How good do you have it?

  (I wrote this a few years back and never published it. You might like it)

So, I like history. All kinds of history; American history, world history, biblical history, ancient history, evolutionary history, and especially military history. 

I have a couple of six-foot bookshelves stuffed full of books. However, these days I also subscribe to Audible. Audiobooks are a great use of my hour commute time. Podcasts are another popular way to consume information or entertainment. I subscribe to a dozen podcasts. Why are these audible transmission modes so popular?

According to some social anthropologists, human beings have evolved to consume information audibly. 

Storytelling has been the principle way to transfer knowledge from individual to individual, individual to group, and on down to future generations since the invention of language.  Writing, in general, and books in particular, are only a few thousand years old. Reading from the written page requires a bunch of things to happen at once. Read the letters, turn them into silently spoken words, then sentences, and ultimately, to form a story.  

Listening to a story is different. You are just listening to those spoken words and turning them into a mental image in your head. Simple stuff.  I just hope with all the changing ways to get your information, books will still remain viable and relevant. I love the smell of a hardback book. That aroma of paper as I leaf through the pages is good for my soul. 

I’m bringing this up because in this age of information overload, we are bombarded with all these different mediums vying for our attention. We have become targets of mass media corporations. We are not really consumers of a product, we are the product. I should say, our attention is the product. We are selling our attention whether we understand that or not. Most of the time, we are giving it away. 

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, etc. are ‘free’ as they don’t charge you to use their platform. Here’s a hint, if you're not paying to use their product, you are the product. They are selling your profile, likes, clicks, shares and data to someone else. I am guilty here as well. I can burn up a few hours on social media without a thought. I will look up and say, “Wow, where did those two hours go?”

I’m not writing this piece on the ills of social media. There are thousands of well written accounts on the subject. What I’m saying is we need to understand what we are consuming, and understand what we are missing in this consumption. The information we consume today is a constant stream of digital junk food, fast food and leftovers. So what are we leaving out? The healthy stuff. The vegetables and fiber. We need more of a balanced mental diet. We need to start taking in healthy portions of history. 

Now some of you might say, hey I love all the war movies and Downton Abbey, but that’s not what I’m talking about. As much as I enjoy Saving Private Ryan, and Band of Brothers, movies are only a tiny slice, of a small part, of a much bigger picture. They can also whitewash some of the more ugly parts of history. No, I’m talking about understanding where we are as a species, and where we came from. 

What do you know about history? I’m talking about knowing what your life would be like fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, and maybe a thousand years ago. I’m talking about knowing what an absolutely spectacular world we actually live in. Compared to just a few decades, let alone a few centuries ago, we are living in an age of abundance, health, wealth, and peace. Most people think the world right now sucks. Seriously, people think they have it rough. 

People, especially young people, have been trained to look at the world through a certain lens. They see nothing but injustice, racism, patriarchy, greed and suffering. They take in a steady diet of ‘news’ from late-night comedians, Slate, Salon, and Vice. They are being told that we are constantly at the precipice of some great calamity. They are being told that they alone can, and should, solve all the world’s problems. To do that, all they need to do is change everything. 

Change it to what? They’re not sure, but by God, they’re going to do something. Look no further than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to see this principle at work. The solution filled world she creates in her mind has the answers to all America’s woes. However, it can only exist there, in her mind. The real world is far too complex, because it’s filled with people, and people do what they want. It’s also filled with nature that is always trying to kill you.

So, how bad do we have it right now? Really? Compared to what? That would be a good starting point. 

Compared to the rest of the world? No other nation on this planet offers the opportunity to move from abject poverty to wealth and success like America. Zero. If you immigrate here legally, without two nickels to rub together, you can work hard, save and scrimp, and you will soon be out of poverty and experience at least the beginnings of the American dream. Your children can get a scholarship to university and become doctors, engineers and even politicians, if they have the stomach for it. Those who live below the poverty line in America would be considered working class in most places on the globe. We are probably one of the only nations where obesity is a huge health problem among our poorest citizens. 

Many people complain about how unfair everything is right now. Jeff Bezos has billions, and I have student loans and work at Subway. Boo flippin’ hoo. I didn’t tell you to take out student loans for a degree in gender studies, philosophy, or Art History. Why do you want the guy working at the tire shop to pay off your student loans? Sure, there is racism, sexism, and greed, but it’s so much better than it was just within my lifetime. Real hate crimes are so rare in a country of 340 million people, there is a growing trend of inventing your own hate crimes, just to get attention. 

How about fifty years ago, was that any better? 

