Thoughts from the West

TRIBUTE TO MY FRIEND, PETER BRECK

2012-02-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

It is one of those days you foolishly hope will never come. I almost wish I had not come in to work today. But I did. And on one of my discussion groups I read the astonishing news: Peter Breck, a.k.a. Nick Barkley, is dead.

When I was young, I became a huge fan of Peter's in watching The Big Valley reruns. My brother and I would often play the Barkleys when we played what we referred to as "big men," rather than "cowboys." My cousin Cory often joined in as well. Of course, I never got to be Nick, because that was forever my brother, Jamie's part. And if Cory was there, he was always Heath, so strangely the younger brother became the oldest brother, Jarrod.

Time moved on, and in time, in March of 1999, I met and began a friendship with the real man behind Nick, Peter Breck. We met at a "Festival of the West," in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I gave him a copy of my book, Death of an Eagle. Unbeknownst to me, he was a huge fan of eagles, and I guess that explains our instant connection. He immediately told me if I ever put the book on audio he would love to be the man reading it. Of course, that honor eventually went to another great friend, James Drury, "The Virginian," but I would have loved it just as well in Peter's voice.

Later on the day I met Peter, my wife and I seated ourselves to watch a concert, and Debbie pointed to our right, where I found Peter sitting with his ever-present gloves on top of his head. That was Peter. Funny to the end. He sat there with those gloves perched on top of his full head of brown hair, looking as serious as a broken femur.

One of my favorite stories about Peter happened around 2001, when I received a late evening phone call. "Hi, this is Peter Breck." I was stunned, but of course happy. We chatted for a while, after he apparently dropped a stack of papers he had been holding. He sounded like he might have been drinking a little, but that, with Peter, was even endearing. At one time he told me to "give your mother a hug. Give ALL your family a hug. And aim low--they might be crawling."

He called another time to ask for "Jimmy Drury's phone number." I never could stand the name Jimmy, but that's what Peter called him, and to Jim Peter was "Pete." Anyway, I gave him Jim's phone number, and after we chatted briefly he hung up to call him. Debbie was standing there in awe, and she said the words I will never forget: "Would you have ever thought Nick Barkley would be calling you to get the Virginian's phone number?"

Over the past few years I kept meaning to call Peter, but I kept putting it off. As I keep in touch regularly with Jim, it is a shame that I let Peter go, but I did. I just thought he would always be there when I needed him. And then I saw the news. Peter died on Monday, and before that he was suffering from dementia. It brings me back to the sad knowledge that Clint Walker, another hero, is in the early stages of this disease himself, and has suffered it for longer than Peter did. I find myself wondering how long Clint will last, and it is hard to keep tears out of my eyes.

And so our heroes pass before our eyes into the Great Beyond, leaving only their memories behind, and their images on old film. I loved that man, Peter Breck, and I cherish the memories of the times we talked about his days on The Big Valley. I only wish I could have gone to stay with him in Vancouver as he invited me to do so long ago. You always think there will be one more day.

TRIBUTE TO BRIAN HOWELL

2012-01-19T16:35:00.000-08:00

This is a poem I wrote for my good friend Brian Howell, who finally succumbed to a brain tumor last spring after giving it a valiant fight. He survived chemo, radiation, and several operations where they told him, "We think we got it all." We miss you, Brian.

THE COWBOY—TOO TOUGH TO DIE

I can’t believe he’s gone—the cowboy rode too tall to die;
Now he’s sitting that old saddle, riding herd up in the sky.
He didn’t stand too tall of stature; some might have even called him small;
But it’s what’s inside that really counted, and he was taller than them all.

I can’t believe it beat him, that hungry beast that knows no friends;
But the cowboy kept on laughing, right up to the bitter end.
He never lost his sense of humor—never lost his sense of love;
And we know he’s standing guard now, from his cow horse up above.

I can’t believe our cowboy rode on, to ranges way up in the sky;
Too tell the truth, we thought he’d beat it, and he’d keep on riding high.
Now tall in the saddle he smiles, up on the mountain they call Scout;
Even if that funeral pyre claims our cowboy has bucked out.

He left a wife and left a family, who will fly his banner high;
Who will long to see him smiling, from his saddle in the sky.
And the friends who called him brother, will keep the campfire burning bright;
For the buckaroo we all loved dearly, who rides the sky tonight.

We will miss our compañero, till the angels call us home;
For he left us way too young, those far-off ranges for to roam.
We will hear him in the thunder, and in the breezes’ sigh;
We will miss our smiling partner until the day we die.

—Kirby Jonas, May 3, 2011

FAT OFF, DAY 61

2011-03-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

Well, it is with great shame that I say when I got sick over a month ago and was out of commission for a week and a half it shattered my willpower. I have done horribly at my diet in the last month, and consequently have gained back a few pounds. In light of the fact that I still continue to harden up my physique overall I don't think the photographs, which I should have taken tomorrow, will show me looking worse than the last set, but probably not much better either. So I have let down anyone who was looking to me to show them it is possible to get lean in three months. As I said, I'll be posting my latest photographs soon so you can see my progress, or lack thereof, and realize that this fitness thing is an ongoing, everchanging process that cannot be cheated.

I will still be ready to do the photo session in May for the last book of my "Gray Eagle" series and for the cover painting of my new book, NEPHI WAS MY FRIEND, but it is going to take some heavy duty running for me to catch up to where I was. Oh well. Such are the sacrifices of life. DON'T GIVE UP. That is the main thing about fitness. Never give up.

LONG WINTER

2011-03-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

It seems to be true for most people this year, unless you talk to a skier: It has been a LONG winter. I have enjoyed the way the snow looks. It's beautiful when it's falling, beautiful when it lies like diamond-shot cotton on the spruce boughs and when it blankets the fields. It seems as if you could walk into it and scoop up enough diamonds to retire on, but as you walk they simply disappear.

Unfortunately, the winter itself is NOT disappearing. For me, a non-skier, although I'm very glad to have the snowpack built up, in hopes of having a decent water supply this summer, this winter has seemed endless.

I won't complain too loudly, however, because I'm not a fan of any day much over 80, either, unless I'm on the beach, which is almost . . . never. But I do love spring, and I am greatly looking forward to those warmer days, and the blooming of my flowers--at least it makes for good deer food, anyway. They usually get 50% or more of my tulips before I get to see a bloom!

My new book is almost finished, and I need to thank Old Man Winter for that. I have stayed in the house an awful lot in the last few months, and I have to admit I don't get much writing done when it's beautiful outside. So here is my nod to winter. Now go away whenever you get a chance!

FAT-OFF, DAY 33

2011-02-07T20:48:00.000-08:00

All right, I am back! I wasn't seeing a whole lot of commentary on the bottoms of these blogs, so going with that I decided not to knock myself out putting a blog up daily. However, I have not stopped keeping track of everything myself, except that I have slacked off on writing down every bite of food I take in. The first month was spent "getting to know" my foods a little better, calorie count, protein and carbohydrate contribution, etc. After that part was done, I pretty much tried to stick to the same type of diet throughout, varying only here and there. Spinach remains a mainstay, and I have created an egg white and spinach souffle that is absolutely terrific. The only problem is the spinach is of course cooked. To offset that problem, I also do a fruit juice/spinach shake in the morning and a water/spinach/vinegar/olive oil shake in the evening--it's sort of like a spinach salad, only already digested for you! Just kidding. I know that sounds gross, but it really isn't bad. And if, like me, you have braces on your teeth it is even that much better. There is NO toothpicking afterward.

Today I am posting photos I took on the last day of my fourth week. On the evening of these photos, taken last Sunday, I had eight weeks to go in my program, but I am liking this routine so much I may add on another 4 weeks and make it a 16 week program. The workout is becoming very drastic, and I have started sticking to one major body part in the morning, then doing the second one in the evening, when possible. I will also throw in six or eight more quick sets of the first body part in the evening if I can, making a total of 20 sets or so a day of, say, chest.

I have stalled out around 205 pounds now, but as I am still losing body fat I am not going to panic. I had gained enough muscle during my building phase that I questioned the feasibility of my goal of 185 pounds, so I think as I go I'm going to have to re-think. 6 % body fat is my main goal anyway, regardless of what my weight ends up at.

The main thing: Keep on working out!

FAT-OFF, DAY 11

2011-01-13T23:29:00.000-08:00

Here I am at Day 11, and I'm writing this late, so I have no cute or informative notes to add. Is this photo showing my progress to date? NO!!!! This is a reminder of how much blubber I was packing on Day 0. I'll try to get new photos the night before I begin week 3. Am I brave putting these fat shots up? I guess so, but what good is this blog and how honest am I if I don't have any of those nasty "before" photos?

Whoa! Wait a minute: I keep meaning to tell you that getting LOTS of sleep is imperative to your success, so don't scrimp. If you can find them, 8 to 10 hours is optimal. Some people sleep less, but I think you are compromising your success if you do. I often take a good power nap or 2 during the day as well as my night sleep, but honestly I don't think I ever get more than 6 hours a night. However, I say that with full knowledge that my success would be better if I were to follow my own advice.

As I predicted, today's weight went back up, and quite considerably. I assume part of that was something to do with the scale, but I also retained a lot of water, I think, to help "salve" the muscles that got swollen up from yesterday's rough workout. I guess tomorrow's weigh-in will show the truth. Don't get too excited about the day to day drops and gains. It's the end of the week compared to the beginning that will really reveal the true trend, and hopefully that will show a minimum of 2 pounds a week for the first two weeks. Generally it should be much more.

Today I drank several protein shakes and had a huge vegetable shake in the evening made of a processed vegetable juice augmented with carrots and frozen broccoli. I added 2 cloves of garlic and a cup of cottage cheese and blended it until smooth. I am a garlic fan, especially raw garlic, and if you really desire to have long and healthy life you'd better become one too.

I splurged and also had a small piece of blueberry pie one of the other firefighters left in the fridge. When you see my workout today you'll see why I was able to justify that.

Today was chest and triceps day again, and we finished off with abdominals.
For chest it was flat flyes, incline flyes, and cable crossovers, and you need to concentrate on a SERIOUS stretch at the bottom of all these and a very hard squeeze throughout the movement but especially at your peak contraction.

Close grip bench, pushdowns, and kickbacks served to put my triceps into overdrive, and due to a lack of time we supersetted each triceps exercise with the corresponding chest exercise. We were able to do this only because these particular chest exercises concentrate on the chest and don't involve any triceps work.

For abs we did old-fashioned situps, the best way to gain strength in the upper abdominals. I did one set with no weight, then the next two with first a 5 and then a 10 lb plate behind my head. We finished off the routine with crossover crunches, both left and right, and center crunches. 15 reps of each of these will suffice.

Later, at the fire station, I did ten or twelve sets of cable crossovers and 50 very slow pushups.

In the evening, I ran one hour on the treadmill and weighed in at 203.75. Yes, I sweat a lot! Most of that weight I have probably gained back in water by now. But the 961 calories the treadmill computer said I burned in that workout allowed me to feel okay about the piece of blueberry pie. It was good to get some glycogen stores back in my muscle tissue.

FAT-OFF, DAY 10

2011-01-13T23:17:00.000-08:00

I'm already up to day 10, and if you're following this blog you can see the weight has been dropping off pretty steadily and in good amounts. I wish I could convince you all how good the food is that I'm eating. Is it a feast? No, but I don't feel hungry, and I feel much healthier than when I'm eating the normal junk that 99.99 percent of the population eats every day of their lives. Believe me, it's not as bad as you think. All you need are some basic staples, some spices, and a good knowledge of nutrution or someone who can impart theirs to you. It's not rocket science! Give it a try for just 12 weeks, and I think you'll agree that the way you will look and feel is worth it. Or maybe it's just me being vain!

Today's weight is 205.5, so I'm down 7 pounds and it is day 10. Several pounds more of my body weight are in muscle now than last time I was down to 6% body fat, so at the end of my goal time period I don't really believe I'll be at my goal weight of 185. That is just a guideline. I am much more worried about the 6% than I am about the body weight.

But if by chance the 6% takes me down to 185 then I have 20 pounds left to go, and believe me, these 20 will be far harder than the first 7. I wish I could say different, but the first one or two weeks are always easy compared to the last 10.

Today I was neglectful of writing my diet and daily routine down, so I don't have much to report other than I did a few more carbs than normal, mostly in brown rice. I am also trying to incorporate much more protein into each day.

Eating beans three times a week at least is good, along with brown rice, wheat, and sweet potatoes. Try to steer clear of regular potatoes, at least during this phase when you're trying to strip fat. And always steer clear of white rice and white flour if possible. White sugar too. They are not your friends. In fact, other than the sweeteners stevia and xylitol you should really be cautious of ANY sweetener. I use some agave syrup, however, and sometimes I will eat molasses or honey. But almost none during this fat stripping phase.

Today's body parts were back and biceps, with a less emphasis on the forearms, which should have been worked to some extent when you did back and biceps. I am going to be sticking to the same number of sets and reps for a few weeks, so I'll stop writing the fine details and just say I did deadlifts, bent rows and pullovers for my back, dumbbell curls, concentration curls and hammer curls for my biceps, and a variety of exercises equalling 6 sets for forearms.

Today was also Sprint 8 day, and with all the fat I've lost I've lost some energy as well, so I re-set my incline down to 2.5% and ran a 9 mph, a 10, an 11, and the rest 12's.

Overall, a good day, but with all the water I drank and the hard work inflaming my muscles I can't expect to weigh tomorrow what I did today.

FAT-OFF, DAY 9

2011-01-11T20:38:00.001-08:00

DAY 9

Today’s weight: 207.75, exactly 5 pounds off since beginning day 1

Today’s note: I’ve talked about it before and will talk about it again: If you are ignoring your stretching you are not only risking serious injury you are also neglecting a major key to muscular strength. A stretched, limber muscle is a strong muscle, and after being in the gym a while you will start to notice you can lift a lot more weight when you’ve been following a strict stretching regimen than when you haven’t.

Schedule today:

5:15: Rise and drink 16 oz water
5:50: Drink one smoothie, 16 oz with typical ingredients. It’s key to note that this “16 oz” is after it’s been frothed up in the blender. It is probably really close to 10-12. About 220 cal
6:32-7:25: Weight workout and only 4 to 5 swallows of quality protein drink. I was still full from the smoothie.
8:00-8:30: 2 servings of protein shake, 54 grams of protein, 280 calories
10:05: 16 oz water
10:15: 1 serving protein, ¼ cup oatmeal, 27 grams protein, 140 cal
11:30: 16 oz water
12:00: canned chili 580 calories, 40 grams protein; 8 oz water
12:30:1:15: power nap
3:20: 8 oz water, 30 grams protein, 140 calories
4:50-5:00: performed a quick follow-up upright row workout to stress my shoulder muscles; 15 reps for 6 sets of a moderate weight
5:02: 8 oz water, 2 fish oil pills, 1 serving protein, 24 grams plus 120 calories
8:15: 16 oz water with spinach “ghoulash” and 3 cloves of garlic. I forgot the oatmeal in the ghoulash, and it wasn’t nearly as tasty as last night.
9:15: 16 oz water

Today’s totals: 2080 calories; about 240 grams of protein, 13 cups water

Today’s workout:

Squats and Military press supersetted: 15, 12, 10 reps each
Leg press and lateral deltoid raise: 15, 12, 10 reps each
Stiff-legged deadlift and barbell shrugs: 15, 12, 10 reps each
Leg extensions, leg curls: 15, 12, 10 reps each
Calf raises: 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 15 plus 30 for burnout

This is the second day of my second week and also the week somewhere in which I will start to see my awesome weight loss slow way down. This is actually a good thing. There are so many toxins stored in the fat in your body that you don’t want to flush them all out too fast and send them careening through your filtering organs. Take it easy. 1-2 pounds is a good, sustainable amount of weight loss per week, especially if you want to keep it off over the long haul.

FAT-OFF, DAY 8

2011-01-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

DAY 8:

Note of the day: ABOUT PROTEIN. You should be eating at a minimum 1 gram of protein per day per pound of body weight. If you are lifting hard you will have to eat more to see any gains. The majority of the population does not eat anywhere near enough quality protein. Egg whites are probably the best all around source because they are almost sheer protein. Cottage cheese is also good. Protein shakes are an excellent source and can serve as an entire “meal.” Remember, when I say 6 to 7 meals a day, I’m not talking about normal American meals of 1200 calories or more a shot! You do NOT have to take out the egg yolks if you don’t want to, but it isn’t a bad idea to remove half of them either. I.e., a 6 egg omelet can be made with 3 whole eggs plus 3 egg whites. Also, if you are serious about losing weight and getting lean, you could conceivably get by with 7 protein shakes a day (for a 200 pound person) and four servings of spinach throughout the day plus one or two sweet potatoes and a half cup of oatmeal.

Today’s weight: 208, meaning 4.75 pounds of weight lost in week one of the regimen

Today’s schedule:

10:00: get up. It will be almost impossible to get 6 to 7 meals if you rise this late, but sleeping in felt good, and getting 8 to 10 hours of sleep is very important for muscle gains and fat loss.
Consumed smoothie with all normal ingredients
24 oz wter
11:00: Worked on my new book
11:30: 2 TBS peanut butter
12:58-2:03: Weight routine plus Sprint 8 on the treadmill
Consumed protein shake throughout
4:30: Handful of nuts and seeds
5:00: Protein drink
24 oz water
7:00: Spinach “ghoulash,” approximately 500-600 calories
9:00: Protein drink, last meal of the day

Workout:

Flat bench: 15, 12, 10 reps
Incline bench: 12, 10, 10 reps
Decline bench: 15, 12, 8 plus 2
Close grip bench: 15, 12, 10
Single dumbbell press behind the head: 15, 12, 10
Skull crushers: 15, 12, 10

Cardio work, Sprint 8 workout: 4 degree incline, 3 minute warmup, runs done at 9, 10, 11, 12, 11.5, 11, 10.5 and 10 mph, with a five minute cooldown: 1.87 miles total. The key to this workout, again, is to run at the fastest sprint YOU can, not the fastest sprint your neighbor can do. Your max is your own max and no one else’s. Just give it all you have.

FAT-OFF, DAY 7

2011-01-11T20:34:00.000-08:00

DAY 7: DAY (mostly) OFF

NOTE: EAT SPINACH EVERY DAY!!!

7:15: Wake up, 8 oz water
7:30: smoothie and all supplements (skipping the protein powder in the smoothie!)
8:30: Dumbbell curl workout to supplement yesterday
24 oz water
9:30: 1 TBS peanut butter
9:45: 1 ½ TBS coconut oil
9:55: 1 TBS peanut butter
11:00: ½ cup cottage cheese
11:50: brunch with the other firefighters: omelets, sausage, mushrooms, potatoes
8 oz water
3:00: 8 oz water, 2 TBS peanut butter
3:30: Extra workout (Yeah, I’m cheating!) one arm pulley rows, pull-ups, military presses
3:45: More of this morning’s smoothie
8 oz water
5:00: ½ cup cottage cheese
6:30: half a cup elk burger, 2 whole eggs, 4 egg whites, 1/4 cup oatmeal scrambled together with two cloves of garlic and Frank's Red Hot sauce
8:30: Four small chocolates from Germany (why do these people tempt me so?!?!)

FAT-OFF, DAY 6

2011-01-11T20:31:00.000-08:00

DAY 6:

I am now at the end of week one of the fat-off routine, and down somewhere between 2 to 3 pounds. That sounds good, but between now and the end of next week fat burning and weight loss will come screeching to a halt without some extra emphasis on the diet and even a little cardio on my off-cardio days. Sorry for the not-so-exciting news.

Note: Shock bombing is a technique that has been used by body builders for many years to “bring up” a lagging body part. For instance, it works really well with the forearms and can be used profitably for up to 5 days straight, although with the larger muscle groups 2 or at most 3 days should be the limit. To “shock bomb” you can do, for instance, three sets of forearm work every hour, up to 8 times a day. Do this 3 to 5 consecutive days a week and you should see gains in muscles that have been holding back in their growth in comparison to the rest of the body. DO NOT DO MAJOR MUSCLE GROUPS MORE THAN THREE DAYS IN A ROW, and do not shock bomb a muscle group, even forearms and calves, more than once a month.

Today’s schedule:

8:40: Rise and shine. Yes, I slept in, and it felt great!
3 TB S vanilla yogurt, 8 oz water
9:50: Smoothie with vanilla flavored protein, spinach, yogurt, grape juice. From now on do protein shake and smoothie separate. This was HORRIBLE.
10:45: Family member funeral (in-law), forced to go too long between meals
1:15: Funeral dinner. Starving stomach forced me to cave! Ham, potatoes, fruit salad, 2 very small pieces of cake. Total about 900 calories. Don’t do this again! Note to self: Convince all friends and relatives to live a good long life so I can avoid funeral dinners.
2:46-3:44: workout
3:44: guzzled remainder of disgusting protein smoothie
5:00: 4 whole grain crackers with cheddar cheese
7:00: 3 small German chocolates (hey, they were a gift I couldn’t turn down!)
10:30: 1 TBS peanut butter

Today’s body parts: Back and biceps, with a minor emphasis on the forearms

Today’s workout:

Seated rows with a wider grip: 15; Underhand grip: 12; Overhand narrower grip: 10
One arm dumbbell row: 15, 12, 10
Pulldown: 15, 12, 10

Barbell curls: 15, 12, 10
Preacher bench curls with chamfered bar: 15, 12, 10
“Outside” dumbbell curls: 15, 12, 10 (performed with hands as far away from each other as possible

“Rotator swivels” (movement performed by holding a dumbbell in each hand, arm bent at 45 degrees, and pivoting from side to side with the hands, keeping the body and hips stable: 15 reps
One arm dumbbell wrist curls: 15, 15
Reverse wrist curls: 20
Reverse curls, lowering the bar to a count of 10 full seconds: 10, 10

FAT-OFF, DAY 5

2011-01-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

DAY 5:

Day five, and it's a wonderful life. It's a great accomplishment to say you even made it through one day of this, so 5 is an incredible feeling of power. Try it!

