Gone So Long and Gone and Going On

I started this as a post for social medial, but it didn't quite seem right for that. Maybe it's a prose poem. Maybe it's just a few thoughts at the end of a week, an OK week except for contemplations. 

But then those matter don't they? They affect well being. 

Talking about them is supposed to do some good. 

 I’ve been gone from where I used to live a long time, almost a quarter of a century. A moment in a book I was reading reminded me the other day I ought to try again to find out what happened to this one girl I used to know. We knew each other as kids and in high school, rubbed each other the wrong way frequently, but co-existed well all in all. 

Funny the little things that trigger memory. The book had an incident about a swimming pool, and she and I were in the same circles that went swimming when we were 10 or so.

I had learned when her mother died that she had preceded her in death sometime before the internet documented obituaries as well as they do now, except maybe behind paywalls. 

I thought a fresh Google might let find out what happened to her. I didn't get an answer. But that led to the discovery of another person who passed, then another and another. 

That on the heels of learning a while back of a friend 30 years gone I just hadn’t heard about.

I need to stop looking and counting. 

One girl, I couldn't tell you the last time I saw or talked to her, but her passing made me sad and made me keep reading Legacy. 

One in the mix was a guy I hadn’t thought of in years and years and years, but when I saw his obit I remembered this one time a friend and I went with him and flew this plane he built—long, long before drones.

A piece fell off while his remote-control plane was in the air. He managed to land it without destroying it in spite of the fact that it was an aileron he lost, a piece pretty important to control. 

We joked about insurance. As he loaded the damaged plane into the back of his car, he said: “Yeah, I need `a piece of the rock' for my plane, too.” It was a spin on a slogan for Prudential many might not recall. 

As I read of his passing, I learned he turned that passion for building into a successful small business and made that how he spent his time until… 

Made me look more at one of the others. She was a parallel friend, someone from the schoolyard you'd say hey to or chat with if you crossed paths back then. You can look at some timelines now and get reminded in small ways they did the same things you did back when with a different set of friends. 

And she went on to a career and other things until circumstances, and possibly some bad decisions, kicked in. 

Trying to find out more, I learned of another friend who preceded his mother in death. That's all her obit said.

It's made me think of fond moments with each of those seven gone that I've learned of in the last few years.

Apparently origins and specifics of the quote are disputed, but I'll go with the variation attributed to German poet Ludwig Jacobowski that I found. It seems to fit best:

“Do not cry because they are past! Smile, because they once were!” 

 Maybe so. I'll remember that and go on trying to create new moments. 

 Zevon nailed it. "Enjoy every sandwich." 

And a paraphrase from that first quote above is sometimes mixed with a passage from Dr. Seuss, I'll keep in mind too. 

 “We’re off to great places, so let’s be on our way.”

A Bit of Memoir - C. Dean Andersson, John Steakley and Self-Promotion

I've mentioned not loving self-promotion, but I'm also aware repetition is necessary on a project so I share where I can. It's in marketing textbooks, but I got a personalized lesson once upon a time.

I guess that makes this a story with foreshadowing and everything.  

The late great and wonderful C. Dean Andersson (the 𝘏𝘦𝘭 trilogy, 𝘐 𝘈𝘮 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘢 and much more) and his wife Nina Romberg aka author Jane Archer, once told me of doing a mall signing with the late John Steakley of 𝘈𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘳 and 𝘝𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦$--the one made into a movie by John Carpenter--fame. 

Steakley's father was a car salesman, so when someone was dismissive of the work on the signing table, he rose and followed the guy all the way down the mall loudly hawking the work with a continuing spiel about the virtues.

So flash forward a while later, Steakley was master of ceremonies or toastmaster at a con I was attending, okay it was a Coast Con in Biloxi, Miss. Early '90s or so. There were these big gatherings of con attendees and guests on opening night in those days. 

A comic I wrote, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬, was the new thing I had out in the moment so when Steakley introduced me, I mentioned that. 

"What was that title again?" he asked, tipping a microphone to his lips then pointing it back at me.

 "Er, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬." 

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 you say. Interesting. So everyone should know about 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬?" 

"Sure, it'd be nice." 

"Excellent, so what was that title again?" 

I said it a little louder and with more assurance: "𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬." 

"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬. Well great. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬!" 

He kept the riff going a while, proving everything Dean had described, repeating 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘉𝘰𝘰𝘬 often and loudly until he finally clapped me on the shoulder: "That's what you have to do. Keep saying it, my friend." 

