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638. In The Canebrake 2

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A voice out of the darkness called, “Titus?” It shook him; he had expected almost anything except someone who knew his name. “Is that you, Titus Young?” the soft voice repeated.

In answer, he kneed his horse and rode further into the light of the fire. The hidden voice said, “You scared hell out of me.”

“You didn’t do my heart any good either, Cotton.”

A man of middle age came out of the canebrake and Titus swung down to walk up to the fire. Even though they had known each other most of Titus’s life, they didn’t shake hands, because Cotton was a slave.

Or had been. The fact that he was alone in the dark, not far from the Ohio border suggested he had run away. That left a lot of questions. Titus had been told that the Cherokees were allowed to take their slaves with them, and Cotton had been with Bullfrog since he was a boy.

Cotton was the one who taught Titus most of what he knew about hunting, fishing, and tracking, and just keeping alive in the hills and the swamps. That counted for a lot, but Bullfrog and Salali were the Cherokee couple who had adopted Titus when his parents died. Even if Chief Ross had told them to do it, and even if Bullfrog hadn’t paid much attention to him afterward, Titus still owed them both a debt of loyalty.

Titus asked, “Why are you here? What happened to Bullfrog and Salali?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Titus,” the older man said. “I stayed with them as long as they were alive.”

“Go on.”

“Salali was sick all summer. By the time we left, she had no business traveling, but the soldiers didn’t give us any choice. She died two days along the trail.”

“And Bullfrog?”

“He was hurt bad inside when Salali died. He rode all day, he ate, he laid under his blanket at night, but I don’t think he ever slept. After about two weeks, he died too.

“The soldiers didn’t want to give us time to bury him, so I carried him out of camp in the middle of the night. Those soldiers weren’t much. It wasn’t hard to avoid them. I found a nice place under a pecan tree and buried him, same as I had buried Salali. When I finished, I stuck the shovel in the ground like a gravestone and started walking north. I was already out of the camp and there was no reason to go back.”

So. Bullfrog and Salali hadn’t been the best pair of substitute parents, but Titus missed them. To be fair, he had been no prize either when they got him. Headstrong; too young to be independent, but determined to be independent anyway. He had spent most of his time with Cotton, learning Cherokee ways from the slave, the same way Cotton had learned when he came to Bullfrog as a boy.

“Was Francesca in your group?” Titus asked.

“Your wife? Why would she be with us? She wasn’t Cherokee.”

“The soldiers took her anyway.”

“That’s why you’re following?” Titus nodded. Cotton said, “I never saw her, but there were several groups that moved out at different times. She might have been in a different group.”

“Okay,” Titus said, swallowing his disappointment. “Don’t matter, I’ll still find her.”

Cotton bustled about the fire, pulling something out of the ashes. It was meat, long, slender, cylindrical. Snake. Titus didn’t mind snakes, as long as they were dead. And if they were dead, you might as well cook them. When Cotton started to tear it with his fingers, Titus said, “Don’t you have a knife?”

“Got nothing. I should have kept the shovel, but it seemed too much trouble.”

Titus went to his horse and took a knife out of his saddlebag. “Keep it,” he said as he handed it over. “I’ve got another one.” Cotton grunted his thanks and split the snake. It tasted like squirrel, and it was as welcome as a feast.

Except for munching, they ate in silence. Titus hadn’t seen Cotton in a couple of years, and the time showed in extra wrinkles. It was good to see him again.

Titus had been born to a German father who had died too soon, adopted by a Cherokee father who had not been able to handle him, and had learned most of what he knew from this black slave. Only he wasn’t really that black.

“Cotton,” he said, “how come you’re so pale?”

This story will conclude tomorrow. After all, that will be Halloween.

637. In The Canebrake 1

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The background for this story is told in 636. Half Breeds, Various.

In the Canebrake

It was a long, cold afternoon, with spits of snow that were slow melting. There wasn’t any green left in the grass; it was all the crackly brown of late fall. The year was 1838; the month was somewhere in that no-man’s land where October slides into November on a path slippery with sleet.

