Baby Boomers were raised to be tough.  As a boomer, I speak from experience.  We aren’t as tough as our parents, who fought the war, or our grandparents, who defied the great depression.

Our parents and grandparents innately knew that they needed to toughen us up to ensure our survival.  The best example of the institutionalized theory was our playgrounds.  Steel play structures embedded in concrete; overhead ladders, bumper slides, steel rings chained to a swivel at the top of a pole, tetherball, and swing sets.  The ground under all of these toys was covered with asphalt to protect us from mud. I got my second or third concussion when I fell off an overhead ladder in 6th Grade.  I was the center of playground attention until I regained consciousness.

My playmates and I saved the wax paper from our sandwiches.  We would sit on it as we rode the slide.  A properly waxed slide would easily send you along at supersonic speed.  There was no way to hang on.  God help you both if you launched before the kid ahead of you cleared the landing zone.  Matters were complicated by the fact that the pit that naturally developed at the bottom of the slide was a mud hole in bad weather.  Skilled sliders, with wax paper, could deftly sail over the hazard.

Teeter-totters were an acrobatic art form.  Properly launched, a small boy could be put into low earth orbit if enough big kids jumped on the other end.  Then there was the purgatory of suspension.  Two kids could keep one hanging in the air all recess unless he had enough fortitude to jump.

Tetherball was particularly deadly.  We underestimated its violence since it was the girl’s domain.  Broken noses, loose teeth and an occasional concussion were routine for any boy foolish enough to challenge the “Tetherball Queen.”  Black eyes were part of the game.

My personal favorite playgrounds were the de-commissioned steam locomotives and “memorial” artillery pieces that adorned some of our parks.  I envied the kids I saw on TV who had Sherman Tanks and fighter jets in their parks to climb on, and in.

The playground supervisor at my school was “Safie,” I never knew if that was her real name.  She was the Lifeguard at the pool and the local First Aid Instructor.  She might have been a nurse at some time, she wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody.  I first met her when I was in 4th Grade, walking by the big kid’s baseball diamond.  I was hit in the chest by a line-drive foul ball.  I woke to Safie resuscitating me with the “back-pressure arm-lift.”  I’m not sure which hurt the most, the injury or the indignity.  Safie went through a pint of iodine and a hundred band-aids in any given week.  The teachers loved her as much as the kids feared her.

Little boomers were toughened as well; they had sandboxes full of cat shit and rusty Tonka Trucks.  A real boost to immune system and an introduction to the realities of the world.

The games we played were significant.  Dodge ball, stealing sticks, capture the flag, crack the whip, kick the can… all played in the street with traffic.

Our children, Gen X, have been coddled, they probably won’t survive.  The Millenials are a bit tougher, they came of age just in time for the 2008 Financial Crisis.

As parents, we Boomers have lost sight of the need to toughen our children.  Perhaps our memories of childhood softened us.  We chose to deny our children the opportunity to fall off a locomotive, play in traffic, or enjoy the thrill of being bucked off a bumper slide onto the asphalt.

Sand boxes, when you find one, have covers to keep the cats out; and are filled with a special play sand that must be purchased in hardware stores and certified for children’s use by health authorities.

Playgrounds are abundant.  Lots of grass and RUBBERIZED ASPHALT!  What is that all about?  I think it is a way to “recycle” toxic waste.  Playground equipment is rare, and padded when you find it.  The apparatus of our childhood is non-existent;  a conspiracy of the insurance industry.  A  few enterprising Boomer lawyers trying to make a living in civil litigation have established legal precedents that will decay our culture and weaken the gene pool.

We have killed germs to the point where our children have compromised immunity to damn near everything.  Allergies, athsma, obesity, ADHD, electronic game addiction,  and cyber bullying.  What have we done?

There are a few glimmers of hope.  The fast food industry has stepped into the void.  Indoor multi-story play structures with ladders, tunnels, slides and reservoirs of plastic balls have attempted to resurrect a generation’s immune development.  There isn’t enough anti bacterial gel to sterilize them.  The random distribution of lost diapers, particularly in the seas of plastic balls, serve to stimulate immune response and  antibodies.   Most of these arenas are in the private sector and somewhat outside the sphere of influence of the germ nazis, at least until the lawyers discover the fertile ground.

Skate boards have also been a salvation of the younger generations.  They have evolved into far deadlier machines than the fence boards and roller skates of my generation.  Like motocross, the sport is inspired by the Darwinians.

