Graduate or Go to Jail… I Have a Choice

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I organized a protest my senior year. It was probably the first time El Dorado Union High School students in Placerville ever went on strike. (It may have been the last.) As I recall we skipped class and presented a petition to the Principal. Some our more rowdy classmates added an exclamation point by lighting a trashcan on fire.

As a 60’s issue, it wasn’t a biggie. The Administration had axed our Senior Ditch Day; we wanted it back. Practicing for my future at Berkeley wasn’t what almost got me thrown in jail, however.

My problem was with the LAW, or, in this case, Mike Denatly, the Placerville Chief of Police. I had my run in with him on the very day I was to graduate.

It was a goof off day. All the tests were over, yearbooks signed, and caps and gowns fitted. There really wasn’t much to do except celebrate and say goodbye to friends. Lunchtime meant a final cruise of Placerville’s Main Street to check out girls, to see and be seen.

What happened was out of character for me.

I normally keep my comments on other peoples’ driving habits inside the car. The horn is for really bad infractions and, on very rare occasions, a single digit comment is appropriate.

I would never stick my head out the window and yell at someone. That can get you shot.

But heh, it was graduation day. When a blue car stopped in the middle of Placerville’s crowded downtown street in front of us, it irritated me. When the driver got out to have a leisurely chat with the driver of the car in front of him, it pushed me over the edge. Out went my head as we edged around the two cars and I had an attack of uncontrollable Y chromosome aggression.

“You SOB,” I yelled,  “get your car out of the way.”

So what if I didn’t recognize the Chief of Police out of uniform in an unmarked car. So what if he had stopped to offer help to a guy who had managed to stall his car on Placerville’s busy main street. So what if I had suggested he had canine parentage in a voice that half of Placerville heard. It was an innocent mistake.

“That was Mike Denatly you just cussed out,” our driver managed to stutter with mixed parts of fear and awe.

As a teenager, I pulled some fairly dumb stunts. Most of us do. Young people have a responsibility to push the envelope. It is the rather awkward method evolution has provided for growing up and developing unique personalities. Mistakes are bound to happen. But I was carrying my responsibility too far; I had gone beyond dumb and plunged into really stupid.

“Keep driving,” I uttered with all the hope of the irrevocably damned, “maybe he is too busy and will ignore us.”

Sure, like maybe the sun won’t rise tomorrow. The poor stalled guy could still be sitting in the middle of Placerville for all of the attention the police chief paid to him after my little admonition. Denatly jumped in his car, slapped his flashing light on his roof, hit his siren and sped after us. Not that he needed to speed fast or far. We were creeping up Main Street in sheer terror about one block away.

I am sure my car-mates were wishing fervently that one Curtis Mekemson hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning, had never made their acquaintance, and was, at that very moment, facing a group of starving cannibals in a far off jungle.

We pulled over with Denatly literally parked on our rear bumper and resigned ourselves to the firing squad. Luckily, for my friends, the Chief had no interest in them. He appeared at my window red-faced and shouting about five inches away. Under the best of circumstances he was known for having a temper and these were not the best of circumstances.

“Get out of that car,” he yelled. “Get out right now!”

I moved fast. This was not the time for bravery and stubbornness. It was a time to be humble… it was grovel time. And I groveled with the best. I blathered out apologies and managed to work “sir” into every sentence, several times. I trotted out my friendship with his stepson Brian Morris, I threw in the City Treasurer who was a mentor and I even brought in Father Baskin, the Episcopal minister, as a character reference.

“Get in my car,” he ordered. My groveling seemed to be having minimal impact. At least he hadn’t handcuffed me.

We drove up to City Hall and I had visions of being booked and thrown into a cell with some big hulking giant who either didn’t like young men or liked them too much. I thought of having to call my parents and explain how their son had become a common criminal.

But Denatly had even more diabolical plans in mind. We slowly made a turn through the jail parking lot to give me a sense of my future and then, to my surprise, hopped on Highway 50 to Canal Street and drove up to the high school.

I was going to have to explain my actions to the Principal. My chances of graduating that night slipped another notch. I doubted that the Principal would have much sense of humor about one of his students cussing out the Chief of Police. But explaining my inexplicable actions to the Principal would have been mercy in comparison to what happened.

