His name is Hal, short for Hallelujah, the name his mother gave
him when he was born on Christmas Day on the charity ward of
a local county hospital. On his birth certificate after the Name of
Father she had written UNK for unknown. Not likely for a nice
girl like her to have had sex with more than one partner. Rumor
has it that she was knocked up by the preacher at her church.
That was very possible for a devout Christian (and somewhat
plain looking) lass to drop her drawers in the name of the Lord.
After all, it's been done before and it will happen again.

To save her parents, very religious people themselves, a lot of
grief and embarrassment she left home before she started to show
and never went back. She moved to a small city about a hundred
miles northwest of her hometown hoping that nobody would know
her there.After she arrived and rented a room at the Y she found
a job at the Five 'n' Dime. That was the way she subsisted until
it was time for Hal to make his grand entrance into this world.
From there it was off to Los Angeles where Hal grew up.

At school he was a teacher's pet. "A delight to have in class,"
was written on his report card more than once--not exceptionally
bright but not stupid either. What made him such a delight was
that he was extremely obedient and polite. That was because at
home his mother didn't allow any back talk. He was so concerned
about others' feelings that even today he asks forgiveness from
the chicken that he is about to eat for supper.
He tried to become a vegetarian but that reminded him too much
of Louise, the mother of his son. But we are running ahead of
ourselves now. More about this woman later.

Ever since he could hold a crayon or a pencil he loved to draw
pictures so it came as no surprise that art was his favorite
subject. For hours on end he'd lose himself in the landscapes
he was drawing and pretended that he was a part of them.
Hal was a skinny, street smart kid who had to negotiate his way
through life. He had, for example, figured out several routes
he could take between school and home to avoid a confrontation
with Bruce, a.k.a. Brute.
Bruce was just that; a brute with a huge body and no brains who
liked nothing better than to beat up on skinny kids like Hal.
One time when Hal came home with a black eye and a fat lip his
mother asked him what had happened. His story was that he got
injured during football practice. This pleased his mother very
much for late at night, alone in her bed while still awake, she
would dream the same dream over and over again how Hal, a
fleet-footed receiver, in the final seconds of a game in which
his team was trailing, got the ball and ran with it for 69 yards
and a touch-down for the victory.
What happened next always brought tears to her eyes; her Hal, her
boy, was carried off the field on the shoulders of his teammates.
He was the hero!
Little did she know that even the second team coach had humili-
ated him when he showed up for the tryouts by calling him "the
Stork," referring to his skinny legs.
Hal had never told her that. After all why would he hurt her?

His mother doted on him. She loved him as only a mother can love
her child. She would buy him anything he wanted, (limited budget
permitting,) all he had to do was ask her.
It must be said that he never took advantage of her generosity.
Was it because he knew how hard she had to work for her money?
Starting as a part time seasonal clerk at K-Mart she had worked
herself up to be the manager of the shoe department. It was
hard work but she loved it. She was on her feet all day while
waiting on demanding customers. Some days she'd come home
with feet so swollen that she could barely take her shoes off.
At times like that Hal would bring her a cup of tea and sitting
on the floor in front of her chair he'd massage her poor aching
feet. When he was about 10 or 11 years old he would have dinner
ready when she came home from work. Simple dishes at first, like
Top Ramen or hot dogs but after a while he was able to put a nice
meal on the table.
They had a good life together those two, until tragedy struck.

After high school and 2 years of junior college he transfered
to UCLA to obtain his BA and a teacher's credential.
His first choice was to teach kindergarten but he had to settle
for first grade. The school's principal felt that kindergarten
should be taught by a female teacher. Hal, in turn, could not
see himself in front of a class filled with kids like Bruce.
He declined an offer to teach a higher grade and accepted the
first grade class.

When the doctors found a lump in his mother's breast it was al-
ready too late. Less than 3 months later she died in her sleep.

