Goobledygook and Other Interesting Things

By Michael Bunch

Raif was tough. He was the toughest guy on the block and the undisputed leader of the Sixth Street Kerugma Gang. He had a rough upbringing, and well, home was little more than a place to crash for a while before going back into the streets to commit more mayhem. He was well-known to the cops having stolen several cars and newly branching out to become a sidewalk pharmacist. As he was chased by the police, he finds himself trapped in a blind alley. In a panic, he challenges God to save him. Much to his confusion, his challenge is answered.

This book is filled with many other stories that may answer some of your challenges and perhaps surprise you as you read!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636306155

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Goobledygook and Other Interesting Things

Michael Bunch

ISBN 978-1-63630-614-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63630-615-5 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Michael Bunch

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books, Inc.

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Table of Contents

Raif and the Sixth Street Kerugma Gang

The Phoenix of Phoenix

Gamilion, the Yucci, and the Padre

My Angel Poopie

Cammie and the Dung Beetle

Sing, Brian, Sing

Don’t Let Me Catch You at the Holiday Inn!

Nashi’s Greatest Possession

On the Way to Prague

Victoria’s Little Miracle

Norman and the Rock

The Potter’s Wheel

The Angel and the Oldsmobile

Sweet Nina

Orville and Wilber

The Sheriff, the Boy, and the Beat-Up Old Truck

Road Rage

Yonaguni Yonaguni World

Raif and the Sixth Street Kerugma Gang

Raif was not your typical young man. He grew up on the rough side of town, and well, his parents really did not care much where he went or who he hung out with. During his youth, he regularly stayed out past one and two in the morning before stumbling home. He literally grew up on the streets of the city, and home was little more than a place he went for an occasional meal, to change clothing, and for a few hours of sleep. By the time Raif reached eleven, he has already experienced huffing, petty crime, marijuana, and sex. Not too shabby for a young boy who was eleven going on twenty-one. He was already well-known to the local police as they repeatedly picked him up over the previous years for a variety of crimes, not to mention truancy. School was simply not in his vocabulary. He vowed never to go back by the time he was twelve. Raif’s mother was not much of a family person as she had four children by four different men. To say that she was a bit loose is an understatement. Her idea of raising her children was to check in on them every week or so to see if they were still alive. The only bright light in the family Raif knew was his grandmother, Ofelia. She would feed him whenever he came over to her house and remind him that God loved him. His mother’s motherly instincts were sorely lacking, and her children knew very little about love and almost nothing of motherly care. In fact, they were uncertain who exactly their fathers were and often argued about it. Raif was the oldest, and he sort of felt responsible for Ronald, Jennifer, and Louis. He did what he could to help them out and tried to be sure that they all had at least one meal most days.

To say that life was difficult for them is an understatement. But they hung together in the only family that they knew. And it was Raif who kept them together (as best he could). It was inevitable that Raif would eventually graduate to the big-time crime. By the time he was eighteen, he had stolen several cars and heisted a load or two of electronics from parked freight trucks. He had never been caught stealing the big stuff, so he felt that he was pretty lucky. And by now being eighteen, he knew that he was invincible. In short order, he began to take more and more risks, including being shot at and buying his own gun for protection (or so he told himself).

Then at nineteen, something extraordinary happened. He grew by nearly one-and-a-half feet in less than a year. It was almost comical as he outgrew his shoes and pants faster than he could steal them. He went from five foot to nearly six foot three in a little over eleven months. This was incredible. He was a veritable giant among his peers. He eventually went to the county hospital to find out why he had gotten so big so fast. After several dozen tests over the course of three weeks, he was informed that he had had a tumor on his pituitary gland. And it was the tumor that had caused his unusual growth. Fortunately, it had stopped growing spontaneously, shrinking to almost nothing. The doctor assured him that he was done growing. Raif was relieved if not also a bit prideful.

Needless to say, being so big made him king of the hill in his gang. Not very many people wanted to challenge such a large creature. His temperament was not always the best either. In fact, he was known from time to time to grab someone who disagreed with him by the scruff of the collar, suspend them in midair, and shake them like a rag doll until they agreed with his point of view. Needless to say, few disagreed with him. It was natural for him to become the leader of his gang. Later that year, he was elected leader.

Their gang was called the Sixth Street Blades, but once Raif took over, he changed it to the Sixth Street Kerugma. He had no idea what the word meant. But he had heard it on channel 22, and it sounded Japanese; it sounded tough, and it sounded cool. No one challenged him. He was the boss and that was it. So the Kerugma it was.

