Category Archives: Adventure

Jack wrote this in December, 2005:

Jack wrote this Dec. 24, 2005. I posted it  again  in 2020, and I’m aware that I’m repeating it here.

24 December, 1963

Dear Folks,
Christmas Eve is here, like so many others before it I suppose, and it’s wearing a black gown spangled by a thousand sequins and a deathly cold, second to none in my experience. I am in Seoul this week, or at least three days of it. My three-day pass started at 0600 today and ends 0800 Friday morn. I can truthfully say I will have a merry Christmas this year. It has been a truly unique year in many many ways, and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the whole world, even this Xmas, I wouldn’t have missed spending it here. It is a shame all GIs can’t be as happy here as I have, because if they were there would be an awfully lot of people enlisting and volunteering for the Land of the Morning Calm.

 Actually, when I open my mind enough to realize it, I am forced to admit that it doesn’t really matter what the environment, you can enjoy it if you force yourself to. It frightens me to open my mind to the Real Facts, even long enough to put it on paper, but Korea is really a pretty lousy rotten place, but I just don’t admit it, even to myself, and I don’t allow myself the luxury of not enjoying it, or being miserable, even on times like Christmas when everyone is obligated to be miserable. I feel almost guilty for being happy instead of wanting to blow my brains out. I am having a hard time convincing myself that I’m right and the world is all wrong. After all, what right do I have to be happy on a miserable occasion like Christmas. PEOPLE ARE FUNNY, you know?

Wednesday, December 25^th, Christmas Day, 1963, Seoul, Korea

I’m just lounging around, not really accomplishing very much or even trying to, for that matter. It is somewhat warmer out now, which doesn’t say much. The sun is shining, though. It doesn’t really seem like Christmas, — I can’t really place what is missing. The vendors are walking around the streets pushing carts and foreign announcements of their wares, while scissoring noise makers give tinny forecast of their presence. And life goes on.

 The Koreans are an odd people in that respect. Off through the distance amidst a conversation of nationals and among a flurry of alien phrases you can pick out the words “Merry Christmas.”
 A vendor has just come past the window selling dried octopus and I couldn’t resist the temptation. I bought an octopus for 20 Hwan (about .15) and said “Kajuo Shipsho Makkoli” which means “If you’ll get me some makkoli I’ll make it worth your while.” Makkoli is a Korean liquor that has an alcoholic percentage that is as variable as it is questionable. I am not sure it is alcoholic, but it is definitely depressant. Sometimes a little dab will do you, while at other times you can drink a gallon with only myopia as a result. It is the color of very weak chocolate milk, and has a taste that isn’t like anything a sane human being ever dreamed. It is I think made from fermented rice. A half-gallon costs .60 Hwan. Dried octopus has a pissy flavor that is very near to being flavorless, it is something like chewing dry rubber. The first time you try it, it is the furthest thing from desirable, but like makkoli, you develop a taste for it. The two go amazingly well together after you get used to the idea of the thing.

2300, 25 December, 1963

 Another Christmas draws to a close. It has been uneventful in any respect, except that it has been Christmas, and that, in itself, is self-sustaining, I suppose. The world is as you see it, and it sees you as you see yourself when you look in the mirror. Goodbye, Christmas Day 1963, it has been real. It is cold out again and the day is dying.
With love,

Purcell
Your Loving Son
PS Hoping you have all had a Happy Hornica and a Merry Xmas, too.

Old Jules, can a sensitive person be a police officer? and who would have better luck as a police officer, a people person, or a tough guy? since the job is to serve (people person) and protect (tough guy). I’m guessing its 50/50, but anyone else have an opinion?

Can’t be done. Nor an honest person. You need to be a person who wants the power to swagger a gun, the ambition to confiscate a lot of cash and product without putting much of it into evidence, and write tickets to people for burned out license tag lights.

Old Jules, do you trust the government?

I don’t even trust them to be the government.

Old Jules, if you were president,  how would you fix the economy?

Protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods beginning with appliances and graduating to heavy industry over a decade.
Institute FCC rules regulating political talk radio.
Instruct the IRS to grant broad margins of enforcement leniency involving cottage industries.
Until we rebuild a manufacturing base and begin producing products the economy can’t recover.

