Joining The Blue Star Blogroll

A couple of weeks ago I went through a period of low posting activity. I had posted Making the Army of Reconquista, and visitor traffic increased dramatically. I decided to take advantage of my so-far most popular post, and put in a lot of time and effort dropping comments and trackbacks to it on blogs where illegal immigration was a hot topic. During this period of navel gazing, I frequently checked my hit counter statistics to check on where recent visitors were coming from (referrers).

Many were fellow 101st Fighting Keyboardists, the Chicken Hawks. I had joined the Chicken Hawks, even though I am a retired Air Force officer who served from 1962 to 1984, through the Vietnam War and the Cold War years. I joined for two reasons. The first is that in twenty one and a half years of military service, I was never in a combat zone. The second reason was I thought it was chicken shit that the Left was calling supporters of the Iraq war Chicken Hawks if they had not served in the military. Can only lawyers have an opinion on the law? Can only doctors have an opinion on healthcare? And by the criteria established by the Left, how come they get to say a damn thing about national defense?

As I examined “referrers,” sometimes it seemed on a minute by minute basis, I started noticing that a lot of the strongest supporters of the military had Blue Star banners. When I investigated what the Blue Star was all about, I found it existed for two purposes: to show support for our military; and to indicate a child in the military. I qualify on both counts. I support a strong, active military, and my oldest son served 16 years in the Army, and has been on continuous active duty in the Nevada Army National Guard since 9/11. Within a couple of weeks following the fall of Iraq, he was stationed as a military police prisoner guard at Abu Ghraib for eight months. Since then he has been on continuous call-up, and may deploy again to Iraq.

My middle son is drawing disability pay for an aircraft accident which required him to leave the Air Force at the end of his enlistment.

For these, and many other reasons, I will with pride join the Blue Star Blogroll.

And I'll post the banner as soon as I can get it done without befouling the left column and completely screwing up my home page layout.

Major Michael B. Combs, U S Air Force, Retired
Gualala, California

Greatest Baseball Player Of All

 

You can’t pick a greatest football player of all time. In football your body has to fit your very specialized position. That is why Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback of all time, but he wouldn’t last one snap as a defensive tackle. Similarly, Jerry Rice is the greatest wide receiver, and Ronnie Lott is the greatest (fill in defensive back position). Bill Walsh is the greatest coach. 

 Now that we’ve got those out of the way…In football you play offense, or you play defense. The only baseball positions that are remotely similar to football's specialization are the twin American League abominations, pitchers who don’t bat, and hitters who don't field. Now if I could figure out a way to gripe about professional basketball stars not being called for traveling with the ball, I think I will have covered most of my major sports soapbox items. 

Which brings me to the greatest baseball player of all time. I’m going to go way out on a limb and declare – it’s a tie! A tie between Babe Ruth and Willie Mays. Babe Ruth is by far the dominant baseball player of all time. Until Barry Bonds hit home run number 715, the Babe had been either first or second in total home runs for 85 years. The only reason the Babe is not still the greatest home run hitter of all time is that he had five very good years pitching for the Red Sox before his powerful hitting forced the issue, and he was made an outfielder to have his bat in the lineup every day. During Babe Ruth’s first five years with the Red Sox, he had roughly 1500 fewer at bats than he would have had as an every day player. For his career, the Babe hit a home run every 11.8 times at bat. In an extra 1500 at bats, at that rate he would have hit another 127 home runs, for a career total of 841, or 86 more that Hank Aaron. Cut his production rate in half, and he still would have hit another 63 for a career total of 777, still 22 more than Aaron. Babe Ruth was not only a home run hitter, he also hit for a career .342 batting average, the 7th best of all time. The man barely ahead of him, in 6th place, is Ted Williams. For another comparison, singles hitter Pete Rose had a .303 lifetime average, just ahead of power hitter Willie Mays .302. 

How good a pitcher was the Babe? Lifetime he had 94 wins against 46 losses, a 0.671 win/loss record which is the 12th best for all time. His lifetime earned run average (ERA) was 2.28, the 15th best of all time. He was undefeated in three pitching starts in two World Series for the Red Sox. The Babe was a workhorse pitcher. In two seasons, 1916 and 1917, he was at the top in the American League for games started and innings pitched. In 1918 and 1919, he led the league in home runs each year while still pitching. 

I picked Willie Mays for the lowest position possible on the best ever list, tied for first with the Babe. There is no way Willie could ever be second to anyone. When I evaluated the Babe, I had to go to the statistics pages, and old news reports. But I didn’t have to do that to size up Willie. I saw him play. 

The first time was on television, the World Series of 1954 against the Cleveland Indians. Brother Ron and I were home from Point Arena Elementary School for lunch. The school grounds started only twenty-five yards across School Street (Highway 1) from our house, so it was not a challenge to be home for lunch every day. 

