WILL’S STORY 

Late Fifties and the Sixties: 

"A child’s only real job is to become greater than the sum of their parents" This is the key to evolution. It is how the race of humans becomes better with each generation. It took many years for me to understand the truth of this. It is also something that I made up. 

Woodside High school is thirty miles south of San Francisco, Vietnam was closer. The cold war, nuclear destruction, the Bear on our doorstep, fear and uncertainty; the draft and rock and roll. How could we contemplate the white bread life of our parents? It was all so mundane. They came from a place of having nothing, the depression was their perspective and that bred the greed. Having more was what it was about for them. Be better than the neighbor and better meant having more. A job was for life and the company took care of its people. Retirement was the goal. Work hard for twenty or thirty years and then it was all downhill. After World War Two and the glut of workers on the market it is understandable that the job was the focus. 

Parents were busy most of the time and it became important for both parents to work. It meant more opportunity at retirement and of course they could show the neighbor the new car. What wasn’t discussed at all was the abuse. The daughters and sons who were beaten and raped and carry it to this day. The wives that let it happen often knowing what was occurring but not wanting to rock the boat. The greed and the retirement took precedence.  

I was eight and I woke to the sounds of my mother screaming and being beaten. My sisters and I hid in the closet. I couldn’t take it anymore and grabbed a twelve-gauge shotgun. He was still hitting her when I jammed it under his chin. I told him to stop or I would put his brains all over the wall. They both got very quiet. There was no doubt about my intention or my ability. I grew up with guns. That was the last day of my childhood. To my knowledge he never hit her again as I became his whipping post. I never complained. I bore it all and knew that there would be a time when I would be able to go away. I remember one occasion; I was nine or ten, taking a bath when he wore out six willow switches on my back. I watched the water turn red with my blood, between my legs. I did not cry out. He was my stepfather. There was no excuse. He beat me far beyond the perceived infraction. He expended his anger at life and at himself on me. I knew it, even at that time. I still carry his temper and it is a full time job to keep it in check. Rage is a terrible force. I know now that this all happened to someone else. It didn’t happen to me. Not me that sits here today and puts this account to paper. Over the years I watched him pay for it all. No one deserved it more. He quit smoking at about forty- five. He smoked lucky strikes and Pall Mall. I used to steal them from him. My sister and I would hide under the house and smoke them and drink stolen beer. After he quit he contracted every cancer known to man and lived into his mid seventies. He deserved every bit of it. 

It was ok for their generation to cheat, steal and lie; do whatever it took to get ahead. I learned it from them and it took a long time to realize that it wasn’t ok. I was never a good liar. I tended to tell the truth. It always cost me, then, and now. Honor is an expensive habit but one I would not break, no matter what. 

In those days telling the truth got me into juvenile hall. It wasn’t a hall and it wasn’t juvenile. It was a jail where one learned to steal and smuggle and to start a fire by putting a wire bread tie into an electrical socket to smoke a cigarette rolled in newspaper or toilet paper. Everyone was tough or they were beaten or they died. I took some beatings and gave some. I was incorrigible or so the papers said. I couldn’t be controlled. I reckon that was the truth in a way. I think I was more of a wild thing searching for a center and a reason. I never understood why they kept putting me in that place. I smoked pot, listened to Hendrix and Janis. So what? Was that reason enough to attempt to kill my spirit? 

Four hundred and fifty acres, of orchards, redwoods and three lakes. The woods were my friends. I loved to climb the redwoods, get to the very top on a windy day and make the tree swing violently with the wind. I built a tree house, eighty-three feet up in a redwood. It went completely around the tree, had a roof to lessen the dampness of the fog and a wood stove. I could see the entire bay area from there. On a clear day I could see every bridge on the bay, even the Golden Gate. I made wine from the mulberries and brandy from the peaches and apricots. I hid it there. It is a wonder that I never fell from this perch in a drunken stupor. It was my sanctuary. Most of it is still there. 

Originally James Halliday owned the property. He invented the cable car that is now quite famous throughout the world. The first one ran from Skyline Boulevard to the bottom of Portola Valley. Few know this. Skyline is a road that runs from South City to Santa Cruz along the top of the coastal range. Sometimes I would sit up there and watch the fog come in off the ocean. It would leave the tops of the mountains like islands in the sky and the sun would set into it throwing red beams into the white fog. There was this road that ran through this area, a perfect road with long sweeping turns that runs right through the redwoods; a motorcycle road.  

Mr. Moorsehead bought the property. I never knew his first name. He was an old man and very wealthy. He loved kids and each weekend he would pull up to the front door in his five windowed Chevy truck and we would all pile in at the sound of the horn and go on a picnic somewhere on the property. He built the lower lake. It is about a half-mile long and a quarter mile wide, complete with an island. All concrete, it was cheaper in those days, the lake was surrounded by a train track, he loved trains. It was a quarter scale steam engine that pulled the cars: passenger cars and flat cars. He was a graduate of Stanford University, which was a reasonable horse ride away. Every year on the Fourth of July there was a huge party with the alumni and the grounds were full to overflowing. I was the engineer on the train for he trusted no one else. I think he sensed my true spirit and knew of the horror I lived in though he never said. 

He had a huge home, built in the old style Victorian. There was a domed ballroom in the center that was covered in plywood tables three levels high. Electric trains from all over the world ran on the tracks on those tables. Miniature houses, stations, trees and people were everywhere. Several transformers operated the entire setup. I was the only kid to ever play with these trains and only with his supervision. Not even his relatives touched them. I don’t think he cared much for his relatives. They all wanted his money.  

We never talked about money, only trains and I have never seen a bigger or better setup before or after. He was my friend and we would sit beneath the mandarin orange tree and eat fresh ripe oranges or cherry plums. I did not realize that he would die so soon and it saddened me greatly. The family fought for years over his estate. I learned why he didn’t talk about them; they weren’t worthy. The land is still there and has remained intact even though the value must be astronomical.  

I fished and hunted and built forts and dug tunnels and learned woodcraft. I played out Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn on the lake as I built boats and rafts and ran free. My parents were too busy and they often had no idea where I was. I came to really appreciate that place only many years later.  

My sister Lee Ann and I would climb these two redwoods right to the top. They were about one hundred and fifty feet high. On a windy day we would get them swinging in opposite directions and as they crossed we would trade trees. Scott and Cathy Newman lived just down the hill from us and were about the same age. We played together in the woods almost every day. They also had the first television I had ever seen. They had just come on the market. It was a small round black and white and we would get to go down there and watch “Rawhide” (Clint Eastwood as a very young actor. He played Rowdy Yates), “Wagon Train” and the “Three Stooges”. The Western series was very popular. There was “Paladin”, “Maverick”, “The Rebel”, and “Wyatt Earp”. Every one of these actors went on to do major motion pictures. We acted out the parts and played a lot of cowboys and Indians. When the movie “Swiss Family Robinson” came out we made rock piles and log piles to protect our forts. One time we dug a tunnel into the side of this sand bank and made a big fort inside. It had side tunnels and other rooms. That year it rained a lot and Mr. Newman caught us playing in that fort. He was pretty mad at us and made us all watch him as he jumped up pretty high and when he came down the whole complex collapsed. We didn’t know about shoring and it was a good thing he did what he did. It was a good lesson. We dropped shafts and dug other tunnels but we had seen “The Great Escape” and figured we knew all about shoring! It is truly amazing we didn’t die in those holes. They had to move away for some reason and it got pretty lonely afterwards.  

I was given a twenty-two caliber, single shot rifle at age eight for my birthday. I put a lot of game on the table. Dove, pigeon, duck, quail, robbins and squirrels; I even ate a woodpecker once. I became a crack shot. It got to where the folks quit buying me bullets, as I would go through them too fast. They bought me a BB gun instead. BB’S were very cheap and I still kept putting food on the table. Most of the birds went into the spaghetti in place of meatballs. 

That was the summer my grandparents stayed with us and we remodeled the kitchen. I helped him make cuts on his table saw. Grandma made handmade ravioli and baked. She was always pretty quiet and she smoked a lot. She smoked four packs of Raleigh non- filters every day. In the end it was not the smoking that killed her; it was time. They owned a house in San Francisco. When they put in highway 280, they knocked it down. They did not receive the value of the house, something about imminent domain or something like that. I was too young to understand. The state wanted the land and they took it. They do the same thing today. They ended up in Pacifica, down on the coast. 

Woodside High School was a lot bigger than Portola Valley School and it scared me to go there. It did not take me long to figure out the system and free myself to do pretty much as I wanted. I would hang out in the girl’s bathroom and smoke stolen cigarettes. They thought it was cool and I got their attention. It was fine until one of the lady teachers caught me and then she made quite the ruckus. I did not know she was in the stall!

I cut first period a lot. I cut a lot of classes but first period was English and I always got an “A” even when I didn’t show. 

There was this little donut shop not far from the school in Redwood City. The owner was Ann and she made the best glazed donuts I have ever had before or since. She used vanilla in her recipe and served them hot right out of the oil, the glaze not even set yet. Smothered in butter with a good cup of coffee, there was nothing like it.  

There were moments that came and went like a firefly. I remember swimming with John Flood and his two pet otters in the lake. The otters would come up and sit on your belly. And the times sailing out of Tiburon on a 65-foot catch, all teak and mahogany. We spent weeks on Flood ranch in Santa Maria; thirty-eight thousand acres, of space, grapes, horses and coyotes, hunting deer and learning to drive a stick shift on an old Land Rover. John drove a Ford Falcon with Hurst linkage that we install. We put the a four-track tape player in that car when they first came out and then later updated it to the eight-track player.  

We spent our summers at the beach, skim boarding and body surfing. At night we built bonfires and music played laced with the smell of Mexican pot. Beer that someone had brought and no one knew how it got there. Jerry Romelfanger played his drums. He drove a Rambler with a pushbutton drive. It was a station wagon and we loved it. He was sixteen when he died. There was John, Jerry, Greg Hoss and I. We had been at the beach for two days. It was foggy and cold but we played music and chased the girls. Jerry got sick and the next thing we knew he was in Stanford hospital with pneumonia. We all went to see him. He was there for a couple of weeks and then they let him out. We went to the beach to celebrate. We partied pretty hard that weekend. Jerry was wonderful and it was great to have him back. 

Greg and I were big on baseball. We played in every league right on up to semi pro. Greg was a pitcher, I played the outfield, center and left. I couldn’t hit the long ball but I most always got on base. I was pretty good at stealing too. Greg had a mean fastball and a quick curve that kept him on the mound. 

We had a game when the news came. We were walking home along Portola Valley Road, still in our uniforms, carrying our cleats when Greg’s mom pulled up next to us and got out of the car. She leaned on the side of the car until we made it to her. We thought we had a ride home but something wasn’t right and somehow we knew something real bad had happened. Neither of us spoke as she told us Jerry had gone into the hospital the night before and had died that morning. I looked at Greg and he was crying and I noticed that I was too. My heart was in my chest. Greg’s mom pulled us both to her and we all cried together. 

Greg and John and I carried Jerry to his grave. There were no tears among us then. We were all cried out. It wasn’t real; he was not in that box. We put some joints and some beers in the ground with him. I have never gone back to that grave though I can still see his face.  

Every year for two weeks the family would pile into the car or the camper and go somewhere. Often we went back east to Tennessee and Virginia to see relatives. Route sixty-six when it was a two-lane road dotted with gas stations, greasy spoons and hotels. It took many days to make the trip and it was always an adventure. They left me at a gas station in the bathroom one time and got fifty miles down the road before they realized it. We had a sixty-two Chevy pickup that was the old man’s pride and joy with a full camper on it. I don’t know how many times I stole that truck and went for joyrides but he never caught on. He never caught me at anything I did. I did enough though that I figured that the beatings were for all the things he didn’t know about. It was a way of justifying it. Grandpa Walters was a mean bastard and I reckon Henry got a lot of his from him. Difference was grandpa was fair or so I thought. He grew tobacco and milk cows on 40 acres in Tennessee. My cousin and I carved out some corncob pipes and were in the barn smoking when grandpa caught us. He beat the hell out of us, we both bled and he only said “you want to smoke, smoke. Don’t ever do it in my barn”. He held my hand on his electric fence for a long time. He figured I needed to know how it worked. As he explained it in every detail that thing just kept right on jolting me down to my boots. I never messed with his fence. He had an outhouse, a one holer behind the house. Mostly it was winter when we were there and it was really something to run out to that outhouse in a foot of snow. It smelled bad, but it was warmer than being outside. I don’t really remember much about him and I don’t really care to. I saw that side of the family as being a bit weird. He could spit tobacco juice twenty feet and hit the can every time. We played football in the snow. Interesting legacy.  

We had a huge kitchen. My grandfather and I remodeled it. The cabinets and the picture window are still there. We built a fireplace with rock we had gathered and a plumb bob. He was a master craftsman.  

Several buildings in the Bay Area are now state monuments. He helped build the Steinhart museum and the aquarium. During the depression he stole their prized trout to feed his family and fished Lake Merced where it was illegal. He told me of hiding in a culvert and baiting hooks with bread and catching ducks. I would have loved to see that. His father immigrated to San Francisco around the horn and he was born in Crockett on the Carquinez straights. This is where the American River empties into San Francisco bay. C & H sugar has a plant there. He survived the 1906 earthquake, flew with Eddie Rickenbacker in World War One as an aerial photographer and raised a bunch of kids during the depression. Many of them weren’t his but they were all my uncles. At one time he had a lease on a huge tract of land in Clear Lake in Northern California. There is a place called horseshoe bend that has a stone pier and a white stone house that he built. As a baby, at two, I fell off that pier and nearly drowned. Aunt Erma saved my tail.  

I have a distinct image of a bunch of adults plucking chickens at the ranch house. My uncle Buzz had my sister Lee Ann in his arms and I was holding them in the basement pushing on the door. He warned me then kicked the door. I was flung backward into a broken pickle crock and it nearly cut my leg off right behind the knee. I was laid up for a long time. I was probably three or four at the time. I remember pigs hanging and bleeding into a bucket, being gutted by the adults. We played with the animals and in the piles of loose hay. Spotlighting deer at night was a sure way to put food on the table. In those days no one much cared. They were feeding family and it was needed. He missed one payment on the lease; times were hard and cash was slim. They took the land from him and the next year the resorts began to pop up all over that land.  

He was a hard man, but he was always fair with me. He taught me so very much about the trades that I didn’t know I knew until much later. That was a special summer remodeling that kitchen. We cut the hole for the picture window and waited for weeks for it to arrive. We shot robins out of the apple trees with a bb gun and put them in the spaghetti. If I made a mistake he would slap me on the back of the head and tell me “I told you to do it like this”. He had big, callused hands. I wrote him a letter when he was 94 and thanked him for all he had done for others and all he had taught me. My mother was there when he read it and she said he cried. No one had ever done anything like that for him. At 95 I asked him what was the best piece of advice he could give a man. He said, “ If it moves fondle it, if it doesn’t consider it carefully and for Christ’s sake don’t ever say no!” He was married to the same woman for over fifty years and I don’t know how much of that advice he adhered to. There have been times I wished I had. The San Francisco Chronicle once interviewed him and asked him to what he owed his longevity. He said, “I drink wine with every meal. Don’t drink water. Water rusts the pipes”. I still have the article with his picture. He died at 96, still pounding nails. I didn’t go to the funeral. He is buried at the veteran’s cemetery outside of the city. I have never been to his grave. I still see his face and know that in his way, and in mine, there was love. When the family gathered to fight over his stuff, I walked in, looked around, grabbed his favorite pool cue and left. They still bitch that I ended up with his cue. We both love the game and he would have wanted me to have it. I still do. 

I let them fight over the rest of his treasure. His name was Walter Schuetz and he was an American born German who went to fight the Hun. He married an Italian woman Erma Scattina and bred a brood. I carry more of the Italian in me I think. Grandma was half crazy but he stayed with her anyway. She made a hell of ravioli from scratch and was a wonderful baker. No one knew her well.  

Most of the early years are bad memories. There was some good. I grew up by myself, with little or no direction. I had no friends that lived close enough to visit very often. If I got less than a C on a report card, I was grounded until the next one. Grounding meant coming straight home from school, working in the yard and the garden. The garden was about a half acre and was my responsibility. I watered and pulled weeds. I got no credit for the effort. It was Henry’s garden after all. Each year it was an enormous success and at harvest, there was the canning. Jams and jellies made from the orchards. We had blackberry, peach, and apricot cobblers, fresh from the trees and the vines.  

The garden around the house was also quite large and was also my responsibility. There were roses, azaleas, camellias, and gladiola; a myriad of flowering plants. There were no drip systems or timers in those days. Everything was hand watered and took a great deal of time and energy. Everything was about work from the old man’s point of view. 

Maybe he thought he was helping to create a work ethic in us, I’ll never know his motivation. We all hated him for it. I did all the man things that really he should have been doing and my sisters did all the woman things that our mother should have been doing. We all learned how to cook and clean. A typical dinner was all of us seated around a table with him at the head and me at the other end. Very little, and often, no conversation, with him searching us each out, for some transgression. He would pick one of us, usually me, and make us go out, and cut willow switches, and bring them back to him. The bigger the perceived transgression the more switches. Punishment followed, swift and severe. He was a very strong man. Our kitchen was huge, larger than most people’s family rooms. I tended the floors, making sure they were always clean and waxed. One day I rode my skateboard through the kitchen. I lost it on the wax and went right through the sliding glass door onto the porch. I paid for the window with a beating and more work. I had made the skateboard myself from an old pair of skates I had scrounged and a piece of wood. It had metal wheels and vibrated terribly. It was a mile to the bottom of the hill on a roughly paved and pretty steep road. I rode that skateboard down the hill every day and hid it in the bushes carrying it back up the hill after school. 

There was another time that Lee Ann had locked me out of the house. We were supposed to be washing windows and she was making faces at me through the plate glass picture window. I threw a bottle that was half filled with Windex at her. I did not throw it hard and meant only to startle her. It shattered the window and I got a good beating and more work for it. 

My Uncle Buzz had done his time in the Navy and rode submarines. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor. He was a great pistol shot and competed on the Navy shooting team. When he would come for a visit, he would walk me down to the dump and we would shoot. The ranch had its own dumpsite that was about a half mile from the house. He had a Remington single action 22-caliber pistol with a nine-inch barrel. He rarely missed anything he shot at. He would give me six bullets and allow me to shoot his pistol. If I missed, that was the end of it and it was a long half-mile back home. 

He taught me gun safety in a very big way. He also taught me to play blackjack and poker, pinochle, hearts, spades and cribbage, which I learned long before old maid and fish.  

He carried a 1911 military forty-five in his waistband along his back. I remember once we were walking in the woods and he spotted a deer. He had the twenty-two in his hand. In one swift, sure movement, he had holstered the twenty-two, pulled the forty-five and fired off a round. I was looking right him when he did it and it was the smoothest move I have ever seen. I looked to where the bullet had gone and was just in time to see the deer jump straight up in the air. It came straight back down and did not move. I t was a perfect heart shot. We field dressed that deer, tied the feet together, ran a pole through them and split the weight on the way home. 

Grandpa and I fished the lakes for perch, bluegill and catfish. He was a master fisherman. One year we were vacationing at Trinity Lake in Northern California and the fishing was just plain terrible. One morning a few of us went way up the Trinity River to do some trout fishing. A truck from the Shasta Fish Hatchery pulled up right where we were fishing and started dumping huge nets of fish into the water. We caught them with our hands and threw them up on the bank. We harvested over four hundred trout that morning. They were stunned by the difference in water temperature and took a while to get moving. Grandpa was like that; he didn’t care about the law when it came to food. On our way back to camp, driving along the river we noticed the river had turned red. It was weird. The salmon were making their annual run from the lake up the river. We caught about forty of them. We spent hours cleaning fish that afternoon and evening.  

The game warden came by and asked Grandpa if he knew anything about a group who had been spotted on the river, over fishing. Of course he said no and gave the warden some coffee. The fish were all on ice by then and stashed away. Grandpa showed him a legal limit of trout that he still had out, complained about how bad the fishing had been, and we got away with it . We left the next day and froze all those fish. It was good eating all that winter. 

He would take me deep sea fishing sometimes in the winter. We would leave out of Princeton, which is near Half Moon Bay. Usually it was calm on the way out but got nasty on the way in. White caps and huge swells rocking the boat unmercifully. I never got seasick. Often the majority of the people on the boat did. Grandpa and I would eat tuna sandwiches and chuckle about how those sandwiches made everyone all the sicker.  

We caught lingcod and rockfish in many varieties. It was hard work bringing the fish up but we never went home empty. On one trip, it was cold and nasty and they had just painted the cabin. Everyone was trying to keep warm in the cabin. Grandpa and I stayed out on deck and drank a little brandy. The fumes from the paint made everyone very sick, even the Captain, but grandpa and I were just fine.  

There were some good times, but never with Henry. Henry was all about beatings and the need for revenge and anger and fear and hate. In later years when he would get some new cancer, he would call me up to tell me he was hurting and dying. I told him “Not yet Henry, don’t whine to me. You still have dues to pay.” “Frankly I don’t give a shit if you do die but I suspect you still have the dues”. 

Every year we had a family gathering and had a huge party on the lake. Italian families are traditionally rather large. I would venture to guess there are about two hundred and fifty relatives within fifty miles of San Francisco. In the years after the ranch these gatherings would take place at Tamales Bay, which is north of San Francisco and is the breeding ground of the Great White Shark. Most of us were involved with the ocean. Tamales bay has huge clam beds, horse neck, gueyduc and cockles. Fishing and diving, shooting halibut off the bottom with spear guns, free-diving for Abalone. Huge vats of clam chowder both red and white, fresh fish and shell- fish cooked to perfection. 

These gatherings would usually last for two weeks. It was the annual gathering to see who was sleeping with whom, who had purchased a new house or a new car and general gossip. Many a good drunk, by firelight, and wood smoke would be had during these reunions.  

Sometimes we would go down to Mexico. Down to Ensenada when it was still a small town that no one ever heard of. One year Greg came with us and we bought a pound of pot. It cost us seventy-five dollars. There is a beach there called Estero beach. There was a wall that had to be fifteen feet high with broken bottles along the top. The wall was also electrified and ran out into the water. You could get around it though, and we did. We gathered wood from everywhere. There was an old abandoned bar on top of the cliff and we stripped it. We took the bar, tables, chairs, walls and the floor.  

We stole some outhouses and threw them down the cliff with the bar. We built a huge bonfire and several hundred people showed up and we had a hell of a party. We charged a buck for all you could smoke. There were crates of alcohol. I remember being very drunk and very stoned when a hand came over my shoulder. I took a hit and put the joint into the hand, then, I turned and looked into the face of a Federale. 

He looked at me for a long time then took a hit and smiled. He waved off his men. There were about twenty of them, very well armed with rifles and bayonets. They had marched up the beach from their station, which was about five miles away and surrounded us. They stuck the bayonets in the sand and stayed with us all night. I guess there were just too many of us and they figured it was best to join us rather than try to arrest us all. 

We got away with one of the best parties ever. We made money on the pot and still had some left. We gave it all away before we left. Still, it was only a cursory search at the border. 

I ran away at fifteen and built a camp in the woods. My school attendance and grades were never better. I had a pulley system for bringing water up from the creek, shelves in the trees for supplies and a good tarp shelter with a bed I made from branches. In those days you could still drink from a creek. It was wonderful. I came home one night and it was gone. The old man had found it and left nothing but a note pinned to a tree. I went home and I suffered. 

James Flood rescued me and made it so that I could live with them for my senior year. At that time they were among the ten wealthiest people in America. You wouldn’t know it. Blue jeans were the norm. I was invited once to a huge formal dinner. Squab was being served and not knowing any better I picked it up with my hands. Everyone at that table stopped and looked at me. Mr. Flood smiled and picked up his bird too. So did everyone else. There were at least fifty people at that table. 

It was a huge house. I once counted sixty-five rooms and three basements. They had the most beautiful grounds and outbuildings. As far as I know it is still in Woodside. John and I had a falling out years later over who knows what but we haven’t spoken in years. 

I grew up with Shirley Temple Black’s kids who were wild as hell and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s kids who were not. He was a true gentleman and funny as all get out. He used to work in the market helping out Neil Nash just to be part of the community. He was a great man. 

My brother, Jim was in the Navy. He rode submarines. The USS Perch was one of his boats. He was at the Bay of Pigs, and the whole Cuban missile crisis. He was my stepbrother but never treated me like one. He had a brilliant mind. We shared books. He joined the Seals and went to Panama City to train. I went with him. It was a great road trip. We listened to Ray Charles on the eight- track as we crossed the desert. In Florida we rented a two- bedroom house and lived on watermelon. Eight watermelons, for a buck. We didn’t have much money so we bought throw pillows and spread them around. Jim had a TV, which was a big deal in those days. The humidity was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Lightning storms that electrified the boardwalk: Beautiful women on the beach. It was a special time for us both. Apollo landed on the moon. 

After Seal training he went to Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos doing Seal things. He never talked about any of it but he left something there and has never been the same. He lives with his good buddy Jack Daniels, made a bunch of money on a real estate deal and now has a couple of hundred acres up on the Rogue River in Southern Oregon. I’m going to make it up to see him one of these days. It’s been about 20 years now. 

I caught a plane in Florida and ended up in Mexico City. We had friends there, the Zetinas. By Mexican standards, they were quite wealthy. There were thirteen children and they lived in a huge three-story home in San Angel Inn. It is an area within Mexico City that has cobblestone streets, small markets and an air of history. I had forty dollars, a guitar, a backpack and a camera. I spoke no Spanish. 

At the airport I couldn’t make the pay phone work so I took a taxi. I had an address and that was enough. No one knew I was coming. I was sixteen years old. That was the most intensely harrowing taxi ride I have ever experienced; five lanes of traffic that did not care about lanes, tailgating, horns or speed. I thought that I would never arrive and that I would die in this taxi and no one would know where I was. My brother only knew I was headed out. I suspect he thought I was returning to California.  

Elena met me at the door and was very happy to see me. She had done a school year with us as an exchange student. She was beautiful. I was the first from our family who had made it down there and I was made very welcome. There was a poker game going and they insisted I sit in. We drank a lot and played poker until dawn. I was wrecked from lack of sleep, a long flight and the alcohol. I was also the big winner. I had won several hundred dollars and was ready for bed; not a chance.  

We went out and hit a bunch of bars and I paid for most of it. It was tradition, the winner buys. Mostly it was like that the whole time I was in Mexico. They refused to speak English around me and I picked up on the Spanish pretty quick. 

One of the sisters is Esperanza, which means hope. She was twenty-two, beautiful and very sexy. She and Elena shared a room on the third floor. I had an apartment on the roof with the pigeons. Esperanza seduced me and I was more than willing. She was the first and I will never forget the wonderful lessons I learned from her. I was there for several months and we spent a great deal of time exploring each other.  

Cantinflas was a very famous Mexican comedian and was a friend of the family. He had made a bunch of movies including one with Bing Crosby called Pepe that did quite well in the States. We were invited to stay in his home in Acapulco. It was a three-story house on about five acres of coconut palms that overlooked the bay. There was a swimming pool with a window in it. I had never seen anything like it. After great nights carousing the bars and learning with Esperanza, I would wake up, push the button and the servant would arrive with a huge platter of fresh fruit, a picture of fresh orange juice and a stack of warm tortillas, smothered in butter. I would pull out a bottle of vodka to mix with the juice just to get the day moving. 

One day I decided to try and climb one of the coconut palms and get a coconut. I found out there was no way I could do it. This young boy of about twelve saw the attempt and scampered up that tree like it was nothing and dropped several coconuts down to me. We cut a hole in the top with a machete, drank half the milk and filled them up again with rum and vodka. We sat around the pool that day and kept drinking these things and splitting the coconuts and eating the meat. It is amazing just how drunk you can get with this particular drink. At one point I decided that I was going to dive off the third story into the pool. I had successfully made the second story. The pool was not that deep and about the time I had started to launch off the balcony, Octavio, one of the brothers and a weight lifter, grabbed me and fetched me back in with one hand. He probably saved my life. He was also a very good chess player and for years afterward we played by mail. 

One night we went to La Quebrada, which is where the cliff divers dive off a cliff into the ocean. It is a narrow passage and timing is everything. They had to wait for just the right swell to come in before they leapt. The water is very shallow and the game is to hit the top of the swell. It was night and they were diving with torches in hand. Just before they would hit the water they would drop the torches and bring their hands together to better cut the water. One guy didn’t drop his torches in time and broke both arms on impact. He came up screaming and several people jumped in and got him safely to shore. I had a wonderful time in Mexico. I will never forget any of it. 

When I finally got back to California, not one thing had changed. It was depressing. I spent my time smoking pot, doing all kinds of drugs and stealing away to go to the Fillmore West, Winter Land or the family Dog to hear some of the best music of our time. Monterey Pop Festival, and Altamont. Jefferson Airplane, Hendrix, Joplin, Santana, Credence Clearwater Revival, Quicksilver Messenger Service and many others. There were free concerts in Golden Gate Park and of course there was the Haight, Asbury district. Drugs were everywhere and so were the women with the flowers in their hair. It was a very special time, the year of sixty-eight.  

I was getting pretty good at avoiding Henry except for the one time he punched me on the chin and knocked me clear across the kitchen. I hit the refrigerator and slid to the floor. He didn’t knock me out but he surely tried. That was the one time that I for sure deserved every bit of it. I had pushed him past his limit and I knew I was doing it. I guess I thought I could take him by then but in the end it was no contest. Mom kept putting me into one counseling group or another trying to get me to settle down. It never worked. After the first run of that bullshit, I knew how to manipulate those folks, and I did. In the end I stood before a judge who gave me the option of going to jail until I was twenty-one or joining the service. I opted for the Navy, for no real reason and with no real goal. I was thrilled to be finally free of the parents. I was thrilled until I arrived at boot camp. 

They made you stand in line a lot. They poked and prodded and dressed you up the way they saw fit. There was no pot and no other drugs, just people yelling at you and demanding things of me I was not sure I could do. I found out that I actually could. After eight weeks of hell I was done with it. The Chief who ran our group was a real asshole and carried a flask in his hip pocket. He was a mean drunk, and he was most always drinking.  

San Diego is a hot son of a bitch in July and at graduation we had to stand for hours on the tarmac in the heat. It was all I could do to survive. People dropped like flies and they just hauled them off to the medical tent. I was proud though and happy to have graduated. I remember an army recruiter once who asked me if I liked jungles and I told him no, there were things in there that would eat you. He said he had a jungle where people would shoot at you too. I figured the Navy would keep me out of the jungles of Vietnam and all of the inherent dangers associated with that war. After graduation though I was pretty gung ho and thought that somehow I would make a difference. I did not believe in the war but I felt that since we were there we should be doing everything we could to support our troops. 

I had asked for and received assignment to Submarine school in Groton Connecticut though they told me that they really didn’t think I would cut it. I was a little too tall and they thought I had not scored high enough on the tests. They didn’t know that I didn’t care about the tests, had no idea what they were for and had not really tried. 

That part of the country is really something in the late summer and fall. The winter sucks. It was so different than boot camp. There was much more freedom. The curriculum was grueling but I kept at it and did well. I bought a model of a submarine that was made by Mattel Corporation and carefully put it together. I painted every item, very carefully. It was a work of art and the surprising thing is just how accurate Mattel had been in their design. I learned a lot about submarines while building that model. I played a lot of poker and I won a lot of money. I ate fresh live Maine lobster nearly every night at the enlisted mans club and I drank my share of scotch and beer. No drugs. 

I figured I had had enough of that and stuck with the booze. I reckon at that time it was the military that saved my life as I was on a pretty hard road before them. Many of my friends had died of the sixties and I was lucky to have survived. There were some years that if they hadn’t made cars, I would not have known that year had happened at all.  

We swam in the limestone quarries in the summer, enjoyed the change of color in the hardwood forests in the fall and every one of us hated the winter. I took a three-day pass and went down to New York City on a bus. I got as far as Times Square before the shear enormity of the place overwhelmed me. In the end I got me two bottles of scotch and a hooker for those three days. I spent less money that way and all in all had a pretty good time. 

It was mid winter when we graduated and there were several feet of snow on the ground. I finished fourth in my class. I had been first right up until that one drunk before the test. I was happy with forth. 

Pilgrim Airlines I won’t soon forget. I sat in the airport waiting for my flight out to San Diego. It was a miserable night, huge billowing black clouds, lightning, and driving rain that came down in sheets and sometimes horizontal. The gate and the runway were empty. There were no other passengers waiting. Way out on the end of the tarmac was a lonely twin-engine propeller driven airplane with the logo Pilgrim Airlines painted on the fuselage. After about an hour or so, sure enough, it is this plane, that pulls up to my gate. 

A pretty stewardess asked me if I was ready to board. I didn’t answer; I just picked up my duffel bag and followed her into the driving rain. I was soaked as I climbed up the steps and was seated in the middle of the aircraft. I could see the whirling propellers out of the periphery of each eye. The plane was vibrating terribly. The stewardess was having trouble with the door until she finally got off the plane and closed it from the outside. I saw her running back into the terminal. I was not encouraged. I don’t really know how or why that plane got off the ground but it did and it rocked and bucked for the entire flight. Lightning all around, electricity and ozone in the air. 

I just knew those propellers were going to come off and cut me right in half. The longest hour I ever spent in the air. Somehow that plane survived and we landed at the international airport where I connected with a jet heading west. 

San Diego was a pretty good duty station. I was stationed on the USS Sperry, a sub tender out on Point Loma. I was attached to the personnel office on temporary duty. I was waiting for my boat to come back from a West Pac tour. It was a world War Two; diesel boat. I had trained on Nukes. It was a good base and the Ensign I worked for liked me. I got the job driving officers around so I had constant use of the motor pool. I would check out a car on a Friday, drive down to the border in Tijuana, leave the car on the American side and walk over. A lot of scotch and hookers and then I would show up for Monday morning quarters. There were times I woke up in places with cockroaches crawling all over me next to some Mexican whore that I neither knew nor remembered. It is a wonder I did not get the clap or any other venereal disease.  

One night just after I crossed back into the states I got picked up by some civilian cops for being drunk in public. I had no ID but I convinced them I was military which was a huge mistake as they took me to the Marine Corp Recruit Depot and gave me over to the MP’s.  

They beat the hell out of me. They did it several times. I was mouthy and drunk and deserved it and I developed a healthy respect for the jarheads and the MP’S. I still made Monday morning quarters and did not get in trouble. 

I ran into the chief who had run our outfit in boot camp, in a bar. He was pretty drunk and seemed very different. I was pretty drunk too and we got in an argument. I decked him and left him lying right where he fell. I didn’t feel anything at all, one way, or another, he wasn’t worth the effort. 

By now I was smoking pot again from time to time. I was sitting on the pier one afternoon and had just finished a joint when a captain’s barge pulls up and ties off. There must have been twenty-five or so officers coming down the pier towards. I did manage to stand up and watch them go by. It was a lot of brass and one of them was an Admiral. One of the Commanders peeled off of the group and came over to me. He said “Don’t you know how to salute boy?” I told him I did but I was trained to believe that a salute was a sign of respect. I didn’t know any of those fellas, and really didn’t know if I respected them or not. I did get in trouble for that one though the Ensign I worked for kept it to a minimum. 

I drove a Lt. Commander up to long beach one weekend. He was shipping out to Pearl Harbor and was meeting with his family. He was being assigned to a fast attack nuke boat and I envied him. I spent the weekend with his wife and kids and we all hit it off pretty good. He treated me like one of the family. 

One day I was up on the fantail and I saw this old diesel boat lumbering up the channel. It looked like it was only running on two engines. It was my boat. Before it even came alongside, I was down talking to the Ensign. I told him that I really didn’t want to go to that boat and was there something he might be able to do? We had played a little poker and even though he generally lost, he liked me. He pulled out a list of every boat in the Pacific and told me to pick one. I had read about USS Queen Fish SSN 651 in some journal and I picked her.  

Two days later I was on my way to Hawaii. The Lt. Commander was the XO I had taken to Long Beach and he greeted me personally. There was a chief who we called Captain Christmas behind his back, who was also there. He put his arm around me and asked me if I wanted to join the snipes. They fixed everything mechanical that broke. I told him I would see and that I wanted to get a little familiar with the boat before I decided what department I was going to go for. I didn’t see the sun for two solid months. I lived inside that steel tube and cooked. It is called mess cooking and everyone did the tour when they first arrived. I was in Hawaii for Christ’s sake and I never saw a beach, much less a pretty girl. I couldn’t leave the boat but I could play poker and I did win. I won a sixty-two Chevelle that I christened, Mary Ellen, after an old girlfriend. I had just turned eighteen. My number came up number eleven on the draft. I would have gone to the jungles of Vietnam without a doubt. 

When I did finally get a chance to get off the boat, a friend and I took Mary Ellen out to the north shore. We had several cases of Primo beer and by the time we got there the whole back seat was littered with empties. All the way out we had been hearing warnings about forty-foot waves on the North shore; swimmers and surfers stay out of the water. There was no reality to the warnings.  

We had been drinking and I did not really have any concept of what a forty foot wave might be like. I was body surfing and had caught a few good rides. I was treading water when the first big wave came in. It sucked all the water from beneath me and I was standing on the sand. It was at least one hundred yards to shore. The wave was about fifty yards away and seemed to be about ten stories high. I’m sure it wasn’t but it sure looked that way. I had no choice and ran as fast as I could right at that wave. I got a good angle on my dive into it, but it really didn’t matter. That wave picked me up as if I was a leaf and slammed me into the sand. There was no direction at all. No up or down, nothing to indicate where the surface was. I did the only thing I knew how to do; I relaxed and went with the flow. After what seemed a very long time I found the surface and had just enough time to catch a short breath before I was once again slammed into the sand. The process repeated itself several times before I was able to get out beyond the breaking waves. I was in trouble and I knew it. All I could do was tread water and hope to catch a smaller wave to shore. There were no smaller waves and I was quickly getting tired. Finally, I went for it. The wave I caught was huge and it carried me most of the way but I lost it before I made it in. I swam for all I was worth towards shore and my friend pulled me the last few feet to get me free. I lay there for a long time. It had been a very near thing. That was the day I truly learned respect for the power of nature and of the ocean. 

Hawaii in those days was wild and wide open. There were lots of women and drugs. I found myself doing both again. I latched on to a hooker and we rented a little place on the beach. It was a cool little apartment and there were a lot of parties there. I would bring my friends and she would bring hers. What she did with her time when I was at sea was her business and I never mentioned it.  

One night I was sitting with my back against a palm tree at Waikiki beach and I watched this hippie take a can of hairspray and shoot it into his mouth. It took all of about sixty seconds for him to fall over dead. He had coated his lungs with the stuff and had asphyxiated. I got up and walked away. There was nothing I could do. Hawaii was like that. 

One time a bunch of us had gotten pretty drunk and decided that it was time for tattoos. I talked them all into it. I was the last to be called and had spent most of the night outside the shop with a bottle of scotch. I didn’t go in. Everyone was pretty mad at me and some wouldn’t speak to me for weeks. It was as if it was my fault that they decided on a huge Yosemite Sam on their chest or something just as silly! It was funny to me but not to them. 

We did a lot of stuff that was highly classified that I don’t talk about to this day. It probably no longer matters but I gave my word to the Navy.  

To qualify to be on a submarine usually takes about a year of very intense study. You have to know what fluid flows in what pipe at what temperature and what color it is. You need to know where every valve is and every nut and bolt that holds that pipe to the bulkhead. You need to know everything there is to know about that submarine and there is good reason.  

Everyone needs to be able to deal with any crisis immediately or it could well cost the entire crew, their lives. It is important and it is serious. I did it in six months, which was a new record for that boat. I had a lot of help and I am most grateful to those chiefs and officers who were there for me. 

When you finally qualify, the crew gathers on deck and the captain pins on your Dolphins, upside down. There is no backing on the metal, just two sharp little pins. When the captain places them, he slaps them into your chest. It doesn’t matter that it hurts; it is a particularly proud moment. After the ceremony, the crew takes you to the Enlisted Man’s club and gets a beer picture from behind the bar. They fill it with every kind of liquor they can get in it and drop your Dolphins to the bottom. You have to chug it down and catch the Dolphins in your teeth. It is a tradition that goes way back. I don’t know if they still do this but I do know that some have died of alcohol poisoning from the effort. I didn’t die and I didn’t spill a drop and I caught my Dolphins in my teeth. After that I don’t remember one thing. I was told that at some point I went back to the boat and threw the topside watch into Pearl Harbor. He was a friend. The XO tried to restrain me and we both ended up in the water. I never got in any trouble for any of it but it took two days to recover. 

We had been chasing a Russian Submarine for several weeks when I made a serious mistake in judgment. I had taken some LSD because I knew that I didn’t have to worry about doing anything for a long time. The captain called me to the bridge and told me to take over the planes. This is what controls the depth of the boat. The control room was lit n red lights as is common when underway. Thousands, of tiny little red lights, and two screens, one was sonar, and the other radar. The noise of the sonar sounds just like you hear it on TV. I was way too stoned to be there. The captain gave me several orders, which I completely ignored. It was all I could do to keep the bubble even and the boat level. He finally got out of his chair and put his hand on my shoulder and asked me what was wrong. I told him I had a terrible head cold and could not hear very well. He let me go and I don’t think he really knew just how high I was. I thought about it for a long time afterwards and realized that with one simple move, I could have driven that boat right into the bottom and killed us all. I was never high again while we were at sea. 

One day a Captain came by during morning quarters and asked for volunteers for PBR’S. River Patrol boats. These boats were used on the rivers of Vietnam and had a very short life expectancy. Several of us had gotten good and drunk the night before so we looked and felt our best that morning. We all stood forward. He told us he was trying to get some idea as to how many in the submarine service might be interested. It was like a survey. When he came back months later none of us stood forward. We had sobered up. 

We did drive by Vietnam. I could barely make out the shore. Everyone got a ribbon for having been in the war zone. I still joke about having waved, “didn’t you see me?” It wasn’t a joke at all and to this day I honor every man and woman who served there. I have never failed to shake the hand of any veteran whenever I see them. I thank them for what they have done. They deserve every bit of honor we can bestow on them and every bit of thanks. 

In the end what we did was not any smarter or any safer. In its way it was just as dangerous chasing Russians as it was in the jungles. Either place, one mistake meant death. 

I got out in the early seventies. 

I met a girl named Mary and we hung out for a while. She had saved my life once. I had gotten to the point where I thought I had had about enough. It had been a hard year. I had a thirty-eight-caliber handgun and had carved the bullet quite carefully and put that gun in my mouth. I started laughing and realized that I simply could not do it so I took a whole bottle of Demerol and tried again. I ended up going into a coma with that cocked loaded pistol in my mouth. All I would have had to do was twitch and it would have been over. I guess it just wasn’t my time. She found me like that, several hours later, and after taking me to the emergency room and getting me home, she took care of me. I lost four days completely. I have no recollection at all of what occurred during those days. She worked in the bank of America building in San Francisco, in a law office way up high. One night she took me up there and we made love on the boardroom table. We had opened the curtains and had a spectacular view of the Transamerica pyramid building, which had just been completed. There was a whole floor that was devoted to an extensive law library. The views from up there were wonderful at night. I do admit to thinking about the board meeting that happened the next day. Mary told me someone had reported that someone had gotten into that boardroom and had made quite the mess! I wonder what happened. 

Only three things will kill you: Bad luck, stupidity and time. 

I went to college on the GI bill when I got out. I had no direction at all but it paid the rent and kept me in drugs and booze. I met Mike Bruce a year into it. He had just gotten out of the Coast guard and needed a place to live. He still had not adjusted to civilian life. It takes some time. You learn that there is no honor among civilians. There is little reason to trust anyone but you do anyway until they give you reason not to. 

LSD in those was 2500 mg’s. What there is now is about 100. It went by the names of barrel, windowpane, orange sunshine and several others. You could take one hit, divide it into fourths, and get four people high for several hours. We didn’t do that. We would take the whole thing. In fact we would take several and not come down for several days. We ate mushrooms by the pound and peyote and mescaline and we smoked pot constantly.  

Palo Alto, on a foggy night, riding bicycles that were tricked out, doing thirty-five, on the flats, weaving in and out of traffic. Riding down Mt. Home road at about fifty, listening to the wheels sing, knowing that one mistake, one rock at the wrong angle, meant death. We didn’t care about death. Death was everywhere. The war still raged and the Russians still threatened. There was racial tension and areas that white boys didn’t go and survive. We went anyway and we cheated death. We had black friends and Mexican friends and we were cool. We walked the walk. The Black Panthers and Patty Hurst. No one cared about death. We all knew we were going to die anyway. No one expected to live to thirty. Thirty was old.

There was one time that Bill Cosby showed up to perform at our college. Michael and I went to see him. The auditorium was only about half full. Cosby came out on stage with a big cigar in his mouth, looked around and said “Nice to see you all.” “I’m going to give you folks a show that all those empty seats are going to regret missing”. That is exactly what he did. I have never laughed so hard before or since and I have seen him in several other venues. I laughed so hard that I got up and was halfway out the door when he finally quit. I hurt so badly from laughing I just had to get out of there. 

I sat in on a bunch of pre law classes at Stanford and hung out in the law library there. It is a very good law library. I learned that it was not in my code of ethics to become a lawyer. It was a very good lesson. 

I had a sixty-six mustang with a 289 and a three speed. It had a three speed, Hurst linkage, on the floor, a Holly four barrel, carburetor and a good sound system. Jeff and I went to the city, to the Fillmore and saw Juthro Tull. 

My sister lived on the other side of the city in Noe Valley and we decided to go get some smoke from her. We stopped in at Magoo’s and caught the best part of Dr. John and the Night Trippers; flamboyant as hell with several beautiful girls all wearing feather boas. I went up Market Street at over sixty and ran all the lights. Castro Street and we were catching air at the top of the hills. I really don’t know what got into me. Cops were everywhere in the rear view mirror. I made some quick turns, lost them; parallel parked on a side street and cut the lights. 

We were all right for about one minute and then there were cops all over us, and dragging us out of the car, and beating on us. They really don’t like it if you run from them. Jeff was much smaller than I and he got it pretty bad. They ran us down to the San Francisco City Prison, which is more like a dungeon and shoved us into a cold damp cell full of hardened black boys that had an attitude towards whites. There were metal bunks with no pad and no blankets. It was wet and it smelled. We found us a corner and tried to stay low. They weren’t having any of it and pretty soon they started messing with Jeff. They were going to rape him and there was nothing that he could have done to stop it. I picked out the biggest one there and hauled off and hit him in the temple just as hard as I could. I thought I had broken my hand. He dropped like a tree and stayed down for a moment.  

It was very quiet. He shook it off and stood up and squared off with me. I knew I was dead but I didn’t back down. I was ready and he knew I wasn’t going to be cheap.  

Jeff had managed to get behind me and to one side and he was ready too. “What you white boys doing in here”, he said. “Surviving, Just like you, I said.” The tension could have been cut with a knife. There were seven of them. My hand was bleeding and I licked off the blood. He waved off the others, dropped his hands and put one out to shake mine. These ain’t no sissy white boys he said, ya’ll leave em be. I shared the smokes I had all around and they were grateful. I never knew his name but he kept them off of us. We were there for three days. It was bad, but we survived. I never found out what happened to the mustang though I tried. In the end it cost us a pretty hefty fine. They didn’t cut any slack in the city in those days. Jeff played a mean lead guitar and we drifted apart. I don’t know what became of him. 

We rode our bikes to school, made the classes and made the grades. I don’t really know how. I couldn’t find a direction. I couldn’t settle into anything. There were lots of women and parties. We would go down to Half Moon Bay just after the first frost and by bags of artichokes for a buck a bag and fill the refrigerator. The outside leaves were tough so we stripped them off and ate the rest. We lived on them for weeks. I took some law at Stanford University. I didn’t really know why but I did figure out that it was not in my code of honor to be one of them. 

At one point I bought a 69 Chevelle with a four fifty four and dual holly fours. The fastest car I ever owned. I got it cheap and it took awhile to figure out why. Every cop knew that car and I was always getting pulled over whether I had done anything or not. I threw all the tickets out and mouthed off to the cops. 

I met this beautiful girl from Boston and she wanted to drive that car. She ran a stop sign and buried it in an oak tree. I was in the passenger seat. We had a few cuts and bruises but basically were all right. We walked away from the car and I never saw it again. I did get a bill for the towing. The tree was at the veteran’s hospital. She never even said she was sorry and left to go back to Boston a few days later. I never heard from her again. It was a good example of what a pretty face could get me into. Hers was an exceptionally pretty face. 

Michael Johnson had a VW bug that he had tricked out into a dune buggy. I liked it and I did the same. Michael Bruce had a dodge van that he had lifted. We used to go to the Palo Alto dump and race all over the place. There was one spot that we could jump over the van and we did it a lot. No one ever crashed or got hurt. We all prided ourselves on our driving skills.  

I also had a two-fifty Kawasaki dirt bike that we rode to school. One day it blew the spark plug right out of the hole. We super glued it back in and kept right on going. Every once in awhile that plug would pop out and we would glue it right back in. I took to riding trials and ended up riding a Montesa two fifty coda. It was a great bike with a real low end and good torque. 

Trials are doing things with a motorcycle that is purely impossible. Coming up on a four-foot log, lifting the front end and setting the engine just overt the log so the rear wheel would get a little traction then going over, making an impossible turn on the other side. Standing on the foot pegs and never touching the ground or you would lose points. I was pretty good but not great. Mike Bruce took to riding a Norton seven fifty and raced tracks like Laguna Seca and Sears point. He was crazy as far as I was concerned. T he speeds were often over one hundred miles an hour and then they would lay those bikes so far over the sparks would fly and their knee would be on the ground. He was always much better on the street than I, but he couldn’t hold a candle to me in the dirt. 

One day, we had eaten some acid and I was in the back yard throwing a knife at a target on the fence. I was pretty good at it. It was a Buck knife with a locking folding blade that I wore all the time on my belt. It was a good tool, and useful. I could slip it out of the scabbard, flick it open and underhand throw it. Mostly, I hit what I was aiming at. This one time, I did not. The knife bounced off the fence and came right back at me. It was like it was all in slow motion. It was heading right for my crotch and I jumped back. That knife buried itself to the hilt, right above my knee. I yanked it out, wiped it off on the grass and started throwing it at the fence again. I never thought about the wound until I realized my boot were squishy. It was full of blood. I went into the house and washed it off but it wouldn’t quit bleeding. Michael’s mother was a nurse and he knew all about this stuff. He put on a neat bandage and I kept it elevated for a while. It just wouldn’t quit bleeding so we figured we should go to the emergency room and get it sewed up. The doctor was a very good-looking woman and was very talented with a needle and thread. I asked her if she could sew up the pants as well. They were favorites of mine. She had to know just how high we were but she never said a word. 

One day, Mike and I left the house to go get a coke and ended up in Reno. We won six hundred dollars and came home. We thought that was pretty good so we took our girls and went back the next week. In about fifteen minutes we lost every dime we had. We couldn’t get the car out of the lot. We wandered around from casino to casino picking up nickels, dimes and quarters that were left behind in slot machines or on the floor. I spotted a chip on the floor under a blackjack table. I watched the game for a minute or two then dropped a quarter on the floor. I bent down, palmed the quarter then told the dealer that I had dropped a chip that was under the table. That chip could have been any denomination. Everyone at the table stood up and stepped back. The dealer stepped back and the pit boss came in and retrieved the one-dollar chip and gave it to me. We got enough together to get the car out of hock and had a hungry ride home. 

There was a time that I lived on Easy Street (Yes it is really there) in Mountain View with five women. I was sleeping with them all and they all knew it and were ok with it. It went on for about a year. I worked and paid all the bills. They stayed home and did drugs and girl things. I had to start making lists of who was going to do what or nothing ever got done. It was a great time but looking back on it, it should have been them working and me staying home. I keep a good house. Five women just spent the days arguing about who would do what. 

I got busted and spent some time in the county jail. It was a farm like environment. I played cards and read a lot. It was a really rude awakening. I got probation also and that was worse. Now I had someone checking up on me all the time for no reason, who could (and sometimes did) put me back in jail for no reason at all. When that happened, it meant losing my home and my job. They could keep you as long as they wanted. I would have much rather have had just a straight sentence; probation is a scam for the county to make more money. Somehow I made it through those days. I will never know how that happened. 

I was wandering and going nowhere. One day I was up in Redwood City and happened by a little machine shop. There was a curious smell and weird noises. There was a help wanted sign in the window. I went in and inquired about the job. Al Bergstedt took me into his office and we sat down. There was an enlarged picture of a micrometer on the wall behind him. We talked for a while and he asked me if I could tell him what the dimension was on the micrometer in the picture. I told him that I had no idea what a micrometer was but that I would like to learn. 

I told him I would work for him for free until he thought I had learned enough to pay me. He liked the idea and hired me on the spot. I worked for about a month before he put me on the payroll. He paid me back wages to the day we had talked in his office. I learned a tremendous amount about the machine trade from that man and am very grateful for his tutelage. I worked for him for five years and never missed a day.  

The wages were better than average for the times and I had money most of the time. Al was dating Betty and they were both into diving. They were involved with a diving club and for two years we went diving together up and down the coast of California. We dove every weekend. 

There was one occasion when we were at Fort Bragg up the coast and were free diving in thirty feet of water for abalone in the bay. The tide was out but the water was still pretty deep. It is no easy feat to dive in thirty feet of water, locate and remove abalone from the rocky bottom and find the surface again on one good breath. 

Fort Bragg is a remnant of a time when the Russians occupied part of the coast of California. There is an obelisk out on the point that was built by Frank Lloyd Wright; A monument to his genius. I remember a time that I was sitting on the cliff watching the sunset reflecting off of that monument. I still had my wetsuit top on though the flap was loose at the crotch. I had two fondue pots that I always carried with me. One held hot oil and the other cheese. I preferred the Swiss for its sharpness. I would beat the abalone on a cutting board with a serrated wooden mallet to tenderize it, and then drop it into the hot oil. When it was cooked, I would dip it in the cheese and eat it. There is nothing quite like fresh abalone cooked in this fashion. This was a very magical time, sitting on that cliff. I wondered what was next for me.  

We spent many an evening around a campfire, talking about the times and the future. I played Arlo Guthrie’s, Alice’s Restaurant on the guitar and sang old Bob Dylan and Neil Young songs for them. 

Sometime during this period the movie “Jaws” came out. I was on acid when I saw it. It awakened a primal fear that I didn’t know I had. Always when I was diving I was continually looking over my shoulder. It turns out it was a very deep-seated fear of sharks. It was many years before I went back in the ocean again and never far from shore. 

Betty and Al continued to dive until they had an encounter with a Great White. They were in Tamales’ bay, the breeding ground of the Great White Shark, spear fishing. They were shooting halibut off the bottom. The way to do this is to attach a line to your belt and be towed along by your partner in the boat. Al had shot a fish and was in the boat, tangled in his towline. Betty was down in about forty feet of water. The cry “Shark” came across the water from a nearby boat and Al was just in time to see a huge dark shape run right down the towline straight for Betty. For some strange reason she caught sight of the shadow and saw the shark. She shot him with her spear gun and the spear just bounced off. She kicked off of its snout and cut herself free from her towline. As the shark circled she kept it in sight and dropped to the bottom and got behind a rock. Rocks were scarce in this area as it is mostly a sandy bottom, which is what the halibut like. 

In the meantime Al had hauled in her line and came up with an empty end. He was smart enough to see that the line had been cut cleanly which a sharp knife could only have done. He did not jump in to save her. He couldn’t have saved her anyway. He would simply have been lunch and he knew it. Betty stayed on the bottom for about twenty minutes until the shark tired of the game and swam off. 

She made it to the surface and Al got her into the boat safely. Betty is a little thing, not more than five four, but she kept her head that day and showed just how brave she truly was. They lived on a sailboat but to my knowledge never went diving again. It was a very close thing. 

We rented the extra room to Claudia, and she and Michael got together. They got married a few years later. It was time for me to move on and I rented an apartment in Palo Alto, not far away. It was a bachelor’s apartment. I never did the dishes; I just bought new ones. I rarely cooked and there were trashcans overflowing with beer cans. I taught Michael how to read a micrometer and he pursued a job in the same trade. He was very good at it. 

I was doing a friend a favor and had trimmed the trees in their backyard. The yard was littered with cuttings about knee deep. I was cutting up the brush when I noticed that I had a tear in my Levis. I dropped the saw and took a look. There was a cut to the bone that had happened so quickly that I never felt a thing. More stitches, from the emergency room. I hobbled around on a cane for several weeks and figured that since I had a cane I might just as well have a top hat. I found a beautiful, antique, collapsible, silk, top hat. I was going with this beautiful blond, Hillary at the time. She wouldn’t move in with me since the house was such a mess and I couldn’t blame her. I had a pet rabbit and a duck that by now had moved in. We could be seen walking down the sidewalk from time to time in Palo Alto. I was wearing my top hat, using my cane, a beautiful blond on my arm, and a rabbit on a leash with a duck that followed us everywhere. It must have been quite the sight. After a while, we split up. Then there was Kathy and Gina. They were best friends. Kathy told me she was 17 and would be eighteen soon. We lived together for a time until her birthday came around and she made the mistake of telling me she had just turned seventeen. I asked her to leave and she did. I slept with a lot of women until I finally had enough of it all and I quit school, quit my job and headed for the mountains.  

I did a summer with my sister in Miranda in Humboldt County. I got a job with a logging company that was located at Ruth Lake in the trinity Alps. I took the Zenea cutoff to get there, which starts at Garberville and goes about a hundred miles through the woods. It is dirt and it is rugged. I talked to the guy on the phone and told him I was a machinist and I guess he thought I said mechanic because when I arrived they handed me a mechanics toolbox and put me to work. Fortunately they had service manuals on all their equipment, and they had a lot of it. I think he must have had at least a hundred and fifty men working for him. Long before daylight, breakfast was served and the crews would pack into crew trucks and head out in various directions. Often I was working all night, in order to have something fixed and ready by daylight so the crews could use it. There were three or four of us that were kind of hippie looking, which did not sit well with the rest of the men who were all quite redneck. We kept to ourselves and hunted for a lot of our food. There is nothing quite like the taste of squirrel that has been feeding on pine nuts. Ruth Lake was a company town with a company store. Everything was expensive. The owner of the logging company also had put in a first class restaurant and an airstrip. The food was as good as any place in San Francisco but was very much over priced. I only ate there twice. I was saving my wages and the wages were good. You could eat at the mess hall but it cost a bit also. It was much cheaper to hunt. Often we would be sitting around a fire cooking our catch. The rednecks did not like us at all. 

One day, for no reason at all one guy came at me with a big knife. He said something like he was going to carve him some hippie. It scared the shit out of me and I found myself with a blanket wrapped around my left arm jumping from bunk to bunk trying to avoid that knife. He was a huge man, experienced with a blade and never left an opening. I maneuvered myself around until I got near the door then I beat feet out of there. It had appeared that I had stood up to him though and that went over well with the other rednecks. I would have run quicker had I had a chance. They did back off though and I was grateful. It was very hard not to spend money but I managed. Even little things, the necessities were way overpriced. I lived very Spartan. There was one time that a Mexican man who was setting choker fell asleep behind a log and a Caterpillar tractor backed right over both legs and took them off. He never made it out of the woods. Another guy got a single bee sting and within fifteen minutes did not look like anything recognizable as human. They helicoptered him out and he survived. It was a dangerous profession. I set choker for a few days because there was a need to be filled. A choker is a cable that is about three quarters of an inch in diameter with a bell on one end and a ball on the other. You would wrap it around a tree and set it in such a way that when the log skidder arrived you could hook up the winch cable and twist, turn or direct that log any way you wanted to make the job of the skidder easier. Often you would have five of these things on your shoulder and get them all set before the skidder got back from his first trip. It is imperative that you pay VERY close attention. One mistake could mean death and it did and does happen.

I had a two ton flatbed truck with every kind of tool imagine able on it. Every hand tool, pneumatic tool, compressor, generator, tig welder and oxy acetylene. Often I would be sent out at night to replace the heads on a cat or some other skidder. 

The directions would go something like this: Well you remember where I was two days ago? I moved up about three miles from there. You will see a fresh cut spruce stump come up on the right of the track. There is a set of cat tracks by that stump but those ain’t mine. Past that little windmill on the left there is a stock tank and I took off to the north just east of that. Follow my tracks and I left that cat parked about a mile in. Go find that place in the dark!! Somehow I always did and I would radio in to base (sometimes the radio did not work) and they would send out a helicopter with the parts on a sling. I would send up a flare when I heard him and usually had a fire going on the ground and he would lower me the heads. They are heavy and need to be winched around. 

One night I was out to do just that. I found the cat all right and I parked my truck just on the side of a pull out. It had been raining for the past three days. I started walking towards that cat when I heard a terrible noise and turned just in time to see my truck sliding backwards down the bank that had just collapsed. The cat was broken (I was there to fix it after all), my truck was useless and I was sixty miles from base. It was very wet and very dark. I knew that there was an FMC skidder about three miles away and headed cross-country in that general direction. Somehow I managed to find it, get it started and head back. An FMC is the undercarriage of a tank with a operators cage in the middle. It has a big winch on the back and a short blade on the front. I was doing about twenty-five miles an hour through the woods, taking out small trees as I went along. 

I think they will do about forty. I got back to my truck, hooked up the winch and dragged my truck up to safety. I then drove that FMC back to where I had found it. By the time I got this all done, I was beat and went back to camp. 

I was sleeping hard when I was pulled out of bed and jumped immediately to my feet. I was squared off for a fight. It was the owner of the company and he was very mad. He wanted to know why that cat had not been fixed. I told him what had happened and he said I had five minutes to gather my gear, come up to the office and get my check. I was fired. I was also pissed. When I came out of the office, the owner and about twenty men surrounded me, the owner in the circle with me. He told me that he was going to whip my ass. He was a big man and overweight. He also had a pacemaker that I knew about. I was in the best shape of my life. I told him that I had no intention of fighting him, no matter what. He pushed me into my car. I came off that car like a cat and started dancing around him in a circle. He couldn’t keep up with me and he knew it. I was pretty quick. I told him that I was only going to hit him once, just as hard as I could right in his fucking pacemaker and he was going to die right there in front of all these men. I told him again I didn’t want to fight and he backed off. He said to get going and that is just what I did. Later the story came out that I had refused to fight him and was branded as a coward by those rednecks. It never bothered me a bit. I did not do the time for killing that man and I have no Karma with him. 

When I got back to Miranda, Rod and Judy wanted to take off for a few days and I watched the place for them. I was watching the evening news and they were talking about lightening strikes and wildfires all over the area. They were calling for help. Rod had a big and very old water truck. I took it down to the spring and pumped it full of water. I threw two chainsaws, some fuel for them, a backpack with some clothes and emergency food and away I went. They were happy to see me and put me to work right away. Water and chainsaws are a big deal in a forest fire and I used both. They used me hauling water in that old truck until they had brought in enough tankers of their own, then I went up on the fire line with the saws. Fighting forest fires is very hot (if you have not done this you cannot understand) very dirty and very hard work. It seems that they always happen in the most remote, rugged and inaccessible places. It is easy to get trapped, separated and killed. Mostly though it is a very organized effort and command knows where everyone is and what is happening. It is called situational awareness and is very important. These folks were good at it. I was on the line for better than two weeks. I was used up when it was all over. Rod never said anything but thank you when I brought his truck and saws back. It was time to leave though and I moved on. 

I ended up on ten acres owned by a friend between Auburn and Grass Valley on Highway 49. It is gold country and I figured to try my hand at finding me some. She had an eight-year-old son that I liked a lot and a bunch of Rhode Island Red chickens. The rooster was mean and would jump up on that boys back dig in his hooks and peck that boy on the head. It got to where he wouldn’t come outside. That rooster had given me the eye a time or two and I told him that if he ever did that to me, I would put him on a plate. One day he got up on my back and I flung him to the ground. It didn’t kill him, but it should have. I got a twenty-two rifle and came back outside. 

The rooster was waiting. I’m a fair shot but I swear I must have shot at that rooster ten times before I finally got him. Every time I would squeeze off a shot, he would see it coming and duck his head. Right up till the last time. I traded that dead rooster for a new live one that wasn’t mean and everyone was happy. 

One day I was crossing the yard when movement caught my eye in the distance. It was a pheasant running back and forth across the ridge that was about a quarter mile away. The pheasant was acting very strange and I had never seen one doing anything like this. I guess he sensed me watching and started running right me. He never left the ground, just ran right up to me and pecked at my feet. 

I couldn’t get him off of me. I didn’t want to hurt him but I picked up a steel rake to fend him off. We kept going around in a circle. He kept trying to get at me and I kept fending him off. Finally I got up a tree and sat on a branch. That pheasant kept me up there for an hour going around and around the tree. Can you imagine that? A grown man treed by a pheasant? To this day I have no idea what was on that birds mind or what caused him to act the way he did. 

I decided to leave for a while and went up to the South fork of the Yuba River. I didn’t have much, just a guitar, a camera, a lever action 30/30 Winchester, a backpack and a sluice box with a pan. I had one book, Autobiography of a yogi.  

The south fork of the Yuba River runs through a very steep canyon and is some of the most rugged country in the Sierra Nevada range. Highway 20 will take you to the top of the ridge then it is several miles down the canyon to the little town of Washington, California. Not much there in those days, a small grocery, a trailer park and an old two story hotel with a bar. I cut the corner and hiked in from about ten miles from the turn off to Washington.  

I built a permanent camp, cut a good stack of firewood and settled in. Beautiful country but rugged as hell. It was several months before I saw another live person and I had to hike up the river to Washington before I did. I spent my days swimming, looking for gold and reading. After dark I would lie by my fire and attempt to meditate. I was trying to teach myself. I met my first spirit deer. I was sighting in my rifle, shooting at a little white rock across the river. The sound reverberated loudly in that canyon. I had fired my three rounds and was sitting on a rock in the sun when I heard the sound of hooves on stone. This huge beautiful, twelve point buck stopped right over the top of that little white rock. I was sitting very still. He looked right at me for a long time. The sun was reflecting off of his big brown eyes. There was no doubt that I could have killed him and I wanted the meat but it never dawned on me to even raise the rifle. We stared at each other for a minute or two; he slowly turned and walked off. I will never forget that moment. 

