The Press Box Scam.

We almost always  went into New Haven in the fall, Saturdays mostly, and that was almost exclusively to go the football games at Yale Bowl. Well, in truth, the football games were dessert from the legendary Tail Gating Party. It was like a gourmet buffet sitting out on the tailgates of Ford Country Squire wagons and the food was just incredible. Eggs Benedict, grilled ham and cheese, fried chicken and buns and rolls and cinnamon everything. And no telling who you'd run into. Governor of Ct., Lowell Wicker, Walter Pigeon... and it was just plain fun. The air was cool and crisp, everyone was happy and smiling and waving to each other, just flat out almost perfect Saturdays. Everyone would have some food, some hot cocoa and some Bloody Mary's and stroll across to watch the game. There are 8 Ivy League colleges and they played football against each other every year. All in the same order. Every single year. 2nd week, Harvard, week 3, Columbia. Yale bowl is huge, it can seat over 80,000, it's impressive to say the least. The highest portion of Yale Bowl other than the lights and scoreboard was the Press Box. It sat perched above the crowds and field on the 50 yard line and was pretty good sized. It had an aisle towards the back for members of the press to walk up and down without getting in front of anyone and potentially blocking some reporters view to a historic moment in Ivy League Sports History and a rail. Down a few steps towards the front there was a row of seats and desks and then right at the very front were the seats for the various incarnations of Scoop Newsworthy, Ace Reporter. At one end of the press box sat a table that had a huge pile of incredibly delicious sandwiches, and against the wall they had thermos dispensers of coffee and hot chocolate and chicken soup. And it wasn't 7-11 snacks, it was ridiculously good food and the hot cocoa was just... perfect. On any given Saturday there were perhaps on the high side of 50 people in the press box. It was an exclusive club as well, if you didn't have a Press Box Pass hanging around your neck with the number of the week and the name of the Ivy League team you were playing surrounded by a huge red circle you didn't get into the Press Box, No Way.

I usually went with the Goulds and Todd and I noticed a flaw in the system. The Press Box Passes looked the same every single year. The sequence of games  and the corresponding number of the week were the same. The Press Box Passes year after year looked exactly the same, the only variation being the date of the game, which was printed in probably at that time the smalled font available to nearby commercial printers and you literally had to look HARD at the pass to see the date. It was a Eureka Moment in our young lives and we immediately, at the end of every game, would ask anyone we saw who had a Press Box Pass if we could have it, and the game being over and members of the press leaving, they always said yes. Didn't do us any good at the time but the following fall, for two years, Todd Gould and I, adorned with what appeared to be authentic Press Credentials, sat hight above Yale Bowl, drinking hot chocolate and eating sandwiches and watched the games on those brisk, crisp fall mornings. What a view!

I used to go to Ticla when I was an agricultural relocation specialist, and not to badmouth Ticla it had it's good times and it had it's bad times where it looked like shit and items turned up missing. But when it was on the upswing it was cool and nice and mellow. I'd wake up, get up out of my hammock, grab my fishing rod and walk down and take a few casts while recycling the previous nights Coors Light. Without exception, I'd catch either a mangrove snapper, or something that looked like them, or a snook and once in a while the snook was big, 10 pounds or so. However big or as many as I caught, I'd take it up to the restaurant of Emalia, the woman we rented our Palapa from and tell her "Half of the fish for us, the other half is for you, sell them for lunch" and it worked out fantastic. We got free food, Emalia got free fresh filets and all was right in the world as far as meals went.

