I mentioned recently that I had to attend a funeral for an old friend. He was a retired Sergeant Major, an organized and responsible man, who knew he had just a few days left. He called in his kids and gave them instructions on how to take care of their mother after he was gone. He had arranged things to a "T" and gave them all the information they needed to take care of his affairs. He told his wife the night he died that she would not have to worry about anything, the house and the car...

Happy Thanksgiving, Joe...hope you have a lot to be thankful for.

Litke came back from Germany with a Super Beetle, a 1600cc with loud pipes and oversized tires. We were on the same team of instructors at the Fort Ord Drivers School. Our office was connected to one of the big classrooms in a drafty old pre-WWII shop building...the last in a row across the street from the monster motor pool where our trucks were parked. Just across the apron on the north side of our shop was the post incenerator where the local police and sheriffs offices burned up all t...

This is a short one but has always been one of my favorites because Willie is involved and his quick wit was always a joy to me. I am not sure how it will come across in print, well, you be the judge. When we were doing student convoys in the back country of Fort Ord, we were fed lunch by the cook school's field mess operation (where their students learned to use their field equipment). There was limited parking at the field mess so we parked the convoys at a nearby break area and loaded...

Fort Ord was one of the most beautiful places I was ever stationed. Right on the northern lip of Monterrey Bay, it has sand dunes, sea scapes, coastal hills and behind them there is a series of valleys and ridges that are literally breathtaking. I was stationed there four times (basic training counting as one). I attended the truck driver school there in 1964 and returned as an instructor in 1975. There were 5 Driver Training Ranges the school used; DTR 1 was in the sand dunes along Im...

Last year Ted showed off his guitar room.  I was not only impressed, I was totally jealous.  I don't get a room.  Best I can do is a corner in the basement office.  (Sigh).  So here's my corner.    

I just wrote about Lampasas and being surprised to find racism previlant there. I guess I should have expected to find that kind of thing but I really thought of Texas as a western and not a southern state. But the faulty logic at play there didn't account for the fact that racism is not territorial or regional. I learned as I got older that large towns and small are populated by large minds and small. Still, some of the experiences I had while traveling around the USA were surprising to me. F...

Same age, almost, same desert almost, same last name.  Makes a daddy proud.

I was watching some congressmen grilling the CEOs of several banks the other day, lecturing them and attempting to embarass and ridicule them in front of the world...in part because they traveled on private aircraft. I have some limited experience with congressional travel overseas and you might be interested in some antecdotal information on how frugal your congresspersons are with YOUR dollars. When they travel overseas, congress is paid per diem (a daily subsistance allowance based on lo...

Don McClean said it was the day the music died. I don't know if he meant ALL music...I doubt it...probably Rock and Roll music or at most popular music. Even narrowing it down a bit, I am pretty sure it didn't all die. But it was a day that impacted popular music in some profound ways. The plane crash that took the lives of Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz, and the Big Bopper created a void in the rock and roll world. There are a couple of side stories from that night that are interesting. Buddy ...

I know it is a silly little story. I also know that among you there are similar stories that won't mean much to anyone but you. But my best friend in high school was Charlie Smith. He only went to school for one semester because he had nephritis and was tutored at home most of the time. After high school he attended computer programming at a trade school. There was a girl in his computer class who had gone to high school with us named Cheryl. I never knew her very well, but every boy in the...

I see from national news organizations that our own Pastor Ted has become "news" again. Actually, it isn't news, it is "olds" but is getting press time now because the "new" leadership of the huge church/business that Pastor Ted founded chose to suppress it at the time the "good pastor" was disgraced. Claiming now that they suppressed the story then because they wanted to protect the "flock" after such a devastating scandal. At the time, a male prostitute/drug pusher claimed to have had&nbs...

Forty some years ago I used to listen to the early morning country music show on AFN while I got ready for work. I heard a song by Johhny Cash often, it was about a streamlined train coming through a small Texas town and all the folks coming down to the tracks to see it...something like they ain't never seen before. It was a great song. I never knew the name of the song and even many years later when I Googled it, I couldn't find out. Well, after some searching through Johnny's song lis...

    It was dark and the snow was coming straight down in big "goose feather" clumps. We had been indoors and preoccupied and had not seen the snow start or we might have left sooner. As it was, there was at least three inches on the ground and building fast. I had to get from where I was in the little town of Weilimdorf to Patch Barracks in Vaihingen. Not a great distance, but the route I usually used involved a short stretch up a tall hill with a winding road. Looking ...

Sometime in the late summer of 1967 I found myself at odds with the local Selective Service Office (Draft Board). Almost a year previously, I had received a notice to appear for physical evaluation at the induction station in LA. I had let my dad, The Chief, know about the notice and he said he would let them know why I wouldn't be there. But a year later they were concerned that I hadn't shown up and wanted me to know what a serious offense it was to blow off their notices. So that is how I fo...