Category Archives: Adventures

Other Guys’ Stories

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(Or, OGS, to save time) Up since three am. Met George Sack the Jacknife King in Mojave. Took Sack’s truck on the 58 to Baker, then left into Death Valley. A route I used to have for Pac Bell in 1969. The emergency phones were hand cranks on the side to ring up the Nevada Operator who then transferred the call to where ever. So, back to our mission.

Find some old desert rat who knows how to run a 1931 Axel straightening machine located in a shop in Pahrump. That’s Pahrump, Nevada. This guy Mickey drinks with some real characters. In the tiny town of Shoshone, we hit a trailer park he’s supposed to crash at most of the time. This trailer park’s newest model trailer was a 1958 model. Every other weed-packed driveway had a faded, all tires flat junker of some make of model sitting forlorn and long forgotten. Like it made it to that driveway and no farther. Forever. Mickey isn’t home but his drinking pal, Mo, is. He informs us he’s known as ‘Loco Mo’ in the finer drinking establishments surrounding Death Valley because of his 40 years as a railroad man.

OGS… From Mo’s mouth a few hours ago,”No, Mickey ain’t been around. He falls asleep on the couch and pisses himself, then I sit in it later and it ticks me off. He’s probably in a motor home behind the County truck yard off Death Valley Junction. His ex lets him sleep in her van. You go up there and take a look-see, but, what ever you do, don’t fuck her. She’ll ask you. Just tell her you can’t or something. She’s a real piece of work. I met her the same night Mickey did a long time ago. She ain’t changed one bit. Just one dick-crazy bitch!”

I nod my head in agreement. Since there’s a lull in the conversation, I make the mistake of asking him what had happened that particular momentous occasion. “Oh man , she was getting into her car outside the ‘Chicken Ranch’ (The Pahrump Whorehouse) as we pulled in to check the place out. She saunters over to another engineer friend of mine’s driver window to make a deal with us before we went inside. She says to my buddy that everything we we’re looking for was right in front of them. I’m sitting shotgun in this solid sided panel van that used to be a Winchell’s donut delivery truck. Two more guys from work are in the back with Mickey, putting down whiskey and Cokes like crazy.

Now, I was married at the time and wanted no part of her business, so I was put behind the wheel while everyone else did whatever in the back of the windowless panel truck. She directs me over my shoulder to a longggg desert road and I drove while things sounding pretty wild went on just behind me. It was pitch black in the rear view mirror so only my ears filled me in. As I’m about to complain about our gas situation, this gal is on top of me. I try to shove her back with my head and neck, thinking she’s getting fresh with me now. I was dead wrong. She was trying to throw up out my open window. I blocked her so whatever she had been up to back there, was now all over the back of my head and all over my shoulders. Not much was said as I drove her back to her car. Six months later, Mickey marries the broad!”

I again nod and tell him thanks. I glare at George with his dead pan face that’s quivering to not smile. Off to the ex’s…

ITEM: I meet the ex. It’s 115 in Death Valley Junction. I’ve seen covered wagons in better shape then the trailers in this park. All were shot forty years ago. Well, it is Death Valley. Who plans on retiring here? Sheila answers her battered screen door fixed by an off-sized half sheet of stained plywood. She doesn’t even ask who I am and I’m welcomed inside her humble home. Its dumpy on the outside but neat as a pin inside. She has two small air conditioner window units going and a little fan on her tiny kitchen table blowing the cool air around. It was comfy.

As I stepped past her, I checked out Mickey’s ex. Maybe seventy. Wearing a pair of loose shorts and a loose tank top. At one time she had to have been a looker. If I’d met her in her prime after five drinks, I could see making a pass at her. She obviously had those same thoughts in mind as she pulled her tank top off exposing some pretty darn large breasts. I take a step back towards her bedroom and say, “Hey, I’m just here looking for Mickey, you have the wrong idea toots!” She acts like I’m a flustered school boy and starts to slide off her shorts. I have to nip that in the bud pronto. She stops undressing but makes it even worse by doing this jiggle like the nude dancers do in the top less bars. I start to say something, I forget now. She cuts me off. “Want me to find your little man for you baby?” I start laughing. It’s just too weird. I say to her, “Look lady, you could have a pack of hound dogs and the Sheriffs mounted patrol helping you, and I wouldn’t want the little man found. Just get dressed and we’ll restart our meeting. How about it?” She picks her top up off the table, puts it back on, then offers me a beer. I settle for a Sprite and sit down for a few minutes to be polite.

She cut out the baloney and showed me some photos on her tiny counter. Most of her and Mickey at rodeos and stuff decades ago. I chug my soda and I’m out the door. I tell George what had gone on. He stayed in the running truck to keep the air going so was unaware of the fantastic time I was having just a few feet away. He calls me a liar and to head the truck to Pahrump and his friend’s shop the press is at. Mickey was already at the Nevada shop. He had just been dropped off by a friend. George got a call on his cell phone as I went down memory lane.

OGS…We find the shop in Pahrump. At the end of a long two lane road, then, five more miles on a pretty darn smooth dirt road to the only place at its end. In front of us is the sweetest damn shop I’ve seen in quite awhile. First of all, the back drop to it was breathtaking. Jagged, mean looking multi colored mountains maybe five thousand feet high. Larger ones peeking out above the front rows of what looks to be lava-like swirls ending in up thrusts peaks. No colors at all. Just faded greys, whites and blacks in squiggly mile long strata’s of ink-like rows, one above the other. Really rugged ranges of volcanic rock ridges and valleys. No green. No puffs of red or yellow rocks. All sunbaked lights and darks. Only broken by some ancient smashing of tectonic plates into each other causing mile long fractures and buckling hillsides. Pretty awesome.

Jake, the owner, opens his small shop door and invites us inside. Out of the oppressing heat as fast as we can move then inside the giant shop, as the door closed behind us were suddenly transported into the 1930’s. WHAT A SHOP!!!! As a couple of Jake’s men get the wrecked race car parts from the back of Sack’s truck, George and I stand under the cool blasting air of a ten-foot by ten-foot grill about ten feet over our heads. It’s blowing nice, cool air onto us at sixty miles an hour. Their were three more of the same hanging from the tall ceiling of the 100 foot long, maybe sixty foot wide steel building. As George went over his bent axle and other parts with a hung over Mickey, I’m offered a tour by the owner Jake.

Jake on the tour: “Now, this here is a (Oh, sorry. I took notes. Pat, my wife, won’t be too happy though. The only paper I had in my bib coverall’s are my gas receipts. They’re covered with felt pen scribbles now.) CINCINATTI, tool gripper and finisher. Made in 1945 and still runs like a charm. (I’m looking at, then up, at a machine from a Jules Verne book. It even has a tiny video screen to see x-rays made of parts in process. WOW!) We move along. Every machine seems to be larger and more impressive then the last. “Here’s an ‘OMAX’ 240. It was a state of the art Water Jet in 1939. It sucks the power, but still does pretty damn good detail metal cutting!”

He then picks up a five foot long, twenty inch tall, metal sheet cut out of the Indian Head from the old Indian Motorcycle Logos off their gas tanks. Some of the cuts are paper thin. He shows me this by holding it in front of the overhead lights. We move along. “This old boy is a ‘MAZATROL’ 99. Made in Italy in the late 1930’s. Weighs two tons. I can still press rough parts out of Magnesium and Aluminum with it with very few flaws!”

Now, Jake is creeping up on 70. He’s trim with a hillbilly beard. Maybe 145 pounds. Wears those giant wide suspenders to hold up his Levi’s full of wrenches and gauges of all sorts and sizes. Maybe five seven. Still full of pep and active. More machines come into view. His shop is even larger then I thought. After we go past the, ‘BLIST GRINDER’, 1955, a long row of seven foot tall metal tool boxes cover one ENTIRE wall of this part of the shop. Another longer building telescopes even farther back, hidden by the tool box back wall. In between every other tool box? Huge six foot tall gun safes of all colors and lock configurations. Some have no locks at all and are opened up half way. Inside are metal dies and such of all types. “See those dies? In that safe alone sits about $200,000 worth of custom dies. Mainly for the military and aero space companies!” I count twenty two safes all along the wall and around the shop here and there. I hadn’t noticed them before in awe of all the giant machines. I ask Jake how he can see into the top drawers of the fifty drawer and tray fronted tool boxes. He looks at me like I’m crazy and says a matter of fact, “I get a ladder!” Duh. On we go.

Two side by side ten foot tall and thirty foot long ‘DUTCH SAWS COMPANY’ articulating cut off stamps, lathes of all types, big as a VW Bus, ‘Nugier Air Drill’, a ‘JOHNSON MILL’, an entire room sized booth for a ‘MILLER WELDER’. After the ‘DO ALL’, the ‘LAGUN’ impact torque converter, and the, ‘HERCULES GRINDER’, I ran out of note paper. I also ran out of tour. The other section of the building was family and employees only.

As Jake leads me back to his office, I try and get one last look over my shoulder. Jake stops, then says, “Well, come on out side and I’ll show you a little side project we’ve been working on!” Out a side door, I shoot a glance Sack’s way. He’s in auto repair land with Mickey. Out into the blazing sun we go. I put on my shades and walk right into the back of Jake. He had stopped, and I wasn’t paying attention. I apologize as I spot his project. I look at him and mouth the words, “A Morter?” Jake nods and gives me the low down. “It’s 185 lbs all together. We tried a removable bottom plate. Too dangerous. You want some solid welds on this baby! It’s fired by packets of black powder set off, (crouches down onto his knees next to it) by a conventional fuse shoved into this hole here in the base of the tube. Pretty basic, actually!”

The tube is about four foot tall and about the size around of a bowling ball. Maybe because that’s what they fired out of it. Farthest shot? Four thousand feet. Impact pretty impressive if not hitting soft sand. Jake gets hundreds of bowling balls off the internet from closing bowling alleys all over the U.S. I asked him if I could see it in action. No way. They took it far out into Death Valley to fire it safely. Maybe I could come out on some other occasion? Told him I really would love that. I asked him how they moved it around. It looked pretty bulky and heavy. A lot heavier then 185. Jake points past me towards a giant rear yard full of vehicles. His finger is pointing at something I’ve always wanted. A 1938 “DROTT’ yard crane.