Note of the day: The only oils you should be cooking your food in are coconut oil, by far the preferred oil, or butter. Olive oil is very heart-healthy—until you heat it. After 250 degrees it loses its good qualities. Do NOT cook with other oils, especially partially hydrogenated oils.

Today’s body parts: Legs and shoulders

Today’s body weight: 209, weighed in after morning smoothie

Schedule:

7:00: 24 rise and drink ounces of water
7:52: 8 oz water plus all supplements
8:00: Smoothie of protein mix, grape juice, spinach
2 green tea capsules, but actual green tea is probably best if you have time
9:10-10:49: gym
10:19: Protein shake
10:40: Protein shake
11:00: 1 TBS peanut butter, all natural with only peanuts and salt, 8 oz water
12:00: 1 clove garlic, 8 oz water
1:00: 16 oz water, 1 serving chili
2:00: 24 oz. water, 1 serving chili
3:00: Extra shoulder workout consisting of military {overhead} presses, 6 sets, and one set of lateral raises
4:00: 2 TBS peanut butter, 12 oz water
6:30: 8 oz water, shake made of spinach, broccoli, celery, salsa, water, 2 cloves garlic, cottage cheese, 5 grain cereal. Very tasty, believe it or not.
7:00: Last extra shoulder workout consisting of all upright rows

Note: Do not do this extra routine for any muscle group as a normal part of your year-round workouts. I’ll address this in tomorrow’s blog.

Today’s workout:

Squats done on Smith machine: 15, 12, 10 reps, one minute rest
Extensions, holding for two seconds at the top: 15, 12, 10 reps
Leg press on hip sled: 15, 12, 10 reps, last three reps being your hardest three

Superset the following:
Stiff leg deadlifts, performed with a moderate weight: 15, 12, 10 reps
Rear laterals: 15, 12, 10

Superset the following:
Leg curls: 15, 12, 10
Front deltoid raise: 15, 12, 10

Superset the following:
Dumbbell shrugs, 15, 12, 10
Calf raises with body weight: 40, 35, 30, 25 (Be sure to concentrate on a HARD squeeze at the top and a thorough stretch at the bottom. The last 5-10 reps can be done faster for a good burnout.

Sprint 8: 4% incline, 5 minute rest, intervals of 1 ½ minutes rest, 20-30 seconds all-out sprint at these speeds: 9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 11.5, 11, 10.5 1.88 miles total

FAT-OFF, DAY FOUR

2011-01-07T06:27:00.001-08:00

Today's weight: 210.75. Another quarter pound and I will have lost two pounds since Monday.

Here I am at day four already. Yes, this can seem like forever when you're looking ahead to the end of the twelfth week! I honestly almost skipped today's workout. Yes, I weakened! I had an orthodontist appointment at 8:00, and I just didn't have the energy to get up earlier. But knowing this blog is being looked at gave me the will to workout after the appointment. Thanks, Internet!

Today we are back to chest and triceps.

The lesson for today is: WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING YOU TAKE IN FOR AT LEAST A WEEK AND KEEP TRACK OF THE CALORIES. You can find calorie charts all over the Internet to help you. If you do this you will quickly see how easy it is to pack on the calories. Remember, you have to burn over 3000 calories more than you take in to burn one pound! So if you're doing this cutting phase I'm in, if you can get it down to 2000 calories you will be much happier in the long run. So far, none of my days have been under 2000.

Stick to the same number of sets and reps today as the first workout. 3 sets of 15, 12, and 10 reps if possible. That's the goal, but if you have to stop at less reps because you bit off more than you could chew, that's okay. Just adjust it next time.

Today's chest exercises: Flat flyes, Incline flyes, Cable crossovers. These are all isolation movements that should be hitting your pectoral muscles HARD, and you should concentrate on squeezing hard all the way, but especially at the top of the movement, and get an extreme stretch at the bottom. Don't go too heavy until you know how it feels at the deep stretching end. You sure don't want to get hurt at this point.

Today's triceps movements: Close grip bench (a mass building movement, of which you should perform one occasionally so as not to lose too much of what you gained in your mass building phase), rope pushdowns, kickbacks. (Perform all with a hard flex at the top of the exercise. Kickbacks should be held a moment at the top, and alternate the rotation of your hand to hit the entire triceps area).

7:10: today I succumbed to the Almond Roca in my drawer and had ONE PIECE. 90 calories
7:30: 12 oz water, all supplements, handful of peanuts, 8 oz milk
9:15: 3 whole eggs, 2 whites, 2 slice of toast with butter, 16 oz water
9:50-10:30 workout
12:00: 1/4 cup protein powder; 1 1/2 TBS peanut butter
12:20: 12 oz water
2:00: 1 TBS peanut butter
2:45: 1 TBS peanut butter (stick to the all natural refridgerated kind)
4:30: 1 TBS peanut butter
5:30: seven inches kolbasa sausage with lots of mustard, 1 clove garlic
6:30: 6 eggs whole, potatoes

Note: mustard is very good for you and can be eaten every day. Eat lots of it, but be sure it's the yellow kind. What's good about it: it's full of the spice turmeric.

FAT-OFF, DAY THREE

2011-01-07T06:05:00.000-08:00

Well, Day 3 has come and gone. That means I have made it through all of my body parts and survived. Time to start over with chest and triceps tomorrow . . .
My story for the day is about a housewife I see infrequently at the gym. Her husband is a fellow firefighter, and I must say she is one of the more attractive ladies in the gym. But she is not meeting her fitness goals. She often asks for tips on different exercises and the way to perform them to best benefit, and I help all I can, but the conversation we got into the other day explained why she hasn't--and unless she changes her attitude never will--meet her goals. It's because they aren't really "goals." She won't eat the way she's supposed to because, in her words, she has to eat the way she fixes food for her children. Okay, there are two things I would say to this: One, you might watch more carefully exactly how you're feeding your children, because chances are pretty good you're not doing them any favors either. And two, then you don't want it bad enough. Even when I'm the one making the meals at home, I feed myself differently than I feed everyone else. Not that they eat an unhealthy diet, but the fact is if you are trying to burn fat to be in competition-shape you CANNOT eat like the rest of the world. That is a fact. But remember what I said before: Nothing tastes as good as being fit and looking good feels. You have to want this, my friends. You really have to want to look good unless you're one of those freaks of nature with metabolism on your side. And even then, ANYONE CAN IMPROVE.

Today's body parts: Back and biceps
Today's body weight: 211.75

Workout time: 9:03-9:44 for weights
Intervals (alternate sprinting/walking) 25 minutes
Forearm workout, 8 minutes

Deadlifts: 3 sets, 15, 12, 10
Bentover rows: 3 sets, 15, 12, 10
Pullovers: 3 sets, 15, 12, 10

Dumbbell curls: 3 sets, 15, 12, 10
Concentration curls: 3 sets, 12, 12, 12
Hammer curls: 3 sets, 15, 12, 10

Remember, on the weights you should be raising the amount of weight for each set of an exercise.

Also remember to only rest one minute or less between sets of the same exercise and no more than 2 minutes before starting the next exercise.

Because of the radically short rest periods, you should be pretty drained by the end of the weight routine. Get five or ten minutes rest, drink 16 oz or so of water to rehydrate, then get on your cardio machine of choice. Mine is the treadmill (or as it's spelled on a sign in my gym, "tredmill). I was running at an incline of 3.5 and did 8 sprints (the workout is Sprint 8) at 12 mph.

Forearm work: 6 sets, 1 each of 6 different exercises

The day's routine would read something like this:

7:35: Up and at 'em!
7:40: 16 oz water, take all vitamin and mineral supplements (see previous days)
8:07: 3/4 cup potato salad, 1 1/2 TBS coconut oil, grape juice/spinach smoothie (680 cal)
9:00-11:35: Protein drink, 12 oz water during workout (160 cal)
11:45: 12 oz water
1:00: 1/2 cup cottage cheese, cucumber slices with artichoke dip, 1 TBS coconut oil, 1 clove raw garlic, 2 green tea capsules, 3 fish oil, vitamin B-100, 32 oz water: 360 calories
3:45: Scrambled eggs: two whole, 4 whites, 1 clove garlic, 4 whole-grain crackers, cheddar cheese, 16 oz water, all supplements, including another shot of green tea capsules (580 calories)
6:45 2/3 cup cottage cheese, 1 scoop protein powder, 8 oz water (380 calories)

Total calorie intake: 2160
A good day: I'm down almost a pound in three days.

FAT-OFF, DAY TWO

2011-01-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

Already Day 2. I'll try to keep these dailies as succinct as possible. I know the first one was a little long, but as you get into the routine I will need less and less detail--I hope!

Quote of the day: Nothing is worth doing unless it's worth doing right.

List of the day: The top ten foods you should consume every day. I've added a golden 3 to this one, one of which is garlic, included in the top ten essentials, so it now totals 12.

1. GARLIC
2. Spinach
3. Grape juice
4: Cocoa--mix up with water and just drink it! Hold your nose if you must!
5. Nuts, especially almonds, walnuts--raw, unsalted
6. Green, leafy vegetables (I know, it sounds an awful lot like more spinach. Maybe that should tell you something about the importance of spinach!)
7. Fish, particularly salmon (also fish oil capsules)
8. Berries, particularly strong on blueberries and raspberries
9. 1/4 yellow onion (reduces chances of getting cancer by possibly 80%!!!!)
10. Eggs, including yolks if you like

GOLDEN THREE: One clove Garlic (I do 3, and no, my wife doesn't like it!); 3 TBS coconut oil, raw and unprocessed; 2 TBS spices/herbs--obviously it will help financially if you can start growing your own, as this will add up) This combination kills yeast in the body, which cuts down on your cravings for sugary foods. White sugar is probably enemy number 1 to your workout plan.

Cooking tip: Use olive oil raw. If you cook it it will lose its value. If you are cooking, use coconut oil or butter. The doctors are lying to you when they tell you any other oil is good for you, and that includes canola oil. A particular enemy is soybean oil, which seems to be in about every prepared food in existence.

Today's workout concentrates on legs and shoulders

15, 12, 10 reps of squats. This EXTREMELY important exercise releases HGH, or human growth hormone naturally into the body, augmenting the effectiveness of all your other exercises. This is also true of deadlifts. Other exercises to a lesser extent.

15, 12, 10 reps Leg extensions on the machine. Hold each rep at the top and pause at a full stretch at the bottom.

15, 12, 10 Leg presses (In the interest of time, I began supersetting each leg exercise at this point with a shoulder exercise. Your rest period ends up being longer than 1 minute, but it does not feel like it. It feels like less. Very intense method of cutting fat and toning up muscle.)

15, 12, 10 Military press with dumbbells

15, 12, 10 Stiff legged deadlifts (USE A MODERATE WEIGHT, OR YOU WILL GET HURT)

15, 12, 10 Side laterals. Flex deltoid muscles of your shoulders very hard all the way through, especially at the bottom. Hold briefly at full extention if you can.

15, 12, 10 Leg curls

15, 12, 10 Barbell shrugs--very good for building the trapezius muscles. I know this is my toning phase, but I will continue to use an occasional building exercise throughout so as to not lose what I've gained in muscle. MUSCLE IS AN IMPORTANT KEY TO BURNING FAT.

Calf presses: Do six sets with a full contraction and stretch. Contract HARD at the top, and keep your rests to a minimum, even just long enough to write down your numbers. I did 40, 35, 30, 25, 20 and 15, and I contracted hard enough that I could barely walk at the end.

The day's schedule:

6:00 AM: 8 oz water with the usual supplements
6:20 AM: Smoothie, same basic ingredients as day one. Ends up being something like 300 calories
Consume protein shake throughout workout!
6:45 to 7:39: workout
8:00 Finish protein shake with 8 oz water. I make my shakes with water rather than milk, but that is personal preference.
8:30: 16 oz water
10:30 110 cal in sardines, 6 whole grain crackers, 1 TBS coconut oil
10:40: 16 oz water, fruit pills, vitamin B-100
10:46: 8 oz water--GET HYDRATED EARLY and stay hydrated throughout the day or your muscles and cells will pay for it.
1:00 Protein shake made with 8 oz water
1:35: small portion of potato casserole with some sausage: 350 calories; 8 oz water
4:00 1 cup cottage cheese (200 cal); 1 green bell pepper (minimal calories); 8 oz water

Your goal meals should be 6 to 7, and all should be fairly small. No gut-wrenching meals that keep you from being able to eat again in another 2 to 3 hours.

Body weight: 212.25. And YES, GET ON THE SCALE EVERY SINGLE DAY, PREFERABLY ALWAYS THE SAME SCALE.

FAT-OFF DAY ONE

2011-01-04T15:50:00.001-08:00

The journey has begun. Along with listing my schedule, body stats, workout particulars and diet, I will be occasionally including a few tips that you might find useful in your daily trek toward fitness. I hope this helps somebody else out there to reach their goals.

Quote of the Day: Nothing tastes as good as being fit and strong feels.

EAT FOR FUNCTION, NOT TASTE.

EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT.

At day one I begin with approximately 20% body fat. My goal for the final photo shoot is 6%. My tiny bit of math skill tells me I have 14% body fat to take off, incidentally my favorite number--don't ask why, because seriously I have no idea.

I weigh 212.5 pounds and am actually up to a Levi's size 35 waist 501 jeans. My goal weight is 185 with a goal pant size of 33. I am at a handicap where the body mass index charts are concerned. My lean weight is listed as 163, at which weight all of my body building for the last twenty or so years would be for nothing--and I am supposed to maintain 16% body fat at that weight! When I was 9% body fat at 187 pounds last October I was charted as morbidly obese. No kidding. The handicap is that if you are a serious weight lifter you will always necessarily weigh far more than the charts say you should. NEVER forget to take this into account. Things are figured differently in the body building world. Don't get discouraged. You are a world apart.

Day one's workout concentrates on the muscles of the chest and triceps. I begin at 10:25 AM and end at 11:09, as far as the weight lifting part of the workout. My cardio intervals and ab workout bring this to 12:00 PM.

Here is the workout:

15, 12 and 10 reps of flat bench press, AFTER a warmup set, raising weight each set, ending with a set that needs a spotter. All sets should have a carefully timed one minute rest between.

15, 12 and 10 reps of incline bench, same as above but without the warmup set.

15, 12 and 7 reps decline bench. Last rep is all I can muster, for a level 10 out of a possible 10 on effort.

For triceps (no warmup, as bench work covered this):

15, 12, 10 reps close grip bench press, one minute rests

15, 12, 10 reps pushdowns

15, 12, 10 skull crushers--don't let the name scare you off. If you do this right, with a good stretch, it will give you great results.

Weight workout ends, now begins cardio work.

The "Sprint 8" workout consists of a 3-5 minute warmup on the treadmill, then a 20-30 second all-out sprint, 90 second rest at 3 MPH. Repeat this 8 times, then cool down as long as you need. At the end of this interval workout you should be ready to collapse. You will NOT want to do one more sprint. DRINK A TALL GLASS OF WATER.

Abdominal work: Leg lifts on the end of a weight bench: 15, done to a cadence of a count of 3 up, count of 3 down. Keep it slow, keep your stomach sucked in, keep your stomach muscles contracted. Believe me, 15 will be a LOT. Leg lifts resting on left hip: 15 ; Leg lifts resting on right hip: 15; Straight crunch on bench: 15 ; Right crossover crunch on bench, 15 ; L crossover crunch on bench, 15. Both of these were done as partial reps, keeping it contracted at the top of the movement.

Now here is how the whole day's schedule went:

7:20 AM: 16 oz water

7:30 AM: Protein drink, 50 calories worth

9:45 AM: Smoothie containing: 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt; 3 cups spinach; 1 medium banana; 5 ice cubes; 8 oz water; 80 calories worth of frozen concentrate grape juice. This concoction sounds and looks nasty, but it is actually pretty tasty, and a great way to get your spinach down without even tasting it. Two months I got braces put on, so this is perfect for me.

9:50: 8 oz. water

10:45-12:00, workout

11:00: Protein drink, 120 calories (sip this during your workout for maximum effect and absorption into the muscle cells.

1:30: lean ham, 230 calories

3:45: 3/4 cup cottage cheese, 150 calories; 3 cloves of minced garlic. (just shove it in with a spoon and follow with a tall glass of water.); 1 1/2 TBS raw, unprocessed coconut oil (actually tastes pretty good, although the texture initially takes a little getting used to); 1 cup Diet Pepsi (this is VERY bad for you, and my only excuse is that I had a 2 liter bottle I'm using up; when it's gone you won't see pop of any kind on my lists if I can help it.);

Supplements: 3 fish oil; 1 glucosamine-chondroitin; 2 gree tea capsules; 1 multivitamin; 1 calcium (more on this in a future blog); 2 concentrated vegetable pills; 1 vit B complex; 8 oz water

6:00 PM: 16 oz water with 2 cups of elk meatballs, boiled; 1 TBS coconut oil, 1 vitamin B complex; 2 green tea; handful of trailmix including cranberries, raisins, pumpkins kernels, cashews, sunflower seeds--spendy but very nutritious.

8:00 PM: 16 oz water, 6 whole grain crackers with a half avocado; Protein shake mixed up with spinach, banana, yogurt and grape juice into a smoothie.

Day's calorie count: approx 3000 calories, which I'll gradually start cutting as my 12 program goes on.

GET PLENTY OF SLEEP

WATER GOAL: 10-12 eight oz cups a day. It's not as much as you think and is critical to your success.

I am beyond embarrassed at having gained this much weight during my bulking up phase, but it is vital to this program that I show what I look like in the beginning, thus the inclusion of the lovely photos.

