Accidents Will Happen: Part II

     When last we met, I had been describing my surfing mis-haps.  Now that I have been properly humbled, it's back to more misfortune at poor brother Timmy's expense.  

     One day back in the late fifties a wonderful and strange new phenomenon occurred at school.  A solitary figure was seen careening down a walkway on a hill while standing on a small board.  There were wheels under this board.  He looked like he was surfing down the hill.  He was scooting along pretty fast and he was hooting and hollering and whooping with joy.  All of us at Punahou School who had seen this exhibition were witnessing our first skateboard ride.  We immediately ran up to this "sidewalk surfer" to see how such a miracle had been performed.  This sidewalk surfboard was nothing more than a small plywood plank about five inches wide and a foot and a half long.  

     The heel and toe portions of a skate, the kind with metal wheels that you attach to your shoe, had been hammered flat and nailed to the bottom of the board.  By leaning to the left or right while standing on the board you could get it to slowly turn.  In this fashion you could gently slalom down a hill as long as the substrate was fairly smooth concrete or road-bed.

     Within an hour or so of getting home from school, all the kids in our neighborhood had made themselves skateboards from their old skates.  Roller skating was so passe'.  That sissy stuff was for girls and stupid kids who were too oblivious to realize they were being totally dorky.  But smashing one of your old skates flat and nailing it to the bottom of a small board; now that's totally cool. 

Pictured, is the kind of skate we used to make our skateboards. 

      Comparing the skateboards of today to what we rode around on is like comparing a Corvette to a Model T.  The old metal wheels of those skates weren't really up to the rigors for which they were being repurposed.  As long as you were pushing yourself around on level roads and sidewalks you were OK.  Things could get a little dicier on hills.

     Timmy's Nose Dive Onto The A'a.

     Behind our house was an extinct volcano called Koko Head.  On its slopes, Henry Kaiser had built a subdivision called Koko Kai.  Our little neighborhood road, Portlock ran along the edge of the ocean and was very flat.  The new roads in the Koko Kai suburb had some fairly dramatic hills on them.  We gave each of them names from our Hawaiian surfing lore.  Pipeline, Sunset Beach, Waikiki etc.  The steepness of the hill was matched by the seriousness of the surf spot.  The gentlest hill was Waikiki.  The steepest hill was called Waimea for the famous surf spot on the north shore of the island that got up to forty feet in the wintertime.

     One day Timmy and I felt that we had mastered the art of skateboarding well enough to challenge the awesome downhill grade of Waimea.  With skateboards in hand, we hiked up to the top of the hill.  Making sure that no cars were coming (most of the new houses weren't occupied yet) we gave each other a nervous smile and in the words of young stupid siblings the world over we said to each other, "Here goes nothing.  We're probably gonna get killed!"  And with that salute we jumped on our boards and headed downhill.  The idea was to slalom down the road so we didn't just head straight down which would have generated way too much speed.  However, after the first few seconds we realized we were accelerating so quickly we could do nothing but go straight and hoped to God that we made it to the bottom intact.

     As the big brother, Timmy had pushed off in front of me and I was about ten yards behind him.  By the time we were halfway down Waimea we were traveling somewhere just below the speed of sound.  Suddenly I heard the sound of metal grating on asphalt and I saw my brother lurch forward.  One of his front wheels had come off and his skateboard came grinding to a halt.  My brother also came grinding to a halt.  Unfortunately his grinding consisted of pitching forward onto the asphalt in a prone position.  I managed to avoid the carnage of broken skateboard and broken brother and coasted to a stop at the bottom of hill.

Pictured below is an artists rendering of that terrible day.  In the lower left we see Timmy, briefly airborne, much to the horror of an innocent bystander with blond hair and a pink mini-skirt.

     "Oh no.  Oh God.  Poor Timmy!  This is gonna be bad; real bad!", I muttered to myself as I hurried back up the street to supply what little aid and succor I could.  In those days our typical neighborhood "outfit" consisted of a pair of shorts and nothing else.  As I got closer, I could hear the cries and anguished whimperings of poor brother Timmy.  I could also see the damage that a forward dive onto the asphalt at just-below-the-speed-of-sound could do to a mostly unclothed body.  Boy howdy, it was not pretty.  Large portions of his front side had been scraped off and he looked like he was wearing a ragged suit of blood.  Poor Timmy.  Together we walked home with skateboards in hand; him (not so) softly whimpering and me clucking and making soothing cooing type sounds trying to comfort him (fat chance!).  

     "Hey Timmy; it could have been worse.  You're not dead and hey!  We can repair your skateboard!"  I picked up the wheel that had fallen off.  "You're young.  You'll heal pretty quickly.  Then we can go back up Waimea and show her who's boss.  You know what they say; Ya gotta get back on the horse that threw ya!  Just think; some day in the not-too-distant future when you're all healed up, we'll look back on this day and chuckle merrily as we remember Timmy's nose dive onto the A'a!"  (Note to non-Hawaiian readers:  A'a is the Hawaiian name for the sharp choppy kind of lava that is created when it flows slowly.  It is very hard on tires and hiking shoes and certainly would be very hard on the tender naked flesh of a young mostly unclothed boy...)  The real agony would begin tomorrow when the scabs started to dry up and Timmy would be swathed in bandages like Borlis Karloff in "The Mummy".

     One other accident of note wasn't really an accident as much as foolish behavior on Timmy's part.  In 1964 my brother decided, with the encouragement of an English teacher at our boarding school, that if Tom really wanted to be a writer the only place to go to school was back East where the bulk of the literary establishment dwelled.  Besides, it would build character.  To be a good writer, one must suffer.  Or some such lofty drivel.  My dad wanted us boys to go to Stanford.  When my time came I did as I was asked and had a moderately marvelous time there.  Timmy, at this point in his life, was in a contrary mood.  By that I mean, whatever our dad wanted; Tom would do the opposite.  So off he went to college in the East.

     Williams College is one of the prestigious Ivy League schools.  It's located in the extreme northwest corner of Massachusetts, far from civilization as the rest of us know it.  I remember getting my first letter from him while I was in my junior year at our boarding school; "Dear Mickey,  Fall in New England is everything it's cracked up to be.  I decided to go out for the cross country team and we have been running through the glorious autumn countryside.  I have enclosed a couple of the fall leaves, resplendent in their hues of orange and red and yellow.  Enjoy.  L&K, brother Timmy"  (or words to that effect).  

     I turned over the envelope and out fluttered a few dried gray leaves.  Timmy didn't take into account the long canoe ride that his letter was going to have to take in order to make it all the way from New England to Hawaii Prep. Academy in Kamuela, Hawaii. 

Here's what Williams looked like in the fall.  How lovely!

     Soon old father Winter showed his doughty white beard at Williams.  The temperature plunged, the snow fell and the sky lowered to the point where poor Timmy couldn't tell where the snow ended and the horizon began.  This is when the outdoor activities ceased, everyone bundled up and stayed indoors until Spring.  Assumedly, they were studying so they could graduate and take their place at the helm of their fathers' law firms and multi-national corporations, etc.  At this time, like the other Ivy League schools, Williams was not co-ed.  If you wished to enjoy the company of ladies, you had to visit what were called "The Seven Sisters" schools.  Vassar, Sarah Lawrence, Wellesley etc.  Because of the remoteness factor that meant traveling a fair distance and our hero did not have a car.  These institutions of higher learning were sometimes called "suitcase schools" because if you hoped to have a chance for some nookie, you had to pack your suitcase and travel.  In my brother's case it meant hitch-hiking. 

