I Think Of Gregg

I Think of Gregg

I met Gregg on a hazy summer afternoon back in the late '80's while I was coin-shooting a schoolyard a block or two from my home. Coin-shooting, you say? What's that? Perhaps I should give you an idea about what I mean by “coin-shooting” before I get on with the story about my friend Gregg.

While serving in the U.S. Air Force, I was stationed for almost two years at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. It's a long story to explain why I, an Air Force Weather Observer, was serving his country in one of the largest Army Posts in the world. Too long to go into at the moment. The short answer was: the Army, at that time, had no weather observers and the Air Force supplied them when they were needed. So there I was, sitting in southwest Oklahoma on the lands where Geronimo used to ride and outlaws used to rob the 5 o'clock train – the land of the Old West out any window. I watched the clouds and sent in reports about them every hour to anyone with a weather teletype. And while performing those duties, my eye was often directed to a small mountain range to my north, the Wichita Mountains. I normally paid them little mind other than to use them as a mileage marker for my observations when the visibility was limited.

But one day I ran across a story in a magazine about the notorious James Gang and their leader Jesse James. This particular story concerned his brother, Frank James, and how, before he had died, he had returned to a campsite in the Wichita Mountains and had recovered some outlaw loot buried in an old coffee pot. The story also talked about another treasure the James Gang had buried in the Wichitas supposedly containing over $180,000. Frank had been looking for that one but hadn't quite remembered exactly where it was located before he passed on. I recall one of the last sentences in the story about the loot. It stated: “Yet treasure seekers still dig in lonely canyons, scan out of the way pinnacles and explore musty smelling caves in quest of Jesse James's two million dollar treasure, secreted in the Wichita Mountains at a time when those hills harbored some of the deadliest outlaws of the West.” As you can see, the dollar amount of the lost robbery money varied as to who told the tale. But the fact remained that Frank James made a recovery of some of the loot back around 1910. Near Saddleback Mountain in the Wichitas.

And the site of the recovery was visible from where I sat day after day watching the clouds. I could look at the mountain range, count one, two, three mountain-tops to the left from the big one, Mt. Scott, and that was the place it was found.

I began dreaming about treasure. I read some more and came across the legend of the “Lost Iron Door of the Wichitas”. This was another supposedly lost treasure up there in the mountains, and that legend had lost Spanish gold, dead men, mule trains of gold coin brought up from Old Mexico and Indian attacks. This particular stash was placed in a cave and the cave was sealed by a large, black, iron door. And, as a lot of legends relate, it was lost. Some say a hiker back in the '30's ran across it. When he went home to get companions and helpers to recover the gold, he couldn't find it again.

Even after many years of searching.

With visions of outlaw loot and minted gold Spanish coins dancing in my head, I spent many an hour wandering around those mountains, poking into holes, clambering over rocks and boulders, scurrying down granite gulches where it seemed the only visitors that had been there in the past 100 years were scorpions and rattlesnakes. Of which there were plenty. I realized after some of these “expeditions” that losing something in there would be extremely easy. Like I almost lost myself there on numerous occasions. Some of the areas in the Wichitas are strewn with rocks and boulders from the size of your fist to the size of semi-trailers or even larger. All jumbled together with no trails, no roads and no signs as to where you were. And areas like that might stretch for mile after mile in all directions.

I never did find any real “treasure” while poking around in those old mountains. But I did discover a virtual treasure, a love for the search and a hunger for the idea of finding lost treasure, which I carried throughout the rest of my life.

My first metal detector wasn't much more than a toy. I'd bought it at Radio Shack for a few dollars and was out one morning in the driveway trying it out, not expecting much. I was swinging it around the gravel, just killing time, when it sounded off with an electronic squeal. I poked around in the driveway for a second where the machine had pointed and pulled out a quarter. I felt a smile start on my lips. Granted, the quarter wasn't old and it was only a half-inch down in the gravel. But... I found treasure! Son-of-a-gun!

And if it was in my driveway – hell, it could be anywhere!

My next detector was a lot better than the first. It was a White's and I had many, many hours of fun swinging this machine all around town. Of course it was much happier detecting aluminum foil, pull tabs, iron junk and a thousand other pieces of detritus that'd found its way into the earth than it was in finding coins. I threw away pounds and pounds of this stuff, wore out numerous pairs of blue jean's knees and sweat buckets of sweat digging small holes in the ground. But I found treasure also. Coin after coin would go into my pocket from digging in the dirt. Some of them pretty nice, too. Silver Mercury dimes, the occasional silver Washington quarter, some Indian Head pennies and lots and lots of modern coins of all denominations.

