Four Years

I can't believe that I've been doing this blog for over four years now!

In that time our grand kids have grown up, and great grand kids have been born. Carol logged hundreds of calls driving the ambulance, we said sad goodbyes to our dogs Boom Boom and Chewy, said hello to two new puppies Taz and Squeak, had a couple hundred of our weekly barbecues with my brother, weathered wind storms, ice storms, snow storms, power failures, and heat waves. One of the Pine trees in front of the house blew down blocking the highway, and I was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

We caught Salmon and Trout, went kayaking, and hiking, landscaped the back yard, painted the house, turned an old dock into firewood, and Carol traced our family tree back to the Pleistocene era. I try to walk at least a mile every day, Carol usually walks two or more, but when the weather's stormy we do jigsaw puzzles for exercise.

Writing about our boring lives and trying to make it interesting is a challenge, but it's also a lot of fun.

Teaching Squeak

After just two days Taz has matured from a care free ne'er do well into a mentor and teacher. It's unbelievable how much he's changed since we got the new puppy. Squeak follows Taz almost everywhere, but if she gets too rambunctious she gets a quick warning growl to settle her down.

Amazingly, Taz lets Squeak play with his precious toys, (he won't let the great grand kids play with them!) and he even lets her drink and eat out of his bowls. It's almost as though he's taken on the role of a wise Kung Fu master.

“Follow me grasshopper, and I will show you things that you have only dreamed of!”

“Do not chew on the table legs, or scratch your rear on the carpet. Those are NO!s.”

“If you bite this toy like this, it makes a good squeaky noise! See?”

“Do not worry, you will be able to do it someday. I will teach you.”

“When you growl and whine like this, they will let us outside to do our business.”

“Always do this outside, never in the house. That is a very big NO!”

“Here is a good spot to...Why are you pooping like that? It is very undignified!”

“Here is the very spot where I killed a mole when I was still a pup.”

“Over here is some good tasty grass to eat.”

“In the summer I will show you how to eat apples, too.”

Squeak

The vet called the other day and asked if we still were looking for a companion for Taz. Carol said yes, I said no. Guess who won?

We drove to the little town of Alsea and picked her up. She's supposed to be a full blooded Papillon but I think she's got some Meercat and maybe a little alien from Mars blood in her. Have you ever seen a real dog balance on her two front feet, with her hind legs off the ground to poop?

She's a real ball of fire, Taz just walks around looking confused most of the time. I was afraid he'd be super protective of his toys, food and us, but Squeak is into things so fast Taz can't even keep track of her, let alone protect anything.

JC's Deck

Just about every day for the past year and a half now, I've been walking almost a mile to my brother JC's house. It's good exercise for me and if I get rained out, or for some other reason can't make it, I feel like something important is missing from my daily routine.

When I arrive, usually around 1:30 in the afternoon, JC is either sitting at the patio table on his deck reading a book or inside playing with one of his computers. We almost always end up out on the deck sitting under the awning out of the sun and sometimes, out of the rain. Even though my voice is getting weaker, and JC's hearing isn't too good, we still manage to have some good conversations.

We sit and sip cheap wine, (his white, mine red,) and talk about computers, or movies, or fishing, or old times, but since we're on opposite sides of the political spectrum, seldom politics. Arguing about politics is too much work, anyway. Talking about religion is fine, since we both believe that organized religion is responsible for most of the problems in the world today, and that the so called “holy” books, rites, ceremonies and sacraments were invented and created by man, not by any of the many mythical gods.

When we run out of subjects to talk about, we become nature observers, watching Hummingbirds, Bluejays, Crows and spiders. We spent one afternoon watching a female orb weaver spider literally kicking a horny male repeatedly out of her web. Finally after a dozen attempts she let him quickly mate with her and then promptly kicked him out again. We captured mealy bugs and dropped them onto her web to watch her dart over and wrap them up for later. One day we watched a bunch of tiny, newly hatched baby spiders sending out almost invisible strands into the breeze and then launching themselves from their nursery out into the world. Another time JC was showing me the last Blueberry on his potted plant. “I think I'll pick it before the birds get it,” he said. As we were looking at it, a Bluejay swooped down, grabbed the berry and flew off.

JC built planters on the outside edge of his deck, and shelves to hold potted flowers and plants. In the summer the deck is surrounded by Columbines, Hostas, Petunias, Blueberry plants and pretty flowers that neither of us can name.

The weight of all the planters and pots came dangerously close to collapsing the deck and sending it, and most likely us, on a merry trip down the hill and into the trees. We had noticed the gap between the deck and the trailer getting wider and when JC checked underneath he discovered that in many places the supports were large tree branches and rotted lumber, all leaning downhill. Needless to say he replaced everything underneath with pressure treated wood, and fastened the deck itself to the side of the trailer with turnbuckles. He also replaced most of the decking with new boards and of course, after a few failed attempts, installed the awning.

Recently, for lack of anything else to do, we've been keeping track of how many times we have to go inside and pee. It's become a competition and we even talked about putting up one of those pool hall gizmos with sliding disks on a wire to keep score. A lot of times he says he has to go check on one of the movies that he's constantly copying on his computer, so now to keep him honest when I have to go, I say, “ I have to go check my movie!”

We're starting to recognize the sounds of the cars that come up the steep road to his neighborhood. “Here comes Andy!” I'll say. Going to see his girlfriend!”

“Yep,” JC will say.

“That sounds like Howard's pickup!” JC will say, “Looks like he's been out crabbing!”

“Yep.” I'll say.

“There goes Mary! There goes Andy!”

“Yep. Yep.”

As you can see, we're easily entertained.

Lightning Strike Lures

In the fall of 1981 I caught my first Steelhead on the Yachats River. Little did I know that it was the beginning of a twenty year fun filled business.

My wife Carol, our son Rick, our Cocker Spaniel Rusty and I had moved to the Oregon coast the year before, and despite taking a Steelhead fishing class taught by Dr. Howard Horton at the Marine Science Center and on the Siletz River, we still hadn't caught one. It wasn't from a lack of trying, we spent many hours casting and retrieving various lures and drifting globs of smelly salmon eggs through the deep holes on the Yachats, Ten Mile and Alsea Rivers.

