"Woman Chair!"

This is an exciting headline that greeted readers one recent day in the local newspaper.

Eventually, it became somewhat clearer what the two words were intended to mean.

At first, nothing came to mind so much as those 80’s cars with robot voices that announced to occupants with annoying regularity, “A Door is A Jar.”

No, I still insist. A door is not a jar. And, a woman is not a chair.

But you see, women’s lib has backed the poor newspaper into a corner, and the editors can no longer find the politically correct English words to announce this astonishing fact: A person of feminine gender has been selected to lead the local rodeo committee for the next year.

Woman Chair! They couldn’t, or didn’t dare, report, “Woman Selected Chairman.” That would be almost as bad as saying “Water department workers found the problem as soon as they opened the manhole cover.”

Manhole cover. Perish the thought. Nowadays that has to be “Personhole Cover.” It does lose something in the translation, doesn’t it?

Woman Chair!

Apparently, this is big news in the local scandal sheet because it proves that after nearly 100 years, the rodeo has finally become progressive enough to permit a female to be the Big Kahuna.

Which brings us, at long last, to the true purpose of this particular diatribe: The phrase “progressive rodeo” seems quite poignant in its mutual exclusivity.

The concept of a rodeo as a “progressive event” simply boggles the mind. It’s actually quite the opposite. Here are some cases in point.

At The Greeley Stampede the biggest draw, the biggest ticket seller, far and away the best moneymaker is a grotesque, crude, destructive, violent, noisy, dusty, smoky, unhealthy event known as “demolition derby.”

In this competition, buffoons in beefed-up heavy older automobiles drive around in circles bashing into each other until only one is left running.

Now hey Bubba, don’t that sound like fun. Which is more disgusting, the young men who build and drive the automobiles – or the slobbering fools who pay for admission and sit there cheering while watching the destruction?

Lest you think this is the worst thing about the local rodeo, keep on reading, folks.

For years, to make money, church youth groups have participated in the “stadium cleanup” project. Here’s how it works: First, the young folks are allowed free show admission, so they can hear lots of live music, much of it focusing on marital infidelity.

Then, in this little-known underbelly of the popular rodeo, our impressionable young people get to stay afterwards to use shovels, buckets, rakes, brooms, mops and strong stomachs to clean up after the filthy dregs of humanity who have attended.

Truckloads of garbage are collected and hauled off at the end of each day. Imagine – you buy a hot dog for $8, you eat part of it, and throw the rest anywhere in the stadium, for someone else to step on, or sit on, for someone else to clean up.

What a stellar object lesson for the young.

Woman Chair!

What self-respecting individual of either gender would be driven by what unseen ambition to become the “chair” of this event?

Well here’s how that goes: Society at the rodeo has its zenith among the crumbs who make up the upper crust.

Its nadir is found in the infestation of pond scum that oozes into town every summer. People who pay for admission are sprinkled in the middle there somewhere.

Yes, folks actually aspire to “serve” in this absurd annual event. It is perceived as an indicator of status if one rises to the lofty level of Committee Member, Woman Chair or Man Chair.

If you have arrived in this prestigious category, you get to drive a specially-marked new white pickup truck for a while, and you can haughtily thumb your nose all over town at the rest of us underlings. This is the ultimate in snob appeal, the highest point to which one can rise in society here locally – unless you could become Rodeo Queen.

Man Queen!

Just imagine a headline another year: “Man Queen!” Then the rodeo would truly become a progressive event. However, let us save any laborious descriptions of the Rodeo Queen Contest for another time. The poor babies.

Barrel Racing!

Now here is an event that will stop the most staunch women’s libber right in her tracks.

Separate but equal! There’s not much evidence that men actually want to enter the barrel racing.

It’s an event that was invented to give the girls something to do during rodeos, because sooner or later you know they are going to want to ride the bulls.

There is a rumor that next year, the Barrels are planning a strike, threatening to refuse to participate. They have a point. What would a barrel race be without Barrels?

The real rodeo itself? Think of yourself as a calf. Suddenly, you are chased out into a brightly lighted sandy field, and some genius on a tall horse loops a bristly, stiff rope tightly around your neck.

People cheer while you are jerked ingloriously upside-down to the ground. We’re told repeatedly how this doesn’t actually hurt the calf. Sure.

How entertaining can life be? Enough said about the rodeo itself? Didn’t get to see enough violence and bloodshed at the rodeo or the demo derby? Hey. Maybe next year.

Perhaps someone should suggest to the Woman Chair a new motto for next summer:

“The Greeley Stampede. Entertaining the public by dominating domestic beasts for 91 years!”

Fare Thee Well

Hasta la Vista, baby. Sayonara. Adios. Aloha. See ya later, alligator. After a while, crocodile. Vaya con Dios.

That’s right. Buenos noches Irene. After more than three and a half years, the Friday Letters bids you adieu.

In 189 weekly installments, Mr. Tommy has strung together approximately 190,000 words. For readership ease and appeal, the rule was to limit each chapter to about 1,000 words.

At first, the weekly letters were intended for our four children. The original concept came from daughter Tammy, but others, like my sister-in-law Bonnie, were supportive.

As you may have read in last week’s installment, the family is spread out over the whole globe. An e-mail communication device seemed logical.

We soon discovered the existence of the “blog” system, and sister-in-law Joan established one for us, Tommy’s 18th St. News. Blog, by the way, is a contraction for “web log.” I mention that so that some word historian somewhere may understand the heritage.

Doing the weekly letter has been a hoot. I have spent six to eight hours each week on it. Laura puts in another hour editing the text and placing it on the site – something I have never learned to do.

We signed up for “Site Meter,” which counts the “hits” on the site. My record high, two weeks ago, was 120 page views and 80 site views. I’m told that’s pretty good for an old cowboy reporter.

Perhaps a good time to quit – or at least to take a hiatus – is when one has reached the zenith or the nadir. I’m guessing my readership, after 3 1/2 years, has grown as large as it’s going to.

It has been good for me to exercise my English skills. My mother-in-law used to do crossword puzzles for the same reason. (Crosswords make my brain fuzzy. Mom loved the game.)