COMING HOME

2011-01-02T22:22:00.000-08:00

Coming Home, a Christmas story

Cole Spradlin had stayed way too long in Boise, and now, driving home to Idaho City, the snowflakes spun and whirled and plummeted like a million angels had torn open their pillows in the most monumental pillow fight in eternity. The wind drove out of the west, and Cole dreaded the long haul up the canyon ahead. Two hour-old sleet made of Interstate 84 a long black ribbon of glass, the dotted lines now only ghostly forms through the snow floor. He could only imagine how the balding tires on his trailer were going to manage the oil slicks that were sure to be masquerading as snow-swept asphalt roadway between him and home.
The eve of Christmas Eve had fallen like a vengeful gray monster on the Boise Valley. And perhaps worse than this battering winter storm, with the economy as wounded as it was few people were spending, and the Spradlin family was in a bad way. Against all odds, Cole had stayed an hour longer at the trade show in Boise than his winter sense advised him to because a potential customer had told him he would be back to look at a fifteen hundred dollar king size bed Cole had spent many hours crafting out of native aspen wood brought down from the mountains above Idaho City. He knew the price sounded high to anyone used to seeing the sterile, white lodgepole pine furniture offered at most furniture outlets, but even at fifteen hundred dollars he wasn’t making a profit of more than six hundred dollars. And with the time that had gone into that bed it added up to less than eight dollars an hour.
The trade show officially closed down at five o’clock, but Cole hadn’t even started putting things away until four-forty-five, in hopes of his customer returning with cash. By the time he knew they had lied to him or changed their minds, worried rumor among the other vendors was that in some places there were already three inches of snow in the valley, with no sign of a break in the weather. It was a cinch that Idaho City could brag double that amount.
Cole had lived in the mountains long enough and had listened to people exaggerate the weather long enough that although the reports worried him he reserved his judgment of how much snow had really fallen. But he had filled with dread when he went out to get his pickup and trailer and pull into the arena to load his log furniture. The sky glowered down ceiling-high, a deep, purplish gray but a-glow against the flickering lights of the city. In the orange-tinted parking lot lights the quarter-sized snowflakes glittered and danced, and landed in fluffy piles, where the big, ruthless paws of the wind scattered them pell-mell. It was feather snow, but that wasn’t going to make any difference. With so much snow in the valley, Idaho City and home would wallow a foot deep by the time he made it back. It was unlikely the road plows would be able to handle the load.
Worst of all was that staying over-long at the show was going to cost him making it home to his family Christmas party at a decent time, even if the roads had been good. As it was, with the bald tires on the trailer, he had to hope he would make it home at all.
Pulling off I-84, Cole surveyed the state road with dread. There were a small number of tire tracks already in the snow, but the snow was gathering in them and hiding any sign of tread pattern. The trailer swung a little too wide as he made his turn, sliding on the packed snow. He eased it back up to speed, but the speed dictated by road conditions was forty miles an hour tops, at least until he got a feel for how well his trailer tires were going to handle it.
Out through the purple-gray gloom Christmas lights glowed on scattered houses and on the trees in some of the yards. It was a beautiful sight, especially with the multi-colored lights all diffused in the fog and falling snow. But it was a deadly kind of beauty. He knew that not far ahead all of these lights ended, and for many miles there was only an occasional ranch house huddled in the murky shadow—and none of them his. He almost wished he had built his house down here closer to Boise. Normally, he loved Idaho City, its small town charm and remote location in the depths of the evergreen woods. But tonight, for perhaps the first time ever, he could have loved a peaceful cottage in some nameless, faceless, ticky-tacky Boise suburb.
The road climbed steeper and steeper, and one by one the houses sloughed away and grew farther and farther in between. Soon they were no more. Occasionally, a car would pass him headed toward the interstate. Sometimes he would see headlights approaching from the rear, and he slowed down to let them pass, these other poor travelers headed up all the snow-bedecked miles of road to remote Idaho City. Other than these headlights and taillights and the roadside mile markers gleaming in the dim light of his headlamps there was no light at all. The stars and the moon were rolled into a blanket of cloud and snow and either lost in peaceful dreams or laughing in glee about the fools on Idaho’s roads.
Cole had only gone five miles or less up the canyon when he saw the car. The faint red tail lights glittered through the sideways-falling snow ahead, but they were much too far to the left to be on the road. And there was nothing but sagebrush and grass in this area. Someone had slid off.
In this day and age of cell phones, Cole’s first thought was to keep on driving. Whoever was in that car had known the dangers of this road as well as he did, and they could just call the state police and have them up there in twenty minutes or less. After all, he was already going to miss too much of his family party, and he had sworn to Lisa and the kids to be home as soon as he could. It wasn’t his fault if some sorry traveler didn’t know how to drive on winter roads.
What’s more, this party was going to be the last time he might see his dad for a long time. Daddy had found himself unable to keep up payments on his place on the edge of town in Idaho City, and he had had to sell out. He was moving to Salt Lake City to live with Cole’s sister, JoAnn, and her husband. With his dad being eighty-four years old, there was no telling how long he would be around. Cole couldn’t just skip out on what might end up being the last meaningful get-together they had.
Besides, there was hardly a safe place to pull over in this narrow area. Chances were he would get hit trying to help these people, and who would that benefit? So as he got close to the car, although his former life as a city police officer and firefighter in Idaho Falls made him look out the corner of his eyes at the stranded car thirty feet off the road, his hands were glued to the wheel and he was determined to drive on by.
Then Cole heard the voice, a voice as clear as if the speaker were beside him on the seat. It said, “Do unto others as thou wouldst have them do unto you.”
Cole swore. He looked around in dismay, at the dark trees and the mountains and the tumbling snow. This night was going to be endless. His guts told him that.
Closing his eyes wearily, he took his foot off the gas, and applied the brakes carefully, eventually coming to a stop in the deep snow along the roadway some hundred feet past the stranded vehicle. He didn’t want to drive too far off into the soft grass and brush, especially since the roadside fell off steeply here, but he was more concerned about sticking out in the road.
He sat in the semi-warm cab for a moment and took in a deep breath, sighing it out. Well, the least he could do was to check on the passengers in the car. If no one was hurt, maybe he could phone the police for them, if by chance they had no cell phone, and be on his way home to Lisa and his dad.
Feeling magnanimous for stopping at all, Cole stepped out of the truck, and if he hadn’t been holding onto the door handle he would have gone down. He swore again and pulled himself back up erect, standing still for a moment to collect himself. He almost cursed a third time when he slammed the door and looked down to see how deeply his tires were buried in the snow. But he guessed two cuss words a night was plenty.
His pickup, a ’72 Chevy, was two-wheel-drive, and he had the sick and sudden thought that he wasn’t going to be pulling back up on the road himself. Sour-faced, he looked toward the stranded car, which appeared to be a large white or at least light-colored sedan. Throwing all morality aside, he cursed them from not learning how to drive, cursed himself for playing the good Samaritan, and he cursed the snow. Christmas was ruined. First, his big sale had fallen through, so the extra cash he and Lisa had counted on for Christmas presents did not exist, and second, he was going to have to store that behemoth of a bed somewhere until the spring fair came. The icing on the cake was missing his family Christmas party—perhaps worse, if he couldn’t get back on the road.
The irony, he thought to himself. Stop to help some idiot who can’t drive, and now he was stuck too, and in all reality who knew when help might happen by? The police vehicles weren’t apt to be much better at getting around in this hell of a winter storm than his pickup.
Before heading back to where he could see movement in the stuck car, he pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket. How he hated that thing! He had never wanted one in the first place. But sometimes it did come in handy, and this was one of those times. He dialed his dad’s number, where they were having the Christmas party, and it was dead silence. With alarm, he looked at the screen, and it read NO SERVICE. Cole couldn’t believe what he was seeing! It was all going from bad to terrible, and he didn’t even know yet if he could get that other car back on the road. Being by himself, and with the depth of the snow here, he was almost certain he couldn’t. And now, not being able to phone the police for help, he was going to have to take them somewhere. He could feel that in his bones. He couldn’t just leave them here to fend for themselves.
With a sickness starting in his stomach, Cole jerked his collar up around his neck and started trudging through the foot and a half deep snow toward the car. He could see their tire tracks leading from the highway. They had actually spun in a circle before luckily landing upright far off the road.
The driver of the car, who appeared to be alone, began to stir again as he approached, and soon he saw the dome light come on as the door opened. What appeared from twenty yards away to be an older lady stepped out of the car and stood in the snow waiting for him, huddled up in her coat. Again, Cole took a deep breath and said a little prayer. He had to change his attitude. He was sure this lady didn’t want to be out here in the snow any more than he did, and he had no right to blame her. It might have been his own mom—only his mom had died two years ago.
As he got close enough to feel like the woman could hear him through the wind and muffling snow, Cole yelled out, “Hi! Are you okay?”
“I think so,” came back a sweet sounding voice. “You shouldn’t have stopped. You might be stuck too.”
This comment immediately melted Cole’s heart. Here this old lady was, stranded in the middle of nowhere, with help who-knew-how-many minutes—or hours—away, and her car stuck good. And all she could think of was his well being. He wanted to slap himself for the names he had called her earlier.
“I couldn’t just leave you out here,” he said, able to speak without yelling so loud now that he had reached her. “My name is Cole.”
The woman thrust out her hand, which was covered in a knitted green glove, probably home-made, like the ones his mother used to wear. “I’m Wilamena Giovanni,” she said. “I know—it’s a mouthful!”
Cole laughed. “I’ve heard bigger names. So let’s see what we have here. Did you try to drive out yet?” He looked at her big white sedan, a new model Lincoln Continental.
“I did,” Mrs. Giovanni said, “but it wouldn’t even move. It just spun and spun, and I didn’t want to make it icy under the tires, so I stopped. Plus it was making a strange noise.”
“Good for you,” replied Cole. “Well, listen—my pickup might be stuck, but at least it’s warm—sort of. What do you say we get you up there and inside, and I can pull out a shovel and see about digging you out?”
“You are so sweet, young man,” she said, and she smiled up at him.
Cole wasn’t quite certain how the smile of Wilamena Giovanni hadn’t melted the snow all around them, as warm as it was. She was a tall woman, perhaps five eight or nine. Although slightly stooped of shoulder, and her hair a silvery gray, she still cut quite a figure for her age. Her eyes were a beautiful blue, at least from what he could see in the dim light coming off the snow, and her face was strong but handsome. She must have been a beauty in her younger days.
Cole held out an elbow to Mrs. Giovanni, and she took it, giving him that smile again. “I’m glad I found such a gentleman clear out here in the toolies.”
Carefully, they picked their way back through Cole’s tracks, which were being quickly filled in as the wind jetted bitter snowflakes across them. When they reached the pickup, they walked around the trailer, and for the first time Cole noticed that its tires were buried possibly deeper than those of the pickup. He cringed but said nothing. He didn’t even swear in his head, and of that he was inexplicably proud. Helping her into the truck, he went back around and started it again, then left it running while he took his flashlight, dug a shovel out of the snow in the bed, and started back to her car.
Five minutes’ digging didn’t get him any closer to moving Mrs. Giovanni’s car, and he got out to give things a closer look. He was kneeling down in front of it when he happened to notice the strange tilt of the left tire. With a feeling of dread climbing in his chest, he scraped out a better spot under the front bumper and got down on his side to shine his flashlight up under the motor. It was as he feared. The car’s axle was broken. Snow or no snow, that was one Lincoln that was going nowhere.
With a sigh, he sat back up, feeling defeated. The snow was pounding him, and the wind gnawed on his ears until they were numb. Even his scalp was starting to lose feeling, right through his hair. Cole Spradlin didn’t want to move. He sat there in the snow, feeling it start to melt right through the seat of his pants, and stared at the driving snow. Finally, he sighed once more and looked up the slope toward his pickup. Well, it was time to find out where this Wilamena Giovanni had been headed tonight, up or down the canyon. He couldn’t just leave her out here, not without any phone service to call for help. He was going to miss his dad’s party entirely now, but there was nothing to be done for that. He just prayed they would all know he was okay. He would worry more about them worrying than he would about his own safety. He could handle himself in the snow.
Cole trudged back up to the pickup, his heart heavy. Even as pleasant as this woman was, he sure wished she had stayed home on this night, of all nights. Her presence here was taking away his last chance to see his dad, at least for this winter. Daddy was leaving for Salt Lake in the morning. And the way log furniture sales were going these days, his chances of getting down to Salt Lake even in the spring or summer were looking pretty dim.
Besides Lisa, his dad was by far his best friend. They had done everything together, hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, riding horses. They even sang and played the guitar together, not the garbage that was playing on the radio these days, but the old, magical cowboy songs, the songs he had grown up with by artists like Eddy Arnold, Marty Robbins and the Sons of the Pioneers.
He couldn’t believe his daddy was going away. For a moment, tears brimmed Cole’s eyes, but he was almost to the pickup door, and he forced them away and sniffed against a runny nose. He was going to miss his dad, more than he even knew how to handle. They had ceased manufacture of men like Frank Spradlin.
Cole opened his pickup door and gave Mrs. Giovanni an apologetic look. “Ma’am, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but you have a broken front axle.”
“Oh no!” she exclaimed, her hand coming to her breast.
“Did you feel anything hit the bottom of your car when you went off the road?”
“Oh yes! Very badly,” she exclaimed. “But I got out and looked for damage and didn’t find anything, so I thought I was all right.”
“You must have hit a rock,” he surmised. The wind was battering his ears, whipping at his hair, sending bits of ice down inside his collar. They were having to yell at each other to be heard. “Hang on, I’ll come around,” he said, and he plunged through the snow to his side and struggled in, slamming the door with that hollow sound of old, hard steel.
The wind still beat at the truck, whistling and howling around the windshield and along the iced-over hood. But even so, it was like they had suddenly dropped together into a well of silence. “Whew!” he exclaimed. “That’s crazy out there.”
“Young man, I’m so glad you came when you did, but I don’t want you to worry any more about me. You understand?”
“Worry about you? Ma’am, there is no way in the world I’m going to leave you here with that car, if that’s what you’re suggesting. Where were you headed, anyway?”
“I live in Idaho City,” she said with no small amount of pride.
“Really? Well, so do I!”
“Isn’t that nice.” They quickly exchanged information on where their respective houses were, and Cole laughed.
“My daddy loves your area. He always wanted to build a house up there in the woods when he retired, but my mom was bent on living in town and owning this big, two story, sided house with a fancy picket fence. Daddy was just glad she didn’t insist on staying in downtown Missoula, where they used to live. He never much cared for the city. But anyway, Daddy loved Mom so much he caved in, and she got her big, sided house in town. At least he got Idaho City.”
“Aw, how sweet. Do they still live there?”
“Well, my mom died a couple of years ago.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Thanks. It was rough, but she suffered quite a while. And Daddy, he tried to hang onto that white house, but he couldn’t keep up the payments. He spent way too much money on my mom’s medical bills that last year—pretty much used up his savings. So he had to sell out. Tonight we were having a party at his place, and in the morning we’re sending him off to live with my sister in Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“I know, I wouldn’t want to live there either.”
“Oh no! I didn’t mean that,” she corrected. “I only meant it was a shame he has to leave Idaho City. It is such a beautiful place. I’ve loved it since I was a child.”
Cole gave a laugh of understanding. “Well, I still wouldn’t want to live in Salt Lake. But you’re right—leaving Idaho City is a shame. It’s going to be the death of my dad. He never wanted to live anywhere else. It took him forty-six whole years to finally make it back there after he left and ended up in Missoula.”
“My! That is sheer determination,” said Mrs. Giovanni. “An admirable quality. But I love Idaho City so much myself I can easily understand his drive.”
Cole smiled at her warmly. She was such a beautiful, elegant lady, so easy to warm to, so easy to get to know. He felt like he was somehow related to her, like they had known each other for years. “Well, ma’am, let’s see about getting out of here. I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive you home tonight, if this old truck will make the pull up the canyon. Then in the morning after Daddy leaves I’ll come back down here with you, we’ll get a tow truck for your car and make sure it gets safely to the shop. I know a great mechanic in Boise. It won’t cost you more than a couple hundred dollars—in fact, I’m pretty sure he owes me a favor.”
“You silly young man!” she said. “You shouldn’t be going out of your way for me. You have a very important party to be at tonight. You don’t know when you will see your daddy again. Please don’t you worry about me. I will be fine.”
“That’s insanity right there, ma’am,” said Cole. “We’re both going to Idaho City anyway, and you are a captive in my truck—my hostage. You’re going home tonight, safe and sound, and that’s that.”
Mrs. Giovanni gave a gentle laugh, and her soft hand came out and lay on Cole’s. “Thank you so very much, young man. You know, I always wished I had a boy like you.”
Cole smiled back at her. “No boys?” he asked.
“No, just no boys like you. My little Nick, he stopped going to church when he was fifteen. Can you imagine that?” She sat silent for a moment. “Just stopped going. He said he didn’t believe anymore. He started drinking. One night the state police called me and then came to my house. My Nick had died driving drunk—he ran off into the canyon. He took a beautiful young lady with him, and the friend who had gotten him into drinking in the first place. Such a shame.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t imagine losing a child.”
Mrs. Giovanni smiled and dabbed at a tear. “You’re sweet to say that. You know, I think if Nick would have had some years to mature he would have come back. And I truly believe my Nick could have been a good man like you some day—if I could have raised him in the right place.”
“Do you think Idaho City wasn’t right for him?”
“Oh, heavens! No, no. It wasn’t Idaho City. My no. My father got a job in Pocatello when I was seventeen, and we had to move. We went first to Pocatello, and then out to Omaha, Nebraska a year later. I met my husband, Peter, out there in Omaha. He was a real estate salesman, and very well established. Very young, for his business, but very well liked and successful. We raised Nick there in Omaha.” A sad, faraway look came into her eyes.
“Any other children?”
She looked up at him, then quickly away. But not so quickly that he didn’t see a rush of tears come into her eyes. “No, my ‘parts’ stopped working.” She forced a little laugh, trying to sound light-hearted. “I was unable to have more children, after Nick. I used to want a little girl. I would have named her Brielle.”
Unbidden, Cole felt tears come up in his own eyes. He was embarrassed, but ever since having his own children, watching them grow, he had seen in himself these vast emotional changes. Little things made him cry, things as simple as Hallmark commercials on television or the public display of affection between a parent and child. It was always the sappy things, the stories of love, or love lost.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sure you made a wonderful mother.”
A sob escaped Mrs. Giovanni, and her hand came quickly to her mouth as she turned her head to look out the passenger window. He heard her choke out the words, “I’m so sorry.”
Instinctively he reached up and rubbed her shoulder. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. I’m the one who should apologize for bringing up any sad memories.”
“It isn’t your fault, young man. When a woman gets old—at least this is true for me—these memories are just . . . there. They come, and they stay, and always they are right there waiting for the right cue to come out and make me cry. I’m a silly old woman.”
“And I must be a silly old man,” said Cole. “I do the same thing myself.”
She composed herself and dabbed at her eyes daintily, then finally turned back to face him. “I can believe that, young man. I see the softie in you. You know what? I sure like you. If I had had another son I hope he could have been the gentleman you are.”
Cole cleared his throat and squeezed her shoulder, then let his hand fall away. “Well, I’m going to give this a shot. Say a prayer if you have any pull upstairs.”
With that, he eased down on the clutch, wiggled it into first gear, and feathered the gas, started to let out on the clutch. He immediately felt the tires start spinning. He would have been surprised if they hadn’t. He tried for a few more seconds, but it was obvious there would be no easing out of this place.
He sighed and looked over at Mrs. Giovanni. “Well, aren’t we a pair? One good thing is I have a tank full of gas, and if we have to we can just sit here all night with this old Chevy running and tell each other stories about . . . well, just whatever we want. Maybe we can sing some songs too.”
She laughed. “Fine, but only if you like the right kind of music.”
“I’m not sure what the ‘right’ kind is, but I like old cowboy music—and Celtic.”
The old lady’s eyes searched his warmly. “That doesn’t surprise me. I always liked cowboy music too. My husband didn’t much care for it though. He wasn’t much of a music fan. But when I was young I knew a boy who played the guitar and sang like a bird. I fell in love with that kind of music over sixty years ago. Sixty-seven, to be exact.”
“Well, maybe you’re in luck, if you like hearing a cat with it’s tail slammed in the door, because I have a guitar and I play and sing that old music myself.”
A merry laugh escaped Mrs. Giovanni, and her eyes sparkled. “To judge by your speaking voice, I am going to guess that you sing marvelously. I would be honored to find out.”
“Okay, you’re on. But before I give up and start singing the night away I’m going to dig out a little snow and put on some tire chains. I shouldn’t have tried this road without them in the first place.”
“Would you like some help?”
Cole started to laugh, then thought better of it. “No, ma’am! I wouldn’t want you freezing out there in the snow.”
“Well, I’m getting out whether you say so or not, so you might as well accept. You don’t think I’m a weakling, do you? I don’t live outside Idaho City for nothing.”
Cole studied her eyes for a moment, imagining the look of her as a younger woman. That face was so full of joy, so full of an eagerness to help, to please those she loved. “I’ll admit I sure could use a good flashlight holder.”
Giggling, she said, “Well, that is sure something an eighty-two-year-old woman can handle! I’m your man!”
Before Cole could come around to the passenger side, Mrs. Giovanni had climbed down out of the truck herself, and in the whipping and slashing wind she came around with the flashlight and met him at the front of the hood. Cole dug the tire chains out of his trailer while Mrs. Giovanni stared in wonder at the furniture loaded carefully in its dark depths.
“I so love that look,” she said. “Aspen makes such beautiful art. That boy I used to know, the one who sang, he wanted nothing but to fill his house with such fine things—beautiful handmade log furniture, old saddles, rugs made out of bear skin and buffalo hide, and the big mount of a longhorn bull on his wall.” She stood for a moment lost in memories as Cole looked at her. “I should say our wall,” she said in fond reminiscence. “He always said he was going to marry me and build me a huge log house full of woodsy things and horse and cowboy and Indian art.”
“What happened to that boy?”
Mrs. Giovanni’s face grew sad. “Long ago I lost him.”
“He died?”
“No, I simply lost him. Too many moves, and back then we didn’t have so many ways to find people. I tried to send letters, but nothing ever came back.” She stood there lost in thought for a long time, then said, “I suppose he found another girl who was prettier and more worthwhile than I was and filled a log house with all of those things for her instead. I couldn’t very well blame him, since I was the one who moved away first.”
“Well, I’ll say one thing, ma’am. I doubt he found anyone prettier and more worthwhile than you. If he thought he did, then that was certainly his loss.”
She laughed. “You’re making an old woman blush. You need to put on those chains, or I will have to do it for you. And can you do me a big favor? No more ‘ma’am,’ all right? Please call me Wilamena. Or Billi. That’s what my dad used to call me. And other people, too.” Again, she seemed lost in faraway thoughts. Instinctively, Cole knew her mind had gone back to her young man with all the dreams. He thought suddenly of his dad. He wished somehow he and Wilamena had been able to meet while he was still living in Idaho City, because judging by their similar tastes they would probably have hit it off. He tucked that thought away in his mind to ponder another time and turned to the job at hand.
It took almost a full hour of digging and hacking at ice to get the chains on and pickup back out on the road’s edge. Just before Cole could get in, after helping Wilamena into her seat, he saw headlights appear in the snowy gloom, coming from the direction of Idaho City.
Within less than a minute, those headlights began to look familiar, and as they slowed and began to pull over he knew. It was his dad, coming down to look for him.
The old man got out of his four door Chevy, which he had bought back when he still had an ample savings account to accommodate Cole and his family as well as himself. At that moment his dad looked every bit the big, powerful man he used to be, the big mountain man, man of the woods, scoutmaster of twenty-some years.
Frank had a cane now, which sometimes he used and sometimes he didn’t. But he still stood six-foot-two, even hunched slightly over, and his big hand dwarfed the head of the cane. His snowy white beard was trimmed short, hiding only his jawline, and his mustache was groomed perfectly. Even as an old man, he had pride. And even at eighty-four years he cut quite a figure of a man.
As close to a run as he could still muster, Frank came over to Cole as Cole heard other doors slamming on the truck and saw the shapes of his wife and children peering at him through the driving snow and wind. “You okay, son?” asked Frank.
“I’m fine, Dad. Just got stuck in the snow trying to help out a lady who ran off the road.”
Frank walked over and let his cane hit the ground as he gave his son a huge bear hug. “You about scared the daylights out of all of us, buddy. I can’t afford to lose many days off my life, at this age.”
The old man’s eyes crinkled, and Cole’s filled up with tears. Things never changed. No matter the tough situation he got himself into, his best friend came to his rescue.
Then Lisa and the kids were at his side, and everyone was hugging him and crying. Lisa kissed him so hard on the mouth it almost hurt, and then she took him by lapels of his coat and shook him. “Don’t you ever scare me like that!”
He tried not to laugh, but he did. “I’m sorry, baby. I tried to call, but there’s no service here.” He pointed to the broken down Lincoln Continental, way out in the dim, snowy shadows. “This old lady ran off the road and broke her axle. I couldn’t just leave her here. Believe me, she’s been trying to get me to.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. She lives in Idaho City, too, but she keeps saying she doesn’t want me to waste my evening when I have more important things to tend to.”
“Well, we’ll put a stop to that right now, won’t we?” said Lisa brusquely. “We’re taking her home, right?”
“Yeah. I just barely got unstuck myself and chained up. Just started to head out when I saw you coming.”
“Cole, I want you to do me a favor. I know how you’ve been needing this evening party with your dad, and I knew you wouldn’t miss it if you had a choice. I’m sorry it got so late, but I know you would never leave anyone stranded like that. I would love to ride with you back home, but right now I want something else more. I want you to talk your dad into riding with you in your truck. He was worried sick about you, sweetie. He really wanted this evening for the two of you. I don’t want to take that away. I’m going to see if he’ll let me take the kids in the truck—and I can take your friend, too. Then you and Dad can go home together. It would be good for you both.”
“Okay, you’re on.” He gave Lisa another big hug, then pulled away. “You’re the best wife in the world, you know that? I feel bad about pawning my new friend off, though, but I know Dad’s truck’s a lot warmer than mine. I’ll go get her. And you’d better get back in the truck before you get blown away.”
Lisa looked around her at the snow that was still pounding down, sometimes seeming to come from every direction. She didn’t fight him, but grabbed the children and herded them back to Frank’s truck.
Frank went with them, picking up his cane on the way, and insisted on helping Lisa into the truck after she got the kids in. Cole saw them pause at the passenger door though, and Frank bent his ear to his beloved daughter-in-law.
Cole yanked open the pickup door and smiled at Wilamena, apologizing for letting in the snow and the piercing wind. “Wilamena, I’d like you to do something for me. I wouldn’t do this if you didn’t live in Idaho City and I didn’t know we would have many more chances to visit, but my wife suggested it. Would you mind riding home with my wife, Lisa? Dad’s truck’s a lot warmer anyway, and that will give me a chance to have a last talk with Dad before he heads down to Utah.”
“Certainly, young man,” she said as she laid a hand warmly on his forearm. “May I call you Cole?”
“I hope you will.”
Impulsively, the old woman suddenly leaned close and gave Cole a big hug, and he hugged her back. It was like hugging a long lost aunt.
In the blinding snow, Frank and Wilamena passed each other as they made their way to opposite vehicles. Frank got in and slammed the pickup door, and Cole got in the driver’s side. With the wind at bay, they both sighed and looked at each other. There were tears in both their eyes. “I’m glad you’re safe, buddy,” said Frank. “My guts told me you were okay, but this road has killed a lot of folks.”
“Thanks for coming, Dad. It means a lot to me.”
Frank nodded, but he didn’t seem able to speak. With the chains on, the truck pulled out of the snow and back onto the highway fairly easily, although the road itself was covered with three inches of snow now and it promised to be a long trip home. Just what Cole and Frank needed most.
A long silence filled the truck, silence broken only by the tires crunching in the new snow, the windshield wipers flapping, and the howling winter wind.
“Not much like Christmastime, is it, Cole?”
Cole looked over at his dad and smiled. “Nothing like ‘Winter Wonderland.” But I bet it will be in the morning.”
“Maybe.”
“Dad, how are you going to make it down there in the city? That’s not your kind of place.”
Another long silence. “I love your sister, Cole. Love her family, too. But you’re right. I don’t know how I’ll do it. I’ve tried to think of any way to stay up here, but it’s time to move on, I reckon. Your mother would have wanted it that way.”
“She wouldn’t have wanted you to lose the house.”
“Well, I guess maybe that was God’s will. Who knows? Your mom and me, we sure never figured on her gettin’ that cancer, I’ll say that. That disease can eat up a retirement account like nothing you ever saw. It scares me a lot for you not to have insurance.”
“Let’s don’t talk about that, Dad. We don’t have time for that kind of discussion. You’re leaving tomorrow.”
Frank tried hard to look at his son, but like Wilamena had done earlier he ended up turning his head and looking out the passenger window as the snow swirled and broke around them. Cole glanced in the rearview mirror to make sure his dad’s truck was still safely behind them, and it was.
“If any house or apartment comes up for rent in Idaho City, what do you think about moving back? Or what if Lisa and I build a new house and attach a little place to it, just for you?”
Frank laughed sadly. “You’ve always been my best buddy, Cole.” His voice cracked, and he had to look down and swallow a few times. “I’d do that in a heartbeat if I thought we could. But you aren’t much better off than I am. We both know you can’t build a house, and I can’t even help you, physically or financially. We’re both pretty much stuck. JoAnn and Doug have their little place on back already. I guess God intended it to be that way.”
“They’re right in those suburbs, Dad. They’re smack in the middle of a bunch of houses you can hardly tell apart from each other. No hunting close by, no fishing, no country—at least in Missoula you had that. It’s just all houses, all the same cookie cutter houses. You can’t live like that.”
“I’d stay in Idaho City if I could, son. You know that. Did I ever tell you about the little gal I used to know there? Maybe I showed you her picture.”
“Only about a hundred times,” said Cole, laughing.
“She loved that place too. She loved it more than anything. I never could understand why she left and never wrote me or tried to call or find me. Long time ago,” he said with a sigh. “Well, no matter now. That’s a lot of water under the bridge, long before you kids—and your mom.”
“Tell me about that girl, Dad. You showed me her picture, and one time you told me she was really your meant to be, not Mom. I didn’t understand then, but over the years I came to.”
“I hope you don’t ever think I regret your mom, buddy. I loved her with everything that was in me.”
“I know, Dad, but you’ll be with her again some day. That little girl, now—what about her?”
His dad laughed. ”Not much to tell, I guess. Met her in school. I saw some little wood stove bellows she and her mom used to paint for folks, as a collectible kind of art, and we just got talking about art and things. We started going for walks. I had the horses then, and she lived in a house in the woods. Nice big place. Beautiful. Good strong log construction. Man, she loved those horses!” His eyes lit up, and he laughed. “She was a natural rider, the best I ever saw. Best cook, too. Made a rhubarb custard pie once for my family—that’s what she called it—rhubarb custard. Anyway, she made the mistake of letting me try a piece first, while everyone else was gone somewhere, and I had to fib to her later and tell her I let everybody have some. Truth was I hid it in a box out in the tool shed, because the weather was cool that October. Then I used to sneak out there and have a piece or two, until it was all gone.”
“You thieving rascal!” Cole teased.
“Well, I finally told her I ate it. I told her that just before I left on my mission.”
Cole’s father had gone on a mission for their church at the age of nineteen and spent two years in Maine. What happened in his absence had caused him pain for many years, pain so deep he seldom spoke of it, and Cole only knew the faintest details. Maybe it was time to hear it all.
“What happened, Dad? You never made it back here?”
“Well, you know. Not until I retired, anyway. I wanted to, but in my line of work there was no money up here.”
Frank Spradlin’s father had gotten a job as foreman at a huge lumber mill in Missoula, Montana, and when Frank returned from his church mission in Maine he followed them there, although reluctantly. Instead of working in lumber, Frank got a job as a fireman for the city of Missoula, and there he stayed. After retiring from the fire department he worked as an insurance adjuster, investigating fires for insurance claims. But as soon as he was able to, at sixty-five, he came home to his Idaho City.
“You know, I waited for a long time before I went out with anybody. I looked for my little gal up here for a couple of years. I even drove up here once, and the house was empty. Empty. I remember walking around that big place, looking at the timber around it, thinking of the walks we used to go on in the forest. She was some gal, Cole. You would have loved her. She wasn’t your mom, but she was sure something. We did a lot of dreaming, she and I. That’s a long time ago.” His old, rugged hand gripped his cane harder, tapping it twice on the floor as if to accentuate his words.
“Just so you know, Dad, I don’t blame you at all for thinking of that girl. Those are sweet memories. God didn’t give them to us just to throw away.”
Frank nodded, gazing at the floor. “I remember the first time we touched. I had found this little pink pebble along the river bank, shiny, just like someone had polished it. I called her and told her I had something for her, and when I saw her I held out my hand. Our hands touched when she took it, and . . . I know this sounds pretty strange, but it was like this feeling of electricity went through me, like some kind of magic. I was head over heels for that girl. I loved your mom with everything I had, but that little girl and I, we had everything in common. Everything. I never stopped missing her.” He laughed sadly. “I guess I never will.”
For the remainder of the journey, they talked about old hunting trips, and catching a big cutthroat trout out of the Missoula River in eighty-two. It had nearly drowned Cole, but he wouldn’t let go of his pole. He came up out of the rapids soaking wet, but he had a fish. For years his dad had kept that fish mount on his wall. Now it was on Cole’s.
His dad had made a rug out of the elk that nearly killed Cole’s horse one year, during the rut, and the huge rack and skull hung out on Cole’s covered porch, because there wasn’t enough room in the house.
They talked about the time they were driving up the canyon and their old ’55 Chevy pickup caught fire under the dash. It shocked them both so much that they dove out of the truck with the fire still licking the ignition wires, and before Frank could think to jump back in and set the brake it rolled backwards down the hill and off into the river. The fire went out, but of course the old Chevy was history. It was a long walk home, but they were laughing by the time they got there.
Memories flooded Cole’s old pickup, and he treasured every one. At last, they came past the border of Idaho City, and the town was beautiful in its new blanket of snow. The wind was hardly blowing up here. For some reason it very seldom did. The snow was simply settling down, its big goose feather flakes piling up everywhere, weighing down the roofs, covering cars. Cole knew about where Wilamena lived, so he drove that way with Lisa following them.
When they were almost there Cole saw his daddy’s eyes light up, and he began to look around. “This is where she used to live. Right in this area. Man, I loved this place.”
Cole smiled. Seeing his dad this way made him happy, but he couldn’t help the horrible sadness at the thought of his leaving. He pulled to the roadside to let Lisa pass, and his wife went only another hundred yards or so and stopped in front of a grand log house with a light still glowing in one window.
Cole looked over at Frank, and his eyes were fixed on the house, staring. “Dad? Dad? You okay?”
Frank pulled himself out of his trance. “I’m sorry, buddy. I just got taken by surprise. This is the house. This place right here. This is where my little friend used to live, back in the forties.”
Frank got out at the same time Cole did, and with his cane in hand he walked a few feet away and stood staring at the big log house. Cole went to stand beside him.
“I haven’t been over here to see it since we moved back here. Couldn’t stand to think of the memories and wonder where she ever went. Why she never tried to find me. She promised she would.”
“Excuse me, but . . .”
The voice sounded suddenly beside them, and it was Wilamena Giovanni. The snow was drifting down, tumbling in big clumps of flakes, sticking to her hair, melting on her wrinkled but rosy cheeks as Cole turned to her.
Wilamena was looking past Cole, a strange look on her face. Cole turned and looked at his father, who was watching the woman expectantly. Lisa and the children had come to stop beside the older woman, their boots buried in the snow.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop to get your name down the canyon,” Wilamena said, seeming to gather herself as she peered at Frank through the falling snow, lit by the light from her house. “My name is Wilamena.” She said the name a little hesitantly, turning her head a bit as she said it, as if to better catch Frank’s reaction. “Some people call me Billi.”
Cole was watching Wilamena when he heard his father’s cane whoosh into the snow. Looking over at him, he had never seen a more dismayed look on his father’s face, not even the morning he came out of the trees to find twelve-year-old Cole standing over two huge mule deer bucks he had just killed by shooting through one and right into the second, which was hidden behind him. One of their racks was thirty-five inches wide, the other thirty-seven.
“Billi? Billi Nelson?” Frank took a halting step forward, then another. His face was pale, even in the darkness. “Billi, it’s me, Frank.”
The old woman’s knees buckled, and she almost collapsed. Cole caught her, or he was sure she would have landed in the snow. He helped her to stand back up, and her eyes were filled with tears. “Frank? Is it really you?” Her hands came up to her mouth, and for several seconds they just stared at each other. Then, as if she were carried, Wilamena started forward, walking as if something were trying to hold her back and something else was pushing her forward. Unabashedly, she threw her arms around Frank Spradlin, and they stood embracing in the snow so long that the children started shuffling their feet uncomfortably.
Cole realized he had tears on his cheeks. The surrealism of this situation was almost eerie. Wilamena Giovanni was the girl, the girl in the old photo his father had kept all those years.
After a long, long time Wilamena Giovanni pulled away from her childhood friend and held his cheeks in her hands. “It really is you. I looked for you for so long, Frank. I wrote and wrote, and only some of my letters came back as undeliverable. I lost my Frank.” Wilamena began to weep openly, and Frank took her in his arms again and held her.
“I tried to find you too, Billi,” he said into her ear, his words only slightly muffled by her silver hair. “I searched and wrote you for two years. I even came back here to see if I had done something wrong, and you were gone. The house was empty.”
“It was for a couple of years, and then Bobby bought it from Dad and Mom. You remember my brother Bobby?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Bobby passed on back in the seventies, and his son-in-law bought it. Then last year he had to move to Arizona to take a big job, and when I heard the house was empty again I sold my home in Omaha and moved back.”
“You’ve lived here since last year, Billi? How could I not have seen you?”
Wilamena laughed. “Well, you wouldn’t have known me, would you?”
“I suppose not. I suppose not.”
“I heard you lost your wife,” said Wilamena. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Billi. It was hard. She was really sick for a long time. But she got tired of fighting it. She was ready to go. And you? Who is your husband?”
“My husband worked his whole life, ever since he was twenty-four years old, trying to make himself a millionaire. When he made it, he was so proud of it that he kept going. When he had ten million dollars in investments of all kinds, rental properties all over Omaha that were being managed by four different men, and a cabin on a lake in Canada that we never had time to go to, he had a heart attack and died. I told our lawyer to sell everything but our home and invest the money, but I didn’t need any of that wealth to be happy. I only needed my Idaho City. And here I am. And here is my Frankie.”
She started to say something else, but the look in her beautiful blue eyes was full of such amazement that she had become speechless. She slowly started to shake her head, and then she went to Frank Spradlin’s arms again.
And Cole knew his sister JoAnn was losing a house guest before she had one. If he had never known anything in his life before, he knew two things on this beautiful December night: first, that God had made him stop in the canyon that evening to help a stranded traveler.
And second, this embrace by long lost childhood sweethearts would last two lifetimes. It was going to be the merriest Christmas ever in Idaho City.

