Howdy And Here She Is

I've been pretty tired after the marathon twelve-day foal watch, so haven't been blogging much. Now that I'm back to my normal workload, I've been recovering. Here are some photos of the filly who made it all worthwhile, however tiring. She's going to be a very fine and sweet horse. Her official name is Dedicated One (her dam is Dedicated Sue, her sire Formula One). Her stable name is Oona. In these snapshots, she's four days old.

Dedicated One Arrives In This World!

Suzy had her foal -- a great big, strapping, beautiful, chestnut filly, at 10:35 last (Tuesday) night. She has a white blaze and socks to top of her rear pasterns, nice brown eyes. Great big legs. Dr Rick says "huge." Suzy was perfect, strong and brave. She really stamps her babies! The filly's going to have Suzy's coloring and sorrel tail. I was there for the whole thing this time, from just before her water broke, while I was doing night check and getting ready to bed down in the tack room, again.

Our first foal, Rep, two years ago, pretty much foaled himself, and got right up on his own as soon as he was out. This one -- Dedicated One -- stable name "Una" -- I had to get my hands and arms bloody, to give her a tug to help out. Took a good while to get her toweled off and up on her feet, but did, and then a few minutes for her to get her sea legs, me holding her up. Our friend Kim arrived and helped me get her nursing for the first time. Dr Rick arrived after she was up to make sure all was well and it was, everything perfect. We got her nursing again while he was there, a good long drink.

We have four horses again! Yay, Suzy! Yay, Una!

I hope to get the official baby photos today. We didn't have a camera available last night.

What a foal watch! Twelve days. Suzy's term was 348 days. I hadn't had any real sleep to talk about for twelve days but I got some last night.

!Adelante!

Jeffrey's Everyclear Party

In Nevada in those days, you could get a cocktail to go, in a "go cup." Try that most places today and see how far it flies... Maybe still can in NV. I don't know. In fact, you could get a cocktail everywhere I remember going. Go to the diner for some eggs in the morning, have a cocktail if you wanna. 7-11s sold liquor. Supermarkets, too. In Silver City, the only retail establishment in town was the bar.

Sometimes we'd go into Carson so we could pretend to gamble and so drink for free at one of the casinos. Dave would get one thin dollar worth of dimes. When a waitress would approach, he'd put one dime in a slot and take a cocktail off the tray, then walk around with it. And so forth. Get kneewobblin' drunk for one dollar or less.

I got so whisky drunk drinking for free while pretending to gamble one night, at a blackjack table, I couldn't do the math with the cards when they were dealt. Dealer was getting irritated because he was trying to work for a living. The pit boss finally told me I was welcome to stay and drink if I wanted to but I couldn't gamble anymore. Truth!

Place was lawless in those days as anywhere I've ever known, any time. I don't recall too many real bloodlettings for it.... Chaos, often. Madness, always. Occasional fisticuffs. Sure. 'S why we liked the place. On top of that, it was also, with Vermont (still), and Nicaragua and El Salvador, the most armed place I've ever lived. For all the chaos and madness, booze and drugs and general lawlessness and fun, I don't recall many firefights, for all that. Most people were downright polite,actually, if'n you obeyed the code of the mountains.

One time Jeffrey had an everclear punch party at his trailer in Silver Springs. Made a big ole punch. (Everclear for those who don't know was raw grain alcohol -- a punch would be about 190 proof.) Invited all of his pals over for the afternoon. Everyone, needless to say, was good and slammed by the time the punch was drunk up. My '63 Fury had no exhaust pipes at all, just noise right off the manifold, and a completely broken spring in the back on one side, so it listed heavily to one side.

(The manifold exhaust pipe had rotted through and broke in two on the way to NV from VT that year, and I'd driven across country with it like that, getting out every so often, crawling under the rig, and stuffing either broken end into a beer can, which muffled it some, until the can burned through, repeat process, and so on, for a couple of thousand miles. One night when we were leaving the End Of The Trail I was so drunk -- clearly -- that I told Jeffrey to drive. Anyone who's been in a vehicle when Jeffrey was driving knows that's fuckin' drunk, right there. No further description required. Jeff, instead of just driving around a corner and on to the highway to Silver Springs, decided to take a "shortcut" instead -- up and over this rock ledge -- boom bang -- ripped off the entire remaining exhaust system from manifold to tail pipe's how I got into that fix.)

So, a whole bunch of us left Jeffrey's for the End Of The Trail in my Fury. I can remember for sure that in the car with me were Morgan, Lonesome Wayne, and Custom Kenny, but there were more than that. The front seat was crowded and the back stuffed full. All of us way more than drunk.I got about a block toward Dayton on the highway when the cop light went on behind and the siren. So, I pull over, thinking the jig is finally up, this time, for sure. Redhanded. Judge'll never let me out. If they'd have pointed one of them breathalizers at me like they have today, thing would probably have exploded, killing us all.

