Feb16

Cowboy Saving Bullfighter

by CSasser on February 16th, 2012 at 6:12 pm
Posted In: Adventure, Travels

“The hardest part to learn about being a rodeo clown,” my partner Gerald Barnhart used to say, “is to be a cowboy-saving bullfighter. After you do it awhile, you don’t even think about it. When a bullfighter gets in a wreck, it becomes natural to go in to save him.”

One night when we were working a rodeo, a cowboy got down. Gerald made his pass, darting between the helpless cowboy and the bull’s horns to attract the animal to him. He stiff-armed the bull’s head in passing. Swamp Rat, the bull, threw up his head and knocked the clown flying. Before I could get to him, Swamp Rat hooked Gerald once in the butt, followed by a short cross to the belly, then landed a knockout punch that sent the clown plowing across the arena. By then I was there to draw the bull away.

Other than working the bull riding, clowns also keep the audience lively and entertained. We had a monkey puppet controlled by wire. It drank beer, break-danced, and lay out in the arena and twitched whenever a bull ran over it. You always heard gasps from the audience.

“Did you see what they did to that poor monkey?”

At one show, during a bull ride, Barnhart ran up behind me with his broom and propped me up with it. I went along with the gag.

“Don’t move,” he whispered.

The bull was Old OO. While he always ran at our dummy in the arena, he had never hit it. So, I stood there like a fool leaning back on the broom with my arms stuck out. Old OO ran at me. Then he swerved aside.

“Hey-y-y, Wayne,” Gerald called out to the announcer. “Did you see that? I got me two dummies.”

We used the act from then on with Old OO. It always set spectators on the edges of their seats.

But always behind the jokes and antics, the baggy pants and the grease paint of the rodeo funny man is a serious side—the “cowboy saving” bullfighter who takes his lumps to keep fallen riders from taking theirs.

One night during a lull in the action Gerald was telling a joke about a bull being Mexican since it looked like he had sat down in guacamole. About that time the bull exploded into the arena. He was a spinner. There was a wreck and the bull jumped into the middle of the hapless cowboy.

Gerald made his pass to distract the bull. I made my pass. I could smell the bull as he got off the cowboy and began passing back at the clowns. I was going to grab his tail. Later it dawned on me. Say you grab a 1,500-pound bull by the tail, what do you do with him then?

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Feb01

Shark in the Squall

by admin on February 1st, 2012 at 11:34 pm
Posted In: Travels

You don’t bait-cast a shark rig. I idled the boat across the incoming chop at the seven-mile reef in the Gulf off Port Aransis. Old army buddy Dewey Gubbins dropped one bait—half a King fish—and let out about sixty yards of line. Then he dropped the second bait. I swung the boat ninety degrees into the swells. There was a line of dark clouds on the horizon. The breeze seemed stiffer than when we came out between the jetties. The swells troughed out of their chop and the breeze brushed the them with whitecaps.

“There’s a squall coming,” I said.

The other boats started coming in ahead of the squall line. My reel in its boot gave a few ticks.

“It’s the seas pulling it,” I said.

Ten feet or so of line ticked off the reel. The line traveled slowly across the water. Gubbins held onto the side of the boat and his eyes followed the line.

“It’s not the seas,” I said.

I set the hook, put everything I had into it. The relentless speed of the line through the water did not change.

“It’s not very big,” I said.

Gubbins said, “I don’t think it knows it’s been hooked.”

Suddenly, the heavy rod bent like I had just roped and goosed a Texas steer. The weight of the shark almost jerked me overboard. Females were bigger than males.

“I was wrong,” I said. “It’s big.”

I fought the fish. The muscles in my arms and legs trembled. I pumped when the shark slacked and gave her line when she ran. I grabbed for things to keep from being pulled overboard.

“Hurry,” Gubbins said. “The squall.”

The squall loomed on the horizon, rain in dark slanted lines with wind. I fought the big shark still deep and unseen in the ocean.

“We’ll have to cut the line if the squall keeps coming,” Gubbins said.

“Don’t cut the line,” I warned.

I felt a drop of rain. It felt like a shard of ice on my skin.

“Twenty minutes,” Gubbins said.

“Thirty minutes,” he said later.

The squall rose off the port bow, blotting out the sun. It made the water dark. The shark rose out of the depths like a great gray-winged shadow.

“Holy. . .” Gubbins said.

He leaned out across the gunnels with .357 pistol in hand. The fish sounded. I brought it back to the pistol. It always seemed unfair to end a fight like this.

Rain. A blinding deluge. Gubbins cursed into the howl of the storm.

“Get it near the boat,” he yelled.

“You’ll shoot the boat!”

“Bring her close or I’ll cut the line.”

“Don’t cut it, Gubbins.”

The pistol cracked.

“Missed her. Rain in my eyes.”

“She’s coming back.”

