We just got back from Portland. Good trip. Some rain both ways. Two sad-looking eagles, feathers askew, each perched on the high point of his own snag, waiting out the cloudburst.
The doc visit was good. Lab numbers are great: I’m a poster boy for good lab numbers. Doc sez she’s getting ready to PCS to some other cycle in her career. It happens to all these guys at the teaching hospital linked to this VA. They get funds, and their docs are first-rate. Next time I go to Portland, in two months, the new doc will probably be there. Ah. Well, Dr. Moore has been a pretty good doc, just like Dr. Lyecette before her. I’m running through docs at the rate of one doc every two years. I hope to see several more of them. The hospital grunts are all permanent party, though, so I always have more or less the same crew of nurses to kick around.
On the way home we stopped for lunch at the IHOP just off the metacloverleaf multiramp bridgeplex at Springfield. It was fun finding the IHOP after running through this disorientation course. I especially liked navigating the ramp exchange's construction zone during the heavy cloudburst. I truly hope that impatient trucker who was following me gets his bowels back in order soon. No person should have to live with that kind of rage. And that was the good part of the IHOP visit. The bad part was the fillycheese steak sando. I don't know what I was thinking. Ah well. The IHOP menu bragged about being the home of the bottomless coffee pot. They serve more or less typical restaurant coffee. Next trip, I'm gonna hold out for the Casa del Pueblo, down the road a couple hours in Trail.
Anyhow, the rest of I-5 was great. The scenery is pumped green stuff and/or with blossoms. The huge valley between Roseburg and Portland is filled with neat stuff. One stretch is miles and miles of commercial flower and tree farms, thousand-acre plots of seed grasses, and maybe a few thousand-acre sod farms as well. Not a lot of animal pastures here, but a few dozen low-acreage lots with a horse pen nearby, houses scattered around riparian tree lines. One or two small herds of goats, a couple small herds of sheep. Goofy llamas, a couple pairs, a few solitary ones. Some folks have had luck using llamas as herd guards for the goats. Llamas are hard on coyotes, they say. I say they should wonder about how a mountain lion fits into the concept.
No wrecks, no near misses, and except for me trying to get off the Freeway in Springfield, no assholes on the road.
Nice tunes on the radio, and a dry run on realty from NPR. Some guy gave a sort of brisk narrative about how the local Kallapooya folks used the camas plants that grow in the interior wetlands of Oregon...turns out that the interior wetlands have been drained, so the camas doesn't grow in such profusion as it used to. Nowadays, sez the commentator, central Oregonians grow flowers and sod where the wild camas, and the Kallapooya, used to thrive.
Anyhow, no drama, just a nice trip with my honey. She makes me try to do her goddam crossword for her. I guess words into imagined squares at 70 miles per hour. It takes a hundred miles to do a puzzle, because we are not working very hard at it. I don't know who the first chancellor of Germany was. Four letters. I think it's a bogus clue.
After Roseburg we drive through the mountains, negotiate long grades with big trucks, hotshot gofasters, oldfarts, and some guy who was drunk or on good meds. The Umpquah rivers converge at Roseburg, and we follow the South Umpquah for about forty miles before we begin to cross the several transverse ranges that take us to the Rogue drainage. We pass through stretches of clear weather, but some of the winds are hard gusts. Some of the showers are outright downpours. Traffic itself is moving scenery. Big trucks wobble before my eyes, water spray from the wet road makes huge fogs around the big trucks’ wheels feel like running through a car wash as we pass them.
The RV Boys pull manifold toytrailers from one-tons or motor homes. Their combinations are limitless...pickups pulling an open trailer carrying four quads and some gear, enclosed box trailers large enough to hold a pair of racing cars; all kinds of motor homes that pull huge things or cars behind them, campers of all sizes like guppies weaving in and out among the big stuff. We were in a little car, RedBud's Trailblazer.
RedBud sez, a deep-sea diver is always under a lot of pressure.
I say what?
She sez, that’s the quip. A DEEPSEA DIVER IS ALWAYS UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE. What about KURZ? She sez.
I dunno, I tell her.
The last few of the mountain passes have good vistas, then we are in Grants Pass, and descend into the Rogue River Valley. It seems a lot like the final approach pattern of a long flight when I dive off the freeway at a rural off-ramp, then slide into surface traffic once again when I get to the main road near our house. I almost want to put my landing gear down. Have to sit a minute in my driveway to get the damned hips awake. Takes a while to stand fully upright in the driveway.
You get the idea.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
Mokuleia
I have to think hard to remember now. This was over 30 years ago.
From Maili Beach on the leeward side, you go south to Nanakuli, then turn left up the mountain, Lualualei, a snake of a road with a great view, through Kolekole Pass and over into Schofield Barracks, then down to Waialua, turn left, follow the road to Dillingham Beach. Sandy road off to the right takes you to a break of scrubby conifers, salt-cedars maybe. Or you can come up the center of the island from Honolulu, as long as you get to Mokuleia Beach.
Facing the sea. Public beach on the right, military beach a ways down the road on the left. Fresh water from the public beach. In the stand of scrub trees a couple dozen beach dwellers live in about a dozen huts. Huts are secluded, at the end of trails in the sand, the trails themselves nearly hidden among thick scrub brush and trees. Pretty much everyone has an ocean view.
