FROM SNOWBOUND SEATTLE

My Street

Seattle, Washington

Day 1

"The Storm of 2008"

Photo by Merritt Scott Miller

Well, hello again, from snowbound Seattle. It’s been real fun here the last week or so and I imagine a lot of you in other parts of the States, in Canada, the U.K., France and California can relate to that.

It doesn’t snow here that often and this is the most ambitious I’ve seen in the 18 years I’ve been here. There were two memorable ones before that but they were single storm occasions. We’ve been slammed by three so far and snow’s expected until Saturday.

We’re built on seven hills, two lakes and a bay. To our backs are the Cascade Mountains. To the west, across Elliot Bay and our portion of the Puget Sound, there are the Olympic Mountains of the peninsula of the same name. Beyond them lies the vast and mighty North Pacific. North and south, along the I-5 corridor, which runs from the Canadian Border to the Mexican, there is the Fraser River Valley of British Columbia, a funnel for the Chinooks which barrel in from the Arctic. To the south, the mighty Columbia River and then Oregon beyond.

I was partly raised in high mountain snow country and I’ve spent several winters deep in the Cascades, once in a rough timber and plywood shack with a corrugated tin roof and a Fraser potbelly stove for heat. No electricity, running water or telephone. Two Coleman lanterns and a Coleman stove for backup. An am/fm radio for company and the nearest town, Canyonville (pop. 500) about an hour away. I had a 1984 VW Bug and I worked as a ranch hand.

I’m no stranger to this kind of weather and I admire those who can adapt to it as well as my neighbors have. Something happened the other day that made me laugh and admire them both.

Our local NBC affiliate, KING5 (link) showed a predawn clip of a Seattle Police cruiser, with chains, make two unsuccessful attempts to drive up one of our seven hills. I admired the dedication involved but then I got to thinking. (Yep, you’re way ahead of me.) Burglars watch television too. And some of them come from places way colder than this.

Nope, the crime wave never happened, which tells me that even a burglar wouldn’t go out in weather like this. I’m from a family line that produced a couple of them and that is saying something. Trust me on this, folks.

It’s hit us hard, too. In some ways, but not in all. Our emergency services were prepared for this and I’ve got nothing but the highest of praise for them, my dig at the Seattle Police Department notwithstanding.

I live across a ship canal from Seattle, in the University (of Washington) District. Our mercantile establishment has not shut down and though we may not be able to drive to a mall or to one of the prestigious department stores downtown, we can still make a good Christmas and now we have another reason for cutting back besides being either laid off, let go or worried about our jobs. We can blame it on the weather. And knowing us, we probably will.

As of this writing, Sea-Tac Airport is closed, stranding thousands of people. Considering the weather where the majority of these flights come from or connect to, that’s not such a bad thing. Those folks in that airliner in Denver were very, very, very lucky. Nothing’s flying in and out of Seattle but nothing’s crashing and burning either.

Our buses still run, though not always on schedule. But it’s better than a couple of storms past when they ran on the freeway during a blizzard and then had to pull off finally and give passengers a choice between walking to a place where they could be picked up or waiting in a cold bus.

Nobody’s going to lose their job for not showing up to work or being late. We’re host to more than several international corporate operations here, a dozen reputable colleges and universities, some of the finest medical research and hospital care facilities in the world. Those who work at these places know how important it is to be there. Those who employ them know how important it is not to lose them. Adjustments are made.

It’s likely that before this is all over, this will also be our state’s Katrina, when it’s taken into consideration the massive flooding we experienced behind torrential rains in October and November. But I doubt it will be publicized as such and I would be very surprised if Governor Christine appeals to the federal government for help.

Despite all the industrialization Boeing and the Second World War, and Weyerhaeuser and Microsoft have brought to Seattle, we still haven’t been a city long enough to acquire the sophistication of New York, the Dixie charm of Atlanta, the totally rowdy and go for it attitude of Dallas-Ft. Worth, the dedication to the heartland of Chicago, the gritty glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and the "what box do you want me to think beyond now?" attitude of San Francisco.

We are, however, a small megalopolis which has more to teach about "community" than it has to learn. I suspect most of you can profoundly relate to that.

Take care, stay well and God Bless.

Rusty

TWO GENTLEMEN FROM ILLINOIS: Springfield v. The Space Needle

Space Needle from Capitol Hill

Seattle, Washington

Photo by MS(R)M

Well, first, I want to thank those of you who responded to my invitation for a forum on hard times. I’m waiting now to see how much of that input is getting out there through the popular media and I’m very encouraged by what I see in these regards.

I’m also pleased with what President-Elect Obama has done so far. He’s keeping it simple and non-partisan. He’s choosing the best people for the job. I’m also enjoying his relationship with the media. He’s got a sense of humor and doesn’t mind making jokes at his own expense. It reminds me of what Grandpa Seamus used to say about paying attention to the wolf who shows its throat. I hasten to add that I see nothing predatory about Barack Obama. I admire his strength and a self-confidence. I also appreciate that he doesn’t talk up or down to me.

He seems, as well, to understand ~ perhaps better than any of us ~ that a several score percentage point victory in this election does not mean he has the mandate of the entire nation. I sense he knows full well that there are people waiting for him to falter, stumble and fall on his butt. I don’t believe that keeps him up late at night, though. He’s got too much to do to worry about failing. He’s also got a dynamite significant other and a real nice family. He’s probably been vetted more thoroughly than any president-elect since the McCarthy era and I appreciate not having to worry about surprises up the road. The man’s honest.

Apparently that’s not true of the Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich and as bad as I feel about that, having friends back there, I don’t imagine I’m nearly as outraged, embarrassed, ashamed and generally extremely PO’d as they are. What got me was the sheer arrogance of the man. Chicago may yet be the Land of Daly but the capital of Illinois is Springfield, the Land of Lincoln. The fact that he joins a short list of crooked state chief executives probably doesn’t make the average Illinoian feel real good either. It’s been suggested that those who live in the Land of Lincoln have become cynical and ‘grease’ whatever palm which requires it. I, for one, don’t buy it. Not for a country heartbeat.

It’s also ironic, considering where I live. We’ve got several Port of Seattle employees up on fraud charges now and several executives have resigned. It didn’t go on very long and when it was discovered, it was acted on swiftly. One of our elected officials said today on the news, with reference to the Illinois governor scandal, "We don’t let that kind of thing happen in Seattle."

Well, no, but we’ve had Rodney King Verdict marches, the WTO riots, anti-war protests and marches, gay pride demonstrations and parades, et al ad human rights. For all our reputation as being Birkenstocks-and-wool-socks-in-winter-laid back, we’re just as reactive as anywhere else in the country.

We’re a community of busybodies and we pay attention, collectively, to everything that goes on. That’s also why it takes us longer to get things done. EVERYBODY not only has an opinion, it seems like everybody’s got a mouth to go with it. Nice part about that is, though, once we decide, it’s pretty much then just a matter of getting it done.

We’re also extremely patriotic. It generally rains on the Fourth of July but that has never compromised the fireworks. Primordial humans may have invented fire. Seattleites some while back learned the value of waterproof matches.
Until next time, then eh? And thanks for the ear.

Rusty

INVITATION TO A READERSHIP FORUM ON HARD TIMES; AND HOW TO SURVIVE THEM AND GROW

Well, hi again. I’ve been laying a bit low these past couple of weeks, trying to figure out which way the winds are blowing and taking Grandpa Seamus’ advice about keeping my butt out of the breeze in the process.

Actually, Seamus himself wasn’t very good at that which is probably why, among other things, he got run out of Ireland after Bolland’s Mill and encouraged everywhere else to "go west, young man, PLEASE go west" until he got to some high mountains that were just as ornery as he was. And neighbours just as colourful. But I’m third generation and it’s been thinned out some. Mostly. Maybe. Okay, you’re not buying that. I digress.

