Bittersweet

The HoW gathering in New Orleans is now an in-my-face priority, so imminent that I just checked-in for tomorrow morning’s flights delivering me to The Big Easy.

I wondered why the premium cable channel kept repeating the Spike Lee documentary, “If God is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” and learned it’s because Saturday, September 4th is the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

That 4-hour documentary extended beyond Katrina and into the BP oil disaster, and ended with music and still photos of the storm’s devastation, of disfigured and bloated bodies, corpses caught in death poses trapped in rubble that either crushed or drowned them.

Saturday, I know my emotional baggage will be packed with the day’s historic relevance.

I sense it will seem a little surreal that 100,000+ people will be partying with no holds barred in ’the Quarter’ although the infusion of money is desperately needed.

I know I’ll find comfort in the company of writers whose work I respect (each, and all), now writing friends I’ve made here, and will be privileged to meet, there.

Dick, Jane, Sally & Spot: Where Are [We] Today?

We probably taught your mama or grandparents how to read in the '50s or '60s (pretty important, right?) and then got tossed aside like potato peelings, except that peelings sometimes get the chance to be mulched.

Because we're literary, we don't really move-on but we do live-on and I’m Spot, a pup of the 50s, hoping I'm barking up an empathetic pant-leg with all of this.

I got sick and tired of that little blonde bitch tugging on my ears all the time but got my revenge on Sally by pissing a yellow lake next to her bed so that every morning her footsie-bottomed pajamas would get soaked, but don’t blame me for her psyche being as scrambled as a Scrabble letters bag.

Poor Sally's a drunk who can’t handle obscurity, sleeps with every worthless loser-boozer in this little dive bar down on Jefferson, the one whose neon sign hasn’t worked right since Sal was America’s little darlin’--with a bigger and longer run with us than Shirley Temple (who at least got a drink named after her even if it is diabetic death and dry as a Mormon dance, for chrissake).Freckle-faced Dick still has that eldest sibling superiority thing when, in actuality, the poster boy for nerdism can’t figure out how to start the lawnmower sometimes and still hangs his Christmas lights along the front of his house in rows that frantically blink Morse code of, “Why are we the only crooked fucking string on the block, dick!” or maybe it’s “Dick” (because, trouble with Morse is, you can’t tell upper from lower cases, “dick” from “Dick” with that code stuff).


You had to know Jane went corporate, one of those MBA feministas, man-without-balls types who thinks she can get to the top without going horizontal, but I guess that’s why you people write, so that colorful characters like us flea-bitten, leg-humping old pooches can exist, even if it’s on dusty shelves or in old musty boxes in attics and basements, while some of the diminishing few of you cherish and collect us to warm your hearts or whore us out for whatever you can scrounge on e-Bay and never give a nanosecond of thought as to why poor Sally‘s a lush.

Inmated

Randy’s smooth ride on the heavily armored bus was eerily quiet and found him consumed by the heady cocktail of two jiggers of fear, a splash of remorse, and a twist of fate, for, his life was on the rocks.

He caught a 12-year stretch for separating fools from their money by illegal internet means--fraud and grand theft--but reality’s pinch of prison didn’t hit him until that bus ride.
After two hours’ in-processing, a medical check and a 90 minute orientation, the uniformed guard jokingly referred to as “Life in Your New Neighborhood,” which returned only mumblng, stares, and a murderous look from the man with a raised middle finger, it was time for a walk.


This 'white collar crimes' convict wasn’t sure he had a single skill or mechanism to survive life inside.

With bedding laden arms and handcuffed, Randy’s heartbeat was in his throat on the walk to his cell, a 200-yard walk that seemed like a 10-mile, uphill trudge experiencing aches that weren't there.

Less than 20 feet from his cell, one of the guards snickered, “Oh, you’ll love your cellmate, Louie, and I’m sure he’s gonna love a tight, new piece of ass,” and San Quentin’s newest resident, “M27696“, fainted into a heap onto a threadbare blanket and stained pillow.

Ronnie Ray's An' My Give 'n Take

My buddies have all gone tesstossterstone-wacky or however you spell that hormoan over the 2010 Camaro and paid 70 bucks to rip around town in it for a day. It jumps off the line and throws ya back on the seat when ya stomp it, and it surely gets eyeball, but they agree ya just can't see out the tiny rear window worth a tinker's damn, that it's useless as socks on a rooster.
The V-8 "SS" version, the one with the rally stripes, has nice tires and rims, though, so I rented the dang thing and Ronnie Ray done me a good turn, seein' as he owed me one. I only paid $360 for the tires he put on that Camaro I rented.

