Richard Paolinelli's Blog, page 29
September 26, 2020
Places Called Home: Antelope Valley, California
So here it is, January 1986. Halley’s Comet is overhead and , after quite a show the last time it had swung by, this time its further away and kind of a fuzzy dud. And the oil industry in west Texas has busted again. Which means its time to pack up and move again.
We headed back to California, but this time not back to Turlock. The Antelope Valley, located in the High Desert north of Los Angeles, was hopping. So we hopped into the car and headed west.
[image error]If you’ve never been to Lancaster/Palmdale, the two big cities in the valley on the western edge of the Mojave Desert, don’t feel to bad. You really haven’t missed much. Its hot in the summer, cold in the winter and there’s not much to see, much less go out and do. I stayed there for five years and aside from winning some more bowling trophies, seeing the first Space Shuttle landing after the Challenger disaster, watching the SR-71’s fly overhead and heading down to Los Angeles – or “down below” as the locals called the City of Angels – there’s not much else of note.
But it was there than my last days of the drilling business came to an end. My heart lay elsewhere, literally and professionally. By September of that year, I was loading up my belongings and taking a chance on my future in more ways that one.
I’ve been back a few times. Only to see my parents until they finally left in 2013 and my sister until she and her family bugged out a couple of years ago. It still isn’t much to look at. I chose a picture at night to run with this post. Its really the best time to see the place.
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The Calling: Part 2, Chapter 14
A Work Of Star Trek Fan Fiction By Richard Paolinelli
© 2020 RICHARD PAOLINELLI . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO COPYING OR ANY OTHER REPRODUCTION OF THIS STORY IS PERMITTED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION. This is a work of fan fiction based in the universe of Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry. It is not intended to be sold, to be used to aid in any sale and is not to be copied or used in any other way by any other party.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Will she be okay, Doctor?” Forelni asked as he laid the unconscious woman on the biobed in Sickbay.
“I think so,” McCoy replied as he scanned the overhead readouts. “She had two pretty good shocks to her system. But she seems humanoid, she could almost pass for an Earth woman. In fact, she could…”
McCoy’s assessment was cut off suddenly as Avion’s eyes opened. One hand shot up to grab McCoy by the collar while the other reached for the now-empty sheath at her belt. Forelni quickly placed a hand on each of hers.
“It looks like her recuperative powers are as quick as her reflexes,” McCoy remarked dryly.
“My lady,” Forelni said gently. “You are in no danger here. This man is, Leonard McCoy. He is a doctor, a healer.”
“Then why was my blade taken from me?”
“It was not taken,” Forelni released his hold on the hand grasping McCoy’s tunic and waived Butler into the room. Butler handed the blade to Forelni, who in turn handed it to her. “You dropped it when you collapsed on the cargo deck. You have my word, you have no need for it here.”
McCoy mumbled a “thank you” as she turned loose of his tunic and reclaimed her blade. He was about to ask if giving her back a weapon was a good idea when he noticed she wasn’t doing anything at all with her reclaimed knife. She wasn’t waving it in a threatening manner nor was she making any move to return it to its sheath. He noted with interest that Forelni’s hand was still on top of her other hand and neither of them seemed in any hurry to change that status. McCoy didn’t need to look at the overhead to know there was something going on between them. The way they silently held one another’s gaze told him that.
“Your name is Bari…?”
“Bari Forelni, Crown Prince of Etalya, my lady.”
McCoy pulled a very good imitation of a Spockian raised eyebrow. Forelni should have introduced himself by his Starfleet rank.
“And you are in command of this vessel?”
“Not yet,” Kirk said, having entered just in time to hear the question. “But I suspect that one day, if I’m not careful, he’s going to end up running it.”
“My lady,” Forelni smoothly moved to introductions. “May I present the commanding officer of the Enterprise, Captain James T. Kirk. Captain, Her Majesty, Queen Avion of Chandera.”
“An honor, your majesty,” Kirk managed a bow and his legendary smile. “Welcome aboard my ship.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she replied coolly, turning her attention back to Forelni. “Strange, a Prince serving under the command of someone other than his King or Queen.”
