In Remembrance of My Twin.

 

Coming Storm by Anne Littlewolf.

1953-2022.

It's hard to start telling everyone about my spiritual twin. 

We met at Wayland Baptist College as freshmen in 1972. At that time, she was Patricia (Pat) Penny. Her father was pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Farmington, NM. 

For six months I lived in Farmington and attended that church. That led to our introduction, and that's all you needed with Trish, as we called her.

She never met a stranger. She was friendly with everyone and hard not to like.

Our names were so close that professors and other students would get confused. I was called by her last name and she mine. We laughed about it and decided we must be twins. From then on, we called each other twin.

We were both history/English majors and chess players. We talked a lot of history and played a lot of chess over those years.

Till the last time we met and laughed over lunch we talked about Mrs. Jamar's Literature classes and living and dying by Kate Turabian's style book for term papers. 

She liked to crochet in the TV room of the Sub to relax. Two of her closest friends kidded her about be a granny and she started talking like a cranky woman, they imitated her, and it caught on. They decided they were a sorority sisters in Omicron Beta, it stood for Old Biddies. She was the last one, Judy passed in 2019, Nora in 2021.

One time she was in the TV room all alone and watching Englebert Humperdinck in concert. Two guys came in and changed the channel to a football game. They never knew what hit them. 

Judy was my first wife. She was engaged to David, but his mother broke them up. We started dating and Trish became engaged to David. Both our marriages ended in divorce. She had a daughter named Karen Sue, and she is now working at the Smithsonian Institute in D. C.

I remember in Spring of 1976; we had a class together. She was six months pregnant and showing. The class was held in an old auditorium in Gates Hall. We sat in theater seats. I'd sit next to her trying to take notes without a desk and fussed at her as she used her tummy, that it she had an advantage.

We graduated and lost touch. I didn't go to the 10th class reunion, and she wasn't there for the 20th. Nora told me she was in an abusive marriage. At our 30th reunion, she wasn't there, but Nora had her phone number and e-mail.

She legally changed her name to Ann Littlewolf, was remarried and living in Gunnison, CO. We got in contact, and she drove down for a twin reunion. It was like thirty years never happened.

Linda and I drove up and spent a night and got to see her horses, then went on to Nebraska to visit Linda's brother and family. it's a long drive from Gunnison to Lincoln.

For a while she taught at BIA schools in the Four Corner's area but quit to become an artist.

She had horses and they were her life. She and her husband rode them, and she bought an 1890 Surrey that she fixed up and trained her horse to pull. They'd ride it at county fairs in the area and take friends out on rides. 

She wrote and illustrated a children's book. 

She was living with a man, and was driving, as they were talking, he slumped and died from an aneurism. The book was her catharsis. How she learned to go through grief and go on. I particularly like how she handled loss.

APS has a place where teachers can mass produce work. You just had to pay for the materials used. I took her pages and had them copied on card stock, laminated and bound. She could only afford twenty copies, but at Kinkos it would have been three times the cost. 

They sold out very fast. I sold some at book signings. I sold two to a cancer doctor, he said he'd put them in his waiting room.

I retired and couldn't use APS anymore, so I desktop published them. My printer couldn't use cardstock, so they were on regular paper, and I couldn't laminate them, but they were easy to copy and with a square hole binder were easy to publish.

She came down with some of her artwork and found a cafe in Old Town that would let her put up paintings on commission. Coming Storm was one of them, the others were paintings on tree bark.

I would from time to time go into the cafe and check on them for her. She called and said the guy who owned the cafe's phone was disconnected. I went down to the place it had been gutted. Nothing was left on the wall. The paintings were gone most likely tossed in the trash by the new owner when he started renovating.

She gave me two of her paintings that I framed and have on my wall at home. The first one I call Aspens in Colorado.

The other one is Line Wolf. 

She came down here as the altitude in Gunnison was becoming a problem. She stayed with Mom while her husband was selling their place and trying to find a place for them and their horses. Mom was having some medical problems and she moved in with another lady in the Baptist community. 
They settled in Tijeras Canyon, not far from Albuquerque. I talked her into redoing Finn and Flipper as a coloring book. She did and I've published a number of them.

When Mom sold her townhouse and moved into senior living, she and her husband help with the move. Mom loved Anne like her own daughter.

Anne's church's choir on one Sunday a month would stop and the Senior living place and sing. I took Mom to church, and she insisted after I got her back that we listen to the choir, and Anne naturally made me sing with them.

