Wachovia, WAMU were like large beached whales caught in the outgoing tide.
So bigger whales farther out in the deeper water are taking over their fallen brothers.
But what is the point of creating ever bigger whales, any one of which has the expanded capacity to do even greater harm than the smaller ones they absorbed?
Let's change metaphors now and call these bigger whales in the deeper water ships. How long can these ships continue to take on water before they sink too?
As I have said before, one of the major trends causing the financial calamity - other than fraud and unbridaled greed- is that the investment-bank led destruction of jobs through foreign outsourcing, combined with deliberately open borders to bring in cheap foreign labor, has caused wage stagflation.
But the usury system requires ever inflating wages so that borrowers can keep up with usury payments. Otherwise, the lenders would eventually soak up all the money. That is the role of the "inflation fighting Fed": to continually inflate money supply. It has done so admirably, driving the value of a dollar down to a nickle since 1913. (Don't argue that government causes inflation because it could not do so unless the privately-owned Fed accomodates guvmint and prints the money that the government then borrows, agreeing to pay back interest. Ralistically, the government turned over the money printing operation to the central bank.).
The banking system needs inflation to keep the system running.
But the current wage stagflation has hit that need head on and it was the banks that are caving in, due to the resulting deflation.
The Fed can inflate all it wants and pump that into the lenders - but it does no good. The borrowers wallets have to be inflated and they aren't. so banking appears to be doomed ala 1929 - 1933.
Bank A is not loaning to Bank B because Bank A knows that when Bank B gives the money to Company C to build inventory, Company C's customers can't get money from Bank D to buy the product because of tighter lending standards, so Company C won't be able to pay back to Bank B who will not be able to pay back Bank A.
The situation is so simple to figure out. And impossible to solve without the entire economy shrinking its balance sheets, with all the accompanying pain.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Bail Out Wall Street from the Bottom Up, Not Top Down
Congress should not gallop ahead at full speed to fix in 48 hours a problem that has been building for years.
Paulson and the government until now have favored funneling the money into the top, instead of starting at the bottom.
Amount from $300 to $1,200 were given away as a tax refund. The government giveth.
But I calculate the $700 billion bailout Paulsen requests for Wall Street comes out to $9,333 - before interest - for each of the roughly 75 million tax paying households in the U. S. Of course, the cost for the previous takeovers and bailouts swell the per household tax bill even higher.
Why not have Congress give the $9,333 instead to teach house hold, with the restriction it could be used to only pay down debt or save in a financial institution or one of the identified financial services stocks. People in debt would repay lenders, which would help both. And people not in debt would invest savings or stock in the financial system, helping to build liquidity. Financial systems that can't be helped by this plan because they are too far gone would be allowed to go bankrupt under the cleansing mechanism of Darwinian free market forces.
Congress has to realize the current $700 billion mess is just the latest in a series of crises still to come. That is how it has been playing out all year.
Paulson and the government until now have favored funneling the money into the top, instead of starting at the bottom.
Amount from $300 to $1,200 were given away as a tax refund. The government giveth.
But I calculate the $700 billion bailout Paulsen requests for Wall Street comes out to $9,333 - before interest - for each of the roughly 75 million tax paying households in the U. S. Of course, the cost for the previous takeovers and bailouts swell the per household tax bill even higher.
Why not have Congress give the $9,333 instead to teach house hold, with the restriction it could be used to only pay down debt or save in a financial institution or one of the identified financial services stocks. People in debt would repay lenders, which would help both. And people not in debt would invest savings or stock in the financial system, helping to build liquidity. Financial systems that can't be helped by this plan because they are too far gone would be allowed to go bankrupt under the cleansing mechanism of Darwinian free market forces.
Congress has to realize the current $700 billion mess is just the latest in a series of crises still to come. That is how it has been playing out all year.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Have outsourcing, open borders destroyed the U. S. banking control system?
By Dan Cunningham
It was not just mortgage fraud or Federal Reserve manipulation that brought about the current banking malaise.
There were two big, opposing major trends going on that have apparently doomed the banking system as a control mechanism.
When the Federal Reserve Bank was created it centralized money creation outside the government and in the hands of a few big bankers. The system allows the creation of money out of thin air, to be loaned out to borrowers to buy either assets or services. The control mechanism is that the borrower now has to hustle to pay back the loan, with interest.
A home bought for $200,000 at 7 percent interest will result in a buyer having to pay back almost $479,000 over 30 years. The buyer has to accumulate not only the original $100,000 which he did not have, but an additional $279,000 to cover interest costs. Obviously, if money supply stays stagnant, as interest is skimmed from the money supply and given to the bankers the banks or lenders end up holding more and more money as the overall supply of money available for borrowers to earn shrinks.
The suits at CNBC will tell you that the Fed is an inflation fighter. In reality, one of its major roles is to expand money supply so there will be excess dollars available to flow to the lenders. Thus the system would break down. You can argue that the government expands money supply through deficit spending, but the government is only a conduit. The actual money is created by the Fed, borrowed by the government, which then also owes interest on the money it borrows and thus it needs an inflating money supply so it can pay back its lenders.
We know the Fed is not an inflation fighter because since its creation the value of the dollar has dropped 95 cents. What you could buy for a nickle in 1913 should roughly cost about one dollar now.
As the money supply expands, business charge more for services and goods and as more inflationary dollars flow into the companyhy or governmetn agency,such as a school district, raises are periodically given to workers so they can try to keep up with the interest payments they have to pay, plus for the rising cost of goods and service that they need.
If inflation stops and deflation kicks in, then banks have to shrink their balance sheets and the result is a slowdown or reversal in the creation of money. Business in turn contracts and people lose jobs and if it gets serious, as after 1929, an economic depression can occurr.
So the American system, as financed by usury banking, requires ever rising inflation to stay ahead of the game.
But other globalists, some of them the same people running the banking scheme, began pushing the mantra of a borderless world, free markets, free flow of labor and goods. To accomplish this goal requires that the bottom third of the world be brought up to the middle third, while the top third is brought down to the middle third. But the goals can be more short sighted than that, and not based on any global scheme, but on a very limited, provinicial theme.
Companies in the past 20 years have learned they can skim a bigger profit by outsourcing production to bottom third countries, and then selling those products and services to their customers in the top third. Aided and abetted by the mantra of free markets and capitalism, chanted by both Democratic and Republican limousine leaders, outsourcing kicked in full throttle and millions of high wage jobs have been abolished. At the same time, the out of work formerly well paid workers were now having to compete against a new pool of cheap, foreign labor - both ecuated and uneducated - being brought in to halt wage inflation and to start bring U. S. wages down to lower levels. America was told it has to compete against low cost labor in Mexico and China, as well as low-cost labor from Mexico and Indian being imported into this country. -- all for the goal of keeping wages in check.
It is now apparent that American wages - except in some government and highly manipulated areas like investment banking and trading - are indeed stagnant.
It is this wage stagnation that dooms the American banking usury system, which must have ever rising inflation in wages and costs to make usury work.
The big blow off from the mortgage banking scandal is also a culprit - it was an accelerant that brought slow moving counter trends to a head.
Even as late as early this year suits on CNBC were arguing there is no real mortgage crisis since so few homes were actually involved in subprime deals, according to their calculations. However, the losses from subprime are so huge and so pervasive and so global in scope because of the distribution of the losses, one is led to suspect that the pooled mortgages that were marketed may have included nonexistent loans as well.
The initial response from the Fed to the subprime blowoff has been to pump money not into consumers but simply to lenders, saying failure to do so will cause them to go away. However, because these inflated dollars have been placed in the hands of the lenders, simply to stuff black holes in their ledgers, is not helping the underlying need to keep pumping more money to borrowers so they can keep up with usury.
But remember, there are two major economic currents flowing across the world, and against each other.
The absolute necessity for inflation to keep usury banking in business, and the counter trend of lowering wages to create a global economy with a more level playing field. Inevitiably, as the Chinese become more rich, they will rise more toward an American consumption level - even as outsourcing and open borders moves Americans downward to a lower consumption level.
When I read the Daily Reckoning by Bill Bonner and his staff, who have homes in several countries, travel the globe and live a high life, they opine that the American consumer has to consume less. They do not seem to be themselves. But they are intellectual and economic elities who have indeed out thought the rest of us and accumulated more.
However, their opinion is like billionaire George Soros writing in The Atlantic that now that he has made his piles of money, everyone else should live under communitarianism, his speaking in code for socialism, or modified communism.
In socialism there is less room for banking. The government itself is the control mechanism.
And now that the globalists are seeing their end game in sight, they apparently are willing to let their outsourcing and open border and deflation scenario take out the banks, for they will be replaced by totalitarian SWAT teams and troops and police states.
This must be what they have in mind. Because the outsourcing and open borders, in the long run, is the enemy of inflation, and inflation is the covert agent of the banks.
The banks may think they are just in for a bit of a chill for a while, a slowdown.
But if you look at the big picture, what was the banking scene like in Soviet Russia? And today Russia is on the ascendancy. Russia easily stopped the dual citizen Israeli -Georgian war minister dead in his tracks and kicked him out of South Ossetia before he killed another 120 Russians and added to the $4 billion demolition program accomplished in just a few weeks.
The Soviet symbol was a globe surrounded by sheaths of wheat, as I recall. This is very similar to the symbol for the U. N.
The free market globalists, heirs of the grand poo bahs who controlled the ancient spice trading routes, may or may not have Russia included in their grand scheme. It is now easily observed that the Jewish forces that took over Russia in 1917, then somehow accumulated billion dollar fortunes in a supposedly classless society when the Berlin wall fell, have been routed from their country. Remnants of Judaism remain. These remnants hailed the Russian military rescue of S. Ossetia, calling what the Israeli-
Georgian war minsiter did appalling.
Russia is growing its banking system. Islam has a screwy kind of banking system that does not have interest but has mismatches between what is put out and what is paid back in.
But the U. S. banking system seems to be pausing. The next big scary thought is that credit card debt - which grew 7 percent last year - may now have to, gasp, contract, because deflating wages will make it difficult to keep up with 24 percent interest rates.
