Deep Thoughts from My Youth Pastor

I wake up. I’m not focused. There’s a seventy pound dog hogging up most of the bed. My first thought?

It’s a memory.

I’m sitting in a car with my youth pastor. He’s in the driver’s seat, and I’m in the passenger seat. Before we get going to wherever, he points to the car’s unused cigarette lighter. The logo on the face of this ubiquitous late 20th century device is a long, thin rectangle with two wavy lines at one end. This is the universal sign of a lit cigarette.

The youth pastor spins the logo so that it’s horizontal. It looks like a lit cigarette. “What is that?” he asks me.

“A cigarette,” I responded, thinking there was some sort of lesson being taught in the front of a Corolla.

“Right,” he said. He spun the lighter ninety degrees clockwise. Now the logo is vertical, and the wavy lines are heading off to the right. “What is it now?” he asked.

I had no idea where he was going with this, so instead of guessing, I just said, “No idea.”

“It’s a smokestack!” he said with obvious glee.

“Ah.” That’s all I could think to say. Again, I had no clue as to where this conversation was going.

Again, he turned the lighter a quarter turn so that the rectangle was horizontal once again, but the wavy lines were pointed downward. “What is it now?” he queried.

“Um…”

“A drainpipe! See it?”

“Oh, HA!” I responded. It was obvious that my youth pastor had put a lot of time into this. To my fifteen year old brain, I could appreciate the effort.

One more turn of the lighter. Now the rectangle is vertical, and the wavy lines are at the bottom, pointing to the left. “And this?”

Obviously, this was the coup de grace as it was the last possible position for the lighter. It all lead up to this point. I still didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” I replied, slightly embarrassed by my lack of imagination.

My youth pastor had a big smile behind that big bushy beard. “A TAMPON!”

Writing this out now, it’s still funny to me. It was a more innocent age where the mere mention of a female’s hygiene product could elicit that amount of laughter.

You don’t see cigarette lighters in cars much anymore. They’ve been politically corrected into adapters or just exiled completely. But whenever I get into an old car that still sports on old fashioned push-in, pop-out resistance lighter, I have to smile.

And if there’s no one else in the car, I take the time to turn the plug’s logo to each of its four cardinal points. “Cigarette. Smokestack. Drainpipe. TAMPON.”

Thanks for the memory.

True Leadership

This is a tale of Leadership.

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about MY leadership. I don’t do leadership. People have tried to put me in positions of authority only to discover that there was a whole host of better choices by which to avoid utter devastation. My leadership style is one that could be best titled, “Here, Let Me Show You What NOT To Do”, or “I’m Insane, and I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, So Put Me In Charge”.

So, as a point of clarification, this is not a note that describes my prowess of being a King among Men, because that’s not a thing. This is, however, a regaling of an event that best highlights the leadership style of one of my commanding officers while I was in the US Coast Guard.

I was on the USCGC Citrus for just about six years. I had that rare opportunity to be stationed on the 180′ cutter on back-to-back tours. Out of fear of receiving a third set of orders aboard the “medium endurance cutter”, I opted for the Honorable Discharge.

During that six year period of my life, I served under four extremely different CO’s: Lieutenant Commanders Allen (about one and half years), Geratis (two years), Hathaway (two years), and Fisher (only a few months). I’ve written about Thad Allen before. He was the one that grew up to be the 23^rd Commandant of the Coast Guard. David Geratis replaced Allen, and the stories that happened under Geratis’ watch could fill volumes (e.g. the Pacific Star Event, Epic Air Guitar Contests, etc.). My time under Fisher’s command was very short as my departure from the billet of the service came hard on the heels of his moving into the Captain’s Cabin.

It’s about LCDR Jeff Hathaway that I wish to write. He was a tall drink of water, lanky, and didn’t speak much. When he did talk, it was calm, measured, and rarely loud. If it was loud, it was only at a volume to float over the cacophony of other voices on the bridge. His answers always came after some thought. For a captain of a vessel that was mostly billeted with a bunch of hot-head twenty-somethings, maintaining a cool and level head was amazing. If I were to title him, I would say that LCDR Hathaway was a Philosopher-Commander. He wasn’t flamboyant, or over-the-top, but neither was he cold fish. He was, in every positive definition, a good man. Nice. Level-headed. To coin a phrase, he was the captain that the Citrus needed.

Our patrol schedule was pretty hectic during Hathaway’s command. I don’t remember why, exactly. Sometimes it was because other cutters in the district or area were unable to maintain a patrol schedule due to being in yards, being out of commission, mutiny, or whatever. The other reason we were finding ourselves not at home, and cruising around doing that whole guarding the coast deal, was because we could. The curse of being “Semper Paratus”, Always Ready.

We found ourselves in San Diego. There was a section of my enlistment when I spent more time in San Diego than I did in our homeport of Coos Bay, OR. This particular visit to that southern Californian seaport was because of RefTra.

Allow me a moment of time to explain RefTra, or, as landlubbers would understand, “Refresher Training”. This occurs every eighteen months or so. Every floating unit has to go through an extensive training evolution, usually hosted by the ever-friendly US Navy.

And we all know how much the Navy just LOVES the Coast Guard.

RefTra is, essentially, where an entire boat goes to boot camp. The Navy “riders” come aboard our cutter, and put the ship, her crew, through every imaginable disaster that could sink the ship, then they judge how well we react. Fire, flooding, machinery failure, navigation, comms, personnel casualty, NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) attack, you name it.

Yes, I said, “Nuclear”.

One particular training exercise went down like this:

RefTra Rider: “OK, for this training evolution, we will simulate a nuclear bomb exploding 1,000 yards ahead of you. What are you going to do?”

Me: “Die? Is ‘Being instantaneously turned into burnt toast’ an option for this ridiculous scenario, Chief?”

RefTra Rider: “It’s the exercise. What are you going to do?”

Me: “Well considering that this boat was commissioned two full years before they dropped the first atomic bomb, I feel pretty certain that we’re not specifically designed to survive a nuclear blast that just detonated a half-nautical mile off of our starboard bow.”

It took a number of years for me to learn when not to contribute honest talk during RefTras.

RefTra was a 24/7 carnival of naval entertainment that lasted for about six weeks.

Sometimes the training evolutions involved playing War Games. This is where the Navy wants to practice maneuvers. What they do is to get a bunch of these grey monsters on one side, and they direct other ships to be on the other. Sort of a Good Guys versus the Bad Guys.

The Good Guys usually consisted of an aircraft carrier with all of their “birds”, some cruisers, a handful of destroyers and frigates, some amphibious dealie-boppers, as well as some other behemoths that were built to wipe out large swaths of the earth.

The Bad Guys usually were an attack submarine, some ancient minesweeper, and us.

Always seemed like a fair and even fight to me. Especially when we had that attack sub on our side. AMAZING boats.

There was this one particular part of a War Game when we were to transport some Navy SEALs from San Diego to San Clemente Island. The object was to navigate our painfully slow cutter, which was brightly painted white with the glaringly colored Coast Guard stripes on the bow, close in to the island, drop the SEAL team into the water, and leave the op-area undetected.

We were tied up starboard side to the Anti-Submarine Warfare #9 pier in San Diego. Occasionally we would tie up down at the Navy Base south of the Coronado bridge, but that was so embarrassing. Our poor little cutter looked like a rowboat among giants when we were there. The docks were built for those large warships. We were so small that our gangway had to be placed as high up on the cutter’s superstructure as possible just so that we could disembark. So we preferred to dock over at the ASW9 pier at the north end of San Diego Bay.

At the time, I was a third class petty officer (QM3), standing duty as the Quartermaster of the Watch, when the SEAL Team arrived.

Let me tell you a little something about the Navy SEALs. Most everyone knows something about them. Usually the information that they have is derived from what they’ve seen on the big screen. Action/adventure movies that depict the Navy SEAL as a master of all things warfare. Killing machines. Tip of the Spear. Able to fiercely engage the enemy on the Sea, from the Air, or on Land. Hollywood generally shows that one member of a SEAL Team, with a dull butter knife, a wet bandanna, and a book written by Samuel Clemens, is able to take on a whole battalion completely alone.

Of course, this is complete balderdash. Piffle. Utter tosh. Bunkum.

Everyone knows that any one member of a SEAL Team is infinitely scarier than that.

And there were five of them approaching our gangway.

They were wearing all black. Their uniforms, their hats, boots, duffel bags, those clouds of impending doom that followed them. All black.

The guy at the front, led his roving pack of warriors up the ramp, and stopped at the top. As is the protocol of coming aboard a military vessel, the guy turned, and saluted the flag at the stern.

It was a good salute. Textbook. Good form. I gave him a solid 8.5.

He then gave a very smart right face, and saluted me. “Request permission to come aboard.”

In any other setting, I, being the QMOW, would’ve saluted back, and said, “Permission granted.”

That’s how the game worked. Walk up to, but not on, the ship. Salute the flag. Salute the quarterdeck. Make the request. Get permission to board.

Leaving the cutter was the opposite. Approach the gangway. Salute the quarterdeck. Say, “Request permission to lay ashore” or “Request permission to disembark” or “Request permission to jump over the side”. Whatever. Then permission is granted. Salute the flag. Leave.

When we were at home, the saluting thing was more perfunctory. A muscle reflex. As you’re walking up the gangway, you give a vague salute in the general vicinity of the flag, and then you give another salute of questionable value at the quarterdeck. No words are exchanged, and half the time the quarterdeck doesn’t even see you passing by.

But this wasn’t a normal setting. As this was RefTra, and EVERYTHING was open for grading Therefore, the going on and off of the cutter had to be by the book.

So, there I stood, in front of this highly trained killing machine. He was saluting me, waiting for the customary permission to be granted.

I stood up straight, and said, “ID, please.”

We had orders from the CO himself that no one was to come aboard without first displaying their military ID. I didn’t make up the rules, but I was on watch, so that’s what I did.

The SEAL unit guy looked a bit confused. “I’m Lt. McDeathmuffin, and I’d like to come aboard.”

OK, I don’t remember his name. He was a lieutenant, though. I do remember that.

To be fair, I didn’t know he was an officer. None of the men had any collar insignia that indicated rank.“Oh, OK. I’m third class quartermaster Campbell. ID, please, SIR.”

“No, look, you don’t get it. We’re Navy SEALs, we don’t have to show our ID.”

It’s true. Members of certain Special Operations Units in the Armed Forces are exempt from having to display any ID. This is for their protection, and the protection of their loved ones. Even to the point where the media must blur out the faces of these operatives in any photo.

So, before we go any further, and to calm those veterans out there, I am fully aware of the “No ID Rule” with Special Forces now, AND I was aware of the rule back then. But here’s the thing, my orders were very clear. No one was to come aboard the cutter without first showing their ID. There was no proviso. No special dispensation.

No ID meant no access.

“Ah,” I said. “Then you don’t get to come aboard.”

This is where it got a little tense, right? Here were five men, and each one of them could kill me in three different languages. They had guns, knives, little pouches on their belts that held 31 different flavors of Death. As far as I knew, I was probably already dead, but I didn’t have the good sense to fall down yet.

Me? I had an embarrassingly dull folding knife on my belt, a small Swiss Army knife in my pocket, a sail needle in the brim of my hat, and a full arsenal of Monty Python quotes. In my favor, I also just finished watching a bunch of Chuck Norris movies down in the Rec Deck, so I felt pretty confident that, should the five Angels of Death before me decide to rush the quarterdeck, I could stand my own for at least two or three milliseconds.

Lieutenant McDeathmuffin dropped his salute, and stared at me in such a way that it probably took five years off of my lifespan. “Are you telling me that you are not going to let us come aboard?”

The question, if you wanted to call it a question, was more of a statement of disbelief. It smacked of something akin to Samwise Gamgee before the orc horde.

I’ll be honest. I’ll be fully transparent here. It kinda made me mad. Sure, I was about to wet my pants, because: SEAL, but it also sort of ticked me off. It was the visceral reaction to when some gigantic bully says to the little guy, “Who are YOU to tell me no?!” So I don’t know if it was my ingrained Coast Guard defiance towards all things Navy, or if it was my just being sick and tired of RefTra where we were pitied by all these Riders that would come onboard and mock our old equipment, our antiquated ship, and our “inferior” Coast Guard policies. It could also come from my Scottish DNA that seemed to always come to a boil whenever someone tried to be all uppity…regardless of the survivability of the encounter.

“Yup,” I answered. “No military ID, no permission to come aboard. Those are my orders.”

The entire SEAL group nearly sprained their ocular musculature from rolling their eyes so hard. McDeathmuffin growled at me. “Who’s orders?”

It was an impasse. Rock meets the Hard Place. I really didn’t know how this was going to get resolved…other than my broken body being thrown over the side. “Captain’s orders,” I said.

“Call him up here,” he snarled. No, really. He snarled at me.

I resisted the urge to roll over and show my belly. Instead, I asked, “Really?”

“Call. Him.”

“OK….”

One does not just call the Captain of the ship. You have to be really, really sure that you want to poke that bear. Really, really, REALLY sure. But, as I was facing a pack of barely leashed feral, trident bearing, modern day Spartans, I thought it warranted the rare call to roust the CO.

I grabbed the ship’s intercom, called the 1MC, keyed the mic, and said, “Captain, your presence is requested at the quarterdeck.”

And then we all waited. I was standing there, just outside of the 01 deck starboard side door. Opposite of me were five very impatient SEAL team members standing on the gangway.

Their only obstacle keeping them from gaining access to the cutter was li’l ol’ me.

LCDR Hathaway came down from the Captain’s cabin, and walked over to the quarterdeck. I rendered a salute, to which he returned. “What’s the problem, Campbell?”

“Well, Sir, they want to come aboard, but they won’t show me their ID cards. In accordance to your orders, Cap’n, I cannot grant them permission.”

LCDR Hathaway nodded, and mulled that over in his mind for a few seconds, as was his way. He took a couple of steps towards McDeathmuffin.

Before the captain could say anything, the SEAL lieutenant snapped up a salute, and said, “Captain, I’m Lt. McDeathmuffin, leading this group of SEALs. Our orders are to report to this…”

“I’m fully aware of your orders, lieutenant.” The Captain emphasized the lieutenant part. Hathaway wasn’t really the sort to pull rank. He didn’t flash the golden oak leaves on his collar to impress or to coerce. He was the sort of man that you knew was the captain long before you saw what was on the collar.

“Do you wish to come aboard?” the captain asked.

McDeathmuffin frowned. “Uh…yes, sir.” He did his textbook salute again. “Request permission to come aboard.”

LCDR Hathaway returned the salute.

