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.