By Shavaun Scott

Annie was my mother’s older sister, and she read fortunes for a living. She could divine meaning from cards spread across a kitchen table top to determine whether a husband was prone to infidelity. She read tea leaves to predict if a firstborn child would be a boy or girl. Annie would advise you to improve your luck by putting a bay leaf in your pillowcase when you slept or attract a lover by drinking tea made from ginger. When a mourning dove cooed three times in a row Annie would say it was certain that somebody close to you was going to die.

Annie saw patterns everywhere and she knew how things were connected.

She had short, curly copper-colored hair and ever-present gold hoop earrings that she never took off. When I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, she wore bold floral-patterned dresses she called shifts that hugged her ample curves and made me think of Hawaii. Her lipstick was always ravishing red.

Annie drove a blue Mustang, which I believe she wrecked and replaced at least twice during my elementary school years.

She taught me to dance the hula, barefoot on the grass in the backyard and convinced me there really was a man who lived on the moon with his wife.

“I’m a counselor, honey, I’ve always had a gift.” Annie explained when I asked her how she earned money. “See that actress on Days of Our Lives -- I read cards for her and her friends in Hollywood. I have a whole list of clients I help; they’ve come back to me for years.”

Annie gave love life advice to soap opera stars from patterns she could discern by reading a deck of tarot cards in formations she’d been trained to interpret by an old Roma man she’d met at the Eagles Lodge where she’d been cocktail waitressing.

She made twenty bucks every time she gave a reading.

“In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen.” – William S. Burroughs

Jane was my pious aunt, married to my father’s alcoholic brother. He had a reputation as a misanthropic drunk, but Jane was known as a woman of God. She was a tall blonde, rail thin and straight-backed with a small tight smile that never revealed her teeth. Her lipstick was such a pale pink you could barely see it. She wore crisp white blouses that she pressed with her iron.

Jane drove a long beige station wagon with plenty of room in the back for kids and groceries. She never broke the speed limit. She was a stay-at-home mom who believed that the man was the head of the household and the breadwinner. She took care of everything else.

Jane had two daughters, one named Sarah who was my age and the younger, Hannah, who was sick all the time and whiney as a stray cat. Hannah was diagnosed with ulcers from “nervous problems” when she was seven, and always got attention by saying some part of her body hurt. Often, we saw her trip and fall on purpose and then wail for her mom as if it had been an accident. She was four years younger and Sarah always tried to ditch her because she tattled so much. “Get lost cry baby” Sarah would say.

Since Sarah and I were best friends as kids I spent a lot of time at their place while growing up. Sarah loved dogs and bikes and climbing trees, same as me.

I always went to church with Jane and the girls. On Sunday mornings, Sunday evenings, and Wednesday evenings too. God, and the rituals surrounding him, was the center of the home – which naturally excluded my uncle since he was unsaved and therefore destined to hell. As were my parents, and all the rest of our relatives, according to Jane. Even those who professed to be Christians – like my mother -- clearly weren’t living a Christ-centered life which meant they weren’t legitimately saved. My mother wasn’t a church-goer and she didn’t try to lead others to the Lord, which was one of the most important signs of a real Christian. Either you were a real Christian and lived every moment as an ambassador for Christ, or you belonged to Satan; there were no gray areas when it came to heaven or hell.

It was unsettling to find out my mother and father belonged to Satan. I wasn’t sure what to do about that, other than pray.

My Uncle Dan worked long hours as a truck driver, just like my father, but he drank so much beer every night he passed out drunk on the couch when he got home. He didn’t have any use for most people, especially kids, and we knew to stay out of his way or risk a whipping. “Children are to be seen, not heard,” Uncle Dan stated at the dinner table, forming his words around a cigarette in the corner of his mouth without removing it to talk. He never smiled and his eyes were dark and mean.