At this point, I thought that the captain was to just circumvent the order, which was his right to do so. It was fine for him to do it, but it would not have been OK for me. I was cool with the captain taking the reins on this one.

“Permission granted,” the captain said. “As soon as you show your ID’s to Petty Officer Campbell, as he directed.”

“Sir,” McDeathmuffin said, somewhat incredulously, “regulations stipulate that we don’t have to show our ID’s. Our identities are classified.”

Hathaway nodded. “I see. Unfortunately, those same regulations do not stipulate that you can come aboard without permission. So… Get. Off. My. Boat.”

Outside of the fact that I was pretty sure that both LCDR Hathaway and I were both going to have our broken bodies tossed over the side, I was suitably impressed.

I could not have been more proud of a captain at that point. Not only did he not back down, but he also backed me up…a mere QM3, an underling. He could’ve easily thrown me under the bus, but instead, he put steel in my third class collar devices.

I learned more about leadership in that short exchange than I did from volumes of books that I’ve read. Ever since that single moment, I have thought of this as one of the best examples of leadership that I’ve ever witnessed.

A deal was eventually struck. Lt McDeathmuffin acquiesced, and showed his military ID the CO. It was deemed enough to satisfy the order for the rest of the SEAL team.

The other four members of the team got to the top of the gangway, saluted the flag, turned, then saluted me. “Request permission to come aboard.”

I saluted each of them in turn. “Permission granted.” Each one was done with LCDR Hathaway standing directly behind me.

When the last SEAL was aboard, and was being escorted below, the captain asked, “Is there anything else, Campbell?”

“No, Sir. Thank you.” I saluted him.

“No, Campbell. Thank you.” He returned my salute, and went back to his cabin.

There are those that take their leadership and foist it upon those under them. That see those that are under their authority as tools, cogs in a wheel, disposable items to be used to assist in their upward trajectory.

Then there are those that see being a leader as a means to support and build up the those they call their crew.

LCDR Hathaway was the class act of the latter grouping, and I am proud to have served under his command.

Jeff Hathaway also “grew up” to become a member of the exclusive Flag Rank. He retired as a Rear Admiral (lower half), well respected and well decked out with ribbons and medals.

But for me, the highest honor I could give him was the fact that he backed his crew…even in the face of certain death.

ADDENDUM:

I’m not one that believes in Karma, but I do believe in the responsibility that everyone has to conduct themselves in such a way so as not to appear to be a fool later on. The “Pride goeth before a fall” principle.

Our orders, as previously stated, were to transport the SEALs to San Clemente Island for their portion of the War Games. Because of our size, and less than stellar speed, we planned it so that we’d arrive under the cloak of a moonless night, and we configured our running lights to as to convey ourselves as a fishing trawler.

Here’s the thing about the Citrus that was common for all buoy tenders: They were engineered to be able to get into shallow waters, work the buoy, then back out to deeper seas. To facilitate this purpose, the keel, or lack thereof, was rounded. The Citrus sort of wallowed through the ocean. Even if the sea-state was at a Beaufort-1, she was still going to waddle + or – 5º across the water. Put in your mind the cadence of “derp-a-derp-a-derp-a-derp” and you can imagine how we transited any course.

We were used to that. Some guys suffered from sea-sickness when we first got underway, but their bodies would eventually adapt to the rockin’ and rollin’ of the ship’s less than elegant gait. She’d get there; it wasn’t always going to be pretty, and it wasn’t going to be quick, but she’d get there. Eventually.

So, while we were used to the way the Great White Ghost of the Oregon Coast made her way from Point A to Point B….

…the SEALs were not. At all. Not in the least.

Wow, were they sick. Toughest men on the planet, able to wipe out scores of hardened soldiers with a spork, lying on their mysteriously filled duffel bags on the Rec Deck, bemoaning their lot in life.

We couldn’t hear them very well, however. We were watching a good Chuck Norris movie, and we had the volume way up.

The Thadmiral

About a month ago, I was taking a weekly course entitled “CERT”. This acronym stands for “Community Emergency Response Team”. I don’t want to take too long dwelling on this, but basically it’s a nationwide grass roots effort to train regular folks how to respond in the event of a massive catastrophe. To create a pool of citizens that can be utilized as a viable resource for the First Responders when everything goes to golly because of…whatever. I was also taking the course because my work has me involved in some Emergency Operation Plan Thing, for whatever reason that escapes me. It was, however, a good course, and I was glad to take it.

The reason I bring this up is because during one of the sessions, they were talking about the structure of command during the event, and they were putting up photos of different scenarios of the past. One such tragic event was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that happened in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. During the slide-show, there was a photo that displayed some VIPs looking at a chart of the area, being all serious. There, looming over everyone, was Admiral Thad Allen. He was the Commandant at that point, and all four stars were shining out like some 19^th century lighthouse in a storm.

(not my shot, but it’s similar to the one they were using)

I, of course, being all professional and studious, yelled out, “Hey! That’s Cap’n Allen!”

Most of the US knows Adm. Allen as the 23^rd Commandant of the United States Coast Guard. He was the face of authority during some of the country’s more dire events in recent history. He mobilized the USCG fleet during the attacks of 9/11, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, then, after getting his fourth star, the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

He was the Commandant. That’s about as rarefied air as you can get in the Coast Guard. It’s the ultimate brass ring. You can’t just apply for that job, do a couple of gedunk interviews with mid level managers, then get the post, you have to earn that O-10 stripe. One does not just drift through one’s career and then find themselves sitting in the Commandant’s chair. One has to be approved. One has to get the thumb’s up from the President. Sit before the Senate and get grilled for a while. And then, the biggest hoop, getting the nod from the wife, Pam.

It’s a four year hitch, being the one and only four-star. You get to rub shoulders with Congress, the power hitters of D.C., and bigwigs from other countries. One also gets to hang out with other Flag Officers doing other Flag Officer games at the Flag Officer Only Clubs. As Commandant, one is given the ability to walk aboard any cutter, at any time, and take it for a spin around the ocean. Not many people know that. Commandants have also been known to sneak into CG AirStas and take any random HH-60 helo out for a shopping run to Costco just to be able to change the call-sign to “Coast Guard One.” The USCG Commandant also gets to sit in on the Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings when they have their big military top secret pow-wows. Don’t get me wrong, they don’t get to make any decisions at the JCOS meetings, because: Coast Guard.

That’s how most people knew Adm. Thad Allen.

There are, however, a sub-set of people that know him differently.

I reported aboard the USCGC Citrus (WMEC-300) in October of 1982. At that time, the commanding officer billet for the Citrus was a Lieutenant Commander, and that CO had just recently taken residence in the Captain’s Cabin.

He was LCDR Allen. An officer, to be sure, but he didn’t have any amount of “scrambled eggs” on the visor of you combo cap yet.

I have a whole shelf full of memories of my time on the NRPQ, and some of my favorites were from that time when Allen was the CO. There are two such memories, however, that really stick out in my mind.

The first occurred on Christmas, ’82. I was the new boot onboard, so it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to pull duty. The OOD at the time was the BM1, whose name escapes me. We were all just sitting around, wasting the tax-payers money when the BM1 came out to tell us that we were going to go out on the O-1 deck to growl the non-skid by the gangway.

(see pic of the bridge of the Citrus. LCDR Allen is the fellow to the far right, in all of his bearded glory)

For the uninitiated, “growling” a deck was the noisiest, most back-breaking job one can expect while serving on Deck Force, second only to working the chain locker. Non-skid can only be removed by hammering at it with hammers, or using a tool called a growler that was nothing more than a device with multiple wheels, each having hardened teeth that eat at the surface. It was slow, required crawling around on the deck, and essentially made you wish you were never born.

Sure, it was Christmas, but as I was so wet behind the ears, I just figured that was the way of things. There was some other crewman with me, I believe it was a guy we nicknamed Patty-Mac, and we “turned-to” ship’s work. We found solace that the deck we were attacking was located directly above the First Class Petty Officer’s berthing, so the BM1 was not going to get much rest.

We were well into the process when the QMOW (quartermaster of the watch) “piped” the Captain aboard. He was coming aboard to wish the crew a Merry Christmas. Patty-Mac and I came to attention, and saluted him aboard. He stood there at the foot of the gangway and gave us a quick inspection.

After we exchanged our Merry Christmas greetings, he asked, “What are you doing?”

I didn’t really know how to respond to that properly. We were wearing our coveralls, covered in non-skid dust, and had the tools strewn all over the recently bared deck. Our activities seemed somewhat obvious to me, but as Allen was an officer, and I had very limited exposure to them, I didn’t know if he was familiar with the wonderfulness that was growling. My first thought was to say, “Well, Patty-Mac and I were having our Christmas Tea Party out here on the Promenade Deck. Care for a biscuit?” Somehow, I was able to hold my tongue as McAndrews explained that we were told to work the deck.

The captain nodded in understanding, but didn’t say much. After that, he went into the ship, supposedly to greet the rest of the crew. Patty-Mac and I went about our happy little task of attacking the evil non-skid.

About ten minutes later, the CO popped back out of the superstructure, and made his way to the gangway. Caught thus unprepared with his sudden appearance, we barely had time to turn off our growlers and render our customary salutes. I can still hear Allen’s gruff bulldog voice telling us, “You’re done for the day. You can stow that gear and wash up.” We said our thank yous, gave our salutes, and started to gather up our tools.

No more than thirty seconds after the captain disembarked, the BM1 came scrambling out of the watertight door, looking rather ashen and visibly shaken. “Y…you’re done, OK? Uh…yeah, you…uh…you don’t have to be doing that anymore today, alright? For the love of Pete, PUT THAT STUFF AWAY!”

I have no idea what Allen said to the BM1, but whatever it was, it improved my estimation of the captain considerably.

The second memory was more personal. This was near the end of Allen’s tour on the Citrus, and we were on patrol down the West Coast, doing fishery law enforcement. We had just finished up around San Francisco, and made our way south. The next stop was Monterey Bay, and the plan was to start boardings first thing the following morning.

I was on the helm when we pulled around Santa Cruz Point, and anchored just off of the wharf near Steamer Lane and the Boardwalk. The captain was on the bridge, of course, and when we secured from anchor detail, he turned to me, and asked, “Aren’t you from around here?”

Asking me if I was from around there was a basic question. Answering was not. I wasn’t just “from around” there. It was my blood. I had fished that area. Surfed the waves. Spent hours at the Boardwalk, the wharf, West Coast Drive, Twin Lakes beach.

I wasn’t from around there. My DNA matched everything shown on nautical chart 18685.

Instead of saying all that, I simply said, “Yes, Sir.”

“Your family still in the area?”

I had no idea where he was going with this line of questioning, but went along for the ride. “Yes, Sir. He lives probably twenty minutes from where we are right now.”

The captain nodded, then said, “Give him a call. Tell him to meet you at that wharf tomorrow morning at 0600, and we’ll take him on a tour of the boat.”

Stunned is not a term that describes my reaction at that time. Gobsmacked. Dumbfounded. Completely blown away.

This was before cell phones, or the internet, so I had to use the radio and access the marine operator. So, there I was, on the bridge, next to the chart table, calling Dad.

Ring…ring…click, “Hello?” Dad’s deep voice boomed over the speakers and throughout the bridge.

“Hi, Dad!”

“Hey!” This was the all encompassing Dad Phrase. It could mean anything at all, but it was the default statement. “What are you doing?”

“I’m standing on the bridge of the ship, calling you, over.” I was on the radio. I had to say things like “over” and stuff. Remember, I was on the bridge, surrounded by important military types. I wasn’t too sure, but if I failed to throw in the occasional “over” and “I spell…” I’d have to walk the plank, or be hung from the yardarm.

There was pause after that. Not a long pause, but long enough to convey the thought, What did you do now? Instead, he said, “What.” It wasn’t a question. That was Dadspeak to give me a second chance to explain myself.

“We just anchored in the Monterey Bay, Dad. Just off the wharf. We’re going to spend the night here, and take off in the morning, over.”

“Hey! That’s great. Uh…over.” Dad was getting the hang of it. I just hoped he wasn’t going to break out in fisherman talk and start peppering his radio protocol with the occasional “by golly” and such.

I’m sure Dad was still unclear as to why I was calling via the marine operator, especially when it was not something that was easily done. One didn’t just grab the radio on the bridge of a military vessel just to chat with your father.

“The captain said that if you can get to the wharf by 0600 tomorrow, I can come pick you up, and bring you to the boat. You wanna come?”

Dad didn’t answer right away.

“Over?” I said. Knowing Dad, he wasn’t about to break the vital “over” rule.

“Yes,” he said calmly. “I. Will. Be. There.” This could plainly be interpreted to mean, “I will crawl through enemy held territory, over shards of glass, to be there. The gods themselves could not stop me.”

I barely slept. I was awake before the watch came to wake me up at 0500. A few of the Deck Force came out, and helped launch the small inflatable Zodiac, Cit-3. BM3 Galusha coxswained the both of us in the early gloom over to the wharf. I tied us off, and ran up the stairs along the side, enjoying the first sensation of not being on a ship for over a couple of weeks.

Dad was right at the top of the stairs, waiting with a boyish grin. I escorted him down to Cit-3, and we zipped back over to the cutter. He had no problem getting up the Jacob’s ladder, and the deckies made sure he got to the well deck safely.

I don’t think I had ever witnessed my dad more giddy in my life. He was shaking everyone’s hand, big goofy grin on his face, quick to laugh. I actually had work to do as we were preparing to get underway. So I handed him off to the First Lieutenant, who took Dad back to the wardroom with the other officers.

Dad and Allen spent about an hour back there, talking, laughing, swapping sea stories. The captain brought out a couple of charts, and Dad was able to point out some of the best fishing areas. The CO took Dad around the ship on a tour, being a gracious host to my father.

When it was time for us to weigh anchor, the CO brought my dad back out to the well deck. Galu and I whisked Dad back over to the wharf while the Citrus finished prep. We got back just as they were shifting colors.

It was bittersweet saying goodbye, and only having such a short time with him. But, honestly, having a CO stop operations so that a Seaman Apprentice could go fetch his father for a quick reunion? Who’s ever heard of that? Who DOES that?

But that was Cap’n Allen. So many other memories. The time he brought some beer aboard after we did so well at RefTra. The times he joined us at Hussong’s in Ensenada. When he would come up to the bridge and stand watch with us, giving one of the OODs a break from the watch. The stories he would tell of his earlier Coast Guard years, and he’d have us all in stitches.

As is the case in all military branches, faces come and go. Time sails by. I’d be watching the news decades later, and in the miasma of the horrors of 9/11, I’d hear Allen’s name come up. The devastation of Katrina and Rita, I’d see his three stars shining out of the gloom.