I had left Carol to fish at what we called “The Big Hole” about three miles up from the Yachats rivers mouth, and walked downstream with Rusty. I had bought a green and gold spinner at True Value and I was anxious to try something a little different from the Mepps and Rooster Tails I usually used.

At a bend in the river overhung by Alder trees, Rusty and I slid down a muddy bank and I made my first cast. The spinner sparkled and flashed in the fast moving current and then disappeared. I suddenly realized that I had a fish on!

Boy, did I have a fish on! After a splashing jump right in front of us, the silvery bright Steelhead headed downstream making my reel scream and Rusty bark. There was no way to follow it because of the overhanging trees and brush, so all I could do was hang on and pray. When it reached the next bend in the river it stopped and started jumping and thrashing. Rusty was still barking, up to his chest in the water trying to decide if he could swim down stream and help. He was a great swimmer and if I hadn't called him back he probably would have tried.

I started pumping and reeling, and after about fifteen minutes I had the fish back in front of us. Our net was back at the big hole with Carol so my plan was to slide the fish through a shallow backwash and up onto the bank. Things were looking good until Rusty couldn't contain himself and tried to jump on what we both thought was a tired fish. Rejuvenated, the Steelie raced back down stream toward the Ocean, stopping again at the same place and jumping to show his defiance. For the second time I had to call Rusty back out of the water.

Three times I had to crank that fish back up stream and when I finally slid it into the shallow backwash, it started flopping and splashing, turning the once clear water into a muddy soup. I threw my rod down and Rusty and I jumped on the writhing fish. It was an epic struggle, I lost my grip on the slippery, mud coated Steelhead several times but with Rusty's help I finally slid the muddy fish up onto the bank and conked it, on what I hoped was its head, with a rock. I washed the Steelie off in clear water and hung him from a broken limb in an Alder while I tried to make Rusty and I presentable, or at least recognizable.

Carol, hearing the barking and yelling, had started down stream to see what all the commotion was about. She stopped in her tracks when she saw her wet, slimy, bedraggled husband and a muddy, dripping dog walking toward her. “What happened to you two?” she yelled.

When I saw her, I raised the fish with a flourish and a Ta Da! She was almost as excited as Rusty and I, and later we drove into Yachats to show the eight pound Steelhead to everyone we knew and some we didn't.


I went back to True Value hardware and bought some more of the green and gold spinners. They had a heavy brass body that made them sink quickly and get down to where the fish were, but they weren't cheap, and they were always hanging up on snags and rocks. Usually we would break our line trying to get them free, so even though we were starting to catch fish, replacing lures was turning into a big expense.

One evening while I was going through our gear, I looked at one of the green spinners. “I bet we could make something like this ourselves, and it sure would be a lot cheaper!”

The next day we visited a tackle shop in the little coastal town of Seal Rock and were surprised to find that they carried almost all of the components we would need. With a little innovation and model paint we could build our own green and gold spinners.

The fishing tin the 1980's was good, and we were catching Coho and Chinook Salmon, along with Steelhead and even some Calico, or Dog Salmon from the Necanicum River near Seaside. Our lure making was evolving, we discovered prism tape and ¼ inch lead wire for the spinner bodies, and we started putting a stripe of prism tape on the blades to make them even flashier.

We kept experimenting and improving our spinners, trying out different colors and sizes and giving them to friends to try, asking for feed back. Just for fun, I cut a lightning bolt out of a scrap of prism tape and stuck it on the blade. I showed it to Carol and said, “Hey, we could call them Lightning Strike Spinners, and use a lightning bolt for a logo.” I don't know how many lightning bolts I cut out with an Exacto knife, but I know it was a lot, because we started selling spinners, first in a little sporting goods store in Yachats, then when Jack Green, a friend of ours who lived in Seaside, got them in 12th avenue grocery next to a fishing bridge over the Necanicum River, we were hard pressed to keep up with the orders.

Finally, we found out that the wholesale tape company where we got our prism tape would make a die to stamp out the lightning bolts for us. That really sped things up, and by then we were selling enough that with a little bit of fibbing about how big we were, we could get the wholesale wire, lead, hook, and blade manufacturers to sell to us. We could buy our components by the thousand instead of in small, more expensive quantities.

We tried every color and pattern of prism tape we could find, and of course we tested them on the local streams and found out which combination of color and size caught fish. When we encountered other fishermen we'd hand out free lures, and we traveled up and down the coast selling them to hardware, sporting goods and convenience stores. We always took our fishing gear along with us.

By the early 1990's we were selling several thousand spinners every fall. Almost all of our sales took place in September, October and November. We had narrowed our selection down to the most popular colors and sizes by then and we would start making them in the summer trying to anticipate which of the five colors and three sizes would sell the best that fall. One year, early in September, the first Salmon caught in Alsea Bay was caught on one of our florescent orange #5 spinners. The local stores sold out immediately and we were getting phone calls in the middle of the night asking if we had any. We gladly sold to people who visited our shop and we made a lot of friends that way. A young man by the name of Martin Link stopped by to buy some lures and later he sent us a picture from Venezuela of him holding a Snook he caught on one of our spinners. One fisherman asked if I would put our lightning bolts on his Mepps spinners, as he was convinced that there was something magical about the lightning bolt that Salmon couldn't resist.

The sporting goods stores, truck stops and convenience stores in Seaside were always our best customers. Our lures were the local favorites, and you could always find them hanging from the power lines that crossed the river over the fishing bridges. One time we drove our pickup and camper up the coast to Seaside and camped next to the river. The next morning while we were eating breakfast we looked out the window to see a fisherman fighting a fish. We helped him land a nice Chinook and we were pleasantly surprised to see that he was using one of our lures. I took his picture holding up his fish and later we had it framed and took it back up to him. There's a story told to me by Jennie Logsdon-Martin of I fish.net, about her using a Lightning Strike spinner in Seaside. While she was walking to the river to fish, she found a piece of pink ribbon on the ground. She picked it up and on a whim, tied it to the hook on her lure. Needless to say she caught a big Chinook and the next day almost everyone was using a piece of pink ribbon tied on a Lightning Strike spinner.