These babies are RARE. I’ve only seen them in photographs. As we walk over to it the urge to offer thousands of dollars I do not have is bitten back by a reality check. I climb up into the battered, but still cushioned, seat and look for the controls. No controls or steering wheel at all. Just toggle switches. Toggle switches? Jake is smiling. He fills me in. “You didn’t know they were all electric, did ya!” I’m blown away. I hop down and Jake shows me how to work it. “Every wheel has its own toggle array. Back, forward, left and right. He turns to his right, and just under the boom extension are about twenty toggles. I can read the faded metal instruction tags under them. You had to turn completely around on the seat to operate the four extender support legs in front of each hard rubber drive wheel. Jake knows what’s coming next and saves my breath. “It’s not for sale. EVER!” That took care of that. This was built in the 1930’s! No fumes in your shop. Quiet. Dependable. Would I trade my 1946 UNIT Crane for it? No fucking way. But, I sure would love to see this baby parked next to it.

Sack and I end up goofing at ‘Terrible Town Casino’, in downtown Pahrump. The place is pretty crowded. I’ve never won anything gambling so I headed for the coffee shop and some iced tea. I ask a tired but nice Latino waitress if it’s always so busy. She informs me that it’s like this on the first of the month. People get their checks and they come to ‘parlay’ them into quick fortunes. As soon as it;s all gone, it’s cat food and food stamps until the next first. “Come by tomorrow. Plenty of seats at the machines!”

George tells her a couple of my old jokes and she hangs out for a few minutes. When my carrot cake is brought by a coworker, she asks me if I would like it a la mode. Our table was five feet from the ice cream machine so I nodded a yes. Under the chrome nozzle goes my carrot cake. She takes a quick look around then covers my carrot cake with six giant loops of ice cream. As she sets it down in front of me she whispers, “Eat it fast before anyone sees!” George helped me. I tell him to back off and worry about his sugar intake. He gurgles out a quick, “Shut up!” We take care of business. Both of us get head freezes. George tips her ten bucks.

Back at the shop, everything is ready to go except the rear end. I have the pleasure of watching a master at work. Using titanium blocks and air powered rams controlled by foot pedals, Jake torques the drive train to Sack’s specs while giving us a running commentary on what he’s doing. Multiple gauges on the machine tell Jake every move he’s making on the newly welded rear end. Really impressive. As my eyes follow his swift moves, he’s like a ballerina. Constant motion with no wasted moves. He had done this dance thousands of times. Glancing at all the gauges, mini blocks placed here and there then pressed by slight taps of his toes on the big steel shoe guides, voila! It was done! Total cost? $400 to Mickey, the rest was between Sack and Jake.

As we put the rear end in the back of Sack’s Dodge truck, Jake motions us to follow him across the large front lot over to his personal residence. Around about an acre is a ten foot chain link fence. Interlaced with lathe strips to block your view. Once inside the solid metal gate, you’re looking at about fifty Honda cars. The old 60’s ones. Ones never sold here. Japanese models. Vans. Trucks. Two doors. Four doors. Some with four flats. Some missing doors and hoods. I’m not a car man and it was HOT. I say some compliments and start to head back to George’s truck. Jake looks hurt. I step back to his side.

“These Honda’s are just a hobby. Inside the garage is what I really want to show you guys!” He unlocks the side door to the house’s three car garage and in we go. It was hotter than hell inside. No open windows and just oppressive heat. Wanting back out, Sack’s open mouth has me look where he’s looking. I start to take notes on my hand and Jake shakes his head no. “This is top secret. Tell no one!” So, I can’t. I can tell you this much. He’s using five types of cars from the 30’s to the 50’s to make this giant Frankencar. It’s hood is seven foot long. A V-16, 24 valve engine, with all sorts of stuff on it that I have no idea what he was talking about. It’s to be completed in five years. Think of a Flash Gordon rocket mating with a Futuristic Batmobile. To open the doors you push in small button like protrusions behind the doors themselves. They then sprang open smooth as butter. Really neat.

ITEM: Back at Sack’s truck, I tell Jake my Richter story. The earthquake measuring is called the, ‘Richter Scale’ to honor him. Forgive the spelling. I’m too tired to look for the dictionary. At Richters big shop in North Pasadena on my first phone repair, I watched sheets of tear off paper coming off a big machine. A metal arm like a spider leg is making squiggly lines back and forth across the wide sheets, then, the sheets continue on, folding themselves into a catch box on the floor. I ask a fresh off the phone Richter if there are earthquakes somewhere. He laughs then tells me they thought the same thing when they first turned it on. Then they found out from the odd hours it came on that there was a rhyme and reason to the hits. It turned out the Lockheed plant in Burbank had a giant press, so huge, that every time it stamped out a one piece frame for an F-18 fighter it caused a 2.9. (Ten years later, I was at that Lockheed plant and saw them taking that big press apart to junk it. It was about twenty five feet tall and even wider. One of the techs gave me an 8″ by 10″ of it in action. I put it in that year’s journal).

Finally heading for home, we drop Mickey off at his ex’s. As she opened the door to let him in, she was dressed in a man’s two piece pajama set. She ignored us and looked happy to see Mickey. We headed for Baker and a Bob’s Big Boy before parting ways back in Mojave. A really fun day…

The Wild Life

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It’s 1967. The Hart High lunch line. I just stole 10 hamburgers to sell on the hill later. I’d lean over with my right hand inside a tear in my bomber jacket to boost food from the microwaved catered food trays. Next to me is Frank Angelostro. He has a flowing Hawaiian shirt and some sweat pants since his Levi’s were stolen in gym class. He puts his stolen burgers and cheese burritos in the front of his pants. As I start to pay for a milk and a bag of Fritos, Frank suddenly screams out in pain as he leaps around like a madman while jerking his sweat pants off. I watch in horror as my best pal starts clawing at his testicles covered in molten hot cheese from an exploded burrito cover.

ITEM: Doing Sheriff work camp during the summer Angelostro, Carl Winager and myself are shoveling and raking fire zones around large white buildings at Special Devices Systems off of Placerita Canyon. An explosion about fifty feet away scares the crap out of us. It’s over before we can jump for cover. The entire side of a sixty foot warehouse is blown away. Three men in lab coats are staggering around with blood coming out of their ears. As we drop our tools to help, the Sheriff lead flunkie tells us to pick up our tools and keep cutting weeds.

ITEM: When they shut down Bermite in Saugus, they did no clean up. They just shoved everything into a wide valley in back and covered it all with a zillion tons of dirt. We took lumber from huge stacks at the old site as soon as the security man fell asleep in his trailer. We dragged the wood to three huge oak trees near the train tracks and built a connected tree house. It was the first thing I built the County tore down. The start of a tradition. After they tore it down, they left our Playboys next to the middle oak tree under a big rock. On top was a short note on a torn lunch bag. “NICE JOB KIDS!”

ITEM: After some heavy rains the Soledad wash is careening out of control all the way to the ocean 30 miles or so away. We take a military raft for ten part of the way down it before a Fire Department helicopter is hovering over us as we’re paddling like crazy past Denny’s off Sand Canyon. We turn it over and swim for our lives across from Whites Canyon. Still raining like crazy, one of the O’neal brothers and I escape. It takes me four hours to get home. As I climb through my bedroom window, my overhead light snaps on. A Sheriff is sitting on my bed drinking a Coke. My mom screams, “JUST TAKE HIM!”, as I’m led downstairs to his car.

ITEM: Working at Ace Cains cleaning trout ponds, we find five baby great horned owls in the top of a shed we’re supposed to tear down. I take one home with me. To save time, Johnny M., a proud owner of an M. 40 military truck, drives it through the shed. A 2×6 splinters and goes through his radiator. He’s so pissed he quits. I end up hitchhiking with a baby owl in my jacket biting and clawing me. Later, my step dad comes home from a drinking bout (this was just before he rolled his Half-ton Chevy Pickup off of Placerita, getting thrown through the windshield, then having the truck roll over him- TWICE, and lived!) I had a large cage built in the garage with a perch outside. Owls are nocturnal so night time is their time. The owl, Apache by name, is out on his perch. Bill comes in the garage side door because it’s pretty late. As he take his jacket off, my owl flies to his arm like I had trained him on my own. Not good. Bill Burtis tore that garage up in the dark fighting to get that owl off of him.

ITEM: Bill Burtis was a cement man. Foundations, cantilevered slabs, swimming pools, driveway, tennis courts. All sorts of stuff. He did a park for Canyon Country up Bouquet Canyon. Angelostro and I were hired to strip all the twenty foot 2×4 framing off, pull the cement double-headed nails and clean the cement off before stacking the wood. We get bored and start up a D-6 Dozer sitting near the wash. I tell Frank I can drive it no sweat. I back over one of the new slabs. Not good. We also can’t shut it off. Bill Burtis pulls up with some burgers in sacks for our lunch. He slams them into the ground and looks to the sky with his arms out, silently begging for lighting to strike us most likely.

ITEM: We’re doing a swimming pool for Clayton Moore, the original T.V. ‘LONE RANGER’. He signed an autographed picture for me I still have of him and Tonto sitting on Silver and Scout side by side. I’m about ten years old. I say, “Where’s Tonto’s name?” Moore goes back inside his house, then comes out about five minutes later. Its now signed by Tonto with an ‘X’ under Tonto spelled out in block letters. Moore tells me Tonto was taking a nap and couldn’t come out. He then pats me on the head and asks me, “So little man, who’s your favorite cowboy?” I say a loud, “Tom Mix!” He ignores me and starts talking about a driveway with Bill.

