Archangel Rachel

By Michael O Brien

He also learned to love women from his Mom. Then he rode his bike around the coast of Florida in 1976 ending in 1,000 miles, then back to Purdue, Taking the name of Rachel. He also climbed all the Rocky Mountains. Then he wrote this 3rd book so you folks could marvel at high adventures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532093357

Michael O Brien

Mike is a free spirit. Born in 1940 as WWII began. He crawled from his playpen to draw pix of fighters and bombers. Then electric trains and steam engines.

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Copyright © 2020 Michael O Brien.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9336-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9335-7 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:   03/05/2020

Contents

Acknowledgements

The Phantom and the Phantom

George Gipp

My World it is Too!

Incident One

The Cup Passes…

Timelines

Goat Song

Re-Emergence

Party Break

On The Trail Downtime

Weeds

Incident Two

Crosstime Cabin

Pandora’s Tale

Incident Three

Viders

The Pan Interview: Guiness

Rivold

Pentacle

Meat Farm

Rachel by Rachel

Kite Basin Again: 1998

1989 Narrative

Fifteeners

Revenge Against The Taliban

Doubting Thomas

Tag The Guns

Acknowledgements

Andre Taylor and Family

Chris Brummet

Cindy Dennison

Diann Luebker

Duane and Sheila Stimer

Gaylie Bauer

Grace Church

Griggs Family

Harry Wilson and Gamily

Holt Family

Holst Family

Indy Star

Lifeway Church

Melonie Cregor

Michael Stewart O’ Brien

Northpointe Church

Pat Ford

Peggy Collins

Sharon Hensley

Shalley Chandler

Ted O’Brien

The Place

Tish

Tom McGilliard

Anita Shepherd and the Lisa

Jeff Lieber

Nicci Crossman

Jan Ringenberg

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The Phantom and

the Phantom

My mother-in-law, Ma, who lived in the same apartment building with us, always maintained that she was not a nosy person like those old folks who were always watching their neighbors. She was always stating that she was one of those who Minded Their Own Business. She would sit in her rocker and watch TV, and never, never spy on the neighbors.

One afternoon in 1965, Tish and I noticed that the apartment next to us had suddenly become very quiet. I mentioned this to Ma, and she said Oh ... yes…. they moved out two nights ago, carrying several red and blue suitcases and may boxes. It was about three thirty in the morning.

Tish and I noted that for a woman who minded (mound?) her own business, she certainly had observed details that would give a detective reason to gloat. So from that time forth, we assumed that Ma had superhuman and magical powers of vision, and we began calling her the Phantom. I don’t know if she was secretly pleased, but she never protested the name too much… and she always did know what was going on with the neighbors.

But in that year of 1966, the first year that Tish and I were married, there was an even more mysterious Phantom that appeared. Hoohoo hah ha ha ha…

The O’Brien family had been rooted in South Bend until 1950, and had strong ties with that paragon of football prowess, the University of Notre Dame. My grandfather was an alumnus, as was my father, Eugene Louis O’Brien, whom we had lovingly nicknamed Dowdy. We all had nicknames kinda like that… mine was "Backowe".

Don’t ask.

The Crismans, my mother’s side, were also linked to the Fighting Irish. Naturally, in our family of five boys and two girls, the boys tended to want to go to Notre Dame. Denny, the oldest, started in 1958, followed by Michael (me) in 1959, and Freddy in 1964.

But my tenure in South Bend was during a time when ND was NOT a football power. A couple of terrible coaches had managed to turn the fighting Irish into the quibbling micks. My first year on campus they won two and lost eight.. and just barely beat Navy at home 7-6 on a last second Hail Mary pass. Next year they were three and seven, and this went on until I left.

But then came 1964, Freddy’s freshman year, and a new and untested head coach named Ara Parseghian, who took the unranked Irish through nine straight wins, a number one ranking, and a final game loss to USC that really didn’t hurt all that much. The Irish were back.

Now at this time in my life I was a sports nut. I knew all the names and numbers of the Baltimore Orioles and the Baltimore Colts, and kept track of all team stats so well that the sports editors of the Sunpapers used to call me for box score corrections, or to settle trivia bets.

Obviously I had always been a Notre dame football fan, just as the whole family was. But by this time, my Dad had become the second-biggest ND fan in the family… and in 1966, I had one of my amazing sports hunches that the Irish would be National champions.

