The Adventures of Bloggard

Been Around the Block. Got Some Stories. These are Them.

The Skydivers

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Skydiving Wallpapers - Top Free Skydiving Backgrounds - WallpaperAccessMidwestern 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.

I’m no whiz at math, and I had to struggle and focus. But it just didn’t look right. Something was wrong. The proof and the class ended at the same time, but I remained sitting, going over it.

Me and Bill and Dennis Thought Something Was Off

To my left, Bill the ex-marine with crisp black hair still in a crew cut. To my right, Dennis with wavy long blonde hair. They were staring and pondering, too. All the other students had left the room. The professor looked at the three of us.

“A question?” he asked us.

“There’s just something …” began Bill.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

“It’s this,” said Dennis. “If your original assumption is correct, then the proof is correct. But if not, then the conclusion is wrong. The proof is circular.”

Professor ‘Fessed Up

The professor smiled a slow, warm smile. “Well, now,” he said. “That’s exactly correct. The real proof requires calculus, which I can’t use here. But without giving a proof, students just don’t understand it. So we use this one.”

Haw haw haw haw haw!

We Started Becoming Pals

Over coffee, I met the boys. They were older. Bill had just finished his Marine stint; Dennis an army tour. Both had been in Japan. “Ohio,” they said when meeting; I think it means hello. “Gomenizai,” they would say, “I’m very sorry.”

Haw haw haw haw haw!

Next semester we shared a drafting class. At that time, there was an adventure with a girl, she missed a period, and I was all uptight. They just laughed. “A woman is not a close-tolerance machine,” said Dennis.

Huh? I had no clue what he meant.

“He means,” Bill said, “that most likely you got nothing to worry about. Just relax.” They thought my expression funny.

Haw haw haw haw haw!

And Then … the SkyDiving Adventure

I neither relaxed nor thought it funny, but they were right, as it turned out. After drafting class was lunch. Over burgers, Bill was talking about El Toro Marine Base, and about skydiving. Really?

By the following week, Bill had found a place where we could go skydiving. It cost $50. Dennis said he was in. I did, too. Bill handed me a piece of paper: a release. “Since you’re eighteen,” Bill said, “you need to get your parents to OK this.” I said OK.

In the evening, I handed the paper to my mother and stepfather. My mother didn’t know quite what it was, and my stepfather seemed uncertain. I explained that it was perfectly safe, and that you just jumped out of an airplane. It was really fun, like flying, and you had a parachute.

They looked at the paper. They looked at each other. They looked back at me.

Haw haw haw haw haw!

How to Save Time with Abbreviations

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hourglassHere’s a handy tip that can yield big savings:

Use abbreviations. For example, when I operated Network Answering Service in San Francisco, we quickly learned to develop standard abbreviations for common things people say. For example, OOT for “out of town”, or WCB for “will call back”.

Other handy abbreviations include PLSC for “please call”, NA for “not applicable”, DBA for “doing business as”, DA for “doesn’t answer”, and OCS for “onward christian soldiers”.

But why limit this to written notes? For example, suppose you want to thank somebody for something, but it’s just a little thing. You want to thank them a little but not a lot. To communicate this precisely, and to save time at the same time, just abbreviate “Thank you” or “Thanks”.

Say: “Thank.”

See, that’s less than “Thanks.”

But wait, there’s more!

You can abbreviate more complex ideas, as well. For example, perhaps you were thinking just now that these are the moments of your life, and this is how you are spending them. Well, in this case, you could save some thinking time by using an abbreviation of “moments”.

For example, you could say “momo”. That would be like one little moment. Or the plural form “momos”, as in “These are the momos of our lives.”

Often the practice of abbreviation yields surprising insights. For example, thinking about how these are the momos of our lives, you might just naturally think about death. And then of course there would be “no more” momos, and you could abbreviate the “no more” as “nomo”.

So you can see, you could speak, or think, very succinctly. You could think about the momos of our lives, and how, when we die, we got nomo momos nomo.

You see how that can save you time?

It can Really Add Up!

Now if you just save a few seconds every couple of hours, then you’ll accumulate several minutes every single week. By the end of the year you’ll have an extra thirty or forty minutes. Over a lifetime you might have hours, or even days, saved up!

And that ain’t bad.

Graduation Ceremony

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July, 2003, 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.

Up the gangplank and onto the decks, and then sailing off for a bay cruise with lots of fun and laughter. Young people are all beautiful, and it’s great to see them laughing.

