Upended Stock Tanks, Empty Feeders.

All the wonderful horse friends have left Wise Acres. Amy, the last one to depart, was a Tim Trabon intervention, a companion for Harley who was bereft and needed some company. When Harley passed away (a week before Tim did) it signalled the emphatic end of an era. Freddie had bought him for me well over thirty years ago as a colt. His good friend Amy made it through the last awful winter, then gave up the ghost on her friend Harley’s grave. It was the last place she’d seen him, and she chose to graze there a lot. It’s where she died and is buried. Sweet and gentle, she was an Argentine Criollo, an agile polo pony in her previous life.

Then the rains came. The storm season. But the damned tornadoes are no longer a threat to the horses.

I had a big beautiful Appaloosa with rust spots who loved storms. In driving rain and hail he’d be out there grazing. I think it must have felt like a massage to him. He looked like a war horse, but what a gentle old soul. Dutch.

Tanks for the memories.

I turned the stock tanks over, no need for them anymore.The salt blocks have melted away. The barn swallows are the only inhabitants of the loafing shed all the horses had liked for shade and shelter. They gathered there and seemed to conspire, to plan. When the little guy comes out with the fly spray, you all surround him and I’ll walk in front of him—don’t let him go until he knuckle-rubs our backs, and scratches our bellies.

Blue, Roxy, Dutch, Jack Ford, Mighty Mouse, Red, Lopez, Harley and Amy. The denizens of Wise Acres. Before them, Percy, Senor, Bullseye, Mr. Walker, Belle, and a dozen others. All with distinct personalities. Marvelous creatures with dignity, humor, a bit of crankiness, and all incredibly giving when it came to that. Harley was an actor. Ears back when I’d feed him. I’d laugh and pull his ears and he’d say, sotto voce, stop that, you’ll ruin my pasture cred in front of the herd.

He was also a joker. I’d be in his pasture intent on some chore, tightening some fence wire, and he’d come up behind me and tap me with his nose, causing me to jump, startled. He loved that. Any tools I would lay in the grass he’d pick up and run away with, hammer, pliers.

Anyway, end of an era, and a fine one at that. Before the latest and final loss, they had all taught me plenty. As I say in the upcoming book, Chickens One Day, Feathers The Next, their teaching methods were varied but fell mainly into one of two camps: The “Bad things happen fast” method, and the “Don’t do that again” method.  Often the two were combined.  I’ve been kicked, bitten, rolled on, dragged, chased, bucked off, run off with, tree branched and humiliated.  I always came back for more. “The Horse Worrier” in the afore-mentioned book will explain a whole lot about the G-equine epoch which started when I was a little kid in Tulsa, and then haunted me all my days. I did love me some fine, fine horses.

Town for sale. Cal-Nev-Ari, Nevada.

The cropduster I wrote into the book

I've never been there but I wrote about it in Ruined Days, a thriller that got good reviews and few sales. I was there in my mind. Felt the dust and grit whipped up by the wind, saw the lone biplane, a yellow cropduster, rocking on its wheels until the desert wind subsided. Tri-cornered colored flags fluttered and snapped at an abandoned fireworks stand, and a lone telephone booth stood in the cheatgrass fifty feet from the flagged lot in its own version of abandonment.

The doors squealed on rusty hinges when Travis, my protagonist, entered the booth, and wouldn't quite close but who could hear him anyway? He made a call in that wood and glass booth, read off some coordinates from the cell phone he took in with him. The glass on the phone booth windows was somewhat frosted from the constant barrage of wind-borne grit. A half hour later a Cessna landed on the makeshift runway, but that's another part of the story.

I noired the community down some--it's bustling compared to what I wrote about it, but I needed it to be a bit more desolate.

Town comes with casino, volunteer fire department

The town is real. In the book it was for sale for fifteen million dollars. It went to seventeen mil a few months after Ruined Days was published, and now it can be had for eight million. Its name (pronounced CalNevAir) derives from its location in Nevada close to the California and Arizona borders. A couple named Slim and Nancy Kidwell pioneered the place about fifty years ago, Slim passed on, and now Nancy is ready to sell. As a successful prospect you'd buy the town, airstrip, casino with slots, a diner and a bar. Listed is a motel and various other businesses including a convenience store.

Of the 350 residents, some are pilots who keep their planes in their driveways and taxi to the nearby airstrip.

When the Kidwells came not much existed but a dusty military airstrip. They had to haul water from the Colorado River. They planted barley, dug a well, got a land patent from the BLM and the town was born. None of that was easy. They were true pioneers, the last of the breed some say. If she sells Cal-Nev-Ari, she plans to stay. She's been there over fifty years, and likes the view, the vibe. And the town likes Nancy, from what I've read.

