Johnny Gunn Writes

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Monday, July 25, 2016

An Ode to the Saloon

Ran into a feller the other day that I hadn’t seen in a few years, much to my delight, I might add. Delight, that is, that I hadn’t seen him in a few years. ‘A bit of an ass’ is the best description I’ve heard of him, and he fulfilled his obligation by asking if I still spent time in, as he called it, a tavern. There aren’t many in my crowd that tend to use the word tavern when discussing the pleasures of the partaking of John Barleycorn.

The encounter led me straight to one of my many favorite saloons, and believe me, this old town called Reno has more that a few. It also led me to wonder just how many names we use from time to time when discussing our favorite watering hole. Well, see, there’s one name, and then, we also have cantina, gin mill, and grogshop to consider. Alehouse is rarely used today as is cabaret, but joint? Yes, indeed, and sports bar, nightclub, and pub.

Being a jolly fellow by this time, I found a cocktail napkin that wasn’t yet drenched, and wrote a bit of a poem for the occasion. To wit:

Rhymes With Tune

By Johnny Gunn

These are meeting places, mating places,

Sometimes fighting places.

We go not to glory in the drinking of alcohol

But to glory in ourselves.

We burst forth in song or poetry

Create or destroy politicians

We meet our friends, lovers, enemies

Slap backs and offer sage advice

Ah, the saloon, the name rolls off your tongue

Like the lyrics of a tune

And the local behind the plank

Offers kind words, “What’ll you have, Pard?”

So, my friend Mick stands up and strolls across the grogshop floor and plunks himself down at the piano and serenades us few noontime regulars with Danny Boy, followed by a rousing medley of Irish music, during which most of us either join in the merriment or pretend to. As Toora Lura, Lura, or however that song is actually spelled, comes to an end, in walks Jose Francisco Lopez Garcia.

“I see the cantina is open,” he says, opening his guitar case, and offering Coo Coo Roo Cuckoo, or however that song is spelled. Joe Jingles waltzes into our little speakeasy and wants to act the tough guy, and we let him spout off for a minute or two, and then tell him to leave the dive, that this was our roadhouse, and don’t forget it.

Amazing isn’t it, that such a simple thing as saying hello to someone you haven’t seen for a long time can bring such wonderful memories to the front. I see an ad in the paper for a new bistro opening, so, must run.

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Independence Day Trivia and other Stuff

The Declaration of Independence was an unknown document by almost all Americans on the Fourth of July, 1776. It was approved at two p.m. but only those signing it at the time even knew that, despite the fact that we have celebrated its signing for all these years on the Fourth of July. It wasn’t read publicly until July 8. It was read to continental army brigades in New York on July 26. The soldiers thought so highly of the document that they toppled a statue of King George III. It is believed that the lead from that statue may have been turned into bullets.

Just one hundred years later, there were gala celebrations in Philadelphia that extended over at least three days. Susan B. Anthony took part hoorahing her Declaration of Rights for Woman’s Suffrage Association. General Sherman stopped by to review the troops, keeping in mind that the good old US of A had declared war on Turkey just the day before.

In Rhode Island, the parade of Naval vessels took place in the waters off Bristol and featured the sloop U.S. Juniata. In Washington a three-hundred-canon salute was fired, the first one hundred rounds at sunrise, the second one hundred at noon, and the final one hundred at sunset. That had to have been impressive.

It wasn’t all gayety in 1876, since the end of the Civil War was just a few years before this. In Hamburg, South Carolina an uprising by angry whites led to the massacre of many blacks.

Ten thousand people marched in a four-mile parade in San Francisco, while in Chicago a bunch of socialists read from a revised declaration of independence. One particular highlight from 1876 was thirty veterans of the War of 1812 marching with two of Napoleon’s soldiers in Utica, New York.

Jumping another one hundred years through the pages of history to 1976 we find Old Ironsides, the USS Constitution, in Boston Harbor firing her cannons for the first time in ninety-five years. Across the country, at two p.m., bells were rung in thousands of communities, signifying the time the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

A wagon train consisting of 2500 wagons traveled across the country and arrived at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, while in Baltimore, a re-enactment of the bombardment of Fort McHenry took place after which celebrants enjoyed a 69,000 pound birthday cake.

