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 THE OLANCHA BEAR HUNT
   by Bud LeRoy   (1 of 3)
 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


   Every so often a brilliant idea comes to you all at once. Most
 of the time it takes longer, like a beautiful sunrise. At first
 there is just the faintest hint of light, then gradually it grows
 into an aura of light-blue on the horizon until it ever-so- slowly
 becomes illuminated with the pure bright blaze of inspiration. But
 the ideas that come all at once are the best. They don't just come,
 they strike like a flash! And you are enthralled with your mind's
 ability to sort through the humdrum, day-to-day business of living,
 and then to hit you right between the eyes with such a strong desire
 that must be carried out! -- even at the behest of your friends and
 family not to do so. The Olancha bear hunt was just that kind of an
 idea.

   We had a restaurant about twenty miles south of Lone Pine, CA,
 at the foot of Mt. Whitney right on old Highway 395, where the high
 desert meets the High Sierras. It was a laid-back sort of life as
 there was not that much traffic during the week. It was fall and
 while there wasn't any snow on the ground yet, it was a little too
 cold in the higher elevations for camping, so I had time on my hands
 for the finer things like reading, fishing, playing piano and getting
 ideas.

   The local population consisted of some ranchers and a few
 businessmen who owned the two gas stations, one grocery store, and
 the one other cafe in town.

   There was also Bob Hensel, the beekeeper. He had a couple of
 hundred hives that he kept in a few select spots. One of these
 select spots was up against the mountains about two miles behind my
 restaurant on a gradual incline rising to maybe 1500 feet above the
 restaurant. Bob had gone to check on his beehives one morning and
 found that about twenty of them had been demolished -- I mean torn
 to ribbons! -- with bear tracks all around the destruction. The
 locals in the area said, that on occasion, the Forest Service moved
 troublesome bears from parks farther north and relocated them to the
 mountains behind our town of Olancha, where they couldn't bother
 anyone. In this instance, it didn't work.

   A day or two later at my place, over coffee, two of the local
 ranchers were discussing the bears. Bill Leads was about fifty five
 years old. He owned a small ranch on which he ran a few hundred head
 of cattle and grew about sixty acres of alfalfa. He and his son also
 owned one of the two gas stations in town. He'd been a contractor in
 L.A., but had come to the high desert to get away from the rat-race
 of the city. Bill was a WWII Veteran who'd spent a couple of rough
 years in New Guinea that he loved to talk about.

   Leon Boyd, the other man at the table, was thirty years old and the
 adopted son of a very wealthy rancher from Newhall, who, according to
 Leon, had found him in a line-shack up in the mountains, taken him in
 and raised him as his own son. But as Leon grew up he was a little
 more than the old man had bargained for. You see, Leon loved Budweiser
 . . . not the way most of us loved a cold beer now and again, Leon
 LOVED it! And the way it transformed him was almost a miracle.

   He was about 6'1", and he looked a lot like Montgomery Clift. He
 was quiet and unassuming, but after six or seven Budweisers, he took
 on all the characteristics of John Wayne, right down to the swagger
 and the mannerisms. Before 9:00 AM on any given day he was Leon. He
 could usually make it to nine before he had the first beer. But after
 a couple of them, he was pure John Wayne. No one really knew him that
 well because Leon didn't stay Leon for that long each day.

   His adopted father, either on his own or at the urging of local
 government, decided to move Leon way out of town. He purchased one
 hundred sixty acres of farming land for Leon  at the base of the
 Sierras. Eighty acres were planted in alfalfa, and eighty acres were
 pasture land for approximately forty head of Polled Hereford cattle.
 The alfalfa was irrigated with a watering system run by a big diesel
 engine that would water forty acres just by starting the engine. Then
 the lines had to be moved to water the other forty. The place was
 equipped with everything from a stocked trout stream to a brand new
 Heston Wind Rower. There was a double-wide trailer in which Leon's
 wife and two young sons resided. If he was living in exile, it was a
 pleasant one. I don't know if the place was profitable or that it was
 even supposed to be.

