Earth Day

So its Earth Day, and everybody that had the opportunity to toke a joint on 4/20 is now stretching that day into Earth Day.  There are of course many sober conservationists too, those who are angry with the over many beating hearts upon the earth.  They feel (themselves excluded) that some great culling or elimination must come forth or manifest itself in order to to right the wrongs and save the earth.  The Earth after all lives, it breathes, it is an entity and it is our goal to love it.  I remember the 70s song in a long lost musical "Zero Population is the Answer My Friend".

I chuckle when I think on that.  It is the same mentality that occurred to Grizzly man Timothy Treadwell who became one with the grizz, you can find his last moments in a chilling sound recording on youtube as he was embraced by nature one final time.  I wonder if he had that moment of clarity that told him in the end, he was one in the only way one can become one with nature.

But then that is the way of nature.  To the Earth life is an infection that needs a cure.  The Earth's core existence or role is to wipe the petrie dish of who we are clean.  Not just humans, but everything.  The evidence? Look at the massive die offs.  Consider the dinosaurs of another age, they were probably the most benign group upon the earth, they were part of nature, they did not seek to control or change their environment, they were every Earth Day advocates dream of how we should be.  How did existence repay their most excellent balance?  It snuffed them out so that I could enjoy some coal fired electricity these millions of year later.  Guess the joke was on them.

At one time life was almost frozen out as the Earth became a giant snowball and dealt pretty much a cold hand to life as the Earth froze the oceans where it could.  Wonderful stuff that.  There was Tambora 70,000 years ago which wiped out so much of the plague called humanity that our DNA from this period shows us as a bottle neck when only a few of us were left.  There have been other calderas, Yellowstone is a favorite that recurs like a trip to Disneyland.  North America will be buried under ash next time.  Dekkan Traps anyone?  Or perhaps Siberian Traps? 6-7000 feet of lava flows pushing out of the Earth giving us 750,000 square miles of lava.  That one came close, 90%+ of sea life and 75%+ of land based species gone, snuffed, poof!.  Or so the fossils of extinct ammonites tell us.

Hurray, its Earth Day.  Pick up your litter, pick up your trash, place all kinds of restrictions on technology, growth, food, reduce populations!  All the wonderful stuff we were told in the 70's with dire stories of imminent destruction illustrated in the fake book "Silent Spring", or predictions of us dying soon.  We want the Earth to be clean and hospitable when it is our turn and we are wiped out.  You gotta love the Earth, such a trickster.

What is a veteran?

What is a veteran?

Someone asked me that the other day.  The answer is pretty easy, but its meaning escapes me.  A veteran is someone who served in the military to protect our nation.  A pretty simple statement but when you think about it, it hides great complexity.  Among veterans I count my three brothers who each served in different branches.  I am proud of them for that, but their lives are different from each other and from mine.  It seems veterans are made up of people from all walks of life, different demographics, different belief systems, different politics, and have different ideals of nobility.  The quintessence is that they serve.  I want to speak of one veteran in particular, my father,  someone who no longer lives but has left a legacy.  His is a complicated life to speak of in my view.  But as the son of a veteran who has done much.  There remains much to say.

My father was an easy man to like, and difficult to love.  His was a personality full of laughter but to those of us who knew him there was also harshness and anger.  He was provocative to say the least and my main memory of him was his anger at the world.  For years I thought that anger was simply a mean streak that he chose to develop.  It wasn’t until the end of his life when he chose to speak with me that I realized there was more to him than what I knew, a depth that required understanding.

I wish I could say that all vets like my father were perfect men, that their sacrifice defines them as givers in this life.  But we know that what drives these men and women is as varied as the people that exist.  My father was very patriotic in his own way, but also very cynical of the patriotism he saw.  I am not sure if what made him that way was his military service or his life, neither of which was cheaply bought, both of which were hard fought battles in their own right.  Often the military is an escape of sorts, a change in a pattern that may be used to mold us into one thing or another.  For some it is viewed as an escape from circumstance.  Little do they realize that they do not escape the freight they carry with them.


My father's early life existed around two coal mining towns in Russell County and Dickenson County Virginia. Trammel and Dante are their names.  Locals by the way will not call it Dante in terms of the Renaissance poet, they will refer to their town phonetically as "Daint".  I know something of Dante, Trammel, and southwest Virginia, it can be a hard and harsh place filled with good people who have adapted to the harshness of the limestone and coal.  There isn't much to draw one seeking out a life in Dante.  Built in the rugged Appalachians it reflects a poverty we normally expect of the third world.  There are old burnt out clapboard houses that sit on the edges of town.  Men aged before their time with black lung on the rickety wooden front porches, rocking their chairs watching the cars and trains go by.  Faces are drawn hard and tight by years living underground or winters that were warmed by the coal in potbellied stoves.  Eyes are often clouded by the alcohol they have used to drown away the pain of a continued existence with no escape, or crushed hopes and horizons that will forever elude them.  Most do not realize that cost in their lives before they are old and retired.  They work from holiday to holiday.. deer season giving them respite in the beginning of fall, showing them signs that another year is passing.  Lamentations as old as the bible are voiced through blue grass songs, and like the slaves of old; they endure.  Their hands, when you shake them, are calloused and hard and their lungs, already weak from the coal, catch pneumonia easily from too much time in ankle deep water.  The sides of the hills around Dante are 40 degrees steep and houses sit precariously upon them, their precariousness reflected in the income of miners whose lives depend on the coal they spend their existence removing from below.  The community is poor, but its people stand ramrod straight and dare you to make light of their mismatched clothing and hand me downs.  Some on welfare survive from check to check living in a temporary and to them shameful existence while their children are socially promoted in schools that have inadequate funding and parents too concerned with making rent to spend time making sure homework is done.  The focus is on making it to the end of the month, not on which university or college they hope to attend.  You have a lot going against you in Dante and there isn't much attention paid to this part of Virginia as the noble class of courtesans from DC gallantly suck up all the attention up North in Fairfax county.  Dante is a place to be from, not a place you seek out.  Believe it or not, my father's time was even more difficult and harder on the soul and life of an individual than what I saw there in my own youth.

His call to duty came in the death of friends in a coal mine and the very young but mature decision that life will drown him here and his escape had to be done then or never.


At 15 he was working in the mine loading coal in the McCoy mine at night while going to school during the day.  A pony would come up to the top level and they would hand load the coal at night.  This paid 1 – 2 dollars a night and all the coke and “nabs” they could drink and eat.  McCoy owned a small store and his sons worked by my father's side.  One night while he was working in the tunnels, a roof bolt collapsed and shives (splinters) pronounced "shiv's" from the wooden beams shot out and killed two of his friends.  He knew it was bad, and in the end a similar fate awaited him too.  So he tried to join the military at 15.  He was a good size for his age, but the recruiter would have none of it.  They went to the local school board for age verification, he was fifteen and that was the end of that.  The maw of the mines waited for him.  Except for him that wasn’t going to happen.  His destiny would change, and he knew how.  So he asked for a draft card under the pretense that he could show it to his friends.  The recruiter saw no harm in it, after all, he wouldn’t be allowed to join until he was 18.  So he got one.  It was 1949 and the cards were hand written for the most part.  Later that day he hopped a train to a city further away.  By the following morning he was gone following a different path.

