Here is the new drawing of Warp

 

White Cloud, KS, featured in Volume 10, RAINBOW ARC OF FIRE: OLIVE BRANCH

 This was my Grandmother Breeze's restaurant on the main street of White Cloud, KS.  Greg tells Paul a few stories about the restaurant when she owned it during the 1957 and 1966 visits to the town by his mother, sister and himself.

The house above was owned by Great Grandma Nuzum and then by Grandma Breeze on the main street of White Cloud, KS.

This house was owned by Grandma Nuzum and then by Uncle Robert Breeze over the years.  The hill that is back of where the person taking the picture was standing in front of was where the star ship featured in the story was parked.

This is a patch of the White Cloud Cemetery, Olive Branch, featured in the book where Grandma and Grandpa Breeze are buried (the gray tombstone to the left), Uncle Hap and Aunt Doris (the black tombstone behind the two standing figures), Uncle Robert Breeze (the white military tombstone in back), and Anita Breeze (the reddish tombstone) in the foreground, are also buried.   Doris (born 1925), Robert (born 1927) and Anita (born 1921) were Breeze siblings.  Their sister, Aunt Jean (born 1923), is the white haired woman in the photo.  She died in 2017 but is buried in a military cemetery in the San Juaquin Valley of California with her husband Lloyd Green and near by her son Gordon Douglas Green.  They were all relatives of the main character, Greg.

I do not believe there are many of the Nuzum or Breeze offspring left in the town.  In fact, I am almost certain that there are no Breeze family members remaining.  The man in the photo above is Cousin Jim Rowe, son to Doris (Breeze) and Hap (Rowe).  Uncle Robert Breeze used to tend to the cemetery, but with his death, I am not sure who maintains the cemetery.

My sister Ann and I at George AFB in 1951

 Twenty-two years before my visit to George AFB, my dad was stationed there.  We lived in base housing.  Here are three photos, two of which show us on a sled on base, taken in the base housing area of George AFB.

10 Years ago Congress repealed "Don't Ask; Don't Tell".

I visited a former Marine OCS buddy's brother, 1st Lt. David Zito, who was training at George Air Force Base.  I had just graduated several days before, in early December of 1973, in San Antonio, TX, at Lackland AFB.  I had already driven my '73 Camaro to San Antonio and, with my mom, back to California where I had purchased it a Cormier Chevrolet that summer.  I would leave my car with my mom while I flew to Minot AFB, North Dakota, for my first assignment, knowing that I would eventually be sent to Vandenberg AFB back in California for ICBM training there.  That Spring of 1974, I would have my weekends off and drive down to Southern California to visit friends and family, though the gas crisis made it increasingly difficult to find the gas to drive back to Vandenberg.  After missile school, I and a buddy would drive our cars to Minot AFB after spending a couple of days, staying with Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Jean in San Leandro before heading on to Minot.  

But, of course, hanging over my head for my 6 1/2 years in the Air Force was the threat that I could be found out and discharged from the service which happened in October of 1979.  Thankfully, no gay service members have to deal with this concern any longer, thanks to a Democratic congress and the Obama Administration.

Two new drawings of Rainbow Arc of Fire characters, Oculus and Elemancer

 My artist buddy, Max, has added two more characters to the collection of RAoF characters.  Oculus is on the top and Elemancer on the bottom.  They are the partners Greg and Paul.

Tabby

During the night of November 8-9, while my husband took out the trash, Tabby got out of the house unseen.  When I woke up after 2:00 AM, I realized something was wrong because she did not appear when Pudge did for her morning meal, nor had she slept beside me during the night as she usually did.

After feeding Pudge, I put on a coat and went outside in the dark and cold to call her name.  I figured she must be nearby and would return home soon.  Later that morning and that day, I would go outside, walking the entire neighborhood, searching for her.  I would do this for the next several days, becoming more concerned as each day passed.

I spend hours searching for her, as did my husband.  I alerted others that she was missing.  We put up fliers with that same picture above all over our neighborhood.  I joined lost pet groups and posted her image and details on several online sites.  Nothing.  No word.

We were beginning to worry that she had been kidnapped or was stuck somewhere so she could not make her way home.  The days passed.  Still nothing as the following weekend arrived.  

We visited a brambles by the golf course where stray cats are fed by cat lovers.  She was not there and, again, nobody had seen her.  We went there more than once, calling her over and over again, as well as walking our neighborhood at all hours of the day and night.

Finally, I got a post early Monday morning, November 16, from a man who lived in our gated community and was certain he had seen her on Lincoln, drinking water from the gutter over the weekend.  That entire day, we repeatedly searched that block of Lincoln and surrounding blocks of houses.  I and then both of us searched the golf course behind the row of houses that backed up against the golf course off of Lincoln.  Still nothing even after seven extensive visits to the entire area.  We put up flyers there, too.

Early Tuesday morning, I had a phone call from a number I did not recognize so I let it go to voice mail.  When I read the text, the caller said that he saw her, unfortunately, between his house and his immediate neighbor.  The address was not complete but I was certain where his house was on Lincoln.  I got in my car and drove there, which was only three blocks or so away.

I parked in front of the house I was sure was the right one, got out and moved around to where the small, red gravel covered the ground between the two houses.  I saw her body almost immediately.  She was clearly dead, lying on her side.  I noticed that it appeared that her legs had churned the small pebbles a bit before she died.  I grabbed the towel I had brought with me, carefully wrapping her stiffened form lovingly in between my tears and increasing anguish.  

I carefully laid her lifeless body in the trunk and drove home.  I bawled as I woke my husband to tell him what had happened and he became as emotional as I since he had been the last to see her alive.

She had always been such a sweet, gentle, loving kitty.  When I had been gone three days to the hospital for acute diverticulitis, after I returned home and lay down on our bed, still exhausted, she lay beside me and put her paw on my arm to comfort me, apparently pleased to have me home.

