WOODSIDE

Beyond the Bob Willard Collection, Volume 3

March 2023 Limited First Edition

The telephone pictured above rang on Monday, November 15, 1981. 8:13p. The entire black telephone ensemble, comprised of the hard-plastic molded shell, and its internal gears, bells, whistles, and wires, were all included in the rent. Yessiree. So was its long, attached, black cord that lay curled on the floor, crawling into the darkness behind the wall. And here’s the deal? The negotiation to include this telephone system as part of the rent was not hard fought, nor was it drawn out. Not even a smidgeon. That’s right. There were no smidgeons. Not even a tiny smidge, which is a small, fractional smidgeon.

The fact that the phone, and all its stuffings, and its cord, would be included in the rent, was never in question. That’s how big things worked back in 1981. Those big, rotary-dial clunkers, along with their umbilical tails, often times, came already-installed in houses, and apartments, and townhouses, and condos, and even duplexes, too. You weren’t likely to find this quality of telephone system, with such style, pre-installed, in say, a cabin… or find one pre-installed in shabby places in upper midwest America. And you weren’t likely to find one hunkered in the northern Canadian prairies, where there weren’t any towns of note. Or houses of note. Or donut stores at all. Or people to call. Or reason to go there. You gotta know the boundaries in life. That’s a lesson right there! Knowing Boundaries. Should have been a class in junior high school (called ‘middle school’ by some of you, snoots). Like typing. That lifelong calisthenics skill has come in real handy. ASDF. JKL;. Knowing Boundaries should have been required in higher educational instruction. Or, at the very least, it should have been an elective, available to everyone. But it wasn’t in any course guidebooks that I ever saw. Natch, I didn’t bury my nose in course guidebooks.

Quick note: If any of you, My Dear, Daring, Adventure-Hungry Readers, have ever experienced the use of an old rotary telephone system inside of a cabin, or inside of an icy igloo, or in any northern Canadian plains standing structure, please let our wonderful, office girl, Dorothy, know. She’s been out on maternity leave, but she’s anxious to get back to part-time. The baby is doing fine. All vitals have returned to normal ranges. Bilirubin receded faster than a Summer walnut rolling off the roof of a starkly pitched, Monkey Ward, catalog hen house!

(Sorry – last minute housekeeping that spilled over. Anyway… where was I? Oh…)

Those telephones, and their cords, were included as part of housing installations; just like the home’s lighting fixtures, and light switches: even the ones that didn’t do anything. There was supposedly no additional charge for lighting dimmer switches, although it was strongly rumored that renters did pay more rent when a house came equipped with them. If an abode could be categorized, otherwise, as a ‘dump’, but the place came with dimmer switches, by all accounts, it was considerably less of a ‘dump’. It was tolerable. Dimmers could usher a rental property right out of the ‘dump’ category. Also included in the rent was all the grout between the floor tiles, and the grout between the shower tiles (if it had them), and the shower heads were included, too. It was all part of the deal. Door handles, too. Same with all the kitchen, and bathroom, hardware. All included. And usually, but not always, but usually, maybe just sometimes, exterior single-button doorbells came with the places, too. If the place came with an exterior single button doorbell that also had a light in it, so that the button lit up at night, –AND– the place also came pre-installed with the dimmers, you were living real high on the hog, middle class: real fancy schmancy. You couldn’t help feeling like one of the Roosevelts.

People called those heavy, rotary-dial, over-sized telephones, ‘doorstops’. Some hearing deprived people mistakenly called them, ‘dumbbells’. And that snafu really proliferated. People screw stuff up sometimes, not even meaning to. Not knowing that they have even done so. Like if they have to remember something, and they don’t get it right, but it gets passed on and on, and then that goes on for eternity. We’ve all experienced this endless, eternity snafu. So, in a sense, we are all, each one of us, connected to eternity. Which can get us into a sketchy neighborhood housing some real head scratchers. Some world religions have less structure. But that’s a different story, for somebody else’s typewriter to attack. All I know is a couple of quotes about religion, like, ‘And Moses lay down with his sheep.’ That’s just about A-Z for me.

With advanced apologies, here is a long question from one of our Southern, Eager Readers: Is this story gonna be about something? I noticed that there was no Table of Contents or anything. So I’m feeling kinda quirked. Plus, I’ve got to start getting my taxes in order. Should I start doing those, now? Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to use this year’s Short Form? I told my wife that the taxes were almost done, but my fingers were crossed behind my back, so it didn’t count as a real lie.

And also, since you asked, we did, in fact, stay in a cabin once. Betsy and I both happen to just love, Love, LOVE CAMPING! Well, the cabin we reserved did have one of those old phones in it… and it also had two color teevees, both with remote controls, and cable — which gave Betsy the ability to watch whatever she wanted to watch on the TV in the living room… and I could watch the semi-finals of the bowler’s tour on the small teevee in the back bedroom. The bowler’s tour had, uh, what’s that bowler’s name, um (pause)… I’ll remember it later… Anyway, one of the remotes, the one Betsy used, had some sticky stuff on it, like old strawberry seeds. The cabin had a heated towel rack, too… and a hot tub, which Betsy didn’t use, and I didn’t want to use it, neither. I had a full-on poison ivy plant rash on the back of my hand, and up and down my leg, and I also had a lingering yellow toe fungus which some woman in the line at the pharmacy said wasn’t contagious, but what does she know? ‘Are you a doctor?’, I asked. And she said ‘No.’ So I didn’t know if she was talking straight with me, or if it was just a bowl of creamed hominy. I remember that my skin felt like hornets, and my toes felt like barnacles.

But the best thing about the cabin, that just made the whole trip worthwhile, was that there was a food delivery service with a $5 gift certificate stuck in the corner of the kitchen cork board. The gift certificate came with four, free, jalapena poppers, if we ordered a large drink. I remember we ordered the best pizza pockets and the came with caramelized onions. Betsy said they were yellow, caramelized onions. I told her they looked yellow because they were getting old, but I was just joking. She didn’t react one tonsil tug. Betsy ordered a large diet Fresca, even though I said to her, ‘Honey Cupcake! We’re on vacation. Get the extra-large, full-strength Fresca, rather than the diet.’ It wasn’t the first time she didn’t hear a word I said. Come to think of it, maybe she did hear me, but just ignored what I said, flat out.

The telephone in that cabin was set on a big desk with note papers in the drawer. The only problem was that the automatic pencil sharpener seemed to be on the fritz. But Betsy had a couple of pens in her big blue shoulder purse, so we could write a letter if we wanted to, but we didn’t want to. Who were we gonna write a letter to? We were only in the cabin for that one night. I remember clearly, though, that the lighting from one of the lamps was so bright, and so special, that Betsy was able to polish her toenails before the pizza pocket delivery boy arrived. She said the color of the toe polish was called, ‘ruby.. something or other’. It was red.

I’m sorry. We asked for questions to be held until much later.

• My response: Thank you for your questions, and sharing you, and your wife’s, rustic camping experience. Sounds like the two of you were really roughing it. You have a real good memory for it, too. Please call, and talk to Dorothy, directly, about the cabin telephone. Our office team doesn’t want me to get in the middle of collecting cabin telephone information. They don’t want me to be the ‘cabin information relay man’. Also, if you don’t mind, please mention to Dorothy, the brand name of those pizza pockets with the caramelized onions. They sound great. I hope they weren’t too spicy with the yellow onions.

As for a Table of Contents, I didn’t do one. I admit it. You are astute. I was lazy. But I can provide some direction right here, if I can take just another second. This story is going to be about events that occurred in Woodside, California, once I’ve written it, and re-written it, and edited, and tore it up, and stuck in more ‘filler’. Anyway, that’s the direction. Keeps the wind blowing. Also, there will be other little stories about other stuff embedded therein. Some will be instructional. For example, I will explain to you how to determine how long someone has been deceased, right in the comfort, and privacy, of your own home. I’m telling you, you can do it. I know. I know. Just trust me on this one. I’m also going to tell you that this story will include a video game party, and army ants (not at the video game party, thank goodness), and a lot more stuff. Anyway, if we can all hold off on further interruptions, I will continue. Good luck with your short form taxes, Southern Eager Reader. Say howdy to Betty from all of us roosters. And if you’d like to post her toenail photos on Facebook, I’m sure many of our Other Terrific Readers would really, really like to take a peek. She might get one or two Likes. You never know.

Southern, Eager Reader, again: Excuse me. My wife’s name is Betsy. Not Betty. We had a neighbor, years ago, named Betty, and sometimes the mail delivery got real goofy. It was a good thing that we were friendly with both her and her husband. But you had to keep an eye on them. I once saw Jim, Betty’s husband, who had grow’d up in nearby Little Rock, when the peanut blight was stuck on every Southerner’s mind, well, I saw him dump a barrel, a pretty full barrel, at that, of some of his barn-fowl waste, mixed in with grass clippings, and crinkly leaves, right next to the side of our Dutchmen Aspen Trail 26′ camper. Boy, did he catch hell from Betsy, after I told her, and showed her where the dumping occurred. She’s the one that handles those sorts of thangs. But, anyway, my wife’s pretty little name is Betsy. That’s her full given name at birth: Betsy. It’s not a nickname of Liz, like some folks that don’t know sometimes think. And, oh yeah. I can’t believe I almost forgot. Earl Anthony. He was the bowler that was stuck on the tip of my tongue. He’s probably my all-time favorite bowler, ever. I sent good money to get a glossy of him holding the Tournament Champion Trophy, and he had a big ol’ smile, and you know that Earl never smiled much, but the glossy never came. I think probably the mailman realized what it was, and stoled it. Betsy says she doesn’t think that Jerald stoled it. He’s the mailman. She says Jerald doesn’t even like bowling. She says Jerald only bowled two games in his life.

• My apology: I apologize for flubbing Betsy’s name, and sorry for the yard waste snafu.

You couldn’t remove those rotary phones from the wall to toss them into your car. 1981 was years before portable phones became a consumer product. The few portables that did exist could not fit into your pants pockets. Nor my pants pockets. Nor anyone else’s pants pockets. Including Mr. Green Jeans real big pants pockets, where he kept gardening tools. Small tools like soil scratchers. No hoes. No spades. No leaf blowers. They certainly couldn’t hide inside the heel of a shoe. (Except for special order gumshoe agencies.) And rotary phones could not be shoe-horned into anything. They could only just sit on tables, and only tables that were checked to make sure that they were sturdy. Plus, those big telephone clunkers weighed a ton.

And those old-fashioned, rotary telephones were seriously prolific germ carriers. Complicated turning dials, and places you could never reach. Pipe cleaners. Model railroad mini-brushes. Eye glass tool kits. Little air blowers, like fans. Nothing worked. Rotary phones were a breeding ground for germs, just like all the copper, nickel and silver coins hiding in desk drawers, and piling up in collection jars, and all the wadded up dollar bills that attract dangerous germs, while laying low in the drawers that shoot out from cash registers, in stores like Hatch’s Drugs and Florsheim Shoes. Soda machines coughed out US currency loaded with germs, too. Same thing with the large, clear, glass globe, gum ball candy machines whose sugary rewards make you happy, while your hands are literally germinating with… germs. We didn’t care about germs. Still don’t. Hell, we used to eat dirt and sand and liver wurst, and then later on, turkey bacon. I never knew what turkey bacon meant; and wondered why there was no turkey ham. I even swallowed a pancake handmade by Thelma, Willard’s mom. Just once. Frisell didn’t keep his down for long. He was over at the Willard’s that day, too. We both road our Sting-Ray banana seat bikes down Cook Street and then over a couple blocks to Monroe Street, where Willard lived. Frisell only ate one of Mrs. Willard’s pancakes, too. I was there. He raced through Mrs. Willard’s living room like he was as fast as Tim Crow, out onto Mrs. Willard’s front porch, and skidded to a halt as the pancake launched itself from his food pipe. It sailed over the side of the porch’s red brick wall. We estimate it was about an eight-footer. ‘Germs are good for you.’ Unless the germ is of bubonic plague descent. That’s a bad one. Same with a human flesh eating germ. Another bad one.

Why isn’t ‘samething’ one word just like its nearly-identical twin: ‘something’? That’s a grammatical snafu right there, if you ask me. Or a spelling snafu. Some sort of a something snafu that should be easily correctable. But hasn’t been. And white-lettered movie subtitles that have no frame around the letters needs rethinking. Put a damn black outline around them so we can read it, please! And would you mind leaving the words on the screen a tad longer? I can’t read fifteen words in two seconds. And while we are here, the word ‘alright’ is supposed to be two words, ‘all right’, in written English. Get a better editor! AND ALL CAPITAL LETTERS SUBTITLES IS NOT CONDUCTIVE OF EASY READING. IT IS POOR COMMUNCIATION. We aren’t going to solve it all right now.

One of the nationwide, costly changes in the 1980’s that hit renters square in the forehead, about an inch above the eyebrows, was the landlord’s removal to provide telephones in their Rental Agreements. It was tricky. They were shrewd. They didn’t bring unjust attention to their mad scheme. Generally speaking, renters did not possess legal contract reading skills. No one hired legal counsel. The landlords persevered. They knew lawyers. Or the renters assumed that the landlords knew lawyers. Renters had no use for legal counsel because renters had no money to spend that way, so consequently, renters did not know any lawyers. Renters, basically, just fumbled around setting up what amounted to plastic red checkers on their side of the board, while the landlords played with leather-bound, executive, jet-black and blood-red professional, all-weather, checkers that were already kinged.

In the end, the landlords won their one-sided battle, and stopped installing rotary phones altogether. This made landlords the villains. Landlords had always been villains. They were villains back in the 1870’s. Ranchers (landlords) vs ranch hands (renter/squatter); except this unceasing squabble didn’t just occur across buffalo-stampeded, middle-America, amidst the waving wheat, through the golden cornstalks, and betwixt the why the heck are we growing barley. It zippered across all of America from the western shores of California to White Plains, New York! Landlord battles even tickled Point Roberts, Washington, up in the northwest of the lower forty-eight. It’s an area of the State of Washington that isn’t even geographically attached to the State of Washington.

Point Roberts, Washington is a very small, small, small enclave of houses that is only attached to British Columbia, Canada. It’s 25 miles by car beyond the Peace Arch border crossing from mainland USofA. That’s 40 kilometers for those of you who read better in metric. Thanks a lot, 49th parallel. Nice way to screw up the USA-Canada border continuity. Here’s an idea: How about the US gives Point Roberts, Washington to Canada, to have for their own, straight away, like a goodness faith donation, and in return, Canadians stop bragging about how Canada defeated the United States in 1812, when they claimed they burned down the White House. They all learned it somewhere and they all say it! Even the Dudley Do-Right Mounties say it. Yes, you were a belligerent to the United States in 1812, taking up sides with the British. Yes, the United States White House suffered a burn ouchie. But Canada wasn’t even a country until July 1, 1867. Fifty five years later! And you, Canadian citizenry, didn’t light the match! That whole thing is a Canadian conspiracy snafu, and smells like the backroom of an after-hours Tim Horton’s employee lounge.

Initially, most of us didn’t even know that the telephones were no longer provided in the rentals. We all just woke up in the morning, as we were accustomed, some to the pungent odor of a fresh-brewed Sanka, stretched our legs, twisted our torsos to the left and then reverse-twisted our torsos to the right, cleared our throats, sometimes swallowing the liquid puddle, sometimes the liquid throat-clearing puddle lands in the sink, sometimes you miss the sink and it lands on the floor, or on the corner of your shoe. We proceeded to pee, splashed cold water into our faces, schmushed the cold water around a little bit, shaved our stubble, rinsed the blade, shat, twisted our torsos again due to unsatisfactory prior torso twisting, cracked our knuckles (disregarding repeated warnings from every mother, even Cub Scout den mothers, that permanent ‘big knuckle’ damage would ensue), and then sat down at our breakfast tables or nooks, and leaned into scrambled eggs or cheese omelets, accompanied by deep crevice toasted English muffins. And a thimble of Marion berry jam. And bacon! Always emphasize bacon! Always! Never de-emphasize bacon. Never. Ever. Sometimes, when things got rushed, breakfast was a single Pop Tart that could be so hot, that it would strip away layers and layers and painful layers of upper palate tissue. Which really hurt. You ever had the roof of your mouth torn off? Pop Tart packaging should have included an emergency phone number in real big numbers; not just a crummy cellophane label warning that the contents could be hot. Of course, this assumes that the seriously injured, palate-peeling, Pop Tart breakfast-eater had a telephone to use after the landlords stopped providing them.

Donuts

Occasionally, which is an important word, and its usage here is defined to be an unsatisfactory number of times, there existed on my morning breakfast plate, a charismatic-looking breakfast donut. The little round doughy thing with the hole traditionally drilled right through the bullseye. It’s like the thing had a little shining halo around its head. The donut was just resting on the breakfast plate, in silence. This did not happen enough. And quite frankly, let’s be fair here, it didn’t matter if the donut was sprinkled or glazed or even chocolate glazed…… or powdered sugar or frosted or jellied or cream filled or apple cider-ed (unlikely at my house) or apple frittered (again, unlikely) or if it had been specifically conceived and crafted for dunking and diving into 8 fluid ounces of cold Vitamin D cow milk…… or if it was sour creamed….. or if it was custard eclair’ed….. or if the donut was twisted or long john-ed or churro-ed (unlikely)…… or shaped as a French cruller or an old fashioned or just a simple classic yellow cake…… or a chocolate-frosted-glazed combo (the best)…… or pink sprinkled or a bear claw or a tiger tail or twists with cinnamon…… or twists with coconut…… or lemon filled or Boston creamed or just a lousy sugar donut…… or sometimes there were a few golf ball sized donut holes that sported whipped butter hairdo’s. It also didn’t matter, too much, if it was an Entenmann’s, or Hostess jumbo donettes, or just the neighborhood in-house grocery brand, made in the backroom, by the lady with the black lace hair net, or if it came with a little scoop of ice cream on the side. There are too many ice cream flavors to list here.

One time, one of my whipped butter topping donut holes was topped even more, with an additional flavor paste, much like a styling gel. Perhaps more like a goo. The goo sat on top of the whipped butter topping, which was already sitting on top of the donut hole, as though the goo were a hat. But the goo didn’t look like a hat. It just looked like goo. But I ate it, and I recall, while eating it, that a big question mark stretched across my face as I chewed and chewed and masticated and masticated, softening something already pretty soft with my digestive juices, forming a bolus, balanced on my tongue. I ate the whole thing. Swallowed the bolus. It seemed a little weird at the time. It felt like I was eating a donut hole hairdo snafu. Which I enjoyed. Which isn’t the expected reaction to a snafu.

We can’t justifiably add to our donut count that extended family of pastries that are called, a danish. No danishes. Danishes aren’t technically a donut. Those is just danishes. Five-pointed, blue-hat policemen might allow danishes to be added to their donut list. But them coppers are a special breed, with special purposes, with special doggies sitting up, looking alert, in the backseat, and often being barky. Some backseat, copper dogs, had muzzles so the coppers couldn’t just flip them a donut marble. The thing would just land on the seat, or bounce onto the floor, and grow hair. Coppers had their own rules. I’m no copper. And no, Dear Readers, you are correct, if you were just thinking that muffins aren’t donuts, either. Muffins are the cauliflower of the pastry kingdom. They have that cauliflower pastry look. And half the time their paper cupcake clothes are stuck to them, and hard to peel off, and furthermore, Are you supposed to eat the paper cupcake clothes?, or use your teeth to separate the muffin from the paper cupcake wrapper, or just take a couple bites on the other side, and flick the rest of the thing into the next waste bin you pass by. Not my fav. Muffins aren’t donuts. You almost never see coppers eating Morning Glory muffins with carrots and zucchini poking out of the sides. Healthy-looking, Morning Glory muffins, and coppers, are a rare combination.

What about wafers? They don’t even consider themselves as pastries. So… um… forget about them. No wafers. And Necco wafers… those are like eating little round pieces of glass. (The black Necco licorice wafers are foul. You got your Sugar Babies and your Red Hots and normal candy bars in the movie theater candy display case… why would any kid pick Necco wafers?) Canadian prairie scones are barely edible. Ever seen one? Ever ate one? Those things are instant cotton mouth carriers at the insistence of just a small bite. When I think of Canadian prairie scones, I am reminded of dusty, dried American cow pies. Maybe that’s just me. And no biscotti. I do like biscotti. Have had them a number of ‘biscotti times’. The plural of biscotti is biscotti. That’s cool. But biscotti are cookies. Not donuts. Cookies.

Now, brownies aren’t technically a donut, either, but they are universally included as charter members of any group that anyone nominates them for. If someone nominated ‘brownies’ to become members of the Bass Fishermen of America club, for example, they’re in on the first ballot. And as quickly as a hangnail second. There is no question about it. Brownies also can be a dessert. They can be a snack. They can be a side dish. They can be a quick pick-me-up. They could be a main dish, if you don’t have any other main dish stuff lying around the house to eat. They can be blonde, with the ‘e’. They can be blond, with the ‘e’ released and freed, reserved for some other word that has more need of the ‘e’. Brownies can be brown with nuts or without nuts. They can be double chocolate or single caramel. They can be chewy. They can be firm. Brownies are the chameleons of the pastry world. And are distinguished members, the world over, of every single chapter of the Donut Club Members of America. Brownies sit up front and center at the head table. Remembering the sage words of Gary Gulman: A cookie without sugar is a cracker. And crackers ain’t donuts. Crackers aren’t even wafers.

End of breakfast. Bite, chew, swallow. End of breakfast. Bite, chew, swallow, sip of fresh-brewed Sanka (unless there’s no Sanka). Final bite, in a rush. Final chews, and then the last swallow. There it goes. Last bolus de donette. Adios! Goodbye. See ya later, alligator. (‘See ya later, alligator’ is the English translation of Mexico’s, ‘Hasta manana, iguana’.) Sometimes breakfast concludes with a polite, inaudible belch. And un-pulped fresh squeeze. Gotta get the rush on now because we’re late. Just put the dishes in the sink.

A Division of Families

Growing up, it was just generally understood that there were two different types of families. No, not short families vs tall families. Not big vs small. Or dry skin families vs red, bumpy, irritated, shiny, oily skin families, like my family. The difference in families I’m talking about here had much more to do with of a difference of ‘ways of thinking‘. Not just visible or physical. It was a division of families as to their ‘approach to life‘. It is an important brain measuring component. And I think it’s one of the most reliable ones out there. At least I THINK this is right. I never truly convinced myself that I heard the words correctly, maybe. I don’t know. And anyway, everyone knew what the two differences were. There was no disagreement. There didn’t need to be a ton of talk about it. The division was cleaved right down the middle. Maybe five to ten degrees off-center. Even my older brother knew about it, but he never did much talking about it. The two primary family types, as I THINK I understood them, were:

1 – families that purchased the in-car, rearview mirror, hanging cardboard air fresheners; having taken the store’s escalator back upstairs, wandered around, found the cash register, opened their purse, paid, and unwrapped one, excitedly, on the way back to their car… or

2 – families that wouldn’t be caught dead hanging one of those cardboard air fresheners inside their car

No in-between. No half way. Black or Red and that’s it. Families that did not purchase the in-car, rearview mirror, hanging cardboard air fresheners were the families whose member’s hands were left free to catch a falling ice cream cone, should one appear from the sky, after exiting Sears, and entering their parking lot. My family lined up along-side the non-buyers of the cardboard air fresheners, hands left free to catch the falling ice cream cones.

The Frisell’s? As far as I can remember, I can’t remember if they bought the in-car, hanging cardboard air fresheners. I just don’t remember, Jane Frisell, Bill’s mom, having one hanging in her car.

Willard’s? I don’t recall seeing an in-car, hanging cardboard air freshener, or smelling it, inside Willard’s grandmother’s 1967 blue Ford Mustang with three on the tree. She was about 98 years old when she bought the car, and was so shrunken, that she could only see through the steering wheel. If she still had vision. Each time she tried to drive it, she would jerk that blue Ford Mustang up Monroe Street, about a quarter of the block, not even reaching the corner, and would give up, and just leave it running, and Bob would run up the street, push his grandmother over, climb in, and drive it back around the block, and re-park it. I think my pal Bob Willard sometimes felt bad having talked his grandmother into buying a car she couldn’t drive. He’s the one that wanted it. She couldn’t even hear at that point. Norman Bates’ mom looked embalmy compared to Willard’s grandma on the date of the purchase of the 1967 Ford Mustang.

The Crow family? Absolute buyers of the in-car smellers. Premier buyers. The Crows specifically purchased, and repurchased, the extra-duty, in-car, hanging cardboard pine forest smeller. Bought them for their red 1962 Corvair. When they bought three extra-duties at one time, they’d get one more extra-duty for free. Yet their red Corvair was a convertible, and could air itself out, and had no use for the smeller. Excepting in winter, would be my guess, and in the rain, when the convertible’s roof remained closed. It just made all the sense in the world to the Crow family to purchase the pine forest extra-duty smellers. Smellers were less effective when the top was down. Maybe extra-duties were specifically made for convertibles. I’m no expert. You, Global Reader, know more about the extra-duty hanging cardboard smellers than I know. The truth be known, I never gave them much thought.

The only other thing my recollection conjures about those hanging cardboard smellers is that there were different ones available, that had different smells. I believe they sold an orange smeller. Maybe pina colada. Probably not chocolate glazed donut smellers, though. That would drive you nuts, smelling a chocolate glazed donut smeller, while driving around all day. You’d have an urge to stop at 7-11, and buy cold Vitamin D cow milk. And a six-pack of Hostess chocolate donettes. My family never used any smellers, and it’s just one of the things I have passed on down to my kids. Of course, one of my kid’s lives in New York City, and doesn’t have a car, but still. My father knew how to create his own smell… but we didn’t call it pine forest. As a family joke, he used to call himself a Smart Feller, but we knew what he meant.

Dorothy, our office girl, asked me to ask you, Dear Readers, if any of the last paragraph or two made you chuckle out loud for even a peep or a chirp, go ahead and play the first sound bite below labeled: I Chuckled. But that’s it. Don’t play the second sound bite. OK? THIS IS A CODE RED NOTICE. This is serious stuff. Some of you don’t come across a Code Red in the stuff you read. Novels and cowboy stuff and stuff. Mens’ Magazines? Those entire things are a Code Red. You can’t get caught reading that thing by your wife, or your girlfriend, or your mother, or your sister, or your aunts, or your English teacher, or your piano instructor, or neighbors, or the Jehovah Witnesses. There is probably only a handful of you that have ever even seen the Code Red notice. This Code Red might be bordering on ‘yellow’, but it has been awarded full Code Red status due to it’s seriousness. So, for many of you, here is your first Code Red:

CODE RED warning!

Do Not play both sound bites found below!

Thats a Code Red, if I ever saw one, right there. It even says as much. As I said earlier, this whole sound bite choice-thing was Dorothy’s idea. She says it will give us some insights. She will be tracking and cataloguing each sound bite choice. Apparently, she came up with the idea while she was out on maternity leave. She’s back now, as you know. She asked me to thank both Forrest and Betsy Pinetonsil for the information regarding their experience with the cabin old rotary telephone. Dorothy’s note to me had Betsy’s name incorrectly spelled as B-E-T-T-Y, but it’s been corrected. Mr. Pinetonsil, if you see your wife’s name spelled incorrectly in any future communication or promotional pieces, please let Dorothy know. By the way, we still haven’t made a final decision whether or not to publish the picture of Betsy’s cabin toenails in the quarterly newsletter. The lighting, indeed, looks like it must have been perfect.

So, now, if you were an involuntary chuckler, please only play the first sound bite labeled, ‘I Chuckled‘. Go ahead. Here it is. The one right below. Go ahead.

I Chuckled

If you did not chuckle, play only the second sound bite below, labeled, ‘Stick in the Mud’.

