The Big One That Got Away

Like many a young boy before me, I dreamt of catching a really big one.

I remember one vivid fishing dream, I couldn’t have been much more than 5 at the time.  My brother’s, father, and I were fishing, off of an old wooden dock, in the San Joaquin Delta.  The day was bright and sunny, I had my trusty fishing pole, and was sitting dangling my feet off the side of the dock over the warm green waters that flowed slowly past.

We were fishing for channel cats.  Catfish, bottom dwelling creatures with wide heads and mouths and protruding whiskers.  Suddenly a sharp tug bent my pole and the battle was joined.  I reeled and reeled, sweated and tired, but slowly, gradually, almost imperceptibly the great fish was dug ever closer to the surface.

Finally I could make out the size and shape of the cat’s head rising from the deep.  It was huge.  Just as it broke the surface, that fish whipped its tail, and jerked me clean off of the dock.  I was falling, straight towards its open mouth.  Falling into the black pit of its jaws; when suddenly I hit the floor, hard, and awoke.

Later, older, I remember gathering up my fishing rod and reel and heading out to the arroyo that ran along the southern edge of town.  My brothers and I would go out there and sneak onto Old Man Baranus’ place to fish his pond (see “Seasoned with Rock Salt”) or just work the wide spots in the creek. 

I recall day dreaming of catching a big old Rainbow, 16 or 18 inches long.  Of course, looking back, and knowing that the water seldom ran more than 6-8” and was usually warm enough to poach an egg in summer, I know now that was never going to happen, but a dream is a dream, and a summer daydream is something that no self-respecting tow-headed boy could ever do without. 

Once in a while we would sneak out onto the golf courses; they had such nice looking ponds, but we never caught anything out there worthy of bragging about.   

One time though, just once, when I was ten or eleven; I caught a really big one in Livermore.

My brothers and I had decided to go out fishing at one of the rock quarries out west of town.  Those old quarries had been dug deep, deep enough that they hit the local water table, and then some deeper before they were shut down.  After that, the water table did its best to push water out into them, and the rain that fell had nowhere to go.

So over time, they just naturally filled up with deep, cool water.  Some of them had been lakes for decades before we boys first laid eyes on them.  They were the Garden of Eden to us boys.  They called to us constantly.

We would go out there with .22’s to shoot squirrels, gigs for frogs, or shotguns to jump-shoot ducks, or fishing poles, or just to swim.  Life doesn’t get much better if you’re a boy than a summer day, full of sunshine, temperatures in the 90’s, and a big old lake to swim in.

We made a trip down to the local Grand Auto store as they had a bit of everything in there.  We were drawn by the fishing lures.  I remember looking over the small rooster tail spinners, the rubber grub worms, the small minnow lures, and the flies.  But I was looking for something special, something guaranteed to hook me that big one.  I needed just the lure to catch me a record sized keeper.

And suddenly, I saw it.  It was beautiful. 

Fully four and a half inches of weighted, wooden plug.  Shaped to look like a fish, white, with multi-colored side spots, clear plastic projection in front to cause it to “wiggle” in the water like a fish swimming.  And not one, but two big treble hooks.  One mounted off of the bottom at about the mid-point, one mounted right off of the back end so that is would stream back like a tail.

I searched my pockets for all the money I had saved.  I borrowed some from each of my brothers.  I’d a cut off my left arm if the clerk would have taken it for trade value.  I just had to have that plug. 

Out to the rock quarry we went.  The 3 miles simply flew by as I was just listening to the gentle rattling of that shiny new plug in my tackle box. 

We snuck under the barbed wire fence and found ourselves a nice shady spot under an old oak tree and rigged up our poles.  I took extra care to assure that my super lure was tied on tight.  Then I snuck down to the edge of the water, cause we had learned that if the fish saw your shadow, they would spook.  I cocked my arm back and let fly with that first glorious cast.  That big white six-pointed lure sailed into the sky and arced out gracefully over the calm waters of the quarry.

It hit the water with all of the subtlety of a WWII fighter shot from the skies.

There was a huge circular ripple that surged out from the point of impact.

I am reasonable confident that the splashdown scared the fish in the next quarry to the west.

But I was undeterred.  Heck, I was basking in the glow of certainty.  Confident that this lure, this was the lure that would haul in the big ones. 

