Gramma had to leave for a few days to help out with some family matters. Pennsylvania Dutch families are extensive and when someone needs help, they get it in spades. She left clear instructions on meals and clean up for the family while she was gone. It fell to Betty Lou, then barely a teenager, to run the house and fix the meals. When asked if she was up to it, she responded with her trademark enthusiasm...no matter what she was really thinking. The first evening meal was a challen...

I had just a few minutes until I was due at the Rice Mill...important pick up...and once I picked it up there was no stopping until it got where it was going. So I raced into the Cholon PX parking lot and dashed inside...Cholon was run by the Navy, that meant cheap cigarettes...very cheap. It wasn't very often I could get there when it was open so I was really in a rush. I was so pleased to see there was no crowd to speak of...lookin' good for a quick pit stop. As I was speeding down ...

In preparation for writing this article, I google mapped Sierra Vista and it's environs. I was amazed at how poorly I remembered how the road was laid out until I looked at the sattelite image, then I could see that the Charleston Road from Sierra Vista to Tombstone has been redone in the last forty years. Big shock. Looking at the satellite photos, I could see the old road winding like a sidewinder on steroids... Tom was a big guy from LA. Really big. He married a go-go dancer and b...

Just a couple of months after hearing the story about the shootout in Cochise County, I was on my way from Phoenix to Tucson. It was Sunday afternoon, I had spent a couple of days in Phoenix with MamaCharlie and intended to layover in Tucson with a couple of my buddies, then drive down to Ft Huachuca early Monday, in time for work call. I was clicking along about 85 mph, a speed and RPM that seemed to please my little GTO...only about 10 miles over the speed limit. I had just gotten onto t...

Fort Huachuca was a pretty isolated place in the middle sixties. Three drive-in restaurants...one drive-in theater...one dancin' and drinkin' honky tonk...one Sambo's out on the edge of town...and a daytime only radio station. There were two laundromats and there must have been other stores and town stuff, but I never used anything else. The daytime radio station played a mix of pop and country and for news it read the Tucson morning paper and the police blotter for the county...which ...

Have a happy Labor Day weekend, JU...and for all those who labor so hard to give us this great life we have...THANKS.

In 1967 the Army was phasing out the old M37 3/4 ton truck but hadn't gotten a "permanent" replacement, yet. So they bought a bunch of Jeep Gladiators, put really uncomfortable seats and a silly looking cargo box on them and called them an M755...or something like that. As a tactical vehicle, it was not great but then neither was the old M37. I was an instructor at the truck driving school and was tagged as the primary instructor on this unwieldy piece of ...this new vehicle. I was respon...

This is an article written by MamaCharlie: Often lately I hear the statement, "Your child doesn't need you to be his friend, he needs you to be his parent." I assume that I am supposed to agree unquestioningly, thinking, "Of course!" But I don't. This one isn't true. A friend is a good thing. A real friend encourages you to do right, is on your side, cares about you, and would never let you down. We are not talking about the kids on the street, now. We are referring to loyalty, faithfu...

LT Marcus was by far my favorite Platoon Leader. He came to the Support Platoon from a line company where, as a tank platoon leader, he amassed more letters of reprimand than any other lieutenant in the battalion. His appearance was so like Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbs) that I had my very talented #2 son draw up a Calvin looking cartoon with Calvin's pants torn out in the rear and his bitten cheek exposed. He loved it, framed it, hung in on his office door. We took him with us on REFOR...

In the middle sixties, a bus ride from Ft Huachuca to Tucson cost about 8-10 dollars and took almost five hours. From the dorms at the U of A to the main gate of Huachuca is only 71 miles (a trip I am intimately familiar with, having courted MamaCharlie when she lived in Arizona Hall and I lived in the barracks at Huachuca). But the bus doesn't go to the dorms...it doesn't even go to Tucson...when you board the bus at Huachuca you go to Nogales (making numerous stops along the way), then he...

The Chief grew up in the thirties and forties in Northern California, the area around Eureka and Fortuna, never saw a mexican. When he wrangled a first date with Betty Lou, and she chose to go to her favorite Mexican restaurant, he quickly agreed. He had never experienced Mexican food in his life. He had no clue what was what and finally had to admit his lack. Betty Lou took pity and ordered him something simple...a beef and bean burrito. The food arrived and Betty Lou went right to work....

The Army owns a lot of stuff. Every unit has literally millions of dollars worth of equipment, funiture, appliances, bedding, cooking utensils, tools...on and on. Each unit's stuff is accounted for in the unit's Property Book. The Commander signs for everything, the Property Book Officer manages it all. Every piece of equipment is loaned out to the users on a "hand receipt". A platoon sergeant, for example, when he is newly arrived, will hold a platoon inventory where every single item t...

When I first got the the 14th Cav, he was the senior guy in the room I was assigned to. There were four of us in an eight man room. The old PFC, a younger PFC who was recently transferred in from the 11th ACR because they were going back to the States and for some reason he couldn't go. He was a short timer. The fourth man in the room was the only black man in the platoon and I didn't see him very much...he was tasked out to work with some other group. For the first month or so, the old ...

My first encounter with a real First Sergeant came after and exhausting 10 day journey that started at Fort Dix and went through Brooklyn Army Terminal, Bremerhaven Port, Frankfurt Bahnhof , Fulda processing point and ended in the hallway outside the Headquarter Troop Orderly Room, 2/14th Cav in Bad Kissingen, Germany. I had been told to wait in the hallway and someone would come out and retrieve me. I waited for some time, trying to stay awake and trying real hard not to listen to the buil...

I know that many of you will want to explain in detail the need to have a variety of snakes in the world...let me save you the finger work...I have for many years upheld the notion that there are only two kinds of snakes...live ones and dead ones. It is my fervent desire to insure there is only one kind of snake... I was a squad leader in a truck platoon in Mannheim, Germany. The opposite squad leader was Smitty, a deep south black man who felt much the same way as me about snakes. We...