June 10, 2004, but thinking back to Henrietta, Texas in 1960: My basement hippy pad had three walls painted a cool blue, and the fourth a burnt orange color. I’d painted them myself.

Then, Donny Burkman and I had made paintings

of abstract art by the simple expedient of floating oil-based paints atop the water in the bathtub, and dragging large cardboard through the oils. Donny and I were considerably happier with this art than was my mother, whose bathtub we’d used.

The first appeal of my basement hippy pad was that it was not in the house, so teen angst and sensibility were hidden, as is proper. Gone to ground, you might say.

The second appeal was that I could listen to records without comments or volume requests, as is cool, man.

Ray Charles and the Raylettes were a favorite. Boy, didn’t they shake that thing?

Ray today, gone tomorrow.

Ray Charles died today. Damn! First Miles, now Ray.

What’d I say?

Lands End, San Francisco, 1976: The radio was all abuzz. A tzunami was coming. It would arrive around 8:30 just after dark. San Francisco residents are advised to avoid the beach and low-lying areas.

Naturally, we all wanted to see it.

As I rode my motorcycle out Geary Boulevard, I remembered Playland at the Beach. I’d since seen movies from the thirties, showing a boardwalk thronged with crowds in strange bathing costumes. But the week I’d moved into Ms. Douglas’s upper room, I’d driven down Ulloa Street to the ocean.

Playland at the Beach was abandoned. An empty boardwalk, in the middle of the day. I walked around like a human on mars. I heard a garish, distorted laughing and followed it. Through an open door I entered a building, the Fun House, now empty, sunlight coming through the windows. There, a huge mechanical clown inside a glass cage rocked back and forth, bellowing with wild laughter.

Nobody was around. I went back outside. It was all closed. Rides closed. Concessions closed. No cotton candy. No crowds. Two blocks off the beach. Wild laughter echoing round the corners. Empty.

Not long after, Playland had been razed. Ugly apartment buildings were to spring up later, but now, just empty lots two blocks off the beach.

I parked my motorcycle at Land’s End. Land’s End is a cliff, just above the Cliff House restaurant and the winding highway. Once there was a house there but only foundation stones remain, and a gazebo. It rises a couple of hundred feet above the ocean. A great place to see the tsunami.

From the verge of Land’s End, with a crowd of excited people, we peered down past the trees and brush to the highway and the beach below. We watched a fool dash past the police cars to the beach and back. The radio had said Do not go to the beach. Repeat. Do not go to the beach.

They’d not said anything about Land’s End. We laughed at the fool. We wondered at the police cars. A tsunami can be 30 feet tall, and in record cases 100 feet tall. Either would sweep over the seawall and engulf the police cars.

The time approached. Bottles were passed around. A scent of smoke and wildness in the air.

You never know, maybe the tsunami would sweep up the cliff. Maybe our laughing crowd would be killed, carried and buried into the crushing black of the ocean. It was a beautiful night for it, the air so fresh and clean.

The time grew near. Sometimes a big tsunami will first pull the water back, exposing the ocean floor.

The time came. No water pulled back. The waves on the beach seemed about the same, just like always.

We waited a while, but that was it. This particular tsunami, said the radio next day, was only about an inch high.

Teeny-weeny.

The tsunami.

Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, Yesterday Morning: Layla is a great athelete in my book. Adrienne’s younger daughter, Layla spent some time years ago deathly ill, but has recovered amazingly, and she hikes and bikes, and leaves strong men puttering along in her dust. In her gym, she excels as well.

On her radio as she got up she heard that, further down the coast, a young mountain lion killed a couple of bicyclists and a jogger. Quite possibly from the young cat’s view, it was just having fun. But we humans take it seriously when it an animal has power over us.

The cat is gone, put down by the law, but of course it worries Layla, because on Mount Tam, where she goes running up the mountain trail most mornings, there are lions and tigers and bears, oh my. At least, there are lions and bears.

Yesterday’s run began as usual …

That is to say, Layla drove to Mount Tam, and was stretching by the car, and chatting with Harry and Comet. Harry is an older guy who hikes the same trail most mornings. Often they’ll start off running together, then in a bit, Harry waves her on, and Layla, warmed up, sprints up the trail with a wave.

This morning, while stretching, Harry told Layla that yesterday, at the trailhead, he and Comet had seen a large black bear. Layla, muttered under her breath, “Oh that’s just great. Both mountain lions and bears.”

Comet, of course, is Harry’s dog, a big and bouncy yellow lab. Adrienne wishes Layla would get a dog to go with her. A big dog would love such exercise, and the dog would be some protection against lions and bears, and of course the human predators as well.

As some may recall, back in 1979, a serial murderer dubbed the Trailside Killer haunted Marin County trails. He was eventually identified, captured, and venue-changed to Santa Cruz. My then-wife Lori‘s college pal Michelle V., working in the Santa Cruz Public Defender’s Office, was assigned to the Trailside Killer’s defence. One day, Lori and I had stayed the night in Santa Cruz at Michelle’s house, and over coffee in the morning, I asked Michelle what it was like working to defend the guy. She paused for rather a long time, and then said, “He has very little to recommend him.”

Meanwhile, back on the early-morning trail, the rain had increased and Harry waved Layla onward, and she sped up, bursting ahead as the rain grew thicker.

The trails up and around Mount Tam wind and switch back, divide and come together, and the visibility in the rain lessened, as her trail twisted up the mountainside. She heard Comet the dog barking behind her, but it sounded OK.