Them Camaro tires look sweeeeeet on my Mustang GT and them rental guys is never gonna notice they $1300 ($1150! Just saw they on sale, set o' 4) rubber has been replaced, and besides, it's a give and take world and it's not like I stoled 'em or nothin', is it? Cuz the cheap ones is new an' all, right?

[Before well-intentioned do-gooder readers report this blog to Officer Schmedley, note that it is fiction,and that the author does not own a Mustang or any car requiring or having the fitment for 'performance' tires.]

No One's Home for Saint Fastidious

2004
Carl Ponicetti turned his tan Lincoln onto the wide, L-shaped driveway. The car pulled up to the only house door adjacent to the 7-car garage. An elderly man got out and poked an electronic keypad next to the 9,000 square-foot home's door. A green light flashed, and Ponicetti entered the home. Every move had been watched.


1980
Dutch Lieber and his father crawled out from under a bungalow’s crawl space after working on a particularly nasty plumbing repair. It was a back-up with feces, urine, toilet paper and globs of Kleenex, tissues that didn’t dissolve like toilet paper and had caused the problem. The snake hadn’t cleared it and removing the pipe splashed the fetid goop on the man and boy.


Dutch emerged heaving and dry-heaving from the combined effects of the obnoxious fumes under the house, the heat and relentless humidity. His old man, Fritz, couldn’t help but laugh at his only son, now with hints of green in his normally pinkish coloring. Gasping for breath, it was all the boy could do to even look up and, in an unthinking moment, he raised his middle finger at his father.


The vise grip of his father’s hand grabbed him by a shoulder and his shirt, and the youngster was hauled over to the step-bumper of the plumber’s truck. He had never felt his father’s had hit or slap in anger, but he feared his gesture would bring pain unlike he’d known at his father’s hand. Instead, Fritz pushed Dutch’s rear-end down onto the bumper, and Dutch received the lecture of his life. He never forgot the last part.


“Other kids are get a $100,000 loan debt for a degree in something they’ll never use, you’re a ‘turd-herder’ out here earning a hundred grand, drivin‘ a ‘Vette before you‘re 30. There’s no high society parties but you’ll get everything meaningful you want in life, including a good woman and kids!” It got every ounce of Dutch’s attention, especially the ’Vette part. There was never another apprentice’s complaint.


Plumbing delivered on his dad’s promise. It all came his way: the nice girl seeking security in a working man’s home, and that beautiful home. Nice cars. Great vacations. Life seemed good for too-short a time.

Two months after marrying his only high school girlfriend, Dutch’s father passed away, leaving him parentless, mourning in a bottle. He found the cure and resolve in AA meetings.


Dutch’s mom was a flu victims you only hear about on TV, succumbing with every imaginable tube protruding from her body. Dutch was only a toddler, and later grateful his mom’s funeral wasn’t burned into his memory.

 Childhood friends’ moms took Dutch under their wings and apron strings, and teachers knew a latch-key kid with a plumber father may not be reachable or engaged. Dutch was a quiet kid whose only sibling OD’ed on her prom night.


2004
Dutch sat in his van using a toy telescope to watch Ponicetti. He’d faithfully been there eight mornings, and he finally got it. 7-3-2-8-8-4-3, the keypad dialer’s entry code to the back door.


Daily for weeks, Dutch scoured newspaper obituaries, circling select entries and making red X’s and horizontal lines on the calendar next to the morning paper. Tuesday. Ponicetti’s was clear and the show was on!


The better part of two evenings found Dutch in his garage. His van was backed into the garage with enough space to let the rear doors swing completely wide. Using an intricate design of bungee cords, a thirty-inch section of 2-inch galvanized pipe, and some wooden shims, Dutch’s knees were sore from kneeling on the garage’s concrete to test the device time and again, perfecting the angle and down force. When a particular scaffold board moved from the right side of the van’s floor, it triggered the shim’s release of the pipe near the van’s headliner, a release delivering a vicious, downward swing powered by leverage and tension from the bungee cords.


The plumber’s van pulled to the curb under streetlights unlike others in the city, dank illumination that seemed reserved for the projects. Ironically, the worst light was shed on the most violent streets.


With a predator’s eye, Dutch surveyed the scene through the van’s windows and spotted what he was looking for, the who that would become a what before dawn.