Maybe the younger generations are tougher than I thought…

My first official boy Scout Camping trip was in the fall of 1963 or 1964.  I was probably working on the rank of tenderfoot.

The outing was memorable for three reasons; it was my first overnight with the scouts, the biscuit scandal, and my fight with Jim.

We were at a Forest Service campground not far from our small town.  Since it was public, we shared the campground with a number of civilian campers.  We quickly learned this was a mistake.  No good could come from any fraternization, even incidental.

Deer hunting season was coming soon and many of the campers were hunters from out of the area.  They were conducting reconnaissance missions; learning the lay of the land, finding game and locating sources of supply for groceries, liquor, and ammunition.

Most of the civilians were pretty well off compared to us.  They had RV’s, fancy trucks, new gear and a selection of off road vehicles.  We had army surplus camping gear and hunted in old pickup trucks with our fathers while getting firewood for the winter.

The first morning my friend Rich and I had breakfast duty.  We were assigned to make biscuits.  We made a great bowl of Bisquick batter, and dolloped it out on a large cookie sheet.  As we were walking over to the reflector oven to bake them, I tripped,  dropping the raw biscuits in the pine needles and dirt.  Our Patrol Leader came by, told us to get rid of the mess and whip up another batch.  We had plenty of fixings.

It was still dark, and we could not see well.  Rich and I scooped up the dirty dough and decided to throw it in the bushes rather than wander around looking for a garbage can.  The bears would find it later.  We heard the sickening thump of the projectiles landing on sheet metal. We crept around the brush and found a civilian campsite on the other side of the bushes.  A great wad of sticky, dirty dough was in the middle of the hood on a new four wheel drive truck.

We crept over to wipe it off.  All we managed to do was to smear the mass over the hood and grille of the vehicle.  The situation had gone from bad to worse.  Before we could figure what to do we had to retreat, the civilians were getting up.

We ran back to the camp, started on the next batch; and waited for hell to break loose.

Jim was a new kid in town, my age and seemed to be a fairly decent guy.  He moved a lot because of his dad’s job.  Jim didn’t really know anybody and was trying to fit in, however he could.   He had been showing off a bit on the camping trip.  While Rich and I were cooking biscuits, he decided to show everyone how tough he was.  I was a little smaller than he was and he to picked me as the goat.  He started boxing my ears and I told him to knock it off.  The gauntlet was thrown.  We were starting to draw an audience.  I had a pair of pliers in my hand to move the biscuit pan in the hot oven.  Jim had the advantage of size so I had to improvise.

I quickly reached out with the pliers and got a finger.  He was quickly on his knees bawling in undignified surrender.  I really wasn’t going to remove the finger but he wasn’t sure.   After ensuring that Jim was past any attempt at retaliation, I let him go.

After that morning, the older scouts didn’t seem to haze me as much.

Jim and I ultimately came to be on friendly terms.  He never again tried to bully me, but did occasionally show a mean streak.

Meanwhile, the gods had been smiling over the biscuit dough.  It wasn’t discovered until  the next day when we were breaking camp.  There was a lot of loud talk about vandalism from next door but Mr. Westman and one of the adult leaders, a minister, went over and somehow managed a reconciliation.  The perpetrators were never identified.

On the way home our patrol leader winked at Rich and I and complimented us on our camp biscuits.

I have never really done very well with horses.  Over the years I have come to realize that is as it should be.  Despite their affections, most horse lovers have fared worse.

There are early, vague memories of my Aunt Sara taking me for rides on Dixie around the family ranch in Pittville.  She lulled me into the false belief that horseback riding was fun, and easy.

As a small boy, my heroes were Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and Trigger.  I wanted to be a real cowboy, with a white horse, six shooters, and drive cattle to Texas.  Not one of those singing cowboys.   By the time I was four I had all the equipment; boots, hat, sheriff’s badge, cap guns and a stick horse.  If you weren’t wearing Wrangler Jeans you weren’t genuine.

I remember telling my Dad I wanted a real horse.  He wanted to know what I was going to feed it, where I was going to keep it and if I wanted to spend my afternoons shoveling… manure.  He grew up on a ranch and much preferred a pickup truck.

I had friends and relatives with horses and got to ride once and a while.  My first solo was on Lady, a little harmless Shetland Pony.  I was about seven.  She ran away with me, rubbed me off under a tree and was gone.

