KING OF THE HAREM

Deceptive Death Awaiting

I found this picture as I am trying to make some sense out of the mountain of slides and prints we have.  I mentioned him in another post.  My friend Paul and I got a little too close to his harem.  Paul is just out of frame here.  This dude weighed 700 lbs if he weighed an ounce.  When he came sliding out of the surf and started heaving his blubber at us, we ran...I mean, WE RAN!!!  Somewhere I think I have a shot of Paul's pant leg in his mouth and that grill looked a lot like a really big, unpleasant dog with 3" canines.  Thinking about it now, I'm not sure how I managed to grab this photo.  This fellow really wanted to do us harm.  Loathe though am to admit this...after the first significant adrenaline rush, we both thought we had discovered a fun new game.  It was:  "Let's see if we can run in hiking boots across 50 yards of beach  to escape this brute who was really quite adept at it"  The subtext was:  "Let's not think about what might happen if he actually catches us."  The bottom line was, I'm glad we both survived, but I feel bad that we were so stupid and actually kind of thoughtless concerning how Mr. Bull felt about the whole thing.

ONE OF THE LAST THINGS YOU WANT TO DO IN MEXICO

A very dead rabbit

Any of you who have been following my posts, I said I would tell you more about this accident.  Debbie, this makes the Pantera accident seem like a fun day.  This happened at the end of a three month trip Gail and I took to Mexico and Guatemala.  Originally, we were planning to go to school in Jalapa, a University town near Veracruz.  But, when we got there, the gentleman who had told us he had made all our arrangements looked at us kind of like, "and you are....who?"  He was a professor there and the brother of one of Gail's good friends.  But, we soon found out he was nothing like his brother.  By the next day, we did our usual, sync-think and at the same time looked at each other and basically said, "You know, we have the Summer free...a car that will go almost 1,000 miles on a $5 fill-up, and...we were kids and sleeping in the car seemed reasonable.  That has always been one of the greatest things about Gail.  As long as what I suggest doesn't appear to involve painful death, she is up for it.  So, we had a great Summer...drove all over.  One of the dumbest things I did was:  One night in Cristobal de las Casas, the only place we could stay, which was actually very nice, didn't take credit cards, and I felt we were running very low on pesos.  These were the days when there wasn't an ATM on every corner.  You had to find a Western Union office or knock over a fruit vendor.  And...Villahermosa was just on the other side of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.  The facts that crossing the Isthmus required climbing thousands of feet on the south side and then descending same on the north and none of the roads were paved and it was raining so hard that Noah would have been nervous just didn't seem like deterrents.  Then, one night we stayed in Palenque and we were truly enjoying ourselves because we were the only ones there. Thus, we decided to wash our car.  Just as soon as I borrowed a hose from the gardener and found some implements to complete said task, and Gail donned a bikini in anticipation of the inevitable water fight our sense of well being vanished.  A VW van and a water truck pulled in and 8 guys piled out, all carrying Uzis, MAC-10s and M-16s.  They looked at Gail the way one might expect and those that looked at me seemed to be contemplating how best to remove me from the picture.  We ended up being left alone.  Apparently Tequila was sufficient to entertain these guys who seemed to be drug runners or some of the early members of what became the Zapatistas.  

A few days later, we really were just about out of money so we decided to get on home.  On the very last day, after we crossed the bay of Tampico on the same ferry that was in the 1948 Bogart movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre and were patiently awaiting our turn to exit, a very impatient vaquero in a Ford F-150 just floored it and dragged his bumper all down the side our car and sped away.  Fortunately,  la rubia looks at such thing far more philosophically than do I.  As she attempted to calm me, out of nowhere, she suggested that we pull over and put on our seat belts.  It seemed odd, as these were pre-seatbelt law days and we essentially never wore them.  But I do not question her in such situations.  Not 10 minutes later, a 2 1/2 ton cattle truck that appeared to be parked on the side of the road, but was actually idling, waiting to make a U-turn, failed to see us and went for it.  Then, he saw us and slammed on his brakes, totally blocking the road.  You know how they say your life passes before your eyes?  I didn't experience that, but is was strange how many thoughts passed through my head in that millisecond.  Its an odd decision to have to make.  I had two options.  I possibly could have pulled hard to the left, which would more than likely resulted in us cartwheeling across a soccer field with some boys playing on it.  I couldn't do that one.  The other option was very strange because in that very short period of time I distinctly recall thinking that if we went underneath the truck, we would just be decapitated.  So, I did my best to hit his rear duals as squarely as possible.  There was an explosion like I've never experienced, despite other similar collisions.  Lights out.

