The arborists came out yesterday to remove our third sick sycamore. Whatever killed the tree compensated for its death by making its trunk a little more livable for some other creatures. It was hollowed out like a huge drinking straw, and the empty space was filled with dozens of honeycombs and squirrels’ nests made of twigs, cloth scraps and lint.

 

It was a big damn tree, wasn’t it? Based on the height of the arborist up in the tree, it looks like it must have been about 60-70 feet tall. Our house is 110 years old, and the arborists estimated that the sycamores were 80 to 100 years old. When the tree was felled, it made a hell of a divot in our front lawn.

We’re sad to lose the sycamore and sorry to see the squirrels’ homes destroyed, but we have no regrets about ridding the neighborhood of the flying insects that somehow end up inside all the homes on the street.

The insects inside our sycamore looked like wasps, not bees, and the arborist said they were wasps. But I didn’t know that wasps made honey, so I googled “Do wasps make honey?” Up came this short article:

Ask anyone the difference between bees and wasps and they’re likely to say something like this: bees make honey, wasps don’t.

… the assertion that wasps do not produce honey is incorrect. Most wasps, it is true, do not make honey … But over a dozen species of wasps in Central and South America are known to produce honey, and have long been exploited by humans for this ability. Most well-known among the honey-producing wasps is the Mexican Honey Wasp (Brachygastra mellifica). This species ranges from northern Panama to the southern counties of Texas and Arizona.

I’m not so sure about the “… southern counties of Texas and Arizona” part of that info. We’re in northern Texas, not far from the Oklahoma border, but I’d swear that Mexican Honey Wasps (shown on the right) are exactly what crawled out of our fallen tree trunk. Jamie and I are positive that we recognize the reddish wings and the black and yellow stripes. That being said, neither of us will ever be mistaken for an entomologist, so who knows.

One of my heroes passed away yesterday. Charles Twain “Huckleberry Chuck” Clemans was one month short of 87 (born December 27, 1933).

When I was in junior high school I just kinda-sorta thought I’d become an attorney. It certainly wasn’t a passion and it’s not like I put a lot of thought into it. My research consisted of watching weekly episodes of Perry Mason and thinking, “That was cool.”

That all changed in April, 1962.

KMEN 129, a new radio station, had hit the airwaves about a month earlier. I continued listening to KFXM, the original Top 40 station in my hometown, until my sister told me that all the cool high school kids had switched over to this new station. So as I was getting ready for school the next morning I cranked the radio dial from 590 where KFXM was found to 1290 where KMEN was located.

I never switched back. KMEN was frantic, non-stop fun. The DJs were hilarious. The contests were outrageous. It was like nothing I had ever heard.

It was one of the most phenomenal success stories in the history of radio and was actually unlike anything anyone had ever heard. Several years later, during my last two years of college, I worked as a DJ on a local radio station in Eugene, Oregon. During the job interview the station’s program director asked me where I was from. When I said, “San Bernardino,” he was momentarily transported to another time and place. “Wow. Did you listen to KMEN?” A wistful look crossed his face. “It was one of the two or three best radio stations in the country. It had some great DJs.”

The best of those great DJs was Huckleberry Chuck Clemans, who made listeners laugh between 6 and 9 a.m. every morning. That means his voice would have been the one I heard that first morning I tuned in to KMEN.

His great uncle was Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens, one of America’s greatest novelists and humorists, the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and so many others, and the funny gene had clearly been passed down to Chuck.

I was always a funny kid and I enjoyed making people laugh, and listening to Huckleberry changed my life because it gradually dawned on me that it might be possible to make a living by doing something fun and creative. It seemed like amusing people would be a lot more fun than writing contracts and cross-examining witnesses.

I decided to become friends with this Huckleberry character and learn more about his crazy radio business. I called KMEN’s request lines (Turner 8-1290 in San Bernardino and Overland 6-1291 in Riverside) every morning to tell him a joke. I showed up at all his personal appearances. And he occasionally put me on the air either because I said something funny on the request line or because he needed someone to play straight man during one of his comedy bits.