I would never understand why she left the house and managed to wander so far away, not hear us calling for her so continuously, nor attempt to return home even though we left out food, her litter box, her cat tower, and anything else others had recommended putting out, to induce her to return home.  Eight days she was gone.  The weather had been cold at night, and she did not have her favorite food nor fresh water.  She may have had diabetic issues though she was never overweight, but I still have a difficult time accepting that she had gone off to die.  She was always still hungry whenever it was time to be fed.

Her passing has left a void in the house.  When you are used to two cats and now only one remains, it's noticeable.  We even suspect that Pudge has missed her too.  She used to lay on the kitchen floor and watch my husband clean the floor.  

She was 15 years old, three years younger than Pudge, who appears to be in good health.  At my own age, I don't really want to get another pet.  It's become too hard to lose that pet.  It's gotten harder not easier.  And I hated that Tabby died alone, between two strange houses, having died during those early hours, never having made it back home where she was so loved.  But I brought her home for the last time, though it saddens me deeply still.   

Star Trek: Discovery and diversity

 Everybody but Burnham is LGBTQ: Star Trek Discovery.

I'm a long standing member of Blu-ray.com, and one thread is about the third season of DISCO. One of the viewers claims/complained that Tilly is gay; Joann & Keyla (bridge crew) are gay; Adira and Gray (new characters) are gay; Jett Reno is gay; Saru is non-sexual; Phillippa is pansexual; and, of course, Stamets and Culber are gay. Hence the remark that Burnham is the only straight member of the main crew. And that Seven of Nine and Raffi played handsies in the season finale of Picard so they are also totally gay.

Let's just ignore the fact that Star Trek has pretty much avoided (TOS, Enterprise, Voyager) or danced around the LGBTQ issue in one episode of Next Gen (that one with Riker) and DS9 (Jadzia Dax and a previous love when she was a man meet again). I've patiently watched Star Trek since that first night in September of 1966. I never expected to see LGBTQ characters, and even if the entire crew of Discovery WERE gay, I would simply say, "About time" and move on.

But it seems to me that Tilly and Po were good friends not sexually or romantically involved. Joann and Keyla are good friends and supportive coworkers but not sexually or romantically involved. The others mentioned are each somewhere along the LGBTQ relationship spectrum and more power to them.

This past week's episode showed Stamets and Culber in bed together in their jammies. My husband, who has seen far less of this on TV, turned to me and smiled. Of course, both of us always note and joke about Rob & Laura Petrie having twin beds, as did just about all straight, married couples on TV and in the movies back in the era of primarily B&W images, especially on TV.

I guess I like to imagine that the future will be more evolved than we are or have been. As evolved as I like to see myself since I simply celebrate any romantic couplings on TV especially (and all my RAoF heroes are LGBTQ). If any crewmembers on Star Trek in general are also along that LGBTQ spectrum, so much the better. And if the entire crew of Discovery were actually LGBTQ, that to me is no different than that entire Vulcan crew in TOS that was wiped out and which Spock felt their passing so definitively.

R.I.P. Rob McDonald and Christopher "Kent" Thomas

This is becoming a Facebook ritual in the last few years.  You don't see any posts from a friend in some time.  Perhaps you knew he or she had been fighting an illness but they posted images of their fight against cancer (in most cases).  And you expected that they would beat it this time, as they had before this latest bout.

But then the posts stop.  For several weeks in some cases.  You don't think about it at first.  There have always been gaps in the past.  But then one day you realize that it has been quite some time and you really begin to worry.  But you are also really afraid to ask for fear of being a jerk.

I thought about Rob a few days ago and voiced my concern to myself.  And then, just an hour or so later, his sister posted that he had gotten his wings and was soaring with the angels and your heart skips a beat and that overwhelming sadness overcomes your very soul.

Most of the photos above with Rob in the maroon, sleeveless sweat shirt, were from his and his BF in yellow jacket and friend in the gray T-shirt (Rick Steen).  They visited my place in Colorado Springs in 1985.  We drove to Garden of the Gods and to the Air Force Academy.  And to a lovely canyon near the Springs that was still covered with snow and a cold, running stream nearby.  I always had the hots for Rob's friend, Rick Steen.  Great chest.  The last time Rob and I spoke when I forwarded these pics and the others from that visit, Rob said Rick was just as hunky but totally bald.  

Over recent years that I have been on Facebook, I lost Anita Kocourek, who created the cover images for most of my RAoF books.  A classmate from years ago, Ken Braun, died a few months back.  And also Kent Thomas, who often shared the HOA board leadership with me at Franklin Park Condo Association from the early 2000's until close to 2016 when I moved from Denver.  (I heard that he sold his unit in 2017.)   He helped get the HOA solvent and organized, with clearly stated rules and regs.   He was a good soul.  I only have a couple of images of him, even after all those years of knowing him and working with him:

He died a year ago of cancer.  And, like Rob, was also from Oklahoma.  He was likely only in his early 50's.  

You know someone so well for so many years and then they are gone.  Forever.  And we are left to morn.

Whatever happened to....

 I believe most of us wonder at times whatever happened to some thing or some one who spent time in our lives, perhaps even for the briefest of moments, and then were ushered out.  They leave an ache of longing, to know, to provide us with an answer.

I'm not talking about cosmic questions of why are we here and what ought we to accomplish with our time on Earth.

No, I just mean some thing or some one who impacted our lives with curiosity, and we'd really like to know what eventually happened.

Of course, when my dad told me that I could not take my cat, Tiger, with us when we moved in with my stepmother and her two children, he said he was going to be passing by some remote area where he could, essentially, dump Tiger out--to fend for himself.  I am almost certain that it was our looming and future stepmother who forced dad to bring about this change.  She would always be a bitch in the years ahead.  In fact, that demand should have informed him, and us (though I did not at the time figure out that she was probably the one who demanded he do something about Tiger before we all moved in together) about what kind of person she really was. 

Regardless, dad said that the following day he would be passing that blissful cat paradise and it would be best for Tiger if he were dumped there rather than some other, less hospitable, locale.  

