I am used to having characters insert themselves into my stories without my permission, but I’ve reached a new low point in the control over my creations. I now have a chicken, a Klingon Bird of Prey, and two characters speaking in Klingon. And I am going to have to learn to use Ello, because one of my characters does. And this isn’t sci-fi! It’s real life! (Maybe I’m losing my mind?)
If you have read any of my novels, with one exception, you know that they all include an animal as a character. So far, the stories have included Clarice – a turkey vulture, a mountain lion, and a road runner. I am currently working on Enchanted Rock White, and this bird has inserted itself into the story. Once again, without my permission. The chicken story is loosely based on a tale I heard from a couple of park employees. This story is going to be a little tricky to write, as I have already created the characters and the plot (although more characters will surely insert themselves, again, without permission). When I finish I will have to go back and remove clues so that the ending will be a surprise, as I can tell that already I have revealed too much too soon.
I got the idea of including an animal in each story from Edward Abbey. Although I never met the man, I have read all of his writing I can find, and consider him a sort of mentor, and my dream for years was to be a member of the Monkey Wrench Gang.
This is the real thing, a few years after I was in this airplane, but still the -A model with water injection.
When I get back to writing Comet 21 (or whatever it will be called) I’ll watch this video again. I had a several interesting experiences as #4 in a 5 ship formation. This is a 35 second interval takeoff; we used to practice something much shorter for wartime launches I think 15 seconds. Even as a new guy I realized that wasn’t something you needed to do very often, it looked dangerous as hell.
My father in law, B B Boon, told me lots of stories from 1944, when he was an Army Air Corps pilot stationed at Ladd Field, Fairbanks, Alaska. He flew lots of different types of airplanes – ferrying P-39 Aircobra fighters to the Russians, cargo in C-47 and C-46 transports, and sometimes in B-24 and B-25 bombers. They flew all over Alaska and Canada; he even flew into Hudson Bay a few times. They navigated with pilotage, dead reckoning, automatic direction finding and radio range systems. Because the magnetic north pole is so close, navigation with a magnetic compass is tricky. The fact that he always got to his destination in that environment, good weather and bad, was a testament to his skill as a pilot.
Having run out of Jade Helm 15 conspiracy stories to entertain myself with (see my personal Facebook page), I looked again into a story my father-in-law B B Boon told me about twenty years ago. He was an Army Air Corps pilot at Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska for a while during WWII. One of the most interesting stories he told me was about a couple of missions from Great Falls, Montana, to Fairbanks with the usual stops for fuel in Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon Territory. He used to list the towns where they stopped, as they flew this route often and knew it well. I can’t remember them all now, but they included Calgary, Dawson, and Whitehorse. It was a long trip. On a couple of those trips in a C-47 a heavy footlocker with armed guards was brought on board in Missoula and ultimately delivered to Fairbanks to a Russian officer with armed guards who never let it out of their sight. He had no idea what was in the heavy chests, but assumed they were very valuable.
I did some internet research 15 or 20 years ago and found a story by another Army pilot of the time who had been stationed in Great Falls, and participated in these missions as well. He thought it might have been fissionable material for the Russians to develop a nuclear bomb, which would have been illegal, but at the time we were very concerned that the Russians wouldn’t help us defeat Japan. In fact, the Russians didn’t declare war on Japan until the war was a couple of weeks from being over.
Then I found this story on a history website (albeit one run by a conspiracy theory promoter):
“In 1944, Harry Hopkins was Roosevelt’s chief diplomatic adviser and troubleshooter and was a key policy maker in the $50 billion lend-lease program that sent aid to the Russians. Hopkins dealt with “priorities, production. political problems with allies, strategy—in short, with anything that might concern the president. Henry Morgenthau (Secretary of the Treasury), Averell Harriman (U.S. Ambassador to Russia), and Harry Dexter White (Assistant Secretary of Treasury), supplied the material needed for Russia to print [German] occupation currency. Printing plates, colored inks, varnish, tint blocks, and paper were sent from Great Falls, Montana, in two shipments of five C-47’s each, which had been loaded at the National Airport near Washington, DC.”
