Both say I wasn’t even two-years old yet, so they were astonished that I could recall even the smallest of detail. They had to tell me what it was I was remembering.

My God-father had bought a little red wagon for me and we were out front of the apartments that my folks rented in the little French town. It was a three-story, red-brick building with a large patio area.

The patio was finished with a set of three steps leading to a driveway. I was climbing on the wagon as my dad and God-father were talking.

In the small bit of memory I have regarding this I recall being picked up because I was crying. I was at the bottom of the steps with the wagon on top of me.

Dad told me that the wagon rolled backwards off the steps and I tumbled down with it. He said both he and my God-father rushed to pick me up.

The arms that lifted me were dressed in a light khaki-brown long sleeved shirt. Dad told me that was what my God-father was wearing as he was in his Air Force uniform.

What happened from there I don’t have any memory regarding. My parents said that I stopped crying after a while and wanted to continue playing with the wagon.

Such fragmented memories can be hard to figure out.

After several months of working in Eureka, I was reassigned by corporated to KHIT, the Reno station I had worked at prior to my Northern California transfer.  The move came a good time too as my son’s first birthday was jus’ a few days away and I would be there for it, or so I thought.

Along with my transfer, corporate promoted several people, including a new General Manager of all Lotus Broadcasting properties in Reno. One of the first directives the new GM gave was to call for a manditory staff meeting.

Unfortunately, the meeting was scheduled for the eveing of Kyle’s birthday. I tried to get out of the meeting but was told that if I missed it, I’d be fired again.

So I crossed my fingers and hoped the meeting would be a short one, but it wasn’t and I ended up missing Kyle’s first birthday. By the time I got over to his mother’s house on H Street in Sparks, Kyle was fast asleep.

If I had to do it all over again—I’d rather quit than miss his first birthday again.

1996

Now with a steer breakin’ from the group,
I’ll build up fast and large at my loop,
And ride hard as I know I must.
Chokin’ on the cloudy dust
Kicked up from a steer trailin’ poop.

Chasin’ it hard, back and around,
Coverin’ sage blanketed ground,
Hopin’ my hoss don’t right now.
Flankin’ and shyin’ that derned ol’ cow,
It is nothin’ more than a merry-go-round.

1971

Grandma’s hands used to help mama work.
Grandma’s hands ached, sometimes swelled.
Grandma’s hands, they never did shirk.

Grandma’s hands lifted her child’s face,
Told mama, “Baby I give all the help I
Can, jus’ put yourself in Jesus’ place.”

Grandma’s hands prayed in church Sunday
Morn. Grandma’s hands, clapped so well.
Grandma’s hands fished me from Devils-play.

Grandma’s hands would be hard, swift.
She’d say, “Don’t run so fast ‘cause
Fire and brim-stones is not a gift.”

As strange as it sounds, I have at least four connections to the convicted killer, Charles Manson.

First, I attended high school with a couple of cousin’s of Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. She is a member of the Manson family and is in prison for attempting to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.

The second connection comes by way of having been neighbors with U.S. Forest Service Ranger Robert Leach. He is the officer who reportedly discovered and arrested Manson as he hid inside a cabinet at the Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth, Calif.

My third connection is through my Uncle Vince who experienced furniture having been moved around his Los Angeles area home. Its rumored a number of southern California homes were entered by Manson family member as the residents slept and their furniture rearranged.

Uncle Vince was convinced this is what happened and because of this, he moved back to Paul’s Valley in Oklahoma.

Finally, I owned land near Crescent City, Calif., that was eventually condemned by the state and turned into Pelican Bay State Prision. Its rumored, but never confirmed, that Chuck has resided there a few times since it opened for business in 1989.

If true, that means I lost my home, so Manson could be housed.

It started a couple of months before my discharge date of 27 June. I had turned my entire office in to the U.S. Air Force Inspector General because I believed I was putting live at jeopardy by not following regulations.

We had a new commanding officer in the Environmental Health Office. He had yet to complete his 11-week course in the field but was none the less in charge.

He directed me to take several bottles of bleach with me various missile silos we had identified as containing algae growth in the sump. The sump is a large cement basin filled with water, that turns to steam when the missiles rockets are ignited.

Without the water for steam, the rockets heat up the missile, causing it to burn in its hole. This posed a threat to the lives of the missilier’s sealed inside the control room.

After protesting this procedure, I called the GI’s office at Offutt AFB, the headquarters of Strategic Air Command at the time. They sent an inspector to check into the situation.

In the meantime, I had erred. I had gone out side my chain-of-command and I was now being punished through the use of letters of counselling and warning. In the month of April alone I was give six letters all citing various infractions.

Then came the big one. I was sent on emergency leave by my C.O., after he decided I needed to go home and be with Dad, who had jus’ been diagnosed with colon cancer.

Jus’ before leaving I was asked to house-sit a Staff Sergeant’s home while he and his wife were on leave. I watched the house for a few days and then gave the keys to the NCO’s subordinate.

A few days later, while in Klamath, I called my co-worker and friend, Dave Barber. He told me I was accused of having taken stuff from the Sergeant’s home.

It was 01 June when I returned to Warren AFB. Twenty-six days later I was given a General Discharge under Honorable Conditions, having been accused finally of misappropriation of personal property.

It was the only charge they could muster against me after I requested a court martial. Anything else and they’d have to honor my request.

After spending an extra night on base, sleeping on Dave’s floor, I left Warren AFB one last time. I spent one more night in Cheyenne sleeping on the couch at my friend, Deanna Hurless before catching a Greyhound heading west to California.

I learned quickly sometimes doing the right thing comes with a very steep price.

