In the West, people think they need a pickup truck whether they need one or not. And usually, they don’t. For years, only a 4WD would suffice but in the past decade or so, it has to be a 4WD, 4-door, double cab. The 4WD comes in handy when going to the bank or the Piggly Wiggly grocery or the DQ or a bar mitzvah and must look sharp and shiny at rest in the driveway or rumbling at a stoplight, and sit higher than surrounding vehicles. Unless you can afford a Stingray or Bimmer X2, the PU is the macho king of the road. I had a friend in graduate school who could have been the poster child for testosterone, so he bought a vintage Willys Jeep, a manly man’s rig in those days. Barely off the lot he was so desperate to get his hormone fix, he drove off the pavement just outside the Tucson city limits and we went crashing up a boulder strewn dry wash until he high centered the Willys about 50 feet off the pavement.
Over the years, our family always bought used vehicles and almost always from their owners with great success, including several PUs. The only vehicle that ever gave us any problem was a Chrysler LeBaron purchased from my father. At speeds above 50 mph, the LeBaron shimmied like jello in an earthquake. I found out with no small amount of interrogation, that my father had been in at least one fender bender with one being a frame bender. Since he always trusted his buddies at the service station on the corner who specialized in ripping off physicians and lawyers, the skewed frame went unrepaired but paid for.
I drove one very old Ford PU from Nebraska when we moved to Idaho in the summer of 1990, loaded with a dog and a cat, lots of crap, me, and a busted air conditioner. My gorgeous wife and daughters rode in “style” in a Corolla with an obnoxious parrot. The Ford, purchased from a friend for $500, had rusted floorboards on both sides, giving passengers an unimpeded and harrowing view of the pavement and the passenger door and window were jammed shut. When my parents visited for our first brutally cold Idaho Christmas, a planned trip to a restaurant in the truck convinced them that we needed another vehicle and they put a fatter-than-normal check in my stocking that year allowing us to buy another, slightly classier, PU.
With that fatter-than-normal check, we bought a 1986 Toyota Xtra cab 4WD from an anal engineer who forced on me a neatly typed list of everything he had done to it, everything it needed to have done and when it needed to be done. His wife was expecting their first, so he put it up for sale after she bitched that a baby carrier wouldn’t fit in the jump seat. Then she refused to let him barter over $200 while I was standing there staring at the ceiling. The Xtra cab proved to be too snug for our two teenage daughters plus the dog to ride beyond the driveway, but we figured they would be happy in the carpeted bed liner reading and sleeping when driving to away swimming meets. I even installed Buddy Seats up against the front of the bed, facing backward. They were inflatable with anchored seat belts, but the front window did not open, so they would scream at us with their faces pressed against the glass to their heart’s content, and we could, and did, just ignore them. If it looked like they were turning blue in winter or sweating profusely in the summer or simply apoplectic with anger or lack of oxygen, we would usually stop to give them a break. Wee Willy, our snarly, appallingly ugly dog, had to ride with us or he would bite the girls if put in the back. The side windows would open sometimes but with difficulty and were always caked with dirt. The girls hated it. Their muffled cries and beet red, contorted, faces pressed against the glass were always an indication of their unhappiness, but comic relief for their mother, Snarly, and me.
Due to family pressure, I got rid of that PU with no small amount of despondency and sometime later we bought a spiffy red 1991 Isuzu Trooper, the last year of the box style, which only months after purchase got T-boned and totaled by a monster truck in a parking lot the day I took a new job. The driver, a fellow employee, backed into me and said the Trooper was below his field of vision. While my electrifyingly beautiful wife was out of town, the eldest daughter and I traded the totaled Trooper for a slightly used Toyota Tacoma 4WD, which we sold to the same, now married, daughter before going into the Peace Corps in 2007.
Returning from the Peace Corps four years later, and fat once again with pocket change, we decided another PU was vital, mainly to get to our tiny plot in the mountains. We found Lil’ Red and it was cheap, in great condition with low mileage, and shiny red. Lil’ Red was a 1996 2WD Toyota Tacoma, owned originally by a retired farmer who used it exclusively on his farm. Then a guy bought it for his spoiled 16-year-old son who wouldn’t touch it because it wasn’t 4WD and thus would be the laughingstock of the high school parking lot. It was love at first sight for me, but Lil’ Red never did win the hearts of other family members despite its beauty, in part because friends referred to as a low rider, which was true. When we drove up to a stoplight or in a parking lot, it came up to wheel height on all full-sized PUs and SUVs. Were it not for its’ bright red color, it would be lost in a sea of parked vehicles.
Red experienced two accidents that occurred on our watch. The first happened about half mile from home and involved a trash can alongside a busy road. I had problems for years with insomnia and I could fall asleep under any circumstances. The pulmonologist repeatedly told me it was not narcolepsy but just bad sleep habits. One Saturday afternoon, I nodded off and hit a big, plastic trashcan full of cinder blocks. The can and blocks blew up before my eyes. The trashcan owner was standing in his front yard watching the whole affair and laughing his ass off. I kept thinking how glad I was that it wasn’t somebody’s prized Chihuahua, a mom and stroller and/or a Granny. Surprisingly, the only damage was that the front bumper was pushed down a few inches. I got a chain from my neighbor and hooked it around the bumper and a locust tree and tried to realign it, but my effort only dropped it further.
Maybe a year later, we were heading to our cabin and in the twilight my stunningly gorgeous wife hit a mule deer. I was sound asleep at the time and thought a meteor had hit us. The deer wasn’t dead, at least not initially. Somehow it dragged itself over to the side of the road and collapsed. Lil’ Red had a crumpled hood but was drivable. We stopped at the Forest Service office and reported it to the on-duty, inebriated government employee, who kept dropping his phone and wasn’t sure how to contact either the Idaho Fish and Game or the state police. When we returned home on Sunday, the deer was gone.
Eleven years later and now Lil’ Red is sold. We just purchased a 3-yr-old sleek Nissan Frontier PU while we wait for an electric truck, at which time they will cost the national debt. We want to try living harmoniously on one vehicle, and surviving on our own wits, skill, and Uber. The new one has most of the bells and whistles except heated seats, usually a deal breaker for road menace seniors such as our friends. The loss of Red saddens me, as I knew it would. I’m going to miss it sitting in the driveway, sometimes shiny, like a patient dog waiting to head out somewhere, anywhere. I think it got a good home but how do you know? I do know one thing, the new owner had better be prepared for getting lost in parking lots and having complete strangers stop you and say, “Wow, what a beautiful little truck. How old is it? Let me know if you ever want to sell it.” I did sell it yesterday to the first of several callers within just few minutes of advertising. One caller offered to pay $100 more than the asking price. The new owner is a mechanic and he told me that he was going to rebuild everything under the hood. I asked him if he was going to repaint it. He said, “Why would I do that? How could Lil’ Red be any other color.”
(NOTE: I should add that my stunningly, head-turningly, heartrate-acceleratingly beautiful wife was my final reviewer on this story)
I had a number of early experiences that impacted my general perception of women, their objectification and sex or fantasies of sex with them. Certainly, through my college years and beyond, I was every bit as disgusting as the two college boys in the Trojan ad from the 1950s. Who cares about the women, you need to protect your pals in case they get “lucky.”I’m not sure that I was that insensitive but I’m not sure that I wasn’t.
