Blunt Force Government

According to my careful calculations,
the helicopter landed right where the
pond lies today.

Like the spinning rotor of a helicopter, my thoughts swirl around my head as my own Day of Infamy arrives on the summer calendar, July 23rd. It was a day like any other day, back in 1985, except that a helicopter came out of the sky and set down in the field below our ridge top home.

Out streamed a crew of rent-a-cops, wannabes being paid ten bones an hour to eradicate cannabis, and up the hill they charged. Though the front gate was unlocked, instead of opening it and passing through, they kicked the gate in, splintering it, and requiring that it be replaced. They did the same thing with the gate onto the front deck, though they did manage to restrain themselves, entering the house without kicking in the unlocked door.

These thugs ransacked our home, using a crow bar to pry open GlutenFreeMama’s unlocked hope chest. Exactly what they expected to find in a woman’s hope chest, that would link us to a grow, is beyond me. They took nine hundred dollars from us, money that had been prepaid to me for carpentry services. In other words, before I could start earning income again, after the bust, at ten bucks per, I had to first work ninety hours just to break even.

Sweet Baby Lee

When the chopper set down, pregnant GlutenFreeMama had snatched up fifteen-month-old BenJamIn and grabbed not-quite-three-years-old HeadSodBuster by his hand, and headed out overland. They were trying to get three parcels over to my folks' place, where they waited for the invasion to end. 

I was nowhere in the vicinity, being gainfully employed installing blocking, while working on a construction crew building a new house. I received a phone call from a terrified GlutenFreeMama, after clambering down form the top of a ladder to take the call on the land phone inside Jeff and Carol’s old house, back when we were still anchored to kitchen walls.

Michael sang at our benefit.

No warrant was ever issued for my arrest and I never faced charges on the local scene. Instead, the raid having been conducted by federal “agents,” my home and twenty acres of land were seized by the government, a notice to that effect having been affixed to the destroyed gate on their way out.

For the dastardly crime of growing cannabis plants, I was going to lose my home.

I hired Ron Sinnoway, the pro from Dover when it came to cannabis. His specialty was land seizure cases, and he waved his magic wand and made it all go away, nine months to the day after we had been CAMPed on. For this service I was charged $17,500 and I paid it with a smile. 

About a third of the loot came from family and community contributions; we even had a benefit or two done in our name. The other two-thirds was given to me for services not yet rendered, by Michael for whom I was doing carpentry. In exchange for helping him the following year with his grow, he paid what was left of those lawyer fees, around ten large.

Indiana Slim and Bear

Thirty-four years ago today, the government tried to seize my home and property for the “crime” of growing plants. Its agents invaded my space, created havoc, stole from me and left a seizure notice behind, and all I could do was defend myself or lose everything.

All of this occurred because of 33 plants.

Placed in a historical context, what happened to me was not out of the ordinary for the time period. Just up Bell Springs Road the previous year, a couple had experienced the same invasion, but instead of fighting it, they had given up and moved along, losing their home and land. 

I was sweating blood.

I personally use cannabis daily to treat my mood spectrum disorder, and I use it exclusively for pain management. As a 66-year-old farmer, I have my share of aches and pains. 

Here at HappyDayFarms, we are licensed to grow medicinal cannabis on both the local and state level, no longer outlaws. We played the game, we pay exorbitant taxes and consequently, do not have to worry about the current eradication efforts going on around us. 

That does not mean that I have forgotten, or those around me have forgotten, what it's like to be invaded by agents of the government. I am outraged to learn that current efforts in Mendocino County, in Humboldt County and in other places near and far, include similar invasive tactics. I continue to struggle to understand why growing six or twelve plants, or thirty-three for that matter, gives authorities the right to invade and ransack people’s homes. It’s grandstanding, nothing more nothing less, on the backs of small farmers doing no harm.

As someone who has experienced Blunt-Force-Government, I call bullshit. Get a warrant, take the plants and then leave. It’s as simple as that. Treating these victimless crimes as though they were some sort of abominations, is reprehensible.