I strained on the rod to lift the tired shark’s head. Jaws snapped open and you could see the vicious rows of teeth and eyes like a dead cobra’s. Rain pelted the seas. The seas crashed across the stern and for a moment we were knee deep in salt water. I thought we were sinking.

“Don’t cut the line.”

Gubbins slung water from his pistol barrel.

“Gubbins, shoot her! Now!”

He thrust his pistol at the shark and shot her in her small brain.

She went mad. I strained hard on the rod against the last of the shark’s fight. Her tail thrashed and she tried to dive through a wave tinged with her own blood. She turned belly up. The storm thudded her against the side of the boat.

 

“Not since Atlas Shrugged have I been so captivated by a novel with political overtones.” Hollywood Star about Charles W. Sasser’s A Thousand Years of Darkness.

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Jan19

Lost In Wonderland

by CSasser on January 19th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
Posted In: Travels

I set out to solo-kayak Canada’s Inside Passage to Alaska equipped with a compass and a map from an old National Geographic. Three days later, confused by a fog-maze of sea and islands and channels, I concluded I was hopelessly lost in wonderland when I reached my first deadend channel.

Foolish, old-fashioned, or whatever I might be, the way I see things is that any knight who would slay dragons and save maidens and brings along a GPS, satellite telephone or IPerp is hedging his bets. He’s not really pitting himself against the elements, testing himself, if he can call for help when things get tough. What maiden would want to be rescued by so faint-hearted a hero?

Adventure is my business. As a fulltime freelance writer for over 30 years, I have sailed the Caribbean in a 17-foot day sailor, set a world’s transcontinental flight record in an ultralite aircraft, floated the Amazon River, dived for pirate treasure. . . I had rather die while living, on my own terms, than to simply fade away.

Now I was lost in a wild wonderland, a silent, hidden world where the grandeur of the Pacific meets centuries-old rainforest coastline. Snow and ice coated the towering peaks of mountains whose shoulders plunged to the tide line. Sea otters floated on their backs like fat old men in a Miami Beach pool. Harbor seals snorted. A whale rolled. I scanned timber near the mouths of streams, hoping to glimpse a rare white-coated Kermode bear.

I wore a full-body diver’s wetsuit against sea water cold enough to chill exposed flesh. The wetsuit served a secondary mission as a “scare bear.” After a few days of sweating in it, it stunk like the meanest human in the North Country. I hung it with arms and legs spread to block any likely avenue of approach to my tent while I slept. I don’t know whether bears simply ignored it or laughed, but I felt a lot safer in my sleeping bag.

Tides can rise thirty or forty feet. At low tide one evening, I discovered a grassy knoll that appeared safe for camping. Lapping sounds awoke me. I scrambled from my tent to discover the tide had isolated me on my patch of land. Rising water was within a foot of my tent. A seal in the dark snorted at me. Lightning flashed in a bank of dark clouds to the west. A bear rummaged around on the island to which my pinnacle was attached at low tide. When I solo-canoed the Yukon Territory, I threw stones at nosy black bears to scare them away. This guy didn’t appear the timid sort.

I hurriedly packed for a quick departure, water nipping at my feet, dreading being alone on the water in the middle of a black night, and perhaps in a storm. Suddenly, the tide began to recede. With a sigh of relief, I shooed off the seal, ignored the lightning, made truce with the bear and went back to bed.

After all, an old guy needs his sleep.

 

“. . .After this election, there will be no further elections in which the outcomes are in doubt. We will control voting—or at least the counting of votes. . . It’s our destiny.” From Charles W. Sasser’s latest thriller A Thousand Years of Darkness. Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and fine book stores nationwide.

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Jan05

Gargoyles

by CSasser on January 5th, 2012 at 10:47 am
Posted In: Travels

Following the trans-Gulf Regatta del Sol 2010, six experienced blue water sailors crewed up to return the 40-foot sloop Suite Jolene from Las Mujeres, Mexico, to her homeport in St. Petersburg, Florida, by way of Belize. Manuals for the Catalina Morgan 440 touted the boat as “sea-kindly and designed not to pound when going into seas.”

Even USS Abe Lincoln would have pounded against the 20-foot seas we encountered after leaving port. The crew: Tim Albin; Gregg Merrell; Morris Mauney; our token female Stephanie Hurd; Captain Darrell Moody; and myself. We watched with growing apprehension as the sea turned gray against an overcast sky and mare’s tails began kicking up. Spray washed over the decks. Mountainous rollers tossed the Catalina around like a toy sailboat in a flooded storm sewer, lifting it on liquid peaks to the teetering point before dropping it into the following troughs with a resounding crash. More mountains of water as high as two-story buildings hovered out of the depths.

Everyone except Stephanie came down in acute seasickness, with predictable results. Moving about on the boat proved all but impossible, even though you had to try to reach the railings before you blew lunch.

Morris lost his grip while fighting his way to the head below and got slammed against the corner of a bunk, sustaining a black eye and a mild concussion that left him wild-eyed and temporarily disoriented.

Returning topside, he froze in the hatchway, staring at our dingy’s outboard motor attached to the railing.

