Category Archives: Places

Other Guys’ Stories

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(Or, OGS, to save time) Up since three am. Met George Sack the Jacknife King in Mojave. Took Sack’s truck on the 58 to Baker, then left into Death Valley. A route I used to have for Pac Bell in 1969. The emergency phones were hand cranks on the side to ring up the Nevada Operator who then transferred the call to where ever. So, back to our mission.

Find some old desert rat who knows how to run a 1931 Axel straightening machine located in a shop in Pahrump. That’s Pahrump, Nevada. This guy Mickey drinks with some real characters. In the tiny town of Shoshone, we hit a trailer park he’s supposed to crash at most of the time. This trailer park’s newest model trailer was a 1958 model. Every other weed-packed driveway had a faded, all tires flat junker of some make of model sitting forlorn and long forgotten. Like it made it to that driveway and no farther. Forever. Mickey isn’t home but his drinking pal, Mo, is. He informs us he’s known as ‘Loco Mo’ in the finer drinking establishments surrounding Death Valley because of his 40 years as a railroad man.

OGS… From Mo’s mouth a few hours ago,”No, Mickey ain’t been around. He falls asleep on the couch and pisses himself, then I sit in it later and it ticks me off. He’s probably in a motor home behind the County truck yard off Death Valley Junction. His ex lets him sleep in her van. You go up there and take a look-see, but, what ever you do, don’t fuck her. She’ll ask you. Just tell her you can’t or something. She’s a real piece of work. I met her the same night Mickey did a long time ago. She ain’t changed one bit. Just one dick-crazy bitch!”

I nod my head in agreement. Since there’s a lull in the conversation, I make the mistake of asking him what had happened that particular momentous occasion. “Oh man , she was getting into her car outside the ‘Chicken Ranch’ (The Pahrump Whorehouse) as we pulled in to check the place out. She saunters over to another engineer friend of mine’s driver window to make a deal with us before we went inside. She says to my buddy that everything we we’re looking for was right in front of them. I’m sitting shotgun in this solid sided panel van that used to be a Winchell’s donut delivery truck. Two more guys from work are in the back with Mickey, putting down whiskey and Cokes like crazy.

Now, I was married at the time and wanted no part of her business, so I was put behind the wheel while everyone else did whatever in the back of the windowless panel truck. She directs me over my shoulder to a longggg desert road and I drove while things sounding pretty wild went on just behind me. It was pitch black in the rear view mirror so only my ears filled me in. As I’m about to complain about our gas situation, this gal is on top of me. I try to shove her back with my head and neck, thinking she’s getting fresh with me now. I was dead wrong. She was trying to throw up out my open window. I blocked her so whatever she had been up to back there, was now all over the back of my head and all over my shoulders. Not much was said as I drove her back to her car. Six months later, Mickey marries the broad!”

I again nod and tell him thanks. I glare at George with his dead pan face that’s quivering to not smile. Off to the ex’s…

ITEM: I meet the ex. It’s 115 in Death Valley Junction. I’ve seen covered wagons in better shape then the trailers in this park. All were shot forty years ago. Well, it is Death Valley. Who plans on retiring here? Sheila answers her battered screen door fixed by an off-sized half sheet of stained plywood. She doesn’t even ask who I am and I’m welcomed inside her humble home. Its dumpy on the outside but neat as a pin inside. She has two small air conditioner window units going and a little fan on her tiny kitchen table blowing the cool air around. It was comfy.

As I stepped past her, I checked out Mickey’s ex. Maybe seventy. Wearing a pair of loose shorts and a loose tank top. At one time she had to have been a looker. If I’d met her in her prime after five drinks, I could see making a pass at her. She obviously had those same thoughts in mind as she pulled her tank top off exposing some pretty darn large breasts. I take a step back towards her bedroom and say, “Hey, I’m just here looking for Mickey, you have the wrong idea toots!” She acts like I’m a flustered school boy and starts to slide off her shorts. I have to nip that in the bud pronto. She stops undressing but makes it even worse by doing this jiggle like the nude dancers do in the top less bars. I start to say something, I forget now. She cuts me off. “Want me to find your little man for you baby?” I start laughing. It’s just too weird. I say to her, “Look lady, you could have a pack of hound dogs and the Sheriffs mounted patrol helping you, and I wouldn’t want the little man found. Just get dressed and we’ll restart our meeting. How about it?” She picks her top up off the table, puts it back on, then offers me a beer. I settle for a Sprite and sit down for a few minutes to be polite.

She cut out the baloney and showed me some photos on her tiny counter. Most of her and Mickey at rodeos and stuff decades ago. I chug my soda and I’m out the door. I tell George what had gone on. He stayed in the running truck to keep the air going so was unaware of the fantastic time I was having just a few feet away. He calls me a liar and to head the truck to Pahrump and his friend’s shop the press is at. Mickey was already at the Nevada shop. He had just been dropped off by a friend. George got a call on his cell phone as I went down memory lane.

OGS…We find the shop in Pahrump. At the end of a long two lane road, then, five more miles on a pretty darn smooth dirt road to the only place at its end. In front of us is the sweetest damn shop I’ve seen in quite awhile. First of all, the back drop to it was breathtaking. Jagged, mean looking multi colored mountains maybe five thousand feet high. Larger ones peeking out above the front rows of what looks to be lava-like swirls ending in up thrusts peaks. No colors at all. Just faded greys, whites and blacks in squiggly mile long strata’s of ink-like rows, one above the other. Really rugged ranges of volcanic rock ridges and valleys. No green. No puffs of red or yellow rocks. All sunbaked lights and darks. Only broken by some ancient smashing of tectonic plates into each other causing mile long fractures and buckling hillsides. Pretty awesome.

Jake, the owner, opens his small shop door and invites us inside. Out of the oppressing heat as fast as we can move then inside the giant shop, as the door closed behind us were suddenly transported into the 1930’s. WHAT A SHOP!!!! As a couple of Jake’s men get the wrecked race car parts from the back of Sack’s truck, George and I stand under the cool blasting air of a ten-foot by ten-foot grill about ten feet over our heads. It’s blowing nice, cool air onto us at sixty miles an hour. Their were three more of the same hanging from the tall ceiling of the 100 foot long, maybe sixty foot wide steel building. As George went over his bent axle and other parts with a hung over Mickey, I’m offered a tour by the owner Jake.

Jake on the tour: “Now, this here is a (Oh, sorry. I took notes. Pat, my wife, won’t be too happy though. The only paper I had in my bib coverall’s are my gas receipts. They’re covered with felt pen scribbles now.) CINCINATTI, tool gripper and finisher. Made in 1945 and still runs like a charm. (I’m looking at, then up, at a machine from a Jules Verne book. It even has a tiny video screen to see x-rays made of parts in process. WOW!) We move along. Every machine seems to be larger and more impressive then the last. “Here’s an ‘OMAX’ 240. It was a state of the art Water Jet in 1939. It sucks the power, but still does pretty damn good detail metal cutting!”

He then picks up a five foot long, twenty inch tall, metal sheet cut out of the Indian Head from the old Indian Motorcycle Logos off their gas tanks. Some of the cuts are paper thin. He shows me this by holding it in front of the overhead lights. We move along. “This old boy is a ‘MAZATROL’ 99. Made in Italy in the late 1930’s. Weighs two tons. I can still press rough parts out of Magnesium and Aluminum with it with very few flaws!”

