It wasn’t all that good of a day, this Independence Day eve, if you will.

Oh, i got a lot of things done, but, as usual, none of them ever quite reached conclusion: lots of loose ends to tie up. Then, it looked like things were turning around. i went to the driving range and once again, thought i might have found some magic solution to consistency in hitting a golf ball, an illusion of magnificent proportions. Still, it felt good.

Then i came home for Maureen and i to tag team on dinner, a grilled steak being my contribution and of course Maureen’s incredible salads (once prompting my father to declare he could be a vegetarian if that was his fare). We tagged team on cleaning up as well, and then we sat down to watch the Padres play the Athletic in Oakland.

In the sixth inning, i gave up, passed the remote to Maureen and walked outside to the sitting area. Of course, even in the first part of July, one does not sit outside in the Southwest corner without a top shirt, which i added. i sat here as the glow of the sunset and the city turned dark and once again, opened up this infernal machine.

i thought about tomorrow and all of the stuff people will do. We will go to the North Island Naval Air Station and play golf with our wonderful friends, Pete and Nancy Toennies. Then we will repair to their home on the island for burgers. It will be a good day, and if we are lucky we will miss the traffic in the morning and return early enough to miss the traffic in the evening. We would prefer not to engage in the throng enhanced craziness some folks call a celebration of independence.

Really?

Independence is a tricky concept. If you are truly independent, you are utterly and uncompromisingly alone.

Some 242 years ago, the folks who escaped the tyranny of autocratic rule and oppression against many beliefs crossed an ocean, and subsequently defied that tyranny to win independence.

For them. Not for the folks who were here before they got here and not for the folks who came after them, regardless of how they got here if they were different from them.

Those folks who were trying to gain their freedom from tyranny had some rather incredible ideas about true independence and equality. Of course, it was for them, not for any others not of their background and ethnicity.

But the idea of equality, freedom, and independence for all was the core of what they founded even if they weren’t completely true to the idea of that concept for all.

It was the idea of complete freedom and equality that formed the best governmental system the world has ever seen before or since.

But we keep trying to fix it. Trying to make it better for…For whom? For us, not them.

You see, all of these folks since practically the beginning of time think they have the unquestionable right idea of how to make it all perfect…for them.

And every one of those ideas about what is right has a common problem. They are exclusionary. Those ideas are about what works best for them. Not everybody. The solutions are exclusionary.

Now, i’m not claiming to have an answer. i guess all of you people who know the answer and excoriate those who disagree are smarter than me. However, your answers for the problems always seem to leave someone out or throw rocks over the wall at all of the bad acts out there who keep you from getting your way and disagree with your solution.

i’m not that smart.

i hope. Oh lord, i hope i’m not exclusionary.

Freedom is freedom. For everyone.

No system, not modification of a system will bring real independence.

What will?

No exclusion. Peace. Lack of hatred and fear. People treating people in their personal relationships as equals, treating them as equals. Wow. What a concept.

And you know what? As imperfect as it was, those folks who declared independence back 242 years ago, then fought for their independence, then won, they had the right idea.

And it’s that idea of independence we should be celebrating. Wait. No, not celebrating with picnics, eating too much bad food, drinking too much and admiring fireworks supposedly representing something that brings noise, destruction, and death, and all sorts of other ways of having fun.

No, we should be celebrating by quiet contemplation of how we can serve those who gave us the chance for independence with their sacrifice and their creation of the idea of true independence and equality. And then we should consider how we, as individuals, not of some political, religious, or other exclusionary grouping, but how we as our individual selves can deal with the folks we encounter as equals and as humans who are equal too us.

Don’t think that will happen.

But tonight outside my house on the coast of the Southwest corner and tomorrow while we are enjoying being with our friends, in the back of all of my thoughts will be thankfulness for my forebears who not only came up with an idea about true independence but fought for it and won. And then i will consider how i can best contribute to the idea of independence and equality for all.

