OPERATION EAGLE WING

Bad memories! Those two helicopters that collided 3/30/23, killing 9 crew members, while involved with 101st Airborne Division war games, at Fort Campbell, brought back visions of the first mass training fatalities suffered by the division at Fort Campbell.

Operation Eagle Wing. April 24, 1958.

I was there.

I was there, just one of many, on the DZ Drop Zone, knocking down chutes, billowed with the gushing wind storm, dragging troopers, who were fighting to free themselves from the hell ride across the hard ground.

Many men were saved from harm by our actions. But still, 5 troopers were killed that day. A sixth man died in the hospital the next day. Another 150 or so were severely injured. Some so bad they had to be medically discharged.

This tragedy occurred only three years after the 101^st was moved to Campbell; but there were already two other incidents before, before Eagle Wing involving the Screaming Eagles in their new home. Injuries but no fatalities.

The first was during a multi plane drop, a plane hit an air pocket, dipped, and cut the chutes of some of the troopers that just jumped from the plane ahead. Some injuries, but thanks to the training of Parachute Landing Falls in jump school, no deaths. The second, the pilot missed the DZ and some troopers were deposited over a barracks area. Quite a few of the injuries sustained were the results of falling off the roofs they landed on. Some lucky ones fell off the roof of the hospital and didn’t have far to go to be taken care of.

In the years since Eagle Wing, the 101 Division has had an unseemly amount of disasters involving air craft. In 1996, a helicopter crashed between the barracks and 6 were killed. Between 1988 and 2015, there were 36 Fort Campbell soldiers killed in helicopter incidents.

On 11/12/85, a plane carrying troopers back to Campbell from training exercises in Egypt, crashed in Newfoundland, crashed killing all 258 aboard. The worst air crash in Canadian history.

Injuries and deaths in military training, wartime or peacetime, is an elephant in the room when one raises their hand to take the oath. It is just as much a part military life as are ill-fitting uniforms. But it seems that the 101st has gotten more than it’s share as regards air maneuvers.

The 82^nd Airborne suffered a Screaming Eagle type fate in 1981, in a prelim to Gallant Eagle Operation, in the Mohave Desert. Once again, the canopy hawk assumed the disguise of the a killing wind, gusts up to 40 mph, causing the death of 4 troopers, and 156 serious injuries. It was the largest mass-training accident in the history of the 82nd; but one could argue that it occurred in a joint exercise with the Screaming Eagles, their hex rubbed off on the All American Division.

During my years at Fort Bragg the most publicized injury was that of Padre Jello, the Division’s Catholic chaplain, on his 54^th jump. He landed on the side of a highway ditch. One leg higher than the other. The lower leg snapped on impact. Shows the man upstairs shows no preference as regards troopers.

The lone training death was gruesome. Some members of my outfit, Signal Battalion, and two infantry line companys, were slated to jump on the beach in Panama and work into the jungle. About 15 minutes from hooking-up, the jump-master went to the plane’s open door and looked at the ocean. The plane hit a pocket, tipped slightly and the jump-master fell out. His main chute was not hooked up.

He did as he was trained to do. He popped his reserve chute and floated down. When he got to less than 100 feet from landing, he popped his release and fell free from his chute. Had he fell into the water still attached to his chute, he could have been drowned by the chute filling with water. The pilot radioed for a rescue helicopter.

The copter reached the scene of the fall in minutes. There was no one to be rescued…just a group of sharks swimming in a pool of red in the ocean below.

The trooper had done just as he had been trained to do. And the sharks did as they were born to do.

Operation Eagle Wing

Brigadier General William Westmoreland had recently taken over command of the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell. Prior, Westmoreland had risen from a major to a general in the 82nd Airborne Division. His first initiative at Campbell was to have war games at Campbell commencing with a mass division jump followed by the division splitting in two and let the game began.

Most of my outfit, 82nd Signal Battalion were flown across the mountain to Fort Campbell. We were loaded into a C 130, at 0600, along with our signal equipment, two jeeps, and two deuce-and-half trucks. No parachutes for us or the equipment.

The journey started with a bang as soon as the plane hit high altitude. While we had been waiting for take off, several of the troopers decided to get comfortable and inflated their air mattresses, stretched out and fell asleep. They awoke in a hurry when the change in air pressure caused their mattresses to explode. The rest of us jumped a foot when the explosions happened. Several of the sleepers were sent airborne, actually flung higher than the trucks. What an omen for the days ahead.

Our first full day at Campbell was a day long instruction lesson by the umpires as to what our duties would be during the war games. We would not jump with the division, but would get to the DZ earlier so our communications would be ready prior to the mass jump.

Our Commanding Officer, (aka – CO, aka – the Old Man), told us to get a good nights sleep. Some would drive the equipment to the DZ, the rest of us would jump in. When we woke, we could hear the wind howling outside. The Old Man announced our jump was off. But we would still travel, by trucks, to the DZ and set up our equipment. He was certain that if the wind kept up, the division jump would be aborted; but it would be great training for us to set up in such adverse conditions.

And talk about a struggle. It took forever to get something set up and in a second the wind blew it down. The brass and politicians were already going in the bleachers to watch the drop, by the time we were ready to roll. Since the biggies were there, we knew the planes would fly over shortly. Fly over, see the red flare signaling ‘no go’, and go back to the air field.

We heard the roar of the planes over the roar of the wind. We settled back and waited for the red flare that would signal no-go.The planes flew closer to the DZ. Then a flare shot up…a ‘green-to-go’ signal.

Almost to a man, Signal Battalion shouted, ‘What the…’

We ran out on the DZ as soon as troopers hit the ground. Disaster! Chaos! What a mess! How could they allowed the jump in this wind???

William Westmoreland was one of the youngest to receive that fourth star. He was also very ambitious and hungry for that big number five star. While this well publicized full division jump would not get it for him, but it would raise his esteem toward his goal. Several years later, he would hit the wall for his failure as Commander in Chief of in the-never-should-have-been-involved conflict, the civil war in Viet Nam.

He might have skated on his lack of safety for his men at Fort Campbell; but we that were there would never forgive him for what happened, thanks to his ego and ambition. But that day, he was also a hero. He was one of the first to jump. One of the first to land. And one of the first to knock down chutes. And he did not stop until the job was finished. He busted ass out there. I know. Many times, when I was knocking down wind blown silk, I seen him doing the same, close by.

When everything was under control everybody got the night off. No war games for at least five days. Some of us in Signal Battalion grabbed a cold cut sandwich in our mess hall and ate it on the bus heading into Clarksville. The town was filled with GI’s. It was oh so very silent. We found a bar with some empty tables and went in. The bar was also silent. There was some whispered conversation, but no loud talk.

A very pregnant waitress was loading an order of beers on her serving trey. Four men in 101st fatigues, entered. They walked right to the waitress. She gave them a big smile.

‘What a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘I was sleeping all day and didn’t hear about it until I got to work.’ She wasn’t talking loud but we could hear her. ‘So happy to see you are safe’.

Then she stopped. The smile disappeared. ‘Where’s Jay? Where the hell is Jay? Where’s my husband?’

One of the soldiers said something softly. She dropped the trey and the metal and glass hitting the floor sounded like a bomb had exploded.

Someone behind us hollered, ‘F#@# and he threw a glass on the floor. Others followed suit. The waitress was crying in the arms of the soldier who broke the news to her.

My friends and I set half emptied beer glasses down. We left the bar and the town and the mourning people to their sorrow.

At breakfast the next morning, the Old Man said we were free for the next 5 days. He gave us passes to go anywhere, just so we were back by 0600 the coming Monday. Be ready to continue Eagle Wing.

Bobby Ford and myself thumbed our way down to Nashville. We got back to Campbell with a few hours to spare. The Old Man addressed us at breakfast.

The bad news was we had only three hours to pack and get everything to the plane. The good news was we were going back home to Ft Bragg. Eagle Wing was no longer a war game. Just a field exercise. The umpires were no longer needed, and no longer need our Signal Battalion.

‘The next meal you’ll be eating will be supper, men. And that will be the last meal until after we complete our jump, mid-morning tomorrow.’ He paused expecting to some reaction from us. The only noise was the sounds of hungry men eating.

You get bucked off a horse, you got to get back right back on. We had been thrown by the Canopy Hawk, we had to overcome our fear as soon as possible.

The butterflies in my stomach settled down as soon as I cleared the plane, and looked up to behold that silk canopy in full bloom. It was one jump I will always remember. I had saw the worse and now this jump was one of the best. Floating along on a sunlit morning, with just a wisp of a breeze that didn’t bring fear, but the aroma of the new spring greenery. Silent. Peaceful. A chapel in the sky.

,

This is my favorite blog post about jumping in wartime

D-DAY BRONZE STAR

And here’s my favorite about jumping in peacetime

A JUMP STORY

And that’s a wrap

Happy Landings

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APRIL & OTHER FOOLS

I’m not into April Fool pranks, be they vocal or physical. I’m not into any practical jokes. Any more. When somebody says ‘can’t you take a joke’, my reply is now, ‘was that suppose to be funny?’. If that makes me sound like an old curmudgeon, so be it.

Back in the day, when we only had two sons and were living in our first house with neighbors all around, we had been warned by a cop that their was a peeping-tom prowling about. Since our bedrooms were on the second floor, we weren’t on alert.

The pervert surely didn’t carry round a ladder on his adventures.

It was beautiful summer evening. Quiet. Peaceful. The boys were fast asleep. My wife, Gina, and I were in the kitchen enjoying our AC. For several days the weather had been hot and humid and our AC, namely the cool night breeze coming through the open windows, was so welcome. It also helped the boys to finally get a good night’s sleep.

There was an Alfred Hitchcock movie on our new black and white, big screen TV, a whopping 14 inch RCA, that came with the latest in rabbit-eared antennas. The antenna didn’t require hardly any tinfoil on the tips and it needed to be turned only when you changed channels. Also, a Ford car driving by didn’t interfere with the sound of the TV like always happened with the old antennas.

The movie was a thriller. No commercials for the first half hour and then commercials every fifteen minutes. Plenty of time to go to the restroom or get another cup of coffee. During one of the breaks, Gina said it was too scary for her, and she was tired. She said she was going upstairs to bed.

I had just gotten a cup of coffee and sat back down when I heard a noise outside the window. Then silence. Then another noise. It sounded like a person’s voice. I pretended not to have heard it and picked up my cup of hot coffee. All the while watching the window screen out of the corner of my eye.

Then I saw movement. I saw a blurry face through the screen. It moaned something that sounded like my name.

I threw my cup against the screen. The cup stayed in, but the hot coffee got through. I heard a scream, And as I ran to the outside door, I grabbed a kitchen knife on the way. I jumped from the stoop and cleared the fence. I could see the figure bent over, crying in pain. When I reached it, I had the knife ready, just in case, although my first impulse was to kick the peep-tom.

When I was within striking distance for the kick, I recognized the crying, bent-over figure.

It was Gina! She had only pretended to go upstairs, and instead sneaked out the front door and went around the back. Her idea of a practical joke. I comforted her and helped her inside to wash the hot coffee from her face. Thank goodness, there was no need for further medication or taking her to the hospital. And thank goodness, I would not have to convince a cop that it was an accident… not a case of spousal abuse.

When we both calmed down, I asked her, ‘Was that suppose to be funny? It it was I ain’t laughing.’

By then, the movie had ended and the TV station, having played the National Anthem, was in test pattern mode. We decided to call it a night. I shut and locked the kitchen window, switched off the TV, and locked both doors, double checking to make sure they were locked. Ah, the refreshing breeze continued to enter both bedrooms. No way was I going to shut those windows and lose our AC.

When both of us were in bed, Gina reminded me what happened a week or so before. I had waited until she asleep and I had carefully got out of beg. I went to her side and I hollered. I scared the bejusus out of her. I thought it was funny. She pulled her stunt to get even with me.

Needless to say, the playing of practical jokes between us, ended that night.

Practical jokes are like old cars, sometimes they backfire.

Here’s wishing you a safe and sane

April 1st

And that’s a wrap.

AN AROMA OF COOKIES – Season reblog

A TALE OF THE SEASON 

She told me of this incident that occurred prior to her first Christmas as a single parent.

To date, the two children, her son who had just turned seven, her daughter not quite four, hadn’t noticed how she had been pinching pennies, cutting corners, living from paycheck to paycheck; but with Christmas coming…

The tree would have to be smaller. A lot smaller. Presents would have be fewer. More emphasis on clothes. Less on toys. The usual Christmas feast would be more like an everyday dinner. Dessert, usually a Lazy Susan array of puddings and pies, candies and cookies, would be only her traditional oatmeal cookies. A lot of oatmeal cookies. And to sweeten them, the two children would help her with the baking.

The additional heat from the oven made the kitchen extra toasty. The sounds of Christmas from the radio made the event more festive. And the aroma of oatmeal cookies filling the house gave a promise of a happy Christmas, in spite of…

The sight of her two elves, clad in their pajamas, working happily away, gave her joy and pushed her fears aside. She’d work again on finding a better paying job after the holidays. But for the moment…

The boy’s hand was perfect to form the right size mounds of dough; and after he placed each clump on the cookie sheet, he twisted a little curl on top.

It wasn’t that easy for the little girl. She had to take two handfuls and crush them together. Then tried to plump it into the correct shape. She didn’t bother with a curl, but liked to pinch off a little nibble as a reward.

It was almost time to take some of the cookies out of the oven when there was a knock at the front door. The young man of the house went to see about it. When he came back, he told his mother that it was two men from church. They had two bags of Christmas food, Care Packages they called them, for the poor people.

He said he told them that they must have the wrong address ‘cuz we’re not poor’.

She told me how she panicked. Weren’t poor!!!  She hoped she would have time to catch them and get the offered food. But first, she couldn’t let those cookies burn. She quickly pulled out the sheets and put them on top of the stove; but in her haste, she burned her thumb on the last one.

She gave a little yelp and sat down, blowing on her thumb. Her little doctor quickly pressed her thumb in the butter stick, and her little nurse offered some TLC by volunteering to kiss her owie.

It was too late to chase down the two men. And she was glad that it was. Had she ran after the them and taken the food parcels, she would have embarrassed her son. And she would have acknowledged to the two children that there was money problems.

Besides, looking at her two most favorite people in the world, made her realize the boy was right when he said they weren’t poor. They were very rich in what counts, family.

The little lady finished off the after-work cookie and milk and hurried to bed. She said she wanted to go to sleep real quick. The house smells so good, she explained, she knew she was going to have lots of sweet dreams.

The man of the family hung back. Finally, with a knowing smile, he asked if he could change what he had asked Santa to bring for his mother.

She said it depends. If he told her what the change is, she would write Santa a letter the next day at work and mail it and wait and see if he got the request in time.

He smiled and said he wanted Santa to bring his mother an Oven Mitt so she wouldn’t burn her thumb anymore. He gave her a kiss and went off to bed.

And now, years later, she’s carrying on a tradition she began just before her second Christmas as a single parent. Her elves, this year, are three of the grandkids. It’s a sleep over at Grandma’s, but the special sleep over. It’s the cooking- baking sleep over.

Like always at the cookie-baking party, the oven makes the kitchen extra toasty. The Christmas sounds from the radio has been replaced by Christmas sounds from the MP3 player; but nothing has, nor nothing can, replace the aroma of the oatmeal cookies, that fills the house.

The three children have their own way of making the shapes, like the twist of a curl on top has been lost over the years. But not so, the little pinch for a nibble of the dough.

There’s much more baking to be done each year, and the cookies have to be packaged, thirteen to each plastic bag that has a zip lock to hold in the aroma. The next day, the four of them will bring the cookies to the parish school gym to be placed in the Christmas food bags, Care Packages, for the parish less- fortunates.

When the baking is finished for the evening, she gives the children a small glass of milk and a fresh cookie. Then with a kiss, she sends them off to bed, with the admonition to have sweet dreams. She knows she will have sweet dreams, and sometime in the night, she will imagine hearing a long ago voice reminding her that ‘we’re not poor’.

Over the years she often been asked her secret why her oatmeal cookies taste so good. ‘Real vanilla,’ she replies, ‘Real, not imitation! And,’ she adds, ‘A dash of faith. A dob of hope. And a dollop of love.’

Here’s wishing all of you that the holidays of your choice be filled with the love of your  family and the aroma of cookies.

MEN OF THE USS WARD

A Reblog to remember December 7th, 1941

Even the open sea had adopted the Sunday morning calm of the towns that outlined the clover-leaf shaped harbor. The glow from the lights of Saturday night had dimmed several hours before. Now the only lights were those needed by the people who were going to church and those who were working the Sunday shifts.

On board the USS Ward an easiness had replaced the uncertainty of the night, the first night of the Ward’s task, patrolling the mouth of the harbor…the first night under the new captain..the first night the young crew felt they were part of the actual Navy.

When he felt comfortable with how it went that day, Lt. William Outerbridge had decided it was time for him to go to bed. He was tired. The hectic last couple of days had had drained him. Arriving on board of the Ward on the 5^th, taking command, and setting out to sea duty on the 6^th.