Kirby Jonas's "fat-off"

2011-01-02T22:16:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s that time of year. The time when much of the world goes out, joins a gym, picks up a few diet pills and tries to glean something about dieting from a magazine or two so they can be that person they know is “lock inside,” so they can “finally get in shape.”

For most of us it doesn’t last. Maybe a week, maybe two. If you make it a month you’re far ahead of the game, probably in the top one tenth of a percent in the country.

For me, I have purposely let myself go this holiday season because I am going on an odyssey. No, I haven’t completely let go. I continued to go to the gym, because I don’t think I could function without that anymore. But as for my eating habits, they have been horrible. I have put on a whole bunch of weight and body fat, and tomorrow begins a three month journey in writing and photos to show you the progress of getting it off. I wanted to do this to show everyone that this can be done. Do I want everyone to see me fat? Heck no! But you need to know that everyone must start somewhere, and wherever you are there is always hope.

So enjoy this journey with me, if you will. I am going to keep a good record of what I eat, the workouts I do, and show you in photos what can be done in three months time if you set your mind to it.

And here’s a tip: If you do it with full knowledge of your Facebook friends, and in a blog, you are much more likely to stick with it than if you are the only one who knows about your goal.

Happy new year to all, and enjoy the “Kirby Jonas fat-off.”

ANOTHER LESSON LEARNED

2010-11-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

You know how they say people never appreciate what's in their own back yard? For instance, here in southeast Idaho I am only a short and fairly pretty three hour drive from the most beautiful country on the face of the earth, Yellowstone National Park. Yet I talk to people all the time who live right here in the same town and who have either never been to the park or who might have only gone once or twice in a lifetime. What do I say to that? What a shame. And it is.
But it's a bigger shame to have my little sister living only forty minutes away, near my home town of Shelley, and to only see her two or three times a year. It took her moving to Missouri to have my eyes open to what I've missed.
Going back, WAY back, in time, I was eight years old, my older sister was twelve, when we got the phone call from the hospital telling us we had a little sister. I'll never forget that moment. My sister Kandy and I jumped up and down repeatedly, yelling in delight. A baby sister.
I adored that little girl. I remember cuddling her, nestling her in the plethora of pillows my mom had on our window seat, staring into those alert, watchful eyes, and knowing SHE WAS MINE. And nobody was ever going to hurt her, or they would have to go through me. Not that this was much of a threat, as an eight-year-old boy. But the point is I thought I would have protected her with my own life if I had to. I never dreamed back then that there would be a time we were separated.
But time passed, as time does, and we both moved on. My little sister, whom I should introduce by name as Marqueta (pronounced "Mar-KEE-tuh), grew and proved to be as beautiful as an adult as she had been as a child. Some would most likely compare her to Sandra Bullock, but I'm not an SB fan, and I say she's much prettier and more intelligent and talented. I know, I'm a little biased. Marqueta went on a mission to Philadelphia, came home and married a great guy by the name of Kenneth Graham, and so my little sister, whom at the age of eight I naturally assumed would always be a Jonas, was now Marqueta Graham, and she moved away.
The Grahams have lived off and on for many years within an hour and a half of me, yet, like those people who don't visit Yellowstone, I saw them but seldom. We kept in touch now and then through email, but even that was sparse.
And then, for reasons all her own, Marqueta decided she wanted to move to Missouri. And slowly our world fell apart. Not to say we are all lying depressed on the couch, taking medication and wishing our lives away. But over the many months we've had to think of Marqueta and her family being gone we have come to realize how many things we will miss, and it became harder and harder as the weeks passed.
Today was the last day before their departure. I took part of the day off work and went to Shelley to pick up some shelves from them...and to say goodbye. I thought I could be strong and not cry, but honestly, Missouri is a long ways away, and in my current state of economics and with current gas prices I don't travel much anymore, and it could be a long, long time before I lay eyes on that part of my family again.
I could go on and on about Marqueta's little girls and her boy. But I know it would only be interesting to family. My point is, I had my sister very close to me for many years, and it has only been in the last few months that I have realized how much it has meant. And even then, you guessed it, we STILL didn't visit any more than before!
As I said goodbye this afternoon, the tears filled my eyes, and I couldn't speak. I guess the sadness was as much for my failure to be a real brother as anything else. I know that now I will find a moment every other day when I want to see my little sister again, and there won't be any forty minute drive to accomplish that. Her beautiful little girls and the boy are going to grow and grow, and when I see them again I don't know if they will know me or even want to talk to me. That is the saddest part of all.
Don't let yourself be in the place I am this evening. If you have family who are close by, take the opportunity to visit them, because you never know when they will no longer be nearby. Yellowstone will always be in the same place.

Evolutionism v. Creationism

2010-11-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

Doubtlessly, I am opening up a humongous can of worms with today's blog, but to be frank this has been on my mind for quite some time and really needs to be put out there, no matter the resulting explosion.

I just went online (the best place ever to do research, they say) to read up on evolution and the origins of life. Now first off let me say that I do believe in a certain amount of evolution. Most conspicuous because I've observed them for so long are the different kinds of dogs. No clear-thinking, intelligent individual could possibly look at all the various kinds of dogs and say dogs have not evolved. Arguably, all dogs came from one original dog, likely enough a wolf. Even if I didn't pay attention to all the new breeds of dogs that have appeared over the past 100 years due to man's creative breeding practicing (i.e., labradoodles, etc.) I would have a hard time believing that all dog species appeared at the same time through one almighty Creator. Can you picture a pack of Chihuahuas bringing down a mammoth? They aren't even fast enough to bring down a rabbit, unless it's a baby rabbit. So yes, evolution does exist. I bow to that fact.

However, evolution as an explanation for the existence of man and the many varied forms of life in the world today is another story altogether. I'm not going to go into trying to explain away all of the science fictional theories there are out there for how the earth first came to be. That's not my intent. Number one, it's a waste of time. Number two, I have only one real purpose in bringing all of this up, and this one purpose is to pose a question, which you will read at the end of this blog.

All right, let's get to the meat of this. If I understand one theory correctly, it proposes that life as we know it began as a one-celled organism. Through many millions of years and many strange natural occurrences, this ended up splitting into two-celled organisms, then eventually multi-celled organisms, and each and every one adapted to its own conditions and surroundings until today you have, voila, a multitude of living beings, from the germs living in your sewer to man himself--which often, I might add, don't seem too far separated, if you watch the news very often. But that's a side note I won't go into here.

So let's take mammals, for instance. Most mammals have varying amounts of hair on them to keep them warm. The amount of hair on different species can believably be explained by the theory of evolution. The original appearance of hair on a creature is another question that science can't satisfactory explain to me. And that seems a pretty simple thing.

Now let's move on to eyes. Wow. So we are supposed to believe those eyes just ... happened? Have you ever studied the eye? Or the ear? The brain? The tongue, the throat, the heart? Taste buds? The kidneys, liver, lungs? How all of the bones and the muscles fit together in their perfect order? If you haven't, and if you believe they all just came from the original one-celled organism and "happened" over hundreds of millions of years, then read on.

Let me look at a very humble house in the United States of America, for example. Let's say that this house is divided into five rooms. First there is a bathroom, replete with all the amenities: a shower, a toilet, a nice bathtub in which to soak, a sink, a garbage can, a mirror--you get the idea. There is a living room with couches, chairs, book shelves full of books, a TV, a stereo. Then there is the kitchen with its garbage disposal, dishwasher ... Okay, I'm not going to list every room. You get the idea. Now keep this house in mind.

Say I were to go outside now, take a simple grass seed from a nodding head of grass. Say I were to plant this seed of grass in a special, well-cared-for place in my yard. All right, now let's say at a hundred years of age I die and someone else buys my house and cares for my yard as I always did. Say it has all the best of care until the new owner also succumbs to age. And on and on for the next, say... 610 million years.

If my figuring is correct, then according to the evolution from the one-celled organism theory, that seed of grass should by then have evolved into that humble house spoken of above, with all the amenities, the TV, the computer, the garbage disposal--all of it. It seems highly unlikely that evolution, no matter how many millions of years it is given, could bring this change about in that blade of grass, doesn't it? It sure does. But no more unlikely than that one-celled organism eventually morphing into the highly specialized, diverse, and, I might say, well thought out organisms in the world today, things such as the elephant, the horse, the giraffe, the monkey, the mouse, and, not least of all, the human--all of which came from that same one-celled organism, I might add.

So that question I mentioned earlier is this: Assuming I were immortal, if I let my lawn evolve long enough, and all of the conditions were, as they must have been for that one-celled organism somewhere in that ancient ocean, how long until I would be the proud owner of whatever metropolis my lawn will have evolved into?

Gray Day, Silver Outlook

2010-10-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

It’s not always a bad thing, this color, or lack of color, that man calls gray. After all, what is the difference between gray and silver but the amount of light that’s reflected? My Fleetwood Cadillac might be called gray by some, but the title says it’s silver. A man whose black hair is losing its pigment at the temples might be said to have silvering hair, while one with light brown is graying, yet they might be exactly the same shade. I guess gray and silver are in the eyes of the beholders.

Looking outside today, I am greeted by what most would call a gray day. It isn’t the kind of day with black or purple, towering clouds, swollen with rain, ready to assault the earth with lightning, or to reverberate with the pounding, sonorous boom of thunder. Rather, it is one of those days where the gray clouds hang low over blue, snow-dusted mountain, dusky foothill, and amber plains alike. One of those days that starts out misting, and you can see the gray bleakness stretch beyond the horizon, and you know that the entire day, from dawn to dusk, is going to sleep in this dim-lit blanket of fog-like quietude. The entire day, at least infrequently, will drip with the rains of autumn. And if you aren’t careful, your mood will become as gray as the day.