A year or two later I had another chance.  I was given careful instructions about making a rope halter, putting on the bridle, then the blanket and saddle.  As soon as I stepped off the fence into the stirrup, the saddle rolled under the horse where it was promptly kicked off.  My friend calmed the horse and showed me how to cinch the saddle tight, wait till the horse exhaled, knee it in the ribs to make it exhale more; and really tighten the cinch.  I was so engrossed in the process I forgot to watch the feet.  The horse eased over, casually stepped on my foot and refused to move.  I couldn’t get away.   After an eternity my friend got the horse off my foot.  No broken bones but I felt like I was wearing a swim fin for a couple of weeks.

I swear the horse was grinning while standing on my foot.

My Aunt Gail and Uncle Paul lived on a ranch and had a couple of horses.  I decided to saddle up and ride one once, and got as far as the bridle.  I didn’t tie his head close enough to the fence.  When I bent down to pick up the saddle he turned his head, and bit me in the middle of the back.  That ended my ride.  I had a blood blister the size of the palm of my hand to hide from them and my Mom.

I later got to ride that horse with permission.  Uncle Paul helped me saddle him.  The further we got from the barn the slower he went.  When we finally turned back, he ran away with me.  As we neared the gate he ran my leg along the barb wire fence, shredding it pretty good.  I ended up with my first case of blood poisoning with that wound.   I nailed him with a few rocks before opening the gate.  We weren’t on speaking terms back at the barn.

By the time I was in my mid-teens I had a basic skill level for survival horseback riding.  I had adopted no-nonsense tactics.  If their eyes were not wide open with lots of white showing, watching your every move, you did not have their attention or respect.  Sticks were plenty, carrots were rare.  I had also come to realize why cowboys walked funny.

Years later, when I was a Smokejumper, I had a few opportunities to ride.  On rare occasions a packer with a string of horses and pack mules was dispatched to bring us out after we had jumped a fire in a wilderness.  We were eager to have them carry our gear and riding was fun.  Until the next day.  I was so saddle sore I could barely move.  After that I was content to walk while the horses and mules carried the gear.

Just before I went into the FBI, my wife and I were ranch sitting while our friends were on vacation.  A yearling colt was getting aggressive around a bucket of oats my wife was carrying and I backhanded it away.  It whirled and kicked.  I couldn’t get out of the way.  It caught me in the thigh and threw me about fifteen feet into a ditch.  We thought my femur was broken, my thigh had swelled to the size of a large watermelon.  Luckily, it was a bruise.  I had a perfect hoof-print in my leg for several years.  It passed for a tattoo for a long time.

Not long after that event I heard a quote attributed to John Wayne when someone had commented on his good fortune to ride horses as a side-benefit to his career:  “You may love horses but they don’t love you.  Horses are the meanest, nastiest creatures on this earth. They are full of vile treachery and not to be trusted.  If given the chance, they will buck you off, run away, and leave you in the desert to die.”

That day John Wayne became my hero.

Like everyone, I have been thinking a lot about our current political “shutdown” in Washington.   The truth is, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  This is the government that WE elected.  You still have responsibility if you didn’t vote, perhaps more.  We have become so polarized that impasse is the norm.

Our politicians are very smart, they studied Niccolo Machiavelli and Sun Tzu.  They know what they are doing.  They know what plays with the voters back home.  It is all about power, about getting re-elected.  This will only end when the voter starts looking at the big picture.  As long as we vote single issues, this will be our government.

Don’t worry, I am not going to insult or gratify you with my side of the debate.  One thing I learned a long time ago about politics is that everyone has an opinion.  More importantly, nobody is interested in yours (or mine).  There is no such thing as a rational political discussion.  Very soon it gets heated and then people start interrupting or monopolizing the “discussion.”

Offering political opinions, in any setting, particularly social; only turns people off.  The boors just don’t know better.  The bullies know better but take every opportunity to offer their opinion.  The socially inept bombard friends and family with the same rantings camouflaged with the events of the day; then wonder why people avoid them.

News media are the worst.  They are masters of provocation.  They fuel the fire and fan the flames.  Then they report on the behavior of the fools who take the bait.  We forget that their principal objective is to sell themselves, otherwise they go bankrupt.  If they can’t argue the facts, they subvert truth with perception.  Perception can be managed; truth is… inconvenient.

The summer I was twelve I got to go stay with my Grandparents in Salem, Oregon.  They were my Dad’s folks.  The ostensible reason for the trip was so that I could pick strawberries.  I could earn a lot more picking strawberries than I could delivering newspapers.  My brother took over my paper route while I was gone and we all did well.

