Chapter 101, I Love Dogs

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I love dogs.  I always have.  Like most kids, I remember my siblings and I begging my parents for a dog and, even though the dog they eventually brought home was the worst dog ever, I still loved the thing.  In 1981 Peg and I got a dog.  It was a year before our first daughter was born and I think I convinced Peg to get one by telling her that if she could keep a dog alive then she could probably keep a baby alive.  We ended up getting both so my ruse worked!   Shadow was a great dog.  He was one of a litter of 10 rolly polly puppies that my aircraft commanders’ champion chocolate lab had after an un-sanctioned relationship with a neighborhood mutt.  He was one of the most affectionate, obedient and kid friendly dogs I’ve ever met.  He gave us 13 great years and my daughter Erin still has his collar.  I love dogs.  Now it’s time for the real point .

Sadly, my animal loving friends will ignore everything I wrote in the first paragraph.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend that has crept into the psyche of our society.  That trend is the attribution of near human life value to animals.  It’s weird.  Otherwise intelligent people talk about their dogs and cats like they are their children or even grandchildren.  Thousands of dollars are spent on veterinarians for surgery or even chemotherapy while there is immense human suffering in the world.  Think about it,  to the vast majority of the world, dogs and cats are dinner.  What must they think when we spend what they make in a year to save the lives of an appetizer.  I am certainly not saying that we should be cruel to animals.  They offer companionship and affection and we have an obligation to treat them humanely but, in the end, they are just animals.  Here’s the way I approach the pet situation.

Before you get that puppy, kitten, turtle, fish, snake, goat, lizard, or whatever, you have to have an idea of “how much is too much”.  In other words, what is an unreasonable amount to spend on animal.  Are you willing to forego saving for your kids college education, or funding your IRA, or making the mortgage payment, or paying your electric bill, or going into debt for an animal?  Have an actual number in mind.  Maybe you set aside a “pet fund” and if the vet bills exceed the fund, it’s time to replace Fido.  However you do it, you just can’t give into the emotional, illogical concept of “whatever it takes”.

There is a real moral and societal danger to overvaluing  animal life.  When we raise the value of animals we, in effect, lower the value of human life.  Look at our culture.  At the same time we spend outrageous amounts on pets, we encourage abortion, effectively euthanize seniors through death panels and enslave large portions of our population in gilded welfare cages.

My old friend Paul Bradley is from Montana and is the closest thing to a cowboy that I’ve ever known.  One day he was loading a particularly ornery horse into a trailer when it bucked.  He was wearing a sturdy pair of gloves, but when the horse bucked it managed to pinch off the end of one of his fingers between it and the side of the trailer.  He was not happy.  With his fingertip still in the glove, he dragged the horse from the trailer, pulled his .45 from his holster, put it to the horses head and pulled the trigger.  There was a bloodcurdling scream from a 100 yards away and an animal rights activist, who was attending the rodeo, had him arrested and brought up on animal cruelty charges.  At the hearing, the judge only asked two questions.  Was it your horse?  Did you put it down humanely?  After an affirmative response to both questions he simply said, “case dismissed”.  That happened thirty years ago and I’m afraid that if the same thing happened today, Paul would be doing hard time.

Animals exist for the benefit of mankind.  Without man, the earth has absolutely no value.  We are the pinnacle of God’s creation and we need to acknowledge that by exercising both the responsibilities and privileges of the position.   As much as I loved my dog, I love every human on earth more.

Chapter 100, Facebook Futility

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Well, I finally reached 100!  Not years, although I like the idea, but blog posts.  I know the post pace has slowed considerably but who knew that retirement could be so time consuming.  All excuses aside, here we go with number 100.

I do Facebook.  Or does one say that they “Facebook”?  Either way, I have a Facebook account and I look at it almost daily.  Now I don’t post pictures of my dinner, or tell everyone how wonderful my life is over and over and over and over and over again.  That would violate “Daryl’s first law of Facebook”.  Which, simply stated, is; “The actual state of one’s life is inversely proportional to its self-description on Facebook”.  Think about it for a second.  Yes?  Anyway, when I say I do Facebook what I really mean is that I watch Facebook.  My daughters say that it’s called “creeping” when you just look at other peoples stuff but don’t comment or post your own stuff.  I guess I’m ok with that.  I’ve always been a student of human nature and I find that I can learn a lot about what makes people tick by observing what they post and how they speak to others online.

