Major Mojo's Open Salon Blog

Fresh out of Mikes

Thu, 1 Dec 2011 23:12:43 -0500

On Tuesday I lost my BFF, suddenly and unexpectedly. When I wrote my last post here, Requiem for a Friend, I never guessed that I'd be doing this again six weeks later. My two best friends are both named Mike and they both left this world in the space of 45 days.

I was going to write a piece for Mike Dutt, and I expect that I will write a lot about him in the future, but I just don't have the strength right now. Fortunately, my gifted wife wrote an ode for him and she nailed it. If you knew my dear friend, you know how well she captured him here.

Ode to a Friend

^{_{By Susan Heiniger}}

There's an empty space at the meat counter today.

No exuberant inane chatter over chops and cutlets.

No cheerful braying laughter served with the sausage.

There's a stationary bicycle today.

A vacant seat on the bus.

A ski lift that will rise to black diamond heights with one less aging wunderkind.

One less star trek philosopher.

One less wasted-potential-boy.

One less good-hearted soul in the world.

There are friends left behind to cheer on the home team alone today.

And waitresses who will wonder...where did Mr. Wednesday morning brunch special get to?

There is a fatherless boy poised to become a man.

There is a father who hadn't prepared to bury a son.

There is a bowl still burning for you somewhere, my friend.

Godspeed, Mr. Dutt

Oh Silly Me – Requiem for a Friend

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 14:10:40 -0400

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” ~ Edward Abbey

Where do I begin to tell you about a lifetime of memories with my friend, who left us too soon? Some of you may have known him here on Open Solon as Oh Silly Me. He didn't write a lot but he read a lot, and occasionally commented.

It was January of 1969 when I was plucked from the tiny tropical island of Molokai and dropped into the high desert, smack in the middle of Nevada, to a town I'd never heard of before called Tonopah. My first Sunday there, I met Mike at church, before I'd even been to school in Tonopah. He was a skinny redhead two years older than me, with coke-bottle glasses. The day we met was also the day that I took my first motorcycle ride.

Our tiny Mormon branch was too small to be able to afford our own church building so we met at the Eagles Hall, where we Priesthood holders would arrive early on Sunday mornings and clean up the beer cans and cigarette butts left over from their Saturday night debauchery so that we could hold our Sunday meetings there. My Sunday School class was held behind the bar.

That particular Sunday happened to be Fast Sunday. In the LDS church, the faithful skip two meals on Fast Sunday and then donate what they would have spend on those meals to help feed the less fortunate. It is the job of the young church boys between 12 and 16 to visit every member family and collect their 'Fast Offering'. That's how I came to find myself on the back of a Honda Trail 90 as we descended down the side of an abandoned mine dump, riding behind this half-blind redhead I'd just met, and terrified out of my mind.

Over the next three years I would spend so much time on that extra wide luggage rack that doubled as a rear seat, that I thought I'd end up with permanent marks on my thighs from those metal bars. My parents encouraged me to hang out with Mike because he was the only other LDS kid near my age in town. I think both our parents came to regret encouraging our friendship, each blaming the other kid for being a bad influence. Truth be told, we were mutually bad influences.

When Mike and his family moved to Utah three years later, I figured I'd never see him again but a few months later, my family moved to Utah too. Though we were still 200 miles apart, Mike made sure that we stayed in contact and I visited when I could, generally when my family visited relatives near Mike's town of Pleasant Grove.

That would be the first of several times that we might have lost contact were it not for Mike making sure that didn't happen. I could never have guessed back then that we would remain friends right up until the Grim Reaper came calling more than 40 years later. Mike passed away last week after suffering a stroke a few days earlier.

Truth be told, Mike was always a better friend to me than I was to him. That was one of my first thoughts when I heard about his stroke but of course, it was far too late by then to be a better friend.

One of my favorite things about Mike is the way he thought of his friends. He was always bringing me things he'd come across in his daily travels; a newspaper article about something that he knew interested me, a magazine he thought I'd enjoy, or just some silly trinket that reminded him of me or of something I was interested in. Often over the years he would show up on my doorstep on is way to somewhere or other and drop off a book or a poster he'd come across that he thought I'd like. When we went on trips or just on a hike, he took lots of pictures and always got double prints so that he could give a set to me.

Mike introduced me to a lot of things. A voracious reader, many of the best books I've ever read and some of my favorite authors came my way via Mike. Maybe he just told me about a book he thought I'd like or maybe he gave me a copy or loaned me his. I was introduced to Edward Abbey through Mike when he gave me a copy of Desert Solitaire.

