Life can look kind of tough sometimes. But maybe it’s how we go about looking …

Daigu Riokan (“Great Goof” or “Big Fool”) became enlightened and decided not to take students but to live as a hermit and subsist on alms. Consequently, he was very, very poor.

However, that’s not the end of the story.

One day a thief broke into his hut, and finding nothing worth stealing, trashed the place. Finding this, Daigu Riokan wrote this haiku —

The thief left it there,
there in the window —
the shining moon.

November 8, 1674: The blind English poet John Milton died at the age of 65. A student once wrote in an essay on Milton: “He got married and wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.”

Dublin, November 8, 1847: Bram Stoker was born today. This is important because he grew up and wrote Dracula. One summer afternoon in the middle of our sunlight-flooded back yard, at the age of 13, I shuddered to read how the dog jumped off the boat. And Miss Lucy … ugh!

Some years ago, in Chicago, lived a petty hoodlum named Benny, a miserable fellow, who never had a girlfriend, was always coughing with a cold, and was always broke.

So it was that, pawing through a trashcan, he was surprised to find a small and ornate urn, because he seldom had good fortune. He took it home to his hovel, and was rubbing the dust off, when — poof! — in a puff of smoke appeared a genii!

“You have three wishes,” the genii said, “but there’s a condition.”

As you can imagine, Benny was very surprised, and naturally suspicious. “What kind of condition?” he demanded.

“Nothing much,” said the genii with a smile. “You can have anything you wish, but you must agree never to get a shave or a haircut.”

“What happens if I do?” asked Benny. The genii looked somber.

“Then you will spend the rest of your very long life trapped inside the urn,” said the genii, “Just as I have done.”

“It’s a deal!” said Benny.

“What are your wishes?” asked the genii.

“I’d like health, and happiness, and more money than I can ever spend,” said Benny.

“Done!” said the genii, and vanished in a puff of smoke. There was a knock on the door. When Benny answered, he found Ed McMahon from Publishers Clearing House, with a very large check.

Benny didn’t know what to think, but, oddly, he felt happy and healthy. And that’s the way it went. He spent money madly, but more kept showing up. He started dressing better and going out more, and women began to pay attention.

Some years later, his hair fell down his back below his knees, and his beard almost as long in front. But he had a great life, and a good woman. Everything was wonderful.

Well, there was one little thing. The woman. The woman was very, very happy, except that she kept bugging him to get a shave and a haircut. Relentless, she was, and it was making him crazy. While on a world cruise, in the tiny cabin, after a few too many margaritas, she was chiding him to get a haircut and he blew up.

“All right!” Benny yelled, and stomped to the barber, and ordered a shave and a haircut. The barber rolled his eyes, and began. Some time later, the barber handed him a mirror to see how it looked, but a genii appeared in a puff of smoke, and then Benny and the genii vanished, and the mirror clattered to the floor.

There is a moral to this story:

A Benny shaved is a Benny urned.

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 …

[Read more of this post]

Ten miles north of Henrietta, Texas, 1873: Several families from Iowa arrived, settling here on the rolling plains of north Texas. They built homes and planted rows of Bois d’Arc trees along the Fort Sill tract, a line of trees four miles long. Trees for shade, and trees for a windbreak.

Along this lane, the families settled, Ackers, Hoeber, McNeeley, Hooker, and Hurns they were.

Crossing the ragged road was Long Creek, marked by a wandering line of trees meandering across the prairie.

A mile up Long Creek lived the Millers, on whose land a big gas well would run wild in 1905. In the place I know as the farm, the Ackers family lived. That original home burned, but the well survived, dug deep by hand and lined with stone.

But most of these settlers moved on.

Cattlemen and cowboys came. In 1889, the Parker County School Land, a large tract of 17,000 acres, arranged for surveying by Mr. R. W. Watkins. Mr. Watkins hired a boy of 9 as driver for his hack, to carry stakes and equipment. That boy grew to be my grandfather, Frank Hurn.

The boy’s father, William Hurn, bought 200 acres in December, the first buyer from the tract, and the remainder was opened for settlement in 1890, at a price of $6.25 per acre. Settlers from all parts began to arrive. Wanting a community center, William persuaded the Gent & Fuller firm to donate two acres for a church and school.

The Post Office was a knottier problem. Several names (for the community) were sent to Washington. All were rejected, because for every name there was already a community in Texas with the same name! One day, after a second round of this disheartening news, Col. Bill Squires of the Henrietta Post Office, said to William Hurn, “The heck with it! You go home and forget it. I’ll send in a name that they’ll take.”

He sent in ‘Hurnville’, so Hurnville it was.

Mr. Luther Kelley of the Kelly Brothers firm in Henrietta built a store in Hurnville, but only three families ever lived in Hurnville itself, though the surrounding rich farmland was thickly settled by 1896. At that time, Hurnville sported the general store, a blacksmith shop, a barber shop, a short-order and cold-drink stand, two churches, a cotton gin, the Literary Society’s weekly newspaper, a one-room school, and Dr. Finley’s office.

