Legend has it Ernest Hemingway was asked to write his autobiography in six words. Ever the king of brevity, he penned, “For Sale: baby shoes, never used”.

On the surface, these six words make for a catchy tale, beneath the surface though, they display a sadness that Hemingway was unable to fully express.

Being bi-polar or manic-depressive as it was once known, gives me a slight insight to Hemingway. It also helps me understand to a small extent his final resolution in dealing with his personal demon.

This is the third and final installment of my failed attempt to enter a Hemingway writing contest, sponsored by Harry’s Bar and American Grill, in Century City. While I like this story the most, I had to really stretch things in order to get Harry’s name written into it as the rules required.

The explosion shook the entire ship and all aboard it. Immediately following the ear deafening bang, flames shot into the nighttime darkness.

The blaze roared through the ship engulfing everything in its way. Passengers, who were sleeping, now ran about the decks in a mass panic, each concerned with nothing more than their lives or the life of a loved one.

The bow was slowly slipping into the black ocean water, with the aft of the vessel soon to follow. Those who hadn’t got into a life raft, didn’t stand on the disappearing decks, feeling sorry. They had decided to take their chances with the unknown sea and like lemurs, tumbled into the water.

As for Gerald Rabner, the same was true. His cabin was near the back of the ship and he hadn’t felt the rumble until seconds after it occurred. By the time he shook the sleepy cobwebs from his head, the decks were crowded with people fleeing the quickly dying ship.

He turned back and grabbed his trousers off the floor where they lay. Back to the hallway and towards the deck he ran as fast as he could.

 He stopped and looked over the railing as he pulled his trousers over his legs.

In the water he could see dozens of horrible stories drawing to a conclusion.

 He looked over his shoulder, thinking he’d rather take his chances with the flames. One deep breath of smoke would send him into unconsciousness and he’d never know what happened after that.

Then the flames licked at his face. The full beard he once sported was now gone, having been singed.

Over the side of the vessel and into the water he flung himself.

For only a moment, which seemed like hours, he struggled to get back to air. And as his head broke the water’s surface, the ship was gone as were the voices of the many that had been splashing about him.

Only a single crate was visible in the immense darkness, and Rabner swam to it as fast as he could. As he clung to the crate, he could see more debris floating beyond it.

Among that debris was the outline of a lifeboat. Now Rabner found himself swimming for that.

When he reached it, he pulled himself aboard the wooden craft. Once safely inside he found he wasn’t alone.

Lying in the bottom of the boat was Jack Russell terrier. And like Rabner, it too was cold, wet and scared. The dog quickly greeted him with a wagging tail and barking.

Yet the crate was on Rabner’s mind at the moment and with great speed he moved to recover it. And as he did so, he saw the word, “supply,” stenciled to the box, causing his heart to race with anticipation.

Once the box was in the lifeboat, he wasted no time in opening it. Once opened, Rabner laughed out loud.

He looked at the dog sitting next to him and said, “You’ll eat well, my little one.”

For days the tiny boat drifted about the ocean. And Gerald Rabner slowly faded with each passing day, often dreaming about evenings spent at Harry’s Bar and American Grill.

On the twelfth day a passing cargo ship spotted the little craft. And the captain ordered it brought along side the ship.

As the captain looked down from the high deck into the little boat, he could see Gerald Rabner was dead. However the Jack Russell terrier was still alive and was greeting the sailor’s recovering the lifeboat with a wagging tail and more barking.

They hauled the expired man’s boat onto the ship’s deck as the captain ordered. It was met by both the ship’s doctor and chaplain.

“The man died of starvation,” the doctor reported to the captain.

 The captain looked puzzled, “He had food, didn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” the doctor answered.

“Then why did he starve to death?” the captain queried.

The chaplain interrupted, “He was a Jew, Captain.”

“So?” the captain countered.

“All he had aboard were tins of pork,” the chaplain answered, “And most Jews don’t eat pig as a matter of faith.”

“I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Ernest Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

Good advice for anyone – even those not given to writing.

This is part two of three submissions I wrote for a Hemingway contest, sponsored by Harry’s Bar and American Grill in Century City, California. I didn’t send them in as I felt they were less than what was called for using Hemingway’s standard.

