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Rocky was old and tired and the young tribal deputy knew it. The vet had been out to Grandma Ivy’s place and looked the mustang over. He declared the situation helpless.

“You can let me put him down or you can just turn him out and wait for the end,” the large animal doctor said.

Tommy thought about it for a few seconds. He figured that since Rocky had pretty much been born in the wild, he ought to be allowed to die as naturally as possible.

“Is he in pain?” the deputy asked.

“Not as far as I can see, just at the end of the line is all,” the doctor said as he packed up the remainder of his equipment.

Tommy offered to carry his second bag out to his pick up. They shook hands and the doctor drove down the road and back towards the civilized world of Fortuna.

He returned to the barn and the stall that he knew so well since childhood. There was a terrible ache in his heart as he thought back on the memory of the old horse he was preparing to lead out to pasture one last time.

His uncle had purchase the mustang from the BLM when Tommy was nine and gave it to him as a birthday present at the age of ten. The young boy’s mother was not thrilled about the idea as she knew that her eldest son was a handful of mischief. She knew that with a horse added to the mix it would be worse.

Tommy’s uncle refused to let the boy ride the horse unless he acted responsibly. He set the child to mucking stalls and feeding stock. He taught Tommy how to clean and groom his pet which he named Rocky.

“Where’d you come up with that?” his uncle asked.

“You said he was a mountain pony, so I figured Rocky would be a good name,” Tommy answered.

Rocky was around five years old when he was captured and sold to Tommy’s uncle. Tommy estimated that the old mustang was somewhere around eighteen years as he unhitched the pasture gate and walked the horse through.

It was all the young deputy could do to choke back the tears as he gently removed the lead from the horse. He rubbed Rocky behind the left ear as he had done for so many years. He turned and walked out of the pasture.

There wasn’t much choice to the matter as Tommy checked the revolver in his holster. The Captain had directed him and another deputy to transport the prisoner to Yreka. It was a simple case of transferring an accused car theft from the reservation to standard civilian authorities.

It was a ten hour or more job and Tommy needed to keep his mind on what he was doing and quit worrying about Rocky. “Besides,” he thought, “I have Dodge checking up on him.”

The prisoner transport and transfer went off without a problem. Both tribal deputies were on there way back when the radio dispatcher said, “Tommy, you have an urgent message to call Dodge.”

They found a place to pull into and use the telephone. Tommy’s finger shook as he dialed the Dodge residence phone number. It was the bad news he was expecting; Rocky was dead.

It seemed like a dreadfully long drive back to the reservation as Tommy hardly said anything. His partner already knew the situation and could offer nothing else and therefore chose to say as little as possible.

When they pulled into the station, Tommy immediately signed out. He didn’t stop to talk with the full-time tribal officers as he normally would have. It was already dark and he knew he needed to get home before the wild animals found Rocky body.

Two and a half hours later, Tommy come bouncing up ungraded road and pulled into his Grandma Ivy’s drive. She met him on the front porch with his bedroll and his grandpa’s 30-30.

She said,”You can use the back hoe in the morning. I’m so sorry dear.”

She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him as tightly as her frail arms would allow her.

He walked out to the barn and found that the old ranch woman had saddled up a horse for him. Grandma Ivy was always surprising him like that. He mounted the horse as soon as he tied his bedroll to the saddle and double checked the cinches.

With the Winchester laid across his lap, Tommy moved the horse towards the pasture gate. There was very little moon and the air felt thick as he worked his way towards where Dodge said Rocky had last been seen. “Maybe I’ll pick up fresh sign there,” Tommy said out loud.

Someplace in the distance a wood fire could be smelled. It had a curious aroma, open and natural, not at all like a wood stove or chimney. Then it occurred to Tommy that it was a campfire. He instinctively felt for his pistol, realizing that he could easily ride up on somebody trespassing on his Grandma’s land.

A few minutes later, far off to his left he saw an orange glow. It was low to the ground and close to the edge of the redwood trees that bordered a clearing that Tommy knew fairly well.

He slipped from the saddle and ground tethered the horse right where he stood. Tommy unsnapped his holster and drew his pistol and slowly walked to the right of the clearing. He worked hard to avoid stepping on anything that might make any noise, alerting who ever was trespassing in the pasture.

Once he was within seventy-five feet and in back of the fire encampment, the tribal deputy lowered down and waited. Tommy wanted to see if there were any signs of movement from the camp. He could see nothing but the faint glow of the camp fire.