Titus’s mare was holding out, but he was treating her with extra care since she had lamed up a week earlier. Somewhere ahead of him the main body of the displaced Cherokees was moving west, but he didn’t know how far behind them he was. He had been riding after rumors, picked up at wood cutters’ camps and isolated cabins since he left eastern Tennessee. Now he was tangled up in a canebrake, following a narrow, muddy trail that paralleled one of the many tributaries of the Tennessee River. It wouldn’t be long now until he reached the Ohio — he thought. He hadn’t been really sure of his location for days, and the low overcast sky didn’t help any.

He pulled up at a familiar churring sound, followed by a slithering in the leaves. Canebrake rattler, probably. Titus had lived around snakes all his life, but he had never gotten to like them. Even worse were cottonmouths. They didn’t even have the decency to warn a man before they struck.

It was getting on dark, and the fog was rising from the stagnant waters beyond the trail. He was two days hungry and there wasn’t a scrap of food in his saddlebags. Pretty soon his horse would not be able to find her way ahead, but there was no place big enough or dry enough to spread a blanket. The tall canes around him seemed to close in as the light failed.

He could smell the swamp. He thought of waterhorses and the sluagh, and all the other fairy creatures his Scottish mother had told him about. Those weren’t comfortable thoughts for a night this dark and cold, on a trail this uncertain, at the approach of All Hallow’s Eve.

Something erupted from the brush at his side and hurled itself scrawking into the air. An egret probably, or maybe a heron, but when he saw it for a moment silhouetted against the moon, it became a boobrie, come all the way from the lochs of the highlands to haunt the Scottish half of his soul.

Then he saw the light, faint, almost luminescent in the distance. Perhaps the light of . . .

Titus took hold of his imagination and put it firmly away. What he needed to worry about tonight were not creatures designed to frighten children, but men with guns and knives, and the intent to do a traveller harm.

He eased forward; the sound of his horse’s hooves was swallowed up by the soft ground. There was a spot wide enough for a simple camp, and somebody had managed to find enough dry wood for a fire.

Then the mare stepped into a puddle. It was a small sound, but the figure by the fire vanished. First he was there and then he wasn’t, and he didn’t leave even a hint of movement in the canes.

Titus froze in place. His rifle was in a scabbard at his knee, but pulling it out now might cause the trouble he was trying to avoid. He hallooed the fire in a low voice, but got no answer.

Titus kicked his mare in the ribs and started forward, pausing at the edge of the firelight. He called out, “How about welcoming some company. I’ve been riding all day and this is the first wide spot in the trail I’ve seen in hours.”

No answer.

“I’m not going on in the dark. You might as well come out, unless you plan to stay squatting in the mud ’til morning.”

Still nothing, and a shiver ran up his spine. He wished he hadn’t been thinking of bogles. Then a voice out of the darkness softly called his name.

This story will continue on Wednesday and conclude on Thursday.

636. Half Breeds, Various

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A couple of days ago, in late September, I was beginning to search around for an idea for this year’s Halloween post. I’m not into things that go bump in the night, but if there were ever a holiday that calls for the telling of stories, it would be All Hallows Eve. Then I remembered a scene in an unwritten novel.

Of all the novels I’ve written in my head only, not on paper, Titus Young is the most complete. I know who my protagonist is, I know his antecedents and I know his offspring. Titus Young is the middle book in three well plotted but mostly unwritten generational historical novels.

I think I would write it next, if it weren’t for money. I could write five SF novels in the time it would take me to research and write this one lengthy historical — and I will probably do that — but Titus Young still hangs in there, taunting me.

Titus Young himself was a half breed — half Scottish and half German, that is. I assume that the term half breed is offensive now; I certainly haven’t herd it in years. During my childhood it was in common use especially in Oklahoma. Nevertheless, now that I’ve gotten your attention by the post title, I will switch to mixed race to avoid offending modern sensibilities.

