UT-OH a book about misadventures

Alaska Bear Tales: Part 1… Backpacking in Denali National Park and across the Alaska Range

/ Curt Mekemson / 17 Comments
A pair of Kodiak brown bears have a stand off on an Alaskan river. “Maybe if I pretend he isn’t here.” When our son Tony was flying helicopters for the Coast Guard on Kodiak Island, he and his wife Cammie arranged a trip for us to watch brown bears fishing.

The Alaska wilderness experience is significantly different from what you experience in the ‘Lower 48.’ One of my primary reasons for moving to Alaska in 1983 was to explore the difference. 

There is a sense of vastness when you slip on your backpack and head away from your car in Alaska, a possibility that you can hike for days and not see another person. And there is an element of danger. Few well-maintained trails and trail signs are there to guide you. The weather is always a factor. Large storm systems march across the state and bring rain and mists in the summer and biting cold and snow in the winter. Plus there are large animals out there, large animals with big teeth, big claws, big hoofs and big horns.

“The better to eat, scratch, trample or gore you, my dear.”

It isn’t that the animals are out to get you. They just don’t have the same level of tolerance their southern cousins do. Recognizing this, I always went out of my way to be polite when wandering in their territory. The number one rule with bears is no surprises. Bears weigh several hundred pounds and have suspicious minds. Their tendency is to bite first and ask questions afterwards when surprised. So, you make lots of noise when walking through dense brush. Almost all of the wilderness shops sold bells to wear, but I regarded them as dinner bells. Cows wear bells, right? And grizzly bears like to eat cows. I preferred to sing. Cows don’t sing. And believe me on this one: There is nothing like a large pile of steaming bear shit to make you sing loudly. Peggy is known to break into a rousing chorus of 99 Bottles of Beer on the wall.

The number two rule is don’t run away. Behaving like food implies you are. Also, as part of this rule, stand tall. Look like a human being. Such behavior suggests to the bear that you know something it doesn’t. Why would a 100-200 plus pound creature stand up to a 500-1000 pound plus creature? It makes the bear more cautious. Possibly something else would taste better.

Be particularly wary if you encounter a female with cubs. Do not approach the cubs or get between the mother and her cubs. It’s a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

These cubs were delightful little fellows, but definitely called for a telephoto lens. Mother bears are very protective of their kids. The cubs were walking across a a fish dam and ladder on Kodiak that was built to allow salmon to get around a 30-foot falls.
And Mom was nearby.

Carry bear spray. If that doesn’t work, play dead. Fortunately, I’ve never had to use bear spray or made it to rule number three. (I don’t count the bear standing on me in Yosemite as an attack. I think he was merely curious about what might happen if you stand on a human. Call it a scientific experiment.)

My first journey into grizzly bear country occurred when I went to Alaska in 1981 to help the American Lung Association set up its Trek Fund Raising Program I had created. A friend came along to go backpacking with me in Denali National Park and canoeing on the Kenai Peninsula. Before we headed out on our adventure, the Lung Association Board Member who had brought me to Alaska, took us aside for some advice. 

“You will want to carry a weapon with you, Curt, in case a grizzly bear attacks,” he warned. Now there was a comforting thought.

“I don’t have a weapon,” I told him. “And, furthermore, I would probably just piss the bear off or shoot myself.” But he was not going to let us go off unarmed. He broke out his 357 magnum pistol and handed it to me along with a handful of bullets. With that much fire power, I could at least seriously piss off a bear. I took the gun and bullets and dutifully stuffed them into different compartments in my pack.

I thought of a use for the pistol shortly after we headed off into the backcountry of Denali. My friend was walking in front and was primarily in charge of making noise.

“Here bear, here bear,” she kept repeating, “eat the one in back of me. He’s fatter.”

It was our canoe trip on the Kenai Peninsula that led me to finally break out the weapon. It was early in the evening. I was peacefully sitting back, reading a book and sipping a cup of tea when the silence of the evening was shattered.

“SCHIWISSSSH!”

“What the…” I thought, dropping my book and knocking over my tea. 

“SCHIWISSSSH!”

Loosing the tea really irritated me. It included a shot of my 151 proof rum. I made a dash for my pack, the pistol and the bullets.

“SCHIWISSSSH!”

Whatever it was, it was getting dangerously close to camp. I could dimly see a large figure through the thick trees. I fumbled through loading the pistol with eight thumbs and two fingers, took it in both hands movie style, and made a heart pounding stalk through the forest, the Great Hunter personified.

“SCHIWISSSSH!”

 A large, ungainly moose (all moose are large and ungainly) was methodically stripping the leaves off of a tree. He would grab one end of a limb in his gargantuan mouth and work his way down, ripping off leaves as he went, schiwissssh. My 457 and I high tailed it back to camp in hopes that the moose would find greener leaves elsewhere. Old timers n Alaska will tell you that the moose is more dangerous than the grizzly.

Looking ungainly but not very dangerous. A moose that Peggy and I found in Alaska.
Peggy provides some perspective with moose antlers on one of our drives up the Alaska Highway. How would you like to wear these on your head, or worse, have them charging you? This set weighed close to 50 pounds.

My actual encounter with bears waited for when I moved to Alaska. Two involved grizzlies and the third a larger Alaskan brown bear. The first happened on an off-trail trek I was planning to raise funds for the American Lung Association of Alaska. I decided going cross country would be fun and selected a section of the Alaska Range for the adventure. I invited two people, Margaret Timmerman and her friend Tracy, along to help preview the route. 

Both were experienced Alaskan outdoor people. Tracy was a glacier guide and Margaret taught mountain climbing for the local community college. She was also my travel agent. Once, when I visited her to arrange for a trip to New Orleans, she related an experience she had leading a group on an expedition up Mt. Denali. They had been caught is a serious whiteout storm on the mountain side and been tent bound for several days. Since I couldn’t imagine leading groups up Denali much less being stuffed up in a tent for that long, I recruited her to be one of my Trek leaders. 