The silver in a day like this comes, perhaps, because two of the things I claim most deeply are to be a lover of nature, and an artist. I have on my land over one hundred fifty trees, and hundreds of flowers, all of which are loving this day. They stand quietly as the silver autumn mists wisp like smoke to the ground, as the cooling and calming waters of October-end seep like lifeblood into the thirsty soil. Except perhaps for spring, this is the time of year for which the landscape holds its breath most impatiently, waiting for reprieve from the triple digits of summer. It is this time of year that gifts the land with its last long drink of water before laying the soil and the flowers, the grass and trees, down for their long winter’s nap under sheets of blue ice and blankets of sparkling snow. It is this time of year that goes down with a promise of things that are brighter, things that are full of life and color, and not so very far away.

Now is the gardener’s time of reprieve from watering, from weeding, and from the harvest. It is the time to sit at one’s window, a down comforter across one’s lap, sipping hot cocoa and gazing at the wintry blue landscape and city lights that sparkle through the chattering, wind-battered branches of the trees. It is the artist’s time of contemplation, of thanks for the beauty of the fall, appreciation for the austere and solemn snowscape, the chickadees and juncos that flit among the crab apples or the mountain ash berries, still stark red or flaming orange against the drab purple-gray of the bony branches left by the old year gone.

Two days ago my wife and I stood in the logging yard at Pratt Logging, in Blackfoot, Idaho, surrounded by the scent of new-felled lodgepole pine and the pitchy-sweet aroma of burning pine slash. The sun was bright, and golden and fiery leaves surrounded us on every side. Sawdust was thick beneath our feet, and its fresh-cut perfume rose up to us with every step. So soon that sunshine faded, and this grayness—this silver—flowed down over us, this sign of autumn lying down to rest.

To an artist, to a friend of nature, this isn’t dull grayness. This is the silver promise of a ghostly white winter, melancholy on some days, sparkling with the brightness of broken diamonds on others, yet in all cases only a sweet March breath away from new grass and flowers, new growth on the trees, and new life in the landscape.

A LIFETIME ACCOMPLISHMENT

2010-10-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

(Photo: Jacob Jonas and Hannah McIntire, the front runner for the girls team)

There he was, at the top of the hill. The last two hundred yards of the three mile race lay before him, all of it downhill. And Jacob Jonas was in the lead. And all alone . . .

The crowning of my oldest son, Jake, as the top high school runner in his district this year, as a junior, began many years ago. At least for a boy of sixteen it has been many years--the vast majority of his life.

Jacob was four years old at the time. It was a bitterly cold night in December, shortly after his birthday. I had missed taking my wolf dog, Loup, for her run earlier in the day and felt guilty for it, so I decided that in spite of the cold that seemed to gnaw into your bones, a cold magnified by winds of twenty or more miles an hour, I would take Loup for her run. But in this case, I did a personal cop-out, because she was going to be running alongside me while I drove in the nice warm pickup. Loup was half timber wolf, half malamute, so the cold was nothing to her. In fact, she preferred it. She could come in the house for five or ten minutes in the deadest of winter nights because it was too warm for her inside, even though we keep our house at a fairly consistent 62 to 65 degrees.

Debbie, my wife, wanted to come with me, and of course we brought the baby, Clay, and Cheyenne, my daughter and oldest child, would never miss an adventure, which a ride is to her. So we all bundled up and ventured out into the cold. Behind our house was a dirt road that wound up into the mountains at an incline of somewhere between 5 to 12 degrees, depending upon the stretch. It was a road I loved to run, but not with a wind chill of twenty degrees or less.

This night there was ice covering most of the road, and there was no moon, so it was fairly dark, and the stars sparkled like ice chips in the sky. I had only gone a hundred yards or so when Jake began saying that he wanted to get out and run with Loup. Mind you, Loup was then 9 years old, and what I would consider an extreme athlete. She could run with me for a dozen miles, but her "miles" were double miles, because she would sprint back and forth, checking out some mystery of nature ahead of me, then coming back to make sure I was still tagging along. She was the ultimate sled dog, just without the sled.

Jake was a four-year-old boy with a big imagination. He imagined he could run alongside this world-class athlete who was my dog. He was very adamant, and as I drove along I told him several times he could not get out. It was too cold, too steep, and too slick with ice. I knew he couldn't last, and I would be stopping the truck right away to let him back in. It was nothing but a pain in the butt.

Yet Jake was insistent, and so finally, with a knowing glint in my eye, I relented. We made him bundle up, tie his hood down tight, and then he hit the ice. I looked at Debbie as the door shut and said, "I'll give him half a minute."

Well, I gave him more. A full minute. Then two, then three. Debbie and I started to get a little worried, so we started opening the window and asking him if he was ready to get back in. Hardly looking up at us, he would just shake his head and say, "No." Jacob has always been a boy of few words.

So on and on Loup ran, and on and on Jake stayed with him. Like the protective girl she was, Loup started going back and forth, this time checking not on her daddy, but on his little boy. For tonight, this miniature of his father had become her friend, her partner . . . her charge. She wasn't about to let him fall behind.

There is a point a mile up in the mountains and eight hundred feet or so higher that the road dead ends. Little Jacob Jonas was still running by the time we reached that dead end. He was running, and running strong. By this time we had stopped asking him if he wanted to get back in where it was warm. It was obvious that this four-year-old had determined to stick it out as long as Loup did. He would not be deterred by any biting wind or freezing ice.

At the turnaround, Debbie and I finally made the command decision that all parents at some time must make. We forced him to give up and get back in. He wanted so badly to run all the way home, too, but with the icy road going downhill didn't seem like the best of ideas. That and the fact that we had another twenty minutes or more ahead of us if we allowed him to have his way forced us to draw the line.

But that was only the beginning for my son. In the 7th grade, he joined the cross country team, and one of his first races was an invitational for all family members and friends. I was the only adult who took the team up on this invite, and although I got endless harassment from Jake's team mates, telling me no forty year old could keep up with them, I placed fourth (beating all of the naysayers by a LONG distance, I might add), and came in behind Jake. And my boy had won it fair and square. Yes, I tried to catch him. He beat me by four seconds.

He has been running off and on now for twelve years, and although I was still easily able to take him as an eighth grader in an eight mile run, by the next summer he was blowing my doors off by ten minutes in an all steeply uphill six miler. And I was doomed.

All through grade school I had coached all of my children about starting out too fast, about pacing themselves early and overtaking those who insisted on sprinted out at the gun. The grade schoolers always ran a half mile run in the fall and another in the spring, and about the fourth grade it switched to one mile, fall and spring. Jake came in first on every one he ever ran, as did his little brother, Clay. But I learned in the last few years that although Jake doesn't take off from the mark in a sprint he might as well, because it is certainly a sprint compared to mine.

My last hold-out, the last ace in the hole, was my 100 yard dash. Even last fall Jake had no chance against me there. But this summer he beat me by an easy 10 feet. My reign, in all arenas (well, except for weight lifting) has ended. Jake is the king of the track, not only the top runner for Pocatello High School in the three miler, but the top runner on the track in the spring as well.

I guess as parents we all want our kids to do better than we did, to reach a higher mark. Jacob has reached this in all areas of his life. I struggled to be a B to A minus student, while Jacob is consistently at over 100 percent in all of his classes and seems to hardly ever study. (Don't ask me how they figure OVER 100 percent, as I have never grasped that.) He has the girls flocking all around him all the time, although he is shy like I was and pretends not to notice. I had none of that--and if I did I truly DIDN'T notice. Jacob, it would seem, has it all, including a sweet personality, the best trait of all. So he has indeed come in far ahead of his father, as a runner and as a person.

As for the district race, for the first half this year the runners had to come past the starting line, and as Jake came around a runner from one of the other schools was still ahead of him. Jacob has been a second place runner many, many times, and I feared this was his lot again. So I generally go out about two hundred yards or so to cheer him on, to work him into a hard sprint at the end of the race. I did this for the district meet.

In this case, I went up the hill, the last stretch, then down a steep hill that comes just before the summit. Here is where I thought I would have to cheer him on to come anywhere near that other boy. I got in position. I waited. Then I saw Jake. He was alone. The other boy was nowhere in sight!

I sprinted up the hill with Jake, cheering him on. We reached the top, and I yelled for him to give it everything he had. It seemed like the entire school was there to cheer the other boy on, and they knew their boy had this race. But their boy had disappeared. Instead, they had Jacob Jonas and his much-too-excited dad running up the last stretch, to the top of the hill. From there, Jake had it. He took the last two hundred yards at a sprint, and nowhere in that two yards was another runner. Jacob took the race, and he took it by leaps and bounds.

I just finished watching the video of that finish, the finish Debbie saw, but I could only watch from the top of the hill two hundred yards away. I don't mind admitting I watched the end of the race through tears. There he was, that four-year-old boy, the little winter runner. It was a beautiful autumn day, and he was flying across the line, all alone--at least to everyone else's eyes. I knew different. Loup's spirit was right there beside him.

A TRIPLE RAINBOW AFTERNOON

2010-10-24T14:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while driving a patient from Pocatello, Idaho, to Salt Lake City, Utah, in the ambulance, I saw something I have never witnessed before and had no idea was possible. A triple rainbow. I want to describe this scene as vividly as I know how, and admittedly I do not feel up to the task, so it may be a very humble attempt. Most anything would be humbled in comparison to the scene I saw yesterday.

First, I will attempt an explanation for what I saw, then attempt to describe it in all its glory and pray that if the glory of nature is attractive to you you might be able to envision the scene in the eye of your mind. I did some research this afternoon on rainbows, and it turns out that the phenomenon I observed was what is known as a "reflection rainbow." This makes sense, because it was explained as exactly what I had ascertained it to be: a second rainbow coming off the primary rainbow, but the second one being made from light that was reflected off a bay of the Great Salt Lake, to my right. A reflection rainbow, as opposed to a reflected rainbow, is made by the sun striking brightly off a body of water and thus hitting the rain drops that in conjunction with the sun form the rainbow. Because as you might have observed if you have studied rainbows as I have over the last ten or fifteen years you will have noticed that the farther down the sky the sun is when the rainbow appears the steeper the angle of the rainbow, the reflection rainbow is, at least in the case of the one I saw, almost exactly vertical, and is not a "bow," as such but a strip of rainbow heading straight up from the base of the primary rainbow. Okay, enough for technicality. Now let me get to the surreal beauty of the scene . . .

As I drove the ambulance south, lost in my own melancholy thoughts, wishing I could still be home with my family, the rain was dumping in buckets all over the four lane. At times I was plowing through, and hydroplaning OVER, an inch of standing water. I like rain, but driving in it at high speed is not my favorite pastime, and I was feeling pretty out of sorts. The feeling of melancholy was no doubt heightened by the gray and gloomy day and deep, dark clouds hanging low over the hills, sometimes just above the foothills, with the tops of the Wasatch Range breaking through above, but still within their own shrouding gray-blue mists.

Then, as beautiful coincidence would have it, the sun reached a point in its westward descent where the cloud bank was broken by brilliant patches of azure blue, and it was precisely at this point that I came to the northern end of what is known as Willard Bay, an arm of Great Salt Lake.

Fleeting images of rainbows began to appear to my left, to the east. At first, these were simply spears, only the southern leg of rainbows, and some of them pretty faded, since the sun was still struggling through clouds. But as the sun continued to drop far down the sky, these rainbows began to brighten and grow, sometimes forming all the way across the east in a full, brilliant bow, and often in a double rainbow, the secondary one being outside the first, less brilliant, and a mirror reflection of the first.

To set this full scene, I have to say that the Wasatch Range is in the full height of its autumn color. The close-up brilliant gold-yellow of cottonwoods was almost brighter than an artist could capture, and the gambel oaks that carpet the steep ridges of the mountains were in full and gleaming cloaks of scarlet. These are some of the most beautifully rugged mountains I have ever seen, pale tan to gray in color, and in some places can hardly support a blade of grass for their ruggedness. Deep canyons open up in them and chew their way back into the mountainsides, and in the gleaming, golden sunlight of late afternoon every crag and fastness and mountain valley was accentuated. Yet because the sky was so black and glowering, much of these mountains were in shadow, and so the clouds hanging like tattered sheep in the foreground stood out against them that much more brightly. It was against this backdrop that the rainbows appeared.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the two magnificent bows of color came at a steep angle out of the ground, seeming almost close enough to touch, and then, forming at the base of the inner, primary rainbow and shooting almost straight upward to meet the secondary rainbow as it started to make its northward bend, was a third band of gleaming light. At first, I thought it was a trick of my eyes, something to do with light coming off my window. So in spite of the still-falling rain I rolled down my window. But still, there it was, beautiful and plain as day.

I had no explanation for the phenomenon at the time. To be honest, I could hardly think. To things amazed me, truthfully. The first was the very beauty of the scene, and the second was how every driver who passed me in the next twenty minutes or so that this phenomenon remained visible were staring straight ahead, moving down the road as if this were just another day, as if the most incredible display of nature's beauty wasn't sprawled out right over their left shoulders. Unbelievable. I'm all for driving safe, but had I not been taking a transfer I would have pulled to the side of the road and gotten out. This scene was most likely a once in a lifetime occurrence. I'm guessing that's the case, since I'm 45 and after that many years of studying nature's beauty have never seen it before.

So now you have this incredible scene as I hope in some remote way I have managed to capture it: One of the most rugged and steep ranges of mountains I know of, its rocky tan crags turning orange-gold in the late afternoon sun, its deep canyons dark purple, black clouds hanging over them, with lighter clouds drifting before them, bright white and sometimes leaning toward yellow. A vast array of trees clothed in colors from dark to pale green to the most impossible yellow you can imagine, and the mountains clothed in red oak. And then, framing it all, this display of triple rainbows the like of which most people will probably never see.

It was just as I was nearing the end of the Great Salt Lake that I realized this third phenomenal rainbow was being created by the reflection off the lake itself. I had started noticing that if I looked that direction I was almost blinded by the light off the lake, and then it hit me why that stretch of rainbow was vertical. Shortly after this, the ambulance passed the lake, and the vertical spear of color was gone.

I was left pondering the wonder of nature and my gratefulness that I had taken this opportunity for overtime. Even though I was away from my family, I had witnessed something I would never have known about had I been home with them. And yes, I broke one of my cardinal laws of driving and got on the cell phone to share the wonderful moments with my wife.

Being an artist, besides a writer, I will one day attempt to recapture what I saw yesterday, but I pale at the very thought of the challenge. Perhaps some things are of such unspeakable glory that they were never meant to be put to canvas or even to the written page.

I guess that remains to be seen.

Disclaimer: The reflection rainbows shown in the photos at the top are NOT the one I saw. These are pale, drab version of what laid itself out over the Wasatch Valley yesterday afternoon. These, particularly the bottom one, judging from the almost vertical sides, are from probably just before the sun slipped from sight below the horizon.

BLOGS OF NOTE???

2010-09-07T22:17:00.001-07:00

So a couple of days ago I was just perusing Blogspot, and I come across this link entitled "Blogs of note." I have to admit, I'm only judging by one of those "blogs of note," so this blog probably isn't being fair, but . . . what the heck????

From what I read of that blog of note, I am writing my blog all wrong. Silly me! To have a blog of note, I think I am understanding that there are several requisites I haven't been meeting. One of the most important is to write in the vernacular of a "Valley girl." Yeah, that's right--like, you know, like totally awesome, I KNO-OW! Hmm... Another requisite is to pepper my blog with vulgarity and profanity, and I've been completely missing the boat there too. Then, I should be telling a story, and in that story I should make myself look like a complete blithering idiot. And if not me, then everyone else in the story.

I guess I'm just doing this all wrong. I mean, like, don't you get the !@#$%^&* idea? Okay. Maybe that's just not my style. I guess I'd better stick with my own way of blogging and forget trying to write a "blog of note." I'll just never be in the "Blogspot Hall of Fame."

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE ...

2010-09-04T23:36:00.000-07:00

Today isn't my normal working day. I should be on the second of my four days off. But in this fire department we have the unique ability to trade shifts with other firefighters, and a month ago Howard worked for me so I could go to West Yellowstone, Montana. Well, as they say, paybacks are . . . nasty. Or at least they say SOMETHING like that.

So here I am, working at Fire Station 3, one of the busier stations in this city of 52,000 people. We are normally allotted time in the morning to workout, but I am in the habit of getting up and going to the gym before work, especially when I know I'll be at one of the busy stations, because, like today, I have missed far too many workouts by thinking I would be able to do it on shift.

But that isn't the topic of this blog, just one of my many sidetrails you all must be used to by now. The topic of this blog is the old saying, "There but for the grace of God go I."

Our most recent call tonight was to a trailer park. One of the more poverty stricken trailer parks in town. As we pulled into the park, there were police cars everywhere, and in one particular yard were the cops who drove them--my former comrades-in-arms. There were also the denizens of the trailer park everywhere we looked, from very young to fairly old, including all ages in-between.

The call was for a battery, and it was obvious who was battered from where the group of cops was standing. It seems, from what bystanders said, that this fellow had attempted to molest a thirteen-year-old girl, and someone caught him before he could and laid him out on the sidewalk.

I won't get into my feelings on this topic, because I have four children of my own, I would literally die for them, and if I were to begin a blog about child molesters it would be pages and pages long.

What I thought of most at the time, however, was those poor children--and yes, the adults, too--living in that trailer park. Cigarette smoke filled the yard we were standing in, the grass-less, tree-less, dusty, littered yard. I could also smell the odor of alcoholic beverages, and sweat, and dog feces.

There was a time I would have scorned these people. Why would they choose to live like this? Why can they not change their lives, get a good job, and be useful members of society?

Now, I only pity them. My heart goes out to those little children, and the adults whose past choices--and sometimes LACK of choices--brought them to this place in life, where at a glance everything seemed so bleak and hopeless. What chance do those children have? For that matter, what chance do those adults really have, adults who likely once were children living exactly the same way as the children in that park tonight.

I find myself whining sometimes about not being able to pay a bill, about not being able to buy a new computer. And then I go on a call like the one tonight, and I remember how much I have compared to so many other people in the world. Not for one minute to I advocate taking money from the middle class and doling it all out to the poor. To a certain extent, a person can change his life. He is the master of his destiny. Some people truly are simply lazy and don't want a job. But when a child is born into an environment like what I saw tonight, they are starting out on a path from which it must be very hard to break away. I was not born on that path. I was born on a path one step up from poverty, and my hunger as a child, my lack of heat in the house, and the lack of ability to take a bath more than once a week because we had no hot water heater drove me to want to give something better to my own children.

But I could just as easily have been born into a trailer park like the one I saw tonight. I could just as easily feel the hopelessness those children must feel and see the entire universe through gray-colored glasses. At least those folks live in America, and that's a start. But they have a big job if they are going to pull themselves out of a depressing hole, and they have not likely been equipped with as many tools as the more fortunate of us in life to do that job.

We should all say a prayer for those people who seem from the start destined to live life in a dirty trailer park. We should all say a prayer for ourselves, too. For there but for the grace of God go I ....

THE "RIGHT-OF-WAY" MENTALITY

2010-09-02T21:33:00.000-07:00

Tell me I'm not the only one who is highly aggravated by today's mentality, particularly on the part of teenagers, but definitely not restricted to them, of "I have the right-of-way." What is right-of-way, anyway? It refers to the "right" of one entity taking precedence over the "right" of another. In other words, when two cars come to an intersection, the car without the stop sign, or the car with the green light as opposed to the red, has the "right-of-way." Or, in the case of a pedestrian in a crosswalk, he has the right-of-way over any vehicles that are approaching. Okay. I'm sure you all knew that, but I just had to say it. Now let's explore this right-of-way.

I'm sure that many of you have already guessed, and if you hang around me very long you will know for sure, that one of my huge pet peeves is the attitude of people who use crosswalks today--and many who DON'T use the crosswalk, just cross illegally in the middle of any street they feel like crossing. Maybe it was just me, maybe I was a dyed in the wool coward, but back when I was a kid, when I crossed a street, crosswalk or no crosswalk, I RAN. Or at least I walked fast. Nowadays I think about the poor car having to stop and then build up a head of steam again after the pedestrian has crossed the street. But that's life, right? Especially if it's nasty weather outside. I don't begrudge any pedestrian crossing the street while that driver sits in his nice warm car and waits for him.

HOWEVER... I do begrudge the pace at which 90% of the population crosses that street. I mean, hey, let's face it: A lot of drivers don't stop at crosswalks? Why? Well, some are probably not paying attention, and maybe they didn't even see the person who wanted to cross. Shame on you, buddy. Pay more attention. And I'm sure some are just plain rude from the get-go. They feel like their time is more important than anyone else's, and why should they have to stop when they're going down the road peacefully at 25 mph? I can see that point, but if every driver had the same attitude, some days, and in some crowded cities, people would NEVER get across the street. And then there's a third group: the group who have been burned so many times by stopping by today's pedestrians that they are fed up and don't feel like they owe much of anything to someone trying to cross the road.

Okay, here's a scenario: You're driving down the road, and you near a high school. It's still 25 mph, right, because by the time a kid reaches high school he's supposed to be smart enough to look both ways before he crosses the street. Great. You see a kid or two walking toward the curb now, so like a good guy you come to a stop before the intersection. In the old days, said kid or two would then hurry across the street, and maybe even wave at you for being polite enough to stop for them. You would both smile at each other and go on your merry way, pedestrian feeling good that driver had stopped, driver feeling good that he had been polite and that the pedestrian had kindly thanked him for it. Today? Today most of those kids would hit that intersection, and IF they even looked to see if a car was approaching they would SLOW DOWN their pace, not speed it up. They would adjust their all-important headset, or turn nonchalantly to talk to their friend. And some might as well get on their hands and knees and crawl, for all the speed they muster. And of course, while performing this act of utter sluggishness in the face of the driver's show of responsibility, most of them would never DREAM of giving the driver a smile or a wave. Why? BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE RIGHT-OF-WAY!!!! Of course. The right-of-way. It's the law. The driver HAS to stop.

