Tag Archives: military
Mystery to solve, solvents to mist
My grandfather was a man of more happiness than monetary wealth.
He reasoned, my father told me, that knowledge is the heated, padded seat in the outhouse of life — you can’t find the swallowed diamond until you sift through a lot of BS.
Granddaddy kept a lot of secrets along the way of gathering facts.
One day, while standing the backyard, looking at the canal but, in his thoughts, staring out at the sea, a fellow old seaman walked up to Granddaddy and told him a wild tale about a plot of land up in New Hampshire owned by a family named Winthrop something or other.
The land itself was not remarkable except for one small fact — every 100 years, a bright light appeared on the horizon, rose into the sky and shone down on a certain spot of the family plot.
My grandfather, ever the realist, asked why the seaman was sharing this information with a sailor and not someone more authoritative.
Well, this seaman, he was known in those parts for his notorious behaviour, having crossed paths with the law a few too many times, but he didn’t mind sharing this information with my grandfather, a nice man who had only beaten this fellow a few times in acey-deucey.
My grandfather asked what the man knew about the farm.
“It’s not exactly a farm. Not anymore. A few years ago, they converted it to a golf course.”
My grandfather had a soft place in his fact-filled thoughts for the irrational sport of golf. “Okay, so tell me what you know about this light. Anything you know for a fact?”
The man shared a document with my grandfather.
Yellowed and torn, the document described a treasure that was like no treasure that had been seen before — not only a map of the stars but instructions for how to travel through space from one planet to another.
My grandfather was a loving, trusting man but he had his skeptical side, too.
What proof did the man have that the document was authentic?
The man said that his grandfather had worked on the farm and found the document buried in the wall of an old, abandoned well, long since dug up and removed from history. No one living knew about its existence.
The man said that the next 100-year visit was fast approaching. All the man asked was that my grandfather visit the golf course, take pictures and share whatever information he gleaned.
Granddaddy was also a curious man, having learned that behind every legend or myth is a nugget of truth.
He had already accumulated enough material wealth to last the rest of his lifetime, but what about the lifetimes of his son and his grandchildren?
He accepted the document, bid the man goodbye and, when my grandmother returned from her garden club meeting, suggested they consider taking a vacation to New England in the next year.
My father had heard this story only a few times from my grandfather, assuming it was more parable or metaphorical tale than anything real.
Dad told me that in every life we’ll encounter people who belief wholeheartedly in family lore. We are not to disapprove or discourage these people from holding their stories on the highest pole, flying them as flags of faith and family honour.
Dad said that Granddaddy promised the story would have a happy ending but he wouldn’t tell my father what was discovered one night in New Hampshire, only that a few photographs he took barely document the event which cemented my grandfather’s belief in one fellow sailor’s tall tale.
Dad didn’t have an ending to share with me.
However, he did said that Granddaddy hinted the answer would be found on his property in south Florida.
Lo and behold, I think I have the first evidence of that fateful, faith-filled evening.
I present to you, dear reader, the images to which my grandfather eluded:
I have more to go through to determine if the map and other information are in the chest and I’m just not seeing it.
Quotes for the day
Leo Cawley, Vietnam veteran:
There is almost no human activity that is as intensely social as modern warfare… When a military unit loses its internal cohesion and starts to fight as individuals there is such a radical and unfavourable change in the casualty ratio that it is almost always decisive… Every general staff in the world since 1914 has known that the bravery of individual soldiers in modern war is about as essential as whether they are handsome.
J.G. Ballard:
…the slaughter in Star Wars, quite apart from the destruction of an entire populated planet, is unrelieved for two hours, and at times stacks the corpses halfway up the screen. Losing track of the huge bodycount, I thought at first that the film might be some weird, unintentional parable of the US involvement in Vietnam, with the plucky hero from the backward planet and his scratch force of reject robots and gook-like extraterrestrials fighting bravely against the evil and all-destructive super-technology of the Galactic Empire. Whatever the truth, it’s strange that the film gets a U certificate — two hours of Star Wars must be one of the most efficient means of weaning your pre-teen child from any fear of, or sensitivity towards, the death of others.
