Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

My daughters like to read stories of my childhood, so here's a quick one.

I was talking to an old friend recently who says he woke up in the middle of the night laughing about a trick Dick Whitaker and I played on someone back when we were kids. He thought it was funny, but it could have had severe consequences. He dreamt about this 60 years after the event, but as you age things from long, long ago pop into your mind despite the fact that you can’t find your wallet and can’t remember what you did yesterday.


When I was a kid I had an old army M1 training rifle. It wasn’t real, but during WWII they used these for training soldiers, saving the real ones for the war effort. Years later I carried a real one. This mock M1 looked real and on this particular occasion Dick and I had the brilliant idea of putting a firecracker in the barrel of the gun and…Well, here’s what happened.

Where's My Coffee?

Another week of bachelor-hood is coming to an end. I’m ½ hour from leaving to pick Gayle up from the Reno airport. Last month she was gone for a week and this month another week. This time she went to Portland to visit her best friend. I think these breaks are good for her. Being stuck in Greenhorn and the Quincy area might have some pluses, but in terms of social activities it’s like trying to rally the residents of a convalescent home for a pick-up game of basketball.

At least this time she didn’t leave notes all over the house with instruction on how to feed the cats their medicine and reminders to turn off the coffee, although I did find two notes, but I forgot to read them. (I just read one stuck on the front door re: “turn off oven, lock door”, and something else…can’t remember the third instruction) She didn’t even have all my coffee in the right amount already in the filters ready to drop in the pot. I guess she thinks I’m old enough to fend for myself now. Makes me feel like a big boy.

Gayle always leaves a card for me hidden where I’ll find it after she’s gone. I get a kick out of that. Sometimes on my pillow. Sometimes in the refrigerator and once on the toilet. There’s no significance to the toilet thing, except that she knows that sooner or later I’ll make a visit. Frankly, I like all of that.

Gotta get to the airport. More later.

Church without Walls

Back in the 50's there was a great comic strip called “Rick O’Shay”. It was my favorite comic strip. “Hipshot”, who was a rough gunslinger, would ride his horse to the top of a mountain on Easter and Christmas, take off his hat while gazing out at the mountains, and pray. I guess I identify with Hipshot.

Church Without Walls

I’ve had theological questions since I was a kid. They bubbled to the surface when I was in college taking courses from professors who openly admitted their intent to destroy any semblance of theism in their students. This was particularly prevalent when psychology was a major. It didn’t work on me.

My analytical process continues to this day, but the rock of my belief system has not altered much. Superfluous questions that can never be answered have been discarded leaving me with a few solid pillars that underpin my belief system.

I have yet to find a church that sees things the way I do, so I’ve resigned myself to what I call my church without walls. I go to church every day... or at least most days. That’s when I walk in the woods with my dog. In my church there are no babies crying, no people singing off tune to inane songs led by young guitar players from garage bands and hyper-kinetic drummers. No social cliques. No long sermons.


In the forest there’s peace, there’s a stillness and solitude that refreshes my spirit, while my dog runs blissfully seeking a new spot to leave his business card. That’s my church and that’s where I communicate, reflect, pray, and think.

Even more profound is the evening service when I can sit on my deck and stare into the heavens. There’s no ambient light here in Greenhorn Ranch and my property backs to the forest, so the sky is clear and one gets the impression that there are actually more stars in the sky in the mountains than there are in the city.


That’s it. That’s my sermon for today. I think I’ve finally found my church.

"Come on Baby, Light My Fire"

I’m not sure if I was a bad kid, if I was just mischievous or if I became demented prematurely, but I was just thinking of what it was like to be raised in a large church with a bunch of buddies who were crazy.

If my dad had known what was going on behind the scenes I wouldn’t have lived to experience the true and indisputable insanity of puberty. My dad was a quiet and spiritual man with an Irish temper and the physical prowess to back it up. I loved and respected my father as I did my “Italian” mother, who was both protector and consigliere for her two sons. There were times when she would go to bat for us even when we were guilty as sin. My parents were a good team. They understood the “good cop, bad cop” routine.

I have many, many friends to this day that I have known from when we were kids in the church. But church was more than fire and brimstone for some of us. We were the pre-teen dingbats who were allowed to sit together in the back row, as long as we didn’t start a fire or a fight.