Auto Biograph by Don Taco

Auto Biograph  by Don Taco

  One of the particularly American genres of music is the 'I Love My Car' theme. In our childhood, Jan and Dean, and The Beach Boys, made the concept hugely popular. But it existed in our literature as far back as recorded music and automobile culture did. Your grandparents saw the first automobiles, and the first recorded music. We grew up with them both firmly entrenched in our lives, especially in the Southern California scene, which never bothered to develop public transportation and was difficult to exist in without an automobile, and equally difficult to get out of earshot of a radio.

The Studebaker March dates from 1899. It's a promotional jingle. On The Back Seat Of The Old Henry Ford is a classic double-entendre, a motif that will apparently never grow old, from 1916. Terraplane Blues, Red Cadillac And A Black Moustache, and Hot Rod Lincoln are early stalwarts. Maybelline, The Little Old Lady From Pasadena, Little Deuce Coupe, the list is endless.

Everyone has their favorites, of course, but in my not at all humble opinion, there is one that transcends all the others. And the irony of it is that it is by a British fellow, not an American, and about a motorcycle, not a car. If 1952 Vincent Black Lightning isn't already playing in your head, my god, man, where have you been hiding all these years? Get yourself to a listening device and treat yourself to a few minutes of the absolute best.

Auto-Biography by Ricki T Thues

 Auto-biography by Ricki T Thues

 

When my father, Bob, was 16 years old he bought a used Ford Model A for $50. That was a lot of money back then and the car needed some differential work. Bob tore apart the differential and discovered that it needed a new banjo housing. He could hardly afford the housing, but bought and installed it anyway.

 

With the car in his parents’ garage, Bob sat in the driver’s seat, fired up the engine, depressed the clutch, shifted into first gear, gunned the engine and popped the clutch. The car spun its wheels and flew backward, crashing through the rear wall of the garage. The wall was destroyed. The rear end of the car was pancaked, wrecking the rumble seat and rear axle. The car was totaled. My father was uninjured, which ultimately was lucky for me.

 

It turns out that the banjo housing was installed upside down, giving the car three reverse gears and one forward gear. The symmetrical design is a storied flaw and a rite of passage for mechanics of the time. My father could not afford another car until after his time in the Marines and after he was married to my mother. He bought a used Ford Country Squire Woody station wagon to raise a family.

 

My first car was a 1963 six-cylinder Mustang. In that first year the car was really a Ford Falcon with a Mustang body. When shopping for the car, my father took me to a nearby Ford dealer where we found a 1965 Shelby GT350. Its blue racing stripes, fastback design and hood scoop were stunning. My father insisted that he drive the car off the lot before I got in the driver’s seat to test-drive the car. He fired up the 289-cubic-inch "HiPo" K-Code V8 engine. It roared to life. Bob drove to the driveway and gunned the car onto the road in a fishtail, rubber-burning burst of power. He drove a block, pulled to the curb, turned off the engine, and turned to me. “No way!” he said emphatically. “This car will kill you.” I ended up buying the Falcon Mustang.

 

In my Junior year of college, I got the idea of buying a cheap car and driving it home instead of paying for airfare. South Bend, Indiana, was the home of the old Studebaker factory. There were a lot of used Studees to be had. I bought a 1950 Studebaker Lark Commander for $50 that was older than I was. It ran well enough. The back seat was the perfect size for a passenger and a case of Stroh's long-neck bottle beer. We made frequent runs to Niles, Michigan, where the drinking age was 18. The car lasted through the South Bend winter, but started to run rough after a particularly cold freeze. I took the car onto the freeway to see how it would perform. At 60 MPH, there was a loud rattling sound and then a report like a shotgun fired. The car continued to drive, rattling me back to campus, where I turned it off in the stadium parking lot, never to run again. Later, my friend diagnosed what happened: “In the freeze,” he said, “your head gasket failed, allowing oil and water to mix. The loss of lubrication caused a rod to break and be thrown through the engine block. Miraculously, the other cylinders kept firing, allowing you to limp back to campus.” I had to fly home that year.

 

Back at home, I drove the Mustang to its destruction. It was always underpowered and ate throw-out bearings, but I drove it through high school and beyond. During a drive up to a friend’s family’s house in Cowen Heights, the Mustang was struggling to climb the narrow, winding road up the hill. I was hugging the mountainside of the road halfway in the wrong lane when a teenager in a muscle car came flying down the hill around a blind corner. I swerved away from the oncoming car but could not avoid the glancing head-on collision. Both cars were totaled, but miraculously no one was hurt.

 

I bought a used Ford F-100 pickup truck with a 302 cubic-inch (5.0L) Windsor V8. It was the best car I ever owned. Powerful, useful, and versatile. The truck bed shell made the truck into a camper. After my wife Paula and I made our first skydives, we continued in the truck to the Grand Canyon for a vacation. We sat in the back of the truck, the camping shell protecting us from a canyon-wide thunder shower. Jagged bolts of lightning and thunderous booms framed one of the seven wonders of the world. Paula turned to me and asked, “Do you remember how it felt to jump out of the airplane?” We fell into conversation, reliving the skydives and ignoring the presence of nature’s magnificence. On the way back home, we stopped at the skydiving center and made our level two skydives.

