No Contest
an excerpt

“CHAPTER ONE
“Lord, how I wanna go home,” Bobby Bare bemoaned through our car’s AM radio. He convinced me, setting off empathetic tears. At eleven years, eight months and eleven days, I knew firsthand how dreams could become prisons with invisible bars. Well, in Bobby’s case, the prison had liquid bars, but I could hardly pull off going honky-tonking with no facial hair.
“Last time I went through Cheyenne, they still had wooden sidewalks,” Dad admitted to no one in particular. Being a thirty-four-year old artifact, Dad had an awful lot of past to let slip. Five years so far in the Air Force, twelve before that in the Army-Air Force, two years fighting fires in the San Bernardino Mountains, nine years as a farm laborer in the valley; Dad had motives most people did not know existed. Opportunities, on the other hand, were something he usually had to sneak up and grab.
With ebony hair and eyes, beige complexion, Dad might have picked his heritage from parts of seven continents. But he knew nothing and didn’t claim much about his ancestral roots, which, I suspected, stifled any healthy disposition about his own particular limbs.
“…And go on back to the loved ones, the ones I left waiting so far behind,” Bare continued to unravel his folk-song mystery. The loved ones Dad left behind were impoverished not only fiscally but also affectionately. He grew up in an environment where he had to fight literally inside and out of his home for any societal position except the bottom. His five older siblings only passed along what they couldn’t sell to the “peonies.”
By age-seventeen, when he met Mom, Dad’s body already possessed ripples upon layers of dense muscle from all his backbreaking labor. The defenses he had developed – to guard the emotional parts of him – were nearly as packed. He had a runaway temper chased by a furious right jab.
Even though his self-image was somewhat tarnished, God forbid any man looked down his nose at Dad. He made no excuses for what he had grown to be, and considered himself no lesser a man than the next. Either a person accepted him that way or a person did not, phooey on a person.
Nevertheless, his charm with the ladies remained as smooth as a waxed paper cup. His childlike heart stayed malleable as warm loam. He took no delight in harming others, unless, of course, he caught them bullying a woman, child, or dog….

“They even had hitching posts in front of the stores!”
Mom – her nose buried in the Wyoming Cultural Guide – nodded her head to the sound of Dad’s voice. She knew not, cared less what she agreed to. If she did not fully understand the terms, how could she possibly be held accountable?
Unlike Dad, Mom grew up at a supportive, nurturing physical address. The Breedlove family had enough material assets to be comfortable. The youngest of seven, Mom inherited the lion’s share. She developed that fox’s flair on her own.
“They read the good book from Friday 'til Monday, that's how the weekend goes,” Jim Reeves resounded joyfully. Mom seldom mentioned how her Church excommunicated her paternal grandparents for asking too many theological questions. The ordained celibate type, they were told, were the only ones qualified to interpret scripture. The marital act had somehow scrambled her grandparents’ minds, those dearest of dears. Mom would never allow that to happen to her, though. Save sex for procreation and government, she professed; and let the bible be.
“…I've got a dream house I'll build there one day, with picket fence and ramblin’ rose,” Jim Reeves promised. Grandma Breedlove’s house was that kind of home. Encircled by the white picket fence, short white and yellow perennials and tall red roses; Grandma and Grandpa centered their lives wholeheartedly on the Liturgy, Sacraments and Vatican council. Obedience, hope and charity impregnated every part of Grandma’s home and yard like morning’s fresh chicory blend….

Mom met Dad on the Broadway southbound bus. He was on pass from Scott Field. She was out shopping. Dad followed her home; Mom introduced him to Grandpa, then took off into the house to join her sisters helping Grandma with supper.
Even at that first awkward meeting; having the Breedlove boys sicced on him; Dad felt more welcome, comfortable among Mom’s family than he had anywhere before. To marry into the family, though, which was his only option if he wanted to keep spending time with Mom, he had to first catch up with Mom’s advancement in the Catholic ecumenical system.
At an unceremonious pace, therefore, he “received” his Baptism, Confirmation, First Holy Communion and Penance. With that out of the way, Grandpa granted his blessing for Dad and Mom to tie the double knot. The rest, as they say, is family history….

Johnny Cash had taken his turn at the radio’s helm.
“Hear that lonesome whippoorwill, he sounds too blue to fly…” I went back to gazing through our new two-tone blue Dodge 440 nine-seater wagon’s rear tinted glass. Feeling lonesome sure beat feeling nothing at all. I suppose that’s why I liked sad songs and that adrenaline rush associated with tall bike ramps, fast cars, and grand larceny… but I’m getting way ahead of my story….