Mike loved the high-desert country of Utah and Nevada and I always thought of him as a desert rat, which made Abbey a natural fit for him. He reminded me sometimes of the Hayduke character in Abbey's novel The Monkey Wrench Gang,so much so that Mike was the inspiration for the character of Wally in my novel. I adapted this short story from that novel. Mike knew he was the inspiration for that character and loved it.

For about five years in the late 70's and early 80's I had a little part time business Deejaying dances. I would pull my little trailer of sound equipment all over the State of Utah playing gigs for High Schools and Church groups. Mike went along on almost every gig for no pay. He just enjoyed hanging out for the weekend and was happy to help me lug equipment, set it up and take turns playing deejay. Then we would tear it back down at midnight and either drive most of the night to get home or head to our next gig in some other small rural town. Often we would spend the whole weekend's earnings just having fun for the weekend.

Speaking of music, it was Mike who introduced me to a lot of the music that I still love today. In Tonopah, we couldn't get much music via radio so it was hard to keep up with what was current. The first time I ever heard Abbey Road it was on a reel to reel tape that Mike recorded and gave to me. That was a scenario that repeated itself many times over the years.

I remember stopping by his house in Salt Lake years later and he was excited about a new album he'd just gotten by some group called Supertramp. I didn't really want to listen to it because Supertramp sounded like a disco band to me and I was so done with disco. Too bad for me, he made me listen to Breakfast in America and I was blown away. I'd never heard anything quite like it before and to this day, I think of Mike whenever I hear anything from that album.

In the past few days I've spend a little time looking back over the years. Each memory of our adventures together seems to spark three more that I had nearly forgotten. I'm amazed at how many things we've done together over 42 years: a trip to Disneyland as teens, too many weekend gigs to count, hikes, motorcycle rides, concerts, sporting events, dinners, camping trips and movies. Mike loved movies and always stayed until the very last credit had rolled by on the screen.

Mike was always my best cheerleader. If I was attempting something, whatever it was, he was always encouraging, he always believed I could accomplish it. When I did have success, he was always happy for me with no hint of envy or resentment. I can only hope that I was as supportive to him as he was to me but I don't think I was.

Like everyone else in the world, Mike made mistakes. He made one very big mistake in his life, for which he paid a high price. I've always admired him for owning up to what he did and taking his lumps like a man. I remember one particular conversation in which he told me about the problems he was having, financial and otherwise, in the aftermath. I thought that if I were in his shoes, I'd just run away and try to escape it all but Mike didn't run. He faced his problems and eventually overcame them. I thought that showed a lot of character.

Among the things that Mike introduced me to was the Bob Seger song Beautiful Loser. He said it was about his relationship with me. While I don't think that Mike was a loser, I do understand the parts of the song that he related to.

Mike, old buddy, you've really done it this time. So long. You'll be missed.

The Five Dollar Redemption

Tue, 4 Oct 2011 14:10:23 -0400

Her name was Rhonda and she was a cute little redhead, my classmate in the 7^th grade, in the ultimate BFE, Tonopah, NV. She liked to sit in the row next to me and tease me, constantly asking if I wanted to see a beaver. Of course I said yes and she would open and close her legs quickly, too quickly for me to see anything.

After such teases, she would say, “No really, really this time. You wanna see?” Time and again I fell for it like she was my personal Lucy with a beaver football. When we were supposed to be studying and weren't paying attention to each other, her legs would drift open and I'd get a glimpse of her panties, which had a series of circles and a bulls eye right, well, you know where.

Yeah, Rhonda was a tease and maybe a bit sexualized for a 7^th grader but she did come through on her teases sometimes too. After weeks of promising to show me her “fried eggs” she did eventually take me behind the gymnasium and show me her little boobies, which looked a whole lot tastier to me than eggs, I must say.

All of this sounds like good clean, coming of age and exploring your budding sexuality stuff except for one minor glitch; Rhonda had a boyfriend.

Darrel was a hood, probably the ultimate hood in our little town. He wore a leather biker's jacket full of chains and he chain smoked. We were 13 and he was in the 9^th grade but was probably closer to 17, having been held back in school a couple of years. There wasn't a soul in the Jr. High or High School that wasn't afraid of him.

Not only did Rhonda tease me, she told Hood Darrel about it and he didn't dig it one little bit. He and Rhonda always managed to follow me down the hill after school and he would taunt me. “

Hey Mojo, I hear you been flirting with my ol' lady.” “Hey Mojo, yer gonna get yer ass kicked if you don't stay away from my ol' lady.” “Hey Mojo, yer a pussy.” “Hey Mojo...”

I stuck with my group of friends and walked on, trying to ignore him and dreading the day when he took action on his threats.

My cousin, Denny, came to visit that summer and he spent a couple of months with us. Denny was a couple of years older than me, a few inches taller, and he generally pinned me when we wrestled, which was pretty much all of the time. I was always convinced that I'd get him the next time but I rarely did.

