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Wild Night

Posted on February 12, 2014 by Bill 5 comments

We graduated high school and spent the summer hanging around Fruita before starting our new lives. Most nights we met at the pool hall and went to Grand Junction for a movie, drove around drinking beer, or shot pool.

We saw Joe park his old Power Wagon and walk in. He said, “I twisted off from my roughnecking job down at Moab and have to pick up my gear. Lee, I’ll buy the gas and beer if we can go in your Mercury. My Wagon isn’t too happy over 35.”

“Sure.” Lee said. “We can run down there and be back before midnight. Ought to be fun.”

Joe said, “Do you guys want to come along?” to Ed and me. We headed for Lee’s nice ‘56 Mercury and piled in. Joe bought a case of Coors bottles for the trip. We threw the empties at road signs.

It was 100 miles to Moab then fifteen miles of dirt road to the drill rig with Joe’s stuff. After an hour and a half and most of the beer we turned onto the narrow dirt road. It followed the Colorado River downstream in a canyon with sheer sandstone walls on one side and the river on the other.

We made it to the rig, Joe got his gear, and we headed back to Moab. About half way there, Joe yelled, “Stop! There’s a Ring-tailed Cat.”

The Ringtail, as it is now called, is a member of the raccoon family, lean and leggy for nocturnal hunting in its desert habitat. He was between the car and the cliff wall, with a little scrub to hide behind.

“I’m going to get that sucker.” Joe said as he took some heavy work gloves and jumped out of the car. The cat tried to go up the sandstone wall and Joe lunged for it. He tied into a fury of teeth and claws. The cat left and Joe bled.

Ed cleaned Joe’s bites and scratches with the last of his beer and we headed home. After lots of laughs and very little sympathy for Joe’s wounds, we all settled into the ride.

Lee was fairly drunk, but no more than the rest of us, so he drove all the way, nodding a bit. We were about three miles from town and Ed said, “Well, I’ve had enough excitement for one night…look out!” He had seen two horses in the middle of the highway. Lee was in enough of a stupor to have not seen them, then jerked his head up and hit the brakes.

Too late. The Merc hit them both head on. The horses flew over the hood and struck the roof, peeling it back and spilling their insides into the car’s interior. Ed managed to get the car stopped and we dazedly looked around. No one was hurt, but we were all drenched in blood and the contents of the horse’s innards.

A passerby saw the accident, drove to the diner in town and called the cops. Everyone in the café drove out to see the carnage. As a friend from the diner walked up, Lee went over, covered in blood, stomach contents, and shit. He said, “Can you smell any beer on my breath?”

Note: The events in the story are true, but from two events. I have changed the names to protect the guilty.

Posted in Memoirs, Stories

What This Website is About

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

I have wanted to write all my life, but I could never bring it off. I didn’t know why, but I just could not sit down and do it.

When I was 59, I was diagnosed with ADD. What I thought was my fatal flaw turned out to be some weak wiring in my brain. With some cognitive therapy and medication, I can now write. Some.

The other problem with writing is that I am having trouble adjusting to retirement. I need structure in my life and work provided that. I have a part-time job, but there is very little work in the cold months. So, how to get structure?
1. Make a plan for the week.
2. Shoes on in the morning.
3. A set of goals that are reflected in the plan.
4. Get out of the house to write. Coffee shop.
5. Regular exercise.
6. Cook.
I have these goals and sometimes I actually follow them. Another big help is the writer’s meetup I attend every other week. I have also enrolled in a memoir writing class.

What is happening? The website is up, and has content. I plan at least one new post every week. There may be more. Stay tuned.

Posted in Introduction

Heart Attack

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

You get home around 6:00 PM after running around town all day getting ready for a trip to South Dakota. It is spring, and time to sell the cheap jewelry to the tourists headed to Mount Rushmore.

You start the rice for a stir fry and the phone rings. You reach over and pick up. “Hello.” You say.

“Hello.” Your father says. “I’m in the hospital. It looks like I had a heart attack last night.”

You sway; sit down on the kitchen chair. “Oh no. How are you doing? What happened?”

“I was lying on the couch about 7:30 and started having chest pains. I realized what was happening and called 911. The Paramedics came and hauled me to the hospital right away. I’m in the cardiac unit here.”