Like some of you, I got laid off back late last summer and the job I had before that lasted five years. I’ve also worked at Boeing. As in a lot of other places right now, even temp work is hard to find in Seattle. I understand why and even though I’m behind in the rent, so does my landlady. I’ve got enough unemployment coming in now to pay the rent, just not enough to catch up.

She also knows I spend a lot more than 40 hours a week trying to get back on the Hit Parade. She and her sister own 17 buildings and a lot of tenants won’t be able to make their rent at all. They’re international, these two, and their native country’s going through what the rest of us are.

I think maybe I’m luckier in some ways because I’ve survived lean times before. When a federal judge up here closed down old growth to protect the spotted owl, I ended up losing a three bedroom mobile and fourteen acres of land. Then I moved into a city of almost a million people where I only knew one. It hasn’t been real glamorous but I have learned how to adjust my outgo to my income. Mostly.

I also grew up with good role models in that regard, as well. I remember one time in the early Fifties when times got lean on the ranch and the weather was favouring the trout. There was a lot of work to do around the place and Seamus wasn’t the most patient person to begin with.

We ended up going out fishing one Sunday morning after church, which was unusual because generally going before was Seamus’ way of getting out of going at all. By the time we got to the ravine where the fishing was best, it was noon. And while I took up position downstream and at the bottom of the ravine, instead of baiting up and casting, Seamus tied a blasting cap to a rock, leaned over and tossed it into the creek.

I got a little wet and the ground shook a bit. But between us, we scooped up enough German Brown and Rainbow to get through most of a winter. He admitted it wasn’t very sporting but it did put food on the table. And he doubted it troubled the trout nearly as much as it apparently still bothered some other folks.

And I’ve been fortunate to live among whole communities who reacted, in spirit if not also in fact, like that too during hard times. Reflecting on it, it seems to me they all had a couple, three things in common.

First, facing common adversity, they put their political, religious, economic and other differences aside. (For the most part.) They admitted, both to themselves and to one another, that they were scared of losing it all and trying desperately to figure out to hang on to at least some of it.

Once the figurative and sometimes literal hugging and crying together was over, they got organised. They looked at needs and resources and got a game plan behind every contribution every single member of their family, neighbourhood and community could make, each in their own way.

I’m talking about the kid who rides their bike delivering papers over nine square miles before school because suddenly two incomes is not enough. And the teenager who spends afternoons bucking hay on their uncle’s ranch because said uncle got hurt in a tractor accident and the mortgage can’t survive a bad harvest.

I’m talking the Iraqi war veteran who sees more hell than any human being should, coming back to a nation in chaos. And the UAW line worker who, for twenty years, busted their butt, sometimes double shifting and working on holidays so their kids could get a college education and not have to work probably the toughest job there is alongside coal mining, commercial fishing, construction, farming, logging, ranching and steel working. (in alphabetical order)

I’m talking the ninety year old great grandparents who survived the Depression, a World War, several protracted conflicts and more than one recession, working to exhaustion and falling asleep praying to the Almighty for the strength and courage to make it so all those they helped bring into this world wouldn’t have to keep on going through it.

I’m also talking the company president who cares about their people and needs to make some tough and lonely decisions that get passed down to the line boss, the foreman, the superintendent, the editor. We’re talking a lot of ‘bosses here. You make the best decision you can in the time you’ve got to make it. But no matter how good or bad the call, it stays with you forever.

These folks I’ve had the privilege of knowing during hard times also didn’t spend a lot of time blaming their elected officials for it. Out here, in the Pacific Northwest, we tend to look at their job as we do our own. Because we’re a region of mostly small communities often isolated in winter, we tend to elect our neighbours.

So we’re on a first name basis with folks like Governor Chris, whose daughter I ran into at the post office the other day, and U.S. Senators Maria and Patti. It sometimes takes things a lot longer to get done here but that’s because our elected officials are taking constituency input. If they don’t do their job, same thing happens to them as happens to us if we don’t do ours.

Perhaps most importantly, these folks who not only survived but came out ahead, saw this as a chance to reinvent and prosper in different ways. They had the daring to consider that just maybe the machine’s breaking down for a reason. And maybe it’s because human beings have been sacrificing their health and sanity far too long for a lifestyle that is toxic to every living species on this planet, including them.

Maybe it’s time to downscale and retool. We’ve been a power-driven society since the dawn of the Industrial Age and in our need for validation, our need to keep up with the Joneses, we’ve laid waste to practically every other people and every other species who sometimes not so quietly suggested there was a better and far more time-tested way. And when it comes right down to it, I don’t think we’ve been real kind to one another, have we, gang?

Well, Grandpa Seamus had a mouth on him and I guess I do too. I’ve got some ideas about how we can not only survive this but come out happier and kinder to one another and the planet. But my voice and that of an unreconstructed Irish rebel who should have been gagged, roped to a chair, stood up against a wall and shot by a British firing squad at the "tender" age of 17, is certainly not near enough. We need to open this blog to input from you, the readership, in these regards.

Granted, there are only a hundred of you now but you’re a very special one hundred. And each of you knows a few more like you. You’re spread out from one end of North America to the other and in the UK and France. You’re a brain trust to be reckoned with and then some. Each and everyone of you.

In short, folks, you rock. So let’s get those cards and letters coming in, gang. (And yep, Judah, that means you can get creative with tofu. Just don’t try to sneak any broccoli or cauliflower in mine.)

Those folks I talked about, who survived hard times and came out ahead? They’re you yahoos.

Folks, we have a chance to make a difference. I’ll look forward to hearing from you. Take care, stay well and God Bless.

Rusty

VETERANS DAY 2008

A VETERAN REFLECTS

I am a veteran but I do not believe that wars are good or even necessary. I am, however, proud of every human being on the face of this planet who died in the service of family, neighbours, community, cause and nation. Honoring those who gave the ultimate sacrifice should not, and never has, respected demographics. It is said that history is written by the victor. I suggest that it is remembered by all.

I am glad we no longer blame warriors for wars. I came back to a nation which had apparently forgotten that. I saw what it did to those who fought the hardest and the best. According to one Veterans Administration study I read, 50,000 veterans of my generation’s war killed themselves after they got back. That’s almost as many as who died in battle or from battle-related causes. That seems so incredibly unfair to me, even some 35 years later.

It’s taken me a long time to live down the guilt I feel for the death I helped bring to civilians as well as "enemy" military. It took a Vietnamese University of Washington student whose father was in the North Vietnamese Army and who visited here and welcomed me like a comrade in arms, to let go of a measure of what has haunted me down almost four decades now.

"Rusty, soldiers do not make wars. They only fight them."

I leave you with a poem I wrote 37 years ago and updated at the end after two of the young people in my life served in Operation Desert Storm. I leave you, as well, with a final heartfelt plea, because as Americans, you can do this.

ATONEMENT

It was Christmas Eve and even the Buddhists were turning out.
While their former European masters gathered in basement pubs
to dance and wassail, while from their towers beyond,
Red Chinese border guards smiled knowingly.
We're just come off the gunline and I was tired of killing.
I'd known even then that a single death buries a thousand dreams.
My ship alone snuffed out Paradise several times over.
I watched it all again on a Hong King ferry plying the harbour to Kowloon.
White mingled with yellow' Confucius with Commodore Perry;
the Mings with MacBeth and the Mandarins with Richard the Nix.
Back and forth I rode, sometimes forward, other times aft,
but mostly amidships, like Gulliver in an artillery barrage.
Each trip, a few more of my own dreams died.
It was an act of penance which continued until another gulf
and another war gave both Jesus and God
something else to regret.

