I sat there at peace.

Jon sat there in turmoil.

I calmly reflected on my day of getting unruly kids to school. My truancy tracking program often took the wind out of my sails, and it was moments like this that I cherished.

Jon worriedly reflected on what his doctor discovered during a recent check up. At 14, he wasn’t prepared for the diagnosis.

“I have it,” Jon solemnly said.

I held my breath for that next ten seconds, slowly letting it  out until my lungs were as empty as his dark eyes.

“You told me,” Jon said, “that I couldn’t keep messing around. You told me to at least be safe.”

I sat silent, waiting for him to continue.

“Usually,” Jon said, “positive stands for something good. But in this case, testing positive stands for just the opposite. But that is what my doctor said. HIV. Positive.”

I sat there, a little disconnected. It was like one of those frozen moments in time when the all-too-real springs up into your face and you find it difficult to recover from the blow that sent you reeling.

Jon shrugged, seemingly unaffected by the looming disaster that would take him out of this world in the near or distant future. “My doctor said I had five years at the most.”

To hear a 14-year-old gay boy talk about the end of his life was unsettling.

“I,” he continued, “don’t even know who burned me. I had so many unsafe encounters that I have no clue who it might have been. I mean, I have been racking my brain trying to figure out who might have been a carrier, but what difference does that make now? I can’t help thinking about all the others I might have infected. I imagine it might make a big difference to them to know that someone they had sex with might have burned them, too.”

I nodded, wondering if he even remembered how many kids and adults would be on that list. I knew Jon had been selling himself down at the Loop, in front of our State Capitol, for the past two years. Kids were his main partners, but he had many adult partners, as well.

Jon identified early on and had been sexually active since he was 6. He had experimented with many male partners before he was even 12, and when he reached puberty, he was already addicted to sexual activity.

The caseworker who called me to work with Jon informed me, “Jon has problems with his sexual preferences.”

On our first meeting, Jon hopped in my truck carrying a large purse. He was just 13 then and he was adamant that “preference” was definitely not the right word.

Jon told me it was his “orientation” to be gay. He told me “preference” indicated he had “chosen” this lifestyle or that he “preferred” being gay. Jon swore to me that this was not the case. Orientation meant that he was born this way and there was no preferring or choosing involved. As Jon said to me, “A dog is a dog. A cat is a cat. A dog cannot prefer to be a cat.”

Simple explanation, and as I got to know him better, I understood what he meant.

During that first meeting, Jon pulled a black dress out of his purse, panty hose, a bra, and a couple of hefty dish rags.

Trying to remain open-minded, I asked, “What are the dish rags for?”

Jon laughed. “Don’t you know anything? I am going dancing tonight and the dish rags are to stuff my bra with.”

I flippantly asked, “Why not just use tennis balls?”

Jon laughed, “That’s actually hilarious! That’s why I like you. You don’t know anything, do you? If I use tennis balls and I rub up against my partner, he will think I am aroused already! Dish rags are more subtle! You do not want your partner to think you are turned on before you even start to dance!”

Enlightened, I grinned and said, “God forbid.”

That next day, Jon went to school, walked into the girl’s rest-room, and put on his dress. He got in trouble for  interrupting classes by parading up and down the halls. He also got into trouble after school, when several bullies tracked him down and lit his hair on fire. The hair spray he wore did not help the situation, and fortunately someone had the good sense to pour pop on Jon’s head to extinguish the flames.

At this point, his casework asked me to take Jon each Tuesday evening to the only support group for gay kids in the city. This was in 1989, and the support group met in a gay bar on O Street, the main drag of our capitol city. I was to remain discreet about these meetings as the caseworker knew if the public ever found out I was transporting a 13-year-old gay boy to a gay bar for his weekly support meeting, there would be hell to pay.

Unfortunately, Jon’s attendance of this support group was short-lived. His support group leader was a young gay man who called me one night after two months of Jon attending group. He was frustrated because no matter what he tried to do to persuade Jon to stop pursuing him as a sexual partner, Jon continued to come onto him. Jon liked guys with beards.

So with that not working out so well, I tried to include Jon on fishing trips and skateboarding ventures with some of my hard-core delinquents, but Jon’s mannerism’s and his arrogant attitude did not win him a popularity contest with them.

The straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back came when one day five of my at-risk  kids were painting my house. It was a scene right out of Tom Sawyer, with five tough, street-wise delinquents dabbing at my house with paint brushes. When Jon showed up there on his bike, the other five kids reluctantly let him join them.

Things were going good, too, until Jon lipped off to one of them, and in running to avoid an ass-kicking, he slipped and fell and cut his knee on a board. When I brought him a wet wash cloth to clean his bloody knee, one of the boys said, “Destroy that rag when he’s done or you might get AIDS!”

“Screw you!” Jon responded.

“No,” the other kid said, “you would like it too much!”

And it all went down hill from there.

Soon after that, Jon was booted out of his home and his caseworker was scrambling to find him a placement. Two gay men agreed to take Jon and even went through the foster care training, but the powers that be would not approve as they thought it would lead to a sexual abuse situation.

So Jon was moved into the home of a 66-year-old Grand-mother-type who would not allow him to come in her front door. She insisted instead that Jon use her backdoor for fear of what her neighbors would say about her having a gay youth as a resident. She also once slapped him on the hands with a ruler for getting milk out of the kitchen fridge.

I often wondered if placing Jon in the home of those two gay guys would have given him the type of support he needed. Because Grandma Jones sure wasn’t the right placement for a sexually active gay boy like Jon.

One day, when picking him up for school, I noticed bruising around his neck. When I asked him about it, Jon openly admitted he’d had an S and M session with a partner the night before. And choking him out was part of the session.

Several weeks later, Jon called me in the middle of the night to tell me of one of his sexual experiences with an older man. At 2AM, I was less receptive then he wanted me to be, and so he let me have it with telling me he’d been selling himself to boys and men on the Loop for the past year. He also told me he had been barebacking (no condoms), and that this relationship with this older man meant more to him than all his fooling around. He insisted that I at least understood the purpose of his call. To let me know that even though everyone in society condemned sex between men and boys, that this was one experience that wasn’t just about the sex.

I continued for the next several months to play cat and mouse with Jon, trying to steer him away from the Loop, but by then, I honestly think he was addicted to the sex.

One evening he came over to the house. He had a Michael Jackson tape with him and asked me if he could place it my tape machine and dance for me. I laughed at the absurdity of  Jon doing the moon walk in my living room.

After I told him no, Jon went off to my den. Michael Jackson was soon blaring from the back den and my two dogs came scrambling through the kitchen and into the front room to avoid getting their sensitive ears blasted with Billy Jean and Thriller.

When Jon was done dancing, he came back out to the living room where I was watching a movie. He plopped himself down in front of me and promptly said, “I am ready to do you now!”

Awkward! echoed through my mind. Unbelievable! Bizarre!  Definitely skating on thin, black ice. Time for Jon to go home and take a cold shower!

And that’s exactly what I told him.

Ironically, the next day, his caseworker called me and asked me if I would consider taking Jon for a foster placement. He told me that his time with Grandma Jones had come to an end, and he thought my home might be a better solution. He offered me $3,000 per month.

Now that was unheard of in those days.

My last foster placement was a special needs kid who netted me $1,400 per month, but that was because he came straight to my home from the group home he trashed in a psychotic rage.  The kid had taken a shovel to all 19 windows in the house, on the coldest day of the winter, and on a weekend no less. It cost an astronomical fee to replace all those windows. So therefore, the caseworker set my payment extremely high to cover the cost of any damage the kid might do to my home. Fortunately, I only had one violent incident with the kid and it never involved a shovel and my windows. But I digress.

While I was slightly tempted at Jon’s caseworker’s offer of three grand per month, I shared with him the incident of the night before, and went on to say that I did not think I could continue to work with Jon. I told him that gay support leader had been right: Jon liked guys with beards.

The caseworker was disappointed that I did not accept his offer, but he did persuade me to continue working with Jon.

He set me up , too, pointing out all my many successes with many other state wards. At that point in time, I was the only truancy tracker in the city. And though it took me a long two years to consistently get 60-some delinquent kids to school, to court, to treatment, and to remain in their homes, by that third year, I had a proven track record.

I was ahead of my time, too, with a vision fulfilled. My caseworkers agreed with my plan to pay their wards $1 per day to go to school. They also agreed with my “skip days,” or as they became known, “mental health days,” in which if a kid had gone to school for 30 days straight, I rewarded them by allowing them to skip a day. I spent that day with them on a one-on-one basis, taking them to MacDonald’s, to a movie or out to skate or on a canoe trip down the Platte.

At first, kids dreaded to see me coming in the mornings. I  not only woke them up with my motorized squirt pistol in hand, but I escorted them to school.

They also hated the fact that if they skipped once I got them there, their administrator had my pager number and they would not hesitate to call me and send me on the hunt for them.

Those kids did not ever appear in court again with a 3-month truancy problem. They did not have a chance to continue skipping, not when I networked with their caseworkers, probation officers, parents, and school staff.

It was magic. And it worked.

So the caseworker used my proven history with kids to convince me to continue trying to work my magic on Jon.

Jon continued to sell himself on the Loop.

And therefore, ended up in my den, telling me that he had tested positive for HIV.

His doctor had been right: Jon lived another five years before he died of AIDS complications at the age of 19.

The book that follows was written in memory of him.

The hammer fell on an empty chamber, and so Steven spun the cylinder again and aimed the pistol at ten-year-old brother, Jack. He thumbed back the hammer and pulled the trigger. And again, the hammer fell on an empty chamber. Relishing the terror he was inspiring in his two younger brothers, Steven pulled the trigger a third time. Fortunately, he flinched when it fired and the bullet passed above Jack’s head and embedded in the wall above him. Steven simply laughed and walked away, leaving his two younger brothers quite shaken.

I was just two years into my truancy program and as a private contractor with the State, I knew I was obligated to report this incident. My job then was to do wake-up calls on some of the most difficult, counter-cultural kids in the city. By the time I saw any of these kids, they had been to countless meetings at school and hearings at court, and had been made wards of the state.