My Uncle John had picked strawberries, beans, and who knows what else every summer since he was twelve.  He was in the big time now, working the night shift in the cannery.  He was home for the summer after his freshman year at Oregon State.

I worked five days a week and had the weekends off.  Grandma and Grandpa went away for the first weekend.  I slept in a very nice bedroom they had set up with some Japanese screens in the unfinished basement.

On Saturday morning I was sleeping-in when I heard someone creeping down the stairs, suppressing laughter.  I went on full alert.  I heard a thump and a funny noise as something landed on the bed next to me.  It was a cherry bomb!  Uncle John and his buddy Jay, ran back up the stairs while I flipped the thing off of the bed just before it went off.

By the time I got upstairs they were gone.  Jay’s car was parked on the street but they were not to be found.  That was fine with me.  I took a big russet potato out of the pantry and shoved it up the tailpipe of Jay’s car with a broom handle.  It was a Mercedes Diesel.

The gods were smiling.  John still had cherry bombs.  Over spring break he and some college buddies had gone to Mexico.  They had returned with a treasure of cherry bombs and the Holy Grail – M-80’s.  He had been telling stories of what they had done with them in the dorm.  The best part of the deal was that HE had initiated the hostilities.  All I had to do was find them.  It didn’t take long.  They were in an old fishing tackle box.  There were M-80‘s too.  Since it was war, I had no reservations about confiscating the enemy’s entire supply of ammunition.

I waited until Grandma and Grandpa got home, reserved a pocket full, for training purposes; and buried the tackle box under the garbage cans.  I had discovered a lot of other interesting stuff while conducting the search.  A case of Coors Beer was tactically re-located so Grandma would easily find it.  There was other contraband that went to good use.  I was sure to stay under the sphere of my grandparent’s protection when John was around.   I knew the enemy would resort to torture and beatings.  I could take it but preferred to avoid the drama.

One of my favorite pass-times was to drop a cherry bomb in Mill Creek so it drifted into the ducks downstream before it went off.  I got pretty good at it.  It wasn’t very long until the ducks abandoned Mill Creek for the duration.

My buddy and I had a great time.  We had plenty of viable targets.  Before too long the Police patrols increased; we had to cool it.

After a certain point we came to an impasse.  I returned most, well some, of the stash just before I went home.

When I left, Jay’s car was still parked next to the house and hadn’t moved since the potato was stuffed up the exhaust pipe.  A potato can take several weeks to shrivel up and blow out once the engine starts.  It can be tough on batteries.

Mr. Dale Westman was a Saint.  A Fireman by trade, his calling was to be our Scoutmaster.  He had two sons, Rick was a lot older than me, Denny was a couple of years younger.  They were good guys, and scouts.  Mr. Westman treated us all like his own.  His patience was infinite but he commanded respect.  He never gave up on a kid, ever.  Even if the kid gave up on scouts.  We had some scouts that were rough around the edges.  He made room for everyone.

He was a diplomat.  The local Elks Lodge was our sponsor and we put a lot of wear and tear on the building.  Fortunately for us, so did the Elks.  After some of their parties, the place looked like there had been a scout meeting.  The damage was often quite similar.  The main difference was the Elks had booze at their meetings.

We had more than a few “cleanup days” at the Elks Lodge, that involved a bit of construction before we cleaned up.  Seems that a couple of the scouts specialized in punching holes in sheetrock.  We figured out who they were because they ended up breaking bones when they happened to hit the sheetrock over a stud.  On cleanup days the scouts with casts on their arms learned how to repair sheetrock.

One year the Elks decided to evict the scouts after an incident.  The past Exalted Rulers, quickly quashed the rebellion.  They were the patriarchs of the community and had all been scouts.  They understood.

I didn’t know until many years later, but Mr. Westman was often a character witness for scouts who got into trouble.  Mr. Westman and the local authorities plea-bargained more than one kid into the military.  I remember more than one former scout coming out to our camp to talk to Mr. Westman after they made it through basic training. Del G. the local Chief of Police had sons who were scouts.  The Chief was on the committee too.  It was a good thing that the firehouse and the police station shared the same building.

“Hey Mr. Westman!”   Was a greeting, a distress call, and sometimes an announcement.  Occasionally it was a plea for mercy.  It was usually shouted by a scout from a distance.  Once and a while it was murmured through tears.  He was always there.