About 100 banks are expected to fail in the current crisis, not many out of 6,000. About 2,000 banks failed in the late 80s and early 90s, but the banking system weathered the storm. This was helped by the Fed inflating the money supply to keep the scheme going overall.
But if there is to be a banking recovery ahead, it will have to overcome the fact that globalists have apparently busted wage inflation once and for all. Commodities are inflating, pushed up rising world demand. But Americans will not have inflating wages to help them buy coal and oil and food.
Where does that leave the banks? People will have to spend what increasingly little they have on shelter, food and transportation to and from work. They does not leave much left over for interest.
Something will have to give.
It was not just mortgage fraud or Federal Reserve manipulation that brought about the current banking malaise.
There were two big, opposing major trends going on that have apparently doomed the banking system as a control mechanism.
When the Federal Reserve Bank was created it centralized money creation outside the government and in the hands of a few big bankers. The system allows the creation of money out of thin air, to be loaned out to borrowers to buy either assets or services. The control mechanism is that the borrower now has to hustle to pay back the loan, with interest.
A home bought for $200,000 at 7 percent interest will result in a buyer having to pay back almost $479,000 over 30 years. The buyer has to accumulate not only the original $100,000 which he did not have, but an additional $279,000 to cover interest costs. Obviously, if money supply stays stagnant, as interest is skimmed from the money supply and given to the bankers the banks or lenders end up holding more and more money as the overall supply of money available for borrowers to earn shrinks.
The suits at CNBC will tell you that the Fed is an inflation fighter. In reality, one of its major roles is to expand money supply so there will be excess dollars available to flow to the lenders. Thus the system would break down. You can argue that the government expands money supply through deficit spending, but the government is only a conduit. The actual money is created by the Fed, borrowed by the government, which then also owes interest on the money it borrows and thus it needs an inflating money supply so it can pay back its lenders.
We know the Fed is not an inflation fighter because since its creation the value of the dollar has dropped 95 cents. What you could buy for a nickle in 1913 should roughly cost about one dollar now.
As the money supply expands, business charge more for services and goods and as more inflationary dollars flow into the companyhy or governmetn agency,such as a school district, raises are periodically given to workers so they can try to keep up with the interest payments they have to pay, plus for the rising cost of goods and service that they need.
If inflation stops and deflation kicks in, then banks have to shrink their balance sheets and the result is a slowdown or reversal in the creation of money. Business in turn contracts and people lose jobs and if it gets serious, as after 1929, an economic depression can occurr.
So the American system, as financed by usury banking, requires ever rising inflation to stay ahead of the game.
But other globalists, some of them the same people running the banking scheme, began pushing the mantra of a borderless world, free markets, free flow of labor and goods. To accomplish this goal requires that the bottom third of the world be brought up to the middle third, while the top third is brought down to the middle third. But the goals can be more short sighted than that, and not based on any global scheme, but on a very limited, provinicial theme.
Companies in the past 20 years have learned they can skim a bigger profit by outsourcing production to bottom third countries, and then selling those products and services to their customers in the top third. Aided and abetted by the mantra of free markets and capitalism, chanted by both Democratic and Republican limousine leaders, outsourcing kicked in full throttle and millions of high wage jobs have been abolished. At the same time, the out of work formerly well paid workers were now having to compete against a new pool of cheap, foreign labor - both ecuated and uneducated - being brought in to halt wage inflation and to start bring U. S. wages down to lower levels. America was told it has to compete against low cost labor in Mexico and China, as well as low-cost labor from Mexico and Indian being imported into this country. -- all for the goal of keeping wages in check.
It is now apparent that American wages - except in some government and highly manipulated areas like investment banking and trading - are indeed stagnant.
It is this wage stagnation that dooms the American banking usury system, which must have ever rising inflation in wages and costs to make usury work.
The big blow off from the mortgage banking scandal is also a culprit - it was an accelerant that brought slow moving counter trends to a head.
Even as late as early this year suits on CNBC were arguing there is no real mortgage crisis since so few homes were actually involved in subprime deals, according to their calculations. However, the losses from subprime are so huge and so pervasive and so global in scope because of the distribution of the losses, one is led to suspect that the pooled mortgages that were marketed may have included nonexistent loans as well.
The initial response from the Fed to the subprime blowoff has been to pump money not into consumers but simply to lenders, saying failure to do so will cause them to go away. However, because these inflated dollars have been placed in the hands of the lenders, simply to stuff black holes in their ledgers, is not helping the underlying need to keep pumping more money to borrowers so they can keep up with usury.
But remember, there are two major economic currents flowing across the world, and against each other.
The absolute necessity for inflation to keep usury banking in business, and the counter trend of lowering wages to create a global economy with a more level playing field. Inevitiably, as the Chinese become more rich, they will rise more toward an American consumption level - even as outsourcing and open borders moves Americans downward to a lower consumption level.
When I read the Daily Reckoning by Bill Bonner and his staff, who have homes in several countries, travel the globe and live a high life, they opine that the American consumer has to consume less. They do not seem to be themselves. But they are intellectual and economic elities who have indeed out thought the rest of us and accumulated more.
However, their opinion is like billionaire George Soros writing in The Atlantic that now that he has made his piles of money, everyone else should live under communitarianism, his speaking in code for socialism, or modified communism.
In socialism there is less room for banking. The government itself is the control mechanism.
And now that the globalists are seeing their end game in sight, they apparently are willing to let their outsourcing and open border and deflation scenario take out the banks, for they will be replaced by totalitarian SWAT teams and troops and police states.
This must be what they have in mind. Because the outsourcing and open borders, in the long run, is the enemy of inflation, and inflation is the covert agent of the banks.
The banks may think they are just in for a bit of a chill for a while, a slowdown.
But if you look at the big picture, what was the banking scene like in Soviet Russia? And today Russia is on the ascendancy. Russia easily stopped the dual citizen Israeli -Georgian war minister dead in his tracks and kicked him out of South Ossetia before he killed another 120 Russians and added to the $4 billion demolition program accomplished in just a few weeks.
The Soviet symbol was a globe surrounded by sheaths of wheat, as I recall. This is very similar to the symbol for the U. N.
The free market globalists, heirs of the grand poo bahs who controlled the ancient spice trading routes, may or may not have Russia included in their grand scheme. It is now easily observed that the Jewish forces that took over Russia in 1917, then somehow accumulated billion dollar fortunes in a supposedly classless society when the Berlin wall fell, have been routed from their country. Remnants of Judaism remain. These remnants hailed the Russian military rescue of S. Ossetia, calling what the Israeli-
Georgian war minsiter did appalling.
Russia is growing its banking system. Islam has a screwy kind of banking system that does not have interest but has mismatches between what is put out and what is paid back in.
But the U. S. banking system seems to be pausing. The next big scary thought is that credit card debt - which grew 7 percent last year - may now have to, gasp, contract, because deflating wages will make it difficult to keep up with 24 percent interest rates.
About 100 banks are expected to fail in the current crisis, not many out of 6,000. About 2,000 banks failed in the late 80s and early 90s, but the banking system weathered the storm. This was helped by the Fed inflating the money supply to keep the scheme going overall.
But if there is to be a banking recovery ahead, it will have to overcome the fact that globalists have apparently busted wage inflation once and for all. Commodities are inflating, pushed up rising world demand. But Americans will not have inflating wages to help them buy coal and oil and food.
Where does that leave the banks? People will have to spend what increasingly little they have on shelter, food and transportation to and from work. They does not leave much left over for interest.
Something will have to give.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Construction attracts sticky fingers
Commentary
“Look upon it as the dismantling of the middle class…. we are in the midst of the largest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. It is a transfer from the middle class to the rich and from the middle class to the poor— courtesy of the people in Washington who rewrote the rules.”
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele — “America: What Went Wrong”
The construction industry is one big honey pot. And when you get around honey you get sticky fingers.
McClave saw a glimpse of that when a sub contractor for the campus project allegedly was paid for work it didn’t do. McClave didn’t pay the bill. The contractor did, using the school district’s borrowed construction funds. I assume that’s being worked out.
That’s going to happen in construction. Sometimes things just disappear. Or don’t et built.
For eight years I worked for a home- builder developer and compared to the hurly burly of a big city daily, it was a dream job. Carpeting on the floor. Stained glass windows. A three-story granite former mansion that was a National Historic Site.
That was work life in a staff position at headquarters.
Out on the lines, it was a different picture.
Rolling fields and deserts in Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah and Idaho were being turned into improved lots with water, sewer and roads.
The home-building affiliate of the company was constructing homes and condominiums. (We called homebuilding an affiliate, parallel company because the main enterprise, Terracor, was already $30 million or more under water when I walked in the door. It would stay afloat for almost 10 years because it had the good fortune to be at the end of the line for the sequential bankruptcy of the developers which had been financed by the big real estate investment trusts of the 1970s.)
From just five projects, consider this track record.
The construction manager at Bloomington was fired. He had diverted construction materials from company projects to build his own dream home. Mike was a flamboyant Jewish guy with horn rim glasses and a beautiful blonde wife. He was a lot of fun to be around, always laughing.
But building a personal home for free with diverted labor and materials was like stealing from the company. A no go.
Then there was the mature, distinguished looking construction manager at the Pinery. I met him once for coffee in a restaurant and he extolled about the wonderful benefits and illumination he had received from belonging to a secret society. Looking back, of course, he was hinting I should knock on the door because it might open doors for me.
As it turned out, years later I joined a competing secret society, but my counter culture assessment of the symbolism of that fine group, and they were a fine group of men, left me empty and a little confused. Others with far broader observation skills than me have said that secret societies, though warring among themselves, seem to converge at the very top of the pyramid.
Anyway, I was shocked a few months later to learn that the distinguished gentleman was fired. Something about missing construction materials that had been paid for, or something like that. I do know that the first wave of condos at the Pinery used to lose their snow cover real fast after a storm. That’s because there was no insulation, I was told.
