Harry's here.

Harry gets marked (new/old flashback)

Harry stunned by the question, furrowed his brow, and choked back a bitter retort. Incredulous, he thought, why wouldn’t I feel it felt bad?
“I just do,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
Silently, he counted to ten and in those precious moments realized that his life was soaring away as if on the wings of a hundred wayward gulls. He forced his sore posterior from the inviting couch.

“Doctor,” he said in a too precise tone, “I have to leave…no, don’t try to stop me I have to do…uh, …what I have to do. Goodbye. I wish I could say thank you, well, I guess I could say thank you….Thank you.”

It was probably the most difficult thing our hero had ever done; more painful than facing a thousand vulture like gulls or a hundred toppling telephone poles, and even though his gut was twisting like pantyhose in the wind, he felt good.

He shut the door on the doctor’s querying, “See you next week, then?”

The stairs down from the recently vacated office were in stark contrast to its lavishly decorated interior. They creaked under his weight and the soft patter of rodent feet echoed behind each step. It was music to his ears. The door swung open under the renewed strength of his soul and when he stepped from the shadows, a beam of sunlight accentuated his rugged face as it caught the mark of a passing gull. Abruptly, the gull broke into a graceful 180-degree turn and nosedived toward him.





To be continued…

Harry off the Couch. (new/old material! - flashback continues)

The doctor said nothing. Harry continued his story. Then, while he calmly recalled a tale of steaming engine rooms, tall dark strangers with bad accents, teak decks and tight ropes he jerked convulsively, screamed and thrashed madly at his face. Memories of being bound, gagged and left as fodder for the gulls came screeching into his trembling ego. The doctor was startled from his sleep as Harry flailed and crashed noisily from the couch, finally collapsing into a writhing, heaving, hysterical, and very empty blob. He sobbed cathartically. After the tears had dried on his blotched face, much as the salty sea spray had dried on his parched lips decades earlier, Harry spoke.

“I remember now,” he stammered. “The captain left me on the deck, t…t…t…tethered,…tied. There were b…b…birds, g…g…gulls mostly, everywhere, the noise, the stench, it w…was unbearable. The s…s…sun was bl…blinding…and waves were p…pounding against the boat. The spray was splashing over me, at f…first, it was s…s….soothing, and it fr…frightened the gulls. But they’d come back, again and again and again, gouging and scraaa….ahh…aatching at my eyes and nose and toes and everywhere…anywhere and the salty spray would dry on the scratches and gouges and in the cracks in my l…lips and…it drove me m…mad with th…thirst and pain. I must have p…passed out because s…suddenly it was twilight and c…cold and somehow a rope was frayed. It must have been from their constant pecking…endless pecking…pecking… pecking…pecking!”



Harry buried his face in his hands and pounded the floor with his forehead. The doctor wondered if his hand-woven imported Turkish carpet would withstand the abuse, decided it would, and cleared his throat.

“Hmmm”, he said, picking at the small hangnail on his left thumb then rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

Harry slithered back onto the couch and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He gulped his way through a deep breath and stuttered as it seeped out of him. “I…It was pretty bad.”

“Let’s go with that,” said the doctor. “Why do you feel it felt bad?”

To be continued…

Harry on the Couch (new material from old - flashback!)

He had been exploring a newly acquired fear of seabirds with Teamsters appointed psychiatrist Dr. Bemay, consequently had endured many weeks dredging up painful memories of various exploits in his past. Indeed, through the horrors of hypnosis and the revulsion of regression therapy, he had been wallowing in old adventures best forgotten.

Then, one fateful day…he squirmed on the luxurious leather couch. The doctor, lounging out of sight, in the matching recliner behind him, nodded his head silently.

“There really isn’t any life like sailing, really, oh yes, trucking comes close on a decent highway…but you can’t beat the wind and waves, wet cold rain gear, eating beans for months on end, rope burns, sunburns, pirates. Pirates?”, Harry felt a vague chill of fear as he repeated the word and paused. He could hear the rhythmic breathing behind him, and wondered if the doctor had ever been sailing.

He considered asking but did not, recognizing that this was his dime and his time and with that recognition, Harry, once again, felt safe and warm, he breathed in the sensuous aroma of the leather, stretched, and sank deeper into the soft cushions.
His eyes closed and his mouth opened.

“One evening I watched the rigging snatch the last rays of sun like a giant spider web and hold them against the darkening sky, a few drops of rain began to fall…I stripped down and let nature’s shower wash the salt and sweat from my body.” A small tear passed unnoticed across Harry’s cheek. “It was… uh… truly …” His voice trailed off and for a moment the only sound was the distant caw of a gull sailing in on a breeze through the open window.











