Brother Coitus playing Rugby in Iraq.

Catcher's Cup. A Painful Lesson in Safety.

When I got to little league age (which was 9 years old) Dad said "Well, are you going to tryout for little league this year?" Dad always wanted me to play sports. Every sport. All of the time, all year long. The more contact the better. Mom wanted us to take lessons. Skiing lessons, swimming lessons, tennis lessons. Dad on the other hand wanted to raise sports-stars, and I was his first attempt.

"Naw... I want to play another year of PeeWee."

The PeeWee rules let you play until your tenth birthday, Little league lets kids start after their ninth birthday. I chose to play with my 3-year teammates for another challenging year on the "Fred’s Market Cougars."

I think I really hurt his feelings by not being ready to take on that challenge. Hell, I hadn't wanted to play ball in the first place, but Dad pressured me into it. In retrospect I'm glad he did. But at 9 there wasn't that much "retro" in my "spect." All I knew was that some of the guys in my class had skipped their last year of PeeWee to "go up" to little league. These guys were already a year older than me, and had skipped their last year, so some of them had been playing in the "bigs" for two years. All I knew was that they routinely kicked my ass in recess, and that no one routinely kicked my ass in PeeWee. Plus, there were little-kid scare stories of hazing (which wasn't in my vocabulary until MUCH later. I preferred the term "initiation") which was legendary among the wide eyed ranks of soon to be little leaguers like me. No thanks Dad o’ mine... I’m stayin' in PeeWee.

I don't even remember what happened that year in PeeWee. I vaguely recall that my 3-year teammates all went to Little-league without me.

I DO however recall my first year of Little league. I was the 38th string catcher, and I still believe that, the coach put me in the 38th string as a favor to Dad. You see, Dad had signed on as assistant-assistant-assistant coach. Sports careers are built on relationships. My first year of Little League was no different. Since I was a catcher, the Coach took me aside and asked if I'd ever caught before? I had, and I told him so. Then he asked "So you’ve got a cup?"

Well this confused me, because cups are pretty common...even in a small town. But while my family had LOTS of cups in the kitchen, none of them were uniquely mine, and what does this have to do with baseball anyway?

So I said "well, we have lots of cups at home."

"No, a CATCHER'S CUP."

I'm sure he read my blank look at this time. I’ll just bet that I looked like a confused dog... Head tilted to the right, ears up, eyes wide, brain working overtime, no results."

Look son, a catcher needs protection...uh, you know?"

Still blank. I'm lost in the kaleidoscopic array of predictable directions that this conversation has NOT gone. So I guess the answer to THAT question was "no."

The coach, again, correctly read that situation and drove the point home.

"A catcher needs a CUP. It's a protective device that fits inside a jock. It protects your testicles. You get the picture?"

Understanding was beginning to rear its ugly head. I think the Coach sensed this, but forged ahead anyway. Neither my ignorance, nor the coach’s obvious discomfort with this discussion was going to stop such a monumental safety issue from being resolved.

"Before you catch on this team again, I want you to have a cup. A young man could really get hurt out here, and I don’t want that happening to my players. One good foul-tip and you might never be able to have children."

I don’t know whether he was actually concerned, or whether he distrusted my skill at stopping pitched baseballs prior to contact with my crotch. "OK coach. Where do you get one of these.... cups?"

"I think that one of the stores downtown will have them. You just have to shop around ‘til you find one. Let me know when you buy one so I’ll know I can let you catch again."

"What do they look like?"

"Just ask the saleslady in the store... She’ll help you out."

Well, asking a sales lady for a "catcher’s cup" was absolutely the LAST thing on earth that I was ever going to do. I had a premonition of telling an ADULT that I needed a cup to put in my balls in, and getting called names like "dirty" until my parents arrived to cart me to the orphanage.

I examined my options: I couldn’t go back to PeeWee... Too old. I could quit baseball... Dad was one of my coaches though, so that’ll never happen. Thoughts of asking a blue-dye-rinse fat woman to help me with a catcher’s cup shot through my head. There’s only one thing to do. Ask Mom to go buy one.

That evening I did just that. I told Mom I needed a catcher’s cup. She looked at me like I was crazy, then laughed at me. I had to convince her to ask Dad. All this ended with Mom buying me a strange, decidedly non-cup-looking-thing and my first jock strap. Of course, it was Mom's first jock strap too, and she got the wrong kind.

For those of you who are testicularly-challenged, there are special jocks made for catcher's cups. They have a pouch sewn into the front of the nad-pouch. My jock was the everyday economy version with just the web-pouch for my nads. Neither Mom nor I knew this, nor would we figure it out for a year or two.

Ever the trouper, I went upstairs, stripped off my shorts and put on my brand-new-what-the-hell-is-this-for jock. Then I stuffed the it-doesn’t-even-look-like-a-cup into the pouch. I let the wide elastic snap into place with a flourish, then immediately regretted it.

Now, for those of you who've never seen a catcher's cup, they are roughly the shape of the front half of a french bikini (yes, I know that I'm mixing gender stuff here...just stay with me) They are made out of some sort of nearly bulletproof plastic with foam rubber padding around the edge (which doesn't help). The whole thing is a neutral grey color with ventilator holes drilled through the front, sort of reminiscent of the holes you poke in the metal lid of a jar when you catch grasshoppers.

Those ventilator holes were the worst torture known to man... Or boy. Of course, had I been wearing the proper style of jock, I never would have noticed this. But I was blessed with a non-catcher’s-cup-wearing mom, so I discovered pain. And that pain was that special type of pain that lasted as long as I wore that cup. Worse yet, I knew what my baseball schedule was, so I had plenty of warning, and therefore anxiety in anticipation of having to wear that cup. I would rather have just been hit by a couple of foul-tips and had it over with, lack of future children notwithstanding.

Back during my Little League years (I don't mind saying) my pecker wasn't much in the size department. But just about all of the nerve endings in the world were packed into that little sucker. And, as physics would have it, my pecker had more strength than mass, so it sorta stuck out straight.

Straight into one of those sharp edged ventilator holes. So, If I wore my cup (which I'd just learned about yesterday) in a jock (which wasn’t made for the job) to avoid injury (which never happened in PeeWee) my pecker felt like someone was trying to split it like string-cheese.

OK...I'll buy that. All of those adults can't be wrong.

I wore it all that year.

Here's an Email From My Brother in Iraq. This is in response to the media over-reporting Tiller's murder, but under-reporting William Long's murder.

I love my country.

I was on vacation in Hawaii last week, walking through a mall will my family, when a band started playing the Star Spangled Banner. I, and my family, immediately turned to face the music, and put our hands over our hearts. Two people, walking behind me, slammed into me, almost knocking me down. They cursed at me and said things like, "watch where you are going" and "dumbass." Then they walked on, shaking their heads.

As the band played, I looked out the corner of my eye. We were the youngest people in the whole crowd that actually did the right thing. Most everyone standing up and paying respect were in their '60s or older. One man, probably a veteran, actually struggled to support himself with his arms on his wheelchair. He couldn't stand on his own feet, yet he still tried to rise.

Everyone else, from the age of about fifty on down, did not move a muscle. They talked on their cell-phones, sat in their chairs, and sipped their Starbucks. No one removed their hats.

I can't believe I've spent fifteen years of my life defending these assholes.

Kurt Scholz

___________________________________________________________________

Now this is your Intrepid Blogger talking:

Present-day Americans are idiots. There, I said it.

Americans are so accustomed to their life of affluence and leisure that they think it is owed to them. History and wisdom assure us that is not the case.

Nearly every day I'm blessed with the thought that I live in the greatest country in the world. I own my house. I own the land it sits on. I own the truck I drive to work, and I work at a company that is able to pay me well. I am truly blessed, I realize it, and in that realization is yet another blessing.

