Clinging To Our Guns

by Ben Small



In anticipation of an Obama swearing-in ceremony, America has been buying guns in unprecedented numbers. Of course, Obama-phobia isn’t fully the explanation. Americans feel threatened; they’re afraid. Gang and drug warfare are on the rise, as are home invasions, and in some cities, like Chicago, which is setting murder records, only the cops and bad guys have guns. (Ordinary people aren’t supposed to defend themselves in Chicago. Mayor Daley won’t permit it.)

But there’s no denying the Obama effect. Overnight, prices of AK-47s skyrocketed, in some places as high as 200%. Same with AR-15s and other weapons carrying more than ten rounds. You may remember the Clinton Assault Weapons Ban. That didn’t do much to stop the proliferation of serious weaponry. It was a joke. Yes, magazines were limited to ten rounds. But there were no limits on how many magazines one could carry.

Several articles have appeared about surging guns and ammo sales across the nation, and the gun stores I’ve visited have been packed full of purchasers eager to beat expected new anti-gun measures. Barack Obama has said he supports gun control, and his legislative record backs him up. Yes, there was the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, but that victory for Second Amendment gun rights was by a one vote margin. Change a judge, and it’s a new ballgame.

But something else, too is driving the buys. A different fear.

Mexican drug gangs are storming our border, shooting up border towns and killing police officers and border guards from El Paso to Tucson to San Diego, and of course, their Mexican counterpart cities. And the Latino gangs that support these drug lords, like MS-13, are spreading across our lands like an infection. MS-13 is in Los Angeles, San Diego, Tucson, El Paso, Chicago, Madison, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and other cities as well.

Just last Halloween in Tucson, my home turf, three teenagers in three wrong places at three wrong times were shot down, two of them killed. All three were students at Sunnyside High School. Three normal kids with bright futures, students of a friend of mine. One of these kids, a young girl, was at a party. Some gang-bangers tried to crash, and an argument ensued. Later the bangers came back. They shot up the house from their car. The girl, inside dancing with friends, died.

My teacher friend says the kids know the ropes. You’re sitting at a stop light and a car pulls up. Someone in the other car flashes a gang sign. You’re not in a gang or you’re in a different gang; you don’t respond or you give the wrong sign.

That's disrespect.

Bang, bang, you’re dead.

Amazing. Imagine being a teenager today...

A few weeks ago, my wife and two of her friends took their Concealed Carry Class and submitted their permit paper-work. The class was jammed. The instructors said classes have been packed for more than a year; they're struggling to keep up with demand.

Now these are ordinary citizens. Not gang-bangers, not criminals. You can’t get a concealed carry permit if you’re a criminal. Nor can a criminal buy a gun – legally. But criminals don’t have any problem getting guns, all kinds of guns, even automatic weapons. They just smuggle them in from Mexico and spread them around the gangs. The guns that are terrorizing Chicago aren’t guns held by law-abiding citizens; they’re gang guns. No gun ban is going to stop that trade. Only law abiding citizens are denied the means to protect themselves in Chicago.

Our growing security anxiety is fueled by several very real concerns: 1) fear that our institutions are breaking down; 2) fear that wealth re-distribution policies will heighten tensions; 3) fear that anti-gun measures will limit purchases by law-abiding citizens of weapons and ammunition; 4) fear that like the L. A. riots after the Rodney King beating and the looters and marauders during and after Katrina, there will be roving gangs of looters and predators following any future catastrophe or breakdown of food delivery, power supply, energy or social order; 5) fear that terrorist or gang or drug lord raids within our borders will increase; 6) fear that our borders are so porous, we have no ability to stop drugs or the growing illegal gun trade, and 6) fear that the police cannot adequately protect us.

A Harvard study a year or so ago examined the effectiveness of strict gun control measures worldwide. The study concluded that those jurisdictions that have the more severe gun limits, have higher crime rates. Look at Chicago or Washington, D.C. Indeed, Britain, which completely banned most guns many years ago, has seen violent crime rise since.

Already, some silly measures have become law, and are being considered elsewhere. Like the California law that requires every handgun sold by 2010 to imprint on its cartridge identifying marks traceable to the gun. This law was passed last year by the California legislature and signed by the Governator despite no proof that such technology exists or would be effective. In fact, a study by the University of California at Davis, showed that such technology does not work. And what about revolvers? Their cartridges are carried away with the gun.