Stick in the Mud

Alert: It has been reported that we have a bug in our system. It’s bug #1543 for those of you that have been granted access. We didn’t THINK that anyone would play both sound bites, especially with the prominent Code Red warning issued. Apparently, some of you did not take the Code Red warning seriously. As it turns out, no matter which of the two sound bites is played first, that same sound bite plays if the Reader also selects to play the second sound bite. Doesn’t matter the order, either. You can see that both sound bites are, indeed, labeled correctly.

Our IT tech, Terrance, is scrubbing the computer code back in our lab desperately trying to track down the bug. It’s repeatable, so it should get fixed. However, Terrance is not great. His three month review received a below average rating due to attendance, attitude, and inability to bug fix. I’ll just leave it at that. But he’s the second cousin of our office girl, Dorothy, on her paternal branch, and Dorothy is what we call a keeper at all costs. So we’re stuck with second cousin, Terrance, right now. The percentage chance of a fix for bug #1543 coming soon is in the single digits. Terrance is more capable of blowing this whole thing up, frankly, and crashing the system! Here’s a check. If ‘Negotiation Preamble‘ follows as the next header, you should be in good shape. If ‘25¢ Brownies‘ follows, then you’ve encountered internal bug #2592, and have been redirected to a different story altogether. It’s a terrific, terrific story, and comes highly recommended, with 9’s and 10’s given from all Readers. So, feel free to read it. But at this point, there is no ability to hear both distinctive sound bites from this story, called Woodside. And if you followed the Code Red alert, you shouldn’t be playing more than one of the sound bites, anyway. It’s just a shame that this didn’t work out. Dorothy is going to be crestfallen. Since becoming a new mother, she has so much faith in humanity. Internal discussions regarding the removal of both sound bites is on-going.

Negotiation Preamble

I’d been dragged through tough negotiations over the years. It started early on with an elementary school playground dust up, when some bigger, stronger, older kid, that didn’t like my looks (‘I don’t like your looks.’), sat on my chest, around the corner of the playground, just out of sight of the 5th Grade playground monitors wearing purple and gold angled sashes across their chests. Purple and gold were our elementary school’s colors. I liked those colors. Even today, I can still feel the bigger kid’s bony ass sitting on my bonier pelvis front. Hurt like a mother. With bold honesty, I didn’t like my looks that much either. So I kinda agreed with the bully that said he didn’t like my looks and sat on me, mashing me into the playground sand, to do his own customization of my pre-pimpled punim. ‘You ready for a face full of knuckles?’ he snorted. ‘You ready for a knuckle sandwich?’ he snorted again.

I was skinny with a flat head. I was not at all thrilled with my nose. It was like having a dodo bird nose stuck on my face. But I wasn’t no dodo bird. I avoided looking at my dodo bird nose whenever I peeked in a mirror, or saw my reflection in cleaned, shiny glass. My neck was about the thickness of my ring finger, or a standard hexagonal Ticonderoga #2. Yet, somehow, like a Christmas miracle made for a puny non-church-goer, my pencil neck had the sinew, and structural strength, to lug around an extra-large, grapefruit-sized, Brazil nut that appeared in my throat, called my Adam’s apple. I don’t know what I did to have to have that thing, and I certainly wasn’t going to draw any attention to it by asking anyone where it came from. My Adam’s apple was bigger than I could even make a muscle. That’s a lousy combo. When someone asked me to, ‘Make a muscle’, I knew how to do it. It just didn’t show up visually that good, depending on how close the asker eyeballed it. Kids that got Adam’s apples before muscles need some sort of additional school support, and professional clinical attention. I don’t guess that that’s a main campaign consideration, though, if a kid was running for student council. Promising Adam’s apple therapy would not engage voters. Plus, there was not a single chart on the school nurse’s bulletin board that was focussed on the Arrival of the Adam’s Apple, or what some people called ‘neck swelling’, or the ‘throat balloon’.

Those Brazil nuts are super rich in selenium, if you’re in need, or suspect a selenium deficiency. In addition to being found in Brazil nuts, selenium can also be found occupying a square on the Periodic Table. Atomic number 34. One short sidestep to the left, and we land on lucky atomic number 33: Arsenic, the King of Poisons. This was Medieval English Royalty’s favorite choice to force an enemy’s sand to drain quickly. Today we call it murder. Or, more rightly, assassination. (Which has a strange Arabic root word: hashish.) Arsenic was real popular back in middle Middle Ages, and continued, without challenge, into the late Middle Ages. The Ruling Families in those warm, wonderful medieval days when the skies were abound with dragonflies and flying cross-bow bolts and occasionally, falling ice cream cones, found a poison they liked and stuck with it. Passed the arsenic poison preparation on down to the children. Like today’s ginger-lemon cookie recipes. They tested their formulae on barnyard animals like chickens, dodo birds, and polo geese. The Periodic Table hadn’t even been invented when those Medieval Ruling Families were administering to the English countryside, and sometimes administering to the Scottish Highlands, and sometimes administering to the Irish green, so how were they supposed to know where to find a replacement poison? They weren’t time-wasters conjuring on some crusade. Most of them.

King John of England died in 1216, a year after being embarrassed into signing the Magna Carta (Great Charter), which embodied major concessions for any ruling crown to ever make: it basically said that a king no longer sat perched above all law. KJ really had no choice due to his losing pretty much damn-near all of the continental land under his reign (where France sits now). It was enormously valuable arable land that brought in tax money, and better peaches, and more gorgeous tangelos than they could grow in the English fog. It’s land that had been under Norman/English rule for 150 years. Ill-prepared King John, who has been stamped, and strudel-veined, with permanent black ink, as one of the worst English kings ever to reign, was rumored to have been murdered by a monk who slipped an arsenic teabag into his morning eggnog. Or whatever morning drink satisfied the kingly palate. All we know for sure is that it wasn’t a cherry cola, and it wasn’t a frosted cream soda, and it wasn’t Duffy’s Gabby Grape pop with chipped ice in a 3 oz. pointed dixie cup. Wasn’t it kinda amazing how well those little paper dixie cups worked, with their over-folded sides that could expand, and yet not drop a drop of water drops? Everything else was pretty much available to him. Even day old backwash mead water. But whatever the transportation liquid medium used, King John certainly ingested something that disagreed with him, and then he died. That’s the short of it. Kerplunk. It got meted out, historically recorded, as dysentery, which I THINK means puke and blood and mucous and poutine and pizza crust, possibly chased with a wash of river cider, but was argued for centuries to have been a painful, murderous exit.

If you’re going to be ‘King’, you gotta choose a name?

Why would future English kings, and queens, steer away from the name, ‘John’? It’s understandable. It’s been explained. To recall: King John was a jerk, and a crappy king, with underdeveloped negotiation skills. Furthermore, England’s future queens never chose ‘John’ as their royal name because ‘John’ is a boy’s name. Even back then. Some things have simple explanations. But now, leaning back in your favorite Gatwick 28.5″, naugahyde, swivel rocker, stretching out, maybe caressing a pink sprinkled donut, or a maple cruller safely tucked into a yellow napkin, if you ask yourself what name you would choose if you were King-About-To-Be, what ensues are carefully considered make-sense questions. You have to ask them. First off, all names are available right off the old medieval tennis racket. Any name may be chosen. Collect $200 when you pass Go.

If you thought, how about ‘William’? That’s a good name, you think. It’s historical. After all, the very first ‘William’ was ‘William The Conqueror’. And it has been from he that all future kings, and queens, in English Royalty history, have since descended. From October 1066 to today. 950+ years, and the monkey grinder is still being turned by the calendar. Every single English king, or queen, has a direct descendent line to Bill the Conqueror. Just because of that alone, it’s arguably the most make-sense name to choose for an English King-About-To-Be. You think. But before signing the agreement on the bottom line, with permanent black ink, wary of King John’s blunder when pushed to sign the Magna Carta, you might ask: How did the previous King Williams’ fare in life? How did those named, ‘William’, in the English Royalty line, die? You’re gonna ask it.

Professor Price Brandt Smith was every high school student’s favorite teacher. Numero uno (just one example of my dual-language skills). That is, Professor Smith was the favorite for those lucky enough to have sat in his classroom’s ‘arc circle’, to listen to him weave incredible tapestries of murder by poison, or murder by cross-bow, and murder by battle ax, and battle hatchet, or murder by beheading (usually foolproof), and he’d let us in on all the Royal incest, with deep dives into who was sleeping with whom, and tales of high seas knock ’em out battles, and weaponry development, and plotting, and land wars throughout Ancient, Medieval, and Modern European history. All taught to us with extraordinarily colorful descriptions that inspired each of us for our individual durations. His teaching left a mark. Price Smith was a gift. Plain and simple. William the Conqueror, he tutored, was the Norman leader who led the slewing of England’s recently crowned King Harold Godwinson (only about nine months previous). King Harold’s defeat, by stiff arrow through his right eye into his cranium, occurred at the Battle of Hastings, in southern England, on October 14, 1066. William, or Guillaume, his given name in French speaking Normandy, also succumbed to a painful death, albeit twenty-one years later. The method, however, was not by arsenic poisoning or sour eggnog that had gone goofy or an arrow through his eye lodging in his grey lumpus.

King Harold Godwinson could drown if he doesn’t shut his mouth

According to Price (he asked to be on a first name basis with his AP students), William the C (the lead-off William, the starter) died in 1087, a few weeks after a quite sudden rearing up by his startled horse during a skirmish, outside of some castle, in France. The violent upward thrust of the horse caught William the C with unexpected, off-balanced, suddenness, as his belly lunged with lethal force, into the hardened, black, femur bone pommel, of his saddle. Apparently, the chosen war horsey didn’t like all the shouting, and the banging, and the swishing of swords, and bludgeoning of battle axes, and swirl of cross-bow bolts, flouting around his nose, and delicate hind quarters. Just so you know, in advance, the following has not yet been totally confirmed, but apparently, William’s horsey, additionally, had an aversion to stepping on the bleeding trunks of beheaded warriors. (I can absolutely relate to this situation. I’ve had this exact situation occur more than once, in fact, and I can tell you, it was frightful, and unsettling for me, each time. For I, too, have experienced getting assigned a horse that was goofy, and uncontrollable, and a bad decision maker for the rider. It’s not just William the C that has had this problem. I had it happen a couple of times at day camp. Dr. Ginsberg’s son, Patrick, would pick me up in his car, along with a couple other day-campers, and I never saw more hair growing out of someone’s nose for the rest of my life. It was like having two wads of nose hair, ‘chew’, packed in each nostril. I’m surprised he could breathe through the clogs. Maybe he couldn’t. One horse, in particular, didn’t like me, and would try to run me into a tree. Well, walk me into a tree.)

The saddle pommel collision damaged, and disorganized, the intestinal integrity of William’s kingly bowels, in a very shocked, and unfavorable, way. Then he became pretty smelly, pretty fast, along with gaining a big tummy ache, and then more, and more, ‘hold your nose’ stinky, and everyone within smelling distance, everyone, evacuated the church that he had, at length, been transferred into, to die. That was only a couple weeks following his unfortunate horsey incident. The attending church members sought fresh air. It was so stinky. They just left the Conqueror laying there, on the cold stone floor. William stunk to high heaven, for a little longer, shivered, and died. It was painful. And it supposedly really hurt, too. History is a collection of different viewpoints, and perspectives, of events, that happened one way, or another. It’s just how it is.

More than that, get this. When stuffing W the C’s overweight, dead, carcass into his burial crate, on the cold, milled-stone floor, inside the Church of Rouen, his gizzards unceremoniously burst from an internal duodenum, and colon, build-up of bile, and escape gases. It wasn’t a real loud explosion. Quieter than a kid wailing on a playground. Probably. Assuredly. If the wailing kid had lungs that came anywhere close to mine. But the result left body fluid, and smelly tissue, on the walls, and some of it spilt onto the stinky floor, and some both struck, and stuck, on some of the admirers who were in attendance. There was a terrible stench. Which apparently really stunk. The attendees, as the final curtain was mid-drop, ran out of the nearest exits, to cleanse themselves, and escape the rancid, ‘breath of the Devil’, whom they had been promised many, many times, over, and over, and over, wasn’t even allowed in church.

Someone later cleaned it all up, because someone even later, still, peeked in, and said the coast was clear. They could have used some Lava soap. But no. No one yet had the distribution rights on the continent for Lava soap. This was before landlords included phones. Bottomline: William the C died from an infection from internal fecal leakage. I have both witnessed, and experienced, Canadians claiming that they invented everything, and might say that they cleaned up William the C’s mess, in the church, too. Just ask them who wrote This Land is Your Land. They’ll say it was a Canadian song written by Jim Croce, or Gordon Meredith Lightfoot. Even though Jim Croce was American. And he didn’t write it. And Gordon didn’t write it neither. Isn’t Meredith more of a girl’s name? I can’t fully defend Canadian naming mores. But there is this from the Canadian songbook archives:

This land is your land..

This land is my land…

From Nova Scotia…

To Vancouver Island…

Question from Reader: Hi. Thank you. Well, of course, I didn’t know any Professor Price, but I just can’t say enough good things about Canada’s bacon. And all donuts. You described a tough ending to William the Conqueror’s life. I still like the guy. But not a pleasant way to die. His guts exploded? Are you kidding me? Where were the singing angels? No Earl Grey tea? Not even sparkling lemon water? No fruity iced-cucumber beverage? Couldn’t the guy even get a bite of a little cracker? Melba toast? How discouraging! How about another William? Is there anything more to know about English kings with the name, ‘William’? Right now, for me, for my King-About-To-Be name, I’m thinking strongly about ‘Tony’. ‘King Tony’ sounds sophisticated, and powerful. Can you tell me about one more King William, if there is one? It can’t be worse. Any news on any ‘King Tony’s’? Also, unlike a previous Reader, I stayed in a cabin, and there was no phone hook up, whatsoever. I’ll let Dorothy know. Is it ok if I can’t remember the exact year we stayed in the cabin? Is that part of the survey? And I didn’t mean to play both sound bites. My mouse got sticky, and I thought I right-clicked. Is your team having troubles deciphering right clicks?

Still in the market for a ‘King’ name?

I will issue a bug report for right-clicks. But first off, there have been no English kings with the name, ‘Tony’. And, fortunately, the wait to find the next ‘King William’ is not a long wait. In fact, as it turns out, William the Conqueror’s third son was given the name William. His first son he named Robert, but they didn’t see eye to eye. His second son he named Richard, but Richard died riding bareback while hunting in the monarchy’s New Forest. His unprotected medieval noggin collided with a substantial low-hanging, leaf-laden tree branch, and the substantial tree branch won. Scored a definitive knock-out. Richard was a goner tout de suite. The year was 1057. Smacked in the forehead, dead as a door nail. That was years ago. But that was second son, Richard, and we’re investigating third son, William.

William the C’s third son, William, became the next King William. King William II, or King William Rufus, as he was called. Became the sovereign in 1087 right after his father’s big and small gizzards exploded messing up the church pews in the front of the prayer chapel. It is trumpeted that Canadians cleaned up the mess. At least that’s what I heard at a dinner party in Canada. Four hundred years before the New World was yet to be discovered, in 1492, maple leaf bearing Canadian janitorial crews crossed the wild Atlantic Ocean to clean up William the Conqueror’s spilled guts in Rouen, France. Which at the time wasn’t called France. It was actually Normandy. Rouen its impressive capital.

King William II, aka King William Rufus, was doing okay as a king, following the death of his exploding-guts father. Not that I’ve read that much about his tour, frankly. Nothing special. He had some country peasants that liked him, and some that had not yet even heard of his ascendency. Uneducated, yet well-meaning, a few male peasants that liked him made weekend posters that said, ‘Rufus no Dufus’. Peasants weren’t known for terrific grammar. Forget about spelling. Another male peasant made a sign with turtle gloves that said ‘Go Rufus’. But this King William Rufus had a younger brother, Henry, William the C’s fourth son, who was a pain in the English arse. William Rufus’s older, living brother, Robert, had received the Duchy of Normandy as a parting gift from their dad, although he wasn’t in attendance to hear it in person. William Rufus, himself, got the pink slip to the rest of the kingdom (England + all the other monstrously important continental land plots not named the Duchy of Normandy; like Aquitaine, Maine, Anjou… places like that). Rufus also discovered, in his goodbye goodie bag from dying dad, the crown, and the scepter, and controlling interest in the Tower of London. But it was younger brother, Henry, who didn’t like the gift he got from their father prior to his father’s guts exploding. Henry just got some cash. Some change. It’s reported to have been Five Grand. It was probably money loaded with germs.

If we move the needle forward, to the year 1100, King William Rufus, aka King William II, still the third son of deceased King William the Conqueror, died from being shot by a swift, big-head arrow whistling as it entered his chest, piercing his lung, stopping in his chest cavity, and killing him ASAP. Probably there was a grazing of the heart. The location of this unfortunate, life-ending, happenstance was the same New Forest that his older brother, Richard, had been hunting in, in 1057, when he collided and was killed by that substantial low-hanging, leaf-laden tree branch. If you thought ‘What a coincidence!’, so did I.

To complicate matters, though not fully substantiated, King William II’s death by that fast-flying arrow perfectly aimed, causing immediate collapse, bloody drool, and rolled-up eyeballs, was a possible murder. Probably orchestrated by his younger brother, Henry. You see, Henry, too, was horsing around in the same New Forest on that afternoon in August, one one zero zero. So, too, was a party-goer, archer friend of Henry’s, who is the one credited with shooting the medieval big-head arrow that ‘accidentally’ knocked the king off his horse, ‘accidentally’ piercing his lung, ‘accidentally’ killing him, and incidentally, without shedding even a single tear. No tissues were asked for. No tissues were needed. Today, a plaque marks the location where the dead king hit Terra firma. Only three days after the unfortunate bagatelle, Henry reached Westminster Abbey in London to claim the throne, selecting his King-About-To-Be name as King Henry I. Henry acted fast to prevent any other wanna-be kings from getting across the finish line first. Although few, other than he, knew for certain that his King Brother’s doorbell had stopped working. It wasn’t just on the fritz. It stopped working forever.

Earlier Reader interrupting, again: Oh boy. This is nuts. Let me get this straight. So William the Conqueror’s digestive insides blew up, after he was already deceased, and the very next king, the next English king, was his son, King William II. Then, he gets shot by an arrow, all the way through his lungs, and out the other side, like what happened to the medieval-looking monster, in Andy Warhol’s movie, Frankenstein, and it’s possible it was murder, orchestrated by his younger brother, future King Henry I. Do you recommend moving on to another name, or are there more Williams’? Didn’t any of them lead poppyseed lives? As long as there hasn’t already been a King Tony, I’m still leaning toward ‘Tony’ as my King-About-To-Be name.

Again, there isn’t much history to wallow through before yet another William shows up in line for the throne. This time it was the William that was begat by the very same King Henry I that succeeded King William II. Henry may have felt tingly about orchestrating his older brother to be killed in the New Forest, and so honored him, by naming his own son, his only legitimate heir, ‘William’. Just having a male heir made Henry giddy. Rightfully so. It’s job #1 for any sovereign to produce a male heir. However, this male heir, this next-in-line version of a ‘William’, died without warning in 1120, in the White Ship disaster. It was late November that year, and the good ship White Ship sank off the coast of Normandy, into the freezing, icy English Channel, killing almost everyone on board. In transport, down in the belly of the ship, was King Henry I’s spermatazoan pride, seventeen-year old Prince William, along with several other of King Henry’s spermatazoan illegitimate kids (he had at least 22 bastard children:13 girls and nine boys), as part of the 300 White Ship occupants. The sailing vessel collided with a known, exposed, large rock, quite near the coast of Normandy. The disaster was nearly a clean sweep. A perfect game. A bowler’s 300. There was one survivor, a butcher from Rouen. The occupants were traveling back to England after party night, in what we now call, France. They had been drinking heavily, and were tipsy. Even drunk. So, technically, not quite a king, but this King-About-To-Be, named William, was next in line, and gets a nod and inclusion, in this list. This time the death was due to oxygen deprivation: drowning in icy sea water in 1120 AD. And, as we all know, lengthy submersion into icy sea water can be a devastating skin-wrinkler. And heart stopper. And brain freezer. Worse than eating real cold ice cream, real fast, if you can believe it.

Although not a William, the same King Henry I, the possible murder-accomplice of his older king brother, William II, like countless others back in the heyday, died from ingesting something that didn’t agree with him. His particular Fortune was cast by gorging on plate after plate after plate of what King Henry considered a delicacy: slithery, lamprey eels, in a white wine puree, and mushroom, sauce. Lamprey eels are one form of ocean poison, but they aren’t found on the Periodic Table. They are a parasitic fish, with disease, and sharp teeth, and sharp, stick-like cartilage like pointy bones, and King Henry’s doctor told him, on more than one occasion, ‘Only have the lampreys as an appetizer.’ King Henry I’s death was painful, too. Some historians suggest that the death could have had something to do with the mushroom bits sprinkled in the white wine broth in which the lamprey eels were served. That sounds fishy. Whereas almost all plants take in carbon dioxide (which animals exhale), and give off oxygen (which animals breathe), mushrooms, like humans, are oxygen ‘breathers’. Because of this, human beings have a closer evolutionary relationship to mushrooms than to arugula. Which makes sense. Mushrooms have been around a long time, whereas arugula only came to be when Whole Foods was discovered in the 1980.

Another interrupting Reader: Can you just go back to arsenic, and skip the rest of the King Williams’?

Sure. But just quickly. There is another King William, of William and Mary fame. He was King William III, and he died in 1702 of a mundane fall from his horse, breaking his collarbone, and dying of infection, within two weeks. To move on, though, Women of English Royal stature put arsenic in their make-up to help whiten their skin. The whiter the better. That demonstrated poor selection skills. And everyone knows that white skin is the best. This was not said to us by Professor Price Smith, in Room 312, while seated in the ‘circle arc’. Along with mercury poisoning and lead poisoning, Queen Elizabeth I, who died in 1603, may have encountered her own death from the arsenic skin make-up leeching into her blood stream. Good Queen Bess, as she is remembered, caked on layers of make-up, up to two inches thick, like a glazed donut bakery frosting, to hide, by smothering, her scarred, pocked face. No one dared lick the frosting from her puss. Especially her cousin, and co-queen, Mary, Queen of Scots. They had a personal disagreement that was pretty entrenched. Later still, centuries later, even Napoleon Bonaparte may have taken his final salute due to arsenic poisoning. Arsenic was so popular back in the days of the battle axe and beheaded torsos, that it was co-named, ‘Inheritance Powder’, being the snack of choice for antsy inheritors that were in too much of a hurry to wait their turn. For a long time, arsenic was used as rat poison. What’s good for the rat is bad for the king. We’re all equal (sorta) under the Magna Carta.

Negotiation Tactics: Lesson #1: Crying (Beginner)

A small crowd gathered on the playground. My arms were pinned under the big bully bastard’s bony knees. Helpless. I was helpless. It was the kid that didn’t like my looks, sitting on top of me. Negotiation Tactic #1: Do I start crying? That’s right. That’s a tactic. Especially if you cry confidently, and convincingly; pretty loudly. Almost wailing, but not quite wailing. No kid in that situation wanted to wail too loudly because everyone within earshot, a good three or four houses in every direction on a scout master’s compass, would hear you. Not the best. Not at all the best. For example, take the friend that you walk to school with every morning and with whom you walk back home after the final 3:20p school bell rings, alerting every student that they didn’t have to any more learning that day. Along with the other kids within earshot, your friend could easily get a super sour jawbreaker taste in his or her mouth that is so sour, but they can’t spit it out. It’s so sour. Like a rat eating arsenic. Can’t spit. And they can’t throw the super sour jawbreaker away as far as they can throw it, nor can they toss it on the ground and boot grind it out of existence next to the outdoor painted hopscotch. That’s because there is no actual jawbreaker. Instead, the super sour taste just sits there, unmovable, on top of their pink tongues. Like the center part of toast. Sour toast. Not cinnamon toast. This unwanted, horrible taste has been suspected to cause a temporary loss of friendship.

No kid wanted the label of a cry baby. And as far as all of us kids could tell, no grown-ups wanted a cry baby reputation, neither. I don’t recall a single adult where we grew up that had a reputation of being a cry baby adult. Kids didn’t wake up on any school mornings, and while seated, enjoying a breakfast of donut twirzles and a glass of refrigerator-cold, chocolate, Vitamin D, extra fortified, milk, and think to themselves, ‘I’d like to have a cry baby reputation.’ The life of that kid would be ruined. Forever. Especially if the kid was enrolled in Mr. Levy’s Social Studies class that had Cheryl Hilton as a girl co-student person girl seated right next to you. Or close by. It’s with a sadness that I grew up getting so utterly tongue-tied around pretty girls. In this case, there was an actual reason.

Cheryl Hilton was the one girl in fourth grade we all knew for sure was a ‘dame’. Unsure what it meant, really, but there were no dames around like Cheryl Hilton. Lipstick. Fourth grade. Lipstick looked great. Looked better than great. Looked like a dame. Red. Firecracker Red one day. Unsweetened Cherry Pie the next day. It just made you happy to go to school. Attendance was at a record high. Fewer kids stayed home sick. Cheryl Hilton drew perfect lines. Plus, she had that little mole on the left calf above her left ankle that looked like a Marigold chrysanthemum. But I didn’t really know her. So I didn’t pay much attention. Her walk had a nice beat — two, three, four — to it. A nice rhythm. And she was real good at twisting her head and looking over her shoulder. Cheryl had a capability. Cheryl was a dame.

I remember the Monday following the weekend in October that Cheryl had her Marigold chrysanthemum mole removed. All us kids remember that. The whole class. Even Willard. Especially Willard. Willard fixated. The resulting mole removal surgical wound was hidden under a small yellow band aid. The band aid had a picture of the Rocky Mountains on it, and also used a six-point, semi-italicized, Helvetica Bold to print ‘Made in Japan © 1956’. No punctuation. Seemed messed up. It was like a real life printer’s snafu right there on Cheryl Hilton’s band aid on her left calf above her left ankle hiding the Marigold chrysanthemum mole surgery location. The band aid looked pretty though. Matched her blouse that day. Same yellow. Same hue. And the same yellow as the three small ribbons perched like song birds in her exceptional, braided hair. Except her blouse had a crimson filigree lace sewed around the edges, while the band aid was cat’s ass smooth, with a slight up-curl on the left side, where it must have gotten wet. We all knew it. So did Cheryl. We all liked it. So did Mr. Levy.

Tears didn’t work on the playground. They especially didn’t work in the doctor’s office, where they made bold attempts to free themselves from captivity and escape their ducts to explore cheeks and curl into the corner of mouths. No. Tears only worked at home. For a time. And then stopped working once you started first grade. Astonishingly, tears actually can work in front of girls. As counter-intuitive and backward as that may seem. If you cried in front of a girl, particularly one that you liked and thought you wanted to be your girlfriend, to her, tears demonstrated that you have a big wonderful beating heart, that you are sensitive, that you have and show emotion, and they fall in love. Which they like. They are attracted to that. Tears are the pheromone of the human female. But not so much if you’re wailing at the top of your lungs, terrified that the bigger kid sitting on your chest is about to change the angle of your nose. Another observation about Girls. They prefer noses on guys that angle forward. Perhaps magnetic north. They don’t come out and tell you that. It’s just an observation of a predilection. It’s Natural Selection. Page Two of Darwin’s famous ‘Treatise of Facial Acceptance by Members of the Opposite Sex ‘. Collapsed wheezers didn’t make the cut. They were the recessive wheezers. Like Mendel’s green, wrinkled peas. Yellow peas are dominant over green peas, strange as that is.

