From “Hills of Gold”

04. April 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Chapters From the Latest Book

Wherein Jon Kettering meets a man who will later … much, much later … become very important.

Monterey was the largest settlement in California, then – and perhaps the prettiest of all the  towns, all set about a neat plaza; all built of the usual mud brick adobe but the folk there took care to whitewash the walls of their houses, which made a sparkling contrast to the rusty-red tile roofs. There was a sandstone church, too – a cathedral, they told us – with a galleried tower and a curving façade that shaped like a fancy bedstead. All around was green, pine trees gnarled by the ocean breeze into fantastic shapes. A party of soldiers in blue uniforms was at drill in the open plaza in front of the Governor’s House – that was where we were told that Colonel Marsh would be found. I decided then that I never wanted to be in any Army, after watching the soldiers tramp across the dusty plaza in a tight-massed group while another soldier – one with a bright red face and some yellow stripes on his sleeve bellowed, “Left, right, left right … harch!” and called them names and used words so abusive that Ma would purely have washed out my mouth with soft soap for saying them.

“Pa, don’t them soldiers know how to walk proper?” I asked, as we waited at the open door to the governor’s house. Colonel Marsh’s assistant, Lieutenant Sherman had told Pa to wait after Pa explained his business. “If they do, why do they have to learn it all over again?”

“I don’t know, rightly,” Pa replied, just as Colonel Marsh’s assistant returned, and showed us into the hallway. There were a couple of chairs with seats of woven rawhide, a single bookshelf, and a desk for Lieutenant Sherman to work at, next to the door which led into the Governor’s private office. This Lieutenant Sherman was a young man with red hair falling over a wide forehead and chin-whiskers. All that hair untidily cut, as if someone had given him a going-over with sewing shears. His unform was a nicer one than the soldiers outside at drill – it fit him better and looked to be made of finer cloth. There was a sword in a long scabbard leaning against his desk, so I guess it was too awkward managing a sword and a chair and a desk all at once.

Lieutenant Sherman had sharp, discerning eyes on either side of a beaky nose, and he said to Pa, “Mr. Kettering – the Colonel will see you now … but privately. I’ll wait with the lad. You’ll have only twenty minutes, so make it brisk; as governor here, he doesn’t have time to waste.”

I started to follow Pa, but Lieutenant Sherman had closed the door on Pa’s back. He gestured towards one of the chairs and sat himself down at his desk.  We looked at each other for a long moment. The front door to the plaza stood open, letting in fresh air from outside, and the distant sound of those soldiers at drill being yelled at. I felt kind of silly, just sitting there and kicking my heels against the chair legs, but I couldn’t stop the question that popped into my mind.

“Do you really like being a soldier?” I demanded.

Lieutenant Sherman had already taken up a pen, dipped it in an open inkwell, and began writing – the pen made a scratching sound on the paper. I could see that my question took him by surprise.

“Well … yes, mostly, I do. Wish I had been sent to Mexico with General Taylor, though – instead of being sent here. It was an interesting journey, though. Most of my friends went to Mexico, to fight. In comparison, it seemed pretty … ornamental being Colonel Marsh’s assistant. I wonder if strings were pulled on my behalf.” He corked up the inkwell, and I think for the first time, he really looked at me. “I knew there were Americans settled here in California … men, mostly. Not many women and children.”

“I’m not a baby,” I replied, a bit indignant. “I’m almost nine years old. I’ve been helping out my Pa build a sawmill … and Mr. Reed said I’m almost as good a rider as his vaqueros.”

“Well then, how long have you been in California? Where did you come from before?” It sounded as if he were fishing around to make conversation to fill the silence. I could hear Pa’s voice, but faintly – not loud enough on the other side of the door to hear his words, and what he was explaining to Colonel Marsh.

“We’ve been in California for nigh on two years, sir.” I replied. “Pa and Ma and my sister Sally came from Ohio, before that. Mount Gilead, Marion County. Pa was the wagon captain of our party, after we decided we didn’t like the first captain. Major Persifor, be called himself. He said he had studied at West Point. He wanted to shoot all the dogs.”

