Riding With Mud

what?

2012-02-10T15:29:00.002-05:00

I went to the VA Hospital in Topeka today and I saw several older guys wearing Vietnam Veteran hats. It reminded me that I went to Vietnam with a bunch of kids not a bunch of old farts. For the last couple of years, Barbara has been telling me that I am getting deaf and need to have my hearing tested. When I was in the VA Hospital in 1969 they tested my hearing and told me there that later on when the damage to my ears really caused deafness, I would need to have the VA provide hearing aids. With that advice in mind I went over to the Hospital and got sent home with a bunch of paper to fill out. Needless to say, they claimed that I really wasn't eligible for free medical treatment and they would provide treatment so long as I had a medical provider or was willing to pay for it myself. The catch is I will have to pay for the testing to see if I am elligible for a service connected disability.

Today I went back and explained that what I wanted was not free medical care, but an evaluation of my hearing and then a determination if it was service connected. I am very happy with the medical care I get from the local Hospital and Doctors. According to the DAV the only thing I could hope for in this effort was for the VA to give me a 20% disability and that portion of my retirement to be Tax free. I wonder if having a ringing in my ears 24/7 and a mild deafness is worth any price.

The hearing loss started in basic training at Fort "Lost in the Woods" (Leonard Wood), Missouri. I loved the M-14 rifle but it was one loud noisy sucker. As I shot it, we would often put cigarette butts in our ears or go home from the ranges slightly deaf. I qualified Expert but I am pretty sure that my deafness started there.

Iwent from Lost in the woods to Fort Sill, OK and the home for wayward cannon cockers. Most of my training in Advanced Individual training was done in a Fire Direction Center and it was only slightly loud from the radios. My 23 weeks in Officer Candidate School (OCS) was on the guns for only a couple of weeks but compared to the M-14, the Howitzers exceeded the pain threshold a lot.

At Fort Irwin, CA, I spent a month or so running through the desert running between 175mm guns as a safety officer. If you think the 105 or 155mm howitzers were brutal, you should be near a 175mm gun as it goes off. In the first unit I was in, the battery was put in a position where the guns were split by a double apron concertina and one night I was right in front of a 155mm when it was fired. Literally my ears bled.

In Vietnam, as a forward observer, we would move from location to location during the day. There was no way I could wear ear plugs and hear anything that was happening out in the jungle. The only blessing was the M-16 was not nearly as loud as the other weapons.

One thing I want to point out was that in my youth and after the service, I wasn't a fan of loud music especially concerts. Even today, I take my ear plugs when I go to a KU Basketball game because of the 110 Db sound.

Do you know how to tell an old Artilleryman? Real LOUD!!!

MUD

45800

The Longest Night

2012-02-08T12:34:00.001-05:00

For those of you that have just started reading this collection of war stories or my tales from Vietnam, I want to remind you that I was just a kid, not yet 21 years old when most of this happened. I was really book smart and only half way street educated when it happened. I am not sure if I had enough smarts to realize how dangerous my duties were. In the story about being in a Bird Dog, I realized that I didn't talk about the silver and green tracers coming up off the ground as we flew over. I can promise you that being shot at in an aluminum air plane was a damn good way to get shot down and killed. I tell people that I have been mortared, rocketed, shot at ambushed, sit on and hit, but missed by the stuff that could have done the real damage.    I want to share with you a tale about what I called the longest night during my stay in Vietnam.

As a General Support Artillery unit, the 1st Bn, 92nd FA had no assigned forward observers. From time to time, The FA Bde headquarters up on top of Artillery Hill would realize they were a Forward Observer short and task us to provide an officer. Once the ASP resupply in Dak To was finished, they had little need of me daily and I found myself doing odd jobs as well as the assigned Ammunition Officer. I would fly as an Aerial Observer once or twice a week, and a couple of times I took special teams out beyond the wire of our base camp and set up listening posts. One of the worst times was during one of these assignments.

The 3rd Battalion, 503rd Infantry (aka 173rd Abn) had a Forward Observer from Augusta, Kansas, about 15 miles east of where I grew up in Wichita. His father had a heart attack and they asked us to provide a replacement observer for two weeks while he went home. I was the person chosen and I flew clear down by Saigon to join up with them. they were in blocking positions north of Saigon and trying to stop the resupply the NVA were giving the VC.    Although the unit was listed as Airborne, we were mostly just humping rick sacks around in the hills. the enlisted guys all called me Leg because I wasn't jump qualified. I told them that it would have taken orders for two giant guys to throw me off the plane as the only thing I saw falling out of the skies was dead birds and bird shit. They were told to call me Red Leg (an artillery term) or LT Leg. My recon sergeant and I sat down one night and compared our pay. He was drawing jump pay, combat pay and separation pay and made about $100 more a month than I did. Oh well, money talks and BS walks. We were just out in the mud, the blood and the beer (minus the beer) until relieved of that mission.

About the end of the second week, the Company Commander called me over and told me that the Forward Observer they sent home came down with Malaria and I was stuck with them until a replacement arrived. I guess I didn't have enough smarts to know better or any fears to make me want out so I just stayed doing the job I had right in front of me.

Each day we would move about as far as an American Infantry Company could make it in one day. It was fairly hilly so on the ground it was only 4 or 5 miles. Up and down, not like that damned crow it could be as far as 15 to 20 miles. The exception to this rule was every third day, we would take midday off and resupply. The supply Huey's would come in and all sorts of good things would arrive.    There would be a big ball of clean uniforms, C-rations, ammo and water cans. Every man would be given 9 C-ration meals and we would sort them down into what we needed to carry and throw throw the rest in a hole. For some reason I could not seem to get enough to eat and I lived on the Beef Steak and Potato ration as much as I could. I would use hot sauce and pepper to spice them up and I stayed alive eating that heavy meal. I could trade pound cake and applesauce for three or four Beef Steak and Potatoes. The Beans and weenies were also a good trade. No one wanted the Ham and Lima Beans except for the ham part of the meal. The Lima beans were called MF's for some reason. They were hard as rocks and not my favorite even if they had been cooked by mother. These hadn't.

Somewhere in the middle of the third week, we had humped all day and settled down into what was to be a night position. Somewhere I heard a voice say, "Snake" and I heard a machete striking the ground. Just a few minuted later, someone else hollered "snake" and then the word went out that we were on a hill of young bamboo and there were those damned green bamboo vipers all over the place. I think the final count before we moved was about 20. Because it was by then getting dark, we didn't move but just a few kilometers down the trail we were on. It was one of the worst positions we could have found but that's where the leaders decided to stop. The company set up along the trail with everyone on one side. Unfortunately the side we picked was the downhill side and I hated it. As it started to get dark. I fired the defensive concentrations (Def Cons) that I would use as targets to shift from if we were in a ground attack. To confuse any trail watchers the VC might have I also fired the Def Cons up by the old position. I settled in for the night and I think we were all watching for more snakes.

Each member of the Headquarters element pulled an hour of radio watch during the night. That meant that for an hour, we would check with the outposts and maintain radio contact with the battalion TOC. About each five minutes we would ask the outposts and ambush position for a radio check. They would push the talk switch on the radio and it would break squelch and make a click sound. They would not say anything but that went on until it was the next guys' turn on the radios. I had the Midnight to One shift and was about half way through the check when all of a sudden one of the ambush patrols down the path started firing their machine gun and M-16's. Boom, a hand grenade went off and then the flares on the trial lit up. The outpost or ambush patrol had come in down the trail and set off the trip flares. It was just by luck that the platoon we had guarding that trail didn't shoot them as they didn't use any passwords they just came running in. About the time they got back to our position, that whole side of the perimeter started reporting movement and several trip flares went off.

I could not see a damn thing so I just got on the log roof of the command bunker we had dug that day. I had my radio on and had artillery up and firing very soon. We fired as much as we could get for about 10 minutes. Then a 155mm battery came up and asked if they could fire. Damned straight they could. I had every battery moving rounds around the jungle and when a 175mm battery got hot and fired a couple of rounds on the old position, it got so quiet that you could hear a fart for a mile. I had no idea how long we had fired or how many rounds we had used. What I was proud of was that we had only one person wounded and no US Soldier killed from fire from any source "Check fire but stand by" was my order. The Company Commander called the Platoon that had the ambush and had the leader and those guys in the ambush report up to our position.

Not one of those guys could say what they had seen, only a trip flare had gone off. When they were asked about the radio and the machine gun, no one had brought them in to our position. The commander right there on the spot ordered the Platoon Leader to take his platoon and go get that equipment, "Right Damned Now!" One of the guys was bleeding from a cut on his hand. One guy threw a hand grenade and didn't tell the other guys that he had. The guy next to him stood up to shoot his M-16 and was wounded. The medic patched his hand up and he didn't go back out with his platoon.

The Platoon leader called in about 10 minutes later that the radio and the machine gun were right where they were dropped and there was no sign of any enemy. I stayed up the rest of that night and fired one round about every 15 minutes. The next morning at first light I asked the Commander if I could go out with the platoon to see what the hell had happened.   He was reluctant to let me go but he finally gave in and as soon as we got to the ambush position, it was pretty clear what had happened. A troop of monkeys had come down the trail and accidentally tripped one of the flares. We had managed to fire a whole boat load of ammunition and managed to kill about 15 monkeys.

The only thing that made it all worth while was that the Company Commander sent that platoon back to the old night position and it was pretty clear that someone had dug up the cat holes there and the round I had fired on that position had wounded someone. We spent the rest of the morning waiting for that platoon to follow the blood trails to some graves. There were a couple of VC's in a grave and there wasn't anything to identify who they were or their unit. I did report the dead VC as a part of the after action report but I left out any mention of the monkeys.

MUD - Monkey Killer Extraordinaire

45625

LTC ALFRED J. CADE

2012-02-08T10:56:00.000-05:00

I try to not tell the names of people that I saw do things not done in the way I would have done them. On the same note, I try to give full credit to people that I saw do great things in a good manner. One of the best I worked for during my time on Active duty was one of the most professional people I ever met. As I found out later, he went on to be a Two Star Major General in the Army and then sat on the board of Directors for many Companies. Here is that story.

I was inducted into the Army in September 1966 and spent until January 1968 training for my eventual deployment to Vietnam. Most of my training was excellent on the technical side but lacked specifics on what we were expected to do in Vietnam. The only exception to that was the two weeks I spent in Panama in 1967. On many occasions I wondered aloud what the hell we were doing that had anything to do with getting ready for Vietnam. The absolute worst thing in all of it was the training an Artillery Battalion at Fort Irwin for deployment to Vietnam. We actually had to pass a Nuclear Weapons proficiency inspection to get certified as combat ready knowing there weren't any Artillery nuclear weapons in Vietnam at the time. My main mantra was train like you were going to fight and in a lot of ways we either didn't or couldn't.

I deployed with a towed, 155mm Howitzer Battalion as a Forward Observer and the Battery Supply Officer. Unless you have issued every stick of equipment, trained with it and then boxed it up for deployment, you have no idea how much crap a unit has. I am sure there is somewhere in the archives a record of the tons of stuff we issued and someone wondering how we managed to lose most of it in such a short time.

The first night in the field for that battalion, we were mortared with about 30 rounds and with several killed and at least 50 wounded. Most of the guys were sleeping on cots and we hadn't completed our bunkers when the rounds started falling. The first error was to put a Battalion in a formation all in one field and with little adult leadership. There wasn't much energy for immediately building bunkers and we paid the price for our ignorance. I am not sure who was responsible for that mess but I am pretty sure the Battalion Commander of that unit didn't last much longer there than I did. I left that unit so disillusioned that I really could have been transferred full time to an Infantry Unit and been more happy. The infusion program moved me about a week after the mortar attack and I was never so glad to be out of there as I was when I got to Pleiku and met our new commander, LTC Alfred J Cade.

LTC Cade met me the first day and told me that we had to resupply the forward Ammunition Supply Point (ASP) at Dak To. During TET it had been pretty much wiped out. He was sincere in asking me if I could devote the next few months as the Battalion Ammo officer to help him get that mission done. Roger Out! I had the 5-Ton Ammo trucks from most of the Battalion and Service Battery there to make daily convoys from Pleiku to Dak To. As most of our batteries in the 1st Bn, 92nd FA were drawing their Ammo out of the Dak To ASP and it took about 400 rounds daily just to keep that ammunition supplied. Our Goal was to increase the flow of ammo forward until we were at least a couple of months ahead of the daily use.

Over the next two months, I spent my time either in a jeep drawing ammo, leading our portion of the convoy north or flying air cover as the convoy did it's thing. I don't remember much about the tent there on Artillery Hill as I spent only about one night a week in that bed. Most of the time I was in the seat of a jeep if sleep was to be had. The daily grind was to run a convoy to Dak To, return, pickup the paper work for the draw, go the Pleiku ASP and fill our trucks with ammo and go back to the convoy start point the next morning. If I was lucky, there was time to go back past the the orderly room and pick up my mail. I would also draw enough C-rations to feel us for the day. After the road was cleared, we would make the run to Dak To and back Repeat, until we had rounds complete.

During this time, I pulled duty in the Battalion Tactical Operations Center (TOC) once every two weeks. It was during that duty, I got to meet Colonel Cade up front and personal. Sometime during the evening he would come in and spend time talking to the junior officers and catching up on the battalion log. He would on most nights send a runner down to the enlisted men's club and have a six pack of beer brought back to share with those on duty. The limit was two beers while on duty. He had a calm way of bringing peace to the chaos of the day. I probably learned more in those informal sessions that I did in the first year in the Army. Not specific tactics, but how to talk to people and provide leadership and guidance to those of us that needed it. I can tell you that I never questioned anything he said or did because of the calm assertive way he did things. I didn't suffer fools gladly and he was clearly no fool.

As our convoys wound their way up through Kontum to Dak To, there were several places where the Viet Cong had ambushed our convoys. For some reason, when I was with out trucks, the part of the convoy that got ambushed was always in a different part of the convoy. When we were at the back, the front would get attacked. If we were at the front, the back of the convoy would get attacked. That continued until tone day when I was in a Bird Dog or small 2 place airplane and flying over the convoy. Right ahead of my trucks, the VC opened up with a few machine guns and an Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) I contacted the battery in Kontum and had them on line very quickly. We fired on the ambush position and on an OP located on top on a nearby mountain. The only time we had to stop firing was when the gun ship or fast movers were on station to drop bombs or make gun runs on the enemy. I also saw a bunch of the VC moving back away from the ambush and I brought fires on them. About the time we needed to go over to the airfield to refuel, LTC Cade flew up by helicopter and continued the fires until we could get back on station. One of my drivers jumped out of his truck and ran up to the ambush site. He was wounded in the leg and the only casualty in one of my convoys that I knew about.

I read the after action report in the 1st Field Force Artillery information last year. For some reason while I was mentioned, the Battalion Commo officer and LTC Cade were mentioned for their efforts and were awarded medals. I got squat but I did survive. The morale in my unit was about as high as it could be and we continued the mission until we had everything we needed in the ASP. After that, we made only a weekly run to Dak To and I moved on to several other things.

Later on, I would catch glimpses of Col Cade's career I read that General Cade had a great career in the Military and I'm sure he was the kind of leader that we all wished every unit had. I was always proud that I had had a chance to meet him and see what real leadership could be. By the way, General Cade was a Black officer and I am sure that he would tell you that we were all green soldiers and he would treat every soldier the same way. I am proud to have served with him and learned a lot from his calm assertive leadership style.

MUD

Old Soldiers

2012-02-07T11:27:00.001-05:00

In the mid 90's, When I would take my mother to the monthly meeting of the Eldorado High class of 1940, one of the first subjects brought up by everyone was the health of the other members in the class. It seemed like some one new would be at death's door almost every month and the size of the gatherings got smaller and smaller. Almost from the first, the number of men was limited. I think the last time we went, there was only one guy that regularly showed up. He had one of his knees replaced and was using a cane but he would get in there anyway. Mom was using a walker (she wouldn't let me push her in in a wheelchair, didn't want to look that feeble)

Now, the E-mail is reporting the death of a lot of the old Guardsmen I served with. There are almost none left that served in WWII, and a few that served in Korea. What amazes me is how old the Vietnam Vets are. A lot of the Captains and Majors I knew in that era are approaching 80 and their longevity is growing to an end. One of my friends, Major Bernard Larson died over the weekend and his funeral is Thursday.

I don't remember where we went, but I do remember that Bernie had his duffel bag in the back of a truck with the rest of the officers. For some reason the driver of the truck threw his out instead of just handing it down like the rest. That bag made a really different sound when it hit. It was a kind of a splosh, combined with thud and then the bag turned dark green and smelled wonderful if you liked martinis. I thought he was going to cry. It turned out that he had a gallon jug of premixed Martinis along with a jar of olives wrapped up in his sleeping bag. I think either jar might have survived except for them clinking together was just more that they could stand. It is funny to me the things I remember about people. I didn't know where he grew up, what faith he was or anything about his time in Vietnam. I did remember that he was at one time a Major and the Brigade provost Marshal and he liked martinis. I had forgotten that he reverted in grade to be a Warrant Officer in our old unit and made CW4. I had lost track of him when I went full time and went to another unit.

I am beginning to get to that point in my life that finding out about my high school class mates is hearing about their illnesses and deaths. I guess it is just a normal part of life or we would be up to our arm pits in old people.   Oh well, I don't fear death it is the getting old and sick that worries me. I want to go quick and have it be done.

Yes,I know the subject is morbid, but it is something that as we grow older we think about more and more.

MUD - Not yet at Death's door. I know where it is, but no one is there knocking right now.

45523

Different Topics for a While

2012-02-06T09:47:00.000-05:00

I got stuck in the war stories for a while and I think I need to change the subject and move on. Here are a few things that are on my mind right now:

As a basketball fan, I am surprised how the Big XII race has tightened up with three teams 8-2. It will be a race to the end and the last half of the season will tell how it will end. I am pretty sure that there will be four or five teams in the NCAA Championship in spite of the teams beating each other up. I am enjoying this season in spite of the hawks losing a few.
I guess races are on my mind as we move into the election year for the President. I wish that the process didn't take so long and was over today. I guess it takes a while for people to open their eyes and see clearly. While Newt is probably the insider that could get everyone to work together, there is a lot of people out here in the heartland that just think he is a blow hard. I can't figure why in a nation of people that believe in freedom of religion, Romney's being a Mormon is so damned important. Oh well.
There is hope for the little guy. In a private parking lot by Fort Riley, a police officer wrote a ticket for a lady that parked too close to another car. Both of them were hers' She fought the ticket and finally won. Someone with a sense of right and wrong should have looked at the entire situation and dismissed that ticket long ago. No doubt that she and the courts spent a lot more money over this than it was worth.
Wasn't the Super Bowl a good thing? I had forgotten how many people hated Madonna and how many guys loved her. I thought she did a good job and it was a great Half Time show. The game kept you interested right to the end. No blow out there. No big deal to me who won in the long run.
More and more I find myself in the position of defending the Westborough Baptist Church against people that want to shut them down. In spite of the fact they are just a bunch of stupid people exercising their rights, people hate their message so much that without thinking they would be willing to give up some of our freedoms. In addition to the right to act stupid, they have the right to Gather, Right of Free Speech and the freedom of religion in their corner. I for one won't push for our government to stop them unless make it a law that you must be not say stupid things. I won't endanger one inch of my freedoms to stop them. Where would it stop if our Government had the right to come in and tell us what to do or say?
We finally got some rain this weekend. I think it was a little over an inch of the dog's food dish is any measure. We might hate to be trapped inside by the rain, but we know that we needed the moisture. At least it wasn't snow in like Denver (4 Feet) or Lincoln (1 Foot) Things could be worse.

Enough of this, I am going to move on and finish some of the paperwork that had been on my card table for a month or so.

MUD -

The next couple of Weeks

2012-02-05T11:39:00.001-05:00

Right after the sun came up, it was pretty clear to me that we had more tires flat than we had still full of air. The entire bunch of survivors in the battery were just as flat as the tires. I think I managed to get about 3 hours sleep prior to the attack and the adrenalin had long been burned out of my body. I am pretty sure that I couldn't have been excited by a ground attack. The shell was empty, the tank was empty and I was just numb.   There was no one left to be in charge if I went over to battalion for an officer's call so I just stayed in the battery area. I was not the least bit surprised when early in the day the Battalion S-3 came over to tell me we were to move out that day to three separate positions. My battery was to move about five clicks (Kilometers) up the road by that evening.

Shit oh dear, we could manage to have enough tires to move one gun truck and one gun at a time. I put the maintenance section working on fixing tires and I went over to the new position. It was right on the edge of an Arvin Compound and had been where a battery of 105's had been for a while. It was a pig stye but it was behind the wire of a camp. Actually, there was a double apron of wire running right down the middle of the camp and the guns would be split with a row of wire right down the middle of the battery. to get from gun one to gun two, I would be forced to go back around the wire.

When I got back over to the old position, the maintenance team had actually fixed enough tires to get two gun trucks with their tires fixed and I took the two trucks and two guns to the new position. By the time I got back with the two trucks, (and the tires off the two guns) they had a third truck with their tires fixed and we put the good tires on three guns and moved them over to the new position. That work stayed pretty constant until by mid afternoon we had all our rolling stock in the new area.

About that time, I really looked at the map and the coordinates the battalion survey section gave me. I got on the horn to the Battalion FDC and checked with them to see if the coordinates they had were different. We were about 5oo meters off highway 1 and about a kilometer in off the road was a set of train tracks. By just doing a simple map spot, the coordinates we were given were a Kilometer off. I asked Herb to get the S-3 to send the Recon Survey Officer down and let me show him his mistake. I sure as hell wasn't going to fire anything until it was fixed. About 15 minutes later a young Lieutenant showed up mad as hell. He argued with me that I was full of shit and he was right. No matter how much map spotting I had learned at Fort Sill, he knew his coordinates were right on the money.

About that time I talked to our FDC that was now located with battalion and they asked me to fire a Defensive Concentration for our sister battery down the road. I told them that the coordinates were off and I had no intention of firing an error. The Survey officer was standing there and told the Battalion FDC that I was just a tired 2nd Lieutenant and was wrong. I am pretty sure that he said something about my lack of recognition between my asshole and a hole in the ground. Finally, I got them to agree that if the Survey officer would sign off on the first round, I would be glad to shoot a smoke marking round down by the other battery.   Boom, the next words over the net were "Check Fire, Check Fire, Check Fire.." It seems that my smoke round was right next to their guns and had I fired a high explosive round it would have managed to kill a bunch more of my fellow cannoneers. In about 10 minutes, the Battalion XO and the S-3 showed up and wanted to know what happened. I showed them the map coordinates I was given, showed them a map and where the railroad was located and where I thought we were.    I had even made the Recon Survey officer sign a C-Ration bot top flap that he was responsible for the round and off everyone went all pissed off.

After about an hour, the Battalion FDC called and told me that my new coordinates were about 50 meters from where I map spotted them and I was given a whole new mission down the road. Shot out, smoke rounds on target and I thought I had heard the last of that problem. That was until the next day,

Wait, who is that Full Bull Colonel and what the hell is he doing pulling into my position. There was a jeep with two radio's in the back and the tail end of mortar rounds on the tips of the antennas. That spit shined Colonel looked like he had just come from the parade grounds at Fort Sill and I was dirty, wrinkled and probably smelled as bad as I looked. About the time his jeep stopped moving forward, he jumped out and shouted that he wanted to see the idiot in charge. I walked over, mostly because I didn't have the energy left to run, and reported. He chewed my ass for about five minutes about my battery firing into my sister battery position. No self respecting officer would have ever let that happen. I didn't have a chance to tell him my side of the story. Then without stopping to take a breath, he looked at the mess the battery position was in and he just threw a fit and ate my ass for throwing my trash all over the place. My mother would have told me to take a deep breath and back down. I never suffered fools gladly and this ass hole was one of the biggest fools I had ever seen.

NOTICE - This paragraph is pretty much what I said and I was tired, pissed off and there were no ladies present.    You can skip it right here if you are sensitive to profanity . "Now wait a God Damned minute you son of a bitch. You came in here all pissed off and I am not going to stand for one more stupid word out of your mouth. First, the coordinates given to me were wrong and I told battalion of that and they insisted I fire the round down by my sister battery. In fact here is the God Dammed coordinates and a c-ration box top signed by the recon survey officer that he was responsible for the first round fired. Second, any self respecting Artilleryman would recognize that trash as coming from a 105mm Battery and this is a 155mm battery. The God Dammed mess was here when I started moving this cluster fuck in and I was not going to start cleaning anything up until I had overhead cover for my men to go to sleep in so I wouldn't lose any more of them. And third, you picked the wrong day to come rushing in here and trying to east ass when you should have come here to see what you could do to help. I don't need a short ass hole trying to motivate me, I need help. If all he could do was show his ass to me and my men he could just get back in the jeep and go talk to the battalion. Until he did, I was in charge and no one would talk to me like that in front of the men. He stopped and said in a quiet voice that "You have a very unprofessional attitude Lieutenant". By that time, three of the Section chiefs were standing there and they walked between us and one of them asked the Colonel to leave. He did. I figured that I was done, finished, stick a fork in me over and I didn't care. I calmly went over to the land line to battalion and told them what happened. I know their end was on a speaker and I could hear laughter.   I didn't think there was any adrenalin left in my system but I was shaking like a hound dog in a peach orchard trying to shit out the peach seeds he had eaten.

