This is a Branta Canadensis Maxima, for you non-latin speakers.

Christmas Driving Lesson 1974, this is a Ugliest Crapola Jeepillia for you non-Jeep speakers

We had a '51 Willy's "station wagon" that Dad bought for some reason...I think it was because all of his friends had four-wheel drives and he wanted one too.

When I think back on it, I can't really decide whether I liked the thing or not. I guess its kind of like having an ugly girlfriend...She's lots of fun to ride, but you don't want your friends to see you doing it.

You have to picture this thing...It looked like a pregnant army jeep of Korean-era vintage. It was two tone green (pea soup over bile) and had a narrow wheelbase and exterior front fenders.

Inside the contraption was a very confusing set of controls. There were three (count 'em THREE) stick shift levers sprouting out of the hump between the seats. The turn signals didn't self-cancel, which I'm sure was confusing to the other drivers we encountered.

And to top it alloff, the windshield wipers ran on an electric motor that cut out every time you gave the motor some gas.

The Jeep (we called if a Jeep, even though it was made by Willys) was ALWAYS cold. Even in high summer. It was pretty spartan.

If that wasn't enough, most of the time it just sat there in a lonely, ugly heap, undriven, with a battery.

On Christmas eve of my 6th grade year Dad decided to give me a unique present. He walked into the TV room and said "Karl, come with me."

"Where to?""Just come on."

I think that, looking back on it, he didn't want to ruin the surprise by telling me what he had planned.

We went out into the dark, winter night all bundled up like we were going somewhere to work (which is what I thought was going on) to the Jeep. He told me to get in the driver's seat. Now, this is where things got exciting, confusing, and not a little intimidating. But you know that feeling you get when you take a monumental step toward maturity? You know, like the first time you rode a bike, or got drunk, or beat your dad in a footrace, or hit a home run, or found a pubic hair (on you...), or found a pubic hair (on someone else...). I got that feeling sitting in that driver's seat.

I'm sure the young men in the plains Indian tribes felt something like this on their first vision-quests.

Yep, I got that feeling... For about 15 seconds, until we discovered that I couldn't reach far enough to completely depress the clutch pedal without ducking my head below the bottom of the
windshield.

So Dad stomped into the house and came out with what Mom called a "booster seat" to put on the driver's seat of the Jeep so I could reach the pedals AND see over the dash board at the same time. I guess this was done in the spirit of "safety." Then Dad locked the hubs and put the Jeep in four-wheel-drive. I guess that was for safety too.

I started the Jeep (I'd done that LOTS of times...no big accomplishment there), and backed out. As I recall, I didn't kill the engine trying to get the hang of the clutch. Well, not more than a few times anyway.FINALLY I got the thing backed out of the carport and into the driveway. There was about a foot of new snow all over everything, and it was still coming down. It was an overcast winter's night, and if you've never been out on a night like that...Well, its pretty damned dark.

We started up the windshield wipers (with their on-again...off-again arrhythmic tempo) and shined the lights out toward the pond. All I really saw was that tunnel effect you get when driving in a snowstorm at night. The headlights define an illuminated circle in front of you, and the only sensation of movement is that the snowflakes all look like they are coming at you, instead of the other way around.

But I knew that field and the pond in the middle of it like the back of my hand, so did Dad, so off we went driving around the pond.

For all you city kids out there, ponds are full of water. And that water has to come from somewhere, not to mention the fact that the water has to GO somewhere too. So at one end of this pond was a creek (pronounced "crick") flowing IN, and a the other end was a spillway (no pronunciation tricks in "spillway") flowing OUT.

Well, if you're going to drive around a pond , you have to negotiate the creek and the spillway.

So, since I was driving in what Dad called "grandma gear" which is just a classy, uptown way of saying "compound first" which moves the vehicle while idling and thus requires no clutch-skills, we limped along around the pond at about 1 mile an hour. It took forever to make one lap.

Going through the spillway (we encountered it early in the journey) was a piece of cake. It was just a ditch in a dike made of river rock. No bridge, no culvert, just drive right through the thing, and climb the hill on the far shore.

Later, at the opposite end of the pond, we had to negotiate the creek. I almost got us stuck because the ground around the creek was soft.

Dad yelled "give ‘er some gas!" So I floored it. We climbed out of the soft mud in record time, and I let off the gas. Now you've got to understand, that was as far as my accelerator foot had been trained. Either no pressure on the accelerator, or all the way to the floor. Pretty much Driving Miss Daisy or Dukes of Hazzard. Not much middle ground.

After about four laps around the pond (taking at least 5 minutes each at that speed) Dad got antsy.

He said "Push in on the clutch" and then shifted into second gear for me.

Now, I should probably interject that I hadn't used the brake pedal all night so far...We just hadn't gone fast enough to need to slow down. Hell, up until this point, we'd almost been stopped anyway. But I was riding that brake pedal...just in case. With my left foot.

But now we were careening around the frozen pond at a speed approaching 10 miles an hour (hold on!). Somewhere during the fifth lap Dad said "Give 'er some gas."Well, I stomped on it (there's that dukes of Hazzard thing again). All of the sudden we were bouncing around in the cab of the Jeep, and my foot was jumping on and off the accelerator a couple of times a second. The Jeep was bouncing over river-rocks while all four tires were spinning. Dad was yelling, my eyes were wide, and as the snow parted beyond the stupid on-again-off-again windshield wipers a great big fallen tree appeared. So I slammed on the brakes, jerked the wheel left and braced for impact with both feet straining against the floor-boards.

Right against the gas pedal.

I guess a good way to describe it was that the Jeep had lots more GO than STOP. With one of my legs standing on the brake pedal and the other leg standing on the gas pedal, the Jeep just got confused and did what any normal Jeep would do under the same circumstances. It spun its wheelsaround and headed for the pond.

There was about a 6 foot drop-off at that end of the pond. That was before you got to the water level (which was covered in ice...Hell, it WAS Christmas eve). That was also the deep end of the pond. It was easily 10 feet deep.

Lucky for us there was a huge cottonwood tree to keep us from going swimming. That tree must’ve moved over a couple of feet to its right (out of the goodness of its heartwood, you understand) and caught our left front fender. That tree definitely saved us a lot of problems that night.

The Jeep had slammed into that cottonwood tree hard enough to crumple the industrial-strength left front fender into the tire. We were looking almost straight down at the pond (okay... It SEEMED like straight down) when Dad said "What’re you DOING?"

Hell, I didn’t know what I was doing... This WAS my first actual driving lesson, you know. So I didn’t have much to say... But knowing that I was probably in awfully big trouble made me start bawlin’ like a baby.

I cried, Dad (inexplicably) laughed, and when we finally got back to the house Mom got pissed. Then, because Dad was laughing, I figured that was the right reaction and started laughing. Well, that pissed Dad off, and he started in on the "What the Hell do you think is so funny?" speech.

Well, it cost $270 to fix the fender (you know, so the Jeep would retain its value), and I was the first kid in my class at school to wreck a vehicle. I didn't drive much for a while.

Until I got to be about 13 or 14. Then the Jeep replaced my bicycle. I got mobile.

At first Dad told me to drive it to the farm to build fences and irrigate, so the Jeep, my shovel and I did some traveling. We looked pretty classy, the three of us, considering the Jeep’s newly painted fender let people know what color the Jeep used to be.

The Jeep would just about do 60 mph on a slight downhill incline (if you REALLY stomped on it), and it was built like a...well, it was built like a jeep. Thus, it was pretty safe for a fledgling driver, three stick shifts notwithstanding.

One summer Dad hired high-school senior to work on the farm. He let me drive all of the time at the farm, and sometimes on the road. The only creature-comfort that the Jeep had was an old AM radio. The speaker dangled down by one wire under the driver's side dashboard. We played that radio all of the time. The radio station in Enterprise owned three rock-and-roll records: Dance the Night Away by Van Halen, The Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits, and I Want You to Want Me (the live version... very hip) by Cheap Trick. While working at the farm we hoped that we'd hear them played that day... Usually sometime between Paul Harvey’s "The Rest of the Story" and the Farm Report.

Our hired man let me drive the Jeep every time we had to move it, so I got better at driving and using a stick shift during the course of the summer. In fact, I got downright cocky. I'd smoke out across the pastures as fast as that Jeep would go.

One day, it was quitting time and I was tearing up the road to the last gate before the road. The ranch hand was saying "You'd better slow down...slow down...DAMMIT SLOW DOWN!"

I was trying, but we weren't slowing down. I was pushing down mightily (OK, as mightily as a 13 year old can push down) on the brake pedal, but it wasn't moving.

And that gate was coming up awfully fast.

The Jeep ran through that gate like it wasn't even there. It took us 40 yards to stop, and another hour to pull the barbed wire out of the wheel assemblies. And yet another hour or two to replace the gate.