Suddenly, a person tossed a couple of logs on the fire causing it to build up a flame. Tommy still could not get a good look at who was by the fire. “Who ever they are, they’re smart enough to sit just outside the fires edge,” he thought.

He crawled on all fours to get closer. Then he heard the sound of a rifle as its hammer was being pulled back. He rolled to the right as the sound of thunder blasted its way through the night.

Tommy quickly fired back.

A strained voice called out, “Who the hell’s out there?”

“It’s me, Dodge,” Tommy answered. “Lower that damned rifle. I’m coming in.”

“Are you hit?” Dodge asked.

“Nope, are you?” Tommy returned as he got up and walked cautiously towards the campfire.

“I thought you were a varmint,” Dodge said as the buckaroo rose up from behind the still form of Rocky. “Then you shot back and I figured you were the two-legged kind.” Dodge smiled.

“What on earth are you doing out here?” Tommy asked.

“Keeping the varmints off of Rocky, because I knew you wouldn’t be home in time to bury him,” Dodge responded.

Tommy shook his head in amazement because nobody asked Annie Dodge to come out and spend the night fending off varmints, four-legged or otherwise. Maybe he’d finally be able share the pain he felt in his broken heart too. It was at that moment that he realized that some of the best cowboys God ever made were cowgirls.

Cinco de Mayo is still celebrated in Mexico, but is considered a minor holiday. It was largely unknown in the U.S. until the 1960s, until Latino activists started raising its profile.

The holiday celebrates the Mexican victory over France at the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862. Mexican Independence Day is celebrated September 16.
Mexico had been invaded by Spain, France and Great Britain in late 1861, but within six months Spain and Britain had pulled out. With the \Civil War in the U.S. raging north of the Mexican border, the French decided to take advantage of the chaos and invade Mexico, which had been torn apart by war in the late 1850s.

The French made inroads in April 1862, but in May, at the town of Puebla — about 85 miles east of Mexico City — a small Mexican army under the command of Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a larger French contingent. Zaragoza was born in what’s now Goliad, Texas, about 60 miles due north of Corpus Christi.

It was a classic David-over-Goliath victory, and it’s been celebrated ever since for its symbolic value, even though the French did eventually take over Mexico and establish the short-lived Second Mexican Empire under the Emperor Maximilian.

Dad sat reading, “The Eureka Times–Standard”. It only came in the evening. Mom was absorbed in an Agatha Christy novel. The two girls and Adam were outside playing.

Tommy came walking down the hallway and sat down on the edge of the couch. He let a big sigh escape as he did so. Neither parent took notice. They both sat there busily reading to themselves.

Outside Tommy could hear the kids at play. He was wishing to himself that he was younger and could go out and play too. But he had already graduated from high school and his job as Paul Bunyan’s voice at the Trees of Mystery had closed for the winter months.

“Besides,” Tommy thought, “I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life.”

Tommy sighed again. Still, Mom and Dad did not look up or give Tommy any attention.

Tommy stared out the large sliding glass door into the back yard. His thoughts drifted back into another time. He was just a little boy then, when his family moved into this house. That was back before there were four children. It was just Adam and himself then.

He looked at the Alaskan daisies that he had spent a week after school planting. They were all white with brilliant green stems that stood out against the dull gray redwood fence he helped build less than seven years ago.

There was the swing set with its rusted green legs and cross bar that he could not recall never having been without. It had saved his life once by providing plenty of entertainment the one summer he was grounded to the back yard all three months.

Just over the fence was the old apple tree that was shade from the afternoon sun for the summer months. He spent last summer with Linda. She was gone now, back to Southern California.

Tommy’s parents continued to read as he sat there with his thoughts. They were mostly memories, more than thoughts.

“Thoughts collect dust, memories live on,” Dad had once said.

Tommy was trying to make a decision – an important one. At first the decision seemed to be easy, but the more he looked around, the less thought he had and the greater the memories he found.

Until this time, Tommy thought of memories as something old men passed back and forth in front of the hardware store. Tommy knew he wasn’t an old man, yet the flood of memories weighted him down until his heart felt like that of an old man. Tommy pushed himself upright and squared his shoulders. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. It was a loud and long noise.

Both his Mom and Dad stopped what they were doing and looked at him. Tommy took another breath.

This one was longer and deeper than the previous one and said, “I’ve decided to join the Air Force.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Both parents sat there in stunned silence. Then Mom started to cry as Dad stood up to shake his grown son’s hand.

The wind blew the double gate open and our chocolate-brown lab, being curious by nature wandered out of the yard. He was gone for three days and I was sick to my stomach and heart-broken.

