First Impressions

I’m off work and just get ahead of a red Honda Civic of early 2000s vintage and am behind a cargo van that has a sign stating Llamas on board when I see a bunch of cars parked along Balmer Road, including a van from the Sheriff’s Department.

Odd, I say to myself. I then had to hit my brakes because that cargo van in front slowed down suddenly. What’s going on? I see several more cars parked alongside Hayford Road. A Honda Odyssey is parked off the road its nose facing toward Hayford Road and a number of people and sheriff’s deputies are around the vehicle as if looking for something. What could they be looking for?

I saw to the right of the van and some distance back a lone gurney with a covered body laying on top apparently waiting to be taken to the County’s mortuary at Deaconess Hospital. It’s apparent this once alive person is in no hurry to get to his or hers next location. Whatever troubles or worries this person experienced before today are no longer at the forefront. It kinda reminded me of a country western song I believe George Jones sang, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.”

As I drove on from the scene I had to wonder how and why this person came to that place to cash in his chips, a quarter mile from Northern Quest Resort and Casino. Was it suicide? Was it murder? Was it something more medically induced?

Did he or she have a spouse? Or children. Or was this person living alone in a quiet and restless melancholy? Should I be sad for this person? Or should I revel that he or she might be in a better place away from the demons that haunted him or her?

Obviously, that wasn’t the first body I ever saw. The first one was a couple of weeks after I started working as a dietary janitor at Kadlec Hospital in Richland, Washington where I once resided. I was 18 then and I had delivered a food cart filled with delicious food and was heading down the service elevator, when a door opened and there was this charming looking older man with pleasant smile, and in front of him was a gurney where a deceased person laid. Needless to say, it gave me a queer feeling having to share an elevator ride down to the first floor with this blanket covered body with Einan’s Funeral Home embroidered as the pleasant older man and the dearly departed left the elevator and I went back to the main kitchen to fetch another food cart.

I also saw my share of dearly departed friends as they laid in repose at the same named funeral home I just mentioned. I know it is a fitting way to say goodbye, but it’s not for me. I got this empty and forlorn feeling inside and it was more sadness than just saying so long to an old friend. One wasn’t even old, but quite young. He was shot by his girlfriend.

The story as she told it, they had a bit of a fight and he broke into her apartment and she shot him in self-defense. The police apparently believed her and she was never accused of any crime.

Then of course the day I saw Mom. We had to go and see her following the meeting with her pastor. As I mentioned in previous posts, she was killed in a head on collision back in 2009. To this day it’s still hard to write this, but when I saw her laying there in a cardboard container at the crematorium where she would eventually be cremated, I had the impression that she was merely asleep as we walked up to her still form. The shock brought instant sadness and grief to me and I cried out to her. We all reacted with tears, sobs and hugs. I saw her face. Aside from a superficial cut and bruise to her cheek she looked fine. Her eyes were sewn shut because she requested her eyes be donated.

It is hard to see a dead person and maybe it is because we chose to live a superficial and sanitized environment where we don’t see dead people as readily as we used to some 80 to 100 plus years ago. With this pandemic, maybe we have turned full circle and realized our own mortality for what it is, a natural evolution of life we must someday experience just as that person did today.

The Gulley

It’s a place in my previous life in East Wenatchee I knew all too well. A cavernous gulley that for some mysterious reason happened to be on top of a hilltop. I don’t to this day know what geologic forces played a role in its development but suffice to say it was a magical and adventurous place for a young boy and his dog to explore.

From the moment I happened to discover this place was where Prince and I, later Heidi the dachshund, and Sammy her son, walked the entire length of the miniature canyon. It was what made the drudgery of walking the dogs more exciting and adventurous. It wasn’t a short walk either. By the time I came home on weekends, though I did walk it after school on occasion, a good portion of the day was gone.

This wasn’t really a time of innocence. After all, it was the end of the 60s And the beginning of the 70s with its own complexities that was a stark reminder that simpler times are more in the eyes of the beholder than in truth or fact. Vietnam and as a counter point the anti-war rallies, the hippy, free love, drugs and rock n roll movement, not to mention the Black movement that culminated in race riots and calls for equality sounded out across the television airwaves each night with Walter Cronkite.

