What are we really up to?

This last Saturday was a great day at Costco! Now, many of us need to just come clean, especially the men. There are few reasons we go to either Costco or its bastard brother, Sam's Club. Very few of those reasons have anything to do with saving money. Sure, they got some deals if you are able to break it down by unit. But when you have to buy 1500 units of anything, the upfront price is a little, well, pricey. Nope, we go to Costco for a limited number of things-the free food and big screen TVs.

Sometimes, in a man's Costco quest for the best day for the free stuff, he hits the jackpot. It's like fishing and you find that hidden inlet in a lake that, for some reason that day, all the fish in the lake are at. You throw your hook in and WHAM! Fish on! Saturday, yesterday, May 30th, was such a day.

You enter pushing a cart. Professionals at this all have carts. You can spot rookies who are in a warehouse shopping store with nothing to carry all their 'groceries' in. Yep, the big screens were there and on and as you entered you were awash in three foot high faces from shows and movies in such vivid colors that just don't exist in the real world. You proceed past them, the nuts, videos, you slow your pace down as you see some slacks for less than $10 but you keep moving. There is the $500 grill they sent you a flyer on that does everything except buy the food and rub your feet after a night of grilling. The big shed made out of that heavy plastic would look great at your house; you just have no place to put it. Then the patio furniture but there, next to the cheese and the $9 wine, is a tent. Not just any tent, but a tent by a sausage company! The fish have come to you.

You walk by slowly, not wanting to seem too anxious. The three sales reps, schlepping a sausage you've never heard of, were actually grilling them on two George Forman's and placing the hot links, carved and in their own little paper doilies just for you. Six different sausages. Who cares what they were, the justification to try all six was clear. You didn't care about the name because there was no intent in buying any when you can have at least six bites for free. Then, as if the gods were with you, the three reps all turned their backs at once, focusing on the grills. The crowd moved on in one mass, leaving three of the sausage platters open for one massive, first round score. You sweep in as if you were a Delta Force operator and scored three doilies and moved on without breaking your stride. None of the three men even saw you. This was such a critical event in time because now you could come back as a regular shopper, casually strolling and take on the other three as if you were a true comparison shopper. Then, as you tasted each as if it was a fine Chablis, they would offer the other three again. You don't want to disappoint them so you wolf down all of them.

Now your thirsty, you need to cleanse your pallet so you mosey to the other side and hit the power drinks and those that are good for your joints. They are next to the pasta and pot sticker samples. You walk past the 'vegetable medley' being offered by the woman in the hair net. She's not too happy because she knows she got the lame sample station and it will be a long day for her. You hit the free chicken patties and then the pot stickers. Then its time for dessert and you find yourself heading back to the bread side, next to Valhalla and the sausage. Free cheesecake today.

You top off your luncheon buffet with chips and salsa then head for the door. Oh, wait, the coke and thirty-six rolls of toilet paper. That's right, you actually came for something.

Show ME the money!!

I read in the paper this morning that the Federal debt will cost every household something like $577,000. Now, I'm not going to sit here and argue over who got us here, Republicans or Democrats, or muskrats. It really doesn't make any difference after the ship hit the iceberg, who might have had a little too much rudder one way or the other. My comment is on that number-$577,000. I have confidence in the powers that there are some bright people in the right places that have legitimate degrees in finance and economics from known colleges that are low enough on the GS pay scale to still have to pay their own bills and are really thinking this was the best thing to do. I get that. I want to throw my two-cents in because, well, this is my blog and I can.

I want the money.

Now, I don't have a degree in Finance, Accounting, or Economics. Those degrees, frankly, would have caused me to paint my walls with grey matter a long time ago. Nope, I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I do have some common sense and sometimes even a blind pig will find a walnut or however the saying goes. Track with me and see if you don't say "Hmm, the white boy may have somethin', Maude."

You give me the $577,000 (hereafter referred to as the $$). I turn around and clear all of my debt. Now, for some of us, that won't be enough but I figured if you are that high in the debt ratio, you don't need it in the first place and your house in the Hampton's can just wait for that extra coat of paint.

If I take the $$ and pay off the mortgages, I am clearing my bank's debt; I have just relieved their receivables and AIG's obligation to insure it against default. That debt can now be reinvested back, via the bank, to another investment opportunity, maybe creating jobs-reemploying people. Now, that money I got from the Feds, maybe part of it is taxable and counted as taxable income. That means they get some back. Whatever money I don't use, I turn around and beef up my 401, thereby investing in the stock market, almost ensuring my retirement plans or at least making them and me feel better about retirement and not becoming a ward of the state or living in a friends garage at 80.

Now, there's always someone who will take that money and go to Vegas, bet it all on red at the roulette table. Those are members of the "herd" we will always have and need to be thinned but what can you do? The rest of us, however, the farmer rebuilding that John Deere, the baker replacing that Vulcan oven with a newer one, the candlestick maker--well, you get what I'm saying, will buy crap we need, employing more people. I think we, the people, would allocate that money pretty well. If we did, we would all win. Even those that mis-spent their allotment would feed the system, like a dead carcass starting the food chain with the flies and worms. They bet on the ponies at one of the local Indian casinos. Obviously, the casinos benefit and hire more people. The individuals who just lost their money, drink their problems away, stimulating those depressed areas in Kentucky to grow more grain for Jack Daniels. On the drive home, they run off the road and into a tree, destroying the tree thereby stimulating the dramatically hurt landscaping industry. The investigation and subsequent arrest help my son's-in-laws and promote hiring more police, thereby employing my son. The driver, is transported to my daughter's hospital, ensuring her job and helping out the gauze and bandage industry. We all win.

All we need for this to happen is for us to get our check. Of course, we can only get it with a valid driver's license, an original birth certificate, and one credit card with our picture on it.

The price had no sales tax added

The sun hasn't come up on this 2009 Memorial Day. I woke up and got the dogs walked and made a cup of coffee and came in and sat down. Best time to create and think is just about now. I look out the window and see the trees and plants moving in the pre-dawn light. It's a fresh feeling, a time of renewal. So different for many whom we celebrate today.

In thousands of stories, those who stood in the gap, had their lives end just before dawn-in the darkness, days very similar to what I am looking at. The day captured thousands but there is something about the night that cuts to our primal fears. The Boogieman loves the dark and dwells there. The fears we have as children of darkness and things that go bump in the night are, almost always fictional. Parents scramble out of bed to the night terror cries of their kids who are having a bad dream. We tell them no one is going to hurt them and everything is just fine. It is fine, for most of us. But for those in this photograph and countless others, the night brought with it the fear of those things that live in closets and under beds.

So, you're nineteen and are in some beauty spot like Guadalcanal, a sandy Normandy beach, Mogadishu, the Mekong, or Tikrit and you are on patrol, or with a long-range patrol (LRP), or standing a post. It's night, and you know about the Boogieman. You know he's real. You know he exists. Yet, you continue to do your job. Where do we get such men and women who can look under the bed and then crawl under it with those things that go bump in the night?

