There But for Grace, (The Final Flight of Pace 38) In Memory of 2nd Lt. William J. Stone, by Bob Kaufman

The night sky was pitch dark, moonless, and overcast. Monsoon thunderstorms surrounded the valley. To the east and north of Phoenix and adjacent cities, ominous storms were building and coming our way. The darkness was pierced, rather frequently, by lightning. Our weather briefings sometimes contained the code: “LTGCCCG” which is translated to mean: “Lightning Cloud - to - Cloud, Cloud - to - Ground”. Monday, July 26, 1971, was that kind of night, a typical mid-summer night in the Valley of the Sun. But moments before 11 PM, it all changed, as if a lightning bolt had struck right beside me!

At 2234 MST (10:34PM, Mountain Standard Time), 2nd Lt. William Stone advanced the throttles to the wall, lighting the afterburners of his T-38 jet trainer and accelerated for takeoff from runway 30C at Williams AFB on his initial night solo flight. Because of the thunderstorms, solo students were prohibited from flying in the practice areas over the mountains east of the base. Instead, Lt. Stone, and about 20 other student pilots flying the same mission, received radar vectors from Phoenix Approach Control to “High X-Ray”, the pattern entry point, 3 miles southeast of the approach end of the runway at 4600 feet altitude, geographically just east of the town of Queen Creek, Arizona.

For the next 24 minutes, Lt. Stone flew a rectangular pattern over the base, 1500 feet above the normal pattern. The purpose was to burn 1300 lbs. of jet fuel, reducing the aircraft weight making it safer for practice landings. A fully loaded T-38 carries 3800 lbs. of fuel, making the total aircraft weight over 11000 lbs. at takeoff. Although light by military jet standards, the T-38 demanded careful attention for safe flight, especially when attempting to land “heavy weight”. For safety reasons, solo students were prohibited from landing with more than 2500 lbs. of fuel except in an emergency.

With both the high and normal patterns operating, the beehive was buzzing, as were the radio channels. One could barely get a word in edgewise. 

At 2257:45 MST, an unidentified aircraft called Rum Dum, “Outside downwind breaking out”.  Radio transcripts show that for the next 45 seconds, Phoenix Approach was busy in conversations with other aircraft. Rum Dum was the call sign for the Runway Supervisory Unit (RSU) located at the approach end of the runway, staffed by qualified instructor pilots who observed all pattern activity to improve flight safety.

At 2258:30 MST, Lt. Stone, call sign “Pace 38” (spoken as “Pace Three Eight”), having exited the high pattern and having turned northeast to a heading of 030 (“zero three zero”) degrees, radioed: “Phoenix Approach Control – Pace 38 – pattern breakout, request X-Ray”. Because of the radio chatter, Phoenix did not respond to his call. One minute later, traveling in nearly level flight at an estimated speed of 280 Knots, Lt. Stone’s aircraft crashed into the side of a vertical rock face in the Superstition Mountains a short distance from the prominent Flat Iron.  The impact occurred at 4570 feet, about 50 feet below the peak at that location.  The aircraft disintegrated upon impact and Lt. Stone was killed instantly.

Radio call signs for every training mission at Willie were a combination of a key word and a two-digit number. Key words such as Oslo, AWOL, Pace, and Vest were assigned to formation, instrument, cross country, and other flights. The two-digit number corresponded to the scheduled takeoff time. Pace 38 was scheduled for 2238 (10:38 PM). Lt. Stone was the last solo on the schedule board. Others were scheduled at three minute intervals prior to his time.

That night, I was Pace 32.

Just one minute and thirty seconds prior to Lt. Stone’s last radio call, I made an almost identical call to Phoenix Approach Control – different only by the numbers of my call sign. Before the controller could respond to my call, Cram 02, another aircraft radioed Phoenix requesting instructions.  Within a few seconds the controller responded: “Zero Two Standby / Pace 32 squawk ident zero four zero zero.”  Following his instructions, I pushed a button on my transponder causing the image of my aircraft to stand out on his radar screen. Immediately the controller returned: “Okay 32, radar contact, turn right heading 120.” In the next few minutes, I received additional instructions that took me to “X-Ray”, the entry point to the normal traffic pattern at 3100 feet altitude. I had just completed a right turn to the base leg of the traffic pattern when I looked to my right and observed an explosion and huge fireball in the distance.

