The Wisdom of Calvin

 

Preparing

We've  decided to add an adjacent ranch to our holdings, some 10,000 acres.  The owners wanted $1,000 an acre for it but there have been no takers for years because there's not a lot that can be done with it -- limited livestock grazing potential is about it, plus, with care, one annual crop of alfalfa hay, probably mostly Grade 2, some Grade 1 -- so they were happy to have us take it off their hands for a comparatively modest sum.  But it does have water, and water in the west is more valuable than gold and silver.  But we'll put this acreage in a conservation reserve program (lower taxes!) and leave the water where nature wants it.  We'll also do a lot of restoration work planting native vegetation to help re-establish a flourishing ecosystem.
As we completed the sale, the owners of a 6,000-acre ranch adjacent to our new holdings came to us offering a very reasonable price for their ranch. It was inherited land they did not know what do do with and wanted to be rid of.  We were happy to acquire it and for now, at least, also put it in a conservation reserve program.  
So in total we've added some 25 square miles to our fiefdom.  There's lots of game on the new land.  Aside from some roads and a few other improvements, most of it looks just as it did before the white man came.  That is, unless you are a botanist and can recognize all the invasive species.  And spot the changes caused by a lowered water table and hard-panning in a few places.  

One reason for the eagerness to sell ranch land is the collapse in beef prices during the Covid restaurant restrictions.  Prices have come back somewhat, but now there's a war on cattle and other livestock production because it's supposedly bad for the planet.  So people are nervous about having so much marginally productive lands on their hands, lands that are still taxed and involve potential legal liabilities for all sorts of things and require insurance to help protect against those.  But for us the additional land has real benefits.  One of these is security.  It's not a problem yet and our neighbors are good people, but since the governments, federal, state and local, no longer feel it necessary to enforce civil peace or prosecute criminals, we have to be practical and prepare for what may come.  The more we can isolate ourselves and our assets from the wider world the better off we should be.  So, at no little cost, obvious access roads are being obliterated and surveillance and monitoring equipment is being installed. And soon there will be only one way to easily enter our land and it will be double-gated and guarded.   Once you pass through that second gate you are safe in your person and property.  Isn't that worth a lot?

The world today

 

Baby Blue

 Art Laboe, the legendary DJ who passed away recently, broadcast a dedication to me on my birthday when I was in an overseas DoDEA high school. It played over Armed Forces Radio Pacific, as it was then called. The request wasn’t called in but mailed in some time in advance, but Laboe made it happen on the right date.
The song was “Baby Blue” by the Echoes, popular decades before I was born, but it seemed fresh and new to me. I still remember hearing that dedication over the radio and being amazed and thrilled. And I still love that song. 
The boy who dedicated it to me, a service brat as was I, I had known since we were seven years old.  Parental transfers meant we often didn't see each other for years, but we always kept in touch, and it was always assumed by both of us that we would marry.  We were meant for each other.  There could be no doubt. 
Then 9/11 happened and as soon as he was old enough, even though he had been accepted at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, he postponed his education to join the Marine Corps.  He was wounded in the fighting at Najaf and after a series of infections and amputations lasting more than a year, died of septic shock.

 

No more than a memory

Everyone needs a ghost.  No matter how busy our lives, how interesting our pleasures, there are depths of loneliness  that neither work nor pleasure can plumb, a little core of ourselves that needs someone to talk to or simply be with. Who can fill this need better than an understanding ghost?
Each of us not only needs a ghost but has a ghost.  We cannot see it or touch it or hear it, but it is there and keeps us company when there is no one else. A ghost, perhaps, is no more than a memory of someone once well loved. 

