We all tell the story differently, I suspect.  I know that’s been true in my life anyway as I talk about the significant moments in my life.  I’m sure it’s the same for you.

For me, Jared was a “Three Mile Island” baby.  Bev and I lived just a few miles from the power plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania when the worst nuclear accident in American history blew what many people still say was “moderate amounts of radioactive gases and iodine” into the atmosphere.

Say what you want to say about our government’s capacity to tell less than the truth—I think it was the Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr who argued that this was the nature of government, to tell less than the truth—we experienced it.  The Philadelphia media market had us packing our bags and fleeing to the hills! The Lancaster and York media markets closer by argued that everyone should stay put.

It was in this craziness that Jared was in utero during that time and I always thought that some of his personal issues sprang from that horrible moment in American history.  A surgical intervention at age five, give or take, fixed his kidney issue.  The drug Cylert fixed his school attention issues—though a funny family story points to a surprising number of pills he didn’t take, found many years later in the crevasses of a rickety kitchen table and in the ancient hems of the living room drapes.

J, or Jared, or “Dr. J” as I called him, after a Philadelphia basketball icon of the time, grew up to be the man I thought he would become.  “Strong, wise and kind,” the exact words I used to pray over him while he was asleep in our New Jersey, Carson City and Portland houses. The other children, Rachel his older sister and Josh his younger brother, probably now curious as to what words I spelled over them while they slept.

Each of our kids were put or sent to bed at an early hour, but each were permitted to read until they fell asleep.  It taught them to love books at an early age, brightened their sense of conscience or responsibility about the world, and exposed them to people who never would have been a part of our dinner table or family vacations.  These writers were their “virtual friends” I think, long before the word became popular.  Jared knew the formative influence in my own life was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and while he didn’t cleave to his voice or concepts like his older sister later did, he found a similar voice encouraging his individuation and growth in the science fiction writer, Kurt Vonnegut.

I now wonder if I shouldn’t have left more Bibles sitting around the house—not really, but you get my point as I’m just as satisfied now to have Hafiz, Rumi or the Bhagavad Gita in my own home.  But a number of Vonnegut volumes sat in my personal library and were no doubt the first volumes read in a life-long pursuit for personal truth and perspective.

Jared was a Humanist.  Do not let the trappings of this service fool you.  He wrote for his youth pastor, Alan Guffey the following, when church and family pressures asked if he was going to become an adult member of the church he grew up in:

I have been going to church since I was born. I received an infant baptism from my father…the pastor here at Valley.  [But] life at home is “free” when it comes to religion.  For example if I felt the need to switch to the Roman Catholic Church, I don’t believe my family would have a problem with that.  Much of a problem anyway…

And save for his grandmother, an ardent anti-Catholic because of how she was raised, it would have been fine.  As fine as it was in later years when he told me that he was a Humanist.

“I am too,” I said.  He already knew that.

“What do you think of the American Humanist Association?” he asked.

“Probably a good organization,” I replied, intrigued that my son, considered by some in my family, never myself, to have been a special education student.  “Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m thinking of joining it.”

Humanism is a philosophy of life that holds that theism, or a belief in God is generally irrelevant to the ability or responsibility to lead an ethical life, or to strive toward personal fulfillment, or to aspire to the greater good of humanity. I’m paraphrasing a statement by the American Humanist organization with which he was most endeared, and of which Kurt Vonnegut was its Honorary Chairman.

Jared didn’t talk about a belief in God, not much anyway.  Because it simply wasn’t important to him.  He believed that kindness and compassion spoke more strongly than any scripture—a thought he and I shared in later years.  And he was, simply said, and I’ve heard this from many of you this past week, “the kindest person I’ve ever met.”

To paraphrase words that were said of Jesus himself, he was a “human one.”

Jared weathered a great many church services over the years, serving as the church’s sound engineer, attending youth groups or making friends. “Because that’s what we do,” I said.  “It’s not because I’m the minister.  It’s because our family goes to church together, in the same fashion that it eats together or plays together.”  And I imagine that he’s kindly and compassionately tolerating this one.

When Jared placed a portion of the neighborhood twins’ baptismal speech in Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater on his website with an absolutely hilarious picture of himself as a child, I checked it over the years to make sure I was staying focused on what was most important in my own life.

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

“It’s an odd speech to make over a couple of infants,” as someone has said, “but it’s playful, sweet, yet keenly precise in its summation of everything a new addition to the planet should need to know.”