Outerbridge had his first command of a ship…albeit it he only had been in the Navy a scant fourteen years. He went to bed that first night, content and confident that he was capable of his new appointment. His ship handled well in this it’s first day of patrol duty…albeit it was old. His crew proved they were competent and more than willing…albeit, they were young in both years and experience.

The destroyer USS Ward had been built in just 17 days in the early days of WWI. She saw action in both the Pacific and Atlantic. At the end of the war, she was put in dry-dock until she was recommissioned and refurbished in January of 41, and then sent to the Pacific to be commanded by Outerbridge and crewed by the 47^th Division of the Naval Reserve, called to active duty in January of 41.

Almost all of the crew were from St. Paul, Minnesota, the home of the 47^th Reserves. St. Paul, an unlikely home for a naval reserve is the furthest city from any ocean in the U.S.. The men’s training had been mostly in the classroom, a little on the Mississippi River, and two weeks each summer on the Great Lakes. It wasn’t until they were activated that they experienced the taste of salt water.

They were raw and eager to learn. They were also young. Children of the Depression. Aged and steeled in the hollow life of the economic catastrophe. Russell Reetz, for instance, 24, tried to find decent work while in high school and after graduation; but each job he managed to find, crumbled shortly after. Some like Richard Thill were still in high school when they were activated.

They joined the reserves because it gave them a little money and a social club. A short meeting once a week followed by a few beers and penny-ante poker. Even the yearly two- week summer camp was an enjoyable respite from their daily lives. As the world war grew and the drums calling for the U.S. entry grew louder the reservists took their training with a much more serious attitude; but still the thought of protecting the Great Lakes seemed a better option than being sent overseas. Hence the call-up and the realization they were in the Navy proper, woke them out of their dream of easy sailing.

Still in all, it was a regular paycheck and a huge break from the breadlines of the Depression. Their life so far had been one of hard times and served them well in their new lives. They attacked the work with the zeal of one unwrapping a much wanted present. Having a job makes a person walk tall.

Sunday morning- 12/7/1941: At 0342 A.M. the USS Condor, in the open sea outside Pearl, experienced a wake that was deemed by the ship’s deck officer to be caused by a small periscope, possibly that of a mini-sub that Japan was known to use. The Ward, which was the closest to the harbor mouth, was notified.

Lt. Outerbridge called General Quarters and pinging began hoping to find the sub, but to no avail.

At 0458 A.M. the harbor’s torpedo safety net was opened to allow a number of small ships entrance, among them the SS Antares, which was towing a target into port. At 0630 at PBY plane spotted the submarine following the Antares and notified the Ward.

At 0635 AM., a lookout on the Ward spotted the periscope. Lt. Outerbridge, covered in a kimono robe, gave orders to attack. Since the vessel had not requested entrance to the harbor, Outerbridge’s order was justified by International Law. When the Ward got within range, the ship’s #1gun fired a shot…the First Shot of the USA in WWII. It missed high.

At once the men on #3 gun fired a second shot, lower and aft of the periscope. There was an eruption of water, black smoke, and the periscope laid over as it sank into the depths.

Outerbridge ordered the Ward to go to the spot and four depth charges were dropped to make certain.

Not only had these citizen sailors fired the First Shot, they also scored the First Victory in the War

These acts of war was radioed at once to both the Naval HQ of Pearl, under the command of Admiral Husband Kimmel, and the Military HQ of Pearl, under the command of Lt. General Walter Scott.

SNAFU! Busy lines, missed connections, the ongoing ‘feud’ between Kimmel and Scott, and the fact Kimmel wanted better confirmation such an incident did occur, all combined to nothing being done until it was too late.

At 0755 A.M., an hour and twenty minutes after the Ward entered the US into WWII, Kimmel’s confirmation was answered in spades. The gates of Hell opened in the form of 383 Japanese bombers and fighters in two waves of destruction.

Kimmel had believed that such an attack would be on Wake Island not Pearl and had taken no extra precautions to protect Pearl. The stubbornness of General Short in demanding that all the ships in the harbor be packed together in one section, made it much easier to attack them.

Within two hours, 18 ships were sunk or damaged…2402 US sailors, soldiers, and marines were killed…another 1247 hospitalized. As well as a large number of civilians killled or wounded.

The Day that Lives in Infamy. The next day the U.S. made it’s long awaited entrance into WWII a formality.

Three days after the attack, U.S. ships were allowed to enter the harbor. The Ward was the first…the first to see the carnage, the horror, experience the smell of death. And it all stuck with the men of the Ward for the rest of their lives.

Lt. Outerbridge was presented with the Navy Cross for his actions taken prior to and during the attack. The men of the Ward were given a pat on the back for their actions. While they were given credit for firing the First Shot, there was a reluctance from the War Department Brass to accept the ‘story’ they sunk the Japanese min-sub. After all these men were young reservists who ‘probably had a vivid and wishful imagination… something to tell the girls back home’.

Ten days after the attack, both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were relieved of command, demoted, and fast-tracked on their way out altogether. Both barely avoiding court martial.

The Ward was re-outfitted into a ‘fast’ destroyer with better armament and sent for duty in the Pacific where it engaged in fighting and transporting. In mid 1943 the men of the Ward were replaced as was Lt. Outerbridge. Most of the civilian sailors were sent states side to a much safer way of life. Outerbridge was assigned to a desk in D.C. until he was given command of the destroyer O’Brien just prior to D-Day. His first assignment, station the ship off the coast of Normandy and shell the German defenses. His next, do the same at Cherbourgh.

From ETO,the O’Brien was sent to the Pacific. Both the O’Brien and the Ward were engaged in the battle of Leyte Gulf. December 7, 1944, exactly 3 years to the day of the Ward’s great achievement at Pearl Harbor, she came under attack by Japanese kamikazes. One struck the Ward mid-ship. The ‘new’ men of the Ward abandoned ship and were all picked up by Outerbridge’s O’Brien.

After rescuing the crew of the Ward, Outerbridge was ordered to open fire on the Ward and sink her. In 1957 William Outerbridge retired as a much decorated Rear Admiral. In 2017, the remains of the Ward were found.

(A Little Aside)…In January of 43, while given shore leave from the Ward, Russell Reetz stood in my grandfolks’ living room and married my Aunt Loretta. I was a shy five year old who was fascinated by this tall stranger dressed in a navy outfit. Little did I realize at the time just how good of friends we would become.

Those civilian sailors, those men of the Ward, were discharged in the fall of 1945. All with a chest full of medals. For the most part they went home to St. Paul where they took advantage of the GI Bill, got training for good jobs, got GI loans for houses, and settled into everyday postwar living. One thing though held them together, the USS Ward on 12/7/41. They formed a brotherhood and called it the First Shot Naval Vets.

Damn if their feat of sinking that submarine was not officially recognized, they knew the truth and told the story to whoever wanted to hear it, schools, organizations, the media. In 1958, the group managed to get the #1 gun from the Ward and have it set on the State Capitol Grounds as a monument to commemorate the reservists from St. Paul firing the First Shot in WWII.

In 2000 a feeble attempt to find the mini-sub was undertaken for a National Geographic documentary emceed by Tom Brokaw. My uncle, Russell Reetz and Will Lehner, a shipmate on the Ward, were included in the search, along with Japanese veterans of the min-sub’s mother-ship. During the search Russ was heard loud and clear shouting that they were looking in the wrong location. They were a good 5 miles off. Nobody listened and the search was finally called off.

Uncle Russ figured they had no intention of actually finding the sub seeing as how the two Japanese vets would be greatly embarrassed.

In 2002, a probe by the University of Hawaii proved without a doubt the Ward had indeed sunk that min-sub as they said. They found the sub and there with the hole in it’s side just as the men of the Ward said, in the location where the men wanted the search to occur. It took 61 years but the men of the Ward got the credit they deserved.

Russell Reetz had his daughter, Cindy, write a letter to the admiral that was vocally opposed to the thought that a shell from the Ward could have penetrated the sub enough to sink it. The admiral sent back a letter with a left-handed apology, stating he was glad to see ‘miracles can happen’.

Uncle Russ died in November of 2004. He contracted pneumonia while sitting in the light rain in Washington D.C. at the dedication of the WWII Monument. He is buried along with a number of his fellow Ward shipmates in Fort Snelling Veterans’ Cemetery.

With the death a few months ago of Dick Thill, the baby of the group, all those civilian sailors, those young reservists, these Men of the USS Ward have left us…having earned a special place in our history.

We thank them and salute them, on this anniversary of Pearl Harbor… along with all the men of Pearl Harbor Attack, and the entire “Greatest Generation’.

AND THAT IS A WRAP FOR TODAY

STAY SAFE

NO HOLIDAY FOR BLIZZARDS

November 11^th 2021 – The 81st Anniversary of the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940.

October 31^st 2021 – The 30^th Anniversary of the Halloween Blizzard of 1991.

The Armistice Day Blizzard lives in infamy because of the lose of lives attributed to it. There was 49 deaths in Minnesota

13 in Wisconsin

4 in Michigan

Conditions over the 3 days also were responsible for

A freight train colliding with a passenger train killing 2.

The sinking of 3 freighters and two smaller boats on Lake Michigan killing 66.

The Halloween Blizzard dumped a record amount of snow in Minnesota

27 inches in the Twin Cities, 37 inches in Duluth

Twenty two deaths in out-state Minnesota.

None in the Twin Cities area. Thank goodness! Although our 4^th son, Darren had a harrowing experience of almost an hour, trapped and having to dig himself out of his snow-buried car, in late afternoon in, of all places, downtown Minneapolis.

Eleven counties in Minnesota and fifty two in Iowa were declared Disaster Areas.

For days the low pressure conditions racked havoc all over the United States. Snow followed by ice, followed by record low temperatures for Autumn. Schools closed, highways closed. Power lines down for over a week. Nobody, including the Weather Bureau was prepared and countless lives were lost in the nation.

And the storm hit the Atlantic Coast with such a fury that it not only caused destruction on the Eastern Seaboard, it moved to the ocean and developed into a hurricane.

It is known as The Perfect Storm.

The death of six fishermen who lost their lives at sea during it, is depicted in the movie The Perfect Storm.

In addition to having started on a holiday, both blizzards were preceded by very unseasonable warm days. The beauty of rare Autumns. When the wind changed and the snow began people were sucker punched, not ready for cold weather, let alone snow and sleet, and ice.

Armistice Day in 1940 was during duck hunting season in Minnesota. Duck hunting in summer clothes. Temps of 65 F. The Mississippi River Bottoms was strung out with hunters from the Twin Cities. They left their cars at the end of the Gun Club road and walked along the river bank to a place where they could be some distance from other hunters. The hunting was good and when the wind changed, it was excellent.

‘There were thousands of duck flying over,’ one of the hunters related. ‘We were so excited we didn’t pay attention to the dropping temperature and the rain that turned to snow.’ By the time they did realize the danger, the snow covered the ground and stopped them from getting back to their vehicles…covered the fuel sources that could provide fires to warm them or cook the ducks that were buried in the drifts. Soon they were left with digging out shelters in the snow. Solo hunters had nobody to cuddle to for shared body heat and walking to others was an impossibility. One of the survivors credited his life to nestling with his two Lab Retrievers. Most of the 49 deaths in Minnesota were duck hunters.

There would have been more deaths if it were not for Max Conrad, a pioneer aviator and Bob Bean, a flight instructor, who flew dangerous missions up and down the river, looking for survivors and dropping life- saving food and supplies.

A great many Minnesotans had much to be thankful for that Thanksgiving, but a turkey dinner was not one of the blessings. The blizzard killed a million and a half turkeys in the state.

The tag line for the Armistice Day Blizzard was ‘if you were living at that time, you would never forget it’. I was only two at the time so that’s my excuse for knowing about it only from the words and writings of older folks.

Not so with the Halloween Blizzard of 91.

That one is etched in my mind.

What a week leading up to it! The Minnesota Twins beat the St. Louis Cards in what was the closest and most exciting World Series on record. Two days later the victory parade followed, and thousands watched in the warm weather. And two more days later the Blizzard hit.

The Minneapolis stagehands were in the process of reopening the State Theater of Minneapolis with the Minnesota Opera production of Carousel. The State was built in 1921 as a vaudeville house, later became a movie theater and then a church for the Jesus People. In 1989 the City of Minneapolis bought the, the Orpheum, the State, and the Pantages theaters and refurbished them into venues for live entertainment. We opened them up in a course of several years in that order.

We had already put in several 12 to 14 hour days mounting the production and we intended to put in another that Thursday. There was a lot of grousing by the hands for having to work indoors when it was so nice outside. After all the nice weather wouldn’t last much longer. But we had no idea of how quick that the weather would change.

There was word of heavy snow south in Iowa, but the Weather Bureau, stationed in Chicago, assured us our nice weather would continue. By mid afternoon the blizzard had made it into the Twin Cities. We called it day and left while we still could drive on the road.

Out son, Darren, had moved his car at lunch and parked it at a meter near the theater. When he got to it the snow from the storm and the sidewalk snowblowers had covered the passenger side right to the roof. He had to walk down the sidewalk and then up the street to get to the driver’s side. He managed to unlock and pull open the door when he saw the warning lights of a snowplow in the next block barreling toward him, blasting the snow on the same side of the one-way street as his car.

He dove inside his car and closed the door just in time. His car was buried. He had to roll down the window little by little and push the snow away. It was slowed by snow sliding down from the roof of the car and new snow from the blizzard. And the temperature tumbled lower. Finally he got the window open all the way and crawled out. There was a janitor in front of the theater clearing the sidewalk with a snowblower. He took his machine and freed the car.

I had parked in an underground garage and even though the going was slow I made it home without incident. Our street was plowed because a neighbor was a volunteer fireman and the city kept the street clear in case he was needed. I got out my snowblower and go the car in the garage.

One by one our boys called, checking in and asking if we were okay. Darren was the last. My wife and I said a silent prayer of thanks.

All the hands were back at work the next morning and this time Darren parked in the underground garage. The snow continued, albeit at a lesser rate, for two more days. Then the weather changed. The warm autumn returned. The snow melted and the grass was greener than before the store. We opened Carousel on time. It got rave reviews.

Thanksgiving would have been a joyous holiday with a plentiful supply of turkeys; except we got another blizzard, albeit, it was just an ordinary blizzard. Not too memorable. Even if it did fall on a holiday.

A word to the wise from one who lived through both of those blizzards: If the autumn is unseasonably nice and a holiday is coming, keep your snow shovel handy and snowblower full of gas; because you never can tell.

November 11the 1940 Blizzard is a seldom remember event in our history books.

November 11^th of 1918

Armistice Day/ Remembrance Day/ Veterans Day/ The 11th Day of the 11th Month

Is a day that must live forever in our hearts.

And to all my fellow Vets

Vaya Con Dios

Stay Safe

Get those life saving shots

For your good and the good of your loved ones.

2020/2021

PHIL

This photo says more than anything I could ever write about the year 2020

Phil is one of the millions of Front Line heroes, around the world, risking their lives to fight for our safety, to help bring back the normalcy we had less than a year ago.

Phil is a medic in England, but he represents, in my belief,

Medics, First Responders, Essential Workers, Teachers, etc.

in every county.

Truly, a united world wide fight.

And these Phils have families

Loved ones.

Some who work also on the Front Line.

Some who stay back

and support their Front Line Heroes.

This photo of Phil was taken by his loving and supporting wife, Fraggle, a professional photographer, who captures amazing art in her photos. More of her art can be seen in her WP Blog: https://fragglerocking.org/

This is what she wrote to accompany her photo:

‘Our year has been coloured by Phil working on the front line coping with the Covid procedures in his Operating Theatres and having a horrendous time being dressed up in Hazmat gear that steams your glasses up, is uncomfortable, hot, hard to do your job in and generally is a nightmare. I’ve tried to support him, make home a sanctuary and listen to his woes and tribulations when he needs to get things off his chest. So this is the shot I did to sum up the year.’

Please don’t let the work of the Phils go in vain.

STAY SAFE

OBEY THE ADVICE OF MEDICAL SCIENTISTS

The sooner we all strive to do our part to overcome this plague

the sooner we will get back to normal lives.

And the sooner we will have a

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2021

And that is a wrap for a year we wish had not been one we will never forget.

MEN OF THE USS WARD

Even the open sea had adopted the Sunday morning calm of the towns that outlined the clover-leaf shaped harbor. The glow from the lights of Saturday night had dimmed several hours before. Now the only lights were those needed by the people who were going to church and those who were working the Sunday shifts.

On board the USS Ward an easiness had replaced the uncertainty of the night, the first night of the Ward’s task, patrolling the mouth of the harbor…the first night under the new captain..the first night the young crew felt they were part of the actual Navy.

When he felt comfortable with how it went that day, Lt. William Outerbridge had decided it was time for him to go to bed. He was tired. The hectic last couple of days had had drained him. Arriving on board of the Ward on the 5^th, taking command, and setting out to sea duty on the 6^th.