The Intruders, first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater, March 30, 1976:

Old War

As I've written before, one of my grandfathers was a naval aviator and his wife, my grandmother, was a navy nurse.  They got married before Pearl Harbor and both served throughout the war and stayed in the service afterwards.  During the war, my grandfather was shot down at sea and listed as MIA and probably dead, but was rescued weeks later.  Two other times he made it back to his carrier but his plane was so badly shot up that it was unrepairable and pushed over the side.  In all, he was wounded three times.  My grandmother served aboard a hospital ship during several island invasions.  The most harrowing was Iwo Jima, where casualties overwhelmed the ship, lining the passageways and filling the deck spaces.  She was sent ashore during the fighting to carry out triage on the beach. She went among the wounded like the angel of death, deciding who would live and who would be left to die.  Those who were not evacuated knew they were going to die as soon as she looked at their wounds and then moved on without calling up stretcher bearers to take them to the evacuation point.  After the war, my grandfather flew one of the first Navy jets, the F2H-2 Banshee and then the F9F-2, in which he flew flak suppression missions over North Korea.  My grandmother again served on a hospital ship during the war, and treated casualties from the Inchon landings.

My other grandfather I haven't written much because I didn't often see him, although I liked him a lot, because he retired to New England, which was not convenient to visit.  He joined the Army Air Force in the lead-up to Pearl Harbor and flew P-40s in New Guinea and then P-51s in England.  After the war, he left the service, and from what I understand, thought to get a job as an airline pilot, but single-engine fighter pilots held no attraction for the airlines.  They preferred transport pilots -- those who had flown military versions of the DC-3, DC-4 and Constellation.  Even multi-engine bomber pilots held little interest for the airlines because there were so many transport pilots to choose from.  In my grandfather's case, he eventually found a job with a Central American airline, TACA Guatemala, flying war surplus C-47s.   He was called back into the service for the Berlin Airlift, flying coal into the beleaguered city in the same type of plane.  After the Airlift, he decided to remain in the Air Force, it being a better life for him and his wife and  babies than going back to his old job.  He was assigned to a Douglas B-26 (nee A-26) unit stationed in Japan.  When the North Koreans invaded the South, he flew some of the first combat missions against them.  Due to a number of difficulties locating and identifying enemy targets in the fast-moving and confused early days of the fighting, he served stints as a ground-based Forward Air Controller, where he saw combat from the foot soldier's point of view.  After serving in Korea, he was recruited to join the Strategic Air Command, where he flew B-47s and later B-52s out of bases in New England. 

Dead Chinese soldiers killed in hand-to-hand fighting in front of US foxholes.

During the Viet Nam war, he flew bombing missions out of Guam, including during the Christmas bombing, after which he retired to a quiet life in Maine. 

Retreating US soldiers pass by dead Americans killed in a Chinese ambush

From what I have learned, his experiences in the Korean War affected him more than those of the other wars he was in, perhaps because he was involved in a massive military defeat and retreat by American forces and the largest seaborne evacuation in history, dwarfing the Dunkirk operation, the rescue of the United Nations armed forces trapped at Hungnam by the Chinese as well as many thousands of Korean refugees in what was called the Christmas Miracle. He saw it all first hand on the ground, not merely from the air, although he saw it that way, too.  Maybe it was a combination of seeing the bird's eye, or god-like, view of the fighting and then being right there on the ground in the middle of it, that affected him so profoundly.  The Chinese invasion of Korea was massive (250,000 troops), extremely brutal, and overwhelmingly violent.  Korean civilians fled the Chinese onslaught as the Americans fought desperately to at least slow down the invaders.  Once the troops reached the harbor at Hungnam, they formed a perimeter and held off the attacks of Chinese while almost 100,000 civilian Koreans were evacuated on US Navy ships, then all supplies and equipment were loaded onto LSTs. Nothing was left behind.  Finally, the American troops were evacuated under the protection of naval gunfire, including the massive cannon of the battleship Missouri.  When all were embarked, Navy demolition teams blew up all the harbor facilities in a series of massive explosions that rocked the ships still in the harbor.

Jeep blown up by Chinese artillery.  One killed, three wounded.

Bombed train burning in Pyongyang.

