A CAMPING TALE


JB and I went backpacking up in the Olympics.

Hike four miles up the road past Staircase at Lake Cushman to the trailhead. Another six or so miles to the Flapjack Lakes, which are right at the tree line.

Although it was July, there was still a lot of snow around the lakes. There was a shelter at the lake, active word being WAS. A sizeable tree had fallen on it the previous winter, and it was pretty much destroyed.

However, a good piece of the roof was still intact, and it had a hole in it just big enough for us to crawl through. It made for a tight but serviceable place to sleep. Saved us the trouble of setting up a tent.

One of the reasons for coming was to do a little fly fishing. Therre is nothing quite like floating a dry fly on a crystal clear high country lake and watching the trout come up from about 20 feet deep in a silver flash to take the fly on the surface.

The first couple of times I am always so hyped up that I jerk the fly right out of his mouth. It isn't until I settle down a little that I can wait long enough to let the fish get it all the way in his mouth.

Right next to the crushed shelter was a snowbank, which we used as a freezer. When we had cleaned the fish, we would use a stick to make a hole in the snowbank and shove a fish in head first, cover the hole over, and then mark it with a pine cone so we wouldn't lose the spot.

When it came time to eat, we would just go get a couple of fish out of the "refrigerator", roll them in corn meal with a little salt and pepper and saute' them in butter. When backpacking I always instisted on bringing along butter. Almost everything tastes better when saute'd in butter with a little salt.

After dinner and a while sitting around the fire, we turned in for the night. Even in July it was pretty damn cold when you were up that high.

Just as I was laying on my back about to fall asleep, something ran across my face. Something small and furry with VERY cold feet. It startled the hell out of me, so I sat up very abruptly and hit my forehead VERY squarely on a pine log holding up the roof of out impromptu shelter. I saw stars, rebounded while watching the stars inside my head pulse on and off, and crashed back down on my back, semi-conscious.

Something small and furry with VERY cold feet ran back over my face in the other direction.

Startled, I sat up very abruptly and once again hit my head.

Since it was so cold, I had climbed in my sleeping bag fully dressed. The only things I had removed were my boots and belt knife.

I grabbed at my belt knife, and started stabbing the ground to my left, but of course there was nothing there.

When I lay back down, I kept my knife in my hand. A while later the perp ran across my face again. I started stabbing off to my right. Unfortunately JB was over there. I didn't stab him or anything, but he woke up with me stabbing the ground close to me.

"Albert! WHat the HELL are you doing?"

Panting and slathering, I explained to him about being attacked in the dark by vicous furry ANIMALS. I don't think he believed me until I lit a match and showed him the big knot on my forehead.

Our packs were in between us in the shelter, so we went through them to see what the ravening beast was after. We found a pack of Pilot Crackers had been gnawed open.

We took the Pilot Crackers out of the shelter and set them on a nearby stump, and went back to sleep, although I had a hard time falling back to sleep, with my head throbbing from hitting the log twice, and being all keyed up waiting for another vicous attach by rabid animals.

I got up the next morning, and there, sitting on the stump, grinning his hideous grin and mocking me, was a chipmunk.

The Airplane Flight From Hell

I was a consciencious objector from the late stupidity in Vietnam.

I was a part of a class action lawsuit that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.

At the time there were a very limited number of reasons you could apply for CO status. They were all based on religious affiliation. If you were a Quaker or a Seventh Day Adventist it was OK. Philosophical objections were not allowed.

The case went to the Supreme Court, and they found that people could object to war without cloaking in it religion.

We had all been on hold by the draft board until the case was settled. The Court made it's decision, and the following week we were all drafted. I have a couple of interresting story's about all of that, but I went to basic training and AIT (Anvanced Individual Training) at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.

When I was about ready ot graduate from AIT, the called me out of class. My grandmother had passed on, and they were letting me leave early so I could go home for the funeral.

I had a ticket, but I had to go back to the barracks and pack and grab a cab to the airport.

As I pulled up to the airport, I saw my flight taking off. Shit, shit shit.

I went in to the terminal and started exploring my opportunities. How could I trade in my ticket and still get home in time for the funeral. I went to every ticket terminal.

Finally I found a redeye flight out of San Ontonio which would connect with another flight in L.A.. and take me to Portland where I would connect up for Seattle.

Way Cool.

Podunct Airlines. I didn't care.

We took off, and headed for the coast. When we got in the air and were cruising along I looked out the window. I was located just behind the wing. I looked out and saw a lot of smoke coming out of the inboard engine.

I stopped a stewardess and pointed out the window and said I didn't think it should have flames coming out of that particular area of the engine. The Stew looked and turned a couple of shades of pale. She ran off towards the cockpit.

Shortly after that the Captain came on the announcer system and said "Some of you may have noticed an unusual condition in engine number 2. We will be makeing an unscheduled stop in El Paso to address this problem. There is no reason to be alarmed."

We came out of the clouds into El Paso, and every emergency truck and the foam vehicles and all of the emergency equipment were all deployed along the runway.

I remember thinking "Oh shit, this must be worse that I thought."

We landed without incident, and the pilot came on the public announce system and said "Passengers may now disenbark to the terminal while we fix this minor problem" He was so much in control that we just disembarkes to the termminal.

We saw various vehicles come and tend the plane. Other than being a little pissed that we were sitting when we were supposed to be flying, there wasn't a whole lot of concern.