The korean war-vintage radio speaker that hung underneath the dashboard had fallen off and wedged itself under the brake pedal. It was just EXACTLY the right width to keep the pedal from moving at all. And let me tell you, I've never seen a more solidly built speaker before or since.

When I was a junior in high-school, the Jeep was pretty much my only transportation. Then Dad bought a Porsche 924 in the summer between my junior and senior years. That meant I got to drive the Ford Pickup (which was cool for a country boy, thank you very much).

Dad came to me and said "Karl, this is your last year to get good grades and get into a good college like Stanford or Harvard. So I'll make you a deal. If you pull a straight 4-point-0 during your senior year, I'll give you a car. It may not be a great car, but it'll be one more car than you own right now. But you have to pull straight A's. Nothing less is good enough. Anything less, and no car."

What a fantastic opportunity for a free car! And for about one semester it worked. But I started struggling in one of my classes (I forget which), and eventually pulled a B grade. I was crushed.

I figured this put me completely out of the running for any sort of car based on our deal. Plus, since I always secretly figured he was just going to give me the Jeep anyway, I just did the Karl thing and coasted through the rest of the year.

At the end of the year Dad said "You know, I would have given you a car if you had applied yourself. Forget the grades, if you would have TRIED I'd have given you a car."

I said "Well, you were just going to give me the Jeep, right?"

I almost vomited when Dad said "No, I had a Porsche 914 picked out for you."

Later, after I had quit college, in retrospect I believe that one of the worst things about my unsuccessful college career was the fact that I was so immobile. I had a dinkasaurus loser-bike (just like when I was younger...its funny how things run in cycles isn't it?). I think a car might have helped a little (but I doubt it would have made the difference between dropping out and getting a PhD).

I learned an awfully valuable set of lessons in that Jeep. It was one of my icons of growing independence. Whenever I see that body style Willy's now, I tell everyone within earshot that I used to drive one of those.

Dad eventually traded it to a guy for the promise of two nice dinners with him and his wife.

The guy paid for one. That was about par for the course with that Jeep.

Fashion, Beer, Mechanical Work... It's Another Oregon Redneck Roadtrip!

Mom, Dad and the girls moved away from Enterprise in the summer of '83. That left me alone to my own devices, but Kurt stayed with a family friend that was generous enough, or stupid enough maybe, to volunteer to let Kurt live at his home.

I lived in town in a small apartment. The apartment building had a back courtyard that contained stables and an outhouse at one time. That pretty well dates the building. Circa 1890-something.

Mom and Dad sent plane tickets to Kurt and I so that we could come to Phoenix for Christmas. The nearest airport that actually had a flight to Phoenix was in Portland. Portland was (and still is, surprisingly enough) a LONG way from Enterprise.

For those of you who are geographically challenged,Portland is nestled into the lower-right-hand corner of that hump on the west side of Oregon. Enterprise is across a river from Idaho.

That's a lot of road.

It’s an ESPECIALLY long road if your cars can’t be trusted. I had a '69 Camaro which was great for getting around in a town the size of a football stadium. But it wasn't a good choice for a trans-state pilgrimage. Kurt, on the other hand, had a pretty Chevy Luv Truck that was fairly reliable.

FAIRLY reliable. You'll notice that it has been at least 10 years since you saw a Chevy Luv. There's a reason.

Kurt and I gave ourselves 2 days to get to Portland. Its really only a 13 hour drive, but we didn't want to miss our flight. We figured we'd just sleep in the truck. It was a good thing that we planned ahead because Kurt's truck had a trick or two up its tailpipe, and it snowed and snowed and snowed between Enterprise and Portland.

First, we ran into the weather. The Oregon National Safety and Feel-Good Agency was requiring tire-chains to go through the mountains. Kurt had some chains that he had got a really good deal on...almost free as I recall. You know the old adage: "If it’s too good to be true..." That’s the story of our life.

We stopped at the bottom of the mountains and put the chains on with all of the other people attempting to negotiate that Donner-like mountain pass. When we were sure that the chains were on securely we began our trek up the snowy mountain.

Almost immediately we heard the ominous "thump-scratch, thumpety-scratch, thump-scratch" of one of the cross-links of the tire chain tearing the paint off the side of Kurt's shiny truck. We got out and fixed it with baling wire and went a few miles until the same thing started on the other side. So we wired it up.

Again and again this happened. It took all day to get over those stinkin' hills. We almost ran out of baling wire. That would have been a catastrophe. A day without baling wire is like a day without sunshine.

We continued westward after we got to the low lands along the Columbia River west of Pendleton. But the truck wasn't running quite right. That is to say, the damn thing would die, at 60 mph, headed down the highway. Sometimes it would spontaneously restart, other times it would magically start only after having come to a complete stop.

It was almost like Kurt’s truck was trying to tell us something.

Not knowing anything about trucks, but having limited knowledge about 2 stroke dirt bikes I guessed the problem was ignition, and had to be fouled spark plugs. So we stopped and bought some plugs and installed them in the truck on a cold snowy Oregon night under a streetlamp at a truck stop. Nope. It wasn't plugs. In fact, the truck seemed to run better with the old plugs. We know this, because we switched plugs, then switched them back because the new plugs actually ran worse.

Somewhere during the course of changing the plugs, one of us bumped the air cleaner which jiggled loosely. I tried to tighten the wingnut holding it onto the carb, but the nut was already tight.

Its hard to figure this stuff out in the dark, along the side of an interstate, especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.

The carb was loose. But the bolts that had wiggled loose were installed from the underside of the intake manifold, which was securely bolted to the engine block. To further complicate issues, the Japanese design team had chosen to attach every possible hose, vacuum line, and linkage to the carb, so the array was pretty intimidating to two non-mechanical dudes like us (HAH! Stupid Amelicans wirr nevel figule this out). Apologies to Toshiro Mifune, whose work I enjoy.

So we did the only thing we could do. I rolled up my nasty old cowshit-smellin' Vietnam-era army jacket and put it on top of the air cleaner housing and slammed the hood on it. The idea was to put enough pressure on the air-cleaner to keep the carb in place, so it wouldn’t suck air through the joint between the carb and manifold.

It wasn't entirely successful, but we were able to limp at about 29 miles an hour the rest of the way to Portland.

We had planned to sleep in the truck and save money on a motel room. But we were COLD! I can't describe it, we were freezing. And my coat was under the hood holding the engine together. We got a motel room, and turned the heater on "Redneck Defrost." It was about 120 degrees in a half-hour, but we were still chilled to the bone.

That was the first time I had ever rented a motel room. Since I had no credit card we had to find one that took cash. My first motel room came with hot and cold running -dealers. I can't recall ever bringing a tire iron and a bowie knife into a rented room on any other occasion. But I did it that night. At least it was warm.The next morning, before our afternoon flight, we found a garage that only had a foot of water running through it from the torrential downpour hitting Portland right then. There was an old redneck mechanic in the service bay who told us it was going to cost thirty dollars more than everything we had. We explained our plight to him and he fixed Kurt's truck as a favor on his lunch-hour. What a good guy. We sure didn’t expect to find anyone who would be helpful in a city like Portland. I guess it goes to show that if you look hard enough, you can always find some good... Wherever you happen to be standing.

By now we were tired, cold again, and frustrated. Then we had to hike about half a mile from our parking space to the airport terminal in the cold driving rain. Now picture this. Two soaking, shivering hicks with cowshit stained boots and hats dressed in old, ripped army jackets which look as if they came across a state under the hood of a truck...and did, walking through an international airport looking pissed-off. Even the Hare Krishnas left us alone. When the stewardesses saw us coming, they changed our seat assignments to keep us away from the decent folk flying the friendly skies. They sat us right up front, next to the stewardess' station.... Presumably so they could keep an eye on us.

Once in the air, almost as an afterthought, one of the stewardesses got close enough to smell us, wrinkled her cute little nose and asked "can I get you...gentlemen.... anything?"

We couldn’t miss the "I’m from the city... someplace nice, and we don’t really like people like you" implicit in her otherwise proper question. I’m sure she would’ve added "like a bath and a decent set of clothes" if we hadn’t appeared so anti-social.

That was pretty much the last straw for me. I just looked out from under my shit-stained hat brim and said "two beers."She ever so politely asked "May I see some ID?"I impolitely responded "No, you may not."

"Well then I can't sell you two, uh, gentlemen any beer. The drinking age is 21."

I asked "In what state?"

"Well... in Oregon." She was losing her sense of humor. So was I.

"Well in California, Arizona, and Nevada it’s 19. Bring me two beers when we get over one o' those states."

