I skim those entries, looking for the unusual. Like this in the September 2011 issue from a classmate in France:

I’m now preparing for my next show in the famous Théatre des Deux Anes in Paris, well known for its shows of chansonniers for ages. I do not sing, but under the name of Jean du Frout, I write fables which are told by various actors, including myself, and after the fable, a piano improvises on well-known themes related directly or humorously to the fable. Now you can laugh, as have done many spectators of the show in the past three years…We have a house in Brittany where we spend about ten days a month. ‘Frout’ means a tiny stream. I wanted a name related to the famous 18th-century French fabulist, Jean de La Fontaine, but with all due respect, the fountain had to be much smaller. This explains Frout.

Or this:

[We] traveled to the Ecuadorian mountains and rain forest in January, had three sessions with a shaman, and spent five days at an ecolodge and learning from the Achuar people, among other highlights. In May [we] did a week of bareboat sailing in Canouan and the Grenadines on a 40-foot Moorings monohull, and that has become [our] new favorite sailing destination! Two weeks later [we] were in Lima, Peru, producing a 2½-day workshop for 36 young indigenous leaders from 11 countries across Latin America and 11 participants from Peru, sponsored by Chirapaq, a Peru-based indigenous empowerment organization.

And I got a write-up in the class of 1968′s notes:

How many of us get a chance to start a new career at 67? The irrepressible Steve Cotler has just published a children’s book, and he’s zooming around, entertaining and educating kids in schools and libraries from coast to coast. His middle-grades novel, Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything, the first in a series from Random House, is narrated by the (also) irrepressible Ronald “Cheesie” Mack, an 11-year-old from Gloucester, MA. Adventurous, outrageous, smart, curious, and funny, Cheesie sounds a lot like someone we knew in Section D (third row, center section, if I recall correctly). Appropriate for ages 8-12, Steve’s book is getting rave reviews and is in bookstores and available electronically. The second in Steve’s series, Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel, comes out in June. For a copy autographed by the author, or to arrange an author event at your grandkid’s school, contact Steve.

During the past decade, Steve has also reconnected with the Summer Science Program he attended when he was 16. SSP is a summer residence program in which gifted high-school students complete challenging, hands-on research projects in celestial mechanics. Steve writes: “In 1997, I found a magic bean from SSP’s beanstalk deep in my memories and gave a talk to the future scientists at the 39th annual summer session about connecting creativity to technology. I resolved to rejuvenate and expand what had become one of the longest-lived but terminally tired science enrichment programs in the world. Replanting the magic bean, I became chmn. of an alumni-operated nonprofit that took over SSP, expanded to two campuses, built an endowment, and reconnected with its 2,000-plus alumni. I suspect my work at SSP will live and thrive long after I don’t.”

SSP summer programs are now located on two campuses: New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro and Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. SSP appears to be a fairly high-powered operation; the 72 students enrolled in SSP 2011 were selected from 1,054 applicants and will come from 22 states and 14 countries overseas. Our politicians talk about job creation, but think for a moment about what that means in today’s international economy. More than half of the tech startups in this country over the last two decades, including a number of very successful companies, have been created by young tech graduates from overseas. Tech rules, and it’s just beginning. If we were as smart as the overseas kids at SSP, we’d be offering them and their families citizenship instead of making them leave as soon as their student visas expired. Ditto the overseas tech grads at our top universities, whom we expel on graduation. The ship is leaving the dock. We need to get aboard before we get left behind.

We’re not all Wall Streeters!

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Cheesie lives in Gloucester. MA

Cheesie returns to his home state in a couple of days for a two-week whirlwind of book events. The lad “lives” in Gloucester, so of course I’ll be speaking at two elementary schools there, as well as schools, both public and private, in Cambridge, Arlington, Newton, Sutton, Millbury, and Auburn. Plus libraries in Easton, and Millbury (pizza party there!).

It’ll be great fun. My typical presentation is here.

Altogether, I’m doing 12 schools and two libraries in two weeks. Whew!

Then I’m off to Brooklyn for three schools in two days.

If you would like Cheesie in your school or library, contact me. My calendar is getting full, but there are still a few open slots.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO.

“Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937).

The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years.

Yesterday the Dow fell over 500 points. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Sigh…

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Lavacicles hanging from the lava tube's ceiling

Shasta County’s Subway Cave, just north of Old Station, CA, is one such lava tube. About 1,400 feet long, the cave was hidden from view for millennia until the roof collapsed in two places. Native Americans knew of it, but researchers believe they left it unused, believing it inhabited by malevolent spirits.