I rapidly reeled the lure back in.

I can remember to this day the wake that thing left crossing the water’s surface.  Something akin to that of a Torpedo boat racing across the sea’s swells.  If there had been any fish interested, I suspect that they would have had to run wind-sprints for a few weeks just to build up the stamina needed to chase down that lure.

I cocked my arm for the second cast.

I launched forward with even more force than before, focusing all my energy on the forward motion of my arm.  In all that energy, and focus, I forgot about position and direction. My right arm whipped forward, my thumb on the release button, waiting the ideal moment to let my lure free, when….something clonked me in the head.  Hard. Close to my right ear.  Which immediately began to transmit a sharp pain.

I ain’t real sure if it was the barb buried in my right ear, or the near concussion of the impact, that started my eyes to watering.  Only thing I am reasonably sure of is that it weren’t joy over finally hooking a “big one”.

Now, my brothers swear that I yelled “Ow”, then tugged the rod forward, yelled “Ow” again, and tugged again……  In fact, to this day they swear that I kept that up for several minutes.  Don’t you go believing them.  I am quite confident that they are making that part up; confident for two reasons.

First, because as I recall they were laughing so hard that they both fell to the ground, and their eyes had to have teared up with all of that.  And there was no way that they could have seen me tugging over and over again with all that water flowing from their eyes.

And second, because I know for a fact that by that age, my vocabulary wasn’t limited to the single word “Ow” in situations like that.

 

 

Copyright © 2013, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Cooperation Sounds like Breaking Glass

I grew up in an old house. One that had seen its share of kids in the day. Local hand-me-down-history had it that the house had started its life outside of town where it had served several families prior to being picked up and moved into town right near the Catholic Church.

Now as anyone knows who has been around some, in California back in the 1800’s, the Catholic Church was one of the first major improvements for any town. And the town just naturally grew around the church. Since Livermore was founded in 1869, you know that by the time we lived in that house a hundred years later, it had seen some kids.

 

That house was built sturdy. Full, real 2” x 4” studs. With 1” lath boards on each side of the wall, then tar paper, chicken wire, and hand smoothed plaster. Inside walls were close to 7” thick. Outside the 1” lath was sheathed in a second layer of ship-lap boards from dirt to sky.

 

The windows were the old sash type. Glass panes held in wooden frames that slid up and down inside of a grooved wooden track; complete with ropes, pulleys and counter-balance weights so that they would stay up. The glass was held in from the outside. Fitted into a recess that was cut in the sliding frame, with metal triangle “glazer points” hammered in to hold the 4 corners, and all four edges sealed in place with putty.

 

Did you know that glass is like a liquid? Yep, sure is. Break a really old window, one that has been standing on edge for decades, and you will see that the bottom is thicker than the top. Every time.

 

One day, my brothers and I had to help our father as he replaced a window that had been broken. I can’t tell you how it got broke, but I would guess that we boys had had something to do with it. At the time, I remember being some put out over the fact that we had to help. That was work. And everyone knew that boys shouldn’t be made to work when the sun is shining.

 

At least everyone except our father.

 

I came to realize later though, that that 30 minute lesson in window replacement was some of the best invested time of my life. That 30 minutes provided more play time than I can possibly even begin to calculate.

 

You see, as the years progressed, my brother’s and I broke an additional window or two in the place.

 

There were the two or three that got broke from BB and Pellet gun wars in the house while Mom and Dad were at work, and the couple few that a shoulder, head, or other body part (or whole) got shoved through, and some thrown books, toys, and other “objects at hand” accounting for some glass truth be told, and I would be remiss if I didn’t include the one we shot an arrow through I suppose. And while it pains me to admit to anything as mundane as a thrown rock, I guess I should fess up that we even broke a couple that way too.

 

But, after that window replacement lesson, there was nothing that could calm the fires of open hostility quite like the sound of breaking glass.

 

Maybe the US should try that in the Mideast. Fly them drones over the cities with a loop tape of glass crashing to the ground. Certainly couldn’t hurt.

 

In any case, before the last shard of glass actually hit the ground, my brothers and I would have ceased the fight, and launched into an amazingly choreographed routine. It looked like this:

 

We all broke for our rooms and our secret money stashes, I’d grab all the bills that we had, race out the back door and jump on my bike, headed downtown in a sprint that would have been hard for a drug fueled Lance Armstrong to keep up with.