While I was on the river there was a freak snowstorm that lasted for three days. It was quiet as death and particularly beautiful. I spent those days in my sleeping bag drinking coffee and just reaching out to put a stick on the fire. It was right cold. I read my book, again. 

I took a week and hiked out to the south and east up a narrow side canyon. I figure I went about fifteen miles or so and I came upon an old abandoned mining town. There were four barrack sized buildings and six single-family houses along the side of the hill. There was a structure that I figured was a blacksmiths made out of small gauge rail near a tunnel that ran straight into the mountain right at the bottom of the canyon. A small creek was running out of the tunnel. Tunnels have always fascinated me and I took my one flashlight with marginal batteries and went in about two miles. It was wet in there and often I was waist deep in water. I went by two cave in’s. There was a light gauge rail running all the way and several side tunnels and air shafts. I figured that this mine was a good producer at one time and probably supported several hundred people. It has never bothered me going into a tunnel but coming out is a different story. I did not know what might be behind me and I kept looking over my shoulder.  

I found an old metal lunchbox in the attic of one of the barracks that was full of dynamite that was crystalline with liquid oozing out. This is extremely dangerous. I put less than one drop on my finger and flicked it. When it hit the floor it went off like a medium sized firecracker. I took a pole that had a notch in it and carefully removed the box. It really wouldn’t have mattered that I had the pole, if that stuff had gone off I was dead anyway. I set the box on the ground and backed off about a hundred yards behind a big boulder and shot it a few times with my Winchester. It did not go off which surprised me. I ended up digging a hole that was about four feet deep and burying the box. This was done in a very out of the way spot so that it is unlikely that it would ever cause anyone any grief. I found a few small nuggets on the mine dump that had been exposed by rain and weather over the years. 

Crunchy beans are not tasty. I had failed to soak my beans the night before and cooked them anyway and they never quite cooked even after several hours. I was sitting by my fire at about seven-thirty or eight when I heard branches breaking off to my left. Something big was headed my way. It was moving along the side of the ridge, just below the houses. I grabbed my rifle, chambered a round and stepped off into the dark, away from the fire. It was moving very fast. From one point to the next, the steps were about twenty feet and when it landed I am sure I felt the earth move. When it crossed the canyon above the tunnel mouth it made it in one step or leap. This is a distance of over fifty feet. There was a low grunting noise from time to time. Very deep throated. This was a VERY large critter. Then it was gone. I stayed up all that night, keeping watch. 

The next morning, just as soon as it was light enough I carefully checked out that entire hillside, looking for sign. There was nothing. No broken branches, no footprints; nothing. I checked the canyon above the tunnel and again found nothing. I am a fair hand at tracking and was amazed that I could find no sign. This made me all the more apprehensive and I lit out right then and headed back to my primary camp. To this day I truly believe that this critter was a Bigfoot. There is nothing in those woods that could move like this thing did. I don’t expect anyone to believe me. This happened just like I have described it. 

I was about out of supplies. I had been living on what I could shoot miner’s lettuce, the occasional fish and some pine nuts. It was a pretty bland diet. I was nearly out of salt and that just wouldn’t cut it. I decided to make the hike up to Washington. It turned out to be about eight miles. It took an entire day to cover the ground.  

I went into the little store and picked up some supplies including two snickers bars. The thing about Washington that I really loved is that you can (might be you still can) put your gold on the counter and they bring out a scale and pay out just below market value. Gold was at about one hundred and thirty-five dollars an ounce in those days and I had found nearly three ounces. I bought a bottle of whiskey. I spent the night in the hotel and tied on a good drunk at the bar playing pool with the locals. I mostly won so I did not have to pay for the drinks. I had a huge head the next day so I spent one more night there and avoided the liquor. 

Washington has a post office that is not much larger than a walk in closet and sure enough there was a letter there sent general delivery from my mother. I stuffed it in my shirt and made the hike back to my camp. I was about halfway back when it started raining pretty hard. I had a choice of going along the cliff face or hiking way up, over and around. Like an idiot, I chose the cliff face. The cliff was covered in wet moss and handholds were hard to come by. I was about one hundred feet off the deck and found myself with nowhere to go, clinging to that cliff with fingertips and toes. It was a hairy situation. I had one small possibility but it was really quite dangerous. I figured if I hit the deck the least I could expect was a broken bone or two and a slow death. There was no one else out there and no one knew where I was. I took the chance, barely made it and survived. Another treasured moment that was about success and life as opposed to failure and death. I made it back to a very cold camp. It was a miserable night but I did have that bottle of whiskey and it helped. It took half of the next day to get all dried out and settled in again. 

I don’t remember how many times I had read my book. I don’t know how long and hard I tried to teach myself to meditate. It was a lot of effort. After about two weeks, I remembered the letter from my mom. She said that she had taken a course in San Francisco that taught her how to meditate. It had cost her four hundred dollars and she offered to pay for me to take the course. It was one of the few times that she really put herself out for me. The event was going to occur in a week at the Mark Hopkins hotel in San Francisco. 

I cached my extra gear, which wasn’t much anyway and hiked out of the canyon. I hitched hiked down the mountain and into San Francisco. I arrived on the night of the event. I walked into this huge ballroom, carrying my backpack, guitar and that 30/30 Winchester in a leather sheath. I was wearing a fringed leather shirt and the last pair of navy bell- bottom dungarees that I owned that had hundreds of patches all over them. My hair wild, halfway down my back. I had a beard and smelled like wood smoke, I also had not seen a bath in a week. 

As I came into the ballroom, about three hundred heads all turned and looked right at me. They all had on pin striped suites and pointy little Italian shoes. There was a beautiful woman standing on the stage who had been lecturing but when I came in it got real quiet. I put my pack and other gear next to the wall, held up that 30/30, slid the sheath off of it and dropped it on the floor. I levered a live round into the chamber, let the hammer down and sat down, right there in the back. Those folks made me pretty nervous. I had not had much contact with people in months and this was a scary bunch. Pretty quick they all turned around and faced the stage. The girl on the stage introduced herself as Patty and asked my name. I did not say anything. I did not realize she was talking to me. She went on with the lecture, which made little sense to me, but she was good looking and I was enjoying watching her move. She knew it too.  

Shortly thereafter, there was a break and she came right up to me and introduced herself. She put me right at ease and said that I probably didn’t need the rifle so I unloaded it, put the sheath back on and leaned it against the wall with my other gear. All of a sudden, pretty girls surrounded me: in suits. I didn’t get it but I guess Patty did because she sort of took control of me from then on. She offered me a place to stay and I must say I was grateful.  

The meeting went on for a few hours. It did not seem to be really going anywhere but I went home with Patty that night. I took a long hot tub and cut the beard off. Patty trimmed my hair a bit. I only had one other set of clothes so we went out early and I bought a couple of new sets. I had little money and only about two ounces of gold. Patty was fascinated by the gold. She had never seen raw gold. We went out to breakfast and were sitting in a restaurant with a whole bunch of people in suits. Patty was wearing a suit also. She took a large cinnamon bun and stuck it on her nose. I didn’t say anything and neither did she. Then we started laughing. Lots of people got up and left. Patty was like that; just a little crazy. The course went on for another three days and I did truly have a good time. I did get some guidance in meditating but I also saw right away what was going on. It was about getting all those four hundred dollar bills. 

In those days the attitude about sex was very open and there were a lot of lonely girls in this group. I slept with most of them at one time or another until Patty took over and she and I got together. I moved in with her in her San Francisco home and we took up housekeeping. I got a job with Bethlehem Steel down on the pier cutting shafts for ships. It was like being in a dungeon. Dirt floors in a brick building with fifty-gallon drums staggered around fired with wood for heat. A very dismal place, but they paid very good money and I was already in the machinists union.  

Patty’s home was four blocks from the beach and two from Golden Gate Park. We would run the beach up to the Cliff House and go have a cocktail and watch the sun go down into the ocean. The Cliff House has an interesting history. It was built by a man Named Sutro and incorporated huge covered swimming pools fed by the ocean. It was a health spa in those days. Sutro started out in Nevada, in Virginia City and the silver mines.  

These were the richest silver deposits in the United States. Many of those involved made huge bucks from these deposits including James Flood senior and Leland Stanford who later founded Stanford University. This was all happening in the late 1800’s. The miners got deep enough that they ran into natural hot water springs and found they could go no further. Sutro walked out into the desert near Dayton, which is about eight miles away and said, “If it was up to me I would put a tunnel right here and run the water off and build a hot springs bath”. They let him build the tunnel but not the bath. The tunnel ended up within a few feet of where he had originally decided it should go. He was so disappointed about the baths that he went to San Francisco and built the Cliff house. Just across the street from the cliff house is a fair sized mountain covered with plants. This mountain is actually made out of concrete and is there to this day. During the 1906 earthquake all of the baths and part of the Cliff House were destroyed. The foundations for the baths are still there and you can hike down and see them. There are some good photos there that show this history. Sutro was a great architect and a hell of an engineer.  

Patty had purchased her home from a man named Alexander Everett who was the first person bring this awareness teaching to the United States. His first classes cost ten thousand dollars and included people like Werner Earhart who later founded the EST organization and William Pen Patrick who was a multimillionaire who had made his money with a woman’s cosmetic company called Holliday Magic. Because of Patty, I was privy to and involved in the inner circle. What surprised me is that I already knew so much of what they were teaching. I think it surprised them also. One day the three of them came over and sat in our living room and offered me a job as an instructor. Forty thousand dollars a year, a Mercedes of my choice and all of the pin stripe suits and pointy Italian shoes that I would not be caught dead in. They were serious and Patty was beaming. I told them that I was honored by the offer but that I had always believed that wisdom was free and knowledge was paid for. Wisdom should be shared, freely as it was part of the evolutionary process. I saw only dollar signs in their eyes and could not in good consciences, accept their offer. Patty was crushed and they were offended and left. We argued that night for hours about this issue.  

Patty was from Chicago. Her father owned several Greek restaurants there and her mom had a real estate brokerage. There was a lot of money in this family. One year she wanted to go visit for Christmas. This was the winter of 1978. We drove back there and had a wonderful Christmas with her family. They all wanted us to stay and for me to find work in Chicago. I actually did look into it but the conditions were very bad in the places I interviewed in. One morning I was wearing about seven layers of clothes and walked out the front door and felt like I was standing there naked. It was COLD. A car came sliding by at about fifty on a residential street on about a foot of ice. This guy was either completely nuts or the best driver I had ever seen. I went back inside and told Patty that I was leaving and that it was time to make a move. I told her I intended to be in Denver by daylight and skiing the next day. She said fine and off we went. It was the worst blizzard in history. We went across that flatland all alone. Not one other vehicle for the entire trip.  

The highway was just a mound of snow and you couldn’t see twenty feet. Somehow we did make it though I did have doubts as to whether or not we would. We had a nice toasty hotel room in Estes Park. I was just getting out of the shower and Patty was on the phone letting her family know she was safe. It turned out that her Grandmother had gone into the hospital that day and was not expected to live. We drove all the way back across that flatland in the middle of that blizzard. There was nothing flying and we had no choice. I pulled up to the door and said “Patty, get out, I have had enough of cold. Pick up a ticket and I will meet you in Denver or Aspen”. 

I drove all the way back across that flatland in the middle of that blizzard. Three times in three days I made that trip. Years later I was watching the weather channel and they showed that storm. It is truly amazing that I managed those trips. Patty met me in Aspen and we got in some good skiing. We went over to Telluride and skied for another week. I was a pretty crazy downhill skier and I loved it. One morning I forgot to adjust my bindings and was screaming down this rather large slope. I was just catching the tops of the moguls. I had a lapse of attention and caught my tips in the top of one and went down. I did not come out of the skis and ripped all the tendons from behind both knees. I lost all the toenails on both feet and my boots filled with blood. I made it back down to our room where I bandage up my feet. I wrapped ace bandages around both knees and skied for another few days. It hurt like hell but somehow I knew I would never ski again. It worked out that way. I wore steel braces for a few months rather than surgery. The toenails finally grew back. 

Patty was a great cook. One of the best I have ever known. We use to have great traditional American breakfast each morning. After awhile I noticed that there were pills and supplements included. It got to the point where there was no breakfast, just a huge pile of pills. I have never known or believed what was in these pills. One morning I swept those pills off the table and told her I was leaving. I was gone before dark.

I ended up twelve miles east of Dayton Nevada at my friend Fred Kelley’s farm. Fred was farming a full section of alfalfa and Tom Eitel lived there also and had a section of his own. I hired on and did all the water changes, cutting, bailing, bale pick up and repair of equipment. Tom’s dad founded Litton industries and there was a lot of money in that family. Litton made the first microwaves. 

I lived in a trailer that was about forty feet long and had a bit of a second story for sleeping. It was a strange configuration. The entire outside of the trailer had been painted in a variety of color and design. Whoever did it must have been on LSD or mushrooms at the time. It was a great job. 

The fields were watered with wheel lines, which is a quarter mile of pipe and sprinklers on wheels with a motor in the middle. You would turn of the water to the line, disconnect it, start the motor and run it forward the required number of revolutions (I think it was four) until you lined up with the next valve, hook it all up and move on to the next one. This happened once a day, first thing in the morning.  

I would get around the fields on a two-fifty Kawasaki often wearing nothing but tennis shoes and a gun belt. I had bought a little HR 22 revolver to help keep the rabbit population down and got to where I could hit three out of six off that motorcycle. There were no neighbors, just green fields, big skies, beautiful mornings and sunsets. There was a lot of quiet. The equipment was the best. The cabs were air-conditioned with stereo systems and a beer cooler. The work never stopped but it was good work. I was in very good condition. Patty would show up from time to time and try to get together again. We would spend a week or so together and then it was time for her to get back. I have a picture of Patty, naked, driving a tractor. If you knew her, you would understand just how rare this picture truly is. I think she always had the heart of a cowgirl and the fate of an executive. It seemed to be a constant battle for her. I was always very much in love with her and still am but I could not fight her battle for her. Looking back on it, the decision was correct. I just could not fit into her world. 

It was pretty hot most of the time. One day I took the backhoe and dug myself a pond. I threw a hose in it and filled it up. Fred Kelley liked what I had done and asked me to make one for him. I got about eight feet down with the backhoe when Fred came over with a case of dynamite. There are one hundred and eleven sticks of dynamite in a case. We put the whole case in the bottom of the hole and covered it up. My trailer was about a quarter of a mile away from that hole. When we set that dynamite off, it blew rocks the size of soccer balls all over that trailer. We were very lucky no one got hurt. That hole never did hold water. We had fractured the bedrock. It sure was something to see though. 

Fred was gay and still is. He is also a particularly wonderful human being. His crowd all had money and all had connections. We would do Sunday champagne brunches in tuxedoes at lake Tahoe and sail on the lake. Fred had a powerboat and we would often make the trip to Emerald Bay, which got its name for a reason. The water there is Emerald green. To my knowledge no has ever found the bottom of that lake. Every once in awhile some fisherman will bring up a perfectly preserved body. One time it was a Native American woman. The water is so cold that there is no deterioration at all. I don’t want to know how many people might be down there. There is a particular variety of fish that is native to Lake Tahoe and to Pyramid Lake, which is out in the flats on the Nevada side. This Species is found only in these two lakes. Since Lake Tahoe is an extinct Volcano, it is speculated that these two lakes are connected. Pyramid Lake is what feeds water to the Los Angeles basin through the California aqueduct. 

There was a gay bar that Fred would take me to that was always moving. There was this one woman whose name escapes me, who was an ex madam and knew every joke ever told. She protected me and would tell those men who tried to pick me up that I was straight. They all knew her well and I was grateful. I was however flattered that so many people wanted me! I put down a lot of scotch in that bar. 

There used to be a comedian whose name was Waylon. He used a puppet whose name was Madam. He was often of TV on an old show called The Hollywood Squares. Perhaps the funniest man I have ever known. He was billed at one of the big casinos once and we all went out to see him. There were about ten of us. The line to get in was around the block. We went right to the front of the line and right on in. We were seated right up front, center stage. It turned out that one of the crowd I was with was in a relationship with Waylon. He apparently was also gay. On one side of our table were Neil Sedaca and his group and on the other was Frank Sinatra. We pulled back the tablecloth and did lines of cocaine right there. I don’t know how we got away with most of the things we did. It was a sign of the times I guess. After the show we were invited backstage. Waylon and I started drinking Tequila. I showed him how to do a Tequila Puff, which is a shot of Tequila with a little soda water in it. You cover it with a napkin, slam it down on the table, it would then foam up and you would shoot it down. He thought that was great and we killed a bottle of Tequila doing them. We did a lot of cocaine also so the alcohol was not a big deal. This went on until about three in the morning when the decision was made to go get breakfast. There was (it still may be there) a little restaurant that could serve only about fifteen people at a time and made the best omelets in the state. We went downstairs and piled into a huge limo that was parked in front. Security came over and asked us to get out of the car. Waylon was behind the wheel and told him that he worked for the hotel. In two seconds, he had all of us, and the guard rolling with laughter. We had them bring up my van and we all piled in. There must have been twenty-five people in that van. The front end was almost off the ground and it was all I could do to control it. We never got to twenty miles an hour, but we made it. There was a line outside the restaurant and again Waylon had everyone rolling. In the end we all filed in and stood behind someone who was already eating. It was an “L” shaped counter with little room and we annoyed the hell out of the customers. We would reach over their shoulder and get a piece of toast or a potato. It didn’t take long for them all to leave but they were laughing when they did. That was a hell of a night and a great party. I heard years later that Waylon had died of aids. I do not know if that is true or not. 

There is a gay Rodeo in Reno and Fred won the competition for the gay king several years running. I have known him since I was 15 years old and he never made a pass at me or did anything except counsel a very troubled teenager. I owe this man a great deal for his total honor and integrity. Fred had a friend named Kat who is a beautiful woman who lived in Carson City and dealt Blackjack for a living. She taught me how to deal and to handle cards. She once asked me if I wanted to know how to cheat and I told her I did not. It was hard enough without someone thinking you were cheating. She helped me to get a job dealing Blackjack at the Peppermill in Reno. I nearly got into a relationship with her. We saw a lot of each other. I wanted it but she was fresh out of a break up and was not ready. I have no idea what ever happened to her and her son. I do wish them the very best and wish we had not lost contact. 

Tom had a gambling habit. He liked to play Texas Hold-‘em. This is the game that is played in the world series of poker every year. There was a game in those days in the back room of Cactus Jacks in Carson City that was made up of all of the ranch, farm, shopping center and hotel owners. It was a no limit game. It happened once a week. Tom was there every week. He was a pretty good player but did not know when to quit. I understand that he is now working in Santa Cruz California on the Boardwalk.  

He taught me how to play the game and loaned me a couple of books on tactics and odds. I got a job dealing Blackjack and poker at Cactus Jacks. I only dealt part time anywhere as the ranch work took up most of my days. It was an interesting time though and I learned all I ever wanted or needed to know about gambling. I was pretty good at it. I once took six dollars that was left over from buying groceries and parlayed it into thirty-two hundred in four hours on a blackjack table. I started sitting in on the weekly poker game. Everyone knew me and even though I was young accepted me in the game. Those boys really taught me how to play poker. It cost me several thousand dollars for the lessons. It was a tough crowd to beat. I started playing in Reno, Tahoe and in Carson City. The players were nowhere as good as that weekly game and I regularly made money. I made thirty-six thousand dollars that year. There was one night when I was sitting in the big game and I caught the lock from what is called the flop. I had a full house, aces over tens. By the time we got to the last card, there was twenty-two thousand dollars in that pot. There was always a crowd gathered to watch these games and each play took a long time for every player. The last bet was five thousand dollars to me. I had observed carefully and figured that that player had drawn out to a straight flush on the last card. I did not call the bet. I threw my full house face up on the table and folded. I never broke eye contact with that man. He threw his cards face up also and sure enough he had drawn the straight flush. He said, “You earned it kid”. He did not have to show those cards but to this day I am thankful that he did. I left that game about two hundred ahead and never have sat in a big game since. I learned that I really did not like the energy of casinos, the smoke filled rooms (in those days) and the greed. I still do not gamble except for an occasional lottery ticket. 

I have terrible bunny Karma. I will probably always have bunny Karma. Jackrabbits have a cycle that runs for seven years. On the seventh year they will overpopulate themselves and die back to a level that the environment will tolerate. It was the top of the seven-year cycle. Parts of my wages were a percentage of the harvest. The fields were full of bunnies. You could drive in a quarter mile on the driveway at night and they would come out of the fields in a wave. You could not help but squish a hundred or so. I kept seeing the perimeter of the fields shrinking and that meant that we were losing hay. I took to sitting up on the stacked bales just before sunset. I would shoot three rifles and a pistol (all twenty-two caliber) until they were too hot to touch. I rarely missed. I shot thousand of bunnies. You could not eat them. They were infested with the bubonic plague, which is nature’s normal reaction to the cycle. I did not want to poison, as that would affect all the other critters that lived on Jackrabbits. There were never any to be found the next morning. The Coyotes did a remarkable job. There is no doubt though; I have terrible bunny Karma.  

Cutting alfalfa is an art as is bailing. Cutting is done in the daytime and I would sit up on my swather and start out with perfectly straight windrows. After a few joints and beers those windrows developed waves and curves. It didn’t really matter except I had to follow those same lines at night when the bailing happened. I would go out just after dark and make a bale or two. Use a special meter to check the moisture content and if it was correct I would bale all night. No drinking or pot at night. I was constantly checking the moisture content. Too much moisture could start a spontaneous combustion fire and to little meant we lost money and the hay was too dry.  

After the bailing I would take the bale wagon and pick up all the bales. This is done semi- automatically and is too complex to try to explain. It sure makes the job easier on the back though. We made bales that weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, exactly. Every morning I sharpened all the blades and made sure that the all the fingers on the baler were working correctly so that the proper knot was tied. It was bad if the baler broke down during a night shift, as timing is so critical. It happened anyway and I found myself fixing things in the middle of the night by flashlight. 

Patty came to visit one time and we heard about some Lab puppies and went to check them out. There was this one little critter that ran all the way across the warehouse and came right up to me and licked my feet. I took him home. His name was Blue and he went everywhere with me. If I was in town and bought a steak or a burger, he got one too. He would ride around on the gas tank of my motorcycle. I put a piece of carpet there to help him hold on. One day a jackrabbit jumped out right in front of the front tire and blue went right off the bike and hit the ground. He tumbled several times, the rabbit got away and he would never go near that bike again. He took to running alongside instead. 

I recall one morning, I was riding out to change the water sets and was riding my motorcycle as usual. There were four wild mustangs in the fields and Blue and I got to chasing them out. I was right alongside of them going flat out and Blue was on their heels. The sun was just coming up and the fields were almost a black, green. A spectacular sight to see those horses move like they did. Another one of those visions, I will never forget. 

I spent about a year in Nevada and a great deal happened in that year. Most of it was very good. I moved back to California and lived with my sister Lee Ann and her husband Jim. They were into making wine and we made eight hundred gallons of some of the best Zinfandel I have ever had. Jim won awards for his Zinfandel. I did work on the house for them in exchange for rent. I recall one day I was on the phone to a friend who worked in a high-rise in San Francisco. I was looking out the open kitchen window and saw the ground rolling at me like a wave. It had about a three-foot swell. I told my friend that there was an earthquake coming his way and to get out of the building. I dropped the phone and dove headfirst right out that kitchen window. As I looked back I could see the entire house rise and fall. It lasted for about three minutes and the waves got smaller after that first one. It was a four on the Richter scale. We picked grapes from vineyards up in the Napa valley and grew two acres right there in Pleasant Hill. Jim had a line of sporting goods that were mostly clothing. Helly Hanson was the primary brand. They are the oldest and the best manufacturer of foul weather gear. He asked me to help him out and gave me a territory that included all of northern California from San Francisco. He gave me a little Datsun truck as my van had finally died, so that I could cover the territory. I would go up the coast then come down through central California, take a break then go up the east side and back down the coast. I had very little money and camped out a lot, which was fine with me.  

Jim is a suit and tie guy. I am not. I would go out on the piers along the coast and get to talking to the commercial fishermen. I would tell them that I had been fishing a particular creek with no luck and asked what they would recommend for bait. It was true. I did fish a lot. I was usually in semi clean clothes and smelled of wood smoke. I made friends with these folks and sold a whole lot of foul weather gear. It is truly surprising how much they would go through. Coming back down through central California I would sit out in back of the stores and smoke a joint with the owners and sell them tremendous amounts of products. Most of these folks were just trying to launder money from their pot growing operations and I knew that about them. I fit right in and I did well. I sold over a half a million dollars in products on my first trip. Unfortunately, the manufactures were not as good as one would hope at delivery and I lost a lot of that trade. It also hurt my reputation that I had so carefully established. I was never paid a dime for any of that though I had been promised a fair commission. In the end, Jim could not maintain those accounts as those folks did not understand suites at all and wanted no part of him. He just did not know how to fit in. Lesson learned, don’t work for relatives.  

After a while, I rented a place in Lafayette, which is in the east bay area of San Francisco. I learned how to hang wallpaper from a friend who shared the rent. It was a huge five-bedroom place with fireplaces everywhere and a great yard. Blue and I loved it. Hanging wallpaper is another art. I learned to wrap wall plates, keeping everything properly lined up so the pattern would match. It made the plates seem to hide in the wall. I learned to double cut and about many different types of wallpaper and how they acted. Too much glue or too little or the wrong type could cause problems. We did a three-story office building in Walnut Creek. It was a good party house and there were a lot of women. I met Randa Saba and her sister. Randa was a tiny and quite beautiful Arab who was a surgical nurse. Because my work kept me standing, I had developed a serious case of varicose veins. The doctor told me that if I did not have them removed, he would be taking both legs in a few months. It is rare for a male to develop this condition. I had the operation, had hundreds of staples in both legs (which I later removed myself with a screw driver) and lived on reds and alcohol for the two months it took to recover. 

Randa and I got along well for a time until I started drinking too much. I am not a loud or violent drunk; I just go to sleep but I was spending a lot of money on alcohol. I don’t blame her a bit and to this day wish I could have handled it better. She ended up moving to the Midwest and started a business making health food muffins. I think she made a lot of money at it.  

We did a lot of very good restaurants in the area at that time as well. I would drive out to Port Costa on the weekends and drink Beer and play pool at Juanita’s warehouse restaurant. Port Costa is about three miles East Of Crockett on the Carquinez straights. There is a lot of history to this town. The straights have a current that runs at six knots. It is where the American River dumps into the San Francisco Bay and is a hundred feet deep in most places. When they built the trans-continental railroad it stopped on the North side of the straights in Benicia.  

The current was too strong to bridge with the technology of the day and they would ferry the trains across to pick up the line at Port Costa and run on into San Francisco. There was a huge end of the line town built on piers that was quite the wild and wooly place in those days. Daily killings, whores, whiskey, hotels and ships, a very rowdy place. There is a picture that I have that shows at least fifty clipper ships tied to piers there. The wheat from the mid-West was brought by train and shipped from port Costa. James Flood at one tried to corner the Wheat market for the entire country. It was not successful. When I asked his son about it and about the silver mines they all of a sudden did not want to talk to me anymore. Theirs was old money as was Stanford’s but it wasn’t all clean money. They were into a lot of things that is never mentioned any longer. This is not a judgment; it is simply an observation, as in the end it was mostly good for the state. The 1906 earthquake took most all of it away leaving only the Warehouse and a few homes. Today there are only about four hundred people that live there and they are blessed to do so. It is often fogged in and damp and cold, but it is worth every bit of that to live there. 

Anne had an ice cream store there and I would go hang out there with her and drink coffee. We became friends and it was Anne who notified me when a cottage came up for rent. I took it immediately. I also picked up a Job at Grove Valve and Regulator. It was another Machinists job that had a union. It paid very well and had great benefits. 

The cottage was right next to Anne’s store and was two stories. The bottom floor was on the same level as her store. It was sort of like a train car, everything in a line. From the North it went; bath, bedroom, living room and kitchen. I blocked off all the windows down stairs and dug a ditch in which I put a piece of drainpipe. Anne asked what I was doing and I told her I was putting in a darkroom. I always had a camera with me so it seemed natural. I cut a hole in the kitchen floor right in front of the refrigerator and put in a trap door with a ladder. The basement had two layers of brick on the floor and I pulled them up and made long flowerbeds. The beds were about fifteen feet long and three feet apart. I removed all the soil and put in my own mixture. I installed high tech lights and timers and planted marijuana. It was all hybrid seeds that I had gotten from RC who is an old friend and who wrote a book called marijuana botany. It is an exceptional book. RC, Robert Connell Clark, at that time was the only person who was licensed by the Federal Government to grow marijuana, legally. He worked for a university in the mid-West. I was one of the first that took to indoor growing. I grew mostly for seed and I created seeds that did very specific things. I also got some exceptional buds that were for my own use. I never sold any of this. No one knew I was doing it at all. I also met this guy Michael Santos who was a leather crafter and made beautiful moccasins. I had never seen this level of quality before and he taught me most of what I know about quality in materials and craftsmanship. We smoked a joint and I rented him the other half of my basement and he set up shop. I had never encountered anyone like him before. He could make anything and used rare and exotic materials. He had this pipe that he had carved from Catlinite or Minnesota Pipe Stone as it is more commonly known. This is a blood red stone and is a metamorphic, sedimentary stone: basically very hard clay.  

This stone was highly prized by all of the Plains Indian tribes and was used to make their medicine pipes; more commonly known as peace pipes. It has great spiritual significance to these people. It only comes from Pipestone, which is in the South West corner of Minnesota. Michael’s pipe was a small platform pipe about three inches long. The stem was less than a quarter inch thick and flat. The bowl was carved to resemble a nest in and there was a free standing Eagle standing next to the nest. There was a white (natural) spot right on the head of the Eagle. The detail was extreme. This pipe had life and spirit and meaning. I tried for two years to buy or trade for that pipe but Michael wasn’t having any. We smoked from it many times. I guess he finally got tired of me asking about it and one day he came up and put a piece of raw pipestone and a variety of files and that pipe on the table. “If you want it so bad, make one”, is what he said. There was no way I could do anything like that and I told him so. “It depends on how bad you want it”, he told me. We sat there for a full week, smoking pot drinking Beck’s and carving stone. At the end of that week, I had my pipe and it was nearly as good as his. I knew then that I could make anything. 

Peter Minder is a Swiss man and his wife’s name is Kathy. They have a son named Nico but he was not quite with us yet. They lived upstairs from me and to the west. My back stairs were their front stairs and I let them share my porch, which was a deck about ten by ten. We covered it with plants. My front door was to the east and was below the level of the dirt road. Looking out my living room window you would see the road and the front tires of my truck. We would share Pete’s coffee every morning and they taught me how to make a REAL cup of coffee. Kathy baked the best bread I have ever had. She taught me how it was done and I got pretty good at it. I acquired a huge stainless steel pan that I would work my dough in. It was my bread pan. I reckon it was about two and a half feet in diameter with angled sides. The best pan I ever owned for this purpose. 

My dog Blue owned Port Costa and everyone loved him. He was often found laying in the sun right in the middle of the street. He never moved when a car would come to town and people had to drive around him. There were several doors into the Warehouse Café and he used them all. At the dinner hour he made his rounds among the tables and the patrons would give him their prime rib scraps. He lived like a king. There was one occasion that one of the patrons made a big deal about Blue being in the restaurant and Dick (the manager) told him that there were several doors that the dog could use and he couldn’t watch them all. The patron got all huffy and said that he would never eat there again. Dick told him that was fine with him he would just give his portion to the dog! A reporter from the San Francisco Examiner did a piece on Port Costa and used Blue in the article. He described coming into town and having to drive around this rather large Black Lab to get into town. Blue and I were together for about eight years. He developed epilepsy and was taking meds for it. I called them doggie downers. It was Phenobarbital. He still had occasional seizures. There came a time that Blue and I took a road trip way up into the Sierras. We were about a hundred miles from civilization. We were sitting around our campfire when he started to seize. I forced a huge dose of doggie downers down his throat but it didn’t help.  

There was no way to get him to a vet and I know it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He seized for fourteen hours straight and I held his head in my lap the whole time. Towards the end he was to exhausted to move much and just lay there twitching. I knew he would never recover from this seizure. It was bad. He looked me in the eye and I felt he was begging. It was his last lucid moment and I recognized it as such. I put a bullet in one ear that went right out the other. It was a twenty-two hollow point and it was enough. There was very little blood. I dug a grave and cried like a baby for hours. I buried him there and covered the spot with a huge carrion of rocks. It is a peaceful place high up in the Sierras where the wind blows through the trees and you can see forever. He will always have those sunsets to the west. I prayed for that dog. If ever a critter deserved doggie heaven, it was Blue. I don’t think anyone can imagine just how horrible it is to have to shoot your best friend. I have never owned a dog since. He lives still, in my memory. 

I was invited to a catered party in Walnut Creek one night and was stricken dumb by the food. I asked who the chef was and was told his name was Anton. I went to find him but he had already left. Anton was Swiss and I met him finally at another party and we sat out back and smoked some hash. It turned out that he knew Peter and Kathy and we started seeing each other from time to time. Anton was working at a boarding school for incorrigible children and cooking for the lot of them His girlfriend Gina worked there also as a counselor. I would stop by Anton’s house after work and we would play darts and carve beads out of pipestone. We drilled and carved these beads one at a time, by hand. We both hung out in my basement with Michael and learned all he was willing to teach us. 

Anton has an interesting history. He was brought to this country by Henry Kissinger and was met at the airport by him with all the necessary entry and work visas in hand. Anton had five dollars in his pocket and spoke little English. He cooked for Henry as his personal chef for several years then opened a place called Maxine’s in Washington D.C. At that time it was the most famous restaurant on the coast. He turned down the job as chef at the White house during the Carter administration. One day he just walked out of the restaurant, left it all to his partner and hitch hiked to New Mexico. He picked up a job right away, hung out for a while and went on to California. We became great friends. We smoked a lot of pot and made a lot of beads and talked about how great it would be if we had a place in the Southwest where we could make a living making art. 

Michael turned me on to rendezvous. There is a segment of the population that attends these events that are held all over the country. People dress in period clothing and carry period weapons. The theme is about the times of the trappers. Cap and ball rifles, hand forged tools, buckskins and lodges. Great handcrafted art. Some of the best weapons and knives I have seen anywhere. Beads that were used for trade in those days from all over the world. Beautiful hand carved art pieces, paintings and cloth art. There was one rendezvous that we never missed that was held in Calaveras County. That is where I met Tom Maloney and his wife Gay. Like Michael Santos, Tom made custom footwear and was a good trader. We hit it off pretty well and spent some time around the campfire drinking brandy, smoking pot and telling stories.  

That is where I met Crazy Bob, who is not to be confused with moderate Bob, who I met later or waterfront Bob, who I had met a few months before. Then of course there was Two Bulls. Each one of these people earned their name for good reason. 

Crazy bob had a yurt at that time. A yurt is a round canvas structure with walls that stand straight for about three feet then poles angle up to the center to a very special ring and connect at the top. This leaves a smoke hole in the center at the top. The Mongols commonly used this type of structure. He had a forty-nine Chevy panel truck that needed paint years before he got it with a pretty beat up horse trailer attached to it. He had a scrawny Appaloosa pony and a blue tick hound whose name was Tredway. I swear no matter how much that dog ate you could always count his ribs. Bob was from Oklahoma. I have always felt that the license plate for Okalahoma should say the bailing wire, duct tape capitol of the world. If you can’t fix it with one of those you are in real trouble. 

Michael had gone to Oklahoma and he and Bob packed up all his gear, which hung all over that forty-nine panel. Bob had been growing pot at his parent’s farm and some very nasty people tied up the three of them at gunpoint and took it all. They were really quite lucky to be alive. I met his folk’s years later and found them to be very down-home people. Michael and Bob had little money so they hand painted the Oklahoma license plate on the back of that horse trailer and headed west. They made it as far as Reno Nevada and had just enough money to buy one big Mac. Bob was just about to take a bite out of it when that dog Tredway reached right across his shoulder and slipped that meat patty right out of it. Michael said that you could hear those buns slapping together. 

Crazy Bob is a rare individual. Most of the time I have known him he never lived in a house. He was always in the woods somewhere, living off the land. One year I found him in the dead of winter with two feet of snow on the ground living in an old abandoned chicken coop. There was a hole right in the middle of the floor and Bob was sitting there with half of a baseball bat waiting for the rat that lived in that hole to show himself. I don’t know if he ever did get that rat but we warmed him up with some whiskey and some pot and fed him good for a couple of days. 

One year Crazy Bob grew a pretty good crop of pot in Calaveras. Some young man who was about twenty-two made the mistake of stealing some from him. Bob caught the guy and at gunpoint, took him deep into the woods and duct taped him to a tree. He told him he was only going to ask him once where it was and if he did not tell him the truth he was going to make a big hole right in the center of his forehead. The kid told him a place in San Francisco and Bob went down there to retrieve it. He left that kid taped to that tree. It took him three days to get there and back. This kid was a city-it and had never spent any time in the woods. I reckon you can imagine just what he must have gone through taped to that tree like that. Of course the goods were not where he said and Bob was coming back. As he neared the place, the highway was covered with sheriff’s cars, dogs and police. Bob kept right on going.  

Three years later, Bob was up in Alaska in a bar and was telling this story to Two Bulls, who he had never met before that time. Two Bulls told him that that was pretty funny because at the same time he had been in Calaveras and had come up on this kid taped to a tree. Two bulls was a crack shot and carried a mini fourteen. He was also a woodsman. He said he ripped the tape off the kid’s mouth and told him not to say a word. He cut him loose and told him that it was apparent that he had done something pretty bad but he did not want to know anything about it. “Just say nothing, and sit here”, he said. He told the kid to count to one hundred before he moved, and if he moved before he got there Two Bulls was going to put a big hole right in the center of his forehead. Two Bulls went back up the ridge. He said that kid smelled pretty ripe and had wild eyes. I guess the kid got to about fifty and stood up. Two Bulls put two rounds right above his head in that tree, and the kid dropped to the ground and started flapping all around like a fish. About that time a bunch of hound dogs came barreling out of the woods and were all over this kid. They were followed by a bunch of cops. Two Bulls hit the trail. He said had read the paper a few days later and found out that someone had escaped from the Calaveras County Jail and that all that law was out searching for the escapee. They found the kid and he made the paper but it had nothing whatsoever to do with the escape. No one knows what ever happened to the kid but I reckon he won’t ever steal again. The thing about people like Crazy Bob and Two Bulls is that they will do exactly what they say. Getting rid of a body is really no big deal for a woodsman, in mining country, where there are a lot of very deep holes in the ground. 

While they were in Alaska Two Bulls decided he needed a good raincoat. By now these two were fast friends. They were two of a kind. Two Bulls got a hold of some number ten, truck tire tubes and some Barge rubber cement, (don’t leave home without it) and carefully put together a full-length raincoat, complete with a hood. It must have weighed a hundred pounds but he was a big man. One day these guys had trapped a Bobcat and had it in the woodshed. I guess they had been drinking pretty heavy and bet a bunch of the locals that Two Bulls would go into that woodshed and bring out that Bobcat. So here is a bunch of locals with flashlights and dogs surrounding that woodshed. Two Bulls goes on in and the ruckus commenced. That cat got to screaming, Two Bulls got to screaming and pretty quick the door bursts open and Two Bulls comes barreling out with that Bobcat right on his tail. Two Bulls comes to a screeching halt, the Bobcat takes one look at the dogs, people and flashlights and jumps right up on top of Two Bulls head. It took a bit but Two Bulls finally gets a handhold and flings that Bobcat away. The cat made it through the cordon and breaks out to the freedom of the woods. That raincoat was nothing but shreds and tatters and Two Bulls face was covered in blood. To this day he carries scars from that encounter. 

Tom Maloney was known as Big Tom and Gay was mom. There was a party at the bar in Port Costa and I met these two women there and we sort of hit it off. One was named Heather Hakola and the other was Sadie Starr. Sadie was an ex hooker from Nevada and was truly related to the original Bell Star who was in the same profession, and gained her notoriety from being involved with Cole Younger of the James, Younger gang. 

She later married Sam Star in Texas. Sadie and I ended up at my place and started fooling around. She then asked if I had some pot, which I did and she left with it to take to Heather. The next thing I know it is daylight and I have spent the night with Heather. We connected in a very big way and she spent the next four days with me, mostly in bed. Heather had just turned eighteen. It came time for her to report in to her mom and dad and we drove into Concord to do so. I was more than a bit apprehensive. I was twelve years older than her. Guess who opened the door? It was Big Tom! It turned out to be no big deal and I was welcomed with open arms. I had no idea they had any children. It turned out they had three daughters and a couple of boys. We went out to Tom’s moc shop and smoked a few joints and he shared all of his treasures with me. I had known Tom and Gay for two years before this event. Heather moved in with me within a few days and we took up housekeeping.

Tom had a job driving truck and was making fewer and fewer mocs. He had a Pfaff commercial sewing machine that had been sitting for a long time and a good collection of hides and tools. A time came when he was cash poor and had a real need. I gave him fifteen hundred dollars for the sewing machine and a few hundred extra for some tools and some deer hides. I put it all in my kitchen, as there was nowhere else for it to live. It was a small house. 

Rich George and I worked together at Grove Valve and Regulator. Grove takes up two city blocks in Emeryville and employed over four hundred men. We ran vertical turret lathes and manufactured huge valves. Some of those machines had seventy-two inch tables. We were both very good at it. We made it a point to punch the time clock EXACTLY on time. At lunchtime we would go to the parking lot and smoke a joint or two and listen to loud music. We both loved everything Led Zeppelin ever did and Eric Clapton and many others. We were very close friends and often went to the bar after work to drink, play pool and play pinball. Rich was good and very lucky. It is a hard combination to beat. 

He was also big on sports, which I had no interest in at all. I do remember one year, I think was the first year that Joe Montana played quarterback for the San Francisco Forty-Niners. They had won two games at the very beginning of the season. I did a very dumb thing and walked into the break room at work and told everyone that I would put one hundred bucks on them making it to the playoffs and another hundred that they would win the Super bowl. I also put another hundred on the Oakland A’s making it to the World Series and a hundred that they would. WAY to many people got in on the bet. Everyone knew that I did not follow sports and thought I was absolutely crazy. Neither team had done anything for years. I watched every game that year. I won all my bets and came out of it several thousand dollars richer. I never bet on sports again and no one ever asked me to! Rich went by George rather than Rich. Sounds a bit funny, doesn’t it? We spent a lot of time in bars and it was not unusual to have a three or four hundred-dollar bar tab at the end of the week. We were very serious about our drinking, often leaving work, going to the bar, drinking all day and going back to work without any sleep. Sometimes, we did this for several days in a row. It did not affect our work, surprisingly. We worked the swing shift but there were bars that catered to us. We did not need banks, as the bars would always cash our checks.  

I got elected to chief shop steward of the union for no real good reason. I had not asked for it but folks thought I would represent them well. I became a lead man and made some very trick stuff like the manifold for a nuclear submarine. It was a very tricky part and was worth a million dollars. There was no room for error at all.  

George met little Susie. She was going to school and was cocktail waitperson at the bowling alley. George and I got into a bowling league. He was shy about the whole thing and I tricked him into asking her out. I told him I had talked to her about it and she was just waiting for him to ask. Of course I had not talked to her at all. He went right up and asked her out. She accepted.  

We made a pact and a bet and quit drinking, cold turkey on his birthday. It was seventy days to my thirtieth birthday and that was the goal. We spent days hiking all around the straights. Crockett is just up from Port Costa and is where my grandfather was born. I was walking the hills that he had walked as a child and it meant something.  

We fished for Sturgeon and caught a lot of them. On the average these fish were about one hundred pounds and I would sell at the back door of the local restaurants. There was a layoff at work and George and I went out with over two hundred others. Some of these men had twenty plus years with the company, mortgages, boats, cars and children to be worried about. The company wanted to get rid of the union. I started drawing fun-employment. I called it that because the post office was attached to the bar and it was really just fun money. 

I got to know Juanita very well. We had coffee most mornings sitting on the bench in front of the hotel. She was a huge women and her thing was to come up behind a man and hang her breasts around his neck. It was a huge pair! She was an ex madam and owned the warehouse café and bar. The warehouse has all sorts of antiques hanging all over the place inside and at one time had a full sized, stuffed, Kodiak bear behind glass.  

While I was on fun-employment, I got a job for George and I painting the kitchen in the warehouse. It had not been done in years and was covered in grease. It was the perfect job for us. We made ten bucks an hour and all we could drink. We would arrive just before closing, wash down a section of wall, go sit at the bar and drink until closing. We would then paint that section, wash down another section, and wait for them both to dry, drink and play pool. We would keep doing this until daylight. It took several months to paint that kitchen and in the end it cost much more in alcohol than it did in cash.  

One day Juanita asked me to go and get her a bunch of ice. When I was loading it into her walk in freezer I noticed a couple of rather large boxes of fish. I asked her what it was and she said she really didn’t know but would prefer that it was not kept in that freezer. She needed the space so she gave me the fish. It was a lot of fish. I took it home and set it on the roof (on the street side of my house the roof was only about chest level) to let it defrost.  

I got on the phone and called everyone I could think of and told them I was going to have a fish fry that night. After awhile I went to check on that fish and discovered that it was all salmon! I got back on the phone and pretty soon people started showing up with bbq’s. I think we had ten of them going. The fish was spiced with fresh garlic and butter, wrapped in foil and slow cooked in “Webbers”. Anton did most of the prep and the cooking. He also made this desert that is done with handmade vanilla ice cream, pineapple slices that were deep-fried in a special batter. He put the pineapple slices on the ice cream and covered the concoction with REAL chocolate that was made from melted Swiss chocolate bars. It was, “The Great Port Costa Fish Fry”, and is talked about to this day. We had coffee and cocktails and there was hash and pot to smoke. It was a wonderful party. About seventy-five people were there. During the party I took a plate down to Juniata and we fed her dinner. She told me she did not know it was salmon but was happy to see what had been done with it anyway. Of course we all thanked her.  

Mike Bruce had bought into a partnership in a machine shop. It did not work out in the end, as it was a poor choice in partner. The guy ended up owing Mike a great deal of money. As part of the payoff he signed over ownership to his thirty-seven foot, Chris Craft power boat. The trouble was it was in Long Beach and we wanted it in San Francisco. It was a very nice boat all teak and Mahogany. Mike hired this girl Robin who was a pilot and we all caught the train to Los Angles. It was an all night trip. 

Mike brought along an ounce of cocaine and a large Tupperware container of great buds (the best part of the marijuana plant). Needless to say we partied all night on that train ride. We were a bit used up when we arrived at the boat. The inspector had certified that the boat was sound and since we did not know much about boats at the time we took him at his word. We bought two thirty-gallon fuel drums for extra fuel and headed north. We had motored for several hours when I suggested we stop, have a bite of lunch and do some fishing. Robin and I caught fish and Mike puttered around the boat checking on the engines and whatnot. We stayed there for about an hour then continued north. It was New Years Eve. It was one of those crystal clear nights on a very calm sea that was icy cold. It was beautiful. I spent a great deal of my time sitting on the bow watching the stars. We were several miles offshore and out between the mainland and the Channel Islands. Santa Catalina is one of those Islands. We got up about even with Point Magoo, which is a navy test site, when for no good reason everything on that boat died. There was no electrical power at all. We had enough battery left that we thought we were transmitting our S.O.S out but we received no reply. It was the highest tide of the year and a record high at that. About midnight we found ourselves stuck on a sandbar at Point Magoo with waves breaking over the transom. It was very cold and very dangerous. I shined the flashlight in the water and could see the sandy bottom. I figured I could walk the seventy-five yards to shore and go get us some help. We talked about it for a long time before I went over the side to make the attempt. There was a big sand dune out in front of us and I made for it. I was still bundled up in clothing and foul weather gear. I had a handmade wool scarf on that was a gift and it wasn’t long before it was trailing far behind me. They grow when they get wet.  

By now I was treading water and doing a pretty easy breaststroke. I have a huge, gut level fear of sharks. It came from watching the movie jaws on acid and to this day I worry about being in the ocean. I have never been able to watch that movie or read the book though I have tried several times. This was the first time since I saw that movie. All of a sudden I am surrounded by fins, swimming in a circle around me. I am terrified and I knew that if anything had so much as touched me I would have died of a heart attack. I had no choice but to continue on. I did not hurry of break the surface of the water at all. I knew it could very easily have been my time to die and that I had no control at all, of the outcome. I made it to shore, climbed up the big dune and spotted highway one about two miles away. I hiked through gunnery ranges and military stuff and made it to the highway. I now looked like the creature from the black lagoon. Soaking wet, bone chilled with this very long scarf trailing out behind me. It was a slow night on highway one but a car finally came by. I flagged them down and surprisingly they stopped. I was a new car with a newlywed couple in it. My teeth were chattering but I managed to express the extent of the emergency and they told me to get in. I told them I did not want to trash their seats, I was sandy and wet, but they insisted. They turned the heater all the way up and it helped. I asked them to take me to the gate at the Naval Station and they did. They truly went out of their way for me. The duty officer was a young lieutenant with all the brains God gave a rock. It took about an hour of interrogation before they got the Coast Guard on the way.  

The lieutenant, a chief and I got in a jeep and headed cross-country back to the boat. No one offered me so much as a blanket. It was totally, inexcusable behavior. When we got there the bullhorn they had brought along did not work and they wanted to go back to fetch another. I pulled the batteries out of the thing and replaced them with batteries from one of their flashlights and it worked just fine. It was a good thing it worked. We were in radio contact with the Coast guard and could keep Michael and Robin informed about what was happening but we could not hear anything from Michael. I had him flash his light a couple of times for a yes and once for a no. It worked out. In about an hour this Coast Guard Cutter showed up. I think it was about eighty footer. 

They backed within about fifty yards of the boat and stopped. They said it was to dangerous to get any closer. I took the mike from the lieutenant and informed them that Michael was ex Coast Guard and was perfectly capable of dealing with lines and could they just shoot a line over to him. They refused and also refused to put a small boat over the side to bring him a line. Michaels boat was an old search and rescue boat and had a special tow post on the fantail. It would have been a pretty easy thing to get that boat off but they just wouldn’t do it. Michael assured that they were all right and we went back to the base.  

By daylight Michael’s boat had gone over that big sand dune and was sitting in the middle of a mud flat with nothing but mud for a hundred yards in any direction. There were a couple of fast running channels of water between him and the shore and the Coast Guard made a big deal of running lines and rubber rafts to get them off. The whole time I was thinking about that cocaine and that pot.  

I was hoping that Michael had thrown it overboard. It took until about nine in the morning to finally get them off and over to the base. They finally brought out blankets (I think because there was now a woman involved) and we warmed up and were fed something nasty. The whole time Michael was carrying that cocaine and that pot. Somehow no one ever thought it was appropriate to search us.  

We called a salvage company who met us at the flats and connected with this cool guy who was going to do the salvage. He had a huge tow truck with a trailer and a four-wheel drive tow truck that he took within about fifty yards of the boat. He winched it across, used the big truck to pull the little truck and the boat and got it all loaded on a trailer. This took all day but he did get the job done. In the process he had made two holes in the hull to pass the cable through, and that was that. We found ourselves living in the boat yard waiting for the insurance people to show up. Robin went home. 

We really had little to do so we drank beer, did lines of coke, smoked pot and played poker. We were there for about a week. We had made friends with the people who owned the boat yard and the people who worked there. They understood our circumstances and were OK with us living in the boat. They let us use their bathroom and showers. I was walking around the yard one morning when I spotted a sailboat up on blocks with a big hole in the side. 

I asked the owner of the yard about it and he told me that it had belonged to a wealthy man who had died and left the boat to his son. The son had no interest in the boat and it had sunk at the pier. It was a thirty-eight Alden sloop, with every bit of the original equipment on it. He told me there was a back bill of seven thousand dollars in storage fees on it. I asked for and got the phone of the son. Alden is an east coast boat builder that is famous for quality and design. I got an appraisal from the yard for free as to what it would take to fix it and make it seaworthy. I think it was about twenty thousand dollars. I called the son and met him for breakfast. I told him that I had an interest in the sailboat but not in the yard bill. I told him that it would cost a lot to fix and showed him the appraisal. I told him that if he would pay the past due bill we could go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and transfer title but that I would not give him any money for the boat. I would simply take it off his hands. He agreed and we went to the D.M.V. and transferred the title. That was after he paid off the yard.  

I now owned a thirty-eight foot sailboat that I had paid seventeen dollars for! No one believes me when I tell this story but Michael was there and it is the truth. We had spent some time with the salvage and got into a technical discussion about low-end torque on his salvage vessel. Michael and I came up with a venturie design that would be directional and fit around the prop of his boat. He loved the idea and contracted us to build it for him. The insurance people finally showed up and we were free to go. The train made a special stop, right at Port Costa to let us off. I went up to Princeton and met with Al Bergstedt’s brother and contracted him to make the venturie from my drawings. It was ready in about ten days and weighed over a thousand pounds.  

He had special equipment that I had no other access to and it was the smart move to just let him build it. Michael and I loaded it up in his van and took it back south. The salvage guy was thrilled and why he installed it, Michael and I stripped my sailboat of everything valuable. This included compass, radios, depth finders, stoves, sails, lines pulleys; virtually everything that was not nailed down and some things that were. We loaded it all up, went back to my house and put it all in the attic. I started advertising in the sailing magazines to sell the boat. There was no way I could have come up with the money to fix it. The ad ran for a few months and I was beginning to get a yard bill of my own built up. A man in Susanville, California finally contacted me. 

Susanville is as far north and as Far East as you can go and still be in California. It is nowhere near a body of water large enough for that boat. He was a collector though and he wanted it. I told him he would have to pay off the yard bill and pay to truck the boat north and I would come and bring him all the stuff that I had stored. He agreed. He paid for my expenses to get to his house and we spread all the gear out on the grass in front of his farmhouse. He had a big place that was perfectly tended. After he inspected everything, we came to an agreement on a final price and he wrote me a check. It was several thousand dollars. Mike and I decided to turn it into a vacation and go fishing. We went into this little fishing store and started asking the owner about which stuff was the top of the line. He was certainly skeptical of us as we did not look the part at all but he kept putting stuff on the counter, as we would point it out. It was over a thousand dollars in gear and I paid cash, much to his amazement. We fished all the way south, through the Trinity country and beyond. It was a great trip.  

The next year we had a very wet winter and spring. There was flooding everywhere. The road between Port Costa and Martinez was washed out. It ran along the side of the cliff and huge sections simply went down the cliff. They never repaired it. There was a small lake just above Port Costa with an earthen dam that seriously threatened to burst. If it had a big part of the town would have washed away. I remember standing on that dam at two in the morning, helping to reinforce it with sandbags. I could feel it moving in and out. Water was running over the top and right down the main street about a foot deep. We had piled sandbags along both sides to protect the buildings and all in all the damage was minimal. By the end of May it was all over but the road still had two inches of silt on it. It was my birthday and George and I had made the seventy days without drinking. I decided to have a little party. I ordered four hundred and eighty pounds, brought in five Webbers and hired a blue grass band for the event.  

Mike Bruce and Ken (cant remember his last name) had working part time for a man named Bob Truax. Bob was big into rockets and wanted to be the first private person to put a man in space. He bought all kinds of government surplus stuff. A thousand pound thruster that may have cost a half million dollars in development he would pick up for a few hundred bucks. It was all liquid fuel and pretty dangerous. I went to a test of one of those thrusters one time. It was bolted to an Iron “I” beam that was set into a concrete pad. 

When that thing fired off the noise was tremendous and the heat turned that concrete to glass. Bob built the rocket-powered motorcycle that Evil Keneviel used to attempt to jump the Snake River canyon.  

Kenny was into lasers. This was very on in laser technology. He had built a pretty good one and brought it to the party. I rented a huge generator on a trailer just to power the thing. The party just kept getting bigger. On the first day of this party, we filled the hotel, overran the restaurants and bars and people were camping everywhere. We virtually shut down the town. There were hundreds of people. I did not know half of them and most did not know each other. There were old and young, bikers and straights, stoners and drunks. It was a real interesting mix. Michael Bruce did all the cooking and we sent out for another bunch of ribs. I started with five kegs of Anchor beer and bought five more before the end. It went on for the entire Memorial Day weekend. The band was particularly good and kept playing the entire time. Musicians who had never played together would just sit in and play. I don’t know how they did it. They never asked for more money, which I thought was very cool. The event and the experience paid them well.  

The first night I found this guy passed out sitting on his motorcycle. He had his hands on the bars, his head on his arms, and one foot on the peg. I pulled his spark plug wires so that he couldn’t go anywhere. The next morning I gave him coffee and a shower. He spent the next few days sleeping on my couch. This guy called me the next year and asked if I was going to do it again. Apparently he had been hit by a Cal Trans truck on the Bay Bridge and had lost a leg. They gave him a bunch of money and he offered to foot the bill. I told him no. The fact that this party went off with no fights and no injuries and no one ending up in jail was a miracle.  

Kenny fired off that laser that first night and started using a mirror to shoot out all the streetlights. They are light sensitive and will go out in the morning. He fooled them into thinking it was daylight and they would go out. The game was to put them all out before the first one came on again. He took out some in Benicia, about three miles away across the straights. He could project an image of the Starship Enterprise from the television series Star Trek up in the sky. He shot that thing at passing airplanes. We were having a very good time with laser. I was standing next to Kenny and Michael Bruce with a bottle of scotch and a joint when the laser reflected off of a sheriff’s badge. He asked us if we were doing any damage and we said no. He said that he had gotten complaints about shooting the thing at airliners and perhaps we better stop doing it. Of course we agreed and he left us alone. He was a friend with another officer who lived in town (I had made a silencer for a pistol of his) and he also did not want to hassle such a large crowd. There were several other cars called in and they just stood around and did not bother anyone. There was a lot of pot being smoked all over town but they let it go. 

As a side note the officer who I had made the silencer came into my house unannounced and uninvited to pick threat silencer up. I had just harvested my basement crop and had pounds of buds spread all over the house. He picked up a newspaper and covered what he could and what was in his immediate view.  

He sat down and said, “I don’t want to know and I don’t need too, but this is pretty stupid”. He was right and I agreed. There was never another word said about pot and we remained friends for the entire time I lived there. He knew I wasn’t a dealer and that was enough for him. I don’t know much I drank but it was at least a couple bottles of scotch. I found myself cracking bottles with Henry (my step father). He told me that he wanted to try smoking pot, which surprised me but I gave him a few hits off a joint. He went off somewhere and puked his guts out. I had aunts and uncles and cousins I hadn’t invited or seen in years show up. It was a hell of a party that I really don’t remember much about. I had not had any alcohol for seventy days and it hit me hard. I would drink and smoke, pass out, wake up and do it again. Everyone wanted to share a drink with me and somehow I kept going. I was very relieved when it was over. 

George and I took to playing darts. We hung an eight-dollar dartboard with plastic darts over the kitchen stove. There was no other place that had enough space. I had cases of beer stacked around the walls. We had no idea what we were doing, but we would drink a lot of beer and throw darts. Someone, (I don’t remember who) taught us how to play cricket and 301 and 501, so we started doing that. There were always people hanging out at my house. 

It was at about this time that I met Heather and she moved in. George and Susie had just started dating. Heather’s sister, Cyndi was married to little Miki. Miki started hanging out with us and showed us how to really play darts. We got rid of the eight-dollar board and bought a good Nodor English board. Each of us spent at least one hundred dollars on a good set of personal darts. We spent a lot of time in the kitchen drinking beer and throwing darts. Miki had put together a team and asked George and I to join. 

We started league play and went around to many bars throughout the area and competed. It turned out that we were very good. Other teams would buy us pictures of beers and try to get us drunk so that our play would be affected. They did not know that we had been drinking and throwing darts in my kitchen nearly every day for the past two years. We got a lot of free beer. We made it to the finals and it was all tied up for the championship. None of my team was shooting their normal game and it was dead even. There were about a hundred people sitting in folding chairs watching this game. It came down to one shot. The other team missed and it was my turn. I made the shot and the crowd went wild. My team picked me up on their shoulders and the champagne corks were flying all over. Someone dumped champagne on my head. We had just won the Northern California State Championship! It really does not matter if it was skill or luck and in the end who really knows or cares. 

When we played darts in my kitchen, Heather would go right ahead and cook dinner anyway, right in front of the board. If a dart missed and landed in the dinner, there was an immediate five dollar fine. If it hit Heather it was twenty dollars. No one missed often though she did make some money with this rule. 

Ridge Green lived in Port Costa and still does. He has a contracting business and does a lot of re-models on very expensive homes. He is a meticulous craftsman, which is why he always has work. I know a bit about the building trades and sometimes he would need extra help and hire me. Ridge is a very strong man. He can lift a ninety-pound bag of concrete in each hand over his head. I have seen him lift two five gallon buckets of wet mortar to shoulder height and set them on a wall. He was a state champion in the art of Judo. We wrestled a lot and of course he would always end up winner but I know he appreciated the fact that I kept trying.  

There was one time that he had me bent over forward on my knees on the ground and was leaning on my back and neck. One ounce of pressure would have snapped my neck like a chicken. He was good enough to know it and let me up. He knew his strengths and was the mellowest person one could imagine. He had one flaw and I would not really call it a flaw. He had no tolerance at all for bikers. Bikers in a drug deal gone bad had killed his brother, and Ridge wanted some back.  

One time there were about twenty bikers at the Warehouse and we were all there drinking beer. One of them made some comment to Ridge. Ridge very calmly told him that he was the last man they wanted to mess with. Ridge and I went outside and I watched him kick over a Harley Davidson, which of course hit the next one in line, and they all went down. He needed to vent his frustration and anger somewhere. He took off his shoes and socks and stood in the middle of the street. I stood with him. Shortly one of the bikers came out, went back in and then they were all there. Ridge was calm as death. I was afraid, but I was also ready. Ridge told them that he only intended for one of those bikes to go down but it really didn’t matter one way or another he was ready willing and able to take on all twenty of them. He said “It was people like you that killed my brother, but don’t think for one minute that I am easy meat”. Then he just stood there in a fighter’s stance and waited. Those bikers looked around among themselves, someone said it just wasn’t worth it, and they picked up those bikes and rode out of town. They rode around Ridge and I, we hadn’t moved. 

Anne (she owned the ice cream store) had free access to my house and would sometimes store things in my freezer. My basement pot growing operation generated a lot of heat from the lights and I would open the trap door to vent it. One day I left it open and went to sleep. I heard a scream and found Anne at the bottom of the ladder in a heap, surrounded by mature pot plants. Fortunately she had not broken anything but she did get some pretty bad bruises. I got her upstairs and shut the trapdoor. As I was checking her out for injuries, we talked about what she had seen. She had no idea that I was growing at all or that I had been doing so for several years. I told her she had a couple of choices. She could turn me in which meant that I would go to jail. She could ask me to stop which I would do that day or she could realize that it was really only a scientific experiment and that I was not selling any of it to anyone and forget about it. She decided to forget about it and I was very grateful. She was more careful in my kitchen after that incident. 

A reporter for the San Jose Mercury News who was a friend of a friend approached me. They wanted to do an article on the process of indoor growing and I agreed. They called me mister science in the article and did not use my name. The article was several pages of a Sunday paper insert, with many, full color photos. This was early on in the business of indoor growing. Very few people knew how to do this. I no longer have a copy of this article but it really was an exceptional piece. I quit growing shortly thereafter and disposed of everything associated with the project. I retained a huge catalogue of seeds though. I had seeds from the original Indica plants that were brought into this country and some of the original Pollyanna hybrids that were the best of the Sativa. I had years of hybrid seeds that were all carefully labeled with dates and the properties of each seed. This was a particularly rare and valuable collection. I shared samples of these seeds with RC who took them many steps further in his research at the University. 

One morning I walked out on my back porch and saw smoke and fire in the window of this apartment. The window had blown out and the flames were starting to get big. There were about ten apartments in a two story, long, building between my house and the Warehouse. All of these buildings are very close together. I ran inside and got Heather on the phone for the 911 call, and ran back out the door. Peter had just come out and I told him to get a hose and put water in that window. 

I knew where the services were and quickly cut of the gas and electricity to the entire building. Then I started banging on doors and shouting, FIRE. People came stumbling out and moving away. About the time I was sure everyone was out of the building except for the apartment that was on fire, the Port Costa Volunteer fire department arrived. They pulled a hose and started hooking it up. It just did not seem like any of them had a clue what to do. That first line was an inch and a half line and I took upstairs at a run. I kicked the door down and dove into that room on my stomach. I was screaming, “Is there anybody in here”, the whole time. About then the water charged that hose and it took every bit of strength I had to keep it down, finally get control of it and direct the water at the base of the fire. I figured out the nozzle configuration and finally got the right spray going. This room was completely dark with smoke. I was lying on the floor trying to find good air and put that fire out. It was probably three minutes later when a pair of firefighters showed up in proper gear and took over. By then the worst of the fire had been knocked down. I was hot, filthy and dying of thirst. I went around back and Peter was still putting water through that window with a garden hose. I took the hose from him and just stood under it. The fire department asked me to join that day. I politely told them no. They had not checked on the utilities, had not warned any of the residents, had let me run into a burning building with a hose that once charged is supposed to be manned by two people and they had not called for backup. I didn’t want to die from mistakes like that so I declined. 

Ridge and I were doing a remodel job in Berkeley. We were on our home, going north on interstate eighty when we saw this huge column of smoke rising in the air in front of us. It went many thousands of feet into the air. There were fire trucks and emergency vehicles passing us regularly. We did not really think all that much about it but as we were getting closer, we began to wonder if it might be the C& H Sugar plant in Crockett.  

