Phil Truman's Blog, page 3

At age forty Punch Roundstep wasn't sure he had any more understanding of women than he did at twenty.

"Women is sure hard to understand," he said to his friend White Oxley.

White took a draw off his long neck, taking time to watch a Packers' receiver get clobbered before responding. "Well, I don't think it's so important to understand 'em as much as it is just to like 'em."

"Why'zat?" Punch asked.

White considered the question for a few seconds, long enough to observe the Packers' QB get crunched under six hundred pounds of Cowboy beef. "I expect it's mainly to ensure the continuation of the species like anything else," he said.

"Well, I like Jo Lynn; tell her so all the time."

"That's good," White said absently, his eyes still on the TV. "But you need to compliment 'em sometimes, too.

"Yeah, but that don't always seem to work."

"Don't work how?"

"Night before last we was getting ready to go out and she comes out wearing this tight red dress."

The reverential sound in Punch's voice drew White's attention away from the Monday night ballgame. "Red dress?" he asked.

"Yeah, and she asks me did I think it made her look fat. Well, she was so dang gorgeous I just grabbed her up and said, 'Darlin', I love a woman with a big butt.'"

White leaned back into the sofa and took another slow drink of beer. "You told her that, did ya?" he asked with a sad grin.

"What, you think that was wrong?"

"I ain't sure your answer was wrong; mebbe just ill-advised. Y'see, that's a trick question women like to pull on us to see if we're paying attention to 'em. There ain't no right answer. And they'll keep asking you that question until you tell them what they don't want to hear. But they ain't looking for honesty. Your best hope in a situation like that is to try to change the subject…or leave the room."

Punch furrowed his brow and shook his head. "See, that's what I mean. I don't understand why they'd do that."

"It's a mystery, awright," White said, turning his attention back to the more comprehensible world of football, hoping his answer would end this bottomless and pointless discussion on women his befuddled friend had started.

However, Punch persisted. "But I meant what I said to her. When she come into the room in that red dress, she was so dang pretty it brought tears to my eyes. I was payin' attention to her. Now she won't even talk to me...or nothing'."

White sighed resignedly and pressed the mute button on the remote. He wouldn't be able to concentrate on the game until he got the boy straightened out on this matter.

"Son, the damage is awready did. There just ain't no going back with women, or forgettin' neither. All you can hope to do at this point is try to cover up the mess you made with presents. Your women will forgive a lot, if you give 'em presents. The more, the more better."

"Awready been trying that," Punch said.

"'At's good," White said, nodding with encouragement. "What did you start with? Flowers? Candy? Jewelry?"

"Naw, better," Punch said. "I got her a new vacuum cleaner."

"A what?"

"Yeah, gave it to her this evening. Didn't seem to make much difference, though. So tomorrow, I'm going to take her out to get a new washer and dryer."

White picked up the TV remote and switched off the power. He stood to go get himself another beer. "This is going to take longer than I thought," he muttered.

 

You can read more about Punch and White in my novel Legends of Tsalagee.

My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
my Website

 

 

White Oxley had purchased the rooster at a discount. "Well, there is one I can let go for half price," the salesman said.

He'd made the trip to Siloam Springs to find a replacement for his main rooster who'd fallen victim to a coyote. White hadn't been surprised after it happened. The old boy was past twelve and apparently didn't see very well. He'd guessed the cock mistook the coyote for one of his dogs. Most likely, Stumpy, who had somewhat of a coyote appearance, and liked to wander around the chicken yard looking for misplaced eggs. There was a young cockerel in the flock, but he wasn't quite up to speed for taking on the responsibilities of Head Rooster, so White made the buying trip to Arkansas.

Unfortunately, King George – that was the departed rooster's name – had come to tolerate Stumpy, probably because his repeated floggings of the dog didn't seem to deter the mutt's trespassing; and with the rooster's advancing years, keeping up the chicken yard policing activity came to be more trouble than it was worth. Funny, though, that old George couldn't tell the difference between a coyote and Stumpy, as the dog had only three and a half legs – losing the lower half of his left front one after stepping in a rat trap as a pup – and moved about with a pronounced hop. On the other hand, chickens weren't known for their intelligence.

Oxley eyed the chicken man suspiciously. He'd told him coming in he didn't want no dang high dollar rooster, and had turned down the first two prospects. "Why half price?" White asked.