Several months passed by as the gang pursued its petty crime to support their habits. The police already knew where they met, and it was pretty hard to miss the gang leader being so tall and all. When they graduated from stealing cars, heisting stereos, and petty thuggery into dealing crank, nobody in the club thought much of it. That is other than how much more money they would make. It was going to be great for everyone. No one would have to scramble for chump change in order to keep alive. They were on easy street, and it was going to be an easy joyride.

Late one cold rainy January day, Raif was running down the street away from the police after being observed on a nearby corner, plying his sidewalk pharmacist trade when he literally ran into, or should I say ran over David Amaya. David and Raif had grown up in the same neighborhood, and they lived right behind each other’s house on the same block. The difference between them was that David had a good mother and a hardworking father. They both provided for David with tender care. Where Raif had dropped out of school, David had finished junior college and was an accomplished air-conditioning repair machinist. Where Raif had lived on the street, David was at home and in his own bed nightly by 8:00 p.m. Where Raif roamed the streets, stealing everything he could get his hands on—including David’s bicycle more than once—David worked hard around the house and later at the local convenience store to put money in his pocket. They were neighbors and acquaintances who could not have possibly been more different.

David started to go to church with his parents when he was a baby. He graduated from a children’s church into the adolescent ministry and discovered that he had a heart for the guys who lived around him who never seemed to have a chance. Raif, for his part, never darkened the door of a church, for fear that the roof would cave in on him. Besides, as he used to say, church is for suckers to be conned out of their money by a sly-talking preacher who did not care for anything except the money. David had tried to talk to Raif several times before, but it always turned out the same. Raif would use his size to intimidate and then mock David. Remarkably though, David never seemed to give up, and despite some pretty rough handling at Raif’s hands, he kept coming back. That really bugged Raif, but he did not want to talk about it.

This particular afternoon, David was at the corner of North West Central Avenue and Twenty-Seventh Street when Raif literally ran over him as he was running from the cops. As Raif wheeled quickly around the corner, David was facing away from him, handing out flyers. David had just started to turn around to see what all the noise was about when Raif plowed into him. Blam! In a split second, they were both sprawled out across the sidewalk with David’s flyers fluttering in every direction. Raif let loose a barrage of foul language so furious that it could have sunk a battleship as he stumbled to his feet. Simultaneously, as David was getting up, he stumbled and fell against Raif. They both stumbled again in a flailing balancing act that they were both losing. They crumbled together in a pile, both trying to get away from each other at the same time trying and failing to regain their balance. As they tried again to get up, the flyers came fluttering down around them like a small blizzard of snow. David instinctively tried to pick them us as the breeze started to scatter them. Having recognized Raif and remembering his hard upbringing, as a whim, he stuffed one into Raif’s coat pocket as he pushed away from him while simultaneously ducking another massive barrage of foul language. After a few moments, they were both back on their feet. Raif was making a fast getaway to the east as David started a mad scramble to gather his flyers together against a demanding breeze.

A few moments later, Raif disappeared around the far corner as the three policemen rounded the opposite corner in hot pursuit. They ran smack into David who was stooped over trying to stack his flyers. One of the policemen inadvertently bumped him, which sent him rolling forward in a wild tumble, scattering the flyers he had already collected again into the wind. After a profuse quick apology by the policeman and a fast query, they continued down the street in the direction that Raif had gone.

By this time, Raif’s very long legs had paid off. He was nearly two-and-a half blocks ahead of the police and confident that they could outrun them. When he rounded the next corner, he spotted a police cruiser cross the street a further block down. As his heart leapt into his throat, he hesitated. He then quickly ducked in between two old abandoned brick buildings. The space between them was barely four feet wide, but it ran the full length of the buildings and into the alley beyond. Raif thought for sure that he could make it to the alley and, likely, those fat pigs could not. But when he reached the end of the narrow alley, he discovered that it was closed with a fifteen-foot chain-link fence, topped with razor wire, which had been concealed in the shadows. Instinctively he turned back the way he had come to make a run for the opposite side of the street. When he did, he heard the sound of a police radio of the cruiser coming from down the street. Just before the he stepped into the sidewalk, Raif ducked behind a pile of cardboard boxes to hide as the cruiser rolled to a stop.