Hong Kong
Christmas 1970

Please, put an end to this madness.

The Spirit of '76 - Part II?

EVERY FLIPPING TIME I THINK THE LIMITS OF WEIRDNESS HAVE BEEN REACHED….

Hi again, folks. You know, just about the time I think the parameters of weirdness have been reached, I get something in the email which gives me some pause to reevaluate that assumption. I don’t normally quote emails but since this one was forwarded to me by one of the NSJ readership, I’m making a hopefully rare exception.. And also for the record? I’m glad she thought enough of me to pass it along.

Anyhow and stuff, the Weirdness Bar got raised another couple of inches. Or so. And stuff. Soooo, here’s the letter and my response . Happy Friday, gang.

Fellow Business Executives:

As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama will be our next President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8% but since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead.

This has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who will have to go.So, this is what I did. I strolled thru our parking lot and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem.

These folks wanted change; I gave it to them.

If you have a better idea, let me know.

Sincerely,

Yep, I've got a better idea and this comes from someone who saw merits in both parties and candidates, did a Force Field Analysis and voted according to the results.

If you've read my latest blog http://nstar312.blogspot.com/, you'll know where my greatest concern lies now. I wrote that blog on Election Day, without benefit of the media keeping me abreast of the returns.

I hope this letter was truly a joke and I suspect it is. I'm also certain, however, that many people feel this way and will likely penalize those who disagreed with them and voted their own individual consciences.

If I was one of those employees, I'd be on the phone to the Washington State Department of Labour & Industries because at least in my state, discrimination of this sort is illegal. I know it is on a federal level and if one of those Obama supporters reports it to his Congressional representative(s), there will most certainly be an investigation and, likely, an example made.

I've been a journalist covering politics for over 30 years now and in California, Oregon and Washington. In Oregon, while on hiatus, I ran two county-wide campaigns. On the one hand I know, then, how dirty politics can be and on the other, how vengeful the constituency can be as well. The campaigns I ran in Oregon were clean and free of virtualy all of the unconscienceable behavour I've witnessed in this election.

Why? Because even these "dumb" farmers, loggers and small town merchants knew what constituted appropriate behaviour and which did not. This ‘mud-slinging" crap is beneath the dignity of the constituency, at least in the Pacific Northwest.

My suggestion is to remember that regardless of the demographics, we are ONE nation, ONE people. The election is over and like BOTH candidates said, it's time for us to begin acting like Americans. And I'll add to that, instead of a bunch of Gulliver's yahoos without the common sense God gave a mayfly. Not to libel either the yahoos or the mayfly.

And yes, feel free to circulate this response.

SPIRIT OF 76?

FOR POSTERITY OR AS A POST MORTEM

11/04/08 – Seattle, Washington
By the time you folks are reading this, the election returns will likely be in. As I write this, they are not. I’m not thinking about winners or losers. I’m thinking about how the game was played. I’m also not just reflecting on the politicians but on the slice of constituency I’ve experienced offline in a neighbourhood comprised mostly of University of Washington students and faculty, working people and the mercantile infrastructure. I’m also thinking about several online chatrooms I frequent and which, by the demographics of their regulars, represent not only most of America, but a slice of Canada, the UK and Europe, as well.

I’ll be 60 this March and I cannot recall an election which brought out more of the worst in some and the best in some others. Offline, we don’t discuss politics that much and when we do, it’s always an unemotional "force field" analysis. Name calling, lying and defaming candidates or people of opposing parties is simply considered rude because it’s non-productive. It’s also embarrassing to witness. We have an innate sense of human dignity which may be passe east of the Mississippi but which forms a cornerstone of not only our political philosophy and world view, but the way we behave toward one another. To put it bluntly, regardless of who wins an election, we still have to live with one another as family, friends, neighbours and community.

There was a particularly rabid viciousness to the online constituency I witnessed. It was savage, vile, profane and, for the most part, extremely unimaginative. It involved personal attacks which had nothing to do with the issues at hand or the qualifications of the candidates involved. It presumed an inherent superiority of one party over another that was nothing more than another aspect of the national arrogance. We castigated George Bush when he turned out to be wrong, but when he wanted to play Patton in his race to the Rhine to avenge 9/11, we cheered him on. He took that, rightfully, as mandate and became not president, but monarch. It didn’t take a coup to put him on the throne. It took the constituency.

Since, by birth I am also a member of the International Community, I was ashamed of the conduct I witnessed. I am just as American as anyone born here and I was brought up in Northern California by Americans. I’m a Vietnam veteran, a journalist who has covered politics in three states and someone who has organised and run two political campaigns. My coverage was unbiased and the campaigns I ran were clean ones. Neither would have been possible without a constituency which demanded that level of integrity and eschewed the crap that doth make hypocrites of us all.

Regardless of who is inaugurated in January, Capitol Hill will remain. There will be no rioting in the streets, no Stalineque purges, no calling for heads to roll. The government will go on because that is what THIS government does. McCain is no more the devil than Obama. And regardless of who emerges victorious, the "vanquished" will still be a member of the Senate in good-standing, with the gratitude of his peers and supporters for giving it his all.

My concern is for the constituency and who they will blame next for their troubles in their race to escape personal responsibility. I will also be wondering what happened to the words of the people, by the people and for the people.
I wonder what the framers of the Constitution, many war veterans of the bravest experiment since the Magna Carta, would think of us now.

MY INSPIRATION: HOMEWARD BOUND, AN INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

                               

TRIBUTE TO HOMEWARD BOUND: THE INCREDIBLE JOURNEY

It’s said that the older one gets, the wiser one becomes. I’m glad that’s true, apparently, of most folks. The older I get, the weirder my life becomes. And so to adapt and adjust and stuff… Yeah, like THAT’LL work with you guys. (sigh)

I get my inspiration from some strange places. For all of my experience in LA and in the entertainment industry both as a staff magazine writer and under the mentorship of character actor and screenwriter True Boardman, Jr.; and despite the number of years I watched traditional hero in crisis saves the town, the country or whatever and even if he/she dies, they’re remembered forever movies for the courage to keep going, it’s like, "Hey, I was partly raised on a ranch but I did NOT come to town on a horse, okay?" (And not that there would have been one flipping thing wrong if I had, by the way.)

I was talking to animals before I was conversing with humans. For the first three years of my life ~ true story ~ I didn’t utter a single humanly intelligible word. They thought I was partially autistic. When I finally did open my mouth in their direction, I spoke in complete sentences. And they consulted upteen specialists before they asked Grandpa Seamus what he thought. He just shrugged and said,

"It’s obvious to me that up ‘til now, the lad hasn’t had anything to say to us."

He was right and I’ll allow as how I’ve been making up for it some since. I don’t consider myself a vain man but I do love the sound of my own voice. When it doesn’t inspire me, it puts me to sleep. I’ve noticed it has the same effect on most others. I don’t know what you call that in your family but in my house, we call it "a win-win situation".

The movie I go to for inspiration is a Walt Disney film called "Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey" http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/search?query=The%20Incredible%20Journey. There have been two versions, both by Disney Studios, and I’m talking about the 1993 remake. (http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0211900/journey/incredible_journey.htm)

Though filmed in the Canadian wilderness, it’s about a family who moves 200 miles across the Sierra Nevadas to San Francisco and accidentally leaves their three pets behind.

It’s the saga of an aging but wise golden retriever Shadow (voice by Don Ameche), this pizza loving Peter Pan adolescent bull terrier with consistently more guts than good sense named Chance (Michael Fox) and this immutably prissy but surprisingly adaptable lady Himalayan cat, Sassy, (Sally Field) and what they endure to rejoin their human family.