He created his own Indian tribe and gave listeners Indian names to match their personalities. (Probably very politically incorrect today, but pretty damn funny back in 1962.) I was dubbed Smiling Fox. He, of course, was the leader of the tribe and named himself Chief Raunchy Wolf, an appropriate moniker.

He built a robot named Rollo who became his on-air sidekick. One day Rollo was missing and Chuck explained his absence by saying, “Rollo’s probably out in the lobby caressing the cigarette machine’s knobs again.” As I said, Chief Raunchy Wolf was an appropriate moniker.

He told crazy stories about KMEN’s 314-pound secretary (a beautiful girl named Sheila who didn’t weigh 120 on her worst day). On the other hand, he had a frequent caller he dubbed Mystery Sue. Everyone in town awaited Mystery Sue’s sexy, breathy tones and thought, “If she’s half as beautiful as her voice…” Turns out she wasn’t, but in Huckleberry’s creative radio world, anything was possible. Like Orson Welles, who had coined the term, Chuck understood that radio was “The Theater of the Mind” and created worlds and characters that could only be “seen” through his listeners’ ears.

KMEN held a cake baking contest and I won third place by decorating a cake to look like Huckleberry (that’s Hucky, the cake and 16-year old me in the photo to the right).

As I said earlier, KMEN put together outrageous promotions. One of them pitted all the DJs against each other in the KMEN Walk-Back-and-Forth, a competition in which they had to walk twenty miles from San Bernardino to Riverside and back and forth and back and forth until only one DJ remained. Huge crowds of listeners hiked along with all the DJs, but Huckleberry’s crowd dwarfed all the others. I lasted only about ten miles before my ankles surrendered, but Chuck, a gifted athlete, an All American swimmer at Stanford, racked up another 90 miles before finally being declared the winner.

One year KMEN staged what it called a Talk-A-Thon. Huckleberry’s assignment was to sit in a motor home in San Bernardino’s Perris Hill Park and blather non-stop until he broke the world record for continuous talking. For reasons I cannot explain except for the fact that they also thought Huckleberry was funny, my parents allowed me to spend all night in the crowd outside that trailer. It was the night of my sister’s wedding so after the ceremony I showed up in my rented tuxedo. Huckleberry invited me inside and said, “If you’re gonna dress like an emcee, you’ll need to act like one.” He thrust his microphone into my hand and continued, “I get a five minute break every hour. I want you to sit here and talk to the crowd while I rest.” I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything more intelligent nor more intelligible than “Uhhhhhhh” for the next five minutes, but he told me what a great job I’d done. It was the best compliment I had ever been given.

“You weren’t like the other kids,” he once recalled. ”They just wanted free records, but you were interested in the performance.”

I’ve often thought that great radio stations are like meteors that flash through the night sky. They’re rare and beautiful and light up everything in their path, and almost before you’re aware they’re there, they’re gone. It’s an especially appropriate metaphor for KMEN. The station was a special combination of the right people in the right place and at the right time. It blazed brightly, but briefly, and then, like those metaphoric meteors, it started to break apart as it fell to earth. Other DJs began leaving for better gigs in bigger markets, but Huckleberry understood the magic that was KMEN better than most and was reluctant to leave. He turned down lucrative job offers in San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle over the years. But it eventually became impossible to ignore the inevitable. Brian Lord, one of his original KMEN cohorts, recalled a downcast Huckleberry forlornly lamenting that “God doesn’t live here anymore.”

One of the worst days of my life came during my senior year in high school. On a chilly January morning, my hero announced near the end of his show that he was leaving KMEN that day after four years of incredible #1 ratings. I mourned his departure as if a family member had died. Many years later I stumbled across an old reel-to-reel tape of the last few minutes of his final show on KMEN. It was both funny and poignant and he had trouble getting through it before choking up and fighting back the tears.