Pitch dark inside, one enters by concrete steps at either end. The floor is flat and knobbly—just as one would expect a hardened flow of rock to be—and the roof is high enough for one to walk upright. A flashlight is necessary.

Interesting geology. And not overrun by tourists.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

Great Pond. Black Mountain. Rio Grande. No poet named those.

*     *     *     *     *

Planning a road trip into the Rockies had dragged my map mouse across several northern California highways unknown to me. Whim uppermost, I fixed on Route 36, a skipper above Lake Almanor, until three names bade me stop: Boiling Springs Lake, Drakesbad, and Dream Lake. The first brought me sulfurous thoughts; with the second, I heard oom-pah tubas; the last was reverie.

All three of these place names are invisible at normal magnification. Many zooms are needed. Only then does the Pacific Crest Trail appear, and by its side two tiny blue bodies and an end of the road oasis perhaps yclept by a Brit yearning for Bavaria.

I had my first port of call.

On the road at 9:30, we depleted our blood sugar as Colusa rose up as the next burg empeopled by more than a thousand. After an eight-block roll up and back on Market Street, we settled on Mi Ranchito, an over-full parking lot closing the deal. On the front door a sign: “We are very sad to anounce that July 29, 2011 will be the last day of bussines. Thank you all our loyal customers for all the years.” Inside, every table was taken. Some questioning of waitresses and waiting regulars brought out this story (most details have been added by the writer to improve clarity and drama):

Slinging refritos since the early 70s, the Silva family, through hard work, long hours, and treating their employees like family, turned a five-table sideshow into the most successful Mexican restaurant in Colusa. The employee thing was a necessity. As the Silva’s many progeny came of working age, some of them wallowed in Sr. Silva’s surprising wealth, choosing out-of-the-kitchen careers (partying at Chico State, fixing up Chevys, partying at Chico State). Sr. Silva was greatly angered, but Sra. Silva did not want her children to work as hard as she had, so she was over-lenient.

Sadly, Papa Silva died in a garbage compacting tragedy last year, and when Mama followed in a bizarrely similar accident three months later, the family business became the family fortune. Unable to agree on how to continue, the heirs fought. Alas, there was no Solomon among their advisers. Mi Ranchito was neither split between them nor given whole to one willing to strap on the leathers and pull. It would simply be closed.

(Much of the above came to me on a wave of bilious dyspepsia occasioned by a surfeit of carnitas con pico de gallo.)

Lunch completed, we northeasted through unending seas of walnut trees to Chester, CA, wherein lay the turnoff for Drakesbad and the aforementioned  lakes. Now in forest, and with Mt. Lassen blocking the western sky, we drove to the trail head, the last three miles graveled and dusty.

Wildflowers shot up from wet, black earth among surprisingly few flying insects. Below us, grandfathered, no doubt inside Lassen Volcanic National Park, sat the private resort Drakesbad Guest Ranch, its frolickers jabbering around a swimming pool. And at the top of the short climb, a green lake the color of hospital walls. Reportedly simmering at a volcanic 125º, and with numerous red signs warning of thin crust and severe fricasseed leg syndrome, Boiling Springs Lake sat placidly below us as we viewed from a ridge.

Approaching the far end of the lake, we heard sounds of steam percolating through mud (the “boiling springs”). The day grew late, and we did not make it to the other lake, which in retrospect seems appropriate.

Unsullied by reality, it remains a perfect vision…a dream.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

“What can you do?” I asked him.

“Anything,” he responded…and I discovered it was no lie.

He showed me his motorcycle, airplane, vintage Greyhound bus, dump truck, water hauler, golf cart, ATV, and various non-rideables…like a portable sawmill.

Over a decade ago, Bert moved from Mendocino County to Idaho, bought eight-plus acres of nearly undeveloped riverfront land and a couple of buildings, and figured that his unrelenting flood of sweat could turn a marginal campground into a living wage.

“Five years,” he told me when I visited years ago, “and I’ll be able to sell all this to some rich Californian for a half-million more than I paid for it.”

“All this” is Albert’s Place: country bar, trapper’s cabin, general store, rolling hamburger stand, and RV park about 30 miles east of Coeur d’Alene (the trendy Santa Fe of the north country) on the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River. It’s a strange piece of property. Two county roads cut through the parcel, forming a T and separating river from park from bar and store. The speed limit is 15, laughable to the locals. All Bert’s buildings are on the dry side of the county roads, including one, the general store, which ten months previously was on the other side of the river. The store fills only the front half of the first floor. In the back is Bert and Ann’s home, a two-bedroom, two-bath affair. Built in the 50′s, the general store/home was used as the local general store in the filming of the Pierce Brosnan disaster flick Dante’s Peak (set designers added fake dormers to improve its quaintness). The building became vacant five years ago and was subsequently flooded by the river into FEMA’s uncaring hands. Shoshone County took over from the Feds in 1996 and decided to destroy it. Bert bought it last year from the county for $250 on the condition that he remove it immediately from its location on the flood plain. It took him 42 days longer than immediately to accomplish the feat of jacking the 90,000-pound dwelling onto 24 truck axles and pulling it across the low-water, summer river with a bulldozer.