Old Jules, why do people stay “faithful” in marriage?

I was married to a woman I loved for 25 years. Happened she didn’t care for sex, so we had an agreement I could go with other women for sex so long as it didn’t interfere with my relationship with my wife. It worked 20 of the 25 years and it sure as hell wasn’t cheating.
When it quit working it was because I thought through all the pain my keeping on that way was causing husbands. And it would keep on causing pain for husbands because a rule of the Universe is that women ALWAYS eventually tell their husbands.
I decided I preferred to leave a woman I loved [eventually] over being the kind of man who had sex with the wives of other men.
Why does someone stay ‘faithful’? I’ve no idea. I have a lot a huge life experience full of women who didn’t. Roughly half the men in the US ought to be assuming their wives are stepping out on them. I don’t know what the other half ought to assume.

Old Jules, if you love someone and they don’t love you yet, how long will you wait for them?

It ain’t as though nature puts more males on earth than females. It ain’t as though there’s much special about the great majority of them that you won’t find in others. That being the case my personal time limit would be roughly 10.3 seconds.

Around 2003 I was writing the book.  I never got around to finishing it.   Maybe one of the reasons I never finished it was the fact Mchael Powell passed out of my life after Chapter 3.

Hi Michael (Ratso, from Midnight Cowboy, always seemed more appropriate, but you lacked his charm and virtue):

It must have been Veterans Day, you commented you didn’t understand why I was allowing you to hang around or some such thing.  You claimed you never understood what I saw in you.  I almost told you that night, after you’d flitted around Sky City and the streets of Albuquerque behaving like a lunatic, approaching one stranger after another trying to sell meth to them.

You,  persuading me that morning to take you; urging me to keep in there with you, almost begging me to allow you to continue.  I’d never before observed anything in that league for human folly.  You, a man out on bond for a couple of felonies, evidently manifesting the best behavior you could muster, were an irresistible experience for any writer worth his salt.

I never made any bones about the fact I’m a writer.  When we first met I was completing a book about the lost gold mine.  You sat in my apartment one night and read part of it.  When all the refinements on that were finished, you might say I was a writer all dressed up with no place to go.  I was always surprised you never made the connection.

The study of human frailty is meat and potatoes for a writer.  You dropped into my life as a voodoo-doll on a parachute.  You reminded me of a 1950s cartoon of a Tasmanian devil.  A sort of whirlwind energy creature dedicated to breaking anything breakable, and disrupting anything disruptable.

You are one of those rare, incorrigible folks incorporating the entire catalog of human vice and frailty, and showing none of the virtue, so far as I was ever able to detect.  You stayed in my life from March 1, until a couple of weeks after Veterans’ Day without much input from me, sponging, begging, stealing, banging on my door at all hours, and generally rebuilding my enthusiasm for the project whenever it flagged.

The name of the new book is, Zombies On Boogie Street, Methamphetamine In the New Millenium.  It’s all about blasters, pathological liars, rats, snitches,  thieves, sex-addicts, stupidity; people who shoot meth and people who believe they are possessed.  Generally, in short, about the low-life scum bottom-feeders who choose to make meth their major goal in life.

You inspired a book, and you earned a major piece of it.

Three chapters, so far, although your part isn’t really finished yet.  I expect the Michael J. Powell ones will be the centerpiece.  There’s nothing in the book I didn’t see for myself, if it’s stated as fact, or that you didn’t tell me as fact.  The reader will be forewarned that that whatever came from you can be trusted only as far as you can be trusted.  Which is to say, not at all.

I do believe your assertion that you are possessed, though I don’t know much about possession by demons.  I think my readers will be as convinced of your possession as I am.  I expect they’ll be convinced some of the homicides, burglaries, rapes, robberies, and other mayhem you claim to have committed, actually happened, as well.  Even a pathological liar doesn’t lie all the time.

For a long while I really felt sorry for you.  That’s why I prepared and took food to you and your mother when you didn’t have any.  It’s why I prepared the Caisse’s Tea for you when you dreamed up the story about having a brain tumor.  I knew it was probably a lie, but figured, just in case, it couldn’t hurt.