It was slow at Harry’s Bar and American Grill as usual on a Tuesday night. The bar was especially slow as the two bartenders watched television and re-wiped the clean glasses.

The older of the two saw me as I entered the bar and immediately asked, “What’ll it be?”

 “Jus’ a draft, thanks,” I answered.

As he went about getting my beer, I sat down on the stool nearest the T.V. He returned with a mug and exchanged it for the money in my hand.

I had been sitting there for a while when he spoke to me.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked in a gruff voice.

“Nothing,” I replied.

He shrugged and walked away.  As he did I looked at him for the first time.

His ruddy complected face sported a crooked nose and jutting jaw. For his years, he was large with huge hands and broad shoulders.

 When he walked away I asked him, “Why’d you become a bartender?”

 He looked at me startled, “I could still be a cop – I was sergeant once, but I wasn’t happy.”

 He poured himself a shot something from behind the bar and quickly downed it.

“Why weren’t you happy?” I asked.

“I wasn’t living,” he answered.

I stared at him with a puzzled look.

“In anything you do, son,” he started, “You gotta live life.”

“And being a bartender is life?” I asked.

“No,” he returned, as he poured himself another drink, “this is life.”

 He gazed thoughtfully at the glass for a moment, and then looked back at me, smiling as he said, “Being a bartender is a living.”

I smiled back and said, “Thanks, Dad.”

This very short story is one of three written as an attempt to win an Ernest Hemingway contest put on by Harry’s Bar and American Grill, in Century City, California. Part of the rules included using the restaurants name in the story somehow.  I never submitted any of the stories as I believe them to be more in the genre of O. Henry than E. Hemingway.

“Stand back folks,” the man in the tuxedo with the microphone said, “Here’s our one-millionth customer!”

As he said that, a man walked through the automatic doors, carrying a small box. At the same time the camera in the background came on as did the lights.

The tuxedoed man with the microphone moved forward with an extended hand and said, “Congratulations, sir! You’re our one-millionth customer!”

“I am?” the man asked in astonishment.

“Yes, sir, you’re our one millionth customer,” the tuxedoed man started, “And we have a wonderful prize for you!”

Still in shock, the one-millionth customer replied questioningly, “You do?”

“Yes, sir,” the man win the tuxedo with the microphone answered, “You’ve won dinner for two to Harry’s Bar and American Grill!”

As he finished, he handed the one-millionth customer an envelope.

“I’m…” the one-millionth customer started, “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s okay,” the man with the microphone and tuxedo said, adding, “What brings you to our store today?

“Well,” the one-millionth customer answered, “I was jus’ planning on returning this.”

As he said it, he lifted the small box slightly.

“You’re what?!” the tuxedoed man with the microphone exclaimed.

He quickly grabbed the envelope back from the man and pushed him aside, announcing, “Stand back folks, here comes our one-millionth customer!”

Mom had jus’ passed away and there was a lot to do in the way of taking care of her remains and her personal effects, including her entire household. I was already exhausted and I found the ordeal of dealing with my siblings emotional dysfunction even more taxing.

So after all was done, I retreated to Mom’s home and laid on her bed and cried myself to sleep. After an hour-long nap I got up and started poking around her home.

There were a number of items I recalled as a kid and some of them I had often coveted as an adult. But somehow they no longer held the importance they once had since Mom’s death the night before.

So I left them to be parsed out between my brother and two sisters as I didn’t want to bother with the fight. Besides I already knew Mom had left me four things: a panoramic plate she and Dad purchased in Switzerland before I was born, a porcelain holy water fount, the families’ Catholic bible and a Lucky Lager churchkey.

For the uninitiated, a churchkey is a manual bottle or can opener. Sardine tins and condensed milk cans are about the only thing a manual can opener is used for nowadays, while there is still a need for the bottle opener as many imported beers require one.

In 1935, beer cans with flat tops were marketed, and a device to puncture the lids was needed. This new invention gave birth to another invention: the manual can opener or churchkey.

It was created by D.F. Sampson for the American Can Company. The company issued operating instructions on the cans themselves and even gave away free openers with their cans.

As for the term “church key,” sources vary on its origin, but it’s obvious there’s a bit of irony in the naming of the device.  Some have claimed the “churchkey” was so named as a way to rub the repealing of the Eighteenth Amendment in the noses of the various religious organizations who had helped bring Prohibition to the U.S. in the first place.