We have made many friends through the Letters, and we have given old friends a new insight into our personalities. It has been great fun, exciting and fulfilling.

There are some disappointments, naturally. I was ambitious. I thought the Letters might attract the attention of someone who would want to publish (pay for) my writing.

No dice. No offers. I’ve always been a failure, a big loser, when it comes to getting paid for what I do, whatever it is. For instance, I have dozens of oil paintings in storage – good ones, I’m told – that I have been unable to sell. I have never sold a one.

Other than newspaper work, which pays poorly, I’ve never been paid at all for anything I have written. Writing is time-consuming, difficult work. I’m dog tired when I finish each week’s chapter. I’m positive Laura’s contribution causes a bunch of fatigue as well.

I’m not going to roll over and die. (Well, I am going to die eventually, but I have no plan to roll over to do it.)

My brother Dick has asked me to write the story of our 1955 family dream vacation. I have photos and documentation to go with it.

The weekly Letter has given me discipline, a regimen to which I have adhered. My fear is, if I don’t have a weekly deadline, I’ll let things slide, and go for a motorcycle ride instead. At the moment, a ride sounds pretty good.

These days, Laura and I spend from five to eight hours each week editing and formatting the weekly bulletin for St. Peter Historic Roman Catholic Church – “our” church. It is a grind, a beautiful fulfilling, exciting, terrifying weekly grind.

Frankly, at this point, I’d rather put my energy into that than the weekly Letters. I’m hoping to continue my e-mail relationship with the family as well as Brighton High School classmates and other friends who live far away.

I fear the lack of my persistent presence will erode that. Want to keep in touch? I answer every e-mail I get but I do not do no Facebook.

Hasta luego compadres.

-0-


Happy Belated St. Patrick Day

Words of the week: Zenith, nadir. The zenith is the top of something, the nadir is the opposite. That isn’t necessarily bad. The nadir of the earth isn’t always a bad place to be. However, Zenith made a good television set. Nobody ever made one called a Nadir.

One more word: Hiatus. It’s Latin, from hiare, to gape. Today it means a break or gap where a part is missing or lost, as in a manuscript. It means a blank space or a pause.

 Love you all.

Tom and Laura

News From the Four Siblings

A credible eyewitness has come forward with shocking news: Mr. Tommy’s memory isn’t always what he thinks it is.

Regular “Friday Letters” readers may recall that the Feb. 11, 2011, version consisted, in part, of an anecdote about Tommy’s 1979 Jeep CJ-5.

An adventure was reported in which the lives of Tommy and a passenger were endangered by a mechanical malfunction. The gear shift lever came out in his hand when the vehicle was in a precarious position at the edge of a big river.

Here’s the incredulous reaction from the credible eyewitness. It was reported previously that the passenger endangered was “another man’s girlfriend.”

The eyewitness was my daughter, Jayedominique Hodge Blair, who now lives in Indiana.

After reading the Jeep story, she telephoned and said: “Dad. That wasn’t somebody else’s girlfriend. That was ME. I remember it clearly. It scared the hell out of me.”

Let’s see. Jaye would have been 16 at that time. She has always had the most beautiful brown almond-shaped eyes, since the day she was born.

Her hair was and is a lustrous brunette color. She is very feminine and mannerly and extremely intelligent. She has always had the most wonderful smile and a beautiful mirthful laugh.

At the time of the Jeep incident, I was recently divorced from her mother. I was busily “trying to date” a woman named Deon Rossi. Deon already had a boyfriend. A jealous boyfriend.

A gorgeous brunette, Deon had the most beautiful brown almond-shaped eyes. She had a mirthful sense of humor, a wonderful smile and a beautiful laugh. Are you beginning to see the synapse-link wreckage?

Once upon a time, I believed memory, particularly my memory, was infallible. But I have to admit now that time, and wishful thinking, and a guilty conscience, played tricks on my memory.

Certainly, there were other instances in which I could have been caught, uh, in a compromised position with another man’s gal. (See also the Feb. 18 report, “Desperation and Falsehood.”)

Over my entire writing career I have made it a personal policy to own up to it when I make a factual error. Thanks to Jaye, this one has now been set aright.

Siblings around the world

Son Benjamin lives with his family in Seattle. He reported by text a few days ago that he had accomplished almost nothing he had intended to do while off work for the weekend.

Ben and Shana are parents of a brand-new Christmas baby, their first child. He texted, “Hey Gramps. Spent the weekend holding Sal. Time flew by. There were other things I could have done, but I was busy squishing the boy.”


Squishin' the Baby

My son is a good father, a real good father. I already know this. If you have a beautiful Christmas baby like Ben and Shana have, you should spend the weekend squishing the boy.

Touch is intuitive and essential. Good parenting depends a lot on loving touch – demonstrating to the child acceptance, affection, inclusion. Good nurturing technique.

Good for you Ben and Shana. Squish the baby.

-0-

Shortly after she was graduated from high school, our youngest daughter Monica left for Florida. She has made her life there since.

Like the other three, there are many admirable traits in her. She started from scratch down in F-L-A, and has succeeded in various endeavors on her own. Well, on her own with the help of an amazing network of friends and supporters. Currently, she lives seaside in the Keys and spends her days working in the yacht business.

She is attentive to her parents, thoughtful, generous, concerned, loving and kind. Much the same as her brother and sisters. She is attractive with a bright smile, self-assured bearing and confidence that bring her strength when “life happens.”

Monica said something on the phone a few days ago that has really stuck with me. I was wondering aloud about our nation, our people, our future, probing a little for my daughter’s “take.”

I asked, “Why do people give so little attention to their spiritual lives? They don’t seem to realize there are consequences . . .”

Monica interrupted. “Dad. People don’t even know about that stuff like you and Laura do. Most of them are simply caught up in the fury.” Fairly bright, I thought. Perceptive.

Caught up in the fury.

-0-

Then there’s Tammy, younger sister to Jaye, older sister to Monica.

Twenty years ago, Tammy moved to Australia and then more recently to New Zealand, Auckland to be exact.

She and Phil have two beautiful sons who are growing tall and strong in beautiful New Zealand. Tammy is like her siblings, relying on her inventive survival techniques, a self-starter, analytical thinker, downright hard worker. She’s quite bright and beautiful. There’s that smile again . . .