The fowl in question didn't look like a half-price rooster. He sported a high comb and long bright red wattles. Head and neck feathers shined a reddish-golden; his body and leg feathers glinted in mottled blue and rust and green; those off his back flowed burgundy to red to orange; his tail feathers sprung high in black and blue-green arches. He was sure enough a handsome bird, and seemed to know it; strutting about the large cage, his head high, his beak slightly opened, his red eyes wide and fierce.

"He ain't much of a crower," the chicken man said. "Sounds sorta like a tornado siren with laryngitis."

White nodded. "What else?" he asked.

The man sighed and crossed his arms on his chest trying to decide what to say. "There's some signs that this feller ain't very aggressive, you know, with the ladies."

"Whadda you mean?"

"I mean he has a tendency to get henpecked."

White took off his ball cap and scratched the top of his head. He studied the rooster in silence. "Well…" he said presently. "For the price I reckon I can live with that." Then he added under his breath, "Guess I know what that feels like."

Back at his farm, White was about to release the new rooster into the chicken yard when his grandson came running up. The boy was smart like his momma and ornery like his gramp. That made him White's favorite.

"Hey, Gramp," the boy said excitedly. "Who's this?" He jumped up onto the pickup's lowered tailgate peering into the cage.

"Ain't give him a name yet. Thought you might have one."

"Let's call him Tyson."

"Like the fighter?" White asked.

"Who?"

"The boxer," White answered. The boy gave his gramp a puzzled look. "Before your time, I guess," said White.

"No, I meant like the chicken mom buys at the store."

White grinned and nodded. "Seems about right." He opened the cage door and prodded the rooster out. "Welcome to your new harem, Tyson."

The rooster alit with some squawking, gathered himself, ruffled his feathers out some, did a little preening, then looked about. The group of hens gathered across the yard looking back at Tyson, muttering amongst themselves. The rooster raised his head high, puffed out his chest and strutted toward them. A fat old hen, white with brown neck feathers who they called Maybelline, walked out from the group and stopped in front of Tyson, cocking her head left, then right. The rooster threw back his head to crow, but only a scratchy screech came out. He stuck out his left wing, lowered his head and started waltzing in a circle in front of the hen, then put the right wing out and circled back, describing a figure eight. The big hen watched him for several seconds making several clucking comments during the dance. In the middle of Tyson's third circuit, Maybelline walked over and pecked him soundly on top of his head. Tyson squawked moving back a step or two, then turned and fled to a far corner of the yard, flapping atop a fence post.

"How much you pay for that rooster, Gramp?" the boy asked.

White would later reflect that, though tasty, Tyson was the most expensive fried chicken he'd ever et, even at half price.

 
My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
my Website


 