Negotiation Tactics: Lesson #2: Vowing (Intermediate)

Negotiations grow in importance as we age. Beginning with The Vow to the five-pointed, blue-hat patrol cop who’s flashing lights told me to pull over. He climbs out slowly like he has a bad back, approaches my car from the rearview mirror, comes to the driver side mirror, and tells me I was speeding. I respond, showing a mouth of happy teeth framed by a cute smile, that I will never speed again. I promise to do this. I promise to be more alert and aware of my driving. Usually, the five-pointed, blue-hat patrol cop’s head and forward-facing nose are pointed down while writing out the speeding ticket (‘I won’t do it again, sir. I promise.’). He ignores my pledge like he’s heard it before. The promise to be a better driver, and the inference to be a better human being in general, worked once. On that one occasion, the five-pointed, blue-hat patrol cop wasn’t able to urge any ink out of his policeman’s pen by shaking it real hard. Instead, I was issued a verbal warning. So vowing seemed to be a reasonable negotiation tactic, but it’s not reliable if you use it too much. I’d grade Negotiation Tactic #2: Vowing, as an incomplete. Even though a vow supersedes a promise in sincerity, they generally aren’t accepted as honest. Promises are awarded much too frequently, and have a tendency to be forgotten. Like vows.

Negotiation Tactics: Lesson #3: Lying (Advance Beginner)

The next important Negotiation Tactic #3 came when trying to land a job for which I had no relevant expertise. Lied through my teeth. The lies just jumped off of that ridiculous, dangling uvula in the back of my throat (shouldn’t it be called the front of my throat, or the top of my throat?), like water drops from a melting icicle, and surried through the bicuspids, unimpeded. Is that what you’re supposed to do in a job interview? Lie? Personally, I had been practicing lying a lot growing up so I was okay with that. I was good at it. It was one of the first things I got really good at. It was probably the first thing I got good at. Award-winning good, but I never received an actual award. I was a natural. Like an already developed skill. That I might use when needed.

The Act of Lying is more believable when the liar succeeds at controlling facial muscles… dumbing down the face… relaxing it… as though what was just made up was in perfect balance with the cosmos. By fourth grade, I could talk to my mother in the kitchen while she’s buttressing liver pate, or while she’s completing her Hungarian stew by stirring in more Hungarian stew stuff, and tell one whopper after another with no shake in my voice delivery. At my current advanced age, much older than at the time of this recollection, I negotiate fewer times by Vowing but have hung on to Lying. I have abandoned tears, too, for the most part. No more crying. Well, occasionally, I cry. I can always Lie and say the tears are due to a bug flying into my eye. Word choice is critical. If I say, for example, ‘a bug flew in my eye’, it’s believable. Non-specific. If I say, ‘a bumblebee flew into my eye’, or ‘a wasp collided with my head and stung me in my eye’, or ‘a dragonfly got stuck in my eyelashes’, listener’s antennae detect a falsehood.

Negotiation Tactics: Lesson #4: Hold Firm (Advanced)

Once a year, on Valentine’s Day, after I aced the written driving test at 15 years and 9 months, with a proud score of 78, and earned my driver’s license due to an absolutely stellar driving performance with my hands at 2:00 and 10:00, looking both ways, and slowing to a complete stop behind the stop signs, and slowly eking my way forward for a better view (none of which is how I ever actually drove post-driving test), I would sell fragrant roses on a strategically selected street corner. It’s the only day of the year I would do this. I wasn’t normally a flower salesman. I’d negotiate ten more bucks out of the opened wallets of every empty-handed, frantic husband driving home from work. February 14th. The day before Tim Crow’s birthday, if you know Tim. Fastest kid by a mile in our neighborhood. Was not close. His legs must have been coiled springs. Well, he also had the Red Hair Advantage. The kids with red hair were generally the fastest kids because they had to run for their lives from the big bullies that didn’t like their looks. Was the red hair thing part of some plan? Tim didn’t know. It didn’t matter. No one could catch him.

How Valentine’s Day negotiations typically went:

A car screeeeeches to a stop. A white collar worker-guy, maybe wearing a striped tie knotted with a loosened Half Windsor, but definitely not knotted with the 15-step intricately-layered Eldredge Knot, gets out of the car, hurried and harried and half-crazed. Almost breathless but breathing nonetheless:

Harried Valentine’s Day husband: How much for six roses? (breath, breath, gasp, gasp)

Me: $35.

Harried Valentine’s Day husband: Aren’t they normally about twenty bucks? (breath, breath, gasp, gasp)

Me: Sometimes they go for twenty to twenty-five bucks. You are welcome to drive around, find a store with parking, then stand in line, hoping it isn’t like the line to buy tickets to The Exorcist. Eventually, you’ll get inside the flower store. Hopefully they’ll have some decent ones left.

The harried Valentine’s Day husbands never did that. They didn’t tend to drive off to find a flower store. Everyone was surprised by the lines circling block after block to buy tickets to see The Exorcist. It was a monster success. Everyone wanted to see Linda Blair swivel her head 360˚. How did she do THAT? And to think The Exorcist was a Christmas-release movie: December 26, 1973. Those unbelievably long lines were shown right on teevee. At the local thirty-minute news hour. The lines even made national headlines for days and days and days and days and days. But harried VD husbands and nervous boyfriends never drove around looking for a flower store at 5:00p Valentine’s Day. To begin with, if they knew where there was a flower store nearby, they would not have stopped their cars to a screech on the parking side of the street to buy the flowers from me. But there wasn’t a flower store near my location. That’s how I picked it! Negotiation Tactic #4: Hold all the cards.

The process was simple. I’d drive down to the broken-down, broken-glass warehouse section of town (near to where the stockyards used to be) and buy fragrant bouquets of roses from a flower distribution warehouse around 2p on Valentine’s Day. The actual day. I tried going a day before Valentine’s Day one year. The bouquets were cheaper but those flowers looked used when I tried selling them the next day. I couldn’t get my price. So I learned a lesson! If you’re too early, you might not get the worm. Timing is important.

After buying the fragrant bouquets at the distribution warehouse at 2p on Valentine’s Day, and after arranging them in my car, and then cleaning floral remnant gunk off my hands using Lava soap and the outdoor hose, and doing all this prep work before getting behind the steering wheel, only then did I pull out of the distribution warehouse driveway, pausing to look both ways, twice: swivel 1, swivel 2. I turned right onto Blankenship Road, slowed down at the street light up ahead, and then turned left to head south to the distant parts of town where the well to-do people lived. Not the super rich. The ‘well to-do’. Good homes. Educated families. Hard workers. Those were my stool pigeons. I mean they were my customers.

There was one guy, one year, on Valentine’s Day. Easy to remember. Like it happened yesterday. Well, actually, it’s gotten to the point where I rarely can recall what happened yesterday. This guy remains stuck in my memory, however. He found a spot in a recallable cranny of my lumpus. The guy was real frantic, didn’t like my price, and stormed off. Just seemed like normal behavior for him. I guess he headed for some store to buy his flowers. What store? I didn’t know. He wasn’t heading home, yet. That’s for sure. Not empty-handed. He acted like a tough guy, a real asshole, but you could tell that his wife controlled everything at home.

He was a real scaredy-cat. You knew his wife told him that morning, prior to his leaving for work, but after helping him tie his Half Windsor, not to come home without any flowers. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day!‘. He returned to my corner not five minutes after his explosive, tornado exit. It didn’t seem like enough time had passed for him to have bought other flowers. I saw him return and drive up and park. There he was, shaking his head, lightning sparking from his eyes, walking to the end of the line. I excused myself for a second from a customer and went up to the guy and told him to come to the front of the line with me, explaining to the others in line as we passed, that he had a prior arrangement. I finished up with the customer I had excused myself from, and then sold the asshole six red roses. He gave me a $50 bill for the $35 package. Then he said, ‘Keep it, Bud.’ I did what he said even though my name wasn’t Bud. He didn’t know me. It dawned on me that I had just gotten rewarded for helping this asshole jump to the front of the line. Could that be a negotiation tactic? Well, it’s timely that that question came up right now because I happen to be writing about negotiation tactics right now.

It got me thinking that maybe I should have been doing this all along. Occasionally, go grab the guy at the back of the line and bring him up to the front. Basically jump him to the front of the line legally. So I tried it and it worked slicker than a cat’s ass. Each time I ‘jumped’ a guy from the end of the line to the front, the ‘jumper’ gave me a tip even after selling rose bouquets at an already inflated price.

Calculations show that a bouquet of six red roses cost me $18 at the distribution center. That alone would have become a $7 profit following the standard $25 charge. But add in the $10 Valentine’s Day holiday surcharge and the profit balloons to $17. But then add in the $15 additional jump-the-line tip. That’s $32 clear. One sale. $32. It all went into the safe netting of my billfold; not my pant’s pocket. Sometimes things just click. Sometimes the sun shined in my backyard. Sometimes I experienced billfold bulge. Billfold bulge is good, usually. Not so much if its just jammed with $1 bills. Fives are ten times better than ones if I have my math straight.

The bouquets I bought at the distribution warehouse came barreled in white buckets; ten bouquets per. I signed a piece of paper promising to return the buckets the next day. Had to. I didn’t volunteer to do that. They told me to. Plus, I would receive back the $5 deposit I put down on each bucket. I bought ten buckets. The bouquet buckets each had about six inches of water in them so the bouquet flowers could drink if they were at all thirsty, but I poured the water out because I didn’t want it sloshing around in the back of my car and in the trunk of my car. I put four buckets along the floor in front of the back seat and I lined the trunk with the other six. I had already packed a five gallon water tank to refill the buckets once I arrived to my usual Valentine’s Day selling spot. I’d done this before. I had it all figured.

Electronic Arts

I wasn’t surprised when Larry Probst III asked me to take over the controls of one of Electronic Arts’ top-selling franchises: Need For Speed. Getting the Need For Speed franchise under my belt would be like stuffing a big, beautiful, peacock feather in my hat (if I had one). I would have had to have been an idiot to say, ‘No, Thanks’. Well, I may not even have had the chance to say, ‘No, Thanks.’ Larry knew he didn’t have to have a Plan B. He knew I’d do it. Wanted it. Would love it, hopefully. Not too much headache. Fingers crossed. Ollie ollie oxen free. Additionally, Need For Speed was already being developed at EAC; that’s short for Electronic Arts Canada. That’s the office where I was working. For years, we became the top performing development studio within Electronic Arts Worldwide. Our studio had a slew of franchises, and we were producing hit after hit: NBA Live, FIFA Soccer, NHL, Need For Speed, SSX, Triple Play Baseball.

Everything wasn’t perfect, though. The other Executive Producer, other than me, his name was Bruce, was tasked with creating a video game based on a Saturday morning cartoon teevee show called, ReBoot. Man, was I glad I didn’t get stuck with that thing! We had an executive staff meeting every Monday morning. It would last for a couple hours. You couldn’t wait for it to end so that you could get out of there. But in one Monday morning executive staff meeting, I became absolutely thrilled when Bruce, the other Executive Producer, was ‘asked’ to produce ReBoot. And not me! It was like I had escaped purgatory.

ReBoot, the Saturday morning teevee show, was produced/created by a few companies in Vancouver, BC, which included Mainframe Entertainment. And more granularly, by Mainframe’s slick, and slippery, main guy named Christopher Brough. He and I happened to have been sharing season tickets, and the cost, of two front row seats for the new Vancouver NBA basketball team, the Vancouver Grizzlies. So I already knew Chris a little bit, and because of our existing relationship, I thought there was a strong chance that I would get asked to make the video game; whatever that was gonna be. I’d heard that someone within EA signed the ReBoot license. The sun shined brightly in my backyard in that Monday morning executive staff meeting when ReBoot landed in the un-wanting lap of the sad, other Executive Producer, Bruce. I just sat in the warm glow of hallowed sunshine. At the same time, a black thundercloud knotted above Bruce’s head, and I think I saw a little rain. Bruce’s head moistened. That’s how executive staff meetings can go when you don’t play them right. If you can’t escape executive staff meetings unscathed, you’re gonna be stuck as Executive Producer forever. You may not ever be promoted to the level of VP-ness.

The goal in any executive staff meeting is to come out of it with nothing more to do. That’s all that matters. You might have to talk about your products, which you’ll do as little as possible (not at all if you’re really experienced – I’d made seventy games by then, so I was the most experienced), and you might fib if you have to regarding the status of the games you are developing (cuz you never really know, kinda, unless the game is so screwed up that everyone already knows). Also, it’s not wise to antagonize anyone in an executive staff meeting because you don’t want to do anything that might extend the length of the damn thing. (If you’ve got a beef, cure it somewhere else.) Equally important, get out through the nearest door within seconds of the meeting being gaveled over. You don’t want to allow any time for secondary ideas. That’s the goal. Get in. Get out. Leave with nothing more to do. Those are executive staff meeting marching orders right there. That’s the perfect result from a Monday morning executive staff meeting. I always sat closest to the escape door.

But to drag yourself, head down, out of a Monday morning executive staff meeting, like your testicles ache from being kicked in, having just been slapped with a new video game property to develop, that’s exclusively licensed, with the understanding that it better turn into a ‘franchise’ (multiple-products, multiple-years, big big sellers), is absolutely, not-shockingly, the worst result anyone could ever have. Bruce, the other Exec Producer, stepped into a big bag of stinky poo that Monday morning. I knew that ReBoot was going to be a bitch. I knew because I knew Chris Brough. Bruce sensed it would be a bitch, too. So could the other four people in the Monday morning executive staff meeting. Five of us left the Monday morning executive staff meeting unscathed. Bruce left the meeting already plotting how to shove ReBoot over to not-yet-talented-enough-to-be an Executive Producer, S Rechtschaffner. Mr. Rechtschaffner was responsible for Triple Play Baseball, under Bruce. The last version he released to the public had the batter run to 1st base after hitting the ball and never actually step on the bag. You could pause the game and just look at it. It looks like they purposely made the runner miss the bag. Just blew on by. Missed the bag entirely. Still, Bruce was plotting. Never mind that Rechtschaffner worked under him. Bruce would help get him promoted to Executive Producer, hand over ReBoot like it was a reward, and enjoy life a little bit. Rechtschaffner didn’t even know this was going to happen to him. He’d find out, in about a year and a half.

I had developed what I called a ‘XXX‘ system of product diagnosis to help ensure my own success. If a potential game/relationship received three of those black X’s, I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s too hard to make a great game with a great staff that you’d worked with many times and shared many successes together. That’s hard. But it’s your best chance. Here are examples of how I applied black X’s:

• If it was my first time working with an external developer, that’s a black X

• If it’s a sports game that the developer had never made before, that’s a black X

• If the developer was located more than one time zone away, that’s a black X

• If it was the first time I had ever made that particular type of game (i.e. a cricket game), that’s a black X

• If the property was a new license, with a new company, that no one had worked with before, with a shortened development cycle, and the new company had been contractually granted Approval Rights as to what the product became, and their contact person is inexperienced building video games, that’s more than 3X‘s. That’s 10X‘s.

ReBoot was the definition of that last 10X red bullet point directly above. With the amount of games I’d made, I knew there were at least 3Xs. For the impressive number of games that Bruce had produced, I could tell that he knew ReBoot was a full poo bag, as well. I just don’t think that he had an equivalent 3X model of diagnosis.

Chris Brough, the producer of the ReBoot Saturday morning teevee show, the guy that Bruce was going to be working with while attempting to make a ReBoot video game, used to complain to me about a Saturday morning teevee show that I initiated, and helped create, called Mutant League. Mutant League Football was a terrible concept for a football video game that I was tasked with ‘finishing’ when I first joined Electronic Arts, in September, in 1992. It was a football game that had monsters (or ‘mutants’) playing football rather than NFL players, or college players, playing football. I knew that this poorly conceived video game was an albatross. It was thunked up by Michael Mendheim, who lived northeast of Chicago. It was his baby. My concern was that football fans would be buying John Madden Football (EA Sports), or Joe Montana Football (Sega), or even Mike Ditka Football (Accolade), before they’d ever consider buying Mutant League Football. How many fans would be buying a fourth football game? Answer: Not enough.

I figured that the only way to really sell this video game ‘product’, would be if the football fans that might buy it, already knew about the monsters in the game from a Saturday morning teevee cartoon. Like a reverse license. Create an awareness from a Saturday morning teevee cartoon, and cash in at the register with the video game, later. There were three types of monsters (football players) in the video game: big, green-skinned, heavy trolls with names like Mo and Spew Puke (brothers that were linemen), robots (which were fast, and played many ‘skill positions’), and skeletons. The highest-rated player was a running back, who was a skeleton, named Bones Jackson (a play-off of the name, Bo Jackson). He was Mutant League’s biggest star. All the players had fun names, and many had back stories, and relationships. It was a super violent football game with the monster’s (football player’s) legs breaking, and ribs flying, and heads rolling; but they could all rejuvenate, returning to full strength, after spending time in a clear rejuvenation tank on the sidelines. The rejuvenation tanks were filled with an acid green bubbling brew. That acid green rejuvenation liquid was the key to the Mutant League Saturday morning teevee cartoon that Chris Brough complained about.

Mutant League, the Saturday morning teevee cartoon, had the highest viewer rating in it’s time slot for several consecutive weeks. ReBoot ranked lower. It wasn’t aired in the exact same time zone, but it ranked lower. Chris was unconsolably upset. Mutant League was a dirt-cheap, after-thought, poorly drawn cartoon, contracted out to a subterranean South Korean cartoon art house. It looked foreign. It looked cheap. It looked unfinished. It wasn’t even what we normally did. We made video games. Interactive video games. Not sit-and-watch at home, non-interactive, Saturday morning, cartoons. ReBoot, the Saturday morning teevee cartoon, on the other hand, was a highly-produced, highly-polished, super expensive to create, work of computer cartoon artistry. Broke all molds. The most expensive cartoon ever made at that point. It was high-resolution, computerized textures, and computer animation. Not hand drawn scribbles on onion skin, wrinkle paper, like Mutant League.

Our ratings surpassed Chris Brough’s ReBoot ratings because Mutant League was the most violent Saturday morning cartoon ever permitted by the Saturday morning ratings boards. In the Mutant League Saturday morning cartoon, monsters (mutants) sustain injuries, arms fall off, other monsters pick up the broken-off arms and beat other monsters with them, but the damaged ribs, and fingers, and appendages, and all the rest, visibly regrew in the bubbling, gurgling green ‘secret’ rejuvenation liquid… and thus, there were no actual injuries. Every mutant was fine. No mutants got hurt, even though their heads may have bounced along the football field, only to be punted into the stands, two minutes earlier. Saturday morning cartoon-watching kids loved it. ReBoot, on the other hand, had high-gloss characters that looked like little cartoon boys and girls (people; not monsters, not mutants) and had no rejuvenation liquid at all. Of any color. Not even purple. Turns out that Mutant League Football, the video game, performed better than I originally envisioned, and to this day, has loyal cultists that, for some reason, loved the game. For me, though, for my portfolio, from my perspective, Mutant League struggled, and wasn’t a viable product line. It wasn’t my child. I wasn’t its father. That snafu belongs to the original Mutant League conception genius, always–boss, M. Mendheim. His allegiance to Mutant League reminded me of Happy Keller, a forgotten, Grade B, video game producer, who fell in love with Mickey Mouse as a child, and wore Disney clothes every day as an adult. It was a blind addiction.

But ReBoot, the video game, was Bruce’s problem. I had my own problems. I had been tasked with making one of those World Wrestling Federation video games. EA paid through the nose for the license; both nostrils! So, the company had to make something. I wasn’t a fan. Hated the sport. Well, I didn’t watch it, except as a little kid, at times, when it had real stars doing real wrestling moves, like Wahoo McDaniel, and Dick the Bruiser, and Da’ Crusher. I didn’t do a great job on that video game product line, and it quietly passed on to another producer later on. Thankfully. Back in the day, when he was a wrestling stud, Wahoo McDaniel was also a defensive player in the American Football League, and when playing for the New York Jets, after he’d make a tackle, the stadium announcer would boom, ‘Who made that tackle?’, and the fans that filled the 1964 stadium would scream back excitedly, ‘Wahoo! That’s Who.’ He wore #54 for gang green. I owned an 8×10 glossy of Wahoo when I was a kid. It was a present from a childhood chum on my birthday. That’s right. It was given to me by Robert Steven Willard, Thelma’s lad. I kept it in a Pee Chee folder that had the times table printed on the inside cover. I also had a big glossy of The Sheik, but I never liked him. Maybe it was my brother’s glossy. I can’t remember everything. Like you.

Need For Speed

Driving the Need For Speed product line meant becoming its Executive Producer, the person with the ultimate responsibility for its on-going success. It surprised me that Larry Probst III, the CEO, was the one who asked me if I’d do it. I knew Larry when he was a sales guy back at Activision in 1983. But now, it was 1993. And this was Electronic Arts; the big gorilla of the exploding computer and video game industries. By huge, huge margins. EA was the worldwide gorilla. Not just in the USofA and Canada. Around the globe. All 24 times zones. 1993 Electronic Arts was different from 1983 Activision. The stakes were astronomically higher. Failure could be disastrous. The video game industry, as a whole, was much much more savvy, in 1993, than it was ten years earlier, in 1983. If 1983 Activision were considered the equivalent of a summer afternoon in City Park with trees in full-colored bloom, and grasshoppers singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah by happily scratching their legs together, and there’s a nice flowery smelling breeze, then 1993 Electronic Arts was Navy Seal hell week, and there weren’t any grasshoppers anywhere around. They didn’t survive long ago. Alternatively, if 1983 Activision was a beginner’s, gentle ski slope, rated ‘Easy’, with the big green circle identifying it’s skill level, and it was named Little Pink Marshmallow, then 1993 Electronic Arts was a double black diamond, five-meter tall, blinding blizzard, fractured ski jump named Final Plunge… with a lot of gusty cross-winds. Including splintered legs, and broken knee caps, limiting the landing zone far below. Electronic Arts was tough, and demanding… and the only place to be. If you could get there. If you could survive it.

I had been in plenty of meetings with EA’s senior management team. That’s Larry Probst III’s team. Larry’s team. It was an enlightening experience and always felt like an honor to be invited. I always viewed my presence as an invitation. Educational and important. It was clear these guys, and gals, knew exactly what they were doing beyond the level of any of the other senior management teams, at the other video game companies, that I had worked for: Activision and Accolade. I wasn’t a full-fledged member of Larry’s group, but I’d been invited to, and involved in, many meetings with them. The topics varied… but in the end, the most important discussion points were the status of the games being created. That’s my backyard. That’s my experience. That’s where the sun shone, or the hail pummeled. I produced the games. Folks in marketing marketed the games. Manufacturing was responsible for getting the game cartridges manufactured and boxed with the Instruction Manual. There were many video game consoles, and computers, to create the games for at the time. Nintendo, and Sega, and PCs, and Commodore 64’s, and different hardware configurations, in France, and different rules for Germany, and we translated the games into many languages. Cartridges were later replaced by 7 1/4″ floppy disks, and later 3.5″ diskettes. There was advertising, and PR and customer service… but most importantly, there were the games, themselves.

Electronic Arts could have the best marketing in the world, which EA had, and every department in the company could be outperforming exaggerated expectations, and fantastic forecasts, which they were all doing, but if the games we created sucked, there’s a problem; too few sales, unhappy customers, and lots of returns that have to be tracked, and managed. Overall perception of the company could dip. Stock price could cower. Careers could be jeopardized. Employee target bonus’ would be jeopardized… no one would be singing Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah. Or humming it. Or whistling it under their breath. Even in their car, on the way home, by themselves, with the windows rolled up.

When attending meetings with senior management, Larry’s team, I watched how the senior management team worked and learned what mattered to them. It was all numbers. The company was run on sales forecasts, and sales results. Individual members in Product Development (like me) were measured by the sales results of the products they produced. It’s what mattered most. It’s all that mattered. And there was a lot of competition. From internal competition, and from other video game companies. But Larry didn’t need to be the one to ask me to drive the Need For Speed franchise. I would have agreed to it no matter who made the offer. Need For Speed was one of EA’s key franchises, and the way to get ahead, and stay ahead, at EA, was to swallow as many key franchises as you could jam in your mouth.

I’d only been at EA for one year before agreeing to an inter-company transfer, from Redwood Shores in California, the world headquarters, where they made John Madden Football, to their recently-purchased development studio, in Vancouver, British Columbia. That’s right. I said, ‘yes’, to the transfer. ‘Yes’, to relocate to ice-covered, frozen tundra, Canada, where half the population dies while being eaten by polar bear. It was one year after transferring to this northern Frostbite Country, where polar bears hang out on every street corner, in Canada, when Larry asked me to take on Need For Speed. I was already sitting on top of two important EA franchises: PGA Tour Golf and NBA Live. I had set a new positive course for the PGA Tour Golf franchise, reworking the golf engine that created the experience, and won the MVP Worldwide trophy at EA for dominating the video game basketball world, by founding NBA Live. Based on the declining sales of EA’s previous basketball titles, the North American forecasting for NBA Live was set at 340,000 units by Nancy Smith, Sr. VP of Sales in North America. But I knew what we were building in NBA Live, and each time I would see Nancy, I’d tell her, ‘1.2’, ‘1.2’. Meaning, I thought we would sell 1.2 million units… 860,000 more units that she had forecast. Almost quadrupling the forecast. NBA Live was a masterpiece. It sold over 1.2 million units. Won lots of industry awards. It has still defined how a basketball video games looks – for the past 28+ years, and counting. The company thought I was a genius. Still, adding Need For Speed to my portfolio would be a valuable addition. The only stipulation at EA was simple, and straightforward: In order to keep a Franchise, in order to continue making games for it, you needed to sell many, many hundreds of thousands of units (copies of the game)… or, preferably, millions of units. Every year. On time. No excuses. No fuck ups. That’s a Franchise.

There was, however, one small issue regarding my running the Need For Speed franchise. It was a small issue that I kept to myself. Probably not important at all. I hesitate even to waste time mentioning it. So, I kept it hidden under a rug, unspoken, an issue that was specific to me. It’s probably so small that I need not bring it up, even now. Anyway, this was the insignificant issue: I knew almost nothing about cars… and I had little interest to learn anything about cars. Ugh. Yikes! Everyone else seemed real excited about cars. It just didn’t seem important, to me, for anyone else to know that I was running on empty when it came to car knowledge. That I was a car knowledge black hole. I especially didn’t think that Larry Probst III, the CEO, who made the offer, needed to know. I was pretty sure about that. The only thing, at the time, that I knew less about than cars, were inner buttocks bidets.

A Little Background

I liked cars. I just didn’t love them. I knew the names of quite a few. I would have to have been a doofus not to know the names of a few cars. And I knew more stuff, like what some of them looked like. But that’s about it. I didn’t know any engine-talk. Hemi, and hammy, and fan belts, and radiator caps. I didn’t sidle up to those things. Our classmate, Karle, did. Not me. I just didn’t connect with those things in any way. My car knowledge never advanced beyond my failed attempts to understand the difference between a fender and a bumper… and I’m still working on it, though not actively. I just don’t care! But here I was, agreeing to run EA’s super important, supercar driving franchise. See. I knew golf. And I really knew basketball. The players. The plays. The skills. The records. The innuendos. I was like a basketball savant. Hell, I even knew that the NBA trade deadline was the 14th Thursday of the season, each year. And pretty much no one knows that. But I really, really, really didn’t know anything about cars. Like bidets.

The car knowledge that I did firmly possess, in 1993, heading into the Need For Speed first turn, began back at around age ten, sitting with Bill Frisell, on a corner hill, on 8th Avenue, counting VW’s, as the traffic passed by. They travelled left to right. One way street that headed due west. Toward the front range of the Rocky Mountains. A street light dangled across 8th Avenue two houses farther up, to the west, and it monitored the speed of the traffic. A lot of the time, the cars would have to slow down, or stop, if the light glowed red. If you saw a VW run the light, you’d get double points if it was one of the VW’s you called out first.