In a recent telephone conversation, Tammy revealed that she had resigned her high-profile job in a company that specializes in real estate auctions. It was engaging work, she said, but pressurized, and she became fatigued.

As a good dad, I thought I’d better ask, “How are you going to make a living now?”

She answered, “Oh, we’ll do something creative. I don’t really know yet.”

I like that. To leave one job without having another one to go to? It shows a young woman who is courageous, resourceful, confident, self-reliant, strong.

It’s enjoyable being a dad to these four strange moppets. Indiana, Florida, Washington, New Zealand. But once in a while I have to say to their mother, “What have we done?”

-0-

Word of the week: Sibling. Originally in Middle English, “sib” and “ling” meant “a relative.” We use it today to mean one of two or more persons born at different times of the same parents; brother or sister.

A Buick for Tommy

When I was about to turn 16, just old enough to drive in Colorado, I bought a car for $1. It was a 1940 Buick Special, a four-door sedan that looked like a streamlined stagecoach.
Something tells me there was an undisclosed business arrangement between my Dad and Harold, the man who had owned the car. But as far as I knew at the time, the sale price was one antique silver dollar.
 

Harold was also the scoutmaster of the Boy Scout and Explorer Scout organizations to which my brother and I belonged. Dad and a couple of other men who were teachers in Brighton were assistants to Harold.



Curbside in Laramie, ca 1963

Looking back, that car was quite beautiful, a quiet, smooth automotive wonder with “suicide” rear doors. It was jet black, a luxury car for its time. It was a sort of foreshortened limousine.

 It wasn’t what I wanted, but it was what I was allowed to have. The Buick’s eight cylinders were in a row, not in a “V” like the quick Fords and Mercurys that were laying rubber all over town. Horsepower- challenged, the Buick was unable to spin its rear tires. A stopwatch indicated the car would reach 60 in 25 seconds. Eight or nine seconds was common at the time.

I can’t deny the Buick’s attractiveness. Still, had I had my own way, I would have acquired a ’49 Ford two-door hardtop. I would have added Turnpike Cruiser skirts, maybe a continental spare tire kit. I would have lowered the car in the rear, and I would have put three-point “Fiesta” star spinner covers on the front wheels.

Oh, and dual exhausts and shaved hood and trunk. A car-club plate would have hung on chrome chains from the rear bumper, dragging just a little bit when we drove into the A & W. At least I could dream. You could get girls if you had a car like this, or if you played the saxophone. Or both.

 Along this line of dreams, I asked my friend Gary Barnard, a fantastic artist, to make me a design of a rearing horse, a “Black Beauty” which I thought would make an attractive addition to the rear fenders of the old black Buick. Gary made right and left prototype drawings.

Dad got wind of my project. It was very threatening to him. He became apoplectic. He confronted me. His face turned bright red. The veins bulged out on his neck. He yelled. He threatened. He postulated ultimatums. He cursed and waved his arms a lot.

Embarrassed, I had to tell Gary that all was for nothing. He would not be allowed to paint his two beautiful Black Beauty designs on my car.

 A short time later, I borrowed a pair of clamps designed to compress coil springs. I “raked” (lowered) the front of the Buick with these devices. The car became cool, scraping the front mudguard going into the drive-in.

I drove the car this way for one day. Apoplexy struck again. Real bad apoplexy this time. I returned the borrowed lowering kit.

Giving up, I returned to daydreaming, longing for the day when I didn’t live in my parents’ home, when I could have a damn lowered rusty Ford and paint a picture of a damn frog on it if I wanted to.

To add to my pathetic teen frustration, Dad by some quirky thinking did not believe the Buick could be repaired. He fixed his own vehicles, including school buses, but he thought the Buick wasn’t eligible for fixin’.

I drove it for years putting up with the “Buick Lurch” going around corners, over rough roads or across railroad tracks. This uncomfortable and dangerous condition was caused by worn-out shock absorbers.

The shocks weren’t like those we know today. They were of a design featuring an oil cylinder and a double-bend arm linked to the coil-spring suspension.

So we bounced and lurched all over the roads between Brighton and Aurora and Laramie and Boulder. Dad insisted the shocks could not be repaired. He also insisted the shock absorbers would not be repaired.

Knowing well by then the critical point at which domestic peace turned into apoplexy, I made no further effort even though I knew the vehicle was unsafe.

Years later, I saw replacement shock absorbers in a catalog. In the same Buick-specialty book, there was an advertisement promoting repair of these devices.

A valet at a Denver parking garage slipped the Buick clutch all the way to the sixth floor. It was burnt out. The car became unusable.

Miraculously, Dad permitted a repair. The mechanic installed incorrect parts, so we drove the car the rest of its life with us with an ill-performing clutch. Re-do or take-back was not permitted.



When I started banging into things like fences and garage walls, Dad permitted repair of the master brake cylinder. But new tires? No way. The four unmatched and balding skidders were good enough until I got stranded in a Wyoming blizzard. Mom bought new tires.

When Annette and I got married, it was our only bouncing-bubble family car. We drove it to and from Wyoming summer and winter.

After the baby (Jaye) was born something changed with Mom and Dad and they bought us a brand-new Ford Econoline van. It also was monumentally underpowered, but it came with new shock absorbers. I put bigger wheels and tires on it, and seemed to get away with that modification. It wasn’t a Buick, I guess.

We tried the two-car thing for a while. Then Annette’s father died and we came into possession of the 1950 Ford F-4, a two-ton truck with a pickup box.

The Buick went to Brighton for storage. Over the years, I tried various restoration projects, but my efforts all failed because classic cars are expensive to repair, to drive, to own. Cash and time. I had neither.

After moving the Buick out to Idaho, then back to Brighton and then to Greeley, I sold it to my friend Ray, who greatly admired it and had “low-rider” on his mind. Ray let it set out in the sun for years, which I had never done, and he eventually gave it to his son Rick. I don’t know what Rick did with it.

Tressl Road, Blackfoot, ID, ca 1975
Tom, Jaye, Monica, Tamara, Benjamin, Annette

Sometimes in my dreams I have the Buick back, and I am repairing it, restoring it. Upon awakening, I realize I still don’t qualify for classic, antique Buick ownership: Time and Money.

