Rediscovering H. L. Mencken

I've spent the past few days re-reading The Bathtub Hoax by H. L. Mencken. As a college freshman, I first encountered Mencken and read everything by him I could find. Mencken turned out to be the biggest influence upon me as a writer, and his political and social views-----he was a "libertarian" long before the termed was coined-----shaped, and continue to shape, my social and political views.

Mencken wrote vigorous yet elegant prose; his writing combined both power and delicacy. He was a keen observer of people and society, and never was hesitant to make his opinions and feelings clear. Mencken was a practitioner of what is today called "the conversational style" (although he would've surely disdained and mocked the term). For Mencken, writing was a one-to-one conversation between an author and the reader, an act of intensely personal communication. He never hid behind such formalisms as "your author" or "the reader," nor did he geld his writing with such timidities as the passive voice. Reading Mencken for the first time was like my first taste of undiluted vodka-----it was a shock to my system and left a burning sensation. And I futilely tried to model my own writing on Mencken's. I like to think I eventually developed my own style as I matured as a writer, but it's obvious "my own style" has many elements of Mencken in it. Some are purely stylistic, while others are attitudinal. As an example of the latter, it was from Mencken that I picked up the technique of deliberately provoking readers by directly challenging their beliefs and assumptions. Mencken did so for a worthwhile reason, namely to get readers to analyze why they believed certain things to be true or just, and I often do the same (although I usually try to soften the blow with some humor).

While re-reading The Bathtub Hoax, I was repeatedly astounded at how often Mencken's social and political observations, mostly made in the 1920s and 1930s, are still very relevant today----or perhaps even more so than when originally written. Take, for example, the following paragraphs from an essay titled "Notes on Government" which was published in 1926:

The light began to dawn, I believe, at the precise moment when the prohibitionists ceased arguing that prohibition would cure all the sorrows of the world, and began arguing that it ought to be submitted to because it was the law-----in other words, at the moment when they introduced the doctrine of law enforcement. That doctrine, it soon became obvious, had little foundation in logic; it was almost purely mystical. What it amounted to was a denial that the citizens of a free state had any natural or inalienable rights at all. If, by whatever chicanery, a law was passed ordering them to cut off their children's ears, then they were bound to obey. If, by the same chicanery, a law was passed prohibiting them to wash the same ears, then they were equally bound to obey. It needed little gift for ratiocination to penetrate to the absurdity of this doctrine. Or to grasp the fact of its extreme antiquity. Even a moron could see it was simply the ancient dogma of the king's divine right in a new false face. It could not be disentangled from the concept of the citizen as a mere subject. Above him stood an occult something called the government, a force distinct from the people and superior to them. Did the people, under democracy, create it and give it the breath of life? Then, once created, it was nevertheless distinct from them and superior to them. They were forbidden to resist it.

When Mencken wrote the above, it was in reference to the Prohibitionists of the 1920s. Today, their ideological descendants are everywhere, hectoring us about too many "trans fats" (whatever the hell they are) in the foods we eat, not being sufficiently "green" and energy efficient, not using enough sunscreen, etc., etc. Mencken identified those ideological descendants as "wowsers," a word he first used in 1926 in an essay titled "Yet More Hints for Novelists":

Since the earliest days, as every one knows, American jurisprudence has been founded upon the axiom that it is the first duty of every citizen to police his neighbors. There is no such thing in this grand and puissant nation as privacy. The yokels out in Iowa, neglecting their horned cattle, have a right, it appears-----nay, a sacred duty!----to peek into my home in Baltimore and tell me what I may and may not drink with my meals. A Methodist preacher in Washington, inspired by God, determines what I may receive in the mails. I must not buy lottery tickets because it offends the moral sentiments of Kansas.

