My old friend Jimmy and I have always had a slightly different take on things. You see, I’ve always been a sort of straight-up science guy–hell, Bill Nyes is one of my heroes, along with Tyson, Sagan, and Krauss. I’ve always been skeptical of any kind of pseudo-science, whereas Jimmy, dumb shit that he is, falls for every conspiracy theory and junk science blog he reads. The moon landings were faked, there’s a face on Mars; I’m surprised he doesn’t belong to The Flat Earth Society. I’ve always thought he’s just smart enough to be dangerous, and he is.

Recently he returned from a trip to L.A., so I stopped in to see how it went. He offered me a beer, but I felt the Sobriety Stone in my pocket and refused it. Jimmy thought stones had magical powers, but I just carried it to remind myself not to drink. I’d been sober now for several months and I attributed it to my stone and running. Yes, I traded in one addiction for a better one, the runner’s high.

As we sat down at the table, I pulled it out, and set it down. It was a nice smooth, polished piece of amethyst. “The word amethyst means not drunk, you know,” I said.

“Oh yea?”

“Yea, something about the Roman god of wine, Bacchus, turning a girl named Amethyst into crystal, and pouring wine on her. Anyway, I’ve come to be a bit fond of her–my sober companion.”

“Well, I have a stone that blows yours out of the water. I’ll go get it.” He ducked into his bedroom, and, because he always had to one-up me, I wondered what he’d bring out. An elephant carved out of blue tiger’s eye? A crystal for his crown chakra?  A piece of fool’s gold?

He came back and set an ordinary-looking rock on the table. We both looked at it in silence. Finally, I said, “That’s a rock.”

“It’s a healing stone,” he answered. “You wouldn’t believe where I got this.”

“I don’t believe I would.”

So he tells me this story about how he was coming back from L.A., and somewhere in the Sedona/Flagstaff area his car over-heated. He pulled it to the side of the road, and waited for it to cool down. While he was sitting there listening to the radio, he noticed someone coming toward him from the desert. Pretty soon he could see it was an old, bent-over Indian woman, her brown face sere and wizened. She seemed to be coming directly toward him, so, thinking she might be seeking help of some sort, he got out of the car, and started walking toward her.

“No, no!” she yelled, coming close now, “You must not step here–this is sacred land!”

“I thought you might need help,” he offered.

“I need a ride into Flagstaff,” she said,” and I will give you a healing stone from the sacred land for fare.”

So he gave her a ride to Flagstaff, and she gave him the stone, and the mysterious Indian woman disappeared into the city streets.

I laughed out loud. “That is such an obvious scam, I don’t believe you, man…a rock?”

And that was when Jimmy came right up to me, looked me in the eyes and said, “You don’t know everything.” The words stuck in my mind. You don’t know everything.

“I know enough not to believe in magical rocks,” I said, picking it up. “I tell ya what–I will believe in it 100 % if this stone can erase this old scar from the back of my hand!” I held it up in my hand and turned it so Jimmy could see the scar. We both watched for a minute; the scar was still there. “As I thought.”

The next weekend, my Sobriety Stone proved its lack of power as well. I fell off the wagon and swan dived head-first into the pavement. As soon as my party-hungry friends heard I was drinking, they started showing up, and soon my place was packed, and I was drunker than hell. When Jimmy showed up, and made fun of my impotent Sobriety Stone, I decided to embarrass him in front of everybody. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Where’s your magic rock, Jimmy?” I was so loaded, I was slurring. “Listen, everybody,” I said, “I held Jimmy’s rock in my hand like this and I…and I…” –my  drunken vision suddenly focused on the back of my hand, and there was no sign of any scar. It was completely gone. I’d had it for years! “I…I guess…I don’t know everything,” was all I could say.

(originally posted July 2016)

I think that I shall never see

Another year like ’73.

I turned 18, became a man,

And strutted ’round, so lean and tan.

The drinking age was dropped too far,

And high school lunch was at the bar.

The army turned to volunteer;

The only draft we knew was beer.

I graduated, got employed,

And bought the things that I enjoyed.

Yes, only God can make a tree,

But we were gods in ’73.

SOLO

Celeste was a nice but terribly spoiled nine year old. An only child, she was born on Halloween in 2006, a little more than nine months after Nasa’s spacecraft Stardust delivered its cargo to Earth. Two months after her birth, her grandfather, Albert P. Lamoine, CEO and founder of Lamoine Industries in Minneapolis, keeled over dead from a massive heart attack, leaving her father Boone with a sudden and considerable fortune.

The money was the only reason Cindi, Boone’s wife, didn’t leave him. She had truly learned to loathe his bible-thumping, holier-than-thou bullshit, but she liked to think she’d put up with him for Celeste’s sake. Sometimes she did feel a little sorry for him–a grown man believing such ridiculous nonsense! And his Bible Studies, what a crock.