Well, the driver doesn't HAVE to stop. By law he does, but by the laws of nature the laws of man are made to be broken. So what happens when that 1 mile an hour high school kid who wants to exercise his snail's pace right-of-way meets up with the 35 mile an hour pickup whose driver didn't see said teenager? Hmm.... Well, it's nice to legally have the right-of-way, but when that teenager is lying in the morgue, right-of-way doesn't mean a whole lot anymore.

My concern is, whatever happened to common courtesy? Why do so many people, no longer just junior high and high school-age people, but folks of all ages, feel like it's their duty to go across a crosswalk at a third the pace they were traveling when they first reached the crosswalk? Whatever happened to using your "right-of-way" to politely get across the street and let the traffic move on? There's not a sane person in the world who would argue against some little old senior citizen or a person with a handicap moving slowly across the crosswalk in front of them. That's great. I'm glad to wait for them and help them on their way, even though the common courtesy of a wave of thanks would still be appreciated. But where did this mentality of going as slow as one could move come from? Is it all part of the sense of entitlement kids are taught now? The whole idea of "life is all about me, the law says I can do this, and I'm going to make the most of it?" Wouldn't it be sweet if instead of simply following laws everyone still did things for other people out of the goodness of their hearts?

And I haven't even said much about those pedestrians who are breaking the law themselves by crossing mid-street, and who still think they have the right-of-way simply by the fact that they are a PEDESTRIAN and become highly agitated when your rearview mirror almost clips them as your vehicle passes. I know, I shouldn't get that close. But nothing makes me much angrier than sheer rudeness.

Once in a while, I see a kid walk fast when he hits that intersection. Some of them even run, and not because they're in a hurry, because when they reach the far curb they slow back down. That is how my own kids cross the street. Politeness has been drilled into them from a very young age. But many parents forgot that lesson when they were raising their kids. I sure wish we could get that back. I have often thought how fun it would be to take a wad of five dollar bills and cruise around and around the local high school at lunch time, and when any kid hurried across the crosswalk in front of me, get out and slap him a five and thank him for being polite. Unfortunately, I wouldn't need a "wad" of fives. I probably wouldn't use more than one or two. It's sure a different world than the one I grew up in.

So, have you got the idea yet that creeping across a crosswalk is a pet peeve of mine? Oh, right. Maybe I already mentioned that.

OLD FRIENDS

2010-08-31T22:44:00.000-07:00

They say you can't go back. Well, in a lot of ways I guess that's true. But if you keep your mind sharp, and you are a nostalgic as I am, in other ways it's not true. The other day I proved once again, that yes, sometimes you can go back.

I met my friend Kim Stillwell on Facebook. Some say that site is a waste of time. I beg to differ. For one thing, my life would be a sadder place without Kim. But that's not really what this blog is about, so I'll save Kim for another time. This blog is about going back in time.

That brings me to Scot. Scot Peeler. Until last Saturday, since May 1983 I had not laid eyes on my old classmate Scot. Yep. That's a lot of water under the bridge. The last time I saw my friend, in fact, he was trying to hold things together out in his garage when the cops finally showed up to bust up his senior graduation kegger. My one and only kegging experience, and I got the full meal deal--well, minus the drinks! Got to see a bunch of my school buddies acting drunk and stupid, giving me all sorts of good laughs in my completely sober state, and then on top of it all I got the fun of watching everyone scatter like rabbits when someone shouted, "The cops!!!!" Great fun. I know, you might argue that it would have been more fun if I was drinking too, but that's the subject for yet another blog!

So anyway, Scot has been living in Germany with his wife and daughters, but apparently he comes back to the States now and again, and I didn't know this until his cousin Kim Stillwell let me in on the secret. So we arrange a get-together, another "full meal deal," where I got to not only meet Kim in person (and she's beautiful, I might add!), but I get to see Scot again and have a long overdue reunion. So we meet in this place in Idaho Falls, Idaho called the Sandwich Tree, Scot's favorite place to eat in that town.

It was amazing the years that vanished when I laid eyes on Scot. If you've ever had a good friend and not seen them for, in this case, more than half your life, you probably know a little of the feelings that went through me when I saw Scott sitting there, some twenty-eight years after the last time. He was the same old Scot, believe it or not. Not all of my classmates have survived so well preserved, but there he was, and he was still Scot. And as a bonus, Neccia (Jensen) Hahn was sitting there with him, a total surprise. Neccia was my fifth grade crush, although she probably doesn't know it even to this day, because I was too shy to tell her, then or now.

It wasn't enough to sit and gab with old Scot and with Neccia at the sandwich shop. My wife Debbie and I even followed Scot back to the old home place and visited for a few more hours, and man, the memories we dug up. For many years I had this memory in my head of Scot, but somehow, I guess as too many new entries were being made into the data banks of my mind, this particular file got put into deep storage. But somehow Scot remembered it and reminded me. Way back in the first grade, when I was scared to death of other kids and horrified to be in mean old Mrs. Blake's first grade, surrounded for the first time by more kids than I had ever laid eyes on, Scot was the first person to befriend me. We kicked one of those soft red balls back and forth on the asphault beside Shelley, Idaho's Dean Goodsell Elementary, and that was when I decided maybe school wouldn't be so bad after all. I have Scot to credit for that, and I'm thankful he saved that memory all those years and carted it out for me. It was a bit of nostalgia I won't let go back into deep storage again.

Sometimes you can go back, I've found, and the memories can sure be sweet. Old Scot. I remember going home for lunch in the third grade, Miss Hone's class, with money from him in my pocket, and on the way back to school stopping off at King's department store to buy him a box of Lemon Heads, or Red Hots, or whatever his pleasure was that day (and skimming three or four off the top as my "fee," although I never admitted that to him until I placed an oversized box of Lemon Heads in his hand the other day at the Sandwich Tree). I recall Scot with his long-ish hair flapping in the wind. He used to have this jouncy walk that helped it do that. Now he doesn't have so much of that long hair left, but he's still Scot, and I find after all these years I'm still just as fond of him. He's one of those guys who's pretty hard not to like. Some things you just can't shake--a bad cold, or a good friend. One you don't ever want to see again, and the other, like Scot, you don't ever want to lose.

AUTUMN IN THE AIR

2010-08-29T21:11:00.001-07:00

Something whispers to you in the wind, and you can't tell quite what it is. Some days are still hot--some even VERY hot. Yet there is a certain something you can't put a finger on. Is it that the sun is a little farther to the south? Is it that the nights are cooler even when the days still grow hot? Is it the sun coming up later in the day? Going down earlier? I don't know, but somehow as I grow older, even without looking at a calendar, I can always tell when fall is around the corner.

I don't know if "fall" is really the fitting term for this season, unless it means another year is about to fall. It just seems so unpoetic, for a season that is so beautiful, spectacular, and yes, in a way, melancholy. Autumn looks and sounds like such a beautiful word that as I get older I find myself using it more and more. So autumn it is. My favorite season of the year.

There is an odor that comes with this glimpse of fall, an odor you can't associate with any other time of the year. Perhaps it is the scent of decay, but a soft kind of warm, glowing decay, telling stories of the gradual death of the summer grass, the leaves of the hardwoods. Subtle changes come into the sky, into the clouds. The light seems to hit them a different way. The birds seem enlivened, perhaps by those coooler nights. I've noticed my beautiful meadowlarks singing more, serenading me from the sage behind the house. This was particularly true when a grumbling and rare early morning thunderstorm woke me up early yesterday morning and made me run out to cover the last of the hay, which I had neglected to put the boards back over. While I was at the barn, the rain came down, and I went inside and listened to it patter pleasantly on the roof. Then, for a few minutes, the sun came back out, and I made my dash for the house.

After I came back in and the rain charged over the mountain in one very heavy, dark sheet that I could see cascading toward us like a ghost in a B movie, it began to soak the land, if only briefly. It was after the rain that the meadowlarks came out in droves, and I lay in bed and thought of my friend Stephanie, who so loved the meadowlarks. It was such a moment as this when I would have loved to call her and share, would have loved to hear the excitement in her voice. Like me, it was the simple things about life that brought joy to Stephanie and made her eyes sparkle and put a huge smile on her face, dimpling those cheeks. But since I can't call Stephanie anymore, I sat and remembered her and dreamed her near. My beautiful little wife, Debbie, and I lay warm under the covers breathing in the fresh, clean air and listening to those meadowlarks, and the day was as perfect as it could be. And somehow I knew Stephanie was out there in the sagebrush, or walking through the forest to the west, and she, too, was listening to those meadowlarks.

The lightning flashed, and the thunder cracked sharply, and then, like a stubborn child, it lingered and grumbled and rattled its way on into the distant mountains. Fall is on its way. Autumn, beginning with September, "The Hunting Moon." Or, in Cheyenne, the Moon of Drying Grass; Kiowa, Moon When the Leaves Fall Off; for Sioux, Moon When the Plums are Scarlet. So maybe the Indians had a much more poetic way to describe their "moons," or months. Our name, "September," means simply the ninth month. But I guess it's poetic enough, in its own way.

The important thing is fall is almost here, and although it signals a coming time of cold and dreary days, it is a glorious season that no one should miss being in the middle of, even if it means getting away from the TV and going for a walk in the mountains. Maybe we'll run into each other out there.

Vaya con Dios.

Safe drivers

2010-08-24T18:47:00.000-07:00

I've given a lot of thought lately to how the roads would be if all of the people who drove "wrong" were taken out of circulation. You know, those who drive too slow, those who drive too fast, those who rubberneck everything they pass, those who drive while drinking, eating, talking on the cell phone, or reading books.

And in case you're wondering about that last one, I'm not joking. I've seen people reading novels that are sitting on their steering wheel as they drive 75 mph down the freeway. If anyone ever deserved a ticket for inattentive driving . . .

One day I was sitting behind some lady with three or four kids in her car, and there was a green light in front of us. I waited a couple of seconds, thinking maybe she was having trouble shifting. Then I realized she was eating! Not just a sandwich or an ice cream cone, mind you, but a meal! In her rearview mirror I saw her swear, out of anger, not embarrassment, and suddenly she tossed a styrofoam box full of Mexican food right out of the car into the middle of one of the main thoroughfares of town. I went by her and let her know I had seen, which she couldn't have questioned anyway, as I was fifteen feet behind her, and her response was to extend her middle finger in my general direction, and I don't think she was waving. Looking back, that was one person I should have turned in for littering, and with whom I would have gladly gone to court as key witness. But at the time I was too shocked to call the police.

Another time, I was in the turn lane, and another car was directly in front of me at a red light. The driver was conversing with the driver of the car next to him, in the straight lane, and the light turned green. I gave them a couple of seconds, then tapped the horn, thinking they were simply too busy and hadn't seen the green. The response? Again, this guy gave me the one-finger salute. Had I been a serious road rager that day, I'm pretty sure that one would have ended badly.

Being a former Wells Fargo driver, who put 170 city miles on a 10,000 pound truck six days a week in Phoenix, Arizona, a cop in a city of 52,000, and now a firefighter in the same city, I have numerous opportunities to watch stupidity and rudeness at work on the road, and I feel safe in saying that if every rude and unsafe and simply, uh... "non-intelligent" driver were taken off the road, it would be like we were all living in ghost towns. I swear, the municipal bus system in every city would have a boom like we can't envision, and trains would come back in bigtime circulation. I'm pretty positive that there wouldn't be 1 out of 5 cars still on the road.

Heck, maybe some days mine would be one of them!!!

Losing a Best Friend

2010-08-22T17:09:00.001-07:00

Have you ever lost a best friend? Have you ever felt the heart-wrenching feeling of knowing you can't pick up that phone and call them and hear that voice on the other end, the voice of the one person you know will understand you, and who will stand by you no matter what stupid mistake you've made? You can't open the computer and compose an email for them to tell them how your day has been. You can't even sit and watch the moonrise, or the sunset, and know you will be able to tell them about it later. All of the little things in life that you passingly thought were "nice" become priceless. Every meadowlark singing in the sagebrush, every butterfly, even the smallest pink stone, lost among a million others along the bank of a river. A blue forget-me-not, blooming in the spring, becomes some kind of a beacon, sent to you, you fancy, by that friend you can no longer see.

Have you ever woken to the emptiness of longing for one last hug, one last word of praise, one last touch? Have you ever walked through a forest or along a gurgling stream and thought of God and eternity and wondered why, if you can't be with your best friend, you ever came to earth in the first place? Have you ever dreamed of the past and wondered if you could have changed it, had you only known what was out there? What was waiting around the very next bend?

Have you ever stared into the vastness of the sky and watched the clouds, those silent castles and dragons, wizards and ... angels ... and wondered if your best friend is somewhere looking at them too? Have you ever felt a passing breeze, cool on an otherwise hot day, or warm on a day when winter is not far gone or fall is waning, and wonder if that breeze is the touch of your friend, a wish for you. Does your friend long for you as you do them? Do they keep secrets that no one else will ever know because you were the only person they could tell them to, the only person who would listen or even try to understand?

Simon and Garfunkel sang "I am a rock. I am an island." But in the grand scheme of things there should never be a rock of that kind, nor that type of island. Every person should, at least once in their lifetime, meet that best friend who changes the way they think about the universe, about life, about love. If you are not looking and you let that one best friend who could have been but never was pass you by then the blessings you could have had will be sadly locked away in a treasure chest you will never see. Will you experience the pain of losing that best friend? Perhaps. Only time knows that. But it is a promise that you will cherish their memory, and it is reflections of them that will carry you through some of your darkest days. Reach out. Touch. Give. When you find that best friend you will know it. Then hold onto them as tightly as you can as long as time will let you. You just never know when fate will choose to carry them away.

The Meadowlark Came Back

2010-06-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

I think it was last August when I wrote about it, that dearth of songbirds that had come to my world. In particular, I mentioned that I had noticed how the Western meadowlark was absent, and how lonely the sagebrush grasslands seemed without his song. My best friend, Stephanie, recalled the Western meadowlark from her childhood in Cody, Wyoming. Now, of course, Stephanie is in an urban area in Utah and wouldn't have noticed the absence of meadowlarks so much. But to hear that they weren't even here, in the heart of the sagebrush-covered West, disturbed her as it did me.

This year a hint of spring came early. Way back in March we had warm weather--above average, they said. But that was only a teaser, for little did we know what was coming. Between a cold, wet April and the coldest recorded May on record for Pocatello, this has been a remarkable spring, remarkable for its dreariness. But out of it all a Phoenix arose, so to speak. Out of the figurative ashes of the cold and the wetness of our Idaho spring, came all kinds of songbirds I hadn't seen on my property before: goldfinches, western tanagers, evening grosbeaks. In fact, two grosbeaks greeted my wife one morning about thirty seconds before I pulled into the driveway when they ran headfirst into my new picture window. I went to pick up the male and found the female sitting there beside him, stunned. Being the bird lover I am, I put the female in the pocket of my coat with only her head protruding and held the male in my hand as I called my mom to tell her about this remarkable experience, most importantly, the appearance of the long-absent grosbeaks. Well, as you might guess, the male got his strength back and flew out of my hand, and the female took strength from her mate's revival and took wing out of my pocket. So I no longer had "two birds in the hand," but unfortunately two birds in the house! After both birds managed to once again knock themselves senseless from INSIDE the house, I had the foresight this time to take them both outside, where in short order they revived and flew away.

But back to the songbirds. For some reason they are back. I never dreamed I would see the incredible black, red and yellow plumage of the beautiful western tanager in my yard, but there they were. And the goldfinches--both birds whose absence I had mourned. Yet above all, there in the sagebrush meadow behind my house, piped the song of the meadowlark. Filling out their bright yellow chests, with the black chevron pinned so boldly across it, they let their melodies fill the air. They are back, and I am soaking in the beauty of their song. I guess it is last year's absence that makes this year's music sound so sweet, and I suppose that's how life always is. You have to have the sadness to know the joy.

All I care about when I walk into my forest is this knowledge: The meadowlark has returned.

Reptiles with feelings?

2010-06-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

It was one of those incredible moments when you would give almost anything to have a camera, particularly a video camera, with you, but you don't. My family and I were traveling to a friend's house to take down some juniper trees when something in the road caught my eye. I'm one of those inexplainable oddities who actually tries to NOT run over a snake when I see it in the road, and when I realized I was looking at one I swerved to the left. I missed the snake, but looking in my rearview mirror I could see that this one wasn't crawling out of the way. So I backed up in order to chase it off the road before a less hospitable motorist could drive by.

What I found when I reached the place where the snake had been was nothing short of shocking. First off, the snake that had made me stop was already off the road by then. But there on the shoulder where it had crossed were two more of them, intertwined. The larger of the two was on its back, and the other one, perhaps two inches shorter than the four feet of the first one, had the entire length of its body snug up against the other's. My first reaction, as I'm sure would have been the reaction of most people, was to believe they were mating. But a closer look proved this to not be true. First, their "parts" weren't connected, and secondly, the larger snake was dead! It's head had been run over by a previous car.

So here were these two snakes, a dead one, on its back, and a live, slightly smaller one, that had completely "embraced" the first one and was writing and back and forth like crazy. Now, I'm no herpitologist (snake scientist), but as I watched this live snake's activity a number of things came to me. It appeared that he/she, the live snake, was by virtue of lying on and around the dead snake and writhing madly back and forth, trying to bring life back into it, or to coax it to move. Another possibility was that it was actually trying to move it farther out of the roadway, out of danger's path. Either way, the live snake was so engrossed in whatever it was doing that I was able to pet its body, and it gave no sign that it even noticed. It didn't hiss, didn't try to get away, just continued this bizarre "dance of death" that it was occupied in when we arrived.

We ended up staying there watching it for fifteen or twenty minutes, and all the while the snake tried to move its buddy, its mate, its brother/sister--whatever the connection was--off the road, or to bring it back to life by moving with it, perhaps sort of a reptilian artificial rescuscitation. Finally, I picked up the dead snake and moved it to a safer place several feet off the road. I have known too many people who might have seen it on the road edge and gone out of their way to run it over, killing the other one in the process. This brought about the first change in the live snake's activity. Once we put the live one down in the grass as well, it darted away from the dead snake, and I thought it was going to make its escape. However, I picked it back up by the tail and held its head near the dead snake for a couple of seconds. At that point, the snake seemed to recognize its comrade once more, and once more it entwined itself with the body of the dead one and began trying to move it. Now, of course, the snakes were nowhere near the road, and it seemed the obvious conclusion was not that the live snake was trying to move the other one off the road but truly was acting as a rescuscitator.

We left and chopped junipers for over an hour, and when we returned we were shocked to find that the snake was still there, performing his rescuscitative efforts. This time we rushed home with our load of wood and grabbed the camera. However, when we made it back half an hour later things had changed. The live snake was still there, but now he was still. The sun had moved, causing a nearby juniper to throw shade over the snakes and chilling them. Either that fact or perhaps sheer exhaustion had caused the snake to stop trying to "save" his friend. I tried moving them both out into the sunshine again, but it was as if the cold shadows had broken the spell, broken his obsession, so to speak. The live snake slithered away into the low branches of the junipers, and we let him go.

But that snake has left me pondering: What do we as humans really, truly know about the feelings, the "emotions" of the animal world. Many people like to believe that we are the only beings who can think or feel, who do more than just react to circumstances. Perhaps in the case of this snake that is true. Or perhaps there is something more, something deeper, that no mere human being can understand. I don't know. I can't pretend to. All I do know is that on that warm spring day I was witness to something I have never seen in 44 years of life, 44 years as an amateur snake "expert," something I will probably never see again. I will always wonder what the connection between those snakes truly was, and I will always wonder what purpose the living snake had in mind. I guess it's just another mystery for the ages.

Mustang

2010-04-21T00:45:00.000-07:00

MUSTANG

I am the mustang,
The primeval wanderer of the American West.
From pure stock were my ancestors born.
Now I am born of the wind.
From the Arabian, the Spanish barb,
The Tennessee walker, the saddlebred,
The Andalusian, the Morgan.
The Spaniard brought my fathers, my mothers,
The American and the Frenchman too.
They were set free, lost or escaped.
Now I run free, of mixed blood,
With my flags flying,
From the supple crest of my neck,
From behind me,
My flags of victory,
My flags of glory.
In the high plains wind they toss,
The wind that carries scent to me of such as you.
You are not my master.
I am your equal.
If you capture me and treat me as such,
I will respect you.
In time I may be your partner.
But I will never be your slave.
I am the mustang,
The primeval wanderer of the American West.
From pure stock were my ancestors born.
Now I am born of the wind.
Born of fire and of the flood,
Of thunder and of rain,
And of the lightning that pounds the earth
As my hooves pound that same earth.
Ancient am I, ancient as the wisest stallion,
Yet new as the brightest colt.
Follow me, learn my ways;
In time, you may gain my wisdom,
And the wisdom of my forbears.
And if you listen, if you watch me long enough,
You too may one day be one with the land.
Without me, without my kind,
You will not survive.
I am the mustang.
I am born of the wind.

© Kirby Jonas, April 17, 2010

Tree of Life

2010-03-12T00:19:00.000-08:00

TREE OF LIFE

Deep in the darkest, dampest forest,
You are the tree that waits to shelter me,
The tree that has spread its branches protectively out over the forest floor,
That has prepared a bed of soft needles for me to lay my head down
When I am sad and scared.
You are the tree that stands tall and strong
But ready to sacrifice any part of itself—
A branch, some needles—to light my fire of life, to warm me, inside and out.
You are the tree with the sweetest fruit, the truest grain,
A tree I could make a home with, a tree I could feed on spiritually,
A tree I can admire for its incredible physical beauty
And stroke gently for its softness,
A tree whose limbs would sigh out in delight as it felt my gentle hand.
You are the tree who, when the wind comes sighing through the boughs,
Sings the loveliest music when you put your branches together,
Music that draws the tears from my eyes, music that lures me from afar.
In my forest of life, I’m not certain how I have survived
Before you, not knowing your security, not knowing your song.
The heartwood is the center of the tree,
But that heartwood in you is visible through places,
Not where you are weak, but where you are strong.
It shines with a glowing light, as if the angels
Have already lit a fire inside you, and for centuries it has been waiting
To light my way, to warm me, to call me home.