Outerbridge had his first command of a ship…albeit it he only had been in the Navy a scant fourteen years. He went to bed that first night, content and confident that he was capable of his new appointment. His ship handled well in this it’s first day of patrol duty…albeit it was old. His crew proved they were competent and more than willing…albeit, they were young in both years and experience.

The destroyer USS Ward had been built in just 17 days in the early days of WWI. She saw action in both the Pacific and Atlantic. At the end of the war, she was put in dry-dock until she was recommissioned and refurbished in January of 41, and then sent to the Pacific to be commanded by Outerbridge and crewed by the 47^th Division of the Naval Reserve, called to active duty in January of 41.

Almost all of the crew were from St. Paul, Minnesota, the home of the 47^th Reserves. St. Paul, an unlikely home for a naval reserve is the furthest city from any ocean in the U.S.. The men’s training had been mostly in the classroom, a little on the Mississippi River, and two weeks each summer on the Great Lakes. It wasn’t until they were activated that they experienced the taste of salt water.

They were raw and eager to learn. They were also young. Children of the Depression. Aged and steeled in the hollow life of the economic catastrophe. Russell Reetz, for instance, 24, tried to find decent work while in high school and after graduation; but each job he managed to find, crumbled shortly after. Some like Richard Thill were still in high school when they were activated.

They joined the reserves because it gave them a little money and a social club. A short meeting once a week followed by a few beers and penny-ante poker. Even the yearly two- week summer camp was an enjoyable respite from their daily lives. As the world war grew and the drums calling for the U.S. entry grew louder the reservists took their training with a much more serious attitude; but still the thought of protecting the Great Lakes seemed a better option than being sent overseas. Hence the call-up and the realization they were in the Navy proper, woke them out of their dream of easy sailing.

Still in all, it was a regular paycheck and a huge break from the breadlines of the Depression. Their life so far had been one of hard times and served them well in their new lives. They attacked the work with the zeal of one unwrapping a much wanted present. Having a job makes a person walk tall.

Sunday morning- 12/7/1941: At 0342 A.M. the USS Condor, in the open sea outside Pearl, experienced a wake that was deemed by the ship’s deck officer to be caused by a small periscope, possibly that of a mini-sub that Japan was known to use. The Ward, which was the closest to the harbor mouth, was notified.

Lt. Outerbridge called General Quarters and pinging began hoping to find the sub, but to no avail.

At 0458 A.M. the harbor’s torpedo safety net was opened to allow a number of small ships entrance, among them the SS Antares, which was towing a target into port. At 0630 at PBY plane spotted the submarine following the Antares and notified the Ward.

At 0635 AM., a lookout on the Ward spotted the periscope. Lt. Outerbridge, covered in a kimono robe, gave orders to attack. Since the vessel had not requested entrance to the harbor, Outerbridge’s order was justified by International Law. When the Ward got within range, the ship’s #1gun fired a shot…the First Shot of the USA in WWII. It missed high.

At once the men on #3 gun fired a second shot, lower and aft of the periscope. There was an eruption of water, black smoke, and the periscope laid over as it sank into the depths.

Outerbridge ordered the Ward to go to the spot and four depth charges were dropped to make certain.

Not only had these citizen sailors fired the First Shot, they also scored the First Victory in the War

These acts of war was radioed at once to both the Naval HQ of Pearl, under the command of Admiral Husband Kimmel, and the Military HQ of Pearl, under the command of Lt. General Walter Scott.

SNAFU! Busy lines, missed connections, the ongoing ‘feud’ between Kimmel and Scott, and the fact Kimmel wanted better confirmation such an incident did occur, all combined to nothing being done until it was too late.

At 0755 A.M., an hour and twenty minutes after the Ward entered the US into WWII, Kimmel’s confirmation was answered in spades. The gates of Hell opened in the form of 383 Japanese bombers and fighters in two waves of destruction.

Kimmel had believed that such an attack would be on Wake Island not Pearl and had taken no extra precautions to protect Pearl. The stubbornness of General Short in demanding that all the ships in the harbor be packed together in one section, made it much easier to attack them.

Within two hours, 18 ships were sunk or damaged…2402 US sailors, soldiers, and marines were killed…another 1247 hospitalized. As well as a large number of civilians killled or wounded.

The Day that Lives in Infamy. The next day the U.S. made it’s long awaited entrance into WWII a formality.

Three days after the attack, U.S. ships were allowed to enter the harbor. The Ward was the first…the first to see the carnage, the horror, experience the smell of death. And it all stuck with the men of the Ward for the rest of their lives.

Lt. Outerbridge was presented with the Navy Cross for his actions taken prior to and during the attack. The men of the Ward were given a pat on the back for their actions. While they were given credit for firing the First Shot, there was a reluctance from the War Department Brass to accept the ‘story’ they sunk the Japanese min-sub. After all these men were young reservists who ‘probably had a vivid and wishful imagination… something to tell the girls back home’.

Ten days after the attack, both Admiral Kimmel and General Short were relieved of command, demoted, and fast-tracked on their way out altogether. Both barely avoiding court martial.

The Ward was re-outfitted into a ‘fast’ destroyer with better armament and sent for duty in the Pacific where it engaged in fighting and transporting. In mid 1943 the men of the Ward were replaced as was Lt. Outerbridge. Most of the civilian sailors were sent states side to a much safer way of life. Outerbridge was assigned to a desk in D.C. until he was given command of the destroyer O’Brien just prior to D-Day. His first assignment, station the ship off the coast of Normandy and shell the German defenses. His next, do the same at Cherbourgh.

From ETO,the O’Brien was sent to the Pacific. Both the O’Brien and the Ward were engaged in the battle of Leyte Gulf. December 7, 1944, exactly 3 years to the day of the Ward’s great achievement at Pearl Harbor, she came under attack by Japanese kamikazes. One struck the Ward mid-ship. The ‘new’ men of the Ward abandoned ship and were all picked up by Outerbridge’s O’Brien.

After rescuing the crew of the Ward, Outerbridge was ordered to open fire on the Ward and sink her. In 1957 William Outerbridge retired as a much decorated Rear Admiral. In 2017, the remains of the Ward were found.

(A Little Aside)…In January of 43, while given shore leave from the Ward, Russell Reetz stood in my grandfolks’ living room and married my Aunt Loretta. I was a shy five year old who was fascinated by this tall stranger dressed in a navy outfit. Little did I realize at the time just how good of friends we would become.

Those civilian sailors, those men of the Ward, were discharged in the fall of 1945. All with a chest full of medals. For the most part they went home to St. Paul where they took advantage of the GI Bill, got training for good jobs, got GI loans for houses, and settled into everyday postwar living. One thing though held them together, the USS Ward on 12/7/41. They formed a brotherhood and called it the First Shot Naval Vets.

Damn if their feat of sinking that submarine was not officially recognized, they knew the truth and told the story to whoever wanted to hear it, schools, organizations, the media. In 1958, the group managed to get the #1 gun from the Ward and have it set on the State Capitol Grounds as a monument to commemorate the reservists from St. Paul firing the First Shot in WWII.

In 2000 a feeble attempt to find the mini-sub was undertaken for a National Geographic documentary emceed by Tom Brokaw. My uncle, Russell Reetz and Will Lehner, a shipmate on the Ward, were included in the search, along with Japanese veterans of the min-sub’s mother-ship. During the search Russ was heard loud and clear shouting that they were looking in the wrong location. They were a good 5 miles off. Nobody listened and the search was finally called off.

Uncle Russ figured they had no intention of actually finding the sub seeing as how the two Japanese vets would be greatly embarrassed.

In 2002, a probe by the University of Hawaii proved without a doubt the Ward had indeed sunk that min-sub as they said. They found the sub and there with the hole in it’s side just as the men of the Ward said, in the location where the men wanted the search to occur. It took 61 years but the men of the Ward got the credit they deserved.

Russell Reetz had his daughter, Cindy, write a letter to the admiral that was vocally opposed to the thought that a shell from the Ward could have penetrated the sub enough to sink it. The admiral sent back a letter with a left-handed apology, stating he was glad to see ‘miracles can happen’.

Uncle Russ died in November of 2004. He contracted pneumonia while sitting in the light rain in Washington D.C. at the dedication of the WWII Monument. He is buried along with a number of his fellow Ward shipmates in Fort Snelling Veterans’ Cemetery.

With the death a few months ago of Dick Thill, the baby of the group, all those civilian sailors, those young reservists, these Men of the USS Ward have left us…having earned a special place in our history.

We thank them and salute them, on this anniversary of Pearl Harbor… along with all the men of Pearl Harbor Attack, and the entire “Greatest Generation’.

AND THAT IS A WRAP FOR TODAY

STAY SAFE

11th Day of The 11th Month

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

            First part of the poem written one hundred years ago by Dr. John McCrea after he presided over the death of a friend killed at the Second Battle of Ypes, site of the first use of gas in the war history calls The First World War.

The seeds of this conflict, one of the deadliest ever, went back centuries; but gained speed in a series of events and alliances begun in 1882, with the trigger, killing of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria occurring in June of 1914. When it finally ended it had caused the deaths of nine million combatants and seven million civilians and restructured boundaries in both Europe and the Middle East and dragged warfare into modern times.

It started for the most with  centuries-old methods of war, such as using the horse for both transportation and warfare; but quickly changed into a war of man-made machines powered by the combustible engine on the land, the sea, and a new battleground, the air. And this new method of warfare introduced yet another reason for nations waging war, Oil.

One thing that didn’t change was the reliance on the foot soldier, the doughboy, the mud slogging, trench fighter. And this war was indeed a war of trenches, miles of trenches. For the most part, these men in all wars are unsung; but sometimes one becomes a hero, a household name like the man from the hills of Tennesse, Alvin York of the 82 Division. Largely because of York’s heroics, his division, the 82nd was chosen to be the first airborne division in the US Army.

This war also brought to light the need to bring medicine and medical techniques into modern times. More deaths occurred because of tetanus and infection than from actual battle wounds. The studies of Pasteur and Lister became the Bible for the new medical structure and monies that would never have been allotted for the civilian populations were made available for new medicines to combat the main causes of death in this war.

The war spawned a variety of poems, songs, paintings etc.. It is the source of two of the strongest anti-war works of art, Remarque’s novel ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and Lewis Milestone’s faithful movie of the novel.

The Christmas Truces especially in 1914 have been used in movies and stage plays. The one I am most familiar with is ALL IS CALM:THE CHRISTMAS TRUCE OF 1914. We put it  on stage at the Minneapolis Pantages in 2008, and it has been done during every Christmas season since. On Christmas Eve 1914 the sounds of Christmas hymns are heard coming from both the German trenches and the British trenches. Soon the soldiers come out of the trenches and the combatants meet in No-Man’s Land where they exchange Christmas greetings, food and beverages, and join with each other in singing the songs of Christmas. These truces were wide spread that Christmas even on the Eastern Front between a group of German and Russian soldiers.

At first the war had a variety of names depending on what countries were fighting each other. As more countries entered into the battle these names were melded into The World War/ The Great War. After the Armistice The World War/The Great War was given a subtitle: The War To End All Wars.

The Armistice was signed at 5 AM, November 11, 1918. The cease fire took place six hours later, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. The time had a good ring to it and was easy to remember. There was also a political/military motive behind the delay in the cease fire. The delay gave the Allies a chance to gain better ground in case the Cease Fire didn’t last. That last day of fighting resulted in over 2,500 additional deaths. For all practical purposes it was the end of the war, but peace wasn’t officially ratified until 1/10/1920.

The victors had no mercy for the losers and dictated harsh edicts that changed the world. Boundaries were changed. New countries were created with no respect for the differences in the peoples in these countries. Overlooked was the ethnic differences, the differences in language and especially religions. It was a hastily drawn up with the main purpose to cripple the countries that could pose problems to the Allies as respect to economic progress and to colonial expansion. These ‘written in the sand’ changes still, almost a century later, remain one of the biggest sources of wars, horrific and genocidal, both external and civil, in the world.

November 11th was called Armistice Day, a legal holiday, in most countries that were on the ‘winning’ side. Later the name was changed to Remembrance Day in many of those countries. In 1954 it became known as Veterans Day in the U.S.A.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

It wasn’t long before the subtitle, The War To End All Wars became as ludicrous as the phrase uttered in almost all conflicts, ‘They’ll be home by Christmas’.

And events that started just twenty years later caused a name change. The Great War was dropped, and The World War had to be renamed The First World War because another war with the usual suspects, some like Japan and Italy changing sides, combined to fight The Second World War, which was not The War To End All Wars either in spite of the fact the war ended with destroying two large cities with the first use of atomic bombs. Such destruction, we were told, would end war forever. No country would ever start a war with the threat of the mushroom cloud hanging over their head. Another premise that proved false.

Early one morning Frank Glick was driving to work and saw this Bald Eagle sitting on a gravestone in the Fort Snelling National Veterans’ Cemetery. Luckily he managed to take this picture.

The cemetery sits on a high bluff overlooking beautiful valley where the Minnesota River flows into the Mississippi River. At funerals in the cemetery, sometimes there is an Honor Guard firing off a salute, sometimes planes fly in formation; but almost always there is a Bald Eagle flying  above the ceremony. The sight never fails to bring lumps in the throats of teary eyes mourners.

The cemetery and the nearby Veterans’ Hospital are both running out of room. And this sad situation is occurring in all our Veterans cemetery and hospitals across our land.

Our lawmakers always seems to find the monies for overrides on government contracts to develop a new weapons system, and monies to pay for the exorbitant salaries and profits for the private contractors, like Chaney’s Haliburton, that have slithered into our defense budgets ever since Viet Nam.

And yet when it comes to helping our veterans, these patriotic lawmakers vote down request after request stating no money is available. Our veterans hospital are for the most part outdated and understaffed. These patriots lawmakers, many of whom took deferments to avoid service, fought the idea that Agent Orange used by us in Nam was responsible for  veterans’  medicals problems like cancer, and they continue to avoid the epidemic of mental problems of our veterans who fought in our questionable conflicts ever since WWII. And the list goes on and on.

The best way to thank our vets for ‘THEIR SERVICE’ is to demand that we honor our commitments to them for sacrificing so much so much ‘to protect our freedoms’ and our ‘need’ to be the policemen for the world.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow  

In our present day treatment of our veterans, we have broken faith, not only with those that died but also with those that lived.

To all my fellow vets, Vaya Con Dios.

This is a reblog from 2016

Spoke PAUL NEWMAN

Celebrity endorsements or protests of political figures or views exploded during the Viet Nam Conflict. Nothing like what is going on the 2020 presidential race, but something totally unseen in the US before then.

Before WWII there was the Isolationist Movement with Charles Lindbergh as the figurehead; but after Pearl Harbor, the movement disappeared. Even Lindbergh volunteered to fight for the Allies. Turned down by the Army Air Corps, he was hired as a civilian advisor. Countless celebrities expressed their views by action, entering the War via draft or volunteering. Their actions better than words.

The Korean Conflict, America’s Forgotten War, received little media attention, let alone public concern. The American Legion and the VFW took a lot of soul searching and time before they accepted the fact that the participants were actual foreign war veterans and could become members. The US and the other countries involved did so under the auspices of the UN because of the Domino Theory, fear that if the Communists weren’t stopped in Korea, they would hit Japan next. The biggest Celeb attention came from the TV show M.A.S.H. filmed years later.

And then came Viet Nam. A civil war of words and protests broke out. Household names, personified by John Wayne on the right and Jane Fonda on the left, voiced their opinions on the involvement like never before. One side used the Domino Effect and patriotism, ‘My Country Right Or Wrong’, as the base of their arguments. The other pointed out that it was a Civil War fought to end French Imperialism and has nothing to do with the US. In short, we were involved in an unjust war.

Did the dueling names have any influence with their public views? Perhaps. The US involvement continued in spite of government lies and illegal acts, and the Draft was changed to add a numbering system; and finally our government yelled ‘Uncle’ and withdrew. Today the Communist country of Viet Nam is a prime trading partner of the US.

Did their views harm the careers of the endorsers? Well, in spite of history proving him wrong, the career of the outspoken John Wayne actually got a much needed boost; that and the fact that he finally learned how to act instead of just being the Duke over and over. It also gave him another military-hero movie to proclaim his patriotic spirit and remind people of his bravery in WWII…films.

Jane Fonda’s career nose-dived; not because of her protesting per se, but it’s extreme. She went into the capital, Hanoi, of the enemy our military was fighting. She cavorted in her photo-ops just a few miles from where American POWs, American heroes, were encaged. Her actions were not only in poor taste, they bordered on treason. It took many years and a lot of exercise tapes before she regained a career as the excellent actress she was prior and still is.

The Viet Nam draft was geared toward the lower middle class and minorities. Those of wealth and fame were passed over by the local Draft Boards. The most notable exception was Mohammad Ali, the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the World.