Such are the laws of the greatest free nation ever seen on earth. We are all governed by them. But a government of laws, of course, is a mere phantasm of political theories: the thing is always found, in inspection, to be really a government of men. In the United States, it seems to me, the tendency is for such men to come increasingly from the class of professional uplifters. It is not the bankers who run the ostensible heads of state, as the liberals believe, nor the so-called bosses, as the bosses themselves believe, but the wowsers. . . . . . Thus we are run by wowsers-----and wowser is an Australian word that I hereby formally nominate for inclusion in the American language. . . . . . What does it mean? It means precisely what you think of inevitably when you hear it. A wowser is a wowser. He bears a divine commission to regulate and improve the rest of us. He knows exactly what is best for us. He is what E. W. Howe calls a Good Man. So long as you and I are sinful he can't sleep. So long as we are happy he is after us.

And nothing has changed in the 62 years since Mencken wrote those words, except perhaps things are worse now. Wowsers now come from the left and right sides of the political spectrum and in all manner of guises. Those who are tormented by the idea of someone eating trans-fats are no different from those who are horrified by the notion of adults gambling with their own money in a casino; both are busybodies who can't stop sticking their noses into the private lives of persons engaging in peaceful activities they happen not to like. We are entirely too polite toward wowsers. We need to tell them to go to hell more often and, if that fails, we need to be more profane and threatening toward them. Instead of listening politely like Oprah and then thanking them for sharing their gibberish with us, maybe we should instead take them out back and bullwhip some sense into them.

Many called Mencken a cynic. He certainly did not take an optimistic view of the human condition, as the following illustrates:

What lies beneath all this is simply an ancient fact, noted long ago by William James, and before him by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and before him by the Greeks, and before the Greeks by the first human politicians. It is the fact that the race of men is divided sharply into two classes: those who are what James called tough minded, and demand overwhelming proofs before they will believe, and those who are what he called tender minded, and are willing to believe anything that seems to be pleasant. It is the tender minded who keep quacks of all sorts well fed and active, and hence vastly augment the charm of the world. They find it wholly impossible to distinguish between what is subjectively agreeable and what is objectively true.

Is that cynicism? No. Instead, it is a powerful, simple statement of an unfortunate truth. In the paragraph above, Mencken neatly explains why so much goes wrong in the world, why so many grand schemes crash and burn, and why so many people waste their money on miracle diet pills, no-money-down real estate investments, and psychic weekends in Sedona, Arizona. If such foolishness was confined to the private sphere-----if it went no further than some goobers really thinking they can make $5000 a day from home with their own internet business-----it wouldn't be a big deal. But unfortunately our social institutions (like schools) and government are now overrun by the tender minded, the sort who sincerely believe everyone can be above average with the proper instruction and that you have solved a problem by passing a law. Trying to engage the tender minded in a rational dialogue is like trying to teach your dog to conjugate irregular French verbs. You'll only get frustrated for your efforts, and if you persist too long you'll go insane.

While he never attended college, Mencken was a believer in education. But it was "education" of a special sort, as he wrote in 1927:

The discovery of fraudulence, I believe, is one of the principal aims and achievements of true education, if not the first of them all. A man soundly fitted for life is not one who believes what he is told, as a schoolboy believes, but one trained in differentiating between the true and the false, and especially trained in weighing and estimating authority. If the young man at college learns nothing else save the fact that many of the bigwigs of the world are charlatans, and that positions and attainments do not necessarily go together, then he has learned something of the utmost value. The tragedy of the world is that the great majority of human beings never learn it.


I need to stop before I quote the entire text of The Bathtub Hoax. (The book's title comes from one of Mencken's essays, an entirely fictitious/satirical account of how the bathtub was invented in Cincinnati in 1842; despite its obvious ridiculousness, his essay was, to Mencken's delight/horror, taken as absolute fact by most readers.) If you want a definitive survey of his work, I recommend A Mencken Chrestomathy.

Mencken was kept well away from impressionable high schoolers when I attended four decades ago, and I suppose that is even more the case today. Indeed, America would be even more querulous, have many fewer people willing to quietly submit to established authority, and show much less empathy to those suffering from self-inflicted wounds if the majority of the population had some exposure to Mencken. You could make a strong case those would all be bad things.

On the other hand, we'd have fewer damn fools running loose if Mencken was part of our educational curricula, and that would be a very good thing. A very good thing indeed.

