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UT-OH Chapter 7: The Death Defying (Suicidal?) Great Tree Race… And the White-faced Coatis of Costa Rica

/ Curt Mekemson / 3 Comments
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 Coatis of 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.

UT-OH Chapter 6: Nancy Jo and the Graveyard Ghost—A Twisted Tale of Fright (Or Maybe a Tale with a Twist?)

/ Curt Mekemson / 14 Comments

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.

UT-OH Chapter 6: Searching for God in all the Wrong Places

/ Curt Mekemson / 8 Comments
This photo was taken 2-3 years after our parents sent the Mekemson kids off to Vacation Bible School, but here we are. I’m on the left, my dog Tickle is next, then my sister, Nancy and my brother, Marshall. Tickle got to stay home. He didn’t need religion; he was a good dog.

How to develop a warped view of religion…

I’m continuing with my blog-a-book/memoir/misadventure series today with my first two experiences of organized religion. It was a rocky start.

Pop inherited most of the religious fervor in our family. According to my mother, his mom was a hardline Scotch Presbyterian with a sense of humor to match. One didn’t drink, cuss, smoke or perform any of the other nefarious deeds the devil so cunningly uses to capture wayward souls. Fortunately, he missed some of the thou-shall-nots his mother preached. But he did inherit a sense that church is “good for you,” however, and this meant it would be doubly good for his kids. While Mother had more doubts about religion, even she felt that a little God wouldn’t hurt us. Or, at least she recognized kid-free summer time when she saw it.

Eventually this led to the three Mekemson kids being spiffed up and marched off to Vacation Bible School. My brother, Marshall, and I got a rare midweek bath, clean clothes, and the lecture: No shoving, shouting, fighting or farting. Our older sister, Nancy, bathed regularly and didn’t need the lecture.

In those days, going to church in Diamond Springs meant going to the Community Church, a small, white, box-shaped building that came with a straight steeple and fundamentalist leanings.

Other than the fact that Bible School seriously interfered with my play time, it wasn’t all that bad. I was encouraged to color lots of sheep and no one seemed to mind that they were purple. But the real fall-on-your-knees thing that grabbed my attention was all the stuff about miracles. I was fascinated to know how Noah got all of those animals on one boat, what he did with the poop, and how Christ walked on water. I had so many ‘hows and whys’ the Bible School teacher stopped calling on me. I went back to coloring sheep.

One day we were privileged to witness a true miracle in progress. Somehow, we had escaped from Vacation Bible School only to be corralled into attending an actual kids’ service. I think it was a graduation ceremony meant to put the exclamation point on our lessons. It came complete with hymns, prayers, a sermon and lots of Amens. Then the big moment arrived.

“Would you like to hear the Lord knocking at your heart?” the Minister asked.

“Oh yeah!” “Wow!” “Really?” What little kid could resist? The minister instructed us to bow our heads and close our eyes. He was quite insistent on the eye part.

“None of you little kids open your eyes until I tell you to,” he ordered. Apparently, you can’t witness miracles with your eyes open.

Twenty little children dutifully bowed their heads and screwed their eyes shut. Three didn’t. If there was to be a miracle, the Mekemson kids wanted to see it. So we watched the preacher with eagle-eyed attention. He glared back at us. Whoa, this was getting interesting. Next, he tiptoed from the pulpit to the back of the church. What was he up to?

Bang, bang, bang. He was up to pounding on the back door. Yes indeed, the Lord does work in mysterious ways. We watched the minister tiptoe back to his pulpit.

“OK,” he said, “you can open your eyes now. Did you hear the Lord knocking?”

Twenty little sets of big round eyes popped open and twenty little mouths started gabbing all at once. The minister smiled smugly until his eyes fell on us. You could almost hear what he was thinking and I didn’t think ministers were supposed to think those kinds of thoughts.

“Vacation Bible School is over,” he announced abruptly. “I want you all to think about what you learned today. You can go home now.” We jumped up for a quick escape.

“Nancy, Marshall and Curt, I want you to stay.”

Ut-Oh. We were about to learn that the devil had reserved a special place for us. The Mekemson kids were very bad and downright sinful. We had better change our ways or we were going to spend eternity in a very hot place. We were also being held hostage until the other kids left. It wouldn’t do to have us spread malicious rumors.

After being pummeled by twenty minutes of non-stop haranguing, we were finally turned loose. It was pushing 100 degrees outside and Mother was waiting impatiently in one of our ancient, non-air conditioned cars. She lit into us with an intensity that would have made the Minister cry “uncle.” I wondered if our punishment had already begun. But Nancy straightened things out quickly with all of the righteousness of a 12-year-old girl— and forever became my hero. Not only was the minister a ‘lying, deceitful, old so and so,’ she was never coming back to that church again. Ditto.

Marshall, who was seven, sought his own peculiar form of revenge. (He told me about it later out of fear I would tattle.) Our friend, Lee Kinser, lived next to the church and had an old outhouse up the hill behind his home. In-door plumbing had long since replaced its primary use and the daily deposits had turned to dust. The outhouse’s appeal to Marshall was that if he sat on the seat and left the door open, he had a straight shot at the church’s bell. All Marshall needed was his BB gun and a Sunday service. Actually, I think he enjoyed more than one service from his box seat. In my imagination, I can still hear the minister saying to his Sunday congregations, “Do you hear the Lord pinging?”

Brother Jones and a Glowing Jesus

And that was my introduction to religion. Almost. Another fine tutor was Brother James Allen Jones, or some such name long since forgotten. He was a southern radio preacher par excellence in an era when radio still dominated the airwaves. At least it did in Diamond. There was only one TV in town and it certainly didn’t belong to us.