 

Because we needed a second car, I bought a 1968 VW van. The van served me well until it didn’t. The windshield wiper motor failed, so I had to move the wiper linkage under the dash by hand when it rained. Many problems were solved with the Volkswagen’s Guide for the Complete Idiot. The manual had an exploded view illustration which showed every part of a Volkswagen. Working on the universal joint, I read in the book, “Get ready to loosen the bolt. You are about to skin your knuckles. OK, now take a break and have a beer.” It all came true.

 

One day I was driving the VW van about 30 miles from home when I heard a loud BANG! The engine continued to run normally, so I drove it home. I pulled into my driveway and turned off the van. The engine continued to diesel, sputtering and running. I jumped out of the van, ran around to the back, and opened the engine hood. The gasoline in the inline filter was boiling, and the right-side exhaust manifold was a blazing red. I dropped the hood and ran across the street. The engine stopped in a grinding screech. Luckily, the engine did not blow up. I discovered that the reverse-thread nut that held the fan had come loose and thrown the cooling fan against the firewall. That was the BANG that I had heard. Without the fan, the VW’s air-cooled engine had overheated and seized. The van never ran again.

 

Shopping for the van’s replacement on the Highway 39 row of used car lots in Huntington Beach I stumbled upon a 1962 Morris Minor 1000 panel van with a 948cc A-Series engine and British SU carburetor. The van had wooden surf scene carvings in the window depressions and KC spotlights on the roof above the windshield. The car had a retro beach cruiser vibe. I fell in love with this cool, impractical vehicle. Of course, it had its quirks. I carried a small flat screwdriver in my pocket to adjust the SU carburetor. When the battery died, I could push the car, jump inside, and pop the clutch to start the engine. Ultimately, the bottom of the engine block cracked. I kept it alive for another year by slathering epoxy over the cracks, but the tendency of the A-Series to overheat ultimately killed the car.

 

My questionable idea to replace the Morris Minor was to buy an MGB. I still had to carry a screwdriver, but now had four screws to adjust on the dual SU carburetors. It was sure fun to drive. 

 

Tired of constantly tinkering with an unreliable MGB, I replaced it with a brand new VW Rabbit, and reliable it was. Paula was happy to drive the Rabbit, and the F100 became my car.  The Rabbit was durable and served us well. It was pleasantly unremarkable, but like so many cars, the Indian signs of failure began with the dash control panel and indicator malfunctions. I brought the VW to my amazing VW mechanic, and he said, “Ignore the warnings, and when the indicators tell the truth, get a new car.” Sage advice, which gave me an additional year of use.

 

The VW dealer was happy to give me almost nothing in trade for a new Rabbit convertible, which was my second favorite car of all time. It was a commuter car and a hot rod. I loved the feel of the wind in my hair. Like the MGB, driving is always more exciting when you’re in a convertible with the top down.

 

My brother-in-law borrowed the truck to haul some junk away. On the way to the dump, he swerved to avoid a weaving speeder and crashed into the center divider. The truck was totaled. Greg had to have the truck loaded with junk towed to the junkyard where the junk and the truck were put to rest.

 

To replace the F100, I bought a 6-cylinder Toyota Tacoma truck. What a workhorse. Every week there was a note on the truck asking, “Do you want to sell?” I used the notes for fireplace kindling. Twenty-seven years later, this truck is still in my driveway with 260,000 miles on the odometer. It does everything from camping trips to pulling the utility trailer to hauling sheets of plywood to bringing the trash to the dump. And it still runs like new.

 

Sometimes accidents are unavoidable. Paula was sandwiched in the Rabbit in a rear-end collision. She was fine, but the Rabbit was not. Time for another car.

 

In the Saturn showroom, Paula sat in a car that fit her perfectly. This was a new experience for her, so we filled out an order sheet immediately. The purchase of Paula’s Saturn was an amazing experience. There were no discounts and no bargaining with a salesman. I filled out a checklist of options and submitted it to be built. I tracked the assembly with actual video of my car on the factory assembly line. This car was flawless. The polymer body was virtually scratchless and dent-proof. The car just drove and drove. After 400,000 miles, electrical problems raised their ugly heads, and we donated the car to NPR.

 

I ordered a hybrid Prius, which got 60 MPG. While driving it around Orange County as the iMentor computer consultant, the gas mileage was a real plus. For advertising, I traded consultation with a friend for a full vinyl wrap on the car featuring a giant logo and my phone number. 1-2 leads were generated from the car every couple of weeks. 

