Back in the late 70s (I would tell you the exact year but it’s kinda hazy) I was living at the Elsinore drop-zone in Southern California, affectionately known as the Ghetto. It was a small trailer park on the other side of the DropZones dirt runway. It was a very close group of folks living in various trailers, vans, and tents. It did have a bit of drug-oriented undertones. Five Dollar lines of cocaine were available 24/7 in a guy named Ernie’s trailer. Smoking pot was a normal part of the day.
Skydiving would start around 9 each morning during the week and would go on all day. Sundays a bit later because of what would go on Saturday nights
At almost any time of the day, you could look up in the sky and see a mixture of Round and square parachutes drifting down. And when the winds were just right there would be load after a load of Students under round canopies filling the sky. The Ghettoites would congregate in ghetto corner, drinking beer, passing a joint or two around, watching and laughing as the students landed just about anywhere. It was cheap entertainment and was a regular outing for all the locals living in the ghetto.
Southern California in the summer is very dry and One day a fire started over on the other side of the Drop-zone by the Hiway. Within minutes it blew up into a major brush fire. The wind was out of the west, blowing away from the DZ, so the fire spread up and over into the hills to the east. Armies of firefighters arrived out of nowhere. Lots of fire trucks. But everything was tinder dry and the fire took off with huge billowing clouds of smoke blocking out the sun. The only shade we had had in a long time. On that particular night, a bunch of us wandered half down the dirt runway. The smoke had cleared, the sky crystal clear. So we parked ourselves in the tall dry grass and on lawn chairs to look up at the stars and the fiery glow of the brush fire just over the other side of the ridge. We talked about how the jumps had gone that day, how great we were on various jumps, and of course, the fire. Off to the North, the LA city lights lit up the horizon line. The LA Borealis we called it. During a moment of silence in the conversation, we heard a lone dog barking close by. It was off the Airport in the houses on the east side of the lake. Soon another, farther down, joined in. This went on for a while until another even farther down joined in to which the first dog stopped barking as if his part of the session was over. This dog barking chain reaction went on until it got so far away down the lake the barkingness got swallowed up by the noises of the night. The sky was transparent. The stars were clear and bright broken up by the occasional shooting star or satellite. An occasional Jet descending into LAX to the North would pass through. The silence broken by an occasional “DID YOU SEE THAT ONE!!??” as a shooting star that only one person, maybe two, ever saw streaking across the sky. Or so they said. Then off in the distance to the west, a faint barking sound crept out of the noises of the night on the far side of the lake. Soon another joined in but closer and louder. Pretty soon another closer, continuing to get ever closer. Then as if being handed the barking baton the very first dog that had started this wave of barkingness joined back in passing the barking baton onto the next participant once more and the whole routine started over. It was after midnight so many people started to wander off into the darkness to find a bed. Some of us without jobs, however, stayed long enough to hear the barking wave come around the lake once again, passing us by one more time and starting over. With this second passing, we were satisfied that we had enough scientific evidence to come to a unanimous conclusion about this phenomenon of dogs barking, systematically, counterclockwise around the lake. After observing this, over what we felt was a reasonable period of time, we concluded that Dogs bark counterclockwise. It was scientifically undeniable. After letting this sink in for a few moments the last of us in the group picked ourselves up out of the tall grass, woke up those who had drifted off, folded up lawn chairs, and wandered back down the dirt runway into the darkness. Crossing back through ghetto corner, splitting off in different directions to whatever kind of vehicle that would house our bed that night. Those of us who had stayed awake had a knowing that the world would never be the same again. Well, at least until we woke up the next day.