Choosing Sides...2017 Style

In one of my last political diatribes, I predicted that the world is in the process of choosing sides. Those willing to fight for liberty are arming to the teeth and preparing for the not too distant future by buying and storing the three B’s…bullion, bandages and bullets.

Both political parties are irreversibly split in philosophies and only await November’s election before the birth of two new parties on the more extreme ends of the political spectrum. The desire and the plans are already in place, and only the fading hope of retaining our republic delays the inevitable. The give-me-free-stuff socialists will flee the Democrats, and the responsible-adult wing of the Republicans will reinstate the Constitution of the United States as the basis for their party platform. The remaining go along to get along moderates, the “republicrats”,  will become the dodo birds of tomorrow, doomed to quickly fade into irrelevancy.

Once the two spin-off parties attain power, I foresee a serious move from the right to achieve a friendly, non-violent  geographical/political divorce from the non-producing leftists on each coast. If the left is dumb enough to ignore that desire in order to retain their political ability to suck the success from the free enterprise system, there will be blood in the streets...and they are not the ones holding the three B's.

You can say you read it here first.

North Texas Storms

Monday evening we experienced the worst thunderstorm I've seen in the twenty years I've been in Texas. The edge of the storm hit here, but winds were near 80mph with golf ball sized hail that was driven sideways from the wind. They punched several holes in the vinyl fence panels, and sounded like they were going to come through the roof windows.

Those in the middle of the cell got softball size hailstones that actually penetrated house roofs and literally destroyed cars sitting outside. Where they hit the ground, the craters left after the ice melted looked like the surface of the moon!

I'm sure the fly-by-night roof repair companies will soon be prowling the neighborhood. The last time we had damaging hail, they began calling even before the storm had stopped. This time the storm area is so large they will have thousands of homes to contact.

One thing I noticed after the storm was how much better built the old cars were. When the wind and rain abated,  I checked my old '56 Plymouth parts car to see if the windshield survived, as I had planned to put it in the car I'm restoring. The glass was fine, and not single dent in the heavy sheet metal! Newer cars would not have survived the beating without major damage.

The Move and More

The biggest change is that we’ve moved from our quiet, wooded, rural acre in East Texas, back to the windy, treeless, small town bedroom suburbs of the DFW Metroplex. No need to explain why, but suffice to say it was by mutual agreement, and there is no turning back at our age. I’m sure I’ll occasionally comment on the frustrating challenges we experienced trying to coordinate and monitor construction of a new house from 150 miles away. That project will be remembered for the rest of our lives, but not with fondness. The best thing about the move so far is the lack of scorpions and black widow spiders around here. They are native to this part of the state, but I’ve not seen any and I hope it stays that way. There are several candidates for the worst thing…like wind, noise, clay soil, higher prices and traffic, but mostly I miss my coffee drinking buddies at Pop’s Café. Small town East Texas had some great people that I’ll never forget.

I don’t know if any readers of this blog are visitors to my other blog/journal that documents the trials and tribulations of rebuilding a sixty-year-old, extremely rusty Plymouth. I’ll assume not, but if I assume incorrectly, please bear with me if I repeat a few things from the other site. However, instead of a play-by-play record of progress, I’ll just hit the high spots if and when they occur.

I've been asked about my novel-writing efforts. The last I posted was about a year after In Dreams was published in 2011. Success was about as expected for a typical work of fiction by a new author, meaning sales tanked after a short period of modest sales. Most buyers chose the downloadable versions i.e. Kindle. Writing that one novel seemed to sap all my creative energy, so except for a few feeble attempts to ignite new interest, I’ve done little in the writing department. The story I had in work fizzled when the plot became too weak to continue, and while I hated abandon the 25 thousand words I had on paper, it was no used beating a dead horse. Recently, I found myself creating a plot in my mind and while that’s the way the first book started, it remains to be seen if thoughts will ever translate to words on paper.

Family-wise, my wife’s granddaughter stayed with us for the better part of a year, but finally got her own apartment near Dallas. I’m too set in my ways to have houseguests more than a few days, so it’s good that she got a job that (barely) pays her rent. The Maltese puppy she acquired shortly before moving out is still living with us, as her apartment doesn’t allow pets. Thankfully, she and the pup weren’t together long enough to really bond, so we now have a new furry child to terrorize our two older dogs. Gracie has a very sweet, energetic personality and provokes many more laughs than scoldings.

National politics continues to drive me nuts, and this year being a presidential election cycle makes it especially frustrating. We still have a country, but for how long? An amicable divorce between unbending regional political philosophies looks better with each passing day.

Like a Phoenix?

While I haven't posted anything new here in years, I'm surprised by the number of visitors this blog still manages to attract. Most are probably random hits from searches for other sites, but those who do stop in often read  many of the old posts.

Since I occasionally get the urge to vent about our crazy world, or to share something that interests me, I've decided to do so here since the blog site is still available.

I have no clue as to the frequency of new posts, but it will not be often enough to attract new readers. It will only serve as a place where I can ramble on to my heart's content, while providing some new fodder for the few regulars who still drop in.

The next post will attempt to fill some gaps since Porky Pig helped say goodbye four years ago this month.

It's Time

Dozens of times I've sat at my keyboard wanting to write something profound, witty, or interesting, but the words weren't there.

I wanted to write more about that communist sonofabitch in the White House and those self-centered, spineless, moral cowards in Congress, but feared being placed on someone's watch list. How sad that we can no longer exercise a freedom that was so expected, cherished and respected only a few years ago.

