Signboarding - Rose Hill

A couple of quick flashbacks...out Hwy 80, near the lake, the highway ran down a small hill with the lake on one side and Rose Hill Cemetery on the other.  Before we started pairing off with the girls, a group of the guys often went out on Friday and Saturday nights to pass time and see what kind of mischief we could stir up.

Two small, yet memorable activities were to go signboarding along the highway.  There was a large beer billboard on the south side of Hwy 80, that McCoy, I think, thought would be fun to pantomime.  The premise was that it was a shame for the beer to spill out of the glass or pitcher, so we should try our best to keep it from spilling.  Up the ladder we go, out the walkway, and the animated pantomime began.  Most times we did that, a dozen or so cars would screech to a stop, pull off to the side and watch.  When the crowd built up enough, we would climb back down and drive away before the cops came.

Almost across the road was Rose Hill, so either on other nights or maybe those same nights we would sometimes go into the cemetery and see if the place could scare us...most nights it did.  Those days were before Lee Harvey Oswald was interred there.  J.W. is there now but he wasn't with us those nights.  Names like Cooper, Dillard, McCook, Shields, McCoy, Koebernick, Means, Scott, Tate, and Helmericks come to mind. 

 Adios

John Warren Southard - J.W. - Jay

J.W., we only knew him as J. W. although he was known as "Jay" after he grew up, was one of our gentle giants; a tall, powerful kid, standing about 6’4” he was larger than Bobby Keener and Steve Means, two of our best athletes.  Although we played on several of the same teams, for some reason J. W. was one of those kids who never quite played up to his athletic potential.  He was one of the more promising football prospects early-on, but after playing on McBee’s Rinky Dinks JV team as a Sophomore, didn’t play football beyond that.  He may have been injured, I don’t know.

He switched to basketball, played on the JV basketball team as a junior, and earned a varsity letter as a senior center.  He was active in the R.O.T.C. but I don't know if he served in the military.  I wasn’t too close to him, but considered J. W. to be one of the good guys.  He worked with the Ft. Worth Police Department for 40-years.  Jay passed away at 63, March 2008.

God bless you my friend

Dive - Dive - Dive

About July 2001, Google launched their Google Images site, but with only 250,000,000 indexed images, you really couldn't find pictures of things that were in your mind or memory.  Now, with over 10,000,000,000 indexed images, you can find almost anything that you recall seeing years ago.

The picture above is one of those things that a former 10 or 12-year old boy in 1955-58 would recall.  It was the post-WWII period when our fathers, most of them WWII veterans, were in their 30s and our country's leaders were positioning us for the Cold War, where we would arm, but not shoot...not officially, that is.  There were frequent sonic booms overhead and the early TV broadcasts consisted of a lot of WWII films and Victory at Sea on Sunday evenings...there was a lot of war stuff in the public consciousness, even the consciousness of a 10-year old.

Kelloggs ran a Corn Flakes commercial that featured a nuclear submarine! as a give away.  But the dumb thing didn't really work like the commercial showed.  You would stuff some baking powder under it, a gas bubble would form, the sub would rise, then roll over, fart the bubble, and drop like a rock, then repeat the process until the baking powder was gone.  It was one of my first introductions to the disconnect between sales puffery and reality of the deliverable.

I seem to recall commercials with klaxons and a Clark Gable-like commander yelling, DIVE-DIVE-DIVE.  It may have been my imagination, but then again, my bathtub fleet consisted of floating bottle tops I could sink in various naval engagements using a canon made from a water-filled nose spray bottle.  I liked the bottle caps better.


Dive--Dive---Dive !!

Hairstyles 1954 – 2010

Today, I was thinking some about the FBG.  Have I previously said that I don’t like them?  I wondered if anything could be inferred from a periodic superficial examination of attractive women’s hairstyles over a half-century.  Not sure what I expected to find, but I did recall some weird hairstyles in the early to mid 1980s.  Interestingly, it was difficult to find any clear examples of the images I pictured in my mind. 

I saw most of them in the airports as I was traveling quite a bit in those years. They were the first wave of professional women I had seen doing what men had been doing for decades...dragging their ass through a crowded airport, lugging too-heavy luggage, and rushing to make their connections because their incoming flights on the same carrier got them there late.  In my best chauvinistic character, I joked about them being market makers in stuffed bunnies...hold on...recall that they were the first of their kind I had seen in that venue.

There are a couple of the hairstyles I was looking for marked above within the green box.  Pictures of them are really difficult to find on the net.  Wonder if those images have been scrubbed?  Today, those women would be in the 45–55 age range; they were 20-30 then—they are the FBG.

