Aloha blog friends:

I have been pretty busy with keeping up with appointments with doctors and occupational and physical rehab for my wife. She broke her right femur (hip) and had a double fracture on her right wrists, her ulna and radius on August 16th. Her recovery has been great. 
Slowly I am getting busy again with several projects, one of the important ones is to drum up interest in my book, Polynesian Dreams, now available on Amazon Kindle, Barnes&Noble, Nook, Kobo, WaveCloud. Googlebooks, Ebooks and more.
I priced the e-book version at $3.79, an inexpensive price for hours of interesting reading. It is autobiographical but filled with adventure, romance ( a bit of sex), it follows me from a young boy in Holland during the German occupation, to my service in the Dutch Royal Navy on a gun boat in the Carribean, to my service in the Dutch Merchant Navy which took me all over the world. It continues on my immigration to America, my service in the American Army in Germany as a MP and Criminal Investigator, Finally, it describes the period when I got addicted to drugs, alcohol and atrocious behavior and subsequent fight back to health, prosperity and happiness. This is the inspirational message contained in Polynesian Dreams.
Please read a sample chapter on any e-book site and if you like the whimsical style, buy my book. I am fortunately financially secure and therefor donate all my net proceeds to either The Wounded Warrior project or an Animal Shelter.
If you buy the book or have bought it, please take a few minutes and write a review on Amazon.com, this helps future readers make up their mind to buy or not to buy.
You are invited to email me at: pokerbydutch@verizon.net and to check out my web site: www.polnesiandreams.com
I am also working on a new novel, working title: The Court is in Session. I am including the beginning of the first chapter. Mahalo to all of my readers. Johan Van Oldenbarneveld.

THE COURT IS IN SESSION

Johan Van Olden

It was a typical Los Angeles evening, warm and sultry. Charlie's Bar and Grill was in one of the non descriptive side street around the corner of the City of Angels County court house. This watering hole was established in the roaring twenties and had been a favorite of generations of attorneys, defense and prosecuting alike ever since the original Charles N. McKenzie opened the door for the first time. Countless court victories and defeats had been celebrated or bemoaned at the well worn oak bar or in one of the red leather booth or round tables, scarred from careless cigarette burns and some of them with the carved initials of vandals or lovers. The original Charlie had made a pile during prohibition and gone to live in Florida with his ill gotten gains. The bar had gone through a myriad of owners, some not bad, some not good. The current Charlie was a tall, bespectacled debarred lawyer named Henk Davidson, who everybody called Harley, who after losing his license to practice law had been an investigator and knew most everybody in the courthouse.  If he was not working on a case, and this was less often with time, he occupied a corner stool from opening to near closing, sipping whiskey and soda in a tall glass and leaving each night slightly sloshed. Finally he figured it was cheaper to buy the joint and surprisingly Charlie's thrived under his ownership. He hired a dependable fry cook, gave him the title of Chef and you could get an excellent bratwurst with potato salad and a delicious German pickle from noon until closing time at 2 am. No menu and nothing else was served out of the small kitchen, a paper plate, a plastic fork and in the corner one could help themselves to a squirt of deli-mustard, a paper napkin but ketchup was an absolute no-no. The brat was served on a fresh and tasty French roll and the potato salad was homemade and the best in the west.

Tonight, in his favorite corner booth, Walter Hammond II Attorney at Law, sat morosely sipping his second double single malt scotch on the rocks. 

"I knew I would find you here", and with these words Henry Powell, slipped in the booth beside him.

"Well now that you found me, what is on your mind my brown brother, former roommate and brilliant bull-shitter par excellence?"

"I see you are in a rare mood this fine evening", replied the tall, well dressed and groomed  black man ."

"Yes, I am, and so would you if you had Judge Julia Hightower on your ass all day. That miserable, and I have trouble not using the C word, must have her period. Jesus Christ, each time I made a motion it was ‘overruled, counselor’ in that nasal annoying voice. God, that man hating lesbian is  making my life miserable."

 Walter got the attention of the waitress, Peggy, or Leggy Peggy as the insiders called her for the obvious  apparent two reasons and held up 2 fingers.

"On top of it, the guy I am representing is a class A asshole, a Russian who cannot build his shitty strip mall, probably a money laundering enterprise owned by the Russian mafia because some old fart who is standing in his way and who is adamant he wants to die in the white clapboard shack that he was born in, raised his three children in and absolutely will not sell. The old guy is half blind with glaucoma and I much rather be his attorney than the slime ball who is suing so he can built another blight on our fair city. The guy has been in our country for 15 years but made me hire a Russian translator because he claims he does not understand enough English to know what is happening in court. So, at $300.00 per day, I have my the flow of my brilliant reasoning continuously interrupted by a young Russian translator of whom I cannot take my eyes of her beautiful rack.. There, my political wizard, representing the democratic party as trusted advisor, is the reason I think I sit here, lapping up good scotch and getting blasted."

"Brilliant plan. I guess you are not in the mood to hear why I came looking for you?"

"Not in the least even though we fought many battles in the hallowed halls of Berkeley's, studying for the bullshit bar exams together and chased after the same warm pussies that liberal bastion had to offer."

"Yes, but you scored more times than I"

"That is only because you had morals while I had none, and my only reason for living was  to get laid by those pretty little women all dressed up with pushup bras having their lush pink tits peeking through their blouses and wearing panties with the days of the week embroidered on them, only never the right day."

Henry looked thoughtfully at his friend, "Fond memories my friend, and then we had to spoil it all by getting married. You to that  tall blond from that blue blooded rich family in Vermont. I, to that super cute, super liberal Latino who I helped with getting her degree in jurisprudence and now is the star attorney in immigration court and has little time for me or our issue, son Daniel, now going on ten and probably will get laid before he is fifteen. I see a juvenile delinquency case in the future."

Where upon Walter Hammond II replied, "fret not my learned friend, I too did not fare so well. Frosty, as I call Katherine the Great Hammond nee Foster, has greatly reduced all the once so pleasant sexual activity. Shit we use to go at it like two drunken monkeys when we lived in that small apartment on Claremont Avenue in Oakland."

"Yes, I remember, we were neighbors and the walls were thin"

"Suck up, buddy," and Walter again held up two fingers to Leggy Peggy.

"However, you have aroused my curiosity, why did you come looking for me in this shit hole?"

"Walter, do not insult this establishment. Just because it is smells like spilled booze and the toilet like stale piss, it is your home away from home."

“Yes, anything is better than that brick palace in Pasadena, recently featured in House Beautiful with two beautiful people in beautiful clothes with two beautiful children and a beautiful Schnauzer.  Talk about Schnauzer, did you noticed Leggy Peggy’s short, shorts?  Christ, any shorter and you will get a peek at her Schnauzer.”

“Walter, got to admit, it gets attention and sells booze, the main reason Charlie’s in business. Booze and sex, a lethal but profitable combination.”