Making that decision was almost akin to the one that dad presented me with a couple of years before when he asked, one afternoon out of the blue, "If you had to choose, would you want to live with your mother or with me."  What kind of a question, and dilemma, is that to put upon a kid who isn't even 10 years old? 

But now I was faced with losing my beloved cat for good.  I had no choice.  That morning dad took Tiger in his company car and I never saw him again.

Oh, dad claimed a week later that as he was driving by those same Elysian Fields, he saw Tiger with a mouse in his mouth, trotting blissfully along with his prize, looking as well fed as when he lived with us.  I was at the time too naive or stupid to know dad was lying to me--he never saw Tiger again either.  But still I hoped Tiger was OK.

But what I have always wanted to know was whatever befell Tiger eventually?  How long had he survived?  Did he ever try to make it back to our apartment building in Orange, long after we had moved?  How and when did he die?  Did he ever remember me in those final days or did he find some other loving family who took him in and cared for him as I, ultimately, could not?  It makes me teary eyed even today as I think of him, especially since I never even had a picture of Tiger, except in my unreliable mind and foggy memory of oh so long ago.

Once, when I was still at the Academy or having just left, I visited Dan Stratford and Dick Tuttle in Denver.  Dan and I hiked over to Cheesman Park where the gay guys hung out at the South end.  I saw a lanky, handsome man who drove one of those fancy van conversions that hardly anybody drives any more.  He had long, finely toned and tanned legs and brown hair.  I did not have the nerve to walk up and speak to him.  Eventually, Dan had to go back to their townhouse, so we ran those several blocks from Cheeman Park to Pennsylvania Street, along 9th.  I asked a few guys, and Dan also asked for me, who that might have been.  Did anyone know him?  As far as anyone else knew, he was someone just passing through Denver, never to be seen again.  This was 1980 or 1981.  Before the AIDS Pandemic would cut a deadly swath through so gay men all over the nation and the world.  I used to think about that guy over the succeeding years and wonder if he had survived or died.   Like so many men I saw in this bar or that, so many guys I was friends or acquaintances with at one time or another during that tragic decade and more who did not make it.

I do not know, and likely do not suspect, that the universe is so constructed that we get tidy answers to our simpler questions.   Those that we would not really be asking much to get the answers to.

Marine OCS Part 5

 The first few days of Marine OCS were a whirlwind of activity.  We had to get our green fatigue OCS uniforms fitted, as well as our boots.  I kept stumbling in front of Lt. Nichols as I tried to climb the three step stand so he could get a good look at the fit of the uniform.  (I was not used to wearing boots--my previous pair back in the mid-1950's caused me to trip and fall onto the corner of a coffee table in our living room on Foxley Drive in Whittier, requiring three stiches.  I still bear that scar though these days it's very faint at the left base of my nose.)  He asked me if I were unable to walk and chew gum at the same time?  I was not capable of that in boots, apparently.

BTW, I kept one pair of those two sets of boots we were issued that day.  The other pair I left out the day I departed OCS and someone that they fit in the platoon snapped them up.  I think we were required to turn in our fatigues.  

Once we got our three pairs of fatigue shirts and trousers, we were advised to allow the Platoon Sergeant's and Sergeant Instructor's wives to sew on our white cloth name plates on the back of the shirts and above one of the shirt pockets.  It earned them extra money and it kept us in the good graces of our platoon staff for a short time anyway.

We had ridden over to the uniform issue building and back in what was generously referred to as "cattle cars"--trucks that pulled enclosed trailers that looked very much like those you would see on any highway hauling cattle to market.  The metal benches were hard and uncomfortable, as well as difficult to stay atop.  We kept sliding off when the trucks turned.

On the second or third day, we each also had a one-on-one meeting with Lt. Nichols in his office off of the platoon bay.  I had already decided that Marine OCS was not for me even though we were required to remain there for 9 weeks and the 10th week of out processing.  I would be there for most of the 12-week duration, regardless of my imagining it a waste of tax-payer dollars and my time.  I sat in an overstuffed chair in his office and responded to questions as he asked them.  The chair sat at an angle, pointing slightly away from where he sat.  I did not know if I was supposed to look directly at him by turning my head when he or I spoke.  So I just sat there and stared straight ahead the whole time, never once looking in his direction.  He must have thought I was screwy.

We also had the first of our platoon runs.  While I had run often in the neighborhood, and up at Mark Lombardo's house in Palos Verdes, and was pretty much ready, these were interesting in that we ran sometimes as a platoon in formation, keeping the unit's pace.  Along one of the dirt paths were small rocks jutting up which a few of us confessed to hoping they would jump up, bite one of our feet and cause us to fall in a heap, letting everyone else to pass us by.  It almost never happened, but we kept hoping. 

We also had the first of our calisthenics exercises on the grass near the parade grounds.  Everything was fine except, at one point, one of the guys screamed out in pain.  Not sure if he pulled a muscle with sit ups or not but he appeared to be in some pain.  A few of the guys thought he might be faking.  He was also the one who joined because he wanted to be in the Marine band.  However, the band was made up entirely of Marine enlisted men, so nobody was quite sure why he thought he, as an new officer, would be able to join. I believe he was one of the few who left the program at the six-week point where you were essentially kicked out early.  That never happened to some of us because we were pulling our own weight and were not causing trouble, so they kept us for the full 9 weeks before we could officially resign.

Our first weekend, four of us drove into downtown DC and stayed in a high-rise hotel there.  Not sure which one at this point.  I believe John Robertson was one of the guys.  Later, Dennis Zito, John and I would become buddies and would either stay at the barracks as a trio or go to DC and stay instead at the Crystal City Marriott that had the best military rates.  Years later, Dennis told me that his first weekend with a few other guys was spent uncomfortably waiting in the hallway outside their hotel room.  The other 2-3 guys he was with had hired a couple of prostitutes, and he had no desire to join them.   