Book plug, of course

If you're interested, there are reasons to buy. It's a casino town with its own airstrip. There's a motel. The highway, US Route 95, connects to Las Vegas less than 70 miles away. It's on the market and the listing is here. If you buy it, tell 'em I get six percent for pointing you there. Nevada is the only state where prostitution is legal, but don't think Cal-Nev-Ari is ripe for a bunny ranch, as it's in Clark County where they're strictly prohibited. As of 2018, there's no income tax collected in Nevada. No corporate tax, no franchise tax, and no inventory tax. If I had eight mil, I'd be there. Writing and sculpting. I bet Freddie would even consider it. Great place for her jewelry and perhaps she'd learn to do a little cropdusting.

And it's sixty-eight degrees on this March third, compared to 20 in southeast Kansas. Maybe some of you well-heeled readers would like to go in with me. If you have a plane we could buzz over there.

This is as good a place as any to pitch Ruined Days, a pretty decent thriller. It can be accessed here.

A book for 2019, and maybe two

This may be the cover…

A book of essays, Chickens One Day, Feathers The Next, has muscled its way into line ahead of the thriller L.A. Hardscape, and some of the pieces are pretty sober. Some aren't. "Publishers Never Call," for instance, is downright silly. The title piece is about death, though the quote itself comes from the subject, USMC Captain A. Rudolph Green, who was a close friend and one of those crazy buddies for whom no escalation of whimsy was ever too much.

I recall the time he stood on the mat outside a grocery store which kept the glass door from opening outward until a gaggle of angry customers and the store manager were all shouting at him. He handed me the keys to his Jaguar and said, "We may need a fast getaway from this one," studying the effect of his experiment on the faces pressed against the glass. As I drove up, he stepped aside, and the crowd at the door fell outside upon one another. He leaped into the Jag roadster with the steaks he'd bought, and it was off to another adventure. I loved him for these outrageous moments and for the whiskey-fueled talks that lasted into the morning hours and may have involved philosophy of a very high level.

He once visited me at the University of Arkansas and, at a Razorback football game, was beside himself, helpless with tear-causing laughter, when the fans erupted with the victory cry, "Whooooo PIG, Soooooeyyyyy," "Did they really yell that," he'd say every time. "And you chose this school."

There are essays, memoirs, about horses, Louisiana, motorcycles,Tulsa, KC, Van Gogh, Cormac McCarthy, rejections, rodeoing, birds, advertising, boxing. Oh, it's varied and faceted, as we say when neglecting themes altogether.

Ben Carmean is working on a cover, which means the book will look professional, inviting, of interest. I hope you'll find it all of those and more. All my books have marvelous covers because they're all done by Ben. I don't know what I'll do when he finally says, "I'm not doing any more covers for you. You never paid me for the first one."

It's good enough to have merited a contract from the publisher who did Ruined Days and Resume Speed, and it will join those books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other sites.

John Paul Drum, thinking about this…

So, if all goes right, 2019 will feature two more G-books. I just need to finish the other one. And, first friday in May, The Hilliard Gallery opening is a G-solo show, with a title from the Chickens book, "A Love Letter To Tensas Parish." Some of the sculpture is inspired by some boyhood time spent in St. Joe, Louisiana, and there will be deep south blues harp and guitar and drum music by John Paul Drum and The Big Three. Louisiana finger food and Mudbug Beer, too.

Some men and women from the parish will be presented in pictures and short bios; the mayor, a poet, a young distiller, a lady entrepreneur. I'm working on sculpture now and it's more fun than it probably should be. I saw things down there, or believe I did, that direct me in the welding of these pieces, some of which are effigial, some metaphorical.  Bayou freedom informs them. I can't explain it. Perhaps the pieces will speak for themselves. John Paul Drum's music will surely help. It should be quite fun and I hope you can make it. Six to nine, and later, May 3rd, Hilliard Gallery, 1820 McGee, Crossroads. Just follow the strains of southern blues in off the sidewalk. (Click this for a youtube of him and Nine Below Zero)

The Double Dog Dare of Christmas Lighting

That’s a fuse? Good luck with that.

There. I proved it. The lighting exists. I swagged lights across the front of the small pasture by the road, and they all worked. All fourteen strands of them. For years, Then, this year, the lighting scheme defied me. It kept blowing the first strand and they'd all go out. The definition of insanity was invoked. I replaced the first strand again and again. Pow. So I bought all new lights. This after installing those tiny fuses into the blown strand only to have it go out again. Have you ever tried to mess with those little fuses?