After our meal, we walked back to the cars, and a vast bellow from the Tiburon firetruck announced the parade. Cruising slowly behind the firetruck, car after car of teens in suits and party dresses, waving “Class of 2003” flags, cheering, yelling and having a blast. All the cars were convertibles. Ron claims to have counted 13 Mercedes, 15 Porches, and 16 BMWs.

So different it was in Henrietta, Texas, forty-two years earlier.

In Henrietta, seniors graduated three days before everyone else. It was a hot June day, and band was my last class. I was the snare drummer, and pretty good at it. Earlier that day, I’d unpacked one of the big field drums that you use when marching. I’d secreted it in the practice room, whose door was right behind our drum section.

Midway through class, during a pause, I stepped into that room and strapped on that field drum. When we began the next song — a march called “Barnum and Bailey’s Favorite” — I played my part on the field drum.

It has a deeper tone. Mr. Raeke, the band master, looked at me oddly, but said nothing. As the song went on, I began marching around in a circle, and then marched up the side of the band and out the door. Suddenly, behind me, I could hear the cacophany of folks choking and laughing into their horns.

Up the long corridor between bandhall and gym, with my field drum sounding louder and louder and louder. I played a drum solo called “The Downfall of Paris”. I’d learned it for contest, and it seemed appropriate.

Around a corner to the left I veered, past the girls bathroom, then quickly around a corner to the right, past the office. From the corner of my eye I saw the Superintendant skidding from the lounge, but I was past him.

Down the hallway past classrooms I marched at triple-step. That drum solo and I were moving. Only thirty feet separated me from the door, when out jumped a goblin!

Oops, I mean, out leaped Mrs. Schwend, the librarian,and she planted herself in front of me. I tried a fake and to the left but she was too good for me. Short of knocking her down, I was captured!

In the meantime, my girlfriend Carolyn, following our plan, had run from band to start my car. I could see the getaway vehicle outside, for all the good it did.

And now Mr. Kale, the Principal, had grabbed me.

“Come along, Mister,” he said.

In his office I unbuckled the drum. He said he was going to give me three licks with the paddle. I told him he couldn’t because the bell had rung and I was no longer a student.

“Don’t give me trouble,” he said. “You don’t know it, but I’m doing you a favor.”

I didn’t care. I was too jazzed up. I got the licks, and then left. Carolyn was waiting. Off we drove.

At a party that night, I heard from Eddy Frank that the School Board had actually had a meeting. The agenda? To consider blocking my graduation. Eddy’s father spoke against it, saying it was just youthful hijinks, but it looked likely to vote against me, when Mr. Kale the Principal stood up.

“You can’t block his graduation,” he said.

They looked at him, and Mr. Douthett asked why not.

“He’s already been punished,” said Mr. Kale.

Mumble, grumble, grumble … and acceptance. So that was it. I would graduate.

Wherever you might be, Mr. Kale … thank you.

This Newfangled Daylight-Savings Time

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Changing the Time of Day?Dallas, Texas, Spring 1966: Living in Dunia Bean’s apartment on Gillespie street, I worked at the Cabana Hotel. The Cabana is a clone of Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, complete with over-sized statues of Venus, David, and the rest of the crew. Inside, a vast two-story lobby with greenish marble floor and a round sunken area with sofas enough for a football team.

Overlooking this magnificance, our front desk where I worked with Dick and Earl, dignified alcoholics. Dick taught me how to get big tips at crowded times, and Earl as a young actor fought swords with Errol Flynn in the movie Captain Blood. That was a while back.

But this was in the spring, and for the first time since the war, Texas was going to have Daylight Savings Time. We were all abuzz.

Paul the Bellman was a portly fellow, balding and gabby. He made big tips because he knew about health food and horoscopes. This was years before such things were popular. His most popular health food remedy was honey and vinegar; he’d recommend it for almost anything.

On the way to the elevators with the guests, he’d ask about their birth-date and provide predictions and prescriptions all the way to the room. Then I suppose it just seemed wrong, to the guest, to tip miserly to the fellow who’d taken such an interest in their fortunes and their health.

Paul the Bellman was very opinionated, and also had an annoying habit of slapping his hand down on the bellman’s marble-topped desk when he was about to speak. This made a loud pop. I think it was his version of banging the Judge’s gavel before pronouncing sentence.

