TRESPASS

  …sneaking about a roadside attraction…

There’s an old barn tucked around the bend of a rugged two-lane road, just on the other side of a rise. It’s probably been there forever: plank sides aged to near black; shingled roof haphazardly covered long ago with corrugated metal. From astride the seat of the BMW, I see double doors agape, hinges frozen, perhaps. I could peek inside were I to choose to stop.

 

 

I choose to stop. Peering in, thin slivers of light pierce through flicker pecked holes in the tinder dry wooden sides and from the roof where the tin has shifted. As my eyes adjust, stalls come into view; stalls with remnants of forgotten tack hanging from nails, I suppose. And a loop or two of rope. The center of the space is swept clean and vacant save for a pair of wooden barrels, a couple of tall fruit picking ladders ~ three legged things fashioned so they could stand on uneven ground ~ and deep in the shadows a… what’s that? 

     A 40s era Ford Ferguson tractor ~ an 8N I’m thinking ~ more rust than color. Dad taught me how to drive on one when I was about eight. I remember the cold, bare metal seat he’d covered with a shearling jacket scrap, the ratchety hand throttle to the right of a Bakelite coated steering wheel, the shift knob that, in concert with the tractor’s engine, buzzed and vibrated like crazy and the lever I’d yank on to lift any disk plough or a spring tooth harrow or a land plane I might be pulling when I needed to turn around. Maybe there’s a disk out back, I think.

     I close my eyes for a moment and inhale deeply. The place smells of dust and sweet ag filth, but mostly of yesteryears. I have to wonder if there’s a nasty old ratter cat hiding in the darkness somewhere, ready to scream a defiant scream and launch itself onto my face to claw out my eyes should I venture in.

     

So I don’t, nor do I go out back looking for ploughs and stuff. It just wouldn’t be right. The fence line that had marked the rancher’s property line long ago decayed and fell into the weeds and thistles, but I know shouldn’t be trespassing. Tiptoeing away, I glance this way and that, hoping the ass end of my motorcycle riding togs won’t be on the receiving end of some old boy’s birdshot pellets. 

     Riding off, I think about how I might feel if curious passers-by were to pause and peek inside my family’s barn from sixty or seventy years back. Hell, it was old when we moved in in ‘57. 

     I wonder if the thing is still standing.

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

DEAD BIRD

 …things wished undone…

I’d not hung out with Tommy very much. A roly-poly high school kid who hadn’t yet lost some of his baby fat, he was a shirttail friend of some of my pals. Funny, rarely. Serious, sorta. Athletic, not at all. Down to earth? Yeah. Maybe that. 

     His major asset may have been a century-old cabin I’d been told about. It was located an hour away in the Sierra at a gold rush era encampment called Jonesville. Set amongst some towering pines and backed by a fresh, burbling creek, about six miles past where the pavement ended, I only visited Tommy’s place once.

     

My Honda Trail 90 was nearly new. Buddy John’s older Trail 55 had miles on it and John would have made it but his Saturday lifeguard gig cramped his schedule. Buddy Duane had a more powerful 125, but its configuration didn’t lend itself to gravel or dirt roads and when we got to where the pavement ended, he turned back. I motored on not quite knowing where I was headed.

     Jonesville is little more than a collection of hammered together ramshackles, lit by candles or kerosene at night and warmed by cordwood in the woodstove that would also serve as the cook stove. Each place had an outhouse some distance away, old Reader’s Digests sometimes served as toilet paper. To find a particular cabin, one departed the main road that headed over Humboldt Summit. Every worn out  two-track intersecting that main road looked the same. I found Tommy’s on the third or fourth try.

     Dinner that evening would be hobo stew, a mix of ground beef, potatoes, bell pepper and onion wrapped in foil and tossed into campfire coals. Tommy had prepared four of ‘em, so there would be leftovers. He’d swiped some Brown Derby beer from his old man to wash things down a bit. With nothing to clean up, just aluminum foil to ball up, in the gathering dusk we set out so he could show me around.

