THIS TIME POP WAS TRANSFERRED as far west as you can get and still be in Texas: El Paso. Or El Paso del Norte ("The Pass To The North," as the early 'Mesicans'' called it...). It might as well have been to another state - even another world - for any similarity this part of Texas bears to the rest of Texas is purely imaginary. Texas is really a whole lot of disparate "ecozones" I guess they call them nowadays - sort of melded into a "whole" by a mystique, is all.

Something like that.

In later years, Pop used to say his family "Had lived border to border and coast to coast. In Texas!" LOL!

Now El Paso is nothing if not Mes'ican - so what we need most here is a little Mex music to get us going. Of course, "midi's" are the only thing I know that you can post here in this present format and I scoured far and wide to "lift" the best for you! Here is a medley of Mexican tunes - including the ever-popular "Adelita" - Song of the Revolution (which was not all that long before our time there...and fresh in many minds yet on both sides of the Border) and the ever-popular El Rancho Grande - a hit tune I think it was in 1934, and my Dad used to give the little Mex "yip!" at just the right time when they sang it ...LOL!... and I remember this still...) Enjoy, then, as you read further.

EL PASO IS LIKE THE SURFACE OF THE MOON. (We were to sojourn there two whole years and it never even rained once the whole time!). We rented a Mex-Tex hacienda-type home at 930 Kern Blvd. (Somehow, I always seem to recall addresses...). We were not far from the flank of Mt. Franklin... a sun-baked, cactus-covered ridge which dominates the region. Our house had adobe (probably cement mix to look like the real mud-and-straw stuff) walls. It was laid out in a sort of angular- cornered "U" or surround, everywhere one-room-wide, enclosing a private patio. Across the open end of the patio "U" was, I seem to remember, a grid-like lattice or "wall" of large, open timberwork, with a gate, and screening oleander bushes maintaining the privacy. Down one side of the patio along the building itself, ran a covered walkway; the other side had no overhang - and French doors that opened direct to individual rooms. The roof was flat and gravelled (you could walk on it - if Pop did not catch you!). It was surrounded by knee-high parapet (i.e. the roof was about three feet lower than the upper edges of the exterior house walls). So you could kneel down behind them I suppose and shoot at the banditos as they swarmed over nightly from Juarez Ciuadad across the border. LOL!

WE OFTEN HEARD SHOOTING matter-of-fact, from over that way at night - no joke! - but never had to "take to the housetops" in mortal defense of our lives. Outside the patio at one end of our house (see left - a picture taken in Winter of 2009, in fact - perhaps some 75 years (!) since I last knew shelter within those hacienda walls...), a crude wood ladder gave access to this roof - an enticement to the child in any of us at any age - but access to which was strictly forbidden by Pop - who true to his origins elsewhere, worried about "causing leaks" (in a land where it never rains! LOL!).

(One notable exception: the day our family and many neighboring kids swarmed up the ladder - like ancient Anasazi when the Athabaskans were in their fields far below.. LOL!) and this was the occasion of an overflight by the "Graf Zeppelin" - Hitler's challenge to the Decadent West - which floated by aloft as we all craned our necks and ogled... Notable were the Swastikas on her tail fins and the Swastika banners displayed outside the "cabin" slung below... Check it all out at Graf Zeppelin.

Seen it all in my time, By Cracky!

A big feathery, pink stand of Desert Willows ran along the neighbor's adjoining adobe wall by the driveway. My constant and unguarded intrusions into this attractive pink jungle resulted (always) in innumerable bee stings from the honeybees which frequented it. Tennyson's Nature "...red in tooth and claw" was ever my favorite teacher: I remember standing stoic-like once and watching a bee which had just stung me with his you-only-get-one-chance stinger, trying to walk away while the fast-stuck dart in my arm helped pull his guts out. ("Creative Design", right?)

LOG BEAM ENDS protruded from the ceiling levels inside to the exterior of the walls. From an end of one in the patio courtyard hung pendant a huge bunch of dried red peppers... The day we moved in, Mom admonished us "...not to touch the peppers...". Which was really all Ceily and I needed to so-touch the minute Mom was busy elsewhere. Soon someone rubbed an eye - someone else licked a finger - our howls rent the air, as is said... Sigh.

