The Robe

Near Carl and Cole, San Francisco: Lori Jane Ingram, my then wife, was an attorney by schooling who disliked lawyering, and who ran the operations side of our company, Network Answering Service.

She was good at it, interviewing and hiring the operators, training them, scheduling, and keeping our official manual up to date: very important, we believed. She organized our annual Christmas Party, and she instigated the 'TGIF' Pizza Party, where we brought in a dozen huge pizzas every Friday afternoon, the office kitchen filled with the scent of fragrant tomato sauce. Operators who weren't scheduled on Fridays dropped in anyway, so we knew it was a hit.

For such a thoroughly modern Millie, now and then she enjoyed sewing.

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Driving and Driving

Highway Five: Today I am driving north in the Big Yellow Truck. Arriving in Mount Shasta, we will be unloading the Big Yellow Truck. Tonight perhaps we will dine at Casa Ramos. We will order beer. Last time, son-in-law Joe, age 36, was carded by the waiter. Ha ha ha ha ha! And that's the news.

Packing Up Like Gypsies

San Anselmo: My son-in-law Joe is huge, with a shaved head and a little tail of hair. When Adrienne first saw him, she was aghast at her daughter Celina's choice. But Adrienne has long since come around. Joe is great.

And Joe is massively strong, so I am again delighted to have him helping me to pack the Big Yellow Truck. This will be our second and final trip, hauling home, office, shop, and warehouse to Mount Shasta, our new home as of next week. Like gypsies? Well, perhaps a bit more stuff.

Nearly everything except the beds and the shop tools is packed up in boxes. We've got dollys. We've got those coarse grey blankets to protect things, and plenty of bright yellow nylon rope. We've got a system of dots: Red means storage, green means shop, yellow means house. I tell you we are organized!

And by the end of the day, plenty tired. Ah, the joys of moving day!

Ruru the Guru sez "Equipment Savings Direct to You"

San Francisco Yellow Pages, 1986: In the Yellow Pages that year you'd find listed "Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service" at 221-3333. If you called it you might hear this --

"Hello and thank you for calling Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, the free telepathic answering service that doesn't cost a thing.

"I am your Host and Operator Ruru the Guru, speaking to you direct from the Himalaya Hideaway.

"You know, sometimes I think you Americans are so suspicious. Just now when I said our service is free, several thousand of you thought What's the catch? and How do they do it?

"Really! So suspicious! OK, OK, here's the deal ...

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Office in a Box

San Anselmo: My voicemail company becomes temporarily closed today, as I pack the office into a box. Easier than it sounds, I'm packing four computers, two desks, and one set of shelves with stationery and toner.

In May, I contracted with a long-distance company to move our voicemail lines and equipment into a cabinet in their San Jose switching center. The installation and re-routing was completed last month, and I cleared out my equipment rooms. The business office is now portable; it can operate anywhere there's a phone line.

Today, packing my office into boxes, is the last step.

Tomorrow, loading the Big Yellow Truck.

Then, vamanos amigos!

Law 23 on the Freedom of Moving Away

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

When you move to a new place, you have a window of expanded freedom.

That's it.

Somehow, when we move to a new place -- a different city, a different apartment, a different country -- a window of time opens up in which it becomes more possible to make changes. It will be, for a time, easier to do new things or to do things in a new way.

This window of time is not forever, but it's as if for a time you leave your emotional baggage behind. For a time, you're less constrained by your past habits. For a time, life is again new, more as it appeared when we were children, fresh and with infinite possibilities.

Do you think that, by moving, you will escape your present difficulties? You do? Well, for a time, it's true.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Having a Center

Where is the center of a life?

For me, it's a place: my grandparents' farm, eight miles north of Henrietta, Texas. Not the homes in which my mother and I lived when I was a child, but the farm.

The town where I went to college comes close. In some ways, college years were the most important and best years of my life. Now, of course, so long afterward, I know not a soul in that town, and the place I lived is surely no longer standing. The University and it's buildings will have changed, the businesses and the town no doubt hardly to be recognized. Yet some part of me is still there.

Even more so, the farm. My mother dwelt there as a child; she lived there on the day she died. I grew up there, as much as in the town. Running through the woods, wading through the metal bin filled with grain -- it was like water, only thick and smooth. Peering everywhere: down into the water tower, through the fence to watch the pigs, hiking around the tank, climbing rusting machinery, watching grandmother wash, cook, garden.

Some part of me grew there, and forever lives there still.

When my mother died, my dreams for exactly one year were odd in this: No matter the subject of the dream, the farm appeared. A dream of travel would be to, or from, the farm. A dream of worry would take place within the rooms of the farm. A dream of flying would espy the farm on the horizon.

