Yost Park or Bust "Breaker breaker big dummy, this is the cotton mouth. We've got ourselves convoy." (a childhood should be filled with horse puckey)

Top of the morning gents,

FETS day dudes. Fuck everything tomorrow's Saturday.
Know what I mean?

I myself have a date way out in time and space:
borough destination beyond the Independence Mine and
the Lucky Shot Trail.

Yes, the coded language is intentional.

Need to know stuff, if you know these land and mile
marks, then you've visited my dumb ass safe house and
petted the patrol dogs: Dopey and Shep. By the grace
of God, and Nolton and Nay did those dogs breathe. The
Chief and 1D25's quick draw kid have shot each and
every dog I've ever owned and fed my hand too.

All you soldiers know of my hideouts. I even did a
basic finance project for Dr. Lindahl on the future
value of money etc, interest compounded on the unpaid
balance, with inputs for inflation (a good thing in
real estate). For simplicity on paper and in theory I
used my simple Willow property note-owner financed
with payments going to the Hubbard's: 10% note, 10K
down, 10 year term.

This is odd: I haven't plugged and chugged a physics
homework assignment in years, nor any Art Music
Theater Appreciation bull crap.

I always fucking figure percentages in my head,
intuitively listen to Master Greenspan's beautifully
descriptive terms like Irrational Exuberance,
Speculative Frenzy, and Froth in the Market.

Only at business school do we use what we learned
every fucking day for the rest of your life.

I even masturbate to CNBC, BBC World News and The
Voice of Russia. Detective Columbo has also been
infected with the finer shows such as Sell This House,
Flip This House, This Old House and Antiques Road Show
making me a widower for an hour each week.

Ain't we real PBS wankers?

Only geeks, dweebs and snobs enjoy Monty Python,
Brit-coms, and Listener supported art fag shows and
beg-a-thon fundraisers. I decant a bottle of Chateau
de Poopoo, incense and candles, and partake in
fascinating discussion and eye altering chief seshes
with me Chinese/Russo descendant, yet Native American
wife.

Hell, these high brow snob shows on PBS are what's
keeping us graying gunslingers learning new and
wonderful ideas, instead of composing curse ridden
prayers effectively promoting the lethal spread of ill
thoughts, bad words and hollow points.

One problem: my aching back. I can't sit in front of
the tellie or in a driver's seat without needing a
chiropractor bigger than me.

Which is what I started writing about: how my dubious
wisdom and bullet-proofed memories serve to teach
other morons beside myself. A wise man learns from his
mistakes, a genius learns from the mistakes of others.


When you see 2 little blond kids sliding down a ravine
whilst still on horseback, think of hip, leg and low
back pain and get a fucking clue.

It wasn't intentional we slide down a hill ass over
tea kettle with a horse crushing cully and me, just
sloppy trail conditions, poorly trained ScandicADHD
children ages 5 and 7 years old.

Despite her giant pregnant gut blocking our view of
her face, Mom still helped us cinch strap and saddle
up her favorite horse Tango, and pack sandwiches for
me and Cully for our all day trail rides and
expeditions throughout the Indian Trails, Pine Ridge,
Maplewood Park, or to Mike Callahan's house a few
blocks behind Maplewood School.

You guys were suck ass losers in the MOM Department.
As our hyperactivity flourished we advanced from
watching her on the sewing machine for 4-H and
typewriter for the Edmonds Herald, to riding horses
while she put clothes on the clothesline and rested
her pregnant burdens suffering more than we could ever
thank her for.

2 blond sids, John and George AKA Karl and Cully,
spent entire summers riding horses or pulling our
wagons powered by 1-goat power engines.

My mom indulged us with pet names after her deceased
uncles and brothers in Scandinavia and Canada: we
found it exciting. Make believe is way cool if yer mom
chimes in and don't poke fun at little boy daydreams
and imagination-laden adventures in the way back of
the Ewing farm. She even insisted we bring all our
goats with us when we went camping in and around Puget
Sound and Hood Canal.

I got scratches and gouges all over my hide when I
went swimming in Hood Canal with my goats. It may look
amusing and quaint in a Nordic pastoral theme, but
goats like to play dunk more than human boys. Me and
Cully ain't got no hooves nor horns, so the saltwater
bleedings really took all the fun outa playful
drownings with animals best for milk or steaks.

No shit, it was like a dog humping yer leg, but with a
playful yet horned and hoofed goat galloping up and
over yer ass with only downwards underwater for
escape. I wasn't laughing after they chased us bare
ass naked back up to my parents, soaking wet and
crying like fucking girls. Yer pets take on new
personalities when ye unleash 'em and let 'em go feral
in the ocean with yer sons.

All animals can out swim humans, learn that from a
dumb ass surrounded by dogs and goats as campground
and cabin patrols.

All animals will use their human masters as bumpers,
brakes and dozer blades whenever practical. Which is
why I still have to stretch and limber up every
fucking day till I kick it in a pine box.

From the years of 1967-1973 Me and Cully enjoyed
summer rainstorms on horseback trail rides within ear
shot of the Green River, Elbe and Bundy Creek. Until
we almost broke all 8 of our legs and 3 heads and
necks.

Both Cully and I were riding Tango through Catfish
Lake and The Indian Trails just below 5-corners
adjacent to Yost Park, cool as shit in the pouring
rain. We rallied all the trails and deep puddles
running Tango as fast and far as he pleased.