I know a little something about this, I was a child fifty years ago, but I lived through the late 60s and 70s. I remember the smog, acid rain, and whale hunting. I remember the people fleeing the big cities to get away from the riots, and crime. I remember the gas shortages, Vietnam, Watergate, the crappy cars, and crappy houses they built in the 70s. Women were just starting to make inroads in business, colleges, and society. Minorities were still feeling the sting of racism, and in many places, violence and abuse were a real threat. Although the progress made through the civil rights era was unmistakable, people of color were not truly equal. Not by a long shot, but things were getting better. Homosexuality was really not accepted anywhere. 

In the late 60s and 70s, you worked hard, usually in the manufacturing sector, paid your bills, and taxes. You drank beer with your buddies at bowling league on Saturday night, and went to church on Sunday. Poor people were actually poor. Malnutrition, bad teeth, and violent crime was a real threat if you were living under the poverty line. However, life with money did not mean you were free from suffering. Even if you were a millionaire, if you had a heart attack, you died. If you had cancer, you died. Your life expectancy was 66.

What about 100 years ago? If you were a young man walking around 100 years ago in America, that meant you made it through World War One. Congratulations, seriously, that was an accomplishment. WWI was the first full scale modern war. No one understood that when the war kicked off in 1914. 

There were still cavalry troops with lances and sabers in 1914. They were trained to do what cavalry troops had done for thousands of years: Follow up an attack on the enemy in retreat, and slaughter them. Well, when you send your cavalry to attack a retreating enemy in 1914, and that enemy has those new-fangled machine guns, your cavalry was going to be shot to ribbons. They learned that lesson the hard way.

Think of the WWI trench-warfare. Huge armies with millions of men dug into the earth a few hundred to a few dozen yards apart, fighting for years. The modern technologies of massed artillery fire, machine guns, barbed wire, poison gas, airplanes, and later tanks, were all new to the battlefield. It took time and experience to know how to fight with them, and defend against them. That experience was gained through the slaughter of 15-19 million young men. If you were a man, 40 or younger in Europe during WWI, you were sent to the front to fight or die. How’s that patriarchy working out for you? 

Think about being a soldier on the Western Front for a second. You’re living in a trench for months at a time. Driving rain or oppressive heat, you’re in that trench. The stench of thousands of decaying corpses just a few yards away must have been revolting. There were no toilets. When there was action, you would be in the front lines for weeks, crapping in the same trenches you were living in. 

Let’s say you lived through the war. Hooray! You made it! Now you can get back to your life. However, just as the war comes to a close, there is another killer waiting for you; the Spanish Influenza of 1918. 

This time, death was not selective. Although it killed more children and old people, it was gender neutral. It killed 50-100 million people world wide. Six percent of the earth’s population died in one year. Around 675,000 died from that flu in the United States alone. People didn’t go outside their houses. Kids didn’t go outside to play. People just got sick, and then died. 

Just a few more tidbits from a hundred years ago: 85% of men over the age of14 were in the labor force. Today, it’s 69% of men over 16. The average worker worked 55 hours per week. The chances of being killed on the job was thirty times more than it is today. Most women didn’t work, and those who did, were often teachers. They worked for less money than their male counterparts. Your life expectancy was 53 for men, 54 for women.

What about a thousand years ago, living in 1019, the Middle Ages? What would that be like? To sum it up, it would suck, that’s what it would be like. 

In those times, no matter where you were on the planet, you were either nobility, a peasant, or slave. There was no middle class. If you were a peasant, you farmed daylight till dark to eke out a living and pay your taxes to your feudal master, King, Emperor, Sultan, or whoever was in charge of your land. You didn’t actually own your land, the King, or person in charge did. 

If you were a man, you worked, all day, every day, sunup to sundown. Unless your King or Emperor declared war on the king in the neighboring land. Then you went off to fight or die. You hoped you would be victorious, so the enemy peasants wouldn’t come to steal your wife and sell your children as slaves. If you were a woman, you gathered firewood, cooked, tended to the children, and hoped your husband wouldn’t die in some fool war. Even in the rare times of peace, if your ox died, or you broke your leg, there was a good chance you would starve to death. Life expectancy was around 30, so at least your suffering didn’t last long. 

What I’m getting at is we don’t know how good we have it. Mainly because we are not being taught these things in schools. History classes today are about how evil we were in the past, especially if you are American. 

Yes, most of our founders owned slaves, and we screwed over the Native Americans time after time, when we weren’t outright killing them. Look, all these things are true. However, we are teaching our kids to look at the past through our ultra-modern lens. A great way to think about this is; you imagine you would have been one of the ‘good guys’ in the past, but there is a much greater chance that you would have been one of the ‘bad guys’ because almost everyone was. 

America did not invent slavery. It’s been around since Neanderthals were painting Mammoths on their cave walls. So, were Jefferson and the gang guilty of founding our nation with slavery still a going concern in the southern states? Yes.  If they hadn’t compromised with those supporting the abolishment of slavery in the northern colonies, we would have never become a nation. It was a terrible compromise at the time, but the northern states thought slavery would eventually be abolished, just as it had been in England. 