Then he rose up to the biggest chair in the Coast Guard. With all the perks that came with that extra stripe, he inadvertently bestowed upon all of us the ultimate prize: Bragging Rights. We who knew him when. We who stood watch, shared a beer, suffered the storms of the Pacific.

So there I was, in CERT class, blurting out, “Hey! That’s Cap’n Allen!”

The instructor of the class was a retired Coast Guardsman himself, and had served when Allen was the Commandant. “You know Admiral Allen?” he asked with no little amount of awe.

“No,” I said. “I know Cap’n Allen.”

I know that Thad Allen rose to the highest rank of the service. That he is officially known as “Admiral Allen.”

But we who stood on that small bridge with him, who spent time under his command on that cutter, all know him by a higher rank than that.

For he will always be Captain, first and foremost.

Voyage to the Chief’s Mess

I served my entire enlistment while in the US Coast Guard on the CGC Citrus (WMEC-300), a defrocked buoy tender that patrolled along the west coast of the Lower 48, and occasionally Canada and Mexico, depending on the mood of our OPCON. I had only been onboard for a couple of months, and we were preparing to get underway on my first patrol, when the ship’s intercom, the 1MC, perked up, and said, “Seaman Apprentice Campbell, lay to the Chief’s Mess.”

As a side note, as I write this, I will do my best to define the esoteric words that accompany ship life. A Chief is a senior ranked enlisted personnel that can best be explained thusly: “There is nothing so close to God on earth than a chief on deck.” They are the masters. They put the “salt” in “salty”. They are the Keepers of the Flame, Protectors of the Oath, Drinkers of the Coffee.

Another required definition here would be the “Chief’s Mess”. This is like the office for those god-like paragons of the sea. Only those E-7 and above are allowed in there. It’s in the Chief’s Mess that they sit around telling sea stories, drink coffee, devise nefarious duty rotations, and sacrifice unsuspecting seaman apprentices to Neptune, god of the sea.

No, really. I truly believe there’s an altar in the Chief’s Mess to carry out this function.

Being told to “lay” somewhere is shorthand for, “Drop what you’re doing, and get your wee Boot Camp Butt to where you’re told.”

So, the 1MC actually said, “Hey, Campbell, stop goofing off, and get your wee Boot Camp Butt to the Chief’s Mess, where they will likely sacrifice you to Neptune.” At least, this is what I understood it to mean.

Some people would associate this with being called into the principal’s office in school. I can see that connection. The principal of a school, however, isn’t going to make you do an extra month of mess cook duty simply because you washed the Chief Boatswain’s Mate’s coffee cup because it looked like something pulled out of an abandoned biology lab’s fridge.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The upshot of this was I became REALLY good at cleaning pots and pans that weighed as much as my first car.

I started the journey to the Chief’s Mess reluctantly, trying to confess my sins along the way and prepare my soul to meet my Maker…wondering how getting to heaven will go if it’s discovered that my arrival there was precipitated by my being sacrificed to an ancient Grecian god. I remember thinking that the ensuing conversation would be somewhat awkward.

There were two main factors that were the genesis of my trepidation. 1. Up to that point, I had only seen BMC John Barberi a couple of times, and one of those times was during the aforementioned Coffee Cup Incident, which, as it turns out, isn’t the best way to make a first impression. And, 2. also up to that point, my only real interaction with any chief was with BMC Wilkerson, my Boot Camp Company Commander. Not the best reference point to base a working relationship.

My soul being as ready as it ever was going to be, I knocked on the Chief’s Mess door. “Come in,” was the response.

I opened the door into the Sancto Sanctorum, and there sat BMC Barberi, the Vengeful Angel of all things Deck. He wasn’t an overly built man, but he had that look about him that said that he could find inventive ways to make your life miserable, should the mood strike him. He was sitting on a wrap-around couch deal that was welded to the deck.

It was a ship. Everything gets welded to the deck. If you stood in one place for too long, you would also be welded to the deck.

The table before him held three things: An ashtray (this was WAY back when there were such things as “smoking lamps”), a length of 21-strand sisal rope, and his coffee cup. Which, by the way, was slowing regaining its bio-hazard lining.

He looked at me, I looked at him. I looked at his coffee cup. He frowned. Wanting to fill the awkward silence, I said, “So, how’s the coffee cup?”

By way of answering, he tossed me the rope. “Tie me a bowline.”

Here’s the thing about a bowline knot: It is the King of Knots. I’m not making that up. I know this to be true because it says so in Chapter 14, verse 8 of the Epistle of St. Dad.

My dad was a commercial fisherman. That was his true vocation. He spent the week at a job with Lockheed, but his life’s calling was being out on the Pacific, killing dinosaur looking creatures found in the deep sea. Occasionally, he would take me with him on these outings where I would serve as his deckhand. At least this is what I was told. I now see my being a deckhand for Dad to be along the same lines of how I imagine my dog, Kona, thinks he is helping me drive to the store. Nevertheless, I was on the boat, trying to help Dad. One of the first things he wanted to teach me was how to tie a bowline. I was only about six years old, but it was seemingly essential that I know how to tie that knot.

First off, the bowline is pronounced, “boe-lyn”, not “bao-line”. The former is a knot, the latter is a specific line used to tie a line from the dock to the bow of a ship. If you insist in calling the knot a bao-line, you will be mocked mercilessly, and typically will tossed over the side as a sacrifice to Neptune.

This happens with some frequency, just so that you know.

Secondly, the bowline knot is technically known as a “temporary eye made in a line”. For you movie buffs out there, this is the knot that Captain Quint was teaching Police Chief Brody while on the boat Orca in the movie “Jaws”. “Rabbit goes out of the hole, around tree, and back into the hole….” In knot lore, it is the most useful knot out there. Again, as St. Dad had said, it’s the King of the Knots.

You may disagree about that. But if you do, please let me know so that I can never speak to you again, you mouth breathing, heretical infidel.

Needless to say, I learned to tie the bowline from a young age. I don’t want to brag, but by the time I graduated from high school, I was quite the proficient with the knot, as well as other knots necessary for a deckhand. Clove hitch, sheepshank, trucker’s hitch, becket bend, square, figure 8, etc. So much so that when I was in boot camp, I was the star pupil in basic seamanship.

And just to be clear, standing out from the midst of your other recruits ALWAYS turns out well. So does gaining the sobriquet of “Professor”. But that’s a story for another time.

So there I stood in the Chief’s Mess before Chief Barberi and his partially clean coffee cup, holding a fathom of rough rope. “A bowline?” I asked.

“Yeah, tie me a bowline.”

That’s it? I thought. I was called into the Temple of Neptune to tie a knot? I was so relieved. If the only thing keeping me from dying a gruesome death was the ability to tie a knot, I was in the clear. I could literally tie that knot blindfolded. “OK,” I said, and started to tie the King of Knots.

“Hurry up,” Chief said. “Tie it.”

Apparently, this was to be a timed exercise. No matter, I could tie it quickly. I whipped the the bitter end through the loop, around the standing part, back through the loop in respectable time. I handed the finished product back to the Chief.

Chief looked the knot over, nodded his head, and looked back up at me with his Clint Eastwood squinty eyes. “Five people would’ve died in the time it took you to tie that knot.”

Granted, I was only eighteen at the time, and although my high school GPA would say otherwise, I was relatively well read. Up to that point, I had yet to read about a mass extinction event caused by the leisurely creation of a knot. But, as he was a chief, I knew better than to question the veracity of his statement. It being the 80’s, if Chief Barberi told me that the Soviets tied bowlines like that, and that it was un-American to tie the knot like that, I would’ve believed him.

Chief undid the knot with ease, then said, “Watch.”

With practiced hands, BMC Barberi masterfully contorted the rope (and, yes, it was a rope, not a “line”), and, in a matter of seconds, showed me a bowline knot as if by magic.

I was stunned. My method of tying the knot was Dad-approved. It was how they taught us in Boot Camp. I was lead to believe that there was only one, orthodox approach to tying the King of Knots. Yet, here was this lanky sorcerer in Coast Guard blue, displaying occult knot tying techniques. It was the same as if your whole life was centered around the belief that Mint Chocolate Chip was the Lord of Ice Creams…and then someone introduces you to Umpqua Maple Nut.

Everything was turned upside-down.

“Do that again,” I whispered with awe.

For the next ten minutes, Chief ushered me into the world of advanced Knot Lore. He tied the bowline his way a few more times, slowly, then walked me through the process until I could do the same, although clumsily.

When I proved my acolyte level skill with the new bowline rendering, Chief said, “Now, tie me a Knife Knot.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Allow me to clarify. When I was about 8, I was given for my birthday a book titled, “The Ashley Book of Knots”. This is the Bible of Knots. It was a huge book that contained every conceivable knot known to man, and how to tie them. I loved that book. I would spend hours pouring over the diagrams, trying to learn every knot possible. I spent a summer once trying to do every knot at least once.

I never saw anything called a Knife Knot.

Already having been taken down a notch with the whole bowline-tying-adventure, I humbly confessed, “I don’t know what that is, Oh Great Sensei of Ropework.”

OK, I didn’t say all of that, but it was implied.

Chief went to tie what he called a Knife Knot. Basically, it’s a simple overhand knot that results in an eye in the line. It’s common enough, and is usually made when an and eye is immediately needed. The problem with this sort of knot is that if the line/knot combo is put under any load at all, the body of the knot constricts upon itself until it’s almost a solid mass.

Chief went on to explained that it was called a Knife Knot because it required a knife to “untie” it.

“Now, tie me a Knife Knot,” Chief repeated.

I shrugged, tied the knot, and handed it back to him.

“That is the last time you’ll ever tie that knot. If I ever see you tie that again, I’ll….”

Well, to keep this family friendly, allow me to say that what Chief promised to do would be biologically improbable.

I learned much from BMC Barberi over the next couple of years. How to be on the helm, how to properly toss a heaving line, how to be a successful lookout, how to raise and lower the motor lifeboat.

How to be a Coast Guardsman. How to respect others, honor the traditions, and be dedicated to something bigger than yourself.

Oh, and how to never, ever touch a chief’s coffee cup.

And how, by avoiding the practice of tying a Knife Knot, you will keep from having your skull shoved into random orifices.

Thanks, Chief.

Road Trip Down Hihn

My dad worked “over the hill”. City names like Sunnyvale, Cupertino, San Jose didn’t exist. You either had San Lorenzo Valley or Over The Hill. Every day, Dad would wake up about four in the morning, get in his little early ’60’s VW Bug, and venture Over The Hill to go to work. You could set your atomic clock to his schedule. He’d rise up out of bed, go to the kitchen to drink a couple of cup of coffee so strong that it could remove grout from the tiles on the kitchen counter, and do the crossword puzzle with his fountain pen. With that ritual out of the way, he’d get into his Bug, and drive Over The Hill.

I didn’t even know exactly where in the environs of Over The Hill he worked. I knew it was somewhere near my cousins’ house, but the actual location was a complete mystery. I also have no idea WHAT he did over there. I knew that he worked at Lockheed, but, as this was the heyday of the Cold War, what happened at Lockheed, stayed at Lockheed.

I remember one time when the whole family went down to Vandenberg AFB. Work required that Dad be present for some big deal, so we all went down there for the event. I recall Mom getting my sister and I, throwing us in the VW bus that she had, and taking us to some spot off base. From that viewpoint, we were able to watch a rocket lift off. We were probably too close, because all I remember was how loud, and how BIG that rocket seemed. Ever since that moment, early in my kindergarten year, I knew that my dad went Over The Hill every morning to go build rockets.

To be honest, I know now just about the same as I did then concerning my dad’s vocation at Lockheed. The full extent of my father’s job was that he went Over The Hill every morning to go build rockets for Lockheed.

And I thought that was the coolest thing. Ever.

Being such a young lad, I didn’t really have a concept of distance. Sure, I’d been Over The Hill a few times to go see The Robbie, my cousin, who lived remarkably close to where Dad built rockets, but I had no real grasp on how many miles separated our home in SLV from Over The Hill. When we went to go visit The Robbie, I remember leaving the house, a stunning period of boredom where time didn’t exist, then us showing up on Muir Drive. This could be said of any road trip that I had to endure as a child. Going to the Ben Lomond Market: Left the house, a stunning period of boredom where time didn’t exist, then us showing up at the market. Going to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Southern California: Left the house, a stunning period of boredom where time didn’t exist, then we’re at Altadena. If you came up to me, and said, “There are 2.3 million miles between our houses,” I would’ve replied, “Yeah, OK, whatever. Can we go?”

The fact that Dad worked Over The Hill, and my incapability to understand how far that meant (~35 miles) is important for the events that follow.

For, you see, one bright and pleasant early Spring day, I decided that I was going to travel Over The Hill see Dad at work.

If memory serves, and it usually does not with any measurable accuracy, I was in kindergarten, and it was just after our trip to Vandenberg for the rocket launch. In order to assist the reader, I ask them to recall that I had no operational knowledge about how far this would mean. Also germane was that I, a) did not yet possess a valid driver’s license, and, b) did not own a gas-powered vehicle.

Please note that I specified “gas-powered” vehicle.

In case you missed it, that’s called foreshadowing.

It would also be important to mention that my plan to go on this journey did not have the endorsement of either parental unit. Nor were either of the aforementioned parental units invited to be a part of the decision making process.

There is, however, ample reason to believe that our dog, Shammy, played an integral part in the formation of the plan. This is because Shammy was the major influence in my upbringing. I learned from her that any chance to escape the confines of the fenced backyard to go on an adventure was always worth the risks.

She was a wise dog.

It’s true that I did not have a gas-powered vehicle. I didn’t even have bicycle yet. I did, however, have a tricycle, and while it was a very capable tricycle, I had some serious doubts of its ability to make it to Over The Hill. Don’t get me wrong, the trike was sturdy, but the three wheel dynamic did not instill me with much confidence.

Fortunately, I was not completely bereft of options. I had received, just that previous Christmas, the most ultimate present. The “Li’l Fire Chief” pedal car.

It was such a sweet ride. Bright red paint with white pin-striping. It only had the one seat, and it was barely wide enough for my chunky butt. There was a windshield that was large enough to ensure that there would be no road debris hitting my knees. The pedals, obviously, were under the “hood”, making the car a front wheel drive. It had this over-sized, white steering wheel that compensated for the lack of power steering.

The most impressive item on the whole car, the one thing that would be sure to draw the chicks, was a large, ostentatious bell that was mounted centrally at the front of the hood. A lever on the right side of the cockpit allowed the driver to ring the bell. Incessantly. From dawn to dusk. As loud as he wanted. Regardless of whatever the adults were trying to say over the glorious sound.