   I spent a lot of time with Leon. I was twenty four years old,
 with two small children of my own, and too much time on my hands.
 I totally enjoyed Leon in both his guises, although my wife didn't
 appreciate the drunken John Wayne quite as much as I did.

   I had finished cleaning up the kitchen, gotten a cup of coffee
 and, sat down with Bill and Leon just as they were discussing the
 bear problem.

   "Something needs to be done with that damn bear before it ruins
 all that old man's hives," stated Bill.

   "You're right," said Leon. "Somebody needs to go up there and
 shoot that son-of-a-bitch before it comes down lower and tears up
 something more serious."

   It was at this precise moment that the flashbulb of inspiration
 went off!

   "Hey you guys, why don't we go and get that bear? Hell, you
 fellas have hunted bears before haven't you? And I'd love to go on
 a bear hunt!" I said.

   As this point my idea of a bear hunt was a trip to the mountain
 with Leon and Bill, drinking a few Buds, and picking up a few
 arrowheads left by the Paiute Indians. You know, just a fun day with
 the good ol' boys. The idea that either one of them could ever find
 a bear was simply not in my realm of possibility at all.

   "What do you  guys say?" I asked.

   Bill took a big puff of his pipe and looked over at Leon who
 was trying to take a drink of his coffee, but the shakes from last
 night's beer were keeping the cup away from his lips. I could see
 that it might take a few Buds to get rid of the shakes and get the
 bear hunt on. It was still early in the morning, and Leon was weak.
 He worried about what his wife would say, and she always had alot to
 say. I had the feeling that she'd married the Leon part of his
 personality. I never could figure out how she'd gotten to know that
 part, however, as it wasn't around that much. But John Wayne was, and
 I knew HE wanted to go!

   "What do you think, Leon," asked Bill? "You know that I've got to
 butcher a steer tomorrow. I could  throw the stomachs in a tub and
 haul them up the hill. The next morning, before daybreak we could go
 up there and kill that old bear. Those cow stomachs will sure bring
 him down the mountain."

   "Well, I guess we could," agreed Leon, but without too much heart.

   "Why don't we go up there and see if there are any tracks left," I
 suggested, "And get some idea how big this rascal really is." Both
 men agreed.


   Leaving the daily business of the restaurant with my dad who
 co-owned it with me, we got into Leon's pickup. In the back he kept
 a lot of empty beer cans, and a two hundred fifty  pound anvil. I
 never knew what the anvil was for, I never even saw him use it. After
 he drank a few Buds, though, he always thought he was a road racer,
 so on both sides of the truck bed there were big dings and dents where
 the anvil's horn would bang from side to side. We hadn't gone down the
 street a hundred feet before Leon decided that we should stop and pick
 up a few six packs just in case we got thirsty on the way up the hill.
 We drove into the town of Olancha to Casey's Grocery Store to do our
 shopping.

   Old Michael Casey had probably been in the grocery business as
 long as there'd been groceries. He always knew what was going on for
 at least fifty miles in all directions from his store. He was a salty
 old man who had a constant grin, and a mischievous sense of humor.
 Everyone around, at one time or another, had owed him money for
 groceries on credit. If you told him that he had a soft spot in his
 heart, he'd tell you that it was in his head.

   "What've you boys been up to today?" he asked as we walked back
 from the beer cooler.

   "Not much, Mr. Casey," I answered. "We were just thinkin' about
 going up the hill to see those hives of old Bob Hensel's that got
 torn up by that bear. We figured maybe we would try to go up and
 shoot it before it ruined something more serious, or hurt somebody."

   "Hell, it already has ruined something more serious. It tore
 Jack Nye's shed all to pieces. He had him a side of beef hanging
 in the shed to cure when he heard all hell break loose out back of
 his house. He ran outside with his gun and seen a bear come right
 through the side of the shed! He fired once, but I don't think he hit
 anythin'," Mr. Casey stated. "There were two bears though. One was
 cinnamon-colored, about five or six hundred pounds. He didn't get a
 good look at the other one. You boys go up there after them bears,
 you be mighty careful! Old Nye mighta' missed him; mighta' not. A
 hurt bear ain't nothin' to fool with!"

