Tribute to Don Gau (Part 2—Living in Paradise)

[waltappel 1]

What started out as posting a couple of funny stories seems to have turned into a series. In case you missed the earlier postings, here are some links:

"Maybe the greenies don't like it when you act like a fool...": A true story about just how stupid I can get when I'm really frustrated.
"More Stupid HumanTricks": A story of me getting stupid with some hot sauce.
"My Visit to a Bordello": Just like the title says...
"One more reason to hate the doctor's office": Nipple infections are not fun but can be funny.
"I am a bad man when I get bored": My encounter with a perv in a laundromat
"I am not a smart man when I'm drunk": A BASE site scouting trip gone bad.
"thoughtful career choices": Who says mental hospitals are not fun? (ME, that's who!!!)
"Glory, Glory, Halleleujia": Don't read this one if you are a homophobe.
"practical joke for the practical nurse": A practical joke I played when I was a nurse.
"The Romantic Kiss is Not Dead (long)": "God's gift to women
"The Ultimate Accusation": Like the title says...
"Building Stress Levels": How to give a BASE jumper a heart attack
"Lick it Baby!": adventures with my tongue
"When you have Little to Lose, You have Everything to Gain": Jumping El Cap

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Tribute to Don Gau (Part 1 - Paradise Discovered: I found paradise in the country

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In part 1 of Tribute to Don Gau, I related how I met Don. I told you he was quite a character.

I have a load of Don stories, including one where he kept me and others from being arrested after we were caught jumping off the tower. 460 has a few good ones too.

We’ll post ‘em as we write ‘em.

Don Runs over the Dog

Don’s wife Frances lived on the same property as Don, but she lived well away from the road in her modest house. No way could those two live together. They saw each other once or twice a day usually and at least 90% of it was arguing. Don would make her mad and she would throw a fit. Then he would keep egging her on. They were not meant to live under the same roof. Frances swore in ways that would make a pimp blush, but the unwritten rule was that you were NEVER allowed to use foul language in her presence—not an easy thing for me.

Although certainly a fireball, she was also a very real and caring woman—there was absolutely nothing phony about her.

Every time I visited Don, we would drive back to Frances’ house to sit on the porch and talk for a while, then Don and I would drive down the dirt road back to his shack. It was one of these times that we had a real problem.

Don was driving very slowly and somehow we ran over one of Frances’ dogs. I love animals and it’s deeply painful to me to see an inured, dying animal. That was bad enough. But running over one of Frances’ dogs?!!!! And Don was driving?!!!!

This could mean the beginning of World War III.

I won’t describe the suffering that dog went though before he died, but trust me—it was bad. Don had learned to take things in stride, though, and he put the dog’s body in the trunk of the car. We drove to his shack to get a shovel and then into the middle of one of his fields to bury the poor creature.

He stopped the car and we got out and somberly walked back to open the trunk. I’ll never forget what came next.

Don opened the trunk and with the gusto of a loving dog owner who is excitedly calling his dog to go to their favorite swimming hole, Don smiled and loudly said, “C’mon boy!!!!!”, and started laughing that giddy, boyish laugh of his.

“Don, you are one sick fuck. You’re my friend, but you are one sick fuck.” I just shook my head.

Don just laughed.

Don Pisses in Dogs Mouth

People in the country have a very different relationship with their animals--especially poor country people. Their world simply dictates a different set of rules than city dwellers follow.

Don took it to an entirely new level at times, though. Don wasn’t really into mistreating dogs, but he didn’t exactly give them the care that a typical city-dwelling dog owner would either.

I don’t remember what the occasion was, but Frances had a big party at her house and the beer was really flowing. Elmer (actually, his name was Matt, but Elmer was his nickname), a good friend had come from Maryland to Texas to hang out with me and make a few tower jumps and I had brought him over to meet Don.

Don, was quite the partier, and he was in fine form this evening. Elmer and I were hanging out having a couple of cold ones with him, when Don decided to show us how much his dog liked beer.

Now it’s well known that many dogs like to drink beer, and it certainly was a fact that Don liked his beer. No, Don LOVED his beer. He loved it a lot. A little too much to share it with a dog. Don, being a creative sort, though, came up with a solution.

We followed Don around the side of the house, away from others view, and the dog dutifully followed. I still just shake my head and wonder at what happened next.

Don started taking a piss and the dog started lapping it up out of midair.

Yes, that is what happened.

