DEAD ENDS

 Or as Mother might have said, 

"Well wishing zombies..."                    

"A dead-end street is a good place to turn around."  ~ NAOMI JUDD       

As always, unapologetically unedited.

Dearest Reader...

A series of letters addressed to me was received by the post office, here, at Saratoga, Wyo., today. As I've been under the weather (and indeed under the ground) for a long while now, I haven't sought to retrieve them. I did read most of them - just not in the usual or conventional way one might expect. After all, even we dead have our ways. Folks often think we can't reach out to them, or that we don't know what their lives are like, and well, they're just wrong. Of course, we do. Weren't we just like them once?  It makes no sense trying to tell them this, though. One must patiently wait for them to find out soon enough for themselves. (The truth is, I just read over his shoulder as he wrote.) 

Apologies. As usual, my old brain is getting ahead of my dusty self. (The air certainly is a bit thin in here.)

These particular letters come from 'one of mine'  - a great-grandson out in California. Now I have done my best to reply to him, but it's not easy writing upside down even from the spiritual world while lying under the soggy piece of pine that covers the box of one's earthly remains. Truth be told, I'd much rather be enjoying some of that eternal slumber the preacher man from Rawlins promised when they lowered me down in.

Nevertheless, the arrival of his letters and his urgent need for an unfamiliar yet friendly ethereal voice tells me that I can, at least for the moment, wake up and clear my head for a bit to hear what he's trying to say. He wants to tell me that he is going to go back to someplace called FaceBook, and he's looking for some advice.

I wrote back that 'FaceBook' seemed an odd name for a city, but told him I was unfamiliar with many of the new settlements out West. I asked him how he would travel there, and if it was anywhere near Dog Town, Death Valley, or Angel's Camp? I wrote that I was pretty sure his grandma and my Mrs. had a sister out that way. He seemed flustered trying to explain exactly where it was to me and finally just said it was "someplace in between all three." 

Well, I had to scratch my skull at that.

I told him I was certain that he would be fine 'at' Facebook and asked him again if we had family or friends out that way. He got a funny look on his face and said that this was sometimes part of the problem. I asked him what he hoped to do there. Did he want to settle and farm, or maybe go into business there at FaceBook? There are a lot of new fan-dangled things out these days to buy and sell like real nice boot polish or even great big new things like 'lectric washing machines. 

I told him that maybe he could start up a business buying or selling things like that there, and may be open up for business close to the FaceBook's City Hall? He only laughed; he said didn't want to get scammed for something out of the back of some old rusty Subaru at midnight in the Wal-Mart parking lot. I guessed he must have a pack mule called "Sue" or a girlfriend named Miss "Sue Barreau" who isn't trustworthy after dark. I told him there's always gonna be carpetbaggers you had to watch out for. I said too that "Walmart" sure seems like a funny name for the City Hall.

I asked him if he expected to meet new people or make new friends. He said the last time he visited there he got caught up with a gal who turned out to be a cat-fishing presidential assassin. He said that the FBI had even come to his house and questioned his wife and to his work to question him over his associations with her at FaceBook. I told him I couldn't remember much about Leon Czolgosz of John Schrank, nor even good old Garfield or McKinley for that matter anymore, and that he sure wasn't the first man to fall victim to the charms of some redhead looking for someone to buy her supper. I told him chances were that she'd end up just like them - forgotten in their coffins. He really shouldn't let it bother him all that much if some woman was a better fisherman than he was neither. After all, we all have our strengths. If he hadn't done anything wrong, well then, God and his wife would forgive him, and well, maybe next season the fish would too.

                             

                               

He kept talking about the Bolsheviks or the Chinese influencing what he called the algorithm and trying to make you vote for someone or believe in something that might or might not be true. He kept saying how something called "AI" was gonna make us see things that weren't really there. I told him I didn't know what no damn "AI" or what no algo-reethum was but that there was always gonna be some Houdini in the crowd and believing everything you read or was told has always been a fool's business.

I told him it was like what my own dad had always said - "Put that algo-reethum back in your pants boy "a-fore" it gets you into trouble." 

Think for yourself despite yourself.

He wrote on with a lot more curious statements, and I admit, it caused the dust to swirl around in my head trying to figure out what he meant. He said that he was afraid that being back at FaceBook would mean that he'd just end up getting stuck "in the middle." He said that sooner or later he'd be trying to slow down some war of comments between any combination of his Woke-tree-hugger-karma crystal-loving folk-friends whom he loved dearly and those of his Q'anon-Flat-Earther-Bleach-and-Ivermectin-injecting-Robert.E.Lee-Statue-Believing friend-folks who he loved dearly too. He was afraid of getting stuck in between those two sides each yelling that "only they was the only ones right." 

He said that sooner or later each of them would draw a line in the sand that he was expected to cross (or not cross) one way or the other. He was afraid that (Lord help him) if he said the wrong thing when they went to show off a picture of their new baby kittens or barbecued briskets, kids, or guns, or some dead fish they caught, or if he questioned absolutely anything they said or believed to be true about Aliens and Roadkill - that he'd just get beat up and verbally abused over something he called jack-shit.

He said he was afraid of being called out on just about anything, or worse, about somehow mistakenly calling some talented old man in a silly dress "He" or asking why everyone seemed to have concepts of "diversity and inclusion" that necessarily meant excluding someone else.

He wondered if it would be safe for him to volunteer any comments about the merits of absolutely any book selection, from Plato's Dialogues to Dr. Seus to 1984 and Huck Finn, or maybe even All Boys Aren't Blue without being harangued to death by one side or the other?                 

