I REMEMBER...the Irish Pub Crawl

…traveling to Europe in the early 70’s (a lot of my life stories strangely happened in the 70’s) and spending time in Ireland. The pubs were a particularly intriguing phenomenon I had an interest in. Warm, friendly, a local tavern for food, drink and fun.

I was somewhat lucky at darts and Irish pubs harbored dart boards much like American bars have pool tables. I won my fair share of pints, dazzling the locals (who admittedly drank faster and in larger quantities than me…perhaps that was my asset in the competition).

So having met some new found darts & drinking friends at a pub one evening (they were off-duty ambulance drivers- I hope they were off-duty…) we forged a deal. The public taverns closed rather early during the week (so the workers would actually show up to work the next day) – the only bars that stayed open late were the ones inside the nicer hotels for the hotel patrons. They offered to treat me to a “Pub Crawl” (which is a much more apt description than the Americanized “bar hopping”. I observed that there were definite tricks for a successful pub crawl that seemed to incorporate rugby/roller derby moves and teamwork. A good pub crawl needs at least two big, strong, rugby/roller-derby guys that are socially ambivalent to under-breath comments and glares, the money man and the rest of the drinking team. Note: all the best pubs in Dublin were packed and everyone seemed to be speed-drinking, so there is no “getting a drink and going back to your table” – that action is too lightweight to survive. Each bar was packed and several people deep. Alone, I never would have even made it to the bar and if I had and then left – I doubt if I could have made it back for a second beer (pint).

So, the game plan was to have all of us (about six) line up behind the two bruiser “breakers (literally). They would elbow and push their way through the throng until, at last, the biggest and strongest found the bar (zygote!!). He would plant himself there and the second team member would be right behind him fending off all other drinkers to maintain a strong line. We would string out behind the first two, foot to foot, with the money man at the end. This was our fire line- like a bucket brigade with volunteer firefighters (except these guys were medics/ambulance drivers). Money man passes money forward through the line to get to the main bar position holder, who secures the pints and passes them back down the line until we are all properly lubed. This pattern is repeated, to insure an uninterrupted and even flow of suds until a. the money runs out or b. the pub closes ( or in my case, after b. comes c. – the acquisition to your “line” of a tourist with a pass to the after-hours bar in an upscale hotel- good for a couple more hours of drinking).

Note: I have no idea what these guys were talking about that evening (probably beer, women, and tourists) as their brogue got thicker and my hearing got fuzzier as the evening wore on. I remember we laughed a lot, so it must have been humorous.

I pick up accents fairly quickly and when motivated by inhibition, fairly well also. My biggest compliment of the evening was being mistaken for a drunk from Scotland. Hoot, laddy, not so bloody bad, eh?

I REMEMBER...my motorcycle & the stuck throttle

…when the throttle stuck on my motorcycle going through a small town in Northern California in the early 70’s. It was Easy Rider time and I had this beautiful BSA 650, chopped, dark chocolate teardrop tank, with chromed extended front forks and butterfly handlebars, banana seat and it weighed about twice as I did. I loved that bike, but I recall that I loved my perception of my image on that bike more. It was somewhat patterned after the bike Peter Fonda had in the movie, Easy Rider.

It was 1970. I had graduated from Chico State College and having fulfilled my promise to my parents to finish college, I launched on to the “go forth and seek the truth and find yourself” tour [that tour lasted about 15 years until I started my family and grew up]. Haight Ashbury San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Carmel, pretty much anywhere along Hwy 1 was a good ride. I had watched Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson) multiple times and listened to the Steppenwolf album (yes, vinyl) until the grooves wore out. It indeed was a Magic Carpet Ride.

So, I have my hair down to my belt, full beard, sunglasses, a monster bike, way bigger than me (could barely hold it up when I came to a stop) and I am cruising through the back roads out of Chico, Ca. Just as I approached the main street of a small rural community, the throttle stuck wide open on the bike and I was catapulted forward, screaming down the road trying to brake, steer this flaming monster and not crash. Thinking I was a dead man driving, I did not notice immediately the flashing red lights and siren trailing right behind me until I got a few miles out of town, burned the bejesus out of my hand trying to hit the kill switch. I finally coasted over to the side of the road, awaiting my fate, as the police cruiser slammed to a stop behind me in a cloud of dust. The officer was highly agitated. 1970, rural cop, long-haired hippy biker, speeding through his beloved, but small, town blowing through both of the town’s stop signs – I could feel my life slipping away, locked in a dungeon, for years.

Kick-starting (a motorcycle term) my yet to be refined sales career, I apologized profusely, addressing him as “Officer, Sir”. I explained the problem with the stuck throttle. He was quiet for a bit and said: “Let me take this thing for a short ride to see if you are telling the truth.” He was bigger, in authority, and had a gun. I said “Sure.” He was gone almost an hour. Just me standing in the dirt next to the locked police cruiser.

