Maud Hurn

The Hurn Farm, near Hurnville, Spring 1964: On the north side of my grandmother's two-story house, it was cooler. She planted flowers and ferns there, and, just north of the stone smokehouse, a bed of delicious strawberries.

My grandfather had fallen from the horse, and it had addled his thought. She cared for him, for he could not work any more. On a weekend away from college, I visited as she dug up bulbs with her trowel, near the fence. Or perhaps she was planting them.

"Why not move into town?" I said, echoing my mother and my Uncle Doc. Between jabs at the earth, she glared, then her face softened.

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The Short Essay

Evolution isn't only for the birds. Artforms also come and go, develop, mutate, expand, reach dead ends, or evolve into something new.

The short essay. I think that means spelling out an opinion, or writing about something as if you know what you're talking about. Do we really know? Maybe. Maybe not.

Once upon a time, cuneaform writing evolved, apparently to keep records of how much grain was stored, then perhaps adapted to sending messages. Generally this would involve land, money, or women, most likely. At the time, hired guns called scribes were the only ones who could either read it, or inscribe it.

But with the invention of moveable type, things changed.

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The Skydivers

Midwestern University, Wichita Falls, Texas 1963: My big plan was to become an engineer, because I thought a slide-rule would look good with my glasses. And so I was in the math class.

The professor was a large, languid fellow with an embarrassing habit of scratching himself absentmindedly, spreading chalk dust on his pants.

On this particular day, he was chalking a proof on the blackboard. "Let's assume such-and-such," he said, and then described five or six steps, "and then as you can see, the result is so-and-do."

Except that something was wrong.

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Ronald Reagan Visits

Wichita Falls, Texas: After high school and college, my friend Donny Burkman worked at Neiman's in Dallas, where they taught him to ask questions of customers, "Would that look good in your home, do you think?"

He learned well. A politic and skillful fellow, his skills emerged as time advanced. He'd inherited a quiet manner from his father, a district manager for Continental Oil. One Sunday afternoon, his father, in a pickup with their tiny terrier in the back window, was leaving the Continental office near the train station, when a light aircraft made a bad mistake.

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What is a Weblog?

Dave Winer sez:

"Consider the sequence of developments in publishing:

"In the 70's, to run a publication, you needed a million-dollar printing plant, or you needed to lease time on one, to print and distribute your publication.

"In the 80's, with the advent of laser printers, GUIs and desktop publishing software, the cost dropped to $100,000. So more people could publish.

"In the 90's, publishing technology took off in a new way, all-electronic, and the cost dropped to a few thousand dollars.

"Enter weblogs, and the cost drops to hundreds of dollars, maybe even tens. If you want to do a publication, all you need is the time to write, and an idea to write about. The number of publications goes up every time the rules are rewritten. Now, factor out the non-publication oriented websites. Those are not weblogs. Everything else is."

Mama

Henrietta, Texas, 1958: For the big party, I wore my white sport coat, Easter finery, memorable from the rocket-fuel incident. I was already stealing Kent cigarettes, and had a partial pack in my right-hand jacket pocket.

My mother was fussing over me, which at fourteen, annoyed tremendously. I kept brushing her hands off my jacket, my hair, but she kept at it, and sure enough, felt the cigarettes in my coat pocket. Her face froze.

"What's that?" she demanded.

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The Big Grasshopper Round-Up

Henrietta, Texas, 1948: Mrs. Miller started a dayschool, and off I went. The first day, my mother walked the four blocks with me, to show me how to get there and back. We lived behind Uncle Doc's medical office, and she worked there as a nurse.

During that first season, I learned about coloring books, and naps and cookies, and how you don't run while playing a trumpet because falling down can hurt you. I was warned not to eat the castor beans growing beside the house.

In just a few months, Mrs. Miller seems to have learned her dayschool lesson. The dayschool was closed. No more herd of children in her home and backyard.

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Voicemail and Cowboys

Fairfax, California: A former client (of my voicemail company) asked about current rates. After I'd quoted prices, he wanted them cheaper, which I declined simply as unprofitable.

His email today said: "I can understand your rationale that they are not profit-generating packages, but at the same time, aren't they pretty minimal to maintain? What's wrong with a bunch of bread & butter stuff that takes little effort? I could get a $7.95 voicemail from Pacific Bell for less."