My first negative impression of women that I recall came when I was three and living in Kansas City. There was a neighbor girl whose father was a Friday night wrestler, “The Mauler from KC Holler.” Karen, who was five, definitely did not adhere to the Barbie Rule, that she was meant to serve men. She was big and strong and carried around a brick to make her point. She once thumped a baby in her carriage that cost her the brick. That didn’t stop her from beating the shit out of me regularly with her fists. Once I was on the ground, she usually sat on me. My father had always told me that, “Men never, ever hit a woman.” No exceptions. Finally, after too many crying episodes where Karen had pummeled me senseless, my father discretely told me, when Mom wasn’t listening that he would teach me to box. After a few lessons, we went on a Sunday picnic with Karen’s family, Karen got me isolated and began her bruising routine. To her shock, I hit back and chased her through the fried chicken-potato salad feast on the blanket. As Karen and I streaked through the dishes, I stopped and turned to my father and said, “Dad, I hit her just like you told me.” I think my father wanted to evaporate in the presence of “The Friday Night Mauler,” fearing for his life. He told me later in life that The Mauler laughed and laughed and said that Karen learned an valuable lesson. I’m not sure what that lesson was but she quit wailing on me and babies in strollers. I heard she settled down and did not follow, as she could have so easily done, in her father’s footsteps as Lady Mauler.
**********
In the 7th grade, I had two experiences that both involved condoms but they both did not, fortunately, involve women. I grew up during the Playboy era when we males totally objectified women, as are the “lucky” lads in the ad above, who, in their glee, were planning to “score” big and of course, share that with their pals. We had two heads vying for our attention, and Hugh Hefner’s voice was stronger than Phyllis Schlafly’s. Women were something to win, like a teddy bear at the fair. I’m not sure we have changed down deep, but at the very least, unlike the two college boys in the Trojan ad, we are aware of our transgressions now. In their and my defense, we didn’t know any better.
These two stories illustrate how most of us males, including my father and my aunt, thought of sex and women in the 50s. My father was primarily worried about avoiding pregnancy and my aunt was probably mostly concerned about my cousin’s reputation. The victim, the woman, and her feelings were not the primary concern. Trojans prevented pregnancy but they didn’t reduce the objectification of women.
My father, a physician, decided it was time to give my oldest sister, a 6th grader, and me what came to be known in our family, as the “Rubber Talk.” Against my mother’s anguished protests, he decided that both of us, at 10 and 12, would, as he put it, be starting to get “certain feelings” that he couldn’t describe other than to say that they would be unlike any others we had previously but maybe not unpleasant. He definitely erred on the conservative side in his strained description. It was after dinner when he pulled us into my bedroom. At the time, our two younger sisters, like 2 and 4, way underage for those “certain feelings,” were present and giggling. They didn’t understand the essence of the talk, but they caught the delicacy of the message and that it involved “private parts.”
“To illustrate my point,” my father said, “I am going to tell a story about a friend of mine from medical school who, one week before their wedding, he and his fiancée decided that their apartment needed painting. During the painting, they both simultaneously got the “certain feelings” and my friend did not have the proper protection in his wallet and neither did his fiancée in her purse. But, my friend did have a substitute.”
“What do you mean by proper protection?” I asked.
“A prophylactic, Son. Like a one-finger rubber glove that you put over your penis that keeps your girlfriend from getting pregnant,” he explained as though I were his patient. All three sisters tittered at the mention of penis.
“What was the substitute?” I asked.
“A balloon,” my father said. “A penny balloon. Anyway, that’s not the point. He was not properly prepared, and the balloon broke, and his fiancée got pregnant.”
I just remember that both my oldest sister and I were confused, trying to figure out the message until he set us straight and laid the groundwork for our motto through our steamy high school years. “The point is,” he said. “Be prepared.” I remember thinking at the time whether that had anything to do with the Boy Scout motto, “Be Prepared,” which usually meant always having a pen knife, whistle, matches and maybe some toilet paper but certainly not condoms. I was a devoted Boy Scout at the time so I would have had them in my wallet at all times had the manual said so.
The younger sisters fled the room to report immediately to our mother what Dad had said. After he dismissed us, I overheard her hissing at my father thinking that we couldn’t hear. “Dammit, Dave, ya damned fool, you know what you just did?”
“Yes, I believe I do. I gave them the first and only lesson on human reproduction,” he said somewhat defensively.
“That’s not what you did,” she hissed, louder. “You just gave them carte blanche your okay to just go out and hump to their hearts content with any road bum or traveling salesman or whore as long as they have a rubber with them. That’s what you did! Human reproduction, my ass.” I’d never heard my mother speak like before or since. I offered to buy some Trojans for my sister when I planned to visit the our local pharmacist, but I never got up the nerve.
That was the last of the sex talks. My father had done his duty and neither parent felt obligated to expand on his story. I do know that my mother got an opportunity to check on my sex knowledge by using my cousin as a neutral party, as my next condom experience will testify. Both my sister and I were on our own after ‘The Rubber Talk’ to navigate some unchartered (for us) but thrilling waters.
**********
I know the second experience occurred in late summer of that year because it involved my cousin, Bobby, who was one year older than me, always visited from Texas just before school started. and definitely pretended to be more worldly than me when it came to subjects of the groin. I remember one autumn evening 5 or 6 of us neighborhood boys were playing basketball in our backyard when Bobby beckoned us over. Girls were forbidden to play, the assumption being that were the weaker sex and relegated to Barbie and teacups. Bobby pulled a package of Trojans out of his jeans pocket and passed them around, still in their foil wrapper. We all knew what they were but not sure how they were used. Bobby told us we could take them out of their package and try them on but no one did. We did practice on our fingers until he grabbed them out of disgust and stuffed them back into his jeans pocket.
A week or so later, my mother beckoned me to her room.
“David,” she said, “Let me ask you an embarrassing question. Do you know if Bobby is sexually active or not?”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean, sexually active?” I thought she meant was he slapping the salami or choking the chicken, as we called it, but I didn’t know if my mom was familiar with that terminology so I just shrugged my shoulders. “Why?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “Marion found some safes floating around in the wash and she thought that maybe your cousin was sexually active.”
“What do you mean, sexually active?” I asked.
“Having his way with some of the girls in his class,” and she turned red.
“Having his way?” I was having fun.
“Having intercourse with them.” This was not the way she had intended the conversation to go. Then I remembered the evening on the basketball court.
“I seriously doubt it, Mom,” I said, “I’m not sure that Cuz Bobby knows that you can use it for something besides peeing.” I never heard any more about it.
**********
In conclusion, I do know that I perpetuated the practice of objectifying women well into my 20s, certainly well past my college years. Most likely, I haven’t completely left the Playboy mentality behind, and maybe never will. Hugh painted a pretty exciting life with dozens of Barbies parading through the mansion, more objectified the less they had on. They were considered no better than the actual Barbie doll herself. I would like to think that if my father and my aunt were alive today, they would tell a different story. One that may involve Trojans but also include a story that didn’t imply that sex and pregnancy were the most important consideration, and that the woman was not just a sperm receptacle and we males were there to fill it up. In my opinion, that’s a challenge that may be as difficult for men to overcome as racism is for all of us. But, in both cases, it ain’t gonna happen if we don’t try!