In Sparks, Nevada, the James C. Lillard Railroad Park was dedicated, and in Clinton, Missouri, the Henry County Museum was dedicated.

Well, here was are in 2016, and for many of us in western Nevada, that means we’ll be taking a nice drive to Virginia City, beloved Queen of the Comstock, for a day of parades, picnics, mining contests, and one of Nevada’s best fireworks displays.

It’s the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence that most of us remember, so poignant it can lead to a full bursting of dams that hold back our tears, tears of joy that have flowed since that fateful time of two p.m., July, 4, 1776.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

Description: http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/images/w.gif

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

For a full reading of the declaration, go here http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

Or Tweet with me, darlin’?

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Introspection Anyone?

We’re moving toward the halfway point of the year, which might be a good time for a little introspection and reflection, maybe even some other ection if we can find one.

Our winter brought us some much-needed precipitation to the Sierra Nevada, the western Nevada valleys, and northern Nevada in general. Spring is an entirely different matter. We have gone from ultra gorgeous to fanatically evil on an every other week schedule.

Tomatoes and squash have suffered the most from the drastic changes, which included a hard freeze on June 15. If we can get the wind under high gale force, we might yet have enough veggies to fill the larder. Between chickens and rabbits, our freezer will look good for the summer and winter, but the shelves of home-canned veggies and stuff are empty.

On the publishing front, I’m dancing around like I had good sense. My very long, not quite novella length short story, Red Light Raven, http://bookgoodies.com/a/B01G2B7RUG has found numerous friends and appears to be selling well. The second book in the Jacob Chance, U.S. Marshal trilogy was released and is doing well. http://bookgoodies.com/a/B01F29L6ZQ , and I had some good news from a new publisher, New Pulp Publishing. They have released Blood of Many Nations, the first novel in a planned series featuring wild and crazy private eye, Simon Sol Dorsey, http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Nations-Simon-Dorsey-Mystery/dp/0692717161/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 .

Along with all that, Solstice Publishing has offered a contract on an action thriller I’ve been working on for several years called To Serve and Deceive. We are just getting started on the edit process and hope to have this little gem out in the next few months.

A publishing company in Great Britain has an historical frontier fiction piece under review at this time, I have an historical western fiction piece I’m working on, a second Simon Sol Dorsey piece is almost ready for review, and I’m doing research for two other westerns.

I retired from holding a real job several years ago, and I gotta say, I’m working harder now, enjoying the hell out of it more, during these retirement years, than I ever did working for the man.

I get up and five, coffee’s on auto-pilot so with a cup in hand, I feed the horses and chickens with our little Sparky Dog right at (Nay, under) my feet, then feed him, turn on the computer and have at it. When the sun comes up I head out and set the irrigation for the various garden plots, pour more coffee, and get back to it. By ten in the morning all the animals are fed and watered, the veggies are taken care of, and I usually have at least another thousand words in whatever project is on top of the heap that day.

That’s the end of the workday for me. After that, if the weather’s good, I’m outside playing with the animals or messing around in the garden or just sitting in the sun readin’ and grinnin’.

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

Or Tweet with me, darlin’?

Monday, May 23, 2016

Just drive, please

Many, many years ago, I operated a small museum in Virginia City called the Pioneer Livery Stables and had more than twenty buggies, carts, wagons, and sleighs on display. I also had a team of Clydesdales and access to other horses and ponies that were trained in the harness.

It was a lot of fun to take the big team and a spring wagon into the Long Valley area, now all grown up with hundreds of houses, sometimes to spend the weekend at a springs or just take a day ride. Driving a beautiful team that is pulling a wagon that has seen a century of duty is pure happiness for me.

What brought this little commentary about has to do with driving, whether a single, a team, or more than one team. One of my wagons was used in the movie Silver Dollar, and we had four teams up on that wagon. That was surely a thrill.