Ali was vocal in his refusal to fight in Viet Nam on religious and civil rights grounds. He said he did not believe a man should kill another man. He also asked why should he shoot brown people who never did him any harm when nothing is being done in his own country to protect the rights of dark skinned citizens from civil abuse. He was found guilty of refusing the decision of his draft board, and the government of the United States stripped him of his World boxing title. He didn’t lose it like he won it, in the ring. It was a World title but the US, and the US alone, took the title from him. To hell with the rest of the world.

The US Supreme Court, by an 8 to 0, vote over-ruled the guilty decision. Ali, a few years later, won back his World Title the way he first earned it, in the boxing ring.

There were no celebs fighting Viet Nam at the time but many of the veterans of the fighting became famous afterwards…men like Oliver Stone and Kris Kristofferson saw action and translated their experience into movies and music.

Some, like ex-VP John Kerry, went and fought in Nam, earned a chestful of medals, came home and then protested the war.

Student deferments were one way of avoiding the draft. Some like ex-Pres Bill Clinton used the deferments in the right way. He finished near the top of his class in Columbia, did two years at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and finished near the head of the class in Yale law school.

Others needed a little help. Ex-VP Dick Cheney, a hawk who pushed for our attacking Iraq and Afghanistan among other things, lost his deferment when he flunked out of Yale. Faced with a One- A physical, he quickly entered the U of Wyoming and managed to keep up enough grades to avoid the draft.

Money and pull also helped. Wayne LaPierre, of NRA fame, was in trouble until his rich daddy found a doctor who stated that Wayne had a nervous condition. This phobia would prevent him from ...wait for it.. ever firing a gun.

When it looked like ex-VP Dan Quail was about to be drafted, his father managed to get him in the Indiana National Guard HQ, even though this perfect refuge was full at the time.

Ex-Pres H.W. Bush, a true WWII hero, had no sons drafted. His one son, ex-Pres George W. Bush, a true war hawk who was responsible for our invading 2 innocent countries that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack on the US, managed to avoid real military service through pull. He got into the air wing of the Texas National Guard and was trained as a jet fighter pilot. His lack of good aptitude and his poor attendance would have 86ed most other trainees, but he managed to receive millions of dollars worth of training; and He would have saw action if Texas ever was under attack but…

Oh, also he skipped out of the last several months of his service requirement to work in a senate election race in Alabama. Still he was given an honorable discharge.

Many avoided the draft by pretending insanity. The rocker/NRA poster boy/reality TV hunter, Ted Nugget tells the most disgusting story of how he ‘fooled’ the docs about to give him his physical. It’s on the net but if you have a weak stomach I would suggest not reading it.

And some like ex-mayor, Guiliani, avoided it under never-explained-circumstances. But then so much he does is impossible to explain.

Europe was one refuge for draft dodgers. Sylvester Stallion, who like John Wayne, is an actor who fought a lot of battles…in films only. He didn’t bother to report to his draft board when he turned 18 and went to be a ski instructor in the Alps instead. While his fellow Americans were being shot at, Stallion was enjoying himself earning his nickname, The Italian Stallion. And bragged about it. But unlike another well known draft dodger who fought the battle of avoiding VD and bragged about it, Stallion never called those who did fight ‘Losers”.

Mitt Romney, who backed every war except the one he have had to see action in, took advantage of slow draft board and went to Europe on a Mormon door-knocking mission.

Although almost 100,000 American males went to Canada to escape the draft and or deserted the service itself, there no celebs among them.

ExPres Jimmy Carter, a US Naval Academy grad, who served seven years in active service, five of which were in submarines, and who left the service only because his father died and he had to go back to the family business, ran for the presidency vowing to pardon all Viet Nam era draft dodgers. And always true to his word, Carter pardoned them all on the day after he took the oath of office. Carter was a one term president. Many vets said they voted against him because of his pardoning the draft dodgers. Wonder how many of these same vets voted for Trump.

Only about half of exiles choose to return to the US where a military record or lack of one meant a great deal in obtaining work. Government work, and some private employers, gave preference to military veterans. If a man had no military history employers wanted to know why. If a man had been in the military, the need for proof of an honorable discharge was required. The thought of a draft dodger getting elected to public office was out of the question…or so we thought.

Does it help? It certainly can’t hurt as long as the celeb that is doing the endorsing is a little higher than a has-been D-Lister, or an organization such as the Taliban.

Is it fair? I’ll defer that question to Paul Newman, outstanding actor/idol, and such a strong advocate of liberal politics and politicians that he made the FBI Enemies List in the Viet Nam Era.

When I was in charge of the stage of Northrop Auditorium early 60s, several times a week prominent speaker was booked for a free noon- speaking engagement. No tickets. No ushers.

The speakers were from all fields, but in those days, the ones that spoke out against Viet Nam involvement and the one pro-Civil Rights were the most popular; but none so popular as a symposium consisting of two pro Viet Nam advocates and two anti Viet Nam Advocates, one of the later was Paul Newman, and a moderator.

Unlike the usual audience of less than a thousand, this one was standing-room -only on the main floor with young ‘ladies’ elbowing their way up the aisles to get closer to the stage, and the balcony was almost half full also. At least 4,000.

It was a well informed and interesting hour, even if most of the audience only listened when Paul Newman spoke. When it wasn’t his turn to speak, he sat listening intently, all the while chewing on his gum. Paul Newman Cool.

I and my student crew had constructed a TV ‘studio’ backstage for a Paul Newman press interview after I pulled the stage curtain shut. Everything went well until one of the TV reporters asked him if he didn’t think it was fair that a famous celebrity like Newman should get involved in something as important as the Viet Nam War. People might agree with him only because he’s a movie star.

I swear the temperature rose ten degrees. Those famous blue eyes blazed. He took out his gum and threw it in a waste basket. He stood up… and Paul Newman spoke.

I can’t quote him verbatim but I can relate the gist of his speech: I am an American man with the right of Freedom of Speech. I am a father with a son that I hope will never have to fight in a war as unjust as this one. I am not a black man, but I am part Jewish and know that we must fight for Civil Rights and condemn the racial and religious hatred that persists in this country.

I am an actor and most people will listen more to me than to a truck driver or farmer, or even a clergyman. Not only is it fair for me to make my views public, it is my obligation. Whether or not they listen and believe in my viewpoint is immaterial. At least I might have opened the door to a different side of the argument than what they are use to listening to. And if I am just singing to the choir I am letting them know that I agree with the songs they are singing.

Thus spoke Paul Newman.

(A little aside from the topic.)

Many of the young ladies in the audience were not interested in going to their next class. They wanted to hang around Northrop to get a glimpse or better yet an autograph of Paul Newman. When one of my student crew was locking up the main auditorium a young lady whispered him aside. She offered him five bucks if he would get the gum that Paul Newman was chewing on. He dug it out of the trash can and sold it to her. Then he and another crew member got a couple packs of gum and after chewing a stick, would offer it in a very discreet manner to a waiting fan. I heard later they started asking ten bucks but dropped it down to five if a phone number came with it. I often wonder what happened to those two bandits. Probably became Social Media zillionaires.)

I purposely tried to avoid any mention of ‘he-whose-name-must-not-be-mentioned’ before, even though he is the most famous draft-dodger at this time, because he is beyond being just a chicken-hawk draft dodger. The way he speaks about veterans, their families, the fact he has done nothing about his good friend, Putin, paying on bounty to the Taliban to kill American military, the fact that both Putin and the Taliban are endorsing him… how can anyone who served vote for such a treasonous person is beyond me. Commander-In-Chief!

And how anybody can vote for a hate-filled who backs the would-be-nazis that are coming out of the sewer at his instigation. Lock Him, (and his friends),Up.

Or vote for one who sees over 200,000 deaths of citizens he swore to protect with the phrase, ‘It is what it is’. As one who moves from bleach injections as a cure to killing off the weak and old ones in the herd. ‘They are what they are’!!!

Enough! Please!

Wrap it.

Stay Safe.

And pray that the sun will shine again.

Oh! P.S. If you are offered a deal on an old wad of chewing gum purported to have been Paul Newman’s, don’t bite, it might be a scam.

A BRAVE LAD

P.F.C. Giles walked into HQ and asked if he could talk to the Colonel. Giles had the day off because he had just finished a field op with one of the line companies. He was a telegraph operator and from what I heard, he was a good one. I didn’t know much else about him. I remember a while back he was on a battalion jump with me. That was his cherry jump. That’s what they call the first jump after the five jumps in jump school. It is the first jump you make fully equipped and have to exit with a crowd. He had made another jump on that field op.

When I asked him what he wanted to see the Old Man about. He said,softly, that it was personal.

His talk with the Colonel took about a half hour and when he walked out of HQ he told Sgt Major Simpson and me the Colonel wanted to see us.

‘Close the door,’ the Old Man said, when we walked in, ‘And what I tell you will go no further. Understood?’

‘Yes, Sir.’ He motioned us to sit down.

“Sgt Major, I want you to see Giles gets to Repo Depot as soon as he gets packed. And then do what you when somebody is discharged. And Corporal, make out the necessary forms for a Medical Discharge.’

‘What’s should I put down as the reason?’ I asked.

‘Didn’t look sick to me,’ Sgt Simpson observed.

The Old Man held up a finger. ‘Hold off on the reason for now. I got to touch base with a friend in Division Personnel. I don’t want that kid demonized with a Dishonorable or a Mental discharge’, he said angrily. He stared at the door and then added in a calm voice, ‘That lad has a lot of backbone. A lot of balls. He is a brave lad. A brave lad.’

Neither Simpson or I said anything.

‘To tell his CO what he told me…He risked a lot. Risked getting ridiculed by some of the men. Risked getting beat up. Risked getting a Dishonorable Discharge. Maybe even stockade time.’

We waited as the Colonel lit a cigarette. I know Simpson was an anxious for the Old Man to tell us what he was talking about. as I was.

‘Took a brave lad to stand right there and tell me he is a homosexual…’

‘He’s a que…’ Simpson blurted out.

‘Let’s use the term “gay”, sergeant.’ the colonel interrupted, ‘It sounds better.’

‘Excuse me, Sir,’ Simpson apologized. ‘It just surprised me. He sure don’t look like a… gay.’

‘I won’t ask you, sergeant, just what a gay is suppose to look like.’

The Sergeant Major it would be best to keep still.

‘The lad just stood there and told me he was homosexual. Flat out told me he was gay.

‘He said he had hoped somehow being in the Army would put his feelings on the back burner, but he said that isn’t the case. He wants out. He know just by admitting his homosexuality will get him kicked out. He said at least in civilian life there are some people who understand.’

‘Like his family,’ I said.

The Old Man shook his head no. He told why Giles said he joined up and volunteered airborne in the first place. Seems like his father rode him pretty hard when he learned his son was gay. There’s another son and he’s in the 101^st Airborne and the father always threw that in Giles’ face.’

‘Guess he showed the old bastard,’ Sgt Simpson said. ‘He got the balls to jump just like his brother.’ Then he asked,’ Is the brother gay too?’

‘I don’t know, sergeant,’ the Colonel answered. ‘Probably not.’

Then the Colonel held up his finger again. ‘You just gave me an idea, Sergeant,’ he said. ‘There’s just the two boys in the family and the other one just re-upped for another six. Giles mentioned his father has arthritis and is worried he won’t be able to work much longer. Don, forget the Medical Discharge. We’ll make it a Hardship Discharge instead. Be better for him.’

‘Too bad we have to lose a man like Giles,’ The Old Man said as Simpson and I stood up. ‘Took a brave lad to do what he did today. The Army can always use a brave lad like him.’

‘Maybe some day, Sir,’ I said, ‘The Army won’t kick out brave lads on account of them being gay.’ And we the office.

Simpson pulled me in his office and closed the door. ‘You don’t really think they will ever let homosexuals in the Army just like any body else.’

‘When you joined up did you ever think you’d be in the same outfit as blacks?’

‘No, but…Simpson stammered. ‘I mean…Could you serve with somebody you know is a homosexual?’

‘Well,’ I answered, ‘It’s like old Sergeant Estes said when he let me buy him a beer, ”Never held it against you for being a Yankee.I found out I can get along with just about any body…even a Yankee. Unless he of course he would to marry my sister.”

Master Sergeant Simpson frowned and shook his head. ‘You know, Don, sometimes, you just don’t make any sense at all.’

It took a long time after my saying some day they might not discriminate against gays 

But not in my wildest dream  I never imagined women would be jumping out of planes

and serving right along side men

in the 82nd 

And that’s a wrap for the day after the US Supreme Court ruled that

Equal Employment Rights

apply also to

LGBTQ

STAY SAFE: And let’s hope today’s discovery of a common steroid might be the cure for the Virus

PREJUDICE & ME & THE ARMY

“It’s going to take a long time, and it’s going to take white people admitting what we did was pretty damned bad.” – Greg Iles – 2017 National Writers Series interview

There wasn’t many blacks in my ‘class’ at basic training in Fort Collins, Colorado. The two officers in charge were white. The rest of the cadre were black. Nice guys. Even the group of Texans who enrolled together dropped their initial snide remarks about blacks and accepted them as their instructors.

It was my next Army stop, Signal School, Fort Gordon, Georgia where I was introduced to the world of prejudice.

There weren’t many blacks in my ‘class’ in Signal School either and all the instructors were white. We had quite a bit of freedom and could go off base on the weekends. Two of my new friends, Chicago 1 and Chicago 2 managed to buy a car and the three of us along with three others took off on a Friday night to spend a wild weekend in Augusta. Never made it.

On the famous Tobacco Road right before we almost got past the endless shacks and lean-to’s of the share-croppers, and were not too far from the famous and very exclusive Augusta Golf Course where the Masters is played yearly, we got t-boned. Too much moonshine and the driver speeding along a gravel road that intersected the highway didn’t stop. Good thing we were packed inside a well built DeSoto. None of us got hurt but the boys from Chicago told us all to complain about factitious aches and pains. They thought they struck it rich. Whiplash! Whiplash!

We had to report to the Augusta Court House on Monday to give our accounts of what happened. When we walked in far down the lobby was a wall with a fancy words about truth and justice. When we walked to the elevator I noticed a drinking fountain marked Whites, and one across the lobby marked Coloreds. Welcome to Jim Crow country you naive young Yankee.

The two Chicagos had a rude surprise also. Not from the separation of races, in fact one of them commented how he wished Chicago had the same thing, but from the laugh of the cop when they asked if they could get the name of the driver’s insurance company. Insurance! That ole redneck didn’t even have license plates… let alone insurance.

The term colored isn’t used anymore. It is a reminder of the South of Jim Crow. But in those days it was the term whites used a lot. We would never think of called a person a Black; even though we used the term Negro, which is Latin for black. The ‘n’ word derived from Negro was used a lot by whites and blacks.

There was big time prejudice in and around Fort Bragg, North Carolina, my next and last stop in the Army. Racial hatred was as much a way of life in that neck of the woods as displaying the Confederate Flag. Bragg was named after a Confederate War general and slave owner. Yankees ranked second on the South’s hate list. Even though a large percentage of paratroopers were good old boys, troopers were hated because it was paratroopers that Eisenhower used to force integration in the Little Rock schools.

Cities and towns were divided into the White section and the Colored section and getting caught in the wrong section was not something anyone wanted to do.

Ft. Bragg and the adjoining Pope Air Base, is the largest military base in the NATO countries. It is an open installation so anyone can drive on or off it without going through MP secured gates. In addition to the 82^nd Airborne Division, it was the home of Green Berets, and numerous ‘Leg’ outfits. A leg is a slang word used by paratroopers to signify anyone not a paratrooper.

And if a trooper did anything that attracted the Law’s attention, he better hope it was 82^nd MP’s, brothers-in-arms, that he had to deal with. Leg MP’s had a real burr in their saddle when it came to ‘bad- ass paratroopers’. And then their was the civilian police!!! Best bet for a white yankee like me was to talk with a southern accent, yes sir, no sir, sorry sir, and pray. For a black trooper, leg, or civilian, keep quite and pray and pray hard.

One payday night a few of us from HQ’s Company were about to walk in to a pizza place incop Fayetteville when we heard a shot from across the street. Someone was on the ground and a uniformed town cop was running into a phone booth, chased by an ever growing crowd. It didn’t take long for police, MP’s and an ambulance to cart away the victim and the shooter. It took a general from the post to calm down the protesters.

The first newspaper release was that a Fayetteville cop shot an armed and dangerous soldier and a mob tried to harm the cop. The solder’s gun wasn’t found because someone in the mob took if from the scene.

Another story came out stating that there was nothing to the rumor that the victim, a Latino sergeant, had angered the cop by moving in with the cop’s ex-wife. And that the witnesses who said there was the perp didn’t have a gun were just trouble makers trying to stir up another protest. And that was the official police report, accepted and case closed. Protests!

An order was issued by the Army that any more protests would result in Fayetteville being declared off limits to all military personnel. That settled tempers down.

The sergeant recovered in six weeks and was given a medical discharge. The cop was given a two week suspension, with pay, and was transferred up the hill to a big buck part of the city. Don’t know what happened with the ex-wife.