I was lucky. I was one of the first in my town to have a detector and, therefore, was one of the first to detect over “virgin” ground. I was lucky insofar as I was able to recover a lot of the “easier” finds – the ones not so deep.

I upgraded my detector not long after that and, once again a few years later as my finances allowed. The new machines had discriminators that rejected a lot of the junk I'd been digging with the old ones. I found more coins and “stuff” with each iteration of detector – jewelry, old artifacts, bullets, medals and tokens. Some of the coins were the older and rarer ones, too.

It was along about that time that I was coin-shooting the old high school in town when a skinny man stopped and watched what I was doing. I noticed him and pulled off my headphones to see if he wanted to ask me anything. And did he ever! I think he had about a hundred questions for me immediately and another hundred not long after. He was extremely interested in what I was doing and wanted to know everything about it. I gave up doing much more detecting that day, sat down and we chatted for almost two hours.

I think he caught the bug almost immediately.

He purchased his first detector within a month – one of the earlier White's if I remember correctly. He “cut his teeth” on that one, dug his required hundreds of pounds of trash along with some quite nice finds. We went detecting together many, many times. He was quite the researcher, too. He devoured whatever the library had as far as old maps and transcribed them to new ones where he'd marked out the old sites that might hold coins or even caches – old schools, churches, seldom-used picnic grounds, abandoned family homesteads. We went poking around all over the county looking for “treasure”. We'd even knock on the doors of homes in our hometown that looked old and ask permission to search their yards. We almost always got a “yes” answer, too. Sometimes we went alone – usually because one of us had to work or to do other things beside hunting treasure. Family stuff, this and that. But we got together a lot of weekends in the summertime. He'd hear of a place or I would. And we'd get our little expeditions going and start swinging our detectors.

You probably should know that Gregg wasn't a well man anytime I'd known him. He'd left the Air Force with a medical disability back in the late '60's or early '70's. And he'd suffered (and would continue to suffer) from various cancers and other debilitating diseases. He'd lost a kidney, a testicle and a number of feet of intestine when I'd met him. He would go on and off a colostomy bag a couple times while we were friends. He was ill a lot and had a horrible time trying to gain weight. He was always a skinny guy because of it. He was a year younger than I was and looked a dozen years older. He had very little money and eked out a living from a disability pension.

I felt that Gregg's problems were his and never bothered him much with questions. I just listened when he wanted to talk and gave him as much support as he required, which wasn't much. He did alright for himself, even being as sick as he was a lot of the time.

He was a tough little guy.

And he just loved treasure hunting!

Gregg and I got to be quite good friends over the years. We went coin-shooting as often as we could. Sometimes Gregg was too sick to hunt for more than an hour or so at a time. I was content with that. He genuinely loved poking around in yards and fields with the detector. He wore a nail apron when he was shooting – to carry out the trash he found and to place the “goodies” in also. He was an expert in cutting a trap-door hole in the grass, retrieving the “treasure” and resealing the sod so you'd never know he was there.

After our hunts we'd go to one or the other of our homes and wash up our coins and other finds, exclaim over one or the other, relax and talk about where we'd go the next time.

We always had a great time together.

Once Gregg told me he'd found the location of an old bottle dump and did I want to help him dig around in it? Boy, did I! The dump itself just looked like a small stretch of woods – nothing to show what was buried under the surface of the soil. We took our hand-held digging equipment and spent many hours poking around in that dump, recovering several hundred bottles of varying kinds – medicines, whiskeys, beers, sodas, condiments, even some crockery. It was different than coin-shooting – you had to be much more careful digging in the ground. Most of the time you couldn't see it, but there was LOTS of broken glass in there. I have at least one good scar to prove that! But I also have the most beautiful old glass bottles propped up on my window ledges at home that catch the sun to remind me of our days poking in the dirt for bottles.

Gregg's health never did really get to where you could call him well. It was always up and down for him. It was getting worse and worse in the late '90's and he made a number of trips up to the VA hospital in Cleveland for operations and other therapies. He'd tell me of his treatments there and what a difficult time of it he had. It finally got to a point where he couldn't coin-shoot any longer than a half hour or so at a time, so we planned carefully some hopefully better sites so he could recover something before having to go home to rest.

