Missing In Action

If you want your heart squeezed go to youtube and type Waltzing Matilda the Tom Waits version. Totally out of this world. He is a veteran of the Amish Civil War. Missing in action because of his own accord, he has the ability to endear himself to anyone. A brilliant writer, singer, and artist.


Waits has a great quote: "If you get far enough away, you'll be on your way back." It seems all of my life I have been running from something. My mom and dad asked me as long as they were alive why I was always running. I could never answer that question.


Perhaps now that I am almost fifty maybe I have some clue; My dad was a truck driver gone weeks at a time in every state but Alaska and Hawaii, I know I wanted to travel like him. Few people knew that dad was a professional athlete. A Pro Bull Rider. He was bucked off one Saturday night and broke both of his arms, that put an end to that career.


My mother was the hardest working human I have ever been around. Be it working the eleven-to-seven shift in a rest home or working in a can redemption center she knew nothing but working as hard as she could every minute of every day. Then she would come home and do the house work inside and out.


Both my mother and father had a eighth grade education but we never wanted. They were incredible. Dad would bring home his pay check on Friday night and mom would give him twenty-five dollars to live on the road for the next week. As a young man I always said to myself no body will ever control my money but me. It took me years to realize my mom was incredible at managing money and dad knew it. Dad or mom never had a credit card. They fought to stay out of debt.


A true family history: My father was a son of a horse trader in West Virginia and my mom was the daughter of a horse thief on the Iowa-Minnesota border. On dads right arm just behind his bicep he had a long scar. I can remember as a young boy asking him what happened, he told me his father had a horse and it bit him they were thirty miles from the doctor and nineteen miles from the vet. You have heard doctors called old horse doctors, today's doctors should leave such little of scar for such a bad bite.


My dad grew up with tobacco farmers all around him. He chewed Mail Pouch loose leaf, smoked El Producto Cigars, rolled his own cigarettes, and would smoke a pipe now and again, and dip snuff. He died of a heart attack on my birthday my senior year in high school. Combine all of that nicotine with all of the fried food he loved to eat and it was inevitable. At the end he was one of my greatest heroes.

The Treaty

I am lucky; I see a lot of unique things out where I live. The neighbor feeds their wild mustang in the pasture in my front yard; I have an Amish neighbor across the way that is a horse trainer. He is constantly driving a different buggy or a different horse by the house, what a nice man.


The neighbor with the wild mustang also has an Arabian that could be a brother to the mustang, because they look so much alike. Recently my dog Andy has been trying to make friends with them. They are about twenty hands taller than Andy. None the less, Andy always tries to get a smell. As the neighbor says “Andy must think that is one big dog.”

Andy and the horse called Spirit have sort of come to an understanding. Although at times I feel like the local law enforcement when the two get together, they have come to an agreement, sort of a Peace Treaty.

Me, I have been working on my own peace treaty. For some reason the Iowa Highway Patrol has taken a liking to me. They have stopped me so many times; I am on their Christmas card list. I do not know why I am a frequent target because I am a great driver. Yet still Bi-monthly I am stopped. No complaint just fact, bless their heart they are just doing their job.

Late last winter-early spring, I was going to town to check on a couple of students I had on Saturday school. I had gotten out of bed, put on my old jeans, flannel shirt, and fishing boots and walked out the door. I jumped in my old pickup truck and went to town. (That sort of sounds like a country and western song doesn’t it.) I went to school and checked on my two students, then went to get a cup of coffee and started my way home.

As I was going home, I may have exceeded the speed limit a bit. I met a patrolman and he pulled me over. Because I have been stopped so many times, I know they like to see your hands at the top of the steering wheel. (Bless their hearts I would never want to face the danger they do every day.) For some reason this time I forgot and put them in my coat pocket. That was the wrong thing to do.

The officer was a young man and he asked me very politely to please step out of the car. As I got out of the car, I dug my hands deeper in my coat pocket because it was cold. Wrong thing to do, He said “Sir would you take your hands out of your pocket?” I realized at that point he was a little concerned. I removed them slowly.

He said “Sir, do you mind if I search you?” I didn’t want any trouble so I said go ahead. I had on a huge leather jacket with multiple pockets and things in all of them.

He said “Do you have anything in your pockets that will harm me?”

I responded that I didn’t and he began the search. I had a pen in one pocket the size of a hypodermic needle, he felt that and asked me to remove that, then he felt a plastic baggie in there (I had bought cookies at a bake sale) and he asked me to remove that.

By this time, the poor scared young trooper was actually shaking, he was a little frightened. I’m sure he thought what does this big ugly looking guy have in his pockets? As he was searching me of course a couple of my students and one of my neighbors drove by. I knew it would be a long time before I would hear the end of this.

I do not know if he forgot why he stopped me or if he felt guilty, but after he searched me he let me go.

That would not be the last time I saw him.