It needs to stop.

My parents, Pauline and Robert, and neighbor Rex at a benefit,
1985.

Got Zucchini?

I feel pretty much the same way about zucchini, as I do about reading. If you do not like to read, I maintain it’s because you are not reading the right stuff. If you (a) do not like zucchini, (b) are tired of squash in general or (c) have gotten bored with the green submarines, I might suggest that you expand your horizons as far as how to prepare this summer staple.

Have you ever tried:

…simply sautéing thinly sliced zucchini, with onions/mushrooms/pretty much anything, and adding desired spices?

…thinly-sliced and sautéd squash as a last-minute add-in to pasta sauce, over spaghetti/any-kind-of-pasta?

...roasting sliced zucchini in an olive oil/balsamic vinegar mix, along with peppers, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, and serving it over pasta? Or putting the mixture on a pizza?

…the ever-popular fried zucchini patties, with grated zucchini, some onions/scallions, flour, egg and salt/spices? Lightly salting the grated squash and allowing it to drain in a colander, prior to cooking, helps prevent soggy patties. Adding a topping, such as guacamole, salsa, sour cream, ranch dressing or anything that piques your taste buds, is a must.

…preparing patties using equal parts drained, grated zucchini, and grated, rinsed potatoes, and then the rest of the ingredients? (Cheese optional)

…simply steaming cut-up zucchini and adding butter, salt and black pepper?

…zucchini casserole, a dish that layers zucchini, rice, pasilla chili peppers, fresh tomatoes, cheese and is topped with sour cream?

…including zucchini in such traditional dishes as [minestrone] soup, shepherd’s pie, quiche, veggie tamales, enchiladas?

…making an omelet, including onions, cut-up baby zucchini, mushrooms, sweet peppers and cheese?

…wait for it: zucchini bread? With coffee in the morning?

…zucchini on the grill? Whether pre-steamed for a brief visit, or sliced length-wise and grilled over the coals?

…a variation of zucchini on the grill, wrapping cut-up squash in foil, with butter, salt and black pepper, and grilling it over indirect heat?

…stuffing one of those got-away-dudes with a rice/ground meat combo, and baking it with cheese?

…zucchini noodles or zoodles? Using a spiral vegetable slicer, prepare zucchini and add olive oil, garlic, salt and anything else you choose, and serve cold. 

…zucchini tacos? Grate zucchini and sauté it with diced onions and add beaten eggs, paprika, salt and hot sauce, and cook until eggs are done. Put the mixture into corn tortillas that have been heated on the griddle and add cheese. 

…raw zucchini sticks, served alongside sliced cucumbers, carrots and cherry tomatoes, with ranch dressing?

On-farm we eat zucchini every day, and why not? It’s fresh, it’s free and it’s tasty, if you are willing to broaden your horizons. If you do not grow zucchini, but know someone who does, chances are that person would love to share some with you. 

Be sure and bring a truck when you stop by to pick “some” up. Chances are, you will need it.

zucchini casserole

These Little Piggies Got Sunburned

“Peace, pot, love, groovy, posters, candles and incense,” was an old expression dating back from my childhood home on Fellowship St. I turned eight years old in 1960, so I was seventeen in 1969, formative years to have come of age. To this day I am not certain whether the expression above was intended to mock or glorify hippiedom.

I battled my boss(s) at Sunrize (sic) Market about sideburns and hair over the collar, from 1967 until I was drafted in December of 1971. I indulged in the Devil’s lettuce from 1968 onward and once I was finally released from the Big Green Machine, I officially accepted my vocation as a hippie.

Complete with 199th PSC fatigue shirt...

I wore my hair in new location, along with a fiercely red beard, long enough to once get caught in the spinning fan belt of my VW bus, the generally accepted hippie coach of choice. I didn’t shave afterwards; I just learned to keep my head out of the immediate arena of spinning pulleys. 