Talking About The Unspeakable

I belong to some e-mail lists and on-line discussion groups for cancer patients, and yesterday they were ablaze with links to a blog post made by Alan Sullivan, a terminal leukemia patient. Alan said some things a terminal cancer patient isn't supposed to say, or even think. Go read his comments before reading this post any further.

First off, I don't think Alan is serious about committing suicide before he gets any worse. I feel that way because he discusses using a drug overdose to end his life, and I have a pet theory that people who are genuinely serious about ending their lives do not use pills------there is always the possibility, and in many cases I think it is a hope or even expectation, of being found and revived before death occurs. No, people who are serious about killing themselves use a gun. If Alan is really looking for a swift, painless, and certain death, then he needs to buy a Smith & Wesson Model 19 .357 magnum revolver (with four or six inch barrel), load it with 158 grain hollow-point rounds, insert the barrel in his mouth, pull the trigger, and. . . . . . . C'est tout pour maintenant; au revoir, le monde! Seriously, his life would be over in a nanosecond, and he would need no one to "assist" (that is, share responsibility for what happened) in his demise.

But Alan raises a very crucial issue: we have developed the ability to sustain life well past the point where the human body was designed to die, and often such sustained "life" means prolonging someone in a vegetative state or in great pain. At what point do we------as a society, as individuals------say "enough!" and admit that further efforts would be a waste of everyone's time, energy, and emotion?

I had to answer a form of that question upon getting the news last year that my situation was irreversible. I was offered the options of "doubling down" on my treatments-----more chemo! more radiation! too bad we can't remove more of your liver!------or going to palliative treatment of my symptoms as they arose. I opted for the latter, and my first oncologist's strident opposition to my choice is why I switched to a new oncologist. Since making that decision to end those grueling chemotherapy treatments I was getting every two weeks. . . . . . . . well, I've actually had a pretty good year, all things considered. I have felt much better than I did toward the end of the chemo regime, and don't miss the side effects like extremely low white blood cell counts, sudden nosebleeds, etc. In my case, "doing less" has made my life much better. But there are those in the medical community-----like my first oncologist-----who pressure patients (and their families) to undergo any and all treatments, no matter how unlikely they are to help. For doctors like that, keeping patients alive as long as possible mutates into a variation of Evel Knievel jumping 40 buses with his motorcycle; yes, it's an impressive stunt, but what is the practical value of it? Does professional ego and pride------"look how long I kept that patient alive!"-----sometimes take precedence over what is in the best interests of the patients? I genuinely believe that was the case with my first oncologist; I strongly felt he took my decision not to continue with the aggressive course of therapy he was advocating as a personal rebuke or insult.

I've had healthy people tell me that, if they ever develop cancer or any other life-threatening condition, they will have their doctors do everything and anything to keep them alive as long as possible. I used to feel that way too, but I discovered your perspective changes radically once you experience what it's like to be really, really sick. You understand there is a huge difference between "living" and "existing." The former is worth it; the latter isn't. If you have ever awakened in the ICU of a hospital, and tried to speak but couldn't because there was a breathing tube down your throat-----and I've had that experience------then you probably wouldn't want to spend your last days "existing."

Alan also raises another sensitive issue in care of the critically ill, and that's pain management. This is an area where our perpetually screwed-up "war on drugs" rears its head; the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has as much to say about how pain in terminal cancer patients is treated as do the patients' oncologists. For example, heroin is used in most of the rest of the world (such as Europe) to treat pain in cancer patients but medical use of heroin is prohibited in the United States. The "logic" behind that decision is something that only Congress could come up with: yeah, we know you're gonna be dead in three months, but we don't want you to get addicted to heroin, so instead you get to live in agony during those three months. Prescribed levels of various painkillers are monitored by the DEA, and a doctor or medical facility that is too "generous" in dosage levels for opiate-based painkillers will soon find itself under scrutiny by the DEA. To avoid such complications, doctors and facilities tend to prescribe lower levels of pain medications than many patients need. And that's because numerous politicians, in an effort to score cheap political points by showing how "tough" they are on drugs, restrict the availability of certain drugs to terminally ill patients.

