

THE OLANCHA BEAR HUNT
  by Bud LeRoy
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  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
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bud is one of those shy and retiring individuals who is well traveled,
and once you get him started: he has something to say. He can be
reached at: 1:135/362.
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