Now, don't make them Supermen or Superwomen. They will be the first to tell you they're not. They are scared. Have you ever been scared? No, really scared of something that was real; it breathed and wanted in the worst way, to look you in the face while it took your life. That kind of fear. Knowing that something so vile was right there-waiting just for you. And yet you took steps forward, not backward. Something moves these people. Yeah, it could be for love of country or honor. I don't think all that political crap applies. I think what moves these men and women, who stepped into the vastness of fear, was a motivation of the heart. That's the only thing that could move the body in such conditions. Now, maybe their hearts were motivated by their love of protecting their country or their family or getting even for sins against them. Most of them would tell you they did it for each other, the person to their left and right. God is the only one who knows.

So, these people that we celebrate today, what do they want us to do today? Do they want us to wear black and mourn their passing all day? If we have lost one, we probably feel like doing just that. Everyone of these fallen this country loses, we should take personally. That is a good healthy reaction. I think they want us to enjoy what they bought.We live in the greatest country in the history of the world. Sorry Canada. You're real nice but you know we're right. I'm looking out my window into a nice yard-a yard-with grass! NO ONE in Iraq has grass. I'm listening to Aretha on the radio right now. They shoot people in Mogadishu for listening to a female singer. We get upset standing in line at the grocery store wondering why they don't open another lane because there's four of us in this line. I counted yesterday, there are eleven different bars of soap at the store. Eleven! Whole towns in most of the places we sent troops don't have soap, of any kind. I can even decide if I want to go to work, or live under the 7th Avenue bridge. My life, and that of my family's is our choice. I can follow God or pray to Ulsa, goddess of the pond trees. I can be a professional taxidermist or President of the United States. Its up to me. Those we think of today bought that for me.

When people complain about the U.S. and are here from other countries, I don't think we should say, "Hey, ya knucklehead, go home then." I think we should say "Stay and take another look. You obviously missed something the first time. Forgive them Father, for they don't know what they are saying." We wear our worst on our sleave. You want to know what issues this country has? Read the paper or watch the news or listen to the radio. We'll tell you. Our worst day, beats most nations best. That 7th Avenue bridge thing? That's good living in some countries.

So, today is Memorial Day. This weekend-where did you go, what did you buy, what did you bring to the picnic, soccer game, NASCAR event, Indy race, come on, what did you do? We did everything we could except what we should have been doing; going around and kissing, full on the lips, every veteran of any war, conflict or dispatch we could find, then looking them in the eyes and saying nothing. Just making that eye contact; they will know what we mean. I don't care if you're sitting there coughing and saying "Well, ah, Mark, I know what you want to say, but I just don't feel comfortable kissing another man...." Git you're scrawny, phobic ass over it! That's not the point. As I get older, I am finding myself losing my tolerance for whatever it is I feel I am losing tolerance for. Whatever the heck that just meant. These people, the ones that survived, are the living legacy to the ones that paid the bill for us. This prize we call life, was paid first on the cross, the gold standard to follow. Then, it was paid by millions of men and women. Thousands are standing that same post today. Anywhere the weak need protection or violence happens and that special kind run to help, the soldier, sailor, marine, airman, coast guard, police, or fire. These people go to the noise rather than flee from it. They know the potential is there that they will come face to face with the Boogieman.

Some people think that God has nothing to do with this. I honor your ability to believe what you wish. But I find it impossible to separate the two out. There is an old saying "there are no athesists in foxholes." Before our son, Travis, went to Iraq, we all met as a group. The 63 Combat Regiment has a motto. All units do. Now, some of you might be thinking "Oh, what is it? Gut 'em when you find 'em or some other violent chest pounding rhetoric?" Nope, his combat unit's motto was from Isaiah 6, "Send me Lord."

Where do we find such people to pay the sales tax on our enjoyment on this life? We find them in the homes we have made. From our teaching and our our own hearts. Those that died, they came from us. They mimicked our hearts and minds. They are us and we are they. This is "our day" the best and brighest would say. Remember them, cherish them, kiss them full on the lips.

Life's path

There are layers to life, I think. When you look back or forward in you life, there are twists and turns which occur at specific stages of life.

Like the early years, when you chipped your tooth playing football in the front yard. Grade school and then high school was when you discovered girls were dopey and then girls cause us to be dopey. College years or post high school were when you wanted to exercise your sophistication with smoking a pipe, drinking beer, discussing Milton, or discussing the validity of Fifty-cent (for the older group-he's a rapper and only God knows how he spells his name). Post college years we're spent looking for a mate.

Then we moved into child years or traveling in search of ourselves; or we're in jail. There's a long stretch here where we're running fast and hard. Once the kids are grown and start to cycle out, we look around for something to filling the void. First, there's the long awaited nap. But that doesn't last. You can only take so many of those during the day. You start going to things, like the symphony. Some, finish their spousal duties and move on to others-again. Others, move into different phases with their partners and look for what phase is next.

As the years pass, comfort becomes the command of the day. Instead of that 1977 Gremlin you nursed for years, you live on the edge with a Kia, a brand new one. You get your hair done differently, you daily try to stay ahead of the ear hair. You've become fluent in HDL and LDL dialog. And later, you begin to take interest in news reports on what the Federal government is doing with Social Security and Medicare.

In your fifties, which is where I am finding myself now, I am dramatically closer to the end than to the beginning. But I remember, with advantages, what feats I did those days. My youth is but a thought away and sometimes, like yesterday, still thinking I can leap tall buildings or at least find I can still leap up on a short wall without the use of a ladder, to check my mister system for my front porch. I was kind of proud of that little hop. The old man can still move. Of course this morning, as I write to you and sip my coffee, KYOT playing their Sunday set of melodic music in the background, and two of my favorite things laying at my feet, I have a dull pain in one of my hips. Brought on, of course, by something other than my leap of youth yesterday.

So, what's next? At this point of my life, what is coming up? They say that fifty is the old forty. So, I guess I am equal to what my father was at forty huh? Well, okay. I can live with that. I just don't want to go to ninety. I think if I went to ninety those last few years would not be as cute as the first few years. Lots of talking at high volume. "MR. WILLIAMS, DO YOU WANT TO GO DOWN THE CAFETERIA AND HAVE SOME MUSH?" Nope, I think at that point we take stock in where we are and look at a cab ride to the Golden Gate Bridge, take a walk out to the first tower and take one last leap, with the intent of hitting a passing luxury liner. Wow, now that would be fun! Yep, I want to always be able to leap tall buildings, or at least a short wall.

End of the year teacher's story

Carol Ferguson was wrapping up her room the week after school let out for summer. She had been a teacher for thirty-nine years, the last thirty-three in this inner city high school district and at this particular school. When she told people how long she had been there and just after their gasp, she would comment “Well, I have changed rooms over the years.” What she didn’t say was the last twenty had been in this particular room, tucked away in one of the older wings. Now, at the end of her career, Carol Ferguson found herself trying to find a place for the lifetime of memories, most of which she knew she couldn’t take home. It was time for Carol Ferguson to make room for the new teachers and time for her to rest. Carol Ferguson struggled with the idea of whether it had been worth it.

