By almost any measure my mother was a tremendous American success story in the early years. A divorced single woman with 4 children in tow would almost universally have a difficult road back in the 50’s and 60’s. She surmounted that and eventually became a millionaire in real estate in California. Her intelligence, business acumen and beauty were formidable and she overcame virtually any obstacle in her way. All of that is a long and complicated story so here I want to only focus on her very first business venture: Pamper House. “This is the story of a French girl with both beauty and brains who came to America to seek her fortune.”* My mother was a fairly well know Parisian model for the House of Jacques Fath who was one of the three preeminent pillars of postwar Parisian haute couture. With influential backing she did not think small – her address was 600 Fifth Ave, NY 20, NY – that’s Rockefeller Center.
Not too many businesses start out with a glowing 3 page spread in Life Magazine but somehow PAMPER HOUSE managed the feat on July 14, 1952. It wasn’t an ad – it was the feature article in their ‘Modern Living’ section of that edition. The subtitle read: WOMEN HELP SELVES TO BEAUTY AT QUARTER ADMISSION, DIME AN ITEM. Chock full of a dozen photos illustrating ‘beauty served cafeteria style’ the article described a brand new unique sort of club with a one dollar a year membership fee. Everything else was a la carte with a quarter for admission and a nickel or a dime or two for everything else. Working women or suburban housewives could rest and relax or grab ‘showers, shampoos, sets or scents’. Get ready for a date, have a snack or whatever. Except for the reception room no men were allowed in any part of Pamper House during business hours
Pamper House was a rather audacious venture for a relatively new immigrant. When asked by Dorothy Roe*, Associated Press Women’s Editor, how she would cover her costs Tanya Pitt replied “I have been reading about Mr. Woolworth. He founded a business on nickels and dimes – and I understand he did very well”. And so did she – before they even opened they had 2,000 members and almost immediate success. There were more than 3,000 women a week coming in with regularity and plunking down their quarters and nickels and dimes. This Parisian model had understood the temper of the times and the need for women to finally have a space of their own. She even foreshadowed the automat and vending machines.
Very quickly plans for expansion to Manhattan, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington DC were hatched. Soon my mother bundled my sisters and I along with my monkey Ike into a trailer and we were off on a cross country tour to promote Pamper House. In Chicago we even got invited on to the television show Welcome Travelers. In 1953 that was a pretty big deal for us kids.

January 12, 2012 / Pamper House / FHP, BK 2, #6 / FAM Pg 36 © 2012 / CIP # 874, Jan 20, 2012 / KD July 14, 1952 / FHPM MXD / F 192F, YP 79/10B

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Pamper House I presume was probably conceived in Gilbert House. Our first home in the new world was actually pretty close to a mansion in Port Washington, Long Island, New York. That was back in 1951 but I think I first became aware of the name in around 2002. It was then that I was sorting through my mother’s correspondence files (she had died the previous year) when I came across this rather nice postcard which I instantly recognized as a picture of our home in Port Washington and it even gave its name as Gilbert House but then sadly I misplaced the postcard. Quite a number of other memorable things for me happened in that house. The most important was I met my future wife LO-Tan there when I was about 8 or 9. We have a photo of that meeting.
The rest of the memories are mostly from a little boy’s point of view but they were fun for me to remember. The first exciting thing my sisters and I found was a secret passage between rooms. My memory is hazy but I think that in one of the closets there was a secret panel that if you removed it led to a passageway that led to a couple of closets in other rooms. Very exciting stuff when you let your imagination run as to its original use – perhaps even in Revolutionary times! The house was complex with three stories and probably a basement. There was a vestibule at the entrance allowing access to all three floors. I know some of it was rented out but I don’t know the details of any of that.
The second thing I remember quite clearly was a sledding mishap. The house sat atop a little hill with a retaining wall at the bottom around three sides – probably 3 to 4 ft high judging by the postcard photo. Immediately when I saw the photo I remembered one day sailing off into the wild blue and landing in the street below. Luckily there was some snow around so I only suffered cuts and bruises and a little blood. I think it was the only time I ever flew under my own power. I hadn’t thought about that day for probably close to 50 years. I gather I landed somewhere close to where it is reputed that the old ‘Toonerville Trolly’ ran from1908 to 1955 in the comics. One other photo I remember very well – it is of my grandfather, my uncle and I sitting on the steps leading up to the veranda and those steps are clearly visible in the postcard. It has always been one of my favorite photographs of me as a youngster.
Let’s zoom up to the present. Knowing the exact address it’s possible to enter that directly in Google Earth and virtually fly right there. From the air you can see the house and everything around it from a bird’s eye view. You can move left and right and up and down; you can explore the neighborhood. All the streets and buildings – that’s how I found out there is now a library next door (it was built in the 70’s). I called them and Janet at the ref desk found my postcard for me and told me that a Mrs. Tressins had owned the house in recent years but had passed away and it was now owned by a Mr. O’Connell. I’ve been back to my very first home in America some 60 years later. It’s been great fun!

