Recent Stories
The Gatekeeper
An Appaloosa Radio Original Story
1958
He graduated from Florida State University where he had majored in being a fraternity brother. After his college experience, he drifted into what for some types of people is the easiest of all jobs — selling.
Tony Bochs was a natural. People instantly trusted and liked him. He was not handsome, but he had an easy boyish smile and he always looked at you directly, never turning aside or evading. Easy to trust. Very likable.
Please sign here. Lots of places to sign, way too much paperwork to read it all now. So, sign here and here and her.
Congratulations! You are now a Florida property owner. Lot 117 C of the Whispering Pines Senior Resort Community.
Have you thought about what kind of mobil home that you would like us to move onto your property? Our affiliates over at Action Manufactured Homes have just the one for you. The one that you have always dreamed about. If you wish, I’ll drive you over now and help you get the process started.
They gave him award after award after award. Tony Bochs, salesman of the month. Tony Bochs, salesman of the month. Congratulations! Tony Bochs the 1958 Salesman of the Year.
~~~
His former fraternity brothers never understood why Tony would give up such a good thing and move to Los Angeles. All he ever told them was that he was tired of selling swampland to tourists. They laughed. That was Tony’s perpetual joke. What do you do for a living? Oh, I sell swampland to tourists, complete with alligators and mosquitos.
Selling lots in the Whispering Pines Senior Resort had been a goldmine for him. He now owned his own boat, was buying a house, and he drove a blue Triumph sportscar.
Yet, Tony Bochs had another dream. He had a deep sonorous voice. He dreamed of becoming a voice actor, doing commercials, and narrating films. His ultimate dream job would be to become the voice announcer for a gameshow.
“Welcome to America’s favorite gameshow! Where anyone can win big. Featuring our host!”
Fill in a name. Maybe — Jack or Pete or Bill or Clint or Johnny
“Tony, please tell them what prize they have just won.”
“They have just won a brand -new car from our friends at Gleason Brothers Buick! Buick the car of distinction. The car of pride.”
Tony Bochs sold his boat, cancelled his purchase on the house, and loaded one suitcase with clothes onto the passenger seat of his Triumph sportscar and began the drive west.
Los Angeles proved not to be the land of infinite opportunity that he thought it would be. After a few weeks, Tony Bochs accepted a job that was very different from what had been his Hollywood dream. He was hired as a student recruiter for a non-descript college located on Western Avenue, in East Hollywood, just down from Barnsdall Park.
During the General Strike
An Appaloosa Radio Original Story
Featuring O.ss.K.ar 44-070-256, Lauren’s personal EeKK//.
Imagine a time (in the not-too-distant future) when EeKK//s do all the work.
In this episode, Lauren joins a “General Strike” to protest a grave social injustice, and O.ss.K.ar 44-070-256 has to take swift action to prevent harm.
The prime task of organizing and coordinating Lauren’s “strike” adventure fell to OSKAR, Lauren’s most personal Eck. OSKAR kept her calendar, managed her health and finances, facilitated her communication, and managed and organized all the other Ecks who supported Lauren’s life.
When Lauren first added the event “general strike” to her calendar, OSKAR was not familiar with the term. It was not in his native vocabulary. From game play, he knew about “striking an opponent” but that did not fit the calendar entry. He also knew about “strikes” in bowling. Sometimes Lauren bowled with friends, and OSKAR kept score, but again the term did not seem to be about bowling. Still, it was on her calendar and OSKAR had to organize for it. First, he noted that the location was not at her work site. Therefore, he reasoned it might be a non-working day. A vacation day? Maybe a personal enrichment day? He was not sure how to code it.
Nonetheless, it was at a location different from where she usually went on Tuesday mornings. OSKAR opened his mapping applications and located the event’s site as a large plaza in front of a downtown office building. So, she would need parking. OSKAR found a parking garage three blocks from the plaza, checked for competitive rates, inspected available police crime reports for the area to see if it was safe for a twenty-seven year-old woman walking alone, and then secured a space with an advance ticket which he filed in the appropriate folder. Finally, he authorized payment and told EDDIE about the route change.
EDDIE was Lauren’s car Eck. Lauren did not actually own a car. There was no need to have your own car since the apartment complex had a sufficient supply of vehicles in its available motor pool. EDDIE located an available vehicle, ensured its functionality, and locked it in with Lauren’s ID. EDDIE would then drive the car to the locations at the times that OSKAR specified. Strictly speaking EDDIE was not Lauren’s Eck. He served all the tenants in the condo complex, but he knew that OSKAR represented Lauren and, thus, could make assignments that Eddie had to comply with.
