Category: Stories

Sike! No handshake from me plebe! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

April 12th, 2023

Part 3 of 4

The landlord was rich, and not really a rancher – he wanted a ranch you could mow with a riding lawnmower – but he had a few goats. He was a cool guy in his way. He also had terminal prostate cancer.

He was kind of arrogant as you might expect, but he was cool in his way. He and I used to talk a lot. He was a retired engineer who had designed some kind of a bomb that helped us win WWII.

We worked out a deal where I could pay less rent if I cleaned the bugs off his Cessna and lopped off cedar trees. Turned out to be a mistake. It was subtle, but I noticed that he and his family became a little more condescending.

I told them I was getting too busy at the paper to do those chores, so I would pay the full amount again. That seemed to fix the problem. I knew they still thought they were better than me, but they pretended harder.

Once, the landlord took me up in his Cessna. That was pretty cool. We went to a little private airport where he met for coffee with his rich friends. I did not like his friends.

A few of them shook my hand until my landlord said I was his tenant – and the next guy gave me the old yank the hand back “I’m not shaking your dirty hand!” move. I noticed. How I remained a Republican for so long after that is beyond me. What interests did we have in common?

But I still believed in Ronald Reagan and I didn’t know what else to be yet.

I still went to the landlord’s office to pay the rent sometimes. I enjoyed his WWII stories. I didn’t enjoy all his opinions, but he helped win the war, plus he was dying of cancer, so I said nothing.

Anyway, I missed the old man and missed our chats after he was gone. Especially since I’d gotten busy at work and his passing caught me off guard. Cancer doesn’t wait till you have a moment.
Editor’s curse: the hole must be filled

April 10th, 2023

I can say that without hesitation that Mark Twain is my favorite writer. I’ve always identified with his melancholy and mischievous nature.

But what really made me fall in love with him was Roughing It, his “autobiographical” book about his time in the West.

Especially the stories about his time as a newspaper reporter in a Nevada mining town. I wrote for small town weeklies, which was close enough.

I put autobiographical in quotes, because he constantly veers off into jokes and tall tales (Loved the apocraphal story about the man who makes an enemy of Joseph Smith by giving a whistle to one of his many sons).

BTW, the entire book is online for free and is searchable.

“It is unspeakable hardship to write editorials. Subjects are the trouble – the dreary lack of them, I mean. Every day, it is drag, drag, drag – think, and worry and suffer – all the world is a dull blank, and yet the editorial columns must be filled.”
Mark Twain

He loved hoaxes and didn’t let truth get in the way of a good story. I wasn’t that kind of journalist, though I loved April Fools Day pranks before they made me stop (some newspaper got sued).

But so much of it rang true. Boredom over beats you had to cover, Chamber of Commerce style propaganda you had to pretend to believe. (His insights into the silver speculation game are extremely relevant. Search Roughing It for the term “salting.”)

But most of all, I can identify with the part about being an editor and having to write editorials (or in my case, columns). I only had to do it once a week and even I ran out of ideas. I can’t imagine having to do one every day.

I didn’t get challenged to any duels (I have a feeling that was an exaggeration), but I pissed off the preachers and my publisher more than once. Other times I came off like an idiot. Those were usually the ones where I was on deadline and had to pull something out of my ass.

Brain block happens with this blog as well. I’ve realized all I’m really doing is writing the column I used to write, except this time I don’t have the publisher on my ass saying, “Stop writing weird shit!”

Hopefully with weird shit being on the table, I can pull more material out of my brain and less out of my ass. I still cringe when I remember some of those columns.
Beep Beep I’m a car! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

April 9th, 2023

Part 2 of 4

There were a few other issues with the place I lived as a young sports reporter aside from the “Monkey Bluto” water pump, but overall I liked the place. I liked where it was. Not too far from town, but far enough.

At first.

There was a lot of traffic in the mornings, but not too too much. This was in a rapidly suburbanizing area, but there was some nature left. I liked the color green.

