Boney Fingers
Up there by Yorkville, near the old Y Ranch HQ and beside the Rancheria, there’s a tombstone in the cemetery with the epitaph: “I done all I could
View ArticleInsanity’s First Draft
It makes sense that when CNN decided to give us a history lesson on “America in the 1950s,” ‘60s, ‘70s and so on, they’d do it from the perspective of Nixon’s Great Silent Majority. Nixon’s GSM being...
View ArticleZombie Patriotism (May 12, 2004)
Is it possible for a dead human body to feel colder than the steamy tropical air blanketing it? Here I am dragging this dead Vietnamese kid to the burn pile by his one good ankle and I'll be damned if...
View ArticleInsanity’s First Draft
It makes sense that when CNN decided to give us a history lesson on “America in the 1950s,” ‘60s, ‘70s and so on, they’d do it from the perspective of Nixon’s Great Silent Majority. Nixon’s GSM being...
View ArticleFire & Flood
When Hurricane Florence came ashore near the mouth of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, Trisha, Abel, Jeff and myself were at the Johnson Ridge Observatory inside Washington’s Mt. St. Helens National...
View ArticleMy Worst Job (July 12, 2000)
Isn’t it funny how good fortune smiles upon you? In December of 1973 I moved into the loft of an old barn (since bulldozed) just north of Healdsburg. I arrived in a ’63 Bel Air six-banger in need of a...
View ArticleCounter Intelligence
When everybody’s guilty, nobody’s guilty, right? Take us bloody old “Sky Soldiers.” Paratroopers retrained as “Air Cavalry,” we were fighting to “Bring democracy to South Vietnam.” Our outfit, the...
View ArticleKnown For Potatoes
Trisha and I hadn’t been to Boise since 1991. Back then our backseat boys were nine and thirteen, and we were on our way from Idaho’s Seven Devils Mts. up on the ridge beam of Hells Canyon to Nevada’s...
View ArticleThe Big Salty
It’d been five and a half years since Trish and I last laid eyes on the ocean. Long enough for us to want to put an end to that string. Myself, I was brought up in LA city back when LA county was still...
View ArticleRevolution With A Smile
“Sheriff takes two I.W.W in custody,” reads the headline. “Even though admitting that he had been kicked in the head by a mule before he joined the Industrial Workers of the World, Mike Kitzey,...
View ArticleEuphemism & Euthanasia
Don’t know if it was my skin-crawling malaria dreams or the head traumas that caused me to come back from Vietnam so scared and reckless, fierce, coldblooded, brokenhearted, outraged and shamed....
View ArticleWomen’s March in Bend
During last year’s Women’s March in Bend, the weather was fit for neither man nor beast. Still at least 3,000 people, including Trisha and myself, braved the wind, sleet and snow in order to petition...
View ArticleAnderson Valley’s Eternal Bubble
A while back when I read our esteemed editor complaining about getting a $4,800 property tax bill to go with his downtown Boonville commercial acre assessed at $431,000. I remember when $431,000 was a...
View ArticleFalse Economy
Until I was nine or ten years old and he got promoted, my dad (born 1921) was a wholesale salesman. He worked for Firestone Tire and Rubber way back when even the largest corporations were “publicly...
View ArticleViewscapes
I dropped out of high school when I turned 16. Now having a union job, a ’59 Chevy, cruising buddies, girlfriends and plenty of gas money, I never did return. It was 1965 and, when it came to Lover’s...
View ArticleSummer Of Smoke
It was Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1970. My surviving holemate, Don Perkins, and I had gotten off a train from L.A. and now we were leaving on a midnight Greyhound to Georgia. Finally, after three years...
View ArticleMy Kingdom For A War
When, immediately after taking office, our Emperor Orange Julius made it clear to the world that he, the self-described “Most Powerful Man on Earth,” was going to use the “Dictatorial Executive Orders”...
View ArticleThe Bonanza Goes ‘Phew’
Last month in my bit “Eclipsing the Rainbows” I mentioned how, according to the Univoiced Booster Media, the Path of Totality of the Solar Eclipse coming this way on 8/21 was going to put on the map...
View ArticleWealth Care
More in anguish than anger, some Post-War, Post-Holocaust veteran declared that, once we’ve set our minds to it, we Americans can do most anything except know the reasons why. As evidence, consider...
View ArticleOutback Invaded
Trish, the boys and I had been in Ireland for only a couple of days when, with me piloting our rental car, we arrived at the outskirts of Drogheda. Facing the Irish Sea from the mouth of the River...
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