“I want to join” he told the recruiter.
“Well son, how old are you?” came the questioning reply.
“18”
“Do you have proof?”
“Here is my draft card”.
“OK son, sign here”…. And it was done.
He’d escaped to a better life, maybe.

He was signed up and sent to boot in Massachusetts.  There he won soldier of the year at the base and was given a ticket to the World Series.  At around his 16th birthday he hit the beaches of Inchon as part of MacArthur’s invasion of Korea.  The water, he told me was to his chest and the mud on the beach was knee deep as he carried his BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle).  The North Koreans were taken completely by surprise and they had made it inland a good 20 miles before there was any resistance.  There he captured his first North Korean, an officer, and so sought to hand him over to a Major Forrester.  The order was to have the Korean dig his own grave and then shoot him.  Which my father promptly did; heck of a start to his 16th year.

So they moved forward, all the way to the Chosin Resevoir when the Chinese communist came in waves cutting them off and driving them back into pockets.  He told me he remembered that it was colder than he had ever been in his life and people around him were felled as much by hypothermia as bullets.  Nights were full of fear as the enemy would mass and prepare, the mornings were spent marching and calling in air support.  During all of this he received his first wound.  So at 16, while recovering he was sent back to be a desk sergeant and MP.  He did not like it, nor has he ever liked authority.

He then skipped over and remembered Vietnam.  He was one of the first advisors in Vietnam,  an NDIC (non commissioned officer in charge) with a five man unit over various villages working with local militia against the Viet Cong.  A Major Bear was in charge (called running bear because he hit the bunker running when a firefight or mortar fire began).  His contact was a barefoot Vietnamese Lieutenant who was disciplined and warned him of eminent attacks.  One indication -  when 20 of the lieutenants men disappeared, they were told by Viet Cong family members that there would be an attack that night and not to go in.  It was a crazy war.

My father told me of the Tet Offensive which started just as he was about to go on leave.  He remembered trying to keep Major Bear calm who was running around with a bag of grenades and how my father fell as a bullet ricocheted off his belt.  He mentioned working with PsyOps and nothing more, Vietnam taught him to love the grenade launcher and he was very accurate with it.  There were numerous other fire fights he referred to, but did not speak of.  Other things too, like the barber who shaved him with a straight razor turned out to be VC.  He still smiles at that.  Later he saw the man being led away even as the country slowly disintegrated, another casualty.

So he comes home, teaches counter insurgency for two years at Loyola University, wins ROTC shooting championships, finishes at Fort Gordon and after a tussle with a major (and revealing the lie of his age) finished the military demoted to Senior Master Sargent.

In the end though, he didn’t escape. There is something about the stark beauty of those hills that calls one back.  I myself don’t want to go back, but sometimes when there is a crispness in the air, I can hear its siren song whispering.   In the end he returned to the home of his youth, the Appalachian Hills and brought his German wife and children with him.  There he raised us in effect as he was raised.  We saw the poverty, we lived in it for a time (though like all children we didn’t know we were poor, we simply ran through the forests enjoying what was around us).  He had spent years seeking an escape, but the mines called him back, and back he went.  He was a union man; he loved the union and embraced it as did his father before him.

And so he finished and retired union.  In the interim he divorced his wife, took on another, led a separate life, and moved on until he died.  He was tough, he was mean but that toughness was an integral part of what he was; not only in the military where he had seen more fighting in more climates than most can imagine, but also in the harshness of his environment that raises such young men

He lies there now in those hills he so loved with the laurel and the deer that still creep to the graves of the family plot high in the wooded land.  His struggles are over and he is done, having fought the hard fight.  In the end there really isn’t a winner where this life is concerned, we do our eight hours and then punch our time clocks at the end of the day.

But the final question still remains.  What is a vet?  I can only look to my father in trying to answer that question.  We praise these men and women on Veterans day, and we see them for one day as heroes.  But like the ancient heroes of Greek history, they did great things as men and did them with the flaws of who they were.  They fought, they died, and it is the sweat and blood of their sacrifices that make the cement that holds the walls which protect our society and keeps us from those who would destroy us.  That is the true heroism.  They are imperfect, and they do not want to be seen as gods or super men (or women).  They served, their reasons are myriad, but in their time, they stood ready to risk all.

Maybe its not that complicated?  Maybe it is the nobility of human nature coming through imperfect beings.  My father did much in his life and while he never made the long service to his nation the centerpiece of who he was, nor demanded to be honored, he served.  It was tough, it was gritty, it wasn’t pretty.  It was like him, complicated and not.

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Ghosts of the Aztecs, Or The Strangest Lunch I Have Ever Had

Here is the entire incident as it occurred so many years ago

Templo Mayor

I lived in Mexico for several years.  The diversity of its landscape and people are lost to most of us living in the US.  We see only those who struggled and were willing to take the great risk to better themselves in a land and culture alien and foreign to them, but beckoning with hope.  The United States is a wondrous trap in that way.  We don't always see Mexico at its best with these men and women, even as its people strive to bring the best out in themselves.  I have traveled now the depth and breadth of that nation, I have seen their hopes and dreams, their intial alienness to me is less alien than it once was and I can spot regional differences that make up a mosaic of a nation state whose people are different nations tied by a mythos that is often frayed by its poor leadership.  It is a nation whose people are to be admired, whose organization is to be pitied.  The strongest ties are familial and obedience to the patriarch, for either good or ill, this is powerful throughout that land.

Today I will speak of something that is in the mist of reality, a surreal thing that brings to my mind the question of what is real, and what is myth.  As Mormons we believe that there is no difference between the spirit and the flesh, that all things that exist have a spiritual origin and that origin exists forever changed only by the experience that we will upon ourselves.  While that view is known to us, it is sometimes disconcerting when it actually descends upon us from the unknown places.  For myself I cannot claim great spiritual insight, it would be hubris for me to do so, I am very much based on the reality of this life and its effects on me.  So I remain relatively blind to the corners of existence that hold surprising things that perturb the placid waters of my life.  Routine is comforting and safe, it also blinds us.

