St. George Reef is a collection of exposed rocks and covered ledges lying about eight miles northwest of Crescent City. In 1792, English explorer George Vancouver christened the outcroppings Dragon Rocks. Over time, the reef became known as St. George Reef.

It is interesting to note that in historic legend, it is St. George who slays the dragon. However, the dragon was still active July 30, 1865, when the steam side-wheeler Brother Jonathan struck the reef and went down. Of the 244 people aboard, only nineteen managed to escape in a small craft.

Public outcry over the disaster spurred the Lighthouse Board to action. However, with the costly Civil War having just ended, Congress was unwilling to allocate the large sum required to construct a lighthouse on the exposed reef.

Then there was the problem of where to build the light. The wave swept reef itself was deemed to difficult a location to build a lighthouse, so in 1875 the Lighthouse Board planned to build a light at Point St. George. The location was rejected as being too far from the reef itself and in 1881, the Lighthouse Board finally settled on Seal Rock off Point St. George.

With the 1881 completion of the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, Alexander Ballantyne proved that construction of a lighthouse on an exposed rock was feasible. The following year, Congress granted an appropriation of $50,000 that allowed Ballantyne to visit St. George Reef and survey Northwest Seal Rock, which would serve as the foundation for the lighthouse.

The Board hired Ballantyne and work began in 1882. Unfortunately, the initial surveyors were only able to get to the rocks three times in four weeks due to the difficult weather conditions at the reef.

When work began again in April 1883, a cable was stretched from the schooner La Ninfa to the top of the rock, and a platform suspended from the cable was used to transport the workmen to and from the rock. The La Ninfa would initially serve as the barracks and mess hall for the construction crew an as a means of transporting workers to the rock and back again in the event of an impending storm.

When the seas threatened to wash over the rock, the workers would lash their tools to iron rings set into the rock and then ride the platform to safety. It is somewhat remarkable that in the entire construction period that only a single worker was lost.

Explosives were used to blast away chunks of the rock. Flying fragments of rock would shower over the area, even reaching the schooner on occasion and by September, the crew had terraced an area of the rock for construction of the lighthouse.

The work season on the rock was limited to the spring and summer months when the seas were more accommodating. During the fall and winter of 1883, plans were made for the next construction season, while each spring, the moorings for the La Ninfa had to be reset and the damage inflicted on the site during the preceding winter had to be repaired.

In December, Ballantyne heard of a granite deposit along the Mad River near Humboldt Bay. When the granite proved to be of excellent quality, Ballantyne contracted the Mad River Railroad to transport the granite to the north spit of Humboldt Bay, where a depot was built to finish the granite stones and load them on ships to be transported to the reef.

Work on the rock began again in June of 1884. Several weeks were spent building a derrick with a 50-foot boom on the rock. Then, word was received that Congress had appropriated only $30,000 for the work season instead of the requested $150,000.

Work continued, but slowly with much of the work suspended in 1885 and 1886, when minimal funding was provided to continue work and then totally lacking in 1865. The initial estimate of $330,000 had proven to be far too little. Not until 1887 did work restart when $120,000 was appropriated.

During 1887, the first nine levels of blocks for the elliptical pier , which would hold the engine room, coal room, 77,000-gallon cistern and the base of the lighthouse, were set. Some of the stones weighed as much as six tons, and each was finished so that it would require at most a 3/16th of an inch joint between it and its neighbors.

The pier was raised to its thirteenth course or level the next year. In 1889, nearly all of the work on the pier, which contained 1,339 dressed stones, was completed.

The final appropriation, which brought the total cost of the lighthouse to $704,633.78, came late in September of 1890, which prevented any work being done that year. The next spring though, work crews returned to the rock, and the first stone for the lighthouse tower was set in place May 13.

The light itself was built on a massive stone base – a pier sixty foot high built of cut rocks each weighing as much as six tons. On top of the base was a tower — a stone square pyramidal structure over 140 feet above the sea.

The tower housed a first-order Fresnel lens which originally flashed alternating red and white. (The red was later removed.) By the end of August, the tower was complete.

The rest of the work season was spent removing the scaffolding around the tower and completing the interior. Although the work was finished in 1891, it would be another year until the lens arrived from France, but in the meantime the station’s fog signal was activated.