And we did all right. He got some recoveries, even on the shortie trips.

Gregg had an apartment on the third floor of a low-income housing unit in our home town. It was crammed with the flotsam and jetsam of a life hunting for treasures. He enjoyed haunting the local Goodwill store and buying up little treasures and reselling them in a boutique store in our downtown. He made some money doing that and it gave him something to do other than lament on his health. He also had collections of various things including a bunch of old LP records. He was the first to introduce me to Zydeco music which I now adore.

I visited him as often as I could when he was out of the hospital and in his apartment. He'd moan and groan about his ailments, but he'd always done that for the years and years I knew him, so I never took them too much to heart. That was just Gregg and, even though you knew he was sick, he'd always been that way, so you figured he'd just go on and on.

I should have known better, I guess.

I received the phone call on a sunny day toward the end of July, 2001 from his sister. I immediately knew what was up as soon as I heard her voice. She informed me that Gregg had passed away the day before and would I be available to be a pall bearer for his funeral?

I immediately agreed. After I listened to the arrangements from his sister – the funeral home, the hours, the cemetery – and had hung up the phone it hit me.

Gregg was gone. He'd died in his bed in his apartment, alone as we all are in that hour. He was never going to call me again with ideas for a new hunt. He was never going to stop at the house and chit-chat on a Saturday afternoon. He wasn't going to be there for me to call when I made my “big” find. And he would have been the first on my list for that call.

He was a close friend and losing him was really a gut shot.

Gregg was buried in a beautiful oak coffin with a white satin lining. His thinning gray hair and his salt-and-pepper beard were combed nicely and he had his favorite walking stick in his hands. He'd had an awful time walking toward the end. I helped carry him from the hearse to his last resting place - a veteran's area of the local cemetery where he now rests. He has a simple gray headstone indistinguishable from the other ones nearby with just his name, date of birth and death and military rank. The names on a lot of the nearby stones are familiar. They're friends and acquaintances of Gregg and I who served their country and who chose to be laid with their brothers-in-arms. It's a nice spot and close to the street that runs next to the cemetery. They plant small American flags on each veteran's gravestone on Memorial Day and they stay there until the autumn leaves begin to fall. On trips to say hi to my mom and my gram, who lay nearby, I now say hi to Gregg also.

I like to think he'd appreciate that.

So on beautiful summer days when I take up the old metal detector, slip on the big headphones and listen for it's sweet song of silver while I'm swinging over dewy green grass, I think of Gregg, I think of Gregg.

His grave will be the first place I will visit when I hit the “big” one.

I think he'd like to know.

McCoy's Woods

McCoy's Woods

On the Christmas after my 16^th birthday I received a shotgun from my father as one of my Christmas presents. I'd been hinting and begging for it for months and months and my entreaties had finally bore some fruit. Some people nowadays might think that a shotgun would be a strange gift, even a dangerous one. But my father was a small-game hunter, and he thought it was time for me to have my own gun.

My own gun! Wow! I was like Ralphie in the '83 classic “A Christmas Story”. Except this was NOT a Red Rider B-B Gun. It was a REAL gun.

I still own it, you know. It's not the best shotgun in the world – far from it. It's an old Mossburg 16-gauge with a Vari-choke on the end of the muzzle, probably late-50's vintage. The choke can be twisted to give you full, modified and open chokes. It's clip-fed and bolt-action. Heavy, clunky in a lot of ways and not particularly accurate. The clip had a habit of falling off the gun after every shot. But it was mine and it still holds a warm spot in my memories.

Dad was a good teacher, especially insofar as hunting went. He hunted with his brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles and his dad – most of our extended family liked to hunt, mostly small game like rabbits, squirrels and pheasants. A couple went after deer from time to time but dad wasn't interested in them. For some reason most of the family were 16-gauge shotgun men. When you think about it, it's a little-used size of shotgun. Purists like to go for the 20-gauge, maybe an over-and-under or a smooth auto. The vast majority of shotgunners opt for the popular 12-gauge. A small group like to hunt with the .410. Probably to test their accuracy with the small bore weapon. But for some reason my family liked the 16.

So that's what I opened up that Christmas morning.