I liked to believe that that out there was just it and I was in absolute freedom, away from all the complexities of adult life in general. I didn’t have to worry about my job, making ends meet and keeping a roof over my head. Instead, I had the adventure of taking Prince, Heidi and Sammy down the gulley where I pretended to explore strange new wonders.

One time I took my friends from Methow there. They didn’t see the fun of the adventure, especially Dori, Greg’s sister who thought we were most certainly lost. They took off on their own back to the house, which come to find out later, they had no idea where my house was. Ross, the younger brother of the two and I came home and the parents all asked the same question that we asked, “Where’s Greg and Dori?”

Dad, Pete and I found them a couple of blocks and a full neighborhood away, knocking on doors and asking complete strangers if they know where the Schellhammers live. They probably forgotten that Thanksgiving day over 50 years ago, but it’s still fresh in my mind.

There are more adventures to follow, more lessons learned as I continue along this deep wadi. It was a place that allowed me opportunities to think which I wasn’t really allowed to do with my parents, my teachers, and my friends. Thinking required creativity and imagination which I discovered early on was taboo for the most part. I could think but only within the confines of conformity and conservatism.

It was down in this wadi that I became more attuned with nature, long before I was exposed to Thoreau or Emerson. I was a romantic in the strictest sense, but I never told anyone about that, fearing that they would forbid me from ever venturing down there again.

It wasn’t a woodland or even an idyllic paradise in any stretch of the imagination. It was mostly desert grass, whose seeds stuck to my socks, sagebrush and what I thought were cattails but I’m sure there was another name for it, that to this day I’m not familiar with.

I kept it a secret until one day Cathy, my sister wanted to come with me and take Prince for a walk. It was then that I allowed her to see my secret place and tell her my own beliefs and what I wanted in my ideal world We walked and talked about stuff that a twelve-year-old and his seven-year old sister could only understand. After we left the gulley, we found a road that continued north that I had never dared take before.

Cathy gave me a careful, if not frightened expression as I led her out from the gulley and slowly up this small hill. At the top was a graveyard from the old days, whose grave stones gave out birth and death dates from the 1800s. The most recent was 1927 to 1943. It was a white head stone which I later learned was reserved for those who died in war for our country. There are others like it but long ago, going back to Civil War and World War One.

We were awed by the whole experience as we saw stones of enfant children not even a year old buried next to siblings and parents who passed much later.

There are many lessons one learns from just taking a walk on a road less traveled or down a winding trail that leads into a gulch that no one pays much attention to. I didn’t learn about myself from reading a book, I learned about myself walking my dogs with my friends and my sister away from the concerns out there that we cannot control.

Recuperating

Sunday, I threw my back out somehow. I’m going to see my doctor, Cyndi at the Kaiser Permanente clinic this afternoon. I’m in pain but semi-functional as I inform you my loyal readers that I had some not-so-great news from my publisher in regard to the royalty payment I’ve waited since August for.

They say all calamities comes in threes so I guess my back issue is number three after my unforeseen eviction from my mother’s in law and this royalty business. I had high hopes that the book would sell better than it did. The payment was chicken scratch for all intents and purposes. I’ll just have to get more marketing done so my book is out there for the masses to see, buy and read, then word of mouth usually takes care of itself after that.

I had a feeling that the back issue would be something like a foreboding since about July. It was then I started noticing my left foot turning outward whenever I walked. I blamed it on the uneven ground and the fact that Lillian insisted no shoes be worn inside the house. I thought after I bought a newer pair of shoes this would stop, and it did to a point, but every once in awhile it periodically became an issue again and I concentrated on repositioning my left foot so it wouldn’t turn.

Since I moved up here and started working at the casino again, the problem resurfaced, only this time it happened more as a result of my left foot doing this after four or five days of work. On Sunday it became so bad that it was affecting my back and I fear I might have pulled a muscle. I told the nurse who took the call this morning that I had a stroke going on 19 years and haven’t used an AFO in ten because I felt I had outgrown that orthopedic device. Now I’m thinking I may need to wear it again.

