Mr. Mahan! Mr. Mahan!

Learning The Ropes

64 Dodge Dart with Push Button Transmission
The one is kinda painted, Jourdan's
lacked a little in that.

Michael Jourdan was a high school friend of mine.  He stood about 5'6" tall, probably weighed about 145 pounds soaking wet, drove a 64 Dodge Dart, that was a faded blue color car with push-button transmission (it really had push buttons) and seemingly had the world by the tail. Empty Skoal cans lined the dash of that beast, silver aluminum lids on those cans, from window to window.   It is important to note that I myself stood about 6'4" and could put two Mike's in my pockets, and the kid would have a heckuva time finding his way out of things.

R.L. Quinton, Michael Jourdan, Carrie Minor, Randy Jansen
 Charlene Holden, Ralph Peck, Mary Winn, Sam Willis, Terri Hayes,
Cindy Shea, Larry Snyder and Dennis Pannell.

Mike was a "cowboy" as were the rest of us...Randy Jansen, Charlene Holden, Mary Winn, Terry Hayes, Sam Willis, Steve Keaton, Bobby Evans, Cindy Shea, all of whom lived in town, in fact on really nice roads, in pretty good houses, but alas, we were there to be the rednecks of the world, and who better to do it all.

Quite a Bit Older Now

Larry Mahan (May'-Han) was THE cowboy of the day.  Being fifteen years our senior and just seven years younger than our mothers, made Larry, the King of the Day.  He and Phil Line made a movie called The Great American Cowboy that won an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1973 which was about the time I became a sophomore and Michael moved to town and was a junior.  We all managed to see that movie two or three times, and this was in the days before video tape, before cd's and such, so we managed to find it playing at a movie theater and took it in there.

Ralph Peck, Cindy Shea,
Karrie Minor and Same Willis
at the Dewey Fairgrounds

Mr. Floyd Jack had some property he had gotten on Tuxedo, just south of Madison Avenue.  He taught school at Col-Hi, mostly in my memory it was with Mr. Fee and was drivers ed.  He had some kids as well, because my brother took his daughter out once, I vaguely remember.  You have got to remember the day, because it was about 10 acres (not a house in site) and once you took Tuxedo across Washington Boulevard and went a few blocks, there was nothing there but farm land.

In fact, just an interesting little foot note:  There was hay hauling that went on through Bobby Evans step father, in an old blue 1951, 1-ton truck with a flatbed, and pop-up hay loader.  If you had it set right, you could haul away with two of you on that truck and no one in the driver seat.  The steering was so stiff it just wouldn't get off to the right or left.  The place we hauled hay from now has apartments, businesses, storage places, the whole bit.  We thought we were out in the country.

Paint

Anyway, back to Mr. Jack's place.  Mike had two horses, a paint and a palomino, that Mr. Jack made him a deal...if Mike would clean his barn (of fifty years of horse leavings) then Mike could keep the horses there and have a place to ride.  So being the ever present salesman that Mike was, he talked a friend (me) into it, and before long, Mike and I were cleaning out that barn with sharp shooters, and regular shovels.  The height of the roof was like six feet off the ground, because three feet had been built up over the years.  So we shoveled, and cleaned and shoveled, and shoveled and made the barn area be closer to nine feet in the four stalls, and left a pile of manure stacked up outside the building, which later went on a few teachers gardens.

Mr. Ed
(He was a palomino)

Mike and I had shoveled ourselves silly.  In about a weeks time we had managed to make that barn area livable again, and we had brought the saddles out and were ready to ride.  After getting both horses saddled up, we had loose reins (meaning the reins were separated, with just one to each side) Mike climbed aboard the palomino and I got on the paint.  We rode around the land inside there for a while, then Mike opened the gate and we ended up taking a dirt road about two miles out in the country.  (Again, this dirt road is now paved with houses on both sides)

This was all great and we had a big time, and Mike sped his horse up, which meant mine was trying to speed up and take in all that countryside.  We finally made it back and around and down to the 'farm', and Mike loosened up the wire at the top of the gate and we rode back in, feeling all big and cool.

Not me but it had to look the same.

That was when, (I have no idea why and it takes longer to read it than it actually took to happen) I leaned back in the saddle, threw one arm back, took my cowboy hat in that hand, whipped the reins up like a saddles bronc rider (when the left rein disappeared from my hand) and I hollered out "Ladies and Gentleman, World Champion Saddle Bronc Rider, Mr. Larry Mahan" and I said something like 'woo hoo,' sort of in a loud, cracking sound, and that's when that paint horse decided that he had had enough of me, my weight, my riding him and and before I could rescue that one rein, he was bucking across the field....head down, my right hand pulling the right rein, his head turning, his back legs catching and kicking air, his two front feet staying together, whamming into the ground.  It's funny what you remember in moments like that.  The grass seemed so green, just a vibrant color, the big pond surrounded by rock seemed to lay there looking at all this hubbub that was going on, my feet were managing to stay in the stirrups, and most of all I remember thinking it was awful weird to have ones heart beating up in ones throat.

