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: Now hanging with Oz. He doesn’t want his real name to be used, just his street name so the homeboys will know. Figuring I was going to jail in the near future, I did some tractor work for Oz to sort of kiss up. He’s a mover and shaker in the State Prisons on all sorts of levels I don’t even want to know about. I figured some pals on the inside wouldn’t hurt. When I first met him, he was reticent to say one word to me. After five tequilas, he loosened up a little. I’ve never seen him nude but what is showing is tattooed. Pretty gory ones peak out of his shirt collar. Some horned demons maybe? Anyhow, he’s connected all over the State. He’s in his forties so I’m considered an old man and no threat. Caught a break there. Plus, he liked my tree house and hates authority. Kindred spirits.

ITEM: After eight drinks to my one, Oz filled me in on his life. He has 16 brothers and nine sisters. Most by different mothers. His dad got around. Oz has only met the ones dropped off at their house in the middle of the night when he was growing up and raised with him at his mom’s house. His dad was only there to get the probation department guys off his back.

Once his dad left the dinner table, answered the door to some guy shouting at him, shoots the guy three times and drags him in the house. He sits back down at the table and ate while waiting for the police. They were North of Fresno picking artichokes living in a cropper shack. When the cops came, they listened to Oz’s dad’s version of the guy threatening his family while they look down at the blood trail off the porch into the front room. They call the morgue guys and adios. Just another dumb Mexican. Who cared. Oz says his mom raised them all, no questions asked. They were blood and that was that.

A lot of Oz’s bro’s are well respected in prisons all over California and Arizona. I figured to throw his name and gang sign around a lot if incarcerated. Oz says his people really run the prisons. It’s huge money. I asked him to leave the details out in case I was ever asked to take a polygraph.

ITEM: I tell him a couple of phone man stories and he interrupts me right in the middle of one. “Hey, dude. I know a freaky wire story I bet you haven’t heard!” O.K. ‘shoot’, says I. Oz’s story: “At Mira Loma is where all the immigration cases go. Some bro’s have been there for years man. Waiting on appeals and stuff. One of my cousins is there right now, looking at deportation. It’s his third time and he still comes back. They say it’s adios forever if they pick him up again. He’s cool though so they cut him some slack since he’s a good worker and can drive tractors and things like that. He’s on the grounds crew. It will cut him time served and good time if he wins. Out of his cell time if not. He tells me they get this job a couple of years or so ago that was a real mind blower!”

It hits me as he says the last sentence. It’s going to be the conduit deal. My wife Pat is an immigration attorney. She was at Mira Loma while doing some Pro Bono when all the lights went out and the sirens went off. Everyone thought it was a break out. Nope. Only if it had been. I stay quiet and wait to hear it from Oz. He had taken two more shots and looked like the kind of guy I wanted to stay on the good side of. I just met the guy and knew zip about how booze affected him. Oz confirms my suspicion on being able to change in an instant.

He’s staring at me intently. I look him right in the eye. “They get told by a prison guard to dig up some of the grounds for some reason or another. About four or five guys I think. They had full run of the yard and the tool shack from being on the crew so long. All the guards knew them well. The guard who was supposed to watch them takes off and leaves them on their own. My cousin says they hit a big rock. They can’t dig around it so they go to the tool shed and get the electric jackhammer. After some long extension cords this dude jumps into the hole and starts hammering the big rock!” As Oz took the rest of my drink down, I say, “And the guy got fried. My wife was their with a client the day it happened. It knocked all the power out in that wing of the jail. Killed the guy. He hammered into 10,000 volts in a cement electrical conduit!”