As successful radio personalities do, Chuck moved up to a larger market. In this case, he became the new morning man at KCBQ, the number one station in San Diego. But it proved impossible to repeat the alchemy that had created KMEN and he eventually left the radio business in an effort to deal with his own personal demons.

No matter where life took us and no matter what endeavors we attempted, Huckleberry and I stayed in touch. I’ve often said that his words of wisdom led to whatever success I’ve achieved. After he became a stock broker in Phoenix he wrote me a long letter that among other things said, “Take my word for it, there’s no room in radio for tenors.” (I can’t tell you how much I regret that I lost that letter during one of the many moves I’ve made over the years.)

I had already realized that I was no Huckleberry, that I didn’t have whatever elusive combination of ingredients it took to become a successful radio personality. I had figured out that I was much better at writing material for other people to deliver than I was at delivering it myself. I changed my college major from radio to advertising.

At one point Chuck and I lost track of each other for a couple years. When we finally reunited, he threw his arms around me and said, “I’ve missed you, Smiling Fox.” He was still my hero and I always had a hard time accepting the idea that he might have come to think as highly of me as I had always thought of him, so I was stunned (and delighted) that he still remembered the silly Indian tribe name he had given me so many years earlier.

Huckleberry and I remained friends to the end. I tried to see him every time I found my way to San Diego and oftentimes went far out of my way just to get there. Between visits we stayed in touch via email and phone.

He never lost his great sense of humor. I’d say, “Tell me a radio story,” and he could always come up with one that made me laugh.

Oddly enough, our roles completely reversed over the years. For the last few years, he always made a point of telling me that I was his hero. It boggled my mind every time he said it. How could that possibly be?

Marvelous athletes like Chuck always find a way to vanquish their opponents. But one opponent, Father Time, remains stubbornly undefeated. Chuck had become increasingly frail over the course of the last few years. He hated the twice a week dialysis sessions he was forced to endure. Then he suffered a badly broken leg and went through a long, painful recovery and rehab. Finally, just a few months ago, he underwent heart surgery. I called him in the hospital and somehow, after all these travails, he sounded stronger, younger than he had in years. “Jesus, Clemans,” I said, “you’re one tough son of a bitch.” He just laughed.

Here’s the last photo of me with Hucky. It was taken in his living room in San Diego. Look just to the right of the lamp and you’ll see a small framed photo. Look closely enough and you’ll discover that it’s same one found in the middle of this story — the 1965 shot of me, my hero, and my third place-winning Huckleberry cake. I am just so honored that Chuck hung it on the wall right above his favorite easy chair.

Thanks for the laughs, Huckleberry. Thanks for the memories. Thanks for the wise counsel. And thanks for the friendship. I’ll miss you.

Rest in peace.

This is Tinker, our little MaltiPoo. She’s the happiest, friendliest, most affectionate dog you’ve ever seen. I walked into the bedroom the other day and found her lying on the bed with a soft stuffed kangaroo dressed in a sweater that says, “I LOVE AUS.”

I don’t want to push my luck here, but I believe Jamie said, “Maybe we can take Tinker with us next time we go down under.”

Now if we can just get Oz to eliminate all its harsh restrictions on foreign visitors, Jim and Jamie and Tinker can head down under again.

(Good thing we don’t live in Pennsylvania or a big box of late votes would have been mysteriously discovered in the trunk of a car sitting in a parking lot across the street from Democrat Party Headquarters and the final tally would have been 100,000 votes against Oz vs three votes in favor.)

God daughter Tatum is about to graduate from the Physician Assistant program at Chapman University (also Jamie’s alma mater).

Tatum called Jamie very excitedly the other day to announce that she had just delivered her first baby. The first of many, I’m sure, because that’s what she wants to specialize in.

