the catman of bella street

The gentle breeze wrestled with the leaves on the trees as the long thin chenille curtains over my open bedroom window waltzed with the wind. I stared at the ceiling listening to the night sounds on this silky summer evening. There were crickets, frogs, the cooing sound of a dove, the rumble of a train with its wistful whistle and the occasional sound of the patter of rain. And slowly, imperceptible at first, the high pitched sound that neighbors said was the ‘whine in the wire’. I knew better. It was the Catman, the Catman of Bella Street.

It was a short street ending at a barricade and dead end. On the other side was a field of shrubs and grass, dirt mounds and boulders, moguls for bikes and the scene of pitched battles for the boys on the block. Beyond lay some low hills and behind that high prairie leading to majestic mountains. Most of the homes were built in the forties and fifties, the houses simple but well maintained. Midway down Bella was an old general store from 1947 where I would buy popsicles and orange ice cream bars with a vanilla center and even a Nesbitt’s soda. Aunt Beatty, who owned the store didn’t make any money off us kids nickel and dime purchases but delighted hearing about our little league games finding enjoyment in just having us around. Large trees, mostly oaks, shaded the entire length of the street, often touching and adding to the shadowy mystery that over hung the homes, side walks and road. Some said it was a sinister force and genuinely spooky. I didn’t think so.

I lived with my grandparents, Ma and Pa Kettle. Adopted soon after birth they raised me since the age of four when mom and dad and my younger sister were killed in a car wreck coming back from Evenin’ Shade, the adjacent town, after doin’ some shopping. I had stayed with my grandparents that day digging worms and telling my parents, ‘I need to stay home this time’. There was after all the promise of goin’ fishin’. I’m eleven years old now and doin’ ok, but missin’ them everday.

Now all the other streets in town proudly proclaimed their ‘neighborhood watch’ signs to warn predators and anyone with a malicious mind that they were being observed. In my way of thinkin’ it just added fodder to the gossip over coffee and sticky buns for the local ladies. But not Bella Street. There was no sign. No one peeking behind the curtains or watching for some sweet morsel to gad about at the next neighborhood pilates party. It was not necessary. Someone, something, a force saw all and protected against any evil intent. At night it may appear as a shadowy figure a moonlit image with cat-like features projected on your garage wall or a phantasm on your backyard fence making creepy caterwauls, an arbiter of drama and suspense. And what wasn’t understood creating legend and myth. Added to the fear, superstition and conjecture from the residents of Bella Street, the local police threw up there hands in utter bewilderment and didn’t appreciate anyone threatening their authority and position of power even if it was for peace and contentment.

Catty corner across the street from the Kettles was my other favorite ‘old’ person along with Pa and Ma. His name was Les and he called himself ‘Love-ve-ly’ Les. He was a pilot for the Navy, Airforce, and Marines. In Vietnam he flew F-4 Phantoms on night raids, Hawgs over Hanoi. He described them as suicide and missions of madness. ‘We, the pilots, were all stoned’ he said. His plane was often hit but he was always able to return safely home not having to accept accommodations at Hanoi’s Hilton. He lived alone. Said, ‘wife left me for another man. I was just too long gone. I can’t blame her and wish her well’.

Now Uncle Les and I became very close. One of his bedrooms had a lot of electronic equipment. Said it was just a ham radio and other stuff for reaching out to his buddies some still overseas. I became very curious and of course he had at least four black cats. He looked older than his 40 some years with either a skinhead or military cut, most often adorned in a flight type zip up. And his eyes were constantly alert always wary and watchful. All through school I would spend time with him sharing things the system did not teach. After leaving for my first year of college at a state university I felt bored and lacking any stimulating challenge was impressed to return home and delay my degree to be closer to an aging Ma and Pa and Lovevely. I was shocked to see how tiny and frail Les had become. Takin’ me aside he said, ‘there were many things we did in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. All war is crime and criminal acts of mass murder were perpetrated largely on innocent people. ‘I am so ashamed’ he said, ‘and now some of those crimes are coming round full circle the Devil demanding payment on a debt that is overdue. I’m dying of cancer with perhaps only a year to live. Please consider what I’m asking you. Can you halt your schooling long enough so that all that is presently known can be shared? Without hesitation I said a tear filled ‘yes’.

For the next few months we shared among other things about the surveillance of the neighborhood to stop crime. Through technology shared by friendly entities, just ask the boys at Groom Lake and area 51, some indistinct from human living both on and off the earth, modern technology could not only detect intent but create mental pictures, having no basis in fact or matter but mirrored in the mind and indistinguishable from present existence, a fictional reality absolutely believed to be true.

Dwelling mostly in the matinee of the mind the legend of the Catman grew, most vociferously from the mouths of perps bent on committing crimes along Bella Street. They could be found cowering in fear often with one of Les’s black cats hissing and clawing at the air sitting near. Incoherently they would babel about cats and men with feline faces as they were escorted to jail, while no physical evidence by the police was ever found substantiating the authenticity of their alleged claims or of the Catman.