    Picture Timmy, a young innocent country mouse from a tropical climate, bundling up as best he could, donning his new galoshes and standing by the side of the road in the freezing snow with his thumb out.  I ask you: WOULD YOU PICK HIM UP?  No.  I thought not.  So apparently, Timmy spent a lot of time standing by the side of the road with the thumb of one mittened hand sticking out shivering in the snow.  I never found out if he ever got lucky with a member of the opposite sex.

  Williams College in Winter.  Looks chilly doesn't it?

      One of Timmy's best friends from boarding school also made the plunge and went to Williams.  Curtis Tyler was a big affable fellow and he and my brother and a few others all hung together at our boarding school.  Curty's dad worked for one of the big fruit packing corporations that preyed on Central and South America and the Caribbean.  At the time the Tyler residence was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  So Timmy and Curtis headed down to Puerto Rico for that first Christmas vacation.  To say that our hero was ready for a little sunny R&R would be an understatement.  

     On their first full day in P.R. they took the family water skiing boat out and spent the day water skiing and drinking in the lovely sun and clear tropical days that P.R. is known for when there are no hurricanes lurking about.  My brother hadn't been in the sun, much less equatorial sun, in many months.  I imagine he was as white as a sheet.  At the end of that first day he looked (and felt) like a cooked lobster.  In 1964, there was no such thing as sun block.  The sun tan lotion that was available in those days, Sea and Ski, and the like, didn't provide much protection from the conditions that Timmy had just experienced that day.  

     That night, he was in serious pain with extreme sunburns over most of his torso.  Even a shirt felt like torture.  That night all he wore to bed was a pair of Madras Bermuda shorts and a pair of athletic socks.  He couldn't sleep and finally at 3 AM he decided to seek some relief by bathing his over-cooked body in the soothing balm of the sea.  Hey; why do you think they call it balmy?  So off he ran in his shorts and socks through the streets of San Juan to find some seaside relief.  

     On Timmy's last visit to Happy Acres, I set up a movie camera in the backyard so we could drink and reminisce and perhaps chuckle a bit.  I managed to make a little video out of the portion of the film that pertained to Timmy's Christmas trip to Puerto Rico.  I'll let this YouTube snippet tell the rest of the story.  Enjoy!  I sure did.  Next up:  More bad stuff that happened to da Mayor!  Timmy's off the hook, for now...

YouTube video link: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWjlG_bnUkY 

     Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres
    
     

Accidents Happen: Part One

     Everyone has accidents.  The nature of the accidents have to do with our age, where we live and what we were doing at the time.  I am thinking of the accidents that befell my brother and me as we were growing up in our ocean-side house in Hawaii.  I imagine some of our misfortunes were of the generic variety; skinned knees, sprained ankles, little fingers pinched in door ways; that sort of thing.  An accident can happen with something as innocent as a tether ball.

     In our front yard, for awhile when were were kids, our dad had set up a sturdy steel-poled tether ball set.  Timmy and I and our neighborhood gang wiled away many a pleasurable hour smacking the tether ball back and forth.  I quickly learned that the taller contestant had the upper hand as he could hit the ball in a higher arc which the shorter opponent couldn't quite reach.  The final result was the ball quickly spinning itself tightly around the pole; followed by the tether-ball victory dance.  My brother and I were about the same size and height and our tether ball matches got quite spirited.

     One day as we were playing my brother went to hit the ball as it came winging toward him and, inexplicably, he missed the ball entirely.  His momentum threw him to the ground and as he put out his arm to break his fall, instead he broke his arm.  Oh boy!  Our first cast!  I'm pretty sure my brother got heartily tired of telling his school mates what had happened.  To make him feel better, we decorated his cast with witty sayings and crude drawings of him lying on the ground next to the tether ball set with a crooked arm.  Classmates joined in the fun with their signings of the cast also making fun of the poor little crippled boy.  

Below is an artist's rendering of that terrible accident.  I'm on the right.  Timmy's on the left and you can clearly see the compound fracture of the right radius and ulnar bones.

     I believe the itching was the worst part.  Tom solved the problem with a straightened coat hanger.  Thankfully he didn't break the skin down in there so he avoided infection, possible gangrene, necrosis and amputation.  For that I know we are both very thankful.  Our parents probably wouldn't have let us keep the tether ball if poor Timmy had to play with one arm...

     He broke his arm again a few years later sliding down the side of a steep dirt embankment above the waste area of Ricky Moore's house where we had built our plywood fort.  Our gang were the good kids on the block.  We were only out during the day playing ball sports or surfing and occasionally snorkeling above the wonderful coral reefs that fronted our neighborhood.  Back then the coral hadn't been vandalized by beady eyed arrivistes; stripping it of the colorful reef fish and live seashells that abounded in our youth.  

Here's part of the "good kids" gang.  Da Mayor's on the right with brother Timmy behind me.  The little guy in the plastic boat is our kid brother Randy.  He doesn't quite know it yet but we're about to send him out into the open ocean with the crashing waves on what we hope will be the first of many spirit quests.  On the left, you can see part of the pier we walk out to paddle our surfboards out to our neighborhood surf spot, second reef.  (we're standing on first reef)

     Ricky Moore's backyard was just the right size for a game of home-run derby.  The snug little fort we kids had built past where the lawn ended was made of salvaged four by eight sheets of plywood.  We had cut a few holes in it to let in some light.  Since it was only four feet high we had to duck-walk to get in through the entry and would then sit in there for a few minutes shooting the breeze till we realized we were idiots for sitting inside this dusty squat little structure when we could be outside in the glorious Hawaiian sun playing baseball.  In our version of home-run derby (a show popular on TV at the time) whoever managed to hit the ball so it landed on top of the fort was the winner and new home-run king.  

     My brother was in the outfield when Peter Brown, who was famous for purposely fouling off pitches he didn't like, hit one up and to the right of the fort.  It landed on the bluff above and Tom went up to retrieve it.  In the act of sliding back down, he broke his arm.  We all heard the crack, followed by a great wail of anguish and pain.  Poor Timmy; he was kind of a klutz growing up.  Another cast; another straightened coat hanger.

     But my brother was not done with himself yet.  One day we were on the other side of the island (Oahu) which was considered being in the country in those days.  We were visiting some relative of our step-mother and we were to entertain ourselves with her son.  He took us to this beach behind which was a seawall with cement steps leading down to the sand.  My brother had a glass coke bottle in his hand as he was descending the stairs.  The stairs were steep and wet from the ocean spray and my poor but beloved brother was still in his "klutz" phase.  You guessed it.  His feet slipped out from under him and he fell crashing to the cement stairs.  He put out his hand with the coke bottle in it.  The bottle broke and cut his hand down to the bone, severing tendons in the process.  He had to have a wire cable installed in his hand to stitch the tendons back together.  So in addition to this, his third cast, he had a stainless steel wire sticking out of his palm.  Once again with the straightened coat hanger but this time he had to be extra careful since there were stitches in their too.  Poor Timmy...  what a klutz... 

     OK.  We've had enough fun at Timmy's expense for now.  We'll get into the skateboard mishap and the trip to Puerto Rico on his first college Christmas break later...  I don't want the reader to have the impression that I was much too clever to avoid the pratfalls of youth.  On the contrary.  I had two notable misfortunes that involved stitches but no casts.  Mine both happened in the ocean.  One surfing; one bodysurfing.