I live in a tree hut. Built on the trunks of three of the 40 foot pine trees. The bedroom is completely enclosed, ten feet off the ground, accessed by a door at the top of a ladder, a 12 X 15 foot room, six-foot ceiling. Several glass windows display the beach--about half of this wall is glass. One of the windows was adapted from the top of a door, so the scene before me is living pictures, a real-time triptych, with sound. The mattress is a gray military wool blanket folded on a reed mat, an army poncho liner arranged on top.
A small, low table usable while seated on the floor—mostly for reading or writing, since the food usually happens downstairs. Candles are ensconced in coconut shells. If I light several I can see well enough to write in my journals, study, do my homework from the University. If I’m not trying to read I light only one, or maybe none. Guitar in its case in the corner. Some bamboo tokers lying around near the bed. Sketchbooks in a pile on a smallish shelf.
It should have been better than it was.
The dog’s name was Frog. I don’t know why. He was almost a benji, about 40 pounds. Too cute for his own good. He showed up one day and stayed. Most times he slept downstairs on the sandy floor of the kitchen. He didn’t like having people pet him unless they were going to give him something to eat. I hardly ever fed him.
All those people down at the public beach fed him. Sometimes he’d even bring food back to me. It was touching. He’d sneak a whole chicken off somebody’s picnic table and bring it back to me. Some haole tourist hot on Frog’s heels is standing next to my treehouse flapping his arms and trying to catch his breath, and I pretend I’m giving Frog a ration of shit for stealing the chicken. The haole doesn’t want the chicken back. He walks off in a huff. I split the chicken with Frog. It works out okay. This is not stuff you write home about.
The diving is good. I keep my snorkeling gear and my sling in the kitchen. The kitchen is three walls and two counters under the bedroom. I hang a 50 gallon lister bag under one set of branches. Some utility ropes and a few boxes of stuff lay about on the counters. Some shelves with coffee and honey, powdered milk. Some jars. Utensils, anyone who needs it can make coffee, tea, have some food. I also have a camp-stove, one burner.
Many mornings I take the snorkeling gear and paddle out over the shallow channels to look for a fish. Any meat eater, a foot or so long will do. Roast him and eat him with some rice, soy sauce, a spot of tea. Or snag an octopus, not as good, but it fills the belly. Guava, papaya, sometimes pineapple, lilikoi, strawberry guava, breadfruit, whatever is ripe will fill up the menu.
My version of being a starving student in the early 70’s on the beach at Mokuleia. I had a car, and drove into the Manoa Valley four days a week for classes. The GI bill was more than enough to feed me and keep me in clothes, but I had to budget it to buy books and pay tuition.
Adventures in paradise, for sure. There are reasons why it should have been better than it was, but it’s fair to say that it was as good as it could get. You see, it was before Telstar connected the islands to the mainland.
From Maili Beach on the leeward side, you go south to Nanakuli, then turn left up the mountain, Lualualei, a snake of a road with a great view, through Kolekole Pass and over into Schofield Barracks, then down to Waialua, turn left, follow the road to Dillingham Beach. Sandy road off to the right takes you to a break of scrubby conifers, salt-cedars maybe. Or you can come up the center of the island from Honolulu, as long as you get to Mokuleia Beach.
Facing the sea. Public beach on the right, military beach a ways down the road on the left. Fresh water from the public beach. In the stand of scrub trees a couple dozen beach dwellers live in about a dozen huts. Huts are secluded, at the end of trails in the sand, the trails themselves nearly hidden among thick scrub brush and trees. Pretty much everyone has an ocean view.
I live in a tree hut. Built on the trunks of three of the 40 foot pine trees. The bedroom is completely enclosed, ten feet off the ground, accessed by a door at the top of a ladder, a 12 X 15 foot room, six-foot ceiling. Several glass windows display the beach--about half of this wall is glass. One of the windows was adapted from the top of a door, so the scene before me is living pictures, a real-time triptych, with sound. The mattress is a gray military wool blanket folded on a reed mat, an army poncho liner arranged on top.
A small, low table usable while seated on the floor—mostly for reading or writing, since the food usually happens downstairs. Candles are ensconced in coconut shells. If I light several I can see well enough to write in my journals, study, do my homework from the University. If I’m not trying to read I light only one, or maybe none. Guitar in its case in the corner. Some bamboo tokers lying around near the bed. Sketchbooks in a pile on a smallish shelf.
It should have been better than it was.
The dog’s name was Frog. I don’t know why. He was almost a benji, about 40 pounds. Too cute for his own good. He showed up one day and stayed. Most times he slept downstairs on the sandy floor of the kitchen. He didn’t like having people pet him unless they were going to give him something to eat. I hardly ever fed him.
All those people down at the public beach fed him. Sometimes he’d even bring food back to me. It was touching. He’d sneak a whole chicken off somebody’s picnic table and bring it back to me. Some haole tourist hot on Frog’s heels is standing next to my treehouse flapping his arms and trying to catch his breath, and I pretend I’m giving Frog a ration of shit for stealing the chicken. The haole doesn’t want the chicken back. He walks off in a huff. I split the chicken with Frog. It works out okay. This is not stuff you write home about.
The diving is good. I keep my snorkeling gear and my sling in the kitchen. The kitchen is three walls and two counters under the bedroom. I hang a 50 gallon lister bag under one set of branches. Some utility ropes and a few boxes of stuff lay about on the counters. Some shelves with coffee and honey, powdered milk. Some jars. Utensils, anyone who needs it can make coffee, tea, have some food. I also have a camp-stove, one burner.