This sounded pretty realistic. Printing plates for currency would have been valuable; and heavy.
There you have it.
B B was one of the most amazing people I have ever known. He was one hell of a pilot, a businessman, and friend.
ca. 2003 — Close-up of Electronic Stock Ticker — Image by © Royalty-Free/Corbis
“Delta X Financial shares collapsed this morning in heavy selling after the SEC filed fraud charges against the company.”
Darren’s head snapped toward the television on his kitchen counter.
“Callers to company’s offices were referred to an attorney. The stock currently is trading under a dollar a share, wiping out more than ninety percent of the shareholder’s value.”
Darren picked up a bowl with two beaten eggs and poured them into the hot skillet in front of him. The eggs sizzled when they landed in the melted butter. He put two slices of baby Swiss cheese, cubed ham, and chopped jalapenos into the skillet on top of the eggs.
Delta X? The company’s shares had skyrocketed in the last year as their assets under management grew from a hundred million dollars to twenty five billion, but Darren had never put any in his client’s accounts. Too risky. What goes up must come down. One of his clients had discussed buying shares, a lot of them; what was it, a hundred thousand dollars? Darren had talked him out of the purchase, but the client had simply taken the money elsewhere.
Darren hadn’t gone into the office, or even turned on his computer yet, and it was almost noon. He had woken up with a migraine, took some pills, and was just starting to feel halfway decent. The Delta X news seemed odd. Somehow he knew it was going to happen. He folded the eggs over to form the omelet, and then carefully turned it over. What was it?
He muted the TV; too much noise, his head still hurt. He put the omelet on a plate and walked carefully to the dining room table. The omelet went down quickly, the melted cheese smooth and comforting but the jalapenos sharp and a little painful. Another sip of coffee seemed to stabilize his brain somewhat.
The dream!
The dream he had just before waking came back into his mind. A dream of unusual clarity. He remembered the sight of a ticker tape with DLTX crossing the screen, over and over, the only symbol, and -2.44 and -3.86 and -7.98 and -9.21. How could he remember this detail? It was like he had been watching the screen through a window.
Darren’s head was spinning again, and he left the dirty plate and coffee cup on the table and staggered to the nearby sofa, falling onto it.
The window opened in front of him, and there was a woman on a bed, under the sheets. It was Karen! She appeared to be naked, and was beckoning to him, smiling. He had never been with Karen, but the idea had crossed his mind on many occasions.
He felt soft and wet kisses on his face, and smiled.
Molly!
Molly, his dog, as yet not fed, insisting on his attention. He closed his eyes to go back through that window, but it was no longer there. He lay still for a few more seconds, but the dog insisted, pawing him again. His head felt stable again, so he sat up.
“I’m coming. I’m sorry, girl, I feel lousy. I’ll be right there.”
Darren barely got the dog’s food and water bowls filled before he was dizzy again, and staggered to the sofa, and once again collapsed. He was asleep in seconds.
He was seeing through the window again. The window was large, perhaps large enough for him to step through it by bending over just a little. There was a television on a table top. Wait a minute, that’s my TV on top of my kitchen counter. Only it isn’t exactly my TV, and the wall behind it was a bright blue. My kitchen’s yellow. What’s that on the TV? Something about Delta X? Is there a Delta X in that world? A ticker tape at the bottom of the screen was flashing by, and the only symbol was DLTX, and the numbers were going up, up fast; +2.22, +3.58, +5.82.
A bell ringing made him open his eyes. He was stretched out on the sofa. The doorbell rang again. He sat up. He felt fine, his head wasn’t spinning, and he wasn’t tired. He stood, feeling good, and walked to the door. Molly was already there. He opened the door, and Karen was standing outside, smiling.
“Can I come in?”
“Oh, of course, I’m sorry. I’ve been a little out of sorts lately.” She was smiling and wearing a very short skirt and damn she looks good!