I smiled and sat back down.

Wish he and Dean were still with us.

Cover Stories - Ali Larter was apparently the model for my novel Blood Hunter's Original Cover

Apparently even if I read reviews, I'm guilty of not reading them carefully. A gentleman named Mark Louis Baumgart was kind enough to write a thoughtful review of my novel Blood Hunter some time back. It was a meticulous piece on Amazon that sought to put the book in perspective on the horror paperback fiction landscape.

I noted it there somewhere along the way, happy to have it, of course, but I only noticed today that he included a bit of trivia several paragraphs deep.

SEE ALSO: THE RETURN OF BLOOD HUNTER

Apparently the cover painting artist on the original Pinnacle Books edition was done by E. T. Broeck Steadman, and a 17-year-old Ali Larter of Heroes was the model for his work. It was before she became an actress. Checking her bio, she must have been a Ford model at the time and just shy of heading to Italy, Japan and a few other places. 

I honestly never knew that. A little googling located the author's website with his note on the work. 

The character in the painting is a little younger than the character she more or less represents in the book, but it's still kind of fun to know.

I can't recall my original title for the book. Blood Hunter was the publisher's choice from a later list I submitted. 

SEE ALSO: WHEN DARKNESS FALLS - THE NEW COVER 

My original cover idea was a clawed hand and forearm raking its way across the cover, back of said hand and the forearm covered with mud, leaves and Spanish moss as the human creatures in the tale used to form pelts for themselves.

Something similar had been done recently, so the editor asked for another idea. 

I suggested a swamp.

"What's a swamp look like?" she asked from her New York City desk.

I had a Louisiana cypress swamp in mind. By the time notes were conveyed, the swamp took on a more lush look and the character most-closely aligned to the one on the cover lost a few years. 

So it goes, it's still a catchy image for one of my favorites of my early works. 

Order Blood Hunter here

In the Arm

I was able to get my first vaccine shot this past week. I have to keep reminding myself I've taken a step. 

I'll feel better after the second shot and the wait for immunity to kick in is up, but I do feel a bit more upbeat, maybe lighter than I realized I wasn't. 

I had grown numb to the sense of existential dread we've been enduring for a year. 

I felt some anxiety leading up to the shot. It was never about the stick. I think I feared the appointment wouldn't hold, that somehow there'd been a mistake and a kink in the supply chain would force a further wait.

I'd been qualified for a while to receive in Virginia, but it was feeling like the day and the opportunity would never come. 

It all went smoothly, though. The pharmacy I went to had things planned well, and I had only a three-minute wait for software to allow me to check in precisely 15-minutes before. Even with Siri's assist, it's hard to calculate drive time. I damn sure didn't want to be late, either.

The guy giving injections asked which arm. 

"My left is to you," I said. 

"It can be in either."

I told him left was fine. I had no side effects on this first one other than the sore arm everyone reports.

I'm not sure how we--all of us--will remember the day as time passes, but it will perhaps be one of those moments we look back on as this long slog becomes a blur somewhere behind us.

My list of things to do after is limited and infinite. 

I'd always had the notion seeing the next Bond movie in the theater might be something to look forward to. I realized if all goes well with the second shot and a two-week wait, the planned release of Black Widow would come just as my immunity should kick in.

Then the date of Black Widow was moved to July, so almost certainly that will be a possibility if local theaters open.

Beyond that, dinner out, visits here or there with less concern, the grocery story. Christine and I have been doing curbside pickup. Browsing in the store and planning meals accordingly seems like something that will be fun. 

Beyond that, what will normal be? I'll have to see. But one step closer's not too bad. 

The White Koi - A Poem Memoir in Free Verse

 

The White Koi 2007 

One of the koi 

Has all-white scales.

“He’s an albino,” an old woman says. 

She sits in a wheelchair 

Having found her way to the pond

On her own. 

“I think it’s just a white variety,” I say.

“The eyes are not pink.” 

Why does it matter? 

Why do I need to correct this 

Old woman I don’t know? 

She’s here just like I am 

Escaping the nursing home’s confines 

Where antiseptic smells

Fail to mask underlying odors. 

Defecation and death. 

Escaping the boredom 

And the waiting 

For one or the other

To catch up. 

I’ve brought my mother 

Pushed her wheelchair. 

Alone, she would not find the will or the way. 

She is indifferent to the 

Fresh air, sunlight, the koi pond. 

