IT'S JUST A DREAM. GO BACK TO SLEEP

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Blog number forty and five                                                        Sep. 30, 2006

After my bypass operation, the first thing I remember is a nurse asking me how I'm feeling.  I try to tell her I feel all right, but I can't speak because of the breathing tube stuck down my windpipe.  I shook my head as a response.  I remembered at the time that someone had told me I wouldn't be able to speak with that tube down my esophagus, so I wondered why she asked me a question.  My son Daryl tells me later that he didn't think I was alive, so the nurse did that in order to show him that the doc hadn't killed me.

The next thing I remember is that I was nauseous, so I rang for the nurse and told her my problem.  She said she would give me a shot that would take care of that.  A few minutes later I rang her again and asked for some crackers. She said, "I thought you were nauseous." 

I replied, "I am.  I wanted the crackers to see if that would make me feel better." 

She said, "I haven't given you your shot yet."

Now here's a strange thing, and remember, I was still in ICU, going in and out of consciousness.  Every time I thought of that incident, I remembered the nurse bending down by the foot of my bed and injecting the drug to make my nausea go away, but as I remember it, my head was down there, lower than my feet.  Why that is so, I don't know. I think I subconsciously put my head where my consciousness was.  It was only after I went home, and several weeks after that, that I focused on that experience and realized what I had imagined.  It seemed so real until I really looked into it.  It also seems strange to me that I didn't think anything odd, my head being down there.  Seems odd now, so I guess my mind is catching up with the real reality.  Either that or I'm crazy like my wife says I am.

A very kind nurse pulls the tubes out that were stuck in my chest by telling me beforehand what she was going to do each time, then slapping near the tube while at the same time jerking the tube out.  She also bathed me, which was very welcome.  I sensed a sadness about her -- some tragedy happening or recently happened.  I wish now I had had the where-with-all to tell her how much I appreciated her efforts in my behalf.  Of all the nurses I have ever had, she stands out as the most caring.  I really felt that she was focused totally upon my comfort.

I had another nurse that told me to make sure my private parts didn't show when had to get in and out of the bed.  I told her that I was too sick to worry about my modesty and she said, "I'm not concerned about your modesty.  I'm concerned about mine." 

I thought, "Well, fuck you, lady.  Don't look." 

The last thing done to me was when the doctor came and pulled out the wires that were placed in my body in case I needed a pacer. He didn't do like the nurse did.  He just jerked one out, then the other.  It was the strangest feeling, like a chill inside my chest.  Very weird, very uncomfortable, but not painful.

There is a lot more I could tell, but it ain't all that important.  If I was writing a novel; I could use it to flesh out the story, but I ain't, so I won't.
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I was watching a reality program last night called, "The Blue Tide" about drug use in Los Angeles.  They were talking to this druggie woman whose boyfriend had just shot himself and she was bandaging her arm, all the while explaining that she shot up there, then would see bugs under the skin and would start picking at it until it was a pretty bad wound.

She then talks about the same kind of wounds she has on her upper arms and pulls her shirt aside to show them, but we can't see them because they are blurred in order to save our sensibilities in some way.  So I'm wondering, why are they showing this while at the same time blurring it so we can't see it?  What's up with that?

I was sitting at Java City on 18th and Capital in Sacramento and I overhear four young men at another table talking about the methadone treatments they have.  I learn that at least one guy is daily - I think, maybe weekly, selling his blood serum to pay for his methadone treatments.  Backing away from the situation, I realize that our society seems to be vampiristic, (don't look for this word in the dictionary. It's my own coinage.) taking blood in exchange for treatment for a condition brought on by the very same society.  Something seems very wrong there.

"THIS WOULD BE FUN IF IT DIDN'T HURT SO BAD"

Blog number forty the four                                                        Sep. 28, 2006

So I'm walking down an alley and I feel a dull ache running down my left arm.  I get so pissed!  I raise my right fist to the sky and shout, "Kill me, you bastard!"  I am furious.

Months later I'm talking to a friend that I hadn't seen in a few weeks and he tells me he had a bypass and when he got the pains, he knew right away what it was and he told me he got very angry.  Now I'm wondering if that isn't a normal reaction, to get angry at a serious defect in the operation of the organs of the only body we can use at the moment.

I tell the Doc and he gives me an electrocardiogram and a prescription for nitro pills.  He tells me to sit down and rest if I ever get another chest pain and if that doesn't work after a few minutes, to take one of the nitro pills, If that doesn't work, take another one and if that doesn't work, call 911.

I have a few more pains over the next few days, and, still angry about it, instead of resting, I do pushups.  Surprisingly, this seems to help.  I tell the doctor this and he says not to do that.  Now I'm torn.  Obey the doctor or go with what seems right.  I go with the doctor.  Mistake?  I dunno. I might have been on the verge of a major medical discovery, engendering me fame, fortune, and a spot on Oprah.  Oh well...