That horse managed to take about four hops, when there came up on us, the barbed wire fence that separated the south pasture from the north pasture, it was an 'oh gosh" kind of second, and that horses front legs hit the ground, my mind was telling me that we were going to go over that fence together, I dropped a bunch of slack into the rein, causing him to turn his head sharply to the left, and about that time his backside came high up off the ground, and somehow or another, that horse managed to turn his head, causing his body to snap to the left, causing my body to snap to the right, and before I knew it, I was on the rocks and the ground, face down, and that horse had just managed to turn his body and ditch me over that fence.  I shook my head, trying to figure out where and who I was.

How I Thought The Horse Looked

That is when I heard Mike calling from the other side of the fence, running and being all excited, "Mr. Mahan, Mr. Mahan...are you alright???  The laughter was causing tears to come down Mike's face, my own face was in a state of shock, and the paint horse was walking to the barn, both reins beneath its legs.

Standing In The Dry Part

18 and Taking the World By Storm

I had already been out of high school for a year.  A year spent at OSU and Wesleyan College.  Not to say it was a great year, by any means, not even to say it was an OK year...but it was a year I had managed to get through and I had managed to get summer employment at J.M. Huber Carbon Black factory in Borger, Texas.

Borger Texas, land of my birth, had not shown much of  a world moving forward in 1977, and looking back on it now, it really seemed to move backwards in time, even though it had only been 14 years since I had lived there the first time.  There was several "industries" in town; Borger Pipeline, Phillips 66 Carbon Black, Phillips refinery plant, Phillips rail car, on and on with Phillips, and J.M. Huber Carbon Black. Phillips and Huber were across the street from each other, and it is important to talk about how black the black was when you went there.

Company Logo

Carbon Black is/was used in about everything.  A small portion of it went in every car tire made, and a smaller portion went in licorice that you ate, to turn it that black color.  Ink pens, paints, car parts, everything took carbon black.  Carbon black was fairly simple to make (in theory) as it is just fuel and fire, cooled by water, moved by water, and then packaged into seventy pound bags, or put inside large hopper cars on the railroad, and transported to the companies that used black to make their products.

J.M. Huber Corporation

It was black.  When you drove out to the plant, about three miles from the two plants, the earth turned black.  The road was black, street signs were black, the signs telling you J.M.Huber was on the right side of the road was black. The fences, tires, pick-ups, steel buildings, water hoses, EVERYTHING within that you could possibly see, was black.  The people that worked there, the clothes they wore, their hardhats (issued white, turned black) their jeans and work shirts, their skin, and even people's teeth were black in color.  We were paid 30 minutes a day to take a shower, using strictly baby oil to break the black up, get it from around your eyes, and mouth, your hands, any part of you that was exposed to working, turned black. Carbon black was about the consistency of baby powder, just black. 

Powder on Your Face

Your clothes were washed four times per week, and you had two lockers, one on the clean side, where you would come into work strip down to nakedness, walk through the showers, into the dirty side, where you would put on your black clothes (that may have been blues jeans and blue work shirt) but were soon again black.  You even had powder, like baby powder at the locker room door, that you would dip your hands in a fifty-five gallon drum, rub it all over your hands your face and your neck, to try and keep the black from attacking you so badly.  It rarely worked.  It was important that you kept yourself dry through the day, to keep the black from sinking in.  This rarely worked too, as that one time where you managed to stay out of working so hard, was met by some clown, just outside the locker room, who had a garden hose, wetting you down.  At the end of the day you showered, walked across to the clean side, drove home, took your dirty/clean shoes off on the porch, and went inside.

Getting Clean

I had managed to talk four professors into me leaving early, taking my tests and getting to Borger about mid-April to work.  I took the tests, packed my bags and headed west.  I was living that summer with my Uncle Pete and Aunt Lora (that was pronounced Ain't Lore) and when I had been there a couple of days, work began.

My boss was Woody Paige, he was the safety man in the plant.  Woody had worked in the black for several years, but told me he had actually lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (where I was from then) and had worked for Arnold Moore Funeral Home.  It was hard seeing this all come together because I had had my dealings with Mr. Moore, and here was Woody, a dyed in the wool carbon black safety man, whose clothes were black, smoked Camel shorts, and a pair of the biggest safety I had ever seen.  Woody had told me he left the funeral home, when he had "been discovered" having an affair with a lady that worked there, in a not so pretty way, by Arnold, and had managed to take a gurney into the front of Arnold's trousers, with Arnold in them, and pushed Arnold down the stairs, all the while trying to get his own trousers off of the floor and getting the woman dressed and out the door.

Woody turned out to be a great boss, because we never saw him except in the mornings, and in the shower of an evening.  He never told us to do anything, he just put us with the right people and off we went to do out job.

Staying Clean?  Nah....

(A tiny little footnote on Woody:  He left J.M.Huber a couple of years later, after, on a drunken binge, he had managed to steal a tank from the Army reserve field there in Borger, and had managed to get it some three miles down the highway, running the thing over the center lanes and curbs, and turned and ran it into a hardware store that Woody felt owed him money.  Later on, sobered up and in jail, Woody admitted having never been in the hardware store.....)