The floors were tiled (azuelos -I remember that one). I never learned to "speak Mex" - no self-respecting Texan of that era spoke Mex, though the Tex-Mex lingua franca down that way is near ubiquitous. But my Spanish vocabulary was as limited then as now. Regrettably. We had an endless series of Mexican cooks and housemaids. The endlessness being occasioned by the habit of 'Manana' - which meant that though they said they "would be back" when they left each night (the Law - ours! the U.S.'s! - in those days was that all non-nationals had to be back across the border by sundown), they often failed to show again for days on end. Drove Mom nuts in trying to run her household!

One fairly "steady" was big, old, fat Elena' Ramon (her full name meant "Queen of the Lemons" -which entertained my Dad mightily, his grasp of the palaver being the best in the family). Mostly I remember her entering the dining room with the dinner plates aloft in each hand, having to squeeze sideways through the doorway with many a heave and grunt - which never failed to elicit a subdued snicker from me and under-table kicks from Ceily and a glare from Mom. On hot days though you could go into the kitchen and Elena' would give you a glass of cool 'aqua.' (Plain old water was almost a treat in Texas back then - which must sound strange indeed to the sugared softdrink generation now in the saddle...). After which she would flap her big old apron front at you and advance menacingly, saying "Vamoose! Vamoose, muchachos!" - by which means we were given to understand that "her" kitchen was not the place for idlers and children...

Bernhardt Saar lived in the house just beyond the Desert Willow thicket. Ours was a scrappy relationship - he was about my age. Mostly, I remember one day, Bernhardt having "bested me" at some upsmanship or another, I was beating a hasty retreat homeward when he picked up and lofted a dried prickly pear blade lying to hand - said missile catching me square in the buttocks. (“Buh-tocks” as Forrest Gump was won’t to call them in the much later movie… LOL!) Trousers down around my ankles and bent over the foot of the bed, I had to endure an hours long double indignity (or so it seemed to me then) of Mom's lecture on deportment in general, and Spine Extraction 101 (with tweezers!)...

Ahhh - Life's Lessons Learned: is it not written somewhere that "God has many ways to humble a man?" And He starts early-on it would seem...

THERE WERE OTHER PLAYMATES... A ragtag neighborhood "gang" was dominated by an older girl, one of the "Conklins" or something like that, who lived down the street. She rivaled a Pirate Corsair in her ability to conceive secret gatherings, raids and expeditions upon the spot - all guaranteed to bring down parental wrath and disapproval (always postmortem). One of my favorite ventures was when "Conklin" -who knew the way geographically down dry draws and up narrow alleys - far beyond the ken of the rest of us at this age - led us to the outskirts near the "Smelter" - a vast smoking monster plant not too far off it seems - where noxious fumes and equally noxious products, I presume, issued forth daily. But near the Smelter and down in a dusty draw was a dirt bank where you could dig out big, finger-long, glassy crystals of some kind. Everyone called them 'quartz' - but my later knowledge of mineralogy suggests to me that considering the locale, and the likely desert formations roundabout - I bet they were gypsum - maybe even Calcite or "Iceland Spar". Whatever. But that Old Earth harbored many a secret in her bowels that parents and others knew not, was borne steadily in upon me...

Much of our "play" in this dry, sandy, hot land consisted of shinnying up and over endless rock and adobe walls that criss-crossed the backyards and lawns. The result was that the fronts of our assorted playsuits, "play clothes", indeed anything at all worn outdoors, soon was reduced to raggedy, scraped and torn "fronts" - to the despair of Mothers generally. Once my Grandfather back in Colorado sent expensive all-leather jackets to my sister and me. And once my sister put hers on and went out to play with the gang for the afternoon. About twenty wall-climbings later, the leather front was reduced to largely shreds and strings...

Wow! Did she catch it when Mom saw her...! (We don't want to go there...!)

And so at last I began school!

The school, nameless after all these years, lay right alongside the trolley tracks where they shot out over a wide, dry arroyo leading ultimately away to May-he-co way beyond over on the other side.. (It was on these trolleys that the hordes of Mesicans had to entrain nightly back to Juarez). And let it be further recorded in these unknown annals, that - 'S God's Truth! - that beside each motorman's foot on those Texas trollies of yesteryear, was an extra pedal - which when stomped, opened a gaping hatch out upon the very tracks down below - and was for the express purpose of expectoration of spent snuff quids...- as said motormen saw fit to dispense.

