Returning to the Heartland

Winter in Pacific Beach

Winter in Nebraska

We spend the winters in San Diego. When we called Arizona home, San Diego served as our summer retreat. (There are only two seasons in Arizona, winter and hell.) Now our legal residence is Omaha, Nebraska. To escape snow, we switched to using our condo mostly in the winter, except part of our itinerary is traveling to Nevada in search of snow at Heavenly. Life’s confusing.

We discovered we prefer San Diego in the winter. No summer crowds at the beach, breakfast seating at cafés is less than forty-five minutes, and you can go to a movie without standing in line. In truth, the weather’s better as well. In the winter, you don’t need air conditioning, which is convenient because we don’t have air conditioning. We just open a slider and let the sea breeze in.

Since Christmas, I surfed regularly, got a little snow skiing in, saw a lot of my family, and took many looong walks around my neighborhood. I had to take these walks because Pacific Beach has too many great places to eat, and I don’t want to look like the Michelin Man.

It’s time to go home. We miss the grandkids and we want to enjoy spring in Nebraska. We had some fun, but this has not been one of our better sojourns to San Diego due to some tough personal issues. Despite difficulties and distractions, I still got some writing done.

A lot of stuff is coming. Soon. I promise.

Happy New Year!

The first eight days of 2017 have already slipped away. I've been distracted by family and fun. It seems the only way to slow down time is to stayed bored. That's not going to happen.

After Christmas, we have made our winter trek to San Diego to avoid the worst of an Omaha winter. Ran right into Southern California cold, rain, and tiny surf. (Yesterday was perfect weather, but it lasted exactly 24-hours.) The small waves didn't bother me because as I grow older, waist-high surf has become my friend.

Today, Crossing The Animas achieved another milestone. My editor broke free of her backlog and starts work this week on my already perfect manuscript. (I always believe that until my book comes back bleeding red ink from every pore.) Prior to sending a manuscript to my editor, I have the book read by a few trusted readers. Thank you all for your sound advise and for saving me untold embarrassment.

Last year I agreed to participate in a short story anthology. I had never written a Steve Dancy short story and I didn't know how I would like the abbreviated format. I loved it. I deviated from my standard form and wrote "Snake in the Grass" from Joseph McAllen's point of view. It put my characters in a different light and gave me a fresh perspective on their motivations. Fun project. Wanted: A Western Story Selection has also been successful, so we have agreed to put together another set of short stories with the creative title of Wanted II. Look for it later this year.

I have again agreed to write essays for Constituting America's annual 90-Day Studies. This year's project will be about important Supreme Court cases. Nothing controversial there, I'm sure. I'll let you know when each of mine is published, but don't wait for me. Cathy Gillespie and Janine Turner do an exceptional job of pulling together bright minds to illuminate the Constitution, especially for the young people in our country.

Anyway, going to be a busy year. Guess I'll have to wait to slow down time.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles—A Travel Memoir

                   

"And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea -

have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!"

My wife and I are on an extended vacation that traverses five states and a couple of countries. (Can you vacation in retirement?) We started with meeting high school friends in Carson City and then my wife’s brother in Garnerville, Nevada. Since many of the Steve Dancy novels take place in and around Carson Valley, I always enjoy visiting the area to get ideas and check up on how Jenny is doing. From there we flew to San Diego for a week of surfing and beach-style laziness.

After SoCal, we were supposed to return to Omaha for a week, but schedules got messed up, so we stayed home only overnight before flying to New York. Well, not exactly. Seems SouthWest had a computer glitch that turned every airport in the nation into serpentine lines of anxious travelers trying to figure out a new way to get from point A to point B. Due to family commitments, we had to get through this goo of snarling humanity or miss our opportunity to see all six grandkids together. Unfortunately, when we got to the front of the glacial line they told us the only available flight to New York was two days in the future. Bummer. Our son saved the day by booking us a car to drive us to Chicago for an early morning flight the next day. As we tooled along the highway in splendid exasperation, he even got all six of us flight reservations—my wife and me, my daughter, and her three kids. Since it was seven in the evening, our driver assured us he could get us to Chicago by 3:00 AM.

After a few hours’ sleep at an airport hotel, the six of us boarded a crowded flight to JFK. As a special treat for our 50th wedding anniversary, the kids had rented a house in South Hampton. Unfortunately we arrived too late for the train or jitney, so once again we piled into a mini-van for a sluggish ride out of New York City on a Friday night.

Now things came together beautifully. We arrived in time for a late grilled dinner in the backyard. The grandkids, together again, went bonkers. They laughed and ate and played and swam and generally made us feel old. A drink took the edge off, another put us to bed.