January 16, 2012 / Gilbert House / FHP, BK 2, #7 / FAM Pg 38 © 2012 / CIP # 875, Jan 20, 2012 / KD May 1951 / FHPM MXD / F 192F, YP 79/4B

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This is the one I have dreaded to write. Complexity is an understatement – a gross glossing. Book 2, the United States, the latter half of the 20th Century, chaos and pain along with some bright spots, my mother and the disintegration of a family – that’s complexity over simplified. And we can boil that down to one word – Mother! Oh boy, I have dreaded to write this page. On the day she died I would guess her numerous acquaintances – neighbors, backgammon and bridge players mostly – would be nearly universally positive. Her business associates would lean positive but be quite mixed. Her family, especially her parents, siblings and children, would have a nearly universally negative outlook. Only her grand children might be mixed. She didn’t entirely deserve any of it, but she did engineer most of it. She died broken but I don’t think she broke till the last few days.
I can’t condemn my mother because she never did anything terribly wrong to me. I can’t condone her because she did some terrible things to all three of my sisters. There were always long periods of disconnect between my mother and all four of us children though those periods were usually not synchronized. There was virtually no contact between mother and any of her children from 1979-1986. After many, many years of spats I finally found a way to handle her. In the late 80’s I started treating her exactly as she had treated me in our last contact. I carried this down to the nuance, tone and often use of words verbatim. After a couple of years of this I noticed she had started treating me with respect. We never had another problem.Smoother sailing for me in the last decade.
Sadly my sisters did suffer and were never able to find a lasting solution. Two of my sisters from very early on and all through their life suffered with just a few respites of relative calm. The other managed quite well for a long time and then had a protracted rocky period that didn’t abate till after mother died. Almost all of my major fights with mother were over her treatment of my sisters. Somehow she was able to treat her son better than she was able to treat most of the men in her life. She quite often tried but never was able to treat her daughters with anything approaching long term civility. Neither my mother nor her mother ever mastered that art and thus ‘complexity re-dux’. Still it was not all one-sided – it never is! I never liked my mother but I did often respect her and was amazed at her intelligence regarding everything but family matters. I’d forgiven her in my own mind some time before she died.
Truth is a slippery thing as I have written elsewhere. I don’t know the whole truth. I do know that while owning a bookstore in 1978 I was appalled at the publication of Mommie Dearest by Christina Crawford. I didn’t believe a daughter could or should write such a book. After I read my mother’s will in 2002 I had second thoughts. Not for me because she did exactly what I asked her to do. Still I found clause 11 very wrong and ugly and never read another word. I was very glad I had backed out of being her executor some years before and asked her to leave me so little.

January 17, 2012 / Complexity Re-dux / FHP, BK 2, #8 / FAM Pg 39 © 2012 / CIP # 876, Jan 20, 2012 / KD May 15, 1920 / FHPM MXD / F 192F, YP 79/5