 

One day I got a flat on the Prius’ front left tire. The Prius is equipped with a small donut spare, so I put it on. As I drove the 30 miles home on the freeway, I was careful to keep under 50 MPH as stated on the tire. A skid warning appeared immediately on the dash, but steering was just fine. I switched the dash display to the power illustration. The car was running 100% on battery. The battery charge indicator was falling like a brick. By the time I got to the tire store, the battery array charge was almost zero. With a full-sized tire replacing the donut, the batteries began to charge up. The next day, the dash showed the dreaded triangle of despair, and the car would not start. I had it towed to the Toyota dealer. Toyota service called and reported that one of the battery cells had burst and the entire array would have to be replaced: $8,000. As it turns out, running the battery array to zero overstresses some of the cells and causes failure of the whole array. This happened because the car misinterpreted the donut diameter as a skid and turned off the gas engine as a safety precaution. Nowhere did the manual say to put the spare on the rear and move a full-sized tire to the front of the Front Wheel Drive. The batteries were 2,000 miles out of warranty. Toyota would not even take half the responsibility, so I had to pay for the full repair. The next year, the manual was clear about putting the spare in the rear. I call it the Ricki rule.

 

When it was time to replace the Prius, we went to the Enterprise Rental used car lot. There we found the most practical, inexpensive car I have owned. The Ford Focus was a striking fire engine red. Gas mileage averaged 30 MPG, not bad. The 160 horse four cylinder engine with Front Wheel Drive was surprisingly peppy. We put a lot of miles on that car. Unfortunately, there was a factory defect in Ford's DPS6 PowerShift 6-speed dual-clutch transmission. A clutch shudder developed due to input shaft seal leaks, which was repaired under warranty. The shudder would return, and the clutch was replaced. The Transmission Control Module (TCM) failed, causing low power or no-start conditions. During a rare period when the car ran smoothly, I decided it was time to bail.

 

I traded the Focus for a Toyota RAV4 hybrid. 40 MPG sure has been nice as gasoline becomes more and more expensive. The car is sporty on dirt roads, winding mountains, and straight out fast freeway speeds. It hugs the road and is quiet inside. When it rains, the DG roads where I live turn to mush. The RAV keeps its traction and gets me up the hill safely home. This car is a pleasure to drive and perfect for where we live.

 

The Tacoma is 27 years old. It still runs well, but I have to think that I should replace it soon. Some all-electric pickups can serve as a silent generator, which can keep an all-electric house like mine powered for a week. Since power outages are a fact of life in my rural home, this is very appealing. Electricity to charge the truck is cheaper where I live than gasoline. But the electric truck manufacturers have not checked all of my boxes. I want all the interior whistles and bells. Four doors would be a plus. And most importantly, I want a full-sized truck bed to haul 4x8 sheets of plywood with the tailgate closed. The Chevy Silverado EV LT has heated and power seats, a comfortable interior and the Midgate bed expander. The Midgate allows the rear seats to be folded down, extending the truck bed into the cab to accommodate a full sheet of plywood with the tailgate closed. The version of the truck I want currently costs $85,000. That is a lot of money for a car. 

 

I think I will wait until my Methuselah Tacoma dies.

Biograph by Taco

Biography, noun, a recipe for dull, dry lists of accomplishments, addresses, acquaintances, and, in some cases, aggressive alliteration (what's the Building Word Power entry for compulsively using unnecessarily big words? I forget. I like big words, and I cannot prevaricate nor dissemble.) Over the decades, I did a lot of different stuff, carelessly and with great enthusiasm, much the way I live my life now.

What's that? You enjoy lists? Okay. Here goes.