Dad believed very strongly in gun safety and taught it before, during and after any trips we made out into the woods or fields. He drummed into me a number of “laws” concerning guns and gun safety. For example: “The gun is ALWAYS loaded until you verify that it isn't.” “Never aim a gun at ANYTHING unless you're ready to kill it.” “The muzzle of the gun ALWAYS faces away from any of your hunting partners.” “Always verify EXACTLY what it is that you are shooting at before pulling the trigger.” He had some more, but those were probably the most important ones that he stressed all the time. He'd been in World War II as an infantryman and was quite familiar with guns.

Besides going hunting with his dad in the pre-WWII years.

When we'd go hunting I'd carry the Mossburg and he'd carry his Fox-Savage side-by-side double-barreled 16-gauge. Some people quibble about carrying a double when you could save the weight by using a single tube with some sort of loader, either a pump or an auto. That's fine if you subscribe to the weight notion. But I always felt that the weight wasn't that much of an issue. And the sight picture as you looked down that WIDE double-barrel at the game you were hunting out in the woods was like looking down a laser straight, two-lane highway. His shotgun was a little on the short side, swung smoothly and quickly and really seemed easier to aim with and to hit your target, especially when comparing it to the Mossburg. It had two triggers, the forward one fired the modified choke barrel and the rear one the full-choke. It was a marvelous rabbit gun. I own this well-used weapon now and cherish it even though I rarely hunt anymore.

I remember going squirrel hunting with dad when I was a new hunter. I remember one of the first trips we took together after I got my own shotgun. Dad liked to get into the woods way before dawn, when the sky was still black and the stars still shone, so that meant getting up really early. He had a “pet” cast-iron skillet he made his breakfasts in and he'd use it to make bacon and eggs for both of us. We'd eat that with toast and coffee (for him) and milk (for me), then load up the car with our hunting coats, the shotguns and some 'number six' shot shells. It was almost always on a Saturday morning when we went out, as he worked two jobs during the week and rarely ever took any vacation time. He liked to hunt squirrels in a woods north of our hometown. He called it “McCoy's Woods” so it must have belonged (or used to belong) to someone named McCoy. I don't think I ever knew. He apparently had permission for us to be there.

We'd park next to a barn on the property, get out of the car, put our coats on and pick up the shotguns. It was a bit of a walk across a field before we hit the wood line and it was a dark walk. We'd usually have wet boots from the dew by the time we got into the trees. We'd load our guns at that point and walk quietly and slowly until he reached what he thought might be a good spot. It was generally near some nut trees – walnuts, oak, hickory. The hickories seemed best. We'd sit near each other, stay quiet and wait for the woods to wake up.

You'd generally hear some of the birds awaken first. They'd start calling to each other, squawking, chirping, marking the boundaries of their territories, greeting the first hint of light in the sky. There was usually some ghostly mist slowly rising from the cold, wet ground and evaporating when it hit the treetops. If you were lucky, the day was close to windless. We liked those days particularly well as squirrel hunting requires a lot of listening and looking. Swaying branches and wind noise made it a lot more difficult – a quiet woods was the best. We'd sit there silently, watching the black woods begin to gray a bit and then a touch of color would start appearing as the false dawn approached. Along about then, if you were lucky in your selection of spot, you'd generally hear a nut drop. You'd turn your head toward where the sound originated and listen really, really hard. And wait. And wait some more. Then another one might drop near where the first one did. Hmm... Interesting. Just might be ol' mister squirrel starting to cut some hickories and have him some breakfast. We'd generally stand up then and slowly and very, very quietly ease our way a bit closer to that area.

If we were lucky we'd soon spot one of the furry rodents up in a tree. You'd usually just see a quiver of his tail, just a twitch, but that was usually enough to pick him out. You'd slowly and quietly move closer until you were close enough for a decent shot. On some of my earlier hunting trips with him, Dad sometimes would have to point out the game to me. He'd raise his hand and point his finger. “Do you see him?” he'd say. “Right there where the branch kinda makes a vee. Can you see him now?” I'd look and look and look and then, like some sort of magic, I'd see the squirrel.

“Yeah, dad, yeah. I see 'm now!” I'd slowly raise the Mossburg, lay the fore sight on him and pull the trigger. The resulting boom was very loud in the still morning. If we were lucky and the Mossburg anywhere close to accurate, the game would drop quickly to the ground and we'd go pick him up. We'd smile at each other while I slipped the animal in my coat's game pocket.