As soon as Dad announced his reassignment to F. E. Warren Air Force Base, I began to read up on the area. According to the Cheyenne Chamber of Commerce literature, confirmed by what I could now see; the area around Warren constituted a high-elevation desert. Before the advancement of the railroad in the 1860’s, no one but a few displaced Indians showed much interest. But, it was the most direct route to join the east and west coasts, so in 1867 the Union Pacific railroad decided to make Crow Creek Crossing – the original name for Cheyenne – their mountain region headquarters. If those steam locomotives were going to chug, chug, and chug; they needed lots and lots and lots of water.
As soon as the Union Pacific announced their intentions to build their headquarters there, President Lincoln ordered the 30th Cavalry to build a military fort near Crow Creek Crossing to guard the Union Pacific….

“That famous day in history the men of the 7th Cavalry went riding on,” reported Larry Verne. “…And from the rear a voice was heard
– A brave young with a trembling word –
Rang loud and clear,
“What am I doin' here?””
“Please Mr. Custer, I don’t wanna go!” Princess – my oldest sister – rolled her eyes.
“Can’t you find a better station?” Princess moaned.
“Forward, Ho!”
“Aaww.”
“Rah, rehear,” Dad imitated a slide steel guitar just to further antagonize Princess. He grinned like the Cheshire cat as he watched her reaction through the rearview mirror.
It was not her fault; Mother Nature made all female lower-to-mid teens’ faces appear very distraught and tormented when they were in the company of their parents and/or younger siblings. The oldest of five one-after-the-next siblings, Princess had to share the responsibility with Mom of raising the rest of us. So, what nature had put there was quadruple reinforced by personal experience.
Even though Princess showed the symptoms of a typical fifteen-year-old female, however, she was actually quite mature for her age. Good or bad though that be, she was destined to remain wholesomely middle-aged for the rest of her life. If to forego old age was a fair trade for skipping youth, she at least broke even.
Princess’s genetics somehow avoided Dad’s temper, Mom’s insatiable nature. She inherited only the best traits of both parents, which made her a good candidate for Papal beatification, except for one minor inconvenience. One had to first die to become eligible….

Mom rolled through across a dial of mostly static, finally getting a clear signal at 95 Fabulous KIMN. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to,” Leslie Gore lamented in very upbeat fashion.
“Oh, YES!” Princess voiced her absolute approval. Mom turned the volume down.
“You would cry too if it happened to-oo you!”
My next-oldest sister Lilly, eyes shut tight, arms folded crosswise, pig tails bobbing to the music, annoyingly smacked her blackjack bubble gum.
Lilly always did have an “I don’t give a hoot” attitude. On the other hand, one could have just as aptly described Lilly’s attitude as “carefree.” Lilly was adventurous, loved to cast off the bands from every barrel of fun she discovered. She just had not learned to dispense the fun in harmless measures….

“Did you know that U-dub football was first-in-Conference this year?” chimed my older brother. Ferris managed to inherit all the Scotch-Irish roots none of us knew Dad had. Dad often teased that Ferris’s red hair and freckled face came from the milkman. When Dad felt particularly bald-faced, he’d blame Ferris quick-temper and acquisitive qualities on the milkman, too.
Two years disparity in age, Ferris and I were the differences between night/day. He loved contact sports but I loved cars. He enjoyed being the center of attention, whereas I was pathetically shy. He solved differences with his fists and heels; I preferred to use my feet to walk, run, or crawl away from confrontations; respectively.
Ferris had only mauled me a few times that I could remember. Even when I tried, I couldn’t remember feeling pain. Terror, now that’s another story….