We kept up with each other on Face Book, it was easier to message than e-mail. Every few months we'd meet at a restaurant and catch up. I always made sure Linda came too. They became friends,

Covid stopped any attempt at selling copies. When my mother went into hospice, I gave what remaining copies to the kind ladies who helped my mother with her last days. They were grateful.

A year ago, we met at Papa Filipe's, laughed a lot and had a good time. A couple of months later she stopped messaging, e-mailing or answering her phone.

In November she wrote an e-mail saying she'd been ill and couldn't work on her art, she'd shifted from oil to colored pencil and crayon. They were amazing.

In February another e-mail said she had an aggressive cancer. I had no way to contact her directly. I started checking the Journal's online obits, but never saw one. Today I finally called the church where she was on the governing council, and they told me she passed on April 10. If there was an obit in the paper, I never saw it. 

When she lived in Gunnison, she painted a mural at a nursing home in the ward for Alzheimer's patients. It was a mountain scene with a fence and a gate across the door. They had trouble with the patients getting out, with the gate there they stopped trying.

Those who bought her work was John Denver and Ricky Skaggs. Ann and her husband went to a festival in Windstar, CO. This is where John Denver's legacy is preserved. She took a number of paintings and gave them for the foundation to sell. They chose two paintings of Eagles to put on a wall.

She had her work in a number of places in Edgewood on I-40 and she'd let me know whenever one of her works sold.

She will be sorely missed. 

  

WC One day in my past.

 

Today's challenge is where I would spend one day in my past.

Picture is of the first NAIA Texoma conference championships in May 1974. The runner I was passing was from Australia running for Dallas Baptist. I beat him in the mile, and he lapped me in the three-mile.

Oooh a tough one.

There is one day that changed everything for me. I can't give the actual date, but here's what happened.

It was between nationals at the 1974 cross country championships, where I ran the race of my life, and the start of track season in February 1975.

I went out on an eight-mile run and felt good. Coming back to campus. I went up to the back door of the gym and found it was locked. I stupidly did an about face, like taught in my high school AFJROTC class. Something twisted in my right knee.

Also, stupidly I applied a heating pad to it when I got back to the dorm. A few years later sports doctors advised ice when a swelling injury occurs.

To train for the mile and three mile takes two or three days a week in long distance like an eight-mile run. Usually Monday and Wednesday, Tuesdays and Thursday for interval runs, 16 220's with a walk that distance between, 8 440's win a one lap walk or 4 880's with one lap walk. This is to keep speed up for the sprint at the end of the race.

What I found about my knee was that on intervals where I was running fast, I didn't feel anything. On over distance I had a nagging ache. Running that way was like water torture.

By the time the season started I was still in good condition, but in a month my conditioning was gone. My times and places suffered. The coach dropped me from the team.

I had been running track since 7th grade, earned a track scholarship and now junior year in college and it was all over.

Since then, I've seen pro football players injured the same way, they plant their foot and twist to change direction and they go down career over. Tony Dorsett did it in practice with the Denver Broncos, Bam Morris (Atlanta Falcons) did it on national TV against the Cowboys.

If could get in a time machine I'd tell the young fool, don't go to that door.

Then again, maybe I'd tell myself not to get married to my first wife in May of 1975.

Top Ten Tuesday

 Today's meme is ten favorite books more than ten years old.

I'm upping it to ten favorite authors.

Barry Sadler, his Casca: The Eternal Mercenary series. Taken over by Tony Roberts is now 56 books and counting.

Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction, History, Religion, hard science like the book pictured. He did it all with knowledge, humor, and style.

You think the pioneers of science fiction were Victor Hugo and Jules Verne, don't forget Andre Norton. She invented the galactic empire. She invented the star gate.

 A man who changed the way war was fought between WWI and WWII, A British captain and wrote the book Strategy. A treatise on historical battles using the indirect approach. The French and English dismissed it, the Germans used it to destroy them at the beginning of the war. The United States used it learning from our allies past mistakes. Island hopping in the Pacific is a prime example of the indirect approach.

One of the twentieth centuries greatest theologian, murdered by the Nazi's for helping Jews and others escape to Switzerland. The shame is that he was only beginning on his philosophy and cut short. He lived his beliefs and died by them.

Known for her book the Thorn Birds and subsequent mini-series, this was her life work. Starting with the rise of Marius through to the rise of Octavian a hundred-year stretch encompassing the life of Julius Caesar. I've read it through at least three times, when writing my books Optimus and Stephanus all of the social dynamics of Rome came from these books. History Channel should make a soap opera based on them there is enough fodder here for at least ten or more years in that format.