I wore bell bottoms, attended college from September of 1970, through May of 1982 (With that two-year hiatus as a draftee in the United States Army) and believed nonviolence was of paramount importance, the irony of my military service having a good chuckle. While overseas, I was a clerk in a redeployment division, the second-most powerful position for a grunt, behind only those who labored in finance. 

What is all of this leading up to? Well, I have been in crisis for the last eighteen months, my hippie lifestyle severely jeopardized by an inability to acquire correct footwear. Fortuitously, I managed to find salvation in the form of a severe paradigm shift, by changing to a different style sandal.

What happened was simple enough: The company manufacturing my old-style sandals went out of business, throwing me into crisis. This disaster led me to question my very existence. After all, I don’t even own a pair of shoes anymore, just two pairs of boots that I can’t get my right foot into.  

New look sandals...

My new sandals don’t have that problem because my toes simply flop in the breeze. It is a new-to-me style of sandal, one that is infinitely more carefree and daring, but one that leaves my toes exposed. I had resisted this approach to life-steadfastly-but capitulated when forced to admit that my feet were tied, at least metaphorically. 

Nowhere in the vastness that is Mendocino County, were the desired sandals available. I went as far as Ukiah, for heaven’s sake. Ultimately, I made the journey up to Garberville, in Humboldt County, where I felt I had as good of a chance as anywhere, only to be similarly disappointed.

However, for $71.00, I could refit my feet with what appeared to be the only viable option, eschewing the ever-popular flip-flops. I am a farmer, after all, but the reality is that both of my dilapidated pairs of sandals had given up the ghost within hours of each other, the second via Freddie the French bulldog, and I was desperate.

So I gave the pleasant woman the required loot and donned my new footgear. My initial assessment was that they were working out better than I could ever have hoped for, and I simply loved them. This balloon burst, ending up distributed amongst several of my toes, which took their time expressing unhappiness and then blistered up like fat, little pink sausages.

The funny thing is I had anticipated this response and had been cautious about how much time I spent in the sun in the early going. It was not until a full ten days after I had begun wearing the new sandals, when I had forgotten about caution, that they showed the cumulative effects of being in sunlight far too long.

What’s a respectable hippie supposed to do? When I asked my 295 tomato plants if they could get by without me for a few days, while I remained indoors, they cringed while the weeds chortled. GlutenFreeMama inquired-innocently enough, I suppose-why I didn’t just put socks on.

Horrified, I informed her that no hippie worth his salt, would ever wear socks with sandals. (It. Simply. Is. Not. Done. Period.) No, this was obviously a case for cannabis salve, and why not? It fixes everything else. But such was not the case, the salve making the little pink sausages squeal with discomfort. I was clearly out of my league.

The only thing that helped was soaking them in cool water, and time, which heals all wounds. Time was the big factor, but time refused to take, well, time off, and I was stuck having to carry on. 

Then, from the dim recesses of my cauliflower brain, came the answer, two days too late, but still welcome: baking soda. I put a tablespoon of it in a little dish, made a paste using water, and applied it to my tootsies. The discomfort, and equally important, the itching, ceased instantly, and the crisis was averted. Not only did the baking soda soothe, it served as a protectant from additional discomfort by an unforgiving sun.

With, I might add, my reputation as a bona fide hippie, still intact.

These little piggies got new shoes,

These little piggies got sunburned,

These little piggies turned red.

DMV 101

I arrived at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Garberville five minutes prior to my 10:40 appointment, Thursday morning. I had necessary documents accompanying me in my trusty backpack. Having been operating a motor vehicle without a valid California Driver’s License for about five months now, skulking The 101 apprehensively, I was here to rectify matters.

It had taken me three months to decide that the problem was not going to fix itself; it was up to me to do something. Unfortunately, the DMV in Garberville did not have any appointment available on the day I called, so I asked about the next day.

It was not until we got to June 20th that an opening, well, opened up. I accepted the assignment happily enough, figuring that another couple of months would not matter one way or another, and I was right enough.

