The Red Door

When I was going through college, I was lucky enough to have very supportive parents.  Although I worked hard to pay for my own tuition, my folks helped out by pitching in for other costs; the greatest of which was transportation.  Growing up on an island in Alaska, getting back and forth to college during summer break wasn’t exactly easy. 

I remember the summer after my sophomore year; my father helped me buy an old Volkswagen Rabbit.  It was baby blue and had a bashed-in driver’s side door.  I had that door wired shut with bungee cords and duct tape, knowing full well that it could fly open at any moment while driving down the island roads.  Growing tired of slipping in through the passenger side door every time I needed to go for a ride, I convinced my father to help me look for a replacement for the car’s damaged appendage.  We found just the ticket at a local junk yard.  Soon, I was parading down Tongass Avenue in downtown Ketchikan sporting a baby blue Rabbit with a brand new, shiny red door.  Dang, I was cool.

As the summer months wore on, eventually plans were made for my annual exodus back to school.  My college buddy, Nick, had decided to fly up to Ketchikan for a little fishing.  He and I had the brilliant notion of sticking that Volkswagen on the ferry boat, and driving it through British Columbia all the way from Prince Rupert to our apartment in Moscow, Idaho.  We knew this would be an epic journey of two young men braving the wild highways of western Canada, armed with our summer earnings, a baby blue Rabbit with a red door, and a penchant for nightlife.  What could possibly go wrong?

Just before we departed the island, my Dad came rolling up our driveway, grinning ear to ear about the “deal” he had just made on a couple of used tires for the Rabbit.  He slapped those puppies on the front of the car and sent us on our way with a hug and a hearty wave.  We loaded onto the Alaska State Ferry just prior to midnight, and six hours later, we were hell-on-wheels, blazing our way East out of Prince Rupert, B.C. at a brisk fifty-seven miles-per-hour.

The first incident happened early in the afternoon.  The road from Prince Rupert to Prince George did go through a handful of towns, but for the most part it was as devoid of civilization as one could get on a highway.  Surrounded by a thick wall of forest, many miles from any sort of village, the car suddenly started to shake violently.  We pulled over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.  Between the two of us, we had a combined total of three years worth of a college education.  It took our collective brain power several minutes to identify a large bulge protruding from the left front tire.  The tire hadn’t popped, but rather, it had simply developed a pimple.

After unloading onto the side of the road a semester’s worth of luggage, musical instruments, file folders, books, stereo equipment, a mini-fridge, and other such college necessities, we accessed the spare tire well.  A passing motorist offered his words of wisdom, “Must be water inside the tire to make it bulge like that.”  Whether that was the culprit or not, I’ll never know, but soon, I had reloaded the Rabbit and hopped back in through the red door.  We were back on the road, baby, and nothing was stopping us now. 

Except for the other front tire…

We had to be about seventy miles from Prince George when other tire blew.  It was a full blown popping sound that jarred us from our intercontinental highway trance.  Soon, after successfully maneuvering again to the side of the tree-lined road, Nick and I realized that, just maybe, we shouldn’t have buried the bulging tire below all of our gear.  While again unpacking the contents of the Rabbit, we began to question the “deal” that my father had gotten on those two tires.

Any speed below thirty was bearable.  If the speedometer approached thirty-five, the bulging tire caused the vehicle to quake with volcanic force.  We limped for hours on the side of the road, hazard lights on, rattling away toward the hope of reaching Prince George in one piece.  Semi-trucks and massive RV’s blew past us like we were standing still.  Even the deer in the forest seemed to travel at a quicker pace.

It took a little longer than expected, but the next morning we were back in business with two brand new tires and a renewed sense of two young men, footloose and free, heading south down the central part of British Columbia.  After a night of frivolity in Kelowna, we had only one more day’s worth of driving en route to our destination at the University of Idaho.  Exhausted, drastically over-budgeted, and ready for our little adventure to come to a close, we again hit the highway for the final stretch.

The late model Dodge pickup sporting four Canadian cowboys came flying up on our tail in the blink of an eye.  Either frustrated with my chosen speed of travel, or incensed by the Alaskan license plate that was displayed on my rear bumper, the Cowboys revved their truck within inches of the blue Rabbit’s tail.  Upon seeing the blatant disregard for safety and courtesy, my good pal, Nick, made a rash decision.  His arm flew out the passenger window and a glorious hand sign involving one of his fingers made its presence known to the truck that followed close behind. 

