I poured Costco vodka into a Brita filter, over and over, 10 times total.  The intent was to prove that high-quality vodka is simply low-quality vodka, filtered to death.  The purpose was to make it more palatable for Gary, who was using it to bash down pills.

I was wrong.  The vodka still sucked, and the room smelled like a fire hazard.  My hosts however, were content to watch me do all this.  Miss Chunna bothered to help.  Of course she did.

Antics like these would be common during my visits with the Gerlachs.  I wish I had more time.  I wish I spent our visits in more productive ways.  They are the only thing I left behind in California.  And my cactuses [1].

I met this not-gentle-man in a Safeway grocery store.  It's just about the only place you will have access to scientists who changed the world.  They'll be in a rollator, in a slack-sized gentle-brown sweater, waiting for their attendant to push them further.  They'll be looking at the bakery dessert prices in bewilderment.

I could hear his deep-toned disapprovals, "Holy Hell".  I had to speak up and confirm him.  "Isn't that awful ?" Within a few exchanges he gave me my first pearl of wisdom...  "I can't believe you guys have to deal with such bitches." Did he just read Trojan Whorse !?  Fortunately he wasn't just a cranky old miserab who earned a distaste for women by trial; quite the opposite, he was a traditionalist who decried modernity, left right and center.  He hated Biden and Trump and Putin—all cowards.  My new friend!

He was loud and proud of his country and his service - he liked men who acted like men (and not cowards).  He praised women who acted like ladies (and not bitches).  Me, entrenched in personal turmoil from career-ending "Long Covid" 🤮 disease symptoms (thanks Pfizer), felt like I struck gold.  We hit it off, in about 12 visits in all, some of them short trips through the Santa Cruz mountains, most of them tableside chats supplemented with snap-cap revolver training.

He lived 5 minutes away.  I could tell he was a trove of information, and his soul was similar to mine, albeit, two generations apart.  It actually made our time together unique, punctuated by discovery.  Having spent 2 years trying to get California doctors to believe anything I was saying about my post-vaccine health, I was certain every Californian was a screaming faggot Yes-man with no Soul inside.  But then Gary proved that wrong.

If you can believe it, there is still …. STILL …. remnants of an old guard in California, good descent people who scraped and scrapped to get to the best part of the World, values intact.  Can you believe it?  They're still there...  you have to look for them.  Start at Safeway.

In the Bay Area there are mostly 'girly boys'.  It's rare to find a masculine man.  They've tried to do away with them culturally, making Gary a relic.  I was fascinated with him from the start: an 87-year-old veteran, scientist, fighter, and spy.  Over the course of 18 months, the stories and knowledge poured out.  We commiserated on endless subjects that only men care about: combat, the natural world, civilization, power, the cosmos, guns, deep history and the future, meaning and purpose, family.  Through our friendship and the sharing of our pasts, I found personal confirmation.  For a few moments in life, I had a grandfather.  And he was wild.

I didn't get to learn his whole story, but enough to know he could have forsaken me as woefully under-educated, or not cut from the same cloth, and he didn't at all.  We spoke to each other like equals, didn't pull words, didn't waste time.  Real ones don't.

HEY BUDDY!

THANK YOU.  THANK YOU.  THANK YOU.

THANK YOU FOR BEING THE MAN THAT YOU ARE.

He always used military time.  Right.  First time I met him I gave him a written report and summation of my life (no longer available).  Boy that was a hit!

The Gerlachs were a Prussian military family that immigrated on the cusp of WWI.  Their name was Von Gerlach, but Uncle Sam demanded they drop the VON before they entered the service.  I can still hear Gary say proudly 'FAWN GAIR-LOCKK'.  Like a Bond villain.  He had a deep voice, so it sounded cool.

Gary was a some kind of wunderkind who got tapped on the shoulder early on, picked up a full ride to Stanford at 15, studied under the best physicists there and at Cal Tech, and was put on the team that built the laser-guided bomb (which led to the laser...  if you didn't know, everything is built as a weapon first).  He had special permission to ride a motorcycle to college as a teen, thanks to his dad, brass in the California Highway Patrol.

Gary learned guns, and gunsmithing early on.  As a kid he maintained all the pistols for all the guys on his Dad's police force.  He entered the Marine Corps at the dawn of the Vietnam War, achieved the rank of Colonel, and commanded men in the battlefield.  “There was nothing usual about it.” — my guy was assigned his military unit because he delivered.  Fast forward to 2023: my sleeping quarters are his 'reloading room' complete with every type of small munition I can think of.  He always wanted to do the reloading with me, and to go shooting.  That is still going to happen.

