A lot of sudden wear and tear showing up on my clothing. I attribute a lot of it to this:
I picked it up at the tail-end of a garage sale in Kerrville, still in the box, evidently never used, for $7.00 US. I thought it would make a great addition to the old Kenmore by offering a means of rinsing one load while another was being washed. Neither of the two uses a lot of water, but this one uses a bit less than the Kenmore. I was hugging myself with joy.
But I believe this thing wears out clothes instead of washing them. At this rate I’ll be running around naked under my outer clothing before another change of underwear’s required.
My current thinking is I’m going to have to figure out something to do with this thing that doesn’t involve washing clothes.
Meanwhile maybe it’s time to test a theory I’ve been chewing on for some while that nobody would notice or care if they saw a 68 year old man in town doing business, buying groceries and chicken feed, bare-assed naked.
Maybe they’d like it better than one who has plenty of cotton and chinese poly-whatchallit covering his privates, but stinks to high heaven.
I’m going to get away from the brave new world of the 21st Century and the animal kingdom for this segment and go back a few million years to my childhood. I explained a little about that farm on the other side of the railroad tracks here: Could you choose to live on the street?, but to pursue the bullying issue I’ll elaborate a bit.
The kids who lived on the other side of those tracks were overwhelmingly tough, poor, and ‘bad’. The families were farm laborers or otherwise unskilled, lots of kids, and Hispanic or considered ‘white trash’. The kids living there went to Lindsey Grammar School, and the RR tracks defined the boundary between Lindsey and the other two grammar schools.
In 1949, when I was starting school my mother went to war with the superintendent of schools and the school board to make certain I went to East Ward, not Lindsey. She succeeded.
Meanwhile, on this side of the tracks and the highway there were a few neighborhoods of kids who belonged in Lindsey, but were doomed by geography to go to school with the regular population at East Ward. One of those was a boy named Floren Villianueva and his siblings. A tough, bad, mean as hell youngster with older brothers meaner than him. He and I entered the first grade in the same class.
Floren and I somehow got crosswise with one another almost the first day of classes during recess. He gave me a blow to the stomach that knocked the wind out of me, doubled me over and might well have been responsible for the hernia of the goozle that’s caused me trouble to this day.
After school each afternoon Floren and his brothers walked home the same route I did, and for a few days they went the extra distance to chase me home, throwing rocks at me when they couldn’t catch me, beating hell out of me when they could. Me finding safety only when I went through the door to the house.
That naturally came to the attention of my mom after a few days. One afternoon she was standing on the porch shaking a rug and saw me running across the tracks chased by Floren and his brothers. They came right into the yard, and she grabbed a broom and chased them off, yelling insults.
When they were gone she turned on me in a fit of rage, grabbed me by the ear and dragged me into the house where she kept her switch. While she was beating hell out of me she was yelling, “If I ever see or hear of you running from a fight again this is nothing compared to what you’ll get.”
When my step-dad got home she told him about it and he just shook his head. “Running from a bunch of God-damned Mexicans!”
I went about in disgrace a few days, the story circulating among the adults with me in hearing distance, all of them dumbfounded by my cowardice.
But I never ran from a fight again. I started carrying a heavy stick with me walking home and only had to whack one of those other kids upside the head with it one time. Afterward Floren and I fought a lot of times during recess and I never whipped him, but I took the beatings rather than the alternatives.
This is too lengthy for me to continue where I’m going with it, but it’s necessary background to get in place before going forward in this segment.
I'd guess Phil probably resembled this young marine when he arrived
I hadn’t thought about my old running buddy, Phil, for a while. That last blog entry got me chewing on thoughts of him. I’ll tell you a bit more about him.
Phil went to the Marine Corps as the result of being a 17 year old driving from Temple, Texas, to Austin with a case of beer in the car. A Williamson County Sheriff Deputy stopped him on a tail light violation, asked for his drivers license and saw the case of beer. Old Phil, being a clever youth, gave the officer a Texas Drivers License with an altered date of birth, so’s to keep from being arrested as a minor in possession of alcoholic beverages.
The deputy wasn’t fooled. He hauled Phil off to the slammer to reflect on his sins. He was offered the alternatives of going to prison for presenting a phony ID, or going into the US Marine Corps.