Our troop did a 50 mile hike one year.  It was a big deal.  He hiked the whole way with us.  To many of you who are hikers, 50 miles doesn’t sound like much.  It was a very long hike.  Most of the participants were the younger scouts, their packs were too heavy, they didn’t have much scouting experience, but they were determined.  We didn’t have training hikes or shakedowns, like modern scouts; we only had enough resources for the main event.  We were not an affluent community, most of the hikers didn’t have the right shoes, let alone the proper camping gear.  We had plenty of grit.  We did fun stuff, like catch and cook rattlesnakes.  Fifty miles in five days was a lifetime.  We had a few casualties but no regrets.

Every year we went to Camp Fleischmann, the main event of the scouting year.  Mr. Westman usually didn’t go.  I don’t think his wife wanted him using up his vacation time.  It was a chance for some of the other adult leaders (parents) to take the helm.  We did cool stuff like snipe hunts, raid other camps, rig snares and set booby traps.  We also did the mundane stuff like hiking, merit badges, swim, canoe and row.  There were always a couple of the adult leaders who developed nervous conditions after a couple of days and had to go home.  I don’t think we ever had a parent go to camp a second time.

Arts and crafts were fun.  We did a lot of carving.  We made neckerchief slides and carved faces on hiking sticks.  We got to practice a lot of first aid.  Usually from carving on our fingers with dull pocket knives.

There were rites of passage for new scouts; and adult leaders.  Trap them in sleeping bags.  Get them lost at night.  Smoke up their tent while they were asleep, hold the edges down and shout fire.  You learn a lot about adult leaders when there is a snake in their sleeping bag.  Then there were the outhouses…

Canned prunes were in the rations, probably for the adults.  The scouts knew better than to eat them.  They ended up hidden in fire pits, and stuffed in the back of our cook stoves.  The hot cans would swell and burst.  The sugary syrup would catch fire and flare up nicely.  Sometimes there was a respectable explosion; the fire would burp out of the stove onto the ground, or the cook, and molten sludge would erupt out of the chimney.  The cooking merit badge developed a new degree of respect.

We got to practice first aid for burns too.

In those days the camp had a sport that I have never seen anywhere else.  We would take turns climbing to the top of a small fir tree.  As many scouts as possible would grab the trunk whip it back and forth, trying to throw the rider off.  It was great sport as long as you could hold on.  If you lost your grip you could easily be thrown a mile or two.  If you were lucky, you landed in another small fir tree, if not, you hit things like fences, rocks, or manzanita brush.   After a while the tree got so limp it would no longer stand on it’s own.  I wonder if they ever recovered.

The adult leaders who went to camp with us returned with a hell of a lot more respect, and a lot less advice, for Mr. Westman.

Once my brother Phil and I had a rodeo.  I was around ten, Phil would have been eight.  That year we spent the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa Ashe.   They lived in Dana, a very small unincorporated community in the woods of north-eastern Shasta County.

We were related to about half of the residents.  Down the road about a half mile lived my Great-Grandparents, the Brewster’s; Grandma’s folks.  The homes in Dana had several acres of land and a barn or two; and usually a shop for logging equipment.  Just out of town a great-uncle ran a lumber mill.  Great-Grandma and Grandpa ran the store and gas station.

After Christmas, Mom & Dad went away for a few days of rest and left my brothers and I with Grandma.  They needed a sanity break.  After a day of so, Phil and I got bored and decided we needed a bit of excitement.

Grandma was raising a steer in the field next to the house.  It was our size; about head high.  The field was big so we had to chase the steer into a corner so we could ride it.  I went first.

The steer didn’t want to be ridden.  When it looked like I was going to mount it successfully; he turned and walked through the barb-wire fence.  Just walked right through it!  Two or three posts came out with a tangle of wire.  I don’t think the wire was broken, but it could have been.

We were in trouble now and tried to herd him back through the hole in the fence.  No deal.  He was scared, spooky and wouldn’t let us get near him.  The more we chased him the worse it got.  Finally, he ran down to the road in the direction of our Great-Grandparent’s place.

If we stayed at a dead run we could keep up with him, but he had about a fifty foot lead.    The field on our side of Great-Grandma’s place had a corral.  That was our goal.  As we neared the corral, the steer saw it and made a sharp right turn toward Spring Creek.  It ran through the icy creek with me right behind it.  Phil was smart and stayed dry.  The water was COLD!  There were still patches of snow on the ground.  Not long after crossing the creek the steer and I realized there was no escape there so we re-crossed the creek and were closer to the corral.

