Word of the day.."Chief"

Today's word is "Chief". When you meet someone today, say hey Chief. They will give you a double-take and you will just smile. Try it. it's fun.

Thinking back on it all.....

When I saw the picture of Rick from when he had returned from Boot-Camp, I went back to this pic that Rick had taken of me just several months earlier. This is when we were 'buds' and it seemed nothing would ever change that. My days were spent working part-time mostly and driving the mesa with Ginny in tow. I soon decided to go to the Colorado Institute of Art in Denver and study Graphic Design. Wow, was that really over 30 years ago? What happened to the time? What happened to Rick during all those years and where was he? Did Rick ever wonder what had happened to me? We re-united via the internet in the beginning of '09 and here we are. The Chronicals have re-capped some of the past and the present in little snippits with a ton of lies and a lot of humor, I hope. I have enjoyed this experiment and would like for both of us to continue for at least a little longer. But, as I hear my wife calling from the other room, I must cut this short, for now. (Does this ever happen to other people?). Peace.

Today I feel....

With Rick at the wheel I always feel O.K.. Rick has a way of taking the edge off an otherwise crappy day. Thanks Rick. Wheeeeee......let's go for a sidecar race. Rick and I would usually win these races because we had no fear and little brains. I still walk alittle funny from scraping the ground at 90 mph. It feels good to be back in the race.

While we’re at it….

Here’s a shot of me just after Basic Training and cook school. I’m thinking this is early September 1976.  I still weighed in at 135lbs.

Picking With Mike

Where were we? Ah, yes. Ft. Lewis, Washington. 1977. I was a dork. (That’s me above from the following story.)

There was a notice posted in August 1977 about “Adventure Training.” It was to be a recreational hike with a small number of people from the unit. It sounded cool to me and so I signed up.

The trail was up the Olympic Peninsula, a beautiful stretch of beach with no way in or out, save the trailheads. It would have been very difficult to bring a boat through. It was one of the most gorgeous and peaceful places I’ve ever been.

Along on the trip was a guy named Mike Buzett (one of those rare individuals whose name doesn’t turn up on a Google search.) I think he was about 24 at the time – one of the older members of the team. While the rest of us humped rucks full of food, tents, etc, Mike left almost all of that behind in order to bring along his cherished Ovation Roundback guitar.

[most of the group on the second day as it rained steadily. It was Washington after all. You can see Mike with his guitar case.]

That first night, we built a fire on the beach and cooked our dinner. A couple of the guys dug clams on cooked them up. Mike brought out the guitar and began to play. He played songs I’d never heard before. Mostly Jimmy Buffett and John Prine, but also Jerry Jeff Walker and other singer songwriters.

I have to say that it was something of a life-changing experience for me. Not in that “Praise Jesus, I saw the light,” ways, but, as an artist, and how I saw the world.

Mike and I got cut off by the tide the next day and, while the rest of the group camped out in a nice little forest service shelter, we spent the night in an old half-shack; Mike picking, and both of us smoking dope.

When we returned to the base, I began exploring the records at the library. I got everything I could by Buffett and Prine and Jerry Jeff Walker, and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and all the guys in the whole Outlaw Country movement. I found stuff that Mike had never heard, and as I plyed the records, he would sit and write out the chords while I wrote out the lyrics.

Mike bought an old Cadillac—which he could barely afford to put gas in—and we did some driving around getting high. I remember going with him (before the Caddy) up to see Jerry Jeff Walker in Seattle. We got so wasted, and it was hard to say who was moreso—us or Jerry Jeff. I remember standing on a sidewalk outside a bar while Mike got more drunk in a bar afterwards. I was to young to drink off base at the time. I ended up wandering off and found a ride home in the back of a truck full of G.I.’s heading back to the post.

I’d sure like to know what ever happened to Mike. That’s the way things go though.

Next time: Getting the Hell Out of Dodge: Rick goes to Germany.

Time for a moment of reflection

We're going black for a while here as we reflect on choices we make and where they lead.

I done did it -- and gave the speech to boot.

Here I am at the convocation, giving the undergraduate speech. I've got to say that the whole thing was one of the most awesome moments in my life. Here is the speech....

I have always been something of an armchair polymath… with a little interest in all subjects … and just enough knowledge of them to be dangerous… or dangerously annoying. I was one of those guys who informs you … against your will … about the most inane things: like that Cashew nuts are part of the Poison Ivy Family, or that fluorescent methyl salicylate is why you can shoot sparks off your teeth when you bite a Wint-o-green Life Saver.