   

Marine OCS Part 4

Somehow, someone must have collected us from the out-processing barracks and marched us to the barracks photographed in January 1973 above.  (I've looked at aerial images of Marine OCS, Quantico, today and these barracks are gone.  Marine OCS barracks now are modern and are located adjacent to the parade grounds on the other side of the tracks.  When I taught community college history, humanities, English, communications, English and literature classes for Pikes Peak Community College at Fort Carson, CO, in the 1980's, the classrooms were in somewhat similar barracks that were built for WWII all over the country as the nation mobilized on a massive scale.)

It might have been this first day that we were also marched to a barbershop where we were freed from our civilian hair and haircuts.  Like shorn sheep, this effort also freed us of having to care for our hair while we were in training.  We never had enough time to "shit, shower and shave" as it was.  Washing and combing hair was one less effort to contend with.  (A few weeks later, Dennis Zito, whom I mentioned before, had become a friend, along with John Robertson.  Dennis had a fine, short-toothed comb that could create a part in our slowly lengthening hair.  He returned from the latrine one weekend morning, coughed, pointed to his new part, barely noticeable and beamed with pride.  We all laughed.  Then I thought for a moment, borrowed his comb and went to the latrine to see what I could accomplish.  My hair always grew fast--it still does, just not in as many places as it once did, unfortunately.  I returned with an even more impressive part much to Dennis's chagrin.)

What happened the rest of that first day is a blank--we might have been given temporary military clothes to wear until we got our fatigues a few days later.  All I do remember is that we finally went to bed in our bunks late that night.  I got a top bunk which would cause me trouble the next morning.  We were already given duties, the first being as a fire guard for the barracks, which also housed two other platoons in our Company.  (Again, I don't remember exactly how, but every officer candidate was assigned to one of the three platoons in the Company.  What criteria they used, I do not recall, but Bruce Culp and I were assigned to the same platoon, as indicated in that earlier photo of the platoon:  Bravo Company, 1st Platoon.  Alpha Company was housed in the barracks above on the right in that photo.  We inhabited the front wing of the barracks on the left in the photo above.)

Most of us slept fitfully that first night.  First, because we were all nervous about what the next days would present.  Second, because one guy who was assigned fire watch that first night marched up and down the bay and then up the stairs to the other bays of Bravo Company.  His marching kept us awake, as well.  Fortunately, everyone soon learned that his marching was not necessary to be on the lookout for fires in these ancient fire traps.  You quietly patrolled the bays in a slow walk so as to let everyone else get much-needed sleep.  The third reason we slept fitfully was that beyond the barracks pictured above, there were railroad tracks.  Trains running north-south barreled past the barracks at high speed, often in the middle of the night.  They were always sudden and they were always loud.  Their passage rattled the whole structure as if it might fall apart above our heads.

At some point I finally did drift off to sleep.  But suddenly, I heard a loud metallic CRASH!  I and most of the others were now fully awake, adrenaline flowing.  And there was yelling.  Lots of yelling followed, demanding that we get out of our bunks.  I flew down to the floor, but the bunk slid across the waxed floor.  The front of my right leg slammed against the side of the frame below my bunk and cut the skin.  Not deeply but enough to draw blood which would not stop.  As I tried to stand at attention by the bunk after my bunkmate and I had pushed it back into place, I was definitely favoring the leg because it hurt like hell.  Just then Gunnery Sargant Williams walked past me and growled to know what was the matter.  I pointed to my leg and explained what had happened.  His demeanor softened and he told me to head to the latrine and try to get the bleeding stopped.  I hobbled off to find some toilet paper.  But it didn't help much.  I quickly rejoined the others in bay.

What had awakened those of us asleep had been a large metal trash can hurled down the middle of the bay.  A couple of the other candidates later explained, who had been awake before the melee began, they had seen Sgt. Williams bring the large metal trash can in the bay while Sgt. Blazer positioned himself at the light switch.  It was a coordinated assault on our senses, and it did the trick.  We were fully wired for the next several minutes.

After we got ready, we formed up outside the barracks and were marched to the chow hall.  This required marching along the paved road from the barracks, past the "slop shoot" and toward the railroad crossing where the chow hall sat on the other side, behind the out-processing barracks.

Obviously, these days, with the barracks beside the parade grounds and on the other side of the railroad tracks from the old barracks, some of our rituals no longer apply.  When the platoon marched and approached a cross street, the candidate marching the platoon was required to send out "road guards" to keep auto traffic from running into us.  Also, when crossing the railroad tracks, the platoon leader was required to send out two "track guards" to position themselves, one on either side of the tracks, facing the direction where any oncoming train might barrel into the platoon.  The road and track guards came from the second man from the front of each side of the two-column platoon.  'Track guards out!" and "Road guards out!" were the commands.  When the potential danger had passed, the commands became either "Track guards in!" or "Road guards in!"

Food in the chow hall wasn't bad at the beginning of each month when a new crew of enlisted Marines were assigned to that duty.  But as the month progressed, the quality and presentation of the food declined.  Noticeable.  Miraculously, when a new crew arrived at the start of the next month, it was obviously better.

One major difference between Marine OCS and Air Force OTS the following year was that during the entire Marine OCS experience, nobody bothered us while we ate.  Food was an important component of marching and hiking and navigating the various physical training courses we were required to endure.  We needed our energy and stamina.  During Air Force OTS, the first three weeks we had to sit silently at a table, no talking, no looking up.  The table had to sit down and get up together when you figured out that everyone else had finished.  It was a bit stressful.

Individual images

Marine OCS Part 3

Top Row:  Paul Fitzpatrick, Bruce Culp, Clayborne, Dan Hunter, Wright, Booher

Second Row:  Kramer, Jim Schloss, John Robertson, Wilson, Greg Sanchez, John Ormbreck, Jerry Moore, Ken Zebal, Olsen

Third Row:  Jim Mullen, Walczak, Laviglio, Smith, Stuart, Darwin Newlin, Raese, Kent Nix, Anderson, Fitzgerald, Langdon

Bottom Row:  Lt. Nickle, Tourek, Moffatt, Dennis Zito, Campomenosi, Hudnall, Unknown, Delacroce, Sgt. Blazer, Sgt. Williams

Not pictured:  Palms, Kelly Stage, and one unknown from California

B Company, 1st Platoon


Here we all are.  Dennis Zito helped me fill in some of the names.  For several of the guys, we did not remember their first names.  Unless you became buddies in some cases, you talked to them using their last names.