We might as well be in the place’s 

Unused Library, the shelves 

Lined with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. 

Donated and warehoused because 

They don’t have further value. 

My mother’s decline was signaled by

Repeated questions 

And lost emotions. 

She showed no reaction 

At the news my father would die. 

Showed no interest In being by his side, 

Her husband of 49 years.

As he slipped away. 

Her memory has been edited. 

Condensed. 

I have no patience

With falsity. 

Not a good trait 

For this current role. 

Still, I correct genetic misinformation 

About the white koi. 

It’s not deficiency

But editing, called breeding. 

And tell my mother 

Her mother is not forgotten

Waiting in a hot car. 

She’s gone.

We remain. 

And I correct, though I can’t put back. 

I strive to make here 

More than a warehouse

At least.

For a person. 

If not for abandoned books. 

And a koi that the service 

Couldn’t place in ponds

Of more vocal customers 

In search of vibrant joy.

Photo by Stacey Gabrielle Koenitz Rozells from Pexels

Memory and Loss

 I've been in a remembering mode for the last few days. I guess my last post on "A Christmas Memory" touched on that. Maybe it's the holidays or just COVID times. My cousin, who is deeply immersed in family history, sort of fueled it further with a Merry Christmas email that mentioned places my mom and grandmother lived before my parents were married.

That sent me to Google Street View to check out my childhood home. It's still there, though looking different on a little street across from the high school in my home town. The siding's new along with a few other features, but the back porch with its red brick steps and ornamental iron posts looks the same. It's only four or five steps, but it seemed mountainous when I was a kid.

It's hard to describe how looking at a recent photo makes me feel. It's a bit bittersweet, though that's not quite the right word. It's just a rush of emotion and memory.

I can recall the guy down the street got a pirate costume one Halloween, just one of those crappy, in-a-bag jobs with the shiny fabric they call vintage these days. I remember him before Trick-or-Treating hanging out and climbing onto that irorn work with a toy hammer and declaring: "Me gonna fix this ship."And I remember sitting on those steps and reading Superman No. 199 in which he raced The Flash. 

So that's the place I was in when I got word last night one of my old friends from high school and college days passed away. Not the kid in the pirate suit. The segue's a little awkward. 

This guy's name was Lee. 

I immediately thought of him calling and waking me up on what would have had to have been June 1, 1984. I'd started working the 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift at the newspaper, so an early call was like the middle of the night. I grumbled, but then I realized Star Trek III: The Search for Spock opened that day and we needed to find out how things turned out with our favorite Vulcan. 

Seeing Trek was a tradition. We'd been Trek fans a long time. We'd been friends a long time. He lived around the corner from me, and we rode bikes as kids. 

He'd actually been the one to purchase the Star Trek Concordance, which was a handy guide in the days before the internet. Gaming was on a Commodore 64, by the way. We explored Zork and other worlds of Infocom. 

We actually missed seeing Star Trek II together because he was running late, and we couldn't get into an opening night showing. I saw it the next day with my girlfriend at the time. She was not a Trek fan. Her friend, who did get in the night before, had been saddened. "Paula said somebody died." Yeah, that spoiler was on Lee. 

We got past that, and we continued to see movies during our early working life.

I'm not sure when our paths diverged, but over time we drifted into different circles. He went back to school, I got married. He later worked in IT at the company where my wife worked, so I'd hear of him a lot more than I saw him, then I left Central Louisiana.

We caught up on Facebook a couple of years ago. He found me, and we kept in touch via posts. He'd moved to Baton Rouge for new IT jobs and was active in a church music program. He'd always been in choir and played the piano well. 

I noted his occasional post about bad service at a quick stop or other steps along his path, noticed not too ago he was dating someone. I was happy for him. Saw pics at a high school reunion I didn't attend because of COVID. He was there in the mix of old friends. 

I shared a meme about Louisiana foods not too many days ago. How many have you had? Along with a lot of other people, he responded adding a quip, a familiar Cajun exclamation. Not something that warranted a response by me in a long thread, but a reminder he was out there living his life. 

Then word came he'd had a heart attack in his home. Someone I didn't know remembered him fondly. 

And suddenly 30 years are compressed, and I'm contemplating, amid this year of death and chaos, yet again how fast it all seems to have been when you look back.

And you start mining your memory. Yep, we saw Raiders together, my second viewing. Dune, Never Ending Story, Krull. All early '80s. 

