Homer Hirt

Deliver Me From Daffodils

2011-03-10T10:14:00.000-08:00

My almost-daily run takes me alongside a cow pasture, where the inhabitants look at me as though I am possessed, and then go back to stretching their necks through the barbed-wire fence, or the “bobwar”, as we Southerners call it, so that they can munch on the green, tender grass that grows alongside the road.

Soon I reach a stretch of woodland, and I see a squirrel or two, and a wren or a mockingbird will accompany me for a few steps, with me pacing along as he flits from bush to bush. Then there is an almost-clear area where a mobile home inhabited by a family with small children once sat. A rope swing and a rundown play house give evidence of this.

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Fame is Fleeting……..

2011-03-04T09:31:00.001-08:00

Yesterday was not a very good day for me. I am not yet recovered from “whatever is going around”, as the doctors diagnose it. I finished my Z pack and my steroid treatment, then started on an antibiotic that makes me feel fully as bad as the “whatever” symptoms. I have not been able to walk my miles each morning, much less run them.

I picked up the two daily newspapers from the box at the side of the road, returned to the galley (that’s the kitchen to you landlubbers), prepared to breakfast and read after threatening the cats with a spray bottle to keep them off the table/

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The Female of the Species

2011-02-17T09:29:00.001-08:00

I have been pondering some deep thoughts lately.

I understand that there has to be a difference between men and women. If there were not, we would have no little folk lying around needing clean diapers, and my Pampers stock would tank.

When we adopted Meredith the Baseball Coach I managed to be missing each time a diaper needed changing. It took time for my wife to catch on… but she did, and I could not avoid this onerous task when Ashlee the Nutritionist came along.

Rudyard Kipling was an English writer who left home as a teenager, and traveled over the world. He wrote many poems, novels and short stories. The one thing he penned apropos to this topic is: “The female of the species is deadlier than the male”. He learned this early on, and it is the reason that he left his mother as soon as he was weaned. Some believe that he was referring to cobras and tigers and maybe even black widow spiders. Not so: old Rudyard could cope with those beasts. It was women who put him on the run.

Kipling also penned: “But til we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen, we will work for our self and a woman, for ever and ever, Amen.” This is just another way of saying that behind every successful man there is a woman…….with a credit card.

My IQ is way up there, according to Stanford and Binet and my grandson Stuart. Regardless, this does not put me where I can understand females until it is usually too late.

Only once in my adult life did I react in time. I was very much in love with a nineteen year old beauty who lived in Alabama. I was twenty six at the time, and had a new Thunderbird. Almost every weekend I would drive the four hundred miles to her home town and we would hold hands at the drive-in theater. One day I was sitting in the kitchen, waiting for my date to get ready to go out. Her mother casually mentioned that her daughter had suddenly shown an interest in LEARNING TO COOK!

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Let Us Now Praise Famous Teachers

2011-02-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

It is not too difficult for my thirteen regular readers to get the point when they read this column:

I like teachers.

My mother was a teacher for one year in a one-room schoolhouse over near Monticello. The building burned down at the end of the first semester. She had some strange stories about her experiences there. I really don’t think that she was responsible for the fire.

I was in love with several female type teachers throughout my time in grammar (that dates me, doesn’t it?) and high school. My number one love was a nineteen year old brunette who showed up to teach at Chattahoochee High School as I began my senior year.

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What I Wish I Had Said!

2011-02-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

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Now that I have the award, I am returning it to our new Chairman. I ask him to place it before the Board of Directors at each meeting throughout the coming year, and when there is a decision to be made, I want them to look at it and ask this question of themselves: ‘Is this action good for Jackson County?’.

Thank you for this great honor.”

From My Family to Yours

2011-01-28T10:19:00.001-08:00

There are some folks that take Christmas as an opportunity to send out a family newsletter. It is good when it is just to the family. When it reaches out to casual acquaintances, it borders on, at the very least, a puzzlement. You read it; after all it is from the person to whom you gave your business card in the Branson Regional Airport just after you had been to see Yakim Smirnov and Andy Williams……… and you were feeling pleased and all was well with the world. Then, in about the third paragraph you realize that you do not know Aunt Millie and her thirteenth grandchild, or Sammy or Joelle or any of the others.

I have never had the urge to produce such a missive, or perhaps it should be called a missile. My family is somewhat mediocre when it comes to interesting folks, although I may get a challenge there.

But this year the urge descended upon me. I acknowledge that it is a bit late, but I did my Christmas column and got chided by my friends and relatives because they considered it improper for the Season. Claude Reese quoted the Bible and got front page exposure. I can’t blame Claude. At our age we should both boning up on the Book. St. Peter may have a few questions of us when we try to tell him why we should be allowed to stroll through the Pearly Gates. Sid Riley put my writing near the back of the edition, but still ahead of “Partners for Pets”.

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It’s Time to Prognosticate, not Prevaricate

2011-01-20T09:49:00.001-08:00

We have a year before us, a year fraught with whatever may be. Our President did his State of the Union speech, and the Loyal Opposition said that what he said is really not so. Governor Rick Scott decided that state spending should be cut, so he immediately put the state’s two aircraft up for sale, and his critics say that this is false economy, because he will be using his own planes and charging their use off on his personal income tax.

But these problems are minor when it comes to deciding what the subjects for my columns for the rest of the year will be.

I know that I will recognize the Navy and the Marine Corps birthdays, and I truly hope that my readers have forgotten what I have written before. I may sneak the old ones in. That takes care of two of fifty columns. I have promised to take up the bagpipes, and in my “I love a Parade” I told about chatting with some pipers and being encouraged. And today the proprietor of The Wooden Nickel in Chattahoochee admitted that he has the same desire, so we may be on the way to beginning a pipes band. We will probably rehearse in the back room of his emporium. He has excellent coffee and ice cream. At the very least I will have something for a column, if it is nothing but “well, I tried”.

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I Love a Parade!

2011-01-13T11:11:00.001-08:00

Jackson County is known for its peanuts, cotton, corn, wheat, cattle and kudzu. On the first five our farmers make money. Then they expend all that they have made trying to overcome the kudzu before it overcomes the cattle.

But we are known even more for our love of parades.

Parades are held for every possible event, except for Saint Swithin’s Day, which is closely related to goats and sheep, both of which are notorious for being difficult to steer down a highway while horns and fireworks are going off.

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Nobody Takes Us Serious

2011-01-06T09:42:00.001-08:00

Last April I had eyeball surgery. I am certain that the ophthalmologist who did the cutting has a different terminology for this, but it was surgery and it was on my eyeballs, so there! A few months passed and I went in to see the doctor for my checkup. He found that I am not seeing as well as I was, and that I should come back. My appointment is for next May. This is just before he takes his vacation, and I am certain that he, like most of us, wants to have a little extra cash on hand when he travels. Does this sound suspicious or did it just happen that way? You may decide for yourself.

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My Book Can Wait! I Want to be a Sportswriter

2010-12-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

For some months I have had an urge to write a book. I did the last chapter first, then suffered writer’s block. Now I feel the need to move away from my usual subjects for my columns and I have been casting about for a new direction. I have decided to put my book in limbo for a time, to change the tack of my columns and to write about sports.

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Famous Athletes I Have Almost Known

2010-12-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

Famous Athletes I Have Almost Known

While I was in the Jackson County Times office recently I caught Clint The Sports Editor working. I suppose he was working, since he was sitting behind a computer screen. He may have been playing Solitaire. I took this opportunity to tell him that I intended to write a few sports related pieces. He nodded and retorted that he might well come out with some sea stories.

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Pearl Harbor …. And I Was There

2010-12-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

I was there on 7 December 1941 when the Jap planes took off from their carriers and flew over our Hawaiian Islands. I was there when they came in low to drop torpedoes that were not supposed to work in Pearl Harbor, but they worked well. I was there when our planes were strafed at the air bases and were unable to take off to defend us. I was there when, at 0800, the color guards at each ship began raising Old Glory and as the bands began playing the Star Spangled Banner.

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The Calendars are Coming! The Calendars are Coming!

2010-12-02T09:03:00.001-08:00

The November issue of The National Geographic Magazine features “The Great Migrations”. It traces the meanderings of animals; some flying, some swimming, some running, as their body clocks send them in search of whatever whales and butterflies and birds look for during these events.

We are, ourselves, on the verge of experiencing a migration of a sort.

I am referring to the annual arrival of calendars. Every trip to the mailbox loads you up. Each time you enter the furniture store or your favorite bank, calendars are thrust upon you.

If you have ever contributed to a charity, you will be blessed with a once-a-year “gift”. If you don’t respond promptly, you will be informed that you have forgotten to send your check, and you really should tighten up and get it on the way. This is so they can send you their next solicitation, which will be a ten year supply of address stickers with your name spelled incorrectly.

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Up Nawth or Down East?

2010-11-28T10:58:00.001-08:00

Recently I wrote of my “Bucket List” and how I had fulfilled one of my longtime desires. I had never been to Maine, and the older I became, the more I thought about it. It is true that I had been within a few miles of its rugged coastline, but I had never crossed over the southern boundary on land.

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Horses! They are Everywhere!

2010-11-18T15:02:00.001-08:00

The day began like a lot of other Fridays.

The event was the First Friday Power Breakfast, and we were to observe Farm-City Day. But once again Art Kimbrough, President of the Chamber, had miscounted, and we were meeting on the second Friday. Some months ago I suggested rather strongly that Art hire someone just to keep track of first Fridays, but no, because I am an octogenarian, he did not follow my advice.

The event went well for the county and even better for horses.

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It’s Semper Fi Time Again!

2010-11-11T10:14:00.000-08:00

Each year at this time Marines celebrate the founding of their beloved Corps at Tun’s Tavern in Philadelphia in the year 1775.
Marines were established to provide riflemen who would climb the rigging of sailing ships and fire down upon the enemy decks, and board when the ships were close-hauled, and bring death to luckless sailors who opposed them.

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Homer and His Ship

2010-11-04T11:03:00.001-07:00

Once the salt of the sea is in your blood you are forever changed. Homer Hirt is obviously among those who are descriptively “hooked”. He has a large study in his home which is amorously adorned with naval memorabilia. This beautiful painting was created when Homer commissioned a fellow Navy man and renowned maritime artist, Richard C. Moore, to paint the now gone but not forgotten, USS Tweety. Homer now has possession of this watercolor art which will soon find a prominent position in that room. Homer also has reprint rights for the painting, and he can arrange Gisclee prints. This painting was custom framed by Brewer Studios.

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“You Ain’t From Around Here, Are You?

2010-10-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

“You ain‘t from around here, are you?” should be engraved on the Great Seal of Jackson County, and installed in stone over our magnificent courthouse. That is, if we had a Great Seal, and if we had a magnificent courthouse.

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My Bucket List’s Got a Hole in It!

2010-10-22T10:12:00.001-07:00

“The Bucket List”, a fine movie starring two outstanding actors, should be on everyone’s viewing list. In this story Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman become friends who, because one has only a short time to live, write up and accomplish a “to-do” list.

My “Bucket List” popped up in my column “I AM NOW AN OCTAGENARIAN - but I may still go to the Methodist Church on occasion!”.
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Another Year, Another Birthday

2010-10-14T09:22:00.001-07:00

Last year at this time I headed my column

“To John Paul Jones, the McCains and Me……..Happy Birthday!

The occasion was the thirteenth of October, which is the anniversary of the founding of the United States Navy. I had my friend Terry, who hails from Chattahoochee but who sallies forth into Sneads territory almost every Monday to have coffee with some of us, look up the date as the Jewish calendar presents it, and the day is listed as “the fifth day of the eighth month called Hedvan”. At least that is what he said it is.

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Ladies and Gentlemen, in the Center Ring……

2010-10-11T12:21:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday afternoon I walked out to my front yard and about a mile away I saw flags and a large striped tent and heard the voice of a man announcing wondrous things……skilled performers and exotic animals and all the thrills that come with a circus. I thought back, as I listened and watched from afar, about my childhood.

Perhaps nothing else brought the joy and wonderment to small towns in the 1930s more than the occasional circus.

In the midst of the Great Depression and in the South that still felt the economic burden of the Reconstruction, life was simple and monotonous, lightened only by the Saturday westerns and radio programs.

And then the circus would come to us!

Chattahoochee did not draw the “Big Top” venues, the Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Brothers shows with elephant after elephant parading through the streets to announce the evening shows. There were no highly decorated wagons laden with lions and tigers and bears (“Oh My!”), driven by men dressed in gaudy uniforms and with beautiful and scantily clad aerialists waving from the tops. Many times our circus would ease into town after dark and set up the tents and feed the animals, and the people would bed down in their trailers to rest up from their journey from the last “wide spot in the road”.

Tallahassee would occasionally be lucky enough to flag down “The Greatest Show on Earth” for a couple of days, and a few of us could make the trip with our parents, where we would feast our eyes and our imaginations on the high flying trapeze artists and the fearless lion tamers and the Human Cannonball and maybe, even get a glimpse of the great explorer Frank Buck, who “brought them back alive” from the jungles of Africa.

Our circuses had worn, patched tents, sometimes sitting askew after they were pitched. We were lucky to see a couple of elephants, but two elephants were just fine, for many of us had never seen even one before a circus deemed Chattahoochee worth a stopover. Lions and tigers? Usually one each, and each one close to his or her dotage. Rousing himself up at feeding time was the action we saw from the king of the jungle, but that was enough for us!

The circus always had dogs aplenty, smart and active ones that did summersaults and flips and jumped through burning hoops and over bars and from one high ladder to the other. As we watched we would make plans to teach our own Fido or Skippy to perform, but we never quite got them past obeying commands to “speak” or to “roll over”.

And the ladies that flipped from the high bar into the hands of the catcher were lovely and costumed with glittering sequins and feathers. At least they were lovely under the lights and from a distance. Up close they looked hard and tired and worn. But when we were seated in the bleachers and they were thirty feet in the air, they appeared as goddesses to us, goddesses that we small boys could fall in love with.

Sometimes when winter set in and the circuses had wended their way back to Sarasota, my father and mother would take me to Marianna, and we would park and observe the Mighty Haag folks in their winter quarters. In the cold light of day, the circus was not wonderful at all. The performers seemed like everyday people as they repaired and rebuilt equipment and practiced routines that seemed simple but would turn into magic when once again the wagons were loaded and taken down the road.

I recall one circus in Chattahoochee in particular, though. One day a man stopped at our dealership to get some service work done. In talking with him my father found that he was the advance man for a circus that was on the way to California to disband. This was their last trip, and at the end of the road the owners would pay off the employees, sell off the equipment and find homes for their animals. Soon my father had made a deal: for $100 the circus would camp down on the ball field owned by the Florida State Hospital, and would do two performances; the one in the afternoon would be for the patients of the Hospital, and the one in the evening would be for everyone that wished to attend.

Both performances were free to the public, and as a bonus we were allowed to show off the new Fords from the center ring. The ladies swung from the high bar and the men walked the tight rope, and the ringmaster directed our attention to the various rings as the dogs jumped and did tricks, and the clowns rolled out with their antics, and the two elephants, a mother and her child, walked around and waved their trunks.

It was truly an unforgettable night for us. The circus got underway the next day and went on down the road, drawing nearer to oblivion with each stop.

And then one day I saw where Walt Disney, the famous animator and film maker, was planning a giant entertainment park, unlike any other on earth, and he was going to have rides, and “live” cartoon characters, and animals.

And there in a picture was the famous man posing with Baby Opal, the elephant that once graced the center ring of a small circus and had played to a captivated crowd in a little Southern town.

The Day…and The War

2010-09-30T11:24:00.000-07:00

The Roll Call began:
Henry O. Bassett
James H. Brett
John C. Carter
These were men who came out on that day one hundred forty six years ago:

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Equal Time for the Big-Boned

2010-09-23T12:43:00.001-07:00

Jerry is a good friend of mine. He is also overweight, or maybe just “big-boned”.

Jerry was a member of the Florida Highway Patrol and in his youth served his state by covering Florida’s Turnpike. One incident that he tells is great. He was near the northern end and he saw a trucker in trouble, so he stops to see if he could help. The trucker addressed him as “Jerry”, even though he was not close enough to read his name tag. This made him curious, and then the driver said that he had been talking with another patrolman down near Fort Lauderdale and was told that “up the pike” there was a “dumb and ugly” patrolman, and his name was Jerry.

He feeds his grandchildren ice cream cones every afternoon at the Wooden Nickel in Chattahoochee. I drink sugar free Starbucks, look at the Krispy Kreme donuts without a twinge of remorse or desire, as he downs a triple dip of Edy’s Cookies and Cream, probably using the excuse that the kids need training in such things.

Jerry is a regular reader of my column although he has not yet registered as a “Follower”. I believe that his grandchildren could show him how to do this, but they are probably holding out until the old man is no longer good for snacks.

Jerry and I are members of the American Legion Post 241 Honors Detail, and we enjoy the camaraderie while we wait at cemeteries for the casket to show. We have heard each other’s “sea and air” stories so much we have numbered them in order to save time in the telling. We have one hundred twelve on the list, and my favorite that he tells is Number 37, with Number 62 running a close second. Of mine, which have to do with oceans and ships, he claims that Number 12 has edged out Number 1, which, of course, is about Noah’s Ark and a couple of the animals, and a keg. It is truly hilarious. I don’t advise anyone else to call out a number and expect laughs, however. Some folks can tell a joke; some can’t.

Lately, though, as Jerry increases in girth, he has taken to sending me E mails, purporting to be from various experts in exercising and/or dieting. I truly think that he is jealous, but will not own up to it because I am Navy and our pilots can land a screaming jet on a very short carrier, while their Air Force flyers usually require a runway that reaches from one state into another. I have tried to take him under my wing, although it would be difficult to imagine a wing big enough for this purpose, and I have urged him to, at the very least, begin to walk on a regular basis.

Today I received another E mail from him. It caught my eye immediately because it was titled “Getting Older and Walking”, and is bordered with ads for “aerobic flooring” which purports to be the “newest evolution in Group Exercise fitness”.

The title of the article was even more eye-catching:”The Importance of Walking“. I immediately was attracted, because I know what the author went through just to do the title. He had to upsize the print. Then he italicized it, and underlined it and ended up with it in teal blue. Sid Riley, our Managing Editor, would have to have help on something as technically complicated as this.

I was ready for the gospel, which, according to authorities, means “Good News”!

And then I read the first paragraph and I knew that I had not converted Jerry. He will go on eating Cookies and Cream at the Wooden Nickel, and making excuses. Here is what he sent:

Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $7,000 per month.

Aha! He has a fixation on nursing homes, and he feeds his grandchildren ice cream every day! He knows the truth: grandchildren will select our nursing homes!.

Then he borders on the humorous, at least as close to the border of humorous as Jerry will ever get:

My grandpa started walking five miles a day when he was 60. Now he’s 97 years old and we don’t know where he is.

That is a little funny, until you recall that Jerry is from Altha, and you had better not laugh at anything about Altha if you are not a citizen of that town. “You ain’t from around here, are you?” had its origins there, and if you are asked that, you had better start looking for the door.

Next he reveals his true nature:

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

Just last week I announced that my morning walks are up to five miles instead of three miles, and only lightning keeps me from accomplishing this. So I annoy him? Wait until I go into training for my next 5K!

I am rather surprised at the next one:

The only reason I would take up walking is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

Two thirds of our numbered stories have to do with sex, and to hear him tell it his stamina in this field has not diminished since high school. I believe that he slipped up and told the truth in this quote. I will spring this on him when next we are gathered at a graveside to render honors to one of our fallen heroes. He would not dare to deny anything in such a setting.

Jerry sent a lot more of these “jokes” over to me, but I do not worry about them. He can enjoy his Cookies and Cream, and I will sip my low-fat Starbucks, and we will, by common consent, add eight or ten more “sea and air” tales to our list, properly numbered.

Believe me; we really know how to tell them!

So I was Wrong about Horses!

2010-09-16T09:43:00.001-07:00

Horses and I have never been able to get accustomed to each other.

I once rode a horse over a narrow trail through the Sierra Maestra Mountains of eastern Cuba. This was during the time that Fidel Castro was a rebel living in the jungles and threatening the dictator Fulgencio Batista . The Naval Operating Base at Guantanamo, or GITMO, was used for underway training for U. S. ships fresh from overhaul stateside, and we crew members looked for amusement during the scant hours we had between heavy drills at sea. There was a riding stable there, and one day four of us rented horses and set out to explore.

My mount would stand still and then run to catch up with the others, which was rather disconcerting since we were often on narrow trails and
alongside thousand foot drop offs. His gait was uneven and ragged. When he would stop, he would try to bite me, and if I dismounted he would step on me.

There was a reason for this.

My father, while a soldier in France in 1917, on occasion had to dine on horse meat, and I am certain that my mount could sense this. The Bible says that the sins of the fathers shall be inflicted on the sons… So I was being inflicted. Never argue with the Scriptures, except the Book of Nicodemus.

You may have noticed that I own a statue of an elephant. The statue is six feet long and four feet high, and made of resin. He has been featured in parades here in Jackson County, and politicians far and wide know him by name and have posed with him, including one who has since left the Republican Party. Because of this statue I have taken it on myself to learn about these fine animals. I know that they take twenty three months to gestate, and that their tusks are similar to teeth and are valuable. Their trunks are prehensile. When they run they always have one foot on the ground, which is basically the way I run. And elephants are said to have a tremendous memory, and that they never forget.

But they have nothing on equines. Horses that I get near remember that my father had char-grilled flank horsemeat steaks, with Worcestershire Sauce, during his Army days ninety years ago. They step on me, and bite me, and try to throw me down mountainsides. So I have avoided them.

But Saturday that changed.

My grandson Stuart and I went over to the Ag Center on U. S. 90 Saturday to see an antique car show. The autos did not appear, but we noticed activity in the arena, and went up to check it out.

And there were horses, beautiful, well-behaved ones, ridden by beautiful, well-behaved ladies. And they were riding in time to music and parading around in formation. And it was worth our sitting down and watching.

Then at break time we found out that we were in the midst of a rehearsal of the American Dreams Mounted Drill Team and Show Squad. We met Kidnight Color Design, who, when he goes out on Saturday night, is known to her admirers as “Sparrow”. Sparrow immediately attracted me, because she is blond and blue-eyed and reminds me of my true love Doris Day.

Next horse to sashay up to the fence for our inspection was Don’t Look at Me Mr., but we did look, and admire, and we learned to pet a horse on the side of his neck, because that is where the teeth are not.

There were other mounts; all sleek and good looking, and they all seemed to know what to do. The riders were pretty sharp, also. We learned that anyone with a horse and the desire can try out for one of the teams, and learn the formations that are a part of this sport. The Boss Lady, called the Drillmaster, in charge is Tammy Dobek, and she almost sold me on taking up the sport. From Tammy we learned that beginners are welcome as long as they have a horse and a helmet and are willing to learn.

We found out that the American Dreams teams are well known, and that they perform often at horse shows and other events. They are headquartered in Marianna, and you can learn all about them on their Website. I am going to be watching out for one of their shows, for I understand that they sometimes use flags, lances, swords, fireworks and “more”. I may really not want to know what “more’ is. Lances, swords and fireworks will be enough for me.

When I went on their Website I found that the description of the abilities of a Drill Team horse pretty well matches what most men look for in a mate: “A good Drill Team horse has many abilities: looks, style, and must be in overall good health. They must have a good disposition, and at least have a ’forward’ gear.”

And if I am going to be around them, I would add “and a forgiving nature”.

Visit thier website at http://www.americandreamsmounteddrillteam.com/

Flag Day?

2010-09-09T08:59:00.000-07:00

This morning I, along with nine other members of American Legion Post 241, rendered honors to a deceased veteran, a long time member of our Post, and one of the few remaining men in this area who served in World War II.

We rendered these honors by reading a short message about his service to his country. Then two of us folded the United States Flag that had been stretched over his casket, and it was presented to his next of kin. We fired a three volley rifle salute, followed by “Taps”, the music that for over a hundred years has signified the end of the day for the soldier and the end of his life here on earth.

As we had waited for the funeral cortege to arrive, I noticed a scattering of small flags on some of the gravesites. Placed there for a special occasion, perhaps for Memorial Day, they were tattered, dirty and torn. I straightened one up so that it would not touch the ground.

I stood there, and thought about our Flag.

Last week the mayor of a nearby town had received a U. S. Flag that had been flown over the United States Capitol. It came from a Congressman’s office. The mayor seemed pleased at the gift. The picture sent me to do research.

The program began in 1937, when a Member of Congress received a request from someone “back home” for a Flag that had flown over the Capitol building. The Architect of the Capitol accommodated him, and the program has grown from that point.

Soon one flagpole did not suffice, so more were installed, and a detail was assigned to fly Flags, however briefly, over the Capitol.

Over a hundred thousand Flags are hoisted annually to the peak of a short staff, lowered and packaged, along with a “Certificate of Authenticity”, and shipped to someone. All requests go through a Congressman’s or Senator’s office. Prices run from $13.25 to $22.55, plus shipping and packing. I could not find how many people are required to furnish this “service”, nor how much it actually costs the taxpayer. I do know that, on occasion, a Member presents one, free of charge, to someone. Perhaps the one to the Mayor came under that classification.

I do not have such a Flag. I have not requested one, and do not plan to do so.

I do have the Flag that draped my father’s coffin that day in March when he was laid to rest. He was a soldier with General John J. Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces in France in the Great War.

I have a Flag that once flew over the USS SAUFLEY, a destroyer that saw service in World War II in the Pacific war against the Japanese. The Flag was used years later, when I was a young officer in her during the uneasy days of the “Cold War”. It was to be destroyed because it was frayed, so I brought it home and had it repaired.

I have assisted in presenting many Flags as we mourned with survivors of honored dead.

Since that day in September when terrorists crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the field in Pennsylvania, we have seemingly become obsessed with the Flag.

We fly it from houses, and from stores, and along streets and high above businesses and sometimes even from the antennas of new cars on display.

We fly it as decorations. It is not uncommon for a speaker to stride onto a stage that has ten or twelve or twenty U. S. Flags in a row serving as a backdrop or for some well meaning organization to use them as centerpieces at their annual banquet.

In the days of protest during the 1960s we as a people condemned those that made garments from our Flag or otherwise desecrated them.

Today we buy shirts and shawls and hats with the same design emblazoned on them.

Once flags were flown reverently on the Fourth of July and on Memorial Day and on Veterans’ Day.

Today we fly them from our homes and along our streets on President’s Day and Flag Day and on any other day when we feel patriotic.

Today we American Legion members presented a folded United States Flag, with its thirteen beautiful stripes and its field of blue and its fifty white stars, to a weeping widow.

Today a man or woman will receive from his Member of Congress a folded United States Flag, with its thirteen beautiful stripes and its field of blue and its fifty white stars and a Certificate of Authenticity.

Today………which would you say honors our nation?

And then the President said:

2010-09-02T09:15:00.001-07:00

Here we are, well into the second week of the campaigns which will culminate in this year’s General Election.

There will be, one way or the other, a new Governor of our great state.

We will have a smattering of new state officials, including a new Commissioner of Agriculture. It is rumored that Doyle Connor, a man who held the office for many years, said that the only qualification for the job was to look good on a horse.

You will notice that I said: “It is rumored…..”, I placed that caveat into my statement because I am going to write this week about quotes, misquotes and quotes that were never said by the supposed author in the first place.

Take this one:

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21 I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years”.

This has always been attributed to Mark Twain, but no scholar has ever been able to find it in any of his writings. We know that the statement is true, but Twain did not say it. I am ready to accept it as originating here and now in my column, but only because my father has no opportunity for retribution.

Ol’ Sam’l (Twain’s real first name) did lay this one on us, and it is not used as often as it should be:

“We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow as the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we have gained by prying into the matter”.

In this one statement we have anthropology, history, religion, science and humor stirred into one pot. Now, that’s the way I expect Mr. Clemmons to write!

You can see from these two quotes that the same saying, filled with the wisdom of the ages, does not draw equal attention when they come from common folk. With Mark Twain’s imprimatur upon it readers will chuckle and get out a highlighter, or E-mail it far and wide. But I put it in my weekly writing, and the reaction is: “After all, he is eighty years old, and you can’t expect anything better”, and there it dies.

Like many folks in Jackson County I attended a church service today. It was a good service, as such things go. The music was excellent, and we had a covered dish dinner afterwards, and even a Methodist can find no fault there. As in most services the preacher read a scripture. Most announce the location in the Bible and give time for the congregation to find the page and follow along with him as he reads it out loud. Not me. I trust preachers to read correctly the selected verses, and will continue to do so, until he commends to us a passage from the Book of Nicodemus, either in the Old or the New Testament. Bible reading is no time for flights of imagination. It is serious business.

Most politicians often borrow quotes from others to fit a particular event. Many of us heard President Reagan on the occasion of the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger quote the first and last lines of the sonnet High Flight. It was a stirring and moving moment. The Great Communicator read:

“Oh, I Have slipped the surly bonds of Earth

And danced the skies on silver-colored wings…

and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of...

And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod

The high unsurpassed sanctity of Space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.”

The poem was composed by a young pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941. He wrote it on the back of a letter and sent it home. He crashed a few days later and the poem has been quoted from time to time throughout the years, but never at a more appropriate time than when President Reagan spoke the words to a grieving nation.

President John F. Kennedy has been known for his speeches, and we admired the way that he gave them. “…..ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country.” But we do not often continue the quote, and we should. It reads “My fellow citizens of the World, ask not what America will do for you, but what we together can do for the freedom of man”. What breadth this adds! And, by the way, the first time the beginning sentence came to the attention of the public was from the pen of Kahlil Gilbran, and was written in Arabic.

Since I began this column with a couple of humorous sayings, I would like to end with my favorite.

One of the most controversial issues of all time has been the sale and the consumption of alcoholic beverages. The statement below has been narrowed down to a member of Congress, but no one yet claims it. A member had been queried on his opinion, and he answered, in part:

“If when you say whiskey you mean the Devil’s brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty,…..then I am against it with all of my power.

But if when you say whiskey, you mean the oil of conversation, the philosophic wine, the ale that is consumed when good fellows get together, that puts a song in their hearts and laughter on their lips…the sale of which puts into our treasuries untold millions of dollars that are used to provide tender care for our little crippled children……to build highways and schools and bridges, then certainly I am in favor of it.”

I intend to give all members of Congress a reasonable time, say thirty days from the date of publication of this column, to claim credit for the authorship.

And if no one steps forward, it is mine!

Wal-Mart, We Love You, Really We Do!

2010-08-26T09:01:00.001-07:00

Modern Americans are born either to love or to hate Wal-Mart. There are very few folks that are in-betweens, except for me. I would like to have it known, before Mickey Gilmore the Manager comes looking for me with one of his on-sale, no- coupon- needed, case- thrown- in hunting rifles, that I am truly ambivalent.

I do not shop at Wal-Mart.

I do buy there.

I do not shop anywhere. I do not even shop for groceries. I cannot blame that on my daughter, Ashlee the Nutritionist, although she did guide me, and showed me how to read labels and figure calories and sodium content. I read the labels but that doesn’t mean that I pay much attention to them. Ashlee inherited from her mother the ability to tell when I am lying, so I read the packages and tell her the truth, as far as it goes. I do prepare a shopping list for groceries, and I stick very close to it.

But back to Wal-Mart.

Last week I bought a nicely done, made-in-Canada picture of the famous “Sailor Kissing the Nurse in Times Square” photograph on the occasion of the ending of World War II. The act portrayed is not an unusual one. Sailors have been kissing nurses for decades. In fact I kissed nurses myself until the medical profession began letting male nurses in. Even a sailor has to draw the line somewhere.

And of course I went to Wal-Mart for the photograph. Only Wal-Mart had it. It was hanging next to one of Marilyn Monroe. This was the famous picture of her leaning forward, luscious lips parted, eyes with the famous “come-play-with-me” look. But I was there to perform my patriotic duty, so I ended up with the Times Square photo. I delivered it to my friend Grady, who is a World War II veteran, fought in Europe and was waiting to be shipped out to the Pacific when the conflict ended, in Chattahoochee today. I will sleep the sleep of righteousness tonight.

And this set me to thinking about Wal-Mart, and what makes it different. Sam Walton began in Bentonville, Arkansas. Before that he had owned several stores that were franchised as Ben Franklins. These were slightly different from the usual town square five-and-dimes. Walton continued with the lower cost merchandise, but pursued sales by offering low prices and a wide variety of goods. Soon he hit on the formula that began the rise in sales and number of stores. We all know what happened. I understand that ninety percent of Americans are within a fifteen minute drive of either a Wal-Mart or a Sam’s Club. I am one of the ten percent. I live twenty minutes away, unless it is one of the days when I have breakfast at the Gazebo with a Lovely Lady. On that day I am two hours and twenty minutes away from Mickey the Manager’s marked-down items.

Today Sam Walton’s empire sells more goods than Target, Home Depot, Kroger, K-Mart and several other “Big Box” stores, all added together. Many of the stores sell groceries, and Wal-Mart outsells two of the biggest grocery chains each year.

Sam Walton served his country in World War II in the U. S. Army’s Intelligence Service. His father was a farmer who moved frequently. Young Sam became the youngest Eagle Scout in Missouri history. He excelled in sports in high school and milked cows at home. His upbringing and his desire to help folks carried over to his stores, where charity events are commonplace, not the exception.

Walton gave a couple of reasons for his success:

“We’re all working together. That’s the secret”.

“Each store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community”.

And this brings me to my point.

Many Americans, myself included, have been in retail businesses. We have run clothing emporiums and automobile dealerships and grocery stores. We have begun small and many of us stayed small. We fit the norm of selling to customers in our area but most of us did not think about reaching out. We did not consider that we should open multiple outlets or expand to other areas or stay open longer hours so that our customers could shop easily or add more lines. It did not occur to us that we could do these things.

But Sam Walton decided to do them; he served his customers and got big, and bigger, and finally became the biggest. He became one of the richest men in America, and when he died in 1992 his children were listed among the top twenty richest folks in America. Not a bad record for a farm boy who came out of the depths of the Great Depression, is it?

And now, I have to end this column. I have some buying to do. I wonder if Mickey Gilmore still has a copy of that picture of Marilyn Monroe…………

A Date That is not Remembered

2010-08-20T08:08:00.001-07:00

Today is August 15.

On August 15, 1945, imperial Japan, on order of its emperor, capitulated in its war against the allied nations.

The war, intended by Japan to expand its influence throughout the Pacific with the so-called “Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere“, began with the invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s. The aggressor went head-to-head with China, a country divided and subdivided by warlords, generalissimos and just plain bandits. The fighting was sub-human, as evidenced by the Rape of Nanking, where the soldiers of Emperor Hirohito slaughtered thousands of innocent civilians.

And then the attack on Pearl Harbor came on December 7, a date that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said would “live in infamy”.

More lands fell: the Philippines, Malaysia, islands across the vast Pacific Ocean. Australia was threatened. As the Imperial troops came, civilization went out the window. The Bataan Death March, prison camps and unmarked prison ships that were often sunk by our own planes, the construction by thousands of prisoners of war of the infamous railroad made famous later by the movie “Bridge on the River Kwai”, only demonstrated man’s inhumanity to man.

The Japanese themselves were not immune. The pecking order in their armed forces dictated that the lowliest soldier would be kicked and beaten as he was ordered into combat if the officer saw fit. The infamous “Banzai” charges throughout the jungles of the islands in the southern Pacific were not only an offensive tactic but a requirement of the code that required death at the hands of the enemy in preference to surrender.

But Japan gave up, announcing her capitulation on August 15, a date that, to the best of my searching, was not mentioned in newspapers or recognized on radio or television.

But some remembered.

There were fifty two United States Navy submarines that went out and have never returned, and are listed on memorials as on “eternal patrol”. Families of the crew members know only that they are still missing.

Visitors to Honolulu often visit the USS Arizona Memorial. Many do not realize that the structure where they stand straddles a sunken ship that entombs hundreds of sailors. Ashes of Arizona survivors can, by request of the families or the sailor, be taken down by divers and placed with the remains of their shipmates.