ITEM: First, don’t wreck a new pal’s story. Oz just shuts up and gets a mad look on his mug. I tell him I’m sorry. I buy us another round. Oz says a surly, “ No man, I gotta go!” I tell a couple of jokes and get him back into a better mood. I then ask him to continue. To let me hear his side of the story. Leaning back in his chair he’s blocking the aisle at the small bar were in. Everyone takes one look at him and walks around to the other aisle. Crossing his arms Oz shuts his eyes and it looks like he was falling asleep. Nope. He was just thinking. Opening his eyes into slits he suddenly leans forward almost hitting his head on our table top. Catching himself he rests his arms on the table and almost whispers so low I can’t hear him over the Tex-Mex blasting from the next room. “That dude that fried? He’s in their wiring and phones!” I keep my mouth shut this time. Oz continued. “Everyone there has heard him crying for help in the back of phone calls. Low, but he’s there man. Lights flicker. Bulbs blow. Gates freeze up and won’t click open, or, stay jammed open or shut. All kinds of freaky stuff!”

ITEM: I end up taking off after this part of the story. Two hot babes came in and Oz left me like I carried the plague. He left me the tab, too. I had to use my propane bill dough to get out of the joint. Back at home I tell my wife Pat the story Oz had laid on me. She says he’s absolutely correct. She’s heard a dozen stories from everyone from Sheriffs to the vendors who do the laundry and food contracts. My wife Pat helps everyone for free most of the time so everyone gravitates to her for legal advice. She gets along with everyone just about. When I piss her off, I get the frown and pout face. You don’t want to get that for too long. I’d rather be clothes lined by the Hulk. So, what Oz had said is true. Boy, what a wild deal.

ITEM: While we we’re moving to our new place since the 22 County people that kept coming out jammed up our bathroom, we had to move these ancient artifacts Pat’s mom has collected for decades. We had them since the room they were in down in the valley had Indian drums coming out of it on occasion, and, Indian ghosts passing through the walls. Swell. They’re Inca, Mayan, Toltec and such. I told Pat it was okay with me. I didn’t bump them off and didn’t want to mess with their totems. I figure we’ll give them to the appropriate museums or tribes when the time is right.

One thing I can’t stand is a grave robber. That’s all it is when you dig open burial chambers or take bones and items from rocky clefts the Navajo and Hopi use. I think the Havasupi and Pima do their dead differently. Whatever. I’ve seen a couple of private collections that made my blood boil. These guys treated sacred bowls, pipes, weapons, hunting gear, god totems and such like it was just a big treasure hunt. They showed me all the special tools and tricks they knew to find buried chambers. Then, when I got ticked, they THREATENED ME. Oh yeah! I had better keep this to myself or else stuff. I figure they’ll get what’s coming to them without any help from me.

Back to these totems Pat’s mom has. When Pat put the box on the back seat of her crew cab truck, our dog jumped into the front seat as usual but this time he did something out of the ordinary. Not only did he start barking frantically at the box, he also jumped out and barked at something in the bed of the truck that only he could see. Now, I wasn’t there, but, I had the same thing happen to me when Pat was gone and I let the mutt into the barn because it was raining. Pat had just brought the box home and had left it on our kitchen table. It was dark and rainy a few nights later and Pat was still in the valley. As the dog ran to the kitchen to wipe out the cat’s food dish, he slid to a stop, pissed all over the floor and backed up to the bridge door. Hackles up and wild-eyed. I opened the door and he ran back to his dog house on the bridge. I took the box downstairs to Pat’s law office and put it in one of her empty file cabinets. I never told her about it. She gets scared easily. Not good with her ticker questionable at times.

I’ve sat and watched the box a few times while fixing weed eaters or what ever in the blue barn. Never seen a thing. I talk to it. I wonder if they get along with all the local spirits from the Pauite burial grounds just across the valley from us. There’s also cave drawings and cliff homes. I guess they’re pretty happy. The cats who live in the barn are happy as clams.

ITEM: I went back up to Quail lake looking for Oscar the other day. I meet this fellow named Cliff sitting in a small 4×4 writing something. He’s parked where the gate will hit so I went over to yak it up and see if he would pull forward a bit. A nice guy. He was on the clock it turned out. His job was to patrol the new dirt road put in for the Turbine company’s 18 wheelers hauling electrical reels of high tension wire, turbine tower parts and the blades themselves. Some of the blades are 75 foot long. He kept count of all the road kills. Yep. From deer to bear to squirrels and rabbits. He kept a tally. I asked him what it would mean in the long run. He just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. He started up his little van and drove away.

