When Peggy opened the drapes on our first morning in Nuevo Arenal, Costa Rica a few weeks ago, this is what greeted her: A hungry Crested Guam demanding an apple, an orange, or a pineapple. We immediately noticed the Guam’s bright red wattle, eyes and long tails. The ‘laidback’ feathers on its head can stand straight up when the Guam is excited. Thus the description ‘crested.’Actually, there were three of them. (They hung out together the whole time we were in Nuevo Arena.) Peggy immediately grabbed her camera and caught this photo of them backlit by the sun. I must say, they were quite polite, just standing there, staring at us.But we couldn’t escape the hungry look. It’s sort of like ‘Feed me or else…’We were soon sharing apples, pineapple, oranges…And even watermelon with our new ‘companions.’Even when they weren’t on our walkway, the Guams monitored our behavior from the lawn and picnic table in front of our Villa.From the lawn. Note its raised wings. I think it was about to chase a Grey-headed Chachalaca that was chowing down on a bite of pineapple the Guam considered its lunch. (See the two videos at the end of today’s post.)They also watched us from the trees behind the villa. Note the long tails.They could see in our back window…A close up.We met this Guam on a hike by Lake Arenal. It was preparing to show off its crest.In full display! “Aren’t I beautiful/handsome.”Some grooming is required. For birds, it’s called primping and is used for feather maintenance.Even down to keeping them oiled! Is the other Guam massaging its legs with its tail feathers? It’s obvious that these big birds like each other, in fact they are monogamous. But I doubt that includes tail-feather leg massages. (Any Guam experts out there that would know?)The primary dining room for the Guams and all of the other fruit eating birds in our neighborhood was a bird feeding table that we and our neighbors kept supplied. Fortunately, it was right in front of our villa. We could sit inside or on our porch and take bird photos all day if we wanted to. You’ll be seeing a few…
Normally, the crested Guams (Penelope purpurascens) are not as tame as the ones that have found an endless supply of food at the Lakeview Villas where we were staying. Nor are they ground dwellers, preferring to live high up in the forest canopy and feed off of fruit they find up there, like the figs from the ficus trees we featured in our post last Monday. Similar to the Gray-headed Chachalacas (Ortalis cinereiceps) that you will meet next, they are members of the long-tailed family, Cracidae. Above them on the animal classification system they are also related to chickens, turkeys and other Galliformes, which is hardly surprising, given their body shape. They range from Mexico in the north to Ecuador and Venezuela in the south.
The smaller Chachalacas look a lot like the Guams minus the wattles and crests. At first we thought they might be their kids, especially given their obvious love of fruit. Closer inspection and a little research quickly defined them as a different species. Beyond looks, another defining characteristic is that they travel in groups ranging in size from 6 all the way up to 20. Ours was around 12. When these large birds make their way through trees, they sound like a herd of marauding elephants (slight exaggeration, but they are noisy.) It’s said that their name, Chachalacas, is derived from a sound they make early in the morning and late in the evening. We didn’t hear it in Nuevo Arenal, but I did one evening in Monteverde. I love the name.
The ‘here’s looking at you’ pose of a Chachalaca. Impressive nose hairs.Another perspective.They would arrive at the food station en masse. Any fruit was quickly disposed of…Tails down and looking around, at half mast and breaking fast, fully up and having sup. (A little humor for my poet friends who follow this blog.)Grooming/primping Chachalaca style. Were they getting ready for a group photo?Maybe. Grin. You may wonder what the Crested Guams felt about the Chachalacas showing up and gulping down all of the fruit. The following videos will give you an idea. The first demonstrates the greed of the Chachalacas at the food table and the Guams’ response. The second shows what Peggy and I found to be a rather hilarious chase scene where the Guam kept losing track of the Chachalaca it was supposed to be chasing! (Click on the photos.)
BTW: Wednesday’s UT-OH! Post is on “first dates and squashed skunks!”
As you might have expected the Guams had little tolerance for the Chachalacas scarfing down the fruit!
The teacher had a large diagram with a pattern that looked something like this.
Something happened between the eighth grade and high school. Here I was a happy, well-adjusted and relatively successful young man one day and a serious candidate for a strait jacket the next. Pimples popped out on my face overnight and my voice became dedicated to practicing random octave jumps. Teenage-hood, which had promised to be a mild adventure, arrived with a vengeance. I was being hormonally challenged; I had a terminal case of puberty blues.
Things started out fine. I left the eighth grade behind with great expectations. After all, I’d become a jock, had top grades, was student body president, and had a girlfriend. Damn, I was even president of the Mother Lode Twirlers, the square dance club. What could possibly go wrong? Everything…?
Take girlfriends, for instance. I expected to lose a little ground in the field of romance when I became a freshman in high school. Sophomore, junior, and even senior boys cruised the hallways in a mad scramble to check out the new crop of freshmen girls. And the older girls weren’t about to date a freshman boy, that lowest of lowly creatures.
But I didn’t expect to bomb the way I did. I became intensely, almost painfully shy. I would walk down the hallways staring at my feet in fear that some young woman would look me in the eye. If a girl tried to talk to me, any girl, I would mutter inanities and make a run for it. The strangest statements came out of my mouth. As for asking a girl out, the odds were a little less than being struck by lightning, and the latter seemed like a less painful alternative.
It wasn’t that I didn’t notice girls. My body was one huge hormone. I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it. I pined for a young woman who sat in front of me in Mr. Crump’s Geography class. She was gorgeous. I was in deep lust. My knee and her butt were mere inches apart and her butt was like a magnet. I had the most intense fantasies of moving my knee forward until it made contact. In my fantasy she would, of course, turn around, smile at me and suggest we get together after school. In reality, she would have turned around and bashed me with her geography book (rightfully so), or worse, told Mr. Crump. I would have died. I kept my knee where it belonged. It is a strong testament to my love for geography that I didn’t flunk the class under the circumstances.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, however, and I was a desperate man. I signed up to master dancing in PE. I would become a combination of Arthur Murray and Elvis Presley. Step, step, slide and swivel your hips. Girls would flock to me. It wasn’t until the day of the class that I learned the magnitude of my mistake. I would have to dance with girls to learn how to dance and there they were, lined up on the opposite side of the gymnasium floor, staring at me.
“God, why did I do this to myself,” I thought as I stared across the distance at twenty females who I knew were thinking, “anybody but Curtis.”
“Okay, boys,” the female P.E. teacher announced in a stern voice, “I want you to walk across the room now and politely ask a girl to dance with you.” Wow, that sounded like fun.
Reluctantly, I began that long walk across the gymnasium floor. I was a condemned man and the gallows were looming. I walked slower. Maybe an earthquake would strike. Maybe the Russians would shoot off an IBM missile. Maybe one of the surly seniors would throw a match in a wastebasket and the fire alarm would go off.
Maybe nothing.
I approached the line and looked for a sign. One of the girls would smile at me and crook her finger. But the girls looked exceedingly grim. A few looked desperate, like deer caught in the headlights of the proverbial 18-wheeler rushing toward them at 90 miles per hour. I picked out the one who looked most frightened on the theory that she would be the least likely to reject me.
“Uh, would you care to dance,” I managed to blurt out.
“Uh, okay,” she responded with about the same level of enthusiasm she would have if I had offered her a large plate of raw liver. It was P.E. Dance Ground Zero after all, and she wasn’t allowed to say no. We were destined to be a great couple.
“You will put your left hand in the middle of the back five inches above the waist line.” The teacher, who was now sounding more and more like a drill sergeant, carefully described what we would do with our hands. It was quite clear that there would be minimal contact and no contact with behinds. “With your right hand and arm, you will hold the girl away from you.” There would be no accidental brushing of breasts either. What fun was that? I assumed the correct position with marine-like precision. I was going to get this right. I studied the chart the teacher had put up to show us what we were supposed to do with our feet. I listened carefully to the lecture on rhythm and down beats. I watched with intensity as she demonstrated.