Okay there were films and dinners. Was he in that mix of friends discussing 30's onslaught? When did we go our separate ways. 

Couldn't tell you. 

But he scored 22 out of 23 dishes on a New Orleans food test. Which one was he missing? Shrimp BBQ or turtle soup?

Ayeeeeee. I should have asked when I had the chance. 

The Dirty Dozen

I'd probably seen television ads for it, and in one magazine or another, I'd encountered the image at left. I remember the guns pointed in all directions vividly.

So when my dad and my uncle decided to see The Dirty Dozen while we were visiting in Arkansas, I wanted to go too. It would have been 1967. Do the math on how old I must have been.

Skeptical, my uncle said I'd never sit through it, but my dad knew I'd do fine. Then he wondered what kind of movie he'd brought me to see when there was a hanging about two minutes into it. It was probably the second movie I saw in a theater, my grandmother having taken me to see Bambi sometime earlier.

It wasn't until I watched a repeat on television when I was older than the violence of the conclusion sank in. "Gasoline and hand grenades? They're doing what?!"


AMC was celebrating the 40th DD anniversary Saturday (7-7-07). Hard to believe.

We saw it in a downtown movie house, the elegant kind that's long disappeared. Later and for years they had a massive poster for Part II Walking Tall plastered across a side wall. We'd see it every time we drove into town.

When we were watching Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson pose as Nazis in remarkably well-pressed uniforms considering they'd brought them in a parachute drop and were wearing them over fatigues, it was still a different movie era.

The theater must have been in its heydey or on the outer cusp of its heydey, back when there were still lobby cards and satin drapes around the screen.

The moments that resonated with me were the funnier ones rather than the violence i.e. when Marvin shoots the bottom of a rope off as an insentive to a solider to keep climbing.

My dad liked John Cassavetes' Frakno best, I think. We talked about the show endlessly afterwards or I did. We even went to see another Lee Marvin show later, Sergeant Ryker, but it was tougher for me to follow, more courtroom drama than thriller.

Maybe it was better back then though when you saw one good movie once in a while in a great venue.

(No rights to image implied.)

Produce Yet Green

Our purple tomatoes to be are finally showing a bit of color. They've been green enough for frying for what seems weeks now, and it's difficult not to be impatient.

As a temporary fix we bought some of the heirloom Cherokee variety at a farmer's market on Saturday from a guy and girl who looked pretty counter culture. Pleasure doing business local. It's a Green thing.

That prompted me to wonder if my square box garden and my back-to-the-land effort make me seem more hippie-esque or just more like my dad.

He didn't know about things like "local" and "Green" with a capital G. He just liked tomatoes, and he liked making me work in his garden.

I hated it. It was one more source he had for giving me things to do.

Now it feels a little more back to the land, which I guess is why any pseudo-suit with a bohemian streak tills the land, or the compost in his square box at least.

Maybe the Old Man was on to something. He just had a Dick Cheney way of expressing it.

There is nothing like a meme (My Me-Me)

OK, Tammi at Drawing on Words , who has some cool new Wordpress diggs, tagged me for this game:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.

2. Each player starts
with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

3. People who are tagged need to
write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Here are my eight:

1. I am working to purge myself of all superstition.

2. I keep a statuette of a figure called a Mum-Ra from the Archie McPhee catalog beside my computer for luck.

3. I met my wife on the job, meaning one of us had to leave the organization due to company policy once we were wed. Our boss at the time got mad when she tendered her resignation.

4. I was born when my parents were older, and the impact of that fact on my life is not insignificant.

5. I can sometimes be opinionated and passionate. (Could you tell?)

6. I wrote a college paper on detective fiction and got a pretty good grade.

7. I have way too much stuff on my DVR.

8. I follow the political world more closely than I once did. I know what the Enterprise Institute is, for example. Still, one of my best sources for analysis is "The Daily Show."

Tagging:

Wayne
Charles
Stewart
Clifford
Etain
Steve
Sphinx
Spicy

Father Allison

I met a lot of interesting people when I was a reporter. It was one of the best parts of the job. I wrote a column not long before I left my newspaper job, noting that in many ways there is no finer job in the world when you're young and filled with piss and vinniger, as the old salts in our newsroom used to put it.

One of the coolest people I met was Father Allison. I actually learned about him from another reporter, guy who worked at one of the TV stations in town. We were competitve but it was a friendly competition.

Father Allison was easing into retirement, working as an assistant pastor, but he'd spent a number of his years in church service in California.