One night, lying in bed, I have a chest pain.  I take a pill, since I am already resting.  That doesn't work, so I take another.  That doesn't work either.  Next day I go to the doctor. (calling 911 seems silly).  He has me take some tests, tells me he is going to do an angioplasty.  He tells me he is going to give me a drug that will enable me to obey instructions and that he will tell me when he is about to inject the dye and that I will feel it as a warmth running throughout my body. 

Starting the angioplasty, I am lying on a bed.  The doctor and his aide are fiddling with the machine.  I lift my head to see what they are doing.  This is all new to me and I am curious. He brusquely tells me to keep my head down.  This surprises me, because what harm is there in my watching their preparations?  He is an India Indian, so I think maybe it is a culture thing.  He has always been kind and understanding before.  Maybe he thinks I will be upset by what I see.  Maybe something else.  I don't ask.  I don't want to be yelled at again.

So the thing starts and he tells me to roll over.  I have been in a deep sleep up to this time, but I am immediately conscious when he tells me to roll over and immediately unconscious.  The next thing I am conscious of is that he tells me he is going to inject the dye and I will feel the warmth he talked about.  And I do.

This is a strange experience and I wonder if the drug given me was sodium phenothol, the so-called "truth drug."  If I had been asked any question I would have answered honestly with the thought of, "Why not?"

The test convinces the doctor that I will have to have a bypass.  I say, "Damn!" because I had kind of thought I could have just had the balloon spread the clogged arteries and I wouldn't have to have the surgery.  When I said, "Damn," he kind of looked at me intently and asked if I didn't want the surgery.  I said, "No, no.  I want the surgery."  I don't know how he read that I was refusing the surgery from my single, "Damn."

I wake up lying in a bed in a room with several other patients who must have also had the same procedure.  We all have a clamp holding down our opened femoral artery until the blood coagulated enough to release it.  I was in very much torment.  I felt very much that I would like to run up and down stairs with forty pounds of weights on each leg.  But I wasn't allowed to move.  They didn't want the clamped artery to start spewing my life's juice, you see.  One guy had to be carted out for repair because he couldn't hold his blood in.

A nurse finally talked to me and told me I could bend the other leg and this helped, but not much.

If I have to have that procedure done again, I'm going to tell the doctor how much I suffered and ask if maybe I could be kept under until I got my clamp off.  Probably not, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

I raised my head to look around once and my doctor yelled at me to keep my head down.  What IS it with this guy anyhow?

The night before the surgery, I am lying in bed after eating a supper. (eating supper before morning surgery?)  A guy comes in and starts shaving my chest and one of my legs.  We chat while he does this and then I start getting severe razor burns with every stroke of the razor.  The chatting stops.  I never complain, but he must have seen spots of blood appearing wherever he shaved.  It was like he was using a very dull razor.  I told my son about this later and he, having worked in hospitals, said that he never heard of them using an old fashioned razor. They always use an electric razor. 

Kinda reminds me of when I went to the emergency room for a cracked rib.  I was in severe pain and I don't know if it was a doctor or a nurse, butt he said he was giving me a shot of morphine. I went to x-ray under excruciating pain, almost passing out from it and when I got back to my bed, I asked the same guy if I could have more morphine because the first one wasn't enough.  So he gave me another shot and that did nothing either.

I told my hospital-experienced son about this experience and he said that the first shot should have put me in a very nice place.  We both decided I had not been given morphine, and he said if they tell you they are giving you something, they have to give you that -- no placebos.  I reported the incident to Patients Assistance and a doctor (at least he said he was a doctor) called me and told me they were looking into it, and I never heard anything after that.  I think somebody was stealing my morphine.

So the next morning, after my shave, I'm being wheeled down to the operating room.  Nobody except for the shaving guy ever talked to me about anything.  I would have liked to have talked to somebody 'cause I felt pretty much alone and helpless.

Next Blog, I'll talk about my stay in the hospital.  I promise.

LIVE A LITTLE. EAT A PRUNE, TAKE A BATH, READ A BOOK

Blog number forty the two                                                         Sep. 24, 2006

I once had an epiphany that fear could not harm me and that there was a "rush" associated with it -- like in a roller coaster ride.  Know what I mean? 

I went on a lecture tour for a while concerning abused children because of a fear of a talking in front of people but that got boring after a while.  Then I noticed an ad in a local "Learning Exchange," offering a class in standup comedy.  Ah!

I wrote what I thought was a good bit for my "final," which was to do an actual standup at a local bar.  I practiced it, memorized it, and was ready to go.  Come time for rehearsal and besides what I had written and practiced, I thought I would do this real easy bit that I had just thought of as I walked up to get ready for my main bit.  I didn't need to memorize it because I was just going to tell what I was doing, like the announcer does at the Olympics? 

"He's walking to the microphone, ladies and gentlemen.  Now he's talking the microphone off the stand, holding it in his hand, bringing it to his mouth..." and so forth.  Easy, right?  Ah, no.  I completely flubbed it -- scared into petrification.  I was physically incapable of doing it. 