Someone ask me recently if I was optimistic or pessimistic about the state of the world, given all the negativism running around today. I responded by saying, “That’s not the question. It doesn’t make any difference what I believe. What does make a difference is what I PRACTICE in my daily living: optimism or pessimism. And I will practice optimism until the day I die. To practice the alternative isn’t living.”
A month without all prescription drugs and I would be dead. If not dead, at least a drooling mass of protoplasm. I remember a 2004 movie entitled, “A Day Without a Mexican.” The movie is mainly a comedy, but with some serious tension which could only be achieved in one day in Southern California when 31% of the population went poof.
I’m thinking that a great sci-fi movie could be made in which all pharmacies evaporate for a month, or even a day, would we all be deceased or just brain dead? Would it be any different than it is now? Some would be dead-dead, for sure, and some would go on as usual. Brain dead. What about just eliminating insulin? Bi-partisan carcasses everywhere or just sugarcoated Democrats? No worries for Republicans; they have a year’s stash at Mar-a-Largo that the FBI doesn’t know about.
It would definitely give a mega-boost to the Mary Jane and Cop industries. Lots of wheat field conversions in Oregon and Washington and Idaho border arrests. We Spudsters would have to buy Camo Cessnas so that would mean a big boost to the private plane industry. Buy one Cessna, get one free. Biden would give me, the producer, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Gravy from there on. The Wife gets a diamond and a fur coat, Republicans lose elections right and left, God drops by for coffee, climate change halts, et. cetera,ad nauseum. It would definitely fulfill my lifelong dream of saving the world.
“Why do you always tell people you’re 80 when you’re not?” my wife asked the other day. “And the pirate joke is getting old, very old.”
“Because I’m very close and telling people I’m 80 grabs their attention when 79 doesn’t,” I say defensively. “It’s sexier. People are shocked and make very complimentary statements, like, I can’t believe you’re 80; you look 62. Or You’re hilarious and you’re really 80? My grandpa is 80 and he’s on oxygen and drools. I’ve found that being 80 is a babe magnet. And I like to tell the joke.”
“You can’t be serious? A babe magnet? You may be looking at them but they sure as Hell aren’t looking at you,” she barked. “Another thing, you way overuse the joke and with your seriously flawed memory, I’ve watched you tell the joke to the same people over and over again. They can’t be happy to see you heading their direction, especially walking like you’ve got a peg leg. You never tell it right, either.”
“Look who’s talking,” I retorted. “I’ve heard you blow it several times, like with that waitress in Tucson. She didn’t have a clue what you were talking about. She chuckled only because she wanted a decent tip.”
The pirate joke goes something like this. Someone asks me my age and I respond, “Aye Matey.” That’s the correct way to tell it. More often than not, I have to tell them to ask me my age because most everyone considers it rude to ask a person their age. The incorrect way to tell the joke is to just say, “I’m 80” in a matter-of-fact way. Even using my best Piratese, it only elicits a look or confusion or just a smile, unless you are a waitress wanting a tip. Now I rehearse.
I love humor in most any form but stand-up comics frequently bore or disgust me. Like, the guy who dropped watermelons from the roofs of buildings to watch them explode in the parking lot below. Very creative. For many years, SNL was a great source of fantastic comedians from John Belushi and the gang to Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and Chris Farley. But now, too often we geriatrics haven’t a clue what’s going on in a skit. I’d rather listen to a Gregorian chant than most of their guest musicians. The last SNL I seriously laughed at was a 1998 skit when Pete Schweddy, alias Alec Baldwin, sold Schweddy Balls and Schweddy Weiners to Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon, hosts on NPR’s Delicious Dish.
Humorous material in today’s world is not easily found, especially in the subject of politics. Occasionally, a Republican will emerge begging for a laugh. Mitch McConnell does a great gobbler or turtle. Perhaps a basset hound. Or Lindsay Graham saying, “Y’all come on down to South Carolina, hear? I’ll put a light on fer ya.” Or Sarah Palin throwing a football to Putin from her front porch. Trump evoked a lot of humorous cartoons and pundits early on, but now, he’s nothing more than the Republican frontrunner.
When I’m around them, I can almost always find humor in the Seattle 3, our three little grandsons, 8 (twins) and 10. I’ve tried to teach them all at least one line of several butchered foreign languages or dialects. For example, their dad works with a woman by the name of Genevieve. I’ve told the boys that the best way to ensure their dad gets a raise is to say to Genevieve the next time they see her, “Bonjour mon amour, Mademoiselle Genevieve.” Genevieve isn’t French. Their father was not amused, and neither was Genevieve, so the French was dropped. Italian, “Mama mia, gimme a pizzeria” is always a hit. Or German, “Ein bier, bitte.” Or a boy from Alabama to his mother, “Git over here wooman, I’m gonna larn you with ma belt.” And then they snap my leather belt accompanied by a fake evil grin. I always laugh my ass off and they laugh with me, but interested passersby usual just walk away shaking their heads. I have told their mom to buy them all miniature wife-beater T-shirts, but she refuses.
Someone hearing impaired recently asked me if I had ever considered being a stand-up comic. “Never,” I signed. “Humor is therapeutic for virtually everyone, but for me it also keeps me immature. Our daughters enjoy my sense of humor and I enjoy theirs, but the buck may stop there. For 50 years I have been asking my wife why she’s not laughing when I’ve deliberately tried to make her laugh. Her response is always the same, “Because it isn’t funny.” In front of an audience, my jokes would never get off stage.”
We have a long-time female friend who is 93 and still sharp as a tack, funny, with an incredible memory, and an unreal laugh. I love to make her laugh, in part because it’s so easy. She always says the same thing, “Oh, David, you are a hoot.” Or, “Oh David, you kill me.” Almost 50 years ago at their ranch in New Mexico, on the front porch of a bunkhouse, she and I got drunk on a bottle of cheap tequila. Actually, I got drunk; she just laughed and drank enough to laugh continuously. I still bring up the incident and she still laughs but never forgets that I was the only one drunk. After her 90th birthday party, which we attended, she privately asked my wife, “When did David go from being a Ph.D. to being an imbecile?” Aye Matey.
Just a few days ago, I buried myself under a Pendleton wool blanket and down comforter in our tiny cabin in the Sawtooth Mountains of Idaho. It was a still cold early July morning, and I couldn’t get up even though my wife was snoring reasonably peacefully alongside me which would have been fine were it not for the fact that her bubbling lips were next to my left ear. That was not reason enough to get up and go for a walk until I looked again at the mountain, towering above the cabin outside the window. It had been gray and barely visible until it turned a brilliant gold in a matter of several minutes. The sun was on the ridgetops now and it immediately brought back then. I got up, dressed, and walked out the door.
