Backward Running Clock, Revisited

Tock…Tick…Tock…Tick… 

The dream returned but different. The dream where Momma doesn’t care if I look into the sun anymore. Momma is but a distant memory.  She blew her mind out in a crash; didn’t wake up to avoid the collision. 

I walked into a car and fell into a dream and looked at the hazy sky. I walked along a cloud that rained upon the people below. They melted. 

Why do you suppose that is? I asked myself as I drove to my sister’s place in Oregon, far, far away from here. But where is it here? Does anybody know? Does anybody care? I looked into the rain. The sun took a day off. 

I saw my sister visiting Mother. They were having tea and scones gossiping about me and Dad. They pretended not to notice me. “Oh, I know all too well about his games,” she told her. They laughed. “Oh, there you are,” My sister said. “It’s time to go camping. Do you have your license?” 

I looked at her and then I looked at Mother. She appeared young like she was in her thirties. I’m in my sixties. My sister is in her fifties. Dad isn’t in the room yet. Maybe he already left. “I left my license at my trailer,” I replied feeling foolish. 

“See what I mean,” she told Mother. “He’s always forgetful just like you used to be before that day when you weren’t with us. Now, you’re here!” 

“I’ll be back,” I promised her.  

Ding…Ding…Ding… 

My Marketing Interview for I Albert Peabody

My loyal readers, I have an interview conducted with Logan Crawford, shown live on Friday June 13, 2025. While I’m not the best participant in this question and answer forum, I’m sure you will get the gist of what the book I Albert Peabody: Confessions of a Serial Killer, is about. 

Thank you all for your support throughout my writing journey. 

Not Another One! 

Elsa here. You know the Amazon parrot master Jerry is so enamored over? Anyway, he did it again. The third time in three years he goes and gets himself a cat! A cat! C-A-T! Crazy right? 

I thought I heard a commotion last week when Master Jerry had gone out telling me that cat named Cosmo, he had a writing meeting to attend. Cosmo left too leaving me alone as the late afternoon slowly became night and darkness filled the trailer and outside. 

I thought I distinctly heard coyotes outside in the back just before Master Jerry came home. Then I heard him calling for Cosmo, numerous times but he never came. It was a bittersweet time for me. I got used to the cat and just knew deep inside something terribly tragic occurred, but Master Jerry I supposed concluded this as well. 

The following week, he arrives home and brings in a container with something inside. My worse fears were soon realized the moment he unzipped the opening and out comes a small cat; more kitten than an adult.  

“Elsa this is Ducky, Ducky this is your new home and that’s Elsa.” He introduced us but I was feeling every bit upset that he would go and do this. I thought he loved only me. Not cats! This one came bounding over to me, intent I’m certain that he wanted to attack and eat me. Fortunately for him, I was securely locked inside my cage, or he would get a taste of my wrath, by golly. 

I could see that he resembled Cosmo to a tee except for his size of course, seeing this little fellow was still a kitten. Same gray and black striped design, same yellow eyes. He tried valiantly to swat at me with his exposed nail paws, but to no avail.  

To show I wasn’t afraid, I lounged back at him with my open beak, daring him to get inside. Oh, how I wanted him inside! Master Jerry merely watched me and him—Ducky—pointing his cellphone camera thing at us and taking pictures while he laughed at us, as though this episode was humorous.  

IT’S NOT FUNNY!!! 

Eight Lives Short

The Hunting Ground 

One evening Ms. Coyote told her worthless husband, Wile E Coyote, “I’m hungry!” She was pregnant with her tenth litter, due any day now. 

“Yes dear, rabbit, quail, or…” He purposefully left it hanging for her to decide. 

“Cat, a nice, domesticated cat,” she replied, her opened jaw salivating with craving. “Your babies wants a cat to feed on. They are so tasty.” 

“Yes dear, a cat,” Wile replied and left the dank, dingy den and searched for the neighbors’ cats that abounded in this rural part of civilization. He met up with his two brothers who were also on a quest and their wives also wanted a cat for supper tonight. 

“I don’t know about you guys, but my wife is really demanding lately,” Wile commented as they snuck around barns and garages, clandestinely searching for a cat or three since it was that many of them with their wives waiting oh so patiently for them to return. 

“Yeah, but I can’t say no to Trudy,” Ralph told Wile. 