We continued to get our act together and no one went to bed that night or the next night until everyone was under overhead cover. I had been awake going on 72 hours and I was one tired son of a bitch. We finished fixing the tires, then we cleaned up the trash out of the wire and sometime that afternoon a jeep pulled up and a 1st Lieutenant got out and introduced himself and announced that he was the new battery commander and I could go get some rest. he said by the looks of my eyes it had been a couple of days since I had any sleep. There was a big hole at the rear of the battery position and I went over there and went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up about the time the sun was coming up from the, well shit the sun doesn't come up form the west. I went over to the guns and the Senior Sergeant from the guns said there was a problem. He thinks the guns were not laid properly and I checked. I set up the second aiming circle and the guns were all lad wrong. It was a consistent error but wrong. They were well over 400 mills wrong.    I went over to the 1st Lieutenant and asked him who had relayed the guns. He said he had changed them the evening before because I didn't know what the fuck I was doing because I had been so tired.   For some reason, I still had a copy of the Fort Sill XO's handbook and it showed how to align the guns or to lay the battery correctly. I got a C-ration box top and did the numbers by the book and then how to set up the aiming circle by the book and my numbers were different than they were on all the guns. He tried to show me how the 175mm battery was done and I calmly asked him if that looked like a bunch of fucking 175mm guns? No, I guess he was wrong and we did change the guns to the right data. The battery had fired all night and no telling where the rounds had gone. For some reason I just didn't care enough to go call battalion and report that arrogant ass hole.

Bright and early the next morning, I was told by battalion to have my gear all together and to report to their location by noon.   There was a program called infusion and I was on the list to be sent over to the other Artillery Group far away from the Colonel that couldn't say my name without spitting. I was so damned glad to get out of that sorry assed unit that it wasn't funny. No more 6th Bn, 84th Artillery and 41st Artillery group for me.

Tomorrow I will tell you about how I met and served in one of the finest Artillery units in Vietnam. The 1st Bn, 92nd FA in the 52nd Artillery group was a breath of fresh air and I was sent there for a new lease in life.

MUD - In transit and loving it.

45384

My View the First Couple of Weeks

2012-02-04T11:24:00.001-05:00

I was a young 2nd Lieutenant when we went to Vietnam. I had a recon team assigned but when we got to Vietnam, there just weren't enough places that they needed a new lieutenant and I was stuck with the battery until they found a place for me. As hard as I try, I can't remember the name of the sergeant assigned to my team. I do remember that a young Private, Sal Agri was given to us about the time we got in country but we all were green and raw. I went through the "In Country" Forward Observer school and renewed my skills but learned only a few new things. I sat through the 2 1/2 days of classroom where we were given the official position and a lot of war stories. It wasn't until we went out on the perimeter to review illumination and night fires that I saw the Artillery in action in combat.

We had set up and were right in the middle of shooting illumination rounds when a Viet Cong (VC) mortar team opened up on our camp. Were they just dumb or what? We were shooting in their general direction and if they had waited a couple of hours, we would have finished and they could have fired without our shooting back. All you have to do is hear one mortar round going out of the tube and you will never forget it. Imagine taking a roll of Christmas wrapping paper and hitting your hand flat on one end. Thunk, with that deep bass sound that tightens the sphincter of us old soldiers.    Until the time the first mortar round was dropped down the tube, we were shooting targets made up by things called White Elephants in the open, or some such thing. The team that was shooting at the time just changed the nature of the target to VC Mortar team in the open and shifted the fire about 750 meter left and let them have it.    We fired for effect on that target and then started to creep the fires deeper away from the base until it was clear that they had Di-Di'd out of there .

The next morning, the class was sent out on what we called a walking shoot. We left the perimeter and called up the Battery to have one round ready at all times. We shot one about a 1,000 meters out and kept moving it out in front of us. It wasn't a walk in the park, but it was one hell of a good experience. We crossed the old mortar firing position in about an hour and found that our rounds had spoiled their party big time. There were several baskets of mortar rounds there on the ground. The team had removed some of their equipment and we found several pairs of rubber soled 'Ho Chi Min" sandals and a couple of those round conical hats. They had picked up the wounded and killed and the mortar tubes but ran off without taking the mortar rounds. I often think about the poor slobs that carried those damned rounds all the way down from North Vietnam and how wasted their efforts were.

We saw that the VC had taken banana stalks and peeled them into about 1 foot strips to mark the trails the needed to follow to get out of there fast at night. That banana plant pieces must have been like a giant marker along the paths and it was clear that they followed the trial as far and as fast as they could. Typical, there were only blood trails where they carried off the wounded and dead. We followed the trail for several kilometers but never found a grave or a wounded soldier. End of mission and end of training.

When I got back to my unit, we spent the next few days loading our gear on trucks in the anticipation of a move to a location where we would become a real unit in combat. One night we were alerted that bright and early the next day we would move up the coast to a new location and support an operation being conducted by a Korean Division. The excitement level was high and I just had no idea what to expect.

The next morning, my recon team and I were in our jeep and we were ready to move with the battery to god only knew where. All I really knew was that it was a road trip down to the coast and up highway 1 to some place picked out by our leaders. I have read the name Landing Zone (LZ) Crystal or LZ Ivy but all I really knew was it was the biggest mistake I ever lived through. We drove and drove and drove to arrive just about dark at a big assed field just off the main road.   They put us in a battalion position with 18 tubes spread out across the field. There were Engineers there stretching out wire along the perimeter and it was pretty damned clear they weren't halfway done. The engineers had a D-8 Cat and it had pushed out a hole and mounded the dirt up into a 10 foot pile. Right on that damned dirt mound was a searchlight jeep that went around the perimeter and absolutely spoiling the night vision of all the poor guys trying to get anything done. An elephant could have walked up on them and they couldn't have seen it.

Our battalion fired a couple of missions and the one's not involved in the firing were moved away from the guns and told to prepare to be there for a couple of days. That meant dig holes and fill sandbags By about midnight we had a wall around our position that was five or six sand bags high. Sal asked if he could go over to his old gun and see if they needed anything. He had spent the day in the back of the jeep sleeping so what the hell, I let him go over to his buddies.

All night long, that damned searchlight jeep continued to light the perimeter and provided a really good aiming point for everyone to say, "Here they Are!!"   Shoot here and there be lots and lots of soldiers to hit. It wasn't until much later that I found out that one of the Fire Direction Centers had put their tent up in the hole right beside the searchlight with disastrous results. Somewhere about 3:15 the first thunk of a mortar woke most of us up. I found out that the gun crew Sal was with started to swing their tube towards the flash of the mortars when the second round fired hit right in the middle of their position. In the next few short minute, another 30 to 40 rounds landed and the carnage was horrible.    If you have a weak stomach or really don't want to know details, stop reading here and wait for tomorrow.

Sal was sitting on the trail in the gunner/s position when the round hit. It wounded everyone on the gun and he was told to get away from the gun and find a safe place until a medic could tend his wounds. He saw a jeep trailer over at the edge of our position and he ran and slid under that trailer. Some time during the next minute a round landed in that trailer and killed him. The really bad thing was that the trailer was filled with 5 gallon Jerry Cans of gasoline and that lit up the area with a fire like a bunch of boy scouts with a bon fire roasting marshmallows.   I was in my little bunker as as soon as the rounds lifted and shifted away from my position, I went over to the guns. There on the ground was the battery XO and the battery commander. I assumed command of the battery and tried to organize the remaining guns and people into some form of a unit.

I was running around like mad and some short major I had never met came over and asked me how many people we had lost. I told him that I wasn't sure how many people we had able to do our job and as soon as we got our shit together we would start counting the dead and wounded. He shouted at me to get that damned fire put out and I ordered three soldiers to go over to the gun trucks and get some fire extinguishers. I was talking to the gun chiefs when I heard some one shout, "Oh Shit, there's a body under there." They continued to use the fire extinguishers but the damned rubber tires kept flaring up. It must have taken them five more minutes to put the flames completely out and I was trying to get a count of the dead and wounded. According to our medic, there was only one dead but a whole shit pot of wounded to include the Battery Commander and the XO. We started moving the wounded over to the battalion evacuation point and that damned Major showed up again.

Yes, I know that it seems important to you to know how many wounded we have but all you have to do is go over there and count the men on the ground at the evac point. The only dead I knew about was the one body under the jeep. The Major wanted that body out of there right now. He was adamant that it be out before sunrise so the guy would not see it. I told the guys over by the trailer to drag the body out and one of them said, "Not now LT it is still glowing from the fire." I went over ans saw a set of metal packing strips on the ground and made a loop to drag out what was left of the body. "Someone get a damned poncho and cover this poor guy up." I noticed that the poncho was melting on the lower part of the body from the heat but I was pretty sure it no longer mattered. The Field First Sergeant from the gun sections came over and he and I tried to identify the body by flashlight. It was just burned almost beyond recognition from the chin down. It was pretty clear that the mortar round had almost blown the head off and most of the chin was missing. On one of the hands that was curled up was a ring with three initials and the last one ended in an A. I thought about Sal But I knew those weren't his initials . He was SJA. Somewhere in the next few minutes one of the gun crew members said that he and Sal had gone in town and Sal bought a ring and was wearing it. he was going to have the initials changed but he was wearing that ring.   Shit oh dear, Damn, Damn and double damn. The first time I had to identify a body it was my Radio Telephone Operator and I didn't recognize him. When we got the body over to the evac point, one of the medics searched the body and found his dog tags.   Yep, Sal was the KIA from A Battery that night.

I later heard that we lost 7 KIA. and almost 40 wounded so bad they were evacuated to a hospital. The worst unit hit was the battery whose FDC was right beside that damned searchlight. When the first round landed in the battalion, the Fire Direction Officer went over to the chart table to look at a map. He, his NCO, a couple of chart operators were standing looking at the chart table when a round came in through that tent and hit right on the chart table. Those poor guys didn't know what hit them. I was told that the Lieutenant had just put his helmet on and the next day as they were cleaning out the mess, the front of his head was found still in that helmet. Someone told me that the blood was an inch deep as they were carrying the bodies out.

When I was trying to get a count of the wounded, I saw one of the young soldiers from the guns laying there on the ground moaning. I asked him where he was hit. He said it was in his groin and he was worried that it had severed part of his dick. He told me that he had just gotten married right before we went over like I did and he was hopeful that the medics could save his dick. I have no idea what happened once the wounded left our position.

Because one of the battery FDC's was gone, the battalion consolidated the FDC's and pretty soon the only officer left was me.    This ends the carnage part of the story. More of the relocation and repercussions tomorrow.

MUD, Battery A, 6th Bn, 84th FA, Acting Commander. April 68

45256

This a Political Think Piece

2012-02-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

Today at lunch, I met a fellow that looked to be about my age but he was black. He answered his cell phone and because I could only hear his half of the conversation, I heard him say something Barbara says all the time. "Yes, I know it was expensive, but we aren't broke are we?" Barb would say it a little different but, "You haven't missed any meals have you?" translates to me a lot the same way. He turned to get out of the booth and we talked a little while. We both have a concern about where our Country is going. We share a concern that the division in our society is getting larger and while he thinks it is more based on color, I think it is more based on money. The one thing we shared was a worry about the need for change.

About that time Barbara came in from visiting our Daughter-in-law across the street and I told him that while we should be worried, the lady that just came in the door wonders just who's job it is to fix what ails us. Is it possible for the Government to fix what's broken? No, seriously, the Government is filled with people that do what they do to get votes from you and me and can they truly change our system to really fix it?

We agreed that about 25% of our country is pretty liberal and about 25% are very conservative. That leaves about 50% out there that are somewhere in the middle. Of all the people, about half vote. Perhaps it is closer to 60% in some of the Presidential Election years but that really means that the people we elect represent at most a minority of the people. With the cost of running for office so high, the people that pay for the publicity for the candidates feel they are owed a return on their investment. Money talks...

As we discussed the world, a Female soldier from Fort Riley came in with her teenage daughter to have lunch in a booth right next to us. The old guy left and I asked the soldier if she would like to hear my Big red One story. (I noticed her shoulder patch was from the 1st Division at Fort Riley) A few years ago, I was sitting at a stop sign over near Junction City and a Military Convoy came by. I noticed the letters BRO1 on the first truck, BRO2 on the next one and it wasn't until about truck 15 that I saw a white soldier driving and then I remembered that BRO was the Big Red One's nickname. Duh Dennis..

End of rant, back to the War.

MUD

Why I am Writing this Story

2012-02-03T11:26:00.004-05:00

My Niece, Rebecca Demauro, has written several fine stories and I just finished reading her story about the trials and tribulations called "The Other F Word." It moved me to put a bunch of my stuff together and see what I could do. I don't want to put it in the publishing world, only share it with people. I am somewhere about 1/3 of the way through the saga of my service on Active Duty. I hope you enjoy where I have been and will join me for more of where I am going.

Again, I am doing my best to protect the guilty and laugh with the innocent. If I offend you, I will try to tell you when the story gets ugly (Coming soon)

MUD
Old Retired Fart

USNS Geiger Part 2

2012-02-03T11:02:00.002-05:00

Don't let anyone tell you that a naval Transport Ship had anything to do with the Cruise Line industry. It matters little that they both float and haul people from point A to B. The main purpose of a boat is to transport people to places and a cattle truck is still a cattle truck even if it does have chrome wheels. The USNS Geiger stacked the soldiers in the sleeping quarters "High and Tight" and they managed to feed everyone three times a day.

At the close of my last episode, the "Midnight Surfer," Stubbs Wiley, was in the the infirmary with my buddy Herb Bose. Herb and Stubbs were both taken off the ship on a stretcher when we reached Subic Bay in the Philippines. Herb had been sick for the entire time and Stubbs was scraped, bruised and battered from his body surfing adventure a couple of nights before. Herb recovered quickly but i never saw Stubbs again. When I tried to share my story with him, I found out that he had passed on and his family had never heard the entire story.

When we docked in Subic Bay, the Aircraft Carrier the Enterprise was docked just down the dock. It looked like it had snowed because there were so many sailors everywhere. Only the officers and Non Commissioned Officers were let off the Geiger and allowed to go into Olongapo. I felt the need to walk so I went into town to see what the place was like. I didn't have a lot of money with me so I agreed to come back to the ship early and let one of my buddies go into town that evening because he had the Officer of the day duty.

Once across the bridge leading into town, we were met with an almost never ending line of WWII looking jeeps that had been painted more colors that I thought were possible. They had little tent looking tops and fringe balls hanging down along the edges. Their intent was to get five or six people as passengers and deliver them to one of the bars along the strip.   I have no idea how many bars there were but I had little intent of going to go inside of most of them. You could tell the navy had been there for a while and many of the young Sailors were throwing their money at the bar girls. I finally did manage to get inside one and to actually find a place to sit. About the time my butt hit a chair, a girl sat down next to me and asked me to buy her a drink. As I recall a beer was about a dollar and the drink the girls drank was about $5. Needless to say I didn't have enough for me to throw a good drunk and to buy watered down tea at those prices was just not going to happen.

I went back outside and got into one "jeepnee" that was headed away from the docks. I do remember there was a VFW Post there at one end of the strip. I wasn't a member so I just continued as the driver dropped passengers on and off as he endlessly cruised the town. At the far end of the road, he turned around and headed back towards the docks. I rode down there and got off where we crossed the bridge to go back on base. I felt like I had been assaulted by all the noise, smoke crush of people and music at somewhere near 90 Db. I personally was glad to go back to the ship.

I officially signed the log book and released my friend to go into town. I sat down in the cabin and read the special orders for the ship. It was a lot like being the Officer of the Guard back at Fort Irwin. Mostly they needed a person to be the go to guy if something went wrong. 2ND Lieutenants were everywhere and it didn't seem to be a big deal. I had a radio and the duty NCO stayed in the office by the bridge. I walked around the ship a lot and as i recall, there weren't too many fights. There had been a lot of unrest between the blacks and whites back in the States but we all were going to Vietnam to fight a common enemy so while the frustrations were high because the lower enlisted grades weren't allowed off the ship, fights were few and mostly bare knuckles.

One of the jobs assigned to the Duty Officer was to eat in the enlisted mess. Down in the bowels of the ship there was a mess hall with what seemed like an endless line of guys waiting to get in. There was a pretty normal cafeteria serving line and everyone was forced to stand up to eat. There was a stainless steel "table" up and down the room so the guys could put their tray down in front of their face and eat. From what I saw, the food was fairly edible and smelled pretty good. From my days at Fort Irwin, I knew to go behind the serving line and see what was on the menu and if they had "Cooks Worksheets" to tell them how and when to fix the meal.    Everything looked good except for the Barley Soup that was on the menu but no one seemed to be eating. There were bowls but the guy serving the soup was telling people they didn't want to eat any. I stopped there and asked him why he was telling people to not eat any. He dipped the ladle down in the soup and showed me that there were weevils in the barley and if you got more than broth, you would also get bugs. I grabbed the senior cook and at my direction he and the server removed the soup from the serving line. I went back to the Duty Officer office and made a note in the log about the pretty good meal with bad barley soup. Things went on that night and I got involved with watching the Ships' Staff watching the guys arrive back to the ship. There was a lot of staggering going on and for the most part everyone was in fairly good spirits. I did notice that one of the ship's crew came back on board with a set of gold clubs that clinked as he walked. No one seemed to be interested that his 100 proof golf balls were made of glass.

The next day I slept to make up for the sleep I missed. We set out on the final leg to Long Bin, Vietnam and someone woke me up and said that the Ship's Captain wanted to see me. When I got down to J.B. Shortfigurer's office, I was told to go right in to his office. In the office was a bunch of the ships Officers and a couple of cooks. The Captain had read the log and wanted me to tell him about those damned weevils. I told him that I checked the mess hall to see if it was clean and the food edible. I told him that I saw no one eating the barley soup and found the weevils in the soup. To me, a young officer from Kansas, that wasn't something I would eat and related that the soup was removed from the serving line. One of the cooks started to interrupt me and the ship's XO told him to shut up until I was finished.   The Captain asked me if what I wrote was the truth and I told him that I took my duties serious and didn't write fiction in official logs. I was dismissed and as I was leaving I could hear the Captain issuing a senior level ass chewing that I wanted no part of.

MUD

45132

USNS Geiger

2012-02-01T18:03:00.000-05:00

As one of the unmarried officers in the unit, I was told to stay at Fort Irwin during the Christmas holiday in 1967. I was seeing Barbara a lot and i really didn't mind staying at the fort and could go home in January. As it turned out, I finally convinced Barb to come with me to Kansas and to marry me on the way back. We flew into Vegas and were married there.

When I got back to Fort Irwin, the unit was well into the efforts to put everything in some form of a container and get it ready to ship to Vietnam. We found out that in spite of what we thought, very darned little of our equipment could be shipped in the bed of our trucks. If we built boxes, we could put things in the bed of the trucks if the box did not stick up above the side of the beds. We could leave the windshields on the trucks to get them to Long Beach but everything must be removed, including mirrors. About a week before the people were bused to Long Beach, the Battalion convoy went down by road. Some of the people that went down with the trucks were allowed to be supercargo on the equipment ship. I didn't go with the equipment.

Barbara had to take me out to Fort Irwin that last day. I was excited to go but reluctant to leave. There were several wives there to see us off and the buses were sitting there running as we kissed our good by's.    We were told that wee could carry only one duffel bag but like many others, I had a guitar and a small carry on with my dopp kit and a few personal things. We spend a few hours on the buses and arrived in Long Beach late afternoon. There was a long list of checks made so that everyone was accounted for. Missing shipment for deployment to a war zone was some heavy duty felony time. In the middle of all the checking and counting people, a car pulled up and a set of MP's brought out one of the soldiers that had not come back from his Christmas leave. He got to spend the entire time on board the ship in the brig.

I don't know why, but the first night on the ship we spent tied to the pier. Most of the time we spent reading books, playing cards and telling stories about our adventures on leave. Mostly the enlisted men were in the area below decks and the officers were in the top cabins. I was in a cabin with 6 or 7 other lieutenants and there was always a card game going. I learned to play cribbage and by the time we got to Vietnam I was pretty darned good. I also read the books Hawaii and the Source both by Michener. During the trip over, I wrote a letter almost every day and had an ingrown toenail worked on. It was that same damned toe nail that got knocked off in Panama.

There were not enough tables to have everyone eat at the same time so we were scheduled to eat in shifts. A steward would come through the upper cabin and ring a set of bells and announce which seating was to enter the dinning room. For the first two meals very few of us could eat anything more than crackers and an apple. The USNS Geiger was a ship that wallowed as it went up and down and it would just make you sick. Our buddy Herb Bose took it the worse. was soon in the sick bay on fluids. He got carried off the ship in Subic Bay and flew on to Vietnam when he recovered.

This brings me to the story of the "Midnight Surfer." I walked all over the Geiger and explored as much as I could. I guess that is what Stubbs did and he kept at it until he discovered a rope on one of the decks during one of his midnight forays around the ship. He took that rope and hid it is a safe place. Several days went by and when we were a couple of days out of Subic Bay   we were all sleeping in the middle of the night. The first thing we knew there was anything wrong was when we were told to go to our lifeboat stations and stay there until a head count was completed. Standing there, we watched one of the life boats lowered and then brought right back up. The gossip mill started working about some idiot trying to body surf by lowering himself out a port hole on a rope. After the count was completed, we were sent back to bed. The next day I went to sick bay to have my toe nail checked and there was Stubbs all beat up and bloody. I asked him what happened and he said that he had lowered himself out of a port hole in the latrine. On the way down to the water, the rope was wet by the spray and he slipped. He got a pretty bad rope burn under his arm and when he hit the water it separated his shoulder. Things were OK for a while until one of the guards on deck heard him holler and the "Man Overboard" alarm was sounded. Imagine their surprise when they found him hanging from a rope.

Part 2 tomorrow.

MUD - Ahoy mateys there be evil weevils to be in tomorrows chow story

Jungle Warfare Course, Panama 67

2012-02-01T11:57:00.002-05:00

In 1967, soldiers that were going to go to Vietnam were often sent to the Jungle Warfare Course in the Canal Zone of Panama. I think the Main post was Fort Clayton which hadn't changed since they built the Canal. Large multi-story cement buildings built down near the water. I would have complained but with rum so cheap, I'm sure that not a lot of us noticed. Rum and Coke was about 15 cents @ and for a dollar you could forget the buildings.

I was told by CAPT Kocsis that I had been selected to go to Panama. I had no clue what to expect but I didn't have a choice. I was scheduled to fly out on Saturday from Las Vegas for a class to start on Monday. That Friday night I had my first date in a long time, with Barbara. It was great to spend some time with anyone other than just the guys. I am fairly sure we went bowling and I remember that she had a hop in her delivery. I promised to call her when I got back and then I was off on my adventure.

We flew to Fort Jackson, S.C. and were put up in barracks like the one's we had at the Reception Station. Terrible but I didn't have the money to do anything different. They gathered us all up on buses and drove us to Atlanta to fly to Panama City.   I remember it was a Pan Am flight and they had some of the cutest stewardesses of any airline. They all wore short skirts and looked great. The flight to Panama was not terribly long but we did have to fly out into the Gulf of Mexico to not fly over Cuba.    Landing in panama was like taking a step back at least 30 years (or more)   We were loaded on non air conditioned buses and driven clear across the ismus to Fort Clayton. We were along the canal a lot and then near the big lake on the Rio Chagras. All over the hill sides there were what I would call tar Paper shacks but they all seemed to have a TV antenna.

Once we found out bunks and got our gear together we went to the O Club where it was air conditioned. I found that all of the Candidates that I went to OCS with were sent to Fort Clayton and one of my Platoon mates was the club officer. 2nd Lieutenant De La Rosa was tall fellow and he bought us our first drink. I'm sure that they made it all back in the rest of the day and the next weekend. At 15 cents a drink we all enjoyed it.

The next morning we went down to the supply room and drew our weapons for the field exercise. I swear my M14 was so rusty that I could not make the bolt work. I broke that weapon down and cleaned it for an hour or so and got it where it would kind of work. I should have realized that with the humidity at about 100% and the coolest temperature about 80 things would mold and rust and mold and rust....   Right before I left Fort Irwin, I borrowed a knife called a lineman's knife. It had a blade and a screwdriver. blade. It was made for soldiers. It was so rusty by the end of the first week that I could not open it. I just threw it away.