Link's sporting goods store in Seaside surprised us one August with an order for a thousand of our lures. He was smart to order a month or so ahead of time, because it took us two weeks to crank them out. We learned a lot about building lures and packaging, filling that order. Carol did all of the packaging and she was constantly improving their appearance and convenience. We started with a yellow card stock with our logo printed on it and four holes; one to hang it up with and the other three to tie the top of the lure and the treble hook down with. Unfortunately this left one hook sticking straight out, and when a kid at the Newport Fred Meyers caught his sweater on one of them and yanked the whole display over, we had to start gluing a plastic cover over the lure. Eventually we found a plastic clam shell that fit our spinners like a glove, and later we printed our own display cards on the computer printer.

When the computer age came along we drug our feet for a while, but finally my brother talked us into buying one. It wasn't long before we were doing inventory, spreadsheets, fliers, price lists and a host of other things including starting up a web site. It was quite a learning process but we did it all ourselves, using Go Daddy as a host, we registered “lightningstrikelures.com.” We had a gallery of big fish pictures and I even created an animated Lightning Strike spinner. We didn't use PayPal or accept credit cards, we just had a list of the sizes and colors, a printable order sheet, and basically said, “You send us a filled out order sheet with a check and we'll send you the lures.” We never got a rubber check and we never failed to fill an order, some of which came from all over the world.

Over the twenty years or so that we sold those lures, averaging from 2,000 to 5,000 every fall, Carol assembled every package and I hand made every lure. Eventually my fingers began losing their dexterity and we decided to sell Lightning Strike. Carol phoned Jim Brien, who owns a salmon egg bait company in Seaside to ask if he'd be interested, and he was. A few days later after a handshake, Lightning Strike Lures was his.

Austin

Our 13 year old grandson Austin, who we hadn't seen for almost 6 years, spent some time with us last month. His mom, dad, little sister and he recently moved back to Oregon from the Huston area, and he's full of Texas tales.

They hated the hot weather and high humidity, the insects of every description, and they survived hurricane Ike, which went almost directly over them, knocking down trees onto their house and leaving them without power for days in a sea of mud.

Austin likes to talk, and he told us all about it, with typical Texas exaggerations. (Thankfully, and to his credit, he didn't acquire a Texas accent.) “The mosquitoes down there were twice as big as they are here, and there were giant hornets, huuuge snakes, fire ants, wasps, ticks, chiggers and tarantulas.”

We set up an old Dell computer for him in the den and he and I loaded it up with games for him to play when he got bored with us. Like most teens he whizzed though them in no time, so I had to scrounge up some more. Once I came in to watch him playing a flight simulator game that had proved way too hard for me, and he was operating a joy stick, typing on the keyboard and working the mouse, all at the same time, flying like an ace.

We went to the lake where I showed him how to paddle a kayak, and he quickly caught on. He even challenged me to a race back to the dock. (I still maintain that I let him win.) Every day he went with grandma for her daily walk, and then later with me up the highway to Uncle John's house, talking 90 miles an hour all the way.

On one of our treks he said, “Wait a minute grandpa!” and he climbed down the bank beside the highway. When he climbed back up, he proudly showed me his find, a wheel cover that had fallen off of someone's car. “What in the heck are you going to do with that?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said with a smile, ' I'm thinking about building my own car, and this will be the first part!”

I''m not sure if he was kidding me or if he was serious, but it wouldn't surprise me, in a few years, to see him drive up in a car with a very familiar wheel cover on it.

Our Backyard

Since she retired from driving the ambulance for the Waldport fire department, Carol has been busy potting, planting, pruning and painting.
The back yard, and especially the patio, is now a riot of colors. She painted the old weathered boards on the deck the same color as the house, and then hand painted designs here and there. I contributed by building a shelf under the kitchen window for some pots and planters, and the patio is surrounded by blooming flowers.
The Hummingbirds have found a banquet, and get less and less timid as the summer wears on. Deer come into the yard almost every morning to eat the fallen apples.
The back yard has become our sanctuary.

The Hump

If you're not a fan of the movie Young Frankenstein, please don't read any further.


Not long ago when my brother, JC was having cataract surgery done at our local hospital, one of the nurses remarked,”I know a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps he can help you with that hump.”
“What hump?” JC asked.
The male nurse introduced himself:
“I'm Bill Blucher, (somewhere in the distance a horse whinnied) and I think Doctor Stein could help you.”
“Who's doctor Stein?”
“Doctor Frank Stein is the foremost hump remover on the Oregon coast.”
“I'll think about it,” JC answered, shaking his head, “What hump?” he mumbled as he left the hospital.

Several weeks later while we were sipping wine on his deck, JC surprised me by saying, “I think I'll get this hump removed!”
“What hump?” I said, trying to be polite.
“You know, the one on the left side of my back.
“I thought it was on the right side,” I said.

I first met Doctor Stein in the pre-op room at the hospital, just before JC's operation. He was a frail man, but the fire in his eyes showed a glimmer of his genius. He introduced himself and then began a speech that I felt he had given many times.

“From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars, "I am man,"our greatest dread has always been the knowledge of our mortality. But today, we shall hurl the gauntlet of science into the frightful face of death itself. Today, we shall ascend into the heavens. We shall mock the earthquake. We shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself!”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” he said, seeing the confused look on my face, “I'm afraid I get carried away.” He carefully drew an arrow to the hump on my brothers back with a magic marker. “This is just so we don't make any mistakes,” he said, “Sometimes these humps can be quite elusive.”

As nurse Blucher rolled JC into the operating room, I thought I heard the crackle and hum of electricity, but it was probably just my imagination. I retired to the waiting room and read several out dated issues of Family Circle, Time Magazine, and Neurology News before I finally gave up and went out to the parking lot and my car.