Alright, sure, it lacked some modern day features. Whoever purchased the car (I’m thinking the grandparents), went with the stripped down Li’l Fire Chief. It should be noted that this was the late 60’s. Safety wasn’t really invented for another ten years. Firstly, the car body, which was nothing but a shell, was made of sheet metal. Back then, sheet metal pedal cars had enough sharp edges and rough rivets to cause lacerations and torn clothes in the best of circumstances. Things like brakes, seat belts, or seat backs were, apparently, not something included in that year’s model. I’m pretty sure it didn’t have head- or tail-lights, but as I was required to be inside by the time it got dark, I wasn’t apt to be pulled over by the cops for safety violations. There were no air-bags; side, passenger, curtain, or otherwise. Road noise was a serious drawback, and the fact that it came with a safety score of about -428. Were a pine cone, falling at terminal velocity, come in contact with any part of the car, it would be written off as totaled. The wheels weren’t much to look at. Basic rims, and the tires themselves were not what one would consider for off-roading.

And, yes, I honestly considered that possibility. Here’s why. Behind our house was the bulk of the Santa Cruz Sand-hills. A biome that was part ponderosa, part chaparral, and mostly something akin to a biblical wasteland. It was, technically, a hill. As you can imagine, whenever someone said they going “Over The Hill”, and because they never actually specified the hill in the statement, I automatically assumed that the hill portion of the “Over The Hill” was just behind our house. That when Dad went to work “Over The Hill”, he was just on the other side of the sandy hill behind our house. That if I were to walk up, and over that hill, I would wind up at Lockheed…

…instead of the Quail Hollow Ranch. Where they decidedly did NOT build rockets.

I distinctly remember contemplating the possibility of driving my Li’l Fire Chief car over that sand-hill, but I was at a point of having enough juvenile intelligence to know that I would probably wind up carrying the car the majority of the way. All because those hard plastic tires on the car were just not up to 4×4 snuff. So, if I was to get to Dad’s work, I would obviously have to take the roundabout route using the roads.

That, and the fact that I was too short to open the gate that lead to the wilderness behind our house.

I don’t mean to paint my chariot with such a dark brush. Consider this: the Li’l Fire Chief was environmentally friendly, being powered only by peanut-butter sandwiches. It was stunningly easy to parallel park, it always passed the smog tests, and the bi-annual registrations were quite inexpensive. Above all, it came without car payments. Had I wanted, and would it fit, I would’ve placed a bumper sticker along the back that said, “It’s Not Much, But It’s Paid For”.

Again, I feel it to be important to bring up the fact that while I was determined to take my Li’l Fire Chief out for a road trip, I had no idea what that meant. I knew there was a route from A to B, What I did not know was that there were more than one road to take. I thought that you took one road, and it lead you directly to the Market. Another road would usher you straight to Dad’s work. One more road would take me to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. No forks in the road, no exits to worry about, no confusing traffic, just an uninterrupted road that started at our house, and ended at the destination. All I had to do was to aim my faithful sheet metal steed down the correct road, and I’d be Over The Hill in no time. Even if I chose the incorrect road, the worst that would happen was that I’d be at the Market, or, at best, at the palace of Grandma and Grandpa.

Somehow, I removed the car from the backyard. I have no idea how I succeeded in doing this. I would really like to know, because I’m sure it was epic. It required me going across the front porch without being caught, and then down the front stairs to the driveway all the while carrying the car that was about the same size as myself.

But to the driveway I arrived. I can remember as clear as though it was yesterday. Our driveway was relatively steep, so getting behind behind the wheel while at the top was a bit tricky. Especially without the luxury of a parking brake. Or a transmission. Or any brakes at all. Basically, as soon as I jumped in, I was going.

Gravity was my engine at that point. I made it down the driveway much faster than I expected. I’m not sure how fast I was going, as, one would expect, I didn’t have much in the way of a dashboard. And, as I got to the bottom of the driveway, and got to street, I discovered that I also didn’t have much in the way of a suspension, either. I cranked the steering wheel hard to the left, and skidded around, lining up on Eleana Drive.

It should be mentioned that the roads of San Lorenzo Valley were, and are, about a half step above hardened game trails. The macadam was laid down years before, and then quickly ignored by the county engineers. I’ve walked that road a hundred times before, but never had the opportunity to drive along its pavement. After about ten feet of travel, the rough road had rattled up through the lack an actual pneumatic tire, past the absence of shock absorbers, over the non-existent baffles and insulation, and directly into every bit of cartilage in my little body. Honestly, it was like someone had put me in a metal drum with about two tons of volcanic rock, and started shaking me up.

The direction of Eleana Dr. on which I was headed was a slight downhill, so, again, I didn’t have to pedal at all. I just let gravity do its thing. Beside the shaking and rattling, I did not know why people complained about going Over The Hill. Just sit back, and enjoy the ride. I merely kept the car roughly pointed in the right direction, and allowed the wind to hit me in the face and traverse through my ever-so-stylish short hair.

My first true taste of true California Dreamin’. All I was missing was my surfboard, baggie shorts, and huarache sandals, too.

Everyone has their preferred routes when traveling. Dad liked to turn off of Eleana and head down Larita Drive. And while Larita was anything but a straight shot with its twists and turns, it did, sort of at the bottom, make a sharp right. It was at that point that one made a decision of sorts. Either Dad made the sharp right, if he was going towards the thriving metropolis of Ben Lomond, or, if was heading towards Felton, he made a left onto Clement Street.

Clement was singular in that it was a street, but it was all of 100 feet long. It was barely a path that connected Larita with the more active artery called Hihn Road. It was also almost straight down. Any car coming up from Hihn to Larira by way of Clement would burn out their clutch by the time they got to the top. Clement was also unique because of the tree that was positioned right in the middle of the street where it connected with Larita.

For whatever reason, when they were making the roads in Ben Lomond, they came to that particular oak, and said, “No, boys. This one stays. We’ll just build our entire infrastructure around this one tree.” It wasn’t just a majestic oak; it was also a champion. Every couple of months or so, we’d hear a report about some car that wrapped itself around that oak while trying to get onto, or off of, Larita. By the time I graduated from SLV High, the score was somewhere around Clement Oak: 14,080, Car: 0.

That was how Dad drove. Larita was his personal and default pre-GPS map that got him to town.

I, however, was NOT Dad. I was a free man, in his own car, with the open road before him. I was the next generation. I was a rebel in a plaid button down shirt and a severe buzz cut. The Master of my Fate, and the Captain of my Soul,. I whizzed past Larita, eschewing the tried and true, and went directly to Hihn.

I was an out of control kid. A veritable blaze of glory.

The last third of Eleana Dr. was level, and I had to actually use the pedals to get by Larita. The last twenty feet of that road, however, right where it T-bones into Hihn, turns into a precipitous cliff. I was committed. Determined.

I was on an adventure to go see Dad, and there was no steep road going to stop me.

Here’s the thing about Hihn Road. It’s like a main drag for our part of the valley. It starts at Glen Arbor, and shoots up the hill for about a mile and a half, maybe two miles. Theoretically, there’s a way to continue on Hihn, taking a few little side roads, and connect with Mt. Hermon road. I’ve never done this, though I’ve been told it’s true.

For fun, I just looked it up on Google Maps, and saw that there is some fact to this urban legend. Who knew. As a rule, I try not to spend too much time on Google Maps, as I usually find myself acting like some long distance e-stalker. “Oh, look! That’s where my sister broke her leg! And that’s my old friend’s house. Wow, they really changed that place. When did they build a house there? That used to be an empty lot. What happened to the old water tower? Check out that tree! It’s HUGE now….” and so forth.

If Hihn was a river, then Eleana Dr. was but a stream. As was Clement, Condor, Archer, Stanford, Terrace, Crown, ad infinitum. As such, there was usually always some sort of traffic on that road. And, it being a well used artery, people rarely paid much attention while driving on it. They knew each pothole, each turn, each dip in the pavement. They could, and probably did on many occasions, drive the length blindfolded, in a caffeine-deprived coma, and trying to smack the yelling kids in the back seat.

Suffice it to say that a little kid, racing down Hihn, a road that was completely devoid of any kind of shoulder, let alone a bike path, while in a red Li’l Fire Chief pedal car, was going to get squished. The odds of survival were not good.

I, however, was not to be bothered with such trivialities. I was on a mission to see Dad at his work. I remember a few cars passing me as I flew down the hill on Hihn. The drivers of those cars had the most bizarre looks of horror on their faces. I, being the ever chipper fellow traveler, gave them a few cheerful rings of my Fire Chief bell to bring about good cheer.

About that point in my adventure, I admit that I had an inkling that I may have made a bad decision. It wasn’t enough for me to actually stop what I was doing, of course, but there was this red flag waving off in the distance of my consciousness that indicated that this could, in fact, end very badly. Like, bodily injury. Or worse, getting in trouble with the aforementioned parental units.

They say that it takes a village to raise a child. I’m not sure about the whole village. I will concede that it takes a series of mothers using telephones to keep a pudgy kid in a sheet metal death trap from becoming a road pancake. Ladies all along my route were calling my mom. “Uh…Kathy? I think I just saw Dan driving his little car down Eleana…” “Hey, Kathy, you won’t believe what I just saw….” “Hi Kathy, this is Marge Johnson down on Hihn. Do you know where your son is?”

I’m not kidding. As Mom was scrambling to get to the VW bus (AKA “Mommy-home”), other mothers were calling to give her the itinerary. I was oblivious to all of this level of emergency Mom-Net, but Mom was grateful as her little bundle of insanity had slipped his leash, and had stampeded off the reservation.

The difficult part for Mom, however, was the fact that my Li’l Fire Chief car with the pin-striping, beautiful sounding bell, and high quality windshield, was just about as fast as Mom’s VW bus. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw her whip past me just as I was abeam of Noteware Lane, where Jenny lived. Mom made a very impressive angle stop that she probably learned from watching Mod Squad. As I lacked any sort of proper braking system, I was forced to reduce the lifespan of my Keds sneakers by employing the Fred Flinstone Feet-to-the-Road technique.

Mom wasn’t a big person. When she stood next to Dad, she looked positively Hobbit-esque. She was just a little thing. Even at five years old, I recognized that she wasn’t all that big.

Unless she was mad. She seemed to grow bigger when she was mad. She could barely squeeze herself out of the bus, she was so mad. It occurred to me that the Mommy-home was able to beat me to Glen Arbor, not because of the engine size, but because the bus was afraid NOT to beat me to Glen Arbor.

Years later, when I started getting into comic books, I read the tales of the Incredible Hulk.

And I thought, “Ah, there’s Mom. Been there, done that.”

The Mom-Hulk stomped towards me, growling something unintelligible. Something about my skin being removed, a tanned hide, and being transported to a place that was only one inch of my life. The words were disjointed, but the import was conveyed quite well when, with one hand, she yanked me out of the driver’s seat, and with the other, hoisted the entire car off the ground. She threw me and my sweet ride unceremoniously into the back of the bus.

We left Hihn. There was a stunning period of boredom where time didn’t exist, and then we were home.

I eventually got to see Dad, but just not at his work. He seemed larger than usual, too.

I don’t remember driving my Li’l Fire Chief pedal car after that. Could be because, while Dad was giving me an hour long lecture on safety, responsibility, and common sense, Mom was probably busy Hulk-smashing my car into oblivion.

Decades later, I would visit my old stomping grounds. I remember driving down Hihn from Eleana to Glen Arbor (in a regular, “gas-powered” vehicle), and I recall thinking that the road was so mind-bogglingly narrow.

I swear, my guardian angel must have spent most of my childhood in a body cast.

The Country Doctor

When you grow up in a small community, you tend to take things for granted. Especially if you grew up in a place that seemed to fall out of Norman Rockwell’s private vault of Happy Thoughts. I’m not saying that my hometown was perfectly idyllic, but I now that I’m older, I tend to think that it was a far sight better than most other places I’ve been. There was just something about the San Lorenzo Valley that holds an anchor for me. Anyone that grew up in a small town could say the same, I suppose. And I’m willing to admit that as I age, my memories of SLV grow more grandiose, and become a bit softer at the edges.

This is the unfortunate part: If you grow up in a Rockwellian utopia, you really have no idea how good you had it. You have no point of reference. I can remember seeing people drive down Highway 9, then suddenly stop because there was a redwood tree. Stop. In the middle of the road. To stare at a tree. We’d see the occupants of the car get all giddy, roll down the windows so they could crane their necks, and gawk. Little Kodak 110’s, with blue flash cubes attached, would start snapping away at this supposed wonder of the Natural World.

We’d all laugh. You see, to us, it was a just tree. Nothing special. We saw trees like that all the time. The valley was positively littered with these trees. That one tree, over which the tourists were all a-twitter, was actually just a young’un. It wasn’t that big, and was probably only three or four hundred years old. If they wanted to see some impressive ones, they should have gone to Henry Cowell, or made the trip up to Big Basin…instead of holding up traffic on Hwy 9.

It wasn’t until I moved away that I realized that not everyone had the Sequoia sempervirens growing all over the landscape. That high schools throughout the country didn’t have a cross-country track that wove its path through a Tolkien-esque elven woodland. Or that anyone could wander a few blocks away from the main drag, and enter a pristine, almost primeval forest. That there were people that had no idea what it was like to enter a redwood grove, walk among the thick carpet of ferns and clover, see the sunlight filter through the canopy, perhaps stand only a few yards away from a few deer,

…and not hear the world. It wasn’t quiet, but what you heard was, and forgive my latent “hippy-ness” for saying this, nature breathing.

It wasn’t just the trees. It was as if the San Lorenzo Valley, being thus sequestered in this redwood Shangri-La, passed through time at a different rate than the rest of the world. Someone once said, “Welcome to SLV. Please turn your clocks back 100 years,” and it’s essentially true. There are still steepled churches with stained glass windows, Hardware stores that had big barrels full of nails that you scooped out, and bought by the pound. You could run a tab at the town market. The meat counter at the market sold local beef, venison, fresh caught trout, bass, and salmon. The volunteer fire department was all volunteer, with the residents, old and young, man and woman, responding to the literal siren’s call. The one barber shop where a young lad could learn more about government during a buzz cut than he could in a semester of class.

And we had a doctor.

His name was Dr. Steele. I never knew his first name. In my mind, his first name was “Doctor”. I was comfortable with the concept that he showed up in Felton one day, the Tuesday after the official end of the Cretaceous Period, and introduced himself to the town’s hierarchy (did Felton have a mayor? Was it big enough to have a city council? Did he have to present himself to some tribunal of Founding Families? A collection of Stewards? Aldermen? Who the heck was in charge?).