A whole 'nuther country (leastaways back then it was...).

But school...

THE PLAYGROUND was a vast, flat expanse covered with mild rock grit about the size of Grape-Nuts, guaranteed to grind away flesh from skinned knees, elbows and the like in "playground falls" clear down to the bone. I was assigned to Mrs. Turkentine's First Grade Class. (Kindergarten was not in vogue back then: when you "grew up" you went first to school to first grade, then serially those grades that followed, then you left home, then you got a job, then you got married - there was no "easing into" (or 'skipping') any of these rites of passage along the way. It was one prolonged coldwater bath...).

You know what we all called her, too: (Mizz Turpentine! Giggle! Giggle!)

Sigh.

But Mrs. Turkentine taught me to read!

Nothing before (there wan't much) nor since (a great deal), has ever proven such a gift! I surely hope she resides with whatever Saints as were her "persuasion" here below.

And she made me a party to this accomplishment!

We had done the drill of "See Spot. See Spot run. Spot is a dog. See Spot bark bow-wow! Etc. etc." till we were mere parroting automatons - sitting on our tiny chairs in a semicircle around towering Mrs. Turkentine on her "big person's" chair in the middle of the circle.

AND THEN SHE DID IT! She sprang something different on us: she would not "tell" us one day what the next "word" in the series was. Bummer! I stared and stared at this undecipherable icon: no meaning could I extract. I went up later to her desk at head of the classroom and whined and pleaded if she "...would tell the word to me, please - Mrs. Turkentine!. Please!"

But she just smiled back at me - kinda Mona Lisa like as I think back on it - and said,

"No, Bernard. I will not tell you what that word is. Never again! You know enough now to figure out what that word is yourself. Go back to your seat!"

I did so, and sat sulking therein. Then I had an epiphany! Maybe the only one I shall ever know - but it was a pip! I looked at that word... and I saw that that word was "white." Just like that! No warning! No Old Testament anchorite on his stylite ever knew greater wonder! With my lips I whispered it to myself: "wh-ite".

Spot might be Spot, alright - but some of him was "white." It said so right there in front of me on the page of my reader: "Wh-h-h-ITE!"

A DAM BROKE THAT DAY - a watershed crossed. I was never the same after. Blame Mrs. Turkentine, my long ago El Paso First Grade Teacher.

And wonder of wonders, I also had a friend courtesy of First Grade, too. His name was Julius. He sat next to me on his little chair. He had a burrhead haircut to start out in Life (as I now sport one with which to end it). He wore striped seersucker pants and a little puffed up shirt. (So far in old age, I have managed to eschew these...).

And once a fly, bent on bettering himself with higher education, buzzed round our semicircle of chairs and with a grasp so quick you would not believe, Julius snatched that fly right out of the air - on the wing! - and then he swallowed him! I saw it all: I am ready to swear to it even yet!

I said, " Julius! What did you do?"

He was Cool this one. "Cool" before anyone knew what "Cool" was.

He just looked back at me and said "I swallowed that fly"...and then he paused and added... " And I just pee'd!"

And when Julius stood up shortly thereafter, to recite for Mrs. Tukentine whatever, his chair was wringing wet and so was the seat of his pants!

I tell you - from that day forward, Julius was my hero! I had never met anyone like this! Julius wrote the rules as he went along! Could such things be? First Grade was an eye-opener for me! You betcha! I wish him well wherever he has got off to. Ships that pass in the night and he never knew what an influence he worked on me...

Of the Outer World, there was still not too much influence... Pop often had to "entertain" visiting potentates from the home offices back in Chicago and New York. The bullfights in Juarez were perennial favorites, of course. And there was a race track there with a hole in the roof of the bleachers, put there by a solitary howitzer shell once when the Mesicans were going to "take El Paso back" and a battery wheeled out of Ft. Bliss and lobbed a round over into the race track and the whole Mesican army went home. The hole in the roof went unrepaired, of course... Manana'! You can check out this esoteric and little-known bit of American history at Racetrack.

Sigh.

The bane of Pop's life were "skips," you see. Time-sales deals where the buyers paid down, and then disappeared with their cars into the unknown. And so Finance Managers were supposed to pursue them all over the Lonestar and May-he-co to bring them to justice. I remember him laughing at table one night ... the Home Office back East had wired him that a certain "skip" was thought to be heading his way. Said "skip" was a sailor, and thus known to frequent "...waterfront bars and saloons." Thus, would Pop please check out same along the Rio Grande? LOL!