Luckily, I had just gassed up the Rabbit just several minutes prior.  They followed us for miles; slamming fists into palms, snarling and giving every indication that, given the chance, the Cowboys would turn us into ground beef.  Clinging to the steering wheel, our very lives in the balance; I drove that baby blue Rabbit with the red door without pause, hoping to heck that one of the rear tires wouldn’t pop before our Cowboy friends ran out of steam.  Either they reached their destination, ran low on gas, or simply gave up pursuit; eventually the Dodge pickup exited the highway and left us alone on the single lane, winding highway.  A mild victory for the college boys!!

Never was I so glad to see the announcement of the approaching United States border line.  We high-fived across the front of the Rabbit as we pulled into one of the lines at the US Customs office.  I rolled down my window and was greeted by a gruff agent asking for our documentation.  Whether it was the blue car with the red door, the cargo that stacked to the roof, or the bloodshot eyes of two college aged kids; the U.S. Customs Agent ordered us to pull ahead and step out of the vehicle. 

Nick and I waited for hours inside a small cubicle.  They had to be convinced that they would find drugs, or anything else of the criminal nature.  The border patrol officials tore into that Rabbit as if they were trying to defuse a nuclear weapon.  Eventually, we were told that we were free to go.  Stepping outside of the cubicle, we found the Rabbit surrounded by all of our belongings strewn about on the pavement.  The interior of the vehicle had been strip-searched.  The carpeted underbelly of the dashboard had been yanked out of place, leaving exposed wires to dangle to the floorboard. 

Once more, Nick and I repacked the Volkswagen while feeling violated by our own government.  We hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in days, our stomachs were empty as we hadn’t risked pulling over for food, and our emotional state teetered just south of fragile.  

We did eventually make it safely to our destination that evening.  You would have never thought that a college apartment complex would seem such magnificent a sight. 

The baby blue Volkswagen Rabbit with the red door comes back to life in the soon to be released Tsunami Warning.  The second book in the Jim and Kram mystery series will be available for download on August 1^st, 2015.

You can download Jim and Kram’s first adventure, Mink Island, at the following link:
Mink Island - Amazon

Living the Dream

I was well out of college before I surfed the web for the first time.  I made the mistake of admitting this to a group of teenagers recently.  As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew that I was in trouble.  The mere fact that my students struggled hard to calculate my age was a bad sign.  One little slip of the tongue and I was officially old to these kids, most of whom weren’t even alive in the twentieth century.  They had never known a world that couldn’t order tube socks with a few clicks of the mouse, and here I was blatantly flaunting that “back in my day…” tone without so much as a thought to the consequences (okay, you’re right – calling them “tube” socks probably ages me, too).  In that moment, I was officially OLD! 

I remember turning forty (not that long ago – mind you) and having my son inform me, “Forty sounds old, Dad.”  I promptly challenged him to an arm wrestling match and kicked his butt.   

Besting my children at physical acts of prowess, though, provided only temporary fulfillment.  I noticed, too, that with each year I progressed in age, so did my kids.  The older they got, the more potential there was for coolness.  What was the ultimate in coolness? – Jazz.  It was time to instigate “Jazz School” in the Purvis household. 

We had actually been planning this for quite some time.  I (jokingly) claimed publicly that the only reason I had kids was to make my own family band.  My twelve-year-old boy has been banging on the drums for a couple of years now and seems to take to it quite well.  He has a good sense of time and his technique is progressing.  We had to wait a bit for my daughter’s hands to grow.  Her ten-year-old fingers finally appeared big enough to span a couple of frets on an electric bass, so I decided that it was time.   

After a brief study of Miles Davis, jazz chord theory and a jazz listening session, the three of us retired to the basement for our first official jam as a father-son-daughter trio.  Sam’s ears proved effective, as he laid down the same groove that Miles Davis’ drummer played during our listening session.  Ella continues to prove that she can do anything she sets her mind to.  Within minutes, she was laying down a walking bass line over the changes to Summertime.  I jumped on piano and our jazz trio was born.   

I was living the dream.  Age didn’t matter.  I felt as young as the two musicians that joined me in that jam session.  We played our music and communicated for the first time as jazz musicians do.  My children quickly learned concepts such as; form, head, solos, trading fours, time, groove, minor seventh chords, root, walking bass and swing.  We worked out an intro to our arrangement.  We designed an ending.  We communicated visually and aurally while swinging through the changes.  I was living the dream. 

Then I told that they couldn’t come upstairs for lunch until they had that song mastered, or until one of them could beat me at arm wrestling.  Take that for calling me old!