Molly wagged her tail strongly as Karen knelt down and stroked the fur on her head. “When you didn’t come to work and didn’t call, we were worried. I thought I ought to check on you. Are you ok?”
Darren thought about that for a moment. “I don’t know. It’s been a weird day.” He motioned for her to sit at the dining room table. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Well, I’m on my lunch break, so I don’t have long.”
Darren looked at the clock on the kitchen wall; it read 12:22. “I can fix you an omelet.” He went to the fridge and got out a jug of iced tea and filled two glasses with ice and tea. He set one in front of her and took a sip of his.
“I can’t stay that long. How you feeling?”
Darren realized he was staring at the TV, which was on, but the sound was off. The same commentator he had seen a few minutes earlier was standing in front of the Delta X building, talking into a microphone.
“Huh?” He looked back at Karen. “Sorry, I got distracted. Are they talking about Delta X stock at the office?”
“I heard something about it. Wade was pacing on the balcony talking on his cell phone. He didn’t look too happy. Rumor is that he has some clients in it in a big way.”
“Not me. Don’t trust those people. I’m feeling better. Earlier, I don’t know, I could hardly stay awake. Migraine or allergies or something.”
“I’ve got to get going, I‘ve got some errands to run. I’d just thought I’d check on you.”
“It’s really sweet of you. Hey, maybe we could get together later.”
Karen smiled coyly. “Sure. 7? If you’re feeling OK, that is.”
“Perfect. I’ll pick you up.”
He walked her to the door, and watched her walk to her car. Damn! As soon as he closed the door, Darren rushed to the laptop computer at the desk in the living room. He drummed on the desk, waiting for the computer to boot up. Finally! DLTX up from $0.85 to$1.00. Dead cat bounce? He went into his broker-dealer’s website, and opened up his personal account. $22,000, a mix of stocks, GE, XOM, APPL, not much cash. Should I? He looked at the TV; the reporter was still standing in front of the building, but now she was talking to someone, a man in a business suit. He recognized the man as a venture capitalist who had been in the financial news recently. He entered sell transactions on all his positions.
He clicked on Equity Buy, and when the next screen opened up, he put DLTX in the box, 22,000 Shares, MARKET, entered the time and date, hit Pre- Submit. Shares were trading at $1.00.
He shouted YES, hit the enter key to finalize the purchase, and jumped up. He got his glass of tea and went back to the computer, to a real-time feed of stock prices. DLTX was heading up, up, up.
Chapter 1
Maurice walked into headquarters wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt that read Texas Secede over a Texas flag, and went straight back to his office. Right after going through the door, he stopped. There, sitting in a chair next to his desk, was a sultry blonde, wearing a very small pair of black panties, and a black lace bra, which for the most part just spilled out her generous feminine curves towards him. The girl’s left wrist was handcuffed to the arm of the chair. She inclined her head slightly to the right, and blonde curls spilled over her shoulder.
“I’m a flight risk.” The girl’s accent was distinctly not Texan.
Maurice stared at her for a few more seconds, then realized he was staring, and blushed. He went back out of the office to the customer service desk Gwen was working.
“There’s a naked woman in my office.”
Gwen slowly shook her head. “I don’t know where they get these people. Talk to Paul. He just stepped out to use the men’s room on the back deck.”
At that moment, Paul came into the lobby. He was wearing the full uniform of a Texas Parks and Wildlife Park Police Officer, right down to the bullet-proof vest and black leather belt, Glock .40 handgun in its holster, two extra magazines of ammunition, radio, Mace, and an empty handcuff case.
Maurice nodded towards the office where the young woman sat, and as he did so, he winced.
Gwen turned to him. “You’re on convalescent leave. You’re not supposed to be here. You just had a bullet taken out of your chest.”
“I’m going crazy. Just thought I’d see what was happen. . . . “ His sentence tapered off as he looked at the blonde again.
Paul came around behind the desk. “Disorderly conduct. Class C Misdemeanor. Got proof, too. Open and shut case.”
