Jackpine Savage!

Sledding, Innocent Beginnings

2011-09-23T07:20:00.000-05:00

In my memory, my childhood is broken down into three sections. In many ways, these are three different people that seem almost strangers to each other, yet all of their memories are mine. The first are the early years that ended when we moved to Bemidji. These memories are spotty and disjointed, but the ones I still recall are very strong. The next phase is when we moved to Bemidji the summer I turned five until the divorce when I was eleven. The final stage starts after the divorce in the final months of the 6^th grade, until I joined the Army 25 days after I graduated High School.

While the months leading up to the divorce were the worst of my young life, most of my time at the house on Lake Plantagenet was wonderful. We were only about eight miles outside of town, but in the 1970's for a kid under eleven, we might as well have been in the middle of nowhere. We were surrounded by more acres of woods than we could explore and had a lake and river within walking distance.

What made that time even more special, were my friends. Tom Wilson was a year older and his brother Dan was a year younger. They had two younger sisters, Becky and Sally that we would harass from time to time. The three of us were inseparable and this is a story about one of our favorite pastimes, sledding.

The Wilsons lived right across the road from us. Their house was on a steep hill that overlooked the lake. That hill was perfect for sledding and every winter we spent the majority of our time doing just that.

The bank of the lake was between three and four feet above the water, which made for a cool jump onto the ice at the end of our run. When the snow was thick on the lake, it was like hitting a pillow. When it was wind swept, it felt like our vertebra was being compressing. Of course, that didn't stop us. But as we got older, the hill lost some of it's power to thrill, and the three of us came up with more elaborate death defying games to feed our need for adrenalin. One such attempt was on their long wooden toboggan. It was large enough for all three of us, but it wasn't a sled you could steer. You had to aim it and hope for the best. Under normal circumstances, that would be fine, but of course, that was too boring for us. We took it about one hundred yards into the woods parallel to their house and aimed it downhill. Then we climbed in, said our feeble prayers and pretended we weren't scared so the other two wouldn't think less of us.

I read years later about phenomenon called Groupthink. This was a classic example. We pulled our legs in and pushed off. The sled was slow at first because of the deep untouched snow. My fear turned into disappointment as it seemed we wouldn't even get started let alone get up to dangerous speed. We rocked back and forth, digging our hands into the snow trying to get down to solid ground for purchase.

Without warning, gravity overcame the surface tension, and we went from grunting incremental frustration to an express freight train headed straight for hell via large trees that sprung in front of us so suddenly, we didn't have time to scream.

Tom yelled out instructions from the front and we tried to comply, shifting our weight right or left to avoid a head on collision. We bounced off the side of a couple of larger trees and went straight over the top of some brush all the while picking up speed. I was sure we were dead meat when finally we were through the trees and shooting up the ramp shaped bank. There was a feeling of weightlessness and we all had time to look around as we sailed through the air above the snow free ice.

Tom tensed. He seemed to have figured out what I hadn't. The bank on that section of the hill was a couple feet higher than where we normally sledded, and the solid wood toboggan had no shock absorption. We hit flat and hard on the ice. Pain shot up my spine and I saw stars. Momentum carried us a good twenty feet and then we came to a stop. I fell to my right trying to catch the wind that had been knocked out of me.

Still, we were all smiling like idiots as we stood up and looked back at the path we'd taken. Groupthink or not, we all decided that once was definitely enough.

The rest of the year, we stuck to our normal hill that lead down to where their dock was located in the summer. It was a well-worn path and plenty fast, especially in the early spring when the snow would melt a little during the day and freeze into a nice ice coating as the sun headed for the western horizon. Of course, once the ice started melting on the lake, we were supposed to stop sledding down the hill. After all, shooting down a hill directly toward a receding sheet of ice in March was not safe or particular wise.

Yeah you guessed it. We didn't just try it, but we soon created a sled version of chicken. We wanted to see which one of us could get the closest to the end of the ramp shaped bank without bailing off. To make it more interesting, we were using their metal discs because they were faster on ice and supposedly easier to bail off. It was getting dark and we'd all gone down twice. As you might expect, we ditched very early at first, but then we got gutsier, not wanting to bail inside the last person's mark.

I was wearing a pair of knitted mittens my grandmother had made me. We were all a little soaked from the melting snow, and it was getting cold as the sun sunk deeper. The sky looked like it was on fire as the sun eased behind the lazy clouds that dotted the sky like rows of white puffy tombstones. I gripped the two handles tight and swore I would beat Tom's mark. He'd bailed at the bottom of the hill, right before it started to go up again, barely three feet from open air. I gritted my teeth and shoved off. Each run, the surface became more ice than slush and my run was fast. I figured if I bailed right when I reached the bottom of the hill, my momentum would carry me past Tom's mark. Halfway down, my disc hit a bump and spun me around so I was going down the hill backwards. I couldn't see when to jump off and chickened out. I opened both of the hands and dove to my right.

Nothing happened. I was still sliding backwards and Tom was yelling something. My mittens, so caringly knitted with Grandma love, had frozen together, locking me to the handles. I was going to scream, but then I shot passed Tom's mark and was flying through the air as I had done countless times before. This time however, I didn't land on snow or ice, but skipped across the open water like a rock. One, two, three, then I was submerged as I fell back and the disc filled with water. I had just enough awareness to take a deep breath and I was under the surface and heading for the bottom. The water freed my frozen mittens, but my momentum and weight dropped me like an anchor.

I looked up as I sank and saw I had continued out as I went down and was now well under the shelf of ice. When I hit the silty bottom, I pushed away from the disc and tried to swim up to the surface. My water logged boots and coat held me down. I'd become disoriented and started heading the wrong way but I noticed it was black as death and I remembered the sun. I looked around and saw it was lighter to my left. I started to walk in that direction. I leaned forward and pushed with my legs as hard as I could, digging into the muck with my hands.

After an eternity, I was out from under the ice and there was light and open water above me. It was hard to think, but I knew I had to keep moving. A few more steps and my head broke the surface and I blew out hard and then sucked in the fresh sweet air. Tom and Dan were there to help me up the bank. I sat down to catch my breath.

"I'm sorry I lost your disc."

They weren't worried about the disc but we were all worried about getting caught. How in the hell were we going to hide this? I told them I would just head home and chances were good I could get past my mom and dad and into my room without being seen. Most times, I could do it. Dad would be watching TV and Mom would be making dinner. Half the time they never turned around when I came in. I thought my odds were pretty good. Tom and Dan looked dubious, but I was determined, so I started up the hill. From the edge of the lake to my front door, was about four hundred yards, mostly uphill. By the time I got to the end of the Wilson's driveway, I wasn't cold any more. I was sleepy, but not cold. It was full dark and my clothes had frozen hard. I couldn't bend my knees anymore and was forced to just shuffle ahead.

When I got close to my house, our front door opened and both my mom and my dad ran out toward me. I'd been in trouble before, but my dad had never run at me in order to give me a whipping. Instead of swatting my ass, he scooped me up like a sack of potatoes and took me inside. They were both chewing my ass but they also seemed scared. I'd never seen them like this and I thought I should be scared too, but I just didn’t care.

They finished stripping me naked and then they shoved me into a bathtub of what I thought was boiling hot water. I screamed and thrashed, begging them to let me out. My dad held me down. There were tears in my mom's eyes.

After another eternity of agony as all my nerves felt like they were on fire, they finally let me out and wrapped me in towels and rubbed me hard until I was completely dry. They explained that the water was room temperature. My dad had learned about frostbite and hypothermia in Kodiak Alaska when he was in the Coast Guard. Then they put me in bed with an electric heating pad and extra blankets. It was strange, but with all of those blankets and the pad, I felt cold for the first time since I'd left the lake. I shivered so hard I was sure I would shatter my teeth. It felt as if I would never be warm again. Sometime later, my dad said it was ok to let me sleep. I didn't think it would come, I still shook, but eventually it did. Before I drifted off, I heard them talking. Dad didn’t think I would lose any of my fingers or toes, but he would know for sure the next day if any of them turned black.

I dreamt of black, dead fingers.

Billy and the AC, an EOD Adventure

2011-09-16T18:58:00.000-05:00

Billy was his name. Come to think of it, Billy is still his name. A couple of years ago we reconnected on Facebook and I was shocked that he was still alive. He was a few years older than me and made partying a lifestyle. In an Army full of people one bubble off center, he was bat shit crazy. He was a musician, an orthodontic technician and several other things that I can't discuss due to statute of limitations. I'd hoped he was still alive, but considered it a low probability with prison being a strong second to organ failure.

Billy Hays started sometime around 1986 at the 6oth EOD at Ft. Dix, NJ. We were told he was our clerk. He was a bit more, but that is a much longer and different story. He was also one of the most unique individuals I have ever met in all my days.

I haven't seen him except in photos since 1988, so my description may be a bit off. That's okay, because this blog is about memories, not exact facts. I remember Billy as being about 5'6", thin and wiry. He chain smoked as if he needed them to survive and drank beer like it was water. Billy was and still is from Mobile, Alabama.

Before I reconnected with him, my strongest memory was his laugh. It was infectious. He truly loved life and wanted to share the joy as often as possible. We hit it right off.

The 60^th EOD had a maximum number of 14 members, and I think we often had only 12. There were only 3-4 of us single guys and we were all on the first floor of the same building. Army barracks are Spartan. These were brick cinder block, painted some baby puke yellow and had no light fixtures. The only light in those rooms came from lamps plugged into outlets. There were bunk beds and two lockers per room, though over time, I ended up being the only one with a roommate, despite the fact that I was a sergeant. Of course Specialist Billy fucking Hayes had a private room across the hall.

The Army is a strange place. They have rules that defy logic and in some cases seem to be created intentionally to contradict logic. One such rule dealt with heating. There was no air conditioning in the barracks, but there were heaters. Regardless of what the weather conditions were, the Army in its infinite wisdom decided they would set dates for when the heat came on in the winter and when it turned off in the summer. It didn't matter to the officers in charge that it often got extremely cold before the start date, any more than it mattered that often times in the spring, it would get too hot outside for boiler operated heaters to continue to run. The dates were the dates, period.

The lack of air conditioning was especially cruel in the months of July and August. One of Billy's favorite stories of me was when he found me one day, sitting in front of a computer in my underwear, dripping sweat into an increasingly large pool on the floor. I was playing one of the first PC computer games and I was hooked. I had the window wide open and a fan going full tilt, but 95 degrees with 90% humidity is going to just plain suck.

One day that first summer, I heard from another soldier that he'd been to a place about an hour away that sold used air conditioners for less than fifty bucks. I asked Billy if he wanted to come along. He said sure and off we went. About ten minutes into our trip and I heard the very distinct sounds of a bottle being opened. My head spun hard to my right and there was Billy, drinking an ice cold bottle of beer. He looked at me and smiled.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

"Drinking a beer, Gus, want one."

"No, I don’t fucking want one. I don’t drink and even if I did, I wouldn’t do it in a moving vehicle in the state of New Jersey."

We then got into a debate over the legalities and I informed him that not only would I lose my license, but I would then get busted down to slick sleeve private. He considered the people that made such laws "savages". At that time, drivers in Alabama and Texas could have beer in their hand as they drove, with a rifle on the rack behind them.

He finished it fast and chucked the empty out the window.

"What am I supposed to do with the rest of them?" He asked, displaying three more bottles, the amount he estimated needed for the one hour round trip.

I told him to hold on to them and we would put them in the trunk when we got to our destination. He then proceeded to take out a cigarette and a lighter.

"Nope. Not in my car you don't."

"Jesus Christ, Scott. First I can't drink, now I can’t smoke? What the FUCK?!"

He only called me Scott when he was pissed, all other times, I was "Gus". I gave him the stink eye, and he rolled down the window. I wasn't sure what he was going to do, but I wasn't prepared for him to lean out at over 60 miles per hour and smoke. Sure, it took him awhile to light it, but he managed. I wasn't sure if he was really that angry, or if it was just the wind disporting his features, but either way, he didn't look happy. From that day on, if we went somewhere we took his car.

We got to the place just as a column of vehicles was leaving. All the drivers had Ft. Dix stickers on their windshields and they had picked over the less expensive inventory. Only two larger and more expensive units remained. I looked them over and asked the man how much they were. $65 bucks for either unit was the answer. I had exactly $50 dollars left until payday, which was only a two days away.

"Billy, do you suppose I could borrow $15 dollars from you."

"Sorry Gus, no can do."

I told the man I'd have to pass and without skipping a beat, Billy said, "I'll take one!"

He broke out a wad of cash and paid the man. The window unit was almost as big as Billy.

"Do me a favor, Gus and help me load this big mother into your trunk."

I was too stunned to react, so I picked up the other end and loaded up the unit. We couldn’t close the trunk and had to tie it down. We got back to the barracks and he needed help getting in the room and into HIS window. I went back to my room that was even hotter than when I left and stripped back down to my undies, sweat dripping into an ever growing pool.

About two hours later, there was a knock on my door.

"Jesus Christ, Gus, it's cold in there. Can I borrow some long johns from you? You could hang beef in there. I don't even need to ice my beer."

It was times like that that allowed me to live with the guilt of duct taping him a foot off the ground to a pole in the boiler room that was situated facing the street out from of the 60^th EOD. What are friends for?

Lemon Bars, A Tale of Misspent Youth

2011-09-10T11:07:00.002-05:00

My wife asked me a while ago how I was doing. It was a beautiful summer day and I was at the grill flipping burger and cooking brats. I didn't put a lot of thought into my answer but I meant what I said.

"Baby, as long as there aren't wheels on my house or crackers in my burger, I'm good."

That sums up my view of success. I want to make sure my children are never hungry and they have a stable home with stairs on the inside and no wheels on the outside.

After my parents divorced, my dad moved to the south side of town and we moved to a trailer court on the north end of the lake. My mom knew that she would be trapped working crap jobs the rest of her life unless she got a degree, so she went back to school. She also worked a crappy job. I was a latchkey kid at 12 before I'd ever heard the term.

Money was very tight. Paydays happened, as they often do, every two weeks. By the end of those two weeks, there were times when the cupboards were bare and the fridge was empty. We were around $5,000 under the poverty line and one day my mom sat me down and asked me if I thought we should take welfare. We could get money and food stamps. I could tell that she hated the idea and even though I was not quite a teenager, I had been raised by a man that didn't believe in asking for help to do things you could do for yourself. I told her no. I told her I could work and she seemed relieved. She also told me it would be hard. She was right.

There were two exceptions to our decision not to take a hand out. The first was free lunches at school. I got a pink meal card instead of the blue ones other families bought with cash. During the school year, that one meal made a huge difference and I would often stay late and take advantage of the seconds that were offered at the end of mealtime. Most often these seconds were burgers or pizza, and on rare magical days, there were pizza burgers.

The other exception was butter and cheese. This was a program started by Reagan. The cheese came in five-pound blocks, and the butter in one-pound squares. Each family that qualified got one of each per month. I would like to believe that their choice of distribution locations was unconscious. I would like to but I just can't. They handed out the free cheese and butter at a building right next to Paul and Babe. We waited in a long line that stretched into the parking lot next to the main road that ran north and south through the town. People that didn’t need the free dairy handout would stare and sometimes honk, pointing. I hated that line, but I loved the cheese. I still have occasional cravings.

For those of you that are too young to remember, the recession back in the late 70's and early 80's was a real ball buster. We also had gas shortages and a long line of cars at the gas station was a common site, even in Bemidji. Those were scary times in America and the first major wake up call we'd had since before WWII.

That summer, I got my first job. It was at a restaurant washing dishes. I started off working mostly weekends, but got up to forty hours a week by the time I was fifteen. They didn't have a machine, and all dishes had to go through three large stainless steal sinks, the first with a harsh cleanser, then a rinse and finally plain water. My hands peeled down to the meat from the cleanser and I always smelled like a combination of detergent and grease. I would get a meal and minimum wage, which wasn't too shabby. Still, there were times, especially during the week in the summers, were food got a bit scarce.

Those were the days when I would visit Bill's house around lunchtime. Bill's was a regular hang out regardless of the time of day and I don't remember ever making a conscious choice to go to Bill's in hopes of being fed. It wasn't a plan or a strategy. Or perhaps, I just wouldn’t admit it even to myself at the time.

There were no wheels on their house. It even had stairs, both up and down. That vision of "home", has stayed with me for the rest of my life and it is what I have tried to replicate for my family. We fall short of course, we aren't like Bill's mom, but even close is good enough. Bill's mother is one of the kindness, most generous women I have ever met. Her house was always meticulous and the overall sensation of her home was like being wrapped in a warm blanket of love. In retrospect, it's obvious that she knew about my situation. There are no secrets in a town like Bemidji, but she never let on that she knew and I'm pretty sure she never said anything to Bill.

It seemed that she was always baking or had just finished baking. There were always leftovers in the fridge along with fruit, snacks, cold cuts and Cranapple drink. The pantry was stuffed full of pasta, soups, crackers, cookies and chips. Bill's mom was always smiling, always welcoming and always offering me something to eat, especially her world famous lemon bars.

There was one small problem. Bill was not exactly appreciative of his friends coming over and eating his food. You see I wasn't the only one. Jason would also show up at opportune times. We seemed to be able to sense or perhaps we could smell the lemon bars from miles away. Bill loved those bars more than life itself, as did we all. Resentment began to build, though it was never malevolent. Bill's mom insisted that he be a generous host even if she wasn't around, but she never said he couldn't play dirty. We all loved games, war games especially, and at some point, Bill invented his own game. The goal was simple. Find something that Jason and I didn’t like to eat. This wasn't a fast game, oh no. This was a strategy game that spanned years.

While he mounted his campaign to find food we would refuse, he tried to achieve smaller victories, some that succeeded and some that failed. It was common for him, to hide the tray of lemon bars. Like bloodhounds though, Jason and I could track the scent and find the tray. His love for Cranapple drink was legendary, and there was always a gallon jug in the refrigerator and a back up in the pantry. His mom made it clear that he couldn't refuse our requests to share the tasty beverage, but she wasn't always in the room with us, and on those occasions, he would pull out a juice glass so small, that it was just the next size up from a shot glass. Then he would fill it just over halfway.