The living walk, the dead ride.  US troops retreating.

Dead mortar platoon sergeant killed by Chinese arty.

Dead American GI's pet dog refuses to leave him.

US "Long Tom" artillery fires on approaching Chinese.

US Army howitzers ring Hungnam perimeter continuously firing on Chinese

Captured US soldiers, hands tied behind their backs, executed by the Chinese.

American GI captured by the Chinese, hands tied behind his back, executed and left along the road,.

October!

 

Bury My Heart

I have fallen in love with American names, 
The sharp names that never get fat, 
The snakeskin-titles of mining-claims, 
The plumed war-bonnet of Medicine Hat, 
Tucson and Deadwood and Lost Mule Flat.

Seine and Piave are silver spoons, 
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn, 
There are English counties like hunting-tunes 
Played on the keys of a postboy’s horn, 
But I will remember where I was born. 
   

I will remember Carquinez Straits, 
Little French Lick and Lundy’s Lane, 
The Yankee ships and the Yankee dates 
And the bullet-towns of Calamity Jane. 
I will remember Skunktown Plain. 

I will fall in love with a Salem tree 
And a rawhide quirt from Santa Cruz, 
I will get me a bottle of Boston sea 
And a blue-gum nigger to sing me blues. 
I am tired of loving a foreign muse. 

Rue des Martyrs and Bleeding-Heart-Yard, 
Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman’s Oast, 
It is a magic ghost you guard 
But I am sick for a newer ghost, 
Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post. 

I shall not rest quiet in Montparnasse. 
I shall not lie easy at Winchelsea. 
You may bury my body in Sussex grass, 
You may bury my tongue at Champmedy. 
I shall not be there. I shall rise and pass. 
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.

~ Stephen Vincent Benét 

 

Shall We Dance?

 In a normal state of mind, you are always thinking a little bit ahead, sometimes quite far ahead, as at the same time you are thinking a little bit in the past, sometimes quite deeply into the past.  But you scarcely notice the present.  It's constantly racing past anyway.  Is it now...or now...or now...or...?

Dancing places you in the moment.  It's the spell of the sensuous.  Neither past nor present exist.  Only now.  Only this instant.  You are intensely aware of yourself at this moment.  You have lost yourself in the eternal present.  

Plus it's fun.

“Dancers are the athletes of God.”
  ― Albert Einstein

A cold earth wanderer

 

She reminds me of me when I was her age, and the people I knew then.

I traveled through a land of men,
A land of men -- and women too --
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth wanderers never knew.
 ~ William Blake

Guardian Angel, first broadcast by CBS Radio Radio Mystery Theater on July 11, 1978.

The old life fades

 I dropped by a little town, population 400 according to the "Welcome to Shelbyville" sign, to mail a letter at the post office, the only operating business on the main street. The town, which had survived the Great Depression intact, was staggered by the 2008 economic crisis and was only just beginning to recover when the Covid thing hit.  That killed it.  
Anyway, as I was walking by an empty store that I had noticed was being renovated, which piqued my curiosity, a light-brown-skinned man in a huge turban stepped out the door.  I smiled and said good morning, expecting to exchange a few friendly words and maybe learn what was going on.  But he looked over my head and past me, not deigning to acknowledge my existence.  My greeting lingered on the silent air and died forlorn. 

I went with my mother to visit relatives in the next county and on the way back we stopped at a non-franchise, old-fashioned burger joint.  The roadside sign advertising it said, "Open every day since 1942.  Try our garlic fries!"  We placed our order at the window and then sat at one of the picnic tables out back under a shade tree waiting for our meal to be brought to us.  There was a mosquito coil on the table and a book of matches, so we lit it and watched the smoke curl up in the still air.  A woodpecker hammered away nearby, but we couldn't spot him. 
While we were waiting, we saw the girl who had taken our order dash out the back door to a vegetable patch, pick a head of lettuce and a couple of tomatoes and dash back inside.  A few minutes later she brought us our burgers, served with the freshest lettuce and tomato toppings anyone every got.  And she apologized for having taken so long.  I felt like asking her to sit down and join us, but other customers arrived and she headed back inside, wiping her hands on her apron.  The garlic fries were good, and, noticing potato plants in the garden, knew they were made from the freshest potatoes.