“Huh?” James Junior grunted. A brother after my own heart, sleeping Jimmy had his head firmly planted in ribcage.
Jimmy probably shared more of my Mom’s physical traits than did any of us other kids, but he did have Dad’s pot belly. Like me and opposite our mom, however; he snubbed having any material thing that exceeded what he felt he needed or deserved, whichever was worth least.
Few eleven-year-olds – much less seven-year-olds – had already developed philosophical ideals, but it came from observing our parents fight over what Dad considered too many unnecessary purchases. We would sometimes take refuge in a closet, talk about whatever came to mind. Without ever intending to, we had already adopted a set of ideals that eventually kept us from acquiring retirement, savings, or bail money.
I shook my head no. “Nothing.”
Ferris being overprotective of his growing empire added fuel to Jimmy’s and my temperate fires. We despised what owning expensive stuff did to people.
We did not know – nor would realize for decades to come – that it wasn’t the stuff, actually, but their attitude towards it that tainted them. That being the case, we remained suspicious of any nice thing we happened to take possession of, especially if we started to enjoy it.
Jimmy’s and my anti-materialism acid test was; if we didn’t really care if our stuff got messed up, we were not being greedy. When in doubt, just mess it up.
Something we never ever discussed, on the other hand, was our own physical matter. As far as I knew, Jimmy still had his chastity. The guy who plugged me those times was an altar boy instructor, and Jimmy was still was way too young to serve, so I figured he was safe in that respect. With a difference of six years between him and Ferris, I hoped he would be safe from those issues, too….
“She’s my little deuce coupe, you don’t know what I got.” I sang along with the Beach Boys, crude as my singing was. I pictured a fender-less primer gray rod, roof chopped to where the windows where all I could see was the driver’s eyes and ears.
“Well she blows ‘em outta the water like you never seen, I get pushed outta shape and it’s hard to steer, when I get rubber in all four gears…” That was my main vice at age eleven. I lusted after speed. I wanted to get very pushed out of shape….
On this fine early summer’s date, Wyoming’s rich granite and crystal deposits shone, sparkled in the sun’s evening light. Like safe shores off in the distance; clean, luminous snowcapped mountains ascended through soft, feathery white clouds. So, I sure hoped, maybe this ‘permanent’ assignment would finally be the charm….

Hundreds of miles behind us now, I missed that yummy aroma of Aunt Lorraine’s kitchen. I craved the chatter of young cousins, old uncles at-play. I wished for the stunning rumble of Bobby’s ’49 Ford flat black Club Coupe, longed for the fear-quelling feel of Grandma’s calm feather bed.
Flat black club coupe, flat black club coupe, flap back cub cloupe; I practiced.
Thousands of miles before St Louis, I still ached for the soothing fragrance of Germany’s fresh-cut alfalfa. I longed for the time I could routinely trust adults and my peers. I regretted getting hold of the knowledge of good and evil….

“I was TDY from Scott Field for training,” Dad established. I actually understood he was still recalling his first, last, only previous encounter with Cheyenne. Being of few words, I had honed my capacity to listen and sort. “Nineteen-Forty-Seven. One hell-of-a-muddy mess!”
“That’s where I’m going to college,” Ferris assured us.
“Good, good,” Mom agreed.
“Ooh! Turn up that song!” Lilly requested….