We were down there one time when Ticla was at it's nadir, dank and dirty, pissy people and whiny surfers from Cali. One afternoon a rental VW beetle shows up with some honeymooners. The groom had been to Ticla many times in the past when it was cool and chill and he wanted to take his new wife down for a few days to relax and surf before continuing south. The wife is not having it, and she's being sort of vocal about them not staying there at all. He complains and conjoles and she says he can go surfing but they have to leave right after that. Which considering was probably a good idea. He wanted to go across the Rio Ostulo, which was about calf-deep in the middle and go about a quater mile north to a break called The Bat Cave... it was in front of a 100 foot cliff and had a cave in it and bats actually lived there, it wasn't something to do with Batman. All good. She's sitting in the sun watching and working on her tan, he's out tearing it up and having a good time. As I turned back from the river I looked up the mountains and the sky was jet black, midnight black and lightning was tearing it UP. Within about 5 minutes the Rio Ostulo went from 8 inches deep to 3 feet deep and hauling ass, a real flash flood deal working and the storm parked, didn't move at all for at least an hour. We didn't get the really bad thunderstorm but the storm eventually moved over Ticla and started raining hard. But I digress. Bob and Judy were on the other side of the river and there was no way in the world they could cross back over to their car, no way in the world. He had his jams and a t-shirt and a vest, she had on basically a bikini and shirt, thin shirt, hot chick beach type shirt. And they were both soaked. They were sitting under a bush, his board over their heads and they were still there when I went to sleep. About 4 AM I woke up to take a piss and I went down to see what the river was doing. It was still raining but not hard at all, just a cold steady rain. I turned on the lights of the truck to see the river and there, off in the darkness and rain, I could see them still sitting there under his board and I almost wept in pity for the groom because I knew she hadn't been suffering in silence. And suffering they had been. See, the beach doesn't have anything to hold the heat even in the hottest days of summer and when the Sun goes down it gets pretty chilly. Actually it gets really chilly. They been sitting there, wet and freezing for about 12 hours so yeah.. poor him.

It wasn't until about 9AM before they could cross the river and she absolutely stomped across that sucker and up the street to their parked car. And guess what? During the night, knowing the people were stuck across the river the local incorrigibiles had helped themselves to just about everything in the car other than the butts in the ash tray. Everything. Which I thought was rather uncool so I walked up into town and up to the kids I knew had done it and told them in no uncertain terms to bring their passports, visas, wallets and cameras back to the car because the camera had all their wedding pictures on it and they couldn't use anything in their wallets anyway. Half an hour later some older woman brought the stuff back, including some clothes and said she'd 'found the stuff'. I think she was either the mother of or grandmother of one of the miscreants. I just felt so bad for the groom, she was like a pit bull on a squirrel, and I doubt they stay married more than an hour after returning to the US.

 When I was in the Army I met a guy named Tony Olivares. He was from El Monte, California... Hacienda Heights actually I think. I assumed he was Mexican but one night we were out drinking and someone called him a Mexican. Not all that good an idea. Tony was Spanish, Castillian, pure blood. When Spain sold California to the US, his family's ranch in the San Jacquin Valley was not included. So yeah, Tony was Spanish. We were not really all that friendly at first, in fact we almost came to  blows one day but we got to be good friends, maybe Best Friends. I hung out with him and his buddies in El Monte, "You're the only white guy within 10 miles of here" and the first time I went to Mexico was with Tony. We got his VW van stuck on the beach south of Encinada for 3 days until some Marinas came along and asked us what the hell we were doing there for 3 days, we told them "We're stuck!" and they pushed us out of the sand and up onto the road.

After I got out of the Army I moved to Denver but Tony and I fell out of touch. I used to have lunch pretty much on a daily basis at the Star Market at University and Evans and one afternoon I was having a sandwich and clam chowder and up walks my brother Tony. I said "I don't know if they let Mexicans around here" and he just smiled. Hadn't seen him in two years and there he was. Small world.

Tony had gotten out of the service and married an Army Brat who's parents were stationed at Fort Carson and they had gone to the post to visit. Tony and his wife were just going to drive up to Denver because, well, it's Denver but at the last minute, his mother in law asked his wife to help her do something so Tony decided to drive up anyhow and enjoy the front range and the weather. It was a picture perfect Colorado afternoon and Tony, never having been there and knowing nothing about it other than it's location and name, decided to get off at the next exit and he did. He decided to go left and two blocks from the freeway, he got a red light and was just waiting for the light to change, looking around and he saw me coming out of the Market and sitting down. He went and parked and walked up and Boom! Time didn't matter, we were instantly best friends again. We spent the afternoon driving around Denver and ended up at Malibu Grand Prix to take some laps. AJ Foyt had been there when they opened the track and they had his best time posted up on the board and I was within 3/100ths of a second 4 or 5 times. I asked the pit man "Damn how come I can't break the record!?" and he said "You're about 240 pounds. AJ is about 185" and that was that. We did about 20 laps each, Tony gave me a ride home and he headed back down to Colorado Springs. It was the last time I saw my friend. We spoke often over the years after that, and when I was working as a mud engineer we kept missing each other's call for about a week. When I finally got through it was someone telling me that Tony Olivares, Castillian Spaniard and my best friend had shot himself and had died. But I always remember that day in Denver where he just walked up to me completely out of the blue and said hello, and the smile on his face as he waved goodbye and headed back down to Fort Carson.