The wagons, buggies, and carts were all set up to be driven from the right side, and in olden times, roadways and trails were often left hand traffic. There were few communities, territories, or states that had laws on driving. A quick view of old photos will show that, but don’t look for it in every western movie because that fact is often overlooked.

My child bride and I were watching a movie the other night and I pointed out that they got it right. The wagon was driven from the right hand seat and travelled on the left side of the road. Patty said, “When did we change to right hand traffic and left hand driving?”

There are more countries in the world with right hand traffic than left, with Great Britain and many of the old British colonies leading the left hand traffic pack. Consensus seems to be that because most people are right handed, and most weapons prior to the general use of gunpowder were operated with the right hand, if one were to meet an adversary on the road, it would be best if that enemy were to be on one’s right side. Thus, left hand traffic, which predominated until good old Henry Ford came along.

Before automobiles, though, Napoleon, a lefty, decreed that all the countries he conquered would have right hand traffic. Wonder what he would have done had he been ambidextrous?

A man named Albert C. Rose, some refer to him as being the unofficial historian of the U.S. Public Roads department, seems to think that in colonial times we had right hand traffic, but I challenge that simply because of the way buggies, wagons, carts, and sleighs were built, particularly I would like to point out, that brakes for those vehicles were operated from the right side and harness for teams was such that they worked better from the right side.

The earliest automobiles that were steered by way of a tiller had them mounted in the center, but when steering wheels came along, they were, for the most part, mounted on the right side. It was Henry Ford’s Model T that changed things. Ford put the steering wheel on the left side, and by about 1915 or so, all the American manufacturers did the same. I couldn’t find out why Ford decided to put his steering on the left side.

I also spent many years working in the mines in Nevada, and driving the huge haul trucks is something else again. Most mines demand left hand traffic on the haul roads leading from the pits to the mill. And, to make things a little more interesting, the driver often sits on the left side, but there is a good reason for that. The machine is huge, carrying as much as one hundred fifty tons of ore, and knowing where that truck is when approaching another truck is tricky. The driver is trained not to look at the other truck but rather guide his or her truck by watching the left side of the road. It works.

Driving the underground haul trucks is a whole nuther story. The drifts and tunnels are just wide enough for the vehicles to get through, and if you value your job you do not want to take out rib posts as you haul the ore out of the mine. You’re trained to look far down and in the middle of the drift or tunnel. That way your vehicle stays in the middle of the very narrow roadway.

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

Or Tweet with me, darlin’?

Saturday, April 16, 2016

To Garden Or Not To Garden ...

My beautiful child-bride Patty and I live in what some call the inter-mountain west and others call the great basin, right along the eastern flank of the Sierra Nevada, about twenty miles north of Reno. Between an altitude of somewhere close to five thousand feet above sea level and the weather pattern disruption created by those lofty mountain peaks, gardening is a crap shoot every year.

There is no normal, but there is an average when we speak of end of frost danger, and that’s where the crap shoot comes in. If one wishes to make a fairly certain bet one could say there will be a cold storm with freezing temperatures and probable snow over Memorial Day weekend. One could get away with saying the three weeks before that would be sunny and warm.

Just one hundred miles to our west, right now, as you read this, in the great central valley of California, gardens have been planted, the plants are growing and blossoming, maybe even showing some fruit. I’ll not plant, even the strongest of my crops until at least May 20, and those veggies most susceptible to frost, on or about June 6. And still be fearful.

The ground is tilled, manure plowed under, seeds purchased, and I don’t even dare start them indoors since we’re talking more than a month before I could put them in the ground. A delightful friend put up one of those hoop house green houses and watched it head for Utah at more than sixty mph last year. It was last year that a dust devil lifted the horses’ weather stalls right out of the ground and set them back down in splinters.

No, a green house in western Nevada is not the answer, unless it’s made of brick and iron, which of course defeats the purpose. Some might ask, ‘why garden?’ Because of such things as fresh corn, tomatoes, green beans, squash, cucumbers, peas, melons, and chili peppers. We eat them fresh all late summer and early fall, can the rest, therefore, eat fresh from the garden food all winter, too.