Something stands out, do you see it?  Their hairstyles radically depart from those that preceded them and from those that followed.  I’ve chosen film icons as examples for two reasons; one, they influenced a portion of society at the time; and two, both their hairstyles and photographs were professionally done which aids the clarity of this example. 

Looks like we have mostly preferred ladies having long, straight hair sometimes with a gentle wave.  It was kind of fun putting this one together.

Adios

WHO ?

Since taking some time to focus on our old class yearbooks and recently joining Facebook, I've begun to form some opinions.

1.  There were about 315 listed in our graduation program, but a few less than 300 pictured in the senior section of the yearbook.

2.  I have no recollection whatsoever of about 100 of them.  Neither their picture nor their name ring any bells.  And, except for a few attractive girls, good athletes, or a scholar in the under-classes ('64 & '65), my recollection of them is even worse.

3.  Of the 200 (prox) I do recall, I remember about half of them by name only...their pictures are generally unrecognizable.  So not only would I not recognize them now, I might not have recognized them then.

4.  One guy from our class became a college professor and spent his career at 2 very prestigious universities.  He did not graduate with any EHHS honors and launched his academic career from a couple of lower tier colleges.  Apparently he joined us as a senior and slid out the door largely unnoticed...at least by me...maybe he was a late-bloomer.

5.  Of the 100 (prox) that I do clearly recall from our class, I considered only about 1-2 dozen of them good friends or close acquaintances.  We haven't stayed in touch...I don't think that I could have sustained that level of competitive intensity for the rest of my life.  However, I've noticed that Texans tend to do well wherever they go.  I think it's that old competitive intensity instilled in them by their parents, teachers, and coaches, that sustains them favorably in the company of others from elsewhere.

6.  Facebook.  The jury is still out.  It seems that people there expect to know who I am before interacting.  While that is a reasonable expectation in times past, I believe it is not a good idea to hang one's true identity out on the net.  In my opinion the downside is substantially greater than any potential upside.  However, I recognize that we are older folks and many of us are most likely real novices with regard to Internet technology.  This stuff developed very quickly behind our place in history and most of us simply had neither the time nor the interest available to gain a good proficiency.

7.  One problem in interacting anonymously is that communication relies entirely on the words. Some of us are good at it, some of us aren't.  Even then, it's possible that a string of innocently offered words can be misinterpreted or express an idea that others consider offensive.  It's a risk, although a manageable one.  However, the communication anonymity helps prevent an angry mob from appearing on the front doorstep, should your innocent words be misinterpreted.  


Adios

Trade Towers Site

This is a c.1910 view of the site where the NYC World Trade Towers were built about 60-years later.  The SHORPY site contains an amazing number of old pictures taken from large format negatives in their possession and is the source of this amazing picture.

Note that St. Paul's steeple is the same church highlighted in my previous post.

Adios

Remember 9-11

George Washington worshiped here.  He had his own pew.

It served as a refuge for the hundreds of firefighters, police, and volunteers who were involved in the aftermath of 9-11. Memorabilia such as letters, pictures, and testaments are now displayed throughout the chapel.   

The city's unwavering spirit and the American people's compassion for each other are evident in the memoirs displayed here.  It's impossible not to shed a tear when you're here.

Many people make it a point to go back when they are in New York, not so they won't forget, but so that they can remember.

 Adios

The First Time – Part 2

It was the first time that the American mainland had ever been attacked by an external enemy; the first time that a combat air patrol had been launched to protect an American city; the first time an order had been issued to American military aircraft to shoot down American airliners should they fail to respond and enter restricted airspace. 

We were fortunate that Adults Were in Charge as those events unfolded.  The broadcast media will be filled with 9-11 documentaries during the next couple of days.  Last night I watched a good 2-hour production shown on the History Channel where many of the decision makers of that day were interviewed.  It would probably be a good idea to pick up a CD of that program or a another like it and have it on hand for future reference.  December 7, 1941, is hardly acknowledged these days.

It hasn’t taken very long for us collectively to forget much of what happened on September 11, 2001.  The responsible adults in charge in 2001 were hugely challenged to lead during those long hours of uncertainty.  And they did a marvelous job.  The old saying goes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  We can do without these kinds of firsts.

The First Time – Part 1

The first time you experience something is often memorable, but do you recall that the anticipation leading up to the first time was probably more powerful than the experience itself? A number of firsts come quickly to mind…the first time I went solo on a bicycle was one of them, the first time the shop teacher smacked me was another. However, once smacked, the sense of anticipation was gone in an instant and the lesson learned was to tread more carefully to avoid a repeat of the event.

