Cyberville

By Mark Newell Douglas

An old sailor visits his shipmate in Sutter Village, California, to renew acquaintance. He is charmed by the setting and decides to settle down near his friends. His all time great hobby is model trains, which he has collected many over his 38 years in the Navy. Spotting a decrepit 3-story building, he decides to buy it and form a Model Train Shop. The story becomes involved in several twists and jerky starts and stops. Essentially, Cyberville is a comedy having no real life or characters involved. Was a lot of fun writing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543900910

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CYBERVILLE

>1<

It is the sign of the times: the ubiquitous cyber world, sneaking around the ether waves.

    My name is Eduardo Feathertop, a 38-year Navy veteran. For years,  I was part of the government snooping around the radio waves, listening to friends and enemies, alike. As for my Naval career, I joined in 1940 on a Kiddie Cruise and went into full retirement exactly 38 years later. Upon joining, I was five foot eleven and a half inches tall, weighed in at one hundred forty nine pounds, with wavy brown hair. The day I hung up my uniform for good, I was six foot 2 inches tall and weighed one hundred sixty-five pounds. Not much hair left, mostly grey.

  I never married — had a few girl friends here and there (no children that I know of); saved my money via the Navy Thrift Plan; didn’t and don’t gamble; and when I turned 21, I found Jack Daniels Old No. 7, got to be good friends with the Lynchburg, Tennessee folks. Never had a car until I retired; then, someone had to teach me how to drive. There were a couple of things, though.

  I have always enjoyed reading westerns and mysteries, even collected a complete set of Zane Grey stories. I keep reading those stories year after year, starting with George Washington, Frontiersman, all the way through to Island Girl.

  However, this is where I really got into trouble: model trains! Absolutely fascinating lil critters. Building, fussing over details under a big lighted magnifying glass, and painting those models requires patience, love, and money, and more money — also a place to keep all those wonderful cars, engines, and structures. Only bought one 3-ft track in each gauge I built; needed all sorts of special tools and gages; never built layouts, though. Where would I have put them? Definitely not aboard a Navy ship!

  What else? Ah yes, a storage locker! That became a problem because I kept moving on to larger and larger storage lockers. When I moved every little box to the last — current locker, it came to me to begin categorizing and assigning personal serial numbers on each box to track what I had in a cloth-bound ledger.

*    *    *

  So, I finally hung up my Navy uniforms in 1978 at the mellow age of 55; it was time to do two things that had irked me all those years. First and foremost, I always hated to shine shoes and tie shoelaces. From now on, I’ll wear sandals. Second, why shave? And … I will wear hats … but just once in a while.

  It was time to pay a visit to all my friends scattered along the Eastern seaboard and the West coast. A few inland friends came last.

  In Chicago, I bought a ticket on AmTrak SuperChief for Sacramento. When I hopped off the train and watched the thundering diesels begin the run for the Bay Area, I boarded — not at all happy — the Amtrak bus that would take me to Yuba City on the Western Slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Old US-99E and Western Pacific Railroad passenger service use to run along that route.

  In Yuba, I boarded an intercity bus for a place called Sutter Village where an old seafaring buddy lived: a nice ride across the Sacramento Valley. When the bus deposited me at a 7-11 store in Sutter Village, the middle-eastern fella shook his head and handed me a scrawled penciled map of the village on a torn piece of a brown bag. The last leg of my trip was on foot.

Aw man, finally!

  Lifting my pack on to my shoulders, I began strolling through the quiet streets. I had landed in a place called Sutter Village in central California where one of my best shipmates had retired years ago: an old shipmate and friend, Aldo Perkins, a former Carpenter’s Mate from the late World War Two, had settled there with his wife, Jennifer.

But was he still here?

Was he still alive?

Or had they moved on? This was the last address I had for him.

  I read that he gradually became very well known in Central California as a fine cabinet maker — as his neat and orderly workshop/garage would attest to me, later. Many years had passed since we met in person. Oh, to be sure, we wrote back and forth, and later started corresponding by email; talked on the phone once in a while.

  Clutching his address and the screwed-up map, with my knapsack hanging on my shoulders, I trudged through the streets in the neighborhood in the twilight until I arrived at what I knew — or I thought — was his house.

  I stood looking at the house front before beginning to walk toward the front porch. Dimly lighted, I thought two people were sitting there in creaking rocking chairs.

Is that Aldo?

I hesitantly walked toward the front porch and cleared my throat.

  "Excuse me, I’m looking for an old buddy and shipmate, Aldo Perkins …

  … Jesus Christ, … Eduardo? He sucked in his breath.

  EDUARDO? OH MY GOD! He stood, rubbed his head, and turned to his wife.

  Honey, this is my old shipmate from WW2, Eduardo Feathertop. Oh wow!

He stood up again, turned around a couple of times.

  Dammit, Eduardo, reaching down to pull me up, getcher butt up here and sit down. He clasped me with both arms and looked me up and down, hugged me tightly, pushed me into the spare wicker rocker, then sat down himself.

  His wavy black hair had disappeared — all of it. Quite a shock. His naturally gray eyes were still clear, crinkling with happiness, and looked shrewd. He always liked to laugh at silly things. He was wearing striped shorts under a nondescript tee shirt. We were of the same height — around six feet. He gained more weight than I did over these past years. When I tried out a few nicknames just then, such as Shiny and Curly, I was frostily advised to use his given name, Aldo, and his wife as Jennifer.

  He introduced Jennifer who I never met, just bits in his letters. Her hair was light brown in the twilight, fairly short, and curly. Brown eyes seemed to fit her very well in her short height … maybe five foot two. In turn, Jennifer was dressed in a tan clambaker shorts and a frilly blue blouse with pink spots on it; slim, compared to Aldo’s swelling lower chest.

  We all babbled on for a couple of hours. Jennifer hauled out another box of Sutter wine and poured White Zinfandel for the three of us …  

  Aldo ran to the back patio — dragging me along — started the BBQ and a bit later, served fine St. Louis Ribs for that first night as we settled for the evening. Jennifer zapped baked beans and cut fresh greens for a tossed salad. I’d hardly dropped my knapsack before they insisted I would stay with them until I figured out where I was going next.

  Eduardo, why don’t we ride around to work off all this food, Aldo suggested.

   We rode around the village in his and Jennifer’s three-wheeler tricycles for some exercise. It was refreshing and sorta fun. We pedaled at a strolling rate up and down the streets lined with big trees and yellow, orange, and red lillies on both sides of the streets shading most of the