My path took me by the U.S. Post Office, where there seemed to be a commotion occurring.  I could see a man laying on his back, people standing around him, and everyone in a seeming endless panic.

My reaction as a trained emergency medical technician was to go and help as best I could. What I found surprised me and left me doubting my true humanity.

Before me lay the non-breathing and bluish body of my grade school principal, whom I felt tortured me as a student at Margaret Keating. It was the man who had shook me by the throat so violently that it had rattled a nearby classroom door.

In my mind, Mr. Fizer had made going to school a living nightmare. I truly believed he went out of his way to try and catch me doing something wrong, and if he could not find something wrong, he’d make something up.

Now suddenly, I was confronted with a personal dilemma: do I let my bitterness allow me to walk away, or do I get down on my hands and knees and save his life?

It felt like it took me forever to make up my mind. But people who witnessed what happened said I didn’t hesitate for a moment.

Before I knew it I was face-to-face with Mr. Fizer, my mouth clamped over his, forcing air into his dying lungs and starting chest-compressions. I repeated this until the ambulance arrived from the nearby air force base.

It would turn out to be a life altering moment for the both of us.

When Mr. Fizer recovered, he was a different man. Kinder, gentler, nicer, a person one liked being around.

He even instructed me, “You call me Bob, from now on Tommy.” And though I never felt real comfortable doing that, I forced myself to use his first name until he passed away as few years later.

As for me, I learned I wasn’t as bad a person deep down as I had believed myself to be.

It had been a tough year. The bride and I were separated, I had lost my job , Mom passed away and I jus’ couldn’t handle anything else, so I literally ran away.

It was around 9 p.m. when I finally decided to pull off the road for the night and get some sleep. I parked my truck in at the rest area jus’ off I-40 and hiked down into a draw near some adobe ruins to set up my tent.

It didn’t take long for me to fall asleep after crawling into my sleeping bag. Generally I don’t sleep well in locations I’m not familiar with, however I was absolutely exhausted.

Sometime after darkness set in, it started raining. I didn’t realize how hard it was raining until my tent started filling up with water and even tried to float away.

I got out jus’ in time as a real gully-washer raced through the draw.

Both my tent and my sleeping bag disappeared as I clawed my way up the far side of the bank from where my truck was parked. I decided to duck inside the door frame of one of these crumbling adobes for shelter.

As fast as it started, it the rain stopped and soon I could tell it was safe to walk across the draw and up the bank to the rest area and my truck.  I took my time as I didn’t want to get stuck in the pasty mud that had rolled down with the gully-washer.

Midway across the now messy draw I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked back over my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin.

There was a human figure standing in the doorway of the half fallen adobe I had jus’ left.  I decided that instead of being careful, it was time to run as fast as I could to the well-lit safety of the rest area.

The next day I stopped at a local Walmart and bought a new tent and sleeping bag. I mentioned to the Navajo clerk what had happened and she told me I had encountered a witch, though she called it something I can’t even begin to pronounce.

I decided it would be best if I simply slept in the cab of my truck from then on.

In 1862, Congress authorized the Treasury to print $150 million worth of bills of credit and put them into circulation as money to pay government expenses.

They were printed with green ink and became known as “greenbacks.” By 1865, $432 million in greenbacks were in circulation.

The impetus for the creation of fiat money (greenbacks) to pay for the cost of the civil war originated in Congress, but President Abraham Lincoln was a very enthusiastic supporter:

“It would appear that Lincoln objected to having the government pay interest to the banks for money they create out of nothing when the government can create money out of nothing just as easily and not pay interest on it.” — The Creature from Jekyll Island, G. Edward Griffin

“Lincoln’s defiance of Lionel de Rothschild and his uncle James resulted in his assassination on the night of April 15, 1965 by John Wilkes Booth at the behest of the Rothschilds local agent named Rothberg.” — A History of Central Banking, Stephen Milford Goodson

While Goodson makes a bit of a leap in assigning blame without specifics to back it up, Booth was a British spy. He had also been a member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, which had a hand in the assassination. We also know that one million dollars in gold was sent from the Bank of England to the Bank of Montreal in Canada for funding a second civil war and that Booth knew the controller of that bank account.

We also know that the current U.S. Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, covered up most of the facts about the assassination at the time, and it was decades later that some of these facts came to light.

The four of us loaded up into the car for the final drive to the vet clinic. It was the first time the old dog actually laid his head in Kyle’s lap and I recall thinking perhaps he knows this is the last time he’ll get to go “bye-bye.”

Inside the vet clinic, we were escorted to a private room where we sat on the floor with the old lab. Kyle and Kay pet and rubbed his belly while I brushed his flaky, dry brown coat.

It was harder on them to say good-bye than for me as I was staying with Chubbs until the very end. I believe he deserved to have his pack-leader by his side as he left this world.

He had been given a sedative and he breathed easier for the first time in months. I knew then I had waited longer than I should have to do what was about to happen.

My thoughts raced as the doctor pushed the final solution into my pet’s leg vein. I whispered, “I love you,” and told him he was “a good boy,” as I rubbed his chest and belly.

It took seconds for his big ol’ heart to stop beating. While I didn’t feel that, I felt, heard and saw his massive chest heave out that long, last and forever final breath.

The tears welled up in my eyes and washed down my face as I leaned over and smelled his fur. They puddled up, leaving wet spots on his ear and cheekbone.

I whispered, “I’m so sorry Chubbs that I couldn’t protect you from this.”

Then I lifted his lifeless form from the floor and laid him on the table. It was the last bit of dignity I could offer my best friend.