Most of our family members were going to hell. We prayed for them all at least six times a day. And I’d pray in the middle of the night, when I woke up with from bad dreams about Armageddon, the anti-Christ, and the mark of the beast. The devil was everywhere, I could feel him sometimes, like a moth landing on my hair.

Insomnia was a problem. There was so much praying to do, and I was never sure I was getting it right. I put my whole heart into praying; I could feel my entire chest tighten up as I lay in bed at night, trying to make sure God heard me.

“Pray without ceasing” – 1st Thessalonians 5:1-2

Beliefs are complicated and have everything to do with how our lives turn out; as children we don’t know we have any choice in the matter.

I realize now that the reasons for our perceptions and behaviors are often mysterious, hidden even from ourselves. We do not all experience the world in the same way.

Robert Sapolsky, Stanford professor of neuroscience and author of the book Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst puts it this way:

A behavior has just occurred. Why did it happen? Your first category of explanation is going to be a neurobiological one. What went on in that person’s brain a second before the behavior happened? What sight, sound, or smell in the previous second to minutes triggered the nervous system to produce that behavior? What hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual was to the sensory stimuli that triggered the nervous system to produce the behavior? What features of the environment in the prior weeks to years changed the structure and function of that person’s brain and thus changed how it responded to those hormones and environmental stimuli? Then you go further back to the childhood of the individual, their fetal environment, then their genetic makeup. And then you increase the view to encompass factors larger than that one individual—how has culture shaped the behavior of people living in that individual’s group? What ecological factors helped shape that culture?

Understanding the interaction of these all these variables is the heart of Sapolsky’s work. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems on the surface. People do things for reasons even they don’t understand, and sometimes our own thoughts and behaviors work against us.

Annie made me think of a bright monarch butterfly with ADD. She didn’t spend much time in one spot. Her laugh was a little too loud and her voice could set your teeth on edge. My dad complained about her over-talking, and how she always let the screen door slam. In addition to the card reading and tea leaves Annie could discern meaning from examining the lines in the palms of your hands. This fascinated me as a kid, and I was forever trying to have her show me the meaning of things that she could somehow see but I could not. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t see what Annie did.

She got me a Ouija board for my ninth birthday but if I was honest, I had to admit my fingers moved the cursor where I wanted it to go. When I played it with Annie it always told me nice things like I’d marry a handsome man with money someday.

Annie owned every book the psychic Edgar Cayce had ever written and fancied herself a medium, but Grandma told her to stop talking about dead people in polite company.

She loved Las Vegas and had several lucky numbers that seemed to show up in patterns that were significant in ways only she understood. At one point she began altering the spelling of her name in order to improve her luck. Anna, Annis, Annie, Anna Mae, Ann-with-an-e. Adding one or two letters could change the course of everything.

I have no doubt that Annie’s beliefs were sincere even if her predictive accuracy wasn’t high; Her belief that she was helping people gave her a deep sense of purpose, and her perception of metaphysical powers reduced anxiety by providing an illusion of control.

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” – Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Sapolsky also lectures on how biological and cultural factors play out in our religious expression. He explains that in the 1970s a mild genetic version of schizophrenia was identified, common in close relatives of schizophrenics. It’s a quirky personality type now identified as schizotypal personality disorder, characterized by somewhat loose associations, difficulties fitting in socially, and magical thinking.

Someone who believes in strange things, mental telepathy, UFOs, and concrete interpretations of the spiritual. In traditional non-western societies these would be the shamans, witch doctors, medicine men and women. They make a living from being magical.

Jane’s worldview came strictly from the Bible. All the sins were clearly and conveniently identified, and they included most normal human behaviors including having things like emotions. Jane was talented at not feeling emotions herself. She never cried or raised her voice, and never once spoke a curse word. Jane was even-tempered and didn’t smile too big or laugh out loud. Even though my uncle was drunk and passed out whenever he wasn’t at work, she kept to her steadfast routine and never seemed to be bothered by him. Her home was comforting in an odd way; it was predictable. I always knew what we would have for lunch (tuna sandwiches and coke), and that we’d pray before we put a bite of food in our mouths. The house would be immaculate, and the laundry done. Jane kept to schedules, only left the house for church and the grocery store, and she held the kids to their chores. Things were lined up straight. Just don’t make noise and do what she says.