                                                        

                                        

Or was he just required to light somebody's match?

He didn't think he could do it. Light the match that is.

He remembered that his momma had always taught him that all books are good. How else are you gonna learn how to think for yourself? She'd told him. 

All I could say as I rolled over in my grave that day was that not much had changed in the world since I'd left. It sure seemed like this town called FaceBook must be a pretty small place, and I could see why that great-grandson of mine was reluctant to go back or to say Hell or High Water around those parts. I could see even from my dark vantage point that if one wasn't careful in those parts you'd be apt to get lost out on the range or end up with some strange red-haired woman of ill-repute trying to take you fishing or do in some president when all's you wanted to do was to try out a little bit of that Golden Rule Stuff. Lord help you if you were defending "someone else's somebody or somebody else." Hell in that place, just thinking for yourself could be a problem.

All I could say to the kid was, well, Good luck there now, y'hear.

And then, leaving word at the post office that yes, I'd read his letters, and sending off the thoughts from my own, I turned over and went back to sleep. 

Better him than me was all I could think.

Return to sender, kid. 

All the best.

Much love, Granddad.

SUNDANCE AND THE CAVEMAN

    

"Herman and me" circa 1977

"And the sons become the fathers and their daughters will be wives,

As the torch is passed from hand to hand,

And we struggle through our lives,

Though the generations wander, the lineage survives,

And all of us, from dust to dust,

We all become forefathers by and by..."

~ Dan Fogelberg

~

As always, unapologetically unedited.

And yes, in case you were wondering, "family history" takes on many forms in the telling.

Part One: The Caveman 

I'm a firm believer that old age doesn't exist. In fact, if vital records are to be believed, we are nothing but varying degrees of motion captured; all of us being grounded at some place and at any particular moment in time. These moments are in a constant state of "becoming." They lead us back to our respective spiritual caves where we watch the shadows of our life's images flicker again on the cave wall... Duh, Jeff...

They are who we are. 

These flickers of light are the elements that allow us to complete whatever lesson we were supposed to learn before moving on to the next. Sometimes those lessons, like those who traveled through "it all" with us, tend to get lost along the way.

Do you ever feel the need to pay homage to your past? Or are you one of the lucky ones who never has to look back? You know, that whole "no regrets" thing. For me, that's always been bullshit. I like looking back. You know, looking back to those crazy halcyon days of memory that compromise the core (or the layers) of who you are. Lately, I have found a need to return (somehow) to the fold of these things. It could be because there are fewer years left by which to do so. Maybe because the old ghosts have a way of reminding us that they're never really gone. 

I discovered this the other day and also once again recently a week or so before. (God, I hope that made sense...) My "discovery," indeed my homage came in the evening news when a television broadcast cited some altercation on "Campanile Street." For some reason, the name of the street resounded in me like someone had struck a gong. "Campanile Street" isn't too far away; it is a street in a neighboring town close to where I live. It was a name I had forgotten - or rather one I hadn't heard or thought of in years. Instantly, I was taken aback, and really washed back into the foundation of who I am, where I came from, and the people who've traveled with me. 

It was then I remembered one certain evening and other happy times on that street whose name I had years ago. At least until just the other day when like some lost radio transmission from outer space, I was reminded of the "who" and what it meant to me. I immediately yelled to my wife, "Honey, that's where Herman lived..."

Herman. My friend. An all-around great guy. The guy who I'd gone camping with, barbecued with, worked with, had helped me build a fence with, and had given me a crazy ass drunken bachelor's party causing me to dress up as a caveman - yeah, that Herman.  

It was the 1970s. He was a friend I'd lost contact with years and years ago. Jolted by memory, and by the fact that of that street's name... and well, let's face it by the fact that I'm probably running in auxiliary years if not on battery power I felt an urgency to find Herman - if only to say, "Hey, remember when," not to mention one giant "thank- you" for so many things..."

OK, Maybe not the caveman suit. (Wink!)

I was too late. An all too-quick Internet search revealed that Herman died more than several years ago. He'd gotten sick. He'd left behind a beautiful family and a great life. How could I not have known this? Yes, I had lost touch with him thirty years ago, but wasn't I always going to get around to calling him up? Wasn't I always going to get around to reminding him about that fishing trip we'd gone on where we didn't catch a fish for dinner but the bugs caught us instead. 

Why had I waited so long? Why hadn't I tried? 

Unsettled by this, that is the loss of my now long ago friend playing out against a mental backdrop of cheating uncertainty and my own behavior in neglecting the gratitude towards those we owe and who've traveled the road with us - well, I felt a wee bit lost. I didn't know what to do. How do I resolve this in my mind?

I placed the usual "electronic flowers" on his "electronic gravesite." I suppose if I still smoked I would have lit an "e-cigarette" and had an "e-beer" to remember him by. Gross. What a shit hole we live in, right? I mean maybe he'll know that I "e-stopped" by? Maybe his family would know...His kids were all grown. His wife moved on... What could I do? I guess I needed to assuage my shitty conscience. I needed some closure. 

  Above: At the lake - Herman's old truck.

I decided to reach out to his son. It felt way too stalkerish to me and maybe it was. Yet for some reason, my need to acknowledge Herman's life to his family and my gratitude for him in my own overruled my sense of decorum to just let things be. Nobody ever said I had good sense. Plus I'm old now...so anyone that doesn't like it...well you know what we all say to that...

So I found "Herman's boy," now a truly successful grown man with a family of his own, and I wrote on some social media wall, "I knew your dad..." It was such an old man's move. Kind of pathetic in a way - but with hopefully an "understood side" of sweet geezer nostalgia.