After about 20 minutes, the terminal announce systen came on to tell us that we were OK to go back on board.

We started to reboard the aricraft, when the pilot came over the announce system and YELLED "EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THE AIRCRAFT NOW!!!!"

We all ran for the terminal.

The refueling panel in the wing had dripped some fuel on the tarmac, and somehow it had caught on fire. Fire right below fuel tanks.

Not a good thing.

After another half an hour or so, the pilot came into the terminal and announced, "If the passengers of flight 5678 will follow me into the lounge, cocktails are on the company."

Although I was underage, I was in uniform, so nobody was going to refuse me service, so I had several coctails at the expense of the airline. And duly fortified, we all got back on the same aircraft and went into the air.

Every time we hit an airpocket or cloud formation. we all went "Oh shit" but we made it to L.A. As I Left the plane and transversed the terminal "Sounds Of Silence" was playing.

I made my connecting flight, and made it home in time for the funeral.

But as the Greatful Dead put it "What a strange long trip it's been."

My Life as a Chicken Hypnotizer.



When R. was small, I decided that she could use a little experience in the feeding and care of farm animals, but since we live in a more-or-less urban area, although it is unincorporated, there are some restrictions on what you can do, not to mention the restrictions on space (I only have 1/4 acre).

I was tearing an old dilapidated deck off of the house, so I used the pieces to build a chicken coop in the back yard. Then we went down to the feed and seed store, and bought a couple of Banty chicks that became Rusty and Dusty, our two laying hens.

R was fascinated that without benefit of a male chicken for inspiration, they would produce eggs on a regular basis. Not only that, they weren't white or brown like normal store bought eggs, they were a grey-green and smaller. She used to like to take hard boiled Banty eggs to school because most people had never seen anything but regular eggs.

One day she had a couple of friends over, and she was showing them the chickens, and I asked them "Do you know it is possible to hypnotize a chicken"

"NO WAY! Could show us?"

So I did.

Later R. asked me "Dad, where did you learn to hypnotize chickens?"

As I have mentioned ad nauseum, we had a farm, and raised all kinds of things. We always had two batches of chickens, One batch of laying hens, one batch of fryers. One of the kids jobs was to go out to the hen house in the morning and gather the eggs and feed the chickens. It was always a little like a treasure hunt, because you never knew what you were going to find. Taking the eggs away from the hens could be an adventure too, as some of them took objection to us removing their eggs. After all it wasn't easy producing them.

The fryers life was short and pretty good. They were fed and watered and didn't have to produce anything to earn their keep, just put on weight. The down side was that before things froze up in the fall, would come slaughter day.

Everyone hates slaughter day. It is nasty, smelly work, but it puts food in the freezer for all winter.

The little kids were chicken catchers. Grandfather was the headsman. Uncle Fred and Dad were the gutting crew, and everyone else were Chicken Pluckers. It was our own little assembly line.

My job was Chicken Hypnotizer.

After the little kids caught a chicken, they would bring it to me. I would stick it's head underneath it's wing and then pump it (the whole bird) up and down for about 30 seconds. Then you could set it down on the ground and it would stay where you set it. Eventually it would sort of shudder, pull it's head out and look around like "Where the hell am I?", but on slaughter day, they generally never came around. If they started to, I would just grab them before they got any ideas about running off, and rehypnotize them.

It always caused me to wonder "How did someone figure this out? It would seem logical that it would be someone who wanted to transport chickens quietly and easily. Like maybe a Chicken Thief? How did my grandfather, who was from the hills of Kentucky and taught me the fine art of chicken hypnotizing happen to be in possession of this particular bit of information?"

It wasn't until many years later that I learned that this is a tecnique used by bird hunters to train their bird dogs. They will hypnotize a chicken and set it down in the brush, then get the dog and lead it around close to where the chicken is, then reward the dog when it finds the bird.

I have always wanted to put this on my resume'. Chicken Hypnotizer. That alone should be good for a first interview, and once you get your foot in the door anything is possible.

I have never found a use for this very rare skill in the modern world. I mean you can't exactly pick up a newspaper, and there on page 13 of the classified ads you find "Wanted: Chicken Hypnotizer. Full time. Full benefits. Must be experienced. Top Wages."

Any one need a perfectly good barely used Chicken Hypnotizer?

The Perkins Perfect Pocket Poultry Punch

When I dropped out of college, I went to work for Automix Keyboards in Bellevue, Wa. They manufactured information feed keyboards for phototypesetters.

They were one of the first in the US to use computer-in-a-chip technology.

I ran a flow solder machine and did general machine repair and maintenance for a printed circuit board assembly area. The firm was very high tech for it's time. They had a Dee System 8 flow solder machine that was so advanced it wasn't even on the market yet. They had bought it as a prototype off the floor of a trade fair. It was a very well designed and efficient machine.

The keyboards were all Reed Switch actuated, and very robust, but pretty expensive. They were combined with the interface machine that allowed a single person to produce a multiple font, multi-color document, like a small newspaper, from a single terminal. Basically you can do the same thing from any computer now, but at the time it was innovative.

Our product was expensive. The same technology that is included in every computer available for desktop publishing cost about $20,ooo.oo at the time.

The consoles we made produced tape, Magnetic tape or paper punch tape similar to Telex tape, which was then fed into the actual phototypesetter.