It was the old lost wallet syndrome, miraculously the first time it has ever happened to me. The last place I remember having it was the Spaceway in Willits, where I not only unloaded a mammoth cartload of groceries onto the moving belt, but bagged them as well at the other end, into bags brought from home.

Somewhere in the chaos I also shelled out about a third of my monthly stipend to the cashier, and that was that. Exit, stage left.

I never missed that wallet with my driver’s license, my VA card and a couple hundred bones in it, until the next time I got ready to go to town, about two weeks later. When we contacted the bank, they informed us that no unauthorized transactions had taken place on our lone credit card, and that out debit card was equally unaffected. We went ahead and cancelled the two cards and had new ones issued. What happened to the wallet remains a mystery.

You’d think with the number-and depth-of the pockets on my cargo pants, it being January, I could have managed to slip that old San Francisco Giants wallet into one of them, but no, as many times as I checked those pockets, that wallet remains missing in action. The odd thing about the whole caper is that I am a much better driver without my wallet than with it.

A driver who is paranoid about attracting the attention of the CHP, is a safer driver by far.

Reggae on the River, 2017

Though I catastrophized about the upcoming journey north to Garberville for a week prior, my concern being the purported “slippage road repair” alluded to in Cal Trans’s highway report, our journey progressed uninterrupted. GlutenFreeMama and Ellie Mae, the rescue dog, had accompanied me. On our way we passed French’s Camp, known for hosting the annual Reggae on the River festival each August. 

Not. This. Year. High Times Magazine has announced that 2019’s festivities have been cancelled.

We pulled into Garberville’s somewhat congested DMV parking lot five minutes early. Grabbing my backpack, I entered the facility and noted the five individuals sitting to the left on the designated Group W bench, while I assessed what I needed to do. Over at the far wall, ahead of me, a man and his middle-school-aged kid were in front of one of four wall-mounted machines. Making my way past those sitting on the bench, I inquired of no one in particular, “Are we supposed to check in?” 

Got it. Go stand at the end of the white line and wait for someone to take pity on me. Well, there’s two windows going, so there’s that.

I did not wait long before the gal at the right window inquired of me, “May I help you?” while continuing to wait on the gentleman in front of her window.

“Yes, thanks. I have a ten-forty appointment to get a replacement driver’s license. Do you need my confirmation number?”

“No, I just need you to go over those machines on the far wall and check in. Then come back here and I’ll get you squared away.”

Cool. This should be a piece of cake. Far wall, machines, I see keyboards. I should be in good shape. Now what? I’m playing a tune on this keyboard and nothing is happening. I don’t see any instructions. Shoot, the kid next to me doesn’t seem to be having any problem, but I can’t just stare at him and his screen. Guess I’ll go back and seek guidance.

“Sir. Did you check in?” 

Is she talking to me? I felt like a sunflower out of soil.

“I’m unclear on what I’m supposed to do,” I responded lamely.

“You need to check in so that I can access your information up here at my desk. You do that at those machines on the far wall.”

“Yes, you mentioned that. I went over there and there are no instructions. I don’t know what to do.” 

She’s got to take pity on me. I know I would take pity on me.

“Oh. No problem. Just press the gray bar,” and she returned her attention to the gentleman in front of her. 

Retracing my footsteps, refusing to acknowledge the Group W bunch, I selected the machine on the far left, instinctively, and started searching for the gray bar. Again, I saw the keyboard, with a small black box to the right, and the monitor in front of me. Nary a gray bar in sight.

I returned to the check-in spot, now in a full-on tech meltdown, and awaited my fate.

“Sir. What seems to be the problem?”

“What seems to be the problem is that I can’t find the fucking gray bar!” I screeched at her.

“I’m sorry. I can’t find any gray bars,” I informed her, in a very small voice.

She stared at me uncomprehendingly, as though I were a monstrous Jerusalem beetle, obnoxiously waving my six feet long antennae around at her. 