All new lights shone satisfactorily and I turned around to walk back inside. I paused to savor the lights one more time before I shut the door. No lights. Darkness taunted me.

It has become a...thing. Freddie likes to see them when she drives home at night. A beacon of warmth and Christmas cheer to greet her after the long drive. It's the least I can do for the woman who supports my writing and sculpture habits. The last few nights, no lights. This is unacceptable.

I shorten the string daily, taking the farthest string and replacing the first blown string. Sure, the box says three strings only. But for years I've strung together fourteen of them with no problem. Now it's as if they're daring me to just try that again. Double dare. The double dog dare even, and I have taken them up on it. I have stepped up, put my tongue on the frozen flagpole. You dasn't dismiss a double dog dare and risk that shadow of humiliation. Always with you, starting upon awakening. He backed down from the DDD.

They're still on. Tread lightly.

Two nights ago the male aussie puppy chewed a strand. They popped and all went out and he shrieked, ran to the house. This was an act of dog. I could live with it. I replaced that strand. There was no mystery to it. I didn't have to be smarter than the lights this time. I can handle this, I felt. And the pup had a moment of training, to boot.

I just looked outside. They're still on. I'll look once before bedtime. Shh.

The compensatory richness of writing.

Nominations don’t mean you’re in, just closer…

Sculpture paid little better than a hobby this last year, and the writing bought me a lunch or two. Fifty bucks here, five bucks there. Not enough to keep it up if I didn't love it. The poetry paid off in other ways though. This year brought three nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and the year before paid off in one nomination.

I'll try to put that in perspective; once a poem or piece is accepted in a journal or review, that's a bit of an award all its own. It means I got through the slush piles to acceptance, which means I became one of the few to be published in that issue. Maybe I was in the one percent to three percent. Then, out of the hundreds of poems published in that journal during the year, that poem was chosen to represent the review as a nomination for the Pushcart Prize. Each publication sends six nominees. Six.

The nominations are their own reward; to actually be included in the prize book is further winnowing of many entries. Sort of a pipe dream, but it could happen.

This poem was one of the six that the editor of Shot Glass Journal/Muse Pie Press sent this year. It's an introspective little poem that just popped out the day after my sister's funeral, when I was winterizing, titled Time to Think

Turn the pots over so they don't freeze and break.
Cold season again, each year the big flower pots of
concrete and glazed clay get heavier. The season got
heavier yesterday when my sister was buried, frigid
day, it snowed a bit just a shot across the bow, a
warning from the slate gray frigate bearing down.
Time to put the stock tank heaters out. Time to
think about time. Not so much of it left I think.

The following day an email informed me that No Tokens had submitted "Grapette" as one of their six nominations. It, too, deals with age, and my sister, though from a lighter angle.

The best for a hot kid on a hot Louisiana day. RC is a close second. Then Nehi.

Grapette

I pour grape juice into an old bottle

one I've cleaned and judged suitable

for pretending the contents are Grapette

and I'm a small boy in Louisiana

 I drink and see pecan trees and the

edge of the bayou where I ventured to

find a dead cow, legs up, vultures

busying about looking like old men in

 feathery overcoats the smell overpowering

and I ran home chased by swamp things

like The Heap, a comic book I allowed

into my fears and troubled dreams

 then, the sunshine again. Some safety by

the front stoop, a dog that would guard me,

my annoying sister who told me I was

in trouble, but she always told me that.

 The only thing missing is the fizz that

made me belch when I drank too fast and

and then I see the satellite dish in the

farmyard on a post and I'm old again.

The poem that Ramingo's Porch sent is dystopian, much longer, practically an epic poem titled The Undefeatist, and rather than reproduce it here, I'll just provide this link. You can access it if you wish. (It first appeared in Longshot Island as a set of poems titled Thunderbolt Poems—it’s the second poem down.)

  Other things happened on the writing front. I submitted some guest blogs that were accepted, and some articles. I made a foray into film with an article that Stage 32 liked enough to publish. Click here for that one.

  I'm happy to say I made it into Rattle twice in one year, no small accomplishment for me as I've been trying to crack that ceiling for a couple of years. The latest attempt won Editor's Choice in their monthly Ekphrastic Challenge where you pair up a poem with a supplied piece of art. Its title is Locked Brakes on Blacktop, and both the poem and the artwork can be found here.

  The downside? 314 rejections. That can get old, especially in an unbroken string week after week. But it's like mining, I guess. You just keep chipping away--the vein might be a few feet ahead in the dark tunnel. You can't stop now. And with each written word, hopefully, you're getting better at the game. Who knows, that next novel might be what I need to strike it middle class.