In my line of work, I connected with caseworkers, probation officers, teachers, counselors, administrators, and parents, and the good Judge Nuernberger, who gave these kids chance after chance before he sentenced them to more restrictive placements. My job was to keep these kids in school, and during each work day, I had many highly volatile time-bombs placed in my path. Each one, an accident waiting to happen. Such was the case with the three brothers, Steven, Shawn, and Jack.

As it turned out, my report resulted in Shawn and Jack being removed from their home. They were sent to live with their dad down in small town Crete, Nebraska. The two brothers blamed me then for ruining their lives and for them being stuck in another bad environment. I even got blamed for the machete fight they had on their dad’s farm, and the finger that Shawn lost to Jack’s wild swing of the sharp blade. Yes, they blamed me for the sucky turn their lives took. But despite the blame game, both boys took with them to Crete my manuscript they had been test reading. The work was a tattered, spiral-bound booklet named, Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball.

Shawn and Jack introduced the manuscript to their mentor, Professor Beef Torrey, and a year later, when 8-Ball was published by an educational publisher, the boys carried their own autographed copies into class and shared them with Beef.

Two years later, while shopping at Nebraska bookstore, I noticed a long-haired David Crosby look-alike staring at me from down the aisle. While conscious of his close scrutiny, I continued to check out books. Suddenly, the guy excitedly declared, “Far out, man, you’re Tom Frye!”

Jarred by such usage of hippy jargon, I turned as the hairy fellow approached me. He was beaming and amused that he’d finally met the author of the book he had come to love due to my two former state wards who had ended up in his classroom in small town Crete. “My name is Beef!” he said. “Professor Beef Torrey of Crete! And I read the manuscript of 8-Ball long before it was published! Congratulations! You’ve written one helluva book, Tom!”

Beef then explained his connection to Shawn and Jack, and I stood there amazed to think how two little kids from Havelock had carried that manuscript with them to Crete and placed it in Beef’s hands. Over the years, Beef has passed my books on to countless students he crosses paths with. This past summer, 30 years after that fateful meeting with that “far out” dude, Beef and a colleague had a biography of Hunter S. Thompson published.

I was talking about that very book with a mother who had bought all 3 of my Havelock series books in early June, and this mother stood there open-mouthed as I mentioned Beef. She said, “That is who first introduced me to your books when I was in elementary school in Crete! Beef Torrey! And now I am reading them to my own kids!”

I recently received an email from her son, who told me he was sharing the books with a friend at Norris High school, and shortly thereafter, this same kid sent me a Friend request on Facebook.

So that is what this book-writing has been all about: Connections.

One boy who had grown up on the mean streets of Havelock ended up serving in the Gulf War. While stationed over there in the desert sands, one of his fellow soldiers asked him where he’d been born and raised. When the kid told him he came from Havelock, the amazed  solider ran to his backpack and pulled out a copy of Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball. Later, after the Havelock boy made it safely home, he told me he’d never read 8-Ball while growing up, but said he read it over there during the Gulf War, and he bawled his eyes out because it reminded him of home.

I once read on the Internet where a used copy of 8-Ball was selling in Afghanistan for $38. The oddest thing is, it had been signed by me! I could only wonder, “How in the hell did my book get over there to that country? And signed by me, no less!”

Over the years, I have received letters from kids confined to institutions and kids going through treatment. The most profound letter came from a 15-year-old kid living in a group home. He wrote to tell me he’d had just finished reading 8-Ball, and he claimed the book made him cry. He went onto say, “I haven’t cried like that since me and my girlfriend lost our baby a year ago. If you haven’t reached a million kids with your books by now, you definitely will one day! Just imagine, a million kids touched by the words you write. I just wanted to thank you for writing a book that changed my life.”

Shortly thereafter, I met a kid down at Havelock Park. He said, “Man, with all those books you sold, how come you still live in the sticks of Havelock? I saw on the Internet that 2.8 million copies of 8-Ball have been sold over the years!”

I simply laughed and figured he must have made the mistake of reading the caption above Amazon.com when doing a search for my books, because if 2.8 million copies of my book had been sold, I think I would certainly know about it. No, in reality, I figured 12,000 copies of 8-Ball have been printed. Someone once estimated that for every one book printed at least 5 people have read it. So if that is true, perhaps as many as 60,000 people have read my one book. But that does not a rich author make. Of all those books, I have probably given away over half of them. That’s just the way I roll.

Most recently, I finished writing a screenplay based on 8-Ball. Only 15 copies had been floating around out there for less than 3 weeks before I received an email from a movie producer out of New York. I promptly sent him a copy of the book per his request and I am now waiting to see what the outcome of this contact will result in.

Two days after firing off a book/script packet to this producer, I got an email from a reporter at 10/11 News. He claimed he was doing a piece on the unsolved murder of Patricia Webb, which my book is loosely based on. He also claimed my book is listed on the Internet along with other facts about Patty Webb the young female police informant who was shot and killed outside of Lincoln.

I thought it quiet strange that this reporter chose now of all times to look into this unsolved murder after 35 years. At his request to speak with me to get my take on her murder, I said, “Have you heard the old saying, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie?’ Well, right now my dog is sleeping peacefully.” I then added, “Unless you have something to say that piques my interest, I guess I remain skeptical and shall remain silent about Patty’s murder.”

So once again, connections that lead to connections.

But lest I get too heady about my accomplishments with my books, I will end this piece with a story that keeps me in my place and helps me to remain grounded and humble.

Denny Ladue, owner of the Used Bike Shop in Bethany, recently portrayed Detective Shepherd in my play based on 8-Ball. Talk about connections. One day, while reading over his lines about a private investigator named Quinn, who put a hit on an informant named Kelly, Denny received a phone call from a lady named Quinn Kelly!

After sharing this particular story he then told me two stories regarding my 8-Ball book. In the first one, he said, “My daughter first read your book when she was just a little girl enrolled at Saint Catherine’s school in Riverside, California.”

This amazed me to think that my book had found it’s way into a fourth grader’s hands at a Catholic school all the way in Callie. But Denny then shared his last story with me in regards to my book.

“And I came across another copy of your book when I first moved back here from California,” Denny said, smirking. “Do you know where I found it? At East High in a dumpster!”

Shortly thereafter, I read a tragic story about 500,000 dogs who were shot and killed over in Iraq. They were feral dogs and the military leaders from the US determined they were a nuisance and had to be put down. Two days after reading this story I had a dream where I saw the ghostly souls of all 500,000 dogs seated on a shoreline, gazing out to sea. When I followed their steady gazes, I saw a large ship sailing toward them to pick them. Once all the dogs were aboard, the ship sailed away on a river of stars. The next day, I began work on a sequel to Wild Hearts, entitled, Do Dogs have Souls?

I guess it begs the question, do they? Think of all the dogs who have passed through your life, and perhaps the dog in your life currently, and you decide.

My first dog, Sandy, was a Shepherd/Collie, and she and I landed on the front page of the Journal and Star when I was five years old with Sandy pulling me across the snow-covered front lawn in my snow boat. She was a part of my life until I turned 14.  I was not there to see her off as I had run away from home and was soon to be locked up in the detention center. But all through those troubled times, I thought of her and how much she was going to be missed. It was a crossroads for both Sandy and I, for I went on to climb my way up out of the juvenile justice system while she went on to the beyond.

Two years later, I ended up with a St. Bernard puppy named Angel, who became notorious for   boxing the neighbor’s German shepherd and sending him rolling with each strike. But for all her rough and tumble ways, she was a gentle dog who readily adopted the small, black and white terrier I brought home one day from my work as a teacher’s assistant at Havelock Elementary school.

I had spotted the small, furry-faced terrier seated on the edge of the playground watching my students play with his one good eye. His other eye was matted shut, and although he looked like a forlorn little guy, there was not much I could do for him. When I went to leave school that day, I discovered that three of my students had scooped up the ratty little terrier and placed him inside my 59 Step-van. When I opened the sliding door, there sat the one-eyed dog, peering up at me and wagging his tail.

I took him home, and Angel immediately adopted him. I named him Christian. Those two dogs, one big and massive, the other small and scrawny, were inseparable. In the winter time, Christian would climb up on Angel’s broad back when she was laying in the snow. There, he would curl up, staying warm until I let them both inside. Once inside, Christian would resume his place when Angel planted herself at her favorite location near the front door.

Then came Misty, a sleek, fox-like Collie/Terrier. She was a beautiful rich brown dog with pointed ears. Misty, unlike the big moose Angel and the short-legged Christian, went along with me on camping trips. She was more rugged than the pampered and spoiled Angel and Christian, and she loved romping in the woods.

My most memorable time with Misty was the time my foster son, Chad, and I skied deep into Indian Caves in the middle of the winter. We pulled a sled with our gear stashed on it, and Misty rode on this most of the trip into the park. We camped in an Adirondack shelter, nailing blankets over the opening in the front, and warmed the shelter with a propane space heater. Misty kept me warm that night by curling up inside my sleeping bag. She was a great dog.

Those three dogs were inseparable up until Angel passed at 14, Misty at 15, and Christian lived until he was 17. A long time for most dogs.

My parents then adopted, Brandy, a wet-mouth St. Bernard. Brandy would latch onto the cuff of your pants and drag you anywhere she wanted you to go. The night that the drug-crazed Terry Reynold’s broke into my parents’ motel, Brandy high-tailed it to the back room, while my dad used a gun to scare the crazed psycho out of their kitchen window. When the cops showed up to investigate the mess that Reynold’s had made, only then did Brandy come out of the bedroom to give the officers a friendly greeting as if to say, “Gosh, sure glad you guys showed up.”

I was there at my parents’ place when Brandy breathed her last breath, and I remember it was a peaceful passing, no vets involved, no needles, just a sprawl on her side and some labored breathing, and then she was gone.

By then, I had discovered the Pet Cemetery out east of town and I began burying my dogs there. I made trade-offs with Patricia, the owner, as I wrote two universal poems regarding both dogs and cats, where the poem could be printed with the name of the animal at the top and therefore apply to anyone’s pet. You can read it at the end of this post.