Other than fighting off the usual hoards of insects and spending hours walking in the rain, our Trek review went smoothly. But that was before we ran into the bear.

We were hiking happily along on a rare sunny day through relatively open country when a caribou came flying out of a small valley. I mean it was moving. We had seen several earlier. They would bounce up to us, take a look, and bounce off. They weren’t worried and neither were we. But this guy had a problem. Within seconds he had disappeared over a ridge. We looked over in to the valley but didn’t see anything except some snow that hadn’t quite succeeded in melting. I could see tracks in the snow, though, and persuaded Margaret and Tracy to climb down with me and take a look. The story of what had happened was obvious, at least to me.

“Do you guys see what happened here?” I asked. They replied “no,” so I gave them a quick lesson in animal tracks 1a.

“Look over there,” I suggested, pointing down the valley. “See the Caribou’s tracks. He is strolling along without a care in the world. Now look up on the hillside coming out from the brush. See the snow thrown every which way. Something big came barreling out of there heading straight for the caribou. Now look at the caribou tracks here.” The caribou’s nice little stroll has turned into huge bounds. It had gone from 3 to 30 mph in 3 seconds. 

“Guess what?” I asked with a nervous grin.

 “What?” came the mutual query.

“Somewhere close to here is a hungry, irate grizzly bear.” Three pairs of eyes suddenly got very busy searching the surrounding area. We spotted him almost immediately. He was sniffing around on a hillside looking for marmots to crunch. I pitied the poor marmot he found, but figured better the marmot than us. Besides, I knew that marmots are pretty good at taking care of themselves.

I once watched a grizzly try to catch one in the Canadian Rockies. I had backpacked into a remote area with a geologist from the University of Arizona in Tucson who was doing a study on the origin of the Rockies. The bear provided after dinner entertainment one evening.

He had chased a marmot down its hole about 50 yards away from our camp and was pursuing it with all the passion of a 300 pound NFL lineman pounding after a skinny quarterback behind the line of scrimmage. Dirt and rocks were flying everywhere. After about five minutes, the marmot poked its head up out of another hole a few feet behind the frenzied bear, watched with interest for a minute or so, and then whistled. The grizzly whirled and leapt in one blinding motion but the marmot was faster. Once again the air was clouded with flying debris as the frustrated bear doubled its efforts. Three minutes later the marmot poked his head out from yet another hole and whistled again. I swear it was playing with the bear. “Come on over here big boy.” 

Tracy, Margaret and I didn’t wait to see whether our irate friend found its marmot. We quietly exited stage left.

My next post will involve two more encounters. Both were much more close and personal than the one described above. In the first, I am stalked by a grizzly bear. In the second I work to persuade an Alaska brown bear I am not a menu item.

Peggy and I are now exploring Northern Ireland as part of our two month jaunt through Greece, Scotland and Ireland. This is a photo from one of the beautiful, glacier created nine valleys coming down from the Antrim Plateau to the Irish Sea. The one we chose to hike up is known as The Queen of the Glens for its tumbling waterfalls. There were several in the section we explored. This coming week, we will be in a remote farm house, apparently without wi-fi or phone service!

Yosemite Bear Tales Continued: A Bear Empties My Backpack 5 Feet Away, Another Towers Over Me While Growling, and a Third Grabs Me by the Head (sort of)

/ Curt Mekemson / 15 Comments
Yosemite National Park is world renowned for its beauty. For backpackers, it is also renowned for its bears.

At the end of my last blog, I had backpacked 18 miles into Yosemite Valley to resupply the food the bears had consumed— and alcohol. (I would have loved to witness the reaction of the bear that bit into my plastic bottle of 151 proof rum.)

My intention was to stay in the Valley that night, but it was a zoo, absolutely crawling with tourists. So I shouldered my pack and hiked back into Little Yosemite Valley. My body was not happy. The hike added a 2000 foot climb plus another five miles to an already-long day. 

The area’s proximity to the Valley means that it is a popular camping area for backpackers, either as a first-night stop or destination. I found a small, one-person site with a convenient log in the middle for sitting against and used my pack and Thermarest mattress to make a comfy chair. I whipped up a quick dinner, topped it off with a cup of wine, and prepared for bed. (My 151 proof rum was not available in the Valley.)

The popularity of the area for backpackers also means it is a popular area for bears— a dine in or take out restaurant. Given my experience of the night before, I was a tad paranoid. I carefully stuffed my food, and anything the bear might find tasty (wine, toothpaste, etc.) into my food bag and used a cable the park provided to hang food beyond a bear’s imagination. 

I also made sure that every pocket in my pack was open, including the top. Although the food was out of the pack, there might have been lingering smells to attract a bear. Closed pockets can lead to bears opening them. It’s rather hard on backpacks. And even if the bear doesn’t stop by for a snack, lots of other woodland creatures, mice for example, are happy to chew holes to get at food— especially in popular camping areas. I’ve had that happen several times over the years.

It should be noted here that several bear/rodent-proof containers are available for today’s backpackers. They weren’t in the 70s. I nodded off that night listening to backpackers yelling and beating on pans as bears worked their campsites, wondering when my turn would come.

I woke up around 11 when I heard a noise on the other side of the log where I had placed my pack, about five feet away. Heart pounding, I sat up to look. A bear was methodically emptying the pack, checking to see if there was any food. I watched with clinical interest as it shoved his head into the pack, pulled out an item, dropped it on the ground and then stuck his head back in the pack. By then I had enough, and suggested rather loudly that the bear go elsewhere. After one more foray, it did. The only damage I suffered was bear slobber, all over everything. My old Basset Hound, Socrates, the world champion of slobberers, would have been jealous.

The next night I was leaving my camp for an evening walk when I met a bear coming to visit. I bent over and picked up a rock. He took off like a dog: It was my kind of bear. And thus my summer went. By the time I had led two back-to-back hundred-mile trips into Yosemite, I had my fill of bears. Each time a bear visited in the night, I’d hear a scream, “Curtis!” I considered myself an expert bear chaser.

It was almost my demise.

