We find out Carol R’s family will be out of town for the weekend of Halloween. A bunch of us Sand cyn boys decide we’ll sleep over in their big horse barn and use their swimming pool. We planned on being extra sneaky and quiet to pull it off. Yeah, like that was going to happen. Not fifteen minutes into a nude diving contest, all the flood lights come on illuminating the grounds. A couple of men in a small jeep are flying down the road from the main house. We run for our clothes, all in piles. I leave my wing tips. Johnny Rodrigez was the oldest at seventeen so I followed him. As we come up on a four foot high wooden fence, Johnny says over his shoulder, “Don’t touch the top to the fence, it’s electrified”! (To stop horses from eating the flowers) He clears it no problem. I know I can’t make it so I roll under the bottom board. Billy T, with just a shirt on, slips in mid leap, lands crotch first on it. Trying to free himself, he shit all over…
Some of my kids came by for a visit Sunday. Brought some grandkids along. The kids were sort of restless. One of my boys suggests I do what I used to do when they were small and bored. I’m at a loss. He reminds me of how I would tape a rolled twenty dollar bill onto an arrow, then fire said arrow into the National Forest that bordered our ranch. While searching for the prize, it was also a treasure hunt for cool stuff. Kids would usually find the arrow. Not right away though. They would also bring back deer antlers, trap door spider burrows (No good if the lid is missing) odd rocks, old bottles….Prices have gone up it seems. My grandkids asked for forty bucks. I said, “Well, ok”! Off went the arrow….When they came back, boy, were they pissed. I had swapped arrows when the weren’t looking and fired off the arrow I had taped a one onto…
Tent boy is reading one of my Navaho books on the prophecies painted on their spirit rocks in Monument valley. I’ve seen ’em. Part of a rock sheared off, so, even the Indians aren’t a hundred percent on what’s ahead. These Indians. Not the Hopi. Their fortune telling abilities are well known to all tribes. Oracles say they came from the inner depths of the earth. They say it will happen again. What transpires in the near future will make the survivors be called, the Termite people…Years ago, my Uncle Curly took me to a wealthy man’s ranch in Flagstaff. This man had an entire sixty by fifty barn converted into a museum for Indian relics. Huh? I say to my Uncle with a whisper, half way through the tour, “This guy’s a fucking grave robber!” My Uncle just nodded and grimaced. This man still hadn’t paid us for dynamiting a road up in the Superstition mountains for one of his claims….This man had stolen from every tribe on the continent. Pathetic…
Once again I’m in a wealthy man’s home in Brentwood. He was a poker pal of Tommy L’s. Tommy had been a door gunner for two tours in Nam on medical Evac choppers. So had this other man. This man handed us drinks then took us into a private den. It was full of Navaho Kachina dolls. Some in glass cases. Some were five foot tall. I knew for a fact, some were sacred and no way should he have ’em. This time I wasn’t fifteen and with an Uncle. I say, “You have to give most of this back to the tribes or your going to have some real bad luck”! He laughed at me. He then shows Tommy his new prize, just acquired. Now, I’m no Indian expert, but once glance told me this guy was showcasing a death dance doll. I say goodbye. Besides, I suck at cards….About a year later, I’m at a big pawn shop off La Cienega, just below Wilshire. It has a bunch of Kachina dolls for sale. I say, “Gee, you get an entire collection”? “Owner was killed. Thieves only took one doll!”…
The worst thing about this entire fiasco is losing all the giant beams and seventy five foot Utility poles. I could tell you stories ALL DAY on wild stuff that happened getting those materials from where they were given to me, to getting them past all the cops. Usually in the middle of the night. Like my ninety foot long glue lams. Dude, here’s how that goes down. First, getting said beams into position to hoist with a crane onto a sixty foot long low boy Dozer trailer is something in itself. Not just one pal. Thirty six. Some of these babies were only sixty foot, but, way fatter and thicker. The three sisters that made up the supports for the second floor were just unbelievable. Weighed six tons each. At my Uncle Curlys old Pier in San Pedro, they had 150 ton cranes. WOW! Power city!!! My Uncles ran the dry docks for forty five years for the U.S. Navy. Battleships, Heavy Cruisers, Destroyers. All the big swinging dicks came to be refitted at my Uncle Curly and Wimpys docks. My other Uncle, Melvin Koontz, owned and trained all the M.G.M. lions, but, another story for some other time…Back to these beams….We had them all ready to go for six days before we could pull off the move. This load was BEYOND ILLEGAL. When I put a tiny red bandana on the end of the load, all the guys in the shipyard started laughing. Any cop that spotted us would feed big time on our ass’s. Starting with impounding a $200,000 Eighteen wheeler and D10 Dozer trailer. I get a call at two a.m. from Frank the Navaho in Coahilla. A thick fog has rolled in, plus, a huge wreck near the Roy Rodgers museum wlll have all the Highway Patrol tied up. I get my big rig pal, George up and on the road with me in about a half hour. We’re off around four am. We’re on the 138 coming off the San Berdo desert. All had been going well. Coming off a steep downhill, a cop goes past, I see brake lights. I tell George, “Could of been braking for the curve”! George looks at me like I’m some slack jawed simp fresh off a funny farm. He finds a wide dirt road and hangs a power right onto it. We, head down it for a couple of turns and kill the lights. Keep the motor running though. We can’t see Jack shit through the fog. We wait about twenty minutes. Felt like hours. George does 18 wheel stunt driving, so, he can drive like a maniac, no problem ( Go to his site, ‘THE JACK KNIFE KING’ ) We get back on the road. Bumping off the road made the load shift. One beam is laying on two of the rear tires of the Dozer trailer. Hmm, weighs six tons and we have a five ton jack. George pulls in close to a cement underpass just off the 138. He puts truck in reverse, then, does this dipsy doodle with the trailer at about ten miles an hour. He nudges the beam back in place with the wall. UNBELIEVABLE!!! We make it to PHONEHENGE around seven am…Oh, almost forgot….Just before leaving, the crane guys lifted my flat bed one ton like a Tonka and set it on the four ninety footers that stuck out of the other beams like giant battering rams. Those beams held that truck like a rope sitting on Sonny Listons shoulders. They didn’t bend one inch…