Marine Corps OCS Part 2

I was told by the OCS recruiter that at least two others (possibly three, my memory is no longer clear on our number) from Southern California would be in my OCS class at Quantico.  All three or four of us would be flying from LAX to Dulles airport on an American Airlines 707 where we would find government transportation to Quantico.

A few weeks before we left, I visited one of my potential platoon mates, Bruce Culp, who lived in Bell, CA, not far from South Gate.  Bruce was blond and 6'1", lithe with a swimmer's body since his parents had installed a pool and he kept in shape.  We spent a couple of hours chatting at his parents' house before I headed home.  Bruce and I would not become buddies at Marine OCS or elsewhere--I cannot fathom why--but our paths would cross more than once over the next few years.

We would both end up leaving Marine OCS at some point during the program.  We would both be at Air Force OTS in 1973.  Both of us would go through missile training at Vandenberg AFB in the Spring of 1974, and be housed in the same Bachelor Officer's building at Minot AFB in North Dakota for the next four years.  Bruce, however, did not take well to being a missile officer.  I believe at the time he deliberately did not do well at Vandenberg missile school.  Back at Minot, they had to find him another assignment.  Very quickly he found his calling as a Security Police officer and remained doing that for the rest of his time in Minot.  After that, I lost touch with him and where he went when I transferred to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.  As I said, though, we really did not become buddies in any of these shared military assignments.

Fortunately, the transcontinental flight--my first--was not particularly full, especially in coach.  While we might have chatted with one another for awhile in our assigned seats, eventually we each found a separate, unoccupied row, after putting the arm wrests up, and tried to catch some sleep on this red-eye.  I know I was not the only one who was nervous about what lay ahead for the next several weeks and more, and I don't believe that any of us slept much.

After arriving at Dulles at dawn, we did not find any government transportation to Quantico.  The four of us decided our only alternative was to hire a cab and split the fare four ways (I suspect there were four of us at this point since I seem to recall that I was in the front seat with the cab driver, and the other three filled up the back seat.)

We drove through the Northern Virginia landscape that was not snow-covered but decidedly bleak and foreboding.  Growing up and spending most of my life in Southern California, or visiting a place like White Cloud, KS, only in the summer, I had never seen so many miles and miles of trees without leaves and leaf-covered grounds in the woods on either side of the highway.  The sky was also gray that morning.  I think most of us felt a sense of gloom and doom as the cab drew closer and closer to Quantico.

We finally arrived at the main gate.  Not knowing where to go from there, we went inside to speak to someone there who might know where we ought to go.  A sergeant came out from a back room bunk in his T-shirt and underwear, entirely out of sorts and berated us for not knowing where we ought to be.  We later realized he was a sergeant instructor for another platoon, not ours, fortunately.  Our early arrival must have cost him a few minutes of sleep, but he must have explained to the cab driver where we ought to go and we were off again, further into the bowels of the base.

He dropped us off at the correct barracks, we paid him, and went inside with our bags from the trunk.  Once inside, we advanced to a desk at the end of a squad bay where a guy was sitting who seemed to be in charge.  He had a list and checked off our names as we gave them to him.  Why he picked me out, I do not know, but he said, "Sanchez, I broke a bottle of shampoo in one of the showers.  Could you go clean up the pieces of glass?"  Two guys who had been sitting next to one another on a small couch seemed to chuckle at his command to me and perhaps at my obvious nervousness.  (These two characters would be John Ormbrek and Dennis Zito, who would become buddies and explain that the guy who was acting so officious was actually just a candidate as we were; but he had dropped out and was in that barracks, awaiting his out-processing paperwork to be completed.  He had no more authority to have me clean up his broken shampoo bottle than the lowliest civilian employee on the base.  But not knowing this, I cleaned up the broken glass and reported back to him that the shower stall was safe to use again.)

Bruce Culp and I ended up being assigned to the same platoon as were John Ormbrek and Dennis Zito.  But I think the other two in the cab with us from Dulles ended up in a different OCS platoon, and I never saw them much after that.  Such was the apparent randomness of military assignments.

Rainbow Arc of Fire team image, work in progress

I commissioned artist/writer Max Spragovsky to create a group image of my Rainbow Arc of Fire superhero team. Two of the newest characters, Kora (Mercuria) and Kalisto (Liquide/Liquid Lord), really did not have her own costume since they were created after I'd had the superhero name and costume design contest on the Gay League site. This gave him a chance to use his talents to enhance those two characters. The team drawing is not yet complete, but I thought people would enjoy the work in progress. Haunt (mostly wearing black) is in the background, Harvest (in shades of green) in the foreground, and Firefrost is on the far left. Mercuria is to the left of Harvest and Liquide/Liquid Lord is to the right of him as you view the image.  When you click on the image, you can view it much larger.

Marine OCS Part 1

Yesterday, I was loading music onto my Sony player when I realized that I had not created a Marine OCS folder for the music we listened to on personal radios in the barracks on weekends or on the Juke Box at the "slop shoot" down the road from our barracks.  Sunday mornings especially, guys tuned their radios, those who stayed behind and hadn't gone into DC, to Casey Kasem's American Top 40 countdown.  We all relaxed on our bunks, wrote letters home, and just took it easy, all the while dreading Sunday evening when the rest of the guys returned and we all had to start getting prepared for a new week of training.

But while we relaxed, Casey would introduce a song like Don McLean's "Vincent (Starry, Starry Night)" or America's "Horse With No Name" or Malo's "Suavecito", and I would look out at the gloriously green woods, well beyond our barrack's windows or look down at the brown Potomac River flowing by and be transported, if just for a few minutes or a few hours.  All these years later, now that I am 70, I still can sometimes remember where I was when I listened to a particular song on the radio.  