There was the first girl, the first varsity game, the first graduation ceremony, the first flight, the first voyage, the first car, the first job, the first wife, the first child, the first house, the first lawsuit, the first loss of a parent, the first near death experience, and so on. None of those firsts really required much more than doing it. The underlying thought is that life seems to have been a succession of firsts, each one possessing its own period of anticipation.

A more recent first was when I realized that the younger ones now out numbered us. I couldn’t say when it occurred…but I recall a 1993 Wall Street Journal opinion piece entitled something like, “Are There Any Adults in Charge?” The newly elected Clinton regime was derelict in the collection of security information from its young staff of 30-somethings and the FBI was growing uneasy with them. We know how that regime ended…he was impeached. And our parents who had been the adults for so long, faded.

While we and the older adults were numerous enough, the foolishness of our younger demographics was kept in tow, but it’s different now. I am amazed at how little those in responsible positions know vs. how much they think they know. But they outnumber us now, so you can’t suggest anything to them with which you might have had some experience. They don’t give a shit. Maybe all generations go through this kind of first…I don’t know, it’s the first time I’ve encountered it. The only real thing missing from the experience was that I lacked any anticipation of it…I was too busy raising and educating a family while the turnover was going on.

Hopefully enough of the younger generations will understand that if you choose clowns for your responsible positions, you can rightly expect to get a circus. I would have thought they had already experienced that first.  Oh yes, there was that first turn over the bridge into Camden (top picture)...never did that one again--scary place.


Adios

Random WWII - Color & B/W

One of the initial screening tests given to an aspiring military pilot includes a section of diagrams showing what a pilot might be seeing when looking forward through his windscreen.  The candidate is to determine the plane's attitude from the diagram and mark the proper airplane exterior image.  It's a multiple choice thing.

The picture above is not only a remarkable example of why a pilot needs that capability, it's also a fine example of what combat photographers called a dicing shot.  It's a high-speed, low-level, highly risky pass along Omaha Beach taken just before the invasion on June 6, 1944.  The nose-down, left-banking plane was probably moving along at 300 kts. or thereabout.  The Invasion bloodbath and the beginning of the Band of Brothers was imminent.

The picture at right was taken from inside one of the landing craft as it was approaching the beach.  Think of the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan.  It's a remarkably clear shot that puts you right in there with them...click to enlarge it.

As our parents' generation fades into history, some of their long stored papers and pictures are just now being brought to public view for the first time in over 60-years.  Only yesterday, news of a new store of COLOR film of the London Blitz came into public view.  It was found in a London attic where it had been stored away for about 70-years.

Some of our parents saw scenes like this in color since many of them were in those places so, their life-long memories were in color.  However, all we saw after the war were the grainy black & white images which became lodged in our personal data bases.  There is quite a difference between a color memory and one in grainy b/w. For me at least, these new color images tend to add life to something that has been somewhat surreal in my mind.  The new color London clip follows below:

WWII Wolfpack

If you were like me, you grew up watching in wonder all those WWII submarine movies.  Words like Wolfpack, U-boat, and Dive-Dive-Dive became a part of your lexicon, but you never really knew much more about the topic than what the old films portrayed.  Run Silent, Run Deep was probably the best of them.

I happened on this picture the other day.  It is one of the few surviving WWII vintage German U-boats and it is on display fully out of the water!  I've been through a number of submarines on display around the USA, but have never seen one of them out of the water like this.  It's a remarkable photo of a truly formidable weapon.

Did you know that these subs patrolled the Gulf of Mexico and the entire length of the Atlantic coast during WWII?  In fact, although not commonly known, they sank a lot of our ships within sight of our Atlantic shores during WWII.



Adios

Supermarket Playground

While I’m on a minor food store rant, I want to touch on couple of matters that rankle me at the local supermarkets.  First, the overdoing of the reserved parking spots near the doors and next, the ridiculous oversize plastic baskets made up to carry a couple of kiddies in front, complete with plastic steering wheels as though they were driving.  

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m quite happy that my old bones still carry my frame in from the North Forty and that I don’t need to get one of those handicapped tags.  However, that someone's sign suggests that I should park in the North Forty to accommodate a twenty-something mommy with a rug-rat or two irks me…especially when the 10 reserved spots near the door for mommies and their kiddies are vacant much of the time, especially early in the morning.  I usually just park there...I have kids and I'm a customer.

For some inexplicable reason my local market has deemed mommies with children a privileged class and not only set aside 10 close-in parking spots for them, but they have also charged a grocery cart kid with being sure that no one but young mommies with kiddies park in those spots.  One thing that I find good about becoming a cranky old bastard is that younger people really don’t want to tangle with me…they lack the tools.  “F.O. or NO” pretty well ends any clucking they may have considered.  The whole exercise resides near the far edge of the theory of ridiculous limits so it’s really a non-issue, but nonetheless irritating.