Mink Island is available as a download at:

Amazon                        http://bit.ly/MinkIslandAmazon
Also on Barnes and Noble, Smashwords,  iBooks, Kobo and Oyster

Three Lessons Learned this Summer

#1 – The Shovel is an amazing tool (aka – don’t forget to ask for help, dummy)

This summer, I dug a very big hole.  Well, a trench is more like it.  It was 150 feet long, four feet tall and three feet wide.  I dug it out, one shovel full at a time.  My neighbors thought that I was putting in a moat.  A moat certainly would be cool (I’m sure my kids and dog would love it), but the real purpose of the trench was to replace a struggling retaining wall.  As dirt piled high above my backyard grass, hours turned into days, and days into weeks.  People would often stop on the street and gawk as I threw rocky fill over my shoulder.  As the massive excavation finally came to a close, I stood above the scene, admiring that my backyard resembled a warzone.  Feeling proud of the muscles that I had developed and confident that my man-made trench would surely impress, I displayed my new gully to various friends that stopped by for the standard inspection.

Friend, “Nice trench.”

Me, smiling proud, “Thanks! Two months of digging.”

Friend, “That’s a lot of digging.”
Me, still proud, “It’s amazing what one can do with a simple shovel.”

Friend, “You know, I could have come over with my backhoe and we could have pounded that out in an afternoon.”

Me, balloon completely deflated, “Oh…  I, uh…  uh…  Thanks.”  

#2 – Don’t Take My Son Fishing

I take pride in the fact that both my ten-year-old daughter, Ella, and my twelve-year-old son, Sam, can work a fishing pole better than most of my adult friends.  They have grown up casting Rooster Tails in the calm lakes of Northeastern Washington, dropping walleye jigs in the deep water of the Columbia, and have even landed their share of salmon and cod in the icy waters of Alaska.  As cool as these experiences have been to share between father and child, I believe that it is now time to release my son to his own fishing devices.  No longer will I bait his hook, clean his catch, or untangle his rats-nest.  That’s what he gets for out-fishing his father. 

Catch record stats from a recent fishing excursion with Sam, Nick and I:

Sam – 7 walleye (one so big, it broke the pole), 1 rainbow trout, 1 pike

Nick – 1 walleye

Me – Nothing

It got to the point that every time my son yelled, “Fish On!" I cursed a little.  My friend, Nick, contemplated pushing Sam into the river. 

From this moment on, my son is on his own.  Let’s see him out-fish me now, as he scrambles to master his fishing knots, unhook his snagged line, and climb up onto shore after being shoved into the water. 

#3 – Drive, Don’t Fly

I only needed to go to Portland, Oregon.  From my house, that’s about a seven hour drive - No big deal, right?  But after finding a plane ticket out of Spokane that was cheaper than three tanks of gas, I figured, “what the heck.”  I would fly in on the early plane and be dropping the crab pots on the coast by 9am.  Since it was such an early flight out on Thursday, I decided to drive down to Deer Park the night before to stay with my in-laws in order to save an hour of morning sleep.

10pm Thursday – text from the airlines “Your 6am flight has been canceled.  You are rescheduled on the noon plane.”  Crap!  Well, there goes the morning crabbing trip.

10am Friday – I was in the Spokane area with time to kill.  I stop at my favorite cigar shop and splurge.  I buy one really nice, really expensive, hand rolled Maduro.  What the heck – I’m on vacation, right?

11:30am – At the airport trying to get my new boarding pass, the ticket agent informs me that my noon flight has been canceled, and I have been rescheduled on the 4pm plane.  Crap!

Noon – I am hungry.  With my truck already secured in the Park’n’Fly lot, my only lunch options are through security.  After being probed, I sit down and order a cheese and basil pizza.  It cost $11 and it was about four inches in diameter.  It tasted like a post-it note.  I was still hungry.  I like to eat vegetarian, but my options were limited.  I ordered boneless hot wings.  There were six small ones and they tasted like croutons doused in Tabasco.  With tip, I spent $30 on the worst lunch in recent memory.  Crap!

1:30pm – I am bored.  My hand rolled Maduro comes to mind.  I could easily kill an hour enjoying that bad-boy.  Back out through security and across the main drive.  I find a bench seat out of the way and extract my expensive cigar.  After unwrapping it and biting off the end, I realize, due to airport security, I don’t have any matches.  Feeling like a common street thug, I walk up to strangers asking, “Do you have a light?”  Several rejections and a few nervous parents later, I bum a lighter off of an off-duty stewardess.  A sudden increase in wind velocity made cigar ignition a little challenging, but darn it, I got that expensive smoke lit.  Three puffs into it, I see the thunderstorm closing in fast. 
Crap!

