https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVsEQA?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Of course this is Donald Trump, so there's no way to tell for sure, but it looks like he's really going to do it this time. Whether or not he can get away with it, and whether or not it will do more harm than good remains to be seen. The president can do a lot of things under a declared state of emergency, and I don't know if this is one of them, but I've got a feeling we are about to find out. US immigration policy has been screwed up for a long time. What's different now is the sheer number of people illegally crossing, day after day, week after week. This can't go on forever, something is bound to happen, either accidently or on purpose, and I don't think it will be pretty. Indeed, it's already not pretty, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
Asians have been coming in for long time. We don't see it so much in the Midwest, but they certainly do on the West Coast, and I suppose they've gotten used to it by now. I'm not aware of any problem issues associated with Asian immigration, unless you count the way they have taken over the telephones. Many of those telephone Asians are probably working from Asia, so it might not be an immigration issue at all, but it's still a problem that is probably not going away anytime soon. Oh well, we've still got the internet. But for how long? The last social networking site that I frequented before this one was bought out by a bunch of Indonesians, and they locked the rest of us out. I'm not talking about Indonesian immigrants, I'm talking about Indonesians still living in Indonesia. That's right, Indo-fucking-nesia! Last I heard they were still eating people over there, and now they are taking over the civilized world right from the comfort of their own homes. Technology is indeed a two edged sword.
I am not a doctor, and I don't even play one on TV, so I don't know what to say about Old Dog being off is feed lately. I seem to remember seeing, on medical forms that I have filled out, that a "sudden" gain or loss of weight is a concern. Make of that what you will.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Flaps
So the big report comes out and Mueller is playing it very close to the vest, not coming to any conclusions about the collusion confusion. It reminds me of situations when the authorities know a culprit is guilty as sin but choose not to pursue the case because they don't think that they can get a conviction with 100% certainty at this time. They can sit back and wait, sooner or later the bad guy will say or do something stupid and that will be that and justice will be served. We're still a long way from the end of this story and Trump isn't out of the woods yet.
-----
I'm as much of a fan of the rule of law as the next guy but I have a question for Mr. Beagles: should there be some wiggle room in the enforcement of the law? The police and the courts have a lot of discretion but how can the law be fairly enforced?
Immigration policy in the US is all screwed up and what else can I say? Some laws and policies get a life of their own and once enacted they are difficult to change and repeal. The big flap is about the caravans and the problems they pose and we shouldn't be farting around while the issues are being addressed. But what about the lesser flaps that involve the temporary visas that allow workers in the high tech sectors? Aren't those workers, many from Asia, taking jobs from US citizens because they will work more cheaply? There's some kind of unholy alliance between immigration policy and big business in the US and I'd like to see it get straightened out.
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Since you guys are a few years older than me I was wondering if you've noticed that certain foods no longer agree with you or that your appetite has changed. I've been off my feed lately and seldom feel hungry regardless of how little I've eaten. I don't mind that I've lost some weight; I read somewhere that it's healthier to be a skinny old coot than a fat one but that sounds like a crackpot theory to me.
-----
I'm as much of a fan of the rule of law as the next guy but I have a question for Mr. Beagles: should there be some wiggle room in the enforcement of the law? The police and the courts have a lot of discretion but how can the law be fairly enforced?
Immigration policy in the US is all screwed up and what else can I say? Some laws and policies get a life of their own and once enacted they are difficult to change and repeal. The big flap is about the caravans and the problems they pose and we shouldn't be farting around while the issues are being addressed. But what about the lesser flaps that involve the temporary visas that allow workers in the high tech sectors? Aren't those workers, many from Asia, taking jobs from US citizens because they will work more cheaply? There's some kind of unholy alliance between immigration policy and big business in the US and I'd like to see it get straightened out.
-----
Since you guys are a few years older than me I was wondering if you've noticed that certain foods no longer agree with you or that your appetite has changed. I've been off my feed lately and seldom feel hungry regardless of how little I've eaten. I don't mind that I've lost some weight; I read somewhere that it's healthier to be a skinny old coot than a fat one but that sounds like a crackpot theory to me.
Friday, March 29, 2019
Trampling
You guys know how I feel about the rule of law. If the cat rule was unnecessary then they shouldn't have passed it in the first place. Once they decided that they were never going to enforce it, then they should have repealed it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I knew that Trump was a mean prick and a lying sack of shit, but I didn't know that he'd been trampling on the Constitution. Would somebody like to refer me to one news article that reports Trump trampling on the Constitution? Ideally, the article should provide the specific article and section that Trump has allegedly trampled on.
Speaking of trampling, the reason I am concerned about all those illegal immigrants is that they are trampling over our border and our rule of law in such great numbers. If people want to let them in, they should repeal the immigration laws and throw open the gates. The way it is now, they are rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior. No good can come of that.
Another episode in the continuing saga:
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVfYiY?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
I knew that Trump was a mean prick and a lying sack of shit, but I didn't know that he'd been trampling on the Constitution. Would somebody like to refer me to one news article that reports Trump trampling on the Constitution? Ideally, the article should provide the specific article and section that Trump has allegedly trampled on.
Speaking of trampling, the reason I am concerned about all those illegal immigrants is that they are trampling over our border and our rule of law in such great numbers. If people want to let them in, they should repeal the immigration laws and throw open the gates. The way it is now, they are rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior. No good can come of that.
Another episode in the continuing saga:
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVfYiY?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
a thousand eggs and punkins blooming
I thought I had explained how the issue was resolved, they passed their rule and then didn't enforce it. They probably didn't need to pass the rule because if they hadn't and if another cat problem arose, which hasn't happened, they could always have gotten rid of the person on a nuisance rule. They didn't need to pass the rule, but they were wise to let it slide once they did.
The reason Beagles finds so many articles about immigration is that the flames are being fanned by his ilk. There are many more articles about Trump trampling on the constitution but Beagles seems to have no problem with that. I have often read Beagles saying that things that don't impinge on him in the swamp don't bother him. Since there has been no news of ketchup bottles disappearing from the tabletops of Cheboygan and being replaced by salsa I assume he is not being impinged. Myself I live in a place a lot of those peoples are coming to, and I have to tell Beagles I have no problem with it at all.
Once the Clean Slate took power there was anticipation that vengeance would be wreaked upon the evil queen who had wasted our money on trivial crap and there was some suspicion that that some of the things she did weren't quite legal, and many of us expected an investigation. Myself I was all for putting her on a combustible boat in the river an shooting fire arrows at it, but that's just me. None of those things ever happened, and I expect that the new board members did not want to set a precedent in case they, ahem, found themselves in similar circumstances.
But in the afterglow of triumph of the Resistance a thousand flowers were blooming. I was only a minor peon but I got on the social committee and I got to have my Marina City Art Club. I had envisioned a bunch of artistes all working together in our preferred media and pausing to discuss finer points of Art, but what I got is more like a small group of people who daub at paper while they exchange the gossip of the day, but I've kept it going for about six years now.
During the dark days of the evil queen there had been almost no social activities. There were no movies, no clubs, no activities, no newsletter, nothing where the community could get together. We at the social committee aimed to end all that, I thought I had an idea for a fun activity where that could happen, how about if we had like a party before Easter where we all got together and dyed eggs and handed out Easter candy. The other members of the social committee thought it was a good idea, but then nothing happened. Well shit. But then one afternoon walking out of the building it hit me, why don't I do it myself?
There was a woman who did Ukrainian, or was it Lithuanian (they both look alike to me, but it makes a big difference to the Ukranians and the Lithuanians) Easter eggs, and I enlisted her. I had my little cadre of Art Clubbers and I enlisted them in buying and hard boiling eggs and buying candy and dyes and Easter crapola, and making posters and it was a pretty good success, and the yearly Eggstravaganza was born. Six months later came the Punkin Palooza, and they are entering their sixth year now There was a Valentine's Day Vavaboom, but that got zero attendance so I don't speak of that often.
My my, this goes on and on, and I hope I am not boring the dawgs, but once I get started on a story I just can't end until its finished. If the dawgs, or as Beagles calls us, esteemed colleagues, want to discuss something else they are of course welcome.
The reason Beagles finds so many articles about immigration is that the flames are being fanned by his ilk. There are many more articles about Trump trampling on the constitution but Beagles seems to have no problem with that. I have often read Beagles saying that things that don't impinge on him in the swamp don't bother him. Since there has been no news of ketchup bottles disappearing from the tabletops of Cheboygan and being replaced by salsa I assume he is not being impinged. Myself I live in a place a lot of those peoples are coming to, and I have to tell Beagles I have no problem with it at all.
Once the Clean Slate took power there was anticipation that vengeance would be wreaked upon the evil queen who had wasted our money on trivial crap and there was some suspicion that that some of the things she did weren't quite legal, and many of us expected an investigation. Myself I was all for putting her on a combustible boat in the river an shooting fire arrows at it, but that's just me. None of those things ever happened, and I expect that the new board members did not want to set a precedent in case they, ahem, found themselves in similar circumstances.
But in the afterglow of triumph of the Resistance a thousand flowers were blooming. I was only a minor peon but I got on the social committee and I got to have my Marina City Art Club. I had envisioned a bunch of artistes all working together in our preferred media and pausing to discuss finer points of Art, but what I got is more like a small group of people who daub at paper while they exchange the gossip of the day, but I've kept it going for about six years now.
During the dark days of the evil queen there had been almost no social activities. There were no movies, no clubs, no activities, no newsletter, nothing where the community could get together. We at the social committee aimed to end all that, I thought I had an idea for a fun activity where that could happen, how about if we had like a party before Easter where we all got together and dyed eggs and handed out Easter candy. The other members of the social committee thought it was a good idea, but then nothing happened. Well shit. But then one afternoon walking out of the building it hit me, why don't I do it myself?
There was a woman who did Ukrainian, or was it Lithuanian (they both look alike to me, but it makes a big difference to the Ukranians and the Lithuanians) Easter eggs, and I enlisted her. I had my little cadre of Art Clubbers and I enlisted them in buying and hard boiling eggs and buying candy and dyes and Easter crapola, and making posters and it was a pretty good success, and the yearly Eggstravaganza was born. Six months later came the Punkin Palooza, and they are entering their sixth year now There was a Valentine's Day Vavaboom, but that got zero attendance so I don't speak of that often.
My my, this goes on and on, and I hope I am not boring the dawgs, but once I get started on a story I just can't end until its finished. If the dawgs, or as Beagles calls us, esteemed colleagues, want to discuss something else they are of course welcome.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Legislative Overkill
The condo cat issue could have been easily resolved by simply limiting the allowable number of cats in each unit. All the other stuff was legislative overkill. It would not be necessary to conduct regular cat inspections either. All they would have to do is, if somebody files a cat complaint, pay a visit to the cat person and see how many cats they have. If they have too many cats, you tell them that they have so many days to come into compliance or eviction proceedings will be initiated. Then do it. The purpose of the rule should not have been to get the cat haters off the board's back, the purpose of the rule should have been to allow responsible cat owners to keep a reasonable number of cats without making their neighbors miserable. I would be interested in hearing how the whole thing turned out, and maybe Uncle Ken will tell us.
I was going to challenge Uncle Ken's assertion that most illegal immigrants are harmless but, for the purposes of discussion, let us assume that the assertion is correct. Like any other group of people, I'm sure there are some good ones and some bad ones, but that's not my point. My point has always been that there are just too many of them for the current system to handle. The way to solve that is by either limiting the number of them coming in or changing the system to accommodate the number that are currently overwhelming it. Doing nothing serves the best interests of nobody, including the immigrants themselves. Apparently somebody has told them that it's easy to get into the US, and they must be disappointed when they find out that it isn't.
I have previously asked my esteemed colleagues if they had any other ideas about solving this problem, and they have denied that there even is a problem. Well, if everything is fine the way it is, why are there articles in the news almost every day about the issue? Like I said, all I know about this is what the news media has told me. Of course the news media is not a perfect source of information, but it's all I've got to work with. Do my esteemed colleagues have a better source of information to which they can refer me?
Here's another one: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVmpL9?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Here's another one: https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVmpL9?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
the clean slate sweeps
The way I see it is that when I go to the Institute and there are no words there except the last ones that I have written, just as when I look at my doorstep in the morning and there is no newspaper, I have a right to complain. On the other hand sometimes the dawgs have something else going on or maybe nothing to say that particular day and they have a right to not post, and they also have a right to complain about my complaining about their not posting. I suppose I also have a right to complain about their complaining about my complaining but you can see where that goes.
I only went to current events in response to the previous post by Beagles, who I might add has a perfect right to change the subject whenever he feels like it, as does Old Dog who was not bound to comment on current events but could have continued the discussion of my old pal Steve and about army life if he was so inclined.
I smoke one pack of cigs every other week which works fine, except the weeks when I don't smoke I develop a strong urge and if I give in to it to just smoke one or two I know I will smoke the whole pack so I have taking up vaping a bit. Not as satisfying as the real thing, but close, and if you are into the feel of throat at the back of your throat, and the sight of clouds leaving your nose and mouth, even better.
Yes, I meant to imply that most illegals are here to take low-paying jobs and not to cause trouble.
And here I am going to continue my story even though neither dawg has expressed interest because once I get started I am like the cowboy in the story of the spittoon, and because I have a right to write about whatever I want.
I was not to return to a board meeting until maybe five years ago. Some woman had accumulated thirty-some cats with the resulting aroma problem. They found a way to boot her out, but instead of dusting off their hands and patting each other on the back for a job well done they promulgated a whole series of cat rules. Only one cat per studio, two per one bedroom, three per two bedroom, AND you had to register your cat(s) and pay five bucks per annually AND provide the board with up-to-date photos of your felines. Outrageous! Uncle Ken went down to the board meeting to raise a ruckus.
Board meetings are, as I have noted, stultifying affairs, a lot of yak yak about things you don't know or care about, but there is a short period when the peons are allowed to shoot off their mouths. As I was shooting off mine I noticed a subtle shift in the attitude of the board, they weren't saying so in so many words, but I got the impression that these rules were just window dressing for the cat-hating faction and they were not going to be breaking into apartments searching for one cat too many, but maybe if you had thirty-something and they became odoriferous this rule would make it easier to boot them.
Well alright then. I never registered or submitted any photos of my cats nor did any of my cat-owning buddies and everything was perfectly fine. I know Beagles hates a rule not being enforced, but I believe it is essential for the smooth running of a government or a condo board.
But then our popular board president died and his wife took his post because everybody thought that she would continue his moderate ways, but she was mad, mad, mad, was spending our money like water on frivolous projects and she had a majority on the board that did her bidding and kept the proceedings opaque and there was nothing that could be done to stop her.