When people like Alan Sullivan write about the "right to die," I get the feeling they are really writing about the right to live without excruciating pain. They want to be able to get as much as they need of any available pain relief medication. "Prolonging life" often really means "prolonging a painful life," and in many ways is not that much different from medieval tortures-----you're kept alive, but only to experience suffering. And that brings me right back to my previous point: there is a big difference between "living" and "existing."

Those of us fortunate enough to live near the border with Mexico have the option of seeking treatment in Mexican cancer clinics. These are widely ridiculed by the American medical community, and often with good reason------you really can't cure cancer with megadoses of vitamins, for example. But the reason why many Americans with terminal cancer visit such clinics has nothing to do with cures. Instead, it is because such clinics will give you as much pain medication as you need, as often as you need it, to be comfortable in your final days. And, in that respect at least, the Mexican medical community is far ahead of the American medical community and its "suffering is good for you" idiocy.

I pass no judgment on Alan Sullivan's remarks, other than to express thanks for him writing what I frankly didn't have the courage to write and for asking some unpleasant questions that needed to be raised. I think we are going to see a big growth in the number of patients with chronic long term illnesses in the years ahead-----people living in pain, and requiring daily care------and the questions about what we should do, or realistically can do, for such people will only grow. And you might find yourself having to go through some of the same thought processes I have had to go through in trying to figure out where to draw the line separating "living" from "existing." I have no idea if I've made the proper delineation between those two, and I wouldn't impose my choices on anyone else. But I've tried my best to reach an answer, and I feel comfortable with my decision.

Geez, what a heavy topic for a post! Maybe next time I should blog about selecting the proper tequila to fully enjoy the upcoming season of professional football from the Dallas Cowboys.

The Ghost Town Of Ballarat, California

Ballarat, California is a long way from anywhere. It's wedged between the Panamint Mountains that form the western border of Death Valley and the eastern face of the Sierra Nevadas. It is located on Highway 178 between the small town of Trona and the junction of Highway 190 (the Panamint Springs entrance to Death Valley National Park). This is extremely isolated country; cell phones don't work out here and the nearest gasoline (or any other services) is over 30 miles away in either Trona.

Ballarat was named after the Australian gold mining town in Victoria. It was founded in 1896 as a supply point for the gold mines found in the Panamints that loom over the town site. By 1905, its population had grown to 500 and was supplemented by a larger transitory population of prospectors who "wintered over" in town before returning to the mountains in spring. Ballarat had several saloons, a Wells Fargo office, and a post office, but no church. The population began a slow decline as the mines played out, and the World War II ban on gold mining effectively turned Ballarat into a ghost town. Today, Ballarat is the permanent home to only a couple of people who serve as caretakers for the property and operate a small store selling soft drinks and snacks. However, the area has seen renewed mining activity, and the nearby Briggs Gold Mine is currently the largest producer of gold in California. However, its workers are transported in from Trona each day via bus.

Ballarat is reached via a graded dirt road from Highway 178 and the turn-off is clearly marked:


The elements have not been kind to Ballarat. Summer temperatures usually top 100, and winter lows can sink into the teens. The desert wind is merciless. The result is that almost all buildings in Ballarat are in a state of advanced decay; wood is splintering and collapsing while adobe structures and walls are dissolving away back to the dirt:






Here are two examples of how adobe structures are being worn away in Ballarat. The first shows an adobe wall being propped up, while the other shows all that remains of an adobe building. It won't be too much longer until the desert reclaims both of these and they will be no more:




The former general store below is the best preserved adobe building remaining in Ballarat:


The Ballarat cemetery is well preserved and maintained, although the wooden headstones atop many graves have collapsed or worn away:



Ballarat may not have the human population it once did, but its wild burro population is doing just fine. The fellows below descended from the burros used by prospectors over a century ago; they have adapted quite well to the desert:



In the late 1960s, Ballarat achieved a bit of fame (or infamy) because Charles Manson and his "family" were frequent visitors there. The Barker Ranch used by Manson and his followers is located in the hills above Ballarat and the Manson family had to travel through Ballarat on their way to and from the outside world. Ballarat was the staging area for the raid on the Barker Ranch conducted by the California Highway Patrol and Inyo County Sheriff's Department which resulted in Manson's arrest; Ballarat was the last place Manson saw as a free man. Before the raid, one of Manson's followers, Charles "Tex" Watson, fled Barker Ranch in a green Dodge truck that made it all the way to Ballarat before breaking down. You can see it in the background of the photo below. The Manson family carved their insignia, five stars, above the Dodge nameplate on the hood. The road to the Barker Ranch site has not been maintained for years and the site can only be reached by a hike of several miles. But Watson's getaway truck is still in Ballarat and can be easily visited, at least until it rusts away into the desert:

Beware The Ides Of August

Is there a certain day of the year on which significant events in your life always seem to take place? For me, the tectonic plates of my life have a habit of lurching violently on August 1.

An example was when I ended my first period of residency in Texas by flying out of the Dallas/Fort Worth airport on this day for New York City, where I was to begin a job in two weeks as electronics books editor for McGraw-Hill. It's no exaggeration to say my life has never been the same since then; I can divide my life into pre-NYC and post-NYC eras, with very little overlap between them.

Recent years have been no different. On August 1, 2004, Di and I crossed into Texas at El Paso as part of our move from Las Vegas to the Austin area. And on August 1, 2005, Di and I closed on our purchase of the Bar Nothing Ranch near Smithville.

It was on August 1, 2006 that I entered St. Davids Hospital in Austin to have surgery to remove my original colorectal tumor-----and when I was released on August 13, I finally understood I was in deep, deep trouble. And it was one year ago today------August 1, 2007------that I got the news the metastasis to my liver had returned despite chemotherapy, and consequently my condition was now "irreversible," a polite euphemism for "terminal." (I like that term "irreversible." It sounds like the title of some cheesy action movie. . . . . . . I can hear the trailer for it now. . . . . . . "Bruce Willis is. . . . . . IRREVERSIBLE!!")

At any rate, I almost fear what today might bring. I think I'll just hide under the bed------the way our oldest dog, Bahrnee, does during a thunderstorm-----and wait until midnight when it might be safe to come out.

Climbing California's White Mountain Peak

The White Mountains lie on the border between central California and Nevada. Unlike the Sierras, the White Mountains are "desert peaks" that receive little rain and thus have no tall trees, glaciers, or running water. But they also have the third-highest mountain in California: White Mountain Peak at 14,246 feet. And it's the easiest-to-climb "fourteener" in California and possibly the entire United States. To get to the trailhead, take Highway 395 north to Big Pine, California, and then head east on Highway 168 for about 13 miles until you reach the turn-off for White Mountain Road. From there, it is about 27 miles to the trailhead. The first 9.5 miles are paved, and then the road turns to graded gravel and gets very steep. I have made it in a 2WD passenger car, but a high clearance 4WD vehicle is a better idea.

What makes White Mountain Peak such a terrific first fourteener is because it is a completely non-technical climb the entire way. White Mountain Peak is the site of the University of California's Barcroft Station for high altitude research, and a smooth, level trail leads all the way to the summit. There are no steep drop-offs or dangerous slopes anywhere along the trail, and no specialized climbing gear is needed. In fact, some people have even ridden their bicycles to the summit. However, it is a physically demanding climb. The round trip from the trailhead is slightly over 14 miles, and the reduced oxygen content at the elevation makes altitude sickness a real possibility-----I can personally attest to that. Cold temperatures are common even in summer, as are thunderstorms and snowstorms. It's a good idea to be starting your descent from the mountain no later than 2:00 pm to avoid getting caught in a storm.