Chuckling to myself after an opening day victory, I sent a telegram to Freddy the Freshman in South Bend. It said One and was signed the Phantom. If the name was good enough for my mother-in-law, it was good enough for me.

Not much was heard about this. Next week the team notched another impressive win, and another telegram was sent with the word TWO.

As the weeks rolled by, ND football posted lopsided wins again and again, until by mid-October many polls had the Irish ranked as number one. And each week, after each victory, the telegrams to South Bend from the Phantom counted them up… Three, Four, Five ...

By this time, most of the family was keyed up for an undefeated season and national title. Nobody knew who the Phantom was. Ma denied it, and since she was not a sports fan, was believed. On family dinners sundays at Dowdy’s house, speculation about who the Phantom was rivaled the excitement about whether the Irish could win all ten. I, having been raised as a Roman Catholic, had become an accomplished liar, and I had some high school experience with acting. I joined the guessing session, but Tish and I were the only ones who knew the secret identity of the Phantom.

By the start of November, another team in the midwest had begun to receive the limelight of attention. Michigan State - MSU - headed by the monstrous defensive skills of Bubba Smith - was also undefeated, and was also smashing opponent after opponent. And to make the story even sweeter, both the MSU Spartans and the Irish were scheduled to a rare meeting in the FINAL GAME OF THE SEASON.

By week eight, the game had the label it still carried in 1993; The Game of the Century. As that fateful saturday approached fans all over the country got ready for the biggest football game ever. Kill Bubba Kill signs were everywhere. Reporters were chased from both closed practice camps; sports shows and ‘casters talked it up almost hysterically. Scalpers couldn’t even get tickets, and you had to know somebody besides God to get into that stadium in Michigan.

Since this is a story about Phantoms, and not a sports story, I will just summarize the game: Notre Dame’s All American running back, Nick Eddy, injured his ankle getting off the train Saturday morning. And by halftime Bubba Smith and his crew had wiped out the rest of the starting backfield for the Fighting Irish. Ironically, the backup to quarterback Terry Hanratty was Coley O’Brien, obviously a distant cousin of ours.

In the waning seconds of the 10-10 game, Coach Parseghian settled for a tie rather than risk losing with an inexperienced backfield. And the polls afterwards, much to the chagrin of the Spartans, gave the number one ranking to ND.

I sent the last telegram with a forgettable poem instead of the Ten I had planned.

That Christmas, the whole family gathered at Dad’s house as usual. After dinner, Dowdy stood up and said Attention, please! I now know the identity of the Phantom! Most of the family burst into talk, turning heads right and left; wives and children babbled and argued. But Tish and I just watched Dad as he grinned at me. Jeez!. unmasked!

How’d you guess? I asked in the growing silence.

"Well, Backowe, I knew that it had to be someone who knew a lot about sports, and who also loved mysteries. And I also knew that it wasn’t me, so that left you."

He’s gone now. And so is Ma Hacker, the other Phantom. The eighties were barely under way, and I no longer had someone to call to discuss the games. My brothers and I gradually moved away from Baltimore when Dowdy moved to Arizona.. and we all drifted apart into each of our young families.

But whenever I hear the word Phantom, I think of two departed people who I love and miss to this very day: my father, Gene Dowdy O’Brien… and my mother-in-law, the late Mrs. Hacker, whose nickname I stole for dramatic effect .. our other Phantom.

Mike O’Brien

2 November, 1994

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George Gipp

Win one for the Gipper

Somehow a ball got lost and wandered out beyond the edges of the field. Coach Knute Rockne was standing there when all of a sudden a football came flying over the field house. Rockne was amazed to see this ball come flying through the air, and he said go find out who propelled that ball over here. Well a couple of managers went over and picked up this character that never played football. He was from someplace up in Michigan, and his name was George Gipp.

Rockne got hold of him and said Did you kick that ball over the field house? And Gipp said I drop kicked it over the field house. In those Days they didn’t hold the ball to kick it; you drop kicked it. Let it touch the ground and kick it at the same time. It was called a drop kick.

Well he got Kip playing; Kip was one of those gifted, Natural athletes, he became probably the great, greatest football player Notre Dame ever had. I can remember many times before a game would start he would get in the middle of the field and turn to one goal and drop kick through the goal post, and then turn and drop kick fifty yards the other way, almost with unfailing accuracy.