Normally, Marshall and I focused our radio listening time to standard kid fare like the Lone Ranger, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and the Shadow. We would sit glued to the radio with all the concentration of later TV/computer/phone screen generations and listen to such immortal words as “Who was that masked man?” “I don’t know but he left a silver bullet behind.” And then an awed, “That was the Lone Ranger,” as off in the distance you heard “Hi O Silver away!” We knew that Sergeant Preston and his faithful dog King would always get their man, just like we knew the Shadow would open his program with the question, “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?”

The Shadow knew. And so did Brother Jones. He also knew how to ream it out. On Wednesday nights, we belonged to him. I am sure the devil quaked in his hooves to know that he had such a ferocious opponent. Brother Jones was more than fire and brimstone, however. He could cure anything. After his show the lame would walk, the blind would see and the deaf would hear. Even hardened criminals would fall on their knees and start sobbing. It was at the conclusion of the show that Jones was at his finest, though. It was time to go for the gold.

“I can see you now. I can see you sitting in front of your radio.” The good Brother would start out in his most hypnotic voice, repeating himself so people would get the message right.

“I can see you reaching in your back pocket. I can see you reaching in your back pocket and taking out your wallet. Praise the Lord! I can see you opening your wallet. I can see you opening your wallet and taking out a ten-dollar bill. Hallelujah! Now you are taking your ten-dollar bill and laying it on the radio. I am blessing you and your ten-dollar bill. Lay your hand on the radio. Feel my blessing coming through. Do you feel it? Do you feel it? Hallelujah and Amen Brothers and Sisters! Now I can see you getting out an envelope and a pen. You are addressing the envelope to me, Brother James Allen Jones. You are now taking the ten-dollar bill and placing it in the envelope. Thank the sweet Lord! You are closing the envelope and stamping it. The first thing you will do in the morning is mail it to me. Blessed are those who give! In return, I will mail you a fine gift, a genuine picture of Jesus Christ that glows in the dark.”

I always wanted the genuine picture of Jesus, but I was a little concerned about its glow in the dark qualities. Marshall and I had been given a cross that glowed in the dark at Vacation Bible School and Marshall kept it on our dresser. It scared me, like the tombstones in the Graveyard. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and there it would be, glowing at me. You couldn’t turn it off and Marshall wouldn’t let me shove it in a drawer. My only solution was to hide under the covers. Can you imagine the trauma of growing up with a glowing cross that forces you to hide under the covers? Who knows what damage a glowing Jesus might have caused.

As you might surmise, by this early point in my life I had already developed a somewhat warped view of religion, not to mention a frustrated pair of parents. But they weren’t about to give up. Their savage little beasts would be tamed. It took Tarzan to show me the light.

Next on my parent’s road map to religious enlightenment was the Episcopal Church of Our Savior in Placerville. This time they used a different tactic, bribery. After church, we stopped at Tom Raley’s grocery store and were allowed to buy a Pepsi and pick out a comic book. I would eagerly search the rack for the latest issue of Tarzan, and, on really lucky weekends, find one. It was like winning a gazillion dollars in the lottery. The mere thought of joining the ape-man on his romp through the jungle was more than I could resist. I became a devout Episcopalian.

Next on our Burning Man focus series, we will take a look at some unusual structures that are built at Burning Man.

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do.” Obviously.

Next on UT-OH: Nancy Jo and the Graveyard Ghost— a terrifying experience.

UT-OH! Chapter 5: How MC the Cat Almost Lost His Danglies

/ Curt Mekemson / 10 Comments
Finding a photo of MC the Cat is impossible, given that he never was around long enough to have his photo taken. Looking solemn, I’m on the left holding my dog Tickle— who did have a role to play in this tale. My brother, Marshall, is on the right holding Happy and her puppies. The size of the pups suggests that there was a question about who the daddy was. Maybe that’s why Tickle is looking disgusted. The Graveyard where MC disappeared, looms in the background.

No story of our family pets and the Graveyard is complete without MC the Cat. He was the exact opposite of Demon. She was as dark as the Graveyard on a moonless night; he was as white as the ghosts that lived there. She was loving and tame while he was as wild as a domestic cat can be— a throwback to his ancient ancestors. He was not a climb-up-on-your-lap type of cat. His one passion in life was spreading his seeds as far and wide as he could travel and still make it home for dinner. He was a tomcat’s Tomcat, a legend in his own mind. 

His one challenge was his small size, which meant that he often came out on the losing end in his battles with larger toms. He would arrive home beat up and battered. One time a chunk of his ear was missing. Another time it was the tip of his tail. How he managed that, we didn’t have a clue.

I encouraged my cocker spaniel, Tickle, to break up the fights to minimize the damage. He loved his job. He would dash to the door at the first yowl and fly off our porch in full bark when I turned him loose. Other than giving Tickle a purpose in life, his efforts had little impact, however.

Pop decided that drastic measures were called for. MC would have to lose his offending appendages. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of money in our household for veterinary bills. But there was a solution. We were a do-it-yourself kind of family. For example, cocker puppies are supposed to have their tails cut off fairly soon after birth. My dad would take the litter, tie thread tightly around their tails, and then break out the tool he used for cutting tin. Snip, YIP! And it was over.  

Obviously, neutering a full-grown tom cat was a bit more difficult. Our Italian neighbor, Papa Passerini, offered an Old Country solution: “All you need is a pair of tin snips, a burlap bag, gloves, a pocket knife, and a rope.” 

Alarm bells should have gone off— massive alarm bells heard all the way to Italy. But they didn’t. Pop moved ahead with the suggested medical procedure.

While MC had never been a paragon of feline domesticity, he’d at least let me pat him on the head if food was involved, as long as I was quick and limited myself to one pat. He even managed a brief purr when I picked him up the morning of his ‘operation’ and carried him up to Passerini’s. Any previous pretensions of tolerating people ceased instantly, though, when his legs were tied up and he was dumped into the dark gunny sack.