He needed to catch his breath, and well, this was as good as any place to hide. Panting as quietly as he could, he waited for the cruiser to move on. As he waited, he reached into his pocket and felt the piece of paper that David had put in there. He pulled it out thinking that it would be useful to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. As he opened the crumpled piece of paper, he saw the words, Remember Kerugma written in bold print across the top of the page. He snickered to himself thinking that even geeky David knew about the gang. Raif smiled and started to wipe the sweat out of his eyes when he decided to read further. This was the first time in his life that he had read about God’s love and salvation. These were new words for him, and the only thing that he could remember about God was that what his grandmother had told him when he was very young. He remembered in a flash about how she said that God would help you if you really needed it and if he asked earnestly for His help.

Raif thought to himself, Only a chump would believe that stuff. Just as that thought finished flashing through his mind, he heard the footsteps of the three pursuing officers running down the street toward him in his direction. Raif dug himself deeper into the pile of cardboard boxes. His heart was pounding, and he just knew that the pile of boxes was not big enough to cover his large body. He was near panic. Then he thought to himself, All right, God, if you are out there and Grandma was right, then help me right now! Help hide me. Build me a brick wall to hide behind. He waited for what seemed like an hour but could not be much more than a few moments and, well, no wall. He was not surprised when no wall appeared. But he did notice a small brown spider had started to build a web across the opening between the buildings. Humph, he said to himself, well, God, if you are really out there, then turn out the streetlight across the street so no one can see back here. After a few more moments and as the police got closer, still nothing. Okay, God, he screamed to himself, if you will not do that, give me some more boxes to hide behind, I need them now! The police were right on top of him by now. He could hear them breathing hard from all the running, and he watched nervously as the beams form their flashlights zipped in and out of and across the alley. Raif was terrified. After a few more moments of holding his breath and listening to the police get even closer, he knew that he was done for. He knew that they would catch him and he was going to spend the next twenty-five years of his life in prison. He just knew it!

When the police stopped to reconnoiter right in front of the alley, his heart stopped. The three men were trying to figure out where he had gone. They were discussing his possible directions of travel when the police cruiser cut a 180 in the middle of the street and pulled up beside them on Raif’s side of the street, shining his spotlight down the alley. It passed the three policemen and focused on the fence at the end of the alley. Raif knew he was dead. After a few moments, he got enough courage together to peek through a crack between the cardboard boxes to see what was going on. He could see two of the policemen’s back silhouetted against the bright floodlight and the third one leaning in the window of the cruiser talking to the driver across the passenger side of the car. They were coordinating their efforts in order to find him. They were going to get him for sure. Then one who must have been the sergeant flashed his light down the alley directly onto the pile of boxes that Raif was hiding in. Raif held his breath.

In an impatient voice, the sergeant said to one of the other policemen, Give me a break. No one could have gone down that alley. Look at that spiderweb. It has not been broken, and there is a tall fence at the other end. Only then did Raif see the dew glistening off the spiderweb, and he let out a silent sigh of relief.

After a few moments, the cruiser continued up the street, and the three policemen went back the way that they had come, convinced that Raif had taken a different alley and that they had missed him. Raif waited for nearly a half an hour before he dared move. When he thought it was safe, he made his way out of the pile of boxes and back toward the street. He paused for a brief moment to duck under the spiderweb, not wanting to break it, thinking to himself, A brick wall, huh?

The Phoenix of Phoenix

Robert Bullock is a man’s man. He prided himself on being the best of the best in his fire brigade. All his life he wanted to be a fire jumper. It was hard, hot, dirty, dangerous, work; and well, you spent a great deal of time just sitting around waiting and training. But Bob used his time wisely to earn a baccalaureate degree and to put on 185 pounds of pure muscle. He loved bodybuilding, and when he was not working out, he was studying. All of the guys in the brigade teased him because he never drank alcohol and never ate junk food, as he knew that it would be counterproductive with his bodybuilding. He took the ribbing in a good-natured way and laughed it up with them although deep down inside it really annoyed him. It was all part of the firehouse life, and he knew it. By every extent of the imagination, he was a fine specimen of a man. His cropped short blond hair, blue eyes, and excellent physique were the envy of most of the guys on the fire team. The ladies flocked around him like bees around honey, making some of his buddies a bit jealous. Life was good, and after nearly two years of intensive training, he found himself trained, accredited, and ready to fight fires.