I don't really know how long I was unconscious.  But, I awoke to Gail saying, "Are we going to catch fire?"  She was hearing the radiator dripping on the exhaust manifold.  The engine was actually underneath us.  I didn't stop to reason, I just realized that my door was jammed shut.  Ironically, my worst injury came from knocking that door open with my left shoulder.  When I got out, I realized what Gail had been hearing and it occurred to me that the car was a diesel and fire was not likely.  Then, I noticed the cattle truck, upside down in the ditch.  After checking on Gail, I went over to see how the truck driver was.  He was gone is how he was.  Then I noticed that there were two guys checking on Gail.  I realized that they were the guys who had been driving alongside us, passing and getting passed for the last couple of hours.  They were in a car identical to ours and I remembered that I had seen them pull over just before the impact.  Turns out, they had picked that very moment to change drivers and were like 300 yards back from the impact site.  They were brothers and the older one was a hospital administrator in Tampico.  He told me that God had saved them...that they should have been to ones that it the truck.  Oh, he also informed me that the truck driver was muy drunk and had taken off running.

So, as we were trying to figure out what to do, everybody that drove by asked me where the bodies were.  Then, a big crew-cab pickup pulled up.  A very pleasant woman climbed out.  It was very comforting for Gail to finally hear English.  Judy was an American.  Her husband, Rafael, worked for the Department of Agriculture.  They both stressed what we all already knew.  Time to get the hell out of there before the federales showed and tossed us in jail until they figured out what happened.  So, we threw our stuff in the back of their pickup (they had three kids), so we rode with the brothers.  It was all a bit disconcerting.  We just left our car in the middle of the road, having paid the local cop to take care of it.  But, Gail had hit her head on the dashboard and was hit in the back of the head with something heavy.  I broke the steering column with my chest and the windshield with the top of my head.  And we had no idea how badly hurt we were.  Many, many hours later we crossed the border into McAllen, Texas.  The border guard looked at us like, "Do I really want to know what this story is?"  Because, the brothers couldn't take their car across.  We weren't supposed to leave our car in the country.  So, their brother came across the border and picked us up.  Gail and I just tossed our tourist cards and showed out passports like we were just visiting for the day.  The fact that we were with three Mexican nationals and covered with blood wasn't going to be easily explained.  Fortunately, the guard decided that he was probably better off remaining ignorant of our circumstances.  We met up with Rafael and Judy the next day.  Fortunately, we didn't have any serious injuries, so we just hung out with our new friends for three days until we could get a flight home.  The second evening, we eventually got around to actually introducing ourselves.  Judy said, "You're not related to a Lester Braun from Chowchilla, are you?"  Turns out Judy grew up in that little Central Valley town where my uncle was the only doctor and he actually delivered her .  She and Rafael met in college at University of Tucson.  And, as I said in the first post, that close of a brush with death made us reevaluate our timetable on going forth and multiplying.  Nine months later, we had a goofy little baby girl.

GAIL AND HELEN vs. GALAPAGOS CATTLE

Here, Gail and Helen, (different Helen from the porpoise picture) in the midst of a stand-off with some bulls in the back country of Isabella island.  They were not being friendly at all.  Gail eventually had to wrestle one to the ground to establish dominance.

