Firefighter Calendar

Today's "blog" is a bit of an ad, but it is for a great cause. Would you feel good about spending 20.00 if it might help save the lives of countless firefighters? Well, here is your chance. The literature I received recently says, "Do your part to help firefighters." I am not going to use that approach. You, the public, and my friends and family owe me absolutely nothing. I am a firefighter because I love the job. I love helping people and making a difference. Dang, I know that sounds so cliche, but it's true, and it is true for almost 100% of firefighters. We took this job, although the pay isn't great and the danger is, because we wanted to help others. So now, if you would indeed like a chance to give a little back, this is your opportunity. You don't owe this to anyone. But I can't begin to tell you how much we as firefighters appreciate your help.

Every year in the United States over 100 firefighters die. It costs over 800.00 to send each firefighter to a yearly seminar that could potentially save hundreds of lives. At these seminars there is safety equipment introduced, there are safety and rescue techniques taught that could help firefighters come home safely to their families at the end of a shift. This same equipment could save the lives of the public. One such item that was introduced to firefighters at this symposium was the "thermal imager." This heat sensor shows hot spots in rooms and has been used countless hundreds of times in fires to save firefighters, citizens, and even pets that may otherwise have died. The symposium has exposed many hidden dangers of which we, the fire service might have been unaware. But we would not have been able to attend this seminar and to learn about these dangers and the ways of avoiding them if it weren't for fundraisers we have put on ourselves, such as the selling of firefighter calendars.

And of course this isn't a simple donation, either. You actually get something in return, in this case a collection of fine photographs taken by a professional photographer and showing firefighters in...uh...shall we say "half dress" just having fun and sometimes in the act of doing what firefighters do--although admittedly dressed a little more..."warmly."

There is another side to this, and this is a personal and sort of selfish plea just for me and my teensy ego. When I tried out for and made this calendar it was with the huge challenge to outsell the other guys in the calendar, all but one of whom are younger than I. At forty-four years old I knew the contest I was going into with guys sometimes half my age. I believe I am up to the challenge. I was photographed at 9 percent body fat after a year-long odyssey to lose the 12 percent that finally melted away. I threw my all into that work, and I can't say it was easy. But I do heartily aver that it was worth it.

Now to meet the challenge and sell more calendars than anyone else in the state. I am going to need a lot of help to do this, and for this reason I'm asking all of you to send the link to this blog on to anyone you know who may want a calendar, or calendars, as Christmas gifts, or who simply wants to help out firefighters as an occupation and simply give back something for the sacrifice those in this profession have made of their lives. Again, I can't begin to tell you how much your help means to me. There are 3000 of these calendars, and it is going to be a long road to sell them all. Please help all that you can. Any calendars ordered directly from me will be autographed by me if so desired, and they need to be ordered soon before some other department gets them all.

By the way, the photos shown are not the ones that ended up in the calendar, but I don't have a scan of the real photo, so these will have to do for now.

You can order by sending a check for 15.00 plus 4.00 shipping and handling (add another 15.00 and only 1.00 more for each additional calendar) to Kirby Jonas P.O. Box 1045 Pocatello ID 83204. If you want your calendar personalized, please include the name.

You can also order by using Paypal and sending your payment to kirby@kirbyjonas.com . Either way, make sure to specify if you want your calendar autographed and if you want it to anyone in particular. Thank you so much for your help, and please pass this blog along.

Your servant,

Kirby Jonas

www.kirbyjonas.com

Where's the Axe? Time to Take Off My Makeup

Hey, I'm dying to get an answer to a question men all over the world have been pondering for ages. I've never talked to a guy who can answer this, so I'll leave it up to the womenfolk. Now, let me say before I ask this slighty touchy question that there is no way every woman out there can answer it. Some women, such as my wife, are just as perplexed as all of us men are. So, if you're not one of those ladies who knows the answer, maybe you can sit back in a comfortable chair and wait with me and the guys to see if a reasonable answer comes back from this.

Here goes... Why is it that when many (not all) females decide to start wearing makeup it seems to get thicker...and thicker...and thicker...and THICKER.... Until after some time it is hard to recognize the woman underneath it. Now, this process, in my observation, can be rapid or have a very slow onset. The rapid ones I really don't understand. The ones that start slowly and take years to build up I can understand. It's like back when I was chubby. It happened slowly, ever so slowly. I was wearing size 32 Levi's, feeling all fit and trim, and then they turned to 33's, then 34's, but it was over years. I saw myself in the mirror most every day, and it was so gradual I didn't notice it until WHAM I see a photo someone took of me and realize I was the size of the Notre Dame, and not nearly as pretty.

So as I say, I can almost understand how it happens that over a number of years a little dab of eye shadow here, a little bit of lipstick there, a smidgen of cheek rouge there ends up looking like it will have to be removed with an axe...or even a chainsaw. It's the ladies who go from the little bit to the slab so thick if you peeled it all off at once it would resemble a buffalo hide that get me.

What's the answer? There is a little secret that men should not be keeping a secret. Most men detest mounds of makeup on their ladies. Most women look so much better with less makeup than with more. It isn't just me who feels this way. I have discussed this topic with many a guy over the years, and never, not one single time, have I found a guy who feels a lady with tons of eye makeup, lipstick, rouge, or--I'll just throw this one in while I'm at it--gaudily painted fingernails two inches long, looks better that way. Sure, a little makeup can sometimes do wonders. I'm not contesting that. But when the chain on the chainsaw stops spinning, when you slap the axe back in the chopping block as you get ready for bed, if your family is calling 911 about an intruder because they don't know it's you, then I'm thinking there's a problem.

Incidentally, there is a sister problem, too, and that is the whole perfume thing. If it smells like you washed your hair in it, soaked your clothes in it, or gargled it, it's probably too strong. Same phenomenon. I'm sure no sane woman ever set out to smell like a perfume factory. It's just that over time they have killed their olfactory senses, or at least damaged them to the point that a dab just isn't as good as a quart of Night Passion, Fruit Sensation, Daring Tryst, or whatever they call those perfumes nowadays.

Well... Anyway, I've been pondering these things for a good part of my life now, and I finally decided to pose the questions to those who might know. Unfortunately, as I think about it, if it's like the chubby Kirby phenomenon, those of you with the slabs of makeup and the perfume that can be smelled two blocks before you are in sight, you probably don't even know I'm talking about you!

Is "Me" an Evil Word?

For many years now I've pondered the modern question: Is "Me" an evil word? I remember sitting in Mrs. Baird's fourth grade class in Shelley, Idaho, listening to all the lessons about how sentences should begin with "Bobby and I," "Sally and I," "My dad/mom and I," etc. She would say something like, "You should never start a sentence with, "Me and Bobby," "Me and Sally," "Me and my dad/mom," and on and on, ad nauseum.

Well, that was all well and good. And it was about as correct as peanut butter and jam. That's just the way it's meant to be. The pronoun "I" is the subject of a sentence, the word "me" is the object. But I'm pretty sure something got lost in the translation.

Now, until recently, I made the strange assumption that the word "me" first became evil around that time period. Yeah, just about when I hit the fourth grade. But a few years ago I was watching an old episode of Gunsmoke (I guess ALL episodes of Gunsmoke are old, huh?), and I heard my hero, Marshal Matt Dillon, say something along the lines of, "Festus, go ask Miss Kitty for some whisky for Doc and I." I was horrified. I suddenly realized this villification (making something out to be a villain) of the word "me" has been underway for quite some time.

Now, I'm pretty sure that many of you are thinking, "Well, ol' Kirb has finally flipped his lid." While you may very well be right on that count, and since I'm up writing this blog at 1:00 AM I'm sure you are, at least in the case of this subject I am only speaking plain English. I just wish EVERYONE would!

I guess I need to get down to brass tacks here. A brief run-down on the plain and simple trick to knowing whether me (ooh, I said that bad word), myself or I should be used is in order here. First off, I. We all know this word. I. It is the word that gets used almost exclusively now that everyone has been sufficiently brain-washed into believing it is the only legal pronoun for oneself and that use of the word "me" may very well get you ten stripes with a cane. So now we use "I" as both subject AND object of any sentence that involves ourself. But that's not quite true. There is this phenomenon surrounding the word "me" that makes it suddenly okay to use, ONLY if it is used alone. For example, "Bubba gave a back rub to me," said Louie the convict. Hmm... Okay. Now let's look what happens when Frank, the ex lock picker doing ten years without parole, gets involved in the afore-mentioned back rub. Suddenly, "me" becomes "I" in a hurry, because even old Louie knows he's going to screw up his upcoming parole if he says the word "me" in combination with anyone else's name. So now, by the mandatory laws of common usage, you end up with, "Bubba gave a back rub to Frank and I."

So... Where did this transition happen? Why was "me" perfectly fine alone, but in combination with another name became "I." Even Louie, just a dumb convict thrown in prison for stealing gummy bears at Walmart, would think it sounded pretty silly to say, "Bubba gave a back rub to I."

