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Last month I received a number of excellent responses to my thoughts in the newsletter about giving spoilers to readers so that they won't get anxiety about what's going to happen to the characters in the book. There was also one negative response. Maybe I'll elaborate on that in the newsletter I'm doing for this month. I had also promised to address the hollow promises of fortune cookies. You'll have to sign up for the letter to discover what I have to say about those things.

In the meantime, I recently had occasion to contemplate the tribute we pay to our dead. 

I traveled with my dad to Afton Wyoming for the funeral of his sister. She was the oldest child of his siblings. Three other siblings had preceded her in death. I've observed that the longer I'm around, the more people I know who have crossed the river into eternity.

 In fact, today I learned that one of my friends from high school died from a heart attack within the last few days. Earlier today, I participated in some on-line indexing which included entering information from death certificates. Most of the names I indexed today were born in the 1890s or early 1900s and died in 1975 in Wisconsin. Only one of them died before age 40. So I've had cause lately to contemplate the fuzzy edge of mortality.

Anyway, at my aunt's service, a nice slide show of her with her children, grandchildren, and great grand children played during the viewing. During the funeral itself, family and friends shared memories and personal experiences about her. A son-in-law and a granddaughter each sang musical numbers. It was all very touching, a fitting tribute.

Why do we do it? Why do we solemnize the passing with ceremony and remembrance? There may be many reasons, and I can't bear the burden of trying to imagine all of them. I can contemplate a few. In most cases, we have an attachment and love for our deceased friends and kin. Our love doesn't end because their physical presence has passed away. A funeral is a final formal expression of love and attachment shared with family, friends, and the deceased--a song of parting with hope that our sentiments can transcend the mortal coil to rise with our loved ones--a symbol of our sorrow with an assertion that we remain bound by the cords of the heart and soul.

We are to some extent what our forebears have made us. We honor the family ties and bonds of friendship. We especially recognize our debt to their struggles and trials. In many cases we have tasted of the sweet because they bit off the bitter. We fortify our remembrance with ceremony to honor their accomplishments, to celebrate their lives and the difficulties they have overcome, to accept the responsibility to transmit our memories of them to our posterity. 

A fellow traveler pulled his RV into the last rest stop along his life's highway this week. The RV will go into temporary storage beneath the sod while the traveler himself rests a bit and takes on some new assignments before eventually reuniting with his RV in its new and glorious state on the eternal highway of bliss. I can offer no fitting tribute, but I have many pleasant memories of Don.

He was a man of order as far as his own house and shop went. He worked hard. He also had fun. He and his bride spent many years working and socializing with my parents. We were neighbors in the best sort of way. It seemed that for years hardly a day went by when we weren't at their house or they were at ours. As I got older and spent more time away, it would be even money as to whether Don and his wife were at our house or whether my folks were at Don's place when I got home. Although memory has dimmed with time, besides his helpful and friendly nature, I best remember Don's stature, voice, and arms. He was not a tall man. I didn't realize that until I was an adult--I was rather on the small side as a kid. I think he was my dad's size, but for years he seemed bigger to me--I guess the fact that he was bigger on the inside than he was on the outside made him seem much bigger in my eyes. He voice was unique in my experience. He didn't possess a particularly deep voice, but it sounded like it came up from someplace deep--like a gurgling brook echoing up through a cleft of rock. I remember his forearms. He had forearms to rival Popeye. In fact, with his large forearms and close-cropped hair, he reminded me of a sailor looking for a fight. I know those arms came in handy for hauling hay and doing carpentry and finish work. I don't know whether he ever had to use them to fight.

Of course, those physical characteristics pale in comparison to his good nature and willing attitude. I can't think of a single time when I called on him for assistance or to borrow a tool or piece of equipment when he wasn't willing to help. He and my dad spent a lot of time working together and helping each other out. If they weren't working, they were talking about working--except for when they were playing cards or doing fun things outdoors with the families and with the other Don, that man of steel who also passed away this year.