At 26, a year after my first book, Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball, was published, I bought a house in Havelock and started my work in foster care. Over the next few years I took in nine different troubled kids and five different affectionate dogs.

Bummer, my Dobie/Shepherd, was the biggest baby of all of my dogs. Doberman’s have poor circulation, and in the winter time when Bummer wasn’t curled up beside either of my two woodstoves, she was burrowed beneath the covers in someone’s bed. And when she went outside, she looked like a damned chimpanzee as my one kid used to dress her up in a sweatshirt  and a pair of colored underwear with Bummer’s stubby tail sticking up through the pee hole.

Bummer once swallowed a baby possum, and while I was outside cutting wood, she vomited the dead thing up in front of Henry, my very startled new foster placement. Henry came running outside of the house, screaming, “Your damned dog just had a baby out of her damned mouth!”

Sam, my Keeshond, was by far the most intelligent dog I’d ever had. She was one dog that I didn’t even have to leash as she would walk twenty feet in front of me, glance back to make sure I was coming, then trot back if I patted my side. She was magically bonded, and I took Sam out to Wilderness Park quite often to walk her. Sam also was great in a canoe and would remain perfectly still while cruising down through Wilderness or the Platte River.

Smoky, my German shepherd, was a misfit, and although I had a six foot high stockade fence around my backyard, she could leap it like a frog. She was an escape artist. So I used to chain her up to a concrete block in the middle of the yard. Fortunately for Smoky, my foster son and I returned home to pick up something we’d forgotten one day, only to find that Smoky had drug her block across the backyard and leaped over the fence, where she was dangling by the chain around her neck and her back feet barely touching the ground. I released her and put her inside the house, relieved that she hadn’t died of strangulation.

Tragedy struck Bummer at five years of age, for my neighbor man, a guard at the city jail, had this thing about standing on my front walk and getting Sam to bark at him. He antagonized her, and therefore thought he was justified in throwing a piece of poisoned meat in my yard. Sam did not get to it, but Bummer did.

My foster son, Trent, and I watched her die right there in front of us. I later had an autopsy performed and my vet determined it was strychnine that had passed through her system. I called the police and animal control, but they could do nothing without proof. I then went over and confronted the neighbor moron, but he simply cussed me out and slammed the door in my face.

That was the closest I had ever come to going to prison. But I kept my pistol in my drawer, and buried Bummer out at the Pet Cemetery beside Angel and Christian.

A month later, I adopted a Husky pup, Crystal. She was a pure white, blue-eyed beautiful dog. Unfortunately, she only lived for four months as she had a brain tumor and after spending $2,000 on trying to keep her alive, I finally had to put her to sleep. She was buried next to Bummer.

And then new neighbors moved into the moron’s house, and they had a black Chow/Husky mix named Sheera. One day while coming home with my kid, we witnessed the big, burly biker neighbor beating on the poor dog. I ran over and immediately confronted the surly bear of a man, and in response, he picked up the dog and heaved her over the fence at me, saying, “If you think you can take care of her any better than I did, you can have the damned bitch!”

I caught her and carried her home, without even glancing back at the moron. I kept her for 14 years after that. She was probably the closest dog to me I ever had, bonding with me and empathetic to my every mood. She would come and stand in front of me whenever I was angry or sad. She would curl up beside, placing her head on my chest whenever I laid down in bed.

The bad thing was, Sheera and Sam were both dominant females, and for nearly eight years I had to keep them separated or they would fight to the death. The worst fight they ever had took place one night in the middle of my livingroom. I made the mistake of getting in front of them instead of taking one dog from behind. Sam lunged forward and bit me deeply on my forearm.

Later, once I had both dogs separated in different rooms, I walked into the bathroom to examine my dog bite. It was so deep it appeared there was a white tooth embedded in my arm. I fainted and fell on the bathroom floor.

When I came to, my foster son, Ricky, was leaning over me, concern on his face. He had been outside on his skateboard ramp when the dog fight took place, so he knew nothing of the whirlwind I had waded into earlier. I had just clambered from the floor to the toilet seat, when Ricky took a long look at my bloody wound and gasped, “Oh my God, it’s a tooth!”

I fainted again. When I woke up, Ricky was showing three of his skater buddies my bloody wound and all of them were marveling that I had a dog tooth embedded in my arm. Come to find out, it was a bone in my arm that was visible beneath the three layers Sam had bitten through and not her tooth after all, but it was still totally gross.

The next day I was filming an anti-drug program in combination with kids from Malcolm and kids from Whitehall at NETV. During a lunch break from the interviews these kids were conducting with me, I slipped home to let the dogs out. And Sam and Sheera got into it again. I had to wade into the fray and break them up. While doing so, I tore open the wound that Sam had inflicted the night before, and it bled all over my purple shirt I was wearing. In my haste to get back to the studio to resume filming, I did not notice the blood splatters on my shirt.

Later, while reviewing the taping, one student asked, “What are those bright red spots on your  shirt?”

“Good Lord,” I said, “that is blood from a dog fight I had to break up yesterday!”

The producer jokingly said, “Now we are going to have to give this film an R rating for blood and excessive gore!”

Sam passed at 14, Smoky at 10, and Sheera lived until she was 15. After burying Sheera, I vowed I would never take in another dog again.

But then came Kody’s book, and we needed a Pitbull pup to photograph as a model for the back of the book. We drove out to the Human Society and found a tiny Pit/Lab mix. While snapping off pictures of her, Kody began begging me to adopt the female pup, promising me he would walk her, train her, clean up after her, and she would essentially become his dog. Famous last words, right?

Jade came home with me. Her photo traveled all over the country on the back of the Wild Hearts book and she got to be on the front page of the Journal and Star with Kody in a full-color spread. But since that time, I have had to replace seven pillows, one vacuum sweeper cord, one Nintendo cord, two gloves, a dozen socks, and at least three bath towels. My couch looks like it belongs on the front porch of trailer situated in some backwoods setting as two cushions have been gnawed as well as both arms.

When walking down the bike trail, people ask me, “Oh, what kind of dog is that?”

And I reply, “Part Pitbull and all Meth Lab!”

Most get the joke, but one lady went on her way, saying, “Meth Lab? Never heard of that breed before. How odd.”

So as I contemplate whether or not to finish my story, Do Dogs have Souls, I wonder how many people believe they do.

Heaven will not be as I pictured it, if I get there and find that all of my past dogs are not there to greet me as I step through my cottage door. I have pictured that cottage nestled in a pine forest  over and over in my mind for a long time now. And each time life here gets really hard, I cope by visualizing each of my dogs sprawled beside a fire inside that cottage. So if I open that door at road’s end and discover my dogs are not there, I am going to march right up to God and ask him why he didn’t allow them in.

Presumptuous? Arrogant? Rude? To bring God to task on the matter regarding my dogs? I don’t think so. He will know I am not stepping out of line, for dogs have been the emotional buffer I have needed to help me with each of the troubled kids who have passed through my life, and God will totally understand when I ask, “Just where are my soul companions?”

And I would hope he’d say, “Ah, I was saving the best for last. You didn’t look out in the field behind your back door, did you? For there you will find all of your dogs chasing crystal rabbits through a field of stars. Just call them back, for they will know your voice.”

And then to show God that there are no hard feelings for causing me concern over the souls of my dogs, I will share with him the joke about all the dyslexic people in the world who actually believe in Dog. He will get a good laugh out of that, I am sure.

So as you, my faithful reader, contemplate whether or not your own dogs ever had souls, I will leave you with this poem, and then I think I will get to work on that book once more.

The Lord looked down from heaven,

a puppy in his hand.

He said, “I’m sending you to earth,

an often troubled land.

“Your presence will bring comfort,

to ones I love so dear.

When you snuggle up beside them,

they’ll know that I am near.

“I know it’s quite a mission,

for a tiny pup to do.

But I’ll be in your heart,

my love will flow through you.

“You’ll whine, bark and sniff,

you’ll cuddle and you’ll play.

You’ll be a ray of sunshine,

on dark and dreary days.

“You’ll share that thought-filled stare,

that dogs are noted for.

You’ll wag your tail and smile,

greeting loved ones at the door.

“You’ll be a most welcome sight,

at the end of weary days.

You’ll grow from pup to dog,

sharing yourself through each phase.

“And when the day draws near,

that I retrieve my precious loan,

you’ll leave the world a better place,

through you, my love will have brightly shone.

“For those who cared so dearly,

and gave you love so free,

will know you were an example,

of the love that comes from Me.”

I stood gape-mouthed and bug-eyed as the sleek, black form of Lightning materialized out of the shadows before me. My heart racing, I faced the black horse as he lowered his head,  sniffing quietly. I reached out and wiggled my fingers in front of his nose. Lightning stood like a king in his moonlit pasture, surrounded by whirling fireflies and their emerald flashes of fairy light.

Everything else faded away, the chirping crickets, the rumbling train on the nearby tracks. For those brief moments, Lightning became the center of my universe. We didn’t touch, yet we connected. It was a magical moment, etched in my memory forever.

Fireflies graced my evening years later during reading time, one of my 11-year-old foster son’s favorite activities. He would shut off the TV and Nintendo, and drag me away from my computer. He would then light candles for me to read by. During one evening’s session, he produced a jar of captured fireflies, releasing them so that they swirled through the den, glowing like gems from a dragon’s hoard. “Cool!” he declared. More than cool, I thought. Magic!

So it is for all of us. Throughout our lives, many such magical gems appear for the gathering. Like shiny jewels stored in our mental treasure vaults, images are often triggered by the silver  moon on a spring night, traces of mist on a summer morning, or gentle snowfall on a winter’s day. Life is made more precious by these moments; we are made rich by this valuable collection. Magic moments become like beacons in a dark night of the soul.

I have many of these magic moments stored inside my head. Some of them come to me in a kaleidoscopic flash. Others simply appear like a slow-swimming fish sluggishly rising through cool water on a hot summer day.

There was the time my foster son, Lance, and I were walking through Fontanel Forest on a cold winter’s day. We had just rounded the bend overlooking the pond, frozen solid in the deeps of the woods, when suddenly, a tall oak tree toppled over right in front of us. It crashed down upon the icy pond and shards of ice and clouds of mist rose up in the air around the fallen giant, leaving a fine layer of sparkling particles drifting through the air. It was a spectacular sight that left us both standing there in amazement.