When we got off the freeway at crocket the roads into Port Cost were blocked off and we could see huge flames off in that direction. We told them that we needed to get by as we had family and homes in Port Costa. They would not let us by. We were angry and scared and drove around the backcountry and went in by a back road that we knew. As we were coming down the mountain towards town, fully engulfed burning trees were falling all around us. We didn’t care and we made it into town. We could see houses burning on the side of the hill and in the direction of my house. People with garden hoses were everywhere. The fire trucks were trying to save what houses they could. It was bedlam. Ridge’s house had not been touched (his family was also OK) and I ran to mine. There was no damage yet but Heather and Miki were wetting down the roof with a garden hose. She was OK and that’s what mattered. Miki told me that the firestorm must have been traveling at over seventy miles an hour as it came through town. I could see where all the grass had been burned and even very low bushes were intact. It must have been very fast. A fire creates its own wind as it moves. Bikers were helping disabled little old ladies to safety. Groups were salvaging what they could from burning homes before all was lost. I could see the huge grove of eucalyptus on the top of the ridge go up. The flames were hundreds of feet high. The town survived the fire though many homes were lost. No one died and injuries were all minor. It was directly because everyone worked so well together that it worked out this way. We could have just as easily lost the entire town. There was also a good deal of luck involved. There is no doubt in my mind that God was there that day. 

As it turned out the fire was started when the Fire Chief’s son from a neighboring town drove around throwing lighted road flares out the window. He went to jail for doing so. I have had more experience with fire than I care to acknowledge. Fire is a dangerous business and no matter what training you may have had there are circumstances that demand common sense for survival. There are a lot of people in the profession who have the training but all the common sense that God gave a rock. Many think it is more important to look good than to do well. I learned a lot more about the inner workings of the firefighting profession later in my life. 

George had two teenage boys visiting from New York City and needed to entertain them. Susie was busy so we packed them into my truck and went north to go camping and fishing for a week. We got up to Humboldt County and stopped in at my sister Judy’s house. She lived in the little town of Miranda. Miranda sits on the bank of the Eel River. The Eel is a rude river and runs south to North. I have seen it in flood and it is huge, and dangerous. I think it was 1968 when there was an earthquake in Alaska that wiped out the coast of California in this area. It had been a wet year and the combination was just too much for the Eel and it jumped its banks and took out several little towns. Judy and her husband owned a small mountain of redwoods that started behind the high school and went up from there. Rod was a real redneck and worked as a lineman. I told Judy that we did not want to impose and if it was all right we would just pitch a tent or two down by the barn. She thought it was a great idea and we down by the barn. We were putting our tents up when this very dirty, fully bearded, long haired man comes out of the bush with a twelve-gauge pump shotgun pointing right at me. 

He wanted to know who we were and what we were doing there and I told him. He wasn’t having of it and that shotgun kept moving from one of us to the other as if he was trying to decide who to kill first. It was a hairy moment. I told him Judy was my sister and that we could all go up and check with her. We were marched at gunpoint up to the house. Judy diffused the situation quickly but George and those two boys had been scared bad and were pretty angry about it. I was scared too. There is nothing quite like looking the business end of a twelve-gauge shotgun in the hands of a man with crazy eyes. It turned out that they were growing pot on their place and this guy was their security and their grower.  

I got a tour of their operation and in the end the guy was real impressed with my suggestions and what I knew. They traded me a pound of the very best Humboldt bud (the very best on earth) for some of my seed stock, which I mailed to them later. George was placated and those city kids got an experience that I bet they still talk about. We ended up on the Smith River, which runs along the California, Oregon border. We snuck in through a protected redwood grove and built a camp. It was an extraordinarily pretty spot. It rained for a couple of days and everything got pretty wet. We built a fire in a huge hollow redwood and hung a tarp partway over the door. The rain came down like it only does in that part of the country. It was like there was no space between raindrops. Like it was just a sheet of water falling out of the sky. When it cleared off we went to fishing and caught a bunch of trout. There was a fisherman who told us about a hole that was a hundred feet deep downstream that everyone was catching salmon in. He told us what bait was being used and we hiked down to give it a try.  

While George and the boys were fishing, I traded a guy some pot for a huge salmon that he had caught an hour earlier. We had only been there for about an hour and I showed up with this fish. I asked them what their problem was and asked why they hadn’t caught anything. We wrapped that salmon in foil with butter and garlic and cooked it in the coals of our campfire. One of the best fish I have ever eaten. Weeks later I told George how I had “caught” that fish. I told him all it really took was the proper bait!  

On the way back, we stopped at a MacDonald’s for a burger. My dog Blue was with us of course and of course I bought one for him. We were all standing there eating and watching Blue. That dog ate the bun, the lettuce, the pickle and the onion, but he would not touch that meat. I had seen what that dog would eat. I have never eaten at a MacDonald’s since. They had always advertised that their meat was 100% pure beef. I reckon that the 10% that was actually meat was 100% pure beef! Only they and the U.S.D.A have any idea what is in the rest of it. I found out later that it was approved by the government, to use sawdust, as food filler. I wonder what kind of trees they used and if it mattered. Were there a variety of trees? Was one sap better than another?  

Later they approved using ground up milk cartons for food filler. Personally I don’t want all those sharp little bits of plastic running around my innards. I don’t eat fast food. It is neither fast, cheap nor, quite possibly food at all.  

I suspect that a great deal of the cancer and obesity in this country can be directly linked to these food outlets. Rather than say so and taxing them for putting out harmful products the government still goes after tobacco products. We did have a good outing though and those two boys had stories to take back to the big city. 

Mike Bruce was big on softball. He played on a team in Mountain View that played slow pitch ball. The team was called “The Guzzlers” and they played beer rules. Everyone had a beer with them when out on the field. If you knocked over your beer while going for the ball it was an automatic run for the other team. If they hit your beer with the ball while batting it was an automatic run for your team. Whoever lost the first game paid for the beer. Mike and I had a tradition where we would get together once a year and do up an ounce of cocaine. It was about the only time of year I did it at all. One year he bought it and the next time it was my turn. For the three days or so it took us to do this we drank a lot, slept little and got in a lot of visiting. The problem with cocaine is that most people only did it in little amounts, usually one gram. All that did was to make you want more and that is how addictions happened.  

One time he had a softball game and I went with him. His team came up one man short, and rather than call the game, the other team agreed to let me play. I was put out in right field. Of course everyone hit the ball to me thinking that I wouldn’t be any good but nothing got past me. One fly ball I caught at a full run over my left shoulder, in a full dive. That guy had been trying to get one by me all day and he could hit. I had started running as the ball was pitched. Every time I got to bat I drove in runs and got on base. It was just one of those rare days on a ball field. I could not do anything wrong. We really beat the hell out of the other team. It was somewhere during that time that Mike’s wife Claudia (they had met in the house we had all shared in Palo Alto and got married) came into an inheritance and they ended up putting most of it up their noses. They had a real problem with cocaine for a few years but in the end beat it though it did cost them a lot of money. 

George and Susie and I had been planning to make a bicycle trip across the country. We had each spent a great deal of money building bikes, outfitting them, and riding to get in shape for the trip. We intended to go from California to New York. Just before our departure date I was offered a job back at Grove Valve that I really needed and wanted so I cancelled out on the trip. Before the job started though Miki Santos, George, Susie and I made a road trip. Miki had a Friend Eddie Dunk who also was a moccasin maker who lived in Arizona. He wanted to go visit, and George and Susie decided that starting the cross-country trip at the top of the Continental divide was good enough. We piled all the gear into my Datsun truck and went to Sedona, Arizona. Eddie had a ranch called “Woo Canyon Ranch” that was outside of town about fifteen miles on dirt roads. It was one hundred and sixty acres right in the heart of the red rocks. There was no water but there was power and phone. He had built an outhouse that composted all the human waste and had a sweat lodge that was a little square structure with windows that was cedar lined and could hold about fifteen people. He and Michael spent their time trading buttons, beads and hides and George and Susie and I hiked around the area.  

There is a ranch close by owned by Bob Bradshaw. Bob was tied in with the movie industry and his place was often used for a location. He had built a complete old west town on his place that used many times. No one in our crowd knew Bob and the day we went to check out the town no one was there. Bob did not live at the ranch. Michael saw a cool hand painted sign that said “Universal Studios” and decided that it must belong to him. We strapped it on top of the truck and used it for pictures all over that part of the country and up in Colorado. Right next door to Ed’s place there is a place called Red Canyon that has some ancient ruins from the cliff dweller people that are in remarkable shape. The people were called the Anazasi, which translated simply means those that came before. It was a name given to them by the Apache. The ruins have rooms with windows, multiple stories, cedar window lintels and artifacts. In those days no one ever went there and we found little corncob’s many intact with the corn seeds that resemble those you can now by at Halloween. Lots of pottery shards. You can still see the fingerprints in the mortar from those who built this place. Today you have to make an appointment with the forest service to even go there. 

I had never met anyone like and his family. They lived completely outside of the system. Miki did too but I guess I just hadn’t given it any thought. His wife Cheryl and two sons Tsunami and Raven were wonderful, sharing people. Ed kept telling that I could do this to and showed me ways to accomplish it. I watched him make a pair of Moccasins and he gave me a couple of pointers. This is something Miki had never offered to do though I spent a great deal of time in his shop in my basement. I was completely fascinated. 

We were there for about a week then went up to the Grand Canyon and on up to Colorado, all on back roads. We had a Rand McNally atlas but it seemed that Miki knew all the roads. We camped among the aspen at altitude. I learned later that Aspen is really the largest tree in the world. A grove of Aspen is all interconnected and is really one organism. We dropped George and Susie off on the top of the Continental Divide as planned. It was a hard parting. Miki and I went on to Aspen and met up with another Moccasin maker and traded some more. I was starting to get the hang of what was going on. All of these people had a Pfaff industrial sewing machine. So did I, it had been sitting in my kitchen for a year gathering dust, but I did not have a clue how it worked. 

When we got back to Port Costa I broke that machine down to the frame, cleaned and oiled every part, put it back together, timed it, tuned it and fired it up. It was really fast. It put down twenty seven hundred stitches a minute. It would sew from nine-sixteenths thick material to silk. It was too quick for me. I machined a handle with bearings and special fittings so that I could hand crank the machine. This way I could control every stitch. By doing this, I became quite the accomplished Pfaff mechanic and fix them for other people to this day. 

Big Tom gave me some patterns for leather bags from medicine bag sized too much larger and showed me how to do a foot tracing for making a pair of sandals. Heather had been doing beadwork since she was about eight and had given it up. I took her up to Placerville and bought her a nice collection of beads. 

I would make bags and sandals and she would add beautiful beadwork. She also made several designs for earrings. We started selling them off the pack porch on weekends and pretty soon we had a pretty good side business going. I had always thought that sewing was something that only women did, but Miki, Ed and Tom showed me that it simply was not the case. I was now making money with a piece of furniture that had been sitting in my kitchen for over a year doing nothing. 

Miki took me up to Napa with him to the Hide and Leather House when he went to get some material. I was introduced to the owner and bought a couple of hides for myself. It was a huge warehouse in a three story, old Victorian building. They have since changed locations and have a much larger building. I had never seen so many different types of hides in such quantities. 

Industrial conveyor belting has had a lot of research and development put into it. In the finial analysis, its job is to grip and it does its job very well. There are many different styles, grades, patterns, thickness and colors. It makes for a very good sole for footwear. In those days we used it pretty much exclusively for this purpose. Miki had been experimenting with glue on soles using Woodstock, Vibron and others. There is a real art to gluing. Coating the material, both parts, letting it completely set up, coating it again, letting it set up, coating it for a third time, not letting it quite set up and bonding. Then there is a process of hammering the two surfaces and using a pair of channel lock pliers to crimp the edges. Temperature is an extremely critical factor. Humidity would also affect the outcome. I am now a master at it but it did take a lot of trial and error to perfect the technique.  

I kept adding to my knowledge of leather crafting and tried all kinds of things. Some of them would sell and some would not. I read books and learned to braid. I once took thirty-one strands of leather that were ten feet long and braided them into a single piece. It could have been used for a towrope. I learned hidden braids for belts and square and round braids. I learned to tie a monkey’s fist and many other trick things made with leather lacing. I learned to make buttons. I made them from old buffalo head nickels. I used a big ball bearing to form a dome with them after I had annealed them, then soldered on a ring. I made buttons from any coin that I liked. English half penny’s, Australian pennies, coins from all over the world that had an interesting or unique design. Newer coins did not work as well as they are a bastardization of the pure metal and will not take either the doming or the soldier. I made buttons from wood, bone, antler and ivory. I made buttons from fossilized materials such as fossilized walrus ivory and mastodon. This is ivory that is mined, not killed and on the average is about thirty thousand years old. Beautiful colors and each tusk was unique. Nicely marbled cores with colors from golden to white. The outside of the Ivory would be black or brown. Ivory is still one of my favorite materials. 

Heather had always wanted to go to Europe and an opportunity came our way. Peter and Kathy had already moved back to Switzerland so she did have a place to stay when she arrived. I gave her a handful of hundreds to supplement what she already had and she was off for six weeks. 

  Miki and I took the opportunity to go south and visit Ed and Cheryl in Sedona, Arizona. There was a young Mexican kid, Robert, he had taken on the lease at Peter and Kathy’s old apartment and he decided that he wanted to go along with us. We got everything ready to go and were sitting in the truck. I went to start it and it wouldn’t turn over. Not a particularly good omen. I got out and fussed with the battery connections and came back and tried again. It started right up. I looked over at Miki who had not moved at all and he had a big smile on his face. He had a five-pound zip lock bag of mushrooms sitting on his lap. We opened up the sliding window that went into the camper and passed some through. We started eating mushrooms in my driveway and did not stop until well after getting to Ed and Cheryl’s. 

I had taken a week off of work at Grove Valve. We got wrecked long before we got out of the Bay Area. Going south on Interstate five we saw huge farms and fields. One that had only a huge water tank on it and we figured this was a tank farm. Another that had a truck lot was most certainly a truck farm. They grew a lot of cotton in that area in those days and you could see the progression of growth. There would be a field with nothing but bare sticks, and then the next field would have little bits of cotton attached. The next field would have a whole bunch of entire cotton balls attached to the plant. I figured out that there were these little gremlins, called, Semi Tropics with sticky little pads on their fingers that would go into all the drug stores and take all the cotton off of the cue-tips and put them on those bare sticks. There is a cutoff between Interstate Five and Highway ninety-nine just north of Bakersfield. I don’t remember the name or number of the highway but I have crossed it many times. On that cutoff there is a high school. The name of that school is Semi Tropic!! We were going down the east side of Tehachapi pass when the truck started wobbling pretty badly. Miki commented on it and I just said it was probably the cracks in the concrete. When we reached the bottom of the pass I pulled over at a truck stop, under a streetlight to check it out.  

The right rear tire was almost completely off. It was held on by three lug nuts that were spun out almost to the last thread. I opened the camper door and got out my toolbox. Robert looked funny as hell in the light of that flashlight. He was at least as wrecked as we were. We had not heard one word from him the entire time. He asked what was wrong and I told him the wheel was falling off but not to worry, I would have it fixed in a few minutes. When I opened my toolbox and shone the flashlight inside, nothing made any sense. All of the sockets looked the same and I could not read the numbers to determine the size. It took a long time to find the correct tools, jack up the truck and tighten down what was left of those lug nuts. I spaced them differently so that the tire had the best chance of survival. I did it all by feel. No one else got out of the truck. It was all I could do to function. I had not realized just how stoned I was until I had to do something. Driving was easy. We came down Oak Creek Canyon from Flagstaff and decided to camp there for a day, even though it wasn’t very far to Ed and Cheryl’s at Woo Canyon. Oak Creek Canyon was full and there was only one campsite left open. It was the worst possible choice. It was in the direct sun and it was hot. There was no shade. We built a camp closer to the cliffs that was in the shade.  

We had just finished dinner and Mike had a cherry cobbler going in a Dutch oven and a pot of Pete’s coffee brewing. The smell in the woods was marvelous. Two forest rangers came by and started hassling us about having put our camp where we did. They told us to put out the fire and move back to the prescribed spot. Miki looked up from that fire (it was down to coals) lifted off the lid of that Dutch oven and offered them some cobbler and coffee. Gourmet food is just as easy as junk, even on an open fire. It just takes a little more care. They accepted and we made friends. They could see that we had cleared and appropriate area around our fire and that there was no danger. Rocks surrounded the fire. In the end they asked us to let the fire go out and when they found out we were moving on at daylight let us stay where we were. It was obvious we were woodsman and we assured them that we would put everything back as we had found it. We did so, and no one but a good tracker would have known that we had ever been there. 

We stopped in Sedona at Basha’s (a grocery chain) and spent a couple of hundred dollars of food and proceeded on to Woo Canyon. They did not have much in those days and it was the right thing to do. We had a couple of cases of Corona to go with the food. After a couple of days, it crossed my mind that even though they did not have much, these people were the happiest couple I had ever seen. Their kids were running around naked most of the time. These were two happy kids. It struck me that I was a bit envious of their lifestyle.  

Ed was growing a small crop of pot up the canyon and he showed me what he was up to. He had placed four fifty-five gallon drums way back in the canyon and had buried a line from there to a spot near the house. He taught me how to run a siphon and proved that if the line was laid properly you could make water run uphill. Every drop of water he had for anything all he hauled in. He did it in a waterbed. He showed me about a hundred rattraps that were surrounding his crop. There were only about twenty plants but they were all doing nicely. He would cut a notch in a almond and tie it to the rat trap then set the trap. His big problem was water. The rats knew that there was moisture in the stalks of the plants and would chew through the cambium layer in a circle, like a beaver. Of course it would kill the plant. His rattraps were very effective. They could not get the almond. 

I had ordered new studs for the wheel of my truck and we went into town to get them. We stocked upon beer and did a pretty thorough job of replenishing Ed’s basic supplies. We had taken stock of what he really needed and filled the need. I fixed my truck with Ed’s help and while we were doing so he told me about a spot that I could hike into and camp and swim, if I wanted. We were spending a lot of time in Ed’s shop and he was telling stories and making moccasins. I watched and I learned. I asked questions and he answered them. He was very open with me. At that time, I was a factory worker as far as he was concerned and we had little in common. I think he saw my need to get out of the system, long before I had. He kept telling me that I could do it if I really wanted. He told me that I had the smarts and the skill. That week went to fast. 

Robert and I decided to go to the spot that Ed had told me about and we put together some stocked packs and hiked in. Today we call this spot the crack (It has been in many publications about the area) but in those days no one had ever heard of it and no one ever went there. IT is five miles to get there up the bell trail along Beaver Creek. Most of the way is just hot and tiring. At about four miles the trail climbs up the red rock cliffs and the view is spectacular. The trail is several hundred feet up and narrow. It then drops right down to the creek and continues what looks like straight up on the other side. This spot is called Bell Crossing. We turned left right there, as instructed, and went about two hundred yards upstream. There is a spot there where the red rock cliffs nearly touch across the creek. The swimming hole is about thirty feet deep and there are flat red rocks all around to sun on and to dive off. This is one of the premiere places in Arizona. We spent a week there without seeing one other person. We hiked and swam all over the area. Nights around the campfire we talked about Ed and Cheryl and how they lived. We were both taken by it all. 

When we got back to Woo Canyon all was right with the world. Of course we brought in more supplies. That fifteen miles of dirt road is pretty rough and going to town for food was done only when really necessary so if someone was coming in it was only natural and polite to bring what they could. They had electricity there which was cool and they had a phone though I did no9t know about the phone at the time. We Sweated in Ed’s sauna several times and played music. Ed taught me some chants to do with a drum. I spent a lot of time hiking the rocks in the area and found arrowheads, single-family dwellings from the Anazasi and pottery. I ran the rocks five hundred feet off the deck like I was an Indian of the old days. I tanned up pretty good. There were a number of occasions that I would just sit, way up high and meditate. I had experiences that were profound and felt a power I had not known before. The whole place had a deep feeling of home to me. I had gone there for a week and had stayed for a month. I saw little of town or civilization. I never contacted anyone from my job at Grove. 

Heather arrived home from Europe about the same time I got back from Arizona. I told her that I was going to quit my job, move to Arizona and start making shoes for a living. I thought it might freak her out but she said, “When do you want to get going”? I went in to work and right about the time the boss was asking me where I had been and why I had not called, I asked him if he would please arrange for my check to be cut and that I was quitting. He was shocked. He asked why? I told him. He was shocked again and tried very hard to talk me out of it. Company loyalty (I had been there for years), How much they needed me, all the usual stuff. He offered me a better position in management. He offered me better pay. I asked again for my check and told him that I would never cut another piece of steel. He really didn’t believe but he arranged for the check and I signed out all my tools and toolboxes and went through the ordeal of quitting a job like that without burning any bridges. 

Heather and I had a couple of weekends of yard sales to thin out our stuff and to make some traveling money. We had a lunch with my parents who had stopped by to visit and they were shocked at our decision and tried to talk me out of it. Henry was pissed that I would give up a good trade and go gallivanting around the country.  

I spent as much time with Big Tom as I could and asked him every question I could think of. I took orders for five pair of moccasins. This meant that I had taken money, made a duct tape mold of the foot and represented that I would deliver the final product. I bought hides for the job. I had never made a pair of moccasins but I did have a basic understanding of the process and I had Heather’s support. She was sure that I could do it. I do not know if she had any idea how important her support was to me and how unsure I was of myself. I was determined though and that was about all I had going for me. We loaded up the truck with my work bench (this is a section of an old bowling alley and is laminated wood in two colors that is about three feet by four feet and four inched thick; it is heavy!) the kitchen table and chairs (a beautiful set that Peter and Kathy had left for me cone in is black lacquer with three leaves) our kitchen stuff, a coffee table and some clothes. We hit the trail! The weather was perfect and we had a great time during the entire trip. We smoked pot and tried to figure out what came next. It was an adventure to the max! I told her about a house I had seen in Jerome that had been for rent and hoped that it still was. 

Ed and Cheryl were gracious enough to let us hang out while we looked for a place. Ed showed me how to make a pattern for the shoes. The house in Jerome had rented and we were having a hard time finding anything at all.  

Jerome is a mining town that sits on the steep sloped side of Mingus Mountain. It has become a lovely tourist town with restored Victorians and shops and bars and activities. At one time it was the largest copper mine in the United States. In the late seventeen hundreds when the Natives showed the Spanish this deposit, the Spanish wrote back to Spain that in was of poor quality and of no real consequence. Apparently they were more interested in gold. There was also a lot of gold in this mountain but the natives never told them about that. There are several hundred miles of tunnels under the town of Jerome. It is a deep hard rock mine. All of the lower tunnels are flooded with water. 

There was a project in Panama that Teddy Roosevelt got going in a big way that was known as the Panama Canal. They employed two huge steam shovels that were specially built for this project. These were the two largest steam shovels of their time. 

One of them ended up in Jerome and was used for back digging old tunnels to expose any minerals that may have been overlooked. While it was doing this it hit some unexploded charges that had also been overlooked and it blew up, killing the operator. The force of the explosion was so great that the bucket of the shovel was found in the valley, several miles away, and several other tunnels collapsed, taking some homes and other buildings with them. The city jail slid down the side of the hill and is still there to this day. Halfway down the mountain is an area called, The Gulch.  

It is a narrow gulch that has homes with basements. Basements are rare in Arizona and these were used for the butchers of the time to help preserve the meat. Below the gulch is the town of Clarkdale. Really it is just another small town that contained the smelters used for processing the ore. Below Clarkdale are huge leach beds that border the Verde River. They used cyanide to extract the ore and these leach beds are yellow. Of course they are now building houses on them. After all, land is expensive and this land is not. Today Clarkdale boasts a cement plant, which is the only industry in the Verde Valley and also has a train that takes tourists up the Verde River to the abandoned town of Perkinsville. In the winter months, the Bald Eagle’s nest along this route and it is quite beautiful.  

In the nineteen sixties, Jerome was an abandoned mining town that was really only a few falling or fallen down buildings. There were a bunch of hippies that had no place to go, so they moved in. Phelps Dodge Corporation owns the entire mountain as well as the town of Jerome. Phelps Dodge is a huge mining concern with holdings all over the world. Phelps made a deal with the hippies: if they would bring these structures back to their original condition, Phelps Dodge would grant them a hundred year lease. It was to everyone’s advantage and there were a lot of hippies that took them up on the offer. Phelps now had security on the mountain and people to block off some of the more obvious and dangerous holes in the ground that dropped down forever. There still a lot of these air shafts and tunnels all over that mountain. Today when someone sells a home or a structure there, I think that really they are selling the lease. Unless there was a different negotiation with Phelps Dodge, this would be the case. I do not know for sure how it works. 

Heather and I looked into this but the buildings that were left were so far gone it wasn’t practical. We also had no money for materials.  

Up until about two thousand and four, they were still mining gold from the Little Daisy mine. The guy that had been doing so for years just packed up and left in the middle of the night. No one knows what happened to him. 

Jerome sits about halfway up the side of Mingus Mountain and at night the lights of the town sparkle. No other town in the area does this. It turns out that they still use the old style lights and that is what creates the sparkle. 

We checked the newspapers and were quickly running out of money. Finally there was one house in the entire valley that came up for rent and we took it. The rent was five hundred and fifty dollars. By now I had six hundred dollars to my name. We took the fifty and bought food. We had no electricity for the first night. I pulled the electric meter off, removed the plastic stops and plugged it back in. I stole the power but we did have lights! I needed some money so and I saw a job in the newspaper looking for a photojournalist. I could write, I had a good camera and figured I could do the work. I talked my way into the job. We took care of the business with the electric company. Jane Rademaker worked for the newspaper and she introduced me to her husband Joe. We hit it off right away. 

Heather and I had no furniture in our house. It was a big three bedroom, two car garage tract home with a huge living room. We ate acid and played hacky-sack in the living room. We also invented a new game that is played with darts. It is called Dark Darts. We played darts in the garage, without lights. It is surprising how good we got at it. The game requires a highly developed sixth sense. We watched the sunrise out the kitchen sliding door. There was a perfect view of the red rocks and I could see the mountain that was just above Woo Canyon. We call that rock the Loaf of bread, as that is just what it looks like. On the maps it is called Sugarloaf. Joe was the manager of the only two local theaters and did the projection in the theater in Cottonwood. He took the money in Sedona. We would sit up in the projection room and drink beer and smoke pot and watch movies. He gave me a huge collection of movie posters, which I used to cover the walls in the garage. We talked about growing pot and decided to do so. I talked to Ed about it and he let me get some starts going. Joe and I drove all over Mingus Mountain looking for a good spot to grow. We finally located the perfect spot. The problem was water. We ran an underground line down this draw and put in some fifty-five gallon drums. We dug out our holes and fertilized. We ran drip line and drippers. We could take a waterbed full of water, pull up to the draw and fill the drums in about five minutes, without leaving the road or leaving tracks. The trees in this draw were about fifty feet high though you would never guess this was the case. It all looked pretty barren but it was not. We shot a lot of game birds and squirrels and cooked them up for dinner. Joe is an avid hunter and a hell of a good shot. I surprised him one time when I took two pigeons with one shot. It was horseshit luck. The second bird just flew in front of the pellets when I took the first bird. I acted like it was intentional and to this day, Joe is convinced that I am a superb marksman! 

With Heathers help I worked a little every day on those five pair of moccasins. One day Ed stopped by and told me that Cheryl was freaking out over the starts and that I was going to have to move them. Joe and I went to Woo Canyon, loaded them into the back of my truck and brought them to my house. They were almost a foot tall. There was a fiberglass door on the garage and we put them in there. I do not know how we got away with transporting those plants, but we did. Heather and I had been in Arizona for about six weeks. 

During this time Ed offered me some work. I went to Woo Canyon to check it out. I had not known, but he was involved in a huge cocaine smuggling operation. They took Air stream trailers and built sealed boxes in the floors. One trailer could move six hundred Kilos of cocaine. They were moving several of these trailers twice a week through Woo Canyon. He told me he would pay two hundred thousand dollars for me to bring a trailer across the border. I said no. He told me that he would pay one hundred thousand dollars to deliver a trailer anywhere in the United States that was required, once it had made the border crossing. I said no. He offered me a job putting these trailers back to their original condition once they had made the trip one time. That sounded pretty good and I said OK. He paid me one hundred dollars a day, kept me in beer and cocaine the entire time and any tools that were necessary he paid for and allowed me to keep. As I was opening up the floor of the first trailer, I brought out a kilo of cocaine that had been overlooked. I threw it over to Ed who got this big smile on his face and said “payday”!  

He took a hacksaw, brought out a scale and split it right down the middle with me. I had never seen so much cocaine, much less owned it. At that time it was worth about fifteen hundred dollars an ounce. This was the real stuff. It was one hundred percent pure Peruvian flake. Cocaine does not get any better. There were huge rocks that weighed up to half an ounce.  

Heather thought this was a good thing and she and Jo and Jane and I did a lot of it. A week later, Ed showed up and told me that he and Cheryl and the boys were moving into Sedona. He told me that I was the only person that he knew that he trusted enough and who understood enough to be entrusted with Woo Canyon. He asked me if I wanted to move out there. I asked him when he was moving, how could I help and was today to soon? He laughed! Three days later, Ed had moved out and we had moved in.  

I couldn’t believe it! I was the caretaker of one hundred and sixty acres in the heart of the most beautiful country I have ever seen. The rent was one hundred and twenty five dollars per month. I got on the phone to Anton and told him what had happened and invited him down to check it out. Neither he, nor his wife Gina had ever been to Sedona. Heather and I went to Phoenix and met them at the airport. Tony and I sat in the back of the truck on the way back. I had some cocaine, some beautiful buds and some acid to greet him with. I had Heather (she was driving) come into Sedona from highway one seventy-nine which is the most scenic approach. Tony and Gina were immediately taken with it all. They loved Woo Canyon

when we got there and we had a great meal and watched the sun go down. We had spent years in Port Costa talking about having this exact situation. Tony told me the next morning that he was ready to move. I asked him what Gina thought and he said it really didn’t matter to him, he was moving! I told him that I would build him an apartment on the east end of the barn that had once been a chicken coop and he said he really didn’t care where he lived as long as it was in that canyon. They stayed for about a week then flew home.  

Joe and I bought materials to build the apartment. We bought pallets of wood that no one else wanted. Wood that comes to Arizona is most often green and banded. When they cut the bands the wood dries out quickly and develops twists and curves. What I bought was this lumber and it was cheap. I might only get fifteen feet of useable material out of a twenty foot two by four or two by six, but the rest was still firewood. I bought bags of concrete for one dollar simply because the bag had a small tear in it and could not be sold otherwise. Joe and I scrounged construction sites and talked to the foremen and got permission to take whatever they put in the dumpsters. We also worked over the dumpsite in Jerome. There was a lot of barn wood and four by fours and studs that were rough-cut to the old dimensions. Periodically they would burn this dumpsite. 

It is surprising what we were able to gather for free or for very little money. Joe and I built the apartment. We did a lot of drugs and drank a lot of beer and got it done. When we pulled up the old plank floor, I found about fifty license plates from various years starting in the twenty’s. They were all Arizona plates and some were pure copper.  

Arizona, after all, is “The Copper State”. They were remarkably well preserved and I later gave them to a collector whose need and desire for them was greater than mine. We built a skeet range and loaded our own ammo and shot skeet. I had an old goose gun with a very long barrel. It was bolt action and held three in a bottom fed clip. It was a very unusual twelve-gauge shotgun. Joe shot a fancy semi auto. We competed for points. We would shoot twenty-five birds each. It was rare that the separation between us was more than two birds. Neither of us missed much. Joe had been shooting like this most of his life. I was new to the shotgun but I had an edge, I was a natural with it and I had a long barrel. I could wait longer than he could for my shot as I had better range. Most of the time I won. One day I had Joe throwing skeet and I would quick draw my twenty-two pistol and take a crack at them. He thought I was nuts to even try this. After about the first ten birds, I finally hit one to his amazement and mine. I knew now that I could do it and hit several more after that. There was no consistency to it though. 

It took about a month to finish the job and I called Anton. About ten days later they drove up in Gina’s BMW loaded down with their stuff. We had a party for them a few days later that had about fifty people and live music. 

There was a local band in those days called “The Spam Tones”. Lee Downing, Moderate Bob and several others played with this band. They played a great variety of music from “The Grateful Dead” to Reggae. It was good dance music and the ladies all loved it. They wrote their own music as well: I like it cause it’s pink, I like it cause it’s greasy, I like it cause it slips and slides and goes down real easy…I got spam on my mind!  

There were huge parties down at the Verde River. Mostly these were naked parties. No one cared. The food was always great, the music was great and the view was great. There were parties in Jerome at the old high school. The first high school in the valley was in Jerome. After they opened the new one in Cottonwood, they started renting out rooms in Jerome. Artists rented the rooms. It is a huge brick building and they made a roller rink out of the gym. There were great parties in that building. 

Joe, Anton and I kept fixing up the barn. I built a moccasin shop, a lapidary shop and ultimately a clean room in there. There also was a spot with a double bed in it for guests. This building progression took time and did not happen all in the first year. Anton and I hiked all over those rocks. We came upon amazing artifacts and spectacular views. We hauled water in a waterbed in the back of my truck and we composted the human waste. Winter was coming and we hauled firewood. We had no chain saw and we hand cut what we found dead and down. There is a place in Cottonwood called, “Phelps and Son”, that manufactures trusses for homes. We could go there and get truckloads of end cuts for free and we did. You can still do this today. It is good stove wood as it is all kiln dried wood, and burns with good heat and little ash. We found a place that we called the stump bank. It was an area of a few square miles where the trees and been clear cut and the stumps were pulled and left to lie there. We picked up lots of stumps. We thought we had put a pretty good pile of wood.  

There was a big rubber company down in Phoenix and I got to know the owner pretty well. He had everything I needed in conveyor belt hose and a lot of other things. I would show up and we would go down in the basement and do a couple of lines of cocaine. Then we would trade. I never once paid money for anything I got from him. It was always cocaine or pot that we traded. He never abused either to my knowledge and ran his business very well.  

There was a fireplace in the main house and we had put a wood stove in Tony’s apartment. We also had a stove in the barn and one in the sauna. It takes a lot of wood to feed all that. Anton and I gathered, cut and split it all by hand. We just were not into the noise a chainsaw makes. It also rained a lot from late July through August and September. This season is called the Monsoon season and happens every year. Tropical storms come up from the South into Arizona. It rained somewhere in the valley every day. Huge, dark, black, clouds, full of rain, and lightening. Sometimes it rained at our house and it came down in buckets. I had set up systems of gutters and barrels to catch as much as we could when this would happen. We used this water to wash dishes and shower. We also grew a small vegetable garden. The lighting shows where amazing. It is God’s light show. Often I would sit out and play guitar as it was happening all around me: Everywhere, but on me. There is a condition that I have seen several times but is still particularly rare. You have to be in the right place at the right time and the conditions have to be right also. The entire valley will get black as night from one of these Monsoon storms right in the middle of the day. One ray of sunlight will come through the clouds and strike on a red rock spire in the distance. It lights up that spire differently than at any other time. You can see the aura of that rock. It vibrates with color and beauty. I have never caught this on film and I am not sure it can be done to truly represent this condition. It touches my spirit to see this happen. 

I was still growing pot up in the canyon. There was one particular plant that was fifteen feet tall and shaped like a Christmas tree. There were buds the size of my forearm all the way to the bottom of that plant. As the light from the setting sun would pass through it, it glistened with resign. We harvested in late November. That single plant yielded three point two pounds of buds. There were only fourteen plants that survived the conditions and the rats but we had a pretty good stash. Somewhere I have a picture of that harvest. Beer flats of buds all over the table and house. We never sold any of this bud we did trade with it. We also used the cocaine as trade goods. Lots of folks were into cocaine in those days. I had had my fill after that first month and had buried it back in the canyon in a metal ammo box.  

That first winter was particularly harsh and cold. We huddled around the fireplace, which was totally inefficient. It would not heat the entire house. In fact if we went more than four feet from the fireplace it was really cold. It snowed a lot and often there was a foot or more on the ground. Anton would put a whole stump into the fireplace, with part of it going up the chimney. The fire roared but it gave little heat even though we damped it down as much as we could without letting smoke into the house. It was pretty cozy and we were all good with it. There were no complaints and we made a lot of trade goods. The women made beaded earrings and did beadwork on leather bags that Anton and I made. Anton and I kept the pathway to the outhouse; his apartment, the barn and the sauna clear of snow. I remember one morning I was sitting in the barn. It was early and I had just started a fire in the wood stove and the place was beginning to heat up.  

I looked out the window and saw Anton running across the snow-covered ground naked and barefoot with a towel slung over his shoulder. He went to the sauna and took an icy cold shower and came running right on back! There was no way I would have ever done that. I took the time to get a fire going in the sauna (we also called the sweat lodge) to heat the place up. The water was still icy but I would also heat a pot of hot water on the stove in the house and that made it all tolerable. We learned to get very clean with two gallons of water or less. We had put a new fifty-gallon plastic water tank on the roof and run a showerhead inside. The water in that tank would heat a little in the sun during the day, but not enough to really make any difference at all. 

About once every two weeks we would make the drive into Sedona to buy supplies and get a load of water. It depended on the weather. In those days if the road got wet, the mud would get as high as the floorboards of the truck and it just was not worth it to go. You had to stay in the ruts or you would be off the road in a heartbeat. If that happened we just left the truck and walked home. Sometimes it was a long walk. We went overland because there was less mud than on the road. After a few days the road would dry out and we could just go get it without any problems. We ran out of tobacco once and Anton and I made the thirty mile round trip to town and back on foot, in the snow. We never thought anything about it. We just made the hike. It took all day. 

I met Bob Bradshaw on the dirt road one day and we stopped in the middle of the road and talked. Bob had a ranch close by and asked if we needed anything. He had not known that we had moved in. I told him that we were fine and he asked if we were running any stock. I told him we were not and we agreed that he could put some of his cows on our place in the spring. We didn’t need the graze and he did. It was the neighborly thing to do. He told us that he was a location director for Hollywood as a sideline and asked if we would be interested in using Woo Canyon as a location. I did not know anything about the industry and I told him as much. He said that they would pay four hundred dollars a day for a location to shoot some music video or commercial. I told him that I had doubts, as I didn’t want anyone tearing up the land. He said that they were really very good about cleaning up after themselves and that if there was any damage done to the land they would put it back to its original condition or as close as possible. We said we would think about it and let him know. Bob is a very interesting character. He owns some of the smartest cow ponies I have ever met. He is also a hell of a photographer. Bob took many of the original photos in Arizona Highways. He used to own a place in uptown Sedona that is now called Rollies Cameras but it was Bob’s camera shop. He built it. He has also done bit parts and been in many a movie and knows all of the great stars such as Duke Wayne and Jimmie Stewart. He tells wonderful stories about the westerns that were shot in the old days and the fights and drunks these guys got into. I am a fan of old westerns and Bob and I hit it off right away. We are friends to this day. He is now in his middle eighties and still has a big-busted blonde on his arm. Since I have known Bob he has had several big-busted blonds. For all intents and purposes they could have been the same woman though any of them would be offended to hear me say so! Sometimes we would run into each other in Sedona and stop right in the middle of highway eighty-nine A, get out of our trucks and stand there bull shitting. There was little traffic in those days and people just went around.  

That was when it was still a two lane highway, no one had ever heard of Sedona, the tourists had not arrived, the town had not incorporated and there was only one tour company; Pink Jeep Tours, who really does have pink jeeps! 

Moderate Bob and Lee Lowden made beads from turquoise and other gemstones. Lee had a shop and a house in the gulch in Jerome. Anton and I would go up there and hang out. We were not allowed in the shop for a very long time. They were very secretive about the bead making process that they had developed. 

We would stand around outside and pick up little bits of turquoise (what they considered waste) and take it home. We mined the driveway. Lee was dealing pot to supplement his income and we often bought or traded with him. One day we were invited into the shop. It was pretty cold out that day. They were not working and we sat around the wood stove smoking joints.  

I made a note of the equipment they had. When we got back to the ranch we talked about making beads. We ordered our first grinders and diamond drills and a Foredom tool. There were lots of other things that went with the process. We were making Roundel beads. These beads (at the time) could only be made by hand. There was no automatic equipment that could duplicate the shape. 

I taught myself to make beads on the grinder and Anton got to be an excellent hand at drilling. He did the rough work and I did the finish work including the finish polishing. It took a year to figure out how to do this well but in the end we became expert. 

Tucson, Arizona becomes an entirely different city in the month of February. Tucson is host to the Gem and Mineral Show. It is the second largest trade shows on earth and is second only to the Paris Air Show. People from all over the world arrive for this show and brings goods from everywhere. It is not just gems though there are indeed a lot of those as well. Every hotel is booked months in advance. It is nearly if not impossible to get a room. Many of the hotel rooms (in fact most of them) are converted into showrooms. One might be walking down a standard hallway of a hotel and be passing rooms that are full of diamonds, rubies, emeralds and a variety of other rare and beautiful gems on display. It is really awesome. There are huge tents, set up on every open lot that is filled with booths. Booths are set up around hotel pools and on grassy knolls (not THE grassy knoll; the one in Texas) fronting the sidewalks. There are food booths, and baskets from Africa and art booths, and jewelry from Indonesia and fossils and artifacts and basically a huge variety of goods from all over the world.  

There are actually several different shows that go on at the same time during this month. Some are by invitation or by special pass. A great deal of the revenue Tucson makes during any given year is directly attributed to this Gem Show. The reason this show happens in Tucson is simply that there is no taxation on items sold in a hotel room. In those days a booth anywhere would cost about fifteen hundred dollars and the promoters, expected to be paid, in full, long before the show began. The selling of booth space is a very lucrative business. We took our goods that we had spent all winter making and went to Tucson. We camped in the desert and it was cold. It rained for a few days while we were there but the show overall was a real eye opener for us all. Anton and I wandered around and traded for turquoise (primarily) and for other bits and pieces of gems that we could get with what we had. We had little money in those days and had I known I would have brought some of the cocaine to trade. The girls traded their beadwork for more beads and a lot of other things.  

We made up some turquoise beads and some from pipestone we had. I carved some beads that looked like masks and Anton did some woodcarvings. We knew we could make anything and we did. It finally started to warm up with the coming of spring and we were seriously low on money. We sold our goods in a few shops in Sedona and I made tobacco pouches in trade for tobacco to a store there. We hand rolled our cigarettes. We still do.  

Woo Canyon Ranch was one of the original homesteads in the Verde Valley. It was first homesteaded by a Chinese family, (the Woo family) who worked in the mines in Jerome. Judge Woo lived in Flagstaff and we paid our rent by check to him. It was a year or so before we met but he was not bothered that we had taken over the place without him knowing. We had no lease and paid the rent by the month. He came to like us and treasured our stewardship of his land. We would not hunt there and would not allow anyone else to hunt there either. Anton and I would go to the nearby ruins about once a month and pick up all the beer cans and cigarette butts we found there. Judge Woo knew Bob Bradshaw for many years and Bob had spoken highly of us. Whenever Woo of one of his family showed up (this was pretty rare) we fed them well and treated them like royalty. There were many times that our rent would be several months behind and then we would make some money and catch it up. He never said anything about it. We saw herds of wild pigs, dear, several varieties of fox and many other critters right in the yard. I once found the track of a mountain lion between the house and the barn. It was as big as a small dinner plate. We also raised chickens for the fresh eggs and it seemed there was always something trying to get at them. When we had first arrived there I had taken my rifle and circled the place holding it high in the air. I let all the critters know that they were welcome and that I would not harm them. I also told them that if they did harm to any of us or were in the buildings or the yard that it was at their own peril. 

I recall one morning walking outside to take a leak and seeing about twenty coyotes running across the field to the west. When they sensed me, they came to an immediate halt and turned around and looked at me. Every one of those coyotes had a chicken in its mouth. They were my chickens! It was really a pretty amazing sight. They all looked pretty guilty. I wish I had a camera at the time. I reached my rifle from its deer horn rack above the door and fired a round just in front of them. They all dropped their chickens and took off running. The chickens were pretty shook up and staggered crazily back to the chicken coop. We fixed the fence that day and were absolutely convinced it was secure. The next morning there was not a chicken to be found in the canyon. Coyotes are really smart! We did replace the chickens because we liked the eggs. We also made very sure the fence around the coop was perfect. 

I had bought a thirty-eight Chevy lineman’s truck from Fred Piper in Cottonwood. Ed had introduced me to Fred. Fred was a ball turret gunner on B 17s and B 29s during the war. He made forty-two sorties over Germany and had two ball turrets shot out from under him. He was a great photographer and has some excellent shots of bombing missions over Germany. He still has his leather flying jacket with his units patches stitched to it. Fred is a good welder and fixed several things for me. He built some special water tanks that we used in the canyon and one that was custom made for my truck. We are still great friends. 

It was a cool truck but was a bitch to drive. It had fourteen forward gears and four reverse gears. It had the same in four-wheel drive. That truck would climb a cliff. It was a flatbed. One night Joe and I were driving that truck back to the canyon from a wood run and a deer crossed the road in front of us. Joe let off with a 357 magnum and I kept the lights on that deer and followed it cross-country. Joe emptied the pistol and reloaded. He reloaded three times; all the while we are bouncing all over the countryside chasing that deer. Neither he nor I could believe that he kept on missing. We went through a wash that dropped straight down about five feet then went right up the other side taking out a small oak tree in the process. Nothing was going to stop that truck. The deer finally stopped and I asked Joe for the pistol. He was standing about thirty yards away and I got out of the truck and put a bullet through his heart the first shot. I had never shot that pistol before. We field dressed him on the spot and took him home. We hung him for a couple of days and Anton did a perfect job on the butchering. In the years I lived there I shot several deer, both doe and buck, and a lot of small game. We needed the meat or I would not have done so. I have never in my life had a hunting license, have never killed anything I didn’t eat, and never took anything I didn’t need. That is all the license I have ever needed. If I can afford food at the grocery, I get food at the grocery. 

There is a particularly fine pictograph at Woo Canyon. There are few in this state that are as well preserved and this one is the only one that has markings from a tribe in California. It could have been a wanderer who camped there and added his sign. 

Loy butte is the site of another Anazasi ruin. It is only a couple of miles from Woo Canyon. It actually runs for several miles along the butte but most folks do not know this. The forest service came in years to both the Honaki (Loy Butte) and the Palatki (Red Canyon) ruins and fenced them off and made them into tourists’ attractions. Up until then, Anton and I took care of them. These ruins date back fifteen hundred years. There are pottery shards and arrowheads to be found in the washes all over the area and Anton and I found lots of them. We loved to wander in these washes. I still do. 

Our overhead was pretty low and I never really paid much attention to money. Eventually one or both of the girls would make me aware that we were months behind in our bills and we better generate some money. This happened in the middle part of June and Anton and I decided to take a road trip north to make some money.  

We really were broke and I borrowed a hundred bucks for fuel, which I knew, would get us as far as San Francisco. I had some Moccasins to deliver and there was still some money owed. These were the first five pair of shoes I had ever made and I had taken half the money. I truly hoped that they fit and I was nervous. We had lots of other trade goods that we had made all winter and we loaded up the truck. We had heard of an event that happened outside of Eugene Oregon called the Oregon Country Fair and we wanted to get there, if we could. 

We had a hundred hits of acid and no pot. We took a hit as we drove out of the canyon. We took the Perkinsville road which is a dirt road that is pretty rough that runs from Jerome, north to Williams and Highway forty. We were about five miles outside of Williams and very high when we stopped. I heard air coming out of the left rear tire and being as stoned, as we were decided it was best to hurry on into Williams. I got a guy in a gas station to fix the tire and Anton and I sat on a bench across the street while he did so. We drank chocolate milk, which tasted just awful. We realized just how high we were and it was all I could do to pay off the gas station attendant without having to talk to him very much. 

Between Kingman and Las Vegas there is a bunch of mines on the right side of the highway. We did not know that at the time but we saw some tailings in the distance and decided to check it out. The distance was much further than it looked and the country got progressively more rugged. We found some tunnels and went exploring them to see if we could determine what had been mined. The tunnels were much cooler than it was outside. It was about one hundred and five or so that day. We wandered all over those hills and nearly got stuck. It was only very good driving skills that got us out of it. We collected some old core samples and a few artifacts that had been lying around then somehow found our way back to the highway. We crossed Hoover Dam, picked up a bucket of chicken from Kentucky Fried Chicken with a large side of Jalapeños and kept right on going. We drove through Vegas without stopping. It was almost sunset, when we reached the little town of Mercury Nevada. 

Mercury Nevada is not a town to speak of. There is a gas station, a post office, and a bar with a whorehouse behind it and not much else. To the east, and not very far is the test sight for nuclear weapons. We were hot and we were tired. We were also just coming down from a day on acid. I got a beer and Tony got a big, lemonade and we took it out on the porch to watch the sunset. There was air-conditioning in the bar but there were also people. We didn’t want to be around people and the shaded porch was much cooler than we had been all day. After awhile, the bartender came out and asked if we wanted anything else. She was wearing a bracelet that I recognized as being made from elephant Ivory and I asked her about it. We struck up a conversation and she went over to my truck, lifted the door on the camper shell and took a look around inside. She came back and insisted that we not go anywhere until she got off as she really wanted to buy some of our goods and that her boyfriend would be coming soon and she wanted him to meet us. We needed money so I decided to hang out for a while to see what would happen. 

Every once in awhile she would come out with fresh drinks that she never charged us for, and stuff money in my shirt pocket. Just after the sun went down, the owner of the bar came out and sat with us for a while. While he was there, two huge platters of food, pitchers of beer and shots of Jack Daniels started to show up. The beer and the shots and the money kept coming. The bartender’s boyfriend, Randy showed up and we hit it off right away. It turned out he was growing pot in two trailers around there somewhere. We got into a technical discussion about cloning and I told him about my seed bank. He was very interested and we exchanged addresses. It was past two in the morning when we finally left. We had only spent money on our first drinks and she had put over a hundred bucks in my shirt pocket throughout her shift. I don’t remember what she bought but apparently everyone was happy. Randy showed up in the Canyon several years later. He had been living down in the Chirracuas down by Tucson. He told me he had a serious problem. He had stumbled upon a hidden cave and found thirteen crates of gold bars. This was probably taken from the Calvary in the old days. He didn’t know what to do about it. There were only a few choices. He could remove it and sell it in small amounts to jewelers at below the spot price and it would move quickly and it would be a cash deal. He could leave it there and forget all about it or he could turn it all in to the authorities and he would never see a dime. I told him I would fully support and help him if he needed it. There is no doubt I could have moved that gold in a couple of years and no one would be the wiser. I wanted nothing for it. Randy knows me pretty well and there has always been honor between us. He is also a very spiritual man. He had spent five years in those rocks living off the local plants. He did not eat meat. He came back two years later and the subject of the gold came up. He had decided to leave it there. He just did not want the karma or the hassle associated with it. He said he would have trouble finding it again and was glad it had worked out that way. We never spoke of it again. 

I was pretty drunk and as we drove down the highway I told Anton that I thought I was to drunk to drive. He reminded me that I had a little bit of cocaine in the back and maybe that would help. We pulled off in Beatty which is the next town up the road, about seventy five miles from Mercury and I went into the restroom of a gas station and did the cocaine. I was standing there taking a leak when this guy goes into the stall next to me. I don’t know why but he asked if I had any acid. I asked if he had any pot. I did and he did and we decided to do a trade. This was a really stupid thing to do. I was drunk, (the cocaine helped a lot) but that was no excuse. I knew better. In those days one seed from a marijuana plant could get you twenty years in prison in the state of Nevada. They would throw the key away for possessing as much LSD as I had. Not one bit of this crossed my mind at the time. 

We left the restroom and walked up to the passenger side of a big Dodge van. When he opened the door I saw one of the biggest black men I have ever known. He looked to be about ten feet tall and was certainly the push up champion of the world. The light was diffused but I saw a huge pile of hundred dollar bills on the engine cowling and spilling around his feet. It became instantly obvious that these were people that I did not need to be involved with. We did a quick trade and I pocketed a small amount of pot, giving up a small amount of acid. They told me they were having trouble with their battery and asked if I had cables and would I consider giving them a jump. I said I would. About that time I noticed a cop across the street that was watching us all pretty closely. I pulled my truck right up to the front of his and we ran cables to the battery. This really was now looking more and more innocent to the cop and we relaxed just a bit. We got his van started and somewhere in the process he had seen the trade goods in the back of my truck. He asked if that stuff was for sale and I said yes. We both wanted to get away from the cop so I agreed to follow them up the highway and pull over when they did. 

As we followed these guys Anton and I talked about the situation. I told him that I could most likely handle the white guy and asked him if he thought he could handle the black guy. Tony was sure that he could. I was sure of Tony. Anton is also a very big man and knows how to take care of himself. We knew these guys were into something that we had no need to know anything about and we didn’t want to.  

After Beatty, it is nearly two hundred miles to Tonopah. We followed these guys for over an hour before the finally pulled off on the side of the road. No pullout or anything, just right off the side of the highway. We broke out flashlights and went to the back of my truck. I opened the camper door and dropped the tailgate. Tony and the black guy fired up a joint and we all eased up a bit. It was a crystal clear, warm summer night. The stars were so close it looked like you could touch them. No noise at all and no other cars for many miles in either direction. The white guy started piling up goods and throwing hundred dollar bills on the tailgate. It turned out that they were heading for Cottage Grove Oregon and had a place there. We told them we were heading for Country Fair. We got their address and phone. They wanted us to spend a day or two with them in Oregon and make moccasins for them and their women. It sounded all right to me. We shook hands and split up; when we finally reached Tonopah we were way beyond tired. It was after eight in the morning. We got a hotel room and slept all day. We had made over two thousand dollars since we had left home, the day before. 

We walked over to the casino at about dusk and had some breakfast. I taught the waiter how to make cowboy coffee and he did it for us. He put a whole pound of coffee in one of those glass pots and boiled it up, added eggshells and served it to us. It was not Pete’s coffee but it was strong and strong is what we needed. We took some more acid, smoked a joint and hit the road. 

We stayed with Big Tom and Gay in Concord when we hit the Bay Area. This became a tradition whenever we did a road trip. I delivered all the shoes and got paid. Every one of those moccasins fit perfectly to my ultimate amazement. We sold and traded a whole lot more of our goods and I took several more orders and made molds for moccasins.  

Peter and Kathy had flown in from Europe to visit Kathy’s parents. We met with them in Berkley. Peter had brought several ounces of hashish from Switzerland. He had it wrapped in tin foil and walked it right through customs and security at the airport. Only Peter would be stupid enough to do that and lucky enough to get away with it! 

I had tried to work with some Arizona pipestone and had carved a pipe. The original design was for an Elk’s head on each side with the antlers intertwining on the front and back of the bowl. This stone had been dynamited to free it from the surrounding rock. I did not know this and it was unstable and had hidden fractures. One whole side of the pipe just fell off. I re designed it so that there was an Elk’s head on the front and the antlers went around the bowl. This worked out OK. I gave that pipe to Peter. He still has it.  

By now I was a pretty accomplished stone carver and had made several pipes. Most of my carvings were done in Minnesota pipestone. It is pretty dense and will hold a very fine line. It is soft enough to be worked with good files.  

There was one pipe that I had started that had a Beaver climbing up a carved stump. The stump was the bowl. For some reason, I could not get see the face of that Beaver in the stone. I would often pick up that pipe and just look at it. This went on for three years until one day I did see it. In five minutes I finished that pipe. Carving is like that for me. I will study a stone for a long time then I will see one tiny part of a critter then I can bring out the whole thing. I once heard that carving was simple, all you had to do was see what was already in the stone and remove the excess. That is just the way it works for me. 

We traded for an ounce of Hashish from Peter, went to Port Costa and did some more trade. We visited Miki who now was in possession of my old place and traded him for an ounce of pot. We were in the Bay Area for about a week. We ate acid every day. 

We went up to Napa to the Hide and Leather House so that I could get some supplies for the orders I had taken. Of course they were closed for inventory. The owner let us in anyway and we went through hundreds of hides and picked out the best. It was hot in there and we had taken off our shirts. We got what we needed plus some extra and hit the trail. We were about seventy-five miles away when I asked Anton if we could smoke a bowl of Hash. He patted his pockets and told me he thought he had lost it at the Hide House. He thought it had fallen out of his shirt pocket. We turned right around and went back. There were about ten people standing around in a circle eating lunch when we got there. That chunk of hash was on the floor right in the middle of them and Anton went after it. Everyone was watching and they looked somewhat disappointed. Anton broke off a chunk and gave it to them. Anytime I ever went there after that I was treated like a king! 

The weather was perfect and driving through the redwoods on acid was pretty special. We got up to southern Oregon and made an effort to connect with Earthworm. We had met him at rendezvous and he had invited us to stop by if we wee ever in Oregon. He is a pretty amazing character. He would get permission to stay on someone’s land and to build a house. He built some pretty fantastic places in the years I have known him and has always traveled with grace and with Spirit. He also had a penchant for taking antique cars and trucks, putting modern engines and brakes on them and selling them. I have no idea how many of these he has done. Some looked just like covered wagons. He is quite well known for this and has made a lot of money at it. Money is not his thing and he spent what he had on materials for the places he built. He has always had beautiful women around him.  

He also knew how to do Brain Tan leather. Brain Tan is softer than chamois and breaths. It is made from a deer hide and uses the brains of the animal in the tanning process. Earthworm is a master at this and Anton and I wanted to learn this craft. We invited him to Arizona to teach us. 

We found him working in a friend’s garage converting his first antique truck. It was an old Ford. He was engineering the brakes and had completed the frame welding and engine modifications. He had a brand new Mazda Engine installed. He had built two beautiful round houses on the side of the mountain overlooking the entire Medford Valley. 

There were several women living there and a handful of kids. He was probably sleeping with all those girls. There was a whole lot of love in that place. They ate vegetarian dishes that were different and quite tasty. We spent a couple of days with them and did some trade. We also had brought some groceries and added to the program.  

We asked Earthworm if he knew anyone who might have a pound of pot to trade and he said he did. He told us to bring our trade goods and trade blanket and to follow him. We spent half the day hiking out deep into the woods. We came upon a little clearing and Earthworm told us to spread our blanket and our goods and to wait. We did. About an hour later he comes out of the woods trailed by a longhaired, bearded man, who had obviously spent a great deal of time in the woods. Earthworm stood to one side and this guy comes up and sits cross-legged in front of our goods and us. He was carrying two paper grocery bags that appeared to be full.  

He made eye contact with me and held it for a long time. Then he made eye contact with Anton and did the same thing. He looked at our goods for about ten minutes. We had made some pipestone beads and had one strand that was interspersed with turquoise beads. There were also several pipestone pipes. From a white mans point of view these were the least valuable items that we had. From a Native’s point of view there is no value to be put on them at all. There is a Spiritual value to them that goes far beyond money. There were many things on that blanket worth thousands of dollars. He picked up that strand of beads and a pipe. He then made eye contact with me and again with, Anton. He got up and walked off into the woods, leaving those two grocery bags behind. There was not one word spoken during this entire event. It was the coolest trade I have ever made before or since. That night we discovered that one of those bags was two layers deep in quart mason jars that were full of perfectly cured Oregon Buds. The other bag was full of cuttings. No leaf at all just a bag full of tiny buds. There were nearly three pounds of pot in those bags. Some of the very best pot in America is grown in those Southern Oregon woods. 

We now had three pounds of good bud, a big chunk of hashish and about seventy-five hits of acid! We had sent a bunch of money home to the girls for bills but I still had several thousand dollars in my pocket. We were ready for Country Fair! 

We showed up in Cottage Grove and looked up the guys we had met in Nevada. They had a ranch of about forty acres and a beautiful home. The white guys father owned it all. I wish I could remember these guys’ names but it is just not happening. We stayed with them and I did molds for moccasins on them and their women. They bought up a bunch more stuff and insisted on paying for the shoes and everything else up front. It was nearly three thousand dollars and paid in hundred dollar bills. 

It turned out that this guy’s father was the first head of C.A.M.P which was the state organization that did over flights, dropped defoliant chemicals, raided homes and confiscated property from small and large local growers of marijuana throughout northern California. 

His Karma had come back on him for causing so much grief to so many people who in reality had no other means to create income for themselves and their families. The majority of these people were hippies who had migrated north after the heyday of Haight Asbury. 

These were not violent people and in fact had established themselves quite peacefully all along the California coast and into central California, north of San Francisco. Apparently he had put together a huge collection of guns worth several hundred thousand dollars. This was stolen from him. The state had decided not to pay him his pension and he was of course angry about it. He had lost pretty much everything that was of value to him and now his only son was dealing crank (methamphetamine) and manufacturing the stuff in a bathtub in his barn. He did not know about this at the time.  

We were asked to cook a diner for dad and a bunch of his cronies. Anton asked how much a plate they were willing to spend and settled on three hundred dollars. Why not? There was plenty of money. We put together a huge party and a wonderful gourmet meal. I was Anton’s helper and we got it done. I had some interesting conversation with dad and learned a most of the above from the horse’s mouth. In the meantime Anton would sneak off, smoke a joint and scatter pot seeds all over the place. It somehow seemed fitting to do so. We made a few hundred dollars more for this dinner and everyone was thrilled. 

We arrived at the Oregon Country Fair three days before the setup time. We built a nice camp and enjoyed this beautiful spot in the woods just to the east of Eugene. The adjoining property is owned (at the time) by The Grateful Dead. The people who put on Country Fair were making payments on the land that the fair was held on, and this was the last year of those payments, before it was finally paid off. They would own the land outright. We ate acid, smoked pot and hash and hung out. 

The transformation of this spot is incredible. People started showing up in custom built school busses and a variety of other very cool cars and trucks. These were mostly the hippies who lived in the woods, grew pot and did art for a living. Country Fair is laid out in a huge figure eight. All along the perimeter handmade booths are erected. There are tree houses that people live in during this event. In two days it went from nothing and no one to a thriving, bustling community. We met up with some artists we knew and acquired passes. These are rare and very hard to come by. A pass would allow you to enter at any time of day and night. The real trades and the best music and parties happened after the fair closed for the day and were not open to the public. On Saturday night there is a midnight show that is, simply put, fantastic. That year the Flying Karamazov Brothers performed. They are the best juggling act I have ever seen and later went on to international fame.  

There is a drum tower that holds hundreds of drummers playing an incredible variety of drums. The drumming never stops, twenty-four hours a day. People on stilts, fairies dancing, children with painted faces, topless women, all dancing and playing around the figure eight all day and into the night. The best American art is displayed and sold in these booths. There is food, from all over the world, at reasonable prices. The best pot on Earth was brought out, sampled, compared, traded and sold. 

This of course was all done under cover. We were generally to stoned to eat and lived on fruit smoothies. There is only one entrance into the figure eight and I could never seem to find it. I spent a lot of time walking that figure eight but was constantly entertained. We did a lot of trade after hours and left there with more trade goods and more money. Several hundred thousand people showed up for this event that year. There is nothing like anywhere that I have encountered and to my knowledge it is still going on. 

After the fair we headed east through the mountains and came up to the Snake River in the dark. We were too used up to make a fire and just passed out on the ground. We woke in the morning (it was far too early) to this horrendous noise. There were three front loaders working the gravel pit that was located about two hundred yards from where we were. We got out of there in a hurry but had trouble getting the truck started so we pushed started it. 

We hadn’t gone far when we found a gas station that would put a charge on the battery. We went into a nearby café and had some breakfast. The truck had been finished and parked in the lot. The café and the gas station were adjoining. There was a fully uniformed, (with a badge and everything) game warden, looking in the window of the truck. I had picked up a perfect set of Elk antlers in a trade (I made buttons out of antler) and he wanted to know about them. I assured him that it was not a fresh kill. Fortunately the sliding window on the side of the camper was not locked and he got a good look at them. He also saw that there were a lot of art and leather goods in the back. It is really a good thing that he did not decide to hassle us and search the truck considering what we were caring.  

It turned out that the owner of the gas station was a woman and had also seen what was in the truck. She wanted some moccasins and took us to her place, which was a few miles out of town. She had a nice hundred-acre ranch that was well set up. She bought shoes and some other goods, gave me some good single malt scotch and entertained us with local stories for a few hours. She was quite an interesting person. Again we had made several hundred dollars. We took another hit of acid and hit the road.  

We pulled into Jackson Hole Wyoming at about one in the morning. There was a drive through at a hotel and we asked about a room. The manager said that he did not have a room and that the town was overflowing. He asked if we had any drugs and we said no. He said that was to bad because he might have been able to help us get a room. We drove out of that hotel and out of Jackson Hole. It is not a good idea to be traveling with as much as we had, looking like we did, have someone ask about drugs and then stick around. We went up to the south entrance of the Teton National Park and stopped at the gate. Like a fool, I turned the truck off. There was an absolutely gorgeous woman at the gate who filled out her Smokey the Bear (complete with hat) outfit perfectly. I bet she wasn’t five four but she was a real looker. She also had a great personality. It was a lonely post and we hung out for quite awhile and talked to her.  

We had to push start the truck as the battery was dead again. In the end we went on through the gate, up about five miles, found a dirt road that took off to the right and pulled off. We parked the truck on a hill so that we could compression start it, put our ice chests well away, in case of bears and slept quite uncomfortably in the truck. We were long gone at daylight.  

When we got to Dubois Wyoming I spotted a taxidermy, and we went in to talk to the owner. I figured he might have some hides to trade. I was looking for buffalo or bear with the hair on. When he looked in the truck he said to stick around and got on the phone.  

Pretty soon there were about fifty people in his shop and all of them wanted and bought something. I took some more orders for Moccasins. One woman told me she had a bear hide at her house that she had killed herself and that she was willing to trade it.  