You say, “Are you in pain? What do the doctors say?”

He says, “I have to be here a few days while they run tests and decide what to do with me.”

“I’ll come over there in the morning.” You say, stomach already upset from the acid dump at the words “heart attack”.

You don’t want this to be happening. As if getting ready to go to South Dakota for another season with that fat little hater of a partner isn’t enough, now your father is sick. You call the partner. “My dad had a heart attack last night and is in the hospital. I’m on my way there in the morning.”

“I’m sorry. You do what you need to do and keep me posted. We still have some time.”

Next morning you throw your backpack in the cab of the Toyota and head over the hill to Grand Junction. You are a bit scared, but mostly feeling the familiar numbness of a life that seems to be mired in a stagnant backwater. You reflect that you seem to be repeating your father’s life. Both having a routine marriage that ended badly and slipping into a progression of days filled with familiar activity, but nothing meaningful.

At the hospital, you see a man who is obviously afraid, speaking tentatively, “Well, I wasn’t planning on this happening. I’m not sure what happens next.” You see that he does not want to say how he is really feeling and you don’t want to either. What a pair.

The next two weeks are no different. You say, “What does the doctor want to do about recovery activities? We need to get you going again.

He gives a noncommittal shrug, not wanting to tell me much at all. You give up pushing, go buy him a throw for the couch he spends most of his time on. He seems shocked I would buy him a comforter, but says nothing.

You take him on drives out into the country. He used to like that when you were a kid. You see him sneaking a nitroglycerine pill from time to time, but he won’t admit he is in pain.

One morning two weeks after he came home you hear clattering in the kitchen. He is opening cupboards, closing them, getting pots and pans out, putting them back. You say, “What’s going on?”

He looks up, says, “What’s the deal?” His look is confused and genuinely scared.

You think, say “I think you are having a stroke.” You get him in the car and go back to the hospital. After two days he seems to be thinking better, but he conceals his physical weakness.

That afternoon, the floor nurse calls. “Your father is having another of his fainting spells.” He has never had a fainting spell. You walk through the open door of his hospital room. He is dead. No one is around. No shroud, just a dead man with no false teeth in his mouth.

(This is about my father’s death. He died in 1978.)

Posted in Memoirs

Train Wreck

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Bill Leave a comment

D&RG Glenwood Canyon

It was one of those bleak, cold January days, too cold for a heavy snow, but enough snow was flying to cut visibility to less than 100 yards. On the D&RGW Railroad in 1924, the trains ran on train orders, instructions detailing where each train on the line was to be at any given time. The train orders told each train when and where to pull into a passing track to let an oncoming train go by.

At 5:00 PM on January 17, 1924, Eastbound Freight #320 was to enter the Shoshone siding and wait for a westbound train to pass. Visibility was so poor that the engineer had slowed to 15 MPH instead of the normal 20 MPH. My grandfather Will was the rear brakeman on #320 and heard the conductor say that there was no way they could get to Shoshone and they would pull in to the passing track at No Name, just east of Glenwood Springs.

Will went out on the platform and was able to signal to the head brakeman in the engine to pull the train in at No Name. The train lurched through the switch and stopped. Will jumped down and threw the switch back to the main line, then the train moved along the siding to just around a bend and stopped. This was a violation of the train orders, but not much, and the crew felt safe in stopping early.

The head brakeman was walking back to the caboose for a cup of coffee when he saw the other engine’s headlight illuminating the snow just around the curve, its wheels’ flanges squealing on the rails.

“Oh, shit.” He thought as he frantically signaled with his lantern back to the engine to start the train moving. He ran yelling to the caboose just as Will looked out the back window and saw the headlight and realized the coming train, brakes squealing and whistle screaming, was going to hit them.

“Run forward!” Will yelled at the conductor as he started to climb the ladder up to the cupola, thinking to get above the impact. The train’s engine struck the wooden caboose and the back half splintered, breaking a steam line on the engine. The steam rushed into the wreckage just as the conductor jumped out and Will’s forehead hit the ladder.

He pulled himself up, blinking blood out of his eyes, thinking “If they were going any faster, we’d be dead.”