Here’s how the game worked. You’d get points for each VW that you called out before the other guy called it out. You’d point your stiff finger at the VW, and call it out by color. The following is an absolutely perfect example as to what, exactly, you’d be required to say: ‘red bug‘. With finger pointed, stiff as a common 10d nail, at the red VW. That’s it. Just say, ‘red bug‘. If you called out ‘red bug‘ before the other guy called out ‘red bug‘, you’d get one point. If the other guy called out ‘blue bug‘, while you called out ‘red bug‘, it’s probably because there was also a blue VW bug traveling down 8th Avenue, and the other guy’s stiffened finger was probably pointing at it. It was always easy to verify. No one was trying to cheat to gain an advantage; to cheat ‘victory’. To tempt Fortuna.

Convertibles were worth three points. You’d shout, ‘red convertible‘, if the convertible was red. If the convertible’s top was down, you’d say ‘red convertible down‘ or, abbreviated, ‘red convertible d‘. Some kids, later on, would say ‘red top d‘, and it meant the red VW’s top was down. And we allowed that flexibility. Some people say ‘poTAto’ and some people say ‘poTAHto’. Other people say ground apple, or earth apple. Anyway, convertibles with their tops down were worth five points. And VW busses got the most points cuz they were the biggest, and they were the most rare. Not a lot of those. At least not that many going down 8th Avenue, heading west, toward the Front Range. I wondered, at the time, why it was like that. Anyway, if you pointed a stony finger at a red VW bus, traveling west on 8th Avenue, and called out ‘red bus‘, you’d get ten points.

This game, which Frisell and I called ‘Bug‘, constituted the entire thimbleful of car knowledge that I possessed, which gave me license, to run the Need For Speed franchise. My paycheck depended on it. As did my wife. My kids. The mortgage, and more. By the way, there is no ‘red bus‘ included in the helpful photo gallery above, because that’s about how many times a ‘red bus‘ drove down 8th Avenue, heading west, toward the Rocky Mountain front range.

McLaren Automotive

Need For Speed was a high-end, supercar, driving simulation, produced, and published, by Electronic Arts. It required an on-going, impressive stable of high-end supercars. None of those cars could just be put into the game: they had to be licensed. And at Electronic Arts, licensing meant an exclusive license. That means that only Need For Speed would be allowed to include the licensed cars in a video game. Competitors could not use them. Competitors would be locked out. If I produced the best supercar driving simulation ever made, and the cars included weren’t the highest rated cars in the world, sales would suffer. Significantly. And that means that everyone on the development team would suffer. Significantly. So I needed the exclusive license to the hottest cars that existed on the planet at the time. Thankfully, our stable of cars was already in good shape, but there were a couple outstanding targets still out to license. Most of the trip was to introduce myself to the car manufactures that I would be working with and speaking with frequently. The idea is to put a face to the voice and name. I booked meetings and my executive assistant, Renata, booked flights, and I took off for Europe.

My first meeting was with McLaren Automotive, in England. I already had the exclusive rights for the F1; their super car. We negotiated by phone. They knew that EA would sell the most units, that we would do the best job modeling, and representing their car, so the exclusive deal was quick to negotiate. This in-person meeting was just a ‘meet and greet’. No agenda. I’m in the neighborhood, I’m the new person running the Need For Speed line, I should stop in. Say, ‘hello’. And they got to show off their facility to a guy that didn’t care much. Which they didn’t know. But that lack of interest that I had carried with me since I was ten years old didn’t last long. I felt it dissipating.

The car for which we had already acquired the exclusive rights, the McLaren F1, was the fastest production road car in the world for over ten years in a row. The car could travel over 240 mph, and cost $1,000,000 to purchase. No other car came close, both to the F1‘s speed and the F1‘s cost. (Today finds them selling for $16,000,000 – $20,000,000.) McLaren built a total of two at a time, in one clean room, where workers could eat off the floor, and did. This phenomenal automobile had three seats, one in the front center, and two in the back. The whole car weighed almost nothing because it was made of carbon fiber. Which meant it was the safest car in the world because carbon fiber is that strong (5x stronger than steel) and basically can’t fracture when hit… even at 150 mph. It was so safe, it didn’t come with seat belts, which is why they weren’t initially available to buy in the USofA. The McLaren F1 also came with its own set of titanium wrenches, and golf clubs. And it had a little antenna in the front of the car that constantly beamed engine data to a satellite way up above the clouds, in space, which relayed the critical data back down, through the same clouds, to our planet, Earth, to the location on its surface, where the engine was made. This was done so that the engine manufacturer could monitor, and analyze, what’s going on with their car, 24/7/365. They thought of each of the 106 of them produced as ‘their car‘. You just own it. If the engine data indicates a problem, they come to you to fix their car, no matter where the owner lives, at no charge, to the owner, for life. For someone like me who was not a car enthusiast, I was getting indoctrinated via a convincing crash course on car appeal.

McLaren F1

The good folks at McLaren told me about a ‘client’ (owner) that had questionable engine data beaming down to their facility. He was an owner that lived in southern Germany. He was a banker. No, he was much higher. He was a bank executive. No, higher, still. He was an extremely rich bank executive that could afford to plop down the equivalent of $1,000,000 US in Deutsche Marks (DM) to buy a car. McLaren was puzzled by the downloaded data that they were receiving from his car. The data showed an average driving speed of 8 mph. Something had to be amiss. A bug in their software? How could a millionaire McLaren F1 owner drive an average speed of 8 miles per hour? He could have bought a Renault, or an old Pinto, or a new Gremlin, for a lot cheaper, if he wanted that kind of performance. So, McLaren sent a crack team to Germany to investigate. To see the car first hand, in person. The owner said he wasn’t aware of any problem when driving the car, and said he loved the car. It turned out that, this time, McLaren had a problem very familiar to video game makers. A problem that we encountered in early video game design days. In those early arcade-like home video games, developers would put a maximum number on high scores, often 1,000,000 points, figuring, believing, knowing, no one would ever approach that high of a score. Until someone, and then more someone’s, broke the score. And ‘broke’ the game. Rather than the onscreen display showing more than 1,000,000 points, the score would wrap around and start at 0 again. If you got an actual score of 1,000,100 points, the screen would show 100 points. That’s exactly what happened with the McLaren F1. The German banker was racing on the autobahn, traveling across more than half of the country of Germany, to go to work, averaging 208 mph. Developing their diagnostic system software, McLaren knew that no one was going to eclipse an average of 200 mph… and so their diagnostics wrapped, and showed an average speed of 8 mph.

I had the opportunity to visit McLaren a few times over the years. On one of the trips, one of their F1‘s was in for servicing while I was there. The guy in the waiting room, sitting just off the ‘clean’ room, was George Harrison. The Beatle. It was his F1 that was being serviced. So we chatted. His accent was real. He told me that he stopped by, just to visit the facility, and they told him they’d check the fluid levels, and rotate his tires, as long as he was there. I thanked him for the white album.

There is a thing between McLaren F1 owners. They care deeply about their car’s ‘skin’. That’s what they call the body. Everyone wanted their ‘skin’ to be unique. To be the best. It was real serious. It’s what the super-rich do… make sure their McLaren F1 supercar has the most unique skin of all the F1‘s. The skin of George Harrison’s F1 was hand written lyrics of the Gayatri Mantra. A bunch of times. I don’t think 108 times, the number of times you’re supposed to chant it. George Harrison? He was the spiritual, Hindu-ee-ish, Beatle. No other McLaren F1 owner had that skin. Only George Harrison. It was the most incredible car I would ever see. Even more than another McLaren F1 that I saw before we burned it up.

When we modeled a car for Need For Speed, we modeled everything about the car. We would use all the statistical engine data from the manufacturer that we could get our hands on. Which was voluminous. Gear ratios were modeled exactly. Acceleration for each gear. Suspension. Aerodynamics. Steering Speed. Turning Radius. Dashboards. Traction. Tires: rain to racing. Revolution Speeds. Brake Balancing. Fish-tailing Characteristics. Sounds. Car sounds were important. We would record the actual sounds of the engine as each gear revved up, and as well as the sounds when down-shifting. We recorded the clicking of the gears shifting, the sounds of acceleration. The squeals of the tires… all of it. When the Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit game player earned the rights to drive the McLaren F1, they were driving an accurate simulation of the real thing; including all the sounds. To acquire the sounds, we recorded them, live. We strategically placed microphones under the hood of the car, all around the engine. And to keep the microphones in place around the engine, we would pack them in with cloth material. We’d done the same drill for over fifty cars by then. But the McLaren was different from all the other cars. The McLaren was so fast, so powerful, so much horse-power, and generated so much heat, that the inside hood of the F1 included a gold liner… which has a real high melting point… but gets super-hot. Hot enough that while recording it’s sounds, on McLaren’s test track, the recording vehicle burst ablaze, and the driver jumped out, and the fire crew got there with fire extinguishers, and put the flames out. We sat and watched a portion of that $1,000,000 McLaren F1 burn up. But not the skin! Thank god. And the worst thing was that we had to mic-up another F1 to get the sounds we were looking to record. Which, for that trip to Europe, meant changing that evening’s flight out of London’s Heathrow airport to Flughafen Zuerich (Zurich’s airport). We were never going to get to Heathrow on time to make our flight after having to record the engine sounds from our 2nd McLaren F1 that afternoon. Good thing we had brought extra microphones! That would have really been embarrassing.

BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche

With McLaren Automotive in the rearview mirror, I flew to Zurich, Switzerland. Rented a cheap European car, and drove to the boutique Zum Storchen Hotel, on the Limmat River that runs through the center of the old town. It’s a wonderful location right on the old town boardwalk that meanders through a myriad of terrific shops. I stopped in one the next morning, on my way out of town, and picked up an ornate hand crafted Swiss cuckoo clock, which I had shipped to Canada. Then, I headed east, toward Austria, on the way to Munich, for a meeting the following morning at BMW. The Swiss air was chilled and crisp and clean and delicious, while blasting the Jerry Garcia Band, and the Grateful Dead, near full volume. It felt like pure freedom. There was a tunnel up ahead that pierced the steep mountains. The tunnel turned out to be surprisingly long. It kept on going. And going. And going. And going. And going. And going. It felt unnatural to be inside of a mountain for twenty two minutes of driving. Freakish. But then, upon exiting on the eastern end, there was a toll booth where you handed money to a toll booth girl. She handed back a receipt, and a bumper sticker that read, ‘You have just driven through the longest tunnel in the world’. I had no plans to ever drive through that tunnel again. It wasn’t that the bumper sticker wasn’t appreciated. Because it wasn’t. I learned that I didn’t like driving in a tunnel for so long.

BMW is located in one of the ugliest buildings I’d ever seen in my life, and was quite a juxtaposition from the Rathaus Glockenspiel in the town’s center, just around the corner from where Hitler used to holler at the enormous, forced gathering of crowds, in the 1930s. BMW’s headquarters was a building built in the 1950s, following the shellacking that Munich took near the end of WWII. Circular towers that were an awful blue color. After waiting about ten minutes, I was met in the lobby, by a kid, younger than me. We exchanged greetings, entered the elevator, were transported up about a half a dozen floors, exited, and then I watched the kid goose-step down the hallway to the meeting room. The kid was twenty-five years old ‘marching’ like the Nazi’s marched. Goose-stepping! I wanted to make a U-Turn, and re-enter the elevator before the door had closed, but knew that that wouldn’t go over real well back at the office. You couldn’t place an apology letter in the video game boxes saying, ‘We would have included the BMW M3 GTR, but the employees at BMW are assholes that goose-step down the hallways.’ The BMW M3 GTR wasn’t going to make or break the next release of Need For Speed. But I kept my cool. When we entered the reserved meeting room, it was all glassed in, with views to the outdoors. The heavy, faded curtains were drawn open. I could see that the draw string was broken, dangling at the side. Before the coffee, and crappy, heavy, greasy German sausage and cakes, the goose-stepper pointed across the street, and said with a wry smile on his face, as though bragging, ‘There. Across the street. Over there is where the 1972 Israeli Olympic team was killed.’ Goose-step boy thought it was the German’s that had slaughtered the team. He was real proud. But they didn’t do it, this time. It was the Palestinian militant organization, Black September. Goose-step boy had misplaced his admiration. I left vowing to never own a BMW. A vow I’ve honored. A rare vow. I never returned to BMW.

I drove across the autobahn from Munich to Stuttgart, where both Mercedes Benz and Porsche were headquartered. Not much to report. As much as I despised BMW, I loved Porsche. The people weren’t stuffy, like those employed at BMW, and as it turned out, like some of the people employed at Mercedes. But I had a nice chat at Porsche with a very nice high energy performer. We got along quite well. Then I ate some more German sausage food, which was carted around their lunch cafeteria to each table, like it was dim sum. But it wasn’t dim sum. It was more German sausage and schnitzel, yet slightly less greasy than what they were eating over at BMW. Porsche had better cars. Better food. Better people. But not as good of a clock tower (the glockenspiel) as they had in Munich.

There was a momentary, scary incident on the drive to Stuttgart on the autobahn. It was a four lane highway going east and west; two lanes each direction. I was traveling west from Munich to get to Stuttgart. It’s about a two and half hour drive. If traveling at normal United States of America speeds. I was in the right lane, and was going to enter the left, faster lane, the one with no speed limit. The terrain was quite flat, and I could see a long distance behind me. The coast was clear. As I put on my blinker, and was about to change lanes, a Mercedes Benz 2000 (I don’t know what Mercedes it was… I couldn’t read that fast) went by me at blinding speed. 150+ mph. Had I even inched into the lane, I’d be dead right now, because I would have been killed right then. When looking to change lanes on the German autobahn, you need to accelerate ASAP if the coast looks clear… because seconds later, some German car maniac is going to blow by you. Scared the tarry Shinola out of me. Goosebumps consumed me. Not to be confused with goose-steps.

There was a former Porsche automobile designer who had quit his job years earlier, and had gone off on his own. He was located south of Stuttgart, near the border of German/Swiss border, just inside of Switzerland. Up in the hills. Out of the way. Difficult to find. He had a car that he designed, and had one built. Just the one. It was a clumsy looking car, an odd looking car. The unique draw to it, in his estimation, was the treatment he had given to the rearview mirror. He placed the rearview mirror way above the dashboard, through a window, out and onto the roof. When I was back in Canada, prior to this trip, he and I spoke on the phone, and he was asking $5000 to license his car. $5000 was like a rounding error for what the approved budget was for automobile acquisition. I had agreed to his price. Upon seeing his strange creation, he told me that his price had doubled to $10,000. Still a rounding error to me. We shook hands, signed the exclusive, I handed him a check, and for the life of me, I can’t remember if we ever included the car in Need For Speed. Since there was only one on the planet, we couldn’t record any engine sounds because it wasn’t ‘intact’ at the time of my visit. It seemed dangerous to me to have to lift your head to look at a rearview mirror that was external and could have ice in winter. What do I know? I’m still waiting for the release of an externally-mounted, roof top, rearview mirror, from any car manufacturer. But I won’t buy it. Maybe BMW could do it. I won’t buy it from them, either.

Ferrari S.p.A. vs Lamborghini Automobili

It does not matter what measuring mechanism that gets thrown at Ferrari, it is simply the #1 recognizable brand in motorcars, and motor racing. When a Ferrari executive was asked, at a meeting I attended, ‘How big is Ferrari’s marketing budget?’, the confused Ferrari executive answered, ‘Marketing budget? We are Ferrari. We don’t do marketing.’ And that’s how it is with Ferrari. If Need For Speed didn’t include Ferrari, we were a Grade B title trending down, faster than a walnut rolls off the roof of a Montgomery Ward* hen house. So, of course, we already had the exclusive rights to Ferrari’s famous lineup. This trip, the lineup included the Ferrari 355 F1 Spider, the Ferrari 456M GT, and the Ferrari 550 Maranello. I visited their production facility, and that day, there were six long mechanical rows, all next to one another, transporting perhaps thirty impressive red Ferrari 550 Maranello‘s. They were all already painted, and it was the final inspection, so they weren’t finding much. It was a surreal scene seeing final inspection guys wearing what looked like bee keeper outfits, or nuclear fallout outfits, inspecting the hanging Ferrari carcasses… each one that fabulous and beautiful ‘Ferrari red’. I dodged certain entrapment when the discussion at the assembly line got technical regarding engine specs, but I found my escape by simply nodding, and saying how impressed I was, and how thrilled I was, to be visiting Ferrari. I could tell they were used to compliments, and expected them. I couldn’t help thinking that there were a million guys that would give their left bowler to be where I was at that moment. Maranello, Italy. Ferrari World Headquarters. It was impressive. Even to me. Everything at Ferrari was impressive. Including their on-site museum.

* Montgomery Ward was also called, ‘Monkey Wards’, by my father, and lots of other kid’s father’s, because they sold exotic monkeys, in some stores, through their mail-order catalog. One of the Dallas, Texas stores had monkeys in the back. And they weren’t the employees.

Even the food at Ferrari was impressive. Ferrari’s cafeteria had one of the great chefs of the world creating the dishes. I could go on and on about Ferrari’s food; as could they. Every dish looked like a work of artistic accomplishment; just like their menagerie of cars. They then escorted me to their Ferrari Gift Store, and asked me to pick out a few things. It’s one of the cool things about these trips. Car companies are notorious for having great Gift Stores at their headquarters. I was given a black leather jacket by Chevrolet that said CORVETTE across the back, when I licensed the Corvette C5, in Detroit. At Porsche, in Stuttgart, Germany, I picked up a few things like key chains, and I didn’t go crazy, because part of the deal with Porsche allowed for up to eight senior management members of Electronic Arts to buy new Porsche’s for 10% below list, including me. Five did. Not me. Too low to the ground. Cool cars. Too low to the ground. I drove an Isuzu at the time. Rubber band engine. I THINK.

Ferrari 550 Maranello

At the Ferrari headquarters Gift Store, they encouraged me to take the three-pronged, polished steel, hubcap cover, with the logo’d prancing horse, mounted on a round brick of fine Italian leather. It was a piece of art. It was an actual Ferrari prancing horse steel hub cap. I wasn’t surprised. This was Ferrari. First class all the way. After meeting with the great Ferrari point people, they walked me out to my base rental car, and while saying ciao, and goodbye, you could hear a disturbing rumbling off in the distance. You couldn’t ignore it, really. Two of the top car manufacturer’s in the entire world, the two car titans of Italy, were 16 miles apart… and had a long-held, hatred for one another. The sound we were hearing was the deep, throaty, rumble of a test driver racing across the Italian golden hills, two miles away, test driving a Lamborghini Diablo SV. It drove the Ferrari guys crazy… and I was headed to Lamborghini next.

The reaction of the Ferrari guys in the parking lot was basically them shaking their fists, and doing that sign that the Italians do in movies, when they curl their hand below their chin, and then open it while thrusting it forward, while they mutter, ‘Non Mi Interessa’, in Italian (well, that is Italian), which means ‘I don’t care’, or ‘I couldn’t care less’, or for us in America, it’s basically Italian for ‘go fuck off’. And then while I’m pulling out of Ferrari’s parking lot, I am still watching the Ferrari boys do the chin flick in my rearview mirror. It was as goofy of an ending to a meeting as was the start of the first, and only, meeting I ever had with the Peanuts‘ gang, up in Santa Rosa, California, an hour and a half up Highway 101, after driving over the Golden Gate Bridge. That meeting, which I know for sure was the second week of December, was instantly strange. Al Miller, and I, walked in, and were ambushed by, I’d say, six secretaries, sitting behind their desks, in a fantastic retreat, with glass windows staring at enormous Redwoods staring back, and it was the coolest looking office I’d ever been in. It was one of Charles Schultz’s houses… converted to an office… on Charles Schultz’s Peanuts’ compound. Charles Schultz lived in the house over there. Al Miller, and I, learned real quick because they all said it, how Charles Schultz is the cheapest son-of-a-bitch in the world. That’s what they said. They were spitting those words right through their teeth. Not holding back. It was Christmas season, and they said he never had ever given anyone a Christmas bonus, ever. And yet neither Al Miller, nor I, had been there before, so we hadn’t met anybody before. We weren’t what you could call, ‘family’. They said that Charles Schultz was one of the highest grossing earners when it came to money (and that wasn’t secret information – I even knew it). He was the highest paid celebrity in the world in the 1980s. He made over $1.1 billion dollars over 50 years. And even now, thirty years after making a game with Gene Smith (RIP: Gene… love you brother), called Snoopy’s Fun House, Charles Schultz is still at the top when it comes to making income, now from the grave. Compared to other grave-earners, he makes more money today than the estates of John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and Elizabeth Taylor combined. Of those three, Elizabeth Taylor is, far and away, the largest contributor. I just could not believe that the entire secretary-slew at the Peanuts‘ house, leaked all that juicy information out to us. One of the coolest meetings I had ever encountered. I took on their attitude: fuck Charles Schultz.

Lamborghini Diablo SV

Driving into the parking lot of Lamborghini Automobili’s world headquarters, in Sant’Agata, Bolognese, Italy, literally little more than twenty minutes from Ferrari S.p.A. world headquarters, had given me ample time to readjust my thinking. To get into a professional frame of thought. Lamborghini is where I was going to feel the most pressure to perform. It’s where I had to actually get something done. We hadn’t secured their exclusive licensing, yet, and this was the #1 line item of my trip’s agenda. Going to Lamborghini was the main reason for the entire trip. I had more pressure on me than LeBron James going to the free throw line. I had more pressure on me than US Army General Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. in Operation Desert Shield. I pulled open Lamborghini’s enormous front door, and approached the front entry desk, which was she-manned by a stunningly gorgeous, Italian girl.

My impressive opening salvo: Hello. I have a meeting with Gabriella Martinelli at 2:00p. Name is Nelson. Sam Nelson.

Receptionist checking her docket: I’ma sorry, sir. I don’ta see a meetings on Gabriella’s ticket for youa right now. You saida, 2:00 o’clock?

The receptionist’s English was spoken with absolute perfect diction. More than perfect. It came delivered in a beautiful, lilting, Italiano ac-a-cent, through the poofy, glossy lipsa of a beautiful, Italiano girl. Ata Lamborghini. Are youa kidding me? I’ma at Lamborghini!!

An older woman then appeared through an internal door. She wasn’t old; just older. 40-ish. With incredibly bright eyes that stopped my breathing. Deep blue, pooled eyes. Blue dazzlers is what they’d be called. She had beautiful almond-shaped azure Italian eyes. Which had an intense youthful, laser, shine. Her clothes were smartly tailored. Very comfortable. She had been working at Lamborghini for a long time, and due to her intelligent work, had many times helped Lamborghini. That’s all I knew about her. Her walk was classy, and easy. Her shoes? New, white, stylish, assuredly Italian, sneakers.

Azure-eyed, white-sneakered woman: Hello. You musta be Sam. I’m Gabriella Rossella Martinelli. Very nice toa meetsa you. Please come in. Jus’ follow a me.

At that, Gabriella extended her hand, and we said our hello’s. Yikes, I thought. Here goes. She held on to my hand with her delicate fingers, and led me away, not letting go. What technique! What warmth! What strategy! What negotiation skills! What am I doing there? I don’t even like cars, although the trip, so far, had warmed my cockles. ‘She’s gonna kill me in this negotiation’, I thought. I was already tongue-tied, yet I hadn’t even attempted to speak. We will see how it goes. I was not defeated, yet. I had no grand plan, but….

I followed Gabriella Rossella Martinelli, head of marketing for Lamborghini Automobili, to her office, on the second floor. Her hand was warm to the touch. The building seemed empty of other people. I didn’t see anyone else. There was not that buzzing about that I had witnessed at Ferrari, and BMW, and Porsche, and McLaren. It was calm, and Gabriella was calming. It was as though everyone had left work for the day.

Gabriella behaved confidently. Acted cool. We chatted about my trip so far, where I’d been. ‘Had I a-been to Ferrari?’, she inquired. I told her that I had. She nodded, ‘Of course.’ ‘Did I a-like it?,’ she continued. I said, ‘Yes, very much. But I am really happy to be here, at Lamborghini.’ She told me that her clients usually visit Ferrari first. She asked if I heard a car being test driven across the countryside while I was at Ferrari. I said, ‘Yes. It was impossible not to hear it.’ At which she smiled. She just smiled. She had a beautiful smile. She was in full command. I felt like Elmer J. Fudd.

I wondered if this all could just be a strategy of hers, as we were about to get serious about negotiating a deal for her high-end Lamborghini supercars. Specifically, the Lamborghini Countach, and the Lamborghini Diablo SV. She knew her cars, I was sure of it, and she knew her objective. She was the weather, and I was a dust mite.

Her opponent in this negotiation, of course, was me. My credentials were probably unknown to her. The last time I was this anxious about cars was sitting on that 8th Avenue hill, counting VWs, with Frisell, when I was ten. Gabriella was going to squash me like a bug. Not a VW bug. More like a beetle. Not the VW beetle. More like a six-legged fruit fly. But with two legs. However, I did have Electronic Arts at my back. I didn’t know what she knew about Electronic Arts, how informed she was, how much time anyone at Lamborghini had spent investigating us. I sat down, at her insistence, in the leather chair a few feet from her desk. The surface of her desk was quite clean. Looked to be but one piece of paper on it. ‘Who has a desk with one piece of paper on it?’, I thought to myself. Who was so on top of everything, that their desk looks like it had just been put in place minutes earlier?

Gabriella: Come-a, Sam. Pull the chair a forward. Would you a-like a water or espresso coffee?

Me: Yes, Gabriella, I would love a coffee, but only if you will have one, also.

She nodded, and while she stepped out of her office, I pulled my chair up closer to her desk, and got a better peek at the paper laying on its surface. I first noticed that the single piece of paper was actually a short stack of paper. Leaning forward more, I could see that it had the appearance of a contract. But I couldn’t read the type upside-down. I realized, at that precise moment, that I would have to let Gabriella know that Electronic Arts only signs contracts created by Electronic Arts. We don’t sign contracts drawn up by the licensees. I hoped this would not be an issue. There were times in the past where contract signatures were delayed for this exact reason. Who controls the contract?

Gabriella returned to her office with two coffees. She seemed to just float along the floor as she walked. Effortless. She didn’t walk. She glided. My mind fractured, and went back to when I had visited Timothy Leary, the ‘High Priest of LSD’, at his home, at the top of the Hollywood Hills, overlooking the Los Angeles skyline. I was shocked when he told me, after sharing a brownie, with my own little glass of milk, that he, and his wife, were renting. Timothy Leary, famed Harvard psychology professor, acid king, was at one stretch the #1 Most Wanted Man by the FBI; just like bin Laden, years later. Timothy Leary was creating his own computer game ‘experience’, and had started his own company, which he named, ‘Futique’. Futique was a blended word, combining ‘Future’ and ‘Antique’. It was a mind game. Duh! It was Timothy Leary. What other type of game would he be creating? Life on the Run as the FBI’s Most Wanted? Sounds like a cool game. Kind of like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? I’m starting my search in Algeria. Timothy Leary wore bright white tennis shoes, no scuff marks, a similar white to the tennis shoes that Gabriella was wearing. Timothy Leary had the most effortless walk I’d ever seen. Until Gabriella Rossella Martinelli’s walk rivaled with uncanny similarities.

Blinking back to the present, to the office at Lamborghini, I imagined that Gabriella knew that she had given me just enough time, and freedom, to glance at that contract laying on her, otherwise empty, desk. This wasn’t inadvertent. Next, she lifted the pages, tapped them together, and placed them back on the desk in front of her. I reminded myself what my job was…. to sell the importance and strength of Electronic Arts, and in doing so, acquire the exclusive rights to Lamborghini’s high-end supercars.

Gabriella: Here is your coffee, Sam. I hope it’sa not a too hot. And if you wanta more, please jus letta me know.

Me: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Gabriella: Soa, Sam, tell me, please, about Electronic Arts, and whya Lamborghini should sign a contract witha you.