Besides, in our garage at this very moment sits a 1968 Ford XL 500. It has one immense V-8, and it goes like a striped-ass ape. And no rust. It will spin the tires. Happiness abounds.

-0-

 Word of the Week: Apoplexy. Latin and Greek. To strike down, or disable by a stroke. Medically, it means sudden paralysis with total or partial loss of consciousness and sensation, caused by the breaking or obstruction of a blood vessel in the brain. Webster’s exemplary sentence is, “He was apoplectic with rage.” Hmm.

Mormons from Venus

This week I cleaned off my desk. Shock. Amazement. Astonishment. I sorted and filed (in a cardboard box) the collection of notes that had accumulated there over a couple of years.

I scanned my notes to make sure I wasn’t missing anything that could be turned into immortal prose among The Friday Letters. One name kept popping up.

It was none other than Paul Solem, a character who was an inhabitant of the lava rock desert of central Idaho.

Why I have Solem in my notes so often is a minor mystery. I met him in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

Solem came to my newspaper office to ask for publicity. He wanted the public to know he was organizing a vigil to call down brothers and sisters from the planet Venus by means of telepathy.

By the time I met Solem, I had been promoted to “editor” of The Blackfoot News. I wanted to do the reporting. Temptation, you know. I assigned a reporter to the story.

Perhaps a little historical background will help. Solem, depending on the which witness one heard: Had been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; or, he had left the church of his own volition; or he never was a Mormon, just a random nutcase with some Mormon trappings.

Regardless, there were many of his ilk in eastern Idaho. The history is, that shortly after the Mormon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, a rift took place.

Members clinging to the “old” ways, many of them Scandinavian by heritage, were steadfastly following the teachings of Joseph Smith and couldn’t abide the radical teaching of this new guy Brigham Young.

When this particular Mormon schism (there are many) happened, many of the old-school folks decided to move north, into Idaho. They took with them their Scandinavian-accented English and stick-in-the-mud humorless spiritual delusions.

They clung to Smith’s Book of Mormon and its various fabrications and oddities. One of these is that each good man, as he dies, will inherit his own planet for himself and his wives.

Solem believed that certain souls who had gone on before had found glorified bodies and a home on Venus. He was convinced that space travel had become feasible for them. He had asked them to come for a visit, to show themselves, to confirm the faith, in a way.

He was just a plain scary guy. A chunky white-haired man with enormous shoulders and a considerable paunch, he never threatened me or offered any hazard. But looking into his Lee-Harvey-Oswald vacant white eyes, one could not read any emotion. What was behind those eyes? No one but he could know.

Solem had picked Ferry Butte as the vigil site. Ferry Butte is southwest of the Snake River near Tilden Bridge. The butte is on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. Solem had gotten permission from the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes to use the butte for his vigil.

I assigned cub reporter Bill Hathaway. Hathaway attended the vigil faithfully, night after night. He managed to cast new light on the event for daily reports. The reporter carried a camera but no photographs of spacecraft or space visitors resulted.

Solem’s idea was that if enough believers would assemble and put their minds to it, people from Venus would receive the message and respond to it.

Ferry Butte is minor as buttes go. It is a rounded hillock with an easy slope. Old folks can climb it. It’s nothing like Devil’s Tower – but Solem’s project was an eerie precedent to the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Curiosity seekers arrived, along with many Indians and some real believers in the Solem cause. Hathaway’s approach to the story would be that he was skeptical the first night, mildly convinced the second, gradually becoming a believer. It was an excellent yellow-journalism gambit. Management approved.

The vigil went on for a week or so. Hathaway complained of having a stiff neck from looking skyward for hours at a time, and suggested he should get extra monetary compensation for his physical pain. Management declined.

In the end, interest waned and no Venusians in space ships showed up. At least, we don’t think they did. Solem didn’t claim any visits either, saying people just hadn’t concentrated hard enough to call them.

A series of stories in a newspaper will usually lose reader interest after the third installment. We had seven or eight. The congregation on the butte diminished from 200 or so at the beginning to a dozen hard-liners.

After things died down, Solem came in again to my office and asked for coverage of a different aspect of his story.

He told me that he had built a gigantic shelter in a cave somewhere out in what Idaho people call “the lavas.”

Solem said the cave was made into a shelter from wind and weather and human invasion. He said he had built two giant wood and iron doors on huge hinges for this security. A space ship could enter this cave, according to Solem.

He wanted to take me and/or Hathaway to the site to demonstrate what he was up to. He required, though, that whoever went with him would have to be blindfolded to keep secret the location of the cave.

I declined this offer. Hathaway declined as well. I never saw Solem again. That I know of. I don’t think I saw Hathaway after that, either. That I know of.

-0-

Words of the Week: Modus Operandi. Guess what. It’s Latin. Latin is so hard to understand. Modus Operandi means “method of operation.” It describes a procedure, as in “The modus operandi of the burglar was to hide in a restroom until the building was closed.”

Desperation and Falsehood

For perhaps the tenth year in a row, I am victorious. I am ecstatic with my secret little accomplishment. This success gives me perhaps way more pleasure than it should.

We’re well past “The Super Bowl” for 2011, and once again I never knew the names of the teams which played in it. Who won? I did!

I was able to ignore that idolatrous cultural oddity almost entirely. I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation about the absence of cheerleaders this year, but I still don’t know who the teams were. Don’t call and tell me, O.K.?

Regardless of my resistance, the spectacle does have an impact on me, on my psyche at least.

Here’s one thing that happened: On the evening of the big game, regularly scheduled events at church were cancelled.

That’s right. Leadership at my church, St. Peter Historic Roman Catholic Church right here in Greeley Colorado, cancelled Religious Education for grade schoolers and two other events geared for high school and college-aged young people.

Imbued with the predictable righteous indignation, I pressed for details. I found that the cancellations were done out of sad resignation. Previously, the adults volunteering to conduct these youth events had tried to continue in spite of “The Game.” They got shut out. No one showed. No one.