She was licked, she was standing there arguing with someone who looked and smelled like the Broadway cast of "Deliverance"...She made the right decision. She brought beer. And lots of it.

I think she was hoping we’d drink ourselves to sleep. Kurt and I expended all of our remaining funds on beer somewhere over the whole western United States.

When we landed in Phoenix we were tanked, smelly, unshaven, and walking around in army coats and jeans with sweaty long underwear underneath.

It was 80 degrees in Phoenix. The crowd of greeters at the gate was full of beautiful women in halter tops. Life was good, women were beautiful, I was snockered and Kurt was looking for a trash can to be sick into.

It’s a good thing video cameras were so expensive back then. Otherwise, I’m sure Kurt and I would have been on "America’s Funniest Drunk Redneck Home Videos" ... Or maybe "COPS"It was obvious that we didn’t fit in, so we decided to be awfully blatant about not fitting in.

But that’s another story.

Have You Ever Wrestled a Fish? All the Guys I Wrestled Did.

I may have already mentioned that my high school appointed a biology teacher we nicknamed "Schnozz" to the Wrestling Head coach position. That's not him (or me) in the pic above. I lifted this from somewhere on the web for the entertainment value.... On with the story--

Now, I had (and still have) a lot of respect for this guy. He taught me a lot in biology and science class. Had the guts to say things like "Okay folks..... The state says I have to teach you this lesson on evolution, even though I don't believe it, you probably don't believe it, and certainly God doesn't believe it. But the state wants us to pretend to learn it, so I'll pretend to teach it." Schnozz was just an all-around good guy. A sportsman by nature, a tough but polite competitor who's ethics never faltered (that I saw).

Schnozz had two sons. As you might expect, they wrestled. As might also expect, they were good at it. My whole life I had one or the other in my weight class. So, as you might expect, I spent a lot of time on the bench or the second-string. Neither of Coach Schnozz's boys were ever my "buddies", although we often spent time together due to sports, or due to the fact that my dad and Schnozz were good friends.

During my senior year my buddy (Mel) took a class on "Public Relations." No, this didn't necessarily mean he had to have "relations" with the public (though he tried). Mostly it meant that he had to take a lot of pictures and write articles for the school paper. Most of Mel's contributions to the paper were about sporting events. The Public Relations class only had about 6 kids in it, and most of them were dopers. Mel was the only 3-sport jock that made all of the traveling squads, so it naturally fell to him to report on the wrestling matches in little backwater communities 400 miles away when no one but the traveling squad made the trip. Thus, he was the only big doofy dude in the state with a 1000 dollar camera taking pictures while on-deck to wrestle next.

I remember a particular occasion during my senior year; I had made the traveling squad too. The coach's kid must've had too many "counts" at that weight class or something. A high-school wrestler is only allowed a certain number of "counts". You use up a "count" each time you step on the mat with an opponent. I think we got about 25 counts allocated per season.... But the coach scheduled about 40 matches. So I was being handed an opportunity to wrestle varsity in a match even though Schnozz's kid usually wiped up the mat with a "fish" like me. It was a good plan on Schnozz's part though.... His kid usually killed me, and I usually killed the kid that I was slated to wrestle from the other school.

We had traveled to a school that was so out-of-the-way that Idaho wouldn't claim it. I mean... It was actually in Oregon, geographically speaking, but everyone acted like Idahoans... With feather boas and everything.. The town was about the size of Enterprise, and sometimes they fielded some outstanding athletes. Overall though, their sports programs hadn't measured up to ours for quite a few years. We normally beat them. But we had to earn it.

One thing you might not understand about sports in small places is this. Every year you play the same teams, in every sport. You also play the same people you played against last year. If you play offensive guard in football, the guy you played across from in 8th grade is probably the same guy you'll play across from in 11th grade. It’s the same with wrestlers. Assuming that you're about average weight for your age, you'll wrestle many of the same people year after year, all through school. Sometimes this is a good thing, such as....When two arch rival schools each have a prospective state champion. Those matches are previews of the state finals. Wrestling fans come from all around to watch those matches. They are actually the height of what ABC used to call "the human drama of athletic competition."

Then there were the matches that we "fish" competed in. A lot of popcorn got sold during my matches. I think it was kind of an unplanned intermission. I had talented wrestlers in the weight classes leading up to me, and in the classes after mine. When I walked on the mat it was a good time to go grab a smoke or hit the concession stand. As long as you didn't take more than a minute or two. My matches rarely went on for longer than that.

Anyway, I had made the traveling squad. Mel had his camera, and was giving me a pep talk before I went on the mat. It went something like this:

"You better watch out for this guy.... He looks ferocious."

"Dammit Mel, I've wrestled this kid every year since 2nd grade and never lost. This guy put the FFFF in FFFFish." I spit all over Mel with the FFFFish-thing.

"No really, I hear he's been practicing" insert evil laugh here while wiping spit off of his arms.

"He's also just waiting to rub that underdeveloped chin into your chest as he's pinning you.... You can see it in his eyes. I think you'd better take him seriously Chickhead, you could really get hurt out there..."

Right then Schnozz walked up and said "Scholz, can I talk to you for a minute?"

"I'm almost up, Coach."

"I know Scholz. I AM the coach, remember?"

"Uh, right Schn.... Coach."

Schnozz pulled me to a semi-secluded portion of the gym (it was semi-secluded because Mel and his camera were standing right next to us. Mel had absolutely NO shame. He eavesdropped constantly. Schnozz shot him a dirty look, but knowing we were buddies, forged ahead.

"The other coach has approached me and asked a favor. Now I can't grant it, but I said I'd ask you."

Now I'm sort of uncomfortable. This was really out of the ordinary. It sounded like he wanted me to throw the match.

"The other coach said that the kid you're gonna wrestle has wrestled hard every year, never missed a practice since 5th grade, and works his guts out..."

"But he's a fish coach"

I'm sure that Schnozz thought "well, so are YOU." But he had entirely too much class to actually articulate the thought.

"He's a good kid who's just not a great wrestler. Not only has he never won a match, he's never NOT been pinned. Their coach asked me to ask you to go the distance with this kid. Take him three rounds. If you've just gotta pin him, do it late in the third."

Well, this was a dilemma, but we fishes have to stick up for each other. I reluctantly agreed to think about it. That was about the time that I had to step on the mat.

We went through the normal routine of getting ready... Shaking hands, putting on the colored leg-bands that helped the guys keeping score tell us apart, putting our feet on the starting line facing each other.

I was still wondering what the right course of action would be when the referee blew his whistle and yelled "WRESTLE!"

Ol' fishy-boy shot a perfect double-leg takedown and got two points in the first 3 seconds.
Oh Hell! Now I'm two points behind, on the bottom, and Mel's on the edge of the mat with his camera. Worse still, the camera is making bzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz sounds like a fashion photographer.

I broke loose, stood up and faced fishy-boy. One point went to me for the escape.

I don't hear any "bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz."

I decided to end this thing right now, so I shot a double-leg on fishy-boy. But he had just experienced the thrill of a lifetime. He HADN'T BEEN PINNED YET, AND HAD ACTUALLY SCORED SOME POINTS!"

With his new found confidence, and victory seemingly within his grasp, fishy-boy tried to get out of the way, but was only able to clumsily smash his right knee into my face.

I saw stars. Not like in the cartoons. I was actually transported (a la STAR TREK) to another solar system with a completely different star.

Then the ref stopped the match 'cause he got too much of my blood on him or something. He called for a towel to clean the mat up, and sent me to the sideline to get my nose plugged up. I tried to exit the mat while catching the blood which was now all over both of my hands and arms and most of my face and upper torso.

"bzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz."

"Hey, Chickhead. It's in his eyes. He’s ferocious and he’s on a roll. The horror!"

With friends like Mel, who needs enemas?

Schnozz toweled my face off and stuck little tampon-looking cotton plugs up both nostrils. He handed me the towel and said "You're doing fine. Really making it look like he's wrestling. Stay with him, get a take down, take him into the 3rd round and then you can pin him."

I looked over at him with the tampons sticking out my nose. Fishy-boy had his whole team around him rubbing his shoulders, giving advice, looking as tough as he could while hopping from one giant duck-like foot to the other and shaking his hands while trying to look extra-macho.
I couldn't even meet his eyes.

I went back out and got a 2 point take down, then the round ended.

Fishy-boy won the coin toss and chose the superior position to start the second round. I let him maul me for the second round. He was throwing crossfaces and really working on my tampon-stuffed snot-locker.

I had just about had all the humiliation I was interested in taking. I was doing this guy a favor (shhh... that’s a secret), and he was throwing cheap-shots at me left and right.
I'm just too damned nice. That's my problem.

This thought was interrupted first by another cheap forearm, then by the sound of Mel's camera.

"bzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz,"

Half of our bench, even though they knew not to expect much from me, was yelling out things for me to do to actually WIN this match. The other half was distractedly looking everywhere but the mat, trying to convince themselves that they weren’t really on the same team as the guy getting mauled by Fishy-boy.

Finally, the second round ended.

Fishy-boy's team jumped to their feet, cheering like.... well like cheerleaders, they are so proud of ol' Fishy. And I can see that all of this is just making Fishy more determined to win.
Most of the guys on my team had given up on me.

The ref started the third round and I let Fishy-boy up. One point to the Fish. It's OK, I'm ahead by a few points.

Then, dammit, Fishy head-butted me in the nose. More stars. This guy was really working on my snotlocker.

So I head-butt him back. Hard. Completely illegal. Fish stumbled, and I take him down and put him in a pinning combination on his back.

But I'm still remembering Schnozz's request "If you’ve just GOTTA pin him, do it late in the third."

So I let him fight the pin for almost the rest of the round, but I had to pin him.... It was a pride thing. He’d bloodied my nose, given me cheap shots all during the match, my teammates (who thought... no, KNEW I was a fish) were gonna razz me about getting busted up by Fishy-boy forever. So at the very end of the third round I stuck his shoulders on the mat. The ref slapped the mat really hard, which signifies the end of the match by a pin. I had done it. Done Fishy and his coach a good turn, and not come out of it too badly. Well, not TOO badly, tampons up my nose notwithstanding.

Evidently his teammates didn't notice that he got pinned.... yet again. They all jumped to their feet and cheered, waving towels and yelling like idiots. You'd have thought Fishy just won a major tournament.

Fishy left the mat with his arms raised, skipping in a clumsy, fish-kid sort of way. His great big shoes slapping the mat with every step, straight into the mob that his team had become.

I turned my tampon-stuffed nose toward our bench and trudged off of the mat. No one said "Good job Scholz." In fact, it looked like everyone suddenly had something else important to look at.

Mel was giggling like a.... well like a cheerleader, aiming his camera at my face "Bzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz."

"Nice match Chick... heh heh heh."

Schnozz just gave me a knowing look and a slight nod of his bulbous nose. He never spoke of it again. Neither did I, except with Mel, everytime he reminded me of Fishy-boy taking me down right after the opening whistle.

The next Monday at school, while walking down the hall, I happened to look in the trophy case. You know, the trophy case that sticks out of the wall in every high-school hall you've ever been in? That trophy case.

It had a brand new collage of wrestling pictures that someone had lovingly arranged with mounting board and off-center construction paper snowflakes.

Every black-and-white 5x10 in that case was a picture of some unlucky Enterprise wrestler being mauled by a wrestler from an opposing team. Then I noticed the tampons in the poor bastard's nose.

It was me.

They stayed in that case until well into the spring track season.

Every time Mel and I would pass that case he'd say "Hey, Chick.... Look at these."

It only worked about 5 times before I caught on.

Do You Ever Wonder Where Your Role-Models Ended Up? I Do. Here Are a Few That I Tracked Down.

Ray Devens:

For a flamboyant personality like Devens, there's sure not much mention on the web. Here's the most recent thing I've come across:

PRESS RELEASE: Savannah-based Rangers organize unit rugby team

Rangers from 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment at Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., have organized a rugby team and are planning to play in the upcoming Savannah Rugby Tournament.

According to Maj. John L. Rafferty, the team’s coach and the battalion fire support officer, interest in starting a team sparked when officers from the battalion played rugby as a unit physical training event.

“Lieutenant Colonel (Michael) Kershaw, our battalion commander, played at West Point and is a member of the team, and a big supporter of our effort to field a team, as well as Sergeant Major (Ray) Devens, who is also playing,” Rafferty said.

Devens is the operations sergeant major for 1st Battalion.

Here's a picture of Ray Devens (at the left) looking completely smoked. This is the only time I ever saw him look whupped. This is the cover of the January 1984 issue of Soldiers magazine. The caption reads: "Vince Lombardi carries the 90mm recoilless rifle flanked by assistant gunner Ray Devens as they move to the next mission during Operation Urgent Fury on the island of Grenada in 1983."

Ray Devens was a wild-man. The first day I was in Battalion, we had road march. I was new to the AT section, and feeling a little bit sorry for myself when this IDIOT came running the wrong direction down the road. Full gear, running the opposite direction that everyone was going. He stopped next to me and said "you're one of my guys, right?" Since I was humping a 90mm, it was a pretty good guess. Devens was smart like that. I said "Roger that Corporal. I got here yesterday" in between gasping for air.

Devens took his canteen out, unwrapped the 550 cord and twisted the top off, then slammed it into my chest. He had a crazy look in his eyes.

"Drink my water" he yelled at me.

"I'm okay corporal, I've still got both canteens."

"DRINK MY WATER, DAMMIT!" Now he was yelling like he was pissed, crazy AND a little stupid.

So, I drank a couple of swigs from his canteen and tried to hand it back. He slammed it back into my chest and said "finish it."

I mustered the courage to quiz this idiot "Why do you want me to drink your water corporal?"

"SO I CAN'T HAVE IT."

That's Devens.

Vince Lombardi (Sgt. Lombardi when this picture was taken) was a leader. He's on the right of the SOLDIER magazine cover above. He left the Ranger Bn, went to college, got a commission, and returned to active duty. I only knew him for a short while in '84, but his men (my peers) talked about him in terms of great respect. Someday I hope people will say similar things about me. Here is an article from the US Mountain Ranger Association (from http://www.usmountainranger.org/memorial/2005/lombardi.htm)

Vincent Lombardi

Vincent John Lombardi Jr. was born in Lewiston, New York on May 2, 1962. His long and distinguished career in the Army began on March 5, 1980. He spent his first five years as an enlisted soldier in the 75th Ranger Regiment and earned the rank of Staff Sergeant. One of the events that demonstrated his service to his country was contributions in Operation Urgent Fury to liberate Grenada in 1983.

After completing his enlistment he entered the Reserve Officer's Training Corps. In 1988 he graduated from Niagara University and was commissioned into the Infantry. Lieutenant Lombardi served with the 1-503th Infantry Battalion in Korea and then 2-75th Ranger Battalion at Fort Lewis. As a Captain he commanded two companies in the 24th Infantry Division and was the Commanding Generals Aide De Camp. Major Lombardi's last assignment was at Fort Richardson, Alaska where he served as the Battalion Operations Officer and Executive Officer for 1-501st Infantry Battalion.

The many awards that he earned in his twenty-two year career included [lots and lots of awards. I'll just list the important ones] Combat Infantryman's Badge and The Coveted Ranger Tab.

The nickname "Coach" was given to Major Lombardi very early in his career and would always be used by the many soldiers who served with him. This signified the respect and admiration that everyone held for a great leader who fought for his country and could inspire all.

Maj. Lombardi was diagnosed with Carcinoid tumors in his pancreas and liver and was transferred to Washington, DC, for treatment at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He died unexpectedly as a result of liver failure on 18 February 2003.

He is survived by his wife, Sue, and two young children, Vince III and Teresa. He will be sorely missed.

I read somewhere that he prowled the halls of the hospital visiting other terminal cancer patients to keep their spirit up. Truly a Servant Leader. I'm privileged to have known him.

Steven Fondacaro:

WASHINGTON (October 16, 2007) — The US military has developed a new programme known as the Human Terrain System (HTS) to study social groups in Iraq and Afghanistan.The HTS depends heavily on the co-operation of anthropologists, with their expertise in the study of human beings and their societies. Steve Fondacaro, a retired special operations colonel overseeing the HTS, is keen to recruit cultural anthropologists. "Cultural anthropologists are focused on understanding how societies make decisions and how attitudes are formed. They give us the best vision to see the problems through the eyes of the target population," he said.

You can read more at: http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=6091

William "Chief" Carlson:

May 21, 2004

At its annual memorial ceremony this morning, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) honored 83 employees who died in service to their country, including Christopher Glenn Mueller and William "Chief" Carlson, two civilian contractors killed in an ambush in Afghanistan last fall.

"The bravery of these two men cannot be overstated," Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet told a gathering of several hundred Agency employees and family members of those killed in the line of duty. "Chris and Chief put the lives of others ahead of their own. That is heroism defined."

Mueller and Carlson died while tracking ists near Shkin, Afghanistan, on October 25, 2003. Both saved the lives of others during the ambush.

"Their sacrifice was not in vain," Tenet said, pledging to continue the war on until it is won. "We owe that victory to all American heroes like Chris and Chief", and to Mike Spann and Helge Boes, two other remarkable young men who died fighting a pitiless enemy in a remote, rugged place."

Again, I'm privileged to have known him.