At first, there was no response. 

(I mean can you blame the kid???) Geezer alert.

Then, as if the veil between worlds began to lift, I heard back, 

"How did you know my dad?..."

It's been a slow-going process - but a good one. I've found a way to (hopefully) share a few pictures and (hopefully) not overshare a few of my memories of Herman with Herman's boy. I know it's been a lot of years. I know that Herman's been gone a while now. I'd essentially lost contact with Herman before the young man was born. I sure as Hell didn't want to offend him or scare him off. 

I just needed to honor my friend. I just needed to tell his son what he already knows and that is how very proud his father would be of him. The young man doesn't need this - at least not at the level I do. It's just my way of bringing it all home - for me - and of remembering a great friend from a long time ago. It's that moment in time when the sons become the fathers. 

  

Rest in peace, Herman Wanner. You were a good man. YOU WOULD BE SO PROUD OF YOUR SON.

This Caveman won't soon forget you.

Part Two: Sundance

Almost concurrently, I found myself pulled back in time again. This time the year was 1990, and I was sick. Well, I wasn't so much sick as I had had an operation and was laid up for a couple of weeks recuperating. I worked in the automobile business, and anyone familiar with that treacherous trade can tell you that have to be pretty f'd up to get a damn day off let alone a couple of weeks to repair yourself from surgery. If they give you the time off (at least in my case) it just means that they are saving the work for you for when you return. Nothing like stacks of bad credit car deals or f'd up auto leases to await your re-entry into the world of auto business shenanigans, right?

At the time the dealership I worked for (which truly was one of the most honest ones around) had hired a sales consultant. His name was "Brad" - and he was WAY bigger than life. Oh, he wasn't "bigger" in the physical sense but he was loud and forward and brash and ambitious and he had a slogan that he wanted to infuse into all of our "auto dealings" with the customers purchasing cars and the banks who would (hopefully) give us a loan for that car.

 His slogan and required mantra was:

 "I'll be preferred..."

It's hard to describe the purpose of the slogan. Its ultimate goal was to get the customer to repeat that mantra back to you as you (unbeknownst to the customer) jammed them (or the bank) into purchasing overpriced items and products he or she didn't need. It was the ultimate in near sleight of hand forced consumerism by effectively increasing a desire for the product and convincing the customer of the product's so-called value - and that "they" would be somehow "left out" (hence "not-preferred") if they didn't purchase said products...

Yeah, it was a lot. Brad was a lot.

For me, it was anathema. Frickin' poison.   

I didn't know who this guy Brad Bauman was and I didn't want anything to do with him. I was convinced that all his gaslighting, glad-handing, and extreme braggadocio were only going to get me fired. I either had to adapt and adjust to his way of thinking and his selling methods or I needed to get lost. It was a tough time for me ideologically and philosophically. That's one thing about the automobile business. You'd best leave all your philosophical consumerism behind and embrace your inner thief. If you don't you'll just get sacked one way or another. 

Brad was the consummate salesman.

And he was damn good at it.

The trouble was - I liked the guy. And believe it or not, he liked me. Talk about opposites.

Brad seemed to get me on some level and that his whole "I'll be preferred..." sales mantra was never going to play well for me - and indeed, that I would probably always be super shitty at it. I was. But that didn't stop Brad. Brad could see that I had other talents. Brad could tell that I was "relationship-based" and that if I had any strength at all in the car business it was in building relationships with banks to buy shitty loans for the folks that had been stuffed into cars they wanted but products and interest rates they didn't need (or deserve).

And I wasn't half bad at it. What can I say? I know how to grovel appropriately.

But believe me - there was so much more to Brad than any of this. He was a good dude who knew how to foster what was good or talented in anyone. He was supportive. He was encouraging. He gave a shit too - like when he knocked on the door of my home that day in 1990 to check on me and see how I was doing. Nobody else did. Nobody else gave a shit. They just wanted me back at work slogging through their shitty deals and trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.

To be fair, Brad wanted me back at work too. He was just smarter than the rest of them because he knew how to get things done. He knew that actually giving a shit bought more favors.

He could also give a shit about someone else without wanting something in return. He knew being genuine was always the best bet.

The truth is, Brad became my most unlikely advocate. 

He was also my most unlikely friend.

So this past week or so, that is about the same time I found out about Herman (see part one) I found out about Brad. Brad, like Herman, had died (unbeknownst to me) a couple years back. It was about then that I remembered that sometime around 1990 Brad had had a son.

 And that son's name was "Sundance."  Look at this great kid!          

  Crazy in the best way - Brad Bauman's son "Sundance"

As with Herman, I let the years carry Brad away from me. As with Herman, I found myself reaching out to a young person, the son of a man who'd been kind to me and a big influence in my life. I found myself reaching out to their descendants "extensions" of them living in the now and well past my time with their fathers from long ago. I found myself looking for Sundance.

I wanted to find Brad's son - I needed closure. I needed to "tell Brad" thank you - through his eldest, his first-born descendant.

Yeah, I know I'm a little weird.

So I reached out - and I found this great crazy passionate young man. I found a young man every bit and as genuine as his father was - the man I once knew. The man I once called my friend. 

I found Sundance.            

                                    Sundance at work...

He's a DJ in San Francisco. He does European techno-style music at different venues. What's been even better is that he's been so gracious to this old friend of his father from 1990. He's been kind enough to send me invites to some of his techno DJ performances in the city. Imagine that, a geezer like me hanging out with the techno music crowd. 