I told the instructor I couldn't and wouldn't go on.  He took me outside where I told him what was wrong.  I kept saying I couldn't do it.  I was too scared and couldn't remember anything.  He suggested I write down my bit and keep it in my pocket and if I needed it, I could just take it out and refresh my memory.  That sounded good.  It would relieve the pressure.

Come time when my name was announced and I went to the mike, I threw away the "Olympics" bit and went straight to my set.  First thing out of my mouth, I get a heckler, Fortunately what the heckler said fitted right in with what I was doing, so I skated over that. Getting into my act, still not at my expected first laugh, I got a big one.  "I thought. If they laughed a that, wait 'til I get to my goodies."

Later, when the nervousness came on I took my cheat sheet out of my pocket and started trying to find my place.  Took me some time and I began to notice giggles coming from the audience. "What's this?" I thought.  Never expected that.

My last part of my set wasn't as strong, but I could see where being a standup wasn't all that hard, providing one wasn't petrified with fear.  I was glad I had done it -- like diving from a cliff in Acapulco, but I firmly promised myself that I would never do that again.

That night I woke up in the middle of the night and vomited.
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MY wife and I are planning to surprise my youngest son (Derek) and his wife (Kiki), so I told Teresa not to say anything about it to them.

I get a call from a guy and my son happened to be over and he asked me what that was all about.  I told him it had to do with a guy that was going to do something for us and my wife started going on about "I thought we weren't going to say anything.  It was your idea, why did you tell him" -- like that.

I finally told her that she should stop talking about it because SHE was the one blowing it.  You can see that, right?

One day a friend of ours (let's call her "Mary Ann") told us that her boyfriend (Let's call him, "Ed,") had the hots for Aunt Bea of "The Andy Griffith Show."  She told us not to tell anybody because Ed would be embarrassed about it and Teresa and I both promised that we wouldn't.

So few days later a friend (let's call him, "Carl,") was over visiting.  Carl, Mary Ann, Teresa and I were all sitting on the front porch talking and I don't remember what topic had come up, but I said, "We know a guy that has the hots for Aunt Bea."

Immediately Teresa and Mary Ann jumped all over me, "Dammit Don!  You promised not to tell. What's the matter with you?" etc.  This went on and on from both Mary Ann and Teresa and Carl isn't dumb.  I'm pretty sure he figured out who the guy was from the way the girls were carrying on, while if it had just dropped with what I said, he would never have known who I was talking about.  I wasn't about to tell him.  I didn't even defend myself with the two because I knew that might just add to the evidence.
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This idiot (Let's call him "Larry,") who felt himself to be a scientific genius hung out at Weatherstone's.  One day I heard him saying, "Darling, darling, seemingly directed towards a girl sitting nearby.  Came to find out later that he had named his dog, "Einstein Darling."  Is the guy an idiot or not?  You tell me.
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My daughter (let's call her "Trinja") used to watch soap operas and seemed to enjoy them, so I started watching to see what the attraction was.  The first thing I discovered was that all the people in the soap -- the guy in jail; the cheating wife, the thief, the runaway, they were all related or tied together in some way.  One big happy soap family.

The funniest thing I ran across was on "All MY Children" when a guy told a woman that another character was pregnant and I realized that everyone in town knew she was pregnant except for one person -- the pregnant woman herself.

ONLY EMO PHILLIPS IS FUNNIER

Blog number forty the one Sep. 21, 2006

So Teresa (my wife) is waiting in line at the Bel Aire (A fancy grocery store) and I'm kinda standing back watching people. I notice two boys about eleven years of age looking over the DVD's in the children's section. One of them picks up a Disney DVD and excitably exclaims to the other while pointing to a cartoon picture on the front, "She's good! I saw her in "Beauty and the Beast."

In an "all you can eat" place - Hometown Buffet, I was standing behind an eight year old boy who was staring at the cinnamon rolls in front of him, plate in hand, and I heard his mother say, "No, those aren't vegetables."

I got a call from Italy one day -- a wrong number. Apparently the Italian lady's son was supposed to be a student exchange and was to live in the person's house that she was trying to call when she got me. She hadn't heard from anyone when she was supposed to, so she was trying to find out what was going on. She gave me the family's address, so I went over there to see if I could find out what was happening. I couldn't find the address because some of the streets were forbidden to me because they were in gated communities. I talked to a lady behind a fence and told her the story and she said she would go get a map, and for me to stay right there and she would be back shortly. I thanked her and she left, leaving a little girl on a bike.

I said to the little girl, "Lemme ride your bike." She said, "No." I said, "Aw, come on. You been riding it all morning." She stared at me for a moment and then she blurted out, wide eyed, expectant, "Are you Santa Clause?"
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Used to be that if you were going to make a turn in your car, you stuck your arm out the window and signal. When I was fourteen, they came out with turn signals. For the life of me I couldn't understand how the car would know when it was going to turn. Fourteen years old, man!

Took me and another guy a lot of moments trying to figure out how a circular lawn mower cut all the grass.

I was confused about the world I lived in for most of my life.