She heaved a sigh of frustration, beckoned for me to return to the far wall and joined me a moment later, as I once again searched for the gray bar, in vain. Hell, I’d take any color bar at this point in time, preferably one that served Jameson.

She beckoned to the monitor, “Now do you see it?”

I’m supposed to be looking at the monitor?

Along the top right side of the monitor, was a dull gray bar. Now what?

I hit every button on the keyboard once again, to demonstrate to her that none of them did anything. 

Glaring at me, she leaned forward and pressed the gray bar on the monitor.

An application came into view on the screen. The woman turned on her heel and headed back to her station.

The cursor blinked off and on inside the box that said, “First name.”

I got this-I know my first name. Small victories count too.

I felt this-years-old...

“Mark,” I typed confidently, and then hit the space bar on the keyboard. I went to type Damien and glanced up to make sure all was copacetic. The cursor blinked unwaveringly from just after the k, in Mark, mocking me for my ineptitude.

Things were starting to spin out of control by now. I hit all the keys on the keyboard again, just for good measure. Depression set in.

I bet you Group W crowd is having a great time, watching the old hippie battling a machine that any first grader could handle. Well, laugh away. If you ever hit 66, then you’ll laugh out of the other side of you mouths.

Dejectedly, I went back to the check-in point for the fourth time, feeling more lost than ever. There was even a guy who was all done with his DMV business, hanging out to see if I ever get it all figured out. I should charge him admission. 

This time the look I got from the woman behind the counter, was laser material, delivered with a scowl that indicated she was looking around for the proverbial fork. As in done.

“What is the problem now?”

“I don’t know what to do,” I murmured, “and I’m afraid I’m going to be late for my 10:40 appointment.” I gave her such an abjectly miserable look, that her scowl disintegrated, and she looked at me closer. 

“You’re here. You can’t be late for your appointment. Let’s try this again.” Only she wasn’t mad any more; she spoke kindly. Once again stepped away from her spot, and escorted me to the far wall.

Her entire manner had changed; she no longer treated me like a miscreant; now she was clearly helping a “special needs” person, and an elderly one at that. It took about two minutes but we blasted through that application, she making the guy at the counter wait while she helped me out. 

Did I feel like a kindergartner? I did and I was OK with that. All I needed was that piece of paper that I had been lacking for five months, and I wouldn’t need to come back for a month of Sundays. 

Meanwhile, it was time for my graham cracker and milk. And a long nap.

These Mofo's Work

I detest advertising because it portrays individuals endorsing products for a fee. There is no attempt to hide what is occurring; everyone accepts the premise that the actors doing the ads are, well, acting. Vast sums of money leap into many hands. An entire industry thrives on chicanery and attractive people, who would sell their grandmothers if they could get a decent price.

These are the "mofo's"
to which I refer.

I hope I have established my disdain for ads sufficiently enough, to make the following message resonate even more for the loyal reader of this space: I am not an actor, I do not represent the company that manufactures and markets Sweeney’s Solar-Powered Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes, and I have something to say:

These mofo’s work.

Excuse my censored French, but I am not jerking you around here; I have no motivation to inflict whoppers upon an unsuspecting audience. No, I speak the naked truth, but I do so only after extensive and exhaustive experimentation. Believe me, I’m exhausted.

Unfortunately for you, that will not prevent me from spewing. Put this in your pipe and smoke it:

Three summers ago, I lost 10 of 40 tomato plants in the orchard, for a whopping 25% loss rate, for those of you who love a scoreboard, and who doesn’t? I sputtered a lot about the viciousness of the little varmints, but as you have probably surmised by now, the gophers thumbed their collective noses at my sputtering, which is pretty good because gophers don’t have thumbs.

Two summers ago, I lost 16 of 160 tomato plants, for a much reduced 10% loss rate. I became the Great White Hunter, employing five gopher traps while wearing gloves, probing the earth for their tunnels, inserting the traps and then waiting, with the requisite bated breath. I moved those traps around all summer, dizzying the gophers-I am sure-with my efforts.

