I love the old science fiction movies from the ‘50’s and ‘60’s. It was when I grew up and there is no argument that some of the best Sci-Fi movies ever made came from then. Conversely some of the worst Sci-Fi movies ever made also came from the same era, which gave rise to Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Frank Zappa also weighed in on the some of the movies created then with his song “Cheepnis”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VBb2pCAnZE
If you so desire, follow the link and you’ll get some insight into my past as well!

So last week on a day off I settled in to watch “War of the Worlds,” the original from 1953 with Gene Barry. It was great to see, it’s been years since I’ve watched it. So when I got up the next morning I was quite surprised to see this guy across the street, staring at our house, I was pretty sure that he had arrived from some other planet during the night. I think his name is Clawd…..





Once I got brave enough to venture out though, I was pretty sure that he came in this, it must have been dropped off somewhere by the mother ship.



I'm going to be keeping a close eye on the sky, I don't know if more of them will be arriving or not. Summer sure is strange in the desert...

Happy July 4th!

We just finished celebrating the 4th of July not with quite as big of a bang as the folks in San Diego, but a great day none the less. We’re still enjoying some time off. It’s rare that my wife and I get two days off together, let alone a holiday, so we’re making the most of it. My wife’s niece is in town with us and enjoying not only the holiday, but our unseasonably cool weather.

Yesterday started off with a neighborhood parade, complete with horses, pygmy ponies, dogs, golf carts, motorcycles, bikes, ATV’s, a multitude of families and a Bald Eagle. Kid’s had their bikes decorated, adults had their horses decorated and some guys were passing out free flavored water. It’s the small things like this that help me remember that the U.S is still a great country.

Going through the list of what makes this such a great country brings me to this morning, and the Sci-Fi channel. Our movie line up started with Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus, followed by Mega - Python Vs. Gatoroid, next there was Mega Piranha (Vs. no one, just a big, mean fish) and topping off the days scientific explosion was Piranha - Conda! Unfortunately I wasn’t able to watch all 8 hours of this, but thanks to a DVR I have access to them. This trumps the old days when I would set the VCR and end up with 8 hours of the TV guide.

What also gives me hope for the future was seeing that both Debbie Gibson and Tiffany have been able to make career comebacks from the Mall concert days of the ‘80’s, and gain the success they deserve as multi-talented entertainers. It also makes me think that I do have a real shot at being a successful screen-writer.

The afternoon was spent BBQ’ing, pool time and rocking out to classic American Rock and Roll: the Beach Boys, Bob Seeger, Grand Funk Railroad, the Eagles , Dick Dale, and of course the King, Elvis.

To top off the night we blew off our fireworks (see San Diego and YouTube), which is really very interesting. Arizona is about as dry as anyplace can be and still sustain human life. A couple of years ago our state legislators legalized certain fireworks. No bombs or flying explosives or anything dangerous like that. But, we can purchase various types of Roman Candles,smoke bombs and fireball generating missiles. To counteract our elected officials every city in the state has banned the use of fireworks. We can buy them at the grocery store, which I find very convenient, but we can’t use them, legally. We used them, and I’m not in jail today, so again, it’s great to live in a free country! It really is….Happy Independence Day!

Story Tellers

We camp often to relax. Camping is a great way to unwind, it also gives us time together and it disconnects us from all of the technological marvels that can become strings. Imagine if you can, complete absentia from, cell phones, lap tops, I pads, Blackberries, GPS and e readers, voice mail, answering machines and social media! It’s a slice of heaven.


Now I’m not against technology at all, in fact I, like most of us enjoy the benefits of it, but it is great to take a step away from it for a while.


It’s hard to beat a day sitting under a tree reading, reading a book with paper pages. I’ve struggled with getting an ereader of sorts, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had it “in the cart” and not been able to press the button. I’ve tried to justify buying one with various rationalizations; the house won’t be cluttered with books, I won’t need a separate bag to carry them in when traveling, they’re cheaper to download than buy. But, I’m still haunting the used bookstores, which are getting harder to find also.