Maybe he needs to feel connected too.

Sundance is every bit his father's son. He's bright, passionate, driven, and compassionate. I am so honored to be able to speak of his father with him. I'm so honored to be able to be able to finally pay my respects to Brad even this many years later by making a respectful acquaintance of his son and his direct lineage.

Thanks for everything, Brad. Thanks for giving me a voice when nobody else cared to hear me or listen. Thanks for 1990! Thanks for letting me get to know your boy, Sundance. Thanks for letting me say goodbye.

Rest in peace dude. Our times were good!

☮️

So I ask myself, will someone care enough to reach out to me through my descendants when that day comes? Will I have done right?

Will how I lived my life matter to someone else? 

I wonder. 

WARD'S MOUNTAIN

    

“If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”

                                         ~ Nietzsche

Sometimes family history is nothing more than the continuity of good memories. Sometimes it's the people who've touched your life.

As always, unapologetically unedited. 

I.

The mountain watched over us. It watched me that day too, as sometime around my tenth year I sat on a bicycle on top of one of its many hillsides gathering my courage. The mountain watched with its usual solipsistic indifference as I spun the bike's pedals back and forth and waved to those waiting for me below. It was so steep! Everyone will be watching you! I felt frozen there at the top; my stomach roiled as I looked down the hillside. A sweeping vista of flowering almond trees spread out below me. The trees moved down the hillside and making me believe for a moment that I was far above the clouds. The hill protruded down and away from a place they called Mt. Diablo and down into Mitchell Canyon and to a place I called home. I lived at the bottom of its north end, and with that particular hill extending off the mountainside like the middle finger of some devil's offspring.

The mountain seemed to be asking me to tempt fate. Can you do it, kid? Can you go down the hill? The only thing I knew for certain was that I was afraid. However, like some acolyte in a rite of passage, I knew I had to meet the mountain's freefalling challenge. 

The mountain watched on silently adjudicating my fate. 

I was there that day with my best friend, Ward. Yes, long ago, in the days before there were ever my beloved friends at Huntington Beach, and long, long before there were ever my dear college alums from Santa Clara U., there was this kid named Ward. We met in the fourth grade when my family lived in Clayton, in the rural areas at the foot of Mt. Diablo - a mountain that has always somehow been present in my life. We were nine years old and he quickly became inseparable. We invented and spoke a secret language between us. We made horny kid "big boob" jokes about our fourth-grade teacher the Junoesque and titian-haired Mrs. Lackey. Together, we were mad for all things Man from U.N.C.L.E. Hell, it was, after all, 1965.

Indeed, Ward was the coolest. He was fearless. He had a bright and ascorbic wit that at even nine years old would leave you busting out laughing. Even my mom adored him. She and he would play this silly game that she was actually "Lilly Munster." It was a game that somehow endeared them to each other. For as long as I can remember he always called my mother "Lilly." 

And how is dear Lilly? He'd say. 

In a word, Ward was fun. 

                

     

My sister's and me circa 1965

Sitting on that bike at the top of the hill on the side of Mount Diablo I surely did not want to disappoint either him or myself. I knew I could do it. I was sure of it. He had gone first, successfully navigating the bike and steep terrain's treacherous downfall from the top of North Mitchell Canyon Road. Ward had taken that freefall bicycle ride down the hillside. Yes, I was sure I could do it. Ward had even lent me his brand-new bike to use!  He'd generously shared his new bike to make my flight both up and down from that hilltop. He believed in me. Seriously, Jeff. How hard could it be to ride up the long steep hill and then to fly down the hill daring speed and life to redeliver me safely to the bottom? 

                     

                      My best friend Ward 

Starting out, the handle grips on Ward's new bike were sweaty on my hands. I watched over my shoulder as my sisters, the red-haired girl across the street, along with Ward grew smaller behind me. I pedaled harder, and as fast as I could to climb that bike up the hillside. It was arduous. I strained against the grade with the wind in my face. I began to see all those almond blossoms fade to the next level below me. I had headed up higher, well past the houses of the families of the peculiar Connellys and the happy-go-lucky Cooks. I sped past those sneering bullies the Jenkins kids who lived catawompous to us. May they rot in whatever jail they ended up in. I even got past that massive chained-up barking dog on the corner in the Daugherty's yard. You know, the one I was convinced was going to eat me for sure. 

I could do it I thought. I could make the climb up the hill. I could climb the hill of Mitchell Canyon Road. Dang! It's all straight up! However, getting to the top was the easiest part. I would have to have faith to let the bike run free going downhill. I'd have to have faith that nearly without brakes I'd make it down that hill. If you put on the brakes you will crash, Jeff.  It felt like everyone was watching me. Besides all of this, Ward had lent me his bike to do it with. Not my old black Schwinn, but a really cool new three-speed.

He had faith in me. Hell, aside from him and the red-haired girl who lived across the street nobody had ever had faith in me.

Arriving at the top of the hill on North Mitchell Canyon Road I rotated my wrists back and forth on the grips trying to gather the courage. It was so steep! I felt my gut clench up. Well, he went before you Jeff so you know it can be done, right? I let go. I felt the bike catch the wind and speed up. I felt the grade. I whizzed past the upper houses at the top of North Mitchell Canyon. I saw the almond blossoms below me begin to move faster and close in. In the distance, I could hear the barking dog that still wanted to eat me. I could see the Conneleys's house and those stupid sneering Jenkins kids. I could make out my sisters, Ward, and the red-haired girl waiting for me at the bottom of the hill. I was flying. I was going soooooo fast!! I was free! I was doing it! I was flying down that side of the mountain!!!