The world looked different after a good night’s sleep. We had four days ahead of us to do nothing but try to keep up with six kids under twelve years old. We even went surfing. Crummy wind-blown waves, but it was fun having three generations in the water. I lost a bet with my grandson that I would catch the better wave, but we had only wagered an ice cream cone, so I had enough money for the rest of the trip. The experience reminded me of Warren Miller’s admonition that “you only ski better than your kids one day in your life.”

All good things must come to an end. On Tuesday evening, we took the jitney back to New York. Our travel hobgoblin had not retreated into the woodwork. After leaving the Jitney, we flagged down a cab to take us to our timeshare. (Hotel costs hampered visits to see our NYC grandkids, so a few years ago we bought into a timeshare-like arrangement.) The cab driver’s mouth dropped open when he saw all the kids and enough luggage for Duchess Kate Middleton. Then he started dancing in place and begged me to allow him to drive over to McDonalds to pee. Having been there myself, I said yes. I didn’t know McDonalds was ten blocks in the wrong direction. It was late, we were tired, and our cabbie took us on a prolonged detour (meter off, of course.) I didn’t complain because we were piled in well beyond the legal limit for a single cab.

Our next travel adventure was beyond inconvenient, it was dangerous. In Times Square we signaled for an Uber, but a pirate pretended to be our car. Dumb us, we didn’t verify the driver’s name before jumping in. Trapped in gridlock, a small gang of teenagers started banging on car hoods and then threw Pepsi on our driver’s car. He immediately jumped out yelling and took after the boys. They jeered and threatened him, so he returned to the car and I saw him pull a cheap steak knife out of the driver’s door. Oh Shit! He brandished the weapon and the boys went on to harass sane drivers. When he finally dropped us off, he delivered the coup de grâce by demanding $30 for a twenty block ride. I had already seen the knife, so I paid him sans tip and we bailed out as fast as we could.

I have a chocoholic granddaughter, but instead of venturing back to Times Square to visit the Hersey store, we decided to take a train to the mother lode of all things chocolate, Hersey, Pennsylvania. By this time you would think we had learned our lesson and stayed put. No way. Except for jostling crowds at Penn Station, comatose Amtrak employees, rude train passengers, WAY-overpriced snacks, and a first-time Uber car that ran around in circles because our driver didn’t have a clue where to find the biggest amusement park in Pennsylvania and felt looking out the window at big signs was a sign of weakness or something. The trip was as pleasant as an emergency trip to the dentist. I exaggerate … a bit. The good news is that once we arrived, everything went like clockwork and we had a great couple of days wolfing down chocolate and getting the bejesus scared out of us on rides engineered by sadists.

When we returned to New York Penn Station, I lost it with a driver who yelled at my daughter on the phone because we couldn’t find him. He kept telling her that he was parked right behind the police. I asked him to look around and tell me where he didn’t see police. He had no answer.  After our sullen journey, I over-tipped because I felt guilty for yelling at him, only to discover that my daughter also tipped him heavily to make up for her rude father.

We celebrated our 50^th anniversary with the kids early because for some odd reason, school now starts in mid-August, and what we really wanted as a gift was to see all of our kids and grandkids together. On our actual anniversary, we decided to do our own private celebration in Paris. What seems like a long time ago, I ran an operation in Paris. My wife joined me on many business trips and it’s a city with a lot of memories for us. Because our schedule got shoved forward, we are now waiting in NYC for our flight to the City of Lights. After our travel experiences so far, I wonder about flying over vast amounts of very cold water.

As I write this, I am sitting quietly in my timeshare. My daughter and her family have returned to Omaha. Our other grandchildren are still on Long Island. We see little of our son in the city because he works day and night.

We are alone. It’s quiet. It’s peaceful. We don’t travel again for another week.

I’m bored.

How to make a cowboy hat

Looking the Part

I'm not a hat person. Although I own dozens of hats, I seldom wear one. I don't even like helmets. I grew up in a generation where you just wheeled your bike out of the garage and went riding without a helmet or spandex regalia. When we pulled our long boards to the beach behind our bikes, we wore flip flops, board shorts, and little else. I ski with soft head gear and when I surf, so far I can still rely on my hair to keep the sun from burning the top of my head.

That said, I like cowboy hats. I own one but seldom wear it because after all these years, it still looks new. I bought it at Wall Drug, and it immediately blew off my head and rolled down the center of the street for a quarter mile and still looked brand spankin' new*. I envy tattered, sweat-stained cowboy hats that scream authenticity. Mine says tenderfoot in neon. I know, I know, if I wore it more, it would eventually look like the genuine article. I'm just not a hat person.