Many mornings I take the snorkeling gear and paddle out over the shallow channels to look for a fish. Any meat eater, a foot or so long will do. Roast him and eat him with some rice, soy sauce, a spot of tea. Or snag an octopus, not as good, but it fills the belly. Guava, papaya, sometimes pineapple, lilikoi, strawberry guava, breadfruit, whatever is ripe will fill up the menu.
My version of being a starving student in the early 70’s on the beach at Mokuleia. I had a car, and drove into the Manoa Valley four days a week for classes. The GI bill was more than enough to feed me and keep me in clothes, but I had to budget it to buy books and pay tuition.
Adventures in paradise, for sure. There are reasons why it should have been better than it was, but it’s fair to say that it was as good as it could get. You see, it was before Telstar connected the islands to the mainland.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Marley revisit
One or two sample days, at this time of the year, a long time ago.
Dec 64
Sukuran, Okinawa...
USO tour demonstration of fencing techniques by some guy and his wife, don't remember their names. He was an Olympic champ, and she was pretty good, too. Foil, epee, sabre, and how they can be fairly dangerous, flashing quickly, better than a rifle with a bayonet, and his wife, the roundeye, looked really good in that tight outfit. Merry Christmas on the bulletin board in the barracks, chow hall rules are that you have to wear Class A uniform, or appropriate civvies to the meal. Turkey, ham, sweet potatoes. Okinawans are good cooks. Some movie down at the movie house, a couple of blocks from our barracks. That afternoon after the movie I sat on the turtle shell tomb with Joe Skaarup, and we laughed about something until we were sore. Took a taxi downtown to Gate Two Street, to pawn some stuff for about eleven dollars, went to the bar to drink Suntory whiskey with my girlfriend, walked home with her later that night to our little house on the side of the hill just above the Moromi area, near the little hotel that had the steam baths. Merry Christmas with an Okinawa accent mark. Long black hairs in my hairbrush.
Dec 65...
We were still soggy from that deal in the La Nga river valley, but we went right back out, this time to the Courtenay Plantation. This was not good stuff. But I was on a new team, having been shuffled in with the survivors from my first team, and the survivors from Team Quail, and a new guy. It was a good mix. We did everything in the dark. That new kid got shot through both feet when we were moving across the dirt runway. I can't think of his name now. That's disturbing. I carried him for a kilometer on my back, doing the airborne dogtrot in the dark, plodding like a goddam pack horse, head down, thinking about my feet, hearing the teams making noises all around me. He never made a sound. We stopped and gave him some surettes in the dark, bam, bam, one in each thigh, and he patted me on the shoulder. Rakemouth Jones carried him the rest of the way, two or three kilometers, held him in his arms like a baby. I know his face like I know my own, but for some reason I just can't think of his name.
Courtenay was mostly flat, trees in rows, service roads, not many places for us to hide, but it was dark and we moved easy. I kept my eye on my azimuth, my slackman kept a hand on my back and watched for me when I stopped to read the compass. The cav had moved their night position forward about two hundred meters without telling us. They didn't know we were coming until some guy saw us moving in his starlight scope and told his M-60 gunner to fire his FPL. Everyone on their line followed the tracers to us. We got down behind the low mud berms, hid behind the little rubber trees, the rounds came snapping in. It was a miracle that we didn't get hit. I was in a white-out, had one of the gunners in my starlight scope, was really thinking hard why I shouldn't just shoot him. But they stopped shooting. Two more times we went into Courtenay that week, before the Aussies hit that big ambush. Creepy Courtenay Rubber Plantation.
We rode out of Courtenay in choppers, a good thing, because the rest of the brigade had to ride back in trucks. Twenty minutes at 2000 ft, cool air, one foot on the skid. We landed at the huge Bien Hoa airport, three teams that went to Courtenay, and piled into a deuce and a half, filled the truck and then some, some sitting on laps, others on the floor, a big heap of muddy boonie rats. Big to-do near the runway, hundreds of guys in the bleachers. Turned out Bob Hope and his boys were there. We made the driver stop, walked in along the flank of the bleachers and sat down near the the front of the crowd, at the foot of the stage. The band was cool: Les Brown and his band of renown, all have gauze bandages across their noses and some even have their cheeks and foreheads covered. Sunburn. Troopers all I guess. Bob Hope is lame as usual, but we think it's cool. Laugh and clap. Joey Heatherton dances, we pound the ground with our fists and whoop it up. One of the guys shucks his web gear and jumps up on the stage with a couple other GIs from the crowd, and he does the jitterbug with Joey Heatherton, actually touches her on the belly on one of the turns. Later on back in the hootch we all form a line and kneel in front of him so we can kiss the hand that touched her belly. But it doesn't last, because the MPs come up and ask us to leave, on account of how we are covered in mud and carry lethal weapons. We are stunned. We just got thrown out of the bobfuckinghope show. Bob watches without comment, barely a pause in his patter, and I notice for the first time that his eyes are flat, like a snake's eyes are flat.
I don't remember any specific comments about it, but I think somebody, somewhere, mentioned that it was Christmas. Anyhow, we didn't see Santa Claus. It don't mean nothing.
Oregon 06. Hooda thunkit?
This year we are in the throes, making the rounds. For the first time in a long time (not counting Christmas two years ago, when we were in Seattle) that RedBud isn't cooking up a dinner. One of her daughters put on a spread last night at her house, and we went there. It was good. Grandkids and a pile of wrappings all over the living room floor. Today we are going over to her mother's house for another round of holiday gathering. We are intransitive: we holiday gather every now and then. This is all good. Even the rain has gotten warm and gentle today.