He became a great All American, led Notre Dame to many victories, but he was a wild, uncontrollable guy. As I said, I was the only one Rockne ever admitted to not adhering strictly to the rules of behavior.

Gipp was a gifted natural pool player and those days many great characters used to travel through the country; professionals and artists picking up some easy money. They come into town and challenged the local champions with some matches and usually walked out with all the local money.

Gipp was fooling them. He would hang out constantly at the pool hall on the bottom of the J and S building, called Holly’s and Mike’s. The visiting Sharks would come in and of course polish off a few of the local champions. And the betting would get real high, and then Gipp came out from the back room, like this country bumpkin, of course. These professionals (until they learned later) would think Oh boy, Here’s an easy mark. And invariably Gipp would clear the table and clean them out of their money.

Kip apparently also drank and there were two managers who were just assigned on Saturday morning to go down and get Gipp and bring him out to the locker room, get him in the shower and get him sobered up. And then he’d go out and score five or six touch downs.

The last game that I saw that Gipp was in, I think we were playing, and it was a rainy day. Gipp had a broken collar bone, and Rockne had him on the bench. I can remember even though we were ahead 46-0, the crowd got yelling, "We want Gipp, we want Gipp, because it was his senior year, and it would be the last time that they would see him play on ND grass.

Rockne said later, much to his dislike, put him in and Gipp played in the mud and scored a couple of touchdowns. But he got very wet and contracted pneumonia, and three or four days later …died.

I never forgot the funeral procession. Notre Dame Street for ten or twelve blocks the entire student body

Stood in groups. After the mass at Sacred Heart, they carried the coffin all the way down Norte Dame Street past our house, went down Jefferson Street, down Michigan Street over to the railway station where they put the body on the train to ship him back into a little town he was from in Michigan.

It was a very sad and impressive tribute and farewell to a great and gifted Athlete.

From the memoirs of Gene O’ Brien; Notre Same class of 1937.

Also view the movie Knute Rockne All American… shown to all ND freshmen every fall.

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My World it is Too!

My changes may be as large as any. It goes without saying that they will be as small. And I will love the world my way, although [others] say my love is worthless because it is not theirs too. But it is my love. And the world that I see is my world. So I will love my world, and my love will change it.

Join us, and the world will be as one.

We spend our loves learning it, and of all we learn, nothing is wrong! Nothing! Nothing is wrong!

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Incident One

My God, you talk fast, she said.

Oh… I’m sorry. I’ll try to talk slower. You must be a human being. I smiled down at her.

Really. And what are you? She tilted her head back and pointed her large lidded eyes at my lips.

"Well…I’m an adult human being, which is almost a different species in terms of mental evolution."

What’s mental evolution? said skeptical full-lipped blonde shoulder length cute nosed girl.

It changes our environment much faster than our bodies can adapt. The mind is an instrument of evolution. It is also subject to the same rules, and it evolves too. I noticed that she was listening. She was looking at my eyes now.

The body, you see, starts to mature around twelve years of growth. But, the mind… Well, most humans seem to remain children. I don’t know why, really. I hope that more humans will mature soon, because this planet needs them.

Why does `This Planet’ need them? God, you talk like a third encounter!

I smiled, and realized that a good bit of what I was saying was being accepted as bullshit. I continued, "You can see the adults once in a while through history: Jesus, Ghandi, King… and even more names few would recognize. But there are so few adults that the ‘children’ still control things.

"And if you don’t believe that children run this country, look at the insanity of an ‘Arms Race’ that competes on a basis of how many times each country can totally destroy the other. At the moment, Russia is ahead 80 to 50, and all sorts of Senators want more money for ‘DEFENSE’ so that we can catch up.

Tell me… do you really think that is adult behavior?

She was looking at my mouth again, so I laughed and leaned close to her face. She watched my lips part, expecting our first kiss.

I smiled and said, We can interbreed, you know.

She looked at my mouth: You’re talking too fast again. And then her hands were on my face and it was our first kiss.

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The Cup Passes…

The giant strode before the silent crowd. He turned and shook his great sword, and he sent his threat over their heads for the third time.

Is there none among you who will stand against me?

The ripples of echoes eddied through the fearful throng. The silence became thicker that it had, twice before, after the challenges.

A motion drew all