In the larger campaign, Jason was the first to fall. His Achilles heal was Raman noodles. Bill was not put off by his earlier failures. Instead, he evolved his tactics. He read the ingredients to Jason. They included pig intestine. Jason said "No thanks." And Bill smiled. Every time Jason came over near a mealtime after that, Bill made Raman noodles. He'd won his first round and I could tell by the look on his face the next time I showed up that he was sure he had the magic bullet to take me down too. I hadn't heard about Bill's victory and came over while he was preparing the noodles. He asked if I would like some.

"Sure."

He smiled and read the ingredients.

"Sounds yummy, serve em up."

It was a small loss, but he took it well, sure he was only one or two food choices away from finding my weakness. Two years later, and it was the summer after our senior year. I'd forgotten about the game and my mom and I were doing better financially. We still qualified for welfare, but we had figured out how to make ends meet and how to stretch the food budget. Our meals were basic, with cod and rice being a staple. When we splurged on burger, it was what is now called 80/20 with a higher fat count and even then only when it was on special. Those were also the days of cheaper generic brands and our house was filled with them, which is one of the reasons I love the 1984 movie Repo Man. A half-pound of burger, mixed with a lot of generic brand crackers, stretches into a pounds worth in size if not actually by weight or substance.

The point was, that I had made a tactical mistake in a strategy game that had lasted more than five years. I literally wasn't as hungry for victory and I'd gotten lazy to the point where I believed I’d already won the game and it was over. But it was never over for Bill. It was a day much like other days, except that I had about a month before I went off to basic training. It was lunchtime and with a resigned sigh, Bill offered to share his tomato soup with me.

"No thanks, I can't stand tomato soup."

He smiled, and there was a look in his eyes that I didn’t recognize. That is until I came over two days later. He offered me some lunch as a gracious host does, as his mother insisted that he always did. He offered to share, his tomato soup. The look was there and this time I recognized it. It was victory.

He'd bested me at last, and just in time. He savored his victory as much as he savored his soup that he ate with brand name crackers. Right then, in that kitchen a month before basic training, I knew.

Most times we don’t appreciate what we have when we have it, especially in our youth. I was as guilty as everyone else for most of my youth, but at that moment in time I knew I would miss that kitchen. I would miss the love and the smells and the comfort. I would miss watching Bill practice the piano while I waited impatiently to hang out. I would miss listening to Garrison Keillor and The Doctor Demento show on the radio. I would miss his basement and the games of chess, miss making his normally reserved father laugh out loud and miss his mother's beautiful smile. I would miss feeling like I had a brother and was part of a family where the mom and dad were still married.

And I would miss the lemon bars.

The Way Home, a DLI adventure

2011-09-04T10:10:00.004-05:00

I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with me, but after the most monumental life achievements, have always been followed by a hallow feeling. This was never truer than when I finally graduated from the Russian basic course at the Defense Language Institute. The battle was won, honor regained, but now the question loomed. What next? This was especially true because the outcome had been so unsure. I didn’t expect to graduate any more than I expected to fail. I knew I had to try and I hoped I would succeed, but I was realistic enough to know that the odds were against me. I knew going in that it would be hard, though even then, I underestimated the difficulty.

Just to be clear, I didn't dominate at Russian language school. I scrapped by in the lower third of my class, my fate in question every one of the 52 weeks including the last. I am not a gifted linguist. In fact, my learning disability inhibits my language abilities, specifically in the case of rules. Grammar rules as well as mathematic rules that are required to solve equations starting in algebra. My specific disability is that the neural pathways that people build up over time through rote memorization in the area of mathematics and language simply don't hold for me. If I manage to keep at something like language, where it’s an immersion course as the one at the Defense Language Institute, I have a chance. I can maintain the pathways with daily work. Once abandoned, even for a short length of time, and they degrade.

I knew this going in, though I didn’t fully understand it the first time I went to DLI in 1984. Even with this obstacle, I managed to survive for 5 months. The second time, in 1991-92, I crossed the finish line just before they took down the tape. Was it vanity that drove me to try again? I've asked myself why many times, before, during and after. The answer that I came up with was this. I felt as if I needed to correct a mistake. I wasn't prepared the first time to meet the challenge. This was my fault alone. I screwed off in high school and failed to learn English grammar because it was hard for me. Before I returned in 1991, I’d finished two years of college and learned what I needed to know. I went back, prepared. I needed to right a wrong I had done to myself. I’d damaged my confidence in myself and needed to get it back. Not to feel as if I had gained or accomplished something great, not to boost my ego, but simply to get back to a state of even. To be able to start fresh without the shame I felt for the initial failure.

After walking across the stage in Monterey in the spring of 1992, I drove back home to finish my Bachelors degree in Russian Area Studies and hopefully move on to a rewarding career. Two things about my trip home were very different than my trip out a year earlier. First, I decided to take the safer southern route as to not temp fate in the mountains again, and second, I wasn't alone. A good friend of mine had been to DLI a few years before and a friend of his had road tripped back to Minnesota with him. He wanted to pay that favor forward by traveling with me. He had friends and family in California so he got a one way ticket and after his visit, I picked him up and we headed home via the southern states.

This trip was going to be different. No blown tires, no deadly mountain passes, no 1,000 mile days, just a leisurely cruise home with a stop off to see the Grand Canyon. The Camaro of Death had a sweet sound system to entertain us on our journey. I had an Alpine tape deck/radio with one of the first 6 disc CD changers in the trunk, 6x9's in the back and an amp under the passenger seat. The sucker would shake the whole car and couldn't be played at full volume without ear protection. Mark had come prepared. He brought a lot of great tunes that I’d never heard before, my favorite being "Jesus Built my Hotrod" by Ministry. We stopped when we wanted to and did take a side trip to see the Grand Canyon. It was a canyon and I guess it was grand, but without the time to really explore, it only added to the anticlimactic funk I was in. Only seeing home again would buoy my spirits, so even though I had the time, I picked up my pace and focused on eating away the miles.

We followed a simple path, staying on I40 until we hit Oklahoma City, then we swung north on I35 all the way home. After our side trip to the Canyon, we spent the night in a cheap motel in Flagstaff, under the names Harry Canyon and Peter Schlen. Schlen being Russian slang for penis and Harry Canyon was a character with a funny sounding name from the movie Heavy Metal. We left the following morning after a greasy truck stop breakfast, and it wasn't until that night when I popped out my contacts that I realized I’d left my glasses at that motel.

Somewhere between Flagstaff and Albuquerque, I got caught behind a convoy of truckers. After watching Burt Reynolds movies, I thought truckers pushed the speed limit, but these boys seemed hell bent on going about five miles under the limit in multiple lanes. When I got an opening, I moved to pass the flat bed. Just as I got close, a large chunk of 2x4 came loose and landed right in front of me, too close to avoid. I could see the nails that decorated the wood and prayed my tires would miss them.

No such luck. I guess I should be grateful that it wasn't a blow out like my trip to California the year before. My rear tire was punctured, but managed to stay inflated as long as I was moving. We pulled off at the next exit. Luck was with us, since not all exits are equal. We pulled into the first store, one of the many variations of Gas and Go's that peppered the landscape. I could just make out the sign of a real garage a few blocks away and went to work jacking up the car to remove the tire. Mark went in for some pop, or soda as it's known in other parts of the country. He came back and it was my turn to use the restroom and clean up a little.

Halfway to the door, I was blocked by a group of five Native Americans. They seemed friendly enough and asked if I had any spare cash. They said they needed some gas money to get back to the reservation. I didn’t hesitate or even give it much though, I just reached in my pocket and pulled out a five dollar bill that was left over from my last purchase and handed it to man that spoke for the group. I went inside, cleaned up, grabbed some road food and went back to the car. I caught the last part of the conversation where Mark was informing them that he was sorry, but he didn't have any cash. It was true and for that matter, I had just barely enough to make it home and cover gas and cheap motels. The group voiced their disbelief and unhappiness with Mark for not donating. The mood was getting ugly until I came up to stand next to him. I hoped the fact I had given them some cash and Mark and I were riding together would be enough to take away their steam. It didn't. They started to get very aggressive and began to threaten us with bodily harm. The trunk was still open and I reached in and pulled out my S&W model 645 and handed the .454 casull revolver to Mark. That was enough to make them leave, but we were pretty sure they would be back.

I got the flat off, tucked my auto in my waistband and rolled the tire down to the garage. It was a sidewall leak and the mechanic didn’t want to patch it, but I begged him. He told me it wouldn’t last for the life of the tire and there was a danger of a blow out. I assured him it would be fine and he did the job in about ten minutes. I could just make out Mark keeping watch at the car. He was still alone when I rolled the repaired tire back as fast as I could and pulled pit crew record time getting that sucker back on the Camaro. I started her it up and aimed for the highway entrance ramp.

Just as we left the quickie mart parking lot, we spotted two pickups approaching fast on a dirt back road that ran behind the main drag of the exit. Each truck was loaded with at least five shooters in the back, all carrying rifles. Our welcome had expired and I leaned on the small block 350 and launched onto the highway. I exceeded posted speed limits and didn’t let off until a hundred miles later when I was sure the two trucks were no longer in pursuit.

The rest of the trip was uneventful with the exception of some negative physical reactions to truck stop chili. A week later I got a small package in the mail. It was addressed to Peter Schlen and contained my lost glasses from the motel we'd stayed at in Flagstaff. I was home, and I was whole again.

Fork You, My Beef with Mr. Hammer

2011-08-28T19:10:00.004-05:00

This is a tale of my misspent youth.

I had a beef with my former teacher, Mr. Hammer. I say had because I think I’m finally over it.

Mr. Hammer was my social studies teacher in the 9^th grade. He’s been dead now for almost twenty years. I think it’s time to forgive and forget.

There was no particular incident that caused the rift. It was more of an understanding. We took an instant dislike to each other and we both did things to reinforce that dislike as time went on. Up until now, only one other person knew the whole story, my best friend, Dan Barter. But it’s time I lanced this wound and moved on.

I want to make it clear that I was a horrible student. There are a lot of reasons, but it was no ones fault but my own. I wasn’t a victim. Sure, some of the reasons are good ones, but I could have decided to over come those set backs and become a good student. Instead, I used them as excuses and coasted through school. I never studied and never took a book home. But despite my status as a slacker, I hated bad teachers. They offended me. I was forced to be in school, a political prisoner, but they were getting paid to be there. I considered Mr. Hammer one of the worst. He wasn’t stupid like a few others; he just didn’t seem to care.

He would fill the blackboard with notes and then leave for up to 30 minutes while we were supposed to transcribe them for later study. My handwriting was and still is horrible, so even if I had been willing to study, my notes would have been of little use. He was also the first teacher to use a brand new technology to grade his tests. The computer (pause for ooo's and ahhh's). We used a #2 pencil to fill in A through D. We’d never seen this before and he was the only teacher I had in Bemidji that used it. I thought it was lazy and impersonal.

His last crime was just plain creepy. He would arrange the seats of the most attractive and well-endowed girls so they were in the second and third row and in the middle of the room. When he did grace us with his presence, he would always leave a seat in the middle of the front row open so he could sit on the desk and look down at us, but mostly down the shirts of the large breasted girls. For those of you that remember him, think hard before you dismiss this claim. I had occasion to discuss this with other classes, both ahead of us and after us, and it occurred to consistently to have been accidental.

These crimes may seem fairly benign, especially for the 80’s, but as I said, we didn’t like each other from the start. I had beef, and I did something about it. Actually, I did several things about it that I will list here for the record.

It wasn’t my idea, but I won’t rat out who thought of this. I will say I crossed the line. We would take a few blank computer cards and make up fake names and fill out fake tests. We were sure we would get busted, but the first test went by unnoticed. The names were goofy, but not obscene. When Mr. Hammer failed to notice there were 2 more tests results than he had students, my loathing for him grew. The following week we took it up a notch by choosing more risky names and making cool looking patterns with the answers. This went on for over a month until the other students started laughing out loud at the answer key with the foul names we had come up with. Finally, he noticed. He stared at me with undisguised hatred. I returned the look.

Over the next year I: Switched a cassette tape for a filmstrip (really old school tech, look it up), with a Van Halen tape and cranked the volume, turned a film upside down and backwards, shot spitballs into his coffee cup (which he drank), took a months worth of nail clippings and put them in his desk (this is where he kept his, so I doubt he noticed), and stole all of his caulk. That is all I can remember, I’m sure I did more. It was the chalk that set him off. He couldn’t spend the first 15 minutes of class writing notes and then leaving for the next 30 without chalk. He came up and asked if I had any chalk on me. He loomed over, trying to intimidate me. I told him I had a lot of other school supplies, but I was fresh out of chalk. It was stuffed in my pants and even my socks. The man had a LOT of chalk. If he’d searched me, I would have been done. He didn’t.

The year ended and grades were sent out. I got an F in his class. He had the last laugh. Or so he thought. I was ashamed, but I never paid attention to how I did throughout the year and even though I didn’t think much of him as a teacher, it never occurred to me he would lie. Those were different times and I was naïve. I was sent to summer school to make up the credit so I could move on to my sophomore year. My mom was angry and possibly more ashamed than I was.

Bemidji is a big town as far as northern Minnesota towns go. Still, I thought I knew all of the students by sight even if I didn’t know their names. I was wrong. I didn’t know one other student in summer school, and all of them were hard cases. I always had a lot of respect for kids like Brian Lofgren. He was tough. A teacher once slapped him in 5^th grade and he just glared at her. I would have busted out crying, but he just wanted to get even. These kids were like Brian. I was out of place so I kept to myself and hoped none of them would decide I would be fun to pick on.

Summer school was set up self-paced. We were all at different levels and grades all in one class, so we all had a set number of assignments we were supposed to complete in the 8 weeks. I didn’t know the teacher, but it was clear he was thrilled to be there. We had no homework, just the assignments. I focused on them and not my surroundings. After two weeks, I was done with eight weeks of work. The teacher was confused and suspicious. He questioned me about why I was there. The next Monday, I was sent home as soon as I showed up. My mom was home waiting for me. She’d got a call from the school apologizing. Apparently, my real grade had been a B, but Hammer had given me an F for “attitude”.

I wasn’t the only kid that disliked Mr. Hammer. I wanted to get even, and a friend who will remain nameless, came up with a brilliant idea. Now there have been recent articles about similar events occurring in the Twin Cities, but I am positive, that my nameless friend, back in 1981, was the originator of the idea to fork someone’s lawn. His reasoning was that you couldn’t rake up plastic forms, but you had to pick them up individually. We rushed to the grocery store and bought around 500 plastic forks. We picked a night, snuck over to his house, and covered his lawn.

This went on for years after. We once tried spoons, and then started spelling things with all three plastic utensils. Mr. Hammer moved, but I followed. Long after my friends had grown tired of the game, and after I got out of the Army, I forked his lawn at least once every couple of years. Judge me harshly if you want, but the last time I forked him was on his grave. Just to remind him I hadn’t forgotten.

Do you think that crossed the line? So do I in retrospect, but allow me to give you some missing back-story on why being sent to summer school hit me as hard as it did. It’s all about self-confidence, or in this case, my lack of. In elementary school, I needed tubes in my ears. My canals were small and clogged and it went on for a couple of years unnoticed until I had only 10% hearing capacity. In that time, I had slowly withdrawn from class and into myself. I also failed to learn how to pronounce hard consonants, especially R. It was the “baby” talk that finally tipped the adults off. Once I got tubes, I was put in a class for two hours a day for speech therapy and to relearn how write and try to catch up on what I had missed. I was behind at least a full year of class and missing two hours a day in fifth grade set me back farther.

In 8^th grade, they noticed my grades were barely passing. They put me through a battery of tests. It was determined I was in the 98^th percentile for intelligence. They also discovered my learning disability. It's in the area of language, which also covers math. They explained that the mylar sheath in most people builds up over time. Repetition increases the thickness of the sheath allowing people to retain what they've memorized. For me, the area of my brain dealing with math and other languages didn’t build up regardless of repetition. I was left confused. Was I really smart or was I stupid? They answered the question by putting me in a special ed class in 9^th grade. That’s right, the same year I had Hammer. If you knew me then and I seemed stressed out and sometimes avoided telling you what my next class was, now you know why.

The class was one size fits all, not specialized to meet the needs of each student. No class could help me since the learning disability I had was physical. There was nothing to over come, but it took me years to understand that. I learned near the end of my freshman year, that they had needed one more student, or the program would have lost funding. Those teachers would have lost their jobs and the kids that did need help wouldn’t have received it. I was furious at the time and felt betrayed. Whatever chance I had to my academic life back on track was mortally wounded then and the coup de grace was summer school. Now, with years of life experience and perspective, I think it was worth the shame and damage to my self-confidence to keep that course in place.

So you see, receiving an F and being sent to summer school when I didn’t deserve it was something I couldn’t forgive. Later in life, I discovered that 98^th percentile is the minimum level to become a member of Mensa. I took their entrance test when I was 32 and have been a member every since. Being in Mensa doesn’t make me feel smarter or better than anyone else. I will always have to struggle with English grammar and I will always make stupid mistakes with contractions, synonyms, homonyms and all the other dirty little nym bastards. It’s just the way I am.

A lot of writers take pride in their command of the English language, and they should. Many rail against those who transgress. I’m guilty of many such transgressions and I do feel bad for some of the editors that have had to struggle with my mistakes. Please understand that I do care and I do try. I go though at least 10 drafts before I send a story off, but some of the mistakes are simply invisible to me.

As for Mr. Hammer, I did have a beef with him, but finally, I’ve put those feelings to rest. I’m happy and content with who I am. It’s time I forgave Mr. Hammer and let go of my beef.

R.I.P. Mr. Hammer, we’re good.

A Shoulder to Cry About

2011-08-22T09:45:00.000-05:00

I've noticed that the most popular posts are about stories where I was in a lot of pain. This is a story of the time I tore my shoulder up and the aftermath. Enjoy.

I'd done a LOT of stupid things when I was a yute in northern Minnesota, and later while I was in the Army and Army Reserve. Many I have and will continue to document on this blog. Some of those things should have killed me, while others should have at least maimed me, yet I was never severely hurt and to this day have never broken a bone or been on deaths doorstep.

In 1989, I played a game of racquetball with a friend and coworker. He was very good and very tall with long, almost simian arms. Paul kicked my ass. I was frustrated not just with him, but with my own play, since I had played some in the Army and wasn't that bad. To be clear, Paul would still have kicked my ass, but the score should have been closer. The last game, I got reckless. He'd been burning me on the same shot and I was sick of it. I saw it coming and charged for where I knew the ball would be. I dove and reached and managed to hit the ball and make it die in the corner, ensuring I would only lose by eight points. I rolled onto my back and slid across the floor on my sweat soaked shirt, savoring the shot.