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The last free man will remain free! I am and have been the luckiest man alive all my life! Jan 1, 1951 may have been the low point. In January 2012 I know it is irreversible. Essentially everything only got better for 55 years. To be sure 2006-2008 was rocky but then it started improving again. Of course there were a few little bumps along the way and there were two big ones: 1975 and 2008 took some time to recover from. Otherwise each and every year was a little better than the year before. I call that a success! I won!! My goals were met!!!
It is important to note that during this life I lived two very separate lives and they were of almost equal duration. At least 99% of the people would call my first life a success and the second much less so. 1% at most (including me) would call my second life the success. 99% of the world talks about freedom. I lived it!! My first life I would rate as a B+ both as a student and as a human being. I was what they called a ‘golden boy’ at the time and most things seemed almost perfect. These were my years of school and corporate business. After I lost my hand I became a good student and I have always understood business. In my first life most of my mistakes were related to youth and testosterone. No one understands that until they get older. I improved in my second life almost every year. I virtually eliminated three major costs and cut a fourth in half leaving plenty of money for food, fun and all necessities.
I loved and still love all of my wives and all of their children who were very special to me – on the children 3 a little more so and 4 a little less. Beyond that in the intervening years there were perhaps ½ a dozen ‘significant others’ that I loved or came very close to it. Two other people I can’t fail to mention: Minnie H. showed me there was greatness and goodness when I lost my hand; and Christine P. restored my faith when I lost my wife. I got help from a thousand people and supreme help from five of them.
I am always working towards some goal or another. On my five most important goals I range between 93 and 99% with one still possible to make 100%. On my second five – dealing with major projects like my games, physics, CIP, FHP, the Condo and my dogs I’m pretty consistently between B and A-. For sure I did better in my second life.
It seems like 99% of the people in the world want to be rich and live forever and 100% of them fail. In my second life I have wanted to live well on very little and live to the age of 70. I have already managed to accomplish 99% of that. Actually it is as easy as picking your priorities. By spending almost nothing each and every year on legal, medical and insurance costs and cutting housing costs in half - voila! Even when you make less than the minimum wage you have plenty for everything you need or want – especially if you can manage to spend every $ at least twice. The last person who fully understood it all was my hero Diogenes who died in 323 BC – that’s 2,335 years ago! Hopefully the PBU does too.

January 15, 2012 / Success / FHP, BK 3, #47 / FAM Pg 37 © 2012 / CIP # 1002, Jan 20, 2012 / KD Jan 15, 2012 / AUD BTR / F 192F, YP 79/10

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No, we’re not talking of William here. He is still alive and kicking in Connecticut and Brill. Long before him, and maybe even a little before me, I am said to have had a twin brother. I don’t know who was supposed to have been born first. I know I am the only one who survived. The story goes he died, I lived, and I inherited his names. For sure I was born with 5 names and I have no idea who belonged to which. Eventually it was rather convenient for me because I didn’t like one of my names so I christened him Francis Joseph and I kept David Wright Pitt for me. Presence has its privileges.
Everybody on this side of the Atlantic including me had heard this story for years and never questioned it. Imagine then our surprise when my daughter went to England – I think it was 1984 but I am not sure – and my father categorically denied there was a twin. He maintained that position all his life because when my sister Valerie went to visit some years later he denied it again. I never broached the subject with him in our correspondence. I do know my mother maintained the opposite all her life and I even have it in writing to me on my birthday in 1986: “I’ll be thinking of you and remembering the great event when you & your brother came into my life – (and one of you left abruptly). The Germans were splattering London with bombs on a 24 hour basis so you entered a very noisy world.”
Since I have in my possession both sides of what I believe is a relatively complete record of their correspondence I can say with some assurance that they never discussed that issue in writing. There was considerable communication between 1952 and 1954 (a total of 42) and extremely sporadic contact (a total of 3) between 1955 and 1984. After that they resumed normal contact (18) until my father died in 1994. They did meet briefly once in the 80’s but it was at a fairly formal banquet and I doubt that the topic came up. So I am reasonably sure the discrepancy was never resolved.
I do at least know that my mother was there at the time of my birth and I know for sure my father was submerged under the Aegean Sea in his submarine the HMS Taku on that day. Beyond that I’ll never know for certain. I do know that there was another set of twins that my mother claimed died before my brother and I were born. When delving deeply into family history all kinds of unusual isolated incidents come briefly to light and never get explained. Putting all this together with a couple of other oddities that appear to have no connection I did come up with a possible though very improbable and outlandish scenario that could link some dots. However, without any more corroborating connections, I will keep that one to myself.

January 18, 2012 / My Other Brother / FHP, BK 1, #62 / FAM Pg 40 © 2012 / CIP # 1236, Jan 20, 2012 / KD Oct 28, 1942 / FHPF GD / YP 79/4