I had been working in Mexico for several years developing a routine that would suffice to my needs as I strove to develop a career in international business, using the Spanish I had developed from my time as a missionary combined with degree in economics.  It is not a easy life, this career development thing, but it is a living after all.  We lived on the coast in Mexico developing hotels and golf courses for the well heeled that would come into the nation and bring their much needed dollars and our lives were not difficult when compared to those living in our host land.  Once or twice a year I would take my four wheel drive Eddie Bauer Bronco II up the United States for a thorough inspection and bill of health by a certified US mechanic I knew and trusted (this kept the warrantee active).  That trip was done alone and lent itself to some wonderful adventures with people who became close if temporary friends.  Driving along those long thin two lane highways one is often pushed over to the side by 18 wheeler trucks madly hurtling freight to their destinations going in the opposite direction.  But the scenery, now that was something else it is desolate and beautiful in its isolation and empty hills.  Whether plush hills of the Sierra Madres or the extensive undulating ocotillo and palo verde hills along with the long stark empty beaches whose silence is only broken by crashing surf and windswept sand.  Those are views that I will always treasure.  On the road, appearing on either side were often empty smaller avenues that stretched off into the distance disappearing into hills for destinations unknown.  When I took these trips I had some leeway in time built into them so I could do what I loved to do when I traveled alone.  I would go on an "explore".  A small voyage of discovery to see what was "out there".  I am no Magellan, I am just curious.

Most of the time such deviations would conclude by leading up to an isolated "rancho" somewhere that rarely encountered guests.  Some few small adobe buildings and a tienda with little else of note in the orange ground beyond the desert cactus, ocotillos and palo verdes.  Such a visit was a call for certain celebration by these hard working families attempting carve a life out of what is still a harsh wilderness.  They would gather together that evening for a small bonfire with talking, singing, someone would break out some goat meat for a barbecue and people would laugh, converse, and share stories of families and friends, with a heavy dose of gossip to spice up the conversation with the stranger.  I too contributed and sang as loudly and off key as I could, they would laugh and shake their head at my antics.  That was my entertainment for them.  More often than not I left a few dollars to help them along for the food they prepared and the company they gave me.  Years later I still smile at the memory of wonderful people whose love of life, tempered by a grim determination of survival found the time to bless a stranger with their happiness.

Deviations exist as learning experiences whereby we have the opportunity to experience something outside the routine.  In one of these trips I descended to a place that was different as I drifted up the North of Mexico.  I had been driving on a somewhat isolated stretch of road, bored of the music and time when a side road made itself known to me.  Turning right I kicked up the gravel  as I took an empty road and disappeared into the brush with little more than a cloud of desert dust to mark my passage.   The ocotillo and cactus ranged heavy on either side as I drove on towards the mountains with the morning sun continuing its hot torturous climb.  After the miles ranged underneath I began to wonder if maybe I needed to turn around and come back, it seemed to be a road that led nowhere.  Gradually the road became harder with more rock as it descended into an isolated valley with high walls on either side leading down a narrow stretch.  Down the center following the road was an arroyo, a dry river bed with not even the tantalizing temptation of water, but the road was more defined now, and there in the distance I saw some houses, even an old church that seemed to lord over the small pueblo.  A farming community to be sure.  That single road cut through the adobe town with an unusually large pile of white rocks on the opposite side that marked an end to the road.  It is rare to see the end of a road, usually we only see the beginnings, as they lead us from our front door into the world.  But endings?  Very rare, and in most of our lives, a surprise.  This was no exception.  Along this ending lay on either side some old destroyed adobe homes which had been left to erode to the elements along with some old wooden buildings in this dusty windswept town.   Nothing was more than a single story, except the church, its tower stood erect and tall at the entrance of the town with cracks on the wall and tower.  The reality of earth and gravity had not yet crushed this building of faith, I supposed its time would come too.  All of this seemed built around or toward that unusually large pile of bleached white stones piled up haphazardly.   People did live here, there was activity and movement even as the rising dust set motes in my eye.  I parked in front of a half collapsed building labeled "loncheria" for those who entertained the idea of being fed (being fed what?!?! is often a question I asked myself at some of these places).  I stepped out of my Bronco (one of only two or three vehicles in the entire town from what I could see), and climbed the wooden steps squinting my eyes for protection from dust and bright sun.

As I walked in, my hopes for a good meal while not dashed were somewhat shaken. Half of the building was weathered and wooden and half eroded adobe, as if they could not be bothered to continue hauling wood from some other place in order to finish the building.  The floor was a mixture of uneven clay tile and brick that remained permanently dusty.  The hiss of a propane burner could be heard from the back room while a small girl in ragged clothing carried out the futility of moving sand and dust from one corner to the other with the sparse brushes of an old broom.  The chairs and tables were made of that ubiquitous cheap hollowed out white plastic found in all parts of Mexico.  Chairs that could easily buckle and collapse as you leaned or put weight on the back legs reminded one to always sit up straight for fear of that sudden collapse.  The wooden portion looked older than old with its weathered shelves and walls that disappeared into the darkness that one experiences when the sun is overly bright outside that the far corner of the room offered no light to define its borders.  I took a seat in the semi darkness for the coolness it offered and carefully sat down.  An older girl of a similar nature came by and handed me a worn plastic menu offering the barest of staples.  At the bottom printed in bold, "sodas frios", caught my eye; something that suddenly made the accommodations much more appealing.

"Unos tacos p'favor" I said. "Y dos gaseosas", My Spanish was of a South American variety and training.  After a questionable second, before I could clarify for  her, she understood and left to bring me my sodas.

They were very cold, and for me this was the saving grace of the whole town.  The warm container of bottled water in my car had long since lost its appeal to me beyond survival and here I was being offered what can only be described as nectar of the gods.  There was ice on the outside of the bottle, inside you could see that thin layer of ice crystals forming on the very top, creating a semi slushing frigidity.  As the liquid poured down my dry, parched throat, I gave thanks to the inventor of refrigeration that allowed it to exist even here in this empty place.  That feeling of the dust being washed away is, I think, one of the highlights of life.  I was partially finished with my drink when I heard a sound in the darkness...  A kind of dry raspy smacking of dry lips and a clucking tongue.   It came from somewhere in the darkness of the shadow, as my eyes adjusted, I saw an old man in patched and worn clothing staring at me.  He had white hair and a short white beard.  This old man had seen life, probably had embraced it, and like so many, had not been embraced in return.  He was poor, he was tired and the lines etching his face were deep.  Again the smacking of lips as he looked right into my eyes.  He wasn't quite asking for something to drink, he was no beggar, but it did not bother him to let me know that he wanted one.  As my eyes adjusted more to the shadow I saw how close he really was and his smile, was one more of a person judging than it was a petition.

I was young, full of brass, and stared back at him.  "Oye, viejo" I said in a slightly disrespectful tone. "Que quieres?" or "Old man, what do yo want?".  He acted neither shocked nor insulted.

"Tengo sed" he rasped with a trace of a smile.