In my head, it went down something like this:

“So, you want to be our valley’s physician?”

“If the job’s available.”

“It is. Your name?”

“Doctor Steele.”

“Ah, good thing you’re named ‘Doctor’. Very handy. Hired.”

Truth be told, I’m sure he had a different name other than Doctor, but I never knew what it was. That’s the way we were brought up. If you were older, say, somewhere in the geriatric age of 18, and you had graduated high school, your first name was Mr., Miss, or Mrs., and you always called the adults by their full name. Mrs. Hulsey. Miss Lang. Mr. Baumert. Interestingly enough, we were never given the dispensation to call them anything else. Ever. Case in point, when I visited SLV decades later, I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Baumert, our neighbor of many years. During our conversation, and after a few “Mr. Baumerts” later, the magnanimous German told me that I was old enough, and I could call him “Karl”.

I tried. Honestly, I did. My body refused to cooperate. “Oh, sure thing, K…Kuh…Kurll…Mr. Baumert.”

It should be understood that Dr. Steele was the epitome of a country doctor.

So many doctors nowadays are eager to “specialize”. “Oh, I’d love to help, but I only work on the valves of the heart’s left ventricle. You need to see that doctor over there as she specializes wonky left knee parts.”

Not so with Dr. Steele. He was from the old school of doctoring. He’d see a kid with a skinned knee, then operate on a compound fracture, then he’d spend an hour doing physical therapy with someone trying to recover from an accident.

I think that it’s true that a majority of the SLV natives had Dr. Steele to thank for their belly buttons. Anyone that played sports can remember the inglorious check-ups that Dr. Steele conducted in the locker rooms at no charge to the school or the parents.

And house calls.

He made house calls. Probably got his horse and buggy out of the shed, and rode out to where the wee bairn was ill with miasma or bilious fever. Maybe someone needed a good blood letting, a few rounds with leeches, or have Dr. Steele perform a variolation against smallpox.

I remember Dr. Steele mostly because of stitches. Apparently, and you may find this interesting, if you’re clumsy enough, you pass the standard bruises and scrapes that seem to accompany the average childhood, and move directly into that rarefied air of stitches. That’s where you get to hear such phrases from your parents as, “Ooo, do you have an owi….HOLY MOTHER OF SAINT SALMON! What did you DO?!” “How much blood do you think is in that little body?” “No, really, you should pick that up. You’ll need it later when we see the doctor.” “Is that bone, or just tendon?” “It’s not bleeding. Shouldn’t something that deep be bleeding?” “How do you get a cut like that from a ROCK?” “No, don’t use those. Those are my nice towels. In the other cupboard are the towels that we use for this situation.”

Or you’d hear from your sister, “Mom, I think Dan-o’s dead. Again.” or, “Hopefully this time he’ll actually contract lockjaw.” or my favorite, “Hey, look. It’s Frankenstein’s Monster.”

I’ve got a nice collection of scars from random cuts, lacerations, gashes, rips, tears, etc. Most of them healed up nicely, and you can barely see the scar. Some, however, were pretty gnarly, and I wear those with pride. Most of them were closed up by Dr. Steele.

The last time I saw Dr. Steele, I was in high school. Earlier in the day, during lunch, I was hit in the face by my then-girlfriend’s shoe.

More specifically, a wooden clog. They were popular then for some reason. They were made from some exotic hardwood, carved to resemble a shoe, and weighed approximately the same as a mature sea lion. In the early 80’s, the gods of fashion thought it would be a fun idea to strap great hunks of wood onto the feet of adolescent women.

To save you the curiosity: 1. Clogs make great weapons. They’ll cut open a lip with some alacrity. 2. The clog-to-the-face maneuver by my then-girlfriend was purely accidental. It was not intentional at all, and, surprisingly, my getting a face-full of Dutch footwear was completely undeserved.

The impact zone was the right side of my upper lip, dooming my future mustache to forever have a gap. I didn’t think it needed stitches. I never thought anything needed stitches, truthfully. I went into the bathroom, splashed some questionably hygienic water on the wound, and went about finishing my day. After about an hour or so, I was informed that my wound probably needed more astute and professional care. It occurs to me that I might not have received this ardent recommendation from others if I had refrained from causing the wound to gap open by pushing it out from behind with my tongue.

For the younger men who may be reading this, doing the “Look How Gross My Injury Is” trick is a sure-fire way to ensure that you will NOT have a date for the Prom.

I went to Dr. Steele’s office. I honestly don’t remember how I got there. I wasn’t driving then, so maybe a friend took me. Maybe I walked, as it wasn’t that far to “downtown” Felton where Dr. Steele’s office was located. I could’ve taken a pumpkin chariot pulled by a team of unicorns. All I know is that I found myself in Felton.

Dr. Steele’s office was right there along Hwy 9. Right next door to the Rexall drug store. There was a wooden sidewalk that went the front of the pharmacy, past Dr. Steele’s, and to the dentist. That, essentially, was downtown Felton.

As you enter the office, you are confronted with a few things. The waiting room was small, maybe big enough for eight chairs. There was always someone there. A mom with a sick wee’un. An older person for a check-up. A mill worker wanting to have his arm re-attached.

To the left was the check-in. Behind that desk was the same woman that had been there since the dawn of time. Again, I have no idea what her name was. My sister will know. She remembers everyone.

My own kids have to wear name tags when they come to visit.

Behind her was a veritable warehouse of racks full of records. Most of them were yellowed with age. I think there was a folder back there for every single resident of SLV. I dare say that a single spark back there would erase about three thousand years of history. The Front Office Staff/Nurse/Office Manager probably didn’t really need all those files. She new everyone.

Although I didn’t remember her name, she remembered mine. She had my whole medical history in her head. “Oh, Dan Campbell! So nice to see you again. You haven’t been in here since October of 1978. You ‘re in need of a tetanus booster. Has your juvenile asthma finally cleared?”

I’m not kidding. She was like a cyborg of medical records.

I told her that I cut my lip, and that I needed to have Dr. Steele look at it. I then did the “Look How Gross My Injury Is” trick. Didn’t phase her in the least.

At that point, she’d seen it all. Long time nurses are a breed apart.

She went to the back, and grabbed my file. There’s nothing so unnerving as being seventeen, and seeing your medical file like that. The manila folder was probably seventeen years old, too. The unnerving part was how thick it was. My whole like was reduced to a bunch of multi-colored papers shoved in an old folder. And there were a couple of thumbprints of dried blood on the front. Which, of course, made me wonder, “Which time was that from? Which dog bite? Or was it from that epic bike crash? Or that time I was run over by my sister? Oh, I bet it was from when I fell off the side of that mountain….”

She took me back to one of the exam rooms. It could’ve been the only exam room. It seemed like a pretty all-purpose sort of place. All the normal accouterments were there. Swabs, wooden tongue depressors, oddly designed flashlights for peering into different orifices, and some other metal objects that appeared to be closer to torture devices than medical tools. To my mind, a doctor could do just about anything in that room. Help a sick patient, perform open heart surgery, stitch up a face. And Dr. Steele had probably done all of that, and more.

When he wandered into the room, I was surprised. He seemed much older than I had remembered, and I remembered him to be incredibly old. I think it was mentioned at Sunday School that it was Dr. Steele that assisted Eve with her deliveries. He was never a big man, but he seemed smaller. His hair was all over the place, almost with an Einstein flair, and was shockingly white. I remember staring at his furry eyebrows that seemed to dance a jig above a pair of glasses. His glasses were made with those old style cat’s-eye frames. The side points were severe enough to be used to open cans of pineapple, should the occasion ever call for it.

And, no, I have no real idea how I landed on cans of pineapple as an example. Let’s just leave that be.

“What did you do this time?” he asked. I’m pretty sure this is the kind of conversation starter you’d expect if you have a medical record folder is covered in dried blood.

At that point, I enjoyed telling people, just to see their reaction. “My girlfriend hit me in the face with her shoe.”

He paused for a moment, gave me a sideways grin, and said, “Heh, you probably deserved it.” And that’s how those sort of things were resolved back then.

He leaned over, stared at my cut for a few seconds, then said, “You’re gonna need a few stitches on that one. Clean cut. It’ll heal up nice.”

He gloved up, squirted something akin to sulfuric acid into the wound, and got his sutures ready.

As mentioned before, this was not my first rodeo, so to speak. I knew what was coming. I was thoroughly numbed up with lidocaine, and, soon, the doctor would start pulling the wound closed with thread. You can feel the needle go in, swoop out, and then there’s a series of tugs as they tie the knots. It’s a very odd sensation. So, as I mentioned, I was ready for it.

What I was NOT ready for was the fact that Dr. Steele, who was not as young as he once was, had developed a slight tremor.

I was leaning back in this chair, Dr. Steele was right up next to me, and he right hand was closing the gap to my lip. His hand was probably experiencing something in the ballpark of an 8.2 on the Richter Scale. All I could think was, “Great. He’s going to sew my lip to my gums. This scar is going to be RIGHTEOUS.”

I have to tell you, it’s enough to put you off your feed when you see a shaking hand come at you with a needle and thread. At just the last moment, just as I was about to pull away at the last possible second, BAM, Dr. Steele’s hand became rock steady. It was as if a secondary neurological system kicked in, and overrode the tremor with a better line of code. For the next five minutes, he snapped that gash closed with the prettiest set of sutures SLV had ever seen.

He made some notations on a new page for my burgeoning chart, told me some basic care instructions, and told me how to remove the stitches myself.

And that was it. No copay. I don’t think he even sent in a bill to my dad. It was just part and parcel of living in a small community as a country doctor. Dad probably gave him some smoked salmon later as a thank you for sewing me closed. Again.

Like I said, it’s common to grow up in a small, backwards area like SLV, and take it for granted. To think that what happens there is normal, and is how things proceed outside of the valley.

I know better now. We had it good.

Forest Pool

When I was a little kid….

And, as I type that, I think, “What age was that, actually?” Considering the subject matter (learning to swim), and the fact that I can remember it, what follows occurred after I was the age of three. I don’t really recall anything before I was three. Snippits of memories. As though someone took a box of old photos and threw them into the air. There’s nothing in chronological order, and they all sort of blend in together; and absolutely nothing makes sense.

So, after three years old. Check.

I can narrow it down to before six years old, because when I was six, I was at the beach, playing in the surf. Although my family is warped, I’d like to think that they would ensure that I possessed the ability to swim at some modicum level before throwing me into the surf with the Great Whites, jellyfish, and the Kraken from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

So, before six years old. Check.

I think it was in the four year old range. I think this all happened before kindergarten. For some reason, learning to swim was more important than teaching me more important things that would help me through Kindergarten. Like using scissors. How to write my name. The importance of NOT eating paste. How to skip.

Seriously. I learned to swim before I knew how to skip. They actually wrote an article in the Valley Press about me NOT knowing how to skip in Kindergarten.

I. Kid. You. Not.

Here’s how the whole swimming issue came up, please keep up. I went to Sunday School at the First Presbyterian Church of Felton. I’ve often wondered why it was called the “First”, as though there was a slew of Presbyterian Churches in Felton. There was only room for one Presbyterian church. I guess, in a rush of optimism that Felton would suddenly become a thriving metropolis, the founding board members of the church thought that they would lay claim bragging rights to being the First. At Sunday School, our teacher taught us about the first chapter of Exodus. It was in that chapter that Pharaoh thought that the Hebrews had become too numerous, so his brilliant plan was to drown all the firstborn male children when they were born.

Hard on the heels of that cheerful little discussion, when we got home, Dad decided it was time for my sister and me to learn how to swim.

I’m sure there wasn’t a link between people lobbing Moses into the Nile, and my dad suddenly coming up with the idea that I, the firstborn male child, should learn to swim. Totally separate, and coincidental events. Nary thread of connection betwixt the two.

Here’s an interesting little factoid: This is about the same time that I developed deep seated trust issues and a debilitating paranoia.

Surprisingly, we went to swimming lessons. I was pretty sure that Dad’s idea of swimming lessons involved towing me behind the boat until I figured it out, but Mom found a place where they were giving swim lessons, and it wasn’t in the river.

We lived in the San Lorenzo Valley, and, as the name suggests, the main riparian event was the San Lorenzo River. A thousand different creeks flowed into the mighty San Lorenzo as it flowed south to Santa Cruz, and, eventually, into the Pacific. It wasn’t all that mighty, truth be told, unless it was in the middle of winter, and a during a seasonal monsoon. At that point, the San Lorenzo river was a thing possessed. When it wasn’t scouring the valley floor from all vegetation, roads, and houses, it did produce a series of wonderful and scenic swimming holes along its serpentine path. Ben Lomond, my home town, actually had a small dam that would be put in place during the warm season, and all the local kids would swim in that ersatz reservoir. My pleas to receive swimming lessons at the beach or down at Grandma and Grandpa’s fell on deaf ears.

Our lessons were to be done in a proper swimming pool.

Here’s the thing: there weren’t many proper swimming pools in SLV in the late 60’s. I mean, why? Sure it got hot sometimes during the Summer, but then there was the San Lorenzo, or the Zayante, Fall Creek, Newell, or even go up to Loch Lomond. There was always some spot to go cool off. So swimming pools, especially community pools, were scarce. There was one, however, and they were giving lessons.

Forest Pool.

This community pool wasn’t in Ben Lomond, however. Forest Pool was all the way up in Boulder Creek.

I say “all the way up”, and people tend to think, “Well, that’s odd. It’s only three or four miles between the Ben Lomond Market to Johnnie’s Market in Boulder Creek. ‘All the way up’ seems to be an extravagant usage of words. Shouldn’t that be ‘quick jaunt’ or ‘blitz run’?”

I get that. Sure, the distance between the two markets is only 3.62 miles (I checked). But that distance is over Highway 9.

When you say the word, “highway”, your brain conjures up images of a spacious roadway, with multiple wide lanes and ample shoulders. Everything is well marked, with copious streetlights to illuminate the way between destinations.

Yeah, no.

Highway 9 is a moderately paved goat path that was originally made to accommodate vehicles that were about six or seven inches wide. It’s not just the lack of width, it’s also a road where redwood trees are literally growing into the lanes. The locals know there are certain spots along the highway where you jink your steering wheel a little to the left to avoid having your side mirror ripped off by a Sequoia.

The tree, not the Toyota.