When the instructors gathered us to go to the field, we were standing in line. Most of us that were not going directly to Vietnam had on State side fatigues and normal boots. Little did we know...   One of the guys right in front of me put his rifle over his shoulder at sling arms. the keeper wasn't fastened enough and his rifle fell right on my big toe. I had just grown out about half a nail from losing ot to smashing my toe and a couple of days later the nail fell off. Thank god in that heat and crud it did not get infected.   Abot two miles from base camp, my hat blew off and I spent the next week without a hat. Somewhere about the middle of the week the heel fell off my boot and boy did I look like a sad excuse for a soldier.

The course was a series of events that each person completed as an individual the first week. We repelled down a water fall, did the slide for life across the Rio Chagres, made a raft with a poncho and floated our gear back across the river, and built a hut using the plants and one with out poncho. There was a night compass course and many patrolling classes. We ambushed half of the guys and got ambushed by them. There was one course that I loved. It was a "Target Detection course where we were given a face shield and BB Guns. We moved down the trail and identified what we saw to the lane grader. The BB Gun we had was the same one I had as a boy. I knew that if you held down the trigger and used the pump action slide you could keep firing until the gun was empty. About half way down the course I saw something move and I knew it was an ambush. I opened fire and hit that guy about 10 times as they yelled "check fire, check fire dammit." I got about five extra points for seeing the sniper and taking aggressive action As we exited the course, the instructor then deducted five points for not telling him about a machete stuck in the tree at the start of the course.

The middle weekend of the course, we were taken back to base camp and I spent the entire time trying to get over the prickly heat that wearing state side fatigues gave me.   The PX had kind of a clothing sales store in it and I bought a set of jungle fatigues, a hat and a pair of jungle boots.   Oh yes, and a giant bottle of calamine lotion. I found that if I coated myself with iot and stood in front of a fan the itch and pain went away. I also found that rum also helped if worn on the inside.   By Monday morning, we were all ready for anothe3r week of fun in the jungle. We were taken out to a new place and we were given a set of orders that we opened only when we accomplished a task. We had a meal that the cadre fixed that ws nothing but what there was in the jungle. It gave about half of us diarrhea and the only ones that escaped that were the one's that didn't eat. The rest of the meals were C-Rations we found at the end of each task. For a week we patrolled across Fort Clayton and slept where we stopped. The next to the last day we were told that we had to complete an escape and evasion course with seven of our classmates. We were told to move down river and given two places where we met the friendly troops. All along the route there were aggressors from the cadre that would tru to capture us and for each time we were captured we would have points deducted from our overall score. At that time, I had about 1750 out of 2000 points and if I didn't get caught more than 5 times I would have enough points to wear the Jungle expert badge.

My group looked at the map and realized that if we went along the river, there was only about 35 yards between the mountains and the river. The team of Navy Seals there for refresher training just made a raft and floated down the river and didn't get caught. We decided that we would turn the course into a mountain exercise and climbed up the cliffs. We managed to go along the cliffs and drop down by rappelling into the safe zones to check in when we needed to. That worked for about half of the way. It was slow and hard but we didn't get caught.   At the midway point, we saw that the path along the river went inland about a half a mile to go around a swamp. As we scouted to see what was along that path, we heard the aggressors capture a group ahead of us by about 100 yards. We decided that cutting across the swamp at night was the best way and didn't get caught. That swamp was so vile and mosquito ridden that no matter how much repellent we had on you couldn't breathe through you mouth without eating a dozen or so of those damn insects. We completed the course and were given a rubber raft ride back to the main base for the Graduation. We all took long showers and right after lunch and a nap we were taken tot he parade grounds and the honor graduates were announced. I didn't make that list but I was on the list of Jungle Experts.

On the flight back to the Atlanta Airport from Panama City, someone brought out a bottle of rum. I thin it was about $2 a quart and we drank more than one using all the coffee on the plane. We the started to drink cokes and when that ran out, we drank water. We were way too tired to be rowdy, just a bunch of drunks that smelled like rum and calamine lotion.

We got to the Atlanta airport about five hours ahead of our flight scheduled to take us back to Vegas. One of the guys from Kansas City mentioned that he sure would like to fly back through Kansas City and see his family. I was pretty sure that a delay in route from Saturday to Sunday would be OK so I also went down to the ticket agent and we worked on our tickets. If I flew standby from Atlanta to KC, there was enough money in the ticket to fly to Wichita and back. Works for ME! As the plane was loading, the ticket agent said that there were no more standby seats except for first class. Crap....   But the stand BY upgrade for first class was only a couple of dollars. I upgraded and ate a steak and had free drinks while my buddies sat back in the main cabin eating sandwiches.

I got to Wichita and was met at the airport by my sister. She told me that our Grandmother had died last week and they wanted to ask the Red Cross to send me home for the Funeral. They decided to let me stay in the course ad I had missed the funeral. Oh well,

When we got back to Fort Irwin, we checked in with out units. We were told to get our gear together and we were going out to the field for a week. We geared up and went out to the field training exercise.     About late Thursday, I started to run a fever and when we drove back to base about 3 AM on Friday I was inside my sleeping bag and so sick I don't remember being taken back to my BOQ room. Sometime Saturday one of my friends came over to check on me and I was rushed to the Hospital, I didn't have a clue what was wrong or where I was. I had literally came in from the field and got in be boots and all.

After about a week in the hospital One of the Doctors came to see me. He said they had tested for everything and they could not find anything. He said if I was anywhere in the desert, he would say it was Dengue fever but you only get it from mosquitoes in the tropics. I told him that I had just spent two weeks in Panama, He removed the isolation sign from the door and I got sent back to my BOQ the next morning.

I called Barb and she sounded pretty cold. She said that I promised to call her when I got back. I told her that I had been in the field and then the hospital and she warmed up. We made a date to go to Disneyland that weekend. Trust me when I say I rode nothing that went fast or in a circle. No Mad hatter spinning tea cups for me.

I managed to date Barbara and convince her to marry me before I went to Vietnam. We were married on 11 Feb 1968 in the Chapel of the Bells, Las Vegas, NV. Somehow we have been married 44 years in a couple of weeks. Still love her today.

I managed to survive dengue fever and while it did knock me for a physical loop, we got ready for deployment and got on board the USNS Geiger in Long Beach for the trip to Vietnam. That story tomorrow.

MUD,
Charter Member of the sick Lame and Lazy Platoon at Fort Irwin.

44946

6th Bn, 84th FA

2012-01-31T11:37:00.000-05:00

Swoosh, was the sound of the doors opening on the first bus of soldiers arriving from Fort Sill. The unit was filled by Lieutenants fresh from OCS and cannoneers just trained at Fort Sill. We had a couple of NCO's that had been in the Army for a while but few if any with combat experience in Vietnam. The Chiefs of Section were the one's that had been acting NCO's in AIT. My battery (Alpha) had a Captain fresh back from Korea, a 1LT that had washed out of flight school and 4 brand new 2nd LTs. I was assigned as a Forward Observer and the unit Supply Officer.

As the supply officer, I was the guy responsible for the issue of the entire battery's worth of equipment as it arrived by truck. This was a new unit and we had nothing on hand until it was sent from some depot. We worked hard to get some Connex shipping containers for each gun to secure their equipment. Our motor pool did not have storage buildings built in with wire cages. I don't remember how many pages of Microfiche it took to list the things on order and on hand but I do know reading one of the readers would give me a headache. The trucks loads of equipment would arrive and we would have to figure out who to make sign for it.

The 6th Bn, 84th Field Artillery was a 155mm Towed Artillery Unit. That meant that we had a 5 Ton Gun Truck and an ammo truck for each gun. When our unit went out to the field, we would stretch out for several hundred meters along the road. The biggest problem we had was that the main reason our XO failed flight school. He was absolutely unable to read a map correctly or tell direction without help. The first time we pulled into a firing position, we were facing entirely the wrong direction. The battery commander was watching from up on a nearby hill and came down and chewed his butt big time. They us-assed that position and drove around and came back to the same spot. had one of the NCO's not remembered, he would have the put the guns in the same spots facing the wrong direction again. That happened two more times and it was when the Post Commander came up over a hill and saw the battery pointing at Main Post that things got changed. One of the other 2nd Lt's was put in the XO's position and things were fairly normal during the rest of the training.

It was a lot like the blind leading the blind there at Fort Irwin. We knew what the books said about fighting but how the hell do you train for Vietnam in a place where there is no brush over two or three feet tall and damned little of that. We had no camouflage nets, no sand bags, no experience and darned little leadership. Somehow the battery managed to get ready for and pass what was then called an ATT or Army training Test. A couple of mornings after that, when we all appeared for a Battery Officer's call, CAPT Alex Kocsis said, "Good morning Special Weapons Officer" to me. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

I was sent over to the S-2's office and read into the Nuclear Weapons Program. I was told that in two weeks we would be given a courtesy evaluation by 6th Army and a week after that we would be evaluated for record. I went back to the battery and was met by the First Sergeant. He would not let me go in to the Commander's office and plead my case. He calmly said that over there in that file cabinet was the records of every man in the battery and I could pick six of the best for my team. I picked out the 6 brightest soldiers in the unit (or the one's with the highest test scores) and went out to meet them. I think one or two were in the Fire Direction Center but the majority were on the guns. I took them over to a Quonset hut and started talking about what the heck we were in for. I am not sure how much of the training is still classified but mostly in a 155mm unit you assemble a round by the book and if authenticated you get to fire it. We had a trainer and between the three battery teams, we shared it. We would have one person read the manual and the others would help do what the reader said. There was some stupid rule that there needed to be two people on hand at all times so we had to stagger lunch.

The two weeks went by quickly with only one small problem. On Wednesday of the first week, I was told to report to Battalion headquarters. Who the hell had picked Stubbs for the training? For some reason he did not have a favorable National Agency Check and would never be given a Security Clearance. I had to send him to the S-2 office where they read him out of the program with a threat of Leavenworth if he ever uttered a word of his training. We were down to five but the training went on.

One Saturday Morning, we all met the evaluation team from the Presidio and did our thing. We had only one training round, so each unit did their thing in order and by the book. We were told that in a week they would be back and we needed to do the same thing only next time for record. A week later we did and we passed. The 6th Bn was Officially certified as a Nuclear Capable Unit and on orders for Vietnam where there were no Nuclear Weapons. Stupid is as Stupid Does. That night, I invited my team over to my BOQ room to have a party. When they showed up, they had Stubbs in tow and we partied until all the beer and Scotch was gone. Somewhere in the middle of all the fun, I asked Stubbs what he could have possible done to not get a favorable National Agency Check. He told me about his trip to the Peace Corps. When they completed his training he was sent to Nigeria and the people there hated them. They were not allowed to go into the villages or do anything they were trained to do. He went to his camp director and asked to be sent somewhere else. He was told that the only way out for the next two years was to be crazy and get sent home. Stubbs said he took off his clothes and ran around naked for a couple of days acting crazy and they sent him home. Works for me. In 1967, no Peace Corps assignment and the Draft soon followed.

Right in the middle of the training for the Battalion level ATT, orders came down for us to send several officers to the Jungle Warfare school in Panama. I will close this here and start the story again in Panama tomorrow.

MUD, Jungle Expert

Wait a Damned Minute!

2012-01-31T10:51:00.000-05:00

Before I launch into a tirade about what was the most unfortunate unit I was ever in, I have a couple of more Fort Irwin stories to tell.    The main post at Fort Irwin had a fairly good PX, Commissary and Officer's Club. The rest of the post was old wooden barracks that housed National Guard units as they trained there in the early summers. By the next period of scheduled training, I would be in Vietnam so I never saw any of them train.

One of the duties we all drew was Officer of the Guard. We would go over to the Guard House, inspect the troops, make a visit on them right after dark and once in the early morning and be there if they needed us. They never did but it was an assigned duty that we all drew once or twice. It did amaze me that there was live ammo issued for the guards at the golf course. Their weapons were .22 rifles with scopes and about once each hour they would flip on the lights and assassinate any bunnies that were there eating the only grass north of the Andreas Fault and north to Canada.

On my second assignment of Guard Duty, I was doing the inspection of the soldiers and I was going down the line and inspecting each soldier as well as I remembered how to. I turned to face a soldier about half way down the line and I had to look down to see his face. There standing in front of me was the shortest and thinnest soldier I had ever seen in a uniform. Even in what was the smallest uniform ever on an adult soldier was a private that made Sad Sack look like a member of the Honor Guard. He was at attention and he placed the M-14 butt on the ground and pushed the charging handle down with his foot. He brought it back up into the port arms position and as he looked me in the eyes, he said, "I've been sick." To keep from laughing, I just moved to the next soldier. When the Sergeant of the Guard and I got back into the guard house, we both busted out laughing. It was my hope that that poor soul would remain in the United States and never deploy against any enemy bigger than a girl scout troop. The average 12 year old girl could whoop his butt.

Fort Irwin was sand surrounded by more sand. There were a few mountains here and there but if you weren't careful, you could get lost quick and often. I had some innate sense of direction and realized that all roads led somewhere and once I had a map, I drove that Volvo of mine all over the place. I loved the sand tank trails and it just kept going and going. I saw the towers at Gold Stone that tracked the Apollo missions and even strayed past them over into China Lake Weapons Training Range. When I saw my first large rocket stuck in the ground, I decided that I had strayed too far and turned around. I drove out north of the main post and finally found where the pavement ended and the trails began their meandering towards Death Valley. Later on, Some of us drove out the back gate and into the back side of Baker, California. I never did find the way back in so we had to drive the extra 40 miles back to the front gate.

I found a way to cut off about 10 miles by cutting over to the Barstow dump from Yermo but you could tear the hell out of the bottom of your car if you drove too fast and the one of the few rain storms washed the sand out of the river bottom. I hit the rocks about 45 MPH one day and the Volvo would only run about 100 yards and stop. I looked underneath and saw that I had mashed a fuel line flat and found that if I would just stop the car, turn on the key and let the fuel pump slowly fill the carbs, it would go another 100 yards. I drove the last two miles to main post 100 yards at a time.

I took it to the Self Repair facility and found an old retired sergeant there that loved old cars about as much as I did. He found a piece of rubber fuel line and showed me how to replace the flattened piece for a couple of dollars. I mentioned that the Starter was dragging some and he showed me how to yard it out and then we rebuilt it there on the bench. In each end of the starter there is a bushing that keeps the starter spinning true and even. The bushing were worn out and he just showed me how to replace them with some stock bushings he had on hand. He told me that the brushes were getting pretty worn out and then we took a stock set of Chevy brushes and ground them down to fit. I think he even recommended that I go to the 2nd hand store and pick up a pair of Michelin tires he saw there on sale for a cheap price. After mounting and balancing those tires, I had about the best car on post, at least in my mind. The only thing he couldn't fix was the fact the windshield was just getting blasted by sand every time I was out on one of my adventures. My dad replaced that windshield and then soon wrecked that car. I was glad that Dad survived, but the Volvo didn't. At Fort Sill, OK they had me put in seat belts in the front and I'm sure that saved his life. The accident that killed the Volvo was so violent that Dad broke his nose with his knee and still walked away from the crash.

After a couple of weeks in the temporary house, a unit deployed to Vietnam and we were moved over to the old BOQ. I had a room that shared a bathroom with the post Provost Marshal. I met him a couple of times but because you could lock the door while you were inside the bathroom seldom saw him. The room was furnished with the basic bed, dresser, a couple of chairs and an area rug. One day as I was walking out to my car I saw a bit of green growing near the sidewalk. I saw that it was a sticker plant and I picked up three or four stickers and planted them in a glass on my dresser. I think I needed a bit of green and was so cheap that I wouldn't spring for a real plant. That sticker plant grew and flourished there by the window in my BOQ and it wasn't until it started to drop stickers that the maid threw it away. I think it had died when I went to Panama.

One night I was in the pool room of the Bachelor's Officer's Quarters (BOQ), watching TV and drinking Scotch. I picked up a bag of chips at the Commissary earlier that day and was well into eating the whole damn thing when I felt flushed. I asked one of the guys if it was hot in here or just me. They rushed me over to the hospital and the nurse on duty said I looked like a strawberry. I had no known allergies and they gave me a shot and put me in isolation. The next morning, I woke up well and healthy. It seems that either the Scotch or the Granny Goose potato chips fried in Cottonseed Oil caused an allergic reaction. Must have been those damned chips.

Most of the units assigned to Fort Irwin in 1967 were units training for deployment to Vietnam. That meant that most nights you could go into the club and not swing a dead cat without hitting a dozen young Artillerymen. Somehow we got a copy of the field Artillery song on the jute box. Whenever the urge hit us, we would play that song and everyone would stand and sing along. Now it is the Army song so I'm sure that everyone stands now. Anyone that wouldn't stand was thrown out the back door. The post commander a Full Bull Colonel was an Armor Officer and quite often we would have to carry him and his chair to the back door. He would stand up and exit until the song was over. We just couldn't throw a Colonel out the door of his own club. I think they finally got him a chair with rollers so we could just roll him over to the door.

I am pretty sure that because of the isolation of Fort Irwin and the fact that most of us were on orders for Vietnam. there was a level of decorum (or lack thereof) that was accepted that would not have been OK at most posts. I am pretty sure that had the BOQ's been right across the street from the O Club, the MP's could have made a killing every night. If someone forgot and drive his car to the club, he would just leave it in the parking lot until the next morning and then drive over to his unit.

One of the nice things about fort Irwin was the fact that most activities shut down right after duty hours on Friday and didn't start until Monday morning. That left us 48 hours to drive to LA or Vegas.   It was a mass migration on and off that post. It wasn't until our unit got formed that most of us in the 6th Bn 84th Artillery were let off restriction to Fort Irwin. Now the fun begins in earnest.

MUD

Fort Irwin, CA 1967

2012-01-30T10:49:00.001-05:00

Near the end of our Officer Candidate School (OCS) we were taken over to the Day Room and our TAC officer read us our assignments for our first unit starting in July. We had class mates going all over the United States and Panama. For some reason, a fairly large group of us were just kept on hold to the very last. Then the announcement. The following will go to where there is sunshine, sand and Death valley. Hey Wait, Fort Ord isn't near Death Valley!   Fort Irwin, California will be the new home for about 20 members of your class. You are not allowed to take wives, more than 300 Lbs of baggage and be prepared for deployment to Vietnam after the completion of training. Talk about a downer. Oh well, by then I had the Volvo and I would at least not be trapped on post the entire time.

After a couple of weeks vacation, I drove all the way to Barstow, California in two days. About 10 PM I drove in from Needles to Barstow and saw what I thought was a beautiful sight from the lights of Barstow. Perhaps it was that I was just tired as hell and needed a Motel with a good air conditioner.   I turned off the Interstate and found a small No-Tell, Motel that gave me a room for about half of what I had in my wallet. It was over 100 degrees and the maids left the AC turned off in the room. I went in, turned the AC on get cold fast and took a shower. By the time I came out of the shower, it was just cool enough that sleeping naked on top of the sheets was the only option. Somewhere about 4 AM it finally got cool enough that I could pull a damp sheet over myself and sleep until the sun brutally appeared for another round of broil the ass off Barstow.

In the light of day, Barstow was a dump that had some pretty street lights. I was so disappointed that a 1200 mile trip would end up in the arm pit of California. I asked the manager of the Motel how to get to Fort Irwin and he told me to go down to the street light (Yes there was one at the main intersection on Main Street) turn left and go out past the rail yard and follow the road north.   I struck out and followed the road past the first Del Taco and across the Rail Road bridge and then followed the road as it meandered across the desert. My map said that the road ended at Fort Irwin, just short of Death Valley. I found the only place where the road was dangerous. Instead of going around the big ass rocks, someone had decided to put the road through the rocks in Dead Man's Curve. I'm sure that many a drunk soldier had failed to negotiate the curve on their way back out to the base. A little further on, I started to see Unit Crests painted on the rocks near the highway. Soon, I hit the gate of Fort Irwin. I had gone about 24 miles and there sat a gate in the middle of a sand covered field with nothing near it for as far as I could see. I pulled up to the gate, the MP saw my Fort Sill sticker and saluted me on through. I just had to stop and ask where the hell was the main post?   he said it is another 12 miles on to the main post. I asked why the hell was the gate way out here in the middle of no where. he said that way they didn't have to pay isolation pay for soldiers stationed more than 25 miles from a town. Hell, you could have been stationed in Barstow and had to draw isolation pay in my mind.

Imagine my surprise when I arrived at a post that was built for desert warfare training during WWII that had not changed a whole hell of a lot. Old wooden buildings and the only grass was in front of main post headquarters where a sprinkler ran 24/7. OK, I did find that the golf course had grass greens but the guards on duty there had .22 rifles to shoot the rabbits. I went into the Adjutant's outer office in Main Post and signed-in. As I waited to get my welcome packet, I noticed that I had my first nose bleed. The clerk behind the desk handed me a tissue and said the dry air here will do that for a couple of weeks or so. He recommended that I stop by the PX and buy a big jar of hand cream, a tube of chap stick and a bottle of petroleum jelly. I think the humidity was about 7% inside where they had water, or swamp coolers to cool down the air. If you stood right in front of one, you could stand the heat.

I went over to the post Housing and was told that I was to be put up in a a house over in the post housing area. Go down to the Officer's club and turn right. The first house I came to was to be my first home at Fort Irwin. I got there and there were about 10 cars parked there in the driveway and on the street. I went in and found that most of the new arrivals in our house were my class mates and we were put up in a three bedroom house for the time being. I later learned that it was the house that our Battalion Commander would be housed in when they picked one. The bedrooms were all taken, the living room was taken and the only room left was the dinning room. Sure enough there was a bed and a cheap dresser there. Oh well, it beat the hell out of a tent. That afternoon, I went over to The Field Artillery Brigade Headquarters to find out about my new unit. They had me again sign in and issued me a welcome packet. I was assigned to the Task Force Headquarters for the possible riots in LA. I was the third assistant Morale and Welfare officer and responsible for the sports equipment if we had to deploy forces to Las Angeles. Further, I was restricted to the post for at least the next 6 weeks. Oh great, right in the middle of no damn where and I can't even go into Barstow.

To make matters worse, and I didn't think it could get much worse, the house right across the street had a pair of 15 year old twin girls living there that I never saw in much more than bikinis. I don't think I saw any other girls on post other than them and they were Jail Bait. Imagine a house full of 19 to 22 year old guys living across the street from two cute blond girls that knew they filled out their bikinis well. No, I think they also wore t-Shirts, no bras and the shortest cut off shorts you could make out of a pair of blue jeans.

Oh,,I was told,, your unit will be over in Bldg by the Post Hospital when it forms. I think some of the people are there if you want to go over. I found one Major, two Captains a jeep and five or six Lieutenants in one little Quonset hut. No one had any idea I was coming and did not care that I was there. I was told to go back over to my lodging and stay there except to check in once a day about 9 AM. I was told by my new room mates that in the welcome packet there was a Charge Card for the Officer's club and it was the cheapest place to eat on post for us. I used that card for the next month and when I got paid, I owed about half of what I was paid to the O Club. You had to pay that bill first thing or you would have your card taken away.

I wish I could say things got better for us in the next month but I soon found that the only way to have anything to do was to volunteer to go out and be a safety officer for the 5th Bn, 22nd FA as they trained for deployment to Vietnam. It was a 175mm Self propelled Artillery unit that was shooting up ammo that was repackaged when they De-commissioned the New Jersey battleship right after the Korean war.   They couldn't hit a barn from the inside with that lousy powder and close was within the grid square of the target. I would go over to their headquarters in the morning, fill up a water jug with ice and water and fill up a five gallon can with water and that might last me one day out in the desert running between the guns. By 9 AM, the Fire Direction center would ask for a powder temperature and it would have the thermometer pegged at 113 degrees and god only knew how hot it really was in the shade. There wasn't any damned shade!

Somewhere near the first of August, it was announced that there would be a meeting of the officer's club memebers in the evening. As most of us were there drinking, we went over to the meeting. the first order of business was the proposed new front for the club. They had about $50,000 in the treasury and wanted to put a new rock front on the building. Oh hell no, we wanted them to reduce the price of the drinks for happy hour for a month and see about that next month. They did lower the priced for a couple hours each evening and at the next meeting announced that the club now had about $75,000 in cash on hand. Oh hell, no, lower prices and more bar food during happy hour. At the next meeting they had about $100,000 on hand and we had damn near free drinks and food for happy hour. A couple of years later I went to Fort Irwin on a visit to My In-laws in Barstow and saw that they had finally put the rock front on the Officer's club. It was a terrible color and I just laughed all the way off post.

I am going to stop here and will write about the 6th Bn, 84th FA starting tomorrow.

MUD, LT FA

44705

Memories and Perceptions

2012-01-28T13:54:00.001-05:00

I just want to state for the record that what I write is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the perception of the truth as it is filtered through time, memories, illness and age. Stories told over and over get embellished a little and that embellishment often becomes a hard part of the truth as the teller remembers. If I misstate the facts, write your own damned story and see how correct you are. If I tell stories about you that are true, just remember that I tried to not tell all the stories that would have indited us all,
MUD

44531

Officer Candidate School

2012-01-28T11:14:00.000-05:00

When I signed in to my OCS Battery at Fort Sill, I had just completed 8 weeks of a preparatory class that was designed to get us ready for the crap they would dish out. We were sent to one of the old wooden barracks and piled in High and tight. Someone had renovated the barracks and down both sides of the middle open aisle were cubicles designed for two candidates. To start, they double stacked us with bunk beds and instead of the usual 25 to 30 there were closer to 60 on my floor. I am pretty sure we were Battery E, also known as class 23A-67 set to graduate with our sister Battery, F Battery on the 3rd of July. Normally the graduations were held on the Tuesday of the week but that would have been the 4th of July so we graduated a day early.