Anton and I went over there to check it out. She asked us if we had any pot and Tony said he would take care of it. She was quite a good-looking woman. The bear hide was hanging in the bedroom, over the king sized bed. There were other hides hanging on the walls of the house and several mounted heads. I was checking out that bear hide when out of the corner of my eye I saw someone standing in the bedroom door. As I turned to face the door it became quite apparent that it was a county Sherriff complete with all of the tools of the trade, most noticeably, a huge three fifty seven magnum. I held up both hands and told him that before he said or did anything, PLEASE talk to this woman. This was not what it appeared to be. The woman quickly explained who we were and why we were in the bedroom. In the meantime Anton had been sitting in the truck rolling joints. About the time we made to the living room, Anton comes through the door with a rather large handful of joints. I gave him a cut out sign with my hand, and his hand; full of joints, went into his pocket. We fascinated the cop and entertained him with a story or two and then it was time for everyone to leave. She walked him to his car and he drove away. She came over to the passenger window of the truck and Anton gave her the joints. He did not smoke. She did and she was grateful. We checked back at the taxidermy and finished our business. I never did get that bear hide but we did get out of that town with our own hides intact. It is a pretty redneck place and again we were lucky. 

One of the things that we were looking for on this trip was a creek that we could lay down at and drink the water without worrying about getting some disease. In six weeks and seven states I found one that I felt OK about and that was the Wind River, way up high in the Tetons, where it isn’t much more than a creek, and the wind blows cold, through the Aspen.  

We cut south along the west side of the Rocky Mountains and turned left at Cedar City Utah. We went through Zion National Park and camped here and there. There is blue spruce in that country. It is a unique place and in one area the highway goes through a tunnel that is cut into the cliff face about a thousand feet up.  

There are windows cut in the cliff to vent the exhaust fumes. It is a small, one-way tunnel and is an amazing engineering feat. We were back in the hot country and by the time we got to Lake Powell, we figured we were getting close to home. I knew a lady who owns a tour company there and we did some trade with her. We didn’t stay long; it was time to be home. 

There is nothing quite like driving down Oak Creek Canyon after you have been away. There is a definite sense of coming home and a real comfort to that. It was sunset when we hit Sedona and Dry Creek Road, which is the way to Woo Canyon. We got home about dusk and the women were there and it was good. We had been gone for six weeks, seen seven states, traded everywhere, made enough money to keep us all for at least a year, brought home gifts for the women, Piles of craft supplies, groceries and new orders for work to be done. 

We had eaten acid every day of this trip and safely got home with all the pot, hashish and acid we had left, which really was a substantial amount. This had been our first of many road trips and it is by far the one that sticks in my memory as being the greatest adventure.  

That winter we put a wood stove in the house and upgraded the rest of the buildings so that we could keep warm. We gathered much more firewood and split and crosscut it all by hand. In the end we had seven stoves in various places in the canyon. It was always comfortable and we never again suffered a winter like that first one. 

Turquoise is a gemstone. It is one of the rarest minerals on earth. It is found only in a few places on earth. There is Turquoise in the Southwest United States including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada. It can be found in Iraq (formally known as Persia) and in China. 

The best quality Turquoise is found on the surface. This explains the rarity of this stone. Most (in many cases all) of it has been discovered and removed. The deeper one goes the poorer the quality and the softer the stone becomes. There was one small piece of what was reported as Turquoise that was found at the four hundred foot level, oddly enough in the state of Virginia.  

Turquoise was formed from a certain combination of minerals that bubbled up in a fresh water spring, under the ocean. During the Tersherairy period, a great deal of heat and pressure was applied and these springs were pushed upward along with most all of the rest of the land mass. In Nevada they sometimes look like little volcanoes. 

There is sometimes water to be found near a Turquoise deposit. Turquoise is what is known as a Faustite. On the Mohr scale of hardness it is rated as a five to six. The Mohr scale runs from one to ten. If one is butter and ten is diamond this makes turquoise a reasonability hard stone. The difference on the Mohr scale of hardness between one and nine, and nine and ten is about equal. A diamond is VERY hard as compared to anything else. 

I have found and worked Turquoise that is probably as hard as an eight on this scale. It will cut glass and when worked on a diamond wheel, under water will create sparks! Most all of the deep blue Turquoise is an aluminum oxide. 

What is known as spider web Turquoise has a great deal of ferric Iron and thus is a deeper blue and in some cases almost a black hue. The majority of this spider web Turquoise came from the Battle Mountain area of Nevada and is highly prized. In my opinion, the very best, purest blue turquoise came from Kingman Arizona though Bisbee Arizona runs a close second. Carico Lake in Nevada has a great variety of colors and hardness’s varying from a chalky blue to deep green. The green is highly prized and quite beautiful. New Mexico Turquoise is also quite good and very pure. Turquoise from China or Persia tends to be closer to that found in Battle Mountain Nevada and has a higher content of ferric Iron. It is easily identifiable. What is found today, anywhere on earth is of marginal quality and pretty soft. It is now being stabilized (the stone is submersed in an epoxy and being soft and porous stone it absorbs the epoxy) or it is treated (the soft stone is crushed, mixed with epoxy and re- formed).  

Though there seems to be a great deal of Turquoise in the Southwest, most all of this is either stabilized or treated. It is not gem quality Turquoise and is usually not represented as such and is therefore pretty cheap.  

Southwestern Native tribes, including the Zuni (New Mexico), the Hopi and the Navajo to mention only a few, prized Turquoise greatly and have historically produced beautiful artwork and jewelry using turquoise.  

Senator Barry Goldwater was responsible for taking this Jewelry to Japan and to Indonesia and having it copied. It was then sold much cheaper than Native Americans could afford to produce the same items. He virtually single handedly destroyed the market for these people. For some reason, that I will never fathom, Goldwater, was honored by Native Americans, at the time of his death. Perhaps they knew something I do not know. To this day, all over the Southwest, Native Americans can be found along highways and in their villages selling these items. Few still use the traditional methods to produce them. An example of this is beads and other items, such as Squash Blossom necklaces, (Navajo) that were made from Mercury dimes that were pure silver are no longer made using the old methods or the old materials. It is not their fault and they still have families to feed. 

I was in New York City at the Museum Of Natural History on Columbus Street and saw a display of artifacts from near the tip Of South America. Among these artifacts was a full sized warrior dressed in all of his regalia. He wore plate armor made from gold. Small plates, which were rectangles about four inches by two inches and an eighth of an inch thick, comprised this armor. On his wrist he wore a turquoise bracelet. This bracelet was about six inches wide and was made of hundreds of very tiny turquoise beads. The holes were so small that the beads were strung on human hair. The holes were not elongated, but appeared, to be drilled quite straight.  

There are several things about this picture that are quite interesting. 

It is fairly obvious that this was an Inca warrior. What was he doing so far south in the area that he was found? How did he come by his turquoise bracelet? Turquoise is not found anywhere in South America. How were the holes drilled in this bracelet? The technology to do this was not available at that time and is only just been made available today. The average human hair is three thousands of an inch in diameter. Up until quite recently the smallest diamond drill made was three quarters of one millimeter. That means that without using a high-pressure water drill or a laser that represents the smallest hole that can be drilled in hard gemstone. 

In the days of this warrior, soft stones, shells and some other things were drilled and hung as beads. The way this was done was with sand, water and a sharp hard stick. The smallest holes were drilled in this fashion with a porcupine quill, sand and water. This process inevitably produced a hole that was elongated, as it is nearly impossible to keep the drill perpendicular to the bead. These beads are known as pre-Columbian beads to mark their place in time and history. 

What this all told me, were several interesting things. The trade routes from the Incas extended all the way up to the Southwest United States. Had I been able to get closer to the beads I most likely could determine which state and what region the stone originated from. I am pretty good at this. 

We will most likely never know how the holes in those beads were drilled. There is however, located in the Smithsonian, a geode that has what has been identified as a spark plug in the middle of it. We may never know what technologies were available before the now available, recorded history. 

Gold and silver were common to the Inca people. In fact there a book written by Garsialasso Delavega called “The Inca”. This is the first written history of this civilization and was written at the time of the Spanish invasion and rape of that country and culture. I don’t really blame the Spanish, they had a lot of practice and apparently figured that anything or anyplace they could overcome or conquer they got to keep everything and treat the people there any way they wished. 

It was a common practice in those days by lots of countries who wanted to dominate the world, own all of what they perceived as riches, make all the rules, eliminate anyone that was in their way and generally create a wonderful feeling of self importance among themselves.  

The Spanish and Portuguese did this all over South America, Mexico and the South West and Western United States. The Russians even got involved in the act in California and had their turn at wiping out local tribes. 

Man has an enormous ego and this sort of behavior has been going on throughout history. Give him a bigger rock, a longer spear or a better rifle and he is quite likely to use it on his neighbor, who might have a tastier potato, a bit of gold, or good-looking women.  

Rape, pillaging and plundering were the highpoints of history. Pillaging seems to have gone by the wayside and actually it disappoints me somewhat. At least it was honest! Perhaps we should reconsider, and bring back pillaging. 

The Inca worshipped the sun and the moon. Their pyramids were covered with either gold or silver. Huge disks of these materials sometimes several inches thick were placed inside these pyramids for the purpose of worship.  

Rather than creating flower gardens, the Inca made life sized images of the local flora and fauna and placed them all around their yards and gardens. There is a report of a single gold chain that took four hundred men to lift and carry. This is supposed to be at the bottom of Lake Titicaca in Peru. 

The last Inca was a guy named Altuapa. The Spanish caught him and kept him prisoner. There was a temple nearby. He was told that if he filled this temple three times with gold and three times with silver they would let him go. This was no big deal to Altuapa. He put the word out that he need a bunch of this stuff and the word passed quickly throughout the empire. It was a huge empire. The Spanish had no idea just how big it was. People from everywhere started bringing the required ransom. In a very short time Altuapa had met his obligation. As was the custom of the Spanish at the time and for no real good reason, they killed him. What the Spanish did not know was that it had taken some time for the word to be passed about the ransom and there were still vast amounts of gold and silver still on its way. When the people discovered that the Spanish had killed Altuapa, they stopped right they were, and buried all of this treasure. They buried it with appropriate curses of course and to this day, little of it has been found. Delavega’s book, “The Inca” is a very interesting read and I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this history. 

It is entirely possible that I have misspelled some of these names and if I have I ask for forgiveness and offer apologies. Unfortunately my computer does not speak Spanish. I have had a word or two with all those little people who live inside my computer, taking notes and they just look at me as if I was a complete idiot. They could be right! 

I suppose I could have looked in a dictionary but if I can’t spell it, how would I ever locate it in a dictionary? This is one of the dilemmas of being English major. I never got less than an “A” in this subject. I can’t spell, my grammar leaves a lot to be desired, and I have never been able to read my own handwriting. This is a wonderful and accurate statement on the quality of education in America. 

People kept showing up at Woo Canyon and staying for a day or two, or a week or two, or longer. We met Tom Bowman in Jerome who also made moccasins, though a different type and style than mine. Jimmie Whitewolf, another moccasin maker, and leather crafter came into our lives. People who showed up brought food and beer and pot. Some brought only themselves and we took care of them. Everyone shared what they had and we all traded ideas and goods.  

We had huge parties, often with live music and people would come from everywhere to be there. They were always pot luck affairs and there were always lots of wonderful things to eat.

One year a friend of Anton’s showed up who was a professional Alphorn player. This is a very long horn that the Swiss traditionally play in the Alps. He would go out early in the morning just before sunrise about a quarter mile away and bounce those notes off of the canyon walls. It was beautiful music. The really cool thing was that he could put notes in between those coming off those canyon walls. He said that he had never been able to do that before.  

Music was always important and we often just played drums. I liked to sit out in front of the barn during the monsoon season and play guitar. Often there would be huge dark clouds completely surrounding us with lightening going off all around and I would be dry right where I sat. It was God’s light show and it was wonderful. 

Big Tom and his friend Jim came down in the spring and Jim took a liking to driving that old Chevy line truck. He did it better than anyone I ever knew. I took to calling him Yard Dog and the name stuck. At one point he had a custom license plate with that name on it. We built a horseshoe pit and Yard Dog and I competed every day. We got to be very good.  

Anton and I spent a lot of time in Jerome. We were helping Lee Loudon and Moderate Bob build rock walls at Lee’s home in the gulch. We would often leave before daylight, drive all the back roads (all dirt) and arrive for coffee and a few joints before we got started.. We then would go up on Mingus Mountain and quarry stone. There is lots of limestone on Mingus Mountain if you know where to look. We used Egyptian rollers to move the stone and pinch bars. These were huge slabs of limestone that took everything that four men could do to move into a truck. It is heavy and quite dangerous work. It is a dance to do this kind of thing, as if one man fails to place his bar at the proper moment, or for some reason cant hold the weight, everyone is put in jeopardy. It would be quite easy to be maimed or killed. None of us ever got hurt. We made an exceptional team. Anton and I traded our labor for pot. Some days we would hang out in Lee’s Lapidary and talk about turquoise and where it was found. I learned a great deal from these two people and bought and read every book available on the subject. I also bought and studied maps. In the summers, Bob and Lee would go to Nevada and mine turquoise. They would not share any of this information with us as they perceived us as a threat. We had after all successfully, mined their driveway for bits of stone that we turned into beads, purchased material at Tucson, and figured out our own technique for the manufacture that were at least as good of quality as those they were making. I don’t think that they really ever understood that Anton and I had an interest in beads that dated back several years to our time in California when we made them completely by hand. Other than their reluctance to share information regarding Turquoise, we had a solid friendship and spent a lot of time together. 

Earthworm showed up from Southern Oregon and we invited him to winter with us. We had a tee pee (lodge) set up along the base of the cliff behind the barn. He moved in. We had rubbed red clay into the white canvas of the lodge and it matched so well the lodge was quite hard to see unless you knew it was there. Earthworm taught us how to tan deer hides into Brain Tan Leather. 

Anton and I started collecting hides from all over the area. We would get them from hunters and meat packinghouses and taxidermies. We could get a green hide for a buck or two and we collected about a hundred hides. We built racks to stretch the hides in and put the racks about two hundred yards up the trail from the lodge. It was a great place for both as the view was excellent. At the back of the canyon someone in years gone by had built a cistern and it always had water in it. I never did find out how deep it was. We would take the green hides to the cistern where we had a couple of plastic fifty-gallon drums and soak them. We also had cut two logs and had them leaning in the crotch of a tree. We would put the green hide on the log and attach it at the top, and then using a draw-knife (an antique woodworking tool) would remove all the excess flesh. This kept the flies from laying eggs and the hide from rotting. We would then take the hides up to the racks; stretch them out and let them dry. Then came the scraping process to remove the hair and the epidermal layer. When this was completed the hide was parchment thin. It always amazed me how thick and soft it became after a few more processes were done to it. 

One morning, Anton was in a real tizzy. This never happened. We were out of pot, completely. He wanted to go to Jerome and trade for some but we had no money and very little gas in the truck. He did not give a shit and got on a bicycle that had one gear and took off. I was not happy and figured that he really had a problem but I got in the truck anyway and caught up with him several miles down the trail. He really could make that bike and uphill or down made no difference. Yard Dog was staying with also and he came along. On the way out that fifteen-mile dirt road we passed several forest service trucks. On the way to Cottonwood we passed a bunch more and a line of cop cars. Going up to Jerome we passed a bunch more. We did not give at any thought at all. We spent the day in Jerome, traded for two ounces of pot and an ounce of hash. By the time we got back to the dirt road we were really wrecked. The truck we had taken was a 1962 half ton step side Chevy ( this was used only around the ranch and was neither registered or insured) that had no mirrors anywhere and no brakes to speak of. When we stopped at the head of the dirt road to take a leak, the right front wheel bearing was smoking. I figured we would either make or walk in and we started up and headed home. 

As we came up to the gate I saw about fifty or more cop cars and forest service trucks all over the yard. I told Yard dog, “for Christ’s sake, don’t throw anything out the window”. He took the drugs and put them in a very greasy bag and stuffed it well back under the seat. It was all I could do to get the truck stopped in the yard with serious downshifting and the squeal of metal on metal from the brakes, and by now that bearing was really smoking. We all piled out of the truck and were so stoned that we had to lean on it for support. We dug out our ID’S about the time a bunch of cops came out of the house and surrounded us up. They asked if we had any weapons and I told them that there was a twenty-two pistol on the front that was loaded and to be careful with it. THE GUN WAS NOT ON THE SEAT. Yard Dog had stuffed it under the seat with the drugs. Two cops were searching the truck, one of which came up with the pistol. The other leaned the seat forward and there was that greasy bag of drugs staring right him. He put the seat back without touching the bag (I guess it was just too dirty looking for him to touch).  

They marched us in the house, which was full of cops, and forest service people who are also cops. The dining table (the black lacquer one with the three leaves?) was covered with a huge mound of weapons. There were at least fifty rifles, black powder, cap and ball, lever action, bolt action etc. There were almost as many pistols of similar descriptions. I wondered where they came from when it crossed my mind that they were all MINE! I had been trading weapons for years and had them stashed all over the place. They were not for hunting or for protection or anything like that at all. They were simply trade goods. Apparently they had run the serial numbers on every one of them and not one was stolen or illegal. Heather and Gina had baked an apple pie and I came in with a scrawny chicken that was the only food we were having that night. The head guy was the Game Warden and his name was Lee Laudaker. He turned out to be a very cool guy and we are friends to this day. After he thinned out the cop herd and sent them all home he shared coffee and pie with and apologized for what had happened that day. He did explain it. 

Woo Canyon had been under surveillance for several years by the Feds. It was alleged that there was a large cocaine smuggling ring operating from there. They were looking for an excuse to get a warrant to search the place. Lee had been watching the place for two weeks and saw two Eagle Feathers on the top of the lodge. He also observed us going out in the morning, hanging up four deer hides and taking them down at night. We did the same thing day after day. He thought we might be a big poaching operation and had acquired a warrant based on that allegation and the feathers. Eagle Feathers carried a fine of one thousand dollars and a year in jail for each one. It is illegal for anyone but a Native American to own these feathers.  

I had a friend In San Francisco who worked at the Steinhart Museum. When they replaced or changed a display, some items would suffer minor damage. I was gifted those items. I had a (stuffed) free standing Bald Eagle, Golden Eagle and a Red Tail Hawk. I had several trunks full of feathers. Every one of them had a registration number. All that showed was that I had not killed these birds. Earthworm also had a trunk of feathers.  

These cops and Forrest Service cops had come in from Flagstaff, Sedona, Cottonwood, Camp Verde, and Prescott. They inspected every inch of that canyon and spent the entire day doing so. What they found was workbenches with projects on them in various stages of finish. They found a group of people that made their living with art. Many expressed their admiration for what we were doing and expressed how they had joined the forest Service to be able to do similar things. In short they were envious. 

Of course there were some assholes in the group. When I came into the house there was a cop inspecting my Eagle Pipe (the one I had carved in Port Costa and really treasured), which he had taken from the mantel above the fireplace. I told him that it was a very special medicine pipe and asked him to put it back. He remarked that he was sure that analyses would prove that marijuana had been used in that pipe. I shut my mouth but Lee told him to place it with the pile of other evidence.  

They had confiscated every feather in the canyon. There was a small plastic bag on the table that I noted contained a roach (a small piece of a joint). Lee walked over to as this cop was being a cop and slipped it into his pocket. I saw him do it. The ass hold did not miss this and asked what it was. Lee told him it was some beads and sent him outside to do something else. We made eye contact and he smiled. I knew that I could have gone to prison for that roach. I could have gone to prison for the feathers as well. 

Earthworm had been up on the ridge at the lodge when they came in and had them covered with a lever action 30/30 and told me that it would have been real easy to cause them a great deal of grief. He said they acted like a bunch of clowns trying to get through a door at the same time. He also told me that a herd of deer had run across the road right in front of them as they came in. There was also a Bald Eagle circling overhead at the time. 

Heather was six months pregnant with our first son Ben and had been topless when they came in to the yard. They held her outside while they searched the house and offered her a blanket to cover her top. She copped an attitude and told them she had clothes inside and wanted them. They kept her outside like this for a couple of hours. There were no female officers. 

I provided Lee with receipts for every one of the deer hides and once we explained what we were doing he was impressed. Once he learned that we were really pretty new to living there and had nothing to do with cocaine smuggling he had lightened up. I also think that when they ran Anton’s ID it must have come back with something pretty incredible. He must have a pretty high security clearance to work for Kissinger and to be offered the job at the White House. The search continued until about ten that night. Lee was the last to leave and was really very cordial the entire time I had contact with him. 

He was obligated (it’s his job) to give me a ticket and a summons to appear in Superior court. I had one scrawny jackrabbit in the freezer that I had shot for food and had no license. Hell, I did not know you needed a license for bunnies.  

When we went to court, Lee was there. He stood up in front of the judge and told him that all of these agencies had made a vast mistake based on incorrect information when they raided our home. He also noted a couple of improprieties that occurred during the raid (the example was lack of female officers and what had happened with Heather) and asked the court to be lenient. In the end I was fined twenty-five dollars for the bunny. I did not have the money and they set up a payment plan. The judge was Judge White and we became friends down the trail. 

Lee would show up during hunting season and bring us truckloads of hides that he had picked up in the bush that hunters had left. He hated waste as did we, and he knew we would tan those hides and put them to use. He is the most levelheaded Federal Law Enforcement Agent I have ever met, and we are friends to this day. I used to find his tracks somewhere in the bush and made note of it. 

Sometimes he would pull me over on the highway with his siren and red lights going. He would ask how we had been and I would tell him I had spotted his tracks in a particular place. He was impressed and we tracked each other for years. There was always a cup of coffee for him and there still is. 

Heather and I went to Lamaze classes with a midwife to learn about having babies. I had seen a Russian film depicting a birth underwater and asked about it. The midwife had never heard of this but she did look into it. Heather and I decided that we wanted to have a water birth. I bought a Water trough, (used for watering livestock), from the feed store, and we painted it up and foamed it up and in the end we had babies in it. We took the tank to Clarkdale to Glenn and MaryAnn’s home and set it up. MaryAnn was a midwife in training (she later went on to become a nurse in the OB department at the hospital) and we had all been friends for some time. Heather started having contractions about midday and we put her in the back of the truck on a mattress. I drove a little crazy on the way out and just as we hit the Verde River the truck was completely overheated. Fortunately Gina was following and we changed vehicles and I left the truck where it was. Ben was born that evening and was the first successful water birth in the state of Arizona. We filmed the event and I still have the tape. He came out like a little torpedo and I caught him and turned him face up. He was still underwater, his eyes were open and he was trying to talk. I brought him out of the water, bundled him up, cut the cord and laid him on heathers breast. I was in tears and I did not care. A short while later I took him out into the dark, held him up to the stars, faced to each of the four directions and welcomed him to the world. I also said a prayer for his good health and long life. I burned a little sage as we did this. It was a crystal clear August night and the stars were particularly close. It is a moment that I will never forget and lives in my heart to this day. Everyone was really nervous that I had run off with him but he was fine and my first child had come into the world to join us. He slept in our bed and I could not get enough of him. His little hands and feet fascinated me and we snuggled when we slept. 

After Ben was born Heather and I decided to get married and went up to San Francisco to do so. We went to the courthouse with the proper paperwork. Anton and Gina were there along with Big Tom and Gay. We decided to honeymoon in Taos in New Mexico and got a hotel room there. The owner of the hotel took to us and owned a retail store and of course we had trade goods and made money. She did not charge for the hotel and we were there for a couple of weeks. I also met a guy who lived outside of town who wanted to sell his place. I traded him out of a bunch of gold coins and we talked about buying the place. He said he would carry the paper. We decided against it later on as in Taos, the wind always blows. There is nothing between there and the Rockies to even slow it down. Taos also has very harsh winters. Over the years I have done a lot of business in Taos. We had a wonderful honeymoon. Of course Santa Fe is on the way and we checked out the plaza and made good connections and made money there.  

There is a mine in Nevada called the Godspur Mine. A rather rich gentleman, by the same name, owned this mine and had several jewelry shops in the airport in Phoenix. I contacted him and received permission to check out his mine and to remove material if I indeed found anything. He had not worked this mine for years. Anton and I decided to go north and check it out.  

The mine is located about eighty miles east of Austin Nevada. We took a bunch of trade goods with us as usual and did business all along the way. Austin Nevada was losing population quickly and is pretty harsh in the winter. We found the mine and spent several days poking around. We did find some small amounts of turquoise. I noted a mine tailing that was up pretty high on the side of this quite steep mountain. It was a cat track that led to it but I did have a four wheel drive Chevy (I had killed the faithful Datsun moving rock down Mingus Mountain and traded it for the Chevy) and I started up the track. I got a little better than halfway and blew a tire. It was a real job to back that truck back down that trade without dying. There was a cliff on one side that dropped off about five hundred feet. Somehow I got to the bottom and jacked up the truck. I had to crawl under it to do so. As I was working the jack handle, I found a piece of very good Turquoise right next to the jack. I quit worrying about the tire and started picking up stone. We spent several hours at this spot and gathered up several ounces of excellent gem quality Turquoise. It was right in the middle of the road. 

I got the tire changed and we got about five miles back towards Austin when I blew another tire. In that country you are a fool to not have two spares and I did. We had them both fixed in Austin and continued on north. We checked out the Carico Lake area. We were walking around an abandoned dump and had just crested the ridge when there was this huge explosion. About two miles away a ridge line that was at least two miles long simply disappeared in a huge cloud of dust. It was really pretty cool watching this. There was an open pit mine in that direction that we had no knowledge of and explosives was how they loosened the rock. We found bits and pieces of Turquoise but nothing really substantial. We were camping everywhere we went. 

We arrived in Winnemucca and started checking around for Turquoise traders. We found out that there was a Native American man whose name was Richard who lived a bunch of miles out of town who might be willing to talk to us. It is a very closed and secretive community, not just Winnemucca but the mining community in general. We hit it off very well with Richard, (he became a lifelong friend and would show up once a year in Arizona to trade) who did indeed trade us a few ounces of Turquoise and introduced us to a man named Joy who had a Turquoise claim and was looking for investors. 

Miners are really a slimy bunch and are always looking for money. Joy took us to his claim, which is located about seventy-five miles north of Winnemucca. The road to get to the claim is some of the worst road I have ever traveled and it took a full day to cover that seventy-five miles. The mine is at seventy five hundred feet with a three hundred and sixty degree view that stretches’ out forever. 

There was nothing there but a ten by ten-steel shed and an old wire spool for a table. We had bought supplies in Winnemucca and we camped there for about a week. We took a couple of side trips to check out other mines in the area that Joy knew about.  

We were coming from one of these side trips and it was night. There was most of a full moon. We came up on this ridge and noticed an odd light about five miles away, out in the flats. We were up pretty high and we killed the lights, shut the truck down and got out. The light looked much the flickering lights of a helicopter and was moving slowly towards us shining down on the desert below it. We could not see where the light originated. Basically it came from a very small cloud that the object. There was not one other cloud in the sky and we could see perfectly, given the moonlit conditions. The cloud was much too low to really be a cloud. We were also many miles from civilization and in an area that provided no logical explanation for this event. We watched this cloud and the light for at least a half of an hour when the light suddenly went out. None of us took our eyes off that cloud which was still quite visible. Fifteen minutes later the cloud had totally dissipated. Nothing ever came out of that cloud unless it moved faster that the eye could follow. I am quite sure to this day that this was an U.F.O. 

We spent a few more days on the mine and picked up a bit of Turquoise and we made an agreement to buy into the operation as partners. I would not supply money and that was part of the deal. I asked Joy what he really needed and he told me he needed a caterpillar tractor to really work this mine. It would used primarily to remove the overburden and expose the Turquoise. He also needed supplies and a variety of tools. He did have a pretty good pile of Turquoise and brought over other people that had some as well. We ended up with several pounds of excellent stone before we left Nevada. He also had a small retail outlet that he sold silver and Turquoise jewelry from and we left some of our goods there to round out his inventory and keep him in groceries. Joy was a pretty good silver smith in his own right. We told him we would be in contact and went back to Arizona. 

When we got back to Arizona I located an old Allis Chalmers A-7 with an eight-foot blade, which is about the same size as a caterpillar D-4 and traded some moccasins and some other stuff for the tractor. It was delivered to Woo Canyon for me and I puttered around with it on the driveway and did some repairs. I contracted for a truck to pick it up and take up to Nevada. It rained pretty hard the day the truck was supposed to pick up the tractor and the truck driver got his rig stuck in the drainage ditch. He had spent the whole previous day washing that truck and he wasn’t happy. In the end they brought out another truck with another tractor to get him out of the mud and get our tractor loaded up. It was a two-day operation. I told them that I was not in any hurry and that should just wait until the road dried out but they weren’t having any. The really tore up the road but in the end they delivered the tractor to Joy in Nevada.  

Joy was thrilled. His brother owns a machine shop in Winnemucca and they really went through that machine and pretty much rebuilt it. Joy rode it all the way up to the mine and did a right fair job repairing the road on the way. It took several weeks for him to make the trip and he spent a lot of energy hauling fuel.  

We heard that Moderate Bob and Lee had spent most of the summer in Nevada and were there in Jerome when they got back. They were both really angry with us and we didn’t understand.  

We were accused of trying to buy the mining rights to a mine they had been working from out from under them. Moderate Bob got right in my face and I was absolutely convinced that he was about to hit me. He is stronger than two men and I knew I was in trouble. I looked him right in the eye and told him that it simply wasn’t true and that I had no idea what he was talking about. He stood there for a minute and finally told me that he thought that I really did not know what he was talking about. He backed off. Anton was standing right behind him and I am sure he would have jumped in had anything happened. Lee would not let it go. There were about twenty people from Jerome standing around. These were all artist friends that I had known, liked, trusted, helped at one time or another and generally respected. Not one of them came to my defense. I raised my voice above Lee’s ranting and let that whole crowd know that I did not appreciate the lies and suspicion and lack of support that had happened there, and that as far as I was concerned, my relationship with all of them, and the town of Jerome was over, right then. Anton and I left and I have never done business or added to the program in any way in the town of Jerome since that day. Moderate Bob and I are still friends. In the end he really did find out it was all bull shit. I guess that they had too much time on their hands and nothing else to talk about but Anton and I. Mining is like that. There is always mistrust and these two guys had spent the summer with only each other as company. They also saw us as a threat to their business. It was a shame to see that relationship go to hell. Lee never apologized and I think that had he done so we could saved the friendship. I have not spoken to him since. 

Anton and I had set ourselves up with contacts and materials and were partners in our own mine. My research had paid off and I now knew as much about Turquoise as anyone I have ever met. While I was in New York City I ended up lecturing at Tiffany’s about Turquoise. Tiffany’s is a little (yeah right!) jewelry store over on Fifth Street. The people there were not aware that Tiffanies had owned a Turquoise mine called the Tiffney mine in New Mexico. I was hoping to trade them out of some stone. I still am convinced that there is a good stash of Turquoise from this mine hiding in a vault somewhere deep beneath New York City. The Tiffany mine operated for many years. The mine is located on the Turquoise Highway, which runs south from Zuni (Highway 40) in New Mexico. We once took a road trip, Anton and I and Heather and Gina down this route. We were also looking for land to buy. We went through Fort Sumter, which is where William Bonny (Billy the Kid) is buried. It was nothing like I pictured it to be, nor was Lincoln where Pat Garrett, (He shot and killed Billy the Kid), was elected Sheriff. We ended up visiting Carlsbad Caverns on that trip. Carlsbad Caverns is one of the (if not the) largest caverns in the United States. There is a restaurant that is a mile under the surface. The place is spectacular, though off the beaten path. You have to want to go there, and it worth every bit of the trip. 

There are so many little things that happened in Woo Canyon. Jimmie Whitewolf came and lived with us for several years. Tom Bowman spent several winters there. We would get up in the morning and meet in what became known as the boy’s room. It really was an area in the center of the barn with an L shaped workbench that we did a lot of layout on. Directly in front of this bench I had built a clean room (there is a lot of dust at Woo Canyon) that was completely glass enclosed. Inside were television monitors, tape decks, audio equipment and other electronics that are used for making and editing video. In those days a video camera was a large affair and one needed a pretty big battery pack (carried separately) to operate them. This was when home video was a new thing. Most people neither had nor could afford video equipment. I had two pretty good cameras and a big pile of other stuff. Most all of this equipment we could operate via remote control through the glass and it really did hold up pretty good. 

We met Louie on the side of the dirt road. He was driving a 1948 Ford pickup that had a hell of a motor in it. He was broken down and Heather brought him out to the canyon. We helped him with his truck and lived with us from time to time over the years. He is a talented carpenter and cabinet maker and can drive anything on wheels. He had been a truck driver in some point in his past. One day I was crossing the yard from the house to the barn and there was little Ben with his bow and arrow that I had made for him. He was three at the time I think. He shot an arrow at a rock out in front of him and it ricocheted and went right into Anton’s open door. There was a loud exclamation and Louie comes out that door with that arrow stuck right in his heart. It was a target arrow so it was not in very deep but it left a scar that he carries to this day. Ben rarely wore cloths before he turned five. Not in the canyon anyway. 

It has been three years since I have even opened this file. Seems like it might be time to continue the story. 

We started making videos on how to do the things we were doing. How to do beadwork and tan hides. Editing equipment was pretty much nonexistent to the layman though we did locate and purchase one unit that let us put in titles and do a few special effects like fades in and out. In the end it was a lot of fun to do them. Jimi Whitewolf was important to the process. It would never have been done without him. He once said to me that I was the only person he had ever met that actually would take some silly idea that happened from a discussion among some very stoned people and just make it happen. He also said that for a man who never wore a watch he had never known me to be late for anything. Reckon it is all true.  

In those days, Woo Canyon was used several times as a movie location for film and music videos. It was a great gig. They paid well to be there and always did a wonderful job of putting the place back to how it was, no matter what the cost. Parts of Midnight Run with Robert Dinnero were filmed there. Taco Bell did some commercials. Crystal Gail and the Judds both did music videos there. There were others. We learned a lot about how it was all done. We filmed these shoots too. When the Judds were there they had brought out some fake boulders as part of what they were doing. I have some footage of Jimi Whitewolf and Ben playing with those fake rocks. Jimi would act like he just could not lift them and then little Ben, acting like Bam Bam from the Flintstones would lift them right up. 

We worked all winter making stuff and sold it in February at the Tucson Gem show. Anton and I made many the road trip and took orders and sold and traded all over America. We never seemed to lack for much but it did take a lot of work just maintaining the place.  

People came from all over the world to trade with us. The best art on earth showed up fifteen miles out on a dirt road and we did trade. People would hang out for weeks at a time or simply winter with us. We did have our regulars. Most added to the program in whatever ways they were able. There were a few that did not and did not see the necessity. They got to stay for awhile until someone would tell me that they were sucking energy or resources and not putting anything back. No one else would take responsibility and I guess I have always been the Alpha male. It always seemed to fall to me whenever any real decisions were needed. I was always easy with them but firm and most just moved on. Some came back at other times and were different people, always making sure they added to the program. 

There were a few core people that were there a lot. There is a huge difference between a commune and a community. Ours was a community. There was only one rule. It only took one dissenting word from any of the core people to me and you were asked to move on. We maintained a wonderful balance of energy that is still present in that canyon to this very day.  

We played drums and music and did sweats and burned sage and climbed all over those beautiful red rocks. We found single family ancient dwellings with some artifacts still inside. We never touched anything and as far as I know they are still there. We did trail runs, five hundred feet off the deck along the cliffs. We found arrowheads in the washes and pottery shards. Mostly we lived in sandals and shorts in the summertime. We smoked a lot of pot. We could trade a strand of our beads for a pound of the very best from Humboldt County in Northern California or from Southern Oregon. We went through a pound every seventeen days just like clockwork. We did this for ten years. Pot was a creative motivator. We started out each day with a round tray that I still have that would have two rows of joints ready to go. We would watch the morning movie and drink Pete’s coffee and get the day going. There came a moment that if I did not actually get up and get moving we would all just sit there all day and smoke and talk and do nothing. Usually I did get up though and would start cutting leather or get a grinder going. Then everyone else got motivated and we would work long hours creating with the occasional joint break. We often worked all night in the cool hours. We created beautiful art. Gemstone beads, custom footwear, bags and beadwork, stone and wood carvings, and a variety of other things. It was magic.  

There is a y in the road that is about two miles from Woo canyon. I always prided myself on how I could tell who would be coming to visit by the sound of their vehicle. It is a lonely road and not many people traveled it in those days. If it had snowed or rained we just did not go anywhere. The road was bad. There was a time or two that we were coming back from somewhere and got stuck trying to get in. The mud could get as high as the floorboards of my truck. When this happened, we just left the truck and hiked in. After a few days when it had dried out we would go back and get the truck. Then it was easy to drive it right out and get it home. We never worried about anyone messing with the truck and no one ever did.  

One morning, early on, not quite daylight yet, I heard a lot of vehicles coming. It woke me from a dead sleep. I got up, got the coffee on and waited to see what was up. I had forgotten but this was the day of a video shoot. Several big rigs and several other vehicles pulled into the yard. I did not even bother to go outside. I had not had my coffee yet. Anton and I had been up all night working on a particularly beautiful strand of turquoise beads and the finished product was sitting on the kitchen table. This guy knocks on the door and comes in just as I was turning with my first cup. His eyes went right to that strand of beads. He asked if he could look at them and I said sure. I offered him some coffee and he gratefully accepted. He asked if I had made the beads and I said yes. Then he wanted to know how much they sold for. I told him that that strand would probably go for twenty-five hundred dollars. He put twenty-five one hundred dollar bills on the table, took the coffee and the beads and walked out. The sun had not come up yet. I kept making coffee and people wandered in and out as the word got out that the coffee was good. At one point, this rather lovely lady came in and asked about beads. She wanted to know if I had anymore and I said yes. She asked if I took MasterCard and I laughed and said No, come back when you have real money! She thought that was pretty funny, got some coffee and went away. I did not know it at the time, not that it would have mattered, but it was Crystal Gail. She is a rather famous award winning country singer. It was her video that was being shot that day. The shoot went on for several days and Crystal and I had the opportunity to share a moment here and there. She had used the outhouse and commented on how it reminded her of when she was a little girl. I found out later that she was suffering from a tubular pregnancy and was actually very sick. They brought in a helicopter and did several shots from the air, some with her standing on flat rock as the bird circled. Flat rock is a special place that is about five hundred feet off the deck. I still go there for the magic. Crystal and I just hit it off as there was simply no pretense. I told her that I did not much care for country music and that the only song of her's I knew of was the brown eyes blue song and I did not much care for that one either. She only laughed. The shoot lasted for a few days and we all learned a great deal. I took orders for a few pairs of Mocs and the girls sold a lot of beadwork. It is always exciting and fun when the movies come into your front yard! The meals were all catered and were wonderful and we were always to eat with the cast and crew. Organized chaos is the best way to describe a movie shoot. Hurry up and wait. So many elements to consider in the making of a film. How someone moves in relation to the camera and how the camera moves in relation to that person. Lighting and lens choices, dialogue and wardrobe. There is so much more that the layman would just never consider.  

A year or so later I get a call from this guy in Atlanta. He tells me that he has heard that I can make boots for anybody. I laughed and told him that anything was possible and asked what he needed. He said he had a guy that was seven foot seven and had size twenty-one feet. He said he worked for Turner broadcasting and was trying to outfit one of their wrestlers. It was a Friday. I told him to fax me a picture and I would watch wrestling over the weekend. I had never seen wrestling before. I drove into town to get the fax and watched how others were dressed and what they were required to do. He called again on Monday and I told him I thought I could probably help him out. He offered to fly me to Atlanta from Sedona but I told him there would be some things I would need in Phoenix when I came back and so we agreed I would fly from Phoenix the next day.  

I could not smoke on the airplane. I was met at the gate in Atlanta by a uniformed driver with a sign in his hand. I could not smoke in the airport or in the car. I could not smoke when I got to Turner broadcasting. I really wanted a smoke. Turner broadcasting is located in the Omni Park hotel in downtown Atlanta. It is where CNN is broadcast from. I was led into a rather large room with double doors that were opened just as I got to them. There were several movie crews present and two boom mikes were put right at my face as I entered the room. I stopped and just stood there and took it all in. The boom mikes were manned by crews that were kneeling on the floor and there were two camera crews shooting at me at the same time. There were about a hundred people in the room dressed in expensive suits and Italian shoes. They were all looking at me. I was wearing a fringed brain tan shirt, Jeans, a pair of my Mocs, a cowboy hat that was pretty beat and sunglasses. I had my two world war one Swiss army backpacks slung over each shoulder. These packs are made with the cowhide and the hair is left on. I was really out of my element and I was very aware of it. I was a bit scared but I rucked up, dug out the fax with the picture on it and said that I wanted to know who drew this picture. Where was the designer? This pretty woman comes through the crowd and says that it was her. I asked if she had any leather samples and she pulled some out. Surprised the shit out of me that she actually had them with her. I held up a piece of leather and proceeded to tear it right in half. Her mouth came open and I told her that this would never do and asked in a rather loud voice for a telephone. I needed an outside line right away. I was ushered to a little table with a phone on it and the attention shifted away from me. Thank God! I got my friend Rob from the Hide and Leather House in Napa California on the phone and told him he was not going to believe where I was and what was going on. We got a good laugh and I ordered the hides I was going to need and told him I would need them in two days. He agreed. As I was describing the scene I was in I was checking out the wrestler who was up on a little stage. I have never seen such a huge man. He did not speak English and was from Argentina. his name was Hore Gonzolas. My Spanish is a little weak but we managed to understand each other. I started making the molds with duck tape and was being filmed during the entire process. When I got done with the tapeing I was about to cut the mold off when he stopped the whole production. It turns out it was the first pair of socks he had ever owned and the only ones. He was not going to let me cut them off! There was quite the ruckus as people got on the phone and finally located a dozen pair for him from the Atlanta basketball team. I cut the mold off and all was well. By now it was early evening and I was exhausted. I had not had a smoke all day. I asked where I was supposed to stay and these two young and rather beautiful secretaries escorted me to the front desk. There was a suite reserved for me on the top floor. We went up. It was a huge room, actually several rooms with a full bar and a great view of the other tower of the hotel. Jane Fonda had the room right across the way and I was truly hoping for a glimpse of her. It never happened. She was married to Ted Turner at the time anyway. The girls were pretty cool and we proceeded to work on that bar. They told me that I could have anything I wanted so we ordered one of everything from room service. I had a little pot and we smoked it. It was a non smoking room of course but I had pulled the batteries out of the smoke detectors and just did not give a damn. We had a great time and they both ordered Mocs and I did molds for each of them. After a bit I asked if they could get me into the back room of CNN and they said they could. There is a lot of security but they passed us right on through. I was in the production side of CNN and was fascinated by all the equipment. Some of it I recognized and got to talking to the techs about it. We got along very well and they let me play with some of the gear. Looking out the window into the set was way cool. There are all the TV monitors behind the set just like you see on TV. We were there for about two hours when the girls asked if I wanted to see Atlanta by night. Sounded good to me. I had a pretty good buzz and had gotten my second wind. It turns out these girls were Dead Heads and had some liquid LSD and we each took some and tripped all around Atlanta that night. It was a wonderful tour. We spent the last few hours in my suite, making a serious dent in the bar and then it came time for my flight home. I had not slept in two days. I got the limo ride back to the airport and slept for the entire flight back to Phoenix. The hides were waiting when I got home and it took three days to make the boots. They were like nothing I had ever made before and I thought them ugly. They were knee high done in red and black leather and looked sort of Roman. I shipped them out.

I had traded for an eighteen foot motor home that was in very good shape, ripped out the bathroom and installed my sewing machine. I put my turning bar on the front bumper. My Mocs are made inside out and the bar is a necessity to turning them. Heather was pregnant with Josh at the time and her and I and Ben headed out going east. We had just started one of the many major road trips. We traded on several of the reservations as we headed east and always did well as did those that we traded with. We stopped and traded in Gallup, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos and many other places. We made money wherever we went. I took orders for mocs everywhere. As we crossed the Mississippi into Memphis, we got pulled over. It was a rather major thing. We fit the profile of someone running drugs and I had a film can in a cabinet with a bunch of other film cans with some pot in it. I was put in the back of the cruiser while they searched the rig. Heather showed them anything they wanted to see and basically proved to them that we were just artists traveling to see Crystal Gail, one of their hometown girls in Nashville. They never found the pot thank God and the brought me out of the cruiser. I had several gold Krugerands in my wallet and as it happened two of them came up missing. I asked the officer if he could look in his cruiser and sure enough they were there. I think it impressed them that I was so casual about it all. They let us go and we found a nice river to camp at. I smoked a bowl or two and left my pipe and that film can on a rock in an obvious place for the next person who might come along. We were in the East now and I really did not know the rules that well. I think it was the Chattahoochee river.  

It was geek week in Nashville. Fan week. The town was overflowing with people trying to see their favorite stars. Somehow I located Crystal's corporate office and rung the bell. Heather was in the rig with Ben. It was a security guard and he asked who I was. I told him I was Will from Arizona and was here to see Crystal. He said will who and I said just Will from Arizona, she would know who I was. Well that did not go over very well and he ushered me in to talk to several more people who asked the same questions and got the same answers. I had time and was really just playing with these guys. I finally ended up talking to her stage manager who actually insisted that I really identified myself. I put my pack on his desk and started dumping beads all over it until I came up with my address book. I had about two hundred thousand dollars worth of beads sitting there on his desk. I showed him her home phone number and asked if he would like to call her or if I should. He laughed and got her on the phone saying Will from Arizona was standing in front of his desk. Twenty minutes later she showed up shadowed by all those security folks. She walked right up to me gave me a hug and told them folks that ever I was to show again she was to call her right away. I told her they were good folks and were doing a very good job for her. As they all stood around and watched she started picking through all those beads on the desk. She was laughing when she said she had real money this time. Apparently she had been back to Sedona a couple of times looking for me and I had always been on a road trip or somewhere and we simply had not connected. She put a rather large pile of cash dollars on the desk. This really freaked out everybody who was there. I made nothing of it and just dumped it in my pack. We agreed to meet for dinner later and she invited us to see her store. She was very happy to see Heather and Ben and while Ben and I played in the back of her store she bought a whole lot of stuff from Heather. She has a sort of monument in the back there with all of her awards and pictures of her with other famous people, presidents and such and it was interesting to see just how famous she actually is. We met later at an about average Chinese food restaurant and met her husband Bill. Their last name is Gatzemos though few know it. These are very down home people who follow their religion and have children that love and appreciate. We had a great deal in common. I wanted to pay for the dinner but Bill just would not hear of it. We said our goodbyes and headed South.

My Brother had a bought a couple of hundred acres just South of Nashville in a town called Manchester. It was beautiful. I was going to take Ben for a walk in the woods when he stopped me. He told me there were all kinds of nasty snakes that hung out in the leaves, copperheads and such and that there were water moccasins in all the waterways. I asked him what the point was of owning land that you couldn't even walk. We had a great dinner and watched the fireflies darting among the trees. It was like a faerie land. I called Atlanta the next day to see how the boots had worked out. They were frantic and had been trying to reach me for two weeks. They said that they did not fit. This surprised the hell out of me as I had never made Mocs that did not fit. I told them where I was and that I had my motor home and my family with me. They said no worries, just come on down to Atlanta and they would take care of everything. We headed out that day and made a clean run into Atlanta. The address they had given me was not the same as the Omni Park and was a corporate office of some kind. As I pulled into the parking lot I noticed that half of the executive lot was blocked off with barriers and two security guards. I pulled up to one of the guards and told him that I was Will from Arizona and asked where I should park. He opened up that barrier and said that this half of the lot was for me! I just laughed and circled up that motor home right in the middle. I guess some of the executives were walking a bit further while we were there.  

It was a pretty fun two weeks we spent there. They put us up in a suite at the Hilton all expenses paid, got us free tickets to everything that was happening at the time to keep Heather and Ben amused and I had them fly George up from Florida where they trained the wrestlers. I had torn those boots apart and completely re done them. I cut leather on the front lawn as people would walk by. Several ordered mocs and bought stuff from Heather. The boots did not fit and that is the long and the short of it. Though George was seven foot seven, they wanted to make him appear taller and asked if I could add some to the sole. I had told them that it would make it look like Frankenstein and that I would add some to the inside instead, which I did. I had never done this before and I simply miscalculated. The boots were finished when George arrived and they fit perfectly. Everyone was pleased. Ted Turner had purchased all the old MGM movies and they are stored in a climate controlled room at this facility. I was given a tour and have actually put my hands on the original reels of Gone With The Wind. The reels are about four feet tall. Quite the honor for me. I met many wrestlers who all gave me signed photos and memorabilia. While we were there, we went to Stone Mountain which is a marvelous granite boulder that has all the Confederate big wigs carved into it. They had a laser light show going that evening and 

we all loved it. This was early in this technology and I had never seen anything like it. In the end the boots worked out fine and were photographed as front pages in a couple of wrestling magazines. All of the filming that was done on my first visit, ended up on Connie Chung’s show which at the time was quite popular. She was doing a piece on the making of a wrestler and I turned out to be part of it.  

We spent some time with some friends in North Carolina, did a bunch of trade with lots of people in the area, some at the Cherokee Reservation up in the Smoky Mountains. This was the heart of the Cherokee people long ago. The town is full of rubber tomahawks and mini Tonka moccasins in shops run by white folks. Pretty sad really. I found some real people in the back woods and traded for some green pipestone that is used to make medicine pipes with and some of the cane that grows along the creeks there that is used for making flutes. I brought it back to Jimi Whitewolf and who is as close as one gets to being a full blooded Cherokee these days and he carved a pipe and made a flute. It was his medicine and still is. We spent several weeks in North Carolina and had a wonderful time. Great music!

There was a bunch of baby opossums that were being cared for by the folks we were with and Ben and I had a great time playing with the little ones. There is a church, every third house, everywhere in North Carolina. They all tried to save me. I am not sure I ever felt as though I was saved and was never convinced that I needed to see the inside of any of these churches. 

We kept going north and ended up at Pipestone Minnesota. Pipestone is in the Southwest corner of Minnesota and you have to want to go there. Anton had told me to look up Chief Standing Eagle when I got there and I made the effort. Apparently he had died a couple of years before, so here we were, once again on a reservation, knowing no one and looking to do some trade. I spotted this big Native brother sitting under a tree at a round table that was really just an old spool for electrical wire. The table was covered with pipestone. I walked over there, leaving Heather and Ben to have lunch. As I got near the table, he looked up for a moment then went back to what he was doing. He was carving a beautiful pipe that had a free standing buffalo on the stem. It was a single piece of stone that incorporated the bowl, the stem and that buffalo standing on the stem. I sat on a crate that was opposite him and watched. He looked up once again and never said a word. I watched for about an hour when he looked up, put a piece of stone and a four way file in front of me. Then he went back to what he was doing. I looked at the stone for about thirty minutes and then I starting working it. We never exchanged one word and by sunset it was obvious that I was carving a copy of what he was carving. Finally he put down his pipe and asked if I drank beer. I said I did but I was pretty picky about what kind of beer I drank. I told him I would go get us some if he could tell me where to go. I came back with two cases of Corona, Heather and Ben. We sat under that tree and watched the sun go down and sipped beer and talked a little. I told him about looking for Standing Eagle and he told me he was Big Eagle, Standing Eagles son. He asked where we were staying and I said I did not know so he directed us to a nearby KOA campground. We got settled in and had a bit of a fire going when he showed up. We invited him to supper and he joined us. Big Eagle and I sat up all that night, sipping beer and talking. It turned out that he owned the spotted quarry which is the very best of the pipestone. It was under water at the time and he needed to pump it out before he would start his mining for the year. It wasn't time yet.  

We stayed there for two weeks, carving stone and listening to stories. Big Eagle would point to a ridge line and tell me that that was where his great grandfather was buried and his great grandfather and his father. He said it was a comfort to know that he would be there too. He told us that John Dillinger had once robbed the bank in Pipestone. All the foundations of the buildings are made out of pipestone. It was a wonderful connection. There was a great deal of honor exchanged and many nights around a hatful of fire, sitting quietly and looking at the stars or telling stories. Days of carving stone. I gave him the buffalo pipe I had made while I was there. It turned out pretty well. In the end I traded for about four hundred pounds of the best of the spotted quarry stone. Big Eagle wanted a lever action Marlin .22 that I had and a damn good and accurate .50 caliber black powder rifle with double set triggers. Much later when I got back to the canyon, Anton and I made a strand of particularly nice pipestone beads interspersed with turquoise and sent it to him as a kicker. He had told me that he never wrote letters and he never did. I would be willing to bet though that he wears that strand of beads to this day. Big medicine went into their creation. There is no doubt in my mind that were I to go there today, I would be welcomed. White men just don’t get that close to these people. I know of no one who ever was able to trade there.  

We crossed the whole Northern part of the country and stopped at all the reservations, Cheyenne, Sioux, Blackfoot, and Crow. Pipestone is a big part of their medicine. I traded everywhere. Everywhere the pipestone was the most sought after item I had. I would always ask what the person intended to do with the stone. If it was to make a medicine pipe then I would trade. If it was to make money in some way I would not. There was always a great deal of honor exchanged and once I was able to get by the white man taking advantage stigma we were very much accepted and met some wonderful people. Each reservation was much like visiting a third world country but these folks were rich by my standards. They had good ponies to ride, meat on the table and vegetables in the ground. Their children were happy and Ben fit right in. All the grandmothers loved Ben. They all loved Heather too. She was heavy with Joshua.  

Custer was a damned fool. When you look at the battlefield at the Little Bighorn it is just so obvious. There are headstones all over where little groups of men died. There was no cohesion at all. There is a Crow reservation nearby and we went to a huge Pow Wow there. There were hundreds of lodges set up with awnings made from interwoven branches. Some of these had to be 50’ in diameter. Crow women are some of the most beautiful women on earth and dressed in ceremonial buckskins and dancing to the drums, there is an unmistakable grace to them. They are proud women. We spent a couple of days there and as usual the trading was good. Native American food is wonderful if simple. Native Americans are very special people and there is much we can learn from them. The trouble is no one is listening, even their own younger generations. So much is being lost. We would all do well to have a closer connection with earth and sky. Instead we ruin both with greed and what has been termed progress. If having more stuff is progress and the cost of it is the destruction of this beautiful planet then one must question the actual value.  

As we traveled west we kept seeing really large groups of motorcycles passing us and finally I asked what was going on at a rest stop. It turned out that it was the 50th anniversary of the Sturgis motorcycle run. I did not know anything about it but we decided to go. It is up near Deadwood. Deadwood is most famous for Wild Bill Hickok and the infamous aces and eights. This was the poker hand he was holding when he was killed. It has been called the dead mans hand ever since. We had a hell of a time at Sturgis. There were about a half a million motorcycles there that year and the streets everywhere were full of riders. We did a lot of trade there as our goods were far superior to the Mexican leather stuff that seems to be the thing with riders these days. I bought a six pack of Harley Davidson beer that was labeled and made for the 50th and passed it along to riders I knew in the bay area. They became collector’s items. This was the biggest party I have ever seen. It was constant, day and night. I heard of no real trouble which on the face of it is pretty amazing. Clubs and groups from all over the world were there. In a way it reminded me of the old days when warring Native American tribes would meet at special medicine places and remain peaceful. Times like that are to be honored and treasured by all. Though there were a lot of weapons everywhere and gunfire at night was pretty common I never heard of anyone actually being knifed or shot. Not that year. I wore a hand gun in plain sight. I had my family with me. I guess there is a presence about me as no one bothered us at all. The one rule of thumb with handguns is that if you wear one most people figure you know how to use it and are willing to do so. Anybody else will get precisely what they ask for. 

We took a room in Deadwood, something we rarely ever did. I went out one night and played the casinos and picked up about two hundred dollars. I don’t really take to gambling much since my days in Nevada and it actually was not much fun. It was just something to do. It just happens that I do know how to do it rather well. We went up and saw Mt. Rushmore and the heads. Ben loved it. There were way too many people in that area at the time so we moved on. We did a little more trade along the way but chose to pass up some reservations in the eastern part of Washington State. By now we were getting a bit road weary and still had a very long way to go. We were still far north of the canyon. 

My parents had their home in Port Angeles in Washington so we spent some time with them. We took a trip over to Victoria by ferry and loved the Bucshard gardens. I bought Heather a beautiful handmade coat that she has to this day. One of the few gifts I have given her that she does still have. My parents set us up with a bunch of canned salmon that they had put up a few weeks earlier. It was nice of them to do this as Salmon is one of my favorite fish. Heathers grandmother lived just down the peninsula and we spent a few days with them too. Her grandfather had a little skiff tied up to a short pier and I asked him if I could borrow it and go see about catching some fish. He was pretty worried that I would get in some kind of trouble but I grew with row boats and told him so. He loaned us some poles and bait and Ben and I set off right as daylight was hitting the eastern horizon. This was a little bitty skiff, hardly big enough for the two of us but I put us out a fair distance from shore and we put our lines in the water. Wouldn’t you know it the first damn thing we caught was a sand shark about four feet long. I don’t like sharks. Not one bit and I was most careful about getting that hook out. It seemed that that day was all about sharks. We caught several and let them all go. I reckon we were about three miles or more out into the sound and the ferries started running. A little skiff like ours is no match for one of those boats and just riding the swells as they passed became quite the adventure. We took on a bit of water from time to time and I put Ben to bailing with a coffee can. It got a little hairy out there and the wind was picking up. I knew the folks would be worrying about now and we headed back. There were some pretty good whitecaps all the way. The old man was sitting on the porch keeping an eye out for us. We just sat on the porch with him and he pointed out places all over that sound that he knew from years of experience and told some wonderful stories of his interaction as a boy with some of the local Native Americans. It was these folks that had taught him all he knew about the sound. The only comment he made about the adventure Ben and I had was that it looked to him that I had been around a skiff and rough water before. I hid the blisters on my hands but I reckon he knew. 

We played some more going down the west coast, spent some time in the bay area and finally headed home. That summer we did 10,000 miles around the country, traded everywhere we went and never lacked for anything. We made some very good friends too.  

Seems like Joshua was born right about the time we got back. He was a water baby too and I held him up to the sky and welcomed him to life. There is nothing, ever, in a man’s life that compares to the moment a child is born. Nothing ever comes close. The look in Joshua’s eyes, his tiny little hands clutching my finger and the small noises. There is nothing like snuggling with an infant all night long. His little feet kicking from time to time. Mom taking him to suckle somewhere in the wee hours then returning him. I was blessed and still feel that same way now, twenty years later seeing the man he has become. He is so much better than I am or ever was in so many ways. So is Ben. They will do well no matter what and any woman lucky enough to live a life with them will be blessed as I have been. They have made me a much better person. 

Life in the canyon continued for a few more years. We took many road trips that each represented a new adventure. We made annual trips to Nevada and mined turquoise. There was one year I had Ben, crazy Bob and little Miki and we decided to do a bit of a roundabout trip on the way home. If I have neglected to mention Miki it is time to do so now. He has always been closer than any brother to me. We married sisters. We have cut an incredible amount of trail together and still live in the same house to this day though there were times we did not. It must have been around this time that he moved to the canyon from California. On this particular trip we were coming down from the mine and shot us a couple of bunnies and some sage hens. We had been out in the bush for about three weeks and got us a hotel room in Winnemucca. I headed right for the shower, Bob and Miki sent out to find lemon and garlic and sour cream and to sneak the stove up to our room. We took the batteries out of the smoke detector and put a towel by the door to seal the crack. Ben was doing flips from bed to bed and trashed the room after I had gotten him cleaned up. He was doing a kids job and he was good at it. Bob decided to go into the bathroom and clean the game. He was in there a long time. We were getting pretty hungry so Miki and I opened the door to the bathroom to see what was taking so long. It was unbelievable. There were feathers and guts all over that bathroom. The drain in the bathtub was plugged and was six inches deep in gore. There was blood everywhere, mirror, walls and ceiling. It truly looked as if someone had been murdered in that bathroom. It was a damned good thing no one else saw it. The game was clean though and he went out and got it to cooking. Miki just got naked and went and stood in that gore and took a shower. We were all in real need. I bet it took Miki and I two hours to clean that bathroom. It seemed like it took Bob about that long to cook too. I remember stepping out on the street to have a smoke and you could smell that dinner a long ways off. You could hear people walking by under the window commenting on how good that supper smelled. That night we just laid flat on the beds and floor and popped pieces of game into our mouths. It was cooked to absolute perfection.  

We got somewhere up pretty high up in the Rockies of Utah the next day and by nightfall had us a right nice fire going. Bob is a tree man and had his spurs and chain saw along with him and he went up a right big blue spruce and dropped down a bunch of deadwood for the fire. Everything on the ground was just too wet. We ran into a small group of rainbow kids heading off for the gathering and we all hung out together that night. I remember Bob putting a green spruce branch on that fire and the colors were fantastic. It rose about fifteen feet in the air and lit up the night.  

Somehow we came out way up in the northwest corner of New Mexico on the Jiceria Apache Reservation. Some of the finest country I have ever seen. It is up pretty high. These folks are a different breed of Apache. They are tall like the plains tribes and broad and strong. We found us a right nice little lake and Bob went up a dead tree and dropped about a cord of wood which we stacked neatly. He really made that tree look wonderful. It was like a work of art when he was done. There was no real campsite so we just made one. We do that a lot. Hell if you ever were driving down the highway and saw a man with a hatful of fire going under a pot of coffee, that was likely me. We had picked up some steaks and cooked them up that night. Ben would fall asleep for a bit then wake up and say “where’s my meat?” This got to be a favorite saying with him on that trip. We most always ate pretty well. We are all pretty good with cooking on an open fire with not more that a skillet and a Dutch oven. The Dutch oven came in handy for biscuits and cobblers. There is nothing like a cobbler made on an open fire combined with a good French roast coffee.

We fished that lake all the next day. We caught a few but the good part was the trade I made with a native who passed by in a canoe with a full string of nice fish. We did a trade and made a friend at the same time. That afternoon and evening there were several people who stopped by our camp and traded. We had food for all. It turned out to be a good thing too. We were accepted for just what we were. That night we had put out some night lines with the hope of having breakfast on the line come daylight. Somewhere long after dark I spotted this boat on the lake that was moving slowly along the shore line with a bunch of very bright lights. There were natives on the boat and you could hear them talking from a ways off. We knew there was another camp about a half mile from us to the west and that boat stopped there. Pretty soon there was all this commotion going on and we got to wondering. We slipped down and retrieved our poles to be on the save side. Hell we had no license. We were also on a reservation and the rules are a lot different. I seem to recall that Miki lost his pole in the water that night. He went diving for it the next day in water nearly as cold as ice and got it back. Pretty soon there were cars with red lights going over to that other camp. It turned out it was a white man over there who had no respect. He had a line out and they caught him at it, confiscated his gear, impounded his car and locked him up for the night. Then they came to see us. We had finished our supper and were just lounging around the fire waiting on the cobbler to finish and the coffee to be done. They were all in uniform and they were all game wardens. You could see them come in slow and really check out our camp. They noted the neatly stacked pile of wood and asked where it had come from. Bob told them. They looked up at that work of art in the firelight and I just know they really appreciated what they saw. They asked if we were night fishing and we said no. We offered up coffee and cobbler and they sat with us for a bit. I recognized one of them as being the man I had traded with earlier in the day. They told us that this was not a campsite and that we needed a license to fish that lake. We told them we would be moving on come daylight and that was the end of it. They told us about the guy in the camp next door and asked if we knew the man. I said no but it would not have surprised me if he was the same guy who was bitching about Native Americans that we had run into at the gas station earlier on. They described him and I reckon it was the same man. They told us he would go to court on the reservation the next morning and would probably pay a sizeable fine. I told them he probably deserved any damn thing he got. I don’t tolerate rudeness in a man. They liked that and we just hung out for a good part of the evening. They knew we had been fishing and our poles were in plain sight. There were also rifles and pistols. They also knew we were real people and made nothing out of it. We talked about the game on that reservation and it turns out that it was common for record elk and bear to be taken there. They had a large force of game wardens and I honor them for watching out for their land. I told them so too. We let them know that we had no intention of taking even small game while were there and asked if it would be ok if we caught a fish or two for breakfast. They said it was fine. They never asked to see a license. Good people those folks. They moved like ghosts and were gone without a sound.

You just have to respect men such as these. There was honor exchanged that night. Miki got his pole back the next day; we caught breakfast and headed south.  

We went down the turquoise trail and visited Carlsbad Caverns. We all loved it. It is just one of those very out of the way places that one has to want to see. We caught the exit of millions of bats at sunset. Those caverns are like no other that I have ever seen anywhere. There is a restaurant a mile underground. We found us some dirt road and ended up somewhere in Texas way down by the border. From New Mexico to Texas and to Phoenix we never touched a paved road again. Somewhere out in the flats we came across the carcass of a horse. It had been down for some time but there was still rotting meat on the bones. Ben insisted we take the skull. A five year old kid insisting we take the skull. There was no place to put it except to tie it to the front bumper of the truck. It reeked of death and rot and of course it blew right back into the cab. We put up with the damn thing for two days then cut it loose regardless of what Ben had to say. People think that that border country is pretty barren. Mostly it is but there are some right pretty spots to put up a camp too. I bet we found both of them! It is really something to be out in big flat country putting up a rooster tail of dust thirty feet in the air of alkali dust. We had no maps and there are no signs. Just dirt roads that go every which a way. We knew we wanted to go west then a bit north. The dust was so bad we all had kerchiefs dampened on our faces just to breathe.