Except her term was coming up. Up rose the Resistance holding subversive meetings in the bar of the building and naming itself The Clean Slate and rising up to sweep the scoundrels out of office, every last one. I was at the meeting when the ballots were counted. For some reason us peons were ushered out of the room and we peons clustered outside looking in through the glass door, and then from inside the room exaltation, and then it spread to us peons. Victory! I felt the way I felt the way I felt in November of 2008 when all the Obama supporters were flowing north over the river under my balcony after their victory rally. From now on everything was going to be just fine.
But of course the story was to be continued, as this one will be.
I only went to current events in response to the previous post by Beagles, who I might add has a perfect right to change the subject whenever he feels like it, as does Old Dog who was not bound to comment on current events but could have continued the discussion of my old pal Steve and about army life if he was so inclined.
I smoke one pack of cigs every other week which works fine, except the weeks when I don't smoke I develop a strong urge and if I give in to it to just smoke one or two I know I will smoke the whole pack so I have taking up vaping a bit. Not as satisfying as the real thing, but close, and if you are into the feel of throat at the back of your throat, and the sight of clouds leaving your nose and mouth, even better.
Yes, I meant to imply that most illegals are here to take low-paying jobs and not to cause trouble.
And here I am going to continue my story even though neither dawg has expressed interest because once I get started I am like the cowboy in the story of the spittoon, and because I have a right to write about whatever I want.
I was not to return to a board meeting until maybe five years ago. Some woman had accumulated thirty-some cats with the resulting aroma problem. They found a way to boot her out, but instead of dusting off their hands and patting each other on the back for a job well done they promulgated a whole series of cat rules. Only one cat per studio, two per one bedroom, three per two bedroom, AND you had to register your cat(s) and pay five bucks per annually AND provide the board with up-to-date photos of your felines. Outrageous! Uncle Ken went down to the board meeting to raise a ruckus.
Board meetings are, as I have noted, stultifying affairs, a lot of yak yak about things you don't know or care about, but there is a short period when the peons are allowed to shoot off their mouths. As I was shooting off mine I noticed a subtle shift in the attitude of the board, they weren't saying so in so many words, but I got the impression that these rules were just window dressing for the cat-hating faction and they were not going to be breaking into apartments searching for one cat too many, but maybe if you had thirty-something and they became odoriferous this rule would make it easier to boot them.
Well alright then. I never registered or submitted any photos of my cats nor did any of my cat-owning buddies and everything was perfectly fine. I know Beagles hates a rule not being enforced, but I believe it is essential for the smooth running of a government or a condo board.
But then our popular board president died and his wife took his post because everybody thought that she would continue his moderate ways, but she was mad, mad, mad, was spending our money like water on frivolous projects and she had a majority on the board that did her bidding and kept the proceedings opaque and there was nothing that could be done to stop her.
Except her term was coming up. Up rose the Resistance holding subversive meetings in the bar of the building and naming itself The Clean Slate and rising up to sweep the scoundrels out of office, every last one. I was at the meeting when the ballots were counted. For some reason us peons were ushered out of the room and we peons clustered outside looking in through the glass door, and then from inside the room exaltation, and then it spread to us peons. Victory! I felt the way I felt the way I felt in November of 2008 when all the Obama supporters were flowing north over the river under my balcony after their victory rally. From now on everything was going to be just fine.
But of course the story was to be continued, as this one will be.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Words Failed Me
"When Beagles discovers the busboy at his local eatery has a long and drooping mustache and is secretly replacing all the ketchup with bottles of salsa then I will start worrying about the invasion." - Uncle Ken
I didn't respond to this yesterday because I didn't know what to say. I seem to remember that he has mentioned busboys when the subject of illegal immigration came up in the past. What's up with that? Is he trying to imply that most illegals end up meekly working low paying jobs and not causing any trouble? On the other hand, Trump and his ilk say that they are a bunch of low life criminals that are infesting the country like a plague. Although all I know about it is what I have picked up in the news media, I suspect that the truth lies somewhere in between those two extreme positions.
While everybody is arguing about building walls, nobody seems to be talking about fixing the asylum law, which was never designed to handle the volume of cases that they are currently getting. The system was overwhelmed at least once in the past, when the Mariel Boat Lift brought all those refugees from Castro's Cuba but, other than that, I don't remember ever hearing about problems like they are having with it today until fairly recently. Has it occurred to anybody that what we need is a different system?
I enjoy reading and writing stories about those thrilling days of yesteryear as much as the next guy, but I think we at the Institute would be remiss in our civic duty if we limited our discussions to ancient history. The movers and shakers of today seem to be lost in the darkness of ignorance and incompetence. It is up to us to illuminate the path to truth and righteousness for them. If we don't do it, who will?
Fun on base
The Institute depends
(clicketty clacking before dawn)
On Uncle Ken
Is that a complaint or merely a critical observation? Please don't take it personally when the posts to this forum don't meet your perceived schedule of frequency, but this has been discussed before.
One of the pitfalls of modern life is that we have become habituated to immediate communication and responses; we want everything now and don't allow ourselves the luxury of contemplative thought. I was enjoying the discussions around Uncle Ken's pal Steve and the trip down army memory lane I share with Mr. Beagles but then current affairs reared it's ugly head and all I can think of is "meh!" Back to the same old shit and I am not inclined to give it much thought any more as it seems a waste of my time except as entertainment value; part comedy, part horror show, and both beyond my control.
-----
When Mr. Beagles mentioned the way that he was classified 1-A by the Alaska Draft Board I immediately thought of Trump and his excuse of bone spurs to the New York Draft Board. All Draft Boards were local, I think, and had their own quotas and methods of meeting them. I can imagine the Alaska folks looking at Mr. Beagles draft status and saying, "This guy was born in Illinois, screw him!" Likewise the New York folks might be thinking, "Hey, I know this kid's father and bone spurs sound like a grievous medical condition to me; deferment granted!"
Bone spurs still sound like a weak excuse to me but what flies in New York doesn't fly in Texas, which has it's own standards for deferment. When I was stationed in Alabama I worked with a guy from Texas who was drafted at age 26, kind of late but they must have been getting desperate. I may have told this story before and if so, I apologize. Anyhow, this guy was a true Texan, first name was Houston, a highly ranked rodeo rider in his teenage years and had the steel pins in his legs to prove it. As a schoolteacher and a parent with a couple of small children he could have been deferred even if the pins in his legs wasn't enough to disqualify him for military service, but no such luck. He still got drafted into the army but was exempt from any "prolonged marching, standing, or sitting," which covers an awful lot of ground. But he knew how to work and tool leather, so that's what he did, teaching that craft in the army Special Services division on base. Most civilians have no idea of Special Services, the cushiest jobs in the army. Some guys were lifeguards at the swimming pool on base, other guys worked at the golf course (I bet Uncle Ken didn't know a lot of military bases had golf courses), and there were a lot more non-military jobs like teaching photography or ceramics. I was in charge of the painting studio but there was little interest in it at the time so I spent most of my working hours goofing off. Most of the folks that did show up weren't military though, they were military dependents, which included wives and daughters. Hubba, hubba, if you get my drift. I will neither confirm nor deny any allegations at this late date.
-----
Had a slight nicotine relapse the other day, dammit. I used to roll my own with Bugler (Blue) tobacco, and instead of tossing the butts on the ground I put them in a pocket for proper disposal at a later time. Any half-smoked cigarettes went in the same pocket and that's what I found in a rain jacket, a stale, half-smoked cigarette and I couldn't resist. I fired it up and it was both disgusting and heavenly, so now I am quite conflicted but have been able to resist any further temptation for a fresh pouch of Bugler Blue. There's a certain irony at play here. When I was smoking I never gave smoking any thought, I just did it without thinking. But having quit, smoking is all I think about and I don't know which is worse, the physical or mental toll. At least I can take comfort in the fact that the fingernail on my index finger is no longer tobacco-stained in that sickly shade of yellow.
(clicketty clacking before dawn)
On Uncle Ken
Is that a complaint or merely a critical observation? Please don't take it personally when the posts to this forum don't meet your perceived schedule of frequency, but this has been discussed before.
One of the pitfalls of modern life is that we have become habituated to immediate communication and responses; we want everything now and don't allow ourselves the luxury of contemplative thought. I was enjoying the discussions around Uncle Ken's pal Steve and the trip down army memory lane I share with Mr. Beagles but then current affairs reared it's ugly head and all I can think of is "meh!" Back to the same old shit and I am not inclined to give it much thought any more as it seems a waste of my time except as entertainment value; part comedy, part horror show, and both beyond my control.
-----
When Mr. Beagles mentioned the way that he was classified 1-A by the Alaska Draft Board I immediately thought of Trump and his excuse of bone spurs to the New York Draft Board. All Draft Boards were local, I think, and had their own quotas and methods of meeting them. I can imagine the Alaska folks looking at Mr. Beagles draft status and saying, "This guy was born in Illinois, screw him!" Likewise the New York folks might be thinking, "Hey, I know this kid's father and bone spurs sound like a grievous medical condition to me; deferment granted!"
Bone spurs still sound like a weak excuse to me but what flies in New York doesn't fly in Texas, which has it's own standards for deferment. When I was stationed in Alabama I worked with a guy from Texas who was drafted at age 26, kind of late but they must have been getting desperate. I may have told this story before and if so, I apologize. Anyhow, this guy was a true Texan, first name was Houston, a highly ranked rodeo rider in his teenage years and had the steel pins in his legs to prove it. As a schoolteacher and a parent with a couple of small children he could have been deferred even if the pins in his legs wasn't enough to disqualify him for military service, but no such luck. He still got drafted into the army but was exempt from any "prolonged marching, standing, or sitting," which covers an awful lot of ground. But he knew how to work and tool leather, so that's what he did, teaching that craft in the army Special Services division on base. Most civilians have no idea of Special Services, the cushiest jobs in the army. Some guys were lifeguards at the swimming pool on base, other guys worked at the golf course (I bet Uncle Ken didn't know a lot of military bases had golf courses), and there were a lot more non-military jobs like teaching photography or ceramics. I was in charge of the painting studio but there was little interest in it at the time so I spent most of my working hours goofing off. Most of the folks that did show up weren't military though, they were military dependents, which included wives and daughters. Hubba, hubba, if you get my drift. I will neither confirm nor deny any allegations at this late date.
-----
Had a slight nicotine relapse the other day, dammit. I used to roll my own with Bugler (Blue) tobacco, and instead of tossing the butts on the ground I put them in a pocket for proper disposal at a later time. Any half-smoked cigarettes went in the same pocket and that's what I found in a rain jacket, a stale, half-smoked cigarette and I couldn't resist. I fired it up and it was both disgusting and heavenly, so now I am quite conflicted but have been able to resist any further temptation for a fresh pouch of Bugler Blue. There's a certain irony at play here. When I was smoking I never gave smoking any thought, I just did it without thinking. But having quit, smoking is all I think about and I don't know which is worse, the physical or mental toll. At least I can take comfort in the fact that the fingernail on my index finger is no longer tobacco-stained in that sickly shade of yellow.
Uncle Ken beards the board
The Institute depends
(I mean you dawgs)
Upon it's friends.
Having dispensed with that I have a tale to tell, a stirring tale of a lone condo owner taking on the all powerful board because, because Godamnit, it's the right thing to do.
When I was just a teenager, a troublemaking student of Gage Park High, I remember that when the towers were rising on the north bank of the Chicago river it was a big deal, tongues wagged, they are so different, they are, well they're round. I remember one day standing on State Street and some guy, some Texan (in my memory he is wearing a ten gallon hat, but that may be something that memory has added) walked up to me and asked me what was that and pointed to the towers nearly done then and asked what are those, and, my heart bursting with pride for the windy city, I replied, why those towers are Marina City.
Some years later an actual cousin of mine lived in the towers, I was so proud. I had known her as a kid, but hadn't seen her at all since we had both grown, nevertheless I was pleased as punch. For the first dozen years the towers were apartments and the management put white circular bulbs on all the railings of the balconies and when they lit them up they were stunning. I remember my cousin had some kind of problem with the lights, maybe it was who paid for the electricity, but when I asked her about it some years ago she didn't remember it, so maybe I am mistaken about that, but it is a foreshadowing of what is to come..
In the middle seventies the apartments went condo, and though you can still see a few of those globular bulbs the towers became a rainbow of all sorts of lights which many found more pleasing than the rigid regimentation of the whites, and Marina City at Christmastime was something to behold.
When I came back to Chicago in 1987 it was my intention to just grab a grubstake and go on to see the world, but I got a pretty cushy job and I was loathe to leave it and try to get a new job in a strange city. I had been living in my parents' attic and when I looked for a place to stay one of the first places I inquired at was Marina City. The guy was kind of snooty, as I recall, and upon hearing of my salary sniffed that I could never afford to live there.
A few years later I had more dough and came back and bought myself a unit. I was proud to be a resident, and I wanted to be a good condo citizen, and attended my first board meeting intending to be attentive and analytical and to lend my well intentioned shoulder to the smooth running of the towers, and I was sawing logs a half hour into the meeting.
Oh well, none of the board members had an eye-patch, or a peg-leg, or said Arrr, so I could probably trust them and since Christmas was approaching I headed out to Walgreens to buy some Christmas lights eager to join the rainbow throng that graced my tower.
Geez, I am only halfway through my backstory, but I guess I will have plenty of time to write this story of Uncle Ken's fight for what our forefathers fought for at Valley Forge because apparently
The Institute depends
(clicketty clacking before dawn)
On Uncle Ken
Tuesday, March 26, 2019
current affairs
I'll be honest I was stunned when the Mueller report came up with nada, but further news reveals that isn't quite what happened. The guy that Trump put in as AG, almost surely because the guy had written that the report should never have happened, and who was confirmed by the reps who have the majority, decided that it all added up to nada. And now all the reps who were demanding that the report be released in its entirety are like well we have to be careful to not reveal too much, and now the AG and his henchmen are examining it to see what can be released but there are no signs that they are in any particular hurry.
It seems like there are two issues collusion and obstruction and Barr has taken on himself, without revealing as yet the evidence against it, that there was no collusion, and obstruction, well it seems obvious to me, but it's a messy issue that has been left open. It seems reasonable that the Barr and Mueller be brought before congress to explain themselves.
But you know, it doesn't really matter. If the report reveals that Trump had a liplock on Putin's love lolly while his forces worked at overthrowing the election, that would not mean a thing to the Trumpists, they would just say well, he's a little unusual, but how about those supreme court justices, and therefore the reps would never, never ever, vote to impeach him. And the dems, well even if it came out that Trump didn't notice the Russkies at work because he was too busy helping little old ladies across the street, well we still wouldn't like him.
It's kind of like elections under the electoral college, the big red and blue states don't really matter, and the fate of the nation rests on a handful of podunk purple states. So likely the next election is in the hands of that narrow range of folks who are neither Trumpists or anti-Trumpists, though I have never met such a person.