It really works for me on several levels and not always in this order.

First, it’s a study in how diverse personalities unite behind a common goal. For these three, it’s following their human family to a new home.

Second, there’s no religion, politics, philosophy or any of the other things we tend to hide behind as human beings when we are confused or frightened by one another.

Third, these three make mistakes but it’s because they don’t judge one another by them that they learn so quickly and adapt so well.

Fourth, there’s an enduringly resonant sense of humour flowing through this film. It’s the kind that doesn’t involve hurting other people or mocking the way other folks think and feel. I like to believe it’s the kind of comedy that makes God smile. I suspect the Deity could use a gentle laugh now and then, especially considering what we, also His children, do to one another in our competition to be the favourite child. Harder for us, perhaps, than contemplating a universe with no beginning, might be accepting the notion that just MAYBE God alone has no favourite child.

Fifth, based on my experience in the woods, it’s realistic in terms of inter-species teamwork. And it’s a cooperative effort that has been going on a lot longer than human beings have been around. Ironically, we were a lot more that way once than we are now. As far as I’m concerned, that puts an interesting spin on Darwin.

The production values are flawless and panoramic. Ameche, Fields and Fox become the characters they portray so the casting, as far as I’m concerned, was perfect. One also has the distinct impression that these three were in the same room, at the same time, with three separate microphones, doing this like radio theatre. The musical scoring was beautiful and as right on the mark and mood as the photography.

There’s one scene where Sassy falls into a river and is apparently swept away for good (mournful music in the background, panning close-up on the faces of the dogs, panning to a sunset as the scene fades). The reunion is a tear-jerker, not the least in part because the cat caught fish and the younger dog learned to like them. (Not altogether surprising. Trout are my favourite meal fish as well.)

Emotionally, to me, it’s like when I start to get a little stressed, a scene will pop up and/or I’ll hear the music; remember the exchange between Sassy and Chance over dogs drool and cats rule, and the wise but stern voice of Shadow, reminding them that they need to get home and as fun as it might be for the two of them, this inter-species bickering isn’t helping any.

Perhaps lastly, it’s based on a children’s story published in 1952 by a Canadian lady writer named Sheila Burnford (http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0211900/journey/incredible_journey.htm) Now I’ll admit I’m prejudiced as far as Canada’s concerned, considering where I was born. But to me, any children’s story so simply set and crafted, in so naturalistic a setting, and which, in its time, has gone so far beyond the shadow of the Maple Leaf to reach so many, suggests that perhaps we have not lost our innocence entirely.

I hope not.

Thanks for the ear, then, eh? And until next time…

Tags: Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Sheila Burnford, Canada, inspiration, Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller, Mick McGuire, The Northstar Journal, humour, dogs, cats, wilderness, philosophy, films, Walt Disney, Disney Studios

A BIT OF SURVIVING HARD TIMES

Well, when the news is as bad as it’s been on some fronts lately and I find myself starting to get overwhelmed by it, my mind turns to other sources than the media for inspiration, meditation and rejuvenation. I learned that from my infamous Grandpa Seamus.

When they were young and Grandma Molly used to get real upset about the Depression news, Grandpa Seamus would invariably just real calmly get up, cross the room and turn the radio off. Then he’d walk out on the porch, put his weathered brown hands on the rough pine wood rail, and let his eyes drift to the majestic snowcapped Trinity Alps which rose like ice-shaggy Nordic gods and goddesses all around him.

If, when he walked back inside, Molly had turned the radio back on, he quietly unplugged it, tucked it under his arm and put it on a shelf higher than she could reach. He never said a word and he wasn’t angry. She knew that and since she wasn’t either…

Then, he’d go out to the barn and saddle up their two horses, Morgans both, while she got on the telephone box, cranked it and got ahold of Thomas Lightoot and his family to ask them to watch the place for awhile. At first, that was just the ranch. (Later, after their second daughter ~ and the one who survived ~ was born, it included her, as well.)

Then together, they’d pack their saddle bags and their blanket rolls, check the bandoleers and clean and oil their 44 caliber Colt revolvers and the Winchesters each of them owned. Yep, just like Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea, except Seamus looked like Glenn Ford and Molly favored Jessica Lange.

Together then, they rode into the peaks that had sustained them for so long and which hadn’t changed much in anyone’s recent memory. They lived off that land, as high mountain and allegedly barren as it might have appeared to those who didn’t know it. They fished by wading upstream and catching rainbow and German Brown by hand. They sparked flint to dry moss. They watched deer gather at dawn watering and sated eagles soar endlessly overhead, benevolent masters of their domain. They avoided brown bear by keen noses and cougar by knowing tracks and not crossing trail. They weren’t armed to protect themselves from these, but from men who came into the Alps for not the best of reasons.

And yes, now as I reflect on it, in some ways, it’s like they recreated themselves as Adam and Eve, with the snake being the radio Seamus unplugged and set on a high shelf.

I don’t know all of what they did on those rides and my experience is based on some of those times when Seamus and I did that. But yes, I suspect they also made love, teased each other, played tag, etc. That’s the way of it with folks born and raised in the Trinity Alps. And, I suspect, elsewhere. That "inner child" is still alive in most of them, right up to the end.

I do know for certain that Molly came back a lot calmer and embarrassingly (for her) in blush. And while she stabled the Morgans, Seamus got the radio down off the shelf, put it back where she listened to it, plugged it in and turned it on. Together they carried in the saddle bags, bedrolls, firearms, etc. While he started a cook fire in the Fraser potbelly, she called the Lightfoots to thank them and to say she’d be by to return the favor, meaning in this case, eggs from the henhouse.

In the years ahead, this ritual was to stand them well, even when it couldn’t always be observed in the specific. During the Depression, the army stopped buying horses and Seamus ended up riding shotgun on a prison van that delivered convicts from the county seat in Redding to the state penitentiary, Folsom Prison, not far from Sacramento.

It was one hundred eighty miles down a highway that followed the meandering and sometimes serpentine Sacramento River. In its early days, that highway was tenuous at best. Between the driving rains and the tule fog of winter and the hot and relentless jungle humidity of the summers, it posed considerable challenges even to hay wagons.

Seamus had a couple of close calls and Molly begged him to find another job. There flat weren’t any and when he didn’t, she took off on a train from Redding to San Francisco and stayed there for awhile. She had what we learned from her diaries after she died, some extremely interesting adventures. We never knew, completely, because he never talked about it, what it was like for Seamus to come back to a ranch with no wife.

Grandpa never asked her to come home, though, and it wasn’t because he was too proud. It was because he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. She had to come home because this remote ranch in the Trinity Alps, with him, was home. Her home.

Folks I’ve spoken with who remember them during this period have said that Seamus’ normally alpine blue eyes were gray a lot. And that he was considerably more taciturn than usual. This for a man who was even more legendary in the Alps for that than Calvin Coolidge was elsewhere.

The turning point for them was in 1938, I think, when a blizzard struck especially hard and out of nowhere. It froze the Alps and turned the Sacramento Valley into a flood plane that stretched as far as one could see. The prison van Seamus was guarding didn’t make it. But he did.

To this day, no one knows what he went through to get home. But, like I said earlier, it was one hundred eighty miles or so to Redding and it took him a week. He stayed overnight and then it was three days or so on snowshoes, with a pack full of tinned goods, back to the ranch, not knowing what to expect but mostly figuring on frozen hell.

As he crunched the final few yards through the snow cloaked forest which surrounded the ranch, he caught a gleam of light through the trees. His throat got thick, his heart started hammering and his eyes rolled to the Heavens in the briefest but sincerest of prayers.