We came up on a wire gate that had a sign that said King Ranch. We knew exactly what that meant. The largest cattle ranch in America. The rule in the bush is if you open a gate, you close it and you show respect the land. We have always followed the rule. We were not too worried about coming up on some cowhands, we were armed too and even though we might look like hippies no one in their right mind would ever put us to the test. Every one of us hits what he shoots at and can get to a gun right quick. Ben at five was already a fair hand with a .22 rifle although he came close to shooting me when I had taught him how to shoot my pistol. The hammer came down on that bit of skin between the thumb and forefinger. The barrel was pointing right at my gut. It was purely an accident but it is accidents that kill people. We saw no cowboys or cattle. We saw a lot of flat land and a lot of dust. We went through many gates and closed every one we passed through. There is a reason for a closed gate and it is usually about controlling where cattle can go. If a man doesn’t close a gate, he just made a lot of work for some cowhand and that’s how you get in trouble crossing private land. It seems like I recall coming up on some folks and some buildings and getting water and fuel. Those two items were a real issue in that part of the country. We were carrying two five gallon buckets of extra fuel and one of water but that was a hell of a lot of open country that had neither. Every once in awhile we would find a little draw that might harbor a few head of cattle, a small bit of water and a cottonwood tree or two. Cottonwood usually indicates water though not always above ground. It was not water one would drink unless it was an emergency and you had boiled it real good and filtered out the dirt. Even then it tastes pretty bad though it will keep you alive. There were some rather infrequent rainstorms that took the edge of the heat off and kept the dust down for a bit. I remember after one of these I sipped some water from a horses hoof print just so I could say I had done so once in my life. It seems that every Texan I ever met has drunk water from a hoof print or so they say. Well boys, so have I.

We were always concerned about fuel and believe me that is no place to run out. A man could die out there pretty easily. We are good but we would have been hard pressed in that country.

We came out somewhere north of Phoenix. That was a lot of dirt road and a hell of a trip. We caught the freeway and made it on home. I would bet that somewhere out there that horse head is bleached white by the sun and picked clean by the ants. I reckon if Ben still wants it he can go find it himself. That is harsh country and it takes harsh men to thrive there. That is why they are so few and far between.  

I came back from a road trip one time to find Jimi Whitewolf, Anton and Abbot sitting around the barn bitching about being out of pot. I had brought a pound or two in so it was ok for the moment. Abbot is a Hopi brother who we all came to know well and love. He is perhaps the finest Kachina carver there is. I have never seen his equal. We were sitting out in the barn smoking joints when these three start telling me of a plan they had hatched about growing pot on the north slopes using mirrors to control the light. It had to be the stupidest thing I had ever heard. As if no one would spot mirrors? To this day I’m not sure if they were baiting me or not but when I ridiculed them about it they asked what I would do. I told them. We started it the next day. Ben was attending Montessori school in Sedona and he and the women would go in early in the morning. The girls would stay there until school got out and come home at about one in the afternoon.

We went out behind the barn where we could not be observed from any angle and put a shaft down fifteen feet. The door to this shaft was a foot thick and insulated and had a foot of earth on top of that. It was not in any special place and you could jump on it and it made no hollow sound at all. Every day we would fill my truck twice to overflowing then empty it into the ruts in the driveway and drive over it a time or two. It blended right in. It was mostly me and Abbot that were down in the hole and Anton would lift the dirt out in a five gallon bucket. Jimi stood watch. You just can’t tire that man. We built a 12x12 room and another that was about 8x8. There was also an alcove for our mother plants. We installed the best cloning operation I have ever seen before or since. We ran power underground and vent ducting to the stove pipe in the roof of the barn. We grew some damned fine pot down there and now had a constant source. It was all set on timers and water was recycled and was constantly flowing. Big Tom and Yard dog were the only other people who ever knew about this until we moved off the ranch. It took us a long time to get it all done but it was completely self sufficient when it was. The women never knew it had even happened. I would go down about every six weeks to harvest and re clone. I would come out of that hole covered in red mud, pouring down sweat and run to the shower to wash down as they were coming in from the y. We could always tell when they were approaching from two miles away. The afternoons were always about doing nothing and the girls thought we were just lazy. Fact is we were used up. We grew this for our own consumption and never sold any of it. Frankly it was too good to let go. 

We had a booth down at the gem show for many years. One year Anton, Tom Bowman and I decided to leave the women to it and go off into the Chirracuas and explore. We spent one night up on Mt Lemon just outside of Tucson but it was nasty cold and we had to use gas to get a fire going at all the wood was so green. Tom lived in his van so we just naturally figured he was good in the woods too. Well we were wrong about that. He wasn’t worth a shit and whined all the time.

This place is known as Cochise’s strong hold and for good reason. It is a huge area that is covered in boulders that climb pretty high. You can see someone coming across the flats for a hundred miles. There is no way the Calvary could have ever approached without those Apaches knowing and then even if they got there they would have to root those Indians out of those rocks. Good luck with that. Anton and I had spread our bedrolls up next to the fire where the ground was warm but Tom wasn’t having any of it and moved off a piece into the shelter of some boulders. Come daylight Anton and I were comfortable and had the coffee going when we looked over to Tom. He was covered in frost. It looked like he had been snowed on. He whined about that too. We took some back roads and followed a well known wash for some time. We actually found a little store with gas. There was this rather good looking young lady running the place. I asked her if she thought it would be alright if we put a camp together somewhere in that wash. She had a brilliant smile. She said “sure, no problem. Folks around here like nothing better than shooting hippies and Mexicans”. We kept right on going. She was pretty cute though. We took a hit of acid along the way and had bought a chicken that was pre cooked. It was long after dark and I had been driving for a long time. I broke out the chicken. Anton and Tom were too stoned to even get out of the truck. I lay out on the hood of the truck and ate that chicken in the windshield. It was like something out of the night of the living dead. They weren’t hungry.  

We had been about a week in the bush, smelled of wood smoke and had not had a bath. We were all dressed head to toe in brain tan buck skins. We all were wearing cap and ball pistols and carried rifles. We had knives and guns; normal. We pulled into tombstone and all of a sudden we were celebrities. People started following us around. This made me a bit nervous so we went into the Crystal Palace saloon of Wyatt Earp fame. The place was empty except for a handful of good old boys who all were dressed the same in those cowboy shirts with the little snap buttons on the front. White hats and all. I figured they must be the band. Probably fifty people followed us into the bar. I pulled two pistols and slapped them on a table, shouted out WHISKEY and kicked out a chair and sat down. There were rifles and pistols on that table too. Most everyone else sided up to the bar or took tables away from us. No one came close. We had a whiskey and a beer and left the place. As we wandered around tombstone we picked up more of a following. Tombstone is home to the largest rose on earth. It is a banks rose and it is by God huge. Takes a bit too just walk around the trunk. A sight to see even though it was not in bloom. It was still winter. It was pretty fun just wandering around with that crowd not talking to us but following us everywhere. I felt like we were the Clanton’s or something fresh to town. We were the only ones who really belonged there though. At least that was how I saw it. We caught another beer at the birdcage and headed out. I never took Tom with us anywhere again. Just too much of a sissy to be in the bush. He did ok in his van though.  

Palo came out of Oregon. He was a hell of a musician. He was also pretty out there. He prided himself on the amount of pot or hash he could smoke. We had listened to his rap for years. He would come and winter with us and carve head beads out of gemstones. His work is still sought after. One year he took about an hour rolling a joint with four papers. It was pretty long and thick. What he did not know was that while he was doing this Anton rolled one that was about two inches in diameter and a foot long. We smoked his right up and we were all pretty stoned. I said to Anton “that was a cute little joint. You have a real one?” Anton pulled out this monster he had rolled and Palo’s eyes got real big. We smoked it until Palo passed out and fell forward. I caught his head just before it hit the floor. He woke up in a little while and accused me of hitting him. He never said another word about his prowess in smoking pot with us. Nobody could keep us with us. We smoked a pound of pot every seventeen days just like clockwork. The roach from that joint Anton had rolled made five regular joints. A regular joint was as big as your thumb. Palo was into black magic and often would tell me he was going to put a curse on me. I laughed at him and told him he had no power over me as I had no belief in any of that stuff. His comment was that I was pretty smart to know that this was the only way it all worked. Most people would not believe that we could smoke that much pot for so many years but it is a fact. It happened just like that.  

Abbot is a very special Hopi. I won’t even try to spell his last name. We used to go up to the mesas and play basketball on the dirt court they used to have. We would spend the sixty bucks and buy a live sheep, butcher it and cook it there. We fed all who showed up.

There was one time that Abbot took me to see prophecy rock. This is perhaps the most sacred place of the Hopi. It is a pictograph of the people coming out of the earth and entering the first, second and third world and the ascension. No one knows who did it or when. White men do not go there. I was wearing shorts, sandals and a special strand of beads. This strand had been a gift from big Tom and I had it for years. It is a holy place and I said some prayer and took off that strand of beads, something I truly treasured and buried it to my elbow in the sand in front of that rock.

Richard Keys was another brother who spent a lot of time with us. He taught self empowerment and awareness all over the country. Richard was always trying to trick me with stuff. For example one time he showed up with a very big rivet and asked me what it was. I told him it was a rivet from the golden gate bridge. It was. Surprised me too. It was over two years after my visit to prophecy rock when Heather and I were sitting in the Spirit room up in Jerome listening to music. Richard walks in and I can see he is wearing that necklace as he crosses the room. I asked him to tell me the story of how that came to be before he said anything else. Abbot had taken him to the rock as well. Richard was as worthy as I in my mind. Richard had put a crystal on the face of the rock and a beam of light hit the earth out a ways from it. Abbot reached down and grabbed a handful of earth and came up with that strand of beads. He gave it to Richard and told him it must belong to him. I told Richard how it had gotten there in the first place and he returned it back to me.

I wore that piece for several more years and the energy had changed significantly. There was a black stone peyote bird as a center piece. None of us were ever able to identify that stone. There are not that many black stones on earth.

There was a Lakota brother who came to the ranch with the intention of doing a medicine wheel. He was young for a medicine man but he had great power. Some of the beads in that strand were made from pipestone. It was a very old piece and Tom had no idea who had put it together. He had traded fro it many years before we met. We spent a whole day walking the canyon and playing drums and praying. Long about sundown we sat and made eye contact. I gave him that strand of beads. I asked him if he intended to charge money for the event and he said he was. I told him he could not do it in the canyon. He understood perfectly and we parted closer for the whole experience. 

I think it was about three years later at about ten at night a damn taxi pulls up at the gate to the ranch. I trotted on out there and met this fella just as he was about to come through the gate. I had a gun in my hand. You just don’t do things like that in this part of the country. I had never seen this kid before. He was about 25 or so. He started telling me a bunch of names, none of which I had ever heard of. Then he came up with one that I had known. We sent the taxi off and I took him into the barn. We asked him a lot of questions. It turned out it was one of those friend of a friend of a friend situations and he had been sent to see us. He was wearing that strand of beads. I asked him how he came by it and he said it was gifted from a Lakota medicine man. I told him the story and the history of those beads. He never offered to return them so I figured he still had a need of some kind. He left the next day and I have not seen him since.  

I would not be surprised to see that strand come back sometime. These things actually do happen though most won’t believe it. Magic does exist. 

I decided to put an addition on the house. We dug a hole that was fifteen feet deep and twelve by fifteen wide. I went up on the rim and cut pine logs that were twelve and fifteen feet long. Green logs are a real bitch to handle and I often did it by myself. The fifteen footers would go on the topl of the truck and the twelve’s inside the camper. Once I got them home I would use a draw knife and strip off the bark. I built a jig on the ground so that I could cut them length wise down the middle. It was a mosquito year. We had never had one like that. It was horrible. I did most of the work at night under lights with smudge pots burning to make a lot of smoke to keep the bugs away. I did not do this all on my own. A lot of people who showed up helped out. It had a flagstone floor and a fireplace inlaid with gemstones and some rock walls. The pine logs were used to hold up the roof which is also half round pine logs. It took all summer to build. Trying to explain it all here is just a bit much and I doubt if anyone will be interested. It is still there to this day. The enormous amount of work that goes into a project like this cannot be overstated. We would scrounge materials from building sites all over the valley with permission from the foremen. We would go to the building supply stores and buy concrete and mortar for a buck a bag because they had a hole in them. The whole thing was built for about 500 bucks. 

We also built a little dome house for Gina out in the bush for her to meditate in and have her own place of peace. We really built a lot of things there and the construction was well done. 

Anton and I and Gina his wife decided to go to Switzerland to see Anton’s mother. He grew up in Switzerland and was a trained Swiss chef. Needless to say that for those years in the canyon we ate like kings and queens. Heather opted to stay and run the ranch. I am not sure of the exact chronology of this trip. We spent way too much time in the air and for some reason flew over the pole. We arrived in Amsterdam and went right to the Bull Dog Café, a world famous hash bar. We had three hundred dollars between us but I had my trade bag with about two hundred thousand dollars in beads and trade goods. We bought up a bunch of hash from all over the world and proceeded to get very stoned. This was like heaven for us. A place we could be legal about our lifestyle. Then it dawned on us that we did not have enough money to take the train to Switzerland. Anton found a pay phone and called a friend. Frank showed up a couple of hours later. Frank is a very talented street musician. He drove a Mercedes bus which is a lot like the old Volkswagen buses. We negotiated a deal and piled into that Mercedes. Then came the autobahn. I had never seen anything quite like this and frank drove flat our and rode the tail pipe of the car in front. I was sitting in the front which is right over the front wheels and was very stoned. We kept right on smoking hash and I was getting a bit paranoid. Then Frank announces that the German border was coming up pretty quick and we better get rid of the hash we had left. We had a few ounces which is a whole lot. We smoked it and ate it and arrived at the border. Sure enough we are the only ones they pull over. I got out and opened up the sliding door for Anton and Gina. A huge cloud of smoke came out with them. None of us could stand very well and the guards were pretty intimidating. They were in full military dress with military weapons. Scary bunch at that border. They asked if we had any alcohol and we told them no. They never even looked inside and waved us through.

I stayed with Peter and Kathy from the old Port Costa days and their son Nikko. It was wonderful just being with them. Peter speaks and reads and writes 27 languages fluently and writes the curriculum for the country of Switzerland. He is a very mellow academic. Kathy is an American.

Anton and I would go into the woods around his moms house and gather branch wood, take it back, cut it into stove length with a bow saw, bag it up and store it in her attic. I also learned how to use a scythe for cutting the grass around her place. She had a whole bunch of opium poppies growing wild all over the place. We would slit the pods and harvest the opium. We got a pretty fair sized ball from the effort and it was really pretty good. She asked what we were doing but never pressed the issue. We would play cards with her in the evenings and she loved the company. She had a side boy that was filled with Swiss chocolate and cookies and was very generous with them. We would sit there and smoke hash and opium and play cards. She must have gotten a contact high as the room often filled with clouds of smoke until we would open a window. One day in the late afternoon we opened the window to let the smoke out and a whole Colum of Swiss army trucks was driving by. There were men jumping off of trucks and stringing comm. Wire and one guy jumped the low stone wall in front of the house and set up a tent in the front yard. I asked Anton what the hell was going on and he just said that we would feed the guy a bit later. This was standard operating procedure for the Swiss army while on maneuvers. There are bunkers hidden in the woods all over the country full of armaments and all the major tunnels going into cities can be sealed and have military command inside with equipment. There are hospitals and airports for fighters underground. Within 24 hours the entire country can be underground. When Hitler got to Switzerland he called it the little porcupine and said he would come back later. He never did. Every man from the age of 16 is in the military for life and is required to keep his gear in his home town. Everyone is armed with the best and the latest weapons. Everyone is expected to qualify with their weapon every year. On any weekend the entire country is filled with gunfire on pre established shooting ranges to practice. Those boys can really shoot. Consider that most of these people have occupied their homes for generations and any idiot who wanted to go up that hill to take that house was going to really have to earn it. There might be ten well armed men who know tactics and weapons. Personally, I would leave these boys alone. I was sitting with Anton at a Gasthouse which is an outside café bar, having a beer when a gaggle of fighter planes went screaming by. They were laid over pretty hard and moving. About twenty minutes later they came around again. I asked Anton what they were doing and he told me they had just been around the whole country. It is not a big country. Everybody plays a part in protecting Switzerland. It is a unique system and seems to work. You can send a letter anywhere in Switzerland with nothing but a name on it and it will be delivered. This country is that well organized.  

We all took a side trip for a few days up to Rein fall which is a falls on the Rhine River. Really beautiful place. We made a bit of a camp on the river and I swam naked from Switzerland to Germany and back. There was a bridge about two hundred yards upstream with guards on it. They watched me do this but at least they didn’t shoot me. We cooked the best brats I have ever had on sticks and wound bread dough around the sticks and cooked that too. Lots of cheese of types I had never heard of or tasted. Mayonnaise comes in a squeeze tube like toothpaste and mustard does too. We crossed over into Germany and went up by the black forest to a party that was happening on a farm. There are no real liquor stores but I managed to come up with two cases of beer I had never heard of. When we arrived there was a three car garage stacked to the ceiling with cases of beer and refrigerators and sinks and glasses of many types. I poured myself a beer and within seconds this young German asked me where I was from. I told him I was from America. He said that I needed to know how to drink beer properly. I told him I knew nothing about German beer edict and that young man followed me everywhere for three days, making I had the right beer served in the right glass served at the right temperature. It really was an education. It was a hell of a party with good food, good beer and good company. Fires that burned all night with people drumming around them. Great music and good people.  

They call it the black forest for a good reason. I took a hike back into those woods. I was less than a half a mile in when I looked back and could just barely see a bit of light from the waning day. It would be very easy to get lost in there. It is the densest forest I have ever been in.

It was my impression from this party and a lot of other contact with German people that these people on the whole still view themselves as a superior race. I never discussed World War Two or the holocaust. What many people do not know and the Swiss tend to not discuss is that the Swiss turned Jews away at their border too, knowing full well that it meant the death of those people. Germany stashed a great deal of money inside Switzerland. So the question of Switzerland’s neutrality during the war is an open question. They have hidden their participation with the Nazi party quite well. Germany lost Europe by accident. This was after they had taken all the wealth from occupied countries, often moving it out of the country to South America and to Switzerland. They had the manpower, the commitment and the technology to maintain the status quo had they not decided to open up the Eastern front. Negotiating with Russia made a lot more sense than invading. Hitler just came to believe in his own propaganda. He got way too full of himself and quit listening to those around him who were much better qualified to make military decisions. There were some very smart people on his team both in the military and in the scientific community. The holocaust itself was a stupid political decision and wasted a great deal of available manpower. The idea that any race is in some way superior to any other is baseless and presents the necessity of constantly proving it. Without some moral guidelines there is no way this can be done. The Nazi party lost the moral high ground when they started killing Jews. It is acceptable to invade another country and control its resources and population. It is acceptable to kill a whole lot of people during this process. It is not acceptable to kill the population off or segments of the population. That kills the moral high ground. It also takes away one’s ability to actually control as resistance is a necessity from the other side of the coin. Honey would have worked much better than the provided vinegar. I do not see Hitler as a particularly smart man. In a way he is akin to Charlie Manson. A petty criminal that was surrounded by very weak minded people that could be controlled by charisma and an idea of superiority. Neither was ever a true leader as they REQUIRED followers. Their identity and self worth always came from others.

Empire is not a new idea. The more successful ones incorporated conquered peoples into the empire. Often those people benefited greatly. It seems to me that the failure of all of them was in losing the moral high ground and believing their own propaganda. Most all of them continued to expand before they had truly consolidated their base. Had Hitler read history and understood any of this and had he created an Eastern wall in the same way he created a western wall, had he kept the pact with Japan the world would have been a much different place today. It was purely accidental that the invasion of Europe on D-day was successful. Had the available resources been brought to bear in a timely manner the allies would have never gotten off the beaches. Blockading the Russians made much more sense as invading them only helped them to advance their own technologies and mobilize their population behind a common cause. The purges in Russia under Stalin may never have happened and the advance of communism may have been severely limited. This is only an opinion expressed by a rather simple man. There is no good or bad expressed here. World War Two became what it did because of egos and the loss of the moral high ground. The Japanese also lost the moral high ground by their treatment of the Chinese and every other country they occupied. Suppression of a cultural belief has never been successful. Incorporation HAS had some limited success. In the end it is my opinion that acceptance and understanding makes a lot more sense than empire. A valid empire could only be established if cultures CHOSE to join because of an IDEA that made sense. Populations are generally not as stupid as governments presume. Any empire must ALWAYS take the moral high ground for any chance of success.

The real trick comes in DEFINING precisely what the moral high ground IS. This is not done by basing that definition on a religious, ethnic or political ideology. There can be no agenda or ego involved at all. The real moral high ground comes from the gut of the individual. Should enough individuals AGREE on this moral high ground then peace on earth is possible without the need of conquest. This is the only way a successful empire will ever be established.

The trains in Europe are amazing. They go everywhere. Even small towns are served. This is true in Switzerland in particular. It all works quite well if you know the language and can at least read the signs and schedules. I tried. I really tried to learn the Swiss version of German. I got to be known as wrong way Willie as it seemed that I was always getting on the wrong train going to the wrong location. This really added to the adventure and I saw many places that I would never have seen otherwise. I traded everywhere I went and sold beads too. I easily made and spent 10,000 in the two months or so I was there. Anton and Gina were never allowed to run out of resources and when something sold I filled their pockets too. We sent money home to cover the needs of the Canyon.

I loved getting up in the morning in Leistal (Peter and Kathy lived here) and walking down to the bakery for my morning nuskiffel which is a delightful pastry. The coffee was as good as I had experienced anywhere and the cream was fresh that morning. All of these towns and cities have fountains everywhere. This is water one can actually drink. Meats, sausages and a variety of REAL cheese and fresh bread were always served at any gasthouse. I never saw any drunk people. Everybody was drinking but the food that was always there seemed to temper it all. Unbelievable wines came to me at low cost and I could often be found in a lovely park leaning up against a tree with a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread and some meat and cheese. I met a whole lot of people this way. I love to experience cultures from the ground up.

There was one day that I was on a train going somewhere when I ran into two Americans. They were a middle aged couple and they were speaking loud enough that the entire train car could hear them. They were complaining about everything, mostly about how the natives did not speak English. They were the typical ugly Americans one hears about. I put up with it for a short time then I went right over to them and told them that if I were them I would just sit there and shut the fuck up. I expressed some possible consequences if they did not. I told them it was stupid and presumptuous that no one on that train spoke English and that as representatives of American culture they were a dismal failure. I told them I was not going to put up with one more god dam word out of them. The whole car started clapping. Those two turned beat red and I returned to my seat. They never said one more word.

Sometimes Anton and I would wander Basil or Bern and would stop at a five star restaurant for a bite. We never paid for meals. He knew all the chefs and had a hell of a reputation. Everyone wanted him to try some new dish.  

There was one night that Peter and I were in Basil and we walked along the Rhine and talked philosophy. It was one of those perfect summer evenings. There are five bridges that cross the Rhine in Basil and seeing them all lit up on that night was beautiful. There is a remarkable amount of effort put into the containment of rivers everywhere I went. This is stonework that lines the banks, not just a bunch of rock that was dumped there by a front loader but actual stonework.  

The Romans had been to Switzerland too. I guess they got around. There are many bits of their occupation still to be seen. Walls, bridges and buildings that were built in those times. There is a history to Europe and certain timelessness about it all. There are museums everywhere and many of the more obscure ones have incredible art. Work that in my opinion compares to many of the known masters hangs on walls of museums in small places that are barely on the map. I saw a monastery that was being remolded. It was over a thousand years old. There were panels in what looked like a choir section that were fantastically intricate carvings. The wood was all matched. What was most interesting to me was that the trees for those panels were planted when the first stones were laid for the building. Those who planted those trees never saw what became of the wood yet knew why they were planted. To see a Roman built bridge that still stands and bears weight is a testament to extraordinary engineering and construction. The Swiss also build for future generations. Many of the farm buildings have stood for generations and the descendants of those that built them still reside there. They are masters of the post and beam construction. Stonework as well done as any on earth is everywhere. I visited a castle in Zurich on the lake that was supported by a single beam, carved from a single tree that was over 100 feet long. It was supported by two uprights. The entire weight of the castle rested on this very basic structure. To even find such a tree today would prove to be a monumental task. I had a very good 35MM camera with me on this adventure. I never took one photo of anything resembling a tourist location. My photos were all of how things were put together. There is a small town that we visited whose name escapes me that was a compilation of all of the construction techniques used throughout the country. These homes were moved to this site. Very different techniques were used depending on available materials and the requirements of the environment. Shale and thatched roofing, stone and wood were all displayed. It was particularly interesting for me to see how this was all put together.

I never purchased a Eurail pass for the trains. I bought my tickets locally and as I needed them. This was actually cheaper and much less restricting. I visited several other countries just to try the food and talk to the locals. The worst Italian food I have ever had was up in the Italian alps.

The French food was understandably pretty good but I have a penchant for French food anyway. The people I found to be arrogant and presumptuous. The Dutch were open and interesting but had no regard for their cities as far as I could see. There was dog shit everywhere. Whenever I found myself in the smaller places outside of the cities the experience was always better. The cities are much the same as anywhere. People rushing off to do whatever they were doing. Though I did go to for short jaunts to other countries, my focus was really on the Swiss and their culture.

Money is an issue for Swiss men. It is the acquisition of money and the saving of it. Spending money is not something that is done much. What you have in the bank is status and status is everything. Swiss women are not treated as equals from what I could see. Many a married woman chased me down with wonderful intention that I never took advantage of. Many a single woman did too. I was married and I keep my word. It sure was flattering though.  

The bigotry and prejudice is mostly language based. A slight difference in dialect is a dead giveaway. A person from Basil visiting Bern would be considered less and perhaps slow and it goes the other way too. I really loved the women and at the same time felt very bad for their lot in life. Sometimes culture does not permit one to see that there may indeed be a better way to treat each other. Since it has always been one way then it should continue? I take issue with that.  

I was sitting on a train going the wrong way to somewhere new next to this young man who spoke no English but was able to convey that he was willing to share some hash with me. He started rolling a joint with hash and put in a bunch of tobacco. This is the European way. I stopped him in the process and rolled a rather large joint from hash I had minus the tobacco. We smoked it right there in that train car. No one said a word though the windows did go down everywhere. It was the only time I was not asked to produce a ticket. The conductor just never entered the car. When we got off the train we found a park, a bottle of very good wine some meat, bread and cheese and we visited as best we could. He had many friends and soon we were surrounded by a very interesting group of young people. One spoke pretty good English and helped the conversation along. We smoked a lot of hash that day in that park and they all took me to the train and made sure I was going the right way.

There is a park in Bern that has this wide curved and somewhat long walkway at one of the entrances. Anton and I were walking up that path and I mentioned that it was about time we bought some more hash. There were hundreds of people sitting on the walls on both sides of the path. No sooner were the words out of my mouth when we were completely surrounded. I stepped back in a defensive crouch and Anton just stood there. Every one of those people extended both hands with chunks of hash in them. It was amazing. The look on Anton’s face was worth a lot of photos but I had no camera at the time. Of course we bought a bunch and shared it all around. Being a somewhat unusual American I was a celebrity and that was the way it seemed to be no matter where I went. I was constantly being offered places to stay in rather opulent surroundings and often by very pretty single women. I never took advantage of those offers. It was not about me taking advantage of those women rather those women taking advantage of me. 

Of course there were many adventures that happened every day while I was in Switzerland but to put them all down would likely be too much. It is the same with those years at Woo Canyon. The few I have talked about are just a small sample. 

We went back to Amsterdam for our flight home. We went back to the Bulldog Café. I asked the proprietor if by chance he had any good pot. I was really sick of hash. He opened this drawer and it was full of baggies of good looking bud. I pointed one out and asked if I could see it. I held it up and said “California”. He smiled and nodded. I opened the bag and said “Humboldt county”. He had a rather odd look on his face at that point. I picked out a bud and gave it a little squeeze and I said “Redway”. He was shocked and said so. No one had ever done that before. Redway is not much more than a cracker barrel of a town up in Humboldt. He told me that he would appreciated it I would evaluate what he had in that drawer and that we could smoke all we liked for free. Sounded like a good trade to me. He sat with us while I did just that. He gave us a bud for the road and offered much more for free too but we had a plane to catch and it was not going with us.

I went to the Rieches Museum in Amsterdam. Now that is by far the best one I have ever seen. It would take weeks to really go through it and see it all. There was a Rembrandt there. I stood in front of that painting for a very long time. There must have been fifty different shades of skin tones in that face. These guys hand mixed all their color. There was an original brace of dueling pistols that belonged to Napoleon. The workmanship was over the top. I saw a safety pin made in gold from Roman times and a crossbow bolt with a golden tip. The Heineken brewery is there. There are tour boats that run all over the place in the canals. I took one of them too. It was hot and all they had to drink was Heineken. I never drink that beer at home. I always thought it a green beer. There it was a full bodied lager and was wonderful. They joked about how the export was made from canal water. I believed them. You can walk down the street there and see an overhead sign on the roadway that says pissour. There are these metal things standing in the middle of the sidewalk. They are spiral in design. When you get to the middle there is a hole in the ground so you can stand right there in the middle of the sidewalk with people all around you and take a leak. The down side of Amsterdam though had to be the dog shit. Why it was never cleaned up is beyond me. Perhaps somebody finally got around to it by now. 

We landed at LAX. I was wearing a full length buffalo coat with the hair on and the tail dragging and Anton had a full length Brain tan moose coat. We had a full cart of bags. We really did not bring that much back. The usual chocolate for gifts some rather expensive items we wanted to bring back for gifts for those who had stayed home and some world war one Swiss army backpacks. These are very well made and are done with cowhide with the hair left on. I still use two of these for trade bags. I had one on my back as we got to customs. There was no doubt we were going to get the once over. I saw one guy point to some head guy who was leaning on the wall and point to us. Figures. I went right up to the counter and took off that pack I was wearing. It was full of trade goods. Undeclared trade goods. I put it right in front of him and told him we had a lot of stuff and what did he want to start with as we had a connecting flight. He pointed to the cart and Anton started putting bags on the counter. I asked him if he was done with the one of him and he said yes. He never opened that pack but he looked in every other one.

We got home without incident and took a good three weeks doing nothing but getting used to being there again. Heather and I started another baby. I know it as when she went to the pharmacy the damn test kit was positive again.

Heather rented a very small place up by the airport that was barely 100 square feet. She started selling beads from there both retail and wholesale. She gave beading lessons and Gina got involved too. The location could not have been worse but it kept her busy. 

Henry (my stepfather) had quit smoking when he was 45. He substituted it with diet Pepsi by the case. He got every cancer known to man at one time or another. He deserved every bit of it. Not only had he beat me he raped two of my sisters. He would call me from time to time to tell me that he had gotten some new cancer. I told him that I really did not give a shit and that I hoped real bad. I also told him it was not his time to die yet. He still had dues to pay. My mother is still denying any knowledge of this assholes activities.  

There was one winter that they put their fifth wheel in the canyon and stayed the winter. I recall one morning sitting out on the rock watching the sun come up and he joined me. He said that there was something he did not understand. All my siblings all had money and stuff but they never seemed happy. I had nothing and it was obvious that I was happy. He wanted to know why. I just told him to look around. God would have to go far to create a more beautiful than Woo Canyon and the people that lived there.  

He showed another time and had open heart surgery. They had gutted him like a fish. He had not been out of the hospital very long and we were all going for a pretty long hike out to vultee arch. He insisted on going. Big Tom paced him. He almost made it, That night he said he wanted to try smoking pot so we obliged. I have no idea what Tom may have said to him. We did our normal thing with very good Humboldt county pot and he smoked along with us for the first two joints. Then the dinner call came. It was a spagaitti dinner. That man ate and ate and ate. We all got up and went back to the barn. It was Gina’s turn in the kitchen so she stayed there. She came out a couple of hours later to tell me that Henry had passed out in a chair with his head back and puked all over himself. I asked her what she did about and she said she just pushed his head forward, made sure he was still breathing and left him there. Good enough.  

About a week before he died I went to visit him in California. I went in the house and said nothing. Just set up a video camera and got all the sound and stuff right. I told him that I figured that he would be dead in about a week and this was his chance to come clean about his whole bullshit life. I told him it was good practice as he would be telling the same story soon enough. My mother was aghast but the son of a bitch sat in front of that camera and made the effort. I called him on the bullshit and he corrected it. He told the whole story as far as I know. He asked me if I could ever forgive him and I said not a chance. He KNEW what he was doing when he was doing it. I also told him I would never forget it either as there was no way I would ever allow myself or my children to become him. I ejected the tape and gave it to my mother and walked out. A week later to the day he was dead. I did not go to the funeral. I hope he does not go to hell. He deserves much worse. They were living in Ojai in Southern California at the time. 

After a while Heather located a place that was in the back of a building and was about 400 square feet. Miki and I painted it and helped to set it up. The front part was being rented by a woman who sold very nice recycled women’s clothing. Her name was AC.  

There used to be a fantastic St Patrick’s day parade in Sedona. It went through the whole town and the streets were lined with thousands of people. Now it is so short and small it is hardly worth attending. We had a live band in front of the store and raised a ruckus. At this point I really was not all that involved with the store except to raise needed money. Business was picking up but very slowly. The location was still too obscure. Heather went to the gem show and I was at the store when the word came that the owners had sold the building and we all had to move. There was a general panic. I located a new spot almost across the street. It was a converted home. Bayla Bayliss is a chiropractor and her practice was in the front. The additional home on this property was up for rent and there was another small building that went with it. The rent was actually cheaper than what we had even though the place was divided oddly and would require some serious modifications. I talked to AC and she said she would move with us. I talked to Heather on the phone and we decided to go for it. Miki and I did the move the next day. It was time for me to get more involved. I moved my Moc shop into town and started doing leather work in the store. We traded for huge piles of goods to put on display and to sell.  

It was a very cool store in the end. It became a rather popular hangout. We would sit on the front porch and smoke a joint from time to time. You could do that in those days. Sedona was still split by two counties and got all their services from both. There just were not that many cops to go around.  

It was time to find ourselves a home closer in. heather had located a place in Cornville that was in a good price range and I still had my GI bill. Trouble was, I had not been in the system for 15 years and had no credit. I called the IRS in Phoenix and had them send me the last three years of tax forms. Then I sat with a good friend who knew all about accounting and filled those forms out any way we wanted. We never got excessive. I made copies and took them to a realtor and that combined with the business and the inventory bought us triple a credit. We bought the house. Some people would call that fraud however one would have to prove intent and we never had any intent at all and made the payments as we were supposed to. Still I now had a bunch of credit cards and so did Heather. We never abused them but used them from time to time to go to dinner or something and paid them right off on time. I had traded some of our gemstone beads to some restaurant owners and we had great credit with them. It was not unusual for us to go to dinner with twenty people and stay long after the place was closed. The staff would always join us. We never had to pay for these meals so leaving a few hundred dollars as a tip was just fine. It also meant that the staff all loved us. We took good care of them.

We moved out of the canyon on Aug 8, 2002 and into our new home. We spent a few days doing it but on that date it was all done. How do I know that? My daughter Willow was born on that day in the same tub her brothers had been born in. The house had a back porch that was screened in and it was full of stuff from the move. Miki and I cleared it all out and set up the tub and heated the water for it. I was in getting the video camera ready when the moment came. There was no time to film it but I was there and caught that beautiful girl as I had her brothers. I also took her away and held her to the night sky and welcomed her.

A few weeks later, I decided I needed some time in the bush. I threw the canoe on top of the truck and grabbed a skillet, a Dutch oven and a coffee pot and left for about a week. I went up on the Molligian Rim and found all these great back roads that are all dirt. I found a couple of particularly nice lakes too. I was on Eagle lake right before dawn with a line in the water trying to catch breakfast when this bald Eagle swooped fight over my head and plucked a rather nice trout right out of that lake and took it into a nearby tree. I could feel the wind of his wings as he came over that canoe. I sat there quietly for a long time and watched that eagle. When he was done with his breakfast he flew on. I heard an odd noise in some reeds near the shore and I paddled over there. I got out of the canoe and climbed up on this boulder. On the other side about twenty feet away was a newborn elk. His mother was not to be seen but I was sure she was close. I welcomed that elk into the world, burned a little tobacco in its honor and backed away quietly. I caught several fish that morning for breakfast. This is just another example of magic happening. I was truly blessed that morning. It was a good trip. I lived off the land and a couple of steaks I had bought. I ate cobblers and drank good coffee. I never saw anyone for that week and that was fine with me.  

Big Tom and Gay (Heathers parents) got a divorce. Miki had been through the same thing and it was terrible on these men. They had done it all for these women. Everything they ever asked for was provided and when it was all in place the women left them. I thought it would kill them both, it was that bad. Tom was a real lost soul. We are all very close. Miki had been married to Cindy and they had two children, Forest and Fern. I was there the day Fern was born on the couch at home. They are both good people. Relationships that last for many years where children are involved then go so south for without clear explanation are the saddest break ups of all. Tom and Gay had been together for a very long time too. Heather and I had always been considered the ideal couple.

Tom had purchased the fifth wheel trailer that my parents had and he and Miki and I went up to Port Angles in Washington State to get it.

My Datsun truck was long gone and so was the dodge. Gina and Anton had borrowed the dodge one day to go pick up someone in Flagstaff at the train station. Gina was driving as Anton does not drive. Just North of Sedona is Midgely bridge. It is a long way down, nearly one thousand feet. The truck hit the ice on that bridge and did several rotations on the way across. At the far end the front hit the guardrail on the bridge and was pushed in such a way that the rear wheels were over the edge. They were very lucky. We replaced it with a half ton four wheel drive Chevy truck. I have never owned a Chevy since. It had twin fuel tanks and was pretty strong as trucks go. They had taken the starter solenoid off the firewall in that year and but on the starter. The starter was mounted very close to the exhaust manifold. That truck went through starters like you would not believe. That truck was never half the truck that old six cylinder Dodge was.  

We made it into a good road trip, trading all the way and stopping in the Bay Area for a few days as usual. We never left the Bay Area without a pound or two of good pot. We replaced the starter there also and headed on up North. We drove the Redwood highway as much as possible. This is a two lane road that runs parallel to the freeway that winds through the redwoods and hits all the small towns along the way. Places like Phillipsville and Miranda and Weott and many others. It was perfect weather and on sunny days like that this road is a real treat. The road runs right along Eeel River which flows south to north. This is a very rare thing on this continent. To the West of Eureka is the bay and the mud flats. There is an old building out that way that used to be a chow hall for the Chinese and the loggers in the old days. We decided to smoke a joint before we went in to eat. That Chevy was not worth a damn in soft sand and sure enough, I got it stuck. We called Heathers real father, Phil, who lived about an hour away and he pulled us out. Inside, are long wooden picnic tables that have carvings in them from way back. There is no menu and the place was packed. We were seated at the same table but it was with a lot of people we did not know. They brought out whole baked chickens and roast beefs and bread and bowls of vegetables. It was just like sitting at a dinner table with a large family and the conversation was constant and interesting. After everyone had eaten a whole pie was put before each of us. It was a hell of a meal.  

We made it up to Washington and had a fifth wheel hitch installed in my truck. Put in another starter too. We had traded for some squaw candy along the way. This is jerked salmon that was common with the coastal tribes on the west coast. It is a very special treat. Even though most all of the tribes along the west coast were peaceful, the white man wiped them out anyway. Genocide was common in those days. We stayed for a few days, made it to Victoria. Henry was in a wheel chair for some reason on that trip. I was pushing the chair. Somehow it just “got away from me” and he rolled on down this little hill and did a few rolls when he toppled out of it. He survived. I wish the son of a bitch had broken his neck. No such luck.

We headed south. That fifth wheel trailer was 38 feet long and really tested that truck to even pull it. We stayed in the Bay area and Tom packed all his stuff into that trailer.  

Quartszite is in Southern Arizona and has had its own gem show for a very long time. This show happens a month before the Tucson show. It used to be that you could find some good buys on raw stone. It has now become more of a RV show. This area ends up with a huge population of snowbirds (people who live and travel in RV’s and winter in Arizona). Tom had agreed that he needed some time to himself to deal with the divorce issue and had asked if we could set him up with a mobile bead store. We did just that and he spent several months in there selling beads. It was good for him. We would go down from time to time to re-stock him and drink a bit of brandy and bring him some pot.

I don’t really remember when James arrived at the Canyon. I think it was Heather who brought him home like a stray puppy. He was a young man who had just left his girlfriend, Donna and was looking for a different point of view. He loved what we were doing. I got him back together with Donna and helped them through their issues. His parents were pretty wealthy and kept a very nice home near the saguaro National Monument in Tucson on the golf course. He had a regulation pool table that was in perfect condition with hooker red felt. We stayed there once while the gem show was happening. His parents were not there but they were very cool folks. We drank a lot of very good liquor and snuck out on the course and hit a few balls.

I had traded for a one ton box van from a friend and painted it turquoise. This paint job was don by Ed. He had done our house, the in law house (Miki had taken this over) the barn and my shop. Heather had picked the paint. Desert Rose. It was pink no matter what the damn can said and I never did like it. I had some large signs that said “Sedona Beads and Leather” made for the truck and James and Donna moved into it. They traveled all over the country for us selling beads. They actually had a very good life for several years. They also got married. Donna got pregnant with their first that first year.  

Ed and Suzie spent a year or so living in our back yard in the lodge (tee pee) and had a son Shaylo right there. Suzie was from Australia and was drop dead gorgeous. Elfin features. Her and Heather became fast friends and Ed and I did the same. He was following the Lakota medicine way and would go to Sundance up north every year. He was one of the first white men to be accepted and had done the piercings several times. This is when a bone is inserted above each breast and a long line is tied to it. The line is tied to a pole and the dancers dance until they pull the bone free. It tears the skin pretty good as it is inserted pretty deep. This is very big medicine. Ed had a sordid past and was an ex junkie and this was a good answer for him. He was a professional house painter and made a pretty good living at it. Suzie learned beadwork and took to making bags and such. 

There is a cap on any retail business. You are totally dependent on people walking in your front door. We were making our bills but just barely and I could see we were not getting ahead of the game. Miki is a very good bookkeeper and kept on top of all of that for us. We both took our turns in the store and made mocs. He got to be a fair hand at it and just doing leatherwork during business hours was a good thing. People would often just watch.

I have never gotten less than an A in any English class. I can’t spell worth a damn and can barely read my own handwriting. Quality education I guess. I have always owned a typewriter and started with an old Royal. I remember the commodore 64 with the 5 inch disks that took forever to load anything but it did have a word processor. I stayed fairly current with computers as they came about. I had a 286, then a 386 and then bought two 486’s. One for the store and one for home. Bill Clinton had just been elected and had run on a platform that said that he was going to help small business. I decided to see if he was serious. I spent six months writing a business plan. I had never seen one before, never researched how it was done and just did it. It was an excellent piece. I wanted to expand into mail order and build a catalog. This was long before the internet. I showed how magazine advertising would make sense too and did spread sheets to show projected growth and a whole lot of other data. I had full color photos. There is no way to really explain just how difficult this was to do or the commitment it took. I sent it off to the small business association in Phoenix and waited. It took a month or two before I heard anything from them. They told me that they liked what I had done but that they could not help me. They only loaned money on equipment and real estate. I was really pissed off. I worked my ass off putting that plan together. I wrote a letter to the President and the Vice President so neither could say they didn’t get it. The letter explained what had happened. I took that same plan down to First Interstate Bank in Cottonwood. I was asking one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars but had enough sense to know that I would never get that much. I had built in many things that I knew they could and would say no too. They gave me a loan for one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars two weeks later. This was the toughest bank in Arizona at the time.  

We hired a couple to do the artwork on the catalog. This was the very beginning of digital technology. They were running a 386 that just did not have enough memory and it took several months to do it. There was a single page that showed all of the colors of beads we carried that took two months by itself. There is very little distinction between some shades and it was very difficult to do at all. Though it was a huge effort and we often had issues with that couple it did finally come together. We printed 10,000 of them and sent them out to our mailing list which by now was fairly extensive. We advertised in magazines and got a pretty good response from that too though not commensurate with their supplied data. I was on the road a lot and went everywhere opening new accounts for wholesale beads and doing my normal trading. It was all cold calls and I rarely failed. I covered most of the east coast and down South. I sure put a lot of miles on and got very sick of hotels. I made a lot of little fires on the side of the road to cook up some coffee. I camped where I could out of preference and stayed in hotels when required. I sent orders and money home and kept moving. The business was growing pretty quickly and it was not uncommon for the UPS guy to deliver $10,000 in beads and leave with cash. In those days they still would take cash. We leased two new cars. A new Ford 4x4 pickup and a Chevy suburban for Heather and the kids. I would have never bought that Chevy but it was what she wanted. It worked out well in the end as we could pack an entire booth in it and go do shows.

Miki and I had planted one hell of a garden that was all drip watered and had talked about putting in a RV pad for Tom. Mike Bruce was having trouble with his marriage and he showed up and I put him to work too laying pipe and such. Pretty soon his daughter Heather came too and not long after he had reconciled with Claudia and they all moved to Arizona. They lived in my little RV for a time until they finally bought a home at the end of the road I lived on. Michael is a fair hand and was a huge help.

We rented a warehouse on Page Springs Rd in Cornville and built shelving and an office and set up shipping and receiving. We filled that warehouse with our products. The Ceiling was fifteen feet high and so were the shelves. It was 3500 square feet.

I had traded for a power boat with a 55 horse motor and a trailer. It was a very nice fishing boat and went fast enough to ski behind.  

Miki and I went South to bring Tom back home. That damn trailer was really too much for that old chevy. This trip happened sometime before we had leased the new vehicles. We were coming up I 17 outside of Phoenix when it ran out of fuel in one tank. I hit the switch but it did not catch. Sure enough the starter quit too. We were blocking the slow lane on a bad corner. This is one of the steepest hills in the state. We were up by Black Canyon City. Miki ran way back and waved cars off that habitually are going 90mph. I crawled under the truck and pulled the starter and Tom was waving traffic around too. There was nothing I could do with the starter. It was fried. I decided to back the whole rig down the hill in an attempt to get it off the road. I can’t back a trailer worth a shit and ended up nearly jack knifing it part way into the fast lane. It was a very hairy situation. After a bit this old guy in a brand new suburban pulls over and says he thinks he can pull us out of this mess. I never thought that Chevy would do it. He took a long time unrolling his brands new tow rope and getting it all hooked up. He put it into four wheel drive and pulled that rig up that hill and off the road. I was impressed. He then offered to take me to town for a new starter. The closest place was Cottonwood at least an hour away. I was filthy and greasy and he did not care. He took me right to the auto parts store and I bought a new starter. Then he took me back to the boys. I gave him $100 which he kept refusing to take until I finally convinced him to do so. He was one of the good ones.

Granville came down and stayed with us for about two months. Jim is my sister Lee Ann’s husband. He had been working for all of the major shoe manufactures for many years. He was a talented shoe designer. He worked for Reebok, Nike, puma and many others. He would get about three years with one, get a good salary then be forced to move on to the next one. It was typical of the corporate world. They just use people up. I had told him that it might be a good idea if he just started his own company and offered to show him how to make the styles of Mocs and sandals that I was doing. He hung out with us and learned then he went back North and bought up a whole lot of commercial shoe equipment. The business is called Native Earth, another suggestion of mine. He still uses my designs and as he had done before he did not keep his word. Our agreement was for him to pay me a small percentage of everything he made. I never got a dime. I also taught him how to make buttons which is a specialized craft of its own. He got in trouble from time to time, taking orders that he could not fill with designs he could not make. I would go over there as a consultant and bail him out. Those ventures usually did pay pretty well. He had a couple of folks working for him and so was my mother. She had been trailing them around for years. The hired help loved it when I showed up as the corona always flowed and we smoked pot all day. We got a lot of work done and it was good work too. My mother hated it and I would just throw her out of the shop and told her we were smoking pot. They still do this today and their kids are involved now as well. They do renaissance fairs all over the country and make a fair living I presume. I don’t talk to them much and for sure don’t trust them. I reckon my family is like that. My extended families are much better humans.

Somewhere at about that time I met Dr John Saint John. We just call him doc. He is an absolutely brilliant psychologist. He would hang out at the store with me all day and we would talk philosophy and beads. He started making some of the finest glass beads available at the time. He is a real talent. We spent a lot of time in front of that store smoking pot and talking. We are defiantly kindred spirits.  

We got a call from Phil, Heathers real father who told us that he had a van that he wanted to give Heather for free. Miki and I went up to the Bay Area in the motor home and picked up his dads classic cougar convertible. We sold the motor home and had another of those special runs up the west coast in perfect weather. The top was down the whole way. Phil was a mechanic and had a shop and when we pulled in the van was not ready to go yet. It was an old 69 Dodge with very questionable paperwork. The back was filled with parts. That should have been a big red flag but we did not catch it. He was going to do the brakes and I had him put tires on it to. It was going to take a couple of days to get ready so Miki and I went on up to Arcadia and picked up a nice hotel room. I did a trade with this woman who owns a very nice massage business and she put a couple of lovely girls to work on us. It was a great massage. There was of course no sex involved as it was just not our style. There was never any suggestion of it either. We went back to Phil’s a couple of days later and I drove the van south. Miki was gone somewhere down the road. I never saw him again until I got back to the Bay Area. That damn van went through as much oil as it did gas. It smoked and ran like the piece of shit it was. It was not registered and the tags were several years out of date. We did the normal and picked up a couple of pounds of pot and headed south. Somewhere along I-5 it overheated. We were off on the side of the freeway with the hood up when a cop pulls up in front of us. He asked if we were alright and we told him we had blown a radiator hose but had an extra by chance. You could see a fuel stop up ahead and we told him we were sure we could make it. A busted truck, a bunch of pot and no tags or insurance. He had pulled up in front of us so I guess he never bothered to check anything. He left us there. We broke down again about ten miles shy of Kingman with a blown radiator core. We pulled it apart and hitched a ride into town and had it re-cored. Of course we had to pick up a few more cases of oil too. It was a million degrees out there that day. When we finally got back to Sedona, we pulled up in front of the store and shut it down. It made some strange noises coughed and sputtered let out a last gasp and the whole thing filled with black smoke. We bailed out. We were greasy, filthy form working on the thing and had not had a shower in several days. Surprisingly it started and we eventually did get it home. Sometimes a free car is better left where it is. It is amazing though that we made it safely on that trail without getting busted.  

W got away with an awful lot when I look back on it. I once took eight ounces of cocaine all the way to the Bay Area with the intention of getting rid of it. I had buried it in the back of the canyon for many years. When I got there it turned out that everyone had gotten into meth and I brought it all back and buried it again. We always traveled with drugs and just never thought about it. It was customary to eat acid and smoke pot and drive all over the country. Partly it was the times, partly luck but I like to think that Spirit was just watching out for us. 

We got Tom and his trailer home ok but the motor on that Chevy was toast. I had it rebuilt for some stupid reason. In the end I used it as a trade in on my new Ford truck. The Ford was a special order. It was the first turquoise truck in the valley. I remember when it finally showed up and the dealer called me I asked if he minded if I took it for a test drive. He said sure. I told him I would be back in an hour or two and he got this funny look but did not say anything.

There is power line road out towards the canyon that is one of the roughest roads in the area. I bought a six pack of Corona and took that Ford to the top of the worst hill on that road. I had gotten my Chevy stuck once at the bottom of this hill and spent three days building a road by hand so that I could get it turned around and out of there. I drank three of those beers, patted the dash of that Ford and told it that if it made it down that hill and up the other side I would keep it. If it didn’t I would leave it where it lay. That truck did it like it was nothing. When I got back to the dealer that truck was covered with dust and scratched down both sides from the brush. The dealer was red faced and yelling at me about how I had ruined his truck. I asked him if he had the contract ready and he said it was. We went in and I signed for the truck. I told him it was no longer his and that if a truck won’t do what is required of it then it was not worth having. I bet he never forgot that transaction.

The Suburban that we had ordered arrived shortly thereafter.

This guy Mark showed up and hung out at the store for a few days. Heather liked him and we gave him a job and a place to live in the warehouse. Mark was overweight and had the features of a pig. There was something about him I did not like from the beginning.

I had always wanted to go to Alaska. It was a lifelong dream. Tom felt the same way and so did Miki. We planned a trip. By now Miki had moved Star in with him. She was a real nutcase as far as I could tell but he loved her and that was good enough. We decided that the three of us, Ben and Josh and Forest and Fern would make the journey. There would be no women. Ben was 7 and Josh was five.  

We hitched the boat to the back of the Suburban and filled up with gear. Fishing gear, camping gear several ice chests, rifles, pistols and a lot of other things. I had a friend of mine roast me up an ice chest full of French roast coffee beans. I had a fourteen foot fiberglass canoe that we strapped to the roof of the suburban. I brought a whole lot of trade goods too. Heather was waving goodbye with Willow in her arms when we left.

We did a straight run to the Bay Area, spent one night, picked up a pound of good Humboldt and did a straight run to the Canadian border. The Canadian border is the worst border I have ever crossed. We got hung up there for most of a whole day. I had put that pound of pot inside a big plastic thermos jug and cracked open an ammonia ampoule and sealed it up in the event they had dogs. There were several of them that searched everything we had but they never opened that jug. If they had I would still be there. This was the first and only time I have ever taken anything illegal across any border. They were pretty interested in all the guns though. We had some normal weapons and some black powder guns too. We told them that they were for squirrels and such, basic protection and for target shooting. They had a real problem with three grown traveling with four children. They had had a rash of kidnappings and tried to profile us. We did not have any permission from the mothers and that cost us some grief. We had to prove that we had enough money to get to Alaska too. We each had a couple thousand dollars in cash and credit cards. They searched the whole rig again but in the end they let us pass. We beat out of there and stopped up the road a piece to get that ampoule out of that jug and roll us up a few joints. We headed up the Frazier River Canyon till we found a likely place and put together a bit of a camp.

We had one very serious issue that I had not been able to solve before we left and I was determined to do so. We had an ice chest full of whole coffee beans and no way to grind them. Tom and I left Miki with the kids and found us a little town to check out. There was this little general store that was owned by this wonderful woman who had a collection of antique coffee grinders on a shelf that around the store about eight feet off the ground. Oddly enough she collected them. I broke out the trade goods and we commenced to haggle. She came out with several ounces of raw gold. She loved what she saw but she just was not going to give up one of those grinders. She had other goods that she kept putting on the pile but I was not leaving without a grinder. Once she understood that we wanted it for actual use and that any working one would be fine she tossed one in the pile. It was very good trade we made that day. We camped there for three days and rested up. There had been a lot of stress just getting going and a lot of hard driving getting to where we were at.

British Columbia is beautiful. Once we got out of civilization it was really some right fine country.

As we went north up that river we saw wildlife everywhere. There is this one area that they were growing ginseng. The plants were covered with shade cloth that was only about three feet off the ground. It went on for many miles. It was a hell of a project. It is a long way between places on the Alcan Highway and it is a good idea to get fuel whenever possible. We traded off doing the driving and even with that the driving shifts were long. Even though we were out in the woods mostly there is only very limited camping. Much like a rainforest, the ground was wet about everywhere we went and firewood was green. The good part is that the Canadians put state run campgrounds all along the trail. These were well appointed. They had showers, good water and free firewood. The bad part is they were far between. These turned out to be our primary places to stop. Prices for everything along this highway are very high. Steak was out of the question. The biggest thing was finding fresh vegetables and we had little luck with this. A head of iceberg lettuce might cost five bucks and finding a tomato was nearly impossible. We made a real effort to budget our funds. We had picked up a couple of bottles of brandy before we crossed over into Canada and it was a very good thing. A fifth of brandy was fifty dollars and change. We had plenty of rolling tobacco and that also turned out to be a good thing as tobacco was very expensive too. We camped everywhere and did a little fishing here and there too. We put the boat in the water on some of the most pristine lakes I have ever seen and rarely if ever would we see another boat anywhere. Mosquitoes were a real issue and none of the repellant we had brought with us was worth a damn. They have some industrial strength stuff up that way that did work pretty well but I got to where I just could not stand having it on me. I took to wearing full buckskins to keep them off and we built smoky fires too. We all got bit up pretty bad but after awhile they just left us alone. No place left to bite I guess.

We were camped at this one lake and were fishing from the bank towards sunset one day. There was this old woman who was responsible for the upkeep of the place and she was fishing too. She had gotten hung up on a snag out about seventy-five feet. She told me it was a very special lure that she had for years and really did not want to lose it. I took the canoe out and worked it free for her. It was about thirty minutes later she hooked into the biggest trout I have ever seen.  

She played that fish for an hour and we all stood around watching her. She was a master fisherwoman, no doubt about it. She got that fish into shallow water and Miki pulled it in for her. It was a huge German brown that must have gone to twenty-five pounds or more. A real grandfather fish. Miki carefully removed the lure and she said she wanted to release it. There were a bunch of people gathered checking out that fish. Miki took it back in the water and revived it by moving it back and forth in the water to get the water moving through its gills. It came around after a bit and swam away in a flash.

There is no live bait fishing anywhere in Canada or Alaska. It is all lures. We asked a lot of questions everywhere we went to be sure we had the best lures for the best chance of catching fish.

We saw moose, elk, deer, bighorn sheep and a bear or two along that trail.

We ended up at the Laird Hot springs and we were sure we had found heaven. There are two major pools there. The lower pool is the hottest and in fact the water is actually boiling at the head of the spring. It then goes downstream into several other pools, cooling as it goes. There are wooded benches placed in the water and one is under a small waterfall. Miki and I were the only ones that ever made it up into that boiling water and we did not stay long. The upper pool is much deeper and bigger but not nearly as hot. There is soft mud there though that is perfect for scouring your body with. Good swimming in that pool. There is a wooden boardwalk that is about a mile or more long that you take to get out to the hot springs from the campground. It is primeval terrain. Short growth, sulfur smell, (the springs do not smell like sulfur) tall trees and weird critters in the waters around that boardwalk. It is quite beautiful in a very strange sort of way.  

The campground has a larger staff, that is paid by the government, and have full time residence there. They are young people and extremely nice. Some very beautiful girls were working there. We made friends with them all and they would come and hang out with us in the evenings. We smoked pot with them. Just outside of the campground, an easy walk, and across the Alcan Highway is the Lodge. This is a two story log structure that has a gift shop, a restaurant and rooms. It belonged to Trapper Ray and his wife. He had a staff that included several very nice women. Trapper Ray is authentic. He had built over fifty cabins on his trap line and really did know that bush. He and I hit it off right away. We would share a table and coffee in the mornings and in the evenings. We did some trade and he asked me if I would set up a trade blanket in front of the lodge. I did so and it of course attracted many tourists to me and to the lodge. Pretty soon the staff was joining us in the evenings too at our camp.

There was one night that I leaned over the fire to add a stick or two and the butane lighter in my shirt pocket fell into the fire, unnoticed by me. There were a bunch of us sitting there when that lighter blew up. Sparks went everywhere.  

Ben celebrated his eighth birthday right there. The folks at the lodge made him a wonderful cake from scratch that was big enough to feed everybody and by now there were a lot of people. One of those girls was a Mohawk woman from the east and she broke out a bottle of brandy which we proceeded to kill. It turned into quite the party and went on most of the night. Miki made friends with one a couple of those girls and years later both of them and the Mohawk woman came to Arizona and stayed for about a month.  

Trapper Ray told us of a little lake that was a bit north that had Northern Pike and we went and gave it a go. Miki caught the only fish that day and we cooked it that night. Northern Pike is fantastic. It is a very primal fish as old as sturgeon with teeth that go halfway down its throat. They are particularly ugly but are excellent eating. The next day we took the canoe with us. I use d the canoe and everyone else fished from the shore. I caught a bunch of fish and so did the boys. There was much too much for just us so we invited everyone to a fish fry. Another party and they loved it as did we.  

We did laundry in the laird river once using rocks and dish soap. One morning I told ray Iwas going to go out in the bush and climb up to the top of this ridgeline. I told him I would leave a cairn on the side of the road so he would know where I stepped off into the bush. I asked him to come looking come daylight if I did not return by dark. He looked me in the eye for a long moment then nodded. There are no roads or trails in that country and it is rugged and dense. Every time I would place a foot down in the wet undergrowth, huge clouds of mosquitoes would swarm all around me. The buckskins protected me well. I had a knife and a handgun. I did manage to make it up to the top of that ridge but it was very tough going. The view was spectacular. It took me all day to get up there and to get back. It was just sundown when I stepped back out on the road. My cairn was no more than fifty yards from me. I went over and dismantled it then hiked back to the lodge. Ray was still sitting at the same table and I pulled up a chair. I was completely soaked and bone tired. The waitress came over with a coffee. Ray looked up made that same long eye contact and said “well”? I started laughing. I told him that that was one of the stupidest things I had ever done. I did not know the country. I had no guide. There were a lot of things out in that bush that saw me as food and were quite capable of making a meal out of me and that it was just horse shit luck that I did not run into a bear though I had seen plenty of sign. Saw lynx and moose sign too. Pretty soon we were both laughing about this adventure. He told me that I was a lot smarter than he had thought at first to at least know what I didn’t know. He invited me to go with him and work his trap line any time I wanted. That was a rather large compliment coming from a man like him. I know a lot about the lower 48 and figure I can live off the land and survive most anywhere but this country was way out of my league. It would take me some serious doing and a winter with a man like Ray to really get a handle on it. There were always kids wherever we went and our kids fit right in. They were usually leading the pack. We stayed there for two weeks before the supplies started running low. Miki and I decided to do a supply run and do the laundry. Watkins Lake is a town that is just about at the Yukon border and it was 150 miles one way. We spent a lot of money on supplies and got pretty stocked up. Got all the clothes clean too. There were incidents with black bears while were there. One was a big bear that came into the campground, picked up a pup tent, shook the guy out and moved on. He then ripped off the entire back end of an RV and went in and rummaged around while the people bailed out the door. They successfully trapped that bear. Ben was yelling about how he wanted to see the bear and I had to restrain him just to slow him down. We did see him in the trap which is a big round affair made from a piece of culvert. The other one was two cars traveling in convoy. The first one saw a Grizzly bear and pulled over to take a picture. They threw out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich then moved on. The second car was a bit behind them and saw the bear too. This guy rolls down his window and the bear comes right on in and really tears him um. I guess he did not have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Somehow he managed to push the bear back out with his feet. He got a helicopter ride to the hospital and several hundred stitches for his trouble. I am quite sure he has a much better memory than any photo would have given him. It is just so stupid to me to feed wildlife like that. . I heard on TV a few years later that there had been some deaths there associated with Grizz. Mostly if you leave the critters alone they will do the same. Trouble around that area though is there is a dump and the bears root around it all the time. They get used to human food and then they go where it is. We went to the dump and observed a few Black bears doing this very thing. Black bears get very big no matter what some may say and we did not stay long. We did this for the kids but it was not a particularly safe thing to do and I kept the motor running and no one got out of the car. We spent another week at Laird and it was a bit of a sad parting when we finally left. I gifted Trapper Ray one of my special handmade knives. It had a fossil walrus ivory handle and was good steel. It was a special blade. All the people working at the lodge and the campground turned out to see us off. The people of British Columbia treated us like family and we found that to be true about everywhere we went in any of the other provinces too.  

We headed north. Watson Lake is an interesting place. There is a forest of poles set in the ground that have signs from all over the world displayed. License plates and street signs are everywhere. This takes up a good ten acres. Most of these little towns on the Alcan are just that, just little towns that support some industry that is local. Mining or logging or perhaps farming. These are pretty wild places and the people are a tough breed. I am a trader and I traded everywhere we went. Coffee was a big trade good and so was pot. We let little bits of this go reluctantly. 

I have never known what it is about me, really, however I have never had any trouble getting a conversation going and getting a trade to happen. People are mostly reluctant at first because they don’t understand trading. They think that they don’t have anything as valuable as the goods you are offering. Most of the time that is not true. Often the things I had with me were expensive and I never expected anyone to have just money so I would find something else they had or could do that I would supplement with in a fair way. Most of the time I could trade for other goods that I would then move them, on down the trail or perhaps I knew someone that looked for that type of item. Trading is an art form and it takes good character to do it. It is always best to never take advantage even if you know you can and it is always a good thing to throw in something extra when the trade is done. Perhaps just a little something you noticed the other guy eying or perhaps something particularly good just to keep the good karma. I never once took advantage of anyone. There was this guy that showed up at the canyon one time with a .44 magnum hand gun. He loved that gun. It was very special to him but he could not shoot it worth a damn. We were shooting targets one day and I was hitting everything I shot at and he just could not hit a damn thing. The targets were only out about twenty five yards which is still a fair shot for a handgun. I gave him a pretty hard time about how that gun wasn’t worth a shit but I would trade for it if he was interested. In the end he actually gave up that hand gun. It was a very hard thing for him to do. The next day Anton and I were out on a dirt road somewhere and I had that gun along with us. That pistol had a long barrel and I knew the round pretty good. I found a little white rock nearly 100 yards away and took a shot at it. I blew that rock right up. Now that is a long shot for a pistol but even with my .22 with the 10.5 inch barrel I have hit targets out to 175 yards. Most people don’t believe that is possible but there were witnesses. That shot was from a rest however the .44 was free standing. I tried a few more shots and kept hitting what I shot at. When we got back to the canyon I took that guy out and showed him how to shoot that gun. I just set the targets further out and he started hitting everything he aimed at. Mostly I never aim a pistol. It is just a point and shoot thing with me and I am a reasonable quick fast draw with a cross draw holster. There are many better shooters than I. Well we went back to the barn and he had to give that gun back to me. It was my gun after all. He never said anything about it but I knew that gun meant a great deal to him. I sat there twirling it on my finger for a long time then reversed it so the butt was pointing towards him and told him to take his gun back. He said no, he had made the trade and he would honor his word. I told him that is precisely why I wanted him to have his gun back. I expect he still shoots that .44. Often a trade is a lesson for one side or the other or both. Trading is an exchange of honor more than anything else. 

We picked up the Yukon River up near Whitehorse. The river runs through that town. There was a paddlewheel tied up to a pier that was turned into a museum that we went to see. The Yukon is not a particularly wide river for most of what we saw of it but is runs swift and makes a peculiar swishing noise which comes from all the glacier silt that flows with it. It carries a lot of sediment. I have a sign that my friend Bushan brought me from Whitehorse many years that says Whitehorse Inn closed. I still have that sign. He had spent many years in the bush in Alaska and had run a great deal of that river in a canoe. He is a wonderful musician and often winters with us to this day. He has some great Yukon stories.