All too soon it was our turn. A scratchy record blasted out a long-since-dead composer’s waltz. I didn’t know who it was, but it wasn’t Elvis. With one sweaty palm in the middle of the girl’s back and the other sweaty hand holding her a proper distance away, I moved out on the floor. Step, step, slide, step, step, slide. One, two, and slide the coach barked out. My feet more or less followed the prescribed pattern. More importantly, I avoided stepping on the girl’s toes. I tried a turn and managed to avoid running into another couple. Ever so slightly I relaxed. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe I would have fun. Maybe Hell would freeze over.
“Stop, class!” the teacher yelled as she blew her whistle and yanked the needle across the record, adding another scratch. We dutifully came to a halt. What now?
“I want everyone to watch Curtis and his partner,” she announced.
“Hey, this is more like it,” I thought to myself. Not only was I surviving my first day of dance class, I was also being singled out to demonstrate. I smiled, waited for the music to start, and boldly moved out on the floor where many had trod before. Step, step, slide, step, step slide. We made it through all of three progressions when the teacher abruptly blew her whistle again.
“And that, Class,” she proclaimed triumphantly, “is not how you do it. Curtis is moving like he is late for an important date with the bathroom.”
The class roared— and I shrank. I don’t know how my partner felt, but I wanted a hole to climb in, preferably a deep hole with a steel door that I could slam shut. And I was more than embarrassed, I was mad. My normal sense of humor had galloped off into the sunset faster than a Triple Crown racehorse.
“You don’t teach someone to dance by embarrassing him,” I mumbled. An angry look crossed the teacher’s face and she started to reply. I turned my back and walked for the door.
“Where do you think you are going, Curtis? Get back here!” she demanded in a raised voice.
“I am leaving,” I replied without turning, calm now with the decision made. The class was deadly quiet. This was much more interesting than P.E. Other kids might challenge teachers, might walk out of a class, and might not even care. But not Curt. This was a guy who always did his homework, participated in class discussions, was respectful toward teachers, and aced tests.
I reached the door and put my hand on the handle.
“If you walk out that door, you may as well walk home,” the teacher barked. “I will personally see to it that you are suspended from school.”
I opened the door, walked out– and went straight to the office of the head of the P.E. Department, Steve O’Meara. Steve worked with my dad in the summer as an assistant electrician, but I knew him primarily as my science teacher. He was a big man, gruff, and strong as a bull elephant, a jock’s jock. He demonstrated his strength by participating in the annual wheelbarrow race at the El Dorado County Fair. The race commemorated the fact that John Studebaker of automobile fame had obtained his start in Placerville manufacturing wheelbarrows for 49ers.
The County’s strongest men would line up with their wheelbarrows at the starting line and then rush to fill a gunny sack with sand at the starter’s gun. They would then push their wheelbarrows and loads at breakneck speed around an obstacle course that included mud holes, a rock-strewn path, fence barriers and other such challenges. In addition to making it across the finish line first, the winner had to have fifty plus pounds of sand in his gunny sack. Underweight and he was disqualified. Steve was always our favorite to win and rarely disappointed us. He also had a very loud voice.
“What’s up, Curt,” he roared when I entered his office. I knew Steve didn’t eat kids for lunch but you always wondered a little.
“I think you are supposed to expel me,” I replied. He started to laugh until he saw my expression. Mortification and anger on the face of a 14-year-old are never a pretty sight.
He became serious. “Sit down and tell me what’s happening,” he suggested in an almost gentle voice.
Ten minutes later I walked out of his office with a reprieve. I didn’t have to go back to the dance class and could finish out the quarter playing volleyball. Steve would have a discussion with the dance instructor. I imagine she ended up about as unhappy as I was. At least I hoped so. I entertained a small thought that she would hesitate the next time before traumatizing some gawky kid whose only goal in attending her class was to become a little less gawky. It would be a long time before I would step onto a dance floor again.
This donkey was hardly dangerous. I was offering it a carrot. The stacks of lumber in the background, at Caldor Lumber Company’s drying yard, had potential, however. One of our sports was climbing to the top of the stacks and leaping between them.
That we survived childhood wasn’t necessarily a given. Racing up and down a 75-foot-tall tree, leaping between 20 foot high lumber stacks, joyriding on railroad push carts, avoiding being shot, playing on a 50 foot high trestle and other similar activities aren’t particularly conducive to a healthy childhood. On a scale of 1-10, I would have placed Marshall’s chances of harm at 9.9 while mine were more like 4.4. I took my share of risks, but rarely without considering consequences. Marshall rarely did. Pop provided some perspective years later.
“If Marshall screamed, I ran. When you screamed, I walked.”
Except for the dog bite and stepping on a rusty nail once, my serious injuries were more in the nature of stubbed toes. Not that I am minimizing the pain of a stubbed toe, mind you. They hurt like hell. There is a reason why flaying skin was a form of torture in ancient times. I’d have certainly been willing to confess things I had done, and lots of things I hadn’t.
I did have a baseball bat used on me once, however. My parents were semi-serious Republicans, semi in the sense that they didn’t devote their lives to the cause but they did vote the party line. The family tradition went back to Abe Lincoln and the founding of the Party. A quote in a book written by my Great Grandfather stated, “We have always been Republicans, and we always will be.”
My indoctrination started young with the 1952 campaign of Dwight Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson. According to Mother, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were responsible for most of the bad things that existed in the Country, and Ike was going to right the wrongs of the previous two decades. I, of course, accepted this view whole-heartedly, and had all the makings of a fine Young Republican. Naturally I was eager to share my correct or ‘right’ perspective with fellow students and proudly wore an I Like Ike button to school.
They weren’t particularly interested.
After all, what do nine year olds know or care about politics? One student, whose parents were avid Democrats, was ready to take me on, however. He wore a button that declared Adlai was Our Next President. Our debate started in the boys’ bathroom when we were lined up at the urinals, and continued on to the playground. Things began well. Even then I was a high verbal, and the points I didn’t win on logic, I was taking with volume. But the situation deteriorated rapidly. My fellow debater did what most politicians do when they appear to be losing ground— he started slinging mud.
“Eisenhower is a blankety, blank,” he declared with a smirk to underline his cleverness. It was his mistake; now we were talking my language.
“In that case,” I argued with glee, “Stevenson is a blankety-blank, blank, blank.” I had more blanks. Marshall, and Allen had taught me every swear word in the English language and a few in Spanish. I could go on for minutes without repeating myself. In fact Allen and I had challenged each other to a contest once to see who could swear the longest and the loudest.
There was a vacant lot filled with tall grass down on the corner where Missouri Flat Road ran into Highway 49. We got down on our hands and knees and chased each other through the grass while shouting obscenities at the top of our lungs. We were so engrossed in our efforts that we didn’t note that Marsh had time to run the block home and retrieve Pop to listen in on the exchange. He was not impressed with our command of the language or our volume. My thought about Marshall for telling was that he was a blankety-blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. A real asshole.
Anyway, I was not to be outdone in the mudslinging department; I had a bright future as a campaign manager. I demolished my opponent. Regrettably, I was about to learn an important Hobbesian lesson in power politics: Never start political arguments with a person carrying a baseball bat, which he was. When I continued to hassle him out on the playground, he wound up and swung the bat like he was going for a home run, whacking me across my right leg. Down I went onto the playground and off I went to the hospital as my leg muscle knotted up to the size of a softball. Fortunately, he didn’t break a bone— and my man Ike won the election.