Imagine how easily you could be framed. Go to the gun range, fire your weapon. Someone picks up your brass and leaves it at a crime scene.

Boom. You’re in jail.

The gun industry has reacted slowly to the California measure, although at least one manufacturer has decided not to sell guns to police or anyone else in California if this law remains in effect. A few other manufacturers are considering similar actions.

So called “assault” weapons are defined very loosely. The term is usually described as semi-automatic weapons, those that don’t have a rotating cylinder feeding a bullet to the chamber. Banners claim these weapons aren’t used for hunting; they're only used to kill people.

That's not true. On either front.

Varmint hunting is popular these days. Rats, prairie dogs, coyotes, they're fair game in many areas. And semi-automatic weapons, both pistols and rifles, are popular choices for hunting them.

I've owned semi-automatic weapons for over ten years, and I don't hunt.

I haven’t killed anybody.

I shoot paper, lots of paper. I compete in paper-shooting contests. Fun stuff, shooting in competitions, part of our American heritage. Sergeant York, an American hero, used to compete in turkey shoots. So do I, but my turkeys are paper, and they’re taped over cardboard.

And what’s wrong with that? Good clean sport. Nothing gets killed, and only a few pieces of paper and cardboard are damaged. The paper, bullets and cartridges are all recycled.

Shooting is green.

So who gets hurt by me owning a gun... or several?

Semi-automatic weapons fire one bullet at a time, just like revolvers do. Yes, magazines for these guns may contain more bullets, but some revolvers shoot as many as eight rounds, and there are speed loaders available. Speed loaders facilitate a revolver rate of fire not far slower than a semi-auto's.

Pick up any gun magazine; there are many from which to choose. Check out the ads. Yes, they may scare you. But remember, these are the guns the good guys, law-abiding citizens, are buying. They're used for self defense and for sport. A gun ban won't stop gangs from getting guns. Criminals don't file for concealed carry permits, and they don't buy their guns in U.S. gun stores. You bump into a bad guy at the wrong time and place, and the only thing between you and the coroner may be your ability to defend yourself.

The bad guys may have machine guns. And sometimes, grenades.

Back in Connecticut, a Revolutionary War cemetery adjoined my back yard. Stones dressed with flags mark the war's graves. In those veterans' days, every home contained a gun.

We may return to that notion.

Election Hangover

By Pat Browning

After weeks of constantly scouring the Internet for the latest election news, I’m finding the habit hard to break. It turns out that the post-election news is almost as addictive.

Apart from raging controversies over the dress Mrs. Obama wore for her husband’s victory speech, and the best dog for the Obama girls, writers for major newspapers have posted columns both humorous and poignant.

Here are excerpts from some of my favorites.

COLSON WHITEHEAD in the NEW YORK TIMES:
OVER the coming days and weeks, there will be many “I never thought I’d see the day” pieces, but none of them will be more overflowing with “I never thought I’d see the day”-ness than this one.

I’m black, you see, and I haven’t gained a pound since college. I skip breakfast most days, have maybe half a sandwich for lunch, and sometimes I forget to eat dinner. Just slips my mind. Yesterday morning, I woke up to a new world. America had elected a Skinny Black Guy president.

An AP story on CNN:
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has dismissed criticism of his description of U.S. president-elect Barack Obama as "tanned" and walked out of a news conference after blasting a journalist who pressed him on the issue.

Berlusconi appeared visibly annoyed after a Friday summit of European Union leaders when reporters questioned him about the possible political fallout of the comments he made Thursday in Russia. The outspoken Italian leader appeared to be joking when he said Obama "has everything needed in order to reach deals with him: he's young, handsome and even tanned."

Berlusconi later said the remark was meant to be "cute" and called those who disagreed "imbeciles, of which there are too many."

GAIL COLLINS in the NEW YORK TIMES:
Finally, on behalf of the baby-boom generation, I would like to hear a little round of applause before we cede the stage to the people who were too young to go to Woodstock and would appreciate not having to listen to the stories about it anymore.