ITEM: Now I’m on five years probation. Hey, it’s a lot better deal then my buddy Clem got. The N.A.T. Team jack boots killed him. First they tortured him, then they killed him is actually what happened. A tiny little guy in his nineties. Deaf and on his way out. He lived in this tiny house surrounded by his stuff off of Sierra Highway near Sand Canyon for fifty years or more. As a kid, I would join up with other kids to toss frozen hot dogs to his little mutt guard dog and take bike parts from a giant pile of bikes he had stacked up. Since he was usually half-blasted at the V.F.W. just up the road within walking distance, it was a piece of cake. We were joking about how easy it was to rip him off at Soledad Sands Park one day, and I got straightened out by a vet sitting at the next picnic table. The guy knew Clem and wasn’t too happy about our bragging. He sat down next to me, told us to shut up and smarten up. He then told us about a place called Tarawa.

If you asked a Marine it was called, ‘BLOODY TARAWA’. Two of my buddies took off mocking the man. Frank Angelostro and I kept our seats. My dad died in Korea. I’d hear this story out and show some respect. Clem was in the first wave of men that hit the beach on Tarawa. Out of a hundred and fifty guys in Clem’s unit, eleven made it off the island in one piece three days later. Point blank fire from cement pillboxes ten foot apart. No cover. The tank men refused to drive over the dead and wounded stacked like cord wood everywhere you looked. It cost them their lives. Multiple high velocity rounds knocked turrets completely off the chassis with in minutes. The Marines did what they always do. They landed more guys and hit the Japs head on. Clem was there all three days. Now, fifty years or so later some guys in black uniforms with no name tags tell him he has to get out of his house. It’s been declared a ‘Nuisance’.

Gee, weren’t they started up by Antonovich, head of L.A. County, to take out crack houses and meth labs? Since every type of drug is going down in price since there’s so much everywhere, guess they needed some ego boosting by stealing some old guy’s land and goods for their higher-ups. Clem moves into an abandoned truck with no tires in the little wash near his yard and starts a fire in the step van rear to keep his dogs and himself warm. It was the middle of winter. The van catches on fire and kills them all. The County leaps into action! First, strip the yard of all the accumulated stacks and piles of steel dozer parts, aluminum, copper by the truck load, autos, loaders, forklifts, iron rods. $200,000 worth. It was a lot of work so they had to bill the estate $50,000 grand for all that trouble. The house sits there in the cleared out yard. Waiting to be torn down for the bullet train that’s to go past. Waiting to make some big shot some big dough. Wonder how the big shot would think of ripping an old man off after getting magically transported to Tarawa?

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…

The Mighty Atom

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Only weighing in at 145lbs, he could stop a plane from taking off with his hair, bite nails in half with his teeth, bend heavy iron bars with his fingers, break heavy chains by inflating his chest, defied cars to break away while he holds them with a rope, merry-go-rounds six people off his hair, drive heavy spikes through 2 inch planks with just his fist. Only a few of the things my hero, Joseph L. Greenstein, did throughout his life. Even into his 80’s. Doubt my word? Look him up. There’s film on him doing everything listed above and more.

Pretty darn good for an infant expected to die at any minute. The local doctors had a pool on his hour of death. They even asked his mother for his little body once he expired since he was so tiny and frail. As a child he really did walk through snow with rags on his feet. His father was a rabbi. The head of the poorest family in Suvalk, Poland. Every year was expected to be his last.

In 1903, the circus came to Joe’s town. Like most of the other kids he, too, snuck in. Circus roundabouts caught him and half beat the tiny waif to death. Found by the circus strongman, ‘Champion Volanko’, after he could stand up, Volanko made every circus worker say these words at the top of his lungs: “YOU DIRTY JEW, I’LL KILL YOU!” When the small boy flinched at the correct voice, Volanko grabbed the man by his lapels and hit him a blow so hard, the man’s jacket came off in his fist. When the circus left town, so did Joe. He became Volanko’s valet.