Titus’s Scottish mother met his German-speaking Moravian father and they married in the unwritten novel Nativity. They moved from Pennsylvania to south-eastern Tennessee to be missionaries to the Cherokees. Moravians often did that. Titus was born there and the Youngs became respected for their compassionate work. When Titus’s parents died during an epidemic, John Ross, principal chief of the Cherokees, himself mixed race Scottish and Cherokee, arranged for Titus to be adopted by one of his relatives. Thus Scottish-German Titus became legally Cherokee, without a drop of Indian blood.

As a young man, Titus took a flatboat down the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers with a load of cargo for New Orleans. His boatmates were two white brothers. They sold their wares in New Orleans, but on their return up the Nachez Trace a disagreement led to a lifelong feud.

While in New Orleans, Titus met and courted a beautiful young Italian girl. Actually, she had an Italian father and a Natchez Indian mother, but she so hated her Indian heritage that she chose to pass as Italian. On a later trip to New Orleans, Titus met her again and they married. They returned to Tennessee where they opened a business.

Some years later, the events leading up to the Cherokee removal occurred. When the soldiers come to round up the Cherokees, Titus was away. His old enemies informed the soldiers that Titus and his wife were Cherokee.

Titus’s wife was half Indian, but no one knew that. She was believed to be Italian, and Titus was Scots-German, but Titus was an adopted Cherokee and she was married to him. That was enough for the soldiers. She was taken away with the rest of the tribe.

This irony of this left her with much soul-searching to do as she experienced the horrors of the Trail of Tears, and saw those horrors inflicted on her husband’s adopted people.

Titus returned, found himself a fugitive, found his enemies in possession of his business, and fled. He headed west, retaining his freedom but following the path on which the soldiers had taken the Cherokees. While he was on this journey, he came across a runaway slave named Cotton, whom he knew from when he was a boy, and that scene will form this year’s Halloween post.

==============

In the 1830’s, America was full of half-breeds (to use the contemporary term). Even more appear in this story than I’ve presented so far. A lot of them were passing for white, and making life hard for the known half-breeds. Gay people didn’t invent the idea of being in the closet. We’ve always had closets.

Titus Young is one more way for me to explore that notion, but it is also just a great story. It begins on a Mississippi riverboat, where Titus meets his old enemies years after the events described above. They don’t recognize him, which allows him to engages them in a poker game and trick one of them into challenging him to a duel.

This part of the novel will be narrated by a young professional gambler who gets roped into being Titus’s second. During the night before the duel, Titus tells the young man his life story, which we will see in a series of flashbacks, and in the morning . . .

But I guess that’s enough for now. The scene which will become the Halloween post will begin next Monday.

634.1 Critter Count

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I have a post about two new critters who came to visit, called Stinky Boy and his Cousin. It was supposed to be posted yesterday, but the tribute to Alexi Leonov pushed it forward to the Monday before Thanksgiving.

As I was writing that post, I was a little uneasy. It ended up mentioning a large cadre of critters. Even though I made it clear that many only came by once in more than a decade, I still wondered if some readers would imagine that I live in a virtual zoo, instead of normal foothills full of sweet but ordinary creatures, and more rarely visited by the exotic.

Then today happened.

We went out early by car to watch a cattle drive which happens twice a year, going to the high country in spring and back down to the foothills in the fall. The critter count included cows, horses, dogs, and cowboys, but they don’t really count because they are all domesticated. Except the cowboys.

Driving back to my house, I had to brake for quail flying across the road. Driving on down toward the valley afterward, we had to dodge a tarantula crossing the road —

“Why did the tarantula cross the road? Mating season.”

— then passed a flock of turkeys in a neighbor’s yard. Still less than two miles from home I saw an egret standing at the edge of the lake waiting for a fish. Yesterday at the same spot I saw a flock of geese floating on the water.

A moment later a vulture swooped down. For a moment we were bracing for a collision but he was only interested in a piece of road kill in the ditch.

Okay, you’re right. I do live in a zoo.