Until I hit the wall with my right shoulder. The pain was severe and it just felt wrong. I sat up and you could see the end of my collarbone through the skin. The game was over and Paul drove me to the nearest hospital, leaving the Camaro of Death in the parking lot. Paul had to get to work, so he left me in the hands of the ER staff.

It was determined to be a separation, but I was assured it was only a level 1, which was a mild strain. Level 4 was a complete tear. I was given a sling, told to take it easy and sent home. Problem was, my Camaro was 15 miles away and I didn't have any money on me and no credit cards. It was also one of those rare weekends when my friends and family were out of town. The hospital was about three miles from my house through the worst part of East Side of St. Paul, so of course, I walked.

I was wearing sweat pants and because my T-Shirt was soaked, I wore the hospital gown to cover my torso. I had my gym bag slung over my shoulder and I have to admit I was a little out of it. You see, another doctor told me a few days later, that it was actually a level 4, complete tear, so I was a little shocky. Apparently Steve Martin was right, no one messes with a crazy person, because my pale white ass made it all the way home without incident.

I was operated on a few days later and two pins were pounded through the ball of my shoulder into the collarbone to hold it in place while the rewired and repaired ligaments healed. It wasn’t that bad really, except that a week after the surgery, the two pins popped through the skin. I called the doctor in a panic, and he said it was normal. “Just keep it clean.”

Sure. I had a hole in my skin, held open by two pins, but all I had to do was work, go to school and not let any foreign bodies get in the gaping hole for four weeks. What could possibly go wrong?

I managed it for a week. Then one morning, I woke up at 3:30. Again, I had that feeling something was very wrong. Before I even moved, I just knew. I was covered in sweat and when I tried to feel my forehead, my shoulder sent a signal to brain informing me that moving it was a BAD idea and to cease and desist. It felt like someone had stretched the hole open and shoved a pound of broken glass inside the joint. Even the smallest motion was agony. I made it to the phone (no cells back then), and called the hospital where I’d had my surgery. They paged my doctor and he called back a few minutes later.

He told be me it was probably infected. He asked if there was anyone that could drive me on by so he could take a look at it. I was fevered and a bit disoriented, so I said sure thing and hung up. Once I found some clothes and figured out how to get my shirt on without screaming, I remembered that there was no one I could call. Mother, Father, close friends (I had two at the time), were all out of town. Again. Taxis were not prevalent in the Twin Cities, and it didn’t occur to me to call an ambulance. I got in the Camaro of Death and headed for the hospital. Not the one 3 miles away, but the one across town where I had found one of the best orthopedic surgeons that had saved my shoulder.

That’s not an exaggeration. If I had listened to the first doctor, I would have rested the shoulder for a few weeks and in that time, the ligaments would have atrophied. The level 4 tear I had was a total disaster. The only thing that was holding my arm on to my body, was skin. The surgeon had drilled a hole on the collarbone and re secured all the ligaments back to hold the shoulder joint back on. He claimed if I took care of it and did my physical therapy, I would get back 99% of my strength and mobility. Without him, or if I had waited even a week, I would have been hosed. As it is, my right shoulder has never given me a problem since.

That morning though, I was considering cutting it off and learning to live life as a lefty. I was grateful that morning that the Camaro was an automatic. I was aware enough of the situation to not go on the highway. Passing out at 55 miles per hour would not help my recovery. So I took city streets from St Paul, though Frog Town and Midway until I got to the clinic where my surgeon worked. Every bump was agony, and I came way to close to clipping parked cars a few times when I blacked out. I woke up in the parking lot of the clinic. I remember wondering how I had got there and if the Dr. was in yet? Should I wait? It was only around 5:30. I was thirsty, so I walked into the clinic. I got a drink from the fountain and sat down in the lobby.

This is another time I’m glad people didn’t have cell phones with cameras. I caught a glimpse of myself in the aquarium they had in the lobby. I looked like hell warmed over. I took a little nap and was awakened by my Doctor. It’s never good when they look worried. My shoulder was swelled up like a balloon. He did his best to rush me into an exam room and didn’t even try to remove my shirt he just cut it away. I saw him stick a needle into the mass. He said it was Novocain for the pain. Before I could ask what pain, he slashed me with a scalpel.

This is not an exaggeration or a fever induced vision. I saw his had raise up, saw light glint off of its edge and watched him slash down at my shoulder with the thin blade. A gout of blood and puss erupted from my flesh. At least of cup of hot fluid shot out onto the floor and ran down my arm. The pain I’d been in since I woke up two hours earlier was suddenly gone. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Thank goodness that was over. I thanked him and made to leave. He pushed me back down.

“We need to get those pins out, the infection could spread.”

I wanted to object that if the pins were pulled out, wouldn’t the infection be able to get into the bone through the holes? I just didn’t have the juice, and I was glad to be rid of those damned things, so I lay back down and waited.

“This might hurt a bit.”

I’ve mention before that doctors are masters of the understatement. If they say it will be ‘a little poke’, it’s going to hurt. If they have the balls to tell you it’s going to hurt, you better brace yourself. He grabbed a vice grip and started jerking on the pin. It was funny at first. I felt like a fish. He was twisting and jerking and finally had to call in help to hold me in place so he could get more purchase. I’m not sure why or how he got a professional wrestler to work for him, but a mountain of a man came in a held me down to the table. It was all completely surreal and ludicrous until that pin slid through two bones on its way out.

I’ve never felt that kind of pain before. Saying it hurt seems inadequate. It felt wrong. If I’d had anything in my stomach, I would have puked. As it is, I just turned even paler and went into shock. The giant let me go and my shirt was instantly soaked with sweat. I may have tinkled, just a little bit.

There are things people say that just stick with you forever. Years later, the doctor that did my vasectomy would use a similar phrase.

“One down, one to go.”

My response was similar years later, but I was a bit less polished at 23.

“FUCK YOU! Cut the end off flush and leave that cock sucker in there.”

I got up to leave and Mr. Mountain collapsed on me again, pinning me to the table like a contender in a WWF championship match. I tried everything I could to squirm out from under that man, but I was helpless as a babe. My surgeon, Dr. Hippocratic oath, came at me again with those vice grips. I’m not sure if it was the anticipation or if the second one really did hurt worse, but I whimpered as he started jerking on it. I would have confessed to the Lindbergh kidnapping, killing Hoffa or told him any or all of my personal secrets to escape the next two minutes. Think what you want of me. I’ve always thought I was pretty tough, but when that second pin broke loose, I passed out.

A few minutes later, I woke up while the giant was tugging down my pants. I had a moment of prison terror, but then I saw the doctor with the syringe. He explained that I needed antibiotics and gave me two in the ass. I had to wait make sure I didn’t have a reaction to the penicillin. Sometime while I was out, he had irrigated the wound and stitched me up. He told me to come back in a week to have him remove the stitches. RIIIIIIIIIIGHT.

I got the hell out of there and drove myself back home. I crawled back into bed and stayed there for the day, sleeping through the night and into the next day. A week later I pulled out the stitches myself.

For the last four years I’ve been dealing with pain in my other shoulder. I’ve had some of cortisone for the pain, but I’ve known the whole time it was something more than bursitis. Something that will require a scalpel. My current doctor wants me to take an MRI. Great, I can’t wait.

Frisbee Fun, an EOD adventure

2011-08-20T17:55:00.000-05:00

This is another tale from my time as an EOD tech at Ft Dix, New Jersey.

It was summer and we had to perform range clearances. There were many different kinds of ranges, each set up for firing a different kind of ordnance, from 40 Millimeter grenades that are fired from a tube under some M16's called an M203, to 155 Millimeter Howitzer shells. On that day, we had to clear the LAWS rocket practice range. Instead of shooting actual rockets, for training purposes, they shot these little blue tipped rockets to save money and reduce the amount of damage done to the range equipment. The equipment was an armored vehicle that was towed back and forth on a set of railroad tracks.

They were small, but still had a small explosive tip and need to be handled with respect. The Render Safe Procedure allowed them to be moved, so we spread out in a line and picked up the duds as we went, collecting them in a pile. After a few hours of this, we'd scoured the entire range. I won’t name names, but in the end there were two others there with me. An officer that was new to the company, and another sergeant.

I don’t recall who came up with the idea. I only remember talking to the other sergeant and thinking it was a fine idea if we stacked all of the practice rounds inside the armored vehicle, along with the entire case of C-4 we'd brought to ensure total destruction. We had some Flex-X as well to maintain explosive continuity. We strolled up to the new officer and asked him if it was okay. He didn’t even hesitate, just told us to get it done. We giggled like school boys all the way back to the armored vehicle.

Once we were done setting everything up, we pulled the two initiators and shut the back doors. We'd set the charge for fifteen minutes, plenty of time to stroll back to the burm at the front of the range and then climb up the fifty-foot ladder to the observation tower. We sat there with or new officer trying to look nonchalant.

The charge went off right on time, blowing one of the back doors open and throwing the other at least sixty feet into the air. It hung there like a bloated kite, then fell back to the ground and sliced through the two rail lines like a hot knife through butter. The sound was muted from distance and being partially contained which made it seem less real. We'd just registered the damage to the vehicle and tracks that we would have a tough time explaining, when we heard the sounds of something cutting through the air. The noise was getting closer, and we all spotted it at the same time. It was the six in thick, armored hatch from the top of the vehicle, and it was coming directly for us as if it were nothing more than a Frisbee, tossed by some child.

A 400 pound Frisbee traveling at about thirty miles an hour.

There was nothing to do but watch it come. We were fifty feet up in a range tower that sat on a berm that was thirty feel above the level ground. When it was less than three hundred yards away, it started to cant to our right. I still thought it would cut through the tower's support and we would all be going on Mr. Toad's wild ride, but it canted even further until it passed us and shot into the trees next to the entrance road. There was a crashing noise, louder than the initial explosion and two pine trees were cut clean through before the damned thing imbedded itself into the New Jersey sand.

The expression on the young officer's face can best be described as a combination of surprise, relief and the haunted look of one that knows his ass will be grass. It was time to leave, and we broke speed records for ladder climbing, berm running and sand sprinting. We hopped in our truck and flew out of there without so much as a glance back for fear we would see someone witness our escape.

The next day, calls were made, asses were chewed and a new officer had been broken in right.

Levity, a DLI Adventure

2011-08-16T07:58:00.002-05:00

In Road Trip, Parts 1 & 2, I described my drive to DLI in the spring of 1991. This is a story of my time at DLI and I think it sums up the reason why I didn’t re-enlist again, and why the Army was likely very happy I didn’t. It's easy to blame my active duty experience as an EOD tech, for my difficulty in adapting to the real Army. After all, as a good friend recently reminded me, EOD units back in those days didn’t act, feel or were treated as if we belonged in the regular army. We were not only encouraged to be unconventional; it was a necessity for survival

Yes, it would be easy to blame my military upbringing, but there was more to it than that. The fact is that while I was always good and sometimes great at whatever job I did in the Army, I had little patience for the Army. I have no idea what a day in the life of a soldier is like today, but back in the Cold War 80's and post Desert Storm 90's, it was populated with people intent on making your life unpleasant for no other reason than they were bored and had the power to do so. There was a lot of bullshit, not for the sake of readiness, but for lack of purpose. Nowhere did this occur more often, than in training schools. Basic training is designed to break people down and then build them back up the Army way. I understood that going in. I also recognized that everything the cadre did was per plan and for a specific reason. They didn't just mess with us for kicks or to abuse their authority.

Unfortunately, once you left Basic Training where the cadre was trained specifically for this task, you went to other training called AIT, or Advanced Individual Training. In these schools, soldiers with experience in that job, or Military Occupational Specialty (MOS), were in the role of instructors and sometimes company cadre. After all, you still needed a sergeant to march you to and from class and tell you what do outside of class. The unfortunate part was that these people never received training beyond instructor courses. They had been through basic training and remembered it was miserable, so they assumed their job was to make the soldiers in their care miserable as well.

Not all of them were like this, and each school was different. I've heard that now, it is common for Drill Sergeants that are properly trained to hold these positions in all AIT schools, and for better or worse, it makes sense. When I got to DLI in 1991, I'd been an E-5 sergeant for five years. My platoon sergeant was an E-7, Sergeant First Class and a complete bastard. Let's call him sergeant Douchebag. I reported properly, conducted myself professionally, yet he pegged me as a shitbag. Shitbag, by the way is an actually Army designation for one that doesn’t carry his or her weight and should not be in the service. Being prior service active duty didn’t seem to help. In fact, having left active duty to become a Reservist is the main reason he took a dislike to me.

Reservists weren't well thought of back then and I doubt it has gotten a lot better. My former status as EOD also irritated him for some reason. I'm sure I also failed to answer his questions to his satisfaction. Regardless, he told me to my face he didn’t care for me or my attitude and didn’t think I belonged in "His" Army. I realize now it was my pride that got the better of me. Instead of trying to win him over through diligence and good deeds, I copped an attitude.

It seemed that this man LOVED inspections. He went beyond clean and gigged more than one person for "vertical dust" clinging to the tile bathroom walls. So of course, step one for me was to decorate my room. There are Army regulations, then there are post regulations that can be stricter than the Army regs, and sometimes there are company or unit regulations that can take it up even another notch. I always knew the regs. In this case, post regulations allowed for civilian bedding. The beds we had were twin size so naturally I bought a matching set of Legend of Zelda sheets and comforter. This went very well with my full sized cardboard cutout of Wolverine and my boogie board. The only thing green on my part of the two person room was the carpet, and I would have got a throw rug if I'd had the money.

Sergeant Douchebag simply LOVED it, and made sure that somehow I was always one of the random rooms to be inspected. He picked around 5% of the rooms to inspect each week on a random day and yet my room was always included. Randomly. Sergeant Douchebag also handpicked other student NCO's to be squad leaders that shared his love for douchebaggery. This people were real pieces of work and they agreed that I had no place in "their" Army. They tried hard to do something about that. Unfortunately for them, besides being an asshole, I was pretty good at cleaning, physical training and other Army type activities. They tried hard, I'll give them that, but they couldn’t pin anything on me. I was the only one that could do it for them. I would have had to do something that gave them the opening they needed. So of course, I did.

The Army doesn’t specifically have a rule against sergeants dating lower enlisted unless they are in your chain of command. In a class environment, we were all just students. However, they did have a big problem with soldiers have sex in the barracks. Apparently, we were supposed to either spend all of our meager pay on hotel rooms, or we were supposed to abstain. Did I mention we were all between 18 and 25 and under a lot of pressure? The only people that abstained didn't do so by choice.

The rule was, that you couldn’t have a member of the opposite sex in the room with the door shut, or your punishment was the same as if you were caught mid coatis. Students were caught from time to time with the door shut, and the universal expletive that escaped everyone's mouth upon being discovered was the same: "We were just studying!"

I gave them the opening they so desperately wanted when I started dating a private. The plan they had for my downfall, was the tried and true "Health and Welfare" inspection. These were conducted under the auspice of protecting soldiers from themselves, but the real goal was to bust us for breaking the rules. These inspections happened about once a month, and almost always in the middle of the night.

I knew that they knew that I had a girlfriend. I knew they were coming for me. What I didn’t know was when. I'll admit that I had my girlfriend in my room with the door closed from time to time. Times when my roommate was elsewhere (I'm not an exhibitionist). Did I deserve to get busted and kicked out of school for this infraction? Possibly. A rule is a rule after all even if I find it ignorant and unfair. But like all rules, they had to catch me first.

A flaw in their system was the student Charge of Quarters. Every night a student had to serve down at the Company Head Quarters and stay awake all night in case something happened. This person staffed the phone and 99% of the time nothing ever happened. They did however overhear a lot of talk between company personnel. For instance when the next random Health and Welfare inspection was going down. I got word that it would be the very next Friday night, around 2:00 AM and that my door would be numero uno on their random search.

I was driving around the next day with a friend of mine, when I was struck with divine inspiration. The people that were attempting and partially succeeding in making my life difficult, wanted to find me with a girl in my bed. I would oblige them. I drove to a nearby sex shop and purchased my one and only blowup doll. The cheapest was $25 dollars and as luck would have it, she had blond hair.

That wasn't enough fun, so my inebriated friend (I often played sober driver since I don’t drink), suggest we fill her with helium. I'm very grateful that cell phones were still uncommon and the ones that existed lacked a camera, or we may have been the first entries in the People of Walmart website filling up an inflate-a-mate on the clown shaped helium dispenser sometime past midnight.

I didn’t want to get charged with some other violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so I borrowed a two piece swim suit from a nice lady sergeant that lived down the hall. I think the doll looked rather stylish. I tucked her in next to me, and laid awake on the verge of hysterical giggles for over an hour. Then I fell asleep.

The first thing I noticed was the pounding. It sounded close. It was followed by angry shouting and the sound of a key being inserted in my lock. Panic rocked me awake as I felt someone in bed with me. I could just make out blonde hair from the light coming in through the drapes. I was fucked, royally and truly fucked. Three people entered my room in a rush. SFC Douchebag was leading the charge, flanked by a not so douchey First Sergeant and the pretty decent Company Commander. What the FUCK? The CO never went out on these inspections. I locked eyes with SFC Douchebag and he looked past me to my bed and smiled in triumph. He rushed forward and threw back the sheets to reveal…

I never gave her a name, but just as he reached for my Legend of Zelda comforter, my groggy brain recalled how I'd spent the night. She didn't float up as fast as I would have liked, but she did head for the ceiling. I was looking at the Captain, and saw his face shift from disappointment to glee. I almost forgot my line. Almost.

"We were just studying!"

That was it for the company commander. He and the First Sergeant bolted out the door before they lost their military bearing. That left me alone with my number one fan, and my doll. I stood at attention and waited for the shock to wear off. When it didn't, I held my pose until the First Sergeant came in and took SFC Douchebag out into the hall. There was a short debate about the perversity of being in possession of such a doll and I heard the commander say "swim suit".