That was lesson number one. Now I want to explore the side-phenomenon of the other personal pronoun, "myself." As anyone who paid two minutes' attention in English class knows, the only person who can give, say or do anything to "me," is "myself." Yet the word "myself" is frequently used by important sounding people like firefighters and cops to replace the word "me"--which is not only more proper but even shorter--in instances such as, "Why don't you meet up with Ragmannanon and myself?" Sorry. The only person who can meet up with myself is I! Not even a guy with a freaky name like Ragmannanon is allowed by the laws of English to meet up with "myself." Again, no one would say, "Why don't you ask Bob if he can meet up with myself?" Would they? So why in our current use of the English language is the word "me" banished except when standing alone?

Well, I hope you don't expect me to answer this question. I'm just as baffled as anyone else. All I know is that it's true. "Me" is an evil word. It has been villified probably since English teachers first started teaching English. Many of the teachers themselves use the words "I" and "myself" when they should be using me. How are their pupils supposed to learn otherwise? Actually READ that English textbook?!?! RIGHT!!!!

But I say we liberate the word "me." Give it back its proper place in the English language. Personally, I'd rather hear something like, "Me and Bob are going to the store," which is the usage for which teachers used to beat our knuckles with yard sticks, than to hear, "Do y'all want to go to the store with Algernon and I?" (Although admittedly if you're going to go to the store with a guy named Algernon you'd probably want to bring someone else along too, just for protection.)

Just take a moment, take that second name or pronoun out, and say the sentence in your mind before you say it out loud. You won't have to do this very many times before I have a new "me" convert and you realize how silly "I" and "myself" sound when used where you should be using that poor little evil "me". Then maybe we'll just have a revolution and everyone will start speaking proper English.

Nah, we all know that ain't gonna happen.

The Barber's Chair...or the Electric Chair

It's that time of year again. Time to discuss the bizarre, the scary, the out of the ordinary. Until my "COLA" blog was dropped mercilessly into my lap yesterday, this is the blog I intended to post.

I was recently contemplating the age-old question: What is more dangerous, the barber's chair or the electric chair? Okay, well maybe it's not an age-old question. Maybe I'm the only one who has ever asked it. Maybe it was a brand-new question. But it was very pertinent. It first slipped into my idle thoughts as the initial stream of blood began to trickle down the side of my head where my buddy the barber had tried to slice off my ear with a straight razor. Now, this barber has a real catchy name, a real innocent sounding name, on his marquee. I'm not going to give you the real name (not to be nice to him, but out of fear it might make him come after my other ear!) But this innocent-sounding name is pretty close, and it will do just fine: "Billy G's." How does that come across to you? Pretty innocuous, huh? Sounds like some innocent goat milker or track coach. Or even one of the Brady Bunch. I guess that's why when my ear landed in a puddle on the floor I was a little taken aback. I mean, when I told Billy to just "take a little off the sides," I had something different in mind. I know my ears might be considered little by some, but come on! (Okay, I'll be fair. He didn't really cut off my whole ear.)

Anyway, back to my war wound in the barber chair. It's not like my hair is flesh-colored, right? I mean, it's pretty dark, and it seems very discernible from my ears, in texture, if nothing else. And conversely, my ears aren't dark brown with little coarse lines all over them. So how do you not notice that there is a place in there where the hair stops and the ear begins? Finally, I came to the conclusion that Billy G collects ears. Like maybe every hundredth customer who comes in, he's the lucky representative of all those who plop down in that blood-stained chair. Billy just casually lops an ear off and puts it on a string in his office. Maybe that's how he keeps track of how many customers he has. You know, for tax purposes or something. But I could conjecture all day.

To give Billy the benefit of the doubt, I did tell him I was getting my hair cut as part of my Halloween get-up, but I think he was taking it a bit to the extreme. Besides, I wasn't wanting to look like a blood-smeared ghoul for Halloween. All I wanted to look like was the other scariest thing I could think of: a missionary!!! :o)

My wound stopped breaking open and bleeding after a few days, giving me enough reason to realize that at least that time the electric chair would probably have been a touch more dangerous than Billy. But at least the executioner gets rid of you fast, not a piece at a time.

It's funny, I felt Billy messing with my wound a few times after he did it, so I knew it had to be bad, but he never said a word about it. NOTHING. No, "Oops! Sorry about that." No, "Dang, I got my razor too sharp today." No, "Hey, buddy, why don't you keep your big floppy ears out of my way." Nothing! And then when I got out in the car my wife informed me that the slice to my ear was only the worst of many wounds I had incurred in that chair. I had them all over the back of my neck and my other ear, too. I guess by then I was numb to the pain.

Before I had the missionary haircut I was pondering on going as Hellboy (which is a great movie, by the way). I guess I should have stuck to plan A. Incidentally, I've included a photo of the new, one-eared me. Just for Halloween.

Have a COLA?

The blog I intended to write this morning just went out the window. I was listening to a conversation between the oncoming captain and driver as I was finishing out my 24-hour shift at the fire station today. One of them said something about a COLA, and the other said, "What's a COLA? We haven't had a COLA in a long time."

Well, for those of you who don't pay any more attention to these acronyms than I do, "COLA" means Cost Of Living Adjustment. Honestly, I just learned that myself within the past five years, after working for the City of Pocatello for 19 years now.

Okay. Why should firefighters or any other city employee have a COLA? Let me think for a minute. Gas has gone up tremendously. It's gone down a little bit, too, since its high, but overall it's about a buck more per gallon than it was last time I had a pay increase--a "COLA". My heating oil, which is the only way I have to heat my house other than electric heaters, has gone through the roof, making me keep my home anywhere from a balmy 58 degrees to a sweltering 62. We do the 62 at Christmastime--you know, for something extra special, when we really want to sweat.

Then there's the afore-mentioned electricity. Yep. Gone up. WAY up. The phone's gone up. The Dish Network went up until I finally got smart and cancelled it so my kids and wife catch up on our five thousand-some collection of videos and DVD's. Personally, I watch in the neighborhood of three hours of television a month, including our own movies, so I can hardly make a 600 dollar a year Dish bill worthwhile on my own.

Food went up. Clothes went up. Taxes went up. Insurance went up. Okay, pretty much everything went up.

Except for my wages.

But I'm not complaining. Hey, I'm just a dumb firefighter. I didn't take the time or trouble to go out and get educated. I have no natural talent as an actor or athlete, so I'm sure not worth their multi-millions. I'm not glib like a politician, so I don't deserve that kind of salary and those perks. I can't sew someone's face together like the plastic surgeon did for my little boy after he got bit by a dog, so I don't deserve the 4000.00 an hour he made for that job. (No, I'm NOT kidding. The anesthesia and everything else were on top of the 4500.00 we paid the doctor. Shoot, he tried to charge us 1000.00 just to write a letter to the dog owner's insurance company!) So no, I realize that all I do is take people having heart attacks, people in diabetic comas, and people who've had their limbs crushed in accidents to the hospital for the important, educated, knowledgeable people there to take care of. I only do the mere job of putting out the fires in those multi-million dollar doctors' houses that I helped pay for by being careless enough to let my kid get ripped up by the neighbor's dog in the first place. So why should I get a cost of living adjustment? Honestly.

COLA, you say? I'll bet our city government would be more than happy to give every city employee on the roster COLA, if we ask them nicely enough. So take your pick. Pepsi, or Coke? If we're really nice maybe we could have an RC. Or I would even settle for a Shasta Cola. Shoot, after five years without a COLA, I'll take about anything I can get!

The Autumn of a Horse's Life

His name is Cowboy Spook, and he stands about sixteen hands high. But when I was on his back I felt like I was a mile off the ground. To those of you who don't understand "hands" in measuring a horse, a hand is about 4 inches, and Cowboy Spook stood six inches less than six feet tall--at the shoulder. But as a personality he stood a whole lot taller.

They say everyone who owns a horse or a dog has that once in a lifetime animal that is either perfect in every way, or very close to it. For the Cordovas, that is Cowboy Spook. He is a tobiano buckskin in color, a paint by breed. To those not in the horse world, that means a pinto horse whose darker coloring is somewhat that of a piece of deer hide. That's about as close as I can describe it, although the shades of buckskins vary widely.

I can still remember the moment I first laid eyes on Cowboy Spook. The very instant. I was with my wife at the Idaho State Fair, in Blackfoot. We always make our way first to the horse barns. We make our way slowly through, enjoying the four-legged friends everyone has brought out to show off. As I came upon Cowboy Spook's stall, I was stunned. I was speechless. Well, almost. And as you might have guessed, speechless is hard for me. I grabbed my wife and said, "DEBBIE!" That's all I could think of to say. Here stood this absolutely incredible animal, perfect from head to foot, more horse than most people will ever lay eyes on, much less ride. On his stall was his photo and the words "Cowboy Spook."

Of course I wasn't going to let this chance pass by. I had to know more about this incredible animal, the likes of which I had never seen. So I made the acquaintance of Caroline Cordova, the gracious lady who is Cowboy's friend and owner. And I couldn't help but become friends with her too.

In 2002, my wife and I, and our friend, Shoshone Indian Clyde Hall, met Caroline Cordova and her husband, Artie, in Mackay, Idaho, where they had Cowboy Spook at the local rodeo grounds. I was dressed in authentic Shoshone regalia, some of it actually from the 1800's, set to portray a white man living with the Indians in 1860's Idaho. We took five rolls of film of me riding Cowboy and standing beside him for a future book cover. He was every bit as incredible from above as he was from below.