There was the time when another one of my kids and I were driving out in the country on another winter day. I was letting him drive my Pathfinder, and as he drove down a rather steep stretch of country road, three deer sprang out in front of us. They crossed the snowy road and faded away into the wooded grove to our left. No sooner had this trio of deer vanished in the trees, when off to our right, a red-tailed hawk drifted down and banked no more than ten feet from the Pathfinder. As we both began muttering in amazement, that hawk soared along with us for an entire three blocks before breaking his pattern and drifting off into the skies.

There was a winter’s night when two of my band members and I were driving back from a gig we’d played at a coffee house down in Kansas. It was during the time of a major gas shortage, and all the gas stations in northern Kansas were closed at the late night hour, and we were nearly out of gas. It was nerve-wracking watching the needle on the gas gauge slipping toward E, and Ben and Craig and I prayed that we made it all the way to Marysville before we ran completely out and were left stranded out on the snowy open plains. Despite our fear that we would run out of gas on that deserted stretch of roadway, we passed through one small town and I spotted something of interest.

I turned the car around and Ben and Craig curiously asked me what I was doing. “Stopping to have some fun,” I said as I parked beside an old church. They watched me climb out of the car and make my way through the sleet and snow to an old bell perched there in the middle of the snow-covered lawn. When Ben and Craig realized what I was about to do, they joined me, and we rang the heck out of that bell . . . until the rope broke and the bell got stuck halfway through mid-ring, and stayed frozen on its perch high above us. We laughed all the way out of that town, speculating on what the less-than-amused townsfolk were saying about who had been ringing their bell at 2AM.

We did not laugh long, however, as the gas was nearly gone in the car, and Marysville was still ten more miles down the road. And then, we saw a green flash of a falling star right in front of us.

“Whoa!” Ben said. “An omen! That had to be an omen! We’re going to make it!”

Another star fell, and then another. All three had been bright, green flashes, a spectacular display in the winter night sky. However, when we got to Marysville, omen or not, we did not find one gas station open. We drove on then, heading down the road to Wymore.

As we drove, another star whizzed through the sky above us, and even Craig began to say, “That had to be an omen! That was four shooting stars in a row! That has to be a sign!”

Sign or not, I then shared with my two friends why I now drove on to Wymore with less enthusiasm about omens than they were obviously experiencing. Two years earlier, my Granddad had walked out of a nursing home there in small town Wymore–in the middle of a snow storm, much like the one raging outside the car as we drove. My Granddad, always the adventurous sort, had his last adventure that night. Dressed as he was in his pajamas and bathrobe, he wandered down a set of railroad tracks and eventually ran into a barbed wire fence, where he collapsed and died.

Despite my depressing, hard-life story, Ben and Craig gasped out loud when yet a fifth falling star blazed through the sky as we entered Wymore. And omen or not, we did not find a gas station open there either.

We had 15 miles to go to reach Beatrice, and as we drove on fumes, Craig fell asleep in the back seat. One more star shot through the sky above as, and Ben seeing this sixth star, was certain we were going to make it to Beatrice. I drove on, skeptical and white-knuckling the steering wheel, and relieved that we had at least passed through Wymore without suffering a fate much like my Granddad did.

We coasted into the truck stop in Beatrice and the car died ten feet from the pump. Ben woke Craig up and while I steered, they pushed the car up to the gas pump. “See,” Ben said, “I told you those falling stars were an omen. God was letting us know we were going to be all right.”

Once we fueled up and started the forty mile trip to Lincoln, Ben told Craig about that last star we had seen. “Six stars in a row?” Craig said. “Wow, that had to mean something. I wish I could have seen that last one.”

No sooner had he said this then a seventh spectacular green flash arced though the sky in front of us.  And even I, the skeptic among us, had to gasp out loud as we watched it slowly vanish into the darkness. (I later wrote a similar story about the oddity of these seven falling stars in my 8-Ball book.)

Another moment, etched in my memory is the winter night I went down to Havelock Park in the middle of a raging blizzard to find a kid there who had planned to commit suicide. He had a pistol and he fully intended to use it. I remember walking through falling torrents of snow as I approached him seated in the middle stone shelter. I remember, too, asking for his permission to sit down at the picnic table, swearing to him that I would not try to take the gun away from him, if only he listened to what I had to say. He cocked his pistol and agreed to let me join him.

I talked. He listened. And twenty minutes later, Travis placed his pistol on the table between us. I remember asking him if I could pick it up and unload it. He allowed that, and before walking him out of the park, I emptied the gun and tossed the six bullets out through the madly falling snow.

So, there you have some of my more vivid magical moments that remain in the treasure vault inside my head. And I bet you readers have many of your own. Keep them. Store them away. Bring them out on a dark, stormy day when you need them the most. Magic moments are what life is made up of.

Though I cherish some more so than others, one of the most spectacular magic moment happened while I performed as a storyteller at a summer camp high in forested hills. At the peak of the story (and using a magic trick) I tossed a large fireball in the air before the campfire. Ooohs and Ahhhs erupted from the campers. Yet the moment the fireball appeared between us, a dove flew above our campfire and passed directly through the last sparkles of light, then winged its way through the dusky woodlands, dazed but unharmed.

Later, when campfire ended and campers had exited the clearing, the Camp Director and I started down the moonlit trail. On either side of us, the forest was illuminated by thousands of fireflies  swirling through the forest air. As we walked, the Director shook his head in amazement, saying, “The fireball effect was great tonight! But, how did you produce that dove?”

I pointed at the fireflies around us. I then rubbed my knuckles on my chest, casually blew on them, and with a dramatic flourish of my hand, I quietly replied, “Magic!”

Fade in:

EXT. YARD OF THE PARTY HOUSE. NIGHT.

The flashing red light of a police cruiser illuminates DETECTIVE SHEPHERD’S face.

Shepherd gestures to two OFFICERS trailing him with a battering ram.

The two officers RAM the door.

Stairway to Heaven begins to play:

REASON (Voice Over)

The party ended when some kid shouted,

“It’s a bust.”

INT. PARTY HOUSE. ESTABLISHING.

SHEPHERD rushes through the shattered door.

Several long-haired kids wreathed in smoke run from cops and slam into a liquor cabinet.

REASON (Voice over)

Some kids were so wasted they simply stared at

flashlight beams shimmering through pot smoke drifting in the air.

Several boys plowed into a liquor cabinet and glass shards

crunched beneath their feet, sounding like gunshots.

I thought the cops were shooting at us.

 INT. PARTY HOUSE.

REASON NELSON snatches up his BLACK LEATHER JACKET and flees toward the kitchen. Reason kicks over a case of beer, spilling HISSING CANS across the floor.

SHEPHERD pursues BROOKS across the room.

REASON steps into their path, and when they all go down, Reason’s leather jacket goes flying.

Scooping up A LEATHER JACKET Reason scrambles back to his feet.

Holding the jacket like a shield, he hurls himself through a screen door.

EXT. BACKYARD. NIGHT. ESTABLISHING.

Reason crashes through the door, tumbles off the porch and lands in front of a ROTTWEILER.

Chained to a doghouse, the dog continues to gnaw on his bone.

Reason latches onto the jacket and scrambles into the doghouse.

Brooks leaps off the back porch and the Rott lunges at him.

Brooks leaps back, pulling his pistol from his waistband. He takes aim on the snarling dog.

INT. DOGHOUSE. ESTABLISHING.

Reason latches onto the dog’s chain and pulls him back into the doghouse.

The dog slams into Reason and bullets plow into the wood directly above his head.

Reason then promptly passes out.

EXT. BACKYARD. ESTABLISHING.

Shepherd tackles Brooks and they fall in front of the doghouse.

Brooks comes to his feet, gun in hand.

Brooks pokes Shepherd hard in the gut with the barrel of his gun, dropping him to his knees. Brooks then vanishes into the night.

INT. DOGHOUSE. NIGHT. ESTABLISHING.

As GOLDEN LIGHT streams through the BULLET HOLES in the wall of the doghouse, Reason slowly wakes up from his unconscious stupor.

VINCE (Off screen)

Reason? You in there? Damn, I’ve been looking

all over for you! Reason, you all right?

EXT. BACKYARD NIGHT. ESTABLISHING.

Pushing the dog out of his way, Reason crawls through the door, dragging the jacket with him. Reason pats the growling dog.

REASON

Not so loud, Vince. Don’t rile the dog.

VINCE skids to a stop ten feet away, looking warily at the large Rott.

 VINCE

You need to get home, Reason!

The party here at Walker’s got busted tonight!

Everyone got arrested, except you!

Now Walker thinks you narced!

 Reason slips on the black leather jacket (BROOK’s JACKET).

REASON

Me? A narc? Get real!

 VINCE

Just get on my bike and ride like hell for your house!

Vince scoops up his BIKE laying in the nearby lawn. He attempts to hand the bike to Reason.

REASON

Just chill. Take some Ritalin or something, and settle down, Vince.

Don’t get so whipped out of shape.

 EXT. STREET. NIGHT.

Vince and Reason walking down a street, bathed in a HALO OF BLUE LIGHT.

As the Voice Over begins, Vince looks nervously in all directions.

 REASON (Voice over)

Vince and I lived in a small suburb called Havelock.

It had once been notorious for its

rowdy Irish railroaders and their drunken brawls.

In our time, the area housed a lot of rowdy

stoners who hung out at Havelock Park.

It was there one hot summer night

that we’d been introduced to our first joint.

It was all downhill from there.

Vince and I ended our last month of

seventh grade being arrested for

breaking into the Emerald Pub to steal pop,

and  since we tested positive for THC,

we were sentenced to probation.

EXT. HAVELOCK PARK. NIGHT.

Reason suddenly notices the LEATHER JACKET he is wearing is not his.

REASON

Damn it! I lost my jacket! Hell, this one ain’t mine!

 Reason slips out of the large black leather, searches the pockets, and discovers a BLUE KEY.

 REASON

Whoa! A key? Wonder what this opens?