It was a beautiful late spring day, this last day of school, and it seemed like half of the student body and a significant portion of teachers were enjoying their lunches on the expansive lawn in front of the school. Denatly pulled up to the sidewalk beside the lawn and ordered me out.

The Chief of Police arriving with me in tow was enough to capture the attention of several students sitting close by. Then he made sure that everyone was aware of our presence.

“Do you want to spend the night in jail or graduate, Curtis?” he asked in a voice that was easily equivalent in volume to the one that I had used in suggesting he move his car.

Conversation on the lawn came to a dead halt. Every ear in the place honed in on us with the intensity that a cat reserves for a potential mouse dinner. And I was the mouse. This was a Kodak moment, not to be missed.

My answer was easy: of course I wanted to graduate, SIR. And so it went; Denatly barking questions with the voice of a marine sergeant and me responding as the lowest of privates. Finally, after a few minutes that felt like eternity, the Chief got in his car and drove away.

I was left to deal with the not so gentle humor of the students and faculty plus a Vice Principal who wasn’t quite sure whether he should take over where Denatly left off or laugh at my predicament. At least he had the grace to wait until I left his office before he chose the latter. I could hear his laughter echoing down the empty hallways.

And yes, I was allowed to graduate that night.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: Love, Lust and Like

Bleeding Like a Speared Mammoth… The Joys of High School Chemistry Lab

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I would have made a good Greek Philosopher, working out problems in my head. I quickly learned in high school that I am not particularly fond of long dead frogs pickled in formaldehyde or chemicals that smell worse than an old dog’s fart.

But there is more to it than that; I am convinced that good lab technicians are mechanically inclined. They like to tinker.

I have lots of friends like that. They love to take things apart and put them back together. They can fix anything and go out of their way to find things that need fixing. My brother Marshall is a good example. He had an old Citroen in high school that he’d spend hours working on out in the back yard with grease up to his elbows.

Ask him anything about carburetors, water pumps, generators, horsepower or timing and he had a ready answer. I admired him for it, but my interest in carburetors was zilch and my primary interest in automobiles was (and is) that they get me from point A to point B without breaking down.

I feel pretty much the same way about other fix-it items. I am just not excited about getting into the bowels of a toilet and replacing its thing-a-ma-bob. Nor am I interested in replacing light switches to see how much voltage I can send coursing through my body. Yeah, yeah, I know… you turn off the electricity first.

I am not sure where this lack of enthusiasm for things mechanical came from but it was probably a combination of aptitude and attitude. Me father wasn’t particularly fond of working on automobiles and some of that may have rubbed off. But he was very handy. In addition to being a skilled electrician he loved puttering around outside making things.

I classify all such activities as chores to be avoided if at all possible. In fact, over the years I have developed a number of strategies for not having to fix things. Here’s my guide on how to avoid fixing things:

  • Don’t own any tools. You might be tempted to use them, or even worse, someone such as a wife might suggest that you use them.
  • Don’t buy a house. Every scientific study ever done confirms that the single most important reason for having to fix things is owning a home. I was 53 years old before I made that mistake.
  • If something doesn’t work, go buy a new one.
  • Plead ignorance. “What do you mean there is more than one kind of screw driver?” As a corollary, hide your repair manuals. My wife Peggy has the irritating habit of looking up things that need fixing and then saying sweetly, “Oh, this looks easy to do, Curt.”  My manliness has been challenged. It doesn’t matter that this ‘easy’ chore requires that I make four trips to the hardware store, purchase $500 worth of new tools, work ten hours straight and injure myself at least once.  I have to do it.
  • Or you can praise your wife’s ability to fix things and then hide. Peggy is a natural with hammer, saw, paint brush and screwdriver.
  • Curse a lot. Your partner may figure that leaving something broken is easier than listening to you.
  • Stall. “I’ll do it right after I cook dinner, honey.” Stalling is easier if you are doing something the other person finds desirable.
  • If all else fails, compromise. I have an agreement with Peggy that I will do one manly chore per month. That’s my quota. Some activities such as fixing toilets even earn two months of credit.

