No More Books

Our founding fathers sat down at their desk with quill in hand, poised over paper and began to write. We now sit in our offices or living room with this small box on our laps and write. From a time when men pressed the ink upon the letters, then press the letters into the paper, to get us our news of the day. Now we go to our little box and get updated as the news happens. We can now see a story that happened a world away. At present in the United States news papers are shrinking and closing on a daily basis. No longer do we long to feel the paper as it caresses our fingers, to smell the ink on the morning edition. For now it is the joy of being connected to the world.
Books are becoming a thing of the past. Just this week Border's Book Stores have closed. Everyone is buying on-line or downloading books into their Kindles. Is this progress? What have we really achieved?
No longer do have the closeness of our neighbors. We make friends with people we have never met, nor will meet. No longer are men meeting in the taverns and debating life and politics. We sit, solitary in our homes and chat over our small box. We know more about our friend living in France, than we do about our neighbor across the street.
Is this what the world has become, a place of individuals that have no sense of his fellow man?
As for me, I long to hold a book in my hand, to feel the cover, to smell the pages, and to see the ink pressed in the paper. I for one will not go gracefully into the future.

Knowing one's place

Having been in policing for over 20 years now there is one thing that keeps bugging me. Never have I seen it in any other occupation, but policing. I have been through a police training academy, many schools over the years and I hold an Associates Degree in Criminal Justice. I have been certified as an instructor, special investigator and I have a Master Peace Officer License. With all this you would think I know just a little about working a crime or just a little about the law. However, it never fails that some citizen tells me how to do my job. I have had someone even tell me that I did not know what I was doing. I wonder, do these people hire a plumber and stand over him telling he is not doing his job right. Do they go through the line at HEB and tell the bag boy that, "No, milk and bread do not go in the same bag!"

So where do they get off telling me how to do my job? What is it in a person that they think they have to tell a policeman how and what to do while he is doing it? Come on people, I did not go through all that training just so you could tell me how you think I am doing wrong! Think you can do it, then go get your peace officer licence. No, wait, then you will have people telling you what you are doing wrong.

What a Private Eye does

In my youth I grew up watching those TV Private eyes. I was fascinated by their work. Solving the murders, catching the bad guys and the shootouts. Where would Thomas Magnum be without his faithful Colt .45?
Then I became a Private eye. No murders, no bad guys to catch and while I do carry my faithful side arm, there has never been a shootout. It seems that each time I tell someone that I am a PI the typical response is, "How many cheating husbands have you caught?" Well I can say with all the pride in the world, that I have not caught a one. As I tell them this a strange look come over their face and it seems that they do not understand why I have not caught any cheating husbands.
So many of the people I talk to seem to have two ideas of what a Private investigator does. It seems that we must be catching "cheating husbands" or getting into shootouts while solving a murder.
In an attempt to spill the truth about my work, I shall endeavor to explain some of what I do. Most work of late has been doing background checks on individuals. Checking their criminal history to see if they have been arrested and convicted of anything. I have a client who shall I say is well off and he has a daughter that seems to date a variety of men. He finds out their names and has me "Check them out". I also provide this service to many local businesses when they are hiring someone.
Finding missing persons. Missing is a strange word because sometimes they are not really missing, but the person hiring me just does not know where they are. I have reunited a uncle with his nephew whom he had not seen in seven years and I was able to locate an ex-husband who went missing and failed to pay his child support.
My most notable case was the case where a father took his child for visitation and failed to return him to his mother. Rumor had it that the father had been quoted that he may leave the county with his son, never to return. Through intense pressure and surveillance, I was able to get the father to return the child. Case Solved.
There are many types of investigations that can be done. Not all are huge cases that require a lot of money spent. I happen to have a very low over-head and I pass those savings on to my clients.
So if you are dating someone and want to know more about them or you are looking for that old high school sweetheart, drop me a line.
One word of caution... I know that in today's computer age, many can find the same information on the Internet. BE CAREFUL not all sites keep their information up-to-date and you will pay for incorrect or bad info. In the above case of the uncle and the nephew, he paid almost $80 to web sites and was given an address that showed to be a current one. When he could not locate the address and hired me, it turned out that the nephew had not lived there in three years. I only charged him $45.

The Motorcycle Diary..

She sits with all her beauty. Maroon, with black and gold trim. Her chrome shines in the light of the new day. Her name is Molly and she is my new love. She never complains, nags or bitches at me. A ride on her is true joy. She is my motorcycle. Oh the feeling of the open road. The wind in my face. The smells and sights of the road as we pass by. It is total relaxation! Now I ponder the act of packing a bag, throwing a coffee pot in her saddle bags and head out on a new adventure. The freedom of riding to some undiscovered country where no man has traveled. Ah, how sweet is my dream...

The Private Eye

Sam Spade, Magnum PI, Jim Rockford... Say these names and it brings to mind the old private eyes of yesteryear. The fedora hat, the trench coat or the red sports car. Solving crimes that the police can't or won't. I grew up on this genre. I wanted to be that PI working on solving the crimes. I carried a notebook and would makeup cases to solve. Mom lost her earring. "The Case of the Missing Earring". I started watching "Dallas" because I wanted to solve, Who shot JR. I guess thats why I went into law enforcement. Now that I am a police detective I thought that I was living my dream, but I'm not. Here lately I have been in=broiled in the politics of policing and I see how our system really works and I am jaded. So where does that leave me. Well, two years ago I started my own Private Investigation Company. Hoping to work it part-time to supplement my income. For the last year and a half it has been a hit and miss game. Some times just making enough to keep the company afloat. In the last six months the business has increased. Not by a lot, but enough to keep us busy. Money is slowly starting to trickle in. I am trying some new marketing and hoping that business will pick up even more. Maybe enough to make it a full-time job. Why you ask? I just got my retirement notice. As of December 31, 2012 I can retire. Four years from now. WOW! Maybe just maybe my lifetime dream will come true, maybe sooner than I hope. We will see.
So, as I lean back, prop my feet on my desk, I pull that bottle of bourbon from the drawer and lite a cigarette. My fedora is tipped sideways on my head, my trench coat hangs on the wall, I wait...wait for that next client to set through the door.

Writing or trying to...

I am amazed that "Juno" won the Oscar for best screen play. This was Cody's first screen play. She was a stripper and blogger on this blog site. She was contacted by an Hollywood agent who liked her blog, "The Pussy Ranch" and talked her into writing a novel. She wrote a memoir of her life as a stripper. Next she wrote "Juno" and the rest is history as they say. So if she can do it, that gives hope to would be writers. So with that said we move on to my writing. I have been commissioned by the Texas Luthern Assocation to write the script for their up comming coranation. The theme is...well, thats a seceret. I have now sat down at my laptop and I am in the process of working on a cheap detective fiction novel. I also am working on a novel about single life for men and the dating pitfalls and the "nice guy". How nothing is what it seems and if it can go wrong, it will.

I am also seeking an agent, so if you know of a good one, let me know.

Trains

I am now a train collector. Well I don't know if collector is the right word. I bought a train set. Set it up and began playing with it. I first had to build a train table. Me, building a table... that was a sight. But it looks good, even if the legs are not so straight. Anyway, its up and running. It has become my zen meditation. I sit and play with it for hours and time just slips by. There is a nothingness to it, no thinking, no stress and lots of fun. I have a steam engine simarlar to the one in the photo. To sit and watch it run with its smoke coming from its stack is so soothing.

Two weeks ago I went to a big model train convention in San Antonio. What a blast! I saw so many layouts and sizes. I did not know that there was so much intrest in model trains in this area. I am sure that there will be more blogs on trains upcoming.