Mary Stewart wrote many different books, but her Arthurian books based on the life of Merlin, not Arthur was ground-breaking at the time.

Hank Bruce is a great friend and has a wonderful wit. Most of his writing is horticulture and gardening, but he branches out on other things. He works with those around the world on planting the Moringa tree to help end world hunger. He has a children's book explaining the merits of this miracle tree.

He is the only one who has read all of my books and written a review on Amazon.

Irene Blea is another friend and member of Writers2writers. She started as a professor and wrote the still available books on Chicana studies. She has a trilogy on the life of her aunt who was sold in the early 1900's as a wife to an old man at age 13. It's hard to image Daughters as being past ten years. It's still an open wound in Albuquerque where 7 women and an unborn child were found murdered and buried on the West Mesa.

It takes the life of a woman whose daughter is missing and fears as the bodies are being dug up that one of them might be hers.

I am a Tony Roberts junky. I can't get enough. As mentioned earlier he now has 26 Casca books. This is the Dark Blade series now with seven books and counting. A half-dark elf and human growing up reviled and shunned, when her mother dies, she discovers she's a princess of the dark elves and her father has left her a quest to rebuild his following and take over the throne of the dark elves.

He has a Kastania series on the rebirth of an empire before it is destroyed by the greedy nobility 

And a series on a rock band with a woman lead named Siren.

Why none of Anne McCaffrey's dragon books haven't been made into movies or TV series is mind boggling. I want a fire lizard as a pet.

Bonus, Harlan Ellison. The writer who has influenced me more than any other. An absolute horrible person, but a great writer.

He was a screen writer who wrote The City on the Edge of Forever for the original Star Trek series. 

Honorable mentions: Zane Grey, James A. Michener, William Manchester, Thomas B. Costain, James Clavell, Tom Clancy, Joseph Badal, Anne Rice and many more.

I'm an old man that has always had a voracious appetite for reading.

WC 080322

 

's

Last Wednesday was crazy and I didn't get to post pictures of my library. It's not very big anymore. My eyesight won't let me read hard copy anymore and I've given most of my books away to Big Brothers and Big Sisters. I have an extensive library on my Kindle. I've replaced many of the books I gave away as e-books.

Today's challenge is the weirdest food I love.

Quite a challenge, I'm not very adventurous when it comes to food, as a diabetic I am on a pretty strict diet, not that I stay on it much as my A1C tells me.

This is from an old (early 1960's) TV advertisement from Kraft recipes. Take Philidelphia Cream Cheese and a can of chopped olives. Mix together, chill in the fridge and spread on celery. Good on Ritz vegetable crackers too.

I like a can of Chili with beans and add a packet of crushed red chile.

Instead of putting pickle relish on a hot dog I use chopped green chile. Costco sells small packets of green chile in a bundle. Not weird in New Mexico.

I like Thai food but made the mistake of once ordering it Thai hot. Hot is equal to Habanero, Thai hot could strip the enamel off of a car. An experience only to be done once. 

My Mom once tried to cook beef tongue, but never again we wouldn't eat it.

Sorry no snails or frog's legs and I shudder at the thought of raw fish.

  

WC 072022 Weekend Getaway

 Today's challenge is to describe the perfect weekend getaway.

We're retired so we don't need to find time alone, we're alone together all the time. We really didn't quarantine during Covid, things didn't change that much.

So, to me the perfect weekend getaway would be to fly to Oklahoma City, we have a three day/ two-night free trip we haven't been able to use for the last year and its good for another year. 

My brother and his wife live in Oklahoma City and my wife's brother and wife live in Wichita, Kansas. We usually drive to Oklahoma and spend a night then on to Kansas for a night and drive home. It would be nice to fly and have them all meet at the hotel for a get together. Having our kids and grandkids there to meet their cousins would be a plus.

I wanted to do this in the Spring, but they were both busy. I'm trying to pull it off for the fall, there is no way I'm going there in Summer!

It would be nice for all of us to visit the memorial site where the Murrah Federal Building once stood.

WC 071322

 

Today's challenge is Which character from a book you like to meet. Okay, one male, one female.

Captain-Pilate Blackthorne, or Anjin-San from Shogun.

Captain-Pilate Blackthorne lands in a hostile land, unable to speak the language, in a totally unfamiliar culture and by using his wits and knowledge he's able to not only survive but thrive.