He's not counted his costs. For the PacBell home voicemail, he must provide the phone line. Including the phone line cost, the PacBell voicemail costs $31 monthly, lots more than ours at $9 to $13.50 which includes the phone line.

But the interesting part is his suggestion to run "Bread and Butter" accounts, even if they are not profitable. I'd ask: how much butter would zero money buy?

To me, that seems like no bread, no butter.

I am reminded of the two cowboys who decided to make some money. They'd buy produce from the farmers, carry it to the town square on Saturday, and sell it from the back of their pickup truck. They did so, that first Saturday, and sold all the produce. The only problem was that they sold it for the same price they bought it. Adding up their profits at the end of the day, there were none.

"Well," said one to the other, "We're just going to have to get a bigger truck."

In the Desert with Rommel

Ulloa Street, San Francisco, 1972: I'd flown my MGB across the desert between Christmas and New Years, to start a Masters at San Francisco State, and I'd found a room atop Mrs. Douglas's house on Ulloa Street. From the windows of this single, high room, I could see the land fall away for twenty blocks to the ocean, and on the hazy ocean horizon, the Farallon Islands.

Dim steamers crept across the edge of the sky, the gulls wheeled and circled around the houses, and the night breeze from the ocean chilled to the bone.

But I ordered a hi-fi stereo receiver and powerful headphones that weighed a ton. I listened to new radio stations, and then sat at my IBM selectric, filled with cheap yellow paper, beside the window gazing to the ocean, listening to the foghorn warning the ships passing by. And wrote stories.

But one day I felt bad. Real bad.

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Bullet

Henrietta, Texas, 1953: The television show "Winky Dink and You" was a big hit. I bugged my mom until she sent for the magic screen and crayons. On Saturday morning, you stuck the screen on the television, then drew from dot to dot, drawing for example a ladder which saved Winky Dink from the bad guys.

Out in our back yard, my dog Bullet was largely ignored. The television was pure magic. Weekdays after school Howdy Doody and Pinky Lee cavorted until godawful country music and boring weather reports. Saturday mornings, Boston Blackie, Superman, and Winky Dink paraded in sequence.

Bullet, whose heart beat with love, was forgotten.

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Multiple Personality

San Francisco, 1982: At Network Answering Service on Geary Boulevard, the Operator was the key to our business. Training was extensive, they were called 'OPs', and there was a huge sign painted on the wall saying "Network OPs are Tops!"

But once you'd mastered the OP job, it can become boring. So when new jobs opened up, we cross-trained an OP, so they could have more variety, and expand their skills.

Emelia comes to mind. She sounds like a sweet and retiring kind of woman, doesn't it?

Well, actually, she alternated working for us and smuggling cars into Nicaragra. Not guns, but cars. Why cars? I never understood this, but I've always been stupid at politics. How were the cars smuggled? I don't know. What I do know is that Emelia looked pretty, but she was tough.

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Fadda Dey

Today, Adrienne took me to the TwoBird Cafe for breakfast, and we celebrated by buying a cheese scone and orange juice in addition to our usual breakfast. We're wild.

I found a wrapped present on the kitchen table, apparently from my children, Tulip the dog, and Percy the cat. Unwrapped it, I discovered a bright red bowl, labled "Complimentary Cereal Bowl", and around the inner rim bearing the legend: "You're the man! You're handsome. You're strong. You're charming." I know that's going over the top, just a little, but after all, they're just animals and cannot be expected to comprehend the subtleties of our language.

I asked Adrienne where she'd found it.

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Writing a Symphony

Austria, 1743: A young man wrote to Mozart and said: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?"

Mozart responded, "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."

"But Herr Mozart," the young man said, "you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."

"Well, yes," Mozart replied, "But I never asked anybody how."

Polishing Jewels

The practice of bloggistry changes the mind.

This April, just experimenting, I started a kind of tech diary. On blank days, it seemed natural to think about some 'Looky Back' days from the past. Over the weeks, I wrote several of these. These stories were so short that I called them 'micro-stories'. Or, when posting an opinion -- like this one -- a 'micro-essay'.

One day, I noticed that these micro-stories and micro-essays are the real deal. In comparison, the tech notes are bland and uninteresting. I began writing more micro-stories, and replaced most of the tech notes.