Great-Grandpa had seen the chase and had come out to supervise.  He opened corral and waved us in.  We had reinforcements!  It looked like we were going to get him through the gate, but he suddenly stopped.  I kept running, waving my arms and hollering.  By the time I realized he was rearing-up to kick, it was too late.  He got me in the face with both hooves.

I woke up in a mud puddle looking up at Phil and Grandpa.  I had been face down when they got there so they were worried.  I was a mess, mud, blood; and bleeding nose.  The steer was gone.

The inventory went pretty well.  Had all my teeth, my jaw worked, one eye was swollen almost closed, both eyes were full of gritty mud; wasn’t too sure about my crooked nose.  I had bitten my tongue pretty bad.  Could have been a lot worse.

Grandpa told me to go across the road to Aunt Bubble’s place and get her to clean me up.  He and Phil were going down to the mill to see if the steer was there.

As I crossed the road to Bubble’s house, she came running out of the house crying hysterically.  She thought I had been shot.  There had been some kids duck hunting on the creek that morning and that was the only thing she could think of that explained my condition.  Once she realized I wasn’t shot she settled down.

Uncle Kenny spent most of the afternoon finding the steer.  Then he had to get it home and fix the fence.  He must have had other plans for the day because he was madder than hell.  I remember Aunt Ruthie laughing at us while we were sitting on the back porch in our muddy underwear.  It didn’t bother me as much as Phil.  My nose had quit bleeding, my ears were ringing and I couldn’t see too good; I was happy just to be warm.

All of that from just a little steer.  A few years later when one of my buddies wanted me to ride bulls with him, I decided to pass.  That was my first, and last, rodeo.

When they were children, my sons regarded me as a barbarian.  I have a little better status now, but I am still suspect.  I should not be surprised, they are city kids.  They grew up civilized.  When I was a kid, if you called me civilized I would have punched you in the nose.  Worse than being called a sissy.

Not too long ago Mark was showing me a fancy bottle of expensive, single malt Scotch.  He wanted me to try it.  I pulled the cork and took a swig.  I thought he was going to choke to death.  If it hadn’t been expensive I think he would have thrown the bottle away.  Hell, I didn’t backwash.  How was I to know I was supposed to use a glass?  I can imagine what would have been said, when I was a Smokejumper, if I had passed a bottle and expected them to use a glass.

They grew up in suburban New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco.  Their mom was a teacher; their dad was an FBI Agent.  They never really had a chance.

I grew up in a small lumber town in Northern California.  If you didn’t have a BB gun by the time you were five you were a social outcast.  If you didn’t know how to dig BB’s out of your hide, without your mother, by the time you were six; you were doomed.

My aunt and uncle lived on a ranch by a lake.   We loved to go there.  We always took our BB guns.  My brother and I would hide in the haystack, allegedly hunting for birds or rats.  When I got a chance, I would shoot the bull in the nuts.  He would go about six feet straight up if I made a good shot.  I didn’t know until a few years later that a bull, or steer for that matter, could walk right through about any fence it wanted to.  If that bull had realized it was me shooting him, he probably would have killed me.

I mentioned this to my brother a few years ago.  I thought we had competed to see who could get the bull to jump the highest.  He denied all knowledge.  He became a teacher and raised daughters. Perhaps that civilized him.  I bet he even has a pink shirt.

We could not wait until we were old enough to get a hunting license at the age of twelve.  Many of my peers had their own .22 rifle by the time they were eight.

We lived for hunting and fishing.  Our house was on the edge of town.  Nearby the river emerged from a canyon.  There was an old abandoned rail line that went along the river, up the canyon, to the next lumber town about 35 miles away.    That canyon was our playground.  We could not wait until we were old enough to go “up the tracks” by ourselves, to fish and spend the day.

By the time I was twelve I had my own .22 and could take it “up the tracks.”  I went through a 500 round “brick” of ammunition in about a week.  Needless to say we got to be pretty good shots.   It was a good thing I had a paper route, I had the funds for fishing tackle and ammunition.  The Army Navy Store provided us with everything else we needed.

REI and North Face were not around when I was a kid.  The good stuff was army surplus.  I had a down mummy bag that only had a few holes in it.  We were in Boy Scouts too.  Their gear wasn’t that great.  The army stuff was a lot better.  I remember buying a Boy Scout pack and blowing it out on the first camping trip.