As a child, my siblings and I collected bottles alongside the road, for the deposit. We also collected newspapers from neighbors willing to save them for us. We collected old clothes to sell to the rag man. There used to be such a thing. I drove a route of dry cleaners, picking up and returning the items they don't handle themselves, such as pillows, ties, dye, reweaving, and hats, and dropping them at the vendors in Los Angeles. I took orders at a fast food place (still the worst job I ever had.) I was a janitor at a girl's high school, and over that summer, we stripped the dorms to the bare walls and renovated everything. I operated injection molding machines, producing dozens or hundreds of small plastic parts over and over, and then sorting through them to reject the deformed ones. I solicited door to door for a carpet and flooring company. I manned the PBX during off-hours at a university, for the security department. (A few calls came in before or after hours and were told the offices were closed. One time, there was a genuine emergency call, and I had to rouse the guards to wake up a dorm resident with dome terribly bad news. But that's what we were there for. The young women who worked the board all day long when it was really busy got paid less than I did, because they worked for the university, not the security department. Patently unfair.) I etched printed circuit boards. I operated a large format box camera to prepare negatives for circuit boards, and for other printing purposes. I ran printing presses of various sizes and types. I stocked the shelves and did deliveries for a liquor store. I worked as a dishwasher in a college cafeteria. I supervised the shipping dock for the central warehouse of a chain of fifty record and tape stores. I stocked the shelves and cut orders at a fabric and upholstery store. I operated precision injection molding machines under a government contract for parts used in Trident nuclear submarines. I ran the register at a copying service and did the overnight orders, no matter how many had come in. I did phone sales for annual benefit shows for the Policemen's Union, the Firemen's Union, the Sheriff's Mounted Posse, the Search and Rescue Team, and a few others before there were so many people calling every night that all you were doing was annoying people at dinnertime and sales completely dried up. I operated, adjusted, calibrated, and maintained a roomful of interconnected equipment that took aluminum wire, flattened, cleaned, anodyzed, annealed, and epoxy-coated it, to be used in manufacturing coils for fixed-magnet motors. I repaired automobile brakes, and other components and systems. I worked on a crew that built houses. I repaired and replaced roofs. I poured concrete. I re-plumbed houses, and performed plumbing repairs. I repaired and replaced electrical components and systems. I cleaned and organized garages, basements and barns. I chopped down trees and split wood. I made sandwiches at a delicatessen. I spent a rainy winter repairing fences for a sheep rancher, driving around, field after field, making sure the posts were still upright and the electric fence operational. (Do you know how you test an electric fence? You grab the wire and shock the shit out of yourself. There's no better way. It won't kill you, or even knock you over. A friend of mine, who grew up in the redneck wilds of Eastern Washington, tells the story of how he bet his visiting 'city cousin' a quarter that he couldn't pee from here to the electric fence. To this day, he maintains that it was the best twenty-five cents he ever spent.) I maintained the phones, computers and network for a winery and grass seed merchant, and re-designed the Chart of Accounts. I performed warranty repairs on laptops. I replaced and installed printers, and occasionally computers, monitors, servers, and point-of-sale stations (cash registers for you Luddites.)  I worked in the scene shop of a university theater. I taught theater classes at a university. I designed and built scenery for a high school theater program. I served on the Board of Directors for Island Community Theater in American Samoa. I designed sets and lights for college and community theater productions there, and stage manged the productions. I taught Remedial English to dual-language (as opposed to second-language) students in American Samoa. I served on college committees as required. I stage-managed the Children's Village stage for DaVinci Days, a festival of art, science, and technology, and served on the committee. I worked as shop foreman in the scene shop of a community college. I was the guide and caretaker for a small local museum. I acted in local non-profit all-volunteer community theater productions., and I directed shows, designed and built sets, designed, hung, and ran lights, designed and ran sound, choreographed fights, designed, built and ran pyrotechnics and other special effects, built props, and served on the Board of Directors. I performed as a 'new vaudeville' duo of washtub bass and mandolin, pretending to be folk musicians. I appeared on television as an extra in a sitcom. I performed as the rhythm section of numerous small acoustic combos over a fifty year period. I played in a rock and roll jam band. I sang. I wrote songs. I wrote short stories. I wrote a biography.

And that, my friends, is how you cram a lifetime into exactly one thousand words.

 

Ash Wilder

                                                       ASH WILDER

My name is now Ash Wilder. As you, my reader, have already discerned, it wasn’t

always so. I’ve changed it to provide freedom to explore and write about my country’s past, the

current state of my country’s affairs, and the future as I begin my quest in the year 2026. My

hope is that as I explore and write, I will find optimism in the people I meet and comfort and

solace in the places I go on my travels within my country, the United States of America, in what

I perceive to be troubled times.

I live in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada in a rustic cabin by a lake where I find

solitude and solace. Here, I can write and live close to nature, away from the congestion and

pressure of suburban and city life. I also live in suburbia, near a city, where my partner, my

family, my friends, and most of my contemporaries live and work. When I’m not in the

mountains or suburbia, I’ll be on the road in Optimus Prime, a converted Sprinter van, staying in

places I’ve never been, long enough to gain an appreciation for the residents and the landscape.

Thanks to inventive minds and technology, when I’m in the mountains or on the road, I’ll stay

connected to the outside world and current events through satellites, computers, cellphones, and

televisions.

Here you will find my writings, some humorous, some serious. My intent is to chronicle

the times in which I live. My writings will include regular entries, poems, short stories, essays,

and a novel on which I’m working. You have free access to my chronicles and photographs

through this website. If you’d like to read my other writings, you may purchase them for a

nominal fee. Your purchases will help support my writing.

Autobiography by Brian Brown

 Autobiography 

by Brian Brown

     When I was an early teenager, family turmoil caused by alcoholism necessitated that I move around a lot. In each of my 4 years of high school, I had a different living situation: once with an older brother, once, maybe illegally, with my two sisters who were also in high school, one year in the Servite seminary, and finally with the family of a high school classmate. The two years of junior high had been similar. It wasn’t too bad; it was just what we had to do in those days to hold together the appearance of a normal Catholic family. The alcoholism was not addressed; it was not spoken of; it was worked around and suffered through, because in those times it was a shameful thing, a personal weakness, a family failure.

     Our ancestral home was in a small roadside town in the Mojave Desert where my father had several businesses. By then we were 4 generations in the desert; not many people were. Our father made a good living; he put 7 kids through Catholic high schools and as much college as we wanted. We all ended up with degrees of some sort. We also always had a second house somewhere in Southern California, not a home really, but a base of operations to get the kids through school and a pressure relief valve when things got unmanageable in the desert. Our parents came and went between the two locations as situations dictated. Sometimes they were with us, and sometimes we were alone together, but we figured it out. 