When Pop cut a slit in the burlap with his pocket knife and reached a gloved hand through, he was met by claws of fury. MC had shed his ropes faster than Houdini. No one, but no one, was going to grab him by the testicles, pull him up to the slit, and cut them off with a pair of tin snips. He clawed his way out of the bag and became a white blur as he disappeared into the Graveyard. And there he would stay. After that, I would only see him at dinner time, and then, only after I put his food down and walked several feet away. 

The good news, from MC’s perspective, was that he was able to continue his tomcatting ways with all parts of his anatomy intact right up until he reached old age and quietly wandered off to tomcat heaven. Where, according to rumor, he was twice as big, had eternal youth, and a long line of lovely female cats stretched off to infinity eagerly awaiting his services. It was probably fake news.

UT-OH! Chapter 4: Part 2 of ‘Hiring the Family Pets to Scare Away the Ghosts’

/ Curt Mekemson / 12 Comments
Imagine sharing a small army cot with this large dog. Now throw in a cat or two and another dog…

I am continuing the story about how I had hired my pets to sleep on my bed and scare away the ghosts that came out of the Graveyard next door to haunt me when I slept outside. I introduced Demon the Black Cat in my last UT-OH post. Today, it’s Pat the Greyhound’s turn. She joined our family as a stray. For weeks, Mother had watched this large, starving dog wander the countryside catching jack rabbits and ground squirrels for food. One day she stopped the car, opened the door, and invited Pat home for a meal.

“Oh, it is just until she gains a little weight,” Mother explained to one very disgruntled Pop. He already believed the size of our pet menagerie was far too large. People were known to drop off unwanted cats in front of our house knowing that they would find a home. As the dog put on the pounds, Mother modified her strategy.

“It would break Curt’s heart if we had to give her away,” she argued. Mother was a master at manipulation. Pat, who I named after the local Greyhound bus driver, became my dog. 

Like all of our pets, she lived outside. It was Pop’s rule; pets were limited to daytime visitation rights only. The pregnant Demon had been an exception imposed by Mother. Since there were no leash laws, Pat was free to come and go as she pleased. Mainly she chose to hang around with her food dish in sight. It was a lot easier than catching rabbits.

The night of the skunk was an exception to Pat’s normal stay-at-home routine. As usual, I had crawled into bed with an assortment of animals. That evening, it was minus Pat. Good, she took up a lot of room. Somewhere around midnight, I half way awoke as she hopped up on the bed, completed three dog turns, and snuggled down. Consciousness made a quantum leap as my nose was assailed by an unmistakable perfume.

“Seems we have a skunk visiting,” I told Pat and reached down to scratch her head. The fur was moist. As I pulled my hand back, the skunk suddenly got much closer. Now, I was totally awake. Ms. Greyhound had been bullying the wrong pussycat. It was a night to sleep inside. In fact, Marshall had a roommate for several days. I don’t know how many times I washed that hand, but I do know that the bedding was tossed and Pat learned what a tomato juice bath was. When I finally made it back outside, the animals were put on notice: One more problem and off they went. 

Then Demon made her contribution.

She was well into middle age by this time and there had been no pause in kitten production. This was a time before spaying became common. Every few months, Demon shelled out another litter. She had long since finished overpopulating Diamond and was working on surrounding communities. We were teetering on becoming known as the Cat Family of Diamond Springs. My father reverted to drastic measures. Demon was not pleased. She started hiding her kittens and became a master at subterfuge. If someone tried to follow her, she would stop and nonchalantly give herself a bath, her whole body, one lick at a time. Then she would wander off in the opposite direction.

Mother paid me in cookies to track Demon down. When the Graveyard was her destination, I had a flat tombstone I would stand on as a lookout. There was an added advantage: Demon didn’t check for people perched on tombstones. Who would? Eventually, the missing litter would be discovered. I felt like Daniel Boone.

Demon’s special home delivery took place the same summer Pat had her close encounter with the skunk. As noted earlier, my attitude about bed companions had become testy. I wasn’t above rolling over quickly to see how many I could dislodge. A really good roll would net three or four. Sleeping with me was like living on the San Andreas Fault.

I did feel guilt over routing Demon, however. Once again, she was pregnant. I watched her balloon out. By this time, I was a veteran of the birthing process and found it interesting rather than troublesome. One night I had awakened to Pat howling, found that she was delivering puppies, and sat up with her through the process. Another time I had gone out with Tom Murphy, our grocer, and assisted in the delivery of a calf that wanted to come out the wrong way. It was messy, up to the elbow work. Remember the coke I stolen from in front of his store on my early morning walk home from Rudy and Robert’s? Tom was repaid many times over. I should have been rewarded with free cokes for life.

I really didn’t expect to be around for the arrival of Demon’s kittens. That would take place in some hidden nook. One should never make assumptions, I learned. Again. It started as a normal night. Roll over, kick the animals off, and go to sleep. Wake up and repeat the process. It was not a normal morning. I woke up with wet feet. 

“What the heck!” I exclaimed as I sat up quickly, dislodging Pat in the process. Demon looked innocently back at me from the foot of the bed. Okay, nothing suggested why my feet were wet. Then I noticed movement. Demon was not alone. Several little black clones were lined up for breakfast. Demon had delivered her litter on the bed and my feet were awash in afterbirth.

That did it.  My bed was not a home for wayward dogs who encountered the business end of skunks and it certainly wasn’t designed as a maternity ward for unwed cats. After Demon and her brood were moved elsewhere and my bedding given a bath, I bought a water pistol and initiated a campaign of terror. Any four-legged critter on the bed became fair game. The cats learned quickly; getting shot with a water pistol was not their idea of a proper bath. The dogs were more resistant. Usually it took several squirts and then I would get the look: Big brown eyes accusing me of dark deeds. But I was tough and my canine companions eventually vacated the premises as well.

