Henrietta, Texas, Summer 1960: My parents were out of town, and I had the place to myself.

In the afternoon, Lefevre and I drove to Wichita Falls for beer. Pioneer Drive-Inn #3 was just inside the city limits, so that’s where we sat until we espied a disreputable-looking fellow who looked like he was over 21.

We struck up a conversation, and offered to buy him some beer. He liked that idea. He was a skinny guy, none too clean, with a Camels pack rolled into the arm of his t-shirt. We produced the money and he got the goods from the liquor store next door, and then for politeness sake we all sat in my car and drank a beer, and while sitting there, the guy did an amazing thing:

With one hand he opened a book of paper matches, pulled one forward and closed the cover behind it, bent it and ignited it, then lit his cigarette and tore the burnt-out match from the book! All with one hand!

I got him to show me slowly, and I practiced this over and over, because I just knew that it would make me very, very cool. I probably could still do it, but frankly I’m just not cool any more, and no longer smoke.

We soon said adios to our new friend, because we now possessed a case of beer and a large house all to ourselves. Naturally, throwing a party seemed like a good idea at the time.

Back in Henrietta, we sat around at the Lo-Boy Drive-Inn and when friends showed up, we invited them to my party. After a while, Lefevre left to fetch his 1967 Impala, him needing to drive back to Wichita Falls to collect a date for the evening.

Lefevre was a famous ladies man.

He was widely considered to be smooth of speech. We all believed that he could walk into any building and come out with a girl on each arm.

Lefevre himself was the first to promulgate this legend. He himself explained to me that he was no longer at the level of trying to get laid; he was at a higher level, where he concentrated on the best way to do it with each particular girl. There was more to this speech, but perhaps that’s enough for now.

That evening, when it got dark, people began showing up. More and more of them. Cars were parked on the street, then on the lawn. Upstairs was lottso beer. Downstairs in my beatnik’s lair, the basement, was cool jazz music, and a quiet spot.

Somehow, during the evening, Lefevre and his date became ensconced in that basement, and everybody else was locked out. Well, how typical, we thought.

We drank beer and told lies, and mostly it was just a bunch of guys sitting around, because all the girls but one had gone home. Paul H. I think it was also had a date, who was now complaining that she needed to go home.

The problem was that she was supposed to ride back to her home in Wichita Falls with Lefevre and his date, and they were inaccessible. Finally Paul H. gave up, and drove her home. The party was definitely thinning out.

Then somebody noticed the intercom system. My parents had installed this fancy intercom with a station in their bedroom, and one in the children’s room, and one in the basement. That was the same basement in which Lefevre and date were barricaded.

Naturally, wanting to give them every consideration, we refused to listen in for at least a minute or two. When we turned it on, we could hear them, but they couldn’t hear us. The girl was complaining.

“Take me home,” she said. “I’ll get in trouble.” Then we heard Lefevre.

“Come here,” he said.

There were some moments of silence and rustling, and then she began again that she had to go home, that he must take her home right now.

“Come here,” he said.

She objected, became angry, remonstrated with him.

“Come here,” he said.

She became tearful, pleading that she’d be in trouble.

“Come here,” he said.

This went on for a long time. Then there was a long silence and more rustling, for a long time.

After a while, Lefevre and the girl appeared in the living room. He said he’d be taking her home now. They left.

What a smooth-talking guy! No wonder he did so well with the ladies!

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.

Two monks argued about the temple flag waving in the wind. One said, “The flag moves.”

The other said, “The wind moves.”

They argued back and forth but could not agree.

Hui-neng, the sixth Patriarch, said: “Gentlemen! It is not the flag that moves. It is not the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves.”

Westbury Hotel, San Francisco, 1974: Clark, the new assistant manager, was a jerk. Everyone agreed. So it was real annoying that he was now the assistant manager. He seemed especially hard-nosed and tactless at first, but maybe he was nervous.

After a while, we got used to him, but when he came in on crutches with his leg in a cast, nobody was real sorry. We watched him hobble around for a while, and then finally I had to ask.

“Clark,” I said, “What happened?” He looked up into the air, and winced at the question.

“I got hit by a car,” he said.

“Why did you walk out in front of the car?”

“Well,” he said, “the light was green.”

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.

As it happens, during the last week Bank of America has added the ability to retrieve an image, so I was able to look at the check. There was a check written to Adrienne and signed by me! (Or something that kind of resembled my signature.)

Adrienne! That scamp!

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

If you ask somebody why they did something, you’ll get only justification and very little useful information.

That’s it.

Generally speaking, in a conversation, if you ask your buddy Joe why he started a fight with Alvin, you won’t get much useful information. The human reaction to having motives questioned is often an automatic marshalling of justification. Joe might say, for example, that Alvin had it coming and that Alvin had been bugging Joe for a long time.

On the other hand, try using an alternate wording. Instead of asking why, try asking “what led you to …” For example, you’d ask Joe “What led you to get into a fight with Alvin?” In this case, often his answer will be somewhat different. He might say, for example, “I don’t like him much, and when he stuck his finger up my nose, I lost my temper and hit him.”

Asking “why” is usually a waste of time; asking “what led you to” generally provides a better picture of what happened.

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