Maurice could see a man on the back deck talking on a cell phone, with a camera hanging on a strap around his neck. The hair sticking out from under the man’s New York Yankees baseball cap was dyed an odd shade of red.
“Proof?”
“That guy out there. It’s in his camera, but he won’t give it to me. Says it’s protected by the First Amendment.”
Maurice walked back into the office. “First, let’s get this young lady out of the handcuffs.”
Paul shrugged, and got out his handcuff key. “She’s a flight risk.”
The girl nodded. “I’m a flight risk, officer.” She rubbed her wrist as Paul put the handcuffs back into their case.
Maurice sat down in another chair. He caught himself staring at the blonde again, and blushed. She smiled, and winked at him. Paul stood by the door.
“See? He’s blocking the door so I don’t try to escape. I’m a dangerous criminal.”
Her accent was strong; not the melodious speech of the southerner, or the twang of the westerner, but familiar to Maurice.
“OK, Paul, take it from the start. How did we end up with a naked woman in the office?”
The blonde turned to look at the other officer. “Yes, Paul, how did we end up with a naked woman in the office?”
Paul shrugged. “I was walking up the Turkey Canyon Trail. You say a PPO should know every square foot of his territory. So, I was doing that. Anyway, I got to that place you call Kissing Rocks, and there she was, naked as the day she was born, and this guy had a camera set up and was taking pictures of her.”
Maurice looked at the blonde, trying not to stare. She leaned forward slightly, and her breasts almost escaped the minimal restraint of the bra. Paul shifted nervously in the doorway.
“Ma’am, is that true?”
“Yes, that is true. However, I was just changing into another outfit. I was only naked for a few seconds. He came up on us right between shots. And then he made a big deal out of it and made us come in here.”
“Well, we do have rules about nudity in the park.”
Paul shifted again, thumbs thrust into his equipment belt. “I have proof. Well, that guy out there has proof in his camera.”
The blonde sighed. “He’s a photographer for a very well-known fashion magazine. We’re doing a shoot out here. This place came highly recommended.”
“Highly recommended?” Maurice winced again as he aggravated the still healing wound in his chest.
“Yes. My old step-dad, he told me about this place. Said it was one of the most beautiful places ever. We were doing a shoot in Austin and decided to pop over.”
“I see. Do you have some actual clothes?”
The girl sighed again. “Of course I do. They’re in the car.”
“Why aren’t you wearing them?”
“Bumblebrains here locked the keys in the car.”
It was Paul’s turn to blush. Maurice turned to look at Paul, who shrugged.
“It was an accident.”
“Well, get the slim jim, and see if you can get the car unlocked.”
Maurice turned back around to look at the girl. “You from New York?”
“What of it?”
“Your accent is familiar. We used to have a New Yorker working here, John Dooley. He talked just like that.”
“Yeah, well that’s the guy I was talking about. He’s my step-dad. Well, he used to be. I’m Monica.”
“John Dooley’s your step dad?”
“My mother was wife number two. They didn’t last long, but he was always nice to me. You’re his friend, aren’t you? You’re that famous park ranger.”
Maurice shook his head and sat down at the desk. “I’m not famous. Let me see what we can do about getting you out of here.”
A few minutes later Monica, now dressed in short shorts and a crop top, revealing almost as much of her voluptuous curves as the lacy bra and panties alone had, kissed Maurice on the cheek.
“You’re everything John said you were.”
The photographer was in their rental car with the engine running, window open, waving for her to get in.
“Got to go. Hope to see you again.”
Monica’s New York accent was at the same time charming and jarring to Maurice’s Texas ears. He smiled at her as she got in the car. Memories of the good times he and John had shared, and the excitement of the last few days, flooded his mind with disjointed images.
With the drama of the moment over, and with nothing left to do, as he was officially on leave, Maurice walked through the parking lot towards the Loop Trail. He had his head down, watching his feet on the pavement, walking carefully as not to aggravate the healing bullet wound in his chest. His gloomy mood returned. At the end of the upper parking lot, he started on the trail, through the picnic area, and down the wooden steps. Something along the trail caught his attention, but he had gone down all the steps before he stopped.