Now, Jake is creeping up on 70. He’s trim with a hillbilly beard. Maybe 145 pounds. Wears those giant wide suspenders to hold up his Levi’s full of wrenches and gauges of all sorts and sizes. Maybe five seven. Still full of pep and active. More machines come into view. His shop is even larger then I thought. After we go past the, ‘BLIST GRINDER’, 1955, a long row of seven foot tall metal tool boxes cover one ENTIRE wall of this part of the shop. Another longer building telescopes even farther back, hidden by the tool box back wall. In between every other tool box? Huge six foot tall gun safes of all colors and lock configurations. Some have no locks at all and are opened up half way. Inside are metal dies and such of all types. “See those dies? In that safe alone sits about $200,000 worth of custom dies. Mainly for the military and aero space companies!” I count twenty two safes all along the wall and around the shop here and there. I hadn’t noticed them before in awe of all the giant machines. I ask Jake how he can see into the top drawers of the fifty drawer and tray fronted tool boxes. He looks at me like I’m crazy and says a matter of fact, “I get a ladder!” Duh. On we go.

Two side by side ten foot tall and thirty foot long ‘DUTCH SAWS COMPANY’ articulating cut off stamps, lathes of all types, big as a VW Bus, ‘Nugier Air Drill’, a ‘JOHNSON MILL’, an entire room sized booth for a ‘MILLER WELDER’. After the ‘DO ALL’, the ‘LAGUN’ impact torque converter, and the, ‘HERCULES GRINDER’, I ran out of note paper. I also ran out of tour. The other section of the building was family and employees only.

As Jake leads me back to his office, I try and get one last look over my shoulder. Jake stops, then says, “Well, come on out side and I’ll show you a little side project we’ve been working on!” Out a side door, I shoot a glance Sack’s way. He’s in auto repair land with Mickey. Out into the blazing sun we go. I put on my shades and walk right into the back of Jake. He had stopped, and I wasn’t paying attention. I apologize as I spot his project. I look at him and mouth the words, “A Morter?” Jake nods and gives me the low down. “It’s 185 lbs all together. We tried a removable bottom plate. Too dangerous. You want some solid welds on this baby! It’s fired by packets of black powder set off, (crouches down onto his knees next to it) by a conventional fuse shoved into this hole here in the base of the tube. Pretty basic, actually!”

The tube is about four foot tall and about the size around of a bowling ball. Maybe because that’s what they fired out of it. Farthest shot? Four thousand feet. Impact pretty impressive if not hitting soft sand. Jake gets hundreds of bowling balls off the internet from closing bowling alleys all over the U.S. I asked him if I could see it in action. No way. They took it far out into Death Valley to fire it safely. Maybe I could come out on some other occasion? Told him I really would love that. I asked him how they moved it around. It looked pretty bulky and heavy. A lot heavier then 185. Jake points past me towards a giant rear yard full of vehicles. His finger is pointing at something I’ve always wanted. A 1938 “DROTT’ yard crane.

These babies are RARE. I’ve only seen them in photographs. As we walk over to it the urge to offer thousands of dollars I do not have is bitten back by a reality check. I climb up into the battered, but still cushioned, seat and look for the controls. No controls or steering wheel at all. Just toggle switches. Toggle switches? Jake is smiling. He fills me in. “You didn’t know they were all electric, did ya!” I’m blown away. I hop down and Jake shows me how to work it. “Every wheel has its own toggle array. Back, forward, left and right. He turns to his right, and just under the boom extension are about twenty toggles. I can read the faded metal instruction tags under them. You had to turn completely around on the seat to operate the four extender support legs in front of each hard rubber drive wheel. Jake knows what’s coming next and saves my breath. “It’s not for sale. EVER!” That took care of that. This was built in the 1930’s! No fumes in your shop. Quiet. Dependable. Would I trade my 1946 UNIT Crane for it? No fucking way. But, I sure would love to see this baby parked next to it.

Sack and I end up goofing at ‘Terrible Town Casino’, in downtown Pahrump. The place is pretty crowded. I’ve never won anything gambling so I headed for the coffee shop and some iced tea. I ask a tired but nice Latino waitress if it’s always so busy. She informs me that it’s like this on the first of the month. People get their checks and they come to ‘parlay’ them into quick fortunes. As soon as it;s all gone, it’s cat food and food stamps until the next first. “Come by tomorrow. Plenty of seats at the machines!”

George tells her a couple of my old jokes and she hangs out for a few minutes. When my carrot cake is brought by a coworker, she asks me if I would like it a la mode. Our table was five feet from the ice cream machine so I nodded a yes. Under the chrome nozzle goes my carrot cake. She takes a quick look around then covers my carrot cake with six giant loops of ice cream. As she sets it down in front of me she whispers, “Eat it fast before anyone sees!” George helped me. I tell him to back off and worry about his sugar intake. He gurgles out a quick, “Shut up!” We take care of business. Both of us get head freezes. George tips her ten bucks.

Back at the shop, everything is ready to go except the rear end. I have the pleasure of watching a master at work. Using titanium blocks and air powered rams controlled by foot pedals, Jake torques the drive train to Sack’s specs while giving us a running commentary on what he’s doing. Multiple gauges on the machine tell Jake every move he’s making on the newly welded rear end. Really impressive. As my eyes follow his swift moves, he’s like a ballerina. Constant motion with no wasted moves. He had done this dance thousands of times. Glancing at all the gauges, mini blocks placed here and there then pressed by slight taps of his toes on the big steel shoe guides, voila! It was done! Total cost? $400 to Mickey, the rest was between Sack and Jake.

As we put the rear end in the back of Sack’s Dodge truck, Jake motions us to follow him across the large front lot over to his personal residence. Around about an acre is a ten foot chain link fence. Interlaced with lathe strips to block your view. Once inside the solid metal gate, you’re looking at about fifty Honda cars. The old 60’s ones. Ones never sold here. Japanese models. Vans. Trucks. Two doors. Four doors. Some with four flats. Some missing doors and hoods. I’m not a car man and it was HOT. I say some compliments and start to head back to George’s truck. Jake looks hurt. I step back to his side.

“These Honda’s are just a hobby. Inside the garage is what I really want to show you guys!” He unlocks the side door to the house’s three car garage and in we go. It was hotter than hell inside. No open windows and just oppressive heat. Wanting back out, Sack’s open mouth has me look where he’s looking. I start to take notes on my hand and Jake shakes his head no. “This is top secret. Tell no one!” So, I can’t. I can tell you this much. He’s using five types of cars from the 30’s to the 50’s to make this giant Frankencar. It’s hood is seven foot long. A V-16, 24 valve engine, with all sorts of stuff on it that I have no idea what he was talking about. It’s to be completed in five years. Think of a Flash Gordon rocket mating with a Futuristic Batmobile. To open the doors you push in small button like protrusions behind the doors themselves. They then sprang open smooth as butter. Really neat.