“I have found in all of my travels, my lady, that there are some men in this universe that a Prince would consider it an honor and privilege to serve under. This is such a man.”
She turned back to Kirk, a little more warmth in her tone than before.
“My apologies, Captain.”
“Quite understandable,” Kirk said smoothly. “You’ve had quite a day.”
“Yes I have,” she looked back to Forelni. “You said I arrived here accidentally. How did it happen?”
Forelni shot a questioning glance at Kirk, he nodded for him to proceed.
“We’re still trying to figure out how,” he began. “We were transporting…an item aboard our ship. But, instead of it, we got you instead.”
“From Chandera? Without my permission?”
“Yes, on both accounts.”
“So you are thieves then?”
Forelni spared another glance at Kirk.
“I don’t think the Prime Directive applies in a case like this, Commander.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t,” he agreed. “No, we are not thieves. There was no one to ask permission when we found a portrait of you, one I suspect you were sitting for shortly before you appeared here, correct?”
“That is true. I was in the gardens of my palace and then I was here.”
“That was where we discovered your portrait. We brought it up with several other artifacts to be studied and preserved, not to be sold for profit.”
“And no one tried to stop you?”
“There was no one there to do so. There has been no one on Chandera to do anything for a very long time. The accident that brought you aboard our ship also brought you forward in time.”
“How long?” she whispered, fear of the answer in her eyes but not her voice.
“Nearly five thousand years.”
McCoy was ready to step in with a hypo as she absorbed this latest shock, but she rallied quickly.
“That is why I did not recognize my world…”
“Sometime during your reign, your sun will burn out and nothing on Chandera survives. We only recently discovered your world and a team of scientists have begun digging out the site where your palace was. They hoped to find out more about your world from the artifacts they uncovered and sent them up to our ship for safekeeping.
“One of those items,” he continued. “Was the portrait you were sitting for. We were bringing it up when something happened and during that event you were brought forward in time in place of your portrait.”
“That seems impossible.”
“Before today, I would have thought the same. And yet, here you are.”
“Can you send me back?”
“Until we understand how you came to be here, I cannot make that promise to you.”
“But in the meantime,” Kirk stepped in. “You are our guest and we will make you as comfortable as we can. Mr. Forelni will see that quarters are assigned to you. If you need anything, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to see to it. Perhaps a tour of the ship when you feel up to it? And when we have a better idea of what happened, we can discuss what your options are.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“If Dr. McCoy has no objections?” Forelni asked.
“She seems fine, under the circumstances,” McCoy agreed. “No shipwide tours just yet. Give her a day first and if you feel anything that seems off I want you to call me right away.”
“Of course. Thank you, Doctor.”
Forelni helped her stand up from the biobed to escort her out of Sickbay when the doors parted and Spock walked in.
“A demon,” she exclaimed, drawing close to Forelni as if to use him as a shield. Forelni heard McCoy mutter something about a mechanical rice picker, only to be shushed by the Captain.
“No, my lady,” Forelni forced down a chuckle as Spock’s eyebrow arched high. He continued with a conspiratorial wink and a grin. “This is Commander Spock, First Officer of the Enterprise. He is from the planet, Vulcan. A desert world. His people developed ears to aid in hearing in their world’s thinner atmosphere…and, I’ve begun to recently suspect, to intercept their opponent’s chess strategies and ruin exquisitely planned traps.”
“Indeed?” Spock’s other eyebrow joined its partner.
“Commander Spock, her majesty, Queen Avion of Chandera.”
“Your Majesty,” Spock nodded in her direction.
“Commander,” she replied, keeping Forelni between them.
“I was just showing our guest to the VIP quarters, Commander. If you will excuse us,” Forelni explained as they continued out the doors.
“Well, Mr. Spock,” Kirk said after the doors closed. “What news do you have?”
“We are still examining the data, Captain. Curiously, the radiation signature from Auriga during the surge closely resembled some of the patterns recorded around Forever World.”
“You’re not saying there’s another Guardian of Forever down there are you?”