Alexis Carew is a young girl from a planet on the fringe of civilization. She joins the Navy as a mid-shipman when the top brass doesn't think a woman belongs in the Navy at all much less as an officer. She has to fight the insubordination of the crew as well as the misogyny of the commanders and still do her job, which she not only accomplishes, but is able to advance.

Favorite Books

Plot: A ship crashes and the only survivor finds himself in a strange environment surrounded by strange looking inhabitants and he doesn't understand the language.

He's taken in and given a female interpreter so the natives can pump him for information.

He falls in love with his interpreter and finds out from her that they are in the middle of a civil war and his advanced technology and knowledge could be the deciding factor to win the war.

In a fight his interpreter is killed, but he helps his side win the war.

When I read James Clavel's book Shogun, I was thinking all through it that I've read this plot before. This was a couple of months before the mini-series was due out and I wanted to have read the book first.

Years earlier I joined the Science Fiction Book Club and one of the first books that came from there was Brothers of the Earth by C.J. Cherryh.

The ship was a spaceship, where he landed was a planet and the inhabitants were aliens.

There's a whole lot of differences between the books, sheer volume the most striking, but it's important to remember that just because the plot is the same (think all quest stories) the writing makes all the difference.

BTW, I read this book from cover to cover in a single night. It was that good. Wish to God that I could have said that about Shogun. 

WC070622 Famous person(s)

 

Today's challenge is: Have you ever met a famous person.

I posted a couple of weeks ago about Don Perkins passing away. He was an all-American football player at UNM and played for the Dallas Cowboys as at running back. He played in the days of Don Meridith, Bob Hayes, Bob Lilly, and Tom Landry, when the 'boys were new and had growing pains. He played in the Ice Bowl game, was out by the time of their first Superbowl win.

After retiring he moved to Albuquerque. He spent time reading the sports on a local channel, worked with high school religious clubs like Young Life and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

My brother was the captain of the FCA at high school, I was in Junior high. He arranged for Don to come to our house and speak to the members of FCA. He forgot to tell Mom. When he showed up and Mom answered the door she was shocked to in her words, "See the biggest black man in my life."

This was the early sixties and Albuquerque was 50% Hispanic, 30% Anglo and the rest was black, Asian and Native American. My junior high and high school didn't have any blacks until I was a sophomore.

Bruce showed up with a carload of jocks just about that time.

I was also in Young Life, we'd meet at a house once a week, from our high school, usually on Thursday night. We'd sing songs, give testimony and pray. In the summer we'd have gatherings at a hotel banquet room with students from all over the city. Don Perkins came and spoke at a number of them and personally shook hands with everyone there.

I never asked him for his autograph, younger and dumber back then.

I've read all of Joseph Badal's books, he's a New York Times bestselling author that lives in Cedar Crest, the other side of Sandia Mountain. I bought two of them at Treasure House books in Old Town at his book signings. He writes spy thrillers similar to Tom Clancy. They are very good. 

He also has a series of an ex-seal that's a doctor and has a drug lord that keeps trying to kill him. 

Another is about two female detectives in Albuquerque similar to Cagney and Lacy. 

The last person is only within Baptist circles and New Mexico politics.

Before I was a teacher, I was a music director at Edgewood Baptist Church. It's a spot in the road on your way into Albuquerque on I-40. 

I was working at a car dealership flagging technicians after they finished a repair and doing warranty. I was also teaching the adult Sunday school class before services.

My very first Sunday as teacher David King and his wife chose to attend and join the church. They were opening a real estate office in the town. 

He was the nephew of our then Governor Bruce King. He was working in the state cabinet. He was also the chairman of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. One of the most influential of all the committees of the convention.

To say the least I was a little intimidated trying to teach the lesson that day.

  

Book Review: Echos of the Past

 

The beauty of Prime Unlimited. Three books considered as one on the rental list.

Peter Rimmer has a ten-book series set in Africa starting in the 1880's

The Pirate, Archibald Brigandshaw, owner of a major British shipping line wants the Brigandshaw family line to join the aristocracy. His oldest son Arthur he arranges to marry a poor aristocrat with title and mansion. Sir Henry Mandeville is a widower with a sixteen-year-old daughter, Emily. When Arthur weds her, and she has a son then a Brigandshaw inherits the castle, mansion and title.

Sounds rather Bridgerton at this point.

The hitch is that the Pirate's youngest son, Sebastian and Emily are in love and let nature take its course.