 VINCE

Let me see that.

Instinctively, Reason withdraws his hand and fumbles and drops the key.

The key bounces in the street and vanishes into the mouth of a DRAIN SEWER.

REASON

Damn! Vince, you klutz!

Focusing on the MANHOLE situated next to the street, Reason drops the jacket and kneels.

REASON

Help me lift this, Vince. It weighs a ton!

Vince glances back at the green THUNDERBIRD speeding toward them.

VINCE

Oh, hell! It’s Wolfe! Get out of here, Reason!

Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper begins:

Reason quickly rises to his feet, a look of fear on his face as Vince hands him his bike.

Reason furiously pedals away, ditching the Thunderbird in an alley.

In the past, when submitting manuscripts, I learned it is better to receive a quick, “NO,” rather than a slow, “MAYBE.”

When submitting my Kastleland game back in the 93 to Electronic Arts, the script went through four different gatekeepers and they were offering me a $85,000 advance with a 5% return on four formats, PC, Mac, Nintendo and Playstation. I jumped through every hoop they suggested, conducting a 1,000 kid survey, having a psychologist do a paradigm, and keeping my four-student crew on task to finish the script. But then, the slow MAYBE turned into an abrupt NO. The fifth and final gatekeeper shot the game down because there was not enough blood and gore. One step backward.

Blizzard creators of World of Warcraft was next in line. The two CEO’s of Blizzard were nice guys, and while they politely told me the game was too educational, they did pass it on to their parent company, Davidson’s and Associates. The gatekeeper there made me a promise, that if I found someone to make a prototype of my game, she would help me sell it. I could find no one in Lincoln at that time who was interested, so the game fell through the cracks. Another step backwards.

The final straw on this long journey came when I sent a $150 packet of material to GOD in Texas. Gathering of Developers, thus G.O.D. I kept telling everyone who asked about the game that Kastleland was in good hands now, because I had sent it to GOD. That was funny up until the time I called the submission guy there and he sheepishly admitted that they had “lost” my entire game packet. My faith in GOD went right out the window, the GOD of the video industry, not the God of the Universe. Ten steps backwards.

So when it came time to submit my manuscript of Beyond the Wind to publishers, I was a little reluctant. The first four submissions came back within four months. They were all a quick NO. Six months later, I received a First Class envelope from Haworth Press of Binghamton, New York.  I knew what it was the moment I took it out of my mail box. But I placed that envelope next to my computer (within sight) and let it set there for over an hour before I actually took my letter opener to it. I was relishing the moment. A big step forward.

After reading the acceptance letter, I immediately called Cindy Gablehouse, wife of friend and fellow writer, Gary Gablehouse. I told her that my book had been accepted, which was ironic because Gary had just had his first book accepted that same week. So Cindy and I concocted a plan for Gary and I to get together that evening for a reading session. Before we started that evening, I slipped that acceptance letter into the pile of Gary’s loose pages and he picked it up, surprise written all over his face. It was a cool moment in time. Another step forward.

Haworth Press sold 10,000 copies of Beyond the Wind, a story about a young gay boy who contracts HIV, based on the life of one of my former kids I worked with (who died of AIDS complications at the age of 19). And so, I wrote a sequel, Out of the Storm, but before I could submit it, Haworth Press folded and closed its doors. Another step back.

But all along the way, everyone who read Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball, always said, “This book would make a great movie!” I had a wide-range audience, as well. Kids confined to treatment or detention centers, teachers, cops, probation officers, drug counselors, and common, everyday folk from ten-year-olds to eighty-year olds. So I knew then, that the story was demographically sound. Meaning, kids to grandparents could relate to the message and the story of Reason Nelson.

I had thought it would become a movie back when Patrick Swayze first bought a copy of The Kid, the Cop and the Con at our local Barnes and Noble, when he was filming that Too Wong Foo movie here in Nebraska. Some kid on the movie set happened to be reading my book and Patrick asked him about it. The next day, the kid called me and told me Patrick went out and bought a copy of The Kid! I was so excited, I called his publicist and asked her if I could give her a copy of 8-Ball to pass onto Patrick. She asked for a release form, so took her a copy of 8-Ball, the release form, and a dozen roses! I never did hear from Patrick, however.

Once when Tony Hawk came to Fast Ramps Skate Park, I was standing in line to get his autograph for my foster kid, when three kids in front of me recognized me. They walked up to Tony’s table and snagged a pen so they could get my autograph as well as his. Tony was curious,  so after the kids explained that I was a local writer, Tony asked for one of my books. I happened to have several in my car, so I signed one for him, and as his crew drove away that day, my kid and saw Tony bent over reading my book. My kid said, “Damn, Tony Hawk is actually reading Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball!”

In 1992, while holding a book signing at Barnes and Noble, my aunt took a picture of me seated at the table. When I received the photos later, I noticed a kid standing just behind me, looking curiously at my books. He wore Go Big Red Nebraska football clothing from hat-to-shirt-to-coat. I took the photo into Nancy, the manager of B and N and asked her who that kid looked like, she said, “Oh, that’s Elijah Wood. His family lives in Iowa and he comes here for Nebraska football games.” Years later, I thought, “Just think I had Frodo Baggins at my book signing!”

Recently, while checking the Internet to see if Amazon was still selling 8-Ball, I discovered a Used copy was being sold for $38 in . . . Afghanistan! And once while talking to Denny Ladue, who played Detective Shepherd in the 8-Ball play, he told me where he first saw a copy of my book. “Yes, he said the first time I saw 8-Ball was when we were living in California. My daughter brought it home with her from her school, St. Teresa’s Catholic school. A few days later, I found a copy of the same book in a dumpster in my alley!”

Another time, my Aunt Darlene and I were at a garage sale, and she discovered a copy of 8-Ball destined to be sold, so she told the lady that I had written it. The lady asked if I would sign it, so I did, and she ended up keeping the copy. At another garage sale, I found a desk I wanted to buy. The guy had $150 marked on it, but when my foster son told him who I was and that I would write many of my future books on it, the guy knocked $100 off the price and I went home to write several books on that old desk.

The funniest story is when I was teaching my foster kid how to drive down at Middle Island  around the cabins on the river. Jason went to turn around in a driveway when he nudged a lean-to garage support with the bumper of my truck. It came off of the supports and all of a sudden the lady who owned the cabin came running outside. I thought she was about to blow a gasket, but she took one look at me and said, “You’re that writer who worked up there at camp! My grandson bought one of your books and didn’t get it signed! Would you sign it for him?”

After signing her book, I offered to pay for the damage we had done to the garage, and she made a “tishing” sound with her mouth, saying, “Ah, hell with that! That’s always happening! My husband’s hit that pole three times himself!”

Another time we were driving around down near Horseshoe Lake, seeking to buy a cabin down there. My biker friend, Ben, a grizzly fellow, and my foster son, Jason, a shaggy-haired kid, and I walked up to the landowner to talk about leasing one of her cabins. She took one look at us and flatly stated, “We don’t want your kind down here!”

We drove away, laughing but as we rounded the bend to leave hillbilly/redneck heaven behind us, some lady standing in front of her own cabin flagged us down. Curious, I stopped my truck to see what she wanted. She walked around to my side of the truck and stuck out her hand, saying, “You’re the one who wrote that book. I’ve always wanted to thank you personally. I am the mother who called the Attention Center one night to tell staff that my son had planned to commit suicide. But after reading your book, he came in and woke me up and told me of his plans. The staff told me you weren’t working that night, but they assured me they would pass along my message. Thank you. Your book saved my son’s life.”

I drove away, amazed. Another step on the long journey. There we were sent packing by an obnoxious woman who, “didn’t want our kind” buying one of her cabins, and yet we met this grateful mother of a troubled kid, who gracefully thanked me for saving her kid. Irish irony, another factor in my life. Can’t have the good without the bad. One of my friends, who followed my journey throughout my writing career, once bought me a T-shirt that said, “When your ship comes in, you’ll probably be at the airport!” She and I laughed about it, knowing how often I had been the receiver of both the good and the bad.

But that same friend bought me a small Gnome for my collection a little later. It was a tiny little thing with a pointy hat and two sea-shells planted high up on his shoulders. I did not pay much attention to those two shells until one day months later, when I had hit a really bad spot in the road, I noticed those two shells resembled wings. And then I looked real closely at the name inscribed on the leaf on the winged Gnome’s pointed cap: Clarence.

Clarence was the name of the Guardian Angel in the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. I had just watched that movie for the first time. It was about a man played by Jimmy Stewart, who was about to jump off a bridge on a cold, snowy winter night, when Clarence came to him and showed him what this life would have been like if he had never been born. In the end, Jimmy Stewart was thankful to be alive, and Clarence received his wings.

Even as I write this, I keep glancing at that little Gnome seated beneath my mushroom lamp situated on top of my computer tower. Clarence has been watching over me each time I write a line, finish another book, complete another play. And as I finished my screenplay, I glanced up and nodded at the little guy and said a prayer. Hopefully, he’ll be watching over my screenplay as it travels to prospects in Callie and three more in Chicago, and perhaps he can turn all those No’s and Maybe’s into a big fat YES.

The thing is, I have always joked with friends, saying, “Yes, when 8-Ball is a movie and playing down at the Joyo Theater, if you bring an autographed copy with you, you can get in free! I’ll even buy the popcorn!”

Good Lord, I hope no one holds me to that flippant remark.

But then again, that would be a nice problem to have.

There were seven of us there that day standing before the dark gap of the quarry entrance. Five were friends I had known most of my life, and we had dared to go where no man had gone before on a number of occasions in the past. All five of them were eager to travel into that huge tunnel before us. In fact, despite the threat of trespassing citations, they all quickly slipped through the hole in the fence and entered the mine shaft.

Their hushed voices drifted back to me as their flashlight beams flickered through the darkness like light sabers. The only reason why I hesitated to follow them was the kid standing there beside me. My foster kid, Chad, and I had ventured off into the “unknown” several times in the past, but this was different. Someone had put that sign there for a reason. Someone did not want us to go into those underground tunnels.