Most times the Rio Bravo del Norte (as it is known on the south side) hardly ever got more than ankle-deep at El Paso, and could be waded at leisure, or ridden across on bicycles (a favorite). "Waterfront" saloons were few and far between...

Sigh.

BIG TREATS were family dinners "across the border." Pop would pack us all into his (company car!) Buick (we always went first class) and we would drive "over the bridge" into a wonderland of ill-lit streets, chickens, and peons slumped against buildings - everyone seemingly dressed in dirty white pajamas - tequila bottles in left hands, limes gripped in right, and a rim of salt to lick along the thumb and forefinger of same. It was lick - swallow - and suck (the lime). In that order. Then pause, doze, and repeat...

Then we would pull up in front of "El Manuto's" ( I hope I spelled that right...). A family style restaurant. We would go in and be ceremoniously seated. Valued Norte Americanos, you see. And soon we would be tucking into the enchiladas, the frijoles, the chile reanos, the tamales, huevas rancheros, tortillas - and for the elders - Cerviza - Dos Equis maybe or equivalent. Sundays there was Chicken Mole' ! Every meal ended with a pecan praline.

Benito's namesake city beat Tijuana (which I was to know decades later) hands down. Take it from one who has eaten there....

A few times Pop took us out to Ft. Bliss - then the last surviving Cavalry outpost in the U.S. Army. (If I recall rightly, the last Cavalry charge of mounted U.S. Troops ever, before this glorious arm of the Service rode forever into the sunset, was an ill-conceived move by combined U.S. (Bliss) troopers and Phillipine (volunteers?) against overwhelming Jap forces on Bataan in the early days of the War...?) On Sundays, the mounted troops put on a splendid "trooping of the colors" for civilian visitors and watchers. They wheeled and galloped in massed formation with never a break in stride. The artillery units pulled light field pieces and of course, their mule trains packed mountain howitzers. Best of all, however, they played polo! And all could come and watch. Their polo teams and achievements were legion. (Many years later when I "got into horses" I assembled an authentic U.S. Cavalryman's outfit - complete to "real" McClellan saddle with the Troop designation still visible stamped into it (!), Civil War dragoon's sword - the works! - and rode same in the bucolic suburban woods and lanes of Southern New England - to the consternation (I know) of my "horse-person" daughter and occasional bemused neighbors as well. More anon...)

Now and then we would have a "picnic," an old-time, pastime that my family much enjoyed. But there was no equivalent in all this burning land to Oak Park's shady groves, water holes - and cow chips! (Grin!). Mom would pack a lunch in an old wicker basket and we would set off in the Buick for White Sands, across the State Line in nearby New Mexico. Miles and miles of glistening snow-white gypsum sand with here and there a Lord's Candlestick cactus poking through to punctuate the weird solitude. We spread our blanket I just know, on perhaps the very spot where decades later the world's first atom bomb ushered in the fearsome era in which we all still live! (We will have occasion much later to refer to this specific bomb blast again - and how some fused sand - "trinitite" - from this very burst came once into my hands and whether (or no) some grains therefrom became lost in my young daughter's crib... but we must not get ahead in our story here).

AND ONCE WE STAYED OVERNIGHT AT CARLSBAD CAVERNS. My first experience with caves and instrumental I know in furthering my latent geological interests... My maternal grandparents made the scene for that trip, and to Nana fell the task of "minding Ceily" on the seven mile (!) trip through the caves. "Minding her" (since she was one concentrated ball of energy and flailing arms and legs), consisted of walking her in a sort of dog-harness affair, at the end of which tether she could always be seen - leaning forward at about a 45-degree angle and pulling like a sled dog. As older and wiser brother, I disdained this "show" immensely and walked otherwise in the group as far from Ceily as I could... Late that afternoon as we emerged from the cavern and were regrouping before the entrance, my grandfather leaned over and asked, "Well, how did you like the walk, Ceily?" To which this super-charged human dynamo looked up and asked back, "WHAT walk, Grandaddy?"

Sigh.