The first time I heard "Horse With No Name", I was accompanying Dennis Zito, who might have been driving John Ormbrek and I and John Robertson, using John Ormbrek's tan VW station wagon into D.C. on a Friday evening.  John was going to let us have his car for the weekend, so we were driving him to the train station where he intended to take the train into New York City for the weekend.  I remarked that I liked what I was hearing from the car radio, and the other guys told me the name of the group and the song title.  It was raining that night and the drops splashed on the side windows as I sat in the back seat and tried to catch glimpses of some of the D.C. landmarks.  I remember seeing the Capitol dome well down the avenue ahead, through the rain and the light of street lamps that night.  (An aside:  I did not listen to radio in those days.  I always had an 8-track player in my '66 Mustang convertible and a Roberts 8-track tape recorder attached to my stereo system at home, so I made my own music tapes and listened to them.)

I heard Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" on the slop shoot (the fast food joint) Juke Box for the first time.  It was still on the Juke Box but was no longer on the top of the charts.  However, if I heard a song there or on a car radio or a radio in the barracks, I forever associated it with Marine OCS.  This was the Spring of 1972, approximately mid March to mid May when, after I was forced to remain at OCS until I could voluntarily leave after 10 weeks (9 weeks with the course and 1 week to out-process).

I wasn't intending to be at Marine OCS at all.  

Richard Nixon was in the White House, the Watergate burglars were not going to be caught until June 17, 1972, well before the election in November.  But the Vietnam War was still raging strong.  Nixon had instituted a Draft Lottery which was held on December 1, 1969.  My number was 119, the same as Bruce Springsteen since we were both born on the same day back in 1949.  

I had been lucky enough to able to graduate from college in December of 1971.  Prior to that, I had decided to try to get into the Marine Corps Reserve as a clerk typist.  I'd been accepted and was going to be able to ship off to Marine boot camp in San Diego after I graduated.  I had already had my draft physical, a humiliating affair.  We were treated indifferently at best, contemptuously at worst, by the various staff members.  My blood pressure was judged high at one point so some officious barked, "What are you nervous about?"  I admitted, "The whole thing."  I was told to sit aside for a few minutes.  They tested me again and I passed.

Weeks later, in contrast, I had my Marine physical in the same building, processing through the same steps but the treatment was totally different.  Instead of being looked upon as some slacker who probably was trying to get out of serving his country (we were all treated like this, not just me), I remember feeling like royalty.  I was one of the Marine's own, I was volunteering, and I was doing my patriotic duty instead of trying to dodge military service.  Besides, potentially joining the Marine Reserves bought me enough time to graduate.

But that summer of 1971, a guy I had become friendly with at Cal State Dominguez Hills, Mark Lombardo, found out I was going to be just a Marine enlisted man when I was about to graduate college.  Why did I not want to attend Marine OCS in Quantico, Virginia, as he had just done that Spring of 1971, and be an officer instead?  His argument quickly made sense to me.  So, I saw the Marine OCS recruiter and I got switched.  The enlisted recruiter responded, "Go get those gold bars."
My entry into the service was delayed further until March of 1972, so I could easily graduate.  Most weekends, I would drive up to Mark's parent's house on Palos Verdes and go running with him to get prepared.  I had always been able to break into a run in the past.  But that had been a few years before and, while still slim, I was not in running shape.  That first run I believe I puked at the end.  I had a few months to prepare, so I was able to get in running shape for OCS by the Spring. 

While all of these Marine exercises were occurring, I had actually heard from an Air Force recruiter based in Huntington Park, CA.  But somehow my personal scores for becoming an Air Force Navigator were not high enough to get me into Air Force OTS, and they were also not high enough to become a pilot.  But that option was still out there and I had not heard the last from that particular recruiter.

   

Likely no Comic Cons this year

It appears that no Comic Cons remaining this year will be held.  We had a hotel room at the Hilton next to the Anaheim Convention Center where WonderCon is held each year.  But we were forced to cancel when we learned that WonderCon was postponed indefinitely.  I suppose there is a chance for the fall but unlikely.

Nothing has happened yet, but ComicCon San Diego will also be cancelled or postponed.  So I won't be able to give away or sell books this year at all.

I hope everyone stays safe.  Mark and I are hunkered down in the house and only go outside to walk to the mailbox or drive somewhere to get groceries or food once or twice a week.  We hope later this morning that Ralph's will have toilet paper and bottled water and food.

Cats in the Rainbow Arc of Fire series

Schnozz was something else.   Smart and sassy, she ruled the house at 6555 Palmer Park Blvd in Colorado Springs before I moved to Denver.  The drive to Denver when I moved, taking her to the small apartment on Humboldt St. in Denver, was traumatic for her.  The 1-bedroom apartment was so much less roomy than the 3-bedroom, 4-level house.  And when temporary roommate and not much of a BF Frank Massey brought to the apartment Sneezer from the Dumb Friends League, Schnozz was further distressed.  The two did not get along well but finally tolerated one another.

When I sent Frank packing back to Virginia but kept Sneezer, and we all moved to another small apartment in another building in the Humboldt apartment complex, relations were only marginally better.  They eased a bit when the three of us moved to a 2-bedroom apartment two doors down from the second small 1-bedroom, and each cat had his or her places to pass the time.  Sneezer took the spare bedroom and would sit atop a carpeted cat pedestal and watch the passersby on the sidewalk below.  Schnozz ruled the bedroom and the carpeted pedestal there.

It was the death of Schnozz that formed a centerpiece in the green book, Volume 4, Worlds Beneath Us.