  

     From the age of 13, this migratory existence meant that from time to time I would have to ride the Greyhound bus from Orange County to our hometown of Baker. With people coming and going and the damaged family dynamics, if I didn’t get on the bus, I could be stuck at the house in Orange County alone for a few days, not an acceptable alternative. So, three or four times a year, someone would take me to the bus station in downtown Santa Ana, a grimy place in those days. I would be dropped off with enough money to buy the ticket and some extra for snacks or a meal along the way. When I was younger, I would tell the ticket clerk that I was traveling alone, and they would usually let the driver know so that I would make the transfers successfully. It probably wasn’t necessary, but at 13 it still felt good to have an adult with at least some authority looking out for me. Later, when I was in high school, I stopped doing that. 

      Bus stations had a peculiar reputation. Everyone agreed that riding the bus was perfectly normal and not to be looked down upon, but everyone did, and riding the bus was usually the last possible option. I was repeatedly warned to be extremely careful about going into the bathrooms, where apparently all sorts of disgusting things took place. It was hard to stand at a urinal and take care of business while looking over your shoulder, expecting a drooling deviant with his pants around his ankles to come out of a stall to pull me in there with him. But nothing ever happened, of course. The bus stations were filled with regular people like me, often tired and overburdened, but they were just getting on with their lives as best they could. These trips were my first exposure to black people; there simply were not any in the desert. None. Looking back, it seems that they were so rare in Orange County as to be a peculiarity. I don’t recall much overt racism; they just weren’t there. I learned that they too were just riding the bus and going about their affairs, like the rest of us. Unfair myths and cruel stories I had heard in my childhood were proven untrue and dismissed. 

     Eventually I would board the bus and then be on to San Bernardino, the first stop. I had to get off the bus and navigate to a new gate and bus, a big deal when you are 13 and in the world on your own. They had a crappy snack bar there where one could get an average burger and greasy fries, and sometimes I did. The next leg would take me to Barstow, where I had to wait and transfer again, lest I be launched out towards Needles and Kingman and unknown Arizona. The Barstow station did not have a snack bar, just vending machines. I quickly learned to have a pocketful of change when landing in Barstow. Finally, I would board the bus for Las Vegas, and about an hour down the freeway the bus would pull off into our little town and deposit me at the one stop sign, where our two paved roads met. In the 6 years I did this, I can’t ever remember another person getting off the bus in Baker. It would be after midnight, and the dry, frigid desert air would bite my ears, but it was ok. The half-mile walk to our house under a fantastical starlit sky was always a comfort, a decompression. I was home. 

     At some point during my high school years, Greyhound changed their scheduling for some reason and decided that the late-night bus on Fridays would no longer stop in Baker, but would be nonstop to Vegas after leaving Barstow. This was a real problem for me, and I told my parents. They assured me that the kindly bus driver would make an exception and would surely pull off to let a schoolboy off of the bus. But what if he didn’t? They just shrugged and said, don’t worry, he will. That didn’t answer my question; it gave me no plan B, and so I figured out one on my own. I decided I should wait until the bus was underway from Barstow, and then meekly approach the driver as the other passengers dozed. As politely as possible, I would explain my predicament and put myself at his mercy, just a schoolboy traveling alone and trying to get home. It usually worked well and without incident. I remember a couple of times when grumpy drivers did not want to get off the freeway, and so I told them I would be happy to hop off the bus if they would just pull over at the off-ramp long enough for me to get out, and they did. They left me standing by the side of the freeway with cars whizzing by on their way to Vegas, at midnight, adding a bit extra to my walk, but I considered each such incident a victory. 

     Weekends in the desert were a burst of freedom, running loose with friends in our desert jalopies, shooting, or just lying around someone’s trailer, out of reach of adults for a day. In this tiniest of ponds, my family was the big fish. We owned the only market in town, and my father was the prominent businessman there. It was nice to be special for a time. My desert buddies were different than my high school friends; rougher, perhaps coarse, but already adept in the ways of the working-class blue-collar world. We were all competent mechanics by 15, owned and shot guns and hunted safely by 14, and some had earlier sexual experiences, I think, than my Catholic high school classmates. At least they claimed they did. They lived in a limited world and made the most of it, while on Sunday afternoons I would board a Greyhound back to Orange County. I was the fortunate one, able to go back out into the larger world and the opportunities there. Our boys' school was filled with bright, curious, and clever kids; the really dull ones had been filtered out. We came from middle-class families or better, and I think mostly from families with two parents. If we worked hard and did well in school, we could also do well in the larger world. It seems that has proven to be true.

     Most everyone has heard the expression about the rich kid who was born on third base and thinks that he has hit a home run. It is not a precise analogy for my situation back then, but there are some similarities. Those of us in Orange County were going to get a chance at the plate; we were going to get in the game to take a swing. My desert friends would never get out of the dugout. This disparity became more evident as I grew up, and by the time I graduated from high school, the die was cast for most of my desert friends. They would become truck drivers or work in the open-pit mines, or be short order cooks in the cafes. They would smoke and drink too much and get in trouble with drugs, and most would not escape. Nearly all of them are dead now. 