Many believe that the formal surrender later in September in Tokyo Harbor should have taken place on the USS Enterprise, a ship that first stood into harm’s way just after Pearl Harbor was attacked, and carried Admiral Bill Halsey’s flag throughout major battles as our Marines island-hopped from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The USS Missouri won the honor because it was Admiral Nimitz’s flagship, or maybe because it was named after President Harry Truman’s home state or because his daughter Margaret christened it.

The grandfather of Senator John S. McCain was one of Admiral Halsey’s senior officers. He was worn down but he was ordered to stay for the surrender. The next day he flew home to California. His wife had a party for him and invited their friends; Admiral McCain excused himself during the festivities and went into another room and died of a heart attack.

I recall a friend that served in the USS Saufley, a destroyer, in sixteen battles. E. J. was from Chattahoochee, and he stayed with the ship through all of the battles, surviving to write a best selling book about this fine ship. The book is “Tin Can Man” and it is still in print.

When I was in business with my father I would attend dealers’ meetings, and on occasion we would gather in a restaurant or lounge at the end of the day. One sallow and emaciated man would, after a couple of drinks, start weeping. I found that he was one of the survivors of the Bataan Death March and of the prisoner of war camps. He lost his dealership in a poker game.

Grady, a gentleman in his nineties, and I occasionally have coffee together in Chattahoochee, and we talk about our childhood in that small town, and about the rivers. Last week he mentioned Eisenstadt’s photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square when the announcement of victory came. We laughed about that, and then he said: “I had been in combat in Europe and I was waiting to be shipped to the Pacific for the final invasion of Japan”. The atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan’s homeland probably saved his life, and that of a million or so fellow servicemen, and uncounted Japanese who were set to defend their shores to the death.

I did not find any mention of this date in the newspapers or on television, but I did find a print in Walmart of the sailor kissing the nurse. I looked at it and then walked on. But now I believe I will go back and purchase a copy.

And take it to my friend Grady.

Mish-Mash

2010-08-13T08:20:00.001-07:00

At times subjects for my weekly column are difficult to come by. On occasion I end up with too many possibilities.

This week I am closer to the latter, so I have titled it “Mish-mash”. This term comes from a now defunct American Indian tribe-------The Minequans, I believe, or perhaps it was the Lower Kickapoos-------- and it means “don’t stir up the cooking pot, you may not like what you find”.

So here is a “mish-mash” of ideas that I have had for some time. Please don’t tell me that I skipped around too much in this work. I intend to skip around, and confuse all but the most erudite and understanding reader.

Some of these ideas I have discarded as improper or perhaps not worthy of such a first line newspaper as the Jackson County Times. A few ideas will be mentioned briefly, more to tantalize that to fulfill you, and I shall pick them up at a later time and expand and expound on them, and present you with a full column of great interest. If not exciting to you, I know that the twelve members of my blog will read them, and I will be happy.

For the first one, I would like to call to your attention that we are nearing early voting time, which is when we eager citizens will participate in balloting via some amazing machines at Sylvia Steven’s office, or at a couple of other selected sites in our wide county. Our choices between candidates will be fairly straightforward, but the proposed amendments? These will give you problems unless you follow these directions closely. First, read the amendment as it will appear on the ballot. Secondly, study thoroughly all of the editorials in the newspapers that give you points either for or against each one. Then scour your mail on the subject. Spend at least two nights on each one and arrive at a conclusion. Decide to vote it up or down, in or out, yes or no. Then go to the booth and vote the exact opposite and you will be, as Sid Riley our Mangling Editor says in his column, “getting it right”.

I have also had the urge to denigrate one or more, or all, of the candidates for office, and to promote one party over the other, but in Florida that is dangerous. It is best for me to avoid this. I would like to note that a couple of years ago my column was titled: “Political Party? Take Your Pick!”, and I listed out the twenty or so parties that have official standing in our State. I ended up stating that if I ever left the “Grand Old Party”, with it’s elephants and flags, I would probably swing over to the Surfers’ Party of America. You younger readers may believe that this relates to the nerds of computerdom, but you are wrong. If you are a true Surfer then you will be seen deep within the curl of a giant wave off Kanehoe Bay. And you will vote a straight Surfer party line.

My first venture into voting was in the early 1950s. General Dwight D. Eisenhower was waging a campaign against not only the incumbent but against a strong Democrat party. He rode to victory under the banner of “I Like Ike”. About the same time a strange little creature from South Georgia came out of the Okefenokee Swamp and into the hearts and minds of America through a comic strip titled “Pogo”. Wile E. Cat conned him into running for president with “I Go Pogo” as his motto. This little fellow was, of course, Pogo Possum, and he gave sage advice that is often recalled today. “We have met the enemy and he is us” is quoted somewhere daily, usually by treehuggers. I personally like “We don’t know all the answers, ‘cause we ain’t sure of the questions yet”. The latter seems more appropriate to our times. He had other friends: Cherchez La Femme, who was a turtle, and Albert Alligator, who was, as you might expect, an alligator, but one that smoked a cigar and walked on his hind feet. I didn’t vote for Pogo then, but I believe I wrote him in for governor in a later election. He would have made a good one.

I am tempted to tell, in detail, how Margo Lamb, producer of The Fitness Corner show on Chipola Speaks, interviewed me on television and presented me with another 5K medal. Margo has freckles, and that makes her okay with me, and puts her on my list of all time favorites, but not as high up as Doris Day, who also has freckles. As I tried to compact this event into a short form, I realized that I had enough material for a full column, so I will go no further for now.

On the way out of the studio after my interview I was stopped by Royce Reagan, who suggested that I do a monthly show, something in the vein of my writings. I felt flattered that he would ask me to do this, until I recalled that he often goes on the air and says “Don’t call me and tell me of an idea for a show. Come in and do it yourself”. It makes me believe that Royce is desperate for new material, and might already be hanging around the courthouse and accosting accused folks that have posted bond and suggesting that they come down and show the TV audience how to set up a meth lab.

So look for expanded columns from me, drawn from the subjects mentioned here, and possibly for my monthly Chipola Speaks show, as soon as I decide the format.

Unless Royce signs up the meth lab man first.

I Opened a Whole Barrel of Seminoles!

2010-08-06T20:24:00.001-07:00

I thought that I had written an interesting and thought-provoking article, one of historical value, a story of the sea and of family life, a tale of higher education and the beginning of an athletic dynasty that has set records during its relatively short time in existence.

The story of “Cousin Ed and the President of Gatorland” was published last week in the Jackson County Times. I was certain that my telling of the first football coach of the Seminoles would bring reactions aplenty from my reading friends.

And I was right!

A resident of Tallahassee, who was one of the early members of the Flying High Circus, a cheerleader and, before you get the wrong idea, a Marine, was at the Seminole Boosters’ Luncheon at The Gazebo Saturday, and I wanted him to see the article. I walked in and I was descended upon, not by happy Seminoles but by ones who gave me the message that “you didn’t go far enough”. George Cone reached me first, but before he could say anything Earl Williams elbowed him to one side and, loud and clear, asked “What about the basketball team in 1946? Ed coached that, too” Of course Earl was on the team, and he probably pitched horseshoes also, and maybe was point man on the curling team, but this was before Florida State University. It was still a girls’ school.

So here is a tenuous connection with that first basketball team, coached by Cousin Ed and made up of celebrities and near celebrities and plain ole’ boys, with at least one of them from Jackson County.

Jim Pavy was also a player. Jim was good with the hoops, and better at coaching. He finished school and began his coaching career. I met him when he was at Chattahoochee High School. He told me one day that “Ed taught me everything I know”, which I somehow doubt, because Jim came from a part of the country that glories in roundball. It is rumored that a birther there, whether a medical doctor or a midwife, catches the newborn, slaps his bottom and hands him a basketball.

I believe that Jim Pavy coached Malone to a state championship and ended up at Chipola. My daughter Meredith the Baseball Coach, who lettered in four sports in high school, received a scholarship for basketball, and Jim may have coached her.

My other daughter, Ashlee the Nutritionist, who had been a cheerleader in high school and a very good one, had to take a physical education course, so she and her friend Michelle, also a cheerleader, decided that golf was their game, probably because the outfits were cute. Their instructor was Jim Pavy. Last week Ashlee visited me and stocked my refrigerator with low fat, saltless, bland foods that may well still be there when she makes her next visit at Christmas. When I asked her about her golf experience, she told me that all she remembered was picking up golf balls by the bucketsful, and that she learned to keep score. She mentioned “eagles” and “birdies” and “mulligans”, but did not recall that the clubs were numbered or had individual shapes. I think that she got a B grade.

Other famous folks? D. L. Middlebrooks played on that first football team, and was later a Federal judge. Chris Kalfas, a Tallahassee native whose father began the Silver Slipper restaurant, where more legislation was passed than in the Capitol, was somewhere in the lineup. Chris and I hunted together on occasion and once I attended a family wedding. Let me tell you that the movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” does not do justice to the real thing.

Ken McLean had played for the University of Florida before World War II, and was on the first Seminole team. I understand that he held records at both schools. Ken later coached at several high schools in the Big Bend. I knew him when he was assistant principal at Sneads High. He was still a Seminole “All the Damn Time”, as the famous yell went.

Saturday night I and my grandson Stuart went to Jerry’s Restaurant in Chattahoochee so that he could stoke up on fried shrimp. This seems to be one of his purposes in life, even though I have warned him of the very real possibility of his becoming the reason for making this sea creature an endangered species. Ben Dudley and his family came in, and Ben’s son complimented me on my articles.

Then Ben, who had been at the Seminole Boosters’ meet in Marianna, suggested that I had been incomplete in my describing the glories of the Seminoles. He ended up by reminding me that the first Renegade had been raised by a family from Chattahoochee, but that the patriarch of the family was a Gator by birth and upbringing. He mused that perhaps it was the girls in that clan who actually brought the steed up not to fear unruly crowds, and to stand firm while a steadfast young man, clad in full Indian regalia, rode out onto the field and hurled a lance into the Astroturf or Bermuda grass or Zoyzia or whatever the groundskeepers had placed there.

I said nothing, but nodded thoughtfully, and we took our leave since our waitress said that there was no more shrimp. She may have told us this because we were talking too much football, but probably because it is impossible to reach full capacity of a teenage boy. I certainly hope that she did not mean no more shrimp “in the Gulf”.

So here I sit, trying to please every Seminole fan or graduate or jock, knowing that as soon as the Times is placed in the newsstands I will get more calls, and that I will hear, as I walk the streets or try to sleep or dine or otherwise recreate, “Why don’t you tell about…….”. I intend to ignore each suggestion and go back to writing about rivers, or runners, or medals.

Unless I get confirmation that Army coach Red Blake recommended an assistant for FSU, and that assistant, whose name was Vince Lombardi, was turned down because he did not have head coaching experience.

That could be worthy of another Seminole column.

Words to Live By - Or Maybe Die!

2010-07-30T09:31:00.001-07:00

We columnists, or as Sid the Mangling Editor classifies us, “contributing writers”, must use words and we must obtain them from quotes or out of a thesaurus or from graffiti.

So we use borrowed words.

We cannot make up words, because all of the good ones have already been discovered. Misspelling existing words does not count as new ones. Sid misspelled “rudiments” for several months until I called his hand on it. I was right, but it didn’t keep him from putting my work two pages behind the “Partners for Pets” appeal.

I used the word “myriads” incorrectly in a column once, and a man stopped at our table at the Gazebo the next week, introduced himself as being a graduate of my alma mater and later sent me an E-mail that Dr. Zimmerman of that institution would have chided me for my error if he were still alive. I would like to start regular communication with him since we have something in common, but I cannot find my English textbook from the first half of the last century and I know that he will be continuously finding fault with my word usage.

Most educated folks like to quote famous people. Mark Twain is quoted more than anyone else, with the possible exception of Madonna. Twain wrote about steamboats and young boys in caves and Indians (he spelled it “Injuns”, and I am glad that Dr. Zimmerman was not around. Twain would have been in big trouble). He did make a comment about government on occasion, and I really like the one that says “Congress has been proven to be the only truly Native American criminal class”. He deserves being read. Or you can read Madonna, if you wish. Each has left a mark on civilization.

On occasion I receive an E-mail purporting to be quotes from Will Rogers. They are referring to Will Rogers the writer and raconteur, not Will Rogers who sells Fords on Lafayette Street. You can tell how Ford sales are going in Marianna by observing where Will has lunch. Good sales….Madison‘s. Low or no sales……..sardines and saltines at a local convenience store.

Dr. Tom Kinchen is president of the Baptist College of Florida in Graceville. When he was Chair of the Chamber of Commerce I got to know and to admire him. Not that I don’t admire all Baptist preachers. I praise them so I can cover all bases on my way down Life’s path. John Wesley may have gotten it all wrong, and I want to be assured of some mercy at the Pearly Gates.

Dr. Kinchen is fond of quoting Winston Churchill, as am I. Churchill should have the lion’s share of the credit for our victory in World War II. He is praised for rallying his people in the darkest of days. Tom should be careful, though. Once Churchill announced that the people of Britain would have to do without the necessities of life in order to save civilization. Later that evening he hosted some newsmen, and regaled them with stories as he smoked a Cuban cigar (an H. Upmann, my favorite) and enjoyed a snifter of brandy. When questioned about this seeming contradiction between his earlier words and his actions that night, he explained “I said ‘necessities’ not ‘luxuries’ ”. I hope that Tom never quotes this. You know how the Baptists are about brandy.

I am certain that I do not have to remind the twelve regular readers of my column that several weeks ago I won a medal in a 5K run/walk. I am quite proud of it, and I would show it off in public more often, but I pinned it to my pajamas and the ribbon is somewhat ragged now.

Since then I have been receiving quotes via E-mail that are gleaned from the “Runner’s World” magazine. They are meant, I am sure, to be inspirational, and I will leave it to you to determine who forwards them to me. Here is one:

“Winning is not about headlines and hardware (medals). It’s only about attitude. A winner is a person who goes out today and every day and attempts to be the best runner and best person they can be. Winning is about struggle and effort and optimism, and never, ever, ever giving up.”

Anyone who reads that challenge without feeling his heart beat faster is on the way to becoming a vegetable, and I am far from that. The day that I received this I went out and cut a minute off my best three mile time. How could I not?

And then I received this one:

“I usually run the first half of the marathon and run-walk the last half. It gets harder to run 26.2 miles at my age, but I’m inspired by the memory of friends I’ve lost”.

This was written by an 87 year-old grandmother of ten who is a marathon runner.

Wait just a cotton-picking minute (words from Tennessee Ernie Ford)! If there ever was a case for Jethro Gibbs of NCIS, this is it! This woman is eighty seven years of age, and she has lost all of her friends? That is suspicious. Where did she lose them? Are they really lost, or just tucked away in leg irons in an abandoned warehouse? Were they truly her friends, or were they “drafting” on her in these marathons that she has run for the better part of a century, and so she sought revenge?

And ten grandchildren! This indicates more missing persons. Where are the parents? Grandchildren only get here by way of children. I know about this, first hand. Most grandparents wish that there had been a way to skip children and go directly to grandchildren. Someone had better keep a constant check on this marathoner’s grandchildren if they are in their teens and they hang around dear old granny very much, especially on race days when there is a full moon. Forewarned is forearmed (I don’t know who first said this. It might have been Mark Twain, or maybe Madonna)!

I believe that there is enough mystery here for an Alfred Hitchcock show. I am reminded of Pogo, my favorite comic strip character. Upon being told that a black widow spider, immediately after mating, kills and eats her spouse, Pogo’s comment was: “You mess ‘round with black widow spiders, you gotta ‘spec trouble”.

Does the same go for all marathon runners? I have nothing against them, male or female. In fact, I have breakfast with a lady marathoner often, and I really enjoy it, but when she gets to be eighty seven, don’t expect Homer to be hanging around!

Cousin Ed and the President of Gatorland

2010-07-22T12:33:00.001-07:00

Almost every family, particularly the families of the South, will have a character that is usually described as “larger than life”. He may be a father figure or a barroom brawler. The character may be rich or poor as dirt in a two rut road; brave, or maybe just afflicted with bravado, but still will be described as “larger than life”.

In the Hirt family our larger than life character was my father’s first cousin, and thus my second cousin or, as some genealogical freaks would determine, my “first cousin, once removed”. Here is his story.

The year was 1947, World War II was over, and floods of young veterans cast about for institutions of higher learning so that they could ready themselves, with the aid of the G. I. Bill, for the future. One of the schools open to them was the Florida State College For Women in Tallahassee. Ed Williamson, my father’s first cousin, applied there for a position as a physical education instructor, and was hired by President Doak Campbell.

And before the year was out he sent a message to the President of the University of Florida to “Go to Hell” when that worthy ordered that there would be no football at FSU. The Gator president did not take his advice, but Cousin Ed went down in the football history books as the first football coach of Florida State University.

Ed and Jerry David (J. D) Williamson were brothers. Their mother was widowed and had been left to raise them. My father was assigned as their guardian in fiscal matters. The Great Depression was in full force when the two graduated from Leon High School, but they went to the University of Florida on football scholarships. At graduation J. D. became a realtor in Jacksonville and Ed went into high school coaching, first in Newberry and later in St. Augustine and finally Lake City. He was there when World War II began.

Cousin Ed applied for a commission in the Navy, but before it came through he was drafted into the Army. I recall going with my parents down to the railroad depot at River Junction to see him. He was physically fit, but the uniform he wore sagged and bagged on him. He chatted with us for a few minutes, and the train pulled out. A few weeks later he came back through, his Navy commission having caught up with him. His blue sleeve bore the single gold stripe of an ensign, U. S. Navy.

The glamour sea duty for young officers was the patrol torpedo boat, the famed “PT” craft that was fast and armed with torpedoes and machine guns. John F. Kennedy, fated to be our President, commanded the PT 109. Ed applied for this duty, but the Navy, in its wisdom, decided he was not physically fit, so he was given command of an Armed Guard, consisting of twenty eight Navy enlisted gunners, and placed on a merchant ship destined to cross and re-cross the Atlantic, first to England and later to Russia on the infamous Murmansk run.

North Sea convoys could only go as fast as the slowest merchant ship, so they plodded across the turbulent seas at a crawling pace, sought after by U Boats and, when close to the continent of Europe, long range German bombers. And always the storms seemed to seek them out, raging against them, tossing frigid ocean waters across their decks. A man falling over the side would be left to float until he died, which often was within minutes of coming in contact with the water.

When the war ended Williamson came home to Tallahassee, and sought employment at the Florida State College for Women, a facility that was answering the call of returning veterans who would go to school under the G. I. Bill. He was there when the leaders of the university decided that a football team was just what was needed to put the newly minted Florida State University on the map.

There was some dissention about this action. One of the committee said that he had never seen a great university that had a football team. Another came back with “I have never seen a great university that did not have a football team”. That committee member, a gentleman named Coyle Moore, won, and a search began for a football coach that had a PH. D.

After some discussion Cousin Ed was called in, offered the job even though he did not have the PH. D. and he accepted, on the condition that he would hold the position for only one year, “win, lose or draw”.

One day President Doak Campbell called Ed in and read a letter from the president of the University of Florida. The missive stated that the male contingent at FSU would be considered a branch of his school, and there would be no football program. Cousin Ed said: “Tell him to go to hell…..you run your program and we’ll run ours”.

The first season was a losing season, but an interesting one. The call for players went out, and one hundred and twenty five men showed up. There was not enough uniforms or equipment. Attrition took care of the high numbers; Ed only cut one man, a veteran that showed up smoking a big cigar. (Some years later Pete McDaniel, a Jackson County Commissioner and a resident of Sneads, owned up to this ‘honor’. Pete told me that Cousin Ed looked at him and his cigar and said “McDaniel, turn in your shoes”. This was all that the players had been issued).

Cousin Ed asked for an assistant coach. He got Jack Haskin. Jack was made backfield coach. He later was the director of the famous “Flying High” FSU Circus. And that was the entire staff; no other coaches, no trainers, no nothing. In the University Club, overlooking Bowden Field at Doak Campbell Stadium, are pictures of each coach and his staff. Cousin Ed is there, looking stern and grim. Jack Haskin is next to him, also looking stern and grim. Perhaps they looked that way because the team had no name, and was facing their initial match-up.

The first game was against Stetson. FSU lost by one touchdown. A contest was held to select a name. “Tarpons” was bandied about, but that was the name of the women’s swim team. “Senators”, “Falcons” and even “Tallywhackers”, but “Seminole” won out.

Cousin Ed finished out the season, 0-5, and, true to his word, stepped down. Bill McGrotha, longtime sports writer and author of “Seminoles! The First Forty Years”, referred to him as “gentlemanly” and “benevolent”. His players called him “Mr. Nice Guy”. He was followed by Veller and Nugent and Mudra and eventually Bowden.

But none of those gentlemen ever told the President of the University of Florida to “Go To HELL”.

Optimism

2010-07-15T06:34:00.001-07:00

We have all heard definitions of an optimist.

“A pessimist says that a glass of water is half empty. An optimist says that it is half full”.

The little boy who is always an optimist about everything, so his parents decide to cure him by giving him a room full of manure for Christmas. With a joyful whoop, the little fellow starts digging in the pile. “With all of this manure, there has to be a pony here”.

And my favorite: “a pessimist says that there is a little bad in every woman. An optimist says ‘I certainly hope so’ “.

So with optimism in mind, let us think about our country.

The Fourth of July is celebrated as our country’s birthday. Some brave men got together and hammered out a declaration that changed the world. John Adams, later to become our country’s first vice president and its second president, said that we should celebrate this day with “speeches and feasting and fireworks”. Most of us do just that.

But on this Fourth of July I sat in a church, and I heard the speaker bemoan the condition of our country, charging off its problems to the failure of our people to recognize that the Creator influenced those brave men that signed our Declaration. He castigated our politics and our way of life and called for us to return, in essence, to the “good days” of history when all was well and straight and true.

It was fine to be reminded of these things. But as I listened I thought about our country’s history.

I have been a student of this history for most of my life. I know, for instance, that the decision to break away from England was by no means unanimous. I know that our American Civil War could have been averted if men of good will had listened to each other and had been willing to work out peacefully the problems of slavery and foreign trade and states’ rights. I know that, from day one, the press (or the media, as we call it now) has been one-sided,leaning one way or the other, and trying to influence either the people or those folks in office.

I know that there have always been folks who have extraordinary influence with politicians, and who have used that influence for their own personal well being.

I know that each president, except for those who died in office early, has been castigated by his political opponents, as ours is today, and as President Bush was a few years ago, and as our next one will be. The latest finger pointing was just last week, when President Obama removed the commanding general from Afghanistan. We forget, or some of us may not know, that one of the strengths of our country lies in the civilian control of our military. Truman removed General McArthur in Korea, who had been a hero of World War II. Lincoln removed General McClellan, who wasn’t much of a general, and who also had political ambitions, much like McArthur’s. Franklin Roosevelt fired General Short and Admiral Kimmel after Pearl Harbor had been attacked, even though he was as much at fault as anyone for the Japanese military success.

We blame a president for profligate spending of our people’s dollars, when we should know that the Congress must appropriate the money, and we (speaking collectively) want our representatives to “bring home the bacon” in the form of special projects for our town or county or state.

We blame a president for treaties signed with foreign powers, and we forget that the Senate must approve each treaty.

We blame the Congress for passing improper laws, when we ourselves do not bother to protest or to track and criticize the members except near election times.

In spite of all this, I am an optimist about our country and its future. After all, our country is only two hundred and thirty four years old, a span not quite three times my own age. It is possible that I could have shaken the hand of a man who shook the hand of a Signer of the Declaration of Independence!

In 1953 I was privileged to see the musical “South Pacific” on Broadway. It still had most of its original cast. It was grandly and beautifully staged, and to a Southern boy it was magical.

“South Pacific” was a love story and a war story and a story of intrigue and a protest against racism, all happening on a small island in the midst of a huge ocean. And in one song Mary Martin stepped center stage and sang “I am only a cock-eyed optimist, immature and incurably green, but I am stuck like a dope, with a thing called hope, and I can’t get it out of my head”.

So here I am, an optimist stuck with a thing called hope, believing in my country and feeling that we will recover from whatever ails us and we will get better and better.

As soon as we throw the rascals out!

Travels with Stuart

2010-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

John Steinbeck, one of America’s most popular authors of the last century, wrote many books, including Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row. Some were made into movies, and he received several awards for them. My favorite was Travels with Charley. This chronicled his adventures throughout the United States, driving a pickup truck with a special cabin built on the back and accompanied by the family poodle Charley. The time was in the sixties, and the book had been suggested by no less a public figure than Adlai Stevenson.
So, with a tip of the hat to Mr. Steinbeck I have titled this work Travels with Stuart. Stuart is not a poodle, even though at one time his hair hung down to his shoulders. He is now a member of Piper High School’s Junior ROTC program, and he has a “buzz” cut that looks good on him. He is my oldest grandson.

When my wife Theresa and I were making annual pilgrimages to battlefields of the War of Northern Aggression, we would on occasion deviate from this invasion of the Nawth and pick up Stuart. We would visit U. S. Navy ships which are now museums. Our favorites are at Charleston’s Patriot Point, where we would clamber up the ladders of the U. S. S. Yorktown and marvel at the workings of this giant ship. Then Theresa would ensconce herself on a bench while Stuart and I would explore the destroyer and the submarine.

After Theresa’s death I did not plan on any more trips. A call from Stuart changed that: “Okay, Homer, we are going to Gettysburg, and Dad is driving us”. I could not resist such a command, even though it was from a teenager much below me in rank and age.

The Gettysburg trip was good, and I refrained from correcting the battlefield guides when they leaned a bit too far toward the Union side. Southbound took us through the Shenandoah Valley, a spot that is so beautiful that words cannot do it justice. We saw General Lee’s vault, and placed coins on his horse Traveler’s grave, just outside Lee Chapel. The two of us (Dad was on his cell phone) walked through the cemetery and stood before Stonewall Jackson’s grave. I told him why the fresh lemons were scattered there.

New Market had been covered the day before. The “Field of Lost Shoes” was especially poignant, since many of the young students from Virginia Military Institute that died there were Stuart’s age.

On other excursions Stuart and I have covered Shiloh battlefield, where we spoke of the anomaly of the name: “Shiloh” means “peace“, but one of the bloodiest battles of the War was fought there; the marks of combat still are evident on trees.

We traced Nathan Bedford Forrest’s excursions through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. Forrest was rated by many historians as the best tactical general of either side. We went to Okalona; his brother died there in his arms. We stood by Tishomingo Creek at Brice’s Crossroads, and marveled at his ability to “call the shots” against an arrogant enemy.

Last year Stuart was with me when I acquired “Ron The Elephant” of local Republican fame. We had gone to Patriot’s Point and then had gotten underway for Wilmington. As we were passing through North Myrtle Beach I spotted a display of statues. We pulled in, and I purchased a six foot by four foot image of an elephant, made of resin, and we brought him back to Sneads in the rear of my Explorer. Stuart fully expected us to be stopped somewhere along the way by a state trooper.

This year “Travels with Stuart” began in Sunrise, his home town, and took us through a part of Florida that is not as well known as the lands that border the interstates and the toll roads. We rode north for a time and then cut over through Indiantown and Okeechobee. I told him of the great cattle drives, much like those that made the West famous in the 1800s. We skirted Lake Okeechobee, where I was once tempted to assist some locals in establishing a barge terminal. We went through Sebring and into Lakeland.

Lakeland is the home of my college. Florida Southern does not have a football team nor a stadium, but it has something that no other institution possesses. It has twelve buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, which makes it the largest concentration of his architecture in the world. I described how I felt when I met Mr. Wright and when I sat in an audience of young students and heard him say to us: “There is probably no one here that is intelligent enough to understand what I am about to tell you”. What a way to attract the attention of a group of college students! Wright once said: “At an early age I was forced to choose between an honest arrogance and a false humility. I chose the former, and I have never regretted it”.

We then cut over to a coastal route and visited Cedar Key. In 1923 my father had the choice of two towns in which to establish his Ford dealership. One was Chattahoochee and the other was Cedar Key. I am glad he chose the former.

As we drove I told him about the towns that we went through. Perry, the “Forest Capital”, had a Ford dealer who was single, as was I, in the 1960’s, and Theresa dated him while she was dating me. This amused Stuart somewhat, because young folks do not think of parents and grandparents as ever having been romantic. I showed him where Ted Turner’s plantation is, and we commiserated with Ted because he was once married to Hanoi Jane.

Arrival in Sneads was uneventful, but the days that have followed have been exciting to him. Stuart really likes Jackson County, with its rivers and lakes and open spaces. We had breakfast with The Runner one morning at The Gazebo. The conversation, as usual, was great, but a three way one this time.

Evenings have often been spent attending fund raisers for candidates. Stuart reveled in listening to folks like Jack Pizza, who described to him how Air Force pilots were trained to deliver the “where did everyone go” bomb. Michelle Kimbrough sold him on trying for helicopter training when he enlists in the Army. He heard from former paratroopers and from Marines (there are no “former” Marines”) and retired Navy men.

He met Marti Coley, and shared with her a political handout that had been autographed by her late husband when he ran for the Legislature. David wrote “be sure to vote when you are old enough”, and I suspect that he will do just that. He was impressed with other candidates but even more so with the attendees that took time to talk with him on an adult level.

Thursday found us at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. I collected my salute at the gate, which impressed him, and he impressed me by properly landing an F-14 Tomcat on the deck of a carrier while “flying” a simulator.

We visited Partners for Pets Friday, carrying old towels and a cash donation, and he learned about Phil Rotollo, the founder. Saturday we went to Seacrest Wolf Preserve. He donned a vest and worked as a volunteer on the tour led by Cynthia and Wayne Watkins. Cynthia praised him and awarded him a “totally awesome” wolf tee shirt.

My “Travels with Stuart” are not yet over. I am counting on them continuing for a year or two, and leaving me with a grand legacy of great times with a fine travel companion, and perhaps material for another column or two.

AN IMPERFECT FATHER!

2010-07-02T10:03:00.001-07:00

In today’s newspapers we see article after article about fathers, fat ones and thin ones, tall and short ones, business fathers and professional fathers: all kinds of fathers. After all, it is Fathers’ Day.

One thing I noted, though, was that each was perfect, or near perfect. I suspect that during this coming week, in a courtroom somewhere, a man will stand convicted of a heinous crime, and a neighbor will testify as a character witness, and will say: “but he is a good father”.
My father was far from perfect, by today’s standards.
I was attempting to write a Fathers’ Day column.
I began with these three paragraphs, and went on to list why I did not consider my own father to be like the fathers that others looked up to, the fathers that loved them, that hugged them, that stayed at home with them.

I told about his seeming lack of emotion when I had difficult times as a child, as a teenager and as a young adult. I explained that he never took the time out of his busy life to take me fishing or hunting.

I complained about lying in my bed, beset with polio and pain and paralysis, with my mother beside me, but with my father only occasionally standing in the door, stoic and solemn. I described the ceremony when my mother pinned my Eagle Scout badge on me in the Chattahoochee Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and he sat quietly in the audience.

My working days began early in my life, toiling at my father’s Ford dealership, first cleaning floors and tools in the service department, later inventorying parts in the parts department while my friends attended Christmas parties during the holidays. I described how he had driven me to the airport in Tallahassee to go to my first duty station in the Pacific during the Korean War, and how he shook my hand and told me to “be careful”, the exact words he used the first time he let me drive our family car by myself.

Then I tried to ameliorate this description, and to justify his failings, by telling of his early childhood and his growing up without a father; his service to his country when he went to France during the Great War; his hard work in beginning his dealership in Chattahoochee and how it survived through the Depression and World War II.

I remembered when I was at home on my “boot” leave and he asked me if I felt if I were capable of being an officer. When I assured him that I was, he said: “Do it. You owe it to your country”. He did not suggest that an officer’s life might well be easier for me. And when I finished my six years of active duty, and returned home, he welcomed me, not with a hug or with tears, but by handing me the keys to the front door of the dealership and telling me to open the next morning, and that I would be back in the parts department at the same wage that I was paid nine years before.

As I wrote out these scathing remarks, taking out some deep seated frustrations, I recalled a letter that I had received from him in his later years. He must have been seventy five years old. He had typed out, on his old manual typewriter, a letter to me that was titled “On Being Proud”. I found it and re-read it. He listed some things that I had forgotten: my eagerness to learn to read and to find out things from books; my work in the Boy Scouts as a leader; my college career.

He told me how pleased he was that I had not accepted a direct commission in the Air Force but had decided to enlist in the U. S. Navy and later to become an officer. He praised my work with our church. He described how happy he was when Theresa and I adopted our three children. He ended up with praise for my service to my community.

And as I read the letter, I realized that I was, indeed, writing about “An Imperfect Father”.

I was writing about myself.

The Best Movies of All Time!

2010-06-18T07:51:00.001-07:00

When a writer, regardless of his capabilities, reaches a certain point in his career and is recognized as a public figure, it is necessary that he become an arbiter. This means that he is a judge, a person capable of rendering a professional opinion on a particular subject. Usually the first field that he is called to judge is “The Best Movies of All Time”.

I have reached that point. My column this week will address great movies, and I will not brook any disputations. Last week I wrote authoritatively about nostrums of the past, most of which have vanished, and our Head of Shipping at the Jackson County Times insisted that our Real Editor, Stephanie, add a footnote that Vick’s Vap-o-Rub has not disappeared from the shelves, but it is in constant usage at her home, and that her husband often puts a smear under his nose, and that it is a turn-on for her. Vick’s may make her passionate, but it takes something by Chanel or Estee Lauder to work for me.

Let this be a warning, all you staffers at the Times. These are my movies! Hands off!

I do not recall the first movie I ever saw. I am positive it was an “oater”, possibly starring Tom Mix, Tim McCoy or Buck Jones. The plots were the same and the characters identical: the bad boys wore black hats, with the exception of the man that played Zorro, and the hero never kissed his girl friend, but sometimes in a close up scene his horse would nuzzle him. Today, in the days of “Brokeback Mountain” that might have a strange connotation, but to us it was the two minute warning before the end of the last reel.

In 1939 “Gone With the Wind” reached the Gibson Theater in Chattahoochee, and school kids could attend if they had the price of admission and their parent’s permission. After all, Clark Gable looked down at Vivien Leigh and said, loud and clear: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”. Gasps were heard throughout the movie house. We should have been required to have permission to see a British woman playing a Southern girl. That was the atrocity that we witnessed that day. That, and the burning of Atlanta.

A few years passed and Howard Hughes, that stalwart designer of military aircraft, including the all plywood Spruce Goose, produced “The Outlaw“. This was the story of the infamous Billy the Kid, and had in it the full gamut of characters, including Doc Holliday and Sheriff Pat Garrett and one named Rio McDonald, who was not found in any history books up to that point. This was Billy’s girl, and she was played by Jane Russell. Jane’s assets, at least the ones on the “upper deck”, were not shown at their best in regular clothes, so Hughes designed a special bra. He was a great engineer and many of us boys suddenly became interested in engineering as a career and went to the movie. Some of us were underage, and the poor acting put us to sleep. It was a really bad movie.

Ms. Russell became famous for her ability to look sexy while being interviewed by famous people. Bob Hope introduced her on one of his shows as “the two and only Jane Russell”. Her partner, Jack Buetel, had been signed to a contract by Hughes and did not appear in another movie for seven years. I really think he did not get another part because it took him that long to get his eyeballs back in their sockets after the famous haystack scene with Jane.

At an interview with some of the denizens of the Table of Truth and Justice in Chattahoochee, some mentioned “Field of Dreams”, but that was from jocks that only think of life in terms of home runs and strikeouts. “Sandlot” was better in my opinion. One did mention “On the Waterfront” with Orson Welles, and it truly should be on anyone’s list. Their rankings also included several “Roadrunner” cartoons, but I refused to add them to such an august listing.

You cannot dispute the greatness of “Casablanca”, even if no one actually said to the pianist “Play it again, Sam”. Dooly Wilson was the man at the keyboard, and he played “As Time Goes By”, and no one else should ever be allowed to play that piece. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman…..what a pair! Yes, “We will always have Paris” stands out, and I hope, someday soon, to be able to add that to my remembrances, but I do not intend to say it to anyone who resembles Bogart or Bergman.