     We hiked a few yards to the end of his shared road, Tommy talking about the families that would be his neighbors. Most had owned their cabins for generations, many built by a great grandpa or grand uncle. None would ever be for sale. Past the end of the two-track, a single track waded into grasses and mule’s ear. Not far beyond, a tiny creek – Scott John, I think it was called – gave melody to the meadow. A sinking sun offered alpenglow to the eastern hills as a three-quarter moon slipped over their summit. We each took a moment to unload some of that Brown Derby and then toed up the fisherman’s path on this side of the creek. Kid though I was, I was struck by the beauty and the balance of it all. So peaceful. So right. I’m not sure if I then believed in heaven on earth, but on the banks of Scott John, I might have experienced it.

     We came to a rounded outcrop of granite around which the little stream curled. There, the stream pooled. “We’ll catch us some trout here tomorrow for dinner,” Tommy said. “Cook ‘em the same way as tonight so there’s no dishes to do. You did bring that extra foil I asked for didn’t you?” 

     I shook my head. I think he must have asked John or Duane.

     “Well, shee-it. I’ll have to figure something out.”

     And I’m sure he did, but not that I’d remember.

 

Breakfast would be Cocoa Puffs or Fruit Loops, dry – “Just like the Indians ate ‘em” – then we were to go hunting.

     “I don’t hunt,” I said.

     “Doesn’t matter,” Tommy said as he slung a .22 over his shoulder.

     “What’s in season?”

     “Doesn’t matter.”

     “Doesn’t matter?”

     “Yeah. We’re just gonna do some target practice,” and he handed me a gunny sack with some empty Brown Derby bottles tinkling at the bottom.

     He banked the fire in the wood stove and we headed out. 

     Walking up the track that led back to the main road, he told me about Robber’s Roost, a couple of miles over the pass where somebody name Black Bart robbed the Humboldt Stage that ran from Chico to Susanville. “Did it more’n once they say. And he always left a poem. Weird, huh?” 

     Across the road, we hiked on soft, scented duff through a stand of evergreens for maybe a half mile. We came to the edge of a glade where the white, barkless hulk of an ancient yellow pine lay in the morning sun. 

     Leaning the rifle against a standing tree maybe twenty good paces away from the downed timber, Tommy told me to set some bottles “make ‘em a foot or so apart.” 

     By the time I’d lined up seven or eight, I heard Tommy rack a shell pointing the gun at bottle number one. And me. 

     “Hey!” I’m sure my utterance was involuntary.

     Lowering the weapon, Tommy grinned. “Get back over here. Let me show you this thing.”

     I’d handled a neighbor’s BB gun once or twice, and this didn’t seem much bigger. 

     Tommy explained how to put in the bullet and how to sight through the points at the end of the barrel. “Just make sure you point this” – he tapped the end of the barrel – “right at what you want to shoot. You should be able to hit it. It’s pretty simple.”

     I tucked the rifle’s butt against my shoulder and peered down the barrel scanning each of the bottles I’d set on the log. Which one would I choose?

The Oregon Junco is a little black-hooded bird a bit smaller than an empty Brown Derby bottle. Looking like a miniature medieval executioner, Juncos flit through forests and clearings feeding on seeds and only saying eetle, eetle, eetle. I’d seen lots of them on hikes with my dad. Part of the balance, Juncos are prey for foxes and red tail hawks and others. Including, this day, me.

     One lit at the end of the row of bottles. Tommy tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “You think you can get that one?” 

     I didn’t think so, but I swiveled the .22 in the bird’s direction and squeezed off a round.

 

Looking back over seven-and-a-half decades, now, I am certain that there are acts I have committed that will justifiably condemn me to an eternity in hell. Lust. Avarice. Gluttony. But the sight of that innocent little guy simply collapsing out of sight off the back of that log without so much as a sound or a flutter must top the list. 

     Mouth likely agape as Tommy slapped me on the back and uttered words of congratulations, I handed him his gun, hiked back to the cabin, fired up my little Honda and – stomach hollow – headed home.

 

© 2026

Church of the Open Road Press

 

MOM'S ACCORD

 “You just never know what might happen.”