Workout # 2

2010-03-11T19:33:00.000-08:00

Workout # 2, otherwise known as "The Workout from Hell"

All right, guys, this is the trim down workout, the workout you start after you've "bulked up" and want to trim off that excess fat that necessarily comes with adding on any significant muscle. Unfortunately, when you are a day or two into this you're going to realize that lifting those heavy weights, and doing one body part per day, is a cakewalk . . . compared to this.

There are several versions of this trim-down workout that I do, and I will try to get all of those on here. I'm just going to start out with a basic split I do which puts the back and biceps with abs one day, chest, shoulders and triceps the next, and legs separate. The leg workout in particular will be a drastic change to what you've been doing.

I'll list the exercises I do each day, then the specifics.

On back day I do four to five exercises. Generally, they are the following, or exercises that are similar. Pullups or machine pulldowns; Bent rows; dead lifts; pullovers; seated rows.

To that, I add barbell or dumbell curls; hammer curls; and one arm preacher curls for the arms. There are different variations of these, but until you really get into it it will be fine to stick to these basics. Believe me, they will put you through all the pain and suffering you desire.

On chest day, I will do the following, either with barbell or dumbells: flat bench press, incline bench press, decline bench press. Add to this some dumbell flyes or pec deck flyes and possibly cable crossovers. For the shoulders: Don't forget the overhead military press, with barbell or dumbells; side laterals, bent laterals, shrugs, and front raises. For triceps, pushdowns, single dumbell behind the neck raises; kickbacks. Please refer to either YouTube or Google to see photos/descriptions of each exercise. This information is all over out there if you look.

On leg day, I do what is called Hindu squats. These are squats with no weight, and I do from 500 to 1000 of these, which is an incredible leg burn and endurance/strength developer. You can see how to perform this exercise on YouTube. Just type in Hindu squats.

With this workout I will also start doing a lot more cardio. If you want, you can stick to half an hour to 45 minutes at a 4 mph hour fast walk or a 4 mph slow jog. Either way will burn some fat for you. You can also do intervals, if you're feeling frisky.

Now for the important part of these workouts: SPEED. Start out at a minute's rest between sets, and do your sets in the 10 to 15 repetition range. Do four sets of each. So to use your bench press exercise on chest day as an example, pick a weight you can stick to or even raise each set and do: 15 reps, wait a minute, 15 reps, wait a minute, 15 reps-one minute-15 reps. Wait another minute or two at most and go into your next exercise, in this case the incline press. You can change the order up, but I suggest doing your big muscle groups, back and chest, before the arms.

The key to this workout, as I said above, is SPEED. Don't let any grass grow under your feet. If you aren't sweating heartily throughout this workout, if you have time to stand around and gab, and if you don't at times look as if you're going to pass out from the strain, then you're doing it wrong. After a while, if you keep it up, you will probably get people commenting on your workout, and in another while they will start asking you how you've accomplished what you have in the gym. Believe me, they will if you stick to it. DON'T GIVE UP. The new you you find inside will blow you away.

In this segment, cut down drastically on your calories. For me, I'll go down to 2500 calories a day and slowly cut out from there. If I'm really trying to get cut for a photo shoot I might be eating as little as 1000 calories a day at times, which will cut your weights in the gym DRASTICALLY. So get ready to throw ego out the window. You will still be strong, but when you aren't taking in the calories it isn't going to be nearly as impressive.

Try to do this workout every three or four days. In other words, for example, back/biceps/abs on Monday and Thursday, Chest/shoulders/triceps on Tuesday and Friday, Legs on Wednesday and Saturday.

A word to the wise here: Until you know what this workout is going to do to you, don't get drastic. Start slow, as with all workouts. Don't get hurt trying to do something that I have been doing for many years. That will only frustrate you and make you want to quit, and that's the last thing I want you to do. Maybe start out with 2 sets of each of the exercises I listed. Work up from there.

DRINK 10 to 15 eight ounce glasses of water a day. DO NOT SCRIMP ON THE WATER. You will pay for it if you do, especially if you are eating a proper amount of protein. And don't forget to do the protein drink before, during and after your workout. Keep those muscles replenished. Down a handful of raisins and nuts after the workout to replace the glycogen you've been burning out of your muscles.

Workout # 1

2010-03-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Above: Frank Zane, Mr. Olympia three times running, back when Mr. Olympia still meant aesthetically pleasing, before the rhoids really took over.

For those of you who come to this blog only for the entertainment value I have to apologize in advance. Unless you are currently a gym rat (weight lifter, etc.), or you are interested in getting in good, muscular physical condition you probably won't get far into this "blog." This is the first in a series of weight lifting/fitness/nutrition articles I've been promising for a while giving those who haven't been gym frequenters a place to begin and maybe a goal to shoot for.

This first one is going to start you out a little drastically, but never fear. Just work it at your own pace, with whatever weights you can do. HOWEVER, PLEASE don't make the mistake of jumping into this with both feet if you aren't used to working out at the gym. Give it a couple of weeks of basic movements, fairly light weights, to get your body used to it. Otherwise you are going to be so full of lactic acid, so incredibly sore, that you are 1) not going to like me anymore, and 2) probably not going to go back to the gym any time soon. Start in slowly!

First, I'm going to give you five basic laws of the game you MUST follow if you plan to find success in the gym.

1) Don't skip workouts! Stick to the routine.

2) Eat every 2 or 3 hours, mostly whole grains, oats, wheat, brown rice, sweet potatoes, etc.

3) SLEEP! If you aren't getting close to 8 hours a night, you are cheating yourself and your workout

4)DO NOT overtrain. I can't stress this one enough. What you think is going to make you stronger is going to break you down, hurt you, make you vulnerable to getting sick. I'll address overtraining again later.

5)Take a good quality protein drink one or two times a day. You aren't going to get a decent amount of protein without this, or at least not as easily. Nitrotech is the specific brand I use, and at age 44 this is the one I went from 210 to 218 with in one month. And mind you, I am still wearing the same pants size. This was not fat gain.

Those are the basic rules you have to follow. The rest we can tweak as we need to.

Before we get into the weights, let's talk about this first program. I am designing this specifically for those who want to gain some muscle, good quality muscle in a short time frame. Don't worry about getting bulky. It's not going to happen in the month I will have you on this. If you continue to hit this one, okay, you will possibly get bulky IF you have that genetic potential. But in the first month you are just going to build a basic framework on which to model the rest of your future programs. This goes for the ladies, too. Don't be afraid of muscle. It looks good no matter who it's on, and I'm not trying to get you all beefed up. I'm talking about nice, firm muscle, not steroid-pumped Muscle and Fitness magazine fodder.

Now let's talk food. This is going to hurt, for those of you who have been dieting forever (and often not with the results you desire). For every pound of body weight you should be eating 20 calories of QUALITY carbs and protein. I'm not talking about Twinkies and French fries. Let's hear it for the oats, wheat, brown rice, and sweet potatoes mentioned above. Don't be afraid of fat, but DO NOT touch the sugar. Please leave that poison alone. You will thank me for this later, if it's the only thing you get out of this article. White sugar is a poison to the human body, pure and simple. Beyond taste there is nothing good about it. Break yourself of it and you are on your way to being far more fit than most people in the good old USA.

Now, specifically, protein. You can pound the weights all day and eat until you're blue in the face, and you are going to get nowhere at all unless you are consuming quality protein. Chicken, fish, eggs, cottage cheese, venison, and yes, the evil beef. Grass-fed beef is actually good for you. No, I'm not kidding. And to supplement it, Nitro-tech Hardcore. Worth it's weight in gold, and they aren't paying me to say that.

I mentioned not being afraid of fats. Now I'm going to go a step further: EAT THEM. Flax seed oil, virgin olive oil, fish oil, nuts. Eating a handful of walnuts, almonds and peanuts every day is one of the best things you can do for yourself, especially if they're raw. Like peanut butter? Go for it, as long as it's the natural kind that has to be put in the fridge, or better yet, make it yourself with a Vitamix blender.

Before your workout, eat around 40-60 grams of slow burning carbs like oats, etc. This will force water into your muscles, and you need that. Then, and this is important, start consuming that protein shake. Drink half a cup or more before the workout and sip it throughout, then finish your workout with at least a half cup. Also, this is your one chance to ignore what I said about fast burning carbs (you know, that poisonous sugar). Take in 60-75 grams of fast-burning carbs, like chocolate milk, dark chocolate, etc. This will spike your insulin levels and refill what should by then be very depleted muscle glycogen stores.

And now for the workout itself. Remember, I'm recommending this for one month. After that, switch it up with one of the others I hope to have up here. If you don't, you will find your muscles become bored, and you will stop seeing the growth. So get in there, rack some weights (after that initial two week break-in period, that is) and slam some calories. Don't be afraid. Any fat you gain I'm going to help you shed next month.

(If you need guidance on the following exercises, drop me a line, but I'm sure you can find a description of each online, probably along with photos. Important note: Do all reps slowly, especially on the downward stroke, and concentrate on thinking about the muscle you're working. SQUEEZE hard at the top of the movement. The squeeze is more important than the amount of weight. Don't let your ego get you in trouble. You can get an astounding workout with 20 pound dumbbells even if you think you're a pretty big guy. It's all in the squeeze.)

Oh--I almost forgot the best part: REST. I am only going to have you working the major muscles one day per week. A full seven day rest period. No kidding. This is paramount. Follow the routine. Don't add anything in. You won't regret it.

DAY ONE: Chest and abs

Bench press (trade off every other week with dumbell press) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Incline bench press (trade off every other week with db's) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Flat Dumbell flyes 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Pec deck (the machine that some call a flye) 4 sets, 10 to 15 reps. The stretch on this is extremely important, far more so than trying to kill yourself with a heavy weight and tear out those all-important shoulders.

Chest is done!!!!

Now for the abs: Hanging leg raises (you will likely have to start out with leg raises on the end of a weight bench) 5 sets of 20 (Note: PLEASE do these very strictly, and at the top of the movement, when it hurts the most, SQUEEZE those abs together. Imagine an accordion. This is imperative if you want to build your abs.

DAY TWO: Back (and ONLY back!)

Lat pulldowns: 4 sets, 10 to 12

Deadlifts (one of the best exercises you can do, even though you hate it!) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Barbell rows (arch that back and squeeze!!!) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Dumbell rows (one arm at a time for a good stretch) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps

Seated cable rows (you should be able shot by now) 3 sets, 10 to 12 reps. Squeeze it hard at the end. Come on, you can do it. You've come this far.

DAY THREE: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! You can do a thirty minute fast walk or light job, but don't run hard. You will negate a lot of the training you're doing. Don't worry, we'll get that cardio back. It's only a month! Believe me, I'm into cardio too.

DAY FOUR: Shoulders and calves

Barbell military press, 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps (keep your back straight!)

Dumbell laterals supersetted with front raises: 4 sets of 10 to 12 ech exercise

Rear (bent over) dumbell laterals 4 sets, 10 to 12 reps

Dumbell shrugs (or barbell, if you must) 4 sets, 8 to 10 reps (try to imagine squeezing your shoulder blades together behind your ears. FEEL IT in your upper back. Very important. You can also hold this one a couple of seconds at the top and stretch it as far as possible at the bottom.

Shoulders are done. Now for the calves, those little buggers that are so genetically dependent!

Seated calf raises: If you don't have a machine for this, you can pad a barbell, but it will be very helpful to have a partner if you do. 5 sets of 12 to 15 reps, and the squeeze at the top, a squeeze so hard it hurts BAD is paramount.

DAY FIVE: Arms and upper abdominals

Dumbell curls (and you can trade off with barbell if you like) 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Hammer curls 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Dumbell preacher curls (watch the weight here--a little goes a long way!) 4 sets of 10 to 12 reps

Close grip bench press (let the bar come all the way down until it touches your chest for a great stretch!) 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Lying triceps extensions (get that stretch again!) 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Bodyweight dips (here's the fun one) 4 sets to failure (I was doing sets of 16-22, but don't go so fanatic that you collapse and knock your teeth out on the dip bar! If you can only do 6, 8, or 10, then great. Everyone starts somewhere.)

Rope crunches (I've started doing these with a twelve-inch cambered bar held over my head. Much more comfortable to the hands: 5 sets of 20 (And squeeze it HARD at the bottom. I'm using 80 pounds on this one.)

DAY 5: Upper legs and Calves

Leg extensions: 4 sets of 12 to 15

Barbell squats: 4 sets of 8 to 10

Leg presses: 4 sets of 8 to 10

Lying leg curls: 4 sets of 10 to 12

Stiff-legged deadlifts (do these slowly so you don't tear out your knees!) 4 sets of 8 to 10 reps

Standing calf raises: 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps

Seated calf raises: 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps

Calves can be worked more often than other muscles, as they get used on a day to day basis, pretty harshly by some of us!

I'm not throwing any forearm routine in here, but you might want to add it in yourself for ten minutes or so later on, especially if you have dumbells or a barbell at home. But you'll be using forearm muscles in much of your other work, so if you don't want to worry about it for this month, don't.

DAY 7: OFF, again!

DAY 8: Start it all over again.

This is a lot of information to digest in a short space, so if you have any questions you can email me at kirby@kirbyjonas.com . I know this is a hard workout, but as the saying goes, I didn't promise it would be easy, I only promised it would be worth it. Remember, unless you want to, this isn't going to get you huge. Look at this as the jumping off point into a whole new world. I guarantee you if you stick with it you will love the changes you see in the mirror.

And here's a teaser for my next workout: VERY LITTLE REST BETWEEN SETS, say 15 to 40 seconds. HIGH REPS. Believe me, this one is going to hurt. BUt to a bodybuilder, it's a good hurt. Some will tell you you don't need the pain to see satisfactory results, but I am here to differ. Some pain and discomfort is a good thing. Just be careful that it's not the wrong kind of pain. If you have pain that lingers for more than four or five days, crank it back a notch. And don't forget to eat and stretch those muscles hard. I stretch hard for my back, chest and legs throughout the day. This is another one of those things that can make or break your progress in the gym. STAY LIMBER!!!! Any body builder worth his salt should be able to lay his palms flat on the floor without bending his/her knees. Just go for it slowly!

A Clash of Cultures

2010-01-29T19:47:00.001-08:00

Colonel Patrick E. Connor

Northeastern Shoshone Chief Saguitch and an unnamed wife

Bear River Massacre, January 29, 1863

On this date one hundred and forty-seven years ago two cultures met on the banks of the Bear River, in what was then the tip of Washington Territory and is today the state of Idaho. Mormon pioneers, pushed, often violently, from every place they tried to settle across the east and midwest, settled in northern Utah in the late 1840's and continued to travel to this safe-haven for the next half-century. They brought their farming implements, their horses, sheep, pigs and cattle.

In this western arena, for hundreds of years before, resided the mighty Shoshone people. They were a horse culture, a nomadic people. They traveled where the food was, depending upon the season. When winter came they were entrenched in sheltered valleys across what is now Utah, Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming. Part of their food stores, incredibly, were the grass themselves. Particularly in the Cache Valley of Utah, home of towns such as Logan, the summer grass grew long and rank. In the fall, the Shoshone returned to this valley to harvest the seed, with which they made breads and soups. Their herds of horses also foraged on these grasses throughout the winter.

But when the pioneers arrived here, driven from their own homes and claiming what seemed to be empty lands, ripe for the taking, the Shoshone arrived home to face possible starvation. They soon began to find themselves relying on the generosity of the pioneers, whose stock had trampled or eaten the very grasses that they themselves had to have simply to survive. It was as if someone had walked into your kitchen pantry, or mine, and started eating anything they wanted without asking. Under this threat, the Shoshones, desperate, had to make a stand.

Skirmishes broke out. Men died. As throughout all of history, when a white person died and it was assumed they were killed by Indians, other whites went after the Indians. Seldom did they find the guilty parties, but any Indian was good enough. If they found Shoshones, or even another tribe, they killed them on the spot. The same was true of the Shoshone and other tribes. If a tribe member died, someone had to pay. It didn't matter if the ones who paid were guilty, only that their skin was the same color as the guilty. And so the war between cultures was perpetuated, and hatred boiled.

At the same time, there were "wars and rumors of wars" between the Mormons, the "Saints," and the United States Army. Brigham Young and his followers were tired of being pushed. They had traveled far out of the United States to find the land called Deseret, and here they intended to make their stand.

In the city of Sacramento, capitol of California, Colonel Patrick Edward Connor, one-time Mexican War hero, was sworn in at the outbreak of the Civil War. His mission: to take a well-trained regiment of troopers to Utah Territory, ostensibly to protect the Overland mail from Indian attack, but secretly to watch out over the Mormons and quell any insurrection. Connor's troops wanted to go east to the Civil War arena and fight Confederates. They were bitter about being stuck in the arid lands of Utah, and they were ready to lash out. They found a target at which to lash in the Shoshone Indians.

When a small party of Shoshones killed some miners traveling the Montana Gold Road back toward Utah, a United States marshal was sent to arrest three Indian chiefs, Bear Hunter, Saguitch, and San Pitch, of the northeastern Shoshone tribe. He enlisted the aid of Colonel Connor's men, the Third California Volunteers. And from the very first Connor stated. "I will help. But there will be no prisoners. I don't intend to take any."

In the most bitter part of late January Colonel Connor started his troops out of Fort Douglas, on the bench above Great Salt Lake City, as it was then called. They marched for three days in horrible winter conditions, the wind buffeting them, the cold and snow freezing their feet. Many fell from frostbite before ever reaching the Shoshone camp. It was so cold whisky froze in its flasks. Faces hung with icicles.

In the Shoshone camp, Chief Bear Hunter had a dream that the camp would be attacked. This dream caused the camp to be nearly emptied of the many visitors who had come their for the annual warm dance festivities, which included Chief Pocatello. The others stayed, including Bear Hunter himself, SanPitch, and Saguitch. This was their valley. The soldiers would want to come and talk, and then they would go away. This was how it had always been.

In the pre-dawn darkness of January 29, Major McGarry's cavalry, who had gotten far ahead of Connor's infantry, sat their horses overlooking the sleeping Shoshone camp. It was light enough that Chief Saguitch, who had risen early and was outside his tepee, could see the horses on the ridge above, could see the steam rising from their sweating bodies. The few Shoshone men left in camp gathered and picked up their arms. The cavalry advanced.

Here the account becomes cloudy. Perhaps the Shoshones taunted the troops. Perhaps it was the troops who were the aggressors. Either way, the troops advanced, firing broke out, and in the confusion that followed the majority of the troops who were lost that fateful day died. Connor's infantry arrived, and with the help of the cavalry horses, who made several trips back and forth across the ice-choked river, they reached the battle ground.

But to call it a battle ground begs great forgiveness for the use of the word battle. For quickly this battle descended into the depths of murder, rape and torture and became, on the part of our country's military, the worst butchery ever recorded in United States history. The Shoshone were quickly out of ammunition. They fought with whatever they had when they found they could not surrender. Men, women, children--all were shot either trying to surrender or trying to run. Some were shot trying to swim the icy river. One of those was a baby floating down the river on its cradle board, pushed their by its young mother because it was crying and might give away those who huddled with her under the snowy river bank.

Men and women were scalped on various body parts, the scalps kept for souvenirs. Women were raped or shot or clubbed to death if they would not submit. Others were raped in their death throes. One soldier heated a bayonet red-hot over a fire and shoved it through Chief Bear Hunter's ear into his head. SanPitch fell. The only chief to escape was Saguitch, wounded three times. Two of his sons also escaped. They traveled up the river, soaking wet, frozen, wounded. In demonstration of the incredible fortitude of people back then, many of them who made it out of camp survived. But most who remained in camp were systematically sought out and shot or clubbed to death.

When the massacre was over, Colonel Connor set his troops to burning the tepees and food stores and anything they could not carry away. He did not want any Shoshones who had escaped to be able to come back and find shelter and nourishment. As in all such incidents, there were some dissenters among Connor's troops, some who watched in dismay and didn't take part in the butchery. There were Mormons who came with wagons and carted wounded and dead troopers away. And there were others who came and sought out the Indian women and children, actually adopting some of the orphaned children into their own familes. Many of the Shoshone who escaped the battle ended up joining the Mormon church, in time, devout members of that faith until they died.

The bodies of the Shoshone people were never buried. The Shoshone did not feel safe to do so, and there were too many anyway. The bodies were left to be devoured by crows, ravens, vultures, coyotes and wolves. The landscape was littered with arrows and spent shells, some of which are still being found to this day, along with pieces of bone from those who were never buried but became part of the landscape.

No one alive today had anything to do with the Bear River Massacre, which for over a hundred years was known as the Battle of Bear River, and by which "heroic deed" Colonel Patrick E. Connor became Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor, the mighty Indian fighter. No one alive today is at fault for what happened there, just north of the present-day town of Preston, Idaho. But we are all at fault if we don't study our history, if we don't try to remember, and to keep ourselves from making similar mistakes. For once, let us all try to practice equality. Equality doesn't mean putting Indian people or black people or any other race or belief at the top of the chain any more than it means putting white Christians at the top. It means all of us are equal. Equal.

Please let January 29 always be a day that reminds us that real "equality" does not mean paying one another for things that happened over a hundred years ago. It means treating each other as equals in the here and now. And remember: Any history that we forget is bound to repeat itself. Remember Bear River.

