In the Time of COVID. Day 42

April 29, 2020

The New Dawn Vehicle

Due to COVID the earth is taking a breather. The natural world is coming in from the margins. While humans suffer, nature is getting a respite. Will it be enough, or is our species so Gung-ho for convenience and comfort that we will learn nothing from this global experiment at pause and patience.

The current situation is causing us to observe and reflect. While some troubled souls, at the encouragement of charlatan preachers or presidents, are drinking bleach to purify themselves, not all of us are so whacked out. There are clear minds at work.

There have been visionaries in the past who saw a path forward that was harmonious with natural elements. Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond, The Rodale’s who were organic gardening pioneers, Buckminster Fuller and his vision of Spaceship Earth, “Mother” Anne Lee, the founder of the Shaker Movement. These and others created manifestos by which to get right with the world. That brings to mind an unusual and misunderstood visionary that was my best pal as a young man. Steve Roberts.

I met Steve when we were 14. The Spokane Public Library was a magnet for certain young people. The city was spread out and there were several large high schools but the library was a good place to do homework , do research, find like minded friends who were liberal and in favor of the Civil Rights Movement, who dug Folk Music, and were eventually interested in the anti-Vietnam War Movement, as The US got itself into that flaming fiasco. Our group grew to 5 or 6 of us, and we at times joined together at a place called the VIs a Vis Coffee House where teach-in’s were being conducted. Exciting guest speakers like Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling spoke there and we were able to ask questions and if we felt the need, be argumentative in search of truth. We earnestly tried to educate ourselves about what was going on. Steve had a keen interest in all of that and we came natural friends. He was an articulate speaker who made sure his facts were in order so that he could be convincing. He was artist, a writer, and an inventor of complex strategic board games.

It was wonderful to have a pal with such passions. He joined his high school’s debate team and I joined mine. We occasionally jousted in competition and by our senior year, I transferred to his school and we became debate partners.

He was raised by a pacifist father who was a great role model. They introduced me the Unitarians and to classical music and I spent as much time at his house as I did at home. Steve was a liberal optimist. He believed we had arrived at a time of profound social change and he wanted to be part of that change. The world seemed so ripe with promise. That is until the assassination of John Kennedy and Then Martin Luther King and Then Robert Kennedy. What had seemed promising was turning into a nightmare. Steve especially latched on to the JFK event, became engrossed in the topic and as the years progressed it became an obsession.

When he received a draft notice, he filed Conscientious Objection status. But he had thrown an egg at General Westmoreland at a parade in 1965. We were demonstrating against the US Invasion of the Dominican Republic that year. Steve had been arrested. That was used to deny his CO status later. They called him up. He refused. They arrested him. He was put on trial. At the trial he attempted to make an impassioned political statement , but the judge shut him up. “This is NOT your soap box, young man!” He received 18 months at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. By the time he returned it was obvious that something was off in his mind. He still believed in the liberal promise but he was hearing voices. He had audio hallucinations and became what others thought was delusional. Again he was institutionalized, this time in a Washington State Mental Hospital. When released he was given a living stipend by The State and also SSI. Just enough to survive. He had to check in with a caseworker and he understood that he must control his behavior when around the caseworker or cops. My pal fell victim to early adult onset schizophrenia.

Being brilliant was part of the package. Being a pacifist kept society safe from is delusions and voices. He believed that the financial support he received was from “Internal Security and The FBI School of Lost Arts, The FBI Division that protects programs and projects of the United States Flag”.

Steve spent the remainder of his life as an inventor. He understood that humans were polluting the planet so he was on a life-long quest to solve the unsolvable ‘perpetual motion machine’. He envisioned “A New Dawn Vehicle” powered by perpetual motion. I know for a fact that he worked on various gear/axle assemblages and frame designs that included a hammock, for at least 15 years. The Logo was a crowing rooster as dawn broke.

His other duties for the FBI included sweeping up glass and planting moss and wild flowers around pathways, wheelbarrowing water to keep the plantings alive, either painting cryptic slogans on cement bulkheads or later, when he was bothered by the meaningless scribble of graffiti tags, he spent his days removing graffiti.

He found a cleft in a large basalt outcropping in Riverside State Park and built himself a cave using found objects. It gets damn cold in Spokane in the winter, He heated with Kerosene lamps and contracted COPD.

He spent 48 years doing what he could to help the environment. He published meticulously hand written broadsides. He invented a form of silkscreen printing using block out and used window screens and used auto windshield wipers.

Street punks beat him badly several times, he retreated into himself, did best in nature, went to ground, lived alone. Occasionally surfaced to send a letter or visit his brother. His whole life he tried to make the world a better place. He used his creativity and genius to stay engaged in life.

I am proud to say he was my friend. I loved the cryptic letters I received. I could decode the unusual images he shared. For years one of his favorites was “Michigan is Porky”. When looking at images he saw other things like Porky Pig in the outline of Michigan. Some people send letters that tell how the kids are and what they have been reading and stuff like that. I never got that kind of letter from him.