In a strange turn of history, Eli Whitney and the Cotton Engine (Gin) would breathe new life, and profits, back into slavery to keep it alive for another few decades. It would take half a million dead Americans to abolish slavery, but Americans did it. The blood and carnage of the Civil War was the price America had to pay for that compromise at Philadelphia in 1776. 

The Native Americans had it even worse. As stupid as it sounds, to a young and ever expanding nation, “The Indians” were always in their way. It started off with Pilgrims saying, “Hey, we just want to get along with you Natives, so please don’t kill us or burn down our little settlements.” In a few generations, it was the Natives who were asking, “Hey, I know you guys have a lot more guns and people, and at this point we just want to live, so can you stop murdering us?”

Today there is also a dangerous narrative out there, I call it the ‘Disney-talking-raccoon’ narrative. The last few generations have been taught about the Native Americans through movies, not history lessons. In those cartoons and movies, life before the pre-white invasion of the Americas was glorious for the Native peoples. They all lived in harmony with nature, and each other. There was no greed, racism, rape, murder, or violence. All those bad things were brought over with Columbus, or in the cargo hold of the Mayflower. This is completely untrue. 

People are tribal. All people. We have evolved over the last ten thousand years to thrive in small groups of a few dozen to a few hundred. This was just as true for the Native Americans as it still is today in Northern Waziristan. There is an old Bedouin saying, passed down through millenia. Me, against my brothers. Me and my brothers against my cousins. Me and my brothers and my cousins against the world.” That mindset is universally true. If you don’t believe me, just check out your Facebook feed. You’re either a “True American patriot” trying to save America, or a “Progressive” trying to save democracy ... Back to the Indians... 

The Native American tribes were killing, stealing, and enslaving their fellow Native kinsmen long before Columbus set sail. The histories of the Native people are filled with raiding within tribes and between tribes. 

 Much of the beautiful imagery we have of Native Americans today, especially the Plains Indians, are from the post-Columbus era. Native American hunters, riding swiftly on their painted horses, flinging arrows into stampeding buffalo herds. This way of life for the Great Plains Indians was only a recent discovery. Before Cortez lost a few bands of horses he brought to the American Southwest, the Native Americans on the Great Plains were struggling to survive.

 When those wild horse herds grew and drifted north, they completely changed the way of life for all the native tribes. 

Before the horse, you were on foot. You could only move as fast as the slowest member of the tribe. You had to carry everything of value on your back, everywhere you went. You had to stalk you game. If the buffalo’s migration path moved a hundred miles from year to year, you had to find them, on foot, or starve. The “invention” of the horse was truly life changing. You could ride fifty miles in a day. You could scout for game, see where your rival tribes were camped, make war on non-horse tribes, and maybe even more importantly, you had leisure time. 

You could make semi-permanent camps, ride out to find your food, and fight your enemies far away from your home. You could afford to keep your elders around, and gain from their knowledge. You could have more children, take more wives, and enjoy some time laying around and contemplating life. Small bands of tribes became mighty nations ruling huge swathes of the West. However, those tribes who didn’t adopt that nomadic, horse centered way of life, were killed, captured, or driven off the plains by those who did. The horse was a game changer. Just read up on the history of the Comanche. 

It’s sort of tragic, when we hear the word “Indian” we think of a people living a certain way of life. One that would not have been possible without those horses who wandered away from the Spanish Conquistadors. 

Again, what I’m trying to say is we are stuck in a binary way of thinking these days. Good versus bad. Anyone who doesn’t think like I do, isn’t just wrong, they’re a terrible person. They need to be stopped, or even punched in the face. This is craziness. We simply can’t look at a situation without understanding how we got here. What forces drove us, or guided us to this point?  Has anything like this happened before? Are there any lessons we can learn from history that might save us a tragedy or two? 

  

I guess it comes down to we are all just human beings and we are all ego-centric. Our world is what matters to us. What happened in the past doesn’t matter, unless I can figure out how to blame the past for my failures. Many think the world is stacked against them. On both the Left and the Right. Each side has their Boogieman. 

Boogiemen are always a bit more tricky than what they appear to be on the surface. Each Boogieman, no matter how crazy their story, has a bit of truth nestled inside. They all have a history. We should learn it, and know it. That way we can understand how they got there, and how we got here… .

Wednesdays With Walt

So, one of the things I used to do, back before the Book of Faces and IG took over the world of us oldsters, was write a few short pieces each week here on my blog. 

I think I started this thing in 06'? Somewhere around there. 

I had a little bit of everything on here. Humorous stories, (well, to me anyway) thoughts on family, politics, religion, or just life in general. 