“No, Doctor, I am not. I suspect that when power from the warp engines was used to hold the portrait’s pattern intact outside of the raised shields that radiation was augmented. It opened a temporal tunnel, connecting the portrait in the present to the portrait in the past. The Queen was likely standing close by and was gathered up by the effect and brought forward.”
“Spock, that sounds highly…improbable.”
“Agreed, Captain. I calculate the odds to be twelve billion…”
“Can we just leave it as highly improbable but it happened anyway?” McCoy groused. “The woman is here, appears to be exactly who see says to be and is just as humanoid as the rest of us.”
“As you wish, Doctor.”
“Two items of importance, Spock. If it happened once, can it happen again? Until we know for sure all transport in either direction is to be by shuttlecraft only.”
“A wise precaution, Captain. We will need to take more readings of the star, the planet and the space between to determine the exact cause and ensure the safety of all personnel.”
“Until we have some answers we’re remaining in orbit, in case we need to evacuate the site below.”
“And the second item?”
“Can we send her back to her own time or not,” Kirk answered. “She’s handling her situation well so far. But that could change if her exile becomes permanent.”
“Of course,” Spock nodded as he turned to leave. “I will endeavor to have answers for you at the earliest possible moment.”
“What do you make of those two, Bones?” Kirk asked, staring at the closed doors.
“Aside from the Captain not getting the girl this time, Jim?” McCoy teased.
“You do know Starfleet has a new duty-swapping program,” Kirk replied with a sideways glance at McCoy. “Feel up to a one-week tour in Sanitation, Doctor?”
“Sure thing,” McCoy answered cheerfully. “Right after your annual checkup, Captain, sir.”
“Insubordinate…,” Kirk chuckled as he shook his head. “That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know, Jim. It’s nice to see love at first sight is still alive and well though. I’d say they were both taken by each other.”
“But is it wise, Bones? Under the circumstances?”
“Who knows? But look at it this way, Jim. Despite his otherwise youthful-looking appearances, that man is older than the two of us combined.”
“You’re saying he’s been around the galaxy and knows what he’s getting into?”
“Exactly. So stop worrying.”
“Can’t. Comes with the extra gold braid.”
“Then wish them the best, for however long it lasts.”
“That I do, Bones. That I already do.”
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September 25, 2020
Places Called Home: Odessa, Texas
West Texas has two seasons: Boom or Bust.
If you’ve seen the movie “Friday Night Lights” you already have a pretty clear picture of what Odessa looks like and is. Football and oil are the two biggest things in that part of the state, and Odessa is right in the middle of it. In 1982 Odessa built a high school football stadium for its two [image error]teams that put many D-I college stadiums to shame at the time.
Midland (20 miles to the east) might be where the money is, but Odessa is where the work gets done in the Petroplex (the local name for Midland-Odessa). By the way, Midland hates Odessa as much as Odessa hates Midland.
The company we worked for drilled brine water stations – brine water is 100% saturated with salt and used by the big oil rigs to drill with. The thicker water is needed to lift the cuttings thousands of feet back up to the surface. And there is a LOT of salt buried about 400 feet below the surface of west Texas. The place is known as the Permian Basin now. Not too long ago it was the Permian Sea.
[image error]We poked holes and started circulating fresh water into salt caverns all over the place: Andrews, Snyder, Lamesa, Odessa, Big Springs, Ozona, Monahans, Pecos, Kermit, Orla, Mentone, Crane and even up in Jal, New Mexico. I could probably write a month of blog posts on those days. Maybe I’ll save it for my memoirs.
But even as I made my living on the rigs, I was starting to get into writing and photography. As it turned out, photography became a hobby. Writing became a profession.
I wrote for local magazines, covered my first two sporting events for publication as a freelance writer, wrote a story about the Odessa Meteor Crater (it looks like a buffalo wallow to me but at one time it was much deeper) and landed my first two fiction writing credits as lead writer for [image error]the comic book series, Seadragon.
I also won my first bowling tournament that I entered, an amateur event that was a monthly series that was held at different houses each month. I kept the ball that I used for the longest time, until I got tired of lugging it around. I do have a picture of it. Its much easier to carry around. I still have the ring that was given to the winner. The prize money is long gone, but not the memory of that weekend.
