I Am: A Journey Through Times and Spaces

Contents

Preface

PART ONE

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIMES AND SPACES

Chapter One

I Decide to Come Down

Chapter Two

Landing

Chapter Three

Colombia

Chapter Four

The Spirit of the Times

Chapter Five

Cool Sunshine

Chapter Six

Going Forth

Chapter Seven

Power Plays

Chapter Eight

Aaron Eli

Chapter Nine

Politics

PART TWO

CALL TO ACTION

Prologue to the Final Chapters:

Preface

I first met Bob Dunsmore at the College of Wooster in the late 1960’s.  Back then everyone called him Bobby.   We lived together in Crandall House at Wooster , and I subsequently visited Jacob’s Hill and Pozo Feliz regularly while living in Santa Fe .  The late 1960’s and early 1970’s were turbulent, free spirited, and creative times for lots of young people.  We grieved over the Kent State killings, reveled at Woodstock (I didn’t go), and sang along at the Newport Folk Festivals.  

I was always at the fringes of most everything we did in those years.  Somehow I had grown up with the message that it is not O.K. to make mistakes, and that the world is not a friendly place.  Like many people in Western society, I was motivated in part by caution and fear.  It was simply the water I had learned to swim in, and I was unable to see anything else.  Bob Dunsmore, on the other hand, has intuitively known from the very beginning that life on this earth is inherently safe and God’s wonder and abundance is to be found everywhere.  This is no Pollyanna immature or naive attitude.  Bob has the mature innocence born of experience that Jesus talks about when he says, Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom (kin-dom) of God as a little child will never enter it. Luke 18:17.

As I read the complete history of Bob’s life, I realize that it is Bob’s inherent trust of life that has led him to places I would fear to tread.  Not only has Bob been a fearless and creative community development leader; he has by his example shown us how life can be lived in a joyous, creative, innovative way when we are not impeded by counting the imagined cost of everything in advance.  Throughout his life, Bob has not been held back by politics, conventional wisdom, or societal norms.  He has been able to see truth where others would fall prey to propaganda, false argument and vested interest.  At times, his thinking is so beyond the boundaries of the box as to be uncomfortable for anyone who has not done significant inner spiritual work.

It is possible to read Bob’s book as a practical manual for the peaceful worldwide revolution underway as it says on the back cover.  I know Bob wants the reader to read it that way.  His creative agendas for transforming economic, political, and energy policy come from hard won experience and careful thought.  Read them with non-partisan respect.  I know Bob would also want the reader to appreciate that the kind of radical (in a good sense) changes he is crying out for, will not come from the same fears and doubts about life that have motivated so many of us throughout history.  To achieve Bob’s kind of changes, we must not see them as only external challenges. As Jesus says, neither is new wine put in old wineskins; otherwise the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed. Matthew 9:18.  The sorely needed external changes in our world, will require transformed hearts that no longer fear life and try to count the imaginary cost ahead of time.  Bob and Julie show us how such a transformed life looks when lived to it’s fullest.  Read beyond Bob’s innovations and thought, and see an example of a life well lived in a difficult transitional age.

Seth B. Burgess

Alto, New Mexico, August 2011

PART ONE

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIMES AND SPACES

I have read of a certain Amazonian tribe whose people will climb into the trees to meet the rising sun. They shake the branches and pound their chests and proudly yell for all creation to hear, Here I am!

Author’s note:

As I consider submitting this book for publication I am advised to spend hundreds of dollars beyond direct publication costs for professional editing services. All typos and grammatical errors that I may have missed in reviewing this manuscript over the last few years would be corrected. At this time I cannot afford to submit to this process and beg your understanding as you run across some errors. I promise that if this book is purchased, as I hope it might be, to promote the construction of a new global society, I will correct errors. I ask for your feedback at dunsmorebobjulie@yahoo.com .

I now thank all of you in many different countries who have inspired me to write this call to action as a manual for a new future. You are doing it. We are doing it. We will succeed….. for the alternative is not an option. This is your story as well as mine. I hope I have remained true to your vision through what I share in the following pages.

I dedicate this book to the visionary who inspired me the most, my dear son Aaron Eli.