Even my hobbies as a kid reflected my non-mechanical tendencies. Building model ships, airplanes, cars, trains, etc. had no interest. My concept of a great hobby was rock collecting. I would hike along the Southern Pacific railroad tracks in Diamond Springs and pick up interesting rocks until all four pockets were bulging and my pants were about to fall off. I would then go home and smash them apart with a hammer to figure out what I had found. Geology became a life-long interest.

I do understand the arguments for being able to fix things: saving money, being self-sufficient, and obtaining satisfaction from a job well done.

These same arguments, however, apply to going out in the pasture, shooting Elsie the Cow, gutting her, bringing home the meat, grinding it up, and throwing it on the grill. Just think of the satisfaction involved and dollars saved! Or, you can go to the local fast food joint and help employ a kid who might otherwise turn to a life of crime.

Now, back to chemistry. One day we had to shove little glass tubes through rubber stoppers. Apparently this is an important skill for budding chemists. It’s not a difficult task if you ignore the fact that the holes in the stoppers are approximately half the diameter of the glass tubes and, more importantly, you have a gallon of Vaseline.

I was half way through my first masterpiece when the damn tube broke and ended up jabbed into my hand. Bleeding like a speared mammoth, I was carted off to the emergency room of the local hospital and sewn up.

There was plenty of time while sitting in ER to contemplate my future as a scientist. My conclusion: there wasn’t one. I decided that the best way to avoid long-dead animals, smelly chemicals and miscellaneous dangerous objects (not to mention higher level math skills) would be to choose a career that depended on verbal agility. In other words, my future would be based solely on my ability to BS.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: A Choice: Graduate or Go to Jail.

The Train Wreck and Miss Kaste

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I did better at academics in High School than I did at sports. Fortunately.

I quickly learned that the humanities were my forte. I also did well in English. It was a natural given my love of books and communication skills.

Science and math proved to be a bit more challenging.

There’s an old adage that we are supposed to work hard at those things we find difficult, that it gives us character. My belief is that I already have plenty of character. If I had any more, little men in white coats would be chasing me with nets.

I prefer to spend my energy on things I enjoy, like reading a good book or hiking in the wilderness. I have little tolerance for doing things that I don’t do well or fail to interest me. In other words, the Protestant Ethic and I have serious compatibility problems.

But I can be stubborn. Math is a good example. In the fourth grade I discovered that long division was nasty. I got beyond that but word problems gave me a complex. Two trains are hurtling at each other on the same track with Train A going 90 miles per hour and Train B going 70. They are 252.5296 miles apart. How long will it be before Train A conductor says, “Ooooh shit!”

Not nearly as soon as I did.

My own expletive arrived on my lips .0000001 seconds after seeing the problem. I concentrated on sending the teacher vibes. “Curt is not here today. You do not see Curt. You will not call on Curt.”

But I continued plugging away at math. I even managed to get A’s in Algebra I and Geometry. Algebra II was different. That’s when I ran head on into Miss Kaste. It was not a pleasant experience.

Miss Kaste, according to those who were seriously into math, was very good at what she did. Students leaving her class were reputed to have a solid foundation in the basics and be well prepared to move on to the ethereal worlds of calculus and trigonometry.

Basics, I quickly learned, meant that there was one way of coming up with answers and that way was chiseled in stone. One did not diverge from accepted formulas or leave out steps; right answers obtained the wrong way were wrong answers. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

This created a problem. I had a true talent for coming up with right answers the wrong way and this brought me unwanted attention. I could have lived with that except for another problem, Miss Kaste’s teaching technique. She oozed sarcasm. She made people cry. My response was to freeze up. I started dreading her classes and developed the proverbial ‘bad attitude.’ I received my first C in high school and vowed never to take another math course. Life is short and then you die.

It was my decision and my loss. Miss Kaste was not to blame. Still, it speaks to the power of teachers to turn students on, or off, to various subjects. I wasn’t a total dunce at math; ironically, I scored in the 98th percentile on the Iowa Test in math the same year. Theoretically, that placed me in the top two percent of math students.

The upside of my decision was that I saw an immediate improvement in my GPA and attitude. The down side was that it eliminated a number of future options, particularly in the fields of higher education. It was an era when the social sciences were eager to prove their scientific nature.

This blog is part of a series in celebration of the 50th High School Reunion of the Class of 1961 of El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. Next up: Bleeding Like a Speared Mammoth… the Joys of High School Chemistry Lab.