I struck out, unlike Ellie Mae, farm dog extraordinaire, who collared two of them, bringing each to me in the same manner as a cat. I am convinced it was her way of saying, “Yawn,” to the whole idea of catching gophers.

Say what?

Last summer, I lost 6 of 160 for a 4% loss rate, after installing one of Sweeney’s Solar-Powered Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes. I was outraged a day or two after I installed one of the gadgets out in the orchard, when the two tomato plants closest to the beeping device, keeled over dead. I took it as a sign from the gophers that they were not to be trifled with.

This summer, with 146 tomato plants in the orchard, I have lost none, after installing not one, but two of Sweeney’s Solar-Powered Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes. I took a different approach this summer from last year, though, and read the fine print.

“Sweeney’s Solar-Powered Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes require one-two weeks before they begin to take effect.” Oh. It takes that long for the critters to get annoyed enough to leave the ‘hood. But it’s been nigh onto a month now and I am still batting a thousand.

My tomato plants look better than ever, convincing me that the gophers did even more damage in the past than I might have realized. Just because the plant survives a direct assault, does not mean that the plant has not suffered, probably missing a fair amount of its support system to the gophers’ dinner table.

I actually relocated one of the two Sweeney’s Solar-Powered Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes, from the orchard to the spot behind my house where I have my cucumbers, along with another 99 tomato plants. The miscreants had changed 'hoods.

“Move along, lil doggies, move along…”

As of yesterday

Bjorn, the Thorn

I wrote about the one-and-three-sixteenths-inch splinter I removed from the palm of my right hand, via razor blade, in “The Hitchhiker” (https://markyswrite.blogspot.com/search?q=hitchhiker). One-and-three-sixteenths of an inch is the same as the diameter of a fifty-cent-piece. Ironically, this is not the longest sliver I have extracted from my body. No, I removed a longer one once from my thigh, but it is hardly worth mentioning because I used a handy pair of needle-nose pliers, and it was out within two minutes.

[Practically] no harm-no foul.

We all agree that size that is unimportant, right? Small is beautiful. It ain’t the meat-it’s the motion. He may be short, but he’s got a tall brain. You’ve heard ‘em all, except this one: When it comes to foreign intruders in the body, small can be as deadly as big. I’m living proof.

My foreign intruder, we’ll call him Bjorn the thorn, entered my left index finger, unknown, unseen and unfelt, at some point Friday morning, May 31st. There were no papers to flash and no customs to go through. Bjorn slid in home free while I was up-planting Heinz tomato plants, in a little patch just behind the black Arkansas tree. Being a southpaw, my left hand is my dominant one.

Whereas I wear work gloves for all the usual fun things such as pitch-forking, muscling buckets of compost around and working with irrigation watering systems, I cannot wear gloves to plant. My ten digits serve as individual probes, seeking out rocks, sticks, roots and anything that will get in the way of new roots stretching out to feel for parameters.

I can’t remove all impediments but I can try to give the roots of new seedlings the length of my hands. After that, they are on their own. Wearing gloves of any kind limits my ability to evaluate what’s going on beneath the surface of the soil. Because all of my prep work involves a pitchfork, and I know how to properly handle one of these critters, I rarely encounter anything but loose soil and countless numbers of unwanted small objects in the soil.

If your thumb looks like this, you might just be a farmer.

If my hands look as though they have done serious dirt time, it's because I have taken my 247 tomato plants from trays, to four-inch pots, to the ground outside. I have done the same with my trays of zinnias, sunflowers, black-eyed Susans, coleus, alyssum, snap-dragons, cosmos, bachelor buttons, and bells of Ireland. 

Gloves and dirt go together like Jameson and milk.