And then I hit the brakes.

The bike spun, crashing me to the asphalt below me. I heard more than felt the bend of the metal as it went down, and as I went down with it. I managed to bring it down on the side of North Mitchell Canyon Road, not too far from the barking dog who grinned that he'd have me for dinner yet. I wasn't hurt. I was a little scraped up but I was okay save for my pride and save for realizing that the whole neighborhood including those shit-ass Jenkins kids had watched me eat it on the hillside. Nah, I was fine. But Ward's new bike? Well, it was broken big time. I had somehow bent the framework coming off the hillside. It couldn't be ridden home. I had ruined my best friend's new bike.

                   

My family's home in 1965 at the bottom of North Mitchell Canyon Road and at the foot of Mt. Diablo

Ward looked forlorn but he never said a word. Would he still be my best friend? Was he disappointed that he'd lent his new bike to his idiot friend to destroy? He never said. He just said a quick "I'd better get home" and limped that bike back up the hill on North Mitchell Canyon Road where he disappeared into the area up by Pine Hollow. "Lilly," my sisters, and the red-haired girl, watched on as he limped that new bike away. 

The Jenkins kids just sneered.

                                                                           *******

II.

It seems my family moved away not too long after that. And like friends do, we did promise to keep in touch. We were pretty good about it too even though my family had moved five hundred miles away and my parents soon divorced. Ward kept me in the mountain's loop; he let me know when a fire had tragically claimed our friend Cindy's life. She was a cool girl. Sweet really. I know that Ward had a crush on her. I don't believe he ever really got over her tragic death. The idea that someone could firebomb a house full of sleeping children didn't make any more sense now than it did then. 

Ward kept me informed about the comings and goings of his brother and sisters. The Steiners were a wonderfully dysfunctional bunch, somehow always at war with each other but far more interesting and colorful than my bland puritanical Record family ever was. Still, the years began to slide by us and distance took its toll. We weren't nine years old anymore. 

                            

Ward pursued his passion which had always been - flying. He had always liked small planes even when we were kids. Even at nine years old he knew all the differences between planes, like Cessnas and Pipers, and Beechcrafts, and he loved small airport life. He quickly became a small plane pilot and enjoyed an immediate and polite career in aviation. He never strayed too far from the mountain though. 

That same mountain that watched over us the day of that fateful bicycle ride.

I can count the times I saw Ward after that. Life is soooo short when it comes to the time you get to spend with the people that matter. I saw him in 1972, maybe once in the 80s at his apartment by the airport, in 1993 at his folks house out on Morgan Territory Road, once about 1997 at a restaurant in Vacaville to catch up on things. The last time in 2006 - when I took my mom "Lilly" to see the old mountain again -  and to stop in to say hello.

Five visits in fifty or so years. I don't know if I feel cheated or lucky.

However, 2006 was a long time ago now. Eighteen years of middle age has gobbled us up and delivered us into our  Golden Years. I stopped hearing from Ward awhile back. He didn't reply to my calls or messages. Life moved on for all of us. Maybe he was finally done with me for wrecking his bicycle back in '65 on that hillside on North Mitchell Canyon Road.

III.

Did I mention how that mountain always looks out for me? It watches over me anyway - even now from where I live a hundred or so miles away. On a not-so-clear day, I often walk my dog up a trail here in Lincoln Hills where I can still see the mountain. From there I breathe in the air that flows through the Golden Gate and surrounds Mount Diablo. I can feel the almond blossoms in the air around North Mitchell Canyon and I can still hear the ghosts of the old toads that I surely kept as pets or wrongly killed, or the tadpoles I hunted from down by the creek there.

It's a haunting feeling to look out at that mountain sixty-plus years later. It is also a soothing one.'

  

The other day though it was May 4. As I woke up I thought, Hey, tomorrow the 5th is Ward's birthday. He will be sixty-nine years old. So like the idiot who flew Ward's bike down the side of that hill sixty years ago, I figured I might do some free falling and take a chance. What the heck could it hurt? I had an old phone number for Ward. I'd never actually spoken to him at this phone number - or at least not in eighteen years. So why not? I thought. Why not send him a text message. 

What would it hurt to not get a reply back? Hell, the phone number probably wasn't even any good anymore. It had been so long. However, I did hear back.

There was a reply.

He replied via text message that he would call me the following day in the late afternoon. I was so taken aback that he replied at all - that there was any reply at all - that honestly for a bit I wasn't even sure it was him. The text message said he had too much to tell me over a text - and that he had a gift that he wanted to send me. The text asked me to confirm my address for him. Was it really Ward on the other end of the text? 

Okay....???

A gift? 

Did I really reach "Ward Steiner" on my phone or had some .com that purchased his number a decade ago and was now trying to send me my "free" vitamin supplement "gift" through the mail. At that point, I didn't question it. I assumed that nobody was going to be calling me "on the 5th" and that I had just been text-pranked by some 21st-century Jenkins kid who was now selling Medicare supplements and sneering that I was still an idiot.

Yet the phone rang yesterday. It was Ward. 

It was amazing. It was joyous. It was 1965 and Mrs. Lackey's big boobs all rolled into one.

Ward was still my friend. Life had just gotten in the way.

We talked quickly and fast. It was as if there was just too much to say, too many quick remembrances. We talked about the fire that had taken Cindy's life, our families, and about how he and his wife rescued rabbits in the wild in need of help. He told me how he was sorry not to have contacted me when my mother died. He said he wrote a letter, but never mailed it, because he felt that anything he wrote just sounded trite. He was kind as he talked about his friend "Lillie."