 

Barry would grab a tape measure, broom, and dust pane; Jeff a hammer and chisel.

 

Jeff would go to work chipping out the old, hard glazing putty, being careful at the corners to save the metal triangles for reuse. Barry would measure the window size and call the glass shop to order up the right size cut, then proceed to gather sweep up, and bury the broken glass.

 

By the time I made the 4 blocks down to the glass shop, the guy would be snapping off the last side. I’d pay for the new pane, tuck it under my left arm, jump back on the bike and head for home.

 

When I got there, Jeff would have the frame cleaned out and ready, Barry would have the glazing putty can opened and the linseed oil stirred back into it, and we would tilt the pane in place, drive the glazer points, and work two sides and the bottom with putty all at the same time. Six kid hands can lay a lot of putty in short order is all I’m saying.

 

If’n the three of us had been smart, we’d a gone in business. We could have a new pane set in less than 20 minutes from the sound of tinkling glass. There wasn’t a glass shop in town that could match that.

 

Several times we finished up just as Mom and Dad pulled into the driveway from work. I know for a fact we escaped restrictions and punishments on any number of occasions cause they never knew we had broken a window.

 

Come to think of it, not only did that 30 minute lesson give me more playtime, it also gave me hours of more comfortable sitting too.

Copyright © 2013 Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Old Cars Get Tired

All my life I have been fascinated with older cars.  I bought my first “wheels” when I was 14 years old from a guy who owned a gas station in San Francisco.  The 1935 Ford pickup truck sat on the side of his station, directly across from the southern entrance to Golden Gate Park. 

 

It was beautiful.

 

It was cheap.

 

It was a collected pile of rusty parts.

 

 

 

Old cars that I have owned in my life have included that ‘35 Ford Pickup and a ‘51 Willy’s 4-wheel drive pickup, both a ‘55 Ford and Chevy pickups, a ‘67 VW Squareback, a ‘68 Ford Mustang, and a ‘70 VW pickup.  I have additionally helped rebuild or maintain a 1924 Doble Steam Car, a 1928 Ford Model A, a ‘60 Ford Thunderbird, a ‘64 VW Bus and a ‘64 Chevy Impala, a ’68 Chevy Camaro, a ‘68 and a ‘69 VW Bug, and an ‘81 Pontiac Trans Am.  And that is without mentioning the VW Carmen Ghia, the MG, or either of the two Fiberglass Dune Buggies.

 

Old cars have cool.

 

Old cars have panache.

 

Old cars have character.

 

 

 

 Several of the cars I have owned and worked on were full restorations while others were “keep ‘em rolling” jobs.  And while a car certainly doesn’t have a soul; and they don’t live, or breathe, or feel pain; they do have a “life force” of their own.

 

That life force must be considered when working on old cars.  You see, every old car I have worked on had one thing in common.

 

They were all tired.

 

 

 

Simple jobs, like changing the oil, greasing a bearing, adjusting valves, are just never simple on old cars.  Full restorations are even harder.  Bolts shear off, gears strip, metal breaks, and fluids leak.

 

An old car that has been sitting, seems to be happy just sitting.  It seems to want to do whatever is needed so that it can continue to sit.  It’s content to slowly rust and corrode first into a single unified piece of “meta-roleum”.  From there, they joyfully slip back into the earth, leaving behind a bit of an orange and black smudge to mark their passing.

 

 

 

I, for one, refuse to let them sit quietly in some field; surrounded by weeds, bearing generations of mice, and crickets, and cobwebs. 

 

Nor am I willing to make them pieces of art; to be carried, coddled, and hidden away from the elements.

 

I will be the fountain of youth for their aging frames, and gears, fluids, and paint.

 

I will use them as they were intended to be used, rolling down dirt and asphalt, concrete, and time.

 

 

 

That old “35 of mine had a gritty home-done paint job.  But it would blow the doors off a corvette coming off the line, carry 1500 pounds of oil, or rock, or scrap metal.

 

The ‘55 Ford; cold blooded beast that had to idle for most of 15 minutes before it would go anywhere, but it could go from 0-60 in less than 4 seconds once it warned up.