So, this afternoon I get to see her and see about getting fitted with a new AFO and hopefully the back issue will resolve itself.

11-11-11

The eleventh hours of the eleventh day of the eleventh month Private Doug Clark wasted away in an endless trench on the Western Front; a wasteland of craters, mud and tree trunks splintered by bombs and howitzer shells.  He shivered in damp and cold air.  His coat that everyone assured him would keep him warm, was wet and useless.  There was word of a truce about to begin, but the general would have none of it.  He wanted to carry the fight to the city of Berlin.

Doug didn’t immerse himself in the politics of generals and such; his concern was warmth and survival.  He heard of a flare that would signal the truce to commence, but didn’t remember what the color of that flare was.  When the platoon sergeant, a kindly looking older man with a gray mustache and fat, jovial face, told them moments ago, a mortar landed and exploded.  The blast muted whatever he said in regards to the flare’s color.

I’m too cold to care at this point, Doug the doughboy stated miserably to himself.  The color could be the colors of the rainbow for all I care.  He had a four day growth of beard on his nineteen year old face.  It made him look more manly, he thought.  At least back home in Philly I won’t be called kid anymore, when I get back.  He wasn’t a big man, but he wasn’t small either.  I’m just an average guy trying to do the right thing, he kept convincing himself.

It was quiet now, only an occasional cannon shot could be heard from behind them.  Then they could hear the low pitch whistle as the shell flew past them and then the ear-piercing explosion over there on the other side of the line.

This place was a beautiful forest, the Ardennes, before the war, seemingly an eternity ago.  Now, Doug only saw a muddy zone of absolute devastation wherever he looked.

There was no flare that shot up though, instead a whistle sounded that ordered everyone to pull themselves from the trenches and attack their trench 500 yards away.  A no-mans land of barbwire and mines, machine gun nests and pillboxes that had seen its share of conflict since America went over here back in 1917.  What is going on, Doug asked himself as he followed the orders of the platoon sergeant and platoon leader, screaming at them at the top of their lungs.   They ran through the wire, all shredded from the last cannonade that erupted moments ago.  They pushed them to their trench and Doug could see the scared faces of the German soldiers someone hastily tried to create a makeshift white flag from a towel, or something.  They all seemed more puzzled by this than anything, as if the general wanted that last 500 yards for himself.  The Kaiser’s Krieger threw down their Gewehr 98 rifles to the ground and raised their hands in the sign of surrender.

Doug reached them at the same time as the platoon sergeant and began ordering them in German who was in charge.  A corporal pointed at an officer who also dropped his personal weapon and his sword to the ground and raised his hands.  The platoon sergeant held his Browning BAR level to the Captain and asked him in German, “Are you prepared to surrender at this time?”

          “I will only talk to your commander,” he replied with contempt to the NCO.

          “LT, he will only talk to your kind,” the Sergeant pointed out with sarcasm in his voice.

          The lieutenant came up to the German captain and said, “I don’t speak German.”

          The officer looked at both men in confusion and frustration as he realized he had no choice as to whom he talked to and stated to the platoon sergeant, “Yes, my men are prepared to surrender.”

          Doug guarded a group of German privates who spoke quietly among themselves and asked him a question in German.  Doug, being from Philadelphia, recognized some of the words, but had a hard time figuring out what he asked.  “I’m sorry, my German isn’t that good,” he replied in a halting German that all laughed at.

          Finally, another German soldier in the group asked in English, “Now that you have successfully invaded our land, what do you plan to do with us?  The war is over, American.”

          “Sir, is that true?” he asked his platoon leader, a clean cut butter bar from West Point.

          “I supposed it might be true,” he stated as a green flare shot up into the sky and a loud whoop of joy erupted from everyone up and down the front.

Truth Stranger than Fiction?

True story, which is funny because I have a rough draft of a similar plot in the works awaiting editing and beta reading. A 19-year-old boyfriend sells his under aged girlfriend into a sex slavery ring in Seattle for $1,000. Daddy finds out about it, goes, and rescues his daughter and brings her safely back to Spokane.