As soon as I fell asleep, however, the whole menagerie, fleas and all, would quietly slip back up on the bed.

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.” Next Monday’s focus post will be on the sculptures of Burning Man.

On Thursday join me as I relate the story of how MC the Cat refused to have his danglies cut off in UT-OH! Chapter 5.

UT-OH! Chapter 3: Hiring the Family Pets Scare the Away the Graveyard Ghosts: Part I (It’s Friday the 13th)

/ Curt Mekemson / 17 Comments
Here I am with Tickle and my mother, sitting on the edge of the Graveyard. Tickle was my constant companion when I wasn’t at school. That included nights when I slept outside in the summer where he joined Pat the Greyhound and Demon the Black Cat in keeping the ghosts away.

First Grade was not the highlight of my school years, thankfully. Things had to get better. And did. My second and third grade teacher turned out to be my Godmother. There is a commandment issued on a mountain somewhere and written in granite: She had to like me. My attitude toward education made a dramatic leap. I actually became something of a teacher’s pet, which surprised everybody. Me, most of all. But back to the wilderness, er, Graveyard.

Between the third and fourth grade, I discovered a new way to enjoy nature. I moved my bedroom outdoors in the summer. It was partially to avoid sharing a room with Marshall and partially to escape my father’s house shaking snores. But the real reason was that I loved being outdoors. I would move out as soon as school was over and stay until it started, or later if parents and weather permitted.

At first I slept on the ground in a cheap cotton sleeping bag. The ground was hard, the nights cool, and the mosquitoes persistent, but these were minor drawbacks. I was free. If I had to pee, I’d climb out of the sleeping bag and find the nearest bush. If I woke up thirsty, a convenient garden hose was nearby. I would go to sleep watching the stars and listening to a giant bullfrog that lived in the ditch in front of our house. I would wake up to the cool morning air and chirping robins. Life was good.

Then it got better. My grandparents bought me a real bed— a wood framed, steel spring army cot, complete with mattress. Looking back, I think they may have been embarrassed that their grandson was sleeping on the ground.

My paradise was marred by one thing, the Graveyard. It was always there on the edge of my sight. White tombstones glared at me.

As hard as I pretended, the cemetery and its frightful inhabitants would not go away. So I developed a set of defenses. The first was to sleep facing the opposite direction, or hide under the covers, ostrich like. A more sophisticated approach was to locate the bed where I couldn’t see the Graveyard. Our well-seasoned cars worked in a pinch, but they weren’t quite large enough. Bits and pieces of the Graveyard would creep around their sides, peak over their tops and slink under their bottoms. A trellis built by my father, Pop, was much better. Its luxurious growth of honeysuckle created the perfect screen. I set up a permanent residence behind it.

But even the trellis wasn’t enough to calm my imagination. More drastic action was called for. I hired protection. It came in the form of various family pets. Their job was to chase the ghosts away. Payment was made by allowing them to sleep on my bed. Apparently, the scheme worked. The evidence is irrefutable: No ghosts attacked me in the years I slept outside.

The downside was that I didn’t have much room. Two dogs, a cat, and me on a one person army cot constituted a menagerie, or a zoo, if you counted the fleas. It was difficult to move. At first, I was very careful not to disturb my sleeping companions. I became a circus contortionist frozen in place with body parts pointed in every direction. If this meant a sleepless night, so be it. It was a small price to pay for keeping the ghosts at bay.

Gradually, my attitude changes. I grew larger, the bed space shrank, and the animals started sleeping on top of me. Meanwhile the ghosts, who tend to hassle little people more than they do big people, became less of a threat. Therefore, I needed less protection. Neither of these factors led to the final banning of the animal kingdom, however, it was the shameless shenanigans of Demon the Cat and Pat the Greyhound.

Demon the Black Cat

Demon, the alpha family cat, was as black as the darkest night. As such, she was appropriately named and attired for Graveyard duty. In fact, she spent a good deal of her life there, stalking mice, lizards, birds and anything else she could get her claws into with impunity. Captured prey would then be brought home for approval, or as gifts. My job was to dispose of the half devoured carcasses, preferably before Mother saw them. I would sometimes tie a string around the unsolicited gifts and run around the yard with Demon in mad pursuit. (Okay, this was admittedly weird, but I did receive high marks from the cat.)

Depopulating the Graveyard was not Demon’s claim to fame, however. Motherhood was. She had kittens often and everywhere. I suspect that half of the cats living in Diamond Springs and El Dorado County CA, today, can trace their lineage back to her.

Two instances of kitten production bring back vivid memories. The first took place on the living room floor. Demon was a young cat at the time, and a neophyte at motherhood. Her impending delivery was quite apparent from her large belly and ceaseless exploration of clothes hampers, closets and other dark places. With high hopes of avoiding a misplaced litter, Mother had arranged her bedroom closet as a maternity ward.

It was my duty to show Demon her new home several times a day. I would carefully pick up the very pregnant cat, carry her to the closet, and deposit her in a box with well-used clothes. Demon didn’t buy the program. It seems that my bedside manner was faulty. She would climb out of the box, glare at me, and stalk out of the room.

When the joyous day finally arrived, I was home alone. Demon was practicing her would-be mother waddle walk across the floor when she suddenly stopped, squawked and squatted.

Neither she nor I was ready for what followed. After all, how prepared can a young kid and a first-time mother be prepared for birth? In a massive surprise to both of us, a tiny, black bundle of fir emerged from Demon’s undercarriage. Surging emotions paralyzed my seven-year-old mind.