Somewhere some grunt is not having a good time today. I hope he gets the chance to look back on it all and laugh.
Dec 64
Sukuran, Okinawa...
USO tour demonstration of fencing techniques by some guy and his wife, don't remember their names. He was an Olympic champ, and she was pretty good, too. Foil, epee, sabre, and how they can be fairly dangerous, flashing quickly, better than a rifle with a bayonet, and his wife, the roundeye, looked really good in that tight outfit. Merry Christmas on the bulletin board in the barracks, chow hall rules are that you have to wear Class A uniform, or appropriate civvies to the meal. Turkey, ham, sweet potatoes. Okinawans are good cooks. Some movie down at the movie house, a couple of blocks from our barracks. That afternoon after the movie I sat on the turtle shell tomb with Joe Skaarup, and we laughed about something until we were sore. Took a taxi downtown to Gate Two Street, to pawn some stuff for about eleven dollars, went to the bar to drink Suntory whiskey with my girlfriend, walked home with her later that night to our little house on the side of the hill just above the Moromi area, near the little hotel that had the steam baths. Merry Christmas with an Okinawa accent mark. Long black hairs in my hairbrush.
Dec 65...
We were still soggy from that deal in the La Nga river valley, but we went right back out, this time to the Courtenay Plantation. This was not good stuff. But I was on a new team, having been shuffled in with the survivors from my first team, and the survivors from Team Quail, and a new guy. It was a good mix. We did everything in the dark. That new kid got shot through both feet when we were moving across the dirt runway. I can't think of his name now. That's disturbing. I carried him for a kilometer on my back, doing the airborne dogtrot in the dark, plodding like a goddam pack horse, head down, thinking about my feet, hearing the teams making noises all around me. He never made a sound. We stopped and gave him some surettes in the dark, bam, bam, one in each thigh, and he patted me on the shoulder. Rakemouth Jones carried him the rest of the way, two or three kilometers, held him in his arms like a baby. I know his face like I know my own, but for some reason I just can't think of his name.
Courtenay was mostly flat, trees in rows, service roads, not many places for us to hide, but it was dark and we moved easy. I kept my eye on my azimuth, my slackman kept a hand on my back and watched for me when I stopped to read the compass. The cav had moved their night position forward about two hundred meters without telling us. They didn't know we were coming until some guy saw us moving in his starlight scope and told his M-60 gunner to fire his FPL. Everyone on their line followed the tracers to us. We got down behind the low mud berms, hid behind the little rubber trees, the rounds came snapping in. It was a miracle that we didn't get hit. I was in a white-out, had one of the gunners in my starlight scope, was really thinking hard why I shouldn't just shoot him. But they stopped shooting. Two more times we went into Courtenay that week, before the Aussies hit that big ambush. Creepy Courtenay Rubber Plantation.
We rode out of Courtenay in choppers, a good thing, because the rest of the brigade had to ride back in trucks. Twenty minutes at 2000 ft, cool air, one foot on the skid. We landed at the huge Bien Hoa airport, three teams that went to Courtenay, and piled into a deuce and a half, filled the truck and then some, some sitting on laps, others on the floor, a big heap of muddy boonie rats. Big to-do near the runway, hundreds of guys in the bleachers. Turned out Bob Hope and his boys were there. We made the driver stop, walked in along the flank of the bleachers and sat down near the the front of the crowd, at the foot of the stage. The band was cool: Les Brown and his band of renown, all have gauze bandages across their noses and some even have their cheeks and foreheads covered. Sunburn. Troopers all I guess. Bob Hope is lame as usual, but we think it's cool. Laugh and clap. Joey Heatherton dances, we pound the ground with our fists and whoop it up. One of the guys shucks his web gear and jumps up on the stage with a couple other GIs from the crowd, and he does the jitterbug with Joey Heatherton, actually touches her on the belly on one of the turns. Later on back in the hootch we all form a line and kneel in front of him so we can kiss the hand that touched her belly. But it doesn't last, because the MPs come up and ask us to leave, on account of how we are covered in mud and carry lethal weapons. We are stunned. We just got thrown out of the bobfuckinghope show. Bob watches without comment, barely a pause in his patter, and I notice for the first time that his eyes are flat, like a snake's eyes are flat.
I don't remember any specific comments about it, but I think somebody, somewhere, mentioned that it was Christmas. Anyhow, we didn't see Santa Claus. It don't mean nothing.
Oregon 06. Hooda thunkit?
This year we are in the throes, making the rounds. For the first time in a long time (not counting Christmas two years ago, when we were in Seattle) that RedBud isn't cooking up a dinner. One of her daughters put on a spread last night at her house, and we went there. It was good. Grandkids and a pile of wrappings all over the living room floor. Today we are going over to her mother's house for another round of holiday gathering. We are intransitive: we holiday gather every now and then. This is all good. Even the rain has gotten warm and gentle today.
Somewhere some grunt is not having a good time today. I hope he gets the chance to look back on it all and laugh.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
November, Thanks
Home is where the heart is.
This year we're going to RedBud's mother's house. This event moves around from home to home, depending on whatever the wind blows at us when the appropriate Thursday comes around. All the family--the in laws, outlaws, hangers on--show up with side dishes, mobs form and dissolve, tidal conversations move from room to room, kids eyeing grand-kids, who wander around among the forest of legs; they work the room with aplomb, confidant that they are what it's all about. They aren't far from the truth. Later on extra food disappears into containers, taken home mostly by those with the kids. It's all good, sure a lot better than the La Nga River Valley, 1965, thermite cans a few days late, but the cook from Troop E, 17th Cav, put out his "A" rations buffet for us in an LZ the precise size of the diameter of the main rotor of a Huey, and it was good then too. You can't buy this stuff anywhere.