   Bill nodded in agreement as Leon paid for the beer. I thought
 about bear hunting . . .

   We loaded up the ice chest with beer and ice, opened one each and
 headed up the hill. Bill took a big pull of his bear and asked, "Bud,
 you ever hunt a bear before?"

   "Nope," I answered. "Can't say as I have."

   "Bill, you?"

   "Yeah, a couple of times. Once I had a horse damned-near killed
 by one. Twenty years ago, when they used to take the cattle up in the
 high country to fatten them up on the good spring grass, I went along
 on a drive. We'd gotten the cattle to some nice grass up above
 Kennedy Meadows. Ben Hughs had a 'line shack' up there where we'd stay
 a couple of days at a time, then we would head back down, leaving one
 guy there for the spring. A couple of months later we'd take more
 supplies up and leave someone else to watch the cattle for the summer.

   Me and a couple of the boys were out hunting meat for camp
 when we came up on this bear cub. One of the boys got the idea of
 lassoing the little bugger. These boys was young and dumb, and I
 didn't have much more sense. So we lit out after the cub. He started
 bawling and trying to run for the trees, but we cut him off. We were
 about to throw the rope on him, when out of the corner of my eye I
 saw a big, brown blur. Something hit my horse right behind the saddle!
 My horse leaped and took off, and I almost got throwed. If I had been,
 I wouldn't be here right now. My horse was gashed with four claw
 marks, eight inches long and a quarter inch wide. The mother bear only
 chased us about fifty yards, but it was a long fifty yards.

   When we got back to the line shack this old hand named Salty
 was patching up my horse, and he told us that a few years back he'd
 been spending the summer up at the line shack. One evening, just as
 he heard a racket outside by the horses, the door of the shack seemed
 to explode inward, and there was a big old black bear was just
 standing in the doorway. Salty let him have both barrels of a .12
 gauge, loaded with double 'aught buck shot. The bear took off! The
 next morning he tracked it for damned near a mile before it finally
 bled to death. Bears are tough. You sure you want to go hunting them,
 Bud?"

   "Sure, he wants to!" chimed in Leon, who'd just finished off his
 second half quart of Budweiser. "Hell, there won't be anything to it.
 We'll just sit up there, and when that bear goes to get into them cow
 stomachs, we'll shoot him plumb dead."

   "Leon, you ever shoot a bear before?" I asked.

   "Nope, but I ain't afraid to, Pilgrim." he answered.

   "What if there's two bears?" I continued.

   "Same difference." Leon replied. (John Wayne was waking up.)

   As we pulled up to where the beehives were, any signs of a battle
 were long gone. Old man Hensel had cleaned up the mess. There were
 just a few pieces of honeycomb and hive scattered around the place,
 except that there were quite a few less beehives than I remembered.
 Even the bees had calmed down. I guess getting honey stolen is not
 that unusual for them. We got out of the pickup and started around
 the clearing to where the hives sat, with Leon and Bill looking at the
 ground for tracks. I was looking at the ground for arrowheads . . . .

   It was beautiful up here. There was a running stream, lots of
 trees, and a view that covered the whole of th Owens Lake area. Owens
 was a lake that had been drained in order to provide water to Los
 Angeles. Now it was just a dry lake bed that ran about ten or fifteen
 miles to the north toward Lone Pine, and about ten miles to the west
 towards Panamint Springs and Death Valley. When the Indians had been
 here it must have been quite a sight. On the site where our
 restaurant stood there had been a stagecoach stop, hence the current
 name, The Stagecoach Inn. That was all there was from the city of
 Mojave, clear to Lone Pine. The real John Wayne had made a number of
 movies in the area. Maybe that's why Leon loved it so much here, I
 don't know. But you could sure see why the Indians liked it. You had
 a bird's eye view of the whole area.

   "The old man's made a mess of the tracks," I heard Bill say, "But
 I can still see which way they went."