Meanwhile at school he met Louise, a third grade teacher, who
was in a same-sex relationship. Her partner Mathilda, Matt for
short and Matthew when there was just the two of them, was also
a teacher but at a high school nearby. Over lunch one day in the
teachers' lounge Louise told Hal that she and Matt wanted to
start a family. Would he be kind enough to get her pregnant?
Well, since he had nothing better to do, he thought it might be
fun. For some perverse reason they wanted the impregnation to
happen the "natural" way, not on a stainless steel table under
the harsh halogen lights in a doctor's office. On the sixth try
"it" (whatever "it" was) stuck. Fun, however, it was not.
Years later he described the whole process as "making love to a
catcher's mitt." Matt's yelling from the next room to "hurry up
and get it done and over with" while this was going on, did not
make the situation any more erotic. Hal wasn't complaining, if
it had not been for Louise he would have died a virgin.

When Matt left Louise to live with an other woman Louise asked
Hal to move in with her.
"After all," she told Hal, "the kid IS your son!"

The apartment was small; a living room, kitchen, bath and only
one bedroom. The bedroom was barely large enough to hold a crib
for the baby and a double bed where they slept together. Hal was
never allowed to touch her. The early mornings were very special
to Hal. He would lie there, wide awake, next to Louise who was
still asleep. He loved to listen to her snore and smell her
morning breath. It was one of the few times during the day that
she smelled like a human being. For the remainder of the day she
would move around in the center of a cloud of lemon verbena, her
favorite cologne. The other time was when she went to the bath-
room. After she was finished Hal would rush into the bathroom,
lock the door and close the window. He then sat on the pot and
deeply inhaled the stench she had left behind.
Like a connoisseur savoring the bouquet of a fine rare wine, he
would just sit there until Louise came pounding on the door while
screaming: "what in the world are you doing in there?"
What he was doing in there, he later realized, was proving to
himself that Louise was not any better than the rest of us and
that her shit smelled just as bad as his and that she, regardless
of what she wanted him to believe, was not superior to him.
He disliked her very much!

At school the kids in his class loved him and so did their moms.
"Such a gentle man," they would say to each other on parent/
teacher night.
With the kids' fathers, however, it was a different story.
One could just hear them think: "you just lay one finger on my
little Sarah, you weirdo s.o.b. and you wont live long enough
to talk about it!"

What the kids liked the most was the story hour. Every schoolday
for a whole hour the children gathered around his chair, sitting
on the carpet they listened to the adventures of the Mouse family.
There was a Paw Mouse, a Maw Mouse, some childeren Mouse
and then there was Pete the Mouse who was the favorite and always
at the center of the stories. Paw Mouse, dressed in his overalls,
would go to work in the mornings, gleaning the wheat fields after
the farmers had harvested. Maw Mouse stayed at home.
In her kitchen with her apron on, she ground the grains and she
baked the most delicious breads and cookies.But it was Pete the
Mouse that the children loved to hear about. He was a kid just
like them. He played marbles, jumped rope, even got into trouble
once in a while. And then there was Brutus the Cat! Always trying
but never catching one of the little mice as they walked home
after school. The stories were set in the children's own world
with mice representing people and children.
One day Hal surprised them by bringing a cage to school
complete with the Mouse family. The kids were overjoyed!
They took turns caring for the mice, cleaning the cage, feeding
them, and making sure that they had plenty of fresh water. All
went well until one day in clear daylight, cheered on by a room
full of six-year olds, Paw and Maw Mouse decided to mate. That
was were the Principal drew the line. The Mouse family had to
go and after a lot of pressure from the very same mothers who
thought of Hal as a "gentle man" before, the mousekeeper had
to go as well!

Then one day Matt and Louise decided to kiss and make up. Matt
moved back in and Hal had to move out. So there he was, without
a job and no place to stay. To make matters worse, his unemploy-
ment benefits were running out. While he was still working, his
paychecks were directly deposited in Louise's checking account.
She in turn would give Hal ten dollars a week spending money.
His mother's furnitue and other belongings was sold when Hal
moved in with Louise. The money that he got for these he had
handed over to her which she used for clothes for herself and
the baby. She even ordered a large bottle of lemon verbena
from a mail-order pharmacy located somewhere in the Mid-
west. Ironically it was in the same town in which he was born.
How he hated that smell of lemon verbena!

A nervous breakdown and a 6 month stay in a mental hospital
later, Hal was placed on permanent disability and given a
stipend barely enough to live on.