OSKAR still needed more information about “strike” if he was to be of maximum assistance to Lauren. He sought available online encyclopedias and dictionaries, and he decided that a “general strike” had to do with labor protests, usually involving leftist organizations, and often involved barricades and throwing large cobblestones. OSKAR began to sense their may be some danger involved in the “strike” activity. He changed the conditional setting for the event from green to yellow. OSKAR’s prime objective, the one above all others, was to prevent Lauren from harm.
After Lauren downloaded the Strike Manager’s Handbook, OSKAR (like Lauren) processed the entire document. He had been correct in his belief that the activity might be harmful. The chapter on “provoking police over-reaction” sent a “chill down his spine.”
It is Just Basball
An Appaloosa Radio Original Story
When Beck was in sixth and seventh grade, he played Little League baseball for the Mayfield Pirates. They wore uniforms that looked just like the major league Pittsburgh Pirates, but (like their major league counterparts), they finished last in their division. In fact, Beck’s team lost every game in both of the seasons he played. Beck himself had only three hits and one walk over two years. “Easy out!” became his opponents’ habitual taunt.
Still Beck loved the game and felt compelled even as a 31-year-old adult working in a dead-end job in the corporate copy room to follow the major league Pirates assiduously. He used to tape Pirate games so he could re-play them when he came home.
Then one day, Beck’s closest friend, Woody (who was a real computer guy), created a pocket player that picked up the wireless signals in the building. He also tuned the pocket player to receive internet radio and the Pirates radio network. So now Beck could hear the call of the Pirate games live in his earpiece as he worked in the copy room.
Percival was ten-years older than Beck and worked a couple of stations over from him. Like Beck, Percival was an avid baseball fan, but he loved the Dodgers even more than Beck loved the hapless Pirates. Beck asked Woody to also create a player for Percival. Woody was more than happy to do so.
Beck and Percival worked side-by-side in their parallel baseball worlds, not really caring about the larger corporate world around them. Because the Dodgers won far more games than the Pirates, Percival lived in a happier world than Beck.
Finally, after four losing seasons in a row, Beck complained to Woody over a beer that he would give a million dollars to experience a winning season. Of course, Beck did not have a million dollars and Woody knew that. But Beck’s complaint got Woody to thinking. Then, one evening in his small computer repair shop, Woody had an idea. “I’ll bet that lots of guys would pay to experience a winning season. Instead of sending them wireless broadcasts of live games, why not write a program, so that what they’ll hear is always a winning team.”
It took a couple of weeks and some exasperation, but Woody completed his always a winner player prototype.
But it was more than baseball . . . .
A Woman of Substance
An original Audio Story for Appaloosa Radio
In dedication to Mrs. Kay Fetner
Eugenia was just thirteen when her father married her off to an older man. This is the story of a girl from Charly, Arkansas who drove her Model A Ford to freedom and a new identity, to become a woman of substance.
~~~
I was playing with some of my cousins and my younger brothers up by the big chestnut tree, the one my Pap always refused to cut down. The tree had the blight and should’ve been cut down and the stump burned. But my Pap liked that tree. He would never cut it down.
To us kids, it did not matter that it had the blight. It was ours to climb on and to hide in. We were glad that he’d never cut it down.
Anyways, I was playing with my kin up by that big tree. Then, I heard my Pap say, “Eugenia!” He said it loud with a stern voice. I knew to come runnin’ when he called me like that.
He was sitting on the porch next to a gentleman wearing his best Sunday go-to-meetin’ dark suit. The gentleman had some gray hair at the temples, and he was beginning to bald.
When I came up the steps to the porch, both men stood up. My Pap spoke.
“Eugenia, I want you to meet Mr. Winston Garrison.”
“Please to meet you, sir.”
My Pap continued. “Mr. Garrison is an Engineer for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. He has a house up in Omega.”
His voice trailed off. I waited for him to complete his sentence.
“Eugenia, Mr. Garrison is going to be your new husband. I’ve promised him that we can make it official next week in the Parson’s House at the Presbyterian Church in Omega.”
I did not know what to say. I simply stood there. I was just thirteen years old.
~~~
Music performed by: Legendary Big Gerry, from his Large and Laid Back album. A selection of traditional Celtic and American music on the hammered dulcimer and acoustic instruments.
Murder at the Gas Pump
Coughlin, California has only had one murder. Bernard Winslow Schlafer (the Third) was a scion of one of the Central Valley’s richest and most important families. Yet, when the time came for him to assume responsibilities in the family businesses, he left Coughlin for Los Angeles where he eventually produced a sleazy reality game show entitled, “Seduction!”