I got to make several weekend flights from Odessa to Dallas to catch Cowboys games at Texas Stadium, which was a treat, My first Texas Stadium game was also the first NFL game from some new rookie for the Miami Dolphins. Some guy named Dan Marino. I wonder what ever became of him?
A lot happened during the 4+ years in Odessa. Much of it was pretty good. Some, not so much. But isn’t that true of every place we call home?
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Free Read Friday: September 25, 2020
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September 24, 2020
Places Called Home: Deming, New Mexico
The Kentucky experiment having yielded no good results, we headed for Deming, New Mexico, the headquarters for the company we’d been working for in Kentucky. It was going to be temporary, we knew that going in. The Guthrie Gamble had literally been an all or nothing bet.
We stayed in Deming for a couple of months, helping liquidate the company’s assets. But while there we discovered a couple of nice places. Rockhound State Park at the base of a large mountain looming over the [image error]city was a fun place to hike around. To the south lay the Three Sisters, a range of peaks that were almost uniform in height and marked the Mexican border. I actually crossed the border, legally, turned around and came right back. There wasn’t much to see in that area.
I did discover a chain of steakhouses there. K-Bobs back in the 1980s was probably the best steakhouse you could ever find. As an aside, we had a chance to dine at one that is still open a couple of years ago in northern New Mexico. Oh well, I still have those fond memories of 1980s K-Bobs.
Deming has a very nice golf course, it looked like it was in just as good of shape as it was in 1981 when I last drove through Deming in 2018. But, like Guthrie, we were barely there long enough to unpack.
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September 23, 2020
Upcoming Blog Schedule
Starting today, we kick into Serious Moving Mode! Which means the last bit of packing up what we’re taking, tossing what we aren’t and wrapping up our final business in Omaha. Monday is load up and get out of town day.
The rest of the week is get to the destination, get moved in, buy stuff we’ll need for a larger place than the one we left behind, etc., etc. Which means between now and Oct. 5th I will have zero time for writing or blogging.
Which is why I’ve spent the last two weeks preloading all of the blog posts you will read from now until Oct. 6th. All the Places Called Home posts, the Free Read Fridays, The Superversive Sunday Spotlights, the Star Trek Fan Fiction chapters on Saturday the 26th and on Oct. 3rd have been written, loaded up and scheduled to run at their appointed times. Most of it is free, a couple of items require the Premium Membership subscription. Just $2 a month folks. Really, its worth it.
This is good because there will be a few days without internet access for me, even if I wanted to post something. In a way, I’m looking forward to a few unplugged days. The recent bombardment of political ads everywhere I turn online is getting tiresome.
So, for the next couple of weeks, enjoy the content I’ve programmed in, be safe, be well and get ready for a lot of “Guess what I just found here in Colorado” posts to come next month.
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Places Called Home: Guthrie, Kentucky
Our third run in Turlock lasted just long enough for me to graduate from high school but it was time to move on. This time we really went on a long-distance move, Guthrie, Kentucky.
[image error]
This move only lasted two months. This time we were looking for oil and although we actually had some crude come up, the amount was not enough to make a go of it. We really weren’t there long enough to get to know the place well.
I saw my first live Cardinal – the bird, not the baseball or football player – and got introduced to the vile species of bird aptly named – Bob White. Because the call it makes sounds like it is saying “Bob White”. And those feathered menaces sing it over, and over, and over, and over…
They also have cockroaches from hell. My dad sat a sandwich down on the counter and we he turned back to pick it up, it was moving. I went to kill one by hitting it with a baseball bat. I thought it was going to take the bat away from me and hit me with it. Took six whacks to take that critter out.
Guthrie was a dying town when we arrived. If you needed anything, you drove over the state line into Clarksville, Tennessee. The three things that immediately come to mind when I think back to that late summer of 1981 are that I couldn’t find any station on the radio that didn’t play country music only and my first introduction to Big Red and Mello Yello. Both are sodas – or so they claim – and I tried each once and once only.
Forty years later I still can’t get the taste of either out of my mouth.