The highest point in the Superstition Mountains is a little over 5000 feet elevation. I was a mountain boy from Northern California, and a little 5000-foot hill just did not seem like much of an obstacle to me. On our usual departure to the east, we flew several thousand feet above it and I simply never gave it much thought. The next morning when I drove to the base on Williams Field Road, that mountain looked to me like Mt. Everest!

For a long time afterward, I reviewed over and over in my mind what I had done the night before and wondered: “what would I have done if I had not received that response from Phoenix Approach?” I cannot say with certainty that I would have recognized the danger and turned to a safe heading on my own without instruction from Phoenix.  I have often thought: “There, but for the grace of God, go I”.

For ten and a half months, Bill Stone and I and thirty-three other student pilots in the John Black/Beercan flight of Willie class 72-02 did everything together. We sat in all the same classrooms, studied aerodynamics, aerospace physiology, weather, and principles of flight together. We even endured a week-long defensive driving course before they ever let us touch an airplane. We sat with a buddy in the high-altitude chamber and watched each other ride the Barany Chair. From those somewhat humorous experiences, we witnessed the effects of rapid cabin decompression, oxygen deprivation, and spatial disorientation. We chuckled as the other guy’s fingers and lips turned blue, and within seconds, he could not write his own name. My now nameless companion failed at 95 while trying to count backward from 100. We laughed as we watched the other guys try to sit up straight after several revolutions in the chair. They looked like they had just spent the night at the bar in the Officers Club. Despite the humor, aerospace physiology was serious business. Our lives depended on understanding the hostile environment we had entered.

We watched each other literally get our butts kicked when we squeezed the triggers of the ejection seat in the Boom Bucket. One by one, we were pulled behind a speeding pickup truck and sailed up in the air 300 feet on a “parasail”, then banged our knees on the desert floor at the Rittenhouse Auxiliary when we tried to practice the parachute landing fall (PLF – in the military, everything has an acronym). That parasail was just a regular parachute with a couple of panels removed “for stability”. What it really did was increase our rate of fall as we descended to the concrete desert floor.

Physical conditioning was a necessity. Frequent exposure to five G’s in a high-performance jet was physically demanding. We ran the mile and a half, three or four times a week and did a hundred other things to earn the coveted wings of a United States Air Force pilot.

One by one, as we each returned safely from our initial solo in the T-37, we took off our boots, and were summarily dispatched to the dunk tank by the rest of the gang. My first solo in the T-38 was a thrill I will never forget … but that’s another story.

(In this picture: 2nd Lieutenants all - Angelo John, left, Rich Martindell, Ed Morrow, Robert Swanson, Frank Zazula, and me, of course.)

In all that time together, I only have one other memory of Bill Stone. One afternoon on the track, as we were nearing the end of a run, he appeared out of nowhere and zoomed past me like he had just lit his afterburners. I finished that race eating his dust!

Every day, when we went to the academics building, we passed a display case showing each of our names and a shiny pair of wings above each name. It was a sad day when the name of William J. Stone was removed from that case.

As a result of the accident and the investigation that followed, local flight procedures where soon changed. A new pattern breakout heading was given so that we weren’t heading directly at the mountains, and we were instructed that if approach control did not respond by the time we reached the highway from Apache Junction to Florence Junction, we were to turn right to a heading of 120 degrees which would keep us a safe distance from the mountains.

For over forty years I had thought the location of this crash was forgotten and unknown.  Prompted by
the tragic crash of a civilian aircraft the night before Thanksgiving, 2011, I searched the internet and discovered photos taken in the past few years showing debris from Lt. Stone’s aircraft located near the trail to the Flat Iron in the Superstition Mountains above the Siphon Draw Trail.  The 2011 crash site is just a few hundred yards away.

Since that time, I have scaled the mountain twice (edit: as of 2015, five times) to visit the site where my classmate perished.  I hope one day to place a plaque at the site in honor of my fallen comrade.