“What the?”
Maurice went back up the steps to the end of the picnic area. There it was, a few feet off to the left side of the trail at the top of the steps. He stared at the object, confused. His police officer training kept him from approaching closer or touching the object. He stood and stared at it.
A wooden stake, perhaps three feet long, was driven into the ground, and impaled on the top, grinning at him was a very small head with long, frazzled blond hair. Maurice knelt down to look at the head more closely.
“Barbie doll?”
He leaned his head to the right, and then to the left, trying to comprehend the meaning of this bizarre sight. He looked at the ground around the stake for more clues, but found none. The area was trampled by many feet, which was the usual state of this place. Maurice stood and backed up a few feet and looked around; up into the surrounding trees, around the picnic area, down the steps, out towards Sandy Creek.
Nothing.
The place looked as it always had, except for the tiny blonde-haired head smiling at him. The stake was milled, probably from pine, like one might buy to attach a sign saying Garage Sale. He took the bandanna out of the right rear pocket of his blue jeans and gently lifted the head from the stake, wrapped it up, and put it in his pocket. He left the stake where it was, and continued walking down the trail, toward the house with twin baby girls and a wife.
In a few minutes, Maurice reached the house, up the hill beside the group pavilion. He opened the screen door slowly, expecting the same chaos that he had left earlier, but the only sound was the clicking of the ceiling fan pull chain against its light globe. He eased the bedroom door open and saw his wife on the bed with the twin baby girls sleeping beside her. He gently closed the door, then poured himself a glass of iced tea and sat at the kitchen table.
He looked up at the sound of the bedroom door closing. Angela smiled, and held a finger to her lips.
She whispered, “shhhh. I just got them to sleep.” Maurice nodded.
Angela sat at the table and took a sip of his tea, then pointed to the bandanna laid out on the table with the doll’s head.
“What’s this?”
Maurice kept his voice low. Found it on the Loop Trail on the way back here. Stuck on top of a wooden stake driven into the ground just beside the trail. Don’t think it was there when I went by earlier.”
“What do you think it means?”
Maurice gently shook his head. “Probably nothing. Some kid bored at a family picnic.”
“Yeah. Kinda weird, though.”
Maurice nodded, and wrapped the head back up in the bandanna. He turned toward Angela.
“You’re as pretty as the day I first met you, on the trail out by Buzzard’s Roost.”
“I don’t feel pretty. I feel ragged. How do you feel?”
“Only hurts when I laugh.” Maurice laughed, then winced. “See what I mean?”
“You look a little down.”
“I’m bored. I need a challenge. Things are going to hell in the office. You’re busy with the girls. I don’t know how long I can take this doing nothing all the time. Taking naps, you know.”
“I could use a nap.” She winked at him.
“Me too.” Maurice grinned as they tiptoed to the other bedroom.
Later, sitting in the folding chair in his back yard overlooking the trail, he watched a buck and two does and a fawn grazing in the lush grass below, in the shade of tall pecan trees. Puffy white clouds drifted across a deep blue sky. The air was still, the quiet only interrupted by the whine of an occasional car on the highway. The doll head tugged at the edge of his consciousness, but he didn’t know why.
I wrote a chapter of Comet 21 today. I don’t know the story yet, so I went into my memory and pulled up images of the Alert Facility at Rickenbacker AFB, Ohio. 2nd Lt. Tom Harter, who three years later shows up as a T-38 IP in Awol 21, is at this point the FNG in the squadron and going on his first alert tour. I thought back to my first alert tour; 1975 at Little Rock AFB, where we had 4 airplanes deployed. It was a great place to sit alert; we were a detached unit and a ways from the rest of the base operations, so we were on our own for the week. The facility even had a swimming pool! Of course, it was January. After breakfast my first morning there, the crew headed out to ‘rotate tires’ on our jet. I asked the Aircraft Commander as we walked out to the jet exactly how we did that. I assumed that meant we would be taking wheels off one side and putting them on the other or something like that. Turns out that we just rolled the jet a few feet so the tires wouldn’t flatten on one side. Rolled it with a tug, that is; it weighed over 302,000 pounds. On my first alert tour at Rickenbacker I heard announcements over the loudspeaker for “Economics Class, now forming in room 101.” It was several months before I learned that was a poker game.