The reef was finally lit for the first time on October 20, 1892.

The St. George Reef Lighthouse was one of the least sought-after assignments in the service, with he first head keeper, John Olson, and assistant, John E. Lind, both having been part of the work crew that had built the lighthouse.  In all five keepers were attached to the station, and they worked in shifts of three months at the lighthouse followed by two months in Crescent City with their families.

Duty at the station was hazardous. The tower was cold and inhospitable and storms were frequent. Relief only arrived when the weather allowed, meaning keepers could be stranded on the station for extended periods of time during these storms.

Amazingly, an occasional fierce storm would generate waves large enough to sweep onto the top of the caisson, seventy feet above the sea, and send water over the top of the lighthouse. The tremendous poundings would cause the tower to tremble and the men to fear for their lives.

Service at the station claimed the lives of at least five men. During construction, one worker holding a tag line to the derrick’s boom was pulled off the pier and fell to his death.

In 1893, assistant keeper William Erikson and the station’s boat simply disappeared during a trip to Crescent City. According to the Lighthouse Board report, “no vestige of man or boat” was discovered. And Keeper George Roux died of exhaustion after attempting unsuccessfully to reach the light by boat and eventually returning to Crescent City.

The worst modern-day tragedy occurred in 1951, after the Coast Guard had taken control of all lighthouses. Two young Coast Guard electrician mates, Bertram Beckett and Clarence Walker, had been making repairs at the station and were ready to return to shore with a three-man crew, including Stanley Costello, Ross Vandenberg, and Thomas Mulcahy.

The five men were being lowered to the water in the station’s boat when disaster struck. As they neared the sea, a rogue wave struck the launch filling it with water. With the added weight, a ring, to which one of the supporting cables was attached, failed, dropping the bow of the boat and tossing the five-man crew into the water.

The station’s Officer-in-Charge, Fred Permenter, leaped into the water with an inflatable raft and managed to recover Beckett and Walker. Mulcahy and Vandenberg succeeded in swimming to a nearby mooring buoy.

The commercial fishing boat, Winga responded to the scene, picking up the two men from the buoy and the three men in the raft and after a brief search, the body of Costello was recovered.  For his attempt to rescue his crewmen, Fred Permenter was awarded a Gold Lifesaving medal.

A Large Navigational Buoy was placed near the lighthouse in 1975 and the station was abandoned. As the last crew prepared to leave the lighthouse, Chief Petty Officer James Sebastian made the following entry in the station’s old logbook:

“It is with much sentiment that I pen this final entry, 13 May 1975. After four score and three years, St. George Reef Light is dark. No longer will your brilliant beams of light be seen, nor your bellowing fog signal be heard by the mariner. Gone are your keepers. Only by your faithful service has many a disaster been prevented on the treacherous St. George Reef. You stand today, as you have down through the years, a tribute to humanity and worthy of our highest respect. Cut from the soul of our country, you have valiantly earned your place in American history. In your passing, the era of the lonely sea sentinel has truly ended. May Mother Nature show you mercy. You have been abandoned, but never will you be forgotten. Farewell, St. George Reef Light.”

The lens was moved in 1983, where it was refurbished, polished, and reassembled as a two-story addition to the Del Norte County Historical Museum. The lantern room wasn’t so lucky though, as the helicopter, carrying it, approached the coast too low allowing the room to crashed into the beach.  While the dome was not badly damaged a new lantern room had to be reconstructed.

The tower stood neglected until 1988 when members of the St. George Reef Lighthouse Preservation Society began work to acquire and restore the lighthouse. Del Norte County had previously obtained the lighthouse from the Bureau of Land Management and have leased it to the preservation society since 1996.

Saint George Reef Lighthouse was relit as a private aid to navigation on October 20, 2002, the 110th anniversary of the first lighting.

The elderly woman was crossing the street, heading west on Ninth, when an SUV, driving east, turned south on Sutro Street. I couldn’t believe what I saw next: the woman disappeared from the cross walk and reappeared as a rag-doll under the vehicle.

The traffic light was still red and I decided to run it, in order to get to the traffic accident jus’ across the intersection. I pulled my car ahead of the scene, got out and ran back to the stopped SUV.