"No never mind" I thought.  He was thirsty and it looked like he could use it more than I could.  It wouldn't hurt to buy him one.  So I ordered another gaseosa for the old man.  It came out and without another word he drank it.  Not a sip either or even a strong draft, he chugged the entire soda down in one long draught.  That is pretty surprising, and he must have been pretty thirsty, no, bone dry would have been a more accurate word.  I ordered him another.  He repeated the same act, one long chug that would have made a frat boy proud.  I ordered a third, this time he took a strong swig, gave a long burp and exhaled as only a man who rarely knows, but appreciates those moments of complete satisfaction.

"You know gringo" he said mimicking me with his own sardonic tone.  "I like you, you have a good heart.  He took another sip.  "I will tell you two stories.  You will not interrupt these stories but listen with our ears.  Agreed?"

I wasn't in a hurry and this small half empty dust bowl in the middle of a desolate valley offered little in the way of amusement.  The sound of lunch being prepared and the familiar smells of Mexican home cooking convinced me to carefully sit back and nod my head.  "Bueno Senor, a su servicio"

"Gringo, you know of the Aztecs? And their sacrifices?"  He asked as he eyed me.  I had in fact been very interested in the Aztecs.  So I replied.

"An amazing people whose pyramids were adapted to the wholesale slaughter of victims to their hummingbird god Huitzilopochtli, it is rumored that in one religious ceremony they cut out the hearts of almost 30,000 to feed their god.  Using an obsidian knife they would cut underneath the sternum and then reach in and pull out the still beating heart and place it in the mouth of their god statue, all the while the man receiving this was conscious and aware.  Their temples are said to be rounded in order for the bodies to be rolled off rather than carried down.  Indeed their sacrifices were so numerous as to be so hated that when Cortez entered Tenochtitlan, he had almost 100,000 indian allies who also wanted the destruction of the Aztecs...."

"Gringo" he said with a touch of irritation "You are interrupting me.".

I nodded my head and apologized.  He went on.

"Cortez and the traitorous Malinche led an army to the Aztec capitol and over time battles were fought and Cortes was driven away.  Even during the height of the fighting priests would snatch or capture any warrior they could, drag them to the top of the temple and tear the heart out.  Begging their warrior god to kill these invaders for them.  Fighting was everywhere in patios, terraces, along the roads as groups or forces surged in and out driving the conquistadores back, or being forced away by the conquistadores.  Two of the conquistadores found themselves at the base of one portion of the Templo Mayor.  The northwest, and there were only a few Aztecs of noble birth standing guard.  They were not fighting or even looking outward towards the battles, their gaze and guard were focused deep into a narrow opening peering intently with their long tepoztopili in one hand along with a maquahitl in the other.  The tepoztopili is a long seven foot spear and the maquahitl a sword with razor sharp obsidian edges.  The maquahitl was powerful enough to decapitate a man in one fell swoop.  With their swords they came up behind these distracted nobles and thrust deep and true killing all three before any could react.  Such narrow openings were not unknown to the Spanish, since they often led to secret passages.  The small opening meant only one thing to these men "Aztec gold".  But the entrance was slight and very dark.  They released the straps of their cascadas and breast plates and dropped them in a pile near the entrance in order  to fit inside this cramped opening, then with the lust of gold in their eyes they were enveloped into the darkness of the passage.

The passage itself was narrow and both men were forced to walk in a stooped sideways motion, it would zig one way and zag another.  There was no light, there was no torch for them to carry and the walls were one moment smooth and another disconcertingly rough hewn, as if not more than piled rocks, then smooth again.
No light was found and the sides grew closer and closer until both men were almost wedged in.  Was this some cruel joke with a guarded walkway that led nowhere?  A last turn with jagged stone pressing on their cheeks showed them a light.

"Joven" the man said to me as he pulled me out of his story.  "With all those sacrifices, why weren't the temples red with blood?"

"How do you know they weren't?" I asked.

"Read what they wrote" he replied

I had read Bernal Diaz Castillo's "The Conquest of New Spain" and one of the things he mentioned was the alabaster whiteness of the temple of the sun.  The old man surprised me, not many were as well read as that, I would be surprised even more later.

"So where did the blood go?" he asked.  I shrugged and indicated with a wave for him to continue with his story.  Just then a little girl brought some appetizers or tapas were brought out and I offered the old man a bite, but his face went back to the intensity as he thought back.  He wasn't interested in food right now, the sharing of what he knew was his priority and food, even for this man who could use it, became secondary.

The light beckoned, but the path had grown slender and almost impossible to maneuver.  Conquistadores did not conquer by not taking chances.  They expelled the air from their lungs, with nothing left and pushed/scraped their way to the soft light.

What they saw, shocked them utterly.  These were hardened men, not some caballero of old money, they had been mercenaries and their origins were Extremadura or "the hard land" that had given life to Cortez and Pizarro.  But nothing they had seen or done ever prepared them for this.  The light was faint but their time in the darkness had made their eyes sensitive to what was there.  While not as high as a cathedral, the roof was high, and the light was from some small gaps in the stone that allowed for some faint beams to pass.  A stone gutter from the top made its way down the sides and through those gaps came a dark crimson liquid, not in any regular way, but in spurts first fast and then dripping slowly.  The gutter would catch it and send it on its way down to a trough sitting far below.  That however wasn't the shock.  It was the being inside.  It was bent over the trough, its head drinking in the liquid when it became aware of the two men.  It stood up and turned.  A mixture of ashen whiteness, as if it had never seen light, and markings on its face and upper torso like the scales of a snake.  No hair was upon its head, the eyes were wide and open, the head bore the grotesque cranial deformation that was long and oblong something the Mayans sometimes had for royalty.  The teeth were filed into triangular daggers, even in this darkened cursed place one could see them flash.  From waist down he appeared as any man, but the torso, the chest and arms were what only could be called monstrous in their mass.  Nor did he walk, it was more of a swinging shuffle with the great arms, like an apes, swinging loosely at his side.  He smiled, but there was no humor in him.  It was as if being human was the mask that was a living parody which covered something past feeling of any humanity.

It seemed to drag itself towards the first man, both conquistadores still stared in shock at the spectacle, as their minds attempted to make sense of what it was they saw before them.  It grabbed the nearest one and with almost casual ease snapped the neck of the man and drove its dagger like teeth into the neck.  As blood spurt out, the second man could hear the sickening chugging of the beast swallowing the gory discharge.  This saved his life.  He was shocked into action and fled to the exit behind him.  But it was an impossibly thin crack and he could not force his way in.  Meanwhile the thing was finishing up, partially sated and looked to the man with the same smile and slowly made his way forward.  No hurry, no speed.  There was no concern for escape.  The food was trapped.