Marshall’s scariest accident happened at Caldor’s logging camp. One summer, Pop arranged for the family to use a house at the camp for a week’s vacation. It was a great opportunity. We were surrounded by El Dorado National Forest, and we could wander to our heart’s content.
The first day out, we discovered an old miner’s shack that had long since given up any pretense of being useful. It was leaning precariously. Naturally, we had to explore it. There might be a treasure. Dark and musty comes to mind as my first impression. Floors creaked in objection on our entrance. A pack rat had set up home in one corner. A treasure for Tickle the dog, perhaps, but not for us.
A table in the opposite corner held more promise. We found an old Phillies Cigar box on top, which was a treasure in itself. Inside there was more: Dynamite caps! Think Big Bang. Caps contain a small amount of an explosive material that when lit by a connected electric current, cause a blast that sets off the dynamite. BOOM. My immediate reaction was to get out of the shack. Marshall’s was to take the box with us. I assumed he was going to give it to Pop so he could dispose of the caps. It was never wise to make assumptions about what my brother might do.
Mother was putting dinner on the table and Marshall was still outside when we heard a loud bang followed by a louder scream. Pop ran. Marshall had held a match down to the dynamite cap to see what would happen. He found out. The whole front of his body from his groin to his head was covered in blood. The only thing that saved his eye sight was that he was wearing shatter-proof glasses. A neighbor, who had come out at the sound of the blast and scream, immediately volunteered to take Nancy and me for the night. My parents jumped in our car and rushed off to the hospital in Placerville, 20 miles away.
Marshall spent a couple of days in the hospital as the doctor removed brass splinters from his body. We returned home. So much for our idyllic vacation. The important thing was that Marshall survived the experience— possibly a bit wiser. Occasional splinters of brass were still making their way out of his skin when he was in his 20s.
While the Diamond Spring’s Firehouse has been rebuilt from when we were children, it still stands in the same location. It was about a block away from where we lived. The siren was loud. The sign at the top says Station 49. It’s appropriate. Diamond’s first firehouse was built in 1849 along what is now Highway 49. In comparison, this is the firehouse not all that different from what it looked like when I was a child, which I featured in my last post. As I recall, they did rebuild it once when I was a child. Pop wired it.
If it sounds like parental supervision of our bad behavior was somewhat lax in my growing up years, that’s because it was. There were times when our parents, or at least Mother, provided tacit approval of our misdeeds. Returning the cherries we confiscated from Pagonni’s orchard or the frogs from Pavy’s Pond was never an issue. They were quietly added to the pantry and happily consumed by all, including Pop. No questions asked.
Once we were even encouraged to break the law.
Because the dirt road we lived on circled the graveyard, the County decided it should be named Graveyard Alley. No one living on the road was asked for an opinion or informed of the decision. The signs simply appeared one day. Mother was infuriated and fired off a letter to the County Board of Supervisors. She was not going to live on Graveyard Alley! Nothing happened, there wasn’t even a response.
Marsh and I were given marching orders: Sometime around midnight go out and remove the signs. We carried out the charge with enthusiasm. No neighbors complained about this obvious act of vandalism since they weren’t particularly happy about living on Graveyard Alley either.
The County replaced the signs. We made another raid and this time the County got the point. They changed the name in honor of an old fellow, George Croft, who was an original resident. We all liked George. It became George’s Alley, which it still is today.
I’m convinced we inherited our trouble making potential from our mother. Pop was a good man who had avoided marriage until he was 38. He was the type of guy who served on the Vestry of the Church, was a Boy Scout leader, and was always available to help out a neighbor. I am sure there were times he wished he had avoided marriage for another 38 years. A lesser man might have said bye-bye and been on his way. But he took his role seriously and pushed on, through thick and thin.
Mother could be something of a ‘wild child,’ wilder than her wild children. Going to fires in Diamond Springs was an excellent example.
Pop was a volunteer fireman for Diamond. As an electrician, it was his job was to show up at burning houses and shut off electricity. When the siren wailed, he was off and running, as were all the other volunteer firemen in town. It was serious business.
For Mother and for us, it was high entertainment. We also took off at the sound of the siren, jumped in whatever old car we had, and sped along behind the fire truck. The time of day and activity of the moment didn’t matter. If it were three in the morning, we would jump out of bed and throw on our clothes; if we were eating, the meal would be abandoned; if we were playing, the toys would be dropped. Nothing could compete with a good fire. Our devotion to disaster was right up there in the same league as it is with today’s news media.
The star performer was someone’s house. There was excitement, danger and pathos. Firemen blasted away with their hoses in a desperate attempt to save the home while the unfortunate family looked on in dismay. But the climax, the Fourth of July finale, was when the roof and walls would crash down and shoot sparks and fire high into the sky. I did keep my oohs and ahhs to myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind a small voice whispered that our family outing was not totally appropriate.
“Your mother chases fire trucks,” one of my little buddies jeered at me in an argument.
My response at the time had been, “So…,” but later in life I would ponder what the towns-people must have thought about Mother, two or three kids, and a dog always showing up. Pop must have been terribly embarrassed. I remember him telling Mother once to stay far behind the fire engine and far away from the fire. He did it under the guise of being concerned for our safety. I now suspect he hoped we wouldn’t be recognized. But he never did have much success in telling Mother what to do. The siren’s call was not to be denied— for either one of them.
Monday’s Post: It’s back to Costa Rica where Peggy and I will show you a ficus, which I would bet is unlike any ficus/banyan/fig tree you have ever seen before unless you have been in Monteverde. No photos this time, I’m keeping it as a surprise. Here is a banyan tree we visited on the Big Island of Hawaii last year, however…
Bob Bray with his wife Linda and the world traveling Bone. Bob and I have been friends since the first grade. Here, he and his wife, joined in supporting me on my trek down the PCT to celebrate my 75th Birthday. (The trek ended up being 750 miles instead of 1000 because of several forest fires in 2018.) We would have been 12 at the time of the Wham-O-Caper.
While I had graduated from my would-be juvenile delinquent days, I was able to pull off a couple of capers without my brother’s influence. The first involved living up to Bertha Bray’s expectations.
For some unfathomable reason, Bob’s parents bought him a Wham-O Slingshot. I mean, how in the world can you expect a kid to be good when he starts playing with his Wham-O? The fact that I owned a Wham-O as well almost guaranteed trouble.
Bob and I agreed to meet for a clandestine hunting expedition. It had to be clandestine because I was still on Bertha Bray’s ‘do not invite’ list. Things were going great until we came upon the old abandoned hobo’s shack that was next to the Southern Pacific railroad track about a quarter of a mile from Bob’s home. Typical of such structures, it had been created out of anything that was available for free: old metal roofing, miscellaneous boards, an occasional nail, a thrown away mattress, etc.
Bob and I looked at each other and had a simultaneous thought. Out came the ammo for the Wham-Os: A shiny new marble for Bob and several BBs for me. We took careful aim, counted down, and let fly, using the derelict old building for target practice.
The Wham-O actually comes with a manual that tells you how to use it. It’s a serious slingshot!
To this day, Bob claims he saw his marble harmlessly strike the building while my BBs were smashing a window to smithereens. I of course saw Bob’s marble hit the window dead on while my BBs weren’t even close. The current occupant of the not abandoned home, who was washing dishes behind a willow bush in a small stream, saw something entirely different: two little boys smashing his pride and joy.
He let out a bellow and came charging up the trail. As he should have. Once again, the Mekemson Gang, along with its newest recruit, was on the run. The good news is that we escaped. The bad news was that the hobo recognized Bob. He went straight to his house. Mrs. Bray’s worst fears had been realized. (For the 50thAnniversary of our Wham-O Adventure, Bob sent me a slingshot. Bertha probably rolled over in her grave. Or maybe she chuckled.)
