To California! To Oregon!!

Gunther in rare form, rolling on the floor like nothing else.

April 13, 2025

What a relief!  Yet, a bit of a letdown, too.  We finished — by “we” I mean Penny and I — finished another week of facilitating Family Promise in Billings. Twenty volunteers did the hard work. Penny did a bit of it, weeks or months beforehand, signing up a myriad of hosts and cooks who would help keep four families going for seven days.  A swell idea, I think.  The four families get their physical selves cared for by our volunteers who fed them and housed them in church Sunday school rooms.

If you think this turns out funky and tricky, you’re right.  But we get to know these families.  Sometimes we encounter them again and again after they get back on their feet, renting or buying a home of their own.  These living skills are taught with gusto by our Family Promise teachers. I’m thinking Michelle.

Do you remember being newly on your own as a young couple?  What did you do?  Did you get some sort of notebook to keep track of your income and expenses?  Did you eat a meager meal of cheese and cauliflower?  Did you hurry off to your second job, because one 8-hour job wouldn’t earn enough to keep you going?  

I find it fun to hang out with these friends.  I’ll probably see them around town.

I didn’t want to talk about Family Promise.  Not at all.  I wanted to tell about my next book, the one about Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr., the fellow who joined the army to defeat the Nazis and Japanese.  (You know, I spent a year in Japan.  They were tamer than kittens.)  Just observing.  Please don’t read anything into this text.  I’m trying to accurately tell you what I experienced.  No motive, other than to inform you.

The reason I’m writing now, is that we’re about to drive our van south to San Diego, California, home of two grandchildren and our daughter and her two dogs and her ex-husband.  And his family.  And lots of good Southern California stuff, like beaches and sharks.  Even rattlesnakes!  But certainly cactus.  Or cacti.

My book editor, Ilsa Tyler, lives a few blocks from our daughter.  I want to tell her that musician and printer, Aaron Parrett, read my book, titled “How I Improved the United States Marine Corps.”  Please allow me to tell you how this phone conversation went:

Aaron:  Did you write a book?

Me: Yes, but it’s practically unreadable.  I can’t read it.  It’s been a year now, and the book is so bad that I haven’t been able to bring myself to read it.  Nobody reads it.  I give them a copy, they grumble, then—nothing.

Aaron: That’s funny.

Me: It has flaws.  Deep flaws.  The beginning is slow and doesn’t grab anyone.  Then it hops all around.  You know what I did?  I nominated it for a High Plains Book Award in two categories.  That way, for only $150, I will get four people to actually read my book.  Seems like a bargain to me.

Aaron: Will you send me one?

Me: I’d love to.  Text me your address.

I got fallout.  I thought I was being humorous when I told Clara about my conversation with Mr. Parrett.  Clara reacted as though hurt.  She said she was proud of the book she facilitated by having me meet up with the editor.  She said she was hurt that I said what I did about our project when I spoke to Aaron Parrett. 

So I quickly sent Aaron a message by email.  I said:  Aaron, I misspoke.  What I MEANT was I loved my book.

For about a year and maybe a few months more, I got into this funk.  I said to myself:  My book is shit.  Then, I’m shit.  I told my psychiatrist.  He said he thought I should try to write a better book. (Better than the piece of shit I just produced, he implied.)  That did it.  Did I mention that a LIBRARIAN told me my book was unworthy to shelf because it “meandered.”  Of course I dropped to the floor on my face. “Yes,” I sobbed, “guilty of meandering as charged by one who knows what’s what in literature.”

One of my nephews observed that most people aren’t any good at writing books. He said I shouldn’t worry too much. (How this twisted a knife in my heart.  How could he say this?  My favorite nephew!

My point is, I’m going to try to take notes when my cousins and I inspect some relics of Carl R Bonde’s that a cousin discovered in a box in the attic of his garage.  We’re going to meet for three days the end of this month in Hillsboro, Oregon.  I hope we also play games and possibly hike or at least groove. I think I could take some of the relics I’ve collected that can connect us to our uncle who died aboard the SS Leopoldville Christmas Eve, 1944 in the English Channel, just five kilometers from Cherbourg, France.