My first experience witnessing the Air Force Missing Man formation was later that week as a Memorial Service was held for Lt. Stone at the chapel on Williams AFB. Rest in peace, Stone. We, the students of Willie class 72-02 will never forget you.

 

Radio Call Transcript

The transcript of the radio conversations that night indicate that Pace 38 and Cram 02 were in the same general location at the time Lt. Stone executed his pattern breakout and that the overworked controller apparently confused the two aircraft.  (Cram 02 was a “control ship” with a qualified instructor pilot onboard.  Regulations required a qualified pilot to be airborne at all times when student pilots were flying solo.  Cram 02 was the lead control ship which took off before the solo students.  He was nearing the completion of his mission.  Cram 47 was the trailing control ship which took off after Lt. Stone.  All solo students had a Pace call sign.)

Time	Position	Message
22:56:45	Pace 32	Phoenix, Pace Three Two pattern breakout request vec ah vectors to X-Ray
22:56:50	Cram 02	Phoenix Approach, Cram Zero Two missed approach and ah sounds like our other control ship is getting airborne.  This time request X-Ray.
22:56:55
22:57:00	Phx R5	Zero Two standby / Pace Three Two squawk ident Zero Four Zero Zero
22:57:05	Pace 32	Pace Three Two squawking
22:57:05	Phx R5	Okay Three Two radar contact turn right heading One Two Zero
22:57:10	Pace 32	Pace Three Two (Repeating the call sign is an acknowledgment of the instruction)
22:57:15	Phx R5	Pace Three Five ah heading ah --- Pace Three ah Five what’s your heading
22:57:20	Pace 35	Three Five heading One Two Zero
22:57:20	Phx R5	Okay
22:57:25	Cram 47	Phoenix Departure Control Cram Four Seven climbing to block above Willy
22:57:30
22:57:35	Phx R5	Four Seven radar contact
22:57:35	Phx R5	Two Nine descend and maintain Four Thousand Six Hundred and an continue Two One Zero
22:57:45	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine
22:57:50	Phx R5	Three Two squawk ident
22:57:55	Phx R5	Okay Three Five squawk ident (At this point it appears the controller is having issues keeping track of the aircraft. The ident feature in the transponder sends a signal to his radar system causing the image to be highlighted, allowing the controller to positively identify the aircraft in question.)
22:58:00	Pace 35	Three Five
22:58:05	Phx R5	Okay
22:58:10	Phx R5	Three Five turn right heading ah Two One Zero
22:58:15	Pace 35	Pace Three Five
22:58:20	Phx R5	Three Five descend and maintain Four Thousand Six Hundred
22:58:20	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine is heading Two One
22:58:25	Phx R5	Two Nine turn right inbound to X-Ray squawk standby (Standby causes the image to disappear from his screen.)
22:58:25	Pace 29	Pace Two Nine
22:58:30	Pace 38	Phoenix Approach, Pace Three Eight pattern breakout request X-Ray
22:58:35	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two turn right heading One Five Zero and squawk ident, maintain Six Thousand (Phoenix did not respond to Pace 38 – a heading of 120 is parallel to the runway.  Phoenix gave the instruction of 150 because he must have thought Cram 02 was too far to the east and needed a heading to take him back to the proper flight path)
22:58:40	Cram 02	Cram Zero Two
22:58:45
22:58:50	Phx R5	Pace Three Two maintain FiveThousand vector to High X-Ray
22:58:55	Pace 32	Ah Pace Three Two wants to go to X-Ray (not High X-Ray – the same point on the ground, but at 4600 feet and 3100 feet respectively)
	Phx R5	Okay you’ll be a vector to X-Ray – Pace Three Five turn right heading Two Five Zero to intercept the One One Six radial to X-Ray, Squawk standby and Rumdum.
22:59:00
22:59:05	Pace 35	Pace Three Five
22:59:10	Phx R5	Pace Three Two turn right heading Two One Zero, descend and maintain Three Thousand One Hundred
	Pace 32	Pace Three Two (acknowledged)
22:59:15	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two turn right heading One Eight Zero (This is crucial.  I believe the controller actually saw the image of Pace 38 and thought is was Cram 02.  This heading is an even greater correction back toward the traffic pattern than the one given 40 seconds earlier.)
22:59:20	Cram 02	Cram Zero Two
22:59:25	Phx R5	And Pace Four Seven ah squawk ident Zero Four Zero Zero (this is a mistake, his call sign was Cram 47 – not a major error, but indicates the controller was swamped.)
22:59:30	Phx R5	Pace Four Seven radar contact turn right heading One Four Zero, climb and maintain Six Thousand
22:59:35		(this is when I believe the crash of Pace 38 occurred as evidenced by the next radio calls)
22:59:40	Phx R5	Cram Zero Two Phoenix (The controller did not give any instructions. This indicates that he wants the aircraft to respond.)
	Cram 02	Zero Two go (meaning, I’m here, what do you want?)
22:59:45	Phx R5	Okay check your transponder, we just lost it, code Zero Four Zero Zero and ident (clearly something had just occurred to cause the image to disappear.)
22:59:50	Phx R2	When you can ah standby talk to Cram Zero Two and send him to channel twelve for (unintelligible) (R2, I suspect was a supervisor – channel twelve was the direct channel to T38 operations at Williams to be used by the control aircraft for special circumstances)
22:59:55
23:00:00	Phx R5	He’s going to Rumdum (unintelligible) (Rumdum was the runway supervisory unit at the base – manned by instructor pilots for pattern traffic control)
23:00:10	Cram 47	Ah Phoenix ah you might want to check with Rumdum, it looks like we may have had an aircraft impact out here