She walked the room as if lost. She would start packing a box then flitter to another part of the room. She would bog down with opening a book or a file and finding something that she hadn’t looked at for years, in this case, a file with cards from students. She would linger over their words and pictures. Carol Ferguson would then smile and again wander the room, trying to find a place to put the old treasure. She had until the end of the week to clear out. A new teacher was transferring in and wanted to get keys and move in before they got too deep into summer. It was at this point Carol Ferguson heard a knock on her open door.

“Hello,” the old man with the cane said. He was about seventy but looked older with a hunched back and a long mustache. A well worn hat covered his head.

“Hello,” she said.

“Are you Carol Ferguson?”

“Yes, can I help you?”

The old man shuffled a few steps into the room before he spoke. “You don’t know me. But I needed to see you.” The man paused for a moment.

“Would you like to sit down?” she offered but the man held up his hand.

“No, I can’t stay. I just needed to see you.” There was another pause. “Thirty years ago, you had my kids. They was one behind the other in ages,” the old man slowly started, a tinge of southern drawl hung in his voice. “Two boys and a girl.”

“What were their names?”

“It ain’t important. What is important is what you did.”

Carol Ferguson had a flash of worry. Fear, quickly swept over her; as if this man posed a violent threat and that she was going to pay for some mis-deed from years past.

The old man’s voice began to break. “You see, I wasn’t around much when they was growin’ up. I wasn’t around at all, by choice, I guess. Their mother raised them as best she could and they were ripe for the pickin’ if you get my meaning. They could have gone either way. I hadn’t seen them since until last year. They found me and we all got together and,” he paused again and caught his voice. “It’s something now. Really something. I needed to come tell you because when we was talkin’ they said one thing that got them through and that they remembered for, well, until now, was their high school teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, giving them the will and the courage to believe. One’s a contractor in Chicago, one’s a writer for a magazine in LA, and the girl is a teacher in the South Miami. They all said between momma and you, they made it. I just came here to tell you thank you for saving my kids.”

The two stood for a moment and neither spoke. The old man shuffled in his turn and left the same way he came in. Carol Ferguson walked over to her desk and sat down, still holding the treasure in her hand. She opened the file and a card fell out. She picked it up and opened it, noticing it was signed by three kids-two boys and a girl.

Carol Ferguson closed the file, laid it on her desk, and began to cry tears of joy.

Mother's Day

Today is the one day of the year we stop and turn to our mothers and say all that we should of said over the last years of our lives. Fathers are important, critical actually, but when the father doesn't fulfill his role in the home, it is the mother who almost all the time steps up and takes on both roles. Frankly, I think most of us take our moms for granted until there is nothing around to take for granted anymore. "Oh, mom, geez."

There is a strength in mothers that fathers don't have. There is a strength that is so strong, so powerful that it is hard to describe. It runs the gambit of physical, emotional, social, environmental and anything else that ends in 'al.' Sometimes we know when they're leaving this planet but sometimes we don't. Maybe you were four and you and your parents were living a good life, just the three of you. Your mother and father loved you very much and their love for each was shown as an example to you every day of your young life of what pure love was to look like. Then, your mother developed a cough, maybe a little fever, then she was gone. It was 1918, and she was one of 18 million who died of the flu that year. Or you had a little time, some warning. She became sick when you were nineteen and it was just you and her now. Father had died and the older siblings had moved away. Now it was just you as the last of the family who stood and watched her breath. The cancer had her. She was boarding on unconsciousness until you bent over and whispered something in her ear. Then, she smiled. She rallied and said a few words of coherence and a smile. It would be her last smile on this earth. That image is burned into your mind. The last thing she did was smile at something you told her. Not a bad ending for a son or daughter with their parent.

What are you whispering in your mom's ear today? What are you going to say to her? Don't let her go without a word or two. Moms aren't perfect. The contamination of the Earth has made sure of that. But they are our mothers. Revere them today. Hug them today. Let them know their life counted. Because in them, all they really want to do is love you and know they meant something to you.

Happy Mother's Day moms everywhere!!

As part of my second life, that of a teacher, I am finding myself sounding more and more like my parents generation. I can't say I sound like my parents because they died when I was young and never really got a chance to talk to them about anything other than daily surface stuff. But I'm guessing they would say certain things and I am finding myself saying those exact things. Such things as "Weren't you listening?" "Didn't I just say that?" "Copy the example on the board-exactly," X 3; or my favorite-"Kids music now a days."

Still, I am comfortable with the generation coming up. "Mark, how can you say that? Have you heard blah blah blah." I know what you're thinking but I really do think we'll be all right. Kids today are no different-----NO DIFFERENT than when I was growing up, except maybe more resilient. Listen, I don't like rap music. Anything that is called 'music' that I could actually do, is not music. If I can stand and hold a microphone too close to my mouth and mumble words and get a million dollars for it, I don't think is music. How is that different from someone like Bob Dylan? You can't understand him even if there is no music and you and him were the only two in the room. How about the Beatles? Huh? Now I've touched a nerve. I knew a girl in high school who, I am sure, lit a candle to them every day. Have you listened to the White Album? Charlie Manson did and apparently it told him that he was the next Jesus Christ.

You look at our gaggle of teens about ready to step out on the stage of graduation and then into the 1040 long form and you find yourself rubbing the frontal lobe of your head in worried anticipation. Nah, we'll be alright. My parents couldn't fathom why anyone, men in particular, would want to wear their hair long. My brother was cut out of his grandfather's will because he had a beard. What exactly is a 'Doobie Brother'? And wat iz txtn LOL? I look at my three kids and their friends and play the stories back of their teen years. Our girls were 'better' than our boy but none of them caused us to worry about their hearts short of them being hurt by their boyfriends or girlfriends at the time. Now, we see young men and women where children once stood-peers in the faith. I got into my sweet Jessica's car the other day and she had some head-banging music on-my Jessica the nurse! Jeannette and Travis actually know the lyrics to rap songs!

So, take rest in the knowledge that those that follow will be fine. Sure, they will face divorce, death, taxes, war, and that cross-road decision about God as they grow. Maybe our fear is that they will turn out like us? They watch us and want to emulate us. I guess we all know what that means. We better get our act together and model what we want them be like. Apparently, we're still leading the parade.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

What was I thinking? WHAT WAS I THINKING? So, yesterday I made a doctor's appointment. Now, I'm a fifty-one year old middle-aged white guy. At this point in my life, the appointments to see the doctor no longer include "torn ACL's" or "pulled ham-strings" or the endless ringing in my ears from too many "gun fights" at close quarters. I am still in reasonable shape and still, if I had too, could leap tall buildings but age has given me wisdom so I use the elevator to the top then jump to the other side. Get my meaning? Nope, doctor visits are reserved now for those things that men, women, no one of any real decorum, want to wander into.