That’s just the calm part. During specific times of the year, there are whole sections of Hwy 9 that just cease to be. If SLV is doing its famous monsoon rain, it’s not uncommon for parts of the mountainside to suddenly decide to slip on down to the river, taking everything in its path with it. There are no streetlights, and even during the midday, the redwood canopy is dense enough that you need your headlights on to see. If there’s a road sign that says, “Turn ahead: 20 MPH”, you should probably go 15. That’s not to mention the insane local drivers that see Hwy 9 as their personal NASCAR track, interspersed with VW buses and bugs that are incapable of getting up to any measurable speed. Also having to avoid the occasional bicyclist who has a death wish, or the odd Sasquatch or two that meander down from the hills.

So, yeah, it’s only 3.62 miles from one market to another, but you better pack a lunch.

The lessons weren’t every day, but they did go on for a couple-three weeks. Mom packed my sister and I into her 21 window VW bus that was incapable of getting up to any measurable speed, and we took off for Forest Pool, Boulder Creek, Calif.

Ben Lomond is a bucolic little berg that is dipped thoroughly in Quaint Sauce. It is the epitome of cute. Boulder Creek, however, which is located deeper into the redwoods, is Rustic with a capital R. It’s like the town that time forgot. Boulder Creek was firmly lodged in the late 19^th century. It was not a bedroom community, it was a working town. Logging, mostly. And if you weren’t logging, you worked at Johnnie’s Market. I think it was a town regulation that if you wanted to continue to live in Boulder Creek, you had to earn a paycheck at Johnnie’s at some point.

Along the main drag, beside the wooden planked sidewalks, there were still hitching posts for horses.

This wasn’t for effect. They were there because people still came down from the hills in horse drawn wagons. Or rode into town on their horses to get some supplies from the hardware store, or to blow off some steam at Joe’s Bar.

It was a freakin’ Hollywood set for a Gold Rush movie, only real.

Forest Pool was near the central street of Boulder Creek. It was named Central Avenue. Because it was central. People from Boulder Creek just don’t fool around. I don’t know the exact location, but my subconscious GPS has it somewhere near Johnnie’s Market.

That’s how you find things in Boulder Creek. All directions involve Johnnie’s. “Turn left before Johnnie’s” “If you pass Johnnie’s, you’ve gone too far” “One street up past Johnnie’s, on the right” “You know where Johnnie’s is? Yeah, it’s nowhere near there.”

Forest Pool wasn’t a big complex, but was functional. It had two pools. One was the smaller-than-Olympic pool that had the standard 3′ to 5′ gradient, with a couple of low diving boards at the deeper end. The other pool was solely for diving. I think the depth of that pool was somewhere between “I-think-I’m-gonna-get-decompression-sickness” to “Marianas Trench”. This pool had two high dives, but more on that later.

Most of our lessons would be in the shallower “main” pool. Mom checked us in, or signed us up, or sold us in to indentured servitude, whatever, but some college aged girl came out to give us the tour after Mom was done. I was told by this girl who was practically ancient at nineteen, that I needed to take a shower before I could get into the pool.

I was standing there, probably in my swim trunks, towel around my neck, and that’s it. In SLV, it’s a code that you never wore anything more than what was absolutely necessary. Shoes, for example, were for church and school. The rest of the time, you ran around barefoot. The soles of our feet were the equivalent to hardened leather. I cold tightrope walk across electrified barbed wire, and not notice.

But there I stood, in the main lobby of Forest Pool, being told that I had to get wet before I was allowed to get wet.

I asked, “Why?” Hey, I was four. Asking “why” to everything was part and parcel to the DNA.

The nineteen year old, that was probably so old she was ready to retire, told me that they did everything they could to keep the pool clean.

This was a good answer. The owners of Forest Pool probably gave her that answer on a flash card, and told her to memorize it. The problem was that I was standing in the lobby, a good twenty yards from the main pool, and the chlorine vapors wafting through were causing my eyes to water. There was enough caustic agent in that body of water to melt the skin off my little body.

Then it occurred to me that in the matter of a few hours, every kid in SLV under the age of twelve would soon be in that pool, emptying their bladders. The water/chlorine/urine mix before they show up would be something around 99.7% water, 0.2% skin melting chlorine, and about 0.1% residual urine from the day before. Five minutes AFTER the kids show up, the concentration will be somewhere around 74.8% water, 0.2% chlorine, and 25% pee. It gets worse as time proceeds, but you can see the trend.

All of this immediately made me wonder: If they were trying to protect THAT pool water from whatever was on me, then… what the heck is ON my body?! Alien creatures? That invisible slime of DEATH that I saw on Night Gallery the other evening when I was supposed to be in bed? The accumulated diseases of all those that have died before? Communism? Did I have communism on my skin?! (It was the late 60’s. That was a totally justifiable fear.)

I think Mom, who kinda knew how my brain was wired, and could see that my imagination was spooling up to the red zone, put a calming hand on my shoulder, and said, “It’s just the rules. Go take the shower.”

Again, I reiterated that I was not even in Kindergarten yet. I was still doing the bath thing. Showers were for grown-ups. Like people who were 8 or 9. I was woefully unprepared for the shower procedure. I didn’t have time to fully research this endeavor. I remember walking into this big room with concrete floors and tiled walls, and staring up at all those shower heads. I chose a random spot, and turned the big knob on the wall.

I was amazed at the modern conveniences where a young lad of four could be standing in a small town in the coastal mountains of Santa Cruz county, and receive a shower of water that was being piped in directly from the glacial runoff of Antarctica. And at about 2.3 million psi. What a marvel.

I screamed. I have no shame in that. I was able to shut off the water before I succumbed to hypothermia. I realize that I hadn’t properly showered, but those showers were causing me to think rather un-Presbyterian thoughts. I reasoned that my eternal soul was more important than whatever purulent disease was then living parasitically on my skin.

There were a bunch of kids that were taking this class. Other than my sister, I knew none of them. This should not come as a surprise as I came all the way from Ben Lomond, and, as pointed out previously, there’s a long, risky distance between our two towns.

“You’s not from ’round here.”

“No, I’m from Ben Lomond.”

“You’s comin’ all da ways up here to go swimmin’? Ain’t you gots waters down that way?”

“Well, you Northerners have this most excellent pool, see….”

“Hmmm, mighty strange havin’ folks comin’ all da ways up here, usin’ our waters.”

And so forth.

We were directed by the ancient 19 year old girl to sit alongside the pool, and put our feet in the water. I was almost certain that, in order to swim, more of our bodies needed to be involved with the pool, but I obliged.

I was sitting next to my sister, who is three years my senior. She was taking this whole swimming lesson event very seriously. This is why she’s a better person than me. She always knew when to pay attention. I, on the other hand, was looking for ways to escape, and go running in the woods.

Being a feral child of SLV, that was a default setting.

The elderly instructor was babbling on and on about the importance of floating. How floating could save your life. That floating was easy, and if you ever got in a bad situation while in the water, you should always float. In emergencies, floating was the best thing to do.

Whatever. In case of emergencies, there was Superman. Everyone knew that.

The girl-instructor from the Jurassic Age showed us how to float. She leaned back, lifted up her legs, arched her back, and craned her head backwards into the water. My sister was nodding studiously. I swear, if she had paper and a pen, she’d be taking notes.

When the prehistoric instructor righted herself, she told us to get in the water, and try for ourselves. She made it seem like it would be so much fun! What a lark! What a hootenanny!

I’ll fast forward for you. Believe it or not, I’m really good at floating. Not kidding here. Professional level floating. Turns out, when your body is 93% fat, you float like a bubble. By the age of 4, I had converted my entire skeletal system into hyper-density lipids. All my major organs were fashioned out of high quality, extra-sharp, smoked cheddar. My vascular system was entirely made up of rigatoni pasta. The Styrofoam kick-boards that we would be using displaced more water than I did. I barely dented the surface tension of the water. I just bobbed along the top, the gentle breeze guiding me to the edge. Floating wasn’t an issue. Getting my body to be completely submerged, was.

My sister, on the other hand, jumped into the pool and sank like a rock. She was like a knock-kneed anchor with blond hair. She’d stand in the shallow end, lean back like she was taught…lift her legs up… and sink to the bottom. She tried so hard, the wee lamb. She would stand up in the pool, and try again. After a while, she would rest by climbing on me, and cruise around for a while on her float-brother.

Meanwhile, I was getting praise and accolades for my floating prowess.

Little did I know that I was expending my fifteen minutes of fame at the age of 4 just because I got the high score in the BMI game.

We swam, and then we swam some more. We went back for every lesson. Backstroke. Freestyle. Breast stroke. Butterfly.

If you ever have the chance to see a chubby kid attempt the Butterfly, do it. Afterwards, go on YouTube and look up “fish flopping on the deck of my boat” and see the incredible similarities.

Why would you try to teach a four year old kid how to do the Butterfly? At four years old, I was still excited about walking to the other side of the room without incurring any additional bruises on my body. The poor geriatric instructor was doing her best, but all I was doing was swallowing an inordinate amount of water that had questionable provenance. The Butterfly? Seriously?

I could do the Freestyle relatively well. The only problem was that, by the end of the day, the chlorine had rendered you mostly blind, so you could never see when you were approaching the end of the pool. You just kept swimming until you ran into tiles and concrete. Then you turned around, and did the same thing in the other direction. Basically, you spent the entire lesson beating yourself up with a pool.

Another key part of this curriculum was diving. Apparently, knowing how to dive is a critical part of living. I did not know that. Miss I-Was-There-Just-After-Creation was very avid that diving was a big part of swimming.

This is where she and I parted ways. I was OK with the whole “go get wet before you can get wet” paradigm. I went with it when she seemed bent on me drowning myself. But diving? She was going to tell me that diving into the water like a spear was a sign of an excellent swimmer? That, somehow, jumping into the water headlong while NOT making a splash was the zenith of class and good taste?

Utter tosh. Rubbish. Complete folderol. Everyone that I knew agreed that the Cannonball was the epitome of Top Drawer water sports. That creating a tsunami in a pool was the ONLY way to prove dominance among your peers.

But, it wasn’t my class, so we practiced diving. We dove while sitting. We dove while standing on the edge. We eventually, on the last day of class, dove off of the short diving boards found at the deep end of the main pool.

It’s important to point out at this juncture that we never ventured to the OTHER pool. The one that was insanely deep, and had those two high dive boards. This is because of one simple reason: We had no business being in a pool that was insanely deep, and had those two high dive boards. And yet, our “graduation” from this swimming lesson class would be each student diving off of the high dive. All the parents were invited as we showed how well we mastered the art of swimming by diving from a high board into a water filled chasm.

This is along the same logic stream of someone saying, “You all did so well in pottery class, for graduation, we’re going to make you fly F-4 Phantoms in tight formation under the Golden Gate Bridge! How exciting!”

“Sooo…you’re saying that we did so well in learning how to flop around like drunken fish in the main pool, that we’ll celebrate by walking the plank?”

I didn’t say that. Be real, I was four. Instead, I probably just fainted. I would’ve LIKED to have said that, but I’m pretty sure that as soon my brain processed the information that we were to be going off of the high dive, I went into survival mode.

See, I don’t do heights. I got queasy whenever I wore thick socks. Positively overwhelmed with vertigo if I wore boots with thicker-than-average soles.

I’m still the same way.

I learned early on that if I was standing, and, for whatever reason, I became prey to the wiles of the Gravity Gods, it hurt. A lot. It didn’t take long for me to discover that if I fell from heights greater than my current stature, like, say, if I missed those two last steps at the bottom of the staircase at home, it hurt a lot-a lot. I could reasonably deduce that the level of pain would rise exponentially the higher up, and longer I fell.

The high dive was approximately 428 miles high. Seriously. It looked like the scaffolding used at Cape Canaveral for the Saturn V rockets. I figured I’d be dead before I hit the water. Or, more accurately, I’d be dead before I hit the fifth rung of the ladder on the way up.

It appeared, however, that our instructor, Geriatric Girl, was determined that we should show how well trained we are by leaping to our deaths from the high dive, and the graduation date was set.

When the day arrived, the diving pool was surrounded by friends and families of the graduating students. I’m not too sure if either of our parents were there, but, seeing as we had to make the long journey from Ben Lomond, I’m assuming someone drove us there. Even for Santa Cruz County, expecting a four and seven year old to hitchhike to Boulder Creek is a bit of a stretch. In light of this, I can say that at least one of our parental units were in attendance. I was more hoping that there was a medic unit and an orthopedic surgeon in the audience.

I wasn’t first, nor was I last. I’m not entirely sure where I was in the queue. I do know that I tried to get Geriatric Girl to just let me impress the onlookers with my outstanding floating skills, but she insisted that I do the dive. The first kid walked right out to the edge of the board, did the bounce-bounce maneuver, then leapt out into the void, slowly angling her body until she augured right into the water with barely a ripple. The people were very impressed, and the effort resulted in some applause. The next kid was a boy who first stood at the very back of the board, then sprinted out, eschewing the bounce-bounce, and flew out from the edge. His dive was a little wonky, but he did go in head first, albeit at an angle.

My sister went before me. She climbed up to the top with no problem as she never had a fear of heights. Which, according to my studies, made her insane. She did a single bounce, and sailed through the air like an angel. She completed a javelin-like entry into the water, sank directly to the bottom, and stayed there. She eventually had to walk along the bottom of the pool to the ladder, and haul herself out.

Here’s how my graduation dive went. Due to the severe amounts of peer pressure and the level of expectation that was placed on us, I, against all odds, went up the ladder. As you crest the top, there are railings on both sides of the board that only go out half way. That last half of the board, you’re on your own. Nothing to keep you from simply falling off the sides. I stood there, at the back half of the board, looking forward to the other end. I couldn’t climb back down because the next kid was already climbing up. I only had one way to go. Although I was terrified, I still was amazed at how much I could see from that height. Pretty much all of Boulder Creek. San Francisco. Wyoming. Most of China. Sputnik.

I was totally cognizant of the fact that I needed to eventually make it out to the end of the board, aim, and dive into the pool. You think you’re ready to die, but when the moment comes, you only want a few more minutes. I tried to move, honest. I literally had to go into manual override to get each of my fingers to release the railings. Every muscle in the soles of my feet were clenching the nonskid surface of that board. I inched my way out to the edge. The next kid was now standing at the top of the ladder, waiting for me. He was yelling something at me, but I have no idea what it was. I gave myself a countdown. Three. Two. One and fifteen-sixteenth. One and seven-eights. One and twenty five-thirty seconds.

I never did fractions so well in my entire life.

At some point, I just gave up the will to live, and I jumped.