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There are only seven things in the world that I truly and deeply love and one of them is D-Pit. It was born on Dec 8, 1978, but of course it had gestated a number of months before that. D-Pit was supposed to be born on Sept 1, then Nov 1 and finally Dec 1 so it was overdue. It was actually born without electricity to the building though 3 days later that was remedied. D-Pit was always a labor of love – for 22 years it was my baby. It was like the Cherokee ‘Little Tree’: a trail of tears and a journey of joy that sprouted in my Sierra Nevada.
I don’t suppose there is anything I am prouder of than managing to keep it alive for 22years. When I first started it with Ray and Mavis Nielsen, my partners at the time, I was well aware of the expected longevity of a small business opening in California in the 1970’s. About half of them would not survive 3 years and 93% would not make it to 10 years. My only goal was to make it 5 years. When we did that I was a supremely happy man even though we had only just broken-even in 1 of the first 5 years. Soon I was aiming at 10 and things did improve a little.
De Books, De Games, De Arts Delight was one of our original tag lines. I was in heaven – all my passions represented. We began aiming at a revenue of around 40% books, 20% games (chess, backgammon, board games etc), 10% local arts and 30% food and beverage (domestic and imported beers, wine, cheeses, coffees, teas, fondue and specialty desserts). The arts included amongst others Calvin Lyster pottery, Lynn Holmgren macramé, Kathrynne Hyde paintings and Bob Boomer’s sculptures. I was proud of what we opened but we may have over reached a little. In fact I originally gave consideration to opening in Sedona, Arizona or Ashland, Oregon, both of which probably might have been a little better but I was home in my mountains. Anyway we and Oakhurst evolved to fit each other. On May 23, 2001, a week before we closed our doors, I was rewarded with a full page, six column spread in the Sierra Star by Earlene Ward. The headline read ‘It’s Been Good Down to The Very Last Word’. There it was recounting D-Pit’s and my history for 22 superb years. It pleased me greatly.
The customers were what made D-Pit special: the Grub Gulch Grannies – Bernie, Betty and Shirley for example; or the school personnel – Marge, Jackie, Polly, Steve & Sandy, Angie, Mary and on & on. Then there were the real, real regulars – John & Norma Rogers, Walt Blackhall, Brad Hunt, Bonnie Williams, Bob Creech, Beth Stauffer and Bob Beeching to name just a few. Most of them I saw at least weekly from the beginning to the end. It was amazing how hard some of them worked to keep me afloat and they all enriched my life. Of course I couldn’t have done it without Stephanie, Rozz and Bonnie who at various times worked for me and Bob Curran an extremely good and helpful landlord. One person however was the most crucial of all to D-Pit’s survival – my wife Sheila. She for much longer than she should’ve put up with me making much less than I should’ve and she remains to this day one of the seven.

December 29, 2011 / WIST Fully – D-Pit / FHP, BK 3, #44 / FAM Pg 33 © 2011 / CIP 999, Jan 10, 2012 / KD Dec 8, 1978 / AUB BTR / F 192F YP 77/8B

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A few years after we opened our new tagline became ‘D-Pit – A Bookaurant and Reststore’. By then we no longer sold games but still got tables of bridge players who would come for lunch and then while away the afternoon playing cards. I still occasionally played backgammon for money and chess to keep my competitive juices flowing. We had survived the critical first five years – just barely but it was enough. In the meantime I had completed the transformation from a city boy to a mountain man. Imported this and that was dwindling and solid down home sandwiches (but still with a little flair) were replacing them. Upstart Crow and Starbucks were receding and I was beginning to hear Mountain Music. We were now a Bookstore and a Restaurant with a little local art. I started calling it A Bookaurant & Reststore.
Many people thought my name was D-Pit though that name in fact reflected the conversation pit we had built into the structure from the very beginning. It helped that my name was David Pitt but it was more the De this and De that, that cemented De name. Our menu also helped – seven sandwiches that included: De Tourist – a scrumptious turkey breast sandwich; De Maybe – maybe roast beef, pastrami or corn beef (see board); De Difference – exquisite apple, Tillamook and onion sandwich; and De Licious – a changing and aptly named sandwich (see board). There were three more all starting with De but those four were the best sellers. For quite some time we also continued fondue and added a soup in the winter and a salad in the summer. It grew and in fact when we closed 22 years after opening we were the oldest restaurant under the same ownership in Oakhurst.
It was the ‘events’ though that were the pumping life blood of D-Pit. The Ski School celebrating an accomplished season each and every year; the Grub Gulch Grannies meeting every Friday, the book group meetings both regular and occasional; and then too there was the music. My friends Max Stauffer and Calvin Lyster headed up the Ski School. They and their instructors and support personnel would all shoe horn themselves into D-Pit and stuff themselves to the gills. Almost always that day was the best day in food and beverage all year long.
On two separate occasions for protracted periods we had live music at D-Pit. The first in the early 80’s was called Mountain Music and organized by Tricia Martin/Marks every Friday. A featured artist – usually local but quite often from further afield. Bob & Doi Dewitt, well connected in the musical industry from Topanga Canyon but now retired in Mariposa and would produce the likes of Utah Phillips or Alisa Fineman. Some of the local talent included Reno & Sheila McCormick, Roger Clugston, Fizzle Fulton, Fast Eddie & Mary Gross. The second incarnation named Finally Folk in the mid 90’s was led by Pete Smith and held every Thursday evening. It did even a little better than the first with a similar cast of featured artists and with more open mike that attracted even more musicians. Food and fun with a beat! Decembers and when we did music were actually profitable at D-Pit but all the rest was fun anyway.