A Penguin’s Guide to Long Distance Running

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

I am not a jock. It isn’t so much physical as mental. You have to care to be good at sports and I find other things more challenging.

Part of this evolved from a lack of enthusiasm for sports on the home front. There was little vicarious parental drive to see me excel on the playing field.

Being as blind as a bat didn’t help much either. Like most young people, 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 and then breeze through the test. As for class work, I sat close to the black board and squinted a lot.

While I got away with this in the classroom, it became a serious hazard on the Little League field.

I remember going out for the team in Diamond Springs. All of my friends played. 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.

“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 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 kicking me out of the first grade I was slightly older than my classmate and, thanks to genetics, 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.

Unfortunately, such glory was not transferred to El Dorado Union High School in Placerville. I blew it. Any red-blooded American male knows that you have to go out for football to become a high school sports hero.

There’s some glory in basketball and a little in baseball, but other sports are pretty much on the level of “Oh I didn’t know you did that.” What did I do? I went out for the cross-country team. Now if you are really, really good at cross-country, like best in the state, you might get an occasional story in the school paper.

But say you are the quarterback of the football team and you throw the winning pass in the annual game against your major out-of-town rivals. You are immortalized. You get the front page of the school paper and major coverage on the sports page of the community paper. As for the babes, they come out of the woodwork.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the best runner in the state, or in the community, or in the school, or the freshman class for that matter. In fact, I am not really built for running. My friends sometimes describe me as penguin-like. I have the upper body of a six-foot-six basketball player and the lower body of a five-foot-five VW bug racer.

It was only excessive stubbornness that usually found me somewhere near the middle of the pack in my cross-country races. It certainly wasn’t a love of running. There was to be no glory in the sport for me, and certainly no babes. But a lot of character building took place. Great.

By my sophomore year I decided I would have more fun playing football, but it was too late. I didn’t eat, dream and sleep football. I lacked the necessary motivation to smash my way to the top. I would come to practice after a long day of work in the fruit orchards where I had put in nine hours of hard, physical labor.

The first thing I did was don miscellaneous body pads that were still slimy with yesterday’s sweat and smelled like week-old dead fish. By then the coach would be yelling at us to hurry up and get out of the locker room and on to the field.

I decided there must be a high correlation between football practice and boot camp including push ups, wind sprints, humiliation and more push-ups, everything it takes to turn a wild bunch of undisciplined young men into an organized group of would-be heroes eager to go out and win one for the Gipper.

The hard work was okay, even fun, but I was highly allergic to being yelled at. I still am. My rapidly waning enthusiasm took a sky dive leap when the coach decided my position would be second-string left guard.

Now don’t get me wrong, guards and tackles are critically important to the success of a team and I confess that smashing into opponents and sacking the quarterback resembled fun. Where else could I practice physically aggressive behavior and be applauded? Even second-string made sense. The other kids had played freshman football and earned their places.

But I lacked the psychological orientation for being second string and had something else in mind in terms of position. I envisioned myself charging down the sidelines with the people in the stands on their feet cheering wildly.

I dutifully put in my time, finished out the year and decided to forgo a career in sports. I am glad I played. I gained new friends and new experiences, both valuable. But I can’t say I learned anything of great significance. What I recall from the season was there was little ‘thrill of victory’ and lots of ‘agony of defeat.’ We were not a team destined for glory.

The Most Desperate of Times: PE Dance Class 1… The 50th EUHS Reunion of the 1961 Class

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

Forty-six years ago I became a freshman at El Dorado Union High School in Placerville California. The number of young women on my horizon was zero. I was deathly afraid of girls.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and I was a desperate man. I signed up for dance classes in P.E. I would learn to dance and become a combination of Arthur Murray and Elvis Presley. (Yeah, I know that dates me a little.) 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, 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 beginning to sound 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. 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 me what I was supposed to do with my two left feet. I listened carefully to the lecture on rhythm and down beats. I watched with intensity as she demonstrated: step, step, slide, step-step.

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 or even Benny Goodman. 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.

One, two, and three, four-five the coach barked out. My feet more or less followed the proscribed pattern as 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 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. 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 appointment in 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.

“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 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, and was respectful toward teachers.