“It’s a gargoyle!” he shrieked.

It did resemble a crouching medieval gargoyle in the blackness of night with sea spray blowing around it. Only Satan rising out of the depths brandishing Neptune’s trident could have completed the scene.

Morris needed a doctor, but there was no chance of that until we reached Belize. Most of us were so sick we didn’t care if we lived or died. The boat sailed on sheer willpower; we anticipated being sent to Davy Jones’ locker sooner or later.

Captain Darrell intended putting in at Ambergris Cay off the Belize mainland in order for us to SCUBA the Blue Hole made famous by Jacques Cousteau. However, weather and shallow water made the approach suicidal. We changed course for Belize City.

Shortly after dawn, Jolene’s queasy, drenched and sea-bedraggled crew maneuvered the sloop past the protective rip-rap of the capital city and into the harbor. No one was permitted to leave the boat until we were thoroughly and expertly shook down by the authorities. Belize is one of the most corrupt governments in Central America.

Four officials wearing smiles of anticipation and determination marched in lockstep toward us, clipboards at the ready. One was skinny, one was fat, one was in-between, and the fourth was a young woman in-training. I felt like odd pig out at a luau.

They were all good at boodle, having perfected it to an art form. By the time they finished, we had shelled out a few hundred bucks America. Under the transom, so to speak, in order to “facilitate” our entry and avoid “complications.” At least the woman in-training had the decency to blush like a dark tomato.

“Welcome to Belize,” they said as they took off for the nearest pub with our money.

“There go the gargoyles,” I whispered to Morris.

 

“Evil is congregating in the Butterfield Mansion,” he said in a voice edge and so hard and sharp that it made Judy tremble. “It’s the evil behind… what’s happening all across the country. There has to be a first shot fired to let them know Americans will fight when they’re cornered. I don’t know how it’s all going to end. All I know is that if we give up now, there’s no place to escape to.” (From Charles W. Sasser’s newest thriller A Thousand Years of Darkness. Available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and fine book stores nationwide.)

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Dec20

The Vipers Nest

by CSasser on December 20th, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Posted In: What I Think

Writers are essentially social commentators. Over a half-century ago, as a teenager, I sold my first piece for $25, the equivalent of what I earned picking cotton for a week. Since then, I’ve been to far-flung corners of the world writing about marvelous things. . .and deepest misfortunes. However, look to technology, especially the internet, as the principal barometer for the greatest tragedy of mankind—the demise of the individual.

While technology has placed at our fingertips the accumulated knowledge of the world, it is also dehumanizing. People, it seems, interact through the neutral territory of machines rather than face to face. Two teens walking together will each be texting someone else rather than chatting with each other. Internet dating dominates the culture. Video games, TV and other technology-centered entertainment media replace the dinner table and family gatherings. . . How often do you see people actually talking to each other.

There has to be fallout from a self-centered existence that forsakes person-to-person interaction. During the time I spent undercover at Occupy Wall Street (previous blog), I observed greed and envy, which the participants were protesting, more palpable than that which exists in the towers of high finance. A collective “we,” ugly and demanding and mob-like, insisted that another collective be brought down to size and forced to redistribute wealth because “we are entitled.”

Guess which trait will ultimately prevail in a society of “we” that no longer looks upon individual success as an attribute to be emulated but instead rewards sloth, ignorance, victimhood and the generic collective “man.”

During my writing career, I have published over 50 books and thousands of magazine articles and short stories. Although there is much good in the “social media” and many honest and decent people involved, it may also be a Vipers Nest of Vitriol that provides a platform of anonymity from which the jealous, envious and resentful strike against successful individuals to cut them down to the level of “we.” The more successful you become, the more you are subject to attack.

Atheists have smeared me on the internet as “ignorant and misinformed. . .there is no God.” Jihadists issued a “fatwa” on my life because I offended them in a book. One guy stalked me for years through cyberspace, planting seeds of hate such as “Chuck Sasser and I slept with the same woman at the same time.” Strangers send me manuscripts and demand I help them—and if I don’t they pan my books on the internet. A lawyer for a defendant I wrote about in a true crime book sent PIs in a failed attempt to discredit me. Even people I might have assumed to be honorable, perhaps heroic, attempt to extort money from me. I have been accused, often anonymously, of everything from organized crime to bestiality and plagiarism.

Whether it is true or not doesn’t matter. Throw enough mud and some of it will stick. Some people want to believe it.

I suppose it comes with the territory of being a reasonably-successful individual who believes in the Power of One. Who believes that it is the individual in society, not the anonymous collective, that makes the difference. As a social commentator, I miss the days when you punched a guy in the nose if he offended you rather than sneak around to smear him from the safety of machines.

 

Charles W. Sasser’s latest works include A Thousand Years of Darkness, a political action thriller based on current events, and a new SciFi, Sanctuary, to be released next year. A Thousand Years is available at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and fine book stores nationwide.

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