Me: Ok. It’s a simple story to tell, Gabriella. A simple success story. Electronic Arts is the highest grossing video game and computer game company in the world. Our lineup of products is the most broad, and most successful, of all our competitors. And that includes Need For Speed. This is a very important franchise within EA… and it gets special attention. Our ratings from magazines, from video game magazines, is always in the upper 90%’s. Our development team for Need For Speed, my team, in Vancouver, in British Columbia, built the predecessor to Need For Speed. It was called Test Drive. So we have been iterating on supercar driving simulations for years, and years. We have the dominant driving video game engine that we continue to hone and improve. But the most important part, maybe, for you, is to know that we will do a treatment of your cars that is first class, and we will sell more units than any competitor. I think you already know what we are offering Lamborghini as an advance against royalties. How familiar are you with EA?

Gabriella: I knowa a bit about your company. I read-a your Annual Report and I-a read-a some reviews. Your company hassa been recommended to me by many, many kids here in Italy. Your reputation is like ours: Molto Grande. Do youa knowa any Italiano?

Me: I know ‘molto grande’ is pretty good. But no, I don’t speak Italian. But I do love listening to it. It is a beautiful language.

Gabriella: Sam, if I-a did a deala with you, would youa be the contacta person? Or are youa the one that does the deals, and someone else-a makes the games? Howa doesa thata work?

Me: Well, I’m here to do the deal, but I’m also the one that heads the development of the game. It is my responsibility. The Need For Speed team works directly for me. It’s what we call an in-house team. They work right in the same building that I work in. We work together every day.

Gabriella: I-a see. So you’re the licensing guy anda the developmenta head, tooa?

Me: For this game, yes. I don’t always do the licensing for the games. Sometimes, like for some sports games, we need the license for hundreds of players, so I don’t get involved with that. But I love cars so much, that I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to visit the great, Lamborghini. I love it here. It is like heaven. I am so excited to be here. To be visiting Lamborghini. The Bull.

Gabriella: Thanka you fora the kinda words. Lamborghini issa quite an interesting place, but frankly, I-a don’ta knowa mucha about the cars. Not the details. Therea are plenty of others herea you coulda speak to about our car’s, how do you say, satickets? No, statistics, I think. I knowa quite a lot about the history of Lamborghini. But asa woman, I don’ta care so mucha about the car performs. Youa understand?

Me: Oh, sure. Yeah. That’s ok. It’s a lot of minutia. I’m sure you have all the car data that we would need to be able to make a successful game, if we get a deal done? Material that could be mailed back to Electronic Arts, in Canada.

Gabriella: The team inna the production departmenta woulda have all the information you could ever want, I ama sure of it. If we get to a deal. I knowa that your offer is $375,000 advance againsta royalties. That is what we discussed earlier over the phone. Yes? Can youa explain morea whata that means?

Me: Sure. It would be my pleasure. What we are offering Lamborghini for the exclusive use of your Countach and Diablo SV for three years, is a $375,000 advance, at signing, against a royalty of 1/2%. What this means is this. If EA receives $25 per unit after some costs, and we sell one million units over the life of the product, which is our current sales forecast, Lamborghini could earn $1,250,000 total. After the $375,000 advance is recouped by EA, you would get a quarterly statement explaining all the worldwide sales, by territory, along with a check.

Gabriella: Tella me what does recoupeda mean?

Me: It means… well, let’s use real numbers. For every 100,000 units sold, Lamborghini would earn $125,000. So at 300,000 units sold, EA will have recouped, or earned back, the $375,000 advance that it paid to Lamborghini. Lamborghini would begin getting paid additional dollars, US dollars, on each unit sold above the initial 300,000 units sold. And you would get paid these dollars quarterly, along with a statement, that shows all the sales in each territory.

Gabriella: I-a see. Anda how many a games would youa make inna three years?

Me: It is my job to produce one game per year, so we would want the rights for three years, or three products. In those years, we would want to review Lamborghini’s car release lineup, and add additional cars. Which would come with additional advances under the same exclusive terms. So, over the term of the agreement, if EA’s forecasting is right, Lamborghini could earn close to $4,000,000. If our forecasts are low, and EA sells more units, then Lamborghini would, of course, also earn more.

Gabriella: I understanda. Ok. Nowa, would you like-a more coffee, Sam? Water?

Me: Oh. Thank you. Water would be great. Can I help get it? Can I get it for you?

Gabriella: I canna manage ita, Sam. There is a restroom outta the door, and turna to the right, if you need to use-a it.

With that, Gabriella left the room for a second time. With the door open momentarily, I heard the deep rumble of another Diablo roaring by. I felt the meeting was going okay, but I hadn’t closed the deal. She seemed to know the right questions to ask. I got the impression that she knew the answers to her questions before she asked them. That she wanted to hear the answers directly from me. Maybe just to confirm. While we were talking, she played with the short paper stack on her desk, and actually left it a little closer to me when she left the room. I took the opportunity to give another quick look while Gabriella excused herself.

What I saw was surprising: a proposal from Activision. Not even a proposal, it was a contract. Activision was the first video game company that I had worked for. They were a competitor to Electronic Arts, but quite low, at that time, on the competitor list. I knew their capabilities, which didn’t come anywhere close to EA’s. First of all, they had no driving engine. They would be starting from scratch. It takes a solid year just to build a driving engine. Or maybe Activision had already started, but they had no sales in the genre. It would be a mistake for Lamborghini to sign with Activision, over Electronic Arts. It would be laughable. But no one at EA would be laughing if I couldn’t bring home this deal, however. Was any other video game company vying to get the rights to the supercars at Lamborghini? Gabriella returned to the room, gliding across the floor, like Timothy Leary.

Negotiation Tactics: Lesson #5: Humor and Prayer (Expert)

Gabriella: Here-a you go-a, Sam. Itsa Italian water. From near Rimini. Would youa like-a a tour of our factory whena we are through?

Me: Thank you for the water. And yes, I’d love to see your production line. I’ve seen a few before, at other car manufacturers, but I’ve heard Lamborghini is the best one. I’d love that. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. But may I ask you what might be a sensitive question, and if so, may I apologize in advance?

Gabriella: Of course-a, Sam. Go-a ahead. I’m sure-a you-a don’ta needa to-a pologize.

Me: Ok. Thanks. Anyway, I saw, because I imagine that you wanted me to see it, that you have a proposal of some sort on your desk, from Activision, Are you considering signing a deal with them? (I tried not to reveal any sort of face; neither concern, nor defeat, nor surprise.)

Gabriella beamed like she had just hit TOMBOLA (that’s ‘bingo’ in English): I’ma glad you-a finally asked-a, Sam! I have notta signed anything a-with a-them, yet-a, but they did-a come by-a about two weeks ago, and senta this offer sheet. I wasa waiting until I-a hada met you. I’ve-a donna more-a research since-a receiving Activision proposal, anda although theira deal termsa, and yoursa, have similars, issa thata how you say it? It issa cleara that Electronic Arts has much bigger history anda more-a bigger successes inna the video game driving car-a market. I thinka that Electronic Arts woulda be the safer choice-a for Lamborghini. So I-a am-a leaning towarda signing a deala witha you, Sam. I don’ta knowa if you are-a able to make-a the deal terms more-a sweeter, but I-a woulda like-a to-a discuss-a that.

Okay! Now we’re cooking. Cards are coming onto the table, at last. Or they are going to be. Now I feel pretty secure in the driver’s seat. I took a slurp of my water. And wished that I’d used the bathroom. I had some leeway on the deal terms. You always had to have some leeway. I just wanted Gabriella to know that Activision would be a mistake for her. I wanted her to know that Electronic Arts was her best choice. So she knew that Electronic Arts was really the only choice to make. But I didn’t want to just come out and say bad things about Activision. I was unsure exactly how to convey this in a nice way. Gabriella continued…

Gabriella: Although deala points are-a similar, Sam, and I’ma full-a of hope that we canna finalize something fora both of our companies here, there-a issa one point about Activision deala that is missing from Electronic Arts deala thata we’ve beena discussing.

Me: Okay. Sure, Gabriella. What’s that? (I took another slurp of water, silently. Probably should have said ‘sip of water’.)

Gabriella: Alonga witha the deala points, anda the advance money, anda the royalty ratesa, Activision deala also includesa 10,000 shares of-a Activision a stock.

I could see what she was angling for. It was obvious. She was smart as a cookie. I didn’t know if she knew that Activision had only just become a public company, so their stock shares had no actual history and could be valueless to her. Maybe she knew. It would have been a bit of speculation. Activision may never appreciate. Probably she knew that the Activision stock may only ever be light green. However, on the flip side, 10,000 shares of EA stock had demonstrable value. At a $20 strike price, that’s an additional $200,000. At $40, it’s $400,000. I quickly gathered my thoughts, and said:

Me: You know, Gabriella, I like you. And I like Lamborghini. And I want to make this easy for you, and easy for Lamborghini. In an effort to close the final terms, I will match Activision, and offer you, and Lamborghini, this: In addition to the deal terms we’ve already discussed, the advances, the royalty rates, the initial three year deal, with the rights to extend under the same terms, I will guarantee that the Electronic Arts deal will also include 10,000 shares of Activision stock!

Gabriella grew a big, beautiful smile, and laughed out loud, in Italiano. Wow. She knew that I knew what she was aiming for. Her laughter was a wonderful relief. She appreciated the cleverness. And we did finalize the deal! Rather than award Lamborghini 10,000 shares of EA stock, which she was looking for, Gabriella agreed to an increase of the royalty rate from .5% to .6%; a jump of 20%. Well done, Gabriella! She felt rewarded. She was happy. And I used the Lamborghini bathroom facilities (Ho usato il bagno.) and then I was happy (‘ero felice), and then I toured the factory (Ho visitato la fabbrica.) with Gabriella Rosella Martinelli, with both of us smiling (sorridente). I had made a valuable friend at my new favorite car manufacturer: Lamborghini Automobili. And said ‘Ciao’ to my new favorite Italian, Gabriella Rossella Martinelli. She made my trip a success.

Final Negotiation Tactic: Lesson #6: Don’t Get Overconfident (Expert)

Sometimes negotiations feel like verbal poker. There is necessary bluffing; the nature of negotiation; the nature of poker. As a distraction, you might raise your right hand up high, and as your adversary glances up, you quickly reach around with your left hand, and pull a walnut out of the back of their head. That’s rare. But it’s also a ‘distraction’. But this isn’t about hocus-pocus, or who hid the bunny ears.

I was a participant in a big poker game in college. The other gentlemen who were invited to the table were all college students. We were all first-semester freshmen. So we knew our shit. Even though we didn’t yet really know each another. We ranged in age from 17 to 18. I was 17, and everyone else was 18. The poker pot got real big on one of the early hands. We’d been at it about a half an hour. Approaching forty-five minutes. Those times quoted are just estimates. The rest is accurate recollection.

On this particular hand, everyone was still ‘in’ after the initial round of bidding, and discarding unwanted cards, followed by replacements drawn. The hand started out normal, and then the pot began to mushroom. I knew the guy that kept raising the pot. He was a cool-headed pool hustler with a slick tongue, and he had a George Gobel haircut at that time when everyone else was growing their hair real long; including the boys. Girls grew their already long hair, longer, as God had instructed on the mount. (It’s that 11th Commandment that broke off the tablet. It gets no air time but all the girls seemed to know to grow it out.)

The kid that kept raising the pot was named Charlie Brown, and he said that he had grown up behind a pool hall, in Miles City, Montana. Wherever that is. But he was nothing like what you’d think some kid from Miles City would be like. Or even could be like. Charlie Brown was smart, and shrewd, and figured out how to get out of Montana, at a pretty early age. I should mention that this all occurred some 30 years before Montana’s reputation began to improve, and people other than cowboys wearing shiny spurred boots, and muddied spurred boots, started to recommend it. This high stakes poker game happened long before Jane Fonda moved to Montana; to Ted’s ranch. Charlie Brown and I were budding friends, and I admired his ability to be different; like his hairdo. I had a George Gobel hairdo in fifth grade… but not in college.

Anticipation exploded when the pot blew past $200. Then it blew past $250, and Charlie Brown finally ‘called it’. At that point, Charlie and I were the only ones still ‘in’. The final two standing. I could have called it earlier, but I was holding five good cards. Strike that. Five really good cards. Five exceptional cards. I pretended to frown once the hand was called. I drummed my fingers, and knitted my brows, so as not to expose my excitement. Some of the guys at the table lit stogies, and there were beer bottles scattered around. It was all very manageable, so that we could clean it all up quickly, should we get busted for underage drinking. It was a private college, in Portland, so the likelihood of a bust was unlikely… unless the campus police caught wind of it. Carry On by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young twirled smoothly on a fairly decent Garrard turntable. One of the guys who had folded his hand earlier, his name was Troy, cleaned the fuzz off the needle, and carefully dropped the arm in place. The song sounded pretty good. Another guy, named Max, played his harmonica along with the song, and he was a good player, and didn’t really ruin anything. He’d walk around campus playing his harmonica all the time. Even in the rain, which was constant. As long as his harmonica, or blues harp, as it was called, was in the same musical key as the song, there was a lot of forgiveness.

When Miles City Charlie elected to pull up on the reins, and call the hand, every kid seated at the table leaned in to witness what was about to unfold. Others around the periphery stopped whatever they were doing, and they leaned-in, too. It was the biggest pot I had ever seen. And from the guffaws and laughter, it was the biggest pot most of everyone in the room had seen, too. Even through the haze of cigar smoke. It was by far the largest pot I’d ever been a part of. Stacked in the middle of the table were twenty dollar bills, and five dollar bills, and a wad of ones, alongside three fallen towers of blue, red, and white poker chips, and loose-change quarters, and dimes.

Before revealing our hands, prior to the results being known, Greg, a guy from Beaverton — a suburb of Portland, counted the pot. We watched. And counted along with him:

$20, $40, $60, $80, $100, $120, $130, $140, $150, $160, $165, $170, $175, $180, $185, $190, $195, $200, $201, $202, $203, $204, $205, $206, $207, $208, $209, $210, $211, $212, $213. Off to the side, two other guys counted the change. They counted twice, and miraculously, both times, concluded: $48.30. Added to the $213, that’s a combined $261.30. Twenty-two blue chips at 25¢ each added another $5.50. Thirty-eight red chip ‘dimes’ added $3.80. Twenty-seven white chip nickels contributed another $1.35. Every chip counts. Every distance is not far.

Poker pot total: $271.95. Yikes! As I said, biggest pot ever. More than a hundred bucks of it was mine. And it was only a twenty-five cent ante at the start.

Charlie: I’ll call.

OK. Here we go. I was anxious, and excited, and nervously filled my mouth with beer, and chips, and wiped my chops with the back of my hand, and hesitated barely at all. Time was racing.

I spouted Fritos corn chip remnants down my shirt front: Full house. Aces over Queens. (There was no beating around the bush. Just the skinny.)

I snapped the cards out before me like a military drill, calling them out one at a time, with emphasis.

Me: Ace of Spades (snap)

Me: Ace of Hearts (snap)

Me: Ace of Clubs (snap)

Me: Queen of Hearts (snap)

Me: Queen of Diamonds (snap)

Charlie looked at the full house laying across the beer stained green velvet, and he seemed to just check himself, reflective in his thoughts. He also checked his predicament. He delayed a moment, and dropped his head, and looked down. Crestfallen. I knew right there, and then, that I had him. I wondered if they’d all let me cash out, or if I had some obligation to keep on playing. So as to not be an asshole, and take the money and run. Like a sore winner. That’s the thing about poker. Nobody likes the winner. Sore or otherwise. I figured I’d stay around for a couple more hands. Maybe give back a little. It’s important to be ahead of the game; to have a plan. Always prepared. Like I’d seen this play out many times in the past. Which, of course, was the farthest thing from the reality.

Charlie, in a low voice, slowly chimmied: Well, I have two pair…

I couldn’t believe my ears. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Turn up the music! Carry on!

Charlie kept his head down. It was clearly a momentous loss. Maybe he couldn’t afford it. Perhaps it impacted his ego, although I wasn’t sure I knew what ‘ego’ was anymore. It all got messy with definitions of ego vs id vs superego. Miles City? It happens. I know that I had reached beyond the betting limit that I promised myself, by continuing to throw dollars at the center of the table, during the development of the hand. Sometimes you just have to. Sometimes you can just feel it. Sometimes the sun shines brightly in your backyard.

As I leaned forward to rake the winnings toward me, but had not yet fully extended my arms around the large pot, Charlie lifted his sullen head, and I heard him continue:

Charlie: …of Jacks.

Charlie didn’t engage in the dramatics of snapping his cards down, one at a time, onto the velvet green, the way I had done. He just spread his cards on the table in front of him in a fan shape, in one singular motion. Charlie had two pairs of jacks; all four. He had Four of a Kind. He won the pot. Charlie Brown had suckered me in, and at the moment, I felt embarrassed to have been so decidedly destroyed by Charlie Brown. It was a Barnum and Bailey circus. The Miles City, Montana pool hustler. And card shark. I was painfully grateful to Charlie for having called the hand when he did. He could have continued to feed it; let it continue to grow.

Charlie’s fifth card was the Ace of Diamonds… the card that would have also given me Four of a Kind… and the legendary win.

Return to Woodside, California, circa 1981

The black telephone that came with my rent in 1981 needed no negotiation because the landlord offered it up as part of the deal, after he told me the rent would be $400 per month. There was a short silence on the phone. I didn’t respond immediately due to the fact that I couldn’t believe how cheap he was willing to rent the place for. So I took it. There was a lease to sign. It said the rent was ‘Due the 1st of the Month’, but there was no penalty language defining what would happen if rent was not received until the 2nd or the 10th or the 30th, or not at all. I was barely surviving financially, I guess, is the best way to put it, at that time. But I spent my rent on a fantastic forty-five year old redwood cottage that had no heat, and no insulation, and no roof reindeer, and was located near the top of what they call a Northern California golden hill. In California, brown is pronounced ‘golden’. Which is probably something that isn’t supposed to be revealed to outsiders. But it’s out now. That frisky cow has been let out of the barn, so Both Readers have been brought into the inner circle. Assuming Both Readers read this far. Some stories start smoothly and flow fluidly. Then there are other stories that begin like they issue forth from someone with a peanut butter sandwich stuck to the roof of their mouth, and the flow is a little sloppy at takeoff. Just needs a little wipe on the corner of your mouth. You judge. The story continues: The tall grasses that waved over the redwood cottage’s woodland surroundings were pinned with scrub oak and eucalyptus trees. Enormous, ethereal, cloud scratching eucalyptus that stood sentinel in clusters.

Eucalyptus trees prefer the company of other Eucalyptus trees growing right next to them. They were the tallest trees in the world. For a time. Taller than California’s giant redwoods, forever said to be the tallest trees in the world, by most Californians. Even imported Californians from places like Hollywood, Florida. Many visitors share this view, too. But the tallest tree in the world used to be a Eucalyptus. Then, with the discovery in 2006 of Hyperion, the name given to the new tallest tree, a 380.1 ft coastal redwood, a Sequoia, all Californians can comfortably, confidently, and correctly boast, once again.

Eucalyptus are native to Australia and smell like medicine and some massage parlors. Aromatherapy snobs. Some say Eucalyptus smells like urine. It’s those same damn people that think cilantro tastes like soap. And so they avoid cilantro as a garnish, or a spice, or an added-value. Eucalyptus don’t thrive growing alone. Whereas an arbutus, as a counter-example, is a skinnier tree and not at all a tall tree, but it can survive alone, marvelously. Not the Eucalyptus. One of the grandest trees on the planet. One of the tallest trees in the world, the ones that look down on all others, need the support of a surrounding family.

The golden hills and the oaks and eucalyptus trees and the swaying grasses were stitched together by one winding country backroad. You felt a heave of exhilaration, a freedom, driving between the expansive white fenced properties near town. That exhilaration was even evident driving by the smaller-sized properties that led up to my redwood cottage. There was seldom any other cars. At all. There were horses and also llamas (for some strange reason) and a sprinkling of goats. A group of goats is called a trip of goats, of course, but that would give you an exaggerated impression as to their numbers and when you’d tell all your friends about this story and all the goats all over the place, everyone would get the wrong impression. So, I avoided calling them a trip of goats. Let’s just say there were a handful of goats. A sprinkling.

The country backroad kindly arced to the right toward the long straight away; often strewn with fallen, decaying leaves. Golds and reds and oranges and browns in the fall. The straight away approached a magical tunnel of thick broadleaf canopy which ended at a left hairpin turn; and it’s at that spot, that hairpin turn, where the country backroad began to the climb uphill, nearing the redwood cottage.

As you exit through the black maw of the verdant tunnel, the deep blue sky and bright yellow sun gloriously return. Sometimes with white billowy clouds. Sometimes with an arching rainbow. Both of those are rare, however, and mark a special day with their presence. Continuing up the hill, yet still below the cottage property, after a couple of short hairpins, the journey to the cottage ends at a long gravel driveway to the right of the country backroad. The driveway ran flat, parallel to the country road, as it continued to escape up the hill. The redwood cottage itself was down the six steps on the right. They were forty-five year old worn rock steps that were wide and deep and easy to navigate and made the whole entrance welcoming and carefree. During winter months, fragrant purple hyacinths filled the entrance. In summer, the hyacinths were replaced with red and white and purple tulips. And dahlias. Wild dahlias. Quite extraordinary. And beautiful. Like some people can be extraordinary and beautiful.

My mailbox was located at the top of the hill, along with seven other country mailboxes, each perched on an individual wooden post. They looked like fragile matchsticks compared to the sky high straight bold of eucalyptus trees backing them. My mailbox was the first in the row and had the numbers 406 painted on its side in red paint. Whomever the artist, the numbers were drawn by hand. There was no using a stencil.

Woodside was one of the most expensive small towns in all America. The local real estate millionaire mavericks made sure the residents were always kept up to date by constantly stapling national high priced sales records to the community bulletin board in front of Robert’s Market; which was also Woodside’s community center. Cities like Beverly Hills and the Village of Grosse Pointe Shores, located outside of Detroit, on Lake Eau Claire, were often on the list. The Upper East Side and the West Village, both of Manhattan blood, were also familiar list members. The Village of Grosse Pointe Shores is where many automobile company founders and their families lived. Like Henry Ford’s son, Edsel Ford, who was Henry’s only offspring. Edsel became president of the Ford Motor Company. Even so, even with the gross wealth of automobile moguls, Woodside listed higher. But I wasn’t there because of that.

I lived in Woodside because I saw the 600 sq ft redwood cottage listing, with no heat, and no insulation, on a cork board inside Kepler’s bookstore on El Camino Real in Menlo Park. I was the first caller. I was the final caller. I pocketed the listing.

Silicon Valley was growing down the road, far enough away to be out of earshot, but a ton of money in Woodside came from the Silicon Valley expansion. At the time, it was Fairchild, and National Semi-Conductor, and Intel and, of course, founding fathers Hewlett and Packard. Later, there came Apple and Oracle Systems, although Oracle’s original name was Software Development Laboratories. Then there was the type, and believe me, these guys were a type, like Bank of America’s senior officers who lived in the town next to Woodside, a neighbor city named Atherton. Atherton was populated by the ultra-rich that thought that Woodside residents were going a little bit too far. Woodside was outdoorsy and horsey and there were barns and the woods and huge acreages with hidden mansions and hidden gardens just behind the rolling hills or hedge growths. And it was mostly all mostly natural. Atherton was seriously manicured and not natural so much. A little bit. Not like Woodside. Atherton had beautiful curvy streets with enormous mansions. Some mansions had names, like Casa del Sol, which helped create a feeling of exclusivity. When your house comes with a name, that’s higher ranking than when your house comes with dimmer switches.

My friend David Crane was the premiere video game designer at Activision in the early 1980s. He’d left Atari, and was cranking out massive hit games, like Pitfall!, at Activision. Pitfall! was a big success, to put it very mildly. It was an enormous success! Selling over 4,000,000 units. It was the #1 selling game for 64 weeks in a row. That’s big. That never happened again. It was a big enough title that Activision created a teevee commercial to promote it. (OK. They made teevee commercials for other games, too. Even Oink! One of Activision’s other games with an exclamation mark in the title. Mike Lorenzen gets the nod for creating Oink! And let’s not forget, Kaboom!, by Larry Kaplan. Well done!) A new young actor was hired to play Pitfall! Harry in the teevee commercial. New guy. He had landed his first gig, or his agent had landed him his first gig. I don’t know exactly how it worked. I wasn’t in marketing. The actor was Jack Black. He went on to act in some other stuff.

So David Crane made a boatload of money as the giant of video game designers. At the time of the release of Pitfall!, he was living in a one bedroom apartment in Sunnyvale, California, a city on the San Francisco Bay peninsula. It was a very bland, flat, south bay suburb. Part of very bland, flat, Silicon Valley. A pretty girl that worked in marketing at Activision fell in love with David Crane, and he, her. They soon married but she wasn’t about to move into David’s one bedroom Sunnyvale apartment. After briefly house hunting, they bought the aforementioned ‘Casa del Sol’ Atherton property mansion. The owner from whom they bought was the President of Bank of America. Quite a jump.

Woodside, California was an escape haven for the Bay Area super riche like Steve Jobs. It’s wooded, hilly, horse country, big grounds with mechanical iron gates, and fingernail polish gardens. Joan Baez shopped at Robert’s Market. Didn’t wear camouflage. Not even a baseball hat. She walked in the food market as Joan Baez. The activist. No one cared. Oh, Joan. And I was paying $400 every month, including phone, to keep an eye looking down on it. Some of the store fronts still had horse ties available for old people riding horses along the side of Canada Road, so they could tie up their steed. While they go in, and buy, a filet mignon, and imported French blue cheese. There’s no actual transaction. The Steve Jobs’ and the Joan Baez’ of the area just nod, and the total gets added to their monthly statement, which gets paid by some house servant. Joan Baez never saw her Robert’s Market food bill. Steve Jobs never saw his monthly statement, either.

The black cord of the black telephone just snaked its way into the wall and hid. Somewhere in there. At one point about a month after I had moved in, I remember inquisitively removing the aged bronze metal cover plate with the small round hole in its heart where the phone cord entered the wall. I slowly pulled the plate away from the wall so I could look inside. Or try to. It was all a profusive stuffing of spider webs tangled with the dried stiff remains of dead bugs. Some with their legs sticking straight up. As though they had rigor mortis. Which they didn’t. The black cord from the phone turned immediately left after entering the wall, and I couldn’t really see where it went without removing entire wall boards; floor to ceiling. Choosing not to go that route, quite a simple decision really, I carefully replaced the metal cover plate, so as not to disturb any of the lifeless remains, and screwed it back into the wall. After the plate was back in place, I thought I should have cleaned in there while the plate was off, but I chose not to take it off again. I left all as it had been; same as it ever was.

The black telephone that came with the redwood cottage may not have been my phone. It was the owner’s phone. But it was my phone number. And the caller at 8:13p that night, knew it.

The instant the phone rang, I was startled. I had only just momentarily settled into my comfortable, cracked, horizon-blue, old, overstuffed living room rocking swiveller. (I used the double ‘l’ approach to the word ‘swiveller’ although the dictionary doesn’t accept the word with either one ‘l’or two ‘l’s’. The dictionary thinks ‘swiveller’ is not a recognized word, but sometimes a writer has to overrule. That’s the magic of writing. You can make up words, and sit back, betwinkling your fingers, and tightly betwixt your eyebrows, hoping the Grand Readers understand. And then move on.)

The swiveller was inserted into the rental agreement contractually as an inventory item through shrewd negotiation by yours truly, with the owner, who subsequently died within a year of my moving in. I was his last renter. The agreement had no provisions included as to what would happen should the landlord pass on to eternity. Pat Kelly was an older gentleman, and following his cremation, I felt honored to spread his white chunky ashes around the cottage property at his request… bone fragments included. I’m guessing femur.