My 8 weeks in the OCS Prep battery helped me get my junk organized quick and I spent the next couple of days helping the other poor dumb Bastards get their gear in order. There was a diagram for everything and we had to work hard to make it be there and all shiny. I literally poured my display out of the laundry bag and set it up. Those poor guys that had just completed AIT in normal units suffered. In the second week, they did a Peer review and we rated every one else in our Platoon. I was ranked tied in the top position with another OCS Prep graduate. We worked hard to help everyone get their gear set up. I was completely blown out of the water when I was counseled by our TAC officer and he gave me a 71 Leadership grade. Barely a C in any language. I was blown out of the water. He told me that I was not there to help, but there to learn how to lead. he said i would raise my leadership grade by every step i went down in the peer ratings. By the end of the class i was tied for 23rd out of 24. Sure enough my leadership grade was 93.

I often relate the story that for the first couple of weeks, we had a Candidate from a Senior Class that lived with us. Every night he would walk up and down the middle aisle after lights out and lecture us on what we had done well and what we had done poorly that day. It was either laugh or cry into my pillow each night for a while. Me, I just had to make it a game and laugh. There were a lot of us that started and darned few, less than 50% that completed.

Each day, the TAC officer would come through our area and anything that was wrong or sloppy would get thrown on the floor. Demerits would be awarded to the offender and special periods of extra duty awarded. The first couple of weeks were especially chicken shit and everyone had to walk the "Parking Lot Tour." I had the bad luck to be in front of one of the most clumsy soldiers ever. He never learned to start by stepping off with his left foot. The first time we were there, he kicked the heel off one of my boots and because of a lack of funds, I was forced to leave that pair under my bunk as a display and not rotate the boots like we were supposed to. We had one pair marked with a red spot and one pair not marked. Each morning I put the little stick on red spot on or off the pair under my bed. No one ever caught on. After we were finally paid about the 8th week of OCS, the guy that knocked off my heel came by my bunk and gave me a new pair of jump boots he has just bought. they were not his size and were a real pain to bring up to the OCS standard. I was a whizz at shining anything by that time and I never was given a demerit for that pair of boots.

The weekend extra periods of duty continued for a couple of weeks until the first big weekend for a JARK. The story went that the 4.2 miles from the Robinson Barracks sign to the top of Medicine Bluffs 4 or MB-4 was named after some WWII Candidate who managed to have to go up that mountain every weekend he was in OCS.    You made the walk like an adjutant walk or stiff legged and you were guaranteed to have shin splints for a couple of days after each walk. I had to go that first time but after that I thought I was going to tie the record of the lowest number of miles in OCS. 4.2 was the record and I was well on my way to only making one trip up that hill.

On Sunday mornings, we were allowed to go to the Day Room and purchase junk food or grotto. It was a blessed extra calories for young soldiers that were easily burning a few hundred more than we could consume in the rigid mess hall atmosphere. One of my cube mates went over to the day room and actually brought a Baby Ruth candy bar back into the barracks. That was a big no no. As he finished it, he was looking for a place to s=dispose of the wrapper when someone called "Attention" downstairs. He grabbed the wrapper and stuffed it in a binder on our desk and left it there while the officer was visiting. He put it in his pocket and disposed it on a trip to the dumpster. The next Monday morning our TAC officer came to visit and saw the binder out of alignment and knocked them on the floor. That stupid candy wrapper had left half a peanut and some chocolate on the desk. The TAC officer wrote a 6X6 special for the infraction. That was 6 weeks detention and 6 trips up the Hill on weekend JARKS. The owner of the candy bar was married and had not been to see his wife for the first month we were in OCS. To help him out, the three of us left in our cube split the penalty and I gave myself a 2X2. That gave me three trips up MB-4 for 13.2 miles. I had the lowest number of miles in our Battery but did not tie the Overall record.

I wish I had a way to share all the things we saw at Fort Sill but am somewhat limited by this format. I can tell you that we got to blow off steam in a lot of ways. We would holler on the bus - "Give me an Attitude Check. Check - We hate this Fucking Place. Someone would holler Give me a Positive Attitude Check - We Positively Hate this Fucking Place..."

On the weekends, there was often gunnery Displays out on the range. We were made to attend and some of the were great but some were a disaster. Honest to god, I saw an Honest John Rocket fired and someone forgot to pull the "God Pin" out of the rail. That rocket hopped its way across the firing position and took the truck and all and blew up right in front of the stands. The crowning blow was that someone set off a nuclear simulator way off in the distance and the announcer read the part of the script about the explosion on the horizon. We could feel the heat in the stands. I'm sure that someone was packed up and sent to Korea that weekend. A couple of months later, I saw a unit bring in a Little John Rocket by Chinook helicopter and shoot it at The biggest mountain in the impact area. I looked at it and said to the people near me that unless that rocket had a left hand spin it was going to miss Signal Mountain. Sure enough, when it was fired it just sailed right on past that mountain. Another young officer went to Korea the next morning. If you have ever been to Fort Sill, you would know all about Signal Mountain and how it is the tallest mountain that dominates the west range. To miss that mountain was very hard to do.

Oh well, I'd better call this a day and move on to my first Unit, the 6th Battalion 84th Artillery at Fort Irwin, CA. Yes,it was later designated the National Desert Training Center.

MUD (then 2LT)

The Early Military Years, Enlisted.

2012-01-28T10:24:00.000-05:00

In 1966, I was cruising along in life like I knew where it was headed and I was along for the ride. I had started college but didn't apply for a Military deferment. Sure trip to the Army. Lo and behold, in July 66 I was sent to Kansas City for a Pre-Induction Physical. I Looked at the paperwork completed near the end when I had a visit with the Doctor. Little did I know then that all those 1s in the PULHES section would award me a 1-A rating. On my 19th Birthday I went to the mail and there was a "Greetings" Letter and I was told to report on 5 Sep for induction (Drafted, busted go to the Military do not pass go)

I did talk to a navy Recruiter about being a SEA BEE because of my construction experience. They weren't interested unless I had training and experience driving heavy Machinery. I just accepted my fate and got on the bus. Go to Canada? Are you Crazy? Hell, all they wanted was a couple of years and what else did I have to do.

The Induction station in Kansas City is still there across from the Train Station. It has a fancy name now something like MEPS but it really isn't important. I spent a couple of days taking tests and the checks to insure that I hadn't done (or Caught) anything since the last time I was there. Nope, Stand in a line in alphabetical order. I lucked out that everyone in the alphabet after P were sent to another room where a Marine Corps Gunney made them swear an oath to the Corps. As soon as those of us that took the induction were official, we were on a bus for Fort Lost in the Woods (Leonard Wood)

We arrived there late at night and were given a sheet, a blanket and a pillow and told to go rack out in an old wooden barracks. We did and early the next morning some a-hole came in and kicked a can down the center of the barracks and called us a lot of names. We were herded outside to a line for breakfast and some of the guys were drug out of the line to serve. I was chosen and put on the part of the line where I fed bread into this merry go round toaster. The toast fell into a metal container and the guys just picked up the toast with their bare hands. At least I got to wash my hands. The toast that got burned was taken by one of the other guys and they made French Toast out of it.

After a bunch of tests, a hair cut, issuance of uniforms and equipment, a bunch of shots, we were finally marched over to a nearby unit. It too was a bunch of WWII Barracks and we were greeted by our Drill Sergeant. SFC Tignor (we became Tignor's Tigers) was a great guy in the barracks. You could ask him anything and he actually talked to us like we were people. His words were, "You guys are being trained to go to Vietnam and the better you do here, the fewer of you that will die there." His motivation was loud and clear to me. I pitched in and learned everything I could. One of the guys that were Acting NCO's (they had been in the Army two weeks longer than we had) could go to the PX and they purchased a Basic Training Guide. It had simple things like the Code of Conduct, General orders, and how to wear the uniform. I got one and read it cover to cover several times. I finished 2nd out of all the trainees in our cycle. My dad got a letter from the 2nd Brigade Commander thanking him for teaching me as much as he could. It was BS but at least I got promoted to E-2 as I entered AIT.

There was a lot of confusion in my orders. I had been selected to go to the Field Artillery OCS at Fort Sill and the first orders I saw were for Fort lee, VA. Had I not got Sergeant Tignor involved, I would have been on a bus to Fort Lee. I finally got a letter that told me to report to Fort Sill. No orders at that point but what the heck did I know. I was assigned to an OCS Preparatory Battery and completed 8 weeks learning how to be an Artillery Fire Direction Crewman and to polish things that were already shinny but needed more.

Some time in late January or early February, I went over to the Robinson Barracks and signed in. 23 weeks later, I graduated as a branch qualified 2nd Lieutenant. My next stop was Fort Irwin, CA but more about the rest of my career next Blog.

MUD
Col, (Ret)

The High School Years

2012-01-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

For some strange reason the City of Wichita really got mad at Beech Aircraft and their attempt to block annexation of the east side of the county from Annexation. Just as I was to start High School, they blocked us from attending South east High School. Instead of going to the same school as our brothers and sisters we were given the choice of three other schools. We could attend the old dungeon downtown called East High, the new school called Wichita Heights or travel 5 miles east to Andover. It was a strange day when we were all given the choice. Most of the girls in my old neighborhood chose Heights and the guys chose East. I guess it was a fortuitous thing that my girlfriend went to Heights. I was then allowed to not have my hormones racing during the day at least five days a week. No more than normal.

It was a culture shock for trailer trash from a neighborhood where no self respecting black man would live to be in a school that was probably 60% black.   My next door neighbor threw a fit and forever washed the cans of Coors beer when he saw they employed blacks in their canning section. Just once, I will use the word Nigger to describe the only appellation I ever heard them called in our group of poor white trash. Imagine my shock when on the first day of PE I not only was in a mass class with then, I actually stepped right on the chest of one of the biggest blackest man I ever met. For some reason he was laying on the floor resting and as I ran over to a loose basketball, thud, I stepped right in the middle of his brand new white shirt. The evidence was clear, there was a size 12 footprint right covering his name. I recognized it as the name of one of the football linemen from the year before. I think the only thing that saved me was that he would have probably gotten thrown out of school had he killed me. I brushed off the evidence and apologized for not seeing him. It was the first time I had been called an "MF" by someone that was man enough to tear one of my arms off and beat me with it. That guy had enough friends with him that it would probably been called one of the worst cases of suicide in 1963. I lucked out and lived, I think.

I managed to get through High School with no special awards or recognition. In fact I once saw that I was in the bottom 1/4 of my graduating class in academic performance. I was supporting a girl friend and a car through most of that experience and trivial things like studying was on the back burner. One of the first failures in High School was the fact that I flunked 9th grade English and had to take it my sophomore year. I showed up in a class of almost illiterate students and was singled out by the teacher after class. She asked me what the heck I had done to flunk a subject like English and immediately set me on a self study path that allowed her to focus on the students that really could not read or write. I read at least a book a week in her class and wrote book reports. I sat in the corner of the room and we basically ignored each other. Play nice Dennis and we will get along fine.

Spanish my sophomore year was another story. The teacher assigned homework every night and I didn't have time to be bothered. I recall the rule that for each assignment I missed my grade was lowered by one whole grade. I am pretty sure that several of us had F's by the end of the first week. I transferred to the Chorus very soon. For some reason the chorus instructor listened to me sing and I wound up in the Choir the second semester. I sang my way through High School and I wore the one suit I owned to do so. We had to buy a Blue Blazer with Charcoal grey pants. We did look good and sang much better than we as individuals were capable of singing. I lettered in Choir but there was no way I was ever going to wear a Letter men jacket with the Choir patch on it. there were a couple of honest to god letter men that put the Choir patch on theirs but they also had Track, or Basketball, or wrestling patches.

I worked at gas stations all through High School and I think I did a pretty good job. My first job was working at a Phillips 66 station and they had real high standards for the restrooms. I was the flunky and it fell to me to clean them and keep them that way. That carried over to the Job I had at Rock Road and Kellogg. On my second night there, I checked the bathrooms and the women's was an absolute disaster. No one cleaned the joint is weeks and it showed. I had to get some pretty heavy duty cleaners to get the toiled to not look like it was freshly crapped in even after I cleaned it. I had to take some auto polish and buff the sink so it would even glow, let alone shine. I did my best and even left the floor with a coat of wax.

The next morning the owner's wife stopped by the station and while she was there, she went into the restroom. She came out and asked "Who cleaned that bathroom?"   I admitted that I had and wondered what I had done wrong. She came over to me and praised me for doing what had as long as she remembered not been done. Yep, the reward for good work is more work. I was forever the Latrine orderly there for the next three years.

I do wish I could really explain my relationship with my girl friend Donna. I thought I loved that girl but I probably lusted more than loved. The only thing that really saved us was a fear that if we went all the way it would probably result in a pregnancy that would tie us to a life in Dog Patch. I am pretty sure that she didn't want that any more than I did. I even bought her a ring but when we graduated from High School our parents helped us decide to wait at least a year to get married. Her parents moved to Seattle, Washington with Boeing and she followed as soon as graduation was over. I went out by bus Christmas of 1965 to visit but even an inexperienced guy like me could tell it was over. She joined the Navy and we drifted different directions. She married "Lucky" and I felt lucky to be free of the whole affair. I found out about her marriage from my father while I was in basic training.

I started at Wichita State and made straight Cs my first semester. Right after the start of the second semester, I learned to play 10 point pitch in the Campus Activity Center and that ended my college career for that year. One of the guys and I worked out a system of cheating that amazing how simple and easy it was. We would put the cards in our hands to indicate our strong suit. Left hand cards folded was diamonds spread out hearts. Right hand folded was spades and spread out clubs. We would never let on what we were doing and beat about any other group we played. We both had also played bridge and knew how to play cards well. The only really good thing was they didn't serve beer there. Cokes and Cheese sandwiches were my breakfast and lunch for a couple of months.

They required everyone to take ROTC the first couple of years but at the end of the enrollment line I didn't fill out the deferment card so I was eligible for the draft. The Vietnam War was just beginning to build and I had a fair idea that a healthy single non college student would find himself drafted.

I worked construction from that spring to well into the fall. I saved nothing but had one of the greatest times ever. I was about 6'2" and 185 lbs of young enthusiastic male. I figured out that if I did get drafted I would fly through that training no sweat. Little did I know that heavy labor just didn't prepare me for running in combat boots. One of my goals was to not go into the service a virgin. I managed to work that out and had no idea that while I was eager, I was not a very considerate lover. Oh well, it was good enough for me.

My car through most of High School was a 55 Chevy. man I loved those big bench seats. My dad helped me buy a Renault and I hated every part if it. In about July we traded it in for a Volvo and I found those reclining seats to be almost as wonderful as the big bench seats in the Chevy. Oh well, Off to the Army

MUD

In the Beginning

2012-01-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

I grew up on the east side of Wichita, Kansas. We were right outside of the City Limits and the view from my house was mostly the Beech Aircraft Plant number 1 on Central and the Beech parking lot that was right behind my house. My daddy was in the Navy in WWII and I was a "Baby Boomer". In my neighborhood, there was no shortage of kids to play with. In fact, many of our ball games on the vacant lot up north had more kids in the outfield than most professional teams had on their roster. We all went to Minneha and it was from kindergarten to the ninth grade when I attended there. I guess the last three grades were technically Junior High but who even thinks about such things at the time. We walked to school and so long as you got home before the 3:30 shift change you could do so mostly safely. There were no old stupid dogs in my neighborhood. If they ventured out between 6:30 and 7 AM or between 3:30 and 4 PM they died in the road. That happened a lot...

The neighborhood I grew up in was called Travel Air City as it was built right before the war to house the expanding workforce for Beech Aircraft. By the time I had grown up, it was known as Dog Patch after that Al Capp cartoon city. I think that appellation stuck mostly because of all the Oakies and Arkies that settled there because of the cheap housing. Someone tore down an apartment area called Beechwood and hauled the large buildings to my neighborhood. It improved both areas. A lot of the rest of my neighborhood was trailer courts and shacks. At least a couple of years in my life I too was a part of the trailer trash as we lived in an 8X38 foot trailer when we moved back after Vietnam. We were going to Wichita State University and in love so we didn't care much where we lived.

A lot of people don't remember who was their first friend. I remember clearly that Harvey Blinn was one of the first guys I knew. He lived two houses south of us on Byrd Street and I think our being friends was mostly because we were both from families where the girls out numbered the boys. I think he had 5 or 6 sisters and I had two. Harvey was a year older but I feel confident in saying that I was a bad influence on him in a lot of areas. Harvey and I maintain a correspondence with each other even today and have had a chance to visit in the last year or so.

One of the influences in my neighborhood was Minneha. My Kindergarten teacher lived next door, The Head Custodian lives across the street and there was a kid in about every grade that lived on my block. There was a joke about a little frog there. When someone would ask "Who Did That?" he would hop out and say, "Petty did it, Petty did it!" Damned if he wasn't right more often than not. I was a pretty intelligent kid that would probably be on Ritalin today. My attention span on old ideas was short and there was no limit on new ideas for things to do. I guess Harvey, Ronnie, Eugene, Denny L. and Wayne needed more to do to enliven their lives. The Wichita Flash was there to help. When my sisters started at Minneha, it was in a very small building at Central and Webb Road. They expanded to a new building up Webb Road and had to build a new Elementary School because of all the kids born right after the war. I think that it now has been absorbed into the Wichita School District now and even is a "Magnet" school what ever that is.

While there were a lot of people involved in the Education process in my neighborhood, there was also a lot of people that worked at Beech. Most of the people that lived in out neighborhood may have started at Beech and walked to work, a lot of them moved to Cessna or Boeing for the money. When they moved up, a lot of them moved out. Not all, but many moved away from there and the neighborhood deteriorated with the arrival of poor folks from Oklahoma and Arkansas. A lot of them seemed to be in the roofing business. The men would travel to places far away if there was a major storm and then draw unemployment all winter. Most of them left large families in the shacks and sent home what little money they didn't drink while in other cities.

I can't even begin to tell you what sociological influences were the greatest on the kids where I lived. I was almost 7 when we got our first TV and we were too poor to go to many movies. I did listen to radio on those hot summer nights but I think I spent more time outside than anything else. Because of the lights in the Beech parking lot, our yard was lit up and we played outside a lot during the summer. Kick the can, hide and go seek and just mischief kep us busy most of the time. I don't remember being bored a lot as we always found someone to play with or something to do.

I don't remember when I got my first bike, but I do know that we all had one. We were like a gang of bikers riding the darnedest collection of old iron anywhere. We roamed the neighborhood and often rode the roads way north of our homes. I can remember riding one time at least 5 miles north of our neighborhood and having to dip my front wheel in the water in a ditch because there was no grease in the bearings and it got so hot it darned near froze up. When we got home the bearings fell out and we never did find enough to make that wheel work again.

I guess I want to share with you that even if we were poor, we were rich in friendships and blessed to attend a school where a good education could be had even if it was by osmosis mostly. For me, my salvation was one of the best libraries ever. I could go in there and find books that took me all over the world. I traveled every battlefield in the Civil War and WWI. Those places I didn't read about in WWII were places we were taken by the war stories of our fathers.

MUD

Finally, I got that Sucker!

2012-01-25T10:47:00.000-05:00

I think I have mentioned feeding the birds (OK about a million times). To do that, I have found that Black Oil Sunflower seeds are the one's the birds like the best. The problem with having bulk seeds in the computer room downstairs is the problems with other animals that like the seeds, like mice. There has been one bold little fellow that has just strolled out in the middle of the room and dared me to catch him. I tried the old mouse trap baited with peanut butter but he just was so small he could lick one of those traps clean and escape. I found that Victor makes a trap that is very pressure sensitive and catches them like crazy. It has a great big paddle looking thing that trips the trap. I put the traps perpendicular to the wall and put just a few seeds between a pair. Out in the garage, I put them along a "run" they use without the seeds. It seems that in the dark, mouses run along the wall using their whiskers to go straight. They first run into the traps line and then go to mousy heaven (or hell in my book). So far this year I have trapped over 30 in the garage and one in the basement. I hate those mice in a big way.

Our friend, Mel, from Austin was with us one day over the Christmas break when we were out on a walk. Her cell phone rang and I'll be darned if she didn't get a cold call interview. She works as a quality control person for the programmers. She tests the programs and finds the bugs before the programs go out for release. The company she had been working for had hired a new supervisor and they just didn't get along. Mel was offered a new job and ran with it. We are thrilled to see her get a chance with a new company.

I have a dilemma, One of my renters thinks the bathroom at their house needs upgraded. They are behind $2,100 in rent for last year and quite frankly I had hoped they would go find somewhere else to live. I do have plans to upgrade the bathroom in that house but how do you do it with them there? I am very inclined to use the back rent to remodel if they make good on their promise to catch me up by march. If they don't, I will evict them and do the upgrade as I can. Oh well.

Barb and I went to the KU vs Texas A&M game Monday night with Dan and Carrie Craig. During our Dinner at the Yellow Sub in Lawrence they mentioned the family trip next fall in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Right now it will cost us a little over $500 @ for a week on the beach. I'm pretty sure that food costs will drive that up a little but as one of the cooks I really look forward to working with Keith to cook up some great seafood. By then, there will be another new baby in the Kirkland family and we love babies.

I am going to work on getting together with my nephew Robert and Julia to see their two year old and soon to be new daughter. I have seen pictures but we seem to just miss them - a lot!. I hate it when that happens.

Better run and get something accomplished. I guess I should try to set a goal or two first.

MUD

I am not as Think as you drunk I am...

2012-01-24T11:20:00.000-05:00

Just the other day, I had a non-alcoholic beer in New Braunfels, Texas. It was a German beer with a German meal of schnitzel, cabbage and boiled potatoes (Mit butter) It was wonderful and enjoyed the taste. For the first time in a long time I found that I could enjoy the taste without the craving for another, and another and another.   For the longest part of my life I really liked beer. No, I really, really liked beer.

While I had many a drunk night in the Military, I drank before I went in and after I came out. No one to blame there. I like many others must stand up and be accountable for myself on that front.

The other day, I was looking for a phone number in my old "Day Runner" and found the Micro fish from my time in the Service. I went down to the National Guard Headquarters to see if they had a machine to read the darned thing and I was taken back that they no longer had anyway to read one. Even the archives section no longer uses one. They sent the old files off to be put in a data base and I forgot to ask if I could get a copy on a disk. I found my military life reduced to 392 itty bitty files and no way to read them.

The biggest surprise was that the Library had a film/fish reader and they were glad to show me how to use it and I did. There wasn't a lot to be surprised about, except for the lack of documentation of all the TDY's to other units in Vietnam. Heck, there wasn't even an order when I got "Infused" from one major unit to another. I did find that I was in battery A, 6th Bn, 84th Artillery , Service Battery and then C, 1-92nd as the FDO then XO.    I had trouble remembering that detail even if the war stories come back loud and clear.

For the most part, my OERs over the years said good things about me. I was amazed that one OER took a pot shot at me for getting out of the Military after Vietnam. All the time, one leader after another told me that the Military would not want me without a degree. They never offered to put me through college except for the GI Bill so what the hell did they expect?   I got my degree from KU and then joined the Guard full time. I don;t regret one day of it. Hell, I may not remember things from time to time but no regrets.

MUD

Jeff? hell no I am not Jeff. Oh, Deaf, well...

2012-01-23T10:13:00.000-05:00

It all started in Basic Training in 1966.   I loved the M-14, but it was one loud Mother. We would put cigarette butts in our ears when we shot because the Government didn't think ear plugs and an ear plug case was something they could afford to issue. I shot the M-14 all the way to expert and by Christmas of my first year in the Military, I felt like I had been listening to Hard Rock all my life. I wasn't deaf, but on the way.

The next step in the cycle was my times on the guns in OCS. Again, we had no Military issued hearing and those damn guns, even the smallest 105mm Howitzer would hurt your ears if you got caught unawares. For our Field Problem we spent four days with 155mm Howitzers and they were more than just loud. The concussion was hard on you.

I went to Vietnam and after the first week in the field, I was damn near deaf and both my ears had bled. When I tried to be an Aerial Observer for pay, they weren't sure I could hear well enough. I went back to the guns and lost a lot of what was left.

I went back in the National Guard after Active Duty and wouldn't you know it would be the Field Artillery. By then, the Government had figured out that a few ear plugs would be a lot better than a lot of deaf soldiers. I try to carry some all the time then and now. It is a little like a little too late for me. Those damned cows are not only out of the barn, but they are out eating the horses feed. (Mixed that metaphor big time)

When I got out of the Service, I went to the VA and had my hearing tested. The guy said by the time I reach middle age I would probably need something but I'm not sure of what he said. Because it was in the audiology lab, I assume he said hearing aids. Now, I am doing battle with the VA. Little did I assume it would be a paper war to even get a hearing test. The VA also said I should go over to the DAV and file for a disability. Let me share that with you.