So, while we were all discussing this radical new change, Daylight Savings Time, and how we would set our clocks before we went to bed, Paul returned to the bell desk.

Slap! went his open palm on the marble desk. “Well,” he said, “I know what I’m going to do.” We all stopped talking. He continued. “I’m going to set my clock for one a.m., and then I’m going to wake up, and set it ahead to two a.m.”

We all stared in incomprehension. “Why, Paul?” I asked.

“That way,” he crowed, “I won’t lose an hour’s sleep!”

I grinned. “But Paul,” I said, “If you’re awake when you move it forward, won’t you lose an hour’s wake?”

He pondered this. “Naw,” he said, “You can’t lose an hour’s wake.” We all nodded.

Slap! went his palm on the desk. He scowled. “But those guys better watch out,” he said.

We looked at each other. He went on.

“Because when they’re changing the time, they’re messing with the sun,” he said. “And they’d better not go messing with the sun!”

Thus came Daylight Savings Time to Texas.

A Voice From the Past

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ghost in the machine
nameless, timeless … speed of light
and when is a loss?

July 1, 2003, San Jose, California: Although I am seated at my desk in San Anselmo, right now in San Jose hundreds of my 800-numbers are being fitted into a seven-foot cabinet inside the switching room of a long distance company.

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

Moving those telephone lines was the final step of the Bloggard Migration Strategy (BMS).

Why migrate? Marin County, where we live, is perhaps the most expensive place in California. To buy the modest house we rent would cost over $700,000. In Montana or even a hundred miles north of here, this house would cost perhaps $150,000. So we decided to move.

In preparation, I consolidated all my local voicemail and 800-number voicemail lines into one place. Because their machine-support will no longer require my personal touch, Adrienne and I are now free to relocate, because I can operate my voicemail office, and my megatar workshop, anywhere.

As I tested telephone lines, I found one I’d forgotten. Some years previously, shortly before he died, my techno friend Harvey Warnke got a voicemail account from me.

Harvey was a unique spirit. Self-educated, he’d learned electronics working in the planetarium, then learned to design the light shows that appeared in the early days of Haight Ashbury psychedelic rock shows. He worked on movies, too.

If you’ve seen the remake of Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, in one of the later scenes there is the meow of a cat; that was Harvey’s cat, whom he named Shi*ty Kitty.

If you saw the movie War Games, in the final war-room scene you saw the huge screens that show missiles launching all over the world; It was Harvey who made those huge screens with their flashing images.

Long ago, he and I traded a project. He designed relays and sensors for the Line Seizer device I built for Network Answering Service, and I in turn did the software programming his Counter Intelligence device, which counted frames of film on a film-editing table for splicing movies. It was a grand time. Harvey was a brilliant engineer, who drove a turbo-charged motorcycle at vast speeds. He was always laughing, always fun.

He was a part of life, a part of my life, and it was a good time.

But his death came suddenly.

He’d contracted some kind of virus, and the virus, invading his heart, made his heart very large and very weak. And then one day, his heart stopped.

At the time, I couldn’t bring myself to delete the voice mailbox with the recording of his voice. I forgot it was there, until now.

Sitting here at my desk in San Anselmo, calling into the machine, suddenly I hear my friend talking.

“Hi, this is Harvey,” he says, “I’m not here right now. Leave me a message, and I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

His voice has survived the years and the equipment changes. He promises to return calls, but he will not.

His voice remains, in the machine.

And you know what?

I still can’t erase it.

The Apartment From Hell

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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.

It was a success, for there I found Rosie the Cat, and took her away and lived happily ever after. Other than that, it was a disaster so stupid you can’t help but laugh.

In North Beach, on the corner of Grant and Green, in the picture you see a bar, but back then it was a Hawaiian Bar, and just above that Hawaiian Bar, behind the large bay window you see on the right, along with mice and cockroaches and loud Hawaiian music on the jukebox of the bar downstairs, that’s where I lived.

Living Over a Hawaiian Bar

Strange and bizarre … all night long, loud lyrics like: “Hooka lakka shooka lakka, wikki wikky ogaloo!” Over and over again. The guys downstairs had the consolation of alcohol to take the edge off these songs; I had nothing.

However, I worked an odd shift at the Westbury Hotel at this time, from seven in the evening until three am. This saved me from several hours of Shooka Lakka Hooka Lakka, for which I was grateful.

Strange Chinese Vegetables!