Then the old family Horizon I was driving blew a head gasket. Totaled. I had to ride my mountain bike to work and back every morning for weeks.

Cars piled up behind me an honked. They all hated me, especially on hills I could barely get up, and they passed inches away from me. Nearly pissed myself more than once.

I was like, people have mercy! I’m an out of shape guy! I hate bikes on the highway too but my car broke! I’m working on it please don’t kill me!

The ride home was more enjoyable, but it also had risks. Speeding down steep hills with the wind in my hair was exhilarating. It almost made up for how much it hurt pedaling uphill.

But one day a white-tailed deer walked out in the road and wouldn’t budge.

It just stood in the road staring at me like “what the hell are you?” I thought God if I hit this deer I could break every bone in my body and it would still be hilarious. The worst.

I tried to think of what to do as I got closer and closer. Then I yelled, “Beep! Beep! I’m a car!” And it jumped. That’s right, I’m a car, bitch!

Family helped me get a Pontiac LeMans that smelled like cigarettes and had a colony of ants in the back seat I could never get rid of.

And I liked it just fine. I was lucky to have it. Anything to not be cursed, honked at and maybe run over, or killed by the local wildlife.
Annual hunt for Easter Egg photos

April 9th, 2023

Easter is one of those holidays that sneaks up on me, like Arbor Day or Daylight Savings Time. I can’t keep track since I don’t care enough. I just figure someone will tell me when it’s coming up and if I have to do something I will.

Holidays with kids’ activities get people excited if they have kids. Since I don’t, caring is optional.

It was not optional back in the newspaper days. You depended on Easter Egg Hunts to get art for the front page. Hopefully the ad department would get a business to buy a full color ad on the back page. Then your Easter photos would be in color that year. What a treat!

Usually, the Chamber of Commerce put those together, but I’d take a church or a neighborhood association in a pinch. I knew I could get away with kids looking at their baskets pics, but those were boring. You wanted to catch ‘em from in front, running.

I would try to coordinate with the organizer so I could get a good spot, far enough ahead, but once they cut that ribbon or said “go,” it was like the Oklahoma Land Rush. Every kid for him or herself. Not much of a hunt, more of a free for all.

Half the time, they’d all be past me while I was still adjusting the camera and I’d be trying to get ahead of the little tykes, which was impossible.

If I was lucky I’d get one front page worthy pic, then I could get a half-dozen kids counting their eggs/candy that I could run on page 3, which was a chance to get more kids in the paper. You could never get ‘em all in, which is probably why Facebook got us in the end.
Monkey Bluto! (living on someone else’s ranch kinda sucks)

April 8th, 2023

Part 1 of 4

The first place I ever rented when I was a green sports reporter was a studio apartment on a ranch. I wasn’t allowed any visitors, curtains or a window unit AC.

I had to accept the terms because there was literally no other place to rent within driving distance of work. Anyway, I liked being in the country.

The apartment was native limestone, built around the cistern that supplied water to the whole ranch. I had to enter a code and drive over a cattle guard through an automatic gate.

The idea when they built the place was that the cistern would cool the apartment. I think it just increased the humidity. I had to keep cleaning mildew off the cistern.

When the water level dropped below a certain level a pump turned on, drawing more water from the well. You never knew when it was coming and it was LOUD.

It woke me up the first night after giving me the dumbest dream. I was Popeye, fighting with Bluto as he often did. I thought up the wittiest cutdown ever and shouted “Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto!”

And woke up to the damn pump going “Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto! Monkey Bluto!” What the hell? It always sounded like that to me from then on.

After that I mostly slept through it.
Being a Baptist teen in the 80s

April 6th, 2023

Randy Newman – God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)

A while back I posted some happy memories about going to church in the early ’70s. But there’s a reason why I left and will never go back. I didn’t reach that decision lightly.

Being an active, church-going Baptist teen in a small town was by turns wonderful, annoying, and confusing. And for me at least, traumatizing.