   "They?" echoed Leon.

   "Yep," stated Bill, "Two of 'em, and they look to be pretty fair
 size."

   Leon and I were moving around so we could see the tracks, even
 though I didn't know a bear track from a camel print, and I doubted
 Leon did either. But Leon squatted down over what Bill was pointing
 at just like he had seen John Wayne do so many times before.

   "Yep," he drawled, "They went that-a way!"

   On the way beck down the mountain I asked what kinds of guns they
 were going to bring. Bill was planning on bringing a .308 Winchester,
 and Leon was bringing a .300 Mag. I had nothing but a borrowed .32
 Winchester. This was way too light for bear hunting. It's lighter
 than a .30 .30. It had a hexagon barrel, was a lever action, and was
 called a saddle rifle. But I didn't think it mattered because I
 didn't believe that we would see any bears, let alone shoot at one.

   When we dropped Bill off at home, Leon said that he wanted to go
 by his house to see what was going on and to tell his wife about the
 bear hunt. We were both pretty heavy into the Budweiser by this time.

   "Leon," I said, "Maybe it wouldn't be too smart to stop by your
 house right now."

   But Leon, in his best John Wayne, said, "Now Bud, don't you
 worry. The little lady will be just fine."

   When we got there I told Leon that I'd wait in the truck.
 Survival is a strong instinct. I opened a can of beer and waited for
 the yelling to begin. I didn't have much of a wait because soon there
 was a lot of it going on, mostly in a female voice. Leon came out
 carrying his gun, with her yelling right behind him. He quickly put
 the gun behind the seat and got into the truck. She reached in
 through the window and pulled Leon's hat down over his eyes, pushing
 his ears straight out from his head, like wings, all the while telling
 him what a lousy bastard he was. She always went for the hat because
 she knew that it bothered him more than anything to have anyone touch
 his hat. As he got the truck started, she turned her wrath on its
 outside mirror, trying as hard as she could to twist it off. While we
 backed out of the driveway, Leon looked over at  me and declared,
 "Well pardner, the little woman has quite a temper on her, wouldn't
 you say?"

   "Yup," I agreed, "She sure has."

   "Maybe I could stay with you and your little woman until this bear
 thing is over with?" he implored.

   "Sure Leon," I said. "We'd be glad to have you." And for me, it
 was true. But for my wife, a night with a drunken John Wayne was not
 her idea of a great evening.

   As we got out of the driveway I said, "Leon, you think your wife's
 still mad about the garden?"

   "Probably," he said. "She's been mad about that ever since it
 happened."

   It had been a couple of weeks earlier that the two of us had been
 fishing in Leon's pond. We wanted to have a fish fry, but we weren't
 getting any bites. You could see the trout just swimming around. The
 longer we fished, the madder Leon got. After awhile, Leon jumped up
 and said, "I'll bet I can catch those little bastards!"

   "What ya got in mind?" I asked. But I didn't get an answer. He
 was already on his way toward the barn. I just settled back, put on
 another salmon egg, opened up a beer and waited to see what would
 happen. I heard a diesel engine start up, then I heard what sounded
 like Leon's Caterpillar coming my way. He came into view just above
 the pond. The stream was very narrow there and there was a natural
 ledge, about three feet deep, where a lot of the stocked trout lay.

   Leon took a big drink of his Budweiser, dropped the blade of the
 Cat, and plunged it into the stream, pushing rock and mud and a lot
 of water ahead of it, and amazingly, even a few fish, which I believe
 were paralyzed with fear seeing such a large intruder plunge into
 their stream. Leon backed up, got another bite, and went back through
 again. But this time, nothing! Down by the house I heard yelling and
 saw his wife coming toward the pond. I knew he was in some kind of
 trouble. Leon saw her coming too and took a big chug of his beer. She
 was yelling about her garden. It seems Leon had run over her prize
 tomato plants on the way up to the pond.

   He throttled the dozer down, stood up, and lifted his hat.
 "Well," he said in his best John Wayne, "What brings you to these
 neck of the woods, little lady?"