Let me tell you about Charles W. Sasser, who for name-dropping purposes I'll call, Chuck. Chuck is a living breathing Indiana Jones, only with a longer resume. However, I don't think he carries a bullwhip. Like Dr. Jones, Chuck has been a college professor and an archaeologist/anthropologist, but unlike Indy, Chuck isn't the figment of some Hollywood maven's imagination. Chuck is for real.
That's his picture to the right which is a pen and ink done from a photo taken right after he'd eaten a bowl of kimchi. You can see by his expression he knew it was a mistake. And the hat…well, the hat was made from the hides of 38 Australian geckos who tried to sell him insurance. Chuck has a low tolerance for cute. The t-shirt, I believe, came from a garage sale in Marrakesh.
The day after he graduated from high school at the tender age of 17, Chuck joined the navy to literally escape those cotton fields back home. He later signed up for the Army Special Forces where he served for thirteen years, and is a combat veteran of several wars. He was a police officer in Miami, Florida and a homicide detective in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds degrees in history and anthropology, and has taught at universities and lectured nationwide. I met him because he moves in writers' circles having over 3,000 published articles and more than 50 authored books to his name.
An extraordinary adventurer, Sasser has solo canoed the Yukon River, dived for pirate treasure in the Caribbean, ridden horseback across Alaska and camels in the Egytian desert. He has climbed mountains, sky and SCUBA dived, kick boxed, busted broncs, driven a Smart Car in traffic, and it's said once had a latte with Bigfoot. He holds a record for flying an ultra-light aircraft across the U.S. I think it's for the number of hours without stopping to use the restroom.
I saw Chuck the other day. "Hey, Chuck," I said. "Whacha up to?"
"Getting ready to go to Afghanistan. A general at the Pentagon called and wanted me to do a story on a Ranger unit over there. What about you?"
"Well, I'm headed to Bass Pro," I answered, slapping my stomach and huffing up testosteronily. "They contacted me about some guns and stuff they wanted me to check out."
Chuck nodded. "Yeah, I got the same flyer."
I decided to shift topics. "Say, listen, I've got this blog I'm trying to get people to read. Would you be willing do an interview for it?"
"Gee, I don't know, Phil. The General is sending a Gulfstream and—"
"Just a couple quick questions. I'll walk you to your car." I looked out across the vast WalMart parking lot, shading my eyes. "Where is it?"
"It's that white Lamborghini out there." He pointed to a dot on the horizon."A Lamborghini? Dang!"
"Well, it's not mine. The Pope asked me to see if it really would go 500 miles an hour like the salesman told him. I gotta get it back to him this weekend. He's sending Vatican One to pick it up."
He started walking briskly toward the Lamborghini. I trotted along, trying to keep up.
PT: So, Chuck, what do you consider your greatest adventure?
CS: Let's see…I've eaten raw seal liver in the Arctic [no seals were harmed in the writing of this blog post]; been bitten by a piranha on the Amazon; chased by a grizzly in the Yukon; dived with sharks; been wounded as a combat correspondent; parachuted into foreign countries…There're so many, I'll have to let you choose."
PT: Didn't you once do lunch with a Bigfoot?
CS: Unfortunately, I've never had the opportunity to dine with Mr. Bigfoot. However, a couple of summers ago, I backpacked the American Northwest and southeastern Oklahoma searching for him.
PT: Do you carry a bullwhip like Indiana Jones?
CS: While I have the greatest respect and admiration for Dr. Jones, I sometimes question his judgment. If I'm going into a gunfight, I'm not carrying a bullwhip. 
PT: Do you think you could take Harrison Ford? 
CS: Harrison Ford is an actor. In my estimation, after John Wayne, all the actors that follow are over-sensitive quiche eaters.
PT: What about Darth Vader?
CS: You take away that black robe and helmet and Darth Vader is just another tall skinny guy with prosthetic legs needing an inhalator. 
PT: Do you own a monkey? 
CS: I do not, nor have I ever, owned a monkey. I did date one once, though. Actually, she was an ape. 
PT: Do you have any Native American ancestry? 
CS: I'm one quarter Creek Indian, one quarter Scotch whiskey, and two-thirds…wait, why do you want to know?
PT: Census people asked me to clear that up. 
PT: How much did you get for your 1st published piece?
CS: $25. I was 15 years old and won a statewide contest for high school students writing about Oklahoma. I wrote about picking cotton. At that time, it's what I knew best. 
PT: Is it true you've never bought anything on Amazon?
CS: Absolutely true. I don't like machines, don't trust them; and they don't like or trust me. When I buy something, I want to deal with real live human beings. 
PT: How's that even possible? There are aborigines in Australia who've bought stuff on Amazon. Hell Heck, you probably know them!
CS: Then I'll get them to buy me stuff.
PT: What's all this I keep hearing about you and Kim Jung Il?
CS: There are a lot of disparaging remarks going around about poor little Kim, who, incidentally, doubles in Hollywood as Martin Sheen. I call him Il; he calls me warmongering, Western Capitalist pig. Otherwise, we have a compatible relationship.
By then we'd reached the Lamborghini. Chuck pressed a button on the keyless entry gizmo, and the trunk popped open. "Dammit Dang it!" he said. "I'm still getting used to this thing." He jerked open the door and slid in. The sleek machine roared to life. Chuck gave me a thumbs-up and zoomed off, narrowly missing a group of nuns getting out of a van, who gestured…well, angrily at him.
I watched Chuck speed out of sight in the Pope's white Lamborghini. "Guess I better head on over to Bass Pro," I muttered.
You can read more about Chuck's true-life adventures at his blog - http://www.charlessasser.com/wordpress/
 

My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
Visit my Website


 

 

 

Four years before the September 11th Attack, I was at Pearl Harbor. My wife and I had long planned a trip to Hawaii for our twenty-fifth anniversary, and we took the kids, both young teens at the time.

On our last day on the Islands, we scheduled a visit to Pearl Harbor. I'd been to the Arizona Memorial once before, and I wanted my son and daughter to have that solemn and most reverent experience; to gain some understanding of the heavy price America has always had to pay for shining a beacon of freedom throughout the world.

Upon our arrival we found all the boat trips to the Arizona Memorial booked for the the day. Ironically, about 90% of the visitors were Japanese. That bothered me, even angered me a bit. So we wandered the small park, taking in the view of the harbor and the other memorial plaques and monuments there on the shore. To assuage my pique against the Japanese tourists, I started walking in front of their camera views just as they took their shots. Passive aggressively, it seemed the least I could do.