The plant was about about a mile and a half wide, and approximately two and a half miles long.  There were pipes and buildings and hills and burners and fixtures and motors in almost every foot of that plant.  Standing at the foreman's shack, looking north, shipping and receiving and testing was on the left, operations was on the right, railroad tracks ran down the east side of Shipping and Receiving Building which was roughly about five stories high.

There were all sorts of fun stuff that happened that summer.  We were sent as a group, to the top of shipping and receiving's building, and told to clean the dome lids that were on top of the building.  This made as much sense as white birthday cake being served on the lawn, but we went, took shovels and chisels, and gaskets, four of us I believe, to clean the dome lids.

When we got there, there were about fifty dome lids scattered across the roof of the building.  It is imperative to remember that this was summertime, and it gets very hot out on the West Texas panhandle plains, and every inch of the surface that we were dealing with was black.  So we all walked down to the middle of  the five story roof, took all the bolts off the dome lid, popped the lid (about forty eight inches in diameter) off of  the roof, and leaned in to look down.  The roof storage area was full of carbon black, up to about four feet from the hole.  We checked it out and the dome was clean. (black but clean) so we decided to check a few more, and they were clean.  So we all settled down and talked about why Woody had directed us to the roof.  That was when it snapped in someones brain that Woody just wanted to not worry about us that day.

So everyone was sitting around that bare hot roof, looking at those bare dome lids, when one kid, David I believe was his name, stood up, walked to the edge of the lid, and told us goodbye.  Then he jumped.  Straight down into the black.  You could of knocked us down with a feather.

After a long three second wait, we all stood up and ran to the hole in the roof, bent over it, and there we saw him, buried about up to his chest, laughing til water was running black out of his eyes, because he had gone as far as he could go.  Then it became a matter of who should go in next.  Within about seven seconds, all four of us were in the holding bin, laughing and having about as much fun as kids in a black snowstorm could have.  It is amazing that you can throw black and is disperses into a small cloud on its travel.

We were in there about thirty minutes or so, when we decided to get out, and head on down and go to work, but that was when we discovered that the holes had gotten above our reach to get out, as the black had moved beneath our feet (unbeknownst to us) and it was now about six feet up to the way out.  The only way out.

Within a few minutes we had figured out that if one kid climbed up on another kid, the kid climbing could get out.  The decision was made that each would climb on my back, get out and then two of them would lay down and pull me out.  It took time, as the black kept sinking. but, we made it anyway.

(to be continued....)

Idaho Dreaming

Placerville, Where The West Was The West

Mine Was Black and had Uncool Tires

One has to keep reminding himself that most all of this took place forty five years ago.  That seems such a few seconds of time, but when considered within the context of time, specifically, it seems weird to even be a part of what was going on. An example of this might be in my driver’s license. In thirty seven years of having a drivers license, which I tried to get when I was one day younger that sixteen years of age, and that made me wait out the weekend, and then I took the test, received a ninety-five written and a hundred on the driving, which is not difficult to do when you’re driving a 1972 Oldsmobile Black Station Wagon that was approximately, three of today’s cars in length and weighed about as much as a half-loaded semi going down the highway.


When one takes this test and receives his first license, you put your current address, height, weight and hair and eye color on the form and that is when it becomes permanently sealed.

I know I know

So at sixteen, I had hazel eyes, and I really don’t know if they are that color, the name sounded fun to me, and I was 6’4” in height, which I have lost some of over the years, that seems really odd.  But the thing that I put down was weight.  250 pounds of me, and yes I was a bit pudgy then (laughter ensues) but I put it down.  Over thirty seven years of holding that license, I have never had a single ticket for a moving violation (knock on wood) but, my weight has always shown to be 250 pounds, regardless mind you, of whether I weighed 198 pounds (my wedding day November 1, 1980) or 450 pounds (yes as bad as it seems, there was a time) and if my license had been renewed annually, it probably would have been printed with rotating numbers to keep up.  It always said 250 pounds.  So some things never change.


At the time described inside this writing, President Abraham Lincoln had been dead less than a hundred years.  Idaho had become a state seventy two years ago.  TV was black and white, and the list goes on and on. 


There was a group of us that took the little trip up to Placerville, that was about fifty miles north of Boise, and it took about two hours to make the trip.  It was on the western edge of the Boise National Forest, and took a while to creep up there in the old Apache truck.  Ed, Donna and Debbie took their Jeep up and they seemed to get there in about an hour and a half.


Placerville hadn’t changed much, because there were about 50 people that lived there in 1964, and close to fifty that live there today.  In 1865 there were close to 5000 people living there and Placerville was rather the center of attention in Idaho.  Mostly for gold mining (placer-mining, shallow field mining of gold and silver, hence Placerville), and according to the Internet, it looks as though the place hasn’t changed much since we were there.  Still dirt roads, grass that looks short but has never been mowed, and as odd as it sounds, the cemetery still sets up on the die of the hill, and looks exactly like it looked back then.  (That sentence really sounds dumb written down, but it made sense to me to write it that way.)

Placerville Cemetery

At the Placerville Pioneer Cemetery is the grave of three fiddlers.  These wandering musicians made their living providing entertainment in the remote camps, but in Placerville, their luck ran out. Actually there were only two musicians, Fred Cursons and L. Moulton, and the third mad was a miner carrying a considerable amount of gold dust. George Wilson, the miner, was the intended victim of a robbery, while the musicians were killed simply to ensure their silence against the killer. It’s somewhat understandable if understanding is even possible, because Placerville was so far from reality, that the three to four months of decent weather, meant eight to nine months of snow.