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 chairman 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.

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 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.

Next Blog: A Penguin’s Guide to Long Distance Running

A Terminal Case of Puberty Blues… The 50th Reunion of EUHS’s 1961 Class

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

The 50th Reunion of El Dorado Union High School’s 1961 Class was approaching like a runaway freight train. Emails from Placerville California were filling my inbox. Ancient memories kept bubbling to the surface. Fortunately time and a sense of humor had smoothed off the sharper edges.

Something happened between my eighth grade in Diamond Springs and high school in Placerville. It hit me right between the eyes with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer. 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 I had taken for granted became illusive, almost impossible to obtain. 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 harvest the new crop of freshmen girls while the older girls weren’t about to date a freshman boy, that lowest of low 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, 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 and came with a full complement of accoutrements: smile, brains, hips and breasts. I was in deep lust.

My knee and her fanny were mere inches apart and her fanny 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, 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.

Next blog: Desperate times call for desperate measures. I sign up for dance classes in PE.

Diamond Springs, California: From Gold Rush to Sleepy… The 50th EUHS Reunion

/ Curt Mekemson / 2 Comments

The message arrived by mail. My 50th High School Reunion was coming up. Once again the mighty Cougars of Placerville, California’s El Dorado Union High School would roar.

Or at least meow.

Teenage angst, hormonal overload and dreams of glory had long since been dimmed by the realities of life and aging bones. My classmates and I have reached the point where looking back is easier than looking forward.

A Memory Book was being created. What had happened to us since that warm June day in 1961? It was time to sum up our lives in 400 words or less. Should I lie?

Naah. I dutifully begin to put the words down on paper. I found, however, that my mind kept wandering back to what had happened prior to our graduation, during the formative years of our lives. Always on the lookout for blog material, I decided to post a few stories from those years. First up:

Many things influence whom we become. DNA, parents, friends, teachers… it’s a long list. Where we are raised also has to be included. It doesn’t matter where we go in life; our hometown remains our hometown. And this takes me back to Diamond Springs, a small town outside of Placerville.

Sleepy is too lively a word for describing where I lived from 1945 to 1961.

In Old West terminology, Diamond was a two-horse town. There were two grocery stores, two gas stations, two restaurants, two bars, two graveyards and two major places of employment: the Diamond Lime Company and the Caldor Lumber Company.

On the one horse side of the equation there was one church, a barbershop, a hardware store and a grammar school. High school was in far off Placerville, three miles away.

It hadn’t always been quiet. Located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, Diamond was once a major gathering spot for the Maidu Indians and later became a bustling Gold Rush town.

To the Maidu it was Mo-lok’epakan, or, Morning Star’s Spring and a very holy place.  Indians came from miles around bearing their dead on litters for cremation. Souls were sent wafting on their way to where ever deceased Maidu went.

Apparently they had been living in the area for a thousand years. It is a sad commentary on both our education system and how we treated the Indians that I grew up in Diamond never hearing the name Morning Star’s Spring much less Mo-lok’epakan. Our only connection with the Maidu’s lost heritage was finding an occasional arrowhead or Indian bead.

Then, in 1848, John Marshall found some shiny yellow baubles in the American River at Sutter’s Mill, 13 miles away. The worlds of the Maidu, California, and Morning Star’s Spring were about to be shattered. “Gold!” went out the cry to Sacramento, across the nation and around the world. Instant wealth was to be had in California and the 49ers were on their way.

They came by boat, wagon, horse and foot… whatever it took. And they came in the thousands from Maine to Georgia, Yankee and Southerner alike. They came from England and Germany and France and China, pouring in from all points of the compass. They left behind their wives, children, mothers, fathers, and half-plowed fields. The chance of ‘striking it rich’ was not to be denied.

Soon the once quiet foothills were alive with the sound of the miners’ picks and shovels punctuated by an occasional gunshot. Towns grew up overnight: Hangtown (Placerville), Sonora, Volcano, Fiddletown, Angels Camp, Grass Valley, Rough and Ready and other legendary communities of the Motherlode.