ITEM: Back at Sack’s truck, I tell Jake my Richter story. The earthquake measuring is called the, ‘Richter Scale’ to honor him. Forgive the spelling. I’m too tired to look for the dictionary. At Richters big shop in North Pasadena on my first phone repair, I watched sheets of tear off paper coming off a big machine. A metal arm like a spider leg is making squiggly lines back and forth across the wide sheets, then, the sheets continue on, folding themselves into a catch box on the floor. I ask a fresh off the phone Richter if there are earthquakes somewhere. He laughs then tells me they thought the same thing when they first turned it on. Then they found out from the odd hours it came on that there was a rhyme and reason to the hits. It turned out the Lockheed plant in Burbank had a giant press, so huge, that every time it stamped out a one piece frame for an F-18 fighter it caused a 2.9. (Ten years later, I was at that Lockheed plant and saw them taking that big press apart to junk it. It was about twenty five feet tall and even wider. One of the techs gave me an 8″ by 10″ of it in action. I put it in that year’s journal).

Finally heading for home, we drop Mickey off at his ex’s. As she opened the door to let him in, she was dressed in a man’s two piece pajama set. She ignored us and looked happy to see Mickey. We headed for Baker and a Bob’s Big Boy before parting ways back in Mojave. A really fun day…

Phonehenge North News

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ITEM: Been hanging with Oscar the water man. He handles every emergency that comes up for the local water company in my neck of the woods. My neighbors just above me blew a one-inch water line fitting and were out of town. I call the company, they hook me up with Oscar. Now we’re good pals. I’ve been going all over the place goofing with him while he does all the work. I’m learning a lot about Bakersfield and Tehachapi.

In Acton, I tried to find a used tire for the dump truck. Nothing at five places under a $100 bucks anywhere in Whiteville. Oscar hangs with a different crowd. We stop to get a tractor tire fixed at a barrio shop in a rough area of Bakersfield. It takes up the entire bed of a one ton flatbed. As we roll it off I wonder about a used tire with my dimensions. Oscar speaks rapid fire Spanish. A kid from the back rolls out an almost new truck tire. It’s $20 bucks if I can fix the guys ringing on his fax machine. Done deal.

ITEM: We eat at the most extraordinary places. Just outside of Bakersfield, heading back to Tehachapi, we pull off the highway over a cattle guard and into some trees. There’s thirty trucks or more of working guys parked all over under some giant oak trees next to a small creek. Big tow able barbeques are going. Half steers on a couple being tended by some farm workers. Vats of beans of all sorts. Fresh vegetable salads- all organic. These guys are hep to the pesticides that have been destroying their families for years. I’m the only white guy there. All are staring at me. I get in line. I pay FIVE BUCKS for all I can eat. As I pay, the woman speaks Spanish to me. Oscar translates. She wants to know if I have any requests. I have Oscar ask her if they won’t spit in Santa’s chow. Everyone chilled out. I was offered a seat at a bunch of tables. Kids were running all over calling me Santa in Spanish.

ITEM: Mexican Americans don’t like Obama. I’m not political. I vote Peace and Freedom. I vote in case the mother ship only picks up the voters. Why risk it. They say, ‘NoBama’, when they say his name. They feel he hasn’t done one thing he promised. The main thing their pissed about is all their kids serving in Afghanistan and Iraq not getting proper medical care coming home. Plus, STILL THERE.

ITEM: News flash. The economy isn’t coming back. You need thirty-year jobs to pay off thirty-year loans. Until those things come together, forget the lying news on TV and radio. My pal Sack the Jackknife King says he’s seeing a half-dozen machine shops folding and going to the auctioneers every week instead of every month. The cost to retool? Hey, just try finding parts to start to build ANYTHING, let alone start up some sort of manufacturing. You have to get your material from China. Or anywhere else in the world. Not the USA. We broke three two-inch box wrenches from Harbor Freight trying to break down the boom on the UNIT crane to move it. I finally borrowed some old Craftsmen wrenches and an air hammer to get it done. We put six-foot cheater bars on the Craftsmen made out of six inch pipe and they laughed at us.

ITEM: Oscar takes me to Quail Valley lake. Its about ten miles from my place way back in the mountains. Lots of locked gates. Being the nice guy that I am, I get the combinations from Oscar to open the gates for him and save him getting in and out. Half way up a freshly packed dirt road, I look up to our left and see all these Wind Power trucks parked in a holding yard. Oscar fills me in as we head up into the National Forest. Oscar is Mexican/Indian with a long braided pony tail. Thick set and powerful build. About five or six years younger them me. I’d arm wrestle him but never fight the guy. First off he’s too nice a guy. Second. Mexican guys always throw mean left hooks and I wouldn’t like one of those at all. I fight with my mouth until I can find a car to run around to stay away from an opponent. If you want action out of me I’ll sell you one of my old, “BLAZING COMBATS”. Oh man, just the best!!!! Frank Frazetta does the covers. I have one over my computer framed. It has a Marine with just a helmet and his pants and boots holding a wounded buddy in one arm and firing a Thompson with his other. Ejecting shells are arching out into the muddy water. The Marines grimace says it all. “COME GET SOME!” My other favorite of his is eleven Saber Toothed cats gang jumping a Woolly Mammoth. Hector, the artist that paints adds on fifteen-story buildings, is going to paint it on the side of my Blue barn in trade for my wife Pat advising him on Immigration stuff. She’s retired now but still knows all the laws. Plus, since she Pro Bono’ed half her cases anyhow she loves barter. We used to chickens and eggs all the time. I love that stuff.

ITEM: Once past the Wind Turbine truck staging yard, we start climbing into the forest. Around five-thousand feet, we’re in thick trees and undergrowth and some really cool rock formations. Most of the rocks are volcanic. Big bastards. Some are larger then Oscar’s full-sized crew cab pickup. It’s a Toyota Tacoma like my wife Pat’s, but it’s a lot larger. Oscar told me his was the first year that Toyota went full-sized. I think Pat’s is way nimbler. Plus Sack put a custom flat bed on hers that’s easier for her to load and unload.

We climb to some cutouts for the new Turbine towers bases. Holy shit. Each tower has to have a hole that can hold fifty yards of cement. If not even more. Giant forty foot long cages of one inch rebar laying on the ground on their sides are still six foot tall. We get out and check out the surrounding area in a sweeping vista. The tall mountains in front of us are really getting rugged. Craggy rock formations with big trees growing out of the hundred foot calving stone splits are all over the place. We hop back in and keep moving. It’s five pm, and we have about two hours light left. It’s even shady in some of the dips in the small canyons already. This is where we saw our first three bears. Oh yeah. A Cinnamon sow and two cubs are leisurely strolling across the wide dirt road in front of us heading to go down towards the lake off to our right. The mom is losing her winter coat big time. Huge chunks are coming off in large swaths. Patches of beautiful short glossy hair stick out here and there. She looks to weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds. The cubs look about five months old. They’re born in the den and suck super high-fat milk, so they look really good after eating all the juniper berries covering the giant Juniper trees all around us almost obliterating the rock strata.

I call out to the cubs like the little kid from ‘Old Yeller’. One of the cubs starts to stroll over to my door. No way. Momma huffs and blows into the thick brush. Both cubs take the hole she punched and disappear. Oscar is blown away. “Dude, I’ve worked here for 26 years and those are the first bears I’ve ever seen!” We head on into even thicker forest. Now there’s big pines and really fat mountain oaks shoving the junipers out of the way. Big slabs of multicolored rocks peek out of the gaps of green and brown. Not a half mile up the wide smooth rolling road now climbing constantly, we spot him at the same time. A BIG black bear. He’s easily three times the size of momma bear. He sees us at the same time just up and off the road and he goes right into some thick scrub like a Sherman tank. I’ve driven Sack’s Sherman, so it’s a good metaphor. Oscar and I high five. What an afternoon! We come to some gates that are wide open. I wonder to Oscar if we could get locked in after going past the gates and stuck when a worker locked them not knowing about us. Or even worse. Knowing about us. Oscar shrugged. He informs me he not only has some five-foot handled bolt cutters in his bed, but also a cutting torch and tank. We’re set so we continue up the dirt road.