     Our neighborhood surf spot was directly in front of our house about a third of a mile out where the outer reef was.  We had a lovely little fishing pier that took us out past the first reef to where the deeper water was.  From there we would jump off the end of the pier with our boards and paddle out to "second reef" where the "big boy" waves broke.  There weren't more than about fifteen or twenty of the neighborhood kids that surfed so at any one time there were plenty of waves for everybody.  Our coastal neighborhood was in the lee of Koko Head crater which formed the eastern arm of our bay.  On the other end of Mauanalua bay was the back side of Diamond Head.  Past that was Waikiki beach where we had taken surfing lessons from the famous Hawaiian beach boys    

     Being on the lee side of the island meant that the trade winds which blew almost constantly in Hawaii were off shore making for nice surfing waves when the Summer swell was in.  Late one afternoon there was a healthy offshore breeze and a decent swell running.  Timmy and I were out enjoying ourselves on our new Velzy surfboards that we had bought with yard work money; augmented, as I remember, with a contribution from Dad; to be worked off in the future.  I took off on a wave that was a little too steep for the angle of my board and it "pearl dived".  That's where the nose of the board is shoved under the water by the force of the wave.  The rider (me) falls off and the board rebounds skyward.  Because of the wind, all surfers are taught to stay under for a few seconds till the board has had a chance to fall back onto the water.  I waited a few seconds and then surfaced.  A moment later I felt my board come thudding down on my head.  My brother had seen the wipeout and told me later that it was the skeg (fin) of the board that came down directly on my head, hatchet style.  

     The board dealt me a sharp and painful blow and it made me very angry.  Spluttering and muttering I got back on my board and started to paddle back out.  I heard a shout from my brother and when I turned my head around to yell back at him in a very irritated voice, I could see what he was shouting about.  Blood was running down my head onto my back and dripping into the water.  

     I mentioned that our surf spot was about a third of a mile off shore.  A copious amount of blood in the water, the kind that springs from head wounds, is not the sort of thing you want what with sharks' amazing ability to smell blood in the water.  As quickly as possible we paddled back to the pier and headed home.  My father, an MD, took one look at my cut and pronounced it 
in need of stitches at the Emergency Room at Queen's Hospital.  Mom and Dad trundled me off to the emergency room, leaving Timmy behind to hold down the fort; hoping he wouldn't break anything...  like another arm... 

     Because my father was a well known Psychiatrist in Honolulu and did rounds in the Psychiatric ward, he and my mother, who had also been in the medical community before she married our dad, knew all the doctors.  I asked the emergency room doc if there was anyway he could do the stitching without shaving my head.  With a patronizing wink to my parents he said he thought that could be managed.  When he was done with the stitches he padded the wound with peroxide and said to come back in ten days to get the stitches out, at which point my father volunteered to do the job at home.  I looked in the mirror to see how much my saintly countenance was disfigured by this grievous head wound.  I was thrilled to see that the mixture of my blood and the peroxide had left the blond hair on top of my head pink.  "Bitchen!"  I thought.  "Wait till everybody at school sees my pink hair!  When they find out about my stitches and my near brush with death and our escape from the sharks, the fellas will be so envious and the girls... well, I should get some major sympathy from the babesters!"  If I play it right and Maria Hemmings hears about it, I might even be promoted to the A-list!

     So we're driving home; it's dark and for some reason I'm sitting in the front seat with my dad driving and step-mom is in the back.  We are about halfway down our neighborhood street when suddenly we see several sets of headlights looming toward us.  When my dad sees that these cars are not stopping he suddenly jams on the breaks.  I was not ready for this and pitched forward hitting my head on the windshield.  The cars coming towards us have also stopped.  My dad gets out to confront these joy-riding hoodlums only to find that what he was seeing was a bunch of shiny aluminum pie plates strung up across the road between two telephone poles.

     At this point my dad starts cussing; slams the door and strides over to the curb in front of the Cowens big front yard.  "COME OUT OF THERE YOU KIDS!  WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE AND WE ARE NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU GET OUT HERE AND SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE!  MY SON IS SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT OF MY CAR.  WE HAVE JUST COME FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM AT QUEENS AND HE HAS TWELVE STITCHES IN HIS HEAD.  I HAD TO SLAM ON THE BRAKES BECAUSE OF YOUR LITTLE PRANK AND HE HIT HIS HEAD ON THE WINDSHIELD.  GET OUT HERE NOW!  I KNOW YOU'RE ALL HIDING IN THE BUSHES.  MIKE!  GET OUT AND SHOW THEM YOUR STITCHES AND YOUR PINK HAIR!"

     A brief word to the reader.  We grew up in a small private neighborhood.  Just like in a small town, everybody knew everybody else.  The people who were now reluctantly leaving their hiding places in the bushes were the bad kids; the kids who got to stay out at night; smoke cigarettes; raid the liquor cabinet; and do sexual things together that were years away for me.  I was about to be paraded around in front of all the bad kids as an object of sympathy while my dad gave them a lecture.  Today, thinking back on this tragicomic incident, I'm reminded of that phrase "You'll never be able to eat lunch in this town again."  My father, of course, wasn't thinking about my part in all of this vis-a-vis the bad kids.  Namely, I might be an object of sympathy tonight with my stitches and my pink hair, but tomorrow in the harsh light of day, after the hoodlums had been forced to take down the pie plates under my father's wrathful eye, I would be persona non grata big time.  

     I could just imagine the scornful cat-calls that would be hurled my way as I walked down Portlock Road.  "There goes the little cry baby with the pink hair.  Poor little Stevens kid hit his widdew head!  Aah, poor baby!"  What really amazed me about this whole episode was how the force of my father's angry voice actually willed all the kids out of the bushes.  With growing alarm I began to realize what a calamity this was turning into.  There they all were like some sort of line-up of Portlock's Who's-who of junior hoodlums.  Dicky and Sheffy and Tobin and even Jojo Roberts who had been kind enough to give me a black eye several years earlier.  Plus there was Kinau and Stefanie and even Betty Ann who I had been harboring a secret crush on.  "Great!", I thought to myself.  "I am so dead tomorrow."

     I must say, secretly I was thrilled to see these wild ruffians who were contemptuous of everything good in the world (at least in my mind, at the time) crawling out of the bushes and sitting side-by-side on the Cowens front lawn while being lectured in the sternest voice I have ever heard my dad use.  "My dad", I thought, "Giving it to the Portlock Road punks for causing me to hit my head on the windshield.  If that isn't love, I don't know what is.  Bitchen!  You go, Dad!  Let 'em know how bad and evil they are.  I'll deal with the fall-out tomorrow."

     Several years later my brother and I were at one of our two body-surfing beaches, Makapuu.  The other beach was known as Sandy Beach.  It was about a five minute car ride from our house.  You may have seen President Obama riding waves in Hawaii on one of his vacations; that was Sandy Beach. Anyway, the swell was running at four to five feet which was about optimum for Makapuu.  I caught a nice wave with a rideable right shoulder.  So I'm happily barreling along going right.  As the shore-break wave starts to curl above me I start my pull-out.  This involves diving down in front of the wave and doing a half turn as you hit the water.  That way as the wave breaks above you, you're crouched on the bottom hugging the sand, ready to spring seaward leaving the breaking wave behind you.  This maneuver almost always works well and it allows the bodysurfer to avoid being sucked into what we called the washing machine.  That's where you get caught and sucked back into the whitewater and hurled around like clothes in the washing machine.  If that happens you can expect seaweed in your hair and in your trunks and sandy water up your nose and count yourself lucky if your swim fins don't get sucked off your feet.