And then there was the black unemployed ex-con who robbed a small on-post bank. He was caught he next day when he tried to buy a new convertible…with cash. His first night in the county jail, he thought he died and went to heaven when he discovered the cell door wasn’t locked. He did die when he stepped outside and was shot dead by the two jailers. One of the jailers said that as he brought back the black to the cell, after making him dump his honey pot, the phone rang and in his haste to answer it, he must not have locked the cell door. Nuf said. Case closed.

If I had read the newspaper much in those years, I probably would have heard of many more those kind of happenings; but if the Army wanted GI’s to read newspapers they would have made them handy.

It was a little over ten years since President Truman had forced the integration of the US Military. Whites and Blacks were still in the process of working and living together. There was stories of racial problems on the main post in Bragg, but not in the 82^nd.

In the 82^nd, any prejudice remained under the surface. We were an esprit de corp outfit and we were brothers-in-arms.

It made no difference what color the man was who packed the chute you jumped with…Only that it was packed right. When you were hooked up waiting to jump, you checked everything that you could see. The man behind you checked the rest as you did to the man in front of you. Again colors no difference. Our lives depending on our brothers-in-arms in war and peace.

When I was transferred to Headquarters Company, I no longer lived in a barracks room. I lived in a two- man room. Headquarters Company had it’s privileges.. My first room mate was a Black, Lil Roy. We got along good. Friends. The only thing that bothered me was his bad sounding phonograph and his endless supply of Little Richard 45’s. On and on and on. For a joke I bought him a 45 of Pat Boone singing Tutti Fruitti. We played it once and then left it in the Day Room soanyone who wanted it could take it.

Roy and I would catch the bus into Fayetteville, sit together in the bus, and at the stop we would part ways. I went into the main downtown and he went down the hill to the black downtown. After he got discharged I realized not only did I miss him, I missed hearing Little Richard, which I cured by a trip to the record shop. Music knows no prejudice…but it does have boundaries.

Duke Ellington came to town. He was one of my favorites. He played the NCO club in Bragg. I wasn’t allowed because I was only a corporal. He played the Officers’ club in Bragg. Again, I wasn’t allowed, no brass on my shoulders. His next gig, and last around Fayetteville, was a black college. No whites allowed. Damn prejudice. Once again I found some relief in the record store in town. It sold a lot of music by Ellington and other black musicians, even if blacks weren’t allowed in the store.

When I went back into civilian life and worked various jobs, I was shocked to realize just how much prejudice there was against blacks and minorities existed in the North. Wake up to the real world, you naive young man from Mendota.

There were protest marches in the 60’s. But nothing compared to today’s world wide protests. There was Martin Luther King, activist, leader, and martyr, whose speeches are honored as keystones in the fight for Civil Rights. But nothing stirred the world like the three words, ‘I can’t breath’.

That and the eight minutes, forty six seconds of watching a cold calculated murderer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck. George Floyd might not have been a saint, but he is a martyr. It is said that the blood of martyrs was the seed of Christianity. We can only pray that the blood of Earl and the other martyrs sacrificed on the altar of hate are the seeds that brings an end to hatred. Maybe this time.

What thrills me most in today’s protests is the young, young around the world, that have either never been taught to hate or have seen the wrong in such teachings.

I could write volumes on the prejudice I have encountered in my 80 plus years, and maybe I will write some of the tidbits in another post; but for now, I would like to just thank all the people who never taught me how to hate. I wish everybody could have non-teachers like I had.

Oh, and as far as White Privilege is concerned, I am all for it. I’ve been beat up by police on three occasions in my life; and without White Privilege, I might have ended up dead in any one of them.

I just wish White Privilege was granted to everyone regardless of their skin color.

And I would like to wrap this up with the lyrics of Oscar Hammerstein in South Pacific:

You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Stay Safe and Love Your Neighbor as Yourself.

PREJUDICE & ME & MENDOTA

Back in the days when we were protesting for Civil Rights and an end to our involvement in Viet Nam, Dick Gregory, black comedian, leading activist in both movements, came to Minneapolis. During a press conference he was asked how Minneapolis compared to other major cities as far as racial discrimination against blacks was concerned.

He said he found very little black prejudice compared to other cities; but before Minneapolitans had to chance to take bows, he explained why. He observed there were so many Indians in Minnesota that were the brunt of prejudice, white folks didn’t have time to bother with the small black population.

There wasn’t any prejudice against Indians in the village/township of Mendota where my roots were. Mendota was a settlement across the river from Minneapolis and St. Paul, older than both. Outside of a few outsiders like my dad, who married into it, we were descendants of French/Canadians or Mendota Sioux or a mix of both. No bona fide Mendota resident had to go back too many generations to find a common ancestor with any other bona fide Mendota resident.

There were some inhabitants that people did not like; but it wasn’t prejudice because they might have Indian blood, it was because they were jerks.

From the time I was a toddler, one of my best friends was Fred La Batte, grandpa’s hired hand. He claimed to be 100% Mendota Sioux; and when questioned why he had a French name, he always answered, because his Sioux name was too hard to spell. I enjoyed being around Fred and I learned a lot from him, including a few English and French words that I found out the hard way to never use within my mom’s hearing distance.

When I acted up and Fred told me to stop it, I stopped. Not to would cause him to shake his finger at me warn me what would happen if kept misbehaving. He would put me in a gunny sack and take me to Chicago. When I asked him about Chicago he told me it was a place worse than even Minneapolis. Yes sir, I obeyed Fred.

Fred also taught me a lot about horses. Come time to cultivate the corn, Fred would hitch Dick, grandpa’s sorrel gelding to the one-row cultivator. Many a hot summer day you would see Dick still hitched to the cultivator munching on the grass in the ditch by the highway. No sign of Fred because Fred had flagged down a ride to Huber’s for a couple cold beers. When I asked Fred how he got the horse to just stand there for such a long time and not go anyplace or turn around and eat the corn stalks, Fred said he warned the horse if he misbehaved he’d get a gunny sack over his eyes and…

‘and, and, you’ll take him to Chicago. Right, Fred?’

‘You learn real good, little Donny.’

The first lesson I received in prejudice was from Mrs. Benson, who taught all eight grades in the one-room schoolhouse I went to. Now even though she was a Lutheran Swede from Minneapolis, we all liked her, students and parents both. She only taught us one year because her husband got polio and required her help at home.

(Polio was the first pandemic that I lived through. We survived because the politicians united and left finding the cure and vaccine to the medical experts, like Dr. Jonas Salk.)

Mrs. Benson’s teaching of prejudice was straight forward. She said that we should accept or reject people as individuals and not because of culture or color…Prejudice was wrong. Prejudice was stupid. Prejudice hurt both the person it was directed against and the person who directed it.

In addition to her talking about it, she gave us a list of books that would teach us more about prejudice.

We were to pick out a book, read it, and then stand in front of the room and tell the rest of the students what we learned about prejudice from the book. She eliminated the first three grades as far as reading a book was concerned; but they could tell us about prejudice they had witnessed, or comment on what they heard. The lesson was in the first hour of class when someone was ready to speak.

After she finished laying out the groundwork, she handed note books she had purchased with her own money and told us we were to keep a record of what we were learning about prejudice, starting with what she had said that morning.

‘Now any questions?

About six hands went up.

 ‘Mrs. Benson, how do you spell ‘prejudice’? 

I reread Huckleberry Finn from the school’s library, which had about two hundred books in it and which I had already finished reading all of them. I gave my report on the relationship between Huck and Jim, the runaway ex-slave about five days into the project. I was the first to make a report.

So to keep me actively involved in the project, Mrs. Benson lent me her personal copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Now that really showed me a world unlike the one grew up in. I read it twice before I gave my report.

Mrs. Benson suggested I read yet another book. She gave me some suggestions but this time I went out on my own read my dad’s copy of The Vanishing American by Zane Grey. I had heard it a radio program once. Since she wasn’t aware of the story, she consulted with her husband, who was a Zane Grey fan. When he told her it was a tale about the loss of Indian culture and of love between  a Navajo man, a white woman.

Mrs. Benson suggested that she and I talk over my report before I gave it. She wanted to make sure her project on racial prejudice did not turn into a sex education class. She didn’t have to worry. I concentrated on the prejudice and loss of the native culture, not the mushy love stuff. I also tied in a lot of things that Fred LaBatte had told me, like why he had a French last name.

( Today the Navajo nation is vanishing, not the culture, the people. They are hardest hit segment of the killer virus in America. In the early days of the virus, those days the president assured us not to worry, within a couple weeks the few virus cases in the US would disappear, a prominent Navajo leader died and people came from all over the Navajo reservation, the largest reservation in the US. The lack of early knowledge and prevention, the arid harsh land, the abject poverty, the scarcity of medical facilities, and the total disregard of the Federal government have fueled the virus wildfire and the vanishing of the Navajo is another type of genocide that has permeated the our nation since the first day Anglos set foot in New England.)

So my growing up in Mendota and my education from Mrs. Benson, pretty much laid down the foundation of my feelings about racial prejudice. I never had much experience with blacks those early years , except for playing against some in sports. Then I went in in the Army!

Oops! What started out as one blog post has gotten away from me. Par for the course. I will close out this post and will continue my experience in prejudice in the Army, deep in the heart of Dixie, in another post.

I will close out this with a quotations I was introduced to last week in one of my favorite blogs:

Playamart – Zeebra Designs A blog of beautiful art, great photos, and fine prose by Lisa, a talented Mississippian now living in Ecuador.

 Blacks and Native Americans share one thing. Native Americans had their land stolen, and their culture systematically crushed. Blacks – it’s the opposite; they were stolen from their land, and they had their culture systematically crushed. We can’t begin to imagine what it takes to come back from that…” – Greg Iles – excerpt from 2017/National Writers Series interview –

And that’s a wrap for today. Stay Safe

ANOTHER SNOW/ANOTHER RIDE

Back in the day: Another snow. Another ride-on-my-thumb.

This happened about a year before the previous snow/hitchhiking story. I was heading back to Fort Bragg from Washington D.C., my favorite city to visit on a three day pass. There was so much to see and do, and for fifty cents you could get a bed in the YMCA. You could hitch it in six, seven hours.

This time it was special. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom.

I had spent most my full day walking around the Tidal Basin, taking in the sights and fragrances of the trees and monuments and the Basin itself. There weren’t as many monuments as there are now. There was Jefferson Memorial, which was worth the walk all in itself, and several smaller monuments. The F.D.R. and Martin Luther King memorials would come years later. And a half mile across the park the Washington Monument could easily be seen.

The Basin is a pure reflective mirror. No matter where I walked around it that day, I could see the cherry blossoms and the Washington Monument, shimmering in the waters.

I finished off the day by walking across the park and revisited the monuments on the National Mall. I never left D.C. without a visit to the Mall.

I always walked tall when I was in D.C., but that day I think I walked even taller. So proud to be wearing the uniform of the 82^nd Airborne, the All American Division. So proud to be doing my part, albeit a very small part, in protecting the grandeur of this country.

By the time I got back to the cafeteria at the Y I was too tired to prolong the day. That and the fact there was talk about some snow might be coming in the next afternoon, a rarity in D.C..

I had ordered a big breakfast in a pancake house by the highway out of the city when the snow started falling. Back home we would call it a dusting. In D.C. they thought it was a blizzard. Some of the other customers wolfed down their food and hurried out the door. By the time my food arrived, the highway looked like it was an evening-going-home traffic jam. My waitress commented on how the city empties when it snows.

‘Yeah,’ I replied, trying to show wisdom beyond my age. ‘And cause a jam-up and silly accidents. If some of them would wait and follow when the first ones cleared out…’

‘They’re afraid they might get called back to their desks. Most are paid by the month and getting out early won’t be deducted from their paychecks,’ she said as she refilled my coffee cup. ‘It those of us who work by the hour that get their pay docked if we leave early.’ She gave a quick glance to the stern faced older woman sitting behind the cash register.

‘I dig it,’ I said with a smile. The highway was still bumper-to-bumper, too close to stop if they had to. A lot of slipping and sliding. I decided to take my own advice and stay put until things calmed down a bit.

On the next refill I told my waitress my decision. She agreed with me. I ordered a piece of apple pie. She agreed with that also, and suggested warming it up a little and putting a scoop of ice cream on top. I agreed with that.

A customer went out and left his newspaper. She brought it over to me. When I decided things had settled down a little out on the highway, I asked her for the check. She hadn’t bothered to charge me for the pie. I left a big tip. The woman that handled the register gave me my change, thanked me and ordered me to have a good day. Since she never once bothered to look me in the face, I didn’t think she cared what kind of day I would have. My waitress mouthed a silent thank you. I believed her.

I got a ride right away. ‘I’m not going too far, only to Arlington; but it will at least get you away from some of this traffic,’ the woman said as she opened the passenger door. With a voice like that…

As I got in and was surprised, pleasantly, to see she her looks matched her voice. By the time I had settled in the seat and shut the door, I did as any red-blooded, lonesome nineteen year old GI would do. I fell in love at first sight, even if she was a little older than me. She tried talking to me but I didn’t reply. I just looked at her and smiled.

‘I’ll turn this down a little,’ she said, reaching over to the volume dial on the radio. She thought I didn’t answer because of the music. It was classical music. I hadn’t even realized it had been on. She had the perfect 10-4 hand grip on the wheel and I could see her left hand. There was a wedding ring. Bummer.

‘Mozart,’ she said. ‘It helps ease the tension of this kind of driving. Do you like Mozart?’

‘Ho, ah,’ I said, hesitantly, ‘He…Yeah, I like him a lot.’ I hoped we could change the topic. The only classical music I knew about was the William Tell Overture that opens and closes every Lone Ranger program. ‘It looks like you know what you are doing driving in the slush,’ I blurted out.

‘I haven’t had to for a long time, but I come originally from upstate New York, a lot of driving in real snowstorm,’ she said. ‘I guess it’s like they say about riding a bike, once you do it, you never forget.’

I agreed. ‘You’re keeping a nice distance, pumping the brake…’

Just then, a dehorn that was passing us started to slide into our lane. She managed to handle the situation like a pro. She held back until he got his car under control. His near miss didn’t teach him any thing. He quickly jerked out of our lane and sped into the passing lane.

‘Too bad there isn’t some way to control the other drivers,’ she said.

Everything was going smoothly until she had to drive over a big clump of snow that had come loose from somebody’s wheel well. The steering wheel spun free of her grip momentarily and the car headed for the left ditch. I thought we had it, but she pulled out of it in time.

‘It’ll be better when you get on the cut-off to Arlington,’ I said.

She looked at me and smiled. ‘Oh, we passed that a while back.’

I looked over at her. ‘Why?’ You said you were going to Arlington. Look!’ I pointed to a car in the ditch. It was the joker that was in such a big hurry.

‘Well, he’s one I don’t have to worry about,’ she said.

‘You should be off this highway. Where are we going?’

‘We are just a ways from Fort Myers. There’s a shelter there and a car can pull off and pick up hitchhikers. Your chances of getting a quick ride are much better there,’ she explained.

‘And your chances of getting in an accident are also much better now,’ I argued. ‘A good deed is one thing, but is it worth it in this kind of weather?’

‘Well,’ she said softly, ‘My husband is stationed in South Korea right now. I would hope that if he was out in a snow storm needing a ride, someone would pick him up.’

I didn’t stick out my thumb until she turned around and headed back to Arlington. I waved and she answered with her car horn.

I thought to myself that there is a very lucky GI over in Frozen Chosen with an angel waiting for him to hurry home. Be it sunshine or bad weather.

The snow was letting up and I hoped that that it had no bad effect on the cherry blossoms. It sure had had a good effect on me. And now when I see where someone had made an angel in the snow or I smell the fragrance of cherry blossoms, I think back to that ride-on-my-thumb.

 

 

STAY SAFE AND OBEY THE RULES

SPRING WILL ARRIVE SOON

RIDING MY THUMB IN THE SNOW

Back in the day when a man in uniform could thumb a ride anywhere:

That heavy snow we just had on Easter Sunday reminded me of another spring holiday snow storm. That one was on Holy Saturday many years ago.

I was heading home from Ft. Bragg to spend a week with my folks. One of guy in the outfit had posted he was going to Chicago. Another trooper and myself answered the post.

I had the backseat all to myself. The two Chicago boys took turns driving and keeping each other awake. I was sleeping good when they started raising their voices above the music on the radio. It took me a bit to realize they were arguing over who came from the toughest neighborhood in the city. The stories grew larger and larger; by the time they left me off at the highway that bypassed Chicago, you would think they both were remnants of Al Capone’s mob.

Next ride got me though Madison, WI.. That’s when the snow started. It was the wet, slushy snow that often makes April the ‘cruelest month’. Luckily a car stopped before I got too wet. The driver was about 30, nice smile, friendly voice. Seeing I was shivering, he turned the heater on high in spite of the fact he was wearing a black turtle-neck sweater. He asked where I was heading and when I told him, he apologized because he was only going a little past Tomah.

Usually the price you pay for hitching a ride is you have to listen to the driver talking, telling you things he would not tell to many other people; but you were a stranger and his story would go no further. Kind of like a confession. But not this driver. He got more out of me than I was use to telling anyone.

