Chasing Rainbows And Similar Acts of Foolishness

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Find out how Marcus and Terri grow up and face their own nightmares and challenges in this poignantly heartrending novel by author Judith Woodson. In this riveting fiction,. In this riveting fiction, you'll witness a suspenseful drama unfold.

Discover how love, lies, hate, sex, deception, and anger lead to a tragic death. We will send you an SMS containing a verification code. Please double check your mobile number and click on "Send Verification Code". Enter the code below and hit Verify. Free Shipping All orders of Don't have an account? Update your profile Let us wish you a happy birthday! Make sure to buy your groceries and daily needs Buy Now. Let us wish you a happy birthday! Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Month January February March April May June July August September October November December Year One day when Daddy stopped there on his milk route, this feller came out of the store with a rifle in his hand and threatened to kill Daddy.

Daddy happened to have his own rifle in the car and didn't want to die without a fight. He reached up behind the seat of his Model-A roadster, and got his rifle out. The gun was a model Winchester. When he levered a shell into the chamber, the gun went off, and the bullet went real close to the old store-man's head. The man died a few days later, possibly from the concussion.

Chasing Rainbows and Similar Acts of Foolishness by W. D. "Arizona" Kennedy - Hardcover

Daddy spent the night in jail for disturbing the peace, and went back to peddling milk the next day. He never did say if the old man's concerns were justified or not. Knowing Daddy, they could have been. Along in early , when my older brother, Charlie, was working on a farm not far from Willcox at Kansas Settlement, a black man and another young feller went in a little store up there and killed the widow-woman that owned and operated the place. I guess they took all the money they could find, and then tried to burn up the evidence. I guess it didn't take the sheriff's department long to figure out who did the job.

I heard at the time that the cowboys who caught the older feller roped and dragged him for a distance. They were thinking about hanging him, I guess, but they couldn't find a tall enough tree, or possibly cooler heads prevailed, and he lived to stand trial. I understand that he was executed legally several years later. I'm not sure what happened to his accomplice. When I started school at Bisbee High it was customary for the freshman boys to give the "B" a new coat of white-wash every year before the big "Turkey Day" football game.

This was always played against Douglas to decide who would retain the Copper Pick for that year. When the day came to do this job, we all gathered at the trail-head to the "B". A group of upper class-men, called the "Drillers", were assigned to keep us all lined out. I grabbed a water bucket, filled it with water and headed up the hill with fifty or sixty other boys doing similar jobs.

When we got up there we mixed some lime and water and started spreading it around the "B". About that time I had a change of plans. I grabbed a bucket and one of my good buddies and headed down the trail. I can't remember who it was that went down there with me, but I know as soon as we got out of sight of any drillers we male a mad dash to the best thicket we could find.

We had us a nice siesta for three or four hours while them other fifty or sixty boys did a bang-up job of painting the "B". When we thought the job was nearly done we went down and got one more load of water and were done for the day. All-in-all it was a good day. A couple years later I was honored to be a driller myself, and kinda wondered how many freshmen pulled the same trick we did.

We as Drillers also had the job of lighting the "B" on fire on Thanksgiving night. We carried tons of old greasy rags up there and outlined the "B" with them and set them on fire. I don't know if they do that anymore or not, but it was a pretty sight to see. Those were some of my good times at Bisbee High School. We had an Okie credit card , and some of the trucks loaded with cotton had to spend the night there.

It was Grandma Turman, and Jiggs, coming back to move the rest of their belongings. They came in the house and stood right beside the bed we were under, and discussed whether to start loading stuff right away, or to wait 'til the next day. Grandma even started to get her broom and start cleaning, but decided against it.

They only stayed for ten or fifteen minutes, but that's a long time when you're holding your breath. If any of us had eaten pinto beans that day, or had a cold, we would have probably ended up in front of a judge. But we managed to get by without getting caught. When they finally left, it didn't take us too long to get out of there. And we made sure they were gone for good before we ever went back.

That was the last time I saw Jiggs Gibbons' feet for about fifty or sixty years. He still lives in California, and he came through the country down there when Charlie was on his death bed. We had a nice visit, but you can bet I never told him "the rest of the story. We got up there and found a full case of dynamite in an old mine tunnel, that some careless prospector had abandoned, probably at least twenty four hours before we got there. There was also a nice roll of fuse, and a nearly full can of blasting caps.

We couldn't leave anything that dangerous laying around, so we loaded it up in the rumble seat compartment of that old Ford, and hauled it home with us. I sat on that case of powder all the way home, 'cause I knew it was safe. The blasting caps were up in the front with the older boys. Anyhow, we made it home with our cargo, and had a bangup good time for several weeks. We blew up a lot of stuff, but I think the only real damage we did was to Daddy's cement water tank. The families of the community got together on week-ends at the time.