I had a girl in town and I lived about four miles out of that same town - Graettinger. I used to stay with her until about four in the morning when I had to walk the four miles home -- past a graveyard. I was deathly afraid of ghosts. Every time, without fail, I used to mentally kick myself for staying with my girlfriend, making me walk past that graveyard when there were absolutely no cars on the road. "Never again!" I would tell myself.

If I had left at a reasonable hour, say ten o'clock, I could have probably gotten a ride from one of the farmers coming home from the beer hall. But nooooo. My lust took over my brain and good common sense.

I was absolutely sure each time, that THIS time a ghost was going to get me. Dr. Burke once asked me what I thought the ghosts were going to do to me and I was stumped. I didn't know.

After I went through the terror of actually walking right past the ghosts' stamping ground, I would feel a slight sense of relief at once again foiling the bastards, but every few seconds I would get a creepy feeling in the nape of my neck and quickly look back. I never really relaxed until I reached the first farmhouse. From then on it was a walk in the park. I was usually so sleepy that I would close my eyes and try to catnap while walking, but I always felt I was walking right into the ditch, so I didn't get much sleep.
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I used to trap and I caught a civet cat one morning, so I smelled like a skunk. When I went to school I told the principle what happened and he had the janitor spray me with formaldehyde. Now that stuff stunk MUCH worse than the outdoorsy smell of skunk. "'sides, we know now that formaldehyde is poison.

"IF ITS KRAFT, DON'T EAT IT"

I did some math tutoring for a coupla of years. I actually had a substitute teaching credential, but I hated that. I discovered I was not a teacher. I'm a tutor. I don't like to teach, but I love explaining things. Couldn't keep the kids in their seats, couldn't get them to shut up when teaching, but if they ask you a question, then they are interested and will pay attention.

My first experience with "professional teaching" was when a principle of a Christian school called up and wanted my wife to come in for work. She was already at work and the guy asked me if I could just sit in on some preschoolers. That sounded like fun, so I said yes.

It WAS fun. I enjoyed it a lot. The only problem came when he asked me to teach a first grade class. I thought it would be like preschool, being as the kids were only a year older, but it wasn't anything like it. I hated it. At the time I hadn't gotten the difference between tutoring and teaching.

One time when I was subbing, this kid in the First Grade kept getting out of his seat so I had him sit on the floor. Then his buddy started up so I had him sit there too. That didn't stop them so I had them lay face down on the floor. I went back to my desk and when I turned around to look at the class, there were these two Black kids spread-eagled on the floor -- their hands out in front of them. Looked like I was training them for their future.

I quickly got them out of that position and back into their seats before someone came in and saw it. I then took the whole class for a walk around the perimeter of the playground. I noticed a lot of the teachers out there were watching us -- wondering what the hell we were doing. I never again subbed. I found out about tutoring from my middle son.

One time I had my son look at my paycheck. He handed it back with no comment, so I asked him, "Did I make $300 an hour? He said, "looks like it." I have no idea what that was all about. I don't think I was worth that much money, but you never know.

Middle school children -- from the ages of eleven, twelve, thirteen, like that, they understand the English language but they are sometime so naive about things that it blows the mind.

I was standing next to a teacher waiting for the children to come into the room and we were talking and I told her I thought the kids were like babies you could talk to and she said she didn't think that was true and just then this eleven or twelve year old girl came up and asked her a question that I wish I could remember, but I don't. Anyhow, as the child walked away I turned to the teacher and said, "See what I mean?" And she nodded and said, "Yes," with a humorous look on her face 'cause what the kid asked was pretty funny. It didn't make any sense, adult-wise.

One time a freshman asked me how many feet in a mile and I said, "Five thousand two hundred and eighty." She looked at me funny and said, "Aw, no it's not." I said, Yep, it is." She thought a while and said, "How'd you know that?" I said I learned it in school.

High school kids -- especially seniors, they were the easiest. The younger they were, the more difficulty I had. When I was pre-schooling I just played with the kids and read books to them. Once I noticed nobody seemed to be listening to my reading so I stopped and they complained. I said, "Well nobody was listening."

They claimed they were so I quizzed them, and by golly, young children can focus on many things at once. While they were listening, they were talking, looking around, playing -- all sorts of things. Bless the children.


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When I took the Volvo in for servicing, I used to go to this restaurant to eat while I waited. I always sat at the counter. On the wall above the cash register was a hundred dollar counterfeit bill. Also with it was a cashed three party check alongside a sign that said "We do not cash two party checks."

I asked the lady about these two things and she said the $100 counterfeit came from a guy that used to work there and it was the only $100 bill theytook in that day, so it was pretty easy to catch him. She said the guy told them that he bought it at school -- it was a copied $100 bill.

I asked her if the "no cash bad check" sign had been up there whey they cashed the bad three party check, figuring that was the impetuous for the sign, but she said no, the sign had been there when they cashed the check. She said the lady sounded so sincere, had a sick father that needed medicine and they had cashed checks for her before and they were all right, this one wasn't. She said she never saw the lady again.
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I was watching a Sacramento news station and they were doing a special on a local famous bail bondsman and bounty hunter. So I see this guy with a rifle and a sheriff standing next to him, and the guy is shooting at a fleeing felon on a motorcycle. It didn't seem like he was trying to hit him, but the puffs of dirt were coming pretty close to the guy's front tires, so I think he was trying to shoot out the tires.