The first thing Volanko taught him was how to breathe correctly. “Joseph, breathing is the key to everything you’ll ever want to accomplish!” Volanko also told Joe to stop listening to doctors. Doctors were bloodsuckers and liars in his book. Next, food. “If you eat like a dog, you will live like one!” From then on and for the rest of his long life, it was grainy foods and plain hot tea. Opening up the back of his pocket watch, Volanko showed Joseph the fine gears and wheels. “Inside your body it’s the same. What would happen if I ground dirt into those workings? Your body is the same. Don’t put bad things into it!”.

Throughout the time Joe spent with Volanko, a mantra was driven into him. “Breathe deeply. Refuse to be weak. Refuse to be sick. Refuse to die. Think strong and you will be!” The very first morning on the road, Joe began the buckets of sand routine. Ten times with each arm. Only a little sand in the fire buckets, but it was a start. Every week, a bit more sand was put into the buckets. Along with the buckets came his time to read. Mostly Jewish prayer books and teachings. Volanko only pretended to be a wild Russian Cossack. He, too, was a Jew. He, too, had once been just like Joseph. He felt it was his turn to give some pay back as another long before had helped him.

After a few months on the road, the buckets now had a lot more sand. It was also time to teach Joe how to break chains with his chest. Not wanting to break the boy’s spirit, Volanko used a piece of string around Joe’s tiny chest. The boy couldn’t do it. Volanko had him pick a chain out of many hanging on a wagon wall to prove it wasn’t trick chain. Putting the chain around his chest, Volanko then took in as much air as he could hold then transferred the air to where the chain wrapped around him. The thick chain burst apart. Joseph never forgot it. From then on, he worked on busting the string. After the string, some cord, then, a small chain. He only got better.

Once he started to put on some muscle, it was time to learn how to wrestle. Volanko gave him some more advice. “To be a man is not just muscles. It’s strength of character. No matter how much sand is in your buckets, you have to build character by living life as a good person!”.

It’s now 1908. The circus has toured all the way to Poona, India. Everyone chewed the narcotic red betel nut, then spit the juice. Beggars of all sorts were everywhere. Armless and deformed they would follow after Joseph crying for charity. He always tried to give them something. If only a kind word. Something to acknowledge their existence. Volanko nodded his head to himself. Joseph had a kind heart.

In Poona, wrestling was king. You wrestled with only a breech cloth. After watching the locals, Joe was introduced to, ‘Gama, the lion of the Punjab’. He was the Poona champion. He was also Volanko’s best friend. Joseph asked Gama how he became champion. “I would wrestle a tree in my backyard, twice a day!” Gama had read about the Spartan boys in ancient Greece. When they got a bit too full of themselves, the Spartan soldiers training them would make them strip naked then, ‘Fuck the tree boys’. Smashing into the big oak in rows, they had to push with all their might to try and shove the tree out of the ground by its roots. If you were caught slacking, you were whipped until you fell. Some never did fall. They were whipped to death and fell over dead. Too proud to give in.

Along with wrestling everyday, Joe also studied Yoga. He also started fasting one day a week. He never wavered. Even keeping it up into his 80’s. Taking on all sizes, Joe learned to endure. To ignore pain. He also started to win. After another year and a half Volanko left Joseph on the side of the road not 100 feet from where they had first met. He never saw Volanko again. As the wagon rolled away Volanko shouted back, “NEVER FORGET WHO YOU ARE!”

Now 16, Joe was back with his family. Not even settled in, Joe watched a Russian soldier kill an old Jewish man with his saber for fun. Joseph followed him into the woods, fought with him, then killed the Russian soldier with his own broken sword hilt. No one in his village ever mentioned it. The soldiers body was never found.

At 18, Joseph married Rachael Leah. A table cloth and two candlesticks was her dowery. Joseph was now responsible for their success. He informed Rachael he was going to America. To Texas to be more exact. Only married 8 weeks, he took ship to Houston. On board the steamer ‘The Frankfurt’, he found work peeling potatoes. Not much in pay, but he ate well.