The T-38 Traffic Pattern at Williams AFB for traffic to runway 30.

With the help of a young friend, I finally made it to the top of the Flat Iron in 2015.
Stone's aircraft hit the rock cliff off my right shoulder (viewer's left).

The blackened rock face top center was the impact point of the civilian aircraft in 2011. Stone's aircraft impacted the large rock face to the left and below as he was traveling from right to left in this image. Debris fell into the draw roughly 500 feet below the point of impact.

My View From the Hospital Window by Bob Kaufman

I have a Bachelor of Science in physics with a minor in math from an accredited university.  I hold a certificate of aeronautical rating from the United States Air Force, which, if it isn't the best pilot training institution in the world, it is second only to the United States Navy. I have my own opinion on that, but that’s another story.  I proudly wore the coveted wings on my uniform for five years. I hold a Master of Business Administration degree.  And, I earned an advanced doctorate degree in the life of Bob Kaufman.  All of that qualifies me to talk about little else than myself, and absolutely nobody else should feel compelled to listen.  I suspect, however, that some of my experience, understanding, and beliefs about life might find a friendly audience in one or two other folks.

This morning, July 26, 2012,(1) I gazed out the window of the sixth floor of my sweetheart's hospital room, where she lay suffering from a serious traffic accident that happened three days earlier.  I noticed the intricate arrangement of pipes, conduits, and other mechanical devices on the roof of one of the lower sections of the hospital.  The scene presented all the tell-tale signs of intelligent, man-made design: straight lines, consistent curves, right angles, and such - those geometric shapes you rarely see, if ever, in nature.

Near the horizon, this side of Mummy Mountain in Phoenix/Scottsdale, a crane was in motion, moving other objects with lines, consistent curves, and right angles in the construction of some other object of intelligent design.  Without a doubt, the buildings I observed could not have arrived at their present form without forethought and effort of intelligent creatures.  Although the complex arrangement of the pipes and conduits caused me to wonder if sufficient forethought had been given to the project and if a simpler arrangement might have been possible.  It looked more like a house that had been designed and built, and then the owner realized something else was needed, something he had not anticipated in the beginning.  So, an addition was made, and then another, and another, and another.... 

In the process of earning that BS degree over forty years ago, I was exposed briefly to a very new field of study called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR).(2) Yesterday, a very skilled and knowledgeable surgeon shared with me images captured by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Those images showing an interactive, three-dimensional view of my wife's broken rib cage, are the evolution of over forty years of study and practice applied to the then infantile field of NMR.