Bob was born on a high mountain cattle ranch near Flagstaff, Arizona, and he loved every inch of that ranch. Her great beauty was woven into every fiber of his being. He trilled at the cold wind as it waltzed down the valleys. In the spring, he breathed in the good smells of the flowers and the trees with delight. He reveled in the magnificent displays that the clouds would regularly put on when storms ran across the mountain range and down into the prairie. He loved the blue of the sky, the cold clear of the water in the brooks, and the ever-changing shades of green across the forest as the sun darted from cloud to cloud. He loved the high mountains, and every day he spent there was better than the one before it, or so he was often heard to say. He was not particularly pleased to have to go to Roswell, New Mexico, for his fire training. But he knew it would be for only a few months, then he would go into the lottery for a placement in the fire service. He also knew that his chances would be improved if he excelled, as there was some latitude given to those who graduated at the head of the class, so he worked very hard. When the other guys went to the local country and western bar, The Boot, Scoot and Shoot on Friday night, he could be found studying and practicing with his equipment. They teased him about being too serious; after all, Saturdays were for fun and not work. But it all paid off for him! You can imagine his delight when he was posted to the mountains northwest of Phoenix. He was in hog heaven and loving it!

After three-and-half months of boring waiting, the first call came in. As luck would have it, Bob was at Rosewood Elementary School doing a fire safety demonstration for Ms. Mc Davit’s fourth grade class when the call came in. That meant that he was late getting back to the station and he missed the departure of the team. He was forced to follow them later, nearly two days behind them. When he finally arrived at Stone Mountain near Running Deer Falls, the fire had been raging uncontrollably for nearly five days. Forest fires were perhaps the most difficult type of fire to fight in the high county, being so unpredictable. As there were no roads, little or no place for a helicopter to land, and no infrastructure of any kind with which to fight the flames, this fire was going to be very hard to fight. The team was forced to hike nearly twelve miles to the fire line. It was just too dangerous an area to jump into.

The fire was working its way up the Stone Mountain Ridge as the wind gusted erratically up to forty miles per hour. About noon that day, the wind took a sudden shift to the southeast, putting the firefighter line in jeopardy of being cut off from the trail out of the backwoods. The decision was made to withdraw the next ridge and to attempt to cut another fire line. Everyone was not happy, as they had already spent several days working this line, but they also knew that safety had to come first, and few complained.

When Bob heard about the redirection, he requested permission to jump, to join the line, as there was a moderate-size meadow not far from where they were going to start the new line. In fact, it was to be the anchor on the west for the line as it posed a natural break in the forest. The meadow also bisected by a small creek, which ran erratically across the west side of the meadow. The fire captain had some concerns about the jump, but after checking the weather forecast, he decided to give him the okay. The fire captain knew that Bob was extremely large and could carry additional tools and supplies to the men already working the line. So he got the go-ahead late that morning with a departure for the plane planned at 1300.

That morning, Bob checked and double-checked his gear before he headed for the jump aircraft. He was decked out with 150 pounds of gear and another 75 in a second bundle of tools to be delivered to his team already on the line. He carefully packed both of his parachutes and made his way to the aircraft. Captain Bergman, the pilot, teased him about being overloaded and underworked. It was all in good-natured fun. A few moments later, they were hurtling down the runway and were airborne with a bump and a thud. The ride to the fire was bumpy as you might expect. These little puddle jumpers flew low. They could not avoid all of the thermals, and they did not have wind shear indicators on them, so the pilot could not fly around them. It was a preverbal barf bag special. Bob took it in stride as his adrenalin was flowing. This was, after all, his first for real jump. He was excited beyond words.

The ride lasted a little more than three quarters of an hour. When he got the thumbs-up from the pilot, he made his way to the jump door. He carefully placed the tool package in the doorway and waited for the second thumbs-up to push it out. When he did, it flitted away like a spinning dandelion seed until the parachute cord tensed and the chute popped out. Smiling, he glanced down at his reserve shoot for one last safety check, tugged on his rip cord, glanced down at the tools shoot (unfortunately it was the last time that he was to see the tools package as the chute failed to fully deploy).

When the thumbs-up came from Captain Bergman, Bob did not hesitate. He braced his hands in the doorway and immediately shoved off. The few seconds that it took for the ripcord to tense seemed like a week. When it caught against the cable and pulled the chute, it jarred his teeth like he had been hit in the face during a barroom brawl. When Bob opened his eyes, he was gently fluttering down to the ground. His view at 4,500 feet up was spectacular as well as cold. He could see the fire off his right shoulder and marveled at the awesome beauty of the raging beast. After a few moments, he could actually see the fire roaring up the trees across the