What got me was that the sheriff and the bounty hunter were just standing there, the bounty hunter shooting at a guy, the sheriff commenting on how close the shots were. Now, the sheriff was not allowed to shoot at a guy that way, so what made it OK for a private citizen to do it? That's crazy, right? Something amiss?

"CALL ME AN ANIMAL IF YOU WANT, I DON'T CARE."

I watch a lot of animal shows and I have seen a lot of strange things. One strange thing which I frequently see is animals that I never knew existed, like giant white rabbits on an island in Eastern Canada that run in herds.

There is a species of chimpanzees that live somewhere in South Asia that look like the missing link for human. They are eerily human-looking and they have sex in the missionary position usually, I have seen them once and I have read of them once, and in all my years of fascination with animals, those are the only two instances of even having heard of their existence. These strange, strange animals hiding from us in plain sight like a covey of purloined letters.

There is another species of chimpanzees that lives in South America that has a dominate male and only he gets to have sex with the females. Once in a while a strange male will come along and a female will actively seek the stranger out, take him to a hidden place and have sex with him. If the dominate male finds out, he doesn't do anything to the male, but he will beat the hell out of the female. Ain't that weird?

Once, watching a school of herrings, right across the middle of the screen swam a red herring. A real red herring. He went off to the left out of camera, then he came back from the left and swam out of camera to the right and I never saw him again. The narrator, who is supposed to keep us informed of what is going on, never mentioned the red herring. What good is he anyhow?

I saw a pack of wild African dogs biting a wildebeest calf, chasing him all over the place, the cow trying to protect her calf, but of course not able to do it. This went on for a few moments and then all the dogs stopped and just stood there looking around. The narrator said that the dogs got tired -- the calf "wore them out." What bullshit -- a calf wearing out a pack of dogs. Where do they get these guys anyhow? My explanation is that the dogs were playing with the calf and got tired of that. They just were not hungry.

I had a cat once that caught a mouse and let him go and I kept trying to get the cat to catch him again and the cat just wasn't interested.

A woman described how a tiger had caught her and she put her hand on his paw and begged him not to eat her and he didn't.

I once saw two red foxes nipping at the heels of our cows. The cows would turn around and butt at them and the foxes would get out of the way, run around and nip them again. Playing.

On the telly, I saw a hippo, a crocodile and a lion all eating off the same wildebeest carcass at the same time -- the hippo eating the contents of the wildebeest's stomach.

I saw a baby hippo walking across the backs of huge crocodiles, unaccompanied by any adult. Evidently the hippos had taught the crocs not to mess with the young.

I heard, on the telly again - I have never been to Africa or any other foreign country except once I went to Tijuana, of a pack of lions killing an elephant calf and the elephants waiting until the lions went on a hunt again and then going and killing all the lion cubs. Tit for tat I guess.

I once saw two pollywogs with their noses stuck seemingly out of the water -- as close to the shore as they could get. I was standing right over them. They never moved a hair -- if they had any hair, which they didn't, being amphibians and all. I puzzled over this because normally they would scatter as soon as you approached, Then I saw a water snake in the pool of water looking for his favorite food -- pollywogs. These two were hiding from him, trusting me more than the snake.

I once watched a water snake watching me for a period of time, then apparently deciding I was no threat, went into the water and brought out a fish and ate it in front of me.

My Middle son, Daryl, had a cat that was an excellent "mouser." She had a kitten and one day I noticed that every time the kitten came close to her, she would hiss and spit at him. I thought how strange that a cat would treat an offspring like that, especially when she had seemed so loving to him before.

Sitting on the back porch, I noticed while watching the kitten, that wherever he was, the mom would be close by. She followed him, keeping watch over him and he never knew it.

I saw the kitten with a live hummingbird which had been caught by the mom. He was too young to handle it and a few minutes later I saw him with a butterfly, also caught by the mom. Tell me they can't use logic.
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A LOVE STORY
I volunteered for hospice at one time. My job was to give respite to the caretaker of the patient. This one guy I had was in a coma and I was told that his wife had taken his favorite records to the hospital so he could listen to them, she read to him, she doted on him, even though he could not respond.

Their story was that they were married and he started treating her violently so she divorced him, but when she found out that he had a brain tumor and that was causing the violence in him, she went back to him and cared for him until he died.
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I hope these are all new stories, but like my oral stories, I forget sometimes which ones I have told before. Won't hurt you to read them again anyhow.

DON'T DO ME ANY SMALL FAVORS

Back in the day, on Saturdays, my wife Teresa, and I got to spin vinyl platters on a public service radio. In order to have some fun as well as listen to some really good music, we decide to visit the various art openings around town and report on the viability of the food served at these gatherings. I wrote "press" on a piece of white cardboard and stuck it into the hat band of my father's hat. This plus a notebook was my uniform, and off we went.