Any time there was a problem Jane would offer one reliable solution: prayer. She told us that life would turn out just fine if we kept to God’s path. She stayed busy doing God’s will and that saved her from worrying.

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not into thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him and he shall direct thy path.” – Proverbs 3:5

Sapolsky also discusses obsessive-compulsive disorder, which also exists on a spectrum from mild to severe. He emphasizes that what appears strange or crazy in one setting can make one successful in another. My Aunt Jane was revered within her church community, and was considered a role model, but her religious obsessions kept her from noticing serious problems that were manifesting in her own family.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder. It’s a pathological attempt to impose structure, predictability, and control in a world where everything is pathologically provoking a sense of unease, uncertainty, and anxiety. In OCD the person never escapes. What’s striking with OCD is there’s no insight. The person never says ‘help – there’s something wrong with me. I feel this need to wash my hands six hours a day.’ Instead they say ‘I can never get clean. I’m so dirty. Everything I do makes me dirty.’ There’s no insight. In a secular context, there’s a tremendous advantage to a mild version of OCD. It works to get you into a place like Stanford, which is regimented and disciplined. Have a six-hour compulsion to wash your hands each day in the secular context of OCD, it destroys your life. You cannot function in society, you are peripheralized, you are mentally ill. Get it in the right context of religion and it is protected, it is honored, and you are rewarded. When people are pulling off these rituals in a religious setting it is not to make the anxiety go away, it is to share it. It’s to share it over time and space with a larger community, to give the nameless dread a name

Jane and Annie were my role models as a child, and I naturally began handling my emotions with their templates.

I went door to door with the church youth group and witnessed for the Lord, explaining to neighbors how they could be born again. I handed out little booklets about the three easy steps to salvation. I was a soldier for Christ in a cataclysmic battle for good against evil, but I had no idea what to do with my life after high school. Jane told me to listen for God’s voice. There would be a sign. Annie had promised a good-looking man with money.

I met my first husband at Jane’s church on a Saturday night; Saturday was when they had Christian rock bands. I was 15. He was 25 and rode a Harley Davidson, with jet black hair halfway down his back. He had the best hair, like heavy black silk. He’d been a biker, and a drug dealer, but was now born again and serving the Lord.

I think it was love at first sight, but I really can’t remember. We prayed together. And studied the Bible. He knew how things all tied together, the signs, the symbols, the meanings. God had a plan for us, and he knew what it was. We were meant to be together and start a family right away, since we were living in the end times and the rapture could happen at any moment. We would be whisked away to heaven in the blink of an eye, while Armageddon took place on Earth. Jesus was coming soon, and we had to hurry.

This felt exciting, important, and dangerous.

I loved it when he picked me up at high school on his motorcycle. “Yes, that big guy is my boyfriend.” The school boy jocks stopped bothering me.

When I turned 16, we got married. A month after the wedding I learned I was ten weeks pregnant. I finished high school early but skipped grad night at Disneyland. My belly was as big as a Volkswagen bug, and my husband would have looked like somebody’s dad. My friends went to parties, and off to college while I went to La Leche League and prayer meetings with women two decades older than me. I had three kids in six years. I breastfed each one for a year.

“Train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” – Titus 2:4-5

Annie was in her mid-60s when she started losing weight. I lived hours away and had my hands full raising three babies; I hadn’t spoken to her in six years. I called my father once a month for news. “She’s not right in the head” my dad said, “It’s depressing to watch. I can’t stand to visit her. She needs a real doctor, but she won’t listen to anyone.”