We end up passing huge cut outs and a giant brand new power substation surrounded by heavy equipment of all types. D-10’s with side blades. Six wheel drive water trucks so tall they have headlights welded on custom bars under their brush guards. Graders. Semi everythings. That was the reason for the new road. Some of the Turbines are two hundred foot tall with seventy five foot long blades. The loud ‘WHOOOMPP’s’ as they spin sound AWESOME! Oscar wonders about thieves. I tell him my kid Tejas puts in security systems with 24-hour infrared tracking by Satellites. They can take your license number no problem. I’m talking about the one in your pocket if you had it out. No lie. Good luck trying to stiff these guys for one bolt. A twenty mile road to get out? Great planning Sherlock. Plus, the GPS tracking gear they install on anything worth taking. We drove past and kept going to the top. We end up not at the real top but close enough. It was starting to get dark so we jumped out to take a quick peek past the safety berm. WOW! We could see all the way to China Lake’s testing base. The one they took Area 51’s stuff to.

Heading back, we slow to take Oscar’s rig out of 4 wheel drive. THREE MORE BEARS!!! Another momma and two cubs. This sow is twice the size of the other mom, but her cubs are only half the size of the other cubs. I start to talk to these cubs and Oscar tells me to shut the hell up. “That bitch can tear our doors right the fuck off!”

ITEM: Coming out near the lake on our way back it’s dim, but some rays of sunlight can still be seen here and there. We’re out of the big mountains and down in a neat valley. The lake looks to be about ten acres. The ends are chock full of ten-foot high reeds. Brush grows all around the side across from us. Some people are fishing. One guy ends up coming over to us. I figured he knew no one was supposed to be trespassing. Oscar is as nice as pie. Not so others on the road. This guy has had a few brews and complains bitterly about a guy named Pat who hassles him all the time. He mentions some problem at the LOVES gas station in town. We check the water pumps and roll. Half way out of the lower hills, we bump into a guy on a quad ATV. Oscar knows him so we yak it up. Oscar had always wanted to see the guy’s place and asks if we can come check it out. Pat calls his wife on his cell. We can hear her say an emphatic, “NO!” Guess they live a mile behind a dormant Volcano for a reason.

ITEM: I gave Oscar a ton of VHS and DVD’s I’m sick of or have three of. Leo has bought me at least fourteen used copies of all the Star Wars movies from Pat’s trips to Salvation Armys and church second hand stores. If you like a town full of second hand stores, Tehachapi is the place to live. They have a church about every fifty yards. As I hand the big box to Oscar before leaving his place, we yakked about Pat telling us his side of the gas station affair against the guy at the lake’s version. We laughed about what a coincidence running into both parties. A voice calling Oscars name makes us turn in the dark towards the gate leading to the dirt road. Into my headlights steps a lost soul. You can see it in her face. She walks like she’s forty and looks eighty. As she steps closer all doubts vanish. Her hair is in knots and her lipstick is around her lips a half inch past her lip lines. Like a macabre clown on meth she wonders if Oscar can give her a lift up the canyon. Oscar lets her know that the Highway Patrol had towed her car at noon from where she rolled it the night before. I think he said it was a Jeep. He also lets her know I’m taking off and would be tickled pink to drive her. Thanks pal.

ITEM: Two corners off of tight dirt roads we suddenly have a llama in my headlights. A tiny little white-haired gal is trying to drive it down the small road to an open gate. Psycho hops right out and starts helping to drive the animal. I use my dump truck as a pusher. Staying away, yet moving it ahead. Once the animal is in the gate, the old lady thanks us. Turns out she has 45 of ‘em in all shapes and colors. Takes care of them all alone. Psycho knew her so they yakked it up for a few minutes. I shut off my truck but left my headlights on. The old woman, “You know that big old Bobcat that’s been around here for years? Well, it’s a female. My big black tom was just a humping the hell out of her the other night outside my kitchen window where I put the cat chow. He looked like a midget screwing a fat lady!” Girl talk. I was still in the truck.

Last Item: I filled out a ‘Welcome to Tehachapi” card at the rental place where we got the 6-ton 4×4 lift to move the steel water tanks. The lady finally calls me and wonders if she can come by to give me her free maps and a lecture on Tehachapi’s past. We had quite the conversation until she asked for my address. I say, “I’m up Sand Canyon Road and then down Umtali!” There’s dead silence on the receiver. Then, a changed voice says, “I live in Bear Valley Springs. I don’t go up that canyon!” CLICK.

Saugus, CA

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Roughly the years from 1965 on. Right about the time I scored my drivers license learners permit. I’ll be jumping around as one story will pin ball into another one. Names might be left out because of lawsuits. If still alive they’ll know exactly what their end of a story is.

Soledad Canyon Road. So many shennanigans almost take an entire book for this street alone. It runs a longggggg way. While stealing ice cream at Whites Canyon from the drug store, caught along with Frank Angelostro by some pissed off parents and held for the Sheriffs. We’re taken from the manager’s office in cuffs to a waiting Blazer-type vehicle. Instead of heading towards Newhall, we stay on Soledad all the way out of civilization and up into the wilds past Rivers End trailer park. Holy shit!!! Rivers End!!! I haven’t thought of that place in YEARS! Have to get back to that joint later.

So, the cops take us to a little spot off Soledad called Aqua Dulce Canyon Road. A bad place for me to be at any time. So many people on that road wanted me dead it was a blessing to have cops with me. Not heading to Newhall had both of us concerned. We also had the ‘quiet’ cops that only talked when answering their radio. Now, Frank was the tough guy of our partnership. Since his dad beat the shit out of Frank and his older brother weekly, Frank could take an adult-style beating no problem. Me? My mouth always did my fighting. That’s why I usually hung with tough guys. Having hot older sisters kept me in a steady supply of older guys who actually had trucks and cars.

As the cops pull over, the sun is now starting to go down. Since the freeway to Palmdale hadn’t been built yet, the odds of some heavy traffic was zero. More like no traffic. Without a word we’re taken out of the vehicle and uncuffed. The taller pot-bellied cop tells us in a low voice, “Start running punks!” Frank is off like a rabbit into the near by wash full of brush and rocks. I run sort of sideways to see the bullets coming after about ten strides. The cops are bent over double laughing. Sure, they could laugh. I was running right towards Tony Epper’s ranch near Vasquez Rocks park. From a little incident at Thompson’s rifle range, not a guy I wanted to run into. He had been shooting trap and I was loading the trap machine in the cement blockhouse along with a nutcase kid named Scott Kingston. No, not the older one with the woody surf wagon. His younger brother Mr. Nutcase magazine cover boy two times already by 15 years old. Epper was shooting against Joe Canutt, Yakima Canutt’s son. I liked Joe since he was my pal Forest’s uncle so I was putting small cracks in Epper’s clay pigeons every fifth round or so making him blow his shots. He ended up charging the blockhouse and threatened to start shooting into the mechanical arms aperture that tossed the discs. I stayed put until Mrs. Thompson showed up in her white pickup to fire me. I asked her how come me? She just shook her head. They usually hired me back.