In 1850 a party of 200 Missourians stopped off at Morning Star’s Spring and decided to stay. Timber was plentiful, the grazing good and a 25-pound nugget of gold was found nearby. Soon there were 18 hotels, stables, a school, churches, doctors, a newspaper, lawyers, vineyards, a blacksmith, some 8000 miners and undoubtedly several unrecorded whorehouses.

Morning’s Star Spring took on a new name, Diamond Springs. The Wells Fargo Stage Company opened an office and the Pony Express made it a stop on its two-year ride to glory.

The town burned down in 1856, 1859 and again in the 1870s. By this time most of the gold had been found and the residents were forced to find other means of gainful employment.

The timber industry came to the rescue in the early 1900s when the California Door Company out of Oakland set up shop in Diamond to handle the timber it was pulling out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Starting with oxen and then moving to steam tractors, the company finally settled on a narrow gauge railway for retrieving rough-cut lumber and logs from its forest operations. By the 50s, it had moved on to logging trucks.

A couple of decades after Caldor was established, Diamond Lime set up business by opening a quarry two miles east of Diamond and a processing plant on the edge of town. The lime was so pure that a block of it was used in the Washington Monument.

This was pretty much how things were when the Mekemsons arrived at the end of World War II. Next blog… the Mekemson/Bray gang terrorizes Diamond Springs.

The Burning Man Wedding of Bone and Bonetta… Not

/ Curt Mekemson / 4 Comments

Best Donkey Eeyore, Bone in his kilt, and Bonetta with her tiara of roses at their Victorian home on the Upper Applegate River in Oregon.

“I’d recommend that you not go to Burning Man,” Dr. V. of the Medford Medical Clinic had urged. Since I was facing acute kidney failure, we had complied… reluctantly.

The tickets had cost $700.

More importantly, Bone and Bonetta were getting married. Ever since Bonetta rescued Bone from a bone-eating alligator in a Florida swamp last fall, the two have been inseparable companions.

Burning Man was the perfect place for their wedding. Several members of the International Society of the Bone would be present including Tom Lovering. (Tom and I had ‘discovered’ Bone hiding out in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1977 and launched him on his worldwide travels.)

The retired Judge Don of the Horse-Bone Tribe was prepared to officiate. Punkin Beth, owner of B&L Bike Shop in Davis, offered to make Bonetta’s wedding dress. Bone would wear his finest kilt, made for him by Ann Baughman of Kansas. Eeyore the donkey was to serve as Best Man. Peggy and I were taking care of the Champaign and cake. It promised to be quite the wedding.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Bone and Bonetta were depending on us to take them to Burning Man. The nuptials would have to be postponed to a future date.

Peggy put our tickets on the Medford Craig’s list and offered them for $600. Within ten minutes Miss Blossom called wanting the tickets. She had just returned from a Hemp Festival and had more or less accepted she would miss Burning Man. Our tickets showing up on Craig’s list at a bargain rate was a message from the forest spirits… she was meant to go in our place.

By Friday morning we were glad she did. I woke up with a blood pressure of 206/112. “You need to come in immediately,” the Medford Medical Clinic directed.

Dr. M met with me. Dr. V had taken me off of my old blood pressure medicine because of its impact on my kidneys. Dr. M put me on a new one. “You will need to monitor its impact,” he warned.

We live in a world of designer based drugs where the negative side effects often outweigh the positive benefits. It’s in the fine print.

Drug companies don’t want us to read the “Oh, by the way, this drug may kill you.” It’s couched between glowing recommendations on their TV ads. Without government regulations and the fear of lawsuits, it wouldn’t be there at all. Billions are spent working to convince us that brand name drugs costing big bucks will make us happy, healthy and sexy. “Ask your doctor,” the ads recommend.

Drug reps then pummel physicians with goodies to ensure sure they make the right recommendations. Sadly, many doctors succumb to the wining and dining. But not Dr. M.

“I saw Dr. M run a drug rep out of his office,” one of the nurses confided in me. “Why should I prescribe your expensive brand name drug to my patients, when the much less expensive generic drug works equally as well,” the good doctor had said

The man deserves a medal.

I had more on my mind than high blood pressure, however. My urinary system was shutting down. This had happened to me once before when I came off of the 360-mile backpack trek from Lake Tahoe to Mt. Whitney I did to celebrate my 60th birthday. It was scary.