Bailey Creek was a different story. The affable older Mormon couple that managed it had been given permission to build a modest manager’s home on the property. Now, they had a green light to build something — but on a visit the headquarters big bosses were dismayed at how overbuild the home was. A gorgeous and huge stone fire place. Very spacious
The Bailey Creek “home” was so overbuilt it was taken over and used as a resident clubhouse instead. So this disaster was not so much outright theft, just lack of oversight and over exuberance.
But, as an aside, the stable manager’s job was abolished when it was determined a lot of saddles and tack had disappeared on his watch. But that wasn’t technically construction shrinkage.
And it’s not just the employees.
Years ago, old timers remember the early 1980s boom and then bust — which subsequently motivated the Reagan Administration to proclaim that the nation has been built and the country no longer needed as many workers as it did. This was part of their rationale for explaining the tough times that were to ensue.
With this as a background, my nuclear family purchased a very small home in Bennett, to get away from the Big City. I bought the house for something like $42,000 with a fixed rate loan just before interest skyrocketed. Eight months later, jobless, I would sell that house for an $8,000 profit. The buyer wasn’t really buying the home as much as he was the low interest rate. That was legal back then, before they invented accelerated payment due on sale clauses and the like.
But I digress. One night I heard noise and stepped outside my back door and switched on the back porch light.
I was absolutely floored to see what was happening in the construction area behind me. My porch light illuminated dozens of my fellow residents who were greedily snatching up lumber and materials from the unfinished homes and carrying them back to their homes to finish their basements or whatever. It was not unlike a disturbed anthill, there was so much stealing going on.
My faith in humanity fell to earth too that night.
But these stories are pretty tame compared to some of the construction rascals who “think big.”
I remember reading, I’m sure it was in Forbes magazine, about the New Jersey bank that agreed to finance a high-rise residential project on the ocean shore.
This was also back in the go-go ‘70s.
Every few weeks a bank executive would go out and check on the construction progress. He would be given a tour of the building as it rose into the sky.
Then he would go back to the office and approve the release of to pay the construction bills that were rolling in.
When the building was completed, and the money had all been dispersed, the banker then realized the rascals had been showing him the construction activity of another building that someone was actually constructing on an adjoining lot.
The bank had bought and paid for empty air.
You could say that all the labor and materials — absolutely all of it — had been diverted.
Construction is a honey pot.
Get around it and your fingers can get sticky.
“Look upon it as the dismantling of the middle class…. we are in the midst of the largest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history. It is a transfer from the middle class to the rich and from the middle class to the poor— courtesy of the people in Washington who rewrote the rules.”
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele — “America: What Went Wrong”
The construction industry is one big honey pot. And when you get around honey you get sticky fingers.
McClave saw a glimpse of that when a sub contractor for the campus project allegedly was paid for work it didn’t do. McClave didn’t pay the bill. The contractor did, using the school district’s borrowed construction funds. I assume that’s being worked out.
That’s going to happen in construction. Sometimes things just disappear. Or don’t et built.
For eight years I worked for a home- builder developer and compared to the hurly burly of a big city daily, it was a dream job. Carpeting on the floor. Stained glass windows. A three-story granite former mansion that was a National Historic Site.
That was work life in a staff position at headquarters.
Out on the lines, it was a different picture.
Rolling fields and deserts in Colorado, Wisconsin, Utah and Idaho were being turned into improved lots with water, sewer and roads.
The home-building affiliate of the company was constructing homes and condominiums. (We called homebuilding an affiliate, parallel company because the main enterprise, Terracor, was already $30 million or more under water when I walked in the door. It would stay afloat for almost 10 years because it had the good fortune to be at the end of the line for the sequential bankruptcy of the developers which had been financed by the big real estate investment trusts of the 1970s.)
From just five projects, consider this track record.
The construction manager at Bloomington was fired. He had diverted construction materials from company projects to build his own dream home. Mike was a flamboyant Jewish guy with horn rim glasses and a beautiful blonde wife. He was a lot of fun to be around, always laughing.
But building a personal home for free with diverted labor and materials was like stealing from the company. A no go.
Then there was the mature, distinguished looking construction manager at the Pinery. I met him once for coffee in a restaurant and he extolled about the wonderful benefits and illumination he had received from belonging to a secret society. Looking back, of course, he was hinting I should knock on the door because it might open doors for me.
As it turned out, years later I joined a competing secret society, but my counter culture assessment of the symbolism of that fine group, and they were a fine group of men, left me empty and a little confused. Others with far broader observation skills than me have said that secret societies, though warring among themselves, seem to converge at the very top of the pyramid.
Anyway, I was shocked a few months later to learn that the distinguished gentleman was fired. Something about missing construction materials that had been paid for, or something like that. I do know that the first wave of condos at the Pinery used to lose their snow cover real fast after a storm. That’s because there was no insulation, I was told.
Bailey Creek was a different story. The affable older Mormon couple that managed it had been given permission to build a modest manager’s home on the property. Now, they had a green light to build something — but on a visit the headquarters big bosses were dismayed at how overbuild the home was. A gorgeous and huge stone fire place. Very spacious
The Bailey Creek “home” was so overbuilt it was taken over and used as a resident clubhouse instead. So this disaster was not so much outright theft, just lack of oversight and over exuberance.
But, as an aside, the stable manager’s job was abolished when it was determined a lot of saddles and tack had disappeared on his watch. But that wasn’t technically construction shrinkage.
And it’s not just the employees.
Years ago, old timers remember the early 1980s boom and then bust — which subsequently motivated the Reagan Administration to proclaim that the nation has been built and the country no longer needed as many workers as it did. This was part of their rationale for explaining the tough times that were to ensue.
With this as a background, my nuclear family purchased a very small home in Bennett, to get away from the Big City. I bought the house for something like $42,000 with a fixed rate loan just before interest skyrocketed. Eight months later, jobless, I would sell that house for an $8,000 profit. The buyer wasn’t really buying the home as much as he was the low interest rate. That was legal back then, before they invented accelerated payment due on sale clauses and the like.
But I digress. One night I heard noise and stepped outside my back door and switched on the back porch light.
I was absolutely floored to see what was happening in the construction area behind me. My porch light illuminated dozens of my fellow residents who were greedily snatching up lumber and materials from the unfinished homes and carrying them back to their homes to finish their basements or whatever. It was not unlike a disturbed anthill, there was so much stealing going on.
My faith in humanity fell to earth too that night.
But these stories are pretty tame compared to some of the construction rascals who “think big.”
I remember reading, I’m sure it was in Forbes magazine, about the New Jersey bank that agreed to finance a high-rise residential project on the ocean shore.
This was also back in the go-go ‘70s.
Every few weeks a bank executive would go out and check on the construction progress. He would be given a tour of the building as it rose into the sky.
Then he would go back to the office and approve the release of to pay the construction bills that were rolling in.
When the building was completed, and the money had all been dispersed, the banker then realized the rascals had been showing him the construction activity of another building that someone was actually constructing on an adjoining lot.
The bank had bought and paid for empty air.
You could say that all the labor and materials — absolutely all of it — had been diverted.
Construction is a honey pot.
Get around it and your fingers can get sticky.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Mark Udall
Dan’s Journal - commentary
By Dan Cunningham
“Sometimes we forget that art is a spiritual path and that spiritual journeys are characterized by time in the desert.”
Julia Cameron
Tall and senatorial looking, Mark Udall, D – Colo.) Seemed relaxed and at home Saturday afternoon at Bent’s Fort Inn.
A small group had been gathered together by Bent County Democratic Chairman Alex Netherton when Las Animas was added at the last minute to a brief weekend swing through southeastern Colorado.
Netherton apologized for the small turnout, saying he’d only had time to send information to television and radio about the Las Animas stop.
Udall at first joked with his visitors, alluding to the current “family motto: Vote for the Udall nearest you.” That was in reference to his cousin Tom Udall, (D – N. M.) also a five-term Congressman who is running for the U. S. Senate in New Mexico.
At least one attendee was silently thinking about the carpetbagger issue. That question was answered. Mark Udall migrated into Colorado to run successfully for Congress in 1998, but he told the gathering his mother was a Colorado native and that he had returned to her roots.
He said his cousin Tom similarly had returned to his mother’s roots in New Mexico. Mark Udall’s campaign site reveals his father also had brief ties to Colorado. Mark’s father is Morris (Mo) Udall, who played for the Denver Nuggets before serving 30 years as a Congressional representative from Arizona.
His uncle Stewart, Tom’s father, was also a Congressman and was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
With a pedigree like that, Udall understandably brings an aura with him into any Democratic gathering whose members have a feel for the political history of the west.
And he also brings a fairly consistent battle-tested liberal perspective that goes back for generations and influences his contemporary thinking.
A campaign spokeswoman, Taylor West, told the Democrat that Udall has worked with Senator Allard on some issues, such as resolution of the environmental mess at Rocky Flats, which was turned into a wildlife refuge.
Within the Democratic Party, she said Udall’s lone challenger is a northeastern Colorado county chairman who is very cordial with the Udall campaign and who even helped organize an upcoming campaign stop. West said the man has said he is only running to call attention to some issues.
Because Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s Mormon background had played a role in the national debate, she was asked about Mark Udall’s relationship to his Mormon ancestors.
West said Mark’s grandfather had been a devout Mormon, his father had been a lapsed one and Mark has chosen to go another way.
The upcoming Senate race in Colorado should be a donnybrook, and so far the polls indicate a tight race between Udall and Republican front-runner Robert Schaefer, a former Congressman in the local Fourth District.
While Udall clearly resonates with the national mood on extricating from the Iraq conflict, Colorado will be a tough battleground.
Much of the economy around Denver is war-based. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other defense contractors have thousands of very high-wage workers who are directly benefiting from the defense industry and the “global” war against third world Afghanistan and Iraq.
One tenth of the nation’s black budget — perhaps $3 billion or more locally — is reportedly spent now at Buckley Field, which is far more than a sleepy Air National Guard field. A few years ago the Denver Business Journal reported that local economists became confused when the state economy stopped plunging into recession every five years due to the oil and energy cycle. They eventually realized the heavy spending at Buckley was smoothing out Denver’s historic booms and busts.