The man was desperate, "if he could enter, he must be able to leave", his mind raced as he banged himself against the very thin opening.  His thought of escape seemed almost helpless, he was prepared to pray to his God for the last time, and with that moment came calmness.  His mind cleared and he knew, or rather remembered, and in that moment he exhaled sharply and drove himself with all his strength into that incredibly thin fissure.  The impact almost made him lose consciousness but he was in and pushing deeper.  Suddenly the thing was behind him, just outside the fissure, its massive arm reached in and grasped deeply into the man's shoulder.  So powerful was the hand that it and its dirt filled nails broke flesh and tore into muscle and sinew.  The panic returned to the man and gave him the strength to pull away even harder, coupled with the blood from the tear acting as a lubricant, he broke away.  The beast thing could not enter the fissure, its physique was too large and with a look of regret and pleading its eyes followed the back of the conquistador as he disappeared into the darkness.

Dazed, wounded, and bleeding the conquistador stumbled not feeling the walls as they ground into him.  The entire way his only thought was to place distance between himself and the terror that was behind him.  "Some possessed demon of the underworld?", what manner of men were these Mecheeca or Aztecs to create and cage such things.  As he wound left and right, he prayed fervently to God that no other entry or exit or passage way existed, he prayed that he would not slip or flounder and turn himself around.  He could not bear that, anything but that.  Finally after much turning and twisting he came out into the blinding light of the sun and fell to his knees in thanks.  Fighting was still going on and so he quickly donned his armor as best he could and made his way to other Spaniards.

Infection set in that night and he went into a fever, during his deliriums raging about a beast no one seemed to understand.  Eyes wide with fear he would start and scream through anguished sweat drenched eyes only to collapse with shivers.  None were sure if he would survive but if so he would be needed.  The Spaniards had to abandon Tenochtitlan, Moctezuma was dead, and their preservation depended on every man fighting as they made their escape.  Eventually the capitol city would fall, the people would be disposed and a new European ruler would stand in the valley.  The Spaniard recovered, though he seemed different somehow, quieter.  The story he told were dismissed as a simple fever and he chose not to pursue it.  He remained off the island though, and found some post around the lake that would keep him busy.

The dust settles, the new kings and gods set up their monuments and continue robbing the earth of its riches for the glory of their own, history is always that way.  Months later, groups like those of DeSoto began heading north to explore and map the new world that was theirs.  These expeditions went out at different weeks and months.  Some returned, others never did, but that was the lot of a conquistador, to risk all for riches beyond the avarice in their souls.  When one bets, one sometimes loses, and these stakes were the lives set against the unknown.  One such group went out into the desolate North with with Indians as guides and translators.  They were a small army, well armed, well provisioned, carrying their priests as talisman for luck, and determined to find the Cibola of their dreams.  The cracked desert and valleys offered a myriad of hiding places for the imagined kingdoms of gold, every corner must be scoured and every map meticulously maintained.  A benefit that later generations would use, even as the bones of these men bleached the deserts.

Several weeks out, people began disappearing.  First it would be an indian, the later a another.  The leader of this group, whose name is as forgotten as this town you are now in, he took little notice, they were Indians and of little consequence in a land full of them.  But then one of the priests disappeared, and then a Spanish servant, he felt bad about that one, he had promised the mother to watch over him. Then coquistadores began disappearing and he could not have that.  It had to be the indians, so they were put to the question under supervision of the priests.  These priests were familiar with "the questioning" and the various devices used to ferret out heretics.  Even the Indians were impressed with what the priest could do with a knife, but while there was confession, no detail to prove the confession came, even after two were crucified in the way of our Lord and left as a sign.  At best they referred to the pagan god seeking revenge for his people.  That indian was slowly drawn and quartered while the conquistadors and priests made the sign of the cross to protect themselves from what they saw as their own vulnerable faith being assailed.  No other indian spoke, they knew their fates if they chose to speak their minds and so remained stoic, saying nothing.

They halted by a small oasis in an uncharted valley.  It was there that the mystery was solved.  Settling in this valley of the Raramuri, a tribe even the Aztecs feared, to reinforce their provisions and water, many more guards were posted.  These Raramuri indians, even in the mountains today, need no horses, they were swift and could run for days with little rest.  The conquistadors used them as scouts or slaves as they plundered on towards the north.  And still people in the encampment disappeared.  Early one morning, the leader and two of his guards, without schedule, inspected the grounds before patrol.  They heard a slight scuffle in one large tent, they pulled open a flap and saw two men.  One whose head had been twisted to face back to the tent's entrance while body faced forward to the back, and holding him up almost effortlessly was another conquistador, this one had carefully slit the man's throat and was rapidly gulping down the blood of the victim.  It seemed so casual and practiced as he effortlessly held up the other man.  So intent was the one conquistador in drinking the blood of the dead or dying man, he did not see the leader staring in shock.  With a shout, their captain called out in alarm for assistance, snarling the killer spun and dove at his captain who was saved by his breastplate as he went flying backward. Dozens of men rushed to their leader's aid and many more threw themselves upon other conquistador who seemed incredibly strong.  The numbers were too great and the killer went down and was held.  One of the priests holding him down kept repeating "Conde Estruch" while the indians fell to their knees shouting "Cijuateteo".  The fear and sweat was palpable as these men bound the killer in rope, then in chains, as he struggled wildly with no semblance of the fellow conquistador who marched beside them all of these miles from the Valley of the Mecheeca.

The priests attempted to effectuate an exorcism but to no avail, they could see the madness in the man's eyes which seemed to be a mixture of regret and intense burning desire.  He no longer controlled who he was, he had given up his humanity and was past feeling as a human.  He could not make a choice, no choice was open to him as he had surrendered himself to whatever it was that possessed him.  In that harsh environment, their fears of the darkness, the unseen, the demons of their religion, the loss of trust in their companion, all combined to envelop their souls in spasms of terror.  Few would sleep well for many nights to come.  The priests ordered a deep pit dug the width of four men and the depth of three, and at the bottom of that pit another smaller pit sized for the man and his many chains.  They lay him there face down and alive, then as he screamed to hoarseness they placed an incredibly large stone over him, even as they prayed fervently to make the ground too sacred for him to crawl through should he escape from shackles and manacles that bound him.  Then they gathered every stone they could find, whiteness being a reflection of purity and piled it upon the heavy flat pillar.  They could hear the muffled shouts and curses as rock upon rock was thrown into the pit all of that day, and all of the night until dawn the next morning when the hot sun brought its clarity to the chill that they lived with.  No sound left the pile of stones, and without sleep, without delay the left this cursed place, leaving with it a local legend the Raramuri kept alive.

"OK, viejo" I said with a smile and some affection.  I liked this man, he knew how to transport people to another place and time.  "Are you telling me that pile of rocks on the other side of town holds the grave of a conquistador from the 16th century?"