Barnie S. (as he now prefers to be known) returned to his hometown to seek additional funding from his maternal grandmother for his television endeavor. On his way back to LA, he stops for gas and lottery tickets at the Log Cabin Liquor and Gas. While he is filling his car, a white sedan enters the parking lot. A man emerges and shoots Barnie S. with an AR-15.
The assassination took less than five seconds.
Meeting Celeste
When things were going well, when the computer code poured itself freely into its allocated slots, when the iterations, runs and routines worked to perfection, when all the bugs and jinks had been banished. That’s when he took off his shoes, his socks and his shirt and wrote code au natural. He told his colleague and life-long friend, Mike, that when his feet felt the “reality” of the surfaces of the floor, it stimulated the neurons in his brain, made things clearer, opened options that he had not seen before.
In the early 1980s, computer programming was still an activity of white shirts, Snap-On ties, and pocket protectors full of a miscellany of pens.
That was not Rick. It may have been him once, back when he worked in the Department of Defence, running massive IBM behemoths, but it certainly was not him now. Now, he was running his own operation, creating computer schools for kids.
The best idea that he ever had. Creating computer schools for kids! The market was unlimited. The work was straight-forward. Taking computer lessons from a book (that he had written) to a computer-assisted teaching design. Simple code. Nothing that complex.
Yet, there were only the two of them, and the project did have its own obstacles.
Last night at three a.m., Rick had a mental breakthrough. He knew how to solve a problem that had been plaguing them for weeks. He woke Mike at an ungodly hour and they drove to the office, grabbing breakfast sandwiches and coffee on the way. For Rick, it was a monumental day of coding.
For Mike, the work was arduous and, since they did not stop for lunch, very fatiguing.
At a quarter to nine in the evening, Rick decided to turn off the systems. He pulled on his socks and his custom cowboy boots which had been made for him during a trip to Spain. He buttoned his blue-gray silk shirt that he had found in Milan. And, in spite of the muggy, South Carolina heat, he put on his black leather jacket, the one he had discovered in Montreal.
He walked down the open stairwell, then across the parking lot, and over a couple of short blocks to the Ramada Inn hotel where a live band was playing in the Lounge. The Friday night customers were filling all the small round tables around the parquet dance floor. A lot more action than three nights earlier, and this time he had drug along his working partner, Mike.
He brought Mike into the Lounge, sat him at a round table, and ordered him a drink. In the 1980s, South Carolina still required cocktails to be served without alcohol. Customers were handed a small bottle from which they added their own. Mike dumped the whole bottle into his seltzer drink. Scotch and soda is not worth much without the scotch.
With Mike appeased with a drink, Rick appraised the crowd that had gathered at the Ramada lounge.
~~~
While the various personal dramas were continuing on the dance floor, the computer guy left his friend Mike and walked over to where the young woman in the white dress was sitting.
It was a frilly white dress that revealed nothing. Just the kind of dress that southern women would wear to their favorite niece’s high school graduation. Indeed, that is exactly why it had been purchased two years earlier. The family had gone to Atlanta for a graduation.
Not what typically what the swingers wore on Friday nights to area’s the most popular pick-up bar!
Still, he was attracted to her. She was extremely pretty. Dark eyes and dark hair. Tall and probably athletic. He guessed that she wore glasses but had taken them off when she came into the lounge.
“Hello, pretty lady. Would you object if I joined you for a while. I was noticing that your friend left you alone. Thought you might enjoy some company.”
Roomies
Original College Humor
Going away to college and residing in a dorm is an opportunity to learn to live with differences. Roommates can learn how to accommodate the needs of others. However, what happens when the roomie you are assigned to live with proves so different that it almost seems as if he came from another planet. You ask for help in dealing with Seth, but the university can’t provide any.
“OK, if the University won’t help me, then it is up to me. Be ready, Seth, for total war.
I have long been a fan of the James Bond 007 movies. So, my first plans turn to slicing Seth up with a powerful space laser, or maybe filling our dorm room with saltwater and then bringing in a bevy of very hungry tiger sharks. Alligators would work too. Maybe even piranha.
Then, there’s that great Clint Eastwood movie where he climbs a mountain with a group of men who, one by one, mysteriously keep falling off their ropes. He didn’t know which one was his target, so, one-by-one, he eliminated them all. Long way down, Seth!
Or, maybe I could go old school gangster. Maybe I could take him to the lake for a one-way boat ride, and then, when were in the middle of the lake, I could fit him with a custom pair of cement boots.