More Power

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Hi, folks, I’m back. It’s five o’clock here on the west coast and I’m just getting home from helping a friend. I see that my power is restored. It went off 3:30 PM Wednesday and came back 1:30 PM Friday. That’s forty-six hours of no light, no computer, and spoiled food in the refrigerator, all of which was no fun. It was also forty-six hours without news of natural disasters or the liar-in-chief. My friends tell me it’s been a rough two days, so I have to go now and see how bad things got. Vacation is over.

611. Living Through History

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I never worked for NASA. I have no actual connection with the space program, but I love it. These days, everybody is talking about the moon landing, but I’m not going to post about it directly. There is no need. I’m no expert, but every real expert left alive will be on your TV.

My connection is personal, and I first wrote about it when this website was new, in October of 2015. I don’t normally like to repeat old posts, but I can’t say it any better.

===========

It was pledge week at PBS. They ran the biography of Neil Armstrong for the upteenth time. My wife and I watched it for about the third time, and when it was over, she said, “That was my childhood.”

I knew exactly what she meant. She and I were soul mates long before we met. Pardon the corn, but it’s true. She grew up in Michigan and I grew up in Oklahoma; we met in college. But when we were children, we were both science nuts long before Sputnik. We both repeatedly checked out Vinson Brown’s How to Make a Home Nature Museum and followed the instructions. We both checked out books on how to grind the lens on your own reflecting telescope, but neither of us made one because we didn’t have the money to buy the glass blanks.

On October 4, 1957, Russia orbited their first satellite. I was in fifth grade when the teacher went up to the front of the room and wrote Sputnik on the board. She said it meant Earth-moon in Russian. It didn’t, but we knew almost nothing about the Russians then. A few days later, she wheeled a cart into the room. It had beakers beneath, a tiny sink, and a hand pump. Oklahoma schools had instituted science as a middle school and elementary subject for the first time.

I kept track of every satellite we launched and every rocket that blew up on the pad. There were a lot of them. When the Russians launched Muttnik (the nickname was American) I was fascinated to see a living creature in space. All my schoolmates said only the stinking Russians would send a dog up there to die.

I watched the Mercury astronauts first press conference and quickly got to know them all. I was thrilled when Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth. Everybody wrung their hands because a Russians got there first, but I didn’t care. We were in space — and we meant people, not Americans.

I watched Shepard’s and Grissom’s launches, and cheered when Grissom didn’t go down with his capsule. In Michigan, my future wife was collecting every magazine that covered the Mercury program.

I was at school while John Glenn was in orbit, so I missed something monumental in our family history. My father, who thought the space program was a waste of money, got off his tractor and came in to watch the televised coverage. He later said, “I just couldn’t work until we got that old boy back safe.”

The rest of Mercury, Gemini, the beginnings of Apollo — I followed every mission.

I had discovered ecology, at a time when nobody knew what the word meant. I spent my junior year building an Ecosystem Operable in Weightlessness for the regional science fair. It was complicated, cutting edge, and more than I could actually complete by fair day. I won’t bore you with the details, but it helped get me a Fleming Fellowship the following summer. That gave me a chance to work with real scientists and to see some of the world beyond my tiny town. Those were the people who suggested I should apply to Michigan State.

At MSU the Biology department cared nothing about ecology. I was a few years too early; if you didn’t need an electron microscope to see something, it wasn’t interesting — to them. The closest thing to behavioral biology was Anthropology, and that is where I ended up. And where I found my wife.

We married in 1969 and took off for a long drive around the US, visiting relatives and national parks. We got back to to East Lansing in mid-July, following Apollo 11 on the car radio. On July 20 went went in to the student lounge of her old dorm and sat with dozens of college students watching a grainy black and white TV as Neil Armstrong set his foot on the moon.

You should have been there.

599. Wandering Quotes

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This is a follow-on from Monday’s post, but it isn’t Part 2.
Either post can be read independently.

Louis L’amour left home early, wandered the world, then settled down to be a writer. Unlike many who came at writing later in life, L’amour was set on it from the first. He said:

My intention had been to write, and consequently I had made  no effort to acquire a trade . . . All I had to offer was considerable physical strength and two hands, but for most jobs that was all that was required . . . All the while I read. There was no plan, nor at the time could there be. One had to read what was available . . .