Here's a picture of the leader of the Western World bodysurfing at one of the local beaches, Sandy Beach, about a five minute drive from our house.  Go Prez!  Uh huh!  You da man; you da MAN!

     At the last moment, as I was starting my bail-out, I see another bodysurfer barreling right towards me from the opposite direction.  We collided head on.  Stevie Wilcox, a fellow Portlock Roadian, was a year or so younger than I and a bit smaller.  However, he was part Hawaiian which meant, at least according to local Hawaiian lore, that he had thicker skin.  He got knocked out for a second but came to before CPR had to be administered.  I, on the other hand, with my thinner Haole (Caucasion) scalp suffered another head wound.  After I got to shore brother Timmy took a quick look top-side and pronounced my cut in need of stitches.  Once again; another head wound and more copious bleeding.  The scar tissue from my previous head wound had given way with this latest insult and the two scars crossed, leaving me with a big X on my scalp.

Here's just what I looked like when I looked up and saw Stevie Wilcox barreling right towards me for our head-on collision.  Ouch!

     We drove home in our little pea-green VW bug with me riding shot-gun, the window open and my head hanging out so I wouldn't bleed on the interior.  As we turned into our driveway, our little brother Randy was practicing his rookie bike riding skills.  He took one look at my bloody head, shrieked and crashed his bike into the bushes.  As Timmy was parking the car, my mother came rushing out of the house, having heard Randy's cry.  "Oh my God!  What happened to you boys?!"  My brother told her he was fine it was just me with all the blood.  Before I continue this story I should let the reader know that I had a certain affinity for the dramatic.  Because I was in the oven for ten months before birth, my brother always maintained that I should have been born a Leo.  Leos are supposed to make the best actors.  As my mother rushed up to where I sat with my head resting on the car's windowsill; still bleeding profusely, with a baleful stare I raised my head, looked at my mother and said; "SHARK!".

     I'm not really sure what came over me.  Perhaps I wanted her to show me the same kind of concern my father had with my first head wound.  When she found out the truth I was lucky to be bleeding copiously at the time or they're might have been more blood shed.  To say that my step-mother was not amused at my ploy would be an understatement.  So off we go to Queen's Hospital Emergency Room again for some more stitches and pink hair.

     

     

Timmy spies a surfing dolphin

Brother Tom and I have rarely spent Thanksgiving together.  Mostly because he was living in Hawaii and I was in Mill Valley.  The one time we were together here at Happy Acres, we decided to visit our kid brother down in San Diego.  Brother Randy had to work on that Thursday so we decided to do it Friday night instead.  We drove down and stopped in a little Runyun-esque dive bar on Sunset Boulevard for Thanksgiving.  When Timmy and I walked in, the cocktail chatter ceased immediately.  We found out soon enough from a neighboring bar patron they thought we were cops.  

     Our neighboring bar patron was an older woman with stringy grey hair and a careworn face.  I figured that rehab or jail time had figured into her past.  "Huh!  You're cops; ain't ya?" she barked with a scowl.  Tom and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.  "No, no.  We're brothers on our way to San Diego to meet up with our other brother.  Here.  Check out our driver's licenses."  After checking our ID's and seeing the same last name she was satisfied, if somewhat disappointed that her spot judgement had been wrong.  With a gimlet eye she gave us the once over again and pointing at me she said, "Well...OK...so your not cops.  But you (meaning me) are the mean one!"  

     With that my brother and I howled in nervous laughter (a tacit acknowledgement that there was some truth to what she said.  I mean, next to my darling big brother; everyone comes off as mean.)  So ever since I have taken great pride in being the mean brother.  So the mean brother got to finally host another post-Thanksgiving get-together.  Timmy came up for a blessedly rainy weekend.  We were joined Friday night by my first fireplace fire of the year and two of our fellow acre-ettes, Matt and Davey.  Dave is a professional musician with great mastery of the guitar.  As the music director for the show band in the Navy for nine years he has a vast and impressive repertoire of pop tunes that he can play and sing.  With Davey on my acoustic steel string and later on electric guitar (Under the Boardwalk--The Drifters) and the rest of us howling possible harmony parts we had ourselves a boozy faux Thanksgiving hootenanny.  I served them the rest of the Thanksgiving dinner I had bought from the Whole Foods serve-yourself steam tray.  A fine time was had by all and for one special shining night-----I wasn't the mean brother.

     Without further ado, here's the column my brother wrote for his local fish-wrap post Thanksgiving weekend.  Enjoy.  


  Otter Views – Rainbow Monday

Tom Stevens for CST

In the rainy weekend’s aftermath, Monday produced the sort of skies favored by painters and photographers. Successive layers and ledges of gray framed distant cumulus towers that could have arisen from a storybook. All the grays were out, from charcoal, slate and battleship to pewter, pearl and dove.

Here and there, slow-moving shafts of misty sunlight slanted through ragged blue windows in the clouds. Probing the sodden world below like flashlight beams, these lit up all they touched and lent vivid  color to what had been drab. 

Neither painter nor photographer myself, I felt uneasy bogarting all this celestial beauty. But then I reasoned pictorial artists had been tracking this chiaroscuro cloudscape since first light, as alert to each change as duck hunters in a blind. 

Monday’s cloud diorama ushered me down the coast from San Francisco, where I had spent the weekend at my brother’s place. Hoping to skirt morning rush hour traffic there and in Santa Cruz, I left early and drove south along Highway One. 

The radio carried a lot of palaver about “Cyber Monday.” Financial nabobs postulated that a big Cyber Monday might offset this year’s disappointing Black Friday. That event, I was told, actually begins for many shoppers on Thanksgiving Thursday. Some reportedly pushed the envelope even further, camping in a Best Buy parking lot in mid-November to be first in line on bargain night.

It’s all somewhat baffling. Tell me again why Americans are pitching tents out in the sleet, then fist-fighting and hair-pulling in electronics stores on Thanksgiving night? Is this going to be a national identifier for us now, like celebrity worship and obesity? Then, so be it. The British have soccer hooligans. I guess we can have shopping hooligans. 

Black Friday’s fistic excesses might explain the growing popularity of Cyber Monday. Why risk getting trampled in Best Buy or shin-kicked at the Genius Bar when you can shop safely from your smart phone? No, strike “safely.” Apparently Cyber Monday has become a bonanza for international credit and identity thieves. It should be called Hacker Monday.

Before these bleak thoughts could further sour the drive, I punched off the radio and glanced seaward. Dark squalls floated like jellyfish over the horizon, stinging the ocean with filaments of rain. In the drizzly shafts where sunlight met rain, candy colors suddenly appeared. This might have been Cyber Monday elsewhere, but it was Rainbow Monday along the coast.

The stretch of Highway One from Pacifica to Santa Cruz features several lofty, roller coaster hills that overlook long, empty beaches. As I came over the crest of one hill, the sun broke through and lit up a set of incoming waves. The water turned pellucid, coke-bottle green, and a double rainbow formed offshore. 