While visiting the relatives that morning, my mother's aunts, still spry though they would never see 90 again, and a cousin, I sat quietly in an ancient overstuffed horsehair chair and listened to them talk, once in a while taking a sip of my Jackson's English Breakfast Tea and nibbling on a homemade English muffin served with Frank Cooper's-brand marmalade.  I looked around for Paddington Bear.  You would think these folks were FOB Limeys, but their most recent ancestor to have lived in Albion would have been born in the middle of the 17th century, a Quaker who took up William Penn's invitation to escape the C of E thugs and make a home in Pennsylvania.

A lot of the conversation consisted of mentioning where someone lived, or had lived and necessitated directions to explain where that was.  But to me most of the descriptions meant nothing, nor did the names of the people. 
"She was a Bright and she married that Schoonover fellow who came up from Scott County to work for the Parker ranch.  That was before old man Parker got throwed busting broncs and kicked in the head.  They built that house up on Gregg's Hill just past the old Dodge place.  To get there you'd have to drive the road out of town that goes past Hixenbaugh's store -- oh, that's right it burned down...when was that? My land, that would have been the spring after the flood that washed out the riverside park...I think that was 1988.  Anyway, you take that road and when you come to where the Sinclair Gas station that the Frasers had used to be, slow down and look for a side road on the left that goes down into a hollow and crosses the creek.  There used to be a bridge...no, the bridge I'm thinking of went to the old Tussing ranch. But the bridge is long gone and nobody lives at Tussing's anymore.  Jack Currance's youngest bought the grazing rights and ran cattle on it until he got run over by that Jane Wiles.  She said a bee flew in the window and she was swatting it away and never saw him.  Then the bridge washed out the winter the A&P closed.
"What was I saying?  Oh, yes. There was never a bridge where I'm talking about, you just have to hope the water is low enough to get across.  You'll know you've driven past the turn-off if you come to where the old roadhouse used to be at Parson's Corners.  You know the one, where your Aunt Amelia, home from the state normal school for a visit, met Arthur and he told her he was going to marry her and she said he was the freshest man the Lord every made.  But he did marry her.  It burned down the day my father bought the Hudson.  Grandmother hated that car.  She could never get in or out of it without help. So he traded it for the Studebaker convertible that your great uncle Oliver taught me to drive in.  He  froze to death along with the rest of the crew that winter when the locomotive he was driving got stuck and the rescue engine did, too.
They all froze when they burned up all their coal.  They found Jim Hazlett's body four miles from the tracks, trying to make it to Somerfeld's ranch, they figured. It got down to 60 below zero that month and it didn't rise about 30 below for more than a week and never above zero for the whole month. Jim was John Hazlett's only son and he took it hard and turned to drink and wrecked his car down by where...."
And on and on.  It was hard for me to keep awake, the voices fading into the sound of bees and hummingbirds buzzing around the roses planted all about the house, their scent wafting through the open windows, an uncertain light breeze fluttering the curtains now and again.  Half asleep, I heard a cow lowing and a dog barking in the distance.I must have dozed off for a few minutes because I had a vivid dream about a swarthy man in a turban bursting into the room and ordering us all to get out, the house now was his, as was all the land and we no longer belonged there.  I asked where we should go and he said nowhere, we belonged nowhere and no one wanted us anywhere.

