Savor sugar words
Pulse rushing to a touch
Hold tight the triggered yearning
From a voice on the phone
While it lasts
Swim in honey
And be glad
Let it hold you
Over breakfast dirty dishes
Stale cold coffee
Of the years
Sustain you through emergence
Of a human side of humans
Viewed by humans
Toenail clippings
Bad-breath mornings
PMS
And milk gone sour
In the fridge
Sit back remember
Savor sugar words
And be glad
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this cold morning.
The adventurers are getting old and long in the tooth. I’ve written about this in the past a number of times, but a few days ago I got an email that got me thinking about it again:
Hi J, I hope this finds you well….cats too.
Age 72. Raised in northern Wyoming. Made my living mostly in electronics and related technology. Army vet.
I have been obsessed with that lost gold mine since 1974 and many years ago received a copy of your CD via a guy I think you know….If you had ever watched him shovel.
Bought your book several years ago. Lots of good stuff but editing sucked on the CD.. Also, someone you might know, Bob Gordon of Dallas went on a trip with us once to the Mangus Mt. area (probably in the early ’80’s) and I think I gave him his first copy of Allens and Byerts. Excuse me, but I am currently too many margaritas along right now and need to cut this short. I am convinced I have a lot of the story figured out….Yeah, like I’m alone. But seriously.
I would like to chat with you if only email, Fergy
I replied to his email saying I’d be willing to discuss it by email. Back during the day I spent enough hours on the telephone hearing where it was to break me of any desire to ever do that again. But there’s always a chance someone will come along and add the piece to finish out the puzzle.
When his reply elaborating on his ponderings arrived, he didn’t clear anything up, but it did get me thinking about some things.
Over the years those phone calls and emails have gradually squeezed down to men of advancing age. Most of us are getting so old we’re not likely to tromp up high mountains anymore. And we’re dying off. Of the hundreds of letters and phone calls I got over the years, every one of the originators had solved the mystery, or was near unto solving it. As I always was. Heck, as I still am, though I don’t think about it much anymore.
During the 20th Century thousands of men tried to find that lost mine, as did a similar number during the 19th Century. There was even a movie made about it in the late 1960s.
Sprawling frontier adventure with Gregory Peck as a sheriff who is given a map, said to show the location of a large cache of gold hidden in a valley, and soon finds he’s the target of every fortune hunter in the West. The star-laden cast also includes Omar Sharif, Telly Savalas, Julie Newmar, Lee J. Cobb, Edward G. Robinson. 123 min. Standard; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital stereo; Subtitles: English, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai; biographies; theatrical trailers.
But as the 20th Century wound down something interesting happened. There were no new legions of youngsters replacing the old ones, researching, reading, poring over maps and trekking into remote canyons. Something was gone, and it’s over.
Old Fergy, Keith and I, a few others are still out there thinking about it, but what we are and what we were is something modern humanity has left behind without noticing it’s done so. I don’t know what that means, but I’m not overjoyed about it. My preferred view of humanity and youth is going to require some adjustment.
Old Jules
Previous posts referring to the lost gold mine search:
Good morning, readers. I wrote this a while back and planned to work on it a lot more at the time. Never quite got around to it.
I posted a while back about a man I used to know named Phil My Original Veteran’s Day Post . Good fellow, old Marine Corps shot up vet with a chest full of decorations. We used to do a lot of drinking, hunting and running around together during the ’70s and 80s.
Phil got himself hitched to a woman named Susan. Good woman, but perhaps the meanest female human I’ve ever encountered. A husband doing anything to violate her perception of justice was to be avoided on pain of the painfully unexpected. Which didn’t keep old Phil from sneaking around occasionally, doing something that would have violated her perception of justice.
Women liked Phil a lot and being one of the highliest decorated Marines ever to come out of the Vietnam War didn’t mean Phil had the will power to always refuse. Nevertheless, Phil and Susan had a happy marriage, more-or-less. They vented their rages and frustrations, of which both had in plenty, having ping-pong ball gun battles, stalking one another around the house, sometimes lasting hours.