He talked about "the gift" he is sending me. He told me he had found it at an auto show a couple of months back and that it "just screamed Jeff Record all over it." I was floored. I was flattered. The friend I hadn't spoken to in eighteen years remembered me enough to see something to get and put away for me as a gift??? I was humbled. ( He won't however tell me what it is - only that I will never guess it and that it's in the mail to me.)

I made him swear that it's not a lock of Mrs. Lackey's hair. Eeewww....

If nothing ever shows up I am still so grateful to even be thought of. 

Then he told me he was sick and I felt like I was falling down the hill on North Mitchell Canyon Road once again. 

Wtf??? Not Ward!

 

 Ward - 1993

We ended the conversation with promises to get together sometime soon. I sure hope so. We are old men now, running out of time. Since his call I have felt the foundation of my life shake. For Ward to be fighting for his health shakes me up. It eats at my core. While we don't always see each other or speak for many years at a time - just knowing Ward in my lifetime has always been fundamental to who I am.

I love him. 

Please great mountain, I  beg you, watch over him. 

☮️

SHUFFLE OFF TO BALTIMORE

                                            

Cecilius Calvert - 2nd Lord Baltimore

Warning: This blog post is straight-up genealogy. If you have no interest don't waste your time. No harm no foul.

As always, unapologetically unedited

     Family history has one enemy - time. I suppose you could say that it is a two-edged sword, that is the need "for time" to research, gather, and problem-solve things that occurred in our ancestral past. However, it is also that very "time" that unless we are diligent and very careful causes all of those things - the things we researched, understood, and yes even inherited - to slip away from us and back into the "unknown again." As they say these days, It can be a bit of a bitch.

So is speculation.

Reuben and Mary (Peek) Schooley

the parents of Hester (Schooley) Record

This happened to me just this past week when I needed to look at the Last Will and Testament of my great-great-great-grandfather, Micajah or (Micager) "Cager" Peek (1785-1854). I knew I had seen a copy of it someplace in my travels; I'm quite certain that I kept a photocopy of it that I inherited from Cousin Barbara back in the 1990s. However, when I went to look for it it was gone. I recalled that in our last move and in our necessity to 'condense" my genealogical work/research I had looked at Grandpa Cager's LW&T and thought, What do I need this for? When will I ever need to look at it? And like a thief in the genealogical night, "time" came and stole my copy of Grandpa Cager's LW&T. I am now back to square one in needing a document for verification -  one that I once had. It means that I will need to start over in tracking one down again - another copy that will (no doubt) just get lost again in the next down-sizing or Great Purge that follows after all of our inevitable demise.

   

My need for a copy of Grandpa Cager's LW&T wasn't so much about Cager but about his wife Millie. Cager's Peek family lines, while not excessively well documented show enough "leads" or anecdotal evidence to get you where you want to go in understanding that branch of the family. The Peeks of Virginia is where you eventually end up and Cager's father Jonathan Peake is a documented Revolutionary War patriot. They are a pretty great old southern family. I admit though, I have never had a lot of interest in studying the South. Because of my lack of interest here, I have let some of these families slide back into that deep well of time again. However, like all things karmic and genealogical, sooner or later "time" will make you eat your vanity and give you the need to take another look.

Now I should mention that Grandpa Micajah "Cager" Peek was a pretty cool dude - he served terms in the Indiana State Legislature:

     

This happened to me the other day when the algorithm on Ancestry.com "proposed" a possible father for Cager's wife and my four-time great-grandmother Mildred "Mille" Peek. Now before I get too far, I need to tell you that Grandma Millie's maiden name has always been "set down" as "Marrell." There are reasons why this is so but let me just say that her maiden name of "Marrell" has been in print since at least the early 1980s. It's a surname that has rolled copious family trees straight into a huge genealogical brick wall where it has sat (and been duplicated again and again ) for the last forty years or so - and all without a shred of proof.

              

Above image: The source of Mildred Peek's maiden name was based only on possibility and conjecture.

I ignorantly accepted Mildred Peek's maiden name as "Marrell" based on the records I inherited from my cousin in the 1990s. I knew that my cousin regarded "Grandma Millie" as a bit of a genealogical dead end or a "Marrell" problem that she could never resolve, extend, or identify, and, in truth, I accepted it. I watched too as over the last forty years the surname of "Marrell" got copied and pasted into numerous Peek/Schooley and auxiliary family trees to the point where if "Marrell" wasn't Millie's actual maiden name it had become so de facto. (I also watched various family trees call Mildred "Cynthia" - a name that appears to be that of her daughter-in-law) My cousin had accepted Mildred Peeks' maiden name as "Marrell" - likely from the published information/correspondence available at the time - and not actually any vital or other records. Remember: DOing genealogy in the 1980s was frickn HARD. YOu actually had to work for your answers and not just double-down on your Google searches. 

Yet like everything that was about to change.

  

Above image: My cousin Barbara's early 1990s family pedigree chart shows "Mildred (Marrell) Peek"

  

Above image: Mildred's daughter Mary (Peek) Schooley

You see, the other day the algorithm indicated that I had 48 (!!!) DNA matched to someone named "WILLIAM HORRALL." 

Who the heck is William Horrall?

These matches indicated that William Horrall was the likely father of Mildred "Millie" Peek.

    

Had it just been a typographical error that had caused Millie's name to be bastardized into a genealogical brick wall for the past forty years? It kind of looks that way. 

But really, could it be just that simple? 