I stood there, remembering our last misadventure, when Chad and I rode our canoe down the rain-swollen waters of Wilderness Park. We capsized at the Horse Crossing on that particular trip, both of us going into the madly churning water. Our canoe was washed downstream, along with our cooler and my favorite jean jacket. The jacket was never found again, but we did manage to eventually find the canoe wedged up against a log jam downstream the next day.

A second disastrous adventure came to mind then. Chad and I and my friend, Ben, had spent a snowy winter day out having a fire in the bluffs of South Bend. On the way home, Chad had asked to drive. He was 15 and had his learner’s permit, and though the roads were icy, I decided to let him drive. He did a good job, too, until we came to the incredibly steep hill between South Bend and I-80.

And then we hit a patch of ice, and down that hill we sailed. Chad frantically cranked the steering wheel back and forth, fish-tailing crazily, shooting directly toward the left hand ditch, then careening back toward the right. Any second my Datsun truck was about to go nose-diving into the deep ditch or flying off the narrow bridge at the bottom of that God-awful steep hill. That wild ride lasted forever. When we finally skidded to a stop at the bottom of the hill, we all three laughed at those panic-filled moments we had shared, quickly forgetting we’d all had a “Come to Jesus” moment as we flew down that icy hill.

One more misadventure came to mind as Chad and I stood there, undecided about following my friends into that underground rock quarry. It took place just a mile down river from where we then stood. Chad, Ben, and I asked a local rancher if we could camp out on his land situated above Horse Shoe Lake. The rancher said, “Sure. But be careful of the Yak.”

“A Yak?” I asked, not wanting to sound ignorant, but Chad asked, “What is a Yak?”

The rancher said, “An Asian Water Buffalo. He’s a mean one, too. Just be sure if you see him out there in those hills, you are close to a good tree to climb!”

We set off down into the ravine between the rolling bluffs, cautiously keeping an eye out for the Yak. Ben even made a witty comment about having a “Yak Attack,” which he and Chad thought was hilarious. I, however, kept my eyes on the trees, wondering if we indeed were going to have to climb one before our trip was over. But near night fall as we made camp out there in the wild lands along the Platte River, we hadn’t seen hide nor hoof of the menacing Yak.

However, upon waking up the next morning, an entire herd of cows stood before us, wanting to get past us to drink from the stream we had pitched our camp before. We hurriedly scrambled out of our sleeping bags, all the while watching for the Yak to emerge from the herd and perform a full-fledged Yak attack. But still no Yak. To this day, I still have no idea what a Yak even looks like.

“So,” Chad said as we stood there, watching the flashlights of my friends getting fainter as they traveled down the dark tunnel, “we going to do this or not?”

I simply started down into the tunnel. Chad flicked on his flashlight and followed me. We first came upon a frozen pathway. Six inches beneath the crystal clear ice there were little railroad tracks. They wound all the way through the underground quarry, once used for mine carts to roll along. Chad said, “Looks like the Seven Dwarfs have been here!”

We then came upon huge stalagmites and standing six feet high on the cavern floor before us. We passed through this immense chamber and the in next hallway stalactites hung from the ceiling. Chad and I followed the hushed voices of the rest of our little band, finding ourselves passing between the opening of what appeared to be another whole section of cave. We saw the lights flickering up ahead of us and soon discovered my friends shining their lights at a dark wall thirty feet in front of them.

“Cow crap!” Chad said as we all looked at the wall, which indeed looked like it was covered with the stuff the cows left behind. And then the wall began to undulate like the black waters of a moonlit river. “Bats!” I said, watching the whole mass of winged furry creatures moving as they clung to the wall. They then began to fly toward our lights.

Gary swatted one out of the air with his glove. He picked up the stunned creature and Ben used his flashlight to shine its light through the tiny bat’s thin wing. We were all examining the veins running through it, when the bat let out a nasty hiss and showed us it’s wicked fangs. Gary let out a shout and dropped it at once, and we all fled the chamber, thinking we were about to be bat-swarmed.

We explored those dark depths for quite some time for they wound back into the hills for at least a mile or more. When we finally came within sight of the white light of the quarry opening in the distance, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Ben made the comment, “Hey, Gary, you sure dropped that bat in a hurry. Have you checked your boxers lately?”

Everyone laughed, except Gary who responded, “I wasn’t scared. I just didn’t want to get bit. Bats carry rabies, you know.”

Ben chided him, saying, “You weren’t scared? How come you screamed like a little girl then?”

We all laughed again, and Gary replied, “Hey, who knocked it out of the air in the first place? Who picked it up?”

At that point, Chad and I were bringing up the rear of our little party when I spotted a metal pipe sticking out of the wall beside us. I whispered, “Watch this.”

Thinking just to startle them all, I swung my walking stick at the pipe, and the Whack! exploded all around us, echoing off the cold stone walls, sounding like the entire cavern was caving in. They all broke into a run and hightailed it to the white dot marking the entrance in the distance. Gary was the first one to make it there in record time.

Two weeks after this excursion into the underground rock quarry, we all read in the papers where four boys were camping in a similar quarry two miles down river. They had lit a fire in the center of the cavern floor, and sometime during the night, the ice melted above them and sent a car-sized boulder down on top of three of those boys. The fourth woke up to find his three friends dead from the impact.

It was a tragic camping trip gone horribly wrong. We were all thinking the same thing could have happened to us. We all considered ourselves lucky that we made it out of that rock quarry alive and well. One month later, we discovered that someone had dynamited the opening to the quarry we had explored and sealed it off with a ton of rock. We figured it was just as well. Why tempt fate when those three boys had died just two miles down river?

Of all the adventures we took after that, we remembered there are consequences to all actions. And no, I probably shouldn’t have trespassed into that quarry, and yes, I am lucky we came out of there alive and well. But would I do it all over again?

What do you think?

I looked at Drew curiously. “The Ville? What in the world is that?”

Drew said, “Hobbitsville. Me and my friend are sneaking in there tomorrow night. Do you want to meet us there?”

I laughed and said, “Just what I need, a trespassing ticket for sneaking into Hobbitsville. But no, I have never been in there. When I was a kid my friends said they had visited Hobbitsville. They said it was a huge mansion surrounded by a large stone fence. They also told me the enormous yard had a moat running through it with two stone bridges. They claimed that giant gold fish swam in the moat and that a small castle turret overlooked the yard. They claimed it was a place where Hobbits might live.”

Drew said, “Well, it’s now owned by the Abel family and they used to hold wedding ceremonies inside the yard. The swimming pool is said to be haunted by the ghost of a girl who died there when she dove off the board and cracked her head open. Kids claim she is buried there. Back in the 60’s, UNL students hung a manikin from the top of the castle and snapped off a photo of it. It appeared in the Daily Nebraskan. But other than that prank, no other vandalism ever took place there. The thousands of kids who sneak in there never leave behind graffiti nor do they destroy any property. Just think, kids have been going in there since the late 50’s, and no kids ever left evidence that they had been in there.”

I said, “They knew they were walking on sacred ground. However, most recently, I had heard that a group of boys snuck in there to skate in the moat, and some guy named Juan the Gardener chased them out by shooting salt loads at them with his shotgun.”

Despite this fact, Drew called me later that night to ask me to join him on his adventure. When I shared with my foster kid, Josh, that Drew wanted us to sneak into Hobbitsville, he started pleading with me to go along. I finally called Josh’s mom and asked her if she had ever been there when she was a kid. Deb told me it sounded interesting. So she said, “Why not just go up to the door and ask permission to go in there?”

I told her about Juan the Gardener and warned her that the owners might outright refuse her request, saying, “I guess Juan is a little hostile, though I have never heard of any kid getting shot for skating in there.”

The next afternoon, Deb drove over to the Abel mansion and rang the doorbell, intent on getting permission to venture into the Ville. A lady with a long, black dress came to the door and invited her in to have tea in the den. While seated there, 15 cats wandered in and out of the den and Deb kept hearing someone in the kitchen rummaging around in drawers. When the mysterious person in the kitchen began to mutter and curse, the lady shouted, “Juan? Would you quiet down in there? We’re trying to hold a decent conversation out here!”

Deb immediately froze. Juan the Gardener! she thought. Oh my God, the man who shoots at skaters with salt loads is here in the kitchen!

After they finished their tea, Deb asked, “My son and I would like to know if we could visit your backyard.”

“No one goes in the back yard,” the lady cryptically said, and it became strangely quiet after that, no more Juan rummaging in the kitchen, the cats stopped pacing, and the lady asked, “Why do children call my yard Hobbitsville?”

Deb explained to her who Hobbits were from the Lord of the Rings, but the lady didn’t seem to understand. She then looked up and said, “It would be nice of you to leave now.”

Deb called me to tell me about her visit. The one thing she tried to impress upon me was that Juan the Gardener was a real person, and quite possibly he had a shotgun.

Drew called a little later. “Well? Are you going to meet me at the Ville tonight? We will be at the north wall at ten o’clock. Come on, it will be a great adventure!”

Josh needled me for the next two hours, asking, “What’s the worst that can happen to us?”

I said, “Trespassing citations. My name in the paper. Salt loads stinging my butt as I fly back over the wall. Those are just a few of the things that come to mind.”

But at 9:30, I decided we would chance it. All we would do is climb over the fence, take a look around, and be out of there swift as the wind, right?

I scaled the wall, Josh clambering up beside me. We hurtled over the top of the high stone wall and landed in amongst the trees along a garden path. We explored the moat, walked over both bridges, searched for ghosts around the swimming pool, and climbed to the top of the castle turret to survey the yard from on high. It was a nice spring night. Cool breeze. Silver moonlight drizzling down through the overhead leaves. A great night for such an adventurous quest.

“What’s that?” Josh whispered, sidling up next to me and pointing down the trail.

I peered down the trail and spotted two brightly glowing embers of the cherries on two cigarettes. We were not alone in Hobbitsville. Two kids were walking down the dark trail, totally unaware that they were not alone either.

Thinking it was Drew and his friend, Josh and I both moved over beside a large tree and waited for the two kids to reach us. When they were about ten feet away, I very casually slipped out behind the tree and stood facing them.