Mid-block, a singular young black man fidgeted nervously, sometimes interspersing what appeared to be dance moves, probably to the beat of whatever the ear pods were delivering from a pocketed music player. An occasional pedestrian would briefly engage the man in conversation, the two would seem to shake hands, and the walker would about-face to head off somewhere to enjoy the dope he’d just scored.


Just past 2am, the loner dope dealer called it a night and made toward the corner. Dutch pulled the headlights on as he fired the van’s engine. Approaching the dealer, the van slowed to match the man’s pace. Dutch pulled just ahead and rolled down the window. “Hey, mah-man, can you help?” he shouted to the approaching man who stopped short of the window.


‘Sup? Whatchu wantin’ or be needin’?


“I gotta forty that says you’ll help me a minute, pullin’s some stuff out for an emergency I got in that building right there. C’mon, 2 minutes help for forty bucks?”


Wary, the dealer shrugged off any suspicion and forty bones was forty bones.


Dutch hopped out, directing the man to the right rear door of the van and unlocked the door. He opened the doors, shielding all but the rear from anyone’s view.


“Just help me slide the scaffold boards out… right there….”


Grabbing the top board was the druggie‘s his last conscious act. The pipe’s crack against the man’s skull wasn’t just a fracturing blow. By design, it propelled half the body into the van. Dutch shoved dangling legs into the van, pulling a tarp over the man‘s form. The doors were locked and slammed quickly shut, and Dutch used cruise control to keep adrenaline from speeding in his exit from a neighborhood that had to have cops in it this time of night.


His destination was a good 20 minutes away, so Dutch made his way toward and onto the expressway, making for the suburbs and Ponicetti’s.


The back of the van was against Ponicetti’s driveway door. Dutch tapped 7328843 and gained access. Tightening the tarp, Dutch fireman-carried the doper in through a carpeted hall. He stopped at a reception desk to remove a key the top drawer. The “Staff Only” door was keyed open, and he hit the switch and the 24x36 embalming room of “Ponicetti Mortuary Services, Est. 1982” was awash in simulated natural daylight.


Dutch dumped the tarped body head-first onto rollers of metal conveyor track. He exited the room and the back door and trotted around the back corner of the building. With only a penlight, screwdriver, pliers and wooden toothpick, Dutch temporarily disabled the gas meter.


He opened the van’s side door and hauled out the wet-dry shop-vac. Reentering the building, carrying the awkward vac to prevent roller marks, he retraced his steps through the darkened hallway toward the tiny strand of light escaping the thick plush under the embalming room’s door.


Dutch almost pissed himself as the head of the body first hit the flames bringing a muffled scream from the tarp, surprising Dutch that the shit-bag dealer wasn’t yet dead, a fate coming true 4 seconds later as the super-burners ignited. In under 45 minutes, ‘Done dealer,’ he thought, stifling a laugh.


When his father and he had installed the stainless crematory oven, his dad had trained Ponicetti in its operation, again and again incinerating casket-sized, cardboard-woven trays designed for cradling fire-bound bodies.


As Dutch used the shop vac to suck-up the remains, he thought of the dealer responsible for his daughter’s overdose. The embalming room looked and smelled fresher that when Dutch entered, as he rolled the shop vac across the rubberized tile to the door and flipped off the light. He wrestled the key in to the door’s lock around the vac’s cylinder, then leaned the cylinder against the desk’s edge to replace the key.


It was pitch black outside. Not even paperboys were out with the morning edition.


Dutch reloaded the heavier shop vac and reached to his back pocket to retrieve the handful of tools as he reassembled the gas meter, ensuring it worked.


2010
White, black, taggers, pushers and bullies…. To date, I seen more than 18 scuzzes erased from the streets, people are still dyin’ to get into Ponicetti’s, Lieber & Son Plumbers have held the maintenance contract since the parlor’s ‘82 opening.


I like this guy. So why wreck a good thing by telling you what city. I supplement my social security, get cash on the barrel-head for cleaning Ponicetti’s, late-nights, cuz I don‘t spook so easy. This plumber ain't ever seen me and I always have the key right there.

The Kavanagh Succession

Liam emerged from the tool shed with a simple pole and reel, holding a cup of worms which he handed down to Keegan Kavanagh, wee but proud of his six years.

The father walked his son downhill to the soft bank of the loch on the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns, settled the boy on a stump, and smiled as the lad giggled whilst putting the worm on the hook and lowering it into the shallows.