FLYING PORPOISE

This dude was getting some serious air time.  He's probably eight feet out of the water here about 200 yards off the starboard bow of our boat. Helen...if you happen to read this, please go easy on me.  This was a Nikon F2 with a 300mm lens and I didn't have much time to do anything but focus...the F stop was all wrong...I tried to fix it in the darkroom, but it was what it was.  I just saved it because I've never seen a porpoise just this high in the wild.

SEA LION MODEL

This sea lion very nearly could have broken me.  I mean, wandering around Ecuador and the Galapagos, those sucres just burn a hole in your pocket.  Then, right in the middle of it all, there's always a diva.  The only thing that saved me was that her currency was fish, not money.  But, did she ever love the camera.

WORLD'S MOST IMPRESSIVE ENEMA

Does this really require any explanation?

LUCKIEST, OR FASTEST, SEA LION EVER

I stumbled across this little guy after and obvious run in with a shark.  I know it might look kind of bad, but he was going to heal up just fine.  How he got away with this is pretty amazing.  Actually, these guy are fast.  My friend Paul and I were kind of checking out a harem of female sea lions, giving the 700lb. bull in the surf a little less respect than he deserved.  Suddenly, he was out of the water and coming at us in a hilariously terrifying fashion.  Waves of blubber rippled as he did this hyperdrive impression of a caterpillar.  Thank God for lava floes...or we would have looked a lot worse than this little guy.

QUANTUM MISTAKES

Which one of these photos was taken first?  Einstein said the time exists so that everything doesn't happen at once.  It takes time and effort to wear a body out like this.

GAIL AND MY DAD

The stereotype of in-laws did not apply here.  There was a real bond of love and respect between these two people

THE MANLY ART OF RIDING BAREBACK

How much more bucolic could this picture get?

GAIL IN THE GRAND PRIX SJ

Personally, I loved this car because it really didn't look like a muscle car.  Yet, with 690bhp, my only problem was keeping rubber on the rear tires.  Gail thought I ruined it because it really was a nice car, appointment-wise...but when I finished with the engine, she knew when I was coming a block away because the windows in the house would shake.  This is one of the few cars that I didn't manage to keep.  It just got used up.

THE CAR THAT WOULD NOT DIE

OK, now we're talking fine automobiles.  This was known as the Klingon War Cruiser.  It even had a "WARP DRIVE" toggle switch on the bridge (some might call it a dashboard).  This was a wonder of GM innovation.  I mentioned it in another post.  For some reason, some people thought that converting a gasoline engine to diesel was a good idea.  It wasn't.  But timing is everything.  Just at  about 100,000 miles, GM did a recall on these and put actual diesel engines in them.  Well, just after that, my parents were driving down the freeway and a wheel bearing did something that I never fully understood and the left front wheel actually came off at full freeway speed.  I suppose to repay me for all the hell I had put them through up to this point, they asked me if I wanted it.  I was in grad school at the time and figured, "why not?"  My best friend was from London and thought these titanic American cars were wonderful.  Among my little group of Nahuatl scholars at UCLA, this car became iconic.  Despite the fact that Gail would not ride in it, I knew its profound value as a symbol of American decadence and poor taste.  In this picture, we are somewhere in New Mexico.  I was doing my dissertation on Colonial New Mexico, Matthew, the Limey, had a '58 Bel Aire that needed a new bumper so he came with me in the hopes of finding one amidst the sea of abandoned old cars that adorned every Pueblo and little village.  Why Kevin was there...not sure.  Amazingly enough, on the way home, just outside Farmington we found a '58 Bel Aire with a gleaming front bumper and nothing else.  We tracked down the owner and bought the bumper for $5.  I have no idea how long it took to get that stupid thing off.  The experience was heightened by a couple of really drunk Apaches who cheered us on by giving a UCLA war cry in homage to Kevin's sweatshirt.  You might be surprised how quickly something like that can become annoying.  Eventually, Matthew and I broke each and every one of those rusted bolts loose and we were on our way.