 

Mom’s last car was a two-door Honda Accord LX. A ‘78. Manual transmission. She wouldn’t own an automatic because “you’re not really driving.” She’d given up her ’69 Toyota Corona two-door hardtop because brother Beebo needed a car for his frequent commute up to Central Oregon and, although it was far from worn out, she’d pass it on and get a replacement. Mom didn’t like in four-door cars. It seems that decades before, some little kid was riding in the back seat of a big old Buick or Packard when the back door swung open rounding a bend somewhere near Pasadena and the kid fell out knocking his head on the pavement. The kid probably died. I don’t know. But that’s why she’d never let Dad buy a car with more than two doors.

     The Honda was a pretty good car. Honda’s always have been. With gold paint and the upgraded LX appointments, this purchase may may have been the only time Mom, having grown up during the depression, splurged on much of anything. As a teenager, I recall her Hoover being older than I. And the ancient Sunbeam Mix-Master was still working when Dad purchased a shiny new Kitchen-Aid for her one Christmas – a gift for which he was roundly excoriated.

 

     Mom loved the car. Long retired, she rarely drove anywhere other than to Safeway once a week and to Partridge Elementary School to pick up a grandkid when needed. Every month-and-a-half she’d take a six-mile round trip through town to the Chevron station between Broadway and Main Street on Eighth. There were countless gas stations between her north-of-town home and that Chevron, but this one was most convenient because she could turn left out of the little subdivision street onto the main drag that would lead a one-way that headed south though town; left into the station; then left out of the station onto the one-way leading north. She believed in filling up before it got to half-a-tank because, “you just never know what might happen.”

      Once, I exercised some courageous temerity and asked Mom why she engaged in an eight-mile round trip for gas when there were so many other options so much nearer. She corrected me: “It is only six miles!” and suggested, “When you get older, you’ll understand.”

 

Indeed, I was a bit older when I came to understand. One day, shortly after that little Q&A, Mom gave up driving. “Macular degeneration,” she explained. “I can’t see well enough to drive anymore.” 

     “Macular degeneration. Yikes. That doesn’t sound good.” 

     “It certainly isn’t good.”

     “How long has this been goin on?” I asked.

     “Oh, for some time now.”

     The question I didn’t ask was whether she thought she could see well enough when she was driving around that grandchild, but she volunteered: “I drove down to Eighth and Main for gas because I could see out of the driver’s side of the car better than the other side. Left turns always seemed safer.” My eyes still grow wide and my heart still skips a beat or two when I think about that statement. “At my last exam, Dr. Lott, my ophthalmologist, asked how I got to the appointment. When I told him I drove myself, he asked for my keys, which I gave him and then he called your brother Beebo, to pick me up.” She paused. “I didn’t like that he called me ‘crazy.’”

     The Honda would sit on slowly flattening tires for years until she finally let it go. I think to Beebo. (I certainly didn’t need it. It only had two doors.)

 

 

Career necessitated my move out of town – two, maybe three hours away. That conversation took place during one of my once or twice-a-month visits. I would take Mom on errands and then to lunch at the Olive Garden. “Livin’ kinda high on the hog, aren’t we?” she’d comment as she stashed once-warm breadsticks in her ancient purse.

     Mom learned to take advantage of a ride service called the Clipper. At her age, the pass was free or nearly so. With a mere phone call, she could arrange trips to doctor appointments or to Safeway. “It’s so convenient and so simple and the drivers are so nice. They help me in and out and load my groceries.” She smiled over her tepid cup of minestrone and looked at me through her dim brown eyes and smudged – because it no longer mattered if they were smudged – glasses. “Everyone should use the Clipper.”

     “Everyone?”

     “Well, everyone who gets to be a certain age,” she said. “You know, Barbara’s still driving and so is Grace. Tooling around town in those big old cars. Probably blind as bats. Ellie is too and she’s at least eight years older than I am.”

     “So is their vision beginning to fail?” I immediately wished I’d not chosen that word.

     “I don’t know, but they’re all far older than seventy-five and that’s just too old to be driving around. They’re just accidents waiting to happen.”