“Ohio? I’m also from Ohio – Lancaster! We were neighbors, almost. Your Major Persifor seems to have been an obnoxious man, to talk of dog-killing,” Lieutenant Sherman brushed his hand over his red hair, and grinned at me, after making a face at the mention of West Point. “Probably did well to get rid of him. You don’t need to call me sir – you can call me Cump, like my friends do.”

“I’m Jonathan, like in the Bible,” I said, as this seemed very like a proper introduction. “But most call me Jon. Why do your friends call you Cump? That’s a name I never heard before.”

“I was christened William Tecumseh; Tecumseh after the Shawnee chief – my father greatly admired the noble character of the man, and there were too many other boys named William when I was growing up. When someone yelled for William or Bill, half the lads in town answered! Going by Cump just seemed simpler.”

I decided that I really rather liked Lieutenant Sherman – Cump, as I had been asked to call him. It seemed an uncommon liberty to me, being invited to call a grown man by that very curious name – I was certain that Ma and Pa would not approve, but in a way, I felt that I might be honest with him. Perhaps he might explain about soldiering.

“Why do they have to march,” I said, looking out at the group of dusty blue soldiers at drill, and being yelled at by the red-faced fellow with all the yellow stripes on his sleeve. “Don’t they already know how to walk?”

“They have to learn and practice keeping in step,” Cump answered patiently, as if it were a logical thing.

“But why?” I persisted, and Cump sighed.

“Because they have to learn to follow orders without thinking about it, over-much.”

“But why?” I asked again. Cump threw a look at me and ran his hand through his hair.

“Because if they thought too much about the orders, maybe they wouldn’t obey at all,” he explained. “It’s the thing, Jon – sometimes soldiers have to do things as a matter of duty that they wouldn’t do if they stopped and thought about it.”

“Why?” I demanded, as this didn’t seem very sensible to me – and why would any sensible man volunteer to go soldiering.

“Because in battle soldiers have to obey their commander, who likely know more about the war at hand, and the objective to be gained,” Cump explained. “Because the commander will know the situation, better than the men in the ranks. That’s why.”

“I don’t think I would like that very much,” I confessed. “I’d want to know at least as much as a commander before I got into a battle.”

Advice Unspoken

26. March 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Domestic

This week, my daughter had to get a new veteran ID card, since she had her VA disability upgraded. Yes, service in the Marines for two strenuous hitches came at a physical price. She made an appointment at the Randolph AFB ID section to bring in all the supporting paperwork, and then we were reminded that my original issue blue retiree ID card wouldn’t be valid after the end of this month, never mind that it was supposed to be valid indefinitely. So she suggested that I come with her to the appointment and see if the issuing office couldn’t process both of ours at the same whack. This necessitated bringing Wee Jamie along, in the folding Cocomelon stroller that he is about two inches from out growing entirely.

Anyway, her appointment was early enough in the business day that there wasn’t much of a crowd, although I expect there will be a rush this week of retiree veterans like myself, replacing our old blue veteran ID.

To our relief, they were agreeable to doing both of our ID cards on the same appointment, even if I was a last-minute addition to the schedule. The tech processing our new cards was a female airman one-striper – competent and well-spoken, but seeming so very, very young. (Baby troops are so cute when they are little, and just barely housebroken…) Anyway, there was a bit of amusement when she initially read my daughter’s documents as having been a Marine at the rank of captain, and both my daughter and I burst out laughing. No, we were both NCOs and fiercely proud of it, although I expounded a bit on how sometimes certain people in certain skills have an invisible, much higher rank than their actual pay grade. The example I gave was that of a CID NCO, and of my own, when I was doing the regular radio news program at AFKN-Seoul.

