Heading For The Orange Zone, Heavily Armed

There was a time in my life.  Could’ve been a dream.  Nightmare.

Have trouble sometimes telling the difference.  Between real and imagined.  Still trying to make sense of it.

I cut my hair to a half-inch, grew a white beard, and am a REGISTERED Republican in Damnhill County. That said, we both know I am a dangerous man. The state’s enemy.

I had just decided to live my life like it was a TV commercial for blue jeans and the environmental president George Bush had just released for development a half-million acres of The Everglades and I wanted to see The Sea of Grass before it went condo.

Why Florida? Got to be someplace. Might as well be warm.

Thoreau walked into the woods a few mile out of town. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I had not lived.”

I took to the open highway. There’s an existentialism about the road.

Hitch a ride.

I bought the shotgun after an incident where I was sitting in the sun on my porch one bright Portland morning having brunch with a couple of my closest friends. Like family. Two rugged-looking guys come staggering out the apartment building’s front door. Stinky and yawning, they walk right past us.

We knew how to party in that building, so we’ve seen some harsh stuff. This looked hinky. Something was wrong. I just knew to look in the basement. That’s where they’d spent the night. On a pile of cardboard behind the washer and dryer. In the basement under my bedroom.

Something smelled gross. There against the wall under my living room was a pile of shit. Human feces. Since I found it, I cleaned it up. In a town where the ex-governor of the state is emceeing the re-opening of Lloyd Center shopping mall, with James DePreist and the city’s symphony orchestra playing background music, there are people I don’t even know taking a dump in my house.

That about said it all, as far as I was concerned, about the state of the state.

I was basically in a very angry mood. I love Oregon. It’s what I must call home. For a variety of reasons, I haven’t been able to put it all together there. I’ve made many mistakes and I’ve drawn the short end of the stick. That’s history. I was out of control.

I decided to grow up. I’m almost there. The town is out of control. To prevent muggings, Portland cuts down the brush. Think about the wisdom of that.

I needed to get out of Dodge. Every single male with whom I discussed this adventure advised me to pack a piece. Granted, I run with best-selling true crime writers and world champion cross-country runners, lesbians and psychics and drug dealers and zookeepers and blues singers and exotic dancers and police chiefs and millionaire inventors, but about a half-dozen street-wise folks whose opinion I respect, all had the same suggestion.

“You’re going to take a gun, I hope,” I recall the police chief saying.

If you don’t know where you are or who you’re with, you’re not safe. Outside our daily turf boundaries, we are basically operating on faith.

I put the gun in the closet the moment we settled down in a safe place. We don’t lock the car at night. Hiawatha goes walking in the dark. We have The Black Gang providing security. We feel safe.

Once you agree that… feeling safe and actually being safe are different… that the former is a self-created assumption taken on faith …and the latter is the condition of being uniquely invulnerable to random violence… in a world where ten percent of the population actually becomes a victim of violent crime. Once I came to the conclusion I really had no conclusive answer to the question – Is carrying a gun a smart thing to do or was not carrying a gun the smart thing to do? – I wondered what my hero would do. And the thought came to me I might be able to save lives with THE DEFENDER.

Besides, I feel safer.

I carry a big stick and a long knife, too. And I have no question whatsoever of the wisdom of these tools.

Worrying about guns won’t solve the problems. Having a gun or NOT having a gun won’t necessarily keep safe you or your loved ones or your possessions. You just have to look both ways, rotate your tires, make wise choices and pray for the best. Cutting down the brush won’t stop the badguys, that’s just killing innocent bushes. This country should pay a great deal more attention to the people with cars. And cigarettes. And alcohol. And prescription drugs.

I digress. I wanted to create a fictional character for the book I am writing. I wanted to change my life. I decided the hero of my book would not go unarmed. I needed to research and I just did the obvious and actually both a piece worthy of hero. I needed to learn how to handle it. In more ways than one.

I also needed to be able to respond to good-hearted, intelligent friends, more pacific than I perhaps, who had well-thought-out reservations about such armament.

It is a well known fact I would not choose to harm a hair or a scale or a feather or a leaf on any of God’s magnificent creations. On the other hand, I’m not really a turn-the-other-cheek kind of guy.

I don’t mean to go on about this. The gun was the first thing some friends mentioned. I think, no pun intended, I may be a little defensive on the subject. It could have been some stupid, atavistic, male thing that could eventually lead to total catastrophe… I don’t know.

I am willing to agree I made a mistake. Maybe I should have kept the money.

Nightmare or not, a registered Republican in Damnhill? Must’ve been up to something.