I was staying late, repairing the pump in a Freon cleaning system that had a bearing go bad, and ran into one of the head Engineers.

I asked him what he was doing there so late. He was literally pacing the floor and muttering to himself. "Waiting for the @#$%^&* punches to come in."

"What punches are those?" I asked."The Perkins Perfect Pocket Poultry Punch" he replied.

"What the heck do they have to do with Phototypesetters?"

"You know how the Keyboards and consoles work?"

"Sure, they use magnetic or paper tape to feed instructions to the Phototypesetters."

"When you are making a paper tape, each letter of the alphabet is represented by a combination of holes in the tape .Little pins feeding through holes in the paper tape to read the combinations. If you make a mistake, you have to correct the tape by manually punching out the line on the tape, creating a null. When we designed the machine, we had to have a unique size and shape of punch to null out the holes in the paper tape. On of the guys had a punch that he had laying around the garage, so we used that. We started up the business with that one punch, and we found someone to produce additional punches. When we went to Patent out system, they found that the punch we were using was already patented. That particular size and shape of punch was patented by the Perkins Perfect Pocket Poultry Punch Co. and we were infringing on their patent."

The only address for the Perkins Co. was a P.O. box in rural Georgia. No phone, no address.

The company sent a representative to Georgia to meet with Mr. Perkins. He lived in a modest shack out in the swamps. The punch was used to make a small hole between the tendon and bone in a chicken's leg so that they could be hung upside down for processing at the chicken processing plant. It had been invented by his dad as a young man, and every chicken processing plant had to have several. Replacement kept him as busy as he wanted to be, and he could work at his own pace.

He made punches according to his own whim and time table.If he wanted to buy a new pair of shoes, he could make up a couple of punches and mail them out to whoever was on the top of the order list, buy whatever he wanted, and stop until he needed something else.

Was he willing to sell the patent?

Absolutely not, he had regular customers who depended on his product.

Would he allow us to manufacture the punches and pay him royalties?

Absolutely not. He didn't trust us to maintain the quality control he infused in each and every Perkins Perfect Pocket Poultry Punch. What if inferior examples found their way on to the market place? What would people think? How could he trust us to faithfully report how many we produced?

So we were stuck with Mr Perkins. He produces the Punches at his leisure, and mails them out when he feels like it.

Here we were, sitting there with 10 completed units on the loading dock, waiting for the punches to come in. We had no way of contacting Mr. Perkins except through his P.O. box, and no way to lean on him to step up his production.

I have always wanted to invent something like the Perkins Perfect Pocket Poultry Punch that would give me the independence to thumb my nose at the world, live off the grid, and have just enough to meet my needs as long as I didn't need too much.

At The volcano.

When Mrs A. and I first got married we took three weeks for our honeymoon, and went to Morelia, Mexico and stayed with my Uncle Ben and Aunt Pat. It was a wonderful time. Uncle Ben is a Professor of History at the College of Michoacan in Morelia. Since both my wife and I are History buffs, it was a magical time, as we had our own bilingual driver and tour guide. When we got there there was an international conference of Humboldt scholars at the college. We were invited to the closing ceremonies, and got invited along on a trip the next day.

Wilhelm Humboldt is the guy that the Humboldt current is named after as well as the Humboldt Valley in California. He was an internationally known explorer and diarist. 200 years previously, he had come through Mexico with the intent of visiting an active volcano. After the conference, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his explorations, the people from the conference were going to take a trip and climb that same volcano.

We took the air conditioned Department of Agriculture bus as far as the town of La Huacana, where we stopped for lunch and changed vehicles. That's Uncle Ben in front of the bus. The bus was a trip. As Mrs A. put it, "All we need is a chicken and a pig, and it would be the bus from "Romancing the Stone" . We took off out into the jungle and went to the end of the road, where we left the bus. Some of us hires horses from the locals for the trip. That again is uncle Ben on the horse.


The University had payed the local villagers to feed us dinner, so we set up right in the middle of the road and they brought out a big old tin washtub full of the best Chicken Mole' I have ever eaten.

I was wandering around eating baked corn meal wrapped in banana leaves when I heard a noise coming out of the jungle. Now we were at the end of the formal road, but I heard a vehicle coming. A truck came out of the jungle, and it was loaded with people in black fatigues and carrying AK47s. I had visions of the headline back at home "LOCAL MAN SLAIN BY BANDITOS IN MEXICO"

I tried to fade back into the crowd, but when you are approaching 6", and the crowd is 5' 6", fading is difficult. The truck came roaring up and the armed men jumped out. They seem agitated that we were blocking the road. There was a very heated discussion, but I finally figured out that they had been invited to join us for dinner.

They put their guns in the back of the truck, and pulled up chairs and chowed down.

It turns out that they were Federales who had been patrolling for Banditos out in the jungle and were on their way home. So we ate Chicken Mole' and drank a little Mescal and had a good time.

Turkeytale

We raised all kinds of things on the farm. It was primarily a dairy farm, but we raised chickens for the eggs and also for meat, pigs for the meat, cats to keep the rodent population down, dogs and horses for amusement.
One year we decided to try raising turkeys, just for the heck of it. At that time I believed domesticated laying hens were the stupidest creatures on the face of the Earth. I was wrong. Turkeys have to be the holder of that dubious honor. A creature could not be stupider and still live.
We ordered a dozen turkeys from the supplier when we made our spring order for chickens, and they arrived at about the same time. When they ship the chicks, they throw in an extra, because they figure that one will die from shipping and handling. In this case all 13 arrived sound and healthy. The instructions told us we had to teach the turkeys how to drink from whatever water dispenser we were using, because otherwise they would drown. You were to hold their head in the water until they swallowed and then take it out. Repeat once, and they got the idea. One of the persistent folk tales is that turkeys will look up at the sky with their mouths open during a thunderstorm and die. I cannot attest to the truth of this, as we never lost any turkeys that way, but it strikes me as likely, seeing how dumb they are.