How is that possible? It seems like she was a baby herself not that long ago. But look at her now — beautiful and smart as hell and ready to take on the world.

But what, pray tell, is a physician’s assistant? I had to look it up.

PAs are medical professionals who diagnose illness, develop and manage treatment plans, prescribe medications, and often serve as a patient’s principal healthcare provider. With thousands of hours of medical training, PAs are versatile and collaborative. PAs practice in every state and in every medical setting and specialty, improving healthcare access and quality.

PAs are educated at the master’s degree level. There are more than 250 PA programs in the country and admission is highly competitive, requiring a bachelor’s degree and completion of courses in basic and behavioral sciences as prerequisites.

Incoming PA students bring with them an average of more than 3,000 hours of direct patient contact experience, having worked as paramedics, athletic trainers, or medical assistants, for example. PA programs are approximately 27 months (three academic years), and include classroom instruction and more than 2,000 hours of clinical rotations. A PA’s medical education and training are rigorous.

The PA school curriculum is modeled on the medical school curriculum that involves both didactic and clinical education training. In the didactic phase, students take courses in basic medical sciences, behavioral sciences, and behavioral ethics.

In the clinical phase, students complete more than 2,000 hours of clinical rotations in medical and surgical disciplines, including family medicine, internal medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, general surgery, emergency medicine, and psychiatry.

Congrats to Tatum. It was a tough program with lots of sleepless nights and endless days and there must have been plenty of times that she thought it wasn’t worth it. But she’s this close (imagine my thumb and forefinger about an eighth of an inch apart) to finishing it all up.

It is, perhaps, another mere coincidence that all five of our god children — Tatum, Jack, Avery, Stella, and Kendal — are so smart, so accomplished, so good-looking, and so hard-working.

We have clearly been huge influences on all their lives.

 

 

 

 

Cadillac Ranch, a truly iconic American landmark, sits just off Interstate 40 a few miles outside Amarillo, Texas. It’s one of those places you see photos of and think That’s kind of cool, but wouldn’t go too far out of your way to see. Luckily, our route took us right past it.

It consists of ten Cadillacs buried nose-first in the ground. If you’re a car buff, you may notice that they show the evolution (and growth) of the brand’s tail fins between 1949 and 1963.

You can see Cadillac Ranch from the highway, and a convenient off ramp leads directly to it. Or them. Whatever.

The cars still had their original factory colors when they were installed. But those colors are long gone thanks to the spray-painted graffiti that now embellishes every square inch of their surfaces.

Every once in a while the cars get a professional paint job. They were once painted white for a TV commercial. Another time they were painted pink in honor of the birthday of the artist’s patron’s wife, then flat black to mark the death of one of the artists, and then rainbow colors to celebrate Gay Pride Day. Once they were even restored to their original colors as part of a series of Route 66 landmark restoration projects. But those new paint jobs and even the brass plaque commemorating the project were graffitied over in less than a day.

In June 2020, the cars were painted solid black with the words “Black Lives Matter.” Here we are just four months later and there’s nary a hint of that black paint remaining.

Clearly, black lives may matter, but black paint does not.

Our Aussie friend Wendy left a comment about our recent trip from Washington to McKinney. “Good to see you guys finally getting to see your own country,” she said.

Fear not, Wendy. We’ve seen most of it, 42 of the 50 states. (Contrary to what President Obama said, there are only fifty states, not fifty-seven.) The ones we’ve missed are:

Alaska. My dad lived in the Land of the Midnight Sun before he moved to California, and when my cousin lived there her kids sent me a very cute hand-made coupon book good for a wide range of Alaska activities, but I never got around to visiting.

Arkansas. Shame on us. Texarkana is only a hundred and sixty-six miles from McKinney, and we’ve been here for nearly seven years, but we’ve never made it to our northeastern neighbor.

North Dakota. How have we missed it? It’s right next door to Montana, which I’ve been to dozens of times, but not once in North Dakota.