Liam trudged up the hill to the shed and repeatedly put a whetstone to the edge of the sickle as his father's father before him had taught him.

Keegan yelped and hollered as a catfish of at least 8 kilograms took the hook through the lower lip and oddly enough swam toward the boy, hovering not a meter away, and staring eyes-on-eyes with the lad whose cries were lost in the breeze and steel singing against stone across the distance.

Keegan and the great fish began to blink in synchronous rhythm, and the boy laid the pole to the ground, the large fish's mouth opened as the youngster removed the hook, informing that fish, “Be seein’ your likes again, I will.”

Some 22 years later, Keegan trudged uphill toward the shed when he heard little Seamus shriek at the loch’s edge, yelling he had a monster fish hooked and the father turned to see his son’s pole bent to the point of near breaking and glanced to his father's, Liam Kavanagh's grave on the far hill, and with a plough-worn weathered hand, wiped a tear from his cheek on what looked to be the clearest and most beautiful of summer morns.

Psst, Fellow Conservatives: What’s All the Fuss?

I was vacillating between the choice DirectTV or Dish Network and, in three calls to the two companies, reached reps in the Philippines, India, and India, respectively.

This morning, I called UPS to compliment a delivery driver’s thoughtfulness (slipping my packages over my fence) and the rep who helped me was in Guatemala.

Fellow conservatives, you know I’m not a ‘bagger, but you have to give me credit for discovering the secret location the 600,000 new jobs Pres. Obama created!

I doubt those jobs pay very well but I’m excitedly anticipating the rollout of Washington’s plan for my daily commute, which he’ll probably liken to Rome not being built overnight.

This is such good stuff, I’m wondering if he’ll move my healthcare or V.A. Hospitals to some of those places (?).

Honing My Skills

When the elderly lady seated at my desk asked why I walked with a cane, I explained how I got hit by a bus when I was 5 years old, how my mother pleaded with the doctor not to amputate my leg, for, she wanted me to have two legs like other little boys and not be ridiculed for a prosthesis or stump.

She left dabbing her eyes, and the next customer who sat down asked why the woman had left my desk with misty eyes and a moist tissue.

I related that she had inquired how I had hurt my leg, and I went into great detail that, during the war, I had put this wounded guy up onto the tank to get us the hell out of the line of fire, and that when I jumped aboard, the tank turret swung around to blast the bad guys and snapped my leg at the thigh, shattering my femur now held together with pins and screws.


The guy who followed the (now) two weeping women departing my desk asked about the commotion, and I simply told him they were moved about how my leg had been mangled and horribly broken on my vacation to Hawaii, when I swam out way too far to rescue a swimmer in distress, how the lifeguards spotted the guy and got to him with a boat before I ever could have, but how a wave caught and flipped me, throwing my body into a jagged reef.

The 20-year old ‘hottie’ noticed my cane as I stood to greet her wincing with pain, and I answered her inquisitive glance recounting how I was stuntman some thirty years ago when I was her age, and how I’d been hurt practicing a stunt to be in a Steve McQueen movie, nearly losing my leg and absolutely losing the chance to be credited in the movie.

As they came and went away with different stories without the benefit of a "Fiction" ‘tag,’ I was notably impressed by the amount of fiction craft a writer can perfect without ever lifting a pen or using a keyboard, that—whether in print or by voice—it’s all in the telling, now, isn’t it ::wink::

Quayle-for-Congress Nails the White House!

This commercial just aired and I almost fell outta the chair.


Arizonans are fed-up with the Fed's inaction on the illegal invasion from the South.


Can this win an election? I dunno, but it's the ballsiest spot I've ever seen. Tough talk?

Click this and you decide.

Just Like on TV

Jobless drop-out 20-year old street-creature Tuff Guy was riding his bike, short-cutting through the mall's parking lot and not even thinking about being mischievous.

He spotted his dream car, a 'beamer screamer' BMW650i that cost somebody 90-grand, so he cross-cut the long rows, gliding over a couple to check-out the 'beamer.'

He pulled-up on the passenger side and eyed a prize in the front passenger's seat: a slim-line laptop computer case, and thought 'BO-NUS!'

To avoid looking suspicious, he laid his bike flat on the ground and, just like on TV, he bent his right arm and rared it back so his elbow would shatter the glass and he could make off with the computer before anyone could blink twice.