On the drive back, I asked which was the relative who had been shot and never knew it. I had a vague memory of such a person that our visit to the old gals had dredged up.  "Oh, you must mean great-great Aunt Louise," my mother said, and I wasn't sure if the "great-great" referred to her relationship or mine, but I didn't interrupt her to ask as she told the old story to me again.  It seems that in the early 1900s -- my mother thought it was 1909 but wasn't sure -- multiple-great Aunt Margaret, who was heavily pregnant with Louise, was alone at her ranch house just before fly season, a time when all the men would go off to cut and brand the new calves, when the dogs began barking and she heard the horses in the corral kicking up a fuss. Fetching the .44-40 Winchester from above the fireplace, she stepped out onto the porch to see what was going on.  Three men were dragging tack out of the stable and saddling the horses, who were not cooperating with these strangers.  Margaret shouted at them to get away from her horses.  Instead of doing so, at least one of the men drew his pistol.  Who fired first is lost, but a gunfight ensued in which Margaret shot and killed all three men, while taking a bullet in her abdomen.  Rifle against pistol at about 70 paces.  No contest, especially when the woman wielding the rifle was used to dropping running coyotes at greater distances than that.
Fast forward, as they say, many decades into the future and the baby in mommy's tummy that savage day is an old lady who tripped and fell heavily and was taken to the hospital emergency room, where she was X-rayed to see if she had broken any bones.  Fortunately she had not, but the X-ray technician discovered something curious in her hip bone, called in her doctor, who examined the X-ray with some puzzlement.  Then, as required by law, he notified the police, for on the X-ray, clearly visible, was what appeared to be a .32 caliber bullet embedded in her hip bone.  Louise swore she had never been shot in her life, the idea was absurd, and her relatives backed her up.  But the bullet was real and it was there, although clearly she had been shot some time ago.  Thinking and thinking, she finally recalled having vaguely heard about her mother being shot by horse thieves before she was born.  It was the only possible time Louise could herself have been shot, when her mother was still carrying her.
I remembered being shown the newspaper clipping about the incident, the writer treating it as amusing proof that those of pioneer stock were too tough to be killed, and visiting the old ranch on a trip home when I was 10, only an old man caretaker living there, a former cowhand, too busted up from a life of hard work to make a living anymore, allowed to finish out his days there, sitting and rocking on the front porch, refilling his pipe with Prince Albert tobacco from time to time, smoking thoughtfully and telling the occasional visitor about how things were in the old days when there was nothing but wind and tumbleweeds, rattlesnakes and coyotes, thunderstorms and wild horses, and a determination to make something of the land, tame it and make it useful, just as you did the mustangs and the few abandoned feral cattle that dotted the gullies and hillsides, reminders of a past failed attempt to gentle a hostile and unforgiving Mother Nature.
He recalled the incident, hearing the distant gunshots out there on the branding grounds, faint but unmistakable in all that silence, and the men leaping to their horses and racing for the ranch house.  As he told us of that day, he led us over a rise and down into a small coulee, walking slowly, favoring his left leg.  He pointed to some water-worn rocks, barely protruding from the soil.  Three graves.  Unmarked.  "Lost souls," he said.  "God knew who they were but no one else ever did."

 

The day

 There's been a change in the feel of the air, autumn is coming.  The misty mornings, the afternoon breeze, the color of the sky, the chill in the shadows, the red tinge to the leaves of the maples all proclaim it.  It makes me sad to see another summer go.  How very many I've let pass without notice.  How many more will I have?  For all I know, this could be my last.  Or I might have another 50.  But even 50 is such a small number.  I tell myself I should make each day count, accomplish something, enjoy, be aware, be thankful for life.  I try.  But inevitably each day is consumed by routine, by the usual demands that take up time and attention and suddenly I notice the shadows stretching toward the east, and glancing at the time, I am dismayed to see it is already past 5 o'clock.  Where did the time go?  And I still have so much to do.  Well, that's life, too, isn't it?  At least at this time of year there are still hours of daylight left at five; it's only late afternoon. 