If I went medieval, then there are all kinds of possibilities. Torture him on the rack. Burn him at the stake. Shoot with a quiver of arrows. The possibilities for inflicting cruelty are endless.
But, I rejected all of those options. Too expensive. Too much work. Too complicated.
Instead, I opted for a low-tech guerilla war.”
College humor based on all-too-true experiences!
Shoe Makers and Raincoats
Jonas Chartogaro continues his interview with former Soviet Spymaster Leopold Trepper, the “Big Chief” of the Red Orchestra spy network.
The focus of interview is about the turncoats and traitors who sold out to the Nazis.
Lilly
Nearly every western boomtown, whether it was a mining town like Virginia City or a cow town like Dodge City or a transportation hub like Denver, had at least one Chinese-owned and operated brothel. Many of these brothels were quite large, some having as many as fifty women working in them. Most operated close to Chinese-owned opium dens and gambling halls. Very few of the customers of these establishments were Chinese men. The “coulee” wages paid to Chinese men were not large enough to afford frequent visits to the oriental pleasure palaces.
This story is based, in part, on the memoirs of a woman who came to the West as a sex slave, but eventually became (it is reported) the wealthiest woman in Idaho. She owned mines, an ore-hauling transport company, an ore stamping mill, various hotels and restaurants, and (probably) a string of brothels. Of course, since she was Chinese, she could own none of these in her own name. Her role had to remain hidden. All her properties and enterprises were legally controlled by her personal attorney.
Of all her properties, her favorite was her large ranch on the Salmon River. She asked to be buried there on a hill where she could hear the roar of fast-moving river.
Unfamiliarity
“With light wings, I did o’er-perch these walls, for stony limits cannot hold me out.”
– an original audio story –
I recently saw an article in Time magazine that has stayed with me. It was an article about Detroit, more specifically about the cement block wall built in the early 1940s to divide the east and the west sections of the city. That’s correct. A cement block wall erected to divide the city. The wall was funded by some of the city’s largest real estate developers. It was designed to separate the city into a “black half” and a “white half.”
Researchers have studied the impacts of the Detroit wall and have concluded that its impacts were enormous.
On over 200 dimensions, the “white” side of the wall was significantly higher (more positive) than the “black” side.
As I said, the study of the impacts of the Detroit wall remained with me for weeks. Then, I realized that my five cousins (although neither African American nor Hispanic) lived on one side of a comparable “wall” and my brothers and I lived on another.
Alligator
A Nell Trustmon story of frogotten ghost towns of the American West.
In rural mining communities like Boyce, Colorado, the arrival of the “Alligator Man” created a community-wide celebration. How could any of the Lithuanian miners continue to work in the deep, hard rock silver mine when there was a real, live alligator in town? Gotta see that!
Psychiatrist
In this mini-series, Jonas interviews Leopold Trepper.
Leopold Trepper was the so-called “Big Chief” of the extremely successful ‘Red Orchestra” network of Soviet spies which operated in Nazi occupied countries during World War II. At its height, Trepper’s “Red Orchestra” group of spy networks operated in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and the Netherlands. Hitler regarded the “Red Orchestra” as his principal clandestine threat and assigned an elite group of senior counter-espionage agents (i.e., the Special Detachment for Red Orchestra) to track down and eradicate it.
The ”Red Orchestra” network was only broken by turncoats from within. Of the nearly 300 agents that Leopold Trepper controlled, only 63 survived the War. The others were captured, tortured, and murdered. Nonetheless, the “Red Orchestra “conducted many of the boldest clandestine missions of the War.
Dead Man's Suit
Every time he wore it, he thought it had a strange odor. It had been dry cleaned multiple times and no one else noticed any sort of odor. In fact, his wife, Wilma thought he looked “spiffy” in it and loved to see him in the double-breasted, brown suit with the faintest of gray pinstripes. “He looks like a movie star,” she proudly told her sister Grace Lynn. Far better in that suit than in the greasy dungaree overalls that he wore most of the time. But truck mechanics don’t wear suits to work in. They work in greasy overalls. The brown suit was for Sunday church and extra special occasions, like when they had gone to the casino and had a steak dinner for their tenth anniversary.
For their anniversary dinner, Wilma had worn a Kelly-green dress with lots of sparkles that matched the brown suit perfectly. She had even insisted that he pay the $5 to get a special color photograph of them together in their finery.
Harlan Royce was a big-chested man and a double-breasted suit looked best on him. A single-breasted suit would make him look bulgy; he would stick out in the wrong places. But, in a double-breasted suit and with a wider, patterned tie, he looked, well, like a movie star!