Jim White (the legend holds), an old cowpoke who was riding his horse near sundown across these wastes many years before, is generally credited with "discovering" the caverns. He observed what he thought was a rising column of black smoke far off in the failing light. Since nothing for miles around could support any such "fire" as this suggested, he rode on over to see what it was - and became the first whiteman of record to behold the cavern's huge opening - with a great swirling column of bats spiraling up into the night sky - the "smoke" he had seen at a distance. That night we watched the bats in their thousands just as Old Jim did long before us. Many, many years later I was to lead an impromptu question-and-answer session right on this very spot with a Park "Rangerette Person-Person" - said Rangerette at that time yet unborn - but of this by and by, My Pretties (as said the Wicked Witch of the East).

The market place in Juarez was a favored place to pick up "bargains." Mom shopped a lot there and sometimes she took us along. Our house really admitted of no other embellishments but Mexican, so Mom used a lot of Mexican craftwork in her decoration. We had bright-colored Mexican woven chairs in the kitchen, and lots of blue-bottle glass and "crude" hand-thrown pottery. ('Twas said the Mesicans salvaged discarded old-timey blown beer bottles - themselves today sought-for trendy deco objects) to cut down and edge for cups and mugs... In the corner of the dining room hung a huge bunch of tropical fruits and peppers - each modeled from clay, and painted by hand. Very bright and cheery and each "fruit" had a coin slot in it so it could be used for a piggy-bank and smashed later on the azuelos floor. (We never did - and those same fruits, dimmed with age, followed us years later across the country to hang in a dark corner of our New England home...).

I did smash the pinata' at the Saunders Xmas parties, though... They were not Mexican themselves, but Mexican customs and decor were de rigeur when I was growing up in El Paso, and I presume remain so to this day. The Saunders (Saunderson maybe? Sanders? Sanderson? No matter...) lived next door. At Xmas they hung a large clay jar (the pinata') from a cross-tree much like a football goal post in their yard.

THE PINATA', YOU SEE, is filled with little toys and candies for the kids (muchachos) and one of their number (always me - till I caught on...!) is selected and blindfolded, given a baseball bat, and whirled around a few times and then told to "break the pinata' ". So you take a few wild swings (while everyone scatters and ducks) then you sort of get your bearings and WHACK! - when you connect with the pot it smashes all to smithereens, and the gifts and candies fly out everywhere! I was batman two Xmas's in a row, but have never been since - nor will I ever be again - as I figured out that by time the batman gets his blindfold off and his bearings back - the others have all grabbed off the pick of the lot (better: pick of the pot?) - and you get the leavings... Always pass on the offer to be batman at a Mexican Xmas Party. That's my advice.

Mom was almost a "fixture" at the Juarez market. She knew and was known to many of the peasant vendors. Now my family did not move in the El Paso "upper set," so to speak. But Pop was a Major Player in the banking and business circles there, as you might say. And Mom entertained a lot with teas, and bridge parties, and afternoon socials and whatnot. And in due course these were often written up on the Society page of the El Paso Times. With attendant (large) picture of my Mom.

And once, my elegant (grand dame type) maternal Grandmother - Gran - came down from Denver to visit us. And nothing would do but what Mom take her over to the Juarez market so she could see all the wonderous things there. One such wonder being the butcher's booth... Now Mom never dared to buy any of the grossly butchered "meats" from unknown sources (and animals?) which festooned this booth - but she knew Juan the Proprietor well and they always hailed one another on her visits. So you would not miss Juan's booth on your visits thereto, he always had a freshly severed pig's head, eyes tight against the swarming flies of the place - and it sat grandly on top of the piled (still very bloody) loins, chops and other cuts "too fierce to mention" (as was once said, I believe, of the diet of the Whale that lived in 'Frisco Bay...).

In short, Juan's shop was right out of the movies (the closest thing I think I could suggest for you, might be... "Treasure of the Sierra Madre" perhaps...).

Grin!

Anyhow - my Mother and Gran sallied forth on their visit to Juarez, and Gran was walking along the booths - much taken with the smiling, nodding proprietors and the swarming muchachos of the place, when suddenly she emitted a little shriek! She had just fetched up before Juan's butcher stall! Bad enough the bloody pig's head with tight-screwed eyes against the bothersome flies... But she was pointing... pointing to something on the back wall of the stall... My Mom hastened up to look.

CARAMBA! For Gran was pointing to the back of Juan's booth, where had been tacked up the entire Society page out of the El Paso Times - and there was my Mom's smiling visage looking out upon this bloody kingdom and the passersby!