So, I made this follow up appointment with the doctor. Sure, it had been three years but things like this, especially a man-in his fifties-still able to sit-scared of what she had already said, didn't want to rush in to. I needed some time to think and three years seemed appropriate. But it was time. I don't know what I was thinking. I thought she was just going to open the file and simply say "Oh, hi again Mr. Williams, I see its been over three years but sure, I don't think anything has changed, lets just schedule that "procedure" and you can be on your way. I knew I had not thought this out when they put me in a room with buttons, switches, garden hoses, and something that said "Craftsmen" on it.

I sat in the chair waiting. I was proud of the way I looked, my new Jerry Garcia tie and clean white dress shirt. I looked good. Then my eyes scanned the room. There was a Tupperware container with stainless steel things; things you see only on Thanksgiving when one is basting the turkey, soaking in a light blue liquid. Then I looked up. In the ceiling was a light; one of those fish eye lens aimed right at a strategic spot on the table. There were tubes of ointment on the counter. Maybe they were left over from the last guy? I thought. Then I said 'hmmm.'

She was real nice-the doctor. Yes, a 'she.' So was her six foot Russian nurse. Something about her, though, screamed in my mind 'gulag'. Now, you have to understand, she was just the luck of the draw three years ago when my primary doctor sent me to her. My brother and a dear friend who both counseled me back to life after these previous events, asked the same question--'a she'? Here's all I got to say-small hands. Yep, that's critical-especially in these 'procedures.' But, she was not going to budge. She had to repeat everything she did three years ago. It was like it didn't even happen! Like that whole thing just sailed out to sea, never to be seen again. My tie and starched shirt looked worn and used draped across the chair I was previously sitting in.

So men, I stand before you-humbled but proud. You see, at this age, as I walked out of the office, finding my car one floor down in the parking garage, I realized I didn't really care. There was a point of pride of what I had just accomplished. Younger men would still be up stairs, curled up in a little ball and the Russian would be tapping them with her size eleven boot say "git up ya sloppy pool of a man!" Nope, as I enter this stage of my life career, I greet it not with trepidation but with open arms! "Go on, take your best shot. I'm an 'Merican male, father, warrior of the faith, husband, grandfather, protector of the weak-you ain't got nothin' with those things in the Tupperware container. I laugh at you!"

So, sometime in the next few weeks, I will make an appointment and do the do. I will march in, the Royal Dragoon Guards playing in my MP3, my head up, my chest out, the word 'mommy' quietly clenched between my teeth.

Not wanting to take anything away from modern science with us standing on the cliff of a world flu epidemic, but to share with you the great breakthroughs that we, here at Central High School, are coming up with to tackle this potential world health issue. You see, this school is looked upon as “cutting edge” “riding the cusp” of modern technology, “a leader for the common man” in world health issues and general well being. Scientists, doctors, lab techs, and people with way too much time on their hands, have come up with a few guidelines of our own to support, come along side of, share with, or generally cause smiles for all as well as those uptight and worried people at the CDC and the World Health Organization. Below, are some simple guidelines to not only protect you and your family from the “curse of the swine” but to provide for a better way of life-a different light on the proverbial rainbow of life as it were. Here are some simplistic guidelines to make your life, if not healthier, at least more interesting.

1) If you sneeze, make sure you cover your mouth and nose. Then promptly dispose of that sleeve of your shirt in the trash in a safe manner.

2) If you are at a restaurant salad bar and one hand has a plate and the other has a pair of salad tongs and you feel a sneeze coming on, don’t turn your head away and blow disease into the general populous. Someone will stand up and complain. Shelter the restaurant patrons and your loved ones by using the “sneeze screen” encircling the salad bar. After all, that’s what its there for. We might as well see if it works.

3) Scientists discovered it didn’t make sense to wash your hands and dry them then touch the same door handle the guy who just sneezed on the salad bar touched to exit the restroom. So, don’t use your hands. Reach down and open the door by pulling on the handle with your mouth. Be careful not to chip a tooth.

4) If you start to feel sick and are running a fever over a 103, go out for a run in heavy sweats and “sweat it out.” At least that’s what my former high school football coach prophesied just before he went to prison for assault. Pearls of wisdom.

5) Quick kissing pigs. Come on people! Unless you’re French or from certain parts of northern Italy or West Virginia no American should be putting their lips on a pig unless it’s smothered in barbeque or on a bun with a cold amber beverage.

6) Drink more coffee. At least once a week you need to drink half your body weight in coffee (x-50%= #cups). It would be best if you drank it black like a Turkish wares salesman or the first machinist mate in the bowels of a Peruvian tramp steamer but cream and sugar is welcome. You don’t see either of these two types with any wussy flu do you? No! Emphysema and colon cancer maybe but hey-first disease first.

The coffee clinic is open in the morning, next to the cattle pens and sty’s. Come by tomorrow morning and take your medicine. Its subsidized by the Feds via the bank stimulus package as stated on page 487 of said package marked with a little * at the bottom of the page.

Never forget--those things good

The old man and the old woman walked slowly down the sidewalk in the park along the Marina Waterfront. He, with his cane and she, holding his arm, their strides almost heal to toe; their posture with a noticeable lean forward. They were dressed for the chill the bay breeze always brought, with tweed overcoats, hats, and scarves. She wore black gloves and a green scarf to accent her blouse that couldn’t be seen and he with formal dress of slacks, a dress shirt, and tie but on his head, a Forty-niners ball cap his grandson bought for him and on his back, a small backpack. Both wore brand new white Nike’s.

They found their traditional bench and so began their sit for an hour or so as they looked out towards the water, towards Sausalito. They enjoyed the walk down from their apartment where they knew they were going to spend the last stage of their lives together. They were close to their two daughters and son, grandchildren and great grandchildren. They had a close family and received calls or visits from one of the group every day. They loved those times but cherished these, when they could lace up each others shoes-bending over that far was too hard to do themselves, and walk down from Mason Street just south of the cable car turn-around to this bench and sit with each other. Sometimes they would walk back and other times they would call a cab. They never called their family for a ride.

They would sit for the hour, watching the ships and the joggers along the sea wall, the tourists taking pictures, the foreign voices as they walked by. Often, the old man and old woman would sit and not say a word. Fifty-four years of marriage caused the old man and old woman to be able to read each others thoughts. Words were spoken-love words were spoken, but the best of those words were said with the eyes and heart. He would point with his cane at the passing ships or points of interest without speaking; she would nod and smile, while still holding his ungloved hand.