Don was laughing that giddy laugh of his and claimed that the dog preferred, Budweiser, but nearly any kind of beer would do.

Don, Don……

Walt

[460 0]

Don and Francis were indeed true jems.

I first met Don through a fellow jumper. Interestingly, the fellow jumper was a Houston Police Officer, and for privacy concerns for him, I’ll refer to him as “Mr. White.”

Don’s home was a simple shack, complete with an antique wood burning stove in the center of the shack and an outhouse that was really only used for the purpose of number 2. The shack had about 5000 empty beer cans unintentionally arranged into a large pyramid near the front door. Don also had a habit of cutting the filters of his cigarettes. He was sort of a weird John Wayne type for the local scene.

This place was party central for all the locals, some of them shrimpers, some of them elderly, some of them elderly shrimpers, and a strange assortment of country people. These weren’t country people in the normal sense. This was like stepping back in time, several decades. In fact, the year easily could have been 1920. At least there was electricity powering the lights in his shack.

Don’s wife would drop by for the partying and would occasionally pull out her harmonica. It was impressive to listen to since she could jam better than any musician I've ever listened to. I got the impression that Janis Joplin may have hung out there at some point in the distant past.

To the jumping…

Mr. White and I showed up at Don’t place around midnight. His lights were off and Mr. White had to beat on Don’s door quite a bit to wake Don. Don answered the door with a large shotgun, followed by a smile, and an invitation to come on in. Mr. White chose terrible conditions for jumping simply because of his police career. He could not or would not get caught. There was no moon and it was very dark. Or rather, it was dark as hell. This was far out in the country and there is no light pollution that many jumpers rely on for night jumping, usually without even realizing it. This was early in my jumping and I only had a few jumps under my belt. This was to be my second BASE jump on a square canopy and I would consider myself very inexperienced at this stage. We gave Don the beer (Schafer’s light, his favorite) in exchange for a ride in our vehicle to the tower. I was a little surprised to discover a large herd of cattle at the base of the tower. Mr. White informed me just to punch them in the nose if they gave us any problems. This was fairly disconcerting, since the cattle were pretty much so thick that they were knocking us around as we tried to walk the 100 feet just to get to the object.

Mr. White and I climb up to 600 feet, at which point we pulled out our pilot chutes to go handheld. This was in the day before going stowed was so common. My BASE rig was an ancient rig I inhereted from Steve “Deadman” Morrell that was built in 1984 and it had no spandex pouch, just two rubber bands to hold the pilot chute. Mr. White went first and I immediately lost sight of him after exit. I then exited, opened perfect, and continued to fly out. I was concerned that if I turned too soon that I would hit the object because it was so dark. I eventually turned completely around to face the tower, to land into the wind. At the last moment, a tree line appeared, and I realized I had flown out much too far. A turn at the last moment put me into the smallest of the trees and my feet touched the ground but my canopy was thoroughly caught in the tree. The ground was muddy. At this point, I just cut the canopy away to retrieve it the next morning. As I was proceeding to walk out through the field of mud, I thought “I’m glad it’s a winter time 50 degrees so any alligators that might be out here would be inactive.” After about 10 feet of walking out of this mud pit on the tree line, I notice something quite large and dark walking with me, about 2 feet to my left. I looked down again, jumped back, and then I noticed that it was a large alligator moving onto me. When I jumped back, it let out this death scream growl and then it lunged for me. Even to this day, I don’t think I’ve been so terrified. I immediately started jumping side to side and started running through the mud field. Even more terrifying was the thought that the whole field may have been covered in these alligators. I discovered later that this area had the highest concentration of alligators in the whole state of Texas.

At this point, I think I could have passed Carl Lewis. Mr. White was on the side of the road, laughing quite hard as I was yelling “The’re alligators out here!” I wasn’t nearly as amused.

Don went out the next morning and managed to get my canopy down in pure Texas style – with a shotgun. He shot the offending limbs, without damaging my canopy in the slightest. It was an impressive feat.

There were many interesting experiences out there.

To me, one of the coolest was coming in to land when Don would have his friends at the bottom of the object. A crowd of 80 year old people clapping when I landed really made a strong impression on me. BASE just wasn’t nearly as radical when you have all these elderly people congratulating me on a good jump. Pure gold…

Chris
BASE 460

Looks like a death sandwich without the bread - Steve Deadman Morrell, BASE 174

[skydivermom 0]

AWESOME story!

Mrs. WaltAppel

All things work together for good to them that love God...Romans 8:28