And then the years slipped by. Cowboy stopped coming to see all his fans at the fair. Other, younger studs began to take over his work at the ranch. And then we learned this fall that Cowboy's health was failing. For years I had meant to go see him at his home in Challis. At last I knew that this was the year we had to make the trip.

Yesterday, Debbie and I and our 10-year-old son, Matthew, made our way on the most beautiful day since mid-May to the little Western town of Challis, Idaho. Entering this town is like taking a trip back 120 years in time. My kind of place. We drove to the Cordovas' ranch and visited for a while, and then Caroline took us out to see our friend.

Cowboy Spook was in a corral all alone. When I first laid eyes on him it was all I could do to hold back my tears of sadness. I walked to him and put my arms around his neck when he leaned his head down for me. The once powerful muscles were weak. His hip bones and ribs protroduded, and his joints were swollen. His mane and tail were lackluster and thin, and his hair was coarse and dull. It is written in the stars: this is Cowboy Spook's last autumn. He quite literally has reached the autumn of his life.

There is nothing harder to watch than a horse or a dog who has been your constant companion as they travel down that hard road that leads eventually to their "crossing over the Great Divide." For me, not having seen Cowboy in five years, it was a crushing blow to see him like this. He can't digest his food well anymore, he can't run and rear like he did. He can't carry a man as big as I. Cowboy's days on the prairie are over, as an old song says. And I could not be more sad.

Cowboy Spook was not only the Cordovas' once in a lifetime horse, but the once in a lifetime horse of a million other people as well. I have photographed, studied, befriended and ridden more horse than I could ever count. Yet never have I seen the equal of Cowboy Spook. Both in his incredibly friendly, loving and docile temperament, and in the beauty of his appearance and the smoothness of his ride. There will never be another Cowboy Spook. The day his old eyes glaze over and his heart stops beating, the horse world as a whole will lose a huge part of its heart too. There will never be another horse like Cowboy Spook.

Of Gentle Snow and Being Rich

Everyone expected, and with good reason, to wake up to the sight of the Three Tetons towering over our house, just outside the bedroom window. Instead, we woke up to giant snowflakes, falling gently, and four inches of white already decorating the railing of the deck.

Yellowstone, which had been just within our grasp, now might as well have been in far Siberia. The recorded road report on the phone confirmed this: Road after road after snow-clogged road—CLOSED. Will not open until Summer 2010. Something about that word, Two Thousand Ten, seemed so incredibly far in the future. I guess that’s how it is when you are a nostalgia buff. You relive the past a lot. It still does not seem like 2009, even as it prepares to come to a sliding stop among the powdery snows of another early winter.

So the snow was falling when I rolled over in our log bed and turned to gaze out the window beyond the deck, which is also made of logs. It was one of those friendly snows, friendly in more ways than one. First, because it was falling so gently, it was friendly to us, friendly to any brave soul out walking or riding, or whatever those brave souls do who love the winter. Second, friendly to skiers and snowboarders, I’m sure, although those two pursuits were the farthest things from my mind then and now. And third, the snowflakes were friendly to each other, it seemed, for it appeared that forty or fifty of them had joined hands and were coming down with the illusion of gargantuan flakes the size of cotton balls. They came with a flutter, unable to fall straight because of their strange, flat shapes, caught in and affected by the slightest shift of air. They eased down onto their comrades who had already come to rest, settling gently to leave plenty of air cushion in between. What appeared to be four inches of moisture was in reality probably more like an eighth of an inch, had it been rain.

I am put in mind of a similar circumstance, when I was traveling alone on a train from Geneva, Switzerland to Innsbruck, Austria. That time it was the magnificent Matterhorn I was looking forward to, a mountain which I believed they might have modeled the Grinch’s mountain after in the cartoon movie. In Geneva the weather had been gorgeous, the sun shining, the city aglow in the light of late November. But the day I got up to catch the train the clouds had slunk down over the Alps, everything lay in shades of gray and muted greens and yellows. As the train clacked on past at the top of the rise, I only knew the Matterhorn was there because like today, with the Tetons, I could feel this incredible presence, the sense that something huge and powerful and important is looming there, just within your grasp, but invisible. I rode on past the Matterhorn that day, and the only Matterhorn I will probably ever see is the Disneyland ride. The next day broke crisp and incredibly clear, incidentally, and the brilliant colored homes and shops of Innsbruck will be forever etched in my memory, there against the stark blue sky.

Now, here in this cedar home, with the world of gray outside and the chill that creeps in through every crack, only to be battled back by the fire in the fireplace, I am taken back to my childhood. There, in a place called Bear Canyon, my first vivid memories begin. The sun came up around noon in the winter, and it disappeared behind the spruce and fir forest sometime close to three o’clock, thanks to the confines of the canyon and its steep, forested sides. Since we moved away from there before I was old enough for school, my memories of that cabin in the woods of western Montana are all good, all made before young children are forced out into the cold to go to school, when your nostrils stick together, and it’s so cold it hurts to breathe. My memories were of building snowmen with Mom, lying on the sofa in front of a crackling fire, with a homemade afghan wrapped around me. Of watching Dad and the other kids come in after a long day, stomping their feet, complaining of the cold, while in my secure little world the cold affected me only if I invited it.

I remember heating water in a huge kettle—or what seemed huge back then—on top of the wood stove so we could have that weekly bath on Saturday nights. I remember hot chicken and dumplings, fresh venison cooked just right, in the early morning hours before daylight, when the house was normally haunted only by my early rising daddy, until his “little buddy” crept out of the covers for a bite. I think it was there, in those formative years, when I gained my love of fresh deer meat, which will always and forever be my choice of meats, just as it is for my own children.

The sun exploded onto the snow field behind the cabin once today, as I remember it doing all those years ago. I can’t help but compare it to a field of diamonds, because cliché or not that is indeed what it seemed to be. Especially when it was cold outside, as Bozeman, Montana, can get—very, VERY cold. Those coldest snowflakes seemed to rest on the surface of the snow field, more like huge flakes of frost than like actual snow, and when the sun would hit them at a glancing angle, they shone fiercely, boldly, and only disappeared when a child thought he could go out and pick them up and be rich.

But what is rich, after all? Is it money, a huge home, fancy cars and computers and big screen TV’s? Or is rich a cozy little house in a canyon in the mountains, a little home nestled below Mount Ellis, where the deer, the elk and moose, and the black bear roamed freely? Is rich being alone with a mother who loves you, wrapped in a blanket, reading a good book, or listening to the music of The Sons of the Pioneers, Marty Robbins or the Carpenters? Does being rich mean a huge hug from your daddy after he’s been gone for an eternity—or at least eight hours—away from his little buddy? Everyone has their own idea of rich, and I guess there are different kinds of rich.

Even as I type this, my beautiful wife lies here beside me napping from her morning’s labors, my belly is full from a big breakfast of pancakes and homemade huckleberry syrup, made from fruit we picked ourselves—as a family. I have a fine memory of the scent of bacon and eggs and pancakes wafting through the house. We are healthy, my kids are happy, and a copy of the Good Book rests here on the bed post above my head. Outside, the world could not be prettier. Although I am an autumn person, and I was not ready for snow, it is so beautiful I can’t be sad. And I swear to you, I am richer than a hundred sheiks. God is glorious, and so is life at the base of the Teton Range. Only the western Montana of the 1960’s could bring me closer to Heaven.

Utah Traffic

Okay, I know. Everyone has told me, and if they haven't they would ... if they knew I was about to write this. But I have always been the kind to jump in with both feet, and today is no different. I was going to write about modern pedestrians and crosswalks, but having just made a brief pilgrimage to Utah and back, during the peak of rush hour, AND just before a ballgame between the Brigham Young University and Utah State (I think), I changed my mind. How could I pass on such an opportunity while it's fresh in my mind?

So, where am I going with this. I am from Idaho, and if you are from Idaho or Utah you probably know of the friendly--and sometimes not-so-friendly--rivalry between the drivers of our two states. I haven't heard them, but I'm sure the jokes in Utah about Idaho drivers are just as nasty and low as the jokes about Utah drivers are in Idaho. With tongue firmly in cheek, I am about to venture into a territory from which there may be no return, and no forgiveness....

Friday evening. Five o'clock. Driving south on I-15 at Willard, Utah, heading for the bedroom community of Draper. Or at least I think it's a bedroom community. I've never seen any beds or bedrooms in any of them yet.

You can see where I'm going with this...if you're from northern Utah. Or maybe you can't. Maybe to you this kind of traffic is normal by now. But to a country bumpkin originally from the wilds of western Montana, traffic at 5:00 PM on a Friday in northern Utah is NOT normal. And anyone IN this traffic by choice cannot be normal either. I have to believe we were all road-ragers waiting for the spark to ignite us. Incidentally, I have to clarify one point, and to do that I'll take you back to one key word: "north." In speaking of Utah traffic, I am referring to north Utah, an entire different planet from the vast red deserts and open country of the southern half of the state.