To be continued...

Betsy Betsy Bang Bang

Oh No, indeed.



But what of our hero steadfastly cruising toward the warm…Not warm! Cold. Cold water trickles down his back. He looks in the rearview mirror and is blinded by a glint of steel as it flashes down and out of sight. Quickly, he shifts Betsy into autopilot; she gathers momentum, faster and faster, at ever increasing speeds. She accelerates for a sharp acclivity near Whiskey gap and YES! YES! YES! Is airborne!!! A chorus of Betsy Betsy Bang Bang We love you, fills the air!






Sophia slips on the soapy teak floor and loses her grip on Harry’s gleaming straight razor. It flies through the air and bounces off the cab roof and spins downward, open blade, toward Harry’s unsuspecting noggin.



It is crowded in the skies but Betsy’s smart radar laser auto navigational locator system is a top-notch product from Canadian Tire. She swerves around pronghorns pulling a large man in a sleigh and careens around white boomers similarly engaged. The G-force pushes Harry deep into his seat as the huge red 18-wheeler heads for home across the celestial splendor. He has broken into a hot sweat, which neutralizes the trickle of cold water on his back. He snuggles under his car blanket, checks the screen for blips, and takes a deep breath. He has almost forgotten the odd glint of steel while basking in the satisfying rush of adrenalin coursing through his veins. It reminds him of that last session with the psychiatrist…so many years ago.





To be continued….

Sophie soaks.

The black hole left by Sophia’s meteoric ‘drop of doom’, while regarded as an annoying pothole by the average tourist, became a Mecca for blonde schoolgirls and astrophysicists alike. However, dear readers, that is another story.




Meanwhile, Betsy torques along secondary highway number 37, a confident Harry at the wheel, a soapy Sophie sudsing in the Jacuzzi and the lively chorus of Jingle Bells reverberating throughout the cab. Harry’s voice - a likely candidate for a fourth tenor - mingles gaily with Betsy’s percussive pounding of the powdery pavement.


Sophia languishes, doing her face, applying Road Rash Repair, by Mary Kay - on special at $2.99 for the holiday gift-giving season.




She eyeballs Harry over the edge of the tub and sinks back. His powerful hairy toes turn her crank. In a flash, she sees Dr. Midas Maybe for what he is…an evil pencil-necked geek with a recently acquired auditory problem and propensity for rather dangerous wilderness games. Not that this was entirely new news to her. She had survived many other meetings with the master of masquerade. She rubbed the small scar on her forehead, drifted back in time, back into the frothy warm tub, and closed her eyes.



Images of a heavy oak door invaded her. Adorned with a brass plaque and proudly embossed with the psychiatrist’s name; it was swinging open under the renewed strength of someone’s –no- his -resolve. An image of the first ray of sun striking his face as he emerged from the shadows enveloped her. She remembered the moment when she recognized him; her hollow gasp muted by the splat of a passing gull. All of this and more swamped her memories, as the tub similarly swamped the floor. Then, memories blurred into a painful torrent of fists and feathers. What had happened? He had dodged and ducked behind the door, swiftly examined the gull, then flung it with an odd precision in her direction. She felt it; again, pierce her forehead at full force. Sophia plunged her head under the churning water, and rubbed her burning scar. Emerging, she popped opened her bottle green eyes allowing the single tear to trickle into the bubbles below. Had he knelt beside her limp body and vowed to right his wrongs or had her near death delirium deluded her? Dare she ask him? Does it matter? Wouldn’t it all stop if he ceased to be? Would she then be free?



She sneaks another peak at Harry and sloshes water over the edge of the tub. This hero dude, she ponders, ignoring the water as it trickles along the teak floor, has a thing or two to learn about a woman. Slowly she rises like Venus from the water, her green eyes glinting, the road rash freshly exposed by her recent plunge beneath the bubbles. Stealthily she reaches for Harry’s straight razor, and then, OH NO,…



To be continued…

Harry throws a wrench or two

Harry gave his head a shake. He was on the road again, with Betsy firmly under control and heading home for Christmas, nothing mattered now except the warmth of his … but wait, look! Betsy’s high beams screamed out at him. Caught in their light is a maiden in distress! She is tied to the top of a tree like a Christmas angel and under the tree a grinch-like figure is flinging flames at the foot of the fir! Horrors! Yes, it is Dr. Maybe! He is going to torch Sophia! Harry leans on his 500-decibel horn and throws on the Jake brake. The protests of Betsy’s pistons, as the Jake brake retards, thrusts cracks in the icy air like the hips of a thousand arthritic cows!