The Pirate sends his son on one of his ships to Bombay with orders he can't return for 18 months.

When the ship docks in Cape Town, the captain of the ship takes pity on the young man and gets an elephant hunter, who supplies him with tusks, to take him under his wing and train him to kill elephants. This is how Africa becomes the focus of the books.  

I'm on the second book Elephant Walk, which is the farm Sebastian creates in the Veld after he returns in the first book to kidnap Emily and his son Harry along with the nanny who marries Tinus Oosthuizen, the elephant hunter and sets up a farm next to Sebastian's.

The Pirate puts a price on Sebastian's head for kidnapping the heir to the title, even knowing the boy is not Arthur's son.

Sebastian gets arrested, as telegraph lines span the globe now, but is found not guilty when Emily testifies that Arthur never consummated the marriage preferring to live in London with his mistresses.  

It gets complicated, but the historical facts are astounding.

You know Cecil Rhodes was one miserable son-of-bitch. He insisted on building a railroad line from Cape Town to Cairo, this extended British control through the Boer States. This led to the Boer wars.

The Krugerand is the South African gold coin named after Paul Kruger, the Prime Minister of the South African Republic. He refused to let the British settlers coming into their country have the right to vote, which led to the war.

When the war turned against them, he fled to Europe with the national treasury. He's the guy they glorify by naming the gold coin after him.

You want to know why the dog paddle style of swimming is used. When swimming across rivers in Africa, don't splash! There are crocodiles.

Toss in a native witch with a pet leopard that pushes for a war against the white men and a bloody conflict. Sebastian's older brother, Nathan, who is a missionary and visits his brother to condemn him for living in sin with his older brother's wife. 

Tinus is a Boer and though he marries an English woman and lives in Rhodesia, he's a from a family line of Boers. He fights against the British. 

Sebastian sits it out and is condemned as a coward, but he's out in the boonies, it doesn't matter to him.

Echos of the Past ends with Tinus being caught, tried and hung as a traitor, not as a prisoner of war, who would be shot.

He led a raid on the British headquarters, took the British general captive, stripped all the officers down to their underwear and sent them packing.

The British general was not amused.

Elephant Walk deals with Sebastian's son Harry, who is at Oxford when he learns his father, Sebastian, was killed by a rogue elephant and has to return to Africa, this is set in the early 1900's leading up to WWI.

The writing is informative, and I love all the varied characters in Africa and England. 

These books are going to keep me busy for some time.

WC 062922 An Event

 

Today is an event in my life no one would believe.

Okay here goes. This is way back in 1995, Bruce King was governor of NM. I was teaching and sponsor of YMCA's Youth and Government program. Students had their choice in the fall semester to either write a bill or they could be in the newspaper and have to write an article. We met on Tuesdays after school and went over their bill or bills. They were allowed one joke bill, but they had to have a serious one too. I had previous bill books and newspapers for them to use as examples.

The legislative session starts in mid-January and lasts thirty days on odd years and 60 days on even years. In February I took my students during the day on a bus up to Santa Fe with other students from the high schools in Albuquerque, for what we called pre-ledge. In the morning the students could attend the regular committee meetings to get a feel for what they would be doing when our time came. They were on their own for lunch and then we held sessions in another government building with a lecture hall. Here all the sponsors from all over the state got to know one another, same for the students, the student governor, vice-governor, secretary of state, attorney general, elected the previous year, would lead the legislative session going over the procedures and decorum for our sessions. The editor of the newspaper and the sponsor of the newspaper would meet with the new reporters and go over their articles.

After the real legislature finished, a week later on Saturday, Sunday and Monday is when we held our model legislature in the Round House, using the committee rooms and chambers.

Some students thought being on the newspaper was the easy way, here they were informed that after dinner during the session when all the legislators were having free time, they were writing their articles and then having to lay them out on the computers and get them ready to be printed first thing in the morning. They were lucky to get to bed by 3 in the morning, then had to witness the committee hearings and general sessions the next day to write their next article. I digress.

That year, 1995, a senator from Rio Rancho had a school voucher bill. The year before it passed the committees but died without a hearing on the floor. He thought this year it would sail through as the committees had the same senators and votes.

Sponsors kept an eye on the students, but they were on their own to choose which committees or sessions. They just had to stay in the capital building. At this time, I always wore a suit with bolo tie, cowboy boots and George Strait cowboy hat. I was not hard to miss.