     “Have they already been in accidents?”

     “They’re all at least seventy-five! You know your Dad had to stop driving when he was seventy-one.”

     “But Dad had a stroke and was suffering with dementia. Couldn’t find his way around.”

     “And he couldn’t even find his damned glasses!”

     I had to nod.

     “I was seventy-five when Dr. Lott made me stop driving and I think that’s about old enough for anyone!” Adding, “You know, you just never know what might happen.”

 

 

Mom lived independently for at least another decade fumbling blindly around the house, and then in assisted living for about another ten years. 

     Like all mother's sons, I rarely reached accord with mom's announcements or encyclicals. I sip the occasional whiskey and smoke the occasional cigar. I like my steaks medium rare rather than well done. I listen to some rock n roll music along with some classical and some show tunes. I’ve long been registered a Democrat. Our Subaru has four doors as have most of our cars. Hell, my ‘91 Jeep didn’t have any doors at all and neither of our kids nor any of their friends ever fell out of any back seat of it or any car we ever owned. 

     So what I think I’m most haunted by is Mom’s ‘still driving at seventy-five’ decree. 

     You see, in May of this year, I turn seventy-four.

© 2024

Church of the Open Road Press

MY CLASSMATE THE PRESIDENT

…a ‘No Kings Day’ reflection…

 

This song of the schoolyard bully is really very sad

He earned lots of infamy by simply being bad

 

He’d push his way through other kids, sneer at them as he’d pass

But no one had the guts to cross this big pain in the ass

 

With impunity he’d needle kids and throw his weight around

Trip up the unsuspecting and laugh when they hit the ground

 

He always drove the fastest car and clutched the prettiest girl

Brag about his conquests after every single whirl

 

He ridiculed the exchange kid, at school for just one year

We’d always hoped that foreign kid would knock him on his rear.

 

     And there-in lay the problem with which we’d not contend

We’d looked for someone else to stand, our honor to defend

 

The fact is really simple as has always been the case

To confront to a vile bully one must meet him face-to-face

 

But that simple tenet is oft tossed out due to angst and fear

Easier is always: “Step aside, make his path clear”

 

So because we all allowed it, junior tyrant had his way

No one displayed the courage to stand up to his sway.

 

     On graduation evening there were many in the crowd

And I and many classmates received accolades aloud

 

But when the bully crossed the stage, the cheering it did stop

It typified the adage about hearing a pin drop

 

He slunk off in the darkness, no one else to push around

Until I’m sure, he stumbled on the new group that he found.

 

 

Fifty years have come and gone as quickly as a flash

Our class did meet and reconvene, our history to rehash

 

The bully did not make our fest, but he didn’t give a fig

In the interceding years, it seems, he’d found a better gig.

 

     To the horror of his classmates, he’d became our President

Ensconced inside the White House where he wouldn’t pay the rent

 

His bully-ness did not subside, in fact it grew and grew

And though he was our President, he was still the creep we knew

 

He pushed right through our statecraft norms said he was much smarter

Than those who’d paved the road to peace with treaty and with charter

 

He took to subjugating folks with skin of different color

And deftly used the tools he had to divide each from one another

 

He gloried running roughshod over laws from sea to sea

And truthfulness and righteousness and basic decency

 

Surrounded by like-minded folks or those with none at all

He pushed our hallowed nation near a precipice to fall.

 

     But time does what time always does and soon his days were through

We looked at one another not quite knowing what to do.

 

         

A Presidential passage is not a thing to cheer

But somehow this was different, relief exhaled far and near

 

A few of us decided we should go attend the wake

We’d do it out of honor for our alma mater’s sake.

 

     The chapel was but empty as we peeked inside the door

Footsteps of fellow mourners didn’t scratch across the floor

 

The crypt to which they rolled his mass was deep and dark and cold

And soon he’d be forgotten like a story never told.

 

     ‘Twas sad indeed but sadder still is this dogged phrase complete

If  his legacy stays unshared, damned history will repeat.

 

 

Let’s not forget the tragic life that brought such pain and pall

And redouble fearless efforts to encourage good for all.