Every July 4th Phil and Susan would have a traditional Sex and Violence Marathon Party lasting a couple of days, or until everyone went home. A television would play The Sands of Iwo Jima non-stop at one end of the room and another would play porn flicks non-stop at the other end.
Lots of interesting stuff in the IWO JIMA flick. We’d sit there with the squeeze box backing up that film, looking at a particular scene, looking at it again, again again again, studying the camera footage (US gov footage from the Iwo battle) until we quit, but tended to go back and do the same thing again … two or three scenes in there are serious head-scratchers.
One scene, a bunch of guys are on a 3/4 ton truck, a wounded one on the front bumper, when they hear a big round coming in. They all hop off that truck, grab the wounded guy and rush for a foxhole… but midway between the truck and the hole, they realize there’s no time. They drop the wounded guy out in the open. They all dive headfirst into holes just as the round hits and the camera goes flying along with legs and maybe an arm or two.
Amazing footage.
Anyway, I’ve digressed. I wanted to tell you how Phil and Susan, thanks to his philandering, ended up in a long duration menage-a-troix situation. They all thought of it as a marriage for a couple of years.
The third of the three was a woman who looked almost exactly like the woman wossname son of Kirk Douglas played opposite in a movie named Romancing the Stone. Beautiful woman, but a rattlesnake extraordinaire who eventually gave both Phil and Susan a lot of grief. But during the early-to-mid stages I think both Phil, and Susan believed it would last the duration of their lives, that marriage-like threesome.
But I’ve wandered so far what with ping-pong ball gun fights and Sex and Violence parties I suppose I’d better save the menage-a-troix story for another time.
Except to say, I’ve seen a lot of commentary from patriot-look-alikes lately expressing strong feelings about how many wives a man ought to be able to have.
At the time, and today again as I think about it, I figured old Phil had done more to earn the right to have as many wives as he wanted to than the folks who object have done earning the right to have only one.
Let no fate willfully misunderstand me and snatch me away, not to return. Robert Frost
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.
Evidently some readers were left with the impression yesterday post was a farewell notice. It wasn’t. I’ll be posting here, but not so often, is all, until I’m where I can’t. I just won’t be spending so much time online.
Keith: I got your email, but I can’t do Facebook because of the slow connection. Check your Yahoo mailbox, amigo. I know you have computer issues, but I think that’s the only way available from this end. J
The invader cat has raised the ante here. It’s evidently a female and in heat. Walks around mewing all the time, to the disgust of the four resident felines. But I’ve begun feeding it because I’m not going to have it starving while I figure out who it belongs to.
My friend, Rich sent me a RAM upgrade for my offline computer and it arrived yesterday. Jumped me from 4 gb of RAM to 12 gb with Readyboost, and it allowed me to follow some computations I’d never been able to do before. Uplifting, satisfying day.
Gale’s fairly under the weather, but he brought down the RAM chips and we conversed a while. Seems he might have come across a tow bar for sale without recognizing it for what it is. Got me fairly excited, because the towing issues are the reason the New Truck isn’t in town being worked on, or isn’t finished, licensed, inspection stickered, lock stock and banana peel. I’m borrowing Little Red to go into town today and try to chase it down.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made the post yesterday, though I wasn’t smart enough was the reason I did. It seemed an explanation of why I’d be making fewer posts.
For those who read it rapidly I suppose it seemed I was about to take off all my clothes and run naked into the sunset.
It’s too cold still for that.
Old Jules
Previous posts about the transportation issue saga:
If I believed in representative democracy I think I might be tempted by this, even though I don’t smoke dope.
There’s something refreshing about seeing someone injecting some humor into all the scowling. This modern religion of self-important in-your-face sneering between opposing political illusions and conflicting certainties about ‘What this country needs‘ and who’s most worthy of hatred and purple scorn ought to get boring for those doing it. For the good of their souls, maybe. Or, failing that, just as a means of demonstrating a human brain resides inside the human skull.