You can read more about Chief at CSM Greer's website http://www.greerfoundation.org/Tomahawk.html Or Robbie Leatham's website: http://www.robleatham.com/Rob%20Leatham%20in%20memory.htm#William

Joe McClaren

Joe's son hired me to fly to Yuma, AZ and drive Joe to Oregon. Joe was well past the part of his life where he was in a hurry about anything, so the drive took us about 5 days. I had the privilege and advantage of talking to a 92 year old WWI veteran about everything for several uninterrupted days. Wow.

A 19 year-old shut into a car with a hairy-assed 92 year old. Do you think I learned anything?

You bet I did.

This guy was a veteran of cattle drives, true frontier living, building his own ranch (which is still run by his family), and raising a family that included a son who was commanding one of the first of Patton's tanks that arrived to "rescue" the 101st Airborne during the Battle of the Bulge. If you don't know the story, then watch "Patton", or "Band of Brothers" or "the Battle of the Bulge", or read any of a hundred books on the subject.

Anyway, we were talking about Joe McClaren, not his son... Joe was a little guy on the outside, but when I think of the archetypical American man, Joe's in there somewhere. All hard work, gristle, guts, brains, and fight.

I'll be lucky to live to 92, but I'll be luckier to approach life like Joe.

How'd you like to make 10 bucks? Gobble?

When we were young, Dad had an interest in all things having to do with hunting, fishing, and game animals. Due to this intense interest in game species Dad decided over the years to raise pheasants, geese, and a species called Merriam Turkeys.

Merriam turkeys are the archetypical huge American turkey species that everyone associates with thanksgiving. They are really interesting birds. They are crotchety, mean, stupid, and nasty...In the nicest way, of course.

When I was young, my morning chore was to go around to the chicken, pheasant, and turkey pens and nesting areas and gather eggs. By the time Mom had started breakfast I had gathered as few as two or three, or as many as twenty or twenty-five eggs. The number of eggs I found hinged upon how well the birds hid their nests.

Mom just made "mixed species scrambled eggs delight" for breakfast. No pheasant under glass or any other esoteric dishes. Just straight-ahead "cookin' with Sue" real food.

Those mornings were adventures. I had to climb into every nook and cranny of the barn, hunt in the tall grass out by the pond, and scour the pheasant coops.

We never ate goose eggs that I recall. I guess they were too valuable. Being gold and all.

I'd come back into the house with my down jacket pockets full of whatever types of eggs I found...many times they broke against each other. Sometimes I had a hard time getting a door or gate shut and had to throw my weight into it. Those mornings I had to listen to Mom cuss and I ended up wearing some other coat instead of my down jacket to school. A pocket full of pheasant ovulation is no fun for a mom to clean.

For some reason, I had a mental block about closing gates behind me. If I went through a gate, it was a even-money bet that I'd forget to close it. So we had lots of poultry rodeos rounding up birds who've been genetically selected for centuries to get away from the big animals chasing them.The bad news was we never really got them all back in the pen.T he good news is that we always had plenty of pheasants and turkeys running around the property.

The pheasants pretty much disappeared after a few weeks of freedom. I don't know if they were lost to predation or they just moved to better feeding grounds.

But the turkeys stayed around. They roosted in a huge old hangman's tree cottonwood on the island in the middle of our pond. There was a huge branch sticking straight out from the trunk of that tree, and in the evening you could see eight or ten turkeys sitting on it as the sun went down.

As part of Dad's master genetic plan for the turkeys, he mail ordered a tom-turkey to freshen the gene pool.

An actual eighteen wheel over-the-road truck delivered that tom. I don't think the truck was necessary....The tom was just shipped as freight. When we opened the back of that truck there was a crate with burlap sides sitting in the middle of the cargo trailer...wiggling.

That bird was pissed.

The crate was about a three foot cube and all of the sides were wiggling simultaneously. I was reminded of the bugs bunny cartoons where the Tasmanian Devil is delivered in a wiggling crate. This was pretty much the same.Dad and the truck driver moved the crate over to the end of the truck, which just served to further enrage the occupant.

When Dad and the driver lifted the crate out of the truck to set it on the ground the tom went nuts. Those two full grown men had a hard time getting it to the ground without dropping it. The tom was moving around so much, and was so big, that it was hard for them to balance the cratebetween them.

After the truck drove off, we let the tom out of the crate.Our lives were never the same after that moment.

We learned to live with fear.

That tom was horny. Not just a little. A lot. I mean that bird would chase the cows around the
field.

Ol' Tom put the R in randy. The H in horny. I can't think of any other related terms. Horny. Randy. That's pretty much it.

Turkey's don't court. They don't date. They aren't coy or flirtatious. Nope. Turkey sex looks more like a catfight. So toms learn not to take NO for an answer. This tom had elevated the act of not being denied to an art form. He jumped everything on that property. Cows. Chickens. The hitching post. Dogs. A basketball. Everything... Including people.

We complained to Dad, who thought we were making the whole thing up and told us so. Mom refused to go from the house to her car (about 5 yards) without a broom, which she would leave on the ground next to her parking space. When she returned she'd exit the car, grab the broom, and go the 5 yards to the house.

One of my other jobs was to take out the trash. It was a pretty simple routine. I took the bag of trash to a rusty barrel, threw it in, and lit it on fire. The barrel was about thirty yards from the back door. The longest thirty yards in the world. After that tom showed up, the trash run took on a whole new "Mission Impossible" dimension. Now the routine went something like this:

-Grab the bag of trash.

-Grab a baseball bat.

-Oops, forgot the matches.

-Drop the bat.

-Get the matches.

-Get the bat again.

-Cautiously open the backdoor.

-Look around for the tom.

-Notice the tom acting innocent about eighty yards from the door and one hundred yards from the burn barrel.

-Silently slip through the door and down the steps, creeping toward barrel.

-Look over shoulder for the turkey.

-Oh No! The turkey sees me.

-Sprint for the barrel.

-Look over shoulder.

-The turkey is fifty yards away and closing fast.

-Sprint harder for barrel.

- Turn head to look for turkey.

-The turkey is twenty yards back.

-Trip over my own feet because I'm not looking where I'm running.

-Spill the trash.

-Get tackled by the turkey.

-Can't use bat because I'm sitting on it.

-Forty pound horny turkey desperately seeking Susan on my lap while swatting me in the head with his wings.

-Punch the turkey with a roundhouse to the snot locker.

-Turkey not amused.

-Turkey backs up hoping for seconds.

-Stand up, pick up baseball bat.

-Chase that lousy bird all over the everlovin' farm trying to hit it with a Louisville Slugger.

-Turkey laughing at me, staying just out of reach.

-Go back to pile of trash.

-Pick up eggshells, nasty paper towels and other assorted kitchen trash.

-Dump the whole mess in the barrel and set the thing on fire.

-Imagine putting turkey in the barrel and setting his randy ass on fire.

-Keep a sharp lookout onthe way back to the house.

Nope, things just wouldn't ever be the same around the old Scholz rancho.

Today, now that I'm grown up, people ask me why I carry a gun. I tell them its because I'm a rape victim.

One day Dad invited one of his friends and his two boys over to our house to go fishing in the pond. When they showed up the whole family piled out of their old Ford van with their fishing poles, nonchalantly getting their gear out of the back of the van.

All of the sudden, out of nowhere, a black streak of feathers and libido races across the yard heading right at the group, all of whose backs are turned.

A night I wake up sweating, flashing back to that moment frozen in time. Its like slow motion. "LOOK OUT!" I yelled. Dawning realization on their faces as they turned toward me with relaxed secure expressions which quickly progressed from confusion to fear as they saw the turkey bearing down on them.

"Don't run!"

That was good advice. Marlin Perkins once said that horny turkeys and grizzly bears can outrun a horse over short distances. Well, if he didn't say that, he should of. It's true.

The father turned to face the oncoming hornyturkey express, shielding his two young sons from the tom. But one of the boys panicked and headed for the hills. He was sprinting down the gravel road as fast as his two-sizes-too-big-he'll-grow-into-them yard-sale cowboy boots would carry him.

I had my money on the turkey. It wasn't even close.

The turkey ran that boy down, tackled him, pinned him face-first in the gravel and started biting the hair on the back of his head, slapping him with his wings, and riding him like a porn star in the middle of the road.

The boy's dad showed up a few seconds later and started whipping that bird with his fishing pole. I remember thinking "he's gonna break that fly rod." The turkey was oblivious. He was going to town on that kid.

Finally, the tom lost interest and wandered off to make a sandwich and have a cigarette, leaving Dad to apologize to the family of a skinned up little boy in the early stages of post-traumatic-stress-disorder, a father who was mad that his kid had been jumped by thanksgiving dinner, and a bewildered younger brother wondering if he was next.