Movies shown aboard Navy ships were sixteen millimeter versions of commercial shows, but were viewed under sometimes perilous circumstances. Underway on small ships both officers and men watched on the fantail (stern) of the ship, with the after gun mount turned sideways to provide the screen. This always gave a haze gray cast to the characters’ complexions. One gunner’s mate objected to a particular showing because “we just painted the mount today and it might damage the finish”. I never said that we had the brightest men in the Navy, just the best.

Ribald comments always were expressed when actresses such as Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield came into view. Some of these suggestions were probably physically impossible, but added much to the sometimes dull plots. On larger ships the officers had separate viewings in the wardroom. The captain or senior officer present made the choice of the movie, and one particular commodore had a fixation on what we called “Grade Z” westerns. Most had the same plots, shown over and over, but with different characters and vistas.

Then “Rose of Cimarron” came our way and the commodore took a liking to it. The plot was different. Rose was a buxom blonde that rode horses, shot revolvers and roped dogies as good as any man. The movie told about her exploits as she branded cattle, winged evildoers with miraculous hits from her Colts, and even lassoed a mountain lion and dragged him back to town, possibly intending to sell him to Busch Gardens. The dialogue was stilted and usually read from an off stage cue card. We watched this through two nights running and then the sound on the projector went out.

We continued watching, and a junior officer had the idea of reciting the words himself. The movie became our favorite, but always with the sound turned off and one of us uttering the various parts. It was a particularly proud evening when I drew the part of Rose, and I said: “Oh, my darling Sam, will you marry me? I am ready to settle down and have your children”. I of course did this in a deep voice and was applauded loudly.

The best movie of all time? For me, that is easy. It is “Rose of Cimarron”. Yes, I have panned it in this article, but after all it is the only Hollywood production in which I had a speaking part!

Taking The Cure

2010-06-11T10:20:00.001-07:00

Seventy five years ago, when I was a mere lad, diseases were rampant in small towns throughout the South. Doctors had skills in setting bones, removing bullets and stitching up cuts, but going past that, treatment of diseases was “iffy” at best. The local practitioners could align broken legs and bind up fractured ribs with adhesive tape and with no painkillers. Cuts were washed out with alcohol, stitched, again with no relief from the pain of the curved needles, and then the whole works swabbed with tincture of iodine. The yellow-brown stain from this often lingered well after the wound healed and the stitches had been removed. Injections from a hypodermic syringe came through a needle that had been re-sharpened on a whet rock in the doctor’s office, and felt like a fishhook barb.
But even then doctors were expensive, although they often would accept as payment a slab of bacon or a sack of corn meal or a jug of “white lightning” from Rock Bluff or Booger Bay. Treatments for ailments as mundane as warts and “stumped” toes, rusty nail punctures and childhood diseases were given at home. The medicine used often had been handed down through generations of grandmothers, woodsmen and in some cases Indian medicine men. Tree roots and bark, sap of plants or the plants themselves, well pulverized and forced down ailing throats or applied properly actually cured or gave the appearance of curing “what ailed you”.
I noticed the other night on TV that a fast-talking huckster was promoting a product that would cleanse your intestinal tract (his words), thereby getting rid of all accumulated fatty deposits and, I assume, foreign objects that you had tried to digest, and put you on the road to good health and attendant weight loss. I was struck by this, not enough to send off my $9.95 plus $4.00 for shipping and handling (again, his words, not mine), but because I recalled the annual springtime “through” of medicines that our mothers gave us when we were young. For those of you that did not experience this, I will explain. A bitter liquid called calomel, which was a mercury compound, was forced into our mouths, and a few hours later followed by a large dose of castor oil. I will leave it to you to decide why this was called a “through”. I would imagine the total cost was about twenty cents, including shipping and handling. As Carley Simon sings so eloquently “What Goes Around, Comes Around” or does she do “it‘s Coming Around Again”?. The “through” has returned, but at a much higher cost.
Other products were there for the unsuspecting child that had a real or feigned illness. Castor oil was the ultimate cure-all. A good friend of mine, now departed, explained its magic like this: you would arise on a school day, dreading what lay ahead, which could be a test or a bully that had threatened you on the playground. You would say “Momma, I don’t feel so good”, and she would pour a dose of castor oil, a vile tasting mess, down your throat. After some time she would ask how you felt and you would be afraid to claim illness since she would then insist on another dose. My friend said it never cured anything but cowardice.
Patent medicines were sold in drug stores, grocery stores and from the automobiles of traveling hawkers. Surprisingly, many are around today. Claims of magical cures are no longer made and some of the names are changed slightly, but the intimations are still there. Carter’s Little Liver Pills have metamorphosed into “Carter’s Stimulant Laxative”, and can be found in your pharmacy. It will be next to Ex-Lax, the chocolate-flavored elixir that pranksters often passed off as candy to unsuspecting playmates who were hungry for anything sweet. By the way, Ex-Lax was a cure for coughing. If you took enough, you were afraid to cough, or sneeze, or make any sudden moves that might relax certain muscles.
The Mayo Brothers’ Barber Shop in Chattahoochee was that town’s answer to the Forum of ancient Greece. It was where the sages gathered to watch a few haircuts and to discuss the world’s events. In 1939 Hitler’s Panzer forces invaded Poland, and continued rolling on through Europe. One Saturday I was awaiting my turn in the chair. The discussion centered on the almost assured “end of civilization and/or the world”. Here was the reasoning: Hitler claimed that his Third Reich would last “a thousand years”. In the Book of Revelation the author mentioned a thousand year reign of evil that would precede the Second Coming, and the Beast that would supervise this happening had as his mark “666”. 666? The hairs on the back of my neck rose! I had seen “the Mark of the Beast!” In fact I had seen several, painted on pieces of tin and nailed on trees and fence posts! I left without my haircut and went to the nearest “Mark”. It was outside of town but within walking distance. I neared it with fear and trembling, only to find that it advertised “666 Tonic”, which I assume was good for what ailed you. It must have worked. It kept Hitler away from our shores.
Dr. Ludd M. Spivey was an ordained Methodist minister that was assigned in the 1920s as president of a small college in Lakeland, Florida. Florida Southern College had two buildings, about two hundred students and a lot of debt. The trustees voted to close the doors, but Dr. Spivey vetoed this, and set out to raise money and to make the school unusual. He convinced the noted architect Frank Lloyd Wright that he should design its buildings. Spivey then went out to raise funds. The first Wright building was to be a chapel, and the story of how the money was acquired connects to patent medicine.
Dr. Spivey was in Chicago and the day was typical for that city: cold and windy. He was walking down the street and he saw a lady who was dressed shabbily and looked cold, so he invited her to dine with him. In conversation she learned about his dream for his college and about the proposed chapel and the estimated cost. They parted, but within a few weeks, Dr. Spivey received a check for the amount he had cited. The check was from a patent medicine company and the chapel, still standing, is a monument to Dr. Spivey, Mr. Wright and a “bag lady“.
There were other patent medicines out there. Some are no longer in existence. As a child with asthma, I had to inhale the smoke from Asmador, which was made from eucalyptus leaves. Today we wheezers have immediate relief from a variety of potions, oops, I meant medicines, that are more effective. I was given cod liver oil, usually by my mother, who wielded the spoon while my father forced my jaws open. Today we purchase fish oil pills. I take them, but I learned that for an hour or two after taking one my breath smells as though I am holding a sardine under my tongue. Now I wait till I get home and pop the pill and go to bed. And then my cats join me and seem to enjoy the air that I breathe out.
Iodine has been “decolorized”, and it’s about time, too. Vick’s Vap-o-Rub is gone, and that is good. (The non-existance of Vick’s Vap-o-Rub has been disputed, however, it does not change my opinion of this “kudzu killing” salve.) My grandmother used it and mustard plasters to treat my colds, and that is why I went through life with only six hairs on my chest. Nothing could grow where Vick’s had been. It could kill kudzu. She also believed that turpentine was good for ground itch and, with a small amount of whiskey added, bronchial problems. Enough whiskey would cure almost anything in those days.
Yes, I know that I have not mentioned Epsom Salts, Ben Gay, Cloverine Salve, camphorated oil nor a hundred other nostrums. But I have to save some for a future column. Stay tuned!

Trophies, Accomplishments and a Birthday Gift

2010-06-04T09:03:00.001-07:00

I’m in trouble……big trouble.
Not as bad as Royce Reagan is. Today at the Memorial Day observance several folks complimented me on winning my first 5k event. Royce, ever eager to draw attention away from his knobby knees, came out loud and clear proclaiming that I’m three years older than I had stated and, what’s more (and this is his big trouble) “The Runner” is also three years older than I had indicated. I can accept being eighty three, but he should know that you never add to a lady’s age. If he gets his wheel chair tires slit, don’t blame me. As the Book of Nicodemus says: “Hell has no fury like a Runner lied about”.
My trouble does not stem from my age, but my references to trophies and my two daughters’ recognitions throughout their lives. If you recall, in a recent column I stated: “I live in a house filled with trophies”. I went on to tell of Meredith the Baseball Coach and her athletic attainments, and how Ashlee the Nutritionist garnered one basketball letter and many cheerleading awards, and looked pretty while doing it.
All this sounded harmless until someone who signed himself “anonymous” suggested that my son also had a few trophies and many accomplishments, and why did I not write about them. I am certain that Mark himself did not do this, since he is modest and retiring and never calls attention to himself, but it could be from one, or maybe both, of his friends. And “anonymous” is correct. I just don’t like having topics suggested, except during two hour breakfasts at the Gazebo.
Before I proceed, though, you should know something about my family.
Theresa and I found that we could not have children, so we decided to adopt. Our first contact with the Children’s Home Society in Tallahassee led to a beautiful little red headed girl coming into our home. This was “Meredith the Baseball Coach”, although she was not a coach at the time. A couple of years later we went to Tallahassee and picked up “Ashlee the Nutritionist”. These worked out so well that we felt it would be appropriate for us to seek a hard-to-place child, a boy this time.
My wife had been a Presbyterian until we got married and I lied to her about how long my family had been Methodists. She changed denominations but always held to predestination as an abiding belief. On June 13 we talked and decided to approach our caseworker about our feelings. A few weeks later the lady came over to our home with four files, and one was of a little boy who had been born on June 13! Predestination came through; Methodism fell behind!
On Labor Day Theresa and I went to Fort Myers and picked up our son. Mark had been born with one hand, a problem that we figured we could cope with. After an operation we put him in with the other two children and sat back to watch. Mark was eager to please; his two sisters looked on him as a butt for their pranks. Somewhere there is a picture of him dressed in Ashlee’s dance class tutu. This was all right with him, since he figured he had a long life to even up.
We named each child appropriately. Meredith’s first name is Glenda, for Theresa’s sister. The Meredith came from “Dandy Don” Meredith, an athlete and sportscaster. Ashlee’s middle name is Ione, for another of Theresa’s sisters. The “Lee” part is for Robert E. Lee, who else? Mark came with the name “Mark” firmly attached, so we inserted “Stuart” into the middle, since we were able to afford a middle name for him, and Stuart was General Lee’s cavalry commander, one of the best ever.
Theresa felt that we should make each child proud to be adopted, so she would tell each one an “adoption” story. Meredith heard about our trip to Miami and it being the coldest day in twenty five years in that tropical paradise. Ashlee learned that she was bald, and somewhat ugly (at least in my opinion) and had a propensity for soiling her diapers, which meant she had to be changed often, just as we should change elected officials often, and for the same reason.

And Mark, in his eagerness, would plead: “Tell me my adoption story”. Theresa would use some license and tell him that we got him from Monkey Jungle and that when we went into a café for coffee, the waitress asked: “And can I bring you a banana for your monkey?” His comment was usually “OH, Mother!” This stood as a joke until two years ago, when Mark and his son and I actually went through Monkey Jungle, and on the way out we saw a sign that said “Adopt a Primate”. He looked at me and I just smiled.
Mark’s “handicap” did not hold him back. His teachers were instructed to let him try everything, and if he failed, then so be it. He played football, and the trumpet, and rode a bicycle and at age twelve would sneak my car out at midnight. His two sisters took piano from Mrs. Charolett Bailey in Chattahoochee, and once while I was talking with her after the girl’s lessons I heard someone swinging out with “When the Saints Go Marching In” on the organ. When I inquired who it was, she shrugged and said “Oh, that’s just your son”.
Accomplishments? He had many. He managed to get through Sneads High School without reading a book until his senior year. Mrs. Pam Rentz demanded that he read a book from the senior list and write a review. He conned her into letting him select one from my library, and his report was on “Young Stonewall Jackson”. He got an F for his effort. I felt that he should have gotten an F+.
One summer while Theresa was visiting her sister in Maryland, Mark talked me into building a deck as a surprise for her. We did not use a kit. My cuts were ragged; his were square. I bent nails right and left; he drove his straight and true. We even constructed a fire pit from concrete blocks.
I did go down to the school office once on his behalf. In the ninth grade he wanted to take a computer class, but was told he could not since he had not had typing and he could not take typing because he had only one hand. The principal relented, and before the year was out he had found his calling, and today he is a contractor with an outfit called National High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, and gets big awards from them, including something that looked suspiciously like a trophy to me.
Mark took ten years, working off and on, to acquire his bachelor’s degree. He progressed better after I cut him off and his Ford Probe wore out. During this process he got married and divorced, but ended up with a fine son who is now sixteen and falls for my jokes and likes Civil War battlefields and aircraft carriers and destroyers and can program my I-Pod with our kind of music.
Mark and I seldom agreed on anything. We are different, but very much alike. We are both stubborn. We are both left handed. He plays tennis and softball and scuba dives. I play none of these sports, but I did win a ribbon in a 5k. So what if it took me eighty years!
Some years ago I hit on giving a dollar for every year of age to my children and grandchildren for their birthday. I will be sending Mark a check soon, and also this column about his accomplishments.
The U. S. Navy’s highest accolade is just two words. I send them to my son: Well Done, Mark Stuart Hirt!

A Report From Your Favorite Octogenarian

2010-05-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

By: Homer Hirt

I once, in a fit of despondency, talked with Sid Riley, Mangling Editor of this fine newspaper, about how to realize when I was no longer capable of writing a good column, and Sid told me that point will be when I began writing about a subject more than once. But then he opened the door by labeling my favorite column, “I’m Not Obese…..I’m Just Big Boned”, as the “continuing saga of Homer Hirt”, so I was able to write a follow up. And this opened the doors to another follow up on my now famous and oft quoted treatise on octogenarians.

I have on my computer notes a political essay that may possibly go down with William F. Buckley, Jr.’s best, or close, anyway. I also have a reply in the works to the “anonymous” E-Mail sent to my Blog that criticized me for praising my two daughters and their many accomplishments while neglecting my son and his deeds. I have no idea who might have written this “anonymous” message, but only a sniveler would hide behind that title, and I may well remove him from my will.

But then this last weekend happened, and I have reached back to my statements on old age and I have built on that in the light of the events of Friday and Saturday. I had written “Here are some of my goals. Most of my readers know about my planned race with “The Runner” on my eighty fifth birthday. She runs a mile in eight minutes, I am covering a mile in sixteen, but I have brought it to that point from twenty minutes in less than a year. I will continue with this endeavor”. I went on to explain that I fully expected to match her pace so that I could cover the mile in eight minutes, and my unspoken hope was that I would pass out as we crossed the finish line together, and she would give me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and I would then die, and the smile would remain on my face through the family viewing prior to my funeral.

All of this, of course, is what we writers refer to as “poetic license”, whether it rhymes or not. “Poetic license” allows us to lie somewhat for the good of the craft and our own immortal souls, so that we can rely on grace and not good deeds when we are checked in to that Great Copy Room in the Sky. Eight minutes for a mile? Not likely!

And then last Friday at the Compass Lakes Barefoot Festival I succumbed to ambition run amok and to several pretty faces (and slim figures) behind the registration table where the Running Moms were signing up runners and/or walkers for the 5K event for Saturday. I put down my money, picked up my pin-on placard, my coffee mug and my visor and went on down to the Republican Booth, where Ron the Elephant was charming passersby.

This is a time for confession, so that you will understand the rest of the story.

I have never participated in athletic events. I never played tennis or golf, or was selected for a real baseball team, or threw a discus or ran in competition. I have excuses for all of this, and a couple of good reasons.

The captain of one of my ships once put me in charge of President Kennedy’s physical fitness for our crew. One of the events was a two hundred yard shuttle run. In this you lined up your men, they would run fifty yards, turn, run back, and then repeat, and I, as Officer - in - Charge, would carefully record times. There was a problem, however. The widest part of our ship was a little over thirty feet, and I lost five men into the water until I caught on: fifty yards to run, thirty feet to run in…… We finally fished the men out of the water, and I faked the rest of the times, turned the statistics in, and hid for the rest of the cruise.

So here I am, early on Saturday, milling around amongst athletic types, who were comparing times, diets, training regimens, shoes (except for the ones that were running barefoot), and former runs. I was wearing my running shoes, my Seacrest Wolf Preserve shirt, my work trousers and my most nonchalant attitude. Out stepped a young lady with a megaphone, announced the rules, which seemed to be chiefly that the runners got to go first, and the walkers would follow. This did not seem reasonable, but I went along with it until I could consider the situation.

The runners took off, and the walkers moved out at a fast pace. Several of us figured out early that we would be better off if we (1) ran down hill, and (2) moved to the shady side of the route when we had the opportunity. And the route was not bad; some paved, some dirt, all well protected by staff who offered water to us as we passed and helped us get our tongues back in our mouths.

And then it was all over. I moved briskly through the gate, to a modicum of applause. The announcement came that awards would be down at the stage, so I moved in that direction. I listened to the age groups and the winners in each. I watched the medals being hung around slim necks and observed the pictures being made of each smiling participant. And then, loud and clear, came the clarion call: “Male, Seventy-Five and Over…… Homer Hirt, age eighty!”

Cheers rang out! Applause filled the air! I raised my arms in the age-old symbol of victory, and trotted up to the stage, dropped my head slightly so that the red, white and blue ribbon with the medal attached could be placed. And then I turned, with a grin, and shook hands all around as the cheers continued. I left the stage, and I wore the medal the rest of the time out there. I, for the first time in my life, felt the “thrill of victory”, even though it was a long time coming. Other participants shook my hand and spoke of my age and, I suspect, might have been somewhat envious. I was so euphoric that I forgot to eat lunch.

But that was not the end of the day.

I loaded Ron the Elephant up in my Explorer, hung the medal on the rear view mirror, and took him to a fundraising event in Marianna where he could welcome all. I went home, cleaned up and went back to the event, accompanied by “The Runner”. What a day! I heard someone in the group ask if I am a runner, and the reply came back: “No, but Homer is a power walker”. Wow! A power walker!

My ambitions were being fulfilled, or at least the indication of possible fulfillment was just over the horizon. And Ron and I finally got home, and I sat down to review the day. After a time, sleep overcame me and I dreamed that my family had presented me with bagpipes, which is another of my eighty something ambitions, and I, magically, knew how to play them, so I entertained all hands, to more applause!

Could an Octogenarian ask for more?

What‘s in the Box?

2010-05-19T13:53:00.001-07:00

My mother, Rossie Lucille Atwater, had six siblings, four brothers and two sisters. They all grew up on a farm in southwestern Decatur County, Georgia. As was the custom in those days the boys inherited the assets of the family, and the girls got married or found “suitable” employment. Mother became a schoolteacher, Aunt Gertrude a milliner, and Aunt Margaret a nurse. Margaret moved to Milledgeville, Georgia, the home of the state mental institution.

There she met Joe Wootten, who was only one year younger than her mother. Joe was brought up on a Georgia plantation, became a reporter for the Atlanta Constitution and later the chief pharmacist at Milledgeville. He trained Aunt Margaret in this profession, and, upon his death, she assumed the position and title.

While Joe was at the Constitution he became good friends with Frank L. Stanton, the first columnist for that newspaper. Stanton was the first Poet Laureate of Georgia, made so by the governor.

Stanton wrote many poems, including several that were set to music and one or two became popular “parlor” songs. Because of this friendship, Aunt Margaret and Uncle Joe were often given autographed first editions of his books, and once Stanton wrote and published in the Constitution a poem about Margaret. Stanton was rumored to be a hard-drinking newspaperman, and I suspect that some of his continued friendship with my folks was carried on during some “treatment” time in Milledgeville.

When Aunt Margaret died about thirty five years ago I rented a U-Haul truck and, with my wife Theresa and my older daughter as passengers, went to Milledgeville to close the estate. I sold the house and automobile, and we loaded the truck with antique furniture, including two pieces that had been built by slaves on the Wootten plantation.

As we were getting ready to leave, Theresa noticed two cardboard boxes filled with books. We loaded them, and months later opened them. They contained books that were contemporary to the times of Uncle Joe and Aunt Margaret, including the Stanton editions, other poetry books and inspirational writings. Some of the authors were James Whitcomb Riley, known as the “Hoosier Poet”, Edgar Allen Poe, Tennyson and others, tomes that you would expect to find in a well-read couple’s library of the late 1800’s and the early part of the last century.

Interspersed among the leaves of the books were personal letters from Frank L. Stanton to Uncle Joe, much of it written on foolscap, a size and type of paper used in the newsrooms of the day. None were typewritten, almost all were scribbled, large and bold, with pencils. Uncle Joe on two occasions had written to Stanton about a particular poem that had been published, and the author would write it from memory for him. He included the poem to Aunt Margaret, praising her red lips, and in the margin wrote: “I hope that this does the trick with the lovely woman”. This reminded me of the times in my courting days when I would quote Robert Burns’ “My love is like a red, red rose”, and this would usually “do the trick” for me. If my date was somewhat on the uneducated side, I would tell her that I wrote it “just for you”. I wonder if Joe used that line also.

And we found something extra.

Also stuffed between the pages of these old, prized books was something that would have once been a treasure. We found, and spread out to examine, Confederate money, from small fifty cent denominations printed by local banks up to and including one hundred dollar bills of the Confederate States of America. Early ones were crisply printed on both sides on quality papers. Later ones, those that were in circulation during the last days of the Confederacy, appeared to be on scraps of paper that had been used before: wall paper, wrappings, anything that was available. And these were printed on only one side.

So which was the treasure? Some of us may believe that “The South will rise again!” and the dollars will have exchange value. In truth, much of it is valuable now as collectors’ pieces.

Or is the treasure the first editions and personally inscribed books of Frank Stanton, given in friendship to a young couple beginning life together? I tend to lean toward this as being the real treasure. After all, Frank Lebby Stanton was the first columnist for the Constitution, and perhaps the first newspaper columnist in the United States.

And I, a friend of his by my relationship with Margaret and Joe Wooten, am a columnist with the Times, and a passing fair one at that, if I am to believe the folks that flatter me on the one hand and try to sell me tickets to a political event or a drawing for a quilt on the other!

It’s Time to Sell a Loaf of Your Bread

2010-05-14T15:30:00.000-07:00

My mother was fond of quoting adages that often did not seem to have any meaning for the times. One of her favorites, and truly an unusual one for the 1930s, when our country was in the midst of the Great Depression, was: “If you have two loaves of bread, sell one and buy a hyacinth”.
This made little sense to me. First, it was an old Arabian saying. Secondly, we very seldom had two loaves of bread at one time, unless company was coming, and then we would probably have cornbread or biscuits. But as I recall the life of the Hirt family I have come to understand the meaning, and it could well be something for today.
The nomads of the desert prized bread as a food that complemented the dates grown at the oases. These were not loaves such as we purchase at Winn-Dixie. They were hard-crusted and durable and something, I would suspect, similar in construction to the hardtack issued to soldiers in the War Between the States. But to suggest that a man sell half of his food and buy a flower……..that was almost unthinkable. The truth was that the bread filled his stomach, and one loaf would suffice for the day, but a hyacinth, the lovely flower that floated in the rather rare pools that he found in his travels, would fill his soul.
Rossie Hirt filled our souls, with music and good books inside our small home, and with flowers outside. In a town of many gardens, ours always seemed to be special. I still own the house on Morgan Avenue in Chattahoochee, and it is still filled with azaleas and day lilies and camellias…..above all camellias, the beautiful winter flower that is a closed bud one day and then suddenly a large, lovely bloom. One of the plants that stands there was rooted from a cutting from Rossie’s mother’s garden, which came from her mother’s garden. It is a japonica, not a popular variety today, but one that has meaning to me and is well worth a loaf of bread.
Rossie took the hyacinth thing to heart. She had my father build a small fish pool in the back yard. In the pool she installed some goldfish and, you guessed it, a hyacinth, or water lily. We enjoyed the flowers that floated on the surface, and the neighborhood cats enjoyed the fish. Rossie borrowed my slingshot and fired away at the predators, only hitting one. Flossie, a large Persian and our neighbor’s pride, picked a cold day in December to fish, and Mother shot at her and struck her broadside. Startled, the cat tried to jump the pool lengthwise, and fell into the icy waters. When the two neighbors visited over the fence after that, Flossie would disappear.
Before we relate this saying to modern times, I must make a disclaimer. Hyacinths once choked the great St. Johns River, bringing its flow almost to a standstill. It was an invasive species, possibly an early attempt by Muslims to bring our commerce to a halt. The University of Florida, being a land grant college (I’m not certain what that means, but it seems to be a statement that one must work into stories like this one), decided to see what could be done with the pest. Cattle feed? Didn’t work. Fertilizer? Nope, mostly water. Wall board? Aha! The professors pressed the water out, dried and treated the residue and made a fairly good looking construction item from it. And then it got wet and ……..sprouted. Even the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright would have trouble with that, and he was known for using strange building materials.
So hyacinths were finally brought under control. Now we have kudzu and hydrilla and crab grass. Since I have begun mowing my own lawn again I would place centipede and St. Augustine in the same category.
So today we think about our need for beauty. Most of us eat too much, but few of us fulfill this need in our lives. We are fortunate, here in Jackson County, to be surrounded by beauty. My morning walks are alongside a pasture, lush and green, with cattle grazing there. Interspersed among them are birds: cattle egrets seem to sort out the cows so that each bird has a cow to stand by. Along the fencerow are mockingbirds and cardinals and a myriad of small songsters, each keeping an eye on me and I watching them and their antics.
We have music. Our churches have choirs, if not great then certainly above average. The Baptist College of Florida has emphasized not only church music but classical as well and has regular concerts. Chipola College passes out scholarships to outstanding musicians who offer free concerts. Chipola also brings in very talented artists and admission prices are reasonable.
And each quarter St. Luke’s Episcopal Church has guest musicians in, and there is no charge, although Father Dave, with good humor, reminds us that there is a “rather large bowl”, just suited for checks and bills of all denominations, and placed so that we must pass by it on the way to the ladies’ “modest” reception. As an aside, the Episcopalians serve wine at the reception, and they serve it well, recommending the right one for your chicken salad sandwich.
We are bordered and dotted with bodies of water: Lake Seminole and the Apalachicola River; Merritt’s Mill Pond and the Chipola, Jackson Blue Spring and ponds and smaller streams. Each provides a beauty that can fill the soul. I still recall a Christmas Eve when I was returning home down the River Road. I looked across at the huge orange harvest moon rising and filling the sky and setting the water aglow beneath, and wished that I could call someone to come and share it with me, to see a miracle and to witness an example of God’s grace.
I believe that Rossie Hirt, if she had been there, would have turned to me and said “See, that is what I really meant about the hyacinth”!

I Am Ready for my Trophy!

2010-05-06T13:28:00.001-07:00

In my previous article about being obese I said that I had begun walking, and that I was taking a little over twenty minutes to walk one mile. I have faithfully continued the program. I walk at least three miles every day, and sometimes I ease that up to five miles.
On occasion I will jog or run about fifty steps when appropriate music pops up on my I-Pod. My grandson Stuart loaded this machine with a good mix: along with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, he added in an album by Artie Shaw and another by Count Basie, two of my favorites. He also put in about thirty minutes of bagpipes straight from Scotland and it includes “Scotland the Brave”, which sent many a bonnie laddie off to war.
He and I both like the Beach Boys, and I can’t help but pick up the pace when “That Old Time Rock and Roll” pours forth into my eager ears. This is when I dance a few steps, and my neighbors avert their eyes, much as you do when you are at a family reunion and good old Uncle Lucius cackles out when he remembers a joke from his childhood and then forgets before he can tell it.
Even without the jogging I have been able recently to do my first mile in fifteen minutes, with the second one taking seventeen. And now the competitive drive has taken me. I know that I promised my readers that I would run a measured mile with “The Runner” on or about my eighty-fifth birthday, and we would do it in eight minutes. But we should all, as our preachers often remind us, “live in the here and now”. In short, I not only want recognition soon, but I really would like to receive a trophy for my efforts.
I live in a house filled with trophies. My older daughter, Meredith the Baseball Coach, lettered in four sports in high school, and took dancing also. That makes for a lot of trophies. Ashlee the Nutritionist, my second daughter, only participated in one sport, and that was basketball. She played two minutes, and that two minutes was in the waning moments of the last game of the season. The coach put her in, and someone passed her the ball, and she passed it off, and the final buzzer sounded. She got a letter, but no trophy. She did excel in cheerleading and in looking pretty and got awards in the former all the way to the national level.
So now you understand my desire. And I have taken a step, albeit a small one, in that direction. I entered the recent Smiling Pig Cookoff and Arts Festival 5k run/walk. Here’s how that went down.
I had loaded “Ron the Elephant” in my Explorer and was bound for the Republican Booth. When I reached the vendors’ gate at Citizens’ Lodge I was waved forward by Margo Lambe, famed Chipola Speaks TV star. She smiled and I decided right then to enter the run/walk. I paid her my money and received the “backpack”, which contained a rather garish tee shirt, some dental floss and a numbered sheet of paper, with four safety pins.
I was in and on my way to glory and fame!
The next morning I talked a young lady into pinning my number on my Seacrest Wolf Preserve tee shirt, and I began mingling with the crowd of athletes. I knew none of the walkers so I moseyed over to the runners. I would chat with one for a minute, and he would get a furtive look in his eyes and move away. Then I realized that runners dress in a certain way. I had the Nike shoes but was wearing long khaki work pants. They had special shirts and shorts and some of the women even wore cute little skirts with polka dots on them. Remember, I came from the era when Gussie Moran showed up at Wimbledon wearing frilly panties that showed under an above-the-knee skirt, and was ejected from the courts after several of the judges fainted.
My fascination with the attire, especially with the skirts, almost got me in trouble. The runners took off, and I looked around for the walkers. There were none! And then someone told me that they had been gone for at least two minutes in a different direction. I had to run to catch up. After some time I managed to pass two pregnant women, a mother carrying an infant and another with a dog on a leash that was checking out the bushes alongside the route. Just as I pulled ahead of this group a photographer took my picture, and I am certain that I appeared to be winning.
And I did win, in my age group, which is eighty and above. I was certain that I had a trophy, but I found out that no trophies were given for walkers, and that is a gross injustice and indicates prejudice of the highest order. I am not trying for “Miss Congeniality”. I can be just as nice as the next fellow, but it was time for a trophy, and no excuses!
Someone pointed out that I could have entered the run and I would have received a trophy because there were no eighty year old runners that day. NOW I know! I will be prepared for the next 5K run. I believe that there is to be one at Compass Lake in The Hills next weekend, and I should have no problem there.
But, just in case, I plan to bring my own trophy!

The Captain

2010-04-29T14:07:00.001-07:00

(Last week I attended a reunion of former crew members of the U. S. S. SAUFLEY. The ship was commissioned and sent into action in 1943. I was an officer in her in the mid 1950s. She was in active service until 1964. This is about the Ship and about two men who served in her.)
He and I sat late into the night. Our common bond is the sea, and the link in our conversation is an old ship, now resting on the bottom in twenty fathoms of water a few miles east of Key West. Once a fighting ship with sixteen battle stars emblazoned on its bridge wings, stars won in arduous duty with the Pacific Fleet in World War II, she now is a diving and fishing destination. We are two different men, but somewhat alike. He is just over ninety years of age, nearly blind, and he depended on his daughter to bring him across country from California. He is a retired Navy Captain, one of the original complement of young officers and men who took the U. S. S. SAUFLEY from New York harbor through the Panama Canal into action in the fighting against a superior Japanese fleet. I am only eighty. My time in our ship was in the mid 1950s when she was serving her nation as a moving platform that evaluated yet-to-be accepted undersea weapons. Weapons that just might even the odds against our Cold War foe. The Captain’s experiences encompassed shore bombardments so that our Marine forces on small Pacific islands could defeat a tenacious force of jungle fighters. There were air attacks that the ship had to fend off: powerful dive bombers, fighter planes that strafed her decks and the most dreaded of all, the Kamikazes thrown at our fleet off Okinawa. The SAUFLEY took a direct hit from one of these, and even in the 1950s one could still see the hull plates that had been replaced where she was struck.
We compared notes on great storms that we had both encountered. SAUFLEY rode out “Halsey’s Typhoon”, a tragedy that sunk five similar ships. I told him of the time, on another ship, when I had seen the forces of nature in the “Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962”. Two decades separated the storms, but the recollection of them remains fresh in our minds. He had patrolled off the Aleutians in Arctic waters, and I had done the same in the Atlantic near Greenland. We spoke of the futility of rescue attempts when a man fell into such oceans, where he could only survive three or four minutes before succumbing to hydrothermal effects. Always we spoke of our ship with awe and respect, as a home should be, for it had been his home and my home, and we were as brothers because of her. Then the conversation shifted to our civilian careers. By this time the rest of our shipmates had drifted off to bed, but we continued. The Captain has a Jurist Doctor degree, and a graduate degree in psychology. My education was in business and economics, a poor comparison. I described my venture into writing columns for a newspaper. He was excited over the upcoming two hundred year celebration of the founding of his home town in California. He told me how much he loved his wife, and how he missed her, even on his short trips to our reunions. I expressed my regrets that I did not hold Theresa’s hand more often in her last days with me. We spoke of children and experiences that were sometimes similar and sometimes far apart. He told me that I should travel, and I should go to Paris in August, when the Parisians would likely be on vacation, but I should go only with a “lovely lady”, for Paris would not be the same without one. And I was to tell no one about her, for it was no one’s business. Then we poured one more small drink in this quiet room filled with pictures of our ship, and with our memories. We chatted for a few more minutes, and then he walked to the door, looking closely at the shadowed forms that his weakened vision revealed to him. His room was down the hall to the west. Mine was in the opposite direction. I stood quietly. I watched him check the room numbers and then fumble with the key card until it opened his door. I “covered his back”, unknown to him, until I was certain that he was safe.
After all, the Captain, and others like him, once covered our backs until we were safe from harm.
I could never do less.

The Best Books I Have Ever Read

2010-04-14T13:40:00.001-07:00

Last week I told my readers how I have moved into the twenty first century by my use of an I-Pod, filled with great music and plugged into my ears so that I can make better time when I walk. I admit that it is a great invention, and I am progressing so that I have reached four miles per day in my exercising.

Now my children tell me of another electronic device, handheld and compact, that allows one to read books on a small screen anywhere and at any time.

And there I draw the line.

Books must have covers, and pages, and print on each page, front and back. The pages must be made of paper, and be numbered sequentially, and have a title and chapters and good words that, when strung together in sentences, make profound sense.

Authors must not be too prolific. They should be required to sweat a lot in the production of the book. Shelby Foote signed a contract to write a Civil War history. He planned one volume, and he figured a year to do it in. He even accepted an advance based on this. Fifteen years and three volumes later he completed his great history and I proudly possess it in my library.

You can hardly turn on a talk show without a guest announcing breathlessly that he or she has just completed a know-all book on politics or diet or sex or training cats (that last is definitely in the fiction category) and it is predicted to be a best seller and it was written in just three months, and you really should run right out and stand in line and buy a copy. This, of course, follows closely on the heels of the one that the “author” published last month. If you succumb to this sales pitch, be prepared to use the book for a door stop. That will be its best use.

I must admit that I have been writing a book myself. I finished the last chapter six months ago, and it is about the War Between the States (the “Waw”, as we call it). I used part of it in my column about Marianna Day, and it was praised. My problem is that I wrote the last chapter first, and I now have what is known as “writers’ block” and nothing will send me back to do the first chapters.