She treated her symptoms with vitamins and herbs from the health food store and lots of natural juices. She had sessions with a faith healer from her Edgar Cayce fellowship. She kept her focus positive and practiced visualizations. Certain foods had to be eaten only on specific days of the week. She counted out cards on the tabletop.

By the time she was taken to an emergency room after passing out in K-Mart, the cancer had metastasized to Stage IV. It was the first time she’d allowed herself to think of the word “cancer”, though she admitted she’d had the lump in her breast for a long time. Maybe years.

Annie had read about clinics in Mexico that were curing cancer ‘naturally’ with laetrile, which was illegal in the United States and deemed quackery. Tijuana was only a three-hour drive. She drove off in her blue Mustang and checked in to a clinic.

My father mailed me a Polaroid photo of her weeks later, taken in a hotel room somewhere in Mexico shortly before she died. It had come in a plain white envelope with no note. She was pale as an egg and her lips were white. I wouldn’t have recognized her if we’d passed on the street. The sparkle in her eyes had faded but she still wore gold hoop earrings.

She died in Tijuana at age 66, under circumstances that will always remain mysterious.

“Keep the pineal gland open and you will always be young.” – Edgar Cayce

I drove a beige Volkswagen Squareback with baby seats in the back to college where I studied patterns of human behavior and how not to fuck up your kids. There were always rumpled toddler clothes and boxes of crackers on the floor of the car. It took me ten years to get a degree in Psychology. I was 26, and gears began clicking into place in my head; my thinking went in all sorts of new directions. I saw choices I’d never seen before. After twelve months of therapy I filed for divorce.

My first job was working as a counselor in a residential treatment home for people with Schizophrenia. The clients had hallucinations and delusions; they felt like family. I helped them figure out the patterns of their symptoms and worked to develop a system of mental checks and balances, so they’d stay out of the hospital. The job felt so natural I was surprised I got paid for it. I took graduate classes at night for two years to become a psychotherapist.

My ex-husband fought for custody of the kids. He prayed aloud with the children, clasping hands with them in Burger King, and told them repeatedly I was going to hell. I eventually won sole custody after the court ordered a psychological evaluation. It took three years.

I was licensed as a psychotherapist at age 29 and bought a used black Miata. I worked in a battered women’s shelter and a rape crisis center. I felt old before I turned 30, but I loved to work with teenagers from uncommon backgrounds who had trouble finding their way. I knew it was possible to rebuild a life after losses, mistakes, and disaster. I believed anybody could do it over time with intention and a plan. I was convinced that psychotherapy could save the world.

I had lost touch with Jane, Sarah, and Hannah after my marriage when I moved hundreds of miles away. The family splintered after my mother died of brain cancer when I was 17, shortly after my first baby was born. My father and Uncle Dan had a bitter falling out over a business venture and ended up suing each other; they never spoke again. Dan and Jane moved their family to Texas. The only connective fiber among us had been my mother, and when she died any bonds that had existed in the family withered.

Sarah found me in 2016 after we’d both submitted DNA by mail to 23&Me. We were lined up on the genetic relatives list right next to each other, sharing 15% of our DNA. She told me she’d thought about me often over the past 40 years but had no idea what had become of me. We became friends on Facebook.

She lived in rural Texas and worked as a caregiver in a residential home for the elderly. Her mother Jane had suffered a stroke a decade earlier and now lived bedridden in the Alzheimer’s residence where Sarah worked.

Sarah and I spoke once on the phone, but I didn’t recognize her voice. It had transformed into the deep rasp of a heavy smoker with a southern accent she had not acquired growing up in California. It was entirely alien.

We exchanged small gifts through the mail, echoes of our girlhoods. Sarah sent me a hand-carved owl figurine. I sent her a silver crescent moon necklace to match the one I wore.

Sarah lived with her father who despite a life of alcoholism was still alive but doing poorly in hospice care.

Her third husband, the mean one who drank, was in prison. She was desperate for money and had no car.