Good food, people you love to share with it.
Life is good. I hope the rest of you are as lucky as I am.
This year we're going to RedBud's mother's house. This event moves around from home to home, depending on whatever the wind blows at us when the appropriate Thursday comes around. All the family--the in laws, outlaws, hangers on--show up with side dishes, mobs form and dissolve, tidal conversations move from room to room, kids eyeing grand-kids, who wander around among the forest of legs; they work the room with aplomb, confidant that they are what it's all about. They aren't far from the truth. Later on extra food disappears into containers, taken home mostly by those with the kids. It's all good, sure a lot better than the La Nga River Valley, 1965, thermite cans a few days late, but the cook from Troop E, 17th Cav, put out his "A" rations buffet for us in an LZ the precise size of the diameter of the main rotor of a Huey, and it was good then too. You can't buy this stuff anywhere.
Good food, people you love to share with it.
Life is good. I hope the rest of you are as lucky as I am.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
To noodle
You noodle the catfish. Carry the neater snakes home in a minnow bucket.
Noodling...it's a harmless pastime. My okie nephews were great noodlers. Since the time I was about five years old until I was 12 or so, we visited the relatives around Holdenville possibly every-other year. Every time I went back to okiehomie to visit I went noodling with my sister's kids, in the swamp near their house. Two nephews and a niece were just my age.
Summer in Oklahoma. Kids out running around, even at night. Informal. We wore cut-off denims, no shoes or shirts. It's a small town, and it gets rural right at the last stop sign. We'd go to the swamp, where the boys had built a board skiff. It was water tight, and carried three, or two with one guy pushing. That sort of thing. We caught water snakes, turtles, and catfish.
An alligator snapper can easily weigh 50 pounds, have a head as wide as my foot. You can keep them in a burlap sack in the boat, and they'll lie quietly. But when you carry them home, you have to hold the tail, because they have very long necks, and if you try to hold them anywhere on their shell, they'll snap you good. They can take off a finger. You hold them by the tail, and they stick their necks up along the shell, mouth agape, looking around for you, and your companions stay well out of range of that head, because it strikes like a snake. You let the snapper get hold of your pants if you're wearing long pants. They'll hang on for a long time, keep the mouth busy, won't bite anything else. You have to pay attention, because if they let go the pant leg, they might get interested in your bare toes. When we go home we realize we smell like fish and swamp water. We put all the critters, except the catfish, into a pit in the back yard. Most of them are gone in the morning. The catfish went for dinner.
Most times we are accompanied by the blond cocker, Dusty. Dusty was a companion, not much of a pet. He'd play fetch with you if you insisted, but you had to put up with his condescending looks when he brought back the ball. I figured he liked to go with us mostly because, at the swamp, the boys let him ride in the boat. Also was Friday, the duck. He was Dusty's companion, and where ever Dusty went, so did Friday. He mostly walked, although he was a good flier. Every now and then he'd perch on Dusty's butt, and Dusty would let him ride. Sometimes Dusty and Friday slept in a pile. Friday was sociable. He liked for you to scratch him behind his eyes. Sometimes he would put his head in our laps, close his eyes, hold real still, waiting for his scratches. Friday loved the swamp.
Lots of fun. Drove my sister nuts, though, with all the critters. Lots of those snakes went under the house, possibly at least one cottonmouth.
Noodling...it's a harmless pastime. My okie nephews were great noodlers. Since the time I was about five years old until I was 12 or so, we visited the relatives around Holdenville possibly every-other year. Every time I went back to okiehomie to visit I went noodling with my sister's kids, in the swamp near their house. Two nephews and a niece were just my age.
Summer in Oklahoma. Kids out running around, even at night. Informal. We wore cut-off denims, no shoes or shirts. It's a small town, and it gets rural right at the last stop sign. We'd go to the swamp, where the boys had built a board skiff. It was water tight, and carried three, or two with one guy pushing. That sort of thing. We caught water snakes, turtles, and catfish.
An alligator snapper can easily weigh 50 pounds, have a head as wide as my foot. You can keep them in a burlap sack in the boat, and they'll lie quietly. But when you carry them home, you have to hold the tail, because they have very long necks, and if you try to hold them anywhere on their shell, they'll snap you good. They can take off a finger. You hold them by the tail, and they stick their necks up along the shell, mouth agape, looking around for you, and your companions stay well out of range of that head, because it strikes like a snake. You let the snapper get hold of your pants if you're wearing long pants. They'll hang on for a long time, keep the mouth busy, won't bite anything else. You have to pay attention, because if they let go the pant leg, they might get interested in your bare toes. When we go home we realize we smell like fish and swamp water. We put all the critters, except the catfish, into a pit in the back yard. Most of them are gone in the morning. The catfish went for dinner.
Most times we are accompanied by the blond cocker, Dusty. Dusty was a companion, not much of a pet. He'd play fetch with you if you insisted, but you had to put up with his condescending looks when he brought back the ball. I figured he liked to go with us mostly because, at the swamp, the boys let him ride in the boat. Also was Friday, the duck. He was Dusty's companion, and where ever Dusty went, so did Friday. He mostly walked, although he was a good flier. Every now and then he'd perch on Dusty's butt, and Dusty would let him ride. Sometimes Dusty and Friday slept in a pile. Friday was sociable. He liked for you to scratch him behind his eyes. Sometimes he would put his head in our laps, close his eyes, hold real still, waiting for his scratches. Friday loved the swamp.