Then something subtle happened. I didn't even notice it at the time, but later reflection brought it home.

After six brief decades as a human being…and a believer, I've found that coincidences rarely happen in life. Had there been seats on one of those boats, we four would've been able to visit the Arizona; we would've been able to stand in humbled silence before the Memorial Wall bearing the 1,172 names of sailors and marines killed when the ship was attacked on the morning of December 7, 1941. We no doubt would've been moved by the moment, gaining an indelible memory. On the other hand, had those things happened, we may never have met Dick Fiske.

I first spotted Mr. Fiske moving through the park and the gift shop as I made my photo op rounds amongst the Japanese tourists. He seemed to stand out. Somewhere in his 70's, he was a small, neat man dressed in a loose-fitting green shirt and white slacks. He sported a snow-white mustache to match his pants. His gossamer hair was white, too, but a military cap covered most of it; a little hat like you see American Legion guys wearing adorned with buttons and patches and inscriptions. I could see a Marine emblem on one side of the cap, and sergeant stripes on the other. The words U.S.S. West Virginia were embroidered on one side, and when he turned around I read "Pearl Harbor Survivor" across the back of his shirt. He carried a big white scrapbook. I was intrigued. I wanted to approach him, but was a little shy. This man was a hero, after all. As it turned out, I had no idea.

"Excuse me, sir," I said to him. "Were you on the West Virginia during Pearl Harbor?" In the American lexicon, the proper noun has become an event.

He looked straight at me, his eyes keen and bright. "I sure was, son. Would you like to hear about it?"

"Yes, sir, I would. And I'd like for my kids to hear your story, too."

He nodded with a smile, and I led him to a bench where my family sat.

He told us the events he'd experienced that Sunday morning over 50 years past, turning through the book he held showing us pictures to fit his narration. He'd been a nineteen year old Marine assigned to the Battleship West Virginia. In those days, those easy duty days in paradise, he was a bugler. It was his job that Sunday morning to go topside and play reveille for the ship's company.

He stood on the quarterdeck when the first torpedoes struck. The blast blew him across the ship. Stunned, he got to his feet. Looking astern, where the Arizona sat parked on Battleship Row, he watched as the bow of the great ship rose up out of the water followed by a massive explosion. The eruption blew him backward. Soaked in oil and water, but somehow uninjured, he got to his feet again and ran to his battle station on the bridge. Once there, he saw his captain receive mortal wounds when bomb shrapnel ripped through the windows. The ship was gone, and the abandon order was given. The young Marine jumped over the side and swam to Ford Island, helping those in the water not able to swim…those who needed help.

Dick Fiske survived that "day of infamy" at Pearl Harbor, and later 36 days on Iwo Jima. But what Dick Fiske did after the war is even more incredible. He accomplished what few of us could ever do: he forgave his enemies. Decades after the war, Fiske met Zenji Abe who'd flown a dive-bomber over Pearl Harbor. The two became friends, and Abe gave Fiske a sum of money asking him to lay two roses every month at the base of the Arizona Wall and play taps. Abe invited Fiske to Japan where he visited Ground Zero at Hiroshima playing taps at their memorial service. He continued to do both those homages for several years. In 1996, Fiske received The Order of the Rising Sun from the Japanese Emperor for his reconciliation efforts. Richard I. Fiske died in 2004 at age 82.

Here at the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 Attack, I don't know if any of us are ready to reconcile with those who attacked us that day, to forgive them. I don't think I am. Those enemies don't appear to be interested in any kind of reconciliation. It seems we daily get messages from some quarter in their camp that their on-going intent is to annihilate all Americans, every man, woman, and child. Tough to forgive people like that. They appear to be against all we believe in: the right to say and write what we want, worship how we choose, go where we please, freely choose fellow citizens to represent us in our government, help those in need, allow all citizens the opportunity to better themselves. Though not a perfect people, decent Americans have always known the difference between hatred and tolerance, tyranny and liberty.

Today we can mourn our honored dead, and pay tribute to the sacrifice of those who died for freedom's sake. Maybe by the 50th anniversary of 9/11 our country and the world will be in a place where we can find Dick Fiske's and Zenji Abe's kind of forgiveness.