Dad went out with a broom later that afternoon and beat the everlovin' crap out of that bird.

Oh sure! As soon as someone else's kid gets boofed by the turkey, he's all over the situation.

We never saw that turkey alive again. We did find what was left of him though-- a pile of bones in the middle of a circle of feathers. I like to think that he tried his "ride-em cowboy" act on a coyote. That would be poetry.

Here's Mohammed and Akhbar with the latest fashions from Old Taliban. Mo' is sporting a witty t-shirt, while 'Barry has chosen the recycled mexican serape-coat. Both have pushed the envelope with the cutting-edge sandbag-on-the-squash look, perfect for that endless summer in Gitmo! Thanks Mo' and 'Barry!

General Wayne A. Downing.

This is a great speech. It was given by Ross Perot to dedicate the "Wayne A. Downing Airport" in Peoria, IL. Evidently, that's General Downing's hometown, and this is the only airport named after a Ranger.

I was fortunate enough to be in one of General Downing's commands, back when he was a lowly Colonel (and I was an even more lowly PFC). I thought you might find the story interesting.

Let's turn it over to Ross Perot... I'm all ears.


"General Wayne Downing’s life can be defined by these words:
-Patriot
-Guardian of our Freedom
-Hero
-Fearless
-Brilliant
-Modest
-Humble
-A man of absolute integrity

A great leader who:
-Builds others up – Never puts them down
-Is kind, gentle, but tougher than steel
-Always helping others
-Always puts others first – himself last
-Treats others as equals
-Great listener
-Outstanding husband and father

General Downing is admired and respected by all who have served with him. He was born in Peoria, Illinois in 1940. His father served in World War II and was killed in action in Germany in 1945. General Downing received an appointment to the U. S. Military Academy in 1958. He graduated from West Point in 1962. His first assignment was as Platoon Leader in Company B 173rd Airborne Brigade in Okinawa. He served 3 years in Vietnam (1964 – 1967) in the 173rd Airborne Brigade and the 25th Infantry Division. In 1984, Colonel Downing was chosen to form and lead the 75th Ranger Regiment. All Ranger Regiments continue to live by the creed –
RANGERS LEAD THE WAY!

General Downing is considered the Father of the Modern Rangers. In 1989 he was appointed Commanding General of Joint Special Operations Command in Ft. Bragg. In December 1989 he commanded the Special Operations Forces that liberated Panama during Operation Just Cause. A year later, he commanded the Joint Task Force of 1,200 Special Forces soldiers who conducted highly effective attacks in Iraq during Operation Desert Storm.

In 1991 General Downing was appointed Special Operations Officer at Ft. Bragg. In 1993 General Downing was appointed to the rank of 4-Star General and served as Commander in Chief of U. S. Special Operations Command, leading 46,000 Special Operations Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen. I had the privilege of knowing General Downing during the years that he served as a General in Special Forces. Again and again, when his soldiers were in combat, he would call me around the clock with deep concern about men who had been seriously wounded, seeking the care from the most talented doctors in the private sector. I will never forget those calls. His level of concern was like these Special Forces soldiers were his own sons.

General Downing retired from active duty in 1996. After retirement, he was appointed by the President to lead a task force to investigate the 1996 terrorist attack on the U. S. base at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In 1999 General Downing served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. In 2001 General Downing served the White House as National Director and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism.

General Downing served as Chairman and Founder of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U. S. Military Academy.

His honors include:
-The Defense Department Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Army Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster
-Defense Superior Service Medal
-Legion of Merit with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Soldiers Medal
-Bronze Star with V Device for Valor and 5 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Purple Heart
-Air Medal with V Device for Valor and 35 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Army Commendation Medal with V Device for Valor and 3 Oak Leaf Clusters
-Combat Infantryman’s Badge
-Military Free Fall Jumpmaster Badge
-Master Parachute Badge
-Ranger Tab
-Pathfinder Badge
-Commander in the French Legion of Honor

And now I will tell you my favorite General Wayne Downing story. In the late 90’s I received a call from a person who identified himself as a retired Special Forces Sergeant named Euless Presley. My first reaction was “Has Elvis been reborn?”

He told me that 125 Vietnamese, who he had fought alongside, had been moved to an island off Hong Kong and had lived there for 25 years. As Hong Kong was being taken over by China, China made a deal with Vietnam to ship these men back to be executed. Sergeant Presley had a great sense of urgency to recover these men. I then called General Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, mentioned the sergeant’s name, and told him the story.

General Shelton’s response was, “I know exactly who Euless Presley is. He is a highly decorated Special Forces soldier. We have got to get these men out. I would not be alive without them.”

I then sent a team to the State Department to see if we could make arrangements for them to be brought to the United States. The State Department’s response was, “We have heard all about this, but nobody can prove that they are who they claim to be. If you can bring us proof, we will allow them to come to the United States.”

I then called retired General Wayne Downing, and told him the story. His exact words were, “Ross, I wouldn’t be alive without these men. I can validate them. I will be on the next plane.”

I asked Wayne, “Where do I send your ticket?”

General Downing responded, “I wouldn’t be alive without these men. Nobody buys this ticket but me.”

I then said, “Can I help you with anything?”

General Downing said, “I need an Interpreter.”

I called Nguyen Quoc Dat (called Max Dat), a South Vietnamese fighter pilot who had been held in prison with our men. Max later moved to the United States and is living in California. The only problem is that Max would be dead if they ever got him, because he would be a much better trophy to trade to Vietnam than the Vietnamese. Max agreed to go.

The team arrived in Hong Kong on Monday. They called me on Tuesday, and General Downing said, “Perot, the Chinese won’t let us on the island, but don’t worry, we will get it done and will call you when we are on the way back to the United States.”

General Downing called on Saturday and said, “All taken care of. The men and their families are on their way to the United States.”

I asked, “How did you get on the island?”

I will never forget General Downing’s response. He said, “Don’t ask, Perot” laughed, and hung up.

I still don’t know how General Downing rescued them, and don’t need to know.
I would like to know if they swam or parasailed in, swam out? In all honesty, I was not surprised that General Downing had accomplished another MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!

The Vietnamese and their families all live near Ft. Bragg, have good jobs and are good citizens, and continue to be under the wing of the Special Forces members there – Thanks to General Downing. General Downing’s actions can be summarized by these words:

THE BEST TEST OF A MAN’S CHARACTER IS WHAT HE DOES FOR PEOPLE WHO CAN DO NOTHING FOR HIM.

Throughout his life, General Downing lived these words from Isaiah: WHO WILL GO? SEND ME!

General Downing’s life and principles can be summarized by Winston Churchill’s shortest speech:

NEVER GIVE IN. NEVER GIVE IN. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER!

He has also lived these words: WHEN PRINCIPLE IS INVOLVED, BE DEAF TO EXPEDIENCY.

Abraham Lincoln said: ANY NATION THAT DOES NOT HONOR ITS HEROES WILL NOT LONG ENDURE.

Today we are gathered to honor General Wayne Downing – a true American Hero! In closing, please remember the last phrase of the “Star Spangled Banner” is a question – O’ SAY DOES THAT STAR SPANGLED BANNER YET WAVE O’ER THE LAND OF THE FREE AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE? As long as we have great Patriots like General Wayne Downing, the answer will be a resounding YES!

In the End Times, There Will be Great Signs.

We're comin' down the line. We're bringing you the Power!

When we were kids we watched a show on PBS called "The Electric Company." It was a pretty good show that went over the ins and outs of kummyunicatin' in English. We watched it all of the time... Not because we liked educational programming, because it was on during "Joker's Wild" which was a dumb show anyway.

Looking back on it, the Electric Company had lots of big-name players. Like Rita Moreno (of West Side Story fame...I think) and Bill Cosby.

Anyway, there was a recurring set of skits on this show starring Bill Cosby as a forgetful, confused not-so-super hero called "Super Guy" who would somehow teach a lesson in spelling or grammar during his skits. I remember one particular scene in which a guy dressed up like a roaring '20's Chicago mobster is flipping a coin saying with a bad (really awful) New York accent "Super Guy is a meatball." It came out more like "Shoopa-guy ish a meat-bowl."

Kurt and I thought this was the funniest thing we'd ever heard. We hunted up two flippin'-coins and started doing our best mobster impressions. First one of us would mimic the mobster, then the other, punctuated by minute-long uncontrollable spasms of manic laughter and searches under the couch for our coins. It's hard to catch a coin when you're laughing like an idiot.

We were busting each other up so bad that we could barely breathe. We would catch our breath just long enough to let go with another "Shoopa guy ish a meat bowl" and the cycle would start all over again. Our ribs and stomachs were cramping up from the violent laughter. That was funny too.