When Beagles discovers the busboy at his local eatery has a long and drooping mustache and is secretly replacing all the ketchup with bottles of salsa then I will start worrying about the invasion.
I've long been puzzled about Brexit, going so far as to peruse a couple copies of The Economist, and it seems like there are two solutions, to stay in the EU or to drop out with no conditions. There was thought to be a third way which amounted to leaving, but with some agreements between EU and Britain, but apparently the tories can't come to an agreement on what agreements to keep, and then there is the border with Ireland, I predict wiser heads will prevail and they will decide to stay in, but I have been wrong about wiser heads in the past.
It seems like there are two issues collusion and obstruction and Barr has taken on himself, without revealing as yet the evidence against it, that there was no collusion, and obstruction, well it seems obvious to me, but it's a messy issue that has been left open. It seems reasonable that the Barr and Mueller be brought before congress to explain themselves.
But you know, it doesn't really matter. If the report reveals that Trump had a liplock on Putin's love lolly while his forces worked at overthrowing the election, that would not mean a thing to the Trumpists, they would just say well, he's a little unusual, but how about those supreme court justices, and therefore the reps would never, never ever, vote to impeach him. And the dems, well even if it came out that Trump didn't notice the Russkies at work because he was too busy helping little old ladies across the street, well we still wouldn't like him.
It's kind of like elections under the electoral college, the big red and blue states don't really matter, and the fate of the nation rests on a handful of podunk purple states. So likely the next election is in the hands of that narrow range of folks who are neither Trumpists or anti-Trumpists, though I have never met such a person.
When Beagles discovers the busboy at his local eatery has a long and drooping mustache and is secretly replacing all the ketchup with bottles of salsa then I will start worrying about the invasion.
I've long been puzzled about Brexit, going so far as to peruse a couple copies of The Economist, and it seems like there are two solutions, to stay in the EU or to drop out with no conditions. There was thought to be a third way which amounted to leaving, but with some agreements between EU and Britain, but apparently the tories can't come to an agreement on what agreements to keep, and then there is the border with Ireland, I predict wiser heads will prevail and they will decide to stay in, but I have been wrong about wiser heads in the past.
Monday, March 25, 2019
Meanwhile, Back in the Jungle.......
It appears that the Mueller investigation was unable to pin anything on Trump, or not, depending on which news article you read. I understand that there are several other investigations still going on and others that are being considered, so we haven't heard the last of this yet, not by a long shot. That's okay, nobody has ever been able to pin anything on either of the Clintons but, last I heard, somebody was still trying.
It seems that Puerto Rico has not yet recovered from its last hurricane although, by some accounts, it was in pretty rough shape even before the hurricane hit. Apparently, Congress forgot to extend their aid package before it expired, but they still might, or not, after they return from spring break.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdkBU?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
While Trump and his opponents sit around arguing about a wall, the illegals are still pouring into the country in unprecedented numbers, overwhelming the Border Patrol and everybody else who has to deal with them.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdDgr?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Then there's Brexit. There are substantial differences between the British parliamentary system and the way we do things here, so I couldn't make a lot of sense out of this one. One thing I got from it is that, whenever a British politician doesn't get his way, he resigns. Sounds good to me.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdPIt?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
It seems that Puerto Rico has not yet recovered from its last hurricane although, by some accounts, it was in pretty rough shape even before the hurricane hit. Apparently, Congress forgot to extend their aid package before it expired, but they still might, or not, after they return from spring break.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdkBU?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
While Trump and his opponents sit around arguing about a wall, the illegals are still pouring into the country in unprecedented numbers, overwhelming the Border Patrol and everybody else who has to deal with them.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdDgr?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Then there's Brexit. There are substantial differences between the British parliamentary system and the way we do things here, so I couldn't make a lot of sense out of this one. One thing I got from it is that, whenever a British politician doesn't get his way, he resigns. Sounds good to me.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BBVdPIt?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
things they say about you after you're dead
Steve is not the first Champaign cohort to pass to the other side of that curtain. At that July 4th party that I would always drop by Steve's house before attending there is often a group photo. The crowd is a little smaller every year. A lot of people have lost interest or moved away but I can run my finger across the photos and mutter this one is gone, and this one, and that one. Sometimes I remember a story about Champaign and realize that everybody involved in it is dead except me.
I imagine solitary deaths like Steve's are commonplace. If you live alone and have some sudden event like a heart attack or a stroke that is what will happen. If we don't go into the hospital likely it is what awaits Old Dog and myself. Not so bad considering that many people in hospitals want to go home to die. Unfortunate for the guys whose job it is too haul us away, but I imagine they get used to it.
Steve had a sister who lives here in the city, He came up every year for Christmas, just a day or two but I imagine that was his family ties. Last I heard she was dealing with the details. I knew her a little, enough to know that she didn't think much of me, and that's why I haven't tried to get in touch with her for details like what was the actual cause, where in the house did they find him, what became of the body. Well none of those things mean anything really.
Right after you die that's what everybody wants to know, your death becomes the most important thing about you, but that soon passes and then everybody has nice thoughts of you, which is nice but a little unnatural like putting rouge on a corpse and eventually that passes on into a fuller description, none of us is all sinner or all saint.
I felt a little bad writing Steve's story that I didn't have enough nice things to say about him, but you know that's the way things are, he had his faults but he was my friend.
I don't get this it gets better, it never gets better thing. I guess if you are a kid and in a bad place things will likely get better, and maybe it is the sort of thing that you would tell a kid to raise their spirits, but I don't know, sometimes things get better and sometimes they get worse. I did like that movie, it was recommended to me by Old Dog.
I had a friend who also flunked out of Airborne. He used to chant I want to be an airborne ranger. I want to live a life of danger. Danger, never appealed to me.
I imagine solitary deaths like Steve's are commonplace. If you live alone and have some sudden event like a heart attack or a stroke that is what will happen. If we don't go into the hospital likely it is what awaits Old Dog and myself. Not so bad considering that many people in hospitals want to go home to die. Unfortunate for the guys whose job it is too haul us away, but I imagine they get used to it.
Steve had a sister who lives here in the city, He came up every year for Christmas, just a day or two but I imagine that was his family ties. Last I heard she was dealing with the details. I knew her a little, enough to know that she didn't think much of me, and that's why I haven't tried to get in touch with her for details like what was the actual cause, where in the house did they find him, what became of the body. Well none of those things mean anything really.
Right after you die that's what everybody wants to know, your death becomes the most important thing about you, but that soon passes and then everybody has nice thoughts of you, which is nice but a little unnatural like putting rouge on a corpse and eventually that passes on into a fuller description, none of us is all sinner or all saint.
I felt a little bad writing Steve's story that I didn't have enough nice things to say about him, but you know that's the way things are, he had his faults but he was my friend.
I don't get this it gets better, it never gets better thing. I guess if you are a kid and in a bad place things will likely get better, and maybe it is the sort of thing that you would tell a kid to raise their spirits, but I don't know, sometimes things get better and sometimes they get worse. I did like that movie, it was recommended to me by Old Dog.
I had a friend who also flunked out of Airborne. He used to chant I want to be an airborne ranger. I want to live a life of danger. Danger, never appealed to me.
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Ain't no Discharge on the Ground
I never made it to Airborne training. Like I said, it wasn't the prospect of jumping out of airplanes that turned me off, it was all that running. From what I had heard, Airborne training was much tougher than Infantry training, and I barely made it through that. Truth be known, I shouldn't have passed some of the physical stuff, but they just pencil whipped me through it. During AIT ( for the benefit of our civilian colleague, that stands for Advanced Individual Training), they gave us the chance to opt out of our enlistment commitments, and I took it.
I was a little surprised that I was accepted into the army at all. I had a slight heart murmur left over from a bought with rheumatic fever, and my father had been rejected for military service during World War II because of something similar. I also had flat feet, which I had heard used to be grounds for rejection in the old days. I told them about it when I signed up, but they accepted me anyway. I wasn't trying to get rejected, you understand. I just thought I should be honest about everything because, well, that's the kind of guy I am. I wouldn't have lied to get in, anymore than I would have lied to get out.
Like I said, I never played sports as a kid, but I thought I was in reasonably good shape. I was really good at walking and bike riding, but it turned out that I sucked at running. I didn't know that because I never had a reason to run anywhere until I got into the army. They didn't call it "running" anyway, they called it "double time", and it was a lot like the jogging that some people do nowadays. It doesn't really get you there faster, it just tires you out faster. Standard marching cadence is 120 steps per minute, which sounds faster than it is. Double time is 180 steps per minute, so it would be more accurate to call it "time and a half", but the army doesn't care about accuracy. A standard road march will move you along at two or three miles per hour and, in those days, I could walk four miles an hour all day without breaking a sweat. Double time might be faster in the short run but, after a mile or so, I could drop out of the formation and keep up with it just walking, while other guys who dropped out were puking by the side of the road.
Running never made me puke, it just made me dizzy and short of breath. I supposed I would have passed out if I had kept at it long enough but, before that happened, the guys around me would tell me to drop out because I was screwing up their cadence with my stumbling and staggering around. It wasn't until I was hospitalized for that bleeding ulcer in 2008 that I found out what was wrong with me. They gave me every kind of test known to modern man. My heart and lungs were fine, which surprised the doctor because I had been smoking and drinking for most of my adult life. He said that I had something called "ischemia", which is like anemia only different. With anemia you don't have enough red blood cells, with ischemia you have enough red blood cells, but they don't carry as much oxygen as they are supposed to. I had lost half my blood supply because of that ulcer, so I was anemic at first, but they cleared that up in sort order with transfusions. The ischemia never went away, though, and I probably had that all my life and didn't know it. The doctor didn't say that in so many words, but it would explain why I was no good at running back in the day. Another thing was I think they gave me too much blood while I was there. The doctor didn't admit that, but it would explain why I never had high blood pressure before those transfusions and now I do. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
I was a little surprised that I was accepted into the army at all. I had a slight heart murmur left over from a bought with rheumatic fever, and my father had been rejected for military service during World War II because of something similar. I also had flat feet, which I had heard used to be grounds for rejection in the old days. I told them about it when I signed up, but they accepted me anyway. I wasn't trying to get rejected, you understand. I just thought I should be honest about everything because, well, that's the kind of guy I am. I wouldn't have lied to get in, anymore than I would have lied to get out.
Like I said, I never played sports as a kid, but I thought I was in reasonably good shape. I was really good at walking and bike riding, but it turned out that I sucked at running. I didn't know that because I never had a reason to run anywhere until I got into the army. They didn't call it "running" anyway, they called it "double time", and it was a lot like the jogging that some people do nowadays. It doesn't really get you there faster, it just tires you out faster. Standard marching cadence is 120 steps per minute, which sounds faster than it is. Double time is 180 steps per minute, so it would be more accurate to call it "time and a half", but the army doesn't care about accuracy. A standard road march will move you along at two or three miles per hour and, in those days, I could walk four miles an hour all day without breaking a sweat. Double time might be faster in the short run but, after a mile or so, I could drop out of the formation and keep up with it just walking, while other guys who dropped out were puking by the side of the road.
Running never made me puke, it just made me dizzy and short of breath. I supposed I would have passed out if I had kept at it long enough but, before that happened, the guys around me would tell me to drop out because I was screwing up their cadence with my stumbling and staggering around. It wasn't until I was hospitalized for that bleeding ulcer in 2008 that I found out what was wrong with me. They gave me every kind of test known to modern man. My heart and lungs were fine, which surprised the doctor because I had been smoking and drinking for most of my adult life. He said that I had something called "ischemia", which is like anemia only different. With anemia you don't have enough red blood cells, with ischemia you have enough red blood cells, but they don't carry as much oxygen as they are supposed to. I had lost half my blood supply because of that ulcer, so I was anemic at first, but they cleared that up in sort order with transfusions. The ischemia never went away, though, and I probably had that all my life and didn't know it. The doctor didn't say that in so many words, but it would explain why I was no good at running back in the day. Another thing was I think they gave me too much blood while I was there. The doctor didn't admit that, but it would explain why I never had high blood pressure before those transfusions and now I do. It's the only explanation that makes sense.
Ain't no use in looking down
It was sad to read the last chapter and the passing of Uncle Ken's pal, Steve and the way he apparently died alone. There's plenty to think about and it's too early for me to comment any further but I wonder if such solitary deaths are commonplace in our modern world despite the degree to which we are all connected. Was Steve the first of the Champaign Cohort to shuffle off this mortal coil?
-----
"It never gets better, you just get better at it."
That line reminded me of something I heard in a movie but I couldn't quite place it and then I remembered. It was from Leon: The Professional. Maybe you will recognize the very young Natalie Portman. Hell of a movie, by the way.
-----
Wait a second, was Mr. Beagles Airborne, with silver wings upon his chest and authorized to wear those dandy Corcoran jump boots? Some of our drill sergeants at Polk were Airborne and quite proud of the fact, especially when counting cadence while marching. Up the hill! Up the hill! Down the hill! Down the hill! THROUGH the hill! THROUGH the hill! Airborne! Airborne! AIRBORNE! AIRBORNE! One two three four, one two...THREE FOUR! Gimme your left, your right, your left...
And then there were other DIs who asked why should you jump out of a perfectly good airplane and maintained that only two things fell from the sky: birdshit and fools.
-----
"It never gets better, you just get better at it."
That line reminded me of something I heard in a movie but I couldn't quite place it and then I remembered. It was from Leon: The Professional. Maybe you will recognize the very young Natalie Portman. Hell of a movie, by the way.
-----
Wait a second, was Mr. Beagles Airborne, with silver wings upon his chest and authorized to wear those dandy Corcoran jump boots? Some of our drill sergeants at Polk were Airborne and quite proud of the fact, especially when counting cadence while marching. Up the hill! Up the hill! Down the hill! Down the hill! THROUGH the hill! THROUGH the hill! Airborne! Airborne! AIRBORNE! AIRBORNE! One two three four, one two...THREE FOUR! Gimme your left, your right, your left...
And then there were other DIs who asked why should you jump out of a perfectly good airplane and maintained that only two things fell from the sky: birdshit and fools.
Friday, March 22, 2019
the last chapter
The bigger guy who took Steve's girlfriend was kind of a bully. Steve's girlfriend started showing up with black eyes from falling into doorknobs. One day with the help of a couple people she got her stuff together and moved out of the farmhouse they were renting and out of Champaign and we never saw or heard from her again.
One Friday night Steve was drunker than usual, but merry, wishing everybody a long and happy life. Sometime later the bully came into the bar and I guess Steve had never forgotten the girlfriend because he started taunting the bully and then the two stepped out into the alley and Steve got his jaw broken. He was wired shut for a month, maybe two, drinking Ragu sauce out of a straw.