I spent a few minutes visiting with a counselor and he started the paper work for their files. He indicated that if I hear a ringing in my ears (I Do) that was a 10% Disability and deafness was another 10%. If it was the money only that is about $250 a month. I explained to him that I wasn't out for more money and he kind of laughed. He said that it's a good thing, because I wouldn't get any money. The best I could hope for is to have the disability declared and some of the retirement income in a Tax free basis. Good enough for me. I am already on the Government dole and don't need more taxable income. In fact even a little bit in a non tax basis wouldn't be bad.

Oh well, I guess I'll just muddle along in life. Oh - Do you know how to tell an old Artilleryman?   Real Loud...

MUD

Great Weekend

2012-01-23T09:54:00.000-05:00

There is a table of paperwork sitting here in the room and I managed to enjoy basketball on Saturday and Football on Sunday. I think the Football games were a little better because I could take a nap and not feel like I missed much. Until Sunday, I had not seen a Baltimore Raven's game all year. Once San Francisco fell out of the picture, they lost me. An all East coast Super Bowl just doesn't float my boat. Other than the KU vs Texas game on Saturday, I didn't have much spirit invested in the games so I could also switch between History, the Military Channel and the games. Direct TV fooled around and I had to listen to the KU game. Most of the paperwork on my table can't be completed until I get the paperwork from the Oil Companies and the banks. I have organized what I have and am just waiting. Most of it isn't due to me until 30 January.

One thing that is clear is that I need to invest in a tractor for all the rock driveways. They are in horrible shape and I sure can't fix them with a shovel and a pickup. I also think that if my renters catch up on their back rent, I'll need to invest a few dollars or get beat at Tax time in 2013. I have also looked at a rental property but I didn't get a lot of good feelings from Barb. There is a duplex worth about $200,000 and I would like to buy it for about $150,000. It needs some maintenance but most other than the roof is just piddling stuff. I think it would make a nice investment to have a house in the Shawnee Heights district that would rent for between $750 and a $1,000 a month for each unit. I just try to let the units pay for themselves and they are long term investments.
The really stupid thing is that at least once each year, I think to myself that I sure would like to get out of the landlord business. The real problem is that so far it is the only thing that has paid off regularly ad most of my real gains have been due to my property investments.

I think starting the weekend out by seeing a movie was the way to start. I loved "Red Tails" and someone said that if I liked it I needed to see "War Horse".

Every once in a while i will be writing on my blog and the courser just disappears. It is somewhat frustrating in I make a lot of errors and have to guess when I am in a correction mode. Oh well, write if you get work...

MUD

Just You and Me!

2012-01-21T22:33:00.000-05:00

Somewhere in the middle of my tour in Vietnam, my unit moved by road from Dak To to Bahn me Touit. It took us most of two days to make the move and when the guns were all set up, some one decided that the gun trucks would be moved back to the base by the air field. It was about a 30 Kilometer move and the sun was well on its way to setting. Had there been a vote, I would have waited until the next morning but no one ever said the Military was a democracy. I was the third Lieutenant assigned to the battery and it was decided that I would remain in the rear and run the resupply point. I would have a couple of NCO's and about 8 soldiers.

On the move back to the rear area, I was in one of the trucks with Sergeant Terratola. He could tell that we were out in the middle of no where and our ass was hanging out. I didn't have a radio, or a map and no idea where the hell we were or where we were going. One of the guys from the big gun unit we were helping was in charge and we were just a row of ducks following momma home. It had been raining for several days and the trucks could not keep the wheels on the road. As we went down the road, we basically just drove from one ditch to the other and mostly in a forward manner. I hate to think what the road looked like the next after when 7 or 8 trucks drove down the ditches and tore the shit out of them.

About half way back, it really got dark and my senses were on full alert. About that time, Sergeant Terratola began to say, "Just You and me Lord, Just you and Me!" He pulled out his St Christopher medal and kissed it. He started to chant the Rosary sayings, "Hail Mary, mother of god, full of grace....." That's all a Baptist from Kansas can remember. That went on all the way back to the base and I understood. It wasn't the "Why Me lord" comment, it was just a way to communicate to the Lord that he was in charge and we were along for the ride.

In the end, we got back safely but I'm sure that most of us felt we were so lucky and a few prayers were said that night.

I remember that night and many more to come. After that, I feel like it would take a lot of crap to make me feel that way again.

MUD

Perception & Reality

2012-01-20T11:08:00.000-05:00

The reality of life is that my perception is my reality. What you think is what you think and I would hope that for the most part as you get older you feel more and more confident that your reality will do for now.   Because most people learn and grow in what they know, their perceptions change as they go through experiences and living. What I find frustrating is that so many people fail to realize that what they are thinking just might be right. Or wrong as the person may be..

I have a real problem dealing with people that think their way is the only way. It has been said that I don't suffer "Fools Gladly". By that, I think that people unable to discuss the facts and somewhat use the facts to shape new ideas are way too rigid. I don't think changing your core beliefs will happen but at least admitting there might be another way to do things is a good thing.

I am pretty sure that I don't care for most Opera. I love music and there are a few places where someone singing Italian very loud is OK, but so far I don't think I want to sit through hours and hours of it. I won't let that aversion stop me from listening to any music, just don't expect to find me in line buying tickets for Rigoletto.    My father loved the movies but he never met a musical he liked. (Well, there was one movie with Theresa Brewer in it that he wanted to see but I think it was because he really thought she was cute)

Speaking of movies, I am going to go see the new movie "Red Tails" today if at all possible. I did a lot of growing up without much experience around blacks. I loved the Military as one of the few places where doing your job was a hell of a lot more important than the color of your skin. I really want to see the success of a bunch of committed young men to do a job that was very important. Had those black Pilots not been there in those great P-51 Mustangs, the bomber crews would have continued to die in large numbers. I am confident that supporting the Bombers did support our efforts in the war and helped shape our victory.

An editorial cartoon in today's paper showed both the Republicans and the Democrats as drunks wanting to drive the car. It is unfortunate that people fail to see that both parties are running the Congress and most of the failures aren't the result of one party over the other. For every one reason to elect one type person over another, we can find an exception. People say that Newt is an insider and should not be President. There is a lot to be said about the ability of Lyndon Johnson to get things done. Mitt says we should elect a person who is not a Washington insider. Isn't that the weakness of Obama? If he could rally the parties and get things done we might not be in such trouble.   Unless, of course the President really doesn't add much to the real workings in Washington. Oh well, I will continue with my reality and you do the same.

MUD

Hawks Won!

2012-01-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

Unless you live in a cave, you probably know that Baylor Men and Women Basketball teams (Bo fum) were unbeaten until last night.   In a game right out of my fantasies, the Kansas Jay Hawks went to work in Allen Field House and schooled them in the manly art of round ball.   Baylor was ranked number three in the nation and KU was about 8th. Be interesting what happens this next Monday when the new rankings come out.

With that said, the weather here is well on its way to being January like in the Heartland. The temperature is about 25 with a 20-25 MPH northerly wind that makes it feel like zero. Should warm up to 40 by the weekend.You never know what the weather in Kansas is going to bring.

Last night, we had our son and his wife over for dinner. Dave's wife Barbara told a funny story. It seems that Barbara was telling one of he co-workers that she couldn't wait until she got home to eat one of Dave' s dinners The lady was aghast that Barbara didn't cook all the meals in her house. "What does he do when he wants a good home cooked dinner?" "We go over to his Dad's house" was Barb's reply.    Good stuff on the state of the world.

Better get running, got a hot date with the wife across town.

MUD

Monday Holiday

2012-01-16T11:36:00.000-05:00

One of the neatest thing about being retired is that unless you just are crazy to go to the bank, Monday Holidays mean very little. We do try not to shop on the weekend any more than necessary and we can slip that over to Monday or Tuesday if needed. It also gives the Barb's some bonding time. I'm not sure of the entire details of today but I think they are going to knit a dragon. OK, a dragon scarf to be more precise.

My son, of the Best Buy Geek Squad fame came over last night and I used his brain to figure out how to read my nieces Book for a Nook on my computer. He can't be bought, but feeding him does seem to make him glad to help. His mother also makes the Geek Squad cookies from time to time. I had done everything correctly but the book had some kind of electronic protection and I had to download the Barnes and Noble free software to get to the book. It is called "the F Word"   by Rebecca Demauro. It is the story of her life as she traveled through several stages of her life. It is a bargain at .99 cents. One stage in her life, is the murder of her daughter, Andi. It really ends fairly well with her moving to an entirely new place in her life and finding that she can't hate the murderer and grow as a person. For family members, there is detail that was a surprise to a lot of us.   I think there is enough hate in the rest of the family to make up for it. If Arkansas can't find an executioner, I'm pretty sure there is a long line of us that would do it for nothing. They don't call me Mean Uncle Denny for nothing. I loved her meeting with President Bush and the First Lady, Laura.

Tonight will be the first meeting this year of Baylor and KU.   It starts at 8:30 PM and I am pretty sure I will need a nap. I think this will be the first meeting of the two teams that will fight it down to the wire for the Conference Men's Basketball Championship. It will all depend on what team for KU shows up. If Robinson and Taylor both have a great night it will be a breeze but if either one falls down, it will not be the 8 point win that the papers predict for KU. It is nice to see entire team playing together and their win over Iowa State was a treat for me to watch.

Today I think I'll go over to the west side of town and get the oil changed in the Ford. Because of the road trips to Austin, she is a lot overdue. I checked the oil and it looked good level wise but needs to put some fresh oil in there. I don't agree that 3,000 miles is long enough if the car is on the road. I think 6,000 is just a little far. OH well.

Barb and I lost our I-Phone a couple of weeks back and we replaced it with a TracFone that is prepaid. I can't get used to the fact that it seems like it eats minutes. With the program I had, I never had a problem with talk minutes and only on our trip to Maine did I get close to using all the Web time I was allowed. Oh well, AT&T is really out of our life now. I think we got our first phone with them through Southwestern Bell in Wichita in 1969. Our long distance was through AT&T. I can imagine how much money we funneled to them over the years but sadly no more for them. Our local line and internet is through Cox Cable, our TV is Direcway and our cell is TracFone. No bundle for us.

For some reason, it is almost 60 this morning. I think there is a cold front due so the wind is from the south at 20 to 25 MPH. Should drop 20 degrees this afternoon and be down into the teems by late tonight. This time last year it was hovering around zero with 10 to 12 inches of snow. This is more like Texas weather.

Oh well, nothing gained by sitting here and writing on this machine. Books to read and places to go.   BYE!

MUD

Sports Saturday

2012-01-15T10:26:00.000-05:00

I got sucked into watching games on TV early yesterday and finished late. I loved to watch Lon Kruger's Oklahoma team demolish K-State. I think it is interesting that Steve Henson of K-State fame is Lon's assistant coach. I am pretty sure they both have (or had) their jerseys retired and hanging in the Field House in Manhattan.

I watched the Iowa State and KU game with a lot of interest. A lot of that game I held my breath watching Iowa State shoot treys from the outside like it was the only shot they could hit, and they for the first half, did. Barb and I have an old saying, "You can't win games on Treys alone." Somewhere in the middle of all that, you must play defense and shoot a two or three. In Bill Self's words, sometimes you win with both the good and bad Taylor on the floor. it was one of the best team efforts for Hawks this year.

Note to Bill Self and Danny Manning - Watch T-Rob's free throws. Early in the year, he made a deliberate move with his right hand to his left shoulder and he has stopped doing that and his free throw percentage has gone all to heck.

I thought the San Francisco win was a good game and fell asleep as Denver got their hats handed to them. The NE linemen spent more time in the Denver backfield than the Running backs.At least we won't hear the endless Teabo stories for a while. I try to be tolerant but even I was getting tired of all the hoop la.

In and amongst all the sports programs, I finished a book. Today is predicted to be in the 60's so I'm not going to spend hours and hours watching TV. Not sure of the details exactly but I do want to take my guns out and do some target shooting. I bought myself a laser sight for the 9mm and have at least 500 .22 rounds to plink with. Perhaps when the girls go shopping Dave will want to come over.

Oh well, no need to sit here all day and write this.

MUD

Dear Best Buy

2012-01-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

The other morning, MSN, my home page here on the Web said that Best Buy may be on the way out because of the perception of lousy customer service. I offer you this blog to encourage you to do better because: A. my son works in one of your stores and loves it and B. because I love the one stop nature of your business. I personally would hate it if every store became COSCO or Sam's Club. You know the place with slightly cheaper prices but absolutely no customer service. It is there on the shelf and take it or leave it.

Let me start by sharing with you that because of the free customer survey on MSN, you have the first leg up on fixing any problems the public may perceive. I can't tell you who first said that knowing what is wrong is the first step to fixing any problem, but it is a truism that everyone should use. Don't go out and spend thousands of dollars on finding out how to fix the problems, let me tell you a way I would fix it and give it a try. First of all, it comes with 40 years of experience behind it and second of all it is free. Got that? FREE.

When a person comes into Best Buy, your greeter at the door needs to say, "Welcome to Best Buy, is there anything I can help you with?" The first impression is the most important. If the customer has a question, have him send them to a person, by name in the department where the problem can be solved. For example "...Can I help you? " Customer - "Yes, I need to buy a computer" Have him tell the customer that "Dave over there in the computer section is our expert in that area and I am sure that he has the best information to solve your computer needs." Have him point out the computer section and if necessary have him announce over the intercom for Dave to be prepared to help a customer he is sending over to the computer department.

Every person in Best buy needs to understand they are the customer representative for Best Buy and no person enters their area without a greeting. I like "Welcome to best buy, how may I help you, or can I help you?" I would give every employee an id card that says "Welcome to best buy" and their first name.

Your managers need to understand that having your employees happy is the first step in making the customer happy. The old saw is if you don't know what's going on in your employees life, how can you know what makes them tick? A manager can't always fix all the problems, but they can often offer solutions that do work. How many people in your store are working the first shift and would love to work second shift so they can go to school? How many people are on second shift that would love to work first shift so they can spend more time with their family? Is part time employees the best answer? Ask them what they think.

The final part of the solution is to consider that not every solution works in every store. For one, the store in Topeka is staffed with some of the best people in the business. You hire some of the smartest people in the business, ask them to give you their ideas and then do something. Leaders are told in the Military to Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way.

I know my son greets every customer like they are a person and tries to fix their problems. If he is as effective with the other customers as he is with my electronics, I know they leave your store happy.   My wife takes treats to the Geek Squad all the time and we are well known in that store.

Most of all, I wish you the best of luck and hope that this next year the spirit of customer service visits your stores and brings you the sales you need to prosper and grow.

MUD
Col, (Ret) US Army

What Do You Want ?

2012-01-13T10:29:00.001-05:00

The first rule of life is that it is yours and what happens in it belongs to you first. Here are a few wishes I have for you:

Look at the things in your life and smile when you are blessed with happiness.
Get rest when you need it. There is no movie, computer game or book that should deprive you from sleep.
Eat sanely. Yes, I love steak but I know that I sometimes need to eat a salad and chicken.
Never, never stop learning things. Read, laugh and love to see the wonders of the world.
For me, writing like this helps me think about life and keeps me from taking it way to seriously.
A house is just a house, a car is just transportation, and things won't make you happy. On the other hand, people loving, laughing and talking works miracles for me. This Christmas we had more people over than ever and it was a wonderful time.
Don't expect every trip to be Disneyland. Sometimes it will rain and be cold. Bring a good book and kick back and enjoy.
The main rule in finance is that income must be greater than or equal to outgo! Other than a house, debt is not a way to anything good. Put your credit or debit card away for a month and spend cash. I'll bet you will not spend as much.
My final wish is that you will smile and make the bastards wonder what you have been up to.

The wife and I bought a TracFone pre-paid phone. It is an LG 500G and a simple little phone that doubles the number of minutes and length of time on the card you buy. My only problem is the instructions manual was way lacking and my fingers are way big. With my I-Phone, when I finished working on something I clicked the phone off. With the TracFone, it wants to go to sleep by its self not be turned off. Calls got to voice mail when it is turned off instead of ringing. The phone and the minutes was way cheaper for the first month than my old AT&T plan. I guess you get what you pay for.

MUD

Mobile Phones Part Two...

2012-01-12T11:31:00.000-05:00

Well friends, it appears that this old dog is either too old to learn new tricks or everything in this world is far too complicated. I bought a TracFone and it has way too many bells and whistles for this old dog. With my I Phone, when I wanted to end the session I was on, I would turn it off. That would save the battery and incoming calls would ring in unless I turned off the ringer. The TracFone just wants to go to sleep not be turned off. If you turn it off, incoming calls go to voice mail at a cost a a minute each time I retrieve them. Just let the damn thing go to sleep and everything is fine. Barb called TracFone's hot line and between the Indian English and an echo on the line we just could not figure out what the hell he was saying. You know, Jim from the call center.

We are having our first Arctic Blast today. Between the 25 MPH wind and the single digit temps, it is zero out there. They say it may clear and warm up some but I'll watch it from the inside just to make sure. At least I got out and got the paper and made sure the birds had seeds and water.

With the wind blowing so hard out there, I am amazed that the turkeys or the deer aren't down here below the house in the creek valley. There are enough birds here to tell me that Rabbit Run is a great place to sit out a cold blast. Guess I'll do just that.

MUD

Mobile Phones

2012-01-06T09:50:00.000-05:00

Way, I say Way back when, I was the on duty officer for the National Guard as the Emergency Preparedness officer, (Also known as the Military Support Officer) I carried an early mobile Phone. It was called "the Brick" because it looked like a brick in a bag with an antenna. It had a limited range and you had to be careful where you turned it on as each time you hit a new cell tower you got charged a roaming charge as well as a cost to use it. One day as I carried it into a store on my way home, a little boy said out loud" Look Mommy, that soldier is carrying a purse and it has a tail." That phone had a limited battery life and if it was left on all day out here as I worked on the fence, it would be dead by that evening. Needless to say it spent a lot of time on the charger.

That leads me to my first foray into the modern era of cell phones. I didn't wait to buy one that was already outdated, I jumped into the fray at near the top of the business. Two years ago I bought an I-Phone G3 and paid dearly for the phone and almost $100 a month for a few months. AT&T wanted to cut down the usage on their towers and offered a slightly lower data plan and it only cost me $70.00 for the last 18 months. All that ends today. I am going to call AT&T and cancel that plan this morning.

Why? Because no matter how durable the I-Phone and a rubber case is, it won't stand up to smushing by the standard automobile tire and being a cheapskate, I didn't insure it. I got two years of service out of it and now time to move on.

I am sure that somewhere out in the distance, the phones will get cheaper and I will move on down that road but in the meantime I think a smaller bill is in order. There is one with a 1,000 minutes and 40 texts and morre web searching time than I had for about $45 per month. We'll see what is in store for us when Barb and I got to Wally World in a while.

See Ya,

MUD

New Years Stuff

2011-12-31T11:32:00.001-05:00

Someone posted 30 things they said we should not do to ourselves for New years. I think that's way too many things. Here is my list of what to do:

You are your own source of happiness. If you aren't happy, get up off your butt and do something. No, posting your "wahhhh" on Facebook ain't it.
What ever your job is, do your best. It isn't hard to compete for promotion with a bunch of people that spend half their time on line and the other half finding excuses for not getting things done. Build a schedule and follow it. Have things done when you say you will have it done. Working late now and then is good practice.
Keep your education going. Read a book, journals or just talk to people in the field that you are interested in. No, not BS, but aske them what works for them and then listen.
Write down on your hand that income must be equal to or greater than outgo. Get a second job or stop spending if you find month left at the end of your money.
Brush, floss and see your dentist at least once a year. Twice ain't bad. Do an annual physical "annually" DUH!
If you are an introvert, find some alone time. If you are an extrovert, get out and meet people.
Stop spending your time reading 30 things not to do and do the right things first and in the oprder of how important ther are to you. If in doubt, make a list and start putting it in order.

MUD

WEB Griffin

2011-12-28T09:58:00.000-05:00

Instead of waiting for the book to get to the library, I bought a copy of his latest book. It is co-written with William E. Butterworth IV. Yes, if you are familiar with his books the WEB in the author's name is William E. Butterworth and I'm not sure if he is Junior, the II or the III. I find that the books that are written with his son just seem to lack the character development from his earlier books. The theme is familiar in a lot of works, he writes from the point of view of a rich smart and talented hero and in most cases while he may lose a battle now and then, in the long haul wins the wars. I don't know why I love pure fantasy but I do. Did I mention that he also gets the girl? A Lot!

The really good news is that WEB Griffin gets done is his works about 250 pages less than Clancy. I can read his books in a couple of days where Clancy can spin a tale on for lots more pages and it takes all week for me to finish. Both writers have characters that move on through the books and are fairly easy to follow. I happen to have most of the Griffin books and not so many Clancy books.

I see our friends from Morocco are in Spain again for Christmas. I think it would be fun to meet them there and see Spain from the eyes of the girls. I'm pretty sure that Gerald is filling up on the ham he doesn't get in Morocco. I would love to eat a sea food paella the way I see them made on the cooking shows. (Just so you know, I really struggled with the spell checker to spell paella. I had to go out to the web and look up Spanish cooking to find out how to get even close to the right way to spell it) I always loved my mother's answer to the age old question "What is this?" She would tell us, "I cooked it, I don't have to name it!"

My niece Jennifer wrote that she was on a plane sitting beside Danny Manning and an NBA Referee. She said she loved to listen to them talk Basketball. Who wouldn't? I am sure that most of the members of our family would have paid to listen to that discussion. I don't know what KU is paying Danny Manning to be an assistant coach but it can't be enough. His work with the Morris Twins was remarkable. They were just a couple of tall guys as freshmen and they were men amongst men by their Junior year.

Speaking of Basketball, I watched the Miami Heat play the Boston Celtics and Mario Chalmers played until he made four mistakes in a row. They pulled him and put in a guard that just took over and hit key baskets when they were needed. Super Mario needs to watch his back and get better fast or he will be setting on the bench for the rest of his season.

OH Well, better run. Read that my Barber is down to his last week cutting hair. He is going to retire at the end of the year and man will I miss him.

MUD

Christmas Past

2011-12-26T10:14:00.000-05:00

This morning I woke up with the house quiet after a full day of people, fun and gifts. It did seem that everyone got what they wanted for Christmas and other than burning the garlic mashed potatoes, the meal went off as planned. I swear I am going to get some serving dishes for the next big meal. I guess I forgot how quickly the taters, or spuds burn when you add a few touches. Oh well.

The first Christmas memory I have is going outside on Christmas eve and wondering how Santa could deliver packages without snow. More years than not, we didn't have snow in Wichita until after Christmas. I can remember pestering Mom and Dad a lot and they would often let us open one package on Christmas eve. The next morning it chaos as we opened the rest of the packages and the rest of the day would be spent playing with the new gifts and friends. There was almost always a big dinner wherever we were and everyone would take an afternoon nap.

Christmas 1968 was spent in Vietnam and we sat up and played cards in case the Vietnamese failed to honor the cease fire. My sister sent me a quart of scotch in a flask that has a cleaning product label on it. I filled a canteen with scotch and water and drank it sitting there playing Rook. By Christmas., I had been on R&R to meet Barb and soon was to go meet her again in Hawaii. I had about three months left on my tour and the thing i wanted for Christmas was me out of Vietnam and home.

Thanksgiving was spent out in the Il Drang valley north west of Pleiku on and operation that was to last about three days. It really lasted about three weeks and I managed to get scheduled for an in country leave because of it. After New years eve, I went to the R&R Center and asked how I could change the in country R&R to a visit to Hawaii. The clerk at the desk said all I needed was a slight change on the orders. He offered a typewriter and some white out and the use of a copy machine. I didn't think about having a telegram delivered to Barb in San Diego. I didn't have a phone so all I could do was sent a telegram to have her meet me.

Some of the most memorable gifts I got for Christmas over the years was my first BB Gun, a new race bike and approval to bring home Rex my companion for many years. Rex lasted the longest. He was a Manchester Terrier and his brindle color didn't make him much to look at. He did have the heart of a lion and a brain the size of a peanut. He thought he was a big as any dog and he got chewed up many times because of it. I'm sure that the vet loved that we supported him as much as we did. He loved me and I loved him.

Most of all, Christmas has always meant spending time with family/ I'm pretty sure that one reason we have a big old living room and dinning room is to display the biggest tree we can find and to host as many of the family as can come over. 10 of us opening presents filled the living room with excitement and wrapping paper. It looked like the group got what they wanted and lots of KU gear showed up. I think there were a couple of the KU vs K-State tickets also were shared. I think we will spend New year's Eve at a game and then the 4th of January, Dave and I will take Kyler and Austen to the big game. I watched K-State play in the Hawaii Classic last night and they are pretty good. It will be a good game no matter what.