The Masterpiece

My life is a first draft

Unpublished, wrinkled and torn

Uncorrected, free, without craft

Born in its final form

Chapter One

I Decide to Come Down

I am an Aries. The doctor grabbed me by the ankle as I dove out into the world falling towards the maternity room floor and nearly causing my father, watching, to do the same; his heart skipping a few beats. OK, world, whatcha got to show?

From the days when I was suckling, I do believe I recall the image, with warmth impressed upon fresh cerebral nerves, of my Mother’s breast. Perhaps I shall never again feel so fine. But that’s alright; I’m glad to have moved on. Now I know that Creation offers me nourishment and offers me a choice: Life or Death.

This account is a matter of life. My own life, and of my own death. The part about death will most probably be found near the end, but I mention that this is an account of my death, also, for it seems that any life worth living, or reading of, is, in part, about preparation for life beyond this plane.

My parents, a Presbyterian minister and wife, were asked to take on an assignment in Brazil that no other mission personnel wished to accept. That assignment was to work with a mission aviator out to save the heathen in Brazil’s interior by expounding a rigid fundamentalist theology very alien to many in a church professing a progressive theology of forbearance. The aviator and his family, the Eltons, were already stationed in the interior of the country.

I was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Before our family moved from language training and orientation in the populous southern coastal zone of Brazil to the remote interior, I experienced a memorable day though only two years old. One of my first clear sequential memories is of a visit to a zoo with a family maid. In the zoo, I had been told, was a lion. Upon arriving to the lion’s cage, I did not dare look at it, the King of Beasts. By looking at it, I was sure to affirm what it was, see it do what it does, and seeing it, being the one witnessing what it does, become thoroughly terrified and perhaps lose control of my bowels. I refused to activate this scenario. I did not look. As we walked past its pen, I turned my head away.

Then, of course, I began to wonder what I had missed. I really did want to see what the world had to show. That is why I recall that experience. That is why I had decided to come down. It was a clear choice. I returned to the cage and looked at the lion. However, it was asleep, with eyelids partly open, eyes partly rolled back. To the King of Beasts, I did not exist. I matured a lot that day.

I Take the Plunge

Later that year, my folks left me to sob myself to sleep in my crib as they walked away down the street. I did not like that at all. I got out of the crib, pushed it over to the window, climbed up into the crib and onto the windowsill, turned the latch on the window shutters to release them, and as they opened outwards, fell. At that precise instant, the apartment maid, eight months pregnant, was bending over to empty trash into a container just under the window I had exited. I fell on her shoulders, completely unhurt, or so my flabbergasted parents surmised upon racing to the scene having heard the sudden commotion. At first the maid thought God had really laid one on her, but recovered her senses quickly, assuring my parents that she was unhurt also.

I believe I am wanted here. It is a nice feeling. Moreover, I did not come to it easily. I felt this most clearly years later when I was ten years old and living in the interior of Brazil in the village of Sitio do Mato in the state of Bahia. My brother’s muzzle-loading rifle refused to fire three times in a row. It was pointed at me. It was loaded. Loaded with half a palm of powder and about as much lead shot. I had seen Jim load it earlier in the day before I had absent-mindedly cut ahead of the hunting party.

Hiding behind a bush to savor one of the most exquisite moments of my youth, I had been spying on a snowy egret grooming itself within yards of me, below, on the bank of the Sao Francisco River. The divine turned to terror as the sound of the rifle’s hammer burned into my brain and paralyzed flight reactions until after the third click. Jim thought I was fair game, because any animal in the bush was. I leapt out of the bush screaming, It’s me! It’s me! Jim kicked me several times that afternoon on the way home. He blamed me for I had wandering off without notifying anyone.

Now I know he was also mad at himself.

My recurring dream at a young age found its genesis in a Calvert School correspondence course book on Greek mythology. Pegasus would fly down from heavenly pastures and land by me. She would stoop down just enough for me to fling one leg over her mane and slide into position on her back, legs dangling in front of her wings. I would grasp her mane, enormous wings would spread outwards and either she would gallop before flight or she would spring directly upwards and away. Oh, what beauty we would see! Familiar places, new perspectives.

I learned to fly without Pegasus, too. I was not as graceful. I needed to run, concentrating fully, believing I could fly, and then I would lift off. A bit of doubt brought me down again. What elation!