 

The ‘70 VW; a bit of rust, a few dents, but a rolling one man car show.  I can’t count the smiles and waves I get every time I drive it somewhere.  And I can’t stop driving it without people coming up to talk and take a picture whether at the beach, the local shopping mall, or the gas station.

 

 

 

And you know, sometimes I feel the cars enjoy it.  Dust them off, fire them up, and get them out and running, and they run longer, repair faster, and breakdown less often.

 

Kind of like me when you think about it.

 

Copyright © 2013, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

Growing Up on the Eastside

The valley that I grew up in was big, and open. Lots of rolling grass foothills in a oval shaped ring that ran about 12 miles east to west, and maybe two-thirds of that north to south. The main floor of the valley was fairly flat, the outer edges rolling rises as they approached the hills forming the oval.

Most of the north side of the valley was hot and dry from the sun. Covered with grass mostly and a few scrawny tenacious trees and brush patches along the gullies and water courses which only ran wet when it rained.

The valley was fair sized with a small town on its western end, and a slightly larger one near the eastern end. I was born near the tail end of the 1950s; born in a little 8 bed hospital; born in the town on the east side of the valley. Born there and grew up there, rambling and running wild in the streets and fields in and around that east side town.

 

East side!

Wow!

Never thought of it that way before.

East Los Angeles.

East Oakland.

East Palo Alto.

East San Jose.

East side……

 

Don’t know what is is about that in California, but the east side just always seems to be the compass location of trouble.

And I am not faulting any particular group here. Yes, East Oakland is predominantly African American, and East L.A. is predominantly Hispanic, but trust me on this one, in our little east side town, there is no doubt that it was predominately white.

Yep growing up on the east side of anywhere in California is definitely a social, if not a developmental, handicap.

Maybe its because the parents who live in east-sides work longer, maybe its because the kids born there are born to parents who have a stronger sense of independence, and so the kids tend to grow up a little wilder. Don’t know what it is but there sure appears to be an unusual physical or psychological onus associated with the east side.

Those broken windows?  Apparently not my fault.

Those bad grades in school; not my fault either.

Those missing Christmas light strings; not my fault, it was the east-side.

That traffic counter that disappeared; it was the east-side.

All them fistfights; east-side.

Heck, even those explosions; yep, blame them on the east side too.

 

So there it is; having realized that I grew up on the east side, I, like the rest of society, now have an excuse for everything that I have ever done wrong, or ever will.

Kind of librating when you think on it a spell. 

　

- © 2013 Marty K Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved

My Nice New Jacket

Were you aware that the expression “beat the sh*t out of” really is not an exaggeration?

I grew up as the youngest of three boys.  All spaced pretty close together.  My oldest brother was a senior the year I was a freshman, and there was one in between.

Yep, we stayed close.  Mostly just under three feet.  The distance from our shoulder to the knuckles of our balled up fist was the maximum distance between us several times a day for most of the years of my life.  We pounded on each other in the mornings, in the evenings, and don’t think for a minute we skipped the afternoons.

I have two hands that are fairly like ham sized from all that work.  Ruined my intended profession it did.  I decided in the 6^th grade that I was going to be a dentist you see, but by the time I got into college, either one of my palms was substantially wider that 9 out of 10 people’s faces…so just had to move on to other professions.

Kind of drifted into retail hardware as a matter of fact.  Had grown up with a father who repaired everything, so I knew enough about plumbing, electrical, painting, gardening, automotive, and several other arenas to be dangerous.

Working in hardware was a joy to me; I filled shelves and solved problems, and worked my way up the ladder until I was managing a 10 million dollar store for a large retail hardware chain.

 

What does all this have to do with my opening line?  Well, I’m getting to it.

One day while I was reviewing some paperwork in the office, one of the assistant managers called me and told me she had spotted someone stealing.  I took that kind of thing pretty personal as retail theft accounts for billions annually and that was money that wasn’t available for me to pay my staff better wages/bonuses.  So, I hustled right down to stop the thief.

The assistant pointed out the man to me, he was wearing a nice new plush gray fleece jacket with a beautifully embroidered “Del Toro Brothers” in an arch across the back and his name on the front left pocket.  The Del Toro’s were a local street gang at the time.