Mink Island is available as a download at:

Amazon                        http://bit.ly/MinkIslandAmazon

Barnes & Noble            http://bit.ly/BNminkisland

Smashwords                http://bit.ly/minksmash

Also on iBooks, Kobo and Oyster

Grocery Store Blues

It was just an ordinary trip to the grocery store, but I was happy.  I had just finished typing the epilogue of my novel, and nothing was going to ruin my mood.  The lines were long and only two clerks were working up front.  One of them radioed in for backup.  Soon, a man wearing a green apron with onion peels hanging from the straps invited me over to check-stand number-three.  It made sense that he gave me this opportunity.  It was my turn.  I was the next person in line that hadn’t yet emptied my cart onto the conveyor belt.

“Sideburns” must have seen the opening while turning the corner back by the deli.  He sped-walked past the end of three aisles and two packed check-out lines before clipping the edge of my cart.  I felt a small breezed hit me from his wake.  Sure, Sideburns only had one item, but there’s protocol here, ladies and gentlemen.  I would have let him slip past my cart of roughly twenty random products, but he didn’t even give me the chance to offer.  Instead, Sideburns slammed down his gallon-jug of vodka in front of me and starting digging into his pants pockets for cash.   

After haggling with the produce clerk over the hefty amount of tax added to the sum, Sideburns grumpily agreed to pay full price.  He dug out every bill and coin he could find.  He was eighteen cents short. 

Now mind you… this was a well-dressed, middle-aged, overly groomed, after-shave doused, loafer wearing urbanite with a fine-knit sweater tied around his neck.  His wrist-watch was probably worth more than my 1984 pop-up tent-trailer.  Normally, I would have tossed a quarter his way, but not this time.  I had to see how this one played out.

Sideburns couldn’t get his debit card to scan.  Mr. Produce shrugged.  The line piled up behind me.  A baby started to cry.  More card rejections prompted profane muttering.  My strange sense of curiosity kicked into overdrive.  I decided to kick the hornets’ nest. 

 “Try swiping your card faster…like you really mean it!”  Sideburns ignored me.  “Faster, from top to bottom in one quick motion.”  He swiped as fast as he could muster and banged his knuckles onto the side of the check-stand.  A man two customers behind me snorted a laugh.  Mr. Produce scrunched his nose in order to move his over-sized eyeglasses back into place.  Two more scans…two more rejections.  Sideburns let slip a few more choice words. 

“Try a different card,” I offered, leaning in close.  He opened his wallet and flipped through an impressive array of plastic.  A Platinum Visa was finally settled upon.   

Feeling snarky, I chimed, “That’s a good one.  I’m all Platinum these days.” 

“Can I get twenty dollars cash back?” Sideburns asked.   

Mr. Produce answered, “Sorry sir, not on credit cards.  Debit only.”  An elderly lady behind me let out an overly-audible sigh.   

The sale finally rang through and the vodka bottle was wrapped in a paper bag.  Mr. Produce thanked him and told him to have a great day.  Sideburns grabbed the bottle and turned to leave without saying anything in return. 

I immediately called out, “Sir, hang on a minute.”  He stopped and turned toward me.  I bent down and reached a hand out toward the ground, scraping a shiny quarter up from the floor where Sideburns had been standing. 

I offered out the coin, saying, “Now you can afford to buy another one.”  I flashed my toothiest grin. 

He accepted the quarter and abruptly turned to leave. 

“Thank you, come again,” I hollered, just to see if he’d respond.  He was already half out the door. 

Although my primal instinct was to knock the guy in the temple with his gallon-jug of hooch, I had just finished writing my book and was having a good day.  This guy wasn’t going to ruin it.  With my book on my mind, though, I couldn’t help but to think…  How would Kram have handled the situation?  My guess is; somewhere closer to the vodka-bottle-to-the-noggin scenario.

Mink Island is available for download at:

Amazon    http://bit.ly/MinkIslandAmazon

Barnes & Noble   http://bit.ly/MinkIslandBN

Shock Therapy (Learning to Laugh at Myself)

By nature, I take myself way too seriously.  This is something that I have been working to correct (for years…), but I assure you - I have not completely found the remedy.  There is something to be said for electric shock therapy, though.