And I want to say publicly, “Thank you J.  You turned out to be a very wise man.”

One of his friends told me the other night that he was “a very old soul.”  And say what you might say about a religious tradition different than your own—that he had cycled through quite a few lives to become such a superlative human being—he was in fact that.

My brother likes to say that younger people who lose their lives somehow burn brighter than those who live their seventy or eighty biblical years of hardship and heartache.  Maybe so.  But this I know, I was blessed to have him as a son.  And you were blessed to have him as a friend, or father, or help mate.

And we could do a lot worse for a friend or mentor.

If you know me, I mean honestly know me—not in the sense of a father, or friend, or former pastor, but know me—you know I pay attention to things.  The name Gregg means “watchful one.”  And I’ve always been that way.  The last couple of nights, deer have come to the field behind our house in St. Helens. To a softball field in the middle of a small city, and peered through the cyclone fence at our house.  The medieval dictionaries that describe such magical phenomena say that deer are a symbol of Christ.  And the synchronicity of it all—if you believe in such things—mean that God is watching over us.

Whatever God is, or whatever you believe God to be.

It’s my hope that God is looking over our son Jared now.  And if the scriptures are to be believed—and this is a fervent hope for many of you—then while you and I may hurt, while his family and friends have been, in some horrible way, harmed by such a senseless tragedy and death.  It’s going to be okay.

And to that, to whatever extent it is helpful, I want to say “Amen.”

Eulogy and service, February 18, 2012.  My oldest son, Jared died climbing on Mt. Hood, February 6, 2012.

Folks hadn’t spent enough time in church, he figured, otherwise they’d be shooting more musicians.  The former Reverend smiled as he leaned back in his chair to observe.

Dustsucker had stumbled upon a friend by the door and, tossing his first beer backward, had already signaled for a second and seemed to be catching up on old times.  Across the room, a handful of men leaned up against the bar listening to a conversation between a well-oiled man and a perky but unimpressed barmaid.  A dozen or more men were gathered at tables with wives or mistresses enjoying a variety of liberties and libations.

No one seemed particularly agitated.  And nobody had paid peculiar attention to them entering the saloon, other than a few who stared at Dustsucker’s unusual girth.  Given that it wasn’t the fat man’s first rodeo, he ignored all but the most ignorant of glances their way.

“Jesus, God!” someone yelled.  And across the room he spied Sally Curtis, seated on a burley prospector in such a way as to gently pass the evening.  Ronin’s long-time female friend began bouncing up and down, clearly pleased by his appearance at the saloon.  Tumbling out of the man’s lap at about the same time the man wheezed “stop bouncing,” she bounded toward him until she jumped full up on to the table and slid right into the former Reverend’s lap.  “Jesus, Sally.  You know I don’t want that.”

“I’m just teasing,” Sally said, straddling the ex-Reverend.  She looked into his eyes and placing a hand on each side of his face said, “I miss you.”

“Well, I miss you too,” Ronin said, taking her hands and placing them into her lap, which he then noticed was uncomfortably close to his own.  He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her up on to the table, “Maybe I can get you a chair?”

Sally burped a couple of guffaws, laughing like only a bar maid can and shouted to the man behind the bar, “Billy get this man a couple of beers.” Every head didn’t turn, but nearly everyone did as a free beer on a Monday night was practically unheard of at the Lakes House Saloon.

Monday’s were generally too slow to see samples given away, though Ronin was of the opinion that if such kindnesses were kindled, freebies on a slow night might be better than giving away drinks on a busy night to increase the bar’s traffic.  At least that was how he tended his church.

Though it had been a long time, he recalled that the bigger religious festivals of the year like Christmas or Easter caused people to ride a far bit to be part of things, sometimes traveling  a couple of hours or so.  The whole point of growing the Wichita Episcopal mission, it seemed to him, was multiplying such events, though his Bishop didn’t always see things that way.

He couldn’t remember how many religious holidays the ancient Hebrews had—he hadn’t been reading the Bible like he used to—but he figured it was near to a dozen.  And throwing free food or liquor at people to attend church didn’t seem entirely inappropriate if people were going to drink and eat anyway.

Ronin kicked a chair out from the table and gently nudged his female friend toward it.  “I’m moving.  I’m moving,” she protested, though both of them knew the protesting was in fun.

She smoothed out her dress, what there was of it.

“How you doing Ronin?” Sally asked, nodding her head toward the door.  Sally always did two things at once, especially when a man was paying for it.  “That Dustsucker with you?  He’s heavier than I remember him.”