I stopped him just after he passed through the registers and asked him if he had forgotten to pay for anything.  He didn’t say a word, just swung his right fist at my head and tried to break for the door.

As I said, I fought a lot as a kid, and so I took the right going in and wrapped my arm around his head which put him bent over and behind me.  It’s pretty hard to punch “uphill” from that position, so he was doing me no harm.  We struggled for a while until I swept my right leg back and around, sucking his feet out from under him and we went down on the concrete floor. 

I landed on his head.  Not the softest thing to land on, but since at the time I was a solid 230, a lot nicer for me than him I suspect.

Just about that time, I see a body come flying in from the side and land shoulder first in the thief’s stomach.  Turns out one of my regular customers saw the scuffle and figured since the assistant manager and all of the cashiers were female, he should lend me a hand.

That customer landing on the thief’s stomach not only took all the fight out of him, it completed my opening statement.

 

You might think the story ends here, but if so, you don’t know how I think.

My customer and I hauled the thief to the office and held him till the police arrived.  Got to tell you, the office needed a good airing out and a couple cans of air freshener after they were gone.

In all of the rush and gagging and confusion, when the police had left with our friend, I noticed that his Del Toro jacket got left behind.

I have never been accused of being subtle. 

Yep, for three months, everyday at noon, I put on that jacket and went down to a different place in town to eat lunch.  It was my own personal statement, to the Del Toro’s and every other criminal in town; “if you come and try to steal from me, it’s gonna cost you“.

 

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

Steal From Me?

 

I spent a number of years in the retail hardware business. 

If you spend any time in the retail world, you will come to understand just how many dishonest people there are in the world, and the lengths they will go to be dishonest is simply amazing.  I took all of that pretty personal.  Did you know that retail theft in just 22 major retail chains in 2008 accounted for over 6 billion dollars?  That means that every man, woman and child in America had to spend an extra $20 at those stores alone just to make up for what someone else stole.  Figure how many stores there are in America and you can readily see that a family of four honest people are spending hundreds of extra dollars each year just to pay for the stole goods.

Once in a while a retailer catches a thief.  Usually the courts at most give them a slap on the wrist and make them promise on their honor not to do it again.  Give me a break, if they had any honor at all, they wouldn’t be stealing.  I mean, many of these people work harder at stealing than they would at a regular job.  Don’t think so?  Let me tell you a story.

One Saturday at the hardware store I managed a clerk paged me and when I answered they told me that they saw a guy putting some tools in a large box in his cart.  So I headed over to the area the clerk was in and we watched.  The thief had cut open a box for a roof vent, carefully cutting one side “flap” open.  He removed the vent and proceeded to fill the box with tools, Roundup weed killer, and an assortment of anything else his sticky little hands came in contact with.

Then, he carefully rolled the very heavy box over in the cart so that the flap was down.

Up through the register he went, the young gal running the register couldn’t budge the large heavy box, but it was a large box after-all, so she looked at the price tag, conveniently located on the topside and rang up the sale.  Collected the $45.00 or so due, and sent him on his way.

I followed him out into the parking lot, intent on grabbing him and having him arrested for stealing what had to be well over $ 1,000 worth of goods.  Just as I was getting close behind him, he pulled a set of car keys out of his pocket. 

I don’t know where the idea came from to be truthful, but I suddenly realized that if I waited a bit, I would have him in a more advantageous position.  Worked out better than I could have imagined.

He approached a car, slid the key in the trunk lock and popped the trunk.  Just then I bellowed out “Hey, I want to talk to you”.

At the time I was just about 30 years old, tipped the scale at about 225 pounds, and nobody who looked would have thought any of it was fat.

He started, looked my way and saw me bearing down on him; his wits panicked and fled from the scene, with his body right behind.

But, what didn’t go with his wits or his body, was his car or his keys.  I let him run.  I knew I was gonna hurt him a lot worse that way.

 

I waved an assistant manager out and we started going through the car.  It took us 12 shopping carts to empty the trunk and the back and front seats of all the merchandise in that car.  There was stuff from 5 different stores in our chain.  There was stuff from 13 other retail chains as well.  None of which were in the same small town we were in, but all of them in San Jose just about 20 miles north.  All told, there was over $16,000.00 in merchandise in that car.