The sun never sets that time of year. It gets down just above the horizon and it is sort of brown light for those hours that one would consider night. It was more like dusk. It messed with us some in regards to sleeping but we got in the groove and often would be fishing at two or three in the morning. We went through a lot of little towns and traded everywhere we went. Perhaps it was the buckskins that gave me a certain authenticity though I never really considered it that way. Perhaps it was the cap and ball Navy colts I carried from time to time. It could be that sitting around campfires playing drums that drew folks in to us. I don’t really know but doors were always opened and trades came about. We were just being who we are without pretense of any kind.

We Stopped at five finger rapids and took a good long look at them. It is a pretty rough place but the rapids are not that long. There is a staircase made of wood that goes down to the river. I t is a long way down. After that came Dawson City. I have never seen a place like Dawson. Mostly dirt roads between the buildings with a lot of log construction and raised wooden boardwalks. It was like stepping back into the 1800’s. We had beaten that boat trailer to death and even though we had a friend in the Bay Area add some extra structure, that trailer was not going any further. We launched the boat in the Yukon and I found a welder who really knew his craft and we did a trade. In the end he did a hell of a job fixing and reinforcing that boat trailer.  

They called it the Alaskan gold rush but it did not happen in Alaska; it happened in Dawson City. All those folks who had come north to Alaska had to first climb the chillicoot pass which was ice and take a ton of goods per man to the top. This did not happen in one trip. Once they got to the top they were met by Canadian Mounties and were told they would be required to build a boat right there on the shores of Lake Bennett. Most of these people had no idea how to build a boat and pine tar was a common pitch used for caulking. Then they had to wait for the ice to melt which is called breakup. The largest armada in history went down the Yukon from Lake Bennett that first year. Thousands of boats of all sizes filled with eager miners on their way to the gold fields. Surprisingly most of them actually made it. The trip down the Yukon to Dawson City is about fifteen hundred miles by river and you must pass through five finger rapids on the way. It took most all summer for them to get there. They lived in tents and huts in below freezing temperatures all winter but they worked anyway. They would build a fire on top of the ground to heat it and dig for ore that they would not be able to process until the thaw. A fire would not heat the ground very deep so it was a process of heating and digging then heating again. They did this without knowing if the work would pay off at all come spring. These were some very tough men and women. The gold was there though and a lot of it. Up a bit further north in Nome gold was discovered on the beach and the waves were used to sluice it off. This is the only location in history that gold was discovered on a beach in quantity. Dawson City has history and character and real people and woodsman and I was right at home there. It is also home to the only casino in the western part of Canada. This is a very old Victorian building that has a gallery around the top where you can sit and have drinks and watch the folks gambling or watch the show on the stage. The girls did old fashioned can-can and were all dressed in period garb. They were young and they were quite beautiful. The casino is called Diamond Tooth Lil’s and I still have a poker chip from there that has been imbedded into my fireplace.

The Yukon is frozen most of the year but when it is running there is a ferry that will take vehicles across for free. On the other side is a pretty good campground and we put together a good camp right there. We really had it down. We could pull into a place and have a nice camp going in very short order. Miki and I usually got that together, the kids played or hauled stuff for us and Tom would usually get coffee or food going on the fire. We switched off the duties. On that side of the river which is the west side is the beginning of the top of the world highway. This is a dirt road that runs 250 miles along a ridge line that has views off both sides that extend for hundreds of miles. My God it is really something. Hell of a road too.

I did good trade in Dawson City. Somehow I got to know one of those cute girls who were part of the floor show. I had a pretty good pile of gold and silver jewelry and she invited us to come see the show. She told us to go up into the gallery and put the goods on the table and cover it with my hat and she would send the girls on up. She would notify security and would buy our drinks. It sounded like a good thing to me so Big Tom and I caught the ferry over and went to the casino. We did exactly as she had instructed and those girls kept on coming up to our table, ordering us drinks, lifting that hat, picking out a trinket, and leaving cash under the hat. Tom and I got pretty drunk for free that night and made a good bit of money to boot. It was a great floor show too. I saw security keeping an eye on us but we had no guns and posed no threat so they left us alone. It was near three in the morning when we took the ferry home. The sun resting right on that river was a sight to see. It was a perfect summer night in wild country. It was a very fun night.  

We had a lot of visitors to our camp during the week or so we stayed there waiting on the trailer repair. Some damn good parties too. The kids had a ball. We took the boat up and down the river and we could see the salmon wheels used for catching fish during the run. There were old ones and new ones being built. We did a little gambling though none of us are really into it. I think we won a bit, lost a bit and came out ahead in the end though not by much. Having a bit of a connection with the staff at the casino made for a very good time and we were always treated with deference. I really loved watching the floor shows. I felt very much at home in Dawson City as if I had been there before and that stretch of the Yukon is particularly beautiful. I did not meet Bushan until many years later back in Arizona and we are have agreed that whoever makes a chunk of money first will pay for a canoe trip from Lake Bennett to Dawson. This has become very important to us both and the day will come, no doubt.

We took turns going into town and staying with the kids though they often went too. They were pretty content in just about any of the camps we were in and always made friends among other campers. There were not a lot of people out doing what we were doing and the campgrounds were rarely if ever full. There was no more going north. Even though we had four wheel drive we were told that the roads were just too rough and Judging by those we had been on we believed what we heard. We were towing a boat too and that made it pretty much impossible. The trailer had been rebuilt perfectly and reinforced again in a different and better way. That welder was a true master of his craft. He only charged a few hundred dollars for the work and took some trade goods and some cash. He was a fair and honest man.  

We pulled up stakes and headed up the top of the ridge on the top of the world highway. It was a long way up and we smoked a lot of pot doing it. The gravel on roads like this is not like any I have seen before. It was rock that one could use for landscaping and the road was pretty rough though entirely passable with decent ground clearance. We passed through small towns on the way, places like Eagle and Circle. Eagle was not on the main road and was a bit north and on the river and even though we knew some folks there we did not go. It turned out to be a good choice as they were not there at the time anyway. We crossed into Alaska. I have a bit of video where we had stopped at that point and were all standing there taking a leak. We were singing a little song about taking a leak on top of the world. It was late afternoon when we pulled into circle. It was the fourth of July and there was a party going on there. A bit of an art show with about twenty booths set up in front of the bar/restaurant and gas stop. There is a small grocery too but not much else. We got right into it and had a very good time, connected with a bunch of folks, did some trade and watched the fireworks. The Suburban turned 10,000 miles on the top of the world and we all watched click over when it did. It only had a couple of hundred miles on it when we left home.

The top of the world highway is incredible. The distances one can see from up there and the views are like nothing I have ever seen. Looking south one can see several mountain ranges and to the North is the Brooks Range. There is a lot of gold up in this country but the business of getting it out is quite difficult. There are men who fly in for the season in C-130 aircraft and bring all their gear with them. This includes Caterpillar tractors, trucks back hoes and a lot of other gear. The will work right into the winter and stop only when it gets serious cold. Serious cold is when the antifreeze for the equipment actually freezes regardless of the engine block heaters that are used. People do strange things in the search for gold. I have always said that gold is where you find it and I do have a bit of experience in that search. The men who do this in that part of the country are a hard bunch and are deserving of a great deal of respect. Like it has always been, some will find a little, some a lot and some will come up busted but the life of freedom that comes with the search makes it all worth it. The gold is really secondary to the lifestyle. It takes a very special breed of men and women to put up with the hardship. They don’t view it as hardship at all as they are eating from the bounty of the land and doing an honest day’s work for the possibility of actual riches that may come into their hands under the next bit of overburden. I have always related to these people and in my own way am one of them. There is always an instant connection.

I met this man at the gem show in Tucson one time that was of this breed though quite different in his way. He admired my gemstone beads and asked if I would be interested in doing any trading. I asked him sure, what did he have. He pulled out a small pouch full of the best diamonds I have ever seen and dumped them into my hand. I dumped them on the glass of my display case and really looked at them closely with a jeweler’s loop that I always carried. These stones were exquisite. I picked them all up and gave them back. I told them that even though these were the best stones I had ever seen they were as common as sand. He laughed and asked what I meant. I told him I had seen diamonds on every corner in every city I had ever been too and that it was the most controlled market on earth. He laughed again and told me that I was a lot smarter than I looked. It turned out that this guy was a major player in the diamond trade in Africa and owned several mines and some other gemstone mines and a couple of gold mines. Often there is no way to tell what a man might be. This guy was dressed very casual in blue jeans and an old shirt with a beat up old hat. He was my kind of people. There was just nothing presuming about him at all

I told him that I wanted to climb up that little hill they had down that way before I died. Told him I had heard a lot about it and that it had every climate on earth on that one little hill. He asked me which Hill I was talking about and I told him Kilimanjaro and he laughed again. He invited me to come and stay with him anytime I could get there and he would fly me up there in his helicopter. We went off and had a few drinks and swapped stories into the wee hours. We never traded one thing but the honor we both held too. It is these trades that have always meant the most to me.  

We made it into Fairbanks and located some old friends and spent some days there with them swapping stories and trading. We actually ate in a restaurant a time or tow which was pretty rare on this journey. Along the Alcan it was just too expensive though we did discover that Chinese food was within our price range and we took advantage of this a time or two.

We found a nice camp outside of Fairbanks called Big Lake. It was spectacular. We put the boat in the water there and did a lot of fishing. There are many islands on this lake with some huge houses that must have cost a great deal to build. Most of them had float planes parked at their docks. These people had money no doubt. We had spent several hundred dollars restocking our supplies and were well set up for a bit of a stay. That lake freezes in the winter and you can drive across it to your own little island.

Tom and I were out fishing one night (still daylight!) and had caught a few fish. Tom had caught the biggest trout yet and the biggest he had ever personally ever caught. He was right proud of that fish. I took some pictures of it for him and it was a good thing I did. We got back about three in the morning and passed out. I was always worrying about Tom. When he slept he would stop breathing for long periods then take in a huge breath and gasp for a bit. It never woke him up but it was always a worry. Sometime between three in the morning and about seven someone came right into our camp and stole all of our ice chests with all of our supplies. The worst thing was the loss of our coffee stash. It had become quite the ritual grinding that coffee by hand and the kids switched off doing it. We always slept with guns loaded and ready in the event of bears and always made sure our food was nowhere near where we slept. This time it cost us dearly. I am a reasonable hand and backtracked the culprits to where they had gotten into a truck. After that it was a waste of time. We reported the theft to the authorities but it did no good and we had to pull up stakes and move on. It was indicative of the people in Alaska in my opinion. We all felt the same way about it. Many of those who live in Alaska are the dregs from the lower forty-eight. There is a lot of alcoholism and suicide and heavy drug use. We found that connecting with people who had been there for generations and with the native peoples was much better for us and we did this quite a bit. I have no desire to return to Alaska for this very reason however I would go back to Canada in a heartbeat given good weather. It got down to where we could not get out of Alaska quick enough. It was about three years later that we caught on the news how there was a huge fire at Big Lake and most of it had burned to the ground. Somehow I really did not care. Karma came around I guess. We checked out Anchorage and did a bit of trade there but it is a city and I don’t take much to cities. We did take a bit of a side track and went through Denali and saw Mt McKinley. This is a beautiful National park that encompasses a huge tract of land between Fairbanks and Anchorage. We went down the Kenai Peninsula as far as Seward and did a bit of trade there too. After the theft we just did not feel the same about traveling in Alaska.. We ended up going into Valdez which was a worthy trip on its own and took a bit of the bad taste away. There is a glacier that runs down the mountain right into the ocean there and that bay is absolutely pristine. The famous oil spill actually did not happen there at all rather a bit north of Valdez. We took a hotel room there. It was the first hotel we had stayed in on the whole trip.

We had tried to catch some of the big red salmon a time or two but our gear was just too light. I remember one small creek that was blood red with salmon. It was very early in the day and I did hook into a couple. I got the joy of a good fight but was never able to land one. They were just too big.  

The silver salmon were running when we got to Valdez. The banks were lined with hundreds of fisherman and the boats in the bay were covered with men too. You could have walked across that bay on the backs of those fish there were so many salmon that day. My favorite thing was just watching and helping Joshua. Here was this five year old boy, nearly six who could hardly cast a line ten feet out and was hooking and landing these beautiful salmon. They averaged about two feet long I reckon and were very good fighters. He had a ball and vicariously so did I. I don’t know how many fish we caught but it was a whole lot. We threw most of them back of course but kept a fair number for supper. We found a little creek and cleaned the fish then went back to the hotel. I cut them up in the bathroom and as we snuck the stove up into the room. Once again Miki and I took the batteries out of the smoke detector and put towels at the bottom of the door. The room was on the second floor and the view of the bay was spectacular. Tom cooked that night with plenty of garlic and butter and sour cream. Miki and I took a walk down to the wharf while he was doing this. It was a particularly special night and we could smell that dinner being prepared all the way down to the wharf. It turned out to be one of those meals one never forgets. We smoked a joint there on the wharf and it was just one of those moments of camaraderie that requires no conversation at all. Miki and I have had many of those moments.

We made a bee line out of Alaska after that and went right back to the Laird Hot Springs. We spent another week or two there and had bought a bunch of brandy and Canadian whiskey while in Alaska where it was reasonably priced. I replaced what our Mohawk friend had given us on our way north and we partied it up a few more times while we were there. Trapper Ray was glad to see me and we swapped lies over morning coffee every day. He took me up to see one of his cabins. These are log cabins that in no way resemble what one would expect to see in the lower forty-eight. The roof line is very low and nearly touches the ground. There is a pretty steep pitch to ward off the snow. Inside it was very Spartan but one could tell it would be warm and cozy in the worst of weather.

We decided that we might as well go see Glacier National park since we were so far north so we headed east for Calgary in Alberta Province. Crossing the border back into Canada was no big deal going this direction. It took a bit to get there but when we finally did arrive it was like reaching another planet. Prices were actually reasonable and we found us a pizza parlor that did these wonderful salads. That is all any of us wanted was salad. It had been a long time since we had had one and even the kids just could not get enough. I found a place that bought the few ounces of gold I had traded for on the way north in British Columbia and we were no longer cash poor. It is amazing how much money one spends on a trip like this. Between fuel and food it is often over one hundred dollars a day. It was a very good thing that the three of us had resources to pool or we could never have made this trip.

There was a huge forest fire burning near Glacier Park and the smoke was low to the ground. We often saw open flame while we went south through the park and the views were limited because of the fires. Still, it was spectacular. There was something good about crossing back into the United States though I can’t explain exactly what it was. We were road weary and heading for home. We came into Idaho and down the west side of the Rockies. We turned left at Cedar City Utah and cut through Zion and went to Lake Powell for a day or two. We did not put the boat in the water but I knew a lady there who owns a jeep tour business and we did some trade.

It was wonderful to get home. Miki and I had made regular calls to our women on the entire trip but in the end, that run cost us both dearly. Holding little Willow and sleeping in the same bed with her and Heather was perfect. Tom settled back into his trailer and Miki was overwhelmed with Star screaming at him all the time. I went back to work in the store and so did Miki. We had been on the road for several months.

Marsha and Doc lived in Maricopa and we had known them for a long time. Marsh had serious trouble with her feet and had never spent fifteen minutes on her feet at one time before she met me and I made her a pair of mocs. It really did give her a mobility that she had never known. Doc was pretty old and was a veterinarian and Marsha had a dog grooming business. The raised a lot of critters and whenever they would show up they would bring us meat they had butchered or live animals that I would kill and butcher myself. Sheep and goats and pigs were pretty common. They had taken in a Peruvian Paso mare and she was not doing well. She had serious infection in all four hoofs and they asked me to take a look at her. She was with foal and could hardly stand. She stood with her legs wide spread and was in agony. The problem was that the hoofs couldn’t be medicated. I actually made a mold in duct tape of that horses hoof and built a set of mocs for her. Of course I put industrial conveyor belt on the bottom. The mocks kept the hoofs out of the dirt and they could be medicated and the medication would stay there. She recovered nicely and dropped a beautiful foal.  

Something was different but I could not put a finger on it at the time. The store was barely surviving and I could not explain it. One day Tom and I were there and about twenty rainbow kids came in. They dumped a bunch of change on the counter, pennies, nickels and dimes. I don’t think there was one quarter. I didn’t want all that change and told them they could pick out what they needed to make things and they could bring back some of the finished products in trade. They loved the idea and did just that. Fifteen minutes after they had left AC came to tell me that one of those kids had stolen a dress from her. It was the wrong for them to do. I asked Tom to come along and we out to find them. Tom asked me where I thought they might be and I told him there were only a couple of places a group like that might be. I drove right to their camp down by Chavez crossing. It surprised the hell out of Tom. I walked right into the middle of that camp and told them to gather up, all of them. Tom stood back away from the gathering with his hand behind his back. He was wearing his bowler hat and just looked mean, armed and dangerous. Neither of us was armed.

Many of those kids recognized me right off of course and I told them we both had a problem. There was a thief among them and likely they had all had stuff turn up missing. I told them about the missing dress and that I was there to retrieve it and that I wanted the goddamn thief too. One of those boys started mouthing off at me screaming about just who the hell did I think I was. I calmly told him that if he did not shut up and sit back down I was going to kill him and eat him on the spot. I told him that people tastes like pork and I loved pork. It got right quiet there in the woods after that. That whole statement just sort of popped out from who knows where. I had never used it before but have found occasion to use it since. Mostly with young men who want to sleep with my daughter Willow. I told them that I was going back to my truck and that I would wait five minutes for them to bring me the thief and the dress and then I was going to bring in the law and they would all be run out of there. It was a fact and not a threat at all and they knew it. Tom and I went back to the truck and sure enough these two guys show up with another guy between them. It was the thief of course. He gave us back the dress. There was a Volkswagen bus parked there and it turned out it belonged to one of the captors. These guys thanked us for exposing the thief and that they had recovered a lot of missing stuff. I grabbed the front of that thief rather roughly and got right up in his face. I told him that was leaving right then and that he was leaving Arizona entirely. I told him if I even heard rumor of him coming back I would hunt him down and kill him on the spot. I told him that this was his chance to learn a very valuable lesson and that he had no entitlement to anybody else’s property. I threw him up against the truck rather hard and he slid down to the ground and just sat there. He was dazed and crying. I did not give a shit. The guy was an asshole and a thief. I won’t tolerate that in a man. The other two agreed to take him up to Flagstaff right them and put him on I-40 so he could get out of the state. I told them to do it right then and that I would be following them. The kid was not to go back to camp at all and that if he had any gear it was just too bad. He had just lost it. They loaded him into the Volkswagen bus and headed out. Tom and I followed them part way up Oak Creek Canyon to be sure they were doing as they said. Tom said he’d never seen anything like that before and that he was more than a bit worried to see me face down over fifty people with both of us being unarmed. I told him that it never even crossed my mind that I should be afraid or worried and figured that it was no big deal. Looking back on it though I reckon Tom was right. It was a damned fool thing to do. I guess the thing that bothered me in the end was it was a guy that stole that dress and for himself too.

He deserved to be treated precisely as he was treated. The rest of those folks came in pretty regularly all summer and traded finished products for raw materials. Overall they were good folks. There was just one bad apple and I had removed it from the barrel for them.

One day two buses pulled up in front of the store. They were pretty fancy busses and the crew sort of overwhelmed our business as there were a bunch of them. Crystal Gail came in and told me that she was there to invite Heather and I to her concert that she was doing in Prescott. I told her I did not like all that country music stuff and she knew it. Her husband Bill was there too and he insisted. I finally agreed and Heather and I went that night. Of course we had front row center seating and backstage passes. That woman can really sing. I had no idea. She can hit three octaves and al that country stuff is only a small part of what she does. I was honored to be there. We went backstage and watched her signing photos and stuff. She asked if we wanted some and I said no. The four of us sat out on the grass all night that night and talked family stuff. It turned out to be a very special evening. I would pay any price required to see her in concert again. That woman is a real talent.

There was a distance between Heather and I could not put a finger on it. All the motions were the same but there was just this feeling that I did not quite get. Tom mentioned it to me as well. Something had changed.

Heather found Tom in his fifth wheel one morning and he was nearly dead. He had suffered a brain aneurism and they flew him down to Good Sam in Phoenix. I went there immediately. They had drilled a hole in his skull to relieve the pressure and drain off the blood. There is spinal fluid that the brain floats on and loose blood can cause all sorts of damage. It can be Permanente damage and I was scared for him. I was there every day for six weeks and would call home and to the Bay area to his Relatives’ every day to keep them updated. I lived in that hospital and slept whenever and wherever I could. There was some Arab Sheik who occupied the whole floor above us and the FBI and CIA were all over that hospital. I had a good time with those boys. Those Arabs were interested in my beads. Ben and I were riding the elevator and I pointed out this guy in a doctor’s smock and told him the guy was a spy. There was an obvious bulge where he kept his handgun and I pointed it out to Ben. The guy turned beet red. I pointed out a lot of those guys all over the hospital. They were really easy to spot. There is no doubt that they ran a background on me but I am sure I came up clean. I had nothing to hide and the distraction was fun considering the serious nature of my being in that hospital. I would go home every three days for a shower and then go right back down south. I sat with him and I prayed for him and I held his hand and I talked to him. I shared stories and for some reason I am sure to this day that he heard every word. Tom and I were close, very close. One day I performed a Native American Prayer ceremony for him with some sage burning in an abalone shell. I used an Eagle feather to fan the smoke over him. The whole ICU was smoky and alarms went off everywhere. When the staff came in I told them what I was doing and to just get out. They could lock me up later if they wished. They left me alone to complete the ceremony and nothing was ever said about it again. They respected the fact that it was a sincere Native American Ceremony. Tom Was a Native American from one of the obscure tribes along the California coast.

From time to time Miki or Heather would come by but they were needed at the store and it was my task to watch out for Tom. Relatives from the Bay Area never came down. It was a very hard time for Tom and I. The Best neuro surgeon in the country was at that facility and he and I met often. He performed the surgery and he did a good job. His name was Spetzler and we developed a pretty good relationship. He never tried to bullshit me and I respected him for it. He would break out these models of the brain and combined with cat scans and x-rays was able to paint the picture for me. Tom recovered though he had lost a great deal of memory. It was coming back slowly but there were just a lot of things he could not get a handle on. It got to where he could drive himself around again safely and that was a major plus for him and a good indicator for me. He was settled back into his home but he spent more and more time alone in there. We would have a cocktail most every evening and visit and swap lies. Not one of his family ever thanked me for my efforts. Somehow that did not surprise me. Tom and I were much closer than he was with any of them.

We needed to raise some money for the store and I took a bunch of beads and other trade goods and headed east. I got as far as Albuquerque. I called back to the store and did not get Heather. I got AC instead. She was holding something back from me and I could tell. I had to drag the information out of her but in the end she told me. Heather was having an affair with Mark. It just cut me to the core and I could not believe it but she was clear and detailed about how blatant they had been and how much money they had spent going out on the town. I told her I was coming back and to tell no one. She agreed. I turned that Ford around and must have averaged nearly a hundred miles an hour on the way back. I was hurt and I was crying for a great deal of the way. I got back just before dark and stopped off at the store. I wrote Miki a letter telling him that I was going to find out the truth from Heather. I was going to get ALL of the truth and it was possible that neither of us was going to survive. I asked him to take care of my children knowing full well that he would. I got him on the phone and told him to come to the store for the letter. He asked me what was going on and I told him to just come and get the letter. He did.

I called Heather and told her I was back and wanted to take a little sunset ride with her and that I was on my way. Her mother Gay was there and would watch the children. We left the house in the Suburban and she was nervous. I could tell. She had good reason to be nervous. I had not looked at her and was doing about seventy going south on Cornville road. There is not much out that way. I told her that I had come there that night to either live with her or die with her and that it would be up to her which it would be but I was going to get the whole truth from her no matter what it took. I pulled out a little .380 automatic pistol and set it on the dash and she knew I was not kidding one bit. She got out of her seatbelt and was halfway out the door. I grabbed her by the hair and yanked her back in and backhanded her just as hard as I could, made her shut the door and put the seatbelt back on and told her to just sit there. She did. She kept looking at that pistol but there was no way she could have beat me to it and she knew it. I have never hit a woman before that time and it was completely against my nature. I found a dirt road and went way off into the desert. I gave her a notepad and a pen and told her that she was going to write the entire history of our relationship and put all of her affairs down. Every single one of them. I told her that if she refused I would shoot her right in the head and then kill myself. There was absolutely no doubt that I would do exactly as I said. At no point did I ever point that gun at her. It just sat there on the dashboard.

She started writing and I sat there saying nothing. I got out from time to time and she asked if she could too. I said no. She had only one thing to focus on and she damn well better get on with it.

She wrote for hours. I made her sign the document and date it too. I let her out to find a bush and watched her the whole time. Then she got back in the car and I read what she had written. It was horrible. I had a very hard time believing it all but it was true. She had slept with about half of my so called friends. She had been doing this since we had first met. She told me that she had planned to leave me even before Willow was conceived. Talk about an agenda. Willow was three years old and the whole business with the store and the house was just something I had been doing for nothing. I was completely blindsided and the heartbreak was more than I thought I could stand. I asked her what she wanted to do and she said she wanted to try to make it all right. That was a lie too but I did not know it at the time. We stood outside the car and watched the sun come up hand in hand. I totally dismantled that little hand gun and threw it as far as I could to the four points of the compass. We went back home and I told her I was going to have a talk with Mark and that I would be back in a bit. I found him at the warehouse right where I expected him to be. He was sitting behind the desk and was sweating like the pig he resembled. He stood up when I came in and there was fear written all over him. He told me he knew karate and that I better not touch him. I told him that he better just shut the fuck up and just sit there. I told him I had a shotgun in the car and that if I had wanted to kill him he would already be dead. I told him that he was to leave the state that day and that I would shoot him on sight if I ever saw him in Arizona again. I told him that all of our mutual friends would want to hurt him too and they would find out what an asshole he was right soon. None of them would tolerate this shit from him and not one would welcome him ever again. He left with the clothes on his back in the same beat up car he arrived in and I have never seen him since. It was all I could do to not kill that man. I had taken him when he was in need, given him a job and a place to live and he repaid me by having an affair with my wife, often right in front of my baby daughter. There is no doubt that his karma will catch him. People like that deserve every bit of it.

To this day I don’t know if what I did was right however it was right at the time and I did get the whole truth. I still have that document. What I did not know at the time and found out shortly thereafter was it was not Mark at all that she was interested in. It was a woman. Her name is Cindy. Gay knew all about it and took Heathers side in the issue. I have never forgiven her for doing this. Cindy was truly a lesbian. It turned out that Gay had the same tendencies and was therefore sympathetic. She lives with another woman today. I don’t have any issues with gay people at all but Cindy had come into my family and was destroying a relationship of 14 years that involved three children. I tried everything to save my family including taking Cindy in but none of it mattered. I found a very talented counselor in Susan Connelly and we went to see her. Heather only went twice. I kept going for nearly a year. Susan had diagnosed Heather as being the worst case of Narcissism she had ever encountered and she was right. I had to look it up but she was right. I was there simply because I had issues with the fact I had struck a woman and the deep hurt I was living through. I was angry too. It was the effort that hurt too. Fourteen years of effort in building a family and a life and Heather flushed it all. There is no way to explain how horrible this time really was.  

I would talk to Tom about it and he would listen. The store was having a hard time as Heather was no longer focused on any of it. Miki told me later that there was 100,000 dollars that came up missing and he could tell me where it went if I wanted to know. I told him I was not interested and to just forget it. I did not see or realize the effect this all had on Tom. He was as heartbroken as me in his own way. I was the last of three men that had been treated precisely the same by three women in the same family. He and Miki had already lived through it all and there is no way I would have survived without those two men.  

Tom suffered another aneurism and it was me that found him and saved his life. He was laying face down in his own puke and I got him up and breathing. The paramedics took him away and flew him back to Good Sam. It was all just too much for him. He could see it all falling apart and he was as helpless as I was. I spent a great deal of time there again but Tom never quite came back. He never recognized me fully again.

I had an argument with Heather and Gay called the cops. There was a pipe sitting on the coffee table that I just did not notice or care about. There was no violence, just a domestic dispute however in those situations, someone is going to jail and this time it was me. They confiscated the pipe. There were no handcuffs and that is pretty unusual. I told them my wife was leaving me for a woman and they were sympathetic. The treated me very well and that pipe just disappeared somewhere. It never came up.

They put me into an overcrowded cell and there were a couple of folks there that I knew. There was one young punk that had everybody buffaloed and he came up to me with his karate shit and threatened me. I got right in his face and told him that if he wanted a piece of me I was going to take one eye out right quick and show it to the other. I was just calm enough and pissed enough that he had no doubt I was serious. He backed off and everybody clapped. I guess I had taken over control in that moment though I did not give a damn.

Some of had to see the judge in the morning and they all told me I would not be released and I insisted that I would. Early the next morning they brought in the swill that passes for coffee. I don’t use sugar so I had no need of a spoon. I refused to take one. This became an issue later on.

It was Judge Wright and I knew him. He was surprised as hell to see me before him. He and I had worked out a case for Abbot many years before. He cut me loose but I was not permitted to go back to the house until after the hearing. When I was brought back to the cell to be released the issue of the spoon became a big deal. They did not believe that I did not take one that morning and they held up letting me out while they searched that cell and everybody in it. It took a long time and of course they never found the spoon. The boys in the cell told me not to worry about that this sort of thing happened all the time. I believed them. I was the only one that was released that morning.

Dev and John Reynolds were pretty close friends in those days. Dev is a successful and very talented writer and was responsible for all of the Land Before Time animated moves, Baldur and several others. She was freelance and worked for Disney at the time. She is one hell of a talented writer. John was mostly a stay at home dad and treated his family like shit in my view. Dev is Jewish and at one point was seriously considering leaving John. I saved that marriage by pointing out the value of family, something I firmly believed in before the shit hit the fan for me.

They have three kids, two girls and a boy who are the same age as mine and they often played together.

John and I had gotten into a project to produce two more how too videos based on work we were doing at the store. He actually is a fairly good producer. The deal was that I would put up the money to produce these films and he would take over the marketing. He directed Heather in the making of these films and handled all the lighting and camera angles. We took the raw footage to Los Angles and rented time on an Avid. At the time this was very high tech stuff. These machines had the capacity to hold a full twenty minutes of footage at one time and the editing went pretty quickly even though it was an expensive proposition. I learned a great deal over that three days and we caught cat naps in the studio and lived on coffee and sandwiches. It was a lot of work. In the end the project was completed but John never did hold up his end. I found out later that this was not the first time he had done something like this. He was good at getting the film in the can as it were but he never followed through on anything else. He was not a man of his word. Dev on the other hand is a great lady and is all heart. She would give the shirt off her back and sacrifice anything for her children. She worked constantly and hard at her writing and was the real breadwinner in the family. John was always frustrated by life and was an unhappy man who always took it out on his children.

It was John who picked me up from jail. We went out to spring creek and I cried on his shoulder, literally. We talked for most of the day but in the end it really didn’t solve anything. I was devastated.

Waterfront Bobby Yates was an old friend from the Bay Area, He ran security for several of the piers in San Francisco. He came into some money at one point and I showed him the property in Cornville where we ended up putting our warehouse. I rented it from him at the time. I moved into the warehouse and Bob never charged me a dime. He knew how bad it was for me. When I got there I had twenty five dollars to my name and the clothes on my back. There was a bathroom and nothing else. No Shower. I had a ten foot diameter cattle tank and I had that brought over and I bathed in it, right in the front yard. All my friends got together and moved all my stuff from Heathers house. Yes, I gave it all to her. The house, the business, all the stock and the bank accounts and I walked away. I only said one thing to Cindy. I told her that if Heather would do this to me then she could rest assured that she would do the same thing to her at some point. The check was in the mail. It was a whole lot of years before I ever said another word to her. That was after my prediction came true and Heather cheated on her and they broke up too. Cindy was just as hurt as I was I reckon but we never talked about it. She got what she gave in my mind.

All the stock was moved into the store in the little extra building there and I took down all the shelving. I never left that place. I had spent my twenty five dollars on a telephone that could only call locally and I got some shoe work from time to time. For nearly a year I just survived. I read everything I could get my hands on about psychology in an effort to understand what had happened and about philosophy to really try to understand myself. Dr Saint John would come by and drop off stacks of books on religions from around the world and eastern philosophy. I hardly saw the children at all and that was very hard on me. It took a year for the divorce to go through and I never saw anyone during that time. Ben decided he wanted to live with me and he did. Joshua and Willow were just too young to be able to figure it all out and I could not support them as it was.

The business was not doing well and Heather lost the house on top of that. It sat empty in foreclosure. I went there and removed the kitchen from the little house that Miki had lived in and installed it in the warehouse. Miki bought the land from Waterfront Bob and he and star moved into the little house next door. She screamed at him all the time and it sure seemed to me it was about nothing. Miki is a very peaceful and loving man.

Ed and Susie had gotten divorced the year before and Susie was staying in my old house with Heather and stayed there for a bit after Heather lost the place and she and Cindy rented another house.  

I saw Susie once when I was taking out that kitchen. She came by one night and I offered her dinner. We had a nice quiet evening over that dinner. I had no interest in pursuing any women at the time and it never crossed my mind that she would be interested anyway.

I guess it was about a month later when she came back. I asked her why she was there and she told me that she had come to fuck me and that she had always been attracted to me. I was really taken by surprise. When a man lives and sleeps with the same women as long as I had been with Heather he really wonders if he can perform with anyone else ever again. Susie is a particularly beautiful woman and we ended up in bed that night after talking for hours. There were no issues. She visited a lot after that and eventually moved in. She was the exact right person at the exact right time. I had waited until the divorce was final and had kept my word to my marriage vows. Ed called me one day and asked what I was doing and I told him I was fucking his ex wife. It got right quiet on the phone for a bit and then he told me he could think of no better man to have a hand in raising his son. It never came between us. It was a job to make the warehouse even somewhat loveable. St John had redone his home and had a whole bunch of draperies that I hung from the open ceiling. Mike Bruce put in a shower tub for me and plumbed the kitchen. Jime Whitewolf did a bunch of electrical work. Susi, Shalo, Ben and I took baths in that tub outside until it was all done. We were halfway through the winter and it was pretty dam cold there for a while bathing in that tub. Joshua and Willow were there a lot and I built a loft so we could put the two bigger boys up on top and Shaylo and Willow on the bottom. Heather was busy losing everything and Willow and Joshua stayed with us until school started. It was only the kids that made it a requirement for me to talk to her. During that first year before Susie I had gotten together I had gone through a time that I really wanted to just leave it all and go to Costa Rica. I made a serious, conscious decision to stay for my children. It has been hard many times but I have never regretted that choice. I soon realized that I just could not afford the payments on that Ford truck anymore. With the insurance it was over 1000 bucks a month so I gave it back and paid the penalty. Since all my credit was tied to Heather that went down the drain too. She owed everyone and never made any of it right. I got a call from my old Friend Fred Kelley and after we talked a bit he told me he had a car I could have and a motorcycle if I just came and got it. Just before I turned that truck in Josh and I did a quick run t Nevada. We put the car on a trailer and the bike in the back of the truck. Fred was there when I really needed him and bless him for it. It was a Hundi four door from when they first started coming to this country. I do not recall what year. The motorcycle was a 750 Honda that had an automatic transmission with low mileage. It was a pretty nice bike but I never liked the automatic. I had wheels though once I gave the truck back.  

There is a very special place here in this valley called Fossil Creek. It is a spring fed creek and has the most beautiful turquoise water anywhere. Going there from Camp Verde is 22 miles of dirt road and in those days it was a rough road. Susi and I and the four kids went out there to camp for a week or two. We had everything packed into that little car and the kids were sitting on ice chests. It took hours to cross that road in that little car with no ground clearance but we made it.

That was a pretty special time. Bushan was out there at the time and he played a lot of music while we were there. We shared a fire at night and food too. We all had a ball, swimming every day. Susie and I would often go swimming nude in the moonlight and make love in the water.  

Fossil Creek has some interesting history. The spring that feeds it is a big one and puts out a lot of water. There is a waterfall at the headwaters though I have never made the hike to get there. It is quite a trek in some rugged country. The creek is in a very steep and narrow canyon. Early on in Arizona history it was decided to put a hydro electric power plant on that creek. It was done by hand with horses, mules, wagons and a pretty big crew. They put a dam at the headwaters and built a flume down the side of the canyon. There is a plant about halfway down that had two generators in it and ran off the main feed water from the creek. They dug hard rock tunnels and used steel pipe that was made for the job and brought in by wagon. At the bottom of the creek, where it runs into the Verde River they built another power plant that housed four more generators. The engineering was incredible. The generators at the bottom were powered by the flume. I have seen some old photos of this project and it really was something that they were able to pull this project together. The technology was the best available at the time and the project attracted international attention. The first wire was run to Jerome, for the mines, Prescott for the political gain and flagstaff for the timber. This was the first electricity in the state of Arizona. At one point they ran wire down to Phoenix too and this little hydroelectric plant. They then built Roosevelt dam in Phoenix with the intention of changing the electrical grid in the state but there was a ten year drought right after they completed it and Fossil creek just kept right on providing power. I think it was in 2007 that they started t take it all apart and put that creek back to it’w natural condition. In the winter of 2008 they took down the dam and closed it all down for months. They removed all the steel pipe and flume. That alone required huge cranes that could reach across the canyon up at least a hundred feet or more and bring that pipe back to the south side where the road is. This is very rugged country. My family and I still go there often in the summer and in 2009 at the time of this writing the current is much stronger and the water just as fine as ever. This will also be a special place for all of us.  

Dev could see that I was floundering and told me I should take on writing a movie. She gave me some books on the process and away I went. I had a pretty good idea and I put it down on paper. Susie and I and the kids would spend days at spring creek swimming and I always had a stack of books and a notepad. I did a lot of my research by that creek. It took me six weeks day and night to get it down on my computer. Often I would wake up with yesterday’s food sitting there on the desk next to me. I just started writing again and paid it no mind. It was much too long. Every two hour movie ever made is precisely 120 pages. One minute of film for every page of script. This is the toughest writing I have ever attempted and it took me a year to finally get it down to a proper length. Susie and I would invite a house full of friends who would read the parts for me and I would video tape the whole thing then do rewrites based on how well the dialogue actually flowed. I was focused and Susie and I got closer and closer. Then she left and went back to Australia. Her family was there and she just had to spend time with them. She would go there for six months and be with me for six months. I was so lonely when she was away. I had come to love that woman very much. We never argued. We put a little garden in the back and she was always planting flowers. She has quite the green thumb. We would go out to the washes and gather rocks and did some landscaping. I built a little platform out of wood and traded for a washing machine. We hooked a hose up to it and hung the clothes to dry. When there are children involved there is always lots of laundry. Shaylo has always been a special young man. He was hard headed as hell and from time to time we had issues. I don’t think any of it ever got too serious though Susie might see that differently. I came to love that young man for precisely who he is and still do in my way to this day. Ed was still around and I was not his father and never presumed to be. Ed was a good father for that boy and always did his best to provide for his needs even times he had very little. We have all had times like that and we just do the best we can. Shaylo and Willow were great buds. Spring creek is close by and used to have a pretty good swimming hole before the floods. We spent many days at that creek. It is pretty close and has great water and shade trees.  

Big Joe showed up one night with this very tiny black Kitten that someone had thrown out of a car and we spent some serious hours removing all the ticks from this poor kitten. Joe asked us if we would take it in and I said no. He took it home that night and his wife Jane did not want it either. He brought it back and we took it in. I called that little black kitten Pocket Kitty as she would ride in my shirt pocket.

John Renyolds got a job producing a movie for PBS that he was shooting up on the Navajo Reservation and Susie and I and the kids went up there for a couple of days. They had a pretty good collection of trained animals, eagles, hawks and even a mountain lion but pocket kitty was the real star. Everybody loved that kitten. I met Will Sampson’s brother on that set and we hit off right away. Will was probably most famous for his part in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Josey Wales. He was a wonderful actor. He had died a few years earlier from a very rare skin disease that caused the skin to become hard. His brother and I spent a good many hours swapping stories.

From time to time I would get a call from Los Angles to find a particular location for them. I would go out, often with Susie and take my 35MM camera and shoot up several rolls of film. This was all catalogued for time of day and film used as well as all the specs on each shot. It was good work when it came about. We saw some spectacular sunrises and sunsets in some right nice places.  

When the production companies showed up there was more work too and I was a pretty good grip. These folks always pay well during a shoot and the food is catered and free.

Bushan would show up in his 1960 Ford truck with the handmade camper on the back that he lived in and play wonderful music. He would stay for months and we loved him for doing so. He still does the same thing and he is very much a part of this family.

I finished writing the movie script and made fifty copies of it and sent it off. I registered it with the writers’ guild. I could never have done this without Dev’s inspiration. It was called Olympus and I have one copy of it left. It is a hard copy as the computer died and took that memory with it. I picked it up a couple of years ago and read it. I did not remember anything about it at all. It was like reading a new book and I found that I really did like it and had done a very good job. It never sold. It is a particularly tough business to break into. I was fairly well connected in some Hollywood circles but no one responded to that script. I reckon they see a lot of them and likely don’t read many of them. Many years later it did generate some interest with a production company in New York and it was bandied about for nearly two years but they never did come up with production money. That is always the bottom line with such things. I wrote one other script called The Kings Deer which was lost with the computer. It was an action film and would have likely made the B movie circuit at least. I will never know as there is only copy of it to my knowledge and that is with the writers’ guild too. I don’t even know if I could recover a copy of it and I no longer care. The real reward from projects comes from the doing of them. This is ultimately true of any of the projects I have ever done.  

Life with Susie was wonderful those months she was here. I am very much still quite in love with that woman. She was my little elf and always will be. I have no idea what would have happened to me if she had not come into my life. She gave me a hope I thought I had lost. Ben was playing baseball and I helped out with the coaching and the umpiring. He was pretty good at it. Joshua took up soccer and was a natural. He has great coordination and fast feet.

Saint John and I continued our studies and had some intense conversations about philosophy, By now he too was going through a split up with his woman of many years. He would come by and get me and we would do some ecstasy and go over to Prescott and spend the day in the park in the center of town and we would talk philosophy.

Prescott is what I would call a good example of America. Right in the center of town is the courthouse made from granite that is surround by a beautiful park with huge old trees and statues. It sits on the town square and on that square is whiskey row. This is an area that has several bars that go back to the days of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. There is a lot of history to Prescott and it still hosts one of the oldest rodeos in America, if not the oldest.  

John and I spent a great deal of time there that summer and we argued and hashed it all out until we both had a clear understanding of who we are and where we were located within ourselves. It seemed that he was always just one slight step ahead of me and it was a good thing he was or I would never have finally arrived at that place of inner peace that I have lived in sense. It is not always peaceful but there is usually understanding and acceptance of why it is not. My life has never been the same sense and a great deal of time has always been spent offering this wisdom to those who wanted to know.

A friend of mine showed up with a 28 foot school bus that he needed a home for. I traded for it with some raw turquoise and parked it next to the warehouse. It was partially finished on the inside and I did the rest of the work. The bus was turquoise, my favorite color.

Big Joe decided to move up to Portland and he asked if I wanted to buy his pool table. I offered my canoe which I had no real use for and he jumped on the trade. A canoe would come in handy where he was going and I had always wanted a pool table. It became the center piece in our house and has always had that distinction. I paid some guys to recover it and carefully watched how they did it. I have had that table ever since and have done this job myself many times since.

Bushan and I started playing straight call shot pool every day and got pretty good. We both have history with the game and were pretty good to start with and this just honed our skills. We played thirteen straight games to one hundred one day. When you are often separated by less than ten balls, which indicates a whole lot of pool. We got in the habit of playing every weekend for years and then I guess it was me that broke the habit. Neither of us would claim to be better than the other and it goes both ways as to who wins. All the kids play too and are all fair hands.

I spent a great deal of time meditating in those days and was still quite focused on my personal path. I remember one night I was lying on the floor in a deep meditation when all of a sudden I could see everything around me as if it was daylight, with my eyes closed tightly. I stood up and danced all over the room with my eyes still shut and never touched anything. There are times that I can still do this.  

We heated our house with a wood stove and it ate it’s fair share of wood. Emmitt is the man to get wood from and I always did. He was in his late seventies in those days and I took to going out in the bush with him to cut wood and deliver it. This was before cell phones and I was always worried he would drop dead out in the bush and no one would find him. He is a true woodsman and probably would have been perfectly content it that had happened. I would be too I reckon. Emmitt has been in this valley his whole life and only left that one time to go fight the Hun in Italy during WWII. He has a pretty good collection of yellow toys, graders, cats, backhoes and such. He cut most of the forest service roads around here and a great many of the roads in Cottonwood and Sedona. He was also on the fire board for what at that time was the Page Springs Cornville Fire Department. We became very good friends and I never once charged a dime to do anything with him. He did offer but I just couldn’t take money from even though I know he is quite well off. He lives in an old shack that could have been a chicken coop at one time with his hunting dogs. He has about five acres there that looks like a junkyard but is all gold to people like me. Were talking about the fire department one day when he told me they were shorthanded and perhaps I should go volunteer. I did and things changed for me. The majority of the calls are for medical and I went to school for six months to get the certification for an EMT. Louie was another friend from the canyon days and we did it together. There was also Shawn who had come across country on a Harley after he had gotten his teaching degree from Hamilton College in New York. Shawn was living in a tent in the yard. We all gathered and studied at my house. It was different and it was fun. We also got a lot of free training from the fire department and got to drive fire trucks around with lights and sirens going. Louie who I have actually always called chewy and I always made the most calls. We rarely missed one. This provided a bit of a supplement to my income though it was only a few thousand bucks a year. I never thought I would get so into the medical stuff but I did and it turns out I was good at it. Some of the scenes were ghastly and there is just no other word that fits. I will not attempt to talk about any of that here. We saved lives and we had people die in our arms. That is the way of it. It is still the way of it. I volunteered for five years and ended up having some issues with management and quit. There were a lot of hairy situations and body parts and fires and I will just leave it at that. This time did have a profound impact on my life. Some of it is just not a good idea to talk about.  

Emmitt left about the same time so it worked out. I kept helping with his yellow toys and he liked it as I could run all of them. No one will be as good with a grader as he is though. He just had a natural eye for grade and that is a very rare thing.

There was this old dairy barn in cottonwood that had stood for many years. It was a huge old barn that stood at least sixty feet in the air with a steeped pitched roof. There were wings on each side. Emmitt had gotten the contract to salvage that barn and he asked me if I thought he and I could do it. I of course said sure, why not? We started in the late summer and worked through the fall and into winter. One morning I went to his house and there was a foot of snow on the ground. I stood waiting for about twenty minutes and Emmitt never came out. I went home and went back to bed. The next day I showed up again and Emmitt was waiting for me. He asked where I had been the day before and I told him that he was full of shit. He had seen my tracks and knew damn well I had been there. He asked why I had not come in and got him. I told him it wasn’t my job to get him out of bed and if he was going to go to work then he best be ready when it was time. He laughed at that but he was never late again. He had the same work ethic. There came a time when we were having lunch in that barn and we had done about all we could. There was a water tank inside that was not part of the salvage and we had to take that barn down without hurting that tank. We were sitting there when he asked what I would do next. I looked around for a bit, took a walk down the length of the barn and came back and told him that if it was me I would wrap a chain around this one pole in such a way that it would jump off the foundation and make a half turn. I told him the whole barn would come down to the west and this one stick that was right above that tank would miss it by at least three feet. This barn was made from whole trees and this was a chancy thing to attempt at best. Emmitt did the same thing I had done and walked the length of that barn. When he came back he asked if I could do the rigging. I told him I could. I had some experience with rigging from my logging days and he just set that chain. I set it all up and attached it to the back of the Cat. Emmitt pulled slowly and even as I had suggested and that pole did exactly what I said it would do and that whole barn came just as I had predicted. That one stick actually grazed the side of that tank on the way down but caused no harm. Emmitt was thrilled and so was I and we just packed up and left for the day. Sometimes you just get a little luck working with you. There have been many a time I had need for one yellow toy or another and Emmitt has always been free in loaning me whatever I needed. I have never hurt any of his equipment and always filled the tank and greased the whole thing before I returned it. It is still that way to this day. He still gets up in the morning and puts in a good days work though he is in his late eighties now and tends to listen when I tell him he might just take the dogs and go get himself some game instead of working. He is just one of those good men that I would do anything for.  

Chewy called me one day and asked if I wanted to help grip on a movie that was being shot locally and I agreed. It was a small local production company and he and I were the only grips. In the end we were both in the credits as Key grips. That is a worthy distinction. A grip does it all from seting up lighting, to placing shiny boards which are just reflective panels used to put light where the director and cameraman, to setting track for the dolly that the camera moves on and about a million other tasks. This film was being done in the 70MM format which is the Imax big screen format. There were only seven of these cameras on earth each was hand made. The camera was worth a quarter million dollars. On the first day of the shoot, The camera man and I were crossing the creek at Oak Creek Crossing with that camera suspended with what are called sticks between us and he went down. This is a pretty heavy camera but I just reached over, grabbed his half and leaned back with it, keeping it out of the water. He was having a very hard time on the slippery bottom and I walked that camera across myself. I was wearing a pair of my handmade sandals with conveyor belt on the bottom. This will not slip on wet rock. I became God at that moment as I had saved the camera and there for the shoot. It ended up with me having to walk everything across that creek, dolly track, dolly, actresses, actors, producer and director. I did it all that first day. I also took several orders for mocs and sandals from everyone. They all loved my work. That was a very fun production and unlike most that are done in a week or two this one took nearly two months. It was a history of the area from the Spanish to recent times. I have several small parts in it as it was a small company and we used what we had. One part was playing a conquistador and I had to grow out my beard for it. That beard growing business was started on that first day and it was a constant annoyance. There is a train that runs up the Verde River that is a tourist thing. It is a cool ride to take as there are Bald Eagles that nest in that canyon. We had the run of the train and at one point the camera set up on the front of the engine. We also got free drinks and food.  

The Hale Bop Comet was in the skies in those days. There is a place that is called robbers roost that is a single spire of red rock that sort of sits by itself a bit out into the flats. There is a cave on the east side facing the rim that has a natural window in it. The window is about seven feet in diameter and is nearly a perfect circle. It takes a four wheel drive to get close to this spot and then it is a pretty good hike which is not safe at all to get into that cave. It is pretty high up, at least 500 feet off the deck. We hauled all that gear up there one night and set that camera so it looked out that window. I had put together a hat full of fire that reflected off the walls of that cave and the back lighting was perfect. That comet was sitting right over those beautiful red rock cliffs out in the distance. We did time lapse all night. Long about midnight or so Chewy had a friend deliver pizza to that cave. That by itself was a remarkable feat. It was cold but it was perfect. This was one of those perfect summer nights.  

Part of this shoor involved mountain men sitting around a fire cooking a bunny rabbit on a spit. For some reason no one could find a rabbit to buy and when the day came the director was not in a very good mood for lack of a bunny. I told him to just hang on for a bit and I would take care of it. I grabbed up my .22 lever action and trotted off into the bush. I was back in about a half hour with a freshly killed and skinned bunny rabbit. I had blood up to my elbows as I was in a bit of a hurry. They all looked at me a bit strange but we had the bunny rabbit for the shoot.  

The whole shoot was like that. Whatever was needed Chewy and I could come up with it and we did.

We brought in some Native American dancers too and that was a wonderful day. I was able to do a bit of trade on the side with some of these folks.

We did some scenes with a stagecoach too. There was a guy who had built one custom and some other wagons too for the Wrigley family. These folks had come to Sedona a few years earlier and had spent a lot of million dollar bills building a particularly nice horse ranch. I had met the woman years before when she came into the bead store. I had asked her what she did with her used horses. She said “what”? I told her that they made pretty good tacos and that horse hide was the best drum raw hide there was. She was offended for some reason I never figured out. Fortunately when we were on their place during this shoot she did not remember me.

The director and the producer were a father and son team and they had a buck or two. They had a special IMAX theatre built in the Village of Oak Creek specifically for this film and for others that they featured later on.  

Susie and I were invited and attended the opening night premier. There were hundreds of people and some of them were important figures from throughout the state. Chewy and I were asked to stand for a special acknowledgement for the work we had done. They said that there was no way the film could have been completed without our most special talents. Truth is they were right. We got a standing ovation. I was embarrassed. They did put it into video format at one point but I never have owned a copy. I suppose I could still get one if I really wanted.  

Susie and I were to together for five years and then she went back to Australia and planned on staying. We split up and it was pretty hard on me and I reckon for her too though she has never said. The last summer she was here we were out at fossil creek for a week or so and I remember one afternoon making love under the shade of a cedar tree. There were two hummingbirds circling at the time. It was at that moment that Savanna was conceived though I did not know it till much later. 

A young lady named Cheryl Lee came into my life a few months after Susie and I had called it quits and it was a lot of fun. She was a whole lot younger than I as most of my women have been but she was the youngest. She loved me with unrestrained passion and I soaked it all up. We were great together in bed or out. There was one time we fornicated in the beer locker at Safeway. People were walking by just outside of the glass. We did things like that. It was crazy fun. She is a talented singer and guitar player and had cut some albums in Europe. She was also a bit of a psych case and had done some time in institutions. Perhaps that is why we why we got along! We hung out for several months and then she went back to Oregon. I thought it was over. I was 

I got a call from Susie and she told me she was pregnant. We talked for a long time and she seid she would be coming back to have the baby. I was thrilled. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking she would stay and we would be forever together. I was wrong again.  

Cheryl Lee showed up at my front door and I told her about Susie and the baby. She just would not accept that I would choose Susie over her even though she had left. It was no longer about her at all it was about Susie and a child coming into the world. She never got it and she would not leave.  

Susie arrived about two months before she was due and we settled right in just like always. Well, sort of. Cheryl Lee was still there. Susie understood her better than I did and knew that I was just trying to help her. We had not slept together since she had left for Oregon. There came a day that Cheryl Lee went over to Miki’s house and took some cookies out of his fridge. They were made with pot and she had no resistance to anything like that. She really went way out there and called 911 to take her to the hospital. There is no way I could allow those boys to know what was going on in my home as I knew them and worked in the field with them all the time so I called dispatch and somehow convinced them that I could handle the situation. I had a good reputation and the called the ambulance off. There is no way that would happen today as the rules are much different. It took many hours for her to come back to something like normal and she asked if I would call her mom to come and get her. I did and mom showed up the next day. I have never met such a right wing Christian and she was all about how bad her daughter had been all her life and how only Jesus was going to save here. She told me about having committed Cheryl Lee to the nut house more than once and gave me her word she would not do so this time if Cheryl Lee went with her. I believed her and I was wrong once again. I found out a year later that she had taken her right to the nut house and Cheryl Lee was there for a whole year. I felt so bad for that girl and it really put a bad taste in my mouth for the word of a born again Christian. There was no honor there at all and her mom will pay her own Karma too.  

Susie is a real trooper and I never saw the radical mood changes I had seen with Heather. Perhaps she had already been through that. We bought an inflatable pool with large air filled sides and set it up in the living room. I prepared the bus for Susie at her request so that she had her own little private place to be. She made the curtains. It was perfect for her. We and taken up Tee Pee living again and I was very happy. The time moved slowly and we did our days at spring creek too.

I got a real job with a paycheck and everything. It had been a whole lot of years since I had one.

I started Working for A Day in the West which is a jeep tour company in Sedona that is owned by John Bradshaw. I had known John since he was in short pants though not well. It was his father Bob that I knew the best. John has two brothers Bob and Scott. The brothers have a pretty bad reputation. Scott was always starting fights with people not as adept as he and giving out some pretty bad beatings. He was also known for beating on his women. For some reason he always had beautiful women. Bob Jr had an alcohol problem and he owned a taxi company. The two did not go hand in hand. There was a rather large stink one year when he was seen beating his dog to death with a hatchet. He died a few years back before his father who died just a couple of years ago. John got elected to the city council and has been involved with that for several years. It was still pretty wild in those days. We all carried loaded weapons and dressed the part of cowboys, outlaws and gunfighters and took tourists on some rather wild rides in the back country. The company is still in business. It was a pretty fun job and I made pretty good money at it. You were not paid a dime if you were not driving and you could only do so many tours a day. There was a lot of down time as there was more drivers than tours often enough. As I built my seniority I had more and more tours but that first year I read a lot while waiting for a tour. That is just the way it is. We never finished before dark as there were always sunset tours and then you had to clean out the jeep and wash it. Not bad in the summer but in the winter the whole business was cold. It is not as easy of a job as one might think. Tour guides are very knowledgeable in all of the local flora, fauna and history. We also got to tell a lot of stories. There is a bar in Sedona called the Cowboy Club and we would meet up there after work every day. I would walk in, check my gun at the door and go over to the bar, slam my hand down and shout out “Whiskey”. It was part of the character and always brought looks. The bartender never rushed right over and I never expected her too. We did some pretty heavy drinking in those days. The lead driver is Jimi and he is an ex bull rider and Lakota or so he says. He is a big man and we had to have a serious face off right there in the beginning. Of course I was not backing down to him and we became fast friends. I could also hold my own and drink with the boys. Mostly we lived on our tips and the paycheck went for bills. The paycheck was never quite enough. I set a record at one point and pulled in three hundred dollars in tips for one day. Normally you could expect fifty to one hundred on good days. No one worked the whole week so even though it all sounds good we were all on the edge financially. The good part was that I had a job and felt I could support Susie and the coming baby on top of all the other things and people I was taking care of.  

Life in the warehouse was always good. We ate better some years than others but it became a gathering place much like the canyon always was. We had Christmas lights, the little ones, strung all over the place. It was a cozy home.

We made several trips to the California coast, to Ojai to help Granville with his shoe business. They took good care of us when we were there and Susie and I always made it all into a party for everyone. We always went for a swim in that big pond, the Pacific, whenever we went there. Sometimes there were other family members there too. We made a point of always going up to Santa Barbara to the farmers market there to get the good Ghirardelli Chocolate, the good stuff that is just thick raw chunks of chocolate.

One year they gave us a pair of little love birds that they could no longer take care of; Guinevere and Lancelot. They rode in the back of the truck covered in a cardboard box through a snow storm on the way home. I had those birds for twenty years or so. Pocket kitty was their friend and they loved to tease that cat. We often let them fly loose in the warehouse. I always loved their happy little noises first thing in the morning.  

I started writing a column for a local paper. It was a weekly and my column was called Rock Talk. I had a very good time doing this. I made fun of everything and it became quite popular. I did this for about five years before the economy and a divorce with the publishers brought it to an end.

A long time friend of mine Kate Howell asked me for some help on a project she was doing and I agreed. At the time she was working as a paramedic for Sedona Fire and she was very good at it.

In those days there were a lot of things going with that fire department that are never talked about but of course I was privy to the inside track. There was a lot of cocaine and sexual kinkiness. Often these activities would happen with on duty personal within the confines of the fire house. Kate was married to a very weird man who was part of the whole Waco cult though from a distance. He called me up one night and asked me if I liked silk and if I wanted to participate in some sexual activities. Apparently he was a cross dresser. I don’t really take any issue with any of this however there was no way I would bring this up to Susie and I was not into it either. He had started as a cop for the city of Sedona the first year it incorporated and had gotten into some bad trouble. There is a left hand turn lane in the middle of the street in Sedona and this guy had a woman in his police cruiser and was running lights and sirens and going very fast right down the middle of that lane. There was no emergency and he was just showing off to the woman. A fed Ex driver who I knew was pulling out when he hit her van. He killed her and she was a single mom. He was seriously injured too and nearly died. They put a steel plate in his head. I don’t recall what happened to the woman who was with him. It was a tragic event that could have been avoided had he not been stroking his ego. He became a paramedic after that for Sedona Fire. He is a big man and was abusive of Kate and I never liked him. There is no doubt in my mind there is a great deal more to the story of the relationship these two shared.

Kate and I worked on a curriculum for teaching children in the sixth grade first aid, CPR anatomy and physiology. It was a major project. I had never stood in front of a class and taught anything so I wrote a script that in the end worked very well for me. I would practice every lesson in front of Susie and she would give me feedback. I could not have done any of this without her support. We brought in animal parts, hearts and lungs and such and let these kids really get into it and learn about how these things actually worked. We taught nutrition and how the long term effects on the body. The final exam was great fun. We set up an ER on the stage in the gyms and enclosed it in black plastic. We had a life sized human dummy in a stokes basket with a complete set of animal organs in place. The local hospital donated gowns, booties, gloves and hats and we would bring these kids into a black lit room that very much resembled an operating theatre. We had an EKG machine and provided strips and we would give them scenarios for them to deal with. What would you do if you found a person who had a branch sticking out of their abdomen? This is a fair example. They came in groups of five and were dressed like and acted like little doctors. We kept an oxygen tank on hand with a non-rebreather mask in case any of them had any issues of their own that we would have to deal with. We only used it once in several years for one young lady who passed out. I taught two classes twice a week at the little school in Cornville. I also was certified as a CPR instructor. We would bring in volunteers from the Fire departments who would help us set up practice stations with a variety of different scenarios. This is commonly done for any EMT class and in the end that is pretty much what we taught these kids; Emergency medicine. This was a very popular class and we did it all over the valley for several years. We were often on the news or written up in the papers. Kate was always the front person and I stayed in the background. I prefer it that way. It cost a lot of money to do this program and Kate paid for it all out of her own pocket. She is the consummate altruist though she does thrive on the recognition.

We organized huge paint ball games that would start at sunset and go into the night. There might be fifty kids on a side. When someone was hit they did not say “ow” they called out for a medic. Each side had medics and we constantly switched them out. The medics were required to dress the wound properly and then Kate or I would inspect their work. If it was done properly the wounded kid could return to the game.

There was a time when these two 12 year old girls who were playing in a sand cave down by the creek and the cave collapsed on one of them. Her friend franticly dug her out, all the while screaming call 911 as we had taught her to do. There was a man who heard her on top of the cliff and he made the call. It took six minutes for the paramedics to get there which was very good given the location. The girl was doing proper CPR when they arrived. Her friend didn’t make it as her stomach and lungs were full of sand. I sat with her for hours and told her she had done all anyone could do and that she should feel good about the monumental effort she had made. In those days one in six is brought back by CPR. It is better today. I am sure this young lady really did get it and she will not have to carry that event in a negative way for the rest of her life.  

We gave this class in some pretty mean inner city schools in Phoenix as well and I guess I just had a way with these kids. I got their attention in some direct ways that always surprised the faculty. They thanked me every time for what I was doing and so did the kids. These kids saw a lot of gun and knife wounds and I would not be surprised if some of them were responsible for inflicting some of those wounds. There was no doubt in my mind that many of these kids were armed with at least a knife. I was never intimidated by any of them and some were high school kids that were as big as I am. A lot of them had attitudes and I just got an attitude too and they respected that. I confronted the leaders every time and I got away with it. The teachers could never do what I was able to do. It is legal to do classes like this in the State of Arizona if there is an accredited teacher present while doing so.

I have mentored a great many of these kids throughout their lives and all those kids that I have mentored have done well in their lives. Some went to college, some are pursuing careers, some went to the military but every one of these people has always held a very special place in my heart.

We usually have a new year’s party that involves only these young people. We usually will get a few kegs of beer and make us a good fire and crank up the music. Few of them are of legal age to drink but I know all the parents and we all know these kids well. They have been friends all their lives. The parents come to these parties too and we have never been busted for contributing to minors. None of these kids ever got hooked into any of the bad drugs though most did experiment with quite a few of the others.  

Just last year a young man showed up at my door who was one of these kids. I had not seen him for at least five years. His name is Chris and he just was not going to continue on to higher education. He had enough trouble making it through high school. He put his thumb out and headed east and got a job in the Keys working on a boat. It was a wonderful renunion and of course we hugged and were very happy to see one another after so many years. He went to one of the several computers we have here and he brought up a site that showed a beautiful Catamaran. He told me it was the 14th largest catamaran on earth. It was worth three million dollars. He had cut a deal and bought it for a great deal less, had acquired his masters ticket and was a dive master and taught diving. He said there was no way he would have been able to do one bit of this had it not been for lessons taught by me. We cried together. It does come back if you put it out.

Chris is not an exception in that regard. These young people often come back to thank me for their input. My home has always been about education and intellectual conversation. Everybody gets to put out their views and then we all examine the validity. I have over the years taken in a troubled kid and put them on a different track. The rule here is that if you are in school I will share everything I have. If you are not in school you can’t live here.

Savanna was born in late March. It was a long labor and though she tried many times to deliver in that warm water in the end she delivered that child from a squatting position, low to the ground. I stood behind her and was relieved only moments before the baby was born just in time to catch her before she hit the floor. Once again I was blessed with the moment of birth. Again I took the child and held her to the sky and welcomed her. She was beautiful and her mother was all a woman can ever be in that moment.  

I wanted to marry Susie and had asked her more than once. She would not hear of it even then and I have never known why. I think it was always the call of her homeland; Australia and the call of her family.

It was time to find a bigger home as both Willow and Joshua were in need of a place. There was not enough room for them with Heather. These things happen. I found a two story four bedroom house behind the high school in Cottonwood. I had never lived in town. The rent was pretty high but Shawn took the fourth bedroom and that made it possible. Ben and Josh shared a room and so did Willow and Shaylo. It was a very fancy house for us coming from the warehouse. It had a built in vacuum system and a two car garage with an automatic door. There was a very big deck off the dining room that looked out to the east and sunrise was perfect to watch from there. It was very different for us all but we settled in. One of the guys from work, Daniel, needed a place and I rented him my bus.  

I got about two more months with Susie and then she was gone; Savanna with her. She never said she was not coming back in her usual six months, she just never did. Susie is not a good communicator. I was lucky to hear from her once a year and the letters were always short and said little. That is not a judgment, it is just Susie.  