Under those large golf-ball domes in Aurora are downlinks that can listen to intelligence gathering satellites over both Europe and Asia due to Colorado’s unique location and high altitude.
Likewise, there has been a buildup in eavesdropping by others. Russia’s huge “disinformation?” agency Interfax reportedly has its world headquarters in Denver. It used to be downtown on Market Street in a guarded building that required a visitor to push a buzzer to gain admittance. It has since moved to Parker Road.
Several years ago it was reported in Catholic Family News that Denver was the global headquarters for Interfax and that more than a dozen KGB agents are routinely based there. A few years later I read in the Denver Business Journal an article about a Russian intern at Interfax, but there was no mention of spies. Most journalists show signs of either wanting to live or of just not knowing. Had I known and done the interview, I might not have asked. Or I might have.
At Colorado Springs there has been a massive buildup of military contractors and expansion of the local military bases, prompting the Department of Defense to make a grab for even more territory, the ranchlands surrounding Pinon Canyon.
(For a glimpse into how the defense industry works, I was once at a monthly Denver UFO Society – DUFOS, an apt acronym — when a member pointed to an attendee across the room. He said the man had owned a small ranch on the edge of Colorado Springs and he had lost dozens of cows due to mysterious cattle mutilations. The unlucky stockman sold out and now his former land holding was occupied by a defense contracting facility.)
The Udall campaign has already taken in $4 million to fund a campaign, even as Udall says the nation may not be tolerant of high-spending political battles any more. His campaign has described the low-budget foray into southeastern Colorado last weekend as another tactic to fight this campaign.
But money usually talks the louodest in politics. And really big bucks are flowing into Colorado’s defense industry. The family members, relatives and suppliers and communities feeding off the war time frenzy may perceive a threat to their prosperity, even as prosperity drains away from the areas not economically benefiting from the massive war spending.
In Colorado, for every rancher who knows Pinon Canyon expansion is a threat to his livelihood, there are one or more families who fear an end to the war will threaten their good times.
By Dan Cunningham
“Sometimes we forget that art is a spiritual path and that spiritual journeys are characterized by time in the desert.”
Julia Cameron
Tall and senatorial looking, Mark Udall, D – Colo.) Seemed relaxed and at home Saturday afternoon at Bent’s Fort Inn.
A small group had been gathered together by Bent County Democratic Chairman Alex Netherton when Las Animas was added at the last minute to a brief weekend swing through southeastern Colorado.
Netherton apologized for the small turnout, saying he’d only had time to send information to television and radio about the Las Animas stop.
Udall at first joked with his visitors, alluding to the current “family motto: Vote for the Udall nearest you.” That was in reference to his cousin Tom Udall, (D – N. M.) also a five-term Congressman who is running for the U. S. Senate in New Mexico.
At least one attendee was silently thinking about the carpetbagger issue. That question was answered. Mark Udall migrated into Colorado to run successfully for Congress in 1998, but he told the gathering his mother was a Colorado native and that he had returned to her roots.
He said his cousin Tom similarly had returned to his mother’s roots in New Mexico. Mark Udall’s campaign site reveals his father also had brief ties to Colorado. Mark’s father is Morris (Mo) Udall, who played for the Denver Nuggets before serving 30 years as a Congressional representative from Arizona.
His uncle Stewart, Tom’s father, was also a Congressman and was Secretary of the Interior under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
With a pedigree like that, Udall understandably brings an aura with him into any Democratic gathering whose members have a feel for the political history of the west.
And he also brings a fairly consistent battle-tested liberal perspective that goes back for generations and influences his contemporary thinking.
A campaign spokeswoman, Taylor West, told the Democrat that Udall has worked with Senator Allard on some issues, such as resolution of the environmental mess at Rocky Flats, which was turned into a wildlife refuge.
Within the Democratic Party, she said Udall’s lone challenger is a northeastern Colorado county chairman who is very cordial with the Udall campaign and who even helped organize an upcoming campaign stop. West said the man has said he is only running to call attention to some issues.
Because Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s Mormon background had played a role in the national debate, she was asked about Mark Udall’s relationship to his Mormon ancestors.
West said Mark’s grandfather had been a devout Mormon, his father had been a lapsed one and Mark has chosen to go another way.
The upcoming Senate race in Colorado should be a donnybrook, and so far the polls indicate a tight race between Udall and Republican front-runner Robert Schaefer, a former Congressman in the local Fourth District.
While Udall clearly resonates with the national mood on extricating from the Iraq conflict, Colorado will be a tough battleground.
Much of the economy around Denver is war-based. Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and other defense contractors have thousands of very high-wage workers who are directly benefiting from the defense industry and the “global” war against third world Afghanistan and Iraq.
One tenth of the nation’s black budget — perhaps $3 billion or more locally — is reportedly spent now at Buckley Field, which is far more than a sleepy Air National Guard field. A few years ago the Denver Business Journal reported that local economists became confused when the state economy stopped plunging into recession every five years due to the oil and energy cycle. They eventually realized the heavy spending at Buckley was smoothing out Denver’s historic booms and busts.
Under those large golf-ball domes in Aurora are downlinks that can listen to intelligence gathering satellites over both Europe and Asia due to Colorado’s unique location and high altitude.
Likewise, there has been a buildup in eavesdropping by others. Russia’s huge “disinformation?” agency Interfax reportedly has its world headquarters in Denver. It used to be downtown on Market Street in a guarded building that required a visitor to push a buzzer to gain admittance. It has since moved to Parker Road.
Several years ago it was reported in Catholic Family News that Denver was the global headquarters for Interfax and that more than a dozen KGB agents are routinely based there. A few years later I read in the Denver Business Journal an article about a Russian intern at Interfax, but there was no mention of spies. Most journalists show signs of either wanting to live or of just not knowing. Had I known and done the interview, I might not have asked. Or I might have.
At Colorado Springs there has been a massive buildup of military contractors and expansion of the local military bases, prompting the Department of Defense to make a grab for even more territory, the ranchlands surrounding Pinon Canyon.
(For a glimpse into how the defense industry works, I was once at a monthly Denver UFO Society – DUFOS, an apt acronym — when a member pointed to an attendee across the room. He said the man had owned a small ranch on the edge of Colorado Springs and he had lost dozens of cows due to mysterious cattle mutilations. The unlucky stockman sold out and now his former land holding was occupied by a defense contracting facility.)
The Udall campaign has already taken in $4 million to fund a campaign, even as Udall says the nation may not be tolerant of high-spending political battles any more. His campaign has described the low-budget foray into southeastern Colorado last weekend as another tactic to fight this campaign.
But money usually talks the louodest in politics. And really big bucks are flowing into Colorado’s defense industry. The family members, relatives and suppliers and communities feeding off the war time frenzy may perceive a threat to their prosperity, even as prosperity drains away from the areas not economically benefiting from the massive war spending.
In Colorado, for every rancher who knows Pinon Canyon expansion is a threat to his livelihood, there are one or more families who fear an end to the war will threaten their good times.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Doug Candelaria, Pueblo artist
By Dan Cunningham
PUEBLO – For at least six hours every day, Douglas Candelaria paints scenes of the cowboy and the American West.
All of his hard work has paid off, as he is now a noted local artist who recently concluded an exhibit of his work at the Sangre de Christo Arts Center in Pueblo. His work is also represented at the L.I.W. Cargo Gallery in Colorado Springs.
Candelaria is an accepted and accomplished member of the Pueblo area arts community, members of whom are holding a clearance art sale at Red Raven Arts Studio in the Bessemer District, 1143 S. Evans Ave.
A native of Durango, Candelaria has always been interested in art.
“As far back as I can remember I was drawing on paper. My mom would go shopping and when she would get back she would empty the groceries and give me the paper bags to draw on.
“Ii would copy from the comic books — Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey.”
Candelaria recalls that Fred Harman, who drew the Red Ryder comic strip and books, was from Pagosa Springs near Durango.
He studied art in junior high and high school, but he admits “they really did not teach you anything.”
Candelaria still remembers his art teacher from those long ago days, Alice Bay.
“I was her pet. She knew I loved to draw.”
After graduation he joined the Air Force for four years, where he worked on air target charts used by B-52 pilots on bombing runs. Then he went to work for the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Geologic Survey as a mapmaker.
Away from his work at the Denver Federal Center, Candelaria would teach himself how to draw and paint fine art, using books and videos.
In the 1970s and ‘80s he primarily exhibited his work in the metropolitan Denver area.
In 1994 his first wife, Jean, developed a terminal illness and he retired from the government to care for her until she died in 1997.
He subsequently married Dolores Montoya, formerly of Rocky Ford, and in the year 2000 they moved to Pueblo to live in a smaller town.
Candelaria also began to realize he needed more formal instruction from other successful artists.
“Like one artist said: ‘ you cannot learn everything by yourself. You do not hear of a pilot teaching himself to fly.”
Much of his instruction has been with Tim Dieble of Walsenburg, a nationally known landscape artist.
Dieble has shown Candelaria how to paint landscapes and backgrounds for his Western art so that his art is more correct.
He has also taken classes through Pueblo artist Marty Brens, who operates Art in the Aspens, which brings in noted artists for instruction.
“She has some of the best art teachers in the country,” said Candelaria, noting that the classes are taught in various places in the Rocky Mountains, including his native Durango.
His favorite subject matter, the cowboy and scenes of the west, is a lifelong fascination.
“It never went away…I never was a cowboy or lived on a ranch.”
Candelaria now lives for his art.
“I paint at least six hours a day, every day. I love to paint. That is as simple as I can put it. It is an addiction, actually.”
He never gets “painters block.”
“I have a million ideas. I would have to live 400 years to paint all the ideas I want to paint.”
PUEBLO – For at least six hours every day, Douglas Candelaria paints scenes of the cowboy and the American West.