Whatever the case, this particular churchkey had been around for as long as I could remember and something I often got in trouble for playing with as child. In recent years I had come to wonder why she kept it as she had stopped drinking years before her death.

I have since realized her saving it and willing it to me, was all part of Mom’s quirky sense of humor — and it’s about all I have left of her now.

As a Route Operator for CitiLift, the Regional Transportation Commission’s para-transit system, I spent six to eight hours on the area roadways. This length of time caused me, like many who drove for CitiLift, to find restrooms where ever they were available.

For me, one of those places was at the American Red Cross building on Corporate Blvd. I had the advantage of being a CPR and first aid instructor for the Red Cross and knew all the people who worked in the building.

As a rule I wore heavy, leather gloves on a daily basis, to protect my fingers from the crimps we used to secure wheelchair passengers inside the vehicle. One day I pulled in and parked, leaving my gloves wrapped on the steering wheel as if I were still holding onto it.

They reminded me a photograph I had seen of a jack hammer left upright with a pair of work gloves still gripping the handle. I left them like that and went inside to take care of business.

When I came out of the restroom, I was stopped by my supervisor, Health and Safety Director Christine Price. She had a puzzled look on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked.

She smiled and answered, “We jus’ had a person come in and say they thought something was wrong because your gloves were still gripping your van’s steering wheel.”

I chuckled as she added, “So I had to go out and look.”

Needless to say, I never left my gloves like that again.

One of the most difficult assignments is the writing of a “Notice of Death.” And what makes this one even harder is it’s being written nearly a decade to late.

Five years ago, while working for the Sparks Tribune, I started to write this article, but it was tabled for a current and active news story. Now, after such a long delay I could simply run down a list of achievements and career highlights, but that wouldn’t enough as there are often deeper strands that need securing when it comes to death.

It’s a delicate balancing act — to touch the memory of a person without making them sound like a footnote at the end of a chapter. But the brief life of U.S. Army Lt. Col. Karen Wagner needs to be told in respect to the history of Nevada.

Lt. Col. Wagner was killed when American Flight 77 became a jet-fuel laden missile that slammed into the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001. While she was raised in San Antonio, Texas, she was a 1984 graduate of the University of Nevada-Las Vegas where she excelled on the basketball court and in the university’s ROTC program.

It was as a student-athlete at UNLV that she decided on a career path in the military and in medicine. She had been in the U.S. Army for 21 years before her death at the age of 40.

And it’s because of this seemingly tenuous connection, Lt. Col. Karen Wagner will always be Nevadan, one of the first lost in the Global War on Terror. It is after all, no coincidence that Nevada’s state flag bears the phrase “Battleborn.”

It was towards the middle of my 7th grade year when I was asked to leave Margaret Keating School because of my bad behavior. So my folks enrolled me in classes at St. Joseph’s Catholic School.

I knew I was in trouble the moment Dad greeted Sister Angela, the school’s Mother Superior, as they hugged each other,  laughed and recalled their time in school together in Fort Dodge, Iowa.

Then much to my astonishment, they talked about their last date before Dad left for the Korean War and how Sister Angela came to decide on a life within the Catholic Church. And though I had heard it with my own juvenile delinquent ears I couldn’t believe it – Dad had dated a Nun!

After leaving radio broadcasting for what I thought was for good, I accepted a job as a Security Officer with the Reno Hilton. It turned out to be a job fraught with both personal and professional pitfalls.

One personal pitfall I encountered was the verbal abuse of co-workers, whose self-confidence appeared to be lacking in many ways. Looking back I realize I let their lack of confidence affect my confidence in completing my duties.

Along with the job came a couple of other duties. Since I was still a state registered EMT at the time, I was given the position of medical officer when on duty. I also applied and was hired as a relief-dispatcher.

After having relieved a fellow officer in dispatch, I was walking back to my regularly assigned post at the employees entrance, through what was called the gray area, when I walked past another security officer. Without warning she verbally lashed out at me.

“You better stay the hell away from me!” she shouted.

My response was less than pleasant and less than professional. I told her to “eff-off,” and not necessarily in those words.

It was the first time all shift that I had personal contact with this officer. Earlier as I was dispatching I asked for a follow-up from her as she had been sent to meet another employee for a “key service,” which is to say she had to unlock a door to a restricted area and observe that employees activities.