With the US-Savings Bonds that his mother had left him he bought
a motor home. His mother had bought a $100 bond every pay day,
twice a month, for fifty dollars. She did this for many years.
"Some day," she'd tell him, "this money will stand between you
and your living out on the streets." How did she ever know?
At first, after his mother's death, he had kept the Bonds hidden
behind the blackboard in his classroom at school but when he
walked in on Louise while she was snooping through his desk
(and knowing her passion for spending money) Hal had decided
to find a better hiding place for his inheritance. After first
putting the Bonds in several layers of Ziploc bags, he wrapped
them in duct-tape before sticking the package in a Tupperware
container. He recalled how he spent a whole week's allowance
on the waterproofing materials. With a shovel that he borrowed
from the groundskeepers' shed at school he buried his treasure
in a far away corner of Griffith Park making sure that nobody
saw him do it. Fortunately the package was still there when he
came to retrieve it after his release from the nut house.

An ad in the LA Times led him to Mary who lived in the Valley.
She had just lost her husband and was selling their RV. Joseph
(please don't call him Joe) and Mary had bought the rig new
some ten years ago. Thanks to Mary's housekeeping and Joseph's
mechanical maintenance (he had been a mechanic for Sears all
his working days until he retired) the RV looked and ran better
than a brand new one. Over the years they had added a lot of
extras like a Solar System, larger holding tanks and above all
a complete Sound Surround Stereo for Mary who, just like Hal's
mother, loved to listen to "good" (meaning classical) music.
Beethoven and Mozart were their most favorite composers.
Joseph was more into country western.

Never mind what Mary said, that she liked Hal a lot, that she
wanted him to have the RV (although he was a hundred dollars
short,) that she just knew that Hal would take good care of the
motor home the same way her late husband Joseph had, the real
reason that she sold him the rig was because he had the CASH!
There had been plenty of lookers who'd stopped by in the past
two weeks but they all wanted to make payments.
Mary let him stay in the rig parked on her driveway for three
days so he had time to get the paperwork in order. It turned
out to be a blessing because now he was able to ask her how to
operate all those gadgets and what all those knobs were for.

"Happiness is an open road and a tank full of gas" he told him-
self and he was on his way! He learned in a hurry that at 6 mpg,
a dollar did not get him very far.

He'd read about Slab City, a free-for-all kind of a place along
the shores of the Salton Sea and decided to check it out. This
time of the year (November) was just right. When he arrived
at "the Slabs," as the locals call it, it seemed that the people
there had been waiting for him. It took no time at all to be
absorbed by this community. Even though he'd never been a
group person, he joined the Slab City Singles and before long
he was in charge of the weekly Sunday morning breakfasts.
Hal could not remember ever being this happy after his mother
had died. From his fellow boondockers he learned the art of sur-
vival on a next-to-nothing budget. How to spend the summers
(when it is too hot in Slab City) at the free campgrounds along
Highway 395 at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range.
How to handle the 14-day stay limit by moving from one camp-
ground to the next and the next and back to the first one again.
How to fill the prescriptions for his medication in Mexico for
a fraction of the price that it would cost him here. Not to
mention the monthly government's surplus food give away.
He had it all!

She looked like a Doris, blond hair, blue eyes and a big smile.
Her name was Doris although not Day. It was she who discovered
Hal's talent for painting. After he had established his camp at
the outer edge of Slab City called Area 21, or Outback Country,
Hal needed something to do. One of his new friends was going to
the Wal-Mart Store in El Centro and offered him a ride.
With nothing better to do, he accepted. Just by chance Hal wound
up where they sold art supplies. There he picked up a sketch pad
and some pencils. All through his moving days, from the place he
shared with his mother to Louise's apartment, to the hospital
and later to the motor home, he somehow was able to hang on to
his paint box with water colors, brushes and easel. That was how
he rediscovered his long lost love; PAINTING!
"You're pretty good!" Doris told him. "You should sell them."