All of his hard work has paid off, as he is now a noted local artist who recently concluded an exhibit of his work at the Sangre de Christo Arts Center in Pueblo. His work is also represented at the L.I.W. Cargo Gallery in Colorado Springs.
Candelaria is an accepted and accomplished member of the Pueblo area arts community, members of whom are holding a clearance art sale at Red Raven Arts Studio in the Bessemer District, 1143 S. Evans Ave.
A native of Durango, Candelaria has always been interested in art.
“As far back as I can remember I was drawing on paper. My mom would go shopping and when she would get back she would empty the groceries and give me the paper bags to draw on.
“Ii would copy from the comic books — Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey.”
Candelaria recalls that Fred Harman, who drew the Red Ryder comic strip and books, was from Pagosa Springs near Durango.
He studied art in junior high and high school, but he admits “they really did not teach you anything.”
Candelaria still remembers his art teacher from those long ago days, Alice Bay.
“I was her pet. She knew I loved to draw.”
After graduation he joined the Air Force for four years, where he worked on air target charts used by B-52 pilots on bombing runs. Then he went to work for the Bureau of Land Management and the U. S. Geologic Survey as a mapmaker.
Away from his work at the Denver Federal Center, Candelaria would teach himself how to draw and paint fine art, using books and videos.
In the 1970s and ‘80s he primarily exhibited his work in the metropolitan Denver area.
In 1994 his first wife, Jean, developed a terminal illness and he retired from the government to care for her until she died in 1997.
He subsequently married Dolores Montoya, formerly of Rocky Ford, and in the year 2000 they moved to Pueblo to live in a smaller town.
Candelaria also began to realize he needed more formal instruction from other successful artists.
“Like one artist said: ‘ you cannot learn everything by yourself. You do not hear of a pilot teaching himself to fly.”
Much of his instruction has been with Tim Dieble of Walsenburg, a nationally known landscape artist.
Dieble has shown Candelaria how to paint landscapes and backgrounds for his Western art so that his art is more correct.
He has also taken classes through Pueblo artist Marty Brens, who operates Art in the Aspens, which brings in noted artists for instruction.
“She has some of the best art teachers in the country,” said Candelaria, noting that the classes are taught in various places in the Rocky Mountains, including his native Durango.
His favorite subject matter, the cowboy and scenes of the west, is a lifelong fascination.
“It never went away…I never was a cowboy or lived on a ranch.”
Candelaria now lives for his art.
“I paint at least six hours a day, every day. I love to paint. That is as simple as I can put it. It is an addiction, actually.”
He never gets “painters block.”
“I have a million ideas. I would have to live 400 years to paint all the ideas I want to paint.”
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Barbara Busey
By Dan Cunningham
“Art is something I really enjoy. I think it has added to my life,” says Barbara Busey.
Barbara is the current artist on display at Old Trail Gallery in the John W. Rawlings Heritage Center, Sixth Street and Bent Avenue.
Her display of artwork includes the first, tentative drawings she made of a dog, people, a windmill and a house.
“My mother saved them,” she says with a laugh.
Her art has obviously come a long way, judging by her more recent attempts to depict a pioneer home, a small town street and the colorful scenery around Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.
Still, her progress in art was delayed because there was no formal art instruction in Las Animas in the days of her childhood and her teen years.
It wasn’t until she enrolled at Western State College in Gunnison that she took her first formal class. She eventually graduated with a major in education and two minor degrees in both art and English. Her college years had an interruption, though, when she married Ben Millikan of Manzanola while she was a sophomore. He was a Naval pilot and was killed in an accidental plane crash while doing recreational flying with his squadron. His death left behind a widow, and two children.
Barbara returned to Gunnison to finish her degree and embark on a teaching career. She began teaching elementary school, but after a few years were able to teach art to both elementary and high school students.
While teaching in Gunnison she met and then married Larry Busey, of Grand Junction.
“He was in the business department at Western State. He had a little boy, so we had three children to take care of.”
While raising their blended family and working, their lives began to travel down a different path.
Barbara had always been interested in the American Indians and her husband became interested in the culture and the people.
They met a Navajo Indian and together they all opened Two Rivers Trading Post in Gunnison, which offered native art and crafts. The Busey family was happily operating this business on the side until the late 1960s.
“We saw this advertisement for an Indian trading post down near Shiprock, New Mexico. We went down to see it.”
They liked what they saw. Barbara quit her job; Larry quit his job. Their children were out of high school and so the couple moved to Fruitland, N. M.
“The store was established in at least 1886. We do not know for sure how far back it went,” Barbara relates.
“We liked it. We liked the climate. We got along real well with the Navajo. We increased the business quite a bit. About 95 percent of our trade was with the Indians.
Their new trading post venture offered food and dry goods, supplies and hardware.
“We pawned. There was a slaughterhouse out back. We made a lot of friends.”
When her husband Larry died in 1989, her son Paul Millikan ran the business together for another six years until it was sold in 1995.
Barbara moved back to her hometown of Las Animas, where she still had two sisters, though both are now deceased. One was Martha Lowe, the mother of former Bent County Democrat owner Jack Lowe, and Katie Bono.
Today, Paul Milliken has a construction business in Farmington, N. M. His sister, Janice Lloyd, lives in Honolulu where her husband recently retired after serving as a U. S. Marshal. Barbara’s stepson, Tony Busey, lives in New York and works for a large international construction company.
Barbara has one grandchild.
She continued her art education by taking classes when she was in New Mexico. Since returning, she has taken classes at Otero Junior College. Barbara also went on to art trips sponsored by OJC — one was to Italy and the second trip, a longer one of three weeks, took in the British Isles and ended up Paris.
Since moving back to Las Animas, Barbara has also vacationed at the Ghost Ranch, a 22,000-acre spread owned by the Presbyterian Church. The ranch offers visitors the opportunity to stay for one or more weeks while taking classes in art, music or religious studies.
Barbara currently works in watercolor and pastel and her exhibit includes a collage.
“I like to draw. I do not do oil painting any more.”
Locally, Barbara has taught a watercolor class but her own production has slowed because she is quite busy as the art guilt president and as a member of the Pioneer Historical Society.
Her interest in art is wide ranging.
“I like to look at it. I enjoy doing it. I like to read about it. But art is more of a hobby now.”
She confesses she has never entered any serious competition — except for the Eads art show.
Her favorite subject matter includes landscapes, old buildings and flowers.
But looking back on her life as a whole, she sums up:
“It has been interesting, to say the least.”
“Art is something I really enjoy. I think it has added to my life,” says Barbara Busey.
Barbara is the current artist on display at Old Trail Gallery in the John W. Rawlings Heritage Center, Sixth Street and Bent Avenue.
Her display of artwork includes the first, tentative drawings she made of a dog, people, a windmill and a house.
“My mother saved them,” she says with a laugh.
Her art has obviously come a long way, judging by her more recent attempts to depict a pioneer home, a small town street and the colorful scenery around Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.
Still, her progress in art was delayed because there was no formal art instruction in Las Animas in the days of her childhood and her teen years.
It wasn’t until she enrolled at Western State College in Gunnison that she took her first formal class. She eventually graduated with a major in education and two minor degrees in both art and English. Her college years had an interruption, though, when she married Ben Millikan of Manzanola while she was a sophomore. He was a Naval pilot and was killed in an accidental plane crash while doing recreational flying with his squadron. His death left behind a widow, and two children.
Barbara returned to Gunnison to finish her degree and embark on a teaching career. She began teaching elementary school, but after a few years were able to teach art to both elementary and high school students.
While teaching in Gunnison she met and then married Larry Busey, of Grand Junction.
“He was in the business department at Western State. He had a little boy, so we had three children to take care of.”
While raising their blended family and working, their lives began to travel down a different path.
Barbara had always been interested in the American Indians and her husband became interested in the culture and the people.
They met a Navajo Indian and together they all opened Two Rivers Trading Post in Gunnison, which offered native art and crafts. The Busey family was happily operating this business on the side until the late 1960s.
“We saw this advertisement for an Indian trading post down near Shiprock, New Mexico. We went down to see it.”
They liked what they saw. Barbara quit her job; Larry quit his job. Their children were out of high school and so the couple moved to Fruitland, N. M.
“The store was established in at least 1886. We do not know for sure how far back it went,” Barbara relates.
“We liked it. We liked the climate. We got along real well with the Navajo. We increased the business quite a bit. About 95 percent of our trade was with the Indians.
Their new trading post venture offered food and dry goods, supplies and hardware.
“We pawned. There was a slaughterhouse out back. We made a lot of friends.”
When her husband Larry died in 1989, her son Paul Millikan ran the business together for another six years until it was sold in 1995.
Barbara moved back to her hometown of Las Animas, where she still had two sisters, though both are now deceased. One was Martha Lowe, the mother of former Bent County Democrat owner Jack Lowe, and Katie Bono.
Today, Paul Milliken has a construction business in Farmington, N. M. His sister, Janice Lloyd, lives in Honolulu where her husband recently retired after serving as a U. S. Marshal. Barbara’s stepson, Tony Busey, lives in New York and works for a large international construction company.
Barbara has one grandchild.
She continued her art education by taking classes when she was in New Mexico. Since returning, she has taken classes at Otero Junior College. Barbara also went on to art trips sponsored by OJC — one was to Italy and the second trip, a longer one of three weeks, took in the British Isles and ended up Paris.
Since moving back to Las Animas, Barbara has also vacationed at the Ghost Ranch, a 22,000-acre spread owned by the Presbyterian Church. The ranch offers visitors the opportunity to stay for one or more weeks while taking classes in art, music or religious studies.
Barbara currently works in watercolor and pastel and her exhibit includes a collage.
“I like to draw. I do not do oil painting any more.”
Locally, Barbara has taught a watercolor class but her own production has slowed because she is quite busy as the art guilt president and as a member of the Pioneer Historical Society.
Her interest in art is wide ranging.
“I like to look at it. I enjoy doing it. I like to read about it. But art is more of a hobby now.”
She confesses she has never entered any serious competition — except for the Eads art show.