There is one concession I make to electronic communications while camping, and it has become not only a ritual, but you could almost say an obsession, Prairie Home Companion. When I’m home, I can (using technology) listen to it at my convenience by downloading it. When we are camping it is a different story.


I get the radio out, warmed up and tuned in. Wherever we go I check ahead of time so see what station, and time it is on. I’ve been fooled a couple of times, and as The Who say, “We won’t get fooled again.” Once the radio is in place, I also place a can, or glass bottle if I can find one, of Coke, in ice. It’s got to be extremely cold to really be enjoyed and plastic bottles just don’t cut it.


Next, I pull up a chair, hush the camp and turn on the radio. When the familiar opening strains announce the beginning of the show I sit back, open my soda, take a long pull, and relax. I love listening to stories and I’m surprised that there aren’t more story tellers like Garrison Keilor around.


I hope to be a story teller someday.

Winter Solitude

Without a doubt one of the best channels ever launched on TV is the Weather Channel. I love the weather and that can be a challenge living in the desert. Our forecast for about 350 days a year is “sunny, warm and clear,” kind of grim for a weather junkie. So it was with great delight when a cold front was moving through, promising us clouds and rain here, and snow in the mountains.

I eagerly tracked the system, checking weather television, weather radio and internet. With a day off in the near future my wife and struck a plan for the winter storm. We were going to drive north to the Mogollon Rim (home of the rarely sighted Mogollon Monster) and enjoy a day in the snow.

Expedition day arrived, sunny, warm and clear in the desert, but it didn’t slow us down. We had packed our snow gear and clothing the previous night and hit the road to adventure. Driving north I became a little concerned with the weather, you guessed it, sunny, warm and clear, the promised desert storm and rain hadn’t materialized. As a matter of record not even the clouds had made an appearance. We stopped in Payson for sustenance and struck out on the final drive, elevation change from 5,000 feet to the top of the Rim at about 7,500 feet.

Even at this point our drive was still a matter of concern; the best we saw was patchy snow in some shaded spots. Rounding the last curve on 260 we were rewarded: as soon as we hit the top there was snow everywhere!

Parking at the entrance to Willow Springs Lake we geared up and struck out. It’s been years since I’ve hiked in snow. Growing up in Chicago I was in the Boy Scouts, in a troop that did year round campouts. Winter campouts were scheduled at places that had cabins. As I got a little older, my friend Bob and I elected to shun the cabins and camp in the snow. We had it down to an art, being able to keep warm in Midwest winters, before the miracle fabrics and gear of today.

We could hear the snow crunching beneath our boots, the wind whipping swirls of snow into phantom patterns, a crystal blue sky and not another soul in sight. Sometimes we were on top of the snow, sometimes it was to our knees. After about 40 minutes we made it to the lake.

Windswept, white, deserted and cold, the only thing we forgot was to bring a thermos of hot chocolate to enjoy once we arrived. Next time for sure. We enjoyed the quiet, cold, beauty and solitude, but alas, had to turn back and return to the desert that day.

Three cheers for weather!

Winter has arrived, but that means something different to us desert dwellers than it does to the rest of the country. For us it’s temperatures in the high 50’s during the day, dipping to the low 40’s and high 30’s at night. In due course we will get colder, there are mornings with frost and ice and occasionally snow will fall on the mountains outside of town. Years ago when I lived in Cave Creek it snowed and stuck a few times, but that isn’t something that we worry about too often.

Christmas has come and gone, and the New Year is on the way. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Some years are better out of the way than others, and this was one that is good to have nearly finished. If you are in the right frame of mind you could say it was a year of “challenges,” or, you could say it sucked, it’s a matter of perception. I’ll leave you to your own devices with that one.

So to wrap up the year I’m waiting for the guys to come and pump out our septic tank. It’s not quite a holiday tradition, but could be if it keeps on going. We had an interesting Thanksgiving a few years ago along similar lines.