 
My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
Visit my Website

A poem keeps popping into my head; something from high school, an Emily Dickinson ditty. There's a couple things odd about that: 1- I'm not what you'd call a big Emily Dickinson fan; 2 – that I remember anything from high school is amazing. But even though I possibly could have gone to high school with Emily, she and I have almost nothing else in common, that is to say, I'm not a reclusive virgin poetess.

Well, I suppose it is true I spend an inordinate amount of time shut away in my room chittering away on this dang computer talking mostly to the screen and my dog; so, okay, I may be a little reclusive. And I may have dashed off a bawdy limerick or two at some point. But I do have kids, even grandkids. I swear they're mine. Do not for one second believe a word about their being adopted. They just say that.

Anyway, back to this Dickinson poem, which keeps rattling around in my head like a Little Richard song*. I'm thinking Miz Dickinson was way ahead of her time. I mean, there may have been some social networking going on in the mid-19th Century, but I doubt it was anything like today. My guess is Em had maybe twenty friends, tops, and those probably included some goats and chickens and such up there in Amherst, Massachusetts; I have a few of those myself. Followers, it is said, were even fewer. So I'm pretty sure that's why she wrote this poem:

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us – don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog.

I definitely understand what Emily was going through. Sounds to me like she was just as paranoid as the rest of us. And it must've been a whole lot harder, because she didn't even have a "Like" button for people to click. Can you imagine?!

Well, this baby frog better get back to telling his name the livelong day to (hopefully) an admiring blog.

*For a demo, go here: http://tinyurl.com/2pxo7h. Picture me as the fat white guy.

P.S. please like me.

My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
Visit my Website

It was going to be 108 in the shade that day…again, so we were trying to come up with something new to do inside besides play video games. Jamison, my six-year-old grandson, had come to spend a couple days, and it had fallen on me to keep him entertained…and uninjured. He's one of those little guys who likes to keep things moving; not only his body, but his mind. In both cases it's a struggle for me to keep up with him.

Catch was out because of some stupid woman rule about not throwing a ball in the house; checkers had already drawn to a Mexican standoff; the 550 piece puzzle we'd picked up at Bass Pro a few days prior (a big-mouthed fish leaping in sunset waters) was completed on the dining table; that is, all except for one piece, which we suspected Jamison's little brother had confiscated, and possibly eaten. We'd already done the theater scene, and we both agreed there's just so much you can watch involving animated yard gnomes and/or six inch blue beings.

So we were at our wit's end…almost.

"Let's make something" he said.

"What do you want to make?" I asked, thinking along the lines of Lego structures.

"Cookies," came his immediate response.

"Cookies?" I said aghast. "I don't know nothin' about bakin' no cookies."

"We can do it, Grampy," he assured me. "Call Mooma (a.k.a. Grandmother). She'll tell us what to do."

As an aside, Mooma is a holdover moniker from Jamison's baby-talk years of which he hasn't yet let go, much to my wife's chagrin. I'm glad I got away with just "Grampy."

So we got phone support from Mooma. Fortunately, she wasn't in New Delhi, so I understood most of what she told me to do. Jamison and I managed to get everything mixed up and put on cookie sheets, although most of his contribution involved licking utensils and sticking his (licked) fingers in the dough. And one egg fell to the floor instead of the bowl, much to the dog's delight. Grover is always happy when the boys come to visit, as he knows he's likely to get food windfalls.

Our cookie of choice was your peanut butter, and therefore had to be "mashed" prior to baking. According to our support technician, this is where you dip a fork in water and press the tines onto the cookie dough ball. This flattens the pre-cookie and creates those hash marks you often see on that denomination of cookie. Jamison insisted he be in charge of that task, and despite my repeated order not to lick the fork between mashings, he did it anyway.

After all was said and done, we managed to bake up a good batch of pretty tasty, non-health code compliant, PB cookies. But, hey, I figure at 375 degrees for ten minutes, any cooties imparted would've been cooked well beyond virulence.

And did you know cookie dough, even mashed, will turn out bigger baked than raw? Go figure. We found one big cookie per sheet, and had to cut them into squares to get them off it. Didn't upset the taste, though. They were pretty dang good, even if we do say so. However, I think Jamison's mom was upset with me that his lunch that day consisted of half a dozen cookies. But I did, I told her, throw in a nectarine so she and Mrs. Obama wouldn't think totally ill of me.


My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
Visit my Website

Eighty-six year old Soc Ninekiller never kept the leash on Little Wolf when they came to Veterans' Park, even though Officer DuFranc told him he should.