This isn’t the story of a military campaign, or a unit, or even a story about flying. Its the story of a young man. I don’t have and don’t find many photos of this time, so I go into the deep recesses of my memory.
It is 1975 and I’m copilot (CP) on Crew E-158 in the 301st Air Refueling Squadron. My aircraft commander (AC) is Captain Rhett Cooper. Some of the names and faces are gone from my memory, but not the feeling of it all: the smell of burning jet fuel, the roar of jet engines, the thump when the gear comes up into the wheel wells. The cold wind biting into my face, the cockpit preflight, everyone taking their positions.
(CP) “Battery Switch” (AC) “On.” (CP) “Parking Brakes” (AC) “Set.” (CP) “Reserve Brake Pressure.” (AC) “Checked.” I open my side window and wave to the crew chief, holding up four fingers on my right hand and making a circular motion, and say
Turning four!
Here we go.
.
NPS Photo of Rockslide
I graduated from Big Spring High School in May of 1969, a couple of weeks after my 17th birthday, the youngest person in my class. My class ranking was about 100 out of 400. I applied to several area colleges and was offered a place at all of them. I applied to the Air Force Academy but didn’t get in there, probably a good thing; knowing those guys later, we called their academic experience “4 years of arrested social development.” I got a scholarship from Air Force ROTC and decided to go to Texas Tech. I never visited any campuses. My parents dropped me off at the dorm that August and were in Thailand two weeks later.
The dorm was Thompson Hall. I was on the first floor, south wing. Robin Courtney and Ray Nuss were sophomores in the room next door, and my roommate was Phillip Frazee. He was also an Air Force brat and was in AFROTC with me, and also became an Air Force pilot. The dorm was where my social development really took off; when I got there I was shy and retiring. Before long Robin and Ray and I became fast friends. We took a spring break trip with a couple of other guys from our wing of the dorm (1st South-South of Thompson Hall – first floor, south wing) to Big Bend in 1970. Tommy Beal was there for sure, and maybe the Bird. We took a large aircraft survival raft Bird had and floated the Rio Grande through Mariscal Canyon, which is the middle of the three canyons in Big Bend National Park, and also the shortest trip. We put in at the Talley campground after noon sometime and floated until dark. We had driven around to Solis, the take-out campground, to leave a car, and in the process left a note on someone’s car windshield to look for us later that day. When we got to Solis there were some people on the riverbanks with flashlights looking for us. As it was dark, I don’t know how we would have found the campground and our cars without them. They were concerned about us. I didn’t write the note, but they may have had good reason to worry. One notable meal at Solis was Vienna Sausage out of a can and Pearl beer. I think I could still pick a Pearl beer out of a lineup if they still made it that way.
Since we were now pros on the river, the next year at spring break we went to Santa Elena Canyon, upstream from Mariscal. We put in with two canoes and a two man raft I had purchased at the army surplus store in Lubbock. The trip started at Terlingua, which at the time had little development beyond the old general store/bar. We floated to the mid-point of the canyon, The Rockslide, without incident. There were 30 other people there, all in canoes, and they decided to portage around the ferocious rapids in the Rockslide. The portage was pretty tough; up and over the rockslide with a canoe was tricky. Tommy Beal and his partner in the aluminum canoe didn’t want to go to that much effort, so they lined their boat through the rapids. Of course they had no idea what they were doing and lost the boat, which disappeared downriver. Robin and I decided our raft would make the trip, so we floated through, which was exciting, but we arrived at the downstream end intact. We made camp with the other group on the huge sandy bank on the Mexican side of the river. While drinking beer at the camp, we heard a lot of commotion; another canoe had made the trip through the rapids, and when it got opposite the campsite it ran up onto the opposite bank, where the girl in the bow jumped out and onto the beach. With her weight gone the canoe’s bow lifted up and swung away and into the current, leaving her across the river.