The bright red glow of their cherries went swirling through the air like fireflies as those cigarettes went flying from their wide-open mouths, and then both of those boys let out high-pitched screams!!

As they wheeled around to run, I couldn’t help but laugh as the one kid yelled, “You aren’t crazy, are you?”

I guess he wanted to make certain that I wasn’t an axe-murderer or worse . . . Juan the Gardener.

And then the other kid stopped in mid-stride and said, “I know you, dude! You once spoke about your book at our school!”

They both came back down the trail then and shook my hand. The one kid said, “So you are the guy who wrote that 8-Ball book, huh? My mom told me she went with you in high school.”

I asked for her name, and winced when he said it. I knew it was just too good to pass up telling her exactly where he’d run into me at. The other kid said, “You work at my school.”

Oh, no, I groaned inwardly. The news that the author of 8-Ball was caught by two kids sneaking into Hobbitsville is going to run rampant through the halls of Irving Middle School Monday morning! And I will probably get a call from my old girl friend who will rib me about meeting her son in this unlikely location. This is going to be worse than a trespassing citation!

Josh and I left the Ville, listening to the relieved laughter of those two boys as they faded away into the shadows of the night. When we got home, I received a call from my student, Drew. He said, “Me and my friend were sneaking up to the north wall of the Ville when we heard these girls screaming from inside the yard! It scared us so badly, we took off running, too freaked out to climb over the wall. I think those poor girls had a run-in with Juan the Gardener!”

I laughed and told him the “girls” were actually two boys, Bobby Kingston and his friend. Drew thought the whole thing was hilarious as Bobby was known to be a major tough guy in the halls of Irving School.

The following Monday as I walked down the crowded halls of Irving, students slapped me high-fives for scaring Bobby Kingston. I simply smiled and said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I still think of that magical night and how cool that yard was. I smile when I think of those two screaming boys, and then shake my head in wonder that I didn’t come away from that venture with a trespassing ticket or worse, that I didn’t have a run-in that night with Juan the Gardener.

It is rumored that his ghost still patrols the yard, but whether this is true or not, I will never know.

Only Juan and the Hobbits know if he is there, keeping his vigil on the sacred grounds of Hobbitsville.

The window peeper known as the Red Faced Man of my childhood found his way into The Kid, the Cop and the Con as the bad guy who stands before the Ballard tunnels, smoking a cigarette with its bright cherry illuminating his face in the darkness. The memory of the Red Faced Man following me home from the Joyo when I was ten years old, has haunted me for years.

The day Bloody Mary Partington paid me to chase her horses into her barn with my motorcycle, I never imagined I would write an entire book about her in the future. But back when I was 14 and I had accomplished my task of rounding up her three horses, she waved and smiled at me from her front porch, and a seed of an idea was planted in my head.

The misfits of Havelock walk through the pages of my book, as well. Franco, the old Italian man who was exiled to America for killing his wife and the man she was found sleeping with, lived with the Blazek family a block from where I live to this day. Old Franco once chased the Blazek kids down the street brandishing a butcher knife because they foolishly teased him by shouting, “Heil Hitler!” Poor Franco ran behind them, shouting, “Mussolini! Mussolini!”

I used to buy Franco bread and chicken, and old Franco would say in his broken English, “Ah, Gotta Blessa You! Holy Mary, Mother of Gawd!” Franco’s favorite saying was, “You gotta any mawney?” And when I would say, “No, no money, Franco,” he would say, “No mawney, no fun! No mawney, no fun!”

Newt, who wore seven wrist watches and sounded exactly like a train from the Burlington yards, lived in Havelock from the early 50’s until the year 2000. He would start out at 70^th and Havelock each morning, take a bus down to Kuhl’s in downtown Lincoln, then venture to the Goodwill store (where he often bought his fancy hats, over 50 of them), then end up back at Burger King in Havelock by 5 each evening. I met Newt (Barry) one day down at Ballard Ball park when he swore he saw me singing on the Johnny Cash show the night before. I could never figure out if he thought I was Willie Nelson or Travis Tritt, but he was certain I was a famous Country Western singer.

George and Louie (Opey and Dopey) the two midgets (small people) used to stand on the corner by the Salvage Warehouse each day just watching cars pass by them on Have Ave. Louie, the smaller of the two, was always friendly and asked me for money, but I never gave him any handouts as I figured my money would go straight to Castle’s for a bottle of their finest.

Aaron the Hulk walked home each day from his work out at Reimer’s cement company with actual cement dust trailing off of him. His face and hair were always covered in a fine dusting of the white powder, as well. Aaron once took on five cops down at Arnold’s tavern and it was rumored that one of those cops went flying out through the tavern’s front window, and that two more followed him out onto the sidewalk, thrown there by the Incredible Hulk. Aaron, though, was a gentle giant most of the time, and the late Skip Kaluza, who lived directly behind him, swore the big guy did not have a mean bone in his body, except when he drank.

And then there were the misfit kids who wandered in and out of my stories.

There was Steve, who broke into the Joyo theater one night with three friends. Steve and the other boys were my first assignment as a Volunteer in Probation when I was 17. I failed Steve, as one night he was getting high by huffing from an aerosol deodorant can, and he suffocated and died because the aerosol he’d inhaled had closed off his lungs. Steve’s story was later depicted in my 8-Ball book.

The other three kids involved in the Joyo break-in, sobered by Steve’s unexpected, tragic death, straightened out. One of those kids, now an adult, showed up at my 8-Ball play just last year, and he sat there holding his breath as I shared with the audience my first role as a youth worker back in the day. As I re-told the Joyo break-in, he thought for sure I was going to mention his name as I stood there recounting the tale on stage. But I didn’t, and he came up and thanked me later for omitting his name from that particular story.

Kevin’s incident with four different drugs became a major part of my 8-Ball book. He had burglarized the Havelock Vet Clinic one night and therefore had obtained a supply of horse tranquilizers (namely PCP). He washed one down with Tequila, smoked a joint, and dropped a hit of acid all in the space of two hours. He then climbed on top of the Havelock train overpass and shouted at the world that he was Birdman. When the police were called to take him in, Kevin began biting chunks of flesh from his hand. He had to be handcuffed and when the cops were escorting him to the ER, Kevin said, “Get Father Frye! I need to talk to Father Frye!”

In those days, the name “Father Frye” was meant to be an insult to me, for I often sat down at Havelock Park, talking and “preaching” to the kids with anti-drug messages. But that night, it turned out to be quite funny as the cop drove Kevin over to Saint Patrick’s church seeking this so-called Father Frye. Poor Father Witt told the cop they didn’t have a priest there named Frye, but when the officer explained they had a drunken youth in his car, Father Witt figured out it was me this kid was asking to speak to. So the cop finally got a hold of me, and I ended up at the hospital for 5 hours in crisis intervention with Kevin.

The visions he saw that night also made it into my story. The seven-headed dragon from the Book of Revelation. Satan, mocking him and laughing at him. Demons swarming all around his hospital room. Jesus weeping in one corner of his room. Yes, it was quite a show Kevin was seeing in his head.

Later, that next morning, is when I started writing Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball. I was simply so frustrated with all the recent tragedies involving Havelock kids:

13-year-old Terri hanging herself.

15-year-old John shooting himself.

11-year-old Tommy hanging himself.

17-year-old Dan placing an M-80 in his mouth and lighting the fuse.

15-year-old Steve huffing the deodorant and suffocating.

18-year-old Joe trying to outrun a train and getting struck by said train and killed.

17-year-old Kim smoking a joint laced with PCP, and forever after swearing he worked for the FBI and that Led Zeppelin owed him a “Ka-trillion” dollars for stealing the lead rift of Stairway to Heaven from him.

14-year-old Greg who skipped school one day, stole a car, and flipped it out on I-80 overpass, and was crushed in the impact.

And then there were all the kids who passed beneath the pines of Havelock Park at all hours of the night, seeking to get high. And there were hundreds with the mind-set that life was one big party and their only goal was to go from one high to the next. Unfortunately, I was involved in so many crisis interventions with so many of these kids that I lost count of most of those situations. Perhaps they still remember them to this day, but those early connections in the first days of my youth work all had an impact on me and the books I would write later.

Reason Nelson. People still wonder if there was a real Reason. And in truth, some of my own life got dumped on that character, but also little long-haired John and scruffy, scrawny Eric, also were incorporated into the memorable Reason Nelson, the main character in four of my Havelock series books.

Boone Nelson. The other “Kevin,” the older brother of the late Phil Hildebrand who shot himself on accident one night, became Boone, Reason’s older brother.

George. The real George knew “every one” and any time I wanted to sell something, two trucks, two guitars and two of my old motorcycles, I would put in a word to George. He would in turn have my items sold within a week. I still regret to this day that he sold my old Alvarez 12-string to Kevin who smashed it a drunken rage one night.

Jack. Jack and I had an exciting adventure two years after Kevin’s Birdman incident, when Kevin left his parents a suicide note. Jack and I actually found Kevin that night partying with a bunch of bikers down at Linoma Beach, and I had to threaten Kevin with bodily harm if he didn’t just get in my van and ride back to Havelock with Jack and I.

Al Simants. Al wouldn’t allow me to go alone with Roy Stobbs the night I was hunting for Tom Wolfe who had falsely given police my name one night when he was arrested. Because of Tom Wolfe’s lies, I had to go to the police and to explain they had a warrant out for the wrong guy. Luckily, I knew Detective Duane Bullock and Captain Jake, and they both gave me unofficial permission to go out on the streets and hunt down Tom Wolfe. Roy Stobbs claimed he knew where to find him, but Al Simants and Randy Rockenbach wouldn’t let me go alone with Roy as they suspected he was setting me up. Al and Roy rode shotgun that night with Roy and I, both Havelock brawlers armed with baseball bats in case Roy was leading us into a trap. We never did find Tom Wolfe that night. Which was probably a good thing for him.

Collin Young, the drug-free voice of wisdom in my books, was based on little, shaggy-haired Rusty Thomsen, who was very unlike Collin in the story. Collin was also based on Phil Hildedrand who followed me around Havelock like a shadow, as Collin follows Johnny Mason in my book.