“Wilma would kill me,” Fred agreed. “No, really, she would definitely kill me, then tell our pups it’s a new type of cat.” 

The moon was hidden tonight, though clear with many stars, too many to count, not that they could, mind you as they continued their trek over acres and acres of land with houses and barns and other such buildings they noiselessly roamed. 

“Shh, up there behind that garage. See him?” Wile he stopped and caught sight of a young tom just out of kitten phase, 

“What’s he doing?” Fred whispered to his older brother. 

“Apparently he’s looking to pounce on one of those mice there in that pile of garbage the humans discarded,” Wile replied, staring at the cat crouched and apparently ready to attack a mouse chewing on some kind of food scrap the humans had no use for. 

“Watch and learn,” Ralph told his siblings as he reared back and launched his thin body in one bound toward the cat. The cat just then did the same thing not realizing the coyote was within a whisker of being devoured. 

The fact that he missed his excellent opportunity didn’t go unpunished by his brothers who joined in the attack and Wile ended up with the prize though not without the customary badges of courage that went with it. No cat he has ever taken went down without a fight. 

This one was no exception as it turned, snarled, and reared back, slashing its razor-sharp claws into Wile’s muzzle, sensitive nose, ears, and scruff, before he bit hard into the tom and rendered it dead as it gave a final gasp of breath. 

“Honey, I’m home,” Wile told his pregnant wife as he drug the cat in and displayed it to her like a trophy. 

“Oh you are good for something after all. Go ahead and wash yourself up. I’ll leave you the innards.” 

RIP Cosmo 

Defining  Music

At work I do a lot of thinking about the obscure and abstract. Being a janitor and all that allows me that luxury. So I’m absently cleaning one of the restroom I’m responsible for and in the background there are various music genres that play throughout the casino though most of the guests are more than likely to tune out the tunes. 

At any rate I’m thinking about how some artists get more airplay than others, and how some musicians’ are classed in one sub-genre rather than another. For example, Pat Benatar gets hardly any airtime on the radio stations I listen to, same as Joan Jett, both of which were extremely popular in the mid to late eighties. On the other hand I listen to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna incessantly here. Why? I have no idea. Neither are a big favorite of mine. 

What really strikes me as interesting are musicians such as Daughtry who used to get decent airplay on some stations but none on the alternative stations I listen to now. I’m sure it has as much to do with a radio station manager’s own personal bias of who he or she likes as opposed to how popular that performer is locally. 

I suppose had the Beatles not had Brian Epstein as their manager, but someone else, not nearly as good at marketing their brand, we may have never heard of them or been relegated to some obscure radio stations that had limited visibility. One has to wonder how many others out there were there that were just as good but lacked that one spark that set their star into the stratosphere and beyond. Be it a great agent, a perfect song or the times that evolved around them. 

As a writer I’m still searching for my brand to set me on a course for future success. I’ve been seriously doing this since my stroke in 2002, have four published or self-published books and a couple of short story entries in my resume, but nothing that screams greatness of the magnitude of a Stephen King or Robert Crichton or Anne Rice. I hope one day my ship will come and I can retire happily ever after. 

Space

As is my guilty pleasure for a nerd like me, I watched another episode of Nova last night. This time it dealt with advances in the physics of space. New and fun things called dark matter and dark energy. 

Like many of you who took Astronomy 143, we were just understanding relativity theory, space/time and gravity. The misconception of fifty, or in my case forty years ago was that space was basically a static unmoving entity; no more.  

According to the episode that theory went by the wayside some thirty years ago when physicists realized that galaxies that they observed were moving as fast at the outer rim of their rotations as the same stuff within the galaxy. The reason? Space is expanding and has expanded for billions of years, and most likely will continue well into the future, billions of years to come. 

Now the new and fun stuff is called dark matter and dark energy. The jury is still out as to what dark matter actually is, but in a quick and easy explanation it is that it is not visible to light, it is about 27 percent of the universe, while dark energy that represents 60 percent of the universe is the cement that binds the universe together or the whole show would fly apart. All the stars and planets and other stuff that makes up the universe is but five percent that we can actually see in the night sky. 

Back in the 90s I found a book called The Physics of Star Trek, which is a fascinating book by Lawrence M. Krauss, first published in 1995. It explores the scientific concepts behind the Star Trek universe, analyzing whether technologies like warp drive, teleportation, and time travel could exist within the laws of physics. 