Then there are those pretend truck carts that are so damned large that they often block the aisles.  All I can do is shake my head and make my way by as best I can.  However, I do wonder what on earth is churning inside their heads…the mommies pushing these behemoths around, that is.  Of course once inside the store, the kiddies are out of those things in a flash, running freely through the aisles and getting under foot.  Mommy can't be bothered to keep her crumb-crunchers under control.

Maybe I’m just getting older and losing whatever patience I have left.  However, a small display of common courtesy and rational thought from these whack jobs would certainly be welcome.  And I wonder what kind of air-head in the store management thought this nonsense was a good idea…probably the same kind of idiot who thought a Pontiac Aztec was a good looking car.

Adios

Panhandling – c. 2010

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Most weekends at my local Walmart store a variety of panhandlers are stationed at both doors asking for handouts.  Going in, I have things on my mind and coming out my arms are usually full.  My patience with these things is relatively low.  However, I usually give at Christmas and to the veterans when they’re outside the doors on Memorial and Veterans’ Days.

In my area the panhandling seems to be orchestrated and controlled by the store to provide a reasonably benign crowd at the doors and rarely are the panhandlers particularly aggressive.  I am a bit nonplussed over how to deal with the little kiddies who are thrown out there by their parents.  I never quite know what they’re collecting for, nor do the kiddies.  But it’s usually funds for a softball trip or sports equipment or something like that.  Is my memory bad, or did parents usually handle those expenses in our day?

It was a glorious morning a couple of days ago and I got out early to get my errands done.  As luck would have it, I had my camera with me.  Going in the store at 10:00 AM, there were no moppets stationed at the door, but coming out at 10:30 AM, there they were…cute, very young, and highly energetic.  My arms were full so the moppets pulled up dry and visibly disappointed--they had just started their shift.  I never knew why they wanted money.

Getting to Walmart early often provides the added benefit of getting a good parking spot near the front and so it did that day.  Then I started into a slow burn…if an old fart like me can get up early enough to go in at 10:00 AM, why couldn’t this well-groomed, young mommy get her own tail up and out the door at least as early.  Maybe she wasn’t too serious about the project herself; clearly, even 10:00 AM was too early for her program—am I being too critical?

There wasn’t much traffic in and out that morning…I think it was a weekday and much of the foot traffic consisted of various vendors reporting in to load their shelves—of course, the moppets attacked them too, sometimes in both directions.  Mommy appeared to have her little ice chest to cool her bottled water, a cell phone to make those important calls, and some extra buckets for the moppets’ use in emptying their loot.

She had staked out a shady spot off to one side for herself, set up a card table, and was clearly prepared to manage the moppet money flow in comfort.  I took a few pictures since this was one of those minor irritations that, although common, is to my mind, indicative of a shift in our societal mindset within the next generations.  Things like this irritate me, but only a little bit.

On the other hand, preying on the generous nature of people without explaining the project is a somewhat new wrinkle and is likely to produce several hundred dollars over the course of a day…not a bad day’s return and low-cost labor to boot!

Adios

Leave it to Beaver

I watched them all...bet you did too.


Adios

Late Summer Crazies - 2010

Over the weekend, Glenn Beck, a Fox News TV personality, invited people to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. for a "return to honor" rally.  About 500,000 came; CBS says 87,000; NBC reported 300,000; Fox News stayed quiet and let the leftist media churn over how to deal with the event...or ignore it.

Meanwhile, our prez donned a helmet, an iconic symbol of his timid generation, and rode a bicycle on his 10th or 12th vacation this year.

Al Sharpton reportedly retorted that the "return to honor" demonstration changes nothing!  I didn't read the article beneath the headline.

The annual end of summer crazies have returned one more year...like the swallows to Capistrano. 


Adios

1951 Meadowbrook Elementary

This is Mrs. Wenzel’s 2nd grade Meadowbrook Elementary class picture from 1950-51 that might have some of the EHHS Class of 1961 in it.

See anyone you recognize? Let me know in the comments section.

Adios

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll - 2010

Back in the sixties as we came of age, the grown-ups told us that our brains would fry like an egg on a hot sidewalk if we used drugs--remember the PSAs on TV?  Sex and Rock & Roll we figured we could finesse.  Some of the returns came in early when Janis and Jim racked off; some of the other returns are coming in now...how are you doing compared to them?