I must admit, after a couple of years, the iconic status of the War Cruiser was wearing thin.  But, being a bit short on funds, I could not justify getting a new vehicle until the warp drives gave out.  Then, to my great surprise, as I walked out to strap in the pod, I noticed an empty parking space between our new Mustang and our neighbor's new Corvette.  Yes, some hooligans had made off with the ship.  I was at first mystified, then somewhat elated and then dismayed as I realized that the back seat was full of rare library books.  Three weeks later, some very sly detectives noticed that an abandoned puke yellow War Cruiser had been docked in a "No Parking on Thursday for Street Sweeping" zone.  A broken driver's window, a split steering column housing and a screwdriver jammed in the ignition along with three weeks worth of tickets led them to suspect something might be amiss.  Thus, the Cruiser returned to me.  Fortunately, the books were still there.  I was shocked, because I figured that's why the gangbangers stole it in the first place.  Perhaps they read them and had no further need of them.  I could no longer keep her however.  She had been defiled.  Aside from that, I was afraid I was going to be flying that ship for the rest of my life.  It just wouldn't die.  I put 200,000 miles on it after my parents bequeathed it to me.  Good memories.

PIE PAUNCH, etc.

Please don't think I'm just being overindulgent in displaying images of us in a long lost universe.  I am in the midst of trying to scan and save all our old slides and Whit's bff and our "other daughter", Chastity, said that looking at pictures of us as kids gets her through the night at work.  I kind of look like the Pillsbury Doughboy here, don't you think?  This is at Oak Glen in probably 1975...no, I have short hair.  This was '77 or '78.  This is also for Gail's cousin, Nancene, because if you don't remember, you were on the other side of the camera here.  We haven't been there in years.  It was kind of a mandatory thing in the Fall to go there and pick apples and eat at Law's Coffee shop.  Best Apple Pie ever. Anybody know if it is still as good as it used to be?  Few things are.  If you look right above my gigantic 1970s belt, you can see the heartbreak of the dread disease, acute APO, more commonly known as Apple Pie Overload.  

This is also a lesson in the difference between men and women.  A woman would never post a picture this unflattering.  But, as a man, I don't really care.  I have not gotten through life on my looks (understatement extraordinaire).  Well, you know, that's not entirely true.  I remember once when we were dating, Gail told me that she always felt safe around me because when she would go out with other guys, leering, lecherous types would make remarks of the stereotypical construction worker nature to her right in front of her date and they never did anything about it.  But, she said that when she was with me, that never happened.  I am not  sure I completely understand this but I believe it may be due to the fact that for reasons unknown to me, even when I feel that I am smiling pleasantly, I tend to non-verbally communicate something along the lines of, "Hey, give me a reason to hurt you."  I don't mean to and I have always thought of it as problematic but being the eternal optimist that I am...it helped me score the perfect wife.

DAD AND THE USAF

This is the hospital staff my dad was in charge of on a Strategic Air Command base during the Korean war.  When I came across this photo I was reminded of one of my favorite stories that is a great illustration of my dad and the military at the same time.  Oh, by the way, Dad is third from the right in the back row.  This was a 100 bed hospital.  So, every night, they got 100 meals, even if there were only eight beds full.  The mess hall was on the opposite side of the base so my dad would tell his staff to just eat the patient meals that were going to go into the dumpster anyway.  Dad was not one to tolerate waste of any kind.  Of course, the base CO got wind of what he was doing and called him in and told him that he could not let the staff eat the patient meals, it was against regulations.  OK...typical military mentality.

A few weeks later, the CO had to come in for his physical.  My dad grounded him.  The CO looked shocked and asked what was wrong with him.  "Nothing." My dad replied. "Then why the %*&# are you grounding me?" the CO demanded.  "Because I can." my dad replied.  "OK, Doc, you can have the meals."  That was my dad.  I don't remember anything ever defeating him.