On the porch waiting for him was Molly in deerskin, holding a lantern in one hand and her Winchester in the other. She was standing in the doorway next to a mountain lion hide stretched on the outside wall. And from their cabin came the smell of roasting venison. He looked at her and she nodded, so he came on ahead. And at the bottom of the cabin steps, he got out of his snowshoes and unslung his back. As she stepped aside to let him in, he handed her a brand new radio.

They stayed married for 55 years and he passed on first. She followed him less than a year later. The ranch on which they lived is now at the bottom of Whiskey Lake, in Shasta County, (Northern) California.

They’re gone now then; all physical traces absorbed back into the earth from which they both came, at some point in time or another. They’re at peace with the planet and the planet with them.

Has their time among us meant something and does it still? I suspect so. I’m still here. And I doubt seriously if I’m alone in those regards, eh?

Thanks, then, for the ear. Take care, stay well and God Bless. Until next time…

With thanks to Mike Browne and the Tomatoman Times TomatomanMike, for the example, and my god-sent brother Dennis for the nudge.

Rusty

SOMETIMES “LOSING IT ALL” IS NOT QUITE ALL IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE EITHER

                        

For a man of considerably modest financial means, I've been blessed with a real interesting circle of friends. One of them lost a million dollars in the stock market just about the time I found out I qualified for unemployment and am therefore not in immediate danger of imminent collapse.

Like most rich folks I know, he worked hard for it and for the right reasons. He figured that the more money he made, the better he could provide for his family. No, he wasn’t born into whatever it is we call the financially better off than most of us are. And at a year shy of 50, he’s wondering whether it’s all been worth it because in all this struggling, he sort’ve got out of touch with the people he’s doing it for and now what he wishes for most is love.

I may be naïve, but in my experience, that happens to all of us, at some point in time or another. I’ve seen what it can drive a person to, especially in hard times, and what it can drive a community, a region and a nation to, as well.  As tragic as it is, sometimes it can happen for a good reason, though.

In the first place, at the rate this high lifestyle is costing the planet, if it’s not slowed down some, there’s going to be less and less to pass down to our sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters. That’s one good reason to re-evaluate our priorities. And whether over-industrialization is causing the greenhouse effect or not, it’s certainly not helping it any. I’m sure that streets with horse-drawn transportation didn’t smell real good but I can’t imagine Chicago a century or so ago ever ranking out as bad as LA does on a warm commuter evening today.

Second, when we’re working as hard as it takes to make more than we really need, we’re sacrificing the enjoyment of it. We’re stressing out, shortening our lifespan and guaranteeing that most of what we’ve got left isn’t going to be that much fun either. More importantly ~ at least in my house ~ we’re not being there for those who love us and need to be loved in return.

Third, it’s hard to pay attention to things going on in the larger world when we’re constantly that tired. It’s easier to react than it is to think things through. None of us, from the meekest to the mightiest, makes the best decisions under that kind of stress.

For Americans, at least, there’s something else that happens to us as a nation. We forget that this is a land where all of us ~ regardless of any other qualifer except being a human being ~ are equal under the law and in the eyes of that God In Whom We Trust. We forget that we’re a family and that families pull together, however much they may disagree, bicker and spoil Thanksgiving consistently. We forget that deep down inside, most of us want the same basic things and that maybe it’s just a matter of scaling down the size of that stuff before the planet gives up on us or we kill each other in the quest of more rooms than we can live in and more cars than we can drive at one time.

Maybe when we don’t have so much stuff to take care of, we’ll find more time to enjoy what we’re really doing this all for. Maybe love’s not supposed to come with so high a price tag. And maybe losing it all is really a chance to start over and do it right this time.

I sure hope so. I’d hate to think we’re going through all this for nothing.

IF JOHNNY COMES MARCHING HOME

                               

Last week, one of the young people in my life announced that he’s joined the United States Marine Corps and will be leaving for basic training in San Diego shortly before Christmas. The news hit me harder than anything in recent memory and the pervasiveness of a silent cyclone of emotions has colored my thinking in every other regards as well. Somehow, I sense I’m not alone in these regards. More precisely, I hope I’m not.

This young man has signed up for a full four year enlistment in the toughest branch of the American armed services. They’re generally first on the scene and they’ve traditionally taken the brunt of whatever action in which they’ve been called to engage. They have a justifiably proud and noble tradition. I’ve served alongside Marines; I’ve gotten drunk with them and I’ve gotten into bar brawls with them. I’m friends with several of them and the saying, "Once a Marine, always a Marine," is true. There are no EX-Marines.

There are a lot of them in Arlington, though, and in cemeteries in big cities and small towns from one end of this vast nation to the other. There are also thousands of them in VA Hospitals and private institutions and they span at least three generations. They are also continuing to kill themselves because they cannot live with the things they experienced in combat. I can relate. After 35 years, I still have bad dreams sometimes and Fourth of July is not my favorite holiday.

As things stand now, this young man will likely be rotated between Iraq and Afghanistan. If conditions continue to deteriorate in South America, a tour of duty down there is not out of the question either. His chances of making it home unscathed are slightly better than his chances of being killed. He’s a nice young man from a logging community. He hasn’t seen a lot of life yet but he loves his country and right now feels the call to duty. He figures that he can serve best with the best. There is absolutely no faulting either his motivesor his logic.

This young man isn’t just another number to me. He’s not some profile, some abstract concept, some rank and last name on a military table of organization. He’s a bright kid with a heart of gold and he’s got a lot to offer here at home. He loves horses and he loves logging and he’d like to try making a living using Morgans to haul out dead Douglas fir to sell to local mills or chop up into firewood and market to his neighbors. No, he hasn’t got the plan perfected, but he’s working on it. Hell, when it comes right down to it, he hasn’t lived long enough to have much perfected but his dreams. He’s shared some of those with me and they’re good, decent, wholesome, modest and do-able dreams. And they all go on hold the moment he boards his flight for San Diego in December.

He wanted to talk to me about what he’s facing and, as you can imagine, I dreaded that for the one question I was afraid he’d ask.

I told him that once he got to San Diego, forget everything in his life that came before and focus intensely on the moment. I told him to obey every order without question or without even thinking about it. I told him to ignore the grousing of his buddies or any of the things they might try to get away with as their way of coping with Marine discipline. I said to make friends with those who acted as he did. I told him to learn everything he could and to give 100%, whether he was polishing brass, peeling potatoes or learning how to survive after his last round was expended.

I told him as well to take the time between now and his December departure to spend with his girlfriend, his family, his friends and his community. These are the memories that make a difference. I grew up in a real dysfunctional family and I envied those of my buddies who had more of those kinds of memories than I did. I think in many cases, they came out of the experience better for them.

There were other things I could have told this young man but I’m not much for sharing war stories or even swapping them with other vets. When I was in college, I interviewed nearly a hundred of my generation’s veterans for a project the university had going. I got to be real good friends with one of them and was there when he killed himself because he just couldn’t forget what happened to all of his buddies but him on a hill in Vietnam.

I’m glad this young man didn’t ask me if I thought he was doing the right thing or more specifically, if I thought our country was doing the right thing. I don’t know anymore. The right thing for whom? Seems to me that the World Community doesn’t think it’s right for them or there’d be a lot more of them contributing militarily. Right for the Iraqis or Afghanis? Even a cursory examination of their history would suggest that they’ve been quarreling among themselves since time immemorial and no empire from the Egyptians on down has ever been able to change that. We’re not doing a very good job of it either. We’re spending a lot of money we don’t have and we’re losing a lot of young men and women who are a more vital resource than any we really have.