I have gotten away from it for years now, as it's just so much easier to post an article, or a meme.....

Well, I'm going to get back to posting more personal pieces, in the form of video content. 

I'll try to get these up at least once a week, on Wednesdays. 

Look out for them.

It may be a trainwreck.

It may be something you like. 

It may be something you disagree with and can't watch. 

Whichever way it goes, they will be my thoughts, and as always, I will try to keep the conversation moving forward. Towards understanding, towards growth, and becoming a better version of ourselves. 

Stay tuned. 

The Biden Recession is here.

The Biden Recession is here.

I told a friend of mine this back in April.
I said it would just take a few months for the numbers to come in and catch up.

Recessions are reactions, and reflections of financial reality, along with people's emotions. The annual inflation rate is sitting right under double digits, as gas, food, energy, and everything else keeps going up. Inflation is about double the rate of wage growth. That's not good.

This one is kind of a one-off recession. The unemployment rate is low, which is not standard in recessionary times, however, we are still about a full percentage rate under the pre covid Labor Partition Rate. That's over a million fewer Americans working compared to the booming economy of 2019.

When you add trillions and trillions of dollars the federal government borrowed from your children and grandchildren thrown all over place to 'boost' the economy, you get what we have now; Inflation. Too much money chasing too few goods. 

The Federal government, first under Trump, dumped 900 billion in 'Covid Relief' cash into the economy. That was enough. We should have stopped. 

Once Biden was elected, he and his newly elected democratic controlled congress, dumped another 1.9 Trillion in 'Covid Relief' cash into the economy. 

Thank the lord for democratic senator Joe Manchin, who would not approve another 2 Trillion in wish-list borrowing/spending, or we would be in worse shape right now.

The GOP is licking its chops about the upcoming election, but they are just waiting for November. They are not telling America what they will do if they get control of the House and maybe the Senate. This is a mistake.

I know when your opponent is drowning, you just let him sink, but right now the GOP should be acting. They should have a plan. They should be telling people what that plan is. I have real doubts the republicans in leadership are up for the battle ahead.

Even the Super Trumpers are all waiting for Trump to announce his candidacy for 2024. I think he is part of this problem with the GOP. He is still solely focused on how the election was stolen from him. Even if you believe this, he's not out there stating what he will do, he just keeps saying he was screwed over in 2020. People who are having trouble paying for the higher prices on everything don't care about Trump. They want someone to say, this is how I will fix it.  

A real leader would be saying, if I were running the show, I would do this, that, and enacting these others policies. What are the exact things the republicans would do to turn things around? Some of those plans will not be popular, but necessary. Will they be willing to take these risks and make some unpopular opinions to get the economy back on track?

Future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is a mild mannered, go along-get along politician. He is not a leader, he's a fund raiser. Not that those folks aren't important, but that's not the guy you need to battle the democrats and the media (I repeat myself) for the last two years of the Biden/Harris administration.

The next few months are going to be interesting to be sure.

 
Will the democrats dump Biden after November, with some Long-Covid diagnosis? Will they let VP Harris run the lame duck session two years, then come up with a new nominee? She is a known quantity in her own party. A quantity they know they absolutely cannot win with.

It will be interesting.

23&OMG

I sat there looking at my phone in disbelief.

No way. Wow... No way.....

This cannot be happening.......

I guess I should start with a little background. I have had three fathers in my life.

That's two more than the standard, so let me start with the one with whom I share a name; Walter Joseph Lucas.

My father was 50 when I was born, so you could say he was late to the game when it came to having children. My sister Lisa is two years older that I am. I knew my father had been married twice before, but the few times he did talk about it were very brief. He would just say his previous wife did not want to have children and he did. It seemed reasonable enough.

Even into adulthood, I never pushed him to tell me more. He had a very complicated relationship with his own family. He was born in 1915 on a ranch near Lockeford Ca. His father died when he was 18 or 19 and he had to take over the responsibilities of running the family ranch. I'm sure he did all he could for his mom, but there was definitely some bad blood between he and his siblings. I only know the little he told me about his family, and I don't know their side of the story, so I cannot judge what really happened.

My father was two generations older than me. He rode a horse to school, and milked thirty cows by hand before and after school. His life was work, money and family, but mostly work. He could not get into the Army during WWII because he was deaf in one ear. He worked in the shipyards at Mare Island, building PT boats during the war years.

By the time I came into the world my father was a successful rancher, real estate broker and owned a land leveling business. He had an extraordinary work ethic and drive. I can best describe him as a combination between John Wayne and Donald Trump. Just imagine that for a moment.

Starting off on our ranch in Clements, our family seemed to be on the move most of my early years. We moved to a ranch on the John Day River near Mitchell Oregon when I was a toddler.