Steve was found dead at 68, along the path to his cave. COPD finally did him in. I saw his genius and feel the loss the world had because of his schizophrenia. Others just saw a homeless guy. I miss you buddy. You were loved.

In the Time of COVID. Day 41

April 28, 2020

Taking a Standing Eight Count

There is a term in boxing for getting one’s bell rung and then standing up in a fog, and shaking it off. The boxer takes a standing eight count, then the ref determines if he can fight on or has lost by TKO, a technical knock out. I’m giving myself a standing eight tonight. I’ve boxed 40 rounds with my memories. I won some rounds and been hammered by others. I’ll answer the bell tomorrow night. Mean time, everybody keep your dukes up this COVID is a brawler and fights dirty.

In the Time of COVID. Day 40

April 27, 2020

Build Something That looks Like a Trailer From The Road

If you look closely enough, you will find homeless camps popping up in unlikely places. There is a tent and car encampment just a few blocks form our house. With the Shelter in Place directives, the housing challenged population is having it even harder than most others. Over the years, our village has had a small cadre of visible pan-handlers, a dozen or so, in a population of 7000. Many are transient and travel north or south on California Coastal Highway One. Now, they’ve gone to ground, like the rest of us, and their mobility is halted because no one will pick up a hitch hiker these days. Fortunately for our homeless population, the local social services have assisted with sanitation options and food relief. It isn’t a fix, but a bandaid. This situation brings to mind my very first memories.

In the early 50’s my folks owned a sorry little trailer encampment. It was squeezed in between a two lane Highway and the Great Northern rail yards, 80 miles north of Spokane and 30 miles south of Canada. The Town was Kettle Falls, populated by 700 hard-scrabble folk. The town had a green-chain saw mill, producing rough cut fir and pine boards. There was gyppo logging in the Kettle triangle to the north. The highway had frequent logging trucks that dumped loads at the mill. There was a large Apple Warehouse on the west side of our property. It took in Apples from The Okanagan Valley west of Lake Roosevelt on the Columbia River. Trains loaded with timber and apples ran south to the Hillyard Yards in Spokane. There was also transnational train commerce into interior British Columbia.

Our Trailer Park was a workers park, no more than a couple of dozen little caravans. When the men came home from work, they’ed walk across the road to the town’s only bar or they would sit out on their stoops and drink. Country radio drifted on the evening air.

Ours was the only “Cabin” on the property. Mom and dad and four kids, ages from early teen to me, the littlest. The cabin was our house and and the office. The living room had a big table , a wood stove, and an upright Piano. It was cramped quarters, but it was home. Often the cabin shook from the locomotives in the rail yard, from the banging of the boxcar trains being dropped off or built for hauling out of there. The smell of diesel from the idling engines was a constant. Just in back of us were a couple of workers boxcars where the families of the section hands lived.

My folks survived the Great Depression and they were compassionate people. One day, a family rolled to a stop in a big flatbed truck with stake sides. Five kids jumped down out of the back and the man and wife climbed out of the cab. The woman nervously smoothed her dress, her husband was a little runt of a guy with his gray fedora pitched on the back of his head and a toothpick dangling sideways from his lips.

My mom met them at the door and they stood outside talking about renting a space. Mom asked about their trailer. She couldn’t see it. The guy said “ well, we ain’t got a trailer , we got an army tent.” Mom said “Tent, it gets colder than hell here in the winter’ He said “We got a good stove”. That was the Howe Family, Gordon and Mary. They put up a platform and pitched that World War II surplus army tent and lived in it for two years. The stove barely kept them from freezing in the subzero winters. Mary Howe became my mother’s best friend for life. They were the prettiest gals in town. They laughed till they cried. Best friends.

My dad had a country swing band. It did its “wood shedding” in our living room. They played at the bar across the road and at Grange Halls In Stevens and Ferry Counties. A one-eyed sax player named Les Frye joined the band. His glass eye was always weepy and greenish, but man could that guy play. Les was on the run from the Social Services in California due to his wife and kids not being right in the head. He loved his family and saved them from the institution. Dad and Mom told him to build something that looked like a trailer from the road so the authorities wouldn’t come poking around. He did. I remember he kept a chicken named Kringle Toes under the the floor. He made a trapdoor that would let the bird up. I guess it was easier to get her eggs that way. It didn’t seem strange to me that they lived in a chicken coop.

At that time, Mambo was the jazz craze. Les told my dad he knew an excellent Cuban Guitar player in California, that they could get. Jess “Romeo” Morales, slick-backed black hair and movie star pretty, hauled into town a few weeks later. According to my mom, that man was too damn pretty for his own good. He became the lead singer and all the gals swooned over him. The band became A Jazz Mambo Country Swing band and was wildly popular through those remote regions. “Romeo” rented a a cabin the other side of the tracks and it was a love shack, if you know what I mean.