Then
I had one more task to accomplish before I crashed. The alpenglow was kissing the Methow Valley goodbye as I poured gasoline on my first pair of hiking boots and tossed a match to them. The burning leather stunk like a rotting cow carcass. It was early September of 1969, and my feet were still blistered after over 500 miles of living in those boots. The soles had even come unstitched and were flapping like an old man with loose dentures. I had finished my first summer of several as a Wilderness Ranger in the Pasayten Wilderness Area in the Okanogan National Forest. The Pasayten is located on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains on the Canadian border. The east slope is the rain shadow side, hot and dry relative to just a few miles west. That first summer of the several I was there. Winthrop was still a sleepy little western town. But that was before the North Cascades Highway was dedicated in 1972. After that, it was never the same. That previous spring, I had received a typed, personal letter from the Winthrop District Ranger offering me the job. That wouldn’t happen today. I ordered those worthless boots from REI right after I got the letter.
During the 60s and 70s, the Forest Service was in transition from the days of the Pulaski to the computer. The Pulaski was an axe-adze combo named after the famous ranger who saved his firefighters during the Big Burn of 1910. A story from the early days that was still lingering around in the Methow country, was that foresters slept with their Pulaski instead of their wives and used it as for everything from chopping up burning trees to dicing carrots. Those were times when fires were totally different beasts than today. Smokejumpers were often the first line of defense and could single-handed extinguish a fire. Today, climate-changed holocausts with winds that uproot colossal trees get out of control in minutes. During that transition, bandy-legged cowboys and brawling loggers were replaced by female forest rangers and desk bound researchers. The Wilderness Act was only five years old in 1969, so wilderness rangers were the new kids on the block in the National Forest wilderness areas of the West. It was a historic time environmentally. Excepting the Wilderness Act, the major environmental acts were passed in 1970: National Environmental Protection Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act.
As a ranger, over a ten-day period, I often backpacked over 100 miles, coming out for four to recover, which meant eating junk food, drinking voluminous amounts of red beer (beer plus tomato juice) in the Three Fingered Jack Saloon, and sleeping. On those trips, except for my last summer in 1973 when my new wife joined me, my only companion was a neurotic German Shepherd – Lab mix, Louise. Any strange noise terrified her, from high wind to trail crews firing off their six-shooters. One night a gun went off outside a trail crew camp and Louise became a blur of brown streaking into the woods. I tracked her six miles the next morning to an old broken-down miner’s cabin where I found her shaking, scrunched in under a bed. Those summers were idyllic and served to usher in a lifetime passion for hiking and backpacking.
Earlier that summer of 1969, one Friday afternoon, I found myself perched on top of several striped, moldy governement surplus mattresses, peering over the protection of the most recent, heavily pawed, Playboy, at a small group of men huddled in the corner of the warehouse. Their conversation was way more realistic and interesting than my fantasies about what I might do on a date with Miss June.
“Golly durn,” said Luke, the tiniest of the group, slapping his thighs with his head thrown back in laughter. “Gosh dang,” he gasped, “That is the funniest durn story I ever did hear. Did she squeal afterward.”
“Luke, that weren’t no pig. It was a woman who couldn’t stack wood. Normally, the joke is told that’s why men prefer women over pigs. Pigs ken’t stack wood and women ken,” said Willard, the tallest and rangiest of the group of four. Willard was pencil-thin and wrapped in leather. He worked on saddles during his time off. He had destroyed one hand with blasting caps the previous year.
Luke changed the subject. “That’s like the time I was sitting on a big ‘ole cedar stump with my shotgun across my lap, rolling a Bull, so one hand was occupied. An a big ‘ole bear come out of a big ‘ole hole at the base of that big ‘ole stump and I held ma shotgun between ma legs ‘n kilt him. One-handed, too.”
Rusty, another ranger sitting with me on the mattresses, whispered, “If he shot anything, it probably was his pecker.” Not a pleasant thought preparing for a night with Miss June.
“That’s bold-faced bullshit, Luke,” said Kicker. The story was Kicker had gotten kicked in the face by a mule. “Besides what does that have to do with women and pigs? Nothing, that’s what I’ll tell ya. Nothing.” Kicker, the meanest member of the group and the least liked by the rangers, didn’t pretend to like seasonals, particularly if they displayed a vocabulary better than his, which wasn’t difficult. Luke shuddered and seemed to melt into the floor.
The quietest one of the four, Clyde, my favorite, was the only legitimate cowboy. He had been raised on a ranch in eastern Washington and had been around mules, lariats, and bad whiskey all of his life. Clyde was not mute when he lost his temper, but the rest of the time he just stared at the ground or into your eyes if you asked him a question. If he answered, you couldn’t hear it, and it was uncomfortable as hell. Like waiting for a lake to freeze over. We seasonals wanted to keep a low profile until quitting time, while I think the cowboys wanted to be casually noticed, slouched there in a circle, low muttering and grunting while rolling a Bull Durham.
For the Bull Durham ritual, it was critical to roll your cigarette without appearing to be rolling your cigarette. It wasn’t authentic if you used both hands. The wooden match had to be struck on the back pocket of Wranglers, sometimes allowing it to burn down enough to singe your fingers before lighting. Boots shuffled and leather creaked. I would not have made a good cowboy. Some of the boys chewed Copenhagen or Happy Days (rasberry flavored) snus, or snoose, simultaneously. As the ad said, “Just a pinch between cheek and jaw,” giving the user a slight bulge below the lowere lip. I got into snoose because my boss and good friend, JD, convinced me that Friday afternoon spitting contests were good for the soul. They were but I got addicted until my wife got tired of finding disgusting syrofoam cups or Planters peanut cans around full of swill.
As I said earlier, my favorite of the bunch was Clyde. I’m sure Clyde just tolerated me as he did any of us college kids. Our lives intertwined with Clyde’s only in the back country. He was married to a reclusive, second-generation French-Canadian woman, whom he referred to, unaffectionately, and always muttered, as “The French One.” He rarely spoke of her, which was easy to understand. The French One was a short, squat bulldog tyrant who spoke bad English. Clyde and the French One had one thing in common: they would hole up all winter, both unemployed, reading western novels, from Zane Grey to Louis L’Amour. Allegedly, in the winter, they only appeared in town for booze, cigarettes, and canned food stuffs. One day I had to go to Clyde’s cabin for some reason and he came to the door cuddling a tiny toy poodle. Clyde called him Buck, or something absurd like that. “What the Hell?” I thought. “Mr. Macho with a toy poodle?” Apparently, when Clyde was stretched out on the couch reading, Buck would curl up on his chest.
Clyde was the head back country packer for the forest. The French One never interfered with Clyde’s domain in the wilderness but Buck often did, perched on Clyde’s saddle in front of him. As rangers, our responsibilitie including finding old camps left usually by hunters before the Wilderness Act had passed, and bag up their rusty bean cans and whiskey bottles and place them alongside the trailfor Clyde to come along later with his mule string and pack them out.
We seasonals thought mules were a pain in the ass and exhibited only one character trait: stubbornness. But those who worked with them could speak of them in hushed reverence for hours. “Snowflake has remembered that danged ground hornet’s nest for 17 years at mile post 31 on Booger’s Lookout trail and kicks up her heels and throws her pack every time.” On several occasions, I listened to these mule worshippers from my bunk, as they stoked the stove until the wee hours of the morn, cackling at each other’s told and retold stories of mule antics. They would pass around a flask of rot-gut whiskey wrapped in a greasy brown paper bag. Spanish Camp, one of the cabins, was buried miles in the wilderness, yet the boys still worried they were breaking some Forest Service law. They would periodically look sneakily over their shoulders, worried that the district ranger was going to bust through the door with the state troopers, six-shooters blazing.