The killing took place in June of 1865, while the trio of men was walking from Placerville to Centerville.  The brutal murders created a wide-spread furor, and in a few days authorities arrested John Williams, who was known by reputation as a gun slinger and a gambler.  In spite of nearly being lynched when he was arrested, a verdict of not guilty was handed down by the District Court a month later.  No one else was ever apprehended, and the true murderer remains lost in time.  That seems worthwhile, since the story would not have been as good if they had caught the guy.


Mom and Donna Jones had brought picnic lunches and while there was a good trip through the cemetery, looking at the headstones and the fence around certain graves, and the unreadable stones, and the graves of three fiddle players, and on and on.  There was a certain fascination with the headstone reading, and it took me in and has kept me looking ever since.

Camera Was On B&W

Pop was always talking to people, getting them to show us stuff, and tell us about things, and reveal history, etc… and the time in Placerville was no different.  Somehow he had managed to get in a discussion with a woman, Mrs. Henrietta Penrod, who was right outside her house, and they were talking.  She was weathered; in fact she had been born there in Placerville in 1892 and was 71 years old. Her dress was long and a print and she wore an apron on the front of it, and a pair of hiking boots that appeared to large for her feet.  She had moved in to her present home in 1913, which seemed to have about a twenty foot by twenty foot floor plan.  There was a propane bottle outside the house, and a hand pump for water, and before long we had all been invited inside to look at the house, because she had something she wanted to show us there.

It seemed somewhat normal then, but thinking back it had to be really something to see.  She had several pictures hanging on the wall, well, hanging on cords that were nailed into the finish board on the wall, coming down and supporting the pictures that were placed rather high and at an odd angle to the world.  The furniture, at least some of it, looked as though it came from 1875 or earlier, anti-madassers, (hair oil that was on the market in the 1800’s and early 1900’s) hand sewn cloths, were across the top of the chairs. There were several books on the table, and a small portrait of her and a bearded man taken years ago.  There was no TV it appeared, and that’s when we noticed that all of the lights were kerosene lights, and the place had a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom.


 It was where she just couldn’t wait to show us the greatest thing to come along.  In the bathroom were a mirror, a toilet, and a bathtub, and directly next to the bathtub was a fifty gallon, white, porcelain, water heater, powered by propane and a gas burner.  Her white hair shined, and her blue veins in her small hands showed, as she explained, that just last winter, it had been installed, and they had brought her propane and connected her stove and bathroom to the tank, and she could cook supper and take a bath, almost every day during the winter, and all the rest of the year combined.  It didn’t take long to realize that this woman had been bathing in water heated on the stove, which was heated by wood, which she cut and trimmed and made small enough for her fire.  She didn’t look it at first, but one could only surmise that she was tougher than the trees she had used for years.


There was quite a bit of exploring to take place in Placerville, but the game of washers seemed the thing to do.  Pop and Ed Jones were walking down one of the dirt streets, and they came across a couple of residents playing a game out in the road.  They had buried two three-pound coffee cans, the tops even with the dirt of the road, approximately thirty five feet apart, and there were six, one and a half inch washers, that were used to toss between the cans.  It was like a game of horseshoes (though less painful if you got hit), and it seemed to keep them all busy for a couple of games.

The Brownie

Watching the old eight millimeter films that Mom took on her wind up camera, show all these people, and the little kids running around inside Placerville, camps, making fires and enjoying part of life.  It is interesting to watch those films, mainly because you know that maybe three other people will get to see them and two of them will enjoy watching.  There is not but a little bit of love for watching, home movies, especially if it isn’t you being watched.

Some Poetry

Ireland

Streets seem narrow, but so are the cars,

Sitting on the wrong side, feeling like the whole world is coming toward me

Feeling at a total loss for helping, or seeing,

The best thing is to watch, and look, and see.

The day is crisp and feeling a little green, and different greens show

And over a hundred greens are there, on the side of that hill,

Above the green waters of the lake, each one soft, and bright,

Covered up moments ago by the mornings fog, as the boats

Lie within their moorings, each a white color, with a bit of the green,

And the trees seem delighted as the sun makes its way out,

The water lapping at the shore, kissing it in little motions

Seeing the bottom, with its growth of green, looking back.

Whisper Sweet Irish

Sitting in the Irish home of the man I had traveled about a fourth the world to see,

Eating the dinner that had been prepared, by his Irish wife, at their table

Eating, just the three of us, together in their Irish home, with the Irish grass

Growing outside. Their Irish son, just home from being abroad for over a year, came in

Said hello, told me a welcome in coming, told stories of his time in Africa,

And Australia, telling it in tones a little less loud than normal, his mother and father

And me, at the table, drinking Irish whisky, and Italian wine.

Tired took the son, and left us there alone, left me there alone, to listen

As the father spoke, in tones so gentle, and feeling quiet, as he told the stories

Of when he raced cars, and traveled to Africa, and Egypt and Israel, and took boats

Across. There was food on the boats, beautiful produce laid out, fresh fruit, and breads

Salmon, bagels, fresh tea, cakes, and everything good on that buffet.