 

     Looking back, by backing down when he was just a kid

We underwrote the awful things he ultimately did

 

If one of us had glared him down then picked him up with song

Perhaps he’d have found the beauty in simply trying to belong.

 

     Our nation thrives on good will and our care for one another

In joining hands with those disdained – embracing like a brother

 

So hold with your friends those needing love, the sad misunderstood

For only in so doing will this land be truly good.

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

Chance Meeting with Arnold

 …people you wished you’d met on the road...

 

Lost to the dustbin of my memory is exactly why or when, other than Arnold Schwartzenegger was governor. Serving as the curriculum leader in a Sacramento area school district, and as an obligatory member of the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), I found myself enrolled in a conference of educators focused on something-er-other and arranged for the ballroom of a hotel across from the state capitol. During a much needed afternoon break where perhaps 500 of us were milling about clutching store-bought cookies and sipping Coca Colas, the lights in the hall flashed on and off, on and off. The group quieted, someone took the mic and said, “Supes and Assistants, the governor wants a photo op with about eight of you.” 

         

I shrunk to the back of the venue, but my name tag label “Assistant Superintendent Curriculum and Instruction” betrayed me. Tapped on the shoulder, someone herded me and seven others into an adjacent room where we were instructed to line up. “The Governor wants to see you.”

         

A near-silent buzz coursed through the assembly of colleagues that I’d never met. Seventh in the line of eight, I straightened the tie I was wearing, a black something decorated with images of Crayola crayons. Very elementary school.

         

Mr. Schwartzenegger – a bit shorter than I’d imaged – entered with an aide, a broad smile and an outstretched hand. This should only take a few minutes, I thought. But it didn’t. To the superintendents this would be their less-than-fifteen minutes of fame. Each one grasped the governor’s hand and would not let go until they’d offered more-than-two-cents-worth on some issue or topic I was sure the governor either didn’t particularly care about or about which he’d already made up his mind. As he inched closer, I realized his smile was pasted on, the handshakes perfunctory and that this was simply one of the duties an elected person had to perform if they wanted to stay an elected person. It seemed artificial, fake. I decided not to play the lobbying game.

 

Months, maybe a year, prior, the governor had been riding his glitzy ‘Wide Glide’ motorcycle along the Pacific Coast Highway though Pacific Palisades sans the required helmet. 

The city cop pulled him over and issued the required citation. Rumor has it that Arnie thanked the officer for his service.

 

My turn came up and as Arnold Schwartzenegger grasped my hand, I looked him in the eye and quietly – so as not to embarrass him – said, “Jeez, governor. A Harley?”

         

His hand immediately pulled away and I felt a firm Austrian index finger pointedly poking my chest four or five times. “I bet you drives zee Bee Em Dawbue!” he said with a grin. An honest grin. 

 

I nodded as he clapped my shoulder. Making a different kind of eye contact, together we laughed and he said, “You be safe, now.”

 

With a wink he was gone to whomever was next and I was left with the impression that, in that moment, Arnold Schwartzenneger was anything but fake. 

I’ve always wished we could have done the Pacific Coast Highway together.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

WALKING TO MY FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL

the first of about 60

first days of school for me

 

 

 

My first day of public school would be my first day in first grade. Rosedale, my neighborhood elementary, was impacted for Kindergarten and Mom was told she’d have to cart me 20 minutes across town to Sierra View which she would not do because she knew with certainty, “All they do in Kindergarten is let kids play.”

     So with Roy Rogers lunch pails at our sides, Mom walked Beebo and me to the confluence of Stewart and Bidwell Avenues, there rubbing both of us on our Butch-waxed, slick-backed hair, telling us to walk up Stewart Avenue because it was straight and it didn’t go along the creek which she deemed dangerous even when reduced to a September trickle, and that she’d see us when we got home that afternoon. Adding, “Now don’t tarry along the way.”

