The Early Years

Introduction

My twin brother, Tex, and I were born April 1, 1942 in Roundup, Montana and raised in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains north of the Musselshell River.  We grew up with two younger brothers, Ronald and David, on a white-faced Hereford cow-calf ranch where my love for horses, and the Land of the Big Sky took an early hold.

Elementary education took place in one-room schools including the first at Franklin, Montana near Careless Creek, six miles north of Ryegate; Beehive, Montana along the Stillwater River west of Absarokee; and then at Dean, west of Fishtail, Montana.  The only art instruction I had during those years was an art class for one hour each Friday at the end of the school day.

Careless Creek

What I lacked in guided instruction I made up for in keen observation riding my horse bareback through the foothills along Careless Creek; camping for days with my family on Swimming Woman Creek where we fished for trout in the beaver dams; picnicking with friends of my parents in the Snowy Mountains; and Celebrating Harvest’s End at country dances at Rothiemay and Cushman where I discovered booze left on running boards packed a wallop and produced mind altering effects.

I retrieved nubbles of colored chalk my teacher Mrs. Darrah threw into the big metal waste paper basket next to her desk; I saved them in a small tin box which I hid in the dirt behind a ten foot high sandstone bluff west of our ranch house; and when the weather was nice I’d go to my cliff wall on the backside of the bluff and push blue tones into cool sandstone for a sky shimmering, drifting down to meet the lines of the arched backs of sorrel and bay horses in brome and timothy laden meadows of green.

My efforts to create large murals on the backside of the big shed next to the barn did not please my father. I was never sure why, but I think he thought I’d stolen the chalk. My nubbles were confiscated. What’s an experimenting adolescent boy to do when he doesn’t have his nubbles to play with?

I learned how to split slivered shafts from cedar posts or gather dried willow branches and push them into the burn barrel just so for the right amount of time to burn them slowly. I made charcoal, but didn’t know what it was called then. I’d draw dark lines and to make my horses rear and run across the shed’s back wall.

When Mom and Dad bought groceries at the Ryegate Locker Plant, sometimes they’d buy frankfurters linked together. The links were wrapped in butcher paper with the waxy side in and the fuzzy side facing out. If it was summertime, Dad would let me have the paper and I’d use my charcoal stick to draw on the fuzzy side. If it was winter, I could hear him from my bunk bed in the early morning when he crumpled the paper to build a fire in the stove. I looked forward to summer. I was nine.

Midnight on the Stillwater

The Midnight Ranch captivated me and in the end broke my heart. We moved from our four room Careless Creek home to a house that had once been a stage stop at the edge of the Stillwater River; to a new home that had twelve rooms, five cabins along the river, and a cold room with a walk-in freezer. This new home had indoor bathrooms, running water and electricity. No more running down the path, under the clothesline, to the outhouse in freezing temperatures. And a bath tub with claw feet! Sure did beat the round, galvanized stock tank Dad brought in and Mom filled with water warmed on the wood burning stove.

The river ran swift and crystal clear over a cobblestone bed and roared, boasting no doubt about its firm rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout that were plentiful and would rise to hand-tied flies or fresh hellgrammite. I stayed out of the water because I watched it knock down a grown man when he waded out into the middle to fly-fish. He saved his own life by crawling out to the bank, but lost his fly pole, gear and waders. Besides being too swift, it was too cold to skinny dip even in the summer.

I faced away from the Stillwater; looked past our big cobblestone house and looked up, up, up to the top of the towering cliffs. The granite colossus rose up hundreds of feet flanked to the west by Dark Canyon and Signal Butte, and to the east by Midnight Canyon. I couldn’t wait to climb to the top and see what the world looked like from up there. Cows and horses looked smaller than ants and the bridge looked like a thin gray line over a silvery blue ribbon patterned with whitewater rapids. The next time I went up I took a canteen with water and stuffed a baloney sandwich into my pocket. I loved it up there. But not when it was windy.

A walk across the bridge, up the bank and across the play ground took us to the one room Beehive School ran by no nonsense Agnes Dallas.  I paid attention to my studies, waited for Friday afternoons, and ran home to my room to draw on tablet paper with crayons before chores. After supper was homework under electric lights instead of a kerosene lamp and to bed early because morning chores and milk cows always need early attention.