She had been sent to on the “key service,” by the other officer I had jus’ relieved in the dispatch office. It was protocol to follow-up on officers when they had been out of radio contact for any length of time.

And after half-an-hour, I radioed her to check up on her and to remind her she needed to collect the employees badge number for her report. It was common for officers to forget to gather this information and they constantly had to call the employee-in-question to get their number.

I thought I was doing a nice thing by reminding her as she ended up having two numbers to gather.

Unfortunately, my supervisor, a sergeant, didn’t see it that way. I was written-up for being verbally abusive to my co-worker and this would be another nail in my coffin towards being fired from the job.

Upon learning that actor Sylvester Stallone had been inducted into the boxing hall of fame, I had to laugh. Doesn’t the sporting world understand that “Rocky Balboa,” is simply a character in a series of films?

Yes, I’ve heard all the rhetoric that Stallone has done much for the sport of boxing, but that’s like saying Stallone has done much for the Vietnam vet because he portrayed “John Rambo,” in “First Blood.” I hope that doesn’t mean he’ll get his name carved into the Vietnam Memorial Wall when he dies.

Stallone is a nice guy, the one time I met him.  He was filming an arm-wrestling movie called, “Over the Top,” at the Sparks Nugget, while I was working in the casino as a keno writer.

In “Over the Top,” Stallone portrays Lincoln Hawk, a widowed trucker trying to make amends with his son. As I recall, the son doesn’t think too much of him until he enters a wrestling competition in Las Vegas.

Yeah, Vegas — it’s not the first time Reno has doubled for Sin City, nor has it been the last. I must admit though, Stallone is shorter than I had expected, but I think that’s because of his on-screen persona and my own lack of height.

Now that the door has been opened to include actors in the boxing hall of fame, I’d like to nominate some of my own. The first would have to be Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in “Raging Bull,” a film about an emotionally self-destructive boxer, whose temper takes him to the top in the ring, but destroys his life outside it.

Another film worthy of nomination would be, “The Hurricane.” This movie stars Denzel Washington portraying fighter Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for several years until he was cleared of the crime.

Then there is the performance of Will Smith as Muhammad Ali in the film, “Ali.” So far Smith is the only actor who has been able to capture the essence of arguably the greatest boxer in the late 20th century.

Lastly, I toss the movie, “Million Dollar Baby,” into the ring. Clint Eastwood and Hilary Swank should both get a nomination nod for his portrayal of hardened trainer working a determined woman in her attempt to establish herself as a boxer, even though the movies ending is a bit hard to believe.

Maybe the whole idea should be TKO’d.

It was long weekend, meaning three days off from the rigors of continuous study. Michael Gorsline and I were invited to go spend some time at the Kelly Recreation Area north of San Antonio.

It was Tech-Sergeant Frank Joseph who had offered to take us out to the lake and he was also bringing a married couple along. Frank was the supervisor of Environmental Health Education at the School of Aerospace Medicine. 

We piled into his van and arrived at the lake’s edge around mid-morning. It was a typical central Texas summer day, hot and humid and we were all looking forward to getting into the water. 

After a day spent swimming and lounging in the sun, we had hamburgers and hotdogs, cooked over the campfire. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day. 

While everyone slept in the van, I decided to take advantage of being outdoors and sleep under the stars. I chose a picnic table located near the van as my rack. 

The next day, Mike and I took a couple inner tubes we’d brought along for the occasion and made our way our way to the middle of the lake. There we got to talking about the regular stuff guy’s talk about. 

“I really think Becky’s cute,” I told Mike about the wife of the guy Frank had also invited. 

“Keep it down,” he scolded me, “Sound travels really well over water, you know.”

I poo-poo’d his notion as I believed we were too far out to be heard in camp.

It turns out Mike was right, and I’d find this out that night as I fell asleep on the table once again. Becky woke me up wanting to know if I really believed she was cute.

I told her that I did and I wouldn’t have said so, had I not meant it.

She then kissed me very gently on the lips, said goodnight and returned to the van. Neither of us spoke of it again for the remainder of the weekend.

I never saw Becky or her husband again after that weekend.

Both her question and her kiss left me puzzled for years after. I have since come to understand that there are something’s better not understood.