However, as much as I try to avoid it, I do occasionally get involved in heated discussions.  We all have hot-button issues and when one of my raw nerves is touched it’s hard not to respond.  I’m especially sensitive to  people who adamantly claim they have a particular world view but then espouse beliefs that are diametrically opposed to that claim. Here’s a good case in point.

I have friends and children of friends who claim to have a deeply committed Christian perspective on life.  They stress the importance of sacrificial giving.  Of serving their fellow man.  Of living a simple, humble life.  All Christ-like attributes that I wholeheartedly agree with and  have strived for my entire life but, here’s the rub, they demand you do it from the barrel of a gun.  Come on, let’s have a little intellectual honesty.  If you’ve ever used the expression “social justice”,  if you believe in most of the tenets on this list then you believe in communism not Christianity.

  • Central banking system
  • Government controlled education
  • Government controlled labor
  • Government ownership of transportation and communication vehicles
  • Government ownership of agricultural means and factories
  • Total abolition of private property
  • Property rights confiscation
  • Heavy “progressive” income tax
  • Elimination of rights of inheritance
  • Regional planning

I can hear the screaming from here.  “But Jesus was a communist!”  Can we really believe that?  Did Jesus ever demand that we as Christians take something by force and give it to someone else?  Following Christ is all about a personal commitment, voluntarily giving what you’ve been blessed with.  The key word is, of course, voluntary.  You and I know where the needs are, not faceless bureaucrats.  But, sadly, we are so overtaxed that it’s hard for most folks to give as much as they would like.  Government shouldn’t the arbiter of what is right and wrong, they screw it up every time.  Only a quarter of what is budgeted to help people ever gets to the people, the rest is gobbled up in bureaucracy.  But there are faith based charities where over 90% goes to where the needs are.  Why don’t Europeans give to charity?  Because they abrogated their personal responsibility to government years ago and literally sold their souls to a god who only cares about staying in power.

Now, to be 100% honest, Jesus didn’t really care about economic theory or preferred forms of government.  He was more interested in the hearts of man and the individual choices that we all have to make.  He pretty much ignored the subject all together.  But no country on earth has ever raised the standard of living, pulled more people from poverty, done a better job of giving every citizen an opportunity to thrive than the USA.  And that is only because our nation was founded on Christian principals.  Our rights come from God and they are individual rights.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, render unto God the things that are God’s”  Let’s stop siding with Caesar.

Chapter 99, Kenny

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Over my 58+ years of life I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know some amazing people.  Some of which have made a huge impact on my life.  They’ve been great commanders, coworkers and friends that filled the role of “mentor” before the term was destroyed by Air Force bureaucracy.  Today I need to write about one of them.

When you show up at a new flying unit one of the first stops is the Stan/Eval (Standardization/Evaluation) office.  When I flew B-52s I was a Stan/Eval pilot and I know how the rest of the crews look at the Stan/Eval guys.  In SAC we wore black scarves and black seems to be the universal color for Stan/Eval sections.  In fact, evaluators used to be lovingly called “Black-Throated Nitpickers”, in honor of our seemingly endless penchant for delving into the minutiae of flying.  No one, no matter what they say, is happy to see a flight examiner appear at the counter at show time.  So when I showed up at Youngstown in 1984 one of the first people I met was the Chief of Stan/Eval, LtCol Kenny Gould.

Kenny was one of the few guys that had made the transition from A-37s to the C-130. Not many pilots were willing to “lower” themselves to flying a crew airplane but Kenny had come from tankers so he embraced the Herk and quickly became an expert on venerable B-model.  And that’s what terrified every pilot when they learned that they were scheduled to get an evaluation from Kenny.  Kenny knew the airplane inside and out and he knew the regulations just as well.  He held himself to the highest standards and he had his way of doing things and his techniques were tried and true.  He could be, to say the least, intimidating.  What most guys never figured out was that, although he held himself to nearly impossible standards, he didn’t demand everyone else do the same.  He loved to teach and share his knowledge but, when you’re an evaluator, others often take instruction and technique as criticism and policy. Kenny knew the difference.  He taught me volumes about what it means to be a fair evaluator, a good example to the younger pilots,  and techniques I used to instruct for my entire career.