Her dream was to buy an abandoned hotel in a small Texas town that was rumored to be haunted. She wanted to open a bed and breakfast for tourists who wanted to stay overnight with ghosts, and she thought she’d finally make decent money. She was bitterly disappointed when she couldn’t qualify for a mortgage due to her poor credit history.

“You should breathe deeply and chant, 'Money will easily and effortlessly flow into my life' as often as you can every day. Things will start to change after a month. If you believe you will be financially secure, then you are opening yourself up to change." – Louise Hay

I’ve been in private practice for 30 years and love helping people connect the dots. I have a nose for psychosis, and for sniffing out abuse. I’m optimistic about the human potential for growth, but clear on the difference between positive thinking and magical thinking. There are rules that govern the physical and mental world, yet our brains often play tricks on us. Humans are quick to see causality among unrelated events and to adopt maladaptive ways of thinking in order to reduce the anxiety that comes from living in a world where bad things happen randomly.

Our own best judgment can lead us to ruin. I’ve learned to watch my mind closely and question first impulses.

I choose my beliefs carefully and with intention, and bristle at fundamentalists and new-age gurus. I love science and the magic of the laws of nature. Within those parameters I’ve found the reliability we were all seeking. I’ve been known to occasionally burn incense and white candles at night – a conscious nod to magical thinking -- but haven’t set foot in a religious meeting since my divorce decades ago.

I’m close to my three adult kids; they were just here for Thanksgiving. We live with a shard of sorrow in our hearts for the one of them that struggles with schizophrenia. She was diagnosed at 19, and her life has been harder than any of us can imagine. I am never completely free of grief.

Sarah and I eventually unfollowed one another on Facebook. She kept posting conspiracy videos about chemtrails, and photos she’d taken of cloud formations in the Texas sky as proof of “something ominous going on.”

I’d respond to her posts with a link to a science article about cirrus clouds and aircraft contrails, which she didn’t appreciate. I posted on her Facebook wall “Stop sharing nonsense. It causes harm. People don’t know how to tell what’s true.”

It felt mean, but I couldn’t help myself.

I was surprised to learn that her younger sister Hannah had also become a therapist. Helping people find patterns may be in our genes, and in the right context, that’s a good thing. Sarah said she and Hannah had gone their separate ways many years ago. It’s my guess that Hannah grew up, went to college, and gave up magical thinking. Apparently, she’s also learned it’s okay to let family go their own way.

The ability to understand patterns can make you good at your job. Scientists, physicians, engineers, and therapists all work with pattern recognition. And adherence to a disciplined structure -- with reasonable flexibility – is how humans create monuments inspired by grand visions.

Context is everything.

Sapolsky stresses that variations in our neurobiology whether from obsessive-compulsive disorder or schizotypal thinking, can be adaptive in one setting, but stigmatizing in another. Schizotypal thinking parallels the magical thinking found in extreme religious theology; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can parallel excessive religious rituals. The key point is that the exact same behaviors that can destroy your life in one context, can make you honored and powerful in another.

Sarah recently sent me an email about Jane. Sarah said she was mad at God, because Jane has spent the last ten years since her stroke unable to walk or speak a complete sentence. “All she does is cry and sleep; she cries constantly if she’s awake. It’s not right that she suffers like this. She was a godly woman. I’m having a hard time understanding God’s plan.”

I wrote back and said how sorry I was, because Jane had meant a lot to me when we were children. “She was a good woman. But don’t blame God for any of this. It’s our beliefs that were faulty.”

She didn’t write me again. All we share now are ancient childhood memories; our worldviews and beliefs are oppositional. I’ve made hundreds of conscious decisions to let go of what I learned as a child in order to be sane, and I let go of attachments to some people too.

I’m no longer troubled by insomnia or nightmares. I’m at peace with all I cannot know or control. Occasionally I sense a benign echo from the past and linger with a softer childhood memory, something having nothing to do with heaven or hell or prayer. Sometimes I dance barefoot in the grass at night and think of Annie when she was young as I smile at the man in the moon and his wife.