For western head gear, I prefer Resistol, but here's a video from Stetson about making cowboy hats. Betcha thought it was a lot simpler.

* I'm a bit obsessed with phrases. This is an interesting article about the origins of brand spanking new.

Growing Up in a Movie

I grew up in the South Bay. This post was prompted when I watched the above video of my old stomping grounds. The South Bay was the nickname for the beach cities south of Malibu and Santa Monica, which included Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach, Torrance, and the three cities on the Palos Verdes peninsula. My homes were in Redondo Beach, and then Torrance for most of high school. The South Bay in the Sixties: a wonderful place and time to be a teenager.

When I was in junior high, my mother allowed me to tuck a canvas surf raft under my arm and walk to the beach with friends. This was early in the morning because the waves were best before the cooling onshore breezes picked up. After hours of riding waves on our rubbed-raw bellies, we lunched at Taco Bell, and wandered home by way of a variety store on Pacific Coast Highway. No one bothered us and we were only mildly bothersome to others. Everything was cool at home as long as I wasn’t late for supper.

My high school years were great. I exchanged my raft for a surfboard and joined the surfer clique. High school was different back then. They had rules against leaving campus during class hours and most of us brought lunch from home. Getting caught playing hooky got an immediate three-day suspension, which made no sense because our misbehavior rewarded us with three more days of surfing. The dress code was strict, but self-imposed. Surfers wore 401 Levis, a white tee from Penny’s, and a blue nylon windbreaker. Dress up days required a Pendleton. Tennis shoes were the only variable and they had to be the latest trend. I groaned whenever I spotted our style leader sporting a different brand or style of shoe because it meant another argument with my cash-strapped mom.

Early high school was my period of delinquency. We requisitioned little red wagons without permission from our siblings. After hammering together some two-by-fours and nailing on a few carpet remnants, we attached the wagon wheels to make a surfboard hauler to tow behind our bicycles. One wagon provided wheels for two surfboard carriers. Somehow, we thought this dual purpose justified our vandalism. Actually, finding the wagon under a pile of garage junk convinced us that nobody would notice the Radio Flyer somehow sat closer to the ground. (Washers and dryers were in the garage in those days and mothers notice everything.) At this late date, I’d like to apologize to our younger brothers and sisters.

Now, instead of walking to the beach, we rode bikes in packs, which irritated more than a few drivers hurrying to work. Couldn’t be helped. We had to get to the beach before seven in the morning so we could surf three or so hours before the wind came up and tourists defiled our paradise. We didn’t like tourists, or any non-surfer, for that matter. We did like their bikini-clad daughters, however, so we hung around until late afternoon.

Our life was perfect. They even made movies about us. You might think I mean the Beach Party films, but we thought they were dreadful. Evidently the multitudes that lived east of Pacific Coast Highway didn’t share our opinion. Unbelievable to us, Hollywood took this horrible film and made six sequels, each progressively worse. The popularity of Annette in a bikini incited an invasion of our beaches by Inlanders.

Anette in her thong bekini

Bruce Brown before Endless Summer

They did make movies about us we liked. In fact, we went to see them in droves, filling school auditoriums to watch live narrated surf films by Bruce Brown, John Severson, and Bud Brown. It was raucous. Wild yelling, screaming, and pounding on seat backs. These were real, and we all dreamed of being highlighted in one of these films or in Surfer Magazine. Actually, Hollywood came around to make some pretty good depictions of our life. Big Wednesday, starring Jan-Michael Vincent, William Katt, and Gary Busey came close, while Lifeguard with Sam Elliott got it pitch perfect.

Sam Elliott in first leading man role

Our teenage years had a custom soundtrack, as well. The Beach Boys and Dick Dale made music about our lives, although we normally only listened to the Beach Boys because our girlfriends liked them. Then we called the Beach Boys gremmies, today they’d be posers. Songs were pretty good though … and again, they were about our lives.

Dick Dale, the real deal

The Beach Boys, not so much

So we had movies, music, and magazines dedicated to our lifestyle. And surfing was the rage across the fruited plains. Everyone wanted to be like us. You probably think that made us feel special. Yeah, you betcha! We knew we had it good. It was a magic moment. The roots of the surfing culture came before, and you can find remnants to this day, but for a few years, everything came together to create a perfect coming-of-age experience. 

Related Post: Idle Away! showing I still surf on occassion.