When I first trained in the C-130 I went through the formal course at Little Rock as a copilot.  I think I was 20 hours short of the required hours to go through as an aircraft commander but I wasn’t bothered.  I was a reserve bum at the time and I figured I could just go through it again in a year or so in the left seat.  More paydays!  But after 6 months back at Youngstown Kenny insisted that I should just do the training at home station and that he would do most of it.  He always managed to throw me a curveball and the biggest one was on my checkride.  We were on a cross-country to Kelly AFB in San Antonio and I was feeling pretty cocky about how it was going.  But on the last day, after the engines were started, he looked over at me and said, “OK, now taxi to the runway, but you can’t touch the nosewheel steering, you can only use the engines.”  After a moment of thought  and, I’m sure, a deer in the headlights look I headed out for a long taxi on, thankfully, very wide taxiways.  It took a few minutes, but by the time we got halfway there I had it wired.  It’s a technique I passed on for the next 28 years.

After he retired, Kenny continued to work in Base Ops in airfield management and remained the voice of experience in the squadron.

Kenny passed away this week at the age of 76.  He will be missed by those that looked to him for his wit and wisdom.  God speed on your journey Kenny.  Clear skies and a strong tailwind.

Chapter 98, Stupid Comment #1

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Fall has finally fallen. I’ve been waiting for the first hard frost to finally wipe out the last vestiges of pollen and this weekend should do the trick.  Looking forward to clear sinuses!

I was an Air Force instructor for over 30 years and one of the first things I was taught at instructor school is that “There is no such thing as a stupid question”. I took that to heart and I always managed to convince myself, and hopefully the asker, that it was true.  There is however no similar axiom that states that “There are no stupid statements”.  Now I know that it’s not politically correct to use the word “stupid”, at least that’s what I hear parents tell their kids almost daily, so I could default to “moronic” but I’m not sure that it’s more socially acceptable.  So let’s just stick with stupid statements.  I think I’ll start a short series called “The most stupid statements anyone has ever made to me”.

We hear lots of stupid statements from “I did not have sex with that women, Monica Lewinsky” to “Don’t let people tell you that businesses create jobs” to “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”. Although there can be a fine line between a lie, delusional, and stupidity.  I could spend weeks on stupid statements by politicians but I’m going to narrow this to stupid things that have actually been said to me or in my presence.  Here goes.

“You don’t know anything about leadership. You were in the military and you just ordered people around and they had to do what you told them.”  Wow, I think my IQ just dropped 5 points typing that!

I had many jobs during my 34 years in the air force but I think my favorite one was pilot scheduler. Most of you who are flyers probably think I’m crazy but it’s true and here’s why.  I love solving problems.  I’ve always loved coming up with solutions to complex problems.  Maybe it’s the engineer in me or maybe it’s because my dad always presented me with tasks and no resources to accomplish it.  Either way, I enjoyed the challenge of not just filling the flying schedule but getting the training requirements done at the same time. A little background for my non-air force friends.

Every pilot has over 100 training events to accomplish every six months. Takeoffs, landings, Night vision goggle landings, night low level routes, day low level routes, personnel airdrops, heavy equipment airdrops, etc., etc., etc,.  It’s a daunting list.  But if they’re not all accomplished by July 1st or January 1st then they become “non-current” and have to fly with an instructor which then complicates the scheduling process even more.  It can be a maddening process.  Now add to this process the fact that the Reserves are voluntary.  You can’t “make” someone come out and fly.  You can’t order them to show up on Tuesday night to get their last NVG airdrop.  That brings us to why I enjoyed being a scheduler.  You not only had to fill the lines and get the training events completed, you had to know what motivates each person.