Gary regularly shuttered in pain when he spoke.  It was always breaking his thought pattern, and scuttled 60% of our discussions.  "4 helicopter crashes - sole survivor of 3".  In the last one, Gary went into a coma, where he would lay for over a year.  He already had a family at this point: a beautiful wife and two kids.  The mother-in-law, like many mother-in-laws, hated him, and finally was able to wage war on him in the courts while he was incapacitated.  They took both kids from him, after painting the picture of a dangerous bloodthirst who could do no better than kill.

The agency that handles intelligence became his next setting in life, the lowly job title—'chief scientist'.  Besides all the typical black works (smirk) was his top-level clearance and access to information.  I suppose, it's me who cares about this stuff—he never brought it up unless I asked.  One day he said, "I would never give you classified information.  I never have, and I never will."  That means the following is just unconfirmed water cooler talk that can be found anywhere (and therefore can't be real):

• Patton was murdered
• Underground tunnels stretch from coast to coast
• The R family does in fact run the world
• Aliens are real
• We were created by an alien race
• Christianity was created by Constantine's scribes
• A certain M prophet was a mass grapist of young girls
• The world floods on schedule and is soon due
• The Germans cured cancer in the 1930s
• The Moon was created, and is hollow
• Sumer was nuked
• The entire planet being nuked, is unallowed

In time these bits of info have faded in their shock value, and in their stead, the following statements did the mental fermentation:

• A man's #1 purpose is to protect his family.
• If you have to shoot someone, put 3 in his chest, 2 in his head, and you kill the son of a bitch.
• If you believe in that [contemporary narrative], then you believe in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
• You are family, and are always welcome here.

---

Gary was 6'7 and trained in various martial arts, all the popular ones of the 1970s, and picked up many belts.  He beat the shit out of someone at work, probably a creep from the state.  He was on track to become a 4-star general.  Not only did they cut him loose, but they yanked the retirement, wiped his info and tried to kill him.  Great employer, huh?

He tried working as a civilian – he designed a machine that completely removes the toxicity of nuclear waste.  Who would want that?  He couldn't get it licensed anywhere.

My timeline gets blurry here, as I can't tell if business cards like these (pic) – which I found lying next to his old passport stamped with dozens of countries – was part of a legit business venture of his, or a logistics cover.

His past was shrouded in mystery, but everything he ever said, always added up.

“[We] made state-of-the-art weapons ...  took them [on tour] to demonstrate, and sell ...”

“I had to shoot my way out of every country in Africa I went in.”

“In [Central African Republic] I watched military men chase women down, cut fat off of their backside and eat it.”

“Last guy who took my revolver out of my hand like that I punched in the mouth.”

“They wanted me to kill the vice president of [Middle Eastern Country] but I refused because he was an honorable man.”

“Charles, come close.  I want to tell you something.” as he brutally laces up boots no senior would require for a day of immobility,

“I...  AM...  JAR HEAD.”

I decided early on to not ask too many questions, and center myself on our friendship – and the Now.  I knew I was no biographer (I never planned to write this) so I didn't bother with consistent interrogation.  There were too many fragments of a life on overdrive to put together.  Sometimes Gary seemed troubled by some of his memories.  So there would be no point in getting him all figured out.

When we were together, he was always very encouraging.  He loved learning.  He made me write down the species name for each of my cactuses.  Of course he did.

He told me, "You are a Computer Scientist." He wanted to pay for me to go to college and resume my degree-getting.  He didn't have any money.

I made sure to salute Gary as much as I could remember to.  He appreciated it, and in this rare bubble of earnest humility I found myself in, I appreciated it too.

---

Every California boy has a soft spot for Asian girls.  Gary's second wife was a scientist from Bangkok who worked at Stanford.  He loved her immensely.  At about the time I was wrapping up electrician school on the Least Coast, Suvan ('Soo-wan') was killed on the way to work.  [2]

What you won't read in the paper: the person who hit her was an Indian woman in a Tesla, running late for her new job at Apple.  Realizing how important consumer tech innovation is, she refused to wait at the red light, pulled onto oncoming traffic, put the pedal to the battery, and launched towards the intersection of De Anza and Stevens Creek Blvd.  After Suvan's death, my protagonist pulled back from civilian life and I believe, began his retirement.

Later he would meet Chunna (“chu-na”) or Mrs.  Trina for the less eloquent, via physical therapy following a fall.  She was just his type - conservatively Chinese and a proper lady.  They married.

Miss Chunna had an interesting history of her own.  Her family spoke out against [the party] when it came thru.  Her brothers were all disappeared; her and her sisters sent to slave farms.