I have been reading for most of my life. I learned when I was four years old and my mother would read the “comics” to me. She hated doing it. Finally she gave me an ultimatum: “read by Christmas or do without the comic pages”. After she explained it to me that way, it came easily. This was fortunate. A couple of years later I contracted polio, or “infantile paralysis”, as it was known in those days. I was quarantined and, when the pain left and the inability to move continued for a while, I read. I read newspapers and books. I recall reading one of my mother’s books named “Anthony Adverse”. It was about as long as “War and Peace” and I suspect that it was a romance novel, maybe even a “bodice ripper”, but at the age of six how was I to recognize that?

I soon graduated to sea stories and adventures. I sailed the oceans with Count Von Luckner, the “Sea Devil”, and experienced “Mutiny on the Bounty” with Captain Bligh of His Majesty’s Royal Navy. I found the writings of Joseph Conrad, and went to Africa in his “Heart of Darkness” and rode out a “Typhoon” with that master of the English language.

Strange folks have written books, and one of the most unusual authors was a lady named Gypsy Rose Lee. That was her stage name, and some of my older readers will recognize her, but not if their wives are around. She was a “stripper” on stage and very classy. H. L. Mencken, a writer for the Baltimore Sun Herald, coined a word to describe her: “ecdaisist”. He took the Greek word for “shedding” and stretched it out to take in the stripping to music that Gypsy Rose did, She not only was good, but she wrote an autobiography that was made into the musical “Gypsy”. On occasion you may be on an elevator and hear the song “Has Any Body Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”. It was written for the show by Jule Stine. A movie followed and she wrote more books and acted in several flicks.

Before you ask, no, I never saw Gypsy perform. I did see Janeen the Tassel Dancer at a night club in one of the west coast ports. Janeen had several tassels strategically placed, and she could twirl them and stop them in mid air and cause them to reverse course. She was well endowed on the upper decks, which is a nautical term. I suspect that she never had to have a face lift. She would only have to take her bra off and the weight would take care of the wrinkles.

And there was Blaze Starr, made famous for being the girlfriend of one of the Longs of Louisiana and also famous for……..

Wait, how did I get off the subject of books?

Last year a young man from Tallahassee who on occasion was published in a newspaper there wrote a column on great books. I E-mailed him, and posed this question: “if you were leaving home and could only take four books with you and would not know where you would be for the next two years, which ones would you select?”. I asked that question of him because I had faced it once. When I enlisted in the Navy, all of my possessions had to fit in a sea bag, and I had room for three or four books and had to make a choice. My mother had given me a Bible, so that went in, but did not get read often. I chose ones that I could read and re-read, and they served me well through my time at sea.

I hope that I will never have to do without books, books that you can pick up and feel, not “texted” books. Theresa and I had over four hundred books about the War Between the States, some fiction, most actual happenings. Stories of battles that were factual in that war surpassed any that have been tried in the fictional sense.

Theresa and I still communicate through these volumes. A couple of months ago I was doing research on my book. During her last years she had also prepared to write a book. I casually picked up a first person account, opened it and found tucked between some pages a Florida Lottery ticket. I never bought lottery tickets, but she often did. She felt that she was doing her part to help education. Well, that’s what she gave as her reason for traveling down once a week to the local convenience store and putting her dollar on the counter. So I know that this is a ticket that she had purchased. It is dated July 8, 1989, and obviously did not win, so it became her bookmark.

And, suddenly one day I pick up the same book, a rather obscure one, and find Theresa’s ticket. This could be nothing except her guiding me from the Beyond and saying: “Holmes, play these numbers”. So I will, soon. I will play them at the appropriate time and I will win. The amount will be in the millions of dollars. I will take a lump sum settlement which, with the standard tax deduction, will still be, say, about nine million dollars, give or take some. I will spend it properly on wine, women and song. And perhaps buy a book.

Theresa would want it that way.

Tempus Fugit…..and I Fidget

2010-04-08T08:12:00.001-07:00

I had been writing columns for Sid Riley’s newspaper for only a short time and was chiefly concerned with the first charge that he gave me: “Tell the folks about the three rivers”. So I told about boats and barges, about river pilots that I knew and of life on the banks of the flowing streams that came out of Georgia and formed the Apalachicola River between Chattahoochee and Sneads.

Then I branched out and related vignettes of my life, both as a civilian and as a Navy man. My fame seemed to grow. At least it grew enough that Sid became somewhat ashamed that he was placing my column farther into the morass of articles, sometimes behind the “Partners for Pets”. I urged that he put me closer to the front page, because I don’t believe even William Faulkner, that famous Southern writer of another century (no, not my century), could compete with a couple of cute kittens.

Then Stephanie, the REAL EDITOR, took me by the hand, figuratively, and found a decent photograph of me, and set up a “Follower” attachment. I do not understand much about this, but I have slowly built up a small list of groupies, and I appreciate it. I intend to take her and the rest of the staff at the “Times” to lunch at Madison’s one day. Maybe not Sid, though. We can bring back some takeout for him.

Soon I was being recognized throughout the county. The first “biggie” was my piece “I’m Not Obese, I am Just Big-Boned”. I basked in the glory of it all. I took my own advice and I lost weight, and got faster on the walking trails. And, as an aside to that, my son and my grandson visited me this last weekend and programmed my I-Pod, which I had been using for a bookmark because I could not turn it on, and today I walked with it hanging from my ears. It was tuned to the Beach Boys and I paced myself and I actually did a mile in 15 minutes! I now have no doubt that I will reach the eight minute mile level, IF I live to be eighty five!

But back to being recognized. Along with recognition here in Jackson County came the “Why don’t you write one about…..” Fill in the blanks: religion; politics; religion and politics; sex; sex, religion and politics. You get the idea. Up until now I would merely nod my head after listening to the question, thank them and walk off.

You will note that I said: “up till now”.

A few days ago I was having breakfast with a very attractive lady and she said: “Why don’t you write a column about Daylight Savings Time?” We had agreed in our conversation that this idea, foisted off on us a couple of times a year, was an abomination. My internal wake up alarm is out of kilter because of it and my breakfast companion has to do her running on a different route since her usual one is not lit by the city. Because I enjoy our breakfasts together, I figured that I had better take this topic on.

It is always necessary to do research unless you have become the authority on a subject or have outlived enough people that knew more about it than you do. Fortunately I recall a great deal about why Daylight Savings Time was thrust upon the United States of America during World War II by Congress. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had pushed through a Declaration of War on December 8, 1941 against Japan and Germany and maybe Italy. (I believe that there was some dispute over who would have Italy. We had them in the first World War, and Churchill felt it was only fair that Germany should have to put up with them this time). The congressmen were peeved that they did not think of this first, so they decided to do something, and came up with Daylight Savings Time. It was meant to give the farmers another hour of sunlight, but this didn’t work, so they decided that it would give war plant workers another hour of day time, but the buildings where those folks built planes and tanks were well lighted, so it didn’t really matter to them. Since Congress works something like the town council of a small municipality, the law has hung in like a cocklebur, and has lasted through WWII, Korea, Vietnam and, for me, the Battle of Oceanview, Virginia. It will probably be with us as we move toward intergalactic space wars between universes and run head on into the Klingons.

So it is obvious that no one should mess with time. I have written several articles about time. Once I used the idea “Make use of scraps of time”. No one will ever know how glad I am that I did not find that motto while my wife Theresa was living. She would have waved it in front of my nose every day, along with her “work” list. She has been gone a little over four years and I am only half through the tasks she had given me.

Time is neither constant nor sure. It is elastic. Read this carefully and I believe you will agree. I get a call to come over to Marianna for breakfast, a distance of sixteen miles. If I am on time, I can drive within the speed limit and make the run in 18 minutes. If I am late, I can drive seventy five miles an hour and my Explorer will ease into a parking space in front of the Gazebo twenty five minutes after I left Sneads. Explain that, Mr. Congressman! We both know that U. S. 90 does not stretch nor contract that much, so it must be time that is so flexible.

When my companion and I sit down to eat, we talk and sometimes we spend two hours together, but it only seems like ten minutes to me. Then the next Sunday I go to church, and the preacher speaks for fifteen minutes, and I catch myself not only looking at my watch often, but wishing I had a calendar.

You have to realize now that it is Congress’ fault. I have not narrowed it down to either House, but I suspect that it is the fault of our Representatives, since they are all running for re-election this year.

The Florida House has it right. They only mess with time as it concerns them. There is a requirement that the body adjourn sine die. This means “within the day” and for years the sergeant-at-arms would, at a nod from the presiding officer, manually stop the movement of hands on the official clock until important business was transacted. The House did this for something over a hundred years, until they figured that unfinished business would mean a special session with more expense money and possibly lots of flowers and strong drink from the lobbyists. I personally liked the old way better. At least they did not push sine die off on the farmers.

I hope that you have learned something about time from my writings. Consider this: Horus was an Egyptian god who was signified by both a circle and by time. Our Congress has angered Horus by inflicting Daylight Savings Time on our country. This is the real reason that the health care bill passed. Do not anger the gods.

And remember what H. L. Mencken said: “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong”.

It’s Not Like it Once Was, and Thanks for That!

2010-04-01T14:38:00.001-07:00

When I was growing up in Chattahoochee, Sneads was like a different land. The economy of my home town depended on the Florida State Hospital and on the large rail terminal at River Junction. Sneads, at the eastern limits of the largely agricultural Jackson County, was a smaller town, and many of its citizens also worked at the Hospital and drove home each evening across the Apalachicola River Bridge. Their trading center was Marianna, and their Saturday morning trips were in that direction. Chattahoochee was a trading center in itself. A strong bank, several hotels and restaurants catered to traveling salesmen, visitors to the Hospital and the train crews and passengers. In addition a Ford and a Chevrolet dealership, general and specialty stores and at one time two movie theaters served its citizens.

In the 1930s the Town Council members had the foresight to begin generating Chattahoochee’s own electrical power instead of purchasing it from the State. When Woodruff Dam went in, Chattahoochee was able to buy cheap hydroelectric power from the federal government. This, and the addition of natural gas later, gave a strong economic base to the local government. Fire and police protection was good and probably as up-to-date as any small town in the area.

Sneads had none of the moneymaking utilities except a potable water system. However, its citizens demanded police protection, and the city fathers provided it. At first a constable and then a marshal and finally a town police force, sometimes only one man, gave them what they wanted. Of course, along with a police force came ordinances that spelled out misdemeanors and felonies that were to be covered and tried in its own court, where the mayor was usually the presiding officer. As with most laws, these were added to as needed, and seldom erased. Abraham Lincoln once said that the best way to get rid of an unpopular law was to enforce it to the maximum extent. Perhaps some of the earlier laws were done away with by that method.

Several years ago Sneads celebrated its Centennial; one hundred years of being a municipality. We had a good time, and many of the older inhabitants were interviewed. These were the inhabitants that had blood lines in Jackson County. I moved over to Sneads in 1967 and a few years later was elected mayor and judge, but I still occasionally hear someone put me down as being “that new man from Chattahoochee”. Perhaps that person does not realize that by moving across the Apalachicola River I raised the average IQ of both places. At least that is what my friends from back home claimed.

Someone found in the files a list of offences that our police got folks for back in the “good old days”, along with the fines to be imposed if one were found guilty, and you were usually guilty because the policeman would not have brought you in unless you were. Here are some of them, along with a comment or two from me:

Fighting…. $1.00. Since it does not state how many people had to be involved, then one would assume that the total fine would be $1.00, so if you wished to save money, get a few friends together and go at it.

Cruel treatment of hogs…..$1.00. This is not described in detail, so it is best left to the reader’s imagination. If you have ever been to a “hog killing” you would be hard put to figure out what could be considered cruelty to an animal that ends up sausage.

Disorderly Conduct on Street….$2.50. Sidewalks are not mentioned, so I suppose this was meant to protect horses that were passing by or to keep gawkers from impeding traffic.

Drunk disorderly conduct….$5.00. There is no delineation of where this can happen: street, sidewalks, front lawns, but it does cost more than just disorderly conduct. However, consider this:

Plain drunk…..$1.00 or 5 days. If you add “Plain drunk” to “Disorderly conduct” and plead to both charges as opposed to “drunk disorderly conduct” you could save yourself 1.50, a princely sum in those days. Or you could save yourself even more money by moving on down to one of the many churches, getting disorderly there and paying only $1.00. But don’t cuss while in the church house, for that would cost you an extra $1.00.

Drunk and indecent would net you a fine of $1.00 or five days, but if it were in public the costs jumped tenfold. The moral was to keep your indecency well concealed from the public and your fellow citizen. So this begs the question: If no one saw the offender, how did he get arrested for indecency? That is easy: his conscience bothered him, so he turned himself in! I certainly hope that this is not still on the books. If you are a man in your eighties, and being unzipped is considered indecent, well………

This was beginning to approach the fine line between lawbreaking and morality, so the law crossed over to:

Keeping a house of ill fame, with a fine of $5.00, stealing at $5.00 or larceny. That entailed doubling your debt to society and to the Town to $10.

Speeding horse……$2.50 or five days was just the beginning of the stress that was placed on moving violations. Reckless riding was the same, but getting on a moving team would diminish your estate by $250.00, which probably approached the yearly income of a man in those days. If you simply felt the “need for speed”, then it was cheaper by $249.00 to ride a train in motion. I think I would opt for the latter, and keep going out of town.

In 2004 Billy Blackman, a columnist for the Havana Herald and, if I recall correctly, a fine musician, covered some of these same laws in his article of April 22. Billy also quoted this:

Running horse rapidly through streets on night of November 5, 1926.…..$2.00 or 10 days.

And his last line says: “The only one I don’t understand is the significance of November 5, 1926. Maybe someone from Sneads will let me know”. Billy, I am from Sneads, and I cannot tell you. But, on second thought, I am not the one to ask.

I am the “new man from Chattahoochee”.

There was a Ford in my Future!

2010-03-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

My father once said, only half jokingly, that 1929 was a bad year: the stock market crash, the highest water on the Apalachicola River and my birth. I am not certain he ranked them in any particular order. But there was always a Ford in my future.

Homer Hirt, Sr. returned from France with the American army in 1919 and picked up his life where it had been interrupted. His job at the Ford dealership in Tallahassee was waiting. James Messer, the dealer, believed in the young man, and soon made him manager. Then the opportunity to become a Ford dealer came. He had a choice: Cedar Key or Chattahoochee and he chose the latter.

In 1923 he opened his dealership in a rented building, using $2,300 that he got from sale of some land in Tallahassee. He met a young lady, sold her a used car, taught her how to drive and then married her. There was always a Ford in the future of the Hirt family, up until we sold our dealership in 1971. I once owned a Buick for a short time, and I felt that H. B. Sr. was looking down at me, a frown on his face and wishing me a blown engine. I sold it as soon as I could. Never doubt the power of your father, even if he is dead and gone.

He believed in Henry Ford and the company he founded. Mr. Ford was the first to use a true assembly line, and the first to pay his workers $5.00 per day. Since the Model T eventually sold for about $250, his workers bought Fords. The proliferation of the Model T got credit for a road system in our country that was second only to the Interstate highways of modern times. The “T”, as it was called, was built to fit the ruts that were worn into the ground by farm wagons. When macadam roads began appearing Ford narrowed the width of his cars, but this did not fit the still-unpaved roads around Tallahassee, so the Ford dealer there set up a woodworking shop to turn out spacers that placed the wheels where they would still fit the ruts. He also built “station wagons” for the wealthy plantation owners of the area.

Receiving a train car load of Model Ts was intriguing. The autos came in two sections: the body and the chassis. The body was loaded in a boxcar at an angle, leaning against one wall. The chassis was loaded on the other side, also leaning. The dealer would gather up some husky men, and they would carry the chassis out and then place a body on it and someone would then drive it to the dealer to have the two sections bolted together.

The Model T was soon outclassed by other cars, so Henry Ford decided to build a finer car. He went to the financiers for retooling money, but they turned him down. To solve the problem he built thousands of Model Ts, shipped them Collect on Delivery to dealers, who then had to borrow money locally to pay for them. It worked for Henry, but was rough on small and large dealers alike. The Model A was born in 1929 and was an instant success, at least until the Depression set in, and sales slowed to a slow walk. The A was followed by the Model B in 1932 and a couple of years later by the first Ford V8.

Henry Ford did not like to be beholden to anyone, so he purchased his own iron and coal mines, a rubber plantation in Brazil and built automobile parts and tires himself. He transported raw materials in his own ships. At one time over 90 per cent of each Ford was done this way. His first Model T engines were purchased from the Dodge brothers. Even though their engine shop was only a few miles across Detroit from Ford’s assembly line, they were required to securely pack them in crates, with holes drilled in certain locations. At the plant the wood slats were taken apart and lo!, old Henry had his floorboards!

Our dealership, known as Chattahoochee Motor Company, survived the Great Depression, but in a very tenuous way. Financing of new cars was almost impossible, and few folks had the ability to save the amount needed to purchase a new Ford. The town of Chattahoochee, home of the Florida State Hospital, survived, also. The common wage for men was $30, with some housing provided, and three meals a day. This was in exchange for twelve hours of work per day, sometimes for fourteen days in a row. We went broke twice in that decade, but recovered.

The Model T was known for being simple to work on. The transmission was a planetary one, with the foot pedals engaging the gears, much as a hydraulic system later worked automatic transmissions. The first ones were hand started with a crank. This led to broken arms, short fuses and a lot of cuss words. If you started up a very steep hill, and you had less than a full tank of gas, you turned around and backed up, since the fuel was gravity flow.

Henry Ford supposedly said that a customer could have any color Model T he wanted, as long as it was black. This came home to me at the age of four. I longed for a pedal operated fire truck. Christmas came and there under the tree was a fire truck! But it was black, and I did not understand the reason for some years: it was a used one, and my father only had black paint in his service department. It worked well, though, but was not as pretty at the Model A fire truck that he had sold the City in 1930, a truck that is still under a roof at the City Hall.

Henry Ford did not believe that a six cylinder engine could be balanced, so he waited until government specifications required six cylinder cars. Until the onset of World War II the name “Ford” was synonymous with “V8”. In 1939 the bootleggers of Tennessee, the Carolinas, Georgia and our part of Florida found that the Ford V8 business coupe was the ideal transport for the thousands of gallons of illegal hooch that came from the mountains and swamps and flowed to the cities. Races between the bootleggers and the revenue officers became legendary, and the drivers soon took to dirt oval tracks on Saturdays, racing each other, mostly driving the cars that allowed them to make money on the twisting back roads. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and modern drivers owe their NASCAR sport to Junior Johnson and others that came from this beginning.

So, what did a person pay for the automobile of his dreams? In April of 1939 a man could walk into H. B. Hirt, Sr’s. dealership and put down cash or a check for $790.00, and drive out in a new Ford 85 horsepower V8. It would be a coupe, and he could have a choice of three colors, Black, Gull Gray or Jefferson Blue. If he would be satisfied with a 60 horsepower V8 he could pay $40 less, but he sacrificed speed and power. Looking for white sidewall tires? Then dig deep, and throw down another $20.00. A radio would cost you $55.00, and you can imagine that not many folks were music lovers for that price.

The banker may walk in and choose the Deluxe Ford, and opt for the basic colors or Coach Maroon, Dartmouth Green or Folkestone Gray. The Deluxe model cost him $850.00. Throw in two more doors and a back seat and he could select the fabulous “Fordor”, and his wife could ride alongside him, work the radio and the kids could sit in the back and count the cows, all for $935.00.

Soon our nation began war production, and Henry Ford made bombers, tanks and jeeps, and Homer Hirt, Sr. saw no new cars. He survived off service to his customers. He even sold horse saddles and wooden wagon wheels. He must have done something right. The dealership lasted for over forty seven years. And I do not believe that I could ever feel right without a Ford in my future!

Beware the Ides of March!

2010-03-04T13:58:00.001-08:00

The Ides of March are defined roughly as the fifteenth day of the month of March. This is a Roman thing; the ancient Romans, having to work with Latin as a language, gave this name to that day, but due to excess bacchanalia they failed to give an Ides to April. This was left up to our Congress to give us one. The Ides of April also falls on the fifteenth of the month, but is known as “Tax Day”, which makes it much worse for us than the Ides of March.

Julius Caesar did not see it that way, however. On the way to the Forum to be crowned emperor he was warned to “beware the Ides of March”. He disregarded the warning. Upon arrival he was stabbed by three “friends“, and he cried out: “Et tu, Brute’”. Brutus was a friend, supposedly, but he feared that Caesar would not make a good emperor. He brooded over his deed. Nowadays he would go on *Fox News*, and write a book and get paid $50,000 for making a speech.

In Chattahoochee High School I was fated to take two years of Latin. We boys had to perform a scene from Shakespeare’s play “The Death of Caesar”. Shakespeare wrote in a strange semi-English, saying words like “doth”, “hither” and “forsooth“, which were difficult enough for good ole Southerners, but our teacher insisted that we recite the play in Latin. Latin puts the verb last in its sentences, which provides for some surprises. Our performance had many surprises. We were wrapped in sheets, and our mothers all attended and sat in the front row to make certain that we did not really stab Caesar. Or “stob” him, as we rednecks call it. Immediately behind them was a group of rowdy boys who heard that we were not going to wear anything under our “togas”. We wore short pants and tee shirts underneath, though, and this kept us from performing in the first “Animal House”. It also kept us from being expelled from high school, and possibly being drafted into the Army.

There are other exciting days in March. The first day of March is Labour Day in Wales. Notice the extra “u” in labor. This is a British peculiarity. They should stop using this in such words. Think of all the carbon added to the atmosphere by these extra letters being printed out. I figured the Brits for being more environmentally conscious.

The eighth day is celebrated, or at least observed, as “8 hours day” in Tasmania. Herein lies a mystery. Do the folks usually work seven hours or nine hours, and on this one day work eight hours? Of course this land is the home of the Tasmanian devil. The Tasmanian Devil, or Taz, is the most ferocious animal in Saturday morning cartoons, with the possible exception of Tom and Jerry and Tweetie Bird. There may be a connection there.

The fourteenth of March is when we begin observing Daylight Savings Time in most of the United States and in Canada. All of the Canadians that I have known did not really care about what day it is, much less whether or not it was 12:00 or still 11:00. Canada is not known as “The Land of the Bland” for nothing. Many of them put the extra “u” in words, and that should prove something about them.

Palm Sunday pops up late in the month. Again, the Roman emperors are to blame. Along about Constantine’s time there was a proliferation of religions, all demanding holidays. It got where there were days when there was no one to feed the lions at the Coliseum, and Christians were off the menu, so Constantine ordered the religions to get together with each other, double up on holidays and get back to work. Christians and Mithrans, for example, picked out a suitable day for Easter and Astarte’s birthday. It worked good until the calendar changed, and Palm Sunday had to tag along with the Vernal Equinox, which makes it a floating holiday. If you are not observant, it can be a complete surprise.

Passover comes along for the Jewish faith about the same time. You are all familiar with the story. The Angel of Death was to go through the streets of Egypt and slay all the boy babies in the houses that did not have a mark of lamb’s blood on the lintel. This is a beautiful tradition. Even today many Jewish fathers put a red smear of paint over the front door of their homes. And the mothers stand and watch and, with their heads cocked to one side, say “that is not quite the shade of red I had in mind”.

The most famous March day is the seventeenth, St. Patrick’s Day. The largest St Patrick’s Day Parade is in New York City, where there are more Irish than there are people. The second largest is in Savannah, Georgia. Savannians dye the river green, the beer green, the bagels green and, who knows, maybe each other the same color. The most famous current resident of Savannah is the Lady Chablis, a female impersonator, who became recognizable because of being written up in the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and of Evil. The Lady Chablis played herself in Clint Eastwood’s movie of the same name, and appears in night clubs. She is also from Quincy, Florida, and has written an expose’ about that town. Now you know why I moved from Gadsden County to Sneads.

The shortest parade is in Enterprise, Alabama, where there is a statue to an insect in the town square. All directions start with “go down to the boll weevil and ____”. The parade is about three blocks long, and consists of one lady dressed as a leprechaun and passing out shamrocks. You really have to be quick to see that parade.

My own experience with St. Patrick’s Day occurred in Washington, D. C. I was with a group that went there to testify before a sub-committee of Congress on water issues. We made the mistake of going to an Irish pub that night, and I, with my tongue loosened by Bushmills, began regaling others with heroic exploits from my days at sea. I was called to one side by a rather shady character who explained that he had been listening, and that his organization could use me. I never did find out if he was CIA, IRA or a scout for a comedy club. The next year I insisted that we have Italian cuisine.

To close this (and it definitely needs closing) I would like to state that March has more than its share of problems. For example, we know that every fourth year is a Leap Year, when loose seconds and minutes are saved up to give February an extra day. My question is: where are these seconds, minutes and hours held until that year? Are they appended to March, and we just don’t realize it? Do they just float about until the magic year? Are actions that occur on Leap Year valid? My wife Theresa proposed to me on a Leap Year and I accepted. This last Leap Year two ladies proposed to me and I haven’t accepted either one yet. Are these proposals still valid, or should I wait till the next Leap Year to accept or reject them?

March has enough problems with St. Patrick’s Day and green beer, with Tasmanian devils and with the old poem “March winds doth blow, and we shall have snow”, not to mention Caesar’s stobbing. When I present a problem to my readers, I usually offer a solution. I am truly sorry that I cannot do it this time. March will just have to take care of itself.

You Can’t Get There From Here!

2010-02-24T13:14:00.001-08:00

My daily three mile walk takes me along Dairy Road in Sneads, beginning at my home, proceeding in a southerly direction to U.S. 90, then returning on a reciprocal of this course until I reach the gate that marks state property, or a barking dog, whichever occurs first, and then back home. I have walked a mile on each lap, and I often come up with ideas for my next week’s column as I pace myself. Seldom, however, has an idea been handed to me as was the one last Monday.

The gate is the access to the old Apalachee dairy, which is now a cattle feeding operation. There is a warning sign there, but it is not needed, for most cars have given up long before because of potholes. The street is named “Dairy Road” in honor of its location. One of my neighbors thinks that it should be named “Cow Flap Lane”, but that has even less appeal than Dairy Road. I am certain that along about July of each year a case could be made for changing it to “Gnat Boulevard”.

I had begun my third mile that day and was heading north, straight and true, according to my built-in directional compass. This has nothing to do with my built-in moral compass, which strays quite often. A SUV passed me at a fair clip, then reached the gate and turned around. As it approached me it slowed and stopped. The passenger side window lowered, and a nice looking lady, holding a piece of paper in one hand, asked: “Could you direct me to the West Unit of Apalachee Correctional Institution?” I gave her the directions: return to U. S. 90, turn east, go one half mile and take the left fork at the sign. She thanked me and then said, looking at the paper one more time: “MapQuest says turn on Dairy Road”, and I nodded and pointed south and she left.

And I had my story.

I have been called by some Great Power to give my readers a lecture on navigation. I must turn the world away from MapQuest and OnStar and other faulty systems. This has to be done quickly, before we have a massive traffic jam on Dairy Road, which will frighten the cattle and cause me to quit walking and to get obese and big boned again.

I am not surprised that there is a problem. This “happening” pops up with regularity on Dairy Road. Usually there are two folks in the automobile; a man driving and his wife sitting in the passenger seat. The man is grouchy looking, and often is thumping the GPS with one hand while he is motioning with his other hand for his wife to shut up. She is probably chiding him for not asking directions back at the Visitors’ Center when they crossed the state line near Pensacola.

I can understand frustration with these instruments. I do not own a GPS, but my son has one in each of his cars. Last year I went to Sunrise, his hometown, while he was traveling for his agency, so that I could spend time with my fifteen year old grandson. Stuart wanted us to go to a barbeque spot one evening; I believe it was named “Upchuck’s Ribs and Such”. He programmed the GPS, and it informed us that we must get on the Turnpike, turn north and go 735 miles until we reached the city limits of Savannah. It seems that city also has an “Upchuck’s”, and we were ordered to go there. I disregarded the directions, got out the city map and plotted my course. Each time I made a turn the voice on the machine complained.

We must return to the tried and true methods of navigation. I have been misled only once by celestial navigation and that was really my fault. If you are not familiar with celestial, it is the system, developed chiefly by Arabs, where a seaman looks through a sextant at a star, checks the angle between it and the horizon and finds his position on the globe. Bill Pennewill, who was probably one of the Navy’s finest navigators, insisted that the other officers of the USS TWEEDY occasionally do a “day’s work” in navigation, determining the position of the ship both morning and evening, plotting courses and making marks on charts. Once off the Atlantic coast I shot Venus, marked the time and gave Bill the coordinates. Bill checked them out and then said: “Holmes, take off your hat”. I asked him why, and he informed me that according to my calculations we were in the nave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

We owe a great deal of thanks to the those nomads of the deserts, who found out that the road signs between oases were not always accurate and began naming the stars so that they could follow them from spot to spot. Aldebaran, one of the Hyades, still is up there somewhere. So is Betelgeuse. I like Betelgeuse because some Hollywood type picked the name up, changed it to Beetlejuice and made a scary movie using it. Scary movies are about as good for cuddling as watching submarine races. A person can also use Ursa Major, also known as the Big Dipper, to find the north. Below the equator the Big Dipper does not have as many stars, and is known as the Southern Cross. I believe that this is because the Australians have too many marsupials. Kangaroos, koalas, and wombats abound. We only have ‘possums, so we get an extra star.

The Arabs also gave us the Arabic numerals, the numbers that we use every day. These begin with 0 and end with 9, or maybe 10, or 20 if you aren’t wearing shoes. Arabic numerals are easy to use. If we didn’t have them we would be trying to use Roman numerals. Have you ever tried to add XVII to CXXI without changing them to 17 and 121? Can’t be done, can it? That’s why Emperor Nero burned so many Christians. He was a moderately good man as Roman emperors went. I believe that he simply lost count. If he had used Arabic numbers he would have stopped at ten Christians, or maybe twenty, since he wore sandals and would probably have used his toes to add them up. We Church folks might even be celebrating St. Nero’s Day if he had not been trying to tally using Roman numerals.

When the good ship TWEEDY was activated in 1961 we were sent to Guantanamo Bay for Underway Training. As with many old ships, though, she immediately lost all electronic navigation capabilities upon departing Pensacola. Bill simply took star sights, plotted our course using dead reckoning and we entered the Windward Passage straight down the middle. Our arrival inspectors marveled at this, and complimented Bill for finding the Passage with no electronic aid. Bill looked at them and retorted: “Columbus found it without any!”

And this brings up comedian Flip Wilson’s famous monologue on Christopher Columbus and the discovery of America. According to Flip, Columbus set out to discover America because that was where Ray Charles was from. Flip described the voyage in detail, even having ol’ Chris telling his crew to “stop”, “back up” and “watch out for the edge”.

All of this is quite hilarious, until you find out that the Naval Academy does not teach celestial navigation any more. Some day, possibly next week, a young navigator will turn on his GPS and find that it doesn’t work because some six year old is playing games on a computer and has blacked out the satellite that sends the beams down to the ship, and he will not know what to do. When this happens, I hope he will “watch out for the edge”…..and for St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

So You Want to Write a Column!

2010-02-18T14:00:00.001-08:00

Some months ago my Sid Riley, Managing Editor of the *Jackson County Times*, persuaded me to write an occasional column for his newspaper. He has been very lenient in allowing me to vary the content, especially since I encountered a fraternity brother of his at one of my waterways meetings, and learned that he is in debt to several of his buddies from college days. This doesn’t mean that he owes them dollars that he had borrowed; far from it. It means that he owes them “hush” money for not telling about some of the shenanigans that he pulled after lights out in the fraternity house.

As I gained fame with my writings I also garnered comments about the quantity and the quality. I am unable to change the quality; this was ingrained in me by various English teachers throughout the years. I will continue to use proper punctuation and syntax in spite of what the Spelling and Grammar icon tells me when I scan for correctness.

My guru for this is the late William F. Buckley, Jr., author of God and Man at Yale and founding editor of the Weekly Review. Anyone that reads Mr. Buckley’s writings does so with a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary close at hand. The Collegiate Webster’s edition is not sufficient for this purpose. It also pays to have a list of Latin phrases and French words that seem to have been in common use in the Buckley family. I once had the opportunity to chat with Mr. Buckley. He had branched out into writing fiction and had penned a series of books about a detective named Blackford Oakes.

One day as I was riding to New Orleans in my *Ford Explorer* I tuned into a *National Public Radio* station just as he was being interviewed on *All Things Considered*. After several statements that seemed to stun the host, who obviously did not have a dictionary at hand, the lines were opened for call-ins. Mr. Buckley, being conservative politically, received none from the largely liberal listening audience. I listened as the two made small talk. Finally I called and was put through to the great man. He was very nice and did not make fun of my Southern accent. My question was: “Why has there not been any good novels written about the Korean War?” We chatted about tales from other wars, and we agreed that The Bridges at Toko-Ri came the closest to greatness, but did not quite come up to the level expected. We finally concluded that it was because the “police action” that was declared by the United Nations was not over yet, and there had been no time for retrospection.

On occasion I am asked what it takes to get into the business of column writing. I offer suggestions, but when the questioner finds out that I do not make money from my efforts, there is a sudden silence and a loss of interest. When someone compliments me on something I have written, I often say “That is all the pay I want”. What I really mean is that “That is all the pay I get”. But in case you wish to venture into this profession, here’s what I recommend.

Get a “nom de plume”. (If you don’t know what this means, look it up. This will do you good, and you can use that Webster‘s Unabridged that I mentioned). Mark Twain operated under a nom de plume. His real name was Samuel Langhorne Clemmons, but he changed his name since his mother obviously did not love him very much or she would have given him a much shorter name. With a short name you can get more words in your column, particularly if your editor is picky about lengths.

The way Clemmons got his name is interesting. He was a cub river pilot as a young man, and once got a steamboat in extremis (look this up, too). He avoided running it aground when the man in the bow with the sounding pole yelled back “mark twain”, which meant safe water. He adopted this as his nom de plume (you haven’t looked this up yet, have you?). This would be like my adopting “Drive in the right lane on the Interstate, unless there is an emergency vehicle ahead” as my pen name. Darn, now I have told you what “nom de plume” means.

So when you have the right name, and you have found an editor, you must decide on subjects. I handled my first three easily. Sid wanted river articles, and I am familiar with three rivers, the Apalachicola, the Chattahoochee and the Flint. After that I ran out of rivers, just like Atlanta runs out of drinking water in a drought.

I spent quite a bit of time in the U. S. Navy. When I added it up recently, I came up with 106 years service, man and boy. Actually it was only six years’ duty on ships, but I was seasick for three days once and this made it seem like 106. And as an aside, if you ever even think you will be seasick, eat several bananas. This will not keep you from upchucking, but bananas are the only food that I know of that taste the same coming up as they do going down.

So nautical experiences have contributed greatly to my columns, and this is primarily because of my “wheel” book. A wheel book is a small bound book that every young officer assigned to an oceangoing command maintains. In it he keeps pertinent data that will assist him in everyday life aboard, and it may also supply him with good information for the future, as mine has.

My wheel book’s very first entry was simple: “When you are facing forward on the ship, the port side is on your left”. The second entry was “red, right, returning” and this relates to the position of buoys that mark channels. In other words, red buoys are on the right of the channel when you are returning from the sea. See how simple it is? These are the only two things that you need to know to be a naval officer. The next one did not pertain to ship handling, but was very important. It stated “Mary Lil (the short brunette) at the DesSub Pub Officers Club has gingivitis. The medic says that I will be able to eat normally within a few days and my gums will heal”.

If you keep such a book be careful of what you enter. I did not write about the time I enticed my soon-to-be wife to go to Key West for vacation when my ship would be there. This intimated intimacy, but I would never let my children read this. Children do not want to believe that their parents ever did more than shake hands, and even then for only a brief period of time, and with gloves on. My three probably believe that the reason they were adopted by Theresa and me was that we had never figured out the “real” way to have children. In other things they are quite intelligent and alert.

Back to Mark Twain: he wrote what is called the “First American Masterpiece” : Huckleberry Finn. In it he used the now politically incorrect “n” word. He wrote this story on paper that was called foolscap, with a quill and probably homemade ink. The reason he did not use his computer was that using the “word” would have caused a virus and it would have locked his monitor up, much as mine was locked up when I stayed too long on the “Victoria’s Secret Angels” website.