May you have a wonderful Independence Day…and think about it.

i had this pop into my head last night as i was putting the house down for the night. i was tired. As i took my evening pills, this thought popped into my head. i mean it popped in there and i knew it was not going to be there in the morning unless i wrote it down. So i came back to this infernal machine and pounded out the thought, expanded on it a bit. This morning, i smoothed it up a bit till it sort of sounded to me like it should.

i was going to send it to three of my best friends, the three i know to whom i can say pretty damn well what i’m thinking and not be thought of less, even if they don’t exactly agree: Henry Harding, who is my brother from childhood, who i don’t see anywhere near often enough, and who gives me strength and hope while staying grounded; Pete Toennies, my Navy sidekick (or am i his…who cares) who disagrees with me to the point where we can’t agree who disagrees with whom first, but is always there to laugh at the absurdity of it all; and then there is my brother Joe, my best friend, who went to the opposite corner of the country from me (or perhaps i went here after he settled in the Northeast corner), who had a totally different career than mine, i.e. preacher/Navy officer, and who thinks like i do except more sanely. Then i said to myself what the heck. I should have no secrets. Too hard to keep them just like it is hard work if you lie to others or yourself and then try to live by that lie.

So here it is:

he saw it coming, knew it was not going to come out well for him,
but
he just kept right on like nothing was wrong;
i mean
he saw it coming
like an old time steam locomotive, screeching whistle, belching smoke,
barreling out of the fog headed straight for him
while
he kept moving on down the tracks
head on
as if he was going to stop that boiler of metal moving fire with his bare hands,
or
like the herd of bison, roaring, snorting out of the dust they raised
on the plains
while
he just kept on plowing toward them
with his mule and plow;
don’t know why;
he never did know why;
he just kept headed for sure disaster;
perhaps he just thought he was grand enough
to brace himself against that steaming, screaming locomotive
or
to rend asunder that roaring, snorting, thundering bison herd
and
tame them
all by himself;
putting one foot ahead of the other
doggedly moving toward the inexplicable but inevitable
train crash, stampede.
nah;
i think not;
i’m a’thinking
he just had enough faith, enough trust, not enough sense
and
was bullheaded enough
to believe he could somehow get through
and
move on.

There was a side to my father and JB Leftwich not seen by a lot of people. Over the years and with the passing of many of their friends, these two became best buddies. They got involved together in a number of shenanigans.

It began with some joke postcards and letters the two of them exchanged when one of them went on a trip. i don’t know who started it, but i suspect it was Coach Leftwich. On a trip, JB or my father spotted a risqué post card and send it to the other back in Lebanon. Coach would respond with a funny letter with all sorts of false stories like how the police were looking for the guy who sent the postcard.

This letter was the result of my father sending Coach a postcard featuring a huge gorilla. Unfortunately, i do not have copy of that postcard and what fictitious story my father wrote on the backside. But here is Coach’s reply:

i was walking across our cul-de-sac to our neighbor’s house to tend to their dog. It was just before nine.

i was not in a good mood.

Sometimes that hits me, a dark mood more or less out of nowhere. i think one reason is i have done a pretty good job of living life to its fullest, and as the vagaries of older become clear, i realize the “to its fullest” part is fading, if not mostly already gone. Sometimes darkness descends because i feel all the hatred, self-interest, and meanness in the world, and i don’t feel a part of it, out of it. Sometimes, it’s just something that hits for no apparent reason.

Then something happens. Like last night.

As i walked down the street, i wondered why it wasn’t completely dark yet. Yeh, it’s right close to the longest day of the year, but this is the Southwest corner, not further north. Nine at night in the Southwest corner is dark any time of the year. But i looked between the houses and over the mesas. The western horizon had a pink aura. The sun was gone, long gone, but yet it was sending its aloha’s. The glow enchanting. I felt better.

i put the dog to bed for our neighbors who were away on a short vacation. He is an old, sweet dog. i felt guilty leaving him alone.

When i locked up the house and headed back, the ring of pink glow on the horizon was gone. But i looked up and Venus was so bright in the western sky it looked like she was coming out of her socket, headed somewhere, like near us.

i stopped in the middle of the street, looked up and slowly turned around. The heavens were alive with old friends. Altair, part of the constellation Aquila, the eagle carrying Zeus’ thunderbolts, is one i used to shoot with my sextant taking star fixes at twilight and after morning’s first light. Such was the kind of navigation i found connection with the past, not the slick satellite GPS they use today which is simply data – yeah, more accurate, quicker, but boring data.

As i usually do when i walk out of our front gate at night, i found the North Star, Polaris, the brightest star in the Little Dipper (part of Ursa Minor), found by following the two stars forming the outside of the bucket on the Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major), the means of finding one’s way at sea long before sextants.

For some reason when i spot Polaris, i think of the Navajos the Hopi’s, the Pima’s, the Anazai. i don’t know why. i also think of them when i go out in the morning at first light. i know why then: the Navajo’s had the doors to their hogans facing east, so the rising sun would shine on them to begin the day.