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September 22, 2020
Richard’s Reviews: Carnal Knowledge by Rachael Tamayo
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Places Called Home: Mineola, Texas
One morning in January 1977 I went to school at Steele Junior High School in North Dakota. After lunch hour I was called to the principal’s office. Forty-eight hours later I was in the back seat of our car as we pulled into Mineola, Texas. Yep, in the drilling business, moves happen that fast.
[image error]So here we were, in the city where my mother grew up – I got to meet a lot of my cousins for the first time – and I find myself enrolled at Mineola Junior High, which had been the original Mineola High School that she graduated from. As for the school, I really didn’t enjoy my time there. The kids were okay. The teachers? Not so much, aside from Coach Davis, who was a pretty cool guy.
As Texas towns go, it was a small town. One of the roads in the downtown area was still cobblestone instead of asphalt.
Our house was directly behind the Dairy Queen, so ice cream was easily at hand. Oddly enough, right next door to DQ was a small cafe that made the best hamburgers. You even got to go into the kitchen when your meat was cooked and assemble your own burger.
The movie theater was an old classic that I kind of miss today. It was there that I took my baby sister to a movie with me for the first time. It was also the last time I did so. We saw King Kong and she was crying because Kong dies at the end (look, the movie has been out for 44 years, I don’t want to hear about spoilers) and as we walked out everyone saw her crying and thought I’d hit her. I swear, that kid was trying to get me killed most of the time.
[image error]We went to Tyler whenever we needed something big. Tyler has an amazing Rose Garden and it was in Tyler I met Ed “Too Tall” Jones in person. He was a really nice guy. I attended my first MLB game that I can fully recall in Arlington. A double-header between the Seattle Mariners and the Texas Rangers. I got to see both Ferguson Jenkins and Gaylord Perry pitch. That was a treat. And old Arlington Stadium had just debuted a new snack item, a strange combination of flat, round corn chips and hot, gooey cheese. Nachos they called them. No one thought they’d last to the following season. Had we stayed a few more months, my first game at Texas Stadium to see the Dallas Cowboys play in person would have happened in 1977 instead of 1983.
But we ended up only spending seven months in Mineola and left in late July. The drilling business dictated a return to Turlock as drought and a housing boom was calling for as many water well drillers as possible.
I’ve been back to Mineola twice since then for brief visits. In the mid-1980s, a company truck was stolen and ended up in Mineola. We were sent to retrieve it and tow it back – the idiot blew the engine – to Odessa, Texas. In 2009 my wife and I flew to DFW and drove over so I could show her Mineola and Tyler while we were close and introduce her to my aunt and uncle. Tyler has changed. Mineola hasn’t at all – aside from the Junior High building being demolished.
That’s actually not such a bad thing.
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September 21, 2020
CRACKED: The Book Tour & Giveaway
Cracked: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories
Genre: Anthology, Multiple Genres of Short Stories
with stories by
J. F. Posthumus, Cedar Sanderson, J Trevor Robinson, Richard Paolinelli, Jane Lebak,
J. D. Beckwith, Grace Bridges, Denton Salle, Margo Bond Collins, J. A Campanile,
Amber Draeger, Karina Fabian, Abigail Falanga, Clair W. Kiernan, L. Jagi Lamplighter,
David Millican, John M. Olsen, Dawn Witzke,Joshua M. Young, Bokerah Brumley
Chickens Land on Mars…
But what happens when authors have too much free time on their hands?
A challenge.
Craft a story featuring our favorite feathered raptors: the CHICKEN.
B’gawk!
Twenty authors deliver in some unexpected ways and live to crow about it.
From chickens in space to cozy murder mystery farm yards to schools of magickal thought…
Includes guardian angels, chicken shifters, aliens, and feathered matchmakers,
Maybe even a non-fiction adventure or two… and more!
These amazing chickens come from the minds of twenty cooped-up authors on the edge of cracking…
Read CRACKED: An Anthology of Eggsellent Chicken Stories
Buy Now.
Goodreads * Amazon
Follow the tour HERE for special content and a giveaway!
Swag pack, plus A $25 Amazon gift card
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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