     In a few weeks, I will be going to a high school class reunion; perhaps a third or more of us are still standing. I will be chatting with retired doctors, lawyers, highly successful businessmen and entrepreneurs. We got up and got going many years ago, and our perseverance in whatever field we followed paid off. We earned it, I think; I don’t know any of my classmates who had a fortune handed to them. We had an opportunity shown to us, and we made the most it.  I don’t think we were privileged, but I do think we were fortunate in many ways. 

     Strangely, after college and a few years of adventures, I returned to the desert, near the place where I had grown up. The lessons I had learned watching my childhood friends do a slow-motion slide into a second-class life stuck with me.  I took the things I had learned in the larger world, married the right woman, and we made a go of it. We lived in the desert, but we were not really of the desert. I had seen the trap that provincial thinking can be, of where the rough life leads, and I avoided it. My curiosity about the natural world and how it worked, which was nurtured in me at our high school, led to a lifelong passion for desert ecology and history. I have been able to navigate both of the worlds I grew up in, most of the time successfully.

   I learned some good lessons from those early bus rides. Don’t always believe what others tell you; some things you have to find out for yourself. Don’t be racially ignorant. Keep a stash of quarters handy for emergencies. Be nice to others, and they will probably return the favor. Be polite, and people will help you out. And don’t judge others by their circumstance; everyone has struggles. After all, we are all riding on the same bus, aren’t we?  

     

      

     

     

The Airplane by Paul Delgado

                                                               The Airplane

                                                 by Paul Delgado

When I was eleven years old, I loved building model airplanes. Most of my favorite models were Revell plastic kits that were replicas of fighter jets or WWII aircraft. The best model I ever built was a yellow Curtiss Jenny. Thinking back on it now, it was probably my favorite not only because it was a biplane with historical significance, but it was also the first plane my mother learned to fly. When she was eighteen, she took flying lessons in a Curtiss Jenny and told me how incredible it was the first time she flew in an open-cockpit aircraft in 1940. 

I have always been fascinated by flight, and as I worked my way through my Revell favorites, I eventually started to experiment with wooden balsa kits. 

My friend and next-door neighbor, David, was a year older and talented for his age in model airplane construction. The models David built were perfect. The paint was meticulously applied, and his decals were perfectly aligned. Meanwhile, my models were built with haste but with lots of enthusiasm!

It was a typical Southern California summer, and David and I put away our indoor hobbies for the most part as the adventures outside beckoned. But one day we decided we would build a larger plane; one we could actually fly. Well, not so much fly in the real sense of the word, but one that would fuel our imaginations, where we could soar above the clouds. Even if in reality we were flying down Florita Street along the pavement.

At the time, my parents were remodeling the living room of our house in La Mirada, and the front lawn was littered with scrap from the demolition. There was an abundant supply of wooden beams, plywood, and nails that called to our imaginations. They were the perfect building materials needed to construct our plane. 

Sitting at the backyard patio table one afternoon, we started to draw the plans for our grand idea. After a couple of hours of “amateur engineering,” we completed the drawing for our design.

First, we needed a fuselage, and we selected a discarded 6” x 6” x 60” wooden beam from the scrap pile. Digging a bit deeper into the scrap heap, we found several discarded sheets of plywood that would work for the wings.  We determined the plywood would also be the best material to construct the tail. 

We continued to poke around the scrap but were unable to find any additional pieces for the tail section.  

David and I looked about to see if there were any suitable alternatives we could use, when suddenly both our eyes locked on the neatly stacked sheets of new plywood on the opposite side of the driveway. The builders had started to stage the materials for the new construction, and the plywood was front and center. I would need to ask my dad if we could use the new wood, but he was at work, yet I was pretty sure he wouldn’t mind if we used it. After all, he was always encouraging when it came to my hobbies.

Now that we had the “airframe” sorted, we needed to figure out how we were going to build the more mechanical parts of the plane. 

Building the “landing gear” undercarriage was going to be a problem… Nailing together some wood for the airframe was easy, but the landing gear posed a challenge. I don’t know about David, but gluing the landing gear together in model building took a lot of patience and skill. They were the fiddly bits, and I had more than one model with crooked struts and wonky wheels. And yet, for all of David’s expert model-building skills, I was pretty sure he didn’t have the experience or the tools for metalworking or whatever else was needed to build the “landing gear” for our plane.

Back at the patio table, we racked our brains as to how we could build a sturdy undercarriage. Our idea had been shaping up so nicely, and just when defeat was starting to creep in, my little brother came running across the patio pulling his red Radio Flyer wagon. David and I looked at each other; it was the “a-ha” moment! Distracting my brother with a fake mission, we sent him off and began unscrewing the front wheel assembly from the wagon. Our excitement fueled our creativity. What other toys could we scavenge to complete our plane? We had the fuselage, the landing gear; all we needed now was a tail wheel… A-ha! My little sister’s roller skates! 

David and had grouped together the materials for our plane. We had the wood and a box of forgotten nails, the landing gear, and a tail wheel. We borrowed the seat from my bicycle, and now we had everything we needed to start building. 

Sawing the plywood planks into wings and tail section by hand was tedious and tiring. However, one of the perks of living in a neighborhood is that there will always be a pal who is curious as to what you’re up to. After promising a ride in our airplane, we had all the labor we needed. 