In the Time of COVID. Day 39

April 26, 2020

The Dream Boat and Our Fear of Drowning

I had reason to go down into the village yesterday. The weather has improved and that’s lured people to Cambria. Valley folk from Fresno and Bakersfield and Taft are drawn to the beach.

I’ve gotten used to nobody being around. I like having a choice of parking slots and empty sidewalks to walk. Now, there is the beginning of disregard for physical distancing, people without gloves and masks and standing too damn close, brushing by like it was any old Saturday. This makes me fearful. Weekends are bad times to be out.

I know I am going to have to deal with this fear. I hope that times will return to “normal” but 39 days in Home Isolation feels like the new normal. It was weird at first, but now it is comforting. Dealing with deep-rooted fear brings to mind The Dream Boat.

When we moved here from Spokane, we had a dream of buying a sailboat. Just a little one that would be easy to manage, that we could drop into the sheltered harbor at Morro Bay. We had absolutely no intention of sailing in open water. We found a deal on a Lido 14 and we bought it. We pulled into our front yard. And there it sat.

You see, both of us have a fear of drowning. I nearly drowned in Hayden Lake as a kid and but for my sister fishing me out, that would been it. Then a year later, I fell out of a row boat on Pudget Sound and again other kids saved my life. I got swimming lessons after that but I’ll never forget the sinking, the light shimmering on the surface above me, the absolute feeling of loss, and of water burning my nasal cavity and the choking in my throat. When I was twenty, I went tubing with friends on an irrigation canal off the Stanislaus River. As I poured over a drop of 3 or 4 feet, I lost my grip and was sucked into a whirlpool. By instinct I opened by arms and legs trying to find anything to grab onto. Eventually I grasped the canal wall and hauled myself out but it was another freak out underwater until I did.

We went white-water rafting with our kids on the Lower Kern River 25 years ago. We went with a professional outfit and it was an overnight. We came to a rough Class 3 rapid and April was spit out. She went under the raft and couldn’t get out. Just on the edge of drowning, she popped up and we hauled her in. After that, even kayaking in still water freaked her out.

So, In the front yard was our Lido 14. We were just to afraid to try it, to wrapped in our phobias to venture out, to unsure of our abilities to survive a mishap. Over the years we had rented different houses and always we pulled that sailboat onto the property where it mocked us. We laugh about it now. Finally, we sold the boat. We cut our losses. That didn’t mean we stopped dreaming of sailing.

By late June in 2014 we were both completely retired. We wanted to treat ourselves to a special adventure. We signed on to a sailing excursion on the Turquoise Coast of South Western Turkey. There was a skilled skipper who handled the 42 foot Catamaran by himself. There were 6 other travelers, the skipper and ourselves. For 10 days we sailed south and east from Bodrum to Feteya. We came upon the ruins of Persian settlements and amphitheaters from Roman towns, there were the ruins of the Greeks and the Phoenicians and the cliff tombs of the Lycian’s. The water was absolutely clear and blue, the coastline remote and ancient.

We face our fears by trusting in the skill of others. I have no “Old Man In The Sea”, Hemingway illusions. People think we are brave and fearless but we are very cautious. Trusting in others has not only saved out lives but it has offered us manageable adventures. Now when we think of a Dream Boat, its sailing the eastern Mediterranean.

In the Time of COVID. Day 38

April 25, 2020

Walter’s Last Encore

There is an imposed isolation when people get old. Friends die, drift way, and then there is the issue of vulnerability. When the phone rings it’s a hustle, grifters trying to scare the hell out of you so you give them your money. It’s a constant barrage. It’s hard to be trusting when you are treated as a target. It’s difficult to go out at night because your eyes make one point of light into clusters, not good for driving. This COVID thing is easier on old folks if they stay away from people. They are used to being alone anyway.

Our kids have called from afar over the last few weeks. They worry that we will ignore the precautions and get infected. We worry the same thing about them. We all want to make it through this. We are cautious. Mostly we rely on our friends. We try to help out where we can.

That brings to mind a phone call I got in 2002. It was from Mary Cole. We made friends with Walter and Mary when we moved to Cambria, 35 years ago. They were 5 years older than our parents but, man, were these folks energetic, creative and compassionate. Mary was a gifted watercolorist. She taught a generation of aspiring painters in her time here.

Walter was a jazz musician . He played drums and vibraphone. He founded the Morro Bay White-Caps, an amateur band of old and young that loved Swing and Dixieland. For decades they played from flat-bed trucks at all the community parades and festivals in our county.

In 1930 Walter was traveling with a small band through the upper mid-west when they had a gig at a Minnesota Normal School where Mary was a student completing her teacher courses. She fell for the drummer. They were married 72 years, through good times , and hard.

That phone call wasn’t easy for Mary to make. “Stan, can you help me with Walter. I need a break. Can you come over and sit with Walter for a few hours?” She started to cry. “Sure Mary, I’ll be right over.” Walter had been slipping away in his 90’s. I hadn’t seen him in a few months. I grabbed my shaving tackle, brush, mug and safety razor and headed over.