Later that month, last November 2020, Daddy confronts this boyfriend who is visiting friends in Airway Heights, beats and stabs boyfriend to death. Daddy places dead boyfriend in a car and drives him out to North Spokane County and abandons the car.

A year later, someone sees the car and doesn’t realize a corpse is in the trunk, steals the car and abandons it in a neighborhood I once considered my home turf.

Last week, someone reported the car to the police citing an odor coming from the trunk. The police arrested 60-year-old John Eisenman for the homicide. Funny that he had to walk all the way home from North Spokane County, a good forty miles from Spokane. Or could it be that there was a female accomplice who once upon a time had feelings for this boyfriend and picked daddy up and drove him home?

Unfortunate Accident?

I saw the news report about the Alec Baldwin shooting. I heard how the armorer on the Rust movie set who was responsible for insuring all rounds are set and catalogued so that no live rounds are in the prop gun. Yes this is a very preventable and unfortunate accident, yet I have to wonder, if this was an accident, who ultimately is responsible for Halyna Hutchins death.

While I don’t put much stock in conservative news such the Washington Examiner, I find it interesting they considered this a homicide rather than an accident. I say that it is interesting because investigators haven’t even come to that conclusion yet.

It is though what this country has come to; a fringe group delighting in this tragedy at the expense of a man they hate because of his ridicule and mockery of a former President.

I don’t have much stock in the ways of the National Rifle Association anymore neither. Their politics has gone so far to the radical right I fear for their true purpose. Yet, what I did learn long ago when I took a hunter’s safety course so I could get my first hunting license, was a credo I’ll take to my grave, which was never assume a gun is safe or “cold” unless you personally check to ensure it is unloaded and safe to handle. Never aim a weapon at someone unless in defense of life and property. Never assume a gun is unloaded unless you check first.

If Mr. Baldwin had done any of those things, then this tragedy would have never occurred. This isn’t a politically charged issue, it is a common-sense issue that everyone familiar with firearms know and lives by. Those that do not know this, either needs to learn it or never have anything to do with firearms.

What A Place

This place I moved to is a house near a golf course in the central portion of Spokane also known as the Audubon Neighborhood. Unlike the house I lived and own, the neighborhood is far removed from the cares and concerns of crime, poverty and blight.

Most of the neighbors are a bit more affluent, work in professional careers, have lawns on tree-lined streets that are green, and the hedges trimmed. It was a place I wanted to live at, had I made more money and my preapproval amount had been significantly higher.

I received a call from my wife the other day, informing me about money matters that are a bit out of my control at the moment until I received actual money from the job I returned to. I told her that I missed her, and she stated that she and Lillie missed me too.

“Mom really misses you because you talked with her and helped her out. She really
misses that.”

She recounted her tirade against Lillie’s stepdaughter and her grandson, my stepson Terry for their sloth.

I told her the home owner has a similar issue with his 20 something son too. I glanced into his bedroom the other day: clothes strewn all about the floor, a water filled fish tank with no fish but some grayish film inside that I could only assume was a new science project he was experimenting on, an unmade bed, soda cans and empty bottles laid about the dresser, floor and table like thing. It’s a small room made smaller by the clutter.

Thankfully, the rest of the house isn’t like that room, though it isn’t clean by Lillie’s standards, not by a long shot. I told the home owner, a disabled vet who was in the National Guard, like myself, but got deployed unlike me to Kuwait and Iraq for Desert Storm, about Lillie. He chuckled at the kind of spic and span order I came from, to this.

We discussed our mutual experiences and I admitted I wrote for the holy trinity: fun, money and therapy. I told him I chose writing over drinking after my stroke I suffered in 2002.

Bob, he’s the actual room mate who helped me and Stephanie move down to Idaho. He lives in the basement with Bill’s stepdaughter and her one-year-old toddler. As far as I know she and he are not an item. They just live in the basement. He’s also a former alcoholic—I mean recovering alcoholic who helps pay the rent by donating plasma and cooking dinner.

Yesterday I helped clean the house. I did the bathroom while Bill cleaned the kitchen floor along with the floor in the living room and hall way. Bob did some dusting. The boy, Luke is his name stayed inside his closed bedroom with his dog Cooper, a Great Dane that is slightly smaller than a Shetland Pony. I think his stepdaughter snuck out while we were cleaning too. Later Bill asked Luke to give Cooper a bath.