OH well, Have a Nappy new hear or Happy New Year out there.

MUD

Don't Start a Clancy Book right now

2011-12-23T08:58:00.000-05:00

A few days back, Barb picked up a book for me at the library. It is the new Tom Clancy book, "LOCKED ON" I really want to finish the book, but it seems that every time I sit down to read, something needs done or I fall asleep. I guess I need to flash to the end and be satisfied if the good guys win and the bad guys loose.

Yesterday, the KU Men's Basketball team played a USC team that stunk up the joint. in 20 minutes of basketball they scored 13 points. They tried to speed up the game and threw the ball away 12 times. Thankfully KU wasn't having their best game either or it would have been a run a way. As it was, the Hawks got it together in the second half and made a game out of it. The Big 12 (minus a couple) might get a new champ this year. I am sure that Baylor, K-State and Missouri would love that. Especially Missouri would love to hang a banner their last year in the Big 12 (-). Oh well, it is only a game and there is always a next year.

Last night we invited Mel's mom and her nephew over for pizza. We had a ball. Zander is such a fun little guy with a whole heart full of fun. I would love to keep him here just to make us smile. Barb bought him a little Tonka truck that flips and spins and it was so great to see him smile and laugh. When the battery ran down, Zander got to get out a toy box full of Lego's and Transformers. Not a dull moment here.

I had been having problems with the lights on the Crown Vic and a dealership told me that it was probably a $500.00 module in the system. Thank god it was a $80 dollar switch. I bought a repair manual and found out that all I needed to do was pry the face plate out of the dash and the switch came with it. About 3 minutes to plug in the wires and it was all good. Now I will keep an eye on it to make sure it stays fixed. I hadn't driven it much at night and it was a surprise when it quit.

Oh well, I hope you all have a great Christmas and a happy new year.

MUD

Life

2011-12-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

If I had to die tomorrow, I'd try to duplicate this Saturday today. Our family gathering was so much fun for me that I'd take it anytime. We did miss my mother's being there but the rest of us had a ball. I have to think that there was a lot more planning and doing by Barb than I was aware of. All through the White Elephant Gift exchange Barbara was directing people to not take this one package and I really didn't know why until it was Jenn's turn. She made sure that Jenn got our package and then I remembered why. Jenn is a brand new Captain in the Kansas City Fire Department and the T-Shirt inside the package said "Call Me Captain". Between Barb and Jenn, they were pushing this cheesecake hard to everyone. I found out why when the winner of the best food item at our dinner was Amanda, the cheese cake maker. Along with our traveling trophy, Barb gave her four tickets to see KU play in the Sprint Center tonight. I'm sure she will have no trouble finding three more people to with her.

As soon as I get my act together this morning, i am going to drive south at least as far south as OK City. I am going to pick up our 'Nother daughter Mel and bring her home Wednesday. We will be blessed with a two week long visit and the holiday will ring with laughter.

We found out that our Nephew, Bob, will be the father of a baby girl in February. We all were surprised at the news and hope they will be as proud parents as we will be proud relatives. Bob's sister said she had lunch with Bob's wife last month and Julia had worn her coat during the meal. She didn't even notice. For some reason little children just mean Christmas to me. I think it is the wonderment they display every day is what I love about Christmas.

On Sunday morning, my brother, his daughter Becky, her friend Bill and Back's daughter Kristin and I went to visit Mom's grave here in Topeka. Beck had put together the funeral for Mom in Tulsa, but none of them had been to see the grave here in Topeka. It was a beautiful morning and everything looked great. Mom and dad are buried in a double stack vault and Mom got the top bunk.

Oh well, better get going and get my show on the road.

MUD

Peace in Iraq?

2011-12-14T12:45:00.000-05:00

About 9 years ago, I asked the question? "What will peace look like in Iraq if it takes a strong man like Saddam to maintain peace?" I wondered if this was another attempt to bring about peace through war. As for Afghanistan, they have had so many wars fought there that they must think that war is the normal state of things. There is a list of places that we have been unable to bring peace but we have been able to bring war.

For all those young men and women that have served, I echo the POTUS remark, "Welcome Home"

MUD

Acumulatin' Crap

2011-12-14T10:59:00.000-05:00

As I look around my computer station, I can see that I have been way too busy accumulating the baggage of life. My dad always said that he wanted to build a house with no flat surfaces to pile anything. He also wanted it to be made with a ceramic tile surface and have a fire hose and a drain in every room. Kind of like the cages in the zoo. Everything slopes towards the drain and you can sweep it clean with a fire hose. he had a vivid mind but no follow through. I remember the time he disassembled an organ in the back room and there were pieces on the floor for at least a year.

The weatherman said this is going to be a really unusual day here in the Heartland. It will be cloudy, rainy . breezy and the temperatures is to get into the low 60's. We can always use the rain but 60 in December? The birds haven't slowed down their eating at the feed station one bit. In fact, one of the woodpeckers completely pecked apart one of the suet blocks and the ground feeders haven't cleaned up the mess - yet. Somewhere there is a woodpecker pecking at the house again. His thumping on the siding really doesn't bother me too bad. If you build a house in the woods, you have to expect critters to think it belongs to them.

I think I have mentioned that I have to establish a defense in depth against the mice every fall. There is a mouse trap with a big paddle lever that I have found works about as good as anything. Seems like the mice kind of lean on the wall when they move about in the dark. I put the traps along the wall and I have knocked off the population at least one a day for a couple of weeks now. It doesn't seem to matter if I smear the lever with peanut butter or not. Now if I could just find a trap that works on the squirrels as well. I just heard the pitter patter of a good squirrel chase going on up on the deck and then a thud. One of them jumped off the deck and fell about 12 feet to the ground. He didn't stick around to nurse his wounds so he must be somewhat OK.

Barb just appeared from the bed room and I said good morning. I should say I croaked "good morning" as it seems I have little voice today. When there is no one to talk to, you don't realize your voice is gone. Inside my mind I sound the same, in reality it is the problem. Oh well. Barb wouldn't take orders to day anyway.

MUD

'Nother Rainy Day in Kansas

2011-12-13T10:05:00.000-05:00

The real cold air just went north of us again and we are just getting rain today. It is damp, cloudy and breezy so not a great day to be outside. Knowing that any thing we have to do outside will be in the car, takes the edge off and won't deter us from dashing out to do what preChristmas business Barb needs done.

Have I mentioned that I am a sports fan? Not as much as my dad was, but I love to watch college basketball and thrill when games are close and teams put out their best to win. I hate to see teams breakdown into a fistfight near the end and never feel bad when a team does its best and loses. I wonder how much press Denver would be getting if they were as close to losing as they have been winning. Tim Tebow can give all the credit to the Lord as he wants, it is his defensive line that is keeping him alive on the field.

It is pretty clear to me why the KC Football owners canned the coach. That is a team filled with great players that completely broke down in the second half and the game turned ugly. The coach was clearly not in charge and the Offensive Coach had no game plan that his team could even understand let alone execute. To me, it is pretty simple - Make a simple plan and execute it as well as you can. The poorest plan well executed is better than a complicated plan not executed. Find their weakness and attack there. Establish a running game early and work towards passes. I loved it when Refrigerator Perry was handed the ball and told to run into the end zone. KC was at its best when Christian Okoyee would be given the ball and run as far as he could. Generally it was with three or four players hanging on for dear life.

Every year in December, USAA sends us a check for a part of not having any accidents in the year. Then, in the mail the next day is a bill for our yearly insurance. Seems like they should just cross level the two and cut the postage. The good news is that the check goes in the pocket for Christmas, the bad news is we still have to write them a check.    The really bad news is that our Taxes are due this week, again the good news is we have the money to pay them.

I guess that life is like that for a lot of people. The good news for us is that when we go out we generally have enough money to pay cash for everything. I saw a guy buy a bottle of water at the last KU game and he had to use his debit card. Yes, it was $4.00 but if I didn't have $4.00 I sure as hell would go by the ATM. Oh well...

Catch you on the flip flop. Going to Austin TX next week to bring our 'nother daughter to Kansas. She has surgery on her foot and can't drive and I have nothing better to do. The really great news is that I will get Barbara to go with me on the return trip and we'll get to spend some time in Southern Texas staying warm and taking pictures.

MUD

Duality of Life

2011-12-12T10:25:00.000-05:00

Every once in a while I will feel bored and just feel the need to get out and do something. I think back and remember that when I was working, I could hardly wait for the time I "Had to do nothing." When we were young, we lacked money to do all the things we wanted to do, and now we lack the energy to do all the things we need to do. We had to travel in our car because we could not afford to fly when we were young and now we hate the hassle of airports and crowded airplanes. Yep, you guessed it, the pre Christmas season is upon me. I could hardly wait for it to arrive as a kid and now it is, "Christmas again?"

The good news is that I can read a book for now and when it is time to get out and "Blow the Stink Off" I know that Barb had a package or two that needs to go to the post office.

Oh well, Oh Well, My Lottery Tickets didn't win. I am some poor sucker without a grin. (Sing that to the tune of Noel) Power Ball, scratch offs, Magic Millionaire and more, all cry out for my money at the store. I'll stand in line and cry for more. Oh well, Oh well, Life's a ball, we can't all win or deck the hall. etc...

MUD

Advice for Politicians

2011-12-11T12:05:00.000-05:00

The problem most people running for office have is they try to say too much about too much. For Example:

Mr. candidate how do you feel about Roe Vs Wade? "Let me say that as a person, I think Abortion is not the way I want Birth Control done. Given my free will, I would not insert the Federal Government into the decision between a woman and her Doctor. As a candidate for (insert the proper Office here) I will completely support the laws of the United States where Roe Vs Wade is the current Law of the Land."
What do you think about President Obama's Appointments to the US Supreme Court? "I will appoint people that will clearly look at the law and vote the way they interpret the Law. I will pick the smartest person I can find to that position. President Obama selected his candidates for the office like every President before him has. His selections should have been no surprise to anyone who was paying attention."
Here is one that I no longer have to answer. This is what I said years ago. What do you think about Gays in the Military? "I personally have served with a gay in the Military. He was one of the most hard working soldiers I knew. He was discharged from the Army and did not go to Vietnam with the rest of my unit. Most of the young soldiers today went to school and worked with gays and I feel confident that they are a lot more understanding than my generation was. With that said, the decision about gays in the Military is made at levels much higher than mine and I will continue to obey the orders of those appointed over me."

The point here is to make sure that candidates know that they need to have an opinion about something or go back to their commercial. making stuff up is what gets Rick Perry in trouble. Newt has a lot of experience in Washington and can come up with the slick answers for a lot of things. The problem is he clearly would take money from Freddie Mac and Fannie May and then feel like he can bad mouth their activities. I don't trust him to make the kind of decisions I want the President to make.

If asked to describe myself, my advertisement would go something like this - "I am a citizen of the finest Country in the World. I was born in the Heartland of Kansas and given the opportunity to attend some of the finest schools. My parents were children of the Depression and instilled in their children that an education, hard work, and positive attitude will take you as far as you can go. There have been times that I did some stupid things with what I was given but I worked hard to make my career in the Military the best I could. The end result is standing before you today. I believe that your family is the best gift you can ever be given and have tried to be there for my wife and son. No one can ever believe in the same things as everyone else does. What I hope to do is to serve in the office of (_______) and to do the best I can do.
I think I have clearly demonstrated the art of leadership in my life and I will appoint the best people I can find for any position I can. I will listen to the advice of others and do my best to find a consensus of those around me. In the bottom line, I will do my best and be accountable for the results."

Sounds way too easy but that's the way I would roll that ball.

MUD

What'ch Mean?

2011-12-10T11:12:00.000-05:00

I am tired of all the politically correct pussyfooting going on! As we get into the Presidential Election Season, there is more obfuscation going on than I could imagine possible. How can we say it? The Congress of the United States has an approval rating of less than 10% and the president is just above 43%. Perhaps we should pull an Italy and run them all out of town. Lets declare it "Circus Over" and bring in a whole new bunch of clowns.

The paper said this morning that the Department of defense got less than a 1% increase in their budget this year. (Excluding War Spending) I wonder how you can separate out "War Spending" as a line item in that bloated budget. If an air crew flies into Afghanistan, how much of the fuel, pay and cost of maintenance can you deduct? Seems like an accounting nightmare to me. If the Hospitals in Germany are taking of wounded soldiers, how much of that cost can be written off to War?

I listened to criticism of Ron Paul the other day and kind of wish more people were aware of what he said. He said that after 9/11 the Administration beat the drums of War and used that as an excuse to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. He said that the current Administration is beating the drums over Iran and we will soon be in a War with them.   Am I the only person that has watched what our country has been doing for the last half of a Century?    Any time an administration has been in trouble, they have used some Military Mission to try to bring us together so we don't pay real attention to the problems here at home.

I am convinced that many of you are just so tired of the rhetoric that you don't pay attention as much anymore. A lot of the inconsistency in my blog may be the result of that same affliction.

To me, the President listed the symptoms in his speech in Osawatomie. We have way too many people out of work and our money isn't worth much on the global market. What he didn't say was the reason why we are where we are. Our Congress played with the rules form one administration to another and we either over regulated of ignored the problems depending on who was in Charge. The democrats try to overdo and bring the lower class into the middle class and the republicans seem to be on a track to lower the middle class to a level where the poor are now the middle class.

I read an article that said the High Speed train was no longer on the table. Did you see where the train was going to run? From LA to Las Vegas. Now if that isn't just a sad event, I don't know what is. The people of LA have been saved from rushing to Vegas and spending their hard earned money gambling. The mecca for greed and gambling is just going to have to fend for its self. The last time I was in Vegas, the place was packed with people trying to give their money away. We all know that the casinos are built with money the winners took home. I wonder if they could pay their bills if they turned off the lights on Tuesday and Wednesday. You know, shut the place down a couple of days a week and save.

Oh well, I guess I buy Lottery Tickets for the same reason. Does that make me a part of the problem of just another solution not working on the answers?

MUD

Friday?

2011-12-09T10:11:00.000-05:00

We missed the snow by a couple of hundred miles to the north and I for one am not one bit disappointed. As a matter of fact, a small snow squall also went south of us earlier and it didn't make me mad either. We had a nice rain a week or so back and that's good enough for me.

The Jay Hawks hired a new football coach and by his record appears to be a ping pong ball kind of guy that has bounced all over the place. He seems to have a good record one year and then a crappy one the next. His Notre Dame team lost to one of the Academy teams for the first time in 40 some years and then went to a bowl the next. (or last, I forget) Oh well, on with the basketball season and Ohio State on Saturday.

Yesterday, I baked some chicken breasts and was all set for some great chicken and noodles for supper. It was filling but not as good as I expected. Either I am losing my touch as a cook or my taste as a consumer of good food. For the sauce I took some of the garlic butter drippings from the pan and made a gravy. It tasted great when I made it but lost something on the noodles. Oh well, I didn't go away hungry or mad. I also didn't win the lottery this week but I did remember to get the trash cans out yesterday.

What's it like for you when you get in a rut? I'm sure the rut I'm in is of my own making and a lot of people would love to be in such a good place. It just seems to be kind of blah right now and I need to find my muse to do better. At least I am not overcome with sadness or anything like that. Yesterday's Facebook was just covered with people overcome with sadness. Not sure why, it just was.

The race for the GOP nominee for POTUS has heated up to a walk (as opposed to a race) between Mitt and Newt. Do you suppose these guys have decided to throw the election because they fear worse things for the economy? At least the President showed "Hopey" Change in Osawatomie last week. Or at least his speech writers did. Near as I could tell the teleprompter worked and he managed to stay on message. I guess when only a small percentage of people really care to get out and vote, he is as good as we can expect. At least we are not being forced to listen to an ultra conservative's message this year.

Oh well, enough of this, moving on even if it is not smartly.

MUD

Sunny and Cold

2011-12-08T10:34:00.000-05:00

Yesterday it got almost nice outside and today it is going to snow. Not that it makes a lot of difference to us, but the weatherman says get ready for a small accumulation of the white stuff.

I think it is interesting that the newspaper is talking about the potential hire for a new KU football coach like it has never happened before. The choices are: A guy brand new to college coaching, a failed coach like the one we just lost, A coach that was fired for some wrongdoing, or some one that will want more millions of dollars that anyone should pay. Duh, it ain't rocket science, it is the act of hiring a football coach. There are a bunch of us that were happy with Turner Gill and i for one want him to come back and earn the rest of his 7 million we are going to pay him. If Nebraska has been happy with never winning a NCAA Tournament game, we should be happy to have Turner Gill only win two football games this year.

Speaking of coaches, how long will KU have Danny Manning to hold dear in Kansas. There was some talk that Danny was staying in Lawrence until his daughter graduated from High School last year. I know that he is a great Big Man coach and has to be worth a recruit or two for the team. Oh well, we will keep him as long as he will stay. I noticed that the Topeka and KU player, Mark Turgeon is coaching at Oklahoma. If Bill Self were to leave, I would hope that Mark will be in the hunt for a new coach. He is a fine young man and we love him as a person and coach.

Barb is upstairs watching Martha this morning. For some reason they are making sausage. Barb doesn't eat the stuff and sure as heck wouldn't make it. Oh well, I buy Lottery Tickets and probably won't win so I guess we are even.

MUD

'Nother Daughter

2011-12-07T11:28:00.000-05:00

I am sure that you have read from time to time that our son, David, married a Barbara and she too became Barbara Petty. She became Barbara Jr when Barbara Sr signed us up for a "Walk Across Kansas." She is in fact our Daughter by 'nother mother.   Her best friend is Mel who lives in Austin, TX. She has become our 'Nother Daughter. Mel was going to run in a marathon and her Achilles Tendon popped. She is undergoing surgery this Friday and in about 10 days after that I'm going to drive down and pick her up. Her family and friends are here in Topeka and the thought of having our 'nother Daughter spending the holidays alone just didn't set right with us.

I am looking forward to a short road trip to bring her up and then a slightly longer trip to take her home. I am sure that the promise of a few days in a warmer place in January will coax Barbara to come with me. I wouldn't mind a side trip San Antonio one bit. There is a La Quinta Inn right near the Mercado and that is a fun place to visit. They have duplicated the shops you would see in most towns just south of the border. The food there is the best. This trip I'm going to try the El Carbon restaurant and try some goat. I have not done that in the past but I'm is a much more adventurous place now. There is also the promise of good places for "Have Camera Will Travel" to go.

I listened to the President's speech from Osawatomie, KS yesterday. It was clear from the start that he has a clear understanding of the problem. I think it is the solution that eludes him. he talked about the problem of large student loan debts and then said that more of the young need to get a College Education. Duh! we all know that the unemployment rate for college Graduates is half of the non graduates. It should be obvious that their pay should be at least twice as much as the non high school graduates. Hos do you pay back a loan of $60-$100,000 making twice the minimum wage?    There was one glaring error to me. He said that under Bill Clinton the deficit was zero. No, under Clinton, the National debt did not increase as the budget was balanced and the projections and income were equal. Not one penny of the Debt was paid. If we spent everything we made and didn't pay our debts off, we would be in Bankruptcy and that's exactly where we are.

Dave Ramsey says that the first step to fixing what's broke is to specify a budget. So far the Congress has not been able to pass one they could live with. I think there needs to be a sunset law that states, "Any Congress that doesn't pass a Budget is recalled and a new one elected."   I am pretty sure that a couple of iterations of that step and Congress would get the message. The next step would be that, Any Congress that spend more than the income without a special vote of the people would be recalled. The final step would involve some reduction of the National debt with a provision that gives the equation about spending being less than income.

Oh well, life here at Rabbit Run is fun. Got to go to Lawrence and watch the Hawks play a good Long Beach State team. I was wondering if the referees would escape Lawrence there for a while. One of the players from LBS hit our center in the nose and as he fell, they called a foul on him for the guy he fell on. The referees called the game pretty close for a while after that and the fans were shouting Bull Shit quite a bit.

Have a great day out there.

MUD

Good Old days

2011-12-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

Today as i was shifting boxes around to put the old decorations back out of the way, I found a Boy's Life Magazine that was David's. It reminded me that I would win a bet about once a month back in the 60's that my cousin was in Boy's life. My uncle advertised his unicycles in there and it was a hoot.

As advertised in the Boy's Life Mag in the 60's.

The boy riding on the unicycle is my cousin Jim Petty.

MUD

Listen Up!

2011-12-04T11:39:00.000-05:00

OK! all you turkey's, all of you that read my latest blog and believe that just because I had a good idea men don't want a great Christmas present:

Here is what I wanted for Christmas.

Dave gave me one of these about a year ago and I used it all the time. It is a lock back knife with a box cutter on one end and a knife blade on the other. It was the handiest tool in my kit. I lost it and hunted several places to find one. Finally I gave up and asked Dave where he bought his -O' Reilly Automotive was the answer. It was in the tool section and about $20.00. A bargain at twice the price. I now have one so Barb, never mind.

MUD

Blinding Flash of the Obvious (BFO)

2011-12-04T10:55:00.000-05:00

Is it time for us to refocus Christmas a different direction?   I am willing to bet that there are all kinds of people that are going to purchase things that are unnecessary and a lot of things that are unneeded. If you are a christian, the holiday should be on a refocus of your faith. For those that don't swing that way, it is time to refocus on family and friends.

The first reason I say this, is that we have so over commercialized the holiday to the point that we are almost made to spend money that we all should be saving. I loved my mother's motto. For years she would say ,"If I can't eat it or wear it, I don't need it!" If you had been there to clean out her house the last time she moved, you would have understood. I hate to think what it would be like if I were gone today. I'm sure there is at least a trash truck of junk here we don't need.

I think that our last trip out west was one of the most memorable because of family. We just visited most of the time but the last two nights were the icing on the cake. getting together in Twin Falls with Jerry's family and of course Mom and dad, was so great. We got to see Jaden and Tracy the day before and Greg and family that day. During the trip I got to visit with Kenny and Grissy and the last night we were in Boise we got all his kids together for a giant Pizza party. Right as the party was ending, Ken called and I passed my cell phone to his kids and they all got to visit with him. To see the smiles there was so great.

To me, our Petty Party on the 17th will be the event of the year. It has been a dang good year and I hope my smile is out there for everyone to see.

MUD

Tree is Up

2011-12-02T11:42:00.000-05:00

MUD and Brother Rick

Must be a sign of my age when I have to ask our son to come over to help put up a tree. Yes, it was a 10-12 footer but dang, I could muscle one of those up by myself in the past. It doesn't help that for some reason I am kind of dizzy this week. I am pretty sure that it is an inner ear thing because my allergies are all up in arms. I went into the kitchen this morning and saw the light over the stove was not working and when I leaned back and reached up the world tried to spin in the opposite direction. The good news is that I was leaning on the island and that saved me from a trip to the floor. (and perhaps a trip to the Hospital)

It was a family tradition that when my parents were alive, the Petty kids would try to get together the weekend prior to Christmas. That would allow those that needed to go to in-laws houses to be free for Christmas. This is one tradition that I hope we can keep now that Mom is gone. It is an open invitation to all the grand kids and many try to get here. The family saying my Mom used, "If you can't come, we'll miss you."

Mom and Mel at Mel's Wedding

Our Christmas tradition is to have everyone bring a soup, salad or pies. We will eat and then have a White Elephant gift exchange. That is one of the funniest things to do. I think this year I will pass out playing cards and we will then get to pick in random order. If you see something opened up earlier, you can take that gift and let them re choose a gift. The last person has their pick of the entire lot. One of the funniest was a bottle of wine that was chosen by the teen age Craig boys and taken away by several others. I guess the "Titty" cup has been removed from the annual festivities. I think a can of spaghetti-O's disguised as fish assholes may re-appear but who knows.

I think Barb Jr will bring her nephews over this weekend some time to help decorate the tree. Da Barb's have selected a color theme for Christmas. It would not surprise me that somehow the Jay hawk colors will wind their way into the mix. There are some tickets for a late December game that may work their way into the gift pile. For the first time in a long time, I got a message from KU Athletics that there are individual game tickets still available. The even have a few of the KU vs K-State game. We have promised those to Barb's nephews even though it is a school night.

Better run, I hear steps up stairs and that means that Barbara is up there and thinking of things to do.

MUD

December is near

2011-11-30T10:50:00.000-05:00

I watched the weatherman last night and he said that winter weather is on its way for the Heartland. It will be 50 and windy today, which is always a sign that a front is headed our way. He even mentioned that 4 letter word (Snow) for this weekend. Dang, I hate it when that happens. The good news is that it probably will not last long. The ground is getting colder because of the below freezing at nights now so it won't melt as fast as it hits the ground.

With 50 degrees outside today, I'll finally go out and pick up all the hoses. I think I'll put them in my utility trailer this year and see if that works out. Last year I put them in the garage in the attic and it was a major pain to get them down. Oh well, when I get that done there will be leaves to rake and final trimming on the grass around the place. Gotta make it all look nice.