The First Sergeant said "Carry on," and shut my door. I'm not drawing any conclusions, but shortly after that SFC Douchebag was moved down the hill to G Company. My life got a lot better and so did the lives of most Foxtrot company students. I was there for another five months and we never had another middle of the night inspection and no one was ever written up again for vertical dust. My doll made an appearance at our class picnic as substitute volleyball, and then was passed on from student to student in a series of pranks.

I don’t know what happened to her, but she's never tried to contact me. Maybe I should have named her.

Part Two, Monterey or Bust

2011-08-12T10:19:00.001-05:00

You might want to read Part One first.

Fifty miles East of Reno, my left rear tire blew out. It didn’t just go flat without warning, it exploded, throwing rubber in all direction. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over to the shoulder. There was a slow steady stream of cars, but I wouldn’t have called the traffic heavy. I managed to get off the road enough to safely work on the car. I was grateful I had a spare, but it was a doughnut, nut a full sized replacement. It was rated for fifty miles. Perfect. By the time I had the first tire off, it was pitch black. The sky was overcast and I don’t think I had not seen so much. You read that right. Before the lights went out, I was impressed with how far I could see, but once it got so dark I couldn’t see my own hand, I welcomed the blinding headlights. Over the thrum of the cars, I could coyotes. My imagination had them converging on my car just before I climbed back inside and dragging me out into the brush. I didn’t see even one, but the howls did get closer as I worked.

Once I was road ready, I cruised the last fifty mile of my daily trip and pulled into the Motel 6. The room was an exact copy of the one in Cheyenne, down to the ugly ass comforter and bizarre art. The bed was as I’d feared and I considered curling up on the carpet which at least had a thin layer of padding. Despite the lack of comfort, I was exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before, and the day of thrills and chills. My alarm woke me at 4:00 and hit the snooze, knowing that no tire shop would be open until 9:00 or later.

There was one shop open in all of Salt Lake that had tires that would fit my rims, but they were a different brand than what I had. The salesman probably still tells stories about that day and I'm sure I paid for one of his kids orthodontics work, but I was back on the road with 300 miles left to go and five hours to do it. I didn't get off to a very fast start. Not long after I crossed into California, traffic slowed to a crawl. I had no idea what was going on, but it was hard to imagine that a traffic jam would occur this far away from a major city. As I rounded a corner and got a view of the road ahead, I saw the cause for the slow down. It looked like a border crossing. I'd just left Reno, so I knew I didn’t somehow accidently cross over into Mexico. I'd heard my dad refer to the state as the Republic of California, but what the hell were they checking? I didn’t have a passport. I did have my military orders and ID, and I hoped that would do.

When I got a few car lengths from the structure, I saw people in uniforms searching vehicles. What the hell were they looking for? Illegal aliens? Drugs? Guns? Then I remembered the guns I had in my trunk. Two pistols to be exact, a .454 caliber Casual revolver, and a Swith & Wesson model 645. I also had some knives and other equipment, all of which I was allowed to have in the Army, assuming I signed the weapons in with the armorer.

Finally it was my turn and the man with the gun asked me to exit my vehicle. He then asked me the last question I was expecting.

"Do you have any fruits or vegetables?"

I thought for a second, but I was sure I only had junk food. I assured him I didn’t, but he must have seen my perplexed look and instructed me to open my truck. He looked through some bags, pushed some stuff around and at one point lifted the bag I had the guns in. They made what I thought was a very distinct gunny sound, but he set them back down without comment. Then he uttered a phrase that seemed so out of place and understated that it has stuck with me since.

"Move along."

I was more confused than ever, but I complied and was soon back up to a the speed required for me to meet my deadline, slowing down only when my trusty, and I found out later illegal in California, radar detector chirped. I went through the garlic capital of the worked and then the artichoke capital of the world and finally, I saw Monterey Bay. I’d been there before and the view was bitter sweet. I took the exit and within minutes was at Foxtrot company, Russian Village on the backside of the Presidio where just a few short year before there had been only grass and trees. With ten minutes to spare, I presented my orders. The sergeant eyeballed me and said:

"You're a little early. The next class doesn't start until a week from tomorrow. You could've showed up next Sunday, but since you're here, I'll get you a room in the temporally barracks until you get assigned to a platoon."

Classic Army, hurry up and wait.

Road Trip Part 1, Monterey or Bust

2011-08-09T15:02:00.001-05:00

In 1984, I went on Active duty in the Army on a 4/2 contract, which is Four years active duty, two reserve. I had signed up on what's called delayed entry, so even though I went to basic in June, my contract expired in April 1990. I had gone back home to Minnesota and served my almost two years of reserve time in an Intelligence unit holding an analyst slot. I had no intention of re-enlisting. I was happy to be out and even let my hair grow long. As far as I know, there isn't any photographic evidence of my brief mullet experiment in the summer of 1990.

Desert Shield began later that summer and despite my adoration for my growing curly locks, I felt the call. We anticipated going into Iraq and were convinced it would be a quagmire. It became clear very quickly in the fall of 1990 that we were going to war. I wanted to rejoin my EOD unit when they got deployed, but I didn’t want to join back as an active duty soldier. I was told it was possible, but that I had to get in the system. In September, 1990, less than a year after receiving my freedom, I signed an 8 year Army Reserve contract and joined the 19^th Psychological Operations (PSYOP) Company under the 13^th PSYOP Battalion.

I needed a job, so I was put in an Interrogation slot and started attending drill. I waited for my orders to be deployed as an EOD tech, but they never came and I couldn’t be deployed with the 19^th because I had no Military Occupational Specially (MOS) in the Reserve. In February, 1991, the war ended and I had 7.5 years of reserve contract left to serve.

A few months later, orders came to send me to the Presidio of Monterey California for Russian language school. It was a one year course and I'd been given two weeks warning to report No Later Than (NLT), Close of Business (COB) Sunday, April 14^th. On Friday morning, April 12^th I hopped into my 1970 Chevy Camaro with big 60's on the back and started my 2,200 mile journey. The red Camaro had acquired the nickname Camaro of Death, which is another story. Let's just say for now that it had some attitude and had served me well.

My first day was any easy 875 mile trek to Cheyenne, Wyoming. I'd book a room at the Motel 6, where they may leave the light on for ya, but they also bought mattresses built entirely from solid rock. After a less than restful night, I got back in my car with the goal of making Reno, Nevada by nightfall. I had been to most of these states before, though Nevada and Wyoming were new, but I'd been to California and many other states. I’d gotten to all most of those paces by plane. I'd even driven in the opposite direction between Minnesota and the East coast four times. So what was the big deal about driving to Cali?

In April.

In a Camaro.

With big ass tires in the back made for street racing.

I found out about two hours into my journey on Saturday morning. You see my friends, there are these little bumps in the road that start in Wyoming and end over in Salt Lake City, Utah called the ROCKY FUCKING MOUNTAINS! There was a winter storm advisory and the local radio station announced the highway was going to be closed. I thought about it and decided that a little snow didn't scare me. I got to the place where the road starts to get really steep and there were no police blocking it, so I rolled on. A few hours later, I was on top of the world, or at least North America and I was starting to wonder the big hairy deal was. There was some snow, sure, but for a man raised in northern Minnesota? Please.

There was a gas station up there and I pulled in to use the bathroom and fill up. A man came out after I'd honked a few times because it said there was no self service. He looked at me like I was an alien. True, I hadn’t seen any other cars coming or going that day on I-80, but I didn't think I was doing anything odd. He walked all the way around my car until he got to the license plate.

"Uh huh," was all he said and he filled up my tank. He waved me off and he looked very sad, as if I had just told him I was dying of terminal cancer. Creepy. But, I was on the road again and looking forward to seeing the Great Salt Lake that I'd read about in McCammon's Swan Song. Ten minutes later, I started seeing tractor trailers pulled off to the side of the road, followed by a couple of SUV's. I noticed that I could no longer see the actual road, just a flat section of snow and ice that extended from one rock wall to the other.

It was about that time I got hit by the first crosswind. I have no idea how many miles per hour it was blowing, but it slammed the Camaro of Death thirty feet sideways and I could have touched the rock wall to my right if the window had been down. I could see the storm form behind me. It grew in strength until it threatened to overtake my car. I got slapped both ways and almost spun completely around, but refused to slow down below 40 for fear of being buried alive and not found for days. My ass cheeks were clamped so tight, I could have converted anthracite into diamonds. I had a death grip on the steering wheel and briefly wondered if it could be bent.

Finally, I hit a stretch of road without any gusts and I while it still looked like an ice age was hot on my ass, I could see the sun break through ahead of me. I was out of the worst of it, I was safe. Then the road started slanting down. By down I don’t mean a gentle grade, but to me it appeared to be a flume ride at Six Flags, except this one was frozen solid. Oh, and here's the really cool part for those of you that have never driven on this section of I-80, it's curvy. It's a road cut into the side of a mountain, so it keeps switching back. I didn't touch the breaks for fear I would lose the illusion of friction that somehow kept me from shooting off the road and out into the air. My hands and jaws and yes, even my ass cheeks, went from uncomfortable to painful to numb and I have to admit I don’t remember the last fifteen minutes.

One instant I was anticipating how death would feel, and the next I was riding through a residential area on the outskirts of Salt Lake City. I was suddenly overcome with the urgent need to empty my bowels and bladder and pulled into the first convenience store I saw. I was still wearing my gloves and winter jacket. Hell, the inside of my car was still around 50 degrees. When I step out of my Camaro, I judged the temperature to in Salt Lake be around 75. People were looking from me to my car and then up to the mountain and back to me again. I walked around the front of my chariot just in time to see a solid block of ice at least three inches thick that covered the entire bumper and grill, fall off in one piece onto the parking lot.

Later, with a completely empty digestive track and a liter of ice cold Mountain Dew, I stood beside the Great Salt Lake. It was salty. It was great. After five minutes, I got back in my car and continued on toward Reno where another rock solid Motel 6 bed was waiting to cause me pain.

Tune in this Friday, for the exiting conclusion in Part 2.

You had to see it

2011-08-06T21:21:00.002-05:00

I'm a writer. Even before I focused on my craft and gave it the time and energy it deserved, I was a story teller. When I was a child, I was a liar. I told lies to escape punishment like many kids do, but I also told lies to get attention. They were stories that I made up and not meant to cause trouble. I realize all kids do this to some extent, but I probably did it just a bit too long before I realized it was wrong.

I tell you this as a preamble, because as I relate things that have happened in my life, there are times when I am obviously exaggerating for comedic effect. In one post I described my balls as being made of brass and being as big as church bells. In another, I claimed I sprinted faster than a car in a quarter mile. I know most readers will either like or dislike these exaggerations, but few will believe I'm claiming them to be true. I'm spending two paragraphs to make this point, because when I tell you this next story about my dad, people will undoubtedly believe I am exaggerating or stretching the truth for effect. I'm not.

These blog posts are to help me with my writing while hopefully entertaining my friends and fan (I know I have one somewhere). But they are also to help keep my memories alive. Some are funny, some are tragic. Most of the stories dealing with my father I will tell so that I don’t forget. Like all father son relationship, ours was complicated, but never doubt that I loved him.

I'm going to tell you two examples of his shooting ability. He loved to hunt. His life revolved around hunting season. He loved to hunt anything and everything, but his main passion was deer hunting. Over the years I saw him demonstrate his skill as a hunter and shooter. You need to have both to consistently take down the game you want, but there are times when even he seemed to exceed his own legendary abilities.

The first occurred when I was too young to hunt. It was the mid 70's and we were all still a family and dad decided to take my sister (who was hunting age) and I along for a road hunt. It was the last day of the season, and he hadn’t seen jack shit on our property. The snow came early that year and it was already deep. On that day, we drove out in the morning and saw nothing. We went back out that afternoon. We were ordered to scan the fields for any movement. I don’t think he'd ever been skunked before, and he wasn't about to go a season without putting some meat in the freezer.

We'd been driving around since lunch, and it while there were still a couple hours before sunset, a bad storm had moved in and the snow was coming down in huge flakes. I was in the front seat scanning the right side, but visibility was down to less than a hundred yards. I prayed for a deer and just when I gave up, I saw the flash of horns out of the corner of my left eye. I was so surprised I couldn’t speak. Dad saw the movement and turned just as the buck bounded across the country road less than fifty feet in front of the car and leapt into the field to our left.

We were going about 35 miles an hour. Dad slammed on the brakes and the station wagon went into a sideways slide. With one hand, he pulled out his still loaded rifle and with the other, he shoved open his door. He held it open with his left foot and used the door frame for a rest. I'd already lost sight of the deer, but he must have still had sight picture with his 3x9 scope, because he squeezed the trigger once and smiled. It was a rare site, and I cherished it.

The car came to a stop and he told us to stay put. We strained to see him, but he disappeared into the storm. Fifteen minutes later, he came back, dragging the field dressed buck through the hip deep snow.

A year later, my parents got divorced and two years after that, my dad moved to Thief River to be the manager of a compressor station for Great Lakes Gas. He purchased 80 acres of land 50 miles north of Thief River near a preserve. He was right between state land and farmers fields. The deer were corn fed and plentiful. It was a freakishly warm November and there was no snow. I left my stand around noon to grab some lunch and met my dad and his girlfriend by the cars. The entrance road to the land ran along a ditch bank and the next to the farmer's field that usually had corn. Behind us was all forest, but in front of us were fields for miles.

After lunch, we headed back toward our stands. When we got past the trees that ran like a wind break along the ditch bank, my dad grabbed my arm so hard I almost screamed. I stopped and followed his gaze. There was something out there, but even with my glasses, I couldn’t tell for sure what it was. My dad had 20/10 and he whispered that it was a buck. He crouched down and moved up about twenty yards to a small mound of dirt and told me to lie down. I did what I was told, but I still had no idea what he was thinking. I lay down on my back and he looked at me like I was high.

"Roll the fuck over."

I did and he lay down and used me as a shooting rest. After a few minutes, he whispered, "Four point."

For those of you not raised by my father, you would likely call it an eight-point buck. But he only called one side for reasons that were never fully explained. I tried to turn my head to get a look, but he growled at me not to move. After a couple of minutes of adjusting, he told me to take a breath and not to move. His actual words were, "Don’t you some much as fucking twitch until I after I take my shot." I took a breath and held it. I have no idea how much time passed, but I was starting to see spots when his 300 Weatherby Magnum boomed. He got up and I followed, sure he'd missed. But he was smiling.

"Let's go get him."

We got in his station wagon and he set the trip meter to zero. We rolled down the ditch bank toward the main road that was a mile away. When we the trip meter said ¾ of a mile, we stopped. I walked behind him into the field. We'd passed the deer by about a hundred yard and we walked back to it. The bullet had taken the buck in the spine, breaking its back and killing it instantly. We were one hundred yard shy of three quarters of a mile. I realize that a car odometer is not an accurate judge of distance, but even if it was a ways off, he shot at least 1,000 yards and likely closer to 1,100. I'd seen the ballistics, and I know that the round would do it. The rifle was stock and even though it is a beautiful limited edition Colt/Sauer bolt actions rifle, it had not been modified and was not what snipers call a "One Minute of Angle" weapon, which guarantees a high rate of accuracy.

I've seen him accurately shoot a lever action from the hip like the character on the TV show The Rifleman, snap a rifle to his shoulder and take a deer mid jumped while on a drive and I'd witnessed him make many long shots from a rest. Standing still, jumping away or at a full run at 500 yards, there wasn't a deer he couldn't take with a rifle. Come to think of it, he was a fair hand with a shotgun (best in Bemidji at Trap and Skeet two years in a row), and was spooky good with a pistol too. I'm a fair shot. I'm sure I inherited some of his natural skill, but I'm thousands of rounds behind him. He took his skills and sharpened them all the years of his life.

He passed away in 2008. I haven't been able to hunt since. It just doesn’t feel right to do it without him. It was the one thing we did together as father and son.

A Sign of Pain to Come

2011-08-03T10:07:00.001-05:00

Since you all seem to take enormous pleasure from my tales of testicular terror(for those of you that don't know what I'm talking about, see my post entitled "Anesthesia is for Pussies"), I've decided to relate an encounter I had as a teenager in my hometown of Bemidji, Minnesota.

I graduated in 1984, much to the surprise of many. For those of you too young to remember, the late seventies and early eighties were the boom of video games. The first was Space Invaders, but the speed at which new games were introduced into local arcades and bowling alleys was astounding. Before I graduated, they even came out with the first home gaming system called Atari. Those were wonderful and magical times, at least for people that had money. Don’t get me wrong, I made and spent more that I should have on games, but they didn’t overshadow a kid's life like they do now. We had no Internet and the Atari was a bit lame.

We still had to entertain ourselves the old fashion way. The way teenagers have been entertaining themselves for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We got into trouble. The ways and types of trouble were limited only by our own imaginations, and we had a lot of imagination. I will refrain from complete descriptions of our high jinks since I'm not familiar with the statute of limitations on all of our activities. I will instead focus only on the return trip from one of our nightly excursions.

It was summer and we were young and restless. We were also tired after a night that involved some running a lot of hiding and even more walking. Despite our tired feet and sated appetite for trouble, we were obliged to complete a ritual we had followed for years any time we passed through a particular section of houses on the way back to the trailer court we lived in. You see my friends; there was a house in that neighborhood that was not like the others. One of those houses wasn't quite the same. It was in fact mostly underground. The roof line was waste high and there were no visible windows. There was a lot of experimental housing back in the seventies, either for environmental purposes or just to be different. Near the house that I lived in before the divorce and our relocation to the trailer court, we lived near a house on stilts.

But it wasn't just the hobbit hole of a house that drew our interest; it was the people that lived inside. They seemed strange to us. We never saw them come or go, yet the place was clearly inhabited. In retrospect, it's obvious we were scared of the place and its inhabitants, but we wouldn't have admitted it to each other at the time. So we did what all kids do when they are afraid of or don’t understand something. We messed with it. We did this by grabbing a piece of fire wood off the pile behind the house and chucking it on top of the roof. Then we would haul ass, laughing like the idiots we were.

On the night in question, something was different. Instead of the usually door slamming and swearing, this night the deafening report of a 12 gauge shotgun trapped the giggles in our throats as the buckshot shredded the pine needles above our heads. To say that we broke into a run in the exact opposite direction of the man with the shotgun doesn’t quite do our flight for survival justice. I had honed my flight or fight response for years by stupidly teasing bullies, and I went from zero to a full balls out sprint in .05 seconds.