At the end of the second Trek, my friend Jean, her sister Mary and her husband Tim joined me at Tuolumne Meadows to hike the John Muir Trail. We spent the night at the Tuolumne RV/car campground. I had eaten backpacking meals for 18 days. It was time to celebrate. We grilled up steaks, broke out a fifth of Jack Daniels, and threw in several cans of beer.

Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park

As the night progressed, I was feeling no pain. So it wasn’t surprising when a bear came to visit our neighbors from Iowa, I was prepared to do battle. They had left their cooler out on the picnic table and the bear was leisurely opening it. The Iowans were hiding out in their camper, making nary a peep.

“Hey bear,” I yelled as I strode across the road, “Get out of here!”

Well, Mr. Bear had found himself a cache of fresh food and wasn’t about to leave. He turned around, stood up on his hind legs, raised his front legs over his head and said “GRRRROWL!” He was one big fellow, towering above me. Stone cold sobriety was instantaneous.

It looked like this stuffed bear at the Tonopah Motel in Nevada.

“OK bear, it’s all yours,” I mumbled as I scurried back across the road to my own camp and safety. “Eat all of the Iowan food you want. Heck, eat the Iowans.”

By this time though, 20 flashlights were shining down on the bear. Campers are packed into Tuolumne Meadows like tenement housing in a barrio, and all of the neighbors were checking out the action, worrying. Thus disturbed, Mr. Bear went grumbling off over the hill, more than a little pissed to have his fine feast disturbed. You could almost make out in his growling, “I’ll be back.”

Of course the Iowans left their cooler out on the table. No way were they budging from their camper. I pictured them driving nonstop back to Des Moines the next day.

Finally things settled down. After another beer, or two, we crawled into our sleeping bags. Tim and Mary disappeared into the security of their truck while Jean and I crashed on the ground.

Not surprising, there came a time when Jean had to visit the restroom. Beer will do that. Equally unsurprising, the bourbon helped me sleep right through her getting up. But I did hear her come back. Except it wasn’t Jean I heard through my alcohol-induced grogginess. It was the bear— coming back for revenge.

“GET OUT OF HERE!” I screamed with all of the passion I had used when I had awakened with the bear standing on me. Jean, not knowing what to do, grabbed me by the head and said, “Curt, it’s all right, it’s only me!” This was undoubtedly the right thing for her to do, except now the bear had me by the head. As you might imagine, my yells increased in volume. By 10.

Picture 20 flashlights shining down on this happy little domestic scene. 

That was my last bear encounter of the season. There would be many more in the Sierras, but my next post will discuss encounters with grizzlies and the giant, brown bears of Alaska. If you find encounters with black bears scary…

Consider this fellow. I was stalked by a grizzly bear when I was leading a backpack trek across Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula.

UT-OH! Chapter 23: A Left Turn from the Right lane: Part 2… On Facing Nuclear Oblivion and Becoming an Agnostic

/ Curt Mekemson / 22 Comments

Being born in World War II, I am considered part of the Silent Generation instead of a Baby Boomer, those born between 1946 and 1964. The reality is that World War II babies are much more a part of the Baby Boomer Generation than the Silent Generation. (At least, I’ve never been accused of being silent.)  It was the events of the 50s and 60s—particularly of the 60s— not the Great Depression and World War II that laid the foundation of who I would become. Four events that took place while I was at Sierra College expanded my world view and moved me from my conservative to a more liberal perspective.

In my last post, I gained a new perspective on what a minority meant, and learned that progress had negative as well as positive impacts. Today, I will look at the impact on my thinking caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the so called ‘Holy Wars’ down through the ages.

On Facing Nuclear Oblivion…

USS Yarnall naval destroyer with number 850 alongside Soviet cargo ship Poltava with crew on deck under cloudy sky
This is an AI generated map of areas in the US that were in range of the nuclear missiles that Khrushchev had installed in Cuba.

All of our young lives we had been raised under the threat of a nuclear cloud. We were constantly treated to photographs and television coverage of massive, doomsday explosions and their tale-tale clouds. They were more than an ut-oh, they were possibly the final UT-OH!

Atom bombs, which could destroy whole cities and kill millions of people, weren’t massive enough, however. We needed bigger bombs and we needed more. We needed hydrogen bombs. We ended up with enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone in the world and blast ourselves and the rest of life into times that would make the so-called Dark Ages seem like a Sunday picnic in the park. The logic was that it would serve as a deterrent to war, that it would bring peace. And to a degree, there was an element of truth in this. At least we haven’t used nuclear weapons— yet. But wars continue to rage.

The closest America came to the nuclear holocaust (that we know of) took place during two terrifying weeks in late October 1962.  I, along with most of the student body and faculty at Sierra College, sat tethered to the radio in the Campus Center as our nation teetered on the edge of nuclear abyss. It all came about because a cigar chomping, right-wing dictator we liked had been replaced by a cigar chomping, left-wing dictator we didn’t. It was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis and has its own headlines in the history books as being a highlight of the Cold War. 

Castro and his revolution provided a toehold for Communism in the Western Hemisphere. President Jack Kennedy responded by waging a crusade to get rid of him that had started with alleged assassination attempts using Mafia hit men and ended in the fiasco known as the Bay of Pigs. Castro had then called on Uncle Khrushchev to loan him something that might make the USA back off. Russia had responded by offering nuclear missiles. 

The thought of having nuclear missiles capable of reaching the areas shown on the diagram above made the folks in Washington rightfully nervous. So Kennedy set up a blockade of Cuba. Fortunately, aided by promises that the US wouldn’t invade Cuba and that we would remove our missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev blinked. 

From that point on in my life, I became convinced that here had to be solutions to solving international differences beyond blowing each other off the map. Nation states rattling sabers is one thing; rattling nuclear bombs and other forms of mass destruction is something else. They might be used. I joined the International Club at Sierra and became a fan of the United Nations. (Photo from 1963 Sierra college Annual. I’m second back middle row.)

