Picture

Something completely different from the dry, hot, windy, southwest desert and talk of cowboys and writing. It's a picture from the dry, hot, windy, Middle East. The ship on the left is the USS NORFOLK (DL-1) with two British destroyers tied up alongside at the long pier in Manama, Bahrain, year 1968. I had the honor and the privilege of serving on the NORFOLK for a few months, an experience that I will not soon forget.

I also served on the USS BELLATRIX (AKA-3), the USS SPHINX (ARL-24), the USS NEPTUNE (ARC-2), the USS CLAUDE V. RICKETTS (DDG-5), the USS VALCOUR (AGF-1), and the USS LUCE (DLG-7), in addition to various shore stations, including the Pentagon and about five years in Europe (Spain, France, and Belgium).

The NORFOLK duty was at the time my service was drawing to an end, and from Bahrain I was transferred to Yokosuka, Japan, for a couple of years before my retirement from the Navy.

So, now I write Westerns, or at least try to, to keep the genre alive and provide entertainment for those readers interested in the Old West and cowboys and Indians, bank robbers, train robbers, good guys and bad guys, fallen women, saloon girls, and happily married wives and all the fascinating country that makes up the West. By the way, I am again polishing up The Bloody Gulch which should be published before too much longer. This is the story of the Sheriff and the CB Ranch gang in early Roosevelt, Utah.