We all knew every square foot of the surrounding five miles of land and like a flock of birds, pivoted in silent communication and headed for the clearing that was across the road from our homes and safety. We had chosen speed over stealth and it was the right choice. Three abreast, we broke land speed records together as we escaped the tangle of pines and increased our pace across the open ground. The lights from the trailer court were in site and we knew that once we cleared the wood fence and were out of a line of sight, we would be safe.

The clearing had changed over the years. The most recent addition was a large pole barn on the south side. Large trucks often pulled in churning the sod into a makeshift driveway roundabout. There were no trucks there that night, but a new addition had been made. The people that owned the warehouse were concerned that people may get curious and want a look inside. In response to their concern, they had decided to erect a no trespassing sign. It went up the very next day. Unfortunately, they had been working on it early that day. They got as far as cementing in the bottom section of the sign post. Like many city signs, they would then bolt the upper post that had the sign affixed to the lower section that was cemented into place. The lower sign post was just three inches higher than my inseam, and I assure you the cement had plenty of time to harden.

I hit that raised post in full sprint and running the fastest I'd ever run before or since. I was actually gaining speed and leaving my friends behind as I hit it full force with my nuts.

Let me assure you that the post was just fine. It did not suffer from the impact. I however went from eye watering speed to zero in .00001 seconds. All the air left my body and I collapsed forward onto the pole, where I rotated like a wounded merry go round. My "friends" took half a block to notice and to slow down. They came back, fear quickly being replace by amusement. If you read the other post about my vasectomy, you will understand that I don’t say lightly that I would rather get the vasectomy reversed than relive running ball first into that pole. I had been kicked in the jewels a few times and had other testicular mishaps involving bikes or fence posts over the years, but nothing before or since can really compare to the pain I felt that night. And while there was pain, it was not focused. It included everything from my thighs up to my belly button.

The man with the odd house and twelve-gauge hadn’t followed us and my friends carried me back, trying hard not to laugh. They failed. As teenagers do when they fear discovery or danger, they split after setting me near my front door. No one was home, so I didn’t need to sneak inside. I went to my room and whimpered, waiting for the pain to pass. With nothing else to occupy my mind, I imagined the amount of damage I’d caused to myself. I’d never experienced this amount off pain before and yet there was a numbness that convinced me I had at the very least ruptured a testicle and at worst severed by penis.

It took me over an hour to get up the courage to look. The lack of blood was reassuring and after further examination, I was still intact. Over the next few days, there was swelling and a lot of pain, but I was whole.

We never spoke about the incident again, but my friends and I had come to a silent agreement that our nightly adventures had ended.

VIP Cookies, an EOD Adventure

2011-08-02T10:19:00.005-05:00

Not all of my time as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician was spent blowing stuff up. We also had a mission to support the Secret Service with bomb search and if necessary response services. We did this for the UN when it was in session and for the President or Vice President whenever they were traveling in our area. During the Presidential campaigns, we also supported all of the candidates and spent weeks on the road starting with the primaries all the way through to the election.

We were given $400 dollars to purchase suites. Even in 1986, you couldn't get much for $400, but we were expected to have at least two suites a nice pair of shoes and as many shirts and ties as were needed. If you ever attended one of these functions, it was easy to distinguish between the Secret Service and us. Our suites were cheap and our hair was a lot shorter. We also didn’t have a giant stick up our ass.

I'm not sure why most of the Secret Service agents were such pricks to us. Maybe it was the fact that we got to move around, while they mostly had to stand in front of doors for hours at a time. Or maybe they just felt superior. Who knows, but after a few weeks, I gave up trying to be nice and get along. Especially after the fourth time they made sure to order enough food for all of their agents, but conveniently forgot us. It was common to go without a meal break for eight hours during the Primaries in 1987-88. We were always short staffed and had to drive from function to function without a break. There were also periods of time we didn’t get paged for three days and kicked back at a hotel, but we made up for it running solid for the next forty eight hours.

Since we didn’t have time to stop and eat and weren't given a plate at 99% of all the functions we supported, we scrounged any chance we could. As luck would have it, the VIPs were usually brought into the events via the kitchen. We were responsible for searching the VIPs route in and out and if he/she stayed at the hotel, their room as well. We found it very convenient that there were large rolls of saran wrap in the walk-in coolers. I would search the entire cooler, then scarf down a half a pound of cold cuts. Once I was no longer dizzy with hunger, I would wrap up another half pound for whoever I was teamed up with.

Sometimes, there is no event. Sometimes, the VIP is just staying at a hotel and they roll in through the front door. In those cases, we primarily search the room and the rooms on either side, above and below. It was during one of these times that we were supporting Vice President Bush. I know there are a lot of people that don’t care for the Bush family, especially George Junior, but let me tell you a couple of reason why I liked the Bush Senior.

First of all, he served in WWII as a dive bomb pilot. Regular pilots were crazy enough, but dive bombers did just what it sounds like. They were launch off a carrier, flew toward the enemy's battle ships and carriers, gained a bunch of altitude, and dove at the big ships. At the last minute, they would pull up, often pulling enough G forces to black out, and then they would fly back and reload a new bomb and do it all over again. Bush senior was shot during one of those missions. After the war, he entered government service and spent the rest of his working life in service to his country.

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq10-1.htm

That's was enough for me to warm up to him, but in the two times I was within ten feet of him, he noticed and took the time to talk to me. The first time, he was at some hotel giving a speech, and he'd been around long enough to know I was EOD. I was 19, but looked about 17. He shook my hand, thanked me for my service and made small talk. I was impressed and happy, but didn’t think much of it. Three months later, I saw him before his speech at the dedication of Ellis Island. They were finally cleaning the place up and we'd spent a full day crawling through a buildings coated in a hundred years of pigeon poop. We cleaned up for the big show, and he shook my hand and said, "Minnesota right?" He'd remembered where I was from. That impressed me. We chatted for about five minutes and then it was time for his speech. Say what you want about the man, he had class.

And now back to the story currently in progress.

I wasn't starving, but I was a bit peckish. We usually had a lot of time to search, but we were called in last minute and the Vice President was ten minutes away. It was then that my sergeant taught me how to search a room expediently. You see the reason we were there was to make sure no one blew up whichever VIP we were protecting. Back in the 80's, they didn’t have a bunch of micro circuit boards and tiny power supplies. Hiding a bomb that could be remotely controlled was hard to do and left signs. Or, it was wired into existing power supplies. So, while my sergeant hit the bathroom and turned on and off all of the switches and gizmos, I jumped up and down on the bed and chairs. Yeah, you guessed it. If there was something there, it would go off one us instead of the Vice President. But hey, we got an extra $150 a month hazardous duty pay!

It was while I was bouncing on the bed, that I noticed the plate of cookies on the bedside table. It was a big plate and they were big cookies.

Chocolate chip.

Six of them.

I knew I didn’t have much time. My sergeant would never approve, but it occurred to me that six just didn't look right on the plate. Five, if arranged properly would not only look better, but seriously, how many big ass cookies did one Vice President need?

It was so big it wouldn't fit in my jacket pocket so I had to break it into four pieces. I rearranged the cookies that were left and brushed the crumb evidence off my hands and suit. We were in and out of that room in less than five minutes. A Secret Service agent, with requisite stick in his ass, was waiting to guard the room. I smiled and waved at him and we walked away. My sergeant suggested we go up to the roof, so I followed. We were in Boston, and it was a warm spring day and the view was magnificent. I was feeling pretty good, until my sergeant said, "Okay, hand over the cookie."

Apparently he'd done the math and noticed six had become five. I figured my ass was grass. I pulled out the four pieces and he studied them and then me. Then he took two of the pieces and quickly gobbled them down. "This never happened," he said and walked back to the elevator.

It was a damned good cookie. Too bad there hadn't been any milk.

Pocket Change, an EOD Adventure

2011-08-01T10:28:00.002-05:00

Getting old and reminiscing about our youth is a common theme in popular culture, whether it's a song or a movie. I have no desire to go back and relieve those days, but they are worth remembering. I was fortunate to have some experiences that were powerful enough that I was able to lock in the time and place clearly in my mind. To remember how it felt to be in that younger body, and to clearly remember the smells and sounds and feelings. Some of the most vivid memories I have, are from the four years stretch of active duty that I served in the US Army. Friendships seemed to develop faster and events seemed to be more important.

I've never served in combat, and it is simultaneously the source of my greatest relief and greatest regret. I was a Cold War soldier. The Soviet Union was the enemy and it seemed very likely that during my tour from 1984-88, we would meet them on the battlefield, likely in Europe. During that time, there were still many Vietnam Era vets on active duty, and many young soldiers like me, were in awe of their stories. People did not support the troops and soldiers were looked down on.

I had a bumpy ride getting to my permanent duty station and even when I found my home, it was not smooth sailing. But those are stories for a different day. This story is about a time when I had brass balls the size of church bells and felt that if I wasn't exactly immortal, I was certainly invincible.

I was 19, and stationed at the 60^th EOD, Ft Dix New Jersey. EOD stands for Explosive Ordnance Disposal. Our job was to render safe unexploded ordnance, and we were damned good at it. On that sweltering summer day, I still had marks to show where the two prongs of the badge, affectionately known as a "Crab", were shoved into my chest by my loving and supportive unit members. Thank god that an EOD detachment consisted of no more than fourteen people.

On the day in question, we were out at the grenade range. Ft. Dix was a training post, and many basic trainees went through there over the years. One of the required parts of training was throwing a live grenade. Thousands of trainees went through every year, and with all of those thousands of grenades, some were bound to fail to function as designed. Every post is different, and at Ft Dix, we dealt with a wide variety of ordnance and even had our share of IED's(Improvised Explosive Devices). But what we had the most of, was grenades. The lot were dealing with that summer had a larger than normal percentage of springs that were broken. For those of you that don’t know, the "spoon" on a grenade holds back a striker with a spring. When the pin is removed and the spoon is released, the spring slams the striker into a fuse that in turn burns for a few seconds before detonating and setting off the explosive. The batch we were dealing with had a lot of broken springs, so the striker never flipped over and the fuse wasn't initiated. The render safe procedure for a grenade was the blow it in place. We did this with a block of C-4. We always put two blasting caps in it to make sure it went off, redundancy in all things.

A tech's biggest enemy in those days was complacency. I'm sure it is still a danger for the EOD techs today, but they also face a greater threat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bad guys figured out that these guys were rendering safe all of their nasty roadside bombs, so the started specifically targeting EOD. The school is about 8 months long and it takes years of real world experience to get really good at the job. I barely scratched the surface in my short stint and don’t claim to have achieved the expertise of a ten or twenty year vet. By targeting the techs, they slow down the process, spread the rest of the guys thin and in turn killed more people with their IED's.

We didn’t have to deal with any of that. Hell, back then we didn’t even have bomb suits. They were introduced just as I was getting out and I never wore one on an incident. Our uniform, especially in the summer, was boots, pants and a t-shirt. A hat could fall at an inopportune time and the uniform blouse could get in the way. The only thing we had on us beside the stripped down uniform was our Hero Kit. It was a leather tool belt that held a dive knife, a demo pocket knife, a blasting cap crimper, a Leatherman tool and a roll of electrical tape hanging by a short chain.

When we had so many dud grenades, thanks to faulty springs, it made sense to go out first thing in the morning with a bunch of supplies and camp out at the range instead of driving back and forth each time. We did that for a couple of weeks and I will admit that I had become complacent. On this particular day, I remember sitting in the air condition van and arguing over whose turn it was to walk down range it the blazing sun. We all liked to blow stuff up, but it was like Africa hot that summer. There was no sense in arguing either, since I was low man, but it was matter of pride to be able to come up with the best excuse for why I shouldn’t go next. It also helped pass the one hour wait time. When a grenade fails to function as designed, there was a mandatory one hour wait time. It used to be 15 minutes, then 30, then 45 and but at that time it was an hour. The time would be increased each time there was a grenade somewhere that decided to wait until longer the current limit to go off. I sometimes wondered while walking down range if I would be the reason the new wait time was 75 minutes.

I stepped out of the van after 55 minutes, went to the back of the van and prepared my C-4 charge. Then, with 200 basic trainees and a cadre of mostly Vietnam era veterans watching, I walked around the large brick wall and onto the range to find the grenade. Did I saw walked? It was more of a strut. No quite a full out pimp walk, but it those big brass balls made it hard to walk like a normal person.

I knew that it was another broken spring. I knew it to the point where I didn’t even question it. I strolled down range, my gigantic balls clanking in the rhythm of my pace, sure of my invulnerability. The Drill Sergeant had said that the female trainee had "really chucked it", so I headed for the middle of the hard packed dirt range that was pitted with holes from all of the blasts. It resembled a prairie dog habitat. When the holes got too deep, they were supposed to close down and grade it, but that slowed down training, so they always pushed it as far as they could.

During a rainstorm a few weeks before, I'd had to reach down into several holes, some up to my shoulder before I found the grenade. Even with gigantic brass balls and a strong believe in my invulnerability, I questioned my intelligence after the 3^rd hole. But there was no rain in sight as I made my search on that day. The heat index was on the ratty edge of being unsafe for outside training and after fifteen minutes of checking holes, I was getting frustrated and thirsty. I looked up at the blast resistant glass for some help, but the Drill Sergeant only shrugged. I headed for the wall, resigned to perform a foot by foot grid search of the entire range. When I was ten feet from the wall, I saw a bulge in the sand at its base the size of a ball, or in this case, a grenade. The private that had "really chucked it", had done so straight down into the ground. I figured that the range sergeants were going to be pissed that I blew a hole in their brick wall, but rules were rules and I set my charge down to blow it in place.

As I bent over to place the charge a strong wind came through and uncovered the grenade. I expected to see another broken spring, but instead, I saw a very healthy spring straining against the sand, attempting to complete its mission. More wind blew and the spring twitched in anticipation.

There are many times in stories where the author will describe a segment of time slowing down for the intrepid hero. I have to tell you that while there is an illusion of time slowing; the reality is that the adrenaline that hits your system speeds up your brain function into overdrive. In less than a second, I disregarded the idea of running, or throwing the grenade. I remembered the change I had in my pocket. At EOD School, a crusty old sergeant had told me to always carry two dimes and a quarter. The two dimes were for a bomb fuse I never saw outside of training, but the quarter was for this very moment. For many years after I got out, even after my brass balls shrunk to almost normal size and I no longer believed in my invulnerability, I carried two dimes and a quarter with me everywhere I went.

I pulled the quarter out of my pocket and slid it between the striker and the fuse just as the spring overcame the sand. There was a loud click as it snapped shut, holding the quarter in place. Now in auto pilot mode, I used a strip of electric tape to secure the quarter, and since I had already picked it up, moved out fifty feet before I set it and the C-4 charge down. I pulled both igniters and walked slowly back to the van.

I was greeted with a scowl from my sergeant. "What took you so long?"

I told him and he shrugged. We went back to waiting for the next dud as more trainees threw grenades and the sun sagged down toward the horizon. It was just another day on the job, and even at the time I didn't find it very remarkable. It was my most interesting grenade, but at the time, that was like your most memorable glass of water. Compared to the other beverages, it was still pretty bland.

Anesthesia is for Pussies

2011-07-30T18:00:00.004-05:00

My first mistake was going to my vasectomy alone. I'd scheduled it on a Friday when my family was out of town, and because I drove myself, I couldn’t have general anesthesia.

The vasectomy wasn't a mistake. We'd wanted two children and we were blessed with two beautiful girls. We were done. Any other form of birth control was either a pain to deal with or had serious health risks for my wife. So I didn’t give a lot of thought to the procedure, at least until I got to the clinic.

After all, my father had one. If he was to be believed, he had it done within minutes of laying eyes on me.

I was escorted into a room that had as it's centerpiece, a large stainless steel table that looked a lot like the tables they used to perform autopsies. A thin blanket was spread out on top of the table and there was a disposable paper sheet often seen in regular exam rooms. There was also a pillow, which I thought was very considerate. I was told to change into a standard ass hanging out the back hospital gown.

My general practitioner came in and once again assured me that this was a simple procedure and he had performed it several times. Then as he laid out his instrument of torture, he asked me if I wanted a mirror so that I could watch. The idea was intriguing, but I passed, and it was the only intelligent decision I made.

"You'll feel a small poke," he said, and I tried not to imagine scenes from prison movies. I felt the needle as it entered my scrotum and it didn't hurt that much, first on the left and then on the right. He waited a respectful time and the asked if I could feel anything. I couldn’t, and he made two small incisions with a scalpel.

"Ok, now I'm going to deaden the tubes and surrounding area. This might hurt."

Most of you know, that doctors are full of shit. They do things that hurt and so are masters of understatements. If it's 'just a little prick', it's going to hurt. If he tells you it might hurt a little, it's time to grab the fucking table and bite your tongue so you don't scream or whimper like a little girl and shame your ancestors. I may have gurgled a little, because he assured me he was almost down when in fact he was only half done.

He gave the Novocain time to work and I was relieved. It was basically over. The Novocain had deadened my sac and I didn't even feel the blade that cut me, so I was over the worst right?

Wrong.

For some reason, it didn’t take. I found that out when he secured a clamp onto my left vas deferens, which is the fancy name for the tube that carries a man's sperm from his testicles up to his Seminal vesicle as seen in the image below.

*Important note, my junk is bigger, especially the nuts.

My doctor noticed what he described as my 'discomfort'. Or perhaps he heard me when I said through gritted teeth, "MotherFUCKER!". Regardless, he noticed something was amiss and applied more anesthesia. It was no more effective than the earlier shots. He then asked if I wanted to quit and reschedule for a day when I could get general anesthesia.

I thought about it, and it sounded appealing. But I knew myself, and I knew that if I escaped his table, I would never come back. I heard my self tell him to go ahead. I was impressed with myself until I felt him cut the tube. It's a tough little tube and took about two very long seconds to get all the way through it. I felt the pain in my toes and in my scalp. My hands ached from gripping the table and I wished for one of those raw hide bites prisoners used to put in their mouths when they got whipped.

"I'm going to cauterize the ends so they can't grow back."

Here's an interesting fact. They use an electric device similar to a mini arc welder to cauterize human flesh. Simultaneously, I got to feel the burn as well as the electric jolt while smelling my own flesh burn. It was…a unique experience. I could feel myself getting a little shocky, but I kept breathing and trying to send my consciousness elsewhere. I got by telling myself it was almost over. I had done it, and it wasn't really that bad, right? Then my doctor said something that shook my confidence just a smidge.