December 30, 2011 / WIST Fully – A Bookaurant & Reststore / FHP, BK 3, #45 / FAM Pg 34 © 2011 / CIP 1000, Jan 10, 2012 / KD Dec 8, 1978 / AUB BTR / F 192F YP 77/8

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Authors, like their readers, are a function of age and age – both the year of their birth and the milieu in which they write decade by decade. To complicate the matter the chemistry is actually between reader and writer often of different ages. Having started with just the names of 10 authors I particularly liked; the point was driven home as I looked up their birth date and the years in which they wrote particular books. Jean Auel is a case in point. I never considered her a ‘great’ writer per se but anyone who launches their own genre – prehistoric historical novel – is definitely in tune with the zeitgeist. Likewise for Michael Crichton who is my favorite author and we were both born in 1942 – it is not a coincidence. If I had ever even begun to really learn how to write I would have written his books.
Favorite authors I gauge more by how many volumes of theirs I have read. Here I have selected 10 authors on the basis that I have read at least two and usually three or more volumes by that particular author. The accompanying title(s) is often their signature volume and always except where noted is one that I have read. The last two figures are the number I actually read over the number within a genre that I might have read. Some of my favorite authors in no particular order:

1) Ayn Rand (1905-1982) ‘Fountain Head’ (1943), ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (1957) – philosophy and individualism, 2/2*
2) Leon Uris (1924-2003) ‘Exodus’ (1958), ‘Trinity’ (1976), QB VII (1970) – historical fiction, 8/13
3) John Grisham (1955-living) ‘The Firm’ (1991), ‘Pelican Brief’ (1992), legal thrillers, 6/25
4) Tom Clancy (1947-living) ‘The Hunt for Red October’ (1984), ‘Red Storm Rising’ (1986), Clear and Present Danger (1988) – international intrigue, 5/9. I loved the first one and then became increasingly disillusioned with this author.
5) Milan Kundera (1929-living) ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’ (1984), ‘Ignorance’ (2002) – Czech-French writer, 2/9
6) Paul Auster (1947-living) Moon Palace (1989), Book of Illusions (2002), (New York Trilogy (1987), his most famous but I haven’t read it) – existential, post-modern, 3/17
7) Ernest Gann (1910-1991) ‘The High and the Mighty’ (1952), ‘Fate is the Hunter’ (1961), ‘A Hostage to Fortune’ (1978) – aviation author, 8/23*
8) Michael Crichton (1942-2008) ‘Andromeda Strain’ (1969), ‘Terminal Man’ (1972), Sphere (1987) – techno-thriller, my favorite author, 13/17
9) Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927-living) ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ (1967), ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ (1985) – Colombian ‘magic realism’ 2/10
10) Jean Auel (1936-living) ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ (1980), ‘Valley of the Horses’ (1982), ‘Mammoth Hunters’ (1985) – prehistoric fiction, 3½/6

December 26, 2011 / WIST Fully – Authors / FHP, BK 3, #43 / FAM Pg 32 © 2011 / CIP 998, Jan 10, 2012 / KD Dec 8, 1978 / AUB BTR / F 192F YP 77/7B

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These aren’t in order by design. Whenever I try to quantify my ‘Top Ten’ in anything the first thing I have to do is to decide if the order is important. Here it is not so I used my ‘random order’ method of deciding. That simply constitutes writing down the numbers 1 through 10 first and then filling in the spaces more or less from the center outward. Herewith, then, my final list of Top Ten Books:

1) Darkness at Noon (1940) by Arthur Koestler (1905-1983) – Stalinist purges
2) A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) by Walter Miller Jr. (1923-1996) – apocalyptic sci-fi
3) The Education of Little Tree (1976) by Forrest Carter (1925-1979) – Cherokee biography
4) The Prophet (1923) by Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) – 26 philosophical essays
5) English Patient (1992) by Michael Ondaatje (1943-living) Booker Prize, Eur. WWII
6) Angle of Repose (1972) by Wallace Stegnner (1909-1993) Pulitzer Prize, West. US Hist.
7) Catch – 22 (1961) by Joseph Heller (1923-1999) satirical WWII novel
8) All the Pretty Horses (1992) by Cormac McCarthy (1933-living) Pulitzer, coming of age
9) Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976) by Tom Robbins (1936-living) irreverent humor
10) Left Hand of Darkness (1969) by Ursula Le Guin (1969-living) gender bender sci-fi