Standing in front of my home at age six, I recall looking around me and up at the sky as a revelation swept through me. I have been here before. It was not so much the recognition of the particular site, Sitio, but the recognition of place familiar to me. It brought to me a peace, an assurance, an excitement about being alive that permeated every fiber of my body. I never shared this secret with anyone. It was too precious, sacred, impossible to translate, much less comprehend. Familiar place, new perspective.

I Fall in Love

Only five years old, I was caught up in the powerfully transforming experience of a growing love for a girl two years older than I was. She lived next door to me for most of the next eight years. We lived in the interior of Brazil on a mission compound, an island of adventure, mystery, and teachings.

Of course, most of my time with Barbie was spent exploring each others’ cosmos, appreciating the differences of view, affirmed by the concurrences in our philosophizing, whether it was over our correspondence schooling, or the ethics of sling-shooting lizards that always nodded their approval when asked if they wanted to die.

I felt more affirmed by this blessed relationship than by interacting with the gang of boys in the village of Sitio do Mato just a couple of kilometers down the dusty trail. Somehow seeing who could spit the farthest or who had the biggest penis or who could hold his breath the longest did not come close to the awe-evoking moments with Barbie. I surely enjoyed some good times with the gang, do not get me wrong. I got pretty good at soccer, and could hold my own against future Pelés, using inflated cow bladders for soccer balls. Sling shooting, tree climbing, swimming, alligator hunting, fishing piranha…filled my days when school was not in session.

The port was a place of magic. A rough stairway of clay was pressed by bare feet each year once the river dropped after the three months of rains. This was the access to our drinking water, to the mooring dock for the skiff and the Boa Nova launch. It was a twenty-foot drop to our favorite fishing spot where thousands of thirsty butterflies would congregate by the shore. A place of refreshingly cool relief from heat that often reached over 115 degrees in the shade. Parallel to the stairway, we would splash river water up the bank and mold a twenty-five foot clay mudslide to provide hours of slick and fast slip sliding splish splashing side-splitting fun.

The best of us would master sliding standing up and pushing off to dive gracefully into the river.

Capsizing a canoe created an incredible acoustic wonderland within the hull that muffled gleeful screams for the outside world. This was Barb and my perfect kissing spot where we could kiss until another head would bob up into the dark space.

Bob and Barb

Songbird Trap

We could walk, when the river was at its lowest, half a mile out over an enormous sand bar just waist deep to reach the island that separated us from the deeper waters of the main channel. Norm and Jim swam to the other side on occasion. I did not have the guts. I had seen fishermen haul to the shore channel catfish as long as their canoes and I had seen the unpalatable scaly prehistoric monsters that swam those waters. I was told they were harmless to humans, but I had concluded from rich experience that nature often obeyed a logic beyond human understanding. No thanks.

When the motorized supply boats chugged by trailing unmotorized barges behind them, we would swim out and latch onto the two hundred feet long, thick sisal ropes used for towing. Immediately our arms would be extended to their maximum functional limits, a plume of water would flair up over our heads creating a hollow cone of water for breathing when our heads were turned backwards. This was dangerous stuff. But irresistible. The hard part was letting go and getting out of the way of the towed barge in order to avoid impact.

We four Dunsmore boys collected a veritable zoo of animal pets. Over the years we domesticated, for varying lengths of time, baby alligators, anteaters, monkeys, a South American ostrich called an emu, armadillos, poisonous snakes for venom antidote laboratories, hundreds of singing birds caught in ingenious pyramidal traps with plant vine trap release mechanisms, an ocelot, iguanas, parrots, a goose, an orphan deer fawn and innumerable insects. I once shot a huge grasshopper flying overhead thinking it was a bird! We always had an unusual assortment of frogs and toads hiding in dark and moist places about the house.

Mom would draw or paint every insect or bird we brought to her. Because our home was whitewashed, birds would often smack into the walls while in flight. Usually the impact would simply stun them long enough for us catch them for Mom to sketch. Songbirds would end up in one of our huge wire mesh cages kept out back under the tile roof. Other birds would be released. Some, however, survived the impact.

We never shot birds for sport. Dad taught us the importance of killing only for food. Some of the birds were eaten shortly after Mom drew and painted them.

The Fall

I overheard Dad say to a Brazilian colleague that he recognized that most Brazilians were of strong religious faith. This was the only explanation for their generally joyous disposition, open hearts, generosity and their love of dance and music. To be able to maintain stamina to deal with the poverty, illness and hunger so often confronted in lives as indentured slaves to the wealthy few, was a testimony to this faith. Dad said, I am here to be evangelized by you.