After summer chores were done, and if I didn’t ride for cows or herd sheep, I’d take my paper, pencils and crayons into Dad’s den just off the master bedroom. Sometimes I’d start a small fire in the corner fireplace, spread out on the hardwood floor and enter my magical world. Everybody else liked the big fireplace in the living room because you could stand up in it and it was fun to pop corn there, but my favorite spot was in the den where two walls were floor to ceiling windows. I had Lots of space; lots of light. What more could I ask for? Well, canvas and oil paints would be nice.

One day a man came to the front door and talked to Dad. When he left I asked Dad who the man was and what he wanted. Dad said his name was Leroy Greene from Billings and that he had asked for permission to set up a painting easel in the oat field across the river. I asked if I could go watch him work. Dad said yes, but not to bother him or make a nuisance of myself.

I fairly flew across the bridge to the oat field side of the river. I quietly approached the man who was at work on a large canvas held above the ground by a sturdy tripod style easel. I eased in closer and could see the beautiful granite cliff, trees, and strip of river. Mr. Greene caught sight of me behind and off to his side. He turned. He pointed his brush at me and said, “That’s close enough. You can watch, but you must not speak to me. Keep your mouth shut. No questions. Do you understand?” I nodded.

I stood for awhile barely breathing as I watched the brush build the forms. The day began to heat up and my legs grew tired so I sat on my haunches balanced under the big sky in the midmorning sun and watched a painting emerge. I ached to ask what was in the little tin cups at the edge of the circular board with splotches of paint, but I held my tongue. A couple hours passed and suddenly Mr. Greene stood up, gathered his equipment, carefully carried his painting to his station wagon and drove away.

Dad and Mom were good friends with our family doctor, Leland Russell and his wife, Elizabeth.  They enjoyed coming to the ranch to ride, hunt and fish, and enjoyed ending the day with cocktails, great food and stories. Mom said Dr. Russell was interested in investing in the Midnight Ranch and Elizabeth was excited about having her portrait painted. We would often visit their home on Locust Street and enjoyed spending time with the Russell kids, Gordy and Rosalind.

During one visit I notice a new painting on a wall above the fireplace in their living room. There was a framed oil painting of Elizabeth holding a bowl of apples in her lap. She was wearing a white peasant’s blouse with both shoulders bare. Her breasts were full and the tops were discretely bare with cleavage showing while she was smiling seductively under tousled raven black hair. The painting was signed, Leroy Greene.

Years later when I was a young man living on my own in Billings, I went to Mr. Leroy Greene’s home on Virginia Lane, introduced myself and  reminded him of the Midnight Ranch. He remembered. I asked if he’d teach me about painting and how much it would cost. He asked who suggested I come to him. I told him Dr. Russell’s widow, Elizabeth. He became very agitated, told me he didn’t have time for me, asked me if I was interested in buying some jewelry, and then asked to leave his home.

Dad went to work underground at the Mouat Mine digging out chrome ore. My twin brother and I took on the business of running the ranch. Dad would come home after a shift, mow hayfields that were ready to be cut, and bale hay that had been cut earlier in the week. Our job was to pull a wagon through the fields and throw bales onto it. We would stack them good enough to get a load back to the barn and then hoist them into the hayloft where they were restacked. The work was slow and hard, but we knew we were helping by doing the field work and chores while Dad slept so he could pull the next shift.

Winter wasn’t far off when the folks bought a herd of ewes that had been preg tested and were due to begin lambing in early spring. When it came time, Mom and Dad built a series of lambing jugs inside the barn. Each jug was just large enough for a momma and her twin babies and had an infrared light for warmth. And then everything went to hell. The ewes began to die. Sometimes before their lambs were born. Some died giving birth. Some died after the lambs were born which left orphans. Mom would try to graft a bum onto a healthy ewe and try to get her to raise three or even four babies. Sometimes that worked, but often the lambs would be rejected, they’d die, and so would the ewes.

Tex and I would throw the dead bodies onto the same wagon we’d used to haul the hay bales and pull it past the corrals and dump them into a pile at the edge of the apple orchard. The pile grew into a mound and the mound grew so high it was all we could do to throw the lambs to the top. We lost hundreds of sheep and before the next autumn rolled around, Dr. Russell was found dead in his car parked on the rims above Billings, Dad was spending most of his hard earned money at Carter’s Camp, and we lost the ranch. I was twelve.