One time Frank invites me to spend the night at his house. Forest Canutt came over since we were about a hundred yards from his house on Beaver Run Road off of Sand Canyon… Saugus Sand Canyon. Not the Sand Canyon I’m off of now. Two different animals. Forest heads for home and Frank insists I sleep in his bed while he uses his sleeping bag near his closet. Sam, Frank’s older brother, was fighting with Frank’s mom in the front room so we hit the hay early. Frank tells me I’ll be insulting Italians if I don’t accept his hospitality. I say thanks and go right to sleep as Frank hits the light. I’m woken up by someone beating the living shit out of me. I scream for help. The room’s only light is from the TV screen down a long hallway away. My attacker is suddenly off of me and the room’s overhead light is snapped on.

In front of me is a short, wide, half-naked extremely hairy Italian man with a big wide black belt in his right fist. The side of my face is throbbing and my nose is bloody. As Frank blasts out the bedroom door in his boxers, his still stunned father doesn’t even take a swing at him. His father is in a drunken stupor. He finally says a slurred, “Who the fuck are you?” As I jump out of Frank’s bed and start speed dressing. Frank’s mom is now in the hallway screaming at Frank’s old man, “YOU STINKING ROTTEN ANIMAL. YOUR BEATING THE NEIGHBORS’ KID!” That sentence is etched into my mind as if it was said an hour ago. Now he gets the picture.

Frank’s mom is now in high gear as we all head towards the kitchen. It was my first time in the house and the kitchen had the door out, was all I remembered. Nope. Frank’s mom starts cooking some sausage and eggs while Frank’s pop apologizes over and over to me while trying to give me all the money in his wallet. It was only about thirty bucks so I told him to forget about it, I just wanted to go home. We eat and it’s over and done with. Two years later Frank’s dad once again beat the crap out of me over the Jewel Tea man caper, but, another story.

Ace Cains bar and trout ponds were not too far down Sand Canyon from Frank’s house so we goofed off there a lot. Johnny Rodriguiz, a friend of Sam’s, would chase us off for his dad (the owner) when we got out of control. Frank and I taught these monkeys Ace had in a big cage near the trout ponds how to jerk off and that got us 86’ed from the place for quite awhile. We would sneak in through Brian Thompson’s property that was right up the wash. Not the same Thompson as the rifle range Thompson’s. Brian had rich parents and thought he could buy his way out of anything. After we all had to see the judge from the head on train prank at the Soledad Capra train tunnel, Frank and I get sentenced ahead of Brian since his parents hired a lawyer for him. I get three months Sheriffs work camp. There went summer vacation. Frank got a year since he was over 18. He went into the Army so they dropped his year. But, at the time, it was now Brian’s turn to be sentenced. His Attorney gives a nice little speech. Brian ends up with the same as me. Three months. Brain shouts out to his mother standing just behind him, “This is BULLSHIT!” The judge says, “Right you are son. Six months. Want to try for more?” Boy Brian, that attorney paid off.

I’m taking some cycles to a friend in Lancaster. Ford Canutt cruises by my place in Sleepy Valley, sees I’m having trouble loading the bikes. He gives me a hand then decides to cruise out to our mutual friend’s with me. A mutual friend who later was busted with a bag full of guns at emergency and a bullet hole in his leg. Sorry, no names, remember.

So, half way to our destination, the straps tying down the cycles come loose in the bed of my Crew Cab Power Wagon. It has a flat bed with one-ton shocks and a 16-foot lumber rack welded to the frame. I still drive it every ten years or so. It has stolen Oregon plates so it’s not a good idea to cruise too far in it. The last time I drove it was to Stan Lee’s house in Hollywood to do an emergency phone repair for him. He signed everything my kids put in front of him.

Back to the loose cycles. Ford was just back from some tours as a tank man in ‘Nam, so he liked to party. He was also called Danny, so, I might put that name in and confuse you. Well, Ford tells me to steer the wheel then CLIMBS OUT MY DRIVER WINDOW DOING EIGHTY! I steer with my left hand and try to stay calm. Still sitting in the shot gun seat since I had the ice chest between us. Over the lumber rack he goes. He ties down the cycles, waves and talks with two babes laughing and yelling at him from the fast lane next to us, then he’s back in the window for a fresh cold one.

I end up married to one of his sisters and have three kids with her before the wheels came off. His mom just passed away. I do have a funny story about Bernice. This was while we still had a truce going. I was wild to see Joe Frazier fight Jerry Quarry. I had tickets and was going to bet heavy on Quarry to win. I was using the Beaver Run phone to make my bets. Bernice clucks her tongue and says I had just thrown good money away. She adds, “Quarry won’t last five rounds with Frazier!” I then bet her a hundred bucks at two to one to shut her up. Oh man, she was dead right. I never did pay her that dough, so, sorry Bernice. Hope your in a good place.

Since we’re on a Canutt role, I can’t let Forrest Canutt slide. That guy stuck it to me so many times I lost count. He was one of those guys you like but can never trust. He almost got me killed a half dozen times and I still hung out with him so the fault was all mine I guess. We did have some good laughs in between the screaming roller coaster rides to hell fiascos, so it was worth it.

Here’s the kind of stuff I mean: There’s a big earthquake and all the store fronts up and down San Fernando Road in Newhall are shattered. Walking down the street as it just happened what does Forrest do? He rolls a brand new ten speed out of a now wide-open bike store window and rides for home. He’s busted in two blocks for looting during an emergency. We’re off Vasquez Canyon Road stealing water melons from the pumpkin ranch. We jump in Forrest’s truck to make a clean get away as a half dozen farm workers are running towards us. Forrest can’t find his keys. He takes off as I’m dragged down and held for the cops. As they drag me to the fruit stand register across the road, Forrest fires up his truck and leaves me. Forrest starts hanging with a bad crowd. He robs a gas station and his accomplice hits the clerk over the head with a pistol. A kid I had once been on Hart Wresting Team with in 1967. Our heavyweight, to be exact. Forrest is on the lam in Northern California cutting trees and staying low. He decides to come home for Christmas. Near Mike’s Tires on Soledad Canyon, his old pick up gets a flat. He takes the tire off the truck and rolls it to Mike’s to get it fixed. Who turns around at the counter to help him? Why, the heavyweight guy he had robbed at the gas station with a new job. Forrest took some good shots before the cops came. I saw the dents his head put in the Coke Machine weeks later when I was getting some tires.

Forrest and I went to lots of live concerts. I saw Hendrix with him twice. Once in Frisco and once at the Palm Desert blowout where the cops had two hundred of us locked up in the high school gyms for two days to pick up trash before they let us go. Forrest was the greatest man that ever lived at getting into concerts for free. He would swill down some booze then start yelling at the top of his lungs, “RUSH THE GATE, RUSH THE GATE! WHAT THE FUCK CAN THEY DO!” It worked a lot of times. Never try it at the old Forum in Inglewood, though. Those guys hope you’ll rush them. All USC and UCLA football players wired to the max on steroids and coke keeping them fresh and alert.