I doodled in the church bulletin, but I listened. I thought parts of the Bible must be metaphors, but figured the preachers had it mostly right. I felt ashamed. Everyone seemed so certain, but I never could. What was wrong with me?

At times I was sure I must have committed the “unforgivable sin,” which was never defined, or I was predestined not to be one of “the elect.” Because something was obviously wrong. They were all so certain. Why couldn’t I be?

And I was afraid. Of hell, the Apocalypse, of predestination. Baptists might be “once saved, always saved,” but how could you know for sure that when you “accepted Jesus into your heart” that feeling you had was really the Holy Spirit?

The preacher seemed to be talking about me every time he preached about hell. Sometimes I couldn’t take it and I’d “get saved” again. “This time for real, Lord. This time I really mean it.”

I lost count at four. I’d say the words I knew to say and in a few days I’d get baptized. (Protip: Always check your pockets first.)

One year I got scare-saved at church camp – then got so horny for a girl on the way home I threw away the “I got saved” forms. Another swing, another miss.

Methodists believed you could “fall from grace.” I hoped I was only backslid. I would have to try harder.

Maybe the girl I crushed on was the answer. And she was the only girl my age in our church. It had to be fate, right? She was indeed a good kid, but in my head I gave her every virtue I felt I was missing. We would date, marry, have kids, and those doubts and temptations would go away.

I never once asked her out, whatever that would’ve meant for a guy with no money in a town with nothing to do. The thought was terrifying. As long as I didn’t ask, it could still come true. The fantasy was all I had. What if she said no?
I remember you Avery, hope you got to wear that dress

March 31st, 2023

When I was around 7 or 8, there was a little kid I used to see in the nursery of our Southern Baptist church. I’ll call him Avery. Avery was about 4.

This was the early 70s in a small Texas town, typical Baptist church. Avery’s parents were decent and very active. I think the father was a former preacher.

When adults asked Avery what he wanted to be when he grew up, Avery would say, “I’m going to be a princess and have a pretty dress like Cinderella.”

You could tell it bothered them. “No you’re not. You’re going to be a handsome young man and have beautiful children.”

Avery would argue back. “No, I’m going to have a pretty dress like Cinderella.” As long as I knew Avery, the answer never changed.

I’m not one of those people who calls himself an “ally.” What the hell do I know about trans issues? I’m old. I used to be on the “wrong” side of politics. I use the wrong pronouns half the time.

But I know being transgender is not made-up, or sinister. I remember Avery and I know what I saw. I’ve since met other trans people – and they’re people, with hobbies and interests. They just want to live.

When I see all the cruelty directed toward trans kids and their families, I think of Avery and wonder if they’ve had a happy life. I’ll never know, but I hope Avery got to wear that dress and feel like a princess if that’s what Avery wanted.
Deja vu all over again

March 28th, 2023

Sting – Russians (This one came out in ’85, one year after I didn’t get Raptured)

A friend just texted me a story about something the Chinese government said and commented “scary.” I wasn’t scared. Not scared of getting nuked by China or Russia. If you’re my age, you’ve heard it all before.

Those regimes don’t want to get Mutually Assured Destructioned any more than the US does. If it happens, it happens, but I’m not going to spend my time fretting over it.

I did enough of that as a kid. Movies and TV shows were full of nuclear apocalypses. I used to have nightmares about seeing mushroom clouds outside my window.

Being a Southern Baptist, those fears got mixed up with the other thing they taught us to fear and/or look forward to: The Rapture, followed by the Time of Tribulation (or the other way round, depending on who you asked).

In any case, I tried to mentally prepare myself for both.

Content warning: Upsetting imagery. The Christian Nightmares Tribulation Band covering the 1969 “classic” Rapture song I heard who knows how many times, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” (The films weren’t this bad, but I got a steady diet of this kind of messaging in the ’80s.)