>

Adios

Jamestown Murmurs

“We are what we have been.” Shelby Foote attributed those words to Jane Austen in an interview, maybe more than once. To me, the words simply say that how we act, think, do, and a myriad of our other personal traits can be traced to our direct ancestors. My eldest offspring reacts intensely to a light huff on the back of the neck…my mother reacted in exactly the same way. Now, I’ve huffed on the back of a few necks over the years, but I’ve seldom seen such a reaction from others.

Family lore had it that one of our ancestral lines went back a long way in this country, all the way back to its founding. However, whatever proof of that claim might have existed was either packed away in a relative’s closet or lost or forgotten over the generations. Only when my own focus and the power of the Internet was brought to bear on the matter was I able to ferret out the truth…and the truth is, the old family lore was correct. I qualify for membership in the Jamestowne Society.

Many years ago I toured Jamestown and walked amongst the recreated ruins of the ancient village along the James River. The picture above pretty much tells the story of today’s Jamestown. For a young man lacking certain specific knowledge of his connection to the place, the stopover was somewhat disappointing; yet, there was something about the place that seemed to murmur…this is where it all began.

Many years later, after learning of my connection to the place, we visited Jamestown again. This time the place came alive, the spirits were jumping, but only in my head…it was palpable. One of my 10th great grandfathers (each of us have about 2,048 of those!) jumped off a small sailing ship onto the banks of the James in 1621 when the tiny village was in its 14th year. He was an indentured servant who, after working off his indenture, became a substantial citizen of the early settlement.

Sometimes I wonder what traits of mine were also his…I wonder if he or his wife reacted as intensely as my mother or my offspring to a light huff on the back of the neck.

A 2005 film, The New World, told the story of the earliest days at Jamestown. However, I found the picture a bit artsy for my taste…but, the photography and scenes are very well done, giving an accurate visual portrayal of the life and conditions of the place and time.

Adios

1957 Meadowbrook Elementary

If you take a look in Facebook and find the “remember Fort Worth when” group, you will find a lot of interesting pictures people are posting, including the 1957 class photo above showing some of our 1963 Highlanders. Thanks mostly to Susan Begley, Bruce McDonald, and Bob Dillard we know all of these former moppets and a number of future 1963 Highlanders.

I would be very interested in getting a HQ scan of the other 1957 Meadowbrook and Handley 6th grade classes to ID like this one. There should be at least 1 and possibly 3 more pictures out there somewhere.

These days, after years of compounding experimental "education" initiatives, teechers' unions, about twice the number of "administrators" than when we were in school, and LBJ's GR8 Society, we get this kind of crap...

Congratulations

About Me

I’m on Facebook. Search for Gus Highlander; the one with the Clan 1963 picture, or I might be Belushi with pencils in his nose, or Arte Johnson's dirty old man, or W.C. Fields.  Add me as a friend, if you wish. I know my transparent approach is odd, but please humor me…as I am experimenting with online things for possible uses elsewhere.

Ex-Highlander recollections and stories from the following classes: 1961 – 1962 – 1963 – 1964 – 1965, would interest me most.

I’m also interested in hearing from folks from the Handley High School classes who might be able to tell some stories of earlier times in the area.

The Clan cover pictures in this posting are the first 6 Clans issued.

Sept. 2011, a little more: I’ve been described as a maverick, someone who marches to a different drummer…and I wouldn’t dispute that description. My favorite ancestor was a frontiersman who served in a company of frontiersman during the American Revolution.

After the Revolution, he continued to move westward to the edge of the frontier, explaining to his grandsons that when he was able to see smoke from a neighbor’s fire, the neighborhood had become too crowded for him. Three of his grandsons wrote down a lot about the old gentleman when they themselves were old men during the 1890s. I’m reasonably certain that I carry a fair concentration of his genes.

He was a 3rd great-grandfather; the first of 5-generations to serve this country in a war...the 5th and last one in that line was me.

And if that's not enough, here's some more and/or more still.

Adios

Spy vs. Spy

Wikipedia relates, “The "Spy vs. Spy" cartoon was symbolic of the Cold War, and was Antonio Prohías's comment on the futility of armed escalation and détente.” I’ve long thought of the Spy vs. Spy cartoons as a simple metaphor for foiling the wishes of others…they keep trying to screw you so you keep developing defenses.

For instance, telemarketers have been doing their best to ruin our afternoon naps and any of our meals they could for as long as I can recall. They did this by buying into the phone companies’ sales pitch of “telemarketing” as a great “business model.” Did you ever buy anything from those people? And how long was it until you came to the conclusion that it was O.K. to be rude and hang up on them?

We took the receiver off the hook, so the phone company countered by sending that loud, irritating signal to let us know what we already knew…the phone was off the hook. When the little quick connectors replaced the hard wired phone sets, the phone companies’ nuisance signal was effectively neutered.