Just like on TV, the elbow's impact broke the glass, alright, but unlike TV, Tuff Guy nicked an artery, and collapsed in a heap over his bicycle and slowly bled to death as the car's alarm sent ear-splitting honks and beeps slicing through the morning's quiet air.

Just like in real life, none of the hundreds of people in the parking lot paid any attention to the car alarm going off or Tough Guy might have gotten first aid, lived through the ordeal and gone to jail, and maybe even been featured on "World's Dumbest Criminals," yeah, on TV!

Riding Out

Rain pounded-down the garden's flowers and shrubs with just the thorny rose stalks standing strongest against the lashing. In the back of the house, cold drops sped down the master bedroom's window as if walkers in a foot-race vying to reach the outer sill before puddling themselves into the eventuality of their falls to the ground

She sat on the edge of the bed peering through the window's streams, focused on nothing in particular, heard the door open and Vince's soft footfalls on the carpet.

He saw the hankerchief clenched in the white-knuckled fist atop her lap as he walked around the edge of the bed, saw her face mimicking the windows with streaking tears evaporated by her telepathically palpable numbness.

Practiced words from Vince's mental rehearsals were wiped as cleanly as a squeegee across a wet pane, as absolute as the wetted pain uncontained in her eyes.

In the moment's excruciating silence, any word would wound her, the more superficial as effective as the deepest, and he knew the only healing she'd ever experience was by sheltering herself--probably separating herself--from his stormy behaviors and a flamboyant lifestyle he hid, that she never deserved or saw falling.

Jeez I Love That Woman

I'm so pissed off I'm seeing red, turning blue in the face, and she's looking over at me from the kitchen, giggling like a pink-cheeked school girl.She knows I occasionally lose my temper like a tantrum-throwing 5-year old.
But this time, they better put out an amber alert for my sanity and there she stands, cool as a cucumber."Honey, I'm sitting here dying and I know you get it, that we writers are sensitive, that the computer is my 'vox clamantis in deserto,' my lone voice calling out from the wilderness' in that voice that usually calms me, that I don't find so terribly cute at the moment. "I'm not laughing at your computer problem. I'm laughing because, here you are coming completely unglued while your winky is out of your boxers like someone hanging out of a window trying to escape an apartment house fire."

Ten Voices of a Mind to Write

Ten of us, from here, will take-on the town, with ten different takes and in how many different voices remains to be seen.

We’ll rub elbows and break bread, laugh and mind-joust in games, and make merriment with drink.

New Orleans ghosts and some of her historic past will sing through our fingers, and her present, her presence, speak. .

The Big Easy will prod different muses to persist in seeking and finding their way into print, with perspectives from Alabama… Arizona… Maryland… Germany… Great Britain… Texas… Great Britain…and from wherever the heck Grey Johnson hails ;)

The Crescent City’s call to the writer will be heard and find voicing, writing that may be extraordinary, well worth my anticipated wait.

For this writer, I may look back on this experience and have to rename it “Labors of Love” weekend, instead of Labor Day.

Ended-Up...Really?

Did you follow your head… or your feet… or your eyes?
Did you follow your heart… or the crowd?
Did you follow your faith… or your finances?
If you led, with what compass?

There is daylight and the trailheads before you,
maybe one yet to blaze, for,
have you really ‘ended-up?’
Or have you just given up
before finding hope in the change
only you can make in your course?

One Undeserved Turn

Ronnie Ray had his big V-8 pickup truck about 3 weeks and it was a sweet dream, too, with 20-inch custom wheels, bed liner, killer steerio, 2-toned paint, and the pride of every mother-lovin' Southern boy's accessorizin', a heavy duty winch in front, and big-ass chromed, diamond-plate step bumper on the back.


Uncle Richie kinda fudged on the financin' to get Ronnie Ray into the thing cuzza Richie's sister Earleen (Ronnie Ray's mama, an' all), and that Ronnie Ray done hot-rodded it from Day One!


He stoopped kinda late and was way over the intersection line, yesterday, but the fellar behind him flashed brights, signallin' Ronnie Ray he could back up.


Well, the light turns green and Ronnie Ray stomps it, still in reverse, and plows dead into that nice fellar's car that had done him such a nice turn.


Ronnie Ray's insurance man 'bout fainted when he phoned it in, sayin' he'd put a major league hurt on the traumatic redesign of the front end on a Mercedes CL-63AMG.


Do you know that dang thing cost over $160,000, and Ronnie Ray 'bout shit when he finds it out, sayin', "You could buy a whole passel...mebbe a neightborhood o' trailer homes for that damn much money," and I know that's right!

