The Tao of Richard

Notes from a Breakfast Diplomacy Meeting:

Richard: “We need a system for resolving conflict and making decisions. When traveling with Mike in the 60s we used to flip a coin to decide where to go next, or who was paying. Why can’t we adopt that system?”

“This journey has already been the most significant growth in my twenty years of recovery and has set in motion a process that if kept on track can only have the most positive results of my life.”

“I am grateful to have been an instrument in your spiritual growth“

“We all like to hike. The summit we reach is not a destination it’s a rest point until we see the next valley and ridge to hike. We need time to rest up as we look at the valley ahead.”

“The thousand words are sometimes worth more than the pictures.”

“I am now more centred and calmly looking forward to the trip to Omaha and engaging with the people there. If we had not had this conversation I would have allowed my buttons to be pushed to total uncentredness”.

Great, lets get back on the road then.

When we arrive in Omaha Richard insists on finding a place he can buy bbq ribs. This is where he watched Obama’s inauguration and he wants to show us how down with the coloured folk he is.

“Is that an African accent?” he asks in the first place.

“No, I was born in Omaha”

They don’t have ribs, so we head to Bill’s which is next to a gas station in a fairly rough looking part of town.

“Akuna Matata brother” he says through a heavily fortified window, before placing his order.

There’s a procession of people buying cheap liquor, and Richard banters merrily with them all. Anyone else would have taken a beating but he’s all smiles as he walks out with a big bag of ribs 10 minutes later.

Son Greg is the eldest of his 3 children. They eat the ribs together in Greg’s back yard and chew the fat.

Richard presses him to get the skeletons out. Greg starts cleaning a rifle.

“When I was very young you paid a lot more attention to your friends than to me. Most of the time you were making a lot of promises and then not keeping them.”

“What could i do to be a better father from here on in”

(long pause)

“Pay attention to me. I’ve got something important to show you all the time. You’re my dad, I want to impress you. I’m proud of what I’ve done, and I want you to be proud of what I’ve done.”

When The Student Is Ready The Teacher Will Arrive

After a night in Mission and some ringing around we’ve managed to find Sylvan.

“Many winters have passed since we last met” he says on the phone when Richard speaks to him. He and Richard used to run together, and sobered up together.

Sylvan lives out in a newly built house with a creek running through the bottom of his land. He has a room full of trophies for horseshoe throwing. He lights wild sage as we sit down to break bread. He speaks slowly, deliberately.

They pray together to the Great Spirit to give Richard strength in this search for a new way of living. Sylvan shares stories of his own amends.

“You forgot your Treaty Paper“ he shouts, waving a toilet roll at Richard as we set off for Omaha.

Manic Tuesday

Last night we ended up at the North Star, which is closed on Mondays and run by a fellow whogoes by the name “The Living Legend”. He and Richad go back some, and they talk into the night in the empty bar.

We slept in a town called Gregory. In the morning Richard seems strangely hyper, and as he drives through town he suddenly pulls over and has a mock altercation with 12 foot gorilla (A statue of the town’s sports teams mascot). It seems we are beginning to see the ‘high’ side of a growing manic state.

We run in to a cowboy and his wife on an old pony trap. Richard lifts his shirt and asks the wife to whip him. It’s a good opener, and soon he’s riding alongside them. The cowboy turns out to be an old hand from California and treats us to an hour of fire and brimstone while his pretty (and much younger) wife looks on. 

Richard can’t resist a theological showdown with the right wing Baptist and an argument ensues. After getting kicked off the trap, Richard makes a a hasty amends (‘peace be with you brother!’) before the cowboy rides off.

Richard’s high is escalating and when we hit the cafe for lunch. He walks in with a scarf over his face holding a shotgun and demands to see the manager. The old ladies inside barely bat an eyelid.

Over lunch he gets a call. He loves to banter with salespeople, but as we listen (he’s sitting on another table of course) he starts to give out personal details. Card numbers. Security numbers. We try to stop him but he waves us away. Eventually he hands the phone to me, but the damage is done. I speak to the guy on the other end and question him but i can almost hear the money leaving richard’s account the longer we stay on the line. He calls his bank five minutes later, and a transaction for $995 has already gone through. Oh dear.

Richard comes back to earth with a bump and sets to work on the phone. Once again he has created a whole world of drama which needs to be unravelled.