Till that second day, when the buffet was laid out exactly as the day before, and the

Third, and the fourth, and the boat lay in for supplies somewhere in the Middle East.

He managed a crossing to the shore, off the boat, away from the buffet.

More wine, around the table, his wife glowing and seeming to be more than happy,

My hands feeling like they were laced with lead, the drink finding its way in, and he

Being from Ireland, told the story, how the King of Ireland, way, way back in time

Lived there, on his property, rallied his troops there, and told them all, he was to conquer

Those from the North.  His voice in a mere whisper now, the clock making its rocking

Click, much louder than he spoke, and his Irish blood running through his veins, he told

Of the Kings’ run, through the shallow part of the lake, around the enemy, which

He conquered handily, and kept southern Ireland clear and fresh, and forever separate.

These last words, came in barely a whisper, all of us leaned in, all of us, in Ireland.

I See The Irish In Your Walk

Yes I see you.  You are standing there, watching the lights above the

Irish walk, seeing the railcars slide down the line,

Looking at the people, looking at you as you are playing,

Smiling, head cocked slightly to the right, smile all askew

On the famous face of yours, peering out from

Your close cropped  hair, looking smart and smiling, and
Giggling; as you begin to laugh, and those around you

Begin to smile, some laugh, some look as though

You have lost your mind, as your coat surrounds your body

Your pants full length, and at the end, your new Birkenstocks

Glaring up in a color so different from that of your clothes,

And you laugh, and I laugh, someone takes a picture,

And the birds fly up from the plaza.

Why are we, we?

Finding the ability to be the person you think you are, is tough.

There is something I have discovered about us, as human beings, (that gawd-awful way of lumping us all together, so that we are one thing....) that though our lives have changed, in these five point two/three/four decades we have been milling smartly or dumbly about this earth, there is little in us that has changed.

Now, not to consider that we are not different, oh I think we are strongly different than we were in our youth.  But in the "big scheme" (another overly used reporting term) of things, we are in this wonderful age (gasp gasp) able to carry out our plans, find the world turning in mostly the correct direction, find our needs are simply and easily met, but that, with time and energy, we must fit those plans, to the larger plans, that the world has put upon us.

Or just sort of be freaky and keep things the way they were.

Gray (greying) Hair

Hair.  If you are female, chances are you have it.  Chances are greater there is a dribble of gray in it. There are those that's heads are covered in gray, and you have learned to deal with that.  Long hair, short hair, its in fashion, in feels good, and by golly you must, or I must say, it is pretty.

On the other hand, there are those of us who, by natures choice, not ours, have been left without any hair to speak of, at least from the top if the knoll down to the little paths over the ears, and off to a startling stop in a wavy little choice along the back of the head.  Now there are remedies for this, you  could get a hair piece, you could have some scalp removed and moved to the top of your head, you can take pills, dye it, whatever the case may be, but in all reality, it is just frigging gone.

Not Me

The only rebuttal I have is in growing and maintaining a beard.  'Maintain' means I have had no choice about the color (gray) that it has all gone.  36 years this summer, my face will not have been uncovered, not for three surgeries, two kids, a wonderful grandson, nothing.  In fact, the only time I even considered doing something about the beard, the scissors fell from my shaking hand so hard they broke, and they have never been back.

Now who would of thought all that in high school?  No one.  Ever.

There are friends whose lives have changed.  At least from the outside looking in, they've changed.  There are friends that are dead and gone, close friends.  There are people that have disappeared from the face of the planet.   There are friends whose loves have meant nothing to us, to me, whose return into my life or my return into theirs, has made the heart jubilant, made it fun, made it someone you can be with, and around, and know when you have said the right things and said the wrong ones, but being able to find those folks again is a blessing.  At least for me.  Maybe just for for me.

There have been times when, out of the clear blue sky, I will say something or do something that is sooo freaking weird for me to say or do, that the people I have been close too for 35 years find it impossible to believe that I would even act or talk that way.

That is me.....on the left.

There are people on this bloody computer, who, if they think for two seconds, well that is me.  he he he  yep that's the ole guy coming right out again, and if he didn't, we would think him as weird as could be.

So there you have it.  A split personality.  Two men living in one body, that figured out the best way to handle living was to split the time fairly between the reality of home and family, and the time spent on the computer with the rest of my family.

1955 Three Years Prior to My Birth
(Thomas, Roy, Roy and Roy)

But are we, all of us persons, are we not the ones who can claim that piece of soul that we lived, once again?  I think of my Dad and Mom, coming from that wonderful age of "the bust" when Dad's dad was a sharecropper who moved rocks by horse and buggy to provide beans and bread, of Dad growing in up in the dust bowl of western Oklahoma, joining the Navy, moving away...marrying my mother at the age of sixteen, taking the orphan out of her grandparents home, moving to Pensacola, Borger Texas, Boise Idaho,  Bartlesville.

When you think of things you find, that they had very little discourse with friends of old times, that they made new friends, but when they moved again, they started from the beginning, making new friends and loved ones. If someone were to say, who were those friends?  There would be one or two families that they would name, because communication fairly and completely sucked.  Phone calls were all a person could make and those were expensive long distance calls, so they just weren't made.  Letters were written, but they too dried up, and went away.