He looked at me and frowned.  Looked down at himself for a moment, and then seemed to gather himself and said "Gringo, you are interrupting me again".

I was.  There were no two ways about it.  And while parts of my upbringing were rougher than others, in both of the cultures I was raised in, a modicum of respect even for an old man, was called for.  "I apologize, please go on."

"Little more happened here.  A small village sprang up by the well.  Jesuits came, and then they left.  The tribes abided in the mountains and eventually came down, Franciscans came for a time, and then they too left, and finally some vagabond priest set up and built the chapel.  We were never a rich community, we were never prosperous, like the seasons we harvested our food and sold some.  The Sierra Madres offered some metals, but none were found near us and even the government almost forgot about our town".  He then laughed.  "The census did not find us last time, or the time before, but the Bimbo truck brings supplies now and then."  Then he was quiet for a moment, as if remembering, or perhaps trying to remember.  He sipped more of his drink as if noticing me for the first time and then smiled.  His eyes squinted at me and said "Are you listening gringo".

"I am"

"Then let me tell you what happened one hundred years ago...."

"Look around you gringo, the adobe here is old.  But the wood in the broken half of this throw away house, it is older still.  Just over a hundred years ago fourteen of your people" and he said this with some sadness in his voice, but also with anger "came to our village.  We had some of the indians still here, some Yaqui and some Rarmuri and the rest like me, "mixtos".  "Ahhh," he sighed after a pause "still poor, - it is our lot to never know the rest of riches"

I did look around, and yes one half was old rough hewn timbers, the wood had long since rotted in the hot sun and assault from the weather.  It seems it was allowed to crumble slowly, you could see the makings of what was once selves on the wall and the end supports for a counter.  The center looked little better than kindling wood if that.  It could have been a bar at one time.

"These outlaws, they came riding in from the north, well armed.  They had ridden hard, and were glad to be away from the law of your land, while the chaos in our own did nothing to them, so they rode in with the arrogance of men who could take what they would from anyone they desired.  We had seen such men before and we knew to hide our comely women, leaving only the very old, usually they left those alone.

They rode into this bar and took what we had, mostly tortillas, meat, pulque and a little tequila.  So they sit in here as you and I do and wash this desert off their throats.  One enquired of the stones out there and a simple minded doddering old woman repeated the tale of the indians instead of feigning ignorance.  These hard men were like the conquistadores.  They were the takers, the robbers of lands, outlaws and they had long since abandoned God for their own riches.  Their suspicion is the same as all of their kind, Aztec gold.  So in they spoke, and as they rested they decided that the next day they would see what was below.  We did not speak their language and did not know what they planned, the old women tended them as they pulled their saddles into this room and made it their bed for the night.

Morning came and as the sun rose, they rose with it.  Walking out they began removing the stones heaped high.  At first such a thing seemed strange to everyone here, but when it was understood they planned to remove all of the stones panic ensued.  Several of the old ones and even some of the younger children came out and begged them not to remove the stones.  In a final effort would run and throw the rocks back on the pile.  These outlaws looked at them in wonder.

"What in damnation?!?" their leader exclaimed in surprise.  That tall dark one was the hardest of them, like a devil, he had no heart, no mercy and simply pulled his gun and began shooting every villager nearby.  In neither anger nor hatred, but as a simple act of removing minor obstacles.  We are a small town, we had no weapons beyond our pruning knives and machetes.  They had guns and rifles and cared nothing for the lives they ended .  After five lay unmoving upon the earth, everyone else fled the town.  There was no hope or safety here anymore and we abandoned everything and ran to the mountains praying to gods or god to deliver them from what would happen."  I gave a wry look at that, wondering who would die for some rocks.  "You smile gringo, with your nice car and the many luxuries that separate you from the land.  But for us it was as real as our sitting here now."  Upon reflection, we do indeed die for rocks, or land, or country.  Who was I to question another then?

"They worked all of that day, and removed the stones they could and while much remained at dusk, there was enough extracted to expose the large pillar lain upon the bottom grave.  By then it was dusk and the the desert winds had begun to rise.  We get these dark dusty winds in seasons, some call it a "Chocolatero" or "Norte" and it darkens everything with its heavy dust stopping everything when it falls upon our small town.  As it blew the men retreated to this bar, leaving two to guard the grave.

The roar of the wind grew heavy and the dust so thick that even the lanterns inside were almost useless.  Dirt and dust swirled everywhere, when speaking under a kerchief one could feel the grit on one's teeth.  On days and nights like that, one usually simply endured and waited for the winds to die and the dust to settle.  The men settled as such men do while the winds grew louder and began to whistle and moan incessantly, they stared blankly or dozed for even in here the sands built up.  The heightened wind however could not drown out the gunshot and shriek.  To a man they grabbed their arms and ran out with the lanterns to see what had happened.  The indians might have returned, there were even Apache in the area, and one does not put anything past the Apache or the Raramuri (at this the old one smiled silently to himself, as if he were sharing a quiet joke, I didn't get it, at least not then).

They went out and found no one, but then what can you see in the height of such a storm, they looked into the pit itself but it was too dark to see much, though the pillar seemed to have shifted, everything else was obscured to empty shadows of nothingness.  So en mass they returned to the bar, this building (he again looked around and past me as if seeing right through me).  "There behind those boxes is an old window frame and door that was the main entrance" he said.  "They took positions" and he slowly got up cradling his soda in one hand as he slowly shuffled; "here, and here.  To guard, and to watch.  Two more over here in the back" as he walked to where the roof had collapsed and pointed it out.  He wheezed as he walked but it was important for him.  He needed me to know where everyone was.  Then he slowly sat back down, he had expended his energy and breathed hard.  We sometimes forget that age may bring infirmities to others.  He was sick, possibly dying.  I suddenly felt bad for a man I had referred to as "viejo".  He saw the pity in my eyes, and smiled as the eyes crinkled behind those large grey eyebrows.  "No need for your pity gringo.  My life, my choices are my own, they have not all been right, but they are my only possession which I can claim".

His declaration was profound and I think on it sometimes, how we own what we do, and how our choices are what create in the visage staring back to us from some distant future.

He gathered himself and continued.  "Those outlaws heard a voice with a lisp speaking in Spanish, but not our Spanish, no the style was that of an old Castilian type, as if a caballero were here in polite company.  Even in the wind they could hear its sibilent whisper 'como ethoith' and 'bienvenidoth'.  A dry cracking and rasping voice it would break into a mad man's chuckle or soft laughter.  'Heh heh heh, como ethtath... bienvenidoth' the voice would repeat as it blended in and out of the wind and earth.  An almost mocking madness.