CHAPTER TWO
“Randall Avenue, is that our exit?” gasped Dad. Mom, still engrossed in Sublime – her immediate romance novel – shrugged her shoulders.
“Randall or Pershing? There on the paper plate!” Dad’s foot feathered the brake pedal. While his index finger searched for the particular platter he wrote today’s directions and phone numbers on, Mom frantically piled wiener buns, corn chips, thermoses, road atlases and Sublime onto her lap.
“Oh, hell!” Tires screeched. The trailer’s tongue rose toward the back windshield; threatened to crush me. The pyramid on Mom’s lap tumbled to the floor with a crunch. The wagon fishtailed left, right, then shuddered, finally stopped. The trailer and hitch dropped back to their normal plane with a shriek, a loud clunk and a deafening silence.
White pungent smoke from our wagon’s tires continued north on I-25, but we who had safely stopped took a moment for contemplation, reflection, silent prayer and/or meditation. Mom and Dad exchanged icy glances, and Dad skillfully steered the wagon aft a few yards and askew onto the off ramp.
Starboard shone a tall white missile. Portside rested a brick security shack. Between the two highlights, arched above the four lanes with-center-median on a halo-lit channel-letter sign, we were bid, “Welcome to Francis E. Warren Strategic Missile Command”. Folks, our latest PCS move was a logistical success! Appropriate fanfare would be arranged at a later date.
Dad had to run into Base Housing Authority for “just a quick minute” to find out where we’d be staying. He returned twenty-three minutes later, not looking pleased with what he’d found out.
“They don’t have any units open on Sergeants’ Row at this time.” Mom kept reading her romance novel and did not look up. “Since I outrank the other members on the list, I’m first in line.” Mom still didn’t flinch.
“They do have a three bedroom flat that we can use until a five-bedroom comes open.”
“You told me back in Germany we were going to have five bedrooms,” Mom flinched.
“No, I told you they put me in for five bedrooms,” Dad recalled politely. “We’re first on the waiting list, dear.”
“Well, James, they can take their waiting lists and make paper planes. There’s no way we’ll all fit in a three bedroom,” she said, one syllable at a time. Any time she called him James, it meant he clomped with hot hooves on progressively thinning ice.
“We’ll make due, pumpkin. It will only be for a month or two.” He never caught on that to try to rationalize with her was like peeing into the wind.
“Wasn’t that what you told me about Baumholder? We ended up staying there more than a year.”
“We had to extend in order to finish with Princess’s braces. Re-member?”
“Well, I’m not living in a three bedroom with all these kids!” Her volume stayed the same, but the emphasis she put on each word was harder.
“What choice do we have?” Finally, without meaning to, Dad had asked the right question.
“We can get a house on the economy.” Her confident tone showed that she’d already decided what was her best, only solution.
“On the economy” meant off the airbase, where rent was more expensive. Regardless the cost, though, if her mind was made up, Dad had best find a way to afford it.
“With what? Dad thought out loud. “We put all of our savings down on this car.”
“And that’s my fault?”
Dad did not reckon it was his fault; he had wanted to get that white ‘59 Pontiac nine-seater the Dodge dealer had just taken in trade. Let someone else take the initial big hit on depreciation.
“I didn’t say that. There will be deposits, and rent in advance. We just don’t have the discretionary money.” Dad turned a little red but still spoke calmly as a hero of his caliber could be expected.
“We could borrow it from my folks.”
“I’m not going to do that!” Veins bulged on Dad’s forehead. He had his principles. Never to borrow from a relative topped the list. Married to a half-Cajun, though, his principles usually kept him in the same predicament as a crayfish near boiling water.
“Well, you can stay in your little three bedroom Air Force dump with the kids. I’m going back to San Louis.” She meant Saint Louis, but she always said it wrong even though she was from there.
“Damn the luck, Felicity!” Dad trembled, choked the steering wheel. Mom locked her jaw shut from the inside and propped herself against the passenger door.
I felt so sorry for Dad. I knew he basically worshipped the ground Mom walked on. He'd do literally anything she wanted, once he figured out what that was. That was exactly his problem, though; the practical side of him was always figuring. What she wanted got rejected before it even came up for consideration.
Not that being practical was a bad thing, but it sealed Dad’s fate of having to suffer through yet another of Mom’s tantrums that led to yet another expensive purchase. The outcome would be the same; just the road getting there could have been much easier if he would have just said yes to begin with.
In the interim, my sisters shared one room. My brothers and I crammed into the second bedroom. Since there was only room left, my parents put their twin beds in there….
Wherry housing could have been less boring, but I do not know how. The first week or so, I mostly ate clover and watched one of our neighbors build a utility trailer out of a single wheel drop axle. Ferris hung out at the gym and indoor swimming pool. Lord knows where Lilly was. Princess kept track of Jimmy, cooked our meals. Alone in her bedroom, Mom buried herself in romance novels and real estate brochures.
No sooner did we get our beds and stuff from Germany set-up, another moving van with our storage stuff that we didn’t take overseas showed up. Since we had not seen any of the stuff for more than four years, it seemed like Christmas in July.
Motor-head that I was; I promptly worked a deal with Dad to purchase the family’s old lawn mower. The mower had parked in the rain before going in storage, so it had enough rust to pass the anti-materialism test; tool and machine chapter. The law was not actually written anywhere, but nevertheless stated that owning tools or machines would not be considered materialistic unless their aesthetic usefulness overshadowed their functional value. The biggest, fastest, loudest machine could pass the materialism acid test hands-down, provided it was ugly.