Ben was into snakes in those days and had a boa and a python. They lived in a glass cage in his room. I don’t like snakes. I don’t kill them unless they cause issues or in fact an actual threat. The deal is, I don’t eat them and they don’t eat me. I have only killed two rattlesnakes in all the years I have been in Arizona. Both of them really had to go. I always stayed from Ben’s snakes and in the end one ate the other which was a real mess and he finally got rid of the one that survived.

We bought a go cart that was pretty quick and there was a good dirt track we ran it on a few miles away. We went target shooting and stayed busy.

I worked at the tour business and stayed away from women. Being a tour guide is much different than having a real job. I had a lot of fun. One night at the bar I started talking the Church of Fornication as a joke and the Church was born. If it moves, thou shall fondle it. If it doesn’t move thou shall consider it most carefully. Never say no. This came from the advice my grandfather had given me years before. It was always done in fun and it still is. There actually is a very informal congregation. There is a southern Baptist, evangelist voice I use when I am giving the Churches’ litany. People still came by from all over and I still was making mocs. I sold a pair from time to time without working at it all. It has always been a word of mouth business for me.  

I met Alana online and we got together for a short time. She is the single most anal person I have ever met and she taught me a great deal. Kate had asked me to take over the Medic program and I did. Alana and I did an enormous amount of work. We went through the whole non-profit process and put together a web site. Shawn had moved out and in with his girlfriend. I rented his room out to Mr. Bill who is an exceptional photographer and web designer. He was invaluable in getting this all together for us. He is also a fair hand at any sort of handyman work and was working for La Berge in Sedona in Maintenance. I learned a great deal about grants and used up all my contacts trying to raise money for the program. To this day I wonder why we had so much trouble getting people involved in this effort. The program is wonderful and should be funded. At some point I gave it all back to Kate at her request as she was going in a different direction. Bill and I moved Alana down to Phoenix and Kate and her still work together. It was evident to me that Alana and I were just not going to make it when she asked me to marry her and I said no. I was not in any way ready to get married at that time. My saying no ended our relationship. She has done this several times since with others. Some people just need that marriage business to give themselves value. I had met Mr. Bill through her.

Bill was living in Montana at the time and Alana and I went up there to move him South. We had a pretty good adventure going north and caught the Choir at the tabernacle in Salt Lake on the way. I had sent him the dimensions of my truck with the camper on it so he would know just how much he would be able to move. When we got to his place there was a pile of boxes in the middle of the living room to those exact dimensions. He had a lot of stuff left over and it took a couple of days for him to give it all away. Once we loaded it all in my truck, the truck was sitting on the rear tires from the weight and would not move. We installed air shocks which brought it up just enough to get us home but it still scraped the tires if I hit a bump too hard. We did the circuit in Yellowstone looking for the wolfs that had been released there but never saw them. We did see all the other sites there and it is indeed a spectacular place. Most of that trip was done on back roads.  

I have always had a book with me, no matter where I have been. If I am standing in a line in a bank, I have a book. If I am waiting for an appointment, I have a book. I have read books on many subjects and genres and I would say I am primarily self educated, whatever that might actually mean. I kept up pretty well with computers also. I like to play computer games and as the games got better and the graphics got better it took better computers with more RAM and memory to play them. This was really the driving force in getting a new computer. About every five years it was time to replace the old model. I don’t play the games so much anymore so I don’t need to upgrade quite as often. Usually I kept at least two computers around as the kids were very much into playing games on them as well. There was a side benefit that happened purely by accident. The kids got very good in computer use and have thanked me since many times for keeping up with it. They all have taught themselves to type and are expert at finding sites and information needed for their education. They also are pretty good at fixing them be it hardware or software issues. Mine has crashed a time or two and they helped me get it all back up and running. I can use them but am still a bit puzzled as to how they actually work. I think there a lot of very little people inside passing notes back and forth.

Kim and I got involved for about a year. I love little Kimie. There is no pretense about her at all. We were both quite aware that we were not in love but truly enjoyed each other’s company in bed and out. There was an exchange student event happening at the school and we were part of it. Kim and I had done some ecstasy that day and we were really stoned. It was particularly pure and strong and we misjudged the time it would take before we returned to normal. We had to go pick up the kids and the exchange students. It was all I could do to just concentrate on driving and the place was out pretty far. We parked at the bottom of the hill and could see the lights and hear the music. We just sat there trying to decide who was going to have to face all those people and round up the kids. Finally I walked up the hill and the first person I saw was Ben and I told him to round everybody up and bring them down the car. I told him there was no hurry. On the way home I was doing just fine until I ran a red light in the left hand turn lane right in front of a cop. He was turning right and came in behind us. I guess he did not notice that I had run that light because he did not pull us over and we made it safely home. Kim and I hid out in the bedroom for the rest of the night. No one was aware of just how stoned we really were.

People were always giving me house plants for gifts. I am not much into the whole effort involved in caring for house plants and I would always tell them so. If those plants wanted water then they could just go outside like everybody else and wait for the rain. Kate and Kim were there all the time watering those plants. Kim and I had a great time together no matter what we were doing.

As a jeep tour guide I could take guests with me for free whenever there was an open seat and I took all the kids, Alana, Kate and Kim. There are some beautiful trails that we were doing in those days and some of the four wheel drive spots are quite the challenge. It was good work and covered the bills though there was rarely much extra.

The day came when I was doing a tour and there was this beautiful woman and her son with me. As I was pulling out, we made eye contact in the mirror and I was instantly struck with her. I was totally distracted for the rest of that tour. I told her I had to go and clean the jeep after work and invited them to have dinner with me at a nearby restaurant. She said she would try to make it. I thought about her for the rest of the day and figured she wouldn’t show. After work I went to the restaurant and did not see her. I ordered a beer at the bar and waited for a bit. There is a back area in this restaurant and when I looked back there, sure enough her and her son had a table. I joined them and we had dinner together. Her name is Anna and her son is Jeremy. Jeremy was about the same age as Ben. 

We saw the sunrise from the deck of my house. We had talked all night. She and Jeremy were there for five days. We never shared the same bed and we talked and there was very little sleep.

When they went back to Sarasota in Florida we talked on the phone. We talked every day for hours and the phone bill was staggering. This went on for a couple of months until she arranged to come out for a visit. She put in applications at the local hospitals. Anna is a jealous sort and I had to cut it off with Kim. Kim was very understanding and wished me the very best. We had always known that someday one of would fall in love. She is a wonderful human being. 

A few months later I got on a plane to Tampa to go help her with the move. There was a hurricane predicted for that day and I thought it would be quite the adventure to see one. I had never seen a hurricane. I reckon it blew on by as so often happens in that area but it sure knows how to rain in Florida. She picked me up in a little Ford Ranger truck with a camper shell on it and we went to her house. She was to have been ready to move upon my arrival. There were two packed boxes in the middle of the living room. It was a three bedroom home converted to four and it was full of stuff. I probably should have seen the red flag but I was in love and I missed it.

She went to work the next morning and Jeremy slept till afternoon. I had enough and I grabbed his foot and drug him out of bed. I told him his days doing drugs were over and if he did not want me to just walk out the door he damn well better help. He had a drug problem that was never made clear to me. It took a full seven days to get that place into the largest rental truck we could rent. Then there were all the repairs that were necessary to get the place ready to rent. The grass had not been cut in months and the trees all needed pruning. It was a lot of work. Jeremy did stay with it to his credit. We had dinner one night with Sue Anne, Anna’s sister and she pulled me aside to tell me that Jeremy had everyone in the family intimidated and that there had been serious problems for years. It was another missed red flag but I thought I could help the kid given some time. I had to pack her clothing? What woman would ask a man to pack her clothing? She came with $40,000 in credit card debt and five failed marriages. WHAT WAS I THINKING? They couldn’t have all been wrong. A classic case of blind love and a beautiful woman and me not paying attention to the obvious signs. She is soft spoken, highly educated and quite a lady. She is also a Narcissist. We got all five cats and the two German Sheppard’s that bite people loaded up put the little truck on a trailer and we headed west.  

We came across in I-10 which is fairly straight and flat. I spotted a sign advertising a restaurant in Louisiana and we went for it. It was a good forty miles off the beaten path way back in the swamps. As we came in there was a wonderful Cajun band doing French Creole bayou music and about fifteen people seated here and there. The place went dead quite when we walked in. We were seated and I went right up to the band and put a twenty in the jar and they started playing again. People went back to their own conversations but they eyed us from time to time. It felt a bit like the movie Southern Comfort to me. The food was wonderful and I had made sure to ask for the hottest sauce they had. I could tell I was being watched with that hot sauce and I was sweating profusely but I just kept piling it on. I bought some on the way out.

We went to the Alamo and spent a day wandering around. The energy there is intense. Those boys are still there. There is an old well there and I left an offering and said a prayer for them all. Honor is still very much present.  

We spent a day in Juarez and bought some good Mexican beer and some trinkets for gifts. We took our time and I did all the driving. Just taking care of the critters meant regular stops and we stayed in hotels along the way. Bella was the larger of the two dogs and the mother of the other one. She and I had one confrontation. This is a dog that is quite strong and quite capable of eating you. I had a hand around her muzzle and she could not get away. We made eye contact and I told her she was only going to bite me once and then I was going to rip off her lower jaw and she was going to look very stupid with her tongue just hanging out. I think she was vain as she never messed with me. She would circle and growl at me if Anna and I were hugging but a look would silence her. She knew I would not hurt Anna and we had an agreement. 

We settled in even though it was pretty crowded. She had a lot of stuff that just stayed in boxes. It was tight playing pool. Jeremy fir right in and started attending school regularly and did very well. He was a very smart kid and he was off the drugs. We were still doing paint ball games and there was a big open place just off the deck. Willow was playing soccer and we went to all the games. 

John Bradshaw came to me with a very good offer to become a manager for A Day in the West and after talking it over with Anna I accepted. We had been running tours out to the Bradshaw ranch after Bob had moved to town. John had made a deal with his father and we now had a major addition to the company. We offered horseback rides and a cowboy cookout. There was also a petting zoo. We built a wonderful four wheel drive track and converted the house into a commercial kitchen. There was a huge garage that was attached that Bob kept all his wagons in and we made it into a dining room. We planted grass and built picnic tables. I had 12 men working for me and 60 horses. I put the kids to work also and we really did a great job cleaning the place up. I never had much of a budget to work with but I made it all work. I really wanted to tile the dining room but there just was not enough money. There were grease stains from where vehicles had been worked on. I got some muriatic acid and went over the whole floor and my friend James and I taped off the whole thing so that it looked like tile and we painted the whole place with concrete paint. It really did look like tile when we were finished. The old movie town was cleaned up too and was part of the tour. The kids were really indispensible and we all had a great time. Anna loved horses and I bought her a beautiful mare named Princess Leah. I bought an extraordinary palomino gelding for myself and we kept them at the ranch. I rode every day.

The tour guides would pull in with a load of tourists in their jeeps and I would meet them with a rifle and ask them who they were and what did they want? While they were eating I would come out with that rifle and ask how the food was. I never had one complaint! Often I would ride out on Trigger and ambush a jeep or a trail ride just for the fun of it.

The business of running a restaurant was all new to me but I learned. I found the best suppliers with the best goods at the best prices. We were too far out for them to deliver to us so we set up some freezers and refrigerators in town. I often would swing by before I went to the ranch to pice up the supplies or attend a managers meeting. I had put a computer of mine at the ranch and I tracked everything. This had never been done before. My weekly reports were clear and concise. We turned a profit. The crew and I would party sometimes after the last tour came through and the work for the day was finished. Some of them had preferences for drugs but I never said a word as long as the work got done. One guy was a serious alcoholic and I caught him drinking on the job. I fired him. The job always came first and what these folks did after that was their business. It was a big extended family. Some of them lived on the ranch.

There were many cooperate events that we did that would involve several hundred people. It was quite the dance feeding them all but I pulled it off every time.

I certified everyone in the company in CPR and set up an aid station at the ranch. Bill Boler is a assistant chief at Sedona fire and is in charge of the EMS for the valley and he was happy to give me some oxygen tanks, a backboard and a lot of medical supplies. This came in handy one day when a rather large woman fell off a horse. I rushed out in my truck, got her stable and on to a backboard. We brought her back to the ranch and parked under a shade tree. There is always the fear of spinal injury so we were very careful about how we handled her. Of course a 911 call hade been made right away but it still took the ambulance a long time to get there. I had her on oxygen and was worried she had punctured a lung. Angel Morales was the paramedic on that ambulance and told me he was glad it was me that had taken care of this woman as I had done it all perfectly. She was ready to go when they got there and I had al the paperwork done too. Medical history and regular vital signs etc. Angel had been an assistant instructor when I first took the EMT class. We agreed that she probably had punctured a lung and we didn’t want to transport over that road for fear of making it all worse. We landed a helicopter right in the yard in front of the dining room and flew her out. They took her to Flagstaff and sure enough she had a punctured lung. Her husband thanked me profusely and commented on the professionalism with which the entire affair had been handled.  

One night after a major event it started snowing. Cowboy Bob and I got into a bottle of tequila. Bob is a great musician and was there for the event. He had been a sniper in Viet Nam and was the best shot I have ever seen. We swapped lies and killed that half gallon bottle of tequila. Bob was not a big drinker, any more than I but that night we cut loose the wolf. I tried to talk him out of leaving but he wasn’t having any. He made it to the top of Bradshaw hill and spent the night there. Anna and I spent that night in the adobe that is an original homestead. We fired off the wood stove and it was very cozy. We got over a foot of snow that night and had no tours because of it the next day. I did manage to get my truck out late that afternoon though it was a bit dicey doing so.

Anna is an OB nurse and she was commuting to Flagstaff until she got a transfer down to Cottonwood. We decided to see if we could find a property to buy. I ran into John and Dev at a soccer game and it turned out they had put their house on the market. We cut a deal on the spot and bought the home. This is a seven bedroom on two acres with an in-law house and some other outbuildings. John had done a bit in remodeling the inside but always had a penchant for doing things half way and leaving part of the job undone.  

It was a very big project to just move. Daniel had gotten himself a beautiful girlfriend and they both were living in the bus. They loved it. Moving that bus back to Cornville was an adventure in itself. There was a rat’s nest on the carburetor that I just pushed out of the way. All the kids wanted to ride in it. I fired it up and ended up discovering it had no brakes when I ran a red light at the bottom of the hill. Fortunately there was little traffic. Then that rat’s nest caught fire from the heat of the exhaust manifold and the whole bus filled with smoke. It went out pretty quick and caused no damage but as I came up to the next light which was red, the smoke was still billowing out of the windows. I was downshifting madly trying to get that bus stopped. The light turned just before I got there and I made the corner, right in front of a cop. Of course that bus had expired tags and no insurance. I waved at that cop and he waved back. He never followed me. Going down the switchbacks into Cornville was pretty dicey too but we got the buss to the new house.

Mr. Bill moved with us. Bushan rented the little in-law house after we had re done it and painted. We also painted the whole big house. There had been some water damage from a failed hot water heater and the bedrooms in the back side of the house had concrete floors. We did not have much for money so we did the same trick we had done at the ranch and painted those floors to look like tile.  

Anna and I got married one month later. She was pregnant and we had been together for two years. It seemed like the correct thing to do. We were very much in love and were very affectionate with each other in public and private. Kate wanted to get involved in the wedding and I gratefully accepted her assistance. We brought in two full movie crews and were married at the ranch. We had a theme that we followed. I was in the adobe dressed in full buckskins when the posse rode up and called me out. When I came out the door they were all pointing guns at me. I was accused of fooling around with one man’s daughter and they were there to take me to the wedding or hang me. My friend Gary Garrett is wild as hell. He is also a direct descendant of Pat Garrett of Billy the Kid fame. Twice I had checked his gun and it was loaded both times. Needless to say having those boys sitting there horseback pointing guns at me made me nervous for real.

We rode into that movie town and it was bustling. Everyone was dressed in period garments and it really did look like an authentic western town. I changed clothes which included a brand new black Stetson hat and a frock coat with a nice vest. Daniel is an ordained minister and he married us. There was a bald eagle circling overhead. We had rented the ranch and all the jeeps to transport folks back and forth. John gave me a great deal but it was still am expensive thing to do. That is one of those things that is still talked about today. It was a hell of a production. Somehow we ended up with a group of Vikings that were also dressed in period garments. These people were a whole lot of fun. It was a side thing but they still ended up in our movie.  

Anna and I had been looking for a business to buy and one of the things we were seriously considering was the Manzanita Inn in Cornville. Albert, the owner offered the place for our reception and that is where it occurred. Even that was quite the event. We had Italian wedding soup and buffalo roast, kegs of beer and an open bar. Albert never charged for the facility and we paid all the wages for his staff. We also left a rather large tip. There were at least a couple of hundred people there. None of my family showed up. I was not surprised. Anna has a bunch of family that did.  

We had booked a cruise with Norwegian lines in Hawaii and we flew out that night. There wass a plane change in Los Angles and then we were far out over the big pond. This old guy comes out of the bathroom and drops like a stone. I caught his head just before it hit the deck. I started checking him out when the stewardess asked what she could do. I asked if they had a med box and she said they did. I told her to go get it and she said she couldn’t do that. I told her this guy might well die if she didn’t. She and another stewardess came back with the box. It was sealed and I broke the seal. They told me I couldn’t do that either and I just took out the stethoscope and a blood pressure cuff. The co pilot showed up and I asked if there was a doctor or a paramedic on board. He said no. Not one of those people had any training at all and Anna being an OB nurse was no help at all either. It was on me, Anna interviewed his wife who was a real nut case and getting any kind of answer that was helpful. I put him on oxygen right away. His blood pressure was in the toilette. He was unconscious. I found some blood pressure meds in his pocket and crushed them up and got them down him. The wife thought he had taken them in New York and that was a long time back. With some help I got him into a seat and kept checking his vital signs. He came around to a point after a bit but he was still incoherent. I told the co-pilot to call ahead and have an ambulance standing by with some paramedics. We were still several hours out and I monitored him the whole way and kept a record of his vital signs. The paramedics met us at the plane in Honolulu and checked him out. It turned out they were going on the same cruise as we were and they just advised us that he could see the doctor on the boat. He was pretty much back to normal by then so I agreed. We gathered up all their luggage which was a huge pile and picked up our bags too. The cruise line had a bus and people to help us out. The co-pilot gave me a bottle of champagne and thanked me for taking over and doing what I had done. The wife was really nuts and she wandered off until Anna located her. We turned them over to the doc on the ship when we arrived.  

Fourteen days of romance and luxury. It was splendid. We dressed for dinner and even though I don’t dance worth a damn, we danced. I even took a hula lesson with her. I never told anyone about that lesson though. We ate like a king and queen and we strolled the deck together. The ship would pull into one of the islands from time to time and we would get off and go check it out. We were required to carry passports and I finally found out why. Since the ship was foreign flagged it had to touch down at a foreign port once before it could return to Hawaii. They ran hard all one night and came to a place called Kiribati which is about 150 miles north of the equator and a long ways from Hawaii. Just a small collection of very tiny islands that are only eight feet above sea level. They natives there are wonderful people and I did some trade. They had some tables set up with handcrafted art work they had done. I had been gifted fifty dollars that were the new ones made out of copper. Those coins became the thing as no one had seen one before. We swam in the ocean and ate a huge meal on the beach. There were native dances and drums. Just connecting with the natives away from everyone else made the whole trip worthwhile. Somewhere on that cruise Anna miscarried. It was not the first time for her but it upset us both.

We had a whole day when we got back to Honolulu and we rented a car and went off to the North shore. There was a native with a small fruit stand at Wiameaia bay and we bought some fresh pineapple, a coconut and some of those little natural bananas. I did some body surfing there and it was all so reminiscent of being in the Navy and doing the same thing many years before. I think that old native with the fruit stand was the same guy I bought fruit from back then. We were happy to get home. I will never forget that cruise, being with the woman I loved and who loved me.

It was good getting back on a horse and back to the ranch. One morning before I went to work I just happened to put on the news. I never watched the news. It was about five in the morning on Sept 11. The first tower at the world trade center in New York had just been hit. I woke the house up and went down and got Bushan moving too. History was being made and we watched as the second tower got hit. We watched it all day. It was unbelievable. I think every American took it in their own way. There is no real describing the emotion of it all.

All air traffic was grounded for about two weeks and there were no tours either. I spent those days at the ranch riding my horse. Anna rode with me a lot and we covered a great deal of country. It was like stepping back a hundred years; it was so quiet. All you could hear were the noises from the critters and the insects, making their own music. Riding horses in that red rock country is really special and particularly beautiful.

One morning one of the hands found one of our cows dead and I went and checked it out. She had been shot and I found the shell casing. I back tracked the killer to the road and a vehicle that had left some tracks. This is something one just does not do in this part of the country. I talked to Tex ( Gary Garrett) and we set a night watch. There not many people I would trust with this kind of thing as it may have become necessary to shoot a man. Gary is one of those men. We switched off every night. I found me a good spot on the side of the ridge that had a good field of fire and I spent many a night there just watching and listening to the sounds of the night. Tex and I did this for two weeks. I received a report that our prize bull had been found dead a few miles away by a stock tank. Tex and I rode over there and checked it out. That bull had been shot also and I found a shell casing from the same caliber gun. There were no tracks to speak of. We mounted up and rode back to the ranch. We stood watch for two more weeks but never caught the killer. There is no doubt that either of us would have shot that man where he stood had we caught him. We had no intention of having any conversation at all.  

John Bradshaw was about to lose the ranch to taxes and he gave us fair warning. He had never paid me anywhere near what he had agreed to but did keep me on as a tour guide without the loss of seniority. He gave me an old barn that I tore down and moved home. The kids dug those post holes in rock hard ground. They had to fill the holes with water and wait a bit before they could get down a little bit more. Of course I laid it out wrong so they had to do it all over again. Bill and I put that barn up and hung the trusses. I strung a four wire fence and put in a couple of gates for corrals for the horses. We put in a hitching rack just to top it all off. Anna and I left the ranch at about eight in the morning and rode till well after dark before we got those critters home. It was about thirty-five miles cross country and we went from stock to stock tank. You can always spot a stock tank by the green of the cottonwood trees. It was a long ride by any account and Anna proved once again she is a trooper. We enjoyed that ride like we had no other though it was all I could do to step down out of the saddle that night. I was bone tired, not saddle sore.  

We had been about six months trying to come to a deal on the restaurant with no middle ground coming up. It was realtors and lawyers doing the work. I would ride Trigger up there and tie up to a tree in back and sit at the bar with Albert after hours or before the place opened. It got to where I could go there anytime and the bartender would just put a glass before me and my scotch on the bar.  

I was in Sedona one day getting coffee from my old friend Richard at Sedona Coffee Roasters and he mentioned that he was going to see out. I asked him what he wanted for the place and he told me. He knew that I was driving tours and asked if I actually had any money and I told him I could come up with twenty thousand dollars on the spot. That got his attention and the negotiations started moving right away. There were a lot of issues to cover but he really did want out. Anna loved that coffee shop and it was a much better deal than we were being offered at the Manzanita. It took about two months but in the end we bought that business. There were no lawyers at all except to write the final contract. The whole point was to get rid of the credit card debt.

I had a meeting with the whole staff and asked them to write down what was right and wrong with the business. I had worked with Richard for those two months and I learned more than I thought I would ever have to know. I became a roast master with his guidance. I fixed all the broken equipment and learned about every aspect of that business. I fired two people who were not cutting the mustard and who had attitudes. It became family between the staff and I. Anna was still working at the hospital in Cottonwood and her part in the deal was to do the books. I handled all the operational stuff. I quit the tour guide business and was putting in sixteen hour days at the store. Richard kept altered books as it turned out and the business was about to fail which was why he wanted out. He had told us some real whoppers that we fell for. He was a big disappointment in the end and the truth of his alcoholism came out. He had it bad. The store was doing less than 75 thousand gross at the time we took it over and it was thin as hell. The overhead was unbelievable. It seemed that every time we turned around there was another serious need that needed to be addressed. Anna hated the furniture and we replaced it all. We put in wireless internet and a couple of computers and charged people for the time they were on it. This was pretty standard practice at the time. Ben and Jeremy were hired in place of the two I had fired and they both did well at it. Joshua was too young but he took on the cleaning job and made good money too. He would work a few hours at night while I was roasting coffee.

Jeremy got himself a girlfriend Sharise. I had known her for a few years and they were in love. What I did not know was that Jeremy was getting back into drugs. His grades started falling off and he was cutting classes. We had given him the Ford Ranger when he got his license and before long he abused the privilege.  

I did some trade for a big pile of irrigation equipment and truckloads of plants and we started the landscaping on those two acres. Miki helped with it as he is the master. All in all I put nearly thirty thousand dollars into that yard. It was worth it the place came out beautiful with lawns front and back an orchard lots of roses and shrubs and flowers everywhere. We rented a trencher and dug all the trenches with that. The boys and their friends did most of that though I took a turn too. I put down all the pipe. Probably close to a half a mile in pipe. I also put in a nice vegetable garden and a duck pond. We bought chickens and ducks and ate the eggs. I also supplied some of the local restaurants with coffee and once again we had big dinners with lots of people at no cost just a big tip. Most of these places started stocking my particular scotch and potato vodka for the summer. I worked hard on all of this. Often I would be breaking the ice on the surface of the ground right at daylight to get some work done before I had to go to the store.  

Anna totally indulged Jeremy. I had nothing to say about any of it at all and it was a shame. He never had any consequences for his actions. She gave him money all the time and was known to pay off a drug debt. We had bought a 65 mustang that I restored and running perfectly. This was a car she had always wanted and now she had one. Jeremy wanted us to give Sharise a job so of course we did. She was a good worker and added to the program however Jeremy was always distracted and was not doing his job. He showed up when he wanted and often not at all without warning. You just can’t run a business like that and I brought it to Anna’s attention. She told me to fire Sharise and I did. It was not easy for me to do but once I told her the whole truth of the matter she understood. Sharise broke up with Jeremy as she was not into the drugs. He was into Meth by then and she came from a family of meth users. It wasn’t long after that Jeremy quit too. 

One morning I was opening the store and my manager Linda took a header and crashed into the corner of a door frame. It nearly knocked her out and she was bleeding pretty bad. I stopped up the leak and could she was going to require some stitches. I told her we were leaving and she asked why? I told her going to the Emergency room to get her patched up and she said we had to get the store open. I said the hell with the store and we went to the ER. We were gone several hours and I had left the place wide open with money in both registers. When we got back there were customers serving customers and the place was packed. There was a big pile of money on the counter. It was one of our best days.  

Bushan took over the music scene and that was quite the job. He worked hard at it and we had live music on the weekends after normal business hours. We did ok with this though it was nothing spectacular. Anna and I both loved the music and it was always fun to do.  

I picked up a contract with the Cultural Park and Josh and I set up a booth there to do the weekend events. They had very good known bands there. Josh and I worked that booth together and we had a very good time doing so. We made good money at it too and his tips were excellent. I never touched tips there or at the store either. I always had some extra passes so Anna could come and sometimes some friends. I loved working with Josh and it was cool to see him coming into himself. He has a wonderful work ethic. Still we each got long breaks so we could walk around the events and check it all out. We worked hard at it but we had a lot of fun doing so. We never had an argument. Joshua is one of those very special people that rarely come to this planet. He is pretty balanced and focused and has a huge heart. I could not be more proud of him and his personal accomplishments.  

They were going to tear down the Prime Cut restaurant across the street and I got the salvage rights for a bit. Now that was a fun thing. We removed all the ash bookcases that were built into the walls and full of law books. I took the brass rail from the bottom of the bar and there was some used equipment there too. The kids had a great time with sledgehammers breaking down walls. In the end I passed that contract on and I’m glad I did. There was some controversy over it with another guy and I just stepped out of it. 

Anna wanted to convert the Arizona room at the house into a commercial bakery and we did. It was an amazing amount of work. Not one thing was ever baked there. We had it all too, refrigerators and freezers and stainless steel sinks and counter tops. It was actually pretty nice.

It seemed like all I did was work. Mr. Bill had found himself a wonderful woman and moved to Sedona to be with her. We all missed him.  

Gary Garrett (Tex) had moved in and quit working for A Day in the West too. I put him to work in the coffee shop. He was good at it. We all had our followings. Tex and Bushan and I all tried to counsel Jeremy. He would sit and listen, agree with what we had to say then go right back to doing the Meth and getting in trouble. We just could not seem to get through to this kid. He is very smart. Anna was looking to get a degree in clinical psychology and had done most of the work before we had met. She had a pretty big stack of psychology books and Jeremy had read them all. I had read most of them myself in years past though my motivation was not to get a degree rather trying to understand what had happened with Heather and I.

There were always young people coming over and I have always loved that. Computer games were a big deal but so was time at the creek and hikes and in those days sports. All these kids helped with the work we were doing in the yard. We gathered a lot of rock and put down paths and I put in a bit of a stone drive that went into the barn for easy access for the hay to be brought in. It was a lot of work but in the end the place really did come out very nice.

Anna and I were still riding our horses out in the bush and I really treasured those days. Sometimes I would tell her that I was going to ride and shoot and she would stay back while Trigger and I would take off at a gallop and I would pull my pistol and shoot at targets. I hit what I was shooting at much more than I missed. Trigger was a wonderful horse and guns didn’t bother him at all. We talked a bit during these rides but she refused to hear anything I might have to say regarding Jeremy. She was always critical of my kids too. They just could not do enough to please her and she never thanked them for all the work they did do.  

Towards the end of that first year the coffee shop grossed three hundred thousand dollars and I was pleased. Anna had gotten pregnant again and the last few months were bed rest. She forgot all about doing the books and we had to file an extension with the tax people. I could tell this was going to be a problem so I put quick books on the work computer and had one of my managers do the daily entries. It was a smart move. I had an account friend of mine doing the payroll and the sales tax. I had no idea what the real financial situation really was and just kept showing up and doing the work. 

I loved that business and really felt like I was in my element. I get along with most people and I made many new friends. Daniels girlfriend Jeanie came to work for us in the kitchen. She is a beautiful Canadian woman and she fit right in. It was much like family in that store. People never called off and we really had the restaurant dance down. It ran smoothly. There were always a lot of people wanting to work there but the staff I had was perfect and there was no room for more.

Often after hours while I was roasting coffee some of my better friends would hang out and we would drink good potato vodka or good scotch in the winter and talk philosophy. No one ever got drunk. It was strictly social drinking. 

Roasting coffee is a true art form. My roaster did twenty pounds at a time. There is a hopper on the top that holds the beans. Below that is the actual roasting drum that spins over the gas jets and looks sort of like a concrete mixer inside with spiraled steel paddles to keep the beans agitated. Below that is the cooling tray that has a vacuum system that pulls away the chaff from the beans. This tray has a stainless steel plate with a million holes in it and rotating paddles to keep the beans moving while they cool. The roaster is brought up to temperature and then the beans are dropped into the roasting drum. This drops the temperature and it slowly comes back up. Then the beans start popping much like popcorn though not as extreme as popcorn. This is called the first crack in the trade. Then it gets quiet for a few moments. As the temperature comes up and is stabilized the second crack occurs and the beans pop again. On the front of the roaster is a sampler that is able to remove a few beans from within the roaster while the beans are cooking. The last couple of minutes of a roast are all about this sampler and listening to the beans crack. Beans are viewed, smelled and tasted. At the right moment, which is a total judgment call, the beans are released onto the cooling tray. With twenty pounds this happens quickly and there is a consistency to the roast. If this is being done in larger amounts as is common for the larger companies, the beans in the front are different than the beans in the back as it takes a lot longer time for them all to come out. The beans in the front may be perfect however those in the back have actually cooked longer and are not the same. Often part of the roast is burnt. The real trick is realizing that the beans are still cooking for awhile when they are on the cooling tray and knowing when to let them out of the roaster. This whole process takes about fifteen minutes from start to cooling tray.

There is also a great variety in coffee beans. I used beans from all over the world and many of my roasts were secret formulas. This is true of most Roast Masters. We all have our secrets. There is a certain amount of water contained in the dried coffee beans and this accounts for the cracking. The cracking is the water cooking out. When the beans were harvested, what the climate conditions were for that year in that particular area of that country matters a great deal. How long the beans were stored before they were delivered matters also. I roasted about fifteen different types of beans and had several blends also. For each of these there was also a decaffeinated roast. We carried a lot of coffee and it was a real job to keep up with it all. We sold whole beans and ground beans right out the door and also in the internet. Our shipping business grew quickly and we shipped out coffee every day.  

Anna had met a woman Laurie who was a master at baking. Her specialty was cheese cakes and we started buying her wares. Her husband Dean is a fair hand at cabinet making and he helped me to do a lot of the alterations that were necessary inside the store. They are born again Christians and Dean and I talked philosophy and drank potato vodka while we were doing the work after hours. These were often late nights. We never argued, we just shared our very differing views. His day job is a home inspector and he did well at it. Dean is an ex marine and we shared a great deal of honor. These two people had suffered a great deal early in their relationship and it was Christianity that got them off of the streets. They had come far by the time I met them and deserved all the respect I had to offer for the efforts they had made in their lives. It wasn’t long before I hired Laurie. I never found her to be particularly personable with our customers and she worked mostly in the kitchen. Though Dean was and is open to other points of view, she never was.

Anna had a hard time with the pregnancy. She was often moody and argumentative. I did my best to not buy into any of it and maintain a peaceful household. I wasn’t there much anyway. I was working at the store, on the average sixteen hour days. It was a long nine months. When it was time for the baby to come we went to the hospital for the delivery. Anna was more comfortable with this and was not into water birth. It turned out to be a good thing. She was in labor for twenty seven straight hours. She only dilated to eight centimeters and the cord was wrapped around the baby’s body. There was simply no way for that child to come out naturally and the cesarean section option was chosen. I was in the operating room and watched the whole procedure. It was amazing. Sofia came into my life. When we finally got her home I took her out to the night sky and welcomed her to life as I had each of my children. Anna took a long time recovering. She worked at night so the child care issues worked out as I was home with Sofia.  

That same year Heather had gotten together with Hakim, a lovely black man who is very spiritual and a few years older than me. They had the twins Akaira and Zion a boy and a girl. I do not know much about those early days with the twins though the boys and Willow interacted with them all the time. I had my hads full with my own newborn and everything else that was on my plate.

Bushan was with us nearly two years and decided to go back to living in his truck. Anna’s Sister Sue Anne showed up with her boyfriend and moved into the little house. Anna wanted to have her work at the store as a manager and I agreed. She took on the scheduling. I was ultimately not impressed and it was reported to me that she sat and read the paper a lot even when there were customers waiting to be served. I had little to say about her performance.  

Jeremy was totally out of control in my opinion. He quit school and was dealing drugs. I knew little about it all. Anna would not listen to me about anything to do with him.  

One day Ben came to me and told me he was going to have to quit working at the coffee roasters. I was really surprised as I knew how much he loved it. He told me that he had saved his wages and had spent the money getting registered at the college. I was so proud of him. He told me he was one hundred and fifty dollars short and needed the money to purchase books. I told him I would gladly help with that and the next day we went and bought the books. I wrote a check from the joint account that Anna and I shared. She came unglued. She was furious that I would spend any money at all on my kids and she closed the account. It was fine to give Jeremy anything he wanted but for me to do anything for my children was wrong. I couldn’t believe it.

Ben led the way with his commitment to college. Joshua graduated high school the same year Willow started as a freshman. By now Ben had figured out the system and had financial aid from the federal government. Josh enrolled there also using federal aid. Anna and I and the baby sat on the grass at the high school and watched Joshua graduate.

We were finishing up our second year in business and there was little money. Personally I just can’t explain where it went. The overhead was high. I was happy if I had gas in my truck and a twenty dollar bill in my pocket. There was no waste on my part at all. I ran the operations and had no handle on the books.  

Jeremy stole the Mustang and took it up to Flagstaff. He was spinning donuts in a lot and ran it into a parked snow plow. He totaled the car. He was angry and probably pretty high too and he took a big rock and threw it through the windshield. Then he went to someone’s home and broke in. He got caught and put in jail. On the way to court I suggested to Anna that she go ahead and press charges over the theft of the car. I thought that he would probably get off the drugs and do a year in jail. When I came home from work, Anna was gone and so was Sofia. I was frantic. She had gone to Flagstaff and rented an apartment. She made a complete day and night change. I did not know her at all. I have never seen someone change so quickly and so drastically. Jeremy moved in with her while he dealt with his court issues. I can understand a mother wanting to protect her child but this went far beyond that and to this day I do not understand. It was more like a duel personality. She was no longer the Anna that I had known and loved so much. I was heartbroken but I kept working at the house and at the store. There was just not enough money so I applied at the hospital in Cottonwood and got a job as a tech in the Emergency Room. It was interesting and I loved it. I also learned quite a lot that I did not know. I was trained in taking EKG’s and drawing blood. I also did catheters for men and women, wound care and splints. It was hard to keep the business, the job and the home juggling but somehow I managed with a great deal of help. The Cultural Park did not reopen that year and went bankrupt. In a way it was good for me as I was no longer working seven days a week though it sure felt like it. I was doing twelve hour shifts at the hospital, mostly at night and would do the roasting at the Roasters as well. I had to start roasting during the day in the late afternoons when there was the least amount of people in the store. At the same time I was trying everything I could think of to put my marriage back together. I suggested counseling and Anna refused. I went anyway. I guess it helped. I don’t know. There came a day that my children came to me and told me to give it up. I was not going to save the marriage no matter how hard I tried and they saw it long before I did. I was walking in a dream and was not really present for much of this time. Hurt and confused, I went through the motions and did the work.  

Nearly at the end of her six months lease in Flagstaff Anna called and told me to take my children and leave. The house was in her name. I had no choice. I also did not have the money to move. We started having garage sales every weekend. We also had to clear out years of accumulation. She was just so cold about it all. I did not know this woman at all. I had a ten by ten shed that was full of stuff. I had the boys just back a truck up to it and take it to the dump. I have no idea what was in there and did not want to know. I am sure some memories went to the dump that day. I sold two thirds of my books. Books are my most treasured possessions. I sold all my lapidary equipment and raw stone collected over many years. It was a very hard time but we raised enough for first, last and a deposit. I had to sell my horse and all the tack as there was just nowhere to keep him and I could not afford to board. We moved into a brand new home with all new appliances in it. It was in a development that had a homeowners association and rules. We lasted one month. Fortunately it was mostly because the owner wanted to sell. He did not like the rules either. We ended up in a three bedroom home in Cottonwood. It was a typical tract home. We were into our third year with the Coffee shop and I started finding out stuff I did not want to know. Sales taxes had not been paid and money was owed to the state. State taxes and Federal taxes were delinquent. Anna wanted to sell the store so I put those wheels in motion. I loved that place and had put a lot of heart into it. Anna never took part in it as agreed in the beginning. There was no way I could continue. There were no buyers to be had after several months. We just kept getting further into debt. It came down to close the door and walk away. On the last day I offered it to Dean and Laurie at a severe discount. They took it. There was no profit but at least some of the bills did get paid. Anna has a totally different perspective on this whole time I am quite sure. I had discovered that the debt was much worse than I knew. She carried at least ten credit cards. I had two. Mine had less than two thousand dollars on them. Hers had one hundred and forty thousand dollars on them. We declared bankruptcy and it was granted. Now I would never have credit again. Such is life.  

We had been separated for over six months and she started divorce proceedings. Just getting to see Sofia was a real problem. She was not very cooperative at all. She hired an attorney. I could not afford one. My friend Dacoma who is a legal aid helped me to get started. The whole process took me three years and mostly I prepared every scrap of paper, interviewed witnesses and all the rest of it. It was a serious focus.

We lived in Cottonwood for one year when the owner announced he wanted to move his brother in. I was still working at the hospital. Other than the bankruptcy and the divorce proceedings it was a non descript year. I had just enough to pay the bills with nothing extra at all. Of course things happened every day in the ER. They don’t call it trauma for nothing. The accidental ricochet that killed a 17 year old boy. He cam in by helicopter. I met the bird and was doing CPR on the way into the ER with my hands over the hole the bullet had made as it entered his heart. The 16 year old girl who took her own life with a .22 pistol. You could see the bullet fragments clearly in the cat scan. The 25 year old young that killed himself with a nine millimeter to the head. All the bones in the scull separated from the internal pressure. He was alive when we flew him to phoenix but I reckon he did not last long and became parts and pieces for someone else.

The old man who lost his wife of many years in the ER and was standing outside of her room totally distraught and no one paying attention. I took him to a side room got him coffee nad listened to him for over an hour. My boss walked by and started to get on my case but one of the nurses pulled him away and explained it all to him. He still called me into his office later and chastised me for doing what I did. I honestly could have cared less about what he had to say. The man who had a rock fall on his head that totally ripped two thirds of his scalp away. I spent two hours cleaning it all up and my friend Deb did the best sewing job I have ever seen. He probably won’t have so much as a scar. The regulars who just came for the drugs. The broken bones and broken bodies, the broken hearts, and the broken minds. The man who came in unconscious from a car accident. When he came around he was disoriented and combative. The little security guard was not big enough or strong enough to get him restrained. The six foot cop who was standing right there did not help and the patient finally throes the security guard off. The cop shot him with a tasser. It had no effect and this naked man stood there ready to fight. Other cops surrounded him. They kept shooting him with the damn tasers. Finally he went face down to the floor and cracked his skull wide open, Blood everywhere. Many of my colleagues stood there and cheered the cops on during this event. I was appalled and talked to the lead Doctor about it. He was appalled too. Do no harm? That day harm was done to an innocent man and the staff cheered about it. What happens in the ER? Everything happens in the ER. I cared about the patients and took good care of them all. Some wrote letters back to thank me for that very thing.  

The old nasty nurses who should have quit the business years before who continue for the money. The nurses who have the experience and the skill to move when movement is required and are good at their craft. The young ones who are still timid. The egos of them all that are usually inflated for no reason though some of them have earned the right to crow. Most of the doctors I worked with were good. Some were exceptional. We all did what we could to save every single person that came through that place. Twelve hour shifts with breaks if and when one could find the time. I did a lot of day shifts and was asked to run the desk. That meant entering all the doctor’s orders into the computer, answering every call that came in, calling for medical records or transportation from a helicopter to an airplane, finding beds in hospitals all over the state that would take our patients and listening to every conversation to anticipate a need and all at the same time. This was serious multi tasking. I got very good at it. I would also do patient care if the need was there or jump up when a code was being worked and log all the times and medications used and procedures done. Sometimes they lived. Sometimes they did not.  

Sharise was working there at the time in housekeeping and we would go for a smoke when we could and talk. I was trying to get her to go into radiology as a career. She was a smart one and the program was only two years. She would have to move to Phoenix to get into it. She was seriously making the moves to make this happen. I mentored her when and where I could. She worked hard there and did a good job. She had broken up with her current boyfriend and was looking for a place to live. I told her that I had no room but she was welcome to my couch anytime. She told me that Anna had offered her a room to rent. I was not happy about this at all and told her so. Jeremy was obsessed with her. Every time he had attempted suicide he always left a not about her. It was not a good thing for her to move in there. She said that it was not in the same room with Jeremy as he was living in the little house. I warned her several times about doing this. She moved in.

We found a house back in Cornville and moved again. The landlord turned out to be a real psycho bitch from hell. The place was overgrown with old mesquite and was a fire hazard. I trimmed it all out and made it look like a park. I burned huge piles of brush. It was a hard and bloody job. Devron wintered with us that winter and we did some construction on the side. Joshua and I were installing irrigation systems from time to time too. Josh works hard and we always made it interesting and as fun as possible. I paid him half of what we made. Good wages for him.  

One of the doctors at the hospital was going to open a private practice in Sedona and offered me a job at better pay. He was building the place from the ground up. Devron and I did some of the initial work on it. I gave three months notice at the hospital and trained several people to do my job. Two weeks before my last the doctor told me he was going broke with the construction and could not afford to hire me. It was too late and I was out of a job. I did get unemployment though and had some time to myself again. It just was not looking very good for the courts and I knew it.  

Miki had a problem and it was severe. He had gotten himself addicted to Meth and it had caused a huge rift. He became something he was not. He was totally unreliable. He had alienated his whole family and he had alienated me. We did not see each other for nearly five years. I told him that I simply would not put up with it and that his example was not acceptable to my children. He understood perfectly and said so. He stayed away and we all missed him. Miki is an integral part of my family. He quit doing his landscaping business and his mother jumped in and paid off his house. I don’t know what he was doing for this time but I do know it was not good. The warehouse went to shit as did his little house. He was staying with Louie a lot and Louie was monitoring his blood sugar. He had serious diabetes and was insulin dependent. He was really lost.  

One night I received a phone call from my old neighbor’s wife. This is Anna’s neighbor. There were emergency vehicles all over my old yard. Police and fire trucks and ambulances were everywhere. I was supposed to have Sofia that night and she was an hour late which by itself was unusual. I was involved with the courts and could not just drive over there without jeopardizing all the work I had done in regards to Sofia. I called the Sheriff’s office and was patched to the officer in charge on the scene. I asked him what was going on. I identified myself and it turned out I knew the officer. He told me there had been a murder. I freaked out. I asked about Sofia immediately and he assured me she was alright. Anna was distraught but alive. Jeremy had killed Sharise in a particularly horrible way and tried to kill himself also. He had stabbed her over an over again for a long period of time. Long after she was dead. Anna had found her in a pool of blood and Jeremy overdosed. Though I tried to get Sofia out of there Anna was not having any of it. She would not speak to me and had brought in one of her few friends to care for Sofia. There is really no way to describe what I went through that night. There is no way for me to understand what Anna went through that night. It was tragic and those words are so inadequate. Jeremy survived and went to jail. For months she would not let Sofia come to my house until I got a court order for proper visitation. We would meet at the park and Sofia and I would spend some time together but Anna was always there. The kids where as unhappy with this arrangement as I was.  

Perhaps she was just being protective or perhaps she was just striking out at me, I don’t know and she never said. It was a bad time for all of us.

Sharise and I were close and I was pretty emotionally distraught. At first I wanted to kill Jeremy myself. I suppose it was lucky he was out of reach. I did not sleep and sometimes when I did I would wake in a cold sweat with visions of being in that room when the murder happened. I could see her trying to leave him probably for good and him preventing her from doing so. I felt her horror as he stabbed her over and over. I still feel it. This is particularly hard to write about. I could not get it out of my mind for months. I was so angry with Jeremy and I was angry with Anna too. Jeremy was a smart kid he had proven that to me. He was deep inside a good kid and he had gone very bad. I felt as if I had somehow failed him and that he had failed himself. We had all tried to get through to him. What could have been different? Anna had always indulged him and there were never any consequences for his actions. What would have happened had he gone to jail over the Mustang and she had listened to me then? What had caused her to change so radically and so completely? She had gotten involved with another man within two months of moving down from Flagstaff. Was she involved with him before we were separated? I do know that he was not there that night but he was there to support her afterwards. I only got bits and pieces of his story often from a little thing that Sofia would say. I never asked Sofia anything about him or anything else. I never said a bid thing about her mother. Anna was taking Sofia to the jail to visit Jeremy and I was not happy about it. Sofia told me Jeremy was sick and in the hospital. I still don’t understand why Anna lied and continues to lie to Sofia over this. It will come back on her and Sofia will have trust issues over it. I always thought Anna to be an honest person however her ding this with Sofia made me wonder about that very thing. What other lies might she have told me? I will never know. I loved this woman and love her still and it is hard for me to this day when she comes over to drop off Sofia. Sometimes we just never are given any answers. For all the young people I have mentored successfully, somehow I failed with Jeremy. I was not able to get through to Sharise either. I could not talk her out of moving into that house. Anna blamed Jeremy’s drug addiction on me and on my children. Though it is true that my kids have all experimented with a variety of drugs, Meth was not one of them. Several of their friends had and the results were always terrible. They had seen what It was doing to Miki and they knew how that had affected me.  

I was the only person that lived in the state of Arizona that had any real clue as to the history of these two. I wrote it all up for the investigator when he asked me too. He told me that they had found an unbelievable amount of pharmaceutical rugs in that little house. I have been into old people’s homes that have bags of drugs lying around. So had he. He told me it was more, much more in this case. Jeremy wanted to get high and he succeeded. Anna had been playing out the psychological game with him in an attempt to get him off the Meth. She was convinced that she was capable of doing so. He would be put on one Psyche drug or another and then would change to something else. I am sure he did this intentionally and was able to mix and match as he chose to get high. Anna had assured me that she was monitoring his medications as I had always objected to this course of action. I was very concerned with Sofia’s safety around Jeremy and had expressed as much to Anna when they were living in Flagstaff. She never listened to me but she did tell the lie of how she monitored his drugs.

Jeremy’s genetic father, Merrick, contacted me. I have no idea how he got my number. All I knew about the man was that he was a horrible father according to Anna. She never had a kind word about any of her prior relationships. It seemed that each one had done some horrible thing that caused the relationship to end. She had a secret and I was learning just what it was. Merrick was 

Confused and he was heartbroken. He felt as if he had somehow failed too. We talked for hours and I know I helped him through this time. He told me that Anna had done the same day and night change with him and that he had seen it happen to all the others too. He had the longest history with her. He too had always objected to the indulgence and the lack of consequences with Jeremy. He gave the phone numbers of some of the other ex husbands and I got other numbers from for others from those men. They all had the same story. Relationship with Anna had been perfect and then for no reason that any of them could discern she changed into an entirely different person. The moment any one of them found any fault with her, any fault at all this came to be. Anna has two personalities. She can be the most loving giving wife one could ever hope for. She can also be the coldest person I have ever encountered. Each person controls for months and sometimes years. Even when the cold person is in control the exterior persona is this sweet, intelligent and quite beautiful woman. I knew her deepest secret now. I knew why she would not see a counselor. I got statements from some of these men though Merrick could not give one because of the pending court case with Jeremy. The County attorney wanted the death penalty. In the end, though it took about a year and a half Jeremy accepted a plea bargain and is now serving twenty-five years to life with no possibility of parole for that first twenty-five. I still don’t know how I feel about it. Merrick could not and would not discuss the case with me and either would Anna. I only knew what was in the papers. This event affected the whole community and is talked about to this day.  

Bushan and I went to the wake and we cried and prayed together. There were hundreds of people there. Sharise had been responsible for starting anti drug programs at the high school that they still use to this day. She was a creative, loving and talented young woman and I still miss her. Anna began to blame the guidance clinic for the drugs they had prescribed. She to this day has not taken any responsibility for not monitoring those very drugs. It really does not matter what the prescribed as he was taking whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted for the high. He was far out of control. The detective had found the whole stack of psychology books in the little house and I know he had read them all. If a person picks up a gun and empties it into another person, there can and often are many reasons for this to happen. If that person reloads the gun it becomes premeditated murder. I knew the nurses and the doctors who were on duty that night and had treated Jeremy and seen the body of Sharise. It was reported to me that she had been stabbed eighty times. Most of the wounds were inflicted over a long period of time long after she was dead. He did not have any Meth in his system but did have barbiturates, Psyche drugs and a lot of alcohol. Just writing this puts me back in that room on that night.  

Miki got busted coming back on the freeway from Phoenix with five ounces of Meth. Possession for the purpose of sale and transporting illegal drugs were the most serious of the charges. He had been set up. He had sold Meth to an undercover officer and they had been watching him. He was looking at a minimum of fifteen years in prison. He had no way out and he was sitting in jail when I got the call. I was his last hope for any kind of help at all. As if I did not already have enough on my plate at the time. I went and visited him and he looked terrible and was more depressed than I have ever seen him. He was still kicking the Meth and it showed. I asked him if he wanted me to get involved and he said he did. He gave me his word that he would never touch Meth again and I believed him. His mother had died the year before and his father a couple of years before that. They had left him and his brother Mark some money and some stocks and bonds. I hired the best defense attorney in the state. I had a lot of paper work to get in order and all the assets were in California. He did have a bank account in Arizona with a minimum of money in it. Mark did not want to get involved at all and neither did anyone else in the Bay area including his kids. Miki had burned them all with lies and they were sick of his whole thing. Somehow my being involved and taking the lead helped them see things in a different light. This took a year.

The attorney took the case on my word alone. We connected with honor from the very beginning. We decided that I was not going to bail Miki out of jail and that he needed to get into an in house treatment program and I arranged it. After a couple of weeks and working with Mark funds began to flow in my direction. The attorney is truly the best and does part time as a judge in several cities in the area. We met on the side of the road one day and I gave him his ten thousand dollar retainer as I had promised. I paid the fifteen thousand dollar fee for the treatment center and put up the ten thousand dollar bail. This all took over thirty days. I worked at this every day.  

I went over to Miki’s home, the warehouse and was appalled at what I found. There was trash everywhere. Nine vehicles that did not run, stacks of old tires, two broken down RV’S. The place was full of Meth heads. There must have been ten people living there without water or electricity. The Warehouse was boarded up and full of useless stuff. The door and several windows were broken out of the little house and it too was full of useless stuff.

Miki had been living with Louie for the most part and sleeping in whatever Meth house he found himself in. He is a kind heart and just let these people take advantage of him and the property. Mark could not believe what I reported to him and I sent photos. The place was really trashed. Miki’s mom had left the property to him in trust through Mark. Mark was the executor. It was a smart move on her part as Miki was incapable of dealing with anything because of the Meth.  

I had been looking for work diligently for a year and there was just nothing to be found. I interviewed for several management positions in restaurants and the story was always the same; I was overqualified. Tourism was down and there was no work as a tour guide. I made a few pair of Mocs and that helped. Josh and I were still doing installations for irrigation systems but the work was sporadic at best.  

There were two female friends that helped me through this time. Kathy, who is Joshua’s best friend’s mother and Juniper who owned a home down the street. We all were going through our own issues at the time and we cried on each other’s shoulders. I registered for a full time schedule at the college and the Federal assistance helped a little but not nearly enough. My unemployment ran out and I found myself borrowing money for rent and for food for my children. It was a particularly hard time for me and I was still doing the court thing over the divorce and over Miki. I had never borrowed money to pay rent. I was very depressed and drank more than I should have. I often drank myself to sleep.  

Mark had asked me to get the people off the property and since I had power of attorney from Miki and a letter from him I had the authority to do so. I went over there with a pistol in my hand and told them all they had one week to be gone or the next time I showed up I was coming shooting. I told them I eat what I kill. I did not know any of these people and I did not want to hear their stories. I guess I made an impression on them as they were all gone within the week. They left all the useless stuff and the trash everywhere. I put a lock on the gate to keep them all out of there. They all had my phone number and I had agreed to let them come back when I was there to get anything they wanted out of there. They had only thirty days to do so and then I was going to take it to the dump. Only one ever came back and that was after the thirty days and she only took a very little bit. She came with a cop that I knew and I met them at the gate with a pistol on my belt. He understood what I was dealing with. I was glad he was there as I did not want any kind of confrontation.  

I talked to Miki and Mark about the property and offered to buy it. I had no money and no credit and they were going to have to carry the mortgage. I also needed money to clean it up and remodel the place to get it livable. They agreed. It was a hell of a thing to put together actually.

Kathy and I had inspected the place closely before this came down and the boys and I had checked it out too. They knew that it was going to be a whole lot of work but they were willing and we took on the project. I think I had twenty thousand dollars to put into the place at the time.

I accounted for every dime as I had agreed. Kathy was in the process of selling her house and had agreed to rent the little house if we could get it finished in time. There was no way I could keep both places going. Kathy’s son and a lot of the other boys we knew jumped in to help. I hired the biggest roll off dumpster available. It held five tons. I borrowed a tractor with a bucket on it to load that dumpster and do some other work. The pile of trash just kept getting bigger and we tore everything out to the inside studs. We pulled out the floor and threw away every fixture. We found dead cats and containers full of human feces. Ice chests that were full of feces too. It was unbelievably horrid. We wore masks and gloves. It must have taken over a month just to clear out those two buildings. We were required to set a new power pole and bring in a new service to a new main breaker box and re wire to both buildings. We set the pole. I had the permit from the county and hired an electrical contractor to do the work. Usually it takes at least two months for the whole process to go through the county and the power company. We pulled it off in one month. Now we had power and water. I had given notice at the house we were living in and we were out of time. In the end we had one day to move. The boys got up as usual and went right to work on the project and I had to stop them to get them focused on moving. There was a pretty big pile of construction materials and tools in the warehouse and it all had to be moved and organized. We all worked our asses off. The boys worked till about ten in the morning the following day to get it all done. There was a huge pile of stuff piled haphazardly in the middle of the warehouse and all over the yard. There were also piles of construction materials and boxes of fixtures and a couple of new showers. I had planned carefully and had purchased everything we were going to need to get both places somewhat livable. I had also traded for a huge pile of plants and irrigation equipment. This probably amounted to another twenty thousand dollars. The boys slept for two days and we took a week or so off. It was summer and it was hot. We were showering under a hose, often wearing the same clothes for days and cooking on a grill. We slept where we fell.

During this time I was suffering from some physical issues. I had a Hieatal Hernia and I had injured my back. Surgery was imperative and I arranged for it to get done. It was life threatening and I could hardly eat at all. I kept putting it off as the boys and the project needed me and I knew I would be laid up for a good while.  

A bedroom for me became imperative only because Sofia needed a safe place to be. Joshua and Skyler kept at the little house and the rest of us concentrated on the warehouse. We organized sleeping places among the pile of stuff and concentrated on my room. We got the bathroom up and running and put in a closet. The floor was concrete still and the walls all need sheetrock and paint. We got it sort of done. It was hurried and not done very well. I had an old piece of carpet from the garage at the last house. It had some auto grease stains on it. We cut it up and fit it in around my bed. It was not much but my stuff had a place to be and Sofia had a place to sleep.

By now I had succeeded in getting a court order for regular unsupervised time with Sofia. Anna hated the mess we were living in and took Issue with the dangers. The court still took my side and Sofia was back with us. She never got hurt. I had traded for a pile of cabinets and counters and we modified them and installed them in both places. I bought all the required appliances including washers and dryers. I bought them refurbished for a great volume price from an old friend who is in that business. We built ourselves a kitchen.

Skyler and Josh had taken building trades in high school and had both excelled. There was no way this could have been done without those two. They concentrated on the little house. They got the first shower running over there and we all were grateful for hot showers at last. I would meet with them in the morning lay out the day’s work and they would just go and get it done. They built better than code. I cannot stress enough just how valuable these two young men were and what good work they did. Other kids started trenching everywhere and I laid a lot of pipe. Every day there were issues and problems to solve but we did the work and solved the problems.  

It was really something to see Ben wearing a tool belt and just jumping in and doing what was needed. He is an academic primarily however he changed that point of view and learned a lot about construction. Willow helped hang Sheetrock, texture and paint. She brought some of her friends too and everyone helped.

Before we had done anything else including running water we had the cable company come out and wire both places for TV and internet. We did have some form of entertainment and it helped.

At some point during this process I had noticed an add for Sedona Fire District in the paper. I was still looking for a job. They were looking for 911 dispatchers. Bill Boler is an Assistant Chief there and in charge of the Emergency Medical services. I have known him for years and he had recommended that I apply for this job. It came up about every two years and I had applied twice before. The first time I was nowhere close to being in the running. The testing process is very difficult and even though my multi tasking skills were pretty good from working at the hospital I just could not cut it. The second time I made it through the testing process and the interview process before a board and actually made the hiring list. I was low on the list and was never hired. I had no intention of trying again. It is a long, difficult and involved process. I had to go to Sedona one day for coffee and for some reason decided to go ahead and try one more time. I put in the application. I went through the testing process and did pretty well. My typing skills were not that great. They wanted 35 words a minute minimum and the best I could do was 33. I can do nearly 60 when I look at the keys but that was not allowed and would not have helped anyway.

The little house was over half done when the boys insisted that I go in for the surgery. I wrote out a very specific plan of action for them to follow while I was in the hospital. I was still very reluctant to go in at all as the project really needed me there or so I thought. The boys convinced me otherwise. The court business with Anna was moving slowly and Miki was in rehabilitation. It was time to go for the surgery. 

I checked in through the ER. I knew everyone and it was no big deal. I was then taken upstairs and given a private room. It was a perfect room as there was close access to the outside on a roof patio and I could l sneak out there and smoke. The next day they wanted to do a bunch of tests and of course I refused. One of the games in any hospital is to do unnecessary tests to drive up the bill. I did let them draw blood. The doctor who was ordering this stuff was a little East Indian man. Doctors on the floor are called hospitalists. This job usually goes to the lowest bidder. I did not like this guy from the start. He came in with the lab results and started telling me a bunch of stuff. I told him I wanted to see the labs. He said why? I told him that I could read and understand lab values as well as he could. I pointed out the normality of some of those values that might have indicated some of the further testing that he was suggesting and told him that I was not going to allow any of it. He was not a happy camper. Scot Kinkaid was my surgeon. I have known him and worked with him for years and I trusted him. He came in later that day and asked me if I would let them take a look at my heart. I was going for surgery and this made sense so they brought in the tech with the echo cardiogram machine. I knew the tech. I love this stuff actually and thought it was cool seeing my own heart on the screen doing its heart thing. The tech told me that my heart was remarkably healthy particularly for someone my age. He said you never smoked did you? I laughed and told him I had been smoking since I was about eight years old and as soon as he was done I was going to go have another one. He asked where and I told him. We both went out on the patio and had a cigarette. About noon they came and got me and took me down to the OR. The anesthesiologist shot something into me. He asked me to start counting backwards. I laughed and told him that whatever he had given me had no effect whatsoever. Scott came in to see what was going on. I told him that I probably had a higher tolerance for drugs than these guys were accustomed too as I had grown up in San Francisco in the sixties. Scott knows me well and also knows that I no longer do any of that stuff. He ordered another full dose. Whatever that stuff was it was pretty strong. I woke up in my room. The surgery was done with five little incisions and a camera and the tools went in through those holes. No big deal. I just wanted out of that bed and a nurse came to my call and helped me up. I was attached to an IV pole. I told her I just wanted to walk around for a bit and that I was feeling pretty good and did not need an escort. I went out on the patio and had a smoke. This is a non smoking campus. The nurse’s name was Gina. I had never met her before but soon learned that I was very lucky to have her. She is one of the real good ones. She never said a word about me going out to smoke that day. I was put on a liquid diet. That night the Indian guy comes in and asks me if I am in pain. I thought it was a stupid question and told him so. I had just come out of surgery. He ordered pain meds to be administered intravenously. It was morphine. I liked it the first time they gave it to me. No pain and a great high. It reminded me of those days with Fillmore shooting heroin so many years ago. What I did not know was this ass had ordered 10mg every four hours if I asked for it or not. I sort of remember Sofia coming to visit on her birthday. I sort of remember all the kids coming once and assuring me that the work was continuing on the houses. I was in and out of it until I was completely out. I had horrible dreams and visions. This went on for several days. At one point I had a vision of all the people who had ever died in that place chanting get up, get out. At that moment I was hanging by my fingertips on the edge of a bottomless well. Down meant death and up was life. Somehow I went up. I awoke in a sweat. My gown was completely soaked. I started removing all the IV”S and alarms went off everywhere. A nurse that I did not know came in and asked what I was doing. I told her they had put the last bit of anything in me and to get out. The little Indian Doctor came in and I threw him out too. That was after I called him an ass for giving me all the morphine. We had no phone at home yet and there was no way for me to get in touch with anyone. My memory was messed up and I could not recall any other numbers for anyone. For three days I went through serious withdrawals and refused to let anyone do anything. Gina was there for some of this and understood what I was going through. She kept people away from me. I had horrible hallucinations, cravings and sweats. I could not eat anything and even drinking water was hard. I vomited a lot. One night a nurse came in and asked me if there was anything she could do to help me. I asked if she could not see that my gown looked like I just got out of the shower and could she get me one that was dry. She called for a tech to do it for her. I threw that nurse out and would not let her back in that room. I thanked the tech. That nurse was just too damn self important to do it herself. Finally I came out of it. I had been in the hospital for ten days. It should have been three at the most. I had lost 22 pounds. That was a good thing I reckon but the method was not. The little Indian doctor came in on that last morning and stood before me with my chart and told me he was worried about my white cell count. I was sitting on the edge of the bed looking down at his fancy little shoes and I puked all over them. I told him that I was not worried about my white count at all and that if he tested his shoes he would find it was all the damn saline he had been putting into me from day one. I told him that I was walking out of that Hospital in fifteen minutes with or without his permission. I told him to get out and get the discharge paperwork done. I could hardly stand up but I managed to get Mike Bruce on the phone. I asked where he was and he said he was fifteen minutes away. I don’t think he knew I had gone for the surgery. I gave him the room number and told him I was busting out and to come right over. Scott Kinkaid came in and asked me how I was feeling. I told him what had been going on and that I was leaving. He said he had no problem with that gave me his personal cell phone number and told me to call him for anything I might need. He was leaving town for a couple of days. There was no way I was going to let that Indian Doc touch me again and I told Scott that. Michael arrived and I had packed up what little I had. I was still vomiting and I picked up a trash can and we went out to the nurses’ station. I had to lean on him. I was very weak. That little Indian ass was there and he told me that if I left it would be against medical advice and I would get stuck with the bill as my insurance would not cover it. I was not in a particulary good mood. I told him that he was an ass, attached to his own stupid ego and that he should be looking for a job as a janitor. Something he might actually be qualified to do. Scott was sitting behind him writing out prescriptions for me and I saw him smile. There were about ten nurses there too all trying not to laugh. I told him that he had put me in an untenable position as my surgeon was perfectly alright with me checking out even though he was not. Scott came over and handed me a handful of prescriptions and told me to see him in a couple of days. I was still vomiting and did so all the way out. I tore up those prescriptions on the way. I had it with drugs. I left that trash can by the front door and Michael drove me home. I think we stopped a time or two so I could puke. I went to bed in my own bed and slept. I must have slept for a long time. It was just sunrise and I walked around and looked at what had been done. I was very disappointed. None of my instructions had been followed. I found myself crying and being pretty upset. It must have been just a release from all that had happened. When everyone woke up I had a meeting with them and told them to take a couple of days off and do something fun. I never said a word about anything else. I slept a lot. After a couple of days I went in to Scott’s office without an appointment. He saw me anyway. His comment was that I was looking pretty good. I told him I was not there to talk about me; I was there to talk about him. I told him that I was grateful for his expertise and for the fine care he had provided. Then I told him that he had a week to get the discharge paperwork squared away with that little Indian ass or I would be forced to file suit. He would be in the suit as that is just the way it is. He told me he would take care of it and that I would never hear another word about it. We shook hands and I left. I really like Scott Kinkaid and I never heard another word about any bills.