Our lives, whether one wants to look at it this way or figure its all corny and means so little, are enhanced, are fuller, and can and should be better because of the technology that is going on today.

I'm fine with it,  don't ask me to shave.

Poison Ivy/Oak Fun

The Fun Of Gathering Plants

Sunday afternoon.  Beautiful day.  Humidity was at 72% just short of a rain shower.  Temperature was 90 degrees, just short of punishment handed down against the withering soul.  Mowing the lawn seemed a perfect thing to do.

I'll weed eat first.  Gather up the weed eater, get it gassed, start the lawn mower for her to mow while I weed eat, crank on it, and it starts.  Yeah!  Then it decides to die, and start and die and start and die, (at which time to relieve this thing from printing all the starts and dies that it went through) I managed to being weed  eating slowly and then things finally kicked in and I began in earnest.

The backyard was the most difficult, with privacy fence on four sides and the house making up the fifth, and four, no five trees, and the tree stump located just behind the garden, and the neighbors plants growing through the fence, and lots and lots of clean up work.  This in my green stained shoes, shorts and t-shirt, with the head phones in, playing Pandora radio, and the vibration of the things melting every bone between wrist and shoulder, with the right should already feeling dead from pulling on the rope so bloody many times.

In about 45 minutes I got the back done....started the front....and in about 45 minutes I had every single place you could think of on this lawn ripped a new one, with the fence showing through, the sidewalk showing off its edge, the mailbox not looking as though it had grown there, and basically looking good, it was a wonderful time.  The to finish things off, I took the mower away and finished mowing the front yard, and the mower ran out of gas, ten feet from the gate.  Life could not have been better.

I went inside, she was in the shower, so I sat down at this stupid box, checked the e-mail, checked out a thing or two on Wimp, got around, pulled my socks off, figured it was my time in the shower, and headed in to take one.  There was green all about my legs that I washed off in the shower, got the green off of my toes, and managed with all the princely timing in the world to get myself nice and clean.

Put on  clean shorts, a clean shirt, settled in for a great time of TV watching and a wonderful nights sleep.  The TV watching went fine, the sleep, well lets just say it was itchy.  My legs were itchy.  I woke up about every fifteen minutes with the feeling of lots of little ants crawling about my legs, biting and taking their share. I convinced my self it was chiggers.  Little did I know that chiggers don't exist here in town, so all of the action that was taken to rid myself of chiggers proved to be at a loss.

Ooops  Wrong Picture

Managed to go to work.  Walk to work.  As long as my legs were moving, the itching didn't itch.  So I stayed on my feet most of the morning and into the afternoon, and came home about 2:00 o'clock, fixed a bite to eat, that should have been it, watch a show on TV, nap a little. But, somehow, life had been at work again, and the legs were itching.

I went to Walgreens and got some Cortizone cream.  That'll fix it.  So home I come and I rub that on both legs.  Thirty minutes later, I rubbed it again.  Fifteen minutes later, again.  The instructions say (to paraphrase) Don't Do That.

The clock said it was 7:50 pm.  So I hopped in the car, drove the car down to the local shopping center, to the urgent care facility and walked in at 7:56.  The closed at 8:00.  But, the first thing I HAD to do was provide them with the credit card, which I did, they ran it for $30.00, and THEN she asked me to fill out their forms.  Interesting.

So, forms done, taken in a room, weighed, temperature taken, flick flick of the mechanical pencil, told to go in the other room, sat on a table, in about, oh, a minute,  the Doctor walked in with a serious look upon her young face (incredible how young they can look) and asked the inevitable question, : "What is Wrong?"
(emphasis on the 'What' part of that, she seemed so sure of herself)

I pointed to my legs, to the blisters, gave a thirty second diatribe and watched as her professional self relaxed, (yipee, she thought, I will be out by 8:30!!!) and she said, "Poison Oak or Poison Ivy"  in one breath, "We'll give you a whopper of a steroid shot"  she was playfully grinning, "And you go back to Walgreen's and buy you some of the antihistamine, rub the other antihistamine on it, and (pausing with a feeling of deliciousness) wear long pants!"  Out she went.

A young bearded man came in (no gray in the beard) said "well, turn around and drop em" so I did, he whacked me with a shot, I left (entire visit took 7 minutes) went to Walgreen's, bought the antihistamines (typed it that time to see if could spell it correctly, failed) came home took two of those pills, had the shot still in my backside, greasy stuff on my legs, and am hoping beyond hope this shall all kick in and make things work, where sleep is concerned.

Wow. I woke again!

Unreal being alive. 

Hell

Heaven

No, it truly is.  I mean as opposed to being dead, which we know little to nothing about, well let's see....in actuality there is...... nothing..... any of us know about being dead, truly know, because if you are dead you don't come back and tell everyone how good the breakfast was, or that there was traffic between cloud 9 and cloud 13 that had really screwed up the day. You can read about stuff that life goes on, eternal life, and that you aren't in your body anymore (yipee!) and that you will live in wealth and beauty and that life goes on and on and on and on....forever. Or you can look at the other side of the picture, living in Hell and fire and torment and so forth...not an attractive state.