Friday, January 25. Will walked up the walk 729 Gunnison Avenue in Grand Junction. Pearl met him at the door. “Well, how did it go?” She asked.

Will entered the parlor and sat heavily in the first chair. “The superintendent fired the whole crew for disobeying the train orders. We talked about the storm slowing us down, but it didn’t matter.” He said wearily.

Posted in Stories

Pearl Comes To Colorado

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Bill One comment

Horse Drawn Wagon

Pearl Pass

It is 1887 in North Texas and Lee Willits’ ranch is not doing well. Lee applied and got a job as a ranch foreman in Colorado. The next thing was to make the move. With all the ranch equipment and a horse herd, he decided to travel with wagons. His daughter Pearl drove one of the wagons.

They travelled from Texas into New Mexico, then north into Southern Colorado and Taylor Park, where Crested Butte is located. The task then was to get over the Elk Mountains to Aspen and down the Roaring Fork River to El Jebel Ranch north of Basalt.

The wagon road from Taylor Park to Aspen went over Pearl Pass. At 12,700 feet high, it was steep, narrow, and rocky. They traveled the road with more than one wagon, the horse herd, and probably with Lee on his horse. It is a shelf road, with the mountain rising on one side of the road and a steep drop-off into a canyon on the other. The road sloped to the outside, and was only wide enough for one wagon. The Willits family was not familiar with mountain roads and misjudged how long it would take to get over the pass to Ashcroft, today a ghost town outside Aspen. They got in at 11:00 PM.

Pearl drove her wagon down that mountain road in the dark. She was a tough kid, though, at twelve years old. She must have been terrified, as she told that story the rest of her life. The family settled down and Lee did well, acquiring land of his own and working it as well as the big El Jebel ranch. Pearl, her two sisters and a brother went to Basalt schools.

As Basalt was near Aspen, an important mining town, it was served by two railroads. A spur of the Denver and Rio Grande Western came up the Roaring Fork from Glenwood Springs; and the Colorado Midland came over the Continental Divide from Leadville via Hagerman Pass, again over 12,000 feet high. One of the railroaders on the Midland was William Shanks, my grandfather.

Will was a conductor on the Midland, assigned his own red caboose, and in charge of the train. He lived in Leadville, a division point on the Midland. In the morning his train went west past Turquoise Lake, over the pass, and down the scenic Frying Pan River Valley to Basalt. At that point, another crew took the train on to Grand Junction. Will laid over in Basalt and took another train to Leadville the next day.

There he was in Basalt two or three nights a week, and he met Pearl, by that time a mountain girl in her own right. After a courtship they married and she lived in Leadville with Will. They had three children; all born at the ranch in Basalt, as it was much safer having babies at 6500 feet in Basalt rather than over 10,000 feet elevation in Leadville in the days before antibiotics. The middle of the three children was Rollin, my father.

Posted in Family History, Stories

Bad Evening

Posted on February 7, 2014 by Bill 2 comments

I’m in lower downtown, Denver. It’s January 12, a Friday evening and the temperature is four degrees. It hasn’t gotten above 18 degrees in a week. There are a few inches of dirty snow on the ground, sidewalks and streets are icy. Tempers are short, people irritated.
I fit right in. We were supposed to meet at the new sushi bar 45 minutes ago. The place was crowded, a line of chilled people waiting to get in. She isn’t there. I call, her phone goes right to voice mail. My feet are cold, I start worrying about frostbite on the ear that got frostbitten on Loveland Pass years ago. I wait for thirty minutes and then head for my car.
It is a bit of a walk to my car. I know a spot on Champa that doesn’t have a meter, and people seem to avoid it. I get colder as I walk. I cross the street to the bus station. Time to warm up a little. I go in. The place is crowded, others warming up, travelers coming and going. I stomp and wiggle for a few minutes, then decide to cut through the bus bay for a short cut.
I go out the door to a noisy, smelly, frigid bus loading bay. Passengers are lining up for their busses, the off-duty cop is arguing with someone over his cell phone, ignoring the surroundings. A well-dressed African-American woman is trying to usher her four children to a waiting bus in the second row.
She looks distraught, the children, ages around four to nine, look cold, confused, and scared. The driver is loading luggage, passengers groping through layers of clothing for their tickets. A man walks through the bus entrance into the bay. African-American, he is wearing a tan trench coat, dark wool trousers, wingtips, and a gray fedora. He is talking on his phone when the youngest child looks up and sees him.
“Daddy!” She cries, running toward him. He lowers the phone as he sees her. She stops in front of a bus, realizing the man is not her father. The bus starts moving, the driver not seeing the little girl. The bus hits her, knocking her down and running over her head.
Screams, panic, people running to the accident, people running away. Blood, already starting to freeze, runs out from under the bus past small, motionless feet. The mother collapses, the cop moving toward her. Quickly, firefighters and paramedics run in. I vomit.
Still retching, I walk into the waiting room and sink onto a bench. Bad evening.