Obviously, what wasn’t included was the concept of expanding universe, galaxies and dark matter because that concept hadn’t been broached at that time. I’m sure had Roddenberry known, there would have definitely been episodes of those topics included to allow Spock to consider the logic behind these new and fun ideas. 

Remembering an Old Friend

Now it’s going on what sixteen years? Anyway, his name was Steve McCollough, and he was my roommate for a number of years back in the early 90s. I lived at his house that was next door to my parents’ place in West Richland. Coincidence? Perhaps, but our lives intertwined from one extreme to the other. We became friends then departed ways, then roommates, then former  roommates, and so on until my sister called me that evening maybe three months after Mom died that he had passed too. 

It was one of those freak accidents we all hear about. You know, you’re home alone and you have to reach for something and get a step stool or chair, and you lose your balance and crash hard into the floor. In his case, a countertop ledge got in the way and his head struck that instead. One of his brothers, who lived near his apartment tried reaching him and got concerned when he didn’t get an answer, went to investigate.  

The news was a shock to say the least, especially for me and my sisters. Cathy as fate would have it, became more than just friends, eventually living with each other and becoming lovers, but that ended as most relationships pretty much do, including mine. 

His brother called my sister and told her the news that Steve was gone. She told me all about the funeral afterwards. I’m not sure if he even suffered but it was revealed he had probably been that way, lying on the kitchen floor for days. His father was devastated. 

Like me, Steve had a substance abuse issue. Drinking and smoking pot was par for him for a number of years. I don’t know if he ever quit. His brother told Cathy he was trying to slow down. I guess she informed Steve of my stroke and that scared the crap out of him. 

But, back in our roomy days, our concerns were work and after work, relaxing out on the back deck where we leaned on a bar top he built and watched the grass grow in the backyard, told stories and got high. 

We played Frisby on occasions when it was summer and warm in the evenings. One day he threw one up on top of the pump house’s roof, obviously out of my reach. Though Steve stood about three inches taller than me, it was out of his reach too. So he hoisted me upon the roof’s edge just enough for me to grab hold and then I threw the disc back out onto the yard. 

He then released his hold onto my foot and down I went, hearing a distinct pop of my left knee as my feet landed on the grass. I was in definite pain and reminded him I had to go to my two-week National Guard annual training the following Saturday.  

Now it’s thirty years later and that episode is fresh in my mind now that my left knee is messed up from my meniscus and my health insurance provider has denied my orthopedic specialist a claim to run an MRI to see how much damage and whether I’ll need surgery, I’m reminded of that summer evening with my friend who I miss so much. 

What Happiness Is 

I read a New York Times article that delve into happiness. It’s not just something obscure or esoteric, but something tangible that gives all of us a feeling of importance. But then the question remains, what is happiness? 

I read the article, and it was engrossing to say the least about how mankind has tried to define what it means to be happy. From philosophical to pragmatic to mathematical, and to marketing catch phrases, we all have sought to define what it means to be happy. 

In a Harvard study also published by the New York Times, happiness is defined as a long life well lived surrounded by family and friends. There was even a graph made that measures happiness on a holistic world view from many different countries from around the world that made these conclusions of how people see their personal level of happiness. 

The one thing I am wondering is how does one measure happiness on a scale? What factors are involved in such a statistical study of this nature? I guess if one’s personal wealth and social status are measurements, then people that are wealthy should be incredibly happy, yet how many people that are genuinely happy?  

I don’t know any rich people, happy or otherwise, growing up in lower middle-class family that struggled to make ends meet. For us happiness was being well fed, being with our family and hanging out with friends. Being rich wasn’t an attainable goal. The goal was just to have a nice job to have and buy my own home—live out the American dream. 

Happiness is as tangible as the nearest friendship, the next family reunion or homecoming game at Washington State University, my alma mater. I wouldn’t know how to live with myself were I was so rich that I could buy anyone or anything without worry. I am quite happy with a life well lived. 

About Assumptions

Last night, as usual I watched one of my favorite TV series, Nova. It dealt with how one group of people makes assumptions about another group, using varying methods to justify their beliefs or prejudices, using “experts” who may or may not know what they’re talking about, but like all lies espoused by narrow minded people, the louder the lie is told the more likely people will believe that lie. 