At one place, a women's group art show, I was rushed by a hefty lady saying things like , "What the hell do you think you're doing? No press!" She blathered awhile and then left us to our devices. I don't know what was the matter with her. Did she fear disclosure of some nefarious doing?

We never reported on the art, we always stuck completely to the food served, and funny thing, in those days, the food was really delicious and lots of it. Nowadays you can only get a glass of bad wine and some crackers.

A few years after that I was talking to a woman we knew pretty well from Weatherstone's and I mentioned my get up and she said something that made me ask, "Did you think that I was serious with that Jimmy Olson disguise?" She said, "Yeah."

Good God! If you saw somebody with a homemade press sign in a forties hat, would you think it real? I don't know about some people. But this reminds me of another story along those lines.

My middle son Daryl and I were in his downstairs apartment doing some comic book writing and for some reason he got the idea to go out on the sidewalk and draw a chalk outline of a body. He also drew a chalk outline of a revolver and painted a red blot by the "guy's" head. Teresa got into the act and said, "Wait a minute." She went upstairs and came back with about ten feet of some yellow caution tape which we tied to the corner stop sign post. When we stepped back, it looked kinda neat. We were proud of ourselves.

The next day we heard of people saying there had been a murder there, the murderer had hid in the tree on the corner and waited for his victim. Somebody else had heard it on the TV. A neighbor friend told us that her husband was telling her about the murder and she said she told him that wasn't it possible that those two nuts (meaning me and my son) might have had something to do with it?

It seemed obvious to all of us that it was a joke, but yet...

One night I was sitting on the porch and here came, "thump thump thump" a car with a flat tire traveling very slowly with a cop car with flashing lights following it. Around and around the block for what seemed a long time.

Another day I was again sitting on the porch and a pickup drove into a light pole. Three guys got out and they all ran off in three different directions -- one stopping to throw rocks at a concerned civilian who told them they better wait for the cops.

"IF A THING IS WORTH DOING, IT'S WORTH DOING BADLY"

"The root of all disturbance, if one will go to its source, is that no one will blame himself "-- Dorotheisis of Gaza, as quoted in a book entitled simply, "Dakota," by Kathleen Norris.

This book, "Dakota," is kind of a spiritual journey that a woman took who lived in New York and wished to go back to her roots in a small town in Western South Dakota.

Ms. Norris talks about a Benedictine Monastery that evidently is close by the small Western Dakota towns and the people who inhabit them, often comparing the similarities and the contrasts between people who live close together in a monastery and how they adapt, and people who live close together in small towns and how they cope.

She tells the story, as an example of the difference in openness between the two, of the revolution in the Philippines when nuns took to the streets rebelling against Marco's regime. Some nuns objected, saying it was a worldly thing and they should not be going into the streets and demonstrating. They had a meeting and it was decided that those who wanted to, could go into the streets, those who didn't think it proper, but still agreed with the movement could feed and help the ones that did demonstrate, and those that were dead set against it could pray for the others.

In contrast to this "coming together," When a new minister brought a nonpartisan election folder explaining the various positions to a small town Dakota church meeting, she was told that church and state should not mix and there was no discussion at all about it.
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I was watching "Cops" last night, one of my favorite programs. The cops were gathering to serve a fifty-thousand dollar warrant on a guy that had a history of violence to cops, and was known to carry weapons. It was not expected to be a walk in the park.

The team got out of their cars, all duded up with their amament, going into this bar where they had learned the perp was. This group of five or six cops, plus the ones filming, started towards the bar. A young girl of about twenty wearing a white blouse and blue jeans was inside the group, walking with them. She seemed to be with them, but had no gear, no uniform, no weapons, and was right in the middle of the frame of the filming. She walked with them up to the door of the bar where I lost sight of her and the cops took the guy down, found a cocked and loaded weapon in his belt.

Who was she? What was she doing there? Why did the cops let her come along like that -- or didn't they see her? What the hell, anyhow?
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I'm seven years old, watering my rock garden. My older brother by two years asks me what I'm doing. I tell him I was growing rocks. He said, "Rocks don't grow."

I replied, "Oh yeah? Where do you think big rocks come from?". As soon as I said that, I thought, "Oh, no. How stupid.".

In First Grade, we learned about the Sahara desert and the Oasises. I was especially impressed with the pictures of date palms. When I got home that day, I took an empty one pound Folgers coffee can, filled it with dirt, planted a date pit and put it in the oven to warm it up to the heat of the Sahara. I cooked all the water out of my "garden," and I remember thinking it wasn't going to work, and I almost remember throwing the whole mess out.
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I was out walking looking for somewhere to "serve" when I came to a small building where they were giving away clothing to the poor. Walking in, I noticed two women - one rather tiny and old, the other young and regular size. They were hanging clothes on racks - all very neat, as if in a retail store. I asked the old lady if I could help them, and she agreed.

I found out that the clothes arrived from donations given at the church which sponsored the store.