Forrest comes by one time with an Alligator. A vehicle from the Army that can drive off of land right into the water and back out again. We had some great times in it. Forrest also would start up my 175 Tempo Cycle by bump starting it backwards and drive with his arms behind him and looking over his shoulder.

Chuck Yost lived up the road from Forrest so we hung out with him on some capers. Notably the Deane Homes affair where we threw a party in one of the model homes and Chuck brought a ton of booze. Everyone was blasted. Not one kid over 18. After Frank Angelostro jumped off the second floor landing to swing on a chandelier and it ripped right out of the ceiling landing on top of his knocked out form, Chuck, Forrest and I started pissing on Frank as he sucked air with the wind knocked out of him from landing on his back. Realizing we we’re dead when his air came back we left our trailer park slut dates and took the Deane Homes show van to Newhall. They always left the keys under the seat. One of my pals was a life guard for the club pool and drove it on beer runs all the time once everyone went home on Sunday.

Once during a Halloween night adventure throwing eggs from the back of speeding pickups from Sunland to Castaic, Willie Schmidt is along with us in Dillenbeck’s truck tossing eggs in the old Woodlands off Sand Canyon. At a cul de sac, Don Winterholm runs out with a single-shot shotgun to chase us off from throwing eggs at his house. This was before he set himself on fire burning ants with a spray paint can. I see the gun and shout, “It doesn’t work, nail the bastard!” I had traded the shotgun to him for a baby red-tailed hawk a week prior. It didn’t have a firing pin, nor a working trigger. As Don races for the front door knowing the jig is up, his mom is holding the screen open with her foot as she keeps the door way wide open for his escape. Before he can slip inside to safety a dozen eggs thrown rapid fire nail the door frame, the porch light, the swing and Don and his mom at the same time. AWESOME! Until, a few months later, I see that Don’s mom is the court reporter in Newhall for the throwing oranges from a moving train incident court appearance. Then it wasn’t so great.

Later on that night, Willie knocked down old man Booth who had me in a headlock on his front lawn, holding me for the cops, after an epic egging of his house ending with Dillenbeck’s truck stalling out. Booth walked like a weird spider on his arms and legs back to his house so Willie couldn’t hit him again.

Well, got to run. I could go on for days.

Hold on, proof reading I just remembered Rivers End. It’s still full of drunks, junkies and eighty-year old hookers. Never steal their false teeth. They never forget. The park’s source of fresh water was the stream water from the Soledad wash. They collected it in a stone pool that was about twenty-foot long and six-foot wide, maybe six-foot deep. Nice and cool in the summer. The railroads emergency hoist ran over your head about seventy foot off the ground to get you off a stuck train during a flood. We rode in it all the time after shooting the lock off. After it was abandoned, my oldest boy Tejas went hand over hand to the cart that was stuck in the middle of the wash way up in the air. He gets his finger pinned under the cart wheel and the cable. Oh man did he let out some blood curdling screams. He finally gets loose and drops like a phoney sack person in a silent movie to the wash below. Oh, back to the water source. The manager catches us swimming around nude in it one day. He’s screaming for us to, “GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!” This nutcase kid, Lyslie Shecocks, tells the man to, “Hold on a second, I’m almost done!” A big turd floats up behind him. The man’s head almost blows off like in ‘Scanners’. We run to our dirt bikes and get away…

Hey Mildred

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It takes too long to write long hand so hope you don’t mind the typed out letter.

It’s raining here in Tehachapi. Looking out the big picture window, I started ruminating on working as a phone man in LA, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. It rains so rarely in Southern California, the animals seem to be caught off guard even worse than the humans. Once, while working a cable vault in Griffith Park just below the old Zoo, I stroll by a hobo camp wearing my PacBell military-style rain suit, galoshes and an umbrella. Hey, I’m working on cables that have to stay dry, sorry hobos if I’m not sitting in an old animal enclosure getting soaked with hundreds of rats running across my hole-filled shoes.

When I would buy new steel toe climbing boots, I would keep my eyes open for a bum or street person who might get a few more miles out of them. After once again trying to be a humanitarian, this psycho street nut takes the proffered boots and seems miffed. Huh?

It’s freezing out in the middle of December in downtown and this guy is barefoot with purple feet. I say to him, “Hey, I have some new socks here in the back of my van somewhere, let me find them!” As I open up my rear phone van double doors, a boot sails right past my right ear just missing my skull. I drop, and look back, just in time to see the other boot coming at me. I partially deflect it. I get a lump in my right arm where it hit me. Now I’m steamed.

I go for him while shouting, “OK, asshole, you want crazy, I’ll give you a fucking maniac!” As he starts to run up the wheelchair ramp into the front entrance of the Denny’s on Sunset Boulevard, across from the Tuxedo center rental store, the manager of Denny’s has been watching the entire scenario through the large glass window in the booth he always sat at to chase hookers out that wanted to use the bathrooms and payphones all day. I could do an entire chapter on Denny’s hookers and waitresses. Hey, maybe some other time; let’s get back to street nut.

I leap onto his back like Tarzan would and the guy, who’s twice my size, goes down onto the wet sidewalk. As I hop up and get ready for action, the bum is also getting up. He’s ready for action, too. Except for one little problem. His pants, that were in bad shape to begin with, are now torn off and around his ankles.

Oh my GOSH! His ‘unit’ was FILTHY and covered in what looked to be black grease. I thought he was Latino from all the dirt and stains on his face and hands. Nope, just a run-of-the-mill white trash nut case. As he starts to bounce in a boxing stance, that flopping unit made me start laughing out of control as I backed away from him. This really made him mad. I look around for some backup. No dice. Everyone inside of Denny’s is now in the formerly empty booths facing Sunset, watching me about to get my ass kicked by a semi-erect crazy man with no pants on. His bush looked like you could hide a small mammal in it quite easily.

Now that I’m backing up, crazy man really starts a show. Grabbing one of The Times newspaper racks in a bear hug to most likely smash me in the head with, I once again start laughing since I know they’re bolted to the cement from being stolen so many times by druggies. As he strains and shouts curses, he begins to defecate. That was it for me.

I run for the front door of Denny’s, waving for the manager to open them up pronto. The manager stalls with the keys, making me start to go into a rage. I shout out I’ll have fifty pay phones installed all around his dump if he doesn’t give me succor. Once safely inside, I find a spot next to the Ms. Pac-Man machine to hide, but also to watch the show outside.

It didn’t last much longer. As expected, if fifteen minutes goes by and a cop or two hasn’t cruised Sunset, it’s a small miracle. Two cars converge on Hercules, still fighting that paper rack like a steel marlin…

Downtown L.A.