 OK, so, I know I haven't always been what might be considered a Model Citizen or Typical. I quit high school and joined the Army when I was 17, broke my back in basic training but being a Bruce I shrugged it off and did 3 years as a scout for a tank battallion. I got out when I was 20, and since then I've done a ridiculous amount of different jobs, from parking cars to being a drilling fluids engineer and working for CNN to having the 2nd late night food cart in Austin Texas, the first and for many years only cart in the just flourishing Warehouse District. Did a fair amount of stupid stuff and despite what have apparently been my best efforts, if I died and went to heaven when I got there I would be dissappointed. In almost everything I've ever done it's really worked out well. I've crashed and burned a few times for sure but you can count them on one hand. I think the thing that made all these crazy jobs work out was that I never did anything that I didn't know I could do. When my friend Joseph asked me one afternoon if I thought I could fly a plane back from Port Mansfield to Cameron County I said 'absolutely' because I knew I could. And I did. When I decided to bake and sell cheesecakes to just about all the hotels and restaurants on South Padre Island everyone told me how hard it was going to be and how it would be almost impossible but I did it because the day I decided to do it, I knew I could. Same thing with the hot dog cart. I walked out of Lavaca Street Bar one night and there wasn't anything to eat so I decided in about 5 seconds that I was going to buy a hot dog cart, serve hot dogs and water and nothing else. I quit my job at Dell where I was making bank but I knew I could make the hot dog cart work. And I did, for almost 8 years because I knew I could do it. You can't listen to other people telling you how hard it is or why you can't do something. Their intentions are good but they don't know you. Every obstacale you run into you don't freak out about you just roll over it. It was like I was trying to get a permit to throw old people off a building when I went to get my permits for the cart in Austin but I just rolled over all of them. Because I knew I could do it. You have to know that no matter what you want to do, how or where you want to live, you have the ability to do just that, to be where you dream of and be the person you want to be. And the funniest thing about it is this.. no matter how much well intentioned comments on how dumb I was to try to do something, being where and who you want to be isn't difficult at all, it's incredibly simple to do. The only thing required is that you have confidence in who you are with all your good points and flaws and when you accept who you are nothing anyone can say or do can stop you. I swear, I am about the laziest person you'd ever meet... not that I sit around all day or anything, I've worked my ass off most of my life... and I've done OK because I knew I could. I decided I could do those things. And I did. And if I can, you can. I'd like to think my heritage has something to do with it but then again, if I can do it, anyone, with any other heritage can do it to. It's pretty cool actually to be really honest. I highly recommend it to everyone.