Finding a job loading and pushing a peddlers wagon, Joseph discovered wrestling was also huge in Houston. The rules in America were a bit different though. After shaking hands, as long as you didn’t leave an opponent deaf, blind or sterile, you we’re good to go. Soon he found work with the Southern Pacific Railroad. While eating lunch one day he met the heavy weight champion of the world, Jack Johnson. Noticing Joe was Polish from his accent, Johnson told Joe a story about a Polish fighter he once fought. “Boy, I’ll never fight that Choyski again. He could hit. He once hit Jim Jefferies so hard his lips were plastered into his teeth. The ring attendants had to cut them away with a knife!” Johnson told Joe to keep wrestling. He was only going to get better. The words boosted Joe’s spirits. Soon with his saved pay and money from wrestling, he sent money for Leah to join him. He also was to be a father soon.

After many adventures, Joe settles in to a nice little gas station business with a small house in the rear. Heading for a nearby hardware store, one of his more famous incidents occurred. Already well-known for his handling of hecklers, one such incident put him on the front page of no less then 7 newspapers.

NEW YORK JOURNAL: ‘Mighty Atom proves power to crowd’. In less then two minutes, Joe had tossed five men through plate glass windows, knocked cold, flattened a dozen more and taken a stab wound during the fracass.

NEW YORK WORLD TELEGRAM: “When the police arrived one officer stated to the newspaper reporter that the Mighty Atom didn’t need no help!” The officer added, “We saved the crowd from him!”

Not long after this incident, Joe was in the German part of New York on business. He stopped in his tracks when he saw a large banner over a storefront that said “NO DOGS OR JEWS ALLOWED.” He asked a passerby, “What in the hell is that?” He was informed that it was the Nazi headquarters and that a big ‘Bund’ was taking place. Going across the street to a paint store, he rented an 18 foot ladder, then stopped at a sporting goods store for a ‘Hank Greenburg’ baseball bat. Now up the ladder, Joe tore down the banner then waited on the sidewalk for whatever was going to unfold.

As the building emptied, Joe took up his bat and played some Nazi baseball. As he told the judge in court later, “It wasn’t really a fight, your honor. It was a pleasure!” Joe took on the entire Bunt. He put 18 in the hospital. He came out of it with a black eye. Hauled into court on a charge of aggravated assault, mass mayhem and so forth, a surprisingly cheerful Joseph Greenstein stood before the bench. The white haired judge could scarce believe his eyes at the tiny man in front of him with just a small mouse under his eye, then, past him at the crowd of badly beaten men filling the courtroom with arms and legs in casts and missing teeth.

Not able to believe it, the judge turned to the police officer and said, “This little guy did all this damage?” The officer responded, “Well, your honor, deese here guys is just the ones that could gets out of the hospital for court!” The judge asked Joe if he had anything to say. “Well, your honor, every swing was like a home run!” The officer leaned and whispered in the judges ear, “These here guys is Nazis your honor. They comes after him, see?” The judge banged his gavel, “Not guilty, case dismissed!”

I could go on for hours. Do yourself a favor. Research this man. He’s one of my favorite people of all time.

Now, the time he was over 80 and would walk the alleys at night hoping street thugs would jump him. Those are some great stories!

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…

When in Rome

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It’s one of the oldest sayings around. Good advice, too, say if you were sitting next to a Roman Emperor such as the great Augustus. If at the arena? Cheer when they cheer and shout encouragement when they stand and shout. If you want to stay in favor. It’s the same as today. Now, if you were sitting next to Caligula, double so.

First of all, he was stone cold nuts. Most likely from all the lead in his food preparation bowls and dinner ware. Wine really brought out the lead in the big goblets wealthy Romans favored. Archeologists have know this for a long time. I just read about it in an old National Geographic I bought at Goodwill. Well, back to Caligula.

This guy did a lot of weird sexual stuff, but, you can read up on that, my story is about how Caligula wanted to get public support back the fast and easy way. A real big gladiatorial event at the Coliseum. To make sure it went off as planned, he enlisted the help of his favorite drinking companion, Publeus Maxima. The top ‘Beastiary’ in all the corners of Rome.