ITEM: I have Tom Mix’s Wedgewood stove. Yep. It came from his old film cutting lab off of Franklin across the street from the Magic Castle. It will go in the new barn’s kitchen. Tom Mix ended in a sad way. Homeless and broke. No one would hire him anymore. He ended up living in his big Bentley or Rolls, whatever. Anyhow, he was driving to Vegas and hit some sand sliding him off the road. A large leather bag full of silver dollars flew from the back seat and broke his neck. Yakima Canutt, my kids Great Grandfather, told me that Mix had a mean streak and could be hard on his horses. I never liked him after that. I switched to Ben Johnson. No one could out ride Ben. Even Yakima said he was the best he ever saw. And that was from a guy who had THREE World Champ all-around saddles sitting on saddle stands in his front room in North Hollywood. I’d watch the fights on Friday nights with him on occasion and he would feed these tree squirrels right out of his hand that came in through an open kitchen window. A great guy!

ITEM: I’m at Buster Keaton’s estate near Malibu. I’m supposed to pull some extra phones out of the giant home to make the monthly bill lower. As I step inside the three-story foyer with the elderly lady of the house, I happen to look down at my white T-shirt as I take my tool pouch off to ease the weight of the belt cutting into me. My shirt is alive with tiny black dots hopping all over. FLEAS! I then smell the cat urine and spot about ten cats looking down at me from beds and perches off the stairs and from landings. OH NO! A CAT LADY! I run outside and strip naked behind my truck while putting my clothes in a large plastic bag I then filled with powdered desiccant we carried just for that purpose. She watch’s me from some rose bushes the entire time.

ITEM: I’m ten miles from a security booth at Edwards Air Force Base at a large six-story high locked building made of steel. The windows are glazed. No one is around. The wind is blowing off the vast empty tarmacs around me about sixty miles an hour in snapping gusts. Lulls, then, WHAM, the wind would howl. I’m to disconnect an old pay phone booth. A bad lunch strikes and I have to go. I mean, NOW! No one around so I drop my pants between my Pac Bell truck and the side of the big building and let nature take its course. I complete my job and drive back to security to sign out. Three big black soldiers are laughing their heads off as I sit in my van awaiting the sign out sheet. These guys are just dying they’re laughing so hard. I lean out of the sun and look inside the air conditioned booth to see what they’re laughing at. It was me, on a 24 inch screen, taking a dump while reading a Ring Magazine and picking my nose. Under the eaves of the building was a telescoping security camera recording me.

ITEM: Bob Sharber and I are at an SCC box in front of the Chevron station across from the big church on Highland and Franklin Street. A guy in a monk robe, shaved head and some white finger paint on his forehead asks us if we have any matches. I give his a small box I had from the Whisky. The guy goes out into Franklin and sets himself on fire. A man in a beer truck put him out with a small fire extinguisher.

ITEM: I’m sitting in my truck across the street from the Chinese theater. A bunch of street kids are putting on a show with their dirt bikes for the long line of people waiting to see the first STAR WARS movie. The line was all the way up to Franklin. Eight kids laid down in the street as two kids stopped traffic inching its way around the block looking for parking. A kid I nicknamed Evel bunny hopped at speed over all the kids, then, bunny hopped his bicycle over the two-foot high block wall around Grahmans side parking lot.

ITEM: I’m at Penny Marshall’s house off of Out Post road. I was replacing her master bedroom phone. She never leaves her bed. She works out of it like most do an office. Jack Lalane lived two houses up from her. The guy from WKRP lived right across the street. I mention her neighbors trying for small talk. She looks above her glasses and says, “Tell me something I don’t already know!” I think for a second then it comes to me. “Well, I was at your dad’s house about a year ago repairing a system down. Your mom has so many nick knacks it took me an hour to move one table to get the pull-down ladder to the phone equipment in the ceiling!” Penny just stares at me looking annoyed. I continue a bit faster. “Well, your dad has all of his people in a big meeting and I kept interrupting him. He finally gets ticked. Outside by my truck he says an angry, “Why are you in the ceiling wrecking my meeting?” I tell him rats have chewed his phone cables. At this he blows his stack. “I just paid thirty grand to have that roof fixed. What do you have to say about that?” I think a second then say, “Well, the rats say its nice and dry up there now!” He orders me off his property. As I pick up my orange traffic cone and chock block, he stops, walks back to me and says. “Finish your job. You really pissed me off, but, you’re pretty funny. You should write for me sometime!” Penny’s dad is Carl Reiner. She laughed and told me to shut up a second. She called her dad and told him what I said. He remembered me. COOL!

ITEM: I get a ticked off customer because I won’t run any wire in a redone bungalow off of Sunset. It says on the face of the order, “No wire runs or drilling walls. Phones go at existing jacks only.” I have to call for a supervisor. Dispatch sends O’neil. A supervisor who already doesn’t like me for a bunch of valid reasons. My super was on vacation. O’neil shows up half crocked and its only one pm. Ripping the work order out of my hand, he tells me to shut my mouth and keep it shut. Up the three steps to the front door of the nicely landscaped four plex, O’neil pounds on the door five times. Three gay guys answer. The one who called to complain about me not putting phones in their bathrooms wonders who George is through the still closed screen making George even angrier.

As the largest of them steps out onto the porch, O’neil sticks the work order in the customers face and screams, “IT’S RIGHT HERE SISSY, IN BLACK AND WHITE, NO WIRE RUNS, GOT IT?” As the big guy- nude, but for a towel- starts to stammer out a reply, O’neil ends the conversation. “ARE YOU RETARDED AND DEAF. NO WIRE RUNS!” Shoving the work order back into my hand O’neil then goes across the freshly planted lawn and kicks the little green wire protector into the street on the way to his company sedan. I look at the guys and say, “Well, there you have it from management. Happy now!”

ITEM: I’m in line at the Laurel Canyon Market waiting to pay for one of their custom deli sandwiches. A man in line just ahead of me looks familiar. Its George Harrison, the Beatle. He turns and looks at me. I say, “Hey, aren’t you one of the Beach Boys?” He nods his head and says a cockney, “Yep, surfs up dude!”

ITEM: I’m talking to the real estate man who owns the building the County store is in. He has a big office under it. As we step outside his office to see where he wants me to run some new wire from the pole for additional lines, a gigantic crash is just above us and out of our line of vision on Laurel Canyon. As we turn to the sound of the crash, two blonde haired kids are sailing through the air right into oncoming traffic. Cars are rear ending and going over the curb everywhere. I couldn’t look. Later on I find out their mom had pulled out of the market parking lot and hit an oncoming car head on. The kids were in the back seat of her Jaguar with its top down and no seat belts.

ITEM: I’m at a huge house off of Mulholland, two houses from then Governor Jerry Brown. In the days when he was dating Linda Ronstadt. I can hear some classical piano music coming from the next room as a maid lets me in for phone repair in the kitchen. I glance in the room while the maid gets the woman of the house. A tiny little girl in a white lace dress is playing a grand piano with custom foot pedals. She’s sliding back and forth on her bench to reach the keys. She sees me in a framed photo’s glass and looks over her shoulder at me. Maybe six or seven. Curls like Shirley Temple. I say a low, “Any Jerry Lee Lewis?” She immediately breaks into, ‘Come on over baby, we got chicken in the barn’, in a fast riff. Her mom storms down some stairs and shouts for her to get back to work. As the little girl went back to Bach or whatever the mom tells me off all the way to the kitchen.

Phonehenge North News

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ITEM: Been hanging with Oscar the water man. He handles every emergency that comes up for the local water company in my neck of the woods. My neighbors just above me blew a one-inch water line fitting and were out of town. I call the company, they hook me up with Oscar. Now we’re good pals. I’ve been going all over the place goofing with him while he does all the work. I’m learning a lot about Bakersfield and Tehachapi.

In Acton, I tried to find a used tire for the dump truck. Nothing at five places under a $100 bucks anywhere in Whiteville. Oscar hangs with a different crowd. We stop to get a tractor tire fixed at a barrio shop in a rough area of Bakersfield. It takes up the entire bed of a one ton flatbed. As we roll it off I wonder about a used tire with my dimensions. Oscar speaks rapid fire Spanish. A kid from the back rolls out an almost new truck tire. It’s $20 bucks if I can fix the guys ringing on his fax machine. Done deal.

ITEM: We eat at the most extraordinary places. Just outside of Bakersfield, heading back to Tehachapi, we pull off the highway over a cattle guard and into some trees. There’s thirty trucks or more of working guys parked all over under some giant oak trees next to a small creek. Big tow able barbeques are going. Half steers on a couple being tended by some farm workers. Vats of beans of all sorts. Fresh vegetable salads- all organic. These guys are hep to the pesticides that have been destroying their families for years. I’m the only white guy there. All are staring at me. I get in line. I pay FIVE BUCKS for all I can eat. As I pay, the woman speaks Spanish to me. Oscar translates. She wants to know if I have any requests. I have Oscar ask her if they won’t spit in Santa’s chow. Everyone chilled out. I was offered a seat at a bunch of tables. Kids were running all over calling me Santa in Spanish.

ITEM: Mexican Americans don’t like Obama. I’m not political. I vote Peace and Freedom. I vote in case the mother ship only picks up the voters. Why risk it. They say, ‘NoBama’, when they say his name. They feel he hasn’t done one thing he promised. The main thing their pissed about is all their kids serving in Afghanistan and Iraq not getting proper medical care coming home. Plus, STILL THERE.

ITEM: News flash. The economy isn’t coming back. You need thirty-year jobs to pay off thirty-year loans. Until those things come together, forget the lying news on TV and radio. My pal Sack the Jackknife King says he’s seeing a half-dozen machine shops folding and going to the auctioneers every week instead of every month. The cost to retool? Hey, just try finding parts to start to build ANYTHING, let alone start up some sort of manufacturing. You have to get your material from China. Or anywhere else in the world. Not the USA. We broke three two-inch box wrenches from Harbor Freight trying to break down the boom on the UNIT crane to move it. I finally borrowed some old Craftsmen wrenches and an air hammer to get it done. We put six-foot cheater bars on the Craftsmen made out of six inch pipe and they laughed at us.