A prize 4-H pig at the Modoc County Fair in Northern California.
Tony Pavy’s prize pig was another case where Marshall was totally innocent. Tony had a large pond with bullfrogs, a hundred or so acres of scrubland, and a wooded hillside that housed a number of gray squirrels and blackberry vines loaded with the sweet, juicy fruit. His attitude was similar to that of Jimmy Pagonni: Children were not to be heard or seen on his property.
As with Pagonni, we didn’t allow Pavy to keep us from our appointed rounds. We would slip in at night to harvest his bullfrogs and during the day to harvest blackberries or bring down a squirrel. Tony had a very effective way of getting rid of us. In a very loud voice he would yell, “Mama, get my gun!” and we would streak out of there.
A couple of friends and I were hunting for the squirrels on his hillside when the unfortunate incident with the pig took place. But before I tell the story, I need to digress and provide some background information.
Growing up in Diamond Springs in the 50s meant having a gun and shooting things. At least it did if you were a boy. We graduated from BB guns and 22s to deer rifles and shotguns. Obtaining your first rifle was an experience similar in importance to obtaining your driver’s license, except you could get one a lot earlier. Before we were allowed to hunt, however, certain rules were pounded into our heads. We had to take a course sponsored by the National Rifle Association. These were the years when the NRA’s primary concern was about hunting and hunter safety, not promoting the use of automatic weapons.
I learned from the NRA instructor that it is important to know what you were shooting. This might seem obvious, but flat-landers out of Sacramento often had trouble making the distinction between a cow and a deer. Of a much more serious nature, every so often one would mistake another hunter for a deer. Wear red hats and bright clothes, we were taught. There were other things we weren’t supposed to shoot as well. People’s houses for example. Robins were also high on the list. They ate their weight daily in bugs. It was okay to shoot ‘vermin’ such as ground squirrels, jackrabbits, coyotes and the scrub jays that pecked away at pears. In fact there was a bounty on jays, $.25 per head. Marshall used it as a money-maker.
My usual preference was for watching wildlife, not killing it. I made an exception for gray squirrels. The thrill of the hunt combined with my appetite for a delicious squirrel and dumpling stew my mother whipped up overcame any reservations I had. All of which brings me back to the pig.
Gray squirrels have about the same appreciation for being shot that you or I might. To avoid this unhappy circumstance, they take off leaping through the trees. The one we had marked for dinner was jumping from limb to limb in a live oak tree on the hill above Pavy’s with all three of us shooting at it when we heard a bellow from the barnyard.
“Mama, get my gun! They shot my pig! They shot my pig! Hurry, Mama!”
I don’t know how fast Mama moved but we flew. By the time Ernie Carlson, the County Sheriff, and a Diamond Springs resident, caught up with us we were far away from Pavy’s and about as innocent as newborn piglets.
“Excuse me, boys,” the Sheriff remarked when he pulled over in his car and rolled down his window, “I don’t suppose you know anything about Tony Pavy’s pig being shot.”
“No, sir,” we replied respectfully in unison. We had rehearsed. Besides, we were technically correct. We hadn’t shot Pavy’s pig; we hadn’t even shot the squirrel. It was a ricocheting bullet that did in the pig.
Ernie looked at us dubiously.
“Pavy told me there were three kids about your age,” the Sheriff said as he continued to build pressure, hoping that one of us would break.
“We’ve been out in back of Ot Jone’s Pond,” I argued indignantly. And we had been. So what if we had arrived there out of breath.
“Well, you kids behave yourselves,” the Sheriff said with an ominous I know you’re lying tone.
We breathed a joint sigh of relief as he rolled up his window and drove off. Once more we had avoided a fate we probably deserved. I suspect now that Ernie was not one hundred percent dedicated to finding the alleged pig murderers. Tony was not universally loved in the community for several reasons, of which threatening to shoot kids was one.
For example: My father did some electrical work for him for free. As he was leaving, Tony asked, “Would you like one of my geese for dinner?”
“Sure,” Pop had replied, assuming Pavy was offering it as thanks for his four hours of work.
“Good,” Tony had replied, “that will be five dollars.” Pop was more than a little irritated. He had a hearty laugh years later when I told him about our adventure with the pig. I wisely avoided telling him at the time, however. His perspective on our miscreant behavior softened substantially with distance and age.
Friday’s Post: One of my classmates in grade school insults me by saying “Your Mother Chases Fire Trucks.” So what if it was true.
An early photo of the Diamond Springs Firehouse with Volunteer Firemen. The siren that called the Volunteers, including Pop, is on the right.
This is how I felt after being bonked on the head by a baseball! Just kidding. It’s actually here because I didn’t have a photo for Chapter 11. This one is an introduction to Friday’s post on Costa Rica Butterflies.
There came a time when I grew out of my mischief making phase. Other things took precedence: school, wandering in the woods, church, girls, and even sports. Few of these earned an Ut-Oh. There were a couple of incidents that earned inclusion in this book, however. The first had to do with a girl.
Starting as far back as the third grade, I had a girlfriend, or at least believed I did. The girls didn’t have to agree. My first heart throb was Carol. She was a younger woman: cute and smart. While I appreciated those qualities, what fascinated me about Carol was that she could run like the wind. I was in love with her legs. We both lived within a couple of blocks of school and would walk home for lunch.
The advantage of going home was we would arrive back at school before the other kids were let out for noon recess. This meant we could grab the best positions for whatever game was being played. My problem was that Carol could outrun me and this meant I was usually second in line. It seemed like a small price to pay for seeing those legs kicking up the dirt in front of me.
Next, I fell for an older woman, the fifth grade sister of one of my classmates in the fourth grade. She had quite a mouth on her and called her little brother pet names like shit-head and fuck-face. I was fascinated to hear a girl talk like that. One weekend, I found myself walking 2 ½ miles following the Southern Pacific railroad tracks to ‘visit her brother’ with my primary objective hearing her speak those ‘guy’ words. She didn’t disappoint…
The Ut-Oh, however, took place when I was in the fifth grade. Judy was a fourth grader with flaming red hair who had several boys in the fourth and fifth grade passionately pursuing her. The competition was fierce. Judy loved it. To encourage us, she cut off small locks of her hair and gave one to each of her admirers. I was surprised she had any hair left but I cherished my locket.
My main competitor for Judy was Eric. He was an up and coming fourth grader, small, but extremely athletic and an all-around nice kid. Judy let it be known that we were the chosen two.
We had our showdown at a school movie that provided instructions on what to do when the Russians bombed us. We spent a lot of time in the 50s worrying about that. People began building bomb shelters in their backyards. The teachers would make us crawl under our desks to prepare for the explosion. We were taught to cover our faces with our arms so glass shattering in from the windows wouldn’t blind us. It is not surprising that the traumatized children of the 50’s grew up to be the anti-war advocates of the 60s and 70s. I stayed up one night to watch atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert over 200 miles away. It lit up the whole Eastern sky and added a touch of reality to our hide-under-the-desk practice.
In the lineup for the movie, Eric aced me out and managed to get next to Judy. A half dozen other fourth graders played honor guard and I couldn’t even get close, but my luck didn’t abandon me altogether. I grabbed the seat immediately in back of her where I could at least monitor Eric’s behavior. The lights went down and the movie started. I strained to keep an eye on Eric. He reached over and grabbed Judy’s hand and she let him hold it. Damn! I could have killed him.
But then, unbelievably, Judy slipped her other hand between the chairs and grabbed my knee. My knee! It was raw sex. The ut-oh bulge in my pants proved it.