 

By Mary Ellen Gambutti

Haiga is a Japanese concept for simple pictures combined with poetry.

 

By Jamie Owens

One of our Idaho neighbors, Crazy Indian, would come in and we would wake up with her noise while she was in the fridge rummaging for beer. In the winter when the beer was left on the porch, Cosmo and I may not know she was visiting until most of a six-pack was gone. Our cabin was small and we slept upstairs. She would stoke the fire so we could wake up warm which was really nice of her. I’d cook breakfast while she would spin stories about being a corpsman in the US Navy. It was not a happy time for her being in the service, but there were still plenty of things to laugh about.

When she got out on a medical discharge she moved to Idaho with friends and married a guy from Florida, whose name was Gator. They built a home at the top of the hill at the end of the community road. When she headed to town for the day, that’s when she would pop by early; can’t go to town without checking if we needed anything. Some food in our bellies, discussions about the weather and a doobie rolled for the long road to town and she was off. We wouldn’t see her again for days, later popping in to share town stories and bringing replacement beer. It’s a good thing we didn’t have an income for whiskey, or nobody would have made it anywhere.

That fall Gator shot a bear that had been raiding his garden all summer. He figured it would be the best bear meat ever, being corn-fed and all. He was tortured over this, not so much about killing an animal, mostly about the possibility of getting caught without the proper papers. Could be a big fine. Shit. He had already been in some trouble with the county.

Gator’s pal that traveled with him to Idaho a few years before, became a county deputy sheriff and then turned Gator in for pot possession. That event happened before we moved to Idaho, but it was explained to me how it all went down, probably while I was sharing a joint with Gator. Legally it went like this: you can’t be a friend and act like a friend and be in your friend’s home acting like a real friend and then find the Mary Jane stash in the cookie jar while you were helping yourself, all friend like, to a treat while you were there acting like a friend. You can’t get all Deputy Sheriff and bust your friend, who really isn’t your friend anymore.

The prosecutor knew this bust was the largest gray area that the county had ever seen and decided to back away. Drug rules and penalties were pretty harsh back then. Part of the allure besides the obvious fun of getting high, was the outlaw part. And of course, as long as there are really stupid law enforcement guys around, it is so much fun making them look like fools! Hell, they meet you more than half way most of the time. But things got serious when the cocaine came in and the sweet grass moving across the northern border was from guys carrying guns. The skies in Idaho filled with helicopters looking for us big criminals who just wanted to get a “leetle” loaded and go work in the garden and raise our families.

Stories would pour out of him with a little beer, a little weed and a campfire; some of them were probably true.

Stumping powder is what we needed Gator said at our campfire one night. He had done a lot of interesting things in his 47 years and a while back decided his best move would be to leave Florida and settle in the North Idaho woods to make his last stand against everything. Stories would pour out of him with a little beer, a little weed and a campfire; some of them were probably true. Cosmo was still against doing anything with the tree stump, but I wanted it out. It was in the middle of my fenced garden. The dead root system so extensive I couldn’t plant anything near it. It shredded hoses and harbored an elite group of squirrels, moles, voles and chipmunks, voracious eaters all. We had been talking about this damn stump for some time, cooking up crazy ideas to be rid of it. We laughed about blowing it up; wrapping up that idea in the haze of dope smoke. How serious can we be? The stump was a holdover from the thick cedar forests that covered Idaho since dinosaurs ruled the earth. During the last century, mountains were logged and we were left with the remnants. If the living cedar trees had still been there, we wouldn’t have been able to afford our 20 acres. So on our property we had second and hell, probably third growth forest, not worth anything in timber money. Perfect for homesteaders, who want to grow veggies, raise kids and be left alone.