I should have mentioned other specialties which have the invisible higher rank in the grand military scheme of things, and thus are sought out and respected by those in the know: the junior enlisted computer or mechanical expert who is gifted beyond all expectation, the clerk who can sort  out the most stubborn administrative tangle, that one NCO who knows everyone and plays the system like YoY o Ma plays the cello – they have an invisible rank and respect far beyond their actual stripes. My daughter added another piece of advice, which may have been more relevant to the Marine Corps, which run maybe 3% female, than to the Air Force, which stood at 13-15%. Her suggestion was to network extensively with other female NCOs, when our baby troop achieves that rank …and then we finished up getting the new ID cars, and left, with Wee Jamie still behaving very well.

But as we left, I thought of all the advice that we could have added; that a female NCO rightfully ought to keep her personal life a mystery to co-workers. That when suggesting some new process or way of doing things to a supervisor, one ought to volunteer to do the hard work on it yourself – because there will inevitably be work involved with a new process. That there are only about six different ways to do anything at all in the military, all of them about equally efficient, and usually it’s just a matter of habit and inertia that favors one above the other five …

Then I remembered that we were about old enough to have been mother and grandmother to the young one-striper, and realized that – well, there are some things that one has to figure out on ones’ own to really, really stick.

Be to her, Persephone,

All the things I might not be:

Take her head upon your knee.

She that was so proud and wild,

Flippant, arrogant and free,

She that had no need of me,

Is a little lonely child

Lost in Hell,—Persephone,

Take her head upon your knee:

Say to her, “My dear, my dear,

It is not so dreadful here.”

 

Prayer To Persephone – Edna St. Vincent Millay

Thinking About a Continuation

19. March 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Random Book and Media Musings

A bit ago, I wrote about continuing stories, and one of the books of mine that I touched on was the story of the two cousins during WWII, Peg Becker Moorehouse and Vennie Stoneman Vexler in My Dear Cousin. The whole concept came to me in a dream, which is not a totally eccentric way to get a notion for a book, but one which has only happened once to me. But it was the one set of lives that I thought there might be a continuation for past the limits of an accounting of their lives before and during the war. That book ended on an optimistic note, with Vennie married to her perfect Mr. Darcy, and Peg and her children reunited with her husband, a prisoner of war by the Japanese.

There aren’t really happy endings in real life, I think – only happy intervals and if we are fortunate, those intervals are long ones. Otherwise, our lives are a sequence of dark and bright. As it happens, the end of the Second World War was one of those illuminated periods, although for some parts of the world there was just more of the same but with a different cast of characters after the summer of 1945. The Iron Curtain slammed down across eastern Europe, the survivors of the Holocaust fought to continue living in a sliver of a new nation in the ancient land of Israel, India was violently partitioned, and Communist-led and inspired insurrections or civil wars broke out across the Far East almost as soon as the ink on the Japanese surrender was dry.

When I looked at a couple of my books, speculating on possible but unwritten aftermaths, one of those speculations touched on the characters in My Dear Cousin. I wondered if Vennie would really adjust and be happy in the role of a stay-at-home faculty wife to an academic. After all, she had been raised on a rural ranch, trained and worked as a nurse, and had an adventurous war as a military nurse … would she really make a successful marriage to the product of a wealthy, and worldly East coast urbanite? I speculated that it would take a long adjustment time for that to happen. Perhaps they would separate for a time, and she would return to nursing,  rejoining the Army  as a military nurse in Korea.

The real-life couple whose experiences I based some of Peg and Tommy’s experiences in wartime Singapore and Malaya returned to their rubber plantation after the war – but eventually had to leave Malaya, when the Communist insurgency there made life too dangerous for their family to stay. I thought that Peg and Tommy, being from the same kind of background – one having grown up managing a rubber plantation, and the other as part of a ranching family – would have no more than the usual post-war PTSD to ruffle their marriage. But they also would have to leave, and start again somewhere else, probably Australia.