Just then, for a thrilling moment, I saw the dark torpedo shape of a lone dolphin within a wave, angling swiftly toward shore. The bodysurfing dolphin was lost to view as my truck sped on down the hill, but the double rainbow lingered for another half-mile, brightening the sky like two rolls of Lifesavers.

The play of colored light on dark backdrops is a Christmas season verity that can offset Cyber Monday. As December days shorten toward the solstice, there is increasing darkness to illuminate. Once the sun sets, strings of colored bulbs sparkle vividly to life. Holiday trees pinpoint the night with red, blue, yellow, orange and green. Spotlighted crèches, Santas and yard snowmen beckon passersby.

In rainy Decembers, the streets become a second winter sky as  shiny black asphalt mirrors holiday colors. Even traffic lights gain some seasonal cachet, their elongated flares of red, green and yellow glistening in turn from wet pavement. They seem to say: Don’t freak on Black Friday. Enjoy the signals.

In addition to rainbows, cloud towers and a bodysurfing dolphin, Monday’s coastal scenery included several Christmas tree farms newly open for business. This early in December, the cut trees are still numerous, still have all their needles, and are power-packed with piney fragrance. Winding slowly through Santa Cruz, I lowered the windows at each tree lot and enjoyed a brisk Doppler blast of evergreen.

For me, that fresh fir tree scent and the play of colored light on rainy pavement starts the holiday season. All else will follow: poinsettia pots in gold foil, holly branches on the mantel, menorahs in the window, friends and family arriving for parties, kids in reindeer hats, egg nog sprinkled with cinnamon, holiday light shows, and bundled carolers trying to remember if it’s 10 Lords or 11 Lords A-Leaping.

When the rain stops, another light show starts overhead. Constellations pulse and shimmer in the great black street of the winter sky. Stars and planets glow in festive strings: red, blue, yellow, orange and green. It’s all there, and it’s okay to bogart.

Horses at Happy Acres

     When I first moved to Happy Acres in the early seventies, my lady friend and I were just renting the house on this former homesteaded dairy farm (with ducks, strangely).  After the ducks and the dairy, came pigs; large hungry pigs.  Old man Quadros by this time had garnered a reputation in the neighborhood of being a bit of a boogie man.  Parents were known to take young miscreants in hand and threatened them with; "If you two don't behave, your father and I will take you up to old man Quadros' place and throw you to the pigs!"

     By the early seventies, "Old Man Quadros" was in a retirement home; the pigs had gone to sausage heaven and the homestead was occupied by a bull, a cow and two well-trained quarter horses.  The day the cow was found dead with the bull standing over her in a state of heightened consternation, a tallow truck was called to drag the poor cow's carcass away.  As the tow line became taut and the body started to slide up the hill, the bull became quite agitated.  I watched from the living-room window early one Spring morning as this drama unfolded before me.  The bull, outraged at this incomprehensible development, let out with a mighty roar and ran around each side of the cow, hectoring and snorting, as if his antics could magically re-animate his mate.

     This is just the sort of situation these horses were trained to deal and both quarter horses took to forcefully maneuvering the bull away from the cow.  As one horse would head him off from one side the bull would let out with a mighty bellow and run around behind the old milking barn and come back to the cow on the other side.  At this point, the other quarter horse would perform the same maneuver as his partner.  Together those two horses kept the raging bull (with apologies to Jake Lamotta and Robert Deniro) at bay, allowing the tallow truck crew to do their duty.  

     That one incident, more than any other, decided my fate for the next forty years.  Happy Acres, where cool and unexpected things happened, would be my home.  I looked across the pasture, above the barn and took in the expansive view of Tamalpais and Tennessee Valley.  The hillsides and valley ridges were rimmed with tall and stately trees.  Up and to my right, the old Miwok trail serpentined along the side of Coyote ridge.  Its side trails led down to Muir Beach, Tennessee Valley beach, Rodeo Lagoon, next to the Golden Gate Bridge and one side trail, which became precipitous at the end rewarded the determined hiker with a private beach called Pirate's Cove.  This lovely little beach had a small seasonal brook running down into the water.  My brother and I would often hike down to Pirate's Cove in the Summer, when the sand was in residence and frolic in the waves or toss the football around on the beach.  There was rarely anyone else in attendance; I believe we may have been naked...   The nearby Pacific ocean zephyrs keep Happy Acres cool in the Summer and somewhat warmer in the Winter.  I realized then that this was the kind of homey place I had been longing for ever since my college days when I had silly dreams of tree houses and geodesic domes.

     After the cows and quarter horses departed, the next door neighbor installed his daughter's two horses on the property.  Compared to the spirit and pedigree of the former horse tenants these creatures were mere nags, slow of foot and woefully sway-backed from too many rides.  I occasionally amused myself (I'm not proud of it, now that I look back) by descending into the pasture with carrot in hand to entice one of these old nags to move.  I told myself that just standing around all day looking bored and forlorn was not good for their health.  

     I would stand in front of "Spunky", we'll call him, and put the carrot before his nose.  His formerly listless eyes would spark up, just a little, and he would raise his head to bite the carrot.  I would move the carrot to the side and his head would follow.  I would move it further and his head would follow.  I found that he would turn his head as far as he possibly could to follow the path of the carrot without moving his feet.  No wonder the somewhat pampered daughter from next door no longer showed much interest in these poor beasts.  Within a year or two they had been further retired to a corral in Squaw Valley where they would be slowly transporting young children up and down that beautiful valley with Squaw Creek running through it.  "A fitting end to a long and servile life", I mused.

     By 1980, I had the place to myself.  All the bills were now in my name.  I contracted with my landlord, Norm, the son of the original homesteader to take over the pasture.  My two partners and I had already taken over the old garage and turned it into "Tres Virgos Studio" a humble but hardworking eight-track recording studio.  My plan was to rent out a bedroom to one of my volleyball buddies and spend my free time (I was still toiling in the numbers mine of corporate finance and accounting at the time.) clearing away all the detritus that had accumulated over years of neglect.

     Old man Quadros had, in his dotage, become something of a hoarder.  He would take his old beater pick-up truck through the valley and offer, for a small sum, to relieve the homeowners of anything they wished to rid themselves of; concrete wash basins, old top loading clothes washing machines with a clothes ringer on top; ancient rusting freezers and ice boxes were also carelessly strewn across the homestead.  In addition to piles of rotting wood with nails sticking up, there had grown up some pesky unwanted vegetation.  In the horses' absence, a large stand of Scotchbroom and Queen Ann's Lace had taken up residence.  However, the largest impediment to my dream of renovating the horse pasture was a huge conglomeration of blackberry bushes that had taken root over the old septic tank.  The effluent from this sewage system, which was really nothing more than a rusted out  fifty-gallon drum buried about two feet under ground, had been faithfully feeding this multi-headed blackberry beast for decades.  While other vegetation wilted and died during the drought years of the mid-seventies, this blackberry behemoth had continued to grow and prosper.

     I contracted with this sturdy war veteran to tackle the blackberry.  He assured me that he and his trusty machete were up to the task and that he had seen much worse in the jungles of Vietnam.  I bought a used industrial-strength five horse-power two-cycle weed-wacker from the local tool rental store.  When I explained my situation, the proprietor assured me that the Echo 500 was up to the task.  My brother was in residence at the time so I assigned him the herculean labor of collecting and moving the various piles of decaying lumber to a safe place out of harm's way.