Walter was at that state where he faded in and out of consciousness constantly. He hadn’t recognized Mary in a few months. It was really hard on her. His head drooped. He was running old memories in his mind. Half sentences about a boatyard they owned in Balboa / Newport Beach during World War II. He would seem to fall asleep, mid-sentence, then rise up and speak another cryptic half sentence. Off in the clouds of memory.

Mary took off with a friend, for a lunch break. She had been doing everything herself, to proud to ask for help.

I got Walter showered and changed and sat at the dinner table. I heated some water and lathered his face and gave him a shave. He had an angelic smile when I did that. For a man, a hot-lather shave is a wonderful thing.

I fed him some soup and then bundled him up and got him out on their front deck. That deck over-looked the mouth of Santa Rosa Creek where it enters the Pacific Ocean. A beautiful view. He continued his half sentences. He was peaceful but totally out of town, if you know what I mean. Into slumber and then mumbling. Dementia was racking his mind. He was my friend, but he was unaware I was there.

It started to get chilly and I needed to move him back into the house. Bone-skinny old guys can’t take much cold even if they are semi-conscious. I went into the living room to figure out what to do next. There in one corner was his stereo and his vinyl collection. I fingered through it. Pulled out Benny Goodman 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert. I rolled his wheel chair over by the stereo. Nice and warm now. Across the room was his drum set, dusty and unused for a few years. Next to it were his vibes, just as lonely.

I cranked the music like he was a teenager. The oddest thing happened. His fingers started to move. His chin started to rise. His eyes opened up. His hands started to tap to the music. “Stomping at the Savoy” and “ Sing Sing Sing” were vibrating the walls. Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson were right there. Walter started grinning. Right then, Mary walked in the door. He looked at her and said “Hi Sweetheart”. Mary said “Oh Walter…” she started crying. She went to him and they embraced.

As quickly he came, he went back into the fog of time. He passed away two weeks later. But, Walter and Mary Cole got one more sweet embrace.

In the Time of COVID. Day 37

April 24, 2020

How I Was Drawn To Jimmy Driftwood

I wish libraries would open again. I wish I could touch books without fearing COVID19. I wish I could transport back in time to the audio collection at the Main Branch of the Spokane Public Library. When I was 13 and 14, it was my sanctuary.

A bus ran by my house that dropped me downtown. I went when ever I could. The vinyl collection had magnetic attraction. I could check out albums to play on my little turntable at home but the real fun was selecting an album, handing it to the librarian and being assigned my own listening station with excellent over-ear phones and audio separation. She queued up the record and handed me the jacket. I poured over the liner notes and images. I read the attributions and song titles. At those times the world opened to me. My favorite section was Folk Music.

That collection included the Library of Congress catalog complied by John and Alan Lomax, and the Moe Asch recordings of the Folk Revival sounds. There was the Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music, Odetta, The Weavers, Songs of the Cowboys, Ledbelly, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston, but by far and away my favorites were “Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs” and “Wilderness Road” by Jimmy Driftwood. They are pure Ozark Mountain balladry at it’s best. I knew those songs by heart. I play several on guitar now.

Jimmy Driftwood was a song writing machine. He composed 6000 songs of which over 300 have been recorded. He was a living repository of early American songs dating to before the Revolutionary War. He sang the songs of the pioneers as they traversed the Cumberland Gap and the Wilderness Road, as they laid claim to farmsteads and built a future in remote settings.

Driftwood’s guitar was constructed from found objects. The neck was fashioned from a fence rail, the front and back from his grandmother’s headboard and the shape of the guitar from oxbow yokes. His father made it for him.

As I got older, finding Driftwood’s albums became difficult. They really were not “popular market”, being too raw and authentic. A few of his songs hit big on the charts, recorded by others. The Tennessee Stud and The Battle of New Orleans are his most popular. I did manage to acquire a bootleg 90 minute cassette that I cherished for years until it disintegrated.

Then came a dry spell of twenty years where only my memories of his work prevailed.

In 1997 I bought our first internet capable computer and we got a cheesy little 28K dialup modem. One day I played hooky from school. I called in well. I sat down at the keyboard of that weird Bondi Blue IMac eggy looking thing and thought “ I wonder what this can do?”. “Who can it find?” I thought of Jimmy Driftwood. If alive, where did he live? I knew he wrote “Street’s of Argenta” the old name for Little Rock, and He composed the lyrics to the old time fiddle tune “”Arkansas Traveler”. I stroked the keys and entered “Jimmy Driftwood, Arkansas”

A minute or two later (28K, right?) up popped “Jimmy Driftwood, Timbo, Arkansas” with phone number. Impulsively, I closed out dialup so I could call the number. It rang three or four times and then a woman answered “Hello” she said. I told her my name and asked if this was the home of the folk singer Jimmy Driftwood. She said “Why, yes it is.” I said “Is he still alive?” ( it had been about 40 years before that, that he had recorded). She laughed and said “I sure hope so honey, he’s sitting just across the room.”

