A Voice From the Past

July 1, 2003, San Jose, California: I was at my desk in San Anselmo, but right then in San Jose, hundreds of my 800-numbers were being fitted into a seven-foot cabinet inside the switching room of a long distance company.

It had been a very techno day; and to my shock I had just heard from my very techno friend Harvey, who died several years before.

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So Long -- Harvey

San Francisco, 1977: I was the only operator at Network Answering Service, and our hours were 6AM to Midnight, seven days a week.

I took the messages that came in for my clients, and then they called me to pick up those messages. It was natural that we got to talking. And quite a few of them were friends, out there in the world.

Hokum W. Jeebes, for example, juggled on the street and occasionally at the Bohemian Club. He knew Lennie Sloan, the dancer, who produced "Three Black and Three White New Minstrel Show." Lennie knew Doug McKechnie, who once played Moog synthesizer number three. And Doug knew Harvey Warnke, a self-taught electronics whiz who built computer-controlled light shows.

So when someone mentioned the benefit for Doug McKechnie, to be held at the Intersection Coffee House, on Pacific above North Beach, somehow I got invited.

And I went.

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Timothy Leary's Jailbreak

Back in 1970, as you will recall, Timothy Leary got busted and was sent to jail, as is fitting and proper for what our honest and insightful President Nixon described as "the most dangerous man in America."

And as perhaps you know, Leary escaped from the jail. Some accounts mentioned levitation, but probably you don't believe that. In fact, probably you were wondering how he escaped, really. You were, weren't you? Wondering?

Well, it's very simple ...

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Jeff's Jailbreak

Rural Tennessee, Fall 1979: My friend Bob, who helped me start Network Answering Service, had a friend back home in Tennessee, a preacher's son named Jeffrey.

Perhaps being a preacher's son bestows a mantle of lawlessness on young males, for it certainly happened that way with Jeffrey. At age 19, Jeff and a younger friend, whom we'll call Doug, were in full bloom as young criminals.

Somehow they'd found a set of keys. That was how they got the money.

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Party Shoes

Mount Shasta, March 19, 2007: Last night I dreamed that I wandered a meandering music store and I bought a bass. After taking it home, I chatted with a friend in the kitchen, and noticed a stranger coming up my back steps, across the back porch, and entering the room. Between us was a gauzy curtain, and as the stranger leaned to peer into our room, I did the same from my side, and I made a horrible loud growl.

This scared the stranger, who back-pedalled across the porch and fell backwards down the steps.

Gosh. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

I love dreams like that, don't you?

But it went on.

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The Monk Speaks

Tibet, Long Ago: There once was a monastery where the monks were not allowed to speak at all, except that every five years, if he wished to do so, each monk was permitted to speak two words. And so it was that, after his five years, the newest monk went to see the head monk.

"Very well," said the head monk. "What are the two words you'd like to speak?"

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Being Serious

I am reminded of a story. This monk, call him Joshu, always had difficulty being serious like a monk is supposed to be. And so every morning he would wake up and say to himself, "Joshu! Today ... be serious!"

And then he would answer, "Yes, sir! Yes, sir!"

Shedding Light on the Subject

Japan, Long Ago: The blind monk had spent the day visiting with a venerable master, high up in the mountains, and now the day was drawing to a close. The venerable master fetched the visitor's staff and his cloak, and said, "Wait! I have prepared a lantern for your trip down the path."

The blind monk laughed, saying, "Day and Night are alike to me. I do not need a lantern."

But the master persisted, saying, "It is not for you. Your feet are sure. It is for the protection of other travelers in the dark, that they might see your lantern and not bump into you."

"Oh," said the blind monk. "How thoughtful. Very well."

And holding the lantern on the end of his staff, he strode off into the night.

All went well for the first half of his journey.

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Cat Haiku

Online, November 13, 2003: You like haiku? Sure, you do! Everybody likes haiku!

Here are three from the "Cat Haiku" page --

Wanna go outside.
Oh, no! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!

Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in the bed, then screams!
My claws aren't that sharp ...

Oh no! Big One
has been trapped by newspaper.
Cat to the rescue!

Find more on the "Pet Humor" site.

Basic Buddhism

India, Long Ago: Gautama Siddhartha sat beneath the Bo tree, and stubbornly refused to rise until he'd reached enlightenment. (He'd tried many other things in that past.) One day, he reached enlightenment. The enlightenment he attained permitted him to express the basic problem of living in Four Observations:

1) Our experience of living often consists of suffering. For example, we experience suffering from losses, illness, hunger, and death.

2) The suffering comes from our insistent mental reaction against the "bad" thing. That is, we insistently desire to have a thing that was lost, and so we experience suffering. (As an example, you throw away a piece of paper and it is lost but you do not suffer. But you lose the deed to your home and you insistently desire that the situation be different, and you suffer. But if you give away the deed to your home to your child, then you do not suffer.) The suffering comes from the "grasping desire" for the thing lost.

