I don't remember her name, if I ever really knew it. She was a petite soldier, a slender blonde; one of the few who could actually look feminine in BDUs. Patch Barracks is a small place and those who are stationed there run across each other periodically.  Most folks are nod-and-smile acquaintances with each other. I don't think I ever said more to her than a "hello" now and again. I guess what I am trying to say is that I didn't know her;  I knew of her and knew who she was. Bu...

Out comes the M-14. Time to clean it up again. Unlock the safe, lock the bolt to the rear, pull out the cleaning bag, set on the floor, spread out the towel. Nancy Pelosi, speaking to a group made up of legal and illegal aliens, said she thought it was "un-American" to enforce immigration laws inside the USA. INS and ICE raids on workplaces were a violation of ILLEGALS' right to work. This is the same week that US unemployment went to nearly 8 percent, the highest in some time. ? Pry the ...

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...

I wrote about living in Texas before. We found ourselves, after some minor drama, living in a two-room shack by the highway in a town that was pure culture shock to me. I had been influenced by Virginians around Norfolk in my "formative" years...living in an institutionalized bigotry...learning by absorption. But Lampasas, Texas was something altogether different. In Lampasas, bigotry was a decision, meaness a choice, and intolerance was a matter of pride. In my life, Norfolk and Lampasas were...

It was late summer of 1977. We had just spent four long, dusty, hot, windy, and mostly unproductive weeks in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It had been a "war" between the Army and the Marines. We had been manuevering all over the Marine base at Twentynine Palms. As in a real war, my part of it had more to do with supplying bullets, beans, and black oil to the shooters than actually shooting. My guys had done a good job, though. Now we were on our way back to Fort Ord. We were organized into...

Before the intersection was renovated with overpasses and a traffic circle, the spot in Stuttgart where highways 10 and 27 intersected was called "Mox Nix Corners". It was more than a simple crossroads. There were side streets, access roads, and frontage roads all coming together in an elongated oval with half a dozen traffic lights trying to sort it all out. The streetcar tracks and busstops added to the fun. The GI's referred to it as Mox Nix Corners because it didn't matter which direction ...

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...

This morning on Fox and Friends there was a report about the Army relaxing its weight standards to allow fat boys to enlist. They mentioned that these fatties had to be able to do 13 pushups in a minute. This gave the reporters the opportunity to chuckle and make fun of the Army's desperate attempt to boost enlistments. This caused my blood pressure to sail and my veins to pop out and my horns to start growing...well, it bothered me. It shouldn't; I have 26 years of experience with the media r...

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...