That was Cleda, Jimmy’s wife. I told her that I was a teacher and that I had listened to Jimmy’s songs as a youngster and absolutely loved their authenticity. She told me he had written those songs for his students. Jimmy commuted to work on a long-haired mule and didn’t record anything until he was well into his 50’s. When I called he was 90. I asked if they had any records or cd’s for sale. Cleda said they had the Bear Family Collection, a German company compiled complete recordings of American originals. She said it was $90.00. I gave her the address and told her I’d send a check.

She put Jimmy on the phone and I gushed my admiration. He said “Well, Stan you need to come out here to Arkansas for my Birthday, I’d love to meet you and your family, Stan.” When Cleda came back on, she said “We hold Jimmy’s birthday on Father’s Day. Our boys was killed in a car wreck years ago and we just have his birthday on Father’s Day, to lift his spirits. Your welcome to come.” She said she had to get Jimmy to an appointment but she’d be sending that music.

The music arrived before my check got to Timbo. Those were honest, lovely people. Jimmy died at the age of 91 before we could ever get back there. Cleda was having dementia and was moved to a rest home in Fayetteville. A few years later we visited the Ozark Folk Center in Mountain View and The Driftwood homestead in Timbo. We visited the gravesite of Jimmy and his sons. It over-looks their cabin. “I made it, Jimmy,” I said. Patting his stone. Cleda Azelea Johnson Driftwood passed in 2004. I am sure they are all together now, on that knoll, overlooking their home.

In the Time of COVID. Day 36

April 23, 2020

Our Lady of Ransom and the Ghost of John Coltrane

One of the reader’s comments on last night’s tooth blog mentioned a news report of a migrant worker who was unable to get dental assistance for an abscessed tooth. The migrant died in the fields. This brought to mind my first year teaching.

The school was in the Salinas Valley, It was rural and almost completely migrant. My year there was an homage to John Steinbeck, who knew the valley well. The town is called San Ardo. To the south, are oil fields. To the north the valley spreads 10 miles wide and 70 miles long to Salinas. It has some of the most fertile soil in the world and grows most of the vegetables sold in America.

We drove into San Ardo in late June. I’d graduated, done my student teaching and had a credential. What I didn’t have was a contract. We were told at university to not even think about finding work in San Luis Obispo county. “Everyone wants to teach here”, they said. I applied for a posting in neighboring Monterey County. The opening was a combined 7-8 all subjects. It was something, and they offered an interview. At least I could experience a rejection.

Crossing over the Salinas River Bridge, the sad little town of San Ardo and its migrant trailers lay before me. A county library as big as a single-wide, was on the left. We turned right and came to Our Lady of Ransom Catholic Church. I took a double take on the name and said “Sad little town, sad saint of ransomed hostages, it’s a sign. Of course they are going to hire me.”

April walked the school grounds while I did my interview. I had to teach a lesson to three older white women while they pretended to be unruly 13 year olds. They tried to act up, but they put on a lame show.

I’d come with a heavy weapon. “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. You know the poem, when mom put’s her son in his place and says ‘Well, son, I’ll tell you: Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair…..” A little single Harlem mom telling her kid to stop bitching, cause life ain’t perfect. Life ain’t fair. These gals were taken unawares. Any doubt they had that I could handle a pack of 12 and 13 year olds was squashed . Any doubt that I could communicate clearly, evaporated.

By the time we pulled into the driveway at home, the phone was ringing with an offer. The pay was terrible, but there was pay. I started in mid-August and remember feeling like an imposter that first day, but, I had the keys, and I had the contract.

Every text in the class had DISCARD stamped on it from Monterey or Salinas schools. It was all total junk. There was absolutely nothing current. The retired teacher hadn’t even cleaned out her desk. She’d been a hoarder for 25 years. She just pitched in the keys and blew town on her last day. Not a happy gal. The first three months I just filled the trash cans and dumpsters.

The students were feral. All the teachers were white and all the students, but for three, were children of migrants. They’ed been yelled at their whole lives, actually slapped for speaking Spanish on the playground. When I found that out, I announced in my first faculty meeting that if I saw anyone do that, I’d call Child Protective Services. The principal didn’t like that.

It was a rough start. I ordered Montgomery Wards Fall Catalogs, and Ma Bell Phone Books. Free books. New Books. We started with real math and problem solving . A Hardware store back in Cambria gave me a class set of yard sticks. Homework was bring an empty cereal box from home. We read the boxes and decoded the information. I brought a gallon paint can and taught them how to estimate area of paint coverage.

In late September the farmer right across the street from my classroom, dumped a giant pile of rotting pepper vines near his fence. When I came in the next day, my class smelled like rotting vines and within a week there were hundreds and hundreds of blue bottle flies in the classroom. I bought fly paper, and those got full real quick. I bought 22 cheap fly swatters and froze some baby sized candy bars. The lesson of the day was kill the damn flies. Kids with the biggest body count, got candy bars.