Worse yet, it was my lack of responsibility that had caused him to go wandering off in the first place. I was the one who preached time and again, “Bar the gate.”

I didn’t put the latch down and ‘Chubbs’ ran away.

For the next two days and nights, I was dutiful as I searched through a chilled rain and the surrounding desert area for him. He placed posters up near the mailboxes, fence lines, telephone poles, and markets.

The posters described the dog right down to the missing toe on his right hind foot. No one called, still I held out hope and prayed that the dog would either find his way home or someone would return him.

Finally, I drove down to the local animal shelter in hopes of finding him a ward of the county. I filled out the required paperwork and I searched through the records of the shelter for mention of a chocolate-brown lab with a missing toe.

A glimmer of hope came when I found a notation about a lab found in a church parking lot. It did not state the dogs color or gender, however it said the animal was “missing a toe on it right hind foot.”

I called the telephone number, but one was home, so I left a brief message with a home phone number.

Feeling somewhat discouraged I walked out to my truck and started it up. That’s when the woman from the shelter came bursting through the door of the building, blocking the path of his truck.

She was very excited and yelled, “Stop! Could that be your dog?”

I looked over to see ‘Chubbs’ wagging his tail excitedly, nearly dragging this tiny woman down the roadway.

Without re-parking my truck, I got out and greeted my lost dog. Along with this woman was a young man, he shook my hand and told me all about how they had found ‘Chubbs’ the day he had gone missing.

Then the three of us had one of those “goose-bump” moments when I called the dog by his name.

Neither of the good Samaritans knew the dogs real name so they decided to nickname him. At first they called him ‘Duke’ but decided that did not fit him.

Instead they chose to call the dog, ‘Chubbs.’

I have spent today simply observing the world around me. I haven’t taken the time to simply stop and watch in a long time. Here are some of the things I discovered along the way —

• While at Meadowood Mall I saw a man asking for money, so I gave him a couple bucks. This act really convicted me because I had been complaining that a friend had run low on funds and had one of their kids pay for lunch using that child’s money. It occurred to me that I was passing judgment and didn’t have the right.
• Walking around the mall is hard work for me because of my back. But I concluded that I must start walking more and more if I am to get my health back. It occurred to me that ‘disability’ is not coming through (at least quickly) so it’s up to me to work on my health.It was difficult, but I passed up the mini-Heath candy bars being given out by some fitness club. I found it to be a little odd that fitness folks were giving out candy if you sign up with their club. So odd!
• While driving the freeway, I saw people speeding down the road. I stayed at the posted speed limit and yet drivers slipped by me as if I was standing still. I really think that if people cannot follow the simplest rule of driving they are probably willing to break more severe laws and not just driving laws.
• For the first time this season we turned on our sprinkler system. Except for this nagging little drip in the line, it all works very well. What was the greatest joy was to watch our Jack Russell Terrier, Harley, play in the long streams of water. He would stand less than 8–inches from the sprinkler head and bite and paw at the water.
• This evening I watched a television program about Franklin D. Roosevelt. In Roosevelt’s day America learned its news about the world from the radio. This evening I learned more about the fireside chat from a medium that didn’t exist back then.

Last weekend I had to do what I have been dreading for a long time. I had to replace a major appliance in our home . My good fortune was that it was a small major appliance, the garbage disposal. The one that came with this home lasted nearly six-years and it was not the best model ever made.

Mary and I had put this off for a couple of weeks, for a couple of reasons, one being money, the other the idea that every time I start a home project something goes terribly wrong. we ·finally came to that point though that we could no longer put it off and we went out and purchased the exact model we wanted.

We were amazed at how smoothly the removal and installation was going. I was smiling as I made the final turn on the ring that holds the disposal to the bottom of the sink.

That’s when I realized we had come to our first problem and it was a serious one.

We had selected the only garbage disposal that required hard wiring to the wall. In other words, it did not come with a cord or plug.

Luckily before I could throw the new garbage disposal out the door and into the busy street in hopes that some large 4×4 truck would kill it for me, Mary calmed me down and read through the directions more thoroughly. She discovered that the model we had could also be rewired with a cord so we could plug it in.

So with no cord immediately available, I salvaged the one from the old disposal and what do you know it worked. All is well, that ends well.

Not necessarily so.

The following night, my lovely bride, loaded the dishwasher and turned it on. I’m resting on the couch in a semi­ reclined state. The dishwasher comes on and she screams as water squirts towards the ceiling through the air vent on the sink.