The contrast between this theology and that of the Eltons next door became more and more stark as the years progressed.

It affirmed what I knew at some primal level; we were created in perfection. We were created in God’s image. We are to pick ourselves up from any fall and become perfect, as God is perfect. This is our challenge. This is our opportunity. No one can do this for me. It is my task. I felt it as a call. A call to action.

Controlled Fall

One Saturday when I was about twelve Dad asked me to take the motorized skiff sixteen miles upriver to Bom Jesus da Lapa to get our mail and do some shopping. Alone. Why he felt it was safe for me to do alone, I do not know.

Always alert for floating trees, the upstream navigation took several hours, the outboard motor under constant strain. There was plenty of opportunity to inspect the shoreline’s abundant life forms: alligators, egrets, shorebirds, ducks, rosy spoonbills, herons, iguanas, and parrots while still scanning the water ahead. I was full of awe constantly. Proud. Alive. The river was full and muddy. Twenty feet higher than during the dry season when we could walk half a mile out to the island in its middle and see the sandbar bottom, the fish, and "capivaras" clearly.

I remember specifically purchasing a large burlap bag of oranges in the "mercado" of Lapa. I felt great skimming the water with the bow high, left hand on the throttle, having accomplished my task, and heading homeward with the powerful currents of the Sao Francisco River accelerating the skiff until half its frame was flying. I was singing with the drone of the Johnson outboard, sun bleached hair flying, too, when suddenly a tremendous impact to the propeller section tore the engine off its support and hurled it into the air. I had flown over a submerged log. In slow-motion adrenaline-clear vision, I realized I still was holding onto the throttle though the engine was several feet in the air above the skiff. Somehow, I had enough discernment in that split second to fall backward into the skiff, on my back, pulling the engine downwards and into the hold. As the stillness and silence screamed back into my brain, I realized I had saved the outboard worth hundreds of dollars and invaluable to Dad’s ministry. I was floating towards Sitio do Mato. I had an oar and about fourteen miles to go. It was late afternoon. There would be no boats between Sitio and Lapa at this time of the day.

As the evening chill and darkness fell, still far from home, I heard the familiar sound of Bill Elton’s Cessna 180 flying too low to the river, coming upstream towards me. As he spotted me, he entered into a steep climb, and turned back towards Sitio with a dip of the plane’s wing to acknowledge sighting me.

A kerosene lantern had been lit to welcome me home to Porto Feliz. The family was at church in the village. I moored the skiff and carried the outboard on my broad shoulders to the tool shed by the airplane’s hangar. Glad to be home.

When school was in session, my mind was full of yet to be fulfilled fantasies that were just outside the window. My horse Brownie was usually grazing in the field outside. There was no looking glass between that world and me and so it became more and more difficult to read about Alice in Wonderland or memorize Napoleonic battle dates. In fact, at times, I could not. Nic told me a couple of weeks ago, as we were analyzing our past years, that the window shutters in front of my bedroom desk would often be closed by Mom if I were found day-dreaming about my wonderland outside. The shutters had a latch on the inside. The shutters opened outwards.

Often I would fall through those shutters, inwards, with a book or test in front of me. When Mom would enter the room to check on my progress, I would suddenly come to, in shock. It hurt deeply to hear the pain in her voice, to hear her sob over my slow progress with Calvert School. Nic tells me I cried a lot. All three of my brothers knew, and suffered in some way, with the difficulty I went through in those years. I even began to stutter, trying to sort through Portuguese and English and feeling pressure to perform properly to please my Mom, Dad and other adults- in that order.

I was told I was a perfectionist. I recall Mom telling me one day what that word meant. She explained to me that the first missionary to Sitio do Mato had painstakingly built the Eltons’ place and ours exactly the same. A lot of effort went into accomplishing this. Some of it had to be rebuilt so they would be exact copies of each other. The village bricklayers and carpenters didn’t understand this mentality, and hard feelings developed. And to what end, she asked? Did it matter at all? There was so much suffering all around him, yet he suffered and toiled over the appearance of these walls, these floors, and these shutters. Most around us have dirt floors and no shutters and some have no walls. Within all life was imperfection. That added beauty to it, leaving room for growth. Then she added, Part of what makes you so perfect to me, Bobby, is your fat little nose, and tweaking it she added, "You wouldn’t be you if it were different." There was always a twist to one of Mom’s compliments.