I know it’s been quite a while since I’ve done any writing, however, I’m back in the saddle again!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Sabbatical Ends

In the words of Jimmy Buffet, “Man, it’s been quite a summer….,” and it has. Not a reason in the world to go into details, but I’m grateful this one is over. Fall has arrived, the autumn solstice has come and we are in the gradual slide into winter. We can look forward to shorter days as well as longer and cooler nights, and our daytime highs are dropping down to the low 100’s, which means the summer hiatus is over. Bears and other mammals go into hibernation in the winter, out here in the desert we go into that mode in the summer.

We took a trip up north a couple of weeks ago, to the Mogollon Rim, or, as it is called in Arizona, just the Rim. Some of you may remember Zane Grey, an author that was writing in the early 1900’s. He had a cabin up there and one of his books, “Under the Tonto Rim,” was written while he was there. I’m fortunate enough to have a first edition of it, published in 1926, so this copy of the book is 85 years old.

I have a small collection of old books like that, some of them are Arizona specific, as well as some Ernie Pyle books, some early UFO books written in the early ‘50s, and a smattering of others.

But I digress, the rim is at an altitude of 7,200 feet, so the weather up there is a drastic change from down here (1,000 feet). Daytime temps were in high 70’s, while at night it was dropping down into the high 40’s. Chilly enough to fire up some heat in the morning. We had a couple of small rain storms, and even a few claps of thunder.

Generally summertime in the desert is monsoon time, when there is a change in the airflow. Damp warm air comes up from the Gulf of Mexico, and meets cool air from the Rockies, with the result being incredible thunderstorms, with lightning displays that can’t be matched. Key word here is generally. This year we were the recipients of some of the largest dust storms we’ve ever had. Our biggest one was measured at 50 miles wide, and over 10,000 feet high…that’s a whole lotta dust!

It’s good to be getting back in the groove…happy fall everyone and I’m getting back to regular writing again!

A different perspective

I’ve been thinking about taking up fly fishing again, which will probably come as a surprise to anyone reading this, or anyone who knows me. I haven’t fished in a long time, but in the distant past I was quite the fisherman. Not always successful in terms of catching fish, but successful in the fact that it was a way to be outside me outside and having fun.

When we lived in Glenwood, a suburb outside of Chicago, there were a couple of places that were close enough to ride my bike to for fishing. There is a place called Izaak Walton Park, which was a pretty cool place. In the park there was a Scout Camp, (Black Bear Lodge), baseball diamonds, trails and a series of small lakes. It was nothing to hop on the blue Stingray, pedal over to the park and spend some time fishing for crappie and bluegill.

About five or six miles away was a forest preserve park named Wampum Lake. Getting to Wampum Lake was much more of a journey, if there wasn’t a parent around to drive. It involved some riding through Thornwood, which for some reason was always kind of a spooky place. It seemed deserted most of the time, kind of Stephen Kingish, if you know what I mean. You also had to go past the Thornton Quarry, a huge excavation that seemed to fit right in the general unease of the place.

Wampum Lake was where I learned to fly fish. That’s not quite true, I learned a lot about fly fishing in the back seat of the car, reading a magazine I grabbed somewhere on vacation. It was a special fly fishing issue, and I devoured it. Some how I saved up enough money to by a Heddon Rod, reel, line, and a boxful of flies, and hit the back yard to practice. Practicing fly casting is easier when there aren’t a couple of cats in the yard; they took great interest in this particular sport. None the less, after some time the basic techniques were mastered.

After some practice I was ready to hit the lake. Dad took me to Wampum Lake where I carefully rigged my equipment and headed to the shore. Looking around to make sure there was no one behind me (the back cast is a large part of fly fishing), I took a deep breath and began casting. Practice paid off, and I was able to get the fly out towards some weeds. A few casts later and I had my first strike.

There is nothing like the feeling of a sunfish hitting a fly, on a light action rod. This fish probably came in at about five or six inches, but to me it felt like a massive trout! Now I didn’t go on to be a master fly fisherman. I did learn just a little bit more to appreciate being outside and relaxing.

I think I’ll take up fly fishing again.