The small wooden Woodside cottage that came with no electrical wire baseboards and no forced air to provide warmth, did come with a few cracks in the walls between the vertical boards that were both the inside, and the outside, structure. The cracks were only slight, yet enough to allow outside plants to grow through the cracks, and up the inside walls. The thriving plants filled the cracks with aplomb, and helped reduce wind, and dirt, blowing through. There was evidence that someone had tried to do something about it long ago. The bed was elevated, and cradled into the wall, just below the bough of a one hundred year old scrub oak. It was quite charming. It was a Brothers Grimm cottage. It was magical. That’s how I felt about it. It was the best place that I lived in for a long time.

The small corner bathroom had a shower that drained the water directly onto the dirt under the house. Uh, I mean cottage. There was nothing ‘house’ about it… It was an absolutely charming cottage with a mossy red brick sun-drenched outdoor patio. Rustic. Cobwebby. I couldn’t believe how fortunate I was to have landed it. Right place… right time. With considerable luck. I had never lived alone before, but this place was too good to pass on.

It was Robert on the other end of that 8:13p phone call. Robert was a close friend that I’d known for seven or eight years. It’s longer now. We had met when we were both in our early twenties. In San Francisco. At the time of this particular call, I had turned 30 years old a few weeks earlier. Robert is eight months younger than I — essentially the same age. There were some obvious different genetics in play.

For one, Robert had a shrubbery of black hair on his head. While my head was thinly crowned with a tawny shade of wisps. He could balance on one foot and had no problem standing at the edge of a cliff. I, on the other hand, could barely stand with two feet firmly planted on the ground, and would never allow myself the danger of standing anywhere near a cliff.

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t hand out ‘participation’ trophies to Timmy and Ogdupa and Aesop and Shugi just because they were driven to an over-planned, over-compensated, over-parented competition or children’s recital. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with the world. I’ll keep trying to figure it out. You, Dear Reader, just continue. Read at your pace. At your very special individual comfort level. Do not strain. No one is pushing you. Okay? It doesn’t matter one bit how you perform. Everyone gets a cookie at the end, whenever that arrives. Cookies will not run out. I’ve been promised that they won’t run out. I know. Cookies aren’t donuts. Are you looking for an argument? I agree with you. Dorothy wanted to see how the cookies attract. I had some concerns, myself. Tortoise vs Hare is old toe nails and no longer relevant. There are no individual winners anymore.

Robert and I talked often. We engaged, chattered, expounded, retorted, and uptorted, and distorted, expressed, drew insight, and did some joking around… the goal being to impress the other by continuing the rally back and forth, and back and forth. Sometimes the topic, amongst a thousand other topics, would be books, or authors, or composers, and sometimes a little bit about current world events, but rarely was country western music the topic of our discussion because Robert didn’t know a lot about that. When it came to country western music, Robert was a stooge. When it came to anything else, Robert was anything but a stooge. Maybe backflips. Maybe Robert was a stoogie backflipper. I’d never seen Robert even attempt a backflip. Nor did… do… or have… I, ever attempted a backflip. I don’t backflip. I just don’t. It’s not me. And as Sammy Davis Jr. sang so nasally, ‘I gotta be me’. Maybe I tried a backflip once. Into the deep end. At the large pool at Celebrity Sports Center, out on South Colorado Blvd, years ago. No one was looking. It was ugly. My swimming trunks immediately evacuated my waste, and shot down to my knees, so I was scrambling real bad. I couldn’t allow my ‘who who’ to be seen. It probably looked like I was frantically drowning. But other than that, had you been present, and snuck a peekaboo, you may have honestly, without hesitation, muttered, ‘stoogie backflipper‘. An ugly sounding word: stooge. With no rhyme to soften it. Stooges are buffoons, and often are overall losers; clowns entertain and have more self-esteem.

Inside his gut, where real stuff lives, where the big decisions are made, Robert was high-brow New York. Even though his entrepreneurial mother, Rita, with little towhead Robert in gloved hand, moved from Queens in New York City, to sunny, shiny, southern Florida, when he was still wee. Hollywood, Florida, If you know where that it. I don’t. I’m guessing thirty two miles north of Miami on the Atlantic side. I could look it up. So could you. Neither of us is going to because it’s just not that critical. Unless, presumably, you were Robert or Rita. Or one of my most Outstanding Readers. My loyalists.

Rita, Robert’s mom, died on September 11, 2001. In Florida. Not from bin Laden. bin Laden didn’t go to Florida. He wasn’t hunting Rita. She had not aggravated bin. Rita’s sand, sadly, had simply run out. Robert was still in the air, from his San Francisco red-eye, and missed seeing her, to say goodbye to his mother, by one hour. He had been warned that she didn’t have long, so he caught the next flight. When Robert arrived at the hospital, he didn’t know anything about the bin Laden attack. Not a word from the plane’s pilot, and not a word from the taxi cabbie. When he glanced up, and saw the hospital hallway TV broadcasting the footage, Robert thought it was Japanese TV show with forced animation of a plane smashing into the Twin Towers. He found out the truth. We all did. Turns out it had a lot to do with the Iraqi strongmen. Which was lucky as marshmallows for us. We can beat them up in an hour. And we better do it right now, because they got weapons of mass destruction.

Although he grew up in Florida, it was New York that had stuck with Robert. Like a permanent marker. Not-to-be-removed. Like invisible paint. I don’t actually know anyone else from Florida but Robert didn’t fit the Florida mold. I knew that much. He’d told me that many times! He seemed to know that he wasn’t going to spend all his life in Florida. Well, I grew up in Colorado, liked it, but I didn’t stay there, either. Robert was a more forward looking individual than was I. I don’t think Robert had alleyways to explore as a kid. I wouldn’t swear to that, though. But not having alleys to roam through would have sucked for me, as it was a fun adventure with all my friends. There was always something cool to find in an alley. Old wood. Broken tricycles. Discarded rubbers. You know, cool stuff. Not having snowballs to throw at buses would have been a bummer. Not enough snow in Florida to make a real good snowball. Not having cold mountain rainstorms with deafening thunder echoing everywhere would have been a bummer. But Robert had beaches and summer tanning lotion and water sports and alligators and snakes. We had White Sands Beach, a very small unimpressive lake with no waves, located in the middle of Glendale, in the middle of Denver, and they didn’t even have snow cones. Well, they had them at one time. They had the machine, but the machine was broken each time I was there so we just ate baloney sandwiches with sand stuck between the slices of mayo’d Wonder bread. Sometimes an ant would be licking the mustard that my mom spread across the rubbery round disk of baloney. One time Tim Crow went with us and his baloney sandwich had two ants. And he didn’t even have any mustard because he didn’t like the taste of it.

So when I think of Robert… I think New York City. I do not think Florida or grapefruit or pterodactyl or swamp or alligator-belly cream pistachio pie. Or swamp. He recently informed me that he grew up across the street from a swamp. At least some of the time. No houses out his window. No buildings. No trees. Just mangle woods. And wide-angle, fish-eye lens, Florida, brackish swamp. But back then, in 1981, when my phone rang, I didn’t know Robert grew up across the street from a swamp. Which I think should be spelled ‘swomp’. No consistency. No wonder the world is so screwed up right now.

At 8:13p on that Monday, November 15, I pictured Robert pacing through his house in San Francisco while talking on his new cordless. Although I didn’t want to expend the energy to answer the phone, with the effort it required to cross the small living room in my Woodside cottage, I was pleased when I found out it was Robert. I sat down into the scarred, and patched, blue bean-bag chair, already preparing to do mental battle with a tough, quick-witted opponent, that was my friend.

Robert always paced when he was on his cordless. Robert couldn’t sit still. He didn’t know how. He lives with some kind of ants in his pants. Even now; decades later. The ants just show up. They seem to enjoy his company. They don’t even know he’s on the phone. They are robotic little monsters; not sentient insects with diagnostic abilities. They aren’t decision makers. They are little pre-programmed crunchy things. With a semi-hard carapace to give them their svelte shape. They are like three tiny, tiny, tiny black donut holes, stitched together. With no frosting. Just mildly glazed.

Millions of them behaving as one organism. Each with one singular purpose. Especially army ants. But the ants in Robert’s pants weren’t killers. They weren’t army ants. At least that’s the way I understood it.

When people talk about going to Africa to see ‘big game’, I’d rather go see ‘small game’; the army ants. My unsuccored fascination originated from the first moment I’d heard about them – when I was wee. I’m guessing I was six years old when I heard about army ants, which means during the seventh year of heartbeat. To me, wee ends at about age five. Maybe four years old. If you were small in size, like me, you could pass for wee at age six. But pretty soon, you can’t pass for wee anywhere. That is over.

An already Engaged Reader: Do you know what type of ants were crawling in Robert’s pants?

I’m not going to answer that. This Engaged Reader is a hyper-ventilator. His question is included to illustrate how quick it was to capture his attention. I love all my Readers. Each one of them. With all my heart. Every systolic and diastolic ka-push, ka-poosh, ka-push, ka-poosh. 128/77. Elevated blood pressure, I know. It’s in my genetics. Just ask Mendel. That’s my excuse. I avoid doctors. Some people go to see their doctor. A LOT. They go to their doctor FOR ANYTHING and FOR EVERYTHING. Not me. I avoid doctors. A LOT. I live by the motto: What I don’t know, keeps me sane. So I have no idea what’s going to be the death of me. You don’t know how you’re going to die, either, unless you’re in last rites, and final stages. Or went to a dermatologist for a pimple expecting professional Clearasil, and found out you have stage nine liver disease, and it’s all too late at that point.

Arcing back to African ‘big game’: Yep. Africa wins the trophy vs North America when it comes to comparing the variety of two ton (4000 lbs) species. 4-0. But if comparing 1000 pound species, North America takes it. This is not getting at all talked about enough.

African vs North American big game

African Elephant – 13,000 lbs American Bison – 2100 lbs

Hippopotamus – 9500 lbs American Crocodile – 2000 lbs

White Rhinoceros – 7500 lbs Antelope (Giant Eland) – 2000 lbs

Kilimanjaro Giraffe – 4200 lbs Polar Bear – 1700 lbs

Blue Nile Crocodile – 1600 lbs Alaskan Moose – 1400 lbs

Dromedary Camel – 1250 lbs Canadian Horse – 1400 lbs

Grizzly Bear – 1200 lbs

Roosevelt Elk – 1000 lbs

Congo Silverback Gorilla – 450 lbs Cornfed Wisconsinite – 450 lbs

For context, the magnificent blue whales that migrate between Santa Barbara, California, and the offshore Channel Islands, can weigh 400,000 lbs. That’s equivalent to 33 African Elephants, or almost 20 American Bison, or nine Cornfed Wisconsinites. Let me check that. My math may be befrostled.

The national bird of America is the bald eagle. We all know that Ben Franklin wanted it to be the New England Gobble turkey. The bald eagle has been the national bird for a long time. However, it wasn’t until 2016 that the American bison (buffalo) was named the national mammal of America. Happy to share, if any of you missed that. Not sure how many American bison there still are around. Not too many, would be my guess. I know where there are about seven of them in a restricted area of Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco. So the number isn’t zero, yet.

There is an army ant phenomenon called an ‘ant mill’ that was first seriously documented, in 1936. The behavior creating the ant mill can sometimes also be called an ‘ant death spiral’. When it happens, it’s because a subgroup (1000s to 10,000s) of the moving blanket of army ants (1,000,000s) get separated from them. It’s always due to the loss of the identifiable scent for the army ants to follow, the pheromone trail. It goes undetected or confused for some reason, or it gets washed away, and severed in a storm,

So the lost posse of army ants just follow a new leader that has no clue where it is going, and so it travels around in a large circle that gets smaller and smaller. Counter-clockwise, Or clockwise. Army ants are ambidextrous. Usually, every one of those ‘lost’ army ants die from exhaustion in a day or so. It’s a blind army ant Bataan March. They can’t see where there are going. Army ants are blind. Each one of them. They have eyes. Positioned on their heads just where you’d expect them to be. They just don’t work. And they don’t have to find their way home because army ants don’t live anywhere. They have no nest, no home. They are homeless monsters, yet one of the most evolved killers in the world. They simply don’t lose their battles. They can’t.

When my phone rang, I was at home (I had been homeless a year earlier, but no longer), in my postage stamp size redwood cottage, about 30 miles to the south of San Francisco. Up on an eastern hillock out in the countryside in the Township of Woodside. I didn’t have a cordless phone. I used an old black, heavy, 1940s Western Electric Type 302 dialer with blotches of greyed dark green paint that had dropped on it ages ago. Perhaps 30 ages ago. One of the blotches may even have been more than 30 ages old. The phone had been the little redwood cottage’s umbilical to the outside, living, breathing world. The small redwood cottage had been the first structure built on that eastern hillock. The year was 1936, the same year that the ant death spiral was discovered. The redwood cottage was built by the owner as a summer retreat. His name was Pat Kelly. It was where he, and his gay boyfriend, a San Francisco doctor, could escape detection. Pat died soon after I’d moved in, and I had the honor of spreading his ashes around the property. Cremation wasn’t the end-all industry, then, that it has become now.

>>>Other things in 1936? You know some of them. The German blimp, the Hindenburg, itself a commercial zeppelin, made its inaugural flight in 1936. It blew up in a fire ball only one year later while attempting to land in New Jersey following it maiden trans-Atlantic flight. And if you thought everyone on board was killed from the explosion, you would be incorrect. Of the 97 passengers, and crew, 62 survived. How? Beats me. Each was as vulnerable as a robin. None had wings. It must have been German Jesus. There is no other explanation.

Another famous event in 1936, covered by an expanding German umbrella, was the Summer Olympics. It goes by a few names: Games of the 11th Olympiad (official name), 1936 Olympics, Berlin 1936, Nazi Olympics. You’ve heard of it. It’s the famous one. No, not that famous one. Not the Montreal 1976 one when Caitlyn Jenner broke the world record, and won the gold medal for the Men’s Decathlon. Time magazine called Caitlyn the ‘World’s Greatest Athlete‘; although her name back in 1976 was Bruce, and she had a penis (just guessing). Does she have a penis, now, you wonder? I don’t know. Go ahead. You do the research. But everyone’s dying to know. I’m gonna sit this one out.

The famous 1936 Olympics was the one when American black Olympic team member, Jesse Owens, dropped a pimple on Adolph Hitler’s certainty that there was a superior Aryan white race. Not surprisingly, Hitler was one of the members of the superior Aryan white race. Go figure! What a coincidence!

Hitler was enthusiastic to show off his new Nazi Germany to the world. The XI Olympiad was the first Olympics that began with the passing of the lighted torch from Olympia, Greece, and carried to the site of the Games, in that instance, Berlin! It was also the first sporting event ever to be broadcast live on teevee… albeit only in Berlin. It was also the first time there was an ‘Olympic Village’, which Hitler directed to be built. The lodging was luxurious — the rooms were heated, and included grass terraces out the doors. It was all very well-conceived, planned, and had a political purpose. Then, Jesse Owens won four gold medals, the most of any athlete at the Games. His gold medals included the prized 100 meter race, which gave Jesse legitimate claim as the world’s fastest man. He also won gold for the 200 meter race, the 4 x 100 meter relay, and for his long jump of 26′ 5″. None of these accomplishments dissuaded Hitler. ‘People whose antecedents came from the jungle were primitive’, Hitler said with a shrug. ‘Their physiques were stronger than those of civilized whites and hence should be excluded from future Games.’ Hitler was kind of an asshole.

Also in 1936, the inaugural Baseball Hall of Fame class of five was announced:

• Tyrus Cobb (Detroit Tigers center fielder, 1905–1926)

• George Herman ‘Babe‘ Ruth (Boston Red Sox pitcher 1914-1919; NY Yankees outfielder, 1920-1935)

• Walter Johnson (Washington Senators pitcher, 1907-1927)

• Christy Mathewson (New York Giants pitcher, 1900-1916)

• Honus Wagner (Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop, 1900-1913)

Switzerland’s Ursula Andress was born in 1936. Ursula was the original Bond girl, Honey Ryder, in Dr. No (1962), which was the first James Bond movie. She set a high bar… which was never raised.

Later, in November, 1936, Democratic candidate Franklin D Roosevelt defeated Kansas Republican Governor and oilman, Alf Landon, to be re-elected President of the United States, for a 2nd term (Electoral vote results: 523 to 8; Maine [5] and Vermont [3] leaned Right for Alf). Vermont and Maine were the only states to reject FDR in all four of his presidential campaigns.

Hoover Dam was completed in 1936: largest dam in the USofA at the time; over 100 workers died on-site during its construction. The purpose was to dam the Colorado River in order to harness electrical energy as a hydroelectric power plant for the southwestern United States (i.e. Los Angeles basin), as well as to provide water to the surrounding regions. The dam went by several names during its construction, most notably Boulder Dam, and was permanently renamed as Hoover Dam, in 1947.

Near the end of 1936, November 12, an impressive bridge, considered to be the greatest bridge in the world, was completed. It crossed the San Francisco Bay, stapling San Francisco to Oakland. From the first shovel of dirt, to a ribbon cutting finale, it took little more than three years. It was not named the Golden Gate Bridge at its completion. That greatest bridge in the world was completed in 1937. Rather, 1936 marked the completion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. The same double decker bridge that encountered a snafu because of the October 17, 1989 5:04pm Loma Prieta 6.9-7.2 magnitude earthquake. That’s when a portion of the upper west bound deck fractured, angled down, and rested on the east bound lower deck below. The fracture occurred over the dangerous waters of the San Francisco Bay – 200 feet below. And on the eastern edge of the bridge, the Oakland side, a portion of the upper deck pancaked onto the bottom deck along a 1.25 mile stretch called the Cypress Viaduct… killing 42 people. Does California have the most earthquakes of the United States each year? No. that dubious title belongs to Sarah Louise Palin’s Alaska.

Returning to the redwood cottage and 1981, the black telephone handle had a blotch of paint. The blotch was dark, dark green — located nearer the ear piece than the mouthpiece. It was where your thumb landed when the phone handle was in your grip. The dark green color of that blotch was the same color as the walls of the indoor, long wooden porch that had old screened windows. Apparently, the porch wall’s hadn’t changed uniform, in like, forever. But it was the perfect color. It blended naturally with the outside scrub oak trees. And it matched the overgrown bushes sheltering the little collage. It was all connected and integrated… including the five ascending rock stairs that connected the cottage to the gravel driveway above. Like it had all grown up together. It was all so symbiotic and natural.

Sometimes shower curtains were missing when you moved into a new home. But the shower curtain in my little cottage rental remained. The shower had a narrow entry, and inside, it was cramped. Three feet by four feet. The shower water emptied through the hole in the shower’s floor, out onto the dirt ground underneath the house. Yes, it was 1936 when it was built. No inspections. Few rules.

Robert and I had already been friends for years when he called; and co-workers part of it. During one stretch, for more than a year, Robert, with ants in his pants, was my boss. But that was not now… The telephone rang on Monday, November 15, 1981. 8:13p.

C H A P T E R 1 :

Me, answering the telephone. I said something like: Hello. (this started the conversation)

Robert, on his cordless: Oh. Hey. Hold on a sec. (audible fidgeting) Wait a minute. (additional fidgeting)

—Robert, yelling away from his cordless: Jan. (pause) Ja-an. (pause) Hey Jan, can your hear me? JAN!

Robert, back to me: Okay. Sorry. I’m back. I guess Jan’s not around. I wanted her to be here for this. So, anyway, how are you?

Me: I’m doing good. Real good. How about you? You doing okay? That was pretty frantic yelling.

Robert: Ya. I’m fine. Anyway, here’s why I called. Do your remember a girl named Paula, from Chicago, that you met at McKenna’s house a couple years ago? In Montara. She was Jan’s roommate at Northwestern and stayed at our house. we introduc…..

My interruption: Yes, of course, I remember her. (instantly)

Robert: Oh. Good. Good. Wellllll… (noticeably dragged out), she moved to San Francisco a couple of months ago, and is coming over to our house this Thursday night, after dinner. Do you want to come over, then, too? Drive up from Woodside?

Me: I think I can make it. Thanks. What time? (of course I could make it… was he kidding?)

Robert: 7:00

Me: I will be there. Thanks. Can I bring anything?

Robert: I don’t think that’s necessary.

Robert’s invitation thrilled me. It would have done so no matter what was going on in my life that upcoming Thursday. I had not had a chance to talk to Paula when I’d met her so briefly at the party in Montara, a small coast side town just south of Pacifica. On the San Francisco Bay peninsula. But when Robert said her name, Paula, during his call, her memory instantly flashed into focus like it was yesterday’s fireworks. Unforgettable.

Paula was exuberant, and outgoing, and beautiful, and bursting with energy. A positive, and infectious, energy. An energy that attracted you, that drew you in. An energy that I wish I had. An energy everyone wanted to tap into. A magnetism emanated from her inner core. When she talked, she would move her head up and down, like she was nodding, ‘Yes’, agreeing to whatever was said. The other person in the conversation felt she gave them undivided attention, and her complete focus. She engage into the other person.

Two years previous, at the party, she had dark short-cropped hair. Black, I believed, but everywhere the lights were lowered, so the ambience required a party-goer to fill in some of the uncertainty. Her eyes shined green. She had an enormously big smile, outlined with bright fire red glossy lipstick. Lots of teeth. Strong teeth. Paula drew attention from men, and women, alike. She radiated warmth. She wore fashionable clothes. The buckles on her shoes looked European, and the gloves on her slender hands were fingerless. She was also a dancer. And she carried with her an exponential confidence which was mesmerizing. Succinctly, Paula had a glow. That’s how I remembered Paula. These are the things that flooded my memory when Robert said her name. I recalled from the party, from two years ago, that I had overheard that Paula was just passing through San Francisco, on her way to Maui, to meet Ron, a guy I understood to be her boyfriend. I overheard these things from other conversations. I didn’t know why Ron wasn’t with her at that party on that night. I also remember the melancholy that overcame me when someone stated that she was flying off to Hawaii the next day to be with Ron. A melancholy that overwhelmed me… from a girl I didn’t even know! It was just another way for me to act foolishly.

The critical word in Robert’s telephone conversation with me, on Monday, November 15, was that she moved to San Francisco, rather than they moved to San Francisco. This delight allowed me the freedom to translate, with some degree of advantage, that Paula, and boyfriend Ron, were no longer together. That Paula had moved to San Francisco by herself. That it was possible that she would be at Robert’s house Thursday night without a companion. Single. By herself. This happily met with my wholehearted approval, and quickened my pulse.

I anxiously looked forward to Thursday.

I hadn’t had a job for months. Which suited me, and gave me no angst. Time was my friend, and what had happened beforehand, months ago, on my last day at work, was of no importance. Just a fleeting moment of history; a bagatelle. My final boss at Zytron, back then, was a burly man named Mike V, and he called me on the phone after my shift, later on, that day. I immediately recognized his voice. I was being ‘let go’ by the company to which I had been employed. More. I was being fired from the company to which I had been a leader for years.

The morning of that day, an enraged, yet important, customer called, complaining, and the Zytron biggywigs panicked. Although I did not do the nasty deed the important customer was freaking out over, I was the day-shift manager and thought it would be heroic of me to take the blame for one of my ‘staff’. So I said that I did the deed, but everyone knew I didn’t do it. I didn’t know exactly how this would work out. But I’d seen the same thing happen on teevee a hundred times, and the do-good cover-upping manager always came out clean, and on top. I guess I thought they’d just say, ‘We know you didn’t do it’, ignore it, and move on. But that’s not what happened. Mike called, and would fire me if I didn’t come clean, and rat on the true culprit of the nasty deed.

I wasn’t going to turn on my co-worker. Our bond was stronger, and more important, than the job. And frankly, the timing of the firing was perfect. Honestly… I had been lingering behind the scenes, buried in microfilm espionage work for years, and it was time to make a decision as to whether, or not, to continue this charade of dark work… or shift my focus to something completely different, filled with light. The firing occurred back in warm July.

Mike tried to hire me back a couple hours after letting me go; after the Zytron biggywigs’s heated heads cooled with towel wraps, and microwaved soda biscuits. Perhaps they were dry crumpets. The second phone call from Mike was a discussion something along the lines of the following: although I cannot remember that well, and it was not something I’d give much thought to, since it occurred:

Mike: Hi Sam. It’s Mike. How are you? Can we talk for a minute?

Me: I’m fine. Thanks, Mike. I know your voice. How are you? Now what?

Mike: Well, I wanted to talk to you about coming back tomorrow, and continuing to work.

Me: Really? Again? This is the third time this year. I think we should just leave it as is.

Mike: You know we like you, and we know you’re not the one that delivered the package to Ms. Hathaway at Fairchild. After calming down, she called us back to tell us that she should not have taken the incident personally. She wasn’t happy about what happened, but she knows you, knows who you are, and when I told her that I had let you go, she said that she didn’t want that to happen. And I’m telling you that everyone at Zytron, me included, don’t want that to happen, either. We all want you back. Let bygones be bygones.

Me: Mike, that’s interesting. But you already knew that Hathaway is a hot-headed manipulator, and you and the rest of the company biggies reacted like she owns you. Like you’re afraid of her. My driver made a mistake. There was really nothing intentional. No one got hurt. You could have supported me… or us. You could have supported my team. Your team! But your solution was to fire me. This was the third time this year.

Mike: Each case was different. And you know it wasn’t my idea to let you go last time.

Me: Well, you should stand up for the people that work for you. That’s what I did. I’m paying the consequences. So should you.

Mike: C’mon Sam. I don’t want to beg over the phone. I have a meeting I need to go to in a minute. Think about my proposal. We all want you back. I’ll call you after my meeting. Say, in an hour and a half. Just think about it. You have my apology, as well as that of all senior staff at Zytron.

Me: Is the meeting about changes to graveyard shift hours?

Mike: I can’t tell you about company meetings right now. You don’t work here. But I have to go. I will call you back in an hour and a half.

Me: So I was working there two hours ago, you’re calling to ask me to stay on, to forget that I was fired by you, and you can’t confirm that the meeting you’re about go to is the one that I already know about? That I was supposed to be in?

Mike: It’s company policy. Nothing personal. I’ll call you after the meeting, and let’s work something out. I’m sure I can get HR to expunge the whole thing from your record.

I had no intention of returning to Zytron, even though it was a wonderful place to work. I enjoyed the work. The hustle. The challenge of meeting impossible hourly deadlines. I couldn’t think about Mike’s offer, again, to return, as though nothing had transpired. But I did wonder what the firing could mean to me going forward. Would they ‘expunge’ the firing from my record if I didn’t return. Who knows? I knew that I couldn’t take Mike’s word regarding ‘expunging’ anything as gospel. He tries, but he was just another pawn. He’s not the decider. But it was the third time Mike had let me go in a year. Each time followed by a beg-back. Mike called me again an hour later, sooner than he had indicated he would call. It was the final call that day. The final discussion between us ever.

Mike: Hi, Sam. It’s Mike, again. Can we count on you coming back, tomorrow? You know we’d love to have you back. This will be the last time, I promise.

Me: With all due respect, thank you for the offer to return again, Mike. But no thanks. I really enjoyed working there. But it’s time for me to move on to something else. It’s been a long time.

Mike: What can I offer you to come back this one last time? Just name it, and I’ll see what I can do.

Me: I don’t think there is anything you can do. I think I’m walking away. I am walking away. With that, I said, goodbye, and hung up the phone, with a shaky hand.