MAUREEN DOWD in the NEW YORK TIMES:
As we start fresh with a constitutional law professor and senator from the Land of Lincoln, the Lincoln Memorial might be getting its gleam back. I may have to celebrate by going over there and climbing up into Abe's lap. It's a $50 fine. But it'd be worth it.

P.J. HUFFSTUTTER in the LOS ANGELES TIMES:
I saw the president-elect on Thursday -- six different times, for a total of 71 seconds. We didn't speak, but he did grin and wave at me. At least I think it was at me. It could have been the Secret Service agents standing behind me, all toting automatic rifles, who are a constant and imposing presence around Barack Obama.

Some of the Windy City's motorists, it became clear, did not seem to understand that A) the Chicago Police Department car that trails the president-elect's motorcade is serious about having traffic pull over when the officers inside flash the lights and hit the sirens, and B) it's not a great idea to cut in front of a black SUV filled with heavily armed Secret Service agents.

When the motorcade pulled off a highway and onto city streets, a couple in a tan sedan tried to drive around the motorcade.

The Secret Service agents cut the car off immediately and aimed their weapons at its occupants. The driver slammed on the brakes, and he and his stunned passenger threw their hands into the air.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF in the NEW YORK TIMES:
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the Hawaii Legislature in 1959, two years before Mr. Obama was born in Honolulu, and declared that the civil rights movement aimed not just to free blacks but “to free the soul of America.”

Mr. King ended his Hawaii speech by quoting a prayer from a preacher who had once been a slave, and it’s an apt description of the idea of America today:

“Lord, we ain’t what we want to be; we ain’t what we ought to be; we ain’t what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain’t what we was.”

The last word belongs to President Bush. He’s not noted for his eloquence, but he “riz above his raisin'" as an old saying goes.

From AP writer BEN FELLER in the SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE:

Bush's comments to his staff, under a gray sky on the South Lawn, also had the feel of an early goodbye with 75 days left in office. Bush sounded wistful as he looked out at a lot of familiar faces, including some people he's seen at work each day for nearly eight years. The president recalled that before his 2001 inauguration, he said that he and his wife would never quite settle in Washington.

"While the honor is great," Bush said, "the work is temporary."

The Perfect Place to Write

Because I began my writing career as a news reporter, I could probably write in the middle of a traffic jam, but there are distractions that bring me to an exasperating halt. Phones and door bells ringing, neighbors and friends popping in when you least expect them, salesmen (yes, they still do occasionally appear at your doorstep), missionaries leaving pamphlets, and so on.

According to Carl Honore, who wrote In Praise of Slowness, it takes our brains eight minutes to return to our creativity mode whenever we’re distracted. Telephone interruptions require a fifteen minute recovery time. With email, one message delays your creative train of thought for more than a minute, according to Lois J. Peterson in her article, “May I Put You on Hold?”

Peterson says, “High tech interruptions come with built-in controls, if only we would use them.” We have answering machines, caller I.D. and email programs that alert us to messages, if we leave the programs open. Shutting down the Internet while we write is one solution as well as unplugging the phones, especially if you're fortunate to have broadband service.

What if? was always be on my mind if I shut off all forms of communication. What if there’s an accident at the job site, what if one of our adult children needed our help? What if my husband had an accident or broke down on the way home?

We had a large home office which I shared with my husband and our two business. Although background music helped, I was often interrupted by not only the phones but my husband wanting to share something with me. Many husbands don't understand that writing isn’t just a hobby or an excuse to avoid housework. Bestseller status would undoubtedly cure that problem.

My husband reads more than I do, including my books. I’ve talked to other writers whose spouses don’t read their work, and resent the time they spend writing instead of with the family. Countless women writers have said their husbands’ resent their creativity. Writers, artists and entertainers used to only comprise 5% of the population (before self publishing), so that placed us in a special category, of which I cannot think of anything comparable, with the possible exception of rocket science and brain surgery. I’m not advocating that writers be placed on a pedestal, but regardless of how much money we earn, or how little, our talents should be respected by family members.

Few of us have our own private office or cubby hole where our writing time is sacred. I've gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to write something down that was rattling around in my brain, without phones ringing or people barging in. I was tired next morning and probably more than a little cranky, but as every writer knows, if it's not handwritten or typed into the computer, we're going to lose that "brilliant" passage.