On top of the normal problems of traffic in northern Utah, unbeknownst to me and my wife there was a game set to commence somewhere in the environs of Salt Lake City between BYU and Utah State. Umm... Apparently this is a big deal down there. Being a non-sports fan, I can't imagine the draw of driving for two solid hours in traffic I could outrun with one crippled leg and bunions. I mean, I would rather whack on my knees with a meat cleaver than spend that same enjoyable two hours again any time soon. But that was the biggest reason, I later learned, that the traffic on Interstate 15 traveled for thirty miles at speeds between 0 and 13 miles an hour, only once raging up to the top speed of 55, and that only for half a mile--as sort of a teaser.

Now, I have to question the intelligence of any police officer who would pull someone over in traffic like that, but they did. And what did these traffic stops accomplish? Generally, they made the ten mile an hour drivers slow to five or less. Wouldn't want to get a speeding ticket, after all. This would go for two miles or so, until we would pass said police officer and his hapless victim, at which point traffic would zoom off up to 13, or maybe even 15, miles an hour, just long enough to get our hopes up before dashing them again and bringing us back down to eight or ten miles an hour until we passed the next wreck or traffic stop. I can only say that I hope every traffic stop ended in the arrest of some deadly serial killer, child molester or IRS agent, because otherwise it only put undue strain on the traffic that was already strained to the point of cracking.

So how does a writer (and road rager in embryo) deal with such a situation? Well, of course he spends his time cursing under his breath and joyfully observing the faces of his fellow commuters. I was surprised at how few of them were talking on cell phones. I mean, generally a trip down the freeway will reveal two out of three in the middle of that pursuit. There they go, flying by me, all over two lanes of traffic, with a phone to their ear and a map stretched out over the steering wheel. Or better yet, a novel before them on the wheel--up high, of course, in case they need to look over it to see where their car is going. And in case you haven't done much freeway driving lately, please know this--I am NOT kidding about the novels.

Oh--back to those faces. Most of them seemed to be in a daze, staring with sheer boredom at the monotony of hundreds of vehicles behind, around and before them. Some were asleep. And sometimes their passengers were too. Some had crazed looks in their eyes, and I could imagine they probably had some automatic weapon in their lap, just waiting for the right moment to snap. I mean, there must be some kind of etiquette road ragers follow, right? A guidebook or something on "straws that will break the camel's back?" They can't expect all of us future road ragers just to go out and learn that stuff on our own, can they? Incidentally, I imagine to anyone who happened to come out of their own daze long enough to look at me I probably had the second face, with the wild but glazed over eyes of the road rager waiting to be born.

Well, it took us two hours to drive the fifty miles to the reunion to which my wife and I were bound. Luckily, we left home thinking we would have an extra hour and a half to find the location of the reunion. As it was, in spite of the traffic and the notorious so-called directions of MapQuest, we were only half an hour late. (And MapQuest is another blog in itself!)

I owe an apology to you if you are from northern Utah and you are arguing that the drivers I'm describing are nothing like you. I knew there was a good driver somewhere in northern Utah, and it must be you. Glad to meet you. Next time I'm passing through, please hold up your hand and wave, and give me a great big smile. Just don't honk your horn. I wouldn't want to road rage on the only good driver in northern Utah.

Photo of Our Free Puppy

Free Dog to Good Home

Open letter to all my friends on Facebook:

Friends, I have this dog that I need to find a nice home for as soon as possible. He is a cute little guy...after a fashion. Well, at least he's sleek and smooth, and his coat sure is pretty. And he has nice ears. Anyway, I bought him about a year ago, and he was okay when he was a puppy, but as he got older my wife started saying he was creeping her out a little bit. I haven't seen this, and I sort of have my doubts (but don't tell my wife I said that!), but she claims that he will sometimes just sit and stare at her. She says he doesn't even blink. And then she's trying to tell me he does it especially if she's getting dressed or is showering. I don't know. Sounds like a pretty wild imagination to me. But whatever... You can't fight the wife, can you? So having said all that, I will let this beautiful five hundred dollar animal go for free. He's had all his shots, he's wormed, and I'll let you have his collar and a bag of dog food too. Oh, and I'm going to post a photo of him on my next blog. You've got to check it out to see how cute he is. Thanks for looking. Oh yeah--He answers to Randy.



Okay, okay, okay. My blog tonight is a copout. Not only is it a copout, but it's an out and out plagiarism. :) Why am I admitting this, you ask? Because as sure as you're born someone out there who reads this will have already seen it on the Internet somewhere, and then I'll be sued and end up broke and making license plates in prison...or whatever they do in prison nowadays!

Anyway, because I had a drastic workout today, or more aptly put I had THREE drastic workouts today and some intense training on pretend fires in the drill tower, and also because I'm in the middle of a chapter of my new book and don't want to stop.... I'm bringing you this plagiarized, fake letter that was just so hilarious I can't help but share it with you tonight. I hope you get as good a laugh out of it as I did.

There's a Monkey Behind You

So it's 1998, and I'm driving down some lonely Texas road in the middle of nowhere. I'm on a book signing tour for 28 days straight, 13 states, 16 stores, and walking into every book store in every mall on the way, not to mention every stand alone store. I had my wife Debbie and our two oldest boys, Jake and Clay, along for the ride. Matthew wasn't born yet. At the time, Jake had just turned five and Clay was three.

So back to that lonely Texas road... I am driving my silver Caddy along, minding my own business, when a pickup goes by with something odd in the back. At least if you consider a loose, full-grown bengal tiger in the back of your pickup to be odd. Now, guys, I don't drink. I promise, I was stone cold sober when that tiger went by. At first I thought maybe I had been staring at road stripes too long, but when I looked in the rearview mirror I thought to myself, "Road stripes don't ride in the back of pickups." But neither do tigers! Well, at least they probably shouldn't.

To satisfy my own curiosity, which is vast, I slammed on the brakes and did a Dukes of Hazzard turn-around in the middle of the highway. My Caddy could go from zero to sixty in five seconds, or so it seemed, so it was no time before we were closing on the pickup. And the tiger. And it was most definitely a tiger. We found ourselves wondering what would happen if the guy had to stop for gas.

So anyway, I needed to head on to my next book signing and had no time to follow our tiger any farther, so we turned back around. But this is only the beginning of my story. I am not--incidentally--making any of this up--all fiction writing aside. This is a true story, and not even the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

As we continue driving down this lonely Texas road, I was needless to say slightly consternated when I look to my left and remark a full-grown giraffe walking leisurely down the fence line. No doubt looking for his tiger. Turns out the giraffe's name was Jake. No kidding.

After snapping a few shots of this giraffe which appeared to be running free in the wilds of Texas, we came upon a sign advertising "WILDLIFE SAFARI." That calmed us down a little, but of course we were intrigued enough that we pulled into this winding dirt lane and stopped at this rickety old building out in the middle of the chaparral. I can't remember what we paid for this safari that was to follow, but whatever it was it was worth it. There was a male ostrich that would eat right out of a bucket in your hands, but only the strongest people on the safari trailer were allowed to hold the bucket, because he could almost take it out of your hands with one peck. There was a huge bull bison that would eat grain right out of the palm of your hand--and leave this terrific green, frothy mush between your fingers in the process. Yeah. Real nice.

But that is as far as I'm going to share of our safari adventures, because the real adventure happened before the actual safari. See, we had to wait twenty minutes or so for the safari trailer to make its way back around to us, and in the meantime we were told there was a little zoo out back that we could peruse while we were waiting. With much excitement but little fanfare, we made our way back on a winding path to a smattering of sturdy cages. They were filled with all kinds of animals, the kind that are too small or too furtive to spot on a safari so are doomed to the fate of being locked up like dangerou felons for happy tourists to gawk at at take pictures of. I can't tell you, to be honest, what any of the animals in those cages were. Except for two of them.

These were spider monkeys.

There was a big black monkey and a smaller brown monkey. Male and female? I don't know. Just a wild guess. But they soon drew our attention, because they kept hanging their arms out the cage, clear up to their shoulders, with their fingers outstretched. They looked for all the world like scrawny little hairy funeral directors. And they truly looked like their feelings would be hurt if we didn't shake their hands. Honest.

Well, a glance around the place told us we were actually alone. Bad scenario. You see, I have always been an animal lover. Or should I say I've always had an interest in being close to animals. So this is a moment I just couldn't pass up. Like any polite person would have done, I extended my hand in greeting. And the spider monkey took it. She was very gentle, too. She gave my hand a little shake and seemed to know all the decorum required of a funeral director. She even gave me a sad little nod and a tilt of her head, as if extending her condolences through this much practiced expression.

Like father like son. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. But when Jake started jumping up and down saying he wanted to shake hands too, what could I do? I held him up to the cage, and the little brown monkey shook his hand gently but firmly and told him with his eyes how sorry he was for Jacob and his loss. Yeah, whatever. Now, for the good part. There was no way on this green earth that Debbie was going to shake that monkey's hand. Shoot, who knows where a monkey's hand has been? Well, actually, we probably all knew where that monkey's hand had been, which made Debbie about the only intelligent person in that zoo at the moment. But Clay, now, he just HAD to shake that hand. So like the doting dad, I picked Clay up and held him out....to his doom.