They made it to the front seats reserved for them just as the organ accompaniment began. Celeste stood center stage, her beautiful long dark hair (from her father’s side) giving her a natural halo. Her pretty face was in stark contrast to Jesus’s bloody head on the cross behind her. Her new Christmas outfit sparkled.

The woman at the organ nodded, Celeste opened her mouth, and her angelic voice began to resound throughout the church, first floating loftily in the rafters overhead, and then spilling down on the congregation like a fresh summer shower. The girl could sing.

After the program, they found their car had a thick layer of ice on it, so while Boone scraped the windows, the girls chatted. “That was absolutely astounding, Cel, I was so proud.”

“Thanks, mom, did Daddy like it?”

“Are you kidding? He practically popped the buttons off his jacket!”

The door opened and Boone slid in behind the wheel. “Man, is it cold,” he said, blowing in his cupped hands, “I hope the roads are plowed…this is bad.” He pulled the Mercedes up to a stop sign, and, unlike his usual law-abiding self, drove right through and up the entrance ramp onto the freeway.

“Dad!” Celeste called from the back seat. “You didn’t stop.”

Cindi joined in. “Yea, I believe that was…ah…a…sin?”

Boone knew there was no way out of it, so he said nothing, and clicked on the radio. The snow was really coming down now, shifting in the wind in time with Mariah Carey’s O Holy Night. Finally, he said, “You know, we have so much to be thankful for…”

Celeste caught her mother’s eyes in a here we go again look. Sermon # 593882.

Boone looked over at the colorful Christmas lights in the yards along the freeway while Mariah belted out “…the stars are brightly shining…”

“We have been truly blessed,” he began, “and we have everything a person could want…the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

“You sinned,” Celeste said from the dark behind him, “the wages of sin are…you know.”

“I was just going to tell you how awesome you were tonight. And there is only one thing that really matters to your mom and me. And that is YOU! We would die for you.”

Celeste leaned forward into the light. “Really? You would die for me?”

“Really,” Cindi said, turning to take Celeste’s hand. Boone turned to her too, and while he was babbling about how much he loved her, Celeste could suddenly see a vehicle ahead through the icy windshield. There was a truck, loaded with pipes and stuck in the snow, directly in their path. But instead of warning them, she held their gaze and smiled.

“I love you too, mommy and daddy,” she cooed, and then suddenly ducked down a second before the Mercedes plowed into the windshield-level load of pipes at 50 mph. Celeste lay unconscious across the back seat as her parents bled to death on the nice upholstery up front. Mariah never missed a beat.

Now, Kor would fly solo.

Jesus Hernandez was a bricklayer. The Jesus you’re thinking of was a carpenter, although both are admirable professions. This Jesus lived alone in a nice house in the San Fernando Valley. He lived alone because he had “anger issues” and his wife was long gone.

His business was thriving. There was enough work right there in the Valley to Keep on Pilin’ like his sweaty T-shirt said. With a nice house in sunny California, a great business, and the wife not but a fading memory, Jesus was happy, his anger apparently conquered. But then…Donald Trump.

At first it was just a twinge he felt every time the media blasted “…and they’re going to pay for it!” But eventually that twinge turned into full-blown rage, and one morning, his neighbors were awakened to the sound of a truck delivering two pallets of bricks to Jesus’s front yard. A week later, he had constructed a wall, about waist high, across the front of his property. The neighbors hardly noticed. They lived in the Valley.

This eased his ire for a bit, and he even put some flowers on top of the wall to ease his conscience too. But words played on in his head. Rapists, murderers, drug-dealers. This would require more bricks–many more bricks.

Eventually his anger drove him to completely wall himself in, but you already knew that. And you probably assumed the day came when Jesus got hurt and needed help, but nobody could get in, and Jesus died a slow and anger-filled death. Don’t be like this Jesus.

My wife loved drugs, what can I say? I was more or less the alcoholic; she was the druggie–and she paid the ultimate price for it. She had a resting heart-rate of 120 bpm and an anxiety problem that bordered on psychosis; I never blamed her for wanting to feel calm. I know how bad that feeling can get, having been through extreme alcohol withdrawal more times than I’d care to remember.

She started out on benzos first, kolonipins, atavan, and her favorite, xanax. It’s next to impossible to OD on benzos, so that worked for awhile, but you also build up an immunity to them so quickly, they’re useless after a while. I remember more than once, an ambulance was called for her, and she walked out of the Emergency Room with a prescription for more benzos–I don’t know what she told the Doc, but I’m sure she should’ve won an Oscar for it.