Sometime in June of that first year, the district ranger directed Clyde to the Hidden Lakes trail head to teach rangers about mule packing, even though none of us were using mules. Unofficially, it was called mannying, the art of wrapping two packs of gear in heavy tarps, one for each side of the mule’s saddle and of equal weight. Clyde got the assignment one Monday and I think he was in shock when he told us. I saw his lips move but nothing came out. It was a blistering hot day when we crouched in a semi-circle around Clyde as he silently wrapped mannys for each of his 17 mules. We were dripping in our official long-sleeved polyester Nudelman shirts and green jeans and Clyde was in his duds.
“Clyde,” I cautiously asked, “How do you know when the tarps each will contain the same weight? “
He yanked the belly strap tighter causing the mule to inhale air in defiance. “You just knowed,” he said. When all 17 were packed, Clyde rose up and walked slowly over to the truck, opened the door and sat down. He poured himself some boiled black coffee out of a thermos and rolled a Bull Durham. He cocked his sweat-stained Stetson back off his dripping forehead, put his right foot on the running board of the truck, took a long slug of coffee and a long drag on the cigarette, and stared at the trees. You could have cut the air with a knife; the only sound was the occasional flop of a mule pattie hitting the dusty ground of the corral. Then Clyde did something that made zero sense; he strapped on heavy leather chaps over his Wranglers and put on spurs. Cowboys in the movies put on chaps for chasing outlaws, driving cows in rough terrain and brambles and rain. The outlaws had faded into the sunset of the Old West, there were no cows for miles, you could drive a truck up the trail to Hidden Lakes and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. And spurs? Clyde’s horse, Trigger (after Roy Rogers famous horse), was as compliant as a trained circus dog. We didn’t ask.
After Clyde had thrown his heavy saddle on Trigger and cinched it down, he sighed. “Well, boys, better git this shitshow on the road.” He threw his leg over Trigger, at the head of the string, and swung gracefully into the saddle. As he reined in, he tipped his hat toward us, as Roy or Gene would have done at the end of their shows, and Trigger really did rear back on his haunches. Just like on TV.
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Clyde but not to us, several of the mules had wrapped themselves around some of the pine saplings, snarling their leads. No way were any of us going to warn Clyde that he’d fucked up while he focused on his cowboy routine. Besides, we saw the potential for a discrete laugh. When Clyde started the string up the trail, Bull Durham dangling from his lips and blue smoke curling up, all hell broke out. In an instant, mules, packs and dust were boiling everywhere.
“Sheeeeeeeeeeit! Gawd damn, git them leetle cocksuckers,” red faced and puffy cheeked he bellowed over and over again as he and Trigger madly raced around chasing bucking mules into the woods. Mannied packs were flying. We could hear him swearing at the mules as they scrapped their packs off against the trees. “Gawd damned you, Millicent, when I ketch you, I’m gonna kick your moldy ass from here to Timbucktoo, you leetle fucker.” When it was finally over and he’d restrung the string, Clyde’s hat was pulled low as he almost physically dragged the string up the trail. Nothing was said, by anyone. That would have been suicidal.
The last time I saw Clyde was near the end of the summer of 1973, my last summer in the Pasayten. I understand he later left the valley with the barmaid, taking Buck with him and leaving the French One behind. Apparently, he died not long after that of lung cancer and a bad liver. We were at Spanish Camp, and it was about 4 a.m. and starting to get light. Clyde was sitting alongside that glowing wood stove drinking fresh boiled coffee, smoking and hacking. He’d probably been there most of the night polishing off his bottle of rotgut whiskey. The temperature in the cabin was probably in the 90s. A story was told that he often wouldn’t go to bed but head out before dawn, leading a string back down the trail, arriving passed out in the saddle at the trailhead, draped over Trigger’s neck. He walked over to my bunk and gently shook my shoulder, leaned over with some seriously foul breath and softly said in my ear, “Time to git up, boy, sun’s on the ridgetops.” And then he walked out the door.
You do not have to pull the trigger that results in killing children to be insane. Any way you slice it, murdering children is insane. Aiding and abetting those who ultimately do murder children is, in my opinion, in absentia insanity. From you, the selfish voter who votes for the crooked politician who supports the NRA, the organization that encourages mass murder to be commonplace by supporting Colt, the manufacturer of the AR-15, the weapon the mass murder, to the user of the AR-15, the trigger-puller, makes you insane by complacency and complicity of an insane, murderous act. The mass murderer cannot exist without difficulty because you catalyze the chain of death that ultimately results in the final unit of death to occur, the unit being: gun + handler. You cannot have a gun murderer without the gun, you cannot have the mass murderer without the automatic weapon; they are joined at the hip. You, the voter, have indirectly placed the AR-15 in his hands. His act categorizes him as insane but your act of allowing him to execute his act of insanity is also insane. You are the invisible component of that vehicle of murder.
Legally, criminal insanity is understood as a mental defect or disease that makes it impossible for a defendant to understand their actions, or to understand that their actions are wrong. A defendant found to be criminally insane can assert an insanity defense, but you, having initiated that chain of death, have no such defense.
Columbus, Ohio. October 4, 1958. The headlines of The Columbus Dispatch read, “2 Men Perish in Sewer Water.” The brief synopsis below followed the headlines with more details on page 3:
Two Columbus men, Earl G. Vines (Age 69) and Eldon Smith (Age 26), drowned yesterday while inspecting a sewer line off Goward Road, due to anoxic conditions in the line. According to the survey crew, Smith went into the line first and passed out and was followed by Vines who while attempting to assist Smith back to the surface fell over, according to Vine’s crew members. Vines had a safety rope with him but not around his waist; Smith had nothing.
Matanuska Valley Alaska. September 11, 1982. Twelve people jammed in a university van drove north from Anchorage. “Shit,” Ray quietly swore as he swerved the van around the two moose carcasses, a cow and calf, barely missing them in the dark. Ray Mancell, my friend, was a very quiet, almost shy, physical education professor and coach at the university. We were taking a group of students to canoe Fish Creek, a relatively small stream north of Anchorage in the Matanuska Valley, and we had about an hour to go before we reached our put-in location. Two graduate students drove their car and were going to shuttle the van around to the take-out point. We had about a 2-hour drive.
Only until we were past the moose, did the image of grossly distended bellies with legs sticking straight out into the road, locked in rigor mortis, sear the image in my brain. They must have been dead for a while to have been that bloated in Alaska. Where were the road crews, I thought? But it wasn’t that cold, just wet. The smell of rotting flesh sliced through the heavy rain drops, through the vents, expanding throughout the van.