Of course, MY impressions were WAY better than Kurt's. But he still made me laugh until I thought I'd die.

We even turned the TV off because it was more fun to say "Shoopa guy ish a meat bowl" and laugh like imbeciles than it was to watch the boob tube. So you KNOW it was fun.

After about fifteen minutes of this, The house exploded into ominous footfalls. Mom had been sewing upstairs in a room just over the TV room where we were flippin' coins and insulting Shoopa-Guy, but now she was coming downstairs. And coming fast. One last "Shoopa guy is a meat bowl" and another blizzard of giggling.

She blew into the room like a tornado, I'd never seen her like this. She was slapping me with both hands until I put up my hands to defend myself, then she rapidly transitioned to slapping Kurt. As soon as Kurt stopped giggling and realized the gravity of the situation he put up his hands too... Of course I couldn't see Kurt get slapped unless I dropped my hands, so I did. That made me the next target of opportunity for Mom.

She went back and forth between us slapping and yelling WHATHAVEITOLDYOUABOUTTHATWHATDOYOUTHINKYOUAREDOINGDIDN'TITELLYOUNEVERTOTALKLIKETHATDIDYOUTHINKYOU'DGETAWAYWITHITDON'TYOUTHINKICANHEAR?!"

At this point both Kurt and I are two confused hombres. A minute ago we were practicing our best "New Yawk" accents on a line from a PBS show, and now we're getting slapped and yelled at in a foreign language (and all in capital letters). So both Kurt and I began yelling things like "WHAT? WHAT! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WE WERE JUST WATCHING TV!"

Mom halted her Sugar-Ray Leonard-like flurries but was still bellerin' things like "YOU KNOW WHAT YOU WERE DOING!"

Actually we didn't. Or at least we didn't realize that it was wrong. So we told her so. We put on our best "please-believe-me-and-don't-slap-me-anymore" faces. Since this was a first for us we evidently weren't very good at it. Nope. She wasn't buying it." DIDN'T I TELL YOU TO NEVER TALK THAT WAY?!"

"What?" Talk what way?"

The two of you were yelling "SUPER GUY IS A NEGRO” and then laughing like idiots."

We cleared it up pretty quickly after that with endless denial. Watergate was on TV around that time, so denial was at the forefront of the public psyche. I don't think Mom ever believed us though, because lying was at the forefront of the public psyche too. She was pretty sure of what she heard. If you quiz her today, she'll still swear we were calling Bill Cosby a negro.

C'mon, think about it. We all KNEW Super Guy was a Negro. That's not funny at all. But a MEATBALL...Yes siree, whoo-boy, that's comedy.

I wonder if Bill Cosby ever thought his "Super Guy" skits would get anyone slapped?

If I ever meet him I'm gonna yell "SHOOPA GUY ISH A MEAT BOWL!" and slap him silly until he says "uncle-b" in his best Mushmouth voice.

I can always plead insanity, and point to my tormented childhood.

The Mother Earth Gnus

This blog was supposed to be about stories. So far I've talked about politics, waxed philosophical, and just generally messed around.

For those of you who know me, this sort of conversational meandering comes as no surprise I'm sure.

So gather round, I've got a story to tell. It's a lovely friggin' tale about gardening, and the best use for certain vegetables.

Before I start, let me talk about comedy. My position on comedy is this: Someone has to take the pie in the face, or it ain't funny. Today the pie flies toward my Father. You'll all get your turn.

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My Dad, in addition to being a hyper competitor, was a child of agriculture. Whenever we visited with Dad's parents the subjects of conversation were maddenngly predictable. Even the order in which these subjects were discussed seemed to follow an unwritten format. Weather, then probable crop yield, then wheat prices, followed finally by which parcels of land were in the process of changing hands.

You can learn a lot about a community by listening to the small talk. Obviously, the folks that Dad grew up with had a set of priorities. Those priorities centered around two things: Plants and the soil necessary to grow those plants.

Simply saying that my father had a green thumb doesn't really do him justice. He was green clean up to the elbow. Some years his biceps took on a green tinge.

I don't know that Dad ever would have made a successful farmer, although I can't imagine him failing at anything he really wanted to accomplish. He describes his high-school motivations as "...anything that would get me off of that goddamned farm."

He spent the rest of his life trying to bring that "goddamned farm" to wherever he was.

He was always the kind of guy who would have a window-box garden in a New York apartment. Full of wheat.

The whole time I was growing up Dad was either planning, preparing, planting, or husbanding a garden.

Since no one plants wheat in a garden, Dad chose many of the staples: corn, potatoes, carrots, green beans, tomatoes, strawberries, and onions. But he also planted things that even Burpee Seeds had too much pride to offer: Kohl rabi, turnips, snow peas, and the dreaded zucchini.

Neither I, nor anyone I knew had heard of zucchini squash before the Carter administration.

Zucchini is like the Special Olympics of gardening. No matter how poorly you perform, you're guaranteed an award at the end.

Here's a recipe for a successful zucchini-raising project: dirt, water, seeds. Pretty complicated, huh?

Zucchini plants are beautiful. They have leaves that are a foot across, growing out of stems the size of baseball bats. They are the deepest shade of green. The blossoms are a gorgeous yellowish-orange, and the size of baseball gloves. Everything about the plant itself is beautiful and rewarding.

Oh... Did I mention that you get one zucchini squash per day? You do. Each squash is about a foot-and-a-half long and as thick as a kid's leg. They weigh about 3 pounds apiece.

One year Dad planted a single zucchini plant. It made him feel so "in touch with nature" that the next spring he planted 5 plants.

Of course, 5 plants yield about 5 zucchinis per day. Do the math: 5 zucchinis times 90 growing days in the season is about 450 zucchinis in a single summer.

Now, let me ask you a simple question: What in the Sam Hill are you going to do with that much squash?

If he had planted 4 more plants, he could have given every man, woman, and child in Enterprise, Oregon a zucchini as a gift.

I hated Zucchini. But that wasn"t important in the general scheme of things. Dad felt productive given the size of his zucchini yield, someone had to eat those nasty slimy things, and I was elected.

Well, to be more succinct, our whole family, everyone we knew, everyone who THEY knew, and unsuspecting tourists who left their cars unlocked while using the public restroom at the Texaco station were elected.

Hell, they had to go SOMEWHERE. Waste not, want not, right?

For some perverse reason, picking and storing these monstrosities fell to me. Hmmm... irony. The guy who hates these nasty squashes has to pick and preserve them for future use. I was tasked with picking, hauling, stacking, and storing all the zucchinis raised in Dad's ever-so-fruitful zucchini patch.

I hauled them into the back porch and stacked 'em like wood. By the end of baseball season we had a stack eight feet long and ten zucchinis high.

Mom was hard pressed to figure out how to use all these squashes.... Never mind the output of the rest of the garden, which was given away in recycled Safeway grocery sacks to anyone we knew, and on at least one occasion, a tourist who mistakenly found himself in our driveway after getting lost.

We had fried zucchini, baked zucchini, zucchini bread, zucchini cake, zucchini stew, zucchini pancakes, zucchini stir-fry, zucchini sandwiches, zucchini and SPAM hash, zucchini flavored ice cream floats, zucchini cocktails, zucchini teriyaki, zucchini wine, zucchini pie, zucchini on-a-stick, zucchini relish trays, zucchini every-friggin'-thing.

I'm starting to sound like Bubba in "Forest Gump" aren't I? I'm just thinkful that no one ever tried a "zucchini Pronto Pup".

I was sick to death of zucchini. So, being a devious little bastard, I worked to rid the world of zucchini. I had the best interests of mankind at heart....don't you see?

There was a big bottle of medicated tar on the back porch. It had been there for years. Dad had originally bought it to put on the wounds caused by dehorning a calf, but we discovered cauterization before we had much of a chance to use the tar.

There was also a huge 60cc syringe (which is a big'un) and a nice selection of extra needles.

One glorious day, when no one was home, I filled that syringe with that nasty-smelling tar concoction, and injected about 10cc's of tar into every zucchini stored on the back porch.

That evening, while preparing "zucchini Alfredo Tetrazzini surprise" Mother cut into a zucchini and found a huge nasty black spot.

"KARL..... Grab me another zucchini off of the back porch."

It was all part of my diabolical plan.

The next squash, and the next were found to have some evil-smelling rotten portions.

"I think these zucchinis are going bad.... Harley! I think the zucchinis on the back porch are rotting." Mom yelled at Dad from the kitchen.

"There's plenty more where those came from. Have Karl take them out and put them in the compost pile."

I don"t think I was forced to eat another bite of zucchini.... ever again.

Guns & politics. Politics & guns.