"I could write you a ticket for that, you know," Officer DuFranc said in his deep cop voice after his first admonition. Charlie DuFranc was an imposing figure, standing six foot five in his leather cop jacket bristling with cop tools and burnished badge. And, of course, there was the daunting Glock holstered at his side. The stern visage on his broad black face helped, too.

Soc, sitting on a park bench, whistled his dog over and snapped the leash onto the collar. Little Wolf put his front paws on the policeman's razor-creased blue pants at the knees. Officer DuFranc reached down to pet the miniature husky and scratch his scruff.

"How you doin' girl?" Charlie asked. "Huh? How you doin'?"

"Son of a bitch," Soc said.

"What?" Charlie looked up, surprised.

"Waya is a male."

"Oh. Well, you need to keep him on a leash, Soc."

Soc nodded. "He seems to like you, Charlie."

"Mind if I sit?" DuFranc asked. Soc made a gesture indicating consent, so Charlie sat. Little Wolf sat, too, and looked up at Charlie with a tongue lolling grin. His panting made him appear to be laughing.

"Where'd you get this dog?" Officer DuFranc asked.

"Didn't," Soc answered. "Showed up on my porch one morning, grinning like now, wanting breakfast."

"You try to find his owner?"

"Yep. Checked the neighbors; put flyers around. Even took out a classified. Been a month. No response."

Charlie nodded and looked down at the dog. Little Wolf looked intently up at Charlie, prancing his front paws. "Woof," he said to the policeman.

"Dog like that must belong to somebody," Charlie said. "Doesn't look like a mongrel."

"My wife always liked dogs," Soc said. "Had one when the kids were little. But they grew up and left home, and that old dog died. Never got another."

"Why not?"

"Raised on a farm where dogs were outside animals, had to earn their keep. Help with the livestock, go hunting. Never had one as a pet. My kids fed their dog treats and loved it up. Sometimes I believed they liked that dog more than me."

"Hmmph," Charlie said nodding, as if he understood.

"Wife asked if we could get another dog a time or two, but I refused. Dogs are a pain, I told her, so she let it go."

"So now you got this dog," Charlie said. "How does that square?"

Soc looked off into the distance remaining silent for some time. DuFranc was about to stand and depart, when Soc continued.

"My wife was just a girl when I married her. Prettiest thing I'd ever seen. We were together sixty-two years before the cancer took her. Been about a year now. I had no idea what a broken heart was until she was gone. Never knew loneliness was such a deep hole."

Soc got quiet for another spell. "You believe in the spirit world, Charlie?" he asked at length.

DuFranc looked sideways at Soc. "If you mean God, yeah. I believe in God."

"Well, there's that," said Soc. "But I'm talking about things happening. Some call it coincidence, like this dog showing up on my porch. I never had much truck with dogs, now this blame thing crawls up in my bed every night. The odd thing is I let him."

Charlie thought about that for a few seconds, then said, "Well, I better get back at it." He stood and touched the bill of his cap. "You have a nice day, Soc."

After DuFranc's patrol car rolled out of sight, Soc reached down and unsnapped the leash from Little Wolf's collar. The dog gave Soc a cheerful "Raff!" and ran off on a sniffing tour. Soc knew he wouldn't go far.

My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

Use these links to check out:
Legends of Tsalagee
GAME
Visit my Website

A certain group of men meets for coffee every so often. They live in a small town; most have for most of their lives. Some would call them elderly: those of you backpacking your way across campus, or zooming your way through careers and parenthood. These guys have already done all this, and have been placed in a box society calls "retired." Their paychecks may now come from retirement accounts and Social Security; their status meetings are now coffee gatherings; their parenting has evolved from scolding disciplinarian to indulgent grand, but that doesn't mean they're out of it. Maybe they're not quite as stylish and trendy as some, but still hip in their own archival sort of way. Their collective wisdom doesn't result so much from a level of IQ as it does from experience.


Around the table there's Hayward, a once dairyman turned flower grower; Punch (Gale), an ex- mechanic, ex-carpenter, ex-trucker who spends a lot of time and money at Bass Pro; Soc, a Cherokee elder, and miser of the spoken word; Abel, an ex-banker now tomato grower; and White Oxley, a callous-handed working man and unsolicited philosopher. There are others who come and go at the monthly meetings, but these five are the "regulars." Some fish, some golf, all attempt to avoid their wives. These coffee meets are one such escape. A main rule of theirs, like the sign hung outside the old Our Gang/Little Rascals clubhouse, is No Girls Allowed. It's not so much a misogynistic thing as it is their lifetimes of confoundation with the female of the species. The all-male coffee meet gives them a forum to discuss this issue without fear of reprisal, as well as others.