Anyway – the prospect of continuing with a matched set of characters, and the same concept of letters back and forth – is still in the formulative stage, but it is intriguing to construct: two different theaters, wracked by war and unrest, two women trying to cope and make sense out of it all. A historic irony to this is that in Malaya, the local Communist insurgents had been allies of the British, and supported by them during the war, while at the same time Korea had been unwilling allies of the Japanese. It has been reported that often the most brutal guards of Allied prisoners in the Far East were Korean draftees in the Japanese Army.

I’m just toying with the concept for now – I have two other books simmering on the burners for now – the final Luna City installment, and the Gold Rush YA sequel to West Towards the Sunset – but it’s not me, unless I have several projects all going at once…

Things Change – Not Always for the Better

16. March 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

I’m trying to fire up a schedule of book events for 2025, this year, since Wee Jamie is old enough to be taken places that don’t interrupt his schedule too much. One of the multi-author venues that I had previously enjoyed doing was the West Texas Book and Music Festival, in Abilene – I think we made the road trip, hopscotching along back-country roads north from Junction, through Ballenger…… to Abilene at least three times. I liked it at least as much for the chance to take pictures of back-country Texas, as I did participating in a community-supported book event, with other authors, and people who liked books, and wanted to support authors, reading books, libraries and generally the community. The West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene had enough juice to invite writers who had been heard of outside of Texas as guest speakers – Elmer Kelton was one, who unfortunately passed from this vale of tears a bare month or two before I had a chance to meet him at the Festival in the fall of (gasp!) 2009. I did meet Paulette Jiles and Scott Zesh the following year, and we got some lovely photos of a balloon festival which was being held in Abilene the very same weekend.

We stayed two nights in a tiny cabin at a KOA campground in Abilene, which was the cheapest option available to us – yes, I am not so well-known that I have expenses paid. This year, for various reasons, we could afford the road-trip and two nights at a hotel or campground, so I looked up what was going on, as far as book festivals go, in Abilene – but it seems like that event has withered up and died, without a trace on social media. The Covidiocy canceled the event for 2020. I had a reply to an inquiry last year that they were already full-up, thanks for asking. I made a mental note to ask about this year, but ll the links that I have are dead, or go to the civic website.  From what I can tell, it may have been incorporated into the big yearly book event in Austin. A deep sigh, and on to investigating other small book festivals.

On the note of things that change and not for the better, my daughter and I, with Wee Jamie went to spend a Saturday in Fredericksburg. We went by way of Blanco and Johnson City, where we had done market events, and from Johnson City over so-called Texas Wine Road, through Stonewall, Grapetown and thence to Fredericksburg, with a stop at Wildseed Farms, hoping that their wildflower meadows would be in bloom – alas, too early in the year. I did see a few shy bluebonnets in a sheltered, sunny verge, and all the redbud trees are in full flower, but nothing much in comparison to what will be out in lavish bloom by the end of April. As a diversion, we counted wineries along the road between Johnson City and Fredericksburg – we came up with a total of 73, although we might have double-counted some and missed a few others. The whole of Route 290 seems now to be a prolonged and long party spot these days, which might account for a great many mildly sloshed people all along Main Street.

Fredericksburg has changed, since the first few times we visited, in the late 90s – and I’m not certain it’s for the better. Maybe I just liked it when they rolled up the sidewalks at sundown, save for a few restaurants on Main Street. The Fredericksburg Herb farm was really a herb garden with candles, perfume and skin-care items for sale along with seeds and herbs, and not under different ownership as a luxury spa. The old five and dime, which didn’t take credit cards and was about the last normal retail outlet on Main, is now an upscale retailer of expensive western wear (I scoped out a pair of $700 dollar women’s boots there and winced). The Christmas store also changed hands – now upscale boutique fashion items instead of Christmas things and garden décor. A big ultra-modern new luxury hotel took over what had been a very pleasant Beaux Arts-style two-story shop building, renovated it out of all previous experience and attached it at the back into a whole new ultra-modern sprawl. Rustlin’ Robs, Dogologie (the store for all things dog, which always has a dish of water by the door for their canine friends), Der Kuchen Laden (the best little housewares shop in Texas) and the Peach House are still there, which is reassuring. But the retail outlets, restaurants and businesses have spread from Main Street to Austin and San Antonio streets, replacing the modest little early 20th century cottages and older houses. About the only good expansion that I can see is that of the Museum of the Pacific War, which went from the old Nimitz Hotel and an open-sided pole barn a few blocks distant, to a big new complex and expanded outdoor complex where they state WWII reenactor events. At a book event there a few years ago, one of the members told us that there are now more B&B beds in the downtown area than there were regular homes. I can believe it, especially after this last Saturday.