Being a bit unnerved by my inherited mistake regarding poor Grandma Mildred I figured I'd better get to work and see what was out there. It didn't take me long before I came across an old county biography that seemed to paint well with what the DNA algorithm was telling me:

               

Above image: History of Daviess County Indiana..., 1915, page 589

Now this county biography was published in 1915. It was available to my cousin Barbara or the authors Jack and Evelyn Peek in 1985 - but it wasn't a readily available source. They would have had to stumble upon it at a library in Daviess County, Indiana. No Google search was going to reveal anything to anyone. Even now, with the proliferation of the maiden surname for Mildred Peek as"Marrell/Murrell" and reprinted in hundreds of family trees if I had seen this section of the Daviess County biographies (correctly) stating the name as "Horrall" - I would likely have moved past it and concluded that the name "Horrall" was the typographical error - and not looked back.

Finally, though, I can correct Mildred's maiden name to "Horrall" and possibly extend her family line for the first time in forty years to her alleged father William Horrall, and his wife Priscilla Calvert Houghton. After all, the 48 DNA matches along with the county biography confirm it, right?

Maybe not so fast.

As I mentioned above things aren't that simple. While it would be easy enough for me to say Eureka! I have found it and corrected the family line I have to consider some other big factors before doing so. 

The first one is that William Horrall and his wife Pricilla Calvert (Houghton) Horrall had no daughter named "Mildred."

                  

                     

Now quite conveniently, there is a space in between their children Thomas and Sarah that "accommodates" Mildred (born 1789) quite well - but this becomes conjecture. That the migration of William and Priscilla Calvert (Houghton) Horrall from Virginia to South Carolina and to Daviess County, Indiana is almost the exact same migration pattern as Cager Peek's parents lends some strong credibility that these families were at least on the same wagon train together.

And then there is that pesky problem of 48 DNA matches between myself and Grandma Millie's descendants and William Horrall's descendants.

The descendants match in the range of fifth to sixth cousins making it almost impossible for Grandma Millie and the rest of us not to be their kin.

Obviously, there's no easy solution here and only one heck of a lot of sifting to get done. It is possible that our Grandma Mildred (Horrall) Peek was the daughter of a brother (or uncle) of the William Horrall the DNA algorithm is trying to put into play. 

It's especially difficult when (this far) family trees show that Grandma Millie's mother would then be Priscilla Calvert Houghton Horrall - an alleged relative of Lord Baltimore. 

Believe me, this is a whole lot to unpack here and one heck of a lot of unproven speculation. BUT consider this - ONLY last week nobody really knew what Grandma Millie's true maiden name was.

It's got to make you wonder. Man, do I have some work to get done or what?

                        

Now how all this fits together (if at all) may take me another twenty years to figure out...

As I say though - I know more than I did just last week.

Believe me, thus far there's no proof of the "Lord Baltimore" connection - only a rumor in an old newspaper. Still, it beats a rumor of being related to one of the many actors who played "Bozo the Clown."

Lord Baltimore or Bozo the Clown

Seems easy, right?

Sadly, it's probably all bull hooey.

BUT - we did get Grandma Millie's maiden name out of it all.

Above image: "Grandpa" Leonard Calvert - Lord Baltimore's younger brother and, per the newspaper article above, our alleged ancestor.

(I'm sure you see my resemblance to Grandpa Lenny...)

Remember: Genealogy without proof is only fiction.

                             

Yikes. But a relative of LORD BALTIMORE??? 

Sounds good to me.

PEACE.

BURNT COOKIES

                                  Maxine 

Family history is often a simple study of frightened hypocrisy and our innermost insecurities. It is a study of select bigotries set amidst the self-righteousness of our own singular and lonely realities.

As always, unapologetically unedited

I.

(You only thought you were in the right - you like me - with our high and mighty sense of self-serving superiority and sense of absolute immunity from it all. What did others do before us? What did others think before you?)

*****

This is the story as it was never told.

An exhausted wind blew in from the kitchen window that day and across the countertop. A nearby stove belched hotly as if in agreement as she knelt to open the oven door. The air around her rustled; it picked briefly at a well-thumbed recipe circled on a page of the Press-Telegram. The recipe's page was floured and smudged where it was folded and lay slightly greased against the mixing bowl. Here it was greeted by a peanut butter-covered spoon that slid lazily toward the sink. Through that same window, she heard the rumble of trucks on the highway headed to the Port of Los Angeles. She smelled the trail of their exhaust as it infringed on the peanut buttery heat of the day.

Not far from the kitchen adults argued between "Adalai or Ike" in November, and sparred bellicose jabs back and forth like workers pitted against each other on the picket line. Kids in the other room played Cowboys and Indians save for the one or two that ran through the kitchen asking her Are the cookies ready yet?  She heard the dial chunk forward and the slap of canned clapping as Ed Sullivan introduced Topo Gigio on the television. Weren't the kids up too late? She hoped they'd all be gone soon enough, but the kids were out for summer so it was hard to say. Maybe later she'd get a chance to watch What's My Line? in peace. At least it would only be another few minutes before the next batch - the second batch - came out. 

The first batch had burned. Maxine wasn't quite sure what she'd done wrong - maybe the peanut butter was too old or too greasy, or maybe she hadn't measured the flour or sugar correctly. She knew that she should have used more lard but the recipe was all a bit muddled in her brain. She was, after all, quite ill. Her mind kept drifting to what would happen to her darling Kenny when she was gone. Those burned cookies had been just her easy excuse to escape for a moment the thought of her life and death, and the fact that like life and her body, the recipe had failed her. 