I do wash my hands religiously every time I come in from outside, and apply salve, but what can I say? Religion and I parted company more than fifty years ago. If you make it as long as I have, there are bound to be similar discards along the way: bell bottoms, vinyl, posters, incense and- 

[Editor’s note: Snap out of it…]

Despite photographic evidence, I am unclear specifically what Bjorn is/was. He emerged in little pieces, over the course of nine days, with me working three to four hours each day, in the wee hours. By working I mean soaking the finger in hot water, supplementing it every few minutes with water from a simmering tea kettle on the stove.

How something of this nature could enter my body without my knowing it, is explained by the fact that I am habitually finding new and creative ways to rip, scrape, cut, puncture, stab or otherwise mutilate my body. What I lack in productivity I make up for in intensity; as a result, I often do not become aware that calamity has befallen me, until I have picked myself back up off the ground. 

In this case it was sometime Friday when the persistent discomfort in my finger informed me that I had a marauder. I prefer the term “discomfort” to that of pain. As long as something is not causing pain, I am good to go. Don’t knock it-it works with weed-eating, processing tomatoes and pitch forking… 

If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't.

My biggest mistake was attacking Bjorn with a sterilized needle the first day, as though holding the tip above the flame on the stove somehow gave me the magical skills of a surgeon.

“Attack! Attack! They love it when I draw blood, which is not hard with a needle.”

Unsuccessful, after abusing that poor finger unmercifully, I now had Bjorn and an open sore to contend with. Oh, and an agenda which required that I continue to work the soil, a-not-so-unreasonable request on a farm. For nine days I worked as a farmer during the day and as a surgeon at night, a surgeon who flunked out of med school after the first semester, because I couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

Why didn’t I just take myself to the VA clinic? Because last year when I had that infection-in the same finger-I went to the VA only to be told that the computers were down, and that it wold be several hours. I left, after thanking the nice receptionist. No big deal-ferris wheel, though I did eventually lose most of the fingernail. I wrote about it in “Redlining it” (https://markyswrite.blogspot.com/2018/10/redlining-it.html).

I do not blame the clinic. I just can’t do waiting rooms, no matter the length of time. It’s why I always make appointments for the time the facility opens. There are still no guarantees, but it provides the best chance for success. The other factor is that I kept telling myself, this can’t go on forever.

After all, we’re not talking about the Giants’ Brandon Belt and his 23-pitch at-bat last season. We’re talking about some dinky piece of something in my finger. Every morning when I wrapped medical matters up, I would declare confidently, “Well, maybe it will just work its way out today.”

Is it a thorn? Is is it a sliver? Is it an alien?

When I finally succeeded in getting the biggest chunk to pop, it came after inserting my finger in a vise-grip and tightening it until the tip broke into the light. The vise-grip consisted of my two thumbs opposed to two fingers playing anaconda, and crushing the end of my finger. The scalding water dulled the pain to a low roar and the cannabis salve was quite soothing afterwards, the lollipop that the doctor gives you after your shot.

Enough of the tip stuck out that I was able to finally employ the tweezers, on-call and salty about it for nine consecutive days. It took another couple of days for straggling chunks to make their way out, but it happened and I am now pain-free. Will I change to using gloves while working the soil? Do you want a pleasant distortion of reality or the bitter truth? 

Line up accordingly, and I will hook you up.

"What Have I Gotten Myself Into?"

Dateline: June 1st, 1982

Pictured in Old Paint (our VW bus) on our wedding day

We relocated from San Jose to a 16-by-20 foot cabin, its windowless openings boarded over with plywood, a structure with no power, no plumbing, no running water, no heat and no refrigerator. There were no cupboards and there were no stairs to get up into the loft.

When we awoke our first morning, it was still dark, it was drizzling outside, it was miserably cold and we had no way of heating our little cabin. GlutenFreeMama looked over at me, her face an open book, Chapter One reading, “What have I gotten myself into?”

Due in September with none other than HeadSodBuster, she looked as though she had just awakened from a deep sleep, and found that her heaven was actually-not quite hell-but certainly, purgatory. I mean, we were warm as long as we stayed in bed, but that was not going to get breakfast cooked, nor heat in the cabin.