My rock that was Peter relocates itself on an active fault zone…

My father’s greatest concern had little to do with the first three changes in my world view. It was the fourth that gave him sleepless nights. His family’s deep faith dated all the way back to the beginning of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Much to his delight, I had become seriously religious in high school. I was the senior acolyte, a junior lay reader, carried the cross, and even sang solos with the choir at the Episcopal Church in Placerville. I was a believer. There was even talk of my becoming a minister. 

The Episcopal Church in Placerville played a significant role in my life for 10 years. I’ve always been grateful for its help in getting me through my teenage years. BTW, my first real job was the church’s janitor which I became at 13.

That changed when I went to college. In 1961 I picked up a Barnes and Noble-published book at the Sierra College bookstore on comparative religions and learned about Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. I caught a glimpse of how much of our great monotheistic religions were based on earlier belief systems or mythologies. The strong religious convictions of my teenage years began to crack. 

Studying history had a much greater impact. In reading about the Roman Empire, I learned that the nature of Christ’s divinity was determined by vote at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE in a bare knuckled political battle, not the most holy of environments. Even more disturbing, I was also learning about Crusades, Jihads, Inquisitions, and various other ‘Holy Wars.’ Doing unto others in the name of God, Allah, Jehovah, Christ, etc. seemed close to a commandment. 

For all of the good religion has done down through the ages, and there is a great deal, it has also been a factor in much of the world’s violence and intolerance. I came to the conclusion that there was a fly in the ointment, a fatal flaw in religion that may yet bring about the Armageddon that so many fundamentalists believe in. Belief that a particular religion is the only true faith is one thing. Believing that adherents have an obligation to impose it on others— regardless of cost— is something else. It doesn’t leave much room for ‘Peace on Earth Goodwill toward Men.’ 

So here I was in mid-1963, a budding peacenik with international leanings, something of an agnostic, environmentally concerned, and committed to civil and human rights. I had definitely become more liberal in my perspective. I had made a left turn from the right lane. I figured I was ready for Berkeley. (Not)

In our next post on Monday, we will explore the beauty of the Northern Highlands of Costa Rica as shown by waterfalls.

UT-OH Chapter 20: Young Love, a Forest Fire, Evel Knievel and a World-Famous Rocket Scientist… Part 1

/ Curt Mekemson / 9 Comments
Living in the forests of the Western United States is subject to a constant threat of forest fires in the summer. This is a photo from our deck when we lived in Oregon. Fires raged throughout the area a number of times while we were there, and once we had to evacuate when the one came within a mile of our home. The forest fire I fought as an 18-year old near Georgetown, California would have looked much like this.

I was a senior before “love” hit me: That starry eyed, loop de loop feeling which has little to do with rational thought and one hell of a lot to do with hormones and ancient instincts that go all the way back to the beginning of life. It had all of the subtlety of a sledge hammer. Nature has a myriad of ways to assure we pass on our genes. A mere sniff works for some. For humans it’s more complicated. We are expected to hang out and help raise kids, a process that takes 18 years, or longer— at a minimum. That takes a lot of incentive.

Falling ‘head over heels in love,’ is just the beginning.

I met D in speech class. She was blond, bright, sexy and interested in me— an irresistible combination. Somehow, she ended up sitting in my lap as a joke when the teacher was a few minutes late. And bam! I was in love. We started dating and decided to ‘go steady.’ I even gave her my class ring. We became an item in the lingo of the day, a couple to be invited out together, a future with a question mark. We even had matching shirts, the ultimate in commitment.

But my question mark was bigger than D’s, or at least it came to fruition sooner. I was graduating from high school while she had another year. There was a big world waiting out there and I wasn’t ready to limit its horizons. So, with a degree of sadness, I ended the relationship. D was not happy. She had our future planned, even down to naming the babies. 

That summer, being a ‘free man,’ several young women attracted my attention, one was Kathy Truax. She had large brown eyes that consumed and a sharp mind that challenged. She seemed sophisticated, almost exotic to me, and came from a very different world. 

Her father, Robert Truax, was one of America’s premier, pioneer rocket engineers. He had kicked off his career prior to World War II when a childhood interest in Robert Goddard led him to build rockets at his home in Alameda, California. He had then gone on to work with the Navy on rocket development during World War II, and later helped build both the Thor and Polaris missiles. By 1959 he had left the military and was heading up Aerojet-General’s advanced rocket development division in Sacramento, California.

Kathy had transferred to El Dorado County High School as a senior when her dad had gone to work at Aerojet. She was on her way to Occidental College in Los Angeles in the fall and I was on my way to the local community college. They were a long way apart, and miles weren’t the only measure. Still, I thought a date would be fun.

The only drawback was I had to pick up the phone and call. There was a very real chance that Kathy would say no, and I am lousy at rejection. So I practiced something I am good at, procrastination. When I finally worked up the nerve to call, she picked up the phone on the first ring. “Oh, hi Curt,” she answered cheerfully. No, she wasn’t totally tied up in getting ready for Occidental and, yes, it would be fun to go out. So much for all of the time I’d spent anguishing. Our date would be a visit the California State Fair in Sacramento the following Saturday evening. I hung up with a loud ‘YES’ to myself.  The rest should be easy.

Except it wasn’t. When is it ever. Time slowed down to thwart me. Weeks later, Friday finally arrived. Fortunately, pear season was at its height, and I had a busy nine hours swamping out 50-pound boxes of pears from the orchard and bench pressing them onto a fruit truck. That night, my friend Hunt Warner was hosting a beer party that killed several more hours not to mention brain cells.  Midnight and Saturday were thirty minutes away when the phone rang.

“Hey Curt, it’s your mom,” Hunt announced over the din.

I had a sinking feeling that there was a family emergency.  And yes, it was, just not family.  The forest around Georgetown, a small community in the Sierra foothills, was burning down. The United States Forest Service had called seeking a few good men but was willing to accept anything that walked on two legs and could swing a mattock (a heavy tool with a pick on one side and a hoe on the other). 