I opened a book I'd borrowed from JC and read until my butt got tired of the car seat, then I walked back into the waiting room just in time to hear the receptionist call my name.
“Doctor Stein wants to talk to you,” she said, “Do you remember how to get to the surgery pre-op?”
I told her that I could find it in my sleep and after getting lost and asking for directions twice, a nurse led me to my meeting with Dr. Stein.

The doctor told me to sit, and then began: “From that fateful day when stinking bits... Oh wait, wrong speech. Your brother's fine. The operation was successful and we removed the hump from the left side of his back.”
“I thought it was on the right side,” I started to say, but thought better of it.
“He'll be fine, he just needs to take it easy for a couple of weeks. I've written a prescription for antibiotics, pain pills and electroshock if he needs it.”

I resisted the urge to yell, “It's alive!” as I opened the curtain to my brother's recovery cubicle and watched as nurse Blucher removed the IV's and helped JC get dressed and into a wheel chair for the trip out to the parking lot. At the car he shook the nurses hand and thanked him for his help.
“Blucher,” (a horse whinnied in the distance,) where have I heard that name before?” JC asked.
“Oh my grandmother was famous in the old country, but please don't say my last name anymore. I get tired of hearing that damned horse whinny!”











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A good day on the lake

Yesterday was a good day on the lake.

I decided to make a quick, early morning kayak-fishing trip as soon as I saw the stars shining down from a cloudless sky. Around seven I grabbed my little tackle box, stuck it on its Velcro strips in front of the kayaks cockpit and dropped my ultralight rod, with a reel which I've had since 1958, in beside my canvas creel and the new net Brad gave me for father's day.

It only takes about 5 minutes to drag my nine foot kayak on its little lawnmower wheeled cart from our house to Eckman Lake. The put-in that I dug out several years ago is getting overgrown with weeds and grass, so it took a little effort to slide in, but soon I was gliding across the smooth, glassy water. The sun was just starting to peek over the trees on the east shore, so I stopped in a sunny spot to rig up my rod. I've used the same home made spinners for years now; the orange and black beads and brass blade seem to work better than anything else I've tried. A few days ago I'd decided to bend down the barbs on the treble hooks to make it easier to release fish without harming them.

I decided to try a few casts, even though I was still quite a way from my favorite spot. On the second cast a big trout hit my lure, hard! My reel handle was spinning backwards, (the drag hasn't worked for 20 years!) and the kayak was turning, starting to follow the fish. I hope he doesn't jump, I thought, remembering the barbless hooks and how easily they came out. Then I could feel him shaking his head and suddenly he was gone. I reeled in and exchanged the spinner for another one with barbed hooks.

I paddled to my “sweet spot,” lining up a bush on the south shore with a power pole on the north side, a cat road on the west with a road sign on the east, and I was ready to fish! It was still in the shade so it felt much cooler, and there were clouds of steam rising from the water.

I used to think that my “sweet spot” was the old creek channel, but after running some temperature checks with a digital thermometer I found just one tiny spot that was ten degrees cooler than the rest of the lake, so it probably is a fresh water spring and the cold water attracts the trout.

A few casts later, I hooked into a ten incher and he did a typical Rainbow Trout fight, a couple of fast runs, splashing and jumping all the way. I reeled him in and released him by grabbing the hook with needle nose pliers, turning it upside down and letting him flop loose without touching him. They come off much easier with barbless hooks, but then as I had just found out, so do the keepers.

A slight north wind had started up, blowing me past my spot. I paddled back to the south far enough so that the wind would carry me back across it and started casting.

Another big fish hit, and as soon as the kayak started to follow him and my reel handle began its knuckle busting, backward spin I knew it was a keeper. I saw the taut four pound test line began to rise and I knew he was going to jump. He cleared the water and I got a good look at him before he took off on another run that made my line sizzle through the water. This is a good one! I thought, as I slid my Father's Day net out and put it in my lap.

He had towed me over to shallower water and then he did something that Rainbows seldom do, he went for the bottom. The bottom of the lake, especially in the shallow water, is covered in great blobs of moss and I tried to keep him from getting tangled in one. He managed to get a fair sized glob tangled in the hooks and then took off for deeper water, pulling me and my boat behind him. I began to think that there was no way I could ever land him.

He jumped again several times, and he kept trying to get behind me, spinning the kayak around in a circle. I could tell he was tiring, he was fighting both me and the glob of moss hanging from the lure. I usually try to land a fish on the left side of my boat but this one just wouldn't co-operate, so I switched my rod to my left hand and picked up the net with my right. Several times I got him in close enough to make a stab at netting him but he was almost too big for the net and I kept flubbing it. Once I had him in the net, but he flopped out before I could lift him into the boat.

Finally I got it right and put him, still in the net, between my legs on the kayak floor, broke down my rod and paddled for the boat dock where I always take out, and home.

The beautifully colored Rainbow was 19 inches long and weighed 3 pounds. I had a half of one of the bright orange fillets for lunch today.

The Lake

The weather's been so lousy and I've been so lazy, that I've either been in front of the TV or the computer for weeks now.

I had almost forgotten how great it is to drag my kayak over to the lake, the little home made wheels rattling over the roadside gravel, sliding it in through the grass and reeds, and heaving a sigh of relief as I glide out onto the early morning, glassy water.

Usually there are streamers of mist rising from the warm surface and some mornings there's a fog bank sitting over the lake, until the sun rises far enough to burn it off.

My senses welcome a flight of Canadian Geese honking overhead, their wings beating the air, the deep thrum of a large Bullfrog somewhere along the shoreline, the warning cry of a mother Osprey when I near her power line nest and the splash of a feeding Rainbow trout as I stop paddling and let the north wind push me to my favorite fishing spot.

Sometimes I don't even fish, I just sit and relax, watching Kingfishers diving for minnows or Otters poking their heads out of the water and curiously looking at me before submerging (and probably catching more trout than I will.)

When I let the wind carry me into the shallow water at the lakes edge, I can watch schools of minnows and tadpoles, clouds of freshwater shrimp and insects swimming through the moss and water plants, and once in a while a startled turtle will slide off of a log where I interrupted his enjoyment of the morning sun.

