Memory

 It's funny how memory works. This morning on the early local news I was watching the weather forecast. Each weekday morning has a "weather stumper" question. This morning was "what animal or animals were on the cover of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album cover"?

I have that album. Probably my favorite of their many albums. "Help Me, Rhonda" is on that album. I remember the "boys" standing in a line and feeding some large brown animal. From my memory the size would have been like a cow.

I wasn't too far off.

They were GOATS! And while the brown ones are there, I don't remember the most prominent one front and center - the white one!

Shutters

 I was walking this morning and for the lack of anything else to look at or for, I was noticing the window shutters people have on their house. Of course, window shutters go way back.  I found a terrific article on Wikipedia about them just now and will read it later. I don't want to ruin what I think I know about them already.

First, I am only talking about the outside vertical ones. I know there are inside vertical and horizontal ones, but I'll save that for another day if I stay interested long enough in this topic (Come to think of it, have I ever seen, or is there such a thing as outside horizontal shutters?). 

Anyhow, enough dallying. As I was not saying yet, I noticed a strange thing about the window shutters today; besides being not functional of course. I noticed a few things. 

First, almost all of them were the same length horizontally. It didn't matter how large or small the window was. The vertical length was as long as the window. If the shutters were indeed to be used, many of them would not cover the entire window. The middle part of the window would still be exposed.

Second, most homes I saw today did not have them but only on the front of the house. The side and rear windows did not. I can only assume that was because of monetary reasons. Now some of these windows were such a size or in such a narrow spot of the home that it was impossible to put on shutters. But many were not.

Third, most of them were a brown color (at least from my color-blind perspective). Why?

And lastly, once I began to compare the houses, when I came across a home without shutters it looked out of place. 

I'm going to read up on the subject and will report back. Or not.

June 1966

             I graduated from college and was commissioned a lieutenant in the Army one weekend in June, married the next weekend, and reported to my first duty station alone the next. I got a suitcase for graduation. My new bride had a car so I didn’t need one.

How I got there and did all of that I just mentioned, well I’ll get to that later. Suffice it to say, the next stage of my life began with an assignment to Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, a United States Army post since pre-WWII. Located in the center of the state near Hershey, which is near Harrisburg, I was assigned to the SROTC Summer Camp going on that summer; just like the one I went to the previous year.

My wife drove me to IGMR and dropped me off. I would not need a car as I said since I would be working as a cadre for the ROTC and everything would be within walking distance. As it happened, I was assigned to the Food Service Section of the camp logistics section. My working title was Ration (yes, as in food) Breakdown Officer. I was assigned a military jeep, M-151 to be exact, with a corporal as a driver. My main responsibility was to ensure that the daily allotment of food made it safely to the sixteen dining facilities that fed the nearly 2,000 cadets at camp.

I got this plumb job simply because I did not have any fatigue OD green uniforms. I couldn’t be assigned to anything having to do with field duty or working directly with the cadets because they wore fatigues almost constantly. So I was on the camp staff who all wore khaki Class B uniforms (I’ll explain the uniforms more (later).

Seriously, though, it was an important job in that ripping off of the reefer truck with serious steaks, fruit, vegetables, bread, milk, and other foodstuffs was a lucrative occupation for anyone with some motivation. The big downside for me was as I followed the truck around to its sixteen sites each morning if I did run into anyone who looked like a thief, I had neither radio nor gun.

Russia 1991 Again - Drinking Vodka

I've written about my 1991 trip to Russia before (3/6/18 and 3/22/18), but another remembrance seems to bubble up to the surface quite often recently. It's about vodka.

Before I went on the trip I was told to practice drinking shots of cold vodka because I would be doing it a lot over there. I knew Russians were famous for drinking, as well as producing, vodka. So I practiced for about two weeks.

The first time I still remember drinking multiple shots was at the family's home we visited (3/6/18). But the one I've been remembering recently was another highlight entirely. That evening I had decided to relax in my hostel room alone and relax. My student, Paul, had something else to do and I either was not required to go, or it was suggested I not go. Anyhow, I was on my own. But not for long.

About eight in the evening I heard - and felt - a very strong rapping on my door. Not knowing who it could be that would be knocking so hard, I quickly answered the door. When I opened it I was staring at a full-blown Russian Army Marshall and his major aide. Both were holding bottles of vodka and the aide had shot glasses.

The marshall was a retired, WW2 veteran who fought on the Eastern Front (of course) and was the conference head person. He knew I was a retired Army officer and a tank officer, which he was as well. He said, "We drink!" 

Fortunately, he knew enough English that we got along fine. We began to drink shots and telling war stories. About midnight, the major fell out of his chair and hit the floor. The general and I drank until about two in the morning when he departed.

He said that I was very impressive (in my drinking ability). Of course, he had to help his aide up and out the door, so he left the empty bottles with me. He also gave me a small medal that all the participants were receiving at the conference. 

It reads "To a veteran of the Great Patriotic War". Okay...

But he also gave me a set of Russian armor officer insignia.

Whenever I drink frozen vodka shots now, I remember that evening.