One thought stood out: The closet! If Demon hadn’t memorized her delivery lessons, I had. I jumped across the room, grabbed her by the nape of the neck, and dashed for Mother’s bedroom. As fast as I ran, it wasn’t fast enough. In the middle of the kitchen, the new arrival completed her journey and was heading for a crash landing. Somehow, somewhere between Demon and the floor, I caught the warm, wet ball of fur in my free hand. After that, my memory fades but I know that the three of us made it to the closet. I left Demon busy licking her new baby. Demon accepted her new home and four more kittens followed the first, although in a less dramatic way. Diamond’s cat population explosion was underway.

Part 2 of Hiring the Family Pets to Keep the Graveyard Ghosts Away will be posted next week on Thursday’s blog-a-book day. Tune in to learn about my second vivid memory of Demon’s kitten production, how Pat the Greyhound became a member of our family, and how Pat and Demon’s bad behavior led to the banning of animals from my bed. Sort of.

Head shot of large mutant rhino vehicle at Burning Man.
Monday’s focus post will be on the wonderful, weird, and often whacky mutant vehicles at Burning Man. It’s a blog you won’t want to miss.

UT-OH! Chapter 3: Do You Feel the Vibes, Tonto? A Train Is Coming. –The Lone Ranger

/ Curt Mekemson / 10 Comments
Here we are in the first grade class of Diamond Springs Elementary School in 1949. I’m in the middle of the back row with my hands in my pocket, crunched together between two girls. Rudy is one person to the right of me. Robert is in the middle of the first row. Joe is on the far right, bottom row. My life-long friend Bob Bray, who you will meet in future chapters, is sitting in the front row just right of Mrs. Young.

My endless vacation came to an end the fall of 1949. It was time for the first grade. Mother was delighted. Mrs. Young, not so much.  A number of the little boxes on my report card that reflected good behavior were marked ‘needs improvement.’ Mrs. Young had decided I needed a lot. Is neat: needs improvement. Shares: needs improvement. Is polite: needs improvement. The list went on. I was a little savage.

The ‘neat’ part was particularly sensitive. My shoes were falling apart, my pants had holes in them (this was before it became a fashion statement for young women), I smelled like a little boy who only bathed once a week, and didn’t wear any underwear. You might wonder how Mrs. Young knew about the latter. It wasn’t that she did an inspection. The zipper was to blame.

I was in the bathroom one day, had finished peeing, and was zipping up my pants when my poor little guy got stuck in the zipper. Damn that hurt! I screamed like the six year old man I was and made a beeline to Mrs. Young to solve the problem.  She must have been delighted and wondered where in her contract it stated “Must be available to liberate little boys’ penises from zippers.” Anyway, she did her job. I suspect a not-nice note was sent home to my mother. Anyway, underwear became part of my attire, forever after. 

I thought of naming this chapter, Free the Penis! But my editor/Peggy (wife) thought not. 

Once, I got spanked. “Reading and writing and ‘rithmetic taught to the tune of a hickory stick” the old song School Days proclaimed. My classmate Joe and I had disagreed over who was top dog. We fought it out on the playground. I thought I was doing Mrs. Young a favor by clarifying the issue. Joe was even more uncivilized than I. She thought otherwise. The only justice I could see was that Joe got it in the end as well, so to speak.

The high point of my year was that I made my first two friends who weren’t family or buddies of my older brother. Rudy and Robert were a pair of Hispanic brothers who lived in a small house out in east Diamond. We had hit it off immediately and on a Saturday toward the end of school, the boys and their parents invited me up to their house to spend the night. It was my first official play date and my first ever sleep-over. I was nervous. My mother took me up and dropped me off to a royal greeting by the boys, their parents and their siblings. 

“Quick,” the boys urged, “we have to go stand by the railroad tracks.” We could hear the train’s whistle as it approached Diamond. 

The tracks were part of a narrow-gauge railway Caldor Lumber Company used to bring logs from its tree-cutting operation 20 miles up in the El Dorado National Forest to its lumber mill in Diamond Springs. When the company was established in the early 1900s, it had located its sawmill in the forest near its logging operation and used mules for hauling the logs. It had then switched to oxen, and finally a giant steam tractor. The tractor made so much noise that the company was required to use outriders a quarter of a mile in front to warn people so their horses wouldn’t be spooked. 

Understandably, the company switched to the railroad when it relocated its mill to Diamond Springs, 20 miles away. The train, in turn, would lose out to logging trucks in the 50s. At the time, however, little kids still had the joy of watching the engines and their line of rail cars carrying massive logs out of the forest.

Caldor’s steam engine and its load of logs. Note the size of the logs. (Old newspaper photo)

My father had a close connection with the railway. As one of Caldor’s two electricians, he was responsible for maintaining phone service along the track between the lumber camp and the mill as well as the massive machinery the mill used for cutting up logs and producing lumber. When there was a problem with the phones, off he went to check out the 20 miles of line. A hand cranked generator was necessary for creating the electricity to make calls. We inherited one when the line was replaced. Marsh and I would invite our little friends over, crank up the machine, and have them touch the outlet. They got the message. It was shocking.

Pop’s favorite railway task was clearing snow off the tracks each summer when the logging camp opened up for the season. “We had a diesel-powered rail car with a snow plow on it,” he explained to me later. “We’d back up and take a run at snow banks, crashing into them, and hopefully breaking through. Often our car would jump the tracks. We’d all pile out and lift it back on.” Some fun; he loved it. 

While watching the train was high entertainment, the primary attraction for us was that the engineers carried an ample supply of wrapped hard candy that they would throw out to the boys and girls standing alongside the track. It was a tradition.

The train was near. We could hear it chugging along. Rudy, Robert, their brother, sisters and I sprinted the hundred or so yards over to the tracks. Being a smart ass, I laid down and put my ear on one of the rails. It was a trick I had learned from the Lone Ranger and his side-kick, Tonto. You can actually hear the vibrations and supposedly judge how far away the train was. I needn’t have bothered since the train came into view a hundred yards away while my I was focused on the ‘vibes.’ I’m sure the engineers saw me. 