In Vietnam, at least, Phil was old enough to drink. He became Marine Recon and a sniper. Phil was in the jungle with a squad of other snipers surrounded by a NVA rocket launching unit when the first rockets were fired into Da Nang AFB. The squad wisely stayed hidden and didn’t take any shots, they radioed in the location of the rocket unit and brought an airstrike down on top of themselves.
They’d be dropped into an area where the NVA was expected to set up a battalion or division headquarters, sit there a couple of weeks waiting quietly, and try for a head shot at a senior officer. Once the shots were fired they’d try to sink back into the bushes until things went quiet, then slink out to some place where they could be lifted out.
Phil did two tours over there. When he came back he had such a chest full of medals they snatched him up for Nixon’s Honor Guard. Which Phil believed would be easy duty.
Instead, it was riot control. Wherever Nixon went there were anti-war riots, and Phil and his unit busting heads, which he thoroughly hated, since he agreed with the demonstrators.
Phil hated politicians, hated war, hated the men responsible for sending him over there and making him the troubled, rage filled human being he was during the decade and a half I knew him.
But the Vietnamese body counts were a lot higher because of Phil.
When I last saw him half his face was eaten away by Lupus, contracted as a result of Agent Orange in those jungles. The Veterans Administration was fighting and squirming denying all those guys were ill from Agent Orange, that the problems were Service Connected, so they’d have to offer disability and whatnot.
Phil used to observe that he might have been a lot better off if he’d just let them send him to prison for the beer and phony ID. Then they couldn’t have even drafted him for that place.
I wonder if that old Agent Orange has killed him yet. Another victim of friendly fire with a delayed action fuse.
Korean War vintage – The From Here to Eternity Version’s missing the first and last stanza, but worth the watch:
The complete version
Around 1956-’57 when Elvis was drafted
Sailor around 1957
A million men or more left their hearts in San Francisco to be reminded by this song. When we returned and the troop ships passed under the Golden Gate a million uniform hats went into the air:
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 brought this one to the top. I listened to it in basic training along with everyone else they could drag out of the sticks to wear a uniform:
The constant ‘brink of war’ cold war military also serving as armies of occupation:
Then along came Vietnam
And those who decided Canada made more sense
than the Okie from Muskogie
and politicians singing For God Country and My Baby to the tune of 1000 bottles of beer on the wall in 10 part harmony for another half-century.
I’d planned for some while to write up the early-post-Y2K incident with the helicopters described below. But Jeanne looked it up in her Y2K journal, read it to me over the phone, and convinced me in the interest of accuracy her version was the most appropriate. The human mind twists and turns events and mine had worked on those helicopters enough to make the story I’d have written somewhat different from the one she recorded that day.
I’d have sworn I’d been teaching her sons how to use a survival mirror as described in the Survival Book https://sofarfromheaven.com/survival-book-2/, and that the instruction was the reason I had the mirror readily at hand to do what I did.
I do recall vividly my increased heartbeat when they turned to fly 150 above the cabin. I’ll defer to her record as to whether I then slunk into the trees.
A nice day all around. Jules came over fairly early, seemed at loose ends, and stayed til nearly 4 PM. While the kids were finishing homework, he started messing around with some tools we had lying around and found a rock that reminded him of a dream sheep mother like the ones he’d bought before from the Zunis.
He spent all morning carving a dream sheep out of that rock and then decided we needed a cairn to put it on. He and Michael and Andrew worked on that most of the day, adding flagstones for a bench to go all the way around it. The dream sheep sits on top like a shrine- I love it. It took all day, he must have moved a ton of rock. Then he build me another bench to sit on for a view of the sunset. Glad he didn’t ask me to help. Michael helped willingly, Andrew less willingly, but he still helped.
After he declared it finished, Michael took off for a hike up the hill and Andrew and Julia were playing around behind the cabin.
We heard some helicopters before we saw them, it turned out to be two black military copters that were slowly flying right along the road that goes by our property. Jules didn’t say anything but he got out his pocket mirror from his survival kit and started sort of surreptitiously flashing it at the helicopters. I got real nervous and decided I should probably walk off in the other direction, so I headed towards the cabin.
I wasn’t sure if they could see who was doing it since he was by some trees, but I wanted to be sure it was obviously NOT me. Damned if those helicopters didn’t turn a 90 degree angle and fly straight over the cabin to get a closer look at us! But nothing happened, thank goodness. By then Jules had faded into the trees. A few minutes Michael came down the hill and said “Did you see THAT?”