I can still see dad tapping out one of his Camel cigarettes, putting it into his mouth and lighting it up with his old Zippo after taking a squirrel. We'd relax for a minute, smiling, talking quietly, enjoying the moment, letting the woods calm down after the shot. Soon the birds would begin to squawk and call again and the animals would go back to ignoring us.

Then a nut might drop somewhere else nearby. Or one of the furry beasts might start barking. They did that sometimes when they'd see you before you saw them. They were scolding you for sneaking around in the woods. At least that's what dad said. Hunting a barking squirrel was always fun. Sometimes we'd even employ a squirrel call, trying to temp the little buggers to respond. This was a little wood and rubber device that, when you tapped on the rubber bellows, would make a sound remarkably similar to a squirrel bark. And sometimes, if a nearby squirrel heard it and was incensed enough, he would answer. I never did find out whether he was trying to say 'hello' or he was saying 'get the hell out of my territory'. It was always a chuckle to “talk” one over if you could. They were curious little beasts and would try to investigate what was going on.

If it was a good day we'd get 3 or 4 (or maybe more) squirrels and head on home. Dad always made sure you helped him clean the game you'd harvested. That was part of the bargain of hunting. You only killed what you were going to eat and you didn't waste any of it. He had a good technique for cleaning the game and I use his method even now. After we had cleaned and gutted the carcasses, we'd take them to mom and she'd put 'em in a pot of salted water and let them soak in the 'fridge overnight to, as she'd say, remove the gaminess from them. Then, usually on Sunday for dinner, she'd cut them in pieces, roll them in flour and fry 'em up. Along with mashed potatoes and gravy and peas or string beans.

Don't let anyone tell you that squirrels (and rabbits and pheasants) aren't good eating. They are. Very much so. And they do NOT taste like chicken. Chicken tastes like chicken. Squirrels taste like squirrels. It's a rich, dark meat and quite tasty. We were not a rich family and the extra meat for the table on the weekends was quite welcome. It never went to waste and was an expected autumn meal.

I even remember getting a lead pellet or two of the buckshot in my mouth that we'd missed when cleaning them. It was no big deal to spit it out and keep on eating.

I've often been disgusted when listening to someone complain about the barbarity of hunting, how the taking of an animal's life with a gun was an atrocity and how it should be banned. This conversation usually took place while the complainee was filling his mouth with beef. Or chicken. Or pork.

Don't. Give. Me. That. Crap!

At least the hunter is involved in the ENTIRE food gathering process. He KNOWS where his meat came from. He KNOWS how it was harvested, how it was cared for before cooking. He is aware of the entire cycle of how his meat came to be on the plate before him. He knows that the plastic-wrapped piece of beef in the grocery store was a living and breathing animal not too many days before and he's thankful and aware of its sacrifice to provide him nourishment. He's aware that he's an omnivore and that he eats meat. He's NOT ashamed of it.

Enough said about that. I wanted to tell you a bit about how pleasant it was to go hunting with my dad and didn't actually want to go off on a diatribe against anti-hunters.

I never got to spend much time with dad when I was growing up. He worked a LOT in those days, so it was always a great treat to have him all to myself on our little hunting trips. We could talk or not talk as the mood struck – we were comfortable with both. He could impart fatherly wisdom with his words and his actions. He could teach you the way life operated by the way he humanely harvested a squirrel, the business-like way he cleaned the animal and the enjoyment he took at the dinner table with the game as the guest of honor.

I learned lots and lots from him without a word being spoken.

On several of our last squirrel hunting trips, when he was getting on in years and had some difficulty getting into the woods, I'd make sure to really savor the trip. I knew in my heart that there wouldn't be too many more of them. I cherished every moment out there with him, father and son, sharing a bond that was forged in the primitive mists of time when the first hunter took his son out with him to hunt. Being in the woods early in the morning at the beginning of autumn is every bit as spiritual and breathtaking to me as is a beautiful church or cathedral is on Christmas morning. The quietness of the dawn as black night slides softly into greyness which is then, in turn, slowly overtaken by the coming sun. The first peek of the sun's light as it illuminates the woods from the bottom, moving the shadows back to the west. The finally arisen sun's golden rays shining through the misty green leaves which are sprinkled here and there with the flaming reds and the vivid yellows and oranges of the turning fall leaves. The perfection of everything in its place and in its time.