Now, Maxima was just about the best darn killer of any type animal you could ever want to see. The bigger and meaner, the better. Also, in the later stage of his career, he had his animal assistants drug the animals he was to face, just to ‘make sure’ he would always come out on top. There was a trick to it. You had to keep the animal at bay until you saw the tiger’s eyes glaze, or the elephant’s trunk dip a bit, then, in you went with spear or sword, and the crowd roared. Business as usual.

Oh, almost forgot. Maxima loved to torture his foes, every chance he got. He and Caligula were as two peas in a pod.

Since there could be 210 days of games in a year, the crowd was pretty jaded. Some ‘advisors’ in the Emperor’s crowd, came up with some ‘extras’ to really make the crowd love the day’s events. A day to beat all fights in the arena before it. They had so many games and so many various arenas and stadiums, it was a tall order. Taking in animals from poorer conquests, completely wiped out entire species for fodder for the games. If that wasn’t your cup of tea that day, why, travel to the stadium for the chariot races. A charioteer was the big Kahuna in those days. He could sway an election, just by sitting next to the person needing votes. Next were the gladiators that had won their freedom by various means, yet still fought. It was in their blood. They would retire all the time, but, the roar of the crowd and a boring life always brought them back, ‘for one last match’. Usually for huge bets from both sides in the event. Sometimes cities were exchanged over the outcomes. Last on the scale of all these were the Beastiaries. Well trained. Many tricks. The animals never really stood any sort of a chance against a good one. Maxima was ‘The best’. At the top of his game. He was even being talked about in the same sentences mentioning swordsmen and trident net men. A big honor. He might be a transition. Bring his mates respectable, so to speak.

Well aware of this fact, plus, backed by the Emperor’s wallet, and Pretorian guard, Maxima made sure he had all the best of the animals flowing into Rome daily. A special area was set up for the animal merchants to show their latest acquisitions. Maximus always had first selection. He especially looked for large, impressive looking specimens. They made for a better kill, but even more important, well fed, made for a slow, ponderous opponent. Who wants lean and quick. On one such procuring trip, Maximus spotted a magnificent beast. An older elephant, but quite impressive.

It towered over the other elephants it was herded with in a large plaza. He pointed it out to one of the Mahars. The report was good. “A fine beast. Well mannered. Unusual for an African elephant. Also, it had exceptional scarring. Would look great for a dramatic finish. Maximus bought it, plus all the other elephants. They were big and people deemed them quite dangerous. A bit drugged and against seasoned killers, they stood no chance at all. Comparable to some of the wrestling extravaganzas we have now a days. The animal men had everything under control. The hardest part was to make it seem dangerous and difficult. Not only were they trained killers, they were also excellent actors. Two day before the event, Maximus strolled through his row after row of grist for the mill. Also a showman, Maximus planned to end the day’s events as the last act. It would be him and the ‘Old Man’.

That’s the name all the feeders and handlers had given the old elephant. Coming up to the well-chained beast, Maximus spoke to the animal quietly. Letting him know who he would be facing. The next time they met, the Old Man would be in one of the large cages at an end of the arena. Awaiting their fates. The Old Man would eat well this night. And all the water he could hold. It would make him even slower. At least sixty years old, it might be a tough sell. Maximus knew how to fix that problem.

The games begin. The first event was really starting to piss Caligula off. A huge fake mountain on hidden wooden wheels, had been rolled out into the arena, blocking the view of many in the almost capacity crowd. Hey, even if the arena wasn’t your cup of tea, you had better attend for at least part of them. Tongues would wag. Not today. Posters and criers paid by the Emperors flunkies had promised a game to remember. The crowd was noisy taking its seats. A good sign. The booths for the painted prostitutes did record business. Rows of them filled every spare twist and turn on every level. It was a different world then. Food vendors and fan wavers were for rent. Anything you so desired could be bought, or rented.