 Waiting for the Green Flash

I didn’t sleep all that well last night, big changes ahead and all that stuff. My alarm went off 7 minutes after I had gotten out of bed, I was already brushing my teeth. My friend Roy was going to drive me to the bridge in Hidalgo to drop me off so I could catch a taxi to the Reynosa airport. The driver was Jonathon, seemed to be the typical friendly cab driver, something I’d done myself for many years in Austin. We parked at the bridge and I went inside to get my Tourist Card, paid for it and headed to the airport for my 8 o’clock flight. My spoken Spanish was rusty but I managed to get in the correct check in line, picked up my ticket, headed through the security checkpoint and headed into the waiting area. I originally decided to just find a seat and wait but the coffee smelled good to I went to get a cup and a ham and egg croissant just to get something in my stomach. All the seats in the little café area were taken but two nice Mexican women waived me over to an empty seat at their table, I said thank you and sat down and they went back to their conversation. Before too long they started loading the aircraft and someone on the PA said something that sounded like my name… sort of like a dying man might croak with his last breath when asked “Who did this to you?”. Seems the plane was loaded and was about to depart, a AeroMexico worked rushed up to me and escorted me out to the waiting jet.. Sort of made me feel like a VIP or something, being paged and escorted like that. We took off and headed to Mexico City, I just sat there looking out the window, Mexico from the air is just as interesting and beautiful as it is from the ground but without the noise and traffic and the distinct aroma of Mexican gasoline hanging in the air. As we approached Mexico City, the sky was overcast and the mountains stuck up through the clouds on both sides, absolutely wonderful to see. Then, in an instant, we were out of the clouds and Mexico City was laid out just beneath us, stretching for miles in all directions. The last time I’d been to Mexico City the town was in mourning, it was two days after the great earthquake, but today it was full of life and you could see and almost feel the hustle and bustle of some 11 million people going about their business. The airport was so full of planes it looked almost like someone had dropped a half cup of rice on a black tile floor but we squeezed in for one of the smoothest landings I’d ever experienced. Kudos to El Capitan. We disembarked and something soon became rather apparent, something I hadn’t considered at all. I’d had a triple bypass about three weeks before so I wasn’t in the best shape to begin with, but Mexico City is sort of up there in the mountains and I was dying walking to the my connecting flight! I almost asked for a ride or copped a wheelchair but I figured this was a good post surgical check on my recovery so off I walked, rather slowly, to the gate for the flight to Ixtapa. With all the planes out on the tarmac I was expecting a rather late departure but we got out of there in about 7 minutes after loading up, I was impressed once again and the myth of Mexico being laid back and slow was made a lie. They definitely have a cut in their strut these days. The flight to the coast was spectacular, I had a window seat, something I had cursed when I saw my boarding pass and seat assignment, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the window and the spectacular view of the mountains. It reminded me of the laugh lines around my grandmother’s eyes when I was a kid. Peaks and valleys, all dark, lush green wrinkles to the coast. Then out in front of us, there it was, the Pacific Ocean and the beaches that lined the coast. We crossed over, ‘feet wet’ as military pilots would say, and did a long, slow banking turn to get us lined up for the runway at Ixtapa. Deep, rich blue water, the long swells marching towards the shore, pongas full of fishermen and larger boats full of tourists, barren, rocky islands tossed about, it looked so sweet it almost brought me to tears to see it. We came into the small airport and when the door opened you could feel the heat and humidity like a slap in the face. No, not a slap, more like a love tap, just enough to let you know you weren’t in Kansas anymore. My ride was waiting, we loaded up my bag… he loaded it up, I’m still not supposed to pick up anything weighing more than 5 pounds… you gotta be joking me, everything weighs at least 5 pounds… and off we went, headed the 30 or so miles north. We exited the main road, stopped at a local fruit stand. I had been begging for some coconut water and this woman who ran the stand was someone that people went out of their way to do business with because she is apparently nothing but cool beans. I got three fresh coconuts, one with a straw sticking out of it and two more for later. I drained the first coconut in about a minute, there’s just, in my mind at least, something wonderful about fresh coconut water straight from the nut. To me, it tastes like clear fresh water with a touch of smile in it and a lingering aftertaste of laughter.

After settling in and getting things sorted out, keys turned over and small things like that, my friend took me down to his place for a bite to eat, a fresh whole red snapper, sliced down the side and cooked to absolute perfection by his wife in garlic oil. When I had finished he asked ‘Are you ok? You look like you need a nap’ and I probably did. It was a long day for me so soon after surgery and I probably looked like a pale, damp old man. Which I was at that point in time. So, I headed back to the house and I did indeed take a little nap. When I woke up, the sun was still about a half hour from setting and I headed out the door to go down to the beach and watch the sun set. I’d flown over the beach, seen the beach, smelled the salt air and heard the crashing surf but I had yet to actually go TO the beach so off I went. Found a little restaurant with a table right down by the sand, ordered a Pacifico beer and waited for the sun to set. I was hoping to see the Green Flash like I had 4 times before, years ago, once on my birthday. To those of you who’ve never seen it or heard of it, the Green Flash is something that happens just as the very top, thin sliver of the setting sun sinks into the ocean. When conditions are right, that last sliver of the sun flashes a brilliant, unmistakable bright, electric neon green. It’s so beautiful, the first time you see it you doubt your own eyes, people gasp and point and shout ‘Did you see that!?” to anyone around, and of course, they’re all doing and saying the exact same thing and they’re just as freaked out and excited as you are. I would imagine the same look would come to the faces of small children who actually DID see Santa Claus and his sleigh sitting on the roof. It’s absolutely magical and I feel so lucky to have seen it 4 times in my life because so many people never see it even once.