 

As soon as she turned her back, Beebo and I winked at each other ~ me with both eyes ~ decided to ignore Mom’s instruction and ambled along Bidwell Avenue, passing the muddy trail down the Chico Creek embankment ~ the one with the stinging nettles we braved when, during the just-ended summer, we went down there to wade; rounding the big bend and the pool in the creek known as the Log Hole where the bigger boys often drank beer and swam naked and probably peed in the creek; sneaking through the sinister tunnel of black walnuts and oaks that arched over the road and the stream; tiptoeing past Jim, the crazy man’s house ~ Jim, a shell-shocked World War II vet sometimes was found in the middle of Bidwell Avenue on all fours, coughing and spitting up something; turning onto Highway 32 at Chico’s original La Hacienda Mexican restaurant ~ a place that emitted aromas making my mouth salivate and water involuntarily (maybe this explained something inexplicable about poor Jim to my six-year-old satisfaction); crossing Chico Creek on the highway’s bridge ~ tossing pebbles and bits of glass and road debris into the water; descending into the parking lot of the Triumph motorcycle dealer where we placed our noses against the shop window so we could peer into the darkened showroom ~ Mr. Brownell also carried lesser-known brands like Honda and Lambretta; passing Smitty’s Hudson, right next door ~ though Smitty went out of business along with that make years before, his Hudson sign still attached to the old, vacant building; heading west on to Oak Street; spying the alley where the bracero gleaners who picked up culls from our almond orchard lived in ramshackle hovels; and pausing, finally, in front of the Hoobler warehouse where Dad took our almonds to market ~ Hoobler, we were told, once ran sheep on what would become our five acres. 

     Beebo and I waited there until a big man in a suit and tie on the other side of the Oak Street told us we could cross safely. The big man turned out to be Mr. Self, the Rosedale School Principal who drove a light blue Lincoln Continental and who would later sell a Siamese kitten to Mom for ten dollars.

     Over in the parking lot, Mom sat behind the wheel of our ’54 Ford Ranchwagon waiting ~ making sure we’d made it to our first day of school okay.

 

© 2025

Church of the Open Road Press

The Story of Peach

 History: unlearned

.

.

The wind was hot and fast and immediate. It kicked up right after the flash. In that instant, Peach knew what was up. At 74 he’d read a lot, seen a lot.

     Eighty years ago, the Enola Gay dropped its payload and commenced ticking of something sinisterly ~ or maybe sincerely ~ called the doomsday clock, something that measured the metaphorical seconds between now and some presumed midnight oblivion. Twenty years later, two constructs became real, even common. One was a series of missile bases dubbed ‘Nike’ dotting every fifty or so miles across the American landscape. The other was the backyard-built fallout shelter, plans of which were readily available at the library or newsstand. Both John Hershey, who authored a book, and Slim Pickens, who starred in the final scene of an early Kubrick comedy, perhaps inadvertently reinforced the advisability of digging such a vault.

 

    When the Nike base was nearly completed just north of town, Peach’s father broke ground on a fallout shelter positioned near the water well in his five acres of peaches. (Peach, the son, never forgave fully Papa, the papa, his little nomenclature joke.) The hole was deep and square and, initially smelled like Vina loam, rich and dark. Cinder block and mortar changed the odor to a minerally musk that would infuse the cavity for years. Entry to the shelter was gained through a circular, hinged lid like you might see on the deck of a submarine: crank wheel one way on the outside to open and the other way on the inside to seal shut the underground space. A neoprene rubber ring prevented the inward seepage of radon in the event of... 

     The unspeakable was often spoken.

 

Finished, the rust tinted metal stairs echoed with each foot fall. The space was stocked with a month or more’s worth of freeze-dried backpacking food ~ Papa being a hiker ~ and gallon glass jugs of water should the line jury-rigged into the well fail. The provisions bill from the Ski Hut in Berkeley, where Papa got his back country supplies, almost equaled a month’s wages. Mom had been appalled and said so many times, shaking her head and gasping exasperated gasps, as they drove north in the Ford Fairlane with their boys in the back.