I buy fresh food at any of several grocery stores. I have money for gasoline, so I don't have to walk. I have money for my guitars, guns, and other recreation. I hunt managed populations of game species. I worship my God in the church that I choose, and in a way that I believe is right. I watch one of my televisions, and hear editorial comments openly critical of government policies. I read newspapers without having the "Glorious Workers' Revolution" style propaganda shoved down my throat. I'm secure in the knowledge that if a policeman beats or kills me, I probably had it coming. I'm comforted by the fact that the state is restrained from throwing me into prison or taking my property unless they can convince 12 people to agree that I broke some law that we all know about. I listen to country music one day, and classic rock the next because our economy is robust enough to support the cost of advertisment, and I'm never subjected to patriotic marching music interspersed with a government spokesman telling me lies. I'm not afraid to tell people who my ancestors are, what God I worship, where I live, or what country I'm from.

All of these things are my everday reality because I am an American living in the U.S. of A.

God COULD'VE decided to make me a 13 year-0ld prostitute in Calcutta, HIV postive, orphaned with 8 younger siblings. I don't have to make the choice of turning out my even-younger sister (which would surely be a death-sentence for her) because I don't bring in enough money to feed my family.

He COULD'VE decided that I should be a child-soldier in west Africa. Or maybe a mutilated beggar in the UAE. Possibly a horny and gullible young Muslim in Jordan with enough driving hatred for infidels to wear a "suicide vest" into a cafe and push the button. He might've decided that it suited his purpose to make me any of 5 billion citizens of other countries. But he didn't.

He blessed me with a life shaped by a country, family and culture that far too many of us take for granted.

For the record, there is no free lunch. We live in the land of plenty because our ancestors all got off their butts, came here, and busted their backs to build a country that would provide the life and lifestyle that the U.S.A. provides.

Is it perfect? Nope. It seems like Black folks, and Indians have a pretty good point about past abuse... But if they ever want to get past those events, either individually or collectively, and embrace the future rather than the past, the atmosphere is more supportive here than in other places. Very few of us will get through life without (many) disappointments. However, this country provides VASTLY less painful disappointments than the alternatives.

Dissidents, revolutionaries, soldiers, and our forebears toiled to provide this alternative to the rest of the world.

That effort, for the last few centuries, put forth by better men than you (or me) is certainly worth one-and-a-half minutes of respect and reflection before a first-pitch or a kick-off.

If standing and removing your hat (or saluting) is just too much effort and life-interruption for you, then you can't possibly include yourself among the people who have made this country the blessing it is.

Kurt, you've said a mouthful.

And to the guy in the wheelchair who tried to rise-- Well, there are still heroes.

Just Another Redneck Rolling Kennel From Wyoming.

Click the photo to enlarge.

Para-sheeting, Brad Gets Stuck, Karl Gets Cussed-Out. Names have been changed in this one too.

One beautiful summer day when I was about 11 years old the Behr family came over for an afternoon of socializing. The parents: Dave and Brenda brought the two boys: Brad and Kyle.

We had already bought the winter's hay supply and had it stacked in four huge haystacks out by the barn.

Now for you city-folk, haystacks are not big piles of hay like you see in cartoons. They are comprised of bales that are mechanically stacked by machines specifically designed for the task. The problem with these machines is that the stacks that they produce are not always very structurally sound. In other words, as soon as the guy driving the stacker backs up and dumps the load of bales against the previous load, the bales can settle and the whole thing gets to be pretty fragile.

Walking on a poorly stacked haystack is kind of like walking next to the edge of a glacier. You probably will be alright if your luck holds, but that sucker could fall at any minute.

The several years previous to that summer we had really solidly stacked haystacks, so we boys trusted haystacks. But Dad and Dave Behr didn't.So they told us to stay out of the haystack because it wasn't safe.

But since A: they couldn't possibly be serious, B: we knew haystacks better than Dad or Dave (when was the last time THEY spent any time playing in a haystack...Sheesh) and, C: they didn't really sound like they meant it when they told us to stay out of the stacks, we boys headed immediately for the haystacks to play cops and robbers.

After a few hours of this, Brad and I got a great idea. We would parachute off of the top of a haystack. They are about twenty feet tall.

But we didn't have a parachute. Come to think of it, the only experience we had with parachutes was those little army-parachute-action-figures that came from the dime-store. You remember those don't you? You folded up the chute, threw the army-man as high as you could, then the chute didn't open and Sgt. Plastic frapped in to the DZ every time.

Minor details like that can't hold up a redneck kid's plans. We'd simply have to make a field-expedient parachute. No sweat...Mom had dozens of bedsheets.

So we ran back into the house to get a sheet. While we were raiding the linen closet Mom asked "Hey, what are you boys up to?"

I answered "We're gonna parachute off the haystack."

Now Dad yelled from the kitchen: "I thought I told you boys to stay out of the haystacks."

Blank looks and silence all around. We hadn't lost any TV privileges yet today, and if we didn't say anything stupid our luck might hold. And tonight was "Six Million Dollar Man" night. I silently stuffed a sheet under my shirt (as if that would fool anyone) and we quickly exited the house single-file.

Besides, Dad still didn't sound serious, and we still had better judgement about haystacks than he did. Silly adults...We scampered out the door with our bed sheet.

Scampering is an underrated art only practiced by preteen boys who are just about to get in trouble. Have you ever noticed that action-heroes in books and movies never scamper? Just kids. It’s a rule.

When we got out to the haystacks, Brad and I climbed to the top of the most stable of the bunch. This stack had one end that was stair-stepped. There was a little plateau about four bales wide about ten feet off of the ground. The stack next to our chosen "Kitty Hawk" jump site had kind of settled into our stack so there was a cravasse between the two stacks that got narrower as it got closer to the ground.

After climbing to the top of the haystack, Brad and I each grabbed an end of the para-sheet. But we discovered that the sheet was longer than the haystack's width. We had to face each other with our heels hanging into space twenty feet off the ground while hanging onto the corners of a bedsheet for balance.

The plan was that we'd say "one, two, three, go..." and step sideways off of the end of the haystack.

We were nobody's fools...No sir. We had a plan. We were determined to jump from the top of the haystack to the landing ten feet below us. Once we had proven our plan, we'd jump off the whole stack. If the plan didn't work, no sweat...It was only ten feet. We routinely jumped that far anyway.

So we counted off "One...Two...Three...GO!" And off into space we went.

Now, I've got to tell you-- All these years later I still remember how long it took to fall those ten feet. Not because we settled gently and gracefully to the ground, but because immediately after stepping into space I realized that the para-sheet wasn't slowing us down AT ALL. In fact, it seem to have been pulling us earthward. This was a big surprise to me, and I wondered why.

Lots of thoughts went through my head during what must have been about one and a half seconds, but most of my thoughts were about was where my feet were going to land on the little plateau. When I jumped I made sure I was aiming for the bales below. If I missed that bale it was another ten feet to the ground. So I remember looking down between my black Pro Keds at the edge of the bale below.

I'm sure Brad was having similar thoughts too. But his aim sucked.

In the split second before we landed the para-sheet actually caught enough air that it seemed like it would pull my arms out of the sockets.

I realized that this para-sheet stuff might actually work.

Then I smacked into the edge of the bale below with ten feet worth of thirty-two feet per second (squared) inertia. The next thing I knew, the bedsheet was yanked out of my hands. I saw it slither off to where Brad was supposed to be (but wasn't), and then snake out of sight into the cravasse between the two haystacks.

I also remember Brad screaming like a girl.

Kurt, Kyle and I all rushed over and looked into the cravasse. All we could see was the bottoms of Brad's tennis shoes and our para-sheet. They were both located directly above the source of the muffled screaming.

Brad had landed wrong, twisted his ankle, collapsed on our landing pad and fallen head-first into the cravasse.

No sweat, we'll just dig him out. We pulled enough bales out of the way that we could reach Brad's feet, but he was sort of stuck.I say "sort of" because he wasn't really stuck, but it caused him a lot of pain when we pulled because when he wedged himself into that tight spot his body pushed all of the stems in the bales down. Now we were pulling against those stems, so he had thousands of "broom straws" poking him as we pulled on him.