Here’s the question: How is “The Super Bowl” that important? It is beyond me why this absurd spectacle is given almost universal attention.

One year my neighbor suddenly bolted out the door of his apartment, screaming at the top of his voice, running around the parking lot barefoot, in his underwear, waving his arms in the air. We didn’t figure out until the next day that this had been his reaction to the outcome of “The Game.”

My dad loved football, or said he did. If I’m not mistaken, he was a charter member of the Denver Broncos’ season ticket club. He attended many, many games both at home and away.

In an attempt to buy in to his interest, in 1975 I acquired a huge Sylvania television set and faithfully watched pro football every Sunday afternoon.

I mistakenly thought that my knowledge of the details of “the game” would give me something to talk about with Dad during our Sunday evening calls to Brighton. I could never seem to know the right facts or who-won-who previously.

In those days long distance telephone was costly, so the silence I heard was expensive. My effort did not please him at all.

That little lesson with Dad was like almost all the other lessons with him. He could tell instinctively that I really didn’t give an obese rodent’s posterior about pro football. It was I being false, desperate; the telephone silence wasn’t his fault, it was mine.

‘False’

Just in case you didn’t know this:

The concordance of the Bible names sixty (60) places in scripture in which the word “false” is used.

In addition, we also find 15 uses of the word “falsehood,” 21 uses of “falsely” and one use of “falsifying.” Then there are “false accusation,” “false apostles,” “false brethren” and “false Christ.” We also find “false prophet,” “false teacher” and “false witness.”

The Bible is fairly strong on the concept of falsehood, wouldn’t you agree? Stands to reason, since in science (logic class, part of Philosophy 101) we learned that anything that is not true is false.

You think I’m going back into “truth vs. fiction” don’t you? Well you’re off the hook. Can’t seem to pound the point through, so I have to let up. For a while.

Desperation

I apparently don’t have the olfactory skills to recognize it, but to some folks desperation does have an odoriferous aroma.

Come back with me more than 30 years. I was one desperate little horny puppy. Man, it was tough. I’d look at a pile of rocks and wonder if there was a snake in it.

I went to strip joints. I tried to strike up conversation with women camped next to me in the Sawtooth Mountains. I talked to women in bars, restaurants, at work.

Perhaps they didn’t even know what they were smelling, but every female I approached in those post-divorce days could apparently detect an unpleasant odor, a warning stench. Women avoided me universally.

Finally, through grace from God, I realized why I was such a loser with women, why “I’ve been a flop with chicks since 1956.” (Thanks to the song Love Potion #9.)

I sat myself down and promised me that I would get over it. I resigned myself. I thought I might well be single for the rest of my life, but I was braced for it. This mad and futile pursuit of ephemeral feminine companionship was making me crazy – and I wasn’t getting any lovin’ either.

Differently than other self-made vows, this one actually took. I quit running all over town chasing waitresses. I quit hitting on barmaids. I quit looking longingly at coeds walking home from class. I quit asking women, “Does your husband mind if you date?”

I didn’t give up my yearning for feminine company, really. I simply and successfully gave up on desperation.

Almost immediately, I met Laura. She didn’t seem to think I smelled funny. At least, my personal aroma probably wasn’t desperation. Wow. That’s going on 30 years ago.

-0-

Word of the week: Ephemeral. It’s from the Greek and Latin, ephemeros, short lived. To us it means transitory, perhaps even vaguely defined, elusive, difficult to perceive, as the ever-changing order of the stars in the heavens.

"The Truth:" An object lesson

“Cinnamon Girl”

In the fall of 1978 I bought a brand-new 1979 Jeep CJ-5, right off the showroom floor at Dolder Motor Company in downtown Blackfoot, Idaho.

It was a gold metal flake cinnamon brown with orange and yellow vinyl hood striping and lettering in similar colors that read “Renegade.”

My Jeep immediately became “Cinnamon Girl,” named after a very good Neil Young song of the era. In the style preferred by Jeep CJ owners of the time, I put her name in the space below the glass in the fold-down windshield.

Quickly, I removed the factory installed “smog” pump and put on a set of Smithy mufflers and twin exhausts that came out in front of the rear tires.

This thing had an enormous V-8 engine, and once relieved of its breathing problems, it was a formidable beast. Yipes. It would go fast. It would crawl. It would go straight up. It would go straight down. Brown convertible top and brown weatherproof seats completed the ensemble.

Later, as a gift, a girlfriend bought me a matching spare tire cover with “Jeep” imprinted on it. It was one stylin’ vehicle, very macho, very suitable to the mood I was in at the time.

One day after I took delivery of this monster, I invited a lady I knew to come for a ride with me. She consented, and I proceeded to show off. (Disgusting how predictable I was.)

We drove into the wilderness west of the Snake River near Rockford. I saw a sandy ramp where fishermen had been launching their boats, and decided to drive forward, down into the water a little bit, just for fun.

Well it was fun. At a certain perilous point, I put on the brakes, depressed the clutch pedal and grabbed the shift lever, intending to change the transmission into reverse.

Brand-new Jeep. Less than a thousand miles. Regardless, the shift lever came out of the transmission in my hand, dripping oil. I had enough knowledge of mechanical things at the time to know that I – we – could be in big trouble.

I held the brakes on. I kept the clutch pedal depressed so the transmission wouldn’t spin around and “lose my place.” I shoved the lever back into the transmission in a sort of random way. Whew. With the help of God, I found reverse and we backed out of the predicament.

The ride was over. The mood was certainly over. The lady in the passenger seat at the time was another man’s girlfriend. I took her home. Nobody died. Nobody else knew until now.

True story.

“Tired Eyes”

After a few months of the usual adventures associated with Jeep ownership, my fortunes changed. Cinnamon Girl had to be adopted by someone else.

I ended up with a very green 1969 Chevrolet half-ton pickup with bald tires, a broken/missing carrier bearing, worn out shock absorbers and a sloppy, leaky automatic transmission.

My friend Ralph and I had been listening almost exclusively to Neil Young music in this era. One particularly poignant and tragic song was about a drug deal gone bad, an epic titled “Tired Eyes.”

This became the name of my new pickup truck. I went and got a stick-on alphabet set and put "Tired Eyes" in the back window. Later, Ralph and I were out driving around, listening to Neil.