Film for the day
If you don’t work, no one can say who you work for
Yesterday, while typing a blog entry and deciding whether to post it (the one containing jokes about Boston bombings and social aftermath), a framed copy of a Marconi Wireless stock certificate and tobacco card images of Marconi himself(!) fell onto the carpeted floor of the study, the glass shattering, shards bouncing, potential splinters pointing up in bayonet charge positions.
I am not one who sees signs and signals in my everyday life.
No, I create them in my fiction, instead, knowing how much our sympathy networks naturally tend to use random events as silent/subliminal signals from our companions and readers thus need not suspend their disbelief for long when encountering a character who would see a fallen picture frame and interpret the “pick up sticks” pile of silicon slivers in a symbolic manner.
The I Ching of clear bling, in other words.
Molten sand as messages from the gods.
We like continuity.
We want to believe that something is good or bad for us on an as-needed basis.
And I, dear readers, want to give you what you want.
Snakes in the grass, the devil in hell, drunk drivers and deadly sunburns.
Guardian angels, smart detectives, good Samaritans and healthy sunscreen.
Throw them in the clothes washer, set it on “extra tumble” and show you the results in a story about the universe you think you live in.
In a dream last night, a man wearing worn clothing, a man who looked like he had worked outdoors all of his life, probably on a farm, sat next to my father while our family sat down for dinner.
As I gave the pre-meal prayer, the man started crying.
He turned to my father and said that his family, the Dukes, had been good, law-abiding citizens, the men all members of the Masons, attending and caring for the Masonic Lodge on a regular basis, yet when his father and uncle recently died, no one, especially the Masons, showed up for the funerals.
My father inquired about how the Dukes had let others outside their family know about the deaths.
The man said they didn’t, they expected God to tell the community about their suffering and their needs for love from the community.
My father fell into silence and looked at me.
I had stopped praying, having faltered on a phrase I can not remember.
I started praying again, asking the Almighty to let the man know that the Dukes were asked to suffer during recent funerals so that the man would be at this meal with us at this particular time, so he could the people next door who had come to see the arrival of a newly-adopted baby by my parents’ next-door neighbours.
We turned and looked out the window to see people of all shapes and sizes, nationalities and beliefs crowd onto a carport to gain entry to the house next-door.
The man continued crying. He just could not see why it had to be his family to suffer in silence.
I woke up in the dream state, my eyes open, seeing the silhouetted trees outside the sunroom where I had fallen asleep on the sofa earlier in the evening, yet also still in the dining room with my family and the man, watching the people next door slowly entering the house in single file.
As the dream continued, I asked myself what I expected from the dream. What were my dreamlike/subconscious thoughts trying to accomplish, assimilating symbols, strengthening neuronic connections, by having this dream?
I stopped praying. We let go of each other’s hands. My father nodded at me and continued to console the crying man, quietly talking to him about the wonderful life that the Dukes had in order to be able to share the luxury of a family-only funeral, a luxury which the community had not been given nor would ever have.
I fully woke up.
I rolled from my side and onto my back, wrapping the heated blanket a little closer around my body.
I rolled back onto my right side, a pile of boxes atop a sofa table blocking light from the neighbour’s driveway lamps.
The dream itself was what it was, a subconscious reminder that the one-year anniversary of my father’s death is approaching, following on the heels of my birthday.
I lay on the sofa, unwilling to get up and write down the dream, wanting to see what my emotional state at that moment felt like.
A little bit of sadness remained. Yes, I missed my father’s ability to work openly with community leaders to ferret out the misfits and reorient them toward positive community service before they became law-breaking criminals.
I also knew that Dad could not help everyone, despite his best efforts, because some people’s personalities are well-formed and cocooned from outside influence due to their upbringing, their beliefs as strongly set in black-and-white/good-and-evil stone as my father’s.
