August 22, 2002

Instilled in mind is a rule my editors hold sacred in stories: "Be sure the reader knows the time and place." I agree, but be patient this trip. I'll be up and down the Coast from San Francisco, California and back again to a small hotel on Post Street, still owned by Mr. Andrews today. Keeping time ruins a vacation. What possible difference does it make to you whether I am in Chinatown on a Thursday or down on the Bay the next day?

So as an opener, set the scene in a concert hall in San Francisco, where a jazz combo plays on a modest wood stage of one by twelve pine lumber. An old gray-headed bird pops into the next chair and asks, "Did you ever have to work for a living?" Sitting around bunkhouses and in saddles on long rides teaches how to think sitting down. Be clear on this, the saying "The truth will make you free" guides man over quagmires until he's caught and put under oath on the witness stand. Making a half turn to keep my good ear toward the music, I reply, "If breaking oxen to lay the rails to build a railroad in Texas is considered work, then the answer is yes, I've had to work for a living."

Wasn't hard to pull up the oxen-skinning yarn. Before leaving home, I read how hard men worked to train oxen to pull freight wagons to build the railroads. How teaching "Ol' Bully" to make a turn while "Ol' Molly" held the traces tight tested the skill and patience of men as tough of will as the hides of those powerful beasts. The oldtimer at the line camp in the 1940s told and retold his stories of breaking wild Arkansas-raised mules up on the Cargile Ranch on Rocky Creek in the 1920s. It's not a long hop for a storyteller to change a mule's collar to an ox yoke.

He wasn't interested in an answer. Over and between the music, he launched a resume of his rise from a tutor for high school students to president of a big university. His was a life filled with rousing academic honors and thundering accolades that'd make the ceremony and decoration of the French Legion of Honor match a tarnished version of a Cub Scout awards banquet. He looked the part of a college president, or he did from my limited view of such important persons. Oh, one time in San Angelo, the kids' pediatrician introduced the president of Angelo State University. I wish I had remembered his name.

But the trumpet player was from Australia. (Remember, this is taking place at a concert.) Musicians from the huge continent of vast wastelands develop forces of sound strong enough to rattle the slats in empty chairs. Fat chance Mr. President, the stranger, could have heard if I asked if he knew the college president at Angelo State University in 1979.

I was already too hoarse to shout above the music. Early in the day, before I left a resort up the coast of San Francisco, an obliging fellow arranged a canoe ride down the Russian River. (I warned you the timing isn't in sequence.) He was an "obliging fellow" until we discovered we were too deaf to hear each other 14 feet apart in an aluminum canoe. The Russian River doesn't have a rapid rating in the summer. Having been raised on the eastern edge of the Chihuahua Desert, I don't have a boating rating, winter or summer. Taking the keel, I was supposed to watch for snags and guide us away from the shallows. I could see and hear the boat drag, but I couldn't holler loud enough to warn him.

In swift water, the canoe threw us in reverse. Seemed going backwards, the sound carried better on the water. To catch his attention, I started saying, "One, two, three, four, testing." All us hombres muted by time-rusted ear canals and burst eardrums respond to the litany of sound engineers testing their equipment. Often the countdown is the last thing we hear on a program. For the rest of the trip, we stayed in contact by a loud cadence of one two three fours. The lady at the docks meeting us heard us so far ahead of time, she thought we were racers sculling around the bend.

Be awhile knowing whether keeping dates and places straight matters. I make notes and mark a calendar away from home. Seems people think I'm from Mertzon wherever I am in the world. Few wait to learn how long I've been away from home. Riding backwards in a canoe might be the reason for the indifference to time or place ...

August 22, 2002

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