Number 10 was a toss-up between itself and Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’ (1954) with Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ (1957) still in the mix. I don’t know why I chose it but I do know I came within a whisker of choosing Ayn Rand. I suppose it was the curious gender concept in ‘Left Hand’ that tipped the balance. It is amazing what fertile imaginations some of our great authors have. As for #5 ‘The English Patient’, which I picked first, it is the only one I have read completely three times. It is exquisitely written around a time and place (WWII and the North African desert) that I can relate to deeply. I’m fairly sure I never laughed out loud as long and as often as I did when I read ‘Even Cowgirls get the Blues’. Sadly I expect it had more to do with my age when I read it than it’s intrinsic worth.
Here’s a brief word about my view of the New York Times Best Seller Lists. About 80% of the books are simply the last book by that author who has appeared on the list before. We are a herd animal. They are often just a regurgitated shadow copy of their original book that made it to the New York Times Best Seller List. They sell but they frequently have passed the point of diminishing returns. Look hard for a first time author – it’s probably a winner.
My Bookstore D-Pit operated for 22 years and every few years I would post a list of my 10 Favorite Books – maybe a few relatively new ones and the rest mostly still on this list. What amazed me was the variation on those lists over the years. I did give this list considerably greater thought than I did any of those earlier lists because this is my final list. That is why it made WIST Fully. Probably if you have read most of these books you could read me like a book. You are what you have read just like you are what you have eaten.

December 23, 2011 / WIST Fully – Books / FHP, BK 3, #42 / FAM Pg 31 © 2011 / CIP 997, Jan 10, 2012 / KD Dec 8, 1978 / AUB BTR / F 192F YP 77/8

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Many of us are at least pale imitations of our heroes or heroines. Certainly I am. Where our heroes boldly led we tend at first to timidly tread. With time we gain the courage of our convictions and our voice grows sturdier. The echoes reverberate louder. By the time we can speak WIST Fully we know our own mind. By then we are an amalgamation of our heroes. These are mine and I am them at least in inspiration.
Childhood legends tend to end up being put away with the toys. My toys were mostly books so I wouldn’t have to speak with an English accent. At first it was Roland, Ivanhoe and Arthur but it was hard to come by books on them over here. Gradually I switched to the likes of Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and eventually Mat Dillon. Even on Long Island I was a cowboy. As far as I know the only character that I learned about first in school was Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman). Even today I still admire most of them, perhaps because I never put away books. For what it is worth with the exception of Mat Dillon they are all historical figures and Mat (James Arness) goes right along with John Wayne another Duke of mine (the two of them really were good friends).
Three of my nobility made the grade because they wrote a book that strongly resonated within my psyche. Henry David Thoreau wrote a book called Walden (1854) about a couple of year sojourn in a small cabin in the woods. I lived it twice – first in Fish Camp and then again in Oakhurst on top of Deadwood. Joseph Wood Krutch wrote The Measure of Man (1954) in which he questioned the impact of science and technology. Since I read it I have had my strong doubts about those two edged swords. Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) was an anarchist novel written wittily from a down home Arizonian point of view. Edward Abbey was my kind of guy. One other author makes my pantheon though I never read any of his books. I did devour numerous articles in National Review and loved to watch him debate. The razor wit and sardonic smile of William F. Buckley Jr. was definitely a thing of rare beauty.
Three more paladins I’ll touch on briefly. Two of them I knew personally: Utah Phillips a folk singer and labor organizer whom I respected a lot for living his convictions; and Ken Kern an author-builder of owner built homes: he both lived and died his convictions. The third I saw many times while a student at UCLA though I never met him personally. John Wooden was the most extraordinarily successful basketball coach in history. I respected that but was even more impressed with how much he loved his wife Nellie.
All of my heroes are dead. John Wooden (1910-2010) lasted the longest. Their hearts are stilled now but mine continues to beat for them. I didn’t even mention Diogenes – he died first in 323 BC but that is another story.

January 6, 2012 / WIST Fully – Heroes / FHP, BK 3, #46 / FAM Pg 35 © 2012 / CIP 1001, Jan 10, 2012 / KD 412 BC / AUB BTR / F 192F YP 77/7B

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