Anyway, being around you cost a lot of money, time, and energy.  Probably most ‘normal’ people would agree that a day with you leaves a person feeling a good hot bath isn’t enough to wash off the residue you leave behind.

I’ve already done what I can to make sure some unsuspecting person doesn’t get blown away by your ‘satchell charges’, assuming they exist.  If someone does get hurt by your burying the damned things, then allowing them to stay there, dangerous as you described, responsibility will fall where it belongs.  The same applies if you actually manage to snuff me, or someone near me.  You’ll be right up there at the top of the list.

That brings me to the threats you’ve been making about me and folks I care about.  If you want to try to carry them out, it’s your call.  The widow-lady figures there’s nothing about you a .357 magnum won’t cure if you come bothering her anymore.  If you manage to harm her, or her daughter and the law doesn’t do anything, you’ll be well advised to move to Bangor, Maine, and change your name.   I intend to make certain you don’t get off without any consequences.  ‘Nuff said.

As for your intentions toward me, I just don’t give a damn.  You do what you think is best and we’ll see what happens next.  Exposing the Michael J. Powells to the world is a worthy enough job for now.  If you blow a hole in me, I’ll heave a sigh and consider it a job well done, knowing you’ll finally be off the damned streets.

See you around, Space-Monkey.

Best to you,

Jules

I’ve been through the experience enough times in my life to know how angry and involved it can get a person into matters that aren’t worth the trouble of thinking about. Cops are generally lowlifes who are attracted to the magnet of the copshop, the cameraderie of legal gangship, and not worth not fastening one’s seatbelt to offend. However, I take the attitude that one of the legitimate ways of leaving the vehicle this lifetime is in a gunfight with cops. Preferably over some matter involving a burned out bulb on the license-tag light developing into something a lot more serious because some cop feels the need to push someone around.

It came close to that last summer when I was in deep financial doodoo and got stopped by a motorcycle cop and his compadre because the license tag had expired… they pushed me around some and towed the car … cost me $100 I could ill afford… and the cop put the word out to the wrecker driver that he was gonna “get me,” watch me and stop me every time he saw the car. He hasn’t done it, so we haven’t had a gun battle. I’m pretty much indifferent to whether he does it or not, and whether we have a gun battle as a result. It’s his choice, not mine.

The Friend: You’re literally saying that we should put our lives at risk and ruin by over-reacting to minor power abuses by people and institutions?

Ergo: No. I’m not saying what anyone “should” do, or “shouldn’t do.” What other people do is no business of mine. Instead, what I’m doing is making an observation about how people handle issues that concern them, as opposed to how humans of the past (in some quarters) believed “honor” required them to handle such issues. It’s all about personal responsibility and grinding our own axes, as opposed to employing mercenaries (cops, judges, lawyers) to grind our axes for us on condition that we submit to our own axes being ground by someone else. It’s safe and convenient and the only cost, other than the fact that our mercenaries now own us, is vaguely spiritual.

On the other hand, it follows that I probably wouldn’t be a good person to sit on a jury of my “peers.” If a person’s only crime was to kill a cop I’d have to take a close look at the circumstances before I’d vote to convict. If a person was only guilty of drug abuse or prostitution I’d vote to acquit no matter what the law says. I don’t subscribe to the notion that part of my role in life demands that I become the tool of the institutions of tyranny and punishment for victimless crimes. But I do subscribe to the view expressed by a famous frontier judge, when he hanged a horse thief, but turned a man loose who’d killed a man who was threatening his family, “There are men who need killing, but there are no horses that need stealing.” I don’t believe the definition men who “need killing” is confined to lousy neighborhoods, nor are the hiding places for such men necessarily outside the institutions of “justice.” How we approach such matters, as I’ve suggested, is vaguely “spiritual.”

Old Jules, what comes to mind when I say ”Lips”?

The grille of a 1958 Edsel

Old Jules, is your adult life what you imagined it to be when you were younger?

At no stage along the way was it what I imagined it would be a decade earlier. The gulf between my life in my late 60s and what I might have imagined it would be in my late 20s can’t fit into the same universe.

Old Jules, what are examples of things that would represent a liar?

Look in the mirror and examine what you see, then find metaphors to describe it. None of us are exempt but we learn more from examining and pronouncing about ourselves than we do from attempting to see our own traits in others.