Some guys just love to fly. You’d think they would be easy but you have to make sure that they’re not pissing off their civilian employer and that the wife isn’t getting neglected (I’ve had to have conversations with both).  Some guys love flying tactical mission but get bored on pilot proficiency flights so you have to mix up the missions a little or put them on a cross-country that has a little of both.  Some guys are motivated by the destination.  Some are simply motivated by the money.  The bottom line.  You have to know your people.  Know what motivates them.  Know what buttons to push to get them to sign up for the missions they need to complete the training and stay mission ready.  All of this has to be done within the framework of a volunteer organization where your schedule is probably number 3 or 4 on their list of priorities.  Scheduler is where the rubber meets the road.  But this balancing act is at the core of any volunteer organization and weaves its way through every level of planning and is the greatest leadership challenge.

Sadly, our society has created a huge pool of people who think that they’re above be followers and aren’t willing to take on the responsibility of leadership. They sit in the back of the proverbial classroom and bully those who want to learn and shoot spitballs at the teacher.  I’m certainly not the perfect leader and I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years but I do understand how to be either a follower or a leader and when to be which.

More stupidity next week.

Chapter 97.5, Mystery Partially Solved

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Thanks to several replies this week, the pieces of the puzzle of Chapter 97 are beginning to fall into place. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1) There is no Shakespearen connection.  Othello is the name of a town in central Washington State.  Why you would name your town Othello remains another mystery.  It looks like it’s about 20 miles south of Moses Lake.

2) Wade Farris, MGen(ret), is the City Administrator of the City of Othello.  Congratulations!

3) There is a “Catalpa” street in Othello.  Although I’m not sure that means anything.

4) An individual who was involved in the seminal event of this practical joke has been posting photos of his cross-country drive on Facebook.  Including Chicago and Yellowstone.  Hmmmm!

I will pass on more information as it becomes available.

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What a summer! With global warming keeping temperatures at an all time low it’s been a great summer of projects.  Two bathrooms in Prince Edward Island and a kitchen in New Castle have kept me busier than ever.  I know I’ve faltered in my pace of posting but who can sit inside at a computer when there’s so much work to be done?  So much for excuses.  Let’s get to the point.  There’s a mystery that I need my Air Force friends to help me solve.

Whenever someone comments on one of my posts, I receive an email asking me to approve the post before it goes online. I get the occasional broken English post which is either some odd advertisement or fishing scam but for the most part I just approve and post them.  Last week, however, I got an odd one.  Posters can use any name they like to protect their anonymity and this one came from someone using the name “Catalpa1620“.  It didn’t mean anything to me, but it was the content that got me scratching my head.  It had three photo attachments, which normally I wouldn’t open, but the comment piqued my curiosity enough to take the risk and virus scan them and open them.  The comment simply said “Your friends at Westover think you might find these pictures entertaining“.  They were right and here’s where I have to tell a story.

It all started at Westover ARB. The wing commander at the time was Gen Wade Farris.  The entrance to the base was lined with rows of granite statues of birds.  I believe they were cranes of some sort.  Wade’s wife thought that they were butt ugly, my expression not hers, and made her opinion well known.  Aircrew being aircrew, a group of them led, by an unnamed individual (initials UKM), decided to make her wish for their removal come true and, I assume, under cover of darkness carefully removed the statues and placed them along the driveway of the Farris house while the Farris’ were out of town.  The homecoming was not a happy one but I’m sure a funny one.  Sadly, the statues were unceremoniously removed by the security forces and broken in the process leaving a heap of granite legs, heads and bird bodies.  The story could have ended there but no, good practical jokes never die.

Fast forward several years to Wade Farris’ change of command ceremony as he was leaving Westover. I was at Youngstown at the time with the unnamed UKM as the wing commander.  On the day of the Westover change of command we had a mission going to Westover so we flew over to attend the event.  UKM was flying commercial air to a conference so I returned by myself to the airplane to fly back to Youngstown.  When I walked into the cargo compartment  I found the rest of the crew standing around looking at an oddly shaped 150 lb piece of granite.  I had heard the story so I put two and two together and called UKM to ask him if he had any ideas of what to do with the thing.  We decided to taxi out to the runway but, on the way, stop on a taxiway and roll it out the back.  we would then takeoff and call the tower and tell them that there was a mysterious object on the taxiway.  That’s not what I did.