It was 1944 when the old man and old woman met. She was a twenty-year-old nurse at the Alameda Naval Air Station. He was twenty-five and in the hospital for burns and shrapnel when his Corsair was shot up over Saipan and his return to his carrier was ‘a little bouncy’ as he would sometimes recount. She became his nurse and knew him when he was at his lowest. They first became friends. As part of his therapy, a day trip was planned with several patients into the city and this park, only at that time, it was a gun emplacement. He sat in the open air of that bay, just he and his nurse, and for the first time, he felt life might be worth living. The two never left. She would later talk about his ‘chocolate drop’ eyes and he would write home about this woman of amazing grace and compassion. His warrior spirit never left. When you get old, your spirit doesn’t leave, it just makes room for other parts of your life, eventually adding the spirit of husband, father, mentor, lover, and now, in the final chapter-trusted council, wisdom, guardian of those things good.

It was time in their walk and in their sit. The old man reached in to the small backpack he had taken off just before he sat down and pulled out a thermos and two cups. He poured his bride some of the fresh brew, always leaving room so she didn’t burn her lips or spill, and then he poured himself a cup. And so they sat some more. Silent. Vigilant. The warrior and nurse.

Friday morning, tomorrow, come and sit. Share a story of your warrior days or of those times when bones weren’t brittle and the breeze was cool on your face. Coffee and sacks are free. In the Coffee Shack at about 7:15

A bright Idea!

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, Andy; you've read about him before, just lightly mentioned in prior writings. We use to work together and will occasionally have lunch or, like yesterday, simply call and see how the other is doing-if each of us were still employed. He answered the phone at work which was the first sign that he was still drawing an income.

It caused me to think, again, about how lucky I am, as well as many of the people I know, who are still drawing checks and able to provide for our families. It's a scary time. But, for a moment, lets step out of the dark house at the end of the street and into the sunlight of fiction and something with an appropriate laugh track. If we were in charge of say, General Motors, and someone was saying to us that in less than 60 days we were going to financially die unless we reinvented ourselves, what would that reinvention look like? Hmm? If you or I were in charge, what would the largest, greatest manufacturing company look like? What would it's product look like? Of course, I have an idea or two.

First, I want a car with the longest warranty possible. I want a warranty that if anything goes wrong with this car or truck, short of me taking a sedan four-wheeling in the Painted Desert, they'll fix it--for free. The Koreans, Japanese, Taiwanese, Vietnamese, and any other 'ese' rhyming countries, whom have only discovered the wonders of toilet seats in the last decade, are making a vehicle with a warranty of a full decade-A DECADE. American cars are still with a 3 year, 36,000 mile warranty and here's the bad part, you will have to use that warranty. If you buy a new American car, chances are, you will have to use it in the first 36 months. Bad form. One way around this is send your R and D team out to a Toyota dealership and have them buy a car, a good one, one Toyota sells a lot of, and bring it back to the garage. Then copy it. I mean build it like you stole it. Test the metal, the wiring, the fine imitation leather and copy its quality. They can complain all they want but since we all stole the idea of the "car" from some French guy in the late 1800's and no one is complaining about that, I think we're good to go.

Next, we don't need all these choices. There is no reason we need fifty-five vehicles to choose from. We're like kids going into a See's Candy Store and being told "Okay, honey, you can have one piece." Come on, we can't do that. We're Americans. We want ALL of them. The fewer choices the better. We got companies like Dodge, which is the bastard child of Chrysler, who basically change the name on the car and park it in their lot. We need one car for our first car-you know-single, going to college/work/reliable/large enough to carry one suitcase and our friend Cassidy to San Diego for a weekend on the beach. Then we need a family car. Something that you can sit three adults in the back seat comfortably or one dog, one adult, and one child in a car seat right in the middle. Then you need the post-kids car time for adults. Something with some class, a real nice radio and that imitation wood crap all around it. Oh and those back up cameras; not that you would use it but they are just soooo cool. Then, lastly, we need a truck. A good, strong, American Truck. It has four doors because, well, you want to be able to carry a few thousand pounds of crap in the back and the crew to load it and unload it. There, those are all the vehicles you need. Now, where you can play is in the color. Get some colors that you would find in a pimp's driveway.

Next, all of these cars run on hydrogen-period. We pull hydrogen out of the air, pump it into the tank, run it in our standard engine with minimum changes. The exhaust-pure water. The stuff coming out of the tailpipe is guess what-good for you, which is composed of--that's right-more hydrogen. We then, with a slight grin on our faces, turn to those countries in the Middle-East and say "Wow, that was fun. It was nice knowing you but we, ah, we have to go now. Enjoy." Each of those cars runs off of a fuel that makes more of itself as you use it, using present technology. Hmm. The demand that goes along with this is each vehicle needs to get a whole bunch of mileage. If we were head of GM, we would also meet for lunch with the heads of Exxon, Mobil, et.al along with the CEO of Seven-Eleven. Some place nice, with table cloths. The deal would be we would build the car to take the fuel, they would produce the fuel for sale for, let's say, 25 cents a gallon, and Seven-Eleven would provide the outlets. It has to be simple enough to fuel that my dead grandmother could do it.

Now the cost. I will not spend $30,000 for a car. I choke at $20,000. You got labor unions, whom I am a member of, demanding that the nineteen year old kid at the Detroit plant get $21 an hour to sweep the floor. The guy dropped out of high school when he was sixteen for Chrisssake because he couldn't pass elementary math. His cousin on his momma's side, Vinny, told him that when he got out of prison for selling drugs on campus, he could come work at the plant. Come on, the guy gets minimum wage for pushing a broom-not a dime more, oh, maybe a locker. That's it. If he doesn't like it, then go back to school, and find your brain. YOU'RE PUSHING A BROOM! Remember who is buying these cars, especially the first one. Your loving child who is working hard at going to school and working part time. She/he deserves a great, dependable car for under, oh, $5,000. It ain't fancy but it will run until you they give it to their kids-250,000 miles later. I'll pay more for the nice car after kids. It'll make me feel better.

Yep, that's what it would look like. Clean, simple, the air would start to turn blue again. We'd have more money in our pockets because it costs us just cheeseburger money to fill up. And all our children would be home from the Middle-east because, well, our beaches have enough sand thank you. We don't need to export anymore and, frankly, there is nothing else you have that we really want or need. Oh, here's a Bible. Try reading this one.

Now, we just have to decide what that crap is we're going to load into the truck first. What do you think?

Arg, me matey's!

For a six-pence, Charlie “The Pin” Gunter, would beat up anyone you wanted along the wharfs of Kingstown Bay in the Grenadines. He would peg-leg himself up to the unsuspecting, looking as though he was begging for alms and when the victim was distracted by The Pin’s odor, Charlie would drop his mahogany leg, and club them with it, turning them into a senseless ball of goo on the rolling docks.