3) To eliminate suffering, eliminate the grasping desire.

4) To eliminate the grasping desire, follow eight important rules. In these rules (called the Eight-fold Path) are proscriptions against the things that often result in unhappiness (such as killing other folks), and prescriptions to engage in practices such as meditation, to learn to still the mind (and thus still grasping desire).

Get it? (Got it.) Good!

Bishop Nippo Syaku

San Francisco, 1975: I saw the flimsy poster, but it was quaint rather than crude. Bishop Nippo Syaku would give some short talks about Zen.

In the rawboned Victorian near Filmore street, poor lighting made the room seem drab, but Bishop Nippo lit up the place. The Bishop was a round-faced, cheerful fellow, very chipper he was. He spoke often of the nature of things.

"We say, 'Oh the flower is pretty!'" He beamed, "But flower does not care!"

On this evening, he spoke of how the True Buddhist is without fear. This amazed me, and made me ponder. I raised my hand.

"Yes?"

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Tutti-Fruity

Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1922: My mother, Margaret Hurn, known as Maggie, was six years old, and very excited that Saturday. Because, for the first time, riding down the dirt road in the wagon with her mother and father, Maggie had come to town.

She had a nickel in her hand. She held it carefully all during the journey. Eight miles seems so little now, for any car can cruise the paved road in just a few minutes. But on that day, on the dirt road in the wagon behind the horse, it took several hours, with the sun high above and dust rising to float in the air behind them, and she was holding that nickel all the way.

She had a plan.

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God Save the Queen

Henrietta, Texas. June 2, 1953. I was nine, and Ricky Moyer's grandmother had a television set. Free of school, with my mother I visited evenings, where in their den, with every lamp turned off -- that's how one watched movies, you see -- we all watched Charlie Chan.

But on this day, a scorching summer afternoon of 106 degrees, we sheltered in his Grandmother's air-conditioning, and on the television that day, we watched people on the other side of the world. A young woman named Elizabeth was being crowned Queen of England in a place called Westminster Abbey.

We watched the black & white procession. We watched the crown placed upon her head. That same day, we learned that a man named Edmund Hillary had climbed Mount Everest, even further away from our hot summer afternoon in north Texas, where farmers and cowboys could gaze upon the Queen.

Frank Hurn

Henrietta, Texas. Summer, 1956. My cousin Dan and I were helping my grandfather, Frank Hurn, on his farm near Hurnville, named after his father. He'd just had the hay baled.

I don't know how it's done; some machine cuts the grasses, and packs them into large rectangles. Somehow two wires are fastened around. Now you've got these large rectangles of bound hay. Heavy rectangles of bound hay.

Stern-faced, my grandfather had the tractor pulling a flat-bed wagon. Our job was to pick up the bales and heave them onto the wagon. Once loaded, some went to the animal's shed for storage. The rest we stacked in one corner of the west field, because every farm must have a haystack.

In the hot, Texas summer, the straw hat helps, but not much. The fine splinters of hay work up your sleeves and down your collar, stinging like needles.

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Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service

San Francisco, 1981: Every year, to the office of Network Answering Service in the big corner flat on the second story above Geary Boulevard, came Mark Bell, the Pacific Bell Directory salesman. And yes, his name really was Mark Bell.

This was back before Pacific Bell splintered into forty or fifty companies so as to serve you better and save you so much money which is why your phone bill is so much lower these days. This was back before Pacific Bell changed personnel every fifteen minutes. In fact, the same guy came every year. Mark Bell.

He was accustomed to my odd phone book listings.

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Hooting and Honking and Wailing

Mount Shasta, 9 June 2004: At the end of the warmer days, as the house cools from the open windows, you can hear them more clearly.

The trains pass by on some schedule all their own, and as I drowse or sleepily read by the single light beside my bed, at first on the edge of hearing a vague rumble comes. This grows, into the churning sound of diesel growl, metal wheels ringing on the rails, and a thousand clacks like monstrous and rhythmic insects.

Then comes the wail. And again. Growing louder and louder, and again, and then so close you could touch it, it begins to grow faint, and changes in subtle timbre, and then fades away as it came.

Strange. It would seem I'd hear the same wail night after night. They must use the same great engines. Wouldn't the train's whistle sound the same?

But no. As the train blows its whistle -- to warn the cars ahead in the crossings -- it seems that every train's voice is different. Some moan. Some shriek. Some beep long and hollow. Others wail.

An infinitude of voices, each one alone, shrieking in the night. A warning, jarring and sweet, above the roar of life, and then fading away.

Ahead of Her Time

Mount Shasta, Sunday March 11: Daylight Savings Time changed today, which is earlier than in years past. But not at our house!