The trailhead is a flat, open area just over 12,000 feet in elevation. Public access to the graded dirt road ends at a locked gate; only personnel at the Barcroft Station have the key to the gate. Climbers spending the night to acclimate just pull off the road and set up camp. Below is a photo I took of the trailhead at sunset; the red Jeep Grand Cherokee at far left was my car and where I spent the night before I climbed. The views from the trailhead are spectacular. You can see from the Sierras into the Owens valley into Nevada. On the night I took this photo, I and my fellow climbers/campers were entertained by a big lightning show from a thunderstom that seemed parked over Tonopah, Nevada:


I chose a day in mid-August with a nearly full moon to climb, as I wanted to start before sunrise and use the moon for illumination. It was a good plan, as I was jolted awake around 4:00 am by the rising moon and was on my way to the summit by 4:30. As you can see in the photo above, the graded road is wide and was easy to follow in the moonlight. In fact, there was an almost mystical quality to the first part of the climb-----I was the only person on the trail, and it was completely silent with no wind----I could hear my heart beating hard from the exertion. The wide graded road leads two miles to Barcroft Station, whose lights could be seen soon after starting the trail. After Barcroft Station, the trail narrows considerably and becomes more rocky, although it is still well-marked and was no problem to follow in the moonlight. Dawn started to break shortly after passing Barcroft Station, and White Mountain Peak was a beautiful sight in the early light:


The upper reaches of the summit trail have been described as "lunar," and I agree. There are no trees or bushes of any sort, and only a few small sprigs of grass try to push up from between the rocks. The photo below shows both the desolation of the upper trail and how the summit region starts to loom impressively over you once you climb past 13,000 feet; the final push to the summit is made by climbing the slope at the right:


This is how the summit looks as you ascend the final slope. If you look carefully in the photo below, you can see a tiny building slightly left of center. That's a building at the summit housing instruments recording temperature, wind speed, atmospheric pressure, and other data:


And here's a look down the slope. This photo exaggerates its steepness; it's nowhere as steep (or scary) as the photo leads you to believe. Your biggest danger-----as you might expect from all those rocks-----is a sprained ankle:


Here's a look at the summit. I had it all to myself that morning, so I had to use my pack (the red object at right next to the summit cairn) as a stand-in for me in the summit photo:


Of course, I signed the summit register. The ammo box containing the register also contained some water, food, matches, and other emergency supplies. (Yes, that's a condom in the blue wrapper at left!):


Here's the view you get from the summit as you look south toward the Sierra Nevada range and Owens Valley; this is a crummy photo that doesn't do justice to what your eye sees:


And here is the view as you look north toward Bishop and Mammoth Lakes; you can clearly the see the irrigated areas near Bishop that are used for growing hay for livestock:


White Mountain Peak is the only mountain where I came down with a full-blown case of altitude sickness. I arrived at the trailhead around 1:00 pm the day before my climb, but I started my trip from San Diego. Going directly from sea level to 12,000 feet turned out to be a big mistake. Even though I did everything you're supposed to do to help acclimate-----drank lots of water, took aspirin (to thin the blood), and rested by reading and listening to music-----I was still a little light-headed when I set out for the summit for the next morning. On my descent, I was dizzy, had a splitting headache and nausea, and my vision was like looking at the world through toliet paper tubes. I was in seriously bad shape by the the time I reached my Jeep. Fortunately, the symptoms began to improve as I drove down from trailhead, and I was okay by the time I reached Big Pine. My advice to anyone contemplating this climb would be not to attempt it without spending a night at some place like the Sierra View campground (at 8000 feet) on the road to the trailhead. It's just too difficult to acclimate to 12,000 feet without an intermediate stop.

The Ghost Town Of Marietta, Nevada

The site of Marietta is really remote; it's in west-central Nevada off Highway 95 between Tonopah and Hawthorne and the nearest gasoline is in Mina, 30 miles away. Cell phones don't work out here. If you visit, you're on your own if you have a problem!