I replaced a front tire on the truck about a month ago and I noticed that just today it is almost flat. The good news is that I have a compressor and can air it up here at home. Barb mentioned that she thought her tires felt mushy also. I guess that a little maintenance on the cars won't hurt either. I am pretty sure the antifreeze in the Ford and the Truck is way good enough but as much water as we added to the Buick better check it.

I used the last of the garlic smashed potatoes in my potato pancakes this morning. I generally cook a few strips of bacon and then cook the pancakes in bacon grease. Yep, I know it is bad for my heart but a lot of people think I'm a heartless SOB so I'll play it loose until I clutch my right arm and/or die.

I Got my son Dave to pick up a solid state hard drive for my computer. When he opened up the case to install it, he found that there was a second bay and he didn't have to remove the old hard drive. With the magic of software, he had the new one clone the old one and I am back in business twice as fast. My next test is to see how long my battery life is with the new set up. I have moved all my old pictures to my external drive and all the new one's will go on the old drive for a while. Some time next year I'll start moving 2011 pictures over to the external drive as back up.

Better get moving, I hear dishes being rattled upstairs as barb cleans up my mess in the kitchen. Wouldn't want her to think I am not gainfully occupied. She is real good at finding things for me to do when she thinks I'm not pulling my considerable weight.

MUD

Starting the Day

2011-11-29T10:12:00.001-05:00

I don't know what you do to start your day, but I can pretty much tell you what I expect each day to start like. There is the mandatory trip to the bathroom and then a trip out to get the paper. This trip is either preceded by or followed by a trip to the coffee pot. I read the paper from the front page to the back with the funny papers near the last thing I read. Breakfast is a cup of coffee and whatever. If I was in a restaurant, it would be two eggs over medium, hash browns, ham and toast. Juice is optional. Pretty darned simple and I know it is a rut but it is like my shoes, I love comfortable.

When I worked, the dress code was a mandatory uniform. Green, green, optional sweater and black shoes. Pretty simple and yet a lot like every day for most of 25 years. I showed up and tried to make each day count for something. The real break over for me was when I found that what my subordinates did was more important than what I did. It is easy to spend time tied to the desk but I found that getting up off my duff and visiting at least one person during each break period was needed. Kind of like getting a kiss from your mother. You may not know why you need it, but I liked it.

My life was like the same as much as I could make it for a lot of years. My wife, Barbara, helped me set the path to achieve our common goals and provided a lot of entertainment along the way. It was pretty clear that where we are is a direct result of her hard work and encouragement. If I for some stupid reason ever find fault for the daily life, all I need to do is remember that I worked darned hard to get here so I should just sit back and enjoy.

The other day, I commented to Barb that I was a little bored and I loved the feeling of being in my own home and bored. After our busy travel schedule this fall it is nice to be home and bored.

MUD

Negativity in the Holiday Season

2011-11-27T10:59:00.000-05:00

It doesn't make me happy when the news of the day makes me mad. I supported Senator Brownback for Governor and he has turned into my worst nightmare since he was elected. I think Governments need to have goals for schools, but not mandates. It may be only anecdotal that the best students are good in art and music but I haven't found anyone that says that no music or art will bring up the poorest students. No child left behind is a great goal and we should try to fund it but not punish the students that can't get there for whatever reason.

This past week a student that was on a field trip to Topeka "Tweeted" that she didn't like Governor Brownback and what he stood for. One of Brownback staffers intercepted the tweet and they demanded an apology from the student. Somewhere there is a village without their idiot. The founders of our country made sure that we had free speech so we could have an honest exchange about our leaders. This type of discussion might lead to a new Governor next time, but unlike many other countries it won't lead to the overthrow of the government because the people can't be heard. I don't like the ACLU for the most part, but I will send them money if the student gets suspended or damaged in any way by the school system. We send our students to school so they can develop many diverse opinions and speak the clearly.

As I have said many times, I hate Fred Phelps and his Westborough Baptist church's pickets. Many of you have said there must be a way to stop him. I absolutely will not even think about taking one iota of his freedom away because I don't agree with his message. I hate the Occupy Wall Street movement but again, if they want to sleep in the park to get us to listen to their message, it beats the hell out of armed insurrection to get their message across. It is the very foundation of out country that allows us to stand on the corner and tell people that we don't agree. I for one want to keep my free speech, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, freedom of the press and the many other things guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.

The one thing that makes me really sad is that the Newspapers and Major News organizations are losing their markets. When they start making stuff up and shaping the news so it fits their agendas, they will fail. If you cannot find truth in the news, you will find you own truth elsewhere. It distresses me that the bloggers and tweeters are gaining in popularity and are about equal with the papers for their trustworthiness. If you repeat crap long enough and loud enough people can start to believe. Barbara said that an instructor told her one time that students need to have a built in crap detector. I think we all need to tune our antenna to the truth and build up an immunity to the crap.

I use the word crap because that's what Harry Truman did. One time a lady said to Bess that she had to get Harry to stop saying crap after the word "Bull". Bess was quick to point out that it took her the better part of 20 years to get him to use crap. I call BS on a lot of what is happening today.

MUD

Thanksgivings Past

2011-11-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

The worst Thanksgiving for me was 1968. I was a forward Observer out with a Mountaingnard Company in the Au Shau valley north west of Pleiku. It was a long way from any other American unit and I was sent out with a radio that didn't work. When I got to the unit, I had been told it was a three day operation and it turned out to be a three week operation. I had to resupply myself with the Indigenous LRRP (Long range Recon Patrol) ration that was basically instant rice. I did manage to keep one small C-ration Turkey meal and that was the meal I ate, Turkey and instant rice at room temperature. It beat going hungry but not by much. When I got back to base camp, it was all the signal officer could do to keep me from killing his assistant that gave me that bad radio. I did insist he got a letter of reprimand for his negligence. I found a tag inside the battery case that basically said the radio was a 15 lb paperweight.

The best Thanksgiving has always been any one that had family involved. One year I went with my niece Janet to visit her daughter Amy in Alabama and it was a great time with a lot of new things to eat. In addition to a deep fat fried turkey, everything else was a casserole. Their tradition is to bake as many of the side dishes as they can. I made my favorite Garlic mashed potatoes and and they loved them. I always make too much and have potato pancakes the next day. Take a cup of planned over (I always plan a little extra not left overs) potatoes, a cup of flour, a teaspoon of Baking powder one egg and enough milk to make them batter like. Cook them in a non stick pan with a little oil. I eat mine without syrup but am not a snob if you like them that way.

This year I smoked a turkey on Wednesday and then finished it in the oven Thursday. We had Dave and his wife Barbara over and had a nice laugh filled Thanksgiving. I only mildly over ate this year and we still have a bunch of turkey left for enchiladas. i think Dave asks for a smoked turkey just so there will be enough for a big batch of enchiladas. Either today or tomorrow I will whip up the best I can make.

I will always miss having my mother over for Thanksgiving. She always told stories and we would laugh for hours. It was always the beginning of the family season and soon the family would all be together for the Petty Family party. This year, It will be here at Rabbit Run on the 17th of December. Everyone will bring their favorite soup and the traveling trophy will be awarded for the best. Jennifer will bring a salad and Barb will make her best rolls and we will provide the drinks. We plan on a 1 PM start time but everyone is invited to come early and stay late as you want. I know Carie and Dan have an office party that evening and there are always those that hate to drive after dark. Weather permitting I have a hint that Rick from Oklahoma will be here. I sure hope he manages to bring Kristin, Kristy and Ethan.

In the Petty family we have a tradition of the saying a party is a party and if you can't come, we will miss you. Those that can't be with us just will miss as many smiles as we can manage. The second saying is that if you go home hungry from one of our meals, it is because you wanted to.

May your holiday season start soon and go long.

MUD

Lost Blogs

2011-11-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

For some reason unknown to me, when I try to update my blog on the road I manage to lose one or two each trip. For that reason, I have about given up on trying to get one written and for it to stay in the computer when we travel. We were on the road for a week to visit Barb's family in Idaho. It was a great trip and we did get to see most of the family. What makes it special to us is the chance to meet with all the nieces and nephews in Twin Falls and then in Boise. There is just a special love for family visits that leaves a warm smile in our hearts.

I guess there are several stages of life and this is one we are going through. First stage is our own life where we learn to live together and make it all work. Then comes the stage where we are concerned with our own child. We start to wonder about Grandchildren about the time our parents start to age and we focus on the past and the future at the same time. My parents are gone now and Barb's parents are getting older.

The best thing for us right now is the fact that we have the assets and income to live comfortably and are pretty darned happy right here at home. It is great to travel but it is also great to be home. About a week and I am ready to be here. I run out of ability to cope about the time I run out of clean clothes. Much over a week and I need two suitcases. I can't manage everything in one trip that way so unless we can travel in the car one week is about the limit.

For some reason I thought the Jay hawk game in Maui started at Midnight and expected that when we got to our car the game would just be starting. It was halftime and at least we got to listen to the game on the way home from the airport. It was raining just slightly and it had been a long day and we don't communicate very nicely under those circumstance.

Oh well, things to do and places to see. Got to get that Thanksgiving turkey home and thawed out.

MUD

What a Wonderful Day

2011-11-13T10:27:00.000-05:00

Friday night we went to see the young Jay Hawks play one of their preseason games. About half way through the second half, they put a guy up in the rafters of Allen Field House and he dropped T-Shirts with parachutes down to the crowd. I was sitting there during the time out and one actually hit me in the head. I had no clue but I reacted fast enough to bring it down and let Barb grab the shirt. I was absolutely oblivious to the whole affair until I was hit. No, I am not goint to tell anyone that I was hurt or mad at the event, just surprised. For some reason I felt detached there in amongst the 16,000 people and felt like I had missed my afternoon nap.

The really nice day was yesterday when we did nothing but eat three nice meals and zone out with Football and good books. I didn't think that just going to a game would wear me out completely so I am now wondering if my blood sugar got low and caused some of the zoned out feeling. About 1 PM yesterday I had a similar feeling and after i ate some of Barb's yummy stew that feeling went away. Oh well, I guess old people should have different feelings now and then just to prove they are alive.

I guess I want to say that yesterday was one of those days that will just slip away in the many we have but it was memorable because it wasn't. I have had many days that were great and many that were terrible and now and then a nothing day is one for the books (or blogs)

Going to try for two in a row.

MUD

My Rights vs Your Rights

2011-11-12T12:02:00.000-05:00

When Barb and I went to Morocco, we were cautioned to not say anything against the King of Morocco while in his country. Sometimes we, as Americans, forget that what we have as rights in our country may not always travel well. In fact, a lot of people think that we in America are free to say anything and because it is our right, we will sound intelligent. My prime recipient in the "Stupid is as Stupid says" award is the Fred Phelps and his Westborough Church protestors. They put all kinds of things on their signs and you can almost feel the spittle from their ignorance as you drive by where they are protesting something. They boil down Jesus' words, "Man shall not lie down with man as he does with a woman" into "God Hates Fags!" I wonder how many hours they had to search through the bible and how low the IQ of the person was to make that missive.

For the record, my rights are very important to me but I do have a sense of what their limits are. I am pretty sure that about the third time I got my face punched it became aware that where I said my free speech was important. Your right to tell everyone what you think is often slander or a punchable offense if said in the presence of the person you say it about. Often a group of people can be arrested if they don't have a parade permit when they assemble. Especially if they don't do it peaceable.

So, I encourage you all to read your rights and understand them before the Police tell you that in spite of free speech, you have the right to remain silent, or look stupid when someone with a cell phone makes a movie of your rants.

MUD

One small story

2011-11-11T10:10:00.000-05:00

In my earlier post, I mentioned that I had been in Pinion Canyon, Colorado as a part of the Headquarters of the Kansas Army National Guard.   There,on about the third day in the field, we had a wind storm that blew down most of our tents.   The next morning as I went out to survey the damage, I spotted something red over in the edge of our position. As I got closer, I realized that there were a lot of colored pieces of cloth there in the scrub brush. It seems that the women had a washing session the afternoon before and that the close line they erected in their tent held their undergarments went down in the storm. Their undergarments were now scattered across the backside of our camp.

Not having served in the field with women, I guess I did not think about such things. In the Active Army and the Field Artillery I was with, we didn't have women in our field units. I sent one of NCO's over to the S-1 tent where most of the women were and had him tell the girls where they could gather up their belongings.

That was my welcome to the problems of having a co-ed military unit.   I have laughed about it several times with my friends and now appreciate some of the situations on active duty more than I did.

MUD

11-11-11

2011-11-11T10:00:00.000-05:00

Not being a numerologist or a person who has a phobia about numbers, the date above is just the date above. If you are a veteran it has a little more significance in that is a holiday named after the service we performed. As an ORAG, an Old Retired Army Guy I would say I resemble that remark. It is a significant date for all those that served not just those that served in combat.

I think this is a good time to tell a little story about one of the finest people I ever met. SFC Romans had attended an M-1 training session and his unit did not go to the Annual training period that the majority of the 35th Division was attending. It was in the middle of no and god dammed where at Pinion Canyon and it was far from the support of any main city. As a member of the National Guard State headquarters, we put together a command and Control team and someone picked up SFC Romans to attend with our cell. In case you don't know a lot about the Guard, the State Headquarters does not have a lot of field training and SFC Roman's addition really helped by adding a field trained NCO to our mix. Little things like putting up tents and running the radio's were a task that we needed a lot of help doing. I for one have done it all but there was only one of me and I needed help. Things went well until the third night in the field.

On that third night, a storm came sweeping across the plains of SW Colorado and without any tracked vehicles, we were on our own. A micro burst hit our camp and blew our tents down big time. I think the only thing that saved us was that we had several tables down the middle of the tent and when the tent poles came crashing down most of us were under the nearest thing we had to overhead cover.   I had grabbed my helmet and I'm sure that it kept me from getting a concussion when the main tent support crashed down so hard that the table legs were broken.

Having a good NCO there helped us put the tens back up quickly and he brought the soldiers together in the Operations tent and we had a weapons cleaning time. Many of the soldiers with us did not have a .45 issued to them as their normal weapon and he just calmly showed them how to take apart and clean each type of weapon. By the time he was finished, the guys were all laughing and telling stories. You would have thought it was a unit that had been together for years not just days.

Later on that night, I told SFC Romans what a fine job he had done and we talked about our time in the service. He was disappointed that he got in the army in 1971 and by the time he was on rotation for Vietnam, they were cutting the troop strength so much that he didn't get a chance to be a combat veteran. I told him that good people are where you find them and I was glad to find him here and now.

Early the next year, a message came down to my office that the Army needed experienced NCOs, especially those with M-1 tank skills. I called SFC Romans and asked him if he was still on the kick that a combat patch was what he needed. He said hell yes and I told him that if he was to get to my office in the morning I would get him a set of orders. He came over that day and brought his gear. We put him on a plane to Germany that afternoon. He told me later that in Germany he went right to the replacement company and told them that he had a request to go to the Big Red One and they directed him to a flight leaving in 30 minuted to Quait. From the repo depot there, they sent him right to a tank line company and he, within 48 hours of leaving Kansas, was a tank commander when they kicked off the attack.

About a month later, he came home a well decorated combat veteran and had letters of commendation from a number of his commanders up the line. When he came in the office that day, he brought his wife and brand new baby. Crap, I wouldn't have asked him to go if I had known how close his wife was to having a baby. She took me into my office and told me that the only thing Joe ever wanted out of the Military was a chance to show what a good soldier could do in combat. I relaxed and later on Joe kind of joked with me that in his humble opinion, combat is one of the quickest ways he knew of to get killed.

On veteran's day, I salute the now retired Sergeant Major Joe Romans and the many soldiers that have displayed the kind of leadership and service that has made our Military what it is. I firmly believe that our winning ways are the result of the leadership shown in the middle of our Military not at the top. Salute to all those fine NCO's I have served with and those I have not met.

MUD, COL (Ret)

Fast Times at Rabbit Run

2011-11-10T09:59:00.000-05:00

For some reason, I have been on the slow track for about a week. I don't seem to have the same get up and go that I had. Not sure why but I did even get barb to take me for a walk yesterday to see if getting out and "Blowing off the stink" would help. I even used that term to Barb and she reminded me that when I used that on a bunch of preschool students one of the little kids said, :But Teacher, we don't stink!"

Today it is to be in the 60's and time for me to get out and round up all the garden hoses that are scattered from one end of the place to the other. There is a little bit of cleaning up the joint that is on my list also. We'll see what gets done and what just escapes my attention.

I seem to be having a problem with my blog. For the past few times I have opened it it seems to be getting smaller and smaller. If I go to the control center and make it big enough to read, the rest of my screens don't fit on the page. Damn computer.

I can tell that the weather is getting ready for winter because the visitors at the feeders and suet block are trying to eat me out of house and home. I don't remember it being this bad even in the worst of winter last year. Perhaps they are trying to fatten up for a hard winter.

Better get a move on and get something done.

MUD

Dang, I did it Again

2011-11-06T10:05:00.000-05:00

For months, Barb and I talked about going to Bentonville, AR to see the opening of the Crystal Bridges American Art Museum on the 11th. Wouldn't you know that the first game in our half season ticket package to watch the hawks is on the same day. I hate it that we over scheduled ourselves. I'm sure that there will be other times to see the Museum and perhaps there will be other chances to catch it after the water feature is finished. CBS This Morning had a short piece about the museum and it looks beautiful.

This morning there was a TV program that talked about people that do not shut their brains down completely at night. The said that insomnia is something that makes it tough for a lot of people to be productive during the day for up to a week each month. Some of my best dreams are those nights where my mind is in full race mode and I wake up with either an old problem solved or a new idea to try. The even better news is that I can take a nap to catch up on my sleep. Most of the time if I miss my sleep, I can make the shortage up the next night.

Last evening we celebrated our daughter-in-laws birthday with a trip to her favorite restaurant. The "Rib Crib" is a pretty good place and even on Saturday evening you can get a seat at one of their tables. I wish I could find a way to help them get over the hurdle and be consistent enough to draw bigger crowds and stay open. There is no one thing that is bad, just not a consistent quality across the menu to make them top rate. I guess when you are next door to a Texas Roadhouse and in the same city as Boss Hogs, it is tough to work your way up to number one.

This past week we took Barb Jr to Kansas City to visit Nebraska Furniture Mart and replace her couch and love seat. I also went over on Wednesday to put the old couch out on the back porch so the new one could be put in the right place. Friday I took my truck and trailer over and hauled off the old stuff and some building debris I made earlier in the summer. Dave had to go to work so I had to load the stuff in the trailer by myself. I am fairly proud that I have developed a way to work smart rather than hard. My back is fine today and had I tried to muscle everything I would be out flat and on pain med.

Oh well, things to do and places to go.

MUD

Bright and Shiny

2011-11-03T11:41:00.000-04:00

I am not sure what the rest of the world expects, but every once in a while I want to wake up bright and shiny. Well, I want to wake up bright and then after some ablutions be shiny. The only sad part is that as a retiree, unless there is some where to go, the shiny part is really not a priority. I can go a couple of days without a shave and I am the only one that notices. Life was a lot easier when all I had to do was put on the light green shirt with the dark green pants and those shoes that stayed patent leather shiny. The really only choice was did I need a tie, the jacket (or blouse as the Military called it) or the black sweater. Now, it is nearing 10:15 and I am wearing my sweats.

The other day, we took our Daughter-in-law to Nebraska Furniture Mart in KC and bought her a new couch and love seat. When I went over to help Dave clear out the old sectional couch, I noticed that the couch really matches the curtains and the wall color. We are glad to have the kids in our lives and having them over for meals now and then. It does give me a chance to show off my cooking and a chance to have some new conversations in our lives. When Barb brings over her Nephews is when life really gets fun. Watching those two boys grow into fine young men is a treat.

This morning I watched a streaming video of the Arkansas Supreme Court as they heard arguments for the Lawyer for Karl Roberts who killed my Grand Niece Andi. I am not sure what the final outcome of the whole process will be. He did it, he admitted it and even if the courts had a retrial, there is more than enough evidence to prove he did it and was sane enough to pay the price for what he did. Yes, I want them to put him out of my misery and be done with it. This has gone on for 12 years and it is beyond the stage where it is like picking a scab. The only saving grace in the matter is that he is sitting on death row and sees the sun only an hour a day and unless he likes solitaire conversations he just has to hate it. I would have gone crazy years ago.

I am going over to Dave's house to meet the furniture truck about noon. I think I will also go get a haircut afterwards and shave off this silly mustache. Barb says it makes me look even older than I am. I guess as hard as she works to look nice and younger, I can make somewhat of an effort. 'Cides, she thinks the mustache is prickly or beyond that stage tickles. Oh well...

MUD

Fall in the Forest

2011-11-01T11:11:00.000-04:00

When the weather starts to turn cool, we can always depend on the critters and insects thinking that our house is just another place to over winter in. Barb always catches the spiders in a jar and gives them the heave ho out the side door. I would rather give them the heel-toe smash but if I have the chance, I'll make her happy by throwing them out. last evening I went in to he bathroom to be confronted by a small mouse. I have the defense in depth traps set in the garage but this little guy must have found an alternate way in. I hope he finds the peanut butter laced trap soon.

Barbara kind of laughs at the spiders, as she claims they keep the roaches down. That and regular spraying and lots and lots of roach traps. Roaches and ants are outside bugs that I want no part of living with.

Today is one of the last days in the 70's for the year. Right before a front passes, the wind will always blow from the south and it will be windy and warm (er). There is no way you can rake the leaves and burn with the wind gusting to 30 MPH.


This picture is at least two years old.

This summer when the Reimer's were here, the girls loved to use our cameras to take pictures. Barbara bought both of the girls their own little camera and yesterday we got a DVD of their pictures taken at Disney World. Sea World and Epcot. What a wonderful eye they have. I would have loved to have them narrate the pictures but for now, I can hear their giggles in my heart. They are just the right age to start the journey through the world with an eye open to new things.

Better run and see if there is anything needed before the rain tomorrow. Write if you get work.

MUD

What is your Favorite Holiday?

2011-10-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

Once retirement sets in, Holidays are a lot like every other day. That is especially true if you happen to have life where you want it. As a kid, Halloween was one big junk food run and I loved it. Now that we live out here in the woods where in 21 years we have never had a trick or treat-or, not so much. Barbara always complains about the early Christmas ads but I'm sure that she is a Christmas junkie to the core. We will host the Petty family party the week before Christmas and I'm sure that Barb will have me working overtime to decorate everything to Martha Stewart's standards. The really good news is that we'll have time to decorate.

I am probably more in tune with the seasons than the holidays. I watch for the last time I mow for the season. I am in tune with the time I put the first suet block out and start feeding the sunflower seeds. The in the spring the last time I mow and stop the seed feeding.

It is always fun to see what the Master Gardner will do to put the plants to bed and get ready for the spring. Bales of hay and all the compost I can carry is high on the list. I am pretty sure that the tiller would not dig in enough to till the baked clay this fall. Perhaps by next spring if there is enough moisture things will be different.

Better run and see what mischief I can get into or out of.

MUD

Can the NCAA Be the NBA Replacement?

2011-10-29T09:56:00.000-04:00

We finally put the Baseball season to bed and I for one am looking forward to a NCAA Men's Basketball season. Barb chose one of those half season ticket deals for Jay hawk basketball and we will see our first game early next month. I think it will be their third game of the season and for me it will be a blast to see what miracle Bill Self can pull out after losing so many leaders off the team from last year. They always seem to re-load not rebuild and it goes on.   I do think it is bad that the Morris twins turned pro the year there is a lock out. They could have developed so much this year. As it is, a lot of first year players will travel overseas and a lot of the players that might have gone there will not have any place to play. I will watch college ball and be glad for what I have.

Last night, I watched the program Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on TV and went to the World Series game during the commercials. I am just a junkie on new food ideas and I love to see a small place make wonderful food. I would love to eat most of that food but it is to me a wonder how hard some of the places work to make a meal. One small diner makes their own wild rice/Blueberry bread just to make French Toast. I know that Barb likes to use her bread maker and some of her loaves make wonderful French Toast. The other day, she brought me some apple slices with caramel. She sprinkled sunflower seeds in the caramel and it made a wonderful snack. I wonder if there is a way to incorporate that taste into French Toast.

Back in the day, I worked in a fast food joint in Wichita and we made our own french fries. One of my jobs was to slice, soak and precook the fries at the start of the day.    I can't figure out why more people don't do their own and blanch the fries to get them started. A few minutes at a lower temperature and then let them sit makes for a great fry. Now days almost all of the joints use pre bagged and prepared fries. What a shame.    Our little joint had our buns toasted with butter and we worked hard to make sure that there was an even concentration of mustard and ketchup on each burger. When I was on the grill, I made sure the dispenser had all the proper holes cleaned out so the ratio would be the same. Throw on a few re-hydrated onions and a pickle or two and we made a great burger for not a lot of money.