But alas, tonight, there was no spectacularly brilliant neon green explosion of light as the sun slipped beneath the cover of the waves for a well deserved nap, poor me had to console myself and settle for watching the local kids surfing until dark, and families walking down the beach at the edge of the water, and the brown pelicans dropping in uninvited and unexpectedly on some unlucky fish and the two hummingbirds who, without a flower in sight, decided to come check me out like they have so many times in my life. Today will go down in the record book of my memory as one of the best none the less, and you have to consider, the sun is going to set again tomorrow. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to see the Green Flash then.

 Pink Yarn French Poodles.

As a misguided youth in Colorado several of my friends and I decided to do some LSD and go to a Frank Zappa concert in Boulder. I made a few phone calls, a small amount of money changed hands and we met downtown for the ride to Boulder. And yes, the drivers refrained. We all eat our snacks, pile into various automobiles and pick up truck, one each and before we knew it we were in Boulder. Anyhow, I'm waiting for the doors to open, standing in line and I was stone cold sober. Not the slightest hint of pink elephants or flying dayglow tigers. Hmmm. About 5 minutes later, someone said "Wow, look at those clouds, the look like giant bats!!". Slowly I turned and looked off to the West into the setting Sun and I had to admit those clouds did indeed look like bats. "AH, here we go!" I said to myself and a minute later the doors opened and we began to file in. One of our group was in line in front of me with a camera and the security man, obviously a football player for UoC, said "You can't take that camera in, give it to me". A spirited debate ensued and the end of the negotiations my friend kept his expensive camera but ended up surrendering all his film. Good to go. So I thought. Steroid Puppy sticks his finger in my face and says "And I'm going to search YOU to make sure YOU don't have any film!!". Yeah, basically told him if he tried I'd break his arm and shove it up his ass. A cop was standing about 10 feet away and I said "This man has no right to search me and if he tries I'm going to fuck him up". Cops tells Steroid Puppy "He's right, you can't search him" and I pushed past the clown. All good. We all get into, look at our tickets, and we head to our seats. Well, actually, I did and about 6 people followed me, for some reason I was the de facto 'leader of the pack' for some reason and I was just as high as they were but whatever. We get to our row and there's a guy laying on the floor puking just a little. I tell him "Hey, there are our seats, you gotta go". He looks at me and it was obvious he had done shrooms of peyote or something and he asks me "Do you think I'll be OK?". I said "Yeah, as long as you move and don't puke by our seats I think you'll be OK but who really knows?'. Off he goes and we settle in to our seats. In our group was a sailor in the British Navy who was on leave to Colorado and we were talking to him at our rally point. Someone said we had an extra ticket if he wanted to go and sure enough he did. He asked if we had any more Happy Paper and we did so he got some blotter as well. I was sitting on the aisle, he was to my left and rest the crew to his left. I was a boy scout and a scout in the Army and had taken "Be Prepared" seriously so I'd rolled probably 10 or so joints. I lit one and passed it to my left. I was known for rolling fat joints, Hog Legs as they were called and when people asked me why I rolled such fat numbers I said "Roll fat joints, Save a Tree". So, I figured they should have been passed back at least one time but nope, no second hit for me, which I found curious. About 3 joints into the evening I thought it might be wise to keep an eye on that joint to see where they were going. Sailor dude, having lied to us about taking acid in the past, was taking the joint, slamming down a massive hit even by my standards, but instead of passing them down he was very slowly placing them on the floor by his right foot and putting them out. I saw them, laying there unloved and rather than saying anything, I just picked them up and started reaching past the Commodore so the rest of the people could smoke them. All good. Fantastic concert, Top 5 for sure. Only thing I didn't really care for was that a purple spot light was reflecting off of something on the stage and it was in my eyes the entire time but hey, rally on. When we got outside, oddly enough for Colorado, the weather had changed a bit and it had started to rain. Three of us are riding in the back of the truck, myself, The Commodore and the guy who had the camera. On the way back into Denver the rain turned to snow. Behind us all we could see were round halos of snowflake in the headlights of the cars, and they made a loud hissing noise when they passed us, it was actually really cool. The friend with the camera says "Man, I wonder what the people in those cars think of us sitting in the back of a truck in a snow storm!". Me being an asshole by nature leaned over the Commodore and said "What makes you think those are cars, and what makes you think there are people in them?". See, some people handle LSD better than others, or should I say they have different experiences while tripping. So when I said that, my friend had an almost immediate reaction... his eyes bulged wide and he said "WHAT????" and quite frankly he lost his shit to the point where I had to reach over and restrain him because for a second I thought he was about the leap from the truck.. and even with the slick road I thought that would be a bad thing. So I'm in the back of a pickup in a blizzard trying to calm crazy boy down and in my mind I'm thing "We will be in Sullivan's soon and it will be warm and they have liquor, you'll be OK". Keeping a positive mindset when all about you are freaking the fuck out has it's advantages and sure as shit, before I knew it we were parked behind Sullivan's. I was home free. People could leap from the truck without the nasty skid marks, I was headed for the door and all was well on Planet Carl. Now, Sullivan's was a 'shotgun bar', long and narrow and old, with booths on one wall and the bar on the other. Dark wood, fucking place was the tits. I pick a booth and sit down, 3 other people as well and the rest piled into the next booth down. There was a waitress sitting at the bar doing something, I couldn't quite see what. They had uniforms like they did on Alice. Polyester dress, wide lapels, the whole nine yards. This one particular waitress fit the stereotype to a T, all the way to the blonde Boufont Hairdoo and I swear to god Rhinestone glasses. She sitting there doing something and when I became obvious to me what that I was I had my own little panic attack, and although I didn't run out the back door into the blizzard, I was stepping briskly and it is a good thing nobody was in front of my or they would have been run over. She had been doing something with a scissors and something pink that I could make out but then..... but then when I did understand what she was doing I freaked and left.. She was making tiny little Pink Yarn French Poodles, dolls or toys or whatever you want to call them but at that point in time, I wasn't having any of it. So I sat in the bed of a truck for about an hour, in the snow and wind in an alley in Denver, waiting for my friends to come out. They thought I'd left and someone asked "What the fuck are you doing sitting in the snow??". All I could say was "Pink Yarn French Poodles!".