"Ok, we're halfway there."

Repeat the same as above but this time I knew what was coming and what it would feel and smell like. Ten minutes later, he was giving me my instructions to take it easy. He'd apparently had men not take him seriously in the past, so he showed me a picture of a testicle swollen to five times it's size with blood because some macho man had decided he could play contact sports the day after his surgery. He clearly didn’t know me.

I'd already cleared my weekend, and had nothing more rigorous planned than walking to the bathroom. In retrospect, that journey was a bit long. I should have brought a mini fridge and a blanket into a bathroom and nested.

Confession time. In the months and years that followed, I told a few men that my procedure was no big deal. I did it solo and drove myself home. Anesthesia is for pussies.

What can I say? I'm a bad man.

TGIF WTF? An EOD Adventure

2011-07-26T09:57:00.003-05:00

It's that time again. What time you say? It's time for me to reveal a story from my past that will cause you to laugh or at least smile at my expense.

It was the mid 80's, and I had just returned to Ft Dix, NJ from Explosive Ordnance Disposal School. I'd been able to get back to NJ to see my girlfriend (we'll call her Gigi), about once a month. It had been closer to six weeks since I'd seen her and I was very eager. What made my return even more special was the fact that it was my birthday. My 18th birthday had been spent doing 1,800 pushups at Basic training in Ft Leonard Wood, MO and my 19 hadn't been much better, spent alone, friendless and more importantly, girlfriendless. But number 20 had real potential. I had a girlfriend, and I was going to get me some. Heck, it was my birthday, so maybe I would get something…special.

I caught a ride with a friend back to Ft Dix. I got to my barracks, dumped my gear, showered and got ready for my birthday date. Gigi was going to pick me up and take me to TGI Friday's, her treat. Now that may not seem like a big deal for some of you, but you have to remember that it was the 80's, and I was making about $12,000 a year as a Specialist in the US Army. Also, eating out at restaurants was a fairly new experience for me, and any place that didn’t have a drive through was classy in my book.

Gigi was on time for once and greeted me with a deep kiss. I wanted to throw her over my shoulder and carry her back into the barracks, but that type of activity was frowned upon, and besides, I was hungry. We got to the Friday's and she gave me balloons and a present. It was a good sized box, but light and I had it pegged as a shirt. I was right. It was a shirt. A shirt composed of the most interested combination of colors, but it did have sleeves and a collar so it had to be a shirt. I thought it was the ugliest damned thing I had ever seen, but I smiled and thanked her for the gift and tried to figure out a convincing story for how it would get ruined while we looked at the menus. Still, like a jingle that you just can’t stop thinking about, I kept repeating in my mind a happy tune. I’m going to get some nookie, I'm going to get some nookie*.

*The actually word has been replaced with "nookie" to keep this story PG-13.

As I said, I was not rich and neither was Gigi, so when the waiter came I ordered a hamburger for my birthday meal. The waiter turned to my girlfriend, who promptly ordered the swordfish. Really? Swordfish? I wish I had ordered second. But what's the big deal right? I’m going to get some nookie, I'm going to get some nookie.

All the servers came over with my complimentary desert and sang me the happy birthday song. I could have done without that, but what the heck, it was my birthday. When the check came, Gigi said she didn't have any money. She must have spent it all on the shirt. Thankfully it was just after payday and I had stopped by the cash machine, because back then hardly anyone making less than $40K had a credit card. I only knew two enlisted soldiers that did. So cash was still king and thankfully, I had enough to cover our meal and would have been able to cover the steak I really wanted, had I known I was paying. But what the hell, I was back from training, I had a girlfriend and it was my birthday. I’m going to get some nookie, I'm going to get some nookie.

We walked out to her car and I watched her ass sway this way and that. I thought that there might not be time to go back to her place and maybe we should find a quiet place to park. I climbed in the passenger seat and watched her get in. My gaze traveled from her cleavage to her eyes and back to her cleavage. The shirt was forgotten as was the Swordfish, burger and my $50 bucks. The moment was drawing near and I was past ready. I had a fleeting moment of regret that I hadn't rubbed one out before the date, but back then 2-3 times was no problem for me, so I shrugged it off. Besides, I was always a giving lover and tonight was my birthday. I was halfway between her cleavage and eyes for the 4th time when she uttered these five words to me:

"I'm breaking up with you."

It took a few minutes of silence for the message to get into my brain, past my nookie chant. My reply was articulate as always.

"What?"

The ride back to my barracks was long and quiet. She had her reasons, though she didn’t seem to be able to articulate them. For months I had ignored the allure of the women in class and the surrounding area because I had a girlfriend and you just don’t do that sort of thing. I'd visited when I could, called regularly, but now that I was back, she'd broken up with me.

On my birthday.

Shit.

In retrospect, things did work out for the best. Gigi was not the girl for me. A couple of weeks later, my roommate saw the birthday shirt and liked it. I traded it for one of his that I liked. The first night I wore it, I caught the eye of an exotic dancer. It was white and glowed in the black light. The exotic dancer said it made me look innocent and thought she should corrupt me. I finally got the nookie I so badly needed, but that is a story for another time and another venue.

A Day at the Beach, a DLI Adventure

2011-07-22T18:52:00.001-05:00

Fair warning. I'm about to tell you a story but not one of fiction. Instead, I'm going to use this blog to capture some of the more colorful stories of my life.

I posted a new profile pic the other day on Facebook and then made a wall post describing the scene. I referred to it as a time in my life when I had the world by the ass on a downhill slide and didn’t know it. I went on to say that the road to that place had been bumpy, but that it had only gotten better since.

I've been thinking about that for the last few days and it is as true a thing as I can say about my life.

The time was 1991. The place was Monterey California. I was there to attend the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio to learn Russian. I had served a 6 year contract, 4 Active 2 Reserve and got out in April 1990, only to sign an 8 year contract in September 1991 as Desert Shield became Desert Storm. By the time I was in a unit, the war was over. March of 1991, I got orders to Monterey because I needed a new job, as my active duty job didn’t exist in the Reserve.

But all of that is another story. This story is about friends. Next to me in the picture, is my roommate and all around awesome guy, Brian Nelson. I am embarrassed to say I can't remember the other guys name. Brian was known far and wide as "Bridude". He was and I'm sure still is a great person and a true friend.

It had taken a coupe of months to get the cash together to buy a wetsuit and board, but we had them. We had also just watched a special on sharks and learned the area from Monterey to San Francisco was called the "Blood Triangle" because of all the great white shark attacks. But were we nervous? Not that we would admit to each other. Soldiers are a different group. What we find funny does not always translate in the civilian world, and there is little a soldier enjoys more than busting his friend's balls. We did agree that there was nothing funny about a shark attack, and that this one area was off limits.

The day we picked sucked. It got cloudy and colder than normal, but worst of all were the lack of waves. Boogie boards don’t require the same size wave to have a fun ride, but they do require a wave. We were out paddling around at Asilomar beach in water as calm as the lakes I grew up swimming on. I was in my grey and black O'Neal suite and Bridude was in what he thought was a green and back suit of the same manufacture. It turned out that when wet, it was actually yellow. Better yet, we'd learned on the shark special that the color was called "Yum, Yum Yellow".

We refused to leave until we caught at least one wave, so there we floated, our concern replaced with boredom, frustrated and cold. That is until I looked down into the calm crystal clear water and saw a shark of at least eight feet glide beneath me.

I remember trying to speak and failing. I distinctly remember thinking it was bullshit when I saw people on TV or in the movies struck dumb, incapable of speech and how ludicrous it was to happen to me. I kept trying until I managed to squeak out the following:

"It…It's a…It's a fucking shark. IT'S A FUCKING SHARK!!!!" Quickly followed up by, "Don’t splash, it will go for you."

Unfortunately, what Bridude heard was, "He's going for you!"

My eyes we fixed on the thing under the water. It moved so fast, darting back and forth between Bridude and I as if it just couldn’t decide which one of us would be more delicious.

Then I lost it as it darted directly beneath me. For those of you that have never seen one, a boogie board is less than half the length of a surfboard, and yet I managed to get every inch of my body on that board. If all I'd had were a Popsicle stick, my ass would have been high and dry.

I heard a voice, as if from far away. It sounded like Bridude, but that couldn’t be, because he was just a few feet…I looked up and saw him standing on the beach, over a hundred yards away. I had no idea how he's managed it, but I had never wanted to be next to him more in my life.

I searched the water for the shark but couldn’t find it. I tried to banish the image from jaws of it coming directly beneath me and without causing a splash, began to paddle toward shore. When I was about twenty feet out, I caught the smallest wave ever recorded and rolled up onto the beach.

We both agreed that while we could have gone back in, we'd achieved our goal of riding a wave and besides, it was getting late anyway.

In the year we were there, that was the only shark we ever saw. We got pretty good on the boogie boards and before I left, I managed to learn how to ride a surfboard.

We had many interesting adventures in Monterey, but those stories will have to wait for another time.

How my dad won the Coast Guard Medal

2011-01-31T14:27:00.003-06:00

My latest novel, The White Face Bear, is semi autobiographical. The majority of it is of course fiction, but the main character is more like me than any other fictional character I've ever written. The prelude to the TWFB is a very accurate portrayal of one of the three bear hunts my dad went on (if you take out the mystical pieces of course). Finally, the journey Jeff Bennett takes to Kodiak, Alaska to spread his father's ashes mirrored my journey in 2008, two months after my father died.

The story that I couldn't tell in the book without an awkward data dump, is the story of how my father won the Coast Guard Medal while serving at Air Station Kodiak. The Coast Guard Medal is the highest award a Coasty can receive for acts of heroism in peacetime. It's a story worth telling, and I want to share it here.
It was a pretty standard November day on Kodiak, which meant no one had seen the sun in weeks and the usual misting rain was mixed with snow. It was early in the morning, and the temp was a wet 30 degrees.

Dick was an Aviation Electrician's Mate, 2nd class. His job was to keep all the birds working. Many times over the years, he discussed the difference between the brown shoes, or Airdales as he called them, and the black shoe Coasties that scuttled around on their boats like crabs. Air Station Kodiak - Rescue had a few fixed wing craft in 1967, but most of what they had was helicopters. Specifically, the Sikorsky HH-52A Sea Guard. By today's standards, it looks odd, and one wonders if it can even get its big ass up in the sky, but in 1967, it was the shit.
He was a fair pilot that could drive anything with wings or rotors, but he mostly flew test flights of the aircraft he fixed and not as pilot in charge during actual rescues. One of the best helicopter drivers was Dick's best friend and hunting partner, Grant. When a call came in about a couple of men that had been lost in the mountains for three days, Grant was driving. The crew complement was three, in this case it was Grant and a corpsman, so Dick decided to go along as the third to help search and to work the winch.

Searching for hunters, or in this case poachers, up in the mountains was rigorous work that rarely yielded a positive result. The sad fact was that in those days they had to rely on nothing but their eyes, and there was a whole lot of ground to cover. The odds of them finding anything was minimal, but Dick's eyes were better than most and he would rather ride on a call than sit back at base.

Up they went, on the hunt as they had many times before and began their search with the most likely hunting grounds for mountain goat. Dick and Grant had hunted everything worth shooting in Alaska and knew where many of the best spots were. The Sea Guard cruised at 85 miles per hour and had a maximum range of 474 miles. Up they went and the search began. After a few hours, they had to refuel, and then out again for another look. By that time, a storm had moved in and the winds were picking up. Grant took her in as close to the peaks as he could and Dick searched for a flash of color, or a straight line that had no business being in nature.

They were low on fuel and had run out of places to look. The two men were surely lost. Their bodies might turn up in the summer, or they may never be found. Maybe they weren't missing at all, maybe they had just got tired of the dreary weather and their dreary wives and decided to head for the mainland. Dick knew people who felt that way, his wife being at the top of the list. For him, though life was what happened while you were waiting for the next hunting season to open, and there was no better place on God's little green earth than Alaska for that.

Grant banked the beast toward home when Dick saw a flash of color. He blinked, rubbed at his eyes and looked back where he'd seen the flash. Nothing, just more snow, now beginning to swirl in the storms gust, and then he saw it. This time he called out for Grant to bring her around for a closer look. Grant nodded, as he saw it too and both men assessed the situation. It wasn't good. They were almost bingo fuel, and if they went back for more, it would be two more hours and past dark before they got back. The two figures looked frozen in place, as hard as the rock and ice that seemed to encase them. It was doubtful at this altitude and temperature that either was alive, but if there was even a chance, they couldn't delay two hours.

The men had somehow shimmied their way along a ledge no more than two feet wide that suddenly ended. The cliff face rose up eighty feet to another ledge that was cut back into the mountain a mere fifty feet. The wind was gusting toward the mountain, which meant Grant would have to hold the chopper in a steady hover, with his blades a few feet above and next to a mountain, with 60 mile per hour gusts buffeting them from behind, while the corpsman lowered the basket eighty feet to a two foot ledge below.

Grant smiled and moved the Sikorsky into position. He was one of the best to ever hold a stick and he knew it. Dick went back to work the winch that would lower the corpsman. The man made no move toward the door, his eyes frantic. Grant ordered the corpsman in the basket, but the man refused. Dick lost his temper and yelled at the man and when he refused to move, threatened to chuck him out of the helicopter.
Time was running out and Dick grabbed the corpsman, shook him and told him he would go down but that the corpsman had to work the winch. He responded, like a condemned man after hearing the governor's call. Dick went down into the storm on a wire basket held by a cable that looked too damned thin to hold one man, let alone two. He hated heights. In a plane or helicopter, he felt in control and gloried at the feeling of riding the wind. It was a lot different swinging underneath one and bouncing against ice covered rock.

He got level with the outcropping and got a close look at the two men. Both of their eyes were closed and they looked dead. The wind eased up for a second and Dick stepped across to the ledge. Both men were literally frozen in place and he had to pry the first one lose, frustrated at the lack of leverage the iced surface allowed. He managed to get the first body loose and somehow, bend him enough to fit into the basket. He strapped the poacher in place and as he signaled for the basket to be raised, the man's eyes popped open. The shock of finding one alive, turned into hope and as the basket rose into the storm, he started working the second man free. The corpsman lowered the winch, and Dick repeated the process, though the second man didn't show the signs of life the first had.

The basket went up for the second time, and Grant eased the helicopter away from the overhang as it rose to prevent it from slamming against the rock like it had the first time. Dick was watching the progress when the chunk of ice he was standing on broke loose. He fell and later couldn’t remember what happened. Grant was watching and saw Dick's hand lashed out and catch something solid. The momentum of his body swung him up and back onto the thin ledge a few feet down. Adrenaline screamed through his veins and he had to force himself to take long deep breaths to steady himself. After a few minutes, he spared a glance down and saw one of the poacher's rifles, frozen in place, its barrel hanging out less than a foot over the edge.
Then the basket was there and he was riding it back to safety. Once inside, Grant wasted no time heading back to base. Dick didn’t want to look at the fuel gauge, but he did. The needle was pegged with five miles left to go and he remembered the expression, 'running on oxygen and imagination'. He hoped their imaginations would hold out. Grant brought it in with his usual light touch, as if he had just been out on a leisurely check ride on a sunny summer day. He'd called ahead to the hospital, and the medical team was waiting with two gurneys.

Dick still had an urge to strangle the shit out of the corpsman, but the man had worked hard on the two victims the whole way back and was clearly capable as a medical practitioner. Dick focused on the checklist for the post flight operations instead. Once they were done, they set foot back on the ground. Grant stopped gripped his shoulder, smiled and nodded. It was enough.

Both of the poachers lived, though each lost a few pieces and parts to frostbite. Dick and Grant got more drunk than usual and life went on. A few months later, word came down that Dick had been awarded the Coast Guard Medal for his part. That was as good a reason as any to get drunk that day, but this time they decided to take a little trip to the base commander's house. It seems the old man was having a party and forgot to invite the hero and his driver, so Dick and Grant decided to crash it.

Wind from the rotors raised holy hell on the picnic, and it was no surprise to the men that the commander refused to put steaks beer in the basket. Neither man was written up, but neither did they reenlist.

Science and Religion

2010-09-29T16:02:00.002-05:00

Not Science vs. Religion.

I read a resent post on FB that sparked a debate between atheists and theists. There was a lot of fantastic and respectful debate. I was genuinely impressed that it didn’t turn into a flame war, though there were a few digs on both sides. It was pointed out that people of faith could come across and smug and condescending. I have noticed that some of the atheists came across as arrogant and condescending. Both attitudes are disrespectful, so let's take the question of people's intelligence and mental state out of the debate. Too often, when people hold opposing views, I see both sides attempt to degrade or dehumanize each other, as if someone that disagrees with them must be faulty in some way. This is a fallacy and cheapens the accuser. One issue we face today is the complete lack of respect between people that possess opposing views. It doesn’t matter if it’s politics or religion, too often people classify their opponents as being stupid or backward or extreme.

One position that was discussed was that debate over the issue is useless. I agree that if a person that believes, either in a specific dogma, or just believes in the existence of a soul, debates with someone that doesn't there won't likely be any resolution. That doesn't mean the exchange shouldn’t occur. I don’t agree with blind faith in anything. I think people should examine their beliefs and dis beliefs and justify, at least to themselves the reasons for them. Even the act of asking the question means that we are open to other possibilities. Being open to a possibility is not a weakness of character. Only a fool assumes they know everything or has all the right answers. Each person need only look to their past to find example of when they were proven wrong and learned from the process. Why do some adults assume that at some point being wrong is no longer possible? For that matter, that a conflicting opinion must be wrong.

I love science. I understand some of it, but even if I had the abilities to understand all disciplines, I would never have the time to verify or test all hypotheses. I trust in the scientific process and the community as a whole to verify and validate findings, but I am also skeptical, because occasionally, this trust is betrayed. Because of the scientific process, hoaxes and bad science are uncovered eventually, but blind trust of science as the answer without even a basic understanding of the scientific process, is simply replacing the faith of one deity with the faith another, by deifying extremely intelligent scientists. It is certainly dangerous to assume that even a group of scientists are right when they insist on the validity of a given theory, yet there is a lot of pressure to create legislation based on theories that have not been given the time to be challenged and validated using the very scientific process they claim supports their position.