He tied me onto my first horse when I was two years old, and sent me plodding off down the dirt road to the bunkhouse where the cowboys lived. My mom said the snowfall that winter was the biggest in decades. You could ride a snowmobile over the corrals without touching a post. That was enough for her. Somehow, we ended up back in California, in Orland. That's the first house I can remember, but we were soon on the move again to the tiny town of Oak Run, north east of Redding.

I loved Oak Run. My father had wheeled and dealed his way into a big ranch there. It was several thousand acres of red dirt, lava rock and oak trees, but it also had a hundred acres of good bottomland where we could raise hay.

The ranch at Oak Run was a giant playground for me. There was a lot of work, but my father never seemed to drive me the way I'm sure his father drove him in his youth. Those were different times. That drive came out of sheer necessity.

I learned to operate the ranch trucks and tractors when I was old enough to reach the pedals. I fed cows, cut hay, and helped irrigate the fields. But only when I was asked or I wanted to. It was not forced labor to be sure, but there wasn't a lot of laying around the house either.

I was turned loose much of the time. In the summers, I would leave the house after breakfast and sometimes not come back until evening. We always had dogs on the ranch, lots of them. They were my constant companions since I didn't have any bothers. Lisa didn't see the enjoyment in damming up streams, throwing rocks, or chasing frogs down at the creek all day.

As I grew older, I was given more responsibility, and expected to do more. By twelve I was gathering cattle in the summer heat, driving Caterpillars, clearing brush or skidding logs. Most of these things were semi-dangerous for a twelve-year-old kid, but I survived.

My father had a way of teaching that could be summed up by the old Nike slogan: Just do it. He never took the time to patiently teach me how to do anything; he just put me in the seat and told me to do it. Drive this D-8 Caterpillar, clear this brush off these hills, I'll be back when you're finished. For a kid, it was equal parts excitement and terror, but that's just the way he was.

He would also let me skip school to go to the Shasta Livestock Auction in Cottonwood on Fridays. I would spend the day running around the sorting pens, while he was in Ellington Peek's office doing business. He would also let me go on business trips with him. I would sit quietly at a table full of businessmen and listen to million dollar deals be made. It was a unique experience for a young man. However, some of favorite times were in his old blue Jeep Cherokee where he and I would go 'check the cows'.

I loved my father, as most sons do. I loved him despite the fact that mine was very flawed, like all fathers are.

My father was an alcoholic. Ever since I can remember, my father drank, a lot. He was a maintenance drinker. He was never falling-down drunk, and he was never hung-over. He would always get up at 6:00 the next day ready to work. Back before computers and cell phones, business was done by telephone. After dinner, my father would start making his business calls. Every night, he sat at the kitchen table, talking on the phone and having several large 'hi-balls'.

We went through stretches where things would be fine for a time. Then, if the cattle prices or real estate market would go down, the stresses and pressures he put on himself would start to boil over. It was very volatile around our house, but then again, my father seemed to live in a constant state of chaos.

In the late 70's my father's ranching business started to take off. I remember the bankers from Bank of California sitting at our dinner table asking my father how large of a credit line he wanted. They were just giving money away, and they were taking my father's word he had the cattle to cover that amount of credit. All with a wink and nod. (Think of the housing bubble in 2008)

He bought a new ranch in Lakeview Oregon. He bought new pickups, horse trailers, semi-trucks, hired more cowboys and a mechanic. We even built a pool and a new addition to the house. It was a good time for our family. Well, until it all came crashing down a few years later.

He was always in conflict with the neighboring ranches, including one actual range war complete with sheriff's deputies, a helicopter and me standing in front of a gate with a lever action rifle to make sure the neighbors didn't push their cattle out of that gate onto the road.

My father made and lost several fortunes in his life. He never seemed to find a balance he could reach. He always wanted more; he always wanted to move forward, never content with where he was. My father was a complicated man.

He loved us kids, but he couldn't stop drinking. He had my life planned out and expected me to take over his 'empire' when the time came. But he spent almost no time teaching me how to do it. He was hard working, but had a soft heart. He could also bend a rule, or outright break it if stood between him and his business success. He never talked about his own feelings, and rarely how he felt about you, unless he has been drinking. Even then it was 50-50 propositions. You were either the best kid in world, or a huge disappointment.

Much like I described him as a combination of John Wayne and Donald Trump, many people loved my father and thought he was a great guy. Others thought he was a son of bitch. I think, in the end, they were both right.

After another lost fortune, our family ended up here in Yolo County. He bought a house with 20 acres after the bank took back the ranch in Oak Run, and he went to work leasing ranches and running steers and heifers for other ranchers.

