The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what to do regarding all my writings. I have three basic catagories of writings: personal journals, news articles and stories and poems.

My bride asked: Are you planning to leave all this stuff for Kyle to have to throw away? That set my mind in motion as it’s really the only legacy I have to offer my son.

About 8 years ago I made the mistake of telling someone that I thought it would be great if my private journals and news articles could be sent to the Library of Congress for future research. She told me I was conceited for thinking so grandiose.

I hadn’t thought about the subject till my bride brought it up a couple nights ago.

She wasn’t saying anything mean; she’s simply looking out for Kyle’s interest. Her statement comes from the personal experience of having to clean out her parents home after they passed away.

While none of my writing holds any true literary quality, it does hold some historical information. And 100-years from now, I’d think some researcher studying the 1980’s, 90’s and Y2K may find some useful information among the pages I’ve scribbled.

But then again—maybe I am being egotistical. However I can’t help but look at it all and think it would be a shame to consign it to the trash heap.

Snow had been falling since the day before and I had to be to work at KBUL at midnight. As it would turn out, the power would fail throughout the region and the station would be off-air for about 12-hours.

Throughout the city, there were accidents from people sliding into each other with their vehicles, cars and trucks high-centered on snow drifts or where the snow plow had left a high furrow. Even 4×4 trucks with their enormously high wheel base ended up stuck in snow.

I had no problem with my little front-wheel Hyundai sedan getting from my home on Sutro to the studio on Grove. Only two other people made it in to the station like I had; Dan, the Program Director and the General Manager, Debby.

All we could do was wait the storm out, which I did by laying down on on the floor in the front lobby and falling asleep. My sleep was interrupted when the electricity returned.

Outside the building door was a generator, brought in by the engineers to provide electricity to make coffee and run auxiliary lights in the engineering office. It had been running most night and into the early morning, offering a gentle chugging noise that had helped me fall asleep.

Once the electricity returned, it became a scramble for Dan and Debby to make-good on all the commercials missed in the hours the signal had been dark. As each hour began I was handed a handwritten log with five to six minutes of commercials to play four times an hour.

After nearly 10-hour of being on the air, trying to play a couple songs followed by 10-to-12 half minute commercials, I was exhausted and ready to go home. Never have I ever been so happy to sign off the air.

As I left the building I noticed the generator was no longer on the steps. I figured it had been brought inside and was not in the engineering office, however I was wrong.

But by the time I got home, I had received a call wanting to know what happened to the generator. At first I got the blame for it’s disappearance, until I pointed out the generator was too big to fit in my tiny vehicle.

To this day I still don’t know how a person could get away with a 300-pound generator without being noticed.

Living out in the county can be trying at times. Especially when it comes to an early spring invasion of field mice.

That means it’s time for the annual setting of the mouse traps. One, under the sink near the HVAC register. A second tucked in behind the refrigerator along the wall.

As I laid down for my nap in preparation for another graveyard shift, I heard the distinctive snap of one of the traps. This was followed by the painful wailing and crying of a dog.

Our two-year-old pit-bull, Roxy, evidently found the smell of the peanut butter to be too irresistable. The vet says her tongue is going too be fine.

Exactly 30-years to the day, I was fired from the U.S. Air Force. It took me years to come to terms with what happened, but now I accept full responsibility for everything that occurred.

It’s what happens when a person goes outside the chain-of-command like I did. It doesn’t matter if it was to the Inspector General’s office or not, I broke a trust.

I have concluded that given the situation I found myself in, I’d do the same thing all over again, without hesitation.

The best thing that came out of the entire situation is that I renewed my relationship with Christ. It came about in the early morning hours, when I felt all hope was lost.

A wave of peace washed over me as I lay in my bunk feeling sorry for myself. It was at that moment I knew God was with me, that He had never left me and that He’d always be there for me.

Once the sun came up, I felt refreshed and ready to face whatever lay ahead. It hasn’t been easy, but through the grace of God, I’ve continued on with life.

Have I always done right? No. Do I try to do the right thing? Sometimes.

Will I screw up in the future? Yes. Is it difficult to admit this? You bet.

But thankfully, I’m not in charge.