In the early 90’s we took our sons camping in West Virginia one weekend.  Joe, the oldest, had just started Cub Scouts.  He was a Tiger Cub.  Of course it was raining when we got to the campground.  I surprised them, and Terry, by setting the tent up in the rain while keeping the inside dry.  Soon we had a nice cozy camp.  We sent the boys out to get some firewood, explaining that the wood on the ground was wet.  I told them to break the dead limbs off of trees to get the dry wood.  After about a half hour they came back with a small bundle of reasonably dry twigs.

I told them to come with me to learn how to get wood.   We found a small dead tree about fifteen feet high.  I broke it off and used the long stem to knock the high dead limbs off the taller trees.  Pretty soon we had a big pile of wood.  Then I showed them how to break up the big pieces of wood by levering them between two close standing tree trunks.  It made a lot of noise and splinters.  I was pleased to have taught them some woodsman-ship.

Later when we were in our sleeping bags I could hear them whispering about dad killing trees…

I had jury duty today and dreaded it.  It was terribly inconvenient.  There were better things to do with my time.  Really?  If I was an innocent defendant, with the misfortune to be charged with something I did not do; I would want a reasonable, open-minded person on the jury.  Preferably twelve of them.

Am I a reasonable and open minded person?  Hope so; but maybe not.  For 22 years I was an FBI Agent.  I’ve conducted more investigations than I can estimate.  I’m very cynical and more skeptical.  Keeping an open mind is of paramount importance.  A lot of subjects who initially appear to be guilty are, in fact, not.  I have seen many who appeared to be innocent, insisted they were innocent; but later confessed when confronted with damning evidence.  First impressions of people are usually wrong.

Witnesses lie and withhold exculpatory information.  Often they only tell part of the story.    Witnesses often are afraid for their lives if they talk to law enforcement.  Rightfully so, despite all assurances, law enforcement cannot always protect witnesses.

False complaints are common.  Complainants only tell you enough of the story to lead to to the conclusion they want.

Any investigator worth their salt spends a lot of time and energy trying to “punch holes” in their investigation.  It is an important part of the process that is sometimes minimized in the face of political or public pressure to solve a case.

Not all “good” cases are prosecuted.  Not all that are prosecuted are convicted.  Not all requests for warrants are approved.  That is as it should be.  Sometimes there is shoddy investigation, or malicious prosecution.

Some guilty subjects are not prosecuted, or released on appeal, because the investigation or prosecution is conducted outside the law.

There are a lot of people who have a hard time distinguishing between fact and opinion.  There are many more people who are willing to jump to conclusions with very thin facts.  Some of them are investigators.  What is more frightening is some are prosecutors.

I vividly remember an Assistant U.S. Attorney who would decline prosecution of complex felonies.   He was eager to prosecute a group of local teenagers.  They inadvertently trespassed on a military reservation, where they set off fireworks, with absolutely no harm done.   The only reason the kids were arrested was that the guard who caught them was off his post meeting a girlfriend in the woods near town.   The AUSA liked it because it was a “slam dunk” case that meant very little work and boosted his accomplishments for the year.  In my opinion it did not serve justice.

There is an incredible amount of “fact” published in newspapers that is half-truth.  How often have you seen conjecture blended with thin facts to sway opinion in the media?  We have all seen newspapers ruin the reputation of innocents.  Have you ever seen a front page retraction?  In the press, as in politics,  perception is more important than reality.  We should never forget that a news media’s first mission is to sell itself, not tell the truth.

When there is a particularly heinous crime and the shock is still fresh; the range and depth of obviously prejudicial opinion is astounding.  When there is an arrest, the concept of innocence until proven guilty is rarely heard.  It is easy to see how lynch mobs happen.  Sometimes the first person arrested in a high profile crime is not the guilty party.

Bureaucracies are slow, cumbersome, and subject to political influence.  They have limited resources and therefore take short-cuts.  The justice system is one of our biggest bureaucracies.

Our system is far from perfect.  There is one element of our system that exists for the sole purpose of mitigating the faults I have mentioned.  It is the jury.  You never know what a jury is going to do.

There are a lot of countries in the world whose citizens ache for a jury system like ours.