It would be hard to live such a life today. The hard work of the world has been outsourced — within America to undocumented aliens who fear INS too much to fight back against slave-like labor, and outside America, to a world-wide cadre of peasants, living slave-like lives. 

L’amour also said of his memoir:

This is a story of an adventure in education, pursued not under the best of conditions. The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.

If L’amour were alive today, he would of course include the internet, with appropriate caveats.

L’amour’s westerns are full of slam bang action. There is no way to pretend that isn’t a large part of their appeal, but it isn’t enough to account for their huge popularity. There are plenty of shoot-em-ups that are briefly on the newsstand, and as quickly disappear from memory. Louis L’amour has proved as close to immortal as a genre writer can become.

I’ll take a stab at explaining why. Feel free to disagree. He was a “frontier philosopher”. Note the quotes; this term is actually insulting, but it fits. L’amour had read as widely as any author, and his understanding of human beings was profound. But when he made “philosophical” pronouncements, he couched them in simple language, and frequently put them into the mouths of uneducated characters. They sound wise, but without arrogance.

Have faith in God but keep your powder dry.

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it’s hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.

A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.

Violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.

Just because the NRA also says it, doesn’t make it wrong.

A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings.

Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.

When you go to a country, you must learn how to say two things: how to ask for food, and to tell a woman that you love her. Of these the second is more important, for if you tell a woman you love her, she will certainly feed you.

That one might not be politically correct any more.

It is often said that one has but one life to live, but that is nonsense. For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

Just because every New Age self-help book also says it, doesn’t make it wrong.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

Do not let yourself be bothered by the inconsequential. One has only so much time in this world, so devote it to the work and the people most important to you, to those you love and things that matter.

If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.

Okay, that last one could just as easily have come out of Heinlein’s mouth. I find those two authors to be much alike, each attuned perfectly to his own era, and both as American as the flag.

—- ALSO —-

When L’amour settled down to write, he tried his hand at many different genres, and stayed with the ones that paid the rent. Early on, he wrote poetry (and you know that didn’t pay the rent).

Many years ago I discovered that his poetry had been collected in a book that sold very few copies, and those only locally. I managed to get a copy on inter-library loan, and enjoyed it. I even copied a few poems and stored them in my computer, since I never expected to see the book again.

Then, in researching this post, I discovered that Bantam had reprinted Smoke From This Altar, so I immediately bought a copy.

If you have a liking for Kipling and Robert Service, you might give him a listen. The work is not all great, but there are gems. I can’t quote a whole poem, that would violate copyright, but I’ll give you a piece of one as a taste.

I turned the leaves of an ancient book
    A book that was faded and worn —-
And there ‘tween the leaves I found a rose,
    A tiny rose, and a thorn.

In truth, they aren’t all good, but I don’t mind digging through lumps of glass for an occasional diamond. Recommended, with reservations.

598. The Education of a Wandering Man

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This is a fine book, but it falls into the not-for-everybody category. I stumbled across it years ago, read it, read it again a decade later, and its about time for me to have at it a third time.

The Education of a Wandering Man is an autobiography of Louis L’amour. It doesn’t revolve about where he went or what he did — although plenty of that creeps in — but focuses on what he learned. That includes from the old guys who were there, who told him what the west was like. It also includes from the books he read — a list that would make any book geek’s mouth water.

L’amour left home at 15 to make his way in the world. That would be 1926. One might be forgiven for thinking that the depression drove him to leave but the numbers don’t add up for that interpretation. The biography in his official website attributes it to hard times specific to his North Dakota home area, but the two biographies seem to diverge in details. That appears to be a matter of simplification, rather than concealment. Check Wednesday’s post for LL’s own statement.

The Education of a Wandering Man resonated from the moment I opened the first page. It sounded a bit like my own life. I didn’t leave home early, or leave school early, and I didn’t wander the world. I did start working about age eleven, pretty much full time plus school, but working on a family farm, sleeping in your own bed, and not going hungry does not describe L’amour’s experience.