He stayed in the real estate business, and never letting well enough alone, he took my mom and my sister's interest in cutting hair and turned that into a business. He opened a beauty salon in Vacaville for my mom and sister to run while he had his real estate office next door.

I was in college and discovering the world outside of ranching, hay bales, and cattle. In other words, I was have a great time.

It wasn't until I met my future wife that my interest turned back to the ranch. She loved it out there. Being a city girl, she couldn't understand why I didn't want to ride horses if I had the opportunity. To me horses meant work, and 14-hour days gathering cattle in the brush from sunup till sundown. Why would you want to ride them for fun?

We both were going to school at American River College, but I was still a year from getting my associates degree, so when my wife transferred to UC Davis, I went to work for my father running cattle. We lived on a ranch my father leased in Dunningan. I think I made $600 a month plus the nine hundred square foot house we lived in. Those were good times.

However, like all things cyclical, the good times are always followed by tough times, and that came in 1991. My father was again overextending, and planning as if the good times would always be good. He hated paying taxes, so for every dollar he made in the cattle business or real estate business, he leased a new ranch, or built new corrals or helped my wife and I buy a place of our own. Our house was just about complete, and with my father's help, we had just made our first annual balloon payment on the new place.

One day he was in Sacramento at a deposition, not surprisingly, he was being sued by one of our neighbors for some semi-shady way he sold their ranch, when he felt sick. He came home and stayed there for a while before my mother convinced him he had to go to the hospital.

I was irrigating the alfalfa at my place when I got the word he was headed to the hospital. He sat in the ER at Woodland Hospital for three or four hours while the doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with him. By the time a new doctor came on and decided he was bleeding internally, it was too late. He had an aneurysm of his aorta. They air lifted him to UC Davis Med Center. They performed surgery to repair the tear in the aorta, but he had lost too much blood and died the next day.

Not that there is ever a good time to lose a parent, but it could not have come at a worse time for our family. The cattle market was heading into a decline along with the real estate market. Loosing not only my father, but also my employer and the person who had engineered my life, was a huge hit. Even though I had my real estate salesman's license and was working on my father's ranch, I had let him make almost all my decisions for me. He was running the show, and now he was gone.

I was very immature for someone in my position. At twenty-five, I should have been ready for this day, but I wasn't. Not by a long shot. I went through the motions of gathering the cattle, and trying to help my mom figure out if we should keep the leases on the ranches. In the end, with all my father's bills and past due taxes, we had to sell everything, my house included, and start over.

At the time, all you see are the problems, all you feel is the pain, all you want is to have things put back the way they were. That isn't going to happen. You have to move, you have to go forward, you have to grow.

15 years later, I was working in the technology field, something I really liked, we had two children, and I was making a good living. My mom and sister were living in North Idaho and my mom had a met a man.

This is where I met my second father, Paul.

Paul is a so much different from Walt Sr.

He is soft spoken and kind. He's a patient, caring man, and he is very happy with the life he has. He is content, or at least at peace with his place in the world. Paul is a contractor, although he's retired now. He's a hard worker, but doesn't chase the almighty dollar at all costs. He likes to read, and loves working on his classic cars. He is interested in the world around him. He is self-aware in a way my father never was.

I could not have picked a better person for my mother to marry. He loves her dearly, and she has found someone to love without having to deal with the whirlwind of chaos and volatility.

Living sixteen hours away, I don't get to see them as often as I would like, but I have never worried a moment about my mother since Paul entered her life. He is wonderful, and I owe him more than I can say. He is the perfect second father.

So wait, I thought you said this was a story about three fathers? Yes, I'm getting to that.

Shortly after my father passed away, my mother told Lisa and I that dad had two sons with his first wife, long ago. He had told her not to tell us kids, but now that he was gone, she thought the time was right. She didn't have any names, just the little my father had told her.

This was fascinating to me and it started me on a long journey to find my lost relatives. Ancestry was a new service, and I signed up looking to see if I could find my lost half brothers. I had no luck. I tried to find his first wife, but without her maiden name, you cannot find birth records and such with the counties involved.

I think I solved the mystery a few years back when I found a census record of my father living in Stockton with his first wife Zelda, her mother, and two small children with different last names. So, I think those kids were my father's stepsons, and would be no relation to me. A bit anticlimactic, but the mystery was solved.

Enter the new DNA registry 23andMe.

I had always heard from my father that he was mostly Irish with some French from my grandmother. My mom is full Portuguese, half from the Azores and the other half from Portugal by way of Brazil.

I wanted to see how true that was and signed up. A week or so later a package arrived. I followed the instructions and spit into the little tube, sealed it up and mailed it back. They said it would take about 6 weeks to get the results.