The people gathered, all very excited to see the U.S. Air Forces’ Thunderbird flying team. Half the crowds were civilians, the remainder in uniform.

The aircrafts,  Northrop T-38A Talons, streaked and roared over head to shouts and cheers, as they flew in groups, bursting like a smoky flower high in the sky. Then they flew headlong at one another, a game of chicken at near the speed of sound.

On perhaps the fourth pass, disaster occurred as two of the crafts touched wing to tail. While the pilot who sustained the rudder damage managed to make it to an airport safely, the other pilot lost part of his damaged wing.

Witnesses could see the pilot was fighting his aircraft as hard as he could to bring it upright and to pull it away from the crowds and the close-by base housing. The craft screamed sideways, passing overhead, spewing smoke and debris.

The pilot, Capt. Charlie Carter blew his canopy and punched out as the dying aircraft drew tight to the earth. However his plane rolled over on its back and Carter ejected head first into a parking lot of the rodeo grounds.  

The charred and torn tail-section of Carter’s aircraft used to sit in a storage area on the backside of the air force base, well hidden from the publics view.

So, I’ve been made aware that I post and blog way too much. Is this true?

A bit of the back-story: A friend that I’ve known since 1977 told me that I blog and post too much. They say my writing overwhelms their FaceBook pages, therefore they deleted me from their “friends” list.

While it doesn’t really bother me, I jus’ want to know what others have to say about this. If I am overwhelming you too, I’d like to know.

Like I need another problem — worse yet — like I need another repair bill, but my truck refuses to go into gear.  It worked jus’ fine earlier in the day, but as I went out to head to work at 11 pm, the stick-shifter wouldn’t go into reverse or even first gears.

Fortunately, our house-mate, Kay is still on vacation and told me to take her car since she wouldn’t need it for work. I managed to get to the station in time for shift-change, but I’m still puzzled about what caused this to happen.

Worse yet, I’m no mechanic and I’ve got to have the damned thing towed to town. I’m at least 15 miles from the nearest service station, so it’s going to cost me a pretty penny.

I really shouldn’t complain because this is the first serious problem I’ve had with my truck in the 12 years I’ve had it.

While the inconvienence has me a little more than pissed off, there’s no sense in worrying about it. What has to be done, has to be done. I am trying to find the humor in this whole situation, but it hasn’t come to me yet.

Maybe in a day or two I’ll be laughing about it or maybe not…

The running joke has always been tanned fat is better than white fat. With that in mind, I pulled off my shirt as I mowed the backyard.

Soon I was joined by our house-mate, Kay Casti. She had decided to grab a rake and gather some of the clippings into a pile and enjoy the sunshine too.

Meanwhile, I continued to push the mower back and forth.

The next time I looked up, Kay was topless. I was surprised at this otherwise modest grandma for allowing herself to be seen half-naked.

She looked at me and started laughing. But the look on my face must have said something different, so she turned around.

Jus’ over the fence was the house painter hired by our neighbors. He was standing on a tall ladder alongside the house, looking in our direction.

Kay’s scream could be heard over the roar of the lawn mower.

Juanita Larson passed away at her home on May 3, 2008 from cancer.  She was born April 9, 1933 in Ackerman, Miss., to Luther and Pearl Spurgeon.

Juanita, or Mrs. Larson as she was better known to me, was an artist who lived and raised her family in Klamath. She was married to Alvin Larson and together, they owned and operated Requa Boat Dock and Klamath Jet Boat Kruises for nearly 30 years.

Their son,  Jon and I went to Margaret Keating School together. We eventually graduated from Del Norte High in 1978.

Four years earlier, I was busy helping with the writing and editing of our eighth grade classes yearbook. It was a simple booklet, filled with pictures and the standard juvenile fare, photocopied and stapled between two heavier pieces of paper.

What makes this yearbook special is the fact that Jon was able to talk his mother into creating the cover art for both the front and back of the booklet. Without her help, the yearbook would have looked rather bland. 

On the front, she drew a cluster of Serviceberries, which is indigenious to Del Norte. On the back—what else—a Golden Bear, the schools’ mascot. She even figured out a way to incorporate our class-motto, Being Closer Together,” into the artwork.

In the end, Mrs. Larson created something very personal and worth treasuring.