The program dealt with how African American people have been negatively affected with their health from medical professionals, called “Critical Condition.” It reached its zenith in 2020 when the Pandemic reared its ugly head and people of color were most affected by the Corona virus than white people. These people also were less willing to have vaccinations because they’ve been lied to so many times by doctors and the government that they rather take their chances not to be vaccinated. 

Assumptions are what people think of other people, mostly falsehoods that are perpetuated by one’s own set of beliefs. As Sherwood Anderson wrote in Winesburg, Ohio, beliefs or passions are grotesques that invariably negatively affect one group of people over another group based on that group’s preconceived notions.  

In my own short life I have dealt with assumptions based on me. Because I was born with a cleft lip and pallet, schools in East Wenatchee assumed I was not just physically challenged but mentally challenged as well and placed in Special Education where I was thrown three years back. My mother who also had the same birth defect, rarely if ever went to school. When she came to live with her aunt in San Francisco, she was fourteen and barely had a second-grade education. Her mother taught her to read and write. 

That’s just the beginning. I was consistently denied promotions to higher positions including leadership based on assumptions that I wasn’t capable or looked as if I had leadership ability, again based on my mode of speaking. Since my stroke I was denied better opportunities based on my physical abilities, assuming I was an invalid. 

People now ask me with hope in their voices when am I finally going to retire? They now assume I’m too old to work and must be placed out to pasture. I hope one day I can show these people how far off their assumptions were when I become that successful writer I dream of being. 

Anecdotes

Two of my team members and I shared stories that were our own personal experiences that we can laugh about now. 

My story revolved around the time I spent with my Uncle Lloyd at his homestead outside Jackson, Wyoming. It had been too hot to do anymore work in his log cabin and Uncle Lloyd suggested we go fishing at the Snake River. The actual headwaters aren’t far from his homestead, about sixty miles north. 

Anyway I spotted a spot that looked promising. There was this pool that looked deep and would certainly be a  possible boon for some trout to cool his fins in. I had no problem inching down to the ledge along a cliff face that was ten to fifteen feet up from the river’s surface. 

The pool was promising but not rewarding. I don’t know if it was the time of day, or if those fish just weren’t interested in worms dug up from the ground because I got zero bites. My uncle and aunt were equally skunked as they called down to me that they were ready to go. 

So I’m standing on that ledge and shrugged with resignation that the fish won this time, packed my gear and went back along the cliff face as I had done earlier. To this day, I still don’t know how I lost my footing and down I fell off the cliff and into that pool of cool water. Both the rod and tackle box was clutched with an iron grip by both my hands and using my legs pushed my body back to the cliff and proceeded back up that side until I got to the top and looked foolish, or at least I felt that way. 

“What happened to you?” Uncle Lloyd asked, though I’m certain by that foolish grin of his, he knew exactly what happened. After I explained to him, he burst out into laughter. 

My friend, fellow team member said, “Well, the same thing nearly happened to me.” 

“I was fishing along this lake bank, and I get hold of this big old Walleye. I grasped my pole with both hands and held on for dear life. I didn’t realized how slippery that bank was and fell forward into the lake. I did everything I could to keep that fish and bring it to shore. He was the heck of a fighter he was.  

“After I finally got him and put that fish in my cooler this guy comes along and says to me, ‘I wish I had a camera.” That was the funniest thing I ever seen. It would have been worth an entry on America’s Funniest Videos.’ 

After work my other team member told me about his dog but then switched to his cat. “We had this cat, black and with a white stripe along his head between his ears.” 

“Peppy Le Pew?” I asked. 

“Wait, it gets better,” he told me. “I could set my clock by this crazy cat. He would scratch at the door, go through the house, scratch at the back door and we have to go and let him out. 

“Every night he would do this. It wouldn’t matter, we would hear that cat scratching at the door and either me or my wife would get out of bed, stumble down to the hallway and let that cat in through the front door, then out the back door. He had our number to say the least. 

“Anyway, one evening, I’m hearing scratching at the door. I opened the door and let him in, and follow him out the back, open the back door and let him out. When I got back inside the living room, my son and daughter’s eyes were as big as saucers.  

“I asked them what was wrong?” 

‘Dad, you just let a skunk into the house.’ 

“Now could you imagine the possible disaster that would have wrought?” He asked as I laughed at this story.