I didn't think I would find too many surprises, but being a huge history buff, I thought it would be cool to be able trace my heritage. I received an email saying my results were in and I logged on and looked at my DNA make up. Nothing too startling. I was 28% British/Irish, 25% Broadly Northwest European, and 35% Iberian, (Spain/Portugal) with the rest a mash up of mostly European make up.

This tracked almost exactly the way I thought it would. Oh well.

I had traced my father's family back to Prince Charles County Maryland in 1731 through Ancestry, and I thought there may have been an American melting pot, genetic wildcard thrown in there somewhere. But it turned out I'm just a plain old American white guy.

I had told my mom about the 23andMe findings and she wanted to know why I was so interested in it? I said I found it fascinating to know for sure where you come from. Knowing what part of the world you came from, tracing your history and such.

I thought that was the end of the story.

A few days later I received an email from 23andMe asking if I wanted to search for my DNA relatives. Sure, why not. I clicked the link.....Oh boy....

I looked at the page for a minute and reread it a few times just to make sure.

I have two half-sisters.

No way. No. Way.

I clicked on their names and looked at their profiles.

No way.

How could this be? They must belong to dad, but when were they born? I found a link to send them a message. What do you say? Hi, I'm your long lost half brother, where did you come from?

I sent each one a message. I had so many questions. I asked if they knew my father, and did they know about my sister and I?

Pam was the first to respond:

 ”.... Tracy and I now know how we are half sisters through information told to us by our mothers when we were young adults. I'd be happy to connect if you want to solve this mystery for yourself. It is just because our parents really wanted us to be born, and all they did to arrange for our arrivals. I was born in 1961. Tracy in 1967. It will benefit us all to know the health and genetic data. So glad to find you. :)"

Wait? What?

I was a little slow on the uptake here just because it seemed so strange. With Pam being born in 61, that was before my mom and dad were married, so no foul there, but Tracy was born in 67, two years after me. Why would our all our parents really want us to be born? I could see my dad having a bit of fun, but I'm pretty sure my mom would not have been okay with my father out populating the planet.

Like I said, it was staring me in the face, but I hadn't put it all together.

I sent both a message saying it looked like my father was a bit of a scoundrel. I think Pam and Tracy had a correspondence between each other and decided to have Pam spill the beans:

"Well, not a scoundrel actually. I don't want to shock you, but since you are over 50, I think you can handle it. When I was 14, I found out that my father (my legal father) was not my biological father. Before my parents married, he had a vasectomy. It couldn't be reversed. My parents really wanted me, so they went to a specialist in San Francisco who arranged for a sperm donor. All they knew was he was a medical student who was healthy and had a great health history and already had a family and children. I was never to have known. Back then, the secrecy was thought best for the child being conceived. At 14 when I chose to sever my ties to my father, my mother told me the truth of my paternal creation. I didn't know about any of you, but always thought that this medical student may have made several donations. Lol. I met Tracy last year through her daughter making a connection to me. We were both stunned. Tracy found out from her mom about the medical student on her 22nd birthday. She is still very close to her legal father, so she is cautious about making it known because she doesn't want him to feel bad. So was your legal father a medical student? Tracy and I don't know if you were from donation like us or if our parent’s donor was both your legal and genetic dad. Sorry for the shock if you didn't know." 

Wow..... No way.

I was shocked.

So the only man I ever knew as my father was not my biological father.

No flippin' way.

As I sat there staring at my phone, I felt a rush of different feelings.

This changes everything.

Then again, it changes nothing.

My father will always be my father. He raised me, for better or worse. It was surreal to me that a man from my father's generation would use a donor to have children. He was nothing if not a man's man. With all his success, all that money, there must have been something missing. There must have been a huge hole in his life he needed to fill with children. It made me wonder about those two stepsons he had with his first wife, and how it must have hurt to lose them when they were divorced.

My head was swimming, but it was late and I went to bed with lots of different thoughts rattling around. What was I going to say to my mom? Should I even bring this up? I had to. It was just too much to let go. Besides, my mom did nothing wrong. She did something extraordinary to bring me into this world. The doctors had instructed her not to tell me about my biological father. She kept the secret for over 50 years. She did it out of love, and that is a great reason.

The next day I called my mom in the morning. We spoke for a while and then I told her the story that Pam told me. The story of Children's Hospital in San Francisco, and the donor, and the instruction not to tell us kids. When I finished, I asked, "So, do you have anything you want to tell me?" There was a bit of a pause, "Well, I would say that my story is the same story you just told me."

We talked about dad and her not being able to have children, and the special clinic at Children's hospital was the cutting edge for the 1960s. It was very expensive, but it was their only hope of having children. My sister was conceived the same way. Mom said she never really thought about it about it after a few years, and didn’t think it was important to tell us after dad died. We were going through enough turmoil at the time.