   From where I sat I couldn't see what she had in her hand until
 she raised her arm to throw. It was then that I realized it was one
 of her prized tomatoes, about the size of a softball. Leon had told
 me that he'd met his wife in high school, and that besides being a
 champion barrel racer in the rodeo, she was also a great third baseman
 on the girl's softball team. But I didn't remember until I saw her
 wind up. Leon realized what was coming at the same time and was
 turning to jump off the other side of the Cat as the tomato hit him
 right under the hat line, square in the back of the head! It was a
 pitch that anyone would have been proud of. I would estimate its'
 velocity at about  65 MPH! The tomato was not quite ripe, but it
 still smashed when it hit Leon's head. He went ass- over-tea kettle
 off the Cat.

   I couldn't see what happened to him next, but I didn't have time
 to worry about it because just then I realized that she had a tomato
 in her other hand and was looking at me! I was sitting with my back
 to the tree, right on the edge of the pond. She was about twenty feet
 away. I jumped up and made it about two steps before the tomato hit
 me right between the shoulder blades. It felt like I'd been hit with
 a bowling ball! I lurched forward, stumbled, and went right down the
 bank into the pond's icy water. I was a little stunned, and real cold,
 but half afraid to come up out of the water for fear that she had
 another tomato. But in a couple of seconds, I heard her going toward
 the house cussing about her garden. I climbed up out of the pond,
 walked over to the Cat, and strolled around to the other side. Leon
 was sitting on a rock in the stream. He still had the can of beer in
 his hand, but he also had a knot on his forehead the size of an egg
 where he must have hit his head when he fell in the stream. He also
 had quite a knot on the back of his head from the tomato.

   "Well, buckaroo," he said, "The little lady still has quite an
 arm, wouldn't you say so?"

   "Yep," I agreed, "She sure has, Leon. Who was her father anyway,
 Don Drysdale?"

   It took the rest of the day to straighten out the garden. The
 tomato plants had seen better days.

   We stopped at Casey's Grocery Store again, picked up a couple
 more six packs and headed toward my house. "Leon," I said, "Why don't
 we drive up the hill right now. When we get close, we'll turn off the
 headlights and sneak up to within a couple hundred feet of the hives.
 We'll sit there for awhile with the truck facing the hives, then we
 can turn on the headlights and see if those bears are there. I'll bet
 they are!"

   "Well, I guess we could head up there for a bit," Leon said, and
 started up the dirt road toward the mountain.

   "You know, I did have an experience with a bear once," I said.
 "It was a few years back, when I was about seventeen. My Dad let me
 and a couple of my friends take his pickup for a weekend at Yosemite
 National Park to do a  little camping. The big thing to do up there
 was to go to the dump at sundown and wait for the bears to come down
 to the trash pile. When we got there, there were a lot of people but
 no bears yet. We got out of the truck and walked around like a lot
 of the other folks were doing. It was a cleared area, about 150' by
 150', kind of a landfill where they dumped all  around three sides
 of a giant pit then pushed the trash into the pit with  bulldozers.
 There were a few trees around the sides which a couple of kids had
 climbed them to be able to see the bears when they appeared. We didn't
 have long to wait. Coming down the hill, about a hundred yards away,
 was the first bear. It's hard to judge how big a bear is in the wild.
 Even a small bear looks real damned big.

   Just then, one of the kids in a tree was pointing up the hill
 at another bear. Within five minutes there must have been ten or
 twelve bears in the dump, only about fifty feet away from us. Just
 about everyone was in their cars. There might have been one or two
 thrill-seekers in the crowd, but not many. So, we sat and watched the
 bears for awhile. Boy, did they go through that trash pile! They'd
 find empty cans and bottles and just sit there on their butts, like
 humans, with their noses in the cans. They didn't even seem to know
 that we were there. Of course, this went on everyday that the park
 was open, so it was no big deal to the bears.

