Little kids sneak out of church, steal Oldsmobile, go drinking, driving, shoot up the countryside

This is the story that I thought of when I saw Charlie's 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire:

I suppose that it might be an exaggeration to say that we stole the Oldsmobile - after all, it was Randy who drove and his father owned the Oldsmobile. It's just that I was 11, he was 13 but looked ten - too young to drive and his dad had no idea that we had taken the car and certainly had not given his permission, so, in a sense, we had stolen it.

But if you had been with us, you would have understood. It was what Mormons call "Fast Sunday," and if you had ever been a boy forced to sit through such an ordeal as that day - and there was nothing at all fast about it - then you would have wanted to steal a car and go driving in the Montana Countryside, too.

Fast Sunday is the first Sunday of every month and the idea is that you begin the fast on Saturday evening, when you skip dinner. You continue the fast through breakfast and lunch and then break it at dinner. You take the money that you did not spend on food and donate to the church's welfare fund so that it can be used to buy food for the poor.

And when we fasted, it was a complete fast - no food, no water, no juice, no consumption of any kind.

But that wasn't the worst part of it. The worst part was Fast and Testimony Meeting, which came after Sunday School. Usually, the Bishop or one of his counselors would start off by bearing his testimony and after that it was all "open mic." As the spirit struck, people got up to bear their testimonies, and there was always a lot of weeping. There was no time limit and the meeting could last hours.

And Mom always embarrassed me, because she would get up, bear witness for an interminable length of time and at some point would single me out and tell some story that showed what a good, faithful and righteous boy I was.

No boy wants the other boys - not even the other church boys - to think that he is good, faithful and righteous. Mom had no idea about the fights that this kind of thing got me into.

I imagine that when Mom got up and told the story on this particular Sunday, she scanned the congregation, looking for my sweet face and then wondered where the hell I was.

Yep, I was with Randy. We had gotten into his father's Oldsmobile and driven off, two little kids, one of them peering over the steering wheel, trying to stay out of the sight of cops.

Randy came from a poor family, yet somehow he always had money and he was generous with it. So before we headed out of town, we stopped at Safeway and he bought Pepsi, Candy Bars and Twinkies for both of us, then we drove out into the country, drinking and eating.

We broke our fast early that Sunday. 

We drove out of Missoula and past Lolo Hot Springs, down a dirt road that crossed the railroad tracks and then Randy found a place and parked the Oldsmobile.

"I got something to show you," he said.

We got out and I followed him as he opened the trunk. Inside was a .22 rifle and two or three boxes of long-rifle bullets.

We had drank our Pepsi's by now, so we put the empty bottles atop some fence posts, shattered them with bullets, then searched about, found beer bottles - and in those days, one could always find beer bottles laying about anywhere in or near Missoula - put them on the posts and shot them, too.

Then Randy drove us back. He parked the car and we went into the chapel, just as the closing prayer was being said.

Thank God!

There there was another Fast Sunday, a year or so before that one, that also involved Randy, cars and sneaking out of testimony meeting. In this case, the cars were Ramblers, a very pathetic brand of car that was none-the-less popular and there several of them parked in the church parking lot.

The word, "Rambler" was spelled out in the grill of these cars in chrome letters about two inches high that were attached to the car only at the base.

Randy showed me how a well-aimed, swift kick, would knock a letter free of the grill. So after that, probably just as Mom was once again telling the congregation what a sweet and righteous boy I was, Randy and I kicked the R-A-M-B-L-E-R out of every car thus branded.

Afterward, we divided the letters up, he taking one half and I the other.

We stashed them until it was safe, and then each of us took our letters home.

I put mine in my middle drawer, where Mom soon found them. She wondered where I had gotten them and so I told a plausible story.

Unfortunately, the Rambler owners - one of whom happened to be the Bishop - all noticed that they had lost their letters. The next Sunday, the Bishop made an issue of it from the pulpit.

Mom instantly figured it out. For the salvation of my soul, she insisted that I go stand before the Bishop and confess my sin.

I did and it was hell.

Margie's birthday party morphs into Jacob's congrats ceremony; a football flies through the house

Continuing on from the last post, the final car that had parked in our driveway had brought Natalie and her children from Anchorage. When Melanie, Charlie, Lisa and I returned from coffee, they were just finishing up their frybread and beans, so I guess Lavina had cooked more bread, yet.

We all signed a card of congratulations for Jacob, since he is now commissioned in the Commission Corps.

And what the hell - one day soon he and Lavina are going to move out and take Kalib with them. As I have stated before, that's why they moved in with us in the first place, so that they could save up some money for a house while they waited for the Commission Corps to accept Jacob and assign him somewhere.

Lavina was sure hoping it would be in Arizona, near her Navajo homeland.

Margie was kind of hoping that it would be, too, because then she thought maybe Kalib could induce me to move to Arizona and be closer to her Apache homeland.

But Jacob got Anchorage.

I don't ever want to move from Alaska. Not ever, ever, ever!

I would die inside.