The old lady told me a few days later that she had asked the minister of the church if he would send someone over to help them. When she called to thank the minister for sending me, she found out that he had never found anyone to send. I had arrived the very next day after she had asked the minister for help so she had assumed that the minister had sent me. She told me she had thought I was an angel when she found out the circumstances of my being there. I myself thought it unusual.

The younger woman, after a few hours that first day, told me she had been raped, but not to tell anyone else that. A few days later the old lady told me the younger woman had been raped, but not for me to tell anyone else, since the girl wanted to keep it quiet.

The old lady, who was in charge, tasked me to clean up the back room. In there, boxes were stacked to the ceiling in the rear and almost to the ceiling in the rest of the room. There was one small aisle through the boxes where one could walk. Stacked against the front wall were several mattresses.

The younger woman and I started rearranging stuff in the boxes - shoes in one, purses in another - there were a LOT of purses. When a box was full, I started a new pile, expecting to go through the whole lot until everything was orderly.

Since it was summer and no air conditioning was available, we left a large upward sliding garage-type door open. Frequently someone would come by and ask for certain articles of clothing. The girl always told them to go into the main room, that this room was just for storage.

Occasionally someone would see the mattresses and ask for one. I told the old lady and she said they had to go through the church and get a paper to show us before they could have one. We NEVER, in all the time I was there, ever gave even one mattress away, although maybe twenty people had asked for one.

I overheard the women talking about a man that had been in there one day, wanting a pair of shoes. They didn't give him a pair because, as the old lady said, "He wasn't humble enough."

There was a small plot of dirt between a concrete border by the front door, containing a water faucet. I planted marigolds there one morning, and kept them watered. I liked seeing them every morning when I came to work.

One morning there was a long line waiting for the store to open and as I went down the line, I looked closely at every person and that is when I came to realize the truth of what Jesus said when he declared that "The poor will always be with us." I could easily see that if you gave each one of these people a million dollars, within the year they would be back standing in line waiting for free clothing.

One day the old lady told me that the younger girl kept preventing her from giving the clothes away that were in the back room. She told me to get rid of them. I asked her if I should throw it in the dumpster and she agreed that that would be a good idea. I started doing that and pretty soon people started asking me if they could go through and take some of the stuff. I said, "sure."

A crowd gathered in the alley. People brought cars and were filling the seats up with clothing. I would set the boxes down so they could go through them before I threw them in the dumpster.

Eventually the younger woman got wind of what was going on and came out and started raising hell. I and her argued about the advantages of giving the clothes away like we were supposed to do as opposed to storing it forever in the storage room. She was in favor of the latter. At one time during our discourse, she declared plaintively, "But I was saving those for my kids."

She objected to all of the folderol. The crowd was excited. The young lady, voicing her objections to the whole thing, declared that "It was just like Christmas" but not in a good way - in a chaotic way.

This woman and a short young Black man got into an argument - the Black man calling her selfish, the lady telling him she was going to get her boyfriend to beat him up. Trying to calm the rough waters, I slowly pulled the garage door down, being careful to let the two of them vent as then wished until they were both actually bent down, shouting at each other under to door opening which by this time was about a foot and a half from the floor. That part was pretty funny.

After the door was closed she berated me again and wanted me to promise that I would never let anything like that happen again. I promised her that I never would. What I meant was that she would never see me back here again.

A few weeks later I dropped by and my pretty flowers were all dead. The place itself closed down a few weeks later.

YOU MUST STAND ON YOUR OWN TWO FEET

We had a small white dog on the farm that used to pee by lifting its left hind leg. One day his right hind leg got cut off by the binder cutters and we didn't see the dog for several days after that. When it finally did reappear, the first thing I noticed was that the dog still peed by lifting its left hind leg, but since the right hind leg was missing, the result was that the dog would pee by standing on its two front legs.
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I lived in Des Moines for several years from the age of four to thirteen, with summers spent on a farm in Northern Iowa - four miles outside of Graettinger Iowa - "The Choice of a Thousand." I walked a lot in Des Moines and often passed a broom factory. Nearby was also a book binding factory, but I got no story there. I just mention it because it's kinda unusual, don't you think? I got to thinking about that broom factory today. Brooms last a very long time. I don't think twenty years is old for a broom. The only time we bought a new broom in our fifty years of marriage was the last time we moved -- two years ago and that was only because of the superstition of moving a broom.

So...a broom factory couldn't have very many sales. Newlyweds mostly. So how do they stay in business? Was that factory in Des Moines the only one in the whole Midwest?
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In the seventies there was an explosion in self-improvement activities. The one I enjoyed the most and the one that was the most valuable to me was est -- "Erhart's Seminar Training."

Right off the bat I knew I was in the right place when the trainer said we were all assholes. I recognized that. One guy objected to being called an asshole and said that the trainer must be one too. The trainer replied that he was the only one in the room of three hundred people that didn't pay three hundred dollars to be there, which made all of us assholes except him. Hah!

That guy was magic. Est was magic. When we signed up, they asked on our submission papers what we wanted out of the est training. We were told that whatever we wanted was what we were going to get. If we wanted a Cadillac, we would get a Cadillac. I put down "enlightenment" and that's what I got. My wife wanted to keep me from other women and that's what she got.