Watching this mountain roll in was making the crowd quiet. The Emperor was not pleased. Once the fake mountain stopped, a doorway opened near the top and a Greek poet stepped out, blinking his eyes in the bright sun shining down into the center of the arena. The wealthy had large shade covers pulled down to give them relief. Not so the Greek. Starting to strum his lyre, the Greek started slow, then, feeling a love of his words turning the fickle crowd in his favor, he raised his voice, gaining strength from the response. In reality, the crowd was waiting for the punch line to this fiasco. They had not long to wait.

As Caligula himself rose to say something, more doors opened in the middle of the mountain. From them emanated lions. Also hit in the eyes by the bright sun, and, intimidated by the vast crowd moving all around them, they did what was only natural, they climbed to higher ground. Unaware of his new guests on the mountain, the Greek in a new burst of vigor, suddenly feels something rub his leg. Looking down, his scream of terror brought down the house. The Emperor sat back down, a contented look on his face. The Greek was soon torn to pieces and eaten by the starved lions. It had been a big hit! The day started off perfect!

The day picked up. After an intermission and some heavy drinking, the crowd settled in for the end of the show. Now a bit cooler and their blood lust abated, they were ready for the chaser act, then, off to home and twenty slaves to tend every need. As Maximus entered the arena, the crowd roared its approval. He always gave a good show. The crowd was well aware of his opponent. The Old Man was the last elephant alive. As each of his pen mates went to their doom, the Old Man watched with interest how they met their fate. Now, it was to be his turn.

As Maximus gave the sign, the gate swung up, and the Old Man was goaded from behind by heated metal spikes. Smoke came off of his hide as he trumpeted and tried to spin in the tight confines of his corral. Nope, it was forward or more red hot burns. Time to die. Trotting out into the center of the arena, the Old Man blinked his eyes in the bright sun, then stood still, awaiting his fate. Maximus knew his craft. Trotting around the elephant in tighter and tighter circles, he would then switch direction and run in the opposite direction. His two swords glinting in the fading afternoon sunlight. Like a hundred times before, he made his move. First, hamstring the beast, then, play to the crowd before the thrust into the throat area. A fast, clean kill.

The Old man timed him. In the blink of an eye, it was all over. Maximus was grabbed, then crushed by a rolling forehead, mashing him into a pulpy unrecognizable mass. The Old Man wasn’t just any old elephant. He was a former War elephant. Bred and trained for decades by the Romans’ old foes, the Carthaginians, the old man had waited for his moment, then, spinning on one foot in the loose sand of the arena, caught Maximus cold. Unfazed by the crowd, or the smell of the blood seeping out of the raked sand, the Old Man now stood and swayed, seemingly content. At sight of his friend being smashed to death, Caligula ordered five lions to be set loose on the beast. NOW! Rolling in the five most starved lions in steel cages, their trap doors were raised and the animals goaded out. Spotting the elephant, two of the lions raced towards him, then, slowed as a team to stalk. The Old Man backed up against the arena wall, then started swinging his trunk from side to side. The lions sprang at the same time. As the two leaped on his back, the other lions came in on the exposed sides of the great beast. Sinking in their sharp claws and fangs, they suddenly found themselves being crushed to death. Slamming his one side into the cement of the arena, the Old Man then rolled completely over, crushing two more of his tormenters. As the surviving lions backed away, the old man, leaking blood in rivers, and having only one eye, then did something unbelievable.

Ignoring the hesitating lions, the old torn beast, turned, faced the Emperor, trumpeted, then BOWED. The crowd went BERSERK. Caligula was crazy, but not that crazy. Waving for the lions to be driven off the sand, he then tossed down a garland. A special wreath signifying the Emperors favor. From that day forth, no elephant was ever killed in the Coliseum again.