I would get Raptured if possible. If not, I’d go through the whole Left Behind thing (same plot, but this was before the book series). If it was nukes, I’d wonder about who might want to restart the human race with me and where I might find a good cave to hide in.

It was an obsession when I was a teenager. I was like, can we get this over with so I can make the Rapture? I feel some sinning coming on and I can only hold it back for so long.

But there came a point where I had quit dwelling on it and live. So I did. As traumatic as recent developments have been, I still have to live as long as I’m alive. Sing While You May.

Strangely enough, I’m borderline obsessed with The Legendary Pink Dots and their singer Edward Ka Spel, who sing about all sorts of apocalypses. I find it cathartic. Exposure therapy I suppose.

Edward Ka Spel – Dotzsong
On being a different kind of sci fi guy…

March 25th, 2023

Once my dad handed me a copy of Robert Heinlein’s The Star Beast my fate was sealed. I would forever be a serious sci fi guy, not a typical fan.

I remember drawing a spaceship during Sunday School once and another kid goes, “That doesn’t look like the Star Trek Enterprise.”

“It’s not supposed to be,” I said. “I made it up.” He just said, “Eh, you just don’t know how to draw it right.”

Story of my life. Always out of sync with what’s popular.

As I got older, Dad and I shared books, browsed for hours in used bookstores. Our house became a library.

He turned me onto people like Arthur C. Clarke, Hal Clement, Isaac Asimov of course, Theodore Sturgeon, Alfred Bester and Clifford Simak.

On my own I found writers like Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I read tons of Golden Age stories. All those books changed the way I think.

I still like “regular” sci fi for an escape, but it’s more like candy. I need science fiction that blows my mind.

OK, so it was a little bit derivative.

One of my trippy sci fi things that no one else got. Organic spaceship. Cool right? (Messed up the sky and gave up.)

I love when a high concept series or movie gets popular. I was so happy when Amazon saved The Expanse, though I wish they’d had more episodes to flesh out the last season.

I also loved Prime’s take William Gibson’s The Peripheral. More Gibson please!

I’m even more impressed when someone pulls off something like that on the cheap.

Everything Everywhere All at Once was everything I wanted and more. Big ideas, social commentary, existential questions, not to mention funny as hell.

I’ll watch anything The Daniels make now. Don’t sleep on Swiss Army Man, btw. It’s weird, but it’s deep. Deeper than you think.

I hate when people think I’m a snob about this stuff. I like what I like. Plus it reminds me of those times I shared with Dad. The only sad thing is he’s not here to discuss it with.

The Legendary Pink Dots – Rainbows Too? Edward Ka Spel’s mythos is steeped in high concept science fiction. One of the many reasons I’m obssessed with the Dots.
Washing Machine music

March 24th, 2023

Just got through listening to some Juno Reactor, some of the “washing machine music” I used to jam out to in the 90s.

Juno Reactor – God is God

That’s what one of my coworkers called it. She said it sounded like a washing machine with an unbalanced load.

I didn’t dance, cuz this was small townsville and I couldn’t anyway, but I loved the stuff. Seems ironic to have nostalgia over that. It was THE FUTURE.

Played “Fear” ” by Eon while giving that coworker a ride in my pickup.

She said “No wonder you drive like a bat out of hell.” (Kind of, but Judas Priest started it.)

Eon – Fear

Techno and trance were great background music at work. I could go in my office, turn on the jam box and type away on news stories or lay out pages in QuarkXpress while people left me the hell alone. No one else liked washing machine music.

Juno Reactor is the only trance music that still holds up for me. Techno on the other hand, I still play – especially The Chemical Brothers. Love those trippy ass videos.

The Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun

I had file all that stuff in the “electronica” box in my brain once I got into weirder things like Aphex Twin (wtf do you call him?), or more popular things like Daft Punk (discotechno?) and Fatboy Slim.

Now I’ve got my CD drive working, a lot of that stuff is going back into rotation.

Juno Reactor is still at it by the way. Check this out:

Juno Reactor – Inside the Upside Down