A couple of weeks passed, and our focus was interrupted by riding bikes, baseball, and swimming. However, it wasn’t too long before our plane started to take shape.

David and I continued to scavenge materials for our plane. We found a can of light blue paint leftover from when David’s mom repainted his little brother’s room.

 We began with the fuselage, but our excitement quickly faded as we realized there wasn’t going to be enough paint to coat the wings and tail. We returned to David’s garage to see if there were any other paint leftovers from his mom’s DIY projects. In the back of a metal cabinet, we found a couple of cans of Rust-Oleum paint. The bright yellow wings and tail were a perfect complement to our light blue fuselage.  

Our house in La Mirada sat at the top of the street. The gentle incline of the road made the perfect runway for a “test flight”. Finally, on one Friday afternoon, we proudly pushed our plane out of the makeshift hangar that was our garage and onto the street.

By now, news of our airplane had reached the far corners of our neighborhood. There wasn’t a kid from our block who wasn’t watching in awe as we rolled out our airplane onto the “tarmac.” 

We decided David would take the inaugural flight. Aligning our plane in the middle of the street, David straddled the plane and settled onto the bicycle seat. David took hold of the rope we had attached to the wings. Pushing from the tail and wings, along with pals Gary and  Kenny, we started running down the street, and as the airplane picked up speed, we gave the tail section a final push and watched David “fly” down the street, steering and braking with his feet. 

It was my turn next. David and I swapped places, and then he and our pals pushed me even faster. 

After a couple of hours, the rope began rubbing blisters on our hands. My feet had gotten hot, and the rubber soles of my Keds tennis shoes were wearing down. We finally decided to let Kenny and Gary have a try, but their mom called them in for dinner, and we decided to call it quits for the day.

David and I pushed the plane back into the “hanger.” What a day we had! As we recounted the day’s excitement, deep down we both wished our plane could have really flown. 

The next day, as we were sitting on the grass in front of David’s house, I turned to him and said, “I have an idea…”

“I wonder if we launched it from the roof…Would it fly?”

Not giving it a single thought, we instantly agreed it was worth a chance. Although we would need to wait until our moms were out of the house, as we both knew they would never approve of the “test flight”.

Saturday morning started pretty much the same as every other day that summer. David spent the night, and Mom made us pancakes for breakfast. My dad took a last swig of coffee, folded the newspaper, rose from the kitchen table, and kissed my mom on the cheek. He said he was going into the shop for a bit and would be back just after lunch. There was a sale at Bullock’s, and my mom was going shopping with David’s mom. They would probably be home shortly after Dad. David and I looked at each other; this was our window to test-fly our plane.

Rounding up some of our neighborhood pals, David and I climbed onto the roof above the garage and hoisted up the plane with a bit of rope while our buddies pushed it up from below. We positioned the plane with its nose pointing down toward the driveway below. We talked it over and decided I would be the test pilot, as David had taken the “inaugural flight”. I climbed aboard and settled into position, ready to launch.

David held the plane with the rope, and I gripped tightly to the “steering harness”. But just before letting go of the plane and starting my takeoff roll, David said, “Maybe we should test-fly the plane first without a pilot just to make sure it flies ok”.

I nodded in agreement and climbed off. Together we released the rope, and away she went.

The plane rapidly rolled down the steep roof, and we held our breath as her wheels crossed the roof threshold…

But instead of the beautiful, graceful flight we imagined, the plane plummeted nose first toward the driveway and slammed to the ground with the force of a forge hammer. We watched in shock as our plane splintered into pieces on the concrete below. The tail section snapped and shattered and sent my sister’s roller skate skittering down the drive. 

We were shocked at the ferocity and violence of the crash. We stood and stared at each other with our mouths agape. I let out an almost inaudible “Oh man…”

My mind was racing. I was petrified that I could have been plastered on the concrete below. But before I could contemplate my near miss any further, David snapped me back to the present, yelling, “They’re home!” Our moms were back from shopping and were pulling into the driveway.

My mom parked the car. She and David’s mom jumped out of the car, and surveying the wreckage, they looked up to see their sons on the rooftop above. The looks on their faces were a combination of sheer terror and relief.

Needless to say, we were both immediately grounded. It wasn’t until a couple of days later that David and I could regroup and discuss the events of our test flight.

Disappointed we sat in the garage eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and evaluated our plane’s design to determine what went wrong. Why didn’t our plane fly?

“Maybe we should have made the wings larger or made the fuselage lighter.” I don’t remember who suggested it, but we both agreed that it probably just needed more speed. 

As we started envisioning our next design and contemplating how we could make the plane go faster, we scanned the garage for inspiration. 

An enormous grin erupted on our faces as we spied the large box of Freedom fireworks on the shelf my dad had purchased for the Fourth of July block party.