He then would collect his pay, and wander the pubs telling stories of the days when he was young and sailed as an ensign with His Majesty’s Fleet with the “good Admiral Sir Eland Barrington.” He would flop on a chair and gather the crowd while pinting the ale and slapping backs. No one believed the Pin, called that for the pin, Charlie said, was shot through his neck during a little skirmish the fleet had while on patrol with the rough and tumble pirate, “Long Slim Jim.” The story went that as he was a young ensign assigned to the forward gun batteries on His Majesty’s Balfour, a thin and nimble frigate, when an incoming round from one of Long Jim’s deck guns filled with chain, nails, and dowel pins, one of which stuck in Charlie’s neck. Not wanting to get blood all over his uniform, Charlie stuck his finger in the small hole and continued to call correction to his gunners.

So, at the tables or at the bar, the aged man with the wooden leg led the pub in story after story of sea fare and glory, all the while, his victims-almost all, woke up some hours later with a cleaved skull and empty wallets.

For a six-pence, you too, can come down to the docks tomorrow morning and have a pint or two. Some fine Ethiopian or Colombian black, imported just for you on the tramp steamer, Valhalla, will make port at dawn. Give the swabs time to unload its gullet and prepare a sampling of exotic foods and spices for you heartless wretches.

Don’t forget to fly your ship’s colors on your doors tomorrow, colored with crayons, each have to have a name. The attire tomorrow? Piratey.

We live in a violent world. I take that back. "Violent" is an understatement and a misuse of the term in comparing it to where we are. I read, just this morning, about a man killing eight people in a nursing home, another man killing his two sisters-decapitating one just before the arriving officer could kill him, and the always present suicide bomber blowing himself up along with a bunch of police cadets in Iraq. Each, I am sure, had a logical reason in their grey matter as to why they needed to do what they did.

I had lunch today with my friend, Rick, whom I worked with years ago. Rick is still in law enforcement and responsible for the security of the Arizona Supremes--the judges, and the building they live in. When we get together, along with our dear friend, Andy, we usually talk about 1) family 2) retirement accounts 3) vacation locations and 4) violence. Rick said he wears his gun where ever he goes, even off duty. I remember when I retired, one of the biggest issues I had was NOT wearing my weapon. Being unarmed, when for decades you always were armed, took some getting use to. Today, almost a decade after I left law enforcement, I wish I could still carry my loving little Glock. Frankly, you who read this, want people like me, Rick, Andy, my little boy Travis, my two sons-in-law, walking around in the grocery next to you fully and readily armed. I'm not saying everyone needs to have a gun just those highly trained with the nightmares being armed carries. Without your knowledge, we bring harmony to the places we walk and share that harmony with, well, you. Even church today, is not a fully safe and loving place although forgiving; it is not a safe place other than the full power and capacity of God to provide that protection. Who goes to a church with an armed guard at the door? With some news accounts out, that wouldn't be such a stretch. Maybe God-this is just a thought-provides the full power of His protection, via people who don't mind walking around with sixteen hollow-point rounds of 941 feet per second of pure lovin' ready to reach out and touch Crazy Henry in between the horns before he slaughters his baby in aisle 3 at the Safeway because Jodi Foster spoke to him in a dream and told him to do so. George Orwell had a statement which I copied and put on shirts for Travis and his squad-with some minor changes-"People sleep peacefully in their beds at night because there are rough men (and women) willing to do violence on their behalf." Somehow, that brings me comfort.

The world hasn't changed-ever. There wasn't a "nicer" time or a more "peaceful" time. People weren't any better off in the fifties; they just didn't talk about it. The world has had no time when man hasn't wanted to steal, rob, murder, his fellow man just for giggles. The world will never be a time or place, without God stepping in with Himself, where peace will reign. Sorry, it ain't going to happen without a God level of interdiction. We have moments of time where things are quiet and quite nice, but it doesn't last. It never has. It hasn't happened for thousands of years and it isn't about to start now. So, with that piece of wonderful, cheery news you say "Geez, Mark, that was happy. So, what is going to happen to us sheep?" Well, there is an answer.

First, you gotta understand I'm not a "God, guns, and guts" "kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out" "you can have my gun when you..." kind of guy. I am, I guess, a realist although labels are for shirts. This isn't a Republican/Democrat, pro-right/left kind of thing. I love peace. I love flowers. I like soft music and holding hands with my wife in public. I don't care for NASCAR and I don't have any guns except my service weapon. I got news; we, the collective we, aren't in trouble; we HAVE NEVER BEEN OUT of trouble. It's been a constant. Man has been messing up since the advent of the Red Delicious and ever since we have been trying to lie, cheat, steal our way back. There isn't a plan or new deal that hasn't been tried in ten different flavors. Nope, we've been treading water with no sight of shore. So, why am I so upbeat, singing high notes, dancing naked--er--dancing and smiling when all about us are high cholestorol, free-basing yahoos with a propencity for talking to people who aren't there and have high capacity magazines just aching to see how fast they can clear one to empty?

You have those little boys at the top of this piece, and those like them, who are currently standing in the gap while you and I sleep peacefully at night. You have my friends Rick, Tina, Andy, Kathleen, and old bastards like Don who haven't retired yet-and really should-old Silverbacks, still trained and ready to respond appropriately to any level of violence some loon decides to mistakenly do in their presence. You, who sleep well and love your peace, deserve to sleep well. It has been paid for and continues to be paid for, first by the Son of Man but given His heart of serving, to men and women-rough, proud, humble, reckless abandoned-type people who, without hesitation, would jump into the darkness of Hell for strangers like you. Why? Well, we can go a bunch of different ways, one of which is the simple fact that they LOVE that stuff, but I have one belief that may cause you to think. God has laid his hands on them-these few-these happy few. They have a heart unlike any other. As one old warrior said once about Travis going overseas "Oh, he's a servant." Travis' company motto was a quote from Isaiah "Send me Lord." And there are men and women, thousands-millions of them world wide answering that call. They rush in while the sheep rush out. They can't help it. They are drawn to a good fight.

Yes siree, its a violent world. Sorry, wrong verb. I can't think of one bad enough to describe it so it will have to do for now. But, if you are looking for peace, ask one of those at the top of the page. They know the true definition of that word. What about God? Oh, he's here. He loves us, He cares for each hair on our heads. He cries when we cry and believe it or not, he laughs big belly laughs when we are happy and laughing too. God loves peace; He invented it. We, if we choose well, will see peace and experience it when we roll up the carpet and go home. But until then, we get to curl up in His lap anytime we want. We are never, unless we choose to, away from Him. And no one-no one, knows this loving protection, like those that have seen the worst the world has to throw at us.

Those few, those happy few.

Sunday morning

A little while ago, we talked about Saturday mornings and the quiet leading to the storm of the rest of the day. The one day of the week that traditionally holds it's peace is Sunday mornings. I just got back from walking the dogs. The early morning is still cool here in Phoenix. You don't have to tank up with a quart of water before you go out and get the paper out of your driveway like you do in the dead of summer. I actually put on a sweat shirt. The sun was up but low so the lights through the trees caused the green to be greener. You know what I mean? Even the morning music changes on Sunday morning.