ITEM: Oscar takes me to Quail Valley lake. Its about ten miles from my place way back in the mountains. Lots of locked gates. Being the nice guy that I am, I get the combinations from Oscar to open the gates for him and save him getting in and out. Half way up a freshly packed dirt road, I look up to our left and see all these Wind Power trucks parked in a holding yard. Oscar fills me in as we head up into the National Forest. Oscar is Mexican/Indian with a long braided pony tail. Thick set and powerful build. About five or six years younger them me. I’d arm wrestle him but never fight the guy. First off he’s too nice a guy. Second. Mexican guys always throw mean left hooks and I wouldn’t like one of those at all. I fight with my mouth until I can find a car to run around to stay away from an opponent. If you want action out of me I’ll sell you one of my old, “BLAZING COMBATS”. Oh man, just the best!!!! Frank Frazetta does the covers. I have one over my computer framed. It has a Marine with just a helmet and his pants and boots holding a wounded buddy in one arm and firing a Thompson with his other. Ejecting shells are arching out into the muddy water. The Marines grimace says it all. “COME GET SOME!” My other favorite of his is eleven Saber Toothed cats gang jumping a Woolly Mammoth. Hector, the artist that paints adds on fifteen-story buildings, is going to paint it on the side of my Blue barn in trade for my wife Pat advising him on Immigration stuff. She’s retired now but still knows all the laws. Plus, since she Pro Bono’ed half her cases anyhow she loves barter. We used to chickens and eggs all the time. I love that stuff.

ITEM: Once past the Wind Turbine truck staging yard, we start climbing into the forest. Around five-thousand feet, we’re in thick trees and undergrowth and some really cool rock formations. Most of the rocks are volcanic. Big bastards. Some are larger then Oscar’s full-sized crew cab pickup. It’s a Toyota Tacoma like my wife Pat’s, but it’s a lot larger. Oscar told me his was the first year that Toyota went full-sized. I think Pat’s is way nimbler. Plus Sack put a custom flat bed on hers that’s easier for her to load and unload.

We climb to some cutouts for the new Turbine towers bases. Holy shit. Each tower has to have a hole that can hold fifty yards of cement. If not even more. Giant forty foot long cages of one inch rebar laying on the ground on their sides are still six foot tall. We get out and check out the surrounding area in a sweeping vista. The tall mountains in front of us are really getting rugged. Craggy rock formations with big trees growing out of the hundred foot calving stone splits are all over the place. We hop back in and keep moving. It’s five pm, and we have about two hours light left. It’s even shady in some of the dips in the small canyons already. This is where we saw our first three bears. Oh yeah. A Cinnamon sow and two cubs are leisurely strolling across the wide dirt road in front of us heading to go down towards the lake off to our right. The mom is losing her winter coat big time. Huge chunks are coming off in large swaths. Patches of beautiful short glossy hair stick out here and there. She looks to weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds. The cubs look about five months old. They’re born in the den and suck super high-fat milk, so they look really good after eating all the juniper berries covering the giant Juniper trees all around us almost obliterating the rock strata.

I call out to the cubs like the little kid from ‘Old Yeller’. One of the cubs starts to stroll over to my door. No way. Momma huffs and blows into the thick brush. Both cubs take the hole she punched and disappear. Oscar is blown away. “Dude, I’ve worked here for 26 years and those are the first bears I’ve ever seen!” We head on into even thicker forest. Now there’s big pines and really fat mountain oaks shoving the junipers out of the way. Big slabs of multicolored rocks peek out of the gaps of green and brown. Not a half mile up the wide smooth rolling road now climbing constantly, we spot him at the same time. A BIG black bear. He’s easily three times the size of momma bear. He sees us at the same time just up and off the road and he goes right into some thick scrub like a Sherman tank. I’ve driven Sack’s Sherman, so it’s a good metaphor. Oscar and I high five. What an afternoon! We come to some gates that are wide open. I wonder to Oscar if we could get locked in after going past the gates and stuck when a worker locked them not knowing about us. Or even worse. Knowing about us. Oscar shrugged. He informs me he not only has some five-foot handled bolt cutters in his bed, but also a cutting torch and tank. We’re set so we continue up the dirt road.

We end up passing huge cut outs and a giant brand new power substation surrounded by heavy equipment of all types. D-10’s with side blades. Six wheel drive water trucks so tall they have headlights welded on custom bars under their brush guards. Graders. Semi everythings. That was the reason for the new road. Some of the Turbines are two hundred foot tall with seventy five foot long blades. The loud ‘WHOOOMPP’s’ as they spin sound AWESOME! Oscar wonders about thieves. I tell him my kid Tejas puts in security systems with 24-hour infrared tracking by Satellites. They can take your license number no problem. I’m talking about the one in your pocket if you had it out. No lie. Good luck trying to stiff these guys for one bolt. A twenty mile road to get out? Great planning Sherlock. Plus, the GPS tracking gear they install on anything worth taking. We drove past and kept going to the top. We end up not at the real top but close enough. It was starting to get dark so we jumped out to take a quick peek past the safety berm. WOW! We could see all the way to China Lake’s testing base. The one they took Area 51’s stuff to.

Heading back, we slow to take Oscar’s rig out of 4 wheel drive. THREE MORE BEARS!!! Another momma and two cubs. This sow is twice the size of the other mom, but her cubs are only half the size of the other cubs. I start to talk to these cubs and Oscar tells me to shut the hell up. “That bitch can tear our doors right the fuck off!”

ITEM: Coming out near the lake on our way back it’s dim, but some rays of sunlight can still be seen here and there. We’re out of the big mountains and down in a neat valley. The lake looks to be about ten acres. The ends are chock full of ten-foot high reeds. Brush grows all around the side across from us. Some people are fishing. One guy ends up coming over to us. I figured he knew no one was supposed to be trespassing. Oscar is as nice as pie. Not so others on the road. This guy has had a few brews and complains bitterly about a guy named Pat who hassles him all the time. He mentions some problem at the LOVES gas station in town. We check the water pumps and roll. Half way out of the lower hills, we bump into a guy on a quad ATV. Oscar knows him so we yak it up. Oscar had always wanted to see the guy’s place and asks if we can come check it out. Pat calls his wife on his cell. We can hear her say an emphatic, “NO!” Guess they live a mile behind a dormant Volcano for a reason.

ITEM: I gave Oscar a ton of VHS and DVD’s I’m sick of or have three of. Leo has bought me at least fourteen used copies of all the Star Wars movies from Pat’s trips to Salvation Armys and church second hand stores. If you like a town full of second hand stores, Tehachapi is the place to live. They have a church about every fifty yards. As I hand the big box to Oscar before leaving his place, we yakked about Pat telling us his side of the gas station affair against the guy at the lake’s version. We laughed about what a coincidence running into both parties. A voice calling Oscars name makes us turn in the dark towards the gate leading to the dirt road. Into my headlights steps a lost soul. You can see it in her face. She walks like she’s forty and looks eighty. As she steps closer all doubts vanish. Her hair is in knots and her lipstick is around her lips a half inch past her lip lines. Like a macabre clown on meth she wonders if Oscar can give her a lift up the canyon. Oscar lets her know that the Highway Patrol had towed her car at noon from where she rolled it the night before. I think he said it was a Jeep. He also lets her know I’m taking off and would be tickled pink to drive her. Thanks pal.

ITEM: Two corners off of tight dirt roads we suddenly have a llama in my headlights. A tiny little white-haired gal is trying to drive it down the small road to an open gate. Psycho hops right out and starts helping to drive the animal. I use my dump truck as a pusher. Staying away, yet moving it ahead. Once the animal is in the gate, the old lady thanks us. Turns out she has 45 of ‘em in all shapes and colors. Takes care of them all alone. Psycho knew her so they yakked it up for a few minutes. I shut off my truck but left my headlights on. The old woman, “You know that big old Bobcat that’s been around here for years? Well, it’s a female. My big black tom was just a humping the hell out of her the other night outside my kitchen window where I put the cat chow. He looked like a midget screwing a fat lady!” Girl talk. I was still in the truck.

Last Item: I filled out a ‘Welcome to Tehachapi” card at the rental place where we got the 6-ton 4×4 lift to move the steel water tanks. The lady finally calls me and wonders if she can come by to give me her free maps and a lecture on Tehachapi’s past. We had quite the conversation until she asked for my address. I say, “I’m up Sand Canyon Road and then down Umtali!” There’s dead silence on the receiver. Then, a changed voice says, “I live in Bear Valley Springs. I don’t go up that canyon!” CLICK.

Saugus, CA

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Roughly the years from 1965 on. Right about the time I scored my drivers license learners permit. I’ll be jumping around as one story will pin ball into another one. Names might be left out because of lawsuits. If still alive they’ll know exactly what their end of a story is.

Soledad Canyon Road. So many shennanigans almost take an entire book for this street alone. It runs a longggggg way. While stealing ice cream at Whites Canyon from the drug store, caught along with Frank Angelostro by some pissed off parents and held for the Sheriffs. We’re taken from the manager’s office in cuffs to a waiting Blazer-type vehicle. Instead of heading towards Newhall, we stay on Soledad all the way out of civilization and up into the wilds past Rivers End trailer park. Holy shit!!! Rivers End!!! I haven’t thought of that place in YEARS! Have to get back to that joint later.

So, the cops take us to a little spot off Soledad called Aqua Dulce Canyon Road. A bad place for me to be at any time. So many people on that road wanted me dead it was a blessing to have cops with me. Not heading to Newhall had both of us concerned. We also had the ‘quiet’ cops that only talked when answering their radio. Now, Frank was the tough guy of our partnership. Since his dad beat the shit out of Frank and his older brother weekly, Frank could take an adult-style beating no problem. Me? My mouth always did my fighting. That’s why I usually hung with tough guys. Having hot older sisters kept me in a steady supply of older guys who actually had trucks and cars.