I had signed up to fight fires at the beginning of summer and had gone through a one-day training, which apparently qualified me to go out and risk my life. It was one of those things you do on a lark and later wonder why. I was definitely at the wondering stage when my mother gave me the phone number I was supposed to call. Normally, my better judgment would have kicked in.  The date was looming, and a good party was roaring. But I was eighteen and had three (or more?) beers down my gullet. Fighting a fire seemed exciting. It was an adventure not to be missed, an Ut-Oh moment for sure… Stay tuned: Part II of today’s post will be next Wednesday.

Monday’s Travel Post: Scenes from Costa Rica.

Chapter 19: Graduate or Go to Jail. I Was Given a Choice.

/ Curt Mekemson / 10 Comments
The Main Street of Placerville looks pretty much the same today as it did in 1961. The Chief of Police pulled our car over on the right hand side of the street here. The incident took place near the red hotel building, a block or so down the road.

If I was going to base my future on my organizational skills, I had to practice, right? So, I organized a protest my senior year. As a 60’s issue, it wasn’t a biggie. The Administration had axed our Senior Ditch Day and we wanted it back. 

I drew up a petition and Patti Foley, who had great calligraphy, made it fancy. Almost all of the seniors signed.  (I still have it.)  A student strike was organized. I’m sure it was the first time El Dorado Union High School students had even considered such an action, Mabe even the last. Some of our rowdier students even lit trash cans on fire. 

It wasn’t the issue that got me threatened with jail, however. The school administration called me in and asked if we couldn’t work out some type of compromise on Senior Ditch Day, which I readily agreed to. The strike was called off, the rowdies stopped lighting trash cans on fire, and we switched our Ditch Day to one more agreeable to the Administration. Everyone won. My civics teacher was impressed. 

My problem with the law took place on Graduation Day when I inadvertently (or is that idiotically) crossed paths with Mike De Natly, the Placerville Chief of Police. Few of my UT-OH! moments can hold a candle to this one. As one might expect, our last day of high school 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 revel in the fact that we were through and to 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 to myself and car-mates. 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 we were hot stuff on graduation day. When a blue car decided to stop in the middle of Placerville’s crowded, narrow downtown street right in front of us and forced us to hit our brakes, it irritated me. And then, the driver nonchalantly got out to have a conversation 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 F-ing 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 De Natly you just cussed out,” our driver managed to stutter with mixed parts of fear and awe.

As a teenager, I had pulled some fairly dumb stunts. Teenagers have a responsibility to push the envelope. It’s the rather awkward method evolution has provided for growing up and developing unique personalities. Mistakes are bound to happen and that’s okay. 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. De Natly 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 Curt 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 some far-off jungle.

We pulled over with De Natly 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 the 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 groveling 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, 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 De Natly had an even more diabolical plan in mind. We slowly made a turn through the jail parking lot to give me a sense of my future fate 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 down a notch. I doubted that he would have much of a sense of humor about one of his students cussing out the Chief of Police. But explaining my inexplicable actions to him 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. De Natly 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 homed 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, De Natly barking questions with the voice of an army sergeant and me responding as the lowest of recruits. 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 principal who wasn’t quite sure whether he should take over where De Natly 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.

UT-OH! Chapter 17: A Pear Picker’s Guide to Happiness

/ Curt Mekemson / 10 Comments
Ladder beneath ripe pears hanging from branches in a pear orchard
This is what you see when you are 5-6 steps down on a 12 or 14 foot pear ladder. Now, imagine climbing up and balancing one step from the top to reach pears in the top of the tree. UT-OH! (I’ve gone over to the dark side here. This is an AI generated picture. My challenge, as always when writing about my youth, is that the photos were few and far between. That’s hard to fathom in the digital age, when I can easily take more photos in one day that I have from the first 20 years of my life. When I pushed the key that asked WP to produce an AI photo for this post, it read my blog and came up with three good suggestions. That may be scarier than standing on the second step! It didn’t catch, however, that the ladder only had three legs. Maybe there is hope.

A number of things combined to pull me out of the puberty blues. For one, I ceased being a freshman. Hormones slowed down, my voice abandoned octave leaps, and I bought a pair of contact lenses. Academics were a plus, even during my freshman year. Lacking a social life, I studied full-time and managed to pull straight A’s. If I couldn’t be ‘ruler of everything,’ ‘sex symbol’ or ‘sports hero,’ maybe I could at least be ‘the brain.’ Was I driven or what?

I also believe that having a job helped. I began working in the pear orchards around Placerville starting the summer of my eighth-grade graduation and continuing through high school. It was a nine hour a day job of hard physical work, one more fit for an adult than a 14-year-old. Dealing with the 90-105° F summer heat of the Sierra foothills didn’t help. But I actually enjoyed the work. And the money. The general rule in our cash poor family was that the basics were covered. We were responsible for the extras, such as dates.

In addition to being hard, there was also an element of danger. Pear picking consisted of hazardous duty without hazardous pay. We were each given a 12-foot ladder, a sizing ring, and as many boxes as we could fill. The pears we plucked from the trees were placed in a canvas bag that fit around our front like a pregnant belly and carried up to 50 pounds. We had the option of working by the hour at $.90 per hour or by the box at $.20 per box. I opted for the per box under the assumption I could earn more.

The ladder was a suicidal three-legged device with two legs playing standard ladder while the third served as the balancing arm we threw out to provide ‘stability.’ I use the quote marks here because the stability was questionable. There was always a chance that you, your bag of pears, and the ladder would come crashing down. The first few rungs were solid; it was on the top four that life became interesting. Even here it was tolerably safe, assuming you focused on easily reachable pears.

The problem was that the best pears had a way of hiding away in the highest, most unreachable part of the tree.  Such premium fruit couldn’t be left hanging, even if it meant taking risks. At least that’s how my ut-oh mind functioned. It was nothing that the boss required. Success meant performing a one-legged-ballet-balancing act. I became quite proficient at the move. Only once did I reach beyond the imagination of my ladder and follow a rapid descent path straight to the ground. Fortunately, the only limbs broken belonged to the tree. I wrote the experience off as a lesson in Newtonian physics.

