Month: June 2008

I first met him when I lived in a small apartment at the back of a publishing house that did a twice-weekly local newspaper. I worked as an editor and writer in the back-office magazine division, and lived exactly one door away from my work. My commute was all of 10 feet.

The town was called Mammoth Lakes, and it was a summer-winter resort that offered skiing (and way too much snow-shoveling) in the winter, and hiking, camping and fishing in the summer. I can’t say whether it was the altitude, or the innate dryness of the air, but fleas were unable to survive at the 8,000 feet elevation, which made the place a paradise for dogs. Add in the limitless trails due to the fact that the town stood on the edge of the High Sierra mountain wilderness, an uncountable number of crystal-clear, ice-cold streams flowing out of those mountains and into cold, clear trout-filled lakes, and the plentiful wildlife – deer, bears, coyotes, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks and lightning-fast bunnies – and it would have to be the place every good city dog dreamed of finding as his reward after death.

Continue reading “Tito 1: Meeting”

There are people capable of thinking in dynasties, or Great Works, but I’m sure I’m not one of them. Knowing myself from the inside as I do, I have a hard time imagining that anyone ever actually SET OUT to build a pyramid. Or that China’s Great Wall came about after a single act of decision by some one person.

But maybe it comes with practice. You start out with small projects, say a tabletop pyramid, or a Small Wall across the back of your lot. Once you learn you can complete those, you go on to larger and larger ones. Until eventually you can say “Okay, I’m ready to start a Great Wall,” and feel confident that you can cross all of China eventually.  Or you start with tiny model rockets, go on to bigger and bigger ones, until eventually you graduate and say “Okay, now let’s put some human footprints on the moon.”

Continue reading “The Dangerous Craft”

Falling Rock was never seen again. Black Deer questioned Grey Owl and Running Wolf when they returned with the trophy, and became suspicious. He delayed his decision and sent all the tribe’s warriors out to look for signs of the missing brave. They came back with no sign of him, but expert trackers believed Falling Rock may have been attacked, had escaped, and might return.

So they waited, but they also continued to search. Years passed and Black Deer died, but Shining Fawn never married. Braves who had liked Falling Rock continued to search – to find even his bones would satisfy the tribe’s desire to know what happened to the well-liked young hunter. They traveled north and south along the rough mountain range, and to the east and west of it, meeting other tribes and telling the story, asking for news, and never finding anything.

Continue reading “Charley & Me – Part 3 (end)”

Charley’s not a very big guy, but he’s solid, and every inch of him you can see is either burned a deep tan by the sun, or covered in tough hide from a lifetime of hard outdoor physical labor. Below the neck, everything inside that hide is either hard muscle, rawhide-strong tendon or solid bone. And there’s this: Charley has a reputation. He’ll fight anybody, anytime, and he’s never been known, in any town within a day’s drive, to lose. If you catch his hands still for a second, you can count the scars on his knuckles from those fights. As I found out later, even the local cops would back away from getting into a physical dispute with him.

Anyway, about 20 seconds into this male-dominance dispute, Danny-boy picks up his plate with as much grace as he can muster, and quietly moves to another chair.

Continue reading “Charley & Me – Part 2”