We walked up several blocks, and crossed Main Street to walk the other side, noting the crowds, and also noting that there weren’t many families with children, and hardly anyone walking with a dog on a leash or in a doggie stroller. It seemed like it was more spring-break/party city, than a quaint, old-fashioned Texas country small town with an attractive and historic downtown. My daughter says – perhaps next time, we should visit during the week – not on a Saturday or a holiday. The brush fire getting going in the afternoon of that day in the hills north of town didn’t help our mood much, what with pale beige clouds of smoke piling up like clouds, and the occasional siren on a brush fire truck roaring through town. We drove home, looking over our shoulders almost all the way.

Reviving the Garden – 2025

02. March 2025 · Comments Off on Reviving the Garden – 2025 · Categories: Domestic

One thing and another has led the garden at the back of the house to have become a total wreck. Between Snowmagedden 2021, some hard freezes over winters since – the back yard was not a refreshing sight. Two sapling fruit trees were killed outright, one was half dead branches, and the fourth may or may not leaf out at all in the next few weeks. This is exasperating, as the nectarine that we planted in front at about the time is thriving, grown to a nice size and produced a bumper crop of fruit last spring. The three grape vines that I also planted to grow up and cover the long arbor were also savaged by frost. I think that two are still alive, but I need to go out and trim the many dead branches.

The yard was also piled high with oak leaves from my next-door neighbor’s humongous oak tree – which is only a fair exchange, as my Arizona trash tree in the front has piled lavish quantities of dead leaves along the edge of their driveway. The various firebush plants, though, have naturalized and spread, and there is a volunteer Esperanza which has grown to a pretty good height. But all these native shrubs first went overgrown and sprawling, before the last cold snap killed off most of their leaves … so my back yard, which has on occasion looked like a veritable garden paradise; lush, flowering and green, now looks like something you’d see around the Addams family mansion – all dead stems and dried leaves. The raised beds are all empty of anything but compacted soil and more dead leaves. The last few years, a lot of my time and energy has been spent helping to take care of Wee Jamie. But this spring, I have reached a limit; I am tired of looking at the ruin.

This week, I’ve set aside some me-in-the-garden time, sweeping up and filling the recycle bin with oak leaves, trimming back the overgrown branches, and running them through the mulcher, to make some mulch chips to put on the raised beds and on the space that I planted some sun-loving daylilies and delphiniums that came in an assortment from Costco. I also splurged and bought a young mandarin orange in a 5-gallon pot from the same place, at half the price that it would have been from one of the plant nurseries. I wanted to buy one last year, but Costco’s small trees and shrubs are seasonal, and once they appear, they aren’t there for long.

I’d like to plan on reviving many of the hanging plants in baskets, as well. The hot weather last summer killed all of the Boston ferns, and a couple of years ago, all my spider plants had their roots eaten by thirsty squirrels. The hardscape, the pavers and the stone bed borders are all in good shape, but the chicken coop needs a new roof over the run area before we start with chickens again.

Mid-March is the last time that we can expect a winter frost in these parts – I’m also hoping that this summer is not going to be one of those hideously hot and dry ones. I also have all the tubes and drip emitters to revitalize the drip system in back – and that ought to take care of keeping what I have planted this weekend in good shape. Fingers crossed. I want a pretty garden again!

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