My little sisters decided that they would make a pet out of the extra turkey. Of course the named him "Lucky" and he had the run of the yard. Come slaughter time in the fall, Lucky got passed over. He grew to be huge. And mean. The side yard was his territory, and he defended it fiercely. One of his major sources of amusement was to terrorize the dog. The dog at the time (Tschindi) was a half border collie, half coyote, and was the best mouser we ever had on the place. The turkey ambushed him almost daily. Seeing as the turkey outweighed the dog by about 20 pounds, it was a pretty one sided battle. The turkey also ambushed anyone who wasn't paying attention. After getting ambushed a couple of times myself, every once in a while I would amble casually out into the side yard, and when Lucky was about ready to pounce, I would turn around and give him a good swift kick, and then run away before he could recover.

Down at the end of the driveway we had a power drop which ran the welder and a 120 volt outlet for an old beat up refrigerator. We kept fresh eggs in the refrigerator, which were for sale for 50 cents a dozen. My mother raised the laying hens, fed us all the eggs we needed and kept the "egg money" for little extras for her and the girls. There was a box next to the refrigerator to deposit the money, so anyone could come by at any time to get eggs even if we weren't there. We trusted people to leave the money, and to the best of my knowledge no one ever stiffed us. If we were home, they would usually come by the house and have a glass of milk or a beer and visit a spell.

We were off at church on Sunday when someone came by to get a dozen eggs, and when we got home we noticed that the turkey was moving mighty slow. We went off on a berry picking expedition up Pack River, and picked several gallons of huckleberries.

When we got home we were greeted with a gruesome site. There were feathers guts and blood all over the side yard, and in the middle of them, chewing on a bone was the dog. He had figured out that Lucky was hurt and couldn't defend himself. He not only killed the turkey, he mutilated him, There was no piece left bigger than a pack of cigarettes. He had paid that turkey back for every peck and every wing slap he had ever gotten, and looked mighty please with himself.

My family ran a dairy farm for about 50 years until progress and modern agribusiness caught up with it. Don't get me stated on how Corporate America has squeezed the life out of the small dairyman.
Being around cows all those years has not endeared the bovine species to me. When you have spent some years at the aft end of hay processing plants, you begin to think of the animal as not much more than a means of producing fertilizer. In the words of a famous Japanese industrialist "Whether you are building rocket ships or taking a dump the basic process is the same. Raw materials go in one end, and the end product comes out the other."
Cows are one of the stupidest animals on the face of the Earth., which leads to


COWTALE I

Spook was a weird cow. Skittish as heck. She liked to sneak up and peer around corners or through windows. It could be startling as heck in mid winter to be out in the milking parlor and catch movement out of the corner of your eye and look up at the window to see this huge eye rolling and peering in at you. She didn't just look, she PEERED and rolled her eye. It was pretty unnerving.
Somewhere in the family is a 22 Winchester pump rifle, 1920's vintage. A sweet gun that has had a lot of ammunition put through it over the years. It has a home made stock, made out of Birch. Spook is part of the reason it has that stock.
One winter we had a porcupine that decided to pay us a visit. Problem one was that it had come to the barnyard in search of salt. There was a plentiful supply of salt on the handles of the barnyard implements, like the pitchforks and the manure shovel. We tried to discourage this by taking the juice from a bottle of canned Chilis Torridos and painting the handles to the tools. It was pretty effective, and is a remedy I have used over the years to keep dogs from chewing on things. The porky no longer was chewing on the handles, but he was still coming around the barn. The way we found out was when we were awakened in the middle of the night by a cow bellowing in pain. It was spook, and at her most curious, she had investigated the porky. She must have irked him, because she ended up with a nose full of quills. We had to take her into the milking parlor and get her head in the stanchion and get all the quills out. Porcupine quills are barbed so that they will not pull back. Most of them we pushed through her lips, but some we had to take a very sharp knife and run it along side the quill and free the quill. Spook was a little more than displeased with the proceedings, but we did manage to get it done, and escape with no more than some bruising. That was the first time.
When it happened to Spook the second time, it was worse. In fact she had a couple of quills in her tongue. I was in favor of shooting her, as a critter that downright dumb should not be allowed to live, but calmer spirits prevailed and we went through the procedure again.
The conclusion we came to was that the porcupine needed to go away. Permanently. With prejudice.
So we staked ourselves out in the barn and waited. Along came Mr. Porcupine. Uncle Fred Shot him, and he turned around and ambled away. Shop him again. He kept on going. Shot him again, and again. In fact emptied the 15 shot tube into him, and he was still ambling along. Finally Uncle Fred hit him over the head with the stock of the rifle. The stock broke, but it did the job.
We salvaged the quills, because they make nice decorations and can be used in tying trout flies. Left with the carcass, we wondered how Porcupine tasted, so we skinned him out and cooked up a haunch.
That was the foulest tasting piece of meat I have ever tasted. Old Mr. Porky had been eating the inner bark of pine trees for some time, and the taste had been infused into the meat. Sorta like eating meat marinated in Pine Sol. While it didn't make up sick, it will never make it on to the main menu.

