J.D.’s Columns

Speed Kills Blue Mountains, Eastern Oregon  2001 (I heard this story from a big gentle guy who had the Harley bar  and shield tattooed across his entire back and had a bible close at hand. He told the tale while we were cutting firewood, after we'd known each other for a year. Will died ten years ago of Hep C complications.)      Before Jesus stepped in, I considered myself to be one big bad outlaw. I know now that I was nothing more than an addict, a thief, an armed robber, liar, fornicator, and money-hungry drug dealer. I broke all the Commandments but one. I never killed anyone.......... but I tried.      Speed does kill. Everybody I used to know is dead now, killed by crystal  meth and crosstops and booze and stupidity and greed. My little brother got me started on speed on the streets of Seattle when he was twelve and I was fourteen. We were walking down along Pike Street and he went...

TICK, TICK, TICK        OK, you just spent the afternoon adding to your guess-what-bird-I-saw-today list by walking a mile though the brush along the river. It was a hot day, so you are changing out of your sweaty duds and admiring your image in a mirror when notice a new mole just below your belly button. You move a little closer to the mirror, stand on your tippytoes, and realize that the mole has a silver-brown sheen and, aw Jeez, legs. The temple of your body has been invaded by a parasite and it is dining on your vital fluids. Tick alert! Quick, get the critter off your skin, but how?       First, a bit of soft science. There are roughly eight hundred types of ticks on this planet. A hundred of these can carry disease to warm-blooded critters, including humans. Not every tick carries a disease. Of the hundred types, five species will be found in the Pacific Northwest. These are the Rocky Mountain Tick, the American Dog Tic...

The Reintroduction of Kate Wolf Marin County, California       Five years before Kate Wolf died of leukemia, I was forty years old, living in a hired man's shack with an open fifth of Jim Beam and a Martin guitar that I could not really play. Across the hills of Marin County, big productive Holstein cows were being branded on their faces and sold for slaughter. The USDA had determined that there was a surplus of milk on this planet. I was wearing out my boots walking around pool tables. I believed that old drunks spoke the truth.      One Sunday morning came down awfully hard. I awoke with a flash of energy as the last of the double shots and slow dances with a woman who had a Jackson Pollack painting tattooed on her left breast blew through my nerve endings. Five minutes later, the goddess of excess smote me behind the right ear and I crawled back into the bunkhouse flannel with the Sunday edition of the San Francisco Chronicle. ...

A SAD Story         Engraved on the chunk of plastic pinned to her blue grocer's smock was the word “Delphine.”  She was one of five clerks handling the pre-holiday crush in a grocery store with aisles wide enough to accommodate forlklifts. Delphine was not smiling the smile that  “mystery shoppers” have forced upon the unions.      She slapped the bacon down like she was squishing scorpions. She hammer-threw five pounds of spuds against the back boards. She scooted the catsup with enough force to score against a Canadian goalie, smacked that bottle with the maple syrup, bowled a strike on the orange juice with a back-handed grapefruit, then helicoptered a dozen eggs into the pile.       "That'll be nineteen dollars and thirty-five cents."       I've never wanted to become a grocery clerk when I grow up. Even a good union clerk doesn't draw enough o...

  I collect one-liners. Here is a bucket of recent acquisitions.... Don't skinny dip with snapping turtles 24 hours in a day. 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? A cat almost always blinks when hit in the head with a hammer. A man and his truck: It's a beautiful thing. A penny for your thoughts, a dollar if you flash me. A synonym is a word you use if you can't spell the other one. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn. Advice is free: The right answer will cost plenty. Alaskans For Global Warming. All I want to do is massage your back. TRUST me... Anarchists of the world unite! Another Deadline, Another Miracle! Any book worth banning is a book worth reading. Friends don't let friends line dance. Anything not nailed down is a cat toy! Are lightning rods contrary to God's will? Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. Ask me about my vow of silence. At Exxon, we help Jesus walk on water. The best things in life are free plus tax. Be ye ...

Elmer Fifty years ago, in the Salmon River Mountains of central Idaho, I was detailed by the rancher who was my boss to help Elmer Brown harvest a few thin crops of oats from a dry hillside that his family farmed for more than a hundred years.      I was in my early thirties, hung-over every morning from chasing barmaids around pool tables. Elmer was a short person, an 89-year-old widower without teeth. He wore bib overalls, lived in the house his mother built in the late 1800’s, required a booster pillow to see over the steering wheel of his Oldsmobile, and hoarded scrap iron.      He lived in the kitchen of the three-story home. The rest of the house was crammed with stuff, floors to tin ceiling.  Paths led through towers of magazines, winter coats, cigar boxes and unopened mail. Propped in the living room doorway was a tidy bundle of a hundred curtain rods.      Our workdays began with a ritual. At sunrise I wander...

Zen Rattler      Deep in the dry, khaki hills of inland north-central California is a hot springs compound with a pool, a few cabins, a dining hall, and a meeting space, Tassajara, owned by the San Francisco Zen Center for retreats and general get-aways.       Fifty years ago, I left a hired man’s job in the high country of Idaho and bunked in the houseboat section of Sausalito because I had been asked to edit an edition of The Coevolution Quarterly, a biproduct of the Whole Earth Catalog where I worked for a few years and which won the National Book Award in 1972, my fifteen minutes of fame.     It was a tough transition from pulling calves out of “open” heifers in a snowstorm to herding authors like Brautigan, McGuane, Crumb, and Brando into some cogent form. I developed editorial constipation, a more acute version of writer’s block and needed to retreat to some neutral corner for a recharge, so I got in touch ...