“Oooo, fuck, what stinks?” shouted Mandy from the back of the van. “Did somebody fart?” I already didn’t like Mandy who was from the “Outside” (Alaskans referred to the lower 48 in the belief that the laws of the universe did not apply to Alaska). She was crude and obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed, but that didn’t deter the panting wolf pack that followed her around campus unrelentingly. I admit, she was serious eye candy and despite Ray’s emphasis on dressing for cold and rain, she definitely wasn’t dressed for the weather with skin-tight jeans, a sweatshirt that accentuated her pronounced endowment and light tennies. Everyone else was in fleece and rain parka and rain pants and waterproof boots.
“We just passed two dead moose,” said Ray. “A cow and her calf. They must have walked up from grazing in the salt marsh alongside the road and got smacked, probably by a trucker with produce speeding toward Anchorage. If the road crew ever gets here, they may just push them back into the water and let them float out with the tide and get eaten.”
“Why would they do that?” Mandy asked. “Moose don’t live in water. I know that much. What eats ‘em when they stink so bad? And they’re huge.
“Moose spend half their life belly deep in wetlands feeding on the aquatic plants,” said Ray quietly. Before they die, wolves, black bears, and grizzly bears love ‘em. Especially the calves. We hunt the bulls and they’re great eating. If they die in the water and float as far as the ocean, sharks, killer whales, birds, crabs, many species of flesh-eating invertebrates.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever. Makes me sick to think about it.” And with that she returned to her fetal sleep position. Mandy was the only student not from Alaska and she was the only one who had woken up. We had left the university at 5 a.m. and the rest of the students were dead to the world and had seen plenty of moose.
Other than the continuous sound of the drumming rain, infrequent blasts of wind slammed the side of the van, shifting the six canoes, strapped three deep on the trailer. By the time we were at the end of Cook Inlet, the wind had been able to build momentum as it came roaring, unimpeded, down the entire length of the Cook Inlet.
We were in our canoes on Fish Creek, when Mandy said, “I can’t believe you can see such big red fish all the way to the bottom stacked on top of each other like. It makes the whole river red,” The rain was coming down now at a steady drizzle. Fish Creek is not really a creek by lower 48 standards, but a small river, and it was well over its banks.
“These are red salmon. They are spawning now, and will all die after they spawn further upstream,” said Paul, a boy whose father owned a jet boat guiding business in Anchorage.
“Sockeye is their proper name,” Ray mumbled. He looked at the creek for a long time. He hadn’t considered that Fish Creek would be so fat and possibly dangerous in the Narrows, a short, sinuous and tight canyon just above the take-out, and this was a group of inexperienced canoeists.
Mohican River, Ohio. May 23, 1956. In the rain, Earl stared at the muddy river and softly cursed. He thought of her almost as a person: fat, brown and cocky as hell. He hated that river whenever he and Brownie had driven over two hours only to find it unfishable. And now, he just had me. He desperately wanted to show off his new shiny green Garcia spinning reel mounted on the new gold colored, Wonderod. He knew it was risky to cross the river, especially with hip waders on, but if he were really careful when he at the rapids, maybe he could get to the bass hole on the other side. Through the steamy window of the black ’55 Ford Fairlane, I watched, wondering what Grandpa was thinking about for so long. And then I saw him walk right into the river and fall almost immediately. In a split second his hip boots filled with water, dragging him, bouncing down the rapids like a bobber, and out of sight. I knew the river got deep below the rapids. I jumped out of the car, running hard downstream to try to intercept him before he got to the hole. When I got there, I didn’t know what I was going do because I didn’t have a rope or a paddle. Maybe I would find a limb. Suddenly he appeared before me, sloshing up the trail, water pouring off his red leather hunting cap and down his face, still grasping his new rod and reel. His boots must not have filled, or he wouldn’t be where he was. He looked sheepish but never said a word. We drove home but didn’t stop for hamburgers at Buddy’s Burger Bender.
Fish Creek, Alaska. September 11, 1982. Paul butted in, “My dad is a guide and I help him when I’m not in school. Both the males and female reds come up the creeks and rivers and spawn and then die within a few weeks. They only live 7-8 years and half of that they live here, then swim to the ocean for the other half and return here at the end to lay their eggs and die. You just have a sweatshirt, Mandy? No raincoat? Dr. Mancell said come prepared in class yesterday, didn’t you Dr. Mancell.”
“Yes, I did,” Ray said.
Through her heavily painted eyes and pouty glossy pink lips, Mandy stared at Paul for a long time. “Well, he didn’t say rain and in Arizona it never rains,” she finally said.
“This isn’t Arizona, Mandy. This is Alaska and in Alaska, it rains. A lot. I have an extra rain parka I can loan you,” said Paul. Paul thought Mandy was the sexiest girl he had ever seen.
“Thanks, but this sweatshirt is sorta waterproof,” she responded. “That’s really interesting. While they are swimming upstream against the current to die, we’re canoeing downstream, with the current to live.” Paul didn’t see any comparison whatsoever, but he just smiled. He wasn’t about to upset Mandy.
We launched our canoes into the water around 10. It was raining harder. The water was icy cold, crystal clear, meandering, docile, and packed bank to bank with red. They were so dense, some backs were out of the water, and they even banged into the boats. Our paddles ricocheted off their backs, hardly penetrating the water. The students reached down and touched the salmon who were emaciated and weak from their foodless struggle miles from the open ocean. Their drive to spawn superseded everything else. Occasionally one would roll over, showing its white belly, and drift downstream to be eaten by all manner of wildlife—eagles, osprey, gulls, bears, maybe a wolverine waiting for them at the inlet.
By the time we pulled over for lunch, the rain was steady and seemed to be getting heavier. There were now two groups, the hard-core paddlers with Ray, who were well ahead of us, the slowpokes. Mandy and Paul were in my group. They were giggling together on a big log, not paying attention anymore, definitely not to me or Ray. It was too wet to build a fire and besides, we didn’t have the time. We ate fast and returned to the river.
I was in the rear with another student. It was raining so hard I could barely see the two canoes in front of me. They were strung out, which didn’t help. We caught up to the canoe ahead of us because I noticed it was zigzagging from bank to bank. Mandy was in that boat. I told my bowman to move alongside her canoe. She was shivering uncontrollably and crying. Her hair was plastered to her head and her mascara was all over her face.
“What’s wrong, Mandy?” I asked. She tried to answer but her teeth were chattering too much. She dropped her paddle into the water. I grabbed it and gave it back to her. “Mandy, you and Lizzy pull over to the bank immediately,” I said. Paul and Larry had stopped and come back to us. “We have to build a fire,” I said. Mandy struggled to get out of the canoe and up the bank, even with Paul’s and my help. With a lot of effort, we were able to build a decent fire. Mandy stood so close to the it I thought she was going to ignite. She dried out and her lips turned back to glossy pink. Without any argument, she took my extra wool shirt and Paul’s extra raincoat with a hood.
When we returned to the river, Mandy was in my canoe so I could keep my eye on her. The rain had reduced to a light drizzle. The river now wandered a lot less but with more large boulders and downed trees which weren’t a problem because the water was calm and seemed slower.