Last night I viewed a short section of a video featuring another knowledgeable and wise person discussing the intricate system that transmits sound waves to the human brain.  With vibrations so small as to be dwarfed by the dimensions of an atom, the ear drum, first in line in that intricate system, transmits those waves to the brain.  From this, if everything is functioning as designed, we can hear the velvet sounds of a cello in an orchestra playing a masterful composition, and we can distinguish that sound from the cry of a newborn baby, constructed, by the way, in only nine month’s time. I can ramble on aloud, and if you have heard my voice before, you can distinguish it from the thousands of others you have heard. Truly it is a remarkable system, part of that larger conglomerate of systems we call human.

If I recall correctly, before my BS, the commonly held astronomical belief was that the universe was static.  Sometime after that, something exploded with a bang and the universe began to move.  But there wasn't enough energy in that explosion to keep things moving apart forever and scientists said eventually it all would implode and maybe start all over again.  No one knows for certain what was going on before the bang, what caused it in the first place, and what will happen when everything collapses.  That last question is irrelevant now because, I think, the current theory is that everything is accelerating away from everything else and there is insufficient force at work to bring it all back together.  Eventually, if man doesn't fall victim to some other catastrophe, when he gazes into the heavens at night, he will see only black because the stars and galaxies will have moved so far away that their light will no longer reach the earth.  I have no idea what the theory is about the moon in this scenario, so maybe there will still be romance and horror stories about what happens to some people when the moon is full.

I am subject to correction on that last paragraph because, for the past forty years, my study of science has been limited to things I have seen on the likes of the Discovery Channel. And, I wrote all of that from my memory which is getting weaker as I write.  Finally, it could happen that future scientists will learn something new that will change the current theories, whatever they really are.

So, as I write, Doctor Hu is performing surgery (he pronounced it "hue" like having to do with color, not "who" like the fictional British TV character who travels the universe in a telephone booth). His dedication to the science of medicine gives me a good deal of comfort and a great deal of gratitude. He is working to repair my sweetheart's ribs so that they will move without causing great pain, so that her chest will expand sufficiently to cause air to reach the lower limits of her lung, so that it will function properly and not become diseased further, thus allowing her to rise from her bed of pain to continue to live, love, and bless the lives of everyone who is fortunate to cross her path.

All of this is to say that my nearly sixty-four years of earning all the credentials, outlined earlier, convince me that there is no way that all of this is an accident of nature and not an act of design and construction by someone very intelligent.  I do not dispute the bang theory.  I simply do not know, but certainly would like to know more about how it all happened.   Some will call this blind faith.  I don't care about that.  I do not, and never will accept the notion that mankind evolved from a single-cell in some primordial soup somewhere millions of years ago when the right combination of protein molecules and energy happened to come together in a collision in time and space.  The cello convinces me otherwise. Although, surprisingly, that description fits how each individual was and is created, but the time required for that process is measured only in months.  Equally unacceptable to me is the idea that over eons of time these cells learned by endless trial and error how to form themselves into all the systems necessary for sustaining the myriad of organisms that inhabit this universe.

I love the 1994 movie IQ, with Tim Robbins, Meg Ryan and Walter Matthau playing the part of Albert Einstein.  I know it's a chick flick.  So what? At one point, Einstein and a few of his old cronies are walking with Edward Walters, a simple garage mechanic with a fascination for science, played by Robbins.  One of the old scientists asks Edward if he thinks they will ever discover intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  He responded, "They're still looking for intelligent life here on earth."

For a few minutes today, I observed two men working at one of the junction boxes on a rooftop below my window. From the 6th floor they looked like nano-probes moving about affecting repairs.  Obviously, they were working to ensure the hospital systems continue to work properly.  I will concede that there really is intelligent life on earth, citing as evidence those systems the "mano-probes" were repairing.  Such mechanical systems, placed on the roof by design and human effort, not by accident, pale in comparison to the complex and marvelous systems of the mano-probes themselves. Simple logic, another of the attributes of intelligence, tells me that to believe intelligent man created the hospital but man himself is an accident of nature, is silly.