Hart Island

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It’s a small island. Not to be confused with ‘Heart’ Island, the one built by the ‘man with the broken heart’. Nope, totally diferent. Hart Island is the one with over 850,000 buried in it. Most in giant mass graves. Some since the Civil War days. It housed Confederate prisoners for a while. They moved those guys’ graves, though. But don’t worry. They more than made up for ’em. Still put over 2,000 new ones in the ground there every year. Some graves have ten coffins stacked in one hole. I’ve never been there, but, a former New York Detective known as ‘Joe Bus’ (aka Joe Carbone) told me many a story about that island. None of them good…

Now, why would I hang with an ex-cop? To make my friend, Alice, happy. She owned an after-hours cop hang out in West Hollywood that Joe spent most of his waking hours in. He was a stalker of Alice, but, a nice one. He never went over the line, and, he spent a lot of dough at Alice’s house. It was tucked up at the end of Shoreham, not far from where I had a head-on in my AT&T truck. Another story.

Lots of cops drank and made book at Alice’s. On and off duty. Joe still had connections to Brooklyn cops, so, he was the guy L.A. cops went to for guys they were looking for that skipped town. Now, Joe Bus always sat with me, since I would play Backgammon with Alice. In close proximity, the guy literally panted like a Yorkie in a hot car. Joe never stepped over the line, though. His old lady owned a sports bar called ‘Strike Four’ in Silverlake. Alice hated her, so, she kept Joe on a big hook. Some chick deal I tried to stay out of. Since Joe bought me rounds, I was always nice to him. Plus, its better to have cops like you in my world.

So, my pal, Ira F., deals high end jewelry in Las Vegas. He changed his name legally to something so ridiculous, I burst out laughing just thinking about it. Anyhow, back when he was just plain Ira, a Detective from New York shows up at his mini-mansion, wanting to ask him some questions. Ira tells him to go fuck himself. No warrant. No talkie. I found out about this little exchange six weeks later when Ira calls me from the Burbank airport, needing a lift. It seems this cop came back three nights later with a cute little warrant. An arrest warrant for stolen diamonds…

Ira is cuffed, taken back to New York, ensconced in a Queens jail. From there, he gets lost in the ‘system’ for six weeks. Never did see a judge. Just a lot of jails. He lost 45lbs. Also, 20 grand. His wife put money into the accounts of all the guys that he buddied up too, to stay in one piece. Gee, he sure told that cop off.

Now, Joe Bus was this sort of cop. On occasion, other ex-New Yorkers would sit with us and tell stories about the East coast. One night the conversation came around to Hart Island…

Since the 50’s, only law enforcement was allowed on the island. Whenever they went over with a load of deceased, there was always a priest on board the barge-like vessel. Joe said there was only one rule. Never be on the island at night. Everything was to be completed well before dusk. One of Joe’s buddies expounded on this. Looking like an extra from ‘On the Water Front’, Bobby was about seventy, but looked like he still had one more fight in him. He had a brother-in-law that worked the ferry doing fill-ins for other harbor guys every once in a while. He said he always felt sad going out to the island. “All douse unwanted. Just piled all’s in a heap. It’s heart breakin!”

Now, a complete opposite island is ‘HEART’ Island. These guys also knew it well. I did research on both places after they got me interested. Heart Island was a creation of George Charles Boldt. Now, Boldt wasn’t a from a rich family. His father would work their garden at night so the neighbors wouldn’t know how broke they were. George made his way in the world as a Hotel man. One night, in a modest Hotel he owned and operated, a family with a sick child requested a room. With no rooms available, George gave them his own apartment and slept on a sofa in the lobby. This family was related to William Waldorf Astor. The owner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. When they told him of the deed George had done, George finds himself the new Waldorf manager. From there on it was all up hill.

From here, the story is usually of George finding his true love after a long series of disasters with women. He takes possesion of his island, has thousands of tons of dirt brought in to shape the island like a Heart, then tears down the modest vacation house and begins construction of the gigantic manshion in honor of his new bride. On her death, all work is halted. Boxed furniture stayed boxed for 80 years. It was abandoned. Check out pictures of it. Boy, it is really something. It’s now being restored and has tours. My New York friends gave me another side of the story. They say that George’s wife Louise spent all the dough on his house, ruining him. Then, she left town with her chauffeur and was never seen again. I like both versions…