The lady ends up in a million dollar house in Perfectville, USA.  Wild, huh?  She deserved it.  Humans with proper radar would find her to be traditional and timid, but with a guarded sweetness.  She delivered on being a Lady to Gary, cooking him wild looking nutrition-first Chinese meals, while tolerating his consistent Alzheimer's episodes.  Other women wouldn't have handled the assigment.

Despite an exceptional educational pedigree, incalculable service to the USA, and incessant hard work, Gary had only his home in his old age, and some guns.  And his lady.  I was the only person for a hundred miles that took an interest in him.

I think he deserved a lot more.  Maybe not things or money.  But respect.  When I went on walks with Gary in the neighborhood or at the grocery store, he would stop and talk to anyone who'd listen.  He'd tell them about his service in the military and his work for the govt.

What would they do?  Take a guess...  Act severely troubled like they have a bladder full of piss that needs immediate attention.  These people today, I tell you, they're awful.

He wanted me to go diving.  "You can witness every era of evolution living amongst each other in the Ocean." He was a SCUBA instructor, but at this age he would need so much help it could never happen.  He wanted me to go flying with him.  He was a licensed pilot, but he had no plane.  Ultimately our time together would be 95% dining room talks, 5% outside walks.

We drank Modelos some days, his to chase the pill-drowning vodka.  I can remember his giant ape-like fingernails consistently peeling the gold flake wrapper, his mind doing its best to keep busy.

Gary had a Masters in Geology.  We went over all the California fault lines.  He had hiked all through the Padres with his german shepherds in his youth.  I asked him about Yosemite, a new favorite place of mine: he spent his childhood summers there.

He said his time at Stanford was brutal: “they were jews and I was german – they didn't want me on the team – and tried to fail me the best they could...  I studied so hard”.  As a 15 year old ?!

“I got to study under Feynman … he was brilliant”.  He named other big hitters, kraut and jewish sounding names, I can't recall them now – apparently geniuses in the world of Qualitative Electrodynamics and other high-order maths and physics.

With each new detail I would re-assess this man's life; I was breaking my new rule, shame on me.  It seeemed, for as amazing and unique that it was, it was amazingly difficult and uniquely challenging.  I don't think I could have done all these things.  I would have stopped short.  For instance, when his grandfather smacked the shit out of him as a kid, saying, “You Will Not Be Weak” ...  it worked.  I may have folded and said Fuck Grandpa and Fuck Stanford, I'm going to San Francisco to get fucked up (haha, maybe).

Then again, giving myself some credit, maybe Gary wouldn't have handled failure-zone Baltimore, dope smoking parents, and lackluster-everything so well, either.  Life gets its funniest here, when you compare lives and play what-if?

That's the only trouble I experience then, and now, thinking on my time with GG.  Why did God make us friends?  What was I supposed to be learning?  Why me?  Why him?  These were all my issues, not his.  Whereas I was stuck in must-find-meaning mode, he was in his retirement, living loudly and shame free.

One week Gary suddenly wanted to get a puppy, and our outdoor walk terminated at the pet store, in front of a jumbo sack of RAW (dog chow).

He had to know what RAW means.  We examined the entire bag; these assholes didn't once explain what RAW is.  Some stupid millenial branding tool I'm sure.

“What the hell is RAW?!”

“WHAT IS RAWW ???!!”

“What Does RAW Mean ??!!”

I couldn't stop smiling.  The people who stopped to stare, they all deserved this.  Giant man on a mission for the meaning of RAW.  Never did get an answer.  But I've been smiling ever since.

Gary was always in the process of buying an overpowered gun.  His collection disappeared, after trusting some contractors, who robbed him of all of his original collection:  machine guns and submachine guns of all known variety, custom-built revolvers and handguns of every make and caliber I've ever heard of, Revolutionary antiques, custom bows and arrows, long arms, sniper rifles..  I remember tote after tote of brass casings in the garage with CASULL hand-written on them, next to the gray Mayonnaise dated to Suvan's death year.  He was gradually picking them back up in order of importance.

He at times, around my descheveled fold-out sleeping arrangement, would ungracefully walk into the room half-naked with a mac-10, or mac-11, to show and tell.  I still find it hilarious.

Leaning against the bedroom wall, a sand-colored sniper rifle where you can swap out the barrel and create a new gun.  The kraut scope on top weighed 8 or 10 pounds at least.  When I looked into it, I could barely see the crosshairs and I've got decent eyes.  The damn thing was so heavy – what a pain in the ass it would be to lug that around and have to assassinate with it.

357 magnum with all custom parts, black chrome-moly and resin-coated wood handle.  I can still feel the mechanism, smooth as silk.  Beautiful.  Sitting on the lounge sofa with snap caps.