When he cruised back to where I was, he smiled and said: “You were right about the throttle – but I fixed it. You know, I always wanted to have one of these.” He advised me to keep going north and not to come back through “his town” and drove away.

I drove north. I went about 60 miles out of my way to make it home a different way. Sold the bike and bought a new Volkswagen van for me and my black lab with a stubby tale and a red bandana.

I REMEMBER...my sister, onions, turkey and cooking drama

my younger sister, Sharon, and her playful ways she would display her displeasure about me making simple, innocent, constructive suggestions about her kitchen habits.

The three times I recall of note are:

1- the time she and I were helping our Mom unload the groceries from the car. I had already brought in the onions and potatoes and Sharon (about two years old - I was about six) was putting them away in the bottom cupboard next to the refrigerator. On my second trip into the house I didn't see any potatoes or onions out so I asked her where she put them. She pointed at the cabinet and when I looked inside - as the poem says - the cupboard was bare. It is conceivable that she thought she heard a disparaging word (because the clouds were not cloudy all day) from me. Bereft of the proper words to cleverly hide the truth that she had just neatly poked them through a hole in the cupboard wall, dropping all the potatoes and onions to an impossible-to-get-to crawl space under the house, she just sunk her four teeth [two on top and two on the bottom, all in the front like a deranged beaver] into my shoulder blade and hung on until Mom heard my screaming and saved me. When a turtle does that you have to cut their head off to get them unhooked, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. It was just a suggestion.

2-We both survived and got a little older. We still had combined kitchen duties, possibly one of God's tests where what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. It was Thanksgiving. We didn't have much money, so we were thankful for the turkey. Sharon was thankful for having an underachiever for a brother, so she could look really good compared to her sterling self. I was particularly thankful for the fact that I was the oldest child (by four years) and significantly bigger than my sterling sister.

Not being clever enough to avoid cleverly disguised, seemingly perfect set-ups (sibling harrassment opportunities), I came upon my sister, basting the family turkey, perched precariously on the open knee-high oven door in our 50's, bright turquoise, far-too-small, kitchen.

There was just enough room to squeeze behind her to pass through the kitchen. My sister had commandeered the opportunity to baste the turkey to a perfect golden brown and Mom had relegated me to taking the potato peels out to the trash. In retrospect, I probably could have gone around the kitchen, but the what-could-possibly-go-wrong temptation to casually, ever-so-lovingly, brush past her, took control of my body. As I squeezed behind her (I am absolutely confident I mumbled "excuse me") my "I am peeved with you showing me up to Mom all the time" knee reflexes must have jerked involuntarily and given her the the ever-so-slight shot to the back as I passed by.

This was 50 years ago. I was twelve and she was an evil, evil (did I say evil yet) eight years old. I have this painfully vivid memory of her involuntary Sarah Bernhart [Quote from Wikipedia: "Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt's life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, described her as a notorious liar) acting skills kicking in. As I gave her the quite innocent knee-to-the-back love tap, she instinctively screamed loudly, fell backwards, flinging the turkey, the roasting pan, drippings, etc. across the floor, skidding to a greasy stop at my Mom's feet. No amount of protest on my part could properly explain the huge injustice I received as my clever little sister, writhed on the floor, in the turkey bastings, crying and screaming that I had viciously kicked her in the back. You are probably thinking, geez, it has been fifty years; get over it. You weren't there to see the Mona Lisa smile creep across her face as I was dragged off to the dungeons to be flogged. Note: We ate the turkey anyway. I ate mine standing up.

3. Somehow, we managed to bury the hatchet (just not in each other) and we lived on to another day later that year to combine our fine-tuned culinary skills to make a birthday cake for our Mom, while she took a nap. After all, Sharon had mastered pancakes and I had beaucoup (dj. Many; much: beaucoup money. n. pl. beau·coups also boo·coos or boo·koos. An abundance; a lot.) merit badges for cooking over an inverted coffee can in the wilderness.

We had the cake mix, we had a two part angel-food cake pan, but obviously, had no clear recipe to follow. We were practically valedictorian scholars, and so, boldly moved forth to surprise Mom with a homemade cake. Wrong mix. Wrong pan. No sense of time. After the pan suffered in the oven for about twenty minutes with the only heat coming from just the oven light-bulb, we realized our error. It was quite obvious what we had to do. If a person only had so much time to go from point A to point B and you had gone too slowly in the beginning - the obvious solution would be to go faster with the remaining time you had left, so you would arrive at point B at the right time. The same principal could surely be applied to cooking. Not noticing that half the batter had leaked out of the two-part pan onto the old style, non-self-cleaning oven bottom, we cranked the heat up to broil, to make up for lost time and proceded into the family room to watch "American Bandstand" - with forever young, Dick Clark.