Marietta was founded in 1877. Unlike most other ghost towns, it was not a site of gold or silver mining. Instead, Marietta was the location of the first large-scale borax mining operation in the United States. Marietta grew rapidly, and soon boasted numerous buildings (including, reportedly, 13 saloons), a post office, several stores, and even a little "Chinatown" because many of the laborers were Chinese immigrants. But in the mid-1890s, new deposits of borax were discovered in what is now Death Valley National Park and mining activity rapidly shifted there. By the early 1900s, Marietta was essentially abandoned and its post office had closed. There were brief flurries of gold mining in the 1930s and uranium prospecting in the early 1960s, but today Marietta is a true ghost town. There are still a couple of caretakers on site to look after mine owners' claims, but these people live in modern travel trailers near the site of Marietta.

The road from Highway 95 to Marietta is kept well maintained by the Bureau of Land Management because the town lies within a range for wild burros and horses. I wasn't lucky enough to see any of those two animals as I approached the site, but the view of Marietta from afar is striking in its starkness:


The most impressive ruins in Marietta are those of a general store run by F.M. "Borax" Smith, who in the early 1890s became famous (and rich) for discovering the vast borax deposits in Death Valley. Judging from the size of these ruins, Smith must've been doing well in Marietta as a merchant:


The other stone ruins in Marietta are more modest, as in the photo below. If you look carefully in the background, you can faintly see the outline of the dirt road that leads into Marietta:


Large stone-walled corrals were the American West's equivalent to today's covered auto parking garages. Naturally, Marietta had a couple of nice places to "park" your horse, like the one below:


There were few wooden structures in Marietta, and fewer still have survived the past century. In the photo below, the building at left with the crumbling "false front" was the post office. I'm not sure what the structure at right in the background was, but it seems to have been some sort of barn or stable:


I had the pleasure of visiting Marietta in mid-week in winter, and the silence and isolation was awesome. It was so quiet I soon became aware of the sounds of my own breathing and heartbeats, and I got a real sense of what an isolated spot this must've been even at the town's peak in the 1880s. The people who settled places like this were certainly a hardy, self-contained breed!

Ridin' The Storm Out

As I write this, Hurricane Dolly is getting ready to come ashore south of Corpus Christi. If you're watching coverage on CNN or the Weather Channel, you might think we're barely clinging to life in the face of this natural disaster. However, my biggest concern at the moment is what I should have for lunch.

So far, it's been like a strong cold front here-----lots of rain, gusty winds, some lightning, etc. There was a flurry of excitement around 10:00 am this morning when a waterspout was sighted on Corpus Christi Bay heading for downtown, but it dissipated before making landfall. And that's been about all. Conditions are expected to worsen this afternoon, and some flooding might happen in low-lying areas. Since the national news media are not interested in anything that happens between New York and Los Angeles unless 1) things are exploding, 2) things are on fire, 3) something crashed, or 4) debris is flying through the air, I guess that means there will be nothing about Corpus Christi on CNN tonight or in tomorrow's New York Times.

So everything is fine here. And I think I'll have some bean and cheese taquitos for lunch.

Howard Hughes, Ham Radio Operator

I haven't blogged for about a week because 1) I took a needed break from writing after finishing my latest book, and 2) I went on a buying rampage at my local Barnes & Noble and have since been in a reading frenzy.

Last night, I started a new book by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele titled Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness. This is shaping up as the best biography of Hughes I have ever read, with some original insights into how his personality was shaped by his overprotective mother and the death of both parents before his eighteenth birthday. Like Elvis, you get the sense Hughes died the day his mother died; he was never the same afterwards.

But what I'm blogging about today is the information that Howard Hughes was a ham radio operator in his youth. I knew from other Hughes biographies that Hughes was interested in electricity and built radio sets as a youth in Houston, but Barlett and Steele provide more details in this description of him at age twelve:

Howard's room was on the second floor, facing north. There he assembled his shortwave radio equipment and, using his call number 5CY, spent hours flashing messages to amateur operators all over the country and to ships at sea. With fellow radio enthusiasts, he formed the Radio Relay League, a local organization of young amateurs like himself. Since Howard had the latest equipment, the boys usually met in his room.

Zowie! This was news to me. I did a Google search and managed to come up with just one link mentioning Hughes's ham radio exploits. That link confirms the 5CY call sign, which means it could be verified by checking call books of the 1918-19 era. (Unfortunately, I don't have access to any.)