He became a foreman on the grounds crew which he wasn't too happy about. He hated giving orders to other people and he still had to take orders from those above him. But being a state employee he got to retire pretty early, before anybody else in the crowd. We were all like fascinated by the idea of never having to work again. What was he going to do we all asked him. He told us he was going to move to Las Vegas.
After a year he was still in Urbana. He told me later that he had never planned on going to Las Vegas, it was just something he said to get people to stop bugging him. He was going to stay in town and do nothing and just enjoy the fact that he no longer had to take orders from anybody.
He moved into that little house where he would die maybe twenty years later. He came out to the bars maybe once a week, but he was argumentative when drunk and he would piss people off and then he would stay away from that bar for three or four weeks. Eventually he stopped going out to the bars at all, He had some friends who would come by and he would do cocaine, but after awhile he stopped that and then he stopped drinking too.
I was back in Chicago by then. I'd come back to Champaign once a year for this big 4th of July party where all the old crowd showed up. I'd come the night before and get drunk downtown and the next morning I would be sort of killing time before the big party started and I dropped by his house. We used to have those postgame recaps after acid trips, and now in old age we would have discussions about life, and I did that for maybe a dozen years. He had a good piece of money from the grounds crew and he got some money from the VA for PTSD, which I think was sort of a scam, and he was pretty cheap. But he did subscribe to magazines and he bought a lot of books and CDs and the place was just crammed with stuff, The curtains on the window were never opened, He had a little porch with a beatup kitchen chair and I'd say, 'Steve why don't you step outside and smoke a cig in that chair and feel the evening breeze and watch the cars go by," and he'd just snort.
The magazines and books piled up unread on the floor and the little table where his ashtray was,and I'm sure he never listened to the CDs because he got had a big screen tv which he'd turn on first thing in the afternoon and turn off late at night before he stumbled to bed. He didn't drink, but he smoked those Lucky Stripe stubbies, smoked them all his life, and lots of dope, and pills, pills that once may have been recreational but now were painkillers, His feet hurt, his back hurt, other stuff hurt, everytime I visited him he could walk less far.
Last fall a buddy who frequently called him about sports kept getting his answering machine, and then his mailbox was full. He was in a little group of us ex-Champaign people who email each other and he wrote us and I got in touch with an old pal of his who still lived in town and he got around to checking on him and it turned out that he had been in the hospital for his feet. They were better now and he was feeling a little chipper and we all kind of joked about how we had thought he was dead.
But then a few weeks ago now he was dead. I keep wondering did he die in his sleep in his bedroom? A lot of times when people die they feel sick before and head to the bathroom and die there, was that what happened?. I like to think he died in that chair in the front room watching his big screen tv and puffing on a Lucky Strike. I guess it doesn't make any difference, but that's what I like to think anyway..
One Friday night Steve was drunker than usual, but merry, wishing everybody a long and happy life. Sometime later the bully came into the bar and I guess Steve had never forgotten the girlfriend because he started taunting the bully and then the two stepped out into the alley and Steve got his jaw broken. He was wired shut for a month, maybe two, drinking Ragu sauce out of a straw.
He became a foreman on the grounds crew which he wasn't too happy about. He hated giving orders to other people and he still had to take orders from those above him. But being a state employee he got to retire pretty early, before anybody else in the crowd. We were all like fascinated by the idea of never having to work again. What was he going to do we all asked him. He told us he was going to move to Las Vegas.
After a year he was still in Urbana. He told me later that he had never planned on going to Las Vegas, it was just something he said to get people to stop bugging him. He was going to stay in town and do nothing and just enjoy the fact that he no longer had to take orders from anybody.
He moved into that little house where he would die maybe twenty years later. He came out to the bars maybe once a week, but he was argumentative when drunk and he would piss people off and then he would stay away from that bar for three or four weeks. Eventually he stopped going out to the bars at all, He had some friends who would come by and he would do cocaine, but after awhile he stopped that and then he stopped drinking too.
I was back in Chicago by then. I'd come back to Champaign once a year for this big 4th of July party where all the old crowd showed up. I'd come the night before and get drunk downtown and the next morning I would be sort of killing time before the big party started and I dropped by his house. We used to have those postgame recaps after acid trips, and now in old age we would have discussions about life, and I did that for maybe a dozen years. He had a good piece of money from the grounds crew and he got some money from the VA for PTSD, which I think was sort of a scam, and he was pretty cheap. But he did subscribe to magazines and he bought a lot of books and CDs and the place was just crammed with stuff, The curtains on the window were never opened, He had a little porch with a beatup kitchen chair and I'd say, 'Steve why don't you step outside and smoke a cig in that chair and feel the evening breeze and watch the cars go by," and he'd just snort.
The magazines and books piled up unread on the floor and the little table where his ashtray was,and I'm sure he never listened to the CDs because he got had a big screen tv which he'd turn on first thing in the afternoon and turn off late at night before he stumbled to bed. He didn't drink, but he smoked those Lucky Stripe stubbies, smoked them all his life, and lots of dope, and pills, pills that once may have been recreational but now were painkillers, His feet hurt, his back hurt, other stuff hurt, everytime I visited him he could walk less far.
Last fall a buddy who frequently called him about sports kept getting his answering machine, and then his mailbox was full. He was in a little group of us ex-Champaign people who email each other and he wrote us and I got in touch with an old pal of his who still lived in town and he got around to checking on him and it turned out that he had been in the hospital for his feet. They were better now and he was feeling a little chipper and we all kind of joked about how we had thought he was dead.
But then a few weeks ago now he was dead. I keep wondering did he die in his sleep in his bedroom? A lot of times when people die they feel sick before and head to the bathroom and die there, was that what happened?. I like to think he died in that chair in the front room watching his big screen tv and puffing on a Lucky Strike. I guess it doesn't make any difference, but that's what I like to think anyway..
Thursday, March 21, 2019
It Wasn't All Bad
About halfway through basic, I concluded that joining the army had been a terrible mistake. There are various ways to weasel out of something like that but, after thinking about it for awhile, I decided that they were all more trouble than they were worth, so I decided to tough it out. Everybody said it would get better after basic, and it did, but it never got really good. It's like when my daughter said years later that people had been telling her all her life that things would get better. In elementary school they had told her that high school would be better, but it wasn't. Then they told her that college would be better, but it wasn't. "Tell me, Dad, when does it get better?", she asked. I had to think about it for awhile, but I finally told her, "It never gets better, you just get better at it."
One thing that was good about my military experience was that it gave me time to sort my life out. What had I done wrong? What had I done right? What am I going to do next? Stuff like that. I did some of my best thinking on guard duty. Many people would find walking around the perimeter of a motor pool or ammo dump in the middle of the night boring, but I didn't. It was quiet, I was alone, I had to keep moving, but not very fast, just fast enough to keep from falling sleep. Another good thing was that I got to meet all kinds of people from all over the country, which I never would have done in Chicago or Alaska. We all talked about our previous experiences and where we were going from here. We developed a sense of comradery because we were all in it together, and I learned that I could get along with most anybody if I had to. I also did a lot of reading, everything from porn to philosophy. I think I got at least as good an education, in the things that mattered, than I would have gotten in college. Shortly after I got out, my mother told me that a kid of a friend of hers was considering enlisting in the army, and asked me if I would recommend it. "Well", said I, "I wouldn't take a million dollars for the experience I got, but I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars either."
One thing that was good about my military experience was that it gave me time to sort my life out. What had I done wrong? What had I done right? What am I going to do next? Stuff like that. I did some of my best thinking on guard duty. Many people would find walking around the perimeter of a motor pool or ammo dump in the middle of the night boring, but I didn't. It was quiet, I was alone, I had to keep moving, but not very fast, just fast enough to keep from falling sleep. Another good thing was that I got to meet all kinds of people from all over the country, which I never would have done in Chicago or Alaska. We all talked about our previous experiences and where we were going from here. We developed a sense of comradery because we were all in it together, and I learned that I could get along with most anybody if I had to. I also did a lot of reading, everything from porn to philosophy. I think I got at least as good an education, in the things that mattered, than I would have gotten in college. Shortly after I got out, my mother told me that a kid of a friend of hers was considering enlisting in the army, and asked me if I would recommend it. "Well", said I, "I wouldn't take a million dollars for the experience I got, but I wouldn't do it again for a million dollars either."
riding high with the new posse
I first met Steve in 1965 when he walked into The Tavern, a real dropout, which impressed me. He went into the army in the fall of that year. He got out of the army in the fall of 1967 and that's when we moved into the ranch house, which we left in the spring of 68. We moved into the house on Healey Avenue in September of 1968 and I left there in the spring of 1969 to do my CO in Herrin and I moved back to Champaign in September of 1971.
When I returned to Champaign in 1971 there was a new posse in town. This was a gang of Vietnam vets just back and going to Parkland, the junior college just west of town on the GI bill, and from what I hear mildly terrorizing the profs, being a bit older than the high school graduates and having been to war and not taking any shit from some weenie academic. Steve was kind of a big guy and a bigmouth and he fell right into step with them, maybe a bit of an older brother to them, not that they respected their elders
He was riding high with a beautiful girl friend and talking revolution with his comrades. When riots rocked the campus in April of 1972 he was out there in the streets with a bandana for a mask hooting and hollering and doing a little looting. I have a photograph from the newspaper of him and his comrades busting into the campus camera store. He later told me that all the boxes in the window were empty, though the store later claimed great losses and collected on their insurance.
But he just wasn't as tough as his new comrades and a bigger guy took his girlfriend and even though he still hung with the guys, they'd begun making a bit of fun of him.
He finished his courses at Parkland and went on to the University and got a degree in International Relations I think, but when it got to getting a real job he went back to the grounds crew sometime around the middle 70s.. I remember being shocked at that, the grounds crew started at like seven in the morning so how could he close the bar every night which is what everybody else, including me, seemed to be doing? He still came out on weekends, but I think he was not so crazy about the bar scene by then and he liked the idea of getting that steady paycheck.
Good stories Dawgs. I had thought that your idea of a career all along was to be in the army. I remember now that your first move after Gage Park was to Alaska. I just don't listen as closely to stories that don't involve me. I hope you are going to continue.
Old Dog, I'm guessing you had conflicting thoughts about going into the army, but as long as you had to you thought of it as a big adventure. That haricut thing is like a legend. It wasn't the main reason we hippies didn't want to go in the army, but it was up there, maybe a little bit of that Samson thing, it was who he were. Also continue
When I returned to Champaign in 1971 there was a new posse in town. This was a gang of Vietnam vets just back and going to Parkland, the junior college just west of town on the GI bill, and from what I hear mildly terrorizing the profs, being a bit older than the high school graduates and having been to war and not taking any shit from some weenie academic. Steve was kind of a big guy and a bigmouth and he fell right into step with them, maybe a bit of an older brother to them, not that they respected their elders
He was riding high with a beautiful girl friend and talking revolution with his comrades. When riots rocked the campus in April of 1972 he was out there in the streets with a bandana for a mask hooting and hollering and doing a little looting. I have a photograph from the newspaper of him and his comrades busting into the campus camera store. He later told me that all the boxes in the window were empty, though the store later claimed great losses and collected on their insurance.
But he just wasn't as tough as his new comrades and a bigger guy took his girlfriend and even though he still hung with the guys, they'd begun making a bit of fun of him.
He finished his courses at Parkland and went on to the University and got a degree in International Relations I think, but when it got to getting a real job he went back to the grounds crew sometime around the middle 70s.. I remember being shocked at that, the grounds crew started at like seven in the morning so how could he close the bar every night which is what everybody else, including me, seemed to be doing? He still came out on weekends, but I think he was not so crazy about the bar scene by then and he liked the idea of getting that steady paycheck.
Good stories Dawgs. I had thought that your idea of a career all along was to be in the army. I remember now that your first move after Gage Park was to Alaska. I just don't listen as closely to stories that don't involve me. I hope you are going to continue.
Old Dog, I'm guessing you had conflicting thoughts about going into the army, but as long as you had to you thought of it as a big adventure. That haricut thing is like a legend. It wasn't the main reason we hippies didn't want to go in the army, but it was up there, maybe a little bit of that Samson thing, it was who he were. Also continue
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
"Choice, Not Chance"
That was the slogan they were using in those days to inspire guys to join the army instead of waiting to be drafted, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I didn't join right after high school in '63, I spent the first four months in Alaska because I thought I wanted to live there. When my seasonal job played out, my plan was to spend the winter in Chicago and return to Alaska the following spring. By the time I got back to Chicago, I realized that I didn't really want to live in Alaska, but I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't gone there. I turned 18 while in Alaska and duly registered for the draft. When I got back to Chicago, I went in to tell the draft people about my change of address, and the lady expressed surprise that the Alaskan draft people had already classified me as 1-A. She said that her office wasn't classifying guys until a year or so after they registered. She said she couldn't un-classify me, which meant that I would likely be called up sooner than I would have been if I had registered in Chicago. This got me to thinking that maybe I should join now and get it over with. I could always re-enlist if I liked it, but I wasn't planning to make a career out of it at the time.
I had a job as a machinist trainee, and the recruiter offered to make me a machinist trainee in the army. I couldn't see the logic of that, if I had wanted to be a machinist trainee, I could have just stayed where I was at. I told him that I would rather go to Vietnam and be a real soldier. In those days (1964), you had to be Special Forces to go to Vietnam, and you had to be Airborne before you could be Special Forces, so I signed up for Airborne. I thought it would be fun parachuting out of airplanes, and it might have been, if it wouldn't have been for all the running.
I never played sports in school, and had never ran very far in my life, but I was really good at walking, so I figured learning how to run wouldn't be all that hard. It might not have been either, if they had trained us properly. The first time we ran a mile, and that wasn't so bad. The sergeant told us that we would be running 5 miles a day before we were done with basic training. I figured that, if we ran five days a week and increased the distance by 1/4 mile each day, we would be up to five miles long before our eight weeks of basic were done. But that's not how we did it. We didn't run at all for the next two weeks, and then we ran five miles all at once.
Although I had never played sports, I had done a little amateur weight lifting with some guys who knew how, so I knew that wasn't how you are supposed to train for any physical activity. Right after our five mile run, I talked it over with another guy who had actually ran competitively in school, and he agreed with me. We decided that, if we wanted to learn this shit, we would have to take responsibility for our own training. So, after supper, we went out to this quarter mile track out back and ran around it five times. Our platoon sergeant, the same one that had been drunk the other night, saw us running and followed us back to the barracks afterwards. He announced that our previous five mile run obviously hadn't been enough for us, so we were all going to do it again right now. This made me and the other guy really unpopular with the rest of the platoon. I don't know about the other guy, but I never did anything like that again. For the rest of my time in the army, I never ran when I could walk, I never walked when I could sit, and I never just sat when I could sleep.