The famous British astronomer, Sir Arthur Eddington, said "the more we know about the universe, the less it looks like a great machine and the more it looks like a great thought."(3) I accept that thought without reservation.

The surgery was a success.  I think Dr. Hu is more artist than scientist. Now we are hoping that these repairs will allow her body to heal itself. Time will tell. Meanwhile we continue to pray for her recovery.

You may wish to view a beautifully produced video entitled "Our Divine Creator". It captures my views precisely: Our Divine Creator

(1) July 26 has become an important date on my calendar. On July 26, 1971, Lt. William J. Stone, my Undergraduate Pilot Training classmate was killed in a crash in the Superstition Mountains. On the same day as this story, July 26, 2012, as I was driving home on the 101 freeway, I received a call from my high school classmate Frank Buerger. He informed me that our classmate and good friend Pete Thill had passed away earlier that day.

(2) Not wishing to draw too much attention to my obsessive compulsiveness, I must say “nuclear” is properly pronounced nu-CLE-ar, not nu-CU-lar ... but that's another story.

(3) Quoted by John Lewis, former Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, and MIT. Note: My cursory research indicates this quote actually may be paraphrased from a quote by Sir James Jeans: “The stream of human knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality. The universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter. We are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of this realm.” — Sir James Jeans, (1877-1946), English physicist, astronomer, and mathematician, The Mysterious Universe (1930), 137.

I've Seen That Smile Somewhere Before by Bob Kaufman

Claire Johnson Senior Picture, 1967

Once, long ago, before I was young - indeed, even before time, I knew her and loved her!

Then, as I was about to leave that existence, Mother assured me: "Everything will be alright."

It was as if she was sending me off to my first day of school.

I imagine she licked her fingers, as mothers do, and slicked my hair, tugged at my belt to straighten my shirt. She looked, and looked once more to be certain I had my sack lunch in hand. Then, perceiving my reticence, she scooted me out the door before I could object.

So, I departed, as we all did one by one, into The Great Agon. 1

     "Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,
     seeking to find the old familiar faces", Charles Lamb wrote. 2

The Old Familiar Faces by Charles Lamb

That idea resonates with me.

It seemed part of my very soul when I first heard it not long ago.
I felt something expand within.
It was as the sound of angelic harmony – triads, and more complex chords, I have often heard, especially when the MCO women sing in three or four, or even more parts.

It is like an “arrival” chord. One that just feels right – that moment of anticipated resolution in the music, following a dramatic, suspenseful crescendo. I have felt similar beauties before - fulfillment of the promise that truth shall "distill upon thy soul as the dews from heaven." 3

Suddenly, I wished I had read more in the previous seven decades of my life. If I had, that truth might have drifted my way long before now.

"Where had I seen them, those familiar faces?", I thought.
"Certainly not here.”
“I have sought them as long as I can remember - since I was very young - even before that."

Their familiarity precedes time.

"If not here, then where?" I asked aloud.
(My thoughts, alone, could not contain that question.)

Spring 1968

Not the first, but my most memorable moment finding a familiar face, was the instant hers passed before mine, slightly lower, as five foot four is to just under six feet, not eighteen inches away, as close as two people can be within a single doorway without grazing against one another. I felt the faint breeze on my forearm as she passed by - all too quickly it seemed. Absent was the discomfort of a violation of personal space! Indeed, this was a most-welcome intrusion.

Though more than half a century ago, the image of that moment is unfaded.

Even if I close my eyes really tight, clench my fists, and think really hard, I cannot recall another familiar-face moment as vivid as that one, although, there have been many, many more.

Curious. Most have involved music, I think, but that's another story.
Or maybe it is this one.
My mind is yet unsettled on that point.

Spring 1968, Merrill Hall

Orson F. Whitney wrote: "More than once on hearing a noble sentiment expressed though unable to recall that I’d ever heard of it until then, I found myself in sympathy with it, and felt as if I had always known it. The same is true with some strains of music; they are like echoes of eternity. I do not assert pre-acquaintance in all such cases, but as one thought suggests another, these queries arise in the mind." 4

We Lived With God

Perhaps that is why I have found many familiar faces while engaged in singing music that also has a familiar echo. It is more than simple coincidence.