I guess it’s a bit surprising that a guy who knew about so many things performed so horribly in high school. In fact, it was only in my art classes that I got A’s. The rest of my grades were poor…. Not even good enough for the guidance counselor to suggest vocational school…. College was never an option back then, and I wound up the next 15 years in a series of low-end, low-wage jobs... Soldier… Cook… bartender… day-laborer… cab driver.

Eventually I managed to turn my artistic side to good use took a nine-month crash-course in production art, and bluffed my way into a series of graphic design positions including managing the art departments of several different regional retail operations.

But, as much as I enjoyed art and being creative, Graphic design wasn’t living the dream. It was not what I wanted to be when I grew up.
This is something we all come to grips with at some point. As children, we all want to be a policeman or a fireman or a nurse or an astronaut, or Brett Favre…. Well, maybe not Brett Favre.

The point is we all have plans, hopes, and dreams, and often as not, we don’t see them come to fruition.

As a child, I wanted to be a sailor, like Popeye. Later, I wanted to be a veterinarian. In middle-school I was a fan of Jacques Cousteau, and wanted to be a marine biologist.

While graphic design wasn’t, as I said, living the dream, it did provide enough money to get by on.

Earlier I referred to myself as a polymath. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a polymath is, basically, a person whose knowledge is not restricted to one subject area.

And because of my interest in so many different things, I always said that, when I retired, I was going to spend the rest of my days in college, taking classes…This was my new dream.

A friend, tired of hearing this idle threat, asked me why I was waiting until retirement? Why not now?

Well, as one of the truly great philosophical minds of our times, Homer Simpson, said, “I’m no Super Genius. Or are I?”

Sure, I knew why the Dutch wore wooden shoes, but I also knew that I was no super genius. I had doubts that anything had really changed over the nearly thirty years since high school.

Nonetheless, at age 45, I began a fairly remarkable journey. I took the tests, and, started at TVI taking core classes and building up credits to transfer to UNM.
I was a single parent, working full-time—a forty plus hour work week, and I was carrying 12 to 16 hours a semester, going to classes at night and on weekends. A pretty hefty schedule, and in all honesty, I wasn’t expecting great successes.

But a strange thing happened. I started getting A’s. Though at first I laughed at it as a fluke, I began to realize that, yes, I could do this! After the few two semesters, the grades began to become something of a personal competition for me. And then I made the Dean’s List! I never thought such a thing could be possible.
I wasn’t sure what my end goal in college would be, I’d thought about the school of architecture. What happened, though, was that I took a class…for fun…in Creative Writing… and I liked it… And I did really well in it. My instructor, a UNM grad student, encouraged me to pursue writing.

I realized that I did not—by any stretch of the imagination—possess the math skills needed to pursue my dream of being an architect. But I did possess the skills I needed to pursue another dream.

See, ever since I can remember, I’ve written stories. It started with “The Death of a Toad,” an autobiographical confessional-style tale written around age 8. It continued with the stories I wrote and illustrated as a wannabe comic book artist in my pre-teen and teen years. It continued on as an adult, in journals and letters to friends, telling stories and recounting adventures. The fact that I could do those things well … never had occurred to me.

In the years since coming to UNM, I’ve had the greatest encouragement from all of my professors, leading me to grow as both a student and a writer. My senior honors thesis was extremely well-received. I was awarded the Vicente Ximenes Scholarship for graduate study, and UNM’s Creative Writing MFA program has honored me in its acceptance of my application for this coming Fall Semester. My dreams of a continued life in academia have also been realized.

No one is more surprised to see me here than me. A whole new sort of dream has been presented to me and I am going to live it. Now at 50, I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. Thank you

____________________________
And here's my son, Gabe, who came out to see me. This was the first time I'd seen him since he went out on the road last summer.

Today I Feel...

As a new feature on the Moonpie Chronicles, we are introducing the wildly unpopular "Today I Feel..." series. The rules are pretty simple and only Vance and I can play, so tuff darts, buddy!

Today I Feel....
...with a little bit of this thrown in...

Wives we've had...

I still lived in Memphis when I married Gretchen after 8th grade. She never cooked or cleaned or nothin'. I left right after I got the chaulks out from the wheels of our house and I hauled ass. We were married about 7 days.

Wives we've had

This was my 17th wife a mere 13 minutes after we said "I do." This was a short-lived marriage, lasting roughly a half hour. The cops came and that was all she wrote.