And there he served as a consultant on church matters for film and television. He had some great stories, and I used to go to lunch with him after our interview.

He'd advised Helen Hayes on a Western television show in which she played a nun. He was at first hesitant to give her instructions, but she insisted he help her get things right.

He worked a lot on the television version of "Going My Way" with Gene Kelly, and he donned a cowboy hat as an extra on "Wagon Train" or one Western or another. Union rules precluded him from doing much acting, though.

I loved to hear his stories and his jokes, and when he figured out I wanted to write he encouraged me with the advice to do something every day even if it was a small bit of progress.

He said once Oscar Wilde left a gathering to write. He returned a short time later and when asked what he'd done he responded: "I put in a comma. I took out a comma."

Some days that's all I do but I try to force something from my brain through my fingers and across the keyboard.

I lost touch with him after a while. I kept meaning to get back to talk to him, but eventually I heard he'd gone to a nursing home. I should have gone by to see him and heard a few more tales of Hollywood.

(Thanks to Charles for reminding me to plumb my memory once in a while.)

At Black Beauty Ranch

"It will be interesting to see, but it will probably be sad," Christine said on Friday as we discussed going to an open house at Cleveland Amory's Black Beauty Ranch.

"No," I said, "These are the success stories, it'll be fine."

So of course it was me fighting tears the most as we stood in a rare East Texas rain looking at the animals cared for at Black Beauty, originally created as a spot for Grand Canyon-area burros that were to be shot by the National Parks Service in the '70s in order to free up grazing lands.

Now a host of animals are housed there -- camels, horses, chimps once kept in zoos or research labs, and burros including one named Friendly who was part of the original airlift from the Grand Canyon.

It's only on occasion that Black Beauty's gates are opened for visits because, as the keepers stress, it's not a zoo. The animals are there to live out their days following harsh and inhumane treatment in many settings, not to be viewed.

Babe
Babe, the lone elephant, was left an orphan in South Africa by culling procedures there and wound up in the U.S. as a circus elephant.

Her legs on her right side were injured and untreated during that stint and require ongoing care.

A huge pile of sand is kept in her living area so that she can lean against it to take weight off those legs. She's kept on a strict diet to hold her weight down and relieve stress on those legs.

She lives alone now, her companion, an elderly Asian elephant having died. Upon that death, volunteers say Babe issued a rare trumpet sound from her trunk.

A sign of sentience? Who is to say?

Black Beauty also houses blind ponies, their sight lost to disease. Two of the blind ones are frequently guided by a third resident pony who stays beside them.

The burros, calm and docile were the last animals we visited. They were quiet hosts, mingling with visitors as they frequently do with other animals at the ranch.

Friendly, now around 30 years old, and another named Eeyore stood close to us and to others, allowing their fur to be stroked by children and often bowing their heads.

When their heads tilt now, the markings across their fur become more obvious, dark brown on their coats.

Legend holds those markings were left by the shadow of the cross of Jesus Christ as the donkey He rode into Jerusalem gazed up at His crucifixion.

Yes, it was sad, but it was also wonderful.

For more on the story of Black Beauty Ranch check out Making Burros Fly.

Rolling to 44

Yesterday was my birthday. It was such a busy day I didn't have a lot of time to think about it. Then I checked in on my MySpace page.

The little profile box had automatically changed from 43 to 44. It was the first time I saw it in print and it was sobering.

I'd grown comfortable with 43. It's not 23 but it's not bad.

But 44?

The 4 somehow makes things different. I'd accepted 43.

44 is closer to 45! which is halfway between 40 and 50 and howthef**** did I get to 44 or even 40?and ohmigod where is the f***ing break lever?

I was recovering from minor--except surgery is major--on my last birthday and I blinked and it's a year later, a year since I stayed home two weeks recovering and watching movies until I felt good enough to read books again to pass the time--how much The Man Who Knew to Little --there's nothing but crap on can you stand?

And now it's a year later.

And there's a 4 at the end of my age.

Already.

Black Beauty Ranch

I should have mentioned Cleveland Amory's Black Beauty Ranch in my previous post.

It's a refuge for horses and many other animals and it needs support.

It's certainly a good answer to the: "Where will the horses go if we don't slaughter them?" question.

I've called many of the committee members listed in my previous post also and in each case I've had very pleasant conversations with their staffers.

If you read this before 2 p.m. 7/25, take time to act.