William Hurn’s son Joe taught the Hurnville school, a three month school, for the lump sum of $75. This was the high point, and soon after, settlers began pulling up stakes to move further west. Rural Free Delivery replaced the Post Office. The growing nearby town of Petrolia drew away the Baptist Church. Hard times took the Methodist Church, and the tiny school was consolidated into Henrietta, the county seat.

When I was a child, my grandfather told me that he once carried the mail in a wagon up into Oklahoma Territory, where it went on to be delivered as the Pony Express. However, the dates don’t match up worth beans, so either he was a-woofin me, he was speaking of his father, or I disremember exactly.

The Pony Express, a remarkable feat in the American West, was in service only from April 1860 to November 1861, delivering mail and news between St. Joseph, Missouri, and San Francisco. My grandfather would have been born too late to be carrying mail for the Pony Express.

The 1890 Oklahoma Territory census still exists. Nearly all other old census records were destroyed by fire in 1921. This census was ordered in June of 1890 by Governor George Steele, the first territorial governor of Oklahoma. Oklahoma attained statehood on November 16, 1907, as the forty-sixth state. So I reckon my grandfather carried the mail up to Oklahoma, but not for the Pony Express.

In November of 1959, my grandfather wrote of these events. At that time Hurnville had a resurrected Baptist Church and Dan Oster’s filling station and grocery store. And as my grandfather wrote, “a community where all are friends and would welcome anyone who might come to join us.”

Of the original settlers of the Fort Sill tract, the descendants of only three still held title to land in 1959, those three being Bud Frey, Frank Hurn, and the descendants of F. D. Stine.

In 1972, I visited Dan Oster’s store with my friend, writer Barbara Austin. The church was gone, and Dan Oster was old. With the death of my grandparents, my mother had purchased the farm. Later, when she died, the farm was purchased by my cousin Nancy and her husband, rodeo champ Perry Lee, and they raised a family there. In some recent year, they sold the farm, and moved into town. I don’t know who owns it now. I wonder who lives in that place I knew so well.

In my uncle Eugene’s book “A Pictoral History of Clay County”, photographs can be found of the Hurnville that was, of William Hurn and of my young grandfather. You will find a copy in the Henrietta Library, or through the Henrietta/Clay County Historical Society.

In 1999, an acquaintance named Bob Hampton and his wife moved from Wichita Falls to a red brick house about 3 miles north of my grandparents farm, not far from where Dan Oster’s store once stood.

A cemetary remains. A concrete marker identified the location of the old school, but the marker vanished in the dust of a road-widening project.

There now remains the road, and memory.

Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1970: My youngest brother David was a tow-headed skinny kid with an active manner, and often serious. Paul was David’s older brother, and 14 years my junior, so I left for college when he was still little. It was only when I returned home as a young man that I got to know the boys as they grew up.

At that time we had a huge orange tomcat named Kitty. David and Kitty were great pals, often exploring together, and when David took a nap on the long white sofa, Kitty would find him and wash David’s straw-colored hair. One afternoon, as I walked through the living room, I found the two of them fast asleep on the sofa. David had his arm over Kitty, and Kitty had his arm over David.

But Kitty had an annoying habit.

Kitty had no regular mealtimes. Kitty ate when Kitty got hungry. No matter what my mother was doing, Kitty would begin rubbing against her ankles, yowling loudly. No matter that my mother said “Shoo!” No matter that my mother pushed Kitty away. Rubbing and yowling continued steadily until my mother gave in and went to feed Kitty.

But what if my mother wasn’t available. David, Kitty’s great pal, would become the target. Kitty yowled and rubbed David’s ankles until David would go and feed Kitty.

Kitty did not try this strategy on me or Paul, because it didn’t work. Paul and I would not react to these guerilla tactics, and so Kitty concentrated on our mother and David.

Mama complained. David complained. But grumbling and complaining, they’d open a can and feed Kitty. I told them that they were just training Kitty to expect a reward from that behavior. Mama frowned.

“But he just makes so much noise!” she said.

Paul tried to explain it to David, but David just said that Kitty was hungry. So I suppose it unsurprising that one day Paul appeared with a serious expression on his face.

“I’m worried,” he said. I looked up.

“About what?” I said.

“I’ve just realized,” he said, “that Kitty has more will-power than Mama and David.”

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.

Russell lives in the hills just north of Los Angeles. He does high-end cabinetry and contracting. He is a mighty woodman, and has two grown boys of his own. One of them, Alec, makes movies these days.

Russell’s mother, Billie Jane, a long-ago crony of my mother’s, and long-time friend from my childhoot, is now very, very long-lived like all of her maternal line. Not letting that slow her down, she pulled a copy of my college story “Ralph the Cat” from some ancient file, and sent it to Alec. Alec likes it. Now Alec wants to make a movie of it. I’ve just written a letter of permission to film the story. Funny. I wrote it when I was about the same age as Alec is now, and that was a long, long time ago.

If things go well, soon coming to a Film Festival or Art Theatre near you … “Ralph the Cat.”