A quick look under the vehicle told me all I needed to know about the condition of the woman beneath it. She was alive, bleeding with several broken bones, and her sweater was tangled in the undercarriage and she was quickly choking to death.

As fast as possible, I climbed underneath the SUV and lifted her up off the cold asphalt with the hope of easing her breathing difficulty. It didn’t work as she continued to gurgle and wheeze.

My next thought was to get out my pocketknife and cut the sweater away from the vehicle. The Reno Fire Department arrived at the accident scene jus’ as I freed her.

“We have two victims,” I heard one of the rescuers call out.

I hollered back, “No, I’m not a victim — I’m an EMT.”

The firefighters rolled the vehicle forward and started to work on the injured woman. Within a couple of minutes they had her on a back-board, and neck-collar on her and were transferring her to the awaiting ambulance.

The paramedics took over and raced her to the local hospital, where she was admitted in critical condition. I filled out a report for the Reno Police and was interviewed by a reporter with KTVN news.

Later I was given a Life Saving award from the American Red Cross for risking my well-being to help the woman. unfortunately, the woman died a short time thereafter, leaving my euphoric feeling of doing the right thing in the dust.

I would gladly trade that award away if it would have kept her alive for another few years.

The letter started out: “I don’t know if you are the same person I grew up with in Klamath, but…” It arrived at the radio station, KIIQ where I was working part-time on the air.

Before opening it up I noticed it was postmarked “Yerington,” which at the time didn’t tell me much. I wasn’t certain exactly where the town was at the time, other than I knew I had driven through it on my way from Las Vegas to Reno.

When I reached the bottom of the note that had been in the envelope, I nearly fell off my chair. It was signed “Diana Goodyear.”

The only Diana I knew in Klamath had moved to Nevada when she and I were in 8th grade at Margaret Keating School. We had written each other a few times, then lost touch, but I had never stopped thinking about her though.

It was a difficult morning as all I could think about was getting home, grabbing an envelope and a stamp, to mail the note I had written in response. Diana Webster — as I knew her back when we were kids — and I have been in constant contact ever since.

As if being separated from my bride wasn’t difficult enough, I was fired from my position as promotions director at KOZZ in Reno as the new-year began. And while I still had a part-time job as on-air staffer, I was finding myself to be more and more emotionally drained from the constant tumult.

As it happened, I received a phone call from my Aunt Barbara, who told me my cousin Pammy was trying to get a hold of me. Pammy and her husband own a hunting and fishing lodge in Alaska and wanted to know if I’d be interested in care taking the place while they visited the lower 48 for a couple of months.

I jumped at the chance.

Without much notice to the station’s program director, Jim McClain, I bailed out of KOZZ and a packed my bags for the 17-hour flight to Anchorage. I was looking forward to doing something aside from being distraught over my marriage as it continued to fall apart.

Little did I know I would end up with nothing but time to think, worry and obsess about how bad I thought my life had become and how I believed I was a total failure as a human being.

Shortly after Pammy and her family packed up their Cessna and headed for California, a huge snow storm blew in and buried the area. It knocked out the satellite dish, the Internet and phone service and made traveling the 25 miles via snowmobile from the lodge to town nearly impossible.

I felt alone, depressed and was stranded in the middle of nowhere.

At one point, all I had as entertainment was a little chipmunk who lived in the woodpile by the backdoor. Unknown to me at the time, the little guy was unable to forage for food and I found him dead one morning.

That left me with a lot of time to shovel snow drifts, chop kindling and make certain the pipes didn’t freeze.  Eventually the snow let up and blue skies emerged and I was able to go outside and have a look around.

This lasted only a day as I discovered there were a couple of huge bears roaming the property. I figured it would be safer to stay close to the lodge as I didn’t want to become part of the food-chain by accident.

Much of my time was spent journaling and reading a book I had packed labeled, “The Yukon Writing’s of Jack London.” Inside of sixty-days I wrote 180 pages of material on how I felt and I ended up putting the book away before finishing it.

By the time my cousin’s returned, I was ready to head south, back to Nevada. I had enough of the solitude and needed something to take away the loneliness I felt in both my head and my heart.

I also discovered in short-order that I’m not cut from the same clothe as the character’s written about by Jack London.