In Debbie's defense, she was running a video camera at the time, and she couldn't very well fly to Clay's rescue as we all know she would have. In the moments that followed, all monkey heck broke loose. Clay's hand was taken in greeting, but unfortunately, Clay being more the size of the monkeys, they decided they would either adopt him or have him for dinner. We never found out which. The monkey's other hand shot out of the cage, and it grabbed Clay by his upper arm and started pulling him into the cage. I had to grab it's hand and jerk it loose and shoved it back into the cage, pulling Clay away with my other hand while he screamed in horror. But not as much horror as the monkey, robbed of its new toy. That monkey raised the demons from below, I swear. It started screaming in the most blood curdling cry you've ever heard, and needless to say we slunk away from there in horror, hoping we could vanish from the zoo before the owners showed up to see what the ruckus was about.

But the story doesn't end here. After leaving the maniac funeral director monkey and Jake the giraffe, we headed out to finish the rest of our tour. By this point, the boys were really tired of book stores and malls, and it took a lot of work to get them to walk fast so we could move on to the next store. So, because Clay was so afraid of monkeys now, if he was dallying, all we had to do was say, "Come on, Clay, there's a monkey behind you." Usually without even looking back he would come running to us. Even when he did look back and saw no monkey, he still kept running each time the ploy was used.

As all good ploys, however, this one was overused, and in the end it was almost my demise. We had been using the "monkey behind you" scare tactic to hurry Clay up for three days when we stopped in a Dallas mall and hit up Waldenbooks with our usual spiel about buying my books. We had an appointment for a book signing after that, so we were in a big hurry to get out and get to the next mall. But Clay was dragging his feet like nobody's business. He was tired, hungry, and hot, and he was fed up with malls. But he was still afraid of monkeys.

If I had looked back at Clay the next moments would not have been so traumatic. But I hadn't. I just glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, realized he was dallying, and uttered the same by now brainless comment, "Look out, Clay, there's a monkey behind you."

As I finished speaking, to check on the effect my statement had on my three-year-old, I turned and looked at him. There, directly behind my son, was a black man. He appeared to be about 6' 6" and three hundred fifty pounds. To say my heart leaped into my throat was putting it mildly. Clay run to me, thinking this time a monkey really was behind him, and I stood there in shock, thinking I was about to be pounded into the ground. To end the story abruptly, it turned out this guy was engrossed in some other thought and haven't even heard me. But I learned that day to look before I leaped, and I also stopped telling Clay there were monkeys behind him.

Incidentally, there were crowded malls along our route where not one white person was in sight. But we quickly became very relaxed, particularly in Texas, where what appeared to be entire gangs of black men would stop to chat with us and see where we were from, just as friendly as can be. Other than the spider monkey, everyone we met in Texas was pretty friendly. Well, and maybe she was too. A little TOO friendly for Clay's liking.

So if you ever get a chance to shake hands with a monkey, just think where that monkey's hand has been and pass on that opportunity. And whatever you do, if anyone says there's a monkey behind you--RUN!!!!

Is It Creek or Is It Crick?

Thanks to my friend Stephanie, the majority of this blog is going to be one thing: a poem. Folks, I love Idaho, but I'm originally from Montana. I have also lived in Virginia. In both places I was too young to pay much attention to how the locals talked. Most of my manner of speaking, including the words I use, came from my own family. My father was basically an eight year college student by the time I was born. He was forty-five years old and set in his ways. He was also set in the way he spoke, and for the most part it was in very correct, although not "stilted," English. Perhaps it is for that reason that when little Steph asked me if I was a "real Idaho boy," the test consisting of whether I pronounce a stream of water "creek" or "crick," I was able to firmly say, "CREEK!!!!!"

When I first met my wife in 1986 we went for an 18 mile hike with my dogs. Of course, it was only supposed to be an 8 mile walk, before I got lost. The fact that she never complained was the biggest reason we kept dating. I figured if she was tougher than I was she was definitely one to hang on to. That fact has been proven time and again throughout our lives. Unfortunately, we started on slightly rocky ground at the beginning of our hike when Debbie made the mistake of mentioning the "crick" we were walking past. I started into a teasing stretch that went on and on, and eventually led to the poem that follows. After I read this poem to Debbie, she stopped being an Idaho girl, at least in the sense of passing Stephanie's test. I have never once heard her say crick again. See? Some folks really can learn new things at the advanced age of 22!

So, with no further ado, here is the poem inspired by my Debbie and thrown into this blog because of Stephanie's "Idaho test." I hope you enjoy.

Down on the Crick

There’s a little word I’ve heard around that needs an explanation;
I have a feeling there’s no place for it in grand oration.
Now listen to me very close and see if you agree;
By the way it’s spelled, it’s not quite said the way it ought to be.
If you’ll sit there for a while, I’ll teach to you a lesson;
And if you’re guilty of this crime, I hope you’ll be confessin’:
The simple word I’m speaking of I think is pronounced crick;
But it’s not spelled that way, and I’d like to know the trick.
This word should have a long E sound, like bee or tree or beagle;
Can pronouncing such a word as "crick" somehow be illegal?
I guess if it’s tradition, to call a "creek" a "crick,"
I’ll go become a vagabond, living on Pike’s Pick.
Or I’ll become a shipherder, herding ship along the hill;
Or sick my fortune in the mines, like a wick man never will.
And if someday I’m lucky, a pretty girl I’ll mit,
And she’ll fold up my underwear so very nice and nit.
And we’ll buy us a great big farm, if they’ll give us a good dill;
Then I’ll have all I ever want without the need to still.
I’ll plant my whit out in the field, and what I sow I’ll rip;
So I can go and buy another couple thousand ship.
We’ll take those ship, so soft and fat, and also very mick,
And shave the wool right off their backs, forgetting how they rick.
’Cause smell don’t bother me at all, when my fortune I am sicking;
I’ll have chickens with their bicks plumb full, and my luck will still be picking.
My best friend’s named Ezekial, but we just call him Zick;
The other day I caught him in the john, about to take a lick.
I was so embarrassed, I ran right to my bed,
I jumped right in and pulled the dirty shi— whoops! blankets over my head.
And this morning I was standing here, frying some eggs in griss,
When my wife comes in, tired of fighting, wanting to make pi— uh, make a truce.
Then we decided to shear our ship, and go into town with their fliss,
And sell it off, then go to the bank, so we could pay our liss.
Well, there’s not much more to say I s’pose, you’ve got my drift by now;
I nid to get back to the barn and milk that bawling cow.
Now go and think on this a mite—take six days, or a wick—
Then tell me how you say it—is it creek or is it crick?

—Kirby Jonas June 1, 1995

What Is a Bad Day, Really?

Did you ever stop to wonder if your "bad day" might have been some other person's really good day? I don't know if I've ever pondered that, and I have to thank my blog for prying that thought from me now. Today I realized that in spite of how bad my day was, there was one man I came in contact with who would probably give an awful lot to have had my "bad day."

I wish I could say I was going to bring some humor into this blog tonight. But even though firefighters and police officers, the first of which I am and the second of which I was, are known for morbid humor, tonight there will be none of that. For one thing, I wouldn't presume to push that kind of humor off on people who don't deal with death on a frequent basis. Humor is used by emergency response personnel to deal with the stress of watching people get hurt and die . Few people living in the normal workaday world would understand that humor. Besides, in this particular instance there is no humor. Out of the call that took up most of my "eight-hour day" today, I can't find one reason to laugh.

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself. Here are the details of what I was thinking of as my "bad day." I started out having a bad day when my alarm clock went off at 5:30 and I started hitting reset and pondering the morning's workout, which was dwindling with every push of that button. The workout itself went well, especially because it is quality time I'm able to spend with my wife even on the days I have to work, but after that the day started to go downhill. My daughter delivered me a message wrong this morning, and I ended up in a place I didn't expect to be and running into a person I was neither ready nor willing to see. Bad, uncomfortable moment.

I escaped that situation a little worse for the wear, but then on arriving at my next appointment realized I had forgotten my uniform boots, as I had been dressed in workout clothes for the morning's exercise period--which of course I would have completely missed if I hadn't gone on my own before work. I thought the day was looking up when they told me I didn't have to be in my meeting but could get my workout in instead.

Now let me jump back for half a moment to make an important point. This day wouldn't have seemed so bad but for the fact that it was my 20 year wedding anniversary, and I was having to work it. I had this big, grandiose plan I was going to pull off which I had been planning for quite some time. But first I forgot my wallet, and second, I didn't make the phone calls I needed to make before it became too late.

I started out my workout by taking off my wedding ring so it wouldn't get scratched by the weights. For my workout, I did 35 pullups, 60 dumbbell curls, and jumped on the treadmill to work up a real sweat, which I lived to regret. Ten minutes into the treadmill workout we got a call, one of those calls a firefighter dreads to hear. Trench collapse.

I was understandably keyed up by the nature of the call, so I didn't realize until partway there that my wedding ring was no longer on my radio antenna, and I had no idea where it was. So here it was my 20th wedding anniversary, and I'm living with the fact that I might have lost my wedding ring forever. We think of the oddest things on the way to bad calls, I know.