That sounds selfish, doesn't it, when Margie wants to be closer to her homeland?

But even she doesn't want to be there in the summertime. Too hot. She would rather be here.

Only in winter does she want to be there. She is fed up with Alaska winters.

So maybe someday we can figure out how to broker a compromise.

I love Alaska winters, except for the warm ones. They say this is going to be an El Niño winter. They are the warm ones. I do not like El Niño winters

A lot of football happened today. First, 20th ranked BYU Courgars beat the third-ranked Oklahoma Sooners, 14-13, in a game that came right down to the wire.

I was glad, because I was cheering for BYU. I may be an agnostic coffee drinker who wrestles with the weight of my Mormon upbringing every damn day of my life, but it is still a fact that my direct ancestors include a man who hung out with Joseph Smith when he was held in jail and set out with Brigham Young to cross the Great Plains and BYU is still my alma mater.

Jacob's alma mater played today, too, the Arizona State Sun Devils, who crushed Idaho State 50-3. Natalie's stepson, Cooper, not only watches but gets filled with inspiration. 

Cooper dashes into the front room, ready to play football. As you can see, Kalib is wearing his Sun Devils jersey.

Jacob throws Cooper a pass. Jacob, by the way, made varsity starting quarterback when he was just a sophomore, but then he injured his knee and that was that.

Cooper fumbles the ball!

He's just starting out. The important thing is not that he dropped it, but rather that he stood right there, again and again, as the ball bounced off his chest or head, and was always eager, excited and ready for the next pass.

Royce wanders through in search of toe pets. He gets some.

Natalie and her daughter Tiana adjust each other's hair as Tony, Tiana's twin, sits on the other side.

I'm not at all certain how it happened so fast, but very soon everyone said their goodbyes. Kalib gets a goodbye hug from his Auntie Lisa.

Then Kalib watches as his Auntie Melanie climbs into the 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire with Charlie to begin the drive back to Anchorage. Note all the leaves that have already fallen from the trees. Note, too, how dark it is even though it is only 9:15 PM.

It was a beautiful, beautiful, warm, sunny day, but summer is over. Fall has begun. There won't be many more days like this. One maybe, two perhaps. Wouldn't it be something if we got three? Dare I bid for four? 

Oh, we'll get sun, radiating down brightly upon golden leaves.

But the air will feel crisp.

Wonderful in its own right.

And then Kalib watches as Lisa drives away.

It always comes to this. I don't care what it is. It always comes to this. Every time my kids come out, they soon leave. Kalib will soon leave and move elsewhere. Very soon, I will leave Margie to go back north and I will hate to say good-bye. I will miss her every day that I am gone. And when I again leave the north to come back here, I will be sad to leave the Iñupiat community behind. When I again return here, I will miss them and their harsh, hard, sprawling, deadly, life-giving country every day, just as I missed them today, just as I also missed Sandy and all my Indian family and their hot, steamy, crowded, teeming, naturally abundant, country today - even as I reveled in the celebration of being here in what, weather and companion wise, was probably the most pleasant place on earth.

And then one day, very soon, even if I beat the odds and live to be 100, it will all be over. I will be dust, drifting in the wind. I will become the flesh of other creatures, the fiber of plants and all those whom I love will exist no more, as so many already don't, except in the hearts that loved them, but even those hearts will die.

Some that it's better after you die, that you go to a better place.

But I like this earth, this hard, beautiful place that we dwell upon, as fragile yet rugged people, destructible mortals, more precious than any indestructible immortal could ever be, fearing and fighting death yet in the end always accepting.

Nothing will ever be better. Not heaven.

And nothing will ever be worse.

Not hell.

It's all right here, the best and the worst that has ever been or ever will be.

So brief.

So precious.

It is as though it always was and then as if it had never been.

It's late. I should go to bed.

I wax ridiculous.

One day, I will state it better.

Charlie shows up for Margie's birthday driving a 1962 Oldsmobile Starfire, clad in the Party-Wear shirt Melanie bought him in India

Charlie had talked about this car before, but I was still very surprised to see it in the driveway. He had first spotted it at the home of a man who lived several blocks from him. It was white, then, just like when it came from the factory. 

Charlie knocked on the door, met the owner and asked him if he wanted to sell. The owner said that he had never thought about selling it, but after giving the matter some contemplation, said he would sell it for $1200. Charlie couldn't go for it.

A couple of weeks later, he made a cheesecake (Charlie makes excellent cheese cakes) and took it to the man. "How about $800?" he asked.

"No," the man said, "but the cheescake sure is good. Thanks!."

A bit more time lapsed and then Charlie got a call. "I'll take the $800."

The engine had not been started in how many years no one knew for certain, so Charlie washed the cylinders out with oil and then got it going without too much difficulty.

He and his dad then rebuilt the engine, he painted it as you see here and today drove Melanie out here.

Royce, the orange cat, was mighty impressed.

So I was I. It reminds me of an incident from my childhood...

Well, I hear knocking on my wall. That mean's its time to go into the house and celebrate Margie's birthday.