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When the work slowed down in Hollywood or Beverly Hills, or, if you were a smart ass who needed straightening out, you ended up working Downtown L.A… Not the nice parts either. You go where the cables go. They usually start out in a Central Office (C.O.) then, like a hub of a wheel, cables left it like giant spokes, then turned into even smaller cables, the farther out they went. I always hated it, yet, sort of liked the challenge in a sick sort of way. Mainly because of the people. If you’re cable maintenance, you work big cutovers after six pm. Don’t want to piss those big clients off. Into the breach you go. Cables don’t run in front Downtown. They run underground. In big long dark alleys. Through brush in Griffith Park. Brush so thick it rips your sweatshirt and jackets to shreds. Once you’re out of the glaring lights, you find the Lost Souls. The ones who live in the hidden camps, grottos, the abandoned zoo, freeway underpasses.‎.. Or, the other side of the coin. The rich, the late night movers and shakers. Private clubs. Every sort of bar and hang out, for every sort of person. You get pulled off your regular work, all the time if you were a special circuit man. Heart monitors, alarms, traffic signals, data transmissions, railroad switch signals. All kinds of stuff. Since I was always causing trouble in crews, I end up on the Specials crew, Downtown. Boy, was it wild. I go out with a guy named Rick L. on my first night on the new crew to learn the ropes. You worked noon to whenever you felt like. Techs were hauling in over a hundred grand in overtime in six months. In the sixties, no one cared how long you worked. Just get it done. Rick was an alchoholic, but a working type. He was the first person to show me the underground city, sometimes multiple stories, underneath the street lights and towering buildings packing the miles above. In between jobs, Rick hit his usual bars and clubs. It’s easy to get a tab anywhere in town if you play ball and do favors. Favors? The kind that could get a guy killed. ‘The little bird on the shoulder’, was one such favor. Here’s how it would go down. You’re in a bar, replacing a credit card machine gooey with Coke spilled in it. Maybe a Coke kicked over by some almost nude gay dancer, T bagging a customer off the bar, right next to you. Your a phone man. There’s one thing a phone man can’t say. “I’m not going!” You’re instantly unemployed. You go where dispatch tells you. Period. If a dispatcher doesn’t like you, it’s one turd sandwich after another. Hate to climb poles? Those will be the only jobs you get, forever. So, back to the bar. A voice from behind you, shouts out it needs to talk to you over the blaring music. You turn and see the owner of the joint, looking weird from the flashing stobe lights and lazer going off all over. You nod, finish your repair, meet him in the almost quiet rear office. He pushes out a chair, wonders if he can fix you a drink. He then gets down to business. Someone is doing him/her wrong. They want to tap into some lines. If you don’t get up and walk, money will then appear. Here’s where it gets tricky. You read the paper a few days later, after accommodating your new pal, and see that someone got themselves killed. Maybe it will say for ‘no reason’. Maybe you’re the reason. People say all sorts of things on the phone that aren’t true. I’m no different. You’re protected by that void. It’s just a voice. Not reality in a way. You gave someone ‘the little bird’. Maybe they heard just what they didn’t want to hear. They snap and in the blink of an eye, they do something foolish or crazy. Another phone man, Big Ed, told me a story along these lines and I never forgot it. It can be tough not to pick up bunch of hundreds shoved at you for five minutes work. I was sorely tempted on many an occasion. I found a lot of other ways to get in trouble, but never line tapped. Plus, I was a snot nosed kid. On top of that, a lousy phone man. It took YEARS to become a good phone man. Adequate was all I ever was. My forte was schmoozing pissed off customers. I’d keep them under control until a real phone man arrived. For thirty seven years, the dog and pony show kept me jumping. Usually right into a fire…

Pals

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Back in the late forties, most rail road switches had to be operated manually. It was pretty much the same, all over the world. India has the most rail layed of all countries. They still use steam for propultion in some areas. Since all those, ‘out of the middle of nowhere’ switches needed to be switched, men lived next to those switches. Some, if lucky, had a telegraph to keep in touch. Others, went by strict schedules. Rain or shine. Those switches had to go exactly on time or people would die. Hundreds of miles from a city, in South Africa, lived such a switch man. He had worked that switch all through World War 2. All alone. His only source of contact left by the hanging mail pouch the train would hook on its’ way past. His mail and the surrounding villages’ mail was tossed out the mail car’s open doors as the train flew past. He would get a break in the beggining for one week in Johanesburg. That had long gone away…Now, the old man was worried about losing his job, and his home. Slowly but surely, all the railroad switches were becoming automated. Plus, the old man wasn’t getting any younger. Out on the fringe of a huge African desert, winds blowing at a hundred miles an hour, wild life coming past at night, villagers and tribesmen angry at the railroad threatening him at times. It was a tough, lonely existence, but it was all he had. One morning, the old man hears an odd sound emanating from a dry gully, just past the long emergency rail siding past his shack. He uses his cane to make his way over to investigate. The sounds were being made from a tiny, barely alive, baboon. The old man put him inside his worn, ragged coat pocket, then went about is switching duties. Thus began a friendship and a working partnership that few could equal. As the old man’s health deteriorated, the baboon would help him into an old pull cart, then, take the old man to the switches. Being ten times stronger then the man once it reached maturity at around 80lbs, the monkey also took over the manual switching part of the job. Sure, they had their spats. But besides being a good trainman, the monkey was also loyal. Many a passing troop of baboons would call out to him over the years, tempting him to join. Nope, the only troop he acknowledged was the old man…One morning, a train track repair crew on a short bob engine pull into the siding to await the passing of the main line train, while in the middle of a track inspection run. Sitting in their idling train, the repair crew watch an odd event transpire. A large baboon, wearing a tattered engineer’s cap, scampered over to the switches, puts his ear on the tracks, then, hearing what he wants to hear, WORKS THE SWITCHES. Hiding in the brush as the train blows on past, tossing the mail and supplies, the baboon then picked up the articles, and went back to the shack. He then returned, and reset the switch. The train men were astounded. Once back at the train yard, the story spread. A train representative was sent to investigate. He found the old man so crippled, he couldn’t leave his bed. His friend had to be tranquilized for them to get near the sick old man. Not long after, the switch was automated. The company wrote off the old shack. The incident was forgotten…by the big shots. Not the train men. Every day, for years, the train men tossed off food and a small bag for the switchman’s shack. Fuck corporate; they wouldn’t turn their backs on a fellow trainman. He was a real pal…

Merry-go-round

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I’m in line behind a lot of hungry people, waiting patiently to give their orders to the ‘roach coach’ cook. It’s one of the big, motor home sized coaches. Two order windows. It’s a hot day, but everyone is having a good time. I’m supposed to be working the zoo on phone repair, but, it was a slow day, so I was playing frisbee football with some Mexican guys. I can’t run, but WHAT AN ARM! Off to our left is the big Merry-go-round. Its music plays all the time. It just plays slower as kids get on and off. Coming down a footpath from an upper parking area is a bald headed black man. He’s blacker then Snipes. Blue black. He has just this weird thong, African deal around his loins. No shoes. Big sandals that wrapped his calves. He also had a big boom box on his shoulder. He looked to be about six five and three hundred pounds. Easy. He wasn’t the man he used to be, but still, he impressed me. That little gut isn’t what’s going to nail you…The big man also has a pleasant demeanor on his mug. His music is jazz. Not even blasting. He looks like a black Mr. Clean. He smiled at some kids then got into the line across from mine. Some gang guys of the Latino race quietly surround this guy and tell him to, “Turn that shit off bro!” My man doesn’t want trouble. There’s about fifty white people, seven blacks and six thousand Latino’s. Nope. He turns it down low. Nope. “OFF, M-FER!” My man now sets the big boom box on the ground and shakes his head in a slow no. Out of the crowd comes a champion. This guy is wider then he is tall. Has no shirt. Fifty years of tattoo’s all over his chest, arms and back. He has a red doo rag on his head and a wife beater shirt cut to show his abs. A Big Foot looking Man chu beard. He doesn’t waste any words. Twenty beers are doing his thinking any how. He comes right at My man with a flying left hook. Mean and vicious. It never lands. A big right hand comes in low and up, right into his chin. He never knew what hit him. He flew backwards like in a Popeye cartoon. He’s no Blutto though. This is the real world. His head hits the hard blacktop long before his ass did. A pool of blood starts forming around his head like a crimson halo. Everyone fades away. I see my man heading back up the dirt trail with his radio on his shoulder. I catch his eye. He looked really sad…