“Look at these photos,” Bert crows, extracting an envelope of Kodaks from behind the bar.

“He’s even got it on video,” Shane, one of the bar’s regulars, volunteers. “You should see Bert wading across through four feet of water, pushing the bastard.” The three other Wednesday 3 p.m. denizens chuckle at Shane’s jab, but Bert’s face shows that he is reliving a crossing that required his total concentration to accomplish. Those 42 days cost him $4200 because the county fined him $100/day for not living up to the agreement he signed.

“Under duress,” Bert protests. “Either I signed right then, or they said they would burn it. And it took me a long time to find someone who could move a whole house across a gravelly bottom river.” Now it sits on a cement foundation one foot above the hundred-year high-water mark.

“We didn’t break a pane of glass or crack a single wall lifting and moving that building,” Bert brags, “but when I set it down on the foundation, every damn door went out of plumb. I guess it had never, ever been true. The ends were low, so I had to jack it back up and stick about two inches of shims in the middle.”

His exploit got written up (with photos I can no longer find) in the local paper. Now, the store/house (my wife and I have one of the upstairs bedrooms) looks like it has been here forever. Bert is proud. This morning I flipped on his large-screen TV and watched five minutes of John Wayne leading The Fighting Seabees across the South Pacific. Had Bert served in World War II, he’d have been the Duke’s main man.

The summer is ending now, and it hasn’t been a particularly profitable one for Bert and Ann. The weather did not cooperate. Ann, a no-nonsense head-down worker, figures the cold and rain cost them half the expected revenue from RVers and inner tube floaters. But cash flow is not their biggest problem. Bert is a doer. If it can be done, he’ll make it happen…efficiently and effectively. Unfortunately, Bert’s way does not always match County regulations. In addition to the $4200 fine currently on his head, he has completely alienated the Health Department. He is convinced that the addition of a store/house and a restaurant (under construction in the bar) and six cabins and so on and so on will not overtax his septic field. He is good at what he does (and he does everything), so I suspect he is correct. But the Health guy simply kiboshed everything. No explanation. Just a flat-out denial…without tests or measurements. So Bert got written up in the local paper again. Headline: “Albert’s Place Owner Not One for Technicalities”.

Sans lawyers, sans technical experts, sans the ability to read and write (he’s crunchingly dyslexic), Bert is forging onward. For almost everyone in this backwater, the Rules are in the way. It’s a cash-under-the-table economy where exceptions are granted to cronies. Bert finds it “coincidental” that the man who installs new septic systems in the area is the father of the health department official who poleaxed Bert’s.

Tomorrow morning I will spend a couple of hours reviewing a $215,000 refinancing proposal (60 densely typed, daunting pages from Countrywide Mortgage) with him. With this money, Bert thinks he can prevail. I worry that someday soon a small-town bureaucrat will find Bert’s frontier/can-do spirit just a bit too insulting to the dignity of his high office.

In the Old West, someone would’ve gotten shot.

[Bert died several years ago. The above is a memorial.]

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

.

Heading east on Oregon's Rte. 218

We saw a prairie chicken, many hawks, rock taluses of every hue from red to red and from gray to green, and one man with horse and sheep dog. After the shallows named the John Day River, we parked at Clarno and walked back through 44 millions years on the quarter-mile self-guided tour through the rocks under a tall palisade of rock spires. Here were the frozen remnants of massive mud slides called lahars that trapped and siliconized leaves and branches from what was once a tropical rain forest. Every broken boulder held fossils trapped; the guide pamphlet hailed Clarno as a treasure unique in the world. It was 4 p.m., bakingly hot, and at the clipboard guest book hidden under the only sign at the Monument, we signed in below the Komura family of Nagoya, Japan, as only the fifth car to visit this day.

