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.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
Christmas? Bah, Humbug…and here’s an APC for you!
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!
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!
Thursday, December 17, 2009
I AM NOW AN OCTAGENARIAN
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!
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!
Thursday, December 10, 2009
A Date That Will Live in Infamy……..
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).
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).
Friday, November 27, 2009
I May Be Too Late………..
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.
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.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
There Was Not Always a “Veterans’ Day”
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.
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.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
D DAY, THE SIXTH OF……NOVEMBER?
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!
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!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Lift Up Your Voices and HOWL!
“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.)
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.)
Sunday, October 25, 2009
To John Paul Jones, the McCains and to Me…Happy Birthday!
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”!
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”!
Thursday, October 8, 2009
“This is Where I Stood”
“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.
“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.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
America’s Elite Ruling Class
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!
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!
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!
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…
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)
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)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Help me celebrate…..and send a check!
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!
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!
Monday, August 31, 2009
No Good Politicians? Take a look at these!
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.
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
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.)
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.)
Monday, August 17, 2009
Elephants Have Feelings, Too!
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.
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.
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