Do you know why I got out of the fast food business? One day a white cheerleader came into the restaurant and had her black football player's arm. One of the black girls and her friends were waiting and a fight broke out. About the time the white girl was on the floor and getting stomped, our rent a cop came in from the parking lot. I had just gone over the counter from the other direction and was about to stop the fight. As the cop cleared the door, he took the loop on his holster loose and prepared to use his gun. He must have changed his mind and when he bent over to pick the white girl up, his gun fell out of his holster. One of the kids there inside the restaurant watching the fight picked up the gun and brought it up pointed at the officer. The cop snatched that gun so fast that the kid didn't even know where the gun went. I saw the gun go back into the cops hands and I reversed direction and jumped back over the counter.   I went over to the boss and told him that I had a Bronze Star from Vietnam and had no intention of being in the middle of a gun fight in Wichita. I clocked out and went home.

As you can guess, I didn't die there at Sandy's by North High and I survived to move on.

MUD

Smile On My Face

2011-10-28T10:54:00.000-04:00

One night years ago, I was teaching a class at TeleTech and one of my students asked me why I don't smile more? I said I smile all the time and the entire class agreed that I was like an Army Ranger on a Mission and all business most of the time. I counted to the class all the things I had to be happy about in my life and made sure that they knew they were a part of that happiness. Getting to meet those kids and teaching them about what to expect was one of my joys. I guess too many years in the Military took that smile and hid it. I promise you that there is a big old smile in my heart most of the time even if it doesn't leak over to my face.

This week, I went out to the National Guard Museum at Forbes Field and got to say good bye to my friend Melvin Simpson. He lived a full life and dedicated a lot of it to the Museum. His was the first viewing and funeral there inside the new meeting room. I didn't stay to meet his family as like most of the people I knew in the Guard, I didn't know much about them and I'm sure they didn't know me.

I am sure that after this last time, I want there to be a cremation and no public viewing of me after I die. I want goofy pictures and smiles abounding not the body without any life left in it. I have a picture of my mother on my computer and one in my heart. The picture of Mom in my heart is one of smiles and laughter and love. That's the way I'm sure we all want to be remembered not at the end of life.

I think one of the solutions of the debt Crisis for the Government is to find a way to have the seniors out there buy some of the houses on the Fannie and Freddie roles with some of our IRA's, 401(k)s or 503(b)s without any tax consequence. I have to believe that the relief today has to be better than the possibility of a little tax revenue later on. I'm not for having the seniors use all their savings in such a manner, perhaps just one house per family. I for one will turn it into rental property and help a family that is struggling to make it without the big house payment to worry about.

OH well, Smile and make them wonder what you have been up to.

MUD

Good Day Part 2.

2011-10-27T10:12:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I mentioned some of the reasons I felt things were no going as well as they could for Americans. Here are just a few more thoughts.

America has to be one of the most generous countries in the world. Who else would give money to other Nations that they have to borrow? We have sent billions of dollars overseas in the hope that others would love us and I'm pretty sure that in a lot of cases they don't even like us. It looks like the Arabs and the Chinese have all the excess money in the world and it is about time they bailed out the really poor. Wait, if it was a dumb idea for us, it isn't any smarter for them. I have an idea, lets stop sending the foreign aid to other countries and start paying our national Debt with that money. Last time I looked the French don't like us, why are they on the list?

If the foundation of our freedom is the strength of the voters, we are in a sucky hole. Look at the results of any election and you will find that a good share of people don't take the time and energy to vote. If you don't care enough to vote, why would a politician care enough to do things the way you want? At best, in a republic, you elect people and they try to do their best, not what you think is best, but what they think is best. If you don't tell them what you think, contribuite to their campaign and vote, don't expect things to get better.

I am blown away that the Occupy Wall Street movement is so all over the place with their message. Hey guys, pick a topic, make it clear and push hard for it. Having 300 things you don't like is just madness. Boil your list down to a list of the most important in priority order and shout about that. Sitting in a park and not having a clear message is stupid. I heard on the evening news that most of the tents in one London park are empty at night. They were erected and the people go home to sleep. Stupid and smart and I'm not sure which one stands out the most.

Don't let all thios talk about student loans fool you. The government isn't offering to pay the for you or to give you relief from the debt. They are reducing the percentage of the loan they expect you to pay every year once you start paying on the loans. Same on the Mortgage programs, they are leaving you with the debt, just reducing the interest you have to pay.

The way to find our way out to the mess we are in is to have everyone only borrow what they need and not what they want. Work hard, pay your debts and whenever possible pay cash. I loved Dave Ramsey the other morning when he told one of his new listeners that being debt free will eventually lead yo to not have any credit rating. Borrowing money to have a credit rating is only prifot for the banks. Put your money in you account and pay cash as much as possible. Having 20% down to buy a house is a darned good way to get a loan and a better interest rate.

Now get out there and do things the right way.

MUD.

Today is a Good Day to Live!

2011-10-26T16:39:00.000-04:00

Somewhere in the morass of data that overwhelms us daily, there has to be enough truth to say these are some of the causes of the problems that have us perplexed. here is just a few thoughts on what I think happened and somewhere out in the future I will try to offer some answers to the problems.

A few years back, people said that it was unfair that the United States had all the money and benefit from the production of goods and our life style was too great. Does anyone remember NAFTA? As I remember it, many of our jobs went overseas in the hope that the lower production costs there would benefit us all. It had the end result of having a lot of production jobs to migrate to cheaper sources of labor and there were fewer jobs here in the US. Companies like GE migrated their corporate headquarters to stop paying taxes in the USA.

During the Reagan years, we spent tons and tons of money on the Military Industrial Complex in the hope that the then Soviet Union would blink and the weakness of their system would show through. They did and it did. Many of the Former Soviet Union States left the USSR and left Russia to face the world alone. Someone forgot to tell Washington that we no longer needed a large standing Army and we continued to spend money on the Military and that led us into looking for places to send our Armed Forces to justify the expense. That cycle just about has us spent into the hole and perhaps it is time we blinked.

Not that many years back, people worked for one company for most of their lives. My Dad retired from Beech Aircraft in Wichita and he spent over 40 years there. I retired from the Military and my wife retired from Teaching after 30+ years. I talk to young people today and they have many of them worked for two and three companies and have no thought that there would be one entity that would owe or pay them a retirement. In fact, many young people have trouble finding one job that will even give them a full 40 hour work week. Benefits? Ha, I laugh at the idea that you have benefits let alone retirement.

Countries change year to year and those that were strong Republics are moving towards a more socialist society. Free enterprise is moving towards more socialistic and those countries that were very Socialistic are moving to a more democratic. It is pretty clear that communism and its sister socialism is on the wane. Free enterprise is also suffering movement and what was the norm a few years ago just isn't working.

MUD

Fall has Fell

2011-10-26T09:54:00.000-04:00

After about a week of days that just got nicer and nicer, we have a morning of about 40 degrees and a light rain falling. It would be nice if it were to continue to rain on and off all day. Barb thinks it is good for her plants to go to bed for the winter with their feet wet. After turning over a small patch of the garden yesterday, I can attest to how hard and dry the ground out there is. The clay in the soil was a lot more like concrete than just dirt. Barb planted some potatoes this last spring and I'll bet that we didn't get over a handful of anything worth eating. The tomatoes this year were equally as disappointing. Oh well, Barb did her best, it was the hot dry weather that ruined things.

One of the things I love about the fall and winter here is the activity at the bird feeders. I keep a black oil sunflower seed feeder, a couple of suet blocks and a finch feeder full. I have a water dish out by the feeders and a heated water dish for the really cold days. I think of it as about the cheapest entertainment you can have for the money. So far, we have been blessed to not have a flock of sparrows hang around and most of the birds are very pretty and seem to work out a system that allows the birds to fly in, get a seed and then stage back in the tree for their next turn. It is pretty funny when a new bird shows up and tries to sit in the feeder and not take turns. New birds son get the message that they need to take turns and it all works out.

The creek valley below our house is really down and out of the wind. When it is cold and windy, a lot of turkeys and deer will hang out in the valley. I love to see a flock of turkeys come through scratching up the leaves and looking for things to eat. Now that there is no fruit in the orchard, the deer won't show up for a month or so. I'm sure there is a car they need to run in front of and scare the hell out of the driver.

A red bellied woodpecker just landed on the suet block and announced his arrival. They are as noisy as blue jays. Probably one of the noisiest days here was when a sharp shinned hawk flew in and grabbed a blue jay. The jay's mate sat in the tree and raised holy hell the entire time. The hawk seemed to enjoy eating the blue jay right there on the ground by the feeder. Oh well, it sucks to be lower on the food chain than some one else.

Today is Dave's birthday. We will probably take them out to dinner if his wife is well enough. If not, we'll just buy them a pizza or something. The other day I was talking to a pair of Grandmothers at the store as they showed off their granddaughter. I told them that we have the world's best Lego collection. They said that their son-in-law banned Lego's from his house because his son kept taking the things he made apart. I told them that when Dave was little, I would try to make a car or a spaceship every day before I went to work. I fully expected him to take the vehicles apart so he could learn how to make his own. After all, it is the learning part of Lego's that just amaze me.

MUD

Nice Guys Don't Always Finish Last

2011-10-25T10:18:00.000-04:00

This morning I read the paper as is my usual way of starting the day. The front page, the funnies and then the Obits. I check the last one to make sure that I'm not there. This morning I saw that a great friend to the Guard and fellow Guardsman Chief Master Sgt Melvin Simpson passes over the weekend. He was one of the people that adopted the idea of a National Guard Museum and helped us make it happen. For a long time, there was a vision of a museum dedicated to our history but there was just not anyone that could make the ideal and the money happen at the same time. It is only fitting that the viewing tomorrow and the Funeral on Thursday will be held at the Museum. I'm sure that a lot of the younger soldiers have no clue how hard he worked to make it happen. In spite of the fact that there were always potential blockers to the Museum, I never heard him say a bad word about those people. RIP Chief Simpson.

Reading about a departed friend always makes me wonder what really will be my legacy. I'm sure that there are people that will say good things and some that won't. One of my best things was to find and marry my wife Barbara. I have often said that there are a lot of guys that would have benefited from having someone as strong as her in their life. Can you imagine a Guy like Ex President Clinton if he had a wife that kept him in line? If he had given up those cigars, he might have made it. What would we have to say about Nixon if Barbs' sense of fair play had kept the Watergate idea in check? Just how many damn toys and how broke would I have been without her guiding light.

The absolute bottom line is that if I were to die today, I hope that everyone would know how full a life I have lived and how I want Funny stories and not tears over my passing. I don't want a funeral, but I sure do want a wake. I want people to gather and laugh at the smiles in my life. No, I don't want to go right now, but I don't fear death. I have been shot at, shit on, poor, sick, healthy and wealthy. Just remember my motto- Smile and make the Bastards wonder what you have been up to.

MUD

Risk Communication

2011-10-24T15:21:00.000-04:00

Many years ago, I was taken to a Risk Communication class with the Chief of Staff and the Adjutant General. Probably because I was too outspoken and they wanted to give me some tools to keep me from saying things that embarrassed the Guard. I have a tough time noticing that what I say sometimes hurts people so they must have thought it was worth a try.

We attended the two day workshop on how to deliver the Guard message about the time everyone found out what poor stewards we had been when it came to environmental factors. We were told to deliver our speech in the following order. a. Remind people that a lot of us were ignorant of what the environmental hazards were and until the 1980's, the Military was exempted from the requirements. b. Now that we know, we will do our best to confine our activities the best we can and, c We will do our best to mitigate the damage done because, d. We too live in our communities and want to feel that we have done as little as possible to damage you and ours.

The final warning was when surprised go back to the commercial that briefly as stated above. I was selected by our group to sit on a panel where we were meeting with the Environmental Group that was protesting our poor stewardship at Camp Swampy. They asked some tough questions and I thought I stayed inside the guidelines and the approved script. When the taped interview was concluded, we were told that the panel members would be critiqued down the hall by one of the instructors.

When I arrived in the room down the hall, the door opened and a camera crew immediately turned on the lights and camera and the reporter asked me what I thought of Homosexuals in the Military. My first response was "Good Question." I told the reporter that I had served with a young soldier who did his best to serve but even though he was one of the hardest workers I ever had, was finally discharged. I told the reporter that such decisions were made at levels far above my pay grade and even though I might have a different opinion, I would continue to obey the orders of those appointed over me. Seems like the Military has finally decided that those junior in rank don't care as strongly as the Generals and Admirals.

I will watch the development of the Military as it evolves. I would personally warn the young men and women that serve that they must at all times conduct themselves properly. Hell, I can remember a short time back that you couldn't hold even your wife's hand in public and I'll bet personal Displays of affection will be against proper protocol for even non homosexuals. I am pretty darned sure that for a while, discrimination will rear its ugly head. After a while, what you do in the privacy of your own bed is you own damn thing and it won't matter to most of us.

MUD

“Hey LT. Did he kiss you good bye”.

2011-10-23T11:41:00.000-04:00

This is a Pre-War story because it happened to me prior to my attendance at the little skirmish I call Vietnam. It is intended to show you that I didn't have any anti-homosexual bias back in the day. Hell, I was so unbiased that I was ignorant of the whole thing.

I grew up in a lower class neighborhood on the East side of Wichita. I was a baby boomer and the drug of choice where I grew up was beer. I swear that to this day I have never done a refer, a joint, Marijuana, bong or whatever the street name of Cannabis is today. I have smoked Swisher Sweets but they were stuffed with the horrible tobacco they came not loaded with cannabis.

I was exposed to a lot of things growing up and I know first hand what Ron White means when he says, “You can’t fix stupid, stupid is forever”. The poor white trash that I grew up with were a collection of Oakies and Arkies. To make matters worse, they married each other and I think the whole damn place was related to each other. To have escaped that neighborhood without impregnating someone whose brother’s name is Bubba, is no small feat. I also grew up somewhat sheltered from a lot of the normal experiences those in a big city stumbled upon each day. There wasn’t a black, a Jew or a homosexual that would have lived there. I did learn a lot of creative expressions for them but my experiences were very limited.

I was drafted in to the Army in 1966 because I learned to play 10-point pitch in the basement of the Campus Activity Center at Wichita State University. I mean I seriously started out only as a casual player until I met Chuck, my card-playing buddy. We very soon learned to cheat and our system of signs went undetected until we were so good that it was a hell of a lot more fun to win than go to class. Hell, it was more fun to loose than go to class but winning was a lot more fun than loosing. Well, to make a long story short, hell I don’t get paid by the word so what do I care how many words get killed in this pieces of thesis. (or, substitute Feces here is you desire) I went through 8 weeks of Basic Training, 8 weeks of Advanced Individual Training (AIT) and 23 weeks of Officer Candidate School at the Fort Sill School of wayward boys or Cannon Cocker College of Cannon Knowledge.

I wound up in wonderful Southern California where you couldn’t raise hell with a dozen Indians and a case of whiskey. Fort Irwin was the armpit of the Mojave Desert (notice only one s here because you wouldn’t want a second helping of that hell hole) We were about 50 miles from Barstow and if you have been there it is in the middle of “no” and “damn where”. The unit I was assigned to was training to go to Vietnam and I was assigned to the battery as a Forward Observer and had an additional duty as the Supply Officer. That meant that in addition to making sure that everything that went out of the supply room was signed for, I had to figure out how to ship the whole damn mess to Vietnam. Going out was fairly easy. When everyone started turning stuff back in I needed more help that I had assigned. For the record it was me, a Staff Sergeant and a PFC trying to make sense out of the pile of “stuff” and trying to figure out where to stuff it so it would all fit in a half a dozen Connex containers.

One day I finally went over to the 1^st Sergeant and asked for some help. He thought about it for a minute or so and smiled. I should have known that I was about to be the recipient of someone he didn’t want or someone who didn’t want to be a “Supply Specialist”. I met Private Johnson ( I really don’t remember his name and there are a hell of a lot more Johnson’s than any other name so what the hell) and put him to work. That kid was motivated to doing a good job. He was so motivated that he moved his bunk into the supply room and was there night and day for well over a month. To say he was a good worker was an understatement. I was thrilled and never looked that gift horse in the mouth. Like I said, that went on for over a month and one day he was standing there in his Class “A” uniform and leaning on his duffel bag. I noticed that he didn’t have an insignia or a name tag on the uniform and asked him what was up. He said that today was his discharge date from the Army and he was leaving. I knew that the bus stop to Barstow was clear on the other side of post so I offered him a ride. He gladly took the offer and I drove him to the bus stop and wished him well. We shook hands and off he went.

When I got back to the supply room the guys were giggling like a bunch of little kids. I made them tell me what was so damn funny. They said didn’t I notice something "queer" about the soldier? No, he was a clean-cut hard working guy to me. The Army had a policy of discharging Homosexuals in 1967 and he went home so branded. The final words I heard that day were “Hey LT. Did he kiss you good bye?”

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the risk assessment class I took and the ambush interview where I was asked about the Military's anti Homosexual Policy prior to last year.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-22T10:53:00.000-04:00

Have we as a nation slipped so low that we have made it seem impossible to be a success through getting an Education and Hard Work? If that is the case, I could kind of develop a good feeling about the OWS crowd. I tried to listen to them articulate their ideals yesterday on the Dave Ramsey program and I find it like taking a shotgun to kill a mouse. The damage done by the gun would surely cost more than the mouse could. They also do not have a clear message that anyone could solve. I contend that the problem is in Washington not just Wall Street.

I agree that the Presidents of major Corporations should not be paid millions of dollars in bonuses when they strip their workforce to save dollars. Golden parachutes would be gone and the door would hit a lot of them in the ass on their way out. But, with that said, why don't the protestors feel that John Travolta who has enough money to fly his own Boeing 727 is not just as wrong? Why do Athletes in Major Sports make so damn much money that the only way we can watch them play is to stay home and watch TV? Why should it cost $10@ (without any popcorn and a coke) to go to a movie? If we want to complain about the fat cats and robber barons that can afford homes near Bar Harbor, Maine. Martha Stewart has one there too.

Put the Congress back in the real world retirement and Medical system like the rest of us and see how soon they find a few answers. Make them have a real budget and pay them only what they save from last year. Make the president pay for the excesses in the White House and see how long it takes clear out the Lincoln Bedroom and make it pay for its self. I'll bet people would pay for the tour of the White House if they knew it was for a good cause. Hell, people pay good money to go to Graceland and Elvis has been dead how many years?

How can Washington expect us to think they are telling the truth when they say there is zero inflation. I would rather that they say, "OK you old folks, no raises this year tighten your belts" than try to convince us that it isn't costing us a hell of a lot more to live this year.    I'm not saying I can afford it, just saying that I expect them to tell the truth when they lie to us.

I am pretty sure that we all have a little wiggle room in our budgets to take trips, have a cabin by the lake and buy new cars. It is just that I want to be the person to decide what way I wiggle when I squirm around and pay my bills. The last thing I want to hear is that Washington is "here to help us."

MUD

Hate and Evil

2011-10-21T16:31:00.002-04:00

This last week, a man broke into the home of a mentally handicapped man near Council Grove Kansas. He had some perception that the handicapped man had somehow said something bad about his family. He beat the victim and then poured alcohol on him and started a fire. Though burned badly, the handicapped man lived. The question is, was this a hate crime? What is a personal injury crime but the expression of a hatred for the other person? Because the victim was black and the perpetrator white, does this carry some special level of hate? Is there a possibility that the perpetrator thought so little of the man that burning him was just another thing to do? Is this almost the opposite of hate and the absence of feelings for another human being? Beats the heck out of me in this case. I would task the NAACP to find ways to celebrate where the races find common grounds and celebrate life as hard as they look for places to label as hate.

My niece Rebecca De Mauro was interviewed by the BBC and in that interview she talks about her struggle with hate against the man that took the life of her daughter Andi. She talks about the mixed feelings she has and how she has struggled to forgive Karl Roberts before that hate consumed her. I am a much lesser man in that I haven't found the ability to not hate him. I would shed my worldly possessions to have just one hour to share my disgust directly with Uncle Karl. Where I do differ is that I can function with a pretty high level of hate and not turn my innards to ash. I would never seek you out and do you harm intentionally, but trust me when I say do not threaten me or my family and expect me to turn the other cheek. I urge you to go to Andi Brewer's Facebook page to read more.

Over and Over we hear the plea that insanity prevailed in the killing of others. Do I think you have to be borderline insane to take another person's life? I guess so, it is the intent that causes me concern. If a person had the capacity to know right from wrong and he knows what he did is wrong, he is sane in my book. In the case of my Niece Andi, Karl tried to hide the body and cover up what he had done. He was one heartless son of a bitch to rape and then kill a 12 year old. Do I think he needs to be executed for that crime? Yes sir, and I would be "Johnny on the spot" to do it if Arkansas could not find a willing executioner.


Andi Brewer

MUD

Moose Madness

2011-10-21T12:18:00.000-04:00

The entire State of Maine is filled with people that want to see a Moose. From the beginning of our class, they said there are no Moose on Mount Desert island or anywhere near Bar harbor.

Either they were wrong or like Barb Says you can't trust most of what you see. This was on the front page of the Mount desert Islander Thursday, Oct 12, 2011.

MUD

Boys and Girls

2011-10-21T10:24:00.000-04:00

No, this isn't going to be a sex education blog and point out the obvious difference between little boys and girls. It is the numbers that interest me. The Petty Girls seem to not remember that there was a proliferation of little girls in some families and seem surprised when two in a row turn out to be boys. Lets see, Rick had two daughters, Myrna had two daughters, Carol had two daughters and one boy, Beck had three daughters, Janet had two daughters. See, the world turns slowly and the numbers catch up. Yes, I understand it is the contribution of the fathers that determine the sex of the child.

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the topic below. It is just a pretty bridge .

On our Road Scholar Trip, one of the presentations was about the people in and around Desert Mountain Island (MDI - home to Bar Harbor and Martha Stewart) as the Civil War erupted around them. This is the 150th Anniversary of that terrible War and historians are looking for ways to tie it to modern times. Right prior to the Civil War, the percentage of women on MDI was about 46%. Even though they sent a large percentage of their men to war, and lost almost 25% of those that served, by the time of the next census, the percentage was again about the same. One of the reasons MDI was populated with so many more men was that they had a lot of laborers to quarry the granite. The Scots came to take out the big blocks and Italian men came to carve granite trim for buildings. I'm pretty sure that a lot of them came as indentured servants and were not able to bring their families over to the New World until they moved to new places.

Barb's great-great Grandfather came to America without his family. It wasn't until he and his brother both were farming that they could bring their families over from Germany. I talked to a German School teacher and he indicated that in the 1870's a lot of Germans immigrated in that manner. There had been a change in the way German land was owned and a lot of small farmers had to come to America to make a living.

Oh well, miles to go and things to do. Write if you get work.

MUD

Back at the Keyboard Again

2011-10-19T11:57:00.000-04:00

While I enjoyed the freedom to order what I want as we dined out, I missed the ability to cook what I like and spice it the way it tastes best to me. One of my cooking secrets is that Barb doesn't like her food too spicy so it leaves me the opportunity to add heat post cooking. I love ground pepper, seasoned salt and the new Tabasco Sauce that is made out of the smoked Jalapeno. Yesterday evening I cooked a big old pot of chili and made corn muffins. I put about half of the batter into the muffin tins and then add about a cup of cut up pickled jalapeno slices in the remaining half. Barb loves the cornbread um-molested and I love the jalapenos in my chili. The really good news as I cook is that Barb is really easy to please and always makes me feel good about what I serve.

Yesterday was Turkey day here at Rabbit Run. With the neighbors working during the day and Barb and I gone, the turkeys had free run during the days. As I was leaving to go to the store in the morning, I saw a bunch of hens out near the end of the driveway. I only had my phone with me and by the time I got the pictures big enough to really see, I lost resolution to really see them. A little later on, I counted about 10 hens right outside the south side of the house.. They were just moving through the area and moving the leaves to find tidbits on the ground. I had my camera handy and snapped many pictures. There is a bush about 1/3 of the way down the hill that had red berries and at least one hen would jump up and eat as many as she could reach.

During our trip to Desert Mountain Island where Bar harbor is located we noticed that they didn't have concrete curbs along the roads. It appeared that there was about a 5 inch wide granite curb everywhere. During the classes, we had a man show us the secrets of the Granite quarries on the island. A lot of New England streets were paved with granite pavers and had curbs made of granite. The workmen would gang up on blocks of granite and cut them down to size in no time. It seems that the granite holds the break fairly well at right angles so they can make blocks for paving or four feet lengths for curbs. Many of the early 1900 buildings also have polished granite slabs for decoration. There on the island the granite varied from white with black flakes to a kind of rose or pink color that polished into a beautiful rock.

Here they drilled holes with a chisel and put feather wedges in the holes to tap the rock apart


Shown here, the rock in spite of being hard as granite split to make a perfect curb.

I was fairly amazed that when I built a rock wall using limestone, I found that the rocks would break where I drilled and struck a lot like the granite did. Most of the granite quarries on the Island are not in use today and have filled in with water. The instructor said that in spite of the weight, most granite used for counter tops in the US are imported. What a shame.

Oh well, Miles to go and things to do.

MUD