Many people had a table next to their rig with items for sale.
Paperbacks, clothes, tools and just junk they wanted to get rid
of. Why not give it a shot, he thought. At first he was afraid
to ask a decent price for his work. A couple of bucks each and
if it was a really nice piece maybe five, but never more than
ten dollars. Doris had to step in again,"You're giving it away"
she told him. "Double your prices!"
To his surprise the selling was still brisk while his income
increased substantially. On the weekends he was able to rent a
booth at the swap meet in nearby Niland. Some Snowbirds even
commissioned him to make a painting of their hundred thousand
dollar (plus) rigs but still, his greeting cards were his best
sellers. All the while he was salting away his extra income
because he knew that before long he had to head for the hills
to find an area where it was not as hot as in Slab City during
the summer months.

After saying goodbye to all his new friends who by now were more
like family, (more family than he ever had) Hal hit the road.
Was he nervous? Of course he was!
Fortunately one of his neighbors at the Slabs was on his way to
Oregon and invited Hal to come travel with him part of the way.
Once he got his feet wet, he thought, things would become much
easier. And he was right.

It did not take him long to find out that the free BLM camp-
grounds were pretty much like Slab City only smaller in size.
The same camaraderie, the same bond that he had encountered on
the Slabs prevailed there too. He even met many of the same nice
people that he had seen in Slab City. It was like a reunion of
boondockers. As everywhere here too was the occasional snob.
Like the man in a brand new diesel-pusher who stayed next to
him. He thought that there should be a section of the campground
set aside for "older" rigs so that old and new didn't have to be
parked next to each other."That way guys like you wouldn't have
to feel so bad about your outfits," he said.
Hal also learned in a hurry never to say "yes" to an invitation
to have some dessert at just anybody's camp. After enjoying a
bowl of his neighbor's ice cream Hal was given the grand tour of
his motor home and was forced to listen to the man's life story.

Still, there was something missing in Hal's life. Often he was
lonely. His brief encounter with Louise had cured him of every
desire to get married.Even in Doris,no matter how sweet she was,
couldn't he see a companion for the rest of his days. He always
welcomed her visits when she came to see him at the Slabs but
after an hour or so, he wished that she would go home to her own
camp. With his male friends he had the same problem, some
wanted nothing better than to get drunk on beer or cheap wine.
Others liked to talk politics and argue about what's wrong with
this world. The worst kind of visitors, Hal thought, had read a
book or two about eastern religion,astrology or geology and then
considered themselves an expert on that subject. These people go
on for hours talking about something they knew very very little
about and it made no difference to them whether the listener was
interested in their drivel or not.

As with all problems in the world if you wait long enough there
will be a solution and it comes when you least expect it.
On a cold and moonless night, high in the Hackberry Mountains
which are part of the newly created Mojave National Preserve
(thank you Senators Allan Cranston and Dianne Feinstein) Hal
was enjoying his "star studded ceiling" as he liked to call it.
Not another living soul for miles around. "Where else but in the
desert are you able to listen to the silence?" he thought.
To keep him warm and to ward off the mosquitoes Hal had built
a small campfire. He liked the smell of smoke,this kind of smoke
but not the tobacco kind. "Wouldn't it be nice if I were able
to share this moment with someone I liked?" he wondered.
At that instant, across from the fire, outside the circle of
light, he spotted 2 green eyes looking at him. The first thing
that came to mind was: mountain lion! When those eyes came a
little closer they turned out to belong to a dog who was lost
and in need of help. Just that morning Hal had rationed his
last little bit of milk so that he would have enough to put
on tomorrow's cereal.Not having any dog food on hand, the only
thing he could come up with was a slice of bread soaked in his
last milk which the dog inhaled in no time flat as if to say:
Thanks, I needed that!
"Where are you coming from pal?" he asked. Hal liked that; Pal.
It had a good ring to it "PAL" from then on it was "Hal and Pal."

Early the next morning the pair broke up camp and headed for
the town of Needles, the closest place where there was a veteri-
narian. The good doctor gave Pal a clean bill of health and a
couple of shots. "A little underfed," the vet said, "just feed
him dog food but no table scraps." Hal asked him what kind of
dog Pal was, the doctor told him: "The best kind, a little bit
of everything!"
And so it happened that Hal had found his companion and that
he was no longer lonely.