He took the dog that stands at my hip when on all four legs, I imagined he would stand well over my head if he stood on his hind legs, outside and ran the hose and scrubbed him with doggy shampoo. Luke had to roll up his pants and remove his t shirt. Thankfully for both it was a sunny and reasonably warm afternoon by Spokane standards.

On occasion, Bill’s other son is dropped off by his ex-wife, named Josh. Josh has Downs Syndrome. He’s chubby and chummy, who likes to touch and feel and hug everyone. He has that ageless looking innocence that these people possess. I know how far that goes sometimes and Bill warned me that I needed to watch him and keep my bedroom door closed so he wouldn’t be tempted to go inside. I think she brought Josh here yesterday but then they left. I stayed in my room, figuring I wasn’t needed. I did overhear some yelling prior to them leaving, so I guess there was an issue, and I chose to stay out of it.

We get along I think because we all share a connection. We all are recovering alcoholics who work extremely hard at sobriety. Mine is the writing, the other two, uses their Christian faith and Bill’s son Josh to keep them away from the brown jug. How long will I stay here in this house? I have no idea, but because I am taking everything one day at a time, it might be soon, or it might be months down the road. It is nice here though; what a place.

A Funny Thing Happened

Not really funny, sad is more to the point. The good news out of this experience these last few days is that I am back to work. On Tuesday I came home—Lilly and Tom’s home—from going to the library to look over my emails, send out new resumes to potential employers and reading the local news from the Twin Falls Times.

Now when I got there Tom was talking and I heard my name mentioned in the conversation. Curious, I went into the kitchen and announced myself. He gave me a taciturn look then said, “We have to talk, and you aren’t going to like it.”

As I mentioned before he doesn’t mince words but comes right and tells the honest by God truth whether you like it or not. I probably wasn’t ready for what he had to say, but deep inside suspected it had to do with my responsibility to him and Lilly when it came to money matters and household expenses.

“You haven’t been pulling your weight around here and we need you to fork over $500 by Wednesday or you can get out.” He used an expletive after ‘get,’ but I won’t repeat that word fearing it might offend some of my loyal readers.

Then he went on a rant about how they have suffered these past few months, working harder and going further into debt and I haven’t helped one bit and somehow the issue with my book marketing got in the mix in which he opined, “You won’t make a dime from.” Also another similar expletive after ‘a.’

It’s been very hard on all of us and I didn’t have an answer that he would have liked, and I wasn’t angry enough at him to come back at him with an “Oh yeah, well (expletive) you too!”

“I knew I was relying too much on my own self confidence that I would have money coming in from remote jobs that I was sure would pouring to me. That never happened. Instead, I was nearly scammed at least twice, and probably got my finances hacked by someone unscrupulous. I’ve been running in the red all this past month and so Wednesday when I got my check, saw to my chagrin I didn’t have $500 to give them.

I sat in the library wondering what my best options to this were. There was only one, move back to Spokane and see about getting my old job back. So, I emailed my former manager at the casino. I gave her the sob story that was genuine. She replied back that there was an opening and I needed to let her know so that she could hold it for me.

So now, I had to tell my stepdaughter the other news, which I knew she wouldn’t like, that I was coming up here and I needed to move back into my house, the one she and her hubby were renovating so we can put it on the market and sell.

While she was sympathetic to my plight there were already six people living in her house now. I replied to her text that I am the homeowner, which in my book trumps her complaint that the house was already full.

Her reply, the house is a mess, it wasn’t in the contract, and she was the renter. Wife then called wanting to know what was going on and why her daughter was blowing up her phone. I told her, and she told me no, don’t go there.

I then allowed her to go ahead and talk to her and come up with a mutually benefitting solution. I then went to Tom and Lilly’s house and packed everything that would fit I my Charger and then heard her voice in the other room.

She came in—my wife that is—and told me that they made arrangements that I would stay at a friend of her and her husband’s for $300 a month. So, on this Thursday evening, I am here in Spokane, with the expectation that tomorrow I was going to go back and work at Northern Quest once again.