Suddenly a phrase from the song stuck out. Neil whined, “I dunno why, he had bullet holes in his mirrors.”

It had to be done. I stopped the truck pointed down into an excavation, a gravel bank to the front of the vehicle.

I got my rifle from the rack (de rigueur in Idaho in those days) and shooed my friend back away from the scene.

Standing at the tailgate, I shot one hole in each of the outside mirrors of Tired Eyes, first the left, then the right. Ralph shrieked and leaped about in surprise and disbelief. Later, I used clear packing tape to keep the mirror shards in place. This rear view arrangement worked all right until I traded Tired Eyes for a ’76 two-door Cherokee.

True story.

The Harley said tick-tick-tick

For the life of me, I can’t remember the name of the sleazy bar. It’s probably still in business in downtown Ketchum, Idaho.

My friend Guido and I would hang out there sometimes. One night I went by myself, and bellied up to the bar: As was my custom, I ordered a beer, and a beer and a beer.

In a little while, I noticed a young woman. I couldn’t help but notice. She had seated herself on the stool next to me.

Pointing at my three glasses of draft beer, she asked, “Can I have one of those?” I told her as far as I was concerned she could have all of them.

Ahem. Time went on. I ordered more drafts. She immediately began to tell me her sad story. She had had a fight with her boyfriend, and he had left, some days before.

Eventually, the bar closed. The woman invited me to her apartment. Seemingly without a thought as to my safety, I went. Ahem. One thing led to another.

Suddenly we heard it: No mistaking that Harley-Davidson sound. “Oh my God it’s my boyfriend,” the woman said.

The man rode the bike into the driveway and parked under the window. I watched as he dismounted and put a giant padlock on the steering mechanism.

When he started around to the front of the house, I opened the window and jumped out. It was about six feet to the ground. I landed in a flower bed right beside the bike. Shortly, my belongings followed me out the window, and the window went closed.

I gathered up my stuff and listened. The cooling exhaust system was all I heard. It said “Tick. Tick. Tick.” Eventually, I got myself together enough to find my vehicle and return to the safety of my dormitory room.

Parts of this third story are blatant fabrication, hence it becomes fiction. Do you feel a little betrayed? I would.

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Word of the Week: Guise. It’s from Middle English and Old French meaning “way” or “manner.” It can mean a manner of dress or garb, but that definition is thought to be archaic.

Nowadays, it means a false or deceiving appearance, a semblance. Webster’s exemplary sentence is, “Under the guise of friendship, he betrayed us.” It’s the root word of “disguise.”

I suppose if I ever run out of true stories, I could begin writing more under the “guise” of fiction. Hmm. Maybe not.

The C. S. Lewis Bible

A visitor brought a “special” Bible to my business, proud of his find and eager to show us. The book was covered in friendly-feeling pastels, pink and lime green.

I checked inside and found that it was purportedly an NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) containing the deuterocanonical books requisite for Catholics. But it also had something unique – it featured excerpts inserted throughout from popular fiction writer C.S. Lewis.

I could hardly contain myself. My visitor had punched my big red outrage button dead-center. The C.S. Lewis insertions instantly called to mind a couple of places in Deuteronomy and vivid words relating to this subject in Revelation, Chapter 22 Verse 18, thus:

“I warn everyone who hears the prophetic words in this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words in this prophetic book, God will take away his share in the tree of life and the holy city described in this book.”

I’m no Bible expert but that looks to me like a fairly serious exhortation. I would rather avoid Revelation’s plagues.

But my visitor was proud of his new purchase. It’s been our merchants’ policy for many years not to denigrate a purchase someone has made from another vendor. It’s not good customer relations to say, “Where did you get this piece of junk?”

However, there is a principle involved in this instance which gives me great pause. The idea of a comingling of sacred scripture and fiction in one book is frightening, appalling. It is patently wrong to publish a book like this.

Can’t say I’ve read much C.S. Lewis. Makes me yawn. I doze. My eyes wander, looking for spiders and cracks in the plaster. Suddenly, watching the street sweeper go by seems quite interesting.

Other people seem to like writing by Lewis, and they’re certainly welcome to it. But to me it’s only fiction. It’s stuff he made up. It is conjured, fabricated, assembled, faked.

The only writing I do know as absolute truth is in the Bible. Fiction can be true but is not necessarily true. Fiction is the intentional muddying of the facts. Mixing Biblical truth and fiction and calling it a “Bible” set my teeth on edge.

C.S. Lewis readers claim spiritual benefit from reading about lions with human speech and an imaginary land known as “Narnia.” It’s probably harmless for the most part – but it is fiction, and mixing it with Scripture sets a dangerous precedent.

In discussing this, I immediately encountered a defensiveness of C.S. Lewis. True, I don’t find any evidence at all that his writings go against Church teaching. However, I have to try to make it clear: It’s not C.S. Lewis I am “going after” here. The issue is the comingling of fictional work and scripture.

The potential for confusion between Scripture and fiction is enormous in the format I saw. If someone thought of throwing Mr. Lewis into a mixed book, why not do one with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Philosophy? Why not an Oprah Bible? An Oral Roberts Bible. A Walt Disney Lion King Bible.

Pick your own. The door is open.

St. John’s precaution in Revelation is very close to the end of the entire Bible. The few words that come after it are: “The one who gives this testimony says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen! Come Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.”

Maybe the C.S. Lewis/Holy Bible isn’t such a good idea.

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Recently, I had the blessing of undergoing a medical test called “Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” better known as an MRI.

I didn’t require sedation like some do; I could see that physical escape from the tubular machine was possible in two directions. I wasn’t comfortable, but I felt confident I could put up with it for 20 minutes.

Before the test began, I was presented with a pair of earplugs. Obediently, I put them in my ears. Must be a reason, I thought.

Well there was a reason – an entirely fake reason. The rattling, banging, slamming percussive noises and vibrations made during the imaging process were nothing more than mechanical theater. Yep. The machine itself is quiet. The technicians add the noise and vibration as a distraction for claustrophobic clients. To me, the sound track was an obvious fraud.