I mapped it out, and assuming that he stole all of that in one day (and I cant believe he left his car full of stolen merchandise on the street overnight) then he had driven 83 miles minimum that day from store to store before he got to mine.

The staff was grumpy after we got the car cleaned out.  You see, we caught a glimpse of the man every few minutes, peeking around the corner of a store down the way, waiting for us to leave his car alone.  Thinking about it, gave me another idea.

 

I posted a clerk out in the parking lot to lean up against the car, looking towards the corner the guy was hiding behind.  I changed clerks out very hour or so all day.  The guy kept peeking, so I kept someone there just to make his life uncomfortable.  The day wore on.  The clerks were happy to do it, they could feel the retribution of keeping the guy isolated from his car all afternoon.

End of the day came, my team was unhappy.  They figured that as soon as we all left, the guy would get in his car and leave.  They wanted to try and chase him down.  I told them I had a better idea.

As soon as the parking lot cleared out, I called a towing company and told them I wanted to report an abandoned vehicle.  Then I went outside and locked the keys in the trunk and waited for the tow truck.  About 10 minutes later, the tow truck was there, verified that I managed the store and could therefore report the vehicle as abandoned, and towed the car off.

 

I smiled and waved at the thief as he stood and watched it all happen.  Figure he found himself stranded, some 30 miles or so from home, getting full on dark, and with a car that had just been impounded in a city other than where he lived.  It would be Monday at the earliest before he could get it back. 

Bus ride home, bus ride back, towing fee, 2-3 days of impound fees; figure he was going to be “out-of-pocket” for at least $500 or more and three days lost proceeds from stealing. 

 

I did tell you that I took steeling from my store pretty personal didn’t I?

 

Copyright © 2011 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

 

"Oh, Stuff It" - Part 4 - The Memory Lingers

As I said, Jeff had the touch, so in our new plan, he would take over the skinning.

 

And to stop the gagging, he’d wear a mask, and suck on a peppermint, and breath through his mouth.

 

The plan also included powering up a couple fans directed to blow fresh air over his shoulders past him first, then on over the raccoon, and off into the yard beyond.

 

And Barry would stand on one side, also in a mask with a peppermint, and with a can of air freshener in one hand, and a fly swatter in the other.

 

And I would stand on the other side, equipped equally well.

 

And while I don’t remember it as part of the plan, apparently Mr Peck was to sit on his back porch, with his own air freshener, his cool drink, his pipe, and collapse in a fit of laughter while watching us struggle to keep what was left of our lunches. 

 

 

 

Barry and I stood there, trying not to throw up inside of our masks, spraying freshener liberally, swatting flies continually, and boiling in the sun.

 

Jeff gave it his best effort.

 

But it simply wasn’t to be.  There would be no raccoon proudly mounted in our basement.

 

 

 

It became all too apparent that that raccoon had baked to a medium rare or better sitting in that metal culvert in the 110 degree heat.  And what heat and decomposing fluids do to skin is just beyond description.

 

The skin just wouldn’t hold together.

 

And it was coming up on time that Mom and Dad would be getting home.  And since we weren’t going to have a nice pelt to show off, we figured we had better give it up and clean up.

 

There was no way that tossing the thing in the trash can was going to work.  We knew that while the lid might cover the critter, it wasn’t going to cover the smell. 

 

 

 

We’d read that the Indians always cremated their dead.  Seemed they believed that it helped the spirit find its way into the afterlife.  But we didn’t have the wood or the time, so we settled for the white man’s plan.

 

Being fairly handy with shovels, we figured we’d bury it.

 

 

 

Never had we punched a hole quite as fast as that afternoon. 

 

Never had we gone so deep.  

 

We were just tamping the last of the dirt back in place when we heard the car pull into the drive and figured that if Mr Peck didn’t narc on us, we might just get lucky and get away with it; so we strolled innocently into the house from the back as Mom and Dad entered from the front.

 

Did you know that after a time when subjected to strong odors your sense of smell goes stops working?  

 

Apparently it’s true.  

 

Cause Mom didn’t even get in to the same room as us before she was demanding to know what had died, and where it was.  

 

And I know it couldn’t have been Mr Peck, cause there were no car phones or cell phones back then.  And he'd still been sitting on his porch wiping tears from his eyes when we went in the house.