Sybil Brand Womens Prison

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Every time I was dispatched there on phone repair, the real world seemed to stand still, until I drove back out the security gates into the sun again. Or moon. Sometimes I would be dispatched in the middle of the night. And why not. I was their ‘Dedicated Tech’ for years. A new concept thought up by some zipperhead who never took a case of trouble in his life…My first visit was almost my last job as a phone company employee. I’m past the three stages of security, standing outside the giant ‘Fish Tanks’ of women awaiting bail or processing. I have to replace a pay phone, and, repair a couple of handsets on two others. I stand behind a big linebacker sized female jailer. I’m not a very popular fellow. The deputy has to move all the women from the one holding tank, into the adjoining tank. After the last customer is jammed into the mass of pissed of women, I enter the now empty tank…The war of words began…”Hey, hurry it up pencil dick!” “You got a nice ass honey, too bad its on your shoulders!” “Figures they send a faggot!” “Bail me out honey, momma spank you real good!” “Lets see what ya got lover, I gots my glasses on!”…On and on it went. Naturally, the stinking pay phones armored door is jammed. I have to drill the bastard. It takes about thirty minutes, in the best of circumstances. More and more women are being jammed into the remaining holding tank. The abuse I took escalated into verbiage best not repeated. I finally get the door off. I have to pull the coin receptacle box to un bolt the phone back. Change floods out of the coin chute like a waterfall from a jammed return. Some of the coins roll towards the inhabitants of the long cell behind me. I tell the gals who grabbed the money to cough it up. Thus started the riot. Ok, so maybe I said a few other things besides that…I end up in front of the head of Administration…Twenty five years of stories began from that meeting…

Book City

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It no longer exists. Was the best damn book store in the ENTIRE world. I put in Big Al’s phones when he moved in. Took them out for his son when the closed down about thirty years later. The new subway to Universal Studios did them in. Changed the entire neighborhood on Hollywood Blvd…Across the street is Hollywood toy. It’s where the mask makers gave me the tubes of fake bloody boogers I would stick in my mustache before going into gay bars on phone repair. Naturally, all the phone equipment is always installed in the ceiling of the bathroom, accessed by the folding drop ladder. Why not in the ladies side? Huh? Their is no ‘ladies’ side in these establishments…Anyhow, Book City ruled its side of Hollywood Blvd. Mainly because of Big Al’s odd ways. He would stand in front of his store and toss his coffee at the street punks hassling him while associates tried to steal books off his rolling cart next to the front doors…He once threw Roseanne Barr out of his store while screaming his legendary, “This is NOT the library, fatso!”…A real glimpse into a different dimension was to go into his basement. Many a strong man came up those stairs a changed man. OH YEAH. Scary my friends. Al’s store was not far from Vine, the oldest, craziest part of Hollywood. Even L.A. itself. Once you lifted the huge slightly horizontal steel door that covered the concrete stairs, you we’re in a different dimension. You we’re in the land of lost books. Hitting the light switch, its pathetic glow was only just better then a match. Why? Because it was the first of a ONE MILE, illegal string of lights, put together by lost souls, trying to clean up a sinking Titanic of books. The ceiling was only about six foot high. Books in stacks vertically actually went from the floor, to the ceiling, FOREVER. Yep. You see, Al owned the entire block over time. He then jack hammered apertures through the basements of each new acquisition, then, FILLED THEM WITH MORE BOOKS. Their was no way to climb out once you we’re in this maze. All the upper access stairs had been nailed shut. You don’t even think about ripping off Big Al. Why would I be down there? Because of the 150 year old cables that fed all the business’s ABOVE MY HEAD. Big Al had me as his BOY since I loved books. One day, while about five stores away from the stairwell, the entire end of town loses power. I’m in stygean black. Literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. In five seconds, I can hear the rats. Hundreds of them. No. Thousands maybe. They lived quite well on all the restaurants that occupied the stores above. You think water pipes that old don’t leak? I would find entire stacks of hard bound books, molding into a lump to step over from a pipe leaking onto them for TWENTY years. The smells could knock a vulture off a gut wagon in some of those passage ways. I pull out my flashlight. Dead batteries. I go to my back up, my pen light in my repair folder. It works…There’s no way I could tell all the stories I have of BOOK CITY in one sitting. NO WAY…Oh, the star in front of his entrance from the walk of fame?…JIMI HENDRIX…

Gower Gulch

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‘Gower Gulch’, on Sunset and Gower. It’s called that because in the days of silent movies, most had horses in them, so, the casting people held all their stock hiring there. Now-a-days, its a Denny’s coffee shop and parking lot, surrounded by studios and talent agencies. Its also prime turf for tow truck drivers. On a repair case for Thrifty drug, right next to Denny’s, I have to go up on the roof to check the dial tones in a fifty pair can. Am I surprised to find about ten guys up there already. Some are holding those gigantic NASA sized binoculars. In between the huge THRIFTY letters on the building, you can’t spot them from the parking lot below. The Denny’s parking lot with signs every six inch, two foot high saying, ‘PARKING FOR DENNY’S CUSTOMERS ONLY’. I also see that some of them have two way radios. What the? Turns out, their all working for various tow truck companies. They glance at my tools, then ignore me…The fishing was so good, there was plenty of work for all. They even had a poker game they would play with license plate numbers. Or, ‘BIG FISH’. This was a vehicle that was worth over fifty grand. They just loved towing those. Just around the corner a block away. Tow trucks sat in a long row. Drivers listening to their spoters. I soon got into the spirit of it and started joking around and looking through the big binoculars too. I never had such good times in my life, goofing with these guys. Some we’re Russian. Some Armenian. Others, who knew. All got along. Sometimes they had so many cars to tow, they parked them along side streets, alarms blaring, to go grab a couple more. Another truck from the tow yard would zoom in, hook up in ten seconds, jam to the yard. I started riding with them after awhile. There’s nothing sweeter then a guy in a three piece suit, screaming “STOP YOU BASTARDS”! as you stay just ahead of them in low gear, laughing like hyena’s. I got so good at doing a Howard Cosell blow by blow, they would put me on speaker to dispatch so everyone in the office could hear…One night, we hooked a great white shark. Arnold Swarznegger’s Humvie! I rode in it once, but, that’s another story. Anyhow, Arnold’s with a non wife, hot babe. He had one of those original military Hummers before they were plastic. Everyone on the roof was holding their breaths. Arnold fakes to go inside Denny’s, then, runs across Sunset holding hands with his squeeze. A tow truck is on it before the talent agencies door has closed all the way. His alarms go off. Arnold is back on the sidewalk. Traffic on Sunset has him check mated. He sprints for the cross walk and the up coming red light. His chick is left behind. Instead of taking a right down Gower, the tow truck heads down Sunset. He played Arnold like a Marlin, as far as we could see. Slowing, then speeding up. Sometimes, life can be good…