When I'm fishing I release most of what I catch, sometimes keeping one for breakfast the next day, or if it's a really big one, taking it home to brag about. My casting skills are deteriorating as the Parkinson's advances, and as far as tying a blood knot with my shaky hands, forget it!

I'm just glad that I can enjoy myself on the lake, whether I'm fishing, or just drifting with the wind, watching and listening.

Roadkill Raccoon

No, Carol didn't hit me!

My old droopy eye lids were sagging down over my eyes so much that my peripheral vision was just about nonexistent. (Gravity seems to be the enemy of getting old.)
The eye doctor had suggested that I get a Blepharoplasty ( Easy for him to say!) over a year ago, but I kept putting it off. Finally, a couple of weeks ago I gave up and made an appointment for the surgery.

He explained that he'd cut away the excess skin that was drooping over my eyes and after some healing I'd be like new again, and look years younger! “As long as I don't look like the runaway bride!” I told him.

I remained semi awake through most of the surgery, floating happily along on the anesthesia. The swallowing problems I have because of Parkinson's caused me to start coughing and gagging at one point, but it passed and he didn't cut off my nose or anything, so I guess it wasn't a big problem.

At home after the surgery, I faithfully applied ice packs for 20 minutes every hour for the first day to keep down the swelling, and slept with my head elevated. The next morning when I looked in the bathroom mirror, a strange black and blue and yellow image peered out at me. It looked like a raccoon that had been in an accident... a roadkill raccoon!

Carol and I are going to our great-grandson Aiden's fourth birthday party today and I think I'd better keep my sunglasses on, or great grandpa might just scare the heck out of him!

Hero

Carol retired from driving the ambulance last month.

She's been on call five days a week or more since May of 2001, sometimes answering as many as four or five calls in one day, sometimes none. She has logged well over 2,000 runs since she started and she's received countless compliments and thanks from patients for her kindness while helping the paramedics.

Tony Mooney, the head paramedic and assistant fire chief, credits her with being "the smoothest driver he's ever ridden with." (Contrary to popular opinion, speed isn't the most important thing in driving an ambulance.)

The days when Carol was impatiently waiting, and her radio stayed silent were the most difficult, but when the Waldport "tone" sounded she would grab the radio, her fire department jacket, give me a running kiss and be out the door. One time she got in the car with the TV remote control instead of the radio but I caught her in time. Taz even learned to recognize the Waldport tone and when it sounded he would start barking, adding to the excitement.

It's nice knowing that whatever we're doing, like eating lunch or her giving me a haircut won't be interrupted any more, but I know she misses it dearly.

Noodling

The other day I watched a TV show about "Noodling," which is essentially sticking your hand into a big catfish's mouth and wrestling him out of the water. It brought back the memory of a hot summer day on the Verde River in Cottonwood, Arizona.

Carol was sitting on a half submerged lawn chair in the middle of the river, drinking pop and lazily fishing, while Rick, our youngest son and I were swimming and goofing off downstream. We splashed our way around a bend in the river, when Rick yelled, "Hey dad! A big catfish just swam under the bank over here!"

I dog paddled over, but even though the water was fairly clear I couldn't see anything.
"He's right under there!" Rick said.
We had heard about noodling from some of the old-timers, but I never thought that I'd want to try it.
"See if you can catch him, dad!"

I summoned up some courage and carefully reached down under the bank. My fingers brushed up against the slippery side of a big fish and I immediately yanked them back .
"Yep, he's there all right!" I said shakily.

"I heard that if you tickle their belly, it hypnotizes them, then you can stick your hand in their mouth and just pull them out!"
Rick was trying to make it sound easy, but I didn't see him sticking his hand down any giant fish's mouth. In fact he had backed a safe distance away. I reached down again and tentatively slid my hand under the fish's belly. I was just barely able to keep my mouth above the water while I attempted to do my best fish belly tickle.
"Boy, he is big!" I gurgled.
"Is he hypnotized yet, dad?"
"It's kind of hard to tell, Rick. He sure seems to enjoy being tickled, though."

Tiring of all the foreplay, I took a deep breath, slid my fingers up to his gaping mouth and grabbed his lower lip. The fight was on!

"I don't think I hypnotized him enough!" I yelled, as the big fish started thrashing back and forth. I thought he was going to yank my arm off, and I gladly would have let go, but he had clamped his mouth shut on my hand and it was a toss up as to who was catching who.

"Don't let go of him, dad!" Rick yelled from the bank, where he had found a safer place to watch the fight.
My arm felt like it was about a foot longer than it used to be, and I was sure my hand was missing some fingers. Gathering what was left of my strength, I made a mighty heave and flopped the struggling catfish up onto the bank beside a wide eyed Rick, who quickly jumped back into the river.

If you've ever caught a catfish, you know that they are hard to kill, and this one was no exception. I picked up a rock with my left hand and smashed it down on top of his head, which resulted in squashing my fingers, still in his mouth, even more. Finally he opened his mouth to gasp for water and I yanked my hand free. I laid beside the still flopping fish, rubbing my throbbing arm and counting my fingers.
“Are you OK, dad?”
“Oh yeah, that was easy!” I said, trying to keep the quaver out of my voice, “Let's go show mom!”

As we rounded the bend in the river, I held the big fish behind my back, hiding it from Carol's view. When she saw us she grinned and held up a stringer with several ten inch catfish to show us. When we got closer I showed her the big fish, and Rick proudly yelled, “ Look what dad and I caught!”

Family?

Recently I joined a group of Parkinson's patients to have my DNA sequenced. Normally this costs $299.00, but thanks to funding from the co-founder of Google, Sergei Brin, we were only charged $25.00. The purpose is to find if there are any common genetic markers in Parkinson's sufferers.
I received what they delicately labeled a "spit kit" in the mail, drooled into it and sent it off by Fed Express to" 23 and Me," a genetics lab. About a month later my results came back.