Sports presented a totally different type of challenge. I am not a natural jock. It isn’t so much physical as mental. You have to care to be good at sports and I find other things more interesting. Part of this evolved from a lack of enthusiasm on the home front. There was little vicarious parental drive to see us excel on the playing field.
Being as blind as a bat didn’t help much either. Like most young people in the 50s, I was not excited about wearing glasses. When Mrs. Wells, the school nurse, came to class with her eye charts, I would memorize the lines while she was setting up and then breeze through the test. As for class work, I would sit close to the black board and squint a lot. While I got away with this more or less in the classroom, it became a serious hazard on the Little League field.
I remember going out for the team. All of my friends played and social pressure suggested it was the thing to do. Nervously, I showed up on opening day and faced the usual chaos of parents signing up their stars, balls flying everywhere, coaches yelling, and kids running in a dozen different directions at once.
“Okay, Curtis,” the Coach instructed, “let’s see how you handle this fly.”
Crack! I heard him hit the ball. Fine, except where was it? The ball had disappeared. Conk. It magically reappeared out of nowhere, bounced off my glove and hit me on the head.
“What’s the matter? Can’t you see?” the Coach yelled helpfully. “Let’s try it again.” My Little League Career was short lived. I went back to carrying out my inventory of the number of skunks that lived in the Woods. This didn’t mean I was hopeless at sports. In the seventh grade I finally obtained glasses and discovered the miracle of vision: Trees had leaves, billboards were pushing drugs, and the kid waving at me from across the street was flipping me off. I could even see baseballs. It was time to become a sports hero.
It says something about your future in sports when your career peaks in the eighth grade.
Thanks to Mrs. Young, I was slightly older than my classmate and, thanks to genetics plus an early growth spurt, slightly bigger. More importantly, I had mastered the art of leadership: Make noise, appear confident and charge the enemy. As a result I became quarterback and captain of the football team, center and captain of the basketball team and pitcher and captain of the softball team. I even went out for track and ran the 440, but they didn’t select me as captain. That honor went to a seventh grader. I was bummed.
I mentioned in my last post that there were no photos of the Pond or the Woods. They were victims of the endless march of ‘civilization.’ Fortunately, and I should add, so far, there are still wild places on earth. Costa Rica has many. Some, such as Monteverde, are attracting hordes of tourists. There’s good and bad news here. Among the good is that the tourists provide Costa Rica with a welcome source of income and the opportunity for the tourists to enjoy the beauty and wildlife of Costa Rica. The bad news is the incredible commercialization that goes along with it and the impact. It’s similar to when the large cruise ships drop thousands of people onto the small Greek Island of Santorini, or our most popular National Parks in America turn into traffic jams in the summer. But enough on that. The tree above was a new one to me, a fern tree. There are more photos below after my UT-OH chapter on the Woods.
Part 2: The Woods
The Woods, like the Pond, earned a capital letter. To get there I walked out the back door, down the alley past the Graveyard, and through a pasture Jimmy Pagonni rented for his cattle. Tackling the pasture involved crawling through a rusty barbed wire fence, avoiding fresh cow pies, climbing a hill, and jumping an irrigation ditch. The journey was fraught with danger. Hungry barbed wire consumed several of my shirts and occasionally went for my back.
Torn clothing and bleeding scratches were a minor irritation in comparison to stepping in fresh cow poop, though. A thousand-pound, grass-eating machine produces acres of the stuff. Deep piles sneak up your foot and slosh over into your shoes. Toes hate this. Even more treacherous are the little piles that hide out in the grass. A well-placed patty can send you sliding faster than black ice. The real danger here is ending up with your butt in the pile. I did that, once. Happily, no one was around to witness my misfortune, or hear my language, except Tickle the Dog. I swore him to secrecy. He knew many of my secrets. It’s a damned good thing he couldn’t talk.
For all of its hazards, the total hike to the Woods took about 15 minutes. Digger pines with drunken windmill limbs guarded the borders while gnarly manzanita and spiked chaparral dared the casual visitor to venture off the trail. Poison oak proved more subtle but effective in discouraging exploration.
I could count on raucous California jays to announce my presence, especially if I was stalking a band of notorious outlaws. Ground squirrels were also quick to whistle their displeasure. Less talkative jackrabbits merely ambled off upon spotting me, put on a little speed for a hyper Cocker, and became bounding blurs in the presence of a hungry greyhound. Flickers, California quail and acorn woodpeckers held discussions in distinctive voices I soon learned to recognize.
From the beginning, I felt at home in the Woods, like I belonged. I quickly learned that its hidden recesses contained a multitude of secrets. I was eager to learn what they had to teach me, but the process seemed glacial. It required patience and I hardly knew how to spell the word. I did know how to sit quietly, however. This was a skill I had picked up from the hours I spent with my nose buried in books. The woodland creatures prefer their people noisy. A Curt stomping down the trail, snapping dead twigs, and talking to himself was easy to avoid, while a Curt being quiet might surprise them.
One gray squirrel was particularly loud in his objections. He lived in the top branches of a digger pine beside the trail and maintained an observation post on an overhanging limb. When he heard me coming, he would adopt his ‘you can’t see me gray squirrel playing statue pose.’ But I knew where to look. I would find a comfortable seat and stare at him. It drove him crazy. Soon he would start to thump the limb madly with his foot and chirr loudly. He had pine nuts to gather, a stick home to remodel, and a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed lady to woo. I was blocking progress. Eventually, if I didn’t move, his irritation would bring him scrambling down the trunk for an up-close and personal scolding.
After about 10 minutes of continuous haranguing, he’d decide I was a harmless, if obnoxious aberration and go about his business. That’s when I begin to learn valuable secrets, like where he hid his pine nuts. It was also a sign for the rest of the wildlife to come out of hiding. A western fence lizard might work its way to the top of the dead log next to me and start doing push-ups. Why, I couldn’t imagine. Or perhaps a thrush would begin to scratch up the leaves under the manzanita in search of creepy tidbits. The first time I heard one, it sounded like a very large animal interested in little boy flesh.
Occasionally there were special treats: A band of teenage gray squirrels playing tag and demonstrating their incredible acrobatics; a doe leading its shy, speckled fawn out to drink in the small stream that graced the Wood’s meadow; a coyote sneaking up on a ground squirrel hole with an intensity I could almost feel.
I also began to play at stalking animals. At some point in time between childhood and becoming a teenager, I read James Fennimore Cooper and began to think I was a reincarnation of Natty Bumppo. Looking back, I can’t say I was particularly skilled, but no one could have told me so at the time. At least I learned to avoid dry twigs, walk slowly, and stop frequently.
Occasionally, I even managed to sneak up on some unsuspecting woodland creature.
If the birds and the animals weren’t present, they left signs for me. There was always the helter-skelter pack rat nest to explore. Tickle liked to tear them apart, quickly sending twigs flying in all directions. There were also numerous tracks to figure out. Was it a dog or coyote that had stopped for a drink out of the stream the night before? Tickle knew instantly, but I had to piece it together. A sinuous trail left by a slithery serpent was guaranteed to catch my attention. This was rattlesnake country. Who’d been eating whom or what was another question? The dismantled pinecone was easy to figure out, but who considered the bark on a young white fir a delicacy? And what about the quail feathers scattered haphazardly beside the trail?
Scat, I learned, was the tracker’s word for shit. It offered a multitude of clues for what animals had been ambling down the trail and what they had been eating. There were deer droppings and rabbit droppings and mouse droppings descending in size. Coyotes left their distinctive dog-like scat but the presence of fur suggested that something other than dog food had been on the menu. Some scat was particularly fascinating, at least to me. Burped up owl pellets provided a treasure chest of bones— little feet, little legs and little skulls that grinned back with the vacant stare of slow mice.
