I Have Lost my Love of Fire. Years ago, I took delight in a campfire while backpacking... Or in the fireplace at my parents house... But now that wildfires have destroyed three of my friends homes... It's not fun anymore!

I really noticed this on the 4th of July when people were setting off fireworks and firecrackers and guns and bombs... And I just wanted it to stop... I was concerned that some idiot was going to set the forest on fire in our neighborhood and we would have to evacuate... 

https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents

When I was a kid and we had family gatherings I always built a fire in the fireplace and included a few Buckeye seeds... A few minutes later the seeds would POP surprising the people at the Gathering... Harmless fun that worked well if I didn't tell anybody what was going on and then all of a sudden pop!

Looking back, that probably wasn't a whole lot of fun for people who were War veterans or had the possibility of suffering a heart attack due to a surprising noise... But I was a kid and it was just something I did... 

I planted that buckeye tree in the backyard. I was hiking in the mountains behind Los Gatos up past the Novitiate and found some sprouted Buckeyes. I brought three of them home and planted them in the backyard and one grew up to be a tree... And then when we sold the house the new owners cut it down to build a McMansion... You can see from recent Satellite photographs that it's not there. 

I also remember the giant bonfires at the Utah Rainbow Gathering... About a quarter of the trees in the forest had died due to some kind of insect... So the Rangers chainsawed down many trees... And the hippies gladly pick them up and put them in the bonfire... And a whole bunch of people would play the drums... And dance... 

Our version of time travel... back to 10,000 years ago when we lived in caves... And fire and drumming was a way to keep the saber tooth tigers away... I also feel that that Grateful Dead song "drums/space" was a time travel event... Especially if you're high on LSD... One time in Maryland there was a thunder and lightning storm and the power went out at the concert venue... Electric guitars are silent without electricity... But the drummers just kept on beating away... And I swear they timed the rhythm of the drumming to the lightning thunder flashes... You know that famous Tom Tom fill... batter batter, batter batter, batter batter --- BOOM!

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The sad story of a boy and his dog on the 4th of July.

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When I was about 6 years old my parents got a toy collie dog for me... It lived in the backyard of our house and slept underneath the deck in a special area that we had lined with eucalyptus leaves and berries so it would be flea free... 

We had a fence that blocked the backyard off that was tall enough so the dog could not jump over it. One fourth of July we went over to a friend's house and enjoyed the "world famous" chocolate chip cookies baked by their son, Kit... barbecued hot dogs and ice cream... We set off our own fireworks but also admired the big displays at San Jose State that we could see in the distance... 

When we got home the dog had vanished... And then a couple of days later the police called and said that our dog had been run over on Highway 9 on the 4th of July... Evidently the loud explosions in our neighborhood caused enough fear in our dog so that he was able to jump over the fence... 

And we never got another dog, and I never got another dog for the rest of my life... But the only thing that is wonderful about this story is the memory of the "world famous" chocolate chip cookies that our friend's son baked... And the barbecue hot dogs and ice cream... 

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My experience with having a dog as a child was that it was just more trouble than it was worth. Sometimes the dog would follow me to school and I would have to walk home from school and make sure he was locked in the backyard so he wouldn't follow me again... When we were hiking in the mountains behind Los Gatos the dog would run around in the bushes and get poison oak oil on his fur... And then later I would pet the dog and the oil would rub off on me... I found that swimming in the chlorinated swimming pool was a good cure for poison oak skin disease... And acne!

I think my parents were just part of that generation that was raising up baby boom children and following the instructions in Dr Spock's book... And an American boy should have a dog... Part of the traditions of Life in the suburbs... 

They also bought a parakeet and dad had tropical fish... The parakeet would repeat a sentence that it heard often... " brush your teeth" - I guess Mom said that everyday after meals and the parakeet picked up on it... 

Anyway... I've never had a pet... My parents bought that dog and so it was really their dog... Mom fed it and Dad trained it to not go to the bathroom in the house... On occasion I would wash the dog... And then he would go roll in the dirt because he hated being clean... 

Much later I got married and Victoria really loved cats... So over the 20 years so we were together I must have lived with eight different cats... But I never cleaned the litter box nor fed the cats... My entire responsibility was ignoring them until it was time to go to the vet and then I had to capture the cat and put it in the travel bag... Sometimes that was quite difficult because the cat had Claws and was strong... 

Thankfully Victoria never had a dog while we were together... She had dogs with previous husbands... 

For many years we lived on the edge of a redwood forest and in the meadow out back we placed a salt lick... And many deer came and licked on it, enjoyed it and on one occasion we had a red fox...

The same company that made the salt lick also made a human grade spice out of the same materials... Basically salt, pepper and garlic... I really like cooking brown rice with that spice and a can of tuna... One of the few things I learned how to cook for myself... With white rice, you use one cup of rice and two cups of water... But with brown rice, you use one cup of rice and three cups of water... Bring the mixture to a full rolling boil, put a lid on the pot... And go do something else for 10 minutes... When you get back it's done... 

And that's the story of our dog Prince... 

Family photo. Karen, Robin, Greg, 

Martin and the dog Prince