I was sitting in an area outside the committee rooms. Senator Benevides, a high-ranking member of the senate and was always on TV making comments, he was hard to miss as he wore a patch over one eye, he came up to me and said, "You might want to sit in on the Senate educational committee, it just started." 

Why he did this I haven't a clue. We'd never met before. I went in and they were reading the school voucher bill, The RR senator went to another committee meeting thinking he had this one in the bag.

Going over the bill it stipulated that a student could use the voucher to attend any school of his choosing if there was room at the school. The president of the AFT-NM stood and said this violated church and state as students could use public money for church schools. The archbishop of Santa Fe spoke in favor as it would give all students a choice of schools.

I saw the flaw in the bill, so I stood and said, "This bill would open up for coaches to start recruiting from other schools to get a monopoly on the good talent.

One of the senators looked at me, nodded his head, and said, "I hadn't thought of that."

When they voted the bill was tabled.

Needless to say, the senator from RR was rather miffed. 

The next year Gary Johnson was elected governor. He ran on the platform of allowing gambling on Indian land. He was as anti-public education as they come and for eight years, he had a voucher bill that never passed. NM still does not have a voucher law.

  

WC 062222

 This week's challenge it Auto Buy authors. Writers who when they come out with a new book, you have to buy and read it in a single day even if it nearly kills you.

For a long time, these authors fit the category until I couldn't keep up, or they died:

Isaac Asimov

Harlan Ellison

James A. Michener

Anne McCaffery

Collen McCulloh

Harold Robbins

Micky Spillane

C. S. Lewis

Deitrich Bonhoeffer

Barry Sadler

Anne Rice

Today's authors are:

Tony Roberts, I just got his 8th book in the Dark Blade series and I'm loving it.

Blake Banner

Tom Clancy

Leigh Berdugo

Mark Dawson

Julia Quinn - Love Bridgerton

Paula Paul

Berthold Gambrel, blogger friend who has reviewed a number of my books on his blog.

Joseph Badal, local author and I've met a number of times at book signings.

Hank Bruce, another local author and member of Writers2writers. He had great books on gardening, and is pushing the nutritional value of the Moringa Tree for developing nations.

Dr. Irene Blea, another member of Writers2writers, she has a trilogy about her aunt who was sold into marriage at age 13, ran away from an abusive husband and went on to live her life. Great reads, she has an autobiography of her life coming out soon that we in W2W read portions and gave input, as they did with my work.

Jonathan Miller, local author who told me about Soutwest Writers way back in 2006. I went to my first meeting, found out about a print on demand in August, had the first two copies of Optimus Praetorian Guard by November. He's an attorney and writes legal thrillers.

Legend of Bagger Vance

 

Hard to imagine it's been 24 years since this movie came out. It cost 80 million to make and earned 39 million. A bust for Mat Damon, Charlese Theron and He who shall not be named.

Of all the movies on golf, this is by far the best. It's more than about golf, As is often said, Golf is life. It's a game that can't be won only played, like life.

It's set during the Great Depression and Matt Damon is a local golf hero before WWI, he comes back damaged. The girl he left behind is spending all her money to save her father's golf course by holding a golf tournament with Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, two of the best golfers alive. Junah is roped into playing in the tournament. Bagger Vance comes along to be his caddy and gets him back in mental shape to play.

The most important part of the movie is after Junah has a disastrous first round. Bagger tries to tell him a story about overcoming adversity. Junah doesn't want to hear it. 

There's a little boy named Harley who is the one who talked Bagger into playing in the tournament and is a fore caddy. The boy's father used to own the hardware store until the depression and is now sweeping the streets and renting out a room in their house to strangers. He tells Junah how ashamed he is of his father and that his friends have too much pride to sweep streets.

Junah then berates him and says, his father paid back everyone who he owed money to instead of declaring bankruptcy like his friends' fathers. "Your father faced adversity and beat it back with a broom."

It's here he realizes what Bagger had been trying to tell him. He and Harley discuss golf and that it's only a game, that can't be won, only played.

That's all I'm saying about the movie. It's great and everyone should watch it. It's available on DVD and on Prime Video.

WC 061522

 This week's challenge is: name the best father in a book, movie or TV show.

I'm going to date myself here, but growing up watching TV, Robert Young was the father I wish I had. No matter what happened he kept a cool head, and settled it in a loving way. Oh for the days of Father Knows Best.

Don't get me wrong, I had a great dad, but he wasn't perfect like Robert Young. I learned at an early age that life was not perfect like it was on TV.