After that Jules and the boys had a long conversation about building a catapult using a sucker rod from a windmill and some other stuff. Said they ought to be able to build one big enough to lob rocks the size of cantaloupes across the road. They all seemed pretty excited about it.
Anyhow, the cairn is a great place to sit and drink hot chocolate and watch the sunrise. I think it’ll last forever, it’s really solid.
Picked up 25 eggs later when we went down to help him collect them.
Saturday, Feb. 13, 2000
This morning we were eating a late breakfast inside the cabin and talking about going to gather eggs and suddenly there was this horrifying roar over the cabin which scared us all half to death- we rushed to the door and saw a pair of fighter jets that had just buzzed our cabin! I think they were getting back at us for the mirror stuff a few days ago…too bad Jules wasn’t around to have heart failure with the rest of us, seeing that it was all because of him. Of course we had to drive down to his cabin right away to tell him all about it.
Picked up 30 eggs while we were there.
That tribal talk a week or so ago got me thinking about an old Mescalero bud I’ve known on and off through the parts of this lifetime that matter. We go long times without seeing one another, but we top off the long spells by bumping into one another in unlikely places.
Kurtiss and I first met working on Skeeter Jenkins’ ranch near Kenna, New Mexico. Must have been 1958, ’59. Skeeter wasn’t a joyful man on his ranch-hands. He’d berate Kurtiss by comparing him to us white lads, then he’d turn around five minutes later and tell us we weren’t half as good cowboying as that damned Apache over there.
I guess the only good that came out of that job was the bond that formed between Kurtiss and me, and the lifelong lesson I learned about not trusting ranchers. Old Skeeter cheated all of us spang out of a hard week pay and spread around the word none of us were worth the board he’d furnished working for him. Fortunately, he’d done that sort of thing before, so nobody paid him any mind when it came to hiring us for other jobs, which we frequently got screwed out of our pay on, same as with Skeeter.
The last time I ran into Kurtiss must have been 1998, ’99. He and a couple of Arizona broncos were sitting on the tailgate of a truck parked for a powwow in Albuquerque when I came across them and a case of beer that was too close to gone to be any good. When we’d killed what was left of that case we kicked out of there and spent the night singing ’50s rock and roll songs, getting roaring drunk and filling in on the minutia of our lives since we’d last met.
Spent a good bit of time talking about Y2K also, which was much on my mind at the time, and they’d never heard of it. I expected that and explained to them. Those Apaches thought that just might be something really fine.
Kurtiss immediately thought of a state cop over toward Ruidoso who’s bad about kicking around folks who’ve had a bit much to drink, “I hope nobody gets to that prick before I do.”
Those Apaches demonstrated some rich imagination concerning the nuances of Y2K aftermath. “We’ll be able to run raids on the Rio Grande tribes like the old days!” This didn’t interest the Arizonians. They were fairly sure Mexico would be open for a bit of raiding, though, and better pickings.
Then Kurtiss went thoughtful. “I’d sure as hell like to kill me some Navajo.” He told the old story of Bosque Redondo and all the slaughter the Din’e did to the less numerous Mescalero during the decade years they shared the reservation. Apache numbers there were decimated until only 1800 were left alive when they escaped the rez and went back to Mescalero.
Bosque Redondo was fresh on his mind because of Navajo whines he heard at the Gathering of the Tribes Powwow. “Mescalero’s too large for such few people.” (The enormous Din’e Rez is getting jam-packed these days, by comparison.) “They ought to take some of that land away and give it to us,” was the general theme.
“We fought our way down,” Kurtiss quoted himself. “And you guys multiply like rabbits.”
This led to some laughs and sneers about the theme of the Gathering of Nations Powwow, “Celebrating 400 years of unity (among the tribes)“.
“I wonder where that was,” one of the Coyoteros grunted. “The Apache never saw it and neither did our enemies. Those Mexicans and Pima and all those town Indians were lucky the whites came along to save them.”
Mostly those guys were in agreement in their scorn for other southwestern tribes. “They don’t know how to use the land,” gesturing with a nod and a slight pucker of the lips.
A whole different view of the end of life as we know it.
I mentioned a couple of days ago that Gale recently acquired some material of a sort I’d never seen previously. One he was working on when I went up there was opalized petrified wood.
He’d never seen any before, either, so he polished up this piece just to get an idea what he was working with.