As my father knew, I had developed a personality different than his.
Perhaps because Nixon was my favorite U.S. President, a man known as Tricky Dicky, who, like me, used the available material to accomplish his goals, regardless of the material’s origin.
“Judge not lest you be judged” can also mean the same thing.
It’s not my place to condemn someone to hell. I want to use everyone for my one-and-only purpose — establish viable colonies of Earth-based lifeforms off this planet.
Meanwhile, the rest of us live and die for my entertainment, providing fodder for stories that you interpret as meaningful messages about life itself.
I am my own reader as well as a writer.
I write for myself first, planting clues in this and previous blog entries about what I want to write later.
Unlike the man in my dream, my wife and I would be happy if no one showed up at my funeral. We are private people who enjoy meeting others when we eat out, go to dance lessons, etc., but are just as happy to sit at home by ourselves with our own hobbies to occupy us.
Are we any different than you, dear reader?
Ancient roadbeds
A colleague once observed, “Never put a clown with nothing to lose and nothing to gain in charge of the planet. Society will quickly descend into comedic chaos.”
Speaking of which, a friend on Facebook said, “Did you hear one of the Boston bombing victims was five feet away from the bomb? One of them was hers. That’s why we should convert to metric.”
Another said, “The Boston bombing is just more proof that the combination of rap music and government welfare is a ‘gateway drug’ to violence.”
And another, “When Grandma pulls out her pressure cooker to make jam this fall, I’m gonna say, ‘Grandma, your jam is the bomb,’ just to see her reaction.”
Yet more, “Mercedes-Benz — Proud to present two high-lights. One: made for police-hating, gang-raping rap stars. Two: great protection for terrorists on the run.”
= = = = =
Whew! These jokes and comments always follow major news headlines.
= = = = =
Now, back to serious pursuit of planetary exploration and settlement, where we decide whether to take seriously North Korea’s threat to launch missiles; the claim that Syria has used chemical weapons; the assertion that U.S. states will use Dept of Homeland Security funds to target abortion clinics and “morning after” pill providers as domestic terrorists; and if anyone cares about government abuses in Africa.
Some of us…
Some of us still remember the embarrassment of Abu Ghraib…sadly, the abuses of power are repeated without end.
From my grandfather’s private Navy “memoirs”…
Irish-Italian American
How does a story like this start?
Which beginning is the beginning?
The author is part but not part and parcel of the tale. The usual “as always”.
In fifth grade, I met a boy who was so dark I thought he was Puerto Rican. He could also wiggle his ears.
Mike. Mike McGinty.
In 1930, a boy was born who grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts — Mike’s Irish father, John.
John entered military service in 1950.
One of his jobs was making sure films distributed by the Air Force were shown to the soldiers. Therefore, John received his paycheck from the Air Force even though he was a Marine. He eventually worked as a librarian for the base after his stint in the Korean War, including a landing at Inchon with the Marines.
However, let’s turn to a romantic view of the action taking place farther ahead and behind in time.
By 1952, John was making regular trips from a western New York military base, driving his mother’s car back home to Lynn.
Meanwhile, a young woman named Maria, whose Italian family had moved around the various eastern towns outside Boston, including Everett, was finishing her last year in high school.
One evening, on January 1st, a special Catholic holiday, Maria, along with her friend Barbara, skipped Mass and cruised on down to a local coffee shop, sitting in a booth.
Sitting at the bar, John and a military buddy of his from the Navy watched the two women walk in.
John dared his friend to talk with the attractive ladies.
His buddy did but he left before introducing John.
John got up from the barstool and wandered over.
Maria thought John would be interested in Barbara, as most guys were, Barbara being more attractive and more popular.
John had other ideas.
“I carried a few thoughts in my head when I first saw Maria. One, the woman I was going to settle down with had better be very attractive. And she was. Second, she better be the kind interested in having a family.”
At 83, John’s memory of the event is vivid, and Maria’s at 77 is, too.