“Sure is, Sally.  And we’re doing fine, though we’re mighty hungry and anxious to get started in the morning.  Know anything about…”

Sally interrupted, “and bring a couple of steaks,” she yelled, causing Bill the bar man to immediately turn around and head back toward the kitchen.  “You’re looking for some people?” she asked, apologizing.  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“We are.  But first, tell me how you are.”

One of the reasons people liked W. W. Ronin was that he was kind.  Say what you want to say about religious doctrines and dogmas, Ronin had little use for them.  The ex-Episcopal preacher typically told his friends when they were curious as to why he had left the church that nobody argues about kindness.  If the whole point of religion was how kind you were, he figured, it didn’t make much sense to argue the fine points about being Protestant or Catholic.

“I’m good.  Business has been good.  We moved everything out of the dayroom to the saloon, except for breakfast,” Sally said.  “Folks just don’t want to eat breakfast around the smell of stale beer and whiskey, though it never bothered me.”

“No, I don’t guess that they do,” he replied.  “I’ve gotten so that I hate to eat indoors, unless it’s raining.  Though the last few months…”

“You’re not fooling me,” Sally interrupted, “still not much of a cowboy, are you?” She was laughing again.  He loved how she laughed.   “What’s with the leg, Ronin?  I noticed you limping a bit when you came in.”

“Oh this,” he said tapping on his left leg.  “Broke it when the back of the Carson City jail blew up.  Hear of it?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I happened to step through the door a moment or so after the bricks blew and stepped right into a hole in what used to be the floor.  One of the prisoners ploughed into me and the unfortunate upshot was this broken leg.”

“Hmmm…” Sally said, obviously trying to remember something.  “Seems like I heard that story a day or so ago.  From a big guy,” she said, picking up her pace.  “A real big guy, I remember.  And not all that smart, if you ask me.”

“Sounds like we’ve headed in the right direction then,” he looked at Sally.  He really appreciated her friendship.  He was sorry it had never turned into anything else, though he wondered if he could ever be with a woman who had been with so many.  There were moments in his life he wished there was someone other than Dustsucker to partner with.  Emma had stirred the same thoughts in him, though he hurt a bit more when he thought of her and didn’t quite understand what that meant.

He had been thinking of Emma as he rode into Virginia City the day before.  She was on his mind this morning as well, as they rode into Reno.

“Listen Sally. I’m going to need some time with that big guy by the door tonight over supper.  If you’re around later, I’d sure like to catch up with you.”

“Well, of course,” she said.  She hesitated a moment before continuing.  “Are we talking down here,” she asked, gesturing toward the bar, or…” And looking up toward the rooms, asked carefully, “somewhere else?”

“I’m sorry Sally.  I didn’t mean to mislead you.”  He smiled gently, placing his hand upon hers. “I’m talking here, at the table or bar.  II’ve missed you these last couple of months, while I was recuperating at the Gospel Mission in Carson City.  And I want to catch up.”

“You sweet on Emma?” Sally asked.

“You’ve met Emma?” he asked surprised.

“Ronin, I’ve met everybody in these parts.  But don’t you worry.  Whatever’s good with you is good with me.”

Ronin smiled and waved to his friend Dustsucker.

“See about those steaks then, would you?  We’ve got some plans to make.  And if you happen to see the Virginia City Sheriff tonight, mind sending him over to the piano as well?”

“No problem.”

Sally Curtis got up, straightened her skirt if you could call it that, and walked rhythmically toward the bar.  She looked over her shoulder so as to catch Ronin’s glance.

“Hey, I didn’t say I wasn’t still looking,” he shouted after her.

“Never heard of a man who wasn’t still looking,” she laughed as she headed back to the kitchen.

Truth be told, I like Fast Draw in all of its forms.  Click through to my other site, Oregon Fast Draw to see why.  It’s an exciting sport.  And it is, as some of my Fast Draw buddies like to say, “the most fun you can have with the lights on.”

Okay, that’s a little inappropriate.  But when you’re talking to a man with a gun, well you tend to be kind of respectful, you know?

I like to think that my interest in Western Fast Draw gives me an edge in writing Western fiction.  Not that I’m the fastest, you understand.  I’m no world-class shooter.  But I understand guns, have a good deal of experience in the martial arts, and love relating what I know about both to readers.