These were days of magic outside the wall.

I learned, through many falls, to turn around on my moving bicycle from the seat to the handle bars. Facing backwards, I would continue to petal and stop on a dime. I can still do this today. You never forget …ah, forget it.

I taught Brownie, the horse that Mom and Dad got just for me, not to spook at my running up to him from behind and leap-frogging onto his back. Then I taught him to gallop without a bridle, turning right when I’d place my hand up to the left side of his head, and vice-versa. I would hold on to his mane for balance.

Then the hard part: I began to fire my muzzle-loader at first at quite a distance, then closer and closer over the days, until I could fire at game while mounted. I often brought home "codorna, a very tasty quail. Had to be very careful eating the game we boys brought home as the shot could easily chip a tooth when accidentally bit upon. A large pigeon called the real, royal or true was a real treat we often enjoyed for dinner, or as a snack fried with farofa," manioc flour with butter. My mouth waters as I recall that dish…

I don’t hunt anymore. More a sport than a necessity for those around me now, I am completely turned off to the idea. I do not own a gun.

Our Brazilian pyramidal bird trap caught many songbirds for us to enjoy in our huge cages. I’ll illustrate it as it was such an ingenious device. Even the guinea pig traps were clever and effective.

Listening

One day, when Barbie was fourteen, she went into shock. I just held her for a long time. It was hard for her to talk. She just wanted me to be near her. Then, through tears, she told me that her folks had just informed her she was adopted. She was given up for adoption in the Philippines. There was no way to trace her family there.

I know now there were many emotions she suffered. Many questions burned through her soul. Much I could not grasp. Nor she. I knew she hurt and felt deceived by her adopted parents for not telling her earlier, for denying her suspicions over the years. I knew she wondered about her own parents and knew she would never know.

Left to right Bobby, Norm, Davie, Jimmy, Norman, and Mary

I learned over those days the importance of being there for someone. There was nothing I could do but to hold her, to love her, to listen…But it was everything to her.

Falling into Wisdom

Around this time, while dreamily swinging in our porch hammock one very warm day, I decided to sic my dog Weenie (a dog in a hot land) on something moving in the bushes far away by the river’s edge. His sudden barking, while running about searching for the unknown intruder caused the animal to bolt. It was an abandoned fawn, still with its spots. Terrified. Weenie spotted it, and darted towards it. Sagu, next door, saw Weenie take off and headed out for the kill. Then old Buffy took off. Then I took off, screaming. By the time I had climbed through the fence and raced to the scene of the attack, each dog had some part of the poor fawn, also screaming, in its mouth. Weenie had clamped down on one ear. I literally tossed the dogs aside and picked up the fawn, holding her high enough to be safe from the dogs who had tasted blood. For the next few months I cared for this fawn, nursing it with a baby’s bottle, replacing bandages, reading its thoughts through eyes that were like forest pools, reflecting all that is wild and pure.

Her wounds healed and I knew someday I would have to let it go. But that was what I wanted. And that was what I did. Before disappearing into the woods, she looked back at me. Her eyes thanked me and mine thanked her.

At that place where I released her, months later I was hunting grouse with Dave and Geraldo. I noticed a tiny solitary speck winging its way westward several thousand feet above us. It was a lone goose. We figured it was going somewhere to die.

I joked about how I could knock it out of the sky. Yeah, sure. I aimed about twenty feet ahead of it and shot. Suddenly its graceful strokes turned into a thrashing desperation. It began an uncontrolled plunge. I began to cry. I did not want this to happen. It was impossible. We ran towards the place in the woods towards which it seemed to be falling. We were there when it hit the ground. The one wing which had not been broken was able to break the fall enough that it was quite alive and quite mad.

We decided to take it home with us and try to care for it and mend its broken wing. We did not know what we were getting into. Over a half an hour period we made various attempts to approach it and were beaten back by its enormous wings and powerful neck thrusts. Only through careful strategizing and with a coordinated feigned head-on approach with simultaneous rear flank attacks were the three of us able to subdue it. I remember my sole task was to hang on to the neck. Period. Dave and Geraldo had to dodge muscle-packed legs and claws while carrying the beast. It was a difficult struggle. On several occasions, one of us would loosen our grasp, and a mad scramble would occur to regroup around this very pissed-off squawking king of the skies.