He offered the women a ride home, dropping Barbara off first.
“At Maria’s house, just before she left the car, I suddenly remembered to ask if she wanted to go out.”
Maria smiled and nodded. “I said yes even though, because I was raised in a strict family, I was forbidden to date while I was in high school. Plus he was 21 and I was 17. I tried to pass him off as 19 to my mother but she said he was too grown up to be 19.”
From then on, right after reveille on Saturday mornings, John would drive as fast as he could to complete the 13-hour trip “all the way across New York State and all the way across Massachusetts.”
“You see, I couldn’t go out with him after 11 p.m.”
John cupped his hand behind his left ear. “What?” She repeated herself. “Sorry, I waited too to get these hearing aids but I’d be deaf without them.”
“I stood at the window to wait for him. When he passed by, he’d…”
“Honk his horn?” I couldn’t stop myself from adding that one.
“Do you think I wanted to go to reform school? Or a convent?”
I laughed. “‘Get thee to a nunnery.'”
“‘A nunnery.’ That’s right. No, he’d flash his lights to let me know he made it safely and he’d see me at church the next day.”
“After Mass on Sunday morning I’d go with her to see her family.”
“I had to see all my grandparents every Sunday after church.”
“‘Johnny,’ one grandfather would say, ‘drink up.’ I’d look at her and she’d say, ‘Yes, drink up.’ One shot of whiskey.”
“That’s right. ‘Go ahead. Drink up.’ You see, John was Irish and my family didn’t approve of our going out together. His drinking with my grandfather…Four Roses! Only the fancy stuff, haha!…it was their way of getting him to be part of them.”
“Yeah, and I’m no alcoholic. Sure, I drink a glass or two of wine or a shot of whiskey every day but that means I’m well-preserved. By the way, what will you have to drink? I have Heineken and Sam Adams in the fridge.”
“Sam Adams.”
“Sam Adams?! He is a drinking man! I’ll get you that beer.” [“No, Dad. I’ve got it.”]
“My other grandparents made their own wine.”
“They trusted me so much with their granddaughter that after a while they showed me the whole winemaking operation in the basement. Of course, I had to drink a glass of wine or two at their house.”
“We didn’t marry until he was out of the military and I was well out of high school. Can you believe I just retired after 22 years as a school secretary? Me, retired?”
“And I’ve been retired for 23 years. Retirement is good.”
“It is. I still wake up when I used to but I get up when I want to.”
Joh turns to talk quietly with my mother, bringing her to tears. Maria taps her finger on the glass patio table to get his attention and waggled her finger to scold him.
My mother turns her reddened eyes to Maria. “If we can’t cry with our friends, who can we cry with? Besides, these are such good memories you’ve shared.”
Later, Mike calls from California to wish his family a Happy Easter in Florida. He comments to me on the phone about my semifinalist status a while back in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, when I will publish the next one, and how my voice still sounds young (even if I don’t look it), as well as his nontalkative father, who in response says he doesn’t like to talk on the phone, even to his kids because he can’t hear well on the phone.
Maybe I should write another book.
I look forward to reading Mike’s new book about branding and John’s recommendation about a series of military books by Rick Atkinson and Carlo D’este.
John wishes for more books about the Korean War.
Maria wishes for pictures of newborns, especially great-grandchildren from her grandchildren Melissa (legal assistant wanting to be an urban planner), PJ (EMT) and Brian (shadetree truck mechanic), all well-behaved and doing well at 25, 22 and 18, children of her daughter Trish and husband Paul, 47, a unionized electrician for Duke Energy, 15 years away from retirement after 15 years on the job.
My mother wishes that the emotional turmoil after the death of her husband will wind down.
Another house to empty, to sell, to remember it and its place in the greater community.
Can you wiggle your eyes?
Would you spend your Easter weekend at Rancho Relaxo?
Do your neuronal connections have labels?
Do you know what your neuronal connections look like?
I think I know mine:
treetrunkdings 