I didn't join right after high school in '63, I spent the first four months in Alaska because I thought I wanted to live there. When my seasonal job played out, my plan was to spend the winter in Chicago and return to Alaska the following spring. By the time I got back to Chicago, I realized that I didn't really want to live in Alaska, but I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't gone there. I turned 18 while in Alaska and duly registered for the draft. When I got back to Chicago, I went in to tell the draft people about my change of address, and the lady expressed surprise that the Alaskan draft people had already classified me as 1-A. She said that her office wasn't classifying guys until a year or so after they registered. She said she couldn't un-classify me, which meant that I would likely be called up sooner than I would have been if I had registered in Chicago. This got me to thinking that maybe I should join now and get it over with. I could always re-enlist if I liked it, but I wasn't planning to make a career out of it at the time.
I had a job as a machinist trainee, and the recruiter offered to make me a machinist trainee in the army. I couldn't see the logic of that, if I had wanted to be a machinist trainee, I could have just stayed where I was at. I told him that I would rather go to Vietnam and be a real soldier. In those days (1964), you had to be Special Forces to go to Vietnam, and you had to be Airborne before you could be Special Forces, so I signed up for Airborne. I thought it would be fun parachuting out of airplanes, and it might have been, if it wouldn't have been for all the running.
I never played sports in school, and had never ran very far in my life, but I was really good at walking, so I figured learning how to run wouldn't be all that hard. It might not have been either, if they had trained us properly. The first time we ran a mile, and that wasn't so bad. The sergeant told us that we would be running 5 miles a day before we were done with basic training. I figured that, if we ran five days a week and increased the distance by 1/4 mile each day, we would be up to five miles long before our eight weeks of basic were done. But that's not how we did it. We didn't run at all for the next two weeks, and then we ran five miles all at once.
Although I had never played sports, I had done a little amateur weight lifting with some guys who knew how, so I knew that wasn't how you are supposed to train for any physical activity. Right after our five mile run, I talked it over with another guy who had actually ran competitively in school, and he agreed with me. We decided that, if we wanted to learn this shit, we would have to take responsibility for our own training. So, after supper, we went out to this quarter mile track out back and ran around it five times. Our platoon sergeant, the same one that had been drunk the other night, saw us running and followed us back to the barracks afterwards. He announced that our previous five mile run obviously hadn't been enough for us, so we were all going to do it again right now. This made me and the other guy really unpopular with the rest of the platoon. I don't know about the other guy, but I never did anything like that again. For the rest of my time in the army, I never ran when I could walk, I never walked when I could sit, and I never just sat when I could sleep.
Fun in the first week
Since today is the vernal equinox I'm going to call it: Winter is over and any weather events to the contrary are seasonal flukes and aberrations. In the last week I've noticed a lot of new shoots sprouting from the local shrubbery, so as far as I'm concerned, spring has sprung.
-----
And where is Old Dog's remembrance of basic training? I am especially interested in how he felt about the goings on.
I've been giving it a lot of thought and I'm still not sure how I felt about it except that it was my first solo journey into the unknown with no clue as to what was coming next. The first day was spent mostly at that big monolithic building on Van Buren with a lot of waiting. I'm sure I had some paperwork with me but I don't recall what it was; we were broken down into groups depending on what branch of service we were in and where we were going next. My recruiter told me I'd probably be going to Fort Leonard Wood for basic training; most of the folks from Chicago went there and all I knew about that place was from a buddy of mine who told me it was dry and dusty but not nearly as bad as Fort Polk. I already heard about Polk from some guys in college and was really glad I wasn't going there. That's when I learned my first lesson about army life: all rumors are bullshit. A big blackboard displayed the destinations for the different groups of army recruits and they were all headed for Leonard Wood, except for one group that was headed for Polk. "Poor suckers!," I thought, until I looked more closely. Oh, shit! Well, nothing to do about that turn of events, is there? As Mr. Beagles stated, we signed up for this.
The whole day was spent waiting, shuffling some paperwork, waiting some more and striking up idle conversations, filled with speculation (and more bullshit). There was a chow hall in the building and I had my first army meal, which was surprisingly good. Late in the day we were herded onto buses and went to O'Hare where we waited some more, sitting on the floor in a corner of the terminal away from the paying passengers. Finally we went through this one door, down some stairs, and on to the tarmac where we walked to a plane and boarded. By then it was after dark and during the flight I was thinking that I could be flying anywhere. Just because I was supposed to be going to Louisiana didn't mean shit; I didn't know what direction I was headed in. For all I knew I could be going to Cuba. But the flight wasn't very long and we landed at England AFB, a short bus ride to Polk, around 2 or 3 in the morning.
More waiting and paper shuffling at the Reception Station, "Sound off when I call your name!" Kind of relaxed, folks just doing their jobs without a lot of pressure. You spend about a week at the Reception Station, getting uniforms, taking tests, shuffling those damn papers, going through medical with it's own array of shots and exams and, of course, that initial haircut. Before that buzz cut we were all civilians and our hair indicated our class and cultural differences; anything over the ears and you were considered a dirty hippy. But once you left the barber you looked just like the next guy and we all laughed and teased each other because we all looked ridiculous. Funny thing is that the haircuts were a great equalizer, breaking the tension and apprehension. We started to pay attention and learn some stuff even though we hadn't begun our training yet, or met our drill sergeants. The fun had not yet begun.
-----
I'm trying to get a sense of the time frames of these recent posts. Mr. Beagles was in the army from '63 to '66, near as I can tell, and I started my adventure in August of '68. But when were Uncle Ken's shenanigans in Champaign? It has to be around that same time, I think, maybe '66 or '67?
-----
And where is Old Dog's remembrance of basic training? I am especially interested in how he felt about the goings on.
I've been giving it a lot of thought and I'm still not sure how I felt about it except that it was my first solo journey into the unknown with no clue as to what was coming next. The first day was spent mostly at that big monolithic building on Van Buren with a lot of waiting. I'm sure I had some paperwork with me but I don't recall what it was; we were broken down into groups depending on what branch of service we were in and where we were going next. My recruiter told me I'd probably be going to Fort Leonard Wood for basic training; most of the folks from Chicago went there and all I knew about that place was from a buddy of mine who told me it was dry and dusty but not nearly as bad as Fort Polk. I already heard about Polk from some guys in college and was really glad I wasn't going there. That's when I learned my first lesson about army life: all rumors are bullshit. A big blackboard displayed the destinations for the different groups of army recruits and they were all headed for Leonard Wood, except for one group that was headed for Polk. "Poor suckers!," I thought, until I looked more closely. Oh, shit! Well, nothing to do about that turn of events, is there? As Mr. Beagles stated, we signed up for this.
The whole day was spent waiting, shuffling some paperwork, waiting some more and striking up idle conversations, filled with speculation (and more bullshit). There was a chow hall in the building and I had my first army meal, which was surprisingly good. Late in the day we were herded onto buses and went to O'Hare where we waited some more, sitting on the floor in a corner of the terminal away from the paying passengers. Finally we went through this one door, down some stairs, and on to the tarmac where we walked to a plane and boarded. By then it was after dark and during the flight I was thinking that I could be flying anywhere. Just because I was supposed to be going to Louisiana didn't mean shit; I didn't know what direction I was headed in. For all I knew I could be going to Cuba. But the flight wasn't very long and we landed at England AFB, a short bus ride to Polk, around 2 or 3 in the morning.
More waiting and paper shuffling at the Reception Station, "Sound off when I call your name!" Kind of relaxed, folks just doing their jobs without a lot of pressure. You spend about a week at the Reception Station, getting uniforms, taking tests, shuffling those damn papers, going through medical with it's own array of shots and exams and, of course, that initial haircut. Before that buzz cut we were all civilians and our hair indicated our class and cultural differences; anything over the ears and you were considered a dirty hippy. But once you left the barber you looked just like the next guy and we all laughed and teased each other because we all looked ridiculous. Funny thing is that the haircuts were a great equalizer, breaking the tension and apprehension. We started to pay attention and learn some stuff even though we hadn't begun our training yet, or met our drill sergeants. The fun had not yet begun.
-----
I'm trying to get a sense of the time frames of these recent posts. Mr. Beagles was in the army from '63 to '66, near as I can tell, and I started my adventure in August of '68. But when were Uncle Ken's shenanigans in Champaign? It has to be around that same time, I think, maybe '66 or '67?
the house on Healey Avenue
Once the lease was taken care of I was off to California. It turned out that just because my ex-girlfriend was tired of her new boyfriend that didn't mean that she wanted her old boyfriend, me Or as she put it succinctly when I arrived on her doorstep, "I don't know how to tell you this, but Bob is in the bedroom."
I was back in Champaign in four months, just as all my buddies including Steve were moving into a new hippie house on Healey Avenue and there was a room in it for me. It was an excellent house, two stories and a basement with one room that was a tiny studio apartment and one big empty space that could be a bedroom if you didn't mind the gloom and mold. There were two bathrooms, though if you wanted to take a bath in the downstairs one you had to sneak down into the basement and relight the pilot light every time..
Back to tending that same bar at minimum wage I was the second most responsible member of the house. Steve, with his job at the University grounds crew was the money man of the house. Music was important, it accompanied the dope which was blended with copious amounts of beer. Every Friday several of us accompanied Steve to the record store where he took what was left of his salary after rent and loaning to us deadbeats and we pored over the new arrivals. "Buy this one Steve." "No buy this one." I remember one by Wild Man Fischer which we induced Steve to buy because it was endorsed by Frank Zappa. When we bought it one of the songs had the memorable line, "In 1962 I was committed to the insane asylum," but other than that one line there wasn't much else in it.
Steve had the only record player in the house, and all those albums, and always plenty of dope and we spent a lot of time in his room. Another thing he had was he was a Vietnam veteran and as such he wrote a lot of letters for those of us who wanted to be CO's. Personally I believe this is a just war, but I have known name for many years and he has a sterling character and I can assure you that his beliefs are long-held and sincere. I still have the one he wrote for me. Actually rereading it lately I'm pretty sure I wrote the whole thing, but he did sign it, and I did get my CO..
One of the guys had a part time job at the animal labs where the kibble came in huge plastic bags which were just the right size to tape into a window after the glass had been broken out by some stumbling drunken hippie, and that's the way the house was when I got my sendoff to do my CO in September. The bathtubs and sinks were all full of ice and quarts of Drewery's Draft. There were waterfights between outdoors and inside involving garden hoses and pails of water from the melting ice in the bathtub, and in the morning I was driving down to Herrin to start my CO.
I know Beagles joined the army at the first chance after graduating from Gage Park and I believe he meant it to be his career. Was this his first hint that maybe it wasn't the stalwart institution that he expected it to be?
And where is Old Dog's remembrance of basic training? I am especially interested in how he felt about the goings on.
I was back in Champaign in four months, just as all my buddies including Steve were moving into a new hippie house on Healey Avenue and there was a room in it for me. It was an excellent house, two stories and a basement with one room that was a tiny studio apartment and one big empty space that could be a bedroom if you didn't mind the gloom and mold. There were two bathrooms, though if you wanted to take a bath in the downstairs one you had to sneak down into the basement and relight the pilot light every time..
Back to tending that same bar at minimum wage I was the second most responsible member of the house. Steve, with his job at the University grounds crew was the money man of the house. Music was important, it accompanied the dope which was blended with copious amounts of beer. Every Friday several of us accompanied Steve to the record store where he took what was left of his salary after rent and loaning to us deadbeats and we pored over the new arrivals. "Buy this one Steve." "No buy this one." I remember one by Wild Man Fischer which we induced Steve to buy because it was endorsed by Frank Zappa. When we bought it one of the songs had the memorable line, "In 1962 I was committed to the insane asylum," but other than that one line there wasn't much else in it.
Steve had the only record player in the house, and all those albums, and always plenty of dope and we spent a lot of time in his room. Another thing he had was he was a Vietnam veteran and as such he wrote a lot of letters for those of us who wanted to be CO's. Personally I believe this is a just war, but I have known name for many years and he has a sterling character and I can assure you that his beliefs are long-held and sincere. I still have the one he wrote for me. Actually rereading it lately I'm pretty sure I wrote the whole thing, but he did sign it, and I did get my CO..
One of the guys had a part time job at the animal labs where the kibble came in huge plastic bags which were just the right size to tape into a window after the glass had been broken out by some stumbling drunken hippie, and that's the way the house was when I got my sendoff to do my CO in September. The bathtubs and sinks were all full of ice and quarts of Drewery's Draft. There were waterfights between outdoors and inside involving garden hoses and pails of water from the melting ice in the bathtub, and in the morning I was driving down to Herrin to start my CO.
I know Beagles joined the army at the first chance after graduating from Gage Park and I believe he meant it to be his career. Was this his first hint that maybe it wasn't the stalwart institution that he expected it to be?
And where is Old Dog's remembrance of basic training? I am especially interested in how he felt about the goings on.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Too Tired to Care
I suppose a gig is like a demerit. I think the term came from the checkmark that an inspecting officer made on his clip board when he saw something he didn't like. In some parts of the country, people call a fish or frog spear a "gig". Those kinds of spears differ from the old fashioned military spears in that the points are barbed, and a check mark kind of looks like that.
I didn't confront the drunken sergeant that night, it was the fake sergeant that woke me up to tell me what the drunken sergeant had told him to tell his fake corporals to tell their men. I doubt that I would have responded differently to the drunken sergeant, though. I expected there would be consequences for my refusal to obey an order like that but, at that point, I was too tired to care. Getting up early in the morning didn't bother me because I had always been a morning person, but I was accustomed to going to bed earlier than most people, which is why I didn't mind getting up earlier than most people. I eventually solved this by learning to take short naps whenever I wasn't doing anything important. I got so that I could sleep anywhere as long as I was warm and dry, and could instantly snap to whenever I needed to do so.
Like I said, it turned out that nobody said anything to me about the incident. I figured out that was because the drunken sergeant must have realized he had been wrong after he sobered up, and thought it best to forget about it and hope that everybody else did too. I learned later that the proper thing for me to have done was to obey the order under protest and report it to a higher authority, but I didn't know that at the time. I also learned later that military men seldom do the proper thing anyway, and they don't expect their colleagues to either.
I didn't confront the drunken sergeant that night, it was the fake sergeant that woke me up to tell me what the drunken sergeant had told him to tell his fake corporals to tell their men. I doubt that I would have responded differently to the drunken sergeant, though. I expected there would be consequences for my refusal to obey an order like that but, at that point, I was too tired to care. Getting up early in the morning didn't bother me because I had always been a morning person, but I was accustomed to going to bed earlier than most people, which is why I didn't mind getting up earlier than most people. I eventually solved this by learning to take short naps whenever I wasn't doing anything important. I got so that I could sleep anywhere as long as I was warm and dry, and could instantly snap to whenever I needed to do so.