I’ve had some good gun coaches.  A week with Bob Munden in Montana in 2009 took a full three tenths of a second off of my draw.  And a weekend with Jon “Trickshot” Wilson in 2011 carved an additional fraction of time so that I can—when I’m adequately hydrated, have plenty of sleep, and have a barking dog climbing up my, well you know what–can pull a six-shooter from my holster and get off a shot down range at under 4/10s of a second.

That’s fast, but it isn’t the fastest.

Here’s a clip of my friend Jon Wilson, in a TV pilot called “the Ultimate Gunfighter.”  Everyone of the people in the trailer are outstanding.  And Jon–well don’t tell him this, because sometimes he can have a big head–he’s probably the fastest.

From what I can tell, the publishing industry has changed a lot in the last twenty years.  I earned a Doctorate in Ministry degree in 1983 and a well-meaning man on my examination committee suggested that I rewrite my thesis project for publication elsewhere.  (It was a hot topic at the time; it’s no longer.)  So I did.  A friend introduced me to his agent.  I signed a contract.  And the rest is, as they say, history.

Save to say that I learned a very valuable lesson.

About a year after the agent began his work (we had a good number of reads by publishers and I was happy about that.)  He came to me and said that so-and-so publisher wanted to see me write an additional chapter to fill the book out a bit.  I had some relevant material, but was a bit miffed by the request.  So I took a number of months to comply.

It was an unconscious reaction on my part, you understand.  I mean if you had faced me with what I was doing–belly to belly, finger in face–I believe I would have repented,  And the book would have made it to print.

A very disappointed agent told me, after the edge had vanished and the publisher had long lost interest, “strike when the iron is hot.”

Okay, I don’t get where that phrase comes from (I’m only 59, or thereabouts.)  But I’ve never forgotten that and it’s bugging me.

I’m ready to see my first novel, East Jesus, Nevada, in print.  And I’m very anxious to begin writing the second in the Ronin series of Westerns, the Lady of the Lake.  (I’m hoping to have all three of them done by my birthday next year.)  So do I look around again for an agent–knowing that first time novels are a big risk to publishing companies, particularly those written by men?  Or do I simply head to Amazon, purchase the services of an artist for cover and interior page layout, and publish it on the Kindle Select Program?

Their in-house “on demand” publisher will take care of the first two concerns and make sure it’s available in paperback for those of you who still whine about what happened to those nifty papyrus rolls.

I’m thinking the latter.  And I don’t want to spend a whole lot more time thinking about this.   Any opinions?

Few folks know that the privately-owned Pinkerton Detective Agency was the only law in some some parts of the American West.  Take California for instance, after the Mexican-American war when it was hardly an American territory and a still a long way from becoming a state.

Even fewer people are aware that at one point the Pinkerton Agency employed more agents than there were individuals in America’s standing army.  So much it’s said that Ohio at one point outlawed the Pinkertons over fears that it might be hired as a standing Army.

Fact is, with everything said and done, the Pinkerton’s served a solid purpose.  Providing security to gold shipments and stage coaches, investigating kidnappings and robberies, serving as rail road agents, town sheriffs, posses and policemen, the Pinkerton years are a rich part of American history.

In the third book in the Ronin series of Westerns, we’ll read the stirring history of the Pinkertons, and hear how a former Episcopal priest developed the necessarily skills and fortitude to become the man he was meant to be.

Interested?  Ronin:  the Pinkerton Years is expected to be finished by spring 2013.  Hang in there, there are two books in the series to read before hand, and it’s only a few months away…

Meet W.W. Ronin, a former Episcopal minister turned bounty hunter, and his imposing but congenial buddy, Carson City deputy sheriff Marcus T. “Dustsucker” Slade.

Together, the men fight graft and greed with pure guts as they wind their way through the Washoe Valley to solve the mystery of the missing Indian children. And along the way, they discover not only a faster friendship, but a deeper meaning to life in the wild, godforsaken West.

That’s my publicist’s writing.  Okay, I don’t have a publicist yet.  But if I did, I’d want one just like my wife, Nancy Lashbrook Townsley, a professional writer, an award-winning journalist and extremely competent editor with the Pamphlin Media Group in Portland, Oregon. 

Thanks babe!  I think you captured the the book well.  

And oh, did she say it was a shoot ‘em up?  No?  Well all of the books in the Ronin series are.  Because I like them that way.

Right now, for instance, I’m researching a second novel in the Ronin series of Westerns, Lady of the Lake.  Taking place in the same general area as my previous book East Jesus, Nevada, the next installment of Ronin’s journey focuses on a couple of murders that take place at Cave Rock, on the east side of Lake Tahoe.   