The fact that I signed up for the DNA tests out of pure curiosity was something they couldn't have even imagined back in the 1960s. If I had not spit in that little tube, I would have never known about my biological father.

So, the real question is: Now what?

What does it change? Like I said before; it changes everything and it changes nothing.

Walt Sr. will always be my father. He raised me, he showed what it was to be a man, to work hard, and he showed me you can do more than you think is possible. I will always love that man.

So what about my biological father? Do I want to know more about him? Yeah, I guess so. I would like to see a picture of him, and see if I look anything like him. I would like to know something about his personality, his temperament. Those kinds of things.

I'm sure he never imagined DNA testing, and that three strangers would someday find each other through an ounce of saliva. I wonder if he would want to know how we turned out?

So many questions.

In the end, I am glad I know. I am also glad my mother and father went to that specialist in San Francisco. I am here.

I have a wonderful family, a wonderful life, and memories to last me a few lifetimes. I am hoping to get together one day with my half sisters; that would be cool. Hey, 23andMe is a new company, not many people have signed up, there may be more of us half siblings out there. I always wanted a brother. (Sorry Lisa, love ya)

Mothers

One of the things that has come with age, is understanding the limits of my own understanding.  The age old adage that, 'you don't know what you don't know', is quite true. 

Ah,,,, to be as sure, and as certain of my beliefs as I was when I was 17, or 27, or 37. For those who have never seen a picture of the Dunning Kruger Effect, it really is a great illustration of my life. Whenever I think I truly understand something these days, I look at where I could be wrong, or try to find another way to understand the issue. I've been wrong about many things, and I hate being wrong. 

As sure as I have been about certain things, parenting was never something I though I had a good grasp on. I'm not sure how anyone could. Maybe if you had 9 or 10 children, you could make a decent determination that, by that 10th child, you've seen just about everything. 

You would be wrong, but you might have that thought rolling around upstairs. Parenting is extremely difficult, extremely frustrating, extremely exhausting, and also the best damn thing you might ever experience in 100 lifetimes. 

One of the things that helped me raise my children was the parenting I received as a child from my mother. My mom is a special person. All moms are special, as I'm sure you imagine yours to be.  My mom is special in some particular ways. 

If you know my story, you know I've written about my father a few times. He was special too. I always say he, was a cross between John Wayne and Donald Trump. That is pretty accurate. My mom is harder to define. She is quite complex. 

If I had to describe my mom to someone (of my age) who has never met her, I would say she is a combination of Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch, and Kitty Forman from That 70's Show. 

My mom is full of life. If I pulled into her driveway today in North Idaho and said, "Let's go down to the bar and have a beer." She would grab her keys and go. If I pulled in and told her I was going through a really rough time in my life, and asked if she any advice, she would sit me down and talk for hours about the best way she thought I could get back on track. Her advice is something I still value. 

My mom always thought of life as an adventure. Boy, did we have one growing up. How she raised my sister and I to be fairly good kids, all the while living through the 18 chapter Greek tragedy that was life with my father, is a remarkable feat. 

Hats off to my sister Lisa for being the well behaved, great student, and the one child mom never really had to wonder what trouble they were getting into.  If she had two of me, on top of dealing with our father, I'm not sure anyone could take that excitement and adventure.

Mom was soothing, she still is. Her way of quieting her voice down, and showing us her love and understanding, was something I tried to do with my own kids. I remember always feeling better after I was done talking with my mom, no matter what had just happened. 

I'm almost certain I failed in this with my kids, because I am a man. I have that 'fixer' mentality. I don't engage very well with the 'just be there and tell them you love them' part of parenting. I want to give them a three piece plan to 'fix' their problem. Look back up at that drawing and see if that makes more sense now. 

My mom was rarely angry at me, and believe me when I say I did a mountain of things to make any parent angry. However, when she was angry it was spectacular. I remember her breaking a wooden spoon on my butt one day and me laughing.

 The only thing that really scared me was when she brought the handmade, braided leather riding quirt down off the fridge. That thing meant business, and it would never break. I don't think I ever got a hard smack with the quirt. She just got it down and started chasing me, and the bad behavior was at an end. 

It still makes me laugh to this day, in my mind, seeing mom chasing after me with her braided quirt. Ah, good times. 

So this Mother's Day, I would like to send some love to my mom Alice up in the hinterlands of North Idaho. I wish I was coming up there to see you soon. We are heading out East to visit Abbie in South Carolina, and I know, being a mom, you will understand. We will get back up there to see you guys sometime this year. 

I just wanted to say thank you for everything you taught me. Everything it may have taken me decades, and many, many mistakes to see and correct. Thank you for every kind work, every warm embrace, and every prayer sent out with me and my family in mind, even when we had no idea. Thank you for being who you are. 

I love you dearly,,

Your son,

Walt