I flew it back to Youngstown, wrestled it into my office, and hid it until UKMs 50th birthday. I then took it to his house, when no one was home of course, and placed it as a lawn ornament in his front yard with a note that read “Happy 50th from Wade Farris“.  And so the legend of the traveling bird body continued.  When I transferred to Pittsburgh, there was the bird body in my office on my first day.  Frank Amodeo found the bird body at his house at Scott AFB in Illinois.  Finally, during my retirement weekend in October 2012, Mr. granite bird body found its way back to my office.  On my last day of work I wrestled the thing into my truck, drove home, and plopped it into the yard beside the house.  I walked by it every day for 6 months trying to decide what to do with the stupid thing.  I wasn’t even a part of the initial joke but here I was stuck with figurative albatross.  But then it occurred to me that it should go home, back to where it came from, back to the scene of the crime.  June of 2013 my wife and I drove to Prince Edward Island to visit my sister Jody and family.  I was going to build a deck for her and do some other projects around her house so we took the truck, loaded with tools and a 150lb piece of granite.  We made a little detour along the way, just 20 miles or so, to Chicopee Falls and made sure the folks at the 439th would find their lost bird and, hopefully, give it a good home.  Apparently they did.  And now we’ve come full circle.

When I opened the photos I knew exactly why they thought I would get a laugh. But there are more mysteries.  The photos on the blog comment post say that it’s “to Wade“, but I don’t know where he is right now.  I heard he retired last year.  And what is the Shakespeare reference to “Othello”.  I haven’t read it since high school so I’m not sure how it fits in.  If anyone has any ideas let me know so I can share.  Hopefully Mr. Granite bird has found a final resting place.

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Chapter 96 – Risk

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This is going to sound odd, but there’s something about the word “Risk” that evokes happy memories in me.  It was 1969 and my brothers and I spent that whole summer hanging out with our best friends, the Doubleday boys.  Now most folks would assume that five boys, ages 9-13 would spend their summer vacation playing baseball, running through the woods, or getting into lots of trouble.  They would be wrong.  In the world of Hartman boy geekdom you would find us playing a spirited, day long, game of Risk with a little chess thrown in.  We would occasionally venture out for a long bike ride adventure but, for the most part, it was mostly battling to take over the world with the roll of the dice and little bits of colored wood.  While the rest of the world experienced the last summer of the 60’s, we geeked out on the Doubleday’s living room floor.  Most people don’t see risk in quite the same way.

I know lots of people who come from lots of different walks of life.  I try to understand why folks are the way they are and think the way they think but there’s one personality type that I really struggle with and that’s the person who is totally driven by emotion.  I know most of you understand what I mean.  It’s the person who listens to a logical argument, sees the facts clearly presented, might even concede all of the points, but in the end says something like, “But that’s just not the way it should be”, or just swears at you, and walks away.  Oh, and here’s my favorite response, “It doesn’t matter how much it costs if we can save just one life!”  And there it is, the most ridiculous sentence in the world.  Let’s take that sentence to its’ logical conclusion.