Our rival school was San Lucas, 10 miles north. I was also the 7-8 PE teacher and coach for flag football. When we visited San Lucas in our blue shirts, San Lucas had red ones. Who’s bright idea was that? Those were Norteno and Sureno colors, friggin crips and bloods gang colors. It wasn’t a football game it was a rumble. Later I suggested we change our colors to green. The principal refused.

Lockwood school was an all white school from the Army Logistics base at Fort Hunter Liggett. When those kids came to play us, my kids tasted blood. They ran the score up something terrible. Finally I called timeout and huddled my kids “Let them score” I said. My kids looked at me like I was speaking Chinese. “Let them score, we aren’t trying to humiliate them. You guys are to good.”

The final score was 57 to 6. The coach of Lockwood got so pissed that we let his team score that he refused to shake hands or do the good game high fives. He loaded his kids on the bus and left. He refused to play us in basketball or softball. A real jerk.

The year went on like that, but I built camaraderie and the white kids who were rich rancher kids identified with the brown kids, who parents picked the crops. They stuck up for one another. When Gabriella, a new girl from Mexico arrived mid-year, she had a serious eye infection and was special needs. She spoke no English, but by the end of the year all the kids rallied around her. She was finally fitting in and speaking some English and could write a bit.

When eight grade graduation came around, it was customary to hire Mrs McKinney, A church organist from King City, to play Pomp and Circumstances.

I hired my son’s private saxophone teacher. He had played sax in the US Marine Corps Band in Washington DC, during the Vietnam War. He was an excellent musician. He stood on stage right. A black beret and goatee and a tenor sax from heaven. He soloed tunes from John Coltrane’s Blue World, and as the eight graders filed in, he gave a Coltranesque interpretation of Pomp and Circumstances. We’d brought art to little San Ardo. My principal was pissed.

Mrs Martin wouldn’t let Gabriella sit on the stage with the kids that had completed their studies. That day Gabriella showed up in a fancy dress and flower bouquet and nicely fixed hairdo just like the other girls. The principal gave me the stink eye and Gabriella was made to sit down in the audience next to me in the front row.

Kevin, a white rancher kid, who’s job it was to lead the people in the Pledge of Allegiance, took to the podium and said “Before We begin the Pledge of Allegiance we as a class have a taken a vote and we unanimously invite Gabriella to join us on the stage. She is one of us.” He looked at me and dared me. The audience erupted in applause. The whole town knew there was a drama coming. I looked at the students up there and there was an extra chair. Mrs Martin looked down at me and her eyes said. NO NO NO.

I stood, looked at that class of kids I’d loved all year, I took Gabriella’s hand and she stood up and I walked her to the stairs. The audience stood and clapped, the class stood and welcomed her. I sat back down and felt pride and foreboding.

After the graduation, Mrs. Martin cornered me and said “You planned this . You went against my express instructions. You will never teach again.” I drove home and cried off and on for days. All that work at school and now I am blackballed….

In August I was offered a job at Paso Robles High School, near home. It paid 30% more than I had earned at San Ardo. Only problem was the principal at San Ardo couldn’t be reached for a recommendation. Was there anyone else up there who could vouch for me. I gave the name of the president of the school board. I thought my goose was cooked. He said I was a terrific teacher, I’d taught his daughter.

I discovered that shortly after graduation a special board meeting had been convened and Mrs Martin was fired. It was the wife of the school board president who had purchased Gabriella’s dress and flowers. They were in on it. The Kids had given the adults courage to do what was right.

Occasionally we drive north on 101 past San Ardo on our way to San Francisco, I mean to, but I never do, take the turn off for a drive through that humble little town. Those kids are well into their 40’s now.

In the Time of COVID. Day 35

April 22, 2020

The Tooth That Turned It’s Back On Me

Last week we were supposed to get blood panels done before our medical check ups. We drove to Morro Bay to the laboratory. When we pulled up across the street, a Casa Flores Nursing Home bus was parked in front. We hesitated for a moment. No way we were going in there. Just no way in hell. Our doctors have put off our appointments until June and those may be by phone. It has since made me think just how fortunate we are to have doctors at all. It brought to mind a tooth from long ago.

I had a tooth that I liked very much. It was a good tooth and it served me for many years. I chewed mama’s fried chicken with that tooth. I chewed her potato salad. When I was introduced to tacos and burritos that tooth was a willing pal in the adventure. We went everywhere together, that tooth and I. We hitch-hiked and snagged boxcars. We had a big time.

Some friends last a life time, others are lost along the way. Some haunt our memories.

We’d been staying in a remote southern Mexican village. I was young and slender and fit. I had a whole mouth full of white shiny chompers. Over the weeks we chewed through some great local comidas. Life was perfect.

It started as a dull throb, just a little sensitivity. So I chewed on the other side, gave my buddy a rest. My tooth throbbed like a heart beat. My tongue gave him a massage. That tongue was always ready to come to it’s aid, ever alert. Within a couple of days that throb became a swelling and the pain danced along the nerve chords of my jaw. It ran up into my eye. My tooth started to scream.