The river was big back then, and the Rockslide was a Class 4 or 5 rapid. The members of her group were trying to throw a rope across the river, about 50 feet away, and intended to drag her back. This didn’t sound like a good plan to Robin and I, so we valiantly climbed in our raft and headed over to make the rescue. We had been drinking beer all day so it made perfect sense. We paddled furiously across the roaring river. The crowd cheered as the girl climbed into our raft. One of us almost knocked her into the river with his paddle (Robin would say that was me, but I think it was him), but we made it back safely. We were heroes!
The canoe in our party was nowhere to be seen as we unrolled our sleeping bags in the sand for the night. In the morning, the river was somewhat lower, and the bow of the missing canoe appeared sticking out of the water just across the river and near the opposite bank. We paddled to it and discovered that the canoe was bent in half at a 90 degree angle. With all of us pulling, we got the canoe straightened out and stomped the bottom back into shape. Remarkably, although the canoe looked like hell, it didn’t leak.
Our camping gear on these trips was minimal. I had a feather-filled army sleeping bag I bought for $10 at the army surplus store and an army surplus pup-tent, two shelter halves, no doubt left over from WWII. What cooking we did was over a campfire. We drank a lot of beer, both Coors and Pearl. On one trip to the Big Bend, Robin and I baked potatoes in the fire. They were charred, but also the only food we had left, and we devoured them. The same army surplus store also supplied my footwear for years – sneakers for $2 a pair. No one even considered taking a gun and we had very little cash. When the park ranger gave you a permit for your river trip, you just nodded and smiled agreeably when they read through the list of required equipment, much of which we didn’t have (who needs an extra paddle?). I don’t remember anyone smoking marijuana on these trips, but we did run across a few stoned people in the middle of nowhere. Robin’s car got searched by the DPS on his way to meet us at Big Bend one time, but to no avail; all they found was cheap camping gear. One time Robin left me beside the highway somewhere in west Texas because he was going home to Denton, and I was going back to Lubbock (my family was in Thailand). I got a ride pretty quickly with two guys. The first thing they asked me when I got in the old car was, “Are you holding?” I said no, mostly because I didn’t know what that meant. Of course, I wasn’t holding anyway. In those days I wore jeans, an olive drab army surplus jacket and navy watch cap when it was cold; they were both inexpensive and stylish. The two guys spent the night at our house in Lubbock and taught me how to make the egg sandwich I’ve made many times since; I’m sure that was the only food in the house.
We made other trips there, driving the River Road in Robin’s Oldsmobile 88 (Yes, we understand, you only recommend high clearance four-wheeled drive vehicles). I remember being stopped on a dirt road looking at a topo map of Big Bend with flashlights as some awesome music of the early 70’s played on the 8-track in the car. Looking back on those times, I know they were in my formative years. Ever since, I have had a propensity for travel to wide open spaces and have spent my off time on rivers and trails.
I mailed a copy of my latest novel to a friend in December. He is smarter than most people I know, but he doesn’t have a phone, email, or an internet connection. He is well read and highly educated. He’s a big guy, with a fair complexion and greying red hair, and a perennial smile, and just like Johnny Cash always wore black, he always wears white. He walked up to me through the crowd of over a hundred men and grabbed me for a hug.
Your book: best yet, by far. Edgy.
My friend wears white because he is incarcerated by the state, for reasons I do not know; that is between him and the state. I haven’t seen him in several months and we don’t correspond often. I am here to help him grow in his relationship with God. I am thrilled by his comments, which are exactly what I hoped he would say.
I hugged him back.
Thank you, brother.
Fort Davis Rocks E Book
My part is at the end of the video.
robertcdeming 