COWTALE II

Most dairy cows do not have a real strong mothering instinct. When they give birth, the next day you take the calf away and put it in the calf pen and raise it separate from the mother. She will be a little confused and irritable for a day or so, but quickly forgets.
Not so with Angie. Angie had real strong mothering instincts, and when we took her calf away, she was not just irritable, she was downright pissed. If you had to go out in the barnyard for any reason, you double-checked to make sure where she was. She had chased people around a couple of times.
My older brother Larry and I were going to go down to the creek in back of the barn and do a little fishing. I think he was nine and I was eight. We checked out back of the barn, and Angie was not in site, so we headed across the barnyard. When we were out in the middle, we hear this bellow behind us, turn around, and here she comes. Angie had never been dehorned, so there was a very real possibility we could get hurt bad. Larry ran one direction and I ran the other. He ran for the gate, and I ran for the hay wagon. There was a piece of barbed wire across the open gate, and it hit Larry neck high, and took the feet right out from under him. It cut his heck pretty bad, so he was bleeding and screaming his lungs out. I made it safely to the hay wagon. Everyone came running at the sound of the screaming, and they bundled Larry up and ran him in to the Doc.
Which left me stranded on the hay wagon. All afternoon.
Angie would go inside the barn, and after I waited a couple of minutes, I edged to the ground, I got about four steps away from the wagon, and here she came, chasing me back. This happened a couple of times before I figured out that she was going in and peering out through the slats in the barn so she could catch me when I tried to get down. So I gave up for a while. She got tired of waiting for me to get down, so she went out into the pasture a little was, and started feeding, but she was keeping one eye on me. She managed to rush in and chase me back on to the hay wagon a couple of times. The afternoon was warm, and I got almighty thirst up there on the hay wagon.
It wasn't until close to dinner time that someone wondered "Has anyone seen Al?"

SKILLY-ROOCHES
We were going camping in the Cascades. J.B. and I and Art and Bruce. At the last minute Art had announced that he had cousins coming from Ohio that he was expected to entertain for the weekend. We thought "That's all we need, a bunch of flatlanders in the mountains." But as we were trying to get out for the weekend at any expense. we said we would take them anyway.
We knew of a tumbled-down cabin in the woods out by Mount Rainier where we had planned to spend the night, and although it was small, it would serve for a small group of people for one night. In the best tradition of campers. after dinner we told scary tales of the woods of the Northwest. I am not sure who came up with the idea, but we began to spin tales of the Skilly Rooches. Skilly Rooches are legendary vampire slugs which live on the slopes of Mount Rainier and slither up on unsuspecting campers in the night. They have an enzyme in there saliva , which is similar to that of the vampire bat, making their bite painless. They resemble the Banana slug, and are all but undetectable, since they never come out except at night. An unsuspecting camper hunkers down in his sleeping bag at night and never wakes in the morning. All that remains is a dissicated husk, surrounded by slime trails. As the campfire burned itself down we settled in. Art said "Hey, Jimmie-Joe, don't you be worried none about the Skilly Rooches, they don't usually come down this low on the mountain." I piped in "Yes, they are high country critters, you seldom see one below about 6,000 feet." "How high are we anyway?" asked Billy-Bob. "Only about 5500." said J.B. "Shouldn't be any worry, unless it gets cold tonight." So Jimmie-Joe he asks "Why should the temperature make any difference?' "You see," says I, "Skilly-Rooches don't know how high they are, they only seem to respond to temperature and atmospheric pressure, so if it is especially cold and the atmospheric pressure is low, they might be able to come down lower on the mountain. We are on the outside range of their territory, so unless it gets real cold with an incoming storm front we should be safe." Jimmy-Joe says " I don't believe a single word you guys are telling us. This is like a snipe hunt we used to pull on new guys at the camp back in Ohio." All we had to say was "That's fine, you guys go to bed and don't worry about a thing." We all went to bed.
I noticed as we went to bed that Jimmy-Joe and Billy-Bob both had pulled their sheath knives out of their belts and were sleeping with them close to their heads.
"Oh well" I thought, " I guess we better put away the Jello surprise we had for them, or someone might get hurt."

When my daughter was 4 or 5 years old, a friend happened to visit. Rose and I were playing a game we call "Skilly-Rooches" which involved keeping your feet off of the floor because the Skilly-Rooches were going to get you. She had gotten several toys for Christmas which were toy cats with long tails which were stuck on with velcro. Well, velcro sticks on any available surface. The cats had 3 tails each and the idea was to get all of the tails on each others socks. (Skilly-Rooches stick very well to socks.) My friend asked "what the heck is this game that you are playing?" I tried to explain about the Skilly-Rooches, but I'm not sure he ever understood.