 One of our noble steeds posing in profile.  Sorry about the picture quality.  Too many years on my bulletin board in the kitchen.

     After the weeds and the blackberry and the rotting lumber had been dispatched with, the next task to further my dream of being the proud provider of horse pasturage was to re-encircle the entire property with three strands of wire to keep the horses from straying off the property and wandering into the neighbor's yards or down Highway One.  I purchased several large spools of double-stranded barbed wire for the job.  Wearing sturdy leather gloves and my jean jacket, I slowly walked the spool around the outside perimeter of the property.  Happy Acres is ringed by Eucalyptus trees at roughly fifteen foot intervals.  The old wire had long since fallen into disrepair and as I removed the old wiring, I nailed up the barbed wire to the trees.  I found out later that, in general, the gentry of the Marin County horsey set prefer something called pig wire which is barbed wire without the barbs.  That way their mounts suffer no unsightly scratches or tears on their lovely hides.  There was a lot I would be learning over the years about what services and amenities to provide to the discriminating horse owners of Marin County.

     My first customer was an enterprising young fellow who owned a small corporation that provided materiel management expertise to the hospital industry.  His offices were in the fisherman's wharf area of San Francisco and he and his wife lived in San Rafael.  I had been hired by Marty to install a computer accounting system and provide financial counsel to his young but growing enterprise.  Marty had two beautiful and spirited Arabians that he was boarding up north in the Petaluma area.  His business kept him from making the trip north to ride his animals and he was looking for pasturage closer to home.  "Marty, have I got a deal for you!", I exclaimed one day at work.  "Every day, when you commute to work, you pass within a couple of miles of my shiny new horse pasture.  You gotta come and see what I've done to the old homestead."

     Martin came up and was quite enthused to have his beautiful Arabians closer at hand.  "Mike, as you know, I have to travel a bunch for the company.  I'd like you to take a personal interest in my little beauties.  I'll show you the twisted snaffle bit that Fatima favors.  You can ride her bareback if you want or put this saddle and blanket on her.  You do ride, don't you?"  

     Now Martin was not only paying me a princely sum (very moderate by today's standards) to manage the finances of his company, but now he was also paying me to board his horses.  "Why yes, Marty, I did some riding back in Hawaii.  I'm sure I'll get on quite well with Fatima and Ahlam."  With big smiles we shook on it.  I had my first two horses!

     When I came up with the idea of boarding horses I had notions of doing some riding myself.  Our homestead is adjacent to a wonderful network of hundreds of miles of trails called The Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  From the Golden Gate Bridge to the wine country in the North Bay, from the ocean to the  San Francisco bay, there are some of the best riding, biking and walking trails in all of California.  When out hiking the trails, I always enjoyed meeting other hikers many of whom had come for vacation.  From all over the world people included our beautiful coastal and mountain trails as part of their itinerary.  I could see myself astride one of my boarder's trusty steeds cantering, perhaps shirtless on a warm day, along past the hikers taking in the bracing ocean breezes.  "Hello ladies!  Welcome to our lovely coastal trails!  Where do you lovelies hail from?  Ireland?  Splendid!  I should have guessed from your fair complexions and comely pink cheeks. Enjoy your walk!  Maybe I'll see you at the Pelican Inn."

This was how I saw myself as the handsome horseman of Happy Acres, sans the cigar...

     I could take the Green Gulch trail down to Muir Beach, tie up my horse at the stables there and take a late lunch at the Pelican Inn, a lovely little British B&B that specialized in English ales and bangers and mash.  "Hello!  Are you here on holiday?  Where do you hail from.  Really?  Me?  No, I live just up over the hill there.  I rode my horse down for a bit of sustenance.  A beer?  Why I'd love one!"  That was the scenario in mind as I contemplated saddling up and taking Fatima or Ahlam for a ride.

     One day I screwed up my courage, went down to the barn which now doubled as a tack room and took down Fatima's twisted snaffle bit.  I gently eased it over her head and inserted it in her mouth.  She seemed a little nervous about all this and it occurred to me that Marty probably hadn't ridden her in awhile.  Oh well, I was young, strong and in good athletic shape--as you can see from the picture above...  I'm sure we could make this work.  My plan was to just ride her around the pasture bareback to let her get used to me before we saddled up for the big adventure.  With a handful of oats rolled in molasses, horse candy, I gentled her over next to a fallen tree stump.  I stepped up onto the stump and gently put my right leg over the horse.  Arabians are small of stature as horses go and it wasn't hard for my lithe 6' 3" frame to get a leg up over her.  She made some nervous grunting noises and shuttled forward a bit as if to disabuse me of the notion of mounting her.  

     But with bridle in hand I was able to slide up onto her back.  There I was sitting on horseback.  I felt like Clint Eastwood in "High Plains Drifter".  I could tell that Fatima was not
completely comfortable with me up there, but I felt confident that as she sensed my mastery of the situation she would settle down.  Gingerly I gave her a little kick and a "giddy-up!"  I leaned down and whispered in her left ear.  "Good girl!  Everything's gonna be fine.  Easy girl.  Slow forward, now, in first gear."  

     There was a bit of head-tossing on her part, but, remembering my long ago riding lessons from the public stables in Kuhio Park behind Waikiki beach, I kept a firm hand on the reins and managed to turn her uphill.  The barn is down on the lower part of the homestead and the plan was for me to gently guide her up the hill to the top of the property; turn her around and then trot gracefully back down the slope.  With a few fitful starts and stops and shakings of the head we managed to make it to the top of the property to the horse gate next to our neighborhood road.  As a car slowly drove by I gave a jaunty wave.  "Hello, there neighbor.  As you can see, I'm riding one of my lovely Arabian horses!"  

 Here's one of Happy Acres' finest relieving her thirst at the "water bucket".  It's actually an industrial pickling barrel from the Sonoma Pickle Factory that I found at a flea market.  There were only two problems with it.  The horses loved to chew on the hose and they would invariably toss it out of the barrel.  Since the hose was set at a dribble in order to keep the trough full, I had to constantly put it back in place.  No amount of securing with spring-loaded clips, twine and baling wire could keep the damn hose in the barrel.  Bad horses!  Bad!  Also, over time the insides of the barrel would get covered in algae and I had to periodically tip the thing over, no small feat as water is very heavy, turn it on its side, crawl in with a bucket of soapy water and a large scrub brush and scour out the insides.  (The picture scrolls to the right).  Directly behind Sly Fox's head is the old duck pen.  Behind it, in the background is the recording studio.  In the foreground to the right is the original dairy barn where the milking and calving was done.  Behind that is the main house.  I'll put that house up against any Applachian moonshiner's cabin you can find...

     As we turned around and headed back downhill to the barn, Fatima picked up speed.  "Whoa, horsey.  Easy now.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves."  Before I knew it we were cantering down the hill.  Without a saddle horn to hang on to all I could do was squeeze my legs around her sides and hang on for dear life.  I was quickly leaving my comfort zone.  Right before the barn, Fatima turned to the right to avoid some rather large rocks that had not yet been cleared from the property.  As the horse went right; I continued to go straight.  For a brief moment I was airborne but having my wits about me, I knew what was coming next.  With a mighty thump I hit the ground.  Luckily I missed the rocks (did I say rocks? more like small boulders...) and my head bounced up off the ground.  I lay there for a moment, moaning.  If this scene had been animated, this is where the little birdies would have been spiraling over my head.  I was dizzy and my head was ringing.  Looking back, I probably sustained a mild concussion.  I slowly got back to my feet like a boxer who'd been knocked to the canvas.  Thus began and ended my riding career at Happy Acres.