I found that my genes show that my Parkinson's wasn't inherited, so I probably acquired it by inhaling bug spray or laquer thinner or God knows what else over the last 70 years. Along with scads of data, there was a section on maternal and paternal chromosomes and family prehistory. It seems that mom's side of my DNA shows a pretty common group of Europeans originating in Scandinavia. However, when I looked at the paternal, Y Chromosome side I found this:

Haplogroup R1b1c9

Your Y chromosome DNA determines your paternal haplogroup.

Today R1b1c9 is found mostly on the fringes of the North Sea in England, Germany and the Netherlands, where it reaches levels of one-third. That distribution suggests that some of the first men to bear the haplogroup in their Y-chromosomes were residents of Doggerland, a real-life Atlantis that was swallowed up by rising seas in the millennia following the Ice Age.

Doggerland was a low-lying region of forests and wetlands that must have been rich in game; today, fishing trawlers in the North Sea occasionally dredge up the bones and tusks of the Mastodons that roamed there. Doggerland had its heyday between about 12,000 years ago, when the Ice Age climate began to ameliorate, and 9,000 years ago, when the meltwaters of the gradually retreating glaciers caused sea levels to rise, drowning the hunter's paradise. Doggerland's inhabitants retreated to the higher ground that is now the North Sea coast.

Dogger what? The lost continent of Doglantis? Truly, I could never have dreamed up a weirder family history.

JC's Awning

After our first Three Stooges attempt at installing an RV awning on the side of JC's mobile home, we sat back, sipped a little wine and slowly came up with several new plans of attack.
Then lo and behold one day when I walked up for my daily visit, there it was in all its glory!
JC had won the battle single handed!
Since then we've spent many enjoyable hours sitting on his deck protected from the rain and sometimes even the sun!

New project

I may have bitten off more than I can chew this time.

We've been keeping an eye on our ex-boss and friend's river front house while they spend the winter in warmer and less rainy places. Joanne moved to Hawaii and then when the volcano fumes got too strong, she came back for a short time, and then went to her brother's home south of San Diego. Laura, her daughter, went to their home in southern France.

Around the first of the year she called and asked if we would oversee the crew that was going to tear down their old dilapidated boat dock. We agreed, and told her that we would take pictures as the work progressed.

When the foreman told us that the wood would be taken to the dump to be disposed of, I asked if they could dump it off at our house instead, so I could saw it up for firewood. They happily agreed and a few days later the first trailer load showed up.

The old Cedar and Fir, rough-sawed timbers and dimensional lumber had been torn apart, loaded on a barge and floated a couple of miles down river to the boat ramp where it was winched on to a 26 foot flat bed trailer and then hauled by truck to our front yard. It was difficult backing the trailer into our driveway, but by stopping traffic on the highway and a lot of back and forthing they managed it.

After I helped throw off the first trailer load the foreman asked me, "There should be at least two more loads like this, are you sure you want it all?"
I looked at the huge pile of soggy, barnacle encrusted, nail infested lumber, swallowed, and said, "Sure, I'll take it!"

Now my work's cut out for me!

Medical Marijuana Test #2

3/11/2009

4:05 am:
Taz growled me awake, I got dressed, put the coffee on and we went outside for our morning pee.

4:15 am:
I got a fire going in the fireplace, poured a cup of coffee and sat down in front of the computer. While it was booting up I realized that it would be a good time to try one of the medical marijuana cookies I'd been given, to see if they would help with my Parkinson's tremors. The marijuana cigarette experiment a few weeks earlier had mostly been a failure.

4:30 am:
I washed the weird tasting chocolate chip cookie down with hot coffee while I was surfing my usual morning web sites.

4:40 am:
Right in the middle of reading the Drudge Report my eyes went out of focus.

4:45 am:
I realized that I'd been staring at the same out of focus article for about five minutes, and that I'd better go lie down. I tried to close down the browser and go off line but I couldn't remember how. I squinted my eyes really hard, concentrated, and managed to find the red X to shut down Firefox. I tried to stand up and almost fell, so I crawled on my hands and knees into the living room and up onto the couch where I started flying through the air. Unfortunately it wasn't that good kind of flying like Superman, it was more like uncontrollable tumbling.

4:47am:
Taz jumped up on my chest and licked my face. My vision cleared enough that I could see the digital clock in the TV stand. I closed my eyes and I was upside down going through bright bands of color, still rolling and tumbling. I didn't want to fight the weird sensations so I tried to relax, but the tremors in my hands increased and some new jerks and tics in my neck and legs started. About fifteen minutes went by before I opened my eyes and looked at the clock.

4:47 am:
How could that be? Now I was floating among the colors, lost in space somewhere. Taz began licking my hand, which usually drives me nuts because it tickles. I tried to move it but I couldn't move anything. I was paralyzed, and I was starting to get sick to my stomach. I concentrated on trying to move and all of a sudden the paralysis was gone, and I was back on my trip. In a little while I opened my eyes again.

4:47 am:
Either the clock had stopped or marijuana has the property of stopping time. Now I was really getting sick, so I struggled to get Taz off of me and stand up. I weaved around and staggered a step or two before I fell to my knees and crawled into the bathroom. I barely made it in time, and although I hadn't eaten anything since lunch the day before, I barfed up a Technicolor nightmare. I remember thinking, I never ate anything like that! I staggered to my feet and wobbled over to the washbasin to wash my face and rinse out my mouth, but before I could start I began retching, and had to kneel before the throne again.

5:00 am:
Using the support of the bathroom fixtures, walls, and furniture I got back to the couch, and shivering, I covered myself with a nearby afghan. The fire was dying down, but I didn't trust myself to mess with it. Taz hopped up to help keep me warm and I sank into a deep sleep.

7:00am:
I was supposed to wake Carol up at 6:00 am, but I was totally zonked out. I remember hearing her stoking the fire and I know she put her hand on my forehead, but when I woke up she was gone on an ambulance run. I alternated between sleeping and throwing up stuff I hadn't eaten the rest of the day.

I think medical marijuana test #2 was also a failure. For the next test, a small piece of cookie?