Like I said, it turned out that nobody said anything to me about the incident. I figured out that was because the drunken sergeant must have realized he had been wrong after he sobered up, and thought it best to forget about it and hope that everybody else did too. I learned later that the proper thing for me to have done was to obey the order under protest and report it to a higher authority, but I didn't know that at the time. I also learned later that military men seldom do the proper thing anyway, and they don't expect their colleagues to either.
fire in the oven
The realtor's name was Reinhart. There was a character in Invisible Man called Reinhart the Destroyer, and that's how we referred to him, because a man who controlled that much money and property and who had our names on a lease where he could squeeze the blood out of us and if we couldn't make it maybe we would end up in jail,was a powerful man indeed. We stood in his office trembling asking to get out of the lease early and he just kind of chuckled and said sure. I imagine that he wasn't unhappy to be rid of us.
So that was that, but then we decided we wanted to take a crack at getting our cleaning deposit back. Me and Steve went out there late one evening armed with cleaning tools and some speed running in our veins. Speed was always the goto drug when some arduous task was before us. We were finishing up in the kitchen and I was doing the oven when I saw fire. Fire!
"Steve."
"What?"
"Fire!"
"What?"
"Fire! There's fire in the oven."
"Huh?"
I want to point out here that this wasn't just the pilot light, surprisingly I knew about that, but this was actual flames in the oven. My memory is that it was quite the conflagration, but in hindsight probably not that much, just enough to scare the shit out of a hippie with speed flowing through his veins.
Well what to do? What to do? Call the fire department? My God, a fireman was not the next closest thing to a policeman, no way in hell could we do that. Imagine a hook and ladder roaring through the curvy streets of our peaceful residential neighborhood, burly firemen in those odd hats and carrying hoses and axes and bursting down the door and yelling, "Where's the fire you stupid hippies?"
No, we could not do that. After much discussion during which the fire in the oven died out, though you never knew if it could come roaring back and explode the whole kitchen with us in it. Finally we called the gas company. The guy sounded kind of bored, well sometimes when the oven is disturbed by like cleaning, the remains of food can become dislodged and fall into the pilot light and cause some flames. Probably nothing to be worried about.
Probably? But it sure beat having that firetruck come to a screaming halt in front of the house. We finished cleaning. I don't remember if we got our deposit back.
A fine story Beagles. I particularly like the title a takeoff on The Cain Mutiny and possibly on Napoleon who was known as the little corporal. I assume being gigged is like getting a demerit. ?Where did you get the gumption to stand up to that drunken sergeant like that?
So that was that, but then we decided we wanted to take a crack at getting our cleaning deposit back. Me and Steve went out there late one evening armed with cleaning tools and some speed running in our veins. Speed was always the goto drug when some arduous task was before us. We were finishing up in the kitchen and I was doing the oven when I saw fire. Fire!
"Steve."
"What?"
"Fire!"
"What?"
"Fire! There's fire in the oven."
"Huh?"
I want to point out here that this wasn't just the pilot light, surprisingly I knew about that, but this was actual flames in the oven. My memory is that it was quite the conflagration, but in hindsight probably not that much, just enough to scare the shit out of a hippie with speed flowing through his veins.
Well what to do? What to do? Call the fire department? My God, a fireman was not the next closest thing to a policeman, no way in hell could we do that. Imagine a hook and ladder roaring through the curvy streets of our peaceful residential neighborhood, burly firemen in those odd hats and carrying hoses and axes and bursting down the door and yelling, "Where's the fire you stupid hippies?"
No, we could not do that. After much discussion during which the fire in the oven died out, though you never knew if it could come roaring back and explode the whole kitchen with us in it. Finally we called the gas company. The guy sounded kind of bored, well sometimes when the oven is disturbed by like cleaning, the remains of food can become dislodged and fall into the pilot light and cause some flames. Probably nothing to be worried about.
Probably? But it sure beat having that firetruck come to a screaming halt in front of the house. We finished cleaning. I don't remember if we got our deposit back.
A fine story Beagles. I particularly like the title a takeoff on The Cain Mutiny and possibly on Napoleon who was known as the little corporal. I assume being gigged is like getting a demerit. ?Where did you get the gumption to stand up to that drunken sergeant like that?
Monday, March 18, 2019
The Fake Corporal Mutiny
Because of my high school ROTC experience, I was appointed to be a fake corporal soon after arriving at basic training. It was no big deal, there was no pay raise, and I didn't even get to sew my fake corporal stripes on my sleeve. They gave me two fake corporal arm bands to slip over my sleeve instead. My direct superior was a fake sergeant. The real sergeant would give orders to the fake sergeant, who would pass them down to the fake corporals, who would pass them down to their men.
One night the fake sergeant came up to the second floor of our barracks and woke me up. He told me that one of the guys on the first floor had left out a can of floor wax with a mop in it when we went out to training that morning and we had gotten gigged for it in the daily inspection. The real sergeant, who lived off post, came in drunk in the middle of he night and flew into a rage when he saw that we had been gigged. As punishment, we were supposed to scrape off all the wax from both floors with our mess kit knives immediately. I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and refused to tell my men to do it. He said that it was my duty as fake corporal to pass down any orders that he passed down to me, and that failing to do so would cause me to lose my fake corporal stripes. To save him the trouble, I took my fake corporal arm bands off of my foot locker and handed them to the fake sergeant, announcing that I had just resigned my commission. He then advised me that I might go to jail for disobeying a direct order, to which I replied, "Good! Maybe I can get some sleep there."
Well, I didn't go to jail, nobody even came around and talked to me about it. The first floor got gigged that morning for not having any wax on its floor, and we didn't. Nobody was assigned to replace me as fake corporal, and the second floor got along just fine without one. I like to think that was because I had trained my men so well in my brief tenure as fake corporal that they became self actualized and no longer needed to be told what to do.
One night the fake sergeant came up to the second floor of our barracks and woke me up. He told me that one of the guys on the first floor had left out a can of floor wax with a mop in it when we went out to training that morning and we had gotten gigged for it in the daily inspection. The real sergeant, who lived off post, came in drunk in the middle of he night and flew into a rage when he saw that we had been gigged. As punishment, we were supposed to scrape off all the wax from both floors with our mess kit knives immediately. I told him that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard and refused to tell my men to do it. He said that it was my duty as fake corporal to pass down any orders that he passed down to me, and that failing to do so would cause me to lose my fake corporal stripes. To save him the trouble, I took my fake corporal arm bands off of my foot locker and handed them to the fake sergeant, announcing that I had just resigned my commission. He then advised me that I might go to jail for disobeying a direct order, to which I replied, "Good! Maybe I can get some sleep there."
Well, I didn't go to jail, nobody even came around and talked to me about it. The first floor got gigged that morning for not having any wax on its floor, and we didn't. Nobody was assigned to replace me as fake corporal, and the second floor got along just fine without one. I like to think that was because I had trained my men so well in my brief tenure as fake corporal that they became self actualized and no longer needed to be told what to do.
Losing Big Sue's car
Oh did I tell you about Sue's car? Sue had an old jalopy that Steve and I and one of the guys who didn't pay actual rent but contributed what he could, took the car to Chicago. Somewhere on the Stevenson expressway it died. We got it off somehow but then it kept dying. We didn't know anything about cars or have any insurance, or well anything. In the trunk there was a coffee grinder that had once been used, not very successfully, to grind some pot and it was full of pot residue. So there was that. We limped it into some residential neighborhood and removed the plates and slunk away like thieves in the night.
I had an ex-girlfriend from whom who I wrangled a place to stay that night, and the other guy found someplace else to stay and that left Steve alone to face Big Sue. We were all a bit afraid of Big Sue, she was well big, and she had that thing some people have where she bossed people around. Just the way it was. For years afterwards Steve would remind me of how we had deserted him and left him to face Big Sue alone and tell her that we had lost her car.
Steve did not have the best of deals growing up. His father was an old country Slovak who tyrannized the family and especially Steve, the only son. His mother was in and out of institutions. On the outside he was all trash-talking bigmouth know-it-all, but inside there was fear. Inside hippie communities there was always some fear of the surrounding straight people, especially authority figures, from cops to the conductor on the train to some old guy in a security guard's uniform/ There was always the matter of dope, you always had dope on you or stashed somewhere in your pad, and a little altercation and this could lead to this and that and you could end up in jail. Not very likely of course, but it could happen. And people in general did not like hippies so there was always that animosity although it was rare that something would come of it.
Living in this ranch house surrounded by the possibly prying eyes of all our neighbors we were a bit paranoid. We had no furniture except mattresses, we had no refrigerator, it was winter and we used the backyard. We never spoke to a single neighbor. It snowed one day after Sue's car was gone, and the guy who had been with us when we lost the car noted all the other shoveled driveways and went out and shoveled ours even though, like I said, we had no car. LSD was a factor in that.
But Steve was more paranoid than the rest of us. Sometimes after smoking dope with Steve in the frontroom I would swing open the front door, exclaiming loudly, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Great Outdoors." Steve hated that. "Shut it," he'd say, "There's people out there."
Because of the way we had rented the place, as two married couples only Steve'and I had our names on the lease. Big Sue was no longer paying rent. "What about my car?" was what she asked if we dared ask her. Cindy had moved out, those hangers on that contributed a little were gone and there were maybe eight months left on the lease.
Eventually Sue moved out, and Steve found someplace else to stay even though he was still paying half the rent on the ranch house. I was working ten hour days six days a week tending bar at minimum wage and no tips. Closing time was one, and I'd get off at two and tuck a six pack of Ballentine Ale under my arm and trudge the two miles through the snow and sit alone in the frontroom and drink my six pack and feel sorry for myself. That ex-girlfriend had moved to Berkeley with her new boyfriend but now she was souring on him and writing me letters asking me if I wouldn't want to move to California. Of course I would, but what about that name on the lease?
Possibly Tiger Country is a flaw in my remembering, Actually now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that Steve did his basic in Fort Leonardwood and later came to Tiger Country (which i think has a nicer ring than Tigerland. You know if you dawgs are hard up for something to write about I would love to hear your stories about basic training, especially those first few days when you went from being civilians to G I's. I'd like to know what happened, but mostly what you felt about it.
I had an ex-girlfriend from whom who I wrangled a place to stay that night, and the other guy found someplace else to stay and that left Steve alone to face Big Sue. We were all a bit afraid of Big Sue, she was well big, and she had that thing some people have where she bossed people around. Just the way it was. For years afterwards Steve would remind me of how we had deserted him and left him to face Big Sue alone and tell her that we had lost her car.
Steve did not have the best of deals growing up. His father was an old country Slovak who tyrannized the family and especially Steve, the only son. His mother was in and out of institutions. On the outside he was all trash-talking bigmouth know-it-all, but inside there was fear. Inside hippie communities there was always some fear of the surrounding straight people, especially authority figures, from cops to the conductor on the train to some old guy in a security guard's uniform/ There was always the matter of dope, you always had dope on you or stashed somewhere in your pad, and a little altercation and this could lead to this and that and you could end up in jail. Not very likely of course, but it could happen. And people in general did not like hippies so there was always that animosity although it was rare that something would come of it.
Living in this ranch house surrounded by the possibly prying eyes of all our neighbors we were a bit paranoid. We had no furniture except mattresses, we had no refrigerator, it was winter and we used the backyard. We never spoke to a single neighbor. It snowed one day after Sue's car was gone, and the guy who had been with us when we lost the car noted all the other shoveled driveways and went out and shoveled ours even though, like I said, we had no car. LSD was a factor in that.
But Steve was more paranoid than the rest of us. Sometimes after smoking dope with Steve in the frontroom I would swing open the front door, exclaiming loudly, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Great Outdoors." Steve hated that. "Shut it," he'd say, "There's people out there."
Because of the way we had rented the place, as two married couples only Steve'and I had our names on the lease. Big Sue was no longer paying rent. "What about my car?" was what she asked if we dared ask her. Cindy had moved out, those hangers on that contributed a little were gone and there were maybe eight months left on the lease.
Eventually Sue moved out, and Steve found someplace else to stay even though he was still paying half the rent on the ranch house. I was working ten hour days six days a week tending bar at minimum wage and no tips. Closing time was one, and I'd get off at two and tuck a six pack of Ballentine Ale under my arm and trudge the two miles through the snow and sit alone in the frontroom and drink my six pack and feel sorry for myself. That ex-girlfriend had moved to Berkeley with her new boyfriend but now she was souring on him and writing me letters asking me if I wouldn't want to move to California. Of course I would, but what about that name on the lease?
Possibly Tiger Country is a flaw in my remembering, Actually now that I think about it I'm pretty sure that Steve did his basic in Fort Leonardwood and later came to Tiger Country (which i think has a nicer ring than Tigerland. You know if you dawgs are hard up for something to write about I would love to hear your stories about basic training, especially those first few days when you went from being civilians to G I's. I'd like to know what happened, but mostly what you felt about it.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Some fort, indeed
There were letters from some fort in Louisiana called Tiger Country...
Ah yes, Fort Polk, home of the notorious Tiger Land, or Tigerland, and known, no doubt, by some as Tiger Country. Because of Tigerland Fort Polk had the reputation of being the absolute worst place to be sent, a hellhole striking fear in the heart of many a young recruit, but I never saw Tigerland myself. Fort Polk was a huge place back then, split into two forts. South Fort was the larger of the two and was where all the recruits did their basic training. North Fort was smaller and was devoted to advanced infantry training, complete with at least one replica Vietnamese village. I don't know if Tigerland had discrete boundaries or was simply a state of mind but it was located at North Fort.
And you know what? I don't think anyone cares if it was called Tiger Country, Tiger Land, or Tiger Patootie. I was going to let it go because Uncle Ken's story was off to a good start and didn't need any distractions from me. But then Mr. Beagles mentioned those details about US, RA, NG, etc., and decades-old memories came to mind with surreal clarity and all I could think about was Fort Polk. But I can't tie those memories into a coherent narrative or story; they are all little snippets, memories of certain sights, sounds, and sensations. I would much rather read about the goings on in Champaign while I wonder how you all managed to stay out of jail, or did you?
Ah yes, Fort Polk, home of the notorious Tiger Land, or Tigerland, and known, no doubt, by some as Tiger Country. Because of Tigerland Fort Polk had the reputation of being the absolute worst place to be sent, a hellhole striking fear in the heart of many a young recruit, but I never saw Tigerland myself. Fort Polk was a huge place back then, split into two forts. South Fort was the larger of the two and was where all the recruits did their basic training. North Fort was smaller and was devoted to advanced infantry training, complete with at least one replica Vietnamese village. I don't know if Tigerland had discrete boundaries or was simply a state of mind but it was located at North Fort.