Though we actually did have two stoves, one a 1920’s vintage Superior stove, which still resides in this kitchen, the other a conventional four-burner range, we relied exclusively on our trusty Coleman stove in the beginning. Before I could convert the gas stove to propane, and hook it up, I had to install the pipe to get the gas from out front to the kitchen, and I needed some propane.

My finest moment: blazing up on the DMZ
They could draft me into the military,
but they could never draft my soul.

I was a grocer, an army veteran, an auto parts clerk and a professional student; I was not a hands-on, handyman sort of guy. Everything I accomplished in the early days came from on-the-job-training. Just as my father Robert had helped me with the foundation of my little cabin the previous summer, I was able to rely on family for technical advice.

My bothers Matt and Tom had helped me build the cabin, along with neighbor Rex. What I mean is I helped them. I had never handled a Skill-saw in my life before that summer but I was a quick learner. I had my first lesson the day I made my debut on the “crew,” working down in Brooktrails on a spec house.

Told I needed to cut the twenty-foot-long, 4-by-12 chunk of green fir, to a length of 19 feet, 8 inches, I proceeded to cut it an inch short. It was a simple logistical error, a 4-by-12 having to be scribed on both sides of the board, in order to cut it. The depth of a Skill-saw blade is only 2 3/4 inches and in flipping the behemoth over to scribe the second line, I had marked the wrong side of the framing square. 

When I realized what I had done, I went to Rex and informed him. Not only had I cut the girder too short, it was the last one on the site.

“No problem,” he said, drawing out the word “problem” as was his custom. Reaching into his pocket for his truck keys, he flipped them to me saying, “Take my truck into Willits and get another one.” He didn’t yell at me or make me feel like a heel; he just sent me to get another one.

I learned as I went along, especially since I had others who had gone before me, to help me.

Ah, Home sweet home

As stoked as we were to have busted out of San Jose, right now, with this mizzle (mist crossed with drizzle) making our lives miserable, I was ready to trade my kingdom for a fire. In answer to my quandary came my knight in shining armor, Bro Matt.

“How’re you guys doing?” he inquired brightly into our dim interior, that dreary first morning. Moving right along when he sensed all was not well, he went right for the jugular, “Kind of chilly in here. Let’s see now; what do we need to do to get some heat in here?”

Triple-walled stove pipe extended down into the kitchen, but stopped just below the ceiling. That was it.

“It looks like we need to start by finding you a stove. This old Superior you have here requires a custom piece, so let’s go find something we can use today.”

We hopped into the Limo, the name for the old Dodge truck, and drove up to Papa’s barn, where Matt knew an old Tin Lizzie was stored.

“This old dog came up from La Puente,” he informed me. “Not a damn thing wrong with it-it will do perfectly.”

We loaded it into the back of the Limo and headed over to neighbor Rex’s spot. Rex was off somewhere but that did not stop Matt from taking me in tow, and heading out behind the house. Beneath an old storage unit, we found several three-foot lengths of somewhat rusty, six-inch stovepipe, that would work just fine.

I took Matt’s word for everything, even though I secretly may have had my doubts about that funky-looking wood stove and that crusty-looking stove pipe. When it came right down to it, starting the fire using wet manzanita wood, proved more challenging than getting the system up and running.

This is not the one but it could
have been.

In that tiny cabin, the old Tin Lizzie worked its magic, and the cabin was transformed within minutes into a snug little cave. 

I can’t begin to describe the feeling that overcame me at that moment, when the heat from the manzanita battled back the cold effortlessly, and a seemingly impossible task was dealt with so easily. If we could take it one crisis at a time, and be content to get something in place until it could be refined, then we were going to make it.

I needed to know that early in the game, and there it was.

Well, the game is in the fourth quarter for me, and I’m good with that. The score is in my favor, no matter how I look at it, and who could ask for a life to end any better than that?

When I bought Old Paint, the engine was in the back seat.

GlutenFreeMama and lil HeadSodBuster

Bro Tom and the author of Mark's Work