While Tarzan hung out in the Graveyard and pirates infested the Pond, mountain men, cowboys, Indians, Robin Hood and various bad guys roamed the Woods. Each bush hid a potential enemy that I would indubitably vanquish. I had the fastest two fingers in the West and I could split a pine nut with an imaginary arrow at 50 yards. I never lost. How could I? It was my fantasy.
Daydreams were only a part of the picture. I fell in love with wandering in the Woods and playing on the Pond. There was an encyclopedia of knowledge available and a multitude of lessons about life. Learning wasn’t a conscious effort, however; it was more like absorption. The world shifted for me when I entered the Woods and time slowed down. A spider with an egg sack was worth five minutes, a gopher pushing dirt out of its hole, 20, and a deer with a fawn, a lifetime.
It isn’t surprising that I became known as Nature Boy by my classmates, given all the time I spent in the woods. I considered it a compliment.
The hanging bridges of Monteverde gave us a unique opportunity to study both the canopy and the forest beneath. There were six bridges at Treetopia Park. At 774 feet, this was the longest. It was also more open. The canopy towered over most of the bridges.One bridge provided us with an opportunity look down on a fern tree. The leaves were a definite clue that we were looking at a fern.As did how the leaves unfold or unfurl known as Circinate vernation. This has always fascinated me about ferns. I have many photos of different species. But given that there are 10-12000 or more know species, I have a few to go…Here’s a different species at Treetopia.And another. Both tropical and temperate rainforests provide ideal conditions for ferns to grow. Some can be giants. We spotted these down on the ground from the hanging bridge. I wish I had a person down on the ground to provide perspective. They would have made my 5 feet 11 inches appear small.
I’d love to show you a photo of the Pond, or the Woods. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of either when I was young. I went back a few years ago to photograph the sites that were so important to my childhood— and life. The Pond had become a large gas station and the Woods had become a trailer park. It’s called progress. There was money to be made.
Instead you have a gorgeous sunset photo over Monteverde, Costa Rica taken by our grandson, Cooper, who is in the eighth grade. Our son, Tony, his wife, Cammie and their three boys, Connor, Chris, and Cooper have joined us this week. We are situated up on a high hill surrounded by rainforest. It even has vines that are safe to swing on and a view that looks all the way to the Pacific Ocean. We sent the boys out with our cameras to explore the surrounding woods and take photos of what they found most interesting. There are more pictures after today’s UT-OH tale.
Part 1: The Pond
There came a time when the Graveyard no longer met my wandering needs. I started traveling farther and farther afield, 15 minutes at a time. That’s how far the Pond and the Woods were away. They were where I played and, more importantly, where I developed a life-long love of the natural world. As such, they earned a capital P and capital W. First up: The Pond.
There were a number of ponds in the area. Oscar ‘Ot’ Jones had one on his ranch for cattle; Caldor had one where logs waited for their appointment with the buzz saw; Forni had one over the hill from his slaughterhouse, and Tony Pavy had one that was supposedly off-limits. But there was only one capital P Pond, the one next to the Community Hall. If I told Marshall, my parents or my friends I was going to the Pond, they knew immediately where I would be.
It was a magical place filled with catfish, mud turtles, bullfrogs and pirates. Although the Pond was small, it had a peninsula, island, deep channel, cattails and shallows. In the spring, redwing blackbirds nested in the cattails and filled the air with melodic sounds. Mallards took advantage of the island’s safety to set up housekeeping. Catfish used holes in the bank of the peninsula to deposit hundreds of eggs that eventually turned into large schools of small black torpedoes dashing about in frenetic unison. Momma bullfrogs laid eggs in strings that grew into chubby pollywogs. When they reached walnut size, tiny legs sprouted in one of nature’s miracles of transformation. Water snakes slithered through the water with the sole purpose of thinning out the burgeoning frog population. I quickly learned to recognize the piteous cry of a frog being consumed whole. Turtles liked to hang out in the shallows where any log or board provided a convenient sunning spot. They always slid off at our appearance but a few quiet minutes would find them surfacing to reclaim lost territory.
By mid-summer the Pond would start to evaporate. The shallow areas surrendered first, sopped up by the burning sun. Life became concentrated in a few square yards of thick, tepid water, only inches deep and supported by a foot of squishy mud. All too soon the Pond was bone-dry with mud cracked and curled. Turtles, snakes and frogs crawled, slithered and hopped away to other nearby water. Catfish dug their way into the mud and entered a deep sleep, waiting for the princely kiss of winter rains. Ducks flew away quacking loudly, leaving only silence behind.
Fall and winter rains found the Pond refilling and then brimming. Cloudy, gray, wind-swept days rippled the water and created a sense of melancholy that even an eight-year-old could feel.
But melancholy was a rare emotion for the Pond. To us, it was a playground with more options than an amusement park. A few railroad ties borrowed from Caldor and nailed together with varying sized boards made great rafts for exploring the furthest, most secret corners of the Pond. Imagination turned the rafts into ferocious pirate ships that ravaged and pillaged the far shores, or primitive bumper cars guaranteed to dunk someone, usually me.
In late spring, the Pond became a swimming hole, inviting us to test still cold waters. One spring, thin ice required a double and then triple-dare before we plunged in. It was a short swim. Swimsuits were always optional and rarely worn. I took my first swimming lessons there and mastered dog paddling with my cocker spaniel, Tickle, providing instructions. More sophisticated strokes would wait for more sophisticated lakes.
Frogs and catfish were for catching and adding to the family larder. During the day, a long pole with fishing line attached to a three-pronged hook and decorated with red cloth became irresistible bait for bullfrogs. At night, a flashlight and a spear-like gig provided an even more primitive means of earning dinner. The deep chug-a-rums so prominent from a distance became silent as we approached. Stealth was required. A splash signified failure as our quarry decided that sitting on the bottom of the Pond was preferable to joining us for dinner.
Victory meant a gourmet treat, frog legs. Preparation involved amputating the frog’s hind legs at the hips and then pealing the skin off like tights. It was a lesson I learned early: If you catch it, you clean it. We were required to chop off the big feet as well. Mother didn’t like being reminded that a happy frog had been attached hours earlier. She also insisted on delayed gratification. Cooking the frog legs on the same day they were caught encouraged them to jump around in the frying pan. “Too creepy!” she declared.
Catching catfish required nerves of steel. We caught them by hand as they lurked with heads protruding from their holes in the banks. Nerves were required because the catfish had serious weapons, needle sharp fins tipped with stingers that packed a wallop. They had to be caught exactly right and held firmly, which was not easy when dealing with a slimy fish trying to avoid the frying pan. But their taste was out of this world and had the slightly exotic quality of something that ate anything that couldn’t eat them.
Next up on Wednesday: The Woods. On Friday, we will focus on some of our Costa Rica adventures.
Chris, who is a sophomore in high school, had watched a capybara as it disappeared into the woods. Later when he was visiting a waterfall, one did him the courtesy of hanging out long enough for a photo.Connor, who is a junior, actually preferred to have a photo of himself taken up a banyan tree without a ladder. His passion for high places reminds us of his dad when he was his age. Here are the boys together at the base of the banyan tree: Chris on the left, Connor in the back, and Cooper on the right.Our other activity of the day was to explore the forest canopy on hanging bridges. There were 6 different bridges. This one had a glass bottom you could see the jungle below. That’s grandma, Peggy, down on the end. Next up on Wednesday, the Woods.