After bringing us the problem in the first place, the phone company then offered us a Caller ID feature, at extra cost, so we could see who was calling.

Next, we bought answering machines to screen calls and found over time that it wasn’t really necessary to answer the phone at all…and along came Voice Mail and Call Forwarding, at extra cost, of course.

Enter email, quickly followed by spamming, email filters, and multiple disposable email addresses. How about proxies and 3rd party email forwarders?

If that’s not Spy vs. Spy, I don’t know what is.


Adios

Socially Crippled?

Almost certainly each of us found that life after EHHS took us in different directions than what we had anticipated. I know mine did. If my own experience was in any way typical, then most of us probably had little concept of what lay ahead. However, based on our limited experiences gained while growing up, we probably had a variety of different preconceptions about the future. We had the examples set by our parents to draw on for modeling our own paths. Sometimes they worked out the way we thought they would, often they didn’t.

For instance, I thought that if you invited your new neighbors over to your new house for dinner, they would know how to conduct themselves properly in a social situation. He had a low alcohol tolerance, even for wine, and after his second glass of a nice Cabernet, ended up face down in his dinner plate. She had a better tolerance, but once over her line, she ended up oblivious that her husband was face down in his dinner plate. We tried it one more time with that couple and suffered the same result. Several other attempts with other young couples to establish a group of 30-somethings up and comers yielded different, but similar disappointments, so we said to hell with it and stopped trying to emulate our parents' social practices.

About that same time the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market, driving silver prices to $50/oz or more, effectively killing the market for new sterling flatware. At that price a sturdy 2 oz. sterling fork had over $100 of silver in it and a lot of fine old sterling flatware was melted down. Sometime later the price of silver dropped back to the $4/oz range but the sterling flatware industry never recovered, probably due to the materials cost problem, but also probably due to the fact that our generation was not headed in the same direction as before, socially.

I thought of these things recently as I looked over my mother’s c.1955 sterling service and another service that dates to my great grandmother’s day, c.1891. Both patterns are nicely detailed, even fussy. Mom treasured hers and saved it for special occasions such as holiday dinners and special guests. I clearly recall washing and drying all that stuff by hand and carefully packing it away, ready for the next special occasion. Same for her special china.

Those traditions date back at least to the 1880’s when machine stamping capabilities were enhanced by a large influx of immigrant European artisans and highly skilled craftsmen to produce a dazzling variety of intricate designs. Meals were a nice way to combine good food, good company, and excellent craftsmanship into a memorable event. That is, until our generation screwed it up, starting about the times my neighbor stuck his face in his dinner plate. Dumb bastard.


Bon appétit

Writing Well

Doc is only a couple of years younger than we are, so he and I have traveled a similar path through the last 20-years of our life.  As I previously mentioned, we like to shoot the breeze when he checks me out each year. 

During my last visit with Doc our conversation touched the subject of diversions and hobbies.  I told him I’ve been a collector of first one thing and then another for most of my life, but I’ve been selling things off in recent years, mostly through eBay. These days I mostly collect words and pictures for use in things I write.  Stuff competes for living space, requires special care, and presents an ongoing risk of loss.  Words and picture files don’t.  He smiled.

The words I like to collect are those that speak to me, written by accomplished writers.  William Safire (above) was one of those kinds of writers; one whose words were so very well crafted.  Charles Krauthammer seems to be his worthy successor; Dorothy Rabinowitz is a powerful writer; James Jones, William Manchester, Ernie Pyle, and Andy Rooney strung together words that illuminate the WWII experience better than most I’ve read.

A film script line from the Knight’s Tale, attributed to Chaucer speaks to the ultimate power of words crafted by an agitated wordsmith.  Standing naked in front of his tormentors, he says, “I will eviscerate you in fiction.  Every pimple, every character flaw.  I was naked for a day; you will be naked for eternity.”

William Safire left behind an embroidered pillow expressing a similar sentiment...

Bad Optics – Gravitas

During the past couple of days, broadcast news outlets I don’t patronize are all atwitter about Mrs. Obama’s poor “optics” on her recent trip to Spain. My favored news commentators assembled video collages demonstrating the old-line news commentators using nearly identical scripts.  “Optics” was the common buzzword. You may recall the repugnant overuse of “gravitas” in the old-line media attack on Mr. Bush a few years ago…”he lacks gravitas …gravitas…gravitas…gravitas…” ad nauseum.  (Note to fledgling news producers: Don’t use talking point words not commonly used by us common people…overused odd words are conspicuous, especially when FNC sticks them all together and rams them down your throat or up your…)

I recall a movie line attributed to Sun Tzu that roughly went something like, “All warfare is based on deception. If your enemy is superior, evade her. If angry, irritate her. If equally matched, fight and if not: split and re-evaluate."