“Get off the track!” Rudy and Robert screamed. We started waving vigorously. One of the engineers dutifully leaned out of the cab and tossed us candy, lots of it. We scrambled around picking it up and shoving it in our pockets. At least the ones that weren’t shoved into our mouths.

After we had collected our candy from the train, dinner was a long hour off. I suggested to Robert and Rudy that we head out to the woods behind their house and ride trees. Who needs horses? My brother and I had learned that we could climb up to the top of young, skinny pines and make them sway back and forth by leaning out. The farther we leaned, the more they swayed. It offered a free carnival-like experience 10 feet up in the air. Even more could be accomplished by throwing our feet out in the direction the tree was swaying and hanging on for dear life. If the tree was skinny enough, two of us could make it bend all of the way down to the ground, where we would drop off and allow it to snap back up. It took a while for me to persuade Rudy and Robert that the sport wasn’t going to kill them.

I suspect the trees didn’t enjoy the experience nearly as much as we did. Years later when I read Robert Frost’s poem about children bending birches, I fondly recalled our pine tree horses— or bucking broncs if you prefer. 

“It’s dinner time!” came the call so we rushed back to the house and made use of an outside water faucet to wash the pine pitch off our hands. Sort of. Pitch has a way of sticking like super glue. It’s the pine tree’s revenge. Mother had a box of Boraxo at home for the task. Hand inspections were held afterward.

“You have to try this,” Rudy enthused, dashing into the house and coming out with a red pepper. I should have been suspicious when the rest of the kids gathered around. But what does a first grader know? I gamely bit into the pepper and was introduced to habanero-hot. The kids roared as I made a mad sprint for the faucet and drank a gallon of water, becoming a major part of the evening’s entertainment. It would have served them right if I’d peed in their bed later. 

I forgave them when I had my first Mexican dinner, however. I still love Mexican food. And I’ve come to enjoy habanero-hot on foods ranging from burritos to spaghetti.

As the night progressed, it soon became time for bed. I was about to flunk sleep-over etiquette. The boys slept on the same bed. Admittedly it was bigger than my small single at home, but I had never slept in a bed with another person, much less 2 others, or maybe it was 10. That’s what it felt like. They put me in the middle. I was mortified, but I tried. I really did. Ten o’clock came and there I was, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling, body frozen in place, and midnight, and two, and four. At five, I gently nudged Robert.

“I can’t sleep. I haven’t slept all night,” I confessed. “I have to go home.”

“Ummm,” the half-awake Robert had moaned and moved. 

I got up, dressed, and slipped out of the house by 5:30, careful not to wake anyone else. It was close to dark outside with only a dim light announcing the morning. Home wasn’t that far away, maybe a mile and a half at most. But I still remember the journey from a first grader’s perspective: It was long and spooky, my first great solo adventure. I followed the dirt road over the railroad tracks out to the Pleasant Valley Road. Not one car zipped by. Fortunately. They probably would have stopped and driven me home. Everyone knew everybody else in Diamond Springs with its population of 750. “Sorry to wake you up, Marge, but I found Curt out wandering in East Diamond.” By noon, everyone in town would have heard the story. 

I walked past the hill with the cross on it and picked up Highway 49. Halfway home, I came to Tom Murphy’s grocery store. Sodas were stacked in wood boxes in front, waiting to be moved inside. I looked around furtively; I was totally alone. So, I helped myself to a Coke; I deserved it. I continued on my journey, walking by the post office, Dub Walker’s store, the barber shop, Scheiber’s hardware store, the historic Pony Express stop, the firehouse and Gust Brother’s Garage, eventually reaching the dreaded Graveyard. I clutched my coke and crossed the road, preferring Pagoni’s mean dogs to the ghosts. 

Arriving home, I carefully hid the soda outside. It wouldn’t do to have overly inquisitive parents discover the purloined drink and ask questions. I happily enjoyed it later in the day, feeling much less guilty about stealing than I did about abandoning my friends. I suspect there was a bit of consternation when Rudy and Robert’s parents woke to find me missing. Imagine what would happen today.

Are you ready for our next focus series? Peggy and I will be returning to the whacky, wild, weird and wonderful world of Burning Man. This is Peggy decked out for Burning Man 2023. The world traveller, Bone (over 50 countries), is resting on the right arm of the throne.

UT-OH! Chapter 1: First Grade Flunkee

/ Curt Mekemson / 19 Comments
Unknown to me, I had grown two days older. But what did I know. I was only five years old.

I can still hear the clanking treads and feel the bite of the blade as my D-8 dug into the side of the steep hill. Dirt and rocks tumbled into the canyon below. I was working alone, cutting a logging road across mountainous terrain. A hot Indian-Summer sun was beating down on me. My body was drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. And then it happened. A portion of the cliff gave away— and the bulldozer went tumbling off the edge. 

“Fuck!” I yelled. 

It was a wonderful word, one that I had learned from my seven-year old brother, Marshall. I didn’t have a clue what it meant, but it was deliciously bad and not to be said around adults. Or my sister.

At five years of age, I was too young to be operating a bulldozer by myself in our backyard, even if it was only four-inches long and the road I was cutting was along the edge of our compost pit. But my mother wasn’t the hovering type; she drank a lot. Empty wine bottles had a way of mysteriously appearing under her bed and in the clothes’ hamper that hid out in the closet. I spent a lot of time outdoors. My mother’s alcoholism was my introduction to being alone with nature. Not necessarily a bad deal.

I wasn’t totally alone. Coaly, our black Cocker Spaniel, was assigned babysitting duty.  At “fuck!” she wagged her tail and barked into our compost pit where the toy had fallen. 