 

 

 

I did learn one thing form that experience though.  

 

Them Indians had it right.  

 

I swear you could smell that raccoon in the back yard for 3 or 4 weeks before its spirit finally left us.

 

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - A

"Oh, Stuff It" - Part 3 - Odeur de Raccoon

We surely enjoyed swinging from the bridge rope that day.  The temperatures hit the 110 mark at least.  And the hills outside of Livermore are mostly covered in knee high dry grass, a hard pressed oak tree here and there, and poison oak.  The bridge crossed the river at the upper end of Lake Del Valle.  Spanning a narrow, deep ravine with a roc wall on one side, and a grass covered hill on the other.

 

We took turns catching the rope, climbing the cliff next to the bridge with it, and launching ourselves outward, swinging through the full arc out and back, and dropping on the second swing.  Wind sound buffeting the ears and being driven down into the green lit underwater of the river was just a pure joy in release from the brutal heat of the sun.

 

 

 

All too soon it was time to call it a day.  We pulled up stakes and jumped our bikes an hour early or so such that we could retrieve our hidden raccoon, finish our chores, and get on with the skinning and taxidermy work that lay ahead.

 

I remember it seeming funny to me.  When we got back and pulled that raccoon out from that metal culvert, it sure looked bigger than I had remembered it being.  But no matter; all the better as a display once we were done with it.

 

We strapped it onto the rack on the back of one of the bikes so that everyone could see our prize.  Jumped on or bikes, and sweated our way back into town.

 

 

 

Old Mr Peck must of seen us coming.  By the time we had our bikes put away, the last chores done, and a worktable set up out back for the skinning, he had pulled a chair out onto his back porch, had a cool drink at hand and was chuckling under his breath as he puffed on his pipe.

 

We weren’t sure exactly what he was chuckling over, but we were happy to have an audience so as we could show off our treasure.  Somehow, again, that treasure seemed to have become even more plentiful than when we picked it up.

 

So we gathered our tools, tape measure, X-acto knives, scrapers, salt for the hide, tanning chemicals, and such.  Then we tossed to determine who was going to get the honor of doing the cutting.  Truth be told, Jeff had the best touch for that part of the work, but Barry and I both knew there were bragging rights that would go with it, so we each wanted a crack at doing the cutting.

 

If I remember right, Barry didn’t win the toss, but he pulled rank on account of being the eldest, and he settled in to start work.  Watching, it seemed to me that that old coon was as puffy as a balloon, sitting there on the table in the full sun during the heat of the day.

 

Barry carefully combed and parted the fur along the mid-line of the critter’s belly, and steadily slipped the knife into the belly skin.

 

There was a slight rush of escaping gas.

 

The raccoon got smaller.

 

All three of us boys began to gag.

 

Mr Peck stopped chuckling and started flat out laughing.

 

Lord, that thing was ripe.  

 

 

 

Now you need to understand, this is coming from a guy who has changed the diapers of very sick children; has cleaned and gutted his share of fish, and deer, and pigs; and even weathered a bad storm sleeping in an outhouse once.

 

But that raccoon…..

 

That raccoon just purely reeked.

 

Mr Peck reached in the house and got out a can of air freshener, and he was a good 40 feet away.

 

 

 

We boys figured it would dissipate pretty quick, so we sucked it up and Barry tried to get on with the skinning.  Problem was, the skin kept shredding on him.  And the smell wasn’t getting any better.  And he was at serious risk.

 

Ask any surgeon.  They’ll tell you. 

 

One hand is at risk if the other hand is holding a sharp knife and the guy who owns both hands is busy with the dry heaves.

 

 

 

We decided that we needed a clear head to rethink this.  So we all stepped back, way back, actually we climbed the fence and stood within the halo of Mr Peck’s air freshener.

 

What we needed wasn’t so much a clear head; as it was clear air and a new plan. 

 

 

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved

"Oh, Stuff It" - Part 2 - The Find

Feeling that we had “mastered” the art of taxidermy, my brothers and I were constantly on the lookout for prime critters to stuff.  We found and stuffed gophers, squirrels, pigeons, ducks, pheasant, owls, rabbits and any other poor deceased little creature we could get our hands on.  But what we really wanted to stuff was a raccoon.