After catching up with my heart which has raced down the block and to the 7-11 and back, I helped clean up the water and I sit there on the floor in front of the garbage disposal sulking for the rest of the night because I have once again been outwitted by a piece of machinery.

It took me the entirety of the following day to have this revelation: I forgot to remove the stopcock on the air vent inside the garbage disposal.

I rushed home from work that night and in less than fifteen minutes I pulled the garbage disposal apart, removed the stopcock, put it back together, turn on the dishwasher and thought myself a hero.

This weekend my wife wants me to caulk the master bathroom. I can already see the mess. Oh, my kingdom for a horse…a really, really fast horse!

Several Airmen were assigned to a communication class designed teach us how to process our feelings as we continued in our careers. One of the main assignments the Chaplain had us complete was righting a brief statement titled, “Who I am.” It was a free-form assignment as long as we developed 10 sentences about how we saw ourselves. I chose to create a free-verse poem:

I am my father’s son,
I am my mother’s child.
A Person,
Unnoticed by some,
Seen by many.
Like a curving path,
Straight as an arrow.
The same as everyone,
A little different.
Forever changing.

After being asked to get-up and read it aloud, a guy came up to me and asked, “Are you Tommy Darby, the sprinter?”

I didn’t recognize him immediately. He, like me was shaved bald and wearing the same green-weenie uniform as everyone else. As soon as I answered that I was, he smiled and introduced himself.

It was Jerry Ballard.  He and I went to Del Norte High together. We had even been team members on the cross country team.  We made plans to get a beer on our next weekend-liberty. But it never happened as we never had the same liberty schedule.

While I don’t know whatever became of Jerry, I owe him a beer for making this kid feel like he wasn’t all that far from home.

St. Paddy’s Day has come and gone, thankfully. I tend to stay home anymore because I no longer drink or party as I did when I was younger.

In fact I have been known to attend AA and Al-Anon meetings the last few years just to help myself stay away from excessive drink. I still likes me Killian’s Red at times and the wagons a hard seat to sit.

Therefore I try never to lecture others about it. But that is another story for another time.

What I want to share is the fact that I have a number of friends who still make the party scene and tend to get blasted especially on holidays where drinking is socially acceptable. St. Patrick’s Day is chief among these.

Thi·s is the tale of one of these many friends whom I have given permission to call me anytime, day or night should she need a ride home. For the sake of her privacy I will change her God-given Irish name to another God-given Irish name — Erin.

Erin went out around 2000 hours on March 17th and proceeded to get lit up with the rest of the crowds in downtown Reno. She called me around 0200 hours the following morning (March 18th) saying she had enough and was broke.

She was so broke in fact that she couldn’t afford a taxi and would I please come and get her. I told her I would be there in less than half an hour.

She was at the Club Cal-Neva, so it was not all that difficult for me to find the place. However exactly where she was inside the casino I was not all the certain about. That is until I went up stairs.

It didn’t take me long to find her or the two women beating the crud out of her as everyone else stood around watching, including an aged security officer.

Usually I don’t like to mix it up when it comes to women brawlers. I prefer to let the law handle it. Yet I couldn’t allow this to stand as they had Erin at a complete disadvantage.

You see, they had her blouse ripped off her and she wasn’t wearing any under garments. It was suddenly obvious to me that it was difficult for her defend her dignity and herself in a fight, not to mention two against one.

I stepped in and tossed one of the women aside and found myself confronted by a nasty drunk who swore I was picking on a defenseless lady. My friends — ladies do not act the way this woman was acting.

Eventually this drunk found himself under attack by this ‘defenseless lady ‘ therefore clearing the way for me to take care of the other woman beating on Erin. I was not as lucky with her as I had been with the first of the two.

She rushed me head long as I tried to help Erin up. I was able to side step the attack and she bounced head first off the side of a one-armed bandit. This knocked her senseless for the moment.

Still no one was lending a hand to help protect Erin’s privacy and I could not find even the slightest shred of her blouse anywhere. It was only a few seconds of searching that caused me to conclude that some sicko decided to keep it as either a souvenir or else to make certain he had the best opportunity at a peep show.

I finally pulled off my sweat shirt and gave it to her.

The following day — which was actually March 19th — Erin came over to the house to apologize for getting me into the situation I got caught up in. She feels bad because she knows my back is so bad.

I told her not to worry about it and that there was nothing to apologize for, because these things happen. Erin also thanked me for rescuing her four times that morning.

I asked her how I did that.

She said that I stopped the fight. I covered her up when she was half-nude. I gave her a ride home. And finally she said she wants to quit drinking.