He’d just finished cutting this piece and it was a bit oily from the saw. It’s going to be a beautiful chunk of rock when it’s polished. Beneath it’s another recent acquisition, zebra agate, formed from river delta bottom mud. The paisley’s caused by the shells of marine life. He hasn’t slabbed and polished any of it yet.
This gives you an idea of the size of the chunk he got. He doesn’t expect to ever see any again, so he’s trying to plan ahead carefully insofar as what he’ll make from it.
Meanwhile he’s keeping three saws working up there slabbing the jewelry quality stone he picked up at the San Antonio Rock and Mineral Show, hmm or maybe it was Austin, a few days back.
I’ve been friends with Gale since 1970. At the time our circle of friends used to joke Gale was the busiest person any of us had ever met. Most of them are dead, or faded into history, so I’m the only one left to testify. He’s still the busiest man I’ve ever known.
Here’s one of the last several remaining of those Siberian Wolf Fang pendants he was working on a while back.
Here’s another of those recent acquisitions just off the saw.
Watching Gale work used to be a hair-raising experience back 30-35 years ago before he lost that finger. He became a legend for a while by making a fairly detailed chess set out of exotic woods using a radial arm saw, holding each piece between two fingers while he made his cuts with the saw.
I occasionally remind him of this piece of history and he always replies, “That wasn’t what I cut the finger off doing.”
About the time the light you see when you look for Orion and see Rigel was beginning its 800 year journey to rendezvous with your eye, these small lead crosses were being poured and carried as a protection against Black Plague:
These are found all over Europe, probably many from mass grave sites. But during modern times they’ve become available to collectors. Gale’s accumulated these over several years.
He uses them to make molds in his silversmithing work, casts modern, Sterling Silver plague crosses from them:
I planned to say a lot more on the subject of Black Plague, plague crosses and Gale’s silversmithing but my eyesight’s been giving me fits for the last few days and this screen’s mostly a blur this morning.
In 1967 I was working 5.5 days a week doing hard physical labor, taking night courses at the University of Houston and having an urgent, compelling romance with my wife-to-be living in Port Lavaca, 150 miles away. Every minute I could spare I cranked up that Metropolitan and headed west to spend a few hours with her. Even for a young man exhaustion built and I had a lot of difficulty staying awake while driving.
Picking up hitch-hikers was one of the ways I stayed awake. Just having someone to talk to on that endless road was a major asset.
1967 was a year of serious racial tensions and polarization. During the years immediately previous a gradual mind-opening of tolerance was manifested in a brief cliche, “I’ve got nothing against blacks, but I wouldn’t want my sister to marry one.” For a while a person heard that at least once a week.
One day as I was leaving Houston I stopped for two black guys hitching at an empty stretch of highway. As they ran up to the car they saw the University of Houston sticker on back and without moving to get in they took on a grinning, belligerant-but-joshing attitude. “You go to U of H?”
“Yeah. Where you guys headed?”
Still no move to get in. “We go to Texas Southern [a black university in Houston]. You a queer? The last guy picked us up went to U of H was a queer. Dumped us out here ’cause we didn’t want none of him.”
“I’m not a queer. I’m going to Port Lavaca to see my girl friend.”
They relaxed and squeezed into the Metropolitan, joshing about the klutzy car, how tight it was, how they didn’t want to be seen riding with a white guy. “Anyone sees us riding with you they’ll think you’re queer. They’ll think we’re letting you queer us.”
As we reached highway speed I grinned and looked over at them. “I’ve got nothing against queers but I wouldn’t want my brother to marry one.”
Both of them gagged on that, double-took me, one another, trying to decide whether to be offended. Finally one of them guffawed. “Hey man, that’s a good one!” Held his hand up to be slapped.
Turned out to be fairly nice guys headed to Corpus Christi for the weekend. The drive to Port Lavaca went by fast, once we decided we were just three young guys not needing to fight, fear, or scrutinize every word for some slur or threat.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much times have changed.
Ruidoso Steak-House
Glanced at her reflection
In the plate-glass window
New squash-blossom turquoise
Sassy Stetson
Patted 50ish blonde curls
And wished
They’d eaten at the casino
Where this didn’t happen
Wrinkled pretty nose
“Don’t give him anything He’ll just get drunk!” Stage whispered
To her Houston lady friend
As though he wasn’t there
She was right of course
Except the old man Mescalero
Was already drunk
He turned away
Then turned back and mumbled
“Sing the Song of Life each day Or when the time arrives you won’t know how To sing the Song of Death.”
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.
So Far From Heaven 
