It was a rare moment when we all had some slack time together. Doug was the company clerk, Van the mail clerk, Country worked in supply and I honestly don't remember where Tommy worked, but our schedules were all scattered. It was in the late evening, we were all layiing around getting ready to turn the lights out when Tommy said, "I sure would like a bowl of popcorn." It was like the old thing about "don't think about an elephant". In short order we were all lamenting the fact that t...
We barely got out of New Jersey before exhaustion overtook us. The Motel in Wilmington, Delaware was pretty open minded about dogs, but Golf was not leaving the back seat. The next morning he came out to relieve himself but immediately dashed back to the back seat floor. It was a nice drive, across the top of Maryland, through DC, down across the top of Virginia. It was just getting dusky when we reached Tennessee. We stopped at a really nice border rest stop with tourist information and...
Coming Home from Germany in 1970 was challenging for MamaCharlie and me. The Hyborean Wanderer was just over a year old so he barely noticed. We flew out of Rhein-Main and stopped in Iceland, which is where we realized that MamaCharlie's purse, chock full of passports, traveler's checks and orders and ID and everything else, was still at Rhein-Main. We paid a $25.00 entry fee into the USA and settled into the BOQ at Fort Dix while we waited to get the purse sent to us...a kind soul had fou...
It was a cool evening in Lampasas, Texas. We were coming home from the Dairy Queen, a dinner out. East bound on the main drag through town, we fell in behind an old pick up with an old upright piano in the back. It prompted me to think about a couple years earlier in Mannheim when some friends needed a piano moved from the fourth floor of one stairwell apartment to the third floor of another stairwell...it was an adventure but that is another story. That is what I was thinking about as we...
I heard the call around the end of the afternoon. "Charlie Three Three is burning!" the excited voice was yelling on the radio. Almost at once we got a call to go to a grid coordinate and assist the "operation" there. The LT and I dashed to our jeep and, grabbing LT Marcus on the way, stormed out to the spot. It wasn't far from the assembly area we were set up in. It took less than 10 minutes from receiving the call to arriving at the road block. The road was blocked because on the nex...
The trip from Missouri to Baumholder was a long and tiresome one. But for the first time in our career, my family got to travel overseas together. Usually I would go ahead and the family would follow a few months later, we always got to go back to the States together, though. This time we were going as a senior NCO and there are a few perks. Anyway, by the time we got to Frankfurt, we were plenty worn out. We had to sit around in a waiting area for hours until the bus for Baumholder dep...
The other day I was sitting in a port-potty at a gravel pit. A water truck came by and sprayed the road for dust control. The spray hit the little house I was in and the initial spray hitting the plastic wall of the potty sounded alot like bullets hitting it. Which aided in my endeavor. But it reminded me that in the world of men, helpless in a porta-potty just means "TARGET". It also reminded me of this: Many years ago I was driving a dump truck to a parking lot in a new apartment c...
It had to be in the fall of 1976, as best as I can figure. The training brigades had all closed down and the instructors had all been reassigned to units in the newly re-activated 7th Infantry Division. Fort Ord was changing its appearance. The WWII barracks that had once covered all the hillsides between Seaside and Marina were being replaced by the dormitory looking buildings of the modern all volunteer Army. I wound up in the 7th S&T Battalion, in the truck company, most of the driving c...
The dozer had been working the clearing all morning. The low-boy had dropped it and the operator off early and left, the backhoe had followed along and together they had spent the whole morning expanding and leveling and smoothing out the clearing. They were wary but although they were definately in injun country, there hadn't been any VC activity in the area in some time. At about noon, they both came under heavy small arms fire. The backhoe operator was hit right away but the dozer was on the...
Every spring at Kasernes all over Germany they have some sort of post clean up day. Usually the morning is spent cleaning up from winter, raking, sweeping, trimming, etc., all the common areas and work places outdoors. The afternoon is spent on the living areas, the barracks for the singles and the housing areas for the folks who live in quarters. On clean up days, only absolutely essential work gets done, everyone is required to "pitch in" and get things squared away. This is not a really big ...
It was early in 1970, the Hyperborean Wanderer was about 6 months old, and MamaCharlie developed a muscle spasm in her back. HBW wasn't very heavy but MamaCharlie wasn't very big, either, so picking him up aggravated the back problem a lot. We lived in Benjamin Franklin Village, right outside of Mannheim. There was a medical clinic in the middle of the housing area, a short walk from our place on Columbusstrasse. MamaCharlie packed up the Wanderer in his stroller and went off to the medics f...
George worked with my Uncle Dude for probably 30 years or more. The legend is that his mom, a dirt floor-poor mexican lady who grew up in the poorest parts of Chihuahua, married a greek merchant sailor who set her up in a modest house in San Diego (it must have seemed a mansion to her) and went back to sea. He would pop in from time to time to drop off trinkets and money and impregnate her and sail off again. George speculated that there were probably several such arrangements with his father i...
Life Happens has an idea for a family cookbook entitled "The Spaghetti Mistake". It is a great idea and while they were here we came up with several recipes to put in it. But the recipes have special signifigance...it has to do with the title...so here's how it happened: We were living at Patch Barracks in Stuttgart-Vaihingen. The Hyperborean Wanderer was about 12 or 13 years old, he probably remembers the exactness of it better than me, and one night in the kitchen decided he could handle m...
Last week we had HBW, LH and the littlies with us. The visit was so fun (marred only by MamaCharlie's severe cold and a little bit of snow on the day we were to take "old Blue" out for a tire spin). While he was here he received some really good career news which I will allow him or her to tell you about, and we had lots of good time to just talk. Watching my little people being parents is a remarkable thing...and I have a whole passle (SP?) of brilliant grandchildren.&nb...
Grandma was a picture of Pennsylvania Dutch-ness. She had two sisters who looked so much like her that I couldn't tell them apart unless they were right next to each other. They were round and jolly and full of mischief, gray hair rolled up in a bun and clacked their false teeth at each other as they sat around the dining room table playing Canasta or Dominoes. Their humor and bawdiness was infectious. All my memories of her and her brothers and sisters are treasures to me. Even at our last mee...