Even small creeks have ways of not revealing danger until you are in it. And usually, the danger can appear understated and frequently unnoticed by novices. It is not uncommon to be taken by surprise and when you realize it, it can be too late. As my group moved downstream, about an hour or after lunch we could begin to hear a roaring sound getting louder. Thus far, Fish Creek had been tranquil, so no one suspected anything different. We still had a mile to go to the van. As we rounded a sharp turn, we saw the hotshots standing on the shore with their canoes pulled up, watching another canoe which was completely underwater and lodged up against a huge log on the opposite side of the stream. Two students were trying to break it free with long limbs by prying and pushing it. Eventually the boat broke free everyone cheered. It was not seriously damaged but badly dented. The dark pools and levelness of the earlier Fish Creek were replaced by steep rapids, small waterfalls and fallen trees.
“This is the Narrows,” Ray said quietly to me. “With the water level this high, I don’t think the students should paddle the last mile to the van,” he said to me. “There is a poor trail that runs along the bank that goes back to the parking area. You and I can take the canoes through the Narrows.” I hadn’t bargained for this; Ray had never said anything about whitewater on Fish Creek. There were six canoes, including the dented one, which meant six trips paddling and six one-mile trips walking back. And darkness was only about two hours away. Besides, I did not feel comfortable at all in whitewater; it actually scared me.
Ray grabbed a canoe. “Why don’t you take the bow, since I’ve got the experience,” he said. I didn’t argue. The Narrows were shockingly narrow and therefore, running much faster. We jumped in the boat. Only a few hundred yards down river, we encountered a log jam on the right side with water boiling up in front of it. The entire creek couldn’t go under the jam, so it had to divert around it, taking a tight hairpin to the left. I was kneeling and draw-stroking like hell on the left side when my knee slipped on the smooth aluminum causing me to lurch and miss one stroke. One stroke. Instantly, the current yanked us to the right and directly into the logs. The canoe whipped broadside and both Ray and I instinctively leaned upstream, the wrong way to lean. If you lean downstream, sometimes you can avoid inundation and if lucky, slide left in this case and past the jam. The weight, combined with force of the water, will take any canoe of any material and easily bend it double if it fills. The water poured over the gunnel, immediately swamped the canoe, capsized it and wedged it against the logs close to the bottom of the creek, all in a few seconds. Ray was thrown to the left into the main channel, but I was not so lucky. I stayed with the boat and slid under the log.
Otsego Lake, Michigan. July 3, 1958. Tripping over the minnow bucket at the transom of the fishing boat, Grandpa fell into the lake, still clutching his now weathered Wonderod, still with the Garcia reel on it. He sunk like a stone into the placid blue lake because he wore all kinds of lures and hardware hooked to his vest and under that his red and black heavy wool hunting jacket. It was cold. He never wore a life jacket. I rushed to the back, in time to see a few bubbles, knowing that he couldn’t swim. The lake quickly regained its placidity. Maybe a minute passed but it seemed like a year before he popped to the surface like a cork, still holding his precious rod and reel. He must have clawed his way to the surface. His now sodden stogey was still clamped between his teeth. With a lot of difficulty, he climbed back in the boat, refusing help from me as he did. He cast again almost immediately but said nothing. He acted as if nothing had happened, and that I wasn’t even there.
Fish Creek, Alaska. September 11, 1982. Ray could see that I was pinned by the force of the water against the upstream edge of the log jam. I was upside down looking up, with my face about six inches below the surface. I reached my hand up and around the log in an attempt to pull myself up, but I couldn’t budge.The force of the water was incredible. If Ray had tried to help, he would have gotten pulled under, too. It seemed like forever as he watched me drowning. He later said that he looked away momentarily and when he looked back I was gone. A few seconds later, I reappeared downstream dragging myself onto a gravel bar. The canoe had dislodged and miraculously ran aground further downstream.
“How did you pull that off?” Ray asked.
“I don’t really know. I remember realizing I wasn’t going to beat the power of the river and muscle myself up over the log. I figured the only option I had was to push up against the log and hope I could break free and go with the current and under the sweeper, praying there were no staubs sticking down to hang up on. I shot out the downstream side.”
“Did your life pass before your eyes like they say?” Ray asked.
“No. I do remember not panicking. I do remember thinking how ironic it was that here I was down with the salmon knowing I didn’t want to be there, that my life belonged a mere six inches away in air, but I couldn’t get to it. And a salmon in the reverse situation on the bottom of boat would be thinking just the opposite. His life was six inches away in a river he couldn’t get to.”
Columbus, Ohio. October 3, 1958. Earl isn’t thinking about his retirement in three months and the bass he and I will catch with his ancient Shakespeare Wonderod and Garcia reel on the Mohican River. He pushes one of his young crew members aside who has started down the ladder and says, “It is my job to go down there, not yours.” He descends the ladder into the sewage pipe below where Eldon lies unconscious, overcome by sewer gas. Earl is thinking only about getting him out alive. He doesn’t want to happen what happened to one of his crew members years ago when he failed to save him in a very similar situation. He cannot fail a second time.
Fish Creek, Alaska. September 11, 1982. Ray and I completed the mile easily and then repeated ferrying boats five more times without further mishap. We knew exactly where our enemy was waiting to ambush us. It was dusk and raining hard by the time we were all packed together, shivering in the van. I stared blankly out the steamed window; I’d lost my good glasses under the log to the current, and my spare glasses were old, cracked, and almost useless. I squinted and thought I saw an old man standing in Fish Creek, casting with a new Mitchell Garcia mounted on a Shakespeare Wonderod, against a backdrop of the bright white on dark green of birches and spruce. That combined with my brush with death, gave me a sense of nakedness and total despair. By all rights, I should have drowned a mile upstream instead of sitting where I was sitting. I had escaped death under water, but Grandpa had not.
Columbus, Ohio. October 3, 1958. When the emergency squad arrived and climbed into the pipe with oxygen masks on, they found the two men face-down in a foot of fetid water at the bottom of the pipe. The autopsy revealed the actual cause of death was drowning.
The Mitchell Garcia was still mounted to the Shakespeare Wonderod, lying comfortably and peacefully in the trunk of the black ’55 Ford Fairlane in a city parking lot in downtown Columbus, waiting for its next owner to take it to the Mohican.
Marjorie Taylor Greene – Lies at the bottom of the slime barrel
This series of three emails written to the same Republican, include my late response to the Texas massacre. Mass shootings of small children, of anybody, should be a tipping point to serious congressional action but it hasn’t been. Defense of any congressman or woman who defends the NRA and doesn’t defend a complete ban on assault weapons is, as far as I’m concerned, a murderer. They probably will never pull the trigger but in effect, they are.
Letter 1: May 24, 2022
I stayed up late last night reading an article from the April 22nd issue of the Atlantic, which had a profound, and if not life-changing effect on me. I would bet if you read it, it would do the same for you. I realized how wrong I was. The article was entitled, “Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid,” by Jonathan Haidt, an imminently qualified social psychologist from NYU. In a nutshell, we have all been victims of social media. It all began in 2009 with Facebook and Twitter, basically rubbing the lamp and releasing a catastrophic genie.