A Sailing Lesson for Life

High winds white-capped Saguaro Lake so vigorously that when my Jeep rolled up with the sailboat in-tow, fishing boats were being blown-off home-made anchors of concrete-filled coffee cans. Anglers reeled lines and pulled anchor to seek safety before winds threw their craft onto the rocks. Ski boats surrendered to the chop and conditions making misery under a sunny afternoon.

Around me ashore, I saw the wind’s earlier victims. Trailer-secured power boats suffered demolished shade canopies whose supports had been mangled like tormented, minimalist, aluminum sculptures.

Boats from all directions aimed for the 2 launch ramps in lines resembling and with the determination of landing craft at Normandy.

Meanwhile, Prindle and Hobie catamarans were sporting trapezes and frolicking, with better sailors able to fly both floats out of the water in arcs mindful of 18-foot fiberglass dolphins. Single-hulled sailors were conspicuously absent. The cats drew impressed onlookers from shore, swilling beers seated atop their trailers and truck beds.

I began removing rigging for what must be a tricky launch from the rocks. A spectator trotted over.

Pointing at my boat then to the lake, he held his baseball cap against his head and yelled over whipping wind, "You're taking that out into THAT!??" He rightly knew conditions exceeded my hull and sail ratings. After all, I had just 13’10-½” of overall length. My gear was rated to 25mph breezes, half the gusting speeds over the agitated water.

I feigned nonchalance reeking of machismo, replied with prophetic self-doom. "It’s hairy. But I can’t let the cats have all the fun,“ akin to the adage of “A sport-biker's last words: ‘Watch this.’"

The exodus of fleeing power boats jammed the ramps so I used 4-wheel drive to gently bounce my trailer down the rocks to the water's edge. My hull was finally in the water, tied-off on a large rock and susceptible to being shattered if blown into or onto the rocks.

I emerged from the Jeep with laden arms: tiller assembly, a small cooler, ball cap and a very hi-tech 3-oz PFD (personal flotation device) vest I used as a seat cushion. I grabbed sailing gloves from (where else?) the glove box. Bare-handed sailing was okay in gentle breezes but nothing was gentle about this day. My hands might get sawn-through by rope-burn by the treacherous conditions.

Wading to the hull, I emptied my arms into the cockpit.

Wind gusts punished my mainsail so viciously that the luffing yielded angry, loud to nearly echoing slaps and pops of disagreement and refusal. I feared the sheet would tear and North Sails weren’t cheap. Not my performance cut.

I bounced the Jeep and trailer up to the parking area. Negotiating the rocks back down, afoot in howling winds, was no small challenge.

The bowline was loosed and I bellied over the rail to cotter-pin the tiller into place. I seated and secured the dagger board, turned and trimmed the main. The boat took off with incredulous speed, the mainsail's seams truly tested. My grin was 50,000 watts.

For almost 2 hours, it was exhilarating to terrifying’s teetering edge. Cats gave me thumbs-up for my skills in 40-50mph gusts. My hull cleared the water several times, exposing the dagger board to howls and cheers from the catamarans, as each time I'd brace for reentry’s slap back into the whitecaps not knowing what to expect. I whooped rebel yells to discharge excess energy disregarding their inaudible cores of fear.

My vang (a control line/rope) suddenly broke its cleat, succumbed to the strain. The line got away in sync with a wind shift, and I was in an instant jibe, swinging 180-degrees putting the wind at my back. The boom sliced across the deck and I ducked from harm’s way. I leaned into the cockpit reaching for the line flogging my calves. Got it!! And as I raised up frantically hauling line to regain control, another wind shift jibed the boat.

The boom caught me in the head, not glancing or direct but forcefully enough to knock me into the water like the head of a bowling pin being toppled by a bullet. The wind's fury of my presence kicked the hull onto its side in the opposite direction as the main quietly filled with water six inches below the surface.

My nose and mouth were bleeding, my jaw and nose maybe broken. Involuntary tears from pain and wooziness, the impact, blurred my vision. If I'd just worn the PDF instead of parking my ass on it.

At best, I had a concussion. If I lost consciousness, there was nobody close enough to save me. Even the cats would play hell tacking for position to get me, but they had run to the back lake.

I could bleed to death down the back of my throat if on my back, so I gulped big breaths and held them for vertical flotation. I brought a gloved hand to my face, pinching my nose, hard, to stop the bleeding, mashing the heel of that hand against my gashed mouth. Added pain might keep me conscious, alive.