Late Snow

After a cautious first few steps outside this morning, Taz decided that the white stuff all over everything was fun. First we wrote our names in the snow, and then after I watched him running in circles, jumping in the air and sliding around, I joined him and we ran around the back yard like a couple of little kids for what seemed like a long time to me. (At least it got my heart rate going pretty good.)
It sure is late in the year for snow here. I guess it's because of that damn global warming.

The Old Deer Head

Early the other morning, watching CNN with Taz stretched out upside down beside me on our favorite overstuffed chair, a piece of firewood fell from the stack beside the fireplace. Taz jerked awake, growled, looked around and started barking at the deer head hanging above the fireplace.

It took 5 minutes of petting and shushing to quiet him down. He just knew that damn deer had knocked over the piece of firewood, and he wasn't about to let it get away with it. He's been suspicious of it ever since he was a puppy, when he first noticed it up on the wall looking down at him.

For quite a while after the firewood incident, any strange noise would result in Taz instantly looking up at the deer head first to make sure it wasn't responsible. That's when I started thinking about how long that old deer head has been with us.

I shot the deer in October of 1958 just a few miles from our ranch in the Colorado foothills. It was on a steep, rocky hillside and when I tried to turn the big buck over to dress it out, the deer, my rifle and I slid, tumbled and rolled down the hill in a cloud of dust and rocks. When I untangled myself at the bottom I discovered that one of it's antlers had poked an inch-deep hole in the inside of my thigh. I was going to the Colorado School of Trades at the time to learn gunsmithing, and I had entered a big buck contest at the start of deer season. All of the entrants were officially measured using Boone and Crockett rules and my buck had a high enough score to make the record book and win the $50.00 first prize. Dad and I took it to Jonas Brothers in Denver to get it mounted.

The next time I saw it was in 1960 after I had moved to Las Vegas and opened a gunsmith shop with Cecil Fredi. Mom and Dad came to Vegas to visit and brought the deer head with them. We hung it on the gun shop wall where it gathered compliments from celebrities like Red Skelton and Brook Benton, and former Cleveland mobster turned Desert Inn owner, Moe Dalitz.

After Carol and I met in Vegas and then moved back to Colorado to get married, the deer head was with us, overlooking our family in a house in Golden and then back to the ranch where it had started from. When we sold the ranch house in 1973 and bought a campground in Cottonwood, Arizona, it hung on the office wall watching over us.

We sold the campground several years later, and the deer head was back in Las Vegas again, hanging in my brother's living room while we took a three year vacation traveling around the country in our travel trailer.

When we finally settled down again on the Oregon coast, our youngest son, Rick and I drove down to Vegas to get some things we had left with my brother including the deer head. On the way back my brother was driving when a Nevada highway patrol car pulled us over. Instead of asking, “Can I see your driver's license?” the officer asked for my brother's hunting license!

For a while there was total confusion until we realized that the tarp had blown back on the rental trailer we were towing and the deer head was exposed. After a few thumps on the deer's hollow head we were allowed to go. “He didn't even check your driver's license!” I told my brother.

“That's good, because I don't have one!” he answered.

For fifty years the old deer head has been a part of our family, getting petted by little kids, (visitors and family,) festooned with silly decorations and hats, but stoically watching over happy times and sad times, birthdays and holidays, births and deaths.

The great experiment

I made up my mind some time ago that if the occasion arose, I'd do a small experiment and see if marijuana would have any effect on my Parkinson's symptoms. A few days ago I got the chance to share a “joint” at our barbecue. It was the first marijuana I'd smoked in over 20 years and I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Much to the amusement of JC, after deeply inhaling I started coughing and hacking. My eyes were watering, and I coughed some more until finally I stopped long enough to take another drag. The whole coughing and crying thing started all over again and I waved off the offer of another puff.

I didn't know if two puffs were enough to have much effect, but I carefully watched the tremors in my left hand as the high began.

I definitely had inhaled enough to get high, but the tremors remained. I tried stamping my left foot in a steady rhythm, but there was no improvement; still just as spastic as before. About an hour later, disappointed and still coughing, when asked if I'd like to try it again, I answered “No thanks, I'm trying to quit!”

I thought the experiment was over and a failure, until the next morning when I said “Good morning!” to my dependable, 4:am, alarm clock dog, Taz. The loudness and tone of my voice startled us both. My voice lately sounds more like a whisper than anything else, so something had definitely changed for the better. Was it all of the coughing I'd done, the marijuana, or both? Over the next day I gradually resumed talking in my Muhammad Ali voice again, but I think that the results call for another experiment, maybe something with less smoke like... cookies?

Bad Cook

I'll have to admit it - I'm a terrible cook! Thank God I married Carol, because she knows her way around the kitchen. If I had remained a bachelor I'd probably weigh about 70 pounds by now, refusing to eat my own lousy cooking, or maybe 700 pounds if I ate the greasy stuff.

I've been banned for life from contributing to our weekly barbecues. JC and Kelly both cook when we're at their house, but when we're at our house all I'm allowed to do is start the charcoal, pour the wine and take out the garbage. Carol does the rest.

The exception is breakfast. Since our dog Taz and I are early risers, I almost always make my own breakfast.

I think a person can learn anything, especially if the threat of pain and fire extinguishers is involved, so over the years, after experiencing many disasters, I've learned how to cook one meal with decent results. Of course, since I'm the only one who eats it, you'll have to take my word for it. (Taz does get to lick my plate when I'm done, (for a dishwasher pre-rinse) and he seems to like it OK.)

Here are some of my favorite breakfast recipes:

High fiber microwaved bacon

Take two pieces of extra fat bacon, lay them on two layers of paper towels on two paper plates. Cover with another layer of paper towel. Microwave on high for three and a half or four minutes. (If the paper plate catches on fire, cut down cooking time.) When done correctly the bacon should look and taste like high quality pork rinds, only blacker. In fact if you're out of bacon, pork rinds can be substituted. If the bacon sticks to the paper towels, which it usually does, peel off what you can and don't worry about the rest. (This is where the high fiber comes from!) Enjoy!