If heaven exists, I pray that it will resemble Old Farmer McCoy's woods on a sun bejeweled early autumn morning. With dad waiting for me in there next to a shaggy ol' hickory tree.

I'd be content with that.

Game On

Game On

So, maybe I am a bit bloodthirsty. Maybe I do enjoy peering down the barrel of a weapon pointed at a bad guy, gleefully pulling the trigger and watching him splatter all over the place. Perhaps I might be a bit too fond of rolling a fragmentation grenade into a room full of no-goodniks and listening to the explosion and the screams.

I like it. It gives me a strange kind of pleasure that's missing in the rest of my life.

Of course, my dear reader, I'm talking about playing a computer game. The very idea of actually doing those horrible things in real life is completely preposterous.

I am a fan of what's called FPS video games. The FPS stands for First Person Shooter. It's a variety of video game where you see the action on the game screen as if through the eyes of the hero, and what he sees is what you also see. Generally there's the snout of some kind of weapon in front of you plus an aiming point for that weapon. As you walk around (or crawl or crouch or ride a hang glider) the viewpoint varies. When you click your left mouse button the weapon fires and, if you've aimed correctly, a bad guy gets shot. And who are the bad guys? That depends on the game. In some games he's a enemy soldier, perhaps a Nazi. Or maybe an alien. In others he could be a member of an opposing combat team. Lots of times the bad guy is one of a pantheon of monsters, their ferocity and ugliness only limited by the game programmer's imagination. In a “normal” game of this type it's common for the enemies encountered early in the game to be easier to kill or overcome than those you have to kill later in the game. In lots of games of this type you encounter “bosses” or particularly tough opponents at the end of each “chapter” of the game. Some of these bosses require you to do special things to kill them. Others just require lots and lots of hits from your weapons to bring them down. Most of them are real pains in the behind.

The latest in the series of these games which I've completed is named “Far Cry”. It won some awards as being the action adventure game of the year a few years ago. It's pretty straightforward as far as these games go. Your main enemies are mercenaries, with the occasional genetic monster thrown in for spice. What was great about this game was that it was played in a background of islands. You could swim from island to island or steal a boat. You could walk pretty much anywhere on each island and the bad guys could be almost anywhere. And if they saw you, they'd start hunting you, circling around behind you, using cover and working together. They could be incredibly tough.

You started out early in the game by getting a pistol and that's what you used to overcome your first mercenary enemies. You then could upgrade your weapon with one of the ones the enemies had dropped. You eventually had choices from your original pistol to a bigger pistol, several varieties of machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles with multiple-power scopes and eventually, hand-held rocket launchers. You could even use a machete for some incredibly bloody close-in work.

As you would play and encounter baddies, you would be killed yourself many, many times. This was normal and expected. You had to learn the techniques of besting your adversaries and those techniques would vary and change as the game progressed. You learned a lot of them by getting killed. A lot.

Some of the enemies you could shoot from a long distance away with the sniper rifle (good for clearing guards in towers). Others you could sneak up behind and shoot in the back (strangely gratifying). Still others required the John Wayne approach where you just ran into the group of enemies and started shooting them down. And hoped you'd kill them all before you were, yourself, done in. This melee approach was lots of fun and I used it from time to time.

Each chapter of the game gave you more information about the back story and what you were actually trying to achieve, vis-a-vis the adventure you were playing through. There were evil scientists, varied groups of mercenaries who ranged from pretty stupid to doggone dangerous, monkey-hybrids and other freaky cloned animal hybrids who were fast, loud and vicious as hell. Each chapter brought you closer and closer to the masterminds and ultimate biggie who was behind most of the nastiness.

The sound work on this particular game was extraordinary. You could hear the mercs talking amongst themselves or swearing at you as they attacked, the water sounded like water when you swam or waded in it, the leaves rustled when you walked through them. And the mutant creatures who were trying to kill you would growl and roar and scream and scare the living be-jesus out of ya. That was usually when you were quietly sneaking down some dark, dismal hallway in a underground fortress on one of the islands. There were occasions where my hand would shake so much from one of those growling attacks from the rear I could hardly aim my mouse hand and push the button to kill the beast. I got killed a lot from those son-of-a-guns.