That is to say, the last several days have been very confusing, because Adrienne didn't want to get caught by the weird feeling we always get when we change the clocks. Therefore she decided to get the jump on the whole thing. Kind of an activist approach to Daylight Savings.

So, three days ago, she began changing our clocks, and I've spent the last three days in a kind of time warp as I walked from room to room. In the kitchen, the stove and microwave and kitchen clock might claim 4pm, but the coffeepot disagrees. The clock in my room agrees with the majority in the kitchen, but my computer held out (until today of course). In my office I operated in a different time zone until yesterday, and the car is still running on some time zone that's out in the Pacific Ocean. It's a wonder we don't arrive before we set out.

Our voicemail is lying to us about when those messages came in. But I'm not fooled.

Oh, well. My Adrienne is just a woman ahead of her time.

Enter Ruru the Guru

San Francisco, 1981: It was actually because of Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

Lonesome Cowboy Tim was the alternate persona of a disk jockey who'd emigrated from Houston to San Francisco, back back in the days of answering machines, before all this voicemail foolishness.

There was a phone number, and when you called it was answered by Lonesome Cowboy Tim, saying "Howdy, Buckaroos!" and then he'd recount some adventure that he and the prairie critters had experienced recently.

Since it was a single line on an answering machine, after some weeks you'd find the line always busy. Then the number would be changed, and you'd have to somehow find it again. This was a challenge, because it was purely word of mouth, yet somehow we always found Lonesome Cowboy Tim.

When Network started up the Third Ear Telepathic Answering Service, we'd not intended to have a phone number at all, since the answering service was telepathic, but the phonebook rep insisted we had to list a phone number.

So I set up an answering machine with Ruru the Guru. Here's what it said ...

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Enter the Voicemail Business

San Francisco, 1987: The last few years, at the answering service conventions, the new voicemail machines were displayed, with big price tags. A few owners bought them, then tried selling voicemail for $30-$50 per month. I thought it was coming, but it wasn't here yet.

Until I got a call from Judy Laurence.

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Enter The Computer

495 Third Avenue, San Francisco, June 1976: My friend Dennis B. and I had been writers together at the San Francisco Writer's Workshop, which met every Tuesday night at the San Francisco Main Library. Before emigrating from Texas to San Francisco State, I'd found an announcement in Writer's Digest magazine, and showed up at the Library as soon as I arrived in town.

After some weeks, we both stopped attending the Writer's Workshop, but stayed friends. Dennis's family were back around Chicago and had done very well in the metal fabrication business. Therefore, Dennis had joined the peace corps, became a photographer and writer, and drove a cab.

One day he confided in me that he'd invented the Cabdriver Philosophy of Life. Stated briefly, it was: "People come into your life. People go out of your life. You go round and round and see some things, and then the ride is over." Not bad, all things considered, it seemed to me.

But I mention Dennis because of his odd habit.

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Enter Ralph the Cat

Denton, Texas, 1965: I majored in engineering, but enjoyed English classes better, so I took a Creative Writing class, and then I was hooked.

Having no clue, I bumbled with artistic ferver. Like every young person, my every anguish of the past was high drama, so if I wrote about anything I knew, I couldn't write worth a damn. No perspective. Ralph the Cat was a kind of accident.

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The Altar Boys

Henrietta, Texas, 1957: Since we were Methodists, I don't see why it was so important.

In our town, being a Methodist was considered kind of easy. The story goes that a fellow had died, and was being shown around Heaven. In one room folks were dancing because, being Catholics, they couldn't dance on Earth. In another room folks were drinking, because they'd been Baptists. And in one room, folks just sat around; being Methodists, they'd already done everything. Ha ha ha ha ha.

I suspect it was some jealousy of the Catholic rituals that caused the trouble.

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Mortality Musings at Ray's Supermarket

Mount Shasta, CA March 1 (Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!), 2007, 5:15pm: When I was in the checkout line at Ray's Supermarket, the serious young man asked me a question:

"Paper or plastic?"

I told him that I would take plastic, because it was very bad for the environment, and I wanted to do my part by helping him to clear out some of it. He looked at me, puzzled.

"It's a joke, young man," I said. "It doesn't actually mean anything at all."

He became pensive, or maybe he was thinking about something else, or perhaps he was reviewing the multiplication tables or the periodic table, or possibly wondering about dinner.

And so I explained it for him. (It is good to do this for the young people around us, so that we can enrich their lives, and some day they in turn can pass these wisdoms on to those younger still.)

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Phil Groves and the Raskin-Flakkers Ice Cream Store

San Francisco, 1975: Castro Street leaves Market Street and climbs a big hill. Past the top, descending, you come to 24th street. There you'll find Bud Edlin's ice cream store. The sign says "Bud's Ice Cream."

Fabulously popular. Bud's secret?

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