These outlaws held tighter to their guns like religious talismans.  Suddenly a man was pulled through the window, before anyone could react, he was gone.  They ran out the front there to see, but saw nothing as the wind and voice continued to mock them.  These men turned to come in when another screamed, disappearing into the swirling dust.  There was no one, they saw nothing.  The outlaws, they pulled away from the doors and windows forming a tighter circle and yet it helped not at all.  A lantern fell and went out and their circle of light grew smaller still.  As the light diminished more were pulled away.  Slowly one by one they were all taken, now and again a shot would be fired but that was the only feeble retaliation.  Even their cold hearted leader began praying to a God he had long since repented of and had forgotten.  But there was no mercy here and he too succumbed.  After some hours only two remained and they stood in the center of the most feeble lights, back to back, guns drawn and hammers cocked...

The next morning, in the light of the new day a large group of Rurami Indians rode into town, perhaps 30 of them.  These are fierce warriors that even the Aztecs feared in their day, and the Mexican government wisely chose to avoid when possible.  They were a great people.  They came with great anger and fear in their eyes.  They saw the scattered rocks, and then entered this bar knowing this to be where the outlaws would stayed.  Unlike we poor people of the puebla this tribe was armed with guns, bows, and knives.  They entered ready for war, but instead saw there against the wall over there (he pointed out the place) the last outlaw, he was the youngest of them, he was no more than perhaps sixteen perhaps seventeen with a shock of blonde hair and blue eyes. Those eyes wide in terror as they kept staring at what wasn't there.  His guns empty, there was a methodical click, click, click, as he continued to pull back and the hammer with his thumb and then pull the trigger.  He stared past the savages at a memory that left him bereft of speech or a even a mind.  Rather than torture, they bound him tightly and left him lying there.  There were other worries to deal with first.  They ran to the pit.

Dirt from the storm piled in places obscuring some details but they could still see the great pillar had been shifted.  Six of their bravest jumped in and shouldered the great pillar back into place.  With great speed they ran to the walls of the tomb and jumped or were pulled out by their fellow tribesmen.  Then with as much haste as possible, all of these men gathered every stone they could, and began refilling the pit.  They continued this all day.  They even ranged further out and brought more stones and piled them over the previous ones heaping the stones even higher than before.  By dusk they had finished and then, like gargoyles squatted on some gothic cathedral they began their vigil.  All held their weapons in the ready, as they sat around that small stone hill in a large circle.  They eyed the rocks with such a mixture of fierceness and terror one was not sure, should a single rock fall, whether they would remain and fight or flee back into the hills.  Words whispered between them "Cijuateteo" was mentioned once or twice as they held their own charms close to them.  All night they stared, tense and in fear.

Dawn came and for the first time they rested and even in those stoic faces one saw relief.  They gathered the bodies of their dead kin for ceremonies and then turned their attention to the young man who was bound.  In the many hours he was restrained, his sanity had returned to him.  Now a new but more mortal fear lay in his face.  They would not follow the norm of their tribe and torture him to the ending of his life.  This boy had been touched by a great spirit, an evil one, but it's power would curse them if they killed that young man.  The leader of this band came to him and said "What your eyes have seen, no man should see.  What your tongue can speak no man must hear".  And with that he held his head down and cut out the eyes of the man and then pulled and severed the tongue.  That poor man had no idea what was said to him then.  To him it was only the mumblings of a dangerous brute and then eternal blindness and pain.  Later he would learn the language and the words would be repeated to him, for he would live but his life was now the darkness and the confines of a village he had barely seen and a terror he had no understanding of.  The rest of his life the images of what was before him would haunt him, even as the women dutifully continued to care for him until he breathed no more.  One not so beautiful crone even took him to her bed.

He lived his life here and is buried in the church yard across the way.  Choices after all, we all make them and we live with their results.

I had finished my lunch and looked at him.  "That is a heck of a story old man, you know you should write...."

For the first time I saw real anger flash his eyes.  He stood erect and said to me.  "Gringo, my words this late in life have no reason to deceive.  They are true!  I know them to be so because that man, that man was my grandfather." he hissed.

I was embarrassed, I had offended in the casual way unthinking people often do.  Presuming my words and the smile of my youth would cover and forgive all sins of disrespect.  "I am sorry old man, you are right to be offended, and I can only ask you to forgive me."

He eyed me in an almost contemptible way and then with resignation said "You are young, foolish, and you will make.... wrong choices"  He let it go at that and said nothing more to me but settled back in his chair.  Some bridges can be built, some can be broken, and some will never span the chasm between us.  I regretted my words.

I paid for my meal and went to the lady of the loncheria.  "Digame senora" I asked "Is the old one cared for?"

"Him?  Sometimes". she said with a shrug.

I gave her the equivalent of 50 dollars in pesos and said "this may help for a while". And I walked out.  As I got into my car, I frowned to myself.  The old man did have blue eyes after all, but then life is full of coincidences, and I left this small village and its large pile of white rocks.

Six years had passed.  In the interim they had found the Templo Mayor and I had risen to the level of Regional Controller and Vice President of Finances for Latin American in a large firm.  I had one of many offices in Polanco in the DF or Distrito Federal the capitol of Mexico, so in my time there I decided to satisfy my curiosity.

I walked into the area where the ruins were still being cleared.  They had excavated them almost to the base that had existed so long ago.  The old man had told me  the entrance was in the Northwest area, and so I hoped to make my way there.  It was closed, the excavations were still going on carefully, but it was a weekend and the archeologists had gone home so no one was allowed there.  I spoke to the security guard and he told me that under no circumstances could anyone enter.  I was familiar with the place and culture by now, perhaps not so arrogant as  I once was, and certainly more appreciative.  I also knew what is required when one wishes to paint outside the lines.  I offered the man a 20 and told him under no uncertain terms would I touch anything and I was merely asking him to accompany me to that portion.  The money would be to simply cover the cost of his time to watch me as well as the ruins.  It was a reasonable request.

We walked around to that area and made small talk about the pollution and weather.  Then as we turned I began scanning the cleared floor or what would be the upper part of the base.  There in the northwest I did indeed see what appeared to be the beginnings of a very narrow opening.  I stared at it for a good two to three minutes wondering at the implications before the guard nudged me to move on.

How does an old man, in a half abandoned village know about a temple entrance buried for almost 400 years?  I don't know.  I would like to find that village again.  The old man is probably just another cross in the church yard by now, and the rocks probably remain unmolested.  I would like to go back, and I would like see what is under that pile of rocks.  I don't care about riches, my riches reside in a wife that loves me (or puts up with me depending on our mutual mood) and children who are now making their "choices" but there is an itch or desire if you will, the need to know things.  I really would like to know.