So the next step up the Stairway to Heaven is opioids. These are the common pain-killers you get after minor surgery or if you break a bone. Not only do they numb your pain, they induce euphoria and have a calming effect. The most benign of them are compounds (usually mixed with acetaminophen) because you can only take so much powder up your nose. (Many users prefer snorting it.) Tylenol 3, hydrocodone, oxycodone come to mind. You can OD on these, however, because it always takes more to feel relief and there is a point where it will kill you. My wife used these for many years, until she met Lauri, who introduced her to Real Downers like morphine.

Lauri had a doctor friend (lover) who prescribed anything she wanted, and she had quite a little pharmacy in her lockbox. Needless to say, she and my wife quickly became best friends. I remember sitting in her apartment, and when she would go to the bathroom, my wife would grab the box, get it unlocked, rummage around for the morphine, and get it back in place sometimes a second before she came out–talk about nerve-rattling!

Lauri told me once that if my wife ever OD’d on her pills, she would kill herself.

One morning, my wife asked me for a drink as she lay down in bed–I saw her pop something, but this was the norm.  A little bit later, I heard her gasp, and when I checked on her, she was unconscious and not breathing. I tried everything and called 911; I’d brought her back from the brink of death many times, but this time it was different. I remember that the EMT fellas said I might want to leave the room for a minute. I found out why later–the autopsy report said she had the “usual broken ribs associated with CPR”. Also, the Sheriff was understanding enough to wait for me to slam a beer before we went to the hospital, where they told me she was dead. Married 33 years, 3 kids, 3 grandkids…gone.

A couple of weeks later, Lauri made good on her promise, and took the whole bottle of morphine.

This is me and my grandbaby Maddi–its hard to believe I was ever this young. When I was her age, ’57 Chevy’s weren’t classic cars yet, they hadn’t been made yet. We thought the year 2000 was so futuristic; the world would surely be like the Jetsons, flying cars and all.

Well, its 2016 and we’re still waiting on the flying cars, but the real technological progress has far exceeded anything we could’ve dreamed of. We do have cars that drive themselves, personal computers (remember Eniac?), and if someone would’ve told us about smartphones and the Web, I doubt if we would’ve believed them.

Still, I think I was brought up in the best of times for small, Midwest towns, and I’m glad I was around for the technology explosion, but there is one more thing I’d like to see happen before I croak: alien contact. I suppose the day after I die, aliens will contact us, and give us the formula for immortality and some seeds for kick-ass alien weed.

Oops, looks like there’s too much magic in that willow–even Good and Evil look like they might just bust out in dance. (Yea, I know, they dance all the time…something about dynamics.) I carved Grendel’s head out of a potato.

This is me on a mine dump outside of Aurora, MN, obviously contemplating Quantum Theory, Grand Unified Theory, the chances that the word prematurely came from Pretty-much-early, and, oddly enough, “schrodingers cat” because I can see my house from up here, the cat is home, and I don’t know if cats will eat rat poison. Guess I won’t know until I open the door. Poor kitty…maybe.

On our last day of marriage, my ex-wife gave to me:

Twelve beers a brewing

Eleven burritos baking

Ten tacos toasting

Nine nachos nuking

Eight Eggos waffling

Seven roasts a roasting

Six hot dogs heating

Five bologna rings!

Four fish a frying

Three Ex-lax

Two sleeping pills

And a subsequent load of laundry.

Circa 1000 A.D.

The Viking longboat slid through the icy waters of Dan, silent but for the rhythm of the oarsmen and the creaking of the crude planks.

Leif Eiriksson stood at the bow, gazing off to the west, though all he could see was mist and fog. Just as his father Eirik had been an explorer and the discoverer of Greenland, so Leif hoped this voyage would find new lands for his people. The ship cleared the fjord, the mast was raised, and the winds and the gods took over.

Leif grabbed one of the thralls and said, “Bring me your mistress, the prophetess, to throw the bones.”

The seer, in her long robe encrusted with precious stones, held her staff up to the sky and called out, “Oh Allfather, great One-Eye, help us to safely cross the great waters on this voyage. Redbeard Thor, send us an easy wind.” Then, as the others crowded around, she cast her bones and twigs on the wooden deck.

To the thralls and the freemen, it was just a scattering of bones marked with runes, but to the prophetess, they held great meaning. Just then, one of Odin’s ravens flew past. “We will find a great new land filled with forests and game, but I also see a great battle.”

Leif looked into her ancient, clouded eyes. “Ragnarok?” he asked.

“No, not Ragnarok,” she answered, “but a battle to rival it. I must cast the runes to discover the name of the battle.” She threw down the bones again, and then, studying the runes, her brow furrowed. ” The runes say the battle will be known as…Superbowl 51.”