The Y Bar at Dean

Dad managed the bar, Mom ran the restaurant, and as a family we holed up in a four room log cabin a few yards from the bar. The business grew because the folks knew what customers wanted and they gave it to them with a generous flourish.

Mom dressed Tex and me in new Levi’s, polished western boots, crisp white shirts and black string ties tied in a small droopy bow. She taught us how to take the order, ask the right questions about drinks and how to serve the plates with shrimp dinners, rib steaks, or crispy fried chicken. Her homemade pies would bring hungry folks from Billings to have weekend dinner at the Y Bar.

When the customer wanted a whiskey ditch, mixed drink, or beer, Tex and I would quickly hoof it past the enormous double sided, walk-through fireplace that divided the huge room. We’d go to the end of the bar and give Dad the order and he’d bring it to the table. The tips we made our parents held aside for us and we bought our school clothes. I dreamt of oil paints, turpentine, linseed oil, and stretched canvas.

One crisp late autumn day a man showed up at the bar and asked Dad if he could bartend for room and board. His name was Chuck Davis and Dad set up a cot in the store room just off the kitchen. Chuck stored his meager belongings under the shelves.

One day I came home from school and Chuck was at the end of the bar carving a buffalo out of a block of wood. He turned the wood in his large muscled hands as he cut small shavings away. The wisps of wood settled on the veins of his hands and some landed on the turned back cuffs of his white shirt. The carving of the buffalo was amazing in the detail of hair tufts, shiny horns and hooves.

Two weeks later he had a painting framed and mounted on the side of rock fire place that faced the front entrance. A long legged Indian in loincloth rode a paint pony with a handprint on the right shoulder. The dust was flying up behind them as they bore down on a running buffalo. The Indian has his bow drawn and about to let the arrow fly. The landscape was taken from the view out the west window of the Y Bar. I had to see more of his work.

Just after sunrise one morning I crept quietly out of the cabin and went to the store room. The latch was open and the door was ajar. Chuck was asleep on the cot and snoring softly. I knocked softly, but no one answered.  I eased in and sat on a short stool at the end of the cot. Chuck was sprawled face down and all of his covers were on the narrow stretch of floor between him and the selves.

In front of me was a large sheet of watercolor paper showing the start of a scene of an elk near a small mountain stream in soft pastel greens, blues and yellow-golds. Around the colors was light pencil drawing so faint I didn’t see the lines at first. They outlined the background of tall pines and snowcapped peak.

My heart was in my throat as I leaned in to get a closer look. Chuck stirred, rolled over, and scratched his chest. His hand slid down beyond his belly and he rubbed slowly. Suddenly his head lifted and he blinked at me.

“Jeezzus bal’ headed christ, kid,” he moaned, “what’er ya doin’ in here?”
“I just wanted to look at your art,” I whispered. My mouth was so dry I could hardly get the words out.
“What’er ya whisperin’ for?”  He whispered back loudly. “I do believe I’m awake now,” he said aloud and grinned.
“I’m sorry I woke you up,” I mumbled.
“Don’t be. It’s daylight… time to git up anyhow.” He ran his fingers through his hair trying to smooth down the long strands. While he laid there he arched his back, yawned and stretched.
“ ‘Scuse the hardwood,” he said offhandedly while he swung his legs off the edge of his bed. He stood up and began to pull on a rumpled pair of Levi’s.
“Yer Nik, the one who likes to do a little art, ain’t ya?”
I nodded.

Chuck tried to tuck himself in behind the open pants flaps, but there was too much to button the fly. He left everything undone.

“Stay here, kid, I’ll go get rid of this and I’ll be right back.” He shuffled past me, barefoot and shirtless.

When he came back to the storeroom he swung the door wide open and flush to the kitchen wall.

“Scoot over, kid.”

I got off the stool and moved into the middle of the still warm cot. Chuck reached behind me and flipped his shirt from a hook above the head of his bed. He slipped the shirt on, buttoned the front, and tucked in the tail.

“Oh Kay, kid. What’s doin’?”
“I’d like to learn how to do what you do on paper and canvas with paint.” I said quickly wanting to get all the words out. “What you do is the best.”
“Well, now… first you gotta want to do a thing like this or to anything for that matter or it won’t pan out. From what I can tell at his ungodly time of the mornin’ you got the desire.”

I grinned and watched as he brought his hand over his face to stifle a yawn.