NOT A PARKING LOT INCIDENT

1971 DeTomaso Pantera

This was one of my favorite cars of all time.  This was my Freshman year in college.  This was back in the day when they still had Auto Shops on college campuses.  So, I was actually getting college credit for using the shop to build my '69 Grand Prix SJ.  Also, one of my favorites.  If you will allow me to digress (sorry Nancene...I know technical details aren't interesting) but the Grand Prix had a 428 that put out 390 bhp from the factory.  When I got done with it, I put it on a dynomometer.  I milked 690 horses out of that thing.  Anyway, whilst I was doing this I was driving this 1971 Pantera.  My dad bought it for himself, but my mother wouldn't ride in it.  If you've ever been in one, its a bit like a luge inside a jet engine.  So, I managed to weasel it away.  Afterall, a young scholar does need transportation and my main ride was indisposed.  My dad was an interesting guy.  He wouldn't just buy me a nice car, but if I were willing to build it, well...that was educational and nothing was more important than being educated.  To dad, education covered a very broad spectrum.  He had a reputation at the hospital because he was the only doctor who knew all the maintenance guys by name.  He loved building.  Thus, when I needed and Edelbrock high rise intake manifold and twin Holley 850s...no problem.  Back to the Pantera.  I was driving one morning, April 15, 1974, 5:36AM, (some things just stick in one's head) on campus.  It was still dark and there was this weird intersection that was kind of blind and definitely uncontrolled.  Like me, a guy who was late for work, driving a 69 Camaro, made the acceptable assumption that at that time of day there was no real reason to slow at that intersection because who the hell else would be up there at that time of the morning.  I never even saw him.  It was kind of an uphill sweeping curve that was fun to take fast.  And, as I mentioned, the other gentleman was late for work and guessed that he was going about 60 mph.  There was just this blinding flash.  I awakened in the passenger seat at some point.  Later, one of the cops actually said I was really lucky that I wasn't wearing a seat belt (pre-law days) because the way the Camaro center punched the driver's door, I probably would have been killed.  How's that for weird irony?  The other guy had a broken femur and was stuck in the Camaro.  So, I climbed out and surprisingly, I seemed totally fine.  I waited around for the other guy to be taken to the hospital and the cars to be towed.  One of the officers asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital.  I said, "No, thanks, I don't have a scratch on me, weird, huh?"  So, satisfied that I appeared lucid, suddenly I found myself alone in this intersection, contemplating what to do.  I started to walk to my grandparents house which was about a half mile away and it occurred to me that the shock was wearing off.  I think I started mumbling "Owww, no, really Owww....OMG!!!! totally Owww"  Somehow I made it to my grandparents house and called my parents.  They immediately left work and came out to get me.  A few hours later I was looking at an x-ray of my chest.  Every rib on my left side was broken at the spine and pulled out of the sternum.  By now, every time I breathed it felt like a dozen swords were being run through my chest.  Morphine and I became really close friends.  Fortunately my dad was a big believer in opiates and he had no problem just giving me a giant bottle of it.  I don't think I could have functioned otherwise.  Not to be a wuss...but my cousin Cindy had to come over and help me out of bed.  I've never experienced pain like that again.  Well, maybe when my dad removed my big toenail without anesthesia because it was ingrown...but that was short term.  Anyway, I healed...the Pantera was fixed. But...that was sort of its demise.  When my dad insured it, the agent didn't know what it was.  In describing it, since it's a Ghia body with a mid-engine 351 Ford Cleveland, the guy insured it as a Ford two door coupe.  Repairing it cost in excess of $10k...which was a lot in 1974.  So, they cancelled the policy.  I never really understood why, but my dad just stored it in our back garage.  I got it running and drove it for a couple months in 1984.  But when the voltage regulator blew,,,I know, it makes no sense whatsoever, but it just sat.  I still have it actually  Every once in a while I think I'm going to restore it.  Its actually a fairly rare car.  1971 was the first year they imported them and only 1000 came over.  I've only seen one other.  I think I haven't restored it because Gail's first car was a 1967 Triumph TR4A and in the early 90s I did a frame up complete restoration on it.  I converted all the Lucas crap to real electronics and those SUs were replaced with Webers.  I was really quite proud of it.  Gail said, "Thank you, I appreciate the thought, but that car was fun when I was a teenager.  I don't really want to be stranded on my way to work."  Its been in storage ever since.  I apologize for the length of this post, but...trauma....what can I say?