Sunny side up Wal-mart eggs

If Wal-mart eggs are unavailable, other eggs can be substituted. Spray egg pan with Wal-mart cooking spray, making sure that the pan is well greased. Crack two eggs into a pan pre-heated to medium temp, and fish out the small pieces of eggshell with a larger piece. Fish that piece out with your fingers and run cold water on them to prevent blisters. Cover the eggs with a lid to steam them to a runny perfection.

Alaska White Baked Potato

Put one medium size Alaska White potato in the microwave set on high for six minutes. (No other kind of potato will do.) Through experience I have learned to poke holes in the potato with a fork so it doesn't explode. (If you poke the holes just right, the escaping steam will make the potato self rotate!) If it does explode, see the recipe for Alaska White Hash Browns below. When it's done, mash it with a fork, season with Dollar Store freshly ground pepper, and sea salt, then smother it with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter and Blue Cheese Dressing. Bon Apetite!

Alaska White Hash Browns

Grate a medium sized Alaska White Potato. ( No other kind of potato will do.) Be careful of your fingers on the grater, (but really, you can't see the blood when the potatoes are browned.) Drop the grated potato into a hot cast iron skillet greased with Wal-mart cooking spray. When one side is brown flip with a spatula, being careful to keep most of the hash browns in the skillet. Season with freshly ground Dollar Store sea salt and pepper, add a dollop of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and when the second side is browned to perfection, serve!

Le Petomane Bean Pancakes

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This recipe has been censored in the public interest by the FDA and the Department of Homeland Security.

Late Christmas Present

The New TV

Our old big screen TV that we got from Radio Shack about 7 years ago started acting up last month. JC is a whiz at fixing TV's so he printed out some pages from the service manual CD, tweaked the settings and cured the dim picture and several other problems. But after he left, a black horizontal bar appeared that bounced the picture up and down like a Parkinson's patient on a “Magic Fingers” motel bed.

We put up with it for a while and even began to get used to it, until Carol started complaining of headaches and I gave up trying to time my tremors with the bounces. JC wasn't sure what it would take to fix it, and Radio Shack wanted a hundred bucks just to come and look at it, so we finally decided that it was time for a new TV. If JC could fix the old one we'd give it to one of the kids.

“Since we can't figure out what to get each other for Christmas, let's get something that we both can enjoy!” I said, rationalizing my hopes for a really big screen TV.

“After all,” I said, “What else is there to do in the winter time except watch the boob tube?”

I went on line and found a 65 Inch Mitsubishi on sale at Amazon dot com with free shipping, and best of all it was bigger than JC's!

After some trepidation, and discussion with the boss, I went ahead and ordered it. Amazon confirmed the order and gave us a tracking number to watch its progress as it traveled by truck from Lewisberry PA to Harrisburg PA, to Columbus Ohio, by air to Sacramento, then to PDX in Portland and finally by truck, hopefully to its new home.

Its journey started on December 23^rd and it was supposed to end here on January 5th. That gave me enough time to build a stand to set it on. Amazon wanted $400.00 for one and I figured I could build one just as good, if not better, for less than $50.00. I picked up a piece of high density particle board at the lumber yard and went to work.

After a lot of sawing, cussing, screwing, gluing, nailing, more cussing and sanding I had a TV stand that was ready to paint. I bought a quart of flat black enamel and a roller at Ace Hardware and commenced to paint not only the stand, but both of my hands and just about everything else in close proximity. I cleaned up by throwing the roller and brush away and taking a shower.

I was disappointed the next morning when I went out to the work shop to view my handiwork. The flat black was just too...flat. I hurried down to Ace, picked up a quart of black semi-gloss, another brush and roller and went to work. When it dried I was disappointed again, in my rush I'd picked the wrong color, stupidly thinking there was only one color of black, I'd picked “India Ink Black” instead of “Ace Of Spades Black” and now it was too... India Inky?

And so, back to the hardware store where I carefully picked out a can of “Ace Of Spades Black” satin, (they were out of semi-gloss,) and another roller. (I'd at least cleaned the brush!) The third try proved to be the charm, and the well-painted TV stand was finished. Total cost – particle board $27.00, paint and rollers - $42.00.

I set the stand up in the living room and filled the lower part with two tower speakers, a Hi Def DVD player, surround sound amp, video recorder and a center speaker. We carried in a small, (25”) but heavy, TV from the bedroom and put it on top to try it out and to give us something to watch until the new set arrived. Unfortunately the whole conglomeration was so heavy it was almost impossible to slide across the carpet.

A trip to Wal-Mart solved the problem with a package of furniture glides which I glued and screwed to the bottom, and I was finished just in time for the new TV!

On the next morning, Jan 5^th, I called the trucking company to find out what time the TV would be delivered. When the secretary said, “Uh, Mr. Cleland, there's a problem, let me put the dispatcher on. Great, I thought, it's probably not going to get here today. A man's voice came on the phone. “Your TV was at our loading dock in Lincoln City last night and someone broke into the truck and stole it along with two cases of Nike tennis shoes!

It had traveled all the way from Pennsylvania and got swiped 60 miles from it's destination!

I spent the rest of the day on the phone with Visa to get the payment stopped, with Amazon where I talked to an Asian lady who's English was so bad I could barely understand her, and with several of the trucking companies that had handled it. Two days later Amazon reordered the TV, I lifted the dispute from our credit card and another TV was on its merry way across the country.

The new tracking number supplied by the trucking company showed a now familiar route; Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Columbus Ohio, Sacramento California, and then PDX in Portland on January 13th.

The trucking company called the next day to get directions and an hour later we had our new TV. It took me all afternoon to figure out how to operate the electronic gizmos, bells and whistles, but it has a beautiful picture, and its bigger than JC's!

Chewy 1993-2009

Chewy was a tiny runt in a large litter of Lhasa Apso puppies. The couple who gave him to us called him “Chip” because he was literally the size of a chipmunk. We changed his name to Chewy because of his fondness for gently chewing on our fingers, but our grandson Austin called him “Choo Choo” I guess because our black lab was named “Boom Boom.” As soon as Austin came in the front door he'd yell, “Choo Choo and Boom Boom!” and head for the back yard to play with the dogs.

Chewy was a friend and companion to us, our kids and our grandkids.