Churning water moved me around, listlessly. A blurry glimpse to shore and the ramps caught once-seated onlookers shocked-still, watching helplessly. My hull lay on its side with the dagger board perpendicular to the rail as if sticking out its tongue in “I told you so.”

The boom strike broke the sunglasses off my face and deep-sixed them. My cap was 60 feet off and floating farther. The cooler was half a football field away. Gulping lake water, breathing impaired from facial swelling, I cursed myself for the expensive PFD way off in a third direction.

Through layered, translucent curtains of pain and surrealism, I prayed. Resignation. I would be swallowed by Saguaro Lake. Die. And knew it. Even my prayer was weak, asking only forgiveness for my wrong-doings and missteps.

I weakly treaded water, the nose-bleed now stopped from the agonizing squeezing, but still groggy. I heard something and craned my neck back to look.

My rescuers materialized in a 1940s runabout with a chalky, faded red deck and white hull. It was about a mile or so off and turning its bow to my sightline. No one was launching in this windstorm. They must have been campers from another part of the lake.

I managed a rag-armed wave as I was some 40 yards off my hull‘s position. I'd been spotted. “Shit. I just might live.” Inexplicably, my rescuers turned about 20-degrees off-course from me.

The fisher powered down 100 yards off, barely idling and now inching away at a 45-degree angle. I saw its antique Evinrude 40 outboard as dilapidated as the hull it pushed. I could make out a couple hunting-hatted guys.

The wind shoved them around and I saw a fisherman's rod tip dipping into the water. He had snagged my hat! Then the boat nudged off another way and the angler suddenly hoisted my PDF aboard. The boat swung, transom facing me, bow to the shore. Again, it angled off slowly. A plaid-shirted guy jerked my small cooler out of the lake, heavy with lake water.

My rescue was imminent. I rallied.

Then the Evinrude whined and screamed to full throttle, the old boat pirouetting to race toward the farthest visible shore. It shrank to a pea‘s size and, in horror, I saw it cranked onto its trailer as the truck sped off in its own dust cloud.

Anger-triggered adrenalin snapped me fully alert, powering scissor-kicks to my hull. I worked the water out of the main and crudely lashed it to the mast. The wind died, dropping from 50mph to 3mph as if a fan’s fuse had blown. I swam around and righted the hull on the 4th or 5th try.

I was a mess. My rigging was a mess but I managed half the sheet to get me to shore. Onlookers motioned me to the ramp.

Three waded out, one catching the bowline I threw with surprising accuracy. I plopped over the side into waist-deep water, taken by the arms and walked up the ramp and was attended to on the ground. A woman rushed up with ice in one hand, a first-aid kit in the other. The was chatter about thieving fishermen. If there was talk of my stupidity I never heard it.

I declined ride and ambulance offers, sure I could make the hour-long drive home. Aid givers got my keys, brought down my Jeep and trailer, and secured my boat onto it. I sat on the gravel, propped by my Jeep tire until the last 5 minutes of sunset.

I left, beaten.

I missed a week‘s work, recounting the incident like a looped videotape playing endlessly. It was a beating I'd never forget and a lesson I'd never have to repeat.

 I’d been beaten by the wind. Beaten by the lake. Beaten by thieves. I’d been beaten by ego-driven bravado bullying common sense into reckless endangerment.

A Night Sky for a Desert Sleep

From first light, the sky was dominated by thick quilts of grey clouds that never delivered on their promise of rain.


August’s skin-scorching sunshine was buffered and repelled, sneaking diminished heat around cloud banks' edges, tempering the day, offering an enjoyably noticeable respite.


It’s twenty hours later, 90 minutes into the new day, and I‘m restless with the agitation of wanderlust.


A moisture-cooled breeze is gliding across the desert with the ease and grace of a figure skater.


It’s as if the breezes are activating a windshield wash-like effect removing dust and pollution between me and my connection with a night sky awash in indigo ink hosting more stars than usually seen from this sleeping city.


I’m in the moment, at peace and able to sleep in the near while, but wishing it were out of doors, under such mesmerizing heavens.

Profound or No-So-Profound Discovery?

For more than five decades, I've heard about 'the unwritten rules.' Like, in elementary school, "It's kind of an unwritten rule that 7th and 8th graders blobbity-bleep-blope-bladda...."


