A Clash of Cultures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your servant,

Kirby Jonas

www.kirbyjonas.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is "Me" an Evil Word?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a COLA?

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

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

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

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

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

Except for my wages.

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

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