I wanted to comment on the abject stupidity of people who believe government is the answer to all their needs and wants...but I didn't, for fear of offending friends and relatives who visit. Now who is the moral coward?

I wanted to share the intense pleasure of rising before dawn, sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee in hand, listening to the last notes of the whipoorwill turn into the first song of a cardinal greeting the sun of another hot Texas day, but that's sort of silly, and most of you wouldn't understand.

I tiptoed around political subjects, chastised fools only when their antics became impossible to ignore, told you about the weather, took some pictures of flowers, and linked to other bloggers and websites, but I seldom conveyed the depth of my feelings and opinions.

As the years go by, nostalgia takes over and facing the modern world becomes too much of a pain in the ass when you don't have the strength or the desire to do battle every day. My little world is made up of old cars, old movies, old music, old perceptions, old ideals, and old memories. Things that mean nothing to those who didn't live them. While my world is a mental pleasure to me, those of us who live in a nostalgic world are an equally big pain to those who don't.

As I retire from active blogging, I hope my friends and relatives will forgive me if I sometimes forget to do the things I used to do. I don't mean to forget names, faces and birthdays, and I don't intend to tell the same story over and over. It's just Mother Nature doing her thing. I forgot what other things I'll probably forget.

With the appropriate apologies taken care of, I want to thank all of you who took time visit this site over the years and simply add......

New London, TX, March 18th, 1937

Today is the 75th anniversary of a horrible tragedy in a small town only a few miles from where I live. This account is from the museum website.

In 1937 New London, Texas, in northwest Rusk County, had one of the richest rural school districts in the United States. Community residents in the East Texas oilfields were proud of the beautiful, modern, steel-framed, E-shaped school building.

On March 18 students prepared for the next day's Inter-scholastic meet in Henderson. At the gymnasium, the PTA met. At 3:17 P.M. Lemmie R. Butler, instructor of manual training, turned on a sanding machine in an area which, unknown to him, was filled with a mixture of gas and air. The switch ignited the mixture and carried the flame into a nearly closed space beneath the building, 253 feet long and fifty-six feet wide. Immediately the building seemed to lift in the air and then smashed to the ground. Walls collapsed. The roof fell in and buried its victims in a mass of brick, steel, and concrete debris. The explosion was heard four miles away, and it hurled a two-ton concrete slab 200 feet away, where it crushed a 1936 Chevrolet.

Fifteen minutes later, the news of the explosion had been relayed over telephone and Western Union lines. Frantic parents at the PTA meeting rushed to the school building. Community residents and roughnecks from the East Texas oilfield came with heavy-duty equipment. Within an hour Governor James Allred had sent the Texas Rangers and highway patrol to aid the victims. Doctors and medical supplies came from Baylor Hospital and Scottish Rite Hospital for Crippled Children in Dallas and from Nacogdoches, Wichita Falls, and the United States Army Air Corps at Barksdale Field in Shreveport, Louisiana. They were assisted by deputy sheriffs from Overton, Henderson, and Kilgore, by the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and volunteers from the Humble Oil Company, Gulf Pipe Line, Sinclair, and the International-Great Northern Railroad.

Workers began digging through the rubble looking for victims. Floodlights were set up, and the rescue operation continued through the night as rain fell.

Within seventeen hours all victims and debris had been taken from the site. Mother Francis Hospital in Tyler canceled its elaborate dedication ceremonies to take care of the injured. The Texas Funeral Directors sent twenty-five embalmers.

Of the 500 students and forty teachers in the building, approximately 298 died. Some rescuers, students, and teachers needed psychiatric attention, and only about 130 students escaped serious injury. Those who died received individual caskets, individual graves, and religious services.

The Last Six Seconds

With a respectful Air Force hand salute to all Marines....those currently on active duty, as well as those who are out of uniform and waiting for their next mission. This was borrowed from another website, but I don't think they'll mind if I share it with you.

LAST SIX SECONDS
On Nov 13, 2010 Lt General John Kelly, USMC gave a speech to the Semper Fi Society of St. Louis , MO. This was 4 days after his son, Lt. Robert Kelly, USMC was killed by an IED while on his 3rd Combat tour.
During his speech, General Kelly spoke about the dedication and valor of the young men and women who step forward each and every day to protect us.
During the speech, he never mentioned the loss of his own son. He closed the speech with the moving account of the last 6 seconds in the lives of 2 young Marines who died with rifles blazing to protect their brother Marines. This is that speech:
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“I will leave you with a story about the kind of people they are. About the quality of the steel in their backs. About the kind of dedication they bring to our country while they serve in uniform and forever after as veterans.
Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour. Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda.
Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island . They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America ‘s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born.
But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.”
They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, Al Anbar, Iraq .
A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way-perhaps 60-70 yards in length-and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically.
Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped. Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.
When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different. The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event-just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.
I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion. All survived. Many were injured, some seriously.
One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.” “What he didn’t know until then,” he said, “and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal.” Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.” “No sane man.”
“They saved us all.”
What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.
You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “.let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” The two Marines had about five seconds left to live.
It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were-some running right past the Marines.
They had three seconds left to live.
For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop.the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the SOB who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers-American and Iraqi-bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe, because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God. Six seconds. Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty, into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight-for you.
We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift he could bestow to man while he lived on this earth-freedom. We also believe he gave us another gift nearly as precious-our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines-to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can every steal it away. It has been my distinct honor to have been with you here today. Rest assured our America, this experiment in democracy started over two centuries ago, will forever remain the “land of the free and home of the brave” so long as we never run out of tough young Americans who are willing to look beyond their own self-interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.
God Bless America , and..SEMPER FIDELIS!”