She heard her husband and the men arguing about wages at the Port, about the damn Communists, and about just giving up and going back home to where things were always better in Kansas. She heard the cackle of her three sister-in-laws and two Great Aunts, of her cousins' sons, and of someone else's mother-in-law's neighbor from across the street - all bitching or gossiping about this and that. They talked about playing Canasta or Bunko next Tuesday night and all pretended not to hear the hushed whispers from the men about how Bill Bess had taken the car's exhaust to himself in his closed garage last week. You know the doctors said he might try to do it again... She heard one of the sisters yell to her in the kitchen, Maxine do you know "Lucille" Bess - that poor dear?  

                         

                 

They talked about cutting back the pyracantha bushes and the Jap gardener who smiled all the time but did damn good work but who barely spoke English. She heard one of the men say, I think he smells like fish. She heard her neighbor's chortle and chaffe that there "was nothing but white kids singing and dancing like the niggers" on the TV programs anymore. She thought for a moment her ears would burst from all their babble. Did they not realize she was doing everything she could to just stay alive? She'd just got back from the City of Hope. 

She heard someone yelling at Jimmy to set his punch on the table and to take it off the television set before he knocked it over. She could hear someone asking her sister-in-law "Where has Maxine run off to?" and someone else grunt, "Well, she's in the kitchen of course trying to fix her damn cookies," they guessed.

Finally, the timer rang off. The smell of peanut butter and freshly baked cookies floated through the air. This batch was perfect. They were nicely formed and ever-so-golden brown with just the right texture and ripple effect. There'd be no mistake when folks bit into them that they were indeed the best peanut butter cookies anyone had ever made. She removed them carefully from the baking sheet, sliding them off gently onto the waxed paper and officially segregating them from their burnt brethren from the first batch. Maybe she should just toss the first batch out? They looked so tired. They looked so exhausted.

             

Maxine stepped back and admired her work. She shook her hands and rubbed her arms to get the blood to flow back into them. She tugged at her cooking gloves making sure they covered the marks on her arms from the disease. She rubbed at her hidden sores. She knew the sisters all watched her thinking that they or the kids might catch her disease if she didn't cover herself but they were too selfish or too embarrassed to say a word.  Could they? Could they catch it? After all, nobody really knew where she'd contracted it from. Was it at that hospital in Kansas City like she'd always told everyone it was? 

She wondered sorrowfully, but half smiling at the thought of it. Yeah, that would shut them up, she thought to herself. Maybe she'd ask Kenny to put some cream on the sores for her later. That would help. That would be perfect. This second batch of cookies was perfect too. For a moment she didn't feel so tired or so exhausted. And then her nephew ran through demanding, I want a cookie right now!

He was that good but bright and sometimes demanding kid. The boy was Kenny's first cousin but Kenny was so much older or so she thought. She didn't pay much attention to how all the kids were related to one another. There were so many. It seemed like they were all someone's brother or sister or niece or nephew's kid, or some half cousin of someone from back home. It all muddled her brain. Maybe the cortisone shots she had scheduled would help with that too?

Her mind felt jumbled up, sticky, and burned. For a moment, she couldn't tell the cookies from the sores on her arms. She could hear her sister-in-laws' laughing in the other room. The loud cackle of their laughter and cigarette smoke wafted into the peanut butter smells escaping from the kitchen. She heard one of them comment that her coffee was getting cold waiting for those cookies. She heard one of the sister-in-laws harrumph yet another tale about how she'd managed to get a good price on pork shoulder at the Value-mart after complaining to the manager that they still needed to honor a coupon expired from the day before. She would be nobody's fool that's for sure.

    

Maxine

"Jimmy, the cookies are for everyone," she nodded at him while hurriedly whipping the grease from her hands onto the kitchen towel. The recipe from the Press-Telegram fluttered in the hot breeze as if in some small greasy agreement.

"I want one now!" Jimmy howled in reply. "You let Robbie Sullivan and the Stubbs boy have punch before I did. I want a cookie before they get one. It's not fair!"

"Fine," she replied. She winced, looking over at her perfectly baked second batch of peanut butter cookies. Did she really want to disturb them - her perfect cookies? She felt the sores on her arms throb a bit like warning beacons at the port. She preferred to carry her cookies out en masse to the group of women in the other room. They were for everyone. She needed everyone to see that they were perfect. She needed everyone to see that she was perfect too. Still, there was Jimmy who wouldn't leave her alone. Oh, what harm could it do if she gave him just one? The sores on her arms throbbed. The cookies really were perfect, weren't they?

  

Then it struck her. The burned ones. Jimmy probably wouldn't even know the difference. Quickly moving in front of that perfect second batch and bustling her apron around in front of him she took one of the lesser burn-scared cookies and gave it to Jimmy. Who would ever know? The boy grinned in unsweetened delight as he ran off to brag to the others about his spoils. Then she gathered together the perfect ones, that second batch, and presented them like Betty Crocker might have. Then she walked them out to the back porch to share that perfection, to share them where the men watched outside from the late evening barbecue, and to where the other women and other children gossiped and played games, and to where they all descended on her and that second batch of simply perfect cookies like vultures on a peanut butter carcass.

Or so she hoped.

It was about then that she heard her sister-in-law's voice. Why did you give my son a burnt cookie???

And so it was as it was in the beginning...

                                                         *******

                "The Mistaken Man" 

We are each nothing more than Maxine or Bill Bess.

We are each never hearing anything more than the echo of someone else's cackling sister-in-law.

We are each all Jimmy more or less.

We are each that someone reaching for some grease-covered recipe.

We are each never anything more than burnt cookies put to the test.