Her favorite subject matter includes landscapes, old buildings and flowers.
But looking back on her life as a whole, she sums up:
“It has been interesting, to say the least.”
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Bud Spurgeon
By DAN CUNNINGHAM
HASTY — Bud Spurgeon was being interviewed when a report of a truck fire caused him to race out of Valley Grocery.
A neighbor’s pickup truck had caught on fire a few blocks away in Hasty, where he lives.
A few weeks later he was out on the road, driving a truck, and would not be back until after Christmas.
Obviously a busy man who is rooted in his community as well as the wider world, Bud has an interesting hobby — creating art from wood, barbed wire and other materials he finds innovative uses for.
Some of his work is on display at Valley Grocery, such as the mockup of the store itself as well as some rural scenes.
On the front wall is a sample of his barbed wire art.
Bud said he took up wood carving “just to use a knife.”
Though his creations are for sale, he does not advertise.
If he did, demand would pick up and he would feel “pressured to produce,” he confessed.
He prefers to express his art as a hobby.
On the day he was contacted, Bud walked into Valley Grocery holding two of his latest creations, baskets made from lariats.
He also has made doghouses, play houses and model barns.
“I have won grand champion at Bent County, Lamar, Holly and Eads,” he said.
Bud also gives a new slant for recycling, because much of the material he uses for his art is picked up at auctions and sales.
Some of his work is for sale at Valley Grocery, otherwise you’ll have to catch up with him.
HASTY — Bud Spurgeon was being interviewed when a report of a truck fire caused him to race out of Valley Grocery.
A neighbor’s pickup truck had caught on fire a few blocks away in Hasty, where he lives.
A few weeks later he was out on the road, driving a truck, and would not be back until after Christmas.
Obviously a busy man who is rooted in his community as well as the wider world, Bud has an interesting hobby — creating art from wood, barbed wire and other materials he finds innovative uses for.
Some of his work is on display at Valley Grocery, such as the mockup of the store itself as well as some rural scenes.
On the front wall is a sample of his barbed wire art.
Bud said he took up wood carving “just to use a knife.”
Though his creations are for sale, he does not advertise.
If he did, demand would pick up and he would feel “pressured to produce,” he confessed.
He prefers to express his art as a hobby.
On the day he was contacted, Bud walked into Valley Grocery holding two of his latest creations, baskets made from lariats.
He also has made doghouses, play houses and model barns.
“I have won grand champion at Bent County, Lamar, Holly and Eads,” he said.
Bud also gives a new slant for recycling, because much of the material he uses for his art is picked up at auctions and sales.
Some of his work is for sale at Valley Grocery, otherwise you’ll have to catch up with him.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Limited Focus
By Daniel K. Cunningham
Artist, journalist, poet
Limited Focus
A UFO
flew on by
flashing lights
in darkened sky.
But I did not see
what there was to see
my eye, trying to cope,
peered through a telescope.
Artist, journalist, poet
Limited Focus
A UFO
flew on by
flashing lights
in darkened sky.
But I did not see
what there was to see
my eye, trying to cope,
peered through a telescope.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Bill & NancyLong
In just the past year, either separately or as a couple, they have been honored by McClave FFA, Las Animas 4-H and the youth chamber of commerce.
With hard work and astute judgment and risk taking, they have prospered in the community, proving the “Acres of Diamonds” tenet that you need not roam to distant lands to find diamonds. You can find prosperity by staying close to your roots.
Their partnership and marriage casts a long shadow too, starting in their senior year of high school, when they became best friends.
But Bill laughingly reveals that his future relationship with Nancy was foreshadowed one day at the gun club as he was setting up clay pigeons for the shooters.
“Three kids came over and told me their sister liked me.”
The sister was Nancy, one of the children of Bill and Bonnie Miller, who lived near the gun club grounds.
While Nancy was a top 10 student and cheerleader, Bill, the son of Jodie and the late Lane Long, “mostly worked.”
Bill says Nancy “worked hard in school and I worked hard at working.
“I played football my freshman year. I worked for farmers in the summer and did not play sports. My father made it clear if I did not do sports I would find some other things to occupy my time.”
When not farming, he worked for Jenkins Motors in the mechanic and body shops and the parts department.
This work ethic traces back to when he was in the seventh and eighth grades.
In those days Las Animas juniors and seniors could study a variety of vocational programs offered by Otero Junior College. Bill studied in the welding program.
After high school Nancy went to work for a local attorney, Oakley Wade, while Bill worked for local farmer Loyde Gardner.
“I had a pretty good job and we were dating so I thought I could go to school (college) later,” Nancy recalls.
Instead of continuing their education, Bill and Nancy married and worked at their local jobs until 1976, when they moved to central Kansas. Bill rented a farm from Nancy’s grandparent. She got a job with the Marion County Attorney and Bill took on two jobs. He farmed during the day, then used his welding skills working the night shift at a trailer manufacturer.
Nancy says they would pass each other in the afternoon, Bill going off to his second job while she was coming home for the day.
In 1978 the Longs returned to Las Animas, where Bill opened a full-time welding and machine shop. Nancy went to work at the VA hospital, one of the then 600 employees there.
Three years later the Longs fortune took a decided turn upside when they bought the local school bus service from Bob and Elva Foulk.
At the time there were 10 bus routes and Nancy quit her job at VA to work with Bill.
“She drove buses, did the books, cleaned buses — whatever had to be done,” Bill said.
As Bill always kept busy, the school buses were put to heavy use in the summer as well.
“We did a lot of work for the Boy Scouts…that’s what we did in the summer.”
The Foulks had also picked up scouts, mostly from the East Coast, at the Denver Airport and transported them to Philmont Ranch, the sprawling Boy Scout adventure camp in New Mexico.
The Longs expanded this operation by also booking side trips for the scouts to other western destinations to extend their Philmont experience.
Bill and Nancy aggressively grew the summer operation.
“We could make as much money in 60 days as we made during the school year,” Bill recalls.
“It got to the point where you had to cross state lines and you needed permits,” Nancy notes.
“It was more difficult to get permits from the state of Colorado than it was the federal government,” Long explains.
The Longs eventually quit the lucrative summer operation when Colorado became too difficult to work with. The operation also took a hit when a bus and a state roadside maintenance vehicle collided.
Bill said the state admitted they were in the wrong, but under state law maintenance vehicles are not liable for damages even when culpable.
So the Longs had to pay for the damages out of their own pocket.
“We would have six to eight buses between Denver and the Cimarron — it was a lot to keep track of and worry about,” Bill recalls.
Not that the Longs didn’t have something else to keep them busy.
About this time Bill was part of a local partnership that wanted to establish a fast food franchise in Las Animas, and the one they decided on was Dairy Queen.
Approved for a franchise, the partnership started work in 1994 — Nancy’s brother Tim did the construction — and they opened just in time for Santa Fe Trail Day.
By 1998 it became apparent that it would be best for one of the partners to take it over entirely.
“We were willing to buy or sell,” Bill notes. In the end, the Longs bought out the partners and they have both managed it since then.
The Dairy Queen is located on the Duckwall’s parking lot. Duckwall’s is in the former Safeway Grocery store, a building that Long purchased when the grocer closed down its local outlet. He leases the store building to Duckwall’s parent Alco, which is planning to vacate the building and establish a larger Alco retail store on north Bent Avenue.
Bill and Nancy like investing in real estate.
“Real estate usually holds its value. In addition it is a source of income that does not take a lot of your time,” Bill adds.
He notes there was a builder who constructed an 8,000-square-foot building with seven rental units that went into foreclosure.
“That was an especially good deal. The mortgage on it was $345,000. We got it for $100,000,” Bill says. He adds that he was surprised there were no other local bidders for the property.
The Longs also purchased an adjoining complex and fixed it up, raising their rental portfolio in Las Animas to 11 units.
He credits two factors for his success.
“Hard work is part of it and using good judgment.”
In 2006 the Longs sold the bus business to the Las Animas school district.
This has freed Bill up to work almost full time on county business.
First elected to the county commission in 2004, he is the current commission chairman, which he treats like a full time job.
“Since we do not have a full time county administrator, I am putting in more time than I was. We do not have the resources for the staff we had three, four years ago,” he said.
Last spring he used his tractor to work alongside Carl Lindauer and Cole Miller over a weekend to get one of the ballparks in condition to open for the season. Last winter, he sometimes drove snowplows to clear streets and driveways.
Bill admits he no longer hunts, fishes or skis.
“I like to go out and do physical work. That is like a hobby.”
Likewise, Nancy was very busy with the three Long children when they were growing up. She was active in the parent-teacher organization and is currently very active in St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
They live in a landmark home on Sixth Street. It was built in 1908 and they are the fourth family to own it.
The Longs plan a one hundredth anniversary party for the home next year.
The three Long children include Lana Gardner, a teacher in Las Animas. She is married to Greg Gardner, whose grandfather Bill once worked for.
Brian, who is in the bee business, recently returned home from California for a short stay before he goes back to help farmers pollinate their crops this winter and spring. His wife is Hannah.
Daughter Erin is married to Mitch Kendrick.
The Longs have four grandchildren.
“We believe in the rural lifestyle and the rural community,” sums up Bill.
“We think rural America is important.”
To that end, he also serves as chairman of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is seeking to build the $300 million water conduit that would bring fresh mountain water to the local communities along the Arkansas River. It was authorized in the original Frying Pan – Arkansas legislation that created a series of dams more than a half century ago.
Bill is still hopeful that the recently canceled coal-fired plant proposed for Bent County by Xcel will eventually be built.
“We will not rely on just wind energy and renewables.”
He also envisions Bent County becoming a transportation – distribution center if the Colorado Department of Transportation realizes its dream of building a rail line that would bypass Denver and move rail freight down to the Las Animas area where a Burlington Northern branch line turns south toward Amarillo.
The rail line could also interface with the under used Highway 50.’
He thinks Bent County would be a logical distribution center with the convergence of rail and highway traffic.
“In the ‘70s only two trains a day went south (from Las Animas). Now there are more than 20.