     I wasn't about to let my personal riding misfortune alter my plans for the pasture.  Over the roughly twenty-five years of providing boarding space, I've entertained about thirty horses in all.  I had determined that four at a time was about as much as my three acres could support.  In 2006 or so my landlord informed me that our liability coverage had been dropped and he was seeking a new insurer to cover the homestead.  An insurance appraiser came up to assay the property for liability risks.  He determined that we had to make several improvements to the property to qualify for his company's coverage.  Overhanging tree limbs were cut, the pile of decaying wood my brother had moved for me years ago had to be removed as it presented a fire hazard.  The back wall of the house had to be reshingled and a spark arrester had to installed over the top of the chimney.  

I love the way her sleek auburn coat shines in the late afternoon sun

    I was much in favor of the last improvement as we had had a problem in the past with flaming bits of paper escaping the chimney.  As the property is surrounded by eucalyptus trees and all the leaf-litter that they shed, I could see where this was an issue that needed to be addressed.  Several years earlier, one night I took it into my slightly inebriated head to burn a bunch of cardboard boxes that had been accumulating.  I used a box cutter to render the boxes into slats that I fed into the fire.  I must admit we had quite a jolly conflagration going when suddenly there was a loud and insistent pounding on the front door.  As it was after mid-night, I couldn't imagine who would be calling at such an ungodly hour.  As I opened the door, several burley firemen decked out in their heavy canvas coats and their bright red fire hats with fire hoses in hand went barging past me without even a "by your leave".  They jogged down the hallway, burst into the living room and opened up their nozzles.  Two great sprays of water came shooting out of their hoses and blasted the fireplace.  The next morning, when I came upstairs, I was greeted by a fine grey coating of ash over the entire living room.  Then I remembered a stern rebuking that I received from Mill Valley's finest as they were leaving the night before.  "Listen, pal, don't ever do that again.  Your neighbor phoned up and said they thought the house was on fire.  You need to get a spark arrester!"

You can see the feeding station where the "upper class" horses got to dine.  This big guy looks like he's thinking to himself.  "Screw the hay; I want at those beautiful fox-glove blossoms!"

     The last item on the insurance appraiser's list had to do with the horses.  "Do you own these horses?", he casually inquired.  I replied, "Why no.  I board and feed them for their owners." I replied.  Well, that just wouldn't do as the policy my landlord was attempting to buy didn't include coverage for my sort of enterprise as it constituted a commercial venture in a residential neighborhood.  The landlord sadly informed me that if we were to have any chance of replacing the lapsed liability coverage, the horses, alas, were going to have to go.  It was with a very sad heart that I informed my horse owners of our situation.  Happy Acres just wouldn't be the same without our lovable garden compost providers.  As it was, we never got the coverage.  It was probably just as well; within a month of me evicting the horses, two, one hundred foot long eucalyptus limbs fell across the horses' dining room.  Most likely I and/or some contingent of the horses would have been mashed mercilessly into the ground.

The three pix below show two major limb falls that both fell across the main horse feeding and staging area.  The limbs fell within a month of each other several weeks after I had evicted the horses.  I'd call that a bit of a close call, eh? (top two pix scroll to the right)  This is also why eucalyptus trees used to be called "widow makers"

     I thought back to all the notable moments of our horse tenancies.  There was the time we had just dug a four foot trench from the main house down across the pasture to the highway so we could get hook up with the county sewer and get off the broken septic system.  A day or so after the plumbing was completed and the trench had been back-filled, one of our horse owners had a young relative visiting and he had promised him a "horsey" ride.  The young fellow couldn't have been much more than ten or eleven and was not an experienced rider.  He was helped up onto the saddle and his mount began walking across the pasture. When he came to the recently filled in trench his hooves sank into the soft ground which hadn't had a chance to settle yet and with a great whinnying cry he toppled over with his terrified young rider pinned beneath him.  Luckily, since the ground was still soft he only suffered a well-bruised leg and the horse was no worse for the wear.  It was just one incident of the liability hazards that were out there.  I could see why the appraiser wanted the horses gone.


The horses were frequent garden intruders despite the signage.

     Over the years, we discovered several other "horse traps" that were lurking on the property.  In various places on the land there were strands of wire left over from this place's incarnation as a dairy farm.  One morning when I went out to feed the horses, I noticed that one of them "Salamanca" (they all seemed to have exotic foreign-sounding names) was slow to come to the feeding station.  

     I had cleared out a level spot below the recording studio that was close to the hay barn where we put the feeding stations.  Duffy and Ron owned a lovely pair of horses and they brought in a proper metal two sided unit with a trough on either side at horse height and a large barred feeding hopper above.  The flakes of oat hay or alfalfa or whatever we were "serving" that day were tossed in the top of the hopper and the horses pulled bits of it out through the bars.  There was less waste that way.  The other horse owners didn't have such a nifty feeding machine and with them, we made do with large truck tires that the hay was deposited in.

     When Holostra finally made it up to her place at the table I noticed she was limping.  On closer inspection, I was horrified to see that the flesh on her right foreleg had been separated from the knee to the ankle and the skin was gather around the top of her hoof like a lazy sock.  Her entire shin was exposed and you could see the bloody tendons all the way around.  I was amazed how stoic Salamanca was.  It was as if she thought, "Oh well; that's a bother; hurts a bit; now; where is my breakfast?"  

     I had the number for our horse vet, an older gent who was venerated by the Marin County horse community, Dr. Steer.  Aptly named, don't you think?  Doc Steer had been here before to administer heart worming medicine and perform the odd annual check-up.  Over the phone, I told his assistant what had happened and could the doctor come over ASAP as it was a bit of an emergency.  His office was a sod-roofed structure in a cow pasture at the northern-most end of Marin County and it would take him about forty-five minutes to get there.  I was told to keep an eye on the animal and to try find what had caused the damage.  After some sleuthing I found a bit of two-strand pig wire half buried down by the old dairy barn.  I could see where it had snared her shank like a trap.  In trying to extricate herself she had pulled a goodly share of the wire out of the ground and left behind blood and bits of flesh.  

     I called Jenny, her owner, and told her, if at all possible, to come over right away and explained what had happened.  She let out an audible gasp and a muffled cry over the phone and said she'd get out of class as soon as she could.  (Jenny was a PE instructor at one of our local high schools.)  Jenny and Doc Steer arrived at about the same time.  Poor Jenny took one look at her beloved horse's skinned shank and began to sob.  Doc Steer had me bend down and support Holstra from her right front while he gently lifted up her leg.  He proceeded to bathe her entire exposed shin with an anti-biotic.  When she had been properly doused he took the collar of severed skin, pulled it back up into place.  He had administered a local anesthetic at the knee joint so as to numb the pain.  He then took out a rather substantial needle and suture and proceeded to stitch it back in place all the way around the lower knee joint.  A sturdy and tight bandage was applied and the job was done.  During this whole ordeal, good old Salamanca never let out as much as a peep.  I was glad the doc was quick with his work as supporting the horse's front end with my bended back was beginning to get a bit tiresome.  Within a few weeks she was good as new.  With a bit of remonstrating by Jenny, I was "encouraged" to scour the pasture for any other possible horse traps that might be out there.  I found several and dug up the old wire wherever I could find it.