Still, every time Harlan Royce wore the double-breasted suit, he noticed the smell. The one that no one else noticed.
The Day They Hanged an Elephant
Using original source material drawn from the Archives of Appalachia (housed at East Tennessee State University), Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder tells the story of Mary the Elephant who was hung for “murder” in the Clinchfield Railroad Yards in Erwin, Tennessee during September 1916.
Mary was the star of a two-bit traveling circus that toured the reconstruction-era South. Charlie Sparks, the owner of Sparks World Famous Shows, claimed that Mary the Elephant was “the largest living land animal on earth,” three inches bigger than Jumbo, P.T. Barnum’s famous pachyderm. At 30 years old, Mary was five tons of pure talent. She could “play 25 tunes on the musical horns without missing a note.” She was also the pitcher on the circus’ baseball-game gag routine.
Information is Expensive
From the City of 4000 Spies series.
PNB7Q knew Noble Son Dusko Rarrko from many eons of clandestine work together. Their relationship was as close as a data device and a sentient being could be.
The PNB7Q knew that what was left unsaid was often more important than what was spoken. Many times, a whiff of intuition had more value than volumes of specific, and detailed information.
There was a reason why Noble Son Dusko Rarrko wished to travel to Lell without informing the PNB7Q. Intuition told the PNB7Q that this was not a need for recreation, down time, as Rarrko had called it. It was a trip where Rarrko wished to travel incognito. Not hidden from others, but, rather, hidden from the PNB7Q themselves.
Motorcycle --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Chapter 13
Compendium --- On Commuter Bus # 74A
Chapter 12
Never Knew Charles --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Chapter 11
Easy Ed's Liquor Mart --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Chapter 10
It Could Have Been Me --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Chapter 9
Gifts --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Chapter 8
Gravy --- On Commuter Express Bus # 73A
Chapter 7
Re-Cap: Chapters 1 to 6 --- On Commuter Bus # 73A
Many contemporary hi-tech employees ride express commuter buses daily to and from their work sites. Mr. Larry J. Connors is just one of the many.
Larry is a numbers guy, a veritable filing cabinet for numbers, whose speciality is making fiscal projections, doing benefit analysis, and generating cost-to-price determinations. Unfortunately, Larry is also a “quasi social isolate” who stares at his own shoes to avoid eye contact with others. As our story begins, Larry’s personal life has been reduced to doing his laundry, playing with his dog, and watching old, classic movies on television.
One morning, when he boards his usual commuter bus, everything changes. He is no longer who he is. He is now living another’s life and he is a stranger in his own body.
Hack
A fictionalized docu-drama
In 1930, the Chicago Cubs’ centerfielder, Hack Wilson had what has been described as the greatest season ever for a National League baseball player.
He led the League with a 356 average, hit 56 home runs, and produced 191 R.B.I.s. He scored 146 runs and drew 105 walks.
In his career with the Cubs, he made over 400 putouts, and he had a throwing arm that rocketed the ball directly from the outfield to Homeplate without a single bounce.
He was often called a right-handed Babe Ruth. Like the Babe, Hack led the league in both homeruns and in strikeouts.
For one season, Hack Wilson was actually paid more than Babe Ruth.
By his appearance, Hack Wilson should never have been a professional baseball player, much less the one player who was paid more than Babe Ruth. He was slightly less than five feet five inches tall and had short (really short) legs and tiny feet. In contrast to his short legs and tiny feet, he had a massive head, probably one and a half times the size of most men. His hats had to be custom made for him.
Some called him a freak.
Reflexology
The small business sat in an Austin strip mall between a pizza place and a nail salon, three doors down from a Japanese Sushi restaurant. On its red neon sign was the single word “reflexology.” The proprietor specialized in what he called “oriental foot massages,” stimulating the nerves, and improving a body’s health.
It was 5:45 in the evening, and in mid-December, it was already dark. The red neon “reflexology” sign was visible across the whole parking lot. None of the signs from the other businesses had yet switched on.
In the foot-massage client waiting area, the proprietor sat on one of the chairs, looking intently at his phone. After five or six minutes, he got up and walked outside. In front of the sushi restaurant was a bench where customers of the Japanese restaurant sat while they waited for their to-go orders. He sat on the bench and lit a cigarette.
He finished his cigarette, glanced at his phone, and then stood up.
Thirty seconds later, he lay on the sidewalk, dead. He fell face down. next to the red wooden bench in front of the sushi restaurant.
No one remembered hearing a shot.