“Go get the bulldozer, girl,” I urged. She gave me a ‘go get it yourself’ look. She wasn’t the ideal faithful-dog. The gray hair around her nose and aching joints spoke to her advanced years.  She felt little need to please me and zero tolerance for my youthful pranks. Healing scars on my foot reflected how little. 

We fed Coaly and our cats canned Bonnie dog food. She got half, and each of our two cats got a quarter. She’d wolf down her food and then go after the cats’ portion. I had discovered that Coaly growled ferociously if I messed with her share. We fed our animals outside on the finest paper towels.  I always went barefoot in the summer and it was easy to reach over with my big toe and slide their food away. I quickly learned to leave the cats with their lightning fast claws alone. But Coaly was all bark and no bite. At least she was until she sunk her teeth into my foot. I ended up in the ER with a tetanus shot, stitches and zero sympathy. Coaly ended up gobbling her dinners and hassling the cats in peace.

At the time of the bulldozer incident, I had been granted a reprieve from school, or, to put it bluntly, I had been kicked out of the first grade— for a year. My mother was not happy. She had good reason to drink.

As her last child to enter school, she had been eager to get me out of the house. Make that desperate. The evidence is irrefutable. California had a rule then that five-year olds could go to the first grade if they turned six on or before March 1 of the following year. There was no such thing as kindergarten, at least in Diamond Springs in 1948. Since my birthday was on March 3, I missed the deadline by two days. Darn. 

Mother’s reaction was more colorful. She made a command decision. Forty-eight hours were not going to stand in the way of her little boy’s education, or her freedom. So, she changed my birth certificate.  March 3 was carefully erased with a typewriter eraser and March 1 typed in. I was bathed, dressed and shipped out, not the least bit aware that I had matured by two days. I think I recall hearing music and dancing in the house as my 12 year old sister walked me to school, a block away.

Things weren’t so rosy at school. The other kids were all older, bigger, and more coordinated. For example, Alan Green could draw a great horse. It came with four legs, a tail, a head and a flowing mane. Mine came with unrecognizable squiggles. It was hard to tell whether my objective was to draw a tarantula or a snake with legs, but the world’s wildest imagination on the world’s most potent drug wouldn’t have classified the picture as a horse. It was not refrigerator art. The whole exercise created big-time trauma.

This negative experience was compounded by the exercise of learning to print within lines. Forget that. If my letter came anywhere close to resembling a letter, any letter, I was happy. Mrs. Young, the teacher, was more critical.

“Curtis, I asked you to make Bs, and here you are printing Zs.”

“So what’s your point?” was not an acceptable response. Mrs. Young was suspicious and that suspicion increased each day I was in school. She was a tough old gal who had been teaching first grade for eons. She knew first graders, and I wasn’t one. As for the birth certificate, Mother’s forgery was in no danger of winning a blue ribbon at the county fair. After a few weeks, Mrs. Young sent off to Oregon for a copy. I remember her calling me up to her desk.

“Curtis” she explained, “you have a choice. You can either go home now or you can go home after school. But either way, you are going home and can’t come back until next year.” 

Just like that, I was a reject, a first grade flunkee. 

Mrs. Young couldn’t have made it any clearer: Mother was going to get her little boomerang back. This was okay by me, if not by her. Playing out in the backyard was infinitely more fun than competing in ‘Scribble the Horse.’ I did decide to stay for the day. Mrs. Young was reading about Goldilocks to us after lunch and I wanted to learn if the bears ate her.

It would have been interesting to listen in on the conversation that took place between Mother and Mrs. Young, or even more so between my mother and father, or Pop, as he was known to us. I’ve often wondered if he participated in the forgery or even knew about the March 1 rule. I doubt it. He was not the parent frantic to get me out of the house during the day.  (Had it been in the evening the jury might still be out, he laughingly reported to me years later.) But I wasn’t privy to those high-level discussions. My job, which I took quite seriously, was to enjoy the reprieve. I was about to begin my wandering ways. The Graveyard was waiting. Join me next Thursday as I learn how it served as a great playground during the day but became terrifying at night when the ghosts slithered out from their graves.

The change that made me two days older. I don’t know if this was the evidence that led to my being booted out of the first grade but the change is obvious. First, check out the the size of the ‘1′ in March 1 with the ‘1′ in 1943. While the type face is the same, the first 1 is much smaller. Second, but less obvious, there is a slight indentation and discoloration of the certificate where my mother used the typewriter eraser.

Vietnam: A War Born in Controversy… A Peace Corps Memoir from the 60s

/ Curt Mekemson / 26 Comments
I was walking toward the first big Anti-Vietnam War protest on the Berkeley Campus in 1965 when a crazily painted bus drove up and stopped. Out piled a group of people who were dressed in outrageous outfits and had their faces painted. The bus was Further of hippie fame and the people were Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. Like me, the ‘slightly’ aging bus now lives in Oregon. I’m in better shape.

The conflict in Vietnam dated back to 1946. It was born in controversy. France had lost her colonial empire in Indochina to Japan during World War II and Charles de Gaulle wanted it back. The Vietnamese Marxist Ho Chi Minh wanted independence. The Indo-China War was the result. In hope of expanding their influence, Russia and China sided with Ho Chi Minh. NATO and the US jumped in to thwart the Communist powers and support France.

In 1954 the Geneva Accords divided Indochina into four countries: North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Under President Eisenhower, the US replaced France in the fight against North Vietnam by providing ‘military advisors’ and financial aid to the politically corrupt regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. Over the next ten years our support continued to grow. John Kennedy dramatically expanded the effort by increasing the number of military advisers from 700 to 15,000. 

By the time I was ready to graduate from Berkeley, Lyndon Johnson was ready to send in the troops. The Cold War was raging. America’s leaders saw Vietnam as a critical step in stopping the spread of communism. Lose Vietnam, the Domino Theory argued, and all of Southeast Asia would follow.