On the way to Mission we couldn’t drive past this picture, so we lost Richard.

When we arrive he’s at the Native American University in the office of an Indian named Hollow Horn who has a photo of himself meeting the Pope on the wall. We’re trying to track down his old buddy Sylvan White Hat.

Crawlers

The room is alive with ticks. Well, two of them. JP spies one on Josh’s shirt, and I find one on my jeans. Then Richard comes in for a meeting, and he’s got one attached to the back of his neck. Josh does the honours.

We check out of the Siesta and hit the road. Richard has seen a storm brewing and wants to get his car hailed on so he can claim on the insurance. He speeds towards it.

The sky is a golden yellow, but soon we’re right in it. The rain falls so hard I can’t see more than about three metres ahead. It closes right in until I’m crawling. Then suddenly we’re out the other side, past a sign that reads:

“God does not keep us from life’s storms...He walks us through them”

The sunset is spectacular. We cross the Missouri as night falls and pause on the other side. As we film in the dusk, coyotes begin to howl.

Sunday by the lake

A new day. Somehow Richard manages to patch things up with Barb after an altercation at the Kongo and they head off to brother Mike’s place by the lake.

It’s a peaceful afternoon and after the tour Mike and Richard sit down and look through an album of photos which Richard has brought, with all the pictures from their global adventures together back in the 60s. These two used to be incredibly close. Now, it’s an amazing thing to witness them spending these few hours together.

We drive out see some of Mike’s land, and he shows us how he’s been planting to create the ideal habitat for wild pheasant to thrive. There’s real science at work, and years of preparation to ensure the birds can survive the harsh winters.

Meanwhile, Debs has their six hunting dogs out. I’ve never seen happier or better trained dogs. They’re quite a sight.

As night falls and ticks start appearing on people’s legs, we head to Ruby Tuesday for dinner. Today was a good one.

Kristofferson to Kongo

Richard’s birthday! We give him a book and his favourite Kristofferson album on cd. He apologises for having encouraged me to eat ‘Prairie Oysters’ which he later revealed were really pieces of deep fried bull’s testicles. I had not seen the funny side, but it’s a day for forgiveness.

Barb and JP drive down from Lidgerwood for a birthday dinner which turns out to be remarkably unremarkable - no arguments, no embarrassing scenes, nobody storms out. In fact it all goes very well. Bob Trusty, one of the original Robin Hood posse is here, so is brother Mike and his wife Debs and Barb and JP.

Afterwards as Josh films him in the car outside the Corn Palace, Richard is approached by a police officer who has spotted him parked illegally.

“Officer, in case you hadn’t noticed we’re making a movie”

“Yes, I can see that“

and then after checking his id Officer Badgood (really) proceeds to stop the traffic so Richard can pull a u-turn and go on his way.

The night ends at the Kongo Klub, a ‘legendary’ establishment where Richard misspent much of his youth.

Mike? check

We’re back in Mitchell. Brother Mike has agreed to be interviewed. We meet at his office. The walls are covered in hunting photos.

We hear stories from the 70’s. Early days of Robin Hood, the hunting service that Mike and Richard ran together with some friends. Weeks of hunting and drinking. There were some wild times. Good times. In the 20 plus years since, they’ve grown apart and led very separate lives.

“Yes he can make amends. Anything’s possible. But the clock is ticking and time is running out. He’s 69 years old now. Will he make them? That’s the $64,000 question. We’ll have to see”.

While we’re having lunch with Mike and his wife Richard calls to say he’s heading over to a recovery meeting and why don’t we film it.

Josh speaks to the assembled and they vote to allow us to film as long as we don’t reveal anyone’s identity.

The stories of loss and tragedy and broken relationships are heartbreakingly mundane but no less powerful for their familiarity. People shunned by their families, troubled by lifetimes of drinking and battling alcohol.

It feels a real privilege that they are willing to share their stories with us, and we leave humbled.

The day’s not over yet. Richard heads off to make amends with an old neighbor who he owed money to for some building work back when he lived here. The man is now in his eighties but when Richard called up to arrange to meet, his first words were “So are you going to pay me the money you owe?”

He doesn’t say much during the encounter, but Richard pays the first instalment, and then we head over to his old house by the lake.

He’s in reflective mood as the sun goes down, talking about how people here celebrated when he left.