   On the other side of the dump was a bear cub and his mother.
 Rusty, one of my friends, wanted to move the truck so that we could
 see the cub little closer up. I started the engine and slowly moved
 the truck to where the cub was. I got within twenty feet of it and
 stopped, but I left the engine running. My Dad's pickup was a Chevy
 with a 3-speed column manual shift, so I just put it in neutral and
 let it idle.

   The bear cub looked like to weigh 30 or 40 pounds, and he was a
 cute little guy. He stayed pretty close to his mom who was kind of
 browsing leisurely through the trash. When she would move away from
 us, I would follow her.

   Billy, my other friend, started talking to Rusty, and I wasn't
 really paying attention to the bears. In a minute or two Rusty told
 me to pull up again because the cub was getting away from us. I
 slowly pulled the truck forward, but what I didn't realize was that
 the mother bear had moved around in such a way that we were between
 her and her cub. Just about the time we pulled up even with that cub,
 something hit us in the rear fender, and I mean hard! It shook us
 pretty good. Then I heard a growl and felt another hit! I dropped the
 truck in gear and popped the clutch and we took off out of there in a
 hurry. Some of the other cars decided to leave at that point too. The
 bears were getting a little too frisky.

   When we got back to camp I got out and looked at the fender.
 Right behind the rear tire on the driver's side, the quarter-panel
 was punched in like a beer can! I didn't even think the she-bear was
 that big was that big, but I guess a bear doesn't have to be that to
 be mean, huh, Leon?" I asked.

   "Yep," he nodded, "I reckon not."

   We were about a quarter of a mile away from the hives when
 Leon slowed down and turned off his lights. There wasn't a moon
 that night, but after a second or two we could see the road well
 enough to make it. We were about half drunk, so I guess whatever
 angel it is that watches out for drunks and crazy people was riding
 with us that night. I'd caught enough of a buzz so I wasn't paying
 too much attention, and besides, Leon and I had been over that road
 alot of times before, or at least that's what I was telling myself.

   The dirt road ended at the oak trees. You had to pull a little past
 the end of the road into the bushes to get the truck far enough in to
 be able to see the hives in the headlights. The hives were set up
 right against the mountain, and I do mean mountain, as we were on the
 backside of Mt. Whitney, the highest peak in the contiguous United
 States. It's well over 20,000 feet high and the hives were as far as
 you could go up against the base of it without going straight uphill.
 Off to our left was the creek that flowed out of the high country.
 There were still several old trails that began here.

   Leon turned off the engine, rolled down the window, licked his
 finger and stuck it outside to see which way the wind was blowing.
 He pulled it back in and rolled up the window. "No problem," he
 stated. "The wind is blowing off the mountain, right at us. Them
 old bears won't even know we're here."

   "That's good," I said, reaching in the bag, getting another beer.
 "You want one, Leon?"

   "Yep."

   I opened one, handed it to him, took another and opened it for
 myself. "You know," I mentioned, "We're not going to be able to sit
 here too long without getting out and taking a leak. That beer is
 going through me pretty fast."

   "We'll just sit here for a couple of minutes," Leon said. "If the
 bears are coming back, they're probably already here by now. Let's
 roll down the windows and listen." he added. So slowly, very slowly,
 we both rolled down our windows. Leon stuck his head out.

   "You hear anything?" I said.

   "I'm not sure." he replied.

   I'd been on hunting trips with my Dad and friends all my life, and
 although I'd never killed anything bigger than a rabbit, I'd always
 felt like the outdoors type. But sitting there, alone on the side of
 a mountain, with the only gun behind the seat in a scabbard, and the
 strong possibility of there being two bears only a hundred feet away,
 who'd been moved to this area because they were not afraid of humans,
 was not too reassuring. Especially being with Leon, who at this point
 had evolved into John Wayne and could probably handle the two bears
 with only a stick.

   Just then there was a noise by the hives. It sounded like one of
 them was being pushed over. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.
 I very quietly rolled my window back up and locked the door, so "John"
 wouldn't get the wrong idea. "You hear that, Leon?" I whispered. "

   "Yep." he whispered back.