“Twenty-eight trains a day go through Las Animas.”
While dreams of water and transportation may take a while to realize, Bill and Nancy continue to live out their dreams in Las Animas.
With hard work and astute judgment and risk taking, they have prospered in the community, proving the “Acres of Diamonds” tenet that you need not roam to distant lands to find diamonds. You can find prosperity by staying close to your roots.
Their partnership and marriage casts a long shadow too, starting in their senior year of high school, when they became best friends.
But Bill laughingly reveals that his future relationship with Nancy was foreshadowed one day at the gun club as he was setting up clay pigeons for the shooters.
“Three kids came over and told me their sister liked me.”
The sister was Nancy, one of the children of Bill and Bonnie Miller, who lived near the gun club grounds.
While Nancy was a top 10 student and cheerleader, Bill, the son of Jodie and the late Lane Long, “mostly worked.”
Bill says Nancy “worked hard in school and I worked hard at working.
“I played football my freshman year. I worked for farmers in the summer and did not play sports. My father made it clear if I did not do sports I would find some other things to occupy my time.”
When not farming, he worked for Jenkins Motors in the mechanic and body shops and the parts department.
This work ethic traces back to when he was in the seventh and eighth grades.
In those days Las Animas juniors and seniors could study a variety of vocational programs offered by Otero Junior College. Bill studied in the welding program.
After high school Nancy went to work for a local attorney, Oakley Wade, while Bill worked for local farmer Loyde Gardner.
“I had a pretty good job and we were dating so I thought I could go to school (college) later,” Nancy recalls.
Instead of continuing their education, Bill and Nancy married and worked at their local jobs until 1976, when they moved to central Kansas. Bill rented a farm from Nancy’s grandparent. She got a job with the Marion County Attorney and Bill took on two jobs. He farmed during the day, then used his welding skills working the night shift at a trailer manufacturer.
Nancy says they would pass each other in the afternoon, Bill going off to his second job while she was coming home for the day.
In 1978 the Longs returned to Las Animas, where Bill opened a full-time welding and machine shop. Nancy went to work at the VA hospital, one of the then 600 employees there.
Three years later the Longs fortune took a decided turn upside when they bought the local school bus service from Bob and Elva Foulk.
At the time there were 10 bus routes and Nancy quit her job at VA to work with Bill.
“She drove buses, did the books, cleaned buses — whatever had to be done,” Bill said.
As Bill always kept busy, the school buses were put to heavy use in the summer as well.
“We did a lot of work for the Boy Scouts…that’s what we did in the summer.”
The Foulks had also picked up scouts, mostly from the East Coast, at the Denver Airport and transported them to Philmont Ranch, the sprawling Boy Scout adventure camp in New Mexico.
The Longs expanded this operation by also booking side trips for the scouts to other western destinations to extend their Philmont experience.
Bill and Nancy aggressively grew the summer operation.
“We could make as much money in 60 days as we made during the school year,” Bill recalls.
“It got to the point where you had to cross state lines and you needed permits,” Nancy notes.
“It was more difficult to get permits from the state of Colorado than it was the federal government,” Long explains.
The Longs eventually quit the lucrative summer operation when Colorado became too difficult to work with. The operation also took a hit when a bus and a state roadside maintenance vehicle collided.
Bill said the state admitted they were in the wrong, but under state law maintenance vehicles are not liable for damages even when culpable.
So the Longs had to pay for the damages out of their own pocket.
“We would have six to eight buses between Denver and the Cimarron — it was a lot to keep track of and worry about,” Bill recalls.
Not that the Longs didn’t have something else to keep them busy.
About this time Bill was part of a local partnership that wanted to establish a fast food franchise in Las Animas, and the one they decided on was Dairy Queen.
Approved for a franchise, the partnership started work in 1994 — Nancy’s brother Tim did the construction — and they opened just in time for Santa Fe Trail Day.
By 1998 it became apparent that it would be best for one of the partners to take it over entirely.
“We were willing to buy or sell,” Bill notes. In the end, the Longs bought out the partners and they have both managed it since then.
The Dairy Queen is located on the Duckwall’s parking lot. Duckwall’s is in the former Safeway Grocery store, a building that Long purchased when the grocer closed down its local outlet. He leases the store building to Duckwall’s parent Alco, which is planning to vacate the building and establish a larger Alco retail store on north Bent Avenue.
Bill and Nancy like investing in real estate.
“Real estate usually holds its value. In addition it is a source of income that does not take a lot of your time,” Bill adds.
He notes there was a builder who constructed an 8,000-square-foot building with seven rental units that went into foreclosure.
“That was an especially good deal. The mortgage on it was $345,000. We got it for $100,000,” Bill says. He adds that he was surprised there were no other local bidders for the property.
The Longs also purchased an adjoining complex and fixed it up, raising their rental portfolio in Las Animas to 11 units.
He credits two factors for his success.
“Hard work is part of it and using good judgment.”
In 2006 the Longs sold the bus business to the Las Animas school district.
This has freed Bill up to work almost full time on county business.
First elected to the county commission in 2004, he is the current commission chairman, which he treats like a full time job.
“Since we do not have a full time county administrator, I am putting in more time than I was. We do not have the resources for the staff we had three, four years ago,” he said.
Last spring he used his tractor to work alongside Carl Lindauer and Cole Miller over a weekend to get one of the ballparks in condition to open for the season. Last winter, he sometimes drove snowplows to clear streets and driveways.
Bill admits he no longer hunts, fishes or skis.
“I like to go out and do physical work. That is like a hobby.”
Likewise, Nancy was very busy with the three Long children when they were growing up. She was active in the parent-teacher organization and is currently very active in St. Mary’s Catholic Church.
They live in a landmark home on Sixth Street. It was built in 1908 and they are the fourth family to own it.
The Longs plan a one hundredth anniversary party for the home next year.
The three Long children include Lana Gardner, a teacher in Las Animas. She is married to Greg Gardner, whose grandfather Bill once worked for.
Brian, who is in the bee business, recently returned home from California for a short stay before he goes back to help farmers pollinate their crops this winter and spring. His wife is Hannah.
Daughter Erin is married to Mitch Kendrick.
The Longs have four grandchildren.
“We believe in the rural lifestyle and the rural community,” sums up Bill.
“We think rural America is important.”
To that end, he also serves as chairman of the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District, which is seeking to build the $300 million water conduit that would bring fresh mountain water to the local communities along the Arkansas River. It was authorized in the original Frying Pan – Arkansas legislation that created a series of dams more than a half century ago.
Bill is still hopeful that the recently canceled coal-fired plant proposed for Bent County by Xcel will eventually be built.
“We will not rely on just wind energy and renewables.”
He also envisions Bent County becoming a transportation – distribution center if the Colorado Department of Transportation realizes its dream of building a rail line that would bypass Denver and move rail freight down to the Las Animas area where a Burlington Northern branch line turns south toward Amarillo.
The rail line could also interface with the under used Highway 50.’
He thinks Bent County would be a logical distribution center with the convergence of rail and highway traffic.
“In the ‘70s only two trains a day went south (from Las Animas). Now there are more than 20.
“Twenty-eight trains a day go through Las Animas.”
While dreams of water and transportation may take a while to realize, Bill and Nancy continue to live out their dreams in Las Animas.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Should the Quarter Horse go back to its roots?
Thoroughbreds like Three Bars & Depth Charge and other often nameless sires have had a positive impact on the Quarter Horse breed.
But 50 years ago the Quarter Horse was 14 ' 2 and 1200 pounds, and now it can range from that size to a 17 hand jumper.
Granted, Thoroughbreds themselves come in all shapes and sizes from 14 ' 3 Northern Dancer to 17 hand Lemon Drop Kid.
But a larger question is temperment. The original Quarter Horse raced on Saturday and then carried kids around the yard bare back on Sunday. And these could be stallions.
Should the QH return to its foundation quarter horse roots? Or is a continuing infusion of hot blood, mostly to pacifty the racing crowd, the way to go?I know the issue is always decided by money. I know we need money to survive, I recall when Western Horseman, for example, focused on the horse. Now it is more like an equipment catolog. AQHA runs two publications - reflecting this split personality.
This was also posted on Yahoo answers
But 50 years ago the Quarter Horse was 14 ' 2 and 1200 pounds, and now it can range from that size to a 17 hand jumper.
Granted, Thoroughbreds themselves come in all shapes and sizes from 14 ' 3 Northern Dancer to 17 hand Lemon Drop Kid.
But a larger question is temperment. The original Quarter Horse raced on Saturday and then carried kids around the yard bare back on Sunday. And these could be stallions.
Should the QH return to its foundation quarter horse roots? Or is a continuing infusion of hot blood, mostly to pacifty the racing crowd, the way to go?I know the issue is always decided by money. I know we need money to survive, I recall when Western Horseman, for example, focused on the horse. Now it is more like an equipment catolog. AQHA runs two publications - reflecting this split personality.
This was also posted on Yahoo answers
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
He Wanted To
He Wanted To
He wanted
to paint.
Not a Fence.
A Picture.
A gray-green shore
or a pink petal
poking out from
a landscape breast.
He wanted to.
But never really
got around
to it.
He wanted
to paint.
Not a Fence.
A Picture.
A gray-green shore
or a pink petal
poking out from
a landscape breast.
He wanted to.
But never really
got around
to it.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Away from it all. chapt. 1, 1st draft
Rough beginning of a current novel.
Away from it All
Chapter ONE
Cody threw the empty beer can out the window. He was reaching into the cooler for another Coors when he noticed something seemed to be moving near the two trees about 15 yards from his pickup.
Though he felt a bit groggy from the beers, he felt no fear. But he wondered if someone else was out here.
Clumsily, he opened the pickup door and eased out of the seat.
Overhead, stars seemed to blaze in the clear, Nevada sky. He had gotten out of the truck earlier to admire the Milky Way, something you could not see in Las Vegas, which was over the horizon more than a hundred miles away. Its glow was faintly discernible on the low horizon.