Dad agreed to let me finance the mower’s whole purchase price of five bucks. He agreed to forego any finance charges and interest, provided I mow our lawn free until he could find a new mower on sale at Sears. I did not let-on, but I was hoping he would allow me to cut our grass, anyway. What good was having a mower without a lawn to test it on?
I wasted no time arranging a trip to the Base library where I checked a book out on two-cycle engine performance modifications. Dad, having repaired TV’s back in St Louis on evenings and weekends for my Uncle Smokey’s appliance store, he had all the stuff I needed to dismantle the motor.
Since the boys’ bedroom was so crowded, I had to work on the mower in the storeroom. I only came out of the closet to eat, went right back in.
To my great delight, Dad’s toolchest included a powerful half-inch drill, a high-speed die grinder, and plenty of military-surplus emery paper for lightening the reciprocating parts and polishing the ports. Warning, though, when operating powerful drills with switches in the locked position, never leave much slack in the power chord. More than once, I became intertwined.
That Clinton two-stroke sounded great when I got it back together. It cut even better, provided I kept the motor wound tight. Otherwise, when the mower hit tall grass, the motor stopped like a bug hitting an upright windshield.
At seven thousand Revolutions Per Minute, I could practically run behind the mower and still cut a nice thick lawn. I could even cut the lawn evenly, provided I kept the blade razor-sharp. I could cut a Wherry-sized yard, front and back, in five minutes flat, provided I did not use a grass catcher.
At more conservative RPM’s, however, the mower under load would do nothing but the shake, sputter and stall. Furthermore, because the Clinton’s blade turned at such a high rate of speed, the mower spit more grass to the chute than the engineers had intended.
That being the case, unless conditions were perfect, the chute to the grass catcher would stop-up in just seconds. The mower’s undercarriage would clog up and the motor would fall on its face.
Try though I did, I never found a way to modify the mower’s undercarriage and chute in such a way to fix the problem. Conditions were rarely perfect, and I hated stopping every few minutes to dig out a clog.
“You should have left the damn thing alone!” Dad encouraged. “Machines never work right after they’ve been jimmy-rigged.” I remained quiet, gazed at the inverted mower, wondered how he arrived at that belief.
But, it works just fine! I just have to work out a couple of kinks.
I finally decided the lawnmower’s trouble was actually one big one called “the grass catcher.” After I “lost” it, I had no more problems….
Another of the hurdles I had to clear when getting my lawn business going was the fact that ‘natural’ lawns in Wyoming rarely grew more than a few inches-per-year. Wyoming’s cold, dry climate was not conducive to ‘nice lawns;’ so it took a lot of water, fertilizer and Mother Nature’s explicit consent.
The majority of the people living in Government quarters were not conducive to paying for fertilizer much less water. The ones who’d been raised in lush climates usually had to pay to get rid of both. The ones who’d grown up in barren environments had grown accustomed to having dirt yards.
Hence, the few people in quarters with nice plush lawns had them because they were gardener-type people. Unlike regular people, gardener-type people, did not mind spending their children’s inheritance on fertilizer and water.
By the same token, gardener-type people were not about to risk their laborious investment to a ten-year-old wielding a rusty mower that sounded more like a chainsaw on steroids.
There it was. A few of my neighbors preferred to trim their beloved plush lawns themselves. Most of my neighborhood was too cheap to buy water and fertilizer. Even when the ‘natural’ lawns finally did grow their few measly inches, they had already their month’s paychecks on weekly beer-bashes and barbeques. Ah, but not all hope had been lost.
In comparison to all but the ritziest civilian neighborhoods, military housing had many, many rules. One of F. E. Warren’s regulations dealt with so-called ‘neglected lawns.’ When part or all of one of the ‘natural lawns’ became tall enough to qualify as ‘neglected’ by code, the base issued the ‘sponsor’ resident a warning.
The sponsor(s) was/were the military-member(s) who signed for the house. If the situation was not resolved pretty darn quick, the military-member got a citation; not the kind to pin on one’s uniform. If the service member was serving in Vietnam at the time while his family elected to remain in Wherry, (s)he still got the citation. There is nothing like a lot of stress over a domestic matter to make an airman more “conditioned” for war.
From there, it only got worse. Notes to the sponsor’s commanders, big fines, and possible expulsion from base housing all followed. There was, however, an upside to the situation for me.
Between the times the owner of the neglected lawn received a warning and the airbase stepped in to mow the grass themselves, my good neighbors were suddenly willing to pay me five bucks to cut their lawns just this once, which was double or even triple what I would have charged to cut their grass all summer! What did I know? I was just an eleven and three-fourth-year-old kid!
Mowing without a grass catcher, my high-output mower sprayed grass through the chute like a cannon. If any creatures stood within its twenty-foot range, they felt like I had just blasted them with buckshot. I learned to keep beer-bashers, barbequers and passers-by that I did not particularly dislike warned to stand clear.
I also became very skilled at always keeping the grass chute pointed away from pets and windows. It would never do to mow a lawn for a couple bucks; have to replace a cat for five or a window for ten.
Finally, mowing neglected yards gave me lots of experience in replacing blade and flywheel sheer pins, drift keys, flywheels and blades.
“Why didn’t you pick up the yard before mowing?” Dad asked repeatedly. Time and again, I silently gazed at the mower; thought about all the empty beer bottles, discarded bones, derelict toys my Clinton had reduced to tiny flakes, chips, splinters, shavings. Pleeez! What fun would that be?