Now you know all of my methods. You select a nom de plume, you pick interesting subjects (leave the Rivers alone, I may have to return to them and they are mine, all mine!) but be careful that they do not incriminate living persons, particularly yourself, and be sure that you make friends with an editor who will not put your column in among the want ads and try to charge you his “by the inch” fee.

Happy columns to you!

The Ash Wednesday Storm at Sea

2010-02-18T13:42:00.001-08:00

What the map will not tell you is the strength and fury of that ocean, its moods, its violence, its gentle balm, its treachery; what men can do with it and what it can do with men. (From THE CRUEL SEA by Nicholas Monsarrat, Alfred A. Knopf, New York; 1951)

The Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 is rated by some experts as the ninth biggest storm of the Twentieth Century to hit the continental United States. This storm stayed put for three days along the Eastern coastline instead of going out to sea. Ashore the three days of continuous rain and high wind caused rising water levels, abetted by a perigean tide. Winds were recorded at 76 miles per hour. The rising waters and the winds caused over $200 million dollars in damage and eroded shorelines 100 meters in places.

At sea it was much worse.

I was a young lieutenant in USS TWEEDY, a destroyer escort that had been activated for the Berlin Crisis, an event that is not even a blip in the history books. TWEEDY, along with forty other similar ships, had become a part of the active fleet of the U. S. Navy, and was home ported in Norfolk, Virginia.

On that Monday morning we went to sea, joining with four other escorts and an aircraft carrier to patrol our designated area near Cape Hatteras in a fleet exercise. It was “destroyer weather”; choppy and rough with heavy gusts of winds as we made our way through Thimble Shoals channel and past the new Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel complex. Without the modern satellite weather forecasts of today, we did not know what lay ahead.

The next day Lieutenant Jack Jolly was watch officer on the bridge of the ship. He was standing the “four to eight”, and as daylight approached he noted that the barometric pressure was falling. He immediately called the captain and then ordered the engineering watch standers to light off the other boiler so that we could have full power. In minutes the Captain was on the bridge. The seas were worsening. The winds kicked up and the waves grew.

By evening we were in the midst of the Ash Wednesday Storm. Decks were made secure, and hatches were closed, to be opened only when absolutely necessary. Crashing waves broke over the 305 foot long ship. Winds were gaining in intensity. Soon the ship was rolling from side to side. Later we were to find out that a cyclonic storm from the south had run head on into a northeaster out of the Arctic regions. By the time the Navy had given the order to “maneuver independently and follow the dictates of good seamanship”, TWEEDY’S radar and navigation equipment had been rendered inoperable, with antennas smashed by the intensity of the wind and water.

At the height of the storm the wind speed indicator showed storm forces at over 100 knots (about 110 land miles per hour). At this reading the indicator broke. We were powering into the waves, now occasionally cresting at thirty to thirty five feet in height from trough to top. The bridge, or pilot house, of the ship was normally twenty seven feet above water level. The narrow ship would ride over a crest and then plunge into the trough, shake itself and rise again to meet the next wave. In the midst of the weather those of us in the bridge area watched as a monster wave of over sixty feet bore down on the stout ship. Depth charges, set on safe and chained down, were swept out to sea. Forged launchers were bent backwards. Only in port did we fully assess the damages, but TWEEDY did not leak a drop into the hull.

Along with the pitch caused by the waves and the force of the wind, the ship was rolling side to side. There is some debate as to how far a ship such as TWEEDY could roll from the perpendicular and recover. Generally accepted is 58 degrees. We observed roll after roll exceeding 52 degrees. She would hang on the maximum roll for a moment that seemed like an hour, and then would slowly roll back, only to go again into that near limit.

Those of us that had access to the visual activity from the bridge were in awe of this demonstrated force of nature. Men below decks were frightened as they were banged about by the violent rolls, pitches and yaws. But the engines kept up their steady beat, and always when a need arose a sailor was there to handle it. Jim Burton, the lieutenant who relieved Jack Jolly at the beginning of the storm, fell and gashed his forehead. He was unconscious as we carried him down to the officers’ wardroom, but he awakened when Nichols, the leading hospital corpsman, began sewing him up. We held Jim down, and held Nichols up close so he could use both hands.

There was some humor. On board for two weeks training duty was a young officer, Jim Hardy, from Philadelphia who became deathly seasick as soon as we gained open water. At the height of the storm he was convinced that he should stand a bridge watch. He dragged himself to the pilot house, observed the conditions and turned to Ned Mayo, saluted and gave him the time-honored words: “Sir, I am ready to relieve you”. Ned, always a wag, returned the salute and said “Good, you are just in time to abandon ship.” Hardy fainted dead away, and we had another officer to carry below. After reaching port we never saw Hardy again.

I am sometimes asked where I had my most memorable meal and what it was. Most folks expect me to name a New Orleans or New York restaurant, but I often reply that my meal was two pieces of stale bread with a slice of bologna between them, and it was eaten while I was holding on to a vertical pipe on a small ship in the midst of the worst storm that I could ever imagine.

After some time the storm moved out and we were able to maneuver, to recover our communications with other ships and to assess our damage. The five ships, less the carrier, that had sallied forth early that week fell into formation. The commodore, who had overall command, suggested a race into port, with the winning ship being feted at a party by the other four. Off we went. Captain Moore called down to the firerooms and asked Willie, a boiler man, to come up. He told Willie that a little more speed would be appreciated. Willie turned, muttering “don’t nobody come down”. Soon we were felt an increase in speed. Captain Moore ordered a series of turns and we completely encircled one of our sister ships and then regained the lead. The party was great!

The Ash Wednesday Storm was the talk of the Eastern seaboard. Thirty folks were killed; many more injured. We were accorded a small mention on the editorial page of the Norfolk newspaper. It was titled “Five Old Ships Defeat the Sea”.

We did not defeat the sea. She picked us up and toyed with us as a spaniel would his favorite toy, and then released us. We had a good captain, good officers and a good crew. When we get together we toast each other and then we lift a glass to the good ship TWEEDY, and the men and women that built her so long ago.

But the men are the stars of this story. The only heroines are the ships, and the only villain is the cruel sea itself. (From THE CRUEL SEA, by Nicolas Montserrat)

Please Mr. Gore, Let Me Have a Little “Global Warming”!

2010-02-04T15:50:00.001-08:00

I was born of the South. I glory in being a resident of Florida. I got here in December, probably during a cold snap, but I was spared the memory. South means “warm” and that is what I crave.

Although there are rumors of cold times during my growing-up years, I recall few days of downright discomfort. The ground would occasionally freeze after a winter storm, but most of us could handle this day or two of ice. We had to cope with open fireplaces where we warmed our backsides before we jumped into bed and burrowed down into several quilts for a solid night’s sleep. On occasion I spent time on my uncle’s farm and had the adventure of using outdoor privies, and these were truly tough on your bare skin, but this was short term.

I went to college in Lakeland, where oranges grew on trees and the trees were scattered about a beautiful campus that fronted on a fine lake with water skiers flitting about.

And at first the Navy was kind to me, with boot camp in San Diego, followed by school in Jacksonville and then seven months duty on Guam. There was no cold weather there. Heavy rains three or four times a day, yes, but it was warm rain. We even experienced a long dry spell. It lasted three days, and was the longest on record.

Then my orders to Officer Candidate School caught up with me, and in mid January I arrived in Rhode Island. I was twenty three, and I saw snow for the first time. I saw snow, and then some more snow, and as if that was not enough, some snow on top of all of that snow. It was cold, and damp and the cold went through my peacoat to my bones and even memories of coconut trees did not help.

After Graduation I went to a ship. We were in and out of cold climes. You can believe me that five degrees below the Arctic Circle doesn’t make too much difference in the way that cold affects you. Standing on the bridge of a destroyer, clad in heavy clothes and watching salt water freeze on the foredeck is not attractive to a Southerner. It did teach me something. In the midst of my first encounter, I promised my Methodist Lord that if he would let me get back to port I would never return to Bluenose territory. The next month I found that our captain had overruled God, and we were back for more ice and snow.

When I returned to Florida my father decided I should attend Ford Motor Company’s Merchandising School, which was set up to train prospective dealers. I agreed to go if I could go in warm weather. Of course, with the luck of the Germans (you remember the Germans…. they lost two wars to us, and had the Italians for allies in the last one) that is built into me, I landed in Detroit on January 5, and was followed immediately by the worst blizzard in twenty five years. There was but one pleasant experience. I had a weekend date with a real “snow bunny”, but she had so many outer garments on that we could only hold hands and kiss. I suppose we kissed, but my lips may have been touching ice cubes. After three weeks I returned to Florida.

Recently I have been subjected to some very intense cold. When I began walking my daily three miles I decided that I would go rain or shine, warm or cold, except in thunderstorms. But several times lately the cold has been unconscionable. I am still walking but I am not happy. I have been told that I should “layer” my clothes for warmth. I do this. I begin with skivvies, add cargo pants below, a special *Nike* shirt above and then I top it off with a red, white and blue windbreaker, complete with high collar and an attached hood. If the day is bright, I don sunshades. I have a beard. I wear a ball cap. My running gloves complete my ensemble. I am fearful that if I fall down I will lie there on my back, waving my arms and legs like an abandoned turtle.

The problem is that I look like a Unibomber. With wraparound shades, beard, ball cap and hood there is little there that resembles me. I have quit walking along U. S. 90 because drivers were running into ditches when they saw me. I now confine my three miles to the street in front of my home, but dogs bark at me, and my neighbors are reluctant to leave their homes.

I understand why we are fearful of Global Warming. We have been cautioned that the ice will melt and the oceans will rise and we will have a different shoreline, maybe even as far inland as Compass Lake in the Hills, …which should increase the desirability of that property. Our manatees are already having problems. If you recall, one ended up in New York Harbor last year. He had a stubborn but befuddled look on his face. His mate had told him when they left the St. Johns River to turn south but he turned north. This is normal for all males. We do not listen to our mates or ask directions. Anyone between Florida and Cape May, New Jersey, would have given him directions, but he would not ask.

If the manatees go north I suspect that they will be replaced by South American penguins. This is okay with me. Penguins are cute, and they dress well. Their eyes are a little close together, though, which indicates little intelligence. When we get penguins up here we can quit asking the question: “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and start saying: “Where did all these funny birds with tuxedos come from, and what makes them think they can waddle across Interstate 10?”

We really don’t want Global Warming. We know that it is happening and that *Al Gore* is in charge of the entire process, both foreign and domestic. I will be starting a petition soon, begging him to let a little sunshine through onto Dairy Road, so that I can walk and lose weight, and someday fit into my Navy uniform, and not be mistaken for the Unibomber. I will give each of you an opportunity to sign on.

In the meantime, go on line to *Jackson County Times* and click on “Homer Hirt” and become a “Follower”. I have nine now, and I understand from *Stephanie*, The REALEDITOR, that there is a room for more. This will give you practice in retrieving my *Al Gore* petition.

We Have Signed The Check

2010-02-04T15:24:00.001-08:00

The Great War ended on November 11, 1918. American soldiers, sailors and marines came home singing “How you gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree”.

Fifty three years earlier the War Between the States ended in the drawing room of the McLane home in the hamlet of Appamattox Courthouse. Not until our young men followed General John J. “Blackjack” Pershing into battle did sectionalism near an end. With the onset of WWI, our country had finally come together in a common purpose. It was difficult for a Southerner to hold a grudge against a Northerner when they had stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the muddy trenches of the “Front”.

From this came the American Legion. Posts were formed across the nation. The men of The Great War soon welcomed those of World War II, who then took into their ranks veterans of Korea, Viet Nam and other combat actions.

Post 241 of Sneads was one of these Posts. In recent years it has had a membership of between seventy five and a hundred, with a strong Auxiliary that complements its work. It is often the patriotic conscience of the area. The Post awards scholarships to worthy high school seniors. It provides for sending juniors to Boys’ State. On appropriate days American flags are placed along U. S. 90 in mounts installed by Legion members. The flags are supplied by the Post, and Dillon Kilpatrick, with some assistance from others, sees to it that they are put up and taken down with respect and care. Dillon also was the “mover and shaker” who led the charge to construct the monument to our county’s fallen heroes that stands on our courthouse lawn.

Dillon’s image is engraved on the Korean War Wall in Washington. I was standing in line one day at the Wall: We were all quiet and… there he was! There was no doubt! I laughed out loud, and got some strange stares.

Post 241 has an Honors Detail. Throughout our part of Florida and in Alabama and Georgia, about a hundred times a year, the Detail renders the final salute to a veteran, usually at graveside, on occasion in a memorial setting. We stand in a single file facing the casket, each man armed with the Ml Garand rifle. A leader reads appropriate words and prays. He then folds the Flag and presents it to a survivor. We fire three volleys. A bugle sounds Taps. We have rendered the final salute to a comrade. Our pay is the honor that we receive by doing this.

Sometimes the salute is referred to as a “21 Gun” salute. Only a President is entitled to twenty one volleys. All veterans are entitled to receive three volleys. One interpretation for this is that the firing signifies that the guns are empty, and peace, at least for this veteran, is here.

Taps is played electronically. We would like to have a regular bugler. The notes ring out and fade into silence, much as it has been played since the Civil War: at the end of the day and at the end of an earthly life. Guy Edwards holds the bugle, and afterwards he may be complimented for his skill. Usually he just thanks the person.

The volleys ring out. Sometimes we are coordinated; often the sound is ragged. The Garand is much heavier to us than it was fifty years ago when we first made acquaintance with this instrument of war that is now a reminder of peace.

One day stands out in my memory. Early morning found us at a small country church. It was nestled among old trees, and the cemetery was typical: tree roots pushing against grave markers and grass overgrowing plots. Inside we heard singing: Just a Closer Walk, When the Saints Go Marching In, I‘ll Fly Away. The pallbearers carried the casket to the grave and we did our part. We then drove to Tallahassee to a well kept memory garden setting. A large canopy protected the family. A motorcycle group, carrying flags, arrived. A piper played Going Home and Amazing Grace. Again we honored the dead. Two settings, different but very much alike.

We have had a couple of World War II members. C. A. Dickson and Fauline Wester are of that generation, but no longer participate. Adell Miles was with us until a short time before his death.

George Segrest, a career Army NCO who served in Korea and Viet Nam, is often there. He places his cane on the ground and fires the Garand, and then retrieves the cane.

One of our newer members is Gene Lanier, owner of the Lanier Andler Funeral Home. We rag him about his participation, and accuse him of spying on his competition.

Reverend David Pipping of Victory Christian Academy wields his rifle well, even though he could by profession be standing by the graveside.

Jerry Alexander, Max Basford, Doug Neal, Bobby McDaniel, Ralph Camp, Clark Riddle and others are there.

The flag is folded, and presented “on behalf of a grateful Nation”. I have heard that each fold has a significance, but I do not know. When we fold it we want it done right, and tight, and smooth, so that it will be a remembrance for the family. And we salute the folded ensign one last time.

Glenn Edwards is our presenter. He does the job beautifully, from memory. He tells of the feeling we have for our comrade, even though we do not always know his name. He prays, expressing the certainty of the Resurrection. When Glenn is not present the task falls to me. I have not yet memorized the words, so I must read them. But I do add something that I feel tells what all veterans offer to our country. It is simple.

“Each member of the Armed Forces has signed a check made payable to our Country. The amount is left blank, for it is good up to and including the member’s life.”

That says everything that needs to be said.

I’ll Have Some Lagnaippe with that Fish Sandwich…

2010-02-04T14:30:00.001-08:00

The First Friday Power Breakfast this month was held on the second Friday. Art Kimbrough had an excuse for this, but I simply believe that he lost count. I take Art to lunch on occasion and he always pays me back by inviting me to the First Friday Breakfast. Meal for meal we are even. Dollar for dollar……….

The program went well. Jamie Streetman gave up the gavel with good grace and a big smile to incoming Chair Sarah Clemmons. Sarah spoke with enthusiasm about the future. Art passed on to her, surreptitiously, a note that I was never to be allowed more than three minutes to pose a question from the floor. Everything was shipshape and 4.0.

And then the Sue Harrison of the Southeast Community Blood Center made an appeal for donors. Everyone avoided looking at her, but I felt especially guilty. I had not contributed blood for over forty years. I assumed that the older I got the less likely I would be acceptable as a donor. And I have a thing against volunteering.

I came by this because my father, in his great wisdom, sent me to Florida Southern College in Lakeland when I was seventeen. I could have easily attended the newly-coed Florida State University in nearby Tallahassee, where the ratio of female to male students was about 20 to one. Florida Southern was affiliated with the Methodist Church and required each student to take courses in religion. FSU has often been acclaimed as one of the foremost party campuses in the country. The ratio at Southern was about six to one against me, and I was bashful to boot. So I was mixed in with a heap of returning ex GIs, men who had fought through the dark days of World War II. They gave me a lot of advice. The best was never volunteer for anything.

This was well received, but on occasion during my time in the U. S. Navy I went against it. I survived my initial five years, though, and returned to Chattahoochee in 1956. My father outlined his expectations. Of course I would be expected to take over his Ford dealership some day, so that he could travel with Mother to all of those places he had carefully avoided in their years of married life. He expected me to have a lot to do in and for the community: Rotary Club as soon as there was an opening for me; High School boosters club, even though I had never set foot on an sports field or basketball court; the Methodist Church.

I immediately became active in the Boosters’ Club, and when there was a classification opening I was inducted into Rotary. Then he sent me to the Church. He told me that I was to go down to see Don Padgett, the pastor, and tell him to give me a job. He said: “When he recovers from the shock, he will give you a good position“. Don did as he was expected, and I ended up as the first male chair of the local Commission on Missions.

But what is the connection between this and the Blood Center? Simply this: as I headed back to Sneads on Friday, I thought that I might check to see if I was really too old. I went in, hoping that I would be turned down. I asked if eighty was not too old. I was shocked. Age has nothing to do with it. Medication? I was good there, too. What about my time in the Navy, and all of the foreign seaports I had visited? All of this was before 1980, so I was clear. Rhonda, the nurse, hinted that if I had caught any of the diseases common to those places I would not likely be walking around today. I filled out the forms and a pretty young lady named Audrey held my hand and took my blood pressure and stuck my finger with a needle, and escorted me into THE ROOM. Comfortable couches awaited me. There was some discussion about my veins, but Jimmy, who could find a vein in a flea‘s front leg, handled that. Audrey brought me a bottle of Lagniappe. I was hoping for Wild Turkey, since I am a bird watcher, but I got orange juice. And today I learned that the Center will contribute five dollars for every pint of blood to “Doctors Without Borders” for their use in Haiti. The orange juice was good, but this is even better.

So I had volunteered, and the only bad thing that has happened since then is that my computer quit, but I don’t really think that this was due to my volunteering.

And now you need to understand Lagnaippe, pronounced something like “laun-yap”. It means “a little something extra”.

To better explain Lagnaippe, I offer this example. I go into *Suitman of Florida*, and Gene Smith fits me with one of his fine Navy blue blazers, replete with proper width lapels and gold buttons. In a fit of generosity, Gene selects a necktie from the $2.95 rack and presents it to me. That is Lagnaippe, in the truest sense of the word, as I defined it. It is “a little something extra”. Gene did not even pause in front of the $25 neckties.

I often have lunch or dinner in *Madison’s*, and Mark the Proprietor is always pleased to see me. I order a fish sandwich, and it is brought to me as I am accustomed to having it: no bread, no potatoes, no salad, and no “sides” of any kind. It is has a slice of lemon and a small container of sauce, and it is laid on the table as though it is the finest dish in the house. I pay full price, and I am pleased to do so. But on occasion the chef, or Mark, or one of the waitresses, adds a scoop of vegetables to the platter so that it won’t look so bare. This is “Lagnaippe”. It would also please my dear departed mother, who always kept after me to eat my vegetables.

Please notice a couple of things about this rather rambling article. I have introduced you to another Cajun term. I have explained that I was taught never to volunteer. And I have recently volunteered and it didn’t hurt at all. I met some nice people by doing this, people that seemed impressed with my goals for my next decade, with my newspaper column and with my repertoire of Viagra jokes.

Out in our community there are many opportunities for volunteers, opportunities for you to give some lagnaippe. Here are a few.

The Chamber has a need for Ambassadors, for volunteers to man the desk at the Russ House and a particular need for someone to assist Art in keeping track of which day is the First Friday and which is the Second.

Partners for Pets is impressive, and serves our community well. One lady that went there for years and cleaned pens and washed the inhabitants became unable to do this kind of work and I commiserated with her. “Oh, no” she said. “I still go, and I sit in a chair and I hold cats in my lap”. The organization will also take cash, old towels and cat and dog food.

I got a message from Cynthia Watkins at Seacrest Wolf Preserve informing me that work days would start in February and continue each Saturday through May. I, along with some twenty active duty Air Force personnel and civilians will be building an enclosure for another wolf couple that have need to live together in sin, and will be picking up wolf poop. I haven’t checked the weather forecast yet, but I can assure you that every other work day will be either extremely cold or extremely hot, with Force 8 storms.

So what is the connection between lagniappe and your volunteering? Just this: your community of Jackson County has given much to you. It is time for you to volunteer your services, to give Lagniappe. You will feel good, as I did (after the blood folks got the needle out of my arm). And you will probably meet some very nice people.

I’m Not Obese… Another Chapter in Homer’s Saga

2010-01-13T15:10:00.001-08:00

At dinner last night at Madison’s, our group’s conversation got around to my columns. There were several complimentary comments on recent subjects, and then one lady said, “But the ones about The Runner were the best.”

This put me on the track that Sid Riley, the Managing Editor of the Times placed me on. When he subtitled my first, “I’m Not Obese” article as “the continuing saga” I felt compelled to write a second one, in obeisance to my namesake, the famous blind Greek poet Homer, who penned the Odyssey. And, as I pointed out, sagas have a tendency to go on………and on.

Accept this as a report of my wellbeing and my advancement up the ladder of success in my several ventures. I reported that I weighed 215 pounds when I began walking and dieting. Then I told my readers that I dropped down to 190, and was wearing jackets that had hung in the back of my closet for some years. I also set up the possibility of my going a measured mile with “The Runner” in the year 2014, when I will be eighty five years old.

I am pleased to report to you that I now weigh 180 pounds, and I will be working throughout this New Year on cutting it down to 170 so that I can once again wear my U.S. Navy Dress White Uniform, with services medals and sword. This is a double goal: I will then have a certain indication that I was once that slimmed fit, and “The Runner” told me that uniforms excite her. I am assuming that she meant U.S. Navy uniforms, not park ranger’s camos or nurse smocks.

And I am on track for my measured mile goal of eight minutes. You will recall that I began this year strolling a mile in thirty minutes. I got serious and soon cut this to twenty five and then twenty minutes. This indicated that in a four year period it would be possible for me to make the distance in eight minutes. I am now down to sixteen minutes, and on some days I not only set a fast pace walking, I run part of the distance. Recently I was honored by being selected Grand Marshal of the Sneads Christmas Parade, and I either walked or ran most of the distance alongside my Explorer, ever though we were in, for the most part, rain and cold.

So, this presents an opportunity to me that had never come to mind until I noticed that Tiger Woods is losing endorsements right and left. Just before Christmas I went to Sandestin with a couple of my friends from the Table of Truth and Justice in Chattahoochee, and we actually went shopping. I stood around, mostly, and watched them in the Bass Pro Shop. They spent some time trying to get me to go into Victoria’s Secret to buy a Christmas gift for someone, but I resisted, and I compromised by going to the Nike store.

Nike has sporting goods, from gloves to shoes, for any sport except Acey-Deucey. I walked around in awe until a nice young salesman approached me and asked what my sport was. I quickly said “running”, not wanting to tell him that I was really a modified stroller. He nodded and led me to the shoes. Soon I was fitted out with a pair of very nice on-sale running shoes, and he had learned that I am retired Navy and that I write a weekly column for a newspaper, to which my friends added that it would probably soon be syndicated nationwide and maybe in Canada. I paid for the shoes and left, but not before he had learned the Times website address.

And then I thought back to something that Jerry Clower, the country comedian from Amite County, Mississippi wrote about endorsements. In his famous, “Knock him out, John” tale of coon hunting he had mentioned a Poulan chain saw. The next week he received a new chain saw from the Poulan Company. Jerry then began talking about Chrysler convertibles, an automobile he had always coveted. Chrysler came through, not with a convertible but with a Dodge pickup truck, which really suited Jerry better.

So how do I turn this concept into something lucrative?

I have mentioned by name restaurants and stores often in my articles. So far none of the folks that run these fine establishments have reciprocated with gifts. Perhaps it is how the names appear in print. Here is the way it’s ‘going down’ from now on out. I have decided that the names should be eye-catching, and I will make them so.

Occasionally, I and “The Runner” have breakfast at the *Waffle House*, but we may drop in on the *Gazebo* on occasion. Practically every first Tuesday night a group of us *REPUBLICANS* have a late supper at *Madisons*. Gina Stuart, who is owner of *K. B. Connor Realtor*, is one of the group, as is Bruce Lambert, who owns *Lambert Inspection Services*. The reason for this get together is that we have the monthly meeting of the *Jackson County Republican Executive Committee*. Because we dine late, I often stop by *Sweet Stuff Bakery* on the way to the meeting for a snack to tide me over.

As my regular readers know, I do not shop, I buy. Whenever I need electronic gear, or office supplies, I often end up at *Mickey Gilmore’s Wal-Mart*, but on occasion I make a stop at *Beall’s Outlet* or *Suitman of Florida* to check on trousers that fit, since my waistband has come down from a forty-four to a thirty eight. And of course this means that my too large clothes must then go to the *Habitat for Humanity* thrift shop on Jackson Street. And while I am kicking around the *Main Street Marianna* I will probably drop in at the *Chipola River Book and Tea Shop* for a priced-right book.

This is enough for now. It will take some time for me and my agent to sort through the flood of inducements that I expect from this column. You can be assured that I will move on to the automobile company that builds my favorite vehicle: *FORD MOTOR COMPANY*, so Will Rogers, get ready!

Music, Music, Music……

2010-01-08T15:19:00.001-08:00

In Chattahoochee High School I played clarinet, sitting usually as first chair in the second section. I was somewhat shy, and I got to sit every day next to Julie, who was a beautiful brunette. Then the band director put me up to the first clarinet section, but after a day I deliberately missed some octave jumps in my solo so that he would put me back next to Julie.

I thought I played clarinet well until I got to college and met some folks who really knew how. If I had persisted I might have been written up by the music critic that wrote “Nathan Jones played Gershwin last night in concert. Gershwin lost”. I suspect that the soloist tried one of Gershwin’s glissandos, maybe the one from Rhapsody in Blue. If that was so, I can understand his failure and the critic’s comment.

To play a clarinet takes ten fingers, with nine pushing a multitude of keys or covering holes, and one thumb holding the instrument. A trumpet has three valves, takes just three fingers and collects a lot of spit. The only instrument easier than a trumpet is the trombone, which has no keys or valves, just a lot of plumbing. The trombone in medieval Europe was called a “sackbut”. That should be a good reason not to play such a convoluted instrument. I suspect that it was originally spelled “sackbutt “, but the sackbut lobby prevailed and had the last “t” dropped.

There are more wind instruments out there. The oboe is much like the clarinet and is known as “the ill wind that nobody blows good”. Bassoons are double reed instruments that are fingered like oboes but are much larger and appear to be made from PVC pipe left over from a plumbing job. A contrabassoon is bigger, uglier and plays low notes. It needs more fingers than a normal person has.

Of course you cannot mention music here in Jackson County without bringing Royce Reagan up. Royce has a television program called Chipola Speaks. It should be called “Royce Speaks”. It is an “interview” format, and I use the quotation marks because as soon as he introduces the visitor, he takes over the conversation and thirty minutes later the guest has only had time to state his name, rank and serial number. A visiting guitarist recently was standing with one foot on a chair, poised to strike a few chords on his Gibson, when Royce began talking. When the program was over the guest needed help getting his foot off the chair, and his fingers were still poised to strike his first chord.

Three years ago my grandson Stuart, who played trumpet in his school band, visited me. We drove over to Chipola and I left him in the car while I attended a quick meeting. Royce asked me about the young fellow and I told him about the boy’s trumpet playing. Royce left before I did, and when I reached my car Stuart had a quizzical look on his face. Royce had approached him and told him that he could tell just by looking at him that he was a trumpet player. It was a good joke, and I imagine that Stuart is still telling about the wonderful man in Marianna that could look at you and determine what kind of instrument you played.

I had a strong desire some years ago while on active duty in the United States Navy to purchase some bagpipes and learn to play them. If one stays away from real pipers there should be no complaints with the way a novice plays. Who but an expert will know if you make a mistake? I have heard some pipes music that sounded like it was all mistakes. Bagpipes are played in many places in the world, but chiefly among the Scots and the Irish. No wonder the Scots are such fierce warriors. I had rather fight ten men armed to the teeth than to hear one bad piper. Bagpipes, in a slightly different form, have been in India for centuries. They were probably there when Alexander the Great invaded. For some reason he paused. History tells us that this is where he wept because he had no more worlds to conquer. I suspect he heard his first bagpipes and decided it was time to go home, where there were only a few stringed instruments and Pan pipes, which do not have bags connected to them and you don’t need fingers. On second thought, do you remember Zamfir, who marketed recordings of his Pan pipes on television? Maybe Alexander went from the frying pan into the fire. No wonder he died shortly after returning home.

I am drifting a bit, but I have been thinking about my goals for the next ten years and I see no reason not to learn to play this instrument. I will have to order it, or them. So how do I do that? Do I ask for “a bagpipe” or for “some bagpipes”? I don’t want to get more than I can handle. I am reminded of the zookeeper in a small Tennessee town that decided a mongoose, the animal that can fight a cobra to the death, would be an attraction. He wrote a letter to an animal supply house, but decided he needed a pair so they could propagate and be more commercially profitable. So he wrote “Dear sir: please send me two mongooses”. This did not look quite right so he crossed it out and wrote “send me two mongeese”, and that did not look right either, so he wrote “send me a mongoose, and while you are at it send me another one”.

If I play the pipes, will I have to wear a kilt? The Hirts are of Germanic origin, and they wear lederhosen. I don’t think a kilt is appropriate for me. I could fake it, but which clan should I claim? I was in the Chipola River Book and Tea Shop recently and my friend Michael is selling authentic tartan neckties. I checked them out but I am not attracted to any of them. If I can get by without wearing kilts, then I will. I have rather knobby knees and a strange scattering of hair on my calves that could be caused by something like male pattern baldness, but I suspect that it is because I have worn boots for too long. And, as an aside, bagpipe music is called “skirling”, which is also defined as a “shrieking noise”. Doesn’t that excite you?

Another problem has popped up. Sneads now has an anti-noise ordinance. A piper has no defense against this. His music is all noise. The ordinance is only enforceable against places that sell alcoholic beverages, though, and I only sell strong drink to my former shipmates that stop by for a visit, so I am probably safe.

Some years ago a man named Boudreau, from Pittsburgh, talked some large companies up there into constructing a self propelled barge that opened up into a bandshell. He was a river pilot and was also the conductor of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. Each year he would embark the Orchestra and set out down the Mississippi River, presenting concerts as they went to small and large cities. Twice they came up the Apalachicola River to Chattahoochee, and gave us rednecks a taste of excellent classical music. Of course age overtook both the barge and the maestro, and I have no idea what happened after that. But wouldn’t an orchestra on a barge, playing to everyone, be a great idea for our wonderful tri rivers system?

And there is a fair chance that there may soon be an accomplished bagpiper in the area, ready and willing to skirl away!

The Honorable Homer Hirt, Presiding……

2009-12-31T11:29:00.001-08:00

In 1966 my father and I purchased land on the edge of the town limits of Sneads and relocated our Ford dealership. The Town Council incorporated the area and we constructed two new buildings. The following year Theresa and I moved over to our new home nearby, and we became citizens.

Although Homer Hirt, Sr. assured me that his twenty three years as a county commissioner in Gadsden County was sufficient political service for two and perhaps three generations of Hirts, I soon heard the siren call and qualified to run for mayor of Sneads. The incumbent had held office for many years, and there were two other local folks that also qualified, but I went in on the first ballot. The sitting mayor asked for a runoff, not wanting to accept that the “new man from Chattahoochee” had defeated him. But this did not happen and I soon took office as the chief executive officer. One of the other candidates had four brothers living within the city limits, but only got a total of three votes. Our first action as a council was to authorize him to carry side arms if he so decided. He was deserving of this, since he had so few friends.

The first thing that I found out about this new office that I so proudly held was that the mayor had no vote whatsoever, but could veto. Because I was looked on as “that new man from Chattahoochee” I rarely was able to sustain a veto, so I soon began merely registering my opposition to actions of the five man council if I disagreed.

Then I discovered I had another duty.

One day the Chief of Police called me: “Homer, you’re due in court this afternoon”. “My Lord, Earl, what charge?” was my response. “No charge” he replied, “You are the judge”. I was shocked. I immediately went to the Town Hall and discovered that my collateral duty was indeed to preside as town magistrate. I did a quick study of the first law book that I ever opened, the one that told about third degree misdemeanors and traffic codes. By two that afternoon I, with much trepidation, took my seat in the council chambers, ready to dispense justice with Solomon -like wisdom.

The Chief, acting as bailiff, preceded me into the room, saying in a loud voice “All rise”. I then entered and took my seat. He continued: “Oyez, Oyez, the Court of the Town of Sneads, Florida is now in session, the Honorable Homer Hirt presiding”. He then ordered the attendees to be seated.

“The Honorable Homer Hirt!” How resounding! How impressive! How……How….. There were no other words to express my euphoria. The Chief called the first case. It was a simple speeding charge. The miscreant pled guilty, and I fined him twenty five dollars. He looked at me in amazement, but paid the fine. I later found out that my predecessor believed five dollars, charged to the man’s running account with the town, was enough.

I dispensed with the next two cases, not too far removed from the lower levels of miscreantism, and breathed a sigh of contentment. I decided that I would (a) study up on the law, (b) look back on the dockets to see how cases had been handled in the past, and (c) wear a coat and tie so that I would at least give the appearance of a judge that took his duties seriously as he meted out justice, tinged with mercy.

It took some time to handle the first two. The law, while lengthy, was not too complicated. It boiled down to being guilty or not guilty. I decided that it would be unseemly to flip a coin in the tight cases, but I could always call a recess and ponder the facts. I recalled what one of my favorite authors once wrote: “A fanatic is a person that decides he knows what the Lord would decide if only He knew the facts of the case”. I did not wish to be classified as a fanatic, but I felt that it was worthwhile to learn from the arresting officer, the defendant and any witnesses.

I checked the dockets for the past five years. Fines were inordinately low, and jail sentences were practically unknown. I discovered that the court should consider the guidelines for sentencing as given by Florida statutes. There were many reoccurring offenders for the same “crime”. It also appeared that fines, when imposed, were not always collected, or were assessed on the “easy pay” system, paid a little at the time to the Clerk.

The coat and tie decision was easy, even though it threw the Chief, the Clerk and many of the usual attendees off track. It seemed to me that the Chief’s basso pronouncement of “The Honorable Homer Hirt” rang out clearer and firmer than ever before. We were also getting a fair number of onlookers.

As the word got out that I was imposing more drastic sentences, defendants began to show up with witnesses. One in particular stands out. I don’t recall the charge, but when the Chief read out the defendant’s name a stranger announced that he was a character witness. The Chief called him to the stand to be sworn in and referred to him as “Mister”. The witness bristled, and said “That’s Colonel, sir”. I looked at him closely. He was not very imposing. He had a scraggly goatee, his hair was shaggy and over his collar, which was ragged in itself. His string bow tie was frayed, as was his seersucker coat. I questioned him: “Sir, are you entitled to be addressed as ‘colonel’ because you hold or have held that rank in one of our Armed Services?” The reply came: “No, sir”. Then I asked: “Did you acquire the title from the governor of the State of Kentucky or some other sovereign state?” and once again came the negative answer, So I then queried: “Well, sir, just what does that “colonel” in front of your name mean?” and he came back: “It’s just like that ‘honorable’ in front of your name. It don’t mean a damn thing”. There was justice administered immediately in that case, with no tinge of mercy. And after that I got a chair that sat me up higher, by a good six inches, than any other seat in the courtroom. That seemed to cut down on the antics.