For her birthday, our roommate’s daughter gave her a new purse. It arrived boxed-up, via the mail and inside were several small gifts including a wire-form doll of “Jesse,” the cowgirl from the animated film, “Toy Story 3.”

The purse also held a matching wallet to go with the purse and a multicolored necklace that was obviously selected as an accessory to the purse and wallet set. The last thing Kay found tucked in one of the many side-pockets of her new purse was a key chain of the cowboy character from the same cartoon flick – “Woody.”

When she found him, Kay squealed without thinking, “Look! I have a Woody!”

The postman stopped what he was doing and peeked around his van. I’m still wondering what was going through his mind at that moment.

While the torture of War on Terror detainees has made national headlines for several weeks, very little has been said about Northern Nevada’s connection. It appears that Nevada Revised Statues have been violated to assist the Central Intelligence Agency in creating a phony company for the purpose of flying detainees from country to country.

In a speech given during a candidates debate at the Atlantis Hotel and Casino Resort in Reno on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2005, Nevada secretary of state and congressional candidate Dean Heller told the audience that Nevada was a target for terrorists.

“From the point of view of homeland security,” Heller said, “we know Nevada is a target for terrorism.”

The prior week, on Friday, Dec. 9, the Sparks Tribune published an exclusive report about a local company named Keeler & Tate Manufacturing LLC having been named in a suit alleging the abduction of a Muslim-German named Khaled El-Masri. He was reportedly kidnapped while on holiday in Germany and flown to Afghanistan.

Tyler Edward Tate’s name appears in connection with the Reno-based company, Keeler & Tate, that has been filed with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.

The question is: does Tyler Edward Tate even exist?

According to Federal Aviation Administration records, Keeler & Tate Manufacturing is the owner of a 737-7BC which the American Civil Liberties Union alleges the Central Intelligence Agency used to transport El-Masri.

The allegations are that El-Masri was held against his will in a “secret prison” and tortured. When CIA officers realized they had a case of mistaken identity, they notified their superiors. However, according to El-Masri, he was detained for two more months and later “abandoned” in Albania.

According to records filed with European aviation authorities, the Boeing 737 landed in Skopje, Macedonia on Jan. 23, 2004, after a flight from the island of Majorca off Spain, which is a U.S.-friendly government. It left that night. Masri’s passport has a Macedonian exit stamp for Jan. 23. The flight plan shows that the 737 landed the next day in Baghdad and then went on to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Jan. 25, which also conforms to Masri’s account.

The flights were part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the 737. The jet’s records date back to December 2002 and show flights up until Feb. 7, 2005. The Boeing 737 may have served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as well.

Among the many stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government has been busy dismantling dictator Muammar Kaddafi’s clandestine nuclear program; Jordan, where the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level al-Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, are being held, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A search of commercial databases has turned up no information on Tyler Edward Tate. Tate has no residential address, no telephone number, no Social Security number, no credit history, no automobile or property ownership records.

It appears that Tyler Edward Tate is nothing more than a name on a piece of paper filed with the Nevada State Secretary’s Office Commercial Recordings.

Nevada state records faxed to the Sparks Tribune by Scott Anderson, Deputy Secretary for Commercial Recordings, show the signature of Tyler Edward Tate. It appears on three different official documents. The signatures vary markedly from document to document.

“Unfortunately, the Secretary of State’s office has no investigative authority,” Anderson said. “A written complaint would have to be filed with myself first. That would be turned over to the district attorney’s office for a proper investigation and possible charges.”

Renee’ Parker, Chief Deputy for the Secretary of State’s Office said that filing for a false business license is a class “C” felony. The act is punishable by a prison term of one to five years and a $10,000 fine. As of Oct. 1, 2005, a civil penalty of $10, 000 can also be assessed.

According to the Nevada Bar Association, the attorney who originally filed the incorporating paperwork for the company, Steven F. Petersen, does exist. However, every attempt to reach him at his office has failed. His secretary always claims he is “away from his desk,” or “out of the office.”

The Portland Connection

Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC is the owner of a Gulfstream V executive jet allegedly used since Sept. 11, 2001, to transport suspected al-Qaeda operatives to countries such as Egypt and Syria, where some of those operatives claim to have to been tortured.

Leonard Thomas Bayard appears on the annual report of the Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of state. But just like Tyler Edward Tate, Leonard Thomas Bayard, doesn’t seem to exist.