And you know what? I don't think anyone cares if it was called Tiger Country, Tiger Land, or Tiger Patootie. I was going to let it go because Uncle Ken's story was off to a good start and didn't need any distractions from me. But then Mr. Beagles mentioned those details about US, RA, NG, etc., and decades-old memories came to mind with surreal clarity and all I could think about was Fort Polk. But I can't tie those memories into a coherent narrative or story; they are all little snippets, memories of certain sights, sounds, and sensations. I would much rather read about the goings on in Champaign while I wonder how you all managed to stay out of jail, or did you?
Friday, March 15, 2019
Steve's closet
That crash pad I was writing about in the last posting was financed by Big Sue, Her family had money or property or something and when they died she got it and she spent freely. I was a friend of her boyfriend and when she moved him and her into that apartment/crash pad, I was brought around to amuse him, which chiefly amounted to drinking with him which I could do just fine.
Steve came back from Vietnam right about the time we were getting booted out of that place. He had a lot of dough from the army and after two years away he wanted to get back into the Champaign-Urbana social scene and boy did I have a deal for him.
We had discovered this ranch house in the land of curvy streets southwest of the campus, a big place with four bedrooms, an ideal nest for six hippies. But who would rent to six hippies? But we had an ingenious plan, we posed as two couples, Steve was married to Big Sue, and I was married to Cindy, and to make it a little more acceptable, Cindy and Sue were sisters. I wonder how the realtor kept a straight face long enough to have us sign the lease.
Sue had her money, Steve had his, I was tending bar, Cindy was a temp secretary, there were a few others who lived there from time to time and chipped in a bit. Life was good. There was a group of high school kids who flew to San Francisco and bought LSD cheap and came back and sold it for ten times what they paid which financed the whole trip and left them with cash and LSD for themselves. They arrived back on Saturday nights at a coffee house where we met them and bought enough for our whole house, and we had LSD Sundays.
Steve's room was actually two small rooms with a partition between them which was taken down so that he had two doors into the hallway. On LSD Sundays that second door to the hallway became Steve's closet. "Let me show you my closet," he would say and lo and behold Steve's closet contained a hallway, and that hallway led into the interior of a house exactly like the one we were living in. And not only that it was filled with people who looked just like us but lived there whole lives in Steve's closet, Closet Steve, Closet Cindy, Closet Big Sue, everybody except yourself who appeared to have no closet doppleganger.
And not only that but if you went into the closet inside Steve's closet the exact same thing happened and now you had Closet Closet Big Sue etc. You could do this as often as you liked but you had to be careful to go out as many times as you went in because otherwise you could spend your whole life in Steve's closet. LSD was a lot of fun.
LSD never really wears out until you go to bed and get up in the morning, but it does weaken considerably and late at night Steve and I would get together and talk about the trip because you couldn't always express yourself clearly when you were flying high. We called this the post-game recap.
And then one day, I remember it explicitly, we were playing poker and Big Sue lost a big pot and all her money on the table. I expected that she would go back to her room and get more from her hoard, but instead she started pulling shy. She was out of money. It was the beginning of the end of our happy home.
Steve came back from Vietnam right about the time we were getting booted out of that place. He had a lot of dough from the army and after two years away he wanted to get back into the Champaign-Urbana social scene and boy did I have a deal for him.
We had discovered this ranch house in the land of curvy streets southwest of the campus, a big place with four bedrooms, an ideal nest for six hippies. But who would rent to six hippies? But we had an ingenious plan, we posed as two couples, Steve was married to Big Sue, and I was married to Cindy, and to make it a little more acceptable, Cindy and Sue were sisters. I wonder how the realtor kept a straight face long enough to have us sign the lease.
Sue had her money, Steve had his, I was tending bar, Cindy was a temp secretary, there were a few others who lived there from time to time and chipped in a bit. Life was good. There was a group of high school kids who flew to San Francisco and bought LSD cheap and came back and sold it for ten times what they paid which financed the whole trip and left them with cash and LSD for themselves. They arrived back on Saturday nights at a coffee house where we met them and bought enough for our whole house, and we had LSD Sundays.
Steve's room was actually two small rooms with a partition between them which was taken down so that he had two doors into the hallway. On LSD Sundays that second door to the hallway became Steve's closet. "Let me show you my closet," he would say and lo and behold Steve's closet contained a hallway, and that hallway led into the interior of a house exactly like the one we were living in. And not only that it was filled with people who looked just like us but lived there whole lives in Steve's closet, Closet Steve, Closet Cindy, Closet Big Sue, everybody except yourself who appeared to have no closet doppleganger.
And not only that but if you went into the closet inside Steve's closet the exact same thing happened and now you had Closet Closet Big Sue etc. You could do this as often as you liked but you had to be careful to go out as many times as you went in because otherwise you could spend your whole life in Steve's closet. LSD was a lot of fun.
LSD never really wears out until you go to bed and get up in the morning, but it does weaken considerably and late at night Steve and I would get together and talk about the trip because you couldn't always express yourself clearly when you were flying high. We called this the post-game recap.
And then one day, I remember it explicitly, we were playing poker and Big Sue lost a big pot and all her money on the table. I expected that she would go back to her room and get more from her hoard, but instead she started pulling shy. She was out of money. It was the beginning of the end of our happy home.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
"You Volunteered For This Shit"
When I went to basic, the draftees, the volunteers, the army reservists, and the national guard guys, were all in it together. They were usually referred to by the prefixes of their service numbers which were, respectively, US, RA, AR, and NG. Surprisingly, the USs generally had better attitudes than the RAs, and the ARs and NGs had better attitudes than either of them. A lot of that was attributed to the length of time they were going to spend on active duty. The total commitment was six years, with the RAs spending three years on active duty and three years on standby reserve. The USs were destined to spend two years on active duty, two years on ready reserve, and two years on standby reserve. The ARs and NGs spent six months on active duty, and the rest of their enlistment on ready reserve. Ready reservists had to spend one weekend a month and a week or two once a year training with their local units, hence their nicknames "weekend warriors". They were basically civilians the rest of the time, but they could be called up on a moment's notice if they were needed. Standby reservists were full time civilians, but their names were on a list and could be called up if they were ever needed.
I chose the RA option because it was essentially three years and out. It was generally believed that standby reservists would never be called up unless World War III started. I believe some of them were called up briefly during the Cuban Missile Crisis because it looked like World War III was indeed upon us, but it wasn't, and they were soon released. Shortly after I enlisted, it was announced that the two year ready reserve requirement for USs was being waived, so they ended up only having to serve two years. If I had known that was going to happen I could have volunteered for the draft instead of joining for three years, a fact that the USs frequently brought to the attention of the RAs. Anytime one of us complained about something, some smart alecky US would taunt us with: "Hey, you volunteered for this shit." I think the hardest part of being an RA was the knowledge that we had brought it on ourselves, while the USs took comfort in the belief that they were only paying their debt to society, kind of like paying taxes.
Although this was before the Vietnam escalation, we all lived with the prospect that we might be sent there at some point. As it turned out, about half of us were sent to Korea and the other half to Berlin. Both places were considered to be trouble spots in the world, but the situation in Berlin had cooled down considerably before I got there. Korea is still a trouble spot to this day, but it's considered a hardship tour, so you only have to spend a year over there. The tour in Berlin was three years, or whenever your enlistment expired, whichever came first, so I ended up spending 30 months over there, while those smart alecky USs only spent 18 months. Ironically, many of the NGs, who joined to evade combat service, saw real combat in the riot torn streets of American cities, while I coasted along in a relatively peaceful environment.
I chose the RA option because it was essentially three years and out. It was generally believed that standby reservists would never be called up unless World War III started. I believe some of them were called up briefly during the Cuban Missile Crisis because it looked like World War III was indeed upon us, but it wasn't, and they were soon released. Shortly after I enlisted, it was announced that the two year ready reserve requirement for USs was being waived, so they ended up only having to serve two years. If I had known that was going to happen I could have volunteered for the draft instead of joining for three years, a fact that the USs frequently brought to the attention of the RAs. Anytime one of us complained about something, some smart alecky US would taunt us with: "Hey, you volunteered for this shit." I think the hardest part of being an RA was the knowledge that we had brought it on ourselves, while the USs took comfort in the belief that they were only paying their debt to society, kind of like paying taxes.
Although this was before the Vietnam escalation, we all lived with the prospect that we might be sent there at some point. As it turned out, about half of us were sent to Korea and the other half to Berlin. Both places were considered to be trouble spots in the world, but the situation in Berlin had cooled down considerably before I got there. Korea is still a trouble spot to this day, but it's considered a hardship tour, so you only have to spend a year over there. The tour in Berlin was three years, or whenever your enlistment expired, whichever came first, so I ended up spending 30 months over there, while those smart alecky USs only spent 18 months. Ironically, many of the NGs, who joined to evade combat service, saw real combat in the riot torn streets of American cities, while I coasted along in a relatively peaceful environment.
dropping out and going to Vietnam
I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday about DST, and he was against it too. I didn't realize that there was such a grassroots groundswell. But now I see that I misread Beagles and he is for making it permanent. By the way I differ on Rubio not being a Trump yes man. He may peep something now and then that is a little off the Trump track, but if it draws attention he will quickly backtrack, and I don't expect he will be crossing Trump on these upcoming Emergency and Yemen votes. But keeping DST permanent doesn't sound that different from abolishing it. I expect both the abolishers and the always-DSTers are closer together than those who want to keep it the way it is. I expect what they don't like is changing their clocks twice a year, but I see that as the main strength of the system, two sort of holidays every year, what's not to like?
I went to U of I with two of my high school buddies, Woodrow Ellis and Ted Jennings (Beagles will remember these guys). Before it even got cold both of them were back in Chicago. Those suburban schools were so much ahead of Gage Park that we were swamped. I hung on by the skin of my teeth for a couple years, and eventually caught up a little bit, but it was lonely and dull.
And then in the spring of 1965 I got introduced to The Tavern. It wasn't really a tavern but it was a section of the student union with kind of old timey furnishings and it was where the kiddy (because they were so young) beats (because it was too early for hippies) hung out. Bam, suddenly I had a big group of friends to hang out and skip classes with. And one day I met Terry and Steve, actual dropouts, as opposed to students goofing off, who lived in like their own apartment and could hold parties where copious amounts of beer were drunk. Way cool.
But on the other side they had no jobs and being drafted was the only sure thing in their future. Terry had some money squirreled away, but Steve sponged mainly off me which, me being cheap, was not that easy to come by. They both got drafted Terry was maybe a little smarter or more likely luckier because he ended up in Oklahoma repairing helicopters while sad sack Steve went to Vietnam.
There were letters from some fort in Louisiana called Tiger Country, standing in the rain in formation wondering how he got there and where he was going. I know both dawgs went through basic, but I wonder if maybe their time was easier in that they weren't drafted and didn't face Vietnam. Eventually Steve was on that twenty-four hour plane ride and when he got there he said he had never seen anything as green as those rice paddies.
Meanwhile stateside I was living the life of Riley, hanging out with my beer drinking buddies, going to parties and bars and jokingly writing Steve to thank him for defending my way of life. I flunked out of school just before graduation and was living in this sort of crash pad which had just crashed when Steve got back from Vietnam, flush with cash and looking to have a good time.
I went to U of I with two of my high school buddies, Woodrow Ellis and Ted Jennings (Beagles will remember these guys). Before it even got cold both of them were back in Chicago. Those suburban schools were so much ahead of Gage Park that we were swamped. I hung on by the skin of my teeth for a couple years, and eventually caught up a little bit, but it was lonely and dull.
And then in the spring of 1965 I got introduced to The Tavern. It wasn't really a tavern but it was a section of the student union with kind of old timey furnishings and it was where the kiddy (because they were so young) beats (because it was too early for hippies) hung out. Bam, suddenly I had a big group of friends to hang out and skip classes with. And one day I met Terry and Steve, actual dropouts, as opposed to students goofing off, who lived in like their own apartment and could hold parties where copious amounts of beer were drunk. Way cool.
But on the other side they had no jobs and being drafted was the only sure thing in their future. Terry had some money squirreled away, but Steve sponged mainly off me which, me being cheap, was not that easy to come by. They both got drafted Terry was maybe a little smarter or more likely luckier because he ended up in Oklahoma repairing helicopters while sad sack Steve went to Vietnam.
There were letters from some fort in Louisiana called Tiger Country, standing in the rain in formation wondering how he got there and where he was going. I know both dawgs went through basic, but I wonder if maybe their time was easier in that they weren't drafted and didn't face Vietnam. Eventually Steve was on that twenty-four hour plane ride and when he got there he said he had never seen anything as green as those rice paddies.
Meanwhile stateside I was living the life of Riley, hanging out with my beer drinking buddies, going to parties and bars and jokingly writing Steve to thank him for defending my way of life. I flunked out of school just before graduation and was living in this sort of crash pad which had just crashed when Steve got back from Vietnam, flush with cash and looking to have a good time.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
More on DST
There was an article about DST in our local paper by Joel Achenbach of the Washington Post. I'm having trouble finding it on line, so I will summarize it. Legislation has been introduced by Senator Marco Rubio to make DST a year round thing, just as I proposed in my last post. It's nice to know that influential people like him are being influenced by The Beaglesonian Institute. Uncle Ken reported reading about Trump making the same proposal, but I didn't see Trump's name in the article and, last I heard, Rubio was not one of Trump's biggest fans, so he must have gotten the idea from me. No other explanation makes sense.
There was a thing about that underwater crucifix on the TV news the other day. I don't remember if they said that the winter viewing is an annual event, but the crucifix was placed there by scuba divers some time ago, so I suppose other divers could go see it at any time of year.
We got up into the 40s today and are supposed to get up into the 50s tomorrow with substantial rain. Such weather is not unusual for us this time of year, but it doesn't mean that winter is over. There will be more snow and cold weather to come, but I will be happy if it just stays above zero.
I also would be interested in reading about the life of Uncle Ken's recently deceased friend.
There was a thing about that underwater crucifix on the TV news the other day. I don't remember if they said that the winter viewing is an annual event, but the crucifix was placed there by scuba divers some time ago, so I suppose other divers could go see it at any time of year.
We got up into the 40s today and are supposed to get up into the 50s tomorrow with substantial rain. Such weather is not unusual for us this time of year, but it doesn't mean that winter is over. There will be more snow and cold weather to come, but I will be happy if it just stays above zero.
I also would be interested in reading about the life of Uncle Ken's recently deceased friend.
Breaking the cycle
It looks like a new record has been set in the annals of Beaglesonia: three consecutive posts by the same author. Uncle Ken, take a bow! Your self discipline and ability to adhere to a regular schedule is commendable; I lack your tenacity of spirit and the written word doesn't flow as easily for me as it does for you. There are a lot of times that I can't think of anything worth saying, or I forget what I wanted to say and the topic has moved on. And then there are times that I like to skip a few days just to see the response from Uncle Ken, wondering if he's going to make mountains out of any molehills.