They had great dads on TV back then, Fred MacMurray on My Three Sons, Lorne Greene on Bonanza, Leave it to Beaver, (stop snickering at the title), they had a great dad, Hazel, Chuck Conners in The Rifleman, Bill Bixby in The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Brian Keith in Family Affair, the list goes on and on. Some were in nuclear family, some were widowers, the last one was an uncle taking his brother's children. then something happened. TV started depicting dads as not perfect, but buffoons. All in the Family, Married with Children. Can't they try to go for human? 

He who shall not be named tried to resurrect the perfect father, but he's in disgrace now. 

Rant over.

Don Perkins

 

Yesterday, one of my heroes passed away. The reason I've been a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan is because of Don Perkins. He was a top running back for UNM and the first from New Mexico to make it big in the NFL. 

On the Lobo field where they play football, they have huge pictures of all the Football players that have been All Americans. His is the first one on the side of the building. Brian Urlacher's is the last for now.

We moved to New Mexico in 1963 and the only football games on Sunday afternoon showed the Dallas Cowboys. The whole city went crazy because Don Perkins was their premier running back. I've been a 'Boys fan from then on. A very disgruntled one for the last twenty years. Dak Prescott makes them worth watching anymore.

After Don retired, he returned to New Mexico. He did some announcing, for a while did sports on a local TV station.

What I remember most was his work with the local high schools through the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I was in 9th grade in junior high, my brother was a junior in high school and captain of our FCA huddle. He arranged a meeting at our house with Don Perkins. He forgot to tell Mom.

Mom answered the doorbell and Don Perkins was there a little early and Bruce wasn't home yet. He introduced himself and Mom didn't have a clue who he was, all she knew was that a big black man wanted to come inside.

 Bruce drove up with a car full of jocks. They had a nice meeting. High school got out before junior high, and I had practice, so I missed it.

When I was teaching at Higland High School, Don put on a one-man presentation each period for the U.S. History classes. He portrayed Frederick Douglas and did a masterful job.

It's a sad day now that he is gone. Only a few Cowboy fans remember him now, and only the old timers like me in New Mexico know what a truly remarkable man her was.

 

 

Bunny O'hare

 

Today's challenge is a book, movie or TV show set in or around your town.

Albuquerque and New Mexico have had lots of all three. The Oscar best picture No Country For Old Men was filmed in Albuquerque, the TV shows In Plain Sight, Breaking Bad and just finishing Better Call Saul were filmed here. Trying to take pleadings down to the three courthouses as Lomas and 4th street was quite a challenge when they were filming around or in them. Pleadings now are done electronically and that's not much of a problem anymore. That was one of the tasks I fulfilled in order to use an office at a law firm for my writing.  

Sony Pictures has a studio in Mesa Del Sol north of Kirkland Air Force Base and the Albuquerque Sun Port. Lots of filming is happening around here.

I have a story about a movie filmed here in 1970.

I was a junior in high school running cross-country. We had a race at our Western Skies course. It's at the mouth of Tijeras Canyon at the base of the Sandia Mountains and Monzano Mountains. Tramway Blvd, at the time was still a dirt road. The course began about a half mile east of the road on another set of roads where new houses were being built. We started and went downhill that half-mile to Tramway and ran on it until we came to another road then uphill for a mile went around a hill and down to the start/finish line.

Driving in we saw a bunch of poles, cameras and other stuff in the middle of Tramway. At the starting line the coaches got together and discussed this obstruction to our racecourse. They decided our race was scheduled before the movie people showed up and since Los Alamos High had traveled down to run we were going to run.

C-team ran first, we all dropped down to Tramway and watched as 50 guys, this was before Title IX and there wasn't girls sports. Anyway fifty barreled through the mish mash of objects in the way. We heard someone yell, "What the hell!"

When junior varsity's turn came they'd cleared a path through their set and the next two races went without incident.

The movie was Bunny O'hare with Ernest Borgnine and Betty Davis. It was a huge flop. I watched it on late night TV about ten years later and I've seen film on the side of a bathtub better than this one.

Top Ten Tuesday

 

Top ten things I look for in a comfort read.

1. A fantasy world I can get lost in. Examples:

Anne McCaffrey's Dragon Riders and Harper Hall series. I want a fire lizard. Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. Tony Roberts' Kastania Chronicles and Dark Blade series.