Well, he couldn't stay there forever, so we pulled him against the stems by yanking on his twisted ankle. He wasn't amused.

Everyone but Brad was a little amused though.

When we finally pulled him out, Brad really was complaining about his ankle. I'd heard his complaints before though. Brad would always have an imaginary injury during play, complain and cry about how life-threatening it was for a couple of minutes, limp around for a couple more minutes, get some sympathy or rest, then forget all about it.

But this time he wanted to talk to Dad...after all, Dad's a doctor. Just the attention that Brad needed after being poked and scratched a zillion times by hay stems.

So we helped Brad into the house so he could see Dad, who promptly asked how Brad had hurt himself.

I cheerfully told him that we were parachuting off of the haystack. I didn't feel any sense of dread at this revelation, since I STILL knew more about haystacks than Dad, and two or three more jumps from a higher altitude and we'll have this para-sheet thing perfected. Dad would be so proud. I was bubbly at the thought of inviting the parents to witness our perfected para-sheeting technique later that afternoon.

Oh boy did the fecal material ever hit the fan. Brad's ankle was completely forgotten about (even by Brad who had become surprisingly quiet, given the gravity of his injury).

My brother Kurt became invisible. This was an amazing gift that he typically used when we had been caught doing something stupid. He figured that if I was the only kid present, then I got all of Dad’s attention. So *POOF*, Kurt disappeared.

And Brad’s brother Kyle was no where to be found at the first sign of trouble. He was the youngest and smallest, so he must’ve snuck out between someone’s feet.

I’ll leave out the colorful bawling-out session. I spent the rest of that beautiful, sunny afternoon in my boring ol’ room (where there were no haystacks, surprisingly enough), Brad's ankle would have to heal on its own, without further medical treatment. Shucks, it was pretty much healed after Dad's lecture anyway. I always though Dad should use profane outbursts in his practice based on this single incident. Brad’s recovery was nothing short of a medical miracle.

Later I found out that Dad agreed with me about bawling-out his patients, but always felt more constrained at the office than he did at home. Something about professionalism, ethics, and swearing an oath at some guy named Hypocrates. Unfortunately his patients were robbed of the chance to miraculously heal. On the other hand, he didn’t lose patients (get it?).

We almost invented para-sheeting that day. It ended up more like hay-diving, which has wisely been completely dismissed as an olympic event.

Maybe I started a personal voyage that day. Later in life I found myself doing lots of parachuting while being cussed at. I got cussed at before jumps. I got cussed at after jumps. I even remember a couple of times getting cussed at DURING jumps (I have a scar on my hand that I got while being cussed at, so I've got proof). Yep. Lots of jumping, and LOTS of cussing.

Some people are gluttons for punishment. Oink.

Dad managed our herd of cattle so that the calves were born in the late winter.

Almost the whole herd would have their calves during the same month. This was accomplished using injections the year before to "synchronize" the cows' estrus cycles. Since they all went into heat on the same day, they all got artificially inseminated on the same day at the ABS breeder's ranch up the road. The end result was that they delivered in a short window of time.

Since they delivered late in the winter or the early spring before the grass started growing, we were still feeding them hay.

When I got old enough to drive, Kurt and I did much of the hay-hauling and herd-watching that Dad had previously done. I would have been about 18 and Kurt would have been 15 one winter when we had a particularly memorable night.

Kurt and I loaded the truck with bales of hay one stormy night and headed to the farm. When we got there we discovered that one of the cows was in labor. Usually cows are better at delivering their calves than you are, so you just wait and watch in case she needs a hand.

We dumped all of the hay and watched the cow in labor for an hour or so. She wasn't getting much accomplished in the calving department. So we decided to help her a little.

Sometimes its easy to help out a cow. You just sneak up from the back, slip a set of chains over the calf's hooves (which ought to be sticking out by now) and apply gentle pressure to get the calf moving.

Other times it is more difficult. You don't do such a good job of sneaking up on the cow and she gets up and runs off. When this happens the cow is spooked and alert, and won't settle down and start straining for another half-hour or so. Then you have to pull the sneaky-act again.

This would prove to be one of the tough times. I must have spooked that cow 4 or 5 times, with the resultant waiting periods in between each attempt. It was getting late, almost midnight, when we decided to run her into a corral and pull the calf.

So we chased a pissed-off pregnant cow all over that field, through the herd, in the dark, during a snow storm. It sounds easier than it was.

Finally, when we got her into the corral she still wouldn't settle down. We decided that the right course of action would be to rope her, knock her down, and pull the calf.

Well that's when the fun started. I roped her and wrapped the rope around a post in the corral. Kurt's job was to push her toward the post so I could tighten the rope. There was no way that we were going to PULL her toward that post. Nope. A 1500 pound pissed off Simmental cow is just a little bit stronger than a teenage boy (or two).

Oh hell, she kicked and snorted and threw her head. It took us quite awhile to get the rope short enough to restrict her movement.

We finally got the chains on the calf's hooves and pulled, but that was a big (BIG!), stuck calf. We had to use the calf-puller.

Now, at this point you're probably thinking that a calf-puller is some sort of medical instrument-looking item that you can carry around in your glove compartment. Its not.

A calf puller is a about six feet long and weighs about forty pounds. Picture an upper-case letter "Y" six feet long made of steel. Now picture a hand-operated winch bolted to it with a big hook on it. That's a calf puller.

The way you use it goes something like this: first, you put a chain (which looks like a choke chain for a big dog) on the calf's hooves, then you put the top of the "y" against the cow's butt, then you attach the cable from the winch to the chains. When you crank on the winch it pulls on the calf. Simple, huh?

Well, we did all that, and the calf was born. It was alive, which was kind of a shock to me given the length and trauma of it’s mom's labor. But the calf was alive, mom was alive, Kurt and I were still alive and it was 3 o'clock in the morning, so the cow decided to reject her calf just to spite us. Cows are vindictive like that.

Kurt and I tried to figure out how to get milk out of mom and into junior when all mom wanted to do was kick.

Out came the rope again.

We roped her and after what seemed like forever the calf was full of warm milk on a decidedly cold night. At least the storm had let up, leaving about a foot of show in its wake.

We let mom off of the rope, and she finally accepted the calf. We stayed around a little while just to make sure that junior was gonna survive.

Now it was about 6 o'clock in the morning. That was the first time that I ever stayed up all night. I'm pretty sure it was Kurt's first all-nighter too, and we were bushed.

Don't get me wrong. I was kind of proud to have helped out (although my meddling may have been the problem in the first place). I thought it was kind of cool to have stayed up all night. I had a good time with Kurt, who was a trooper the whole time.

But we were tired. Bushed. All in.

What do you think a couple of hicks do when they are that tired on a school day? Well, they go to the store and get a Pepsi, that's what.

Nutritious breakfast of calf-pullin' knuckleheads the world over.

We had to drive through town to get to the only store open at that time of day. We weren't talking much just then. I was just trying to stay awake long enough to get to the store. It was going to take something pretty drastic to catch our attention right then.

And right then something pretty drastic happened.

Some idiot was setting up a yard sale in a foot of snow on a Friday morning next to the road we were driving down. What kind of fool sets a yard sale up after a snowstorm at 6 o'clock on a
weekday?

Now I wonder about this. At the time all of these questions eluded me.

Kurt and I tiredly turned our heads looking at the junk in the yard as we drove by. Then, in unison, about 14 seconds later we both turned toward each other and said "Hey! That was an AR-15!"

I had been in love with the AR-15 in one of the local gun shops for years. That rifle stayed in there for so long that I thought it might still be there on the day I could afford it.

Then it disappeared. Heavy sigh.

I still couldn't afford it though, so there was no reason to turn around and go back to the idiot's yard sale.

We just kept heading for the store. Talking about how cool it would be to have an AR-15. We talked about it and talked about it, and when we turned toward home we made sure that the idiot's yard sale was along our route.