Zytron’s Employee Performance Record Books may accurately indicate:

Reason for Termination: Fired July 21, 1981

HR Exit Interview: Janet

I could imagine a quick termination note like that being attached to my file in red. That would not surprise me. A bare bones record. Two short bones. One: a metatarsal. The other: an upper bicuspid. IF… bicuspids are considered bone. Which they aren’t. Teeth and bones aren’t the same thing. Bones are living tissue; always regenerating. Bones give it a go. Teeth are not living tissue. Teeth don’t cure themselves of anything. They can’t even rid themselves of little pieces of spinach. Or menudo. Or pubic hair. (I had a quick talk with myself and decided to remove the pubic hair comment, but I just haven’t done it, yet. If it offends you, consider that it wasn’t really meant to stay there.) Teeth can’t fix themselves. Dentists fix teeth. Orthodontists sometimes fix teeth. Teeth are more like hair than bone.

I don’t know if the scientific tooth community would agree with that. That teeth are more like hair, than they are like bone. See what happened there? It’s a writer’s tool. At the end of the prior paragraph, I just wrote the hair vs bone thing without any real idea if it’s true. It just came to me in the process, and I put it in. I think I could make an argument for it, but I haven’t tried. Maybe I can’t, who know? It just feels like I could make a case for it.

Dearest Readers: This is an example that you can’t always believe what you read. Some people write things that seem like they are true… but are just misjudgments… or end up proven to be inaccurate. These are forms of mistakes. Often, these could be considered stupidities. But there are some evil people who actually write stuff on purpose that they know isn’t true. It’s calculated. It has a purpose. It’s like a silent attack. You, the Readers might not even know that it was made up bull-pucky. The evil people know that a lot of people will just believe whatever it is they hear, or read. And then the evil people stretch it a little farther and little farther.. more and more absurd… bigger and bigger lies… more and more dangerous… knowing that their listeners, or readers, have already bought in, and have invested too much of their own time to let go of it. It’s the clumsy tale of a horse’s ass. Of people becoming geldings. When people become geldings, they don’t have the balls to question what they hear, or read. Nor do they think for themselves. For a recent example: the Jan 6 2021 capitol attackers were all geldings, including those that were natural people geldings at birth.

Reason for Termination: Fired July 21, 1981

HR Exit Interview: Janet

The Zytron Employee Performance Record final short entry in my personnel file doesn’t tell the full story. It’s incomplete. It encourages a false impression. Leaves an unsatisfying taste. A pungent stink. And it is void of full disclosure, as well as showing a disdain for forthrightness, and honesty. Company’s aren’t automagically supportive of full disclosure. Sometimes full disclosure is bad for them. Sometimes full disclosure can expose a doozy-sized company blemish. And if you ever have a doozy, and some of us have had doozies, you don’t want the doozy to be a blemish. That’s the bad kind of doozy. That’s when you wish you had no doozy. That’s when you want to loozy-the-doozy.

What would surprise me, unfortunately, would be if my final personnel file also included details regarding Zytron’s failed attempt begging me to come back onto their company payroll… and this, not more than two hours after they had let me go. Why would it? Why would they include that in my file? Companies, like humans, likely because they are heftily comprised of humans, do not like to dwell on their failures. It makes them glum. Glum companies are not fun companies to get up to go to work for in the morning. Although donuts help. A lot.

I could only hope that my final employment termination record included an explanation that would go something like:

Employee turned down our request to remain on board.

We lost our day-shift manager.

You know. The facts. It wouldn’t even have to include my name. After all, in a benign sense, as viewed by an unbiased outsider, it was my decision to end my employment; to end the relationship. What I did was a form of quitting. The paint hadn’t dried, and I said to let it dry.

Sure, it was not the rehearsed Perry Mason standard firing, where you, the employee, come into work in the morning, and someone in human resources calls you into their office, and says, ‘You’re fired.’ You may not have been pulling your weight, or there was a feeling of insubordination. Attendance may have been poor. You may have gotten into a heated argument with your boss. And then you’re out the door with a kick in the rumpus. That’s a standard firing. That’s the tradition. That’s teevee. That’s what people think when you say that you’ve been fired. They think it’s because of something you did. And that’s what anyone considering hiring at the next potential company would come away thinking, if there was no clarifying explanation that included the actual details of my final hours, at Zytron. When you are in your 20’s, still young and potent, you don’t know how closely your employment record follows you around. What stick’em it has. Or what it even means… it if even means anything. Does someone in HR hand your employment record to you on your way out the door, and you’re supposed to pass it on to the next place that you’re trying to get to hire you? Do the folks in HR have to share its contents? Are they obligated to read whatever is in your file to any other company’s hiring personnel that might call to inquire? Do companies even really call other companies?

I could understand the need for reference checking when considering a hire for the position of CEO. Or a president of a bank. Or a surgeon. Or a teacher. Or a pilot. Maybe even a first-year, little league baseball coach. I’m not a gelding with a nose ring. But a microfiche provider? A guy that’s supposed to be living in the gangster shadows of espionage? Gets a reference check?

SIDE SALAD #1. Start. When you’re watching a murder mystery on teevee… Okay. Hold it. Let’s just walk this back a sec. If you’re one of those Readers who doesn’t like to watch murder mysteries on teevee, then please feel free to jump to the paragraph after the next couple paragraphs that begins with the word, ‘Basically‘, in bold. You don’t need to learn the following real important stuff, in this, our first Side Salad. Stuff that could really come in handy.

Okay. Now. Back to the rest of us. Let’s continue.

SIDE SALAD #1, Final Paragraph. In a teevee murder mystery show, when the autopsy lab technician says he’s waiting for the laboratory results to come back to determine the time of death, it’s all theater. It’s all show biz. It’s in the script. He doesn’t really need the laboratory results. It’s just teevee filler. A quick, back of a napkin calculation, nails it every time, usually. Calculating the time of death is pretty darn easy. You can do it. There should be a merit badge available. Just roll the stiff over onto his, or her, stomach, and dip a rectal thermometer into their tuchus, the rectal thermometer hole that accompanies us at birth, and follows us everywhere that we go, and take a reading. Every 1.5˚ F less than 98˚ F = 1 hour of death.

Basically, your personal employment history is a credit rating without the number. And no one has a clue how credit ratings work. So you’re left to wonder: How big can this employment record stain be? How red the blood droplets or blood letting? How large the scarlet letter? How pointed the dunce cap? It elicits uncertainty. You think about the unemployment line. Food stamps… again. Exhaustion. Debt. Growing debt. Shoplifting. Crime. Capture. Jail. Failure.

I had no idea how the employment record ‘follow-you-around-forever’ thing worked. No one seemed to know how it worked back then. No one knows today. But it was definitely threatening. It wasn’t a good thing. I never ever saw mine. But it was a form of corporate noose. As though I’d ever strung a noose around my neck, to know how that felt. Which I hadn’t. Tug on it? No thanks. Employment records scared. Probably not lethal. Potentially. It was all about potentiality. As in the potentiality that it really sucked.

Interrupting Reader: Excuse me. Yoohoo. Is it true that the word ‘huh’ is from Japan? I mean that it’s an actual Japanese word, and means ‘what’.

Me: Huh?

Interrupting Reader: Yes.

Me: What?

Interrupting Reader: That’s right.

Me: What?

Interrupting Reader: That’s what I heard… yes.

Some HR people may have known how the employment record thing works. What kind of leash it had. It’s length. What role it played. How it was that it was able to follow your around. Like an odor. I feel obliged, however, to offer advanced apologies to each of you that happen to work in HR, or have family members that work in HR. To each of you, I direct no malice. No ill will. But the career HR people I dealt with everywhere that I dealt with them always seemed to kinda be doing their job in a bubble that was different from the bubble that all the rest of us at the company were doing our jobs in. That’s all. Short. We were breath mints, and they were a strange gargle formula. We were breathing fresh oxygen, and they were inhaling ammonia.

Yet, I was not gobsmacked that they ‘let me go’. They’d done it twice before, as mentioned. You might ask, Interrupting Reader: ‘Were the Zytron bigwiggies gobsmacked by my insistence to make the separation permanent?’ Good question. Smart. The quick answer is that since ties had been severed, and we were both bleeding out, I cannot add clarity regarding frustrations that may have taken place behind Zytron’s locked doors after I declined to continue the marriage of employer/employee. I cannot say if another behead rolled. Or two beheads.

C H A P T E R 2 ::

The front screen door of my redwood cottage opened out to warm bright sunshine the morning after Robert’s call. The morning following his exciting invitation to his house party. With Paula! Thursday night. I must not allow myself to forget! I wonder if she’ll remember me. It was only a brief encounter at the party, in Montara, two years ago. Long, long ago, after all. And besides, she was new to the city. Had she ever been to the Bay Area before? I had no idea.

The lights inside, at the party, in Montara, were pretty low, and it was noisy, and active inside, and there were a lot of new people for Paula to meet. I was just one of them. One of too many to remember. And it was in the middle of the party when I met her. She’d probably already met many strangers. It was possible that time was working against me to make a memorable impression. She probably never heard a word I said. Which is just as well. Whatever I’d said was probably foolish or unimportant. She may not have even been listening. It’s understandable, and there would be no fault to it. Still, I should have asked Robert during the phone call if Paula remembered me. I sometimes think too slowly on my feet. Or I don’t think at all! But what if he had answered, ‘No’, with no thought about it?

I went outside onto my brick patio. It was Tuesday, November 16. With my dog, Sunny, at my side, I spent a couple hours gardening, and cleaning up debris that was close to the redwood cottage. The air smelled of roots, and rotting leaves, like sweet marrow. I swept the outdoor rock steps wanting them to be clean, and free from clumps of dirt in case Paula were ever to come to visit. My head was in the clouds with such thoughts. The loose metal gate at the top of the rock steps needed both adjustment, aligning it to the post, and tightening. There was rust on both hinges, so I squirted contents from an old can of 3-for-1 oil. And used steel wool to draw out a little shine.

The petunias and the wild roses needed watering, which I provided along with carefully wiping dust, and dirt, from the leaves of other garden plants. First this one, then that one. My spirits were high. Then the air shifted, and smelled of Eucalyptus. Sparrows chirped happily in singsong. I was myself again. Two white puffy clouds skittered across the blue sky. There were the shape of bunnies. I kept busy. Next, I swept the indoor wooden porch floor. If I had composed a list of chores, it’s possible that nothing I did would have been on it. My mind was elsewhere. Preoccupied. Time passed slowly. But I tried to keep active. I endeavored to make my redwood cottage more presentable. For no particular reason whatsoever. To amuse myself.

‘Is Paula going to be coming down to visit our little cottage?’ I asked Sunny. He lifted his head and changed his position again lying down on the warmed old brick patio in the sun. ‘Of course not. Why would she?’ I answered.

Later in the day, still early in the afternoon, with Sunny in the front seat, alert and excitedly looking out the window, I drove into town. About six miles away. I didn’t rush as I was in no great hurry. Why would I hurry? I had all the rest of the cay. And not a care in the world.

The commercial stretch of Woodside encompassed only a few blocks. That’s it. But there was enough. Some stores sold necessities, albeit extravagant at that: Robert’s Market was a specialized food market with rich little cheeses tasing of herbs and wine, and paper goods, and a marvelous deli of sausages, and cuts of meat. There was an outdoor furniture shop which sold high-end powdered aluminum chairs from the east coast. And a high-cost per gallon Chevron gas station (there must have been silver or gold in its underground gasoline storage tanks), a small restaurant (coffee was $3) which competed with another small restaurant next door (coffee was $3 a cup there, too), a real estate office (I never went inside but I imagined the patrons had glitter inside of their wallets). The Wells Fargo bank where I had my checking account was just one block over, and I’d enter with my chest puffed out whenever I had a positive balance. Next door, but part of the same building, was the Pioneer Saloon with a small stage for live-music. There was a mishmash of other businesses but I didn’t know what they were doing, or why they were there. I had no business to do in any of them. One may have been selling fresh ocean catch from the fisheries in Half Moon Bay.

Visually, the three-blocks comprising Woodside’s town center looked like the set of a teevee western; somewhere off to the dusty side of a movie studio. Off by itself in the backlot. Isolated. Occasionally movie stars, or rock stars, or musicians, like Joan Baez, were driven into town. When we would see them, we’d point at them with excitement some of the times, and then go about our business. They seemed to like the recognition. They felt rewarded. Felt safer than when they were ignored.

It was all very private, though. The town. A lot of residents had horses. And big horse properties with acreage divided by white fences. A couple of the businesses in town had hitching posts outside of their front doors where riders could tie up their horses, so the horses couldn’t wander away, and get lost. So they wouldn’t end up in Oakland, or Gilroy, or delay traffic while ambling crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, on their way to the horse stables, in Sausalito. Plus, the name ‘Pioneer Saloon’ added a western patina. The saloon was only open in the evenings, after the Wells Fargo bank employees, on the street level below, evacuated at the strike of 5:00p. I spent my cash at the Pioneer Saloon when by back balance allowed. I’d been there more than a few time. But not that day. Not that Tuesday, when I had all day to go about my business, without a care in the world.

The trip to town was during banking hours, and I was focused on one thing. I slowly pulled into the Chevron gas station to fill up. With the sun still awake, the Pioneer Saloon was closed. I didn’t want to have to take time, on Thursday, to fill my tank. So I did it that day. Tuesday. I certainly didn’t want to run out of gas driving to Jan and Robert’s house on Thursday evening. That would not be good. And I didn’t want to run out of gas driving back home from Jan and Robert’s house, possibly late, on Thursday night. That could be worse, in the dark. Or worse yet, run out of gas driving back home barely an hour after arriving at their house. That would mean that the soiree was a failure, that Paula didn’t show up. She could have had something better come along to occupy her time. Or maybe I’d said the wrong thing. Or said something silly, and they couldn’t hold back their laughter.

While gassing at the Chevron, I also checked the tire pressure of all four tires. This was not something I would normally do. But I was in no hurry. I tried to make the time pass. I stretched the air hose to squeak more air into the front left. The driver’s front tire. An important tire. A steering tire. I cleaned the outside of the windows. I had all day. And not a care in the world. A man with a hat trotted by on a horse. The sun was bright. I could see the pockets of his jacket were torn. I did all these things at the gas station. Many that I never do. But I knew how to do them. I’d watched others at other times. A bond forms with your car when you take care of it. It’s symbiotic. Even when other cars are honking at you to hurry up, and their drivers are making strange faces. Contorting.

On Thursday, the day of the party at Jan and Robert’s house, I awoke with a nervous, eager outlook. After a morning breakfast of soda cakes with strawberry jam, and yesterday morning’s coffee, I went outdoors, and lay down on the bricks, in the sun, to calm myself. The same spot where Sunny likes to lie down, and he came over, and laid down next to me. There was a slight, pleasant breeze, and I listened to the soughing of the Eucalyptus. Crows could be heard complaining far away, and sparrows darted and chattered in the bushes. I said to Sunny, ‘The birds seem excited today.’ Time passed slowly once again, and seemed to stall in the afternoon. I leaned my ladder against the side of the short cottage, and climbed up onto the flat roof. The sun was warmer up there, and I lay more comfortably on the pad that I’d leave up there when rain was not in the forecast. I awoke an hour later, feeling refreshed.

I knew the quickest way to get to Robert’s house from my little one-bedroom redwood cottage. I’d been there before. It was a distance of about 30 miles. To San Francisco. I would head down hair-pinned meandering Maple Way, whoosh atop the thick bed of dead leaves that covered Glencrag Way, continue through the mythical tunnel of oak trees and Eucalyptus, watching leaves soar in the air behind me in my rearview mirror, then, after the long curve to the left, I’d slow down just enough to screech right onto Jefferson Avenue. Then another right turn a hundred yards beyond that onto La Canada Road at The Peanut Farm. Which I’d driven by often. There were rarely any cars on these backroads. My assumption that The Peanut Farm was a bar had been confirmed. I knew they weren’t farming peanuts behind the front door. I’m not an idiot. Usually. A lot of the time. But I never went inside The Peanut Farm. Didn’t need to. The air-snapping, rumbling motorcycles and muscle-bound large trucks parked outside at night, with their suspensions raised to the limit, and the hooting and hollering from within, were all telltale clues. Ya gotta remember. I’d worked in microfilm espionage type stuff so I knew how all this shit worked. I could tell. The Peanut Farm was a redneck bar. Not my style. I preferred the Pioneer Saloon a few miles away in the heart of the town center. Some of their clientele rode in on horseback. Not Harley’s. Although riding horses never appealed to me.

Years before, in cub scouts, we had to ride horses as part of some sort of child punishment at camp up in the mountains. We didn’t talk about it, but I think every kid at camp hated those horses. Brandy, Butterscotch and Marshmallow were always already taken. There were two polar opposites that I always seemed to be saddled with: Buttermilk or Assassin. They had different personalities. Buttermilk was the color of a buckwheat pancake and was the slowest horse in the stable, which worked for me. But it was easy to fall behind because Buttermilk was an old swayback that was really long in the tooth. And on the return home to the Circle Corral, Buttermilk would walk woozy-like and that’s not very comforting. Not just buckwheat old and pancake slow, Buttermilk had a verifiable screw loose and could get lost if allowed to make all the decisions. Assassin was different. Assassin was ebony black and always lathered and snorted all the time and ran me into tree trunks and overhanging limbs and paid no attention to the cowboy spurs I stabbed into his sides. I couldn’t steer him. The spurs were a joke to him. He didn’t care. I’d pull the reigns back for him to stop and he’d fight like a dog grabbing his leash in its mouth and shaking. Assassin had an attitude problem. Assassin made you stay up worried at night, before heading off to camp, hoping you were gonna be able to avoid Assassin. Or maybe you could say you had a stomach ache.

Buttermilk was resigned to his job and his slow lumbering approach to it. Assassin couldn’t hide his hatred of his job, his ‘plight’, as he might have characterized it if he wasn’t a horse. He also showed hatred for every kid that was forced to sit on his back and dared to kick him.

From La Canada Road it was just a straight-shot mile to the entrance of Interstate 280, the least travelled highway in the Bay Area. Once on Interstate 280, heading north, it’s twenty five miles to Robert’s… about 35 minutes.

At 5:10p, on Thursday evening, I turned to Sunny, ‘Hey boy. Do you think it’s too early to drive to San Francisco?’ He lifted his head at my voice and got up and stretches his legs, yawned and wagged his tail. He thought he was going with me, ‘No, Not this time, You need to stay home. Sorry.’ With that, Sunny dog-circled and laid back down on the warm spot in the afternoon sun. He lay on the porch’s wooden floor, where the sun hit through the windows that I’d cleared earlier in the day, when I had nothing but time.

I dithered and looked at myself in the mirror and filled Sunny’s bowl with cold water from the kitchen faucet. I made up small chores to occupy a few minutes, just to kill time. The big clock face on the porch wall had advanced to 5:30p. I reasoned that if I drove slowly, and perhaps stopped to buy a bottle of wine at the store along the way, the one near Robert’s house, I could stretch my arrival to 6:20p. Still too early.

‘I can always park up the street from their house, or around the corner, and bide my time,’ I thought to myself after putting new candles on the small table on the indoor wooden porch. I could hide behind a tree, need be, so as to not arrive too early. So with that, I said, ‘Wish me luck’ to Sunny, patted him on the head, closed the front door, walked up the swept rock steps, through the adjusted metal gate, and got into my car. The air was still warm and aromatic. After backing out of the gravel driveway, I drove to the top of Maple Way (four country houses), and turned around slowly at the row of mailboxes. Old Mrs. Ludwick was standing by her mailbox, waving at me.

Me: Hi, Mrs. Ludwick. Any good mail, today?

Old Mrs. Ludwick: Oh, hello, Sam. No, it looks like just more bills.

Me: Oh. OK. I’ll just check mine later, then. I’ve got to run. Have a nice evening, Mrs. Ludwick.

Old Mrs. Ludwick: I heard that it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. We could use it.

Me: Boy, we sure could. This drought has been going on too long.

I headed back down Maple Way, past my little cottage on the left, around the hairpins, and the rest of it, until I got to La Canada Road, at The Peanut Farm. There looked to be a lot of early activity at The Peanut Farm, but I paid little attention, and entered Interstate 280, one mile up the road.

There is an old, yet recognizable, cartoon dome house, quite in view, on the east side of the highway. It is just beyond Highway 92, which bisects the San Francisco peninsula. The domed house is known as the Flintstone House, for good reason. It is an open spread that is impossible not to notice from the Interstate 280, when traveling north. It looks like Fred, and Wilma, and Pebbles, live there. Along with a stable of large rusting iron dinosaurs: triceratops, mastodons, and, as you can see in the picture below, a giraffe. It was news to paleontologists that giraffes co-existed with T-Rex’s, and I had not been keeping up with recent developments, or discoveries. Of course, the original Flintstone home was in the town of Bedrock, and this one was a knock-off in swanky Hillsborough. It is, in fact, not Fred’s actual abode, or it would be worth millions. Wait!. Scratch that. It is worth millions already. Plural millions.

I continued up 280. Off to the right, ten miles farther up the interstate, I could see a glimpse of San Francisco International Airport’s control tower. Right alongside the bay. The airport that Paula had flown in to, and out from. The landing runways were located such that the in-coming planes fly low over the bay waters, until the instant when they touch down, after just reaching land. I must remember to ask Paula about it. I wondered if she had a window seat inside the plane.

Traffic in San Francisco was not a problem, and didn’t slow my progress. I exited on San Jose Avenue, and turned left, onto Dolores Blvd. It was my normal route to Jan and Robert’s house. 1/2 mile farther, I turned left again, onto Clipper Street. It was 6:45p, only minutes from their place. I turned, and drove a few blocks over to 24th Street, parked, and walked to the wine store, around the corner. It was not busy when I entered, so after a quick discussion with the woman manning the counter, I purchased the red wine she recommended from Italy, a small brick of cheese, and a package of crackers. And then I drove eight blocks to Jan and Robert’s house.

Jan and Robert lived in a stucco house. It was their stucco house, which they owned, on mortgage, on Kronquist Court. In an area called Noe Valley; audibly pronounced – No’ee Val’ee. In type, or in handwritten form, it’s also read silently in your brain – No’ee Val’ee. The house sat on the even side of the street. Kronquist Court is a five-houses deep cul-de-sac, with not much parking. I found a spot around the corner. After getting out of my car, before grabbing the bottle of wine, and the cheese, and the crackers, I brushed cracker crumbs from the front of my shirt onto the asphalt of the street, and kicked off the cracker crumbs that were caught by my shoes. Two minutes later, I pressed Jan’s, and Robert’s, doorbell button, at 6:59p, on the evening of Thursday, November 19.

I assumed that Jan and Robert shared their expenses. I wasn’t privy to their financial arrangement. But I thought of it as Jan and Robert’s doorbell button. I did not think of it as Jan’s doorbell button, alone, nor did I think of it as Robert’s doorbell button, alone. Whatever their fiscal practice, I pressed the doorbell once more. Still 6:59p. The doorbell button was lit up. Fancy.

I heard foot stomps clambering down the indoor wood stairway, and ‘Okay. Okay. Hold on a minute!‘ in Robert’s voice calling out. Robert opened the door, and I could hear music, and laughter, in the background. Not far away. And then my life took a twist to the future.

C H A P T E R 3 :::: :: :

Robert: Hello, hello, hello. Come on in.

Robert had a warm, welcoming smile on his face.

Me: Hi. Thanks. Thanks for inviting me. Here. See. I brought some wine, and some cheese, and crackers. Should I uncork the wine in your kitchen? So it can breathe. You doing OK?

Robert: Yeah. Thanks. Can’t complain. OK. Sure. Let me see if I can find a cork screw. That could always be a challenge. Then, we’ll go upstairs to the playroom where Jan, and Paula, and her friend, Mary ‘something-or-other’, are hanging out. (I didn’t catch Mary’s last name.)

I could hear other voices. Up the stairs. Coming from the playroom. I could hear Jan’s voice, and Paula’s voice, and another girl’s voice, but mostly I recognized Paula’s excited voice, even though I’d only heard a few words from her a couple years ago.

Paula: … and it’s made by Mattel. The same company that make the Barbie dolls that I wrote copy for at Ogilvie Mather in LA.

Mary ???’s voice: What’s it called again, hon?

Paula: It’s called Intellivision. Like television. It’s new. It’s a video game player. Like an Atari.

Mary ???’s giggling voice: That’s greeaaatt. That’s greeaaatt.

Paula: I brought a game called Sea Battle. It’s the only one I have. It’s the only one they game me.

Paula sounded upbeat. I knew that Ogilvie Mather was an ad agency. I also remembered that Paula worked at J Walter Thompson in Chicago, one of the country’s largest advertising agencies, when I met her briefly at the Montara party. At the time, JWT may have been the largest ad agency in America. She was an advertising copywriter. She had an important job. I didn’t know what she was doing now, in San Francisco, or where she was working. Maybe she didn’t have a job, like me! We could laugh together about not having jobs. I didn’t know. Maybe she had all the time in the world.

Robert: Hey, let me grab a few glasses, and let’s put all this stuff on a tray, and go on up. We don’t have wine glasses, but we can just use these. (Robert held up a small water glass.)

Me: Good idea.

As we began to go up the stairs, Paula came out of the playroom with a big smile to say, ‘Hi’, and introduce herself. She extended her hand, and broadened her smile even wider.

Paula: Hi Sam. I’m Paula. I totally remember meeting you. I’m so glad you were able to come tonight. How are you doing? Can I help with that?

Me: Oh, hi. Yeah. I remember you, too. No. I’ve got it. No problem. I’m doing great. Robert said you moved here now?

Paula led the way into the playroom, and Robert, and I, followed. Jan and Paula’s friend were sitting on cushions on the carpeted floor. The heat was turned up; something Jan and Robert are prone to do.

I couldn’t help noticing that she said that she remembered me!

Paula: This is my friend Mary Clare. Mary Clare, this is Sam Nelson. And of course (directed to me), this is Jan. You know her.

It was just like Paula to be introducing me to Jan, Robert’s wife. She acted as though we were all at her house, and she was introducing me to the other guests. Paula asserts herself. Doesn’t matter if it’s her house, or not. Friendly. Engaging.

Was she really excited that I was able to join them tonight? My pulse quickened. I listened intently to every word she said. I could hear the blood in my ears. It seemed it was going all right, so far. I had survived the first two, or three minutes, without stumbling.

Me to Jan: Hi, Jan. Nice to see you.

Me to Paula’s friend: And I’m sorry, what was your name?

I leaned down and extended my hand.

Mary Clare: It’s Mary Clare.

Mary Clare and I gently shook hands.

Me: Mary.. Clare?

Mary Clare: Just one word, MaryClare. That’s my first name. The ‘c’ is capitalized.

Me: Oh, cool. Nice to meet you, MaryClare.

Mary Clare: Likewise. The wine and cheese look greeaaatt.

Robert: Ya, let’s put the wine, and cheese down in the center. Take a glass, and hand one to Paula. Paula, you’ll drink wine tonight, right? Are you not drinking?

Paula: C’mon Robert. How long have you known me? I, mean…

Robert: Ya, that’s true. MaryClare, pass Paula a glass… well… let me fill it first. Is red okay?

Paula (laughing): Sure. All colors work.

It was so clumsy of me mishandling Paula’s friend’s name from the outset. It must have raised question marks from Paula. But even so, the evening was beginning favorably. Paula looked fantastic. Her hair was longer, but still short. She wore stylish peasant clothes, but they looked expensive on her. Like she had them made special just for her. Same huge smile. Energetic. Engaging. Inspiring. Everyone had their shoes off, so I removed mine, and put them back down the stairs, by the front door, next to the stack. Then, back up the stairs in socks. One of my socks had a hole in it, by the big toe. I paused, and pulled the sock over the toe to hide my poverty before re-entering the playroom.

There was one spot on the floor on a big yellow oversized pillow that was between Paula and MaryClare. I was excited to be there, yet tried to seem cool. I must watch what I say. There was a brown plastic molded contraption that must be the video game machine I heard Paula refer to, when I was downstairs in the kitchen, with Robert. We were all sitting in a broken semi-circle, and the video game machine, the Intellivision, was on the floor, in the center, attached by an electric umbilical cord to the teevee.