Writing isn’t just an occupation that doesn't pay all that well,  for me it’s a source of joy and feeling of accomplishment, like nothing else. I’d rather write than attend a party, sell books at a signing, or stay in bed all day to read.

Although most women writers have said, “I need a wife to do the chores so I can write,” the obvious solution is to marry another writer who cooks, cleans and edits. And while we’re at it, make sure he looks like George Clooney.)

Most of my writing problems were solved when my husband retired and we moved to a small mountaintop ranch (pictured above) with only cell phone service and few neighbors. The only distractions are cows mooing in the distance and an occasional deer or antelope passing by my window or an eagle soaring past. It doesn't get much better than that.

~Jean Henry Mead

The Joy of Revision

I know writers who hate to edit, but I love it. There is nothing like watching a pile of ordinary words begin to shine. But once you have your masterpiece in your hands, this squalling red-faced newborn with its squinched-up face and its misshapen head, how do you shape it into the beautiful baby you know it can be?

First, put the manuscript away for awhile. A month is good if you can manage it. Then read the manuscript through with your colored pen in hand. Look at the Big Picture. Does everything make sense? Where do you need more development? Where are you spinning your wheels? Do you have too many characters? Not enough? Do you have the right balance of plot and character? Are your characters consistent? Is your pacing right? Does everything move at the same speed? Where do you need more information? Where do you need less? Do not fix the problems; just note them.

Go through the manuscript again, correcting the big problems you noticed above. If there is a pacing problem, decide which scenes need to move faster, which might need a slower, more thoughtful pace. Sentence length and structure can affect the pacing of the story. Are all your sentences the same length? Try varying them. Add necessary scenes. Take out unnecessary scenes, even if you love them. (I keep a folder called “Jared scraps” for things I like but which don’t fit this book. That way, I don't feel so bad about cutting things I like a lot. I may never use them again--but they're there if I want them.)

Use the edit/find function to look for “filler” words: that, just, very, etc. You don’t need, “She was very beautiful” or “The stench was pretty awful.” “Very” and “pretty” dilute “beautiful” and “awful.” Do a global search for these words and eliminate every one that you don’t absolutely need. (I'll bet you can do without "beautiful" and "awful" too. What does beautiful look like? What does awful smell like? Rotten eggs or an overused outhouse?) While you're at it, look for your own pet words and phrases. We all have them. Do another search for those words and see if you can replace some of them with more vivid words, phrases, or images. (In one book a popular author whose work I generally admire used “the tires chirped” or “I pulled away with a chirp of tires” at least half a dozen times. It was an interesting line and sounded original the first time, but after a while it just seemed odd. Do tires chirp all that often, really?

Replace meaningless gestures with meaningful ones. Shrugging, grinning, and smiling are fine for first drafts, but look for the telling gesture or detail. Another good use for the search feature.


Look at the rhythm of your sentences. Try to end your sentences with the word that has the most weight. (Not, “After I talked to Moretti, I picked up a sausage McMuffin and went down to the docks to poke around,” but “After I talked to Moretti, I picked up a sausage McMuffin and went down to poke around at the docks.” Not, “There was a star-shaped hole in his head, and a thin line of blood trickled from it,” but “A thin line of blood trickled from the star-shaped hole in his head.”)

Read your dialogue aloud. Does it sound natural? Does it sound too natural (uh, um…I mean, like, really...)?

Replace generalities with specific details. Not, “She was the nicest woman I’d ever met,” but, “I knew she only had ten dollars to last her until payday, but she pulled a crumpled five from her pocket and stuffed it in the blind man’s cup.” Look for bland nouns and weak verbs. Replace them with strong, vivid ones. Don’t settle for the almost right word. Go for the lightning, not the lightning bug.

Keep your characters’ eyes in their heads. (“His eyes slithered down her body.” Well, that’s just gross.) Personally, I'm not bothered when people's eyes meet; that's such a common phrase it hardly registers any more, but there are many readers who are bothered by it, so why take the chance?