Cop comes up to the window. Takes a slow gander at the whole bunch of us. Likely caught a good buzz just from the fumes. Doesn't bat an eye. He looks at me and says, You need to get that muffler fixed. I says, Sure, will do, right away. He gave me a warning citation. Never said another word. Turned around, got back in his car, and drove off.

They ain't shittin' you, either, pilgrim. You could buy this lot, for example:

Like the ad says, "plenty of room and close to town."

This is a shot of my last daylight view of Nevada before heading back east for what I didn't know would be a quarter century (fueled by a black beauty Jeffrey slipped in my shirt pocket, kept me going nearly to Cheyenne....):


I stopped here to drink a beer and gather what was left of my wits before the long drive to Jeffersonville, Varmint, where I arrived with one last thing ten-dollar bill in my pocket, which promptly disappeared at the roadhouse bar that was then called the Library and is known today as Robbie's Wildlife Refuge.

That was also the last transcontinental voyage of the '63 Fury. Later, I sold it to my brother, The Other Sisco, for one hundred dollars. He drove it, with more than 200,000 miles on it, when it was using more oil than gas, per old rig. He used to buy used motor oil in large lots from gas stations and just pour it in one end so it could run right out the other. We called it the SS Acid Rain in its final years, because the once-blue paint job was peeling off in huge sections, like sunburn, right down to the bare metal. It was a good old rig. Maybe my favorite of all I've run.

Dave Reisch and John "The Other Sisco" circa 2006, Sensitivo party at my VT joint

Dayton

The End Of The Trail, as it was late '90s. Sorry to say I have no photos of it in the glory days. The saloon is more than 150 years old.

The End Of The Trail was the headquarters of life, late 70s and 80s. Dave Reisch taped the whole jukebox selection, "the soundtrack of life," on to cassettes one afternoon. It's a literal recording of one afternoon at the Trail, jukebox, pool table noise, conversations at the bar. A real time recording of a day in the life. I'm transferring the recordings to CDr. So far there are two completed.

Dayton

Closer still:

On Saturday night we's all drunk and fightin'....

Dayton

This is more like it:

Dayton, NV

Well, no one can go home again. As it today. Nowhere is allowed to be as it was then. It doesn't look much different in this scene, though.

Silver City, NV

The Golden Gate Hotel

("Heartbreak Hotel")

Across the road in a little parking spot stands this plaque, about the ill-fated Comstock Brothers, who met a questionable end.

My '63 was often parked in front of it in '79, when, living upstairs were our old pals LeRoy, JR, Lonesome Wayne Thomas, and Michael Hurley, Samuella The Fortune Teller, and myself, yers trooley, the one and only Crispo.

One night Michael and I had an argument over some drunken nonsense, and I decided I was clearing out in the morning. When I stumbled to the old Fury, thinking, hungover, once again about how many a good man meets a questionable end, the damned rig would not fire, it just would not. Well, I wasn't a happy man right then. And then along ambled Lonesome Wayne, laid back as only he could be, with a rotor for a '63 Plymouth slant-six distributor. "I found this on the shelf in the bathroom, Sisco. Looks to me like a rotor for a '63 Plymouth."

I found Elwood at the End Of The Trail a few minutes later. "Dammit, Elwood, don't ever be messing with my car again, man."

Snock says, "I didn't want you to leave."

Hell, I didn't want to go anywhere, either, not without my boyz.

Burlapograd, Varmint

Put a call up to Portland on the public telephone....

One Of The Cats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ860P4iTaM

Designated Driver

My boxer, Lily Wiggles

My Jack Russell Terrier Pal, Trooper

My pal, Trooper, Exterminator of All Things Rodent

Yeah, still waitin .... But a dream to report....

Cordelia, Carla, Tex

So I normally don't remember dreams at all but for a week now, not having had any deep, dreamless sleep, I've been waking up remembering all of them. Some I've ended up thinking about for days.

Back in them latter '70s when still just a lad, out in that part of Nevada we loved, around Dayton, Silver City, like that, there was a woman Carla, Queen Of The Comstock, who was a real woman, yessir, believe it. She could hang with the best of 'em and best most of 'em. I wanted her desperately. When I told Dave Reisch that last year one night when we was drinking and yacking, he said, "Man, she would have eaten you alive!" Doubtless, but still ......

Anyways, one night at the bar at the Golden Gate Hotel in Silver City, I was drinking with Carla and trying, lad that I was, to chat her up. She toyed with me for a time the way a cat might a mouse, for entertainment's sake, before delivering the coup de grace. Carla looks up at me over a glass of whisky and says, "Sisco, you're so hip it makes me want to puke." True love! hey.

So last night I found myself dreaming I was back in Nevada and Nevada days, though somehow my dog Trooper was there with me, decades before he was even born. Me and Dave Reisch were drinking at the End Of The Trail Saloon and a couple of other old-time watering holes out there in them days. Dave and me was bellied up to the bar and I saw our old pal Tex come in, in the mirror behind the bar. Then I felt a woman's touch on my shoulder and turned around. There was Carla standing there, looking at me. She asked, "Do you remember me?"

Remember! Oh, my god!