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I suppose old Willie still believes in representative democracy. I’ll try to forgive him being stupid by believing something I don’t. I’ll reciprocate by being stupid enough not to start smoking dope again. Too damned much trouble.
I’m trying to remember when it was I figured that out. Sometime a long time ago, but before too much later, I think it was. I had the High Roller already, but I don’t think I had the gray John B. Stetson yet.
Maybe I should have explained this on my earlier post. If my dad’s still alive he’s too old to care, and anyone else who might have once felt anything about it will also be old enough to handle it.
For me, discovering I had a biological half-brother didn’t come as a particular shock. I’d always figured I probably had a few, maybe a lot. My dad never made any bones about having been a rounder all his life. His extra-marital affairs cost him a couple of marriages.
One night during the early 1980s, Dad and I were sitting in the parking lot of the Georgetown, Texas, hospital at 2:00 am, because his wife of the time was inside being treated in the Emergency Room. They were visiting my wife and me over some holiday.
It was a long wait, and the conversation drifted to women, observations about them, stories about them, puzzlements about women we’d found during our individual experiences with them. Somewhere during all that the subject of the products of our meanderings came into the discussion.
He said he didn’t actually know how many kids he’d left along his back trail, but one was a sure thing. He’d first seen the guy on television because someone told him there was a televangelist who bore an amazing likeness, both in physical features and in mannerisms of speech and gesture.
Dad was mildly interested, enough to eventually watch the guy on television. Which bowled him over. He said it was like watching a movie of himself speaking at a Toastmaster meeting at an earlier age. A suspicion dawned for him sufficiently to cause him to find out more about the man. Where he was from, how old he was, and eventually to find out who the mother of the televangelist was. He had, it turned out, vivid recollections of her when they both were a lot younger.
He didn’t name the man, and I didn’t give it a lot of thought for a number of years. But early during my Christian television watching it came back full force. For a moment I was disoriented, almost as though I watching my dad on television. I truly was amazed and there was no doubt in my mind I was seeing my biological half-brother. Just about my own age.
My lady friend of the time, whom I made a point of having watch him without explaining, commented, “He looks and talks like you. Weird.”
The man was a moving speaker and a faith healer of some fame. So one of the attractions motivating me to rise at 3:00 am and watch Christian television was the strangeness of watching him, particularly.
I always tried to catch his show and his appearances when I could. If a person’s going to put himself through an experience of that sort, 3:00 am’s not an altogether bad time to do it.
In 1992, when my 25 year marriage dissolved and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the projects I was determined to pursue was an attempt to understand the meaning of life, or something in the neighborhood. I did a lot of thinking and planning about how to approach the matter in a way I considered the most likely possibility for success.
Part of the project involved learning everything I could about religions and metaphysics, and I began with an intense study of Christianity, early Christian history, pre-Nicean Christian documents, practices and beliefs at a time before anything qualified as Canon. For a couple of years I submerged myself in the subject.
During the same time period I got up 3:30 am and spent a couple of hours watching Christian television to get a better understanding of what was going on with Christianity today. I found I got a lot of enjoyment doing it, and I discovered one I liked particularly well and thought of almost as an old friend.
Garner Ted Armstrong. I spent a year or so in my early 20s working for Rainbow Baking Company in Houston loading bread trucks off a conveyor belt 12 hours a day, and I filled some of the solitude listening to Garner Ted over a portable radio and earpiece. I considered him one of the best rhetoricians of the 20th Century already when I found him preaching on television.
But what I hadn’t realized was his level of scholarship and open mindedness about Christian history. The fact I was submerged in it at the time led me to write a letter to him asking his take on some issues I’d found ambiguous.
From that time until his death several years later, Garner Ted Armstrong and I indulged in exchanges of 20 page letters discussing the nuances of Christian history, Christian texts, the implications of the Nag Hammadi codices, news coming out of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where Christianity had been and possibly where it was going.