It also strikes me that the thing about making peace with guns is that you’ve got to maintain it with them too. Only in this case, the "guns" are our sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, husband and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, mothers and fathers. I live with these folks. I see them by the hundreds daily because my home is three blocks from the University of Washington. I’m starting to see some of them after they’ve come back from places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Now I understand why it was so hard for people to look me in the eye when I got back.

It just seems to me we’ve got to come up with a better way. How many more of these kids do we sacrifice before we accept that there is more than one way to make peace in this world?

Tags: US Marines, Seattle, Washington, Rusty Miller, Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller, patriotism, McCain, Barack Obama, peace, World Community, Arlington, Semper Fidelis, veterans, Veterans Administration, Iraq, Afghanistan, University of Washington, Vietnam, war, peace

aoljpictureUpload, aoljpictureUpload_1

IN PRAISE OF BOTH PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

September 12, 2008

I’m watching The View this morning and the guests are John and Cindy McCain. I like the McCains, even though I’m not of their political persuasion, which is why I’m not voting for John. But if he ever moves into the neighborhood, I’d like to meet him. He and I have a couple three things in common, including Vietnam service and a passionate love of this country. Even when we disagree, I know he has the best interests of the nation at heart. He’s also not afraid to compromise for the popular good. These are traits I value in a person and I think they’re necessary to be a good national executive.

But it’s Friday, and I don’t do politics on Friday. I’m just enjoying a man whose war record I certainly admire. To me, he’s a model of courage and character. He also recalls a quality not often mentioned in a political context anymore. John’s got integrity. If I needed help patching my roof before the next day’s rain, John wouldn’t wait to be asked. He’d be there with a pickup truck full of roofing material and friends. And towing the hot tar for the shingles. It would be a natural reaction for him. And when we invited him to have supper with us, we’d let him say the grace, even though we’re Catholics. He believes in the same god as anyone else and he’s said that a lot. I wonder if we were the only ones listening.

But, as I said, I’m committed to a more liberal agenda. However, I feel pretty much the same about Barack Obama as I do John McCain. They both have the qualities and character traits I value in a leader. They also have intelligent, dramatic, independently-thinking significant others who are not afraid to disagree with their husbands publicly. To me, that’s a kind of domestic checks and balances which translates into a fairer hearing for the opposing view. I like it that John and Barack came together yesterday. They lent the occasion the dignity, the austerity and the respect it deserved.

It rankles me that "my party" (whose symbol is a jackass, by the way) makes an issue of McCain’s age and appearance. It reminds me of the comments I heard about Mick Jagger in my native country of Canada after one of their concerts there. It was as though the audience expected them to stay young forever and resented them when they did not. Hey, I can handle someone feeling afraid of growing older, even though I cannot personally relate to it. What I CANNOT handle isafflicting the rest of us with an attitude we don’t own. Translated:

Some of us grow older.

Some of us grow better.

Some of us just grow.

Get over it, folks. Nobody except Peter Pan and the folks in Camelot live forever. The Stones still put on one heckuva concert and John McCain has the inner strength and dedication which is to his generation what imagination and daring are to the young. Like Barack Obama, he’s also got a loving family so for him, it’s never going to be THAT lonely at the top. And as John said on The View, with regards to Hillary Clinton, with whom he is friends and has a good professional relationship, "We’ve worked together before and we certainly will again." I’m absolutely certain he feels that way about the other senator who is also a colleague.

I also like it that both of them occasionally put their feet in their mouths. And that the people around them do too. I get nervous around superior people or those who promote themselves as more saintly than thou. Me. WhomEVER. I’ve seen perfectionists polish the joy right out of life. Those for and with whom I’ve worked tend to be so anally retentive you’d swear they were housebroken at the point of a 12 gauge over and under.

Noooooooope. Give me someone who occasionally trips on his lip. I could use a lighter moment or two and Lord knows how much the lesser gods enjoy mortal slapstick. I think that’s why I loved Dan Quayle so much. He was the best act on the Potomac for awhile.

Neither one of these men is going to achieve all he wants in office and that’s due in a large part to something else both seem to remember. They are there to serve the national constituency. They work for us, not the other way around. And I think we, the voters, have learned what fatal folly it is to surrender so much control. We’re going to be paying a lot more attention from here on out and we are going to be a lot quicker to demand a public accounting.

Under two generations of Bushes and under Dick Cheney, we came very close to establishing a dubiously benevolent monarchy in Washington, DC. While I can appreciate the nobility in both Barack Obama and John McCain, I am also an American and I will bow to no one except the gods of my choosing.

I’ve yet to kneel before another human being. I expect I’m not alone in those regards.

 

Tags: John McCain, Barack Obama, Vietnam War, political humor, America, Canada, Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, perfectionists, Dick Cheney, Bush, Merritt Scott (Rusty) Miller, Rusty Miller, Seattle, Hillary Clinton, The View, Washington State Democratic Party, Washington State Republican Party, Christine Gregoire, Patty Murray, Maria Cantwell, Ernest Callenbach, Herb Michelson, Peter Pan, Camelot, Democrat, Republican, Dan Quayle, William Lars Bladine, Jeb Bladine, Peter Wong, KUOW, University of Washington, Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Cream, Garrison Keilor, The Prairie Home Companion

THE SKAGIT VALLEY MASSACRE

                                     

The Skagit Valley, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skagit_County,_ some sixty miles north of Seattle, stretches like a northern Plain of Jars from the Cascade Mountains west to Anacortes and the San Juan Islands of the upper reaches of the Puget Sound. Encompassing some 1900 square miles and a population of 117,000, it is a quietly flourishing land but not a densely settled one. In many ways, it is a place time has left largely alone.

When I lived there, in the small fishing village of LaConner, my neighbors included novelist Tom Robbins, Washington State poet laureate Robert Sund and abstract artist Guy Anderson. Stormy in winter, radiant in spring, tulip fields lovely in summer and hauntingly lonely in autumn, it was, as well, a magical and pervasively mystical place, thanks in large part to the strong presence of the Swinomish (Indian) Confederation and their reservation on Fidalgo Island, across the Swinomish Channel from LaConner.

This week, thanks to a Tuesday rampage by a lone white male with a history of mental problems, six people up there, including a woman deputy sheriff, are dead and two are seriously wounded. At this writing, the media are still gathering information but enough has come out to easily visualize the bloody and random trail of carnage he left before turning himself into the Sheriff’s Department in Mount Vernon, the Skagit County seat. http://www.kirotv.com/news/index.html

In Seattle, it is a story which has overshadowed the war in Iraq, the aftermath of Gustaff and the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. For all the diversity of our neighborhoods and what would only pass as a metropolitan lifestyle this far removed from places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York, we remain perhaps embarrassingly rural in orientation and predilection.

As much as we abhor this kind of violence within our own county and city limits, we accept it as a tradeoff. And as enchanting as places like the Skagit are, it’s tough to make a living if you’re not either from there or hired into the area. But we weekend and vacation there. Some of us retire there. A few of us, self-employed, do make lives for ourselves there.

For the rest of us, it’s the hope and belief that people can live among one another without fearing such excesses of human behavior. As naïve as that might seem east of the Mississippi, it’s worked in the Pacific Northwest pretty successfully, even in the boisterous days when timber was in trouble in Oregon and marijuana replaced it for awhile as the state’s top cash crop.

Long after the vigils, the tributes, the funerals and the memorials, we will wonder if this could have been prevented. We will pressure the courts to compel the man who did these things to explain why. Small town city councils will meet to discuss law enforcement issues and there will be an upsurge in the purchase of firearms and home protection systems. And neighbors will be watching other neighbors for indications of silent stress about ready to go ballistic.

