The plastic bag sits on top of a different pile now, with a receipt from 1999 pulled from its promising interior. The receipt details the purchase of a computer, an NEC/Packard Bell 882, for $629.60 plus one penny for setup from Best Buy store #514 in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
To get to the receipt in the bottom of the bag, I pulled out a stack of handwritten novels, including the following (not in any particular order):
- PATHS OF GLORY: A Story set in the STAR TREK Universe by D.R. "Cat" Ramos, with additional illustrations by Raven Livingston
- A CITIZEN of the EMPIRE: A Story set in the Star Trek Universe by D.R. Ramos
- IN NO SPACE A HOME-WORLD: A Story set in the Star Trek Universe by D.R. Ramos
- CHAINS of LOVE and DUTY: A Story Set in the Star Trek Universe by D.R. Ramos (Companion to "A Citizen of the Empire")
From the author, I received the following note:
02/27/93
Rick: qaqhItlhneS jupquv'a'
Here's the latest in the continuing saga of Tai'gehr puqbe' RaHmoS in the 23rd century. Hope ya enjoy. By chance, I finished the cover art and did the printing & binding on this day the 1 year anniversary of Oliver's passing, so the story is dedicated to him.
The first two Tai'gehr stories are now finished in WP51. I may rework the cover art before I pass them out.
Again, be careful about distribution -- I could get a lotta "hassle" for this sort of thing!!
But you know how it is: Reality is for people who can't handle drugs - and fantasy is for people who can't stand too much reality.
yIn Qapla' je
Deena
[P.S.] It is acceptable to show this to people who are "true Trekkers" -- this need not be said.
I am amazed to find that 16 years have passed since I received these books from Deena. She and I worked together at ADS Environmental Services, a company focused on sewer flow analysis. Deena used to own a couple of Harley Davidson motorcycles and if I remember correctly, she wore a Viking helmet, with horns that came out both sides of the helmet.
Deena enjoyed the Star Trek fantasy world and dressed up like a female Klingon warrior. With her tattooed arms, chest and back, and biceps as thick as my thighs, Deena looked the part. She attended Klingon language school (in Minnesota?) as well as taught courses in speaking the language. One year, New York Times magazine featured an article on the language school and included a photo of Deena in Klingon regalia sitting astride her motorbike. I think her friend Raven was in the photo, too.
Deena grew up in the barrios of southern California and learned that a petite woman was an easy target for rape so she became addicted to working out (in addition to her narcotics habit). Most of the gangs from her 'hood kept their distance from Deena because she tended to kick ass and ask polite questions later. She could use many weapons better than most men.
Deena's husband is just as memorable. James "Hardhat" White. I suppose I've talked about him. The first time I met Hardhat he was walking down the halls of the corporate office. He wore a coonskin cap with the raccoon tail dangling down into his face. His hair was long and stringy, past shoulder-length and matched the length of his beard. He dressed in a pair of overalls, sometimes wearing a T-shirt, sometimes not. He let one strap of the overalls hang down, his reason being "the quicker I can squat and shit. haha!"
"My name's Hardhat. What's yours?"
"Rick."
"Ya know how I got muh name?"
"Uh, no."
Hardhat took off his coonskin cap, grabbed a construction worker's protective head gear out of a pack he was carrying and banged it against his head, making a distinctive thud sound.
"Got a metal plate in muh head."
I nodded, curious as to how this man got so far back in the corporate office without raising the suspicions of the security personnel.
Hardhat proceeded to tell me how when he was a child, his house was on fire and his mother threw him out of a second story window to firefighters, who missed catching Hardhat. Hardhat's skull was crushed so he spent his toddler through teenage years getting ever bigger metal plates inserted in his head.
Did I mention Hardhat had no teeth? When he talked, his beard bounced up and down, because a person who closes his jaws together when he has no teeth pulls his chin very high and pointed outward. Thus a beard tends to jut out, too. Hardhat said he lost his teeth because of narcotics he took to kill the pain of the metal plate in his head.