Wordsworth wrote:
    "Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;

    Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
    And, even with something of a mother's mind,
    And no unworthy aim,
    The homely nurse doth all she can
    To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man,
    Forget the glories he hath known,
    And that imperial palace whence he came." 5

W.W. Gibson wrote of ... "fresh moments that live again in remembrance - unfaded."

Living "again in remembrance" seems to imply a sense of deja-vu, but the passing of that angel before my eyes did not produce such a feeling. Deja vu is near complete forgetfulness...but not quite. Then, when it quietly, almost imperceptibly, drifts back into your consciousness, you feel you've been there before, but you cannot quite account for when or where.

No.
That wasn't it.

The feeling I had, as my heart leapt within, was complete remembrance and reunion. Unawares, I had been searching for her all along, but didn’t know where she had gone! Then I felt, just for an instant, that mother must have added, probably as an afterthought, as she gently kissed my forehead: "Don't worry. You will find her.”

Suddenly, there she was!
Unannounced!
Such an entrance should have been preceded by great pomp and circumstance!

Spring 1968, Together at Last

I was tongue-tied. 6
I tried but couldn't speak.
I didn't even know her name!

"Wie heißen?" (Literally, "How are you called?" – She always liked when I spoke German. I haven’t done it much in the eons since that September – 1967.)
The perfect greeting realized only now, half a century too late!
(Perhaps that eight-month gap between that moment and our first formal date might have been eliminated. Oh, but then, without the suspension, the “arrival” cannot be as sweet!)

Claire and Kristi, Summer 1970

Not quite a year later, on a warm summer afternoon - as we sat in the shade of the pine trees on the lawn where I once played imaginary baseball games on my knees, bouncing a soft ball against the sidewalk and fireplace at my childhood home - we talked of love and learned that we both had wished that the other would have come and sat nearby so we could talk. But she went to one side of the room, and I to the other. Gladly the distance of that separation would eventually disappear.

How could I not know her name? Earth might cause one to forget his former palatial home, but the face of eternal love is indelible! I have always had difficulty putting names to faces and remembering them for very long. I guess it’s just me.

     “I [had] seen that smile somewhere before.
     “Sometime.
     “Who can be certain when?
     “But, if I knew [her] then, it's strange I can't remember.
     “Feelings come so very strong, like we’ve known each other oh so long! 7

The Circle of Our Love

Helene Cardona wrote: 8

     To Kitty, Who Loved the Sea and Somerset Maugham

    For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
    it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
    ―E.E. Cummings

     The angel who smells of my childhood
     My mother, piano and oboe
     Whose face the icon reflects
     Auburn hair like a Modigliani
     Eyes the color of rain
     Light caught by surprise
     Whose presence the absence reveals
     Whose laughter burns snow
     Whose warm breath I breathed
     This morning as I woke
     The scent of gardenias whispering
     I never left you

Truly, she never left me!

Either we knew each other in a pre-mortal realm or I am a hopeless romantic.

I prefer both. 9



Footnotes:

1 According to Wikipedia, Agon is an ancient Greek term for a conflict, struggle or contest. This could be a contest in athletics, in chariot or horse racing, or in music or literature at a public festival in ancient Greece. Agon is the word-forming element in 'agony', explaining the concept of agon(y) in tragedy by its fundamental characters, the protagonist and antagonist.

Wikipedia definition of agon 

2 “The Old Familiar Faces”, by Charles Lamb
3 Doctrine and Covenants 121:45
4 Quoted in "Jesus of Nazareth" Vol. 2, by Truman Madsen
5 “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”, by William Wordsworth - 1770-1850]
6 Like the young man in “Montage from How Sweet It Is”
"Then I knew that you knew that I knew that....
(This song became ours that bright and wonderful spring of 1968...but that's another story.)