     Peach and his late brother, Charlie set up their S-gauge American Flyer electric train on the concrete floor, using one of the two duplex outlets to connect the transformer. The single pull chain light cast comic shadows that grew from foot to shoulder. Peach and Charlie’s neighborhood pals, the ones who didn’t make fun of Peach’s name in front of him, liked to trace their oblique shadows on the concrete floor with chalk and then laugh at their masterwork. Once, Peach started down the stairs to surprise Charlie as he attempted to move beyond first base with Yvette ~ secretly known by classmates in high school as Yvette the Corvette ~ and was told to knock, Goddammit, before coming into the shelter. Never mind that there was no place to knock on that heavy circular hatch door. Later, when Charlie shipped out to Vietnam ~ Charlie said he’d be the good Charlie over there shortly before he left ~ Peach plugged in an IBM Selectric, set it on a rickety desk made of two sawhorses and scrap of plywood and typed his college term papers. 

     There would be no Yvette for any kid named Peach. 

     Dammit, Papa!

 

Peach was standing next to the orchard pump house maybe forty feet from the submarine hatch when that wind blasted into being. He glanced at the opening which was now always open: too much a pain in the ass ~ and maybe too heavy ~ to push down and crank shut after each visit even though each visit had become less and less frequent. Besides, the neoprene had rotted off long ago so the place and all of its contents was always coated in a powdery film of loess. Peach faced the furious gale that was coming from just north of town.

     Not so long ago, there would have been children to shepherd in. Little ones. Ones that toyed with Barbies and GI Joes; ones that played both house and Rat Patrol; ones that practiced violin and brass tuba because they liked the acoustics even though they didn’t know the word.  Ones that needed the strong arms of Peach and the caring heart of Carah to find their way from time to time. How quickly those moments passed. And now: how well they were doing!

    Peach and Carah had taken ownership ~ there was no one else in line ~ after the accident. Some moron driving on a frigid pea-soup morning without his damned headlights on crossed a center line. He couldn’t make out Peach’s folk’s station wagon tiptoeing carefully through the tule fog heading somewhere, nowhere. Peach was amazed at how many townsfolks knew Papa or Mom or both. 

     Kids and trains and tubas and term papers now gone, the cool of the underground made a good place for storing peaches before market. Peach’s peaches ~ perhaps that was the punchline Papa was shootin’ for all along ~ were renowned for their sweetness, delicate skin, and ample dimension. A robust pie would need but four of them. Wearing one of Mom’s old handmade aprons, Carah discovered she could reduce any recipe’s sugar allotment and did so before filling crusts ~ crusts she’d perfected. It wasn’t simply the fruit that gave rise to renown.

Inheriting the place was never in the plan. Once Peach earned his credential, he and Carah immediately lit out for a different horizon, one less agricultural, maybe a bit more foresty. Jobs for history teachers were a dime a dozen especially if the candidate could coach, so Peach claimed he could coach wrestling and maybe volleyball. Thus, he spent three or four years prowling the sideline of the mountain town’s football field as an assistant never quite figuring out the difference in the roles of a defensive guard and a defensive tackle. Then, one late-October evening, they received the call. Taking leave, Peach never returned. With a bit of a resume, some experience under his belt, he figured he could venture home and substitute until something came up locally. 

     The dime a dozen adage held. Teaching history at his old high school, now ‘Mr. Peach’ hired boys and girls to tend the orchard paying each a little in cash along with firewood and in-season fruit. When asked about the submarine hatch, he simply responded “Rumpus room.” High School curriculum mentioned little about Hiroshima and most years, Peach didn’t get that far in US history, which, he rationalized, was a good thing recalling the terrifying nights when, as an eleven-year-old, he had to crawl into bed with Papa and Mom after reading pages from John Hershey’s account of the world’s first wartime atomic blast. 

     Standing in the orchard with dust pellets and grit peppering his eyes, Peach wondered how many other US history teachers had made a similar miscalculation, leaving how many now in charge to pass off history unlearned as simply fiction.

     Facing the wind and under a dust-cloaked sun, Peach struck out north toward the long abandoned Nike missile base and wondered who among the townsfolk would attend his memorial, knowing the answer would likely be none.

     It being midnight and all.

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Church of the Open Road Press