As the cops pull over, the sun is now starting to go down. Since the freeway to Palmdale hadn’t been built yet, the odds of some heavy traffic was zero. More like no traffic. Without a word we’re taken out of the vehicle and uncuffed. The taller pot-bellied cop tells us in a low voice, “Start running punks!” Frank is off like a rabbit into the near by wash full of brush and rocks. I run sort of sideways to see the bullets coming after about ten strides. The cops are bent over double laughing. Sure, they could laugh. I was running right towards Tony Epper’s ranch near Vasquez Rocks park. From a little incident at Thompson’s rifle range, not a guy I wanted to run into. He had been shooting trap and I was loading the trap machine in the cement blockhouse along with a nutcase kid named Scott Kingston. No, not the older one with the woody surf wagon. His younger brother Mr. Nutcase magazine cover boy two times already by 15 years old. Epper was shooting against Joe Canutt, Yakima Canutt’s son. I liked Joe since he was my pal Forest’s uncle so I was putting small cracks in Epper’s clay pigeons every fifth round or so making him blow his shots. He ended up charging the blockhouse and threatened to start shooting into the mechanical arms aperture that tossed the discs. I stayed put until Mrs. Thompson showed up in her white pickup to fire me. I asked her how come me? She just shook her head. They usually hired me back.

One time Frank invites me to spend the night at his house. Forest Canutt came over since we were about a hundred yards from his house on Beaver Run Road off of Sand Canyon… Saugus Sand Canyon. Not the Sand Canyon I’m off of now. Two different animals. Forest heads for home and Frank insists I sleep in his bed while he uses his sleeping bag near his closet. Sam, Frank’s older brother, was fighting with Frank’s mom in the front room so we hit the hay early. Frank tells me I’ll be insulting Italians if I don’t accept his hospitality. I say thanks and go right to sleep as Frank hits the light. I’m woken up by someone beating the living shit out of me. I scream for help. The room’s only light is from the TV screen down a long hallway away. My attacker is suddenly off of me and the room’s overhead light is snapped on.

In front of me is a short, wide, half-naked extremely hairy Italian man with a big wide black belt in his right fist. The side of my face is throbbing and my nose is bloody. As Frank blasts out the bedroom door in his boxers, his still stunned father doesn’t even take a swing at him. His father is in a drunken stupor. He finally says a slurred, “Who the fuck are you?” As I jump out of Frank’s bed and start speed dressing. Frank’s mom is now in the hallway screaming at Frank’s old man, “YOU STINKING ROTTEN ANIMAL. YOUR BEATING THE NEIGHBORS’ KID!” That sentence is etched into my mind as if it was said an hour ago. Now he gets the picture.

Frank’s mom is now in high gear as we all head towards the kitchen. It was my first time in the house and the kitchen had the door out, was all I remembered. Nope. Frank’s mom starts cooking some sausage and eggs while Frank’s pop apologizes over and over to me while trying to give me all the money in his wallet. It was only about thirty bucks so I told him to forget about it, I just wanted to go home. We eat and it’s over and done with. Two years later Frank’s dad once again beat the crap out of me over the Jewel Tea man caper, but, another story.

Ace Cains bar and trout ponds were not too far down Sand Canyon from Frank’s house so we goofed off there a lot. Johnny Rodriguiz, a friend of Sam’s, would chase us off for his dad (the owner) when we got out of control. Frank and I taught these monkeys Ace had in a big cage near the trout ponds how to jerk off and that got us 86’ed from the place for quite awhile. We would sneak in through Brian Thompson’s property that was right up the wash. Not the same Thompson as the rifle range Thompson’s. Brian had rich parents and thought he could buy his way out of anything. After we all had to see the judge from the head on train prank at the Soledad Capra train tunnel, Frank and I get sentenced ahead of Brian since his parents hired a lawyer for him. I get three months Sheriffs work camp. There went summer vacation. Frank got a year since he was over 18. He went into the Army so they dropped his year. But, at the time, it was now Brian’s turn to be sentenced. His Attorney gives a nice little speech. Brian ends up with the same as me. Three months. Brain shouts out to his mother standing just behind him, “This is BULLSHIT!” The judge says, “Right you are son. Six months. Want to try for more?” Boy Brian, that attorney paid off.

I’m taking some cycles to a friend in Lancaster. Ford Canutt cruises by my place in Sleepy Valley, sees I’m having trouble loading the bikes. He gives me a hand then decides to cruise out to our mutual friend’s with me. A mutual friend who later was busted with a bag full of guns at emergency and a bullet hole in his leg. Sorry, no names, remember.

So, half way to our destination, the straps tying down the cycles come loose in the bed of my Crew Cab Power Wagon. It has a flat bed with one-ton shocks and a 16-foot lumber rack welded to the frame. I still drive it every ten years or so. It has stolen Oregon plates so it’s not a good idea to cruise too far in it. The last time I drove it was to Stan Lee’s house in Hollywood to do an emergency phone repair for him. He signed everything my kids put in front of him.

Back to the loose cycles. Ford was just back from some tours as a tank man in ‘Nam, so he liked to party. He was also called Danny, so, I might put that name in and confuse you. Well, Ford tells me to steer the wheel then CLIMBS OUT MY DRIVER WINDOW DOING EIGHTY! I steer with my left hand and try to stay calm. Still sitting in the shot gun seat since I had the ice chest between us. Over the lumber rack he goes. He ties down the cycles, waves and talks with two babes laughing and yelling at him from the fast lane next to us, then he’s back in the window for a fresh cold one.

I end up married to one of his sisters and have three kids with her before the wheels came off. His mom just passed away. I do have a funny story about Bernice. This was while we still had a truce going. I was wild to see Joe Frazier fight Jerry Quarry. I had tickets and was going to bet heavy on Quarry to win. I was using the Beaver Run phone to make my bets. Bernice clucks her tongue and says I had just thrown good money away. She adds, “Quarry won’t last five rounds with Frazier!” I then bet her a hundred bucks at two to one to shut her up. Oh man, she was dead right. I never did pay her that dough, so, sorry Bernice. Hope your in a good place.

Since we’re on a Canutt role, I can’t let Forrest Canutt slide. That guy stuck it to me so many times I lost count. He was one of those guys you like but can never trust. He almost got me killed a half dozen times and I still hung out with him so the fault was all mine I guess. We did have some good laughs in between the screaming roller coaster rides to hell fiascos, so it was worth it.

Here’s the kind of stuff I mean: There’s a big earthquake and all the store fronts up and down San Fernando Road in Newhall are shattered. Walking down the street as it just happened what does Forrest do? He rolls a brand new ten speed out of a now wide-open bike store window and rides for home. He’s busted in two blocks for looting during an emergency. We’re off Vasquez Canyon Road stealing water melons from the pumpkin ranch. We jump in Forrest’s truck to make a clean get away as a half dozen farm workers are running towards us. Forrest can’t find his keys. He takes off as I’m dragged down and held for the cops. As they drag me to the fruit stand register across the road, Forrest fires up his truck and leaves me. Forrest starts hanging with a bad crowd. He robs a gas station and his accomplice hits the clerk over the head with a pistol. A kid I had once been on Hart Wresting Team with in 1967. Our heavyweight, to be exact. Forrest is on the lam in Northern California cutting trees and staying low. He decides to come home for Christmas. Near Mike’s Tires on Soledad Canyon, his old pick up gets a flat. He takes the tire off the truck and rolls it to Mike’s to get it fixed. Who turns around at the counter to help him? Why, the heavyweight guy he had robbed at the gas station with a new job. Forrest took some good shots before the cops came. I saw the dents his head put in the Coke Machine weeks later when I was getting some tires.

Forrest and I went to lots of live concerts. I saw Hendrix with him twice. Once in Frisco and once at the Palm Desert blowout where the cops had two hundred of us locked up in the high school gyms for two days to pick up trash before they let us go. Forrest was the greatest man that ever lived at getting into concerts for free. He would swill down some booze then start yelling at the top of his lungs, “RUSH THE GATE, RUSH THE GATE! WHAT THE FUCK CAN THEY DO!” It worked a lot of times. Never try it at the old Forum in Inglewood, though. Those guys hope you’ll rush them. All USC and UCLA football players wired to the max on steroids and coke keeping them fresh and alert.

Forrest comes by one time with an Alligator. A vehicle from the Army that can drive off of land right into the water and back out again. We had some great times in it. Forrest also would start up my 175 Tempo Cycle by bump starting it backwards and drive with his arms behind him and looking over his shoulder.

Chuck Yost lived up the road from Forrest so we hung out with him on some capers. Notably the Deane Homes affair where we threw a party in one of the model homes and Chuck brought a ton of booze. Everyone was blasted. Not one kid over 18. After Frank Angelostro jumped off the second floor landing to swing on a chandelier and it ripped right out of the ceiling landing on top of his knocked out form, Chuck, Forrest and I started pissing on Frank as he sucked air with the wind knocked out of him from landing on his back. Realizing we we’re dead when his air came back we left our trailer park slut dates and took the Deane Homes show van to Newhall. They always left the keys under the seat. One of my pals was a life guard for the club pool and drove it on beer runs all the time once everyone went home on Sunday.

Once during a Halloween night adventure throwing eggs from the back of speeding pickups from Sunland to Castaic, Willie Schmidt is along with us in Dillenbeck’s truck tossing eggs in the old Woodlands off Sand Canyon. At a cul de sac, Don Winterholm runs out with a single-shot shotgun to chase us off from throwing eggs at his house. This was before he set himself on fire burning ants with a spray paint can. I see the gun and shout, “It doesn’t work, nail the bastard!” I had traded the shotgun to him for a baby red-tailed hawk a week prior. It didn’t have a firing pin, nor a working trigger. As Don races for the front door knowing the jig is up, his mom is holding the screen open with her foot as she keeps the door way wide open for his escape. Before he can slip inside to safety a dozen eggs thrown rapid fire nail the door frame, the porch light, the swing and Don and his mom at the same time. AWESOME! Until, a few months later, I see that Don’s mom is the court reporter in Newhall for the throwing oranges from a moving train incident court appearance. Then it wasn’t so great.

Later on that night, Willie knocked down old man Booth who had me in a headlock on his front lawn, holding me for the cops, after an epic egging of his house ending with Dillenbeck’s truck stalling out. Booth walked like a weird spider on his arms and legs back to his house so Willie couldn’t hit him again.

Well, got to run. I could go on for days.