We have lots of them here in Tehachapi. Some of the military trains that run only at night have a hundred cars. All loaded with battle tanks, Humvies, medical trucks, fuel rigs, Dozers with armored cabs. And not just one train. Our military is far larger then most suspect. It’s a double end coin. I’m proud of our guys, yet, not so proud of who puts them in harms way, and, why they do so…While on a Moose hunting trip with my Uncle Curly in British Colombia, we we’re staying with a pal of his who engineered the Lilliooet railroad into Vancover. After a drinking all night deal, I end up going with this guys nephew on a ‘lead’ car run. It’s just after four in the morning. Freezing cold. I end up in this tiny electric cart that you sat tandem in. Plastic doors and windows that are so yellowed and scratched you can’t see a thing. We roll in the dark, only the sound of the guys walkie/talkie over the clicking of the rails…I soon hear another sound, the ‘swoosh’ of a Blatz beer being opened. I say to the kid in front of me, “Hey, aren’t you worried about getting fired”! I was fourteen and still pretty dumb. He did a radio check then says over his shoulder to me, “Hey dude, don’t you know what our job is”? I say, “To inspect the tracks”? He laughed so hard he spit beer onto his blurred windshield. “Know why I do a radio check every few minutes”? I say, “To let them know we’re alright”? Another laugh, then a reality check. “Kid, if the radio goes dead, it means we just hit headon into a rock slide on the tracks. We’re a lot cheaper then a new Locomotive!” I asked him for a beer, he handed me one back…
In the long history of animal draws, none could ever equal Jumbo. Even to this day. In his prime, Jumbo came to the attention of P.T. Barnum. P.T. just had to have him. Sure, the gigantic pachyderm had toured Europe many times and had his off tour home in England, but, had never been seen in the United States. Barnum offered a fortune for the beast. Not only was Jumbo big, he was also an African Elephant. Much more impressive then its Asian cousin. Also, much more dangerous. Barnum finally gets his animal. Actually, he paid three times as much as he thought he would. It seems Jumbo wouldn’t do a damn thing without his little pygmy elephant stable mate. Barnum paid up again. P.T. made a fortune with Jumbo. One day, while in a railroad yard, the animals we’re being loaded for another tour. A train whistle spooked the pygmy. It took off down the tracks. Jumbo raced after his little pal. An engine killed Jumbo, saving him…Jumbo was racing the locomotive to reach his little pal. The engineer was a real asshole. He kept blowing the whistle to make the pygmy elephant keep running. Another engine was coming from the other direction. Its engineer couldn’t see the little guy. The pygmy had run up onto the other tracks. Jumbo came up from behind, reached ahead, swatted his buddy out of the way, then was hit head on by the other engine. The impact knocked the trains front wheels off the rails. Barnum had the skeleton saved, wired together, then show cased it in his museum. The display had a plaque telling the story…
I’m riding my 250 Montessa La Cross home from Hart high. Its 1967. My bike quits off Placerita cyn. I’m pushing my cycle, spot this kid I know from school in a front yard of Sand cyn. I ask him if I can leave my cycle next to his garage and come back for it later. He says ok. When I came back around dusk, his brother and some other guys are riding it off jumps in their back yard. I end up punched in the mouth by his brother before getting my cycle back…A year later, I’m walking through towels at Hart pool. I see this kid dropping his Levi’s to go swimming. Its the kid who punched me. I stroll by after he’s in the water. Steal his wallet. Seven bucks. I kept the wallet in my jacket…A few nights later, I’m tossed over Ace Canes eight foot chain link fence to grab cases of beer for a sisters boyfriend. You can then pull the bottom of the fence out to get away. Before leaving, I stick the kids wallet on the bottom of the fence like it had fallen out…
It’s really quiet and peaceful up our dead end canyon at night. Except this one night. We heard shouting and cars crashing…. I need a septic and leech field for the new tower. Health and safety came by to check out my site. While shooting the baloney and pacing stuff off, a 4×4 dually pickup goes racing by on our dirt road. The county guy says, “I’d blast around too if I found out what he did!” Seems this racing guy is a fireman who’s not home a lot so he can pay for the new house. His septic kept blocking. A septic guy did a camera inspection of it to see what was up. It was a partially crushed entrance pipe. Then the kicker. He had to pump it to inspect it. The camera picked up hundreds of condoms stuck to the top level of the tank. All along the rim….Seems the fireman never uses them. He backed his truck into the little woman’s car a few times after sharing the video with her…Small towns. Have to love ’em…
Been on the loader the last few days, cutting a road back into the rear of the ranch to access the mountain behind us. Four days ago I found a neat Raven feather lying next to the barbwire fence. I stuck it in one of the barb links so it sticks straight up like an Indian braves would of. Now, Crazy Horse of the Sioux only wore one feather, and his was straight down with a small pebble attached. It signified that he had killed, yet, wasn’t proud of it…Every day since I put that feather up, we’ve had at least ten giant Ravens lined up on the barb wire on both sides of it in the morning…