Boy did Mom truly get a cake surprise for her birthday. This was before smoke detectors. I am still not sure if that was good or bad. When charred-cake black smoke
finally filled the house (except where we were in the lower-level family room with the sliding wood door closed) all Hell broke loose with Mom screaming for us to get out of the house, as it was on fire.

It, of course, wasn't. Just the cake - permanently baked and embedded into the pocked, porcelain interior of that poor oven -was a tad over done. I thought for sure my co-cook and I would share the blame on that one, but as I was the oldest (with a fire safety merit badge, no less) and the one that originated the cooking dilemma math formula, once again, I remember bearing the brunt of the responsibility.

My sister and I have lived long enough to fondly remember these childhood traumas with a bit of humor (and much Merlot). Sharon is one of my best friends now and may have slightly different, but deranged, versions of these stories. However, since this my blog, she will just have to start her own, and post her own version, won't she?

I REMEMBER...the Flaming Marshmallow

...having a minor altercation with my sister, Sharon, when I was about twelve and she was about nine. It involves a flaming marshmallow.

But first......being the first born child, with all the inherent rights instilled in that position, I always had a tough time convincing my little sister of the level of reverence and respect that was due me. Maybe, after 50 years, I am beginning to see inklings that she might be coming around. She treats me very well.

In our youth (many light years ago) my little sister, Sharon, had this misconceived notion that she was also in charge and had equal, if not even greater, rights within the family. I fully believed that Mom loved me best. After all, I was the first child, first boy, only boy and my character was overflowing with admirable qualities [such as: I could make the perfectly believable sound of an alien spaceship taking off and landing without taking an extra breath and I had many merit badges in Boy Scouts for cooking on top of a coffee can, etc.]. Sharon also fully believed that Mom loved her best. After all, she was the girl that Mom "really" wanted, someone of the female persuasion Mom could confide in - in ways that boys and men would never appreciate or even know. She was smarter, prettier, cuter and always, without exception, willing to cheerfully help Mom with any project without resistance. Disgusting.

Whereas, my sister probably had some relatively decent qualities, there was an inherent evil that I just could not get my Mom to acknowledge. It was bad enough that Sharon was practically perfect in every way; she was still compelled to accent my occasional slips off the pedestal. I would be engaged in one of my Mom's dreaded "Death by Lecture" sessions for some totally misrepresented indiscretion when my sister would cheerfully (in a Shirley Temple kind of way) "just happen" to skip into the room and announce stuff like "Hi Mommy, I just wanted to tell you that I love you very much and that I just vacuumed the whole house, put my straight A's schoolwork on the refrigerator next to my award-winning artwork, fed Bobby's dog because he forgot to again....and wanted to see if there was anything else I could do to make your life easier, because you know I love you very much!"

Already in trouble for something (that is why I was getting the lecture), it did not enhance my innocence when I would uncontrollably lunge forward to wrap my hands around the neck of the cheerful little bluebird that was, once again, pointing out why Mom should love her best.

Mom couldn't see the tiniest of Mona Lisa smiles on Sharon's face as she skipped out of the room, knowing she had firmly placed yet another brick in the wall separating the good child from the bad child. Perhaps, if my Mom hadn't been busy physically restraining my thrashing, foaming-at-the-mouth, struggle to get to my sister, she could have noticed.

So what about the flaming marshmallow? This was perhaps my crowning moment in my endeavor to somehow "get even" with my sister. We had all gone camping in Yosemite National Park, back in the day, when they still had the Firefall - [this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but is a cool memory before environmental regulations - you should have been there, but then you had, of course, you would be old or dead, if you had really seen it - so click on the link for the next best thing].

We were enjoying (for a few fleeting moments) the traditional - go camping and roast marshmallows over the crackling fire. My sister always toasted her marshmallow perfectly - a delicious golden brown glow, spread perfectly over the entire morsel. I hated that.

My marshmallows were more like crusty little charcoal briquettes. I employed the young testosterone technique of roasting by jamming the entire marshmallow-on-a- stick deep into the coals, covering it in its entirety with hot ash and enjoying the ensuing moment when it would burst into flames.

Unfortunately, my sister Sharon picked that moment to, once again, point out to my Mom the difference between her perfectly golden creation and Bobby's "burning-black-thing-from-Hell-on-a-stick". My Mom wasn't fast enough to grab me this time when I leaped over the fire with my flaming sugar-bomb on a stick in front of me. I was a Lancer on a mission with the famous Alfred, Lord Tennyson's epic Charge of the Light Brigade.

That was the last straw. Seeing motive, intent, opportunity, and total disregard for the reprisal I would surely receive later, reflected in my blazing eyes, my sister jumped up [dropping her perfect gold marshmallow into the fire - a small side benefit, I relish to this day] and ran screaming into the dark forest.

Knowing I probably wouldn't catch her, and not being clear on what I would actually do if I did, I whipped my roasting stick in her direction out of frustration. Not planned, but ever so grateful for the result, the still flaming marshmallow slipped from the stick and flew through the darkness and stuck perfectly to the back of my sister's head.