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That's a sad tale about your buddy from Champaign, Uncle Ken, but what can you really do? People make choices and decide how they want to live their lives, like it or not, and if the fire in the belly is quenched you may end up sitting in front of a big TV, waiting for it all to end. Has the cause of death been determined yet? I wonder if your friend had a sense that the end was near, maybe an undiagnosed fatal disease, and decided not to fight it. Hogwash, I know, but you never know about these things and I think there are a lot of people that just get tired of living.
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Petoskey is in the news again, this time in The Daily Mail in the UK. There is an underwater crucifix that has been drawing plenty of gawkers now that a hole in the ice has been cleared. Has the viewing of the crucifix become an annual event up there, Mr. Beagles?
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Say what you will about Daylight Saving Time, it could have been worse. There was a proposal to adjust the time in twenty minute increments, three Sundays in a row. Not a lot fun, I think.
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That's a sad tale about your buddy from Champaign, Uncle Ken, but what can you really do? People make choices and decide how they want to live their lives, like it or not, and if the fire in the belly is quenched you may end up sitting in front of a big TV, waiting for it all to end. Has the cause of death been determined yet? I wonder if your friend had a sense that the end was near, maybe an undiagnosed fatal disease, and decided not to fight it. Hogwash, I know, but you never know about these things and I think there are a lot of people that just get tired of living.
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Petoskey is in the news again, this time in The Daily Mail in the UK. There is an underwater crucifix that has been drawing plenty of gawkers now that a hole in the ice has been cleared. Has the viewing of the crucifix become an annual event up there, Mr. Beagles?
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Say what you will about Daylight Saving Time, it could have been worse. There was a proposal to adjust the time in twenty minute increments, three Sundays in a row. Not a lot fun, I think.
dark and rainy Wednesday morning
Well shit.
Long ago when the Trib, with its bold pro-McCarthy political cartoons smack dab in the middle of the front page, arrived on our doorstep every morning I would spread it on the floor and explore it. So many photos, pictures, words, words, words, advertising, and all these columns sprinkled throughout. I remember one called The Duke of Paducah. What a town this Paducah must be, to be in the title of a column in The World's Greatest Newspaper. And then there was something called In the Wake of the News. I don't remember what its content was but the title was followed by this little bit of doggerel:
Do you see where I am going with this Dawgs? I like a soapy shower in the morning and then there are cats to be fed and coffee and yogurt to be brought to the table, and the old 'puter is slowly wakening as I shoot my cuffs and crack my knuckles in preparation of seeing what the dawgs may have written and shuffling that around in my mind and thinking of differing ways to riff on that and presently I am click clacking away happy as the proverbial clam.
I suppose I could just go off on my own as I am doing this rainy morning full of the darkness of DST, but I'd rather have something to comment on, and writing is not a solitary art, you want to believe that somebody is reading what you wrote, you want to see what reaction you wrote had, you don't want to feel so Oh my God am I hear all alone.
And as a good liberal, the first thing that occurs to me is, is it me? Sometimes I know I get a little too hot under the collar discussing politics, maybe sometimes I just go on and on, maybe dawg eyes are rolling, enough already.
Had an old Champaign buddy die Monday. Well probably he died a week before, he had become kind of a recluse spending his days in front of his big screen tv smoking Luckies and a little dope and taking pills he got from the VA and venturing out just for food and stuff like that. He had a little porch and I once bought him a fancy lawn chair, the kind with cup holders, and urged him to sit outside a bit on a summer evening and feel the breeze and watch the cars go by, but the chair never got out of the box.
He did have a few friends who dropped by maybe once a month. Monday one of them knocked on the door and there was no answer and he called the cops and they broke in and there he was dead a week they estimated.
I hate to think of him gone unsung. I am thinking of using these posts to tell his story.
Long ago when the Trib, with its bold pro-McCarthy political cartoons smack dab in the middle of the front page, arrived on our doorstep every morning I would spread it on the floor and explore it. So many photos, pictures, words, words, words, advertising, and all these columns sprinkled throughout. I remember one called The Duke of Paducah. What a town this Paducah must be, to be in the title of a column in The World's Greatest Newspaper. And then there was something called In the Wake of the News. I don't remember what its content was but the title was followed by this little bit of doggerel:
The Wake depends (help, help)
Upon its friends
I suppose I could just go off on my own as I am doing this rainy morning full of the darkness of DST, but I'd rather have something to comment on, and writing is not a solitary art, you want to believe that somebody is reading what you wrote, you want to see what reaction you wrote had, you don't want to feel so Oh my God am I hear all alone.
And as a good liberal, the first thing that occurs to me is, is it me? Sometimes I know I get a little too hot under the collar discussing politics, maybe sometimes I just go on and on, maybe dawg eyes are rolling, enough already.
Had an old Champaign buddy die Monday. Well probably he died a week before, he had become kind of a recluse spending his days in front of his big screen tv smoking Luckies and a little dope and taking pills he got from the VA and venturing out just for food and stuff like that. He had a little porch and I once bought him a fancy lawn chair, the kind with cup holders, and urged him to sit outside a bit on a summer evening and feel the breeze and watch the cars go by, but the chair never got out of the box.
He did have a few friends who dropped by maybe once a month. Monday one of them knocked on the door and there was no answer and he called the cops and they broke in and there he was dead a week they estimated.
I hate to think of him gone unsung. I am thinking of using these posts to tell his story.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
getting warmer
Read a headline on my news feed yesterday where Trump wanted to make DST permanent. Didn't read it because, well, there would be too much Trump in it. So the man who rails against fake news wants it to be fake time all the time. Well probably the original time was some plot by Crooked Hilary, so what he is doing is just setting it right.
The ides just a few days away, St Paddy's a couple days after that, a couple weeks after that we get to the prankster's fave April Fool's, and right about that time the beginning of the baseball season. which actually isn't that hopeful because a lot of opening days are called because of snow.
It's almost time for the sun to rise over my little slice of the lake between the IBM building and the London Guarantee, and I just stepped out onto the balcony to check the southern edge of that slice and nada, but standing out there in my slippered feet I noticed it was not that chilly, not that chilly at all.
Stepping back inside I got to wonder about the really frozen north and switched my Yahoo weather to Cheboygan and it was 4 degrees. Oh my, but I see where the high will be 38, so that is a lot of hot air rushing in.
The ides just a few days away, St Paddy's a couple days after that, a couple weeks after that we get to the prankster's fave April Fool's, and right about that time the beginning of the baseball season. which actually isn't that hopeful because a lot of opening days are called because of snow.
It's almost time for the sun to rise over my little slice of the lake between the IBM building and the London Guarantee, and I just stepped out onto the balcony to check the southern edge of that slice and nada, but standing out there in my slippered feet I noticed it was not that chilly, not that chilly at all.
Stepping back inside I got to wonder about the really frozen north and switched my Yahoo weather to Cheboygan and it was 4 degrees. Oh my, but I see where the high will be 38, so that is a lot of hot air rushing in.
Monday, March 11, 2019
DST Si, pennies and cursive No.
Well, I had no idea that the Institute was such a hotbed of anti DST fervor. As a retired person it has very little effect on me, I don't even have to worry about changing my clock because my computer and phone do it themselves and so does the modern day clock radio in the bathroom. Something a little funny about that time change. Of course you never expect your damn phone to tell you anything, but your computer used to tell you. As it was firing up in the morning a little pop up thing would say something to the effect, Excuse me Sir, but I have taken the liberty of adjusting the time for you, but anymore it doesn't bother, why tell the carbon unit anything?
Back in those terrible long-forgotten days when I had to toil for the bread in the larder I rather liked the time change. As inhabitants of the frozen north Gennelmans we need all the harbingers of spring that we can get. I was of course always aware of five o'clock, and that extra brightness as I was leaving the hellhole buoyed my spirits. The extra darkness when I woke bothered me not at all, if you are getting up to go to work what difference does it make whether it's light or dark?
DST has a mildly checkered past, it was brought out in WW I, but then taken away afterwards, but then brought back and squabbled over and finally LBJ signed it into law and there you are. I say keep it for perhaps the wrongest of reasons, it's been going on for a long time and I have gotten used to it. Pennies though, yeah get rid of them. Oh and while we're at the same with cursive writing.
I'm sure those privacy people do not like your bank keeping an eye on your purchases, but I have to think Old Dog's bank did him a big favor. I lost my wallet going through the turnstyles of the el one afternoon and wasn't even aware of it until I got home and there were messages on my answering machine saying that purchases of gasoline had been made on my card and the bank found that quite out of the norm. I am curious about the details of that suspicious activity on Old Dog's card and I wonder how much the bank told him, normally they don't want to divulge much, for our own good I am sure, I'm curious about this idea that it has something to do with the way credit card numbers are generated. Does Old Dog think somebody just made up a number and it happened to be his?
Back in those terrible long-forgotten days when I had to toil for the bread in the larder I rather liked the time change. As inhabitants of the frozen north Gennelmans we need all the harbingers of spring that we can get. I was of course always aware of five o'clock, and that extra brightness as I was leaving the hellhole buoyed my spirits. The extra darkness when I woke bothered me not at all, if you are getting up to go to work what difference does it make whether it's light or dark?
DST has a mildly checkered past, it was brought out in WW I, but then taken away afterwards, but then brought back and squabbled over and finally LBJ signed it into law and there you are. I say keep it for perhaps the wrongest of reasons, it's been going on for a long time and I have gotten used to it. Pennies though, yeah get rid of them. Oh and while we're at the same with cursive writing.
I'm sure those privacy people do not like your bank keeping an eye on your purchases, but I have to think Old Dog's bank did him a big favor. I lost my wallet going through the turnstyles of the el one afternoon and wasn't even aware of it until I got home and there were messages on my answering machine saying that purchases of gasoline had been made on my card and the bank found that quite out of the norm. I am curious about the details of that suspicious activity on Old Dog's card and I wonder how much the bank told him, normally they don't want to divulge much, for our own good I am sure, I'm curious about this idea that it has something to do with the way credit card numbers are generated. Does Old Dog think somebody just made up a number and it happened to be his?
Sunday, March 10, 2019
Fake Time Fact Check
First of all, it doesn't save daylight. It just moves an hour of daylight from the morning to the evening. It's like that old Indian said: "White man cut a foot of material off one end of blanket, sew it on other end of blanket, and think he have a longer blanket." If it was possible to save daylight, the time to do it would be in the winter, not in the summer when we have more daylight than we know what to do with. Second of all, it doesn't save electricity. You have to turn your lights on in the morning, while you're getting ready to go to work or school, instead of in the evening, while you're watching television or using your computer. Third of all, you don't lose an hour of sleep when you spring forward unless you want to. Most people just lay around on Sunday morning till way past dawn anyway. If you need to get up at dawn on Sunday for some reason, all you need to do is go to bed an hour earlier on Saturday night to get your normal amount of sleep. You don't gain an hour of sleep when you fall back either. Most people just stay up later on Saturday night because they think they won't have to get up as early the next morning. Fourth of all, we don't really spring forward in the spring. In most of the civilized world, we face at least another month of winter after we change our clocks. If you live in the South, you won't care what time it is when a tornado blows your house away. Falling back in the fall is debatable. November is a drim and drizmal month no matter what season you call it. That's why they put deer season in November, to give people a reason to get up in the morning. Otherwise, what's the point? Fifth of all, we are now on fake time for eight months of the year and only on real time for four. Why not make it unanimous and just stay on fake time all year? People would soon get used to it and think that fake time is real time. It doesn't really matter what time we're on anyway, the bad part is having to change it twice a year.
We voted fake time down twice in Michigan, but it passed on the third try, and they haven't let us vote on it since. That's how they do the school millage as well. They keep making us vote on it over and over again until it passes, and then they never let us vote on it again. We never get to vote on lowering our taxes, just on raising them. There have been a couple of times that they sold something as "tax reform", but which they mean "tax increase". They lower one tax and increase another, for a net gain in revenue. Then they gradually increase the one they lowered over a period of years, hoping that nobody will notice, until it's at least as high as it was before. I always vote against schemes like that, but they pass them anyway.
We voted fake time down twice in Michigan, but it passed on the third try, and they haven't let us vote on it since. That's how they do the school millage as well. They keep making us vote on it over and over again until it passes, and then they never let us vote on it again. We never get to vote on lowering our taxes, just on raising them. There have been a couple of times that they sold something as "tax reform", but which they mean "tax increase". They lower one tax and increase another, for a net gain in revenue. Then they gradually increase the one they lowered over a period of years, hoping that nobody will notice, until it's at least as high as it was before. I always vote against schemes like that, but they pass them anyway.
Spring ahead short take
I haven't seen The Last Detail but there are a whole bunch of good films that I haven't gotten around to yet. I remember that Charles Laughton version of the hunchback movie but also the Lon Chaney original and the version from the 50s that starred Anthony Quinn; a good story is worth retelling. There was even an animated Disney version from the mid-90s but I don't recall many details except there were a lot of songs and the ending wasn't tragic as I recall.
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Last week I commented on how Mardi Gras snuck up on me and last night I realized the another thing snuck up on me, Daylight Saving Time, and the semi-annual fiddling with the clocks. I'm not going to say that Daylight Saving Time is a dumb idea but I think it's more of a habit than a necessity and it's time that we got rid of it. Never happen, though. Pennies are pretty useless too and yet we cling to them even though they cost more than a penny each to make. No wonder the government finds itself running out of money.
And speaking of money, last week my bank notified me that there was suspicious activity on my debit card and they flagged it. I went to the bank yesterday and dealt with a human to straighten the mess out; some things are best done in person and I should be receiving a new card shortly. I'd like to know how the bad guys got my number. I'm very careful with these kinds of things and suspect they just got lucky this time with the way they generate those numbers. The lady at the bank says this kind of thing happens a lot, which is scary since there isn't much that we can do about it except practice the normal precautions.
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Last week I commented on how Mardi Gras snuck up on me and last night I realized the another thing snuck up on me, Daylight Saving Time, and the semi-annual fiddling with the clocks. I'm not going to say that Daylight Saving Time is a dumb idea but I think it's more of a habit than a necessity and it's time that we got rid of it. Never happen, though. Pennies are pretty useless too and yet we cling to them even though they cost more than a penny each to make. No wonder the government finds itself running out of money.
And speaking of money, last week my bank notified me that there was suspicious activity on my debit card and they flagged it. I went to the bank yesterday and dealt with a human to straighten the mess out; some things are best done in person and I should be receiving a new card shortly. I'd like to know how the bad guys got my number. I'm very careful with these kinds of things and suspect they just got lucky this time with the way they generate those numbers. The lady at the bank says this kind of thing happens a lot, which is scary since there isn't much that we can do about it except practice the normal precautions.
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