     Another time, one of the horse's, "Sly Fox", as I remember, got a rather large infected abscess on the knee of one of her forelimbs.  Doc Steer came over and made an incision and, using a melon baller, scooped out the infected area.  Once again, not a peep from the afflicted animal.  I'd have been screaming to high heaven.  I eventually replaced the barbed wire with the non-barbed pig wire and used a come-along to tighten the wire all along the perimeter.  

     I found that, despite the wire being galvanized and therefore supposedly rust proof, it wasn't immune to reacting to acid that was present in the tree bark.  This caused the wire to break over time in various places and occasionally the horses were able to "egress".  Fortunately, because the homestead is ringed on three sides by a steep berm that leads down to Highway One, wandering off wasn't that great an option.  I did receive a call one Winter's morning informing me that one of my horses, "Djai", was outside the perimeter and standing on the edge of the berm.  I hurried down below the barn to the southern end of the pasture and found him causally dining on the long grass that had grown up outside the pasture where craning necks couldn't reach.  Now Djai was a very cool character who had survived Hurricane Iniki on Kauai.  And I was confident that he wouldn't panic.  

     I had once left my truck in the pasture after off-loading several loads of horse manure from the Muir Beach Stables to make garden compost.  The next morning I went down to retrieve my truck to find that Djai had vandalized it over night.  He had broken the side view mirror; removed a chrome ring from around one of the headlights and managed to remove one of my rubber blades from the windshield wiper.  When I told Rebecca his owner she said; "That's nothing.  One time Jerry and I were picking magic mushrooms in a cow pasture on Kauai above a cliff overlooking the ocean.  Djai got his head in the driver's side window and managed to release the emergency brake with his teeth.  The truck rolled down the pasture, broke through the fence and crashed into the ocean."  Very cool horse...

     I found, after several horse break-ins to the garden, that the best way to get a horse to follow you somewhere was to offer him a tray of rolled oats covered in molasses, their favorite treat.  With my Wellingtons on, I positioned myself in front of Djai at the edge of the lower driveway.  Holding a tray of rolled oats in front of him I started to back up back into the pasture.  Behind me there was a tangle of eucalyptus branches laying on the ground which I hadn't noticed.  As Djai followed me forward he simultaneously stepped on my foot and jumped over the pile of branches.  Since I was pinned in front of him he knocked me over like a bowling pin and I watched his huge white torso sail above me as he adroitly leaped over the branches and trotted back into the pasture proper.  Luckily for me, it being Winter, the ground was soft from recent rains and I was no worse for the wear.  I redoubled my efforts to patrol the fence looking for breaks.

     One day when I was out in the pasture with my garden cart and my flat shovel collecting horse pucky, I noticed Duffy's horse, Pashmina (C'mon!  I don't really remember all their names after all this time!...) acting strangely.  Her gait was unsteady; she was slowly circling in a tight counter-clockwise circle and was drooling from the nose and mouth.  I called Duffy and I called good old reliable Doc Steer.  The doc diagnosed Pashmina with Equine Protozoal Encephalitis.  This is a nasty little critter that horses can pick up if they drink water that has been contaminated by possum feces.  There are several ponds between here and the coast that were used as cattle watering stations in the golden days of yore.  Possums are also ubiquitous in this area so the disease vector was very likely to happen at some point.

     Dr. Steer furrowed his oft-furrowed brow and announced to Duffy and I that EPE was very difficult to treat with complete success.  "The only place around that's really had any success is the veterinary school up the road at UC Davis.  Duffy was pretty well-fixed financially so finances weren't going to be a factor.  Forthwith, Pashmina, stumbling and drooling, was carefully shepherded up into her horse trailer and transported to veterinary college.  Duffy kept me informed how Pashmina was doing; that she had started improving and that she would eventually be coming home to Happy Acres in a couple of days.  Two days later, as I recall, I got a call from a friend one morning.  "Hey, Mikey.  You better head down to your 7-11store and pick up today's copy of the Marin IJ. (Independent Journal).  Our pal Duffy's horse is on the front page.  I thought to myself, "Uh oh.  What now?"

     It turns out that while Pashmina was traveling back to us in her horse trailer, she slumped to one side of the trailer while Duffy's pick-up truck was barreling down Highway 101 at about fifty miles an hour.  The motion caused the trailer to tip over resulting in the picture below.  Our plucky gal escaped with only some scrapes and a bruised ego; same with the horse...  They got the spelling wrong on Holastra's name (I think...or is it me?) and she was coming back from the vet which was why they were going south on 101 not to  UC Davis which is north.  Notice the traffic back-up in the background of the picture.  Our poor horse was never the same after her twin traumas.

Poor baby.  That's Doc Steer with lead rope in hand; Duffy in shades behind him. (picture scrolls to the right)

     Once a young female, who had convinced her girlfriend, Sly Fox's owner, that she could saddle up and ride, came up to Happy Acres and informed me that she was taking the horse out for a ride. As I sized her up I immediately had my suspicions about her horse competency.  Sure enough, when she had led her saddled mount up to the gate, in the process of opening the gate, she let go of the reins and Sly Fox bolted through the gate sans rider.  I screamed at the girl for her gross negligence as Sly trotted down the short distance from the horse gate to Highway One.  I assure you there's no lonelier or helpless feeling than hearing one of your boarded horses clip-clopping merrily down the road.  

     Fortunately, it was mid-morning, mid-week and there wasn't much traffic.  I ran down across the pasture and pleaded loudly for Sly to reconsider his rash decision and to come home this instant.  Amazingly, after looking around for a moment a bit bewilderingly, my good boy turned around and trotted back up the road and let himself back in the pasture.  "YOU DA MAN, FOXY!  YOU DA MAN!  There's no place like home, huh, boy."  With that I slammed the gate closed, secured the padlock and chain and summoning my greatest reservoir of controlled fury I informed our young trouble maker she was not welcome here in the future.

     The most amazing escape and retrieval came a few years later.  I was having breakfast one morning when there was a knock on the door.  A lady informed me that she had just retrieved my four horses from Muir Beach and had herded them back into my pasture.  When she saw my look of incredulity she explained.  "I live in Muir Beach and as I was driving to work this morning, I saw four horses on the highway next to the Muir Beach Stables.  They were apparently visiting with the horses stabled there.  I suspected that they were yours.  I have a horse stabled at Muir Beach and I know about your pasture over the hill (about seven miles up the road from the beach).  I slowly drove behind them and they trotted back up the road.  When they got to the West California Avenue turn off, they headed up the road and deposited themselves back in their home pasture.  Somebody had left the gate open.  I took the liberty of securing the padlocked chain.  I hope you don't mind."  I thanked her profusely and silently thanked God for my good fortune that my nags had the good sense to allow themselves to be herded the seven miles up the road and back to Happy Acres.  "I keep telling you guys, why would you want to stray?  There's no place like home!"  With that, I fed them and gave them a generous ration of molasses and rolled oats.

     The horses have been gone a good long time now and though I do not miss the occasional mischief they caused in the past, I do miss the smell of them; the year's of compost they provided for the garden; the extra income they provided; there general easy companionship and, perhaps most of all, the sound of them gently nickering in the soft afternoon breezes.

     Happy trails, buckeroos.  Mickey da Mayor of Happy Acres