What she didn’t know was that Comet, kicking up his heels, had sprinted up a side path. And as she ran, Comet the yellow lab was on the side path, racing ahead. And at a turning just ahead of her, he came back around the turn, now running toward her in the rain, on his way back to Harry, who trailed the girl and the dog.

Layla, feet and lungs pounding, and peering dimly ahead through the rain, through the trees suddenly saw the yellow shape bounding toward her. Certain that it was a mountain lion, she stopped and emitted a mighty scream worthy of Hitchcock!

Comet the dog froze in mid-bound, looking all around in fright, and put his tail between his legs. Harry came accellerating up the trail.

“What’s wrong? What! What’s wrong?” he shouted.

Layla, now embarassed, paused for breath. Harry craned his neck this way and that.

“What? What?” he yelled. Layla, breathing heavily, stared at poor Comet, slinking behind Harry.

“Oh,” she said, “… nothing.”

Henrietta, Texas, 1952: Back when I was six years old, in September one morning my mother took me to school. I was excited and afraid, but after a few days I liked it, and then, the weather being mild the following spring, my mother showed me how to walk to school.

The first few days, we drove in our 1951 Chevrolet, and she pointed out the window to show me this and that landmark. Then one morning we walked. Down to the highway, watching the cars, and then across for another block. A right turn and fourteen blocks in a row, and by golly there was the school!

So it wasn’t long before I wanted a bicycle.

Some of the other boys had a bicycle. Linda Brown had a bicycle. I wanted a bicycle.

This year, one showed up at Christmas. There was only one problem. I couldn’t ride it.

I tried a few times. Fell over. Fell off. My mother tried to help me, to no avail. Fell over. Fell off.

Bicycle sat. Bummer.

Now about that time, my mother found a boyfriend named Pete. She was raising me alone, my father being long gone, and so in a way I was happy for her, even though it meant getting dressed up on Sundays and driving all the way to Bowie. Yes, Bowie is named after Jim Bowie, with the Bowie knife, that fought and died at the Alamo. And it’s way up the road from Henrietta. We had to drive for a long time, like a half an hour. Tedious it was.

His house sat beside a busy street, with a mulberry tree and a yellow dog to look at. His mother lived there, too. They had a television with Milton Berle and western movies and wrestling. My mother liked Milton Berle. I didn’t understand Milton Berle at all.

My mother was very happy to go and visit Pete. He didn’t generally know what to say to me, didn’t take much interest. I suppose he had other things to think about. I realize now that going to Bowie was better from my mother’s point of view, because if they disappeared from view for an hour, there were no Henrietta neighbors to start talking.

But now and then Pete visited us in Henrietta, too. And he saw the bicycle. “Do you ride it a lot?” Embarassed, I shook my head.

“I can’t ride it,” I said.

“Why not?” he asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. I didn’t know why I couldn’t ride it. Other boys could, but I couldn’t. “I just fall off,” I said.

He looked at me. “Well, that might not be so difficult,” he said, “Do you want to be able to ride it?”

“Sure!” I said.

So he promised that he’d show me, next visit.

The following week, he came to see us in the morning. As promised, he showed me a trick he’d once used to learn to ride. We went out front, to the sidewalk and Uncle Doc’s lawn.

The trick was to place the right-side pedal forward and high, in the 2 o’clock position, looking from the right. Then you hold the handle bars and place your right foot on that pedal. You stand on that pedal while throwing your left leg over the seat.

Your weight on that pedal makes the bike move forward, and as you know it’s easier to balance on the bicycle once it’s moving. Only later did I figure out that it’s because the front wheel is mounted at an angle, so that when the bike tilts to the right, the wheel tends to turn slightly to the right because of the angle, meaning that the bike tends to move underneath you, which is helpful.

Pete held the back tire upright for the first couple of times. I fell off a little, but within a half-dozen attempts, I didn’t fall off! Not right away, anyway.

Pete laughed and laughed. Although I’d begun with worry and trepidation, now I laughed, too.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

San Francisco, 1978: The answering service had expanded, driving me out of Apartment #8. Rosie and I moved up the hall to Apartment #5. I was working out, and staying thin.

Actually, I personally believe that riding the motorcycle, which is both very physical and kind of dangerous, kept me wide awake, and staying slim was pretty easy.

I saw a lot of women, too.

And then one day I had a wart on my nose.

When I was a kid, I’d got a wart on a finger. That was frozen, cut off, and stitched up. A few years later, another on a knuckle was treated with radiation, which made it very unhappy and it went away.

And now, when I was getting plenty of dates, there was a wart on my nose! Not like it was hidden away somewhere. Right there on my nose, as if scouting where I was headed for.

Not attractive, no.

I decided that I didn’t want a wart on my nose.

I decided to make the wart uncomfortable, so that it would go away. I decided that I wanted it to drop off my body.

Every day, in the morning and again in the evening, in the bathroom of Apartment #5, I stared at the wart in the mirror. I touched it with my finger, and said — with lots of intention — “I want you to extend out of my skin, turn into a ball, and fall off.”

Every day, morning and evening, I focussed as best I could.

In a couple of days, the skin around the wart changed shape. It began to protrude from the skin, and then, at the base, grew thinner. Finally, one day it just fell off.

My nose again proud and happy, I returned to my busy life.

I hate to be rude, but some visitors are just unwelcome, and that’s all there is to it.