The real similarity lay in being self-educated. I stayed in school through two masters degrees, but what I learned came mostly from outside the classroom.

Here’s what LL said:

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no school, no matter how excellent, can give you education. What you receive is like the outlines in a child’s coloring book. You must fill in the colors yourself.

Yes, precisely. I went to tiny schools before college. The teachers worked hard, and I thank them, but ninety percent of what I learned came from reading beyond the textbook.

The Education of a Wandering Man is a feast. Here’s a snack to whet your appetite. First on education:

Byron’s Don Juan I read on an Arab dhow sailing north from Aden up the Red Sea . . . Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson I read while broke and on the beach in San Pedro . . . Somewhere along the line I had fallen in love with learning, and it became a lifelong romance. Early on I discovered it was fun to follow along the byways of history to find those treasures that await any searcher . . . One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend. And there have been many such.

Then on America, as L’amour saw it during his wandering days:

(B)efore the Depression, one must realize there was a great demand for seasonal labor, and much of this was supplied by men called hoboes . . . To begin with, a bum was a local man who did not want to work . . . but a hobo was a wandering worker and essential to the nation’s economy . . . During harvest season, when the demand for farm labor was great, the freight trains permitted the hoboes to ride, as the railroads were to ship the harvested grain and it was in their interest to see that labor was provided. Often this lot of wandering workers was mixed with college boys earning enough money for school or working to get in shape for football . . .
The Depression brought a different kind of drifter to the railroads and highways, and only one who bridged that period can grasp the depth of the change. The Depression hoboes had little of that carefree, cheerful attitude of the earlier hobo. They were serious, often frightened men.

You can read The Education of a Wandering Man several ways. It will tell you about the early life of a beloved author. It will give you a gritty, ground level view of the first half of the twentieth century that you won’t find in history books. It will give you an education in how to get an education. And it will give you enough wanna-reads to last a lifetime.

As L’amour said:

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

Yep, and thanks for this one, Mr. L’amour.

*    *    *    *

Louis L’amour wrote his novels until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Then he finally took time to write his memoir. He was editing The Education of a Wandering Man the day he died.

597. Who Speaks for Us?

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A teacher in a classroom in Sierra Leone.

I had a post written for today, which I will now boot on down the road, maybe a couple of weeks.

My wife and I frequently watch a morning so-called news program, mostly because the hosts are pleasant people. This morning (that would be two days ago, Memorial Day) they took a moment from time to time to “remember those who served”, and went immediately to the men of Big Little Liars and promised an upcoming interview with Lamar Odom. Then they were going to do in in depth piece on where to find the best Memorial Day sales.

Yikes.

I left quickly. Most mornings all I wait for is a hit of good fellowship, a touch of news and weather, and I’m on to other things. Like writing this.

Their treatment of Memorial Day seemed to strike somewhere between grabbing for cheap emotions and checking off a box, but I’m going to give them a pass. I am not the one to judge, because I can’t be satisfied on the subject. Every time Memorial Day comes around I find myself caught between tears and anger, no matter how well things are presented. I have great respect for those who fought for freedom, but I don’t forget the atrocities committed in America’s name. I know that most Americans are offering genuine respect, and that some Americans are using Memorial Day to push military agendas, and a few are doing both at the same time.

I’m just going to have to let go of Memorial Day for another year. 

Lamar Odom is another matter. Mind you, I don’t know the man, and I avoid any news broadcast containing the word Kardashian. He probably has a story to tell, and certainly has the right to tell it.  Nevertheless, he represents something ugly about America — the Redemption Tour.

You are nobody in America until you’ve hit rock bottom, and clawed your way back up, in full public view.

If you’ve simply lived a wholesome, useful life, you don’t count. But if you’ve ripped off a charity, gotten dragged down by drugs, or cheated your kid’s way into college, welcome to celebrity. America is crying out to forgive you, if you can first tell them a stirring tale of depravity to keep them entertained.