• But then, would I also regret it?
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

My Father, A Veteran

In my youth I existed in a dichotomy. My earlier years were in a city far away from the country I reside in now. I was American in name only having an absentee father from the hills of Appalachia who fought in Asian wars and stood guard in a German outpost. My mother being German, and having fallen for a man who served in that outpost. Honky Tonk blues would fill our German household when he arrived, and when staying with my Oma (Grandmother) it would be classical baroque music such as Wagner. I did not know the difference, I simply called it “music” and enjoyed both (as I still do).

The city of Berlin, which is the place of my birth, holds a special place in my heart. Its vibrance and the embrace of its people to a future are remarkable. I love walking its streets, and nearby villages with ancient walls and homes dating to the Renaissance. A sense of history that makes the young United States seem like an awkward teen at a high school dance (granted a well armed awkward teen that tries to do the right thing). Cobble stone streets and clock towers in the forest along with cloisters and modern malls mix and jumble. One is imbued with a sense of the historic and jarring modern there that escapes many who live here in sunny southern California where history is basically the Dodgers stats with barely a nod to Brooklyn where they started and acquired their name (Trolly Dodgers). Berlin recently celebrated its 750th birthday, that adds some context given that it exceeds the US years by a factor of three.

But for me, perhaps of even greater potency and reflection is that chaotic cauldron called the USA. Immigration, or rather the argument of immigration, is a more recent phenomenon in the many more mature nations of the old world, but here in the USA, it remains as old as our founding (Ben Franklin complained about the over representation of German peoples) and it is an integral part of who we are. We have always embraced and been disturbed by our new neighbors, their crazy music (African slaves brought us the banjo), and to borrow a metaphor from Berlin, at one time the world center of calliopes, a cacophony of languages and foods and ideas brought to disturb the placid waters of our neighborhoods. They came, all of them, from everywhere, sometimes as a trickle, sometimes in waves. My friend Henry, his family left Spain in the 1870s during the upheavals of the Glorious Revolution, they traveled to many countries, most to Brazil, some to other parts of South America and a few to Cuba. Henry’s parents fled Cuba under communist rule and came to America. He recounts to me how Ricky Ricardo used to buy musical instruments from his father’s shop in Havanna. That family now stretches from the Jersey shore to the California Coast, and if they are like Henry, they are musical prodigies who also know how to run a firm. My own Kiser’s can be traced back to the French and Indian Wars and pretty much every war in between then and now. The influx of fresh ideas springs from who we were, combined to who we become. It is perhaps the greatest and most powerful secret of America, the integration of peoples into a nation. Which of course brings me to focus on a smaller area. An area that has produced more than its fair share of people who are willing to die for that nation. It’s green hills, the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, its stories, and its tragedies still whisper to me, even as I fight the California traffic for another meeting, or look distantly at the snows blanketing far off mountains when the smog clears. Its people have often been forgotten, sometimes remembered, but always there. Southwest Virginia, Eastern Kentucky/Tennessee are often remarked to with disdain as “the coal fields”. And what those people do have, …..even as they enter those mines and see the white dust on the walls, and smell that all too familiar smell that miners know better than most, is heart. The overlooked heart that gives fire of our industrial age, a heart that for so long ensured (and continues to ensure) that the lights stay on, the computers purr, and the microwave cooks. It is what keeps the Tesla auto moving (the effete snobs at the local dealership get upset when I call them coal cars).

That area is a contrast. The men leave the beautiful streams and the greenest of rainforests to enter the darkness like Tolkein dwarves to bring out the riches for the world. They prefer not to. You speak to most of my family and they will tell you they prefer a day of deer hunting (which in my youth was considered an excused absence from high school), a day of fishing or even a day of walking in the forests which are ubiquitous in the region. It is these men and women I think of today. They have no desire to leave their green hills, even with the hardship in their lives, they love where they are. It is as deep as the hollows and as inexplicable as foxfire. It dwells in their souls like a hidden lover. The heart of these people love the streams, the hot and humid summer days where the community pool was their gathering spot, or some lonely picnic table on a roadside by White Top, worn, the paint and varnish long since weathered off, and only feet from the laurel bushes and stream where deer, wild turkeys and adventure hide waiting for the next young man to enter. No, they don’t want to leave, their dream is their idyll.

I look at my father’s portrait, he loved the area, so much so he only felt at home there and nowhere else. His fondest memories are of the Virginia Creeper trail, a coal route changed from iron cars that carried power to iron men who walked slowly in the winter of life. 

Like so many lovers who did not return the feeling, the hills can be beautiful but hard. My father’s story illustrates that. At 15 he needed to leave and lying about his age joined the military. For twenty years he let flow his sweat, the heartbeats of his life, and sometimes his blood, risking all for a nation that at times tossed him into the breach as a cheaply as we do expendable printer cartridges today. His is a loyal and royal legacy. His father was a machine gunner in another war, and of course generations before fought and died for causes and country often forgotten in tombstones lost in the thick forests of these hills. I would like to say that my father is unique, but he isn’t. So many he grew up with left and fought, and came back, and left again, and came back. It is said that even Ulysses felt the call of sirens long after his ship had passed the islands of shipwrecks. These men and women too hear it all their lives. It is bitter in some ways, pressing its hurt into their memories, but there is also the most profound sweetness. A beekeepers first harvest of the hives in early summer that sits longingly on the tongue. Yes, it can be like that.

I am sometimes conflicted when writing about my father, he wasn’t the most understanding of men. I was the son he could not understand or mold, I suppose I might be the rebel born of the blood that came from a rebellious region, and unwilling to conform to his world view. When you think on it though, I was perhaps prideful, young and, well, rebellious. My world view did not encompass friends dying and retreating in Korea, blood spilt in the jungles and rivers of Vietnam. His view saw that world, saw it at its worst as he fought in the muddiest and dirtiest places against a people who often cared less about life than he did. He prevailed, that is to say he lived to come home. The forge of those times, like our own forges today, hardened him, and inured him to hardship. He took his pleasures where he could find them, perhaps he might have been too grasping at times, but then he was a prime witness to the shortness of life as those around him fell away, in the mines during his youth, in the mountains and valleys of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, and the black lung clinics in the Clinch Mountains. 

He’s found his rest though. The poplar are there, the squirrel nests sit out starkly on autumn branches, and the deer in the spring come to chew on the grass. The wind flows over him, sometimes cold and bitter, sometimes heavy with the smell of honeysuckle, and they blow his troubles away so that his body can rest. It is where he was happiest, and it was from where he tried so hard to leave in his youth.

His headstone doesn’t carry much beyond his name, his birth and the day he departed. The granite hardness is silent to his time serving his nation. If you look around you will see many granite headstones like his. Many witnesses testifying mutely to lives of sacrifice, to lives that fought and died for a nation that is also the very definition of freedom. They are vets, they are vets from this small corner of the world called the Appalachians. They loved their families, their traditions, and after all is said and done, the granite that tells no story beyond the date they drew breath and the date that breath left them, that granite silently guards over those who loved this nation.

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