Always, the farm. There is no escaping it. It is me.

Packarama, Mama!

San Anselmo: Yesterday, Adrienne and I packed our household into boxes. She groaned and complained, claiming she was near wit's end. Adrienne hates clutter; in fact it makes her crazy.

But just when I feared that she might self-destruct, bursting into flames like those cases of spontaneous combustion, she hit her stride for an excellent flying finish. Kitchen, bath, dishes, and clothing. All in boxes.

In the kitchen, remaining to us we have some cans on a shelf, two plates and cups, two pans on the stove, and a spoon to share. I kind of like it. Life seems simple.

The Owl and the Pussycat

London, England, 1871: Due to the current debate about the exact wording of this excellent poem, as a bloggard public service, Mr. Edward Lear's complete lyrics are here provided --

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat:
They took some honey,
and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing!
Oh! let us be married;
too long we have tarried!
But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the bong-tree grows;
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

The Tough Kids

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: About the time of the Sleuth-Hound Club, there were two tough kids in our neighborhood. I don't remember their names, because they vanished from school some time later, so let's just call them Moe and Joey.

Moe was older, lanky thin, and not very smart. His brother Joey was one year younger, lanky thin, and not very smart, too. They were often dirty, often badly clothed, and they gaped in dim wonder at the schooling process. One day, Mrs. Gilbert asked Joey to conjugate the verb 'Go'. Joey looked first trapped, then worried, then irritated.

"Go," he said. Mrs. Gilbert nodded, encouraging. " ... go ..." he said. He scowled. Finally he could delay no longer, and shouted, "Go, go, go!"

This was not the correct answer, but it gives you an idea about Moe and Joey. But I digress. What I wanted to tell you about was the fight.

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The Return of Ralph the Cat

San Anselmo: Russell wasn't actually named Russell. It's so long ago, I don't recall clearly, but I think he was named Orville after his father. When he was in grade school, one day he decided to change his name.

He wanted to be called 'Rusty', like the kid on the TV show "Rin Tin Tin". By the simple strategy of stubbornly ignoring all friends, teachers, parents, and others until they addressed him as "Rusty," he soon became Rusty, and some time later decided that "Russell" was even better.

I admire Russell because he built a home-made hang-glider of fishing poles and plastic sheeting, and jumped off Mount Tamalpais. It worked all right, for a while, but then about 50 yards above the earth, the main spar broke, and he fell to the ground. About like falling out a sixth-floor window. He broke a collar-bone and ruptured his spleen. When he got out of the hospital, he rebuilt the hang-glider to be stronger, and jumped off Mount Tamalpais again, so that he wouldn't have to be afraid of it any more. That's the spirit!

So last week, I got a call from my friend Russell.

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The Victorian Nitrogen Laser

Glitch Manor, Weardale England, June 1856: Not long ago, through an odd circumstance, I became aware of the following letter from Ernest Glitch of Weardale to Michael Faraday. The letter describes the demonstration of a nitrogen TEA (Transversely Excited, Atmospheric pressure) laser, using air as the lasing medium. This occured in Victorian England over a century before Maiman`s ruby laser or Javan`s helium-neon laser. The letter reads as follows ...

"My Dear Faraday,

"I would like to expound to you a phenomenon of singular curiosity, apparent during investigations into expanding the electrical spark. It affords me little joy as my discovery took the sight from Hodges right eye and I have had to dismiss him. As my last correspondence indicated, I have surmised that the experiments are deleterious to poor Hodges, his health having sharply deteriorated due, I think, to the quicksilver effluvia he breathed during leyden phial silvering.

"The leyden battery is now complete! What a detonation is delivered after charging for some time! I had Hodges place a ball of box-wood in the path of the spark ...

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The Forger

San Anselmo: As you perhaps know, Adrienne and I are moving to Mount Shasta in two weeks, which is causing a lot of what we could call "packing" activity.

It also causes some money-juggling activity, closing some accounts and opening others. We'd pressed a Bank of America account into service for our new place, and after I returned home today from San Diego I reconciled our accounts.

There was a mystery check on the new account, for $600.

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Larry Williams Blasting Off

San Diego: The hotel was confused and said the seminar started at 7:30, but Larry Williams website had said 8:30. So to play it safe, we all showed up early, then started at 8:30.

I've been a Larry Williams fan for a long time. If you've never examined commodity trading, you might not know that as a young man Larry signed up for this annual trading contest. You start with $10,000 and then trade it for a year, and the guy that makes the most money wins the contest.

(Doesn't it make you wonder what the contest prize is?)