Forever is such a seemingly useful, yet frightening word.  It is in complete contrast to the words used by 'no-believers' in that they are here, and then they are gone, and they are but a memory.  To a certain extent, I guess that is true, but, because you are stuck in memory, and because there are people (those weird things with two legs that walk around making the world go everyday) that think about you, well, you may be dead, but there is that part of you that continues to live.

Wikipedia (The All Knowing Place Of Rightful Information) says: While in the popular mind, eternity (or foreverness) often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast, something sempiternal exists throughout an infinite time. Sempiternity is also known as everlastingness.

Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens)

Mark Twain continues to live.  I mean, if you think about it, the guy who released his final book (the story of his life) on the 100th anniversary of his death, meaning he had lived from 1835 (Haley's comet came by) and he died a day after Haley's comet came by again, in 1910, then had his autobiography released in 2010, meaning (in a very liberal way) that the guy had 'lived' for 175 years, and even though he wasn't here with us, it doesn't mean that there are not people, we have known, that were alive when he was around, and people that now are gone are known by people that are living.

For example, my Grandpa - Effie Pritchard was born in 1882.  So Effie knew people who were born (albeit not many) in the very late 1700's, and he lived to be 99 years of age, which put him out of this life in 1981, which corresponds to my being here until now, 2012, so......I knew Effie (really knew him) so it could be said that using Effie as the middle man per this example, he had shaken hands with a man who was born in 1799...meaning that I had been his great grandchild, had sat and talked with him, recorded him actually, and that because of my age there has been 213 years and four centuries (agghhh) that two people touched.  Two, just two. If you figure it out, and should I live long enough, maybe there is someone I will relate to in this way.

If a person goes to figuring things out in their own lives, there will likely be about 75% of the folks running around today that can or should remember people who they have met along this earth that encompass more than one century, but two or three or four is possible, and all that with just two people.

If someone goes to figuring out what has transpired during that time, it is unbelievable.

Snake River Run

Beautiful River, Long, Winding Road

Chevrolet Apache

It was a chance to see the Snake River from the top of a mountain.  It had been quite the day for us, taking that tight little road up and up and up, coming off the backside of Riggins, Idaho for a tour of the small piece of the state we were looking at so intensely.  Pop’s Apache truck was getting the ride of a lifetime, because we had been up and down the mountains over the last few days, sitting in the back of the truck, dragging big sticks up the dirt road, making designs in the gravel and dirt.  We had run the campgrounds, looked at deer feeding through the trees, watching them as they looked so small, knowing that they were big creatures, just grabbing a snack before heading off to sleep.

The river looked small as well.  The Snake River passes within 30 miles of the Idaho state capital of Boise, the river then surges past the state border into Oregon, close to where it meets the Owyhee River, Boise River and Payette River. The Snake River then begins to define the roughly 200-mile-long Idaho-Oregon state border, which follows the river into Hells Canyon, a steep and spectacular gorge that cuts through the Salmon River Mountains and Blue Mountains of Idaho and Oregon. Hells Canyon is one of the most rugged and treacherous portions of the course of the Snake River, which pioneers on the Oregon Trail and steamboat operators in the 19th century, had great difficulty negotiating.  


Pop was well into the 20th Century, and he could see the river below, and there was the gravel, dirt, and plain old ordinary road, leading down from the top of this mountain.  8473’. That’s eight-thousand, four hundred and seventy three feet. Little did we know, it was about to be a little over an hour of pure fun (definition to be determined) and it started out great.


Since there is no video or movie film associated with this scrabble of writing, it would be best to try and tell you, as any kid would, that the mountain road was steep, dirt, one-lane and a narrow one at that, and (I think this is the most important “and”), there was no fence or safeguard, bumper-type roll off thing or protective anything on this road.  On one side was the mountain, with its growth of meager plants, but made up mostly of rocks, large and small, a few strips of green grass through it, and at places rocks, small, and large.  The road was cut into the side of the mountain, so the other side of the road, all the way to the bottom, was air.

This is a wide wide wide road

Cool, crisp Idaho air, just in the very low fifty degree’s temperature, and absolutely nothing standing between the edge of the road, and the bottom of God’s clear sky, leaving it all until one would make contact with the earth.  Remembering this, it was the early sixties, and one June 29th, 1956 President Eisenhower signed the highway revenue act, enacting the Interstate Highway System, which means, this road was the best Idaho was going to do at the time.


There were three kids in the back of the truck, a cooler of water, a stick or two we had picked up along the mountain roads, and Mom and Pop were in the front.  I think it is important to note, right here and for the sake of this writing, that Mom has reached the ripe old age of twenty seven to twenty eight years of age, and Pop, following that six year theory, was thirty-three or thirty-four.  Figuring the ages of my brother and sister, and throwing mine in for good luck, that means that they, averaging, about half our ages now, or that they were the ages of our children now.


This may sound just a little bit screwed up, but if you look at your son or daughter as to being of the age to make decisions, or to marry, or to have children, then it is best to think that we were once half as smart as we are now, and we were half the age, and we had fully fun little kids running around, and thinking later that you put them all at risk for something as simple as travelling down a dirt road, well, it just seems incredible.  That was a lot of verbiage getting to the end point, but if you stayed with it throughout, or you are at least fifty years old, the meaning will find its way home.