I suppose that someone not related to me might stumble upon this page someday. For that person's benefit I should probably clarify my stand on the second amendment. Here goes:

It's the only amendment that counts. All of the other "civil rights" are really "civil privileges" unless someone is armed. Go ahead and fool yourself that the reason your "civil rights" are not routinely infringed is because the folks in power respect you. Without an armed populace we'd hear a lot about something called "civil rights" in school, but we'd never actually experience them.

If you choose to be unarmed, then you enjoy your civil rights only because I and 180 million other gun-owners scare the ruling elite into moderately acceptable behavior.

You're welcome.

One of the highest profile gun-related incidents to capture recent national attention was the Virginia Tech shooting. This particular episode has been a catalyst for all kinds of ideas about how we as a society can halt or at least mitigate school shootings. The ideas fall generally into to polar opposite positions.

One position states that people who already legally carry weapons for protection at the mall, or in church, or on a city street ought to be "allowed" to carry at any school. If they are responsible everywhere else, its a pretty good bet that they'll be responsible at a school too. I like this position.

The opposite position states that private citizens should not be "allowed" to arm themselves for defensive purposes, but should instead rely upon police for protection. Usually this position is not limited to just schools, but to everywhere. Guns are bad... everywhere. I vehemently oppose this opinion.

The flaws in this logic it are legion. First, we're Americans dammit... That means that we're "allowed" to keep and bear arms (along with our freedom of speech and other civil rights) simply because we exist. Self-defense, and by extension the keeping and bearing of the tools necessary for effective self-defense are a natural right.

Second, this position requires us to disarm because we "might" use guns for an anti-social purpose. This is called "the doctrine of prior restraint" and limits, restricts or cancels a civil right because someone somewhere might use that right in a way that we wouldn't like. Americans don't like prior restraint. We only punish the people who break the rules, not the people who might break them.

Third, the opposition tries to make the argument that private citizens are incapable of using firearms effectively for protection. They think that a private citizen should sagely recognize his or her limitations, resign themselves to being the victim of some equally untrained but more aggressive attacker, and hope that the police aren't busy. Even a very pro-police guy like myself has to snicker at the anyone who agrees with this plan.

Exactly who are we depending on to come to the rescue of people without guns? Cops, that's who... i.e.: people with guns. Isn't that exactly what these knuckleheads are against? Aren't people with guns the problem? Won't a lot of poorly trained* people with guns be a problem no matter how snappy they look in uniform, or how cool they sound on radio?

I digress. Anti-gunners, fools, Chicagoans, Bostonians, New Yorkers, residents of Washington DC, San Franciscans, the NEA, most liberals, the ACLU (inexplicably), most of Hollyweird, and criminals all agree: guns in the hands of the average citizen is a threat to their way of life. Any other rhetorical position is simply an excuse.

I'll leave you with this thought: If the presence of guns is dangerous, and it's such an effective safety-measure to require people on school campuses to be unarmed, why are we always hearing about "school shootings"?

If the presence of guns really DOES promote shootings, why don't we hear about soldiers and policemen and recreational shooters hosing each other into big bleeding piles? Hell, the guns are right there, all over the place-- It's a massacre waiting to happen. Surely shootings will naturally follow. What anti-gunners don't take into account is that cops and soldiers and recreational shooters are NOT DANGEROUS CRIMINAL SCUMBAGS. In fact, they are generally the farthest thing from it. Anti-gunners somehow miss this reality, and it is the fatal flaw in their reasoning. To them, gun possession = criminal. So, gun possession must surely lead to crime. Could anything be further from the truth?

Yesterday 180 million gun owners DID NOT rob a bank, kill a kid, shoot at a driver who flipped them off, accidentally shoot somebody, wave a gun around to intimidate people, or . Clearly, guns are only tools, not causal factors in any of those acts.

Since the polarizing effect of politics tends to muddy the issue, let's boil it down to it's most basic form: If you were a homicidal scumbag bent upon racking up a body-count so you could get your face on TV (which is clearly the case in many school shootings), where do you think you'd score the most points-- a school or a police station?

The answer is clear and simple. The legal doctrine for such obvious logic is "Res ipsa loquitur" which figuratively translates as "the thing speaks for itself".

* Like I said earlier, I'm very pro-cop, both on a public policy level, and (especially) at the personal level. I have a lot of respect for the professionalism of the American Law Enforcement professional. Having said that-- Cops can't shoot. Okay, that's like saying white men can't jump-- a major generalization, I know. Some cops can shoot pretty well, but they're rare. Most cops probably have spent their time training on more useful occupational skill-sets than shooting. But, having shot with LOTS of cops, I can tell you that the only salvation for the rank-and-file policeman in a gunfight is that the average scumbag's skill with firearms sucks.

I blog, therefore I am.

It's a good thing that the classic philosophers got their reputations before Hip-Hop or text messaging got poular. Otherwise we'd be quoting things like "I think, so I B" or "Yo, yo, yo dawg...Check it-- All dat bad shit jus' make my ass stronger, 'cause my back ain't broke. And shit."

I've decided that America's love affair with multi-culturalism comes from the same part of the American psyche that brought us the Special Olympics. Evidently some cultures are "differently enabled" than mainstream America's culture. I guess that we've given up trying to help folks overcome the limitations of their parents' cultures (which they were desperately trying to escape when they immigrated to America, but which they refuse to let go), so we've decided to celebrate the differences and look the other way while new generations perpetuate actions and images that we once called "stereotypes".

Oh well. It's easier than holding people to high standards of behavior, and no one calls you "intolerant."

I guess I'm different. Maybe I'm stupid. Maybe not.

I figure that you should lead by example-- and leadership is one of the few things that will make you try to be better than the next guy... Unless you are one of the narcissists who believes they were destined for leadership, so they deserve all of the double-standards they can get (I'm thinking about the Clintons, Mugabe, Idi Amin Dada, any communist leader in history, any Muslim head-of-state, televangelists caught with their [hand] in the [cookie jar], attorneys, etc. If you're one of those rare narcissists then you won't take my next piece of advice anyway.

Be the good example. Be the leader in your circle. Don't stage a coup, just quietly be the example. You'll only be seen by those who know you, but your efforts will be reflected in the actions of those around you. Maybe not today, but someday. We Christians, know someone is watching, so it's easier for us because we've practiced being watched (at least a little). You atheists and agnostics-- well, just pretend. You'd be surprised how many times you don't know that someone is paying attention.

Maybe THAT's the philosophy that's been missing in multi-cultural America.

So for you text-messagers out there, here is the translation: "B good"

Translated into Hip-Hop-- Oh, what's the point? Pearls before swine.

Hmm. Having not thought this completely through...

... Aw, what the hell. You're reading. I'm writing. This is a complete Sesame Street moment. Brought to you by the letter "Q" and the number "700 billion."

Today is October 22, 2008. A day which will live in infamy. The news is full of the banking crisis. The DJIA fell nearly 600 points today to around 8500. The bailout money is most likely to be used NOT to bail out banks, but to acquire them-- Which will create even bigger (more important, more likely to be bailed out, impossible to let fail) banks.

I'm thinking that this banking crisis will lead to the several things: a managed world economy, a North American currency, and eventually the mark of the beast. Perhaps the Anti-Christ is a banker. There's a thought. We've been wrong about him for so many guesses (Nero, Lincoln, Hitler, Stalin, Clinton, Richard Simmons, Jerry Seinfeld) that a banker isn't so farfetched. Of course, he'd have to be a Jewish, Israeli, homosexual, banker. Maybe it's too soon to take Seinfeld off the list...

McCain and Obama are still at it. The latest polls are Obama 49%, and McCain 40%. That means 11% of those polled are wishy-washies. Of course, the popular media wants a young black guy rather than an old white guy (except when the young black guy is a republican), so they aren't above "massaging" a story or two...thousand. Recall that W was trailing Gore by something like 9% the day before the election, and Kerry by several points too. So the +/-3% margin of error is actually closer to 10%. I think this is a horse-race, and we're screwed either way.

I am heartened by the thought of Obama pondering his options: "Well, I've spent the better part of a billion dollars of other people's money to get this job... But with this latest banking crisis I'm not sure I want it. Maybe I should blow the election, and in 4 years I can say "told ya so" and run against McCain again."

McCain's thinking "maybe I should retire and do Viagra commercials like Bob Dole, make a few bucks, and spend the last years of my life NOT being the guy the media blames for everything."

Folks, this may be the first time in history that two presidenial candidates race each other to "take a fall" and throw the election.

That's good news for Ron Paul, the Liberatrian write-in candidate, in a strong third-position with around one-quarter of one-percent of the vote (there's a +/-3% margin, so Ron Paul may not actually exist).

But enough about the election. I want to keep this blog positive, so today's self-affirmation is:

At least you're not one of these two people (and if you are... Just pretend you're not).