The Great Nauga Hunt

I worked for the Long Beach, California, Fire Department. One day in a fire station, I forget which one it was, I overheard two firemen talking. One fireman was telling the other one about a joke he had played on another fireman. The joke, the fireman said, was telling this other fireman that naugahyde was the hide of an animal. When I heard this, I laughed to myself. Who would believe that naugahyde was the skin of a real animal? The fireman telling the story was convinced that the fireman he was playing the joke on, did not know that naugahyde was a manmade plastic covering. I didn't know the fireman who was supposed to believe that naugahyde was the skin of a real animal very well, but I thought he was pulling the leg of the fireman who was trying to play the naugahyde joke on him.

Anyway, I don't know who was kidding who, but the utter absurdity of anyone believing that naugahyde was the skin of a real animal seemed so completely impossible that I shook my head in disbelief. I laughed to myself whenever I thought of this incident.

I knew instantly that here was a story, a story I wanted to tell, but how would a writer write such a story? How could you invent a character that would be so dumb as to not know that naugahyde was a plastic covering and not the hide of a real animal? I didn't know.

As time went by, my mind (subconscious?) began to spit out scenes of a young man who was a hunter, such as the ones we used to see in the Tarzan movies and the Jungle Jim stories. An innocent, gullible young man, but a great hunter, who belonged to one of those hunting clubs we used to see in movies about Africa, of men sitting around in a room with the mounted heads of animals hanging on all of the room's walls, usually Englishmen or Europeans.

Well, I wasn't going to write about a bunch of English stuffed shirts, I was going to write an American story about Americans, even if they were stuffed shirts. I've had enough of insulting, ill mannered Englishmen and Europeans bashing America and Americans. The trouble was, I had to use some Europeans anyway, because I made the hunting club an international club.

So you see, from this unusual beginning, I (my subconscious) made up the story, The Great Nauga Hunt.

The Great Nauga Hunt is one of the greatest, if not the greatest hunt in all of the history of the universe.

If you like great hunting stories you will like The Great Nauga Hunt.

I have added the history of how and when I wrote The Great Nauga Hunt to the end of the story so the reader can find out where an author gets some of his stories.

Mr. Warner went back to school at Long Beach City College, on the G.I. Bill, taking Mechanical Engineering before he switched to journalism. After about a year and a half at City College, he quit.

Mr. Warner had always been interested in writing, but he had huge handicaps to overcome: he couldn't spell (he still can't); and grammar was then and is now a mystery to him.

Mr. Warner first began to write when he was about twenty.

During the next few years, he wrote some songs, poetry, and short stories, but his output was quite low.

From 1947, after Mr. Warner left City College, to 1950, he had a number of different inconsequential jobs--the longest, at Douglas Aircraft in Long Beach where he worked in the blueprint department for eight months until he quit and loafed awhile.

In 1950, he enlisted in the Active Naval Reserve as a Weekend Warrior, so that he could learn seamanship and get paid doing it. He has had a life long love affair with boats (building his own) and fishing.

About three months later, the Korean War started and Mr. Warner was called back to active duty in the Navy Aircorp for a year. He was discharged in August 1951, serving on three aircraft carriers, operating off of Korea in the China Sea, bombing and strafing the communists!

After Korea, Mr. Warner went back to City College for awhile, then got a job on a freighter as a deckhand. He then made two trips to the Hawaiian Islands, about thirty days round trip, hauling bulk sugar for C&H Sugar in Crocket California on the Sacramento River.

Leaving the ship in Crocket, he went to Santa Rosa, California, where he washed dishes in a few restaurants and got a poem published in the local newspaper--a big day in his life.

Next, he went to Yosemite and washed some more dishes before going home.

Mr. Warner has cleaned chicken dung from under the pens; he owned and operated his own auto wrecking yard; owned his own 2nd Store; was half owner of a Yacht Landing; speculated in Real Estate; and worked at some other odd jobs, going to work for the Long Beach Fire Department in 1953 for the next twenty-six years, retiring in October, 1979.

Mr. Warner got married in 1961, had his son in 1963, and got divorced in 1973.

In 1974, Mr. Warner and his son, Jeff, drove to Alaska during the summer. On his return, Mr. Warner wrote his first novel.

Since 1974, Mr. Warner has written 15 novels, about 125 short stories, 2 Civil War history books, and 2 poetry collections.