I guess they figure we all need to be entertained these days. For myself, it would have been preferable to use my 20 minutes in quiet prayer.

The result of the MRI scan? Inconclusive.

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Back in 1974, Annette and I decided to replace our well-worn 1962 wedding-gift stereo. We went to Pocatello and got “the best,” mostly for Mr. Tom. We spent $1,500, as I recall, an enormous amount for the time.

Later, as part of a gut-wrenching division of property, I ended up with the stereo, which I have carted with me everywhere, wherever. Over the years, I have replaced the receiver twice and the turntable three times. But the original speakers I have always retained.

With the most recent new receiver, I blundered. I ignorantly pushed one little switch and instantaneously subjected my antique speakers to enormous volume. One of the bass speakers went kerphlooey. I actually heard it blow out. Not a pretty sound.

I tried, our son Ben tried, Radio Shack tried, and we couldn’t find replacement bass speakers. So for several years, we limped along, not really “using” the stereo much because there was little bass sound, and balance couldn’t be achieved.

Monday after Christmas I drove the truck down to the mobile court to empty our household trash in the dumpster there. I drove around the corner at the #3 house.

Voila! There they were. Under the awning. Rather beat up and weathered, two lost sisters.

Yep. Exact matches. Identical Jennings Research Laboratories stereo speakers, made with pride in California. Rare today, to understate it. Made in 1974. Walnut speaker cases with walnut veneer. Abandoned property. Previous owner in jail.

In our home, coincidence is a word viewed with suspicion. What are the mathematical chances of this happening?

Now they’re ours. We have four now. Oh, and the newly found ones, the wooden boxes are beat up pretty badly from weather and rough handling, but the speakers inside appear to be brand new. We combined the original speakers with the newly “found” hardware, and on the whole the historic stereo actually sounds better than it did in 1974. Much better.

We have been enjoying our newly regained musical blessings. The vinyl – some of it from as early as 1958 – is mostly in excellent condition. What fun. I’ll take it.

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Word of the week: Lamentations. A book of the Old Testament attributed to Jeremiah. To lament is to feel deep sorrow, to mourn or grieve. Lamentable is grievous, deplorable, distressing – such as the C.S. Lewis/Bible stew.

A cousin sent me a “link” to a 2007 film clip about the piano and the “black keys” on it.

My hope is that you will click on the link below and watch as much of it as you wish. Then please come back to read my report, if you will.

Amazing Grace - Just the Black Notes  ←click here

The film captures Wintley Phipps, a well-known singer and musician and president of the “U.S. Dream Academy,” an association which exists to benefit the children of parents in prison. It appears as though the featured event was a huge concert in a large auditorium, put on to raise funds for the association.

When I watched this presentation the first time, I muttered involuntarily in Spanish, under my breath, “Calmarselo, Señor Tomasito, calmarselo.”

Seldom have I seen such brazen fabrication. The entire premise is preposterous, a hoax, a myth, a construct, an outright lie.

Mr. Phipps makes the claim that “all . . . well almost all . . . Negro spirituals are written using only the black keys.”

Bunk. Balderdash. Bullshit. Just not so.

My base authorities are Miss Elva Whitney, the music teacher in the ‘40s at Fort Lupton Grade School, and Mrs. Carlson, a blind music teacher from whom I took a few piano lessons in that era.

The consistent teaching was that Negro spirituals, much like the Old Testament, have come to us originally from oral tradition. Not written but spoken, sung.

Original Negro spirituals were not “written” using the piano. The musical score was not “written,” it was passed down through generations.

The music was created in tribal sing-along situations, first in west Africa and then among the enslaved blacks of the Americas. They were oral. Using the voice or voices. They were sung a capella. There may well have been percussion accompaniment – drums. The piano just wasn’t there at the inception of what we know as the Negro spiritual.

Imagine, if you will, an African tribe having possession of a piano and imagine, further, the transport of that instrument from jungle camp to jungle camp.

Even more of a stretch is the idea that the indigenous people would look at the black and white keys on the instrument and make a qualitative judgment: “The black keys are better. So let’s write all our songs using only the black keys.”

Why are the black keys supposedly better? The inference by Mr. Phipps is that they are better because of their color. They are black like his skin.

Imagine Mr. Phipps looking at a zebra and making the qualitative judgment, “There is a black-and-white striped animal. The black stripes are better, though, because their color is like the color of my skin.”

Imagine Mr. Phipps looking at a checkerboard. He will come to the conclusion that we should play checkers using only the black squares. The black squares are better because they are black like his skin.

Here’s the deal. The white keys on the piano are in the “major” key. The black keys are in what we call the “minor.” The white keys are more numerous (a majority) and the black, less numerous (a minority). A racist perspective can be developed using this thinking.

The black keys themselves are shorter, narrower and smaller, positioned higher and further from the player. This is simply practical, a way to facilitate learning and playing of the instrument. The black keys are used by the pianist to achieve sharps and flats, and in the cases where something is to be played in minor chords.

Shockingly, Mr. Phipps, an accomplished musician, doesn’t seem to realize that anything that can be played on the black keys can also be played on the white keys – and vice-versa.

“Almost every Negro spiritual was written using only the black keys,” he says. Bunk. In the first place, he doesn’t know “all” Negro spirituals – can’t possibly. Secondarily, it is patently racist to think that a composer would choose to use this piano key or that, based on its blackness or its whiteness.

When the Negro spiritual came to the Americas, the lilting melodies fit quite naturally into lyrics with classic Christian themes. Hence, we have a wealth of deeply meaningful, beautiful compositions such as “Amazing Grace” and “Swing Low Sweet Chariot.”

I tried “Swing Low” on our piano at home. Using my one-finger, seek-and-peck method, I could play it – on the black keys or the white, interchangeably. So much for Mr. Phipps’ fallacious presentation.

I’ve learned through this investigation that there is such a thing as the “slave scale,” also known as the “pentatonic scale,” using the five black keys. Even this doesn’t support the Phipps assertion that “almost all” Negro spirituals were “written using only the black keys.”

Do we think there was convenient access to pianos all over the South’s cotton plantations? Almost every slave family had a piano in the shack, right? Would the men who captured people on the Slave Coast in Africa have said, “Sure you can bring your piano. We’ll store it aft?”