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 As long as I can remember, we spent the summer in Madison. We rented a cottage on Canoe Harbor every year, on the land side of the street on the corner of the lane that went through the marsh up to Dr. Gilbert's house and I can remember the faint "Put-Put-Put" of his 2 stroke boat motor as he went out at first light to check his lobster pots. Summers in Madison were just heaven and it was tough every year at the end of Summer to move back to our house on Edwards Street in New Haven. I used to love walking to school in New Haven because every morning and afternoon I'd walk by Yale's nuclear reactor, which I thought was just the coolest thing in the world.

Pop, Tom Keyes, my grandfather passed and apparently left his daughter, my mother some money and they ended up buying a lot at 90 Neck Road, which was almost directly across the street from the entrance to Beach Avenue which turned into Canoe Harbor when it hit the beach so it was basically, from my perspective, perfect. They built a house and we moved in, the back yard had an apple tree and the back of the property butted up against Neck River. On the other side of Neck River was what we all called Neck Woods, the Dark Mysterious Forrest behind the house.

I'd walk down the path and at the river there was an old wooden bridge with stone and concrete abutments holding it up. The wood looked ancient to me, broad planks nailed down to three huge timbers under the deck and in my mind they were about a thousand years old. On the other side of the bridge was the 'deepest part' of Neck Woods, it was just woods down to the Post Road on the north and Neck River on the West and it was just about perfect for kids. A short walk on the other side of the bridge and a path led down along the river, I used to walk that path down to Todd Gould's house. If you went straight, there was a shorter path off to the left and straight ahead there was a "Marker Tree". Someone, rumored to be Indians, marked their trails by tying a sapling down when it was about 6 feet tall, bent over and the tree would grow straight up from the tie down. There were a few of those in Neck Woods and I doubt they were naturally occurring, someone had to shape them like that. Apparently at one time the bridge was used to carry granite blocks out of Neck Wood because scattered around there were old cut stone with the drill holes, half of the at least, still in the rock left behind. It was just about perfect for me and I couldn't have asked for a better place to spend that part of my life.