“Then you gotta learn to see.”
“I can see.”
“You look and you hear. It’s high time you started to really see what you look at, and to really listen to what you hear.”
“Ok.” I agreed to keep him going, but not sure what he meant. “How?” I asked.
“Watch, observe, and study all that is around you. Study how things fit together and how one thing influences other things near it and how many things near a single thing influence it.”
“For example… like what?”
“Like this here elk.” He pulled the unfinished watercolor toward us. We both leaned toward the work.
“See the different tans, pinks, browns and blues that are used in the elk’s body? I made some of them light and some became a little darker when I touched other colors to the bottom edges of a shape when the first patches were still wet.  A light yellowish-brown next to a darker bluish-brown makes two shapes and those blending into each other make part of his neck and body. His underbelly is even darker because it’s in shadow. See that?”
“Yep. Did you use the same dark bluish-brown under the log that has fallen across the crik?”
“Yes. Good you caught that, huh? I also let a thin lighter line show at the very bottom of the log. See that?
“Uhuh.”
“That thin shape helps show the edge of the log and separates the log’s shape from other shapes near it and at the same time it gives us the feelin’ that the water under it is reflecting light up into the old log. It’s all in the way light hits a thing and the shadows that fall that makes a thing come to be seen.  Shadows and texture from light make the cylinder shape look like a rounded, silvery-gray log. Do you see what I’m sayin’?”
“Yes, but how do you know you’re gittin’ the right shapes in the right places… like the legs and head of an animal or person?”
“Good question. Study how they look in real life and the proportions of one shape relative to another. Things and their relationships to all other things. Got That?
“I blinked and raised my eyebrows.”
“Study your world around you. You are surrounded by a lot of different things… systems… get to know them. OK?”
“Ok.”
“Then comes the hardest part.”
“What’s that?”
“Practice until it’s the way you want it. And then do it again making it even better. Practice until whatever you are doin’ becomes like breathing… becomes a part of you… an extension of your heart, your mind, and your soul.”

I drew in a long breath through my nose and let it out slowly.

Later I went to his room and everything of his was gone. I asked Dad if he knew where he went. Dad said he pulled out early in the morning and went into the Beartooth Mountains. He had his pack, his rifle, and his bow with broadheads.

I never saw Chuck again, but thirty years later I walked into the Belfry Bar and saw a mural at the top edge of the back bar. I asked the owner, Herb Sterns, if he knew the guy who did the art work.

“I did.” He said.
“Chuck Davis, the whittler?” I offered.
“You bet. Did you know him?”
“Yes. He gave me my first art lesson one morning in 1955 at the Y Bar at Dean, Montana.”

Two years later while working for Jack and Elsie Chapman at the 4K Guest Ranch mowing, and raking the lawns, and wrangling dudes, I met Al Johnson (Jordan Montana). We shared a one room bunkhouse cabin and from my top bunk I would watch him create watercolors with details in pen and ink. Al didn't talk to me about what he was doing, but I had a close-up view of every move and learned a bit each evening before I drifted off to sleep.

Fishtail

We moved to Fishtail, Montana and ran the café situated between the Cowboy Bar and Bud Chitwood’s General Store. We had some experience working with food and learning to handle the counter, the grill, and deep fryer for French fries and corn dogs was a snap.  The bar was owned by Pat and Eunice Taylor and they lived with their two children, Bonnie and Mike, in living quarters in the back of the bar. Our parents were spending a lot of their time on the customer side of the counter at the Cowboy.

Tex and I both started freshman year at Absarokee in 1956 and graduated in 1960. The school did not have an art program and I tried to find someone who would give me a few pointers. Maud Dexter and Isabel Johnson lived in the area, as did George Gee, but I could never catch them in a private setting to talk to them.

We were fairly active in high school and tried out for sports. In Absarokee, if you were a warm body, you were pressed into service in football, basketball and track. The school bus that would take us to Fishtail left within minutes of the last class in the afternoon at the same time after school practice started on the football field.  After practice, we would change clothes and jog seven miles to Fishtail.

Mom and Dad called Tex and me into the back of the bar one morning and told us they were splitting. Mom was going to Billings to work the bars and Dad was going to West Yellowstone to work in the timber. They asked us to choose who we wanted to go with.

