Bernie’s Truck Being Pulled from the Lake Ron AI
The field was dry as a bone and so was the creek. This time we didn't go up to the farmhouse, just across the creek to scout out a cornfield and some brush for signs of wildlife.
It wasn't long before Bernie made a major discovery – a marijuana grow! He got excited and told me that we would have to return to Venice. BJ dropped me at his apartment with his girlfriend, called a couple of guys, and took off again for the farm. A few hours later, he was back with about 200 pounds of marijuana they had cut quickly from the field. Bernie couldn't wait to dry some out in the oven. As soon as he did, he tested it and declared it to be, "good shit."
Later that year, Bernie decided to visit me with his plane and bring along one of Riva's sons, Eric, who was nine years old. I left work early to meet them at the Santa Clara airport. I knew a storm front was coming off the Pacific. When I got to the airport we were amid a violent thunderstorm, and I couldn't reach anybody in the tower. Finally, I talked to a pilot in the terminal, and he told me no flights were going in or out. I went home and worried.
About eight o'clock, I got a call from BJ. They were in Salinas in a motel. He said they'd be in the next day. Said that the evening before he had been flying in heavy clouds with no visibility. When he came out of the clouds at 500 feet, he was upside down. "Almost bought the farm!" It was Bernie's eighth brush with death. Only one more left, as cats go.
We had an uneventful weekend, ending with Bernie taking me up into the Sierras near Yosemite. It was some breathtaking flying with fabulous vistas as we flew close to the peaks and up-and-down canyons. A civil air patrol volunteer told me later that that kind of flying was very dangerous because of up-and-down drafts near the cliffs and canyons. BJ thought nothing of taking risks. Guess that is why he was always so close to death.
My work kept me from visiting anymore. But one day, Bernie sold his business and left Venice. Rumor had it that he ran into trouble with the Outfit and had to leave. It could've been the marijuana he was smoking as well as selling. BJ sold his business for a tidy sum and stashed it back in Elkhart with his mother.
I don't know for sure. All I know is that he left Venice for the road in a pickup camper, traveling, and as he liked to say, "living off the land." Like his father before him, BJ started doing odd jobs in small communities across the country. I lost total track of him. Only his mother, Rosy, could tell you where he was at any given time.
Somewhere along the line he lost Riva and ended up in San Diego, living on an antique powerboat – in a 1949 Chris-Craft. And he was married to an older woman – seven years older to be exact – a real looker named Marilyn with a much better figure than the sex goddess of the same name. I know, because I saw her in a bikini on the day she announced that she had turned 45.
Sure, shocked me. She looked 30. BJ was working for an electrical contractor, and they were staying on the boat in a little marina. When Rosy told me where they were, I had to go see them. They welcomed my intrusion and had a hot place for me to sleep in the front of the boat with only a fan for ventilation.
Bernie was having the mahogany hull and deck refinished by a pair of lesbians. They were doing a good job except they shorted out a taillight causing the battery in the six-volt system to slowly discharge. Bernie decided to take us out fishing anyway.
There was a nice weed bed about a half mile offshore. Bernie drove out over the weed bed and shut down the engine so that the boat would drift onshore over the weed bed. The chop was just right and gave me my first bout – ever – of seasickness. In the meantime, Bernie and Marilyn were catching fish. Once we had passed over the weed bed, Bernie tried to start the engine, and it wouldn't start. When he called the Coast Guard for help, the battery got so low that even his call for help died out. "May day, May day, May day..." just wasn't heard.
As we drifted towards the shore, I thought we might crash against the rocky point directly ahead, or if we drifted past the point, run aground on the beach. Finally, as we closed in on the point, a beautiful yacht appeared rapidly closing in on us. It was the Coast Guard Auxiliary and a very welcome sight. They towed us back to the marina where we had a great fish broil with the fish that we caught.
Within a year, I was back at Purdue, teaching, and I heard from Rosy that BJ and Marilyn had split. When docking fees got too expensive, BJ had rented out the boat to some people who said they were going to take a week's vacation. Instead, according to BJ, they took the boat to Mexico and brought back drugs on it. The boat was trashed and BJ had to sell at a loss.