47 magnum with built-in grill at the end that helps suppress recoil by generating a reverse-pressure.  I didn't like it.  Stainless steel doesn't have a nice hand-feel.  Sitting on the den sofa with snap caps.

10 mm glock at the bedroom door.  Loaded, above the bookshelf.

Loaded Garand in the bedroom closet.  Beneath the best in 1980s home security gear.  All doors and windows bugged for alarm.  In fact, when I stood in front of it, it was alarming.  Only old age had penetrated an otherwise impenetrable fortress.

While Miss Chunna was sweating how to pay the exorbitant California property tax on their social security incomes, Gary's ringing up guns and ammo on the credit cards.  Let us not forget, that they also have a scumbag on their back — some 'friend' of Gary's that helps him write checks.  He called one day while I was there - Ms Chunna looks at me with a worried face...

“HeY ThAir MiSter GaRy, WHO's that VoiCe in the BackGround?” with a wary mexican cadence.  Just by his voice I wanted to strangle this cocksucker, in the garage, between the LiquiMoly and the metric wrenches.

I answered for the three of us -- “Hi Amigo.  This is Charles, the new guy.  Hope to see you realll soon.” Fortunately I never did.

---

He had to take a test, one time, because he was in arrears on his paperwork.  They couldn't make delivery until he tested out.  So I had to take him to the gun man, help him take the test in person, then retrieve the new 2000-dollar 460 magnum.

“65,000 PSI ...  enough to pass thru an elephant” — sounded like the Gerlachs needed this, so I got involved.

20 questions.   You have to get 14 right.   Then you can kill whoever you like.

Would you believe me this military scientist was tripping on every single god damn question?  He was.

His problem was relatable: the questions were overly-simple to borderline-retarded.  One-by-one the test ground to a halt, and the business proprietor was arraigned and made to answer for what the hell they meant, and why they would ask such stupid questions.

We pushed through. I did all the bubble-marking, after deciding the answers of course, based upon a consensus of myself (gun newbie) and untamed veteran.  With each clock-stopping question the shop guy was taking gas something lethal.  It was hilarious.

What do you know, we passed! I mean he did, of course.  And we waited and came back a couple weeks later, or whatever, and got the gun!

A minor victory for man.  A major defeat for elephants.

---

I had to leave California, and the Gerlachs in late 2023, less than a year after meeting them.  My wife and I had to return to the place of our birth, where we had lost 3 family members since our last depart.  Besides, the union had no work for boys with dizzy spells.  It was time.  I gave them a couple of my cactuses, to be checked upon later.

I didn't take any photos of us, I didn't want to sully our visits with a damn smartphone.  Gary decried smartphones but ironically couldn't put his down at night.  Staying in his living room, I could hear him swiping Ukranian war shorts into the wee hours.  When he called me, and if I answered while driving, he would request a call-back and hang up.  I drove out to see him for a hot week in 2024.  He quickly forgot I was there.  Poor fella.  Cactuses looked good, real good.  Out of the center of one, burst a remarkable pioneering pilot branch, aimed at the Western sun.

When my blood grandfather died, I played PlayStation™.  I didn't know him.  When I heard of Gary passing, I felt a type of ill I never had before.  I had just spoken to him a few weeks prior, his voice ever-full of pride and encouragement.  Truly the first time I've experience 'loss'.

The man may have killed millions, and might've been in the throws of dementia near fully, but while we're driving through the Santa Cruz mountains, he still has the presence of mind to tell me to pull over, and check on a lady jogger, as was the right thing to do.  How they did things...  the old guard.

---

Decades before, the Gerlach family ranch was sold by the sister, as well as the [mini-mansion] on Winchester, now a parking lot.

Miss Chunna has a daughter I spoke with once, successful and pleasant and it seems, a capable care taker.  Momma's retirement should be reasonable, God-willing.  The Gerlach house however, our rendezvous place and primary setting of this story, is being prepared for sale.

Guns gone.  Homes gone.  Will the future contain a trace of the Gerlachs?

There's a distant grandson out there, quite tall, that he looked into.  Apparently he's got a temper and doesn't take shit.  That gave Gary a smile.

I hope the Gerlachs, the spirit of their family, the spirit of Gary, lives on in this World, and gives assholes and cowards a whole lot of trouble.

“THANK you, THANK you.” He would tell me, all the time.

No, thank you Gary.

As far as Miss Chunna, I hope she returns well from China this year.  I owe her a visit.

 

Notes

1. Cactuses not cactii.  Correction by GG.
2. news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/12/suvan-gerlach-longtime-engineering-school-employee-dies-56
3. Reader feedback welcome at the email address: webmaster @ jameslafond.com