Tex and I looked at each other and said, “We like it here. We want to go to high school with our friends in Absarokee. We won’t go with either of you.”
“You’ll be on your own,” Dad said, “you’ll have to do it alone.”
“So be it.”

Mom and Dad drove to Columbus, Montana to get their divorce on August 7, 1956. They made arrangements to send our brothers to live with grandparents in Ryegate. The judge ordered that the court retain custody, care, and control of us. Tex and I became wards of the court. We would have been too much for our grandparents to have all four of us dumped on them.

Tex farmed himself out to George and Florestine Pelton, and I made a similar arrangement to live with a couple named Johnny and Norma Orr. I was to move into their place on Sunday. They had gone to Billings the day before and on their way home that Saturday night they were both killed in a car crash east of Columbus. School was to start in a week and I had no place to sleep.

Under my left arm I had two cardboard boxes tied together with twine. They were stuffed with my clothes, a few sheets of drawing paper, 8 Venus Paradise colored pencils,  a bottle of black India ink, pens with nibs, and a set of Hunt’s Speedball pen points. In my right hand I carried my used and slightly battered tenor saxophone in a gray case. I set the gray case down, and then lowered the two boxes gently until they settled safely on the sidewalk. The cinderblock wall of the Stillwater Creamery was behind me, and I leaned against it.

Two dogs trotted down the sidewalk sniffing litter scraps. Sunday morning in Absarokee was quiet, and I needed to think about my next move. I had ten dollars in my pocket; two fives left over from stacking bales for Les Yates during the summer.

I picked up my stuff and walked to Mrs. Cook’s Hotel and talked her into letting me have a single room on the second floor at two dollars a day. The room had a bed, a table, a two burner stove, and a cardboard closet. The bathroom was down the hall and shared with three unfriendly chrome miners.  A month’s rent was forty dollars; I made a collect call to my grandmother Fiske and she sent a check each month.

Red and Cleone Gaustad would invite me to supper from time to time and Tex would smuggle a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs a week from the Pelton’s Dairy. Lunch at the Cobblestone School lunchroom in the basement was my one meal a day and Vande Vandevegate the head cook tried to make sure I had a good serving and often had me come back for seconds. The other suppers were from the metal cans set up behind the Green Derby Café using the light from Mrs. Schulke’s window in the apartment next door.

When I could, I’d try to draw; mostly to escape and also to take my mind off my growling belly.

We graduated from Absarokee High School in 1960.

I worked my way to Chicago and earned my BFA in Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1969. The shock of big city life after growing up on ranches in the foothills of the Snowy and Beartooth Mountains worked on my nerves, but I eventually settled in to the routine of college life, work at Charles of the Ritz, and home work. I finally experienced my first live nude drawing class, first oil painting, first serigraph and first stone litho.

Arnold Zweerts was from the Netherlands and was a renowned mosaicist who took special interest in me and taught me to draw. His live model drawing classes were always fun after the insincere students were eventually weeded out. He would remind the class that at the end of the quarter he wanted to see at least one hundred drawings from each student.

Mr. Dwyer taught my favorite painting class and he took great delight in calling on me to demonstrate his theories of balance. A couple of times I thought I was going to end up in intensive care.

Sonia Sheridan taught me to explore and connect philosophies of artists, scientists, and metaphysics all with the flip of a coin. Her instruction in silkscreen printing set me on a path of discovery by investigating, researching and developing multi-layer registration I use today in my Visions In Depth. She wove cognitive psychology and its close connection with perception, memory, thinking, problem solving, and other mental processes including, especially, the creative imagination with an Asian influence and sexual overtones.

The greatest benefit to the school was the door that led to the Chicago Art Institute. The world class collection of drawings, paintings, prints, sculptures, and installations was nothing short of breathtaking. Performances by the actors studying at Goodman Theatre were a treat.

I kept my nose to the grindstone and soaked in everything I could that intrigued me concerning tools, materials and techniques. I found I liked photography, weaving, and pottery. The big hiccup was the Viet Nam war and the 1968 democratic convention that collided on the streets of Chicago and caught me halfway between the Field Museum and Grant Park as I was returning from a drawing assignment at the museum. Being beaten with nightsticks and choking from mace woke me up to the arrogance of the Daley Machine and malfeasance of the government.