We stopped and talked to the idiot, who turned out not to be such an idiot after all. He talked Kurt and I (mostly Kurt) out of 400 dollars. Who's the idiot?

This is one of those times that Kurt smelled a rat. Big sucker. Huge.

When we got back to the house we scrounged 400 bucks between us and went back for the rifle. By the time we got back home, everyone was sitting down to breakfast. Kurt and I walked in with this really dangerous looking rifle, which immediately resulted in quizzing about where we got it etc.

Just think what Mom and Dad had going through their heads...The boys are gone all night, and come in at seven o'clock on a school day carrying a military-looking weapon that we've never seen before. What, as good parents, should we think about all of this?

Kurt and I really didn't care. We went upstairs and collapsed in bed and slept for most of the day.

A Fight, Some Spliff, and a Lesson for Super-Coach

I guess I was about 15 the first time I got stoned.

It was after Babe Ruth baseball practice. I had just whupped a kid that picked a fight with me.

As luck would have it, I kicked his butt at baseball practice in front of "SuperCoach."

SuperCoach was new to town, and had a son who was a year younger than me, but was a MUCH better athlete. But this kid was an arrogant, worthless punk. You know the type. All ability, no drive. Folks, this kid was an asshole.

He emulated his SuperCoach father evidently. Example: After the kid I was fighting and I had beat each other all over the spectator area of the baseball field, and into the outfield (and the sprinklers were going full-blast in the outfield...making a pretty comedy-filled spectacle for the peanut gallery), SuperCoach marched over, broke us up and demanded to know why we were fighting.

Well, the obvious reason was that we were 15 year old boys, and didn't like each other. Not one bit. But I didn't think that it was any of Super Coach's business. And I told him so. He wasn't amused.

I wasn't much amused either. The testosterone was really flowin'... I felt like a million bucks at that point, was pissed off, and was ready to keep fighting. I had that "bring 'em all on!" attitude going.

We all glared at each other for awhile...and then separated off to different parts of the field to go through the requisite "When he said....I shoulda said..." thought processes.

After practice (I stunk during practice. I was a little preoccupied) a buddy of mine took me out in the country to another buddy's house and we all got silly smoking cheap Colombian Gold out of laboratory equipment they stole from the high school. I specifically recall blowing smoke into a cat's face to get him stoned. The cat would get right up into my face and inhale deeply.

I thought the whole episode was really cool. So I got some seeds from one of my friends and decided to open "Karl's Dope Farm."

At first I planted the seeds out in a pasture. But Dad turned some cows into that pasture and they ate the dope down to the ground.

Back to my buddies for some more seeds.

This time I got a whole film canister full of them. I also got a lot of advice.

"You have to germinate 'em first."

"What does that mean...germinate?"

"You know...put the seeds between two paper towels soaked in water for a few days. The seeds will sprout, so then you plant 'em. They won't grow unless you do that."

"Whaddya mean, they won't grow? Are you telling me that marijuana plants have been solely dependent, throughout history, on south american indians germinating them between two wet Bounty paper towels?"

"Uh, you've got a point....But I heard you gotta germinate 'em first."

I shined the "germinate 'em first" plan on, but I still needed a completely cow-free zone to plant my cash-crop.

Then the perfect idea struck me. I'd simply plant them in the attic in used 5 gallon ice cream buckets (we had about a million of them...Dad's a big fan of Lucerne Neopolitan).

The attic was perfect. It had fantastic light coming in four sets of gable windows, it was oppressively hot and humid, and we never turned cows into the attic to graze.

So I filled about 10 buckets full of Dad's "super-fertile-zucchini-growing" garden soil, and schlepped them through the house to the attic and planted my seeds.

WHOA Nellie! They grew like... well, like weeds. It was a veritable dope jungle up there inside of a few weeks. I hauled gallons of water up there, one bucket at a time, up the step-ladder in my walk-in closet, through the little 1 by 2 foot hole in the ceiling (that I probably couldn't squeeze through now if my life depended on it), across the ceiling joists to my crop.

Well, it had to happen-- Mom caught me.

She remembers it differently, but she asked how come the ceiling had new cracks in it and specifically asked me if I had been messing around in the attic.

I said that I had, and when she asked what I was doing up there, I told her "growin' dope."

I was so proud of what a green thumb I had, that I wanted someone to know, even if I got in trouble.

So she asked if any of the other kids knew about it. I told her that I didn't want them to know.

She told me to keep it quiet and take it easy on the ceiling.S

o, that was cool! It was OK with my parents if I grew dope in the attic.

Karl's dope farm REALLY got serious after that. I started using "Miracle Grow" to increase my yield. Hell, it seemed like the movie "Little Shop of Horrors",. Every time I went into the attic, the plants were bigger and healthier.

Then, one day, Mom was coming in the driveway and looked up into one of the gable windows and saw a plant sticking up and a bottle of Miracle Grow. She decided that I was being too tacky about my farm at that point, and told me to move the plants into my room. By this time I had reduced the plants until there was only one plant per bucket. So I brought my remaining plants into my bedroom. They were about 3 feet tall at this time, and ready to bud.

They promptly died. One and all. It was a massacre. So much for my farm. I lost my farm in the late seventies along with all of the other farmers. Crop failure, you know. Very sad.

So, I picked them, dried them and stripped the leaves into a trash bag. The whole crop yielded about a tenth of an ounce. I smoked it all at one time. Got incredibly stoned, and fell out of the pickup into a gravel parking-lot on my head while two girls from school rifled my pockets for whatever I had been smoking. I couldn't stop laughing.... 'cause it was all gone.

But back to the sad-but-true saga of SuperCoach...Later that year (after I fell on my head) the Babe Ruth coaches all met to elect the all-star baseball team. I did a pretty good job pitching that year, and wasn't too bad a hitter, so they all voted for me as a first-string pitcher.

Well...all the coaches except one.

My coach (who was only nineteen years old at the time, and a pretty good guy) asked me "Jeez, what did you do to piss SuperCoach off? That guy went on for half an hour about how he wasn't going to coach all-stars if you were on his team, and what a crappy attitude you had, and how you’re the problem with America."

I told him about the fight earlier in the season. He laughed, I laughed, after all...what did it matter? I was on the team, SuperCoach notwithstanding.

Later that evening, I told Dad about my conversation with my baseball coach. I was just trying to make conversation, but Dad really took the whole episode seriously. He marched upstairs, picked up the phone and dialed SuperCoach.

It turned out, unbeknownst to me, that SuperCoach's worthless kid had been caught by the police for vandalizing an abandoned house on our farm. He and his buddies had broken all of the windows out, and managed to get caught.

The police called Dad to ask if he wanted to press charges. Dad, being a Little League coach, said that if the vandals all volunteered to work one Saturday at fixing up the Little League field he wouldn't press charges.

They all showed up that Saturday and worked all day. All except one...Super Coach's worthless, arrogant, punk kid. Dad didn't pursue the issue.

So, Dad got SuperCoach on the phone, and I was sitting there listening when he said "I understand that you have some criticism of my son. Why don’t you tell me about that?"

Then he politely listened to SuperCoach tell all about what a lousy attitude I had. It took about 5 minutes. I caught bits and snatches of SuperCoach's speech. It was highly critical, and pretty earthy. I also saw my dad hold his tongue during this whole conversation.

When SuperCoach was completely done with running me down with his laundry list of reasons that made me a poor choice for the all-star team, Dad calmly explained about the vandalism of our property at the hands of Super Coach's worthless kid, the promise to help with the Little League field, and SuperCoach's punk-son's subsequent shirking.

Dad said "I don't mind that you have a low opinion of my son. But I just wanted to let you know what a jewel you've raised." Then Dad signed off and hung up the phone.

SuperCoach and I got along all right after that. I think we both had a greater appreciation of the other.

Hey, Where'd All Those Cows Come From? Or "Hey Baby, Wanna Ride in my Limousin?"(the names have been changed on this one, too)

I was working for the family up the road one summer when the strangest visitor they'd ever had showed up.