Posted in Stories

Kimchi

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Bill One comment

Recently my wife and I started revising the way we eat. We eat more organic food, search out meat from humanely raised animals, and cook more. We bought a half-share of Community Supported Agriculture produce from an organic farm that sells at our local farmer’s market. We did all this for two reasons. We remodeled our kitchen and now have more than six square feet of counter space and more room to move. We also read some of Michael Pollan’s books.

Pollan is a journalism professor at the University of California Berkeley who writes about food. The book of his that inspired me to go to work in the kitchen is Cooked, where he writes about food preparation and preservation. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is about where our food comes from and if, indeed, it is truly food. Because of Michael Pollan’s books our food now costs more, but it tastes better and is from safe and humane sources. He also helped to get us using our new kitchen having fun cooking new things.

I have tried several cooking methods using Pollan’s suggestions, most successful, but I also turned a good pork roast into leather on the charcoal grill. I am shopping for a better grill. Now I am trying some food preservation, namely fermentation. My first effort is Kimchi.

Kimchi is the Korean national dish. It is spicy fermented Napa cabbage and other ingredients with lots of chile powder. Kimchi may be fermented cabbage, like sauerkraut, but the taste is not at all like sauerkraut.

Koreans use kimchi as a side dish and add it to many other foods. There are about as many recipes for kimchi as there are people making the stuff. Onions, daikon radishes, carrots, garlic, scallions, ginger, bok choy, and other vegetables go into the preparation. The big ingredient, Napa cabbage, is soaked in brine, mixed with a paste made from the other components, and allowed to ferment. The brine draws most of the water from two pounds of cabbage, yielding about three pints of finished kimchi.

The kimchi I made fermented for a week sitting on the kitchen counter. Next time, I will use less onion, but this batch is good on hamburgers and eggs. It also went well with some fried potatoes, is good as a dip, and will work on nachos. My wife won’t eat it. She won’t even try it.

Most of the recipes call for Korean chile powder from the Asian market. This is silly for us, living just north of the chile pepper world capital, New Mexico. I used my blend of Chimayo and Chile Molido Puro. Kimchi may be Korean, but chiles are a New World vegetable, unknown elsewhere before Columbus. Once discovered, they rapidly spread to the rest of the world, including Korea.

Besides the taste, kimchi is an excellent food. In Korea’s cold climate it keeps well, providing vitamin C, useful probiotics, and other important nutrients. The Koreans often make it in large stoneware crocks and bury them below the frost line to allow fermentation. I find the kitchen counter works fine. Fermentation makes delicate vegetables like cabbage available all winter, allowing us to eat locally after the growing season.

The preservation method, fermentation, is a bacterial process. In our germ-phobic culture this seems strange, but we need fermented foods. Beer! The bacteria that produce fermentation in any material containing sugars are everywhere. I didn’t use any kind of a starter culture, just letting the microbes in the kitchen’s air go to work. The salt water brine tends to eliminate any harmful bacteria, and once fermentation begins, the alcohol produced does the rest.

If you want to make your own kimchi, recipes abound online. Read several recipes and you will quickly learn the basics. Go to the market, get the cabbage and the other veggies you decide on and do it. I do suggest organic vegetables to eliminate the chance of including pesticides and herbicides in your recipe. Chlorine-free water is also a good idea. Chlorine kills bacteria. Use filtered or bottled water. I used the filtered water from our refrigerator water dispenser. Oh, and read Michael Pollan.

Posted in Food