Larry started with $10,000 and then traded it up, using some blackjack formula for how much to risk on every trade. He made it up to $2,200,000.00 -- that's right, 2.2 million dollars -- in about ten months, then had it all riding on one trade which went wrong, dropping his money to $700,000 -- Whoah! -- and then he traded it back up to $1,100,000. by the end of the year.

So when he offered the seminar, I was all ears.

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Top Gun in San Diego

San Diego: Today I closed the voicemail company mid-day and drove to the Oakland airport, then spent the remainder of the day getting into a very fluffy hotel called the Wyndham in San Diego.

It's supposed to be a very ritzy hotel, but I wonder why they can't even spell 'wind'. My room has a television that doesn't get any television channels or HBO. It only offers to sell me movies from $10.99 up to $14.99. I can even pay $14.99 and then I could check my email. After getting $150 per night for the room, you'd think they could include email, wouldn't you?

For dinner, I wandered locally, and found Kansas City Barbeque, which looked really sloppy so in I went. Actually I ate outside, watching a vast street, as the sky high above faded into indigo. The barbeque was messy and good, the beer was fine, and when I went inside I discovered that the bar inside was the bar in the movie "Top Gun".

However, there was no sign of Tom Cruise or Rebecca Russo.

Maybe tomorrow.

The Apartment From Hell

North Beach, San Francisco, 1974: I'd found this neato apartment and thought myself lucky. The I Ching had said "Supreme Success!"

Little did I know how much the Chinese Gods of Divination love a good joke.

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Telling Lies to Children

Near Hurnville, Texas, 1952: My grandfather had false teeth, but we children didn't know that. He'd taken us fishing at the tank, and we'd caught several catfish. At the faucet in front of the washhouse, he was cleaning the fish. "Ugh!" we said.

In reply, he moved his jaw in such a way that his false teeth moved free and jutted from his mouth. "Wow!" we cried, "How did you do that?"

"Can't you do it?" he asked. We were then quiet for a very long time, contorting our faces, attempting to get our teeth to jump up like his did.

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Dream

Henrietta Texas, 1959: My room was a garret built atop our house on Omega Street, and from my windows to the east, I saw her walking up the sidewalk.

Slowly, a stranger, about fourteen or fifteen, with dark hair and almond eyes, perhaps two blocks away. Well, I admit it. I had binoculars.

She looked about her as she walked, maybe seemed a little timid. A block before our house, she crossed Omega Street, and vanished from sight up the sidewalk behind the old Baptist Church. I knew every kid in town. I'd never seen her before.

But I was to see her again.

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Law 23 of Saving Money

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

Saving means NOT SPENDING.

That's it.

If you don't save, you will never in your life have anything, because it all goes away.

Saving means NOT spending. If the proposed "savings" are spent, then they are no savings at all.

Of course, there is no value at all in savings all by itself. And so your mind will find urgent reasons why the proposed "savings" need to be spent. After all, your mind isn't stupid. It will be obvious that a flashy sportscar is lots better than some money just sitting in a bank, doing no good for anybody.

Therefore use "Mental Judo". From the beginning, your savings should be for a specific purpose. For example, save some to own a home. Save some as insurance that medical or unemployment emergency won't make you a beggar. Save some for when you're old, or just for when you'd like to stop working and concentrate on raising tulips and going fishing.

If you are saving for a particular thing, then your mind has a chance of perceiving that it is important, and you'd rather not jeopardize your grand plan for a moment's flash in a sportscar. Later, when you're rich, and the cost of sportscars is trivial, at that point you can actually afford a sportscar. Maybe two.

Saving means NOT spending. If you are truly saving, then you have the money in your possession. It has not vanished.

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.

Our 1951 Chevy

Henrietta, Texas, 1951: My mother was very proud of the brand new car. Pale green with a long hood, with comfortable seats, a heater, and a radio! She couldn't wait to take us on a trip.

"Hop in the car, and away we'll go! Hop in the car, and away we'll go!" she sang, to the tune of the William Tell Overture, which I knew from the radio as the Lone Ranger song. "And a-waaaay we'll go!"

In celebration, we drove to Denton to visit Aunt Rosemary and Uncle Esty, and cousins Bob and Dan. It was very grand.

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Dreadfully Embarrassed

Westbury Hotel, San Francisco, 3 AM, October 1974: Dreadfully embarrassed. I first heard this phrase in the summer after my Junior year in High School. I'd signed up for the wheat harvest, which is cross between "On the Road", being a truck-drivin' man, and working on a farm.

Wheat is grown in the middle of the United States, so they call it the 'grain belt'. The grain ripens first in Texas, then Oklahoma, then Nebraska, then the Dakotas, and all the way into Canada. Our caravan followed the ripening wheat, travelling north.