Every year, 20 children drown in buckets.  Conclusion:  We must ban buckets or drill holes in the bottom of the bucket so that children will be safe.  5 children drown in toilets every year.  Conclusion:  We must have waterless toilets.  Over 33,000 are killed in traffic accidents every year.  Conclusion:  We must ban all travel via automobile or trucks.  I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  Even if we locked ourselves and our kids in the house with helmets, elbow pads, and kneepads on we still couldn’t protect ourselves, or the people that would have to bring us food or, for that matter, grow the food, from all risk.  It’s ludicrous.  But that’s what some would have us believe.  That we can, and should, protect everyone from all risk.  Risk is also tied closely to freedom.  We are a nation with risk engrained in our psyche.  Millions of Americans participate in extreme sports, start their own businesses, and challenge themselves every day.  Others cower under the blankets demanding that they be protected from everything including their own bad decisions and that the former pay for it all.  To our detriment, risk has become a bad word.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we should totally ignore risk.  There are lots of people who do ridiculously stupid things for the sole purpose of a quick adrenaline rush.  I wouldn’t, however, make them stop doing it.  I just don’t want to pay for the results of the stupidity of someone else.  If they want to personally assume the risk, then have at it.  The best we can hope for is that we educate people to the level of risk associated with any activity and let them make a decision with eyes wide open.  I like buckets.  They’re useful and necessary.  But when I’m done using it, I empty it.  If I’m concerned about drowning in the toilet I put the lid down.  Sadly, common sense and logic is lost to large segments of our society.   But the answer is not reducing freedom and liberty.  Life has no guarantees.  We can’t live in fear of things we can’t control and we can’t live our lives thinking everything out there is going to kill us.  I know people who think that every manufactured product and every large company is trying to kill us and poison us.  Let’s think about that for a moment.  Companies make money selling products to consumers.  If you make products that kill consumers then who is going to buy your products if they’re dead?  Will we live longer, healthier lives if we live in huts with no electricity or running water.  Of course not!  But without power companies and mining and drilling and manufacturing and the healthcare industry that’s where we end up.  Life without risk, like a life without freedom,  is a life of misery.

Chapter 95, Not So Well

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I’ve written before about how important it is for an organization to communicate effectively and accurately with the local community.  It can be a corporation, a government agency, a military unit, a non-profit, or a church.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s true for any organization but, at the core, it has to be all about transparency and honesty.  Let me give you an example.

Aerial spray, by its’ very nature, has a huge potential for causing massive public outcry.  Large aircraft flying very close to the ground spraying chemicals over populated areas, who would complain about that?  Amazingly, the answer is, very few people.  And the reason has everything to do with communication.  When spraying operations are going to be done there is always a campaign to inform the local population of the timing of the mission, the effects of the spraying and the direct benefits to the community.  There are interviews on radio and TV, newspaper articles, and online community bulletin board posts all aimed at reaching as many folks as possible.  Lots of legwork which pays huge dividends.  In fact, even the conspiracy theorists defend the spray operations.

I used to regularly surf the “Chemtrails” websites and blog posts looking for rumbles about aerial spray.  If you’re not familiar with the “Chemtrails” folks, they believe that the government is spraying chemicals from high altitude over the public to control the population and that many of the contrails you see in the sky are actually dangerous “Chemtrails”.  I’m not going to argue the merits of the claim, I just want to point out that, when a conspiracy theorist starts pointing a finger at the aerial spray mission on the internet, he is immediately shouted down by his fellow aluminum hat wearers.  They explain what the mission actually is and how it benefits everyone.  Effective PR has even educated the uneducatable.

So, what does this have to do with me telling today’s story.  Here goes.

The first public affairs guy I had a close working relationship was a guy named Jerry.  He was a soft-spoken, little LtCol who would give you the shirt off his back if you asked and he loved his job.  Back in the day we had a variety of orientation flights we would accomplish to educate the public on what we do in the reserves.  There were civic leader flights, spouse flights, Explorer Scout flights, and even clergy flights.  We would also occasionally do media flights.  These were designed to give the media a chance to experience the mission and potentially do a feature piece on the unit or at the very least get some “B” roll for future news stories.  I would be happy if they could just figure out the difference between a C-130 and a KC-135!  Just last month KDKA screwed it up again, but I digress.  All of that being said, on a sunny summer day, Jerry put together a media flight for all of the local stations.  And since the weather was so nice, and it was a slow news day, they all showed up.

Now you would think that a public affairs officer at an air force flying unit would probably love to fly, but you would be wrong.  Jerry was what one would call a “reluctant flyer”.  He flew when he had to but he didn’t really like it.  So when he showed up with reporters and cameramen in tow and told us he wasn’t really feeling well we weren’t surprised.  The aircraft commander, Dan Gabler, gave them the standard “dog and pony show” in the briefing room and then walked them out to the airplane.  The flight profile was what we considered our standard “show and tell” mission.  It consisted of flying out to the Laurel Highlands, circling Seven Springs a couple of time,  and then returning to downtown Pittsburgh for some low altitude photo passes over the city.  The media would talk with the crew in flight and take stills and videos in and out to the airplane.  Low risk mission, piece of cake.  At least that’s what we thought.