When we took the field for the kick-off all those years ago, we had butterflies in the pit of our stomachs; however, we also had the benefit of a pretty thorough scouting report on our opponents. If they had a snazzy tailback or a big fullback, we knew which ones they were.

France met Spain last year (above) and they looked evenly matched to me, so they fought. When the USA met Spain this year, it looks like we decided to evade. We might have been better off splitting. Could have been a bad scouting report - maybe we should fire the scouts.

Flag...backfield in motion

THIS CLOSE

Did you hear that Judy Oxford died recently? She was one of the more memorable ’62 Highlanders—attractive, vivacious, an all-around nice person. Cancer, I think.

The Grim Reaper visited my door not long ago, but we managed to chase him off this time. Won’t bore you with tedious details—wasn’t the heart, nor the big C—still serious enough to keep me in ICU for most of a week. There was no pain and about 30-minutes is completely missing from my memory. My last recollection was an intense wave of nausea, then an abrupt awakening in the ambulance sitting out in the driveway—it was raining.

My wife has clear memory of my missing 30-minutes, she was there, her clear thinking and fast action saved my life; we don’t talk about it—except when I get cranky--she's my hero, but then she always has been. I was awake, feeling fine, and joking in the emergency room only an hour after the onset of the event. It was there that I first started hearing them say, “you came this close to dying” as they raised their forefinger and thumb in that well-known hand sign. I really didn’t believe them—I felt fine. But it continued during my stay, “you came this close, to dying” said each succeeding nurse and doctor—each one of them using that same hand sign with the thumb and forefinger. None of that jarred me...I felt fine.

About a week or two after my release from hospital, I visited my family physician. We went through the test reports and he outlined some follow-up testing. I felt fine. We’ve become friends over the span of a couple of decades such that we enjoy shooting the breeze with one another on my infrequent visits. He was going on vacation at noon that day, so he had fit me into his busy schedule as his last patient of the morning—we spent an hour together, mostly shooting the breeze.

As I left, he looked at me seriously and said, “by the way, you came this close to dying” and gave me that little hand sign.
That one finally jarred me.




Thank you, God

Favorites

Let’s accept the notion that all high school elections are popularity contests regardless of whether they were called favorites, officers, or king or queen of this or that. A few win and all others lose. And didn’t it seem that the same kids always won? There were just over 300 in our graduating class, 23 spots in the grid above, and we chose 12 different classmates for those spots.

Well, there was a little ebb and flow to it. However, on balance I would view these people as terrific youngsters even from today’s perspective. We got it right.

Wonder what made some people popular with us…there were a number of other terrific people that didn’t make the cut. One thing most of our favorites had in common was that they were generally outgoing and usually smiling…except David Bane who was quiet but always ready with a wide grin when he was addressed. Girls liked him because he was good looking, and the guys liked him well enough to elect him their football co-captain. He joined us as a Junior and gained quick acceptance.

Even the coaches gushed over David...Gary Cooper type…? I don't think Glen Brandon played on that 1962 championship team, I think he may have moved away; Gene Cartwright was a solid kid in all respects; and Tom Koebernick was one of the best people I knew during those years.



Adios

Felton Havins & Carol Reeder

In combing through a lot of vintage pictures looking for good illustrations for a piece I’m writing, I sometimes come across an interesting picture that tells a story beyond the obvious. For instance, the marching sailors above were on parade in a 1908 Santa Barbara festival as a part of the United States Navy Great White Fleet trip around the world President Teddy Roosevelt had ordered.
The hidden story in the picture that amused me is centered on the 2 sailors marked as being out of step with the rest. Closer inspection of the expressions on their faces show their amusement…the lead sailor is shifting his step causing the trailing sailor to shift his step to keep in sync. That sort skylarking can ripple down an entire file of marching military men, and takes place more commonly than you might think.
The 1961 Clan Pan-Am Club picture below suggests a different story. Carol Reeder’s expression tells the story that no one else in the picture knew…there’s some goofing off going on there. Felton Havins was probably up to something; he was a high energy sort, a cheerleader, and a bit of joker. Wonder what was going on?


Others in the picture are Mrs. Charlotte Ballard and Mr. John Psomas in the back row; both were Spanish teachers. Mrs. Ballard taught English also. From the bottom up are Mildred Eppes, Becky Welch, Jim Anders, Carol Reeder, Felton Havins, Dana Gant, Judy Wimbish, and Bob Hart.