I started to doze off so I suggested that he could turn the heat down. He did so with pleasure, beads of sweat were on his forehead. But it didn’t help me much. The slip-slapping of the wiper blades sang me back to sleep.

I woke in a hurry when he started swearing. The blades were losing the battle with the snow but not enough that I see we were in trouble. The car was heading for one ditch and then he swung it back towards the other. It was facing the opposite direction when he finally got it under control enough to pull onto the shoulder. He made the Sign of the Cross and took some very deep breathes.

I cut loose. I called him names that would make a paratrooper blush. And I finished by yelling, ‘You dumb @#@%$#@, I know I told you I was in a hurry, hoping to go to Easter Mass with my folks; but I ain’t that much of a hurry to get killed trying to do it.’

Apology time for both of us.

‘I got thinking about tomorrow,’ he said, ‘And didn’t realize I was going too fast for the conditions. Thank God, there wasn’t any other cars around.’

‘Yeah, thank God! Well,’ I said in a softer voice, ‘It happens. I shouldn’t have had no call to swear at you like that.’ The last thing I wanted was to have him give me the boot in that snowstorm.

He laughed as he pulled a pulled a Uey and back on track. ‘Don’t sweat it, Don. I’m the padre at Camp McCoy up ahead. Heard a lot worse, believe me.’

‘Oh, no!’ I said, ‘You’re a priest! Jeez…Boy, now I really got to get home in time to go to Confession.’

Well,’ he said, ‘I can take some pressure off you.’ He reached under the front seat and pulled out a stole. ‘Always keep one handy in case of an emergency.’ He placed it around his neck. He must have read my mind. ‘Don’t worry’, he said, ‘A car is as good as a confessional.’

I hesitated at first and then begun, ‘Bless me, Father…’ After the first few words, the rest came easy.’

I hoped he wasn’t the kind of priest that closed his eyes when he was hearing a confession.

So, riding in a car, in the middle of a snow storm, going to Confession. A first and only time for me.

The padre left me off at the entrance to Camp McCoy. Nice bench, a sheltered roof. First car stopped. A top of the line Chevy convertible. The driver was a little older than me. Big man, but soft features. I had to do a double take when I saw his backseat. There were boxes of LP records, a stereo phonograph, TV set, a few books and lots of magazines on the floor, Down Beat’s, Playboy’s, probably a Penthouse or two hiding in the stack . He took a nice homburg hat off the seat, flipped it in the back and invited me in.

After trading names and where-you’re-goings, the driver took over the conversation. His name was Paul and he was going back home, which was only a few miles from my home. He had spent the last three years working in Milwaukee. He said the pay wasn’t bad but he hated every minute of working in that office and living in that city; especially after he got a “Dear Paul’ letter from his girlfriend, who had vowed she would wait for him to get established and then they would get married. He didn’t have a job waiting for him, but he was sure he’d find one in the Twin Cities. In the meantime he could live with his folks…And maybe look up some girls he went to school with.

Fancy car, nice clothes, and I imagined he had quite a few romantic albums in his collection would help him find a new girlfriend, fast. Until then, there was always his collection of Playboys, if he managed to hide them from his mother.

His blues story was boring; but I did like the part about him driving me right to my parents’ home, so I made like a bartender expecting a nice tip does and pretended to listen intently. The snow was getting heavier. Instead of driving out of it, it seemed to be we were driving into the heart of it.

I was sure happy when we came over the hill and could see the river and the Hudson Bridge that crossed into Minnesota in the distance. Home was the next stop. Again, I was wrong. As soon as we got got into the river valley, Paul pulled off into the main street of downtown Hudson.

‘I have to buy a new tie for tomorrow,’ he explained, as he got into the jam of cars doing last minute shopping. ‘All mine need dry cleaning.’

Yeah, good luck finding a place to park, I thought to myself.

No problem for Paul. He just double parked in front of a very busy department store. ‘Drive around,’ he said, as he reached for his hat, ‘Meet you back here in a half hour.’ He opened the door and got out. I slide into the driver’s seat and pulled out before one of those irate horn-blowers behind me decided to get really mad.

I turned around the block and headed back to the truck stop we had passed on the highway. Switched on the radio and settled back and enjoyed driving this fine automobile. Sure beat the Jeep I drove back at Bragg. My first inclination when I parked in the big lot, was to go inside and get a cup of coffee; but I had second thoughts about leaving the car unoccupied with a back seat full of expensive goods.

And then it dawned on me. Now, to say I was tempted would be pushing, but I sure was doing some day dreaming.

That damn Paul! That damn stupid Paul! Handing over his fancy car loaded with thousands of dollars of things that anyone could fence. I thought how this kind of money compared to Army pay. I watched the cars heading east and thought how close I could get to Chicago by the time he got tired of waiting and decided to call the cops on me. I thought about those two would-be gangsters I could look up… But like I said, it was a day dream, a would-be author’s kicking around ideas for a story. I wasn’t stupid and I sure wasn’t a thief.

I timed it as close as a half hour as I could. I had no more stopped in front of the store when Paul came running out and jumped in the passenger seat. The chorus of horns started up again. I pulled away as soon as Paul closed the car door and headed back to the highway.

‘Not much of a selection,’ he said, ‘But I got one I liked anyway.’ He pulled out a tie out of one bag and showed me.

I stopped the car just before pulling out on the highway. I turned to him and cut loose with the same kind of language I had used on the priest.

I told him he was a @##@$$#@# fool to turn his life savings to a perfect stranger. How did he know I wouldn’t just up and steal the car and everything in it. How did he know…

He gave me a smile and a doughnut he pulled from a second bag. ‘It’s Easter Time, Don. Nobody steals at Easter.’

The doughnut was good. His logic was…

I drove to my folk’s home and Paul and I wished each other a Happy Easter. It was still snowing as I ran into the house. Went right in because that was back in the day we left our door unlocked and nobody ever stole anything… especially at Easter Time.

I would like to wish everybody Happy Holidays in this time of Holy Days for all. Belated or predated. In sunshine or snow.

GLUCKICHER OSTERTAG

(Happy Easter Day)

May we all celebrate the Holy Days of April in the way we use to. Please stay safe. Obey the rules. Remember the lives you may save maybe the lives of those you love the most.

PRAYER TODAY/GONE TOMORROW?

There’s a wartime saying, ‘There are no atheists in a foxhole.’ Since we are hunkered down in our ‘foxholes’ in today’s war, it seems appropriate for the times. While prayer/religion is not the same in lives as it was 60, 70 years ago, I imagine that in the last couple months, it has taken a rapid rise in popularity.

If for no other reason than the one W.C. Fields used when on his deathbed a friend walked in and caught Fields reading a Bible. Surprised, the friend asked if Fields had gotten religion. Fields answered, ‘Just looking for loopholes.’

Religion has been a hub in the lives of Mankind since before they warmed their hands over a fire. It comes in all shapes and sizes…From a simple Thank You looking at your baby sleeping in the crib, to a lengthy pilgrimage that culminates in an elaborate ritual.

We have reached a point in this war where even the biggest scientific naysayer, the President of the U.S.A., has accepted that this is not a political hoax that will evaporate by April 1^st and by Easter we will be back to normal. We must listen to the medical scientists, hunker down, wash hands, and practice social distance. The later directive has evolved into everyone who is not in the Front Lines of this war should stay within the confines of their homes.

And even with this life-preserving quarantine, ordered by almost all the state governors, 14 refused to declare any type of shut down, people ignored it in the name of prayer/religion, especially in states where Trump reigns supreme. One gov said she would not obey that ‘Draconian’ law. One woman declared that nothing can happen to her because she has been washed with the blood of Christ. A preacher said if grocery stores can be open, churches can also.

Last Sunday a church in Louisiana played to a SRO crowd in spite of a state directive outlawing it. Louisiana is a hot spot already because the celebration of Mardi Gras was too ‘important’ to be canceled, and the Federal Government had not told them to shut down. Louisiana is one of the states that rejects the government’s recent suggestion to shut down.

Criticized, the Louisiana pastor declared that the next Sunday he would send out 27 buses to pick up and transport people to his service.

In Florida, a megachurch pastor held services in spite of a local ban against it. He was arrested and jailed, released on a $500.00 bail. $500.00 bucks…Not even a drop in a KFC bucket they pass around in his church instead of collection baskets.

He vowed to continue and to take the case to the Supreme Court if necessary. Only the case will have to wait a long tine because the Court is closed due to the Virus.

In this war we have a multitude of media services on the Internet, the TV, and the radio. The faithful who think their prayers will not be heard unless they are said in a congratulation in a certain building should be call the faithless…Not enough faith in their God to think he demands a certain ritual and place to be heard.

If your pastor makes such demands, perhaps you should stay home, obey the rules, and come the light again, turn to the Yellow Pages under Churches and play Pin-The-Tail-On-The Donkey for a new place of worship.

Human sacrifice did not prevent the Aztecs from the wrath of Cortez and his gold seekers. On-line, TV, even radio preachers have ways of getting your money…PayPal, personal checks etc.. The difference is those methods of payment are harder to skim off the top like buckets of cash collected in person. First count on the collection buckets is their #1 perp.

Prior to when the Federal Government and Fox hinted that we might be in for some problems from the Virus, there were many innocents who attended funerals. Here’s three documented disasters.

In tiny, rural Martin county, Minnesota they packed the church to say goodbye to a beloved man. Shortly afterwards the county, far from any big cities, became the hot spot of the Virus in the state, quickly recorded the most infections and the first 2 deaths.

After a funeral in a small town in Georgia, the Virus exploded and spread like wildfire.

A funeral in the Four Corners section of the Navajo Reservation brought the Virus to the tribe. Because the tribe is physically susceptible to disease as a whole, life style, obesity, poverty, and the policies of the Federal Government, there are estimates that the entire Navajo Nation is at great risk. The Virus is the Small Pox of our time.

There are a multitude of ways to send your condolences upon a death of a friend or relation without attending the funeral in person. Use them. If that seems cold, just remember if you don’t attend your friend’s funeral, it is tit-for-tat. He won’t be attending yours either.

And with every disaster comes the scam artists. Remember Jim Bakker, the Big Time TV evangelist who became a Hard Time convict? Heeee’s back. And outside of a different wife, he hasn’t changed. He just got ordered to stop selling his elixir to cure the Virus.

Another pseudo-preacher and conspiracy spreader was selling tooth paste that cured the Virus.

The President is going against all medical/scientific advice and is promoting using a malaria/lupus medicine as a cure. He has said in spite of the fact he does not have the Virus, he might just take the medicine himself to prove it cures the Virus that he doesn’t have.

In the second week after we were in a shut down mode, things got worse. More churches offered in-person attendance. Jealous that Florida and California beaches had been big money makers during Spring Break, the governor of Georgia reopened a popular Georgia beach. Rumor has it, he tried to get Chris Christie to bring down his beach chair and promote the grand opening. The money wasn’t bad, but Christie asking for all the free food he could eat, nixed the deal.

The third week will bring Easter, and perhaps Trump’s hinted- at- declaration that the shut down will be lifted to attend Easter Services.

The T.S. Eliot line, ‘April is the cruelest month’, might take on a deeper meaning this April. All major religions have important happenings in the month of April. Some will take place in the safety of the home, others in crowded places of worship.

Our heroic Front-Liners can’t stay at home. If we are not Front-Liners don’t add to their danger. Obey the rules of the shut down.

And for those of you who believe your faith in God will overcome any dangers, consider:

The man sat on the peak of the roof of his house and watched the raging flooded river rise higher and higher toward his temporary place of shelter.

A boat stopped and the man was told to come and jump in the boat.

The man refused, stating, ‘Don’t worry about me. God will save me.’

The waters rose higher and the boat reappeared and again the man was asked to get the boat.

And again the man refused, stating his belief that God will save him.

The water was soaking the man’s feet when a helicopter hovered above and lowered a rope ladder.

And once again the man refused because he had faith and God would save him

And the river rose and took the man to his inevitable end.

And standing in front of the Pearly Gates, waiting to be sorted, the man asked in a pleading voice, ‘Wasn’t my faith strong enough? Wasn’t my prayers sincere enough? Why didn’t God save me?

And the sorter gave him his answer…

God sent a boat, twice, to pick you up and even sent a helicopter, and you refused all three times. Just what more could he do to save your stubborn ass?

God helps those who help themselves

Obey the rules. Keep safe.

The lives you save maybe the lives of those you love the most.

VINCENT- PAINTINGS OR PLAY

While on tour with Leonard Nimoy in VINCENT I discovered there’s a lot to like in art museums. A logical event since I was immersed in Van Gogh’s life and works. Every stop where we had time to kill I found an art museum. I don’t remember watching any TV or going to any movies during the tour, but I remember the art. I am partial to the Impressionists, I found I could get lost in the works of any genre.

We had a week in the Cleveland Playhouse, one of the best regional theaters. The Cleveland Art Museum on only a few blocks away and I visited it several times. It did not look like an art museum. It was one- story sprawling building set in a wooded location.

You couldn’t miss it because it had a large replica of Rodin’s The Thinker outside the building. It was too tall to fit inside. There was one thing it had, or didn’t have, that would set it apart from any other replicas of statue. There was a frisbee-size hole in it’s right buttocks, where someone had taped an M80 firecracker, lit the fuse and ran like hell.

At that time it also had two Van Gogh’s on exhibition, an Olive Garden painted in the asylum at Saint Remy and a wheat field painted in Arles. They hung on a wall in a small room of the museum. My first visit was midday following the opening of VINCENT the night before. Perfect time. Except for one other visitor, the galley was empty. Solitude heightens the appreciation of the arts, for me at least.

The other visitor was sitting on the center of the uncomfortable backless benchs that museums buy by the gross. There were two other benches, one on each side of the center, angled slightly giving the viewer a different view of the art. As soon as I came in, the man rose and plumped down on a side bench, leaving the center one for me without breaking his gaze at the works. He wasn’t faking his interest.

I observed him out the corner of my eye. He sat stooped-shouldered, letting his arms dangle loosely on his thighs and his head frozen in place as he stared at the paintings. He made no attempt to correct his posture. It wasn’t that he was overweight, it was that he was soft, dumpling- weight. He wore a dark gray suit, some sort of man-made ‘–lon’, the kind that doesn’t need dry cleaning or ironing. A Sears special, one suit coat, two pair of pants. I’d bet his wardrobe consisted of two sets of the same special, several off-white shirts and a rack of broad multicolored ties, the ones that camouflage soup stains. The uniform of a not-to-successful salesman. He was casting director’s vision of Willy Loman in DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

Having my people-watching over with, I joined him in staring at the Van Gogh’s.

There are three types of museum art admirers. The first are like Willy and myself. Concentrators. The second are usually art students with a pen and art pad. They sit and copy the painting. The third are the I-own-the-world people, who stand close in front of the work blocking everybody else’s view and sometimes has the audacity lean across the velvet rope barrier and touch it.

Two 40-ish women came into the small gallery. Dressed to the nines, proudly walking on high stilettos, their hairdos fresh and expensive. In those days we referred to them as yuppies. The women were the third type of gallery goers. They communicated in loud voices, predating today’s cel phone users, compelling others to listen even if they didn’t want to.

‘…never thought he was that good an actor. I thought he was limited to Dr. Spock in STAR WARS.’

‘You mean Dr. Spock in STAR TREK. And much more handsome without the ears. I am so glad you invited us to go with you last night. All these years living in Cleveland and we never went to the Playhouse.’

‘We have season tickets for every opening night of their productions. And thank you for inviting me to the museum. Seeing actual paintings of Van Gogh really makes the play special. We’ve never been here. I wish our husbands were with us.’

‘If your’s is anything like mine, time off from work cries for golf. I’m on the board of the museum and my husband is on the board of his golf club. But maybe combining the play with seeing some of the actual paintings…’

‘Maybe…Say, I am up to seeing that wonderful cafeteria in the museum?’

‘And the special of today is quiche, spinach quiche. Let’s …’

They walked out, and I marveled at how fast they could move in those heels. I went back to admiring the Van Goghs. Willy had never moved so much as his head during their visit. I imagined staring at rude patrons’ backs was something a true museum aficionado gets use to.

One thing I never got use to was working on a show on an empty stomach. I left, foregoing the museum’s special for the day, and went to a small Italian diner a few blocks away where I knew there was a hot dago sandwich with my name on it.

After stage checks I gave my museum review to our troupe. They all said they would like to go and see the museum, especially the Van Goghs. Dennis, the tour manager and AV tech, had his wife with him that week, but maybe they would go.

The Nimoys, Leonard and Sandy, had friends to hook up with and of course interviews, ‘Now please when I accepted your request to interview me I said I would discuss the play, VINCENT, the man Vincent, and his work. I will not tell you anything about the unreleased movie, STAR TREK’, was his standard disclaimer necessary in almost all them. Amazing how he could say it in such a gracious way even though the question irritated him. VINCENT was his much needed break from the months of shooting the movie. But maybe they would find time to go to the museum.