One mid-summer morning Denny and I walked to downtown Tonopah. We were in the local Rexall looking at comic books when in walked Hood Darrel.

“Hey Mojo,” Darrel says to me, “Gimme five buck, both-a youse.”

“Pfft. Kiss my ass.” Denny tells him. Of course, Denny can do that, he doesn't live here. He doesn't have Darrel following him home from school every afternoon threatening to kick his ass. At least those were the rationalizations I gave Denny when he harassed me for eventually giving in and giving Darrel my only five bucks. Denny didn't buy my rationale. He said I was a coward. Easy for him to say...

The following school year I went out for wrestling, at least until I decided that all that diet and exercise stuff was way more effort that I was willing to put out. During the weeks I did practice though, guess who else showed up? That's right, Hood Darrel.

I dreaded the day when I'd have to match up against Darrel. He taunted me with that idea and was generally as menacing toward me as he knew how to be. That lasted for about a week, until Coach said for us to take the mat together. To my surprise, I had Darrel pinned in about 30 seconds flat. I thought maybe I got lucky but we tried again, and again he was pinned almost instantly. Over the next week, until Darrel stopped showing up, I must have pinned him a dozen times and then some.

Turns out that for all his tough, motorcycle jacket with chains and Marlboro Man acting out, Darrel was a puss. This is the guy that I had seen attack a teacher in class (the oldest teacher in the school, which now seems not coincidental) and everyone in the class, myself included, had been afraid to intervene.

Darrel stopped following me home but a few weeks after he quit wrestling I saw him and Rhonda walking down the hill ahead of me. I ran up behind Darrel, shoulder butted him and knocked him down, and demanded my five bucks back. He stood up, reached in his pocket and handed it over without a word and without the tiniest bit of hesitation. I have never again backed away from a bully but I've had a few bullies back down when I've stood up to them.

Soon after that, Rhonda dumped Darrel and he dropped out of school, never to be heard from again, at least not by me.

I'm still a fan of fried eggs.

Those Exquisite Dandelion Blues

Tue, 6 Sep 2011 11:09:40 -0400

When I left the ranch this Labor Day for a leisurely little lunch ride, the front pastures were dotted with bright yellow dandelions. They looked as if Van Gogh had dipped his expressionist brush in pigment of his own making and flung it across the verdant fields. As dry as these waning days of summer have been, those long-legged 'lions are just about all that have grown since the last mowing. That pampered, shallow-rooted Washington grass just doesn't do well during the laconic stretch when our daily dose of rain takes its annual vacation.

Motoring into the yard a few hours later, I was taken aback when I saw those same pastures. I dismounted, removed my helmet and looked around in bewilderment. It seemed that some benevolent stranger had mowed the yard while I was gone, all three acres of it. Upon closer inspection I saw that it had not been mowed but rather, in the course of a few short hours, the brilliant yellow dandelions had turned to seed. Their fuzzy little heads had followed the breeze to wherever summer things go to hide this time of year.

Autumn has always been both my most and my least favorite season and very early autumn days like today produce the first inklings of my underlying melancholy. Wandering the back roads today reminded me of the paradox of the Great Northwest. For over three hundred days a year we endure more dank, dreary weather than it seems our beleaguered souls can take, but on those 58 when the sun does shine, there is no more beautiful place anywhere on this bright blue ball. Truth be told, there are quite a few other days when we get at least a taste of that beauty and for the rest of the time we have coffee. It's not really a bad trade-off.

Today was still plenty lush along the back roads and byways but a bit dry in a few tell-tale fields and the rivers and streams immodestly revealed their rocky bottoms. If you looked close you could see a twinge of yellow, maybe even some orange and red creeping into the leaves on the trees that aren't evergreen, even while cotton glinted in the shafts of sunlight beaming through the branches. Summer, that most precious commodity here in this extreme corner of our country, is waning while winter steals in to lurk in the lazy autumn shade, ready to pounce.

When I was young it seemed that summers lasted forever. We ran barefoot in the cool, soft grass, drank homemade root beer and burned hotdogs on a stick while we talked about what we'd do when we grew up, even though it seemed that day would never come. Dandelions that turned from sunflower yellow into fluffy little mops did not signal anything more than a chance to have some fun blowing their pods to the wind.

To Mrs. Erickson, the old widow next door, dandelions were her enemy. She spent hours on her knees with her little forked tool, meticulously digging them up, one by one, day after day. We were amused by her obsession but too young to understand that purging them from her perfect lawn was what gave her a reason to get up in the morning. It provided a distraction from her loneliness.

Now as I approach my own autumn, it is more difficult to let go of those long, lazy summer afternoons when the sun refuses to set. Lately the years seem to fly past like mile markers on the Interstate and I find myself trying to stay ahead of the meloncholy while the early afternoon shadows grow long.