One such instance:

"You know, women is a lot like bass," White Oxley said.

That statement was offered after Hayward had said, "A man once told me, if it weren't for sex, men and women would've killed each other off a long time ago."

White stirred the lukewarm tan liquid in his mug, as he waited for someone to request elaboration. The cup once held coffee, but had become so diluted with creamer and sweetener, it now resembled, and tasted like, the tan icing you'd find atop a doughnut shop maple bar. When no one responded, White continued on his own. "You can spend a lot of time trying different lures to attract them, but they can always find a way to jump off your hook."

"Had this crankbait onest called Plum Crazy," Punch said. "Pretty thing; expensive, too. Ole boy at Bass Pro told me when bass saw it they'd wet themselves. Then he laughed, sort uh crazy like. Never caught nothing with it, though."

"Now see, that's what I mean," White said. "Your women just don't often appreciate what a man has to offer."

Soc grunted and sipped some coffee. "In fishin'," he said. "You need to lower your expectations and raise your commitment. 'Spect that's true between women and men, too."

The table got thoughtfully quiet as the others pondered Soc's pronouncement. One or two nodded as if they might agree.



My name is Phil Truman and I write novels.

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When the commercial came on, I keyed in the History Channel numbers on my cable remote, but nothing happened. I tried it again; still nothing. By then the late Billy Mays had come on, and very loudly started trying to sell me some "Miracle Putty."

"Dang it," I said, frantically pushing several buttons on the remote, desperately trying to get to another channel, any channel. Even the Mute button didn't respond, nor the Power button.

As a last resort, I got out of my lounger and went over to physically turn off the TV. I finally found the TV's off button, but not before Billy told me about a dozen times the number I should call to get the putty.

"I'm going to go get some batteries," I hollered to my wife in the next room.

"Where are you going?" she asked. Uh-oh, I thought to myself

"To get some batteries," I said.

"What STORE, I mean," she said.

"A store with batteries," I said. Please, God, no!

"Why don't you go to Wal-Mart? I need some things."

She hastily wrote out a list and handed it to me. I said nothing. I just took the list and went out to the garage and got in the car. Then, while sitting there in the darkness, I put my head on the steering wheel and wept bitterly.

It's not that I don't think Wal-Mart is a fine company, or that they don't have fine stores with wonderfully abundant, well-priced merchandise. It's not that I don't think their employees are friendly and semi-helpful. It's not that I don't know that without Wal-Mart in our economy America would become Uganda or France. It just that their stores and parking lots are so…so…vast. In the future, when scientists talk of the distances between the planets in our Solar System, they will replace Astronomical Units – A.U. - with Wal-Mart Units to make the expanses more understandable – Distance from the Sun to Pluto = 4,000,000,000 miles or 2 W.U.

No matter what time of day you go to a Wal-Mart the only parking slot available is the one located next to the street. Even then you have to get out of the car and push the five or so empty shopping carts out of it before you can pull in. The store from there is just a glow on the horizon, if it's night. If it's daylight, it's best to have some Boy Scout skills, or at least a Boy Scout with you, to find an entrance. I was lucky this day. A teenaged cart guy wandered by in the nick of time, leisurely gathered up the carts in an otherwise empty space, consulted the GPS device he had on his hip, and started slowly pushing the half-mile long cart train he'd assembled toward the glow on the horizon. I zipped into the slot, narrowly cutting off a van with a handicapped sign dangling from it's rearview mirror, and quickly jumped out to follow the cart kid to the store before he disappeared in the distance.

When I finally walked into the front entrance, I smiled at the older gentleman standing just inside. I nodded to him and said, "How're you doing today."

"Whatzat?" he replied.

"HOW ARE YOU DOING TODAY?" I repeated.

"Yeah, it sure is," he said. "You need a cart?"

"No thanks. I'm fine."

"What?"

I smiled again and shook my head no. If I was going to gather up all the things my wife had on that list, I sure as heck would need a cart, but my pride wouldn't permit me to take one. Real men didn't push shopping carts through Wal-Mart.

As I walked past the "foyer" and into the front of the store, it opened up before me like a cosmic dome. You'd get claustrophobic in Carlsbad Caverns next to this store. I must have been standing there with my mouth open, because a very friendly young man with blond hair and a blue vest approached me and said, "Can I help you find something, sir?"