The Moser family, for whom I worked, pulled a house trailer, and the hands, of which I was one, slept in a bunk trailer, a hand-built box on wheels containing bunks. Some hands were combine drivers, who drove the reaping machines around and around in the wheatfield. I was a truck driver, meaning I loaded my truck with grain and drove it to the elevator in town, where they credited the farmer.

One of the drivers, a thin and angular fellow, had an odd sense of humor and a bad case of gas. At one point, after polluting our bunk trailer, in response to jeers and threats, he said, "Oh. Pardon me. I am dreadfully embarrassed, and I am sure that it will never happen again."

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The Wacko

San Rafael, Summer 1996: Although the plan bombed later, I wanted to own my own home, and having very little money, decided to start with a houseboat or a house-trailer.

Sausalito has lots of houseboats, but frankly the mud beneath the dock stinks real bad at low tide, so yuck!

Marin county, the most expensive real estate in California, so why was I living there? The answer: careful lack of planning. I'd developed my business in San Francisco, then moved across the bridge to Marin because Adrienne hated the Haight; too noisy, she said. When paying rent, $1400 in Sausalito was about the same as $1400 in San Francisco. But buying a house was out of the question, in these latitudes.

So why not start with a mini-house, save up more money, then parlay up to a small fixer-upper, then up to better?

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The Movie Shows

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: In our town were two movie theatres. The Dorothy, one block south of Ikard street (also known as highway 287), was near the Methodist Church and Grover Thaxton's hardware store. One day, I heard a wonderful report from Billy Ray, who'd just seen a Saturday matinee called "Them". Oddly enough, this movie was about ants, but they were very, very big.

This sounded great to me, so I wheedled and wheedled the price of admission from my mother, and went the next Saturday. It was then that I learned that the movie changes every week, as I sat through an incomprehensible film about grown-ups who just talked to each other. Nothing happened at all!

I knew that movies were supposed to have fights and mahem, because I'd seen a movie before, while visiting kinfolk in Houston. That movie was Treasure Island, a stirring adventure about a young boy very much like me, I then imagined. I remember it clearly, and in fact, sometimes I can still hear Long John Silver's parrot, crying "Pieces of Eight! Pieces of Eight!"

After Long John Silver and the big ants report, this "talking" movie seemed pretty lame.

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The Problem

Polk Street, San Francisco, 1987: I met Gaye at the Unitarian Church, perhaps when Cliff married Maggie's daughter, or perhaps when Maggie died. Maggie N. was a delightful and wise woman whose company I always enjoyed, about the age that my own mother would have been.

I had a pretty set of dishes inherited from my mother. Maggie admired them, especially the huge serving platter. The dishes were painted with flowers around the scalloped edges, and painted with fruit and vegetables in the middle. I didn't really enjoy things that decorated, but they were my mother's so I kept them, and felt a little sadness at every meal. I realized that they'd be broken over time, hurting my heart with each little chip, each little crack, each little loss.

So, in a brilliant inspiration, I gave the whole set to Maggie, who I knew would admire them and give them a good home. They suited her, and I was happy knowing they'd be loved and safe. My mother's name had been Maggie, too.

Over time, Maggie invited me to several events at the Unitarian Church. And then one day the daughter invited me to say goodbye to Maggie. Back then, I'd have been riding my red Yamaha motorcycle, in a brown leather motorcycle jacket, and brown boots. At the Unitarian Church, Gaye smiled in a nice way, so I got to know her.

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Many Little Successes

The concept of breaking a task into small parts, to accumulate small successes as building blocks, and to accrue these to build emotional momentum toward your target is presented clearly in Jim Sloman's "May You Be Happy" website, in a short series called "Strategic Applications".

He also addresses the concept of avoiding direct fighting, and adding the external energy from the universe to your own as an effective path to negotiation, enlightment, and success.

The marvellous thing is that he presents these spiritual truths in the context of their use by generals in historical wars on this planet. Along the way, Sloman provides a fascinating insight into times and places when the history of continents hinged on a small battle involving, sometimes, only a few thousand men.

An outstanding read.

Cajun John

Henrietta, Texas, 1959: John P. was a thin, wiry guy a year older than me, with a nervous air and a perpetual smile. His family was from Louisiana, with a mild Cajun accent. John signed up for Latin class, and was forever lost. I helped him some, and we became friends, though he was alien and odd.

The story goes that one day John climbed up onto the Coca Cola truck, with the intent to steal a case of cokes, while the Coke man was inside the A&P grocery store. But the Coke man came wheeling his handtruck out the rear door, and caught John atop of the truck. The Coke man scowled.

"What are you doing on that truck?" he demanded.

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