And then there came the Case of the Protruding Elbows..

In the employ of the town was a man that was, on a regular basis, brought in for “public intoxication” or, as some wag put it “drunk walking”. He did not harm anyone, and he was usually let off with a stern warning or a small fine.

Then he came before me. The Chief swore him in and stated the charges, saying that the man had downed six beers that day. I asked for the evidence and he stated “Your Honor, his elbows were sticking straight out from his sides”. I stared at him and asked him what elbows had to do with it. He then said “Well, Your Honor, every body in Sneads knows that the more he has to drink the further out his elbows stick, and his were sticking straight out”. The defendant nodded in agreement. I turned to the Clerk for verification. She explained that the man, when he had two beers, let his elbows protrude a little to help keep his balance as he walked. Four beers they were farther out, and with six beers they were straight out, with forearms and hands swinging fore and aft. I could doubt evidence, but I could not argue with such deep knowledge, so I assessed the usual five dollar fine and gaveled the case closed.

Sneads seemed to be eternally and plentifully blessed with folks that would be considered eligible for strict judgments elsewhere. I have never decided whether this is heredity or environment. In my day our Police Department accepted, or at least tolerated, them. One lady was witnessed holding up the rear of a small car while her companion changed a flat tire. Our officers were brave but not foolhardy, and I will be forever grateful that she was never hailed into my one- door courtroom..

“C. D” was a disabled veteran whose prosthetic leg squeaked when he walked. He appeared before me when the arrival of his government check and a full moon coincided. And please do not tell me that a full moon does not affect folks with full pockets and a heavy thirst. C. D. would get rambunctious and be hauled to the county jail. About midnight he would make his one phone call, and it was always collect and always to me. I would accept it and he would begin “Homer, you know I went to college with you”. C. D. also had matriculated with every judge in three counties, according to him. I would send a patrolman to get this well-educated drunk out of jail and home, where he would stay, quietly recalling, I suppose, those halcyon days amidst the hallowed, ivy covered halls of higher learning.

At the court hearing C. D. would always beg off, asking to be allowed to go to a Veterans’ Administration facility for treatment of his alcoholism. Finally, three months shy of the end of my term, I promised him that one more appearance before my court would earn him a term on Captain Dennis Hill’s county road gang, with a peg leg strapped on his stump. This impressed him so much that he quit drinking and never came back.

I suppose that those days when he and I were classmates in college finally counted for something.

Christmas? Bah, Humbug…and here’s an APC for you!

2009-12-28T09:50:00.001-08:00

When I married Theresa I soon discovered I had a woman whose overriding purpose in life was to PURCHASE CHRISTMAS GIFTS. She began in July, bought, exchanged, discarded, and then bought more gifts for kinfolk, friends, neighbors and casual acquaintances. This was all right, except that I gained the reputation as a Scrooge, since I never shopped for gifts. I really had no need to do so. I gave gift certificates occasionally, because the Book of Nicodemus mentions them, and who am I to argue with an authority like that?

Now, with Theresa gone some three years, I struggle with inappropriate gifts for appropriate people. I have given advice to newly-wed men on gift giving, but this does not pertain to me at this time of life. There is no dearth of catalogs in the Commander’s household, but I don’t believe that lighted garden gnomes are suitable Christmas gifts, and that is what most of my catalogs seem to feature.

I have decided to continue with gift certificates, good at stores and mail order houses and at the bar in Madison’s. I highly recommend that if you get a gift card from me you use it at the latter establishment, and tell Mark the Owner that it came from me. I keep looking at his array of business cards, reproduced in brass and affixed to the half-wall behind the first row of tables thinking that I will find mine there. It hasn’t showed up yet, but if he can trace additional cash flow back to me, there is hope.

I remember great, and not so great, jokes about gift giving from the past, such as “What do you give to a man who has everything?” and the answer is “penicillin”. This may have to be explained to my younger readers since penicillin is no longer the only cure for social diseases.

Many years ago, when Chattahoochee’s commerce centered around the four railroads that terminated there, a game warden came to town one evening near Christmas time, and had a few drinks with some friends and then went to the store to buy a pound of raisins that his wife had requested. And then he had a few more drinks and bought another pound of raisins. And then a few more drinks……and he ended up with twenty individual pound packets of raisins. My father found out about this and ragged him unmercifully. A few days later, my father left his overcoat in a somewhat unusual place. The game warden found it and returned it. The following Christmas a pound of raisins mysteriously appeared under our Tree. And for twenty years the raisins appeared at the Hirt household, sometimes mailed from California or New York, often gift wrapped. This was never mentioned by the two friends, and after twenty years the raisins no longer appeared. This event was not explained to me until I was in my late teens. Up until then I was mystified that other folks in town did not get raisins under their trees each year. I had always assumed that Santa had something special for us.

In 1952 I was attached to an aircraft squadron on Guam and was supposed to receive orders to stateside. I sent the word to my folks in September that I was practically on the way home and they quit corresponding with me. But my orders had been sent to Jacksonville and were lost. Christmas came, and I was the only man in the squadron without so much as a card for the season. I went out and knocked two coconuts out of a tree, opened them with ceremony as though they were gifts, and ate them. I told this to my children as part of our family time, until one year there was a whole coconut on my plate where turkey and dressing should have been. I no longer mention this strange “gift”, but I still remember it.

Once I thought that I had the right gift for Theresa. She announced that she had seen a framed picture of General Robert E. Lee at Floye Brewton’s `antique shop, and that if I bought it for her she would not ask for anything else for Christmas. The next morning I beat Floye to his shop and purchased for $150 this final answer to my wife’s desire. I did not even haggle with Floye, which seemed to over joy him. A week after the holiday Theresa and I were reading in the family room when she looked up and said “That picture does not look right”. I assumed she was speaking of the location, so I offered to hang it on another wall. “No, I mean we have to redecorate”, she stated. Two months later we had sixteen Civil War prints, new color coded furniture and carpet (Confederate gray and red, what else?) and I had a bill for about $12,000. I had purchased the right gift, but I did not understand the total costs.

As you may surmise, the custom of exchanging Christmas cards also has gone by the boards. There is not only a hassle in maintaining lists, but a great deal of guilt is associated with the process. If you cull “Uncle Joe” because you have not received one from him for twenty years, he will most certainly send you one this year. So it is best not to send any at all and get the guilt over with.

I have a tradition that is not connected with the season. A while ago I commissioned a painting by a well known maritime artist who is also an old shipmate of mine. The painting is of the USS TWEEDY, a destroyer escort, and my last ship. I have had some nice note cards printed up with a reproduction of the painting on the front. I use them for birthdays and “attaboys” throughout the months. My daughter, Ashlee the Nutritionist, refers to them as my “All Purpose Cards”, or “APCs”.

So now I take time to send notes of appreciation to folks whom I feel have done something worthwhile. A few go to politicians, but more to men and women that have made a difference in my life, my community and my country.

The Children Home Society has received several APCs, since that is where Theresa and I got our three children. Usually a check is enclosed.

The Chipola College Foundation will receive one, also with a check. We have established a scholarship in Theresa’s memory, and it has served several students in the last three years. I will use this to honor our children, and this will keep me from trying to select suitable gifts for them. They may pout, but they can’t be openly critical.

Some years ago a fine lady named Becky Champion realized that the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee and Flint Rivers had something in common other than the vaunted “Water Wars”, and that is the opportunity for nature, cultural and heritage based tourism. A comprehensive study by Randall Travel Services, one of the nation’s premier tourism groups, confirmed this. Becky passed the reins on to Carole Rutland, who became the Executive Director of Riverway South. Under Carole’s leadership the concept is developing, and we are on the way toward a worthwhile north-south connection that will mean a great deal to Jackson County and the other five riparian counties on the Apalachicola River, as well as counties in Georgia and Alabama I have a special “APC” for both of these ladies.

Cynthia and Wayne Watkins of Seacrest Wolf Preserve will get one, thanking them for what they do for my friends Teton and Legend and the other animals, and for putting up with me when I go down there and just sit on the porch and rock instead of doing hard labor like the other volunteers. Many of the other volunteers are young service men and women from military bases close by who choose to work at Seacrest on their days off. I, of course, outrank the lot of them, and I get first call on the porch rockers during breaks.

Senator John McCain will get an APC. The McCain family has meant a great deal to me and to our country, and I bristle when I hear the conservatives in my Republican Party denigrate the Senator. I have come close to challenging some of them to duels: single shot paint guns at twenty paces, perhaps. John McCain is a war hero, has served his country all of his adult life, and he still serves us, fighting against inappropriate spending in Congress. Read his book ‘Faith of My Fathers” and decide if you could tolerate what he came through as a prisoner of war. I know that I could not.

But my biggest “All Purpose Card” is going out to the readers of my column.

Two years ago Sid Riley asked me to write an occasional piece about eastern Jackson County. He has allowed me to branch out and share stories from my past and sometimes to encourage folks as we move into an uncertain future. Sid does not pay me, but neither does he charge for this weekly ego trip that I take. My real pay is when someone tells me how he or she looks forward to reading my column. By the way, so far the most mentioned one is “I’m Not Obese, I’m Just Big Boned”.

So, if Sid will publish this, and if Stephanie the REAL EDITOR will put it in the right place, and if the Head of the Shipping Department does not put a label over my name, I will be pleased.

And just look at the postage I will save by not having to send cards!

I AM NOW AN OCTAGENARIAN

2009-12-17T14:52:00.001-08:00

But I may still go to the Methodist Church on occasion!
This title came to me because I have known some folks that think “octagenarian” has something to do with religion. It doesn’t, unless you include the fact that most of us read the Bible more often than we once did, but only because we are studying for our finals.

The day has come…. and gone. On December 14, 2009, at 6:00 AM, I reached a milestone in my life, although at the present moment it seems more like a millstone.

I am now eighty years old.

Please don’t tell me that it is “eighty years young”. In the early mornings after my three mile walk (with a little running thrown in), I feel young for a short time. Then I have a cup of coffee with my friends at the Table of Truth and Justice in Chattahoochee, or I check my E-mail, or I plan my calendar for the week, and I feel most, if not all, of those eighty years.

According to my mother I was born at 6:00 AM on December 14, 1929. I grew up thinking that the song “Dixie” was about me, since it goes: “In Dixie’s land where I was born in, early on one frosty morning”, and if mid December is not usually frosty and if any time before 7:00 AM is not early, then I have been living a lie. I choose to believe my mother, since she, unlike my father, never sold cars, and thus had a solid reputation. She also was not a lawyer, and that placed her even higher on the veracity scale.

I have learned that I do not need to read the entire obituary column in the paper. I just read down through the “H”s, and if my name is not there, I should have a pretty good day. By the way, does it bother anyone else that folks around here die alphabetically?

I am sometimes amused by the way these notices are written. Some of the deceased I knew pretty well, and I wonder if the typesetter got the wrong name at the top. I don’t go to many funeral services any more, but I have been to a few that, after listening to the preacher praise the deceased, I wanted to go up and open the casket and see if we were burying the right person.

Several months ago I was in Pensacola with some old shipmates, and one announced that he had written his own obituary. When queried about the reason behind this, he stated that it was so they would “get it right”. I then asked him if he had told of the two fine looking New Zealand women that showed up at his father’s house ,with luggage, looking for him after his ship had returned from the Pacific. He mumbled something noncommittal, so I decided that if I outlive him I will be certain that his column will include that event. This may be embarrassing to him now, but we were all very envious then.

In spite of the years, my mind is still like a steel trap, although a little rusty and slow to spring. If you ask me about someone, I will recall his name, but usually not until three o’clock the next morning. I will then call you and set you at ease if you wish. It is the least I can do for an inquiring mind.

A few nights ago I was watching NCIS and admiring Abby Schutto, the Tattooed Lady of that show, when Jim Roberts called. He described a woman that he had shared a pew with at a funeral service that day. I was sitting in the Republican pew just in front, and she asked him if I were Homer Hirt. He assured her that I was. I am certain that my strong resemblance to Sean Connery confused her. As we were leaving, she spoke to me and I knew her, but I did not recall her name. It seems that Jim was impressed with her “singing voice”(HAH!), but did not know her. Jim will be eighty in a few weeks. He confided in me that he “knows a lot of people but can’t recall their names”. He is going to make a very good octogenarian. I welcome him to the ranks of the forgetters, even though I am ahead of him alphabetically, and will be listed that way in the obits.

My father lived to the age of eighty four and my mother to eighty nine. I, who have lived a life beyond reproach, will probably make it ten more years. Here are some of my goals.

Most of my readers know about my planned race with “The Runner” on my eighty fifth birth day. She runs a mile in eight minutes. I am covering a mile in sixteen, but I have brought it to that point from twenty minutes in less than a year. So I am on track. I will continue with this endeavor.

I would like to keep writing for the Jackson County Times, in spite of the machinations of one or two of the staffers. Mangling Editor Sid Riley usually places my column with the want ads, and then tries to charge me by the inch as though I were an advertiser. Stephanie the REAL EDITOR, a charming and intelligent lady, corrects this and not only puts me ahead of “Pet of the Week” but has been placing my name and the page number of my column in the masthead. Then the Head of our Shipping Department negates this by sticking mailing labels over it.

I intend to keep going to Seacrest Wolf Preserve and working there as a volunteer. So far owners Cynthia and Wayne Watkins have not put me on the “wolf poop” patrol. They think I am a hero. I assist where I can and I enjoy spreading the word about this very unusual experience a short fifty miles from our county. When you visit give my regards to “Teton”, a very special wolf and a real hero.

I am a member of some organizations that have to do with our rivers, and I intend to continue with them. I have been involved with the “Water Wars” for about twenty years, but I have yet to receive a medal. I also have not been shot at, so that balances out. My knowledge about port and barge operations is worthless when compared to that of the general public. It is somewhat like being a high school basketball coach in Jackson County. If the coach drops dead during a game, there will be at least one hundred fans in the stands that feel capable of stepping in and taking over his duties.

I hope that I will continue in good health and that my American Express card will allow me a couple of future trips. I want to return to Gettysburg Battlefield and argue with the guides, who sometimes tell it all wrong. I have also done this at Chickamauga and Shiloh, much to my grandson’s chagrin, who accompanied me and stood to one side as I argued, and tried to act as though he did not know me. That’s why I kept the car keys in my pocket.

And I would really like to go to Maine. I want to sit on the rocks and look at a real ocean and then go to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. One of my ships spent so much time patrolling off Cape Hatteras, “The Graveyard of the Atlantic”, that there was talk of placing a permanent marker labeled “USS TWEEDY” on the navigation charts.

I realize that these trips will be better if I have someone to accompany me, other than my grandson. I am thinking about a contest to select a companion. It would be all expenses paid for her, and maybe the Head of our Shipping Department could assist me in collecting applications, since she only has to affix labels once a week and has a lot of time to spare. I would require that the selectee be a female, twenty years my junior, does not like Elvis Presley and looks good in a French maid costume.

But wait, that’s who I want for a housekeeper!

A Date That Will Live in Infamy……..

2009-12-10T13:27:00.001-08:00

I was one week shy of my twelfth birthday, and I was visiting at my grandmother’s home in Tallahassee. Suddenly someone called out, and we rushed to the radio. It was early afternoon. The commentator’s voice was somber. The Japanese fleet’s bombers had attacked Pearl Harbor without warning!

None of us were sure where Pearl Harbor was. Finally an atlas solved the problem, and we settled down to glean whatever else we could from the sporadic newscasts.

The next day our President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke before Congress. His message was short. It began “Yesterday, December 7th, 1941---a date that will live in infamy..” The voice that we had heard often during the country’s days of hard times as he communicated hope through his famed “Fireside Chats” was filled with resolve as he asked that a declaration of war be passed.

And it was passed, with one dissenting vote.

Through the next days and weeks the country awoke to fully realize the terrible losses that our fleet and army air force has suffered, not only in Hawaii but in the Philippines and in almost all of the lands that abutted the great Pacific Ocean.

Our way of life in the United States was altered. Even more altered was the way that our Navy was to fight war. The attacks on Pearl Harbor were on the battleships and cruisers moored side by side in the shallow bay, and on the supporting craft that were essential to the operation of the large ships. Battleship after battleship was sunk or disabled. The most famous, the USS ARIZONA, went down in shallow water, and today is a memorial. Other ships tried to clear the harbor entrance. One destroyer departed under the command of an ensign, the lowest rank in the Navy. He left his commanding officer in his wake as he took the ship out to safety.

When word got back to Washington about this early Sunday morning attack on Pearl, one high official said “You mean the Philippines, don’t you?” The vaunted “Yellow” battle plan, in place for years, was no longer valid.

Fortunately our carrier fleet, such as it was, was at sea. The Japanese war planner Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was counting on the carriers being in port, but they were not. This changed the way the Navy saw its mission. Heretofore the carriers were used to protect the battleships. Now they were the primary weapon of offense, and they carried the war very effectively to the enemy. The Battle of the Coral Sea, the Battle of Midway and other engagements were stories of our planes against their planes, each side seeking to sink or disable these mobile airfields.

We civilians back home followed the news carefully, with many young boys my age hoping that the war would last long enough so that we could take part in the action. We endured rationing, shortages, scrap drives and good and bad news for the next four years. The good news would be the battles that we eventually began winning. The bad news came as the names on the lists of casualties going to every city and town in the forty eight states.

We heard of combat heroes and watched newsreels of leaders pinning medals on young men with the “thousand yard stare” as they recalled Guadalcanal and Tarawa and Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Just before our invasion of Okinawa we heard of the most devastating weapon of the war: kamikaze planes. Named “divine wind” for a typhoon that had once saved Japan from invasion, these planes were flown by young men who intended to kill themselves, in the proud tradition of the Bushido code, and at the same time take with them an American warship. Our formations of ships protected the carriers in the center of a huge circle, with battleships and cruisers in the next ring and, finally, in the farthest out positions, a scattering of picket destroyers, the first ships to feel the brunt of the attacks.

One day Arliegh Burke, who would later become the Chief of Naval Operations, listened in on a radio transmission. It was from a young ensign on one of these picket destroyers. He was the only officer left alive. One gun was dismounted, the bridge was demolished, the ship listing badly. The young man said that the ship could make five knots, could still make steerageway and had two guns left in operating condition.

With a blend of horror, pride and pity, Burke listened to the conclusion of the young officer’s report: “I am an ensign. I have only been on this ship for a little while. I have been in the Navy for only a little while. I will fight this ship to the best of my ability, and forgive me for the mistakes I am about to make”. The communication stopped, and Burke never learned the identity of the man or the ship, but he never forgot his words.

In a book years later about the Korean War, the author asked: “Where do we get such men?” The answer, of course, did not need a\ reply. We got them from a free country with high ideals.

And we still get them there.

Remember Pearl Harbor!

(Note: This is not meant to be a comprehensive and historically accurate account of the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is my personal recollections, beginning at the time that I, as an almost twelve year old boy, heard about it mid-afternoon on Sunday, December 7. It is also contains observations from my study of the War in the Pacific, which was largely a navy war).

I May Be Too Late………..

2009-11-27T11:40:00.000-08:00

This is for the newly married Jackson County men who, throughout the past eleven months, chased their girlfriends until they were caught.

I could not find the exact data on the men that were married this year, but I have an idea of the appropriate proportions. Let’s work in groups of one hundred. I would think that, out of a cluster of one hundred men who succumbed to the promise of wedded bliss, twenty six had been married before and twelve woke up with hangovers and realized that the happening should not have happened, and immediately departed for some foreign seaport, or the deep woods, or the mountains.

This leaves sixty-two newly minted husbands. Mickey Gilmore’s advertisements at Wal-Mart have alerted five of these to the supposed desirability of the early purchase of a gift, and they fell for it, so we will be working with forty-seven grooms who have no idea of the perils they face.

These are the ones that I will instruct in the niceties of proper selection of that all-important first Christmas gift, and the snares that are subtly connected. Listen closely, gentlemen.

I was married for forty-two years to a woman who began Christmas shopping as we drove home from the Fourth of July parade. Her list was checked closer than Santa’s, and not just once or twice. Calls were made to ascertain that the aunts and uncles spread across this great nation of ours were yet alive. Once she checked a sonogram of a pregnant niece to make certain that there would be an appropriate gift if the baby (you recall the rule: blue for boy, pink for girl) arrived by Christmas. I watched, at first assuming that this would eliminate any last minute buying, but I was wrong. I would be putting together swing sets and tricycles on Christmas Eve and Theresa would be making one last gift run.

As an aside, I want you to know that I am an expert on last minute shopping. At least three times in the four decades that I was with Theresa, I stopped at a convenience store at 11:00 PM on the night before and bought her panty hose, in the incorrect size and of a shade that she did not use, and put them under the tree. That, my friends, is truly last minute!

That brings me to how you, the neophyte, should go about purchasing gifts. Be careful in your selections, not only for Christmas but throughout the year. Once I noticed a helium filled balloon that had in large print the beautiful thought “I LOVE YOU MORE TODAY THAN I DID YESTERDAY”. I had no special reason to buy this for my beloved, except that it expressed how I felt. I bought it and proudly carried it home. What could go wrong? I had read the large print; she read the small print underneath: “Yesterday you were a bitch”.. This is what the great patriot of the American Revolution Thomas Paine had in mind when he wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls”. It is also what your father meant when he told you to always read the small print. You thought he was talking about contracts, didn’t you?

Some thoughtful man, and it must have been a man, came up with the proper anniversary gift for each year of marriage. It begins with paper, goes to wood for the second year and progresses upward in cost and in desirability. Do not vary from this tradition. On our twenty fifth anniversary I made a quick trip to Tallahassee to purchase silver for Theresa. Being in a hurry, though, I stopped at the jewelry section of Gayfers and saw a diamond tennis bracelet and I purchased it. This was the ultimate bad choice.

Once you give a diamond, there is no going back. I recall Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell singing, in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”, a moving but true “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”. I cry when I see reruns of this on TV. Bracelets lead to necklaces, necklaces to earrings, earrings to a diamond ring for each finger and then there are ankle bracelets. I am thankful that toe rings did not come into favor while we were still married. The DeBeers Company, the world’s largest diamond merchants, once advertised “Diamonds are Forever”. That is the understatement of the century.

Do not ask her what she would like to have for her birthday, Christmas or your true anniversary. You must guess, so that she can blame you for selecting the wrong gift, and pout for a week or so, and use this as an excuse for not cooking or bringing you a beer when you come in from work. I say “true” anniversary. If you have been married for any time at all she will come up with very strange dates that you should have recalled, like “today was the anniversary of the first time we ever watched submarine races together, and that was two months before we got married, and you didn’t bring me anything today!” You can’t win these battles, so don’t try. Just be kind to her. The moon and her mood will change.

You have to be observant and alert, and see what she would really like. She may have told you that she enjoys fishing, but Zebco does not make an appropriate gift for a woman. Rolex does, and ocean cruises are fine, but if you choose to take her on a cruise, be certain to have a gift that she can unwrap, or it won’t count.

Be careful of lingerie purchases. Skivvies are entirely appropriate for intimate times, but be cautious. I would suggest your handling it like this: Forget Fruit of the Loom and Hanes. Take the time to go to Victoria’s Secret, unless you are past sixty. If you are past sixty, as am I, you will only get strange looks from the sales clerks as you ease among the racks and sweat and look furtive. One of them is most certain to call security. But you can, with a nice saleslady’s assistance, pick out an appropriate ensemble. Buy the bra at least one cup size too large. If she wears an “A”, buy a “B”. She will be pleased that you seem to underestimate her endowments, and will kiss you and treat you very nicely, and then she will secretly exchange it for a Wonderbra at her first opportunity, and will not tell you. This is why they call the store “Victoria’s Secret”. And buy the panties one size too small. She will not exchange these, but will, when she is by herself, try them on and decide that it is really the size that she should wear. You have made big points.

On a serious note, and I can be serious, Christmas is an important time for us to express our true feelings about our mates. In 2004 Theresa found that she had terminal cancer, and her oncologist told her that she had only a few months to be with us. Christmas approached, and I was in a quandary. What could I give her that would have meaning at such a time? Christmas was always her season, and she had done her usual thing, buying gifts for everyone.

Then one day I heard a commercial on the radio about naming a star for someone. Up till then I thought that this was an entirely inane idea, but then I realized how appropriate it would be, just this one time. So, under the Christmas tree that year was a certificate and a star chart that says that the International Star Registry “doth hereby redesignate star number Ursa Major RA 11h 7m 55s D 42’ 26’ to the name + Theresa L. Hirt and that the star will henceforth be known by this name”.

Finally………… I got it right.

There Was Not Always a “Veterans’ Day”

2009-11-19T13:39:00.001-08:00

Definition of a Veteran: A Veteran, whether Active Duty, Retired, National Guard or Reserve – is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a check made payable to “The United States of America” for an amount of “up to and including my life”. That is Honor, and there are far too many people in this country who no longer understand it. (Author unknown)

I do not think that Veterans’ Day should be just another “Take The Day Off” holiday.

Veterans’ Day should be a day when all the old men and women who “wrote the check” go down to the local elementary school and sit as honored guests while children, dressed in red, white and blue, step forward and recite appropriate words, and sing the old songs to us. And one of us should then stand up and thank them and tell them a little something about a particular time in our lives that was a defining moment, a time that they will not understand but one that we hope a few of them will remember.

And we should then go and have refreshments in a room where the tables are decorated in bright colors, and the punch and cookies are served by well dressed and handsome young girls and boys who feign an interest in us, our jokes, and our times.

And there should be a parade for us, led by a band or two, maybe including a ROTC marching unit, and with an old restored Army jeep decorated with flags and bunting and, of course, a fire truck out in front of everything. The streets should be lined with people waving Old Glory and cheering as we attempt to walk down Main Street and look solemn, and as we recall the long passed memories of our youth.

November 11 was not always Veterans’ Day.

My father “went to France” in 1917 with the American Expeditionary Force, led by General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing. General Pershing was one of his two heroes. The other was Sergeant Alvin York. When our troops arrived on the continent, the French and English generals expected Pershing to turn our fresh young fighters over to them, to be pushed into the horrible, meat grinder battles being fought at Verdun and St. Mihael, battles where thousands of men were killed daily, where trench warfare was the rule, where those two new killing machines, the tank and the machine gun, were put to full use. Stalemate was a commonly used term to describe this kind of war. But General Pershing demanded and got his own sectors, and immediately the American soldiers and Marines began defeating the enemy. Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Woods became our own front and we advanced and won. And the war came to an end. No wonder “Black Jack” was his hero.

My father did not talk much about his time in France. He once described to me the mud that they walked in and slept in and how he considered himself lucky the day he acquired a couple of boards to stretch his blanket on so that he could lie down above the filth and the mire. But that was it, until just before his death.

He was eighty four, an invalid in body but not in mind, and I was driving him around “his” county. Suddenly he said: “Let me tell you about the first Armistice Day”. That was what they called the cessation of combat on the Continent. He described the scene as he and other soldiers rode in a truck from the front toward the port city of Brest. There had been several false alarms, but this time they saw searchlights sweeping the sky and heard the booming of artillery and the screech of sirens as they watched rockets arcing through the heavens. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and they knew that they would be going home soon. He then came back to Tallahassee with his uniform and a discharge paper, and the State of Florida gave him a $25 bonus.

It took another war for “The War to End all Wars” to be labeled World War I. And it took the end of that war to change the name of Armistice Day to Veterans’ Day, honoring all veterans of all of our wars.

But to Homer Hirt, Sr. it always remained “Armistice Day”, the day he knew he would be coming home.

D DAY, THE SIXTH OF……NOVEMBER?

2009-11-12T13:22:00.001-08:00

The year 1964 was an exciting and eventful one for Americans.

The year before our country had lost its president, John F. Kennedy, to an assassin’s bullet (or bullets) and he had been succeeded by Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was still missing a ballot box from his first election to Congress from the Perdenales River Valley of Texas.

The Vietnam War was escalating, with the White House calling the shots, and missing the target most of the time. Folks back home watched the commentators on nightly newscasts and pronounced Walter Cronkite as the most trusted man in the country.

And in the little town of Chattahoochee the fourth grade of the school was assigned a task. Each child was to bring a topic that was of world significance.

The next morning the teacher learned from one student that Red China had exploded an atomic device. From another it was apparent that the greatest news was the escalating war in the Far East. But there was one child that seemed hesitant. It was apparent that she was uncertain that she understood the assignment. Then her face lit up. “I know, I know! Homer Hirt, Jr. is getting married!”

So there it was: the almost thirty-five year old Navy man, who drove a 1957 Thunderbird and avoided commitment to the opposite sex as firmly as George Washington had railed against “entangling foreign alliances” in his Farewell Address to the Nation, was about to become a wedded husband.

I had met Theresa in the office of the Ford Motor Credit Company in Tallahassee, and we dated for some time. I even sold her a new 1965 Ford, just as my father had sold my mother a Model T. The difference was that he had to teach her how to drive the automobile.

Since it was Leap Year, Theresa proposed to me. She proposed a total of three times, though in later years she said it was only once, but who was counting? The date was set for the sixth day of November, hence the title of “D Day”. We both referred to our anniversary that way, with a little humor tempered by fact. We were married in the Presbyterian Church in Quincy by the Methodist pastor from Chattahoochee. Seated in the expectant audience, which was a near full house, were at least two of the other women that I had dated. Thankfully they kept quiet through the “Speak now” part.

We settled in to a marriage of compromises. Since I was active in several organizations, even President of Rotary, she would attend appropriate events with me. I would often be called on to speak, and what better humor with which to leaven the speech than newlywed jokes. On the way home one night she said: “Holmes, I will offer you a deal. You will never have to go shopping with me if I never have to attend another meeting where you are allowed to speak”. I quickly accepted, and this held for forty-two years.

There should have been one other agreement.

Theresa was an Elvis Presley fan. No, a correction here. She was the ultimate fan. As a young single woman she had been to his concerts. She owned 45’s, 33’s, eight tracks and cassettes of his music. She had an Elvis decanter filled with bourbon and ash trays that she dared anyone to use. Post cards, books and movie tapes completed the collection. I had watched Elvis once, and that was on the Ed Sullivan show, when Ed filmed him only from the waist up. I would have preferred that he filmed him from the waist down, so that I would not have had to look at his famous upturned lip that drove the women wild.

For forty two years I had to listen to “Long Legged Girl”, “That’s All Right” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky”. I was forbidden to step on his “Blue Suede Shoes” or to answer the question “Are You Lonesome Tonight”. I was assured that I was “Nothing but a Hound Dog”. Elvis asked, nay, begged “Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear”, and then sung “Don’t be Cruel”, as if being called a hound dog was not cruelty enough to get the Partners for Pets down on me.

But I persevered. I did not step on any “Blue Suede Shoes” or have any “Blue Christmas” celebrations.

I have decided though, that I cannot go through this again.

If and when I take my children’s suggestion that I acquire a person to take care of my home, or if the lure of a live-in becomes too strong, the questionnaire that I will use to select the candidate, immediately after the query “Do you mind wearing a French maid costume from Frederick’s of Hollywood”, will ask “do you care for Elvis Presley?”. If the answer to this is “yes”, she will be rejected for cause, with no appeal.

After all, I really do not believe that I can tolerate another four decades of Elvis!

Lift Up Your Voices and HOWL!

2009-11-05T14:44:00.001-08:00

“Are you the Wolfman?” came the inquiry over my cell phone. I paused, somewhat stunned by this question. Thoughts raced through my mind.

The term “wolfman” has several connotations. First, of course, is the somewhat antiquated one that was once used to classify a man as an incurable woman chaser. I always recall the cartoon character that, upon seeing a good looking pair of legs on a passing female, began salivating and had eyes that bugged out.

The next thought was that I was suspected of being supernatural and able to change, on the dark of the moon, into a half-man half-wild beast and run around killing folks until the sun came up and he had to go to his regular nine-to-five job.

Then the caller identified herself. “This is Mary Wester at Golson Elementary. Someone told us that you know a lot about wolves and Mary Dungan needs someone to talk to her second grade class”. Mrs. Wester’s husband was once my banker, and you don’t turn down anyone that has that kind of connection. I quickly accepted.

My knowledge of wolves is that of an enthusiastic amateur. It began some time ago when I, trying to kill time surfing television, landed on Royce Reagan’s “Chipola Speaks”. Royce had gone down to a place unknown to me, the Seacrest Wolf Preserve near Wausau, and had interviewed Sylvia Watkins and had actually filmed a wad of wolves inside a large enclosure. I knew that they were live and active, since Royce’s voice was getting higher and higher as the animals got closer and closer. He could have easily sung the soprano’s part in Verdi’s Aida. This impressed me, and the Seacrest preserve impressed me even more.

Seacrest is privately owned, and is part of a 400 acre farm operated by Cynthia Watkins and her husband. In large enclosures they house individual wolf packs, composed of the traditional alpha male and alpha female and all of the other alphabetic designees. It is one of only four such preserves in the lower forty eight states, and the only one where a human can enter and see these fine fellows up close and personal. Cynthia or one of the other guides takes you through and you find out a lot of wolf knowledge, after she purges your mind of all of the scare folklore about werewolves, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandma and Dracula (real name: Vlad the Impaler).

You come away filled with admiration for the animals and even more for Cynthia and her ideals. I left and then returned, volunteering whenever I could, to work there. She has a lot of volunteer workers, many from nearby Hurlburt Air Force Base. I went there once on a cold, blustery wet day, and tried to keep up with these young service men and women. About one o’clock, cold, wet and miserable, I got them together and asked if any outranked me. None did, so I declared that the Navy’s part was accomplished for the day, and I left.

But I have gone back, sometimes to do shovel work, on some occasions to help erect new fences, and on once just to sit on the front porch at the store and rock. I have carried all of my grandsons, each of my children and even some casual acquaintances to take the tour, and each person has left impressed.

So perhaps I was qualified, but I had reservations. After all, Golson is a “government” school, as the shouting heads on television and radio refer to our public schools. Would I be subjected to a gaggle of undisciplined offspring, under little control by a teacher that was working only for retirement, and counting the days until that great “gittin’ up” day? Then I recalled Mary Dungan, and what my wife Theresa always told me about her, so I went.

I was met at the office by a young fellow who escorted me to the classroom, and actually engaged me in conversation. Mary met me at the door with a hug. Any time a man my age gets hugged by a woman the trip is worthwhile. There were fifteen second graders seated in two semi circles at their desks, with name tags printed big enough so that even a seventy nine year old man could read them. The front wall had been made ready to study wolves, with a pull down map of the United States so that I could show off places that were important, and a chart of what they knew about the animals, and what they wanted to know.

I began by telling about Seacrest and Cynthia and what I had done there. I talked. They listened. Then I was seated in the “Visitor’s Chair” and the students sat down on the floor and held up their hands to ask questions of me, the expert of the hour. They were cautioned to “ask questions, not make statements” and they did. Afterwards they stood, approached me and shook my hand, looked me in the eye and thanked me.

I left Golson Elementary School, one of our “government schools”, feeling good about myself and its teachers, for I knew that there were others like Mary Dungan there. I recalled that John S. McCain, when asked what he would do about public education, replied that we should pay our good teachers a lot more money, and should find the poor and mediocre ones different jobs that are not so critical to the wellbeing of our children and thus to our country.

And I say Amen to that!

(Note: The Wolf Preserve is less than 50 miles from Jackson County. Go on line to “Seacrest Wolf Preserve”. Tours are on Saturdays only.)

To John Paul Jones, the McCains and to Me…Happy Birthday!

2009-10-25T13:21:00.001-07:00

On October 13 in the Year of Our Lord 1775 the United States Navy was established. That makes all of us old salts 234 years old, at least in theory. We have something in common, a closeness that extends from that time to the present. We have served in ships that have sailed and continue to sail throughout the oceans of the world.

For me the beginning of the Navy was when a young man by the name of John Paul left the British Isles under a cloud, added the name “Jones” and volunteered to serve this bold, new country in a changing world. In action aboard the Bon Homme Richard against the British ship Serapis, things were going badly, and the opposing captain asked if he was ready to strike his colors. His reply has lived throughout the ages: “I have not yet begun to fight”. And he continued to fight until the Serapis colors were lowered, and just in time, for his ship was sinking.