FISH FOR BREAKFAST


The house had finally quieted down for the night. Mom and Dad were in bed and I was settling down for a long night of studying for finals. I was in my first year of college and carrying a heavy load of subjects. My finals were all due in the next week and a half. It was nice to have the place to myself, very comfortable.
The phone rang.
There may be some times in your life when you are precogniscient, but I really don't believe this was one of them. I knew that my Grandfather has been in the hospital for some time so it came as no surprise to me that my Uncle Fred asked me to get up my father
The information was as expected. My grandfather had passed away in his sleep shortly before.
Grandfather Warren was the Patriarch of our family. He held the family together through many crises. He had always been the strong point in the family. When it came to vacations there was no question where we were going. We always went to the farm.
The farm to me was always a kind of sanctuary from the insanity of the city.
Grandfather and Fred had taught me the meaning of tracks in the dirt-what animal had passed there and why. There are very distinct signs that a person can recognize. They also taught me which bushes yield fruit and which were poison.
I respected my Grandfather more than anyone I knew, but my family knew I had to take my finals, so I was not expected at his funeral.
The last final I had to take was my Botany final. I had talked with my Professor many times and explained that my knowledge of plants came largely from my Grandfathers teaching, I think that the Professor really appreciated my stories, because he allowed me to take an early exam.
The Family was surprised to see me, because they knew I had finals. Although it was a solemn occasion, there was a certain feeling of celebration in the fact that elements of the family had come together that had not seen each other for some time.
It was the first time in a long time I had seen a lot of my cousins from Utah. Although we had been close in early life, we had lost contact when they had moved away from the Pacific Northwest. I had sorely missed my friends in the family, and it was a real pleasure to see them again.
Among the family contingent was a lady I had never met. It was my Grandfathers sister, Aunt Reena.
My Grandfathers sister was a Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Nun. You know-Penguin- full habit Wimple-Rosaries. If you went through the Catholic school system you grew up in fear of the Penguins.
From the first I sensed that this was a different situation.
When we broke out the beer, she actually said she would have a small taste!!
Because I was very astonished that a Nun would actually consume an alcoholic beverage, I watched as she slowly and with great precision consumed several. They were always one very small glass at a time, but over a long evening of story telling, they must have added up.







Towards the end of the evening it came time to tell the fishing stories.
While no one will actually admit that the stories may get slightly larger than life with the retelling, it must be admitted that if all of those fish actually lived in that stream, it must have been one of the most prolific stream that ever existed in the history of modern Trout fishery.
Someone asked Aunt Reena "How do you like your fish?"
She replied : "I don't like fish very much."
This was construed as an insult to Trout fishermen everywhere.
"Have you had high country trout, fresh from the stream, fixed for breakfast?" she was asked.
She said "I've had a lot of catfish and Pike, but no high country trout, but a fish is a fish and I don"t see how one could be any different than another."
Since it was early spring it would be a challenge to get a meal of trout with the water very high and dirty, but I was given the challenge. I thought I knew every piece of fishable water within several miles of the home place, so I found myself out early the next morning getting the bait before the cows were milked.
There was always a place below the loading chute that was good for worms in the spring, so I started there followed by the ramp by the chicken coup. By 6:00 I had the beginnings. Since the streams were high, the only way to fish at this time of year was at the feeder streams. We had one of the premier Brook Trout hatcheries in the country running through our property. Never big fish-just lots of them.
So I was dispatched with a pole and worms.
Brook Trout are not large. They seem to center about 8",which is fine with me because they are most tasty at about that size.
I went out to catch a morning’s supply of fish for Aunt Reena.
In reality the fishing was very good. As soon as I hit the stream I caught fish. They were exactly what I expected. Small Brookies suitable for the breakfast pan.
As I was fishing I kept hearing noises in the bushes behind me. I would move and then the sound would move. I would catch a fish, gut it and move, and then the sound would follow.
The stream made an oxbow, and I figured I would be able to see what was following me, so I stopped to see. As I rounded the bend I saw a skunk following me. He was following the train of fish guts that I had laid down. I didn't have enough food for breakfast, so we had to make a partnership. I didn't want to interfere with a skunk in the pursuit of his business, and he didn't want to interfere with my catching his breakfast.
We followed each other for several turns of the creek. He would not come close to me, but I would not challenge him. We went through several turns of the creek, until I had enough fish for Aunt Reena for breakfast.
Aunt Reena said that she had not seen her brother in almost 50 years, but that she could see that he was loved and a special person. No matter how there lives had grown apart, that she knew how much her brother's family had loved him.
When she got up in the morning she asked
"What's for breakfast, fish?"

The Caddie

It was a fine Fall evening, and we had all gotten together for a Friday night of Poker, beer and cheap cigars. Since graduation we had all gone our separate ways, so it was good to meet for a guys night out. We played real poker. No baseball, low spade in the hole, spit in the ocean. Five card draw. Five card stud, Seven card no-peek (match the pot if you peek). Our sole aberration was acey-deucey, while really not poker per-se does have real odds and calculation.

Cards have never been my friends. We always played penny/nickel/dime/quarter with a 50 cent bet limit, except for acey-deucey, where you could match the pot, which I had. I had turned up an ace and a king and went for the pot, only to have a second king show up, much to the amusement of everyone there. I probably would have called it a night, but as I had bummed a ride with J.B., I didn't have a way home. J.B. Was doing well, so it looked like I would be there for a while.

P.J. was up and contemplating how much to bet on an eight/three, when the door burst open. It was Meyer.

"The Caddie!!" he screamed. "My Uncle is going to give me The Caddie."

We had been hearing about The Caddie for the last couple of months. It seemed that Meyer's Uncle had this 1959 Cadillac sitting in the driveway, not being used. Meyer had been petitioning his Uncle to sell it to him cheap. Each week brought a new scheme got getting his hands on the car. Meyer's uncle had finally relented for a couple of hundred dollars and a summer full of yard work.