Last night, i looked more. The moon was rolling from the south, southwest to eventually go beyond the west horizon . It was two days shy of being a full moon, white, bright.

i continued: Gemini, the twins, Pollux and Castor was almost directly overhead. Close by was Orion, the boastful hunter placed there by Zeus when his wife Hera had the boaster killed by a scorpion.

Of course, i had my “Night Sky” app on my iPhone helping me. i used to recognize many when i was a navigator at sea, but that skill has faded like many others. i was delighted when Alan Hicks introduced me to “Night Sky” in Sonoma. We were sitting in his back yard with a sipping bourbon for a nightcap. We studied the night sky like many old mariners likely do when they are together at night, outside sipping bourbon for a nightcap. Alan pulled out his phone and we went back years to our nights at sea. Thanks, Alan.

Last night, i realized i was reconnecting. The sea, where the night sky is blanketed with stars, the sea where mariners are given “a star to navigate by.” Yes, Mr. Masefield, i too would like to go down to the sea again.

The sea and last night connects me to enormity. People are people, the world is the world, the universe is there. There is hope and quiet and peace. Last night in the dark, my darkness faded and i smiled.

i drove by it the other day, but it was gone. It was a different time, a different world. It was lovely.

We had been one of the first ones in the development. Our first house was the first inhabited on the cul-de-sac, and one of the first overall. It was the first home we owned.

Our home was on the corner of Red Oak Place and J Street, a comfortable 1600 square foot, single-level with a fireplace in the family room. We might still be living there except this wonderful daughter came into our lives four years later. We needed more space with a baby and my retiring (sic), so we moved.

The back slope bordered a farm and J Street did not go further west than our property. It was like living on the edge of two cul-de-sacs. Our development was at the eastern end of the urban spread. About a mile east was a small development from the 1960’s built next to the community college. About three miles dead south was the 100,000 acre Scripps Ranch. That was about it. In high school, my brother-in-law and friends used to bike from Lemon Grove to these high desert, scrub brush hills for squirrels and rabbits. When we moved into that first home, the big ranch still existed and there wasn’t much else.

My dog loved it – i say “my dog” because even though Maureen and i got him while we were in Florida, he quickly became my dog, or to be more accurate, i became his special human. There was no master involved. He was my best friend.

His name was McCaslin after Ike McCaslin, the young boy in Faulkner’s story, “The Bear.” We called him Cass. He weighed between 70 and 75 pounds and was all muscle with a heart of gold. He loved children and practically everyone else. He was technically a yellow lab, but his coat was golden like a golden retriever’s.

He was also a runner, like “if i can get out that door, i’m going to run as far as i can and you can’t catch me until i’m ready…or you drive the mini-van close and open the door.” He also could collapse, like “i don’t really care where you want to go, i am tired; i ain’t going; and i’m gonna lie here, right here, until i’m good and ready or you pick me up and carry me.” This was all right when he was a puppy coming back from the beach at Ponte Vedra, which was about half a mile, but it was a bit more difficult at 75 pounds and around two miles from home on the high desert in eighty-degree weather.

He body surfed at Coronado’s dog beach and would do so until he drowned if i didn’t make him stop. He chased and played with coyotes. He rolled o’possums. He damn near yanked my arm from its socket when a roadrunner darted out of the scrub brush and took off down the trail with Cass, the rope leash and my arm with him, right on its feathery tail. Oh, the stories we can tell. But this wasn’t supposed to be about my buddy.

This was supposed to be about the lost walk.

You see, that place i passed by the other day, now people, cars, streets, and houses upon houses used to be Cass’ and mine. Civilization sort of ran out about a quarter block east of our house until you reached the community college about three miles further east.

When we hit the end of the road literally, i would take the leash off of his collar and we would slowly ascend to the mesa. In less than a couple of minutes, we could feel like we were completely alone. We were. There was all sorts of game. When we reached a canyon filled with acacia we could watch the hawk leaving and returning to his nest: a big, red-tailed hawk.

Not quite a half mile into the mesa, we would turn left and walk down the slope into a deep arroyo. As with most of them, the stream at the bottom was not much more than a trickle, but trees and bushes abounded compared to the high desert scrub of the mesa. We could hear many birds chirping away. It was cooler.