We heaved it into the chicken coop and slammed the gate with great relief for us and great scandalous trauma for the chickens. Our plan worked. One shot pellet had broken a wing bone that slowly healed over several weeks. One day it was gone. It had flown away. I searched the skies, but saw nothing. I sent a wish upwards that it forgive my foolish ways and die in peace. Perhaps it was headed where I was soon headed, The Cabeça do Boi Lakes, miles further into the interior.

The Fall I Don’t Remember

The big day arrived. I galloped off on my horse to meet Xavier. For months we had planned for this three-day hunting trip to Cabeça do Boi Lakes. My horse suddenly bolted at the sight of a piece of paper in the path and I kept going straight ahead and fell. I must have picked myself up after falling directly on my head, proceeded to catch Brownie, mounted the saddle and rode the remaining mile or so to the mission ranch where the seminary student was scurrying about strapping supplies and his muzzleloader to his saddle. I asked him what he was doing. Xavier laughed. However, when he glanced at me and saw the dazed look in my eyes, he came over to me and asked if I was OK. I told him my head hurt. I did not know why I was there. What was he preparing for?

He rode back home with me and reported to Mom and Dad what he had witnessed. I could remember the horse bolting…but who were all these people? Who was I? Where was I? I did not recognize anyone. I felt no panic. I felt at peace, floating in a land of no gravity. The nurse at the mission clinic insisted I stay in bed until I began to remember again, until I recovered from amnesia. I had to be very careful not to traumatize my head.

For three days, I lay in bed. I was in a dream. On the third day, Geraldo, my best friend from Sitio, came in to play quietly with my toys. I knew who he was! I was awakening. I was so excited! He ran off to find my younger brother David. Yes! I knew who he was. Each person who came to greet me filled in a piece of a gigantic living jigsaw puzzle. I knew it would all come together just fine. What a joy it was to watch it come together! An incredible picture. Moreover, it included me!

I had fallen again, and been born into my life at the age of twelve.

Confession

After Dad discovered some object I had broken one day, he took me aside and told me how badly he felt to have found out about the mishap in that way. He offered me a deal: If I would immediately inform him of a problem, he would not punish me. He spoke of how he believed that one of the cornerstones of Jesus’ teachings was that God was a loving God, quick to forgive. However, it was necessary for one to be repentant and to seek this forgiveness. That was all that was asked. That was all Dad was asking of me.

It worked: I ran to Dad the instant I broke one of the family’s silver serving spoons while trying to dig a hole in the sun-baked adobe earth behind the house. We would use that hole as a poisoning hole for the style of marbles we played with the Sitio boys. Dad thanked me for telling him right away, and went to talk to Mom about the incident and understanding he had with me. I had known that Mom was especially sensitive about the four of us boys using the heirloom silverware as general-purpose tools.

Vignettes of Life and Death

I spent many hours helping Bill Elton tear apart, clean and rebuild the Cessna engines over the years. My reward was to take control of the plane during test flights, fly over our homes, across the river, over town, or on mission trips to take medical supplies or the sick to the Ponte Nova hospital, the nearest one to us, a hundred miles away.

I tried to warn one old sick codger that he could not spit out the window while we were flying. You can’t even open the… It was too late. I guess he didn’t know what glass was, either. I cleaned up the mess as it slid down the glass. Couldn’t help but remember one of Dad’s favorite true stories of Christian character which he often shared from the pulpit. A missionary was spat on, but walked calmly on, and after wiping the spittle off his head, discovered under a microscope that the spittle had evidence of tuberculosis. He returned to the man’s home, asked for him and informed him of his illness which he was able to treat successfully.

I recall helping Uncle Bill remove arrows from the tail section of the plane. Then he patched up the aluminum skin. He said the Indians had not shot at him in malice, but just in fear of the great silver bird. I never was allowed to take off or land the planes, but as soon as up in the air and just until touchdown I took control and fell in love with flight.

I was Uncle Bill’s adopted son. Dad would be gone in the mission Jeep with his mechanic helper and dear friend Senhor Faustinho, for months at a time. Dad’s