Night Maneuvers

I live in the middle of nowhere in the timber about 200 yards from the Wapsipinicon River. Where I live is heaven. Everyone is always asking me to go to a resort somewhere but heck I live in a resort. From ten at night until five in the morning no cars go by my house. I have a two hundred acre conservation area across the road from me, I have an 80 acre area that is preserved by an outdoor club next door to me and to my north about half a mile I have one of my best friends and his wife that raise and runs sled dogs. Their log cabin is surrounded by pine trees and lilac bushes. I have been delivered. The only other soul close to me belongs to my dog, a rat terrier named Andy who patrols the property and timber around us.


Come night time Andy sleeps hard from his running and chasing rabbits, squirrels, deer, raccoon, and the occasional skunk. Early one October morning about two o’clock Andy was running around the house barking and carrying on. Finally I got up and let him out. For the next five minutes all I heard was Andy running around and around the house barking.

Finally I got up and I went outside in my running shorts and duck shoes to see what was bothering him. When I went out the door a black cat came running around the corner with Andy nipping at his tail. When the cat saw me he ran up one of the four walnut trees I have in my yard, with Andy springing up and down trying to climb the tree after him. After several attempts and failures Andy topped looked up and started barking and wouldn’t stop.

After fifteen minutes of trying to get Andy to give up his fight I finally decided to get a ladder from the garage and get that cat out of the tree. Now mind you it is 2:30 in the morning a cat is in the tree hissing at Andy, Andy is running around the tree barking and jumping, I am putting a ladder against this tree while wearing duck shoes and running shorts and swearing at Andy and the cat whichever one is annoying me more at the time.

As I am half way up the ladder I hear a car coming and eventually see a sheriffs car and he pulls into my drive way. He got out of the car and he says “What are ya doing?” Well it is three in the morning now, I am in ducks shoes and shorts, and what does he think I am doing picking walnuts?

I said “This cat is annoying my dog he has him up the tree and I want to get him down so I can go to bed.” The cop got into his car laughing and he leaves me. At least he could have shot the cat out of the tree for me.

I finally get high enough to grab the cat, I drop him to the ground, and Andy takes off into the timber after him. I leave the ladder up and go back to bed. About five, that same morning I hear scratching on the door, it is Andy, and he walks in the house and walks to his cushion and falls down with fatigue from chasing that cat. If only there would have been a video from that night.

Ground War

In the part of Iowa I live in the Red Wing black birds are many and they nest in the ditches along the roads. They sit up on the high wires and they watch over their young in the nests. Often if a biker rides by they will swoop down and try to scare them away from their nest. Unfortunately they are on the food chain of the hawk. The big graceful bird that flies’ over our state eating small animals and small birds out of their nest. It is a unique sight to see two or three black birds trying to chase a hawk away from their young.


These are the things of nature that happen around my home. Speaking of food chain it reminds me of a time when I was a young teacher back in the 1980’s; I lived in an old medal trailer home right on the river. I was just substitute teaching and coaching and didn’t have a lot of money. I would eat air popped popcorn and pancakes at the end of the month just to get by. The place I lived did not have an outside light and I lived in the timber about 200 feet from the river. On nights where there was no moon it would be pitch black. It was wonderful to sleep at night but other times it could be extremely frightening.

One particular dark night close to Halloween I was sitting in the trailer watching television in the dark when I heard a large bang against my trailer. I had not heard a car pull in, and my driveway was almost half a mile long and deep in the country so few people would walk out. I quick shut the TV off, grabbed a bat I kept next to the door and snuck out the back door. Actually I fell down the steps onto the ground and rolled behind a pine tree. If they didn’t know I was out of the house they did now.

It was so dark and I could not see the bat in front of me. I could here four or five of them moving around on the gravel of my drive way. People had been going up and down the river stealing things put of cabins and I do not know if they didn’t see the light from my TV or just didn’t care but I was scared witless and I was going to greet them with a Louisville slugger.

I could hear them walking toward my front door and for some reason they didn’t know I was creeping toward them. When I got within thirty feet of them I could hear five of them breathing very hard like they were as frightened as I was. I said “Tell me who you are or I am going to hit you”. I worried that it was some friends just pulling a joke on me and if I hit them I would kill them.

They didn’t say anything, I took three steps toward them and I could hear them breathing as if they were having a panic attack. Now I was within swinging distance away from them. I pulled the bat back like Hank Aaron and I prepared for battle. I said listen if you are a friend you better say something or I am about to beat you to death.

One of them stepped toward me and just as I was about to swing I heard “bah, bah, bah.” Five of the neighbor’s goats had got out and could not find their way home in the dark. I almost had a heart attack. They had found the greens of what was left of my flower garden and they were in heaven right next to the trailer.

Air Wars Over Iowa

It has been my dream to write a memoir of sorts. I have never taken the time. I have always justified to myself that I have been too busy. In reality I have been too lazy, putting it off for another day. I have tried, I have scribbled notes, unfinished word documents, but I have never done what I am going to try to do on these blogs, let you into my life.


My life has been a wonderful journey; I have taught, coached basketball and cross country, traveled the world and been addicted to things I am proud and not so proud of. I live in Iowa near the Amish on the Wapsipinicon River. The entire way I have had a better life than I deserve, with wonderful people around me that have treated me as family.

I plan to tell you the truth in this blog. By the way, most of the time the truth is more entertaining than fiction anyhow. Anyway, welcome to life inside the Amish Air Force.