Now this family was always helpful, endlessly knowledgeable, HARD working, and ran a spotless cattle ranch. The father (let’s call him Tim) was also an "ABS Breeder Service" provider. His preferred breed of cattle was called "Limousin".

Remember the Breeder service and the Limosuin breed. They are important to the story later.

Tim and my Dad would take turns bidding on each others' kids' steers every year at auction (after the county fair), just to run the prices up. Hell, we never ate those steers. Tim and Dad did what was called "turning", which is an uptown, classy way of saying that after paying a LOT for your neighbor's kid's steer you sell it to Armor Hot Dogs for market price. This wasn't a strange practice in the pre-Reagan years since it was tax-deductible, lots of folks did it. I think Tim and Dad(both hyper-competitors) enjoyed the one-upmanship, but the people who enjoyed it the most were the kids doin' the sellin'.

Of course, Tim's kids steers always sold for WAY more per pound than mine or Kurt's (I can't remember them NOT having some sort of "Champion" ribbon attached to the halter of their steers in the auction ring... and the county fair judges probably let our skinny-assed steers into the fair out of pity, or blackmail). But our steers weighed more, coming from a larger breed. You sell beef by the pound... So it was probably pretty even-steven.

Anyway, I worked for Tim one summer (that's how I started this chapter, huh?). One day the whole family was laughing their butts off when I came up to the ranch house. The son (call him Jess) just HAD to let me in on the joke.

Jess told me that a visiting business student had paid them a call that afternoon. Here's the way he told the story (already in progress):

".... So Mom answers the phone and this guy says 'Hi, I'm a business-major from dear old PU and I'm doing a study of rural Oregon businesses. I've interviewed business owners in Enterprise for several days and I'd like to come talk to you about your business, and take a look at your books. I saw your ad in the local Yellow Pages.'

"So Mom said ‘Sure, come on out this afternoon. We'd be happy to help."

"This guy comes out... Typical city-boy business student. Balding, little granny-glasses, tweed. You know the type.

"Mom and Dad sat him down and waited for questions."

His first question was "How many Limousines do you own?"

"About 300."

He was really surprised. "Really! So many? I had no idea. Where do you keep all those Limousines?

'Mom said "Oh, well they are all out in the fields right now."

"You just leave your Limousines in the fields?"

"They finally figured out what was going on-- Mom said "You thought we run a Limo service?"

"The student says "Well your Yellow Pages ad says Highview Ranch Limousine Service."

Mom answered "No, it says Highview Ranch Limosuins, and that we're an American Breeders Service provider."

‘Oh...' says the student. 'I wondered how a small community like this could support a Limo service... That's why I was so interested in interviewing you about your business. Well, since I'm here can I just interview you about your actual business?’

"Mom agreed.... By now the whole family is sitting around the kitchen table with all of the family's financial records in front of the guy.

"So this guy looks at several years-worth of our records and says "Now, I see that during each of the last three years you've sold around 250 cattle. But nowhere do I see you BUYING any number of cattle to speak of. If you're selling all of these cattle... Where are they coming from?"

"Well, hell.... We didn't know what to say. I mean, how stupid IS this guy?"

"Finally, Dad pushed his hat back and said 'Well, when a daddy bull, and momma cow love each other very much...."

Jess couldn't continue his story after that. He actually had to take a knee, then he laid on his side on the front lawn and laughed for what seemed like an awfully long time. He laughed so hard I thought he'd have a stroke and die in the front yard.

'Course, I was too busy laughing at the city-dude to care much about Jess’ health right then.

The big joke between Jess and me for the rest of the summer was "Hey! Where the hell did all these cows come from?" We never failed to get a laugh.

The Highview Ranch also offered American Breeder's Service as a adjunct to their cattle-ranching operations.

For those of you who've never heard of "A.I." here's how that works.

You go to the local ABS guy (like Jess’ dad) and sit down with a catalog (in the interest of not wasting a breeder's time, you should probably already own some cows by this point). The ABS catalog is full of bull....quite literally. There is quite an assortment of pictures of bulls broken down by breed.

You select which bulls you like. Now, ABS is not the Dating Game. You don't get to ask them stupid questions like "If I were a cow, where would you take me for our first cow date?"

You judge the bulls based on their statistics and their progeny's stats, ie: 205 day adjusted weaning weight,average birth weight, etc. Also you can look at the bulls personal stats: weight, age, astrological sign (hey baby, I'm a taurus...What's YOUR sign). These bulls are the worldwide cream of the crop.

Then the ABS guy gives you a price per ampule. That's right, ampule.

'Cause what you're buying is semen. Yup, grade-A bull spooge. Choad. Pecker snot. Spunk. Like I said, you're buying the cream, and that's the crop.

Then the semen is shipped to the ABS provider in great big aluminum coolers filled with liquid nitrogen.

Now, I'm sure that a cow would MUCH rather team-up with the real bull than get AI’ed (that's Artificially Inseminated) because one part of the actual insemination procedure calls for the breeder to put a shoulder-length plastic glove on, smear KY jelly (from a tube that would make you laugh and a cow cringe.... KY sells a package that's about a foot long and as big around as a softball) all over his glove and push his whole arm into the cow's rectum.

This isn't just good ol' redneck fun (Hey, Clem! Watch me pull a rabbit outta this cow's ass! Nuthin' up my sleeve....).

A cow's cervix is oddly shaped so you have to straighten it out by manipulating it through the rectal wall... then you guide a long soda-straw-lookin'-tube with a syringe on the end of it through the cervix and squirt the semen into the cow's uterus directly.

The breeder's do this "sphincter stretchin'" all day (talk abut a crappy job...."Hey! You're just gonna have to handle it yourself... I'm up to my armpits right now). They say that the hardest part is shoving your arm up a butt while the cow on the other end of that butt doesn't want you to. I've seen these guys have to straighten their arms, lean forward and WALK toward the cow. It's like a whole day of bench-press. I think maybe women make better A.I. breeders. Smaller biceps.

So, sometimes a daddy-bull and a momma-cow don't REALLY have to know much about each other after all.

Swimmin', Surfer-Dude Transplants, and Pissed-off Badgers. Redneck 101. The names have been changed to protect the innoncent.

The public pool closed at 3:00 PM every day during the summer. It was heated, but it was only open during the summer. Go figure.

When we first moved to Enterprise there was an OLD public pool. It was open for a short time after we showed up. Then someone found typhoid or anthrax or syphilis or something in it. The cause of the contamination was determined to either be the huge, canyon-like cracks in the bottom of the pool or the 6 foot strands of kelp growing out of them. Thus, the pool was condemned.

Skateboards hadn't been invented yet, so there wasn't anything to do but levy local taxes and build a crack- and kelp-free pool on the site of the old one.

It took about 5 years. At least it seemed like 5 years to a young kid. It was probably more like 6 hours. When the new pool opened I wore a pair of cutoff jeans to the new pool's Gala Grand Opening and paid for a one-day pass at the window. After I went inside, showered and emergedready to jump in the water, the lifeguard told me I couldn't swim in the new and beautiful pool with cutoffs. Something about plugging up the pumps.

So I went home (which was only a block-and-a-half at the time) and got into my old swimming suit. When I got back to the pool I went into the locker room, showered (again!) and came out the other side ready to do some serious laps in the baby pool.

The lifeguard sent me home again because I had a Band-Aid on my knee. Something about oozing sores and contaminated pools and public health.

I'm sure there was a method to his madness, but it sounded like a conspiracy to me. So I did what came naturally to a six-year-old... I started crying AND developing a seething hatred for lifeguards.

I still can't watch Baywatch without locking up my firearms. I hate lifeguards. No, I mean it. If you're a lifeguard just don't tell me. If we meet at a cocktail party, say you're a lawyer or a politician, or perhaps a sodomite. A used car salesman would be a good choice.

Just don't let it slip that you are a lifeguard. Anything but that.