After Cosmo left for an oil field work trip in Wyoming, somehow a late night conversation with Gator and Crazy Indian about the stump problem was restarted and rolled into our foraging trip to Coeur ‘d Alene. Cosmo maintained it was a terrible idea to blow up a tree trunk, or use any of the other previous schemes we came up with, but the garden was mine, he was not around, so I made the decision. Yes, he was my husband and I loved him and all, but I really wanted this stump gone.

But in order to get stumping powder we needed to get to the Federal Government Farm Building office in Coeur ‘d Alene; register and look responsible while signing papers. We had no idea what we were getting into, so we made a day of it. It was late spring and the wild asparagus was up along railroad tracks, it was a good time for picking. I had heard about a new health food store that was larger than the one we had in our closest town. Our planned trip day turned out to be sunny, so we brought food for a picnic. Perfect.

We made the mistake of driving to the Federal Government Farm Bureau office first. Oh yeah there was paperwork and forms in triplicate, just like we expected. But, we were caught unawares when Gator was asked to draw a picture of the stump with the root system and precise measurements, while I penciled in the completed plot lines of my 20 acres including property lines, out buildings, power lines (none), water lines, driveways, easements and slopes. Crazy Indian had to leave the lobby, being way too antsy for this government bullshit; a holdover from her Navy years.

It was surprising to us how serious these government guys were. Us, not so much. We were there for hours and we hadn’t eaten breakfast before we left. We had skipped the normal beer with breakfast at my house in order to get on the road as quickly as we could, get the blasting materials and start having fun in the big city of Coeur d’ Alene. Instead we were there for hours watching these old guys go back and forth between large record books, file cabinets, typewriters, and making calls. The facsimile machine didn’t exist yet.  Finally, they let us know that they didn’t have stumping powder but based on our drawings they could sell us TNT. That’s right, explosive trinitrotoluene...47 sticks of dynamite. I signed papers and paid the cash. They gave us warning hazmat placards for the car. What?

Yes, we were required to post one in each side window and the rear window of the car for everyone and the police to see. For safety. I had just signed the paper agreeing to do this. Shit. No way are we going to drive around in this beat up old Mercury Comet with ‘hey look at me’ signs in our car windows.

There we stood, gazing into the trunk of the car at the beer cooler right next to the full box ‘o blasts. It was a sight.

We considered our options, discussing them in the parking lot. One of the things I had to do was to fill out our exact route home with the TNT. It had been a total lie of course, but now I had signed a paper stating under penalty of the law I would go home that one way, driving straight home with no deviation. Shit. We had plans! So, we put up the placards, drove to the end of the parking lot where they couldn’t see us, took ‘em down and popped open three bottles of beer from the cooler.  There we stood, gazing into the trunk of the car at the beer cooler right next to the full box ‘o blasts. It was a sight.

We can be careful. Honest.

If we had been followed, surely in today’s state of mind with all of this terrorist crap, one would guess we were out to blow up the tracks. But no, we were just looking for some free wild food and some much needed time in the sun. We made it home by dark, jabbering the whole way home about how cool it was to have 47 sticks of : and no one to tell us what to do with it. Even Cosmo was gone.

We only needed 43 but we had 47. Gift from the old guys at the Farm Bureau?

Cosmo would be home in a few weeks so we needed to get this project going, wait for the right windless day, inform all the neighbors and plan a party. We couldn’t wait to set it up. Surprisingly, Gator’s impromptu sketch made on the fly at the Farm Bureau office was accurate. With another neighbor’s help and plans discussed around the campfire, Gator had the placement of sticks scribbled on paper. We only needed 43 but we had 47. Gift from the old guys at the Farm Bureau?

The perfect day arrived; finally, time for the dynamite versus the stump. Gator showed up while it was still early morning dark, eager for the start and everyone else drifted in the rest of morning. He dug holes and chambers around the stump roots, scaring off all the critters and stuffed them all with the TNT sticks, except for four. Those four I stored under Cosmo’s wood shop, figuring their safety was assured there. Gator spent hours determining where the sticks needed to be placed, digging holes and conferring with neighbors about depth. It was complicated as only Gator could make it. I had nothing to do with it. I was busy cooking beans and rolling joints.