A small hairless spot from the smoldering, melted sugar remained for quite awhile, before the hair grew back on Sharon's head. The endorphins [ The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress, supposedly due to the influence of endorphins.....allowing humans to feel a sense of power and control over themselves...Wikipedia] released from the ecstasy of finally seeing Sharon get her just desserts ["Marshmallows Suzette"] allowed me to endure the resulting pain of the beating and lecture-until-you bleed-from-your-eyes that followed.

Even now, when I am having a down day, I can play that perfect moment mind-video again in my brain...with slow-mo and color...and it never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Epilogue: In the truest sense of Men-Mars/Women-Venus thinking, I have retold that story over and over, many times over the years. Men and boys think it is absolutely hilarious and beg me to retell it. Oddly, I have yet to find a woman that thinks the tale is funny. Mostly, they focus on why I couldn't take direction from my sister and just learn how to properly toast marshmallows and confront my inadequacies and anger-management issues.

After about 40 years, I am sure my sister has not let go of the memory. I fear she is gearing up for some kind of Ninja reprisal. She recently told me she was on vacation at an exclusive resort in Mexico, but I have included photo proof, that it was indeed a Ninja Training Camp for Women Harboring Issues From Their Childhood. I never would have been able to hit that target on the back of her head if she had employed a tree-top, zip-line escape.

I REMEMBER...Sharon and the face cream

…treating my baby sister, Sharon, to her first exotic spa treatment. Well, not exactly. I do remember my mom telling me the story, which will have to be close enough. No one else was there to dispute the story. My mom is no longer with us, and my sister was about 1 year old and that was about 58 years ago, so we will have to go with this version.

If Sharon was about one, that would make me about four or five, as I was either three or four years older depending upon which half of the year we are talking about. The fact that I possibly, perhaps, may have harbored some unresolved issues about being eliminated as the only child and relegated to the status of just the only boy, may have some slight bearing on the story, but I only choose to remember the “caring big brother versions” of all family tales….flaming marshmallows while camping will be another story..banana peels in the toilet will not.

I have four children so I know this next statement to be true. When your kids are too quiet, something is probably wrong. As my mom told it, she was doing laundry, ironing and such and noticed that I wasn’t hanging around getting underfoot, as apparently was my custom. This was early 50’s, small town, Oklahoma. It would have not been uncommon for me to leave the house early and disappear for the day. Not that bad things probably didn’t happen back in the day, but the public just didn’t hear about it much. This was before TV (another story). I could ride bikes with my buddies, play ball, dig in the ditch across the street (yet another story about snakes coming soon), play “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” with my friends and as long as I came home as soon as the street light came on, I was good to go.

Anyway, none of those things were happening. I was in the house and my mom knew it. My sister was still in a crib, so she was in the house too. My mom slowly became aware of a soft “cooing” sound from the rear of the house. As she approached the master bedroom, she heard the “cooing” sound more distinctly as “oooooh and ahhhhh”. Apparently, knowing that I could come to terms with any sibling rivalry issues, by just showing the love to my sister, there I was mimicking what I thought I had seen my mom do….kind of.

I had found the large jar of Vaseline, but the wrong end of the baby. I had successfully plastered my sister’s head with about a half-jar of sticky petroleum jelly. Her eyes were totally glued shut. Her small amount of hair was matted with globs of glop. Should there be a hue and cry from readers regarding what a terrible thing this might have appeared to be for a small baby…I must point out that she was absolutely loving it.

I am sure that 58 years later, this experience is probably not on her Facebook page (nor mine). She is now a confirmed worldwide adventurist, hiking mountain trails in Peru, ocean sailing, whitewater kayaking, etc. I suspect that she is strangely comforted, when crawling on her stomach in the dark caves of Costa Rica, and her head and face become matted with exotic bat guano, she has odd, but warm recollections of those halcyon days in the crib having her head slathered in Petroleum Jelly. Perhaps only when buried in the mud baths of Calistoga, with only her lips protruding from the volcanic ooze just far enough to reach the straw and little sippy cup of ice water, does she vaguely recall a similar comforting experience, a long, long time ago. If she is strangely concerned, I plead innocent. If she smiles, I will take all the credit.

There is an earlier story of me, BS (before Sharon), plastering my bedroom window sills shut in a similar fashion, but not with petroleum jelly. Sharon is lucky I matured into a more socially acceptable plaster artist.

I REMEMBER...my finger getting stuck in the kitchen table

…getting my finger caught in the tube leg of my parent’s new aluminum/Formica table when I was six. We lived in McAlister, Oklahoma. My mom owned and taught a private kindergarten in our converted garage and my dad was a mailman on the railroad (approx 1953 – the mailmen were on the train in a special postal car and picked up mail along the stops and sorted it as they went along to deliver to the next city down the line).