The day was very hot, and my turnout gear was even hotter. Between this and the fact that I was already sweating from the treadmill, AND I sweat like the Nile River normally, I had sweat running into my eyes from my helmet for the first half hour of that call, which caused my eyes to burn even up till now, 9:52 at night. As we arrived, the scene consisted of a huge track hoe stalled over a ten-foot-deep trench, two workers and a little old man from Search and Rescue doing CPR on a burly man who lay with his legs still trapped by dirt at the bottom of the trench. Not good. To make matters worse, the trench was cracking again and in imminent danger of further collapse.

To say the least, the three men in the bottom of the trench were overjoyed to see us. But they needn't have been. Our rules strictly forbid us from going into a trench that has not been shored up. No matter who is in the trench, we have to stay on top and watch until the necessary equipment arrives for us to do our shoring, which takes a large amount of time. Always too much time.

Ten minutes into the call it had become obvious that we were not performing a rescue. We were recovering a body. At that point, everyone was forced out of the trench, and the task of shoring it up to get the body out began. This call, which had come in sometime between 10:15 and 10:30, did not end for our engine until sometime after 2:00. For other engines it lasted much longer.

By this time I had been in turnout gear for far too long. My feet were aching and sore, I was completely soaked with sweat and very dehydrated and hungry. But because of other calls we were unable to make it back to our station for any refreshment. While everyone else went to these calls in uniform, I continued to respond in turnout gear because I had to.

I won't list all of the little things that I thought were making my day so bad. It was bad enough already that I hadn't been able to bring to fruition the plan I had so long dreamed up for this anniversary day. It was bad enough that I was hot, tired, dehydrated and hungry, and the calls seemed to have no end.

When I finally pulled off my turnout pants and boots, my feet looked like I had been in a hot tub for 40 minutes. There wasn't a part of them that didn't ache, and they were pasty white and wrinkled. But I finally got a long, hot shower, something to eat, and was able to sit and breathe quietly for a while. The day improved. That was my bad day.

But you know something? That young man in the trench would probably have loved to have my bad day. As it turned out, he was 29 years old, with a pregnant wife and three children at home. I didn't want to hear this part, but my driver told someone else, and I overheard it. I can't tell you how it made me feel. All of the things I had been feeling so sorry over seemed to vanish. No, I hadn't been able to surprise my wife like I wanted for our anniversary, but I was able to call and talk to her later. And tomorrow I will be able to hug and kiss her and my kids. I got hot and sweaty and thirsty and hungry. The man in the hole got cold. And he will never be able to feel sweat in his eyes or feel thirst or hunger again. His wife will never get to see him coming up the driveway, and the kids will never get to run to him and throw themselves into his arms.

I am a person of huge faith. I know there is a life after this. No one could begin to convince me any different. I don't feel so sorry for the man in the trench, but I feel very sorry for those left behind who loved him and who will miss him. And I feel sorry for guys like me who can't see past the little things that they feel are making their day so bad when people around them are having far worse days.

This man's death prompts me to remind you all to tell your loved ones how you feel about them while you can. I'm sure this man's family never dreamed he would not be coming home. Don't be afraid of the word "love." The word "regret" is a stronger word if you let someone die without ever having told them.

Incidentally, I found my ring when I picked up my sunglasses. It was on one of the stems. I had taken it off the mic because I was afraid I might lose it. No, my day wasn't that bad after all.

Softly Falling Rain

One of my earliest memories of childhood is of the soft Montana rain falling on our tin roof. Back then our roof seemed silver, but of course it was plain, ordinary tin. Yet when it shimmered in the sun it was indeed silver to me, and when played by the fingers of April rain there never was a sweeter sounding instrument. It rivaled the beautiful music of the band "Celtic Woman," or the moving songs of the Carpenters, which were so popular back then. But unlike Karen Carpenter, "Rainy Days and Mondays" didn't get me down. I always relished the soft sound of that rain tapping on the roof. During the day, or as I lay in bed in the dark of night it was a lulling melody, a melody without music.

I suppose the rain did make me melancholy at times, but I am the type who enjoys melancholy, who enjoys the memories that melancholy brings to the heart. And the lullaby of that nighttime music can not be rivalled. The only thing that could be sweeter to my ears these years later would be to hear my daddy playing his guitar and singing his cowboy songs to us from the darkness.

Today it rained here in southeast Idaho. It was that sweet, soft, lingering rain, the kind where the sky turns light gray as far as the eye can see. It was the kind of rain that gently soaks into every pore of the earth, watering my trees, my garden, my flowers--free water!!! The City fathers can't charge me a dime for this, as much as I'm sure they'd like to claim responsibility.

The world tonight is wet and wonderful, and it seems as if it could not be more at peace. As a firefighter, there seems to be all too little of that. To all of you out there reading this, I wish you peace and tranquility, and I wish you the magic of closing your eyes and listening to rain dance on your own "silver" roof.

The Fall of the Twin Towers

I tread on sensitive ground when I talk about September 11, 2001. My own sensitive ground, and that of millions of other people as well. There will be no humor in my blog today. There is no place here for humor. When I think of where I was, of what I was doing, of the time of day, it is all so vivid in some ways. Yet in other ways it is a jumbled disarray. I remember the expressions on the faces of certain people. I remember their words as the towers fell, and in my ears I can hear their words ringing to this very day. How vividly I recall the feelings of confusion that washed over me as the radio came on and I started to hear bits and pieces of the turmoil that was unfolding. It took some time to grasp the reality of it.

Before I talk about that day, I have to go back... During the summer of 2001 I became good friends, through email correspondence, with a couple from Mahopac, New York. Most of my correspondence was with Gina, the wife half of the couple, who shared a common interest in collecting 1/6 scale Western memorabilia. That's the fancy way of saying "toys." To make this part of the story short, we talked a lot, and our friendship grew to the point that Gina and her husband Rich decided to spend their fall vacation with my family. I agreed to take them on a tour of my favorite place in the world, Yellowstone National Park.

During our correspondence, I had learned that Gina's father was ailing. So it was natural to think that his condition was going to seriously worsen when around the third week of August I received a message in my heart telling me that Gina, Rich, and their son John would not be coming out to Idaho to go to Yellowstone with us. Something very bad was going to happen. I know it sounds strange to read those words: "I received a message in my heart." But I can't find any other way to describe what happened. All I know is that something came to me very plainly telling me that Gina and Rich would have a bad incident occur that would keep them from coming. I had had this type of thing occur to me before, most recently when something told me on several different occasions that my apparently very healthy wolf dog, Loup was soon going to die. And in the incident with the flat tire when I was seventeen, which you have already learned of if you have followed my blog. So needless to say, although I wanted badly to put this feeling aside, when it persisted I finally had to tell Gina she wasn't going to be able to come. I couldn't tell her why. I didn't know. All I could say, and I hated how stupid it must have come across then, was that something bad was going to happen and they should prepare for it.

Well, I'm sure by now you know what that "something" was. And how can you prepare for it? How can you prepare for an act as monstrous as the attack on the Twin Towers? An assault on the American People themselves? As fate would have it, the tickets Rich and Gina had purchased had them flying out of New York City at 9:00 on September 11, 2001. We were to meet them in Pocatello on the 13th and proceed from there to Yellowstone.

I was driving to work in my pickup when I turned on talk radio. I started to listen, and none of what the DJ's were saying made sense. I thought for a few minutes that they were talking about some past occurrence. And then it began to unfold, and my brain began to grasp the significance of it all. Immediately, my guts became unsettled. I won't go into the details of that, other than to say that for whatever reason my "fight or flight" mechanism took over. I was headed for Fire Station 3 to gather my gear and proceed to Station 2, and I was so sick by the time I reached the station that I headed straight for the bathroom. I remember turning my head and seeing the towers burning on TV as I went through the day room.

I returned to the room to the sheer terror of the attacks unfolding. I'll never forget the shock emanating through the room. The disbelief and dismay. I gathered my gear and sped as fast as I dared across town to Station 2. I arrived to find my good friend Kelly watching the news unfold. He was standing up, pacing the floor, his face filled with shock. When the first tower collapsed his face went white, and over and over he repeated the words, "Oh, my God." He kept putting his hand over his mouth, a classic sign of comforting oneself, and this from a man who is very self-confident and strong in his everyday life. As for me, I didn't speak at all. My voice was gone.

When it was plain that so many hundreds of firefighters and police officers could not have survived the collapse of that first building, the pit of my stomach was empty of all but acid. I could not believe what I had seen, the sight of people jumping from those towers and falling like missiles to their deaths. The footage, shown over and over again, of the planes veering into the buildings and bursting into flame. It was branded like a torch into my mind. It will never leave.

Turning on the computer, I saw the horrified messages from my friend Gina, in New York. You can imagine the sights she was seeing from her home. We both now new that her father was safe. The bad news that had been impending was far greater reaching than just the worsening of her father's condition.