Dr. Maybe shrieks, clutches his head, and staggers into the forest primeval (yuk), his tattered eardrums blowin’ in the wind.






With the accuracy of an eagle at 10,000 feet, Harry hurls the wheel wrenches at Sophia’s bonds. Saturated with her sweet sweat, the icy air has frozen them as brittle as brides’ biscuits. The ropes shatter like crystal. Sophia falls splat onto the snowy road inches from Harry, as he fiddles with his Beclovent inhaler!

To be Continued...

What really happened that night in the campground...

He leaned toward her and brushed the still damp curl from her cheek. Their eyes didn’t meet. Though he searched for hers, she was firmly transfixed on the small bug inching its way across Harry’s broad shoulder. She squashed it and looked up. Their eyes passed each other like two drifters off to see the world, for now Harry had found a more intriguing sight. Nestled or tangled, he wasn’t sure, in her tresses, was a large grayish-yellow spider, carefully he plucked it from its nest and flung it across the tent. It hit the wall with a soft pop and slid into the folds of the waiting sleeping bag.

“Ewhh”, Sophie admonished, “couldn’t you throw it outside?”

“Later”, he said gruffly and reached toward her.

“Oh. Humffph”, she sighed, “I’ll get it then.” She grabbed the flashlight, found the wriggling victim, unzipped the tent, and stepped into the breezy night air.

"I'm going to give it a proper burial", she said and moved quickly away from the tent.

Then the green minty poison spun him into a fitful sleep.



To be continued or not….

What is she?

What is she?....1960's........click on What is she? above

Volkswagon!?????

But wait! Volkswagon sound system??/ How could that be?

Betsy runs away

It was the swooning nudge against her steering wheel that carefully guided Betsy into the runaway lane, subsequently allowing Harry to eradicate the centrifugal gyrations of his body, plop himself firmly into the driver’s seat, wipe the blood from his eyes and ease her to a gentle rolling stop. Harry patted her dashboard and leaned back into her soft leather. Her idling motor sang harmonies with the Christmas carol cascading softly from her Volkswagen Phaeton 9VE Sound System.






“Hmmm, hum, humm. De dumm dee dum”, murmured Harry as he searched for the wet wipes.

Oh yes, clearly, Harry was no 67 pound weakling. Along with his other sterling attributes he owned Betsy due to a strict monetary code. In fact, his first heavy readings, (the book always clutched firmly in his little pabulum encrusted fist) were the adages at the bottom of his first savings account passbook. “A fool and his money are soon parted.” and “Opportunity comes to those with ready cash.” were permanently imprinted on his little gosling brain. (Pro Scrooge?)



These bon wits formed his financial credo. The dough he earned, as a teenager, selling 'quake' insurance in S.F. for the firm of Rigor, Mortis and Stone was stashed with the lettuce he made busking on Haight-Asbury during his lunch breaks. And when he saw Betsy, the time was right and the cash was ready. He peeled off the sawbucks while the salesman’s eyes yo-yoed! Yes-dear hearts, (or Virginia), there is a little Harry Hero in all of us, the good, the bad and the klutzish. However, enough of this maudlin psychoanalysis!



To be continued.

Footprints in the Sand

The tap of Betsy’s steering wheel on his forehead knocked at the door to Harry’s dwindling consciousness. The vague views of her floor mats pried at the windows to his vanishing awareness. More molten memories meshed with his receding reality and he was lost once more to the years gone before.
Where was he now? An empty road, off in the distance, barely visible, a small house, sat shimmering like a mirage. Suddenly upon it, he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the truck, and examined the slightly damaged dollhouse apparently lost and forgotten in the middle of the deserted pavement.



Harry hugged himself as the painful images played before him. There he was, struggling with the heavy cable, winching the dollhouse on to Betsy’s trailer, watching, then running, as the telephone pole snapped and fell in slow motion toward him. He flinched as the memory hit him like a ton of bricks or like a few thousand pounds of telephone pole.



A spray of sand rained around him. Now it seemed, he walked, leaving only faint footprints in the sand that dissipated with the rays of the setting sun. The wind was soft and warm. Then there were golden locks blown askew and left as one with the sandy soil. The parallel tracks across her abdomen led to a distant puff of smoke.
Unghuh. The muddled memories were too much and he succumbed to the blackness, hitting his head once more on Betsy’s steering wheel causing a slight rightward shift in the direction of her mighty Michelins. Still, she trundled onward.



To be continued…