About 30 minutes after takeoff a call came in on the radio.  The aircraft was declaring an emergency, returning to the field, and was requesting an ambulance.  Great, just what you want on a flight with the media onboard, a readymade news story.  And probably not a positive one.  The crew was obviously busy so we didn’t press them for details.  All we could get out of them was that it was some sort of physiological incident which told us that it probably wasn’t an injury.  At least that was a little reassuring.

When the aircraft landed and the ambulance had responded I walked out to the airplane to assess the damage, both physically and PR.  I found Jerry, in a stretcher, unconscious, pale, and being wheeled out to the ambulance.  Dan was obviously concerned and after the ambulance sped off to the hospital he finally had the time to tell the sordid story.

Shortly after takeoff Jerry had started to exhibit signs of airsickness.  Vomiting ensued but then another symptom emerged which has nothing to do with airsickness, in fact it falls into the opposite end of the “spectrum” if you catch my drift.  Jerry quickly went catatonic but Dan was able to drag him back to the toilet, which in a Herc is out in the open in the back of the plane, get his pants down, and flop him on the toilet where he proceeded to explode from both ends, in a state of semi-consciousness, for the remainder of the flight.  It’s not really an approved seat for landing but, given the circumstances, it was the only prudent alternative.  I’m sure the media was impressed but, in an amazing display of restraint, they unanimously decided to not report the event on the 6:00 news.  They probably just couldn’t figure out how to report it in a FCC acceptable way.

Jerry spent the rest of the day in the hospital, on an IV, getting his fluid levels up and then stayed home a few more days getting over the flu.  Clearly airsickness and an intestinal flu are not a good combination.  We did present him with the first “Power Puking and Pooping Award” at the next UTA.  I’m sure he treasures it to this day.

Chapter 94, The Hard Thing

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I’ve always been intrigued  by expressions.  Years ago my brother-in-law Lou bought a book about the origins of phrases in the english language and eventually we got a copy as well.  I know it’s kind of geeky but that’s what I am!  For example, the other day, Peg and I were watching the news and a reporter used the term “tarmac”.  Peg turned to me and said, “You flew for 35 years and I never heard you use that word.  What’s the story?”.  Unless she really wanted a long dissertation, she shouldn’t have asked.

In the early 1800’s a Scottish gentleman by the name of MacAdam came up with a process of paving roads, called macadamization, which involved layers of crushed stone and sand.  It made a better drained and less rutted road for carriages and wagons but produced lots of dust and was prone to washouts.  Years later, in the 1830’s, tar was added to the process, originally coal tar, which significantly improved the process.  This tar reinforced macadamization became referred to as “tarmac”.  With the exception of one airfield in Scotland, tarmac was replaced by asphalt and concrete decades ago.  It seems like only the news media is holding on to the term, but then the media isn’t well known for actually checking their facts.

The phrase that really got stuck in my head this week is “going native”.  I think we all know what it means but where did it come from?  At the height of the British empire, with the British military stationed around the world, the problem arose that members of the military and foreign service would become so immersed in the local culture that they would begin to set aside their british air of superiority and embrace the “inferior” native population.  To prevent this “going native” problem, troops were limited to short tours and rotated regularly.

We’ve come a long way.  At least we think we have.  When we’re deployed overseas we encourage our military to immerse themselves in other cultures.  To learn the language, or at least bits of it, to make a good impression, and to become involved in communities.  I understand that our purpose for being deployed is totally different that the purposes of the British empire but I think we did inherit their fear of going native.  We’ve just applied it differently.