The playroom was a small bedroom with a wide window that opened, and a small walk-in closet.

Me to Paula: What’s that?

Paula: It’s called an Intellivision. It play video games. Have you ever seen one?

Me: No. I barely have even heard of them. You attach it to the teevee?

Paula: Ya. To the back of the teevee. And then you put in a game cartridge. The one I have is called Sea Battle. There are others, but this is the only one I have. Do you guys want to see it?

Well, of course, I wanted to see it… and more than that, try it. Play it. Or learn how to play it. Everyone agreed.

It was so good to be with Paula, after all these years. Well, who am I kidding? It was the first time, really. I don’t know how my mind can get so confused, and play these tricks, on me.

Paula jammed the Sea Battle cartridge into the top of the Intellivision, and moved the power switch to ON. Nothing happened. The teevee was all fuzz with the static noise.

But then Paula asked Robert to change the teevee to channel three. At that moment, the teevee screen instantly displayed an image from the Intellivision. Paula said it was a title screen. Like the cover of a book. Like internal packaging. It was the first video game screen I had ever seen. And the promise of this was thrilling. It looked awesome. New. Maybe a little confusing. Channel three? But I fell in love. Both with Sea Battle, and especially with Paula, for sharing it. A girl that likes video games? Are you kidding?

Me: Wow. How’d you get this?

Paula: I got it from work when I was in LA. One of our accounts was Mattel, and they wanted me to work on this. It was pretty new.

Me: Incredible. Are you working anywhere now?

Paula: Now? I’m at Ketchum Advertising. In San Francisco.

Me: And they want you to work on games for the Intellivision machine, or what exactly?

Paula: No. The Intellivision and Sea Battle are from when I worked at Ogilvie Mather in LA. Now, at Ketchum, I just work on accounts like Safeway.

Me: So you’re not writing stuff for games, anymore?

Paula: No. Not at Ketchum. But I still write for some games doing freelance work. I love working on new technology.

Me: I love this thing. I wanna try it. Do you know how to play it? Have you played it?

It went on like this a little longer. Paula knew how to play the game well enough to explain it to us. She explained about the game controller overlay that helps the player know what the button’s do. We had a few other questions, and she answered them. Since there were five of us, I asked if we could all play, but it turned out that that game was only for two players at a time. Paula said that some games are only for one player, and some are for two players, and Sea Battle was for two players only. So, we took turns playing against each other, mixing it up, cheering each other on, and when it was my turn, I didn’t want to ever stop playing. I got hooked. I figured once I played a few times, it would be something I’d be good at. I can back that statement up because I was always a real good game player. Doesn’t matter what type of game. Cards. Scrabble. Board games. Snowball fights. Baseball. Football. Basketball. Foursquare. Tether ball. Any of them. All of them. Dodgeball, Kickball. There were better bowlers than I, unfortunately, but I was better than the others at playing the pinball machines lined up against the wall at the bowling alley.

I don’t consider fishing a sport, or a game. I wasn’t good at fishing. I really only tried one time as a kid. Well. Twice. The first time was at Cheeseman Dam, up near Willard’s cabin, near Deckers. Near the South Platte River. I was handed a pole, and tried throwing the line out into the lake, and the line went sideways, way over to the left. The hook snagged a fisherman on the side of his head, by his eye. There was no damage, and it didn’t stick very deep into his temple. He just pulled it out, and there was only a spot of blood. But the possibility for serious injury wasn’t hidden to anyone. When the fisherman saw I was a kid, he just said to be careful. I never tried throwing the line out again. So I can say I’m really good at playing games, as long as fishing isn’t considered a game.

The other time I tried fishing was at Washington Park in southeast Denver. Parks and Recreation held a fishing derby for kids one summer day, each year. Back then, there was a stream that ribboned through the park, and emptied into a lake. The stream was stocked with kelp, or carp, or tuna…or some fish-type for the competition. I never did find out what fish ran the gauntlet to the lake. I didn’t catch a thing, including a fish. I didn’t have a real fishing pole. Most of the kids didn’t have a real one. Mine was just a long bent tree stick with a white kitchen string tied at the end. It made me feel like I was Opie Taylor. It was the same type of string that my mom would use to tie up a Thanksgiving turkey. There was really only one kind of string back then. Well I guess there was the white string, and there was a little stiffer brown one, too. The string dangling at the end of my tree stick fishing pole was the white one. Willard tied a hook, and a worm, onto the end. If I had to pick up the worms myself, I wasn’t too interested. My worm feel off, and I quit after ten minutes. Willard tied a grasshopper he caught to the end of his line. He didn’t catch nothin neither. Willard said he thought the fishing derby was for kids younger than us. I think he was right. So we split. We didn’t live anywhere near Washington Park, anyway. I threw my tree stick fishing pole with the Thanksgiving turkey string on the end in a grey trash can right near our bikes. So did Willard.

As for other games, I was a natural. I played games constantly. If I wasn’t in class at school, or asleep in bed, I’d be playing games. I was generally more competitive than some of the other kids. That’s what I overheard Willard’s mom, Thelma say. And Frisell’s mom, Jane, said about the same thing. Alice Blum, Denny’s mom, she thought it was too much. But I found out early on that my fiercest competitor was myself. When playing against others, I’d usually look for a way to play from a disadvantage; just to make the game more challenging. More fun. More meaningful.

I’d say I was a pretty good ping pong player. Both Frisell, and I, had ping pong tables in our basements, and we played all the time. There was a summer ping pong tournament held at our elementary school, each June. The tournament was held inside of the elementary school, in that wide gathering hall, next to the auditorium. That’s where parents would wait before the auditorium doors fully opened for the holiday Christmas Concert, and the Spring Talent Show.

I won our neighborhood summer ping pong tournament, and played a couple more matches to advance to the final game. Guber would have said that I was playing for the Big Tuna if he’d been around to say it. The championship trophy game, for our age group, ended up being me versus some other kid I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have had any reason to know him; it’s just a fact that I didn’t know him. He was just another opponent. Frisell didn’t know him either. Frisell accompanied me to the match. The thing took two hours out of our Saturday afternoon. We road our bikes. At the finals, the kid I as playing against, for the championship trophy, was a big kid, a real jumbo, and he wore a ping-pong-table-colored green shirt that had ping pong ball sized white circles on it. The shirt was purposefully chosen as a ping pong table extension, which visually brought the ping pong table up to his neck, with ping pong balls flying all over the place. It was a cheap shot by him. I’d never run into anything like that before. Frisell said he hadn’t seen anything like that, either. It was kinda genius, really. Cheap. Yes. Genius. Maybe. Probably not explicitly against any rules, but it was cheating. There were no ping-pong etiquette rules governing shirt color, or design. There was probably a rule that said that you had to wear a shirt. Cut-offs were OK. Shoes required.

The judges measured the width, and weight, of our ping pong paddles. Some kids played with thick foam paddles that were illegal (too thick) which gave the ball an un-returnable spin, that no one could handle. And if the paddles were too heavy, I think they thought a kid could injure their opponent by hitting the ping pong ball so hard at his forehead, that it could knock the kid out cold. But I never saw a kid have his paddle disqualified because it weighed too much. I saw plenty of kids have to switch paddles because the foam was too thick. I didn’t use a foam paddle. Not my game. I just used the standard rubber paddle with cork in the handle. That’s there for excessive sweating which never was a problem for me. The standard rubber paddle let me spin the ball, and hit hard slams, with pretty good control. Sandpaper paddles, on the other hand, were too heavily constructed for intense slamming, but weren’t so good for creating spins, when needed.

I naturally play ping pong right-handed. I might serve left-handed, and then switch right away, but that day, at the finals, against the kid with the green ping pong table shirt, with the flying ping pong balls, I played left-handed. I wanted to win with the odds stacked against me. I beat him two straight games, and won the sturdy, upright championship trophy, allowing ping-pong paddle shirt-boy the honor of receiving the flaccid red ribbon. I won a third place white ribbon, once. There’s no joy in the white. I’d rather not place at all, and blame it on an anal tear, than win a white ribbon. So I was competitive. I found that when you tell people that you got an anal tear doing something, they usually backed away, and didn’t ask questions. Unless they were real good friends. But then, they would know it was all made up, and didn’t ask anything, either. Because they didn’t need to.

When I played Sea Battle against Paula that night, I just kind of knew that I was only at a slight disadvantage. Paula was the experienced one. She had played Sea Battle. I’d never heard of Sea Battle. I wanted to win, to beat her; but I didn’t want to crush her. So I laid back a little bit. Hopefully, if I won nicely, if it was a close battle that I just barely scratched out a victory at the end, I would impress her. I wanted to impress her. Let the heavens hear that more than anything. I had already been trying to figure out how I would impress her while I was driving up Interstate 280 from Woodside an hour earlier. I felt even more so now that she’d finished explaining the rules, and we were about to man our battle ports, and head out to sea.

Robert: Anyone need anything while I’m down here?

I was surprised to hear Robert calling up from the kitchen. I didn’t notice that he had left the small room.

Paula: Can you bring up the cheese I brought? I put it on the counter next to the colored nut bowls.

Paula was a good opponent. Nee. Better than a good opponent. She beat me three games in a row. I was smitten. I loved losing to her. I didn’t know how it could be that way. I had wanted to win nicely, to impress her. And yet, I loved losing to her! It was impossible to explain it. I didn’t even need to lay back in the weeds to lose. I tried my best. I fought to win. I engaged, and fired, and missed, and ran, and re-engaged, and got surprised by my opponent, repeatedly. Paula was a great opponent. She played with a strategy. There were battleships, and submarines, and mine layers, and other ships necessary for battles at sea. And you had to employ them at different times, and decide when to engage in battle, and when not to, by steering away, and the ships had different speeds, and different distances that their weapons could fire effectively, and there was a lot of stuff going on. It was just like being in Jutland in the Great War. Or very similar at least. How do I know. I was distracted. It was similar except that we were in Robert and Jan’s playroom, and the heat was on pretty high (normal for them), and I was sitting two feet away from Paula, who was blowing up my ships, and kicking my ass, smiling big with a lot of teeth circled by fire-red lip gloss, begging her lips to be noticed. I watched her mouth as she won, sailing her ships into my defenseless harbor. And she beat me three times! How wonderful that was! I got shell-shocked by the girl that I was already infatuated with, who had occupied my thoughts before I ever really even talked to her, and I loved losing to her that night. More so than winning anything, at any time, in the past.

One time between games, I turned to Paula, just to hear her voice.

Me to Paula: How do you and MaryClare know each other?

Paula: MaryClare and I were friends in Chicago through another friend of hers, named Jan. A different Jan. Not this Jan. When I moved here a few months ago, MaryClare called me, from Chicago, and asked if I knew of anywhere for her to move to, in San Francisco. I said, ‘Yes’, because right across the street from me was a For Rent sign. I looked at the place for her, and MaryClare moved across the street from me at the beginning of the next month. Now, we’re across-the-street neighbors.

Me to MaryClare: Jeez. That was lucky. Do you like San Francisco, MaryClare?

MaryClare: I just love it. Just love it. The weather in Chicago is below freezing right now. Who wouldn’t love this? I already feel at home here. Plus, I love being across the street from Paula.

Me: Where in The City did you guys move?

MaryClare: We’re on 22nd and Castro. I’m on one corner, the southwest corner I think, and Paula is on the other corner, just across the street. She’s on the southeast corner. I think. At the top of the hill. Only about a half a mile, or so, from here. From Jan and Robert’s.

Robert: No. Hi. Paula, here’s your cheese, and bread and a knife. And here are some paper plates. MaryClare, Paula’s on the northwest corner and you were right, your flat is on the southwest corner.

MaryClare: OK. That’s probably right. I don’t know my left side from my right side.

If Paula and MaryClare live so close to Jan and Robert’s house, I need to drive by when I leave. I know where they are relative to Jan and Robert’s. It’s only a few minutes out of my way. And I could probably use some clean cool city air before heading back down the highway, to Woodside. I just needed to see where they lived. To see the corner, and see the houses there. To learn the location. The night continued, and I got to know more and more about Paula. Even the smallest things mattered to me. The conversation turned to Paula’s shoes, and Paula went down the stairs to bring one up.

The night continued and I got to know more, and more, about Paula. Even the smallest things mattered to me. Even the shape of her eyebrows. Later on, an hour or so more into the night, MaryClare said she thought it was getting time to leave. My heart sunk. Didn’t that mean that Paula would be leaving, as well? When would I be able to see Paula, again? How would that occur? It would certainly have to be at Jan and Robert’s house, I thought. But how could I get them to invite us back? How soon? I was free tomorrow. I didn’t have a single thing to have to do.

Then, to my amazement, after MaryClare stood up to go home, Paula said:

Paula: I think I’ll stay a little longer. MaryClare – is that okay? Jan, is that okay with you?

Jan: Sure. That’s fine. MaryClare, are you sure you need to leave now?

MaryClare: Ya. I’d love to stay, hon. I’d love to. But I have to go to work in the morning. It was very nice meeting you, Sam. I’m sure I’ll see you again. Is there anything I can do to help clean up?

Jan: No. There’s not much. Robert can do it. He loves cleaning up.

Robert (excitedly): That’s true. I do.

Jan: He’s always cleaning up the kitchen or wiping up the floor.

Paula: Sounds like the perfect house-husband.

Jan: Ya. He’s pretty good. I’m gonna keep him, for now.

Me to MaryClare: Are you sure you have to go? Do you need a ride?

MaryClare: I drove my car. But thank you for the offer. I should go. Paula, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, hon. Okay?

Paula got up and gave MaryClare a big, big hug. I was overjoyed that Paula wanted to stay longer, and that MaryClare said we’d see each other again.

Paula to MaryClare: I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you. Are you sure you can get home all right?

MaryClare: Of course. What is it? All of five minutes away?

Paula: OK. I’ll call you tomorrow.

So there were four of us left in the playroom after MaryClare called it a night. It was approaching 11p. I wondered how long the four of us would continue. Then, only minutes after MaryClare’s departure, Jan announced her intention to go downstairs, to go to bed. Which, of course, would end the evening.

But it didn’t.

Jan: You guys can stay up if you want. That’s not a problem.

Robert and Paula played another game of Sea Battle. I went down to the kitchen, at Robert’s behest, and brought up some chips, and a few small candy bars. Jan and Robert always keep a stash of small candy bars in a bowl on their 1950’s breakfast nook table. And they were generous about all of it, and encouraged ‘getting your own anytime you want’. The current sea battle was a back and forth affair between the two captains. Robert had mined the perimeter of his harbor, and Paula collided with a couple of them, sustaining substantial damage, but not completely losing her battleship. Then the reverse happened, and Robert ran his battleship into a mine that Paula had hid, and he lost a lot of shelling power as his biggest weapon disappeared below the horizon. Paula guided her submarine with the game controller, and was able to enter Robert’s harbor unscathed. Game over. Paula won again.

Spending the evening with Paula, and meeting her friend MaryClare, was a great first get-together. Of course, it was Paula that steered the evening: the entertainment, the energy, the positive vibes. The excitement. She was centerstage. She thrives on centerstage.

Then the most fortuitous event of the night occurred. Robert followed Jan to bed after his latest loss to Paula in the game. Was I being set up to be alone with Paula?

Robert: Stay up as late as you want. You don’t have to leave. Just turn off all the lights when you are done.

I looked at Paula, and she was smiling, and seemed set to stay longer.

Paula: Thanks, Robert. I’m gonna open another bottle of wine, if that’s okay?

Robert: Go for it! Good night.

Paula: Good night, Robert.

Me: Thanks, Robert. Talk to you later. Thanks for inviting me.

I couldn’t have scripted this any better. It was beyond my wildest dreams. It was now just Paula, and me, and Sea Battle, and the wine bottle, and I thought I detected some flirting, although I could never tell when flirting was really happening, or if my imagination created an illusion. We talked, and played, and sipped, and played some more. Why hadn’t she gone home? She had plenty of opportunities. Could she really be enjoying my company? I, of course, never wanted to leave, but was nervous that I’d say something stupid that I’d have to explain, and wouldn’t do a good job of it. I’d leave out some critical part that would tie it all together, and it would become clear that I was not thinking straight.

I found out that Paula didn’t have to go to work Friday, the next day. Paula found out that I didn’t have a job to go to. The hours clicked by. This continued. And then the sun began its rise. When I helped Paula slide the Intellivision into its box, my hand brushed against her arm. She didn’t act startled. During the night, I had told her about my little cottage. She wanted to see it, which made my heart jump. I offered to show it to her whenever it suited her. I must make sure to clean it extra carefully. And put things away in their proper place.

I knew that Jan, and Robert, slept late, and were unlikely to be awake, as Paula, and I, wandered out the front door, around 7a. You could get in trouble if you called their house early. Rather. You would get in trouble if you called their house, too early. Neither of them were ‘morning people’, and they were still sleeping when Paula, and I, left their house. Lights off. Front door locked. Thank you note under a jar of pennies, on the kitchen table. The outside air was very still. The kind of stillness that occurs before an earthquake. Or a storm. Or an important natural event. A lone dove cooed on a telephone wire overhead, and was the background sound, when I kissed Paula, for the first time.

Early mourning dove while leaving Jan and Robert’s house with Paula

We drove our cars to Paula’s house, on Castro Street. I waited outside of my car while she ran up for a minute. She rented the top floor apartment. Three story house. Already on a high hill. She pointed out MaryClare’s flat to me, just across the street. ‘MaryClare lives right there, on the first floor.’ I was in love with Paula’s voice. Then, as she went indoors, another mourning dove cooed, and then it became quiet, and remained still. Like earth was holding its breath. When Paula came back outside, she skipped down the stairs, put her arms around me, kissed me, and said, ‘I’m ready. I’ll follow you. Let’s go.’ There was a shopping bag in her hand. She apologized that she had to take the time to feed her cat, Fairbanks, or she would have come back down sooner. Which surprised me, as she hadn’t been gone but a couple minutes.

The stillness, now in the air, was the quiet before the storm. As we were driving down to Woodside, to my redwood cottage, rain began to pound the highway. Old Mrs. Ludwick was right. We were getting rain. It started out real strong. You can hear that actual storm by playing the sound bar below.

My windshield wipers barely kept up. Heavy rain rarely blessed the Bay Area. But I loved it. I relished all forms of weather. Paula felt the same way. Being from the midwest, from just outside of Chicago, from a small farm town, called Plainfield, Paula had lots of experience with extreme weather… and she particularly loved thunderstorms. We had that in common. I doubted she had any idea how unlikely it was to be caught in a thunderstorm in the Bay Area. She was new here. She wouldn’t know. I hadn’t known when I moved to the Bay Area years earlier. I also didn’t realize there were no rivers in the area. Not nearby, anyway. Not like there were in Colorado, where I grew up.

My eyes kept jumping back and forth between the driving, and my rearview, constantly checking, to make sure I didn’t lose her. Hoping Paula wouldn’t have second thoughts, turn off the highway, reverse herself, and head back home. Never to see her again. Did she mean to kiss me so tenderly back at her house? It could have been a mistake. What was she thinking as we continued south? The clouds were dark enough to require headlights, and she blinked hers at me, as if using them as a signal. I pulled over on the side of the highway. She pulled up.

Paula: Here I am. You won’t lose me. I love this rain!

It was raining pretty hard, making it difficult to hear her voice.

Me screaming over the pounding rain: It’s not much farther. I love this rain. Am I going too fast?

Paula screaming over the pounding rain: Not at all. I can keep up. Keep checking your rearview mirror to see if I’m still here.

There was no chance I would lose her. I checked my mirrors every few seconds. I couldn’t stop checking if I had wanted, which was the furthest thing from my mind.

The rain pounded even harder when we reached the tunnel of trees, barely 1/4 mile from my little cottage. I hoped I had cleaned the cottage enough, yesterday. Was it only yesterday? It seemed like forever ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago. Had I bought enough food?

Woodside’s back roads were shiny, and clean, and the smell in the air was never before so redolent. We parked in the gravel driveway, Paula’s car right behind mine. It was the first time for me to really see her black beauty; her black Renault LeCar. The interior was red and black plaid, which was quite bold. Additionally, it was a convertible. After opening her car door, carefully, so as to avoid scratching it on the lilac bushes, and the blackberry brambles, and then closing it gently, we both skittled down the rock stairs, to the front door. Neither of us had an umbrella. We were half-soaked just racing down those few stairs. And tired, having stayed up all night. I worried that my wet hair was plastered against my foolish head, and would turn Paula against me.

C H A P T E R 4 :: ::

Inside the cottage, Sunny, my dog, heard two cars drive onto the gravel driveway. He lifted his head up, lazily got off his bed, and stretched. And then yawned a little yawn. He didn’t bark. He knew the sound of my car. He thought of it as his car. He’d ridden in it through the western states, and all over San Francisco Bay’s peninsula. With his head cocked toward the gravel driveway, Sunny inched slowly across the redwood cottage living room, toward the front door. Shaking to wake himself up.

I took Paula’s hand going down the rock stairs in the rain. The stairs weren’t particularly treacherous. But just in case, I didn’t want her to slip. They weren’t perfectly flat. She’d never seen them before. Once we got to the landing following the last step, I struggled opening the screen door. It stuck momentarily due to the rusting spring. (Why now? Paula must have noticed me jiggling it. It hasn’t done this for over a month. I loved holding Paula’s hand going down the rock stairs. I need to replace that damn spring when I have a few extra bucks. ) Holding the door open with my foot, I unlocked the old redwood cottage front door, and opened it into the indoor front porch. Sunny was wagging his tail.

Me: Sunny, this is Paula. She’s cool. Paula, this is Sunny.

Paula immediately bent down to Sunny, grabbing him from behind his ears with both hands, and acting like they’d known each other for years.

Paula: What a big dog. Hi, Sunny. What kind is he? He’s a he, right? Yeah. He’s a he. Should I let him go outside? Will he go outside in pouring rain like this? You’re such a big dog.

Me: Oh, yeah. Just let him out. Thanks. He’s a mix of husky, and collie, and wolf. That’s what I was told. A college roommate had owned him, and then she couldn’t afford to keep him, so I took him for her. He was born in Iowa, near Davenport, on the Mississippi River. That’s where the girl who owned him was from.

Why was I going on and on about Sunny’s past? Where he was born? How do I let myself do this? Boring Paula with unnecessary gibberish, and fool’s details!

With that, although it was morning, daytime, the black storm blocked the light trying to reach inside the cottage. It was quite dark. I walked straight ahead, to the other end of the porch, and switched on the big lamp on the table. You could see the porch quite a bit better now. With peeking into the living room possible.

Did I really tell her a female roommate originally owned him? She was really a college house-mate, a college apartment mate, but I called her a roommate?

Once out, in the downpour, Sunny hugged the exterior walls of the cottage, and returned indoors, almost immediately.

Paula: I love this place! How long have you lived here? Do you have a towel I can use? Sunny came back in. Is that OK?

Me: I’ve been here about six months. Here, let me get you a towel. Sunny’s fine. You can come into the living room, if you want. You don’t have to stay out on the porch. You can go anywhere you want here. Sunny normally goes in, and out, whenever he wants. But let’s keep the front door shut so it doesn’t rain into the place. He can just stay in for a while.

I walked through the living room, switched on another light, went into the bathroom, and came out with a green towel. It was my favorite towel. Along the way, I continued…

Me: Finding this place was just dumb luck, really. I saw an ad on a bulletin board, at a bookstore, in Menlo Park. It’s called Kepler’s. Menlo Park is one town over. I grabbed the entire ad.

While I was going on and on with my gibberish, probably boring Paula, I handed my best towel to Paula. It was so wonderful that Paula would be using my towel. I was in heaven. I wanted her to keep the towel. But I didn’t mention it.

Paula: Oh. Thanks. I just want to dry off a little bit, and not get your furniture too wet. This place is amazing. Is there a bathroom I can use? The view from your porch is amazing.

Me: Of course. The bathroom is right through there, through the hanging Indian print. Take your time. And as you can see, there’s not a lot of furniture to get wet.

Paula walked toward the bathroom: Your kitchen is just as small as my kitchen. Really easy to work in.

I continued talking a little louder as Paula entered the bathroom, through the faded Indian print. ‘So I called the owner and he gave me directions, and after two minutes of visiting, I knew I wanted to get this place, and he was surprisingly easy about it, and it didn’t take any time at all. He rented it to me over the phone. I had even offered to pay a few months’ rent up-front, but he declined, saying that that would not be necessary.’

Paula stuck her head out from behind the Indian print: Do you have any plastic bags… or paper bags?

Me: I think so. Ya. What size?

Paula: Large enough to put the Intellivision, and the game into it. I want to bring it inside, but I don’t want it to get wet.

Me: Let me check.

Paula returned to the living room before I had found a bag in the kitchen. I told her that she should stay inside, and I’d go out, and get the Intellivision. She agreed, and handed me her car keys. The weather was turning more furious. Blacker clouds. A deluge of pounding rain. I hurried out to her black Renault LeCar with the red/black checkerboard seats. I noticed it had a rag top that could open all the way back, and turn into a convertible. Which wasn’t going to happen today! I put the Intellivision, and Sea Battle, into the paper bag, and quickly returned to the cottage. The one that had Paula waiting inside. I was soaked.

Me: What a cool car! Must be fun to drive it.

Paula: I love my car. And I really love the interior.

Me: Flashy looking. And probably pretty good gas mileage.

I grabbed some juice from the refrigerator, and Paula asked if I had any cheese, and I said, ‘Yes’, not knowing why she’d want to know if I had cheese at 8:30a in the morning. I went to the bathroom to get another towel so I could dry myself off.

Me: You want me to make a cheese omelet?

Paula: No. I’d just have cheese, if you had any. I love cheese for breakfast. But I don’t have to have any, if you don’t have any. It’s not that important. We’re certainly not going to go out in this rain to get anything.

I checked and I didn’t have any cheese. I liked cheese, but I didn’t stock up on it. For some reason, I started liking cheese more, that morning.

The thunderstorms continued pounding rain throughout the day. It was quite unusual. It just didn’t stop. This was almost unheard of for the Bay Area. Paula and I fell asleep, in each other’s arms, in the lofted bed, that felt like you were cradled in the boughs of the oak tree, right outside the window. We had both been up all night, and were exhausted. Paula’s head nestled in my arm, and her body fit into mine, as though it were intended to be so. We awoke around 5p that evening, to more torrential rain. There were teevee reports of downed power lines, and flooding everywhere, and road closures, and terrifying mud slides.

The mudslide of specific note occurred in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, on the coast. An entire hill careened into, and through, a house below, burying all inhabitants, including a little girl. The mud-filled house was destroyed. The lasting image on the teevee screen showed a bent baby carriage standing alone with a muddied, yellow, child’s blanket, hung limp over the handle.

The rains continued for three days. Debris was everywhere. Chaos was everywhere. Paula showed no hesitation to stay with me for the duration of the storm. We made do with what food I had, then went to Robert’s Market, in town, to buy cheese, and wine, and crackers, and toilet paper. And eggs. Just one trip. Into the wild. A tree had fallen, and was blocking Glencrag Way, so I had to take a little known detour.

It never felt like we were making excuses for Paula to stay in Woodside. It just seemed safer, rather than to brave returning to San Francisco. She mentioned, once, my going with her to her house, in San Francisco, but she dismissed her idea the second she said it.

Paula: You’d probably have to take your car, and then I’d be driving without you for an hour. Trees are downed. The roads are bad. I just don’t want to be away from you for even that long.

She said she’d rather stay in Woodside. With me. I didn’t even think to argue. I was as happy as a baby elephant skittling along in pink high-top Converse tennies.

And with that, Paula and I waited out the late-November storm, together, in my little redwood cottage, with my dog, Sunny, in Woodside.