P.S. Someone once asked why I didn't write about a surfing protagonist. Disappointing question because the hero in The Shut Mouth Society and Deluge is a surfer. 

Idle Away!

Okay, this is what I do while waiting for other people to put the finishing touches on Jenny's Revenge. The new Steve Dancy is coming soon, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy my amateur filmmaking.

Honest Westerns ... filled with dishonest characters.

Surfing, editing, and sipping umbrella drinks

Kailua Beach and The Mokolua Islands

The Jenny's Revenge manuscript arrived back from my editor. I happen to be in Hawaii visiting family, surfing gentle Waikiki waves, and sipping umbrella drinks. My brother and his wife have graciously hosted us in their home in Kailua. Our visit to paradise was been slightly marred by a quick trip to a discount store to buy blankets because the weather is unusually cold. I've never shivered on any of my previous trips to Hawaii.

Since we mostly laze about, I've had time to make some progress on the edits to my manuscript. This is my eighth book working with the same editor, and I always delude myself that this time the manuscript is near perfect. Nothing doing. Red scars every page. Rather than just accept all the edits, I go through them one at a time. I find that I reject only about one in twenty, but every once in a while my editor makes a mistake and I revel in it. Speaking of mistakes, my first editor is my wife. She's supposed to catch all of my mistakes, which allows me to blame her for the red ink. She claims she is no more successful correcting my writing errors than fixing my personality flaws. They're both just too numerous. Oh well, c'est le vie.

Birthdays Used to be Fun

Arthur: “Do you want anything?”

Hobson: “I want to be younger.”

Today is my birthday. My present is a trip to Hawaii to surf in calm waves in warm water and visit my brother and his wife. It will be fun. The trip, that is, not necessarily my birthday. When I was a kid, I wanted birthdays to come sooner because with enough of them I could become a freewheeling adult. I discovered adulthood didn't include as many privileges as I expected, but birthdays remained great fun. At least for a few decades. Now ... not so much. Instead of blowing a party horn, I catalogue my aches and pains. In truth, I’m grateful to be relatively fit, with a great family and loving wife. 

My biggest problem is remembering to get up from my writing chair to get some exercise. I become so engrossed with my characters, I sometimes have to cause a distasteful dispute so I can leave them to their own devices. When I return from a long walk or an hour of surfing, my characters’ tempers have abated enough that I can get on with the story. I know you think I’m kidding, but …

I'll leave you with my life’s goal. I want to be the first person over one hundred years old to break the four-minute mile. This may sound tough, but I intend to train for an entire decade to achieve this goal. It will be hard and consuming work. Thank goodness my ninetieth birthday is still far off in the future. 

Vacation over—Darn

I’ve returned home after an extended vacation in Pacific Beach, California. I made good progress on Jenny’s Revenge, but I keep forgetting how much work it is to bring a novel to the bookshelves. Lots more work to do. While I was gone, Steve did pretty well on his own.  After a couple day promotion for The Shopkeeper, August is turning out to be one of the best months ever for the Steve Dancy Tales. At one point, The Shopkeeper reached the 80^th best selling e-book in the paid Amazon store. Pretty good for a 7 year old novel. Maybe I should go on vacation more often.

Now I have two big projects. Finish Jenny’s Revenge and do my 2013 income taxes. I was in the middle of a move last April with my records stored deep in a cave known only to the moving company. Taxes! I hate paperwork. I hate little pieces of paper. I think my phobia comes from my early years in management. I never went home until the In Box was empty. Paper, paper, paper. I thought man’s worst invention was the copier machine. It destroyed productivity. When carbon paper dictated the number of people to received memos, distribution was highly selective. Copiers were bad enough, but with email, at the tap of a key anyone can send copies to as many people as they want—at nearly the speed of light! I think I’m beginning to like texting.

Is there a point to this posting? Nope. Just grousing as I return from vacation to contemplate an disagreeable task. Soon, I’ll be wading through boxes of little pieces of paper so I can catch up with the rest of the world in almsgiving to the 16^th Amendment. I’d rather be writing. 

Working Vacation?

Yours Truly on an overhead wave.(Who're ya gonna believe, me or yer lyin' eyes.)

Writing and surfing and sun and good food and better friends. How could I have a better vacation? (Is it a vacation if you're already retired?) Jenny's Revenge is going well, the surfing so so. All the rest of it is perfect. The peacefulness of our getaway is about to expire. My daughter and her grandkids arrive tonight. Then it will be kinetic, noisy, and loads more fun. The energy level in our condo will leap 200%. Okay, that's a gross understatement. Anyway, I better get to writing, because starting tomorrow I'll only have snatches of time for the following week. Then we'll return home to Omaha, where I have vowed to focus on the next Steve Dancy Tale.