I could not do anything to help with the project so I directed the work. I could not lift five pounds. The recovery was expected to take a couple of months. This was late July and winter was coming. Michael Bruce put down the floor for the new bathroom and I laid out two bedrooms with a can of paint on the concrete floor. Joshua and Skylar were very close to finishing the little house. Miki got out of rehab. Kathy helped me to pick out paint and carpets for the little house. She has better taste than I in this area. Jimi Whitewolf strung some wire for me for outlets and lights. As usual he had to do it twice. Jimi has always had to do it twice. It is an inside joke for him and I. Once Josh and Skylar finished up in the little house Miki got on the plumbing and Josh and Skylar framed the bedroom walls for the warehouse. We had all had about enough. It was a long and very hard summer. It was all we could do to get the very basic stuff done in the warehouse. I did most of the painting in the little house. I spent a lot of time on the borrowed tractor just loading the trash. In the end there were twenty-five tons of trash removed plus all the vehicles. Even that was not all of it and over time we made a bunch of loads with my truck. Once a year Cornville has a community clean up where they bring in a bunch of dumpsters, tractors and volunteers. They will take just about anything over that weekend and we moved a lot of trash. It was free. I had bought two tools in the beginning that became indispensible. One was a laser guided cut off saw and the other was an industrial airless paint sprayer. I pushed everyone hard. School was starting and we were out of time. Miki and I kept at it anyway and got it all up and running. I pushed myself pretty hard in spite of everyone trying to slow me down. The work needed to be done. Angel Michael came and we had a sheetrock hanging party. Not much of a party though. It was a whole lot of work. The ceiling went up though. I could do nothing to help with any of that but Ben really came through as did Josh. A friend of mine who does insulation for a living gave me an unbelievable price to come and blow 8 inches of insulation into the attic. Thirty-five hundred square feet for six hundred bucks is a hell of a deal. That was the end of it. We had all had enough. I can never explain how hard my kids, many of their friends and my friends all worked to get us into this house. I will never be able to thank all these people enough nor would they wish me too.  

One morning I was a bit bored and started digging a trench in the front yard. Josh woke up and asked me what I was doing. I told him I was going to put down some irrigation for a lawn and some planter beds. He took that shovel and went right at it. In just a few hours he had dug all the trenches and I had laid the pipe, put in the sprinklers and the drip system. Ben and his friend David moved in a bunch of horse shit for fertilizer and Miki leveled it and planted it. David had dug the trenches around the perimeter of the property which was a hell of a job and I put down the pipe for the main lines and the drip. I did not push this much and just did a little every day. Miki tied in all the electric valves to the timer and the well. Somehow we got all the plants planted. We put in the little orchard and the grapes, planted honeysuckle along the fence lines and all the shrubberies and roses and flowers. I rarely asked for any help as I was very aware just how tired everyone was from a very difficult summer. It was a good thing that winter was slow in coming that year.

I was back in school too. Most of my classes were done online but it was still a focus. In early October I got a call from Sedona Fire that they wanted to speak with me. I went into the Human Resources people and they told me that if I could improve on the typing part of the test that they wanted to hire me. In the end I failed by one word and they hired me anyway. The timing was perfect from the financial need point of view but not from the workload point of view. My learning plat was already full and these folks were about to overwhelm me with their requirements. In the end I was forced to drop several of my classes at the college.

The requirements of the job of a 911 dispatcher are very extreme. There was an extraordinary amount of data for me to take in and to learn. The shifts are twelve hours long. It seemed that all I was doing was learning and testing. This district handles the dispatch for eleven agencies that cover a great deal of territory. My first trainer was Keona. She is a black woman and a very devout Seventh Day Adventist. We talked philosophy quite a bit and she accepted my point of view as I did hers. There is always some down time and she was mostly reading religious text. I really love this woman. She was invaluable in keeping me on track and encouraging me. Others were not and made a point of making my life as difficult as possible. I discovered that this is what they do regularly and heard nightmare stories from others about the training cycle they had gone through. It was training by intimidation. Huge egos got into the picture. The politics became evident and it was horrid and extreme. I learned about each agency we served, what equipment they had and the order in which it would be called out. I learned how to access an extraordinary amount of data so that it was instantly available. I studied maps so that I was proficient at finding locations. The real key to this business IS location. You just have to know where to send the emergency crews. There is no room for mistakes. People’s lives depend on you. I had quit all drugs years before for this very reason. Everything in the communications center is recorded. All the telephone calls and radio traffic are recorded. There is also hard copy of every call and each event is time stamped. This shows the progression of a call from the moment the telephone rings to the point that the responding units return to their base station. All of this is time stamped. The equipment that does all this is call a computer aided dispatch or a CAD. This is several computers tied into five monitor screens that compromise one work station. There is also back up equipment such as radios and a regular PC that has internet access. Systems for dealing with deaf people and emergency medical dispatch back up cards. Emergency medical dispatch or EMD is critical as it is a series of questions that are asked of callers regarding their medical condition which will determine the response level of the responding units. It really is all quite complex and does require a great deal of training to become proficient.  

During the course of my training, my Supervisor Julie was playing some old recordings of calls past as a training exercise. One of the tapes she played was the tape of the murder at my old house. I was sitting behind everyone and tears were running down my face. I was not aware of them. It was extremely emotional to relive that horrid and tragic night. Listening to Anna’s voice as she spoke to the dispatcher dug deep into my heart. The tape is twenty minutes long. This is unusual. Julie happened to look at me and asked me what was going on. I didn’t hear her at first until she stopped the tape. Then everyone was looking at me and I realized I was crying. I told her I needed a break and walked downstairs to get a smoke and some air. She followed me and it was then I told her that the murder was committed by my step son. I told her I did not want to hear that tape again for any reason. It was a hard night.  

After the initial three months of training I was assigned to Lisa for the next phase of training. Lisa was wonderful and took a great deal of time and effort with me. I worked harder than I have ever worked in my life to get all the information and to become proficient.  

I was sent to Colorado Springs to attend an EMD class so that I could get that required certification. I used a fire district car to make the trip and they paid all the expenses. Just before the Raton Pass in New Mexico I saw this guy walking down the road out in the middle of nowhere. It was very cold and he was dressed very lightly so I picked him up. This is no doubt against fire district policy however there was a big snowstorm coming in from the west and I could see snow falling. I saw this as an emergency situation so I picked the guy up. It was twilight and the temperature was dropping quickly. I cranked up the heater gave him a smoke and some beef jerky I had made for the trip. He really stunk. I had to have him crack his window it was so bad. As we were coming down the Pass I was fiddling with the cruise control and got pulled over by a state trooper. He came up to the passenger window and of course the first thing he sees is this ragged smelly guy. I explained what had happened and he asked me for a fire district ID. I did not have one. I was wearing the uniform though and he accepted that. I told him that I did not know how to use the cruise control and was trying to work it out and simply did not see the reduced speed. I also told him that I was not looking for any special treatment simply because I worked for the government and was driving an official vehicle. He said well you are going to get it anyway. Just slow down going down the pass as the road is pretty slick. I thanked him pulled out and set the cruise control at five under the speed limit. Just before the Colorado border that trooper pulled up next to me and using his PA system told me to have a good night. I did not know he had been following me the whole time. I dropped the guy off in Colorado Springs. I was there for a week. I did get the chance to go see an old friend Deb Stedom up in Manitou Springs which is just a bit west. She had married and had become a very successful glass artist and was just about finished building an incredible home. Her husband prepared perhaps the best martini I have ever enjoyed. It had been over twenty years since we had seen each other and it was a wonderful visit.  

Shortly after I got back I was put out on the floor on my own. I was of course supervised closely however I was expected to do the job and I did. I was not as quick as some and made minor mistakes. This is expected. Most of the time I worked with Julie and Lisa. We became very good friends and we worked incredibly well together. Julie has a daughter that is close Sofia in age and they became good friends. They play well together. Our relationship was then and is now one of parents who help each other out with childcare from time to time. At work we were still friends however she always maintained a high standard and never showed any favoritism I also insisted that she did not. Two weeks before my one year anniversary it got bad. I had been on probation for nearly a year and was truly looking forward to being taken off of it. This would mean that I would get a significant raise and be hired permanently. It would also mean that there was a very involved procedure should they wish to terminate me at a later date. I had no reason to think that I would not been hired and had been assured by several key players that I would be. This is a copy of a letter I sent to Bill Boler: 

“Some pigs are more equal than others.” Orwell. 

The Conversations: 

I spoke to both Steve and Julie two weeks ago concerning my upcoming annual evaluation. Both pointed out that there were areas of improvement that could be addressed but that this should in no way impede my getting through the evaluation. Steve told me flat out that he was sure that given more time it would not be a problem. Both saw that I was actively making an effort to improve. Both know my commitment to the district and to the job. 

On Keona’s last day she made a point of congratulating me on the improvement she had observed. Lisa has said the same on more than one occasion. 

I had no reason to suspect that I would be given an extension rather than a raise. Julie and I talked about creating an action plan to address areas that needed improvement. I have always been open to this and have always strived to excel. 

The evaluation: 

Julie was asked to give me my annual evaluation. Terry was not satisfied with the results as the scores were much higher than what, in the end I ended up with. She told Julie to solicit evaluations from others, which she did. Those who had spent the most time with me and who I had worked with most often gave me better scores than those who did not. Understandable. Some of these people I have not worked with in many months. An honest evaluation from them would naturally be much less complementary. Julie was instructed to take an average of all of this input. Terry needed to make me look worse than I actually am. Why? Even as a trainee there are areas that I received lower scores on this evaluation that were consistently higher as a trainee. 

The interview: 

Terry made a real point of letting me know that I could have been fired as opposed to being treated fairly. The threat was open and unconcealed. was shocked. I kept my mouth shut. I made no excuses. I thanked her. Julie on the other hand let me vent my frustration, even though she had serious issues of her own concerning the call on Bear Mountain. When this was over I got a seriously much needed hug. Bless this woman who in my opinion is a superior supervisor. 

I did not wish to sign off on this action and told Julie and Terry that I wanted a day or two to read it and consider the implications. I also wanted to talk to you. Terry told me that it was the last day and I was required to sign off. I bought the car without having the opportunity of looking under the hood. 

Beverly: 

I just can’t seem to get by this person. I say good morning to her and get no response. I can be standing right next to her and say good evening without acknowledgement at all. The majority of the issues in my file are from her. I have really tried and continue to do so. It is an issue that I really need to understand and to fix. She has never liked me, made no bones about it and has gone out of her way to make my life miserable. The stress I am under when I work with her is reflected in dispatch times being worse than when working with any other person. She is close to Terry. The old girls club. I firmly believe that she would prefer I was not here. I do not seem to have these problems with anyone else. Steve assures me that this will change soon. I hope sincerely that this is the case. She is a hell of a dispatcher and of great value to this district. She is also above the law. She has Terry’s ear. Some days you could cut the air with a knife, perhaps! 

The dynamic: 

This is really a political decision, unfortunately, it is also discriminatory. This is Terry’s last major operational decision. What happens? She creates dissent. The comm. Center has been relatively peaceful since the announcement of the new position that will soon be occupied by Steve. Steve has made a sincere effort to calm the environment and to provide workable solutions to the existing problems. With this decision however the focus will now be on me. It will not be pleasant. It gives those who are accustomed to the negative a focus. Some know no other perspective.

There are those here who seek nothing but power and the exercise of that power. There some here who are here for the money and the benefits. There are some here who are here for altruistic reasons. I would like to think I am of the later group. I am here because I love the work. I can and do make a difference.  

Is this really an effort to undermine the authority that Steve has been given? A nose thumbing? A last dig? I think it is.  

The message:

The message this sends to the Comm. Center and most particularly the new people is that commitment; dedication and hard work are rewarded with punishment, a stigma and stress.

There are some who are above the law.

I am not to be trusted and must be carefully watched at all times.

Any minor mistake must be reported. 

Angie:

Angie had a real file and a lot of issues. From attendance to mistakes to inappropriate conduct on the radio. There were other things that you know all about that have no need of repetition here. I think it was Jeff that did her evaluation. However it came about, Angie was passed. She has also done a wonderful job in the last several months in rehabilitating herself. Anything said here is in no way intended to take away from her personal efforts in this regard. Personally I am proud of her accomplishments. I like to think that my input with her has had a value. I believe she would say it has. 

Teams: 

I am particularly fortunate in the people that I work with every day. I work with Julie and Lisa. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody. I have gotten better over the last couple of months. These girls have taught me tricks on the computer that have facilitated this and I work at it all the time. Steve also is an invaluable teacher. I have said from the beginning that it is my goal to be as good a dispatcher as Steve and I continually strive to reach that goal. I have a year invested in the effort.

There was a day that I made a rookie mistake. I created a sign up log for rookie mistakes, signed it, noted the mistake and hung it on the bulletin board. By the end of the day both Julie and Lisa had also signed off on some minor mistake. A few shifts later I noted that Steve and Josh had also signed off on mistakes they had made. We all put money in the kitty. Someone removed this log from the board within a week. No one else had signed it.  

There are times when we all have difficulty with location. On my team, we all jump right in and each try what we know to solve the problem. Once the call has been put out we discuss what happened and practice putting the call in the proper way so that it does not happen again. Our attitude is always happy. Though we take the job particularly seriously we also have fun during down times. Much less stress working with these people than with others and my performance has improved because of their support. Though I do consider these people friends there is a distinct professional line drawn regarding performance. Steve and Julie are examples of what a supervisor should be. They are constantly taking an active role in training. This is not true of others who tend to be reclusive and in some cases judgmental. On shifts worked with these two, more often than not if a minor mistake is made, it is immediately discussed and corrected. If the mistake is deserving and in some way may benefit others it goes into the shift report and most likely into the file. Both Steve and Julie have put items into my drop file and I think justifiably. There were times I insisted that this be done so that there would never be any perception of favoritism. That is the end of it. I would like to think that Steve will be able to create an environment of consistency and that all shifts will work in the same way. There has never been any real oversight of supervisors and some are perceived to be above the law. I think this will change now. I think that Comm. Specs will be better informed and will be consulted rather than ignored. It is even possible they may be shown some respect. 

Shift report: 

Beverly had put two items into my file without discussing any of it with me. I found out about it later and was offended. I wrote a response to these items. Though the issues were really somewhat minor the fact that they were never discussed with me was not. I was also assured that these types of things had no bearing on successfully completing probation.

I discussed this with Terry and suggested that this was wrong and that there was no oversight on this type of activity. The shift report was created. It has become a wonderful tool. Julie and Steve make a point of letting the Comm. Specs know what was put in the report. No one else does as far as I know.  

The Record: 

I have never missed a day of work or called off for any reason. Sometimes this has been excruciatingly painful.  

I have always filled in whenever asked regardless of personal cost.

I have never denied anyone a trade when asked.

I have never been late and in fact was once chastised for being to early.

Though there days that I just do not have it in me, most of the time some portion of each shift is used to improve my performance.

My performance is improving.

My drop file does not contain enough to justify this action.

I am a committed and dedicated employee and having been an employer make a sincere effort to be what I would expect of others.

I absolutely love what I do. SFD is a wonderful organization on the whole.

I am grateful every day that I am employed here.

I make a sincere effort to have a positive attitude every day and for the most part am successful.

I treat everyone with respect. 

Personal History: 

When I started with SFD I was a full time student. Because of the requirements of the job there were some classes I was forced to drop. One of these classes was a typing class. It is my intention to take that class next semester so that I can improve my performance. I did successfully complete some of these classes anyway. 

I had sold my business at a loss.

I discovered my now ex had run up 140 K in credit card debt. I was responsible though not one penny was mine. I filed for bankruptcy which was granted. 

Her son murdered his girlfriend in my old home. She was a dear friend and I was her mentor. During the course of my training, that particular 911 call was played. It is a long call. I don’t ever want to hear that one again. Ever. No one knew at that moment of my personal involvement.  

After three years of a very messy divorce it was finally finished in August of this year. I have some experience with the law and prepared every scrap of paper that went to the court, interviewed all the witnesses etc. I represented myself. Though the price was high and I lost a home worth a half a million dollars and a few other assets including a 65 mustang, all the issues involving my 5-year-old daughter went in my favor. I am pleased with the outcome. 

I was able to purchase a new property from my brother in law. He owns it outright and credit was not an issue. The property needed total renovation. Though the project is still ongoing and I live in a construction site most of the time I am pleased with the results and am very grateful to everyone involved, particularly my two boys and lots of their friends and others. Though my mortgage is within reason, I have been two hundred dollars short every month since I started at SFD. I gave my word that I would make up the difference predicated on the expected raise. Three thousand dollars a year is a significant help. As you know I have more kids than sense. 

Actions taken: 

I had been putting 8% of my earnings into a 457. Yesterday I found out that I have no access to any of this money. I closed the account. It will be a year and a half before they will give me back my money. It now sits inactive drawing 3%. Apparently I should have just put into my own bank. 

Hopefully putting this 8% back into my paycheck will assist me in making up the deficit and allow me to keep my word. My word is what matters to me. 

I have also requested a loan from the 401 and the paperwork is coming your way, I presume. Not much vested there and I can only access half but at least it will make a dent. 

Hopefully these actions will help my financial situation and I might even have twenty bucks in my pocket for a change. 

I have made an appointment with Susan Connelly who is a friend of many years and the best counselor that I know. I have utilized the APS network as provided by SFD. I am thankful that this service is provided. 

It is not the stress of the actual job that is affecting me. It is my inability to understand the complete lack of honor I observe in others. I need some real tools to learn to communicate in a different way. I need to learn t listen better. I need to understand how to better deal with Beverly. Nothing I have attempted has made a dent. I worry all the time about how I am being perceived. I am only able to sleep about 4 hours a night and there is little actual rest in it. My health is suffering. I also need to learn to deal with the added stress of many more months of probation and the stigma that is attached to this. Actually I am surprised how incredibly hurt I am because of this decision. Susan is good and I am sure will be able to come with some positive solutions. 

I believe these actions will help my overall personal picture. 

Actions taken at work: 

My probation has been extended.

Julie has developed an action plan that we will adhere to and that I will work very hard at. She worked very hard on this and I agree with it. 

Conclusion: 

Was the decision to extend my probation discriminatory? I believe it was. A simple comparison between Angie and me would prove this conclusively. Though I am aware that SFD provides tools to rectify this situation, there is no way I would choose to pursue the issue in this manner. That would only cause more dissent and create an entirely different stigma. 

Was the decision arrived at in a fair manner without political or personal considerations? I think not. 

I will have great difficulty in filling in on other shifts and will now only be able to do so as a last resort due to the stigma attached to this action. I cannot now assist others with trades for the same reason. This also has some financial repercussions. 

Had this not happened I could have made scheduling easier as I would be able to work with anyone. 

Taking the CTO course will now be delayed which I was truly looking forward to as it could only make me a better dispatcher. I have trained many people to do a variety of tasks in my life and I am good at it. 

I had signed up for the fire academy to take classes that would allow me to be an asset during wild land season. I suspect this will also be denied or at the least delayed for another year. 

This action only makes my life more difficult and presents a whole new set of challenges for me to overcome. It is not as if I needed more challenges.  

Based on conversations with Steve, I am quite sure that this action would not have occurred had the decision been his. He sees my dedication to this organization and the efforts I make to improve. 

One of the issues involved in the investigation was to determine why there was a large turnover in people in my age group. We learn a little slower, particularly where computer applications are concerned. It does not mean we do not learn, it just takes more effort and a little more time. 

I was the first person to go through the training that is now in place. There were a lot of holes that have now been filled. The training is now better and I still learn by listening to those being trained. Had I been hired today, I suspect my training would have been better. 

The Choice: 

You can override this decision and make it right, or not, knowing full well that the action plan will be implemented either way. 

I will live with the outcome, no matter what it may be and will never say another word about any of this. I will not pursue this any further. 

I think I am an asset to this organization and strive to be a better asset all the time.  

Having been an employer who never once had an employee quit and in fact was regularly overwhelmed with applications for employment I know how assets need to be treated. 

I have always held you in high regard and nothing that happens here will change that. 

I do ask that this be kept between you and I. It is no else’s business and some of the things I have said could cause me grief. 

Side Note:

The Comm. Center is full of gossip. Usually whatever happens is known to everyone in a short period of time. You know this. I think it is interesting to note that though many of us hung our tail sections out in the breeze over the issues with James not one word of what actually happened and what action was taken has been spoken. All we know is that he now has a different plate on his truck. If you want to find your information leak, you might give this some thought. 

Thanks for your time Bill. The appointment I have at 11 today is with Susan and I do not wish to be late. I decided that there would not be enough time for us to have a meaningful meeting so I have presented my case in this way instead. Takes up less of your time also. Please let me know what you decide.  

My probation was extended for six months. I can take every negative experience in my life and put it all together and it would not come close to the horror I experienced for the next three months. It was unbelievable.  

This is a copy of a letter I sent to one of the board members: 

Don,

I sent you a note a while back concerning information that you would like to know. As of Jan 26, I have been terminated from the communications department at SFD. This was after I instigated an investigation into charges of conspiracy, harassment, discrimination, age discrimination, and training by intimidation and a few other odds and ends.

I was informed yesterday that the investigation revealed no substantiation to any of these charges. I found that to be rather amusing. I was also told that there were no comparisons made which of course is what would be required in any investigation regarding discrimination. 

I told them that all this did is to bring the process into question and that I would continue to pursue the matter. Their investigation was based on operational concerns. They also are protecting their own. There were also political concerns. I filed charges against Terry, Beverly and Steve. The three longest vested employees and the deepest entrenched. They each have their own political capitol and I reckon those cards were played. Just the way it is. How well would Communications function (in the short term only) without those three? There was also one communications specialist who represents a grave liability that was mentioned. Loose four or one? Pretty simple really. Still it is not what is actually in the best interest of the people of this community. This department is dysfunctional and its history proves it. 

I asked to bring my case before the board. I was told later via email that I would not be given this option as it was a probationary matter. Still the nature of the charges would indicate that I do actually have this right. No matter actually at this point. This may be being swept under the carpet at the moment but it is far from being over. 

My world is a world on Honor and Honor will be served. I now owe no allegiance to SFD but do owe the people of Sedona. If SFD is going to present itself as a highbrow institution then it best be able to live up to the image. By my scale, the organization is judged by its least honorable part. I think the public will see it the same way. 

I made every effort to provide SFD with the opportunity to do the right thing and they failed to do so in my opinion. Granted it is only my opinion. It is also the opinion of my attorney.  

In the effort to prove my case in a court of law, I will be required to subpoena all audio and written records of every call that occurred during my tenure. I will also ask for full disclosure of every aspect of the supposed investigation. Hr will be required to supply the names and pertinent information concerning all past employees that quit or were forced to quit or were fired. SFD will be a bit busy for awhile I am sure.  

Please do not think that I am making a threat as some sort of disgruntled employee might do. I am anything but that. Up until yesterday I was particularly proud to wear the uniform. 

There was a window for SFD to make things right and to do the right thing. Budget cuts would have been substantial in the wages of these three people alone. The opportunity to hire from the outside and bring in new and innovative blood to finally fix the dysfunction did exist. Now I only see a great deal of expense on the horizon for SFD. 

My intention when I hired on was to retire after 15 years and I will now sue for that amount and for undetermined punitive damages. I have been left no choice really. Since SFD refused to right the wrong it now falls on me. Honor demands that I act and I will indeed act. As usual it will all come out in the wash. Any reports concerning me after oct 15 will be considered inadmissible due to the duress I was put under and the fact that no else was ever subjected to similar duress. Prior to the conspiracy between Beverly and Terry to get rid of me, I had a pretty good record. Bill Boler was kept apprised of this situation throughout the process. He was not part of the investigation. Why? He also knows the truth of every single thing I have presented. No matter how this has been painted, the truth will be known. It was painted and that alone is a serious charge isn’t it? SFD was unwilling to open the can of worms. Fine, then I will do so and believe me when I tell you that this district will not survive the headline test. 

If at some point you would like to meet with this newly minted civilian for a drink and some conversation, feel free to contact me. I don’t know anyone on the board and have only met with you the one time, quite by accident. I am being denied access and have been terminated. You might ask yourself just what you would do given similar circumstances. That is precisely what I am going to do. 

I honestly believe that you wish for what is best for the people of this district. Hiding dirty laundry is not what is best for a single one of them. Terminating a dedicated employee is also not what best serves those SFD professes to serve.

Will Walters 

This is only representative of a small portion of what actually happened but does give the general idea. I have filed a complaint with the Federal Government through my attorney who is the best in the state at this kind of thing. The case is pending and may be for a long time. Needless to say I was very hurt by these events both emotionally and financially. I have never been fired from any job and given the climate of the job market in these days of 2009 finding another job with this on my record makes it nearly impossible.  

2008 was a blur of work, study and putting more time and money into the house. I bought a new horse whose name is Athena. She is an American Saddle Bred Mare. We spent many a wonderful on the trail. I bought two metal buildings that are 12x20. One for a barn and one for some storage. Joshua bought himself a Kawasaki 650 rice rocket and parks it in the shed. We built a corral that is done particularly nicely with electric tape that is solar powered. The vegetable garden prospered and we all took part in the preparation of the soil, the building of the raised mounds, planting, weeding and harvesting. Ben put in some Hop plants for an experiment and they too produced. We cut a pretty good quantity of fire wood and split and stacked it. There was something missing from my life so I started looking online for someone to share with. I tried several different sites. Finally I met the Psycho bitch from hell. I really could have done without this event. 

The psycho bitch from hell:

Let me preference this little piece with this: I have spent the last there years going through a divorce. I did all the paperwork myself, interviewed witnesses and did everything associated with this business. I am ultimately quite pleased with the outcome. This was finalized only a very few months ago. I am a man of honor. It was not ok for me to be involved either casually or seriously with anyone else until those final papers had been signed. It has been a long and grueling journey and even though I remained calm and centered I suffered both emotionally and physically from the great deal of stress involved. Those issues are being resolved. I do not carry any baggage at all in regards to any of this and in fact communicate quite civilly with the ex. 

Over the last few months, I was involved with some conversations with a woman in New York. We had developed a friendship that did not point to relationship as far as I was concerned. I did make that quite clear. She moved to Connecticut and found herself in what she represented as an untenable position. She had told me that she made her living buying and selling antiques. She had no money at that moment but insisted that her situation was very bad.  

I decided to help her out. Silly me. She refused to fly so I bought her a train ticket and provided 100.00 for the trip. I did not really have the money but did it anyway. 

She spent three days on the train coming across the country in winter storms. We kept in contact via phone text. As she was approaching Flagstaff, she asked if I could bring her a couple of Heinekens and some decent food. I agreed. It had to have been an awful trip as far as I could see though she had made some friends on the way and seemed to be doing OK.  

I drove up to Flag in the middle of a horrible winter storm, waited for the long overdue train and met her as agreed. She looked nothing at all like the photos she had sent. I said nothing. We came down Oak Creek canyon with very little visibility, dogging rock falls and fallen trees. I called work four times to report where these places were. Very bad night.  

When we got home, I sent her to shower and told her I needed to get some sleep as I had put in a 12 hour day at work and was beat. I went to bed. There is no extra room in my home and we were obligated to share the same bed. I have a California King Water bed and was not interested in her sexually anyway. I did not know enough about her to even consider those things. Nothing happened and I was grateful that she did not push those limits. 

The next day we discussed her situation, when she would get her next check and when she might be able to get a place of her own. She drank beer all that day. She finally did come out with some of her truth and one of those things was that she was ten years older than she had told me. She said she was 59 but looked more like 65 to me. There were other lies that she clarified that are of no real matter. Looking back, I now see this as an effort on her part to get me to accept her and to begin some sort of relationship. I gave no indication that this was possible at all and I think that triggered something in her. Towards the end of the day and a lot of alcohol, she started the bitching. Somehow her entire situation was my doing and all my fault. I needed to get up early for work and told her that I had heard enough for one day and that she had been drinking and was not making sense. She started yelling at me. I went to bed anyway and went to sleep. Somewhere long into the night I was awakened by her performing certain un resistible sexual activities. Still in somewhat of a sleepy stupor, I got involved. We fucked and it could be called nothing else. 

I went to work the next day and kicked myself all day for falling victim to that advance. It had been over three years but still, no excuse. During the course of the day I received constant text messages and returned a few. I offered to take her to town so that I could buy her some necessary toiletries and take her to dinner. She did not have one dollar to her name. Those conversations were ok in the morning but as the day progressed she became angrier and made less sense. 

When I got home I found the cushions from the couch on the floor and her lying on the couch snoring rather loudly. I asked my brother what had happened and he told me she had been drinking all day and bitching to him until she had finally passed out. We covered her up to let her sleep it off. I noted that an unopened half gallon bottle of brandy had been opened and that there was only about an inch left in the bottom. My brother had told me that she had literally crawled from the living room to the bathroom and would not accept help even though she was unable to stand. I went to bed and to sleep. Again I had to work in the morning.

A few hours later I woke to her screaming at me. None of it made any sense. I had enough and told her that. I told her that in the morning I would pay to put her on a train or a bus to any destination in the US she wished or that I was going to take her to a woman’s shelter. She needed help that I was now sure I could not provide. 

That is when she said that she was going to call the police and tell them I had raped and beaten her. I asked her several times, in front of my brother if she wouldn’t rather choose one of the better options. She kept saying that she was going to call the police. She was still drunk but beginning to come out of it. I looked at my brother grabbed the phone and called YCSO. I know the number from work. I also know the dispatcher who took the call. I explained the situation and requested that they send someone over. I went outside and sat in my car to keep away from her and any possibility of any trouble. Both the call and the car were the smartest things I have ever done.  

First there were two cars and two officers. Several hours later there were six. I knew two of them. I also called off work for the first time ever as there was no way I would get enough rest to do the job. Two supervisors were called in to cover my shift. I had Julie on the phone who is my friend and also my supervisor to advise me as to proper procedure in reporting this event at work. She told me that unless there were actual charges or an arrest it did not matter. The officers knew this was happening and also know Julie.  

They had me strip to shorts and checked me out for marks or signs of any struggle. Of course there were none. My brother and Devron, a visiting friend, both made written statements in regard to the previous night. Both had been up past three in the morning and had heard nothing to indicate that anything bad had happened. My Son Ben came home in the middle of all of this and made a statement as well. I never saw what they wrote and never asked.  

Finally they took her and all her stuff away. This was an awful evening and I was scared and worried the whole time.  

The next day I got a call from the lead officer who informed me that they had taken her to the hospital and that the county attorney saw no case at all and that the matter would simply be forgotten. Thank God! That whole day she called and sent text messages. I did not answer one. I came home at midnight on Christmas Eve from work and again called YCSO about the phone harassment. An officer stopped by and told me he really did not deal with the psycho bitch either and was there any chance I would not insist. It was Christmas and he was heading home. We laughed about my stupidity and he finally said that he would contact her on his next shift and tell her that there was no case, that she was not to come over and to quit the harassing phone calls. He also said that he would have to placate the situation by telling her that she would be given one last chance to redeem herself by phone at a specific time. Fat chance I said and we laughed again. 

She called at the agreed time, proceeded to rant for about ten minutes about nothing that made sense at all. I had to hold the phone well away as most of this was yelling. When she had finally run down a bit I stopped her and told her this: You accused me of rape and assault. You signed papers to that effect knowing full well that it was a lie. You did that to strike out at me for reasons I either care about or understand. No man in his right mind would ever have anything to do with a person who is willing to do such a thing. I could have ended up in prison over that accusation, true or not. You are never to call me again. You are not to come to my home for any reason. I will not help you in any way, for any reason. She started her ranting again and I hung up. I have not heard from her again and pray that I do not.

My son Ben asked me what I had learned from this horrid mess. I told him the truth. Given the same story of need, presented the way it had been presented I would still do the exact same thing I had done. He understood. We have all taken in strays, always with the best of motivations. 

I did point out to him, that, that particular girl card, the rape card, used to manipulate, is the most serious card in the deck, and demands immediate action. It is best to be the one initiating police intervention as it takes a great deal of power out of that card. Never hesitate given a situation like that.  

I have an impeccable reputation and will not tolerate that reputation being tarnished. Many of the people involved in this incident were people I know and work with all the time. Though the ultimate outcome was acceptable, the fact that this did happen to me and that these people know it did bears a certain amount of pain and regret. 

This too shall pass 

It did not end there. Though she had been taken away a few weeks later an officer from child protective services showed up with a complaint of child abuse. It was beyond absurd and I figured out right away who might have done something like this. The case was dropped without any real harm being done. 

A few weeks after that a Sheriffs officer came by and told me that she had now charged me with giving her pharmaceutical drugs. I laughed at this. He asked if I had any and I told him that I did. I showed them sitting on my bookshelf. It turned out that had I given her any I would have been charged with a felony. Great. I went with him and was standing there when he was talking to his lieutenant to find out what they were going to do. I told them that this had all gone far enough and that it was now time to close out everything on this woman or I was going to have to file a complaint of harassment. I had been totally cooperative to this point but it really was enough in my mind. I have heard nothing else since. I had dodged three serious felony bullets with the simple truth but it sure caused a lot of problems. Of course I am now very gun shy about meeting anyone online. 

At two in the morning one day Ben woke me up to tell me that Miki was passed out, naked halfway in the living room. I jumped up and checked him out. It only took moments for me to discern that he was in a diabetic coma and I had Ben call an ambulance. They were there quickly and I knew the crew. They did what they do best and stabilized him. Ben had saved Miki’s life. He thought at first that Miki was just drunk but when he got no response at all he came and got me. To this day I don’t really think Ben understands just what he did. He made all the difference that morning. Miki is still here because of Ben. They took Miki to the ER and I went along too. When he checked in his blood sugar was 1600. It was a new record for that hospital. His liver had quit function and his kidneys had shut down. He was dying and I knew it. It was touch and go for three days and he was in the intensive care. He came around long enough for me to get him to sign some papers for power of attorney and medical power of attorney and this made all the difference. Now the doctors and nurses were required to keep me fully informed and could not legally prevent me from directing treatment, which I did. I called every day to get his daily lab results and when there were spikes or lows in some of those values it indicated to me that a new treatment was being attempted. I found out what that treatment and either allowed it or made them quit. I was very involved in the whole process. He picked up several infections from the hospital and each could be life threatening. At one point I was informed that he was going to die and that I should notify his family. I did so. I had been keeping them apprised of the situation all along. They were just about to come down to see him when he pulled out of it. They did come a few days later. We still had concrete floors and tools everywhere but we made do. Some stayed in hotels. Miki pulled out of it in the end and came home with me. We keep a close eye on him all the time now. Everyone here knows what to look for. None of us wants to lose Miki. He is very much part of this family. 

It was a good summer and even though I was working way too much there was still time for Fossil Creek and a party or two. We usually have pretty good parties, often with live music. Lots of food that everyone brings pot luck, and great people. These parties can go from as few as 35 people to over a hundred. It is usually spontaneous and always worthwhile. At thanksgiving turkeys are always cheap and I will usually buy a few extra and freeze them. When we have a party I will cook up a couple of them in different ways and there is never a shortage of food. One of my somewhat famous ways of preparing a turkey is to cover it with bacon. This keeps the turkey moist throughout as it is constantly being basted. The turkey does not take on the bacon flavor at all and in fact it is the bacon that tastes more like turkey. I have been doing this for many years. Of course you must have all the trimmings too!  

2009 has been no less interesting than any other year and it is at the time of this writing mid September. I was fired in Mid February and went on unemployment. I met one of the most wonderful people I have ever known in Madison, a woman who lives in Phoenix. We have a very special relationship. We share a friendship that in many ways is much closer than any married couple.  

I was looking at Craig’s list one day in a fit of loneliness and in hopes of perhaps meeting a woman to date. Julie had told me about this resource and I was trying it out. In a small town like Cornville it is rather difficult to meet new women and I don’t frequent bars or clubs.  

I noticed an ad that said “Submissive seeks Master”. This really got my attention as from my philosophical point of view there was something wrong with this. There is an old saying in the east: “If you see the guru in the road, kill him for it is a man claiming to be something he knows he cannot possibly be”. Yet here was a person that was actively seeking a Master. Who would possibly claim such a thing? I answered the ad and it began a rather interesting journey into a world that to that time I had no personal knowledge of. This is the world of bondage and Sado masochism, known as BDSM. The ad had nothing to do with philosophy. There are a great many misconceptions about this world and I was quite guilty of having my own preconceived ideas about it too. Being a curious sort of being I had to find out all about it. I am also very open to new concepts, ideas and experiences. This has always been my way. As usual, I jumped in with both feet. I could not have done any of this without the help of Madison. I am also very fortunate that it was Madison who was there for me at this time in my life or that experience would have been significantly different. The ad had been placed by Madison and she was in fact seeking a Master though not the type of master that I was familiar with. Madison is a true submissive. This means that there is a deeply seated need for her to serve. She is the happiest when she has someone to serve. We spent many hours online discussing this world and getting to know one another. Since I knew so little and at the same time so much from the beginning of our relationship she saw me as a Master. Though I was constantly telling her that I could not presume such a thing she at first was convinced that I was not being honest and was testing her. After several months Madison committed to me. I would be her Master. This was difficult for her to do and difficult for me to accept however once I understood what it was all about I also understood the need for her to do so. This is not a superficial relationship at all. Madison serves my every need or desire. When I visit her there is a chilled martini glass that she keeps and a martini is offered in the evening. She sees to my every comfort. We talk every day and we talk about anything and everything. I also learned that my role in this relationship is all about responsibility. By becoming her Master I took on the responsibility of being sure that all her needs were met. I also needed to know what it was she wanted in her life, what skills she might have to reach those goals and a great deal more about her. This was a woman who was working two jobs, supporting two children and never had quite enough to make ends meet. She was depressed in some ways and had a poor self image. She felt trapped in her life and saw no positive solutions to her existence. I began to teach her about philosophy and she taught me about the world of what is known as the lifestyle or BDSM. I began looking online and collecting as much information about the lifestyle as I could. I was in some ways shocked by what I discovered but remained open. Slavery is actually very much alive and well not only in America but worldwide. This is voluntary Slavery. Though sex is commonly involved it is not the priority in these relationships. Domination and submission, Master and slave, restraints and cages, suspension and flogging, electrical stimulation and a rather large variety of other things are commonly practiced. A truly sadistic person matched with a truly masochistic person is not uncommon and the extremes that are reached are quite severe. I have witnessed situations where full on bull whippings are administered and accepted as the proper thing to do. I have seen people who have willing carved into their own flesh or been carved upon by another. Some willingly require being restrained for long periods of time. Being suspended in a cage and humiliated, physically, verbally and emotionally. I also learned that I was completely mistaken about their being two sexes. There are several. There are transsexuals and transvestites and gays and straights and many in between. It became a study for me. Why would anyone willingly wish to do these things to another or have them done to themselves? What was wrong with these people? Was there some deep seated psychosis involved? I met one of the most beautiful women I have ever known. She had manufactured herself and spent a great deal of money doing so. She had started as a man, realized that she was intended to be a woman and had the courage to proceed in making herself over as a woman. She had been married and has a wonderful son, Dylan who is the same age as Sofia. Though she has not taken the final step, the final genital surgery there is no doubt that she will indeed do this when money becomes available. She had endured a great many surgeries as it was such as breast implants (often there is the administration of female hormones in conjunction with this or not) throat surgery to alter her Adams apple, some plastic surgery to alter her facial appearance, hair removal and a great deal of other things. This was a full time job for her. Consider how difficult it must be to learn how to act, move, speak and live as the opposite sex. Consider how much actual courage it takes to do this every day, openly. Consider the emotional need to be accepted and the emotional devastation when acceptance is withheld. This is a person who has always honestly believed that they were born as the wrong sex and who had lived a great deal of their life as a lie. Frankly, I was impressed with her commitment to changing not only herself, her entire life, and her point of view. Her name is Brandi.  

A great deal of the lifestyle is hidden. It is hidden simply because it is difficult to accept the fact that there is a different point of view that is being practiced. It is much like the discrimination that was so prevalent in my youth. In those days it was about black and white. In this case it is simply people who choose to not act or live in the same way as others. There is still discrimination over gays as well. This is slowly changing. I often wonder why it takes so long for prejudice to make the turn into acceptance. It works both ways. There is prejudice on both sides of the coin. I have never understood why it is so hard for so many to accept a man or a woman for the human they are. Simply because a person is different tells me they are giving me an opportunity to learn and experience something different from them. I have never backed away from learning. If I have been successful in passing this on to my children then my entire life has had a purpose and meaning.  

I learned a great deal about myself and others from people who live this lifestyle. I was forced to push my own limits of acceptance and understanding. Most of my life has been about learning awareness and connection with that power that is greater than us and is indeed each one of us. I have often said that it happens in many different ways for everyone. No one way is better or worse as long as the goal is connection and the goal is achieved. Like any other lifestyle or point of view not all are even considering this path nor are they practicing it for this reason. Some are truly masochistically inclined and some are truly Sadistic and when it becomes a matter of exerting power over another in what I personally consider a very sick way, it most often due to a missing element within that person. I also feel that a true masochist has some serious issues that perhaps they should be looking at. I could be wrong and am willing to admit it however I think extremes in anything can be harmful and dangerous.  

I was talking to Madison online one night at about 11 pm when she says she is having trouble seeing the keyboard. I asked what was going on and she did not respond so I called her. She answered on the second attempt. She was displaying all the classic symptoms of a stroke so I called 911 and got an ambulance moving. Once they were there I told her I was on my way. It is an hour and a half drive and I was in a hurry. There is no way to describe the feelings and emotions that played across me that night. I was very much afraid that Madison had indeed suffered a stroke and all they symptoms pointed to just that. It truly hit home how important this woman had become to me and how much I loved her. I also knew that it was my time to be strong, take control of the situation and take on the real responsibility that comes with the relationship we had agreed upon. When I got to St Joe’s she was sitting in the lobby and was hardly coherent. I came unglued and got those nurses and doctors dancing. There is a two hour time limit for irreparable damage from stroke. I was livid. Tests were run and the night turned into daylight. She was sleeping quite a bit. About mid afternoon the head neuro surgeon shows up and begins to explain his findings. I listened to it all then asked him a series of very pointed questions. He asked Madison who I was and she said a friend who was looking out for her. He told her she was very lucky to have a friend like me who actually understood what he was talking about. It turned she had suffered a migraine that is pretty uncommon as it constricts the vessels in the brain and can and often does display stroke symptoms. She had come back to herself by this time and was released about sundown. As we were walking out to the car, my phone rings and it is Ben informing me that he is taking Miki to the hospital with a dangerous diabetic episode. I told him I was on my way. Ben did it again. He was right there for Miki. I knew Madison was going to be OK and we went to her house. She made me a pot of coffee and I rested my eyes for about fifteen minutes then I hit the road going north. I got to the ER and they were not willing to share much with me. Though I do have medical power of attorney I did not have the paperwork and even though it was in his file at that hospital they had not even requested the file. I was not particularly happy about this but knew he had been stabilized and was no longer in a life threatening situation. I went home and searched through all my paper work then went through all of his. I thought I had given it all back to him but in the end it never turned up. I was exhausted and frustrated and went to bed. I had been going about 60 hours without sleep at this point. The next day all the paperwork was available at the hospital and lab results were back. Miki was coherent and they wanted to keep him for a day or two. It was not a big deal but his chemistry did need some adjustment. He was toxic and once again could well have died had Ben not been aware of the symptoms and acted as quickly as he had. 

I cashed in all my retirement funds that I had been saving and took the penalties. It totaled nearly 9,000 dollars. I had a choice to make and I made it. I knew that money would come in handy for paying bills and all the other normal things that life requires but I also knew that we could get the house very close to done if I went in that direction. I decided to put it into the house. No one wanted to do any of the work. I bought all the required materials and just started on it. I got up every day and worked most of the day doing something. There was an enormous amount to finish but pretty soon everyone got involved. I laid out the plan and we pretty much went for it. There was a lot of sheet rock that needed to go up windows to be installed texturing the entire place and paint everywhere. I wanted to see it done in thirty days and I said so. In the end it took about six weeks and everyone was involved. Miki and I worked at it every day for long hours and the boys and friends filled in where and when they could. However it happened it did get done and they came and installed the carpets. That was like the perfect finishing touch. Carpets made all the difference. I also bought a new refrigerator and a dining table with seating for eight. The only real extravagant thing that I bought was a 48” flat screen TV and I have never regretted it. Wii Golf is a staple around here and everyone plays. The big screen just made it all more fun.  

Madison and I just got closer. She has two teenage girls who were raised in the city so when they came up this way I showed them a bit of the countryside. We went out to Woo Canyon one day with her girls, Sofia and the twins, Zion and Akaria. Akaria kept trying to lead the pack and I kept telling her that it was best if I went first for safety. We were nearly back to the car when she ran ahead a short distance. Sure enough there was a big coon tail rattlesnake in the road. She stopped about four feet from it. Not far enough away. She was freaked out as were all the other girls. I told her to walk very slowly backwards to me and she did. That snake was coiled and ready to strike but it did not. As I approached it carefully it moved off into the bush. I guided everyone around that snake and kept an eye on him. It was a very good lesson for everyone. A rattlesnake makes noise to let you know it is there. It does not mean that it will strike. I don’t like snakes. I don’t like any snakes but I don’t harm them either if it can be avoided. This snake did not strike at a child and I did not strike at it. It was a fair trade. He was near six feet long and as big around as my wrist. I also let Madison’s girls drive my car on the dirt road. Now that was an experience! We did survive. Sometimes I have a need to go to Phoenix and when I do Madison really takes care of me. I get lost every time in that town so she makes sure I have directions that are very specific or will chauffeur me. I got three tickets there this year from the photo enforcement thing they have everywhere in all the construction zones. I have no tickets before these and I intend to fight each one. Speed traps are not appropriate in construction zones where it is enough to just stay alive in the traffic.  

Madison and I worked out a project that we both thought would be a good idea and a good business. We thought that we could rent, lease or purchase a luxury home somewhere in Phoenix and install several slaves and submissive’s there for two reasons. The first reason was so that these people could live the lifestyle, openly and be accepted for who and what they are. The second reason was to start up an online business and manufacture many of our own items from leather, metal, fabric and many other items. I am sure that we could have produced better quality items than we could find on the available market. We did an enormous amount of work in this pursuit. We created the best business model I have ever seen where each person was paid exactly the same including myself and any of the managers. We did some design work and I started making a variety of flogs in a variety of materials. It seemed to me that this was a way for both of us to gain more income. All we really needed was help. We started the interview process and talked to hundreds of people in the lifestyle. Both of us learned a great deal. My biggest lesson was in understanding just how prevalent narcissism is within this community. These people have little sense of community and the value that community presents. They are quite focused on themselves and having their own needs met without regard to anyone else. We both spent many days and hours simply talking to people. Some we met in person. Most of these people were not seeking a connection at all and were only interested in having their personal sexual needs met. It is possible that this happened because of the sources we used to contact these people in the first place. I honestly do not know. I do know that it was a great deal of stress and work and was telling on us both. Should we actually put this project together it would only get harder and I really had to examine the whole idea to see if it was worth the price we were paying and would continue to pay. Madison will do as I ask so in the end the responsibility was mine. We were constantly disappointed by those we met and those we interviewed. There were some exceptions but not enough to justify proceeding with the project. 

I had introduced Madison to Michael Bruce and they were developing a relationship that was getting more and more serious. Michael had come into some money and was willing to help us finance this project and that too was a responsibility that I would have to bear. I could see that Madison was not happy and I was finding that I was not to happy either. The stress was enormous. I suggested that we drop the project. Madison was afraid to do so as we had worked so hard on it and she was worried that I would be very disappointed and that our relationship would change. She was worried that she had failed me in some way. It took a while to convince her that this was in no way the case and we agreed to drop it all. It is never easy to take an idea that you totally believe in, an idea that has been worked out to the last detail and just let it go. It was the correct decision. The weight was lifted from us both and we were both much happier.  

I had some serious depressed days and wandered about not knowing what I should be doing. I found myself drinking more, questioning my own worth to myself and to those around me. I had suicidal thoughts and could not sleep. It was a hard time and it lasted for several weeks. Madison pulled me out of it. She knew I needed a distraction and something pertinent to be doing.  

I had met a photographer whose name is Jack, online who lives in St Louis and the discussions that we were having kept my mind stimulated. It turned out that he had a contract to come to Sedona to photograph a gay rodeo calendar. I asked him a bit about the production and the next thing I knew I was involved with the producers as a grip and as a location director. It was a whole lot of fun and Athena was used in the shoot. She will be the only female in the calendar if those shots do get picked to be used in the calendar.  

Jack introduced me to Fred who is a journalist and who is writing a book about the Manson family. Not about Charlie particularly but about what it was like to live in a commune. He is about forty years old and there is really no way that he can really understand what those times were like, the influences involved from music to drugs or the difference between community living and communal living. We connected and he will be interviewing me at some point soon as I have been there and done that and have been successful at it. That alone is a rare thing. 

This connection and those conversations made me think deeper about my own book effort that had sat on the shelf for so long. I picked it up again and started writing. Madison encouraged me to do it every day and I put in long hours and long days on the project. It helped to get me out of my funk and gave me a purpose and direction. 

Madison is a dear and trusted friend and was the one who most encouraged me to continue with this book project. I still don’t know if I should curse her or bless her. Still, the book is now pretty much up to date. I have asked all the women in my life to add their point of view to this book. I will not edit that content. I think it is important to try to put the whole story down and my point of view is certainly not the only one. I have asked all the children to add whatever they wish too. It will be interesting to see who actually does this and what they have to say. 

Ben moved to Tucson after winning a full scholarship to the University of Arizona and has his first place on his own. He was with me 22 years and I miss him terribly. It is all very good for him. He is now in an environment of culture and education. I envy him and he is doing very well with it all. His major is micro Biology.  

Josh is taking all the prerequisite courses to get into the two year nursing program offered here at the local college. He does have a serious interest in emergency medicine however it is a means to an end for him. He wants to fly helicopters and there is no doubt that he will be successful. He sets a goal and he makes it happen. This year he suffered his first heartbreak and it was really very hard on him. I could do nothing to help except support him in any way he would allow. He still won’t talk about it but he is function quite well. He has been working full time in the summer and part time during school at the state run fish hatchery on Page Springs Road. Josh is now 20 years old. 

Miss Willow is attending college and taking classes that appeal to her artistic nature. She is living with me and is learning some of those hard teenage lessons we all had to learn. It has been a bit of a trial but I am in hopes she will survive this time in her life and do well in her future. She is a good heart and just needs to know that about herself. She is not there quite yet. Willow is now 17. 

I hear from Susie and Savanna and Shaylo a few times a year and they seem to be doing well. We all wish we had the funds to spend some time together but to date that just has not happened. Savanna looks a lot like Willow at that age and a bit like me. We talk from time to time on the phone. She is quite the creative heart too. Savanna is now 12 years old. We are now chatting online much more. 

At this very moment I as I type Sofia is sitting with me with her arm around me. She is so very loving and so smart. She is truly my special little treasure. She is reading now and has won the best in her grade already this year and had been in the paper. Sofia is now 6 years old. 

Miki is still living with us and still doing the garden. He is a blessing to have around. There is no longer any issue with drugs.

Bushan still winters with us and offers his wonderful music. He also helps me with the care of Athena and brings in big piles of food from time to time. He also makes sure I eat as it seems I am often too busy to think about it and he is a wonderful cook.  

Devron Still winters with us too and he is very helpful with the still needed construction. He and Miki rewired the whole place last winter and put in some windows. He is a fair hand.

Anna has told me that she will not add to this project. This is of course her choice and I have an opinion as to why she refuses. We interact all the time because of Sofia and it is all pretty civilized. In a way it is getting better as time goes by. I think she is beginning to understand that I have no wish to harm her in any way. It was a pretty involved and nasty divorce and both sides were forced to say and do things that they now regret. In the end Sofia was served well by the results. She still lives in Cornville.

Heather has said that she would do something to add to this. We are still communicating and pretty well. We shared some very good years and we both know it. She lives in Cornville, just around the corner.

Susie has not said one way or another.

There are others and some will add.

Madison and Michael Bruce are moving in together and I am all for it. I love them both and wish them the very best.  

Me? Well I ain’t dead yet and seem to busy most of the time. I was told the other day that I have contracted some sort of degenerative bone thing in the spine which explains the constant pain. I guess there is some arthritis in there too that is pretty bad. I also have some issues with all the trauma I have seen over the years and some of those scenes to recur. I sleep about four hours a night. I won’t take the drugs they seem to think I need. There is no cure. Age and death catches us all if we survive our childhood. I don’t do drugs of any kind anymore and haven’t for years. Somehow I still have retained rational thought though there surely some who would question that. My life was never all about drugs though I will admit they were available and I took advantage of them whenever I chose. I keep learning and I keep passing on the wisdom that a life like this inevitably brings. The stories I have told here are all true to the best of my recollection though there is no doubt that those other people involved will all have a different perspective. This is particularly true of the women I have been with. There is no doubt that their stories and perspectives will be different. I can honestly say that I did my best with each one of them. I am by no means perfect and if I could have done anything different I think I would have just been more in the moment with them and more attentive. Distraction in relationship is very common and I am guilty of being distracted by other people, the job and the direction we were all going at the time. I have never cheated on a relationship. There were many opportunities but I never once cheated. I am rather proud of that actually.  

Everyone has a story. This is mine. There were a lot of very good times and a lot of times that we all struggled and in the end what really mattered is that there has always been a great deal of love. Then there is the adventure that life puts in front of us and I can say that I never missed one of those. Most of my life has been lived outside of the box. Traveling invisibly right in the middle of all those other people and perspectives. It is a very fine line to walk. To be able to do anything you want is a true gift and often just takes a little creative effort to bring it all together. New adventures are still waiting for me. There are some places on this earth that I would still like to see like the bush in Australia and the ruins in Peru. You can’t go to places like this without the time to really see them and feel the culture of the people. I have always had the time to get to know the people and for some reason they always accepted me into their homes and their lives. These things will happen when the time is right.  

At 57 years of age I find that I am no longer seeking the answers to life. I have found my answers and others come from around the world to discuss the things that matter and answer their own questions. What are these questions? Who am I? Where might I be located within myself? How does reality work? How do I relate to the universe and what is my place within it? Is there a God? Where might God be found? What is love? Is love sustainable? What makes men and women act the way they do in American society and with each other? How does one take a past trauma and turn it around so that it becomes a present success? There are other questions both great and small that I have answered for myself and only one real mystery left to solve. That mystery is of course death. Somehow I do not think that one gets solved without the actual experience. I am putting together another couple of books at the moment. One is all about these questions and the answers that I have come too. There is actually a path and a philosophy to life. The choices we all make in each moment direct our own personal path. The other book is some short stories and a few poems and songs that I have written over the course of my life. It seems like I have always read and I have always written. Though I truly have made the effort to live a life of honor it is never an easy path to follow. It is a choice one makes. To take the higher road and to take personal responsibility for that choice. There are really only two choices that we are offered in this life. We can act or we can react. I did not always live this way. It has taken a lifetime to understand the value and many hard lessons that have brought me to this. I have hope that this narrative and those that will follow will change just one persons perspective on their own life and on their own path. In the end I firmly believe that it is only these choices, our personal honor that we will take with us into the mystery of death. None of us is perfect, me least of all however the path we each walk and our own personal stories need to be told so that those that follow can learn and evolve beyond each of us. This is truly how we humans evolve. I would like to believe we will eventually make it to the point of accepting each other and living in peace on this most beautiful of planets. This is an attainable goal. I firmly believe that each one of us knows there is a higher road, a better path and a better choice and it is up to every single one of us to make our lives matter by choosing not for our own reward or benefit but for the benefit of all. I suppose I could keep rambling on here but I feel that it is really time to close this effort. Whatever happens next in my life will be written by others if they so choose. I will leave you with two things. The three things that matter in life and a definition of Honor as I see it.  

Life:

Show up

Pay attention

Don’t be attached to the results 

Honor 

Honor means you keep your contracts 

Honor means you value truth and justice 

Honor means you keep your word 

Honor means you are there when needed 

Honor means you don’t lie 

Honor means you don’t cheat 

Honor means you don’t steal 

Honor means you help the needy 

Honor means you protect the weak 

Honor means respect for all 

Honor means you do these things no matter what the cost 

This is my world 

What world do you live in? 

There are still a few of us that will not compromise this ideal, no matter what. 

We raise our children in this tradition 

We call this evolution  

Dedication:

This book was started as a simple history for my children. These young people are good examples to all of us and they will no doubt continue to be so. These children are far better people than I was at their age. I do not take credit for raising these children. I provided and I guided and I have always been who and what I am. A parent teaches by example. I have made the extraordinary effort to be a good example. I was not always successful however evolution has a way of removing the faults of the parent from the children. They were quite fortunate that there were always so many other aware and often brilliant people to influence them. I have been truly blessed by all those people and it is to all of them that I dedicate this effort. We have all grown so much together and you all have truly blessed me and my family. To Ben, Josh, Willow, Savanna and Sofia I will only say this; good on Ya! You have always provided a light for a man who was always searching and many of my conclusions have come from observing you. Though absolutely true, to tell you that I love you is totally inadequate. To tell you how proud you have each made me is also inadequate. I ask only one thing of each of you: 

Share your light with at least one other person in your life and in so doing make your lives matter. There is actually one other thing that I have always said but seem to need to repeat here. When I pass, do not mourn me for that will just piss me off. Have a good party and toast a life well lived. My thanks to each of my children for all the gifts given, and my thanks to all those very wonderful people who have shared their lives with me. 

Be sure to write your own story for all those that follow, particularly for your own children. 

Will Walters September 17, 2009 

The adventure continues! 

“The beauty of eternity is

  we have all the time in the world to remember, only love matters.”

  H. H. Amin, aka, Heather Hakola-Walters 9/30/09 

  The tension between us now is taught as a tightrope, torked, twisted and ready to snap. Ripe as a sun soaked blueberry, swelled with the sweet juiciness of life, who’s skin is over stretched to shininess, smooth as an eight ball, destined for the left corner pocket. On the tip of our tongues, whose taste has developed, inching along like the evolution of human higher consciousness, less than visible, as if a silk worm were spinning out the line of time, a thread of incandescing light. Now our eyes twinkle, just shy of the delicate cords break, our faces gnarled and wrinkled, we take a look behind the curtain of our innocent illusions, and wink! For if, and when this precious fruits skin is severed by our lives reflection wisdom bursts forth. Again, the first ray of the suns dawn and what may have ailed us then, is gone. What’s is left is the explosion of insight and the gush of perennial love, mushy, messy, having no possible way of cleaning it up, we swim in the sweet, sweet juice of life, just doing the backstroke, too weak from struggling with our minds and unrealistic expectations, shit, when it comes to Will and I, we dam near float at this point! Our blueberry bubbles of love burst wide open, for all that we have been blessed by and all that he once cursed. Nowadays, far beyond our naiveties, no longer precariously perched on the ego’s tightrope, eventually it broke. Snap! Splash! Flash! We bask on the waters of real love, authentic appreciation and the calm reflection of a past time sweet and bitter as blueberries, silkier and smooth as oiled worms thread, laughing at the exhaustion of our dread. No one else could lean in and nod their heads like us, knowing what we know, having experienced and shared so much of life as Will and I. In the end, at the present, now beginning again, I crack a big, shinny eight ball grin and thank him, for what? Only he and I would know! Wink! 

A Note from Kathy 

It has been 35 years since I first met Will. I was 16 and had met him at a party at a friend of his, Mike Bruce. I am not even sure how I ended up at that party. But I determine it as fate, and the everlasting impression that Will left with me as an impressionable teenager. Will, to say the least was a "colorful" character. Dirty minded at heart, never holding back on what he said to anyone, and would express his point at view at every corner...I was taken by him, he was my first love, and to be perfectly honest there is always something special and close to the heart about the first person you fall in love with. I loved his honesty, his sense of humor and ability to enjoy life for all it was worth...  

At the time, Will and I started off as friends. He liked my girlfriend Gina and she was dating Andy, another friend of Mike's at the time. As a friend he had asked me if I thought it would be alright to ask Gina out.."Hell, no" I thought to myself, I want you!". So manipulantly, I told him that I thought it would not be a good idea...So Andy, Gina, Will and I were all friends, me of course ending up with the prize (Will). I remember sometimes that he would get this glint in his eye when he was joking. Sometimes he would imitate Groucho Marx, with the cigar to his mouth when saying something funny or perverted in a sense. Of course it seemed perverted to me only because I was 16 and him being 23. I had actually lied to Will about my age (oops another manipulating endeavor), and told him I was 17...I knew if I had told him the truth that he would not have dated me..And at 16 we moved in together... At times he would mention this "Hilary". She was this beautiful blonde that he knew before "our time". Hilary was beautiful, she was friends with his friend Fillmore who was involved with Heroin. I didn't know Hilary, personally, but Will had talked so highly about her that I wanted to get to know her. She went to my high school, and I introduced myself, really only wanting to know what Will had seen in her, but in the end we grew to be the closest of friends.  

I don't necessarily remember specific events other than a crazy weekend of drinking, sexing and fun at Clear Lake with Andy, Will & Gina. I remember that it was an exclusive golf course. Gina and I were so fucking drunk and on acid. We were an embarrassment to everyone. We were laughing so damn hard. We were staying at some cabins and we had a fire pit. I remember crying and laughing because I didn't know how to turn the fire back on once it went out...Other than that I remember going to Santa Cruz once with Will when Gina's mother was visiting. We were smoking weed in the car, and Gina's mom got a second hand smoke high from it...We got to Santa Cruz and she bought some salt water taffy, and her dentures got stuck.  

Will was on probation for the time we got together. When he told his P.O. officer about me living with him, he ran a background check on me and came back and told Will that I was only 16. Damn Rat Bastard, blowing my cover like that. I was so heartbroken when Will told me to move out because I lied to him about my age. Couldn't believe he was going to dismiss me like that...Of course now, I realize that he had no choice, but at the time it was the end of my world..Around the time that this happened, I had befriended a psychic who lived downstairs from Will. The psychic had no idea that Will and I were together...He just knew we were friends... He read my aura though and had said that there was someone special in my life .He had termed "this person" as somewhat of a "joker"...and frankly that is how I see Will always laughing, always poking fun always finding enlightenment from others in life...  

Will and I continued to keep in contact. Will moved into this townhouse on "Easy Street"...Go figure! One night, we were watching the movie Tora, Tora, Tora...Stoned of course, we watched the entire movie, and at the very end I asked Will very innocently "Where was Pearl Harbor"...Duh!!! Will just about fell over with my ignorance...  

I remember Will having a 30th birthday party when he lived in Port Costa. He was with Heather at the time. Will had always said that he would "die by 30"....He actually had a wood coffin at that party. I thought that was hilarious but so typically Will...  

Over the years, Will has crossed my mind several times. We had lost contact...I thought that I would see if I could locate him, because I was planning to drive through Arizona. It was quite a visit. Will still has that glint in his eye when he smiles. He is probably one of the most educated people I know. But educated in a philosophical sense. A man of wisdom. I loved to see the connection he has with his kids. He took time to show me around Sedona, I really value the time that we spent together. We had long talks about the crossroads that I was at in my life. Will has a good sense about people and relationships. I certainly had felt that even though the absence of several years passing, that nothing had changed. I had learned the importance of honesty in our relationship; it was a hard lesson for me to bear but certainly is something I value today...There will always be a special place in my heart for Will, for the short amount of time that this incredible person had influenced me and the person I am today. 

A NOTE FROM GINA, KATIES BEST FRIEND 

I hope I am not too late but I remember the first time we met in Palo Alto at one of your parties I was so young and naive I was a fish out of water for sure, I do remember going to Clear Lake. You and I want to say his name was Andy, me and Kathy. We dropped acid you guys were playing golf. Me and Kathy were high and drinking beer driving a golf cart. I ended up sleeping in your room because Andy insisted we sleep together and I didn't want to. Anyway Clear Lake was beautiful, I also remember us all living together and you growing pot in the closet you were such a fan of Star Trek we had to watch it every night. I remember when Kathy asked you where Pearl Harbor was and if looks could kill, than that fateful night you came in my room and you left such an impact on me I will never forget it. And let’s not forget my sister Tina and you, Kathy and my Mom, me Tina and Diane in the back seat driving to Santa Cruz you and Kathy getting high in the car Mom got out and said I don't know what has gotten in to me we all started laughing. I did meet your Ex, Heather, in Phoenix and was disappointed I didn't see you. Any way I hope this help a little.  

Love you,

Gina 

I was having the time of my life I was only 18 but felt so grown up living there with you guys. We have always been on good terms, I could never 

have pursued anything because of the way Kathy felt about you. Buy you have always been in my thoughts throughout the years and I am glad 

we found each other again, let’s not lose it again.

Love ya Gina

It was a nice experience but scared the shit out of me at the time. You are like an old shoe we haven't seen or talked to each other for years but it seems like yesterday

Gina 

Sayings:

Only three things will kill you bad luck, stupidity and time

Good health is simply natures slowest way of killing you nobody dies of it

A child’s job is to become greater than the sum of their parents (evolution)

Wisdom is free, knowledge you pay for

Where the meat meets the cleaver

The three rules to life: Show up, Pay attention, don’t be attached to the results

Will's Autobiography 

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