A doctor in Seattle had but me together with an emergency medical kit. It included pain killer of some sort. I self-medicated and it just made me feel groggy but it still hurt like hell. I discovered if I pooled warm beer in a pocket of my cheek around the tooth, the effervescence muted the pain briefly. Then I was high on beer and pain killer and the tooth wouldn’t chill out.

All night I was racked with pain. I’d had it with that damn tooth. Some friend it had turned out to be. I stumbled into the street. The village had three dentists and all of them learned their trade in the old time. I lugged a quart of beer with me and went to the first dentist.

His waiting room had six scared patients. They were in no better shape than me. I can see you on Tuesday, he said. That was in 5 days. No way, I stumbled into the street. I staggered to the next dentist. The door had a sign that said “ Gone to Tuxla Gutierrez”. Damn, Damn, Damn…..

I came to the third dentist. Two guys were in the waiting room. The dentist said he could see me when he was done with the patients ahead of me. Deal!

I stumbled to the corner and entered a little store. I bought a six pack of warm beer and went back to the waiting room. I invited the guys to have a beer. They drank up. I medicated. When the dentist let his current victim flee, the guys pointed at me and waved their hands for me to go first. They still had some beer to drink.

The dentist had a blood splattered smock. His gear was an old belt driven drill and the spit tray was clogged with bloody wades of cotton and layered with lottery tickets. No running water or cool minty mouth wash in that place. At a far wall, a carpenter was chiseling a wide door frame in the mud adobe wall to the back yard. There was dust on every thing.

The doctor sat me down. I opened my mouth. He took a metal probe and pinged my tooth (it was like being shot) I guess he wanted to make sure it was the right tooth. By that time I was quivering in agony. He took a big needle and plunger, stuck it around that tooth, jabbed away. I almost fainted.

He stepped to the back wall for a smoke, when he finished he pinged my tooth again. No change , just as violent a reaction. Again with the needle. This went on three times and he lost patience. He grabbed some pliers. He clamped it on my tooth. If I was a bomb I would have exploded. He placed a knee on the arm rest and jerked that tooth out of my mouth. My limbs shook uncontrollably. My nervous system was on complete overload. He grabbed a gob of cotton ball, poured alcohol on it. Pulled out a lighter and torched the ball. Once his marshmallow was flaming good, he plunged it into my bloody socket and cauterized the wound.

I looked into the spit tray and there was my old friend. We were done for good, that tooth and I. I asked the doctor for a prescription for pain. He said “Why? There is the pain.” He pointed at that tooth in the blood bucket.

I paid him 20 pesos (at that time about $1.75 US). I stumbled out of the office and found my hammock. I lay there for 3 days. My landlady brought me chicken broth. She nursed me back to the world.

In the Time of COVID. Day 34

April 21, 2020

Big Pontiac and the Thunderbolt

One terrific thing about being teachers is summer break. Once our last kid left home we were free to explore. A colleague of April’s was over the moon about Isla Mujeres , off the northeast coast of the Yucatán. It didn’t take arm twisting for us to decide on a 6 week adventure to Mexico, Belize and Guatemala. It was early days of the internet, no cell phones, just a current copy of ‘Lonely Planet Central America’ as our guide post.

After a week on the island and a day trip to Chichen Itza we were ready to move on. In Cancun we boarded a bus to Subteniente Lopez, a town that straddles the Mexico / Belize border and is dissected by the Rio Hondo. The bus dropped us a couple of blocks from the bridge. It’s an odd feeling to roll your bags over a bridge that defines a frontier, leaving one country and entering another. Hoping the new country will let you in.

Unlike Mexico, Belize uses English, though Spanish is commonly used. As we made our way over the bridge we came to a duty free zone with 2 or 3 sad little casinos an a strip mall before the official entry to Belize. After the formalities, we walked further south. Now what?

Off to the side was an old Pontiac Bonneville Convertible. It had seen better days. A giant sat behind the wheel. He must of weighed 400 pounds. He was golden brown in the Afro-Caribe way and had a disarming grin on his face. “Where you headed folks?” We said ‘Ambergris Caye’. He said “You flyin or water taxi?” “Don’t know”, we said. “What do you think”? “The Thunaboat is a good time, don’t cost much, take you to San Pedro in the mornin’. Need to buy de tickets tonight.” “Were do we do that?” We asked.

“Come on I take you to Corozal down de road. We get those tickets and I know a place you can stay. I’ll come in de mornin n take you to the boat. 10 bucks”. We piled in. Though it was 13 kilometers to the boat pier, we must have stopped a dozen times. He was showing us off to his friends. He had costumers, He was Big Pontiac that evening. He’d honk and howdy his friends, they’ed howdy back. It was a big time. Not once did he get out from behind the wheel.

We bought our one-way tickets at the Thunderbolt shed and Big Pontiac, howdy’ed us a few times more to a little hotel that was clean, cheap and had chicken, beans and rice and a shower. In the morning he blasted his horn and off we went.