I discoverd that writing micro-stories changes the mind. Writing them brings up jewels, moments of the past to burnish, shining again, no longer lost. A treasure chest.

They say that it steam-engines at steam-engine time. I suppose bloggistry has now appeared in our world because its time has come. I suppose that the "autoblography" is a natural expression of bloggistry. Evolution is a funny thing -- invisible before, inevitable after.

I for one am grateful.

Diplomacy

Henrietta, Texas, 1954. Donny Burkman was my closest friend at this time, and also lived closest, just on the other corner of the block. My mother had only recently bought our little house with green siding, and I liked living there, in the north of town, near the graveyard. That may sound grim, but it was another neat place to explore.

We climbed the stone gateposts, we read the old gravestones, we walked on folks graves, we sat on the close-cut grass and drank sodas. It was a fine place.

Being ten years old, we wanted nothing to do with his younger brother, John, two years younger. And so we were dismayed, on that hot summer day, as we lounged in the shadows of my mother's living room, when we saw John coming across the Laughon's lawn.

My dog Bullet and John didn't get along. Bullet rose from the cool porch, to greet John.

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Graduation Ceremony

Tiburon, California: Yesterday evening I met Ron L. at the equipment room. Ron will be installing my voicemail equipment into new San Jose digs soon.

He loaded some gear to configure in his shop, and then we went to dinner. Guaymas is a snazzy mexican restaurant overlooking the bay, and from our table we watched the mob of teenagers in jackets and dresses awaiting the Ferry.

The Ferry arrived and slowly docked, a large gold banner riffling in the breeze. "Class of 2003," it said.

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The Flying Lesson

Santa Monica Municipal Airport, California, 1969: From the air as you make a final turn and approach toward the runway, ahead and off to the south you look down upon an airfield belonging to Howard Hughes. Sometimes, just outside the mammoth hangar doors, we could see the Spruce Goose, that famous airplane made from wood.

But this story really begins three years earlier, in Dallas. My friends Tony and Marilyn, and John C. were all intrigued with psychedelics. On John's millionaire family estate, in the cabana behind the pool, we strung up bedsheets over the glass windows, and made a light show.

We were having a great time before the police came.

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Carnaby Street

Near Picadilly Circus, London, 1968: I parked my Austin Mini and we got out, on our way to Carnaby Street. Sharon and I, plus Ron David McCoy and his wife.

His name really wasn't Ron David, but when I met him in Dallas, he worked as D.J. on the local rock station, which insisted that each D.J. be named David. So Ron McCoy became Ron David McCoy. I visited his control room while he spun chatter and platters with a rapid-fire style I found amazing. Good-humored, a skinny guy with Elvis hair, and a baby-doll wife, a real looker.

The McCoys were fun, too. But I was shivering.

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Haiku the Blog

Online: at Haiku the Blog (now defunky), 15 March 2003:

St. Peter loses
the keys to heaven; God to
call for a locksmith.

~dayla_starr at 05:37:4

Composition

Lyon Street, San Francisco, 1987: I loved the synthesizer, and found it easy to read the manuals, to fiddle with the sounds.

Playing the keyboard was something else.

I took two lessons, to learn how to move my hands on the fretboard. I began learning to read, but it was slow.

Then I happily discovered that composition is easy.

First, chords. Staying in the key of C, you just play all the white keys. If you play four notes, skipping every other white key, you get some kind of a seventh chord. If your lowest note is on the C or F note then you'll get a major chord, which sounds very rich. If your lowest note is on the D, E, or A note you'll get a minor chord which sounds haunted. If your lowest note is on the G or B note, you get a real sour chord.

So, for starters, you just plunk around with these seven chords, and find a series of them that sounds good. This is pretty simple. The next step is even easier.

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A Quandry at the Hospital

Dallas, Texas, 1967: When my stepfather showed up, it was unexpected. He was one of the two town doctors back in Henrietta, Texas. The other was my uncle, Dr. Hurn, whom I and all my cousins called Uncle Doc.

When I was thirteen, George S. had moved to Henrietta with two children, set up a practice, courted my mother, and lured her away from her job as nurse with Uncle Doc. My mother and I then lived in our green-siding little house near the cemetary. I didn't like him much, didn't want to move, and felt uncomfortable with the children, just toddlers really.