During play you had a couple of meters you kept one eye on. One was your health, one your stamina and one your armor. When you would run or when you held your breath underwater your stamina would decline. When you took hits from an enemy, your armor would go down to zero. Then your health would decline to zero also. At that point you'd die. Sometimes it'd take a bunch of shots to finish you off, sometimes only one. That depended on what you were getting hit with. You could get hit with a lot of pistol shots and still keep fighting. But one shot with a rocket and you were toast. You could find first aid packs laying around that'd restore your health and you used them as you found them. Sometimes the enemy would shed his armor when he was killed and you could add that to yours. You could also find scads of ammo laying around for the various weapons you might be carrying.

During a few of the chapters of “Far Cry” I found myself getting very frustrated. I'd be getting killed over and over and over again trying to achieve some goal. And one of the peculiarities of this game was that you couldn't just save the game at any point like a lot of games let you do. Saves would only occur where they were programmed and they liked to establish them just after a big battle. And you didn't know exactly where those save points would be. You just had to keep playing until you achieved one of them. I grew frustrated enough I installed a cheat on this game whereby I could do an “instant” save pretty much anywhere in the game. I don't consider this a cheat, really. It's just a feature that “should” have been in the game from its inception. And it helped. A LOT.

I always chuckle when I read reviews of games I'm contemplating buying. They always say something like, “A good 10-12 hours of playing time.” Ha!

A good 4-6 weeks of playing time is more like it for me! Of course I'm not fanatically playing 10-12 hours a day and eating in front of the computer like a teenager might do. For me it's more like an hour or two here and there. Plus you have to realize that I'm not a 15-year-old kid with the reflexes of a king cobra any more, either. Those kids might be able to mow down dozens of mercs in a single burst of machine gun fire precisely aimed. I gotta see the buggers first, try not to flinch as they start shooting at me (or attacking from a dark corner with claws and humongous fangs) and click the fire button as fast as I can with my old, stiff fingers.

But then again, I'm not really in a hurry, am I? The baddies can wait.

I gave a little thought after finishing “Far Cry” recently as to the issue of violence in video games leading to violence in real life. You read about so-and-so having gone nuts from playing violent video games and then going out and performing some violent act. The media loves to paint all gamers with the violence-leads-to-violence brush. I just want to go on record here and now as saying I do NOT subscribe to that conclusion. I've NEVER been tempted to take a shotgun (or a rocket launcher, for that matter) and gun down anyone in real life. Never! It's never even crossed my mind. Apparently I, along with the 99.9999% of people who play these games are EASILY able to differentiate between pixels of light on a video screen and flesh-and-blood folks.

But, of course, it's the .0001% that grab the headlines.

Wanna know something? Most of those nut jobs would have done that or something similar even without the addition of a video game in their lives. They were doing actions like that long before the advent of those games. Maybe the pundits attributed the abnormality of those individuals in those days before violent video games to some other external stimuli. It seems like the “explainers” want to point their fingers at something, doesn't matter what.

My question is, why don't we just accept the fact that a tiny minority of us are nuts from the get-go and let it lie?

I do wonder though, from time to time, in the dead of the night... Am I having too much fun playing those games? Do I get too much of a visceral thrill from plugging a baddie? Am I grinning like an idiot too much as I survey the carnage I caused to the enemy?

Am I a candidate to climb a bell tower somewhere with a high-power rifle in hand?

And sometimes I wonder.

In His Own Words

In His Own Words

I talk to myself occasionally. Generally not long conversations, but I do ask myself questions once in a while. Who, what, where and when are the usual culprits and the answers to those questions are usually close at hand. It's the whys that really cause you to think. And a “why” question came up recently that I've been thinking about ever since.

Why do I write?

Why do I put pen to paper (or electrons to computer storage as this would properly be described)? Why do I sit down and write stories or reminiscences or just thoughts and post them on the blog in front of the critical gaze of friends and strangers alike? Why do I take the time to organize my thoughts and then place them in a coherent fashion in a piece of writing? And yes, this really is a legitimate question that a lot of people who write, even a little bit as I do, are wont to ask themselves from time to time. I mean, I could be doing something else. I could be reading, which I do a lot of anyway but I could be doing a lot more of. I could be working and making extra money in the time I spend pounding on a computer keyboard. I could even be sleeping, or goofing off or doing any one of a million other things with these hours that I put into doing what you're reading now.

I could be. But I'm not.

I've thought about it a lot recently and have possibly come up with a few reasons that feel like they might be close to the truth.

Are you at least a tiny bit curious? If so, read on...