Often, I don't eat lunch -- no time -- but I've come to appreciate the ancient advice to eat a hearty breakfast.  It will take you through the day.  And so I do.  And so if I miss lunch I don't really notice, and may not eat until sunset, often dining after everyone else has, bathed in the red rays of the setting sun, supper finished, the dishes washed and put away, the leftovers in the fridge awaiting midnight snackers.

When El Jefe eats alone, he stands in the kitchen beside the sink and often doesn't even bother to take his food out of the pans, but I set a place at the dining room table and eat just as if others were present.  

I like to help make breakfast for the working men of the ranch and I like serving them and bantering with them as they stoke up on energy to manhandle the day.  And can they eat!  A typical breakfast consists of corncakes or buckwheat cakes served with butter, maple syrup on the side, topped with however many eggs requested. There are serve-yourself plates piled high with biscuits, hashbrowns, refried beans, grits, fried steak, spam, ham, link- and patty sausages, bacon and fried tomatoes, as well as tureens of gravy, pitchers of orange and grapefruit juice and whole milk.  There are also servings of peach and rhubarb cobbler, apple and cherry pie, as well as cinnamon rolls, cake and raised donuts, strudel, bear claws and other pastries, all homemade, of course. And, also of course gallons of coffee.

For the men who won't be able to get back to the cookhouse for lunch, we prepare sandwiches and sides and thermoses of coffee.  The men request what sandwiches they want as well as what else they'd like to have, and it's a pleasure to make it for them, taking care with each item to insure it will be fresh and tasty, as well as filling.

While I'm serving the men, they call me darling or honey or sweetie.  "How about some more coffee, honey, and can you reach me that plate of hashbrowns?  Thank you, sweeheart!"  The sexism is just horrible, horrible, I tell you!

This is all over and done, the men gone, the tables cleared and the dishes washed and put away, before sunrise.  Then I go back to the house and see to things there, rousting the rug rats and house apes, seeing to their wants and needs, seeing they eat a healthy breakfast, typically oatmeal with raisins and walnuts with a dusting of nutmeg, whole-wheat toast with preserves, and dishes of fresh strawberries, blueberries or blackberries. peaches, pears or apples, depending on what's ripe.  Then they are off to a half-day of summer school at the ranch school -- yes, it's painted red and, yes, it's just one room, and it was built when Grover Cleveland was president.

Then it's time for my work day to begin....  If I get to bed before 2am, it's a miracle. I do get tired.  But I always find a little time to enjoy myself, tinkle out a tune on the piano, dance to some old records, read, or just doze off wherever I am, like a cat in a cozy spot.

Good times

 I'm not much of a bar-goer because I'm not much of a drinker, but I like the ambience of some bars -- those with a personality and a history and a dedicated clientele. 

The Horse and Cow on Marine Corps Drive in Tamuning, Guam, is one of my select-few favorites.  I used to live within walking distance and often dropped by of an evening just to imbibe the ambience and chat with the bubbleheads. I had a good friend from the Frank Cable (AS-40) who I would hang out with there, nibbling bar snacks and watching the slow-motion riot taking place all around us.  Sometimes civilians or tourists who had heard of the joint would come in, then later complain of the poor service they received. But the bar is not really for them, it's for the Navy and sailors get first priority.

Everything is not

 

 "Have you ever felt depressed?  What a foolish question -- who has not?  But the depression we are concerned with is an unhappiness that seems to descend from nowhere, enshroud us for no apparent reason, and plunge us into a despair as to who we are and what we are doing here and why we are doing it, even whether we are alive and awake or simply asleep and dreaming the whole strange and sorry affair.

"Have you ever felt that there is a beautiful life that you are not leading, a wondrous world you cannot see, a peace and contentment that have somehow eluded you, and have you wondered where the fault lies?  Is it with you or is there no such life, no such world, no such state of being, no such peace or contentment anywhere at all?"   

 "That's what I want: the absence of everything, a place where there's nothing."

"Waking and Sleeping," first broadcast by the CBS Radio Mystery Theater on June 29, 1981.