We played baseball on some vacant property up the road about a quarter mile from our house. One day while we were up there playing ball, I happened to look down toward the house, and saw a big geyser go up in the air down there. A few seconds later I heard the explosion. It didn't take me too long to get down there, 'cause I didn't want to miss out on the fun.

It was Clifford, and we set off a few more charges before Daddy showed up and told us he thought that dynamite might be hard on his pond. We didn't see how it could hurt it because the water went so high. We found out the next morning that the Old Man was right. The pond was empty as my head. We got some cement and tried to patch it, but it it never did hold water very good after that. Along toward the end of the school year of , I had a run-in with one of my teachers, and it kinda soured me on school.

Old Lady Shreve junior English teacher gave us an assignment that I was not able to complete. We had to write a theme and typewrite it. I didn't know how to typewrite, and wasn't going to impose on anyone to do it for me, so I handed in an unfinished theme, written in ink. I still had several weeks of school, but I knew I was doomed, so I quit handing in my work. She called me on it one day, and I informed her that I wasn't getting paid for my work, so I wasn't doing it. She sent me to study hall and I never looked back. Since I knew I was not likely to return to good old Bisbee High School, I decided a few days before school let out,to give them a going-away present.

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases

My brother, Clifford, and Bobby McDonald had a bunch of coon dogs they were trying to train. They used skunk musk in a bottle to teach them not to chase skunks. I just borrowed a little bit of this training fluid, and spread it around the halls of B.

A few people knew who did it, and after that I was known as "the skunk of Bisbee High". That was the end of my academic achievement, although I did get a G. Certificate when I was living in Mitchell, Oregon, thirteen years later. I've never had occasion to use it. I worked there a month or two longer and had a chance to go to work for the State Highway Department, and took it. I worked there for almost three years before I got my next wild hair. Things went along pretty smooth until the fall of , when things happened that shouldn't have happened, and things were a little shakey for a while.

We worked things out, and by the time spring rolled around, I was ready for a new adventure. Highway work was a little boring. A few days later, when they stopped by on their way back to Arizona, they were still on speaking terms.

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Really, we all had a good laugh and they went on about their business. None of my family has ever taken life too serious. That winter we had several nice trips around the area down there. We went to Tombstone and spent the day once, and I know we all took a trip the mountains to look for "Curly Bill's" treasure at least once.

We have looked for that treasure off and on for close to fifty years. The saddest time of my life was in , when I spent three days in the psychiatric ward of the Bend, Oregon hospital, for simply trying to make a political statement albeit somewhat unorthodox.

Chasing Rainbows and Similar Acts of Foolishness

When I boarded the plane for my R and R, I warned the security guard that a knife in the wrong hands could possibly be dangerous. Maybe I wasn't as crazy as everybody thought I was.

I would like to be able to repay that if I am ever able. I guess by now you have figured out that I come from a long line of intellectuals. On her twentieth birthday, January 3, , she had a marriage that lasted a little longer. That is when she married Daddy. That marriage never failed. They spent their first winter in a make-shift tent made from an old discarded rug, and were happy as if they had good sense. One day when he was working at the air base, he brought home a flight helmet all covered with blood, and a tip off an airplane propeller.

It seems like some pilot had gotten too close to the airplane propeller, and had lost his head, literally. We had those articles around the place for several years. Charlie even tried to fly on a bicycle one time. He had picked up a bicycle over in Double Adobe that had garden hoses for tires. They were wired on with baling wire, and worked pretty good in a pinch.

One day he built him a ramp out of two-by-twelve boards, and I think he just piled up dirt to elevate the high end. He made a few trial runs, and was getting some pretty good distance on his jumps. So he raised the ramp a little. He went up the road a couple hundred yards to get the maximum speed and was on his way to a record jump. When he got about twenty feet from his ramp, giving it all he had, his head hit the ground and both wheels went straight in the air. He kept peddling for a while till he figured out that he was losing traction, and then let the bike fall on it's side.

I would have had to laugh if it would have killed him, but it was more fun to watch him get up to see what had gone wrong. It turned out that one of the wires that held them garden hose tires on had broken and the hose had hooked up in the front fork of the bike. I think he benched that project till he got better tires. About a year and a half before Charlie died, he cut the first joint off three fingers on his left hand while working on a lawn mower.

He thought for a while that his fiddling days were over. It didn't hold him back for long, however.

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