Finally, one summer morning, we found our first raccoon.

 

It was summertime in the valley, and whether it was June, July, or August really doesn’t matter.  We mostly had the same routine whichever month it was.  Morning started for us at 5 am.  Pulling in stacks of newspapers, dropping them on the floor in my bedroom as it was right in the front part of the house; we would talk and joke while we each rolled our hundred plus papers and packed our paper bags for the delivery routes.  Then off on our bikes to ride our section of town tossing papers in the general direction of a front door, doing our best to miss the plants, windows, and other fragile things.

Back to the house for the breakfast that Mom would typically have prepared for us before she and Dad headed out the door to work. While eating, we would pass around the list of chores that Dad had made up for the day; we’d decide which ones needed all three of us, and which ones we could tackle individually for speed.

The three of us could do chores faster than was considered humanly possible.  Try as he might (and try he did) Dad simply couldn’t make up a list of chores long enough to keep us boys working all day.  In fact, it wasn’t unusual for the list to cover the entire front and part of the back of a lined legal pad of paper.  In truth, he really didn’t need all that much done around the house.

But, he knew how much trouble the three of us could get into if left to our own devices for any length of time.

 

And while we learned a lot from those chores; division of labor, task identification, skill set matching, etc., those chores certainly never kept us out of trouble.  Maybe they would have been enough for your “run of the mill” boys, I wouldn’t know, having never been one.  But my brothers and I were far too creative for anything as static as a list of chores to keep us under control.

After wolfing down breakfast and cleaning up, we would race through the divided up chores to get them checked off the list (I said faster than humanly possible, don’t recall saying anything about better…).  Once they were all done, we would then set out to take advantage of the glorious days of summer in the Livermore Valley. 

Summertime in the Livermore Valley is comfortably warm for us natives.  Foreigners usually say it’s downright unpleasantly hot. 

 

Most days flirt in the lower triple digits with a couple weeks each year pushing up to 110-115 degrees in the shade.  Mornings start out in the mid to upper 60’s and jump into the upper 70’s as soon as the sun pokes above the horizon.  It is seldom, if ever, cloudy with still mornings and warm breezy afternoons.

The morning we found our first raccoon was typical.  We had powered through our paper routes, breakfast, and all but a couple chores in record time because the night before we had decided that instead of hanging around town and hitting the swimming pool, on that day, we were going to bike out to the lake outside of town and swing from the rope tied to the bridge railing.

So along about 9:30 or so, the three of us were spinning wheels a good 7 miles outside of town headed south on Mines Road in the direction of Del Valle Lake.  It was fairly cool still (right around 80 degrees) and the sun was just beginning to turning full on, but we were doing fine.  We were on track and on time to be Tarzan’ing from the bridge well before 10:30 am. 

Yep, life was good.  We’d have 4 plus hours to swing and swim, then a quick sprint back into town and we’d be home working on the last couple chores when Mom and Dad got home from work. 

It was important to us to let Dad feel like he had it under control. 

 

Rounding a corner on Mines Road, we spotted a dead raccoon lying by the side of the road.  And was it ever a big one.  Nice, big, raccoon.  Must have been all of 28 pounds.  And in amazing shape for an animal that had likely been killed by a car.  No torn up fur or skin at all.  No crushed head; no fur matted with dried blood; heck, the ants hadn’t even found the thing yet.

Find of a lifetime or not, it presented a problem. 

We had our hearts set on that bridge; that rope; that drop into the cold waters of the river.  Yet here lay the coon we had been dreaming about getting under our skinning knives.  If we gathered it up and headed home, we’d miss our day of adventure.  If we pedaled on, we just knew someone else would steal our raccoon while we were swimming. 

King Solomon would have been stymied. 

 

Fortunately, no one ever accused my brother’s or I of having the wisdom of Solomon.

 

So, after a couple minutes of consideration and discussion, we figured out the best solution.  Gathering up the dead raccoon, we carried it over to the edge of the road, and stuffed it into the small metal corrugated culvert that stuck out from the raised road bed.

And so, confident in its safety, we remounted our bikes and headed on to the lake.

 

Copyright © 2013 - Marty Vandermolen - All Rights Reserved