2. Historical Fiction about an interesting time period or location. Barry Saddler, now Tony Roberts' Casca: The Eternal Mercenary series, now up to 56 books. James A. Michener has some great books: The Source, Alaska, Centennial, Texas, Chesapeake, Hawaii, The Drifters. I tried to read all his books but gave up as that's all I would read for the rest of my life.

3. A particular author. Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, James A. Michener, Tony Roberts, Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Anne Rice, Mary Stewart, Anne McCaffrey, Colleen McCullagh.

4. Writer friends: Dr. Irene Blea who has a book about the seven women found dead on the mesa: Daughters of the West Mesa, a series about her aunt's life: Suzanna, Poor People's Flowers, Beneath the Super Moon, Hank Bruce, who writes about gardening and has a children's book about the Maringa Tree, Jonathan Miller, an Attorney in town that writes legal thrillers, Paul Paul, a local writer with a wide range of topics. The Mind of a Deviant Woman is my favorite, and a good blogger friend that I have linked to many times who also writes in the horror and science fiction genres, Berthold Gambrel.   

I think I've dropped enough names and titles to satisfy the question.

One hand on the Bible the other one on a gun.

 

"Which Way Are You Goin'?"

Song by Jim Croce

 

Which way are you goin'?

Which side will you be on?

Will you stand and watch while,

All the seeds of hate are sewn?

Will you stand with those who say

Let his will be done?

 

One hand on the Bible

And one hand on the gun.

One hand on the Bible

And one hand on the gun.

 

Which way are you lookin'?

Is it hard to see?

Do you say what's wrong for him

Is not wrong for me?

You walk the streets of righteousness

But you refuse to understand.

 

Say you love the baby,

And then you crucify the man.

Say you love the baby,

And then you crucify the man.

 

Every day,

Things are changing.

Words once honored turn to lies.

People wandering

Can you blame them?

It's too far to run

And too late to hide.

 

So now you turn your back on,

Everything that you used to preach.

It's let him live in freedom,

If he lives like me.

Well your light has changed,

Confusion reigns.

What have you become?

 

All your olive branches turn to spears

When your flowers turn to guns.

All your olive branches turn to spears

When your flowers turn to guns.

Why Do You Read?

  The burning question: Why do you read? Click on the post and write your answer at Writers Supporting Writers.

I posted mine there.

Berthold Gambrel posted this question, and I decided to pass it on to my readers also.

WC Favorite Quote from a book

 

I'm deviating from today's topic. Friendly Persuasion is a book by Jesamyn West that was turned into a movie. For a more indepth review check out Berthold Gambrel's on his blog.

The problem of making the movie was that the book didn't have enough conflict, at least not the type of conflict movie goers would expect. They added the conflict of Josh, the oldest son leaving to fight against the Rebel Raiders. It is here that the greatest quotes come.

Josh has left, Jess is chopping wood when his best friend Sam Jordan and Friend Purdy ride up. Both are carrying guns. 

Purdy tries to get Jess to join them in fighting the raiders. Jess refuses. Purdy then says, "War time changes things."

Sam Jordan then says, "War changes things, but you haven't. Last week you told my son he's going to hell for fighting and today you tell Jess he has to fight. Whatever's right for Purdy has to be right for everyone else."

Nothing sums up the Evangelical thought process more completely than this statement.

Later the horse Josh took comes back without him. Jess gets his hunting rifle and starts to leave to bring him back. While going to the horse he tells his younger son, Little Jess, "Thee's the man of the house now."

Little Jess says, "Kill a Johnny Reb for me."

Jess leans down and places his hand on his son's shoulder. "Son, never says that about another man's life."

This is the true meaning of the phrase "Sanctify of human life."

My best book for today's world.

 https://www.amazon.com/Human-Sacrifices-Patrick-Prescott-ebook/dp/B004W0NPD8/ref=sr_1_11?crid=RYOV3642OD6X&keywords=Human+Sacrifices&qid=1653160197&s=digital-text&sprefix=human+sacrifices%2Cdigital-text%2C100&sr=1-11

Jan is a preacher's daughter recently graduated from a religious college with a teaching degree. She divorced her husband as he was beating her up and demanding sex.

The church they attended starts a campaign to make her return to her husband by picketing the house where she's living.

She starts seeing a face in two trees outside her window. The face of a demon feasting on her pain and despair. She names it Mal. Soon she doesn't have to look out the window as she sees Mal in her dreams.

This book is about spousal abuse, church abuse, overcoming the abuse and starting her life over as a teacher and seeing her students as her mission field to keep them out of the jaws of Mal.