We honor John Paul Jones in another way. Almost every news article about military action uses the term “In harm’s way” to denote danger that is being faced by some of our armed forces. The entire quote has a different connotation. Jones asked the Continental Congress to: “Give me a fast ship, for I intend to sail into harm’s way”. The “Harm’s Way” for Jones signified boldness and daring.

Not many years after our new country’s founding, Congress authorized several, first class ships of the line. Made of native trees, live oak from Florida, pine from Main, with fittings and cannon forged in the burgeoning factories of the New England states, these frigates served us well against our foes, including the Barbary Pirates. And two survive to this day. One has never been out of commission.

The U. S. S. Constitution is moored to a pier in Boston, with a full crew and an open gangplank so that visitors can experience something of the sense of “Old Ironsides”. And I have a close connection with her. Many years ago, when I was three years old, she was sailed down our eastern seaboard into the Gulf of Mexico, making port calls as she went. When she got nearby, my father took me to visit. As I walked the deck I felt the “call of nature” and I wet down the main mast of this great sailing ship. I suppose I felt that this was the thing to do at the time. Regardless, my father later told me that he felt that this was the moment that he knew that I would be a sailor!

Our Navy followed many of the traditions of the British fleet, including a daily ration of rum for crewmembers. Mixed with water, it was called “grog”, and it was considered part of the pay of the fighting sailor. But then General Order Number 99 was signed on June 1, 1914 by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, abolishing the rum ration. Coffee and tea had been doled out for some years on a trial basis and the Navy settled on hot coffee as the drink, not of choice but of necessity. Because of this, coffee has become known as a “cup of Joe” in honor of the Secretary.

You may have used the term, not knowing the history, but you haven’t used it in the quantities of us sailors. In March of 1954 the Navy’s Bureau of Supplies and Accounts announced that the Navy consumed 50,688 pounds of coffee per day, more than any other military service on the face of the globe. Recently I read in a health magazine sent to me by my daughter Ashlee, the Nutritionist, that four cups of regular coffee per day will ward off Alzheimer’s. I figure that I am good for at least 50 more years, if averages count for anything.

The U. S. Navy has been known for innovation, but the most innovative move was during the War Between the States. In a time that showed the ushering in of ironclads, rifled cannon, screw propellers and revolving turrets, the Confederate Navy capped it all. The first successful submersible warship, the CSS Hunley, was constructed, and manned with Army personnel. She sortied out into Charleston Harbor and sank the USS Housatonic, but was herself sunk. The Navy continued with research and evaluation, and eventually, in the 1950s, constructed the first nuclear powered ship, the USS Nautilus. I was on a destroyer steaming down the river when she was launched. It was an amazing sight, and long I will remember it. I remember the next three days even better, because I was seasick for the entire time. Never mention the Nautilus to me without being prepared to get barfed on.

David Farragut was a Southerner by birth, but was raised by a Union family, and he signed on with the wrong side. He led the U. S. Navy at the battle of Mobile Bay. He is best remembered for yelling out to his men “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead”. He was in the rigging of his flagship at the time, with his foot being held by a seaman who was awarded one of the first Medals of Honor for this. Farragut got his part wrong, though. There were no torpedoes as we know them, only electrically exploded mines, but he damned them properly as any good officer would do, and proceeded to win the battle and the city.

The Confederate Navy was well filled with former Union Navy officers. One of my favorites was Admiral Rafael Semmes of the CSS Alabama. Semmes took the Alabama, fitted it out as a raider and raised havoc with the merchant ships of the North. Finally, though, he was cornered in a port in France and had to go to sea, closely pursued by enemy warships. The Alabama was sunk, but Semmes escaped to Virginia. There General Robert E. Lee put him in charge of a detachment of army artillery in the last days of the war. Admiral Semmes returned to Mobile and refused to take the pledge of allegiance to the United States. The people of Mobile, being still in a rebellious mood, elected him mayor. No one complained and he served out his term.

My favorite Navy family is the McCain clan……grandfather John Sidney McCain, father John Sidney McCain, Jr. and son John Sidney McCain, III. There have been only two father-son full admiral groups, and the McCains are one of them. The first McCain commanded one of Admiral Bill Halsey’s task forces in the Pacific war, and was something of a hell-on-wheels character. His nickname was “Slew”, and no one living knows why that name. My Navy nickname is “Holmes”, as in “What gave you the first clue, Sherlock?”. I prefer that to “Slew”.

The admiral is given great credit for his leadership in bringing the Japanese Navy to bay. If you look at the famous photograph of General Douglas McArthur signing the treaty on the deck of the USS Missouri, and scan the officers watching, Slew is the third from the left. He looks like Popeye, which would have been a better nickname, in my opinion.

The father was John Sidney McCain, Jr., and was my commanding officer in 1953, and I became famous (somewhat) for locating his favorite smokes, Dutch Masters cigars, for him. He had been a submarine skipper during World War II, and later was in command of all armed forces in the Pacific during the Vietnam War, at the time that his son was a prisoner of war in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton”. His nickname among his lesser lights was “Good G—D---“ McCain, because of his profanity, but we never called him that to his face. I would have followed him over the edge of the earth if it were flat, or any where else, for that matter.

John Sidney McCain, III, is known to you all. He is a senator, ran for president, and was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for something over five years. When I first met him I promised to support him if he ever ran for president, and I did. Jackson County gave him 63 percent of its votes. He wrote a book: “Faith of my Fathers”. You should read it, especially the part about his missing washcloth.

So Navy Day has passed by, but you can still celebrate. If you are a man and you see a sailor, shake his hand. If you are a woman, remember: a sailor always appreciates a hug.

Especially “Holmes”!

“This is Where I Stood”

2009-10-08T15:57:00.001-07:00

“I was 16 years old, the youngest Confederate killed in the fighting. My father was Marianna businessman William Nickels, who was a Unionist. I was burned to death in the St. Luke Episcopal Church”.

“I was a senior deacon and Sunday School leader from Greenwood Baptist Church who rode out with Robinson’s school boys as they came to fight. At the age of 76, I was the oldest man killed in the Battle of Marianna. I was burned beyond recognition in St. Luke’s Episcopal Church”.

In Confederate Park I listened intently while the re-enactors told the heart wrenching stories of ten of the men that fell in battle over a hundred and forty years ago.

The words were familiar to me, but it was as though I was hearing them for the first time. I sensed that many of the listeners were also caught up in the moment.

As battles go, the Battle of Marianna was not much.

It did not have the intensity and the bloodshed of Antietam, the worst single day of that four year struggle, when thousands of Americans died.

It was not a turning point, like Gettysburg, where General Robert Lee, Commander of the seemingly invincible Army of Northern Virginia, was turned back from his invasion of the North.

It was not like Manassas. The inhabitants of Washington had loaded their buggies with picnic food, and had driven out to watch the mighty Union Army vanquish the upstarts. But a strange Confederate general stood his ground and for evermore was known as “Stonewall” Jackson, and the party goers fled back to the safety of the city in panic, and carried with them the sudden understanding that this war was real and terrible.

Marianna was a battle that was a microcosm of this wider conflict, a conflict that was played out over and over throughout our country. There was drama and unspeakable cruelty and great heroism. Men fought for a cause and for their homes, and for each other.

Former Governor Leroy Collins in his book “Forerunners Courageous” told about visiting the site of the Battle of Natural Bridge near Tallahassee as a young boy. There was a feeble old man who would search the ground until he found a particular spot. He would plant his walking stick there and shuffle around it and sing in a monotone “This is where I stood”. Collins said that the boys, himself included, would make fun of the man, but Collins’ father explained that he was one of the last survivors of the battle, and he always looked for the spot where he stood firm against the enemy on that fateful day.

On Marianna Day we watched as men told “where I stood” in a simple way.

I have been privileged to visit many of the War’s battlefields. Theresa and I would try to sense what the commanders were striving to accomplish, and to grasp the soldiers feelings where they stood. One of my ancestors, Samuel Calhoun White, was a member of the 31st Georgia Infantry, and we traced his footsteps through most of the battles in the East and, finally, to his part in the last battle of the great Army of Northern Virginia. We always tried to stand where we imagined Samuel stood at each of the battlefield sites we visited.

Uncle Samuel stood with Jackson’s troops on the unfinished railroad at the battle of Second Manassas. The Southern men ran out of ammunition, so they threw rocks at the Yankees down the hill. The Yankees threw rocks back!

He stood with General John B. Gordon’s brigade below Cemetery Ridge on the second night at Gettysburg. Gordon begged for permission to continue fighting, bnt was refused. The next day Pickett’s Charge sealed the fate of General Lee’s army at that battle.

He stood many more times with the Army, and was wounded three times in combat.

I wanted to record this in a book, as though he were writing home, but I did the last chapter first, and I have never done any others. Perhaps these paragraphs that I did pen will give the reader a sense of the foot soldiers who did not see the battle from the generals’ views, but experienced it on the ground and within a few yards of where they stood.

Here is how I imagined Corporal Samuel Calhoun White, Confederate States Army, wrote of the last day of his war:

The next day we lind up by company four abrest and startd out down the little rode where we had gone to that last fite. Only this tim Genl Gordon led us slow on his horse and he looked real sad like Lee had lookd. And we was draggin along too. We got down the rode a piece and the Yankees was drawd up on one side facin us and some fellow namd Chamberlain sat on his horse lookin at us. We was sad and movd slow and sort of draggd. And then Chamberlain calld out to his men and they come to attention and he told them to “carry arms” which is how fightin men salut. And blame if ever one of them bluecoats didnt do it and then Genl Gordon reard his horse up and did an eyes rite and returnd the salut with his saber and then we all drawd up strait and tall and marchd like we was on parade and returnd the salut.

But then we got down the rode a ways and we stoppd and turnd and stackd our rifels and put our flags acrost them and we all cried, most of us. And then we stood up and walkd down the rode a piece and then just sorta broke ranks and left. And that was the end of the Army of Northern Virginia.

And I thout back to when I left home and went to Savana on the cars and jined Lee’s army. And I rememberd friends I lost and battles we won and lost and what a good army we was and I think it was the best ever. And there was never anythin like us charging like a bunch of horses and yellin til it skeerd the other side and even the animals run from us. And I recollect Jackson and how he died and others and how there was always some good ones to take each place at least for a while.

And I thout about how there shoud have been a better way for us to go than stragglin off, but there wasnt and then I thout to myself dammd if I will ever love another country.

And then Samuel White left, to walk back to Georgia.

America’s Elite Ruling Class

2009-10-04T13:59:00.001-07:00

As I sat recently in the forum held by Congressman Allen Boyd (D-FL), listening to our challenges and his answers, I sensed that the problems we face are well beyond those argued.

Then it came to me: We in America have an elite ruling class.

In the beginning days of our country George Washington set the tone for presidents and for all elected federal officers. His admirers felt that he, the military savior of this brave new country and its first executive officer, should have a title that was befitting a hero. Some wished for him to be addressed as “Your Excellency”, while others proposed similar titles. He put them all down quickly, and let it be known that he would be addressed simply as “Mr. President”.

George Washington understood that this country, with its diverse interests, should not have an elite ruling class. Merchants in the North, planters in the South and a great frontier to the West that was soon to be settled by immigrants, should only be governed by representatives that were answerable to the common man.

But that is what we have today. It is the Congress of the United States.

Those of us that read and understand the Constitution know that the the federal government is made up of three branches, with the intent that one would balance against the other two. But now the Congress has an excess of power, the power of the appropriated dollar, a power that was never imagined when our Constitution was signed.

The blame for overspending our tax dollars is placed on the President, but it should be on the Congress. If the House does not originate a spending bill and the Senate does not agree, then no act goes to the President for signing, and there are no dollars for him to spend.

These “representatives of the people” now have the privileges that our founders feared. They can pass laws that pertain to everyone except themselves and are safe from removal from office except in rare cases.

The members, with a consenting majority, will pass a health care plan that will exclude themselves, yet they can check into any federal hospital, even if that facility by right and by name is reserved for military personnel, and receive free treatment.

The members are vested in the nation’s best retirement plan after serving a few short years. Social Security taxes are not withheld from their pay, so they have no concern for the success or failure of that system.

After only one term an astute congressman can be assured of a job that will last as long as he wishes. He does this by demanding and receiving free publicity from the media, simply by sending out “news” releases.

He votes on legislation that he often does not read or understand. He passes bills that levy more taxes on already overburdened businesses and individuals. He relies on powerful lobbyists for “facts” and for advice.

He inserts earmarks into seemingly innocuous bills, bypassing the tried and true committee system, and then claims that he “did not know”. Bridges to nowhere, weapons systems that the Armed Forces do not want or need, money thrown at problems that were caused by federal money being misspent, all are there by the hundreds.

Wouldn’t it be great if our next congressman, and the one after that, would pledge himself never to vote on a bill that he has not read, and to never insert any earmark?

Wouldn’t it be great if our next congressman, and the one after that, would not be allowed to refer to “Federal funds” but would be required to say “Taxpayers’ money”? The government does not earn money, it spends it. We earn the money.

Wouldn’t it be great if our next congressman, and the one after that, was term limited? It is only conceit of the highest order that makes an elected official feel that he is the only one suited to hold a particular office.

Wouldn’t it be great if our next congressman, and the one after that, would seriously work for the passage of the Fair Tax? Could you imagine not having to fill out another 1040 form ever and that each of us could enjoy April 15 simply because it is a lovely spring day?

And wouldn’t it be great if each citizen’s message to his congressman would be answered with something besides a form letter?

Yes, it would be great!

Honors aplenty!

2009-10-04T13:27:00.001-07:00

I have just been honored!
I am not very good with computers, but I am learning. I occasionally go on line to see what is happening in this fascinating world of communication.
Last week I had a “pop-up”! I thought that “pop-ups” were something like zits on teenagers, bumps that call for immediate panic and canceling of Saturday night dates. But I was wrong. This “pop-up” indicated that I was about to be honored.

I had five people on something that’s called FaceBook asking me to join them. Imagine that, five folks, only one of whom is kin to me! And something called “FaceBook”! This implies looking into someone’s eyes and accepting their accolades. I found out that I would need to post a personal picture. That in itself presents a problem. Should I send the one of me in my dress white Navy uniform, made when I was twenty three?

How about the one that a professional photographer took for our Methodist Church Directory? That was quite an experience. When I sat down to make the selection, the sales person told me that he could “erase my facial scars”. I am very proud of my facial scars. This would be like asking an old time Prussian Army officer to have plastic surgery to get rid of his saber marks. It just isn’t done. So the Directory will show the Sneads Methodist Lay Leader in all his glory, scars, untrimmed beard and all.

I may settle on the picture that is at the head of my column in the Jackson County Times. A lady told me that it made her think of a famous movie star. I assumed she meant Sean Connery, for that was my aim when I first grew my beard. She said, no, that I really resembled Gabby Hayes. That immediately placed her in the time frame of over sixty years of age, since a younger person would not know Mr. Hayes. Another said that I looked as she would imagine a mischievous Santa Claus would appear between Christmas seasons. That’s acceptable, and so is the photograph.

I have received other honors. Those of you that have followed my columns recall that I told of how Admiral John S. McCain, Jr. (the Senator’s father) honored me by remembering me eight years after I performed a valued service for him. I had procured a case of Dutch Masters cigars when he assumed command of the ship that I served in, so he most certainly kept that important action tucked away in a corner of his mind.

Once I took over the reins of the Tri Rivers Waterway Development Association as the interim executive director. I held that position for three months and, to my credit, moved it forward toward its goals. At the end of that time I was given an aluminum Louisville Slugger baseball bat engraved with the name of the organization, my dates of service and “Home Run Homer” prominently displayed. I have kept this bat concealed, though, since I have two grandsons that play baseball and a daughter who coaches and I do not want to have to tell them that this does not indicate that I have had outstanding playing time in America’s favorite sport.

And if you go on line (JacksonCountyTimes.Com) because you are too cheap to pay fifty cents for up-to-date news, you can look at my column, adorned with my mischievous Santa picture and directly underneath an invitation to become a Homer Hirt “Follower”. I did not know what this really meant until recently. I recalled the famous Lee Iacocca’s admonition when he took over Chrysler to “Lead, follow or get out of the way”. I immediately assumed that most of my readers were getting out of the way. To learn more I went in to see the Times’ REAL EDITOR Stephanie. She sat me down and showed me the workings, which seems to have something to do with a “Blog”, another term that I don’t understand. She could tell that I was unhappy to have no followers, so she logged herself in.

I also decided that my three children should be followers. They have never followed my advice before, but it won’t hurt them to log in, and, as near as I can tell, it doesn’t cost to participate. No, that’s not quite right. It could cost them something not to participate. October is the month when I review my “Last Will and Testament”. I have not made a revision for some years, but this could be the time for change. I may well give each of them notice by registered mail that the opportunity is fleeting and fleeing, and I expect a lot of “Followers” to pop-up, with their own names leading the list (remember, “lead, follow or get out of the way”). My estate could be spent by me in riotous living. I will give them till Halloween.

I have only one other comment, and it has to do with “following”. In the very early days of our entry into World War II, our naval forces in the Pacific were scattered, as were the other Allied warships. A force was gathered up, comprised of American, Australian, Dutch and British ships. The fleet was a conglomeration of old cruisers and destroyers that had little in common except a hatred for their new enemy. The senior officer was Dutch Admiral Karel Von Doormann. Communication between ships was almost non existent, but the good admiral gathered them up and ran up the signal flag for “Follow Me”.

I wish I could tell you that Von Doormann was successful in his venture, but I cannot. Almost all of his ships were sunk in his first and only sea battle, with a frightful loss of life. But I can assure you that if you become a Homer Hirt “Follower” your ship will not sink, and you may well live to become an octogenarian, as I soon will be!

Cousin Homer and the Cajuns…

2009-10-04T12:21:00.000-07:00

One of the benefits of being in the inland barge business is the opportunity to get to know the Cajun people.
My first encounter came at the Jackson County Port in 1975. We had loaded our first two barge loads: three thousand tons of crushed cars, 1500 tons per barge, stacked high and lashed down and moored securely to the pier on the Apalachicola River. We waited for the towboat that would take them out and across the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway to Pinto Island near Mobile. There the cars would be shredded and eventually would wind up as steel.
Around the bend downriver we saw a small push boat, struggling against the current. As we watched she came alongside and we could make out her name. The "Delta Dawn", out of southern Louisiana, had arrived. We assisted in tying her up and Captain Callais came up our ladder. He was Cajun and his language was a mixture of English, Southern and French, with a lot of cuss words thrown in, since he had damaged a rudder on a sandbar downstream. We understood the cuss words best of all.
This began for me an association of over thirty years with the Cajuns, particularly those in the port and barge business along the Gulf coast. "Cajun" is a short version of "Acadian", the French speaking people that were run out of Nova Scotia by the British and ended up in and around what is now Lafayette. Periodically the descendants meet with each other, one year going to Nova Scotia and the next year to Lafayette.
The Cajuns are one of the few cultures in our country that enjoy a good laugh on themselves. When you get to know them well, and are accepted by them, you will hear story after story as they make fun of their own mannerisms, families and customs. When you are called "Cousin" you are being recognized as worthy of sitting at their table, sharing their food and drink and hearing their tall tales, tinged with just enough truth to give credence to them.
Soon you will feel a kinship with Boudreaux and Arseneaux and "Boud’s lovely wife Ma-rie" and you might even feel comfortable enough to eat crawfish by pinching tails and sucking heads, and washing them down with a local beer and then standing up and hollering. You don’t holler because you are hurting, but because it is time. The best is "Hooooo", but any holler will do.
Do you know the reason why many of their last names end with an "x"? When the young men were registering for the draft in the Great War (we call it World War I), many could not sign their names, so young Boudreau made his "X" after his name, and the Army added it to the spelling and he came home as "Boudreaux". They didn’t mind that one bit, and it has stayed with them.
They are proud of their names. I was sitting at a table in a bar in Lafayette with some of my good friends, and one of them I had always heard referred to as "Inner", so I called him that. But soon I found out that he had no first name, but had two initials: "N" and "R", which were combined to be pronounced as "NR" or "Inner". He introduced me to his son Bubba that night. I queried him about this name, which was certainly out of the ordinary down there, and he replied: "Cousin Homer, I din’ wan’ him to have wan of dem crazy Cajun names".
One night a group of us were having dinner in one of New Orleans’ better restaurants, and Cousin Ted selected the wine, and it was a good selection. Then he told the waiter: "put de bottle in a paper bag and put it on de flo’ by me", and the waiter did.
The best of the Cajun stories are visual, and impossible to put into print, but here are some of my favorites.
Arseneaux buys a gas station down in Cut Off, next to the Tippytoe Inn, but his sales were not so good. Boudreaux recommended that he "get a gimmick", giving something away with a fill up. The next day Boud stops and a sign says "Free Sex With Fill Up" and he gets the fill up and announces "I’m ready!". Arseneaux say he got to guess a number between wan and ten ,an’ he guess seven an his frien’ say "you miss it by wan" So de nex’ day de same thing, only Arseneaux say to guess between ten an’ twenty, and ol’ Boud guess fifteen, and he say ‘you miss it by wan’. An he gets mad an’ say: "I bet nobody ever win" an’ Arseneaux he say: "Sho’ dey do. Yo’ wife won……twice!"
The two friends found a job in New Orleans, and would drive up and back every day. An outsider named Brown moved into Cut Off and worked with them and they shared rides. "Wan day dey stop and have three or two beer an’ den three or two mo’ and den Boud ran off de rode and wrek his pickum up truck and Brown gets hisself killed. Arseneaux he say: ‘somebody got to tole Mrs. Brown, but I can’t cause I got no tack’ and den Boud he say ‘I got enough tack I ought to be a diploma’ so he go to Brown’s house an he knock, and de lady come out an he say, ‘are you de Widow Brown?’ An’ she say ‘I’m Mrs. Brown, I’m not the Widow Brown’ and ol’ Boud he say ‘lak hell you ain’t!’".
But I have some bad news. Beaudreaux and Arseneaux got a job up at the Dixie Beer plant, "an wan day Arseneaux come back to Cut Off and go see Boud’s lovely wife Ma-rie, and tole her dat her husban’ done drownd in a vat of beer. After she cry som, she say, ‘well, I hope he din’ suffer much’ and Arseneaux he say ‘I don’ think he did. He got out twice to go to de men’s room’."
(Note: This is dedicated to Bert Benoit, who is from Lafayette, but never gets his name pronounced the same way twice in a row here in Florida)

Help me celebrate…..and send a check!

2009-09-14T10:10:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to write a column these days that does not speak of politics. It is not that Mangling Editor Sid Riley does not cover the subject well, but I am able to infringe on his territory on occasion, as long as I do not include the word “Rudiments”. So here goes with one of my observations. This crosses party lines and touches state and federal levels, and perhaps will eventually reach the lower levels, if there are any lower levels.
Last week I received two letters, both from wives of office holders. The mailings were alike in content and in style, and the appeals for the same purpose. You have received similar ones. I am referring, of course, to the chatty type missive in which the spouse announces that her husband’s birthday is imminent and wouldn’t it be nice if she could surprise the Congressman or the Senator with my check, made out to his campaign, for one dollar per year of longevity, and annotated in the lower corner “Happy Birthday!”
I immediately discarded one, but the other is from a good looking blonde, and blondes are high up on my list of weaknesses. Also high up are brunettes and redheads. My daughter Ashlee the Nutritionist is a natural blonde, and she tells me that the reason blonde jokes are short is so brunettes can understand them.
I immediately read the appeal, and was somewhat disappointed since I was only being asked for a dollar per year, until I remembered that the good Senator is somewhat long in the tooth, and the money will not be tax deductible. And I am not invited to the birthday party, which is a pity, because the wife owns a beer distributorship in Arizona.
Then I began thinking about this process of soliciting money. It is flawed. There is no way that the Mrs. can ask for money more than once each year.
In order to do my part I have decided to compile some appropriate dates for mailings, and the reasons for the use of each. The obvious ones, Christmas, New Years Day, Independence Day, are just that, obvious, and even a ………..oops, I almost said “blonde”……..can think of those. So I recommend that these be considered:
● Saint Swithin’s Day. This is a “floating” day, named for an obscure saint, and can be celebrated whenever and wherever followers desire. This is probably the ultimate for fundraisers. Since the origin came from an attempt by an early pope to attract goat herders to religion, there should be no protests.
● June 3. Jefferson Davis’ birthday is June 3. Davis had a distinguished career as a U. S. Senator and Secretary of War, and became the first and only President of the Confederate States of America. Celebration can be held on even numbered years for his birthday and on odd years for President’s Day. Banks in the South once closed every June 3, and for years I thought that it was in honor of my father, who was also born on this day.
● June 21. On June 21, 1951 I was sworn into the United States Navy. It is truly a memorable date for me, and I would appreciate some recognition. By the way, I re-read my commissioning papers the other day and found that I am subject to recall. If the Admiral needs me. I hope that one of the Navy’s newer ships has an inclined ramp to the pilot house. I do not care for shore duty.
● January 22, March 2, May 16, October 11, November 1. These are the days on which I have been accused of fathering children in different parts of the world. This is a standard accusation against sailors and it is because we wear those cute uniforms. We are all innocent. If I am blamed at any time from now on, though, I may accept the charge as a compliment. I will not own up to the act in court, however, since perjury carries an automatic thirty day sentence in the county facility and the judge will know I am lying.
● The Ides of March. This is the day that Brutus stabbed (or as we say down South “stobbed”) Caesar, not only taking his life but placing on countless school children for years afterwards the requirement to learn “Et tu, Brute’ ”. This is Latin, and a little of that language goes a long way. “Et tu, Brute’ ” has been more than enough for me, and I am closing in on eighty years of age. Brutus was a senator, as were some of his compatriots. On second thought maybe we shouldn’t use this. Senators have enough strange ideas without having Latin to confuse them.
● The Day after High School Graduation. On Graduation Day the seniors attack the world. The next day the world attacks back. This could also be called the “Rude Awakening Day”.
● April 15. We should wait until the Fair Tax is voted in. April 15th will then be just another lovely spring day, and we will be glad to send in a dollar per longevity year to all the senators and the representatives. Think of the money we will be saving, even then!
● December 14. This is my birthday. It has always been a difficult time for me because it is near Christmas and I always got that old “I’m giving you one present for both days” treatment. My mother’s sister was a pharmacist and we shared the same day, but she would send me vitamins and cod liver oil. So if you wish to assist me please do so. I do not have a wife to mail out my appeals, but I owe money to several banks. Just take your checks in and deposit them to my account. I can assure you that I will appreciate this gesture more than any senator or congressman will. And you will get a thank you note and an invitation to my party!

No Good Politicians? Take a look at these!

2009-08-31T07:50:00.000-07:00

In the Jackson County Times it is usually up to the Managing Editor to beat the political drum, but just this time I want to tell the readers about four politicians that will always be in my memory,… for as long as I have a memory.
The first of these politicians was the closest to me. He was my father, Homer B. Hirt, Sr. Owner of a small automobile agency in a nearby town, he operated it as he thought it should be operated. In a time when there was a distinct division between the blacks and the whites, in the days of separate water fountains and restrooms, his business had one fountain (for everyone) and two restrooms (one for male and one for female). All employees were paid on the same scale. It must have worked, for the dealership stayed in the same family for fourty-seven years.
One day he was asked by the governor to fill the unexpired term of a county commissioner who had died. He agreed, even though his company would lose all county business. His pay was twenty five dollars a month. After three years of service he qualified to run for the job, but he never campaigned. He said that after three years the voters should know what he stood for. He was county commissioner for twenty-three years, and I have been told that the county did not owe any long term debt when he decided not to run again, and had more miles of paved roads per capita than any other rural county in the state.
Sam Mitchell was an athlete and a high school coach. Other coaches in his district complained that Sam took over the coaches’ meetings. He ran for the state House of Representatives and was elected, only to lose it immediately because of reapportionment. Undismayed he ran again and was once more elected. I met him during this time. We seemed to “hit it off”. On the day he took office he called me. “Homer, be at my office at 9:00 in the morning”. I did not ask him why, but I showed up. You did not say “no’ to Big Sam. When I got to the Capitol he introduced me to another freshman legislator who favored the completion of the Cross Florida Barge Canal, as did I. He and I talked for about an hour, and Sam listened. In a few weeks he had the opportunity to make his first speech, and he chose ……”The need for the Cross Florida Barge Canal”. He was chided for picking this “do not touch” subject, but his rejoinder was that “a friend of mine told me that it was a good thing, and I agree”.
Bob Milligan was a retired U. S. Marine general who got in his wife’s hair by trying to arrange their new home “Marine Corps style”. She told him to get out and do something. General Milligan decided to run for Comptroller of the State of Florida. The incumbent had over 5 million dollars in his war chest, much of it donated by those that his department regulated. Milligan had some handbills printed up and got in his Plymouth and drove over the roads of Florida from Pensacola to Key West, talking to citizens wherever he found them. He won the election and spent about $120,000 total. He was reelected and spent about the same the second time around. He supported his employees when they were right, and got rid of those that should not have been there. He saw that the people of Florida were served. That’s the way the Marines always do it.
Lane Gilchrist was a long time friend of mine. We were officers in the USS TWEEDY, a destroyer escort. Much of our time then was spent in or near Cuban waters during the run up to the Missile Crisis. Our ship was home ported in Norfolk, Virginia, and one day one of the married officers was told by his wife to bring a date home for her single friend. His first choice could not go, so Lane went. Lane and Suzi were married within the year.
Lane and I remained close friends, sharing our recollections and sometimes confiding in each other when we had problems. From his home in Gulf Breeze he took me sailing for my first time a year ago. For some years he had fought lymphoma, always coming back from the attacks. His resistance was low, though, and two months ago he did not come home from the hospital. The Pensacola News Journal, on its editorial page, expressed how folks felt about him. The title was “Quiet dignity will live on”. It read, in part:
“Born in 1936, he was a longtime public official who served honorably, and often quietly, in an era when too many elected officials give public service a bad name. Mayor Gilchrist, also retired from the Navy, was widely respected as a good man, good neighbor and good public servant. He held office for all the right reasons – to serve the city he loved and to represent the people who kept him in office. He served 17 years as mayor, in a small town where public service is more about making other people’s lives better than about creating a stepping stone to higher office.”
So there you have it. When politicians say “But that’s just the way it is”, it would be good to remind them of a businessman that treated people right and felt that there was no reason to remind voters of what he stood for. Perhaps we could tell them about the representative that put his political career on the line because a “friend said it was a good thing and I believe him”. As candidates ask for more and more money to run for office, someone should tell them about the Marine general that was elected twice to a statewide office, passing out handbills from a Plymouth. And about a mayor that held office “for all the right reasons” and made his community better and left many friends and a grateful public.

It’s The Truth…As Far As It Goes

2009-08-31T07:42:00.001-07:00

I grew up in Chattahoochee, on the east bank of the Apalachicola River. There is always a question about the origin of these two names. Here is the truth, as I understand it. A white man asked an Indian what the name of the river was. He replied “Apalachicola”, which means “I don’t understand your question”. The white man then asked about the high bluff overlooking the waters. The Indian replied “Chattahoochee”, which means “I still don’t understand your question”.
My father owned a Ford dealership there, opened by him in 1923 and operated by our family until 1971. This era stretched through the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean police action and most of the Cold War.
The construction of Jim Woodruff Dam brought in a time of prosperity. Men came to work, and their families followed. After completion of the dam and the lake in 1956, the town settled down.
I returned home after four years in college and five in the Navy to work at the dealership and later in other professions. I learned about barges and ports, not only on the Apalachicola but on many other waterways, gaining enough knowledge so that one day a lady who was writing a book about the river called me for an interview. We agreed to meet in a local cafe. Faith Eidse arrived with her tape recorder and a lot of questions. I began by telling her how it was to grow up in this small town.
And then I saw Dave coming. Dave hung around his wife’s shop across the street, but made several trips a day to the café. He would step out, pause, look both ways, study the sky, and then amble across to the other side. He always had a toothpick in his mouth. He was one of the few men that I knew who picked his teeth before he ate.
Dave was full of knowledge about kinfolk. If you hung around him for long, he would manage to make you kin to almost anyone who was from Jackson or Gadsden Counties. Once he announced that “Robert” and I were kin. He arrived at this by reasoning that since Robert was once married to the elder daughter of a local man and I had dated the younger daughter for a time we were “almost brothers-in-law”. I did not mind this convoluted thinking, but Robert did not speak to him for over two years.
Dave strolled up and asked “What’s going on?”, eying both Faith and her tape recorder. I quickly explained. “Has he told you that he owned the last house of ill repute in town?” he asked. (Only he used the “w” word.)
“Why, no, he hasn’t” said Faith, shocked. “Well, he did”, Dave went on, and described an establishment that would rival the glory of the infamous Mustang Ranch. He explained that this was puzzling to him, since I drove around in a Thunderbird, and was not bad looking, and could have been successful with “most of the single women”, thus implying that I patronized my own establishment. He sidled away, watching my expression, which radiated pure hatred.
As soon as he left I explained quickly. During the construction of the dam two couples moved into a very small frame duplex apartment just behind our dealership. The men worked the night shift, and the women soon decided that there was money to be made in the evenings, so they began “accommodating” men. One of the husbands asked his wife about her sudden affluence, and she explained that she and her friend were bored and were taking in sewing to earn some money. He was impressed and, on the next shift, bragged to his fellow workers about his industrious mate and probably recommended that their wives follow suit. Hence the name “Sewing Circle”.
There was quite a range in their customers. Dave’s own father-in-law was known to frequent one of the duplexes. A man who would be known today as a “little person” had been seen there. But the construction ended, the workers moved away, the Sewing Circle served its last customer, and the duplex was abandoned.
When I came home I worked in the dealership as something of a jack of all trades, doing my father’s bidding. One day he called me in and said he would like to expand our service department. The need to buy and move the duplex was obvious. He had already negotiated the price. I understood all of this, but I could not see why I was being involved. It soon became clear.
My father, who was chairman of the county commission, felt that his owning the “Sewing Circle”, even if it were for just a few days, would not be appropriate. But I, as a young man, would probably outlive any taint.
And I almost did. But I was the owner of the last brothel in Chattahoochee. On the day of the interview I had truly hoped that no one else in town would recall this fact. Dave remembered.
Ms. Eidse left, and later sent me the verbatim interview transcript, in all its detail. Mercifully in Voices of the Apalachicola she edited that part out. I recommend that you read her book. It is well done and part of this region’s history.
But I have the real transcript. Just try to get that!

(Note: I have changed all names except Ms. Eidse’s. The other characters in this article are very real.)

Elephants Have Feelings, Too!