South Carolina. No reason for not going. It’s just that nothing ever took me there. I’d love to visit Charleston.

Looks like we could knock the next four states off in an afternoon. They’re small and they’re all bunched up there in the far northeastern corner of the country:

Connecticut. Again, shame on us. God kids Jack and Stella both go to college in Connecticut, and we were supposed to visit for Jack’s graduation, but the Chinese flu shutdown got in the way.

Maine. Just never had the opportunity nor inclination to go. It’s way up there in the northeast corner of the United States and not on the way to anywhere else.

New Hampshire. I’ve never heard anyone say, “Gee, I’d sure like to visit New Hampshire.

Rhode Island. I grew up in the nation’s largest county, which is many times larger than Rhode Island, the nation’s smallest state. Quite honestly, I can’t even tell you where it is on the map. Somewhere up in the northeast corner.

Unfortunately, the eight missing states are scattered all over the map, so it’s not like we can check them off the list on one grand tour. Looks like we’ll need to pick them off one at a time.

UPDATE: Just did a little Google Maps research and found out just how small the four missing New England states really are. If we were to fly into Providence, Rhode Island (CHECK), it’s just a 37 mile drive across the northeast corner of Connecticut (CHECK) to Webster, Massachusetts. From there it’s only 105 miles to Portsmouth, New Hampshire (CHECK). And finally, a mere 1.5 miles across the Providence River to Badgers Island, Maine (CHECK). Bingo! Four as yet unvisited states in less than two-and-a-half hours.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I got to thinking that maybe I have been to Arkansas. My mom and dad used to take us on long, long driving trips when I was a kid. I know we have photos of my sister at the gates of Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, and we went from there to my Uncle Pete’s home in Chicago. The current route, according to Google Maps, cuts across the Mississippi River into Arkansas, but I have no idea if the old route went that way. So I’m going to leave Arkansas in the “Haven’t Been There” camp for the time being.

Our original itinerary had us flying from Denver to Dallas. But early one morning my cousin Muriel called us into her dining room, opened up her beautiful china cabinet and said, “Jamie, I’d like you to have my antique china collection. I’ve already spoken to my daughters and they agree that you should have it.”

Jamie’s lower lip started to quiver and tears rolled down her cheeks. She loves my cousin Muriel and her husband Bill (and vice versa), and she was overwhelmed by their sweet, generous offer. Muriel’s had this collection for 65 years. It’s worth a small fortune (I know because while Jamie was busy wiping her tears, I was busy looking it up on eBay.)

But there was a problem. There was no way for us to carry the entire set onto the plane and we knew it would never survive being shipped no matter how carefully we packed it. So we changed our plans, canceled our flight, and decided to drive two more days from Denver to Dallas to make sure that the entire collection arrived safely.

Thanks, Muriel. Jamie promises to cherish it as much as you have.

We started this little road trip with a stop in Moscow, Idaho to visit with goddaughter Kendal and we’re ending it (sorta) with a visit to her older sister, goddaughter Avery, in Loveland, Colorado. Avery’s just finishing up her teaching credentials at University of Northern Colorado. That’s her boyfriend Jake with a firm grasp on her shoulder. (Good idea, Jake. You’d be crazy to let her get away.)

I can almost remember being as young as Avery and Jake, but I have absolutely no recollection of ever being as attractive.

Damn it.

The western side of Montana is mountainous and green. The eastern half of the state is completely different with low, rolling hills and vegetation that’s brown about half the year. This half of the year, to be specific.

We thought Cody, Wyoming, which calls itself the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park, would be mountainous and forested. No such luck.

Cody was a pretty little town, but between the coronavirus and the end of the tourist season, we were just about the only people on the streets.

We’re not sure which state we were in. Could have been southern Montana. Could have been northern Wyoming. It doesn’t really matter. We saw hundreds and hundreds of deer. Or antelope. Or elk. Or whatever these are. And look at the blue of that sky.