Scott Caplan is an attorney whose offices occupy the same Portland suite as the one listed by Bayard Foreign Marketing.

Public documents show Caplan as filing the incorporation papers for Bayard Foreign Marketing when the company was created in August 2003.

Current Oregon State law states that filing a false corporate document in is punishable by up to 6 months in prison and a $1,000 fine.

According to FAA records, Leonard Thomas Bayard became the sole owner of the Gulfstream V jet on Nov. 16. Records also indicate that Bayard Foreign Marketing purchased the plane from Premier Executive Transport Services, whose address is the same as that of a Dedham, Mass., law firm that incorporated Premier Executive in January 1994.

On the upside, one of Germany’s federal police agencies, the Bundeskriminalamt, known as BKA, interrogated German-Syrian terror-suspect Mohammad Haidar Zammar after the Gulfstream was allegedly used.

Zammar, who is also known as “Sam,” has been a German-national since 1982. He is considered to be a high ranking al-Qaeda member, having allegedly recruited Mohammed Atta, one of the pilots who flew one of the 747’s into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The East Coast Connection

According to Dun & Bradstreet, the Massachusetts law firm’s address is shared by a second company, Crowell Aviation Technologies Inc., which claims to have only a single employee and $65,000 in annual revenue.

Government records also show that Crowell Aviation is one of only nine companies, along with Premier Executive, Keeler & Tate and Bayard Foreign Marketing, that has Pentagon or Department of Defense permission to land aircraft at military bases anywhere in the world.

On the same day, the FAA shows that Crowell Aviation transferred ownership of the Gulfstream to Bayard and Premier Executive sold an unmarked, 3-year-old Boeing 737 to Keeler and Tate Management.

Premier Executive’s only employee is also its president, Bryan P. Dyess. Dyess is a person with a name that does appear in commercial databases. But his only address comes in the form of two post office boxes in Arlington, Va., which is not too far from the front gate of CIA headquarters in Langley.

FAA records show Premier Executive purchased or leased the Gulfstream V in 1999. The plane’s original registration number, N581GA. It was changed by the FAA to N379P, then 8068V and again to N44982.

The Final Connections

The items that these corporations have in common are the link to the CIA and that they are all “dummy” or “shell” companies.” Each has been created to assist the Central Intelligence Agency in moving about the country and world fairly undetected. The “undetected” part is possibly an anomaly and there my be other “companies” yet operating.

Each “company” is housed with a law firm and an in-house attorney. Each one also has a “paper figure” at the head of the company. This enables the CIA to move forward with its plans without hesitation.

Unfortunately, Tyler Edward Tate could not be found and no one at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Va, or Washington D.C. were available for comment.

Finally, when the Sparks Tribune called former Nevada governor and Sen. Paul Laxalt’s public relations office in Washington D.C., his secretary gave explicit instructions to e-mail all questions to the business.

Following those instructions, the Sparks Tribune’s e-mail was simple and to the point.

The communiqué told Laxalt that Tate could not be found and Petersen seemed not to want to cooperate. It explained that the newspaper wanted to prove or disprove that there was a “shell company involving the CIA,” working out of his Reno address. Lastly it asked how Laxalt came to be involved in this situation.

This e-mail was sent to Laxalt, who incidentally resides in McLean, Va., near CIA headquarters, on Thursday, Dec. 22, 2005. Neither he nor representatives of his PR firm have responded to the inquiry.

It is still unknown who Tyler Edward Tate is or if he exists at all.

This is the first of a two-part investigative report I wrote  and which was originally published in the Daily Sparks Tribune.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit accusing the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and three companies of illegally abducting a Muslim German citizen and subjecting him to torture in a secret prison overseas.

The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Alexandria, Va., claims that Khaled El-Masri, 42, was abducted by the CIA, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said at a press conference in Washington.

The suit charges that former CIA Director George Tenet and other agency officials violated U.S. and international laws when they authorized agents to snatch El-Masri on New Years Eve day, 2003.

The suit also holds Reno, Nevada-based Keeler & Tate Management LLC legally responsible for assisting in the violation of El-Masri’s civil and human rights. The company allegedly supplied one of the aircraft and provided the personnel to abduct El-Masri.