When you say something like, “Running for the bus, he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk,” make sure the two actions you’ve chose really can be (and would be) done simultaneously.” Not, “Falling onto the bed, she dialed the phone.” Fall first, then dial. Or dial first, then fall. It would be very hard to do both at the same time.

In the same vein, watch for misplaced modifiers: Mary moved to a little Irish village with nothing but a suitcase and an extra pair of overshoes. Does the village have only a suitcase and overshoes? No, try this instead: With nothing but a suitcase and an extra pair of overshoes, Mary moved to a little Irish village.

Are you showing when you should show and telling when you should tell? Or vice versa?

Beware the information dump, especially of the “as you know, Bob” kind, in which two characers tell each other things they both already know.

“Hardy Boy Syndrome,” she quipped. Just don’t do it. “Said” is good. Rule of thumb: only use a descriptive speech tag if the way a thing is said belies what is being said (“I hate you,” she said sweetly.), or if it’s necessary for characterization or effect. Note: you can’t hiss anything unless it has a lot of sibilants. It might be important to tell us if someone whispered or murmured something. Sometimes.

You can’t smile a word, grin a word, smirk a word, or frown a word. Not: “They’re beautiful,” Jen smiled. Instead, try: “They’re beautiful.” Jen smiled.

Read each sentence aloud. I usually point as I go, since it’s very easy to miss typos, such as repeated or misspelled words.

Exhausted yet? Put the manuscript away for awhile and then read through it again. Happy? Now find several readers and/or writers whose opinions you trust and ask them to read your manuscript for you. Ask them to make places they didn't understand, or places where their attention wandered. Read the suggestions of your readers with an open mind. You will agree with some of their suggestions. Others, you’ll disagree with. If you hear the same thing from several readers, they probably have a point. There is probably something wrong with that section of the book. The solution may be different from what the reader or readers suggested, but there is something there you should work on.

All right. Your book is perfect now, right? Wrong. Put it away again for a while and work on something else. You know your book so well you can practically recite it. But because you do, you read the sentences as you mean for them to be. You will invariably overlook some typos. Our minds provide meaning and correct errors without our knowledge. So read the manuscript again—backwards. (Thanks to Kathryn Wall for that tidbit!) By reading each sentence in isolation, you have a better chance of catching any errors that may have slipped by.

All done? Congratulations! It’s a book! Your beautiful new literary baby is ready to show the world.

The Lucky Break

By Mark W. Danielson

Last weekend, Ben Small and I were privileged to be two of fifty authors who were invited to participate in Irvine, California’s Men of Mystery event. Approximately five hundred people who love mysteries pay good money to have lunch with an author. Over the past six years, I have listened to such impressive key speakers as Dean Koontz, Vince Flynn, James Patterson, and this year, Andrew Gross.

Andrew is best known for co-authoring the first four of James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club series. On his first book, Andrew received zero billing. On the next, his name made the cover. The third gave him equal billing and made him a household name. His dubious partnership with James Patterson began with a phone call where James told Andrew he “did women well.” Wearing a smirk, Andrew quickly explained that James was referring to his writing skills before admitting that this phone call was his lucky break. We should all be so lucky, but the fact is, a break of this magnitude is merely a foot in the door, and what kept Andrew employed was his quality writing. Without it, his partnership with James would have ended before it began.

After the event, I spoke with Robert Fate Bealmear. Robert drops his last name, using just his first and middle names, and I must say it suits his outlook on writing. Robert agrees that more often than not, fate determines a writer’s success. Having authored over sixty books, many of which have been made into films and television, Robert is truly an acclaimed author, yet he’s still amazed that at 73 years old, Hollywood is still buying his work. I replied that the great thing about writing is whether you are twenty or ninety, good writing is always greeted with enthusiasm.

That evening at dinner, someone asked whether I could make a living at writing. My answer was yes, but probably not by writing novels. I do quite well at selling freelance magazine articles, and unlike novels that pay royalties based on sales, magazine publishers always pay up front. Given this, one might wonder why I bother writing novels. Simply put, it’s because fiction allows me to express and resolve whatever it is that’s bubbling inside me. Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, I will always write, so long as there is a topic worth writing about.