If you're reading this in the Metro Phoenix area, you know about KYOT, 95.5 The Coyote as its called by its smooth talking announcers. Nick Francis, rules until ten with smooth, silky jazz but if you don't like jazz this is still the station because its not jazz. I'm not quite sure what it is. Now, if you're listening in Vladivostok, you don't have KYOT unless you're with the Russian Air Defense and then maybe through a satellite hook up, nope, the best ya got there is Good Morning Vladivostok with Igor Vlacdonovich and his sidekick Sal, talking about tides, fishing, and oh yeah-how freaking cold it is.

On Sundays we do different things, if we are not working second shift, but all of it is directed towards one goal-taking a breath and relaxing. A dear friend of mine goes golfing; another couple across the street go for a bike ride or walk their golden retrievers; my wife-Joni, sleeps in then we go to church followed by lunch somewhere with the kids. Even when our son, Travis, was in the vacation town of Tikrit, if he wasn't working Sundays patrolling for evil, there was something different about that day. If he could close his eyes, put on a pair of headphones and smell some artificial pine, like those hanging from your rear view, he felt he was almost home-until he opened his eyes. You get my point.

Nope, Sunday in 'Merica is special, they always have been and, hopefully, always will be. The coffee always tastes better; the paper is thicker, the news doesn't seem as bad when you have comics in color instead of black and white; God is seemingly closer. There's a light breeze outside. The grass just got watered, the dogs are resting with their heads on the windowsill or on the sidewalk in the neighbors front yard. Aaron Neville just got done singing It feels like Rain on the KYOT. Nope, Sunday morning is a good place to be.

I have to go, my coffee is getting cold.

Good old days with fire

To the right there, is a good example of having too much fat on your steak when your grilling on Saturdays. It also applies to the weekly coffee story below. Enjoy.

Remember your birthday parties when you were younger? There was a time when, in my youth, a change took place from pinning tails on donkeys to a higher form.

When I was a teenager, I was sometimes embarrassed by my mother. No, it’s not fun to say, but my mom had ‘consumption’ issues that, in the early seventies, were unpredictable. Having a house full of the most important elements to your high school identity, when your mom was on a binge, was fully avoided at all cost. Younger birthday parties were fine but that season in my mom’s life happened to coincide with my teenage years and as we can all attest, a child, in their teenage years, goes legally insane when anything happens.

My father had died when I was fourteen and my brothers and sister had moved out years before so it was just the two of us. She was really a great mom-with one massive flaw. During the day and a sizable portion of the nights, she was fine, but on some nights-wow. So a birthday party-at night-with my friends-was out of the question. I told her why. She actually begged for a shot at it. Believe it or not, she was actually turning the corner. We talked and came to a mutual game plan. A party of just my guy friends, over for dinner-a big dinner-steaks, potatoes, you know-real food. Stuff that made teen age boys forget about girls and beer was anything that has the word ‘T-bone’ in it. Thus, “Festival” was born.

Festival was the annual birthday celebration that lasted for several years, eventually moving itself to North Mountain Park and the ramada you see next to the water tower, just above the National Guard base on Seventh Street. The boys would gather and grill steaks and eat beans, filling themselves on soft drinks and beef. Alcohol was never needed when you had cows to eat. Teenage boys, with full bellies of good food, were content and not overwhelmed by any other desires, at least for a while. There was a cake in there somewhere but if memory serves, most of that was used in a food fight. As a significant part of the annual celebration, the birthday boy would climb the hill behind the ramada to a craggy outcropping a few hundred feet straight up, light a road flare, let out a god-awful ‘war cry’ and run down the dark, cactus invested, razor sharp hill holding the 1500 degree road flare up so all could see. The idea was to make it down without falling, setting the mountain on fire, or making any form of late night news. It always seemed to work, other than the one time he set his hair a blaze with a piece of molten ember from the flare falling onto his skull. Mom was always so proud-of the party-she never knew about the pyrotechnics.

Festival has gone by the wayside along with the yellow leisure suit. But tomorrow morning there will be coffee and snacks, the food of middle-aged ‘Festival’ goers. Come and enjoy. If you’re there before the sun comes up, and if you listen quietly-facing north, you can hear the war cry of the festival revelers of the past. Don’t try it yourself. At our age, we’ll throw a clot.

Saturday morning isn't for wienies

Saturday mornings are not for wienies. A lot of people look at Saturday as a day of rest but if you own a home and you're a dad, it's a day to get all that stuff done you didn't get done during the week. A week's worth of stuff to do in one day. Only dad's can do that.

The day starts soft. You sleep in a little later than you did during the week, but knowing its the weekend, you stayed up later on Friday night, maybe treating yourself to watching the 10 o'clock news. You throw your robe on and wander out with the dogs to collect the paper from the driveway. It's beautiful this time of year, still cool but not cold. Here is where things start to get aerobic. The paper isn't seen. That's because the paper boy on the big paperboy bike is no longer a paper boy, but a grown man or woman driving a 1987 Toyota getting up at three in the morning to earn a few extra bucks. They don't like their job; who would at three in the morning? The care they give your paper when they toss it into your driveway and it slides under your car, is not high on their list. So, in your robe and half secured sandals, you get down on your hands and knees and crawl under the car to retrieve it.

You spend the next hour making your coffee, reading the paper, and then a quiet moment by yourself in the bathroom. The house is quiet. The only quiet for the whole day. You love that. You finish the paper with the comics and a weak attempt at the crossword puzzle then, after making yourself a second cup, you start to organize your attack. The lawn? That leak in the sink? Summer is just a few hours away, that means the swamp cooler needs to be prepped and staged for service.

Now, fathers with kids, it takes on a new meaning. Children want to participate in the cool stuff that we call 'labor' which, of course, adds six hours to any project. I always wondered how my father, in his late fifties, was so strong. He didn't work out (early seventies, no one worked out) but in his role as father he would routinely wrestle with my older brothers who were young strapping teenagers and he would always, win-always. His arms weren't 'cut' or bulky but smooth and non-descript. It was not until I became a father did I realize his strength came from carrying kids around the yard, up on the roof, to the store, everywhere. Dads ALWAYS worked out. Plus, they knew holds and kicks they learned in those 'special schools' while they were in the military or some other para-military organization that would render strapping teenagers useless.

As the day crawls through the hours, things start getting checked off; the yard, that leak, the awesome swamp cooler. Meanwhile, mother is working on the inside, either with the children, or creating another list for you to start, just in case you finish your first list. Idle hands are the Devil's workshop-or something like that. Women don't like men with idle hands.

Scientifically, men go home to God ten to fifteen years before women. Doctors and scientists have made livings studying how to improve and extend our lives. I don't know about you but I want them to stop. I don't want to live to be ninety with the last seven years in a diaper and people talking to me at the top of their lungs because I can't hear.