"Yeah," I said still looking into the distant haze near the other end of the store. After a few seconds, I looked at him. I could see enthusiasm in his eyes and a bright friendly happy expression on his face. You could tell he was eager to please me. If he'd started panting, it would've been hard to distinguish him from a golden retriever.

I looked forlornly down at my wife's list. "Where would I find the…um…well…these things." I showed him the list.

He didn't hesitate. I obviously wasn't his first husband shopper. "Go down this main aisle to double P, turn left and follow that through Housewares until you get to Business Supplies. From there veer to the right until you see a sign that says 'Phoenix, 2 miles.' You're almost there. Keeping the lawn tractors on your right, stay on that aisle until you reach the next major intersection, then turn left, then right, then right again, then left. You can't miss it."

A couple of hours later, laden with a dozen bulging plastic bags, I walked past a different older gentleman at the entrance/exit. I surmised there must have been an older gentleman shift change since I'd come in.

"Thanks for shopping at Wal-Mart," he said.

I grinned and hefted my bags. "Quite a load," I said to him.

"Whatzat?" he asked.

When I got home, the wife helped me un-bag everything and put it away. But she looked puzzled.

"So," she asked. "Where are your batteries?"

It was a rhetorical question.

The lastest scientific estimate of the age of our planet is about 4.5 billion years, and the age of the known universe is about 14 billion years, give or take a few hundred million years. Our galaxy is thought to have 200 billion stars, plus or minus a billion. From what our best scientific instruments can observe, the known universe has about 125 billion galaxies.

Light from our sun, traveling at 186,000 miles per second (or 669 million mph), takes about 6 hours to get to the outermost planet in our solar system. From there, it would take about 4.5 more years to reach our solar roommate, Alpha Centauri. Going on to visit our next door neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, that little sunbeam would take 3 million years to get there, provided it made no stops for eating, sleeping, or going to the bathroom. The human mind cannot even begin to express a comprehensible number to measure the distance from the spot you currently occupy on this planet to the edge of the farthest galaxy.

But time and distance only seems to be relevant to us humans here on Earth. Without getting into any theological discussions, in some circles it's believed that the human species has only been around for about 3 million years, which, when compared to the age of the universe, is a fractional percentage so small my computer's calculator goes nuts trying to display it.

Most of us here on earth take up less than 10 cubic feet of space. If you were a tourist to the sun, and stood next to it to have your picture taken, in an 8X10 print of that picture, you'd be microscopic, unless you are Aretha Franklin. And our sun itself is almost microscopic alongside the largest known star, which the Hubble telescope recently discovered, and which was subsequently named Alpha Rush Limbaugh.

We humans have an average life span of about 70 years on this earth. If you're fortunate enough to live in the United States, you can add about ten years to that, and could even go up past 100, if you're lucky or Congressman Robert Byrd (D-WVA). But against the 14 billion years the universe has been in existence, we'd be beyond generous to say 100 years would be like a molecule of poot in a hurricane.

If you've managed to stay with me this far, you've been very patient as I've droned on about a bunch of boringly huge numbers, and no doubt you're wondering - like an August town hall attendee - "Is there some point to this?"

Well, it's two things, actually, and both deal with perspective.

If you consider about half the number of stars in the observable universe - 12 trillion - that would be equal to our current national debt ($11.7 trillion). Which, by the way, is growing at a rate of about $4 billion a day, or $5 billion if you factor in Michele Obama's shopping trips.

If you consider the times we're living in then it would be wise to think about what Saint James said - "What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

Universal Health Care, Cap and Trade, Cash for Clunkers, the natioal debt, Democrats vs. Republicans, conservatives vs. liberals, Cowboys vs. Redskins, whites vs. blacks vs. latinos vs asians vs. arabs vs. Jews vs. Muslims vs. Christians. In the final analysis it's all folly.

In 1953 Arthur C. Clarke wrote an award winning short story called "The Nine Million Names of God." In it monks in a monastary set out to list all of the names for God evident in all human cultures. They believed the universe was created to identify all the names of God and once the naming was complete, God would bring the universe to an end. Rather than encode all the names by hand, which would've taken them thousands of years, the monks hired computer experts and their super computer. It turned out, in the story, the monks were right. Here's the last line of Clarke's story - overhead, without any fuss, one by one the stars began going out.

I suppose all the problems in our world and in our country should weigh heavy on us if we're concerned citizens and decent human beings, but in a billion years Who's going to notice?