Like all kids, I had my favorite foods and non-favorite foods. Remembering that this was ‘50’s Oklahoma, some of my favorites were fried catfish with ketchup, ketchup [ketchup went on most everything] and white bread sandwiches [there was only white bread – no choices as I recall), lard and sugar on white bread sandwiches [if you like eating the white stuff –lard and sugar-out of the middle of Oreo cookies – then you would have loved those sandwiches, corn on the cob, fried chicken and hot dogs. There were a multitude of things I didn’t like, as my Mom and Betty Crocker [1953] conspired to provide recipes for such God-Awful dishes like Liver and cream sauce, spinach and vinegar, cottage cheese [ok with lots of sugar and pineapple – but not so much with pepper like my Dad preferred] and of course, the ever popular: lima beans with shredded carrots in lime jello.

It was one of those nights when I was pushing food around in my plate, hoping it would evaporate. [Note: back in the day, kids that didn’t eat their food were told that there were starving kids in China that would love to have it and that you would a) sit there until you finished it or b) go to bed right now and it would still be sitting there when you came back to the table for the next meal]. I almost got out of it once when I suggested that since my Dad was a mailman – why we didn’t just mail the liver and onions to the starving kids in China. Since I hadn’t seen buttermilk (with pepper for my Dad) spew out of an adult’s nose before, I figured I had hit on a solution. It, however, was just a temporary reprieve, until my parents quit laughing and choking. So, there I was one night pushing food around and running my hand around under the brand new, bright yellow, aluminum and Formica dining table my parents had just purchased. [Note: this was when perfectly good imported English oak tables were tossed out to the dump to make way for the sleek new aluminum and Formica furniture – wow – what a wise decision that was] So, finding a little opening in the end of one of the aluminum table tubes, I tried to poke my finger into it. As I had been stirring the cream sauce on the liver with said finger, it slipped right in. Therein was the problem. The finger wouldn’t come out. The more that I struggled with it, the more my finger started to swell making it impossible to remove.

The moment finally arrived when I had to eat or go to my room to await another chance to eat the liver another day, but couldn’t get up. I didn’t want to say why, so I just kept getting deeper in trouble for not getting up. Just as my Dad grabbed me by the arm to jerk me up from the table, I was forced to scream out “My finger's caught in the table”. My Mom and Dad tried squeezing, pulling, 3-in-1 oil (like WD-40), butter, lard, and prayer. Nothing worked. The more we struggled, the more my finger swelled hurt, and the louder I cried. Eventually, my parents had no choice, but to call the fire department. A big red fire engine with lights flashing arrived, attracting all the neighbors. After the firemen quit laughing, they proceeded to try all the firemen tricks, but to no avail. After much discussion, it was decided (over my Mom’s protests) to use a hacksaw and cut the leg off the table. At the time, I thought my Mom’s anguish and protests were for her fear of me getting my finger cut off, but I suspect now that it was truly in anguish over losing her brand new modern aluminum table to a hacksaw.

So, they cut the leg off my Mom’s new table and threw the junked remains into the backyard. They jammed my hand with the six inch aluminum pipe stuck to it into a bucket full of ice for a half hour and voilla’: my finger popped right out. I got to ride on the fire engine with all my friends and was the hero of the neighborhood. My mom eventually retrieved another oak table and mourned the lost “modern” updated model for quite a long time, and oddly enough, never fixed liver and onions again. Our family did, however, endure many more “jello with mixed vegetables” dishes. I have yet to see a Formica/Aluminum table on Antiques Road Show.

I REMEMBER...working for UHAUL

..working for UHAUL company and living in San Francisco, CA. and was the general manager of one of the largest truck rental centers on the west coast. The rental center was in the converted Planter's Peanut factory on Bayshore Blvd. It was one of the largest storage facilities in Northern California. There was a small one bedroom apartment for the manager above the front entrance. See the three windows - that was my living room. When my oldest son, Ian was born, the district manager had some of the storage units removed and added a second bedroom. Very cool. He learned to walk and drive his little walker up and down the hallways of the storage units on the second floor.

All in all, it was one of the best ways to live in San Francisco. The "commute" was riding the freight elevator down to the bottom floor. The view unfortunately was the Bayshore Fwy (Hwy 101). My vehicle was provided and all insurance and gas was paid for. The apartment was also provided for and so was health and life insurance. When Ian was born, all expenses were paid. I was required to wear a uniform daily and it was provided (kind of like being in the military). My paycheck was spent on food and dining out. There are an endless number of restaurants in San Francisco, so that you could dine out every night and you could never live long enough to visit them all.

Some of the U-HAUL stores had been robbed and I was fortunate enough to not have that experience. The closest I ever got to being robbed was one Sunday in August. I was working the store alone. Two rough looking guys came into the store wearing full length leather jackets - the cowboy kind that went all the way down to the floor. Did I mention it was August? It was hot and muggy and when I saw these guys come in, it popped into my mind they were hiding guns and were going to rob me. You just didn't dress that way to go rent a truck. Thank God for an imaginative mind and a backlog of police movies I had watched.