If I remember their story right, Deena and Hardhat met at an NA (Narcotics Anonymous) class. Their NA facilitator told them that for some addicts, the best cure is to find an addiction that won't kill you so Deena and Hardhat had found that sex addiction kept them off narcotics and on each other. When they got married, they wore matching tie-dyed outfits, Deena in a long dress and Hardhat in tie-dyed hat and coattails.
This is serious stuff, folks. I am not making it up.
Deena has a degree in environmental science. Hardhat used to work as a field assistant for Deena but sometimes worked with other field crews.
One time Hardhat was supposed to be topside at a job, which meant he stood next to an open manhole on a street, holding a rope which supported a worker down in a sewer, dangling like a mountain climber. Should the worker down the manhole succumb to noxious/toxic fumes, the topside worker is supposed to be strong enough to pull the unconscious worker out of the sewer. In this case, Hardhat had let go of the rope and wandered off, seeing a railroad spike in the distance. The worker, who happened to be Hardhat's supervisor, climbed out of the hole and swore he'd never work with Hardhat again. Hardhat apologized but was more excited that he'd found a railroad spike.
That's the problem with brain damage from blunt trauma and narcotics - a bit of forgetfulness.
Hardhat knew he had this problem but didn't always see when it happened. He told funny stories on himself about the times he could remember.
Before Hardhat met Deena, he worked as a riveter on skyscrapers in Houston, Texas. He'd harness himself to a metal post, lean back and pop rivets into steel beams. OSHA rules required that two floors down from the active working floor of a skyscraper a set of nets should hang out of a building and be able to catch falling objects, allegedly including humans.
One day, Hardhat's harness broke. He knew he was a goner. By luck, a big board stuck out of the floor below. Hardhat hit the board and bounced back into the building. He stood up, shook his head not believing his luck, walked over to where another worker had a bottle of whiskey, took a swig, walked over to where another worker was smoking a joint, took a long toke, and took the elevator back up to his floor.
When Hardhat walked back to his job, he saw his supervisor and a few workers leaning over the side of the building.
Hardhat looked at his supervisor. "What's goin' on?"
"One of my goddam workers just punched a hole through the goddam netting. What do you think's going on?"
"I dunno but if you see 'im, tell 'im I said hullo."
Hardhat went back to work and didn't realize until later that day that the supervisor was looking for him.
Hardhat had a tattoo of the Iron Workers of America Union on his chest. He often bemoaned the fact that the sewer industry didn't have a good union to raise sewer field workers' pay to living wages like it did for iron workers when he lived in Houston.
One last note about Hardhat. Despite his head injury and occasional memory short circuits, Hardhat is actually a smart guy and an exceptional cook. He was born and raised in southern Louisiana, not far from the headquarters of Tabasco sauce, near Avery Island. I don't know if folks from Louisiana are required to be good Cajun cooks but Hardhat cooks like one. He also smokes meat using his own hand-assembled smoker. Deena invited my wife and me over to their apartment one evening. Hardhat was going to cook duck l'orange but realized he hadn't smoked any duck meat. Instead, he spiced up some smoked chicken (with a few pieces of smoked turkey) to give it a duck-like flavor. Mm-mmm! What a treat!
The last time I saw Deena she was working at a museum in San Diego, volunteering because of the exhibit, which detailed the Lend-Lease deal from WWII. Deena's female family members had helped fly airplanes going to the Soviet Union (from Canada? Alaska? Both?), a little known detail about the war effort, and Deena felt it was important enough for her to quit her job and spend time relating the family stories she knew.
I may feel my life is boring but with all the people around me to tell me interesting stories about their lives and the lives of their forebears, I should rarely feel too bored to miss weaving their lives into this blog.
I should tell you the story of the bazooka man but first want to relate you a tale about an aspiring politician.
Thought for the day:
People with great minds talk about ideas. People with average minds talk about events. People with small minds talk about other people.
You know where that places me on any given day, eh? ;^)
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