Don Ingalls

            On Friday after midnight I put down more carpet tape on the edges of my mattress where it had become less sticky. I lint-rolled the curtains between the bedroom and the living room, the top of my bed and the pillow and picked up a few of bedbugs from the curtains. I went to bed at 1:10 and slept until 3:30 when I got up to pee. Then I went back to bed and slept right through to the 5:00 alarm. 

            After yoga I skipped all my writing and translation projects and played hooky on song practice to get my place ready for the pest control technician who was scheduled to be here between 10:00 and 17:00. I worked for almost four hours clearing out the bedroom and the north side of the living room.

            Gregg the pest control technician arrived at around 11:00. It turns out that my place was the only one he was tasked to treat for bedbugs and he only inspected Benji’s and David’s units. I asked him if only treating one apartment could drive the bedbugs into surrounding units and he said it potentially could. The landlord is an idiot and he’ll keep this infestation going indefinitely just to save money. I asked Gregg about the previous Orkin technician, Steve. He told me Steve has been promoted to management and he’s taken over Steve’s route. I told him to say hi to Steve. It's sad to be on a first name basis with guys who regularly treat your home for bedbugs. 

            I did my laundry and set the dial on the washer to hot but I guess I accidentally reset it to “Quick Wash” when I pushed the knob to start the machine and that’s only 24 minutes. I decided when it was done to wash everything again at the “hot” setting. 

            I rode to Metro where I bought three bags of relatively firm black grapes. 

            Back at my place Gregg had taken my big box fan from the kitchen and set it up in the bedroom to dry out the poison. He left a trap on my living room bookshelf that had three struggling bedbugs on it. I found a couple on the wall of the bedroom. He’s coming again on November 30 so there’s no point in putting everything away. 

            I weighed 89.45 kilos at 14:50, which is the lightest I’ve been in the early afternoon since July 15. 

            I took a siesta at 15:33 and woke up just before 17:30. 

            I weighed 90.35 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was caught up in my journal at 19:05. 

            I digitized a cassette recording of a CBC Brave New Waves profile of the Anarchist band Chumbawamba. The next cassette I digitize will be of my daughter singing songs at Christmastime when she was about 4. 

            I removed the hard drive from my third to last computer and put the panel back on. Tomorrow I’ll probably throw the PC out as it’s just taking up space. It still works but it was slow. 

            I had a potato with margarine and the last piece of the sirloin tip roast while watching episode 14 of Daniel Boone. 

            Three Cherokee are sitting at a campfire gambling furs when a very friendly and charming white man comes out of the woods. He pulls out a jug and the braves drink. They like it and invite the man to sit. 

            The same man shows up in Boonesborough and sells some furs to Cincinnatus. He says he’s looking for Daniel Boone so Yad takes him to Boone’s cabin. It turns out that Will Cary and Daniel Boone are old friends. Will charms Boone’s family and entertains the community. There is a big party to celebrate his visit but then Mingo shows up to tell Boone about three Cherokees who were knifed, scalped and had their pelts stolen. He says that the white man’s trail ends at Boonesborough. Daniel says no one there killed the hunters. Will wonders why there’s such a fuss over some dead redskins.

            Daniel goes with Mingo to talk with Chief Menewa who warns Boone that if he doesn’t bring the killer to justice, the Cherokee will bring justice down on all of Boonesborough. 

            Boone hasn’t returned from his meeting and it’s late. Rebecca is worried and Will begins to comfort her but then starts caressing her hair and she moves away uncomfortably. 

            Boone asks Will if he did it and Will asks, “If I did it would I be sittin around here?” Boone answers that he would. Will says inside him there’s a jar of horny toads howling to get loose that sometimes do and he can’t help it. But he still declares that this time he’s innocent. 

            Will has a trial before the community and he says he may have brought in the same kind of furs the Cherokee bucks had trapped but that’s all. The community votes on whether to fight the Cherokee or to take Will to court in Salem and they decide to fight. 

            Later Will gets drunk and admits that he killed the three Cherokee. Boone says for Yad and Cincinnatus to hold Will there until he goes to tell Menewa. He tells the chief that Cary will be taken to Salem to stand trial but when he gets back he finds Yad knocked out and Cincinnatus stabbed in the bank. Cincinnatus says Will was smiling when he stabbed him. 

            Boone goes after Will and finds him. Will pulls out his knife and Boone wields his. They end up falling off a cliff together with Boone on top and Will dies. 

            This story was written by Don Ingalls, who after serving as a bomber pilot during WWII worked as a test pilot. He joined the Los Angeles Police Department as a press relations officer and edited the police magazine Beat. He wrote speeches for police bosses and served as a public spokesman for the department. It was in the LAPD that he first met, shared an office with, and became lifelong friends with Gene Roddenberry. He was a columnist for The Valley Times. He made his script writing debut in 1957 with a story for the TV show Harbour Command. Roddenberry helped him get hired as a story editor for Have Gun Will Travel. He became an associate producer and then a producer. He wrote scripts for Adam 12, Bonanza (4 episodes), 12 O’Clock High (11 episodes), The Big Valley (5 episodes), Gunsmoke (2 episodes), Marcus Welby (2 episodes), The Mod Squad (2 episodes), Police Story, and The Virginian. He wrote two episodes of Star Trek: “The Alternative Factor” and an anti Vietnam war allegory called “A Private Little War”, which Rodenberry heavily re-wrote and pissed Ingalls off so much that he was angry at him for a year. He insisted that he only be credited as Jud Crucis. He associate produced 21 episodes and wrote one episode of Honey West. He directed 2 episodes, wrote 29 episodes, and produced 67 episodes of Fantasy Island. He was a producer for T.J. Hooker. he made his movie writing debut with Dial Hot Line in 1970. He wrote the script for the movie Airport 1975 and the 1979 TV movie Captain America. He wrote the novel Watchers on the Mountain in 2005. He said a writer who understands their craft can write anything. He said he applied dramatic concepts to even comedy scripts and was never unemployed.