Nope, God doesn't like that either. Men go home ten to fifteen years earlier than women because of two reason, 1) they have become such flaming butts they need to be removed from the planet and deposited somewhere else (yes, this is Biblical-its in the minor prophets somewhere) or 2) it's God's reward for a job well done. So, men, I think we bitch about our Saturdays only if we're not real men, like we're from France. A real man will attack their Saturdays! Make it from dawn until dusk, stress that heart, torque that back. Yep, that's what we'll do.

Who knows, the bus might get here that much sooner!

Hey, I wanna a bonus too! I think.

I'm not upset with those boys and girls who are getting bonus money from these big companies. Really, think about it. I mean, what is your price, or mine? Who would I sell out for a million dollars? how about six million? Wouldn't you TRY to sneak away unseen with a nice direct deposit to your Wells Fargo? Now, I wouldn't shoot somebody or try to sell some pictures of someone walking on the beach-holding hands with someone who wasn't his or her spouse, or commit a major crime (low and medium crimes are still up for clarification and discussion). I mean if you legitimately "earned" a bonus by sticking it out or holding it up, or sold the most, wouldn't you try to walk out the door with something that would clear most of your debts, put a nice little balance in your savings account, as well as pay for that round trip to the Grand Cayman's where the water is blue, the beer is cold, and the banks have no agreements for disclosure via subpoena. What, actually, is our bottom line?

It's funny, I might actually sell out my country's secrets for a maple long-john. One of those from Krispey-Kreme. You know the kind; the one's that when you bite them, the top and bottom are so moist and gooey they pinch together. Yep, I'm salivating too. But a million bucks-hmm. I'm not that motivated. Sure, it would be nice but you know someone would find out. Then they would want something, like a car, or dinner, or a new kidney. Pretty soon, you've run out of money but no one would believe you. They would keep asking. You'd have to say 'no' or keep up the lie and keep shelling out the gifts, then you'd be broke but you would keep it up until all you had left was a pair of black socks and a CD of Gordon Lightfoot, laying face down in your own mix of vomit and Thunderbird, under the Seventh Avenue Bridge with a new street 'friend' named Gustave who said in his prime he was a feline in CATS on Broadway until he broke his ankle and became addicted to the pain meds. He talks to cats all around him, none of which are there.



Nope, I'm not upset with those boys and girls at all.

Morning

Every Friday at school, I make coffee for the staff. I've been doing it for a few years as a way to bring people out of their caves and get them to mingle a little with others as well as just to enjoy a Friday morning. Teaching, especially teaching high school students is tough-real tough. It was kind of a way I got to minister to others. Free or real cheap coffee and snacks before school. Well, I started with just a quick announcement the day before, giving people a head's up that in the morning, there would be a nice snack for them. Those announcements grew from a sentence or two to full blown short stories. So, to stay in the tradition of Coffee Friday, here is an example and from now on, you will also be privy to the blessings of a good cup of joe.

Gus Timmerson was a cowboy. He had been a cowboy for seventy-two years, ever since he could ride the Morgan his papa gave him when he was four. He could saddle the horse on his own at 5. He won his first junior rodeo with barrel racing at 12 and was on his first cattle drive the year before. He married his high school sweetheart who was also the apple of his young eyes in grade school, which was the same two room school house in that remote part of eastern Montana. They had four children together and just a year before this writing, Gus Timmerson, buried his wife from an extended fight with cancer. Now, in the backyard of his years on Earth, a history of two broken hips, a broken arm, the blizzard of ’86 that almost took him and his herd, all the things that life had thrown, and at a time when most would find the rocker on the porch of that back yard a comforting thought, Gus Timmerson was going back to school to get his college degree in, of all things, Modern Art.

Gus Timmerson loved to draw and paint what he drew. Wherever he was on his 1900 acres, either on horse or in his Ford truck, Gus kept a sketch pad with him. He would draw whatever he saw, simple things, and common things. Things most of us miss-he saw. At night, he would sit either on the front or back porch and have a fine, aged drink, his border collie, Mindy, laying at his feet, and looking at something that was finding its way onto his paper. One of his grand children suggested college one day and the idea stuck. It had taken him ten years, the first of them at the community college and the rest he would make the hour trip into Billings.

So, on a cool spring day, Gus Timmerson walked down the aisle of the University of Montana at Billings in a black robe and a mortar board, underneath were a pair of well worn jeans and cowhide Ropers.

And when his name was called as he crossed the stage, the legacy of Gus Timmerson, his four children, sixteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, were the loudest of all.

It’s never too late. Coffee is free on Friday-Coffee Friday. If you don’t drink coffee, it’s never too late to learn how. Oh, yeah, snacks and tea are also available for you tenderfoots.

Engagement parties-really?

So, our little boy, Travis, got engaged and we have an engagement party to celebrate-the engagement. No, Travis isn't little. That's just a hangover from when he was a little boy. He is now 22, 6'3", and in college. He spent a beautiful year touring Saddam's home town of Tikrit. Nope, he's just a little boy in his parent's mind. But do we really need a party to celebrate him asking Tara, his wonderful fiance, to marry him? I think its a girl thing. Any reason to get together and do social stuff like that. There were pictures of the two of them when they were kids, pictures of the two of them when they were older, pictures of the two of them together, there were videos of the two of them, testimonials, lies, all types of things going on at this festival. Mother spent the day cleaning and nesting and I spent the day cooking, cutting the lawn, grooming the dog (my goal was to save $60 at Petsmart) and running to the store for the thirtieth time. The night went great but there were discoveries.

As clans have for centuries, the meeting of two families took place. My ancestors use to meet in the fields of the highlands in Scotland, swap some sheep, get drunk, and throw rocks at each other out of love and respect. We've come a short block from those good days. The Williams clan was drastically outnumbered by Tara's deep and wide family roots. She has cousins who have cousins-and she knows their names! Who the heck knows the names of their cousins' cousin? What is a cousin of a cousin? Do they get invited to the wedding? If they are invited, do they eat or is that limited to just the first line of cousins? When one is planning a wedding, money is an issue, the most expensive part is the food. Are there levels of eating? If your part of the immediate family, you get the whole enchilada. If you're second tier, like nephews or parents of the flower girl, you get cake only. If you are the cousin of the cousin, I think we should be able to limit you to whatever you bring from Burger King. I think that's fair.

Here's the problem, I don't come from a big family. Big families scare me. They're big. But what fun! Huge, gargantuan families of people whose names you never even begin to remember. Counsel to my little boy-just smile, nod, and say "It's good to see you again."

I've mentioned it a few times. Emancipating Elias is out and available. Here is the book jacket for your light entertainment. Just click on the photo and it will explode to where you can read it.

The next book, Holyground, hopefully will be out by Christmas for a holiday book release and more importantly, a book signing at the University Club here in Phoenix. What a fun time at the last one!! Holyground is darker than Emancipating, dealing with forgiveness and carrying the burden of that for decades. It seemed so dark that it even depressed me. But then the guys showed up. I won't say anymore now because, well, I don't know what more to say-right now, other than they will be great to meet.