Old Jules, have you ever had the experience of complete connection with another person in which it seems time stops, you are completely in that moment with them, nothing else matters and it’s like your souls are dancing?

Yep. More times than I can remember. Closing time at honkytonks used to be a good place to experience it.

Old Jules, if their was anything in your life you would change what would it be?

The deer would be scared to come around here eating my chicken feed, my truck would be fixed well enough to regularly and dependably make a 45 mile each way trip to town for groceries a couple of times a month and the cats would eat less and sleep somewhere I don’t figure on taking a nap.

Old Jules, what is best in life?

Accidental homemade fruitcake is best this morning. I started out figuring on making cranberry bread using a raisin bread recipe, but found other ingredients lying around and added them. Best loaf of bread I’ve ever made… a sort of fruitcake-like loaf without all the downside.

Excerpt from a letter Jack wrote while working as night clerk in a motel:
Incidentally, remember the sort of fat, loud lady, scraggly hair and bad teeth at the Conoco? She checked in the other night with a drunk cowboy–paid for the room–wanted a suite if we had it-wanted a whirlpool INSIDE the room if we had it. She must have been pretty horny. (In thinking about this man/woman relationship thing, it’s really weird–night before last Olivia, night clerk at the hotel across the street was arrested for turning tricks during her shift at $25 a pop…seems I always find these things out too late. Actually, fact is I couldn’t afford it I guess. Can’t help wondering why she didn’t guard her interests by screwing the cops–seems too obvious to be overlooked).
But the issue brings to mind the weirdness of the entire issue, that females are walking around on a commodity that is actually marketable–that males in this reality are blessed with a driving need which can only really be satisfied by an entry into the female vagina–that females by their nature have kept the monopoly sound enough to exact a monetary value for spreading it around. A guy pays a prostitute willingly to avoid the ancillary entanglements involved in just satisfying the needs of his vehicle. Part of the cost of routine maintenance like inflating tires, changing oil, and winterizing. It says a lot about the male vehicle, but it says more about the female gender as a whole. Also says something deep and subtle about the entire reality. All the old adages about soft-hearted whores are balanced by the phrase, “harder than a whore’s heart.” All that discussion about logic in decision making goes away with that. I’d imagine Olivia was charging what the traffic would bear–the traffic was paying what they had to–there isn’t a glut on the market that I know of, but maybe there is, in a way. A guy knows he can hit the bars, lie a little, bullshit a little, buy a few drinks, maybe, and stand a pretty good chance. But in that equation his time is worth nothing.
So at the Comfort Inn the guys plunk down 25 simoleans, Olivia comes to a room they had anyway–no beer, no bullshit–Olivia takes the load off and vanishes, no secondary repercussions, no flack, no whines or phone calls.

There’s a body of opinion out there that says the whole ball of wax of the great game is nothing but an elaborate ritual of prostitution. I’ve heard a lot of men argue the case over the years, and if you assume a cynicism and male awareness, even consciousness, that you expect in any male, but assume is absent in most females, prostitution is really the lowest common denominator in most male/female interactions. We turn a blind eye to the male paying for meals, theater, gas, roses, candy, perfume, jewelry, and the implications thereof.

I came across a file of “answers” which, for some reason I can’t recall, don’t have an attached question. Here are a few– Jeanne

I don’t believe it’s possible to have a positive or negative attitude toward life in any sense. Positives and negatives in that context are apples trying to compare themselves to oranges.
Life is boundaries, fences, boxes we place around ourselves, our thoughts, our perceptions and our emotions, and how much we allow them to encompass.

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Do whatever you think is best. Any choice you make will carry you into a river of other choices. You can always choose to drift, to paddle, to swim, to gorge your thirst at any point along the way until the choices run out.
Whatever you choose now isn’t a permanent decision, it’s just an opportunity to dig some challenge out of your life experience. Any challenge will do.