Years later after I got out of the Army I went back just to see some old friends in Madison and I ended up down on Neck Road in front of the house I'd lived in. I drove down Beach Ave. and saw the old cottage, turned around and headed back to West Haven. I stopped at the corner of Beach Ave. and Neck Road, between Tommy Peterson's and the Duques's house and decided to take a walk into the woods I'd played in years ago to see if I could find the Secret Skull my brother and I had hidden among some rocks. It was a fairly skull shaped quartz stone about half the size of a golf ball and to a little kid the overall shape looked like a Skull so we hid it as treasure and never went back. But that day I did. And doing so my childhood memories took a hit. I remembered the bridge over Neck River as a big, heavy duty bridge but when I walked down to it I was shocked. It was maybe 10 feet from side to side. I look at 'the pond' just down stream and that was no where near the size I remembered. I walked down the path to the Hidden Skull and just beyond where the side paths were, there used to be an arch of pricker bushes over the trail, as a kid we used to walk under it and we pretended it was our Magical Gate that we could run and hide behind if our enemies were on the hunt. Now, I had to crouch down and got stabbed several times passing underneath it but I did manage to pass. The bent Trail Marker tree that used to arc over our heads wasn't tall enough for me to walk under, I had to duck. I headed off the trail towards the secret spot and sure as hell, our Hidden Magical Skull Stone was right where we'd left it years ago. Yeah, it really didn't look much like a skull anymore, just a semi-round piece of quartz with some inclusions. Not vacant eye sockets at all. I spent some time there, just sitting and listening and it was nice to just soak in all the things that had created so many fantastic memories but it was getting late so I put the Secret Skull back in it's hiding place and left. I almost hit my head on the Trail Marker, picked up a few more scratches pass "The Gate" and as I walked back up the path to my car, crossing the bridge that now seems so small and I wondered... are we ourselves the Giants we all dream about as children?

 As promised.

Two totally unrelated events, complete opposites that involved the same people.

Preface:

Some people just did not enjoy military service. I was not one of them. Steve Burley was one of them and he, much like Klinger in M.A.S.H. was trying everything short of a dress, probably because he didn't have the legs for it. It was an absolutely beautiful spring day at Ft. Lewis, not a cloud in the sky, just a bright, brilliant Saturday. A friend of mine said "Hey I got some windowpane" and it went from there, just a really nice, mellow afternoon. I was up on the 3rd floor of the barracks and seeing as it was so nice and seeing as Steve had been so stressed lately I decided to go say hi and see if we could go to Chambers Lake. So I walk into his room and he's got his back to me so "Hey Steve wanna go to Chambers Lake?". He says no, turns around, pushes past me out into the hallway and hits the stairs. What sort of was the most egregious and totally undeserved breach of Buzz Tradition was that apparently as I entered Steve's room he had just done one of those fake suicide little bitch cuts on his wrist. It all worked out in the end but the rest of the afternoon was totally ruined for me. Anyhow, Burley did get out and went home to Walla Walla, home of Walt Whitman University and a few days after I ETS'd I went to visit him in Walla Walla. While there, our playful friends the Peyote Buttons arrived and, again on a Saturday, we head to Pioneer Park to chill. We get there, park over by the pond and  we both agree we had significantly "Underestimated the Yield" and we were just as happy as you could be. Fire truck arrives, I look over where it was parking up and there was a crowd of people and we went over to look and see what was up. Swarm of bees in a willow bush. Firemen are talking about blasting them with the hose and they're setting up to do just that and I asked "Why?". Fireman says "So they don't attack anybody, there's kids here!". Que the Smartass.... Go! "Those bees are in a swarm, they don't have a hive to protect, they won't attack anyone" which falls on deaf ears. Twice. So, tripping balls on a sunny day surrounded by hot chicks I walk up to the swarm and push my hand into it. Right up to my thumb, all the while in my best loud sarcastic trippin on Peyote voice "Yeah look, I'm being attacked!" and people are just doing a group WTF!!??. When I went to pull my hand out though I about lost it, all those bees and their little hook feet hanging on to my skin, it took a lot of effort to actually pull my hand out. Still had some bees on my hand so I looked at who I guess was the Captain and did a little 'karate chop' into my left arm and those bees just fell off. Not one sting. "Gosh, look, loook!! Hundreds of stings!". They left the bees alone and went back to the firehouse and I actually enjoyed the rest of the day.  Steve Smith from Madison lived up past Gould's Pond on I believe Mungertown road... yeah maybe but his father had bees and he told me all about them when I was up there from time to time with my brother and he told me they wouldn't sting in a swarm and I took his word for it and it worked out."