Between Clarno and the Columbia River to the north, just 20 miles away, lay the seat of Wheeler County, aptly named Fossil, population 430. The following sign told us that unless we turned left, we would bypass the “City Center”, so we detoured through a well-tended, attractive hamlet far enough from everywhere. Main attraction:  a fossil bed directly behind the high school that invited visitors to dig for their own treasures. No fee buffet, but only take what you can eat. We passed, having already done our fossilizing at Clarno. The town looked larger than its written population, an opinion confirmed by a mannish woman smoking outside the Town Office, who upped the statistic to 550. Then, struck unilateral by a Great Idea, I spun a U on the main street, babbling aloud about oncoming traffic (none) and the possibility that my maneuver was illegal (probably), and parked at the Fossil Mercantile, the largest (only) store in town. I would purchase a postcard naming the town, send it to my friend Tom, co-founder of the Fossil Company in Dallas, and invite him to send an advertising team here to dig for fossils and create a paleontological campaign for his watches.

Like the town, the store was larger and more interesting than expected. It housed three customers, all locals. In addition to bananas and belts, hanging from every rafter were quilts handmade by Fossil matrons, visible testimony to the recent Wheeler County Centennial, and now on sale to benefit the Fossil Museum fund. Rarely have I been so impulsive. In a fit of spendiferous wind, I accost Charlene, a young woman inventorying yard goods, and force her to sell me two:  one for my youngest daughter and one I don’t know why.

As my credit card company fights with their own computers over a pending one dollar charge unresolved at our last gas up station, I learn that Charlene is a native, youngest of five children, and “an old maid.”

“There’s not much to do here if you don’t drink,” Charlene tells us without a trace of self-pity. “I did leave after high school…and got a good job with Jensen Newfield, commercial fishing, up there in Mt. Hood. And they even sent me to a couple of classes, but I guess I just like small towns.” She is attractive in an uncomplicated way.

What supports Fossil, I ask.

“Agriculture, mostly.” She looks right at me as I speak. “And tourists, some. And we’ve got retired folks. When the sawmill closed, up there at Kinzua, it was tough for a while, but it’s, I guess, okay now.”

Later, Ann comments that Charlene could be the salvation some good ol’ boy’s life. And I wonder aloud if any of those lads will be wise enough to trip over her.

The back of the van puffed up with garbage bags of quilts, we head north to the Columbia and cross into Washington.

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

A half-hour further, as I load up the wagons in preparation for our journey northward toward the Oregon Trail, I notice a glistening, reddish smear reflecting the morning sun off the parking lot from beneath the front of my van. Closer inspection under the hood and beneath the car informs me that the rear seal of my transmission is leaking and that I am a full pint low. Galvanized by this direct assault upon my dignity, I scan the horizon for invisible demons or hostile forces. Ann smiles benignantly, wondering silently whether this is annoying or merely catastrophic. Lurking directly across the street–an auto parts store…a purveyor of Quaker State ATF. I top off the reservoir, drive 20 miles, then recheck all fluids, which includes yet another watering of a lonely oak (see previous post). Buoyed by a steady-state universe of our own making, we drive to Crater Lake, an awesome globule of blue hung high in the volcanic detritus of erstwhile Mount Mazama. Round, azure beyond all lakes, and almost 2000 feet deep, it is worth the small detour. Here again we meet flocks of Germans, one of whom, a whiskered, long-haired hippie of 35, squats facing away from the lake, apparently aiming his video camera at a spire of rock towering a thousand feet above us, but instead shooting a minute of Ann asking him whether the tune he is humming is the old Johnny Mathis standard, “Wonderful, Wonderful.”

This day is an interpretive dance.

Wonderful…at least twice..

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

A few strides up the old volcano, I, ever the Good Samaritan, spotted a tourist and a half-his-girth spouse struggling to set up an unmanned photo of themselves.  “Lassen mir seinem Bildung machen,” I offered. They looked at me surprised (“Let me make his development” was, I later determined, a fair translation of  my mis-remembered high school German), then let me take their picture, the glacier-stippled cone filling the frame. Late August patches of very dirty snow, some of it striped pink with algae down the fall-line, bordered the surprisingly under-peopled path.  As we walked through the Park, the modal language was German. And there were more women than men.

On the walk back, thunder wrinkled two-thirds of heaven in rolling waves, followed by remarkably sparse raindrops the size of canned peas that popped and flattened the path dust, then turned into icy pellets that would have hurt had they continued for more than a half minute.

In the mid-90s, while prepping for our independent film HEARTWOOD, my brother, mother, and I scouted for a saw mill north of here, eating dinner in Weed, a logging town whose name must be a smirk to newcomers and a boring, old joke to everyone else. As we approached the Weed exit, a complete replay of that day came back to me. The beat-up clump of poor, little houses off to the west of the highway that we thought might serve as a mill town, the stunningly ordinary restaurant we ate dinner at, and the remodel-in-progress, quaint, old hotel on the south side of Weed’s main street that I evaluated at the elbow of one of its gay proprietors, then turned down as too in-progress to provide a quiet night’s rest, and the decision to drive somewhere else to sleep. Where was that?