The jury alone decides the truth of the testimony and the innocence or guilt of the defendant.  Sometimes the jury “runs away” and nullifies the law.  Sometimes they decide the son-of-a-bitch needed killing and the citizen is acquitted despite the law.  The only element of our system that holds in check law enforcement, prosecution, or the judge; is the jury.  The jury’s decision, if unanimous, is final.  The case can be appealed, but not on the basis of the jury’s decision.  An appeal has to be based on a flaw in the application of the law or rules of procedure.  A jury’s finding of “not guilty” cannot be appealed.

Today, when I looked out on the one hundred or so prospective jurors in the pool, I was actually reassured.  Most of them looked like they could tie their shoes.  A couple  dressed and behaved so as to be disqualified quickly.  Most of them were real people who were capable of deciding the fate of their peers.  All of them had other things they would rather be doing.

As luck would have it, we were all dismissed by 10:00 a.m.

If I had been selected, I hope I would have measured up to the job!

One of the benefits of being a paperboy was free rubber bands, lots of them.

Early in my journalism career I noticed a box marked “rubber bands” on one of my administrative documents; the card I sent to the Sacramento Bee to order papers.  I checked the box.  A couple of days later I got a bag of rubber bands about the size of a loaf of bread.  Cool!  Now I could THROW papers.

Putting rubber bands on all of the papers wasted time; not only in the act of banding papers but in damage control.  Soon I was retrieving papers off of roofs, out of trees; from under cars.  My throwing arm was never very good.  It didn’t take long to learn that rubber bands were appropriate for some situations but not others.  They were great for yards with mean dogs.  Sometimes I could hit the dog with the paper.

One of my customers complained unless the paper was precisely placed inside his screen door.  One time after a particularly petty complaint I put about 50 rubber bands his paper, threw it on his roof, and left it there.

Before long I had about 30 “loaves” of rubber bands.  After a couple afternoons of detention I was forbidden to take them to school.  They were a valuable commodity.  I could use them to trade with my friends for cool stuff.  I traded five loaves to Steve for a WWII bayonet with real blood stains on it.  Turns out it was Steve’s blood.

I started looping the rubber bands together to make a long chain.  I could snap my brother with it from across the room.  I made a real heavy rubber band by making a chain with about a dozen bands on each link.  The heavy ones made good slingshots.

I made a long, heavy chain and towed the wagon behind my bike to deliver papers for a while.  It was quite a bungee.  Over time I kept adding links.  One particularly boring afternoon I used up a dozen or so bags adding to the bungee.  It was probably about 70 feet long.

Thank God we had never heard of bungee jumping!

What do you do with a bungee that big?  I was playing with it in our yard when I noticed my brother’s Tonka Truck in the sandbox.  It was a navy blue 1960 Chevrolet pickup.  I popped off the front axle, put it through the end of the bungee and popped it back on the truck.   Now what?  The bungee was almost as long as our yard.  It was a problem in need of a solution.  Then I noticed my mother’s car, a nineteen fifty-something Lincoln Capri.  It had a trailer hitch.  I looped the other end of the bungee over the trailer hitch and carefully pushed the bungee and truck under Mom’s car.

We lived on a dead-end street that was a long block in length.  After a short while Mom came out with her purse.  She told me to stay home and be good while she went to the store.  As she drove away I kicked the truck out into the middle of the street, casually sauntered out and stood on it while the bungee payed out to full length.

As the tension on the truck increased I realized I was about to die!  She was at the stop sign about two-thirds of a block away.  If the bungee broke it would probably take off my head.  If I could not hold the truck it would hit Mom’s car and she would take off my head.  I kept all my weight on the truck and prayed.  After an eternity she turned right and drove away with the bungee stretching around the Stop sign.

I stepped off the truck. It leaped about four feet in the air and launched like a rocket.  At that same moment a late model white sedan drove across the end of our street.  It came from the direction where Mom had gone.  BAM!  It hit the passenger door behind the driver, a man in his late fifties.  He came to a screeching stop.  He jumped out of the car and walked around it to see what had happened.  The passenger door had a huge blue dent.

I could hear him swearing as he looked in all of the nearby yards and the ditch along the street.  He could see me standing in the middle of the street, way down the block.  I just stood there with my hands in my pockets.  He ignored me.  Pretty soon I saw him holding up the remains of the Tonka Truck by a piece of bungee about a foot and a half long, comparing it to the dent in the door.

After another sweep of the yards, ditch and the culvert at the end of the street, he threw the Tonka Truck in his trunk and drove away.

The whole situation evolved without malice.  There was no plan.  One step seemed to suggest the next.  I meant no harm.  At least nobody was hurt.

I still wonder how he explained it to his insurance company.