7 “The Circle of our Love”, from “Saturday’s Warrior”, by Douglass Stewart and Lex de Azevedo
8 “Life in Suspension / La Vie Suspendue”m by Helene Cardona
9 O My Father, text: Eliza R. Snow, 1804-1887, verse 3:
      I had learned to call thee Father,
      Thru thy Spirit from on high,
      But, until the key of knowledge was restored,
      I knew not why.
      In the heav'ns are parents single?
      No, the thought makes reason stare!
      Truth is reason; truth eternal
      Tells me I've a mother there.

The Summer of My Discontent! by Bob Kaufman

Stan Ghidossi's Wood Pile 2019

My friend, Stan Ghidossi, posted this picture on Facebook, November 16, 2019. Reading his post took my mind back to “The Summer of My Discontent!”

I remember vividly the summer, probably 1964 or '65, when Dad ordered a truckload of logs delivered to the vacant lot across the gully from our house. It was my task to turn the logs into firewood for the coming winter, load the finished product into the bed of Dad's '56 Chevy pickup, and transport the load to the woodpile in our front yard. These were not Lincoln Logs. At the big end, some were about four feet in diameter, certainly longer than the 36" guide bar of Dad's biggest chainsaw. Like slicing a carrot, I cut those logs into pieces short enough to fit our fireplace. No summer before nor since have I been so intimately acquainted with a chainsaw as I was then. Perhaps a close second was a few years earlier, 1958 I think, when lightning struck and destroyed the big tree on the corner of Plumas and Pine Streets...but that's another story.

Dad Sawing the Tree
Destroyed by Lightning

(Oh heck! Why not?)

When that lightning bolt jolted into my life, shattering parts of that ill-fated tree and cutting a spiral rift from top to bottom, I was at the street corner by the telephone office, just a short diagonal city block away, returning from a trek to Leonard's Market, toting groceries in a paper bag that felt like it could not hold intact for one more block's walk in the deluge. I think I may have sought shelter from the rain, pausing momentarily under the veranda at the entrance to the office. You know how a paper grocery bag silently rips apart when it gets wet, especially when it is full of bottled or canned goods? Well...how that wet paper bag didn't disintegrate, scattering the groceries all over the phone office parking lot and shattering the bottles, when I jumped, is a mystery. I do not remember having to break into my piggy bank for funds to replace the groceries, so it is possible that Marge had double-bagged them to ensure a successful delivery.

Mom Helped

When the time came to make firewood from that tree, I was too young to be trusted with running the chainsaw, so my duties were confined to gathering, loading, and unloading the log disks, and splitting them into fuel. There must be a mountain-dweller’s name for those log disks, but I’ve lived in the desert now for nearly a half century, so if there is one, it has floated away from my mental archive like the smoke from all those logs I made into firewood and burned in the old fireplace.

Both summers of my discontent I found myself wishing that Dad would buy one of those gas-powered log-splitters to make my life easier, something he did, finally, after I had migrated to the desert but too late for me to get any pleasure from running it. Actually, it is good that he didn’t buy that work saver. If he had, I would have remained a Casper Milquetoast, never having completed the physical training I needed to become the football superstar I was that fall! Nevertheless, those pre-log-splitter summers were my opportunity to learn that I NEVER wanted to make my living using a sledgehammer and wedges!

(Truthfully, by Thanksgiving that year, I had also learned I wasn't going to earn a living on the gridiron either.)

Dad Posing, I Think

Despite the difficulty of such hard labor, it is strange how the memory of the sights, sounds, and smells of making firewood in that vacant, sagebrush-covered lot, are pleasant to me, so many years agone. Pining for the aroma of sawdust and fresh-cut chips of Douglas fir ejected amidst the smoke exhaust of the chain saw; the wood pitch that stuck to everything attracting dirt and turning black; the clink of the sledgehammer hitting the wedge; the crackling of the wood fibers ripping apart as the log splits; the soft scent of the sagebrush, dampened by a gentle rain the night before; all make me wish, for a moment at least, to return to the mountains!

Perhaps again, in June, I shall return, roll up my sleeves and pant legs, and wade in Gold Lake one more time.

Dear Bugs, where were you during The Summer of My Discontent?

Firewood Was a Basic Necessity!