Lifeguards suck. And they work at municipal pools, so municipal pools suck too. It’s the same principle as being tainted because you're a friend of Bill Clinton. It’s a "guilt by association" thing.

I suppressed my hatred of all things lifeguardy, and patronized the pools (on the days that I had no weeping wounds or un-hemmed shorts) over the years. Mom made a HUGE deal out of making sure all of her kids could swim. I guess I can't blame her. Who wants a kid that loves lifeguards, but can't swim?

So I learned to swim. Later, after Dad dug the pond, we did most of our aquatic recreation in the pond which, except for the leeches, was a pretty good place to swim.

I preferred leeches over lifeguards. Leeches are actually enthusiastic about weeping sores, and I've never met a leech who was opposed to cutoffs.

When my buddy Mel and I got old enough to drive (and therefore to be tried as adults) we decided that life was too dull so a stupid and futile gesture was required on a semi-regular basis. The local pool was a likely target.

Every few nights we'd park the car a few blocks from the pool. We always parked the car next to the river that ran through the park where the pool was located. Our modus operandi was to jump the pool fence, climb up the lifeguard's ladder onto the roof of the pump house, raise some Hell, do a few high-dives, jump back over the fence about the time the cops showed up, hotfoot it to the river, then float downstream to the car, leadfoot it out of town until our hair dried, then come back into town so I could buy a Pepsi and Mel could take a dump at the local pizza parlor.

It was always the same.

There was a big difference between Mel's family and mine. If MY parents knew that I had broken a misdemeanor ordinance about swimming in a pool (which everyone else swam in too...just at different hours than we were using it) I would have been given the old "Death by Mambo"treatment. Mel couldn't WAIT to tell his parents, 'cause they'd laugh their ass off and have a hilarious family bull session over the whole thing. You know...boys will be boys.

When I was a junior in high-school the county hired a hospital administrator named Richards from San Clemente (yes, Nixon lived there) California. He had two "gnarly surfer dude" sons my age.

Dad invited the Richards over for a barbeque on summer night. Before they showed up Dad asked me to make friends with the sons and make them feel right at home. I don't remember what I expected, but I'll bet it was negative. California was a pretty maligned state in Wallowa County because of the stupidity generated in the land of fruits and nuts. It still is.

But the Richards boy (and the whole family for that matter) were really nice people, and a lot of fun to be around.

So Mel (my brother) and I piled into Mel's car along with Ken Richards and Mel's little brother Don. We headed toward town and tried to think of ways to impress this new kid. We stopped at the Little Store for some Soda pop (I got a Grape Crush) and discussed what really cool stuff we should do that evening. Breaking into the pool seemed like a good idea at the time.

Richards was totally against the idea, but...what the Hell....he wasn't driving. Mel was. And no amount of over-cautious "Man, I can't get arrested my first night in town...My dad would kill me" arguments were gonna keep us from showing mister surfer-dude Richards what good-ol'redneck fun was like.

Off to the pool we went. He stayed in the car.

The cops showed up after about two dives each, and chased our young asses all over town. It was a pretty narrow escape. Richards left the car to hide in the weeds along the river at one point. Hell, we were really pissing the cops off I guess. No one likes to be made fun of. Even in a small town police officers have better things to do than chase kids all over town because they swam in the city pool, after hours, while wearing cutoffs. I'm pretty sure they were taking it personally. We were dodging searchlights and roving patrols for about an hour.

Richards was about to cry he was so scared of getting in trouble.

To make a long story short (and why not...I've already told most of it) we got away. We all piled into Mel's Dodge Colt station wagon (with the big dent in the hood where I tried to slide across it like Paul Michael Glaser in "Starsky and Hutch") and skeedaddled outta town.

Just outside the city limits there was a hill with a big road-cut in it. As we crested the hill a huge old hoary badger ran across the road in front of the car.

Mel laid on the skids and we all piled out of the car (which was now sitting on the crest of a hill, with all four doors standing open, in the middle of the road...Mel never was too good at finding a safe parking spot). We all took off after the badger at a dead sprint. I had grabbed the Grape Crush bottle off the floorboards of Mel's car before I got out.

The badger looked over his shoulder at a bunch of long-haired rednecks chasing him and decided that discretion was the better part of valor. He got to the edge of the road cut (which was a soft, loamy soil) and started digging like the devil...or at least a bunch of hicks fresh from a misdemeanor...were on his trail.

We got there only a few seconds after he started digging his escape-route. We started wailing the tar and nicotine out of that big ol’ nasty badger.

Mel, Don, and I were all crowded around him punching him, and I was whacking him with a ten-cent-deposit Grape Crush bottle (back when they weighed about a pound empty). Thump-thump-THUMP-dig-dig-Thump-dig-THUMP.

Richards just stood there and watched while making California surfer-dude noises.

"Whoa dude! he's gettin' away!"

Like any of us really wanted to keep him.

I'd been bitten by a hamster once or twice...I had NO desire to be bitten by a badger the size of a small sheep. The badger was REALLYtrying to get away now. And he was actually making pretty good progress.

THUMP! thump-DIG-DIG-thump-THUMP!

He was almost so far into his new hole now that we couldn't reach him. I couldn't use the bottle because there wasn't room to swing it inside the narrow hole.

That didn't stop Mel, and Doug from punching him some more. When he got his hole deep enough that his butt was about a foot inside the hole Mel reached inside the hole to grab him and pull him back out.

Even though Mel is a smart guy, no one ever accused him of being a genius. But that was one of the STUPIDEST things I've ever seen done (and I've been around the stupidity block...yessiree).

Badgers have loose skin. Loose skin allows you to turn around and bite whatever is holding your ass.

Mel got a handful of badger ass and gave it a good tug.

Later I'd learn that what happened next is normal. Time slowed down. When in the presence of danger or stupidity (or both) the human brain processes information more rapidly than normal causing perceived time to move more slowly. The resultant effect is like watching everything in slow motion. Psychology majors call it "tachypsychia." Badgers are couldn’t care less about the psychological aspects of this sort of thing, preferring to be more pragmatic and direct-action oriented. Badgers are funny that way.

That badger nearly broke his spine turning around in his skin and focusing his effort on trying to bite Mel's hand clean off. Mel pulled his hand off that badger's big ol’ butt with about one nanosecond to spare. The badger bit thin air with a *snap* that sounded like a rat-trap being tripped. Mel pulled his hand away so violently that it almost spun him around from the momentum.

The badger must’ve decided to change strategies, because he started coming out of his hole toward us. I guess he'd had enough of our reindeer games.

So four wet rednecks and a surfer-dude turned their collective chlorine-smelling asses and ran like hell back to the car. And peeled rubber....well, we peeled as much rubber as a Carter-era Dodge Colt could peel. Let's round it up... Call it four inches of rubber.

I have no idea what that badger thought about the whole thing (I can probably guess), but he ended up showing us a thing or two that night. Teeth.

Richards couldn't stop talking about it. "Whoa! I've NEVER seen anything like THAT, dude..."

You guys are crazy...Did you see the gnarly old TEETH on that thing? By the way, what's that thing called? A llama? Can we do it again?"

Over a couple of years of intensive, exhaustive training Ken Richards turned out to be a pretty good redneck. And we MADE him.

We were so proud.

NOON-Chucks! Thrillseekers! Head Wounds!

One cold day when Kurt and I were about 6 and 9 respectively we were huddled together in front of the boob tube watching "Thrill Seekers." This was a syndicated show out of Spokane (that's Spoe-CAN..Not SPOE-kane). Anyway, Thrill Seekers had obviously been made for Karl Scholz's personal enjoyment because it had all manners of stupid and futile life-threatening and violent stunts performed for the camera by people who are no longer alive.

But on that day it was as if God himself had spoken to me through Chuck Connors (late of "Branded" fame). The Lord's message was hidden in a segment featuring a 547th degree black-belt Karate-guy swinging two chunks of metal attached to each other by a chain.