This was momentous news, since out of the five of us, we only has two sets of wheels, thereby limiting out access to a wider world. This was even more important than our guys only poker night, so we abandoned the poker game and all piled into P.J.'s 1957 Mercury four door sedan and headed for Mercer island to rescue The Caddie from Meyer's Uncle's driveway.

Our first stop was a Chevron gas station, where Meyer had dropped off a battery earlier in the day to be charged. A couple of miles from the gas station, the transmission started making some strange whirring noises, and a little smoke started coming from under the hood. As we got closer to the gas station, the noises got worse and the smoke more noticeable. By the time we got there, we arrived in a great cloud of smoke and a lot of noise.

A check under the hood revealed that the whole engine compartment was drenched in transmission fluid. A closer exam showed that one of the transmission lines had developed a crack and was spewing fluid into the fan which was doing it's best to distribute the fluid evenly over the entire engine compartment.

Since it was 10:00 at night by this time, there was no way we were going to be able to fix the Merc that night. So with the optimism if youth, we decided to get the battery, and carry it the mile or so over to Meyer's Uncles house, put it in the Caddie, start up the Caddie and drive it back home.

A car battery gets might heavy when you have to pack it better than a mile.

We finally arrived at Meyer's Uncles, and installed the battery in the car. We expected it to be a little reluctant to start, since it had been sitting in the driveway unused for several months, and we were not disappointed. It backfires, it flashed back out of the carburetor, it rattled a nd ran for a couple of seconds and died. It did everything except run.

The battery was starting to run out of juice, so we had a major decision to make.

Mercer Island is in the middle of Lake Washington. It is fairly large and has a central plateau which is a couple of hundred feet high. We were on that plateau, and about a mile away was the dropoff. It was only a slight uphill , not steep at any point, so we decided to push the Caddie up to the top of the hill,all climb in and even though it was an automatic transmission, we should be able to build up enough speed to start on the long straight downhill.

I do not recommend pushing a 1959 Cadillac up any sort of incline. It is not designed to be propelled by human motive power, even if you do have five healthy fit young males.

The first argument was who should steer, thereby escaping the worst work. Meyer felt that since it was his car, he should steer, but an eminent mutiny convinced him otherwise. We decided that Meyer belonged at the back of the car in the center and the rest of us would rotate position.

with a few rest stops along the way, we managed to get the car within about 40 feet of the dropoff, when the Police showed up.

"What you boys up to?"

with everyone speaking at once we tried to explain about the broken transmission in the Merc, the battery, the reluctant Caddie, the long push to the dropoff. The Officer stopped us.

"Who does this car belong to?"

We all pointed to Meyer.

"Son, can I see your license and registration?"

After fishing in the glove box for the registration, Meyer explained about the deal he had made with his Uncle, and why the car was not licensed in his name. I don't think the Officer really believed Meyer, and he kept looking at us like he was starting a file on each of us for future reference. But what he said was:

"I don't suppose you have a bill of sale, do you?"

When the answer to that was negative, he motioned to Meyer and said "You come with me, son. The rest of you just stand over there while we sort this thing out."

He took Meyer off into the back of the patrol car, and the rest of us stood outside in the cool Fall night wondering what was going to happen.

After about a half an hour, Meyer got out. It was a good news/bad news sort of situation. On one hand, we were free to go. On the other hand, we were not going to be allowed to push the car over the top of the hill and try to get it running. No amount of pleading could convince the Officer of the logic of just turning his back and not witnessing us taking matters into our own hands. After all, the car was going to be towed to the nearest gas station, which just happened to be at the bottom if that very hill. If the car started, we could be on our way and everyone was happy, if it didn't start, it would be at the gas station.

So the Officer called a tow truck, and we all piled in the car, which was towed to the Chevron station at the bottom of the hill. We found ourselves, at two o'clock in the morning, stuck at a closed gas station a long way from home.

Since we had been playing poker for pocket change before we went off on our little errand, we had plenty of change to give the pay phone a good workout. The only problem was finding someone who would come out to Mercer Island to rescue us in the middle of the night. Parents were definitely out. So we ended up playing poker in the bathroom and taking turns trying to beg a ride from someone.

Bruce finally managed to get in touch with his sister's boyfriend, Dave who was only mildly inebriated at the time. He agreed to come and get us if we would help him put in a clutch on his other car the next day.

A half an hour later, he showed up in his fuel injected custom painted diamond tuck naugahide four speed custom wheeled 1957 Chev. We all climbed in to head home. Dave wanted to show his car off to all of us, so the only time we did the speed limit was within the first twenty feet after he started off. He wasn't all that familiar with the area, so we had to give him directions. When we realized he was going to miss the left to go around Beacon Hill, we all yelled "Take a left, take a left!" which he did, four wheel drifting through three lanes of traffic. I remember thinking that it might be a good idea to get out at the next corner, but the car never slowed down enough get out.

At any rate, we survived, and ended up at Bruce's apartment at 3:00 in the morning. We decided it was too late to get back to the poker game, so we divided up the pot and went our separate ways. B.J. gave me a ride home.

when I walked in the front door, there was my mother in her bathrobe, tapping one foot on the floor. "Just exactly where have you been until three-thirty in the morning?"