Another important lesson I learned from the Chicago years was, "Art ain't what I thought it was." The quote is from my best friend during those turbulent times, Nelson Dodson. I spent many long hours with him and mutual friends, Jack Stone, Georgia Wulff and educator, Maggie Phillips, discussing survial in our rapidly changing world of war, sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. It changed my life forever: The exploration is more about self-discovery and the journey of one's Creative Lifespirit.

I returned to Montana and earned my Master’s degree in art at the University of Montana, Missoula in 1972.

The print department at U of M was headed by a genius, Don Bunse, who in 1957, along with a group of fellow-artists, developed the collagraphic form of printing.  Bunse guided me farther into the world of photo silkscreen; color registration and the dimensions of collage as print. Walter Hook, internationally renowned watercolorist, helped me hone my skills in drawing; Rudy and Lela Autio made pottery come alive and became friends, while James Dew and Maxine Blackmer championed my causes, especially when I joined others in revealing some department faculty in a sex scandal involving better grades for sex.

With Chicago and the University of Montana behind me, I created the first image for the magnificent Montana Wildlife Collection while working with Bernie Rosenblum, an energetic and brilliant photographer.

I completed the remaining four animal portraits, had the series of five printed as a Limited Edition, and the same weekend that Eddie Bauer in Seattle purchased hundreds of prints of the animal portraits, I was served divorce papers.

Two Missoula county deputies forcibly removed from my home and studio, drove me six miles from my mountain studio, and then told me to get out of the squad car two miles from town.

The loss of family impacted me enormously. I missed my kids and was given scant blocks of time each month to see them. The separation showed in my artwork and one piece haunts me even today.

I survived this dark and painful event of being thrown out not realizing at the time the bleakness of the Missoula days were just an omen.

To go on I needed to move away and collect the pieces of me that hadn’t been ground into ashes.

Back to Careless

I moved back to the foothills where I grew up, and with Tex’s help, went to work for Mike & Lenore Gross at the Texaco station in Harlowton. From time to time I helped my dad  with his cows on the Lower Careless Ranch.

On August 6, 1981 my twin brother told me my oldest son, Wade, didn’t make it. He was dead.  That information hit my head and heart like a 6’ long spud bar hurled as a javelin at light speed.

I was told the first of the five stages of grieving death and dying is denial followed by anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance; however, I believe the first stage is the numbing that begins at the toe and finger tips, buzzes the cheeks, and engulfs the body leaving only the eyes and mind to register stunning shock; and then the scream, “NO!!!”, thus, denial becomes the second stage of grief. The hole in my being from the loss was so enormous I could not find any edges to pull toward me to mend it.

After the August days of blackness blurred into months and years of boozy indifference, I took stock of my atrophied creative accomplishments. I looked at the warm fuzzies in sunlit corners and the painfully safe, if not inept, landscapes cranked out since the promising and hopeful period of showing and selling at the Charlie Russell Auction in Great Falls, and the display and sales of my artwork at Expo ’74 in Spokane, and all I could I feel was despair.

My work lacked everything artworks should have. There was no energy or spontaneity. And I grew more frustrated and felt alienated. My Aunt Jessie Zeier allowed me to move a trailer on to a patch of land next to the Careless, and would help when she could. I had an extended family, a network of good friends,  the Shiotanis, the Wallaces, the Harmons, the Straights, Ron Pogue, Dean Breitinger, John Ebberson, and my oldest friends from Missoula, Gene and Tes Thompson, who helped me through the days of the funeral and gave me the most important perspective on grieving uniquely.  There wasn’t much they could do to help me move through the phases of Child Death Loss, and even less to inspire my creative spirit, except to be there, encourage me to go on, and remind me to be gentle with myself.

My brain said it was nonsense, but in my heart I blamed myself for my son's death. If only I had kept him home that summer; if I'd had work for him he wouldn't have gone into the Williston Basin to work; if... if... if. I was trying to make sense of senselessness and I spiraled downward.

Money was short and when I did get my hands on a few dollars, I’d buy a fifth of whiskey, twist the top off and throw it into the Careless Creek. Staying drunk for four years was taking its toll. Termination by ethanol is slow and painful; and very expensive.

I did learn that while there are laws and lawyers and judges, there is no guarantee there will be justice in corrupt courtrooms where the participants can be bought. All you need is a ton of money.

A courtroom is not a place where truth and innocence inevitably triumph; it is only an arena where contending lawyers fight not for justice, but to win. Clarence Darrow.