Have you ever climbed a tree? As kids growing up in Diamond Springs, California, there were dozens that called to us, each with a unique challenge. Maybe the fact that we share 98.8 of our genes with chimps played a role. Nothing spoke ‘challenge’ like the 80 foot tall tree in the Graveyard, however. Peggy thinks at 83, I should stick to smaller trees.A view of the tree today taken from near the house where we lived. Now, imagine 8-10 year olds racing up and down this tree as fast as they could go.
Two of these large incense cedar trees dominated the Graveyard. From an under five-foot perspective, they were gigantic, stretching some 75-80 feet skyward. The limbs of the largest started 20 feet up, providing scant hope for climbing. As usual, Marshall found a risky way around the problem.
Looking appropriately graveyard-spooky in its old age, the largest Incense Cedar still dominates the Graveyard. It was probably planted in the 1850s. The large lower limbs (center left) were where Pop built our tree house. It stretched half way around the tree.
Several of the huge limbs came tantalizingly close to the ground at their tips, and one could be reached by standing on the tombstone I used to spy on Demon the Cat when she hid her kittens. But only Marshall could reach it; I was frustratingly short by several inches. Marsh would make a leap, grab the limb, and shimmy up it hanging butt down until the limb became large enough for him to work his way around to the top. Then he would crawl up to the tree trunk, five Curt-lengths off the ground. After that, he would climb to wonderfully mysterious heights I could only dream about.
Eventually I grew tall enough to make my first triumphant journey up the limb. Then, very carefully, I climbed to the heart-stopping top, limb by limb. All of Diamond spread out before me. I could see our school, the mill where my father worked, the woods, and the hill with a Cross where I had shivered my way through at a cold Easter Sunrise Service. I could see the whole world. Except for a slight wind that made the tree top sway and stirred my imagination about the far away ground, I figured I was as close to Heaven as I would ever get.
I could see forever. A few years after my first ascent up the tree, I borrowed my father’s camera and climbed up the tree and took photographs of the surrounding country. This is looking across Diamond. The distant hill on the left was where the cross stood for years.
By the time I finally made it to the top, Marshall had more grandiose plans for the tree. We would build a tree house on the upper branches. Off we went to Caldor, the lumber mill where Pop worked, to liberate some two by fours. Then we raided Pop’s tool shed for a hammer, nails, and rope. My job was to be the ground man while Marshall climbed up close to the top. He would then lower the rope and I would tie on a board that he would hoist up and nail in. It was a good plan, or so we thought.
Along about the third board, Pop showed up. It wasn’t so much that we wanted to build a tree fort in the Graveyard that bothered him, or even that we had borrowed his tools and nails without asking. He even ignored the liberated lumber. His concern was that we were building our fort 60-feet up in the air on thin limbs that would easily break with nails that barely reached through the boards. After he graphically described the potential results, even Marshall had second thoughts.
Pop had a solution though. He would build us a proper tree house on the massive limbs that were only 20 feet off the ground. He would also add a ladder so we could avoid our tombstone-shimmy-up-the-limb route. And he did. It was a magnificent open tree house of Swiss Family Robinson proportions that easily accommodated our buddies and us with room to spare.
It was more like a pirate hideout than a Robinson family home, however. Hidden in the tree and hidden in the middle of the Graveyard, it became our special retreat where we could escape everything except the call to dinner. It also became my center for daydreaming and Marshall’s center for planning mischief. He, along with our friends Allen and Lee, would scope out our forays into Diamond and the surrounding countryside.
And finally, the treehouse became the starting point for the Great Tree Race. We would scramble to the top and back down in one-on-one competition as quickly as we could. Death-defying is an appropriate description. Or maybe, suicidal. Slips were a common hazard. Unfortunately, the other boys always beat me; they were one to three years older, and I was the one most susceptible to losing my grip. My steady diet of Tarzan comic books sustained me, though, and I refused to give up. Eventually, several years later, I would triumph.
Marshall was taking a teenage time-out with Mother’s parents who had moved to Watsonville, down on the Central Coast of California. Each day I went to the Graveyard and took several practice-runs up the tree. I became half monkey. Each limb was memorized and an optimum route chosen. Tree climbing muscles bulged; my grip became iron and my nerves steel.
Finally, the big day arrived and Marshall came home. He was every bit the big brother who had been away at high school while little brother stayed at home and finished the eighth grade. He talked of cars and girls and wild parties and of his friend Dwight who could knock people out with one punch. I casually mentioned the possibility of a race to the top of the tree. What a set up. As a two pack-a-day, sixteen-year-old, cigarette smoker he wasn’t into tree climbing, but how could he resist a challenge from his little brother.
Off we went. Marsh didn’t stand a chance. It was payback time for years of big brother hassles. I flew up and down the tree. I hardly touched the limbs. Slip? So what, I would catch the next one. Marsh was about half way up the tree when I passed him on my way down. I showed no mercy and greeted him with a grin when he arrived, huffing and puffing, at the tree house.
His sense of humor was minimal. Back on the ground, his bruised ego demanded that he challenge me to a wrestling match. I quickly pinned him to the ground. It was the end of the Great Tree Race, the end of big brother dominance, and a fitting end to my years of associating with dead people in the Graveyard.
And Now for the Coatisof Costa Rica
Yesterday, Peggy and I drove from Nuevo Arenal to the tourist oriented town of La Fortuna. It was pretty much what one would expect of a town that makes its living off of separating money from the visitors. There were a ton of things you could do for a price. I don’t have a problem with that. People would get their money’s worth and locals could put food on their tables. But I much preferred Nuevo Arenal.
The highlight of the trip was the band of Coatis we came across on our drive over. There must have been a dozen or so. These diurnal, omnivorous animals are actually related to raccoons. They were spread out alongside the road doing their coati thing. They were easily outnumbered by the people who had stopped to admire them.
Who wouldn’t love a face like this?I found their tails quite interesting…Especially when they stuck them straight up in the air!Having had enough of people, they used the curb as a runway to escape.
And I’ll make my own escape here. Once again, I am going to make a slight change in my blog. I’ve decided to speed up UT-OH, my blog-a-book memoir, so I can indeed turn it into a book. I’ll be pulling out tales from my 15-years of blogging and putting them up in chapters on Mondays and Wednesdays. I’ll reserve Fridays for our travel blog covering our present journeys: Costa Rica now, Greece and the Greek Islands in May, and then Northern Scotland and Ireland in June and July.
In my posts on Monday and Wednesday next week, I am going to relate the two experiences that led to my lifelong love of the wilderness: The Pond and the Woods.
PLUS A Bonus: Costa Rica Is for the Birds… That’s a Good Thing
A change of plans today. I was going to do a post on unique Burning Man structures, but Peggy and I are down in Costa Rica happily settled into a villa above Lake Arenal. A warm tropical breeze is making me feel sleepy. My ‘get up and go has got up and went,’ as the song proclaimed, galloped off to the north. Pura Vida, the Costa Ricans would say. We are living the good life. Posting a tale I have already written plus throwing up some fun photos of birds that Peggy and I have taken is a lot easier than putting together a Burning Man post. Plus, over half the time I went to research a subject for the post, I found that Google had placed one of my blogs on the subject at the top or near the top of its research list and/or just opposite its AI answer. That’s great for SEO, but it also suggests how much I have already written on the subject.
So, my apologies to those who have tuned in to learn more about Burning Man, but hey, a ghost story makes a great substitute, right? So here it is as a chapter in my ongoing blog-a-book series: UT-OH. I’ll eventually get back to Burning Man. I always do.
Nancy Jo and the Graveyard Ghost
My sister was seven years older than I and lived on a different planet, the mysterious world of teenage girls. Her concern about ghosts makes this story a powerful testimony to teenage hormones. If Marshall and I had a healthy respect for the Graveyard at night, Nancy’s fear was monumental.