"Mom I just had a terrible night, I'm exhausted, and you don't want to hear it. I'm going to bed, and we can talk about it in the morning."

By the way, the Caddie had a broken timing belt and wouldn't have started anyway.

Dynamite

My mother's side of the family has traditionally held a family reunion on the Fourth of July every year. I have always enjoyed getting together with the relatives I don't see the rest of the year and see what everyone has been doing. Not the same people show up every year, so there is always someone different to talk to. It is always potluck, with everyone bringing something they make especially well or are proud of (not necessarily the same thing). It is pretty much a traditional Fourth of July.

Except for the dynamite.

My Aunt and Uncle live on the South end of Vashon Island, where they have a sizeable chunk of property. It is a very rural setting. The land is mostly second growth timber and brush. At the time, because they were clearing land, they could but dynamite (for agricultural purposes only) at the Co-op. Anyone who has spent time on the business end of a muck stick and prybar trying to get a stubborn stump out of the ground can really appreciate the pristine beauty of a couple of well placed sticks of dynamite. Not to mention the fact that it is a heck of a lot of fun to make things go BOOM. Both the relatives on Vashon and my family in Idaho had obtained and used dynamite for a number of years.

For the family get-together, people would usually start arriving around noon, and start out with the veggies-and-dip, and chips and snacks. Around the same time the first fireworks would show up. The policy towards fireworks has never been consistent in the State of Washington. Heck, it is not even consistent from block to block. It is literally possible to buy fireworks, walk a couple of blocks and be arrested for setting them off. It is not a policy designed to to build a great deal of respect for the law and its enforcement. To complicate matters, the Indian Reservations are only subject to Federal Law, so you can get a lot more of "The Good Stuff" from the Indians, including some stuff that is outside Federal guidelines.

Every year, McCord Air Force Base in Tacoma holds an Airshow to celebrate the Fourth. They generally flew North out of the base and turned around at the North end of Vashon. During the day we would see all kinds of Aircraft from fighters to cargo carriers, to bombers. We would hear them coming and rush outside to see if we could identify the type and model of the plane.

The fireworks would typically start with the younger kids lighting snakes and smoke bombs, then progress through lady fingers, regular firecrackers, bottle rockets and the usual small fireworks. Since we had to take the last ferry back to the mainland at around 7:00 we never got into the more elaborate airborne displays. We spent the afternoon and early evening, when not occupied eating, inventing new and more elaborate ways of blowing things up.

Firecrackers were placed under tin cans.

Holes were punched in tin cans to pass the fuse through, and then the cans pushed down into mud or soft sand. The idea is to see how high in the air you can blow the can. My personal favorite was an Old El Paso chilies can inside a regular soup can partly filled with water. If you didn't get the fuse wet, it was good for at least a hundred feet of altitude.

I suppose that it was inevitable that we would someday come to the conclusion that since we had dynamite, and there were stumps to be blown, there was no reason we couldn't blow stumps an the Fourth of July. We didn't do this every year, just when the urge was irresistible.

One year after sending cans flying as high as possible, we started speculating how high in the air we could send something if dynamite provided the propulsive force and we could find something sturdy enough to not disintegrate. First we took an old wellhead, dropped a lit stick of dynamite down it, followed by a section of madrona. It made a satisfactory BOOM, but the wood disappeared completely. We never saw it after it left the pipe.

Next we saw a car wheel laying out by the barn. Perfect!

We put the car wheel on a flat place over the top of a stick of dynamite, lit the fuse and got back.

BOOM!

Totally unsatisfactory. The wheel, spinning madly went about thirty feet in the air. Heck we could blow tin cans a lot higher than that. The problem seemed to be that the force of the explosion needed to be focused. Not an insurmountable problem. Having experienced the benefits of the fact that water is not compressible, we decided to dig a pit slightly larger than the wheel about a foot deep, fill it with water and try again. And since one stick of dynamite didn't provide enough propulsive force, three ought to do the job!

We finished digging our pit and filling it with water. Actually, but the time it soaked in, it was more like thin mud than water, but we were pretty sure it would do the job. We had waterproof fuse, so we didn't have to worry about the fuse going out. We set three sticks of dynamite equally spaced in the pit, and dropped in the wheel. We lit the fuse and got the heck out of there.

Just as we lit the fuse ad retreated, we heard a thumping noise on the horizon. It was a flight of six helicopter. Surely they wouldn't be coming anywhere near us! But they kept on a course that would bring them right overhead.

OH SHIT!

We looked at the wheel with the dynamite under it. The fuse got shorter. No one was willing to go near it to pull the fuse. A mistake would probably be fatal.

The helicopters came closer.

The fuse got shorter

Closer

Shorter

BOOM!!!

We had succeeded in our plans, for the wheel flew a couple of hundred feet in the air.

Right into the view of the helicopters. They must have seen it, because the formation split apart and headed away.

We figured we were in huge trouble. The first thing we did was put the dynamite back in the powder shed. Then we all went in and watched some sporting event on TV and prayed nothing came of it. Every time a car went by, we figured it was going to turn in the driveway, filled with guys in grey trenchcoats and black fedoras, but we never heard a thing.

I always wondered what the Flight Leader reported. I don't think he would want to report that they were under attack by car wheels. Maybe they never said a thing and that's why we never heard anything.

The only thing I know for sure is that the next time we went to the Co-op to buy dynamite, they wouldn't sell us any.