Those 2 blond kids weren't actually in charge, just
along for the ride. Horses gallop and leap when THEY
feel it necessary, why fuck with perfection?

Horses also trip, stumble and wipe out with furious
sounds, but no screeching tires or automobile crash
sound effects.

One of the upper trails had a steep drop off where me
and Cully would race Tango the super horse over the
top, hanging on tight while Tango put his flying and
four-wheel drive to work, landing and sliding in a
gallop full speed without a blip on the speedometer.

Rain, mud and unsafe speed rules apply to all of us
used to wheeled transp, unless your a horse, then it's
broady action all over fallen trees and through rain
soaked branches and bushes. Hence why it's called
break-neck speed.

One time we really fucking bit it.

Our super horse lost traction as we flew over the top
of that steep bank. Tango was already sliding as we
tumbled over the steep muddy cliff and on his riders
sliding fast as shit. Me and Cully were ridden by a
horse for a change of skeletal integrity and groinular
structure.

You can really tell when one species absolutely loves
another, cuz the 3 of us carry bonding capabilities
that are still shared with similar little boys, now
with kids of their own: that as their twig bends, so
grew their tree.

You can tell me and Cully were basically permanently
attached to that horse, and Tango did amazing things
in order to protect his precious fair haired cargo.
He'd stomped vicious dogs for us and chased mean older
kids that bullied and pounded on us too, we just aimed
Tango, then punched it.

On that miserably sloppy and wonderful day almost 40
years ago Tango rode two blond kids all the way down
the embankment crushing them at the bottom. As we
crested the peak, Tango fucking bit it royal, flipping
and sliding on his side, kicking his legs skyward in
counter balance pressing the air outa his 2 little
buddies. We slid all the way down backwards and
sideways, using me and Cully as brakes and adhoc dozer
blades. He fucked us up.

I awoke to Cully crying and yelling as he recovered
the air that was knocked out of him and Tango coated
in mud nudging and pushing Cully around in the water.

That poor horse was one worried unit, hyperventilating
and wheezing spit on us as we cried and walked broken
all the way home with a sullen and bleeding horse a
few paces behind, reins dragging untended in the mud.

Both our right legs were bum, our little spinal discs
were herniated and bulging and my hip was outa whack
half way through third grade.

My mom couldn't make sense out of us while she tended
to us with Band-Aids and hugs, but no chiropractor nor
x-rays. Both of told differing lies, yet zero mention
of our 'cowboy racing.' Mom would've jerked our 3rd
grade riders license had she seen us racing Tango at
full gallop through ponds and over downed trees.

The cliff jump woulda meant Death, so it never
happened and my morning stretches and calisthenics are
from 'other accidents' like 'falling down' in an
Estonian jail cell.

Tango was truly upset for the rest of the day,
standing in the rain by the back door of the that
decrepit farmhouse on 200th street, bleeding, soaked
and saddled. When mom or dad tried to remove his
saddle and reins he booked out of reach yelping in
pain only returning to check up on the busted up
little guys clinging to their dicks and parents.

Dad didn't have to ask us, he knew. Ya see, my dad
also grew up on a farm with a favorite horse too. And,
as you'd expect, he too awakes crippled and hobbled
from each and every glorious yet heart breaking
character building injury.

Except he was without a mom, and reminded us often.

His mum was cross generational bunkmates with Rachel
Craig at Ferndale or Firdale in North Seattle, sucking
mucous and iron lung bong rips sans any combustible
hydrocarbons and foamy beverages: TB Ward from hell.

When you see my Mom, sit with her over good coffee and
merlot and tell her about me and cully's longstanding
lie. She'd prefer to hear from you anyways, her boys
break lots of her nice things, which includes Volvos,
horses, hearts and antiques.

My irrational fear is that she herself might break if
either John or George fessed up to 'cowboy racing' a
truly wonderful horse over steep cliffs better'n any
TV show or western. She don't know anything about the
6-month stay at state expense on yonder former Soviet
soil, moms needn't concern themselves with criminal
class offspring.

Me bunnik promised to clear the slate of all that
crap, only if me mum and Eskimo wife outlive your
author on drugs.

This evening, right before you phone yer mums, take
note of the God awful pain and suffering she endured
the day all you naked and bald gunslingers arrived
here with me in my cat box and starting searching the
world over for heroes, heroines and friends angelic.

Un-winged friends, yer fucking right: but not unarmed.

This morning, I gotta really limber up. I got a date
with my past, way up Hatcher Pass Highway. A mere
hunnert miles away on the odometer, but a million
miles away from the smoking section of this cat box I
staked off in yer mind.

Phone yer mums you pussies. She's no crazier than you
bastards, just older and non-masculine, pity.

I've got 2 Eskimo grandchildren, things have change in
pert near half a century. It's us that are the
impudent bitches, good mothering is supposed to hurt
all of us. She's merely sharing her pain with ye: via
the back of her hand, her tears and our knowing she
still worries about us.

My mom's easy to find. Head to the way back of the cat
box, past that beat old farmhouse. She's in back
hurriedly removing fresh laundry from the clothesline
before the downpour, worried sick when her favorite
horse will arrive: with or without her broken boys.


Karl.