I am a very emotional person. I have to admit that I was one of the weak. My wife and baby were home that day, and I could not stay at work. With my stomach being sick anyway, I took the day off and went to be with my family. I couldn't hold them enough. We watched the carnage on the TV at home, and strangely enough, I couldn't even cry. But the shock and the pain hit later. I went back to work after I got to see all of my kids come home from school and held them all tightly to me. There, back at Station 3, where I had begun my day, I sat down and penned my poem, "A Tear Fell," and as any writer does I released my emotion in those words, brought the morning's events into focus, and into the realm of true life, and then I cried.

I don't know if this blog makes sense at all. I don't know if I can even read back over it, because of the pain it still brings to my heart. But I hope we can all remember that day as strongly as I do. I hope that we all will follow our hearts and make September 11th a national holiday if that becomes our choice, to remember those fallen, the innocent and the heroes who died trying to save them. That event cemented our nation for a time, but how soon we forgot. I hope we can bring back the fear that day put in our hearts, but more importantly the pride in our country. This place, the United States of America, is not perfect. We have done things we can't be proud of. So have all countries. But there is no better country to be a part of than America. We cannot forget that fact. As long as we are free, and strong enough to protect ourselves, this country is worth living in, and fighting for. I hope we will all live by Patrick Henry's words, "Give me liberty... Or give me death!" Truly, life is worth nothing without freedom. Anyone who has traveled as much of the world as I have knows that. As one of my heroes, Chris LeDoux, once sang, "Freedom Ain't Free." And part of guarding our freedom is remembering the times when others tried to take it away, when others tried to bring us down. Never forget. We owe it to those who died on September 11, 2001. Never forget.

For those of you who may never have read it, here is the link to my poem about the September 11 attacks, written the night of September 11, 2001, at Fire Station Number 3. NEVER FORGET. http://kirbyjonas.com/poetry/atearfell.html

The State Fair...and so-called "Food"

Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance to all of those who happen to be connoisseurs of what people in Idaho call "Fair Food." I am probably going to say a few things in this blog that will highly offend you if you are a true fan. If that is the case, I can only say, "Hey, it's been good knowing you!"

Seriously, I was told yesterday about something at our local state fair that took me aback so hard I almost ended up on my rump on the ground. I was incredulous. I was dumbfounded. I was stupefied. What was it? Stand by, and I'll tell you.

Okay, I've been to the fair, and perhaps five times in my life I have succumbed to some of its "food." I've tried some of the smoothies there, which in spite of their 5.00 price tag, which was extremely hard to swallow, tasted pretty darn good. I've had some of those cinnamon roasted almonds, which if you eat four pounds of you will find you don't care for anymore--even the smell. At least that was my experience! I have had pronto pups, which is just a fancy name for a plain ol' corndog. I've had maybe one burger, and I've had a funnel cake, which was just a harder than normal waffle wrapped into a cone shape and deep fat friend (as most things seem to be at the fair). The most horrible thing I've tried was the infamous "Tiger Ear," which any human can tell you looks more like an elephant ear, particularly an ear on an elephant who is suffering from a case of the "drips," since they seemed to be soaked in warm grease for a couple of hours before they hand them over to the lucky consumer. After spending several minutes wiping off the oil that was dripping from my elbows, I threw the remainder of so-called tiger ear in the trash, hoping to salvage a little bit of my gall bladder.

Now, there are other things at the fair that I haven't tried and which I shudder at the thought of. There is cotton candy, basically flavored sugar, whipped and stuck to a stick. There are the deep fat fried Snickers bars and Twinkies, both of which activate my gag reflex just thinking about putting them in my mouth. And then there is that... "item" I learned about yesterday.

Now, I have to say that I am not the healthiest eater in the world. I put stuff in my body that I shouldn't. But deep fat fried food is not generally one of my weaknesses. I do like butter on bread. I like butter on pancakes. I like butter on waffles, corn, potatoes. Butter is good. And current research, as happens with most natural food if you wait around long enough, is saying that butter isn't even all that bad for you. This in from Mother Earth News! (And I am NOT making that up.)

But... And this is a BIG but, even bigger than the butt on the above-mentioned elephant... There is a line with butter that even the most ridiculous of eaters should not cross, and that brings me back to that mystery food I mentioned at the beginning of this blog. Here it is. Are you ready for this? No, I mean are you REALLY ready for this? You might want to have a garbage can handy, unless you have access to an emesis bag (fancy name for barf bag).

The latest craze, obviously invented by those at the fair who seem to be in a contest to come up with the most bizarre, unhealthy foods on the face of the planet, is.... (drum roll, please) .... deep fat fried.... BUTTER. Did you read that correctly? Uh... If you read "DEEP FAT FRIED BUTTER," then yes. You read that correctly. I am told, although I have yet to see this with my own eyes, that they take a cube of frozen butter, wrap it in some healthy dough made of white flour, and probably heaping tablespoons full of sugar, and deep fat fry it.

Can I truly say anything more about this? I mean seriously. How do you go any farther in derogatory commentary about deep fat fried butter then just to say they sell it. Period. DEEP FAT FRIED BUTTER. I sat and tried to think of something to top this one, and I just can't. Next year, on the last day of the fair, they will be selling used deep fat frying oil for 6.00 a cup, and all those lovers of "fair food," which is anything but "fair," with be walking around the fairgrounds swilling it like the most exotic of smoothies.

Hmm... Just give me a mountain to run up and a glass of spring water, thanks. Or even a glass of mud would be fine. Healthier than deep fat fried butter, anyway.

Deep fat fried butter....the breakfast of champions.

Of Flat tires and Faith

Flat tires have always seemed to be mysteriously attracted to me. Plain black ones, white-walled ones, heavy duty ones, truck ones, car ones--even replacement doughnut ones. But usually they're retread ones and bald ones. Gee... I think there's a correlation there somewhere. Unfortunately, for many years brain cells were NOT attracted to me, and it took a long time to figure that out.

Okay, to be fair to myself, I haven't personally had very many flat tires. Not on my own vehicles, anyway. I've just been lucky enough that when I've been riding with other people--mostly those who had an affinity for bald tires or retreads--my mere presence, like a cutting comment from the boss does to the uncertain employee, seemed to deflate every tire in sight. And I was left with the fallout.

I'm not making this up. On two separate occasions I am firmly convinced that my being in the vehicle made most of the tires on that vehicle go flat, along with at least one spare--and I'm not all that heavy! Once we were coming back from hunting, and it had turned into a cold, snowy day. We were about as far from the so-called civilized world of Big O's and Les Schwabses as we could get, tired and thirsty and hungry, when one of our spare tires went flat. That in itself would not have been a problem, of course. Spares being flat don't bother me. I mean, as long as there's no call to use them, if a spare is just sitting in the back of the truck and it's flat, big deal. Everyone needs to let off some steam now and then, I always say. No, the problem arose because the spares had already been put on my brother in law's pickup to replace the REGULAR tires--retreads--that had already mysteriously gone flat. Now that--THAT, my friends--IS a problem.

Luckily, at that point the flat tire was on the right side, and my brother in law was able to drive along on the shoulder and keep his nearly unprotected rim in the dirt until we got to the home of a friendly farmer and were saved.

But my story is about the first time I was in a car with those lovely retread tires. This is a story about faith in God, and in miracles. You might find humor somewhere in the rest of this tale. At the time, I didn't.

I was seventeen, and I had gone to stay with my sister Kandy in Salt Lake City, Utah. That was my first mistake. We lived in Shelley, Idaho, which is some two hundred miles or so away. Nothing big--as long as you're driving. Walking is another story. Kandy had three spare tires in the back of the blue 1972 Ford station wagon she had gotten from our daddy. A Ford. That was my second mistake--getting into a Ford. But I digress.

Anyway, I specifically remember those three spare tires, because I made such a big joke about them at the time. Ha, ha, ha. Why would anyone carry THREE spare times? Hardy har har. Kandy's answer? Well, you just never know what might happen. Better to be safe than sorry. Uh-um... Well, I'm here to tell you something, folkds. "Safe" with retreads does not mean three spare tires. Maybe four, five, six or seven. But not three.

To make a long story a tad shorter, in the next hour or two I got really good at changing tires. So good, in fact, that we were soon down to zer0--I said ZERO--spares. Now I was thankful Kandy had been smart enough to buy three spares. But my thankfulness didn't hold up--and flat tires' affinity for me did.

To those who are unfamiliar with this route, there is a pass called "Malad Pass" between Salt Lake and Shelley. For those of you who don't speak French, "Malad," spelled with an e on the end of it, means "sick." I'm not kidding. I soon learned there was a reason for that name. I was soon to become very sick.

We had started up this pass when I heard the strange thump-thump noise on the right front side of the car that I had grown way too used to by this time. The odd thing was, something told me to ignore it. I was sure what it was, and I was equally sure that if we didn't stop before long it was going to ruin not only whatever was left of that tire, but probably the rim of the wheel as well. But something just made me keep my mouth shut. I admit that I didn't have any big revelation from God telling me that He would protect me or anything sappy like that. I remember simply thinking, Hey, let's get over this huge mountain and on to the downhill side before I say anything stupid like, "Stop, Kandy, you're going to ruin your wheel!" So I didn't say anything. And oddly enough it was as if Kandy were deafened at the same time. I kept looking out the corner of my eye at her to see if she was hearing the same thump-thump that I was, but she had this blissful look of calm on her face like nothing in the world could upset her. Nothing like MY gut-wrenching feeling. I should note that as it turned out the tire was only going flat, not completely flat, so we did indeed have a few miles left on it.