Interview with PI Greg McKenzie

By Chester Campbell

Today we’re interviewing Lt. Col. Gregory McKenzie, USAF, Retired. If you’re unfamiliar with Greg (shame, shame), he’s the narrator and chief protagonist of the Greg McKenzie Mysteries, of which four have been published. I don’t have a photo of him (I think he’s camera shy), but his first description of himself in Secret of the Scroll is: “Gannon stands half a head taller than my five-foot-ten, and he’s depressingly slim while I bulge in all the wrong places.” Let’s get on with the interrogation.

CC: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Greg. Give us a little background about yourself.

Greg: I was born in St. Louis to a red-faced, garrulous Scotsman who was a master brewer for Anheuser-Busch. He came to the U.S. with his parents as a teenager. My mother, a schoolteacher, had some Scottish blood in her, as well. After high school, I majored in political science at the University of Michigan, then worked as a St. Louis County deputy sheriff for about four years. I joined the Air Force and became a special agent with the Office of Special Investigations.

CC: What’s an OSI agent do?

Greg: They’re like police detectives, similar to the Army’s CID and the Navy’s NCIS. We investigated crimes, on and off base—I jokingly say I pursued cases like overpriced wrenches and stolen toilet paper, but it was a lot more serious than that. I was involved in murder investigations, drug cases, espionage, terrorist incidents. Anything that might pose a threat to Air Force personnel and installations.

CC: You stayed in until retirement?

Greg: Yeah, stayed in sounds good. When my time was up, I was sort of invited out. I never minded stepping on toes if it got the job done. But when you step on toes that wind up marching around the Pentagon and oversee the OSI, it gets a little sticky. I found my career maxing out as a lieutenant colonel. Unless you’re promoted to full colonel, they cut you off after so many years.

CC: You really did the retirement thing at first, didn’t you?

Greg: Oh, yeah. I was only sixty, so Jill and I bought an RV and set out to bum our way around the country. We wintered in California, then summered through Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas. We headed for Florida when the weather turned coolish, and made our way up the East Coast as spring pushed its way northward. For two years after that, we enjoyed sniffing the jacaranda around the American retirement community outside Guadalajara, Mexico. But Jill longed to return to her roots in Tennessee. So we bought an immodest log house in the Nashville suburbs, and now it’s very much home.

CC: I believe you worked for the DA in Nashville for a while?

Greg: You had to bring that up. I enjoyed my stay but it didn’t last too long.

CC:P What happened?

Greg: There was this case, made a lot of noise in the papers and on TV. The wife of a young CPA who lived in a fashionable section of town disappeared. She was a successful interior designer and the daughter of the president of a big local bank. The lead investigator for the Metro Police was a detective named Mark Tremaine. He immediately zeroed in on the husband and hounded him to death. Tremaine ignored some other leads and continued to expound his theories on what the young man had done with his wife’s body. When he couldn’t take it any longer, the guy took his son and went back home to Philadephia. I made some pretty strong remarks about what I thought of Tremaine, believing it was off the record. They showed up on the front page on the newspaper. The banker, who didn’t like his son-in-law, was the DA’s chief backer. End of career.

CC: So you’re now a PI. How did that come about?

Greg: That was mostly my wife’s idea, but I bought into it. After that situation down at Perdido Key, Florida, where we looked into the death of our best friends’ son, Jill had the bright idea that we should open a private investigation agency. I had enjoyed getting back into the role of criminal investigator, though strictly on a volunteer basis, so I agreed.

CC: Your wife had no experience, right?

Greg: Right. She’s had lots of experience as a commercial pilot, ran her own charter service while I was in the Air Force. But investigations, no. However, in Florida she showed a real knack for getting information out of women in an informal setting. She still does it, and she’s turned out to be a great assistant in my investigations. Oh, better not let her hear that “assistant” thing. We’re equal partners, of course.

CC: As I recall, your military service was sort of a family tradition. Tell us about that.

Greg: As far as I’ve been able to determine, it started back in 1794 when sixteen McKenzies were mustered into the 98th Argyllshire Highlanders at Stirling Castle, north of Glasgow. After the unit was re-designated the 91st, other McKenzie relatives followed them on down to 1881. That’s when the 91st was merged with the 93rd Sutherland Highlanders to form the regiment my grandfather fought with in the Boer War and World War I. My dad, Rob McKenzie, was a little less combative. He was an Army cook in World War II.