The most unlikely couple

As I go through our old photos, this one just screamed at me.  When Gail and I started dating, everyone told her to stay away from me.  At 17, I wasn't exactly a model citizen and Gail was the epitome of one.  Our senior year, she was voted class heartbreaker and I was voted wittiest boy which I believe actually translates to "smartassed a-hole" or something similar.  But...Gail ignored all those well meaning people and so far, it looks like its going to work out.

ANOTHER TRADE OFF

This is a trip Gail and I took to the Grand Canyon in 1981.  I am posting it because it reminded me of another great trade off in my life.  That VW Rabbit behind me...we bought that because we were planning to spend the coming summer in Mexico.  It was diesel and had two tanks, with the price of diesel in those days, we could fill it for about $5 and get almost 1,000 miles out of a fill up.  So, Gail and I wandered all over Mexico and Guatemala.  Then after risking our lives in a hundred different ways, including spending the night alone in Palenque with a group of guys armed with Uzis and M-16s (guessing drug runners), the very last day, just a few hours from the border, coming up the East coast out of Tampico, a drunk in a cattle truck pulled out in front us.  We hit this 2 1/2 ton stake bed truck hard enough with that Rabbit to flip it over.  How we survived it...no clue.  But, obviously we did.  We left Mr. Conejo in the middle of the road and caught a ride out before the Federales showed up.  This is a long story that I will tell in greater detail if I ever find the photos of the actual accident.  The trade off?  Gail and I got home, got our other car, and went to Death Valley.  We still had a few weeks free and Gail thought the heat would help with the aches and pains.  Well, obviously, we discussed the fact that we came really damn close to dying and that led to us wondering why we were putting of having kids.  Nine months later, Whitny suddenly appeared.  So, Whitny can attribute her very existence to a drunk and a horrible accident.

TRADE OFFS

I went to Lynwood Academy from first grade through my junior year.  Long story, but the general consensus was that I had worn out my welcome and I wasn't thrilled about staying there longer either. Foolishly, I thought I would transfer to the local high school.  Instead, two days later, I was a resident at Newbury Park Academy.  It was truly like going to prison at first.  I almost got kicked out my first day there because one of my female friends came to see me and nobody told me that girls weren't supposed to be in your dorm room.  All that, and all I got was this stupid sweatshirt.  Oh, and the girl in it.  At first I was really bummed being set off to the pen, but, in the long run, I think I did pretty well in the deal.  Philosophically, that and other things that have happened to me throughout my life have led me to the conclusion that things that seem really horrible at first...if you allow enough time to pass so you can look at them retrospectively, in most cases, you can see where that horrible thing was a catalyst in bringing you to a better place.  That's been my experience anyway.  It may simply be perspective, but it has worked for me.  You may want to try it.

Gail and Runt

This is Gail with Runt.  I had a cat named Mabel that we saved from a farm near where Gail lived.   I think we were about 18 at the time.  Soon, it was obvious that Mabel was with kitten(s).  She was only a kitten herself and didn't survive the pregnancy, so we kept all seven kitten with us all the time and had to bottle feed them.  We ended up only keeping Pudge and Checker and Porky.  Porky got out one night and well...then we just had the two.  Pudge lived for over 20 years.  She was a great cat.  One time I saw her with a pigeon in her mouth and I was just shocked, because we have always been able to discourage that in our cats and Pudge was especially good about it.  As it turned out, the Mr. Pigeon had a mishap and Pudge was bringing him to me.  She was carrying him in a way that she didn't even leave a tooth mark and she laid him at my feet.  Yes, the pigeon was rehabilitated and released.

Best Russian Wolfhound Ever

Whitny and I have our work cut out for us now.  We got ourselves set up with a professional scanner and a slide copier and we're digitizing all the family pictures.  Scanning the slides is going to be a lot of work...well, they both are.  There are just so many more slides.  Why I started with this one...don't ask me.  This is Amy, our Russian Wolfhound from many moons past.