Speaking of Sneezer:

I have never had a more lovable or loving cat.  He would curl up in my arms on that couch as I watched TV and fall asleep.  At one point he weighed 23.5 pounds, much too heavy.  I had to put him on a diet so that he returned to his regular weight of 17.5 pounds.  He was still a big, heavy cat, regardless.  When he was 20 years old, his kidneys had already been failing.  His weight had alarmingly dropped to barely above 6 pounds.  He would not eat solid food, so I drained cans of chicken and he would slurp up the juice.  But one morning, long after he'd confined himself to a spot between the toilet and cabinet in the carpeted bathroom, he came out to the kitchen one morning as if to eat as he had every morning at the condo on Franklin St prior to his extended illness.  While I was happy to see him, I was immediately shocked to see that he was walking on one of his front legs on the first joint instead of on his paw.  His paw was bent under, and it must have been painful for him to walk like that; but he seemed determined to get to the kitchen.  I was heartsick.  I believe he'd had a stroke and was reliving the past when he was younger and healthy and loved to have his morning meal before I left for work.  I had to call the vet and tearfully arrange to bring him in that afternoon.

He would always sound so mournful in the car on the way to the vet's office to get his regular checkups and shots.  He loved living in the condo and hated to leave.  But this morning he was silent.  I had wrapped him up in a favorite towel and he sat on the passenger seat, looking tired but determined.  After he drifted away on the table in the vet's office, I could not contain myself and cried like a baby all the way home and for hours after.  As with Schnozz before, I had him cremated and have his ashes still.

After Schnozz was gone, my friend Dino and his partner Larry were shedding their three cats in favor of dogs.  They gave me Miranda, the eldest.  Sneezer took quite some time to take to her in the 2-bedroom apartment on Humboldt after she arrived.  Miranda, like Schnozz, only lived to be about 12-13 years.  She had moved along with Sneezer and me to the condo on Franklin St.  At some point, she developed terrible tumors on the back of her neck from the rabies shots from the vet.  She then endured three separate surgeries, six months apart, to remove successive tumors as they aggressively developed, one set after another.  They would not stop.  I finally had to wrap a sock around her neck to keep her from scratching at the wound that the doctor no longer could find enough skin to close at the end of the third surgery.  Again, as with Schnozz, I had to contact the vet for a dreaded house call.  I let Miranda sit peacefully in the front garden amidst the foliage until the vet arrived in the early afternoon.  She left peacefully on that same living room couch pictured above.  Her death was mentioned in Olive Branch, the last volume in the series.

Strangely, a few nights later I awoke to a familiar sound from the kitchen.  I looked up and Sneezer was staring in the direction of the kitchen, around the corner from the bedroom.  A night light from the kitchen counter had put his curious head and pointed ears in silhouette.  We were both listening momentarily to the sound of Miranda, again scratching at the taped sock around her neck.  Of course, even though I checked the kitchen counter where she used to lay before she died, feeling the welcome heat from the back of the fridge, she was not there.  Take this haunting story as you like.  I have never seen a ghost before, but both Sneezer and I heard something from the kitchen that night that sounded remarkably like the sound of Miranda scratching.  

This was Calico Miranda in the Franklin St. condo before she started to develop the tumors.  She loved to sit atop the cable box for warmth:

After Miranda had gone, the sister of a woman I worked with had, with a coworker at Coors Brewery, rescued a few-weeks-old kitten at the site.  He needed a home.  Linda asked me and I said I would take him.  I named him Pudge because, when he would scrunch himself up, front to back, he'd look rather pudgy.  Again, Sneezer was not too keen on a new roommate.  But Pudge was smart and determined, even as a kitten.  Just as I was telling a friend on the phone that I did not see what I was going to do to help them get along, I looked down and Sneezer and Pudge were eating their breakfast together off the same small plate.  Pudge had figured out how to push open the folding bathroom door and was eating contentedly next to the much bigger Sneezer.

Pudge is with me still, as is Tabby, who replaced Sneezer.  Tabby was discovered going door to door in the sister's boyfriend's neighborhood in Denver, getting food wherever she could beg it.  She may have been owned by a family across the street from Linda's sister's boyfriend.  But when he saw Tabby sitting by a couple of the family members on the sidewalk and he asked if they owned her, they offered, "Yes, do you want her?"  One morning he catnapped her, put her in a cat carrier, took her to his girlfriend's house, and I picked her up there, where I had gathered up Pudge a couple of years earlier.  As with Pudge, I took her to the vet and got her fixed (that family had neglected to do what they were legally required to do regarding spaying a pet).  The vet told me that, even at six months old, she was fully ready to have kittens of her own.

Pudge and Tabby made their way on Mark's and my first long drive between Denver and Indio.  We drove non-stop to limit their suffering, only getting gas occasionally for the van we were using to transport the cats and our two TVs.

After such a small condo, only a bit more than 900 square feet, the 2100-square-foot house must have seemed  enormous.  I first found them curled up together in one of the litter boxes.  They seemed terrified of their new surroundings.  By our final night before Mark and I had to fly back to Denver, they'd entirely disappeared.  Numerous times I searched the whole house and the neighborhood (though how both had gotten out of doors was highly improbable).  We eventually had to leave for the airport, but I told my best friend and my sister, who would feed and look after them while we were gone, to keep laying out food and checking the litter boxes.  They confirmed that food was being eaten and litter boxes were being used, but no cats could be found anywhere in the house.

It was Mike a few days later who finally realized that they might have squeezed under the narrow opening in the back of a long, low chest in our new bedroom and would remain there until food had been left out and the unwanted strangers had departed the house.  He tilted the cabinet forward and found two surprised cats staring up at him.  They took off for the moment, but we were relieved after I got his call.

Here are Tabby (top) and Pudge in 2007 in the condo in Denver:

Category Six Books

I guess it's been well more than a decade ago--possibly two--when almost any city of any size had at least one gay bookstore.  For Denver it was Category Six Books.  They were first located on Capitol Hill on 10th Street.  Armistead Maupin drew crowds when he showed up for a book signing, most memorable was his signing for Significant Others, his breakout title.  The store was in the first floor of what had likely once been a large house and then, probably, an apartment building after it was cut up.  One guy who initially worked there in the 1980's recommended that I read Maupin's Tales of the City series and handed me the first four volumes, the only four that were then in print.  Eventually, the series ran to nine volumes, but the store had closed long before the final three appeared.  I would acquire Sure of You at Category Six Books' next location, along South Broadway.