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To ‘believe in’ God is to have an opinion involving belief and disbelief, with belief drawing the short straw.
God isn’t about ‘belief’. Not about old words written down by savage tribes in the Middle East, scholars in Asia, remembered by once-aboriginals in OZ or the US. To ‘believe’ is a statement of uncertainty.
God’s about certainty, not belief. Mixing God up with doctrines and beliefs tends to confuse things and create an environment where ‘belief’ instead of knowing thrives. Dripping fanged religious fanatics and political zealots will attack anyone who disagrees with them. They’re point and shoot weapons for the daily talk show hosts and televangelists. It might be Jews, Japanese, Filipino, even Mormons. It’s already blacks and Hispanics along with Muslims. Just depends on who the talking heads and daytime radio Goebbels tell them to go after.

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FEMA paid my salary for the last ten years of my last career. I visited a lot of their facilities, attended countless conferences and endless schools they provided.
When I retired in 1999 I left convinced FEMA is entirely too stupid to be a danger to anyone.
What became Homeland Security, however, is an entirely different matter. Not more intelligent, but a lot more bellicose and, I believe, potentially dangerous to one or another slice of the US citizenry.

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I had a sister who was a religious fanatic and used to rat me out constantly. Ratted out everyone for that matter, for their own good. No sin too small to help them out by ratting them out.
And over the last almost seven decades I can say I’ve lost a lot of friends who became insufferable religious fanatics and suddenly thought everyone else admired them so much they’d want to emulate them. Wouldn’t shut up about religion, so I booted them the hell out of my life.

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Marriage isn’t about sex. If marriage was about sex nobody would bother getting married nowadays. Marriage is about something else than sex and genital appearance and interaction.
But I don’t know what. After I divorced the female woman I was married to 20 years ago I never thought anymore about it. I’m not marrying anyone, no matter what gender, species, race religion creed or color.
Marriage, I should have said, is about ownership. Who the hell wants to own anyone? Who the hell wants to be owned.

Jack

Old Jules, have you ever held a snake, what breed & what was it like?

I’ve held a lot of them in my life ranging from rattlers, copperheads and cottonmouths to bullsnakes, gopher snakes, hognose and kingsnakes. Some were dead, some were alive. Alive ones tend to want you to release them and communicate it by wrapping themselves around your arm. Dead ones are just dead snakes. No particular sensation involved. Past summer I killed a gopher snake 5-6 feet long with 8 bulges spaced along the entire length caused by his having been raiding my chicken house for eggs. Handling that one was a bit weird, I confess.

Old Jules, isn’t polygamy the solution for enhancing society?

I’ve sometimes thought a woman with several husbands would be an interesting mix. The hubbies who aren’t on duty could play poker, get drunk, watch television or read a book without having to have anything to do with the woman of the house on their days ‘off’.
They’d provide roses, boxes of candy and whatnot when their day in the barrel came up to stay in her favor. She’d love it.
And several adults in the household, husbands-in-law, if she wanted to sit around and eat bonbons all day, could live well with everyone pooling their incomes for the good of the household.
Perfect setup.

Old Jules, what is the most effective way to oppose war?

Refusing to be part of it and refusing to vote for any politician who supports funding for it in countries where elections are a part of the illusion of power might be the only ways. That, and voting for anyone who speaks out against military budgets, military spending, military projection of national power or national interests and concerns.
It ain’t much, but it’s probably all anyone has unless they are ultra-wealthy and part of the actual power community making decisions and manipulating voters and obfuscating actual goals for warfare.

Old Jules, do you have a story that taught you a wise lesson in life?

I learned not to take off a Cessna 140 from a short airstrip when windsocks at both ends of the runway were showing wind in opposite directions. I learned not to have a big breakfast and wait until the density altitude at a 6000 msl runway was feeling the mid-morning sunlight before taking off in an under-powered aircraft.
Most other wisdom in my life acquired the hard way rhymes with those, one way or another.

Old Jules, what is the greatest challenge of our lives?

Learning to be people [individuals] we can love and respect might be the greatest challenge and power we can experience or accomplish this lifetime.
Romantic love is just one of those joys and heartaches we’re blessed with time to time and has little, if no power.
The love that comes with being able to forgive life, humanity and the entire hostile planet of everything feeding on the carcass of everything else is fairly powerful and for the purposes of individual peace it certainly conquers all. Learning to be grateful for the good, the bad and the ugly is probably something requiring love of sorts and it’s definitely a source of power in our lives.