Before the Age of Free Agency

2010-01-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

Island Park. When I was a child, the name always called up images of lake villages, rustic inns that could only be reached by boat, and, of course, water everywhere. The reality is much different. Especially today. In December, Island Park is trees and “snow everywhere.”
Our friends the Allens tried to come to our rescue way back in November when we lamented to them how we had gotten ourselves into a position with our kids and Santa Claus that we didn’t know how to get out of. They had the perfect solution: ditch all our Santa Claus adventures at home and go up to their cabin in Island Park, where they would be staying from December 23rd to January 2nd. Instead of trying to figure out what to do this year to bring that Christmas magic home, along with all of the Santa Claus presents, we could make our own Christmas magic in the forests of central Idaho.
At first, the idea seemed exciting, probably because it was so new. Then came the bomb. Our two oldest sons decided they didn’t want to go. It just wasn’t going to be fun. Unfortunately, for them, they are sixteen and fourteen years old, and there are some decisions in their lives that Mom and Dad still insist on making—“for their own good.” This was one of them. In spite of all the grousing and whining about the trip, and even their logical argument that they could feed and water the animals if they stayed home, they didn’t get to stay. As our family grows nearer and nearer that age of no return, when they will of necessity be off into the world, one by one, Debbie and I find it more and more important to continue doing activities together. If we go to a movie, a concert, or anything close to home I can see letting them have their freedom of choice. But with our being gone away from home, and with the chance to experience the outdoors close up and personal, there were no choices but ours. I knew they would have fun. They were the ones who had yet to find out. I have been in close enough contact with my children their entire lives to know what they will and will not like. A bold statement, I guess, but at least in this case it turned out to be true.
We stayed at my mom’s last night, Sunday, which ended up almost being a mistake. It ends up being fairly tough to keep a positive attitude by the time one leaves her house, since in her eyes the world is falling apart so rapidly it can’t possibly last many more years. That may very well be true, but nothing I can do will change it in any big way, so I choose rather to live with it and enjoy life. Bury my head in the sand, if you want to call it that. But this morning when she heard the boys saying they didn’t want to go, Debbie and I became these evil ogres who weren’t giving their children a chance to use their own free agency. We were forcing them against their will to go to Island Park. She offered to drive them the fifty miles back home to Pocatello rather than their having to suffer the next three days being with their family. Grandma is so helpful. After the fairly short but fairly tense argument involving basically telling Grandma that we know our kids better than either she or they themselves do, we piled in the van and headed north.
We stopped for ice cream an hour later in Ashton, by which time everything had already settled down and not a soul in the vehicle seemed unhappy in the slightest about being there. The snow isn’t nearly as deep this year as normal, but it is still beautiful up here, and the beauty grew as we climbed. The rivers sparkled in an incredibly bright December sun, and as we ascended Ashton Hill the boughs of the lodgepole pines and Douglas fir trees bowed beneath the weight of what appeared to be cotton batting infused with a million shattered diamonds.
The forest grew dense, the shadows a deeper purple, especially against the brilliant snow that was catching the sunlight and using it for a blanket. The road was absolutely clear of snow, it was 20 degrees outside, and no day could have been more beautiful. When we topped out onto the plateau, the forests continued to sweep off into the distance, but here and there meadows sparkled with those myriad snow diamonds, and dagger-like icicles hung from the pine limbs, beneath their mothering blankets of snow, and reflected the sun like tiny, warped windows.
At one point the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River crossed under the highway, and here its wide, dark expanse was dotted with trumpeter swans who called to each other across the water. One proud mother pushed a late brood of cygnets we were surprised to see before her, teaching them to swim, as if a young swan doesn’t already know that when it leaves the egg. On the water they floated like white-clad maidens, their long, graceful necks bent like unfinished bridges, their cries speaking of their joy in the day.
Our friends picked us up at a parking area and took our belongings the mile to their cabin. They also took our children. Myself and Debbie, we couldn’t stand the stink of the snowmobiles, and I couldn’t resist the call of the deep forest, now settling into the last couple hours of daylight, with the shadows lying in long blue and purple tendrils across the snow-bound road. So we walked. In spite of the occasional snowmobiles that roared past us, leaving their blue vomit of pollution in their wake, it was a scene of tranquility, with elk, deer, coyote and fox tracks crisscrossing our path now and then. Cold, yes. But in spite of the cold heaven can’t be much more beautiful than this.
Now I’m in our bedroom, and out the window the icicles hang down, some of them ten feet long and touching the ground. The trees, standing straight and perfect in this wind-less paradise, hold tightly to the several inches of snow that are piled on every bough. It’s a scene straight out of a Christmas postcard, lacking only the elk or the deer, or maybe a faraway Santa sleigh careening across the sky. I’m not saying I wish I was out in it, but from inside the cabin it looks pretty near perfect out there to me. Sorry, Grandma. Sometimes you just have to force your kids to do things they don’t yet know they want to do. I wish she had forced her own kids a few more times than she did. Who knows what fun we might have missed out on?
Imagine the forsaken horizons I never discovered because I was allowed, in my laziness and indifference, to exercise my free agency and do my own thing. Admit it. Sometimes kids just don’t know what they want. That’s when Mom and Dad have to take over.

(As a side note, Debbie and I had to go back to Pocatello for the retirement party of three fellow firefighters. Our two boys who hadn’t wanted to go in the first place begged to stay with the Allens, and we agreed to come back for two more days at the end of their stay. The boys stayed, had an incredible time, and are probably hooked for life. And our three dachshunds (wiener dogs, if you prefer) also loved the snow, even when it was a foot over their heads. That one I wouldn’t have bet money on.)

Firefighter Calendar

2009-11-25T17:25:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-18T21:49:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-11-16T23:30:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-10-28T07:32:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-18T17:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T16:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-05T09:39:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-23T21:59:00.001-07:00

Free Dog to Good Home

2009-09-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-19T10:43:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T20:22:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

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"

2009-09-08T10:22:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

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.

The "Other" Good Guy

2009-09-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

You hear the wail of sirens. Now and then they are punctuated by the blast of an air horn. People pull to the side (well, sometimes). Then you see it: The big red fire engine. Or in the case of our "Centennial" engine, red, white and blue. Or, in the case of some other strange cities, aqua blue, yellow, or lime green. But either way--it's a fire truck!!!! Children--and grownups--wave. With all five fingers. Or maybe they hold their thumbs up in the air, or do the "okay" sign. The point is, everyone loves a fire truck. And everyone loves a firefighter. Here come the good guys to save the day.

A few days ago I met with Tony, a very dear friend of mine from years ago, for a chat that has been too long put off. Friend to friend, with no one around, no distractions. Tony told me something that didn't surprise me--and hadn't surprised him either. A recent poll showed that the most revered job in our country is that of firefighter. Everyone loves a firefighter.

Who was the friend who passed this on? A cop.

Before I became a fireman, before people started waving at me with all five of their fingers, I too wore the colors of Pocatello PD. I was a patrol officer in this very city for three years. And some very long days. There were a few rewarding moments. Very few. But it is the times when pre-teen children, some as young as six or seven, "saluted" me with their middle finger, or when other young children told me if I touched them they would sue me, those are the times I remember most. Or the time I had to drive myself to the hospital with blood running down my face from an eye I could no longer see out of because the ambulance was treating the man who had done it to me. I was a police officer for one major reason: To help people. What did I get in return? Okay, a perk now and then. Once in a great while a thank you. Mostly, I counted myself lucky to not be sworn at or spit on.

Some people say cops can't complain. They go into that job knowing what it entails. But no one really goes into that job knowing how deep the hatred of many people can go for the police. Or at least the disrespect. It wears you down. Tears you up. You are there to serve, and you become a family of police, because that is the only group of people you often feel understand you or what you are.

So let me talk about my friends--our friends--the police. Did you get harassed when you were driving 39 mph in a school zone, and some jerk wrote you a ticket when all you were doing was trying to get to work on time? Did some jerk in uniform give you a parking ticket only because your car was parked two and a half feet away from the curb and cars were having to drive around you? Did they have the audacity to break up your party because some neighbors were intolerant, and all you were doing was making a little noise--at two in the morning? And worst of all, did they throw you in a drunk tank because they claimed your two beers made you unsafe on the road? Well, be glad you didn't take out some child in that school zone, or some unwary driver didn't smash into your badly parked car and kill himself. Be happy that the same cops who let your neighbors go to sleep that night would be there for you when his party got too loud. And if you went to jail for being drunk and driving, just be thankful and think--it's possible he saved your life. And who knows how many others.

But there is an ultimate sacrifice that police officers are sworn ready to make. That is the giving of their own lives to protect the innocent. Not unlike firefighters. But for the police, there are times that the protecting of the innocent can also call for something else. The unthinkable. The nightmare of taking the life of another human being.

My friend Tony, the very one who told me about that study where firefighters are so revered, was called on, exactly three years and four days ago, to protect five people. To possibly save the lives of all of them. He did that. He did it by putting himself in a position where his own life was in jeopardy. I won't go into the details. If you ever want to know all of them, you'll have to ask in a private note. They are too horrible. Too much for the normal person who doesn't witness frequent death and mayhem to digest. For now, I'll only give a brief account.

Two probation and parole officers in our city went to a house to serve a warrant. A parolee had violated his terms of parole. He was going to go back to prison. It was the last thing he wanted. Because of that, he had a huge hatred inside for one of the parole officers. When they came for him, fortunately with uniformed officers in tow, his girlfriend warned him they were there. He was able to get to a gun. He loaded it, a .357 magnum revolver, and prepared to take two lives. But the first parole officer in his sights was the wrong one, another good friend of mine by the name of Wally. The parolee wanted to kill Wally, and he made his try a few minutes later, but he wanted the other one worse. At gun point, he backed Wally into the main room, where he laid eyes on the officer he wanted to kill. As he turned his gun on this man, Wally grabbed his revolver, and the fight was on. Wally ended up shot in the torso, but his bullet proof vest saved his life. Another officer was shot in the leg. It ended up that Wally, who was positioned behind the now-wounded parolee, had a gun barrel at his throat, and the parolee was clicking the trigger over and over. Because Wally had a death grip on the cylinder it wouldn't turn, and the hammer would not descend. But it was a matter of time. Wally was weakened by the blow of the bullet to his chest, and the parolee was determined.

From the front doorway, Tony heard Wally's call for help. Wally yelled, "Do something." Tony told him to move his head, and he did. Tony fired. I won't tell you the exact details of what followed, but death was instant. The parolee went limp instantly and fell to the floor.

Tony was left in a state that any Christian would be in. At first, he did his job. He did the job he had feared but expected and trained for during many training sessions over many years at that job. He helped his wounded friends. He prayed with the officer who had been shot in the thigh, prayed with him because the officer was screaming that he was going to die. Tony calmed him and promised him he wasn't going to die. He cleared the scene and did what he had to for the investigation, which was done by the Idaho State Police. It wasn't until days went by that he fell apart. He began feeling like he was having heart attacks. He had no idea what was happening.

Tony had PTSD: post traumatic stress disorder. Or did he? After being made to go see a psychiatrist, to the tune of over 2000 dollars from his own pocket, he was told it wasn't really PTSD, for to have this you must be wounded. Since all he did was shoot another human being in the back of the head at close range and take his life, but he wasn't physically hurt himself, they told him he could not possibly have PTSD. Workman's comp wouldn't pay a dime for his treatment. And it gets worse, but I won't go on.

My friend Tony possibly saved the lives of five people--or more, for who knows what might have happened had this parolee escaped and gone on a rampage of destruction? For that, he was punished. He was punished with his own sense of guilt and uncertainty. He was made to feel less than he was, which was a savior to his friends, and to the innocent. My friend Tony is a hero. He deserves our respect. Like any other group of people in any other job, of course there are police officers who don't earn respect. So we respect their badges, if nothing else. But remember, you can never tell what may have made an officer bitter, what may have made him come across as hard and uncaring. There is little thanks in the profession of a police officer, folks. But he is out there to help you. And sometimes he is the only thin shield between the normal people--what might be called the sheep of the world--and the wolves who prey on them.

So next time you see a police officer drive by, I hope you will understand their lives a little better, and maybe, just maybe, you can raise your hand and give him a wave--with all five fingers.

Incidentally, the least revered job in our country is that of accountant. Go figure.

The Missing Music

2009-09-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

My friend Stephanie made the comment, "I agree there is no better smell than the sagebrush and fir. That, along with the serenade of the Wyoming meadowlark...heaven!" Stephanie is so right, but until she said that I had not realized something.

There is something wrong out in the sagebrush grasslands. I discovered it yesterday, mostly because Stephanie's words were ringing in my ears. I made an eight mile mountain run up City Creek, which is right behind my house. I was thinking about one of my favorite birds, the western meadowlark--Wyoming meadowlark, as Stephanie referred to it. Anyone who grew up when I did or before, and who grew up in the same beautifully open country I did, grew up to the song of the meadowlark. I listened to them so often, in fact, that coupled with my proclivity to imitate animal noises (a habit that used to highly annoy my sister) I became very good at getting the meadowlark to call back to me.

But it was on yesterday's run that I realized...my friend the meadowlark is gone. I think I heard one early this spring. One lonely meadowlark, trilling out his song from somewhere out in the sage. I enjoyed it, but thinking they would be around all summer I took it a little bit for granted. I haven't heard one since.

Unfortunately, it's not just the meadowlarks that have vanished. It's the native finches, the tanagers, the warblers, the song sparrows. So many beautiful songbirds that used to fill the forest and prairies seem to be vanishing. They have been replaced by starlings, house sparrows, house finches and pigeons, at least in our neck of the woods.

And I guess somewhat poetically they have also been replaced by another bird: the turkey vulture, otherwise known as buzzard. When I was a kid the vulture was pretty rare. I still stop to watch them because they are so big and graceful and interesting. But now you can watch flocks of them soaring the heights. Ironically, most of ours live in the huge trees in the local cemetery.

So is the boom in the vulture population a sad comment on the death of our songbirds? I don't know. I don't know if anyone knows. All I know is that on my eight mile run, with Stephanie Wray's words so fresh in my mind, I was a lonelier man without the song of the meadowlark.

Nature

2009-08-29T18:55:00.000-07:00

Trail running. Probably not the first thing most people think of when told to go relax. Hmm... And I guess I'm included, most of the time, in "most people."

But in the past three months I've regained a love for trail running that only one who runs trails will ever understand. I can probably at least in vague terms get this love across to those who love nature, who love to hike. But to someone who doesn't like to be outdoors in the first place, well needless to say it's a lost cause.

When you're running trails--when you CAN run trails--it feels much like you own the world. If you're in shape, if you've worked hard toward this activity and are down to a body weight that your legs, lungs and heart can support, there is no feeling like it.

There are times, such as when it gets up into the 90's and beyond, when no matter what shape you're in you suffer. Those aren't the times I'm talking about. I'm talking about those times when it's between 40 and 70 degrees, or if it's over that when the sun has at least gone down behind the hills. Then you're in heaven. You float over those trails lighter than dandelion fluff. You run and run and run and feel like you could run forever.

There is a downside to the running, though. It's hard to really see what's around you. It's hard to take in the smells, the sights and sounds, the feel of the nature around you.

If you haven't been out in the hills of late, I feel sorry for you. Maybe it's especially this particularly wet year. I don't know. But it is so green, so vibrant, so alive. The hummingbirds are a constant, the little warblers and sparrows and finches are a special treat when you can see them. But all of that is hard to see when you're running. I guess that's why God made downhills. My knees don't like them, so many times I'll walk, and that is when, although they say it's not possible, I get to "have my cake and eat it too." Run up, feel the wind in my hair, feel my blood pounding, suck in that clean mountain air. Then walk down as the sun sets and turns the sky into crimson and gold, and now even the dust takes on a smell that I treasure, like that of the sagebrush, the juniper, cottonwood and maple.

True enjoyment is if you make it up high enough to scent the Douglas fir forest. The huge brown trunks tower around you, and the forest floor is thick with needle duff. That smell, in the waning of the day, is better than any perfume. Far better, in my opinion. And when you find yourself in the shade and shelter of those giant Douglas firs, you know that at last you are where God intended you to be.

It is at those times when my thoughts can turn to men like Jim Driever and Dan Gilbert, who spent years of their lives confined to a wheel chair, unable to be out in nature. This is something to be witnessed if you can, my friends. These times when you are able to move about freely, to experience the woods with all your senses, these are the times you should not let pass you by. If you are stressed, if you are weary, if you are ready to give up, the woods, the trails, all of nature will renew you. Give it a chance. Don't miss out on one of God's greatest gifts.

See you down the trail.

Kirby Jonas

Another funeral

2009-08-28T16:23:00.000-07:00

A daily funeral blog would likely get very old very fast. It would be like reading the obituaries after a while, and if you are like most people you would be skimming the names and nothing more. For that reason and the fact that I don't like losing friends, I sincerely hope this is my last blog having anything to do with death or funerals for some time to come.

But after the funeral today I can't help but feel there is something more to say than I said in yesterday's blog. Today I left a weeklong class on fire cause investigation at a very crucial place to attend the funeral of my good friend Dan Gilbert. The firefighter whose funeral I attended last Saturday was gone before I started here. But firefighters being who they are, you go in uniform simply to show your support for the family and to honor the profession. It's a brotherhood thing.

In the case of Dan Gilbert, however, I worked with him for the entire time I was a police officer here in Pocatello. On top of the time at work, we rounded up cattle together, in good weather and bad, sometimes eating dust at the drag (back of the herd), sometimes pushing the aspen groves for strays that escaped the main drive. Dan was one of those people you love immediately, the kind of man whose soft voice you know will ring in your ears for a long time after they are gone. He was a loving man, a great father, a good example both as a cop and as a human being. He was a superb athlete who sat his horse, as I said yesterday, like poetry in motion. I only saw him buck off his horse once, and that was in the middle of a fight we had between a big, curve-horned hereford bull, the two of us, and our horses. Ironically, it was the smallest one there, a blue heeler dog, that caused the bull to get so mad, which eventually led to Dan hitting the ground.

But Dan got up off that ground with a smile, and I never heard him swear. Fact is, I don't believe I ever heard him swear in all the years I knew him. I'm afraid what he would have heard from me if I had been hitting that same ground, especially with that angry 2,000 pound bull ready to stomp him into the dirt. Well, Dan came away with only bruises, the bull disappeared for good into a thicket, and we had to admit defeat until another day.

That didn't change Dan's mood, however. He was the best of good-humored cowboys.

I didn't want to misspeak yesterday, so when I spoke of his disease I didn't call it by name. It seemed too coincidental that he would have died of the same rare disease as our firefighter a few days later. But Dan did indeed die of Lou Gehrig's disease, as I believed. He could beat many things, bad horses, bad bulls, the few criminals who wanted to fight him. But he couldn't beat his disease.

Even to the end Dan was thinking of other people. Like me, he too raised chickens, and if he found a good deal on wheat he was right on the phone calling me. Or with any other information he thought might be helpful. Even when he was getting to where he could barely hold the phone he wanted to help other people. I will always miss Dan.

As I sat there through his funeral, I realized that if people could truthfully say even half of the good things they said about him at my funeral, I would be able to consider my life a success. "Live your life in such a way that no one should have to lie at your funeral."

In tomorrow's blog I think I'll talk about creationism, evolution, and faith in God. Until then, stay out of the weather, as long as you can do it by wearing a good cowboy hat, a good slicker, and a pair of chaps. Otherwise, no day is bad enough to not spend on the back of a horse.

Death ... and Life

2009-08-27T15:20:00.000-07:00

First glance at the title of this blog may tell someone who was extremely positive that I am a pessimist. That's not true, at least not on all levels. At least it's not true in speaking of death and life. I have no fear of dying. No fear of the unknown on the other side. No fear of being lost in darkness forever or blowing around like dust in the wind (one of my favorite rock songs, by the way). I understand death itself, and I have a firm conviction of what awaits me on the other side, and I know beyond any doubt that it is far more glorious than what I am living here.

What I do fear, however, is the act of dying. Not the quick, merciful death you have when your car goes 75 miles an hour into a concrete wall or the side of a 1,000 pound hog, mind you. No, I'm talking about lingering death from cancer, Lou Gehrig's disease, or any one of a thousand other strange diseases that plague humankind. Dying slowly, living in pain every day, losing the strength even to roll over in bed when you need to, or to scratch an itch. That is what I fear.

I also fear leaving behind my family, and knowing how much they and my friends will miss me. This is a matter of fact, not any kind of boast about how great I am to be around. I simply know how much I've missed my own father and the many friends who have left this world and left me blue and longing for one more conversation with them. Not to mention those people I never met who have touched my life forever, such as Elvis Presley, Marty Robbins, and John Denver. (No, sorry, Michael Jackson is not on my list.)

You might ask what brings this on. Well, I attended a funeral last Saturday, the funeral of an ex firefighter who had to retire from the Pocatello fire department before I started here, forced into retirement by the merciless Lou Gehrig's disease. The words spoken of this man were glowing, the words anyone might wish would be said of them at their funeral, especially if they could be true.

While at that funeral I had several occasions to think of another friend of mine, this one from my police officer days with this same city. This very close friend owned part of a ranch, or at least his family did, and we gathered many a time on cattle roundups and spent many enjoyable hours side by side pushing bawling cows. (I know to some of you that might not sound very enjoyable, but then golf doesn't sound very enjoyable to me, and many of my friends love it.) Anyway... This friend was struck down with muscular degenerative disease not very long ago. He went downhill fast. VERY fast. He went from an athletic man who sat a horse like poety in motion, to a man who could hardly hold onto a piece of paper last time I saw him. I decided at the funeral that I should go see him, but before I could make it I saw his name in the obituaries, only three or four days after the first funeral. A good friend gone.

Both of these men led honorable lives. Both of them had good senses of humor and many friends. You will never find me jumping on the bandwagon that says, "They were too good for this world, so God took them." I don't buy that. In most cases I believe Death just happens. It isn't destiny, it isn't God taking you. It's just luck of the draw. On the other side of that coin, God COULD stop it if he wanted to. He can do anything. And I don't doubt for one moment that he has saved many a person who should have died. But imagine how crowded this world would be if God saved every worthwhile human being. So I understand why he lets some pass from our midst, even those who seem so worthwhile, who seem to be doing so much good in our world.

I guess what I got out of this last week, what I hope you all will take away from this blog, is how important it is to live every day as if it were your last. Don't leave those loving words unspoken. Don't neglect to give that hug or kiss, or hold that hand. Too many people go out without warning--"buck out," as the cowboys used to say. You may be one. It may be tomorrow. It may be today. Reach out and touch those you love, and let them know it. You may never get another chance.

I am not afraid of death, but I do love life, as long as it is a quality life. Treat it like you love it. Don't ever let your loved ones have to make amends with you at your graveside or stand there in prayer, wondering if you truly loved them because you didn't say it. Let's face it, for many of you reading this, there may be no tomorrow.

And for all of my friends out there who read this, including all those who have touched my life but briefly, I will say this, since I am preaching it. I love you. Don't let that chain be broken.

Kirby Jonas
www.kirbyjonas.com