In college, it was "Even though it's the student radio station, it's kind of an unwritten rule that we nibbidy-nop-blop bloo-biddy-bo...."


Uncle Sam did it to me in the service, "The unwritten rule for combat medics is that frickety-flobb-flurk-flom...."

Over espresso and bagels with a friend, I was bemoaning how sick I am of these unwritten rules you don't learn until you break one, and made an earth-moving discovery: Life's Unwritten Rules.


Here are the first 6:


1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Are all these sets of unwritten rules just monuments to illiteracy or what?

9th Circuit Court Jesters: Spirit of The Law, Will of the People?

It's physically located at San Francisco, California, and has earned an infamous reputation among learned scholars for rending decisions that baffle many of the USA's brightest legal minds, liberal and conservative, and may soon put the term "sore winners" into our vernacular.



California voters went to the polls and voted-down same-sex marriage, and the 9th Circuit has just intervened, putting a big hitch in the giddy-up of my view of "government of the People, by the People, and for the People."


That Circuit Court, in the city who has officially boycotted the State of Arizona law concerning illegal aliens, will hear arguments and sit in judgement of SB-1070.


First the California voters, and now the Arizona voters.


You vote, your measure passes or doesn't, and life goes on because you've earned the right to complain by exercising your say by way of your ballot.


In the notorious 9th, the will of the People, votes and elections, don't seem to matter which leaves this observer reflecting upon about how things were intended to work, because fairness would seem to dictate this boycotted state's issue should be moved to a less skewed environment for examination and argument.


Californians don't want gay marriage and said so at the ballot box: they voted against institutionalizing the legal contract of marriage between two parties of the same gender. I didn't see where they voted against gay people or gay relationships.


Can gay couples make a legally binding contract, call it something else (LifeBlend or something), other than the Judeo-Christian term without forcing the rest of us to redefine our concept? Sure they can. They don't wanna.

Some companies whose names you'd recognize extend health benefits to persons with a "life partner," yet, if I my "life partner" is a woman, I am not benefited. And it's legal. Is it fair? Or moot?


My company roomed me with a gay guy for 3 nights on a business trip at an expensive hotel. Would they have put me in a room with a woman? Did I like it? Was it fair?


This blog is about fairness, objectivity, and an embarrassingly questionable and overturn-ridden (US Supreme Court) track record by the 9th Circuit Court.

What it isn't, is homophobic

MOSQUE AT GROUND ZERO IN NEW YORK CITY

Did you react to the title?


I believe in religious freedom in the U.S.--short of human sacrifice although I'm okay with Tennessee wackos who play with venomous snakes in church. That's just plum-funny to this Kentuckian and good TV that I'd watch on TBN or ESPN, and maybe even tithe to Sony to see.


A mosque at ground zero? Did we go to Nagasaki or Hiroshima in 1959 and, on that ominous ground zero site, build Our Lady of the Mushroom Cloud or Saint Meltdown Catholic churches, or erect The First Ebenezer Church of Fallout Jesus...?


I reacted to a mosque at the Twin Towers' site and am saddened, but tolerant, wishful it weren't so, yet I still believe in fortifying the tapestry of liberty with diversity as long as Old Glory is flying overhead.

Mob Puts Million Dollar Hit on Sheriff Arpaio

Renown (in conservative) and in some (liberal-left) circles 'notorious' Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has learned the Mexican drug cartel has put a $1 million contract on his head.
Known for enforcement actions against some of the 495,000 illegals who cross into Arizona every year and are stopped/found to be breaking other laws, to the delight of an electorate that keeps the zealous senior citizen sporting the badge, Arpaio seems nonplussed at a death threat with payola attached.

Before you decide to assassinate our most dedicated public servant, a few of us Arizonans and this blogger are just wondering....

After you slay poor Joe, what is the Mexican Mafia's Drug Cartel Division's cell-phone number that you're going to dial to claim your windfall?

Just how, exactly, are you gonna say, "Pay up, asshole," [because I really think you should practice that speech] in light of the fact their Juarez, Mexico, Chapter (Lodge? Franchise?) is murdering 400 people a month just across the river from El Paso, Texas?

And like any good reporter worth his salt, my last question is two-fold: What collection agency will you use to go after the mob once you figure out you're not Grand Marshall of their next 'Cinco del Estupido' parade or will you sue for breach of contract...and what the hell were you thinking when you sparked the ire of law abiding citizens already angry about a literal invasion Washington, D.C. chooses to ignore?