Lives

WAR

+++In 1966, hanging out with strange people in Southeast Asia was normal for young Americans. That’s me in the truck, wearing the Aussie hat. I later commemorated this occasion by having a custom patch sewn onto the hat that read, appropriately, “Operation Eagle Sandwich.” The Americans wearing wide-brimmed western hats, we’ll call Dennis and Dave, and the serious man in the middle under a baseball cap can be Rudy. We were on a wild boar hunt. Oh, and somebody did shoot an eagle. I had breast meat, roasted over a bed of salt, with mayonnaise on white bread.

COLLEGE

+++“What?!”
+++The Dean of the College of Arts and Science at Ohio State University was startled to see me appear in his office bathroom mirror while he shaved. I shoved my transcript between the mirror and his face. “You told me I would flunk out the first quarter because I worked full time and went to school full time. I want to show you that I got all As.”
+++Not so hard, really. The university graded on a curve and I was an adult among kids fresh out of high school who were there because it was expected of them. I was there because I worked full time as a janitor to pay for the privilege.
+++The anti-war demonstrators welcomed me. One April morning in 1970, they had me pushing another vet in a wheelchair at the head of a line of unruly students. We crossed the wide green lawn of the Oval to where a wall of National Guard troops blocked the Administration Building. A guard tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I looked at his M-14 assault rifle and his gas-mask-covered face. “Excuse me, sir,” he said politely. “We’re getting ready to tear-gas the crowd and you might want to leave.” You learn more at a university than what is on the curriculum.
https://www.thelantern.com/2010/05/1970-protests-erupted-across-ohio-tear-gas-at-osu/

FAMILY

+++Somewhere between my first and third marriages, I married a second time and we had kids worth dying for. One day, a young couple was found dead only three houses away from where we lived. They had been tied up with coat hangers in their bathtub and beaten to death with a bowling ball. I lay in bed that November night in 1973, thinking about how best to protect my family and concluded that we had to get away from civilization.
+++About 4:AM, I woke my wife and gave her a cup of black coffee and two No-Doz pills before announcing, “We’re going to Alaska to live.” I resigned my job as a fabric store manager and we sent my brother a letter telling him, “Dear Ray, we’re going to Alaska to live. Here’s the key to our apartment, take what you want. Don’t tell Mom until we get there and call her.”
+++Wife and I and 18 month old son went to JC Penney’s that morning. I had a paperback titled, How to Build a Log Cabin In the Wilderness. We piled the counter with sleeping bags, ropes, a tent, lights and batteries, a couple of mess kits, axes with extra handles, and then I spotted a poster on the wall behind the counter. “JC Penney’s, Stores Coast to Coast, Including Alaska and Hawaii.” All of a sudden, my mental picture of Alaska changed to include streets, buildings, apartments! We took cash instead of goods. We were excited and enjoyed the next week, driving from Columbus, Ohio, to Vancouver, B.C. & up the Alcan Highway.
+++I went to work selling for Xerox Corporation and made more money than I expected because of the trans-Alaska pipeline boom. We had a daughter and bought a home in the suburbs of Fairbanks. It’s a great place to raise kids.

WRITING

Relax. It's food. The boar was donated and a Catholic charity used the meat to help feed the homeless.

+++There was no fourth marriage. The lady who’s lived with me for 26 years now thinks I’m not a good marriage risk. I love her, of course. Relationships are life’s musical chairs. At some point, you sit.
+++We met on the Internet in the early days of the world-wide-web. In 1994, Sierra’s INN, or, ImagiNatioN Network, connected people to their game site by long distant phone lines. We ran up phone bills of over $500 a month each. It made sense to move in together.
+++One of those things I told the lady early on to impress her was that I had published a book. True. But. An instruction book. OKAY, booklet. The Futhark Rune Oracle. At the time, I lived in Wiccan country, Manitou Springs, Colorado, at the foot of Pikes Peak on ground once held sacred by Ute Indians and recently reconsecrated by the local coven. A Wiccan Princess (her name may not be spoken) wanted instructions to go with the Nordic runes she sold to the Japanese. I spent a summer researching rune mythology. The book is authentic. And copyrighted. Still, I felt guilty. So, I wrote a novel dedicated to my lady. Penguin published it.
+++The Phoenix Diary is a young adult book because I expected my young grandchildren might read it. It is science fiction because, when I was their age, I assumed that by the time I was my age I would know the answers to life’s big questions. Not one to be thwarted by ignorance, I now make up the answers to life’s big questions in science fiction stories.

+++So there you have it. The first photo shows me on a wild boar hunt in 1966. The last photo shows me on a wild boar hunt a half century later. In between, it’s been full, strong lives. Even if I still don’t know what it all means.