CC: You haven’t mentioned your age. You’re still in your late sixties, aren’t you?

Greg: Right. Thanks to you. It’s still 2004 where I live.

CC: Wish I could slow down the calendar like that.

Greg: Hey, you should be a character instead of a writer.

CC: Sorry, I don’t believe anybody would want to write about me. Stories have to be exciting, not boring.

Greg: I’ve been shot, mauled, threatened, insulted, disparaged . . . how about taking it easy with me next time out?

CC: All that action keeps you on your toes, keeps you young at heart. All that and your good-looking wife. Thanks for being with us today, Greg. I look forward to seeing you around again soon.

Greg: How soon? People keep asking when am I getting another case.

CC: Tell them to be patient, it won’t be long.

Naproxen, Please

by Ben Small



Yesterday, on the way home from an especially fun Men of Mystery book convention, my wife and I stopped off at the Imperial Dunes, a sea of massive sand dunes just twenty miles west of the California/Arizona line. We’d scouted the site on the way to the festival. Apologies to Mark Danielson and his lovely wife, Lynn, for cancelling out on the planned group dinner. After an eight hour drive from Tucson and a full day’s session, and knowing what lay ahead of us the next day, the wife and I took the quick-salad-and-hit-the-sack option.

A sign of age.

These dunes stretch for over fifty miles, from Sonora, Mexico well into the California interior just east of the Salton Sea. It’s a spectacular stretch of shifting yellow, reminiscent of some of the harsher areas of the Sahara. Dunes three hundred feet tall are common; they’re formidable, with bladed edges, curving crescents, and plunging cliffs off the leeward side. The sand dune scenes of the original Star Wars trilogy were shot here. One half expects R2D2 or maybe a camel to make an appearance.

There’s no fence across the border here. And until Interstate 8, there were no roads here either, unless one counts the wooden planks dropped down in the early 1900s. You may encounter illegals on ATVs or even Humvees. Maybe that’s why one sees green-striped Border Patrol vehicles everywhere.

Luckily, we didn’t see any news reports about shoot outs with drug runners in the Imperial Dunes Recreational Area until we got home. Seems it’s not an unusual occurrence, although night battles are most common.

We rented ATVs, and for old farts, did a credible job attacking these powdery monsters and laying our tracks. (Relax, tree-huggers, there were no fragile plants to trample or rip, and blowing sand soon covered our passage.) With just a little practice, I was soon ripping across wind-blown speed bumps, using my legs to absorb the pounding as I built up speed to challenge a nearly vertical three hundred foot climb.

Too little speed and one learns the hard way how to turn around a five hundred pound vehicle on a vertical face in knee deep sand. Too much speed, and you fly over the crescent and drop thirty or more feet, screaming because you know this is not good news. Ostriches do face plants; people tend to break their necks. Just a few weeks ago, the Border Patrol had to helicopter out a woman who’d tried to play ostrich.



Needless to say, my wife was a bit more cautious than me, but then, she’s got some common sense. I’m a guy; guys do stupid things, it's in our genetic structure. I thought I'd lost my stupid guy trick-bag sometime during my fifties, when my wife was re-ordering my priorities and forcing me to grow up, but put me on an ATV and Wa-Hoo, testosterone and idiocy blossom once again.

Watch out Poncho. The Cisco Kid is back.

We sandblasted our exposed body parts for an hour-and-a-half. Enough for a first taste. But we’ll be back. Fun like that doesn’t come every day. Next time we’ll plan a weekend, and maybe rent more powerful machines.

In the meantime, we’re struggling to figure out how get the sand out. Two showers later, and we’re still finding sand: in our mouths, our eyelashes, our hair ― even under our nails.

You see some strange things in places like this. Like some guy in a late model SUV, flying an enormous Italian flag, backing up a quarter mile, and then roaring forward, getting a head of steam as he charges up a three hundred foot vertical face. He gets to the top and turns around, charges down the face again. He gets out and waves the flag, then climbs back in and does it all over again.

Don’cha just love Italians?

I’m so sore, I may not move for a week. Pass the Naproxen, please.