Mom's Camera  (or it looks like it)

Off we went.  Mom had her movie camera, she had cranked it up, and was ready to film some of this ride.  (This was a small camera about four inches wide and seven inches long, wrapped in a leather case with a strap attached to it.  It had snaps on that leather that clicked into place and kept the lens protected, and you would put the film in, snap the case, wind it up and there you would go to work.)  Mom took her film (no sound) and it is fascinating to watch.

Pop had the truck in second gear as we made those first few turns down the road.  Everyone was happy, we kids weren’t fighting and Pop was in control of the ride.  We were doing somewhere close to twenty mile per hour, with three pedals on the floor, Pop was having to stab the brakes, put the clutch in from time to time, and down shift to first. 


The river ran so peacefully, just a little stream from up here, and Pop kept going down the mountain.   It was likely about a third of the way down, that little things began to creep in to Pop and Mom’s minds that would become conversation, then tepid conversation, then that, we-better-keep-our-mouth-shut-and-get-this-over-with conversation.  One of the things was; what do we do if we meet another vehicle?  This road, in seriousness, was the width of Pop’s truck, plus about one foot on the right side and one foot on the left, and regardless of how popular turn outs were on the highway, or even on the logging roads camping, there was no turnout here.  This meant that if we met another vehicle, one of us was going to have to back up or back down the length of the road traveled, just to clear the road.


We rumbled on down, slower, with the brake on, and now the left foot kind of poised at the brake.  Another question: What if the brakes didn’t hold? Down we went, curving back around the side of the mountain, to where we couldn’t see the river any longer, and the back out onto the river view we came.  What would you do, in this deep stint of a drop, should the truck die?  What would you do if it started raining?  Well that was an easy one to answer because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  We rolled down.

There were just three of us, not six...play along

As one of the three monsters riding in the back, I took a turn at looking over the side of the pick-up bed, and could see all the bright green little grass growing, the rocks, the hillside and the river flowing at the bottom.  Because Mom and Pop were too busy watching the road, they couldn’t or wouldn’t see us in the back of the truck, and my sister had moved to the mountain side of it, I was over the left rear wheel well, and there, came loving brother, behind me, grabbing my leg and “pretending” to throw me out of the truck, down that deep and extra steep incline, hoping I would claim the bottom long before the truck did, but with enough hard kicks, and screaming voice and tears flowing out of my eyes, he backed off and moved to the front of the bed.


There were rocks in the road, just about six inches or smaller, that kept shooting off of the side of the mountain, tumbling and rolling downward to the river.  The truck would bump and lurch and you could feel every rock as it hit the tires, and you asked yourself; could one of these rocks send us down the mountain upside down and sideways?  Being one to always look for the positive in situations, I figured at least I could survive, because I kept both hands on the bed of that truck and was constantly based to jump.

Chevy Apache

Pop shifted into granny-gear, throwing that clutch as quickly as he possibly could, bringing our now heating up engine to a grind and the transmission to a slow crawl and the road became narrower.  Looking back, it was interesting to think about the tractor, or grader or bulldozer that cut that road and the guy driving it.  Did he start at the top or the bottom?  Was he scared as bad as I was when he was doing it?  Did he have a celebration and a drink congratulating himself for not falling over the side when he was finished or was this a daily celebration that he kept doing to remind himself that he had just spent one more day alive?  Down we went slow as slow, Mom kept cranking and filming and Pop gripped the steering wheel firmly enough that it would take a couple of days for him to wash out the steering wheel paint or covering that was now becoming a part of his body.  Pop’s ears were red, his neck was red, and down, down, down, further we went.


There were things one was grateful for.  It wasn’t snowing, so the road was firm as a dirt road could be which let a person slide from time to time.   It wasn’t raining, so you could see; except that the dust would roll toward the back of the truck, and then catch back up with you and blind you when you would slow down to make a turn.


By now my sister, who was always worried and sick about situations like this was nodding off with her head against the front of the bed of the truck.  My brother had settled and was looking over the side with me, and Mom had given up about an hour and a half ago trying to keep winding that camera, to get fifteen minutes of film of this harrowing  hour ride.  The river was loud and noisy and the road broke free into one last downhill run, just past a sign facing away from us, the mountain seemed to shrink back and the road bed became wider, and the rocks were bigger than your car or your house, and the river seemed extra wide, and the grass was green, and we had made it to the bottom with only the slightest bit of smoke rolling out from under the truck.  Pop pulled it over to the side, and the entire family stood in the road, shivered (from excitement it seemed) walked up and down the banks of the river for a ten or fifteen minutes and basically enjoyed life.  

Pop had already figured out that he was not going to the top of that mountain via that road, so he picked the way out, turned the truck around and we started out of the valley.   


There at the foot of the road, was the small white sign at the bottom of the road down.  Pop hit the brakes and the clutch at the same time and read the sign:  Road for Crews Only, Dangerous Fall Out.  I swear you could have picked Pop from that seat and taken the seat covers with you.