My political science professors in International Relations at UC Berkeley had a different perspective. Communism was changing. It was no longer monolithic in nature but had taken on nationalistic flavors. Communism in Russia was different from communism in China. The Russians were as fearful of Chinese massing on their border as they were of the US’s nuclear weapons.

One day I arrived at my class on Comparative Communism and learned my professor had been invited to Washington to provide advice on Vietnam. The message he carried was that Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist first and a Marxist second. He wanted to reunite North and South Vietnam. He was no more interested in being dominated by Russia or China than he had been in being dominated by France. Becoming involved in a full-scale war was not in the best interest of the United States and might prove to be a costly mistake.

Washington was not ready to listen. America’s leaders had grown up on a steady diet of Cold War rhetoric. Not even the insanity of McCarthyism had shaken their faith. Being ‘soft on communism’ was political suicide. When Khrushchev banged his shoe on his desk at the United Nations and said he would bury us, we banged back.

Lyndon Johnson and his closest advisers believed in the anti-communist threat but there was more. America was the leader of the Free World. Our image was involved. Lose Vietnam and we would lose prestige. Johnson took the matter personally. We would not lose Vietnam on his watch.

But I was convinced there was more to the fight in Vietnam than a communist grab for power. The focus of my studies on Africa in 1965 was about the struggle for independence from colonial powers.  I felt Ho Chi Minh was involved in a similar fight.

A huge rally was held on campus in May. It was one of the first major Anti-Vietnam protests in the nation. I went to listen. Dozens of speakers including Irving Stone, Dr. Spock of baby fame, Senator Gruening from Alaska and Norman Mailer spoke out against the war. Later the House Un-American Activities Committee targeted the event’s organizers. If Vietnam was part of a communist plot to take over the world, then dissent in the U.S. against the war was part of that plot. The same FBI agents who had prowled on the fringes of the earlier Free Speech Movement were undoubtedly prowling the edges of the protest, taking pictures and taking names. 

In some ways, the rally was like a circus. Over 30,000 students and anti-war activists participated. Folks from the throughout the Bay Area poured on to Union Field and there were lots of interesting people in the Bay Area. Haight Asbury and the hippie era was still a year off, but the elements were all in place. I was standing on Bancroft Avenue when a crazily painted bus drove up and stopped. Out piled a group of people who were dressed in outrageous outfits and had their faces painted. They danced by me, apparently high on something. 

“It’s Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, a more ‘with-it’ girl standing next to me explained. “Neal Cassidy drives the bus.” 

Cassidy had been part of the Beat Generation and a friend of Jack Kerouac. He had been immortalized as Dean Moriarty in “On the Road.” His connection with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters would introduce another type of trip to him: LSD. Tom Wolfe’s book, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” chronicled the experience of the Merry Pranksters on their gaily-painted bus named Further as it made its psychedelic journey across the US.

What I had learned about Vietnam in my classes and at events like the protest created a dilemma for me, as it did for most young men of my generation. If drafted, I would go. I couldn’t imagine burning my draft card or moving to Canada. I actually believe we owe our country service. But fighting in a war I didn’t believe in was at the very bottom of the list of what I wanted to do when I graduated. And there was more. I am allergic to taking orders and can’t stand being yelled at. I’d make a lousy soldier. I saw a court-martial in my future.

Luckily, Peace Corps Recruiters were coming to Berkeley and Peace Corps was something I truly wanted to do. I could serve America in my own way. Peace Corps service would not eliminate my military obligation but it might buy time for the Vietnam conflict to end.

In my next post on the Peace Corps, I visit with the recruiters and fill out a long application. I even take a language test, in Kurdish. Go figure. But that is a story for this fall. Next Monday will be my last regular post for the summer. Peggy and I are going on vacation. 🙂 I’ll write about it on Monday.

FRIDAY’S TRAVEL BLOG: We are going on a walk up a trail I created in the forest behind our home. Am I a trail blazer, or what? A buck plays contortionist, poison oak lurks, and an old cave speaks to the area’s gold mining history.

Nature Boy… Counting Skunks Is More Fun than Being Conked by a Baseball

/ Curt Mekemson / 15 Comments
Another fuzzy photo from the 1950s. My brother Marshall poses proudly in his Little League uniform. Even Tickle had to get into the act.

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. I did, however, realize that there was more to life. For example, I took an early interest in girls. And then there were sports.

I am not a jock when it comes to traditional sports. 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 pressure to see us excel on the playing field. Being as blind as a bat didn’t help, either. Like many 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 would sit close to the black board and squint 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. All of my friends played and social pressure suggested it was the thing to do. 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— but 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 skunks that lived in the Woods. This came with its own hazards, however. Have you ever had a skunk stand up on its front legs, wave its tail at you, and prepare to let you have it with both barrels. If you are lucky, don’t move, and are very quiet, the skunk will return to all fours and waddle off. I’ve been in the situation twice and lucked out both times.

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. That’s a story for another time but I’ll leave it with saying my sports career peaked in the eighth grade where I pitched for the softball team, was quarterback of the football team, and center for the basketball team. It was all downhill after that.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I spent a substantial amount of time getting into mischief as a kid. Admittedly, I had a lot of help from my brother, but I was hardly innocent. The primary difference between Marshal and me was that l lacked his creativity. For example, it never would have crossed my mind to put a bullet down on a rock and then smash it with another rock to see what would happen. In my post next Monday, I’ll explore a Diamond Springs mantra of the time— The Mekemson kids did it.

WEDNESDAY’S BLOG-A-BOOK POST from my Peace Corps Memoir: UC Berkeley came to a grinding halt in the wake of the arrests at Sproul Hall and I joined a picket line. Thousands of students gathered in Sproul Plaza while an army of police hovered nearby…