Hold on, proof reading I just remembered Rivers End. It’s still full of drunks, junkies and eighty-year old hookers. Never steal their false teeth. They never forget. The park’s source of fresh water was the stream water from the Soledad wash. They collected it in a stone pool that was about twenty-foot long and six-foot wide, maybe six-foot deep. Nice and cool in the summer. The railroads emergency hoist ran over your head about seventy foot off the ground to get you off a stuck train during a flood. We rode in it all the time after shooting the lock off. After it was abandoned, my oldest boy Tejas went hand over hand to the cart that was stuck in the middle of the wash way up in the air. He gets his finger pinned under the cart wheel and the cable. Oh man did he let out some blood curdling screams. He finally gets loose and drops like a phoney sack person in a silent movie to the wash below. Oh, back to the water source. The manager catches us swimming around nude in it one day. He’s screaming for us to, “GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!” This nutcase kid, Lyslie Shecocks, tells the man to, “Hold on a second, I’m almost done!” A big turd floats up behind him. The man’s head almost blows off like in ‘Scanners’. We run to our dirt bikes and get away…

Tehachapi North News

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I’ll try and get a few copies out before sentencing next month, on the 18th of May. It might be a long spell in between issues after that.

Umtali Road is getting to be a deserted canyon. A neighbor across the dirt road and up the canyon a ways had a flat tire on his horse trailer right before my blue barn. His girlfriend was driving the U-Haul truck towing it. As I helped him out with my crane’s floor jack, I got the whole story on the move out. A divorce, the house is now deserted. Both parties made a go of living at the place. Both ended up almost losing it. Now it’s just empty.

Good luck going through the joint and finding some treasure at another’s misery. The ‘Watchers’ will put a stop to that. In the nine months we’ve lived here, we’re the only ones that talk to everyone. All other neighbors have some grudge or hard on for theirs.

When the local hooligans kicked over the thirty-eight mailboxes on the paved road off our dirt trail, eleven never have been picked up. They’re slowly being driven over as the winds blow them into Sand Canyon Road. Soon, flattened like odd-shaped license plates, I’m thinking of doing the side of the new barn with them for a folksy look. So, minus the latest mail box casualties, it looks like about sixteen folks still have mail delivered. You can’t count the canyon residents from these boxes, though. You also have to consider the bunker people, the illegals hiding on someone else’s property, out and out squatters, then, people like us, having post office boxes in town. I like my mail. I don’t mind traveling to get it. Oh sure, we could get an armored set of mail boxes. That would take some doing since you have to have your neighbors request it, too. Not in this canyon.

I was using my tractor to smooth out the deep ruts in our road that could easily hide Ward Bond and his entire wagon train, no problem. I figured on some smiles and knowing nods of happiness from neighbors driving past while I forged ahead. Nope. Just like the god-damned mailboxes, no one agrees. One gal slowed to a stop so I shut off my loader to get the well-deserved thanks. She rolls down her window, spits into her hand to put her cigarette out in the small pool, then lays into me. “What in the hell are you doing?” Amazed, I start to stutter out a reply. Nope, not fast enough. “You smooth out the road and the sons-of-bitches will just cause more damn dust. Knock this shit off!”

After she drove off, I thought to myself that she had a point. About ten days after we moved in with our little incentive push by L.A. County, I made up my mind that I would never be passed on our road again. Sure, I’d let the maniacs pass me on the 10 mile dead end to hell Sand Canyon. Can’t stop those psychos (ours is the only road in Tehachapi that isn’t on the local Thomas guide. It’s just shown as a dirt squiggle. No speed limit, either. The locals say the road takes care of the speeders sooner or later, all on its own). The one spot it actually has a sign says 15 mph and MEANS IT. I can’t squeeze over 26 mph with my dually dump and it tracks like a slot car with a load in the back. The wreckage of cars’ doing over 27 mph in icy conditions are soon lay out in the field smashed and rusted. Why doesn’t someone tow them out and make some good dough scrapping them? Who needs a .306 round through the noggin. Remember Fred Kirpsie’s sad ‘year in jail’ sentencing for hoarding a couple of weeks ago? There’s THOUSANDS of Kirpsie-types in every canyon you care to drive up. Most full of hard scrabbles watching you through high powered binoculars as they stir their meth tubs.

I’m kidding? Every week there’s a murder or a lab blowing up. It’s like a wild west ‘Blade Runner’ scene at night. We’ve had Sheriff search teams through our place three times and we haven’t hit a year here yet. In the Tule fog, the mounted search guys were forced on foot from all the barbed wire everywhere. The fences you say? Screw that. I’m still pulling downed barb wire out of dirt piles and from the scrub oak brush piles. Its easy to spot tangled around by bucket and front wheels. When it shoots back at you from tension as you have to use both hands to cut it with bolt cutters, it’s quite a little slice of heaven.

Our last visit by about 100 search team members was when Drunken Tits rolled up her old man in a throw carpet as he was passed out, then beat him with a small wood stove ash removal shovel. She would of used a larger one but the first one she could find had to do. Oh man, what a shelaking that guy took. I could see the lumps on his face from five acres away. After she raped her son (or, so he told us at 3 am one dark night wanting succor) they finally moved away three months ago to avoid court. The guy moving out gave me some new gossip on that but save it for another edition, back to cars passing me on Umtali, I drifted away again. Since hardly anyone reads this stuff, big deal. As stated I’m no Hemingway. But, since he’s wasn’t here, I’ll have to do.

At first, I thought these locals had the same courtesy we had grown accustomed to in Acton. After running our street for thirty years, we had everyone slowed down twenty five years ago. Take a beat-up bike that will still roll, place a dummy kid on it made from old clothes and filled with smashed newspapers topped with an old helmet, Voila! One freshly killed kid when rolled out of the thick Olive trees across from the old place, right into the headlights of Mr. Speeder. Until they shine their flashlight underneath the skidded-to-a-stop vehicle and see it’s a dummy, it tends to stick in their speeding little brains. If still reticent, two boxes of one-inch roofing nails down their one-mile dirt drive way. I’ve seen them with four flats at the stop sign at Sierra Highway after the nail treatment. No, on our new dirt road, it’s one Road Warrior after another. Especially at five thirty am, taking Leo to his bus stop eight miles away. I’m proud to say that since my new policy not one car or truck has ever passed us. And they NEVER WILL.

Our second week here while still moving, I’m going slow to keep the dust down. In a top ten of suck ass dirt roads, ours should at the least get an honorable mention. A gal in a big black SUV blows around me like I’m standing still. As she heads up the road her gigantic dust trail is blocking out the entire road. That was it for me.

I handle a few punks and old geezers in beat-up pickups while honing my skills for payback with Metro girl. I carried two scoops of one-inch gravel in my dump bed for no reason, other then better traction and less bounce until we finally had our Ali-Frasier of Umtali Road. Waiting for Leo down the road one day, I forget all about the little zipperhead as my eyes behold the black SUV coming up Sand Canyon at a high rate of speed. Firing up the F-550 Diesel turbo my hands are shaking at the steering wheel. I force my heart to stop trying to burst out of my chest as I race to get around the aforementioned dead man’s curve. Once around it I’m into really twisty canyons of rock formations that surround the Indian burial grounds to my right. Cliff dwellings and all. Checking my rear view mirror, I see that I’ve pulled it off. Flooring it around every tight curve, I try and get a good lead to pull off my plan.

What plan was this? To get across the road from the mailboxes, then to hide in the goat herder’s dirt driveway directly across from Umtali. I gave him a steel rabbit cage for helping Leo with his bike once, so we’re tight. Once Metro girl does one of two things, her ass will still be mine. If she stops for her mail is the best scenario. If she powers on up the twisty dirt road so be it. Since it’s to be to the death, I could care less. My heart is beating like it’s going to jump out of my rib cage. My mouth is dry as a desert lake bed. Blinking my eyes to un-cloud my contact lenses, I keep my foot on the brake but the tranny is in drive. She powers up the road. Checking for cross traffic and also looking for telltale dirt swirls showing a car on the dirt road ahead, I punch it. I came up on her so fast I was next to her and past her before she could step on it. Oh, she tried. I have to give her that. Too bad bitch, I had planned my moves many a night like a gibbering maniac planned building an atomic bomb. Once across the dreaded whoop te doo’s of molded clay troughs half-full of old exhaust systems, I put the pedal to the medal. Wearing my seat belt for the first time since buying the truck six years ago, I pull it a bit snugger as I begin whipping my dually wheels back in forth at well over sixty mph. Catching a glimpse of myself in my useless window rear view because of my high dump bed behind my head, I see the look of a stranger peering back at me. A wild eyed lunatic with white spittle built up at the corners of his gaping mouth. One quick wink of an glazed eye back at me then back to looking for a possible head on around the next brushy curve.

Slowing as I came to my drive way I pull up onto the property a good hundred feet to see past the atomic dust cloud. Creeping out at twenty miles an hour she appears. Covered with dust and dirt clods she glares at me as I wave a frantic hello back at her. Why humiliate a worthy opponent. Now it’s a polite wave and reasonable speeds between us. In a small town, word gets around fast. Sure, I’ve had to drive a few square pegs into round holes to get the passing thing over with but it was for a good cause. Once Leo starts to drive, God help us all.

PHONEHENGE NORTH NEWS: Oh, I forgot to tell you about the drunken cowboy that passed Leo and I in front of the MONOLITH, then, had the gall to flip us off. We ran him off the road at the ten-mile-an-hour railroad crossing leaving his Camaro facing the wrong way and hung up on the second set of tracks. I lost my right mud flap but it was well worth it. Leo needs guidance in these formative years…

Hey Mildred

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It takes too long to write long hand so hope you don’t mind the typed out letter.

It’s raining here in Tehachapi. Looking out the big picture window, I started ruminating on working as a phone man in LA, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It rains so rarely in Southern California, the animals seem to be caught off guard even worse than the humans. Once, while working a cable vault in Griffith Park just below the old Zoo, I stroll by a hobo camp wearing my PacBell military-style rain suit, galoshes and an umbrella. Hey, I’m working on cables that have to stay dry, sorry hobos if I’m not sitting in an old animal enclosure getting soaked with hundreds of rats running across my hole-filled shoes.