Just as these two characters walked up to the counter, I walked over to the mirrored glass behind the counter and knocked on the mirror and announced loudly. "Hey Larry, I just called the cops to come pick up those shotgun shells we found in storage. They should be here any minute".

There was no "Larry".
There were no shotgun shells.
There were no cops on the way.
In fact, I was the only one in the building, except for my family upstairs.

My prospective clients in the long leather coats turned and left, never saying a word. So, fortunately, I didn't have to find out the hard way why they were there that day. They probably just had overdue parking tickets and didn't want to risk the confrontation with the fictitious pending officers of the law. I had seen an episode of "Sky King" (early 50's TV show about a rancher that always caught the bad guys using his airplane "somehow". He also could "throw his voice" (ha) that would make the bad guys think there was someone outside. That was my inspiration for my "fool the bad guys" trick.

The only other time I had an inkling I was to be robbed was when I was a "manager in training" for U-HAUL at a smaller store in Redwood City in the early 1980's. I was working late one night, closing up the store by myself, when two bad looking dudes knocked on the glass door after we were closed, wanting me to open back up and let them turn a trailer in. There was no way I was going to do that and when they started cursing me, that clinched it...they were not going to be let in. I told them to come back the next day (when there was a full staff around). The next day dawns and I see them pull up in front of the store about 10am. I left the counter area and hid in the shadows of a box display, hoping they wouldn't recognize me. They finish their business, complaining about the guy who wouldn't let them check in the previous night, and left. The guy that waited on them comes running over and says, "Wow, did you see those championship rings? Those guys are with the World Champion San Francisco Niners. That was Eric Wright and Keena Turner". Can you say Pro Bowl / NFL Champions?

So, I guess I have a 50% success rate in recognizing bad guys.

"The Catch" 1982 Super Bowl bound San Francisco 49ers 58 sec. left on the clock..

I REMEMBER...the palm reader & the 3 accidents

....having my palm read when I was in college and how it turned out. But first, let's back up a bit.

I was a pretty good wrestler when I was in college. [Trust me, there is a segue here]. As a result I was fortunate enough to get a "deal" when I went to college. Chico State College in 1965 did not have wrestling scholarships, but I got the next best thing. I got pre-admitted to all the classes I wanted [just gave the coach your class list and it was a done deal]. I got two classes with an automatic "A" Health (taught by the coach) and communications (I was a DJ at the KCSC college radio station] to help keep my grade point up to be eligible for sports. I also got a much sought after job [working at the cafeteria at the college dorms]. This is when the ratio of girls to guys was 3:1...as a bonus, I got paid, too.

So, [here comes the segue], I worked the cafeteria line serving up vegetables and the student that worked next to me was from China. Her parents were fortune tellers and palm readers. She believed in it so much, she refused to "read palms" for her friends, because she didn't want to see what was in store for them and tell them bad news. Anyway, I finally got her to read my palm after I convinced her that I wouldn't take it seriously.

After she looked at my palm, she got quiet and said she changed her mind. With much cajoling, she finally told me what she "saw". First, I would be wealthy in friends, but not in money (at the time it seemed I got a raw deal), but friends and family "appreciate" at a far better rate than dollars over the years, so (if you believe in fortune telling), it worked out OK.

The other, more serious view, was my palm’s "Life Line". Mine has a major break in it, early on in the line and then the second part goes off the side of my hand. Her comment was that there would be a major incident early in my life (remember, this is 1965 and I was 18) and I might not live through it. But, if I did, I would live a long, full life, with enough money to get along, but rich in friends and family.

I didn't think about it until the summer after my senior year. The "Bad News" comes in threes was the catchword for my "interesting break in my life line". In June, some friends (2 guys & 3 girls) and I went for a drive up to Feather River Canyon in my buddy's newly purchased old beater pick-up truck. The girls were in the back and the guys were in the cab. No seat-belts. Coming back down the steep and winding grade, I got the "shotgun" rider's bird’s eye view of the 500' drop off on my side of the cab. As I was sucking up my breath, due to the speed with which we were taking the curves...I heard these comforting words: "S---t, the brakes are out - what should I do"? As we only had two choices, hit the side of the mountain or go over the cliff, we made an extremely hasty unanimous decision to swerve across the oncoming lane on a curve we knew we couldn't make and hit the side of the mountain. Without much discussion, we figured our chances were better with a crash than a lead airplane drop off the side of the mountain.

Oddly, we didn't crash [note: I am writing this tome some 40 some odd years later, so I didn't die, nor did anyone else], but rather, we went up the side of the hill like a motorcycle jump and into the woods on the other side. That newly purchased truck was like a rocket ship out of control. We landed in a dry stream bed, and with all the wheels and both axles gone, gravity had us follow the stream bed like a little slot car.