Lots of fun. Drove my sister nuts, though, with all the critters. Lots of those snakes went under the house, possibly at least one cottonmouth.
Monday, October 03, 2005
Dry Leaves
I always like autumn in the high country. All the summer campers went home and left the near trails empty, so I could walk naked from the camp to the creek and back without having to listen to a buck snort. The summer T-storms have quit, and it isn't yet time for the snow. The weather is so perfect it makes my face hurt in the mornings when I lean down over the fire to blow up some coals for the morning coffee. I smell like campfires and mules.
I never liked tents, and usually didn’t used them. I just set up my tarps, slept with the bags and saddles. Cool-back pads laid on a ground tarp, wrapped my vest around my dayclothes for a pillow. No bed ever rested me as good as this.
Autumn pastures are thick with hot flowers and drying annuals, which the horses and mules love, and which keep them strong and enthusiastic. My little mare was so enthusiastic that, on some crisp mornings, I had to hop 50 yards with one foot in the stirrup, trying to get up in the saddle while she sauntered out of camp...ah, man, those arabs love to walk....the goddam mules fall in line behind her, watch me hop along like an idiot. Mules laugh, you know. I could always tell.
My favorite camps were the alpine ones—high above normal trees—where the mountain gods play canyon, stacking rocks the size of small towns into walls that make your mind go blank trying to take them in. Snow, flakes the size of a glove, drifting down, steal the casual colors from the air, turn the stunted high-sierra junipers into dark shadows. Younger me, sits cross-legged on a saddle blanket, with a tarp over my shoulders, watching my small stove heat coffee in a GI canteen cup. I put in extra sugar and powdered milk, let the cup heat my hands through my gloves. All the casual sounds have been absorbed by the snow. My heart beats in my ears. Stereo winds sing on the canyon walls, sing across the stands of small trees, fly up the canyon and meet above me in the notch at the top of the canyon. If I look up there, I could see the scratch on the canyon wall—the trail, actually—that we will traverse later on in the morning. I hear the horse and mules scuffing around in the trees, clattering among the rocks, lipping out scraps of fodder from around the bases of the little trees and bushes. Now and then one of them will look toward the camp in anticipation. The GI cup is warm in my hands. The mountain gods look down on me with calm eyes. I would stay here forever.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Letter to a friend
You guys...I've thought about that boat trip lots of times. My timing sucked, or I would have taken up the invitation so graciously offered. Ah. Well.
You said something about The sweet spot...nah, sweet spots.
In those days I was in the High Sierras, working as a packer for the Forest Service. One trip I went several days away from the headquarters at Bolsillo Creek, back up behind the Silver Divide, leading five mules, making my rounds with supplies to the two trail crews that were operating in the area. My pal, Dooley, came up from Shaver Lake to go on the trip with me.
Iva Bell Hot Springs. One night after a 30-mile ride, the horses and mules were grazing in a stock pasture at the confluence of two granite canyons, I sat in a hot pool with 24 naked Christian women who'd hiked in from above Fish Creek Canyon. Under a full moon. Total coincidence, us all being there at the same time. Dooley had shot a deer just the day before, and early on in the evening a couple of the Christian women brought some chilis, potatoes and onions to our camp when they smelled the venison we were roasting. I would have sworn to god that night if I'd not had my mouth full of fried onions, potatoes, and that deer’s tender backstraps.
But, the next night the Christian women were gone, and a couple of hippie women who were camped up the hillside brought some peyote buttons to barter for the residual venison chili. Whew. It was a huge mistake for Dooley, but fortunately for me, I had left camp that morning to transport a backpacker who'd hurt his leg—left Dooley in camp because I’d put the backpacker on his horse, put his gear and my bedroll on one of the mules. Took the backpacker to Red's meadow, so's he could use their phone to call for a ride home. He was grateful, and bought me a steak dinner at the restaurant.
Red’s Meadow was a full day's ride from the camp, so I spent the night camped out at the tourist pasture, made small twig campfire just to be cheerful, took comfort in hearing the mule and horses scuffing and fluffing in dark as they wandered around munching at the grasses. All things were shipshape. The moon was past full, and came up late, but when it did the forest glowed white from the light bouncing off the granite walls that surrounded two sides of the meadow. I smoked a bowl zowie weed and burrowed into my sleeping bag. Life can get only so good, and then the bounty just sort of spills over and evaporates back into the cosmos for someone else to use.
Back in our camp at Iva Bell Hot Spring, Dooley was howling at the moon with the hippie women. He watched the purple haze drift across the scenery for the next couple of days, eyes bugged out, hanging on to the saddle horn, letting the horse do the work, because he just wasn't in the same universe with me for a while. Dooley never did have a very well developed concept of moderation.
But you get the idea. The cosmic muffin gave us a memory so's we could have something to do when we get too old to ride 30 miles through the back country, you see. Kids don't get it. They think there is a destination.
You said something about The sweet spot...nah, sweet spots.
In those days I was in the High Sierras, working as a packer for the Forest Service. One trip I went several days away from the headquarters at Bolsillo Creek, back up behind the Silver Divide, leading five mules, making my rounds with supplies to the two trail crews that were operating in the area. My pal, Dooley, came up from Shaver Lake to go on the trip with me.