This story begins with Nancy falling in ‘love’ with the ‘boy’ next door, Johnny. His parents were good folks from a kids’ perspective. Marshall and I raided their apple trees with impunity, and Mama, a big Italian lady, made great spaghetti that included wild manzanita mushrooms. I was fascinated with the way she yelled “Bullll Sheeeet” in a stentorian voice when she was whipping Papa into line. He was a skinny, ‘Old Country type of guy’ who thought he should be in charge. Papa was the one who suggested the gunny sack method of castration for MC.
I use the terms love and boy somewhat loosely since Nancy at 16 was more in infatuation than love, and Johnny, a 22-year-old Korean War Veteran, was a little old for the boy designation, not to mention Nancy. Our parents were not happy, a fact that only seemed to encourage my sister.
Her teenage hormones aided by a healthy dose of rebellion overcame her good sense and she pursued the budding relationship. Johnny didn’t make it easy. His idea of a special date was to drive down the alley and honk. Otherwise, he avoided our place. If Nancy wanted to see him, she had to visit his home. It should have been easy; his house was right behind ours.
But there was a major obstacle, the dreaded Graveyard. To avoid it, Nancy had to climb over the fence that separated our houses. Her other option was walk up the alley that almost touched the tombstones. Given her feelings about dead people, the solution seemed easy— climb the fence. Marsh and I had been over it many times in search of apples. Something about teenage girl dignity I didn’t understand eliminated fence climbing, however. Nancy was left up the alley without an escort.
While she wasn’t above sneaking out her window, Nancy asked permission to see Johnny the night of the Graveyard Ghost attack. She approached Mother around seven. It was one of those warm summer evenings where the sun is reluctant to go down and boys are granted special permission to stay up. Marshall and I listened intently.
“Mother, I think I’ll go visit Johnny,” Nancy stated and asked in the same sentence. Careful maneuvering was required. An outright statement would have triggered a parental prerogative no and an outright question may have solicited a parental concern no.
Silence. This communicated disapproval, a possible no, and a tad of punishment for raising the issue.
“Mother?” We were on the edge of an impending teenage tantrum. Nancy could throw a good one.
“Okay” with weary resignation followed by, “but you have to be home by ten.”
What we heard was TEN. Translate after dark. Nancy would be coming down the alley past the Graveyard in the dark and she would be scared. Knowing Johnny’s desire to avoid my parents, we figured she would also be alone. A fiendish plot was hatched.
At 9:45, Marsh and I slipped outside and made our way up the alley to a point half way between our house and Johnny’s. Next, we took a few steps into Graveyard where weed-like Heavenly trees and deep Myrtle provided perfect cover. Hiding there at night was scary, but Marshall and I were operating under inspiration.
Marsh stripped the limbs off of one of the young trees, bent it over like a catapult, and draped his white T-shirt on the trunk. We then scrunched down and waited.
At exactly 10:00, Nancy opened the back door and stepped outside with Johnny. Our hearts skipped a beat. Would he walk her home? No. After a perfunctory goodnight, Johnny dutifully went back inside and one very alone sister began her hesitant but fateful walk down the alley.
She approached slowly, desperately looking the other direction to avoid seeing tombstones and keeping as far from the Graveyard as the alley and fence allowed.
At exactly the right moment, we struck. Marshall let go of the T-shirt and the supple Heavenly Tree whipped it into the air. It arched up over the alley and floated down in front of our already frightened sister. We started woooooing wildly like the eight and ten-year-old ghosts we were supposed to be.
Did Nancy streak down the alley to the safety of the House? No. Did she figure out her two little brothers were playing a trick and commit murder? No. Absolute hysteria ensued. She stood still and screamed. She was feet stuck to the ground petrified except for her lungs and mouth. They worked fine.
As her voice hit opera pitch, we realized that our prank was not going as planned. Nancy was not having fun. We leapt out to remedy the problem.
Bad idea.
Two bodies hurtling at you out of a graveyard in the dark of night is not a recommended solution for frayed nerves and an intense fear of dead people. The three of us, Nancy bawling and Marshall and I worrying about consequences, proceeded to the house. After a thorough scolding, we were sent to bed. I suspect our parents laughed afterwards. Many years later, even Nancy could see the humor in our prank— and laugh as well.
A fun note on The Bush Devil Ate Sam
I often get comments from people who have read my book including a number of my followers and fellow authors. They are always appreciated. I also hear from people outside our WordPress community. Here’s what I found on Gmail yesterday.
Loved The Bush Devil Ate Sam
Hi Curtis,
I just finished reading The Bush Devil Ate Sam, and I have to say, it was such a vivid, immersive experience! The way you bring Liberia to life, the chaos of students strolling in with termites for breakfast, the encounters with the army ants, and the tension of navigating the local authorities, had me laughing, gasping, and completely captivated. It’s clear how much heart and firsthand experience went into every story.
Reading it also got me thinking about my own writing journey. Each book I’ve worked on has taught me something new about patience, perspective, and letting a story evolve naturally, even when it takes unexpected turns. It’s always fascinating to reflect on the ways our experiences shape the stories we tell.
I’d love to hear about your own process with this book. Did you find it easy to translate your Peace Corps experiences into these stories, or was it more of a challenge to capture the humor, the tension, and the history all at once? Thank you for sharing such a memorable and honest perspective on life as a Peace Corps volunteer. Half the fun was getting to see Liberia through your eyes.
Warmly, Taylor Jenkins Reid
The thoughtfulness of this comment caught my attention. And how well it was written. Of course, I responded to Taylor. But there is more. Taylor is a best-selling author of the New York Times and has won a number of national awards for her writing. Among her books is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, a book that the book club that Peggy and I belonged to for 36 years had picked to read. An Amazon Prime television series based on one of her books is now playing.
Taylor immediately responded to my comments and asked if I would share my body of work. Now I have to tell her she has it, the rest is tied up in 1500 WordPress blogs. Grin. I must say, I am now inspired to finish UT-OH! asap. You may be seeing a couple of chapters a week. I’d prefer that my body of work include two books.
Costa Rica Is for the Birds.It’s a good thing.
Our villa looks out on a large bird feeder that the staff and guests (including us) of Lake Gardens daily fill with a variety of fruits that the local population of birds love. I hate to confess this as a would-be birder, but I can sit on our couch and take photos of all the action. And action it is, constant drama of who gets to eat when, a veritable pecking order of turkey-size birds down to sparrow-size. A lot more photos will be coming of birds and hopefully other jungle life. This is a teaser.
This is the king or queen of the feeder. A Crested Guan. All other birds are required to leave the platform when they are on it.When Peggy opened our curtains on our first morning, Peggy found this crew back-lit by the sun lined up for breakfast and snapped their photo.Up close and personal.Number 2 on the pecking order was this fellow. We aren’t sure what it was, but our assumption is a fledgling Guam. If so, their parents were not about to share food with them. A bush was just below the feeder that the adults would chase the kids around, and around. It was like the Keystone Cops.Here are the kids up on the bird feeder.Number three was a Montezuma oropendola.Peggy caught a photo of it looking the other direction.Number 4: A Brown Jay. We recognized this fellow immediately by its call. We’ve spent our lives with various members of the jay family, but never a brown one. I swear the pretty bird was posing for Peggy. He kept coming back to this lamp outsiide our villa and looking in the window. He didn’t eat fruit, however, He ate bugs. It’s a Social Flycatcher.
That’s it for today. On Thursday, I’ll write about a death defying tree race in UT-OH, one of our many adventures that makes me wonder how we ever lived through childhood. And, there will be more bird photos from Costa Rica.
Wandering through Time and Place 