In time, like after fire, flood, earthquake, volcanic eruption or sea-borne storm, the wounded will heal and the bereaved at peace. This will the subject of family Bibles and local history. Despite our innocence, we realize that of all the natural disasters which can and have afflicted us, what we are capable of doing to one another in rage, fear or madness is perhaps the most unpredictable and profoundly resonating.

We need not seek to know for whom John Donne’s bell tolls. Certainly it tolls for us.

 

THE SPEARGUN AND PEOPLE WHO DRINK WITHOUT GETTING THEIR LIPS WET

 

                                                   

 

One of the younger adults in my life just happened to drop by unexpectedly on Friday night last and managed to cross the moat, slip through the bars, sneak past assorted guards and turn a big brass key in a squeaky lock without me being aware he was within seven klicks of my Bastion on the Sound.

I complimented him on his stealth and after he locked the door behind him and hung up the big brass key, he walked over and sat down in the chair he bought and which is reserved for him. It’s an ergonomic wonder, I’ll give it that. It reminds me of a dentist’s chair but that’s not something you say to a friend about a chair he really likes. Also, it doesn’t take up much room and it blends in real good. I know this for a fact because I can’t recall at the moment what color it is. It’s also silent and that, I think, is its most endearing quality. Were its owner nearly half so reticent.

Especially when I’m watching a movie. I don’t go to theatres to experience films I really want to see because I find the audience reaction too distracting and, in many cases, waaaay too much rain on my parade. Also, the popcorn’s not that good and ridiculously expensive. And it doesn’t do any good to try to smuggle some in. The air’s too clean in Seattle and hot buttered popcorn with salt and a little garlic is harder to hide than the fragrance of a fifty year old bottle of English Leather aftershave or cologne.

So in order to totally experience a film, I need a private screening. I’m also 6’3" and I can’t do anything about that either, except slouch, which is not good for the spine. One grandfather sat tall in the saddle, the other at the wheel of a fishing boat, and it’s not good karma to break with that kind of family tradition. At least not in my experience. And yep, I’ve tried.

My friends know this about me and it’s a peculiarity among several they’ve come to tolerate, if not accept. Especially on a Friday night without a date and no one else to hang out with. Max is 24. I am almost old enough to be his grandfather. Tonight, however, was a little different because of the movie I was watching. And also because I had six pints of Irish ale and a big tub of popcorn on the coffee table, upon which I also had my stockinged feet.

I was watching Jaws and that baffled Max for a bit. Max does know that I was on destroyers in the West Pacific during the Vietnam War; that I have fished for trout in high mountain streams and lakes, for striped bass in the Sacramento River and for salmon off the coasts of Northern California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. I don’t talk about this stuff a lot but when it seems appropriate, I share an episode.

The reason Max was taken aback a bit was that he also knows something else about me. When I was stationed in San Diego, I enjoyed snorkeling into a grotto not far from the Scripps Institute in La Jolla. It was an era of intense activity at the Naval Training Center and elements of the First Fleet as well. But on that relatively remote stretch of beach, it was as though none of that existed

Especially in that grotto. The tunnel leading into it was about twelve feet down, some six feet in diameter and maybe fifty feet long. It opened into a benched dome I could stand up in and into which light filtered from a distant crevice or several. It was like a mini-cathedral to me and those Sunday afternoons in the summer of 1969, as good a place as any to think about helping kill people and maybe dying in the process. In some ways, in was an incredibly spiritual experience. In which a speargun had absolutely no place.

I wasn’t there to take from the ocean. I was a pilgrim passing through, as it were. I was not, until the speargun, a threat to any of those who dwelled on the lands I was crossing. I was this vaguely familiar pale-skinned lifeform in a bathing suit, swim fins, mask and snorkel. I stayed on the surface until I was ready to submerge. Then I took a deep breath, dove, entered, swam, surfaced and climbed out to sit down Indian style on smooth rock cushion and let the air that came in dry me out while I lost myself to my own thoughts and prayers.

One of the guys in my barracks back on the navy base was also into diving, as it were, but he was a SCUBA diver who loved to hunt fish for food. He had a deal going with a local restaurant, which paid him in either cash or in a meal for him and his friends. So he was always going out with a speargun and when he’d made enough from his business venture, he upgraded and offered to sell me his old one.

We were at the base EM Club having a pitcher with a bunch of his friends and the shark and barracuda and manta ray stories were hanging almost as thick as the smoke from 500 cigarettes. I wasn’t much for talking and there was no way I could steer the conversation, especially when it got around to me and my aquamarine lifestyle. They acted, Gerhardt and all his buddies, like I had a death wish submerging in those waters without protection.

They were pretty convincing so I put out about a third my pay for this speargun with surgical tubing and some real sharp spears. Once Gerhardt got his money, they started talking about women and since, at that time, I had a girl back home, I got ready to leave. But as I was getting up, Gerhardt grabbed my arm.

"Tomorrow’s Sunday. You going out?"

"Yeah," I replied, jerking free of his grasp.

"I got a bet going with these guys you won’t dive with that speargun. Life could get real interesting for you around here if lost money and got laughed at."

They went with me and made sure the speargun was loaded. I dove with it and everything went fine, or so it seemed. But when I got up into my personal cathedral, the breezes felt different. Instead of warming me, they chilled me. I started getting scared, something I’d never been before in this place. Something told me to get out as fast as I could and never, ever come back.

I dove, with the speargun, and as I was looking down that tunnel, something came in that filled at least half of it and I lost half my air with a short scream. I knew there was no way out except straight ahead so I just closed my eyes and started kicking as hard as I could. Speargun in tow.

I brushed past it in the darkness and it did not have scales. I cleared the tunnel, shot to the surface and started swimming back to the beach. My erstwhile companions were laughing at me and pointing at something beyond me. I was in no mood to look over my shoulder until I was wading to the relative safety of dry land. When I got there, I turned around, looked out over the stretch of Pacific Oceans I’d just covered and there was a young adult dolphin treading water and laughing his cetacean butt off at me.

So were Gerhardt, his friends and maybe a couple three dozen others gathered to enjoy a true communion with a sun which can cause melanoma and an ocean world which, if disrespected, can kill in more creative ways than any humans since Cro Magnon decided not to share his turf with Neanderthal.

So, Max knowing all this, waited until the second commercial and asked me why I was watching a movie which reminded me of something that frightening. In return, I asked him if he’d ever noticed that when people took a drink in that movie, their lips were never wet when they took their cup, mug or glass away, even in the cabin of Robert Shaw’sboat when old Jaws was closing in.

Max looked at me and asked me who I thought was going to win the national election for president.

I told him probably the speargun. And people who can drink out of a cup, mug or glass without getting their lips wet.

                                                             

The Shamrock Saloon Redemption of Noxious Ned Malloy

Hi again, folks.  Like most of you, I imagine, I like to take a break from the real pressing issues of the day, kick back and have a little fun.  I like to read and I’m a fan of our regional writers like Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Jack London and Robert Service; people who lived in the Pacific Northwest and wrote about their experiences here.  Here’s a story I just wrote which I hope brings you a tenth of the enjoyment their work and the contemporary works of bloggers like Tomato Mike (http://journals.aol.com/tomatomike/TheTomatomanTimes) have brought me.

Thanks for the ear, then, eh?  Take care, stay well and God Bless.

Rusty

 

The Shamrock Saloon Redemption of Noxious Ned Malloy

It was a hot summer afternoon in the remote granite peaks of the deep Cascades of northeastern Washington State and the town's only paved street bubbled and baked.  Inside the Shamrock Saloon, a dozen bikers looked on, handguns drawn, as their leader, Noxious Ned Malloy smiled and waved his big revolvers at the patrons seated at the bar and at tables beyond.