   "Then why don't you turn the lights on?!?" I whispered as loud as
 I could without my voice raising into a scream.

   "You ready?" he whispered.

   "You're damn right I'm ready," I assured him, "And if you don't
 hurry up, this seat is going to get real wet, 'cause I've got to piss
 real bad!"

   "Here goes," he warned, and turned on the lights.

   Right in the middle of the hives was what looked like a black bush
 or a big, dark rock. Just for an instant, it stood up on its hind
 feet, then it rolled away from us and ran up the hill, really fast!
 It hit the mountain and started up. It was leaving the range of our
 headlights, so Leon turned on his high beams and we saw it for another
 second. At most, the whole damned episode couldn't have lasted more
 than a few seconds. Because of the distance I couldn't even be sure
 of its size, but it looked real big and it was real, real fast.

   "You have any idea a bear could move that fast, Leon," I asked?

   "Yep," he said. "I've heard tell that they can run thirty MPH for
 short distances. I also heard that they'll run downhill if they're
 hurt. That's if they can."

   We both got out. I walked to the back of the truck and started
 relieving myself.

   "I wonder where the other one is?" I heard Leon say from the other
 side of the truck.

   My water stopped, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck once
 again. "Goddamit, Leon! Why the hell didn't you mention that other
 bear before you invited me out here to take a leak??"

   ". . . Didn't think of it." he said. "Besides, them bears are
 probably a mile away from here by now."

   "How do you know that?" I demanded.

   "Hunch," he explained. "I've got a flashlight in the glovebox. I
 reckon we should go over there and see if we can see the other bear's
 tracks."

   "Now Leon," I said, "I will admit that I don't know much about
 bears, but I do know something about bees, and there ain't nothin'
 meaner than eighty thousand honeybees at night, right after some
 large hairy bastard just beat up their house! They don't fly far at
 night, but they do sting anything they land on and it ain't gonna'
 be me!"

   "Well, Pilgrim, you just stay here  with the truck and I'll mosey
 on over to them hives and see what I can come up with."

   "Okay Leon, you go on over there. If you don't get ate by a bear,
 you're damned sure going to get the hell stung out of you. You want
 your gun?"

   "Nope." he replied. "Just the flashlight."

   "Alright Leon, but you'd better stay away from those hives."

   "Don't worry about me, Pilgrim. Them bees won't bother me. Turn the
 lights off and save the battery, I'll just be gone a few minutes. And
 hand me one of those beers."

   I opened us each one and handed Leon his. I got in the truck on
 the driver's side as Leon walked off toward the bees . . . .

   When I was a kid, there was an old man named Bud Downs who lived
 down the street from us. He was a beekeeper and he had about a
 thousand beehives. When I was twelve or so, he used to take me to
 work the bees with him. He was a crazy old bastard but I loved him.
 He spent about half the time talking to himself and the other half
 chewing on a cigar, and spitting out tobacco juice. He was always
 talking while he was chewing and spitting the juice out of the window
 of his truck. Most of the time part of the juice landed on his arm,
 which was propped up on the window. When he would spit on his arm he
 would just stare at it like he couldn't believe that he had done that
 to himself. I'd laugh 'til my stomach hurt.

   He was always working or moving the bees. Sometimes on a Friday
 he would take me with him on a trip to Bakersfield with a load of
 beehives. He rented the bees to the farmers for pollinating their
 fields. After school, Bud would pick me up and we would go to
 Newhall and pick up the hives. He usually had them working sage
 honey. He drove a Ford flatbed, ten-wheeler truck, circa 1955 or
 '56. It had a boom on it to lift the hives, or 'supers' as the
 beekeepers called them. We'd get set up at just about dusk, and
 when the bees would stop working for the day, we'd start loading.
 I don't know how many supers the truck would hold, but the old man
 would load it down with all it could carry.