When I would buy new steel toe climbing boots, I would keep my eyes open for a bum or street person who might get a few more miles out of them. After once again trying to be a humanitarian, this psycho street nut takes the proffered boots and seems miffed. Huh?

It’s freezing out in the middle of December in downtown and this guy is barefoot with purple feet. I say to him, “Hey, I have some new socks here in the back of my van somewhere, let me find them!” As I open up my rear phone van double doors, a boot sails right past my right ear just missing my skull. I drop, and look back, just in time to see the other boot coming at me. I partially deflect it. I get a lump in my right arm where it hit me. Now I’m steamed.

I go for him while shouting, “OK, asshole, you want crazy, I’ll give you a fucking maniac!” As he starts to run up the wheelchair ramp into the front entrance of the Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard, across from the Tuxedo center rental store, the manager of Denny’s has been watching the entire scenario through the large glass window in the booth he always sat at to chase hookers out that wanted to use the bathrooms and payphones all day. I could do an entire chapter on Denny’s hookers and waitresses. Hey, maybe some other time; let’s get back to street nut.

I leap onto his back like Tarzan would and the guy, who’s twice my size, goes down onto the wet sidewalk. As I hop up and get ready for action, the bum is also getting up. He’s ready for action, too. Except for one little problem. His pants, that were in bad shape to begin with, are now torn off and around his ankles.

Oh my GOSH! His ‘unit’ was FILTHY and covered in what looked to be black grease. I thought he was Latino from all the dirt and stains on his face and hands. Nope, just a run-of-the-mill white trash nut case. As he starts to bounce in a boxing stance, that flopping unit made me start laughing out of control as I backed away from him. This really made him mad. I look around for some backup. No dice. Everyone inside of Denny’s is now in the formerly empty booths facing Sunset, watching me about to get my ass kicked by a semi-erect crazy man with no pants on. His bush looked like you could hide a small mammal in it quite easily.

Now that I’m backing up, crazy man really starts a show. Grabbing one of The Times newspaper racks in a bear hug to most likely smash me in the head with, I once again start laughing since I know they’re bolted to the cement from being stolen so many times by druggies. As he strains and shouts curses, he begins to defecate. That was it for me.

I run for the front door of Denny’s, waving for the manager to open them up pronto. The manager stalls with the keys, making me start to go into a rage. I shout out I’ll have fifty pay phones installed all around his dump if he doesn’t give me succor. Once safely inside, I find a spot next to the Ms. Pac-Man machine to hide, but also to watch the show outside.

It didn’t last much longer. As expected, if fifteen minutes goes by and a cop or two hasn’t cruised Sunset, it’s a small miracle. Two cars converge on Hercules, still fighting that paper rack like a steel marlin…

Accidents

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The wrong tool for the job is a good place to start. Once I drew an accident scene for a supervisor, I was soon the official accident investigator for Pac Bell from then on. It segued into teaching pole climbing and tool safety for awhile to new hires. I liked it. Especially the meetings and interactions with other companies while attending safety seminars… Otis Elevator man: “While repairing a stuck elevator off Wilshire, two of us were at the very top of the third shaft, using a mini electric winch to free up a jammed cable. It wasn’t working. Also, the cheap, crummy two way radios we were using, kept cutting out, or, not working at all. I kept arguing with my supervisor about the faulty communications between us and the guys working on top of the jammed car. He told me they had a big work load and to just live with it. He sends me down to our step van to get another electric winch. While I’m pulling out the winch, I hear sirens!”… It turned out, his supervisor, being in a hurry, had his head taken off in a split second, by the cable failing, then whipping back up the shaft like a steel anaconda, right into the cubicle the repairman had just been working in. For want of a good two way radio, a guy is dead. Plus, disregarding common sense… Ladders maim and kill more people then any other tool, in all trades. Ninety percent of the time, it’s the fault of the person using it. Once while I was fixing an elderly Jewish lady’s phone off Beverly Blvd., she wondered if I could use my six foot folding ladder to fix her drape loops. I get my ladder off my truck roof, set it up safely, start to fix her loops. She grabs my privates as my hands are busy. I fall off the ladder and land on my butt, the back of my head putting a nice dent in her drywall. I say to her, “What the hell was that all about?” She just shrugged her shoulders, then said, “Aw, you’ll get over it!” I didn’t write that one up. I also rode a 28′ ladder down a cement wall at a Coca-Cola distribution center iin Sylmar, just like in a cartoon. I only pinched a pinky. A small miracle. Some Coke truck drivers applauded as I jumped up, checking myself for broken bones. I had set up in a hurry and my rubber footings on the ladder were worn out. All my doing. I went down the face of the two story wall in about three seconds, then, bounced off the cement floor… I’m once again on the top of an extended 28′ ladder off of Fairfax and Hillside. A supervisor, Warren Hayes, is shouting instructions to Jeff Vaugn on the pole across the street, and to myself, balanced on the ladder top, working a two ton come-a-long winch to pull slack out of a six pair drop, attached to the balcony of a 1920’s two story house. I say down to Warren, “I don’t know Hayes, this house is pretty old, maybe we should back off!” Hayes, “Just winch it up, I’m already late for lunch!” I give it two more ratchets, then, “CRAAACCCCKKKK!” The entire top of the veranda roof, tiles and all, shoots out over my head, landing inches from Hayes feet, just below my ladder base. Jumping backwards, Hayes loses his feet, rolls backwards head over heels down the steep lawn, then, goes through some six foot high rose bushs, to land five feet farther onto the sidewalk. We kept that one quiet too… Ralphs store on 3rd street. I’m a cable flunky for senior techs, running 25 pair cable through the attic of Ralphs. I’m doing what I’m told. The attic is a good thirty foot up. I’m told in no uncertain terms, first thing on the job, “DO NOT WALK OFF THE RAFTERS!” In between the widely spaced rafters was insulation with dry wall below. Just like what happened to Chevy Chase in ‘Christmas Vacation’, happened to a supervisor. Off the attic entry you have a wood area. Anywhere past that, rafters. The ceiling is five feet over your head. It’s not well lit past your drop lights, plus, it’s hot and muggy. As the super is walking over to check our progress, he starts to wipe sweat off his face. Since he was talking to us, we were looking right at him as he stepped off the rafters, fell through the drywall, then plummeted thirty feet onto an empty cash register check out area. Luckily, he only broke his wrist… A tech nick named ‘Bullet’ since he worked so slow, always went gah gah over street hookers and hot babes. While taking his 28′ ladder off his roof rack (Not extended, its 14′) a girl roller skates past him in a skimpy out fit. With the ladder over his shoulder, he spins in a hurry to catch a look at her ass. The ladder spins with him. The end of it catches an elderly lady walking her dog down her front walk, knocking her out. The company paid a lot of dough for that one. Oh, on that same street, Hightower, just below the Hollywood Bowl, I once saw some Edison guys touch power to a strand wire between two feed poles, electrocuting about seventy pigeons that had been bugging them. The ones that didn’t fall onto all the parked cars and sidewalks, hung by their curled feet like odd upside down toys off the stand they had been roosting on, just seconds before… When guys fall into the giant meat rendering vats, they never stop the machines, EVER. They just hope no one gets parts of the guys wristwatch or shoelaces in their sausage. Ditto for guys getting wrenched into the industrial sized mulching machines for tree maintenance. Those suckers will shred a man in two seconds… Miscalculating weight causes many an accident. Once, some cable theives backed a one ton dually pickup to a cable truck left on a job overnight, put down the tailgates of both trucks, then used a sledge to knock out the blocks of wood, chocking the big steel cable reel in place. The cable reel, about seven foot high, slowely rolls onto the duallys bed, just as planned. Then, fully in the truck, it crushes the truck bed to the ground. The tires blowing, kill one of the thieves instantly. Gee, guess they didn’t notice it was sitting on a TEN TON truck bed… Big drills can lay the hurt on you, real fast. The first time I used a one inch chuck Milwaukee HOLE HOG, was almost my last. Like an idiot, I told the lead tech I was trained on the drill, so as not to look like the kid that I was. He took me around this huge mansion that once belonged to Charlie Chaplin, showing me the little yellow stickies stuck to the baseboards, letting me know where to drill. I’m using a four foot, two inch around bit, off this two handed giant drill. He turns me loose after doing the first hole for me. I do about three, no problems at all. I wake up with four guys shaking me and looking concerned. When I finally stand up, I see the blood all over my shirt, then, see where my face had slid down the white painted wall after the drill bit hit the cement subfloor, spinning me into said wall at about a hundred miles an hour. We didn’t write that one up either…