A greater challenge was entertaining myself for nine hours a day. Reaching out and picking a pear requires a minimum number of brain cells and very few of those are located in the frontal lobes. My favorite ploy was singing at the top of my voice. Harry Bellefonte’s tune about picking bananas was a natural. I adapted it to picking pears. But I also belted out many other popular tunes of the day.  “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight” was a mistake. I couldn’t get it out of my mind; I would wake up in the middle of the night humming it. To this day I have to be careful in bringing it up or it is right back there on the tip of my tongue, waiting to escape. Like now:

“Does your chewing gum lose its flavor
On the bedpost overnight?
If your mother says don’t chew it,
Do you swallow it in spite?
Can you catch it on your tonsils,
Can you heave it left & right?
Does your chewing gum lose its flavor
On the bedpost overnight?”

A more productive form of amusement was challenging myself to pear picking contests. The more I picked the more money I made. When the fruit was plentiful and well sized, I could pick 60-80 boxes a day and earn big money, $12-$16. By the way, that seemingly measly sum is the equivalent of $130 to $180 today. Once I even reached a magical 100 boxes. My goal was to try to match the professional pickers, the folks who made a living helping harvest crops. On really good days, I could. 

Over my five-year career in the pear orchards I worked with Filipino crews, Braceros, and the usual contingent of semi-nomadic types who followed the various crops as they ripened from state to state. Most were good, even excellent workers. Of course, there was also the occasional guy who worked just long enough to buy a gallon of Red Mountain Wine and then disappear.

After my first year of working in the fruit orchards, I graduated to swamper status, which meant I delivered empty boxes to the pear pickers and took out their full boxes. I also learned such fine skills as tractor driving, tree trimming, sprinkler changing, post hole digging and crew bossing. And, I might add, enjoyed most of it. There is a certain satisfaction that comes from doing hard work, challenging your body, and being dead-tired at night. 

I also gained a farmer’s satisfaction that comes from seeing a crop evolve from spring bloom to fall harvest. And finally, as my pear orchard responsibilities increased, the work helped me overcome the puberty blues and regain my confidence. Becoming buff and tanned didn’t hurt either. Working in the orchard with my shirt off, picking pears and stacking 50-pound boxes above my head on a truck guaranteed a tan to die for and muscles from my big toes to my hair follicles. 

Almost on cue, girls reappeared in my life, with Paula being an example. Admittedly it was a slow process, in fact far too slow for my hormone driven fantasies. But there the girls were, tentatively giving me the eye and practicing a wiggle or two to see if anyone was home. There was. Down boy.

Next Monday’s Post: A jay by any other name is still a jay, plus 7 other interesting and fun birds of Costa Rica. This is Costa Rica’s Grey Headed Jay suggesting I don’t interfere with its breakfast.
Grand Tetons National Park: Next Wednesday, April 22 is special. It’s Earth Day 56. Please join me as I take you back to April 22, 1970 where I participated in Earth Day 1 on the Davis Campus of the University of California. Earth Day 1 changed my life and helped to change the world. Its message today is as relevant as ever, and possibly even more so, as so many of the gains we have made are now under threat.

UT-OH! Chapter 14: Surviving Baseball Bats and Dynamite Caps

/ Curt Mekemson / 28 Comments
This donkey was hardly dangerous. I was offering it a carrot. The stacks of lumber in the background, at Caldor Lumber Company’s drying yard, had potential, however. One of our sports was climbing to the top of the stacks and leaping between them.

That we survived childhood wasn’t necessarily a given. Racing up and down a 75-foot-tall tree, leaping between 20 foot high lumber stacks, joyriding on railroad push carts, avoiding being shot, playing on a 50 foot high trestle and other similar activities aren’t particularly conducive to a healthy childhood. On a scale of 1-10, I would have placed Marshall’s chances of harm at 9.9 while mine were more like 4.4. I took my share of risks, but rarely without considering consequences. Marshall rarely did. Pop provided some perspective years later.

“If Marshall screamed, I ran. When you screamed, I walked.”

Except for the dog bite and stepping on a rusty nail once, my serious injuries were more in the nature of stubbed toes. Not that I am minimizing the pain of a stubbed toe, mind you. They hurt like hell. There is a reason why flaying skin was a form of torture in ancient times. I’d have certainly been willing to confess things I had done, and lots of things I hadn’t. 

I did have a baseball bat used on me once, however. My parents were semi-serious Republicans, semi in the sense that they didn’t devote their lives to the cause but they did vote the party line. The family tradition went back to Abe Lincoln and the founding of the Party. A quote in a book written by my Great Grandfather stated, “We have always been Republicans, and we always will be.”

My indoctrination started young with the 1952 campaign of Dwight Eisenhower against Adlai Stevenson. According to Mother, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman were responsible for most of the bad things that existed in the Country, and Ike was going to right the wrongs of the previous two decades. I, of course, accepted this view whole-heartedly, and had all the makings of a fine Young Republican. Naturally I was eager to share my correct or ‘right’ perspective with fellow students and proudly wore an I Like Ike button to school.

They weren’t particularly interested. 

After all, what do nine year olds know or care about politics? One student, whose parents were avid Democrats, was ready to take me on, however. He wore a button that declared Adlai was Our Next President. Our debate started in the boys’ bathroom when we were lined up at the urinals, and continued on to the playground. Things began well. Even then I was a high verbal, and the points I didn’t win on logic, I was taking with volume. But the situation deteriorated rapidly. My fellow debater did what most politicians do when they appear to be losing ground— he started slinging mud.

“Eisenhower is a blankety, blank,” he declared with a smirk to underline his cleverness. It was his mistake; now we were talking my language.

“In that case,” I argued with glee, “Stevenson is a blankety-blank, blank, blank.” I had more blanks. Marshall, and Allen had taught me every swear word in the English language and a few in Spanish. I could go on for minutes without repeating myself. In fact Allen and I had challenged each other to a contest once to see who could swear the longest and the loudest. 