Dr. M pulled up the ultra-sounds the technician had done of my bladder on Monday. A look of irritation crossed his face. “This should have been caught.”  You’ve probably heard the statement ‘full of piss and vinegar.’ Well I was full of the former.

“It may be the cause of both your kidney problem and high blood pressure,” the doctor noted and then drew me a diagram. Sung to the tune of the old bone song, “The kidneys are connected to the bladder, the bladder is connected to the prostate, and they’re all connected to the…” well, you get the picture. Apparently the logjam ran all the way to my kidneys.

Doctors have a solution. I won’t go into the details other than to say it involves a long rubber tube and I am convinced spymasters could use it to get whatever confessions they need. “Not only did I do it sir, but here are the names, addresses and phone numbers of every one who helped me.”

Let’s say I had a draining experience and leave it at that.

“Wow, that’s impressive,” the nurse said as I filled my second liter container and started working on the third. I had more pee in reserve than he had ever seen.

“Wow, that’s impressive,” Dr. M confirmed when he came in. He wanted me to ask the urologist if I had set some kind record.

“I prefer to impress people in other ways,” I primly told both of them. I am sure by the time I left everyone in the clinic knew about my performance. So much for patient confidentiality.

So the saga continues. I have at least resolved the issue of acute kidney failure. They are back to normal. I will keep you posted… not so much because I want to write about my health, but more so because I want to use my experience as a platform to editorialize on our medical care delivery system. In case you haven’t noted, it needs help.

Next I want to turn to the second big event my health forced me to miss: the 50th Reunion of my high school class and the world of teenage angst.

A (not so) Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Burning Man

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

“I want you to drink and pee, drink and pee, and drink and pee,” Doctor V prescribed. It was a unique prescription. I pictured myself happily downing Oregon beer. Then he specified water.

My wife Peggy and I were on our way to Burning Man. I wasn’t feeling well and decided to drop by the Medford Medical Clinic before jumping off into the remote Nevada desert. My lower abdomen had developed the personality of a watermelon.

The Doctor ordered all the tests. I was to give blood, donate urine and expose my innards to x-rays. I dutifully ran around to be poked, prodded and pinched while Peggy waited patiently. (Don’t you just love alliteration?)

Anyway, before I knew it, I was back in Dr. V’s office sitting on a hard chair and memorizing a wall chart on intestines. I was approaching anal when the doctor appeared and pulled up my results. “Looks good, looks good, looks good,” he murmured as visions of Burning Man danced in my head.

That was just before he uttered “Uh-oh.” These are two of the worst words in a doctor’s vocabulary. They should be banned. My blood pressure shot up, sphincter clamped down and big toe developed gout.

Turns out my kidneys had joined a union and gone on strike. They were refusing to process the toxins out of my system. My body was becoming a hazardous waste site reportable to the EPA. “Drink and pee,” the Doc ordered. I was to come back on Monday.

The clock was ticking. I would miss the first and second day of Burning Man.

The Rogue Valley Medical Center was on my agenda Monday. My kidneys and bladder were to be scanned by an ultra-sound machine, a sonar-type device similar to what my brother-in-law Jim Hockett uses for finding fish and the Navy used for finding U-boats in WWII.

But first I had to prove myself worthy. A series of small cubicles lined the hallway leading into the hospital proper. I was to report to one. Before the magical machine scanned one centimeter of my body, I had to show I could pay. Hospitals, drug companies, lawyers, health insurers, doctors, nurses, therapists, technicians, clinicians, secretaries, janitors, business managers and at least a hundred other health care affiliates were depending on me. I was at the bottom of a very large and hungry food chain. “FEED ME,” they yelled in unison.

I boldly moved forward and whipped out my Oregon Driver’s license, Medicare Card, AARP Card, and United Health Care Insurance Parts B and D cards. I was a card-carrying member of the Baby Boomer Generation. Plus I had excellent credit. I was prime, well-aged beef. The gatekeeper smiled and gave her stamp of approval. “You are good for a year,” she told me.

The young technician in charge of ultra-sounds led me through a labyrinth of hallways to her inner sanctum, laid me out on the sacrificial table and begin lathering me with warm oil. I liked it. But I didn’t like what the scans showed, a vast ocean of pee and a small growth on the side of my bladder. She returned to it again and again. “I like to take lots of pictures,” she told me. Her diligence made me late.