Mongolian Death Worm

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In scientific circles, ALLERGORHAI-HORHAI. About two foot long and shaped like a sausage, rumored to achieve even larger lengths. Said to have the ability to give an electric shock, amped enough to kill a camel and its rider. Also, emits a shrill shriek, just before its shoots out venom in a directed stream. Hmm… The real ‘Indiana Jones’, Roy Chapman Andrews, just returning from a trek in the vast Gobi desert, had found out about the creature from his head camel driver the hard way. His driver, named Tserin, should have his own book. Tserin would leave weeks ahead of Andrews’ expeditions, to prepare the tents and camps for Chapman’s large party of explorers, and, usually Roy’s first wife, Yvette. A real kick in the pants as women in the field go. More on her later. Chapman wanted to save a weeks travel by cutting across an area in the Gobi, that Tserin would not put one toe into…Chapman had to give up on that idea. Tserin told him to get another camel train master. He wasn’t going into that area because of the ‘Horhai’. In some ways, I0 find Tserin even more facinating then Chapman. Roy had some of his supplies stolen and one of his men killed on his first expedition outside of China and the protection of the Chinese army. This was in the early 1920’s. The Chinese General wouldn’t go into the Gobi, so, he suggested Tserins band of nomads. Chapman hires him to get his goods back. And, to bring back the murderers for justice. A save face deal. In less then a month, Chapman is contacted by the General that the thieves are in hand, and, at his very compound. “Come collect them and pay your reward!” Chapman always travelled with an extremely bulky and heavy, short wave radio, that took up an entire Dodge travelall car. It was worth it, countless times…So, bringing his entire expedition of nine such cars to see justice, they park outside the palace in Peking, to await the general and to watch a hotly contested polo game going on between some hard riding tribesmen. As the game came closer to the parked cars at the end of the long field, they catch a look at what Tserin and his friends are using as a ball. One of the bandit’s heads. The rest were in a pile, awaiting another game, most likely. Roy used Tserin exclusively after this incident. So, when a man like this won’t go into an area, you had best pay attention. Yvette, Roy’s wife, really wanted to see one of these Death Worms. She also wanted to bring one back alive. Roy shot all of his specimens. Not Evette. She would find the babies left by these, ‘hunts’, then nurse them along, turning them into pets. Roy would get steamed. Until her hobby saved all their lives. Taking in a baby Vulture she found in a canyon, she would set it to perch on a fifty cal. machine gun they had mounted on a car’s back seat to ward off bandits. She would feed it on this gun, twice a day from animals Roy brought back. In a dispute at a watering hole with another tribe, one of the headmen noticed the Vulture perched on the gun and ordered his men back. It was too much of a bad omen… Since the hot desert sun heated up everything, the camel riding tribes wore a long, robe-like garment called a ‘Del’. Underneath they kept all their weapons out of the sun. So, you never knew what the hell they had underneath. You knew for sure they had a long curved sword. That’s how they settled all personal disputes. After a few expeditions, tribes folk would travel long distances to Roy’s camps. They had heard of the doctors Roy usually had along for specimen study and such. Not really medical doctors, they still did amputations, and set broken bones. You can’t have enough friends in the Gobi. Some desert storms can easily bury cars up to their roofs overnight with sand. Ditto for quick sand and fine flowing sand that would overheat all the Dodge cars instantly. With over a hundred and twenty five camels in one of his trains, Tserin would pull them all out by camel power. These men took so many crates of fossils and specimens out of China and Mongolia, entire warehouses are still full of them in countless museams, all over the Eastern part of the US. NEVER OPENED. Yep, just like at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, but this is real. Chapman never did find a Death Worm, but, I did a search on the web. A large Chinese scientific team is heading out this summer, to try and find one…

Downtown L.A.

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When the work slowed down in Hollywood or Beverly Hills, or, if you were a smart ass who needed straightening out, you ended up working Downtown L.A… Not the nice parts either. You go where the cables go. They usually start out in a Central Office (C.O.) then, like a hub of a wheel, cables left it like giant spokes, then turned into even smaller cables, the farther out they went. I always hated it, yet, sort of liked the challenge in a sick sort of way. Mainly because of the people. If you’re cable maintenance, you work big cutovers after six pm. Don’t want to piss those big clients off. Into the breach you go. Cables don’t run in front Downtown. They run underground. In big long dark alleys. Through brush in Griffith Park. Brush so thick it rips your sweatshirt and jackets to shreds. Once you’re out of the glaring lights, you find the Lost Souls. The ones who live in the hidden camps, grottos, the abandoned zoo, freeway underpasses.‎.. Or, the other side of the coin. The rich, the late night movers and shakers. Private clubs. Every sort of bar and hang out, for every sort of person. You get pulled off your regular work, all the time if you were a special circuit man. Heart monitors, alarms, traffic signals, data transmissions, railroad switch signals. All kinds of stuff. Since I was always causing trouble in crews, I end up on the Specials crew, Downtown. Boy, was it wild. I go out with a guy named Rick L. on my first night on the new crew to learn the ropes. You worked noon to whenever you felt like. Techs were hauling in over a hundred grand in overtime in six months. In the sixties, no one cared how long you worked. Just get it done. Rick was an alchoholic, but a working type. He was the first person to show me the underground city, sometimes multiple stories, underneath the street lights and towering buildings packing the miles above. In between jobs, Rick hit his usual bars and clubs. It’s easy to get a tab anywhere in town if you play ball and do favors. Favors? The kind that could get a guy killed. ‘The little bird on the shoulder’, was one such favor. Here’s how it would go down. You’re in a bar, replacing a credit card machine gooey with Coke spilled in it. Maybe a Coke kicked over by some almost nude gay dancer, T bagging a customer off the bar, right next to you. Your a phone man. There’s one thing a phone man can’t say. “I’m not going!” You’re instantly unemployed. You go where dispatch tells you. Period. If a dispatcher doesn’t like you, it’s one turd sandwich after another. Hate to climb poles? Those will be the only jobs you get, forever. So, back to the bar. A voice from behind you, shouts out it needs to talk to you over the blaring music. You turn and see the owner of the joint, looking weird from the flashing stobe lights and lazer going off all over. You nod, finish your repair, meet him in the almost quiet rear office. He pushes out a chair, wonders if he can fix you a drink. He then gets down to business. Someone is doing him/her wrong. They want to tap into some lines. If you don’t get up and walk, money will then appear. Here’s where it gets tricky. You read the paper a few days later, after accommodating your new pal, and see that someone got themselves killed. Maybe it will say for ‘no reason’. Maybe you’re the reason. People say all sorts of things on the phone that aren’t true. I’m no different. You’re protected by that void. It’s just a voice. Not reality in a way. You gave someone ‘the little bird’. Maybe they heard just what they didn’t want to hear. They snap and in the blink of an eye, they do something foolish or crazy. Another phone man, Big Ed, told me a story along these lines and I never forgot it. It can be tough not to pick up bunch of hundreds shoved at you for five minutes work. I was sorely tempted on many an occasion. I found a lot of other ways to get in trouble, but never line tapped. Plus, I was a snot nosed kid. On top of that, a lousy phone man. It took YEARS to become a good phone man. Adequate was all I ever was. My forte was schmoozing pissed off customers. I’d keep them under control until a real phone man arrived. For thirty seven years, the dog and pony show kept me jumping. Usually right into a fire…

Emergency Rooms

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Kids can say the darndest things. Especially with bones sticking out of their skin from compound fractures. My daughter Sage was about seven years old when she experienced her first run to emergency. Having bought all the kids new bikes for Christmas, naturally, they all wanted to ride them. I tell all the older kids to watch out for her. They ditch her. She was, “too slow.” Trying to keep up, she crashes on the dirt trail across the way. Hard. Off to emergency. Nothing like an emergency room on Christmas day. I’ve spent a couple there. So Sage has severe facial lacerations on her forehead, chin, inside her mouth, and lots of scrapes and rocks rolled under her skin. Daddy gets to hold her as two docs stitch her up and do clean up to ascertain any other injuries. With seventy two stitches going in, it took awhile. As the one doc stitches the inside of Sage’s mouth, he’s patering away on how, “It’s not that bad now, stay still!” The other doc is doing his thing inbetween the other doc swabbing blood of Sage’s lower face between long passes with the stitches. He has a stretecher deal in her mouth to gain access and see better. Sage’s eyes are rolling around like a great white shark’s. When they occasionally stop and look into mine, I whisper, “Tons of ice cream in your future, as soon as were out of here kid!” Finally, the doc is taking off the nibs of all the sutures and removing the mouth expander cage. All of the other inhabitants of emergency had been watching the proceedings. An expectant mom, a skate board kid with a broken knee. The usual. As the cage comes out, the doc says to Sage in a condescending tone, “Now, that wasn’t so bad!” Sage stands up and screams at him, “FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, YOUR ONE GIANT PRICK!” I get a stunned look on my face proclaiming I had no idea where she had heard such language. All the nurses were biting their arms to stop from laughing out loud… It’s cold and drizzily. We had a long, two inch around rope I’d brought back from my Uncle Wimpy’s dry dock for the kids to Tarzan on off tower one. I tell all the kids, mine and the neighbors, to stay off the rope. As the sun was going down, ice was forming. Once again, as I take off my boots to relax, a wild eyed Tegan runs into the house, screaming that her brother Tejas had done a flip off the rope and hit some rocks. Adding for effect, “His bones are sticking out of his arm!” Hmm. Might have to take him to the doc pops into my head. First I had to catch him. He had a theory that if he ran long and hard, the pain wouldn’t catch up to him. We chase him down about a mile away, following the blood trail. That compound fracture was one of those gifts that just keep on giving. Ended up having to have it reset, THREE TIMES, over the years. On the ride to emergency, I’m in the back of a Jeep Cherokee, holding a struggling Tejas in a head lock to keep him from running off again at the red lights. I shout to the driver to go around the backed up traffic and get to emergency. Some guy gets pissed and trys to road rage us. He chases us down the side of the road to teach us a lesson. As he catchs up at another red light, he gets out to confront me. I had the back window up so Tejas wouldn’t kick it out with all his struggling. The tattooed guy sees me covered with blood and a screaming kid going out of his mind. I say a calm, “You really want some of this pal?” He got back in his truck… I’m dead tired. Just did a rock garden and pond for a side job on a Sunday. I fall asleep on our outside swing. A bunch of dirt bikes roar to a stop in front of my gate. Frantic boys are tossing off helmets while they run towards the house. I almost didn’t say anything as they ran past me. I’m informed that David Phillips had just rolled his Blazer with the brand new giant tires and custom paint job, off the side of Kirpsies mountain. Oh, and they can’t find Tejas in the wreckage. It’s now pitch black. Up into the wild rolling hills we go. A fog comes slinking in. It kept getting better and better. The kids find the wrecked truck. Oh man. Look up ‘wrecked truck’ in the dictionary. There’s a picture of Phillips’ truck. All the other guys from the truck are already rolling in pain waiting for the pills to kick in. No one could go to the hospital because of warrants and such. Fine. We go back, once again to find Tejas. Now the Sheriff’s search and rescue arrives. Horse teams arrive. I head home around midnight to get another flashlight. I see a light on in Tejas’s house off bridge tower two. I shout out, “HEY, ANYONE UP THERE”? Tejas’s head pops out his door, he yells back, “THERE’S LIGHTS ALL OVER KIRPSIES MOUNTAIN, SOMTHING IS GOING ON!”…He was never in the truck.