There was a vacant lot filled with tall grass down on the corner where Missouri Flat Road ran into Highway 49. We got down on our hands and knees and chased each other through the grass while shouting obscenities at the top of our lungs.  We were so engrossed in our efforts that we didn’t note that Marsh had time to run the block home and retrieve Pop to listen in on the exchange. He was not impressed with our command of the language or our volume. My thought about Marshall for telling was that he was a blankety-blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. A real asshole.

Anyway, I was not to be outdone in the mudslinging department; I had a bright future as a campaign manager. I demolished my opponent. Regrettably, I was about to learn an important Hobbesian lesson in power politics: Never start political arguments with a person carrying a baseball bat, which he was. When I continued to hassle him out on the playground, he wound up and swung the bat like he was going for a home run, whacking me across my right leg. Down I went onto the playground and off I went to the hospital as my leg muscle knotted up to the size of a softball. Fortunately, he didn’t break a bone— and my man Ike won the election.

Marshall’s scariest accident happened at Caldor’s logging camp. One summer, Pop arranged for the family to use a house at the camp for a week’s vacation. It was a great opportunity. We were surrounded by El Dorado National Forest, and we could wander to our heart’s content. 

The first day out, we discovered an old miner’s shack that had long since given up any pretense of being useful. It was leaning precariously. Naturally, we had to explore it. There might be a treasure. Dark and musty comes to mind as my first impression. Floors creaked in objection on our entrance. A pack rat had set up home in one corner. A treasure for Tickle the dog, perhaps, but not for us. 

A table in the opposite corner held more promise. We found an old Phillies Cigar box on top, which was a treasure in itself. Inside there was more: Dynamite caps! Think Big Bang.  Caps contain a small amount of an explosive material that when lit by a connected electric current, cause a blast that sets off the dynamite. BOOM. My immediate reaction was to get out of the shack. Marshall’s was to take the box with us. I assumed he was going to give it to Pop so he could dispose of the caps. It was never wise to make assumptions about what my brother might do.

Mother was putting dinner on the table and Marshall was still outside when we heard a loud bang followed by a louder scream. Pop ran. Marshall had held a match down to the dynamite cap to see what would happen. He found out. The whole front of his body from his groin to his head was covered in blood. The only thing that saved his eye sight was that he was wearing shatter-proof glasses. A neighbor, who had come out at the sound of the blast and scream, immediately volunteered to take Nancy and me for the night. My parents jumped in our car and rushed off to the hospital in Placerville, 20 miles away.

 Marshall spent a couple of days in the hospital as the doctor removed brass splinters from his body. We returned home. So much for our idyllic vacation. The important thing was that Marshall survived the experience— possibly a bit wiser. Occasional splinters of brass were still making their way out of his skin when he was in his 20s.

UT-OH Chapter 13: Your Mother Chases Fire Trucks

/ Curt Mekemson / 11 Comments
While the Diamond Spring’s Firehouse has been rebuilt from when we were children, it still stands in the same location. It was about a block away from where we lived. The siren was loud. The sign at the top says Station 49. It’s appropriate. Diamond’s first firehouse was built in 1849 along what is now Highway 49.
In comparison, this is the firehouse not all that different from what it looked like when I was a child, which I featured in my last post. As I recall, they did rebuild it once when I was a child. Pop wired it.

If it sounds like parental supervision of our bad behavior was somewhat lax in my growing up years, that’s because it was. There were times when our parents, or at least Mother, provided tacit approval of our misdeeds. Returning the cherries we confiscated from Pagonni’s orchard or the frogs from Pavy’s Pond was never an issue. They were quietly added to the pantry and happily consumed by all, including Pop. No questions asked. 

Once we were even encouraged to break the law. 

Because the dirt road we lived on circled the graveyard, the County decided it should be named Graveyard Alley. No one living on the road was asked for an opinion or informed of the decision. The signs simply appeared one day. Mother was infuriated and fired off a letter to the County Board of Supervisors. She was not going to live on Graveyard Alley! Nothing happened, there wasn’t even a response. 

Marsh and I were given marching orders: Sometime around midnight go out and remove the signs. We carried out the charge with enthusiasm. No neighbors complained about this obvious act of vandalism since they weren’t particularly happy about living on Graveyard Alley either.

The County replaced the signs. We made another raid and this time the County got the point. They changed the name in honor of an old fellow, George Croft, who was an original resident. We all liked George. It became George’s Alley, which it still is today. 

I’m convinced we inherited our trouble making potential from our mother. Pop was a good man who had avoided marriage until he was 38. He was the type of guy who served on the Vestry of the Church, was a Boy Scout leader, and was always available to help out a neighbor. I am sure there were times he wished he had avoided marriage for another 38 years. A lesser man might have said bye-bye and been on his way. But he took his role seriously and pushed on, through thick and thin. 

Mother could be something of a ‘wild child,’ wilder than her wild children. Going to fires in Diamond Springs was an excellent example.

Pop was a volunteer fireman for Diamond. As an electrician, it was his job was to show up at burning houses and shut off electricity. When the siren wailed, he was off and running, as were all the other volunteer firemen in town. It was serious business. 

For Mother and for us, it was high entertainment. We also took off at the sound of the siren, jumped in whatever old car we had, and sped along behind the fire truck. The time of day and activity of the moment didn’t matter. If it were three in the morning, we would jump out of bed and throw on our clothes; if we were eating, the meal would be abandoned; if we were playing, the toys would be dropped. Nothing could compete with a good fire. Our devotion to disaster was right up there in the same league as it is with today’s news media. 

The star performer was someone’s house. There was excitement, danger and pathos. Firemen blasted away with their hoses in a desperate attempt to save the home while the unfortunate family looked on in dismay. But the climax, the Fourth of July finale, was when the roof and walls would crash down and shoot sparks and fire high into the sky. I did keep my oohs and ahhs to myself. Somewhere in the back of my mind a small voice whispered that our family outing was not totally appropriate.

“Your mother chases fire trucks,” one of my little buddies jeered at me in an argument. 