(This anecdote, too, has passed into family legend here, and if no one else but my own kith and kin ever glances at these pages, hopefully they will at least wave as they go by. No one among my descendants and collaterals much seems to care for family tales, origin myths, and the like anymore. Like Fenimore's Chingagook, I think I am maybe "the last of my tribe." Anyhow when the dust settled it all had a most natural explanation: Juan somehow had come into possession of a copy of the Times and recognized the pretty Norte Americano Senora' who often waved and spoke to him - so what more natural than that he should adorn the walls of his stall with her likeness...?)

Well, our two years ground on down, and towards the end of our West Texas sojourn, I managed to run afoul of the School Authorities! That is, by now I was finishing Second Grade and so quite grown up. Julius got though most days dry-panted now, but I suspect it was his devil-may-care attitude that brought it all on for both of us. You see, when you got to the vicinity of the School in those days (everyone walked - who had ever heard of a "bus" or "parenting?") you came under the direction of older students and stray adults, all of whom wore crossed white belts over their fronts and belonged to an elite corps of some kind called the "Crossing Guards." The Law of the Land was that you obeyed whatever they told you to do and did not cross the street until they said so.

And I guess I must have given someone some back-sass here or something one time. And got caught. And "written up."

Being "written up" was a terrible crime! Than which there was no greater in this rather limited world. Worst of all, you had to appear later on at "School Court," which was held after school hours when you would normally be going home. Most offenders who had to attend "School Court" were Fifth and Sixth Graders and even older students - most of them already well along in their criminal careers of course. A hardened lot at best. They kept away from the rest of us and ate in another end of the lunchroom most days. Even Julius had no friends in that set!

It was almost unheard of that a Second Grader would be written up for the docket in School Court - and I hid my shame as best I could, and began to make my plans for how I would run away to Mexico and maybe live with the banditos and all that should things go wrong at my trial...

Ta- Da! GMAC to the rescue! That very night at dinner, Pop announced we had been transferred again! This time to distant Beaumont, which couldn't have meant less to me just then, though Beaumont and its environs are about as different from El Paso as you can get.... But I was 'Saved by the Bell' (maybe), and that was all that counted! The date for School Court appearance was let's say, two weeks away. But Pop said we would all be leaving El Paso for good in just one week! No prisoner at the bar ever grasped at a glimmer of hope like I did that night! With luck, I would "skip" - and none the wiser: parents, School Court Judges, whomever.

AND THAT'S LARGELY WHAT HAPPENED. I counted the days as they passed. My "secret" was of course "out" at school - and Mrs. Turkentine had posted my name and Court Date on the blackboard, as warning to other would-be malefactors, and I was subject to taunts and jeers in the lunchroom, and horrific tales of School Court sentences executed upon older brothers and sisters of some of my friends. But I hung grimly in. At close of classes the last day, I merely waved as usual to my pals..."See ya tomorrow, Julius!" and so on, and hefted my books (no one wore backpacks in those days) and headed out for home.

Here I was immediately popped into a hot tub of water, given a bath, and suited up in my "traveling clothes." The house was already bare - movers had come and gone, and within the hour we were boarding Pullman cars at the Railroad Station. I even remember (while yet in the station) pulling down the old heavy cloth shades with the pinch-type brass closure catch at bottom (anyone here remember those?) to block the window. Since there was nothing outside but the dirty station platform and Mesican vendors in hordes hawking their wares - Mom tolerated my strange fidgetiness. She was busy reading her new Saturday Evening Post anyhow...

With a jerk, we started. Chuff, chuff, chuff went the engine far up ahead and we pulled out into the sunlight of the upper reaches of the Great Chihuahuan Desert. I risked a peep out the bottom of the shade: no one was there. No Crossing Guards in pipeclayed belts like avenging Highlanders or British Musketry were chasing the train. We gained speed. I raised the blind all the way up. Mt. Franklin was fast disappearing in a pall of cinders and coal smoke. Isolated clumps of Spanish Bayonet and Yucca flashed by. Distant Muchachos waved now and then.

I HAD DONE IT! I gave School Court the slip, and they never found me! Confession is good for the soul they say. Perhaps also even for the soul-less among us, as well. Who knows? But I have never revealed before now, that I was actually a Wanted Man and living on the dodge these past 79 years! I am feeling much the better for it...!