 

The Great Battery Cable Mix-up:  It turns out that there are dozens of fuses that exist throughout the entire length of my fantastic little Bayliner 185.  I think I found, checked, and replaced most of them.  Admitting that I reversed the negative and positive cables while installing my boat battery last spring is not easy for me.  The sparks and really cool popping sounds were over in a less than a second, but given my senseless pride (I refused to ask for help), it took me a week to find and fix all of the circuits that I fried.  Of course, the final blown fuse was underneath the engine in a nearly impossible location to reach.  While employing mirrors and long-handled tools, I certainly made up some creative words.  Looking back, it was a very stupid mistake, and a little bit funny.

 

The Great Shock of 1998:  There’s a reason you should hire an electrician.  I had once taken a three month high school course in electrical wiring, and thus, I thought I knew exactly what I was doing.  Shortly after becoming a new homeowner and installing a sliding glass door in an exterior wall (with my brother’s expert help), I decided that I could wire in an outside light with an interior switch (with no help whatsoever).  The details of my exact line configuration aren’t necessarily interesting to note here, however, the resulting effect of misguided wiring bravado may entertain you.  Confident that my new porch light would illuminate on first try, I hit the switch busting with pride, showing off in front of my wife.  Current arced through the plastic switch cover and my body spasmed for several seconds.  In a bout of pure stupidity and unbelief, I hit the switch again (I mean, I couldn’t have wired it incorrectly, right?).  Instead of showing concern that my heart might possibly stop at any second, my lovely bride pointed and laughed hysterically.  I didn’t take it well at the time, but looking back, it was pretty funny.

 

Life is humbling.  I am learning to laugh at myself, especially over the little things that used to baffle me.  There are too many wonderful people out there that are dealing with much more serious stuff that my little issues; and they handle it with grace and a smile.  My heart is especially concerned with three close friends; each fighting their own bouts with cancer.  These are wonderful people; mothers and wives, a father, husband and grandpa, all professionals in their chosen fields, concerned citizens, honest and brave – and they all laugh and share joy rather than whine or cuss. 

 

So the next time that I hit my thumb with a hammer, or fall on my face while walking up the stairs, or shock the heck out of myself (these things will happen to me, I guarantee it), I will try to laugh at myself, and learn something.

 

Hopefully, you will find a few moments of laughter in my new book, Mink Island.  I laughed at myself while writing it.  (Release Date in two days:  July 2^nd – available for eBook download at Amazon and Barnes & Noble)

Memories of Alaskans from my Youth

Growing up on an island in Southeast Alaska was a great experience.  Sure, the weather was horrid, but I was a kid - I didn't know any difference.  I played soccer in the rain, I went fishing in the rain, I drove my motorcycle to school in the rain, and I created a gigantic replica of the Millennium Falcon behind my house out of scrap metal, skunk cabbage and cedar limbs...in the rain.

Other than being extraordinarily damp, my childhood was fairly normal.  Sure, my older brother was flying float planes before I entered junior high and my dad taught me how to gaff an eighty-pound halibut by age twelve, but growing up an Alaskan wasn't too different of an experience than the kids have down here in the lower forty-eight.  (Side Note - One extreme exception to this was learning to drive.  My home town of Ketchikan had less than forty total miles of road system.  The first traffic light didn't get installed until the early 80's.  I still remember the first time I drove in the Seattle area.  I went down a freeway on-ramp to enter I-5 and I just figured that there had to be a stop sign at the bottom of the ramp.  The guy behind me thought I was number one!)

What stands out most in my mind about my youth in Alaska is the extremely interesting cast of characters that surrounded all of us on that remote rock.  There was the kind, elderly native lady that always hitch-hiked around town, the Vietnam Vet that liked to scare tourists, Banjo Bob and his "stomping out" sessions, my buddy Mark that once spent an afternoon throwing dummies off a cliff, the guy that wore the police-siren bicycle helmet, the dude that lived in the tree-house, my buddy who always laughed at life despite being old enough to buy beer before his junior year in high school, the psychotic eighth-grade Science teacher that taught us how to survive in the woods, and countless other colorful people that seemed to gravitate to that island.

It was the recollections of these types of characters from my youth in SE Alaska that inspired many of the characters in my new book, Mink Island.  The novel is a mystery/comedy set in Craig, Alaska on Prince of Wales Island.  Follow Lieutenant Jim Wekle as he attempts to solve the murder of a bikini-clad young lady that he finds floating in the bay on his first day on the island.  You may also get a kick out of the antics of Jim's unlikely counterpart; a man simply known as Kram.

Mink Island will be released soon as an eBook on Amazon.