And if Sandy decided to go without her husband, Eric, the wardrobe man, would go with her just as he always did when she wanted to go shopping. Otherwise Eric would use his free time to watch TV.

I went up to the lighting booth early. It was back of the balcony just like the Guthrie’s, and to get to it I had to walk through the lobby where the audience was milling around, talking, sipping on their drinks, waiting for the house doors to open, just like at the Guthrie.

‘I thought that was you. I recognized your hat,’ a smiling ‘Willy Loman’ said as he came toward me. ‘I need your help,’ he said, holding out his ticket. ‘I don’t know how to find my seat.’

‘Nothing to worry about,’ I told him. ‘When the ushers open the doors, just ask one of them to show you your seat. Did you enjoy the Van Goghs today?

‘Oh, I enjoy them every time I come to Cleveland, that’s once a month. I enjoy all the art in the museum. There’s so much to see. I go to other museums when I make my rounds but Cleveland’s the biggest. I don’t watch TV much and sometimes I go to the movies, but looking at paintings is my favorite pastime on my route.’

‘Your route? Are you a salesman?’

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘I am a sales rep. Salesmen work for a company. I work for myself. I handle all kinds of things, from soup to nuts,’ he laughed at his interjection, ‘picking just what I like from all different companies. What I think my customers would like to sell in their stores. Small stores, hardware, some grocery, mostly small towns around Lake Erie. East to Erie, west to Monroe, south to Columbus. I do have some small store customers in some of the big cities…’

I asked one little question and got an encyclopedia definition of a sales rep and a travelogue of northern Ohio. He was really a talker once he started. I told him I had to get up to the booth; but when I went to leave him, he grabbed my sleeve.

‘I am so glad I found someone I knew. I’ve never gone to live theater except a school play. Those two ladies talking about this one gave me the idea, and then I read the paper about it…’

I wanted to be polite but I wanted to get upstairs. ‘Well,’ I told him, ‘I bet you will like it and it’ll be something else to do on your route. There’s probably a lot of theaters where you can see plays.’

He let go of my sleeve. ‘There you go now. Good idea. I’ll look for you here when I come back next month and tell you about the plays I went to.’

I walked away. I wasn’t about to get into that I would be long gone from Cleveland by then. Try to explain that I was with VINCENT, not the Playhouse.

After I gave the okay, from my point of view of the house, to open the doors, I stood and watched the audience filter in. I didn’t see ‘Willyl’. I figured he probably bought a cheap seat under the balcony. Worse place to watch a play but I thought he would still enjoy it, slumped forward in his intense position .

I felt better than usual because of the day’s events. VINCENT was accomplishing more than just entertaining for a short time. It introduced people like the two women and ‘Willy’ to forms of the arts other than just what they were into. How many in the theater would go to a museum after seeing this play? And how many were in the audience because of their interest in great artwork ?

And, of course, how many were in the audience because it was a chance to see the beloved Mr. Spock, aka Leonard Nimoy in person?

‘Gosh, I never knew he was such a powerful actor.’

AND THAT’S A WRAP

 

 

MY GUN CONTROL (III)

 

My Gun Control Conclusion

The dining car was almost empty so I had a table all to myself. I ordered the biggest steak on the menu. Uncle Sam was still picking up the tab. I refused wine and took coffee. I was on duty. I forgot my paperback, so I sat back and watched the scenery pass, and thought about Sergeant Calvin C. Crowe. He represented a type of paratrooper I hoped was the exception and not the rule.

When I first thought about joining the Airborne, back in basic, I was hoping it would be my ticket to go overseas to Germany, instead of ending up like so many peace time GI’s in Frozen Chosen, aka South Korea. I had heard rumors of the 11^th being disbanded and Crowe’s remark pretty much convinced if I made it through jump school, I would be in Fort Bragg, North Carolina – for my duration.

The steak and two pieces of apple pie ala mode were good but they didn’t keep me from thinking about my future. Maybe I should have joined my two high school buddies and enlisted in the Navy, even if the hitch was for four years. See the world and not have to do a silly thing like jumping out of airplanes. 

I didn’t want to, but I had to go back to our cabin. I didn’t meet anybody on the way and the rumble of the train reminded me of the Hitchcock movie where the old lady vanishes on the train.

I stood in front of the door. I don’t know if it the funk I was in, or if I saw too many cowboy movies, or if I thought I could hear snoring; but whatever, I unsnapped my holster and pulled out the ‘45. I checked to make sure it was locked and loaded and slowly pushed down the door handle, using my left hand. Then I pushed the door open quickly. The gun pointed straight ahead.

Damn! I was staring right into the eyes of Billy the Kid. He was standing by the table. He was holding a ‘45 pistol. In my side vision I saw Sergeant Calvin C. Crowe asleep on the lower bunk. He was snoring.

I realized that my thumb was pressing on the safety, my finger pressing against the stiffness of the trigger. I also realized I was staring down a barrel of destruction. Not that I thought the lad had any idea of shooting me ; but his eyes told me he was scared and might shoot me in fright, and I wasn’t going to let that happen if I could help it.

‘Oh, Billy,’ I said to myself. ‘Oh, Billy, don’t press down on that safety lever. Please. Please don’t.’

What seemed like a long, long time was over in a few seconds. The kid hollered, ‘No! No!’ and he threw the weapon down. It hit the table with a loud crash and bounced to the floor.

Crowe broke out of his nap and sat upright. It took him a couple double-takes to realized what had happened and he quickly dove for his weapon, all the time shouting ‘F@#k! F@#k!

Crowe’s swearing and Billy’s crying brought me back to my senses and I stuck my weapon back in the holster and picking up my paperback off the chair seat, sat down and opened it pretending to read. My mind did not register on the print but gripping hard on the book hid the shaking of my hands. I just kept thinking over and over how close I came to pulling the trigger.

What a trio!

A teenager from the tough streets of Philly trying to explain between sobs that all he did was take the gun off the sergeant’s belly because the man was sleeping, and he was afraid it would fall on the floor. ‘I just was looking at it. I wasn’t going to do nothing with it. Just looking, honest.’

The man in charge, a rodeo rider from Calgary, mumbling the same apology over and over. ‘I didn’t sleep very good last night. I never thought I would fall asleep though. I don’t think I was out very long. Not very long.’

And me, fresh out of Basic and an Army school, a small-farm lad from Minnesota, only a few months out of my teenage years, trying to look calm by trying to read a book. I must have carried my act off because the other two believed it. If they only really knew that I might have been the most shook-up of the trio. ‘Why don’t both of you go down to the dining car and have some chow? Do you good.’

They both claimed they weren’t hungry; but it would be a long time before they could eat again, so I pulled the porter’s cord and ordered two cheeseburger baskets and a couple cokes. For a couple of guys who weren’t hungry, they sure wolfed down the food as soon as it came.

Crowe said that he needed a real drink as he finished off his coke. I reminded him he was on duty and he muttered about falling asleep on duty.

‘I worked my ass off for these stripes,’ he whined, ‘And now…Blink of an eye and I lose them. Hell, they might even slick-sleeve me. Kick my ass back to Canada. Who knows.

‘I don’t blame you, Ostertag. When you write the report you got to…’

‘Whoa there, Mister Sergeant. When I write the report? I’m not top- rank here. When you write the report…’

‘Yeah, you’re right. When I write the report.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘The report should be be short and sweet. Mission accomplished. Boring trip. Nothing happened.’

‘What you mean…?

‘What I mean, sergeant,’ I said, ‘The report should reflect it was a boring trip, nothing happened. You go off on some tangent to say something happened, but nothing came of it, and the three of us will spend more days in Repo while the Army red tapes the whole thing only to find out nothing happened.

‘Just let the three of us get on with our lives. The kid wants to go home. You want to get to town and buy your new Hog. And I want to go to jump school.’ And if they really believed that, I should have won an award for acting.

Crowe reverted to his normal egotistical persona. He handcuffed himself to our desperado before we exited the train and pushed Billy into the back seat of the MP car that met us at the depot. I got in the front like before.

“Piece of cake, Sarg. Piece of cake,’ he assured the driver, who hadn’t asked us how things went. ‘Sarg, did you have to go to a special school to get in the MP’s?’ The sergeant said he enlisted to be an MP and volunteered airborne at the school.

We were dropped off at MP HQ and Billy was whisked away to the stockade without being able to say goodbye. After we checked out and waited for the jeep to go back to Repo barracks Crowe asked the desk MP about putting in for a transfer to the MP’s. He said he thought he would make a good one. And he had the wings and rank already. ‘And,’ he added, ‘Experience.’

‘Yeah,’ the top NCO said,’You got it all, don’t you?’ He looked at me and asked if I wanted to transfer also.

‘I’ll pass,’ I said, quickly.

The next week I was busting tail in jump school. About midweek, Patricio, the mail clerk intercepted me when I came in the barracks to tell me some kid had  come to the barracks to say thanks and goodbye to me.

‘Must have made a hell of an impression on him,’ Pat said, smiling, ‘When I told him you were in jump school, he said he would lay odds you graduated first time cause you are some baaaaad ass.’

Billy the Kid also promised he’d look me up when he was old enough to enlist again. He left a piece of paper with his address in Philadelphia in case I get up there. He said he wanted to fix me up with his good looking sister.

I never heard from William P. Fuller again. And I sure wasn’t going to reup just to hang around to see him, if he ever did come back.

As far as Mr. All- Canada was concerned, I saw him once from across Slave Market Street in Fayetteville. I waved, and I knew he saw me; but he ducked in the nearest bar to avoid me. I didn’t bother to cross over and follow him in the bar; although I really would have liked to rub it in his face that I not only got my wings, I got them on the first try in the jump school. So much for his prediction that I would have a hard time to make it.

A few weeks prior to my getting my discharge, there was a Division rodeo competition. I went hoping to see if Crowe was as good a bronc rider as he bragged he was. I was disappointed when he wasn’t one of the competitors. I did see him though as I rode my motorcycle out of the parking lot. He and several other MP’s were waving their night sticks around conducting traffic. He did transfer to the MP’s. His ‘experience’ must have been the tipping point to get accepted.

When I got back home I got rid of all my guns, three long ones used for hunting, one hand gun used to try and hit the broad side of the barn. Never missed not having them. Hunting wasn’t the same anymore. My old hunting grounds were suburban lawns. Besides after my experience with Billy the Kid, shooting an unarmed Bambi or Thumper would not be much of a challenge. After all I had faced ‘the most dangerous game’.

For several years after I had the occasional dream of staring at the barrel of that gun, seeing the look in that kid’s eyes. I still think of how close three people came within a hair from having their lives changed – for the worse.

And I am eternally thankful that I managed to use my gun control to prevent it from happening.

And that’s a wrap

MY GUN CONTROL (II)

We checked into the hotel and ate in the coffee shop. I went back to the room but Crowe walked out of the hotel. He woke me up hours later with his loud swearing as he staggered around the room trying to undress and make it to bed. His snorting and snoring kept waking me during the rest of the night.

The hotel clerk had given us a pamphlet from the USO just down the street. It had things we could do that weekend. Crowe said he just wanted to sleep and asked if I had brought any aspirin with. I hadn’t, but even if I had I would have said no. I enjoyed the fact he was suffering from a hangover. I went to the USO alone, had a good free breakfast and then went on a bus tour of the City of Brotherly Love.

Later there was a dance at the club that evening and Sergeant Crowe went with me. There was a large group of military men, some in uniform, some in civies. Crowe was the only paratrooper. And the large number of girls surprised me.

We had some free cokes and snacks and watched the dancers. For the most part they were really good. Crowe made snide remarks about the legs must have spent a lot of time practicing. I pointed out that Philadelphia was the home of AMERICAN BANDSTAND and the girls probably all practiced trying to get on the show. Macho Man said he never heard of BANDSTAND. But he said it too quickly and I knew he was lying. I described it to him anyway, told him how high school kids watch it when they come home from school, and I know that the show on in a lot in Army day- rooms too.

‘Pretty popular,’ I said. ‘Kids really dig the emcee, Bill Cullen.’ I pulled that name out of my hat.

‘Dick Clark,’ snapped my companion, who had claimed to know nothing about the show.

Since none of the girls seemed to be awed by the paratrooper, and since neither of us had enough faith in our dancing ability, we wallflowered and then went back to the hotel.

The next day we went to the USO and got afternoon movie tickets to see PEYTON PLACE. I had read the book and Crowe said he had read some of the book, the parts his buddy had underlined. This movie must be something else, he told me, because it is not allowed to be shown in Canada. He was disappointed on all counts. ‘Didn’t show me nothing,’ he complained, ‘Should have just played it on the radio and saved the price of the tickets.’

I reminded him we got the tickets for free.

When we got outside in the sunlight a couple young girls ran over and pointed out that Crowe had the same patches on his uniform that one of the characters in the movie had. Crowe was elated and he began to tell the girls about the 82^nd and about being a paratrooper and… The more he talked the more young girls joined the group. Not having an 82^nd patch nor jump wings, I stood off to the side, silent.

After a bit the girls started to break off. I noticed Sgt Crowe was zeroing in on a couple and he motioned me to join him. I did and whispered one word in his ear, ‘jailbait’. That brought him to his senses and we went back to the hotel and ate. We fell asleep watching TV, but not before we left a wake-up call with the desk. We had a big day starting early in the morning.

There was a different officer at the jail desk, older, softer spoken, and heavier, then the one from Friday night; but Crowe wasn’t any different. In just a few minutes he managed to get the cop angry, demanding to have his gun back and the prisoner be brought to the desk at once.

‘That’ll do, Mister Sergeant,’ the desk sergeant said in a voice hardly above a whisper. ‘I know you were warned the other night about your attitude.’He looked at me and asked if there wasn’t something I could do to help ‘Mister Sergeant’ act like a real MP, even if he wasn’t one.

I shrugged my shoulders and said the sergeant was the boss.

‘Yeah, I understand,’ he said, ‘I did my hitch in the Marines. The sergeant is boss, and you are nothing. And that makes Mr. Sergeant the boss of nothing.’

Crowe didn’t say a word, but he gave me a nasty look, daring me to laugh; but I knew better. I was stuck with him for a few more days.

‘Look, guys,’ the old cop said, ‘This kid lied about his age to help out at home. His father is dead and his mother is working two jobs. He enlisted figuring there would be one less mouth to feed and he could send money home to boot. Never figuring just how much it cost a private in the Army to keep up. When he got booted from jump school, he lost face, and that extra money for jumping. He came home and got his old job back, delivering pizza to help get his mother over the winter. He said he was planning to go back in the spring. I believe him. He’s a good kid. The Army wasn’t bothering to look for him.. We picked him up for speeding. He was late delivering a damn pizza,

‘If anyone should be on the Army’s shit-list, it should be the recruiter that signed him up. Just a damn quota-filler,’ he said as he made out the transfer paperwork.

As we strapped on our holsters and 45’s, another guard brought Master William P. Fuller, aka Billy the Kid, to the desk. Crowe grabbed Billy’s elbow and the desk sergeant told him the prisoner would need to be handcuffed to leave the building. Crowe argued. Said there was no way ‘this punk’ could outrun him.

‘Not a foot race, Sergeant. It’s a prisoner transfer. Cuff the prisoner. Now!’

I figured I would be the one cuffed to the kid , but Crowe slapped a cuff on his own right wrist and went to put the other on Billy’s left wrist. The guard pointed out that the cuff should not go on Crowe’s gun hand. Crowe argued and said that he was left handed.

‘Damn it,’ the old cop said, ‘You should have asked for a left handed holster then. You never cuff a prisoner close to your gun. Didn’t they teach you anything in MP school?’ Both cops smiled.

We were told that a squad car would bring us to the train station. Crowe said we had chits for a cab.

‘You will go in a squad car, Mister. Sergeant’, and he added, ‘I am instructing the patrol officer to stay with until the three of you get on the train.’ He sighed. ‘I just got on duty a short time ago, and I am more than ready to go home already. Here’s your patrolman. Have a nice trip, gentlemen,’ he said, with a wave. ‘Oh, and Billy, you report back here when the Army is done with you. Remember, we promised we’d find you a better paying job than delivering pizza.’

I got in the front seat and Crowe and Billy in the back. We hadn’t even pulled away from the curb when Crowe threatened the kid with an old Army myth.

‘Look, punk,’ he snarled, ‘Don’t even think about getting away. You get away and me and the PFC lose our stripes and do stockade time until you are caught. But if I shoot you trying to escape, all it costs me is 64 cents for the bullet I shot you with. So what do you think I’m going do if you try to rabbit?’

The driver looked at me. ‘Is this guy for real?’

The train cabin was more than we expected. Large. Upper and lower bunks. A table in the center and three comfortable chairs. I placed one next to the door and plopped. Like the old cop said, it was still early in the day, but I ready to call it a day. I opened the paperback I had bought at the station and hoped it would keep me awake.

Crowe unlocked the cuffs and ordered Billy to ‘sit’, and then he went and fluffed a pillow up and sat on the lower bunk. He took off his jump boots and pulled his can of Kiwi out of his go-bag and worked on shining his precious boots. I began to read my book.