I have to stop, fill my lungs with warm early-autumn air and remind myself to live in the moment. Tomorrow the dandelions may be gone and dark, dank winter may cause my tired old bones to ache but today - this moment - is exquisite and fleeting.

I can worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

_{** All photos by the author}

I went looking for adventure (and brother did I find it)

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:08:21 -0400

_{* This actually started life as an email to a friend and then I decide it would make an interesting post.}

My weekend ride turned out to be quite an adventure. We had a great ride down to The Dalles, OR. The highlights for me were Lyle Canyon Road and Old Columbia Highway which is just a little detour off I-84 that ends at an overlook with some spectacular views.

_{Now that's what you call a motha-humpin' twistie!}

A group of six of us made the trip, the best part of which was a 30 mile loop up Lyle Canyon and down another canyon whose name I don't recall. Three of us were in the fast group well ahead of the pack in Lyle Canyon and on some of the other twistier roads, John on a Honda Blackbird XX, Leo on a new Connie and me on my Honda Hornet ubermachine.

John and Leo set a blistering pace and I chased them through most of the fast parts. It was an absolute blast; keeping the revs up through the tight twisties, using engine compression to brake into the curves and then pulling hard out the other side.

_{The view from a lookout along The Old Columbia Highway. That's the Columbia River and I-84 near The Dalles, OR}

On the way home on Sunday, we took a detour from the main forest service road over St. Helens up to the Windy Ridge lookout, which is about an hour and a half from my house. We stopped at the bottom of the road for a rest and Randy, who was leading the ride, suggested that one of us faster riders should lead because he was going to take it easy and look at the scenery.

_{That bright yellow Aerostitch riding suit just may be the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Keep reading and you'll find out why.}

John suggested that I lead but before I could, Leo took off in a shot so I chased him up the mountain. He was absolutely flying and I was having a blast in formation right behind him, really getting after it. Almost every curve was marked 20 mph and some were legitimately 20 mph curves but most were not. It was really hard to know which ones to believe but it was pointed out that WSDOT is not in the business of enhancing the experience of speeding motorcyclists.

We burned our way up the hill for about 10 miles when John went around me on an outside curve, which surprised me because I was really hauling. Honestly, I don't check my mirrors much in those situations because no one ever passes me when I'm flying through the twisties, and especially not on an outside curve. Just a couple of minutes later John passed Leo and we all fell into a pretty tight formation at that point.

A few minutes after John passed us, I was on Leo's tail heading into a curve and I entered it just as Leo disappeared from my view. I got a quarter of the way around and saw skid marks and white marks on the road and a cloud of dust rising off to my left where there was a steep embankment.

_{The scene of the crime. I effen hate decreasing radius turns! So does John. ;-(}

Leo had stopped in the middle of the lane in front of me so I pulled to his right and then he moved to the right as well to try and turn around. I very nearly hit him and made full use of both brakes.

It was a totally surreal slow-motion moment that couldn't possibly have lasted more than a second or two while I tried to compute what had happened. On some level I knew, on another I was in denial, refusing to believe that a crash had occurred and on yet another it was exactly what I was expecting, given how John was riding.

I had a horrible feeling that John was at the bottom of the ravine or impaled on one of those freaky burned out and broke trees around the volcano, because neither he nor the bike were anywhere to be seen. It was an easy thousand feet down, once you crossed a dirt access road.

I can't even describe the relief I felt when John popped up in his bright yellow Aerostitch suit. The rider landed in a clump of bushes on the near side of the access road and the bike was buried in the scrub on the far side, 10 feet shy of the drop-off. He was completely uninjured, not so much as a scratch, bruise or even soreness. The bike is a total loss but his riding suit and helmet both did their jobs and they are now both spent.

_{What's left of John's Blackbird XX in its penultimate resting place.}

I took a few hours away from work on Monday to help John and another rider retrieve the bike, which was an adventure all its own. The handlebars were broken off, the front forks were no longer connected to the frame and pieces of the bodywork were all around.

I am very sore from spending over an hour trying to heave the leaking, broken bike into the back of a pickup. How is it that John isn't even a little sore while I didn't crash but I'm sore as hell?

John was quite embarrassed and apologetic. He was being a total squid and he knew it, showing off for his buddy Leo, who he works with but had never ridden with. He said the first thought that entered his head after he crashed was that none of us would want to ride with him again.

It struck me as curious that when the most cautious riders I know go down they get hurt badly while John walked away a little poorer but unscathed. I think it's because they had farther to fall. John's head was only a foot from the pavement when when he exceeded his traction limit. The lesson must be just to ride like hell... right?