Before the training started there was a long list of things we had to agree to. Not have any watches on our person, no writing instruments, no paper. No breaks except the ones we were given. A whole bunch of other stuff that I now forget. One thing that was stressed was that if we kept those agreements and kept our soles (trainer pointed to bottom of his shoe) in the room, we all would "get it." We just had to be there and keep our agreements and we were promised that we would get whatever it was that we were to "get." I thought that a fair deal. I was excited.

Several times, before the training began, we were told NOT to have watches on our person. No broken watches, no play watches, no watches. It was on the list of things to agree to on the papers we took home and went over.

We were then told to "Watch. There will be several people who still have watches. With excuses such as "it is broken." "I was never going to look at is." "It belongs to someone else, I was holding it for them." After all this, the trainer said for the people who have watches on their person to hold up their hands. Four people did so, and they gave the excuses he had said they would. People! What you gonna do with them?

Est stressed keeping our agreements, saying, "Keep your agreements. If you don't keep your agreements, watch what happens."

One guy, at sharing time, said that he had just peed his pants. He seemed so proud of himself.

At dinner that night I told my wife that the man had been silly. Est didn't FORCE us to keep our agreements. They just said to keep them, but if you don't, watch what happens. That guy could have gone to the bathroom. The only thing that stopped him was his own misunderstanding of what est was telling him.

I saw this look come into my wife's eyes that I recognized -- a stare as she ran this around in her mind, a slight raising of the eyebrows and a slight uplifting of the corners of her mouth. I knew right then that she was going to use this new information to get some attention by going to the bathroom without permission, and sure enough, that's exactly what she did. She caused quite a stir and was very happy. People thought she was so brave. Hah!

To this day she denies that the reason she broke her agreement was to have fun. She declares emphatically that she simply had to pee.

BAD LEADERS MAKE GOOD CANNON FODDER

I was assigned the maintenance desk for several months -- dishing out work order assignments. The Captain's office was right next to my desk, behind closed doors.

Whenever we had an aircraft on the horn (radio) with a problem, he would always butt in with his suggestions, calling them out from behind the closed door. His suggestions were usually pretty silly or simple-minded, but of course, since he was The Captain, we had to relay them until he had run through his repertoire and then we could commence to fix the problem.

One day Maintenance Control called and asked to use one of our two taxis. They had never before asked for one of our taxis in the fifteen years I had been there, so they must have really needed it and we had two that were at the moment not being used, and since I was in control of work orders and knew we wouldn't need the taxis for a few hours, I said, "OK."

I hung up the phone and evidently The Captain had been listening in because he asked me what they wanted. I told him and he said, "Tell them they can't have it."

I called them back and with an excited quiver in my gut because I knew how this was going to come out, I told Maintenance, loud enough for The Captain to hear, "The Captain said you can't have the taxi." The Captain came bolting out of his office and said, "God dammit! Don't tell them that!"

Hah! What an idiot.

We used to clean the area after our shift was finished and this one guy used to always clean The Captain's coffee cup. I never thought too much about it until one day someone told me that he liked to clean The Captain's coffee cup so that he could rinse it out in the toilet.

These stories about idiots that piss people off and then allow them access to their property reminds me of an incident that happened to a neighbor of ours.

My wife used to leave for work early in the morning because she had a long commute. She parked her car in the driveway behind a chain link fence to keep it safe from marauding downtown citizens.

This guy across the street started parking his pickup truck in the driveway so my wife couldn't get out. We would call the cops and they would go wake him up and have him move it. One day I happened to be outside when he parked his truck in the driveway, and I asked him if he would move it, as my wife had to leave early for work every morning and she had been getting to work late because of the delay in getting his truck moved. I really thought that he didn't notice what he had been doing. I was very polite about it. He moved his truck four feet back out of the way of the driveway.

The next morning we found that he had moved his truck four feet forward until it was again in the driveway.

Wasn't that stupid, to leave his unprotected truck on our property, totally at the mercy of whatever we wanted to do with his truck, depending solely upon how pissed we were with his aggressive act? People often mistake kindness for weakness.

I took one of my stone carving tools - a rasp-like thing, and rubbed it along his truck, occasionally having to stop to get it started again, since the point would stick into the metal at times. I think it must have surprised him a bit that I would do a thing like that. Ever after, he would park his truck way down the block.

Oh yeah, besides what I did to his truck, this time the cops didn't just wake him up. They had the truck towed.
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ION, during World War II, General Rommel, fighting the British in Africa, depended completely upon supplies getting to him from Europe via ships. The British controlled Malta, a base in the Mediterranean which was used as a base for aircraft and warships.

One day a convoy of seven Italian merchant ships escorted by ten destroyers and two heavy cruisers left Europe heading for North Africa and Rommel. The British, with two light cruisers and two destroyers, sank a destroyer, all seven merchant ships, and damaged another destroyer without any damage to the British ships. (Ibid. "Panzer Battles" by Major General F. W. Von Mellenthin)