Bummer the German Shepherd was based on my first dog Sandy. But later, became the name of my Dobie/Shepherd mix that I adopted and rescued years after the book was published.

In my Stag-Heart books, Donice Reeves, became my central characters of both Dawn Red Feather and Carly Raven, both Lakotas from a reservation in North Dakota. Donice was my first girlfriend from 6^th grade through 9^th, and I sent her several excerpts from these books to show her how she found her way into my stories.

So there you have a break-down of what influences me and inspires me to incorporate real-life people into many of my books. I change most names, last or first, to keep things confidential, but those who read my books know exactly who they are in the story.

I did, however, have a negative side to this crop up one day during Havelock Days where I was selling books in front of Wolfe’s Hardware. An old Havelock boy, Mark, walked up to me and said he should sue me for using him in my book as a drug dealer.

Astounded that Mark even thought I had suspected him of using drugs, let alone selling them, I said, “Exactly which character do you think you are, Mark? Because I never once thought you did drugs, but hey, if the shoe fits, wear it out.”

Over the years, I have had several kids come up and tell me their moms were once my girlfriends back in the day. Often when I asked the names of these moms, I would draw a blank and have no recollection of that particular mom being part of my life. But I would go along with these kids, never letting on that I had no idea who their moms actually were.

And then there was the time I was speaking for one hundred boys at the Wahoo Youth Center. This kid in the front row raised his hand at the end of my speaking engagement, and when I called on him, he said, “My mom was your girlfriend in high school.”

I looked at him and said, “What was your mom’s name?”

The kid said, “Kathy Jones.”

Without missing a beat, I held out my arms and gasped in surprise, “Son!!”

It brought the house down.

For the many kids who have passed through my life, Wilderness was a great place of entertainment. In the winter, we used to cross-country ski out there, and when the crick was frozen solid, we often went ice-skating up and down the winding ice way. In my time, I have rode horses through there, canoed down Salt Creek during spring flooding, and spent many winter nights hunkered down beside a fire out in the middle of those woods.

One spring day while hiking out there to a fort we’d built out of branches, my foster son, Chad, and I heard a high-pitched yelping coming form some distance ahead of us. We took off running down the trail and soon came to the old railroad bridge spanning the creek. There, just on the other side, were two men who appeared to be beating on a poor dog sprawled at their feet.

The poor dog was yelping and thrashing around, his leg trapped in a steel trap as the two men were frantically trying to free it from its jaws.

Chad and I ran across the old railroad bridge and went to help the two guys. Both were crying and totally out of control. I told them to calm down and to back away from the dog so it could settle down. I then tossed Chad my gloves and said, “Put these on and try not to get bit when you grab the dog!”

Chad nodded at me and slipped on my rather thick gloves. He then kneeled down and grabbed the dog by his shoulders, pinning it to the ground. I kneeled down, studied the poor dog’s leg, and reached down to pry the trap open. Chad immediately pulled the dog’s leg out from between the pincer-like jaws of the now opened trap. The dog stopped yelping and went limp in his grasp. One of the men scooped up the bleeding dog, while the other wrapped its leg with his shirt. They then both ran off down the trail, without even glancing back to say, “Thanks for your help.”

Chad grinned and said, “Well how do you like that? We just saved their dog and they didn’t say one word to us!”

“I bet the dog would have,” I said. “He probably had better manners than his masters.”

We walked on to the fort where we had a fire and I shared a new story with Chad. Long after dark, we poured our thermos bottles filled with water on the dying fire, and proceeded to walk out of the woods.

As we neared the old railroad bridge, a strange, high-pitched screaming came from the deep woods behind us. Both of us being armed with walking sticks, spun around and brought our sticks up into defensive positions.

It then came again, sounding closer this time.

I whispered, “What the hell is that?”

“A lady,” Chad gasped. “Sounds like a lady screaming!”

It came again, over to our left and definitely closer this time. Chad moved behind me. I glanced back and smirked, “O, Brave One, who will stand in the gap beside me, right?”

Chad wasn’t smiling. He was peering hard into the darkness. He took two steps closer to me, but did not join me on the trail, leaving me to face whatever was coming first. I raised my stick and prepared to launch an attack on whatever came charging out of the darkness.

We waited. Our hearts beating wildly. Vapor trails leaked from our lips. The night air was nippy. A low wind had picked up, and then the sound came again. Closer this time, and definitely closing the gap between us. I forced myself to say, “Chad, stay behind me and whatever happens, don’t run!”

Chad reached out and silently placed a hand on my shoulder. He squeezed hard to acknowledge my sound advice, and stayed glued to the spot directly behind me.

I let out my breath in an explosion of slight relief as the scream came again, farther away instead of closer to us. It was then gone.

We must have stood there for another ten minutes, trying to decide if we should take to the railroad tracks to get out of there, or if we should cross the tracks and cut through the old archery range to take a short-cut back to the truck. It took a while for us to move.

We were both shaken by the mysterious noise, and we still had no clue what it had been.

Only after we reached the safety of the truck, did I share with Chad what I thought it was. ”Remember last year up in North Omaha,” I said as we peered out through the windshield into the dark trees beyond the truck. “State troopers shot and killed two mountain lions that had walked right into the city. They say mountain lions scream like that, although what a mountain lion was doing this close to Lincoln, I have no idea.”

“Maybe,” Chad said, “it was someone’s pet that escaped from its pen. I heard some guy had a mountain lion in a cage out by Pioneer’s Park. Maybe it escaped and was looking for a meal.”

“Well,” I said as I started up the truck, “at least we ain’t gonna be its dinner tonight. But that was sure creepy.”

Another creepy experience happened a few months later out there at Wilderness.

Chad and I had hiked all the way down to Saltillo Road, which is where Wilderness Park begins. As we rounded the bend, some guy dressed in blue clothing came stumbling out of the woods, soaking wet from his neck down to this toes.

He was a big, burly guy and he joined us on the trail, winded from what had obviously been a long run or a long swim. He grinned at us and said, “Ah, the water is great! I just had me a swim in that creek!”

I knew he was an escaped con from the prison 14 miles down the trail, but I wasn’t letting on that I knew that, and then Chad asked, “You were swimming in Salt Creek? Where did you start from?”

Now I knew where the guy had started from and he knew that I knew that, but rather than demand that I hand over my keys so that he could complete his escape, he shrugged and said, “Hot day. A good day to go swimming in the creek. See you around.”

He then faded off into the woods, leaving Chad and I to stare at the place he’d just been.

A few minutes later, I drove us to the Acreage, a small country store at the edge of Wilderness Park. There I phoned the State Pen. and I talked to a captain there to report his missing convict.

An hour later when I called back to check the status of the escaped con, the captain laughed and said, “Yeah, thanks to you we caught that sum bitch!”

Two months later, we were crossing at the Horse Crossing, a regular spot for horses to cross the creek, when out of the woods came four guards and two dogs. The four men looked at us, then one of them used his walkie-talkie and said, “False alarm! It’s not him! Just two other people walking through the woods!”

The guards and their two dogs then went rushing off into the woods, leaving us wondering who they were after this time.

That next fall, we made another trip deep into Wilderness long after dark.

Chad and I had invited my biker friend, Ben, along that night. Earlier that day, I had heard that two escapees had jumped fourteen feet to the ground on the far side of a razor-wire fence out at the State Pen. One guy had broken his ankle and been caught right away, the other guy was still at large.

As we neared the old railroad bridge, we heard a moan of pain on the trail above us. Like soldiers out of an old war movie, the three of us immediately fell into position. Chad drifted back behind me, his wide eyes on the moonlit trail above us. Ben took up his walking stick and faced behind us, while I took point, my own walking stick raised as I faced the trail winding down to us from the rise of the old railroad bridge.

We were freaked out but ready to fight if the need arose.

The pain-filled groan came again. It was a sound that caused the hair on my neck to rise. My gut clenched up. I couldn’t believe I had walked us into yet another dangerous encounter at Wilderness Park. As I stood there, I vowed to never travel into the park again after dark.

We waited for a long while, all the time listening to this guy’s pain-filled moans of anguish, and we froze. For he seemed to be moving directly down the trail where we stood.

Ben took point with me. Chad faded into the shadows directly behind me. “Should we run?” he whispered. “Should we just get out of here?”

I simply shook my head and said, “No, we face whoever comes down this trail!”

It was those words that caused the unseen phantom to stop. Gravel scurried down the trail toward us. We knew he stood in the darkness directly above us. He knew we were there below him, planted on the trail. We were at an impasse.

He had to go through us to continue down the trail. We either had to turn tail and run, or stand our ground and face him as he approached us from the upper trail.

He then shuffled about, sending more gravel down our way. He then let out a moan and started back up the trail.

I glanced back at Chad, then looked to Ben and said, “Time to go.”

We then backed down the trail, our walking sticks held before us.

One more encounter like that did I have on my many trips to Wilderness Park.

And this by far, was the spookiest yet.

I was out there all alone, walking down the trail, walking stick in my hand.  It was bright daylight and I was leaving for the day when this ape-like figure appeared about fifty yards away from me out of the trees.

He had long blond hair and a beard and he was solidly built. He looked at me. I looked at him. And he made a threatening gesture with both massive fists.

For a moment, I froze, not knowing what he intended. I knew immediately he was an escaped con from the State Pen. What I didn’t know is, what he intended to do.

He actually growled at me, his long arms hanging to his sides. He then took two steps forward.

I swung my walking stick up and over my head as if it were a sword. I then brought it down, whooshing through the air, and completed a stroke meant to hack off his head.

It stopped him in his tracks, and he stared coldly at me and then slowly backed away. I stood there, my walking stick held before me like a sword, and watched him skulking back into the thick tree line until he disappeared.

I walked out there, feeling his cold, dead eyes on me all the way, and as I reached the edge of the meadow where he’d first appeared, I raised my walking stick and made a triumphant gesture.

I then walked swiftly back to my truck and drove away, wondering what that encounter had been all about.

Even as I write this, I want to say, “Believe it or not,” but I know this actually happened.

Every one of my most recent stories have been a part of my life, and I can only wonder what will top them.

As wild as my imagination is, I can’t make this stuff up.