The Boeing 737-7BC, whose tail number reads N4476S (it originally read N313P until outted by media reports in December 2004) is reportedly a flagship of the CIA Airline, is not really leased by the CIA. It is owned by a shell company, Keeler & Tate Management Group, LLC. Like other CIA shell companies, it has no full-time employees, no real business premise, and no website.

In lieu of this, Keeler & Tate has an attorney who provides a mail place, registers the company with the state and the plane with the Federal Aviation Administration, and responds in other necessary ways with government agencies and the public. This attorney provides many of the legal services needed by a normal company, including a place to serve legal papers and court documents on the company.

The address of Keeler & Tate is 245 E. Liberty St., Suite 510, Reno. The corporate information provided to the Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller’s office lists the resident agent as Steven F. Petersen, an attorney whose address are the same as Keeler & Tate’s. The only company officer listed is Tyler Edward Tate of the same address.

The address of Keeler & Tate and of the lawyer Petersen is shared by Laxalt Group West, the law firm of Paul D. Laxalt and Peter D. Laxalt. Paul D. Laxalt is a former Republican senator from Nevada. His law firm specializes in “political public relations services.” So does Petersen’s, which has the same address and phone number.

Laxalt, the former U.S. senator whose address and phone number are used by the owners of the CIA’s 737, was a close friend of President Ronald Reagan. When Reagan was president, Laxalt was referred to as the “First Friend.”

When phoned, the receptionist answered “attorneys office” She could not tell the Sparks Tribune which attorney worked at the offices other than there was one who is retired and comes in every once in a while. She did confirm that the office was used by Laxalt Group West. She claimed having no knowledge of Keeler & Tate Management Group.

According to the suit, El-Masri was taken while on vacation in Macedonia on Dec, 31, 2003. He was then transported to a secret location somewhere in Afghanistan where he was subjected to “inhuman” conditions and interrogations.

The civil liberties organization said that soon after El-Masri was flown to Afghanistan, CIA officers realized they had a case of mistaken identity. Tenet was notified about the error. El-Masri remained in custody for two more months.

The suit contends that El-Masri was forbidden to contact a lawyer or any member of his family and after several months of confinement, he was abandoned in Albania in May, 2004.

Copyright © 2005 The Daily Sparks Tribune 

Why the two women were feeling sad is beyond my recollection. What I do recall is that my response was to try to make them feel better.

Since both my then-girlfriend Cathy Andre and her friend and our classmate Cathy Dickey were in a blue-funk, I decided to run up town and buy tickets to a movie for the three of us.  I figured it would be good for them to get out of the house and do something aside from mope.

The movie I chose was highly rated by everyone I had spoken too. And every critic on television and on radio had given the film starring Meryl Streep high marks, besides I figured, with Streep in it, it had to be good.

Wrong.

Don’t get me wrong the performance and the story were both powerful. It jus’ wasn’t the right movie to take Cathy and Cathy to go see at that time.

The film, it turns out is about a woman who makes a gut and heart wrenching decision to surrender one of her children to a Nazi concentration guard in order to save the other child’s life. The surrendered child, we are led to believe ends up being gassed, and that action leaves her emotionally and later mentally unstable.

By the time the movie let out both of the women I was with looked as if they were in shell-shock.  “Sophie’s Choice,” was not my best choice.

I told myself, “Next time, jus’ ice cream.”

It was something right out of the Old Testament – Exodus to be exact. And worse yet, the teachers and other staff at Margaret Keating School refused to allow us kids to come back inside, so we had to endure it.

Jus’ after school started that day; swarms of flying ants began filling the air. They nearly blotted out the blue skies with their numbers and when they weren’t flying, they were crawling everywhere.

During first recess, I saw a girl so freaked out by them, that as she dashed for the restroom, she undressed herself before getting there. She later said she felt like she had hundreds of flying ants crawling inside her blouse and pants.

By our lunchtime recess, there were so many flying ants, all we could do was stand in the shade of the school’s building and watch them swarm over the playground. For some reason, the ants didn’t fly in the shaded areas, instead sticking to the sunshine.

By the time the school day was done, the flying hoards of ants had moved on. No one knew where they came from or where they went too.

And I never learned if they affected anyone else in either the county or the town.