Haidt’s opening paragraph read:
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
The result has been that social media has become the Frankenstein of the 2010s; the opposite of what Zuckerberg wanted. Instead of bringing people together it has fragmented us into our own little bubbles, trusting no one. In actuality, neither Republicans nor Democrats are at fault, we are more accurately, all victims. However, having said that, the election of Trump in 2016 accelerated the process because he took advantage of this fragmentation to expand it even further. Knowing that, “to elect either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis as our next POTUS in 2024, will be to rewrite the American Constitution in disappearing ink.” (my words, not Haidt’s). From what I read last night, if we do elect one of them, we will have effectively killed this country and this democracy. That is not a hyperbolic statement. You don’t have to believe it but it is the consensus of just about everyone who knows what they are talking about. I definitely do not, and I suspect neither do you. The Republic party needs to come up with someone else for 2024, but definitely totally different than those two. Either one would be the death knell to our democracy. Let’s not get into Biden at this point, because it is irrelevant.
Now we have a totally fragmented society, with none of the fragments having a clue what to do and going 1000 different directions, and we are getting increasingly more fragmented. Stupidity has happened at all levels of society (universities, churches, etc.).
Haidt maintains the following (some paraphrasing): 1) it is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does; and 2) the supply of disinformation will become infinite; and 3) we have to make changes or we definitely will implode.
There are 3 solutions according to Haidt:
1. Harden Democratic institutions: Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district.
2. Reform social media: A democracy cannot survive if its public squares are places where people fear speaking up and where no stable consensus can be reached.
3. Prepare the next generation: Gen Z––born after 1997––bear none of the blame for the mess we are in, but they are going to inherit it. The signs are that older generations have prevented them from learning how to handle it.
Letter 2: May 25, 2022
I gave you my word about mailing any more emails to the GOper group and I mean to keep it. This cartoon was just sent to me yesterday by a close friend, who is a true Renaissance Man in every way. I know no one like him. He could be a theologian as easily as being a biologist. The cartoon was originally a response to the Big Oil – Republican Party continuous tryst that has kept this country’s carbon emissions high for years, decades, past when they should have quit lying about it. Both Republicans and their Congressional lackeys. At this moment in history, you could use the same comparison for the NRA – Republican Party Symbiosis, and the deaths of 19 school children. Both groups, both evil. That means that if you vote for a Republican (or Democrat) who is being supported by Big Oil and/or the NRA, rather than voting for candidate who takes a stand on stringent controls on either one or both industries, you are an accomplice to murder and the unnecessarily shortening of human lives.
Take a stand to halt the train of human destruction. You didn’t shoot a kid in the head or the heart but you do support people who support people who did shoot that kid. Let’s say you voted for Marco Rubio or any of a number of Florida congressperps who support the NRA who support the automatic weapon and ballistics industries who support their purchasers who commit mass murder of children.
If I convince one member of the GOPer group to quit voting for murderers, I will have done my job. As I’ve told you, I could care less their opinion of me. They should be judging themselves.
Letter 3: May 26, 2022
One parting suggestion: as a historian, you need to read, “Davos Man,” by Peter Goodman. Goodman explains very carefully and clearly how the billionaires (.001% of humanity) have screwed the world and its “have not” inhabitants. Us. I assume that includes you. At their side is the sycophantic Republican Party, licking their boots and wiping their asses. When you vote for one of those sycophants, you are voting for more global misery and destruction, not less as the Davos Man would have you believe. The Republican politician and Davos Man are joined at the hip.
Of course they support the NRA. And the NRA supports the murder of innocent people; murder is good for business. In my mind, this symbiotic behemoth is no different than Putin. War is good for business. In fact, if you believe Tucker Carlson, Republican politicians and Davos Man support Putin. And so what does that make you if you vote knowing all this is true? What do you think?
I even fault the Republican masses because they maintain their ignorance and their stupidity intentionally. That gives them an excuse to invade OUR national capital. “I don’t knowed the whole Constitution but I do knowed that they’re trying to take away ma guns and that ain’t right.” That also gives them an excuse to call Mexicans rapists, drug dealers, and whores. “Them motherfuckers is taking our jobs, man.” Never mind we won’t do those pissant jobs urselves. ”
I stayed up late last night reading an article from the April 22nd issue of the Atlantic, which had a profound, and if not life-changing effect on me. I would bet if you read it, it would do the same for you. I realized how wrong I was. The article was entitled, “Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid,” by Jonathan Haidt, an imminently qualified social psychologist from NYU. In a nutshell, we have all been victims of social media. It all began in 2009 with Facebook and Twitter, basically rubbing the lamp and releasing a catastrophic genie.
Haidt’s opening paragraph read:
“The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.”
The result has been that social media has become the Frankenstein of the 2010s; the opposite of what Zuckerberg wanted. Instead of bringing people together it has fragmented us into our own little bubbles, trusting no one. In actuality, neither Republicans nor Democrats are at fault, we are more accurately, all victims. However, having said that, the election of Trump in 2016 accelerated the process because he took advantage of this fragmentation to expand it even further. Knowing that, “to elect either Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis as our next POTUS in 2024, will be to rewrite the American Constitution in disappearing ink.” (my words, not Haidt’s). From what I read last night, if we do elect one of them, we will have effectively killed this country and this democracy. That is not a hyperbolic statement. You don’t have to believe it but it is the consensus of just about everyone who knows what they are talking about. I definitely do not, and I suspect neither do you. The Republic party needs to come up with someone else for 2024, but definitely totally different than those two. Either one would be the death knell to our democracy. Let’s not get into Biden at this point, because it is irrelevant.
Now we have a totally fragmented society, with none of the fragments having a clue what to do and going 1000 different directions, and we are getting increasingly more fragmented. Stupidity has happened at all levels of society (universities, churches, etc.).
Haidt maintains the following (some paraphrasing): 1) it is going to get much worse before it gets better, if it does; and 2) the supply of disinformation will become infinite; and 3) we have to make changes or we definitely will implode.
There are 3 solutions according to Haidt:
1. Harden Democratic institutions: Reforms should reduce the outsize influence of angry extremists and make legislators more responsive to the average voter in their district.
2. Reform social media: A democracy cannot survive if its public squares are places where people fear speaking up and where no stable consensus can be reached.
3. Prepare the next generation: Gen Z––born after 1997––bear none of the blame for the mess we are in, but they are going to inherit it. The signs are that older generations have prevented them from learning how to handle it.
Tom did not know what he was getting himself into or he would have never exposed me to your group, and I was like a rattlesnake seeing a mouse. He didn’t even invite me to join; I just did, being the ass that I am. Since Trump, like most liberals, we have all been pissed and wanted to lash out at those who elected such an obviously bad human being, but it didn’t work, because facts mean nothing to those who do not understand the difference between facts and opinions. They are mutually exclusive. Opinions can lead to facts, upon rigorous examination. Example: I think the sun is hot (opinion). The sun is hot (fact). As they say, “you can have your own opinions, but you can’t have your own facts.”
Tom is really too good a person to have inherited me and he has tried desperately to act as a decent mediator, but to no avail through no fault of his own. Even after calling him every name in the book, he still bounced back. He is a great person for the times, an unbelievably loyal friend (he stuck by me) and great for everyone’s mental health. Even mine. I think.
Haidt’s article is very long but definitely worth the read. As a result, I probably will get off of Facebook. I don’t use any other aspects of social media.