Oh, and if the potential composer of Negro spirituals ventured up to the mansion, the mistress of the house would say, “Yes, you can play my piano – but you can only use the black keys because your skin is black.”

Is Mr. Phipps really this dense? Or does he really think the rest of us are this dense?

I once saw a piano in Las Vegas with all gold keys. It was said to have belonged to Liberace. I’m sure the great Liberace made sure to use only the “black” keys when he played spirituals. He couldn’t possibly play spirituals on a piano with monochromatic keys, could he?

Or how about Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder? Did they really know the “difference” between the black and white keys?

Once upon a time half a century ago I went to a Fats Domino concert at a bar in Cheyenne. During the event, two legs of the piano fell off the edge of the stage and the instrument ended up at a crazy tilted angle. Mr. Fats did not let this unusual condition interrupt the rock and roll.

Because of the crazy angle, I could see plainly. The pianist was definitely using all the keys – regardless of their color. As you older people will recall, Fats Domino was black.

Using the reasoning asserted by Mr. Phipps, Fats should have used “only the black keys.” After all, the black keys are there for Negroes to use, right?

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Word of the Week: Racism. Webster says this word is a contraction for racialism, and racialism is a doctrine or feeling of racial differences or antagonisms, especially with reference to supposed racial superiority, inferiority, or purity; racial prejudice, hatred, or discrimination.

The Penultimate Chapter

One day in 1978 at the Blackfoot News, the rumor we had been hearing for some weeks came true.

We were getting a new publisher. He was none other than Mark Brown, son of Drury and Verna Brown. DRB promptly retired and I kind of had a sense it wouldn’t be long for me, either.

David Mark came to us directly from a stint as a Washington, D.C. reporter for The Associated Press. He came to us complete with a wife, children and a ubiquitous . . . um, personal assistant.

Some months prior to Mark’s return to Idaho, I had been named Editor of The Blackfoot News. Young Mr. Brown was obviously envious of me; envy never makes sense, and it didn’t this time.

Long story short, blood is thicker than water. I’m told I wasn’t fired. After more than 30 years to reflect on it, I’d say it was more like this: Because my role as the editor had made me the most prominent member of the News staff, my authority was removed and I was re-assigned as “copy editor.”

I wouldn’t say I have a monumental ego. It’s plenty swollen at times. But hell. After my deep devotion to my job and my newspaper, it hurt my feelings.

Eventually I did what management wanted me to do. I quit in a fit of pique. Can you imagine. If I quit, I don’t get unemployment. And I didn’t get unemployment. Not a dime, after 15 years as a contributor to the fund.

Annette and I had bought rental property in Blackfoot, the 18-unit Avalon Motor Court right downtown. I mistakenly thought the rentals would provide sufficient income. Wrong.

The federal government came along and built brand-new senior housing. Rents were lower for new units than I had been charging for my 40-year-old units. There went a third of my renters.

Then the federal government came along and built brand-new housing for poor folks. There went another third of my renters.

(Annette and I had been divorced in 1977, but that’s a sad side-story with which I might deal here – sometime. Maybe.)

One night I awoke to see flashing blue lights all around the complex. The federal Immigration Police had come to take away the rest of my renters.

So I had 18 units, 17 empty. I lived alone in one unit. Not a good cash-flow situation. So I “sold” the apartments and said goodbye to Blackfoot. (I sold the business by paying a man $10,000 to take over my payments. Such is Idaho, even today.)

After 15 years in Blackfoot, my marketability as a newspaperman had somehow evaporated. The Idaho Falls Post Register and the Idaho State Journal in Pocatello didn’t want anything to do with me. And I really didn’t want to engage with either of them.

What to do?

I persuaded the State of Idaho to send me to a trade school because I am handicapped. The state paid my tuition to learn how to be a commercial cook. I am a straight-A graduate of the ISU Culinary Arts college. Success helped my dour mood quite a bit.

So I went from a sit-down job (writer, good for handicapped) to stand-up work (in restaurants, not especially desirable). But. I learned how to work in bakeries, and it gave me the change I needed.

After Idaho State University, I landed a job in the bakery at the high-end ski resort in Sun Valley. Yippee. Ski bunnies here I come!

I was 37, single, living in a one-bed employee dormitory room, and dreadfully afraid of solitude. After figuring out that I was no dummy, my supervisor put me on the midnight shift.

I was alone from midnight to 8 a.m. in a kitchen that was the size of a small high school, the kitchen that served 11 ski area restaurants.

Wow. I thought being alone that I would go berserk or worse – but that quickly changed. Alone in the bakery, operating a revolving oven the size of a school bus, I immediately began to look at my job as a Godsend, not a curse.

It was January. It was always warm. There were no annoying people around to make noise or requirements of me. There was a phone but it didn’t ring. I ate prime rib, escargot, lobster . . .

Rising bread in vast quantities captured my attention. I learned, oh my how I learned. I got so I counted the revolutions of the Hobart brand mixer for a just-right rise on the french bread, the rye, the dinner rolls.

It was like a huge vacation. On my days off I took my motorcycle on tours of the great Sawtooth Range. I slept on the ground. I went fishing. If I caught a trout, I would eat. If not, I would fast.

I got down to 125 pounds, my lowest since high school. I was also more content than I had been my entire life. Sure, the aftereffects of a failed marriage and the absence of the four children wore heavily on me. But I was all right!

I stayed at Sun Valley for a little over a year. In retrospect, I’ve got fond memories of every salaried job I ever had, but I talk the most about the bakery days.

My supervisor was one Jack Flaherty. Jack worked seven days a week – but on Sundays he would come in later, having gone to Mass that morning. Catholic Mass. I could see Jack wanted to evangelize me, and I should have at least permitted it. But it wasn’t time.

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Word of the week: Colloquial. No, it’s not a synonym for vernacular. Not exactly. It’s from Latin (what isn’t?) colloquium. It means having to do with conversation; conversational or belonging to the words, phrases, idioms characteristic of conversation and informal writing. The label “colloquial” is used as a modifier in most dictionary definitions – and the word does not indicate sub-standard or illiterate language.