“The washer is broke down again,” Mom said over the phone to Dad.

He was at Requa Air Force Station.  Earlier that year he had been able to get permission from the Base Commander to use the station’s laundry facilities.

A few minutes later Dad called back.  Mom lifted the receiver from its cradled and answered.

“Sorry,” Dad started off, “the laundry facilities are out-of-order up here as well.”

After a few more minutes of conversation, they hung up one from the other.

“Tommy, Adam,” Mom yelled out.

Both of us were in our bedroom when she called.  We rushed to her immediately.

“I’m going to need your help with the laundry,” she said as she picked up the telephone and called Camp Marigold to see if they could use their washing machines.

Camp Marigold was just over the fence in the back yard.  It was an RV park during the summer and not much of anything else during the winter.

It was long past summer and using their laundry room would prove to be no problem.

The plans were to take the laundry over, wash it, haul it back over the fence then dry it since our dryer was still working.  And after a weeks time with four children and two adults, there were fourteen piles of dirty clothes laid out in masses on the floor.

Adam looked at me and said, “There goes our day.”

We both sighed because I knew my brother was right.

There were only two washers available in the campground’s laundry room.  And it each took nearly twice the time to wash as our washer did at home.

The going was slow and the coins in our pockets, Mom had given us to pay for the washings, burned even slower yet.  However, we continued to climb back and forth over the fence, each with a load of laundry in tow.

We were down to our last three loads of laundry by sunset.  The back porch light had to finally be turned on.  The yellow glow from the single bulb cast long shadows towards the fence.

There were actually two fences.  Ours was set higher by two feet with a foot and a half gap to the lower fence built by the owner of Camp Marigold.

All day long, Adam and I climbed over our fence and down to the camp’s fence and finally to the ground.  Then we climbed up the camp’s fence and to our higher fence then down into our backyard.

After dark there was very little lighting on the Camp’s side of the fence.  And from behind the top of the higher fence to about ten feet out on the Camp’s side, there was no light at all.

In fact it was pitch-black.

Having noticed this, I set up a devious plan.  I would wait for Adam to start climbing the fence, and then I would scare him.

The very thought caused me to chuckle as an image of the event formed in my brain.  I could see myself reaching out into the pitch-blackness and touching my younger brother on the shoulder.

And even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to see Adam’s face, I imagined the fright in his eyes.  I could also see him as he ran in place from being so scared.

I crouched down in the darkness, between the light of the porch and the shadow of the fence, where I sat and waited.

Adam appeared and approached the fence.  He set the basket full of wet, clean laundry on the top rail of the Camp’s fence and proceeded to climb up it.

That’s when I reached out and grabbed his shoulder and in my scariest voice, a half-whisper and a half-growl, said, “Little boy!”

I felt Adam’s body stiffened at my touch.

The darkness blanketed everything, including the lightning swift right fist Adam hurled at the sound of my voice.  He was on target and I never saw the punch that hit me squarely in my nose.

I fell backwards as Adam clamored over the fence.

The basket of wet, clean clothes toppled from the fence rail and landed in my mid-section.  I gasped for air and could only breathe through my mouth.

Next thing I knew, I was awakened by a stabbing pain from a beam of light shining in my eyes.  I tried to lift myself up, however I could only raise up on elbows elbow as my head was heavy and swimming with confusion.

It was Dad and he had a flashlight.  He was looking down at me from a top the fence.

He quickly climbed over and down next to me as I lay on the ground.  I leaned back, hoping that Dad would have pity on me and the sorrowful state I was in.

“Crap! I think you broke his nose, Adam!” Dad yelled up towards the fence.

I could vaguely see Adam’s silhouette rise up slowly from beyond the fence at that moment.

“Well, he shouldn’t have scared me like that,” he said in his defense, adding, “I didn’t know it was Tommy.”

Dad helped me sit up and then eventually stand-up.  I felt sick to his stomach and my legs were weak.

“The only reason I don’t give you a whipping is because your brother’s already done it for me,” Dad said.

I remember thinking, “I wish I could have taken a trip to the wood shed.”

Mom was even less sympathetic.  After cleaning me up, she sent me back out to finish the wash.

That included re-washing the wet, clean load of laundry that had fallen on top of me and on which I had bled all over.