Iva Bell Hot Springs. One night after a 30-mile ride, the horses and mules were grazing in a stock pasture at the confluence of two granite canyons, I sat in a hot pool with 24 naked Christian women who'd hiked in from above Fish Creek Canyon. Under a full moon. Total coincidence, us all being there at the same time. Dooley had shot a deer just the day before, and early on in the evening a couple of the Christian women brought some chilis, potatoes and onions to our camp when they smelled the venison we were roasting. I would have sworn to god that night if I'd not had my mouth full of fried onions, potatoes, and that deer’s tender backstraps.
But, the next night the Christian women were gone, and a couple of hippie women who were camped up the hillside brought some peyote buttons to barter for the residual venison chili. Whew. It was a huge mistake for Dooley, but fortunately for me, I had left camp that morning to transport a backpacker who'd hurt his leg—left Dooley in camp because I’d put the backpacker on his horse, put his gear and my bedroll on one of the mules. Took the backpacker to Red's meadow, so's he could use their phone to call for a ride home. He was grateful, and bought me a steak dinner at the restaurant.
Red’s Meadow was a full day's ride from the camp, so I spent the night camped out at the tourist pasture, made small twig campfire just to be cheerful, took comfort in hearing the mule and horses scuffing and fluffing in dark as they wandered around munching at the grasses. All things were shipshape. The moon was past full, and came up late, but when it did the forest glowed white from the light bouncing off the granite walls that surrounded two sides of the meadow. I smoked a bowl zowie weed and burrowed into my sleeping bag. Life can get only so good, and then the bounty just sort of spills over and evaporates back into the cosmos for someone else to use.
Back in our camp at Iva Bell Hot Spring, Dooley was howling at the moon with the hippie women. He watched the purple haze drift across the scenery for the next couple of days, eyes bugged out, hanging on to the saddle horn, letting the horse do the work, because he just wasn't in the same universe with me for a while. Dooley never did have a very well developed concept of moderation.
But you get the idea. The cosmic muffin gave us a memory so's we could have something to do when we get too old to ride 30 miles through the back country, you see. Kids don't get it. They think there is a destination.
The Dog Coalie
Somewhere in the family memorabilia is a picture of me when I was around three years old, wearing coveralls, no shirt, standing barefoot on a towel, holding a star wrench. It seems obvious from the picture that I believed that I was changing the tire on our war-grey Packard. I stood on the towel, I’m told, because of the hot sand. Visible in the picture is the shadow of the photographer, my mother I think, and next to her, also watching me, the rounded shadow of a dog.
We lived in a tent in the desert, is my earliest memory. Nowadays it seems to me that it was a medium sized military tent—what I would have called a squad tent when I was in the army—about 30 feet long, not quite half as wide. The plastic windows were so scarred and brittle with age that they barely let in the light. In warmer weather they were rolled and tied, and a mesh screen let in both the air and the view. I don’t remember how the kitchen worked, or if we had heat, or where we got our water. Those things practical to camp living were not yet in my universe.
Mostly it was my mother and my father. More her than him, because at this time he was away at work all day and she wasn’t. More than her, though, was Coalie, the mutt. Coalie was black, weighed probably 50 pounds or less, had medium long wavy black fur all over her hard little body, and a splash of white somewhere on her front. Time dims this memory, yet there was a certain dog-smell about her that still resides in me, and I have thought of her often over the years.
Deserts are almost never as flat as they appear. You can walk out of sight in seconds on what seems to be a table top. The great Sonoran Desert in southwestern Arizona was my yard. Rock-littered arroyos fanned the broad, gentle slope that, to the uninitiated, looked like flat ground. A shallow sandy hill near the tent was spotted frugally with creosote and cacti, a few other varieties of narrow leafed brush, but no actual trees.
Coalie was my buddy, my protector, my companion. Put another way, I was her pup. I was allowed to wander pretty much at will so long as Coalie was with me, and when I went somewhere, she took it upon herself to be with me. She was distressed when I was out of her sight—she actually had snapped at both my mother and father when, one day, they jokingly tried to keep her from following me as I trekked out of our campsite.
So long as I was with Coalie, I was allowed to wander from the camp at will. When mother wanted me to come back to camp she would put her hands together in a way that created a sort of ocarina, and blow across her thumbs. She could actually play a few notes this way, and the sound carried pretty far in the desert. When Coalie heard this signal she would nose me around to distract me from whatever I was doing, and I knew to come home. It was always easier to just come home than it was to resist her nose.
Memories of Coalie reside in a fundamental store of templates inside me: her smell, the coarse fur of her shoulder, the soft fur on her belly, her wet, insistent nose and lapping tongue, her intense, blinking black eyes.
The arroyos. She and I were playing in a sandy wash that was lined with a wall of boulders, dotted with plants that smelled warm and sweet when I twisted the leaves. Small caves in the bank of the wash interested me, because lizards often lived in them, and the dirt was cool and sometimes even moist. The caves intrigued Coalie for her own doggie reasons. I decided to walk across the flat bottom of the sandy wash, toward a stand of creosote, maybe to look for lizard sign or tarantula tracks. Coalie exploded past me with a deliberate bump of her shoulder, I fell to the sand with a yelp. I got to my feet in time to see Coalie snatch up a huge snake, much longer than my entire body. She was growling, whipping her head so vigorously that her paws cleared the ground. The snake’s pale yellow belly flashed. I could hear its running ends snap like little whips. After a few seconds she threw the limp form to the ground, where it lay still. She growled at it, then grabbed it up again, shook it again, threw it down again.
She looked at me, panting—her black eyes glowed. Do you understand? Do you understand?