The driver was still trying to steer, which, looking back on it, was pretty funny as there were no wheels. Note: the three girls were thrown out of the back when we shot up the hill slope. Although bruised and scared, they were alright. Those of us in the cab were OK. The truck died and is probably still there.

The next month, July, I went to visit a former college roommate in San Jose. He wanted to take me for a ride in his parent's new Camaro before they all left on vacation the next day. Full moon, nice night, he cruised up into the hills for a winding road test of the hot sports car. Still reeling from the accident the previous month, I asked many times for him to slow down and cool it. After the car squealed around yet another sharp turn up in the mountains, I undid my seat belt and started to climb over the front seat into the safety of the back seat. That was the moment that Mike couldn't make the next curve and rolled the Camaro over the cliff. I thought surely I had died and moved on to the afterlife. It was a very surreal scene. The engine was running, emitting a high pitched whine. The inside of the car was full of a smoky dirt cloud with just the light of the full moon shining in. Everything was oddly different, as my former roommate was hanging upside down, suspended by his seat belt. The headlights shone out into a dark night right towards the full moon. We were slowly swaying back and forth. It was creepy. Slowly, I figured it out. We had rolled over the cliff and had landed upside down in a tree growing out of the side of the mountain. My friend undid his seat belt and landed on his head. I laughed. We carefully climbed out of the car window and up the side of the mountain through the bushes, to the road. It was very weird looking down on the moonlit undercarriage of the Camaro, engine running, lights shining out into nothingness, with a 300 foot drop under it. That tree was the only one on the side of the mountain and we had landed right in the middle. This was BCP (before cell phones) so we hiked down the road to the nearest house and my former roommate called his parents to get a tow truck and come get us. Mike’s parents arrived at the same time as the tow truck. Mike’s dad only said “Where’s the other car”? Mike told him there was no other car and I don’t think I heard his dad speak again. When the tow truck got there, he refused to hook it up because he feared if the car fell out of the tree; it would drag him and his tow truck off the cliff. So they had to call another tow truck and use both at the same time to get the Camaro up to the road. Needless to say, Mike and his family didn’t leave on their vacation in their new car the next day. Mike didn’t come back to college that September either.

Two bits of irony followed. The car was totaled except for the driver’s side which looked like it was in show room condition. When the tow truck pulled away back to San Jose, the Camaro came loose from the chains and swerved over to the opposite side of the road and scraped everything off the formerly pristine side, mirrors, door handles, paint, etc. Also, Mike and I, other than a few bruises were unscathed…except for two days later when we found out the hard way that the hillside we climbed up in the dark was covered in poison oak.

That was two. The trifecta was completed (thankfully) the next month, where once again I was a passenger in someone’s car. A friend from college and I had gone to Tahoe to apply for jobs at the ski resort for the next winter season. After a long day playing at the lake, we were driving back to Lodi late one Saturday night. There was a Y in the road coming up and we had to be in the left side of Y. The driver thought she was over too far to the right and moved over one more lane to the left. It was dark and it appeared as if we were just about the only ones on the freeway. Just as we noticed the highway divider chain link fence appear out the passenger side window (meaning we were in the oncoming lane on the wrong side of the freeway) we also noticed the oncoming traffic, three abreast, taking up all the lanes coming right at us. This is all happening at 60 miles an hour in opposing directions. Instinctively, I uttered some situation-appropriate, adults-only, words and raised my arms up over my face. The driver instinctively pulled a hard right, even though the chain-link fence was there. Fortunately, the sixty miles an hour, two-ton Cadillac swerved to the left just as it kissed off our tiny tin-can Volkswagen Bug. It was like throwing a small flat rock at the right angle and at the right speed to skip along the surface of a huge lake, defying gravity and impact. The Volkswagen was destroyed. About 30 yards of highway divider chain link fence never lived to see the dawn. Cheryl went to the hospital with a broken rib and a lacerated liver (seatbelt). Once again, I walked away. I suffered a fractured finger and a gazillion tiny cuts from the implosion of the windshield over my head.

I figured I had survived the odd break in my palm “Lifeline”. Three months. Three major accidents. No one should have lived through any of them. Only the vehicles died. Bob, the passenger, walked.

Fast forward thirty years. I meet Lise and early on we took some picnics, trips and adventures. One day she says, “You always drive. Why don’t you let me drive and you be the passenger.” I couldn’t do it. I never was the passenger again after that summer. If I couldn’t drive, I didn’t go. I have since relaxed with it a bit, especially if I can fall immediately to sleep but mostly. I drive. Note: back in the day, before seat belts and before seat belt laws, the passenger seat was often referred to as the Suicide Seat (the act of doing something that seems contrary to your own best interests and seems likely to lead to a disaster).

Drive My Car - Beatles

I REMEMBER...marbles & tops

.........MARBLES & TOPS. I have been struggling of late to not get left too far behind in the social networking/technology era.