The Cat Box

That woman came home this evening smiling down at me while I was taking my daily cat nap. Being that I’m over 90 years old in cat years, I feel entitled to one or a dozen such naps in a day.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I remember now, That human female came into my room and presented me with something inside a shopping bag.

“Happy Birthday!” She told me with her wicked smile, a smile I would dearly love slapping with my outstretched claws. She too is old as evidenced by her white hair and the wrinkles on her face, a hideous woman.

The man who is her mate, I like him. He is sweet and gentle, rubs my chin and neck just right, and gives me a thrill whenever he runs his hand down my back as if giving me a wonderful massage. They call each other ‘honey.’ I don’t know why.

I looked at her with my most disgusted stare imaginable and meowed at her with contempt. “What is it?” I demanded. I meowed at her again. “You woke me up, plus if my memory serves me right, I was born in the spring. It’s autumn you stupid cow.”

But she just smiled at me as if I didn’t know what I was talking about and pulled from this plastic bag, which I would have playfully shredded years ago, a box looking contraption. “A new litter box for you! Isn’t it wonderful?”

A litter box? When I absolutely have to do my personal business, I meow my command to be let outside so I can dig a hole in the flower bed and complete my necessary affairs. I hate litter boxes ever since I was a kitten. Now, I think she has lost her mind.

First, she and ‘honey,’ move us: me, those obnoxious birds, that dog and all of the other stuff into a van and take us halfway around the world to this place where strange and interesting new creatures greet me, along with more dogs and cats than I could shake a stick at. I tolerate it, but don’t like it. I am no longer queen of my domain anymore. Instead, I am a peon.

I watched this mad woman put the cat box together and filled it with cat litter. Of course, when she is finished, she expects me to obey her command to flop myself inside and do my business, while she watches me. I don’t think so!

Instead, I just looked at her with indignation that she would even consider that I would behave like a common lap dog and willingly go where she commanded. I have my pride and dignity to uphold. After many fruitless attempts, she gave up and left the room.

My keen sense of hearing zoned in on her conversation with the woman she called Mom and ‘honey’ calls Lillie, as she complained, “That cat won’t have nothing to do with that box! She wouldn’t go near it.”

The ancient woman ‘honey’ called Lillie replied, “She’ll come around eventually. Winter is coming and we don’t know for sure how bad it will be.”

“Winter?” I meowed in outrage. I almost forgot. Back where we came from, I had to endure the cold, the snow that piled so high I had to literally jump about to get to where I needed to go. And those idiots who drove with such reckless abandon. I don’t know to this day how I survived some of those winters up there. Here? Like that old woman said, no one knows.

While she was out of the room, I did check it out. It was a bit roomy, even for a litter box. It smelled new and clean, which I didn’t mind. I pawed at the granules. That too was fresh and smelled enticing. I squatted down and unleashed some urine that I had been holding to have an excuse to go outside. I suppose it will do for now. I just won’t give her the satisfaction that I liked this cat box.

Unusual Indeed

I applied for a writing job a while back through the Indeed job search site and I received a response for a job offer. I assumed it is legitimate. I even had an interview with this company on Thursday via Zoom. On Friday I received word that I had the job and I just needed to fill out some paperwork and then I could start training on the next Monday.

They informed me I needed to mobile deposit a check to get the necessary software for the writing job I was going to perform, which entailed editing and proofreading pages on their website. Then I could begin.

To start with I had a devil of a time getting this check through my email server. It finally arrived through my Spam folder. The check was made out to me, but the company’s letterhead was of another company from where it came from.

I asked about this, and the person on the other end said it was a donor and this was common practice. I went ahead and deposited the check through my cellphone using my bank’s mobile app.

Today I went to check on the status and transfer the funds into a newly made checking account. The teller asked for the check, which I had to return home and grab, and showed her. The teller told me that check was returned as potentially fraudulent.

On Monday I get to see if that company’s Zoom account or work’s website even exists. Or if the person I talked with even existed. Thankfully, I have no money to give these people, or I would have been out of almost $3,000. A valuable lesson learned I guess.