But, as families do, with silence, blunders, armistices, tacit agreements, and slow familiarity, we got along. We lived on the upper floors above his office, and later built a fancy house on the south end of town. From there I moved to college, dropped out, and later worked in Dallas at the Cabana Hotel.

His practice was busier than ever. He'd also bought the Schwend house just north of his office, and was renovating it for a rent house. A beautiful five-legged dining table from that house sat now in my Dallas apartment, and he was at the door.

"Don't you have to be in the office?" I asked.

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The Priest

The Brazos River, Texas, 1952. Texas is flat and hot, and the river runs lazily through thousands of acres, trailing a forest of oak, hickory, mimosa, and spruce. Mesquite, too, out on the scorching plainlands.

On the banks, and beneath the trees, Camp Crucis. Although we were Methodists, I attended this Episcopalian Camp due to Father Herron, who gave the Episcopal services in a one-room stone chapel just inside the gateway of Henrietta's graveyard. Every service a real Memento Mori.

He had a picture of Van Gogh's "The Shriek" on his wall; he said he liked it. One time, coming to dinner with my mom and me, he brought a cucumber. Scouring its skin with a fork, slicing quickly, a dash of vinegar. Voila! Salad!

The man knew everything. He taught me a sentence in Spanish when we went to visit an old Mexican man who lived in a shack, with a vineyard, arrowheads in cases, and a vast comic book collection. Tengo mucho gusto en conocerle. I'm very happy to meet you.

Father Herron it probably was who told my mom about Camp Crucis. And off I went.

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A Talkative Fellow

San Francisco, April 1976: I can count on one hand the times I saw my father, Jack.

I was seven, and my mother was a nurse, working for her brother, Doctor Hurn, whom all the cousins and myself called Uncle Doc. We lived in a tiny apartment behind his office on a street lined with Bois d'Arc trees. In our kitchen, of an afternoon, sometimes my Mom, Uncle Doc, and Doctor Pickett would drink coffee, on the formica table by the back door, where, in those days, an iceman brought a block of ice with iron tongs, and a milkman brought cool milk in bottles. So that was a long time ago.

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The Men in the Rocket Ship

San Francisco, 1984: Back in Henrietta, Texas, the Edmonds Public Library was calm, quiet, and cool in the summer. The children's section and the Science Fiction section had that same smell as a grade school, a scent of varnish and puppies.

I got to know those books very well. Books about secret codes, books about the Hardy Boys, and books about Rocket Ships. Those were favorites. Even today, checking the news online, whenever a new photograph appears -- Jupiter, a comet, the Crab Nebula -- it's astounding, like deja vu of something never seen.

In college, I was complaining to Crazy Becky Jarvis one day, about my sorry love life. She tilted her head to one side.

"I bet you'd like Patty L.," she said.

And I did.

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The Secret Service

Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, 1984. It was a big deal. Queen Elizabeth was coming to San Francisco to visit with President Reagan. Some days before the event, Secret Service men came to visit us.

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Not You, Huey Lewis!

San Anselmo, 2001. Larry is a retired doctor, now about 90. Given that his name is Larry, perhaps it's to be expected that he named his dogs Moe and Curley.

But, sad to say, Moe and Curley had passed on, and when Larry got another dog, he named the new dog Huey Lewis. I don't think Larry is a big rock fan, so I'm guessing he just liked the sound of the name.

Now, the dog, Huey Lewis, is crazy about Larry, and at the dog park, if Larry goes to the bath room, Huey Lewis jitters at the gate on tiptoes, whining, till Larry returns. "Ah, be quiet!" grouses Larry, "Ya big baby!" Because, frankly, Larry's sometimes kind of grouchy.

Larry is sitting on the bench, chatting with the dogwalker. Huey Lewis, idolizing Larry, flops his big head on Larry's knee. "Aw, gimme a break!" growls Larry. Huey Lewis loves it. Larry's not picking on Huey Lewis; Larry's grouchy with the humans, too, some days. I'm not sure they like it as much as Huey Lewis does.

Now, here's the wierd part. Huey Lewis -- the rock singer -- also lives in this neighborhood. He has a small dog with a big name -- Maximillian? Balthazar? -- and, when he's in town, sometimes he brings Max to the same dog park.

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