I’ve spoken before of the evils of careerism in the military.  How the constant movement, at great expense to the taxpayer, facilitates upward mobility.  Get in, make some “great” change to the organization, get promoted, and get out.  Let’s not get too involved in people’s lives, in local problems.  That could get messy, that’s could get hard.  But here’s where we can’t let active duty ignorance infect the reserves.  Going native isn’t a liability, unless you want to use the military against the local population, native is what the reservist already is. Reservists are already invested in the community.  They embrace the local culture because they are the local culture.  They care about the members of the unit because they’ve grown up with them and are willing to do the hard work to help each other and make the unit the best it can be.  Sadly, I’ve hear AFRC senior leaders use the phrase “going native” as a pejorative.  But let’s not limit this discussion to the military.

There is a trend in our society to move on to something “better” when the going gets tough.  To do what’s fun for us in lieu of what’s going to have a real impact on our family and friends.  To eschew the hard work of daily involvement and, sometimes, drudgery in favor of what we want.  Sacrifice, commitment, dedication, loyalty, words that I’m afraid have been lost in a world of self-promotion, selfishness, and narcissism.  Do me a favor.  Find someone this weekend who is doing the hard work.  They’re not always easy to find because, well, they’re busy doing the hard work.  Thank them for what they do.  Look around for opportunities to go native.

Chapter 93, Proximity

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad lately. It might be because of Easter, holidays do that, or it might be because spring is finally here and we used to talk about, and do, projects around the compound. Either way, he’s been on my mind. If you have multiple kids, or have siblings, you know every parent/child relationship is different. Personalities are different and how you deal with those differences makes those relationships, well, different. So I’m not saying my relationship was better than my siblings, it was just different.

When I left active duty in 1984 there were only two certainties in my life. #1, I was joining the reserves and #2, we were moving home to Pittsburgh. We weren’t quite sure of our housing arrangements but we knew we didn’t want to be far from either of our parents. During the six years I spent on active duty our single largest monthly bill was our phone bill. Every Sunday afternoon we would call my folks and talk, way too long. We talked about family, politics, issues at church, and plans for coming home. But we never really nailed down the “where” of the move until we got here. We didn’t talk about it, but my dad had a plan. I don’t think we had been here 24 hours when my dad proposed giving us my mom’s rhubarb patch to build a house, I don’t like rhubarb anyway, and gave us a brochure from a local home builder. We’re still in that house. And that’s why my relationship with my dad is a little different than my siblings. For the next 18 years I saw my dad almost every day. Some days it was only a wave as I came home late from work but there were lots of roofs to fix, plumbing to repair, dirt to move, porches to build, grass to cut, snow to shovel, and near death tree removal experiences. And since we shared many of the same passions, we sat together on the boards of multiple organizations and talked endlessly about those passions. God, family, and country, in that order, and he never lost his passion for any of them.

He introduced me to Rush (Limbaugh, not the band) and Jim Quinn and tried to talk me into running for office until I explained to him that, as a federal employee, I couldn’t. I think in another life he would have run for office and he would have been fantastic. Unlike me, he was an extrovert and he had what you would call “the gift of gab”. He could talk to anyone about anything and make them feel like his best friend.  But having five kids and being a small, sole proprietor, businessman left him with no time to be directly involved in the political process. He did, however, care deeply about our little township and when things were going sideways in the community he convinced several neighbors to run, get elected, and get things back on track. He was also the head of the township planning commission. A position he accepted because the state and federal government were trying to reach their tentacles into how local municipalities zone properties, effectively seizing personal property rights.

It’s been nearly 12 years since he passed but a day doesn’t go by that I don’t think about him.   I know you’ve all seen the WWJD , What Would Jesus Do?, bracelets. I understand the concept but I’m not comfortable claiming to know what Jesus would do in every situation in the world. Too many people have made that claim and had it end very badly. Jamestown for example. I do, however, ask that question every day and I also ask the question WWDD, What Would Dad Do? I know that it would be ridiculous to speak for someone who was never in the situation in question but I think I have a pretty good idea how he felt and how he thought. We didn’t agree on every question like,” Should I use these new deck screws to put that together or should I straighten out these old rusty 16 penny nails and use them?”, or, “Should I buy the $12 Glacier Bay faucet or the $40 Moen?”, but on the big picture questions he had a huge influence on who I am today.

I miss you dad.