But that’s another story…

From The Bean Wars to Retirement by Mark Farenbaugh

 From The Bean Wars to Retirement

By 

Mark Farenbaugh

I grew up in Orange County, California, the third of eight children—three boys, two girls, and then three more boys. In a family that size, privacy was more a theoretical concept than an actual condition. We all remember it: the station wagon, hand-me-down clothes, and large family meals where prayers were said and no one was excused without permission. It was a wonderful childhood because I had terrific parents and siblings.

My father was mostly German (80%) and French (15%) by ancestry, with a little Blackfoot Indian ancestry and, I suspect, some Scandinavian blood mixed in somewhere, judging by the fact that he, my brothers, and I all developed Dupuytren’s contracture, sometimes nicknamed “Viking disease.” My mother was a fifth-generation Spaniard. Together, they managed the controlled chaos produced by eight children. I didn’t really recognize it at the time, but I’m quite sure I contributed my fair share.

Some of my best memories involve food. What we ate often depended on the family budget, but some meals became memorable for reasons my mother never intended.

Mom learned Mexican cooking from her friends and became quite good at tacos, enchiladas, and pinto beans. The beans were made properly, using the ham bone left over from a previous dinner. It took her several attempts to perfect the recipe, but eventually she did. Unfortunately, my brother Chris and I discovered that those tasty pinto beans had a secondary tactical application.

Thus began The Great Bean Wars of 1959.

Chris and I discovered that the gaseous aftereffects of beans could be captured in a container and preserved for later offensive operations. We would wait until an unsuspecting brother was sound asleep, quietly lift the sheet at the foot of his bed, open the container, and withdraw.

Pee-youuuu! Followed by lots of laughter!

Chemical warfare had arrived, and it continued for most of the summer. But when hostilities spread into adjacent territory—the sisters’ room—the King and Queen of the house finally intervened and banned all further toxic warfare.

We still tell the war stories.

The Viking blood.

Four brothers slept in one bedroom containing two sets of bunk beds. I had a top bunk conveniently located next to a small crank-opened window. I was an energetic kid, a very light sleeper, and eventually discovered that the window offered freedom……after everyone was asleep, I would quietly slip through it and wander around the neighborhood. Especially when there was fog. I never went very far and, amazingly, never got caught. To a boy sharing a room with three brothers, however, walking alone through the quiet nighttime streets felt like crossing into another world. There was probably something prophetic about those little escapes. Even then, I wanted to see what was beyond the window. Looking back in time, I blame it on the Viking blood.

At Servite High School, I made friendships that have lasted much of my life. I am blessed. But even then, I was already looking toward something farther away. I wanted to become an Air Force pilot. More importantly, perhaps, I wanted to get out of a very crowded house, finish college, see the world, and make a life of my own.

When an opportunity to enter construction came along after high school, I jumped at the chance to operate heavy equipment. It was a rough world that sent me all over San Diego County. I enjoyed being outdoors, but I especially liked always being on the move. I was rarely bored—except, perhaps, by the lack of good dialogue.

Once I could afford college, I began my university studies in civil engineering. But I needed to earn a degree more quickly to meet the Air Force entry schedule, so I turned instead to what had always been something of a hobby: Spanish. That decision would later prove far more important than I could have imagined. Spanish opened doors to military assignments throughout Latin America.

I joined the United States Air Force in 1981 with what I considered a perfectly sensible plan: see the world, serve twenty years, and move on. I stayed for twenty-three.

The Viking in me was happy indeed.

My career began in air defense and command and control—basically, everything involving radar and fighter aircraft. Assignments took me through Canada, Washington State, Florida, Germany, Colorado, Egypt, Israel, Hawaii, Nicaragua, Korea, Colombia, Arizona, Ecuador, and elsewhere. What began as a desire to see the world became a career in which the world itself became my workplace.

I had the privilege—and occasionally the headache—of working with military officers, diplomats, ambassadors, foreign governments, intelligence organizations, contractors, pilots, maintainers, and people from almost every imaginable background.

The travel was extraordinary. I had joined the Air Force to see the world.

Mission accomplished.

In December 2003, I retired from the Air Force. The rank mattered, of course, but what mattered more was what stood behind it: twenty-three years of experiences, mistakes, friendships, responsibilities, and opportunities I could never have imagined when I first climbed through that bedroom window in Orange County.

I consulted at U.S. Southern Command in Miami on counterdrug and counterinsurgency operations, security cooperation, and embassy-related programs. Later, I moved into defense contracting and program management, where much of my military experience proved surprisingly useful. I managed aviation operations in Colombia involving more than a hundred aircraft and hundreds of personnel. I installed voice communications systems and assessed maritime radar systems there as well.

Spanish, which had once seemed simply an interesting university subject, became one of the most valuable tools of my career.

Along the way, I married, scuba dived, ran marathons, attacked the game of golf with little success, sailed whenever I could, and eventually began writing about some of the unusual characters and experiences I encountered during a lifetime of moving around the world.

Today, I am comfortably retired, and I consider that an accomplishment too. There is something deeply satisfying about reaching the point where Monday morning no longer carries quite the authority it once did.

I started life as one of eight children in a crowded California house, conducting bean-gas warfare against my siblings and slipping through a bedroom window at night simply to experience a little freedom.

Then I saw the world.