Ah, the simpler days of yore when I was consumed with the desire to only master the playground skills involving marbles and tops.

TOPS: I did pretty well at that game and soon became the king of the blacktop at lunch time. As I recall (which is a task in itself...but since this is my blog, I will naturally assume I am correct in my remembrances), the initial game was just one of skill and luck. The tops were about the size of a large lemon, wrapped in string and spun with a flick of the wrist. We would draw a circle on the black top with chalk and the game was to throw your top and have it land in the circle and stay there without wandering off, or to draw an X on the ground (blacktop or cement) and try to hit the X.

Somewhere, in probably the first grade (about 1953) someone must have gotten anxious to throw their top into the circle and succeeded in bumping the first top out. OKLAHOMA SCHOOL YARD TOP WARS was created. The next evolution was when the steel point of someone's top hit the other top and took a chuck out of it (it was wood after all). My Top Reputation was made when my top hit the competitor's top dead center of the top's top and split it right down the middle. There was a hush and reverence for what everyone had just witnessed. I was Michael Jordon...except for my era I was Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth rolled into one. I had done the impossible (quite accidentally, but I took it). The blacktop boys spread my fame, far and wide (all the way to the third graders, as I recall). All the top guys revered me (except for the kid whose top I split - who never spoke to me again). It was fabulous...except for one down side. No one would play tops with me anymore. Sometimes you lose when you win. However, with only a slight nod to the obvious pun...it was good to go out on top.

MARBLES: I also had awesome skills with marbles (not so much with baseball, football, basketball ...there was no such thing as soccer in 1950's Oklahoma). The goal of the game was to knock your opponent's marble out of the circle (and you got to keep it). Soon, I had a sizable empire of marbles and had a difficult time finding an opponent, as I had taken most of their marbles. The Heavens have an uncanny way of evening up lopsided situations, however. My downfall was that there was an unfairly strict rule about having your marbles out during class time. I dropped my pencil one day and as I reached down to pick it up, the unthinkable happened. My marble dynasty was over in an instant as my year's winners swag of marbles spilled out of my coat and covered the classroom floor as Miss (Evil to the Core) Billingsly, stepping around the few hundred marbles scattered before her, gingerly approached my desk, snapping that old wood ruler into the palm of her hand. I can see it as clearly as if it was yesterday (which is interesting, as I can't remember much that happened last week- which I guess only proves that you can always recall the true turning points of your life). The inflexible rule was that you forfeited ALL your marbles to the principal for the rest of the year if they hit the floor. I went from 1st Grade Marble King to Marble Pauper in an instant. My lasting memory is of all my classmate slain opponents grinning from ear to ear as I had to pick up my treasured marbles and deliver them to the principal's office.

Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian.-- Shari R. Barr

You Can't Always Get What You Want. But If You Try Some Time, You Just Might Find, You Get What You Need....Mick Jagger

I REMEMBER...Stonehenge

...traveling to England in the late 70's and going to see Stonehenge. This is a short observation about how really small the world is and a small moment in time for me.

Backing up a bit...

A few years earlier, I had opened a leather and jewelry store in Chico called Lone Eagle Leather. The night of my grand opening, I had an open bar, a lot of friends and a band playing. As a gift to the guys in the band, I made custom leather belts with the name of their band stamped in the back. Store worked great - an awesome time to be in the crafts business, I expanded to a second store, and then a wholesale leathergoods business as well. I had accounts with the Tower Records chain and the CSU college bookstores throughout California. I was a madman and worked far too much and burned out.

Friends threw me a birthday party on my 28th birthday and put 35 candles on it. A subtle hint I should slow down and take a break. Sold the business, bought a houseboat, put my house up for sale and temporarily "moved" to Jamaica. This is another blog, and the mention here is meant only to show some passage of time.

Came back to town, worked as a carpenter and burned out again (hmmmm...is there a pattern here?).

When I was 30, I went to Europe and stayed in England for awhile and managed to make it out to Stonehenge for the day. A rare sunny day (see me in red tank top in one of the photos). So, I am walking up to the stone pillars approaching the crowd already gathered there for a history lecture being given by one of the caretakers. As I walk up , I see at the back of the crowd, a tall guy (see pic of guy in white pants and white shirt at the back of the crowd with his hands on his hips) that stunned me. Here I am many miles and years away from the Grand Opening of Lone Eagle Leather in Chico, California, and there in front of me is one of the band members wearing my custom made belt. Turns out he was traveling with his dad and was only going to be there for a half hour (a tiny moment in time). I never would have seen it if I had been earlier, later, walked slower or had been less observant.

I am fascinated with time. The time we have, the time we don't have and how little moments in time have special value. This was one of those special moments.

Quote of the day:

Time is the coin of life. It’s the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful, lest you let others spend it for you. .....Carl Sandburg