The neighbors came and the smoke was passed around along with the beers. It would be the event of the Spring. It was time to get started. Oh wait. Jeff, my closest neighbor downhill from me decided he needed to leave right at that moment to nail plywood on his windows ‘just in case’. I was surprised, as his home was close by for ‘living in the woods’ standards, but he was 600 feet away from the garden. My home was located up a significant incline, but less than 400 feet from the stump in the garden. Doubts were being voiced by neighbors, along with the most important question for me, “Should I nail plywood to the windows of my home?” 

I asked, “Gator, do I need to put up some wood because broken windows would complicate things with all the bears around.” He thought for a moment, “Well, maybe that would be prudent. We can delay this until tomorrow if you like.” “Tomorrow? Are you kidding me?” I wasn’t leaving TNT in the ground longer than necessary; someone could get hurt. Probably me. “We are all here, let’s scrounge up some wood.” Cosmo would kill me if this went down badly. Gator reminded me, “He is going to kill you and be angry at me anyway; but think of future campfire stories.” Right then, I was just thinking of keeping the peace and staying alive.

With a flair of someone on stage, Gator connected the wires on the car battery together, but nothing seemed to happen.

We set up tables, placed coolers and had snacks set out and with our chair-backs propped up against the house, we had front row seats to our very own ‘Big Bang’. It was quiet, we all looked gleefully at each other. With a flair of someone on stage, Gator connected the wires on the car battery together, but nothing seemed to happen. We had time to look at each other and wonder if the blasting caps were connected properly and actually working.

Then the loudest WHUMP I have ever heard was followed by the ground shaking and the glass in my French doors rattling. We all stood up as if our bodies all decided at the same time that something was not right. Scrambling in what seemed like slow motion and realizing that large objects were flying right at us like missiles, we ran in all directions to duck behind my house.

Rocks, dirt clods and of course cedar pieces of every size and shape were flying along trajectories that pelted my house, our party materials and everything else in every direction.  My ears rang. I had to pee. The earth dust made it hard to see and breathe as we poked our heads out to see if it was safe; another crash sounding nearby pushed us back. As we snickered and waited for quiet, Crazy Indian took my hand as we headed down the hill to see what we did. We had to go single file to dodge the rocks and dirt clumps that littered my garden path. At the very least I was hoping I would not be digging up large pieces of stump still in the ground.

“How can you be sure that all of that damn stuff blew up Gator?” I voiced out loud. “Because I am feeling a little doubtful right now, I hear things still dropping out of the sky. How do I know that the first piece of wood that headed out into the stratospheres after being ignited isn’t currently now heading straight back to earth towards me?”

No one said anything as we entered through the garden gate, which was hanging by only one hinge and was pelted with holes; the cross pieces that were left were dirt covered and scratched. We all approached cautiously as if another bomb would go off anytime. The huge crater that was made by the blast looked like the beginning of a trip to China. Instead of a place that I could plant potatoes, I had the start of a swimming pool. Later we found a piece of the stump 30 feet up in Birch tree that was 100 feet beyond the house.

Instead of a place that I could plant potatoes, I had the start of a swimming pool.

When Cosmo arrived home six weeks later from the Wyoming work trip, he brought home 239 bottle rockets, so we were on the same wavelength, just a bit different in scale is all. Most of the fireworks banned in other states were still legal in Wyoming. He bought them in a parking lot fireworks stand at the Save-Mart in Rawlins. Every two weeks Cosmo and his work buddies trekked to Rawlins for provisions and they happened to hit town at the right time, right before Independence Day. Cosmo came home with money, fireworks and rabbit furs.

Nothing says FREEDOM like blowing shit up.