THINGS THAT CANNOT BE EXPLAINED.

     I have this friend... we've known each other since the two of us could sit on Ron's Honda 50 and ride across the playground at Washington elementary school. There were times when we weren't in contact with each other, but we always re-united. He's been married for over 50 years. His wife, Frankie, encouraged my kids to read. She always had suggestions for them. Friends are like that. Frankie had a frequent joke; she used to subscribe to a humor publication called, "Liberal Opinion". When I would visit she would give me her old copies and say, "I know you need some liberal opinions, Larry."
     During one of those times when we were out of contact, Ron was a well-driller in Eastern Oregon. He discovered that he had a rare talent, one rooted in ancient chronicles. He is a diviner, a water-witcher. We have joked about that good naturedly, over the course of our adult lives. In the same way that Ron and his father used to good-naturedly remind me about the time they tried to teach me to water-ski behind his dad's 1950s wooden Chris-Craft runabout. I can still see that boat over these many years. It's varnished hull and deck glowing in the sun on the Willamette River. It only had a 50 horse Evinrude motor, but Ron could slolam ski behind it at 9 years old. I was taller and heavier than Ron and had never water-skiied. Jim, his father, showed me how to hold my ski-tips out of the water and yell, "ready". I was sure I was ready so I yelled ready and Jim gunned it. It was at that very moment, when the Evinrude labored to pull me out of the water, that one of my ski-tips dipped beneath the surface and the little outboard engine strained to pull my weight. I hung on to the tow-rope as I was being pulled through the water feet first, the water skiis being ripped from my feet. Jim always called that seminal event, "the 50-yard douche".  That joke makes two adult men in the declining years of life, 9 years old again.
     One day, a year or so ago, we were talking about his ability to find water. I have never understand how it was done, and even worse, I couldn't understand how it could be explained. 
     "Follow me", he said and he lead me out to his old pasture which the waterline to the house transected, stopping off at the shop to get a couple lengths of welding rod which he bent at right angles. He placed one of those welding rods in my left hand and took the other in his right hand. Then he held my righthand with his left hand and we walked together across his field, the dandelion seeds wafting in the breeze. As we approached the place where the waterline transected the field, the welding rod ends began to converge. Just before the points touched I exclaimed in amazement and then dropped his hand. As if the power had been switched off, the welding rod ends went in separate directions. I still can't explain what I witnessed. It will forever remain a mystery. Neither Ron or Frankie or I wish to explain what we witnessed as an act of some diety, and there was nothing to indicate that. What I witnessed has no explanation that can be Googled. And that is, as far as I can explain, what I was a part of. Something that has no explanation.

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