It’s grand to light the BBQ on a summer’s eve, with two beautiful USDA Prime rib-eye steaks ready for the hot coals, and stroll out to the corn patch, rip a pair of ears from a stalk, and roast them, all the while toasting the gods of summer with either cold beer or fine wine.

Or, at the other end of the spectrum, enjoying the aroma of a leg of lamb in the oven, watching the blizzard bring next summer’s irrigation water to us, feeling the warmth of a roaring blaze in the fireplace, and waiting for a bowl full of green beans, swimming in butter, garlic, and crispy bacon, that you grew, picked, and canned.

So, this period, between the middle of April and the middle of May is true hell. Three days of warm weather and you are champing at the bit, and then it snows. And then, another two or three days of warmth, but no, don’t do it. The big box stores sell thousands of tomato plants to the newcomers the second week of April. Another several thousand a couple of weeks later, and then, damn me, another several thousand a couple of weeks after that. It takes a couple or three seasons before the newcomers catch on.

There’s a mountain peak called Peavine, just northwest of Reno, that stands as the gardeners’ beacon, and those that have lived in the area for many years swear by it. “Don’t plant your tomatoes until the snow is gone from Peavine.”

So, what does a frustrated old farmer do in these long weeks before one can plant? There’s a fridge full of cold beer. A rack full of fine wine. And a library full of good books. I believe I’m in heaven.

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

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http://solsticepublishing.com/johnny-gunn/

You can find my novels, short stories and anthologies at

Solstice Publishing

Amazon.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Johnny+Gunn?_requestid=445490

Barnes and Noble

Monday, April 4, 2016

Learn Something New Everyday

I’ve always believed in the thought that one can and should learn something new everyday and not be afraid of the process. Many people don’t learn because they shy away from the thought or are egocentric to the point of believing there really isn’t anything new that they would be interested in learning.

I tried at one time to be a salesman for one of the radio stations I worked for, and while the change in career path failed miserably, I learned a little something from one encounter I had with a potential advertiser. He said to me, “I don’t need to advertise, everyone knows me and my business.”

I mentioned that to my sales manager and asked what my reply should have been. He said it happens often, and one trick he uses is to ask for the telephone book, pick a page at random and a number at random, make a call on the speaker phone and when the party answers, simply say, “We’re doing a quick one word survey. Do you know Don’s Vacuum Service Company?”

Unless it is a big successful business, most often the answer will be “no.” and the owner will hear that. Think about that the next time you’re putting together a little face book comment or tweet for your business.

This brings up something I learned recently about the publishing business. I haven’t been completely sold on the e-book concept, being a codger, a lover of hard-bound books, and a former newspaper and magazine publisher. You gotta hold it in your hot little hands, gotta smell the ink, feel the paper’s texture.

At the same time, I love to write short stories, and the real market for them is not in print magazines because few even publish short stories anymore. With fifty thousand short story writers and less than ten national publications paying for short stories, the market is limited. This is where the e-books really shine. A short story is a quick read, so taking one or two to camp over the weekend, or to the beach for the day, or on that quick flight to see your sister works perfectly.

Until my publisher, Solstice Publishing brought it up, it would never have occurred to me to think about publishing something in book form under eight thousand words. Novels generally run from about fifty thousand and up, up, up words, novellas are generally between twenty thousand and fifty thousand.

At the beach, at the weekend camp, on a day cruise across the bay, can be hard on a book, and I believe that until recently the majority of books taken out like that would be printed novels. Now, without much trouble at all, one can take one or more short stories in E format for quick reads.

Getting back to that advertising sales job, the sales manager was kind in every way when he suggested that I was a far better announcer and copy writer than I would ever be as a salesman, but I keep his thought in mind about understanding that with more than seven billion people on earth, presently, not counting our alien visitors, of course, there are just an awful lot of people that have not heard of my books. I’ve got to get busy.

Until next time, read good books and stay regular

Johnny Gunn

Member, Western Fictioneers

Member, International Thriller Writers

Will you join me on facebook from time to time?

Or Tweet with me, darlin’?