“You missed your appointment,” the scowling receptionist at the Medford Clinic told me shortly afterwards. “You will have to reschedule.” I had apparently committed a grievous sin. But I was not properly repentant. I scowled back.

“Your office made the appointments,” I pointed out. “The hospital made me late and the technician told me she was in contact with Doctor V. I am leaving town tomorrow.”

The room temperature dropped several degrees. “I’ll check with the Doctor,” she said. Each word was coated with ice.

She came back all smiles. “You are going to Burning Man,” she exclaimed. I was no longer just a crotchety old guy whining about his afflictions. I was a crotchety old guy going to Burning Man. I was ‘cool.’ “The Doctor says he needs you to take another blood test. He will call you later with the results.”

It was his nurse who called.

“You have Acute Kidney Failure. The Doctor recommends that you skip Burning Man.” I was to be handed off to a specialist.

I didn’t have a clue what Acute Kidney Failure meant but it definitely didn’t sound like something I wanted to be caught with in the Black Rock Desert of Northern Nevada. We cancelled our adventure.

Next up: Dr. M. draws a picture. The kidneys are connected to the bladder and the bladder’s connected to the prostate and the prostate’s connected to the well, um… you get the idea.

It’s Not Kansas Anymore, Toto… It’s Burning Man

/ Curt Mekemson / Leave a comment

Of the dozens of candidates for the Wizard I found among my photos, I opted for the Green Man.

What if Dorothy landed at Burning Man instead of Oz? Would she have known the difference?

No doubt she would have found a wizard and the odds are high she would have discovered a number of good and bad witches. There’s even a chance she would have stumbled upon a scantily clad, very, very bad witch wearing black leather and carrying a whip. (I think I have a photo.)

This woman, I decided, would make a great witch.

As for rusting tin men, cowardly lions, and uncoordinated scarecrows, they’ve probably all visited Black Rock City. Think of tens of thousands of people dressed up in costumes.

I can even imagine Larry Harvey, the founder of Burning Man, hiding behind a large psychedelic screen and yelling at Dorothy in a booming voice, “Gift me the witches broom and I’ll gift you a trip to Kansas.

And for some reason, I'm not sure why, I selected this young woman for Dorothy. Maybe it's a sense of innocence.

Gifting is big at Burning Man. So is radical self-reliance. Dorothy and her bosom buddies would have been on their own in searching for the broom without a corporate sponsor to be found. Nor would she have been able to buy food, water or even a new axe for the Tin Man. Consumerism is a no-no.

And how would Dorothy get home? “Follow the yellow brick road, sweetie, and tap your ruby slippers together,” was sound advice for Oz but what about Burning Man?

She’d be better off looking up the Midwest Burners. They are bound to have at least one Fairy Godmother who would happily gift Dorothy and her scruffy dog a ride home to Kansas… after the Man has burned. (BTW… Dogs aren’t allowed at Burning Man. Dorothy might have been sent packing as soon as she arrived.)

It’s serious countdown time here on the Applegate River in Oregon. Burning Man is four days away. The Emails are flying back and forth between the Horse-Bone Tribe.

The Horny Princess is planning on coming in on Tuesday and leaving on Saturday ‘depending on the dust.’ This is absolutely her last Burning Man she announces for the third year in a row.

“Don’t worry about the dust,” Sailor Boy responds. “There’s plenty to go around.”

Luna is picking out her hat; Pumpkin (our second year Burner) is bubbling; Scout is just glad he doesn’t have to cook. So are we. I heard from a spy in the Bigger Sacramento Book Club that Scotty was modeling his latest outrageous Burning Man get-up at the book club meeting.

Details, details, details… like where are we camping, who’s bringing what food, when are folks arriving and what walkie-talkie channel will we be using.

But that’s easy stuff. We are, after all, Burning Man Veterans. Thirty minutes of chit-chat and everything is settled.

My thanks to all the folks who have followed my Burning Man Blogs this year. And special thanks to WordPress for featuring the blogs prominently. This is my last one before the event but I will be back immediately afterwards with photos and stories from 2011. This year shows promise of being one of the best ever.

Sailor Boy toasts Burning man and shows off his colorful outfit.