He decided to go on the road again in a camper and it just wasn't Marilyn's cup of tea. She went back to selling real estate in LA and BJ headed for Idaho to do some big game hunting. Rosy told me that while BJ was hunting, he learned of a course in big game guiding. The course usually takes about six weeks to complete, but BJ was so good at what he did that he finished the course in two weeks.
He also met another woman –Wendy. Wendy was again older – five years to be exact – and a native of Idaho who grew up with hunting and fishing. Through his contacts there, he learned of a fishing camp on Great Slave Lake that was for sale. With the money that he had stashed in Elkhart, BJ bought the camp, sight unseen, and he and Wendy flew up there to live.
It took BJ about two years to turn the camp into a first-class hunting and fishing resort with fly in capability. Just when he was about to start advertising for customers in the States, the local Indians who had all the guiding licenses and the Canadian Government closed him down, prohibiting him from doing business because he wasn't a Canadian citizen.
BJ took to the road again. He and Wendy ended up in Tucson in a pickup camper, but eventually, returned to San Diego. Selling his fish camp on Great Slave Lake bankrolled a fencing company. Since good fences make good neighbors and concern for privacy and security was growing, BJ's fence company grew very quickly into a multimillion-dollar operation spanning Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona.
Using illegal workers who put up fences like wildfire, BJ prospered. He flew his immediate family to New York City and the Waldorf Astoria when he married Wendy. During this time, I was very busy with work and a divorce, and we hardly got to see one another except only briefly when I interviewed in Long Beach one time.
BJ had acquired a ranchette in Delmar that he planned to subdivide to cash in on the Southern California building boom. He was also building a hunting lodge in Idaho on a pristine lake amid beautiful mountains. That was when he found out what had happened to Arnie all those years before. forty-four years, to be exact.
It seems that Arnie and Victoria had hopped in her car and drove straight through to Florida – Key Largo. They became beach bums, only working when they had to until their early deaths from smoking and drinking too much.
It seems that when it came time, Victoria used her Social Security number to collect Social Security. When her kids hired a private investigator to find her, the investigator quickly found out that Victoria had used her original Social Security number.
Unfortunately, Victoria was already dead, and Arnie had died 10 years earlier. The private investigator was able to gather some facts about their life in Florida from the locals who knew them as Vicki and Barry and always thought they were a childless couple – just some drifters that had settled in.
As we all know, the economy and the building boom ended at the same time. To compound matters, BJ was in trouble with the locals for trying to subdivide pristine Delmar property, and the fact that he used almost solely illegal immigrants as his workforce for his fencing company. The IRS was probably after him. BJ retreated to his Idaho paradise to work out a solution. The solution soon became obvious. Right before his nose.
With the help of some old connections in Chicago, Bernie got a new identity. With the help of a couple of locals in Idaho that he paid handsomely, he had them help his pickup go into the lake on November 15 when there was just enough ice for the truck to get to the deep water before it crashed through.
BJ spent the night partying with these guys in a local tavern. About 3 am, they staged the event by having the truck with his jacket and some other evidence in it, roll down off the road, onto the lake ice, and then break through the ice. Making sure there were no tracks by the road, his buddies then drove him to Idaho Falls. It wasn't until two days later that someone happened by the hunting lodge, and they discovered the pickup tracks leading out to the lake. A thorough search found the truck and his belongings in the truck but no body of Bernie.
Wendy was left holding the bag and had to sell the fencing business, the lodge in Idaho, and the ranchette in Delmar. She didn't know anything about the books and didn't know if any money was missing. She held a memorial service for him in the spring after a thorough search of the lake bottom came up with nothing.
I figure that Bernie had run out of lives, gotten in trouble with overreaching his means, sidelined some of his money, and faked his death. Like father, like son. Bernie made off with the cash and left everybody else holding the bag. Or did he? He may pop up in your neighborhood. Not from the bottom of the lake, but as your newfound friend and buddy.
Copyright 2011 © Ronald W. Hull
4/2/11
Second Revision: 4/17/25