2009-08-17T12:34:00.001-07:00

By Homer Hirt
Regular readers of the Jackson County Times will have no problem understanding why I am writing about elephants and their feelings. To catch others up on the plot, I recently acquired a “life size” baby elephant statue, standing four feet high and extending from butt to tip of trunk a length of six feet. I had a reason behind this purchase, and I can assure you that it is a good one.
My action was not impulsive. I admit that I had harbored some resentment against the stylized “aardvark” symbol foisted off on us by our Party. I seethed inwardly for a time, and then began telling my fellow Republicans that we deserved something better.
I researched the matter.
The elephant as the Republican symbol was created by Thomas Nast, a political cartoonist that drew for Harper’s Weekly in the 1800s. He wished to differentiate between the two major parties and settled on the pachyderm for us and the donkey for the Democrats. In my favorite cartoon he depicts the elephant, wild eyed and furious, mashing Tammany Hall and breaking political planks labeled “Reform”, “Inflation” and “Repudiation”, while the donkey, clad in a lion’s skin and labeled “Caesarism” flees in panic. So there is no historical reason for the Republican Party to retain the aardvark as its emblem.
Here is another reason for us GOP folks to return to the real elephant as our symbol.
Elephants are very intelligent. They have the largest brain of any land animal. It is said that they never forget, something like the way that your wife never forgets. A month after Theresa and I were married, a shipmate came by and spent a couple of days with us. He and I sat with a bottle between us and spoke of days gone by, storms weathered, submarines chased, seaports visited and, eventually, girl friends. For days after his departure Theresa would get a strange look in her eyes and ask: “And just who was this___________?” Most of the time I would not recall, and I was smart enough not to tell her even if I did. I understand elephants never forgetting, but I have never figured out how a woman can have a memory like this. It is both retrospective and uncanny.
Elephants have a deep political significance, more than the bull moose, which was that “Republican’s Republican” Teddy Roosevelt’s animal of choice when he ran for office on a third party ticket and lost.
Once a very wise man said that getting something through Congress is like elephants making love: it is accomplished with a great deal of noise, anything nearby is in danger of being trampled, and it takes almost two years to see results. Unfortunately, some presidents have the ability to push harder for the results, but the first two similarities still hold true. And elephants have not changed, just Congress.
Elephants were the original proponents of “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more!” Here’s proof.
Male elephants, no matter how hard working and patient, eventually go through a time known as “musth”. When the moon is just right and the stars align, and the food is just so-so, a strange fluid begins to run out of a gland under each eye. This is when he gets moody and breaks his chains and steps on friends and enemies alike. If I were going to compare this to humans, I would paint this picture: Billy Bob comes home a couple of hours late, just as he has done for most of his married life with Sue Nell. Only this time he drives up in the yard of their double wide and stomps up to the door. His key doesn’t work. He looks around and his clothes, fishing tackle and shotguns are out in the yard. Sue Nell has had enough.
Billy Bob goes to the local jook, where the sawdust on the floor is what is left of the furniture from the night before. He begins drinking and trying to reason out what has happened. He gets past the reasoning and feels that it is time to strike. He orders a “long neck” beer, not because the beer is better than what he has been sucking down, but because a “long neck” makes a better weapon. He looks around the dim, dark saloon and picks out the nearest man and lets go with the bottle. After a long and satisfying fight, he ends up in jail, and the next day he sobers up and does not understand what has happened. He has been in “musth”, just like a bull elephant. And, just like the elephant, he goes back to work, and eventually his wife takes him back, and he is all right until the moon and the stars and the beer align once again.
So what do we call my elephant? I have decided on “Ron”, for Ronald Wilson Reagan. That is not his name, it is just what we will call him. My friend Boudreaux from Cut Off, Louisiana had a ratty looking dog. “What’s yo’ dog’s name?” asked Arseneaux. Boudreaux replied: “I don’ know his name, but I calls him Fideaux”. So I call mine “Ron” until I find out his name.
Every day we in the “Grand Old Party” hear about how we have become disorganized and lost our bearings. These problems may be traced to a seemingly innocuous logo. But here in Jackson County we are on the cutting edge of change. Ron the Elephant is leading the way. Just save us all from that dreaded time called the “musth”.
And from Sue Nell.

Collecting is Not for the Fainthearted

2009-08-09T12:22:00.001-07:00

By Homer Hirt
In the July 30 edition of the Jackson County Times there appeared a picture of me and my statue of a baby elephant, and underneath it was a short piece written by Managing Editor Sid Riley. Sid is called the “managing” editor because he manages to take Thursdays off to play golf. He leaves Stephanie to do the real editorial work. This probably is the right way to go. Stephanie looks out for me and has always used a picture that shows my good side for my column. She also proofreads my columns and thus makes them readable and sometimes logical.

Sid “Got it Right” as far as he went. I did purchase a baby elephant statue, made of resin and weighing about 100 pounds. The statue is six feet long, four feet high and has the trunk raised, which is a sign of good luck. I did bring it back from North Myrtle Beach, accompanied by my fifteen year old grandson Stuart, who seemed somewhat bemused and amused by my actions. By now, though, he has learned to expect the unusual from me.

The statue is, as Sid stated, for the purpose of energizing our local Republican Party. We don’t need revitalizing. We have had a steady growth in members for several years, and are over 7200 voters strong. We do, however, need another “mascot”, one that does not look like an aardvark. An aardvark is an anteater, and he sucks ants up from the ground and according to my sources, makes a snuffling sound. As an aside, any animal that sucks ants up is almost bound to make a snuffling sound, or worse. An elephant pulls branches down from tall trees and steps on things on the ground, probably aardvarks and people that annoy him. This is why there is usually a pink squishy substance between an elephant’s toes. It doesn’t pay to argue with an elephant. He also trumpets loudly, both before and after stepping on aardvarks and people.

I have not, however, started collecting elephants, or anything else. I have known some strange collectors in my time. One of the most unusual was a fellow sailor in Utility Squadron Five on the island of Guam. Every night he would lie on his bunk in our Quonset hut and, with an empty aspirin bottle in one hand and tweezers in the other, carefully remove belly button lint from his navel and put it into the bottle. His avowed purpose was to stuff a pillow with the material. I lost track of him, thankfully, but I suspect that if he was successful he has a collectible that would set the “Antique Road Show” on its ear. He has probably been married and divorced at least four times. The divorces would follow his answer to the question from his brides: “Honey, what in the world is this pillow stuffed with?”

My wife Theresa collected Elvis Presley things, as did many young women of her time. When we got married I rented a small house in Chattahoochee and one day we began unloading her truckload of possessions. “Be careful of those boxes” she said, as I picked up one of two cardboard cartons. “Glassware?” I queried. “No, Elvis stuff” she replied. She had never mentioned Elvis to me before that day. Two years before I had broken up with a young lady, partly because she liked Elvis and I did not. And here I was married to an Elvis fan and had no way out. No, make that an Elvis “fiend”. For forty-two years I had to listen to Elvis music. He had songs for every occasion: Christmas and New Years, Easter and Passover, Fourth of July and Washington’s birthday, and countless other events thrown in. He even sung one about a hound dog or something, and some strangely colored shoes that he seemed to care for greatly.

Theresa’s sister in Maryland collects salt cellars. These are the little containers that look like miniaturized chamber pots, and show up in front of you at formal dinners. She has them stowed on shelves and in cabinets. I have not visited her for at least ten years, but I suspect that during this time she has added on to her home at least twice to accommodate the overflow.

But I am not a collector, except for some Navy and Civil War items. I am moderate in both of these, and I do not intend to begin collecting elephants. It is true that I showed up at our last Republican Club luncheon with an image of an elephant about twelve inches long and six inches high. I held it up and asked the assembled people what it was, and almost everyone shouted “AN ELEPHANT” and of course they were wrong. It was a statue of an elephant. The only person to get it right was David Carrel, who has a weekly column in the Times. Now, there’s the man to go to for financial advice. He can tell the difference between an elephant and a statue! Think about how sage he will be on his investment advice.

And now I have a much larger statue, a life size baby elephant, properly colored and soon to have pink paint between his toes to symbolize his ability to walk on folks that get in his way. And I did buy 100 lapel pins that look like elephants, with trunks raised on high. On the Internet I found a life size statue of a bull Indian elephant, complete with tusks, and, I assume, with pink squishy stuff between his toes. And if you have a bull elephant it follows logically that you would need a cow elephant. Africa also has elephants, and a full sized pair of those are available. The prices are a little high, but shipping is included for each, which is a positive point. The company guarantees satisfaction, although I cannot ever imagine not being satisfied with an elephant, as long as the trunk is in the air and the pink squishy stuff is in its proper place.

But collect them? Never!

I’m Not Obese…… The Continuing Saga!

2009-07-30T10:10:00.001-07:00

When I submitted my original column “I’m Not Obese…..”, I thought that I would be through with it, at least until “The Runner” and I, in the year 2014, ran the Great Race on my eighty fifth birthday.

But I did not reckon with Sid “it’s a slow week, send me a column” Riley, Mangling Editor of the Jackson County Times. Sid subtitled the piece “The Saga of Homer Hirt”. I have never known a saga that was confined to one short rendition. Homer’s (no kin) Iliad and his Odyssey were sagas, and they continued on and on…..and on. So, because of this precedent, I feel that I must continue “The Saga”, with a tip of my hat to the original Homer.

The Times article hit the newsstands on Wednesday. I attended the Covenant Hospice’s Garden Gala the following Saturday. I had purchased two tickets, but went alone. As I checked in the Saga began. “Where is she?” the lady that took my tickets asked, looking out into the parking lot. “I’m alone” I said, rather tersely. I went through the portal into the garden. I checked out the auction items. Folks approached me, commenting on the article and then saying: “I’ve figured out who ‘The Runner” is”, and would give me the name of someone that fit the description. I picked up a couple of prospects that way, but no phone numbers.

My doctor had read my piece and complimented me on the fact that I had lost weight and that my blood pressure was down and that I was obviously doing all right in other ways, also. He suggested an office visit to check out my medications. I thought he was going to suggest Viagra, but he explained that my blood pressure dosage might possibly be reduced.

I got compliments on the way my size 42 blazer fit. Since then I have found that my size 40 sport coat fits even better. It is an old coat, though. This is obvious because it was made in the United States. I am down to 190 pounds, and to encourage my goal of reaching 170 I have had my Navy dress white uniform cleaned and pressed, and I will adorn it with my four service awards and maybe even purchase a sword. I once owned a Navy sword, but I believe I left it somewhere in Norfolk, Virginia, perhaps in a pawn shop.

My walks along U. S. 90 have drawn comments. Some folks are concerned because they think that my gait is unsteady. This is not so; it is just how we sailors walk. Once aboard a ship for any length of time, the “roll” comes naturally, and never leaves you. A ship pitches, rolls and yaws, and you must compensate for the motions. This means that you end up walking as though the leg you step forward with shortens, briefly, an inch, and then the other leg shortens an inch when it follows. That’s the best description I can give of the rolling walk.

Have you ever watched the July 4th program on PBS, where each of the services, in turn, sends out a four person honor guard, carrying not only our National Ensign, but the flag of that service? All walk straight and true except for the Navy folks. They wobble and roll, and the flags wig-wag as though the sailors were waving them at their mothers in the audience. If I were Chief of Naval Operations, I would hire four Marines to carry our flags.

I have also been accused of being a mouth breather when I walk. I am in reality lip-syncing. The best of musicians, with the possible exception of Aretha Franklin, lip-sync. I lip-sync so that I can keep time. I first tried marches, but not many marches have words, just drums and horns, which makes sounds that are difficult to reproduce verbally. I moved on to sea chanteys. “Barnacle Bill the Sailor” is something like “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”. It never seems to end. “Lydia the Tattooed Lady” worked well for a time. This song describes a lovely young woman covered with tattoos of all the lands and seas of the world. When the lyrics move to describe scenes below her shoulders they get interesting, but I can’t recall all of the verses. It was written, words and music, by Groucho Marx, but appropriated by sailors as one of our own.

I have finally settled on Beach Boy songs. “Rhonda” is good, but a friend of mine by that name who works at the School Board office says that she doesn’t care for it because it goes “Help me, Rhonda, help me get her out of my mind” and she does not like to be second best. “Everybody’s Surfing Now” is also fine, and it does not pertain to the Internet, as younger folk might think. “Sloop John B” tells of a small sailing ship making a port call in Nassau, and I can relate to that, particularly the part that goes “Send for the captain ashore, let me go home”.

But the best, and the one where I can really step out, and walk sometimes an extra half mile, is “California Girls”. I visited San Diego a year ago, and rode along the coast. The words of the song still hold true. The Master of the Universe must have spent an extra couple of minutes during those six days of Creation planting the genes that would eventually give us these fine creatures. To watch one (or more) walk down the sands, clad in a bikini (no thongs, please), smiling the smile made famous by Mona Lisa…………… no wonder my pace is more sprightly, and no surprise that I, too, smile in remembrance of days gone by.

SCRAPS OF TIME…….....

2009-07-16T08:02:00.001-07:00

By Homer Hirt
Several months ago I happened across a quote “Make use of scraps of time”. I promptly printed out several pages of this message that I thought quite uplifting, cut them apart and made a nuisance of myself by passing them out to members of the Sneads Methodist Church. Some folks questioned me, and some looked at me as though I had lost my mind, a thought that runs through their brains more and more as I age..
Then yesterday during my daily walk along U. S. 90 I began thinking about time itself. I know that seconds make minutes, minutes make hours and hours make up our days. I won’t belabor the concept of how many seconds there are in a day, but we do know that there are twenty four hours, and with a little left over. The leftovers bunch up and soon we have to have a Leap Year, and we give February an extra day every four years. Remember the old rhyme “Thirty days hath September…….all the rest I can’t remember”. This messes up calendars and used to confuse our old date/time wind-up watches. I recall once writing up a field engineering report for the thirtieth day of February. This did not impress my boss very much.
Of course, one tradition for Leap Year is that a woman can propose marriage to a man during this time without embarrassment. My late wife Theresa proposed to me three times one Leap Year, and I finally accepted. Then she wanted me to get down on one knee and propose on my own! I told her not to push her luck. There was still time for our President to have his own war, and send for me.
So we have irregular months, containing anything from twenty eight days to thirty one days. Our Congress, many years ago, decided that Daylight Savings would help us win World War II. I don’t know that it did, but it left a nation victorious and confused.
Several years ago my daughter, Ashlee the Nutritionist, was being moved from Pensacola to Daytona Beach by her company. She had a large Rottweiler and she knew that it would be some time before she could find a home that would accept the dog, so I agreed to keep her in our pool yard. Sasha picked up the habit of stationing herself on our patio at about 5:15 AM, looking through the family room and the hall into my bedroom. If I did not stir, she would bark once, and after a few minutes, again. This would continue until I got up. Sometimes the neighbors got up, also. Then the time changed. I had no trouble setting my clocks ahead or back, but I never figured out how to reset a 110 pound dog.
Shipboard duty gave me a new sense of the importance of time. The Navy had to have its ships working together, so messages were timed and dated according to “Zulu” time. This is the time that it is on the Prime Meridian, or Greenwich Mean Time, in England. On the individual ships, however, we went by local time, but did not pay any attention to AM and PM, just began with 0001 and ran it through 2400. Even our clocks showed 24 hours. It took a while for a new man not to count up on his fingers to determine what time it really was.
A holdover from sailing days was the bell system, whereupon the ship’s bell was tolled every thirty minutes, up to eight bells, when it started all over. In olden times one man was stationed to turn the “glass”, upside down every time the sand ran down, approximately every thirty minutes. I would think that wet days would cause the sand to run more slowly. Even then it was probably more accurate than clocks, which were non existent on ships because all of them were pendulum timepieces.
Of course the commanding officer had to get into the act. A Dutch tugboat skipper wrote that the captain of a ship was the best argument for the existence of a Supreme Being that he knew. He reasoned that the captain did not think he was God, but he was certain that he sat at His right hand, and assisted in controlling the Universe. On all Navy ships at noon the Officer of the Deck sends a messenger to the Captain. The messenger salutes and says” Sir, the Officer of the Deck sends his respects and reports that it is 1200, and the chronometers have been wound”. To which the Captain replies” “Very well, make it so”. In other words, it isn’t noon until the Captain says it is.
That’s close enough to controlling the Universe for me!

WHAT I WISH I HAD WRITTEN!

2009-07-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

I am often chided about my sea stories and my pride in the United States Navy. My fellow coffee drinkers in Chattahoochee refer to me as “The Admiral”, although I am far from that. My fifteen year old grandson, taken with my mementos and books, told me one day that “you are only two steps in rank from admiral”. It is really three steps, but those steps could well be the three greatest steps ever known to anyone. I have written articles about the sea and the ships, but I could never put it down as succinctly and as accurately as these few lines do.

I did not compose them.

I only wish I had.
I WAS A SAILOR ONCE………..

I liked standing on the bridge wing at sunrise with salt spray in my face and clean ocean winds whipping in from the four quarters of the globe.

I liked the sounds of the Navy - the piercing trill of the boatswain’s pipe, the syncopated clangor of the ship’s bell on the quarterdeck and the strong language and laughter of sailors at work.
I liked Navy vessels - plodding fleet auxiliaries and amphibs, sleek submarines and steady, solid aircraft carriers.

I liked the proud names of Navy ships: Midway, Lexington, Saratoga, Coral Sea, Antietam, Valley Forge — memorials of great battles won and tribulations overcome.

I liked the lean angular names of Navy “tin-cans” and escorts— Fletcher, Saufley, Samuel B. Roberts, Burke – mementos of heroes who went before us.

And the others—San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Chicago, Oklahoma City, named for our cities.

I liked the tempo of a Navy band.

I liked liberty call and the spicy scent of a foreign port.

I even liked the never-ending paperwork and the all hands working parties, as my ship filled herself with the multitude of supplies, and then cut ties to the land and moved to carry out her mission anywhere on the globe where there was water enough to float her.

I liked the sailors: officers and enlisted men from all parts of the land: farms of the Midwest, small towns of New England and the South, from the cities and the mountains and the prairies, from all walks of life. I trusted and depended on them as they trusted and depended on me – for professional competence, for comradeship, for strength and courage.

In a word, they were shipmates, then and forever.

I liked the surge of adventure in my heart, when the word was passed: “Now here this: now set the special sea and anchor detail – all hands to quarters for leaving port” and I liked the infectious thrill of sighting home again, with the waving hands of welcome from family and friends waiting pierside.
The work was hard and dangerous; the going rough at times; the parting from loved ones painful; but the companionship of robust Navy laughter, the “all for one and one for all” philosophy of the sea was ever present.

I liked the serenity of the sea after a day of hard ship’s work, as flying fish flitted across the wave tops and sunset gave way to night.

I liked the feel of the Navy in darkness – the masthead and range lights, the red and green navigation lights and the stern light, the pulsating phosphorescence of radar repeaters – they cut through the dusk and joined with the mirror of stars overhead. And I liked drifting off to sleep, lulled by the myriad noises, large and small, that told me my ship was alive and well, and that my shipmates on watch would keep me safe.

I liked quiet mid-watches with the aroma of strong coffee – the lifeblood of the Navy – permeating everywhere.

I liked hectic watches when the exacting minuet of haze-gray shapes racing at flank speed kept all hands on the razor’s edge of alertness.

I liked the sudden electricity of “General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations”, followed by the hurried clamor of running feet on ladders and the resounding thump of watertight doors as the ship transformed herself in a few brief seconds from a peaceful workplace to a weapon of war – ready for anything.

And I liked the sight of space-age equipment manned by youngsters clad in dungarees and wearing soundpowered phones that their grandfathers would still recognize.

I liked the traditions of the Navy and the men and women who made them. I liked the proud names of Navy heroes: Bainbridge, Halsey, Nimitz, Perry, Farragut, John Paul Jones and Arleigh Burke.

A sailor could find much in the Navy: comrades-in-arms, pride in self and country, mastery of the seaman’s trade. An adolescent could find adulthood.

In years to come, when we sailors are home from the sea, we still remember with fondness and respect the ocean in all its moods – the impossible shimmering mirror calm and the storm-tossed green water surging over the bow.

And then there will come again a faint whiff of stack gas, a faint echo of engine and rudder orders, a vision of the bright bunting of signal flags snapping at the yardarm, a refrain of hearty laughter in the wardroom and the chiefs’ quarters and on the mess decks.

Gone ashore for good, we grow humble about our Navy days, when the seas were a part of us and a new port-of-call was ever over the horizon.

Remembering this, we stand taller and say “I WAS A SAILOR ONCE”.

(Note: this has been around for some time, now making the circuit via E Mail from one sailor to another. I received it from a retired Seal; I passed it on to a Navy pilot.

I wrote an article about Arleigh Burke, who personified these feelings to me. Burke was a destroyer man, as was I. He commanded a Destroyer Division in World War II, and was the chief-of-staff for Admiral Marc Michner. He went on to be Chief of Naval Operations for an unprecedented three terms. When he was buried at Annapolis, his tombstone gave the usual “born” and “died” dates, his name and rank and then there followed the single word “Sailor”. This was a most fitting description.)

I’M NOT OBESE…… I’M JUST BIG-BONED

2009-06-27T10:16:00.000-07:00

The saga of Homer Hirt

According to many doctors, obesity is the number one cause of health problems. This did not bother me until one evening I inadvertently stepped on the bathroom scales as I emerged from the shower and saw the hand go past the 215 pound mark. I hastily stepped back, dried off thoroughly, and weighed again. The towel did not help. I was still 215 pounds!

Realizing that it was time to take action, I plotted my course.

What makes a person obese? A survey was indicated. I got a clipboard and a pen and went to the local "big box" store. Folks will usually talk to an authoritative person with a clipboard, so I began stopping obviously obese persons and asking the simple questions: (1) do you consider yourself obese? And the follow-up: (2) If so, why are you obese?

The results were interesting. Two out of ten told the truth: they liked to eat. Two more blamed glandular problems. The other six stated that they were "big-boned". So there I had the answer! I am big-boned.

This satisfied me, until I remembered that at the age of twenty one when I enlisted in the Navy I weighed 135 pounds. Was I "small-boned" then? And when I came off active duty six years later, I weighed 170 pounds. Had I gone to "medium-boned"? I took this excuse for what it was and began looking seriously at losing weight.

I began a walking, or more properly a strolling, regime. I would stroll a mile a day, taking thirty minutes. The pounds stayed on, and I was missing part of "NCIS" on television. I heard of a diet that was simple. A dermatologist on National Public Radio (always the voice of Truth and Wisdom) said that if a heavy coffee drinker would switch to hot tea, he would lose twenty pounds in thirty days. So, I switched to tea. In twenty nine days I had lost one pound. I went back to coffee, because if I had finished the thirty days on tea and the doctor was right, something big was going to fall off. I couldn’t take that chance.

And then I found an incentive for losing weight.

At a couple of First Friday Chamber Breakfasts, a nice looking lady, slim, trim and athletic, an obvious marathon runner, and some two decades my junior, sat by me. We had known each other for some time, and I always enjoyed her company. Then Covenant Hospice had their Garden Gala. I went alone but the lady spotted me, and escorted me to her table. This was during the political season, and as we sat chatting, the wife of one of the candidates came up, introduced herself to my seatmate, and asked her who she was. Came the answer: "I’m Homer’s fiancé". The word spread rapidly, and I basked in the admiring glances.

When the Chamber had their annual meet, I called "the Runner" and asked her to accompany me, and she agreed. I have a picture of us standing side-by-side. She is slim, trim, beautiful and well-dressed. I am bearded, chubby, and wearing my size 46 (tight) Navy blue blazer. At home I checked out the picture and decided that it was time to take weight loss seriously.

Governor Mike Huckaby has a program on Fox that is entertaining and worth watching. One night he was asked how he had lost over a hundred pounds. He gave this simple formula: (1) don’t eat anything that comes through a car window, and (2) don’t eat any Southern food. I began observing this with some reluctance, but I knew I had to have a real incentive. So I came up with one.

I figured "the Runner" can do a mile in eight minutes. I was walking a mile in thirty. A quick moment at the calculator showed that I would be ninety one before I could catch her on the track. I increased my walking time and distance. Now I walk between three and five miles daily. I am getting faster. The calculator indicates that my age will be eighty five on the day of the "Great Race". Much better than the first number!

I talked with my daughter, Ashlee the Nutritionist, and she visited me. My refrigerator now is stocked with fruit, salad makings, low fat meats, raw vegetables, non-fat sauces and no-calorie ice cubes. I gave up Mayfield Moose Tracks ice cream, a concoction from the gods, but occasionally scoop up a little sherbet. Sherbet is not really a food. In fine restaurants you are served it, under the name of "sorbet", to cleanse the palate. It doesn’t take much to cleanse my palate, since Ashlee also took me off salt and white bread. My cats get a serving of deli turkey meat each afternoon, and I have caught myself looking longingly at that.

But this is all working. I have dropped from 215 to 195. I feel better. The size 44 trousers are ready for Goodwill. My size 46 blazer is in the back of the closet. I am definitely approaching the "medium-boned" status. My blood pressure is in the "low normal’ range. My walking route is along U. S. 90, and since I am a supporter of Chuck Hatcher’s Recycling Program, I pick up aluminum cans from the right-of-way, thus earning "Hero Points" from the tree huggers. Friends wave at me, often giving me the sign for "double time". I promptly return this by elevating one finger in their direction.

But with all of this, I think of the story of the elderly couple who died. The duty angel was showing them around Heaven and the man’s eye was caught by the huge number of grand golf courses, all available at any time, a tremendous buffet, and giant television screens so that he could watch any sports action on earth. He immediately slapped his wife. The angel was appalled. Then the man said to his wife: "if it hadn’t been for you and your blasted bran muffins, I would have been up here twenty years ago!"

Tales of Fighting Women

2009-04-01T14:27:00.001-07:00

In a recent article Dale Cox reached back in history, as he does so well, and cited the possibility that during the Civil War Battle of Marianna some local housewives took up arms against the Union invaders. This started my mental wheels turning, and I went back to some research done by my wife Theresa that clutters my office. Please note that my research, though giving the appearance of "clutter" is well ordered and properly piled on certain assigned floor spaces.
Theresa was born in Palatka, and that is where her Southern heritage began. Her father was born in the state of Washington, the son of immigrants from Sweden. Her mother’s family was from Kentucky, that "Dark and Bloody Ground" of feuds and fighting and good sipping bourbon. Because Kentucky was split during the War, it is difficult to trace ancestors from there to either side. Lord knows, though, she tried valiantly to find at least one Confederate in her lineage. I particularly recall one evening when she proudly announced that one of her grandmother’s ancestors was "most certainly a Rebel". She retired to the computer and our books. Then suddenly through the night came the cry: "DAMN, HE WAS A BLUECOAT!"
To compensate for this, she handled my ancestral research quite well, finding many men that fought in units from South Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi. One of them, my great uncle Samuel Calhoun White, listed on his application for a pension that he had served in "Gordon’s Brigade, Jackson’s Corps, Lee’s Army". Theresa’s comments was that "it didn’t get any better than that", and she meant it. John B. Gordon, "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee far surpassed any other military leaders ever, at least in our minds.
Gradually, she became interested in women that fought as men in the "War", as we both referred to the conflict. Many readers will recall Mary Chestnut’s Diary and similar writings, but these were by women who watched the conflict, usually from their homes as the invading army neared, or as they did their duty as nurses.
But Theresa found story after story of wives and girlfriends, mostly Southern, who would disguise themselves as men and enlist alongside their menfolk. In an army that accepted practically anyone who could walk or ride a horse, there was little need to determine if the rather petite person who lined up with the other recruits was truly a man. This laxity is not so strange if you consider young boys, seeking the glory of the battle, would write the number "16" on a piece of paper, put it in their shoes so that they could truthfully reply to the sergeant’s query "How old are you?" with a quick "I’m over 16". So quite a few females marched away with their loved ones into some of the fiercest fighting ever known on this continent.
Usually this would last until the woman found out that she was not suited for the rough camp life or for the eye-to-eye conflict inherent in the style of warfare that was the mode in those days. Some, however, would be discovered by the physician who would treat a battle wound, while others would reveal themselves when their men were wounded or killed, and would, of course, be released to return home.
One of the Union’s female soldiers was Frances Hook, who fought as Frank Martin. She and her brother, orphans both, enlisted in the 65th Illinois Home Guard, and then moved over to the 90th Illinois. One description said:\"the medium- height maid with hazel eyes, dark hair and rounded features deceived everyone." She was wounded and captured during the Battle of Chattanooga and held captive in an Atlanta prison. Her sex was revealed when her wound, in the leg, was revealed. It is reported that Jefferson Davis admired her pluck and offered her a lieutenant’s commission if she would join the Confederacy. She respectfully declined, and was ultimately sent home in feminine attire. She immediately tried to reenlist.
On July 21, 1861, the first large scale battle between the two armies was fought at Bull Run (Manassas) Virginia, and on the Confederate side, eager for battle, was a young "independent" lieutenant, Harry T. Buford. The lieutenant was not formally attached to a specific unit, but served as a courier for General Barnard Bee, who was famous for coining the name "Stonewall" for General Thomas J. Jackson. By the end of the day the lieutenant felt that "no man on the field fought with more energy or determination than the woman who figured as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford". The lieutenant was a woman, whose name was in reality Lorera Janeta Velazquez, a resident of New Orleans, but a Cuban by birth. She moved from one unit to another, fighting at Ball’s Bluff, Manassas, and Pittsburgh Landing. Soon she sought thrills by serving as a spy, but then returned to her disguise and fought through some more battles. After the war she married, had a child and became estranged from her husband. She traveled in Central and South America and eventually wrote her memoirs.
There is one story told that Laura J. Williams from Arkansas dressed as a lieutenant and assumed the name of Henry Benford, and was able to raise and command a company of Texans early in the war She fought at Shiloh and elsewhere in the Western area.
One of the saddest stories of a female in combat occurred at Gettysburg in July of 1863. A written report first described a young soldier, with "the pale face of a boy", sleeping on the ground, being guarded by an older soldier, assumed to be the young one’s father. Later in the day the famous charge by Pickett’s Virginians began, and the young soldier, following close behind the standard bearer, picked up the flag when the man carrying it fell. In a minute the young one died, also, and, as one written account tells it "husband and wife lay dead on the blood soaked ground." The fallen heroes were never identified, but were buried together in Pennsylvania soil.
My favorite female soldier of all was Private Bill Thompson, born as Lucy Matilda Thompson on November 21, 1812. When her husband left Douglas, Georgia, to fight in the War for Southern Independence, she dressed as a man, enlisted as Bill Thompson, and stayed with him in Company B of the Bladen Light Infantry until he was killed near Bennettsville. She continued serving the Confederate Army until she herself was struck in the head by a piece of shell in the Siege of Richmond. She returned to Georgia. Her first child was born on January 21, 1864. After the War she married a northern veteran and had six more children, born respectively in 1868 (twins), 1873, 1876, 1879 and 1881, when she was almost 69. Her last picture shows her at the age of 108, seated in a rocking chair and looking tough as a piece of fat pine log. Her motto was "Hold your head up and die hard".
It is truly difficult to imagine any better motto for all of these courageous women.

Bless This House……BUT, Follow These Rules!

2009-02-27T09:30:00.000-08:00

By Homer B. Hirt

Last Tuesday, February 17, was the third anniversary of my wife Theresa’s passing. Four and a half years ago the doctor found that she had terminal cancer, but his treatment allowed us to have some quality time together. And this was good. She wanted to live to vote for George W. Bush and to celebrate Christmas, her "time of year", and she made both goals.

After she left me, I decided to live alone and in the house where we had raised our three children. It was not too difficult. I had our very extensive Civil War library, something over 400 volumes, and a lot of good John Wayne movies. What more could a man ask for?

Well, the question was soon answered.

My three children, all grown and living elsewhere, would come to visit, and, after a couple of minutes, would begin; "Dad, why don’t you…….." or "Did you know that the………". Folks my age can fill in the blanks with items from lists of things that need repairing, replacing or thrown out. After hearing these complaints, I decided to correct this, Navy style, but in a "nice" way that would offend no one. Hence evolved the following instruction sheet:

Welcome to 2054 Dairy Road.

Here are some simple suggestions that may not make your stay more enjoyable, but if followed will keep the present occupant in a decent, if not jovial, mood.

1. The number one resident, H. B. Hirt, Lieutenant Commander, United States Naval Reserve, Retired, hereinafter referred to as "The Commander", realizes that there are faults in the repair and upkeep of the premises. He would like to assure you that these will be taken care of some day, or not. Included are the bathrooms, the pool, the deck and floors in need of carpeting.

2. It is understood that there are papers, records, and books strewn about. These may not seem valuable to you, but should remain in place, or if moved, put back. By following this procedure it will lessen the labor of whoever writes the Commander’s biography.

3. There are two cats in residence, also. They have peculiar habits. Please recognize these for what they are, and accommodate their wishes, as unimportant as they may seem to you. Cats are warm and fuzzy, and keep your feet comfortable at night. At the present, that is all I ask for. This may change in the future.

4. The yard, pool, deck, fence and patio are in need of repairs. If you wish to assist, do not inform the commander of what should be done. He is fully cognizant of the needs. You may, however, man a rake, a shovel, a pressure washer or a pump, all available on the premises, and fall to and clean these up. This will make it easier for the skilled workers that will follow to achieve the repairs.

5. Inside rules are simple. (1) Doors are to be opened and closed promptly. The cats are not accustomed to the outside or to dogs that lurk there. (2) Towels can be used more than once, so they should be hung properly in their place. (3) If you snack, put the milk, sandwich materials and other foodstuffs back. (4) Dirty dishes should be stacked on the counter. It seems that the Commander is the only person capable of placing them in the washer so that they will come out clean. (5) Do not put your feet on the display table in the family room. (6) And, yes, it is realized that the cats have clawed the leather couch.

6. The thermostat is set at 72 degrees. It is preferred that you adjust your own comfort level by adding to or removing items of personal clothing. Thongs alone, however, are not appropriate unless you are a female under 50 visiting the Commander for some R and R, and are no closer kin than second cousin once removed.

7. Personal clothing is your responsibility, to be kept in the room to which you are assigned until the time of your departure. Then take them with you. The Commander is skilled at stowing cargos in barges, ships, rail cars and trucks. I can assist you if need be in placing them in your suitcases.

If you have other questions, feel free to ask for an appointment, in writing, going through the chain of command. Thank you for visiting!

I am proud to report that so far these rules have worked. It is true that the pool does need cleaning, the patio still requires pressure washing and the deck could stand some hammer and nail work, but what the H----, nothing’s perfect!

And visitors leave me and the cats alone.

Thanks for the Memories 1/29/09

2009-01-28T14:30:00.001-08:00

By Homer Hirt

By now you should have 2009 calendars, lots of them. Calendars from your banks, calendars from your church, calendars from all kinds of sales folks; I also have a plethora of calendars.
But on January 1, I hung my favorite calendar on the wall. It is the one from the USO, an organization that has been active from the early 1940s through today and one that I hope will be around for a long time to come. The organization’s motto is "Till they all come home". And I will say "Amen" to that.
Even if you were not around in its beginnings you are familiar with the USO’s services. Bob Hope, the famous comedian, was one of the early performers that went overseas, even into harm’s way, to entertain our servicemen and women. Hope continued to serve by bringing lighthearted comedy and music to the military overseas in every war until he was physically unable to travel.
I recall Bob presenting his show to about 5,000 Sailors and Marines at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the 1950s. My ship was there for a short time, and we went ashore to attend this event. I was so far back from the stage that I could barely make out the famous man, but I do recall that he walked out as he was introduced by an admiral, and he waited till the officer was gone, and then he did the show for all of us. He carried his trademark golf club, and introduced comedian Jerry Colonna and whatever beautiful young starlets that were in attendance. It might have been Ann Margaret, I do not remember. I believe Les Brown and his "Band of Renown" played. I could not hear many of the jokes, but I do recall his definition of a smarta** as being someone who could sit in ice cream and tell what flavor it was. Things like that stay with you for a lifetime!
In Boot Camp in San Diego I had sat entranced at another USO show, as Lionel Hampton sent us "Flying Home" with his rendition of this tune and many others on his "vibraphone".
The USO was with us again on the tropical island of Guam we gathered on an abandoned airstrip where temporary basketball goals and lights had been installed, and cheered as Meadowlark Lemon and his Globetrotters thrilled us with their ball handling and physical jokes. And, as usual, they won the game.
Other entertainers came and went on other USO events. Most of them were not well known and disappeared into the limbo of the unsuccessful show folk, but were appreciated just as much by us, since they represented that touch of Americana that we had left behind.
What about the USO of now?
My calendar shows pictures of today’s stars entertaining our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and all over the world. Some of the folks that visit I don’t recognize unless I decide to read the "Entertainment Today" section of my newspaper. I see the names and the pictures of Lewis Black, Miss USA Rachel Smith, Kid Rock, Robin Williams (wait: I do know this one!) and Lance Armstrong (that makes two I know!).
And for February there is a picture of Scarlett Johansson signing a Valentine for a young sailor. I don’t recognize the name, but I do know a good looking blonde when I see one, and believe me, Miss Johansson meets that criteria! The sailor, as might be expected, seems well pleased.
And there’s Toby Keith "pickin’ and grinnin’" at a forward operating base in Afghanistan. A picture of "Lt. Dan", a character from Forrest Gump, in the person of Gary Sinise, pops up for August. Mr. Sinise is talking with a wounded man in the Air Force Theater Hospital in Iraq. I will assure you that there are many others from the Entertainment Tours visiting our military all over the world.
So, to Bob Hope and Meadowlark Lemon, down through Toby Keith and Gary Sinise, and all of the fine entertainers in between, I send out the message that always ended Bob’s show:
"Thanks for the memories……………."