   Bud spent most of the time working the bees with no gloves or
 veil. The bee stings didn't seem to bother him. That was not the case
 with me. I'd wear a long sleeve shirt tucked in, with pants tucked
 into my boots and a bee veil and gloves. At night I still didn't feel
 safe because that's when bees would land and crawl, and they would
 seem to find a way to get inside the veil and sting the hell out of
 your face. We always carried a bottle of ammonia with us because old
 man Downs said it would take the pain out of the sting after they
 got to you, but I couldn't tell the difference.

   Hwy 99, heading north out of LA through the mountains towards
 Bakersfield was called the Ridge Route. This area consisted of eighty
 miles of bad road, with long upgrades and steep downgrades. Without
 too many passing lanes it was hard on truck brakes. The last six
 miles of was a 6%, snaking downgrade called the Grapevine that had
 escape ramps on the sides of the road which were really just short
 hills made of very deep sand. If a truck's brakes gave out they could
 drive off the road onto these ramps and the sand would stop them and
 stop. I remember one time seeing a "semi" loaded with watermelons
 about half way up one of these ramps, just kind of rolled over on its
 side.

   The old  Ford truck was so slow it would take us three or four
 hours to get to the top of the Grapevine. We'd pull off at a truck
 stop called Signal Cove, where they had the best double-decker burgers
 anywhere. After that, we would wind our way down to one of the farms
 in the San Juaquin Valley to unload the beehives before daybreak.

   All day Saturday and Sunday we would work on the hives that Bud
 owned in the area. In the evenings we would sleep out in the fields
 with the smell of alfalfa all around us. Sometimes, depending on the
 season, the farmers would be baling hay at night and I would walk
 along and watch the hay bales come sliding out of the backs of the
 machines until I was tired. Then I'd go back to where we were
 sleeping, crawl under the blankets beneath the stars, and sleep the
 sleep of the innocent.

   There was this one time, though, that we had trouble with the truck
 which was over-heating, and it took us longer than usual to get the
 hives to the fields. When we arrived around 4:00 A.M., even though it
 was still dark, the bees were more restless than usual. There were
 balls of bees hanging over the sides of some of the hives, which was
 not a good sign. Old man Downs was in a hurry  to get the supers off
 the truck before daylight because he knew that the bees were waking up
 and that they would be mad as hell. He put on his veil and gloves and
 I stayed in the truck while he was unloading because there was nothing
 for me to do anyway during that time, so I'd just watch him through
 the rear view mirrors.

   The boom on the truck worked just like a forklift. It had two
 forks that fit into the two slats built on each side of the bee box
 for the purpose lifting it up. Just as the old man was setting one of
 the boxes down, a slat broke, and the box, in what looked like slow
 motion, just turned over . . . .

   I heard him cussing as he ran around to the front of the truck.
 He yelled for me to turn the headlights on. He was in front of the
 truck trying to brush bees off himself with the veil he had removed
 from his head. He then went running down the path in front of the
 truck, pulling off his pants as he ran! I knew he was getting stung
 alot, but when I saw him taking off his pants, then his underwear
 while running through that field with his old white ass justa' shining
 in the headlights, yelling and jumping like a wounded jackrabbit, well
 damn it was funny!

   I just sat there looking out the windshield, and laughing so hard
 I thought I was going to break something! Unfortunately, the humor
 was lost on me about ten minutes later when Bud came back with his
 veil on, got into the truck to move it, and let about fifty bees in
 with him. Then it was me who was running through the field getting
 the hell stung out of him.

                                {DREAM}

 Copyright 1995 Bud LeRoy, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Bud LeRoy was born in California in 1946; he immersed himself in the
 local culture through the '60s, but he grew restless and wandered the
 country, far and wide. Eventually, he found himself at home in the
 Florida Keys, a small island named Islamorada. He came to his writing
 later than some, at early forty-something; he's always been inspired
 by the written word. He's a potter, sculptor and poet who has driven
 friend and family alike to distraction with his verbalizations of
 anything that would rhyme, preferably Robert Service. He's husband to
 1, father to 2 and if truth be known -- favorite author is Dr. Seuss.
 Email Bud at 1:135/362 or advint@net.gate
 =====================================================================