I got it. She picked the snake up and shook it again, then paused, watching me out of the corner of her eye. I stepped back. She dropped the snake. I approached the snake, and she let me look at it, but she wouldn’t let me touch it. I squatted beside the snake, my little hands to my chest, and we looked at it together. It didn’t have a mark on it. Its broad head seemed distorted, its gaping lower jaw was rubbery, as though it had no bones. I leaned toward the snake; Coalie groaned, a sound like a rusty nail being pried out of a dried plank. I leaned back into my squat. After a while we went elsewhere play. Coalie was a good teacher.
Later back at the tent I told mother that Coalie killed a snake. Mother nodded and said, yes, Coalie does that from time to time. She asked me if it was a big one, and I said yes, very big. How big? This big: I stretched out my hands, but I knew it was longer than that, so I waved my arms like a bird flying. This big, and this big. I could see the snake belly flashing in the sun, head and tail popping like little whips, sand flying from Coalie's paws. Bad snake, I said. Coalie lay near my feet with her head on her crossed paws, her black eyes flashing between me and my mother as we talked. Mother nodded. Yes. Bad snake. Coalie’s tale thumped softly on the sand a few times. She closed her eyes.
We lived in a tent in the desert, is my earliest memory. Nowadays it seems to me that it was a medium sized military tent—what I would have called a squad tent when I was in the army—about 30 feet long, not quite half as wide. The plastic windows were so scarred and brittle with age that they barely let in the light. In warmer weather they were rolled and tied, and a mesh screen let in both the air and the view. I don’t remember how the kitchen worked, or if we had heat, or where we got our water. Those things practical to camp living were not yet in my universe.
Mostly it was my mother and my father. More her than him, because at this time he was away at work all day and she wasn’t. More than her, though, was Coalie, the mutt. Coalie was black, weighed probably 50 pounds or less, had medium long wavy black fur all over her hard little body, and a splash of white somewhere on her front. Time dims this memory, yet there was a certain dog-smell about her that still resides in me, and I have thought of her often over the years.
Deserts are almost never as flat as they appear. You can walk out of sight in seconds on what seems to be a table top. The great Sonoran Desert in southwestern Arizona was my yard. Rock-littered arroyos fanned the broad, gentle slope that, to the uninitiated, looked like flat ground. A shallow sandy hill near the tent was spotted frugally with creosote and cacti, a few other varieties of narrow leafed brush, but no actual trees.
Coalie was my buddy, my protector, my companion. Put another way, I was her pup. I was allowed to wander pretty much at will so long as Coalie was with me, and when I went somewhere, she took it upon herself to be with me. She was distressed when I was out of her sight—she actually had snapped at both my mother and father when, one day, they jokingly tried to keep her from following me as I trekked out of our campsite.
So long as I was with Coalie, I was allowed to wander from the camp at will. When mother wanted me to come back to camp she would put her hands together in a way that created a sort of ocarina, and blow across her thumbs. She could actually play a few notes this way, and the sound carried pretty far in the desert. When Coalie heard this signal she would nose me around to distract me from whatever I was doing, and I knew to come home. It was always easier to just come home than it was to resist her nose.
Memories of Coalie reside in a fundamental store of templates inside me: her smell, the coarse fur of her shoulder, the soft fur on her belly, her wet, insistent nose and lapping tongue, her intense, blinking black eyes.
The arroyos. She and I were playing in a sandy wash that was lined with a wall of boulders, dotted with plants that smelled warm and sweet when I twisted the leaves. Small caves in the bank of the wash interested me, because lizards often lived in them, and the dirt was cool and sometimes even moist. The caves intrigued Coalie for her own doggie reasons. I decided to walk across the flat bottom of the sandy wash, toward a stand of creosote, maybe to look for lizard sign or tarantula tracks. Coalie exploded past me with a deliberate bump of her shoulder, I fell to the sand with a yelp. I got to my feet in time to see Coalie snatch up a huge snake, much longer than my entire body. She was growling, whipping her head so vigorously that her paws cleared the ground. The snake’s pale yellow belly flashed. I could hear its running ends snap like little whips. After a few seconds she threw the limp form to the ground, where it lay still. She growled at it, then grabbed it up again, shook it again, threw it down again.
She looked at me, panting—her black eyes glowed. Do you understand? Do you understand?
I got it. She picked the snake up and shook it again, then paused, watching me out of the corner of her eye. I stepped back. She dropped the snake. I approached the snake, and she let me look at it, but she wouldn’t let me touch it. I squatted beside the snake, my little hands to my chest, and we looked at it together. It didn’t have a mark on it. Its broad head seemed distorted, its gaping lower jaw was rubbery, as though it had no bones. I leaned toward the snake; Coalie groaned, a sound like a rusty nail being pried out of a dried plank. I leaned back into my squat. After a while we went elsewhere play. Coalie was a good teacher.
Later back at the tent I told mother that Coalie killed a snake. Mother nodded and said, yes, Coalie does that from time to time. She asked me if it was a big one, and I said yes, very big. How big? This big: I stretched out my hands, but I knew it was longer than that, so I waved my arms like a bird flying. This big, and this big. I could see the snake belly flashing in the sun, head and tail popping like little whips, sand flying from Coalie's paws. Bad snake, I said. Coalie lay near my feet with her head on her crossed paws, her black eyes flashing between me and my mother as we talked. Mother nodded. Yes. Bad snake. Coalie’s tale thumped softly on the sand a few times. She closed her eyes.
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