My response at the time had been, “So…,” but later in life I would ponder what the towns-people must have thought about Mother, two or three kids, and a dog always showing up. Pop must have been terribly embarrassed. I remember him telling Mother once to stay far behind the fire engine and far away from the fire. He did it under the guise of being concerned for our safety. I now suspect he hoped we wouldn’t be recognized. But he never did have much success in telling Mother what to do. The siren’s call was not to be denied— for either one of them.

Monday’s Post: It’s back to Costa Rica where Peggy and I will show you a ficus, which I would bet is unlike any ficus/banyan/fig tree you have ever seen before unless you have been in Monteverde. No photos this time, I’m keeping it as a surprise. Here is a banyan tree we visited on the Big Island of Hawaii last year, however…

UT-OH! Chapter 11: Raw Sex, the Nuclear Holocaust, and Being Bonked by a Baseball

/ Curt Mekemson / 13 Comments
This is how I felt after being bonked on the head by a baseball! Just kidding. It’s actually here because I didn’t have a photo for Chapter 11. This one is an introduction to Friday’s post on Costa Rica Butterflies.

There came a time when I grew out of my mischief making phase. Other things took precedence: school, wandering in the woods, church, girls, and even sports. Few of these earned an Ut-Oh. There were a couple of incidents that earned inclusion in this book, however. The first had to do with a girl.

Starting as far back as the third grade, I had a girlfriend, or at least believed I did. The girls didn’t have to agree. My first heart throb was Carol. She was a younger woman: cute and smart. While I appreciated those qualities, what fascinated me about Carol was that she could run like the wind. I was in love with her legs. We both lived within a couple of blocks of school and would walk home for lunch. 

The advantage of going home was we would arrive back at school before the other kids were let out for noon recess. This meant we could grab the best positions for whatever game was being played. My problem was that Carol could outrun me and this meant I was usually second in line. It seemed like a small price to pay for seeing those legs kicking up the dirt in front of me.

Next, I fell for an older woman, the fifth grade sister of one of my classmates in the fourth grade. She had quite a mouth on her and called her little brother pet names like shit-head and fuck-face. I was fascinated to hear a girl talk like that. One weekend, I found myself walking 2 ½ miles following the Southern Pacific railroad tracks to ‘visit her brother’ with my primary objective hearing her speak those ‘guy’ words. She didn’t disappoint…

The Ut-Oh, however, took place when I was in the fifth grade. Judy was a fourth grader with flaming red hair who had several boys in the fourth and fifth grade passionately pursuing her. The competition was fierce. Judy loved it. To encourage us, she cut off small locks of her hair and gave one to each of her admirers. I was surprised she had any hair left but I cherished my locket.

My main competitor for Judy was Eric. He was an up and coming fourth grader, small, but extremely athletic and an all-around nice kid. Judy let it be known that we were the chosen two. 

We had our showdown at a school movie that provided instructions on what to do when the Russians bombed us. We spent a lot of time in the 50s worrying about that. People began building bomb shelters in their backyards. The teachers would make us crawl under our desks to prepare for the explosion. We were taught to cover our faces with our arms so glass shattering in from the windows wouldn’t blind us. It is not surprising that the traumatized children of the 50’s grew up to be the anti-war advocates of the 60s and 70s. I stayed up one night to watch atomic bomb testing in the Nevada desert over 200 miles away. It lit up the whole Eastern sky and added a touch of reality to our hide-under-the-desk practice.

In the lineup for the movie, Eric aced me out and managed to get next to Judy. A half dozen other fourth graders played honor guard and I couldn’t even get close, but my luck didn’t abandon me altogether. I grabbed the seat immediately in back of her where I could at least monitor Eric’s behavior. The lights went down and the movie started. I strained to keep an eye on Eric. He reached over and grabbed Judy’s hand and she let him hold it. Damn! I could have killed him.

But then, unbelievably, Judy slipped her other hand between the chairs and grabbed my knee. My knee! It was raw sex. The ut-oh bulge in my pants proved it. 

Sports presented a totally different type of challenge. I am not a natural jock. It isn’t so much physical as mental. You have to care to be good at sports and I find other things more interesting. Part of this evolved from a lack of enthusiasm on the home front. There was little vicarious parental drive to see us excel on the playing field. 

Being as blind as a bat didn’t help much either. Like most young people in the 50s, I was not excited about wearing glasses. When Mrs. Wells, the school nurse, came to class with her eye charts, I would memorize the lines while she was setting up and then breeze through the test. As for class work, I would sit close to the black board and squint a lot. While I got away with this more or less in the classroom, it became a serious hazard on the Little League field.

I remember going out for the team. All of my friends played and social pressure suggested it was the thing to do. Nervously, I showed up on opening day and faced the usual chaos of parents signing up their stars, balls flying everywhere, coaches yelling, and kids running in a dozen different directions at once.

“Okay, Curtis,” the Coach instructed, “let’s see how you handle this fly.”

Crack! I heard him hit the ball. Fine, except where was it? The ball had disappeared. Conk. It magically reappeared out of nowhere, bounced off my glove and hit me on the head.

“What’s the matter? Can’t you see?” the Coach yelled helpfully. “Let’s try it again.” My Little League Career was short lived. I went back to carrying out my inventory of the number of skunks that lived in the Woods. This didn’t mean I was hopeless at sports. In the seventh grade I finally obtained glasses and discovered the miracle of vision: Trees had leaves, billboards were pushing drugs, and the kid waving at me from across the street was flipping me off. I could even see baseballs. It was time to become a sports hero.

It says something about your future in sports when your career peaks in the eighth grade. 

Thanks to Mrs. Young, I was slightly older than my classmate and, thanks to genetics plus an early growth spurt, slightly bigger. More importantly, I had mastered the art of leadership: Make noise, appear confident and charge the enemy. As a result I became quarterback and captain of the football team, center and captain of the basketball team and pitcher and captain of the softball team. I even went out for track and ran the 440, but they didn’t select me as captain. That honor went to a seventh grader. I was bummed.

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

/ Curt Mekemson / 26 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.