Initially, this book started as a copy of the sayings Michael remembered his grandfather repeating. Michael scribbled them in a black book that was usually near he spent his sitting hours. They were wonderful sayings. They appear in Chapter 2. They were sayings that I came to believe helped mold Michael's wonderful life. Regrettably, I didn't print this book around grandfather's adages while Michael was around to rollick, puff his cheeks, and season it with more laughter and phunny stories.
Grandfather’s
sayings represent what many old timers, grounded in carving a resilient nation
out of bountiful resources and hard working people, remember and repeat as life
passes along the way. They are wizened
thoughts that offer guidance over and around the sand traps of life’s golf
courses.
Grandson
Michael spent a lot of time around Grandfather Deuel. And, as most kids are,
Michael was a seed
sponge. The orange, avocado, and lemon
orchards of
This
eclectic book crosses publishing genres -- biography, history, nonfiction,
short story collection, travel, poetry, building, whimsy, public policy, and
maybe even some fiction.
Ultimately, however, for the open and savvy this is a profile-in-leadership book.
This
unlikely looking leadership book…
·
collects
aged quotes and adages to live by,
·
strings
stories about a benevolent ruler and a cast of errant knights playfully
accepting and embellishing their chores in a Renaissance reminiscent enclave,
·
pays
tribute to a playfully confused kid, whose pursuit of what seemed “phun” to him
molded him into a giant character around whom typically phun-stunted characters
relearned play.
If you…
·
worry
about loved ones who seem consumed with pursuing foolish dreams,
·
wish
you had played outside the sandbox more than you did,
·
imagine
that maybe magic can happen when you live in a community of doers, where bolts and beams and cement from heaven
magically overcome coiffured, suburban society’s roadblocks against pursuing
dreams,
·
are
able to believe and work and sweat long enough to see that junk, when manned
with dinged and beaten crow bars, come-alongs, scary scaffolding, and battle
scarred stone buggies really can make a castle;
then you may enjoy reading how leadership
qualities grow from old sayings, dreams, and used telephone poles.
Introduction
A little about grandfather,
Michael’s first memories, and Andy Rooney.
Grandfather teaches Michael about business from a muddy reservoir that Al Bourne used to water his lemons and oranges, when he wasn’t running Singer Sewing Machine. While playing in the fields around the reservoir, Michael played on the strings of Mr Bourne’s heart, which would lead to Michael obtaining Al Bourne’s farm and filling the reservoir with stories around a 7 ½ storied Castle of Junk.
As grandfather filled kid Michael's head with stories and adages, Michael moved into manhood filled with innocent childhood beliefs. After growing into a hunk of a man, Michael Clark Rubel would, in the middle of adult conversation, reach back into his memory, recall grandfather's words, and ask for his black book into which his wrong handed curl would chisel grandfather's adages for life. All those historical left-handed scribbles are memorialized in Chapter 2.
Odo Stade was conscripted to ride with Pancho Villa and luckily rode away with Villa’s boots after the massacre, which Odo survived.
Stanley Baird shook milkshake maker Ray Kroc and started the Golden Arches from behind a sink -- after beating the Kroc at his own bun filling nickel and dime game.
Escaping
mom's parties meant escaping Sally Rand, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Joe
Penner… MCR's life was ever safest and
preferred aside his dogs' paws, as
With nine cats ruling at home, she rode her broom over all our Castle’s Knights and nights. She was the craggy old witch we all loved, and she magically knew -- and Shrieked, especially in her newspaper – The Shriek -- everything going on in our nightlives.
There are few better highs than building a sky-high castle of junk in an upscale town. Long before "recycling" was in, neighbors piled bags of bottles, telephone companies left their leftover telephone poles, torn out tunnel lumber was scavenged from the Feather River Water Project, collapsed freeway beams were recycled into Castle walls, and found river bed rocks were borrowed from San Gabriel Canyon for our attempt to castle into eternity.
The flood did come, Skipper did blow up the engine, the windmill missed the mattresses, he picked the Wells Fargo safe, the Marine tank was stolen, and some of Skipper's rights and wrongs stand and fall all around the words punched here.
"Do you understand? My life is in your hands!" MCR repeated to his skinny young helper wheeling rocks 50' high on Rubelia's rag-tag scaffolds. "How blessed we were," he would often say in looking back on all the Rubelian work where "Safety was third."
About
golden nuggets, Harry Reasoner, fan dancers, Mrs. Graham, cliffhanging in
Pharmers fly with peacocks, grade schoolers, Dating Games, broken windows, and broken drills. Everyone, especially Pharmers, love animals, kids, dates, breaking and fixing stuff. Rubelia supplied those opportunities in quixotic abundance.
Little Uncle Ted outfoxes Bradley's Washington Post, uses his Acme Thunderer to pick up MCR's dirty underwear somewhere in Mexico, and is left on desert ground reeling from an over-explosion of cross country methane.
He had seen so much of the world. Seen and played so many good pranks. Seen and done so much with so little. It was almost like he had been immaculately conceived, yet he lightly shuffled off his loss of sight as his "Immaculate Deception."
By his sixth inning, he no longer was bailed from Egyptian dungeons to scrub barnacles and toilets. Now, it wasn't a cargo freighter but Holland Cruise Lines calling to reject his ticket purchase. Instead, the Michael Clarke Rubel they had heard about, and Kaia, were comped with a stateroom, and requested they nightly dine with the captain.
Michael's
world travels and fantasized real world work moved his civics 180°. From
He never got much beyond the first book’s youthful opening, “I’m Mike. I build castles… I’m 9…" That's why school kids always had Mykee's soft spot and an entree to tour the Castle when others could not get by Rubelia's two-ton gate or its barbed walls.
Every day he looked and acted like Santa Claus, and even had his own toy making shops for kids and grown-ups. Without him, Christmases aren't the same for all the kids and especially for us supposedly grown-up Pharmers that passed through Rubelia's gates.
“Please move over! You’re standing on my stomach,” spooked the well-dressed lady. Her horror, however, only made Crazy Bill and the Rubelians chuckle under the fruit trees in the Pharm’s cemetery.
God knows the world is filled with Peter Principle Practioners. Back then, the author didn’t know who the Koch brothers were or that they would fund PPPers to go after him. Rubelia had a variety of ways to deal with PPPers. So, some stories of this Rubelian author scrimmaging in and out of classrooms, courtrooms, football fields, and junkyards with Peter Principlers, Principals, John Birchers, and the Koch brothers fall here.
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