I do believe that there is more going on that a simple cycle of life and death. I believe that there is some purpose and some part of us that continues to exist after our meat suite dies. I don’t go to church because I have never found a dogma I can believe in. Religion is humanities attempt to explain what they can't understand. There are and have been a large number of religions and variations of religious systems created by mankind. They can't all be right. There can't be hundreds of true creation stories. I think what some people mean when they say "I'm spiritual, but not religious" is that they don't follow a specific dogma. I don’t feel a need for ritual. I don’t feel the need to find others that share my beliefs, but I also don't begrudge or demean those that do.

I don’t understand why people from both sides of this argument feel that the views must be apposing. I'm not talking about faith in a religious system, I'm talking about the possibility that there is something more that the death of the body. That there may be a purpose for our sentience, and that beyond sentience, we are more than the sum of our organic parts.

I am not a believer in or supporter of the new efforts around "Intelligent Design", because it feels like a cheat or a way to try to prove what can't be proved with pseudo science and half truths. Having members of a particular religion attempt to use science to prove the literal truth of their scripture (e.g. the earth is only 7,000 years old), is just as absurd as scientists trying to use the scientific method to disprove the existence of a soul (a non dogma specific constant among most religions).

In the 1600's, the scientific community was split into two camps with regards to the nature of light. One camp believed that light was a wave. The other camp believed that light was a particle. Both groups had evidence to support their claim and both believed the opposing camp was wrong. I wasn't there, but I'm guessing some unkind things were said by both sides. The problem with both positions was that the evidence each of them was using was proof only for their position, but did nothing to disprove the opposing view. Each side assumed the two theories were mutually exclusive. Because Newton was the one that proposed the particle theory and he had some horsepower, most scientists jumped on his bandwagon. For almost two hundred years, only idiots thought that light was a wave. Then in the early 1800's, some smarty pants created a test that proved light did in fact have the properties of a wave. Take that you stinking Newtonians! They must have been stupid to think light was a particle. That is until 1905, when a real smarty pants name Einstein, discovered what most of you reading this now know, that light is in fact both a wave and a particle. Three hundred years from when the first theories were put forth as scientific fact, we finally had the answer that it was both.

I'm only 44 and don’t think that if I devoted the rest of my life to the study of this issue that I would be any closer to understanding it if I live to be a hundred. I'm also not sure where we are on the time-line from the origin of scientific process to the point where we will have all the answers. Certainly, there is a finite point sometime in the future where we will run out of scientific questions, assuming a sustainable technological society with no expiration date. If we were at that point we could look back at the primitives living at the beginning of the twenty first century with sympathy bordering on contempt. It's possible that the universal duality of wave and particle that exists in matter as it does in light may be as blueprint for the seeming duality we now perceive between science and spirit. I don't have the answer, I have my answer and currently I'm content with it. I'm also open to hearing new views so I can consider them. Until the question is answered definitely one way or the other, I hope both sides can strive for acceptance of each others beliefs without resorting to smug or arrogant condescension.

News and updates on the writing front.

2010-09-08T13:52:00.002-05:00

First, I had my short story "Garbage Man" accepted in the reprint anthology, Northern Lights: 20 MinnSpec Tales by Sam Dot Publishing. It's a collection of stories from the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers group. It is currently available now from Genre Mall.

A new story of mine, "Field Test", is part of the anthology Unspeakable: A New Breed of Terror from Blood Bound Books. It's currently available on Amazon.

Liquid Imagination is also doing a reprint anthology in conjunction with Choate Road that is scheduled to be out by the end of the year. I will post an update when I have the title and the TOC, but my story "Jihad" will be a part of it.

I was invited to participate in the Fell Beasts anthology from Dark Quest Books, due out sometime late this year. My twisted tale is called "Spelunking". Here are the names of authors involved and I couldn't be happier to share some pages with these folks. I've been lucky enough to meet many of them and to call at least some of them friends.

Thomas A. Erb
Adam P. Lewis
Jason Sizemore
Kelli Dunlap
Dean Harrison
Michael West
R. Scott McCoy
John Everson
Tim Moore
James A. Moore
Bob Ford
Brady Allen
Scott Christian Carr

Last, but definitely not least, is the impending release of my 2nd novel, White Faced Bear on October 31st from Belfire Press. The bulk of the edits are complete and I want to send out a huge public thank you to Louise Bohmer, my editor. She has been a joy to work with and has made my book better, period. The next steps are a full technical edit, cover art creation etc. It is a very exciting time and I can't wait to see the final product.

One Minute Weird Tales - Best Dressed

2010-08-30T20:00:00.001-05:00

It took a while, but my One-Minute Weird Tales video is up on their website! Very cool feeling to see a 100-word story turned into a multi media video. Enjoy!

What is a Jackpine Savage?

2010-05-17T16:35:00.002-05:00

The Jack Pine (Pinus banksiana) is a North American pine with its native range in Canada east of the Rocky Mountains from Northwest Territories to Nova Scotia, and the northeast of the United States from Minnesota to Maine.

Savage: n.
1. A person regarded as primitive or uncivilized.
2. A person regarded as brutal, fierce, or vicious.

Put them together and you get the picture. Do not confuse this species with the southern "Redneck", there is a vast difference. The only similarity I am aware of is a love of firearms. Redneck is a derogatory term that may indicate poverty and ignorance, while Jackpine Savage or JPS is term of honor.

In the interest of full disclosure, I would no longer be considered by many to be a JPS. After all, I don’t live up north in God's country any more. I live and work in the "Cities", the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota. It was common knowledge among my people that anyone that lived in a city was an idjit. Since I left to join the Army and never came back, if I tried to re enter that society, I would be shunned for the rest of my life, though possibly tolerated if I resumed my savage ways. If my children married and had grand children that married and lived in the same northern town, they would still be known as "that new family".

Living "down south" in the cities with all the other idjits, I am at times likewise shunned because of my savage temperament. I am a man trapped between two worlds, belonging in neither. Though I have worked hard to blend in with the natives here in the land of asphalt, there are times when my tolerance for idjits slips and my desire to choke the shit out of one of them is almost more than I can bear.

Sometimes I sit in my man cave and stare outside and remember a time when I ran wild though the woods, hunting, fishing and communing with nature (it was too far to run back evertime I had to take a dump). Then I think about how humid it is out there and I think about all the mosquitoes and Lyme disease carrying ticks and turn back to my computer.

So am I a still a Jackpine Savage? Like most of life's big questions, the answer is that it depends. Mostly, it depends on where I am and how many idjits I'm surrounded by.

Idjit: n.
1. A person that regardless of being a college boy, ain't got no sense.
2. A person that lacks common sense and is a danger to themselves and others while in the wild (aka a"Cidiot").

While there may be debate on my status depending on geography, my father was a JPS to the end of his days. Here are some common utterances from a master JPS (this is a radically abbreviated list):
I will beat your ass til it barks like a fox!
I'm off like a herd of turtles.
If brains were gas, you couldn’t start a piss ant's motor scooter.
I'm hungry enough to eat the ass end out of a skunk.
You better paint your legs with turpentine to keep the ants off your candy ass.
You call that a fucking chainsaw?
That ain't a truck, this is a fuckin truck.
If my dog was as ugly as you, I'd shave its ass and teach it to walk backwards.

Guest Blog 8: R. Scott McCoy With "Going To Print"

2010-04-15T16:23:00.002-05:00

Louise Bohmer is a highly talented writer and editor. I was honored to be her guest blogger for April. Please check out the post.

Guest Blog 8: R. Scott McCoy With "Going To Print"

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Time and Energy

2010-03-15T09:03:00.002-05:00

I just put up my most recent post for Stygian Publications about the upcoming Necrotic Tissue, issue #10 and noticed that I haven’t put out a personal post since November. I check and rechecked that date because I didn't believe so much time has passed. I started the personal blog to talk about my writing. Even if no one ever read it, I've always found that writing about an issue has helped me think about it and work through it. Sometimes I will have the edge of a thought about a topic and won’t be able to get a full handle on it until I start to type. So why haven't I posted since last November? Good question. Part of the reason is of course the holidays, immediately followed by the January submission window for Necrotic Tissue. That stretched into late February and transitioned into putting together April's issue #10. When these two timelines overlap, there is very little "free" time.

I do have a day job. Actually it's a career, which takes more time and energy than the jobs I used to have. It's harder to stop thinking about the issues when I walk out the door and sometimes, it intrudes into my home life. It takes time and energy, so even when I have time, I may not have the energy.

I have used the term "making time" in the past, but there is only so much of it in a given week. I "make" time by not doing things I see as wasteful. I used to love video games, still do, but I know they take too much time and give me nothing back but pleasure while I'm playing them. I'm not against fun or pleasure, but when I started writing seriously, part of the reason was the time I spent playing the games took too much and gave me little in return. Sure, I had enjoyed the game and sure I was able to escape the pressures of daily life while playing, but when it was over, I had nothing to show for it. When I was younger, that was okay. Now that I'm past 40, it feels less so. I can feel the clock ticking, and I don't want to waste what I have remaining. That doesn’t mean I will never play a game again or have fun, it just means that I won’t let it consume all of my free time as I once did. The same goes with TV and Movies. I need these things and I'm not willing to give them up, but I need to do them in moderation, and only focus on a few shows that I truly enjoy instead of vegetating and watching whatever was on, like I used to do.
Time and energy. How I use what I have and how to keep a balance can be a challenge. Habits can be good and bad. Writing is a habit for me. There are times when I do it frequently enough that I don’t need to remind myself. I enjoy the process, but it takes time. Novels take more time than short stories. I'm not sure of other writers feel this way, but I can’t just walk up to the computer and type out a couple of pages of a novel. I need to crawl into my character for awhile, sometimes reading the past 10,000 words or so to get into the grove. Interruptions complicate this process, so for the best effect, the time has to be in sections lasting at least three hours in order to be productive. It's a bit frustrating since before, I was able to utilize even half hour blocks to great effect to work on short stories. Perhaps it's my lack of experience with the novel form. I've only written two short novels and I am working on two others, so perhaps the more I do it, the easier it will be to jump in and out of the process. For now though, time is what I need, time and energy.

Some of that time I gave up to teaching. I wanted to see if teaching were something I enjoyed as much as I thought I would. I taught a masters level class on Decision Making last fall at St. Mary's University of Minnesota, where I got my masters. I am teaching the same class again this semester. I do enjoy it, though I need to get better at it. I also taught a security management course at the bachelor's level earlier in the semester and that was too much. I tend to overextend myself, and while I didn't seek the additional class, I didn't say no when asked either. So that brings me to now. Five months since my last post and no significant progress on my latest novel. I have only about a month left teaching the decision making course and won’t teach again until fall, but I need to decide if I have even that much time.

From now until July, I want to finish my third novel and make progress on my fourth. These need to be done and I have the concept firmly in my mind, but I want to skip to my fifth. The fifth is different. An old idea that has new life breathed into it and I want to see how it develops. For some reason though, my mind is trapped in sequence, and I need to finish these first. Something has to give and I need to admit that I can only do so many things at one time. My career is important to me, and not just because it pays the bills, so I need to give it the energy it deserves. Stygian Publications, and especially Necrotic Tissue, gives me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. I'm not willing to give that up and I've made committments to people. Writing gives me a different type of satisfaction and pleasure, and I'm not willing to give it up either. It may be that at this point in my life, I'm not ready to teach. As I stated above, writing helps me sort out issues. As I am writing this, it occurs to me that when I started looking for places to teach, I wanted to teach writing. That was the goal, but a writing class wasn't available and I had never taught a college class. Now I have and I know I can do it, but I'm teaching something that, while it interests me, it is not directly related to what I love. Work can take energy from me, but writing gives me energy. Teaching about decision making as it relates to business, takes energy because I associate it with my day job. What I need to do is find a place where I can teach creative writing. Specifically short stories, since that is what I know best. I am self aware enough to know that I have written some good short stories. Not great, or award winning, but solid. As editor for Necrotic Tissue, I have learned to identify the problems in other people's short stories and am able to suggest improvements. That sounds a lot like real teaching to me. Not covering a subject and discussing readings and thoughts on a topic, but rolling up the sleeves and actually teaching someone how to do something they either don't know how to do or helping someone that does know how, get better.

Time and energy. I don’t have as much of either as I used to, so I need to spend both wisely. My family comes first, then the career, then publishing because I've made commitments to people and because I enjoy it, and then my writing. If I do anything else, it must benefit one of these four things.

Warning, shameless attempt at selling some books.

2009-11-25T07:37:00.002-06:00

If you haven't purchased your very own copy of FEAST yet, now is the time. I have some blurbs from some excellent writers and some darn good reviews, but here is the bottom line. FEAST is a fun read that is well worth a measly $8 bucks. If anyone regrets purchasing a copy, just let me know and I will personally punch Greg Hall in the junk. Why Greg Hall? Better him than me.

If that weren't enough, here is what we Minnesotans call 'One heck of a Deal'. The next 10 people who buy FEAST directly from the Shroud website (Amazon don't count) will get a FREE copy of the extremely popular Choate Road fun book, KNOCK KNOCK...WHO'S THERE? DEATH!

That's right, fellow horrorist. Buy FEAST before December 1st and if you're one of the next 10 people, you get our special bonus book added on just because we love Thanksgiving. TWO great horror treats for under $10, just in time for the holidays.

"Choate Road ... it makes The Exorcist II look good."
~Rio Youers, author of EVERDEAD~

"The soul rot that is Choate Road is the online equivalent of crack cocaine. You'll find yourself debased, malnourished, drooling at your keyboard, yet strangely unable to pull away from your own train wreck of a life. Beware."
~ Michael Hultquist, screenwriter of VICTIM and co-editor of HARVEST HILL~

“Choate Road. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. They're so scummy and villainy that I don't even feel it's worthy of coming up with an original quote, so I stole from Star Wars. In short, I'd rather have George Lucas cuff me and drag me away for copyright infringement than to waste any time devoting original thought to Choate Road."
~Joel A. Sutherland, author of FROZEN BLOOD~

“I believed in God until I visited choateroad.com.”
~David Dunwoody, author of EMPIRE~

That's right, fellow horrorist. Buy FEAST before December 1st and if you're one of the next 10 people, you get our special bonus book added on just because we love Thanksgiving. TWO great horror treats for under $10, just in time for the holidays.Whatcha waiting for?http://www.shroudmagazine.com/feast-by-r-scott-mccoy.html

The Horror Palette

2009-11-10T14:10:00.007-06:00

I was trying to describe my new, first and so far only published book to someone over the weekend at Crypticon here in Minnesota. Because most of my short stories are horror and I publish a horror magazine and also because I got the idea for the book from a nightmare I had, I assumed my book was a horror book. There are numerous threads and even more discussions and debates on what exactly is horror. Don't worry, I'm not trying to add to that debate.

There are some books that a vast majority of people would agree are horror books, but many more that would have less concurrence. I am self aware enough to know that my book is a heck of a lot closer to some of Koontz's work than it is Barker's, but this explanation seems to be lacking.

I had the kernel of an idea some time ago that I finally was able to put to paper this weekend. What I am about to share with you is a first concept. A very rough draft of what I hope can be developed into something useful. It is not a measure of a story's quality or literary merit, it is a graph which places a story based on an X and Y Axis. X is a scale of how scary the story is and Y is the measure of gore. These are two data points, but I think a third helps clarify a story further.Instead of going 3-D, I decided to use labels. Some of the labels I have so far are their own genres, and I am using them only for stories that have a strong horror element or are indeed cross genre. Some of the labels are just meant to clarify. Remember please that this is a draft that I put together with the help of Greg Hall, and not meant the final product. In the corporate world, we would call it a straw man. Something to discuss, yet has enough context to be able to be modified to the final product.

The scale could be anything, but I think a 0 to 20 would have enough range to be meaningful. But, maybe 0-100 would give more stratification. Regardless of what range is used, I have a few examples that I hope are at least in the correct quadrant, if not necessarily spot on. The hardest part I thin will be for a writer to place their own work.

I'm looking for feedback. Please focus on big picture. Let me know if the concept seems viable. If so, what additions or modifications do you suggest. Once I get a solid final product, I think it will be a good tool. I would then like to send a survey out to several people to get their perspective on how they would rate some distinct examples for each of the four quadrants so we can populate the chart with a baseline for comparison. Thank you in advance.

Scott...

Long Ass Post about the HWA

2009-11-06T10:26:00.003-06:00

Let me start this post by stating that I am proud to be a member of the HWA and I have a goal of achieving Active membership. I am not posting this on the HWA forum because it's too damned long. Part of it is rant, but most of it is my attempt at stating a position and making recommendations.

My position is that due to a combination of market factors the current membership guidelines attaining Active membership is viewed as being too difficult. Furthermore, that because the attainment of Active membership is viewed as being unachievable, not enough people are joining. The HWA will benefit from a larger membership through the increase in volunteerism, an increase in dues and the strengthening and in some locations creation of a stronger local chapter structure.

There is a very good thread on the HWA website where members are discussing what other professional organizations provide their members in the hope that the HWA can attract and retain members by adopting some of these practices. I think the discussion will bear fruit, assuming the membership is willing to make some changes.

Any easy rebuttal to my position is that my angst is just sour grapes. I'm not an Active member yet and I want to become one faster, so I'm just complaining. It could be pointed out that many current Active members struggled for years to get theirs, so why should it be changed now? Let me be clear. I don't think Active membership should be easy and don’t mind if I have to wait many more years. I believe I will gain Active status and will continue to work toward it regardless. What I do believe is that it should be realistically attainable, and based on the current number of qualifying markets, that is less likely now than it has been previously.

The market fluctuates, but this current economy is the worst it has been since the depression. I remember the recession in the early eighties, and the only thing that made that one seem worse, was the lines for gas. We are not currently being rationed by the government, but everyone is cutting back. Writing markets rise and fall, that is a constant. The downward trend we are currently facing however is impacting the business in more ways that simply having markets fold. New markets are being created, but paying rates below the professional level. The reason is simple. They can't sell enough subscriptions to pay out professional pay. This has nothing to do with the quality of the writing or the quality of the magazine and everything to do with customers choosing not to spend their money on things that are not a necessity.
One restriction in the guidelines is what qualifies as a professional payment. Section 2 of the membership requirements states:

It shall be required that the publication, publisher, or other entity making payment as described in Section 1 shall be one that pays the same qualifying rate to at least 90% of its contributors. This is necessary to avoid having members attain Active status through "traded" or other irregular sales at artificial rates.