At this point, James Dovali had purchased the store from the original owner not long after the move to the South Broadway location.  After my series began to be written, naturally the first owner and James were kind enough to carry the several volumes as they appeared.  And, even more fortunately, I was able to hold several book signings over the years, especially before Christmas when everyone was doing his holiday shopping.  (I say "his" because while Category Six carried current lesbian titles, they rarely sold because the store had few lesbian customers.  Eventually, a lesbian bookstore would open on 13th street, east of Josephine, making the segregation complete.  When I approached the manager of that store to carry my novels since there were prominent lesbian characters, I was flatly dismissed.)

The 1980's were the heyday of gay bookstores around the country.  That would continue into the 1990's.  But before that decade was over, the Internet was beginning to make serious inroads into sales.  James knew that the closing of the store he loved so much was going to occur, he just was not exactly sure when he would be forced to close it.  I knew that the closing would likely be the doom of my series, as well.  Independent book stores of all varieties were also closing.  As my series hit its stride, all over the country gay book stores were shutting down.  Stores that had been in existence for years were forced to face the reality of amazon.com especially and self-terminate.  Whereas I had once been able to send notices of the first volume to so many stores around the nation, I was getting more and more returns of notices sent to smaller towns and cities, and then bigger ones as well, when the subsequent novels were published.  My list of potential stores to carry my books was dwindling fast.

At Category Six Books, I had sold between 300 and 400 copies of all volumes in the series.  James was always very helpful; and the sales helped him, as well.   The seventh volume in the series even has the main characters visit Category Six Books as part of the plot.  

I used to visit the store most Saturday mornings after he'd opened the doors.  Since business was sometimes slow at that hour, we'd chat about everything:  music, book sales, whatever.  He admitted on several occasions that it was the porn section in back that was keeping the store afloat when regular sales began to slow.  Even as we would chat, a few customers would enter, stride through the interior of the store, and take up station in the very back, partitioned to keep the porn magazines separate from the rest of the store.  But, of course, as the Internet broadened, one could get his active porn there rather than just stare at a motionless photo on a page.  

Although he warned them not to, a gay couple badly wanted to own the store.  Despite repeated warnings, they finally bought him out for a tidy sum they really could ill afford, changed so much about the interior of the store that it looked like someone's grandmother's living room, and wasted money on such unnecessary purchases as a new cash register, among other items.  The sale of my books cratered--they were not at all as helpful as James had been.  Old customers who had hung on also seemed to disappear (though many had already abandoned buying books there).  

The other issue was that the original owner had believed that the South Broadway area was going to bloom as a new gay mecca in Denver.  And it appeared at first that it would.  There was a Heaven Sent Me novelty store a block or so away.  A pan-sexual café was a few doors down.  But even some of those places eventually died, and it really never became that gay area everyone would want to visit.  The rent at the original location was going up prohibitively, so he had to move somewhere; and this had seemed as good as any.  But the locale became not an oasis but a desert that was drying up after the relocation.

Unfortunately, for the newest, and last, owners, the landlord was redoing the front of the building a year or so later, which would have further discouraged the few remaining customers from entering the front door.  They simply sold out everything at a massive discount.  I got a call to pick up my remaining books that had always been on the shelves on consignment anyway.  They slipped away in the night and that was the end of a bookstore that had been around for likely more than 20 years.

A few months before they closed, they held a memorial for James Dovali.  He had drifted from one improbable occupation to another after he'd sold the store, but none seemed to suit him.  I had entirely lost touch.  Before he moved on, I had given him a spare carpeted cat tower since he'd acquired a stray he'd named Slim Shady.  This energetic cat that used to live at the bookstore, as well as the carpeted tower, were acquired by an older couple who had known James.  Rootless now with the store he had cherished gone for six months, James died of AIDS.  I saved his obituary from the newspaper for several years, but it may have gotten lost in my move to California.  I liked him, and I missed our morning conversations at the store.  He'd done what he could to push the sales of Rainbow Arc of Fire, and I appreciated that very much.

By the way, the title of the bookstore referred, if I am remembering correctly, to a category of books that were deemed gay, as well as controversial.  It was not a positive description but almost a clinical definition.  The first owner used to say that they probably should have changed the name at some point during its heyday but never got around to it.  Most customers had no idea what the name referred to even when they knew of the store itself.

Besides the gay bookstores closing, gay magazines and newspapers were also ending as the 1990's came to a close.  Gay novels and other titles were also either going mainstream or diminishing in number as major publishing houses were no longer making the kind of money they'd earned in the late 80's and early 90's promoting gay titles.  That's why my books did not get picked up by St. Martin's press, and I was eventually forced to self-publish.  And, of course, so many who likely supported gay stores and books and magazines and other gay-friendly businesses were dying off, of old age and AIDS, until the life-saving drug cocktails became available from 1995 on.  

But while the store still endured, as you can see by the Top Ten book shelf I photographed above, one week my first novel was #2 to Maupin's The Night Listener.  Especially after a signing, I might have two or three books on the Top Ten shelf.  But now that is becoming so many years ago.  

James and I would put out a coffee urn filled with hot cider, cloves and cinnamon, which gave the store a warm aroma, we'd lay out Christmas cookies and other sweet treats, and watch the numbers of customers increase as the days before the giving holiday dwindled to a precious few.  Usually, it was the weekend before Christmas that would be the most busy and I would do a signing both Saturday and Sunday.   

I think we lost something very precious and community-building when the gay bookstores closed.  Frankly, I wouldn't hear about new titles that I might be interested in reading, especially gay biographies and histories that I liked the most.  An owner like James who loved books and loved to read was always a good source for what was worth reading.  But those days are gone now and likely never will return.