Adios

Kids Born in the 1930s-1970s

Found this on a Poly reminiscences website...it fits my memories. Contributed by Sherry Newman Mallory.

First we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle, and no one died from this.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because . . . we were always outside playing!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were okay.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-Boxes, no video games at all, no ninety-nine channels on cable TV, no videotape movies, no Surroundsound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms. We had friends, and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.

We were given BB guns for our tenth birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls, and although we were warned it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.

We rode bikes or walked to friends' houses and knocked on the door or rang the bell or just yelled for them!

Little League had tryouts, and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!

The idea of parents bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They sided with the law!

This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers, and inventors ever! The past fifty years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success, and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. And you are one of them! Congratulations!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

Adios

Don Imus – Network News

I voted for an incumbent Democratic once…bought the baloney that he was an intellectual gadfly who voted his conscience; however, once in office he was no different than the rest. Just another straight party-line voter when our president, also a Democratic, was called to account for diddling an intern, herself another Democratic, in our White House.

When I discovered Don Imus late in his career, I loved his rapier-sharp humor, but more importantly, he could interact with both political sides and cut through their party-line crap. He was able to draw an impressive lineup of politicians and media people to his show. Although his use of a racial slur was cited as the reason for his removal from his TV and radio shows, I’m fairly sure the real reason he was dispatched in 2007 was that he couldn’t be bought off and the '08 election was closing in.

Imus' show was the only reason I tuned into MSNBC…I haven’t watched a single minute of that pathetic network since 2007. The old-line network broadcast news hasn’t been of much interest or credibility for years…I simply don’t trust anything they have to say.

There are plenty of available avenues for news dissemination these days. My current approved line-up of broadcast network news:

Imus endured himself to me in many, many ways; one of the best being when he commented on a medical research news story claiming some success in extending life by 10-years. Imus quipped something like, "we don't need 10 more years when we're 80, we need those extra 10-years when we're 25."

Good night Chet

Patton's Old Soldier

When I’m at the market I like to smile at old people as they quietly shuffle through the store. Often they look quizzically at me, wondering I suppose, why I’m acknowledging them, when most people simply brush hastily by them in their hurry to do whatever they are in a hurry to do. When the old timer realizes that I’m simply offering a friendly greeting, the ladies will often blossom into a gorgeous grin. The men, most of them conditioned by years of working in a treacherous world are more reserved, but about half of them will return the smile or just nod.

This morning as I was going through the store I spotted an old gentleman and his wife making their way slowly through the aisles, stopping now and then to confer with one another about something, and then something else. He was well into his 80’s.

The old timer was wearing one of those “I’m ex-military” hats that are hard to read from a distance. It was crushed down and he slumped forward as he walked. I thought it was a “USS Something” hat indicating he might have been ex-Navy.

I walked over to him and asked what ship? But, just as I asked, I noticed that his hat read U.S. Army…I corrected myself. There were a lot of pins on it—my father had a hat like that that he wore while he was attending his WWII bomb group reunions during the 1980’s and 1990’s. I found it in his things as I was cleaning out his place.

"Germany,” the man said quietly. I hadn’t asked.

“First or Third,” I inquired. He brightened, cocked his head, and narrowed his eyes, probably wondering how I knew to ask that question, but obviously pleased that I did. His eyes welled up.

“Third,” he responded quietly. Patton, I thought—the Army immortalized in the 1970 George C. Scott film.

“155mm,” he went on. I didn’t immediately understand him, but what he was saying was that he had been an artilleryman on a big field piece.

“You saw a lot, didn’t you,” I said. Tears welled again in his eyes. He replied, “Yes, I did.”

“God bless you, and thank you for your service,” I said as I broke away.

“Thank you,” he replied.

I won’t soon forget the encounter—I hope his day was brightened. I know that mine was.

Adios

K.O. Vaughn – Sam Scott – Steve Means

These 2 pictures reminded me of an old story that I really never knew very well in the first place. Sam and Steve played on the tennis team as sophomores (1961) and juniors (1962), then dropped off the tennis team in their senior year (1963).

Sam and Steve were close friends and I seem to recall there being some kind of rancor between both of them and Mr. Vaughn, the Vice-principal and tennis team coach. I recall them grumbling about something Mr. Vaughn had done with regard to one or both of them. However, as the pictures illustrate, there they were on the tennis team one year, and on an intramural PE softball team the next year.

That was the 1963 championship intramural team and no wonder—with a couple of all-district football players helping out. It’s an interesting comparison to see the differences in physical stature between other members of the team and Sam & Steve—a couple of tree stumps at each end of the lineup.


Adios