Lamar Odom isn’t the problem; he just set me off. He dredged up something ugly from my past.

I was teaching middle school and we all turned out for a rally. It was one of those manufactured teaching moments, half sermon, half vaudeville, but it went wrong from the start. The presentation was by a batch of ex-cons, who had come to the school to tell our kids to go straight. Supposedly. In fact, it was anything but that. They were strutting baboons, flexing their muscles in their tight T-shirts, showing off their tattoos, and tearing phone books in half.

And, no, baboon is not a racist dog whistle this time. These were all white guys. It’s just an accurate description.

They told the kids, “Stay in school, keep on the straight and narrow, don’t end up in prison cause the guys there will eat you alive. You don’t want to end up like us.”

And the teenage boys all said under their breaths, “The hell we don’t!” These parodies of masculinity were exactly what they wanted to become.

Then one of the ex-prisoners began to harangue a tough looking Mexican-American student. He said, “I know you. I know what you’re thinking . . .” But he didn’t. He didn’t even know the boy’s name. He had never seen him before, but that didn’t stop him from calling the boy out.

It was always like that. Whenever somebody came to our school to make our students into better people, they always zeroed in on Mexicans as the ones they planned to reform.

Any teacher in the room could have told you the boy’s name. A lot of them could have told you his parents’ names, and would have had a pretty good idea of their income. Many of them would have known his sisters and brothers names, and would have taught them in years past. Some of those teacher had probably been in his home.

Any teacher in that gym could have stood in front of those children and have given them good advice about their futures — in fact they did just that every day in their classrooms. But those teachers hadn’t been to prison, so they were in the bleachers while the ex-cons cavorted like movie stars.

If you think I don’t believe in second chances, that isn’t the point. I don’t believe in parading your failures like badges of honor and I don’t believe you have to go low before you can go high.

There is nothing wrong with not going to prison.

Just go high, without bothering to go low first. Nobody will ever notice you. They won’t put you on television or in front of a gym full of kids, but that’s okay. We can live with that.

596. Memorial Day

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My father was the tenth of eleven children. He had brothers and sisters much older than he was, some of whom I never met. The ones I knew were my father, his immediate older and immediate younger brothers. All three were of an age to serve in WW II.

The older brother was a welder. He spent the war working at a bomber plant in Tulsa. I never knew which one. He would have passed through the war on a deferment for someone who was essential to the war effort at home, and so he never entered the military. I didn’t say he never served. Making bombers was service, but he got to sleep in his own bed at night, and nobody was shooting at him.

My father was drafted into the Army, and joined the First Division somewhere in France, not long after D Day. He stepped into the shoes of the ones who had already fallen. He fought across France and into Belgium, where he endured the Battle of the Bulge and was wounded shortly after. When he had recuperated, the war was over and he spent the occupation in Bavaria.

My father’s younger brother was also drafted, probably after VE day. He trained and was put on a troop transport. In his words, “they put me on a ship and sent me over to Japan to die.” While he was crossing the Pacific, America dropped two atomic bombs and the war ended. His service was spent in occupation of Japan.

None of my immediate relatives died in service, but when Memorial Day comes around, I still feel the weight of those who did. I think of Frenchy, a man I never met, who was my father’s friend before I was born, and who died somewhere between France and Germany.

It was a war that had to be fought, and a lot of men never came home.

Two decades later, I was quasi-drafted. That is, my draft lottery number was up, and I joined the Navy to have some kind of say in where I served. Times were different. Viet Nam was a war without justification.

I spent my time working at a Naval Hospital that sits in the middle of Camp Pendleton Marine Base, the place Marines were trained just before deployment to Viet Nam. I was head tech in the oral surgery section, which meant I spent my days chairside assisting our oral surgeons. Over three and a half years, I helped relieve about 5000 marines of their wisdom teeth, helped set about 350 broken jaws, and assisted in about a dozen maxilo-facial reconstructions.

I often wonder how many of the Marines I worked on never made it back.