His boot crunched some twigs and brush as it landed heavily on the ground. The sound was amplified by the total silence of the night and seemed to fill the air as much as the stars filled the sky above.
A dark shape was motionless near the trees and Cody seemed to remember seeing a large, dark rock or bush when he had driven to this spot, about 100 feet from the highway and behind a ridge that, together with a rock outcropping on one side and a smoke tree across the way effectively sheltered him from view when the occasional car or truck sped by, headlights briefly flaring the night landscape into focus before fading back to dark.
Nothing was moving but the sudden blazing streak of a shooting star a bit north and to the east. It quickly flickered out after leaving a short trail.
The air was silent, motionless. Warm for much of the day under a cloudless sky, the air had a twinge of cool typical of late April. It felt good on his bare face and arms, which had felt warm in the truck.
He felt the pressure in his groin from the beers he’d already drank, so he stepped farther away toward a shrub.
Looking around, seeing nothing, he unzipped and started to piss.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of relief as the pressure subsided and the shrub received a sprinkling and fertilizing at the same time.
His eyes shut, he did not notice the dark shape move, the same shape that he’d focused on earlier. Then it settled again as part of the nearby landscape.
Cody turned back toward the truck and the door that hung open. Peering back at the nearby landscape, it somehow seemed that the dark shape seemed a little farther away from a nearby bush, but he figured that was because his perspective and angle had changed when he stepped away from the truck and changed his position.
He definitely was alone.
That's ‘s why he was out here. To be alone. To get away from Lana. It was her time of the month again and she had been bitchy as usual the past few days as her mood built up.
Nag, nag. That was all she did lately. He should get a better job. They needed to move on. They were wasting time out here.
At first, Lana had liked this part of the desert. Its wide expansive loneliness had seemed welcoming relief to the hustles and hassles they experienced every day back in Vegas. She was going to paint some artwork they could sell. And his job at the crossroads service station was enough to support their simple life and the cheap trailer they rented.
Cody didn‘t want to say it out loud, but her paintings weren‘t really that good. They were okay, but he did not think he would pay much money for any of them, at least most of them. But occasionally one was real nice, and it invariably ended up on the wall of the trailer. When she got five or six like that, she said, they would go to Reno and see if her friend Mora would show them in her gallery.
He liked Mora. He noted how she smiled broadly at him and would always give him another smile and a quick wink whenever Lana turned away. He wondered what Mora’s deal was anyway. A pretty woman like her, seemingly living without a man in her life. But he knew she seemed normal and was not a woman who preferred other women, because if she had Lana would have said something because she always did whenever she knew of a woman like that.
But Mora was definitely a mystery to Cody and he sat back in the seat and thought about her and the nice little place she had in Reno. Jobs were pretty easy to get around there and if he had a nice place to stay for free, that would be something to think about. He wondered what Mora meant by those smiles and those winks. Was she just being friendly, or flirty, or was it something else?
He pondered all this with a fuzzy mind as he snapped open another beer and took a swallow. He wasn’t enjoying this beer as much. He was getting full. And he wondered if Lana worried about where he was. She could not go to the bar over at Tenney’s because he had the truck. She was probably in bed, either asleep or awake waiting for his return. When he did get there, she would seem to be asleep even if she was awake because he knew she played that game. Though he did not wander off much alone at night, not like he had tonight. Usually they just had supper and then watched tv for a few hours. They did not talk as much as they used to, not as much as when they had first moved here three months ago, after quitting their jobs in Vegas because she wanted to get away from it all for a while. And he had wanted to get away too.
He liked the quiet of the open desert. It reminded him of the open spaces back in western Kansas, where he’d grown up.
Cody gulped down half the beer, then he stopped. He was full of beer. He needed some beer nuts or something else -- but all he had brought was the six-pack of Coors, nestled in ice inside the cooler.
Maybe he should start back.
While his dull, muddled mind mulled what to do, he did not notice the dark shape getting closer to the truck, outside the passenger window of his truck.
He felt very tired, very heavy and weary. Cody wanted to start the truck and start back for home. But his eyes closed and his hand fell away from the key in the ignition.
A few hours later the sky to the east blazed purple and then pink and then yellow as the sun reappeared in its relentless daily sojourn over the desert.
The occasional passing motorist did not spot the tan truck just out of view, behind the ridge that separated the highway from a little open flat spot between an outcropping of rock and smoke tree on the other side of the clearing.
The doors of the pickup were closed and the windows were rolled up as they had been last night.
Two beer cans lay on the ground below the driver’s window. A third partially open can of warm beer rested in the cup holder. Inside the cooler, ice slowly melted into water and three cans of Coors settled toward the bottom at a glacial melting pace.
Where the dark shape had been a few hours earlier there was now nothing. Nothing at all.
And Cody was no where to be seen.
No where.
Away from it All
Chapter ONE
Cody threw the empty beer can out the window. He was reaching into the cooler for another Coors when he noticed something seemed to be moving near the two trees about 15 yards from his pickup.
Though he felt a bit groggy from the beers, he felt no fear. But he wondered if someone else was out here.
Clumsily, he opened the pickup door and eased out of the seat.
Overhead, stars seemed to blaze in the clear, Nevada sky. He had gotten out of the truck earlier to admire the Milky Way, something you could not see in Las Vegas, which was over the horizon more than a hundred miles away. Its glow was faintly discernible on the low horizon.
His boot crunched some twigs and brush as it landed heavily on the ground. The sound was amplified by the total silence of the night and seemed to fill the air as much as the stars filled the sky above.
A dark shape was motionless near the trees and Cody seemed to remember seeing a large, dark rock or bush when he had driven to this spot, about 100 feet from the highway and behind a ridge that, together with a rock outcropping on one side and a smoke tree across the way effectively sheltered him from view when the occasional car or truck sped by, headlights briefly flaring the night landscape into focus before fading back to dark.
Nothing was moving but the sudden blazing streak of a shooting star a bit north and to the east. It quickly flickered out after leaving a short trail.
The air was silent, motionless. Warm for much of the day under a cloudless sky, the air had a twinge of cool typical of late April. It felt good on his bare face and arms, which had felt warm in the truck.
He felt the pressure in his groin from the beers he’d already drank, so he stepped farther away toward a shrub.
Looking around, seeing nothing, he unzipped and started to piss.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed the feeling of relief as the pressure subsided and the shrub received a sprinkling and fertilizing at the same time.
His eyes shut, he did not notice the dark shape move, the same shape that he’d focused on earlier. Then it settled again as part of the nearby landscape.
Cody turned back toward the truck and the door that hung open. Peering back at the nearby landscape, it somehow seemed that the dark shape seemed a little farther away from a nearby bush, but he figured that was because his perspective and angle had changed when he stepped away from the truck and changed his position.
He definitely was alone.
That's ‘s why he was out here. To be alone. To get away from Lana. It was her time of the month again and she had been bitchy as usual the past few days as her mood built up.
Nag, nag. That was all she did lately. He should get a better job. They needed to move on. They were wasting time out here.
At first, Lana had liked this part of the desert. Its wide expansive loneliness had seemed welcoming relief to the hustles and hassles they experienced every day back in Vegas. She was going to paint some artwork they could sell. And his job at the crossroads service station was enough to support their simple life and the cheap trailer they rented.
Cody didn‘t want to say it out loud, but her paintings weren‘t really that good. They were okay, but he did not think he would pay much money for any of them, at least most of them. But occasionally one was real nice, and it invariably ended up on the wall of the trailer. When she got five or six like that, she said, they would go to Reno and see if her friend Mora would show them in her gallery.
He liked Mora. He noted how she smiled broadly at him and would always give him another smile and a quick wink whenever Lana turned away. He wondered what Mora’s deal was anyway. A pretty woman like her, seemingly living without a man in her life. But he knew she seemed normal and was not a woman who preferred other women, because if she had Lana would have said something because she always did whenever she knew of a woman like that.
But Mora was definitely a mystery to Cody and he sat back in the seat and thought about her and the nice little place she had in Reno. Jobs were pretty easy to get around there and if he had a nice place to stay for free, that would be something to think about. He wondered what Mora meant by those smiles and those winks. Was she just being friendly, or flirty, or was it something else?
He pondered all this with a fuzzy mind as he snapped open another beer and took a swallow. He wasn’t enjoying this beer as much. He was getting full. And he wondered if Lana worried about where he was. She could not go to the bar over at Tenney’s because he had the truck. She was probably in bed, either asleep or awake waiting for his return. When he did get there, she would seem to be asleep even if she was awake because he knew she played that game. Though he did not wander off much alone at night, not like he had tonight. Usually they just had supper and then watched tv for a few hours. They did not talk as much as they used to, not as much as when they had first moved here three months ago, after quitting their jobs in Vegas because she wanted to get away from it all for a while. And he had wanted to get away too.
He liked the quiet of the open desert. It reminded him of the open spaces back in western Kansas, where he’d grown up.
Cody gulped down half the beer, then he stopped. He was full of beer. He needed some beer nuts or something else -- but all he had brought was the six-pack of Coors, nestled in ice inside the cooler.
Maybe he should start back.
While his dull, muddled mind mulled what to do, he did not notice the dark shape getting closer to the truck, outside the passenger window of his truck.
He felt very tired, very heavy and weary. Cody wanted to start the truck and start back for home. But his eyes closed and his hand fell away from the key in the ignition.
A few hours later the sky to the east blazed purple and then pink and then yellow as the sun reappeared in its relentless daily sojourn over the desert.
The occasional passing motorist did not spot the tan truck just out of view, behind the ridge that separated the highway from a little open flat spot between an outcropping of rock and smoke tree on the other side of the clearing.
The doors of the pickup were closed and the windows were rolled up as they had been last night.
Two beer cans lay on the ground below the driver’s window. A third partially open can of warm beer rested in the cup holder. Inside the cooler, ice slowly melted into water and three cans of Coors settled toward the bottom at a glacial melting pace.
Where the dark shape had been a few hours earlier there was now nothing. Nothing at all.
And Cody was no where to be seen.
No where.
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