Weed. Next three exits. I took the one marked South Weed and drove past the other two from root to branch, but nothing looked the same. The restaurant I wanted to sneer at was invisible to me. The main street was unrecognizable. And there was no old hotel. Chattering maniacally and hooting the theme from Twilight Zone, I turned into a side road about four miles outside of town and unzipped to water a huge oak. On Route 97 the cars had been spaced no more closely than one per minute. On Angel Valley Trail, I expected to stop reliving my now-unsettled memories of Weed as I relieved. No sooner had I begun arcing than a cigarette attached to a man in a blue pickup turned the same road as I.  Surprised and obviously offended by my callous disregard for community standards, the man slowed to shout something that sounded like, “Hay! Juck har me rub fenwardle!” He stood no chance versus my sangfroid. I wavered not a bit. My fly stayed dry. And we drove the border to the less insignificant logging town of Klamath Falls.

In the Klamath River, huge decks of logs clogged half the water.  But why had they been there so long undisturbed that a thickly tall mat of grass grew upon them?

It was getting dark, and both Ann and I were hungry. She, concerned that a nest be assured for the night, suggested we find a motel first, then solicit recommendations for food. I eschewed her clearly unimaginative plan and drove for 15 minutes through every neoned street at night looking for a hungry fix. Two bars (“Good Food”) and a pool hall (“Billiards & Burgers”) later, I grudgingly acceded to her pathetically sarcastic rendition of “Stand By Your Man” and checked into a Quality Inn where we acquired directions and a 20%-off coupon for “the best Eye-talian restaurant in town.” A pair of wrong turns later, we found it closed on this Monday night, but two matrons in the grocery next to it offered enthusiastic suggestions to my query for a “really good restaurant.”

“Sizzler,” nodded one vigorously–a short, square woman who impressed me as borderline in several mental categories.

“I don’t know if the coffee shop out at the golf course is open this late,” worried the other, her hair pulled back in a ponytail so severe her pencil-drawn eyebrows seemed to extend past her earholes.

“I’d like a really nice restaurant,” I repeated softly. “Maybe one with tablecloths.”

Both women paused, the tablecloth concept working through their encyclopedias of Southern Oregonian cuisine.

Ponytail brightened abruptly.  “Shilo Inn has a real nice restaurant…and I think they have tablecloths.”  Those words engendered a spirited dialog that was meaningless to me, but clearly important to the women. It included mention of someone named Greta and her sonuvabitch ex-husband Harv, one tablecloth, and nothing at all about Shilo Inn.

I had seen the fabled Shilo Inn sign near the entrance to town, so I reversed direction. Another pair of wrong turns later I pulled up in front of the poshest highwayside hotel in Klamath Falls. Ann stepped out to examine the menu and the ambiance, but chance offered another source of information. A couple, clearly turistas like ourselves, were exiting from the eatery, she waddling, he with what appeared to be a toothpick of satisfaction mining interdental spaces.  I could not hear what was spoken, but I saw Ann’s question and the couple’s undisguised run-for-your-life response.

We ended up at Applebee’s: pop culture walls and oldies music, and a damn fine plate of steamed veggies.  I consumed a beer as tall as my forearm. Ann had two wine glasses. And we both heard the heart-warming story of how the young manager was waiting for her Swedish psych-nurse husband to arrive in town and how she hoped to be managing the new Applebee’s in Ukiah someday soon.

After submersion in beery sleep, I awakened at 4:30 a.m. to write this and watch the sun come up over clear-cut hills.

On to Crater Lake!

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.

What is Zorbing? Well, the website states: Imagine yourself suspended inside a clear inflatable plastic ball of about 3 meters in diameter. And when you’re securely in the place, the ball is rolled down 150-meter long slope. (No brakes, no steering,  just you and gravity).

I could not imagine myself thus, but my son could.

Only a short drive from Lake Bled (a picturesque glacial lake with a picturesque church-on-a-island one can row to), we found the hillside without difficulty. He entered the Zorb, strapped in, and took the ride.–

Ready to launch...

Rolling down...

Full speed!

I gulped and photographed. He emerged grinning and suggested I try it.

I didn’t.

Standing on solid ground and smiling

©2012 Steve Cotler's Irrepressibly True Tales. All Rights Reserved.