‘My focus’ Les spoke ‘is here’. ‘It would invite trouble to operate outside of this sphere’. The technology that exists and the technology that Joe Sixpack is aware of are perhaps a hundred years apart and growing. He is definitely in the dark and covered with sheet’! Long before Roswell and 1947, superior technology existed as evidenced in multiple places throughout the earth. Operation Paperclip produced German scientist Wernher Von Braun, Hans Von Ohain, and Kraft Arnold Ehricke among others and advanced travel and propulsion. Juxtaposed were scientists from the Einstein era including Max Plank, Erwin Schrodinger, Niels Bohr and Nicola Tesla who pioneered progress in the understanding of creation, space, and matter. Our progress is slow but nevertheless note worthy, accomplished in a matter of a short duration compared to the centuries of the written history of mankind, steady but in serious decline when contrasted to the (tech) knowledge known and utilized by the rest of creation. None of our advancement was achieved without assistance, and that which was once considered as conjecture and now known as fact is hidden from the public in secret government projects and agencies with dark agendas. Science however remains an enigma closeted in a closed fraternity jealously protective of their pet theories while repudiating evidence revealing flaws to their taught as truth hypothesis and speculations.

Bella Street though a small experiment was nevertheless important, a petri dish in the microcosm and so in the macrocosm. Quantifying the reaction on Bella Street the objective was always protection not intrusion and control. A few were waking to their plight, fewer still to their salvation, and 80% obedient to any edict or demand for their compliance as long as it comes from a voice of authority in a state of comatose indifference. They don’t suspicion they are the rats in the lab, Pottinger’s cats destined for extinction, trapped in the techni-tenacles of totalitarian control.

This is about a future world and total biologic and electronic surveillance when intimate whispers in your most personal moments, casual conversations, and even your thoughts will be private no longer. Your mind now under their masterful manipulation you will be like a automaton having surrendered your will and choice in a bazaar Orwellian nightmare. For those who object to the official narrative and espouse critical thinking contrary to malicious government tyranny and authority you may be red pilled, considered a threat, and placed on a list of targeted citizens.

Soon society will be addicted to cell phones small enough to be carried in their pocket, lap top computers, not the main frames that fill a whole room, and tv’s that don’t weigh more than a 24 pack of bottled ‘cowboy cool aid’ and as thin as a raised panel cabinet door. The good folks of Bella Street though ignorant of the hidden danger in these and other devices deserved a fate better than that. Alas, feeling helpless with the daunting task of awakening people who enjoyed to over-sleep, they could still be protected from a drug fueled lawless society always looking for ways to feed their hungry habit. And let’s look at the facts. Bella Street is the only street in America that has no record of rape, robbery, assault, or homicide for over 50 consecutive years. Fairy tell and fiction you say. What if surviving the civil war and living into the twentieth century you were told about men in space, airplanes that flew faster than the speed of sound, television, telephones, cars, computers and modern cities with skyscrapers to the sky? It would be more than your mind could imagine. But in a short time all these things and much more happened. Don’t deny possibilities that your mind can’t presently accept. Always be receptive to the new, and in the process just don’t let your brains fall out!

Needless to say the local’s were inundated by news and TV personalities. A short list includes the Who’s Who in their respective fields: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Oprah, Jimmy Kimmel, Alt news Alex Jones and Steve Quayle, the BBC, Pravda, CNN, the Vatican, the Chinese news agency Xinhua, National Inquirer, and Televangelists Joel Olsteen and Jim Bakker. Some residents considered it an intrusion and others were having the time of their life traveling, being hosted as celebrities and receiving royalties. Property values skyrocketed and insane sums were readily paid just for the chance to live in the security of Bella Street. The police tried to take the credit but were rebuffed when the rest of the town and every other street suffered from the crime wave sweeping across America. ‘Well’, the chief said, ‘we are still assessing the results of our diligent efforts to prevent crime on Bella Street and then apply them to every other street in our fair city’……. after fifty years’?????

Lovevely is long gone a troubled but genuine soul, and the neighborhood market Aunt Beatty dubbed ‘The Bella Street Emporium’ only a gray collapsing shadow of pleasant memories from the past. Ma and Pa too as well as most of the other ‘oldsters’ have been replaced with a younger version of sometimes happy but often fragmented families doin’ their best to survive. I’m an antique, some say distinguished, an affirmation older women don’t get to use. But they have their ways, some not so subtle, to mask the past ‘plus de pouvoir pour eux’. Nevertheless I am well beyond the age Les was when he departed this present world. However some things remain unchanged and Bella Street still doesn’t need a neighborhood watch sign. It continues to be protected and I above all should know why. While it’s not important to know my name, it’s who I am that I hope you will remember for that’s my claim to fame. For you see……. I am the Catman of Bella Street…………. always was and still am……..

some say he’ll never die……others hope he will

thrum…