Well, we went up and over Malad Pass, and the tire was still holding up. The thump was getting louder, but we were still moving. And Kandy still hadn't noticed anything was wrong. But even now, at the top of the pass, I couldn't speak. Or I wouldn't speak. Looking back, it literally seems that something was telling me very loudly and emphatically, but inside my own head, "Kirby, I'm warning you--SHUT UP! Smile and shut your stupid mouth--for once in your life." So I did.

And then it happened. We had made it all the way down the pass, at which point the tire was thumping so loudly that if we had been in an old Western movie I would have known Indian attack was imminent. Kandy was still blissfully unaware, a point which baffles me to this day. As we were driving past an on-ramp to the freeway, the first one we had passed in miles, something said, "Okay, NOW STOP." And again, I am not kidding. This something was very loud, and very adamant. "YOU HAVE TO STOP."

So with a sinking heart I turned to my sister, knowing we were about to walk the last ninety miles home, and told her we had another flat tire. She immediately hit the brakes and started pulling over. Now, by my calculations later, as if I could really do any "calculations"--maybe I should say by my estimate--we must have traveled three hundred feet before she brought the car to a halt in the emergency lane of the freeway and total silence descended on that station wagon. Ironically, I've been told that Ford--F-O-R-D--stands for "Found On Road Dead." But Ford doesn't make tires, as far as I know, so I can't even blame Ford for this incident--darn it.

Anyway, the silence inside the car did not match the noises inside my head, because for a church-going young man who shouldn't have known any curse words, there were so many of them flying about inside my thick skull that they must have been breaking in half in mid-stream, making all kinds of new words unknown to man until that day. I could not believe we had flattened three tires--and now four. And we were, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere. Yes, there was an on-ramp a hundred yards back, but this was rural Idaho. There was nothing of any significance near that on-ramp, and in particular there were no Big O's or Les Schwabses. (I like saying that--Schwabses.) I would have even settled for a Walmart Service Center at that point--except back then I had no idea what Walmart was and would have thought it was a wallpaper and Sheetrock shop.

My first thought was to try and cross the Federal Government fence along the freeway and head across this freshly plowed half mile of farm field to a lonely looking house I could see in the distance. But there were two major obstacles here: a Federal Government fence along the freeway and a freshly plowed half mile of farm field. Neither is a pretty sight. Those fences have no big, stout wooden posts to grab onto for climbing. They are made with metal posts--the kind that, if you slip and fall on them, tend to skewer you like a frankfurter. And if you try to cross between the posts, the nasty barbed wire, stretched tight as a drum, will make short work of you. As we say in the West, these fences are hog tight, bull-strong and horse high. You can't straddle them, even if you're Andre the Giant, and you can't bend them over. Obstacle number two, even if I somehow managed to fall over this fence, probably ripping my pants off and shredding my flesh in the process, and landed on the other side, I would still have to slog through the freshly plowed field, sinking with every step up past my hightops. And I would be naked! And besides, what if no one were home at the farm house, or worse yet, what if some crazed gang of serial killers had taken the residents hostage and were waiting for a couple of unsuspecting young people like us to wander into their well-planned trap? The possibilities seemed dismal.

So it was that when I reached that government fence and freshly plowed field and looked at that lonely, besieged farm house, I made the command decision without consulting with my driver to head instead for the on-ramp of the freeway. Heck, we didn't have any major appointments anyway.

Once I had made my decision I headed out with long strides. I was too mad to wait for Kandy. After all, she had said a prayer for us to be watched over before we left Salt Lake. Why hadn't it worked?!?! What kind of faith was she made of, anyway?!?! I think this was around the time my daddy died of cancer, or was in the process of dying, and optimism for me was in short supply, while pessimism was a boy's best friend.

So I was walking, through yellow grass that was probably a foot and a half or two feet tall. The reason I mention that particular fact is because it hid everything on the ground from me until I was almost on top of it, and this has some significance here. At this point I think I was fifty feet ahead of Kandy, and as near as I can figure it I was near the same point on the freeway where the voice in my head had finally told me to mention the flat tire problem.

Suddenly, something appeared there in the grass directly in front of me. Had I gone ten feet to either direction I might have missed it, but I was walking directly in line with it. It was a tire. I hope you believe me when I tell you once again, that I am not making this up. Granted, I am normally a fiction writer, but this story is true. I should stop the tongue in cheek now and get completely serious, because I was at the time. My heart nearly stopped, and goose bumps rose all over my skin. Not only was there a tire lying there in that tall grass, fifteen feet off the freeway and hidden enough that passersby would probably not see it or would take little notice of it, but this tire was mounted on a rim. Unfortunately, this rim was green, and our station wagon was baby blue--but I couldn't really demand a color match, could I? But it was a tire, and it was mounted on a rim. And then I made the real test--I leaned over and shoved on that tire with both hands, and it was about as full of air as it could be and had good tread as well.

I wish I could truly impress on the reader that this is a true story, from beginning to end. I have made pieces of it humorous, yes, for a little fun and to keep your interest up. But from the humorous to the serious and in-between, there are no parts of this tale that are not true. For this period in time I have become a non-fiction author.

Well, back to the spare tire. I had learned by now enough to know that different wheels have a different number of lugs on them. This particular rim had five holes. I remember the number very clearly. And after changing all those flat tires in the past two hours, I knew that so did the Ford. I knew nothing about tire sizes, of course, but that didn't matter to me then. My strength suddenly left me, and I found myself plopping down on the tire. My knees basically gave out, and I stared in disbelief at Kandy as she finally caught up to me and saw what I was sitting on. I don't remember speaking much at that time. I only remember finally finding my strength, lifting up that tire, and in a very humble posture rolling it back toward the station wagon. Of course, my pessimism had not totally fled me, even then. I have always believed it is better to be pessimistic and wrong then optimistic and wrong. At least if you're pessimistic and right you can say, "See, I told you so." And if you are wrong you could be elated. If you're optimistic and wrong you're just sad and stuck on the side of the freeway picking your nose and staring at a tall fence and a dirt field and a house full of hostage takers.

So my pessimism now was telling me that maybe the holes wouldn't line up. But to be honest with you it was a very weak pessimism at that point. Down deep I knew. I knew those holes would line up with the lugs on the Ford, and I knew we were going home. I just felt sorry for the farm family being held hostage by the crazed serial killers.

I took the spare tire to the car, and very humbly, and very quietly, I took off the flat, put the new tire on, which not surprisingly fit perfectly, and I sat in stunned silence for much of the trip home. There are times, when I think of this story, that I still sit in stunned silence--a fact that would probably surprise most people who know me very well, since I seldom take that long ago advice and shut up.

So, my readers, tell me: If the odds of winning a lottery are so low, what were the odds of stopping on that freeway where we did, walking back and finding that lost spare tire almost exactly where that voice had told me to have Kandy stop the car? What are the odds? I mean, spare tires don't just fall off vehicles every day, do they? I've walked, and run, hundreds of miles of roads. I've driven countless thousands. And never before or since have I seen an inflated, nicely treaded spare tire lying anywhere on the side of any road, not since that evening that my sister and I needed it so desperately. I could have ignored that voice in my head and had my sister stop before starting up the pass. I could have had her stop on top of the pass. I could have taken my chances and let her drive another five or ten miles after the voice told me to stop, just so I wouldn't have so far to walk home. I could have, but I didn't. The voice told me to stop, and I did. And there was that tire, like some destiny had made it fall off another vehicle in preparation for this desperate day.

I must say that in all the times I've shared this story, not one single person, professing to believe in God or not, has ever had the audacity to suggest that this was merely coincidence. Mostly, they just sit in silence much like I did back then. If I had written this as a fiction piece, it would be ludicrous, wouldn't it? No one would give it the slightest bit of credibility, and it would be shrugged off as drivel. But it's true. People can say there is no God, no Supreme Being who watches out for us. If you can read this story and still maintain the truth of that, then I feel sorry for you. I truly do. There is not a doubt in my mind whose voice was in my head that day, nor whose power caused my sister Kandy's ears to not hear. I only wish that part of my story could include how strong my faith was that we would be okay. But no, that part was Kandy's. I can still feel her peaceful serenity, her knowledge that we would be taken care of. And until I put that tire on her Ford, that was not the knowledge inside of me.

We are watched over, folks. I know bad things still happen, and God can't stop them all. If he did he would cease to be God. We came here to suffer and make mistakes and try to pull ourselves back up. Some of us go through extreme challenges, while some of us just spend our time changing flat tires. But whatever your lot in life, God truly is out there, and He truly is watching all of us and loves us and cares deeply what happens to us, even in those times when he can't intercede in a way that we would like him to. This life is only a test--yes, a hundred times more important than your college finals, but still only a test. But this one--Life--determines how you will spend the rest of eternity.

When that voice calls out to you, no matter how loud it sounds, please listen to it. You never know when there is a lost spare tire out there waiting just for you.