That’s when I pointed out that I didn’t have anything to do with the fourth one. I told her that was all her own doing. I told her she is rescuing herself.

After all it was a decision she made all by herself.

It was somewhere along the State Route 215 near San Bernardino, that I learned what makes Californians different from the rest of the nation. It’s in their approach to driving and a highway patrol officer pointed this out to me.

The 215 at that point is a stretch of three-lane freeway. I was in the center lane doing 70 miles per hour.

In the back of my truck, I had a rotor tiller strapped down. It was about 2: 30 in the afternoon.

On either side of me, traffic was whizzing by at a faster pace than the posted speed limit. However I was doing the posted limit therefore, I felt I was okay.

Suddenly and without warning, I saw the unmistakable sight of a black and white unit pull in behind my truck. Seconds later his lights came on, beckoning me to pull to the side of the roadway, which I did.

This nice youthful officer approached me, asking for my driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. I had that all available for him before he got to the truck’s window.

He inspected them and handed them back to me, saying, “Mr. Darby, do you know how fast you were going?”

I politely answered, “Yes, 70 miles an hour, the posted speed limit.”

The officer responded, “Yes sir, you were, but in the center lane.”

By this time he could see I was confused. He went on to explain that the posted speed is for the right lane, the center lane is for those vehicles traveling 75 miles an hour or faster and that the far left lane is for the 80 plus crowd.

“Oh,” was my only comment to this.

“I pulled you over,” the officer finally stated, “because you were going too slow for the flow of traffic.”

He let me off with jus’ a warning.

Adam and I used to get into trouble sometimes jus’ for fun. But nothing prepared us for the day we rolled our younger sister Deirdre down Mrs. Damm’s hill.

Deirdre was nine years younger than me and six years younger than Adam. Yet she was as every bit as rough and tumble as either of us.

This certain day, the three of us had discovered a metal oil drum in the lower pasture. We decided it would be great fun to ride around in it.

But after a couple of rolls in it each, we decided to run home and get all the pillows we could find.

We collected seven pillows. Three came from each of our beds; two from Mom and Dad’s bedroom; and two were the new ones Mom had bought for the living room.

We stuffed all seven pillows into the barrel. Riding around in the barrel became more fun and much softer with the addition of the pillows.

That’s when we figured out that it was too much work pushing that barrel around. So we decided to go to the highest hill we could get to and that was Mrs. Damm’s hill.

Deirdre was the first to go down the hill. Adam and I laughed so hard that we fell on the ground when she crawled out of the pillow packed barrel, walking like she was drunk, finally falling on her back, sprawled out under the hot afternoon sun.

Next was Adam’s turn to take a ride in the barrel, so the we pushed it back up the hill. Adam climbed in and made certain that the pillows were packed in around him.

Then Deirdre and I pushed the barrel over the edge of the hill. Adam screamed all the way down.

Near the bottom of the hill, the barrel hit a small rock. The barrel bounced into the air and when it landed, it spit Adam out like he was a shot from cannon.

He rolled about twenty feet before he came to a stop. Adam got up , smiling as he tried to walk.

He tried to walk over to the barrel but fell down instead, crawling the rest of the way. My sister and I laughed all the way down the hill.

I could hardly wait to take my turn.

After getting the barrel back up the hill again, I carefully loaded himself in and away I went. I let out a scream as the barrel picked up speed.

When the barrel stopped rolling, I got out and started to walk. I also walked like a drunk man.

The only problem, we agreed was the rough bumps at the bottom of the hill. So it was decided that we’d roll the barrel off the other side of the hill.

Once they got back up the hill, Deirdre got in the barrel and situated the pillows around her. We rolled her as hard as we could over the side of the hill, then ran after her.

But the barrel never made it to the bottom of the hill as it became wedged between two large rocks.

At first it seemed funny, but as time wore on the funniness of the situation waned. Neither Adam or I could get Deirdre unstuck.

Finally, I sent Adam to fetch Mom. Once Mom saw the situation she knew that she was going to be unable to get the barrel unstuck.

She needed Pa and John Popper, his tractor. Mom sent me to get him.

By the time I returned with Pa, panic had set in for Deirdre. She was crying and she said was thirsty and could barely breathe.

Pa hooked up the chain to John Popper and then to the barrel. The chain was used in calving but it also proved to be useful for pulling small children out of bad situations.

Needless to say Deirdre got out fine. There was also some hide tanning in the wood shed later that afternoon.

The three of us didn’t get whippings for getting stuck because Mom and Dad knew that accidents happen. We got the strap because we took all the pillows in the house without asking.