It was also interesting, leaving work at three in the morning. The busses run infrequently that late, and taxis were expensive, so I’d walk through the Stockton Street tunnel and through a deserted Chinatown at three. All the shop’s trashcans pungent with strange chinese vegetables and worse, but these barricades didn’t stop me.

Home at Last, at 3 a.m.

At home at last. But two doors up at Wumpers Bar, they had after-hours entertainment with Perry and the Pumpers. I’ll give the Pumpers one thing: they were plenty energetic. So, to the strains of pumping rock and roll, it was time to hit the hay.

The bars and shops on Grant have lots of garbage, and trashcans filled with empty bottles. So much that the trash companies come every night, sometimes three times during the night. The growling trucks and the crashing din of the bottles leant an exotic ambiance to the late hours on North Beach.

Luckily, the mornings are pretty quiet

Except one day, I’m awakened by a loud, repeating banging. A voice is chanting “Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth! Goddamned Phonebooth!”

Rising to peer blearily from my window at the sunny morning, below my window, a stringy unkempt fellow is kicking the back wall of the phonebooth below. A burly fellow across the street calls out “Hey!”, meaning Stop, or maybe What the hell are you doing?

Stringy guy sticks his head outside the phonebooth door, and screams, “It took my dime!” The guy across the street, a big guy, makes a fist and yells to knock it off. Stringy guy, glaring, makes off down the street.

I go back to bed.

And then …

I’m awakened by a loud, repeated banging. A voice is chanting. I rise and peer from the window. Stringy is back.

Now, the mailbox has been tipped over and lies flat on the sidewalk. Stringy guy is kicking the mailbox over and over again.

“Goddamned Mailbox!” he screams, “Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox! Goddamned Mailbox!”

Ah, life in North Beach.

 

Ronald Reagan Visits

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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.

For reasons long forgotten, the pilot attempted to land on a flat stretch above the train station. He didn’t realize that the huge Continental Oil radio transmitter had long guy wires stretching across the field. The pilot was very surprised when one of his wings was suddenly torn off.

Losing all control so near the ground, he should have been killed, but somehow the plane was tossed into a stand of tough mesquite trees. The plane was a jumbled wreckage, but the pilot opened the door, and stepped free, unhurt. With great bitterness he stood gaping at the wreckage.

At that moment, Mr. Burkman pulled up in the pickup, and through the open window, said calmly, “Having a little trouble, bub?”

Donny and I thought this story astounding; we rolled on the ground.

Years later, Don told me about picking up Ronald Reagan at the airport in Wichita Falls. Reagan had been invited to speak by the Junior League, a mucho-exclusive women’s club. Don was now managing the Wichita Falls Municipal Auditorium, so it fell to him to pick up Reagan, then governor of California.

Don needed a fancy car to pick up Governor Reagan. His own vintage Pontiac was not deemed fancy enough. He’d struck out several times and was getting desparate. Finally, on the day of Reagan’s arrival, Don got a brainstorm. He remembered Hargraves Mortuary. Their long white limousines were a familiar sight to everyone in Wichita Falls, from years of carrying the families of the dear departed to and from the funeral services.

Don called them up. At first they balked, The well-known white limosine.but Don threatened Hargraves that he’d never bury another Junior League member unless that car got loaned. Don reports that the car dropped from the sky, appearing magically outside his office. And just in time to rush to the airport.

The flight was on-time, and Mr. Reagan gracious, and chatty. They were driving into town from the airport, when Reagan suddenly stopped his story, and began twisting this way and that, peering out the car windows, looking first ahead of the car and then behind. Finally he turned to Don.

“Could you tell me,” he asked, “why all the cars are pulling to the side of the road?”

Diplomacy

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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.

We were grateful, because that slowed John down. Clearly he was coming to look for us. Bullet stood his ground, growling low. John came slowly on, circling around Bullet.

“Nice Bullet,” he said. “Good doggy. Nice Bullet.”

Donny whispered, “Let’s hide.” With a sudden brainstorm, I herded Donny and myself behind the open front door. John would never think to find us there, so close. Now we could no longer see John, but we heard him drawing closer.

“Good doggie,” he said, somewhere near the porch.

“Nice Bullet,” he said, backing onto the porch.

“Good doggie,” he said, opening the screen door. He was just on the other side of the front door, behind which we hid. “Nice doggie,” he said, backing into the room, “Good Bullet.”

He closed the screen door.

“Stupid dog,” he said.

 
 

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