A truly strange time of my life, though just one of those side-trails that had little to do with my coincident search and research involving a lost gold mine, nor with understanding the meaning of life. The former, I never found, and the latter, when I found it, didn’t need elaboration.
I still miss old Garner Ted Armstrong and those long letters.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
When I post a blog I frequently do so in complete ignorance of current events. I don’t have a television, the radio never gets turned on, and I don’t read newspapers or magazines until they sometimes fall into my hands many years after they were printed.
I don’t know and don’t wish to know who wants to be king. The Challenge of 2012: Not Knowing Who Wants to be King And I’m not likely to get any joy from knowing which readers prefer which liar and scoundrel, and which prefer some other one. I have no intention to participate in the scramble to assassinate characters of the occupants of one side of the pool of corruption to give advantage to the occupants of the other side of the pool.
If a post here manages to convey an impression I’m giving support to one political illusion over another, it’s entirely by accident and not to be taken as a launchpad for more intense and focused discourse on the issue.
All that’s over there until the first post tomorrow is the single-post archive migrated from Facebook. But if you’d care to go for a look at the archive it might give you an insight into the general drift.
I’m posting this today in hopes of discovering whether anything needs changing, whether the navigation works, and to just give anyone interested a gander at it. If you click it and find there’s a problem of any sort I’d be obliged if you’d send her an email, post it here, or let us know by mental telepathy.
Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.
Yesterday I got an email from someone called himself Rob, AKA ‘Nifty Chicken’ of the Backyard Chickens newsletter telling me I need to re-register.
“This is Rob, AKA “Nifty-Chicken” of www.BackYardChickens.com. I noticed that you’re registered for our newsletter, but can’t find you in our community membership. This quick note is to let you know of some important changes and to help you get re-registered so you can continue receiving the BYC Newsletters.”
Naturally, I’m deeply suspicious about this. Someone’s wanting me to become a part of their ‘we’ over there without me having done anything to deserve it, other than subscribing to their newsletter for several years.
Then I went over to the site instead of clicking the ‘register’ part of the email and the first thing I saw was:
Hi Peeps, Welcome to the new & upgraded version of the BackYardChickens.com website! There are a ton of exciting new features and areas of the site for you to explore. To help get started we suggest you… » read more
Can you imagine that? I go over there with more-or-less neutral intentions, other than a few suspicions about what manner of ‘we’ someone was demanding I include myself in, and the first crack out of the box he calls me a ‘Peep’? The guy thinks people joining his ‘we’ are peeps.
Whatever the hell a peep is. Strikes me this might be a group of ‘we’ folk who go around looking through windows trying to see naked women. Nothing whatever to do with chickens.
Or he’s an agent provacateur for Homeland Security trying to identify all the people who’d be gratified to belong to a ‘we’ that considered itself peeps.
I’ve donealready got plenty of ‘we’ stuff in my life. I ain’t including myself in any we bunch of peeping toms even if they’re peepers that like chickens. Heck, maybe it’s chickens they’re sneaking around spying on. Maybe they’re trying to find out where I am so they can come in here nights spying on the Great Speckled Bird and the hens do and talk about when I shut them up in the fortress nights.
Or more sinister yet, maybe they’re trying to see if I gather the eggs every day. Or whether they’re doing okay on the milo feeding I’ve been doing lately to save money. Or somebody over there read the post, Shame and a Confession About Inter-Species Sexand thinks because I have a perverted chicken I’d want to draw my circle of ‘we’ bigger and feel a part of some group of peepers.
I think it might well be one of those government traps like the one they did in Colorado a few years ago, sending in agents to open up a taxidermy shop, putting out the word they’d buy endangered species carcasses under the table. After a couple of years they’d bought and paid for hundreds of otherwise healthy endangered birds and animalcules and collected names dates and places of the folks killed them because there was suddenly a market.
Indicted half the community before it was over.
I ain’t joining no government plot to arrest my rooster. As far as I know he can’t even get out nights to do any peeping.
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
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So Far From Heaven 
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