Time rushes on; extended families and other responsibilities eventually stretched the close ties that we had once enjoyed. The bonds of friendship remained, but the time we were able to spend together dwindled away like dandelion seeds in the breeze. The seeds are all gone now and time rushes on relentlessly. Fortunately, old friends don't pass away; they're merely blown into the future on separate winds to that happy reunion where all breezes converge beside cool waters, sun-kissed and still.

We lost a man of steel this week. I attended his funeral yesterday. Don was born in 1930--you can do the math. He was a metal welding wizard. He worked in metal with the ease that the more skilled members of my family work with wood and concrete, or sarcasm. I always thought that he looked like Will Rogers; he also had friendly philosophical thoughts from time to time. He and his wife were friends of my parents and they played cards together when they lived close. I worked with Don one summer back in 1978 or 79. He managed a farm and I did the unskilled labor: moving sprinkler pipe, fixing fence, clearing the broken straw, hauling and stacking hay and a thousand other tasks. I got $4.00/hour which was rather good wages for an under-size high school kid at the time. He never looked over my shoulder but would sometimes let me know how I could improve on a task when he examined it later. 

I remember one time when we were stacking a load of hay. We had to use the hay elevator of the mechanized chain variety. Many people would climb the 20 foot elevator like a ladder to reach the top of the stack prior to activating the elevator. My technique (learned from my father, the undisputed He-Man of the hay bale universe) was to ride the elevator to the top of the stack by placing a foot on one of the paired prongs on the chain which were made to stick into the bales to haul them to the top.

In that instance, I stepped into place while the chain was in neutral and not moving. Don then kicked it into gear. The chain started with a jerk (not me, but the yank or tug type) which knocked me off balance. I slipped and finally fell backward with my Achilles tendon between the two prongs and my heel caught on the uphill side. The elevator was dragging me feet-first to my doom--or at least to potential injury (at the time I was convinced that it was to my certain doom. It was like I was in the desperate clutches of Gollum and we were about to fall over the brink into the molten lava of Mount Doom). After the machine had dragged me for a few uncomfortable feet, he shifted it out of gear so that I could extricate myself. We both laughed about it but his laughter was more genuine than mine. I can't say that I'm a better person for having worked that summer with Don, and I'm sure he was no better off for my association, but I enjoyed our work and our friendship.

***

The Gallows from Warbases Company arrived yesterday. I had to put it together immediately. There were no directions. The large pieces went together easily. The lever assembly was tricky but I eventually deciphered it after staring at the online store picture until my eyes turned into pixels. The trap door mechanism required some thought. I looked for instructions online but didn't find any. I couldn't find any pictures other than the view from the top. 

I figured it out and I include a view from beneath the scaffold for anyone who would find that helpful.

As for the ever pressing need to write, I did it. It was a struggle to get to 65K words for several reasons. First, I remembered with some consternation that the rescue scene that I had written last week included the rescue of most of the distressed characters. I had left one of them dangling on the gibbet (which sounds like a way to serve shrimp or something: The special today includes sauteed prawns dangling on the gibbet. I highly recommend them). So I had to rewrite that scene. Time escaped me. By Saturday, I had two days worth of writing to catch up on. Also, I was distracted by the funeral, the gallows assembly, and hanging new blinds for my wife--the blinds were actually for the windows but my wife had selected them. Nevertheless, being the mighty splitter of infinitives and fearless dangler of participles that I am, I worked through the distractions and completed my goal for the week.

I'm rethinking the way I intended to divide this adventure series. I may opt for more, shorter books than for a trilogy of long books. Four to six books that I could sell at a less expensive rate might be more worthwhile, profitable, and fulfilling--the thrill of completing 4-6 books should be greater than that for completing only 3. I may end these in the 80K word range rather than the 120K range.

Next time: I may do reviews of 1632 by Eric Flint and Cthulhu Armageddon by C.T. Phipps. One of these was a DNF for me but I should set forth my reasons.