A rich interweaving of 19^th century Washoe Indian mythology pushes the writing along.  And the opportunity to interact with some of my favorite characters from the first book—Emma, Dustsucker and a certain Storey County Sheriff and saloon owner—is making the writing pure joy.

Good research drives good fiction, in my mind. And you’ll get that in the Ronin series of novels.  Big time.

Now deceased, Barrington was born on the Truckee River in 1880, the same year I set for many of the events in my first novel, East Jesus, Nevada. Barrington is interesting to me because he was kidnapped from a pond when he was a boy, and taken to Nevada’s first Indian school in Carson City.

Does the story seem familiar?  It should.

I didn’t write the novel East Jesus, Nevada with Barrington in mind, though I wish I had known about it.  Knowing there was a Richard Barrington with a story very much like mine makes East Jesus, Nevada even more believable.  It deepens my appreciation for the inspirational Stream.  And it argues the point that as much as things change, the fundamental facts of human experience remain pretty the same.

Much of what I write about the American Gospel Mission in Carson City is modeled after the Steward Indian School, a Native American boarding school just south of Nevada’s capital.  The school opened in December 1890, with 37 students from Washoe, Paiute and Shoshone tribes and represented a signficant effort at “civilizing” a very ancient people.  It closed in 1980.

As for Barrington?  A Washoe history writes that he had considerable success after his graduation from the Steward School.  A noted musician, Richard and his son Lloyd operated lumber mills for 25 years in Quincy and Sierraville, California.  In 1964, he was honored as a Distinguished Nevadan.  He was 84 years at the time.  Barrington died in 1967 at his home in Sierraville, California.

But one of the criticisms of Larry McMurtry’s magnum opus  is that it’s not adequately rooted in fact. I don’t know, and as often as McMurtry’s six-part film is viewed at my house, I don’t care.

I’ve said elsewhere on this site that good research makes good fiction.  And I believe it does.  That’s why all of the books in the Ronin series of Westerns are based in fact.  I may move a hotel forward in time to satisfy a personal need or literary convention (as I did in East Jesus, Nevada.  You’ll have to read the novel to discover why.)  But I’ll tell you about it in the book’s preface.  If I write that a character spoke with Mark Twain or heard a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson, it’s because the conversation was a possibility.  Or even a probability.

A confused reader isn’t a happy reader.  And a happy reader is what I’m hoping for in each of the books I’ve written or am working on.

For instance, the second book in the Ronin series, Lady of the Lake focuses on a series of murders at Lake Tahoe, and a long appreciated remark that ”the lake never gives up its dead.”

Fact is, between the years of 1860 and 1874 records indicate that a total of 14 people drowned in Lake Tahoe.  More stories circulated in the 1870s and 1880′s about bodies that were never recovered because they were lost in the lake’s profound depth (something in excess of 1600 feet). 

An article published in 1872 by the San Francisco Bulletin may tell us why:

“A corpse remains suspended and motionless (in Tahoe) at a depth of 200 feed and over, frozen stiff as though encased in a block of ice, and the great pressures encountered in the vast deep of the lake reduce an adult’s body to that of a child’s stature, exercising a clamping effect that holds the person in a viselike grip, preventing its rise to the surface.”

Conjecture if you like that bodies lost in the lake do not decompose but are somehow trapped in the cool waters of the world’s largest fresh water lake.  Or wonder, as did some people one-hundred and fifty years ago, how those same bodies turned up in unrelated lakes and streams dozens of miles away.  And you’ve got a good story.

I think you’ll enjoy it.  Lady of the Lake, expected to be ready for publication fall of 2012.

No one likes a shoddy product, and the worst of them–it seems to me–is a newly published book with a list of mispellings, pagenation mistakes and so on.  That’s “pagination,” for instance.  Did you catch it?  Yeah, I didn’t.

So if you’ll hang in there until March, we’re thinking you’ll be able to a quality, entertaining piece of Western fiction on Amazon.  And a short while after that, Barnes and Noble and other online retailers.  Or if we can get the literary widgets at greggtownsley.com to work–they’re a funny bunch of folks, you know how some folks are–you’ll even be able to purchase the first in a series of Ronin Westerns on this site.

Meanwhile, enjoy these excerpts of East Jesus, Nevada (expected publication date, March 2012) and Lady of the Lake (expected publication date, October 2012).