Billy was a talker. He was leery of Crowe so he tried to talk to me; but I disappointed him when I replied in only a few words, and went back to reading. He looked out the window; but eventually he decided to ask Crowe about being a paratroper, playing into the sergeant’s ego. This time the sergeant was delighted to answer any and all of the kid’s questions.

Young Mr. Fuller knew how to win a person over. He had a charming personality that was reflected in his smile and his eyes. I could see how the cops back at the jail took a liking to Billy the Kid. I didn’t let on but I was spending more time admiring the lad’s technique than I was in reading my book.

Crowe’s first lesson was how to polish jump boots correctly and how important it was for a trooper to have one special pair for dress up and another for every day. The second was jump school and the fact that Billy had flunked out his on his first attempt.

‘Most people flunk out their first try. Right now the school is rigged so only the very best make it the first time. And if they don’t make it the second time, that’s it. They got all the troopers they need, what with the 11^th Airborne disbanded over in Europe, and the turnover of 82^nd and the Hundred and First pretty slow. A lot do like I did and reup.

‘Now in the jump school I got my wings, there was over 300 started. Only 83 graduated and out of that 83 there was only 31 of us that were first timers.’

‘You made it through on your first time,’ Billy said excitedly.

‘Yup,’ Sergeant Crowe boasted. ‘So you see, Billy, when you get out of the Army this time, go home and get in shape. Two, three hundred pushups – everyday. A lot of chin-ups. That’s where us smaller guys got it over taller guys… like the PFC,’ he said pointing at me. ‘No offense, Ostertag, but you’ll have a rough time making it. At least the first time. You wise up and know do things differently the second time.’

‘No offense taken, sarg. Thanks for cluing me in.’ I knew his whole spiel on jump school was aimed more at me then Billy. Crowe wanted to get into my head and stroke his ego at the same time.

He pulled the ‘45 out of his holster and asked if either Billy or I had ever qualified with one. We both shook out heads. I pointed out that there was only a few hours devoted in Basic to the gun, just enough to realized how hard it was to qualify with one. Crowe told how he qualified in Advanced Infantry school. And then he began to give a lesson on the weapon, known in the Army as US Pistol, Caliber , 45, M1911A1 He began by showing all the unique safety features like the need for the shooter to hold the grip or it won’t fire, and if someone is pressing against the the muzzle it will also prevent the pistol from firing. And of course the main safety lever on the side.

Billy was all ears. I was bored. The sergeant had told us when we boarded the train that he and I would eat in shifts and Billy would have food sent to the cabin. I stood up when Crowe began to break down the weapon and announced that I was going to go eat. Unless he wanted to go first. He was taking delight in showing off his knowledge and waved me goodbye.

To Be Continued And  Concluded

MY GUN CONTROL (I)

My adventure started on a quiet morning in Fort Bragg’s Repo Depot, processing center, Army’s idea of limbo. I had just graduated Signal school in Georgia and was waiting to be sent to my new outfit, 82^nd Signal Battalion. And once there the next step would be going to airborne jump school. Three weeks of hell ending with a three jump- day and a two jump- day and graduation.

It was a Friday and with the weekend there would be at least three days more before I got processed. Days with nothing to do but think and fret about what was in store for me. Except for the sergeant, sitting on his bunk closest to the door, and myself the barracks was empty. The other men in Repo were either on KP or doing an Army make-work like picking all the pebbles off the grass. They were slick- sleeve privates, I was a one- stripe, PFC. The sergeant and I got out of this work details because of our rank; but my rank was too low for the sergeant to stoop to talk to me, and that suited me fine; he came off as a stuck- up jerk.

When he first came into the barracks one of the men had tried talking to him and was shouted at, ‘You will address me as Sergeant Crowe, soldier. Not Hey, Sarg.

Naturally the name evoked a few hidden ‘caw- caws’ from the men.

Crowe stood up, tall. Well as tall as any 5’8” man can stand. He remarked it wasn’t the first time he heard that B.S. and volunteered to leave his stripes on the bed if anybody wanted to step out back and caw-caw to his face. Crowe was short but stocky and in good shape. Nobody took him up on his offer and nobody bothered to try to talk to him again, including me.

His 82^nd patch and wings that had seen quite a few washings, so that meant he had been a paratrooper for a while. His sergeant’s patch was brand new, so that meant he had re-upped, gone to some kind of advanced training and now he’s waiting to either go back to his old outfit or a new one. He just sat on his footlocker and spit-shined his two pair of Corcoran jump boots, over and over. He’d stand tall in any inspection.

I was laying on my bunk putting myself into a relaxing self-hypnosis state to relax. I had just put my calves to sleep and was working on my thighs when the door opened and the company clerk bellowed, ‘Ten Hut’!

The sergeant and I both jumped to attention as the clerk and a captain with an MP band walked in.

‘At ease, men,’ the captain ordered. ‘Sergeant Crowe, PFC Ostertag, I am Captain McElroy.’ I looked quickly at Crowe and he looked at me. The captain laughed, ‘No, men. Not any bad news. Good news.’ I sighed and I imagine Crowe did the same.

‘Instead of going into Fayetteville and drinking 3.2 beer, you are going on a trip to someplace you always wanted to see. Guess where.’

Hawaii was Crowe’s guess. Mine was Paris.

McElroy smiled and shook his head. ‘Nooo,’ he said. ‘If it was either of those places I’d be going and you’d be stuck in Fayetteville. It’s one of the birthplaces of our country, Philadelphia. Hey, cut the frowns’, he laughed. ‘It beats Fayetteville. There’s a soldier in jail up there that we want back here.’

Crowe tried to ask a question, but the captain just waved him off. ‘Pack a go-bag to do you ‘til Monday. Get into your Class A’s and report to me in Repo HQ.’

Crowe and I did as ordered and we did it in silence.

McElroy explained the Philly cops wanted the prisoner out on Monday morning. The MPs were swamped. The Asian Flu was hitting them hard and there was a big bad weekend coming up. Mid-month payday for the Air Force at Pope Field. Crowe and I were the two highest ranked available in Repo. He gave us the Orders, chits and per diem we would need, MP arm bands, a set of cuffs, and each of us a ‘45 with holster and belt and a quick refresher course on the weapon.

When I buckled on the gun, it felt like it weighed a ton. When Crowe buckled his on, his face lit up and I swear he added a few inches to his stature.

We were driven to the train station and got out tickets. We traveled in coach going but were promised we’ve have a private cabin coming back with the prisoner.

It wasn’t until we were grabbing a meal in the train’s dining car that Crowe offered me his hand and ‘introduced’ himself. ‘Sergeant Calvin C. Crowe, PFC. You can just call me Sergeant Crowe.’

I shook his hand. ‘PFC Donald E. Ostertag. You can call me Don, Sarg.’

Calvin C. was a talker once he started. He began with his background. He had grown up on a small ranch outside Calgary, Canada. He had worked with horses a lot and rode in small rodeos, hoping to qualify to ride in the Calgary Stampede.

I broke in and mentioned that I had worked a lot with horses also. Buying, selliing, boarding, breaking…

My words went in one ear and out the other. He was interested in a monologue not a dialogue. I didn’t have enough rank to interest him. Plus I was a leg, a soldier that was not a paratrooper. Our food came and I busied myself with a cheeseburger and fries while he continued with his history, between bites.

He enlisted in the US Army specifically to join the paratroopers. When his first hitch, three years, would be up he would have qualified for US citizenship to go along with his Canadian citizenship. He had found a home in the army. As soon as he got his two stripes, he reenlisted for an extra six years. The first reenlistment brought a big bonus and six years really brought a big bonus. Plus it brought that third stripe, the rank of sergeant. He was so proud of his sergeant chevrons I wondered if he had them tattooed on his left bicep to go with the tattoo of the paratrooper wings which I knew he had to have on his right bicep.

When he got settled back in his old outfit, he was going to buy himself a Harley Hog with some of his bonus money. I asked him what school he asked for with his new enlistment. He floored me when he said Advanced Infantry.

When he first enlisted he could have had his choice of what he wanted to do, an Army school with a good trade, or he could have requested where he wanted to be stationed like Europe; and then he could have volunteered airborne. This way he got what very few wanted, the Infantry, first line in a war, not much of a trade in civilian life. He could have gotten a choice of school or station with his new reenlistment, but he took more Infantry training. Go figure. He was pretty well talked out when we got back to our seats where we both fell asleep.

When we got in the cab in Philadelphia he surprised me by telling the cabbie to take us to the city jail. I would have thought we would into our hotel first, but he was the boss.

The desk sergeant read our orders and commented it would be hard to let Billy the Kid go

Crowe quickly asked if this guy was some kind of desperado. The desk sergeant just laughed and told us that our charge was just a kid, too young to be in the Army.. Seems he lied about his age and when he flunked out of jump school, he went home without permission.

‘Nice boy. We’ve a shine to Master William P. Fuller.’

‘Deserter,’ Crowe said. ‘Damn chicken- shit deserter.

The desk sergeant snapped, ‘Nah. He was still wearing his dog tags and field jacket when he got picked up. He had every intention of going back. You two are going to escort a kid who should be in high school not in the Army. You’re going to bring him back to camp and after a couple days he’s going to be sent back home. Some desperado.

‘Now according to this order you don’t get him until Monday morning’, he added.

‘I still want to see him,’ Crowe said, ‘Tonight.’

‘Okay, I guess that’s your prerogative’. He rang for a guard. ‘Leave your weapons with me.’

I was glad to hand over my belt, holster, and weapon. Sergeant Crowe looked like he was going to argue, but slowly set his 45, and only his 45, on the desk. The guard escorted us to the cell and Crowe demanded that the door be unlocked so we could go in. William P. Fuller looked up. He had a big smile on his face.

Sergeant Crowe bellowed out ‘Ten Hut’, walked over as the lad jumped to attention and pushed the kid against the stone wall of cell. ‘Okay, punk, why did you do it?’ He snarled as he grabbed the lad’s shirt. Surprised both and prisoner and me with that move.

The guard pushed me out of the way and poked Crowe in the ribs with his night stick. He ordered both of us to go back to the desk. We heard him consoling the frightened boy as we left. We stood at the desk and waited for the guard to come. The guard was angry and told the desk sergeant what had happened.

‘You don’t come in our jail and mistreat our prisoners,’ the desk sergeant hollered. Crowe tried to talk, but shut up when the cop hit the desk top. ‘You keep this shit up and I’m going to call the guy who signed this order, and tell him we refuse to entrust the prisoner in your care, Sergeant Calvin C. Crowe,’ He continued to read off the orders in his hands. ‘Says here you two ain’t even real MP’s. Just some jokers they had who were handy.’ He wrote out a receipt for our weapons and told us we’d get them back come Monday morning. Then he told Crowe to leave his holster also.

Naturally Crowe objected. He said he had every right to carry his authorized weapon. But he desk sergeant disagreed. ‘There’s too many guns on the streets now. We don’t need some teenage gang dragging you in an alley and walking out with your gun. Almost all guns used in crimes were stolen.’ Crowe said that would never happen. The cop just laughed and said he bettercall ‘this here Captain McElroy’ and get a couple real MPs sent.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve only have one stripe to lose.’

That brought Crowe back to earth. He touched his new sergeant chevron and agreed to leave the weapon. But he wanted to keep the holster and belt. The desk sergeant shook his head and pointed out it would really be stupid to get hit over the head because somebody thought there was a gun in that empty holster. Crowe threw the belt and holster on the desk and ordered me to follow him.

I waved goodbye to the desk sergeant after thanking him and saying, ‘See you Monday.’ He shook his head and saluted.

To Be Continued

 

THE ART OF RAYMOND (II)

…Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker!

There was a collective silence in the room broken when the sound of a very young voice stated, ‘That guy ain’t even got underpants on.’ The ice broke. The grandkids hooted and laughed. The adults tried to muffle their laughs.

Dad shook his head and told Raymond, ‘Take that damn thing off the table. Put it someplace where we can eat without having to look at it.’

Some of us began to clear the wrappings. Some began to take the plates from the pile and hand them out to be set in place. The little ones, declaring how hungry they were, moved to their chairs at the card table.

Mom hadn’t moved or uttered a sound since she had finally unwrapped her gift, and then she said, ‘Raymond’. Slow, dragging out the name softly at first and building into a shout, followed by sounds of angry crying. Everything stopped. The grandkids stopped laughing. The adults stopped getting the table. Raymond set the statue back on the table.

‘Six months! Six months,’ she said when she manged to speak. ‘Oh, I know you’ll love it, Mom. Six months he left me guess what it was. Six months waiting for that, that… I don’t even know what to call that damn thing

‘The guy in the store said it’s called The Thinker, Mom. It’s great art. A Frenchman made the original,’ Raymond told her.

‘Great art?’ she repeated. ‘Great art?

Now Mom was a small town farm girl who never went further than fifty miles from where she was born until she crossed the river into Wisconsin to watch me play in a high school football game. She had her own idea of what great art was. It was something that you would find in a church, or in a parochial school, or reproduced on a funeral home calendar. The only time she went in a museum was a high school field trip to the Natural Museum, a spooky building by the state capital, that had a real mummy in it. She never forgot the mummy. She never went into a museum again. Great art, humph.

‘A man without a stitch of clothing on…And he’s sitting on the pot.’

That observation got the grandkids laughing again. And some of the adults also.

Mom continued and everyone fell back into silence. ‘Two years,’ she sobbed, ‘Two years Raymond was gone. And, oh, how I missed him. Two years every night, on my knees praying he would be safe. Praying he wouldn’t get attacked by a polar bear or that the Commies wouldn’t bomb that radar place. Two years.’

‘Attacked by a polar bear,’ said the same young voice that mentioned the absence of underpants. ‘That’s scary.’

‘Two years and boy was I happy when he made it home from the service in one piece. And I was so happy even when he bought me a Christmas present way back in June. I figured it might be one of his tricks but I didn’t care. Then I thought maybe it wasn’t a trick. But I never thought it would be something like this. A naked guy…’

‘Sitting on the pot,’ the little voice helped his grandmother finish. ‘I’m hungry, Mommy. When can we eat?’

‘Oh, and another thing’, she said pointing her finger at her youngest, ‘You told me you bought it in a store on Seven Corners. There ain’t a store there. There’s only antique shops. Used things. Old used things. Couldn’t even buy me something new. Bought me something used.’

Raymond took the used statue into the living room and brought back another present, which he set down in front of Mom and asked her to open this present. He promised it was not a trick and it wasn’t used..

She unwrapped it down to the box it came in. It was a home-made ice cream maker. She didn’t cry but she pushed it away.

‘Now why would I ever want to turn a crank for a couple hours just to get a couple ice cube trays of flaky ice cream, when I can go to Huber’s store and buy any kind of ice cream I want. And probably cost less too. Home- made ice cream maker,’ she flicked her wrist to signal Raymond to take it away.’

Today the easiest way to give a present to a hard to please person is to give a them a gift card. Let them get their own gift. Not so in the 60’s. The idea of a piece of plastic with strange markings on it could be a substitute for cash or check was as far fetched as thinking there would ever be a contraption you could sit on the kitchen table and order anything from around the world. And the darn thing wouldn’t be connected to anything, not even a wall socket.

And Raymond had done the 60’s version of cash card. You give the hard- to- please a gift you know they won’t want, or even bother to open the box. You place the reciept in a sealed envelope with the name of the gift and the store where it was bought on top of the box. The recipient just takes it back to the store and redeems it for something they want. Oh, you could give cash or write a check but the money would just get mixed up with monies used for everyday expenses, not something special. Mom knew what Raymond had done. The sealed envelope was in plain sight on the top of the box. She just wanted another shot at him.

‘Mom,’ Raymond said, ‘Tomorrow I’ll bring you to Monkey Wards to exchange it for something cool. Okay?’

He did. She did and bought a blue flannel robe home. It cost more than what she returned and Raymond made up the difference. The robe became the mainstay of her everyday wardrobe.

The Thinker sat by the tree and we all believed that come the 6^th of January, Epiphany, when the Christmas decorations were taken down, the statue would be thrown out with the tree. But not so. It sat there afterwards, a few feet away from the rocking chair where Mom fell asleep each night watching TV. Come summer when Mom wanted a cool breeze while she ironed clothes in the living room, she used the statue as a door stop for the front door.

And then one day it disappeared. Since the movie, The Christmas Story, was years from being made, Mom could not be accused of staging a variation of the accident used to get rid of the unwanted leg-lap.

‘I set up the ironing board and I must have not locked the legs because as soon as I put the iron on it, it took a nose dive and the iron flew off and smashed The Thinker’s head. Couldn’t glue it. Just small chunks and dust. Had Raymond throw it in the trash barrel when he came home.’

‘Did he feel bad about his gift being broken.’

‘Heck no,’ she said, ‘He couldn’t care less about it. The statue wasn’t the real gift. The trick he played was the gift he wanted to give me. Proof he’s still the same old Raymond we remembered. ’

And to paraphrase a show biz declaration:

And that’s an un-wrap, folks