"Dial Your Number..."

 I didn't know what to call this post, so I went with the phrase that won the game. Confused? Read on.

During my second Army tour in West Germany (1972-76), I was initially assigned to the G-3 Operations, Training Section of the 1st Armored Division stationed in Ansbach, about 30 miles southwest of Nuremberg in Bavaria.

It was almost exclusively a desk job. As one of three captains in the section (the others were infantry and artillery) and the only armor officer, I had staff responsibility for anything to do with the training of the tank battalions in the division. I would coordinate with the three brigades, and sometimes the six individual battalions, on the annual gunnery qualifications, the tactical tests, and other required training.

Since the division was spread over a fairly large area of Bavaria which included cities such as Wurzberg, Crailsheim, Illesheim, Bamberg, Erlangen, Furth, Schwabach, Grafenwohr, and Zirndorf in addition to Nuremberg and Ansbach, most of our coordination was by telephone.

Our military communications between Army posts was through the West German telephone system. Consequently, whenever we called another post, we would have to go through the German operators who were all female and spoke excellent English. Actually, it was not a live operator, but a recording who would announce the town and say something like, "Ansbach, dial your number." Then we dial the military number.

We never saw the operators, but each town had different female voices. After a while, it was easy to tell which town one was dialing just by listening to the woman's voice.

One day the three of us, Jan (the infantry officer, Ron (the artillery officer), and myself decided to conduct a contest. It was a slow day. Each of us called every post location and rated the operators on a scale of 1-10, ten being the best. We then tallied the results to determine the winner.

The same operator was unanimously chosen hands down with a perfect score of 30. Two of us thought she was a brunette, while one was convinced she was blonde. We never met her. Then again, since the system had been around for some time, we couldn't be sure how old she was at the present - or even if she was still alive.

Oh! Who won? It was not any of the Division's unit locations, but a training area that all of the U.S. Army's tank divisions in Europe would train at annually. And BTW, Hitler trained his mechanized forces there before and during WW2.

"Grafenwohr, dial your number."

Star Trek - Coincidence?

 A few days ago, I decided to video record the TV series "Star Trek". The first one I got was actually the third episode in the first season (there were only three seasons with a total of 80 episodes). The title of the episode was "The Naked Time".

The episode begins with the Enterprise monitoring a planet that is in the throes of self-destruction. Spock and another crew member have gone down via that teleporter thing they use - forget the name - and are checking out a control unit. Everyone there is dead; there's six in the unit. No evidence of how the people die.

Here comes the stupid part. Spock and the other crew member separate. Let's call him Sam. Sam is investigating one of the dead people who is at a console. His nose itches, so Sam takes his glove off and scratches his nose. (While they are wearing suits and headgear, I guess there is oxygen in the unit because the headgear is more like a face shield.)

Anyhow, he eventually puts his glove on. Then Spock returns and both go back to the ship via the teleporter. Once there, Sam begins to itch his hands where he touched the surfaces of the ground control unit. It begins to affect his emotions and he gets really disturbed that everyone was dead and no one seems to care. He tries to kill himself with a knife. Sam is subdued, but his blood gets on another crew member. He's so emotional that they take him to the infirmary when he ends up dying.

Meanwhile, the crew member with Sam's blood on him gets infected and begins to think he is Irish and starts to sings and runs out of the control room singing. He ends up in the engine room when Scotty is not there. He locks himself in and shuts the engines down. The ship is being pulled into the collapsing planet. They have 30 minutes to break into the engine room and start the engines again and pull away from the planet.

I won't go into any more detail except to tell you many others are affected, including Cpt. Kirk and even Spock. But they do get into the engine room, restart the engines and reverse at super, super warp speed that they don't know what will happen. They do pull away, but as they do, the time goes backward. When they stop it, they are three days in the past. 

TIME TRAVEL!!!!

Now, they can once again return to the planet with the foreknowledge of what to watch for. But Kirk says, "Set a course for our next mission."

Old Friends

 I was on Facebook today for the first time in over a month. I decided to try to look up a few people I served with during my Army years. I found two of four.

One, Gene, was a West Pointer who served with me in Fulda, Germany, during my first tour. From 1966 to 1968, we were in the 1st Squadron, 14th Armored Cavalry. He was the Squadron Adjutant and then HHC Commander; or vise versa. I'm not sure, but I think we saw each other very briefly in Vietnam in 1969. It looks like he got out of the military in 1974. He lives in Alabama according to FB.

The other officer, Gary, was actually first a classmate at W&J College. He was one or two years behind me. We were in the Pershing Rifles ROTC drill unit together. I saw him again sometime in the late '70's when I was stationed at Ft. Leavenworth. Gary was there I believe to attend the Army CGSC. It looks like he retired as a colonel and lives in North Carolina.

I also saw on FB today where one of my ex-cadets from Xavier retired yeasterday from the Army after 25 years. John graduated from Xavier in 1991 and went to West Point. I've stayed in touch, more or less, on FB with him. He lives in the Baltimore area.

Feeling a little young and old at the same time today. I'll look for some more.