One holiday morning (i think it was Easter but i don’t remember well), Cass and i headed out. As we got to the top of the mesa, there was a large manzanita along the path. It had grown up leaving room underneath the low hanging canopy. i sensed something as i walked by and realized there was a person curled up asleep underneath, a pretty good hiding place from the Border Patrol. i’m sure he or she was an illegal. After all, we were only about five miles, if that, from the border. I called to Cass and put him back on the leash as we walked by. i wondered what kind of conditions, what kind of hope for a better life would drive someone from their home, their family to cross the border in fear of being detected and with no real means of sustenance, walk to somewhere unknown.

We let him alone. After all, it was Easter, and i’m pretty sure Christ would have let him be.

i saw others, some walking brazenly down the path with a cheery “Hola” for me, which i returned. A few asked for food or water, but on my walks i had none.

And Cass and i kept walking. After all, this was more like no-man’s land. It was ours to enjoy but also to share.

On the south side of the mesa, about a mile from our start, there was a concrete slab about eight feet square. i surmised it was likely an out building for the folks who owned the property years before. Back then, there were a few cattle raised here, but not many. Perhaps it was a feeding station.

When my nephew, Tommy Duff, came out with his mother, Cass and i took him for our walk on the mesa. When we reached the slab, i told him it was a way station for cowboy elves, who still roamed the mesa. i made up some stories about them. i don’t know if Tommy really believed me or not. Funniest thing is i began to believe in cowboy elves and hoped they still were roaming the mesa.

But no more, not the other day when i drove by.

The development men came back and built and built and built. There was another development just east of us. J Street jutted further into the mesa. My father would walk up and watch the huge machinery level the land, filling in the arroyos and the valleys, and watch the large water sprayers cross and re-cross the leveled areas, spraying their water to cut down the dust.

It’s all houses, single family detached, town homes, condos, apartments. People. Then they added schools and green parks and watered and watered, but it was desert and the water wasn’t enough and the wildfires came and the new folks were sore afraid. And we moved about two miles as the crow flies where i would watch the fires from my hill and look upon the development.

Cass lived until just past fifteen. We had open space and hiking trails to walk at our new home. We did exactly that until his hips became stiff and his eyes became cloudy and our walks were confined to a short circle around the back of our neighbors’ homes bordering on the open space. Then one night at bedtime, he rose from his prone position to walk in our bedroom with me for the night. He stopped and looked at the one step up to the front entry landing. Then he turned his eyes up to me and told me in no uncertain terms he was ready to go, that his quality of life was no longer worth it.

I cried then. i cried when i put him down. i cried when i buried his ashes in the flagpole at the top of our hill where he could look down on the realm of open space and the once high desert mesa he ruled.

When i walk up to the top of the slope and stand by the flagpole where he lies, i no longer cry. I actually get a feeling of joy knowing he’s there in his place.

But when i occasionally go out of my way to go by our old house and pass what used to be our playground, i feel sad we just keep adding people and water and somehow take away the joy of this high desert land.

i wrote a poem about Cass relating to this tale and it is below:

Cass Done Gone

a part of my soul left today.
the stubborn, ole cuss of a lab was more me than him
i worshiped the way he defied the world
until it no longer mattered.
some people told me
i would know when it was time.
i did not believe until
that silly old dog told me two nights ago and
told me last night it was okay.
he has been my mirror, my dreams, my soul
fifteen years.
i could tell him me like i can tell no other.
i am not ashamed of crying, feeling lost.
my granddaddy would scoff:
it isn’t the way it was back then.
there is an emptiness in my soul.
i am really not sure i’ll recover.
yeh, the pain will go in time;
the emptiness will be covered by events passing by,
but the hole will never be filled,
he was one of a kind to me.
he was me
he is gone.
i will bury his ashes at the top of the hill behind the house.
you can see the beach where he body surfed;
you can see the trails where he ran with abandon,
scaring hell out of coyote, rabbit, possum and birds alike;
if you turn around you can see the home he ruled
welcoming unknown people as if they were long lost friends;
taking on all dogs who foolishly entered his territory:
the doberman, the big shepherd, and all other intruders
stood clear after one encounter .
my feet feel cool now.
For most of his life, he would lie under my desk,
while i read, contemplated or typed with
his head resting on my feet.
the silence is awkward:
even in his sleep, he would grunt, wheeze,
kick the walls, chasing something in his dreams,
my dreams.
run sweet dog again;
pant with delicious tiredness after chasing the blues away;
scan the field with those keen sparkling eyes that
always read joy to me;
catch the next wave to bound into the bubbling surf
shake the misery with the salt wetness
from your coat of gold;
lick the face of someone
to give them unmitigated joy.
goodbye, sweet Cass.
goodbye, you joyful part of my soul.