Chuck Connors soberly informed us that these were an ancient Japanese weapon called NOON-chucks, and that this was incredibly dangerous so we should not try this at home.

You gotta be kidding, Chuck! Watching that karate-guy swing those miraculously dangerous sticks in slow motion around his head and under his armpit and over his shoulder to culminate in a dramatic downstroke which terminated by blasting a red fireplace brick into dust simply made me NEED to check these NOON-chucks out.

Kurt and I grabbed our coats and the only tool we could find and blasted out of the house on a mission.

In search of suitable NOON-chuck building materials Kurt and I schlepped out across hill and dale with a broken aw blade. The best we could do was to cut some stems from a shrub. They were decidedly unsuitable given that if we pounded in a fence staple with a hammer the green wood spit instantly. We tried to swing them around anyway...which just ended in the free end of the NOON-chuks flying off, and Kurt and I trying to get behind the same cover before the newlyfreed stick's orbit decayed.

Then...A miracle. I became for an instant a NASA scientist. Everything was clear. The plans for the perfect set of NOON-chucks simply appeared as if by magic in my head. I would cut a piece of chain from the dog's run, and make the perfect set of NOON-chuks NOT from wood...but frommetal.

Kurt and I stole silently and stealthfully into the neighboring property where a bunch of old trucks were abandoned. Ok, we probably weren't all THAT stealthy or silent. In fact we were probably bitching at each other. But we climbed the fence and went over to the wrecked trucks.

We happened upon a rear-view mirror mount for what might have been a rare 1932 Schmedlap Diesel Freight Master Truck. We sawed four pretty much equal pieces of the mirror mount out over a period of hours and at a high price in blisters (but it was worth it... we were Thrill Seekers).

With our new-found prizes we sneaked home...Knowing full well that Mom would summarily snatch any crafts project from us on the misguided (OK...Not so misguided) notion that we were up to no good. Which, of course we were.

We surreptitiously drilled holes near the end of each end of our NOON-chucks and attached a piece of dog chain with a stout piece of electric fence wire that Dad had forgotten to bury in the huge pit in the back of the property.

Success! Eureka! Our NOON-chucks were complete. Now we had something truly dangerous to play with, and that made me deliriously happy.

Looking about for something to hit with them, I realized that if the ever-vigilant and watchful, all-knowing Mom saw us with these she'd throw them in the burn barrel just for general purposes. With this in mind, Kurt and I slunk off to the barn, safe from the parental watcher's prying eyes. After all, this was a cold, lousy day. She wasn't leaving the house, BUT after the heavens opened up to show me the way I wasn't about to squander the providential good fortune to have seen, built, and now owned a pair of real, live NOON chucks.

So, NOON-chucks concealed up the sleeves of our identical green Frostline goose-down jackets, Kurt and I sneaked to the barn.

I decided that the safest thing to hit was the small chunks of shrub stem that we had originally mangled in our NOONchuck making efforts. At this point bricks seemed like a rather advanced technique.

On the TV show, the karate guy placed two bricks about 8 inches apart from each other and laid the object to be broken between the two. I decided not to reinvent the wheel at this point, so I did the same. I laid the green stick between two bricks and with a hearty "HAI-KARATE" I lashed downward with all of my might. The green stick simply caught my NOON-chuck and threw it back at me, hitting the nearest portion of my anatomy (my forehead). When I finally stopped seeing stars, I stood back up, brushed myself off, and threw my NOON-chucks into a pile of junk and left for the house, fully intending never to use them again.

An hour later Kurt came in, calmly hung up his coat and announced that he could break bricks with his NOON-chucks. I gave him a lot of crap, but could tell by his patented smugger-than-thou look that he was on to something.

He took me out into the barn and set up a brick (leftover from our fireplace, in which we used bricks leftover from the Harold's Women's store fire). Then he calmly and efficiently broke that brick into two clean pieces. As I watched the pieces fall I noticed that this wasn't his first such success. Hell, he was ankle deep in broken bricks.

We kept those NOON-chucks pretty well secreted away from prying eyes for several years. And we broke a lot of bricks.

Note to self: No pigs in the kissing booth next year.

Lemme Tell Ya 'Bout Hick Fun

I did my growing in Oregon
’Midst mountains and trees and grass.

And when I tried to burn the trash

A turkey jumped my ass.

Young life was filled with simple things

A pond, a dog, a mitt,

Cub scouts and bikes and BB guns,

And boots just caked with shit.

I learned to laugh and work and love

And drive and fight and play

And be the guy you wish you were

If you're from New York, or gay.

I left the hills and wandered off

In many other directions.

But some things never seem to change

My thoughts, my views (and my erections).

I saw cows that could not skate,

And bird dogs, tough and able,

A flattened cat, a hatchling goose,

And a hamster on an air hockey table.

We country hicks, we like to fight

And drink and swim and hike

And mess your neighbor's front yard up

On a ten year old dirt bike.

We'd sneak a swim in the city pool

'round about midnight

Then run like Hell for hill and dale

Dodging the cops' search lights.

Teachers and coaches gave us room

To grow and spread our wings.

No one said "Ritalin is key

To keeping a handle on things."

We needed a friend of twenty-one

Or a guy with a beard and mustache

To buy some "Beer Beer" at the Little Store

Because we were always short of cash.

Football, bikes, and muscle cars.

Bows and guns and trucks.

A bull rider's hat, shit on my boots;

A pair of homemade NOONchucks.

Baseball, summer, and ranch-hand jobs

And swinging an oar at the bats

At night, on the Lake, from a stolen canoe

And Dad's "You're SO lazy..." chats.

Sledding in pitch black, cold winter nights,

Going too fast to see through the tears

And meeting old folks who sled at night too

And have for forty-odd years

I've told these things to folks that I've met

I don't guess they thought me reliable.

But if pressured I'd swear, its all true, I was there

And take an oath on the Bible

Karl Buys a Dirtbike, Asks for a Loan, and Gets Fired. Just another day at Rancho Scholz.

I'm pretty predictable when it comes to motorcycles. I always have been. I like them. And they like me.

One of my first memories in Seattle (when I was 2 years old) was sneaking out of the apartment to just sit next to and look at a motorcycle downstairs. It was all chrome and black with oval blackrubber patches glued to either side of the gas tank. It was an old Honda (old at that time), and I’m not even sure it ran. But it was very, very cool to a 2 year old Karl.

One of the first toys I can remember was a green Panhead chopper toy. The front end was about a foot long. Typical early '60's outlaw chopper styling. Girder front end, coffin tank, king-queen seat, etc. I also got a toy that was modeled after a heavyweight touring motorcycle (like a Moto Guzzi or something) which I gave to Kurt 'cause I had no use for it in light of being the owner of a really cool Panhead chopper.

Before I could read, when my friends bought bubble gum cards with pictures of sports heroes or cartoon monsters driving souped-up cartoon cars I was spending every nickel I could filch from the laundry room on bubble-gum cards featuring choppers. My friends all thought I was stupid, but I knew what I liked.

But, I’m told I only have one kidney (I don't really believe it...I can piss as good as the next guy) and motorcycle accidents are often the cause of kidney injuries. Mom and Dad were bound and determined to make sure I never rode on any motorized two-wheeler. I suspect that this just made me MORE interested in motorcycles.

Let that be a lesson to you parents and parents-to-be out there in TV land: Whatever you decide your kid is NOT going to do is the thing they’ll want to do most. Kids are intuitive. They intuit that parents don’t want kids to do certain things because those things are entirely too much fun. Just to prove my point, try to explain to a 4 year old why he shouldn’t try to fly off of the garage using a bath towel as a cape.... You can’t. So parents simply forbid kids to do those things, but they don’t have (what kids would call) valid, easily understood reasons. So your rules are in place simply because the forbidden fruit is fun.

