Fire for Hire
Mercenary fire-fighting rigs loaded up with adventurers, old GIs, and ex-cons flock to the big burns for glory and profit.
They protect the houses of the rich on behalf of big insurance companies. Sometimes, they start fires themselves.
Our chaotic, crooked approach to managing fire and timber is reflected in what happens on the ground.
The fire began in silence. On the west ridge, an expensive radiographic weather station stood guard. The fire would not get that far. Below, in the green valley bottom, heavy equipment requisitioned from logging companies cut fuel breaks. The Overhead, as firefighters call the command team, buzzed all around in side-by-sides, using radios to deploy fire engines like ours: oversized pickup trucks loaded with water tanks and tools. We sidehilled the truck, our water tank full with 400 gallons, and it lurched on its tires.
Twenty men from a handcrew fanned out, watering the smoldering brush with thin, lateral hoses. Burning stumps and rootballs turned the air sour. Our other engine hand remained in the back seat, moping and nauseous, while the boss and I played dominoes on the hood.
“That looks promising,” said the boss, as lightning began to thread the clouds together. That August day was …
Can Cats Support People?
Troubled Nevada man finds healing solace in the company of cats
Nye County authorities disagree with man’s cure for PTSD and seize his cats, which are in fact large tigers
County Highway remains doubtful that animals known for their selfish and predatory natures do their owners any good, at least not on purpose; but we are willing to pay for their traumatized owner to get a dog
Can a cat support a person? Not support a person financially (we all know of cases in which large felines, particularly lions, serve as the lucrative main attractions of touring circus acts and Las Vegas showroom extravaganzas), but can a cat support a person emotionally? Can a creature of famously independent habits, whose characteristic motions are slinking, pouncing, crouching, swatting, springing, and self-licking, sufficiently suppress its willful nature and predatory drives to render aid and comfort to any animal, let alone one as needy, fragile, and moody as a male human?
One troubled Pahrump, Nevada, man says yes, supportive cats exist. He speaks as a longtime object of their care. His name is Karl Mitchell, he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, and his curiously selfless feline helpers are, in fact, tigers. Mature tigers, not kittens. Terrors of the savannah. Zebra …
How Eddie Rabbitt Framed America
The Country Elvis of the Ford Presidency
Actually, he was a rocker from New Jersey
Still, who doesn’t love a rainy night?
Eddie Rabbitt got a record deal in 1974, a real-life example of cause and effect. He’d just written a number-one song for Ronnie Milsap, and that mattered to the folks who inhabited the fashionable record-company offices. There were more number ones to be had, they must have figured, and not the kind written in back rooms where grizzled songwriters hover over legal pads and chain-smoke Marlboros. Maybe the higher-ups thought Eddie had the right look for the Gerald Ford era.
Eddie got to tour with Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton; he wrote and sang the title song for a Clint Eastwood movie, which is hardly the stuff of a shadowy existence.
From 1975 onward, Eddie Rabbitt worked in bright light, and for a while he was ubiquitous. It’s easy to forget that there was a time when Hee Haw reached a huge TV audience, or that Barbara Mandrell and her sisters hosted a weekly variety show for a …