Enough for now; I've got stuff to read. . . . . . . . .

More On The Ghost Town Of Coaldale, Nevada

Back in April, I wrote about the ghost town of Coaldale, Nevada. It was of fairly recent vintage and I wondered why it had been abandoned. I also asked if anyone had more information about the site.

Ah, the glories of internet search engines like Google and Yahoo! I received a remarkable e-mail today from Maria Avtgis, who actually lived at Coaldale. With her permission, I am reprinting part of her e-mail below:

Thank you for bringing a part of my past back to me.

My family and I lived at Coaldale for a short period of time when my children were young (about 15 years ago). We lived there when there was a much-needed operating gas station and a coffee shop with the best white clam chowder soup served by Mario, the cook. Mario was much like the other workers working the 'circuit'... He would work for a period of time, then vanish... only to return six months later, asking for a job.

Coaldale has a special place in my heart. I can recall strolling my baby, Stacey, around the front and calling out to my four-year old son not to ride his tricycle over the scorpions.

I can't remember why the owner, my father, left so much merchandise there. Shortly after the EPA claimed that the gas tanks were leaking and closed the gas station portion down, people no longer stopped in except for an occasional cup of coffee or to use the phone. Well, now you have my part of the story. No, there were no giant ants, only a couple of hard-working people trying to make an honest living.

I can't express how grateful I am to Maria for her memories. When I visit ghost towns and similar sites, I am always wondering about the people who lived there and what their lives were like. Thanks to Maria, I now have an idea of what went on in Coaldale; I can visualize her son riding a tricycle toward some scorpions!

Maria's mention of the EPA cracking down on "leaking gas tanks" is why almost all gas stations today are owned by major oil companies instead of independent retailers. Guess who pushed the EPA to insist gas stations install new and expensive gas storage tanks to fight the non-existent problem of leaking storage tanks? That's right; companies like Chevron, Exxon, Mobile, etc. And when independent retailers couldn't afford those new storage tanks, they went out of business and were replaced by stations owned by Chevron, Exxon, Mobile, etc. And-----warning: this is a how damn stupid are you anyway?? question-----what do you think happened to the retail price of gas when those independent retailers were replaced by company-owned stations?

I never cease to be amazed by those, especially from the more leftish parts of the political spectrum, who think a company or industry is being "public spirited" or altruistic when it advocates more regulations for its business area. Bullcrap. They do so for one reason: to strangle competition and increase their oligopolistic advantage.

And, in the process, they sometimes kill towns like Coaldale.

More Photos Of Dub And Buck In Their New Homes

Kimberly Critz, the daughter of Sue and Ward Critiz-----the new owners of Dub and Buck-----sent along some photos of the boys she took over the July 4 weekend.

Here's a photo of Kimberly atop Dub as he strikes a classic "Dub pose"------what a great look on his face! Note that Dub is being ridden with a hackamore and not a bit; that's good clue as to how "dead broke" he was. And the saddle and riding tack Dub is wearing is my old saddle and tack (yep, we threw it in with the horses since they were accustomed to those saddles and tack):


Here's another photo of Kimberly atop "the Dubster." He is such a beautiful horse; this photo reminds me of why I decided I wanted to buy him as soon as I saw him!


One of the fascinating quirks in the relationship between Dub and Buck was how they were rivals in so many ways-----for food, for attention, for whatever------yet either would go nuts if the other was ridden out of sight. We noticed this whenever we would ride one horse around the Bar Nothing Ranch while the other was in the inner pasture or stalled in the barn; we could hear the "whinnying" of the other loud and clear! The photo below cracks me up; it's Buck calling out for Dub, and I can hear his plaintive "whinny!!" as I look at the picture!


In her e-mail, Kimberly told how they are up to their old antics in their new home, such as racing around the pasture in the evenings after it cools off. (Just wait until you see them on winter days when the high temperature is in the 60s!) All in all, it's reassuring to see how well the boys have adjusted to their new home and how well they are being cared for. They are really missed, but I'm glad they are happy with their new loving owners!