I’d like to say that I had a textbook launch and that I was following a proven trajectory. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. Truth is, I just sort of fell in a similar fashion as one would expect from a sack of potatoes being kicked off of the back of a truck. During the next hour of flight from the board to the surface of the pool, I was supposed to pivot my body so as to reach optimum posture for breaking the surface of the water.

This did not happen.

I leveled off.

What happened next was something that I’m sure they talked about for years afterwards.

It wasn’t a belly flop, as that would imply that the belly made first impact. No, no. Au contraire. After reaching terminal velocity, my body, somehow, flattened out so that 50% of my body surface area made simultaneous impact on the surface of the water. My eyelids hit the same time as the tops of my feet. My outstretched arms hit in perfect synchronicity with my torso. The slap made by my body coming in contact with the water was so loud that it shattered every window in a four mile radius. I didn’t even sink right away. My body just hovered for a second or two before it gradually slipped under the water.

It hurt. It was like someone gave me a bad sunburn within a millisecond of time. I stayed in the cool of the water for a while, hoping the fire on my skin would eventually abate. When I finally bobbed back up to the top, and drifted over to the side, I noticed that it was eerily quiet. Not a sound. Everyone was looking at me, mouths agape, their last intake of breath still stuck in their lungs. Even the kid up on the board waiting to dive was horrified, as though he was afraid that my epic belly flop was so powerful, it would somehow jinx his dive, too.

I clamored up the ladder, and stood there in front of the assembled throng. Every last person was dumbstruck.

Well, except for my sister, who was cracking up in the back. But EVERYONE ELSE was stunned.

I didn’t care. My skin was already getting tight from the trauma that was just inflicted upon it. Still, didn’t care. I did the class. I took every lesson. I attempted the Butterfly stroke. I risked the journey over Highway 9 several times, and was never killed by a mountain lion, landslide, or Sasquatch. I was a pilgrim in a foreign land as I made the Hajj to Johnnie’s.

I. Dove (Fell). Off. Of. The. Freakin’. High. Dive.

Sure, OK, maybe I was 93% fat, and I just performed the most perfect body flop the world has ever seen.

I graduated swim class, and that’s all that mattered.

Now take me to the flippin’ beach, already.

Ritual of the Razor

I grew up in a little unknown, sleepy town of Ben Lomond, California. This community, that was somehow big enough to merit a zip code, is nestled in the midst of the San Lorenzo Valley, among the Giant Sequoias of the Santa Cruz mountains. The valley was full of those trees, each one approximately the size of Vermont. It’s a beautiful village, and it’s the epitome of Smalltown, USA

I call Ben Lomond a town, but only because “wide spot along Highway 9” takes too long to type out. The central part of Ben Lomond had all the amenities of any other painfully quaint and unincorporated city. We had the Ben Lomond market, a hardware and feed store, a volunteer fire department, a community center where we always put on plays in the winter, and musicals in the late spring, and a castle.

No, really. We had a castle that some guy built during the 1920’s. Look it up: Howden castle. It was probably the castle that earned us the zip code. You can’t deny a town a zip code if they have a castle. It’s in the Zip Code regulations, I’m sure.

How Brookdale, the next town up on Hwy 9, got a zip code, I’ll never know. Although, there’s the Brookdale Lodge that has a creek running through their restaurant, so that’s got to count for something, I suppose.

But I digress.

Ben Lomond was, and still is, small. How small, you ask? Well, if San Francisco wore a pair of Levi’s, Ben Lomond would get lost in that little pocket that’s for the watch fob. It wasn’t until the late 1990’s that they got a stop light at the intersection of Glen Arbor and Hwy 9. That probably resulted in parades, speeches by dignitaries, and animal sacrifices.

As it was such a small town, there wasn’t much in the way of selection. If you opened up the phone book, all two pages of it, you would see that Ben Lomond was bereft of choices. There was just the one market, one hardware and feed store, one gas station, and, of course, the one barber shop.

If you lived in Ben Lomond, and you needed a haircut, you went to Les’. Officially named “Les’ Village Barbershop”, it was the only place to get a cut. It was run by Les Grizzell, who first came to the town sometime just after dinosaurs moved away because of the high local property taxes. Either you got a haircut from Les, or you…well…you were a hippie. In Ben Lomond it was either one or the other.

The shop had shifted around over the years, but I seem to remember it being located in a little storefront just a block away from the market, in the same dilapidated, barn-like building that served as the town hall/civic center/community playhouse-theater. The barbershop itself was very Norman Rockwellian replete with the red and white barber pole out front (not the newer red, white, and blue variety…just the old school red and white one). The interior was small, with a quarter of the space being occupied by the Art Deco style barber’s chair. The chair itself possessed more chrome than a 1959 Mercury Monterey, and probably weighed about the same. The walls were covered with snapshots of Les’ life. There were no captions, so there was no way of knowing the names or places depicted in the photos, and I don’t think anyone ever asked. There were shelves that were full of those weird plastic, oval shaped combs that I assume were used for the perfect coiffing of a gentleman’s flat-top. Also on display were the very best and latest selection of hair tonics, Butch Wax, restoratives, and creams that the 19^th century could produce. I think there were four chrome and faux-leather chairs in there, all crammed close enough together that it would make any three men waiting for a trim to feel intensely awkward.

When I was a kid, haircuts were $3.50. Before you get too excited, remember that this was during the 70’s, so three and a half bucks was the equivalent to 5 gallons of leaded gasoline for your tuna boat sized road cruiser. The $3.50 wasn’t really carved in stone, though. Kids and seniors were around $2, and active military were often given cuts for free. Being a kid, and getting a haircut at Les’, also meant that you received a bubblegum at the end…providing you sat still throughout the ordeal.

Here’s the thing about the haircuts that you might have purchased at Les’. He had scissors, yes, but the main item in his toolbox was the buzz razor. This buzz razor had two settings: Summer and Winter. The Summer setting left your hair at just about 1/8”, and during the colder months, the razor was shifted to Winter, which left you with a hypothermia-fighting mane of hair that was about 3/16” long.

Positively shaggy.

His Rolodex of styles included the “All-Over” when you left the shop with all your hair the same length, the “Crew Cut” which left a little hair on top, the Marines’ “High-n-Tight” which is best described as “short on top, and bloody on the sides”, and the glorious “Flat-Top”. It was the Flat-Top that truly brought out Les’ artistic side. If you chose a Flat, you would walk out of that shop with the most severe, flattest, and level crop of hair that mankind has ever seen.

Sometimes you’d get a Flat-Top even if you didn’t ask for it. You’d go in, and say, “Hi Les. Give me a Crew, will ya?” But Les would look at you, and think, “This man needs to look like Frankenstein’s Monster,” and you’d leave with the ability to perch a tray of over-full milkshakes on your noggin without worry.

The line of demarcation between when a boy went from the $2 cut to the $3.50 was nebulous. It wasn’t a set age. It just happened. Last time you went, you were a mere child. You got whatever haircut Les was doling out that day, the Cut du Jour, paid your two bucks, got a hunk of Double Bubble, and you went on your way. The following month or so, you went to the shop, got the Cut du Jour, but no gum, and you had to pay the full $3.50.

The difference? The straight razor.

When a boy is still young, and I’m just spit-balling here because I’ve never seen an actual peer reviewed study on this, but there’s no offending hair that surrounds the back of the neck or above the ear. If there is, that hair can be easily removed with the buzz razor. But there’s some hormonal shift in a young boy’s biological life, when he suddenly sprouts hair on the back of his neck, below the acceptable hairline, and hair that closely surrounds both ears. This more mature form of hair cannot be whisked away with a mere buzz razor, apparently. Only a straight razor can be used.

I remember this distinctly. I was sitting in the Mercury Monterey Memorial Barbershop chair, getting whatever haircut Les felt like giving me, and I thought we were done. I was all ready to reach out and select my gum, as was custom, when Les said, “Hold on there, son. We’re not done.”

“Uh…yeah, we are. The floor is buried under my straw like hair. My scalp is thoroughly exposed to the ultra-violet light, and I have no intention of using any dermatological protection because this is the 70’s, and I’d use Crisco grease as a suntan lotion if I could get away with it. So, yeah, we’re done. Pass over the gum.”

Or something like that.

But Les, with all his hair-wizard understanding, had already brought out the shaving cream. Note, I only knew it was shaving cream because it was same stuff that Dad used. Not surprising, however, as there was only two or three different kinds of cream on the market at that time. No one had yet considered that the male population needed 428 different kinds of scented cream, with or without aloe or menthol, with which to scrape our faces free of hair. I had not yet started shaving. I didn’t even have peach fuzz yet. But there was Les, all 8 feet tall and about 140 pounds of him, getting a handful of Barbarsol ready for me.

He had one of those fancy shaving cream warmer units. Well, it was fancy for Ben Lomond. Then again, indoor plumbing and electricity were pretty fancy for Ben Lomond.

I’m not really kidding about that….

The lather went on warm. He applied a layer all over the back of my neck, and smeared a glob of it over each ear. It was an odd sensation. It kinda felt nice.

I had witnessed older patrons go through this process. They just sat there, talking away about politics, being all nonchalant as Les put shaving cream on their skull. Like it was the most normal event. So I tried to mimic what those men had done.

I tried to play it cool…

…until I saw the razor.

Les’ razor was the exact same kind of straight razor that has starred in every horror flick ever made. Les thumbed the back tang of the razor, and the blade snicked out of its protective holder that doubled as a handle. Light glinted off of the edge. He then grabbed ahold of the yard long strap of leather that was hanging off the side of the chair. The Strop. Les expertly stropped the razor back and forth, getting that edge perfect.

Look, there are razors in this world, and there are razors. Then, there’s Les’ razor. I bet, in 1945, Dr. Oppenheimer, Dr. Fermi, and General Groves stood around Los Alamos Laboratories, saying, “Sure, we need to split an atom, but with what?”

“Hey, I know a barber with a wicked sharp straight razor….”

Fast forward two weeks later, when they’re standing in the rubble of the demolished labs. “OK, so, yeah. Looks like you CAN split an atom, but we’ll have to find something safer than Les’ razor, alright? Has anyone seen my skin?”

I was probably in sixth grade, sitting in a room full of grown men that were sick of Carter, inflation, and really small Japanese cars. Standing behind me was a man that was about the same age as the humongous redwood outside, and he was holding a razor that was so sharp, that if his systolic blood pressure went up by two mmHg, he’d turn me into a pre-teen van Gough. I don’t think I ever sat so still in all my life.

I felt the blade kiss my skin. Shiff-shiff-shiff. No pain, no noticeable tension between steel moving across flesh, just a quick wisp of a sensation, and the work on the neck was complete. Les tugged down the tops of my ears, and the razor made a few infinitesimal sweeps to make those “whitewalls” really stand out, and he was done. A quick wipe of the towel to remove any of the remaining Barbasol, the quick removal of the backwards cape that you have to wear, and that was it.

I handed him my five dollar bill, and I got $1.50 back.

“So…do I get some gum?” I asked innocently.

Les looked at me, square in the eye for a long moment. All the men with impeccable Flat-Tops stopped talking, and were staring at me with knowing looks. There wasn’t a sound, then Les said, “No gum for you. That’s for children.”

When I walked into the barbershop that afternoon, with my shaggy, completely sun-damaged head of hair, I was a boy. When I walked out of there with a industrial strength Flat-Top, I was a man. I had just traversed the Ben Lomond rite of passage. I had survive the Ritual of the Razor, and was accepted into the tribe as a man.

A man with a buck-fifty burning a hole in his shorts. So I went one block up Mill Street to the Ben Lomond Market, and bought as much bubble gum as I could with that money.

The King of Penmanship

Do you remember those chalkboards in second grade? And they had those placards above those boards that showed us students how cursive writing was supposed to look like (including the capital “Q” which looked suspiciously like a fancy “2”)? The letters had all the fancy curly-ques, perfect slope, and spacing.

My dad wrote like that.

On purpose.

It was like someone had downloaded “PerfectFont” into his head, and his default penmanship was this exact replica of those training placards. EXACT. Including the Capital-Q-Fancy-2 paradigm. And always in the same size. Like his preferences were set to ElPerfecto, size 11.5. And always in a straight line. He’d never use lined paper, just a blank sheet of paper. The first line would be perfectly parallel to the top edge, then each subsequent line of writing would be parallel to that line, so that by the bottom of the page, it would still be evenly aligned. Oh, and the margins? Perfect.

When he was done, it was a perfect block of words. Medieval scribes would want his autograph.

I feel the need to point out that he would write like this with a fountain pen. Again, on purpose. Like some sort of freakish Stepford Penmanship Drone.

As an added level of perplexity, the man was left handed. That’s not to say that southpaws are incapable of possessing impeccable penmanship; of course they are. What I AM saying is that left handed individuals tend to have some difficulty with fountain pens for several reasons. The majority of left handed people “hook” their hands as they write. This means that as they go across the page, left to right, their hand will eventually come in contact with the freshly laid ink, causing it to smear. There are those, however, that “underwrite”; meaning that, as they write, their hands are “under” the words. Like a mirror to the way the right handed folks write.

Dad was a left-handed, fountain pen using, underwriter, that had had flawless penmanship.

I used to stand there and watch him write stuff. Letters to friends and family, to-do lists, crossword puzzles.

Yes, I said, “crossword puzzles”. He would do the Sunday crossword puzzle in ink, with a fountain pen.

It was insane.

He didn’t have to struggle with writing. He just swooped along, the pen flying across the paper, the perfection an afterthought.

I was completely mesmerized. Entranced. Pretty much everything Dad did was amazing to me, but his writing? Wow. It was like a freakin’ superpower.

Part of the reason I was so enthralled with his writing was because it was the exact opposite of my own penmanship. I, too, am left-handed, but my writing skills are right up there with something that is the equivalent to something that is atrocious in the writing sphere. I’m not an “underwriter”, I’m a severe “hook” writer. Most “hook” writers bend their wrists, but my whole arm is contorted.

I swear, if I had a second wrist in my left arm, I’d find a way to tweak that around, as well.

I tried to write with a fountain pen (because, DAD), but because of my exaggerated hook method, the beautiful calligraphy lasted for about two or three letters before it was completely obliterated by my hand, forearm, elbow, scapula. There was no way around it. In art class, when they were teaching us calligraphy, we had to use the pen and ink (real pen nibs and inkwells). I couldn’t do it. I actually had to use a ballpoint pen, outline the Gothic letters, and color them in. Took me forever. My right-handed friend sitting next to me wrote out all of the Shakespearean sonnets by the time I finished drawing out my name.