In other words, this provision is in place to stop people from gaining membership through fraudulent means.

I understand the reasoning behind this, but I don't agree that it is necessary. Many organizations have a code of ethics that they required their members to sign. In such a small community, I would think it would be difficult to hide such obvious collusion, but I'm guessing it's happened at some point in the past. Based on this language, winning a contest would also not qualify. That is too bad, because it can be much more difficult to win a contest than place a story in a pro pay market. That is except for recently. According to Duotrope, there are 32 markets that pay pro rates and take horror. A closer look reveals that like Necrotic Tissue, the majority of markets pay on a scale that doesn’t meet the 90% rule. Not counting anthologies, there are only 9 markets that qualify. Of these 9, at least 3 are combination markets that say they take horror, but rarely do. That leaves 6 markets that specialize in horror and pay pro rates that qualify. Of those 6, 3 are temporarily closed to submissions.

Conversely, the SFWA has a more rigorous process of qualifying markets, yet they currently have 21 magazines on their list. Anthologies come and go, but they make it clear that only an anthology from a qualified novel publisher will be accepted.

When one of the six markets is open, there are very few slots truly open to submissions. This is a business, and it does sometimes happen that markets choose a known writer with a following over an unknown writer in order to boost sales. Also, many markets have reduced the number of stories in each issue, making dropping the number of professional pay opportunities even further.

The goal is to make gaining Affiliate and especially Active membership meaningful. There is also a desire to keep Active membership exclusive. The question is how exclusive. I wonder whether or not when the organization began was there a certain number of Active members desired? As time has progressed, does the membership overall wish these numbers would increase or decrease? SFWA has 1,500 members. I didn’t see in their website what percentage were Active members, but based on the larger number of market, I think it's safe to speculate that there are more than 200. The HWA posts two data points on the website. The first is on the About HWA section and is from 10/1/2006. There were 240 Active members and 146 Affiliate members. The current numbers as of 10/28/2009, show a decline, with only 196 Active members and 141 Affiliate.

Presumably, some of the Affiliates from 2006 have reached Active status. I don’t know how many, but it seems a safe assumption. So even with some new Active members, the overall numbers have dropped while the affiliate numbers have remained fairly constant. I would have expected much more fluctuation in the Affiliate ranks. My belief before I saw the data was that once reached, people would maintain their Active membership. I realize there may be some people who have passed away, but surely not 44. Also, while I don’t know how many new Active members there have been in the last three years, I have to believe the number would be at least counter a loss of membership through death.
This leads me to believe that people are leaving Active membership for another reason. I'm not sure if the SFWA has similar issues, but their numbers seem to argue that if they do, it is not to the same level.

I also find it odd that there are more Active members than Affiliate. Dues are the same for all levels of membership, but I would think one goal would be to gain more members and increase the amount of dues coming in. Based on the numbers above, there has been a loss of about 47 members for a total loss of $3,055 in dues annually. Almost half of the dues burden is on the Affiliate members, the ones that by very definition are not getting paid at professional rates. For many, paying even $65 dollars in dues is an issue. Based on the difficulty in finding qualifying markets, I would expect the Active membership to be less than Affiliate, not more. Still, I expected there to be more than 196 Active members. There must be at least 500 writers currently living today that meet the requirements for Active Membership. I don't think I'm way off base guessing that as many as 1,500 people qualify for Affiliate membership. NT alone has paid at no fewer than 150 writers the requisite amount in the last two years, more than the current total of number of Affiliate members. Regardless of what the optimum number of Active members is, it's my opinion that there should be at least three time the number of Affiliate members striving for Active membership. So why aren’t people joining? And why are Active members leaving?

I do think that the perception is that gaining Active membership is more difficult than is warranted. While I can only base my conclusions on what I have read and heard, it seems to me that the goal for Active membership was to ensure a certain level of writing skill be validate through the free market. The assumption being that once this level of skill was attained, that the requisite number of professional acceptances would follow, whether it is in short story (the example I am beating to death), novel or the other avenues.

The novel requirement for Active status is a $2,000 dollar advance on 5% royalties. This eliminates the possibility of any small press I am aware of. The goal stated here is to set a professional rate for a novel, yet the advance could be given and the novel could have so few sales that the publisher would not even come close to covering the advance. It also doesn’t state whether the Royalty is to be 5% of Gross or Net sales. Presumably Gross, which was more common in the past, but it could be Net and still qualify since it isn’t defined in the rules. Again, I would argue that there should be flexibility. With the advent of Print On Demand marketing structures, a small press publisher could and often does according to Duotrope and Ralan, give between 25% and 50% royalties. There is rarely if ever an advance since small press does not have the operating capital necessary, but the volume of sale could exceed that of a novel sold to a larger publisher that issued a $2,000 advance with 5% royalties. These models may have made sense at the time they were created, but I think it’s time to reevaluate. Perhaps a $1,000 dollar advance on 10% royalties or no advance on 40% royalties would be acceptable. Presumably when the original amount numbers were chosen, there was some formula used that represented total pay to a writer. If that is the case, then a scale could be created that maintains the desired outcome but gets there in different ways.

Trying to come up with a market based approach could not have been easy. The rates were the rates because that is what the market would bear at the time. The goal was to find a way to identify "professional" work from amateur. Using pay is certainly easier and less bias than trying to have a group of members evaluate an applicant's writing to determine if it had achieved the required level of skill. I can’t think of a better method and my proposal isn't to ditch the market based approach, but instead to modify to keep in line with market conditions. The exception to this should be a new rule for those that win the Stoker award. If the real goal is to validate a certain amount of skill has been achieved, why then doesn’t winning the Stoker award automatically qualify a writer for Active membership?

I don’t think Active membership should be given away. It should reflect a level of skill and accomplishment, or it means nothing. While Active members may not even think about it anymore, there is a perception out there that gaining Active membership has gone from challenging to extremely difficult. If the market is the sole determiner and the market is constricted, the original intent has not been met.

I for one have not "given" professional level pay to any writer at Necrotic Tissue. They have earned it by submitting what I believe is the best story of that issue. The best of not only the 22 or so in the issue they were accepted for, but the best of over 400 submissions that were received during that month. If I paid pro rates for all submission, it would still be my judgment on who was accepted. It would still be possible to "trade" professional pay with another market, though admittedly, due to the cost it would happen a lot less. The exception to this is anthologies. It is possible to have an anthology that pays professional payment to all of its writers thereby qualifying under the 90% rule described in Section 2 and to "select" either only friends or a writer that is also doing a professional pay anthology and accept each other in trade. With the glut of anthologies that comes out annually, this could be common practice and there is currently no way to identify the activity. Yet magazines that can’t afford to pay pro rates for all stories at what is usually four times a year, don’t qualify.

One of my goals is to make NT a pro pay market. Until then it's my opinion that if I pay someone professional pay for having what I feel is the best story of an issue, that it should be allowed as one of the three stories required to achieve Active membership. If there is any hint of impropriety, then the sale should be challenged and brought before either the membership committee or the grievance committee, whichever is deemed appropriate.
In the last two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the creation of sites devoted to horror. The Haunt attracted many members, some fans, but a lot of writers. The Dark Fiction Guild continues to grow but is currently at 396 members, though some are artist and horror directors. There are several other new sites and some have been around for years. The question we should ask is why? There is clearly a perception that these other sites are offering something that they can’t get from HWA. Some haven’t yet received the required $25 dollar sale to become Affiliate members, but many have. The Dark Fiction Guild has a section for groups, yet there is no HWA group. The perception, whether it is fair or not, is that the HWA is elitist. We can complain about this perception, or we can accept that it exists and work toward changing it. Time is limited to be sure, but if we want new members, we must market the HWA. Anyone out there who is writing horror should be a member. We should try to estimate how many there are and set membership targets. I can't speak for other magazines or publishers, but I would be honored to have an HWA ad in Necrotic Tissue and I would let the HWA advertise for free.

I believe in the HWA and think that it is capable of meeting the needs of all horror writers. To summarize, here are my 6 suggestions:

Change the current rules to allow any professional payment to qualify toward Active membership. Establish or modify existing committees to investigate reports of impropriety.
Create a Code of Ethics that all members are required to sign before being accepted.
Qualifying sales and payment of dues should not be sufficient. A group is only as strong as its members and a level of professionalism and mutual respect as well as appropriate conduct should be the minimum requirements.
Adjust the novel formula to account for a lower advance in lieu of higher royalties.
Grant Active membership to any winner of a Stoker award in any category.
The HWA should solicit membership, by having booths at conventions over a certain size and to create a presence on the web outside for the HWA website wherever it seems viable.
Consider the creation of a beginning membership level that would cost less in dues and would allow people to get involved sooner (This suggestion may necessitate the creation of segmented levels in the forum and tighter monitoring).

The Most Important Job

2009-10-18T16:21:00.002-05:00

My oldest is now in 4^th grade at a Spanish language immersion charter school. Because they are learning both Spanish and English, the kids skills like spelling and grammar are a little behind kids in regular school until around 5^th or 6^th grade.

I just found an assignment she had completed in class when she was in 3rd grade. It was an essay about their fathers (that's me!)

I am going to retype it using her words, but with some corrected spelling to make it easier to read. Frankly, there are times when I doubt that I am being the father I want to be and that my kids deserve. Many of us who were born in the 60's had dad's that were hard assess. I had the kind of dad that other hard assed dad's were afraid of. He only ever told me he loved me once, when I was 24. There were never any hugs or positive reinforcement. Dumb ass was a common name, but there were a host of others. He did teach me some valuable lessons that have helped make me successful, but what I wanted most was to know he both loved and respected me. If he were still alive he'd probably call me a dumb ass and say that those are things I should just know.

I'm not looking for sympathy, just making a point about the kind of father I wanted to be and didn’t want to be. Enough of my rambling, without further delay, here's my daughter's essay:

These are some things why I Love my dad. My dad is very smart.

1. My dad is smart because or else he wouldn't be working any more.

2. He's full of ideas.

3. He's just full of inspiration.

My Dad is funny.

My dad is funny because one time at the table he said "Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?" and I said I don't know why. And he said, "Because they taste funny." And this other time he said to me "Hey Andrea, do you want to see a magic trick? And I said yes and he opened the dishwasher and put his dishes inside and he said "Ta da." Oh, and one more time my dad picked me up and put me on his shoulder like I was a dead person and said "wew wew wew."

Why my dad is Lovable.

He's Lovable because he likes to hug and kiss me XOXOXOXOXO. He's also like my own little chair or actually big chair because he's a grownup of course. My dad says I love to a lot to me.

The End.

Every parent makes mistakes, though rarely as many as the children think. It's easy to get focused on the frustrations of my day job, or my magazine or writing. Things don't always go the way we want and it's easy to question whether we are making a difference at all. I'm very fortunate because regardless of what happens at work, the magazine or with my own writing, I've already reached my most important goal. Both my daughters know how much I love them. Now, the trick is to remember that even though I say it a lot, I need to find different ways to tell them and show them, so they never have to wonder. In the end, it is the most important job I'll ever have.

Duotrope, I can quit anytime I want...

2009-10-13T09:49:00.002-05:00

For those who don't know Duotrope, is a site designed for writers to find and research writing markets. They currently have 2,650 markets listed, many in genre fiction. For those that do know, you may also frequent www.ralan.com . I love Ralan's site and got my first few acceptances from markets I had found on Ralan. While I do love Ralan's site, I am not addicted to it. Of course, I'm not addicted to Duotrope either (coughs and breaks eye contact), I can quit anytime I want. I just don't want to.

What attracts me to Duotrope all hours of the day and night is the data. First, they are set up as a search engine. I can keep my search general and get all 2,500 markets, or I can refine my search so it will display only the pro pay markets for horror that take short stories and are offered in print, accept electronic submissions, and I can choose not to show markets that are temporarily closed. Booya baby!! Today there are 10 such markets and I can sort them alphabetically, by pay, average response time, or % of acceptance.

Now this is enough for me to swear undying loyalty to Duotrope, but that's not all the site offers. Oh no, not by half. I love data. I love spreadsheets and for a few years I tracked my submissions on a spreadsheet. Then a friend (or enabler??) told me about a feature on Duotrope called submissions tracker. By creating a profile (it is free), you can add stories to your list as you write them, then you can track who you submit to. By selecting a response option of "Pending", you can let the site keep track of your submissions for you. But wait, that's not all! The site tracks this data on the markets own page, so we can all see how many people (not names, just numbers) are pending (aka, waiting for an acceptance or rejection) and the average number of days they are waiting.

Duotrope keeps the last twelve months of data on each of the markets pages. Necrotic Tissue has had 339 reports in the last twelve months with an average response time of 15.1 days (not too shabby). It shows two pending, which means that two writers haven't updated their pending to either an acceptance or rejection, because we responded to everyone that submitted for July by August 15th. When a writer changes their status from Pending to Rejection, they can pick one of eight other options which include form or personal rejection.

There is a page that summarizes what they call "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", where they list the best and worst for response times and acceptance rates. Possibly my favorite feature is the "What's New?" page. It shows the newest markets added, which have recently opened or closed and has a detailed list of everyone that has used submissions tracker to reflect a rejection or acceptance. I could go on and on, because there is more, but I think I've made my point. My point was that I am, despite my denial, addicted to Duotrope, but with good reason. As a publisher and as a writer, it is a fantastic resource. It's also a great resource for fans. If you love reading and want to find a new magazine or book publisher, Duotrope is the site for you. Each market page has a link to the actual website so you can check them out in detail.

I noticed that Dark Faith Anthology hasn't sent out a response lately, and that my submission was sent 86 days ago. In that time, I have realized that the submission I sent needs some work. I have a bad habit of getting psyched about a stories premise and sending it off before it is polished. By clicking on the market's link, I see that it closes on November 1st. I'm hoping to get my rejection before then (I am assuming it's a rejection at this point, but you never know), so I can squeak in a more polished and perhaps more appropriate story before the deadline.

My goal is to only pull up Duotrope once a day, since the data does not update in real time (yet). Odds are it will look the same no matter how many times I obsessively open it on the same day. I do have five stories currently out there, so there's a lot to check. Really, I might have missed something. Got to go, I have something I need to do.

Scott...

Bernard Cornwell is a Genius

2009-10-04T09:44:00.003-05:00

There are many schools of thought pertaining to writing. I think this is so because there are in fact so many different kinds of people writing and not every piece of advice or technique works for everyone. A piece of writing advice I subscribe to and believe is broad enough to apply to most writers, is to read. A lot. Reading within the chosen genre is a good idea, especially for new writers, but reading outside the genre is perhaps more important as writers develop.

I didn't hear this advice until after I had started writing with a vengeance three years ago. Luckily, I have always had varied tastes in literature. I cut my teeth on the greats in Fantasy and SciFi and didn't discover Horror until my early teens. I was ignorant of the small press offerings for most of my adult life, so I felt trapped by what the bookstores had to offer. I had my favorite authors and certainly I experimented from time to time, but I found I could read faster than even a dozen authors could get out new books.

A friend of mine suggested I try something different. Historical fiction in the form of a series by Bernard Cornwell with a central character called Sharpe. Cornwell uses fictional characters to guide the reader through actual historical events of note, in this case the Napoleonic Wars. He later expanded the series to cover Wellington's earlier Indian Campaign. Richard Sharpe started off as an enlisted man and was given a battlefield promotion for saving Wellington's life.

But the Sharpe series was just my introduction to Cornwell. He has published 47 books since 1981 covering mostly English History (there is a Civil War mini series). The most recent book is Agincourt and I can't believe I didn't see it coming. You see, Mr. Cornwell loves archers as any Englishman should, and while I am not English, I also love Archers. The battle of Agincourt was made famous by Shakespeare's Henry the V. It was an impressive battle for many reason, and has always been a favorite of mine. Now for those of you who do not like reading Shakespeare (and you know who you are), you can follow the fictional archer Nicholas Hook from 1413 to 1415 and get a genuine feel for what it was to live, love and fight in England and France during that time period.

I've seen whole threads discussing how to write realistic battle scenes, especially as it relates to melee combat. I recommend people quit looking for answer of this type on forums and start reading more. Bernard Cornwell is a master, wether it is individual combat or a whole scale battle with swords or muskets.

Michael Knost put out a great book called Writers Workshop of Horror. It is filled with excellent advice from writers who are all great, but are recognized for certain things such as opening, character development etc. The book is an excellent writing reference for any level of writer. If you have issues with openings, read Elizabeth Massie's chapter, Creating Effective Beginnings. The unspoken message though is to also read some of Elizabeth's work and the other writers that have been recognized by fans, peers and even critics as being particularly proficient in a certain aspect of writing to get a real feel for how those aspects are done.

I recommend that once you feel comfortable with the horror genre, to expand into other genres. Wether you're a writer trying to improve or an avid reader, you won't be sorry if you pick up a copy of Agincourt. Did I mention he was a genius?

What the bloggidy blog am I doing?

2009-10-01T12:30:00.002-05:00

Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and now this. This is of course a blog and I'm pretty sure blogs were around before the rest, but I never had cause to start. I always have things to say, but was pretty sure no one would care.

That hasn't changed much, but I would like to use this blog to discuss both my writing and my magazine Necrotic Tissue.

So this is my first official blog! Try to stay in your seats.

My very first published book is officially out. Feast is a novella (though technically is considered novel by the old standard of a writ en work over 40,000 words). What, me bitter? NANOWRIMO, or national novel writing month considers anything 50,000 and over a novel and the big boys in the publishing biz very by genre and publishing house. For horror, it is usually not a commercially viable novel unless it is at around 80,000 words.

Feast is about 45,000 words. Tim Deal from Shroud Publishing accepted it last year along with five other writers, all better known than I am. I'm proud to be among such writers as Rio Youers, Maurice Broaddus and D. Harlan Wilson.

It is for sale on Shrouds site: www.shroudmagazine.com/feast-by-r-scott-mccoy.html

And Amazon.com. Please type my name into the search field on amazon. I did and it was a hallmark moment in my writing life.

I hope you give it a try and if you like it, please write a review on amazon. Also, let me know what you think of it here.

I'm sure I will fill this blog with sporadic and incomprehensible rants from time to time, so swing by if you have a moment.

Scott...