One day Dad and I were talking about all of the reasons that motorcycles were unsafe. Dad got the chance to do lots of stitching over the years on people who, until quite recently, had been able to stay upright on a motorcycle. He saw the aftermath of that sort of thing. I didn't....Well, I watched him stitch a kid’s scalp back on one time. The kid had been riding a motorcycle. But I was more interested in the "how do you tie that knot" mechanics of the operation than the reason that kid had a flap of scalp the size of a baseball glove hanging in his face. All in all, it was kind of cool.

Dad told me "It is especially dangerous for you to ride motorcycles because you only have one kidney. What would happen if you wrecked a bike and got a handlebar through your abdomen?"

"Well..." I thought "that can't happen...and if it did, it'd probably be the wrong side of my body anyway...Hey, the odds are only 50-50 that I'd have a kidney injury with a handlebar through my gut! Hell, I'm more suited for riding a bike than anyone I know..."

Of course, the fact that I was immortal was a big factor in forming these opinions of mine.

When I got to be 16 I didn't have a car, and Dad had me driving our old Willy’s Jeep if there was driving to be done. But I wanted something better (who doesn’t?). So I bought a motorcycle that I thought could be converted to street-legal. The only reason that Mom and Dad let me buy the thing was that I told them that it COULD be made street legal. Of course the guy who sold it to me said it couldn’t be converted to street legal. But it had an old rusty license plate screwed to the fender, so I figured he was trying to keep such a valuable motorcycle for himself. I saw right through his little game, and bought the bike. Full price. It became a bone of contention between my parents and I on about the...oh...let’s say the second day I owned it. My parents wanted it converted to street-legal...Well, it turned out that it COULDN'T be converted... a least not affordably. Since it was supposed to come out of my pocket, there was never enough money to convert the bike. It needed brake lights, turn signals, and a valid license plate. It was a rolling traffic citation.

That didn't stop me. I rode it everywhere. At first I got warnings from the cops. Then I got lectures. Then I got lectures AND tickets for riding a dirt-bike like a dirt-bike is supposed to be ridden...except not in the dirt (i.e.: riding wheelies through stop signs and blasting out of town at 70mph in a 35).

The cop that wrote me my first ticket showed up at our house a full two minutes after I’d parked my bike and walked inside. He wanted to arrest me for "eluding", but I convinced him that I had absolutely NO idea that he was chasing me. I had to show him the fact that I had no rear-view mirror. He didn’t believe me, but I think he was a pretty good guy. He only gave me one ticket for running a stop-sign.

Dad was furious. His cost to insure me went way up. In fact State Farm dropped me over that incident.

One lousy ticket. I wasn’t even in a real vehicle. Bunch of risk-averse pansies.

Then, after I realized that the cops were serious about this not riding a dirt-bike in town thing, I decided that I didn't want any more tickets. So every-time a cop wanted to stop me, I just hit the gas and rode between buildings, down the railroad tracks (especially good), or wherever I figured the police couldn't follow. If I had been out riding, I NEVER went home without checking to see if I was being chased.

It was like Starsky and Hutch, CC Rider, the Dukes of Hazard, and Smokey and the Bandit all rolled into one. I was living my version of the American dream: Goin’ fast, jumping high, skidding wide, funds low, running from the cops. BORN TO BE WIII-II-II-ILD!

I entered my biker phase. Sort of. I mean, the spirit was willing, but the equipment just wasn't up to the challenge. I had spent all of my mad-money on a dirt-bike, and Mom made me put all of my money from summer jobs in the bank for college. So I was stuck with the Jeep or the dirt-bike.

Go fast and get tickets... Drive a nasty old farm Jeep. Let’s see.... I’ll take "call your friends and ask for rides for 500 Alex!"

While I was out riding around in my buddies’ cars that summer a guy moved into town with a beautiful Harley Sportster chopper. It was white with a springer front end that had been lengthened 6 inches over stock. I knew all of these esoteric, motorcycle-lore, trivia points because I had been collecting EASYRIDERS magazines for a couple of years at that point. I learned all about custom Harley-Davidsons from that magazine. Yes, I was only 16, and EASYRIDERS was essentially a wannabe porn mag in those days, but the guy who stocked the magazine rack at Fred's Market didn't know that (and I wasn't gonna tell him).

Fred's Market stocked two issues a month. I bought one (uh...for the bikes and the articles...uh, yeah.), and a friend named Pete bought the other (for the ugly nekkid biker chicks) as quick as they were available so no one knew to complain about anything.

I wanted that chopper in the WORST way. I talked to the guy who owned it... a grizzled old salt of probably 35 years, who said it wasn't for sale. Later that summer his story changed-- he told me he'd sell it for $2900. He was moving out of town in a week and needed the money.

It might as well been a million dollars. My gross pay was about $110 per week in those days.

Where does a 16 year old kid get $2900?

"Mom, can I talk to you? There's this really cool Harley chopper for sale, I'm sure you've seen it around town. It's white, and..."

"Nope, I haven't noticed it. Aren't choppers those silly-looking motorbikes with the stupid long front part that only people who don't bathe are allowed to ride? And besides, what does this have to do with you? You’re never getting one of those dangerous things."

This might be harder than I anticipated. Nonetheless, I forged ahead...

"Uh, well they are motor CYCLES not motorbikes, and I'm pretty sure that people who ride choppers aren't THAT dirty. And yes Mother, choppers have long front ends."

"Cycle, bike, what's the difference? Hand me that bowl of chicken gizzards."

"Well, forget about what it's called for a second. The thing is, I want to buy it, but I'll need a loan."

"How much does he want for it? I don't even know why I'm asking, you know I'm dead-set against the idea of you owning a motorcycle at all, especially one that looks that dangerous."

"He wants $2900, but I might be able to talk him down a little."

"And how much money do you have to spend?"

"There's over $6000 in my college account."

"Out of the question."

"You know I worked for that money."

"You worked to make money to go to college. I ask you again, how much money to you have to spend?"

"Well, since you make me deposit my paychecks into a savings account that takes YOUR signature for a withdrawal, you know that I have what's left of my $25 per month allowance, which right now is $19."

"So you need $2881 of my money to buy something I don't want you to have?"

"Well, when you put it THAT way...Yes. Please, Mom?"

"Ask your father. But let me talk to him first."

Dad didn't beat around the bush..."Hell, no! I'm not paying nearly three thousand dollars for a piece-of-shit motorchopper when you should be out at the farm digging ditches and fixing fences."

"If you'll recall, you fired me for being lazy, so I got a job at Safeway. The management at Safeway doesn't think I'm a lazy turd, they think I'm a great worker. I find it strange that you don’t remember all this, since you told EVERYONE in town that you’d fired me. People are still pointing and laughing."

"Don't be a smart ass. You already bought that loud non-street legal bike, got tickets, raised my insurance rates, collected complaints from the neighbors, and tore up the countryside all while you should have been working, but weren't. There's no way on earth that I'm going to reward that type of anti-social behavior. End of discussion. And another thing...Clean up that pig-sty you call a bedroom. I went in there the other day and broke my leg."

I might as well fire a parting shot... "Well, you made a miraculous recovery from the broken leg, I didn't even notice the limp. What's your secret?"

"GET OUT OF HERE YOU LAZY, GOOD-FOR-NOTHING, SMART ASS!"

Needless to say, the biker moved out of Enterprise with his Sportster chopper. I never got another chance to buy one until after I was in the Army, and I bought it. After a complete rebuild it became one of the great loves of my life, even though keeping it running was an expensive and ongoing challenge.

Sportsters were high-maintenance machines in those days, so I needed a steady income to afford the upkeep. If I had bought that chopper in the summer of my 16th year, It would have broken down and I would not have been able to either fix it or afford the expense to have it fixed. Hell, it was hard enough to keep a chopper running as a gainfully employed adult.
And forget taking it to college...SHEESH, that would have been a goat-rodeo. It was better to wait, and be called names by my ex-employer father.

I've had a bunch of Harleys since then... And they were the long, dangerous-looking kind too.

But I still bathe semi-regularly, just to prove Mom wrong.