All of this was compounded by my lazy approach to penmanship. If you’re writing with your right hand, you just sort of pull your hand across the page as you lay out the ink. If you’re left-handed, you have to push your hand. BUT, if you’re a lazy left-handed person, you anchor your left hand onto the page, write some words, then shift your hand to a new anchor point. This makes your words do crazy, acrobatic tricks. My words would start on the line, but as the pen would work away from the anchor point of my hand, the words would start to pivot up. So the words in a sentence would be a series of wave-like shapes across the page.

The other aspect of my poor penmanship was that my default font size was somewhere in the vicinity of -4. Not just tiny, but migraine-inducing small. The teacher would say, “Write a two page summary of your Summer vacation.” Cindy, with her loopy, bubble-esque writing style, complete with little hearts over her i’s, would write, “I saw a kitty!” and it would fulfill the two page requirement. Because of my letter size, I would have to transcribe something akin to War and Peace in order to get through that second page. AND all those sentences would be a series of little up-swoops that made the entire treatise look like a collection of hacksaw blade profiles drawn on paper. I actually had a paper returned to me with the teacher annotating the page in big red letters, “I can’t read this.”

I showed it to Dad, and he said, “I can’t blame her. What is this?”

Shortly thereafter, I was given a typewriter. I was the first kid in sixth grade that was handing in typewritten book reports. Not because I was trying to show off, but because my writing skills were abysmal.

Fast forward forty years.

I received two fountain pens for Christmas this year.

Challenge accepted.

I Was the Youngest

 

I was the youngest. Technically, I still am. I have an older sister, and, as for the other part of the family, I’m the youngest of my four cousins. It’s hard being the youngest of one family. It’s almost impossible being the youngest of TWO families. Being the youngest of the family does not make it easy to take any position of leadership. As the youngest, you pretty much follow. It’s either that, or you get left behind to sit with the grown-ups as they spend the day talking about things that occurred before you were born.

So, you either follow, or you get to listen to adults talk about their medicines, black and white movies, and The War.

I followed. A lot.

Here’s an example. We used to go to our relatives in the Californian San Bernadino county during August. This, I believe, was because we children needed to be taught a lesson. The lesson my parents wanted us to learn was probably something like expanding our horizons, experiencing different environments, enjoying the company of people from different histories. And other such twaddle. The real lesson was: If you decide to wander out into the midday sun in the high desert, you’ll bake your brain into a brick.

Our family called it “The Desert”, but it never really looked like a desert to me. To my overly active young mind, fueled by Looney Tunes, Lucky Charms, and Tonka trucks, a desert had humongous rolling sand dunes, camels, and the occasional oasis. There were roving caravans of merchants, people walking around in flowing bathrobes drinking coffee from itty-bitty cups, and big tents full of rugs.

And flying carpets. No self respecting desert could exist without flying carpets.

To my six year old brain, deserts had to have dunes dotted with tents, espresso drinking sheikhs, and flying carpets.

With this in mind, what my family called a desert, was NOT a desert.

The name of our destination was Morongo Valley. I’m not saying that it’s a small, and mostly unknown, community, but the spell check on my computer just threw red confetti under the word, “Morongo”.

There, it did it again.

This little community was established in the Southeastern corner of California. According to some, it was called a “high desert”. Being young as I was, I didn’t understand the term, so I asked around. I received various answers. My dad said, “It’s just like a desert, but higher.” My elder cousins, when asked about the difference between a regular desert and a desert that was high, simply giggled. I didn’t understand the humor until I was indoctrinated by Professors Cheech and Chong. I looked “High Desert” up in the dictionary, but it just rambled on and on about elevation, biospheres, and gave various examples. Me being six, however, and being a proto-ADHD poster child, all dictionaries tended to ramble on and on.

Thus lacking in formal data, I had no other option but to create my own plausible theory about Morongo Valley. He’s that theory:

When God was busy making the earth, he got the part of world that included Morongo Valley. This is when Michael the Archangel showed up.

Michael: Ah, I see You’re working on the high desert now.
God: Oh, yeah.
M: How are you going to do the plants?
G: Well, it doesn’t rain often there, so the plants will have absorbent pulp to hold water for the dry season. I shall call them succulants.
M: Oh, good thinking.
G: Then I shall cover them with painful, barbed spines that will cause pain to anyone that even gets close to them.
M: Uh…OK. That seems a bit, I don’t know, hars….
G: You know how we were talking about the lizards?
M: Right, yes. They were very nicely designed, if I remember correc….
G: I covered them in spikes. They look like terrifying. I have no idea how they’re going to mate at all. You should ask me about those land-lobsters.
M: Um…OK, what about the land-lobsters?
G: I modified them. I put stingers on their tails, and filled them with poison. I’ve called them scorpions.
M: Well, that’s pretty extrem….
G: Remember those big spiders?
M: Do I ever. Those were pretty creepy looki….
G: I modified those, too. I gave them fur coats. In that heat, they’ll be all sorts of grumpy. And what do they need, these grumpy furry spiders stuck out in the heat? FANGS! It’s brilliant! I’ll call them tarantulas.
M: You’ve been busy. What do you say we, maybe, dial it back a few notch….
G: And bats! Big ol’ canines on those! With RABIES! Oh, it’s gonna be great!
M: Hey, if I could make a suggestion….
G: Wait until I tell you about tumbleweeds. Sure, they look all innocent, but they’re actually rolling balls that are made up of thousands of poniards. Mobile Organic Spheres of Death!
M: Yeah, that’s nice. Promise me you’ll have a Snickers before we move on to Hawai’i, OK? Promise?
G: Sure, yeah, OK. Now come over here and see what I put in this snake’s mouth: retractable fangs that are pre-loaded with venom….
M: * sigh *

This is pretty much all of Morongo Valley. And this is where our parents would send us out to play. We young kids would get up at a reasonable hour, say five or six in the morning, and start playing. Soon after that, the grown-ups would wake up. We’d eat our sugary breakfast, and then continue to play in the very small house.

Eventually, as a means to prevent migraines, one of the aforementioned adults would calmly tell us to go outside and play, or they would skin us alive.

Or something like that.

This usually occurred just after sunrise.

Allow me to clarify. We lived in the San Lorenzo Valley, a very temperate environment in the Santa Cruz mountains. In August, the pre-dawn temps were around 64°F. After the sun rose, it was about 64°F. Around 9 in the morning, it was about 66°F. In the Morongo Valley, however, pre-dawn was about -80°F, then, just after sunrise, the temps might boost up to around 110°F, and by 9 that morning, well, it’s impossible to tell because the outside thermometer melted.

So, in essence, the adults were telling us hyperactive kids to go play outside in an environment very close to that which one might find on the sunny side of Mercury.

Only, here, there were plants that were actively trying to kill you.

I remember this one time we were at the “desert”, and The Robbie was there with us. It never seemed right to be at the desert without The Robbie. The term “rudderless” could best be defined as “Being stuck in a desert without a Robbie”.

We were kicked out of the house so the grown-ups could have the Hangover Hangout to themselves while sitting next to the army of high-speed fans.

The house in question here is just off the main drag, and it belonged to a husband/wife team named Walter and Jerry. I’ve no clue as to their last names. That information was given out on a Need to Know basis, and, as a young imp, I didn’t have that need. Apparently, I still don’t.

Either Walter and Jerry were related to my mom. Not sure which one, but my bet is on Jerry. Half sister, step sister, something along those lines. I have discovered over the years that Mom and my aunt Ollie have a family tree that have as yet to be discovered branches.

In the Kid Lexicon, “Jerry” was a boy’s name; e.g. Jerry Lewis, Tom and Jerry, Jerry Reed (who was featured on a Scooby Doo episode). Apparently, there was no entry into the Kid Lexicon for the shortened form of Geraldine. That’s just crazy. Because of all this, Jerry was an uncle. Her gender didn’t determine the title, her name did. Subsequently, we had Uncle “Waters” and Uncle Jerry.

It being California, we never gave it much thought.

We clamored out of the house, and into the blazing sun. I remember there was a cat there, outside, just standing there, looking stunned. Like a vampire that was caught in the first rays of the rising sun. As though the poor thing only had seconds to find a shady spot before he burst into flames. The look on that cat’s face has stuck with me for my entire life.

There were bikes. I remember that much. I have absolutely no idea why uncles Waters and Jerry had bikes. Morongo Valley is not known for its trendy, athletic community. This is because no one is keen on exercising in an area where people can succumb to heat exhaustion before the first coffee break in the morning, and the only real activity is to occasionally get up off the couch to see if the various and strategically placed fans can go any faster.

As far as I know, the bikes we had didn’t even belong to our uncles. The bikes could’ve belonged to the town. They could’ve been found next to the ashes of the last kids that tried to ride bikes out in the heat of Morongo Valley. But that fate did not wait for us. We were different. We were special. We were living in the age of polyester, the heyday of NASA, and era of corduroy short shorts. We could ride bikes on the surface of Mercury, and suffer no ill-effects.

Our first stop was the Circle K a couple of blocks down the road. This was the main store of Morongo Valley. People would dress up in their asbestos suits, run from their air-conditioned house to their air-conditioned car, and drive to get ice. During the Summer months of Morongo Valley, which extended from January 2nd to sometime just after Christmas, the main dietary staple of the town was ice. People there were connoisseurs of ice. They would have discussions about which brand of ice they preferred, and why. The Circle K offered other items in their store, but that was just all a front. They sold ice. They were the local ice bank.

My sister, The Robbie, and I pulled up to the front of the Circle K, dismounted our rolling steeds, and approached the door. It was then that I was told that I would be stationed outside to guard the bikes.

I was not a part of this decision making paradigm. I’ve often wondered how, and why, I was selected for guard duty. I wanted to go into the Circle K to peruse the famous ice selections, but I was, instead, posted on bike guard duty. There are many possible reasons, the chief of which was that I was the youngest. That makes sense because the youngest usually get relegated to do the odd job. It could’ve been because I was the fattest of the three, and was less likely to dehydrate as fast as my tall, spindly elders. Mostly obvious reason was because The Robbie said it, and I responded with, “OK.”

This is how it generally went. This is because I was the youngest. As the youngest, you’re not afforded the privilege to off an alternate course of action. It’s either “OK” or you don’t get to go. But that’s not all. To whatever The Robbie said, my response was, “OK.” It was always “OK” when it came to the Robbie. The argument could be made that I was gullible, or naïve, but most likely it was because I loved The Robbie. He was a walking storm of excitement and escapism. I always wanted to be a part of whatever was going on inside his brain.

I still do.

So, outside the Circle K I stood. Guarding the bikes from the zero demographic that would want to steal them. My sister and The Robbie were in the Circle K for some time. At that point, I had no idea why we went to the Circle K. The Robbie probably said something like, “Let’s go to the Circle K.” and I said, “OK.”

What they were NOT buying was sunblock, anything that had the letters “SPF” on it, or some sensible protective clothing. C’mon, this was the 70’s. We used coconut oil to make us sunburn faster. We were on a fast-track schedule to be the 21st century cash crop for dermatologists.

They finally came out, bearing Slurpees, which are sugar infused flavored ice drinks.

Again with the ice.

Later on, post Slurpee, The Robbie said, “Hey, let’s go outside, you and I, without water, without maps, without leaving an itinerary with anyone, and let us ride our bikes hither and yon, through the dry river beds, amidst the cacti, until our brains are baked into tiny bricks! What a lark! Yes, let us do this while wearing tank tops, no helmets, insanely short shorts, sneakers, and gym socks with flashy stripes at the top!”

OK, he didn’t really say that, but that’s pretty much what happened.

It was ridiculous. Reckless. Every year, people die out there doing things like that. Every other person would say, “Have you gone barkers? This plan is simply mad. MAD, I say! And I beseech you, Sir, to abandon this adventure until such time as the environment is more suiting for a ramble!”

I, however, being the youngest, said, “OK.”

My sister didn’t join us. She, being the eldest in our family, had the option to avoid suicide bicycle tours. The fact that she lacked the psychosis creating testosterone in her system also played a major factor.

We were riding bikes all over the place. There were dry river beds that had not seen water since the Noah Incident in Genesis 6. We had cactus needle scratches all over our legs. I had hit so many big rocks with my bike tire that the handlebars, and most of my major skeletal joints, were all wonky. It was so hot, I burned the lining in my lungs. Due to my very fashionable crew cut that Dad required, the top of my skull burst into flames ten minutes into the ride. I didn’t sweat because as soon as any liquid formed on my skin, it evaporated.

We rode for hours. At one point, The Robbie pointed to some far distant point, just before the base of the wrong side of the San Gabriels, and said, “Hey! I bet we could ride to Palm Springs! Let’s go!”

Being the youngest, I said, “OK,” even though the city was probably 428 miles away, and we would dehydrate into dust well before we even got close.

We saw trees that looked like they came out of Dr. Seuss’ nightmares. Various animals that defied description. Cars that were parked out there and left to decompose. They didn’t rust, per se, they just sort of collapsed upon themselves.

And we saw a mine shaft.

There were plenty of mining operations in the region way back when. Silver, mostly. It all pretty much played out by the mid 20th century. Most of the mining corporations just up and left, leaving behind old rail cars, tracks, winches, and abandoned shafts. They tried to block the entrances by boarding them up, but wood, no matter how green, usually dries up, deteriorates, and and rots within the first 24 hours of be left out in that territory.

The Robbie stopped his bike, looked longingly up at the old mineshaft, and said, “Let’s go up there!”

I, being the youngest, was required to say, “OK,” and off we went.

We got close, and, just as I figured, the material they used to block the entrance had long ago fallen away. Inside, just past the edge of light, it was pitch black. A stifling, yawning, impenetrable dark wherein lived every conceivable fear for a six year old boy. I was transfixed at the unseen and the unknown. A chill danced along my spine though I stood under the blistering sun.

At this point, The Robbie, with a full mischievous grin, said, “Let’s go in!”

I, as the youngest, of course said, “Oh, HECK NO! No way! Forget it! No! I don’t care if it leads to Captain Kidd’s buried treasure, the lost portal to Narnia, or gave me superhero powers! No! And furthermore, I’m tired, I think my major organs have stopped functioning after I crashed while chasing that lizard, and my sweat glands have been coughing up dust for an hour. I’m going back to the Circle K where I will purchase a bag of premium ice, then go back to Uncle Waters and Uncle Jerry’s house, fill up that kiddie pool out back with ice, and then soak my body. You may follow me if you choose, or enter this Hades Gate, but I’m done.”

I then turned around, rode my bike in a beeline to Highway 62, took a right, and went directly to Morongo Valley as the youngest of the family…who didn’t have to follow anymore….

…until the next time The Robbie said, “Hey….”