The Thunderbolt was a 35 foot plywood tank of a boat. Everyone had to climb down inside. There were little long narrow port windows on either side but the floor of the passenger space was well below the windows if you were sitting down. The seats were plastic lawn chairs, not screwed to the floor.

Besides us, there were a few other couples, some market people that were taking stuff to San Pedro, and then on came a group of American teenagers being herded by a youth minister. They were on one of those summer mission excursions. Sometimes you just can’t get away from folks like that. An hour and a half to San Pedro with a preacher stirring up those kids, singing those young life hymns over the roar of the engines.

The Thunderbolt had twin 60 horse Mercury outboards and once we left the harbor the pilot opened them up, the stern bit in and the bow rose up and the chairs slid back toward the wailing youth. The roar of the engines and the slapping of the bow over the waves jarred us but the youth minister cranked up his kids to sing over the noise. It was a hell of a time. Out into the Caribbean Sea , an hour and a half to San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, out to the crystal blue waters of the biggest coral reef in the Americas. Out to a tropical island.

In the Time of COVID. Day 33

April 20, 2020

The Burning Bus in Paradise

In 1975 I rode the The Jungle Train. It was an 8 hour trip by narrow gauge from San Jose to Puerto Limon, in Costa Rica. The landscape of waterfalls, precarious iron bridges over gaping gorges, and intense jungle vegetation, was mesmerizing. We skirted sheer cliffs as we dropped down into what seemed an oceanic green canopy. Off too the east , lay the Caribbean Sea. The writer Paul Theroux sang this train’s praises in The Old Patagonian Express, published in 1979. The 7.7 earthquake of 1991 destroyed the rail route and flattened Puerto Limon.

In 1997, I returned, this time with April and our son, Myles. We bought bus tickets at Gran Terminal del Caribe ( not so grand) and departed San Jose for a trip out of the highlands, descending too Limon.

Several surf bums watched their boards being loaded, and did what young people do, they piled on the bus, took up the back area and talked loudly and happily. They had sun bleached hair and deep suntans. Their destination was Puerto Viejo and the best east coast surf breaks in the country.

The rest of the passengers were a mix of tourists like us, local residents returning to the coast, a few nuns, and some hung over merchant seamen from a cargo ship down in Limon. They were returning from blow-out shore leave in the capital. They sunk down in their seats to weather their headaches and shut their eyes.There were other folks that looked vaguely North American or European and a guy dressed in that ubiquitous missionary-uniform, a white jacket, with prominent crucifix, one sees all over the 3rd world. He clutched a massive black bible like it was a hammer or an axe. He read it , rocking incessantly.

Off we went down the beat-up highway. It was paved but pot holes pocked the tarmac and slowed our progress. Semi rigs lurched by us every chance they had to pass. The cliffs were still sheer but the allure of the train was just a memory. This was a daily run, crowded with people, steam covered the inside windows. The escape hatches in the ceiling were open and as tropical rain came and went, waterfalls cascaded from each opening and swamped the floor.

We settled in and we talked about going to Tortuguero to see the leatherback tortoises, and then down to Cahuita south of Limon were I’d spent Samana Santa those years ago.

Eventually we started to reach the low lands where banana plantations stretched for miles.

A Gal across the isle joined our chat. She was in her 40’s, dressed like a Nebraska Sunday school teacher. Hair up in a bun, peter-pan collar on a small print dress that came below the knees. She wore no makeup. She was skinny as a rail and had really weird pointed white plastic shoes and a cardigan sweater. Everyone else wore sandals or flip flops. She was not dressed for the jungle.

She said, years before, she’d spent two years in the Peace Corps living in an indigenous Bribri settlement. The Bribri are matriarchal and she said she felt most complete there. She was returning to teach in the little school she had started years before.

The rain came again and the roof gushed down on us all. Suddenly the missionary stood in the isle. He opened that bible, pointed a damning finger he shouted “Salvation!” Just then, a screech and whop whop whop came from under the bus. A rear tire ceased up and the bus started rattling and quivering.

the driver wrestled the bus to a flat area, half way off the road. We started piling off, tractor trailers blasted their horns, and fire was flying out from under the motor compartment. The bus had caught on some wire, dropped from a flatbed. It wrapped around the rear axle. We thought the bus would explode.

When April stepped to the ground , right where she stood in the grass , there was a red strawberry Poison Dart Frog, she screeched. Myles and I went back on the bus, grabbed our bags and then someone opened the luggage stows under the bus. I grabbed our suitcases and the three of us walked east about 50 yards away from the inferno. I was afraid a semi would slam into the bus, making matters a whole lot worse. The others just stood around helpless. The driver shook his head , over and over.

I stuck my thumb out, and an old minivan stopped. Two middle aged women had just gotten off work at a banana plantation. April and Myles and I jumped in out of the rain. They were headed home to Limon. Nice gals, wanted to practice their English. The next 40 miles was a blast, though the front end of the van was out of alignment and shimmied the whole way. Those pot holes are a killer.