"You probably know this ain't a hold-up.  You fine, upstanding citizens got a reputation.  I'm here to try it out.  I want to find out just how far you folks will go to protect this honest, hard-working, peaceful little community."

Nobody said anything but neither did we drop our eyes.  They watched us watching them for a moment or so, and then from the end of the bar, hidden by two big loggers, our small Catholic priest, Father Michael McGuire, yawned and dismounted his stool.  His pint of Guinness in his right hand and the pool stick he'd been using most of the afternoon in his left, he looked at Noxious Ned with an upraised eyebrow and clicked his teeth.

"Lad, ye ought to be ashamed of yerself, coming in like this on the Sabbath.  And with such preposterous behaviour.  Does your sainted mother know you act like this in public?"

Noxious Ned looked at the diminutive cleric.  "And who the devil might you be, little man?"

"I might be Mary, Queen of Scots, you insufferable blight on the butt of all manhood," Father Michael replied amiably.  "But as it so happens, Ned, I'm here to save you."

Noxious Ned laughed.  "Save your breath, Father.  I'm beyond redemption."

"Well, lad, that's not for me to say," Father Michael shrugged.  "Your soul's not the issue."

"And why's that?" the bearded blond biker sneered.

"Because today is the day you were meant to die, Ned Malloy," our small cleric informed him simply..

Noxious Ned laughed.  "I just knew there was a real special reason I got up this morning."

That seemed to irritate Father Michael but it also could have just been the heat.  His tufted blue eyes simmered and there was the hint of a snarl in his voice when he said to Noxious Ned,

"Put your guns back in your holsters, Ned Malloy."

"Or what, old man?"

The Guinness from Father McGuire's warm pint glass seemed to float in slow motion through the air and as it splashed over the dumbfounded face of Noxious Ned, the pool cue slapped the guns from his hands and then moved in to double him over, straighten him up, double over again and then sort of let him collapse in a black leather and blue bandana heap on the sawdust floor.

By that time, Molly O'Hara, proud owner and proprietor of the Shamrock Saloon, had her "customized" 12-gauge auto on the bar and aimed at the other bikers in general.  One of them spat out,

"You can't get all of us with that."

"Nope," Molly agreed.  "Just the stupid ones.  You stupid?"

Father Murphy chose that moment to retrieve Noxious Ned's big revolvers and dazzled us for a moment or two with his handling of the venerable Colt .45 Peacemakers.

"Ah, Miss O'Hara, with all due respect, Lass, let's not be rude to our guests.  They're all bright lads with marvelous futures before them."  Then he cocked both big revolvers and asked the brave biker, "Lad, how many of you ~ smart and stupid ~ do you suppose the lovely Molly O'Hara and I could together account for?"

By this time, Noxious Ned was coming around and at Father McGuire's request, we helped him to a table and poured him a glass of beer.  Then we sat down with him.   He ran a boxer's hand over his face, rubbed his eyes, yawned and surveyed the scene for a moment.

Then he started to smile.  The smile turned into a grin and the grin, into a chuckle.  The chuckle grew to a laugh that mounted in intensity until it rebounded off the rafters and seemed to shake him to the very core.  Tears streamed down his cheeks and he gasped for breath.  When he finally got control of himself, he told his men,

"Put your guns away, lads, before they kill us all.  They told me what I wanted to know."  Then he looked at our fair Molly O'Hara and added.  "And if these 'peaceful citizens' still want our trade, get thirsty and tip big."

Molly O'Hara stared back at him and touched a raft of her flaming red hair.  The biker blushed and her shotgun disappeared back under the bar.  Ned then shifted his gaze to Father McGuire and the revolvers the little priest still held and with which he was showing off for the crowd.  Our priest looked at Noxious Ned in return and shook his head.

"They'll be waitin’ for you in that church at the other end of town, lad.  Next Sunday and every Sunday after that.  As long as you think you need them to be a man."

Ned lowered his gaze for an instant, then raised it back.  "Aye, Father."

Father Michael's eagle eyes bored quietly into Noxious Ned Malloy and a chill swept through us all, Catholic and Protestant alike.  Even though his voice dropped to almost a whisper, the intense fury of it carried to every ear in the saloon and it felt like he was taking hold of Ned Malloy's eternal soul as he warned him, ever so softly, ever so sweetly and ever so gently,

"And if you ever behave like that again in my parish, you disgrace to all Irish manhood, by your own sainted mother, Ned Malloy, I will use your guns to send you straight to Hell."

After that, things settled down and toward dusk, it got cooler.  Ned Malloy ended up getting out of the renegade biker business and became a mechanic who could fix everything from a McCullough chainsaw to a Chevy big block to an Evinrude 40-horse outboard.  He also courted Molly O'Hara and she let him chase her until she caught him.

Father McGuire apparently never did get ahold of Ned's soul though.  Molly O'Hara's husband has never been to that church at the other end of town.  Every year, though, at our annual town celebration, our little priest does some dazzling stuff with those six-shooters.  Ned watches and smiles and applauds along with the rest of us.

I guess he figured out he didn't need them big Colt .45 Peacemakers to be a man after all. 

until next time

If you enjoyed this and are not a subscriber but would like to be, email me (minstrel312@aol.com) and we'll see you're notified when a new one of these comes out.  RM

 

ONLY $42.35 BUT THE MEMORIES ARE PRICELESS

              

Hi again, folks.  Well, this past Saturday afternoon, I bought the first pair of new footwear I’ve purchased in an embarrassingly long time.  It’s one thing to be committed to a green, recyclable, buy used first, renewable-resource lifestyle but I suspect that even that can be overdone.  I’ve also noticed something about fanatics which makes me not want to be one.  They don’t seem to have much of a sense of humour, do they?

 

To me, then, though this is hardly a majour financial event in my life, it has been cause for some additional reflection.  (I’ve been considering new sandals for about three months now.)  Like the so many of those who live and work in the Puget Sound, “Birkenstocks,” per se, are the footwear of choice. 

 

Money’s been a bit tight over the last several years so I haven’t had the option of a resole.  Apparently, now that times are better, it’s too late for that.  As a good friend remarked recently,

 

“Rusty, if you love those shoes at all, you’ll let them die with dignity and give them a decent wake.”

 

The same friend told me about an easy shoe store two blocks from where I live and bet me I could buy a new pair for under $50, bag a jar of instant coffee and meet them back at the house in a half hour.

 

Turns out they were wrong.  It only took me 25 minutes. 

 

And I wore the new purchase home.  With the old friends and loyal companions wrapped in tissue in the box the successors came in.  At sunrise tomorrow, I’m going down to the Ship Canal and put the box in the water to let the current carry it away.  I like the idea that by the time these sandals reach the Puget Sound, they’ll be on their way to providing miniature reefs for new colonies of marine life.

 

 

                

 

These new ones were a little stiff so I remembered what my (infamous) Grandpa Seamus did with new saddles, harnesses, belts and other leather goods we used on the ranch.  I applied a thin coat of Vaseline to the contact points and set them on the front desk to warm up in the sun.  Then I worked those contact points and the straps with my fingers until they softened up even more.  Then, after donning a pair of wool sox, I put them on and walked a mile or two.  Welcome to my world, new friends.

 

I remember how Seamus smelled when he came in from a session in the tack room.  It was a richly aromatic blend of leather, Vaseline, denim and perspiration.  I was gone many years from the ranch when I came across something which came close to that blend.  It was a line of men’s cologne and aftershave called “English Leather.”  I was a teenager back then so there’s an additional host of recollections these new sandals evoke.

 

 

               

 

So yep, to paraphrase a popular commercial I really like, the shoes only cost $42.35.  The memories, of course, are priceless.

 

Until next time, then, take care, stay well and God Bless.

 

Rusty