  

Three novels for $9.99

Westward Ho!

My granddaughter catching her first wave

Tonight, I head west. At least until I hit the Pacific Ocean. My plan is two weeks of surf, sun, and debauchery. Okay, the debauchery part was hyperbole. At my age, an hour in the water exhausts me. I’ve come to associate an afternoon sea breeze with naps. Surfline says the waves are tiny, but the weather is warm, the winds calm, and the surf glassy. I can’t wait to get my TSA/airplane ordeal completed and slide my key into the door lock of my condo. Tomorrow morning I'll take a walk to the bakery for twice-baked almond croissants and check out the waves from my balcony as I eat breakfast and sip coffee.

Since I’ll also be working on Jenny’s Revenge, I may get into some debauchery after all. Jenny’s shenanigans have surprised me, and I don’t think she is up to any good. I can’t wait to see what she’s up to next. Whatever it is, it won’t be good for Steve or Virginia.

Surfers, Cowboys, and Manifest Destiny

The March issue of Vanity Fair has a great article on the iconic movie poster for Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer, titled “One Summer, Forever” By Lili Anolik. I often blog about surfing and my Westerns, but I always thought the only connection was my interest in both. Anolik set me straight. In the article, she wrote,

“And the image’s hero, the surfer, was a new kind of hero. Well, he was old and new. If he’d been born a hundred years earlier, he’d have been a cowboy. He had the cowboy’s instinctive loathing of fences, love of the great wide-open. And what was standing at the farthest edge of America, surveying the Pacific, but the next logical phase of Manifest Destiny and lighting out for the territory and Westward ho.”

Why I never saw that before is beyond me. At least Anolik has given me an excuse to intersperse an occasional reference to surfing on this blog.  By the way, this is a fun article if you have any interest in surfing, film, design, nostalgia, sports, world travel, or tan lines.

San Diego to New York City

On Friday, my wife and I flew from San Diego to New York City. What a difference. Of course the weather went from balmy to nippy, but that was the least the change. We actually left Pacific Beach for Manhattan. Pacific Beach may be the most laid-back community in laid-back California, and Manhattan the most intense district in the country. Over the weekend we rushed from one venue to another to watch our grandchildren play sports, dance ballet, attend professional sporting events, and shuffle between birthday parties and sleep-overs. Several scheduled activities were cancelled because the nerds at MIT haven’t yet figured out a way to be in two places at once. This was a long way from a long yawn as I checked out the waves trying to decide if I wanted to go surfing now or in an hour when the tide would be better. Perhaps all the clichés about Southern California and New York are true.

Manhattan

Pacific Beach

I did some googling to see what others thought.

The Urban Dictionary defines laid-back as: “Repressive, apathetic, does not care enough, brain dead, has no pulse, unlively, passive or passive aggressive, not caring enough, slow paced, follower mind set, compatable, middle american, lack of passion, lack of drive, bland, boring, white bread american.” (sic)

The Free Dictionary defines laid-back as: “Having a relaxed or casual atmosphere or character; easygoing.”

I’m guessing the first definition was written by a New Yorker on an iPhone while racing on foot to an appointment, while the second was written by a beach bum drinking a Stone IPA at a strand-side bar. 

Whoops, maybe I just reinforced those clichés. 

Not this day

I'm staying in San Diego for the winter and have been able to do two of my favorite things: writing and surfing.

I’m happy to make progress on Crossing The Animas, but surfing is a greater treat because I live most of the year in the heartland. The problem with surfing is that it requires a cooperative ocean, a rarity in Nebraska. On this visit to Pacific Beach, the ocean has been semi-cooperative. We've had days of heavy breezes, tiny waves, and rain, but also plenty of days of good surf. During the week, the crowds have been reasonable, but the weekends are a different matter. The two enemies of surfing are crowds in the water and wind. A 56 hour workweek would fix one, but Mother Nature seems to have a mind of her own.

Crowded Wave

Wind Blown

After a long absence, I always wonder if can still surf. This is a young person’s sport, and every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded that I’m in a different category. Do I have the stamina, and more important, can I handle a wave if I catch one. When you get older and stay inland most of the year, surfing feels iffy.  It’s strenuous, especially when you don’t do it every day. The good news is that I continue to enjoy myself and get a few good rides each time I go out.

One day will be my last day surfing, but happily, not this day.

Visit my Pinterest Board on surfing