First and most simply, I do it because I like to. I enjoy putting words together that make sense and convey a thought. I like the way the words look when they're all strung together into sentences and paragraphs. And I marvel that they originated in some dusty recess of my cluttered mind – some dark corner only lit by an aged 40-watt bulb, hiding under a box covered in cobwebs.

I also like the order, may I even say the art, of a well-crafted sentence or paragraph or story.

It pleases me.

Next I do it to chronicle memories that might well be lost. I'm not getting any younger, or at least that's what I've been told, and a lot of the things I write down I may not remember tomorrow or the next day. Not that they are of any import, but it might be nice in later years to pull up these scribblings and refresh my possibly failing memory at that time with them. And it's certainly a way to gather together pieces of my life into one place where they can be accessed. Perhaps I'll win the lottery next week or be called upon to do some valiant deed whereby someone might then be interested in how this lottery winner or this hero lived his life. It's not very likely but it is in the realm of possibility.

I do it to pass on to my son some things that we may never talk about. Or, in some cases, to reiterate stories or thoughts that I've related to him in the past which I wanted to revisit. My son and I have never had a comfortable relationship and, by doing this, I feel I might be able to communicate to him some memories that might allow him to see things in himself he might otherwise not recognize. He might not think he takes after his old man so much, but one day he might read or remember these words in relation to some circumstance he might be in and he might say, “Damn. Dad used to do/say that!”

It happens to me all the time.

I write for the sheer love of the mechanics of placing letters together to make the words – the correct words – and to place those words together in the precise way as to convey the message and the spirit of the message. It's difficult to describe the mental acrobatics necessary to achieve this but the result, when it's done correctly, sings a song to you when you read it. Metaphorically sing, that is. I couldn't hold a tune to save my soul. Perhaps that's another reason why I write?

To let my fingers sing from the keyboard.

Maybe I do it because I have to. Now don't laugh. Habits are laid down by repetition – good and bad. And once a habit has been initiated and has been repeated many, many times, stopping that habit is difficult. Write a bunch of stories yourself, receive some positive feedback and encouragement and you might have trouble not writing also. Or if this compulsion isn't actually a habit, then maybe it's some other itch that's begging to be scratched – some psychological addiction that manifests itself in the urge to write. Perhaps my psychologist friend might describe, in full Latin no less, the exact compulsion that drives it. She's always been helpful that way.

Hell, maybe it's just that I like to type, I'm good at it and I hate typing THE QUICK RED FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY BROWN DOG over and over. I kind of doubt that, actually. Typing on a keyboard, when you are competent, becomes just a vehicle that you use to place your thoughts on the computer screen. You generally don't even think about the mechanics of striking keys. You just think AND SHE SAID and the words “and she said” appear on the screen. Simple, eh?

But maybe, deep down, it's a genetic thing where an individual tries to leave something that will go on after he is no more. A legacy, if you will. Even a tiny effort such as these blogs. Someone, down the line a hundred or a thousand years from now might see these words and say, “That dude was right on. That's exactly how I feel too.”

It isn't Hemmingway and it isn't Steinbeck but that'd be so cool!

Or an ancestor 5 or 6 generations removed might stumble on these words and marvel at the antique notions of his great-great to the umpteenth generation grandpa/uncle/cousin.

As an infant in the fraternity of writers, I am constantly amazed at the gift a lot of them have and how prolific they are. For example, I recently became reacquainted with an old friend from my days in the Air Force. He has undertaken the task of writing a column/newsletter on line, he's done it for the past two years and he does it weekly! And the columns he creates are quite readable and always interesting. But the operative word I want to stress here is WEEKLY! I have not reached the point where I'm comfortable enough with my skills or my fortitude to guarantee some words on paper on a schedule. I am still only writing when the muse, as they say, strikes. She sometimes bites a couple times a week. But more likely it's a couple times a month.

I suppose if I were a journalist and had to write every day it would become commonplace and mundane. A job. A chore. But I'm glad it isn't yet. Every time I sit down to a blank piece of “paper” it's an adventure, a fascinating challenge to see if I can, again, come up with something I'm not too disappointed in and which I am not too squeamish about placing in this blog.

And so I approach the end of this communication and I look at the words above this line. Are they readable? Are they clear and do they make sense? Are they interesting, even if they're on a subject that might not be everyone's “cup of tea?” Are they acceptable to me?

Do they sing? Even a little?

I think so. I hope so.