We had just bought our first television set, a Packard-Bell black and white set. We got one channel, the NBC station channel 4 (KRON) from San Francisco. It was rumored there were two other television stations, CBS channel 5 (KPIX) and ABC channel 7 (KGO). We sometimes could see just enough on Channel 5 to get interested in a show, but we couldn’t see it well enough to understand what happened. My late first wife Marilynn, who lived eight miles south of Point Arena, told me that they got all three channels crystal clear. I confirmed that, beginning in 1958, when we started going steady, and I spent many hours watching shows on her family’s TV sets – for the New Year's Day bowl games we would set three TV sets side by side, so we could watch all the games – that no one in Point Arena (except Dutch Schrock, whose rhombic antenna was strung between four sixteen-foot poles on an acre of pasture land) ever saw. 

Please excuse the historical digression. Mom, Ron and I sat down on the couch in the living room to eat our lunches and watch the World Series. Almost immediately we saw a prodigious smash to center field off the bat of Vic Wertz, and Willie Mays racing back after it. We saw the catch, the spinning stop and throw back to the infield, and agreed among ourselves that Willie had made a pretty good play. It wasn’t until we heard and read the commentary of experienced sports reporters that we realized just how great Willie’s play had been. 

Later, when the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, we finally got Mom to go with us for our first trip to San Francisco. Since we moved to Point Arena in 1949, Mom had never gone south on Highway 1 past Stewarts Point, a distance of about 25 miles. We saw the Giants lose 4-3 to the Chicago Cubs in Seals Stadium on a late home run by Lee Walls. 

During the next four years, I saw Willie play several times at Seals Stadium, and later in Candlestick Park, and I spent many happy hours “watching” the games on my transistor radio. I never saw Willie playing more clearly than when I listened to the games on the radio. I guess when I say Willie tied the Babe for the greatest ever, I should add a few statistics. One is that Willie spent most of his career playing half of his games each season in Candlestick Park, one of the most unfriendly parks in the majors to right handed power hitters, and yet his home runs to at-bats ratio of 16.5 is only 0.1 behind Hank Aaron’s 16.4, and Aaron played in two of the most homer friendly parks in the majors, County Stadium, Milwaukee, and Fulton County Stadium, Atlanta. Willie also lost almost two full seasons in 1952 and 1953, during the prime of his athletic abilities, when he was drafted into the Army. 

Of course, even if Willie hadn’t been one of the greatest hitters in baseball, he would still have been on the field because of his outstanding defensive skills. He was awarded twelve Golden Gloves, but even the Golden Gloves don’t tell the story of how good he was. Almost every year that he patrolled center field, the Giants flanked him with hard-hitting defensive liabilities: Leon Wagner, Willie Kirkland, Orlando Cepeda or Willie McCovey. Depending on whether Orlando or Willie played first base, the other got left field. So Willie covered his territory, and most of theirs. Sometimes Willie played so shallow that he might have been mistaken for an infielder. During pre-game warm ups Willie would often play around at shortstop, and he looked better taking the grounders and making the throws than most of the Giant’s real shortstops. With his cannon arm, and encyclopedic knowledge of opposing batters, he probably would have been a great pitcher, too. 

Willie’s head for baseball reminds me of Joe Montana’s head for football. I have no idea what either of their IQ’s are, and it makes no difference, because when they were on the field, they had more “game smarts” by far than any other player out there with them. Willie was really fast, too. He stole 338 bases, and could have doubled or tripled his total if he wanted. But almost every steal he made was a brilliant strategic move. Willie batted third most of his career, and if he had stolen bases indiscriminately, he would have taken the bats out of the hands of good power hitters like the aforementioned Cepeda, McCovey, and others. So to me it seemed that Willie stole bases when it was the most exciting and daring thing to do, and when it could turn a game upside down in the Giant’s favor. He would drive infielders and pitchers to distraction with his antics on the basepaths, and then when he was making a play in the outfield he could fake a runner to stop before he should, or keep running when he should have stopped. 

So there you have it. You can take it to the bank. One of the fundamental truths of this and of preceding and subsequent generations has been established. Willie and the Babe, forever number one.

Local Government Used To Persecute

(This blog post is strictly about a local issue in Gualala, California, where I have lived and worked for many years. To me, it is an abuse of the power of a local government agency, in this case an almost ad hoc municipal advisory council. It will have some interest to some of you across the Fruited Plain, since it illustrates how government not done well can trample on our freedoms by intruding in matters that really are not in its jurisdiction. Unless you take the point of view that everything your neighbor does is your business. I hope you don't.)

I went to a meeting of the Gualala Municipal Advisory Council (GMAC), hoping to see local government in action. What I saw filled me with despair.

GMAC is an advisory function. It does not appear to be chartered to make or enforce regulations, but to inquire into matters and make recommendations to Mendocino County agencies. How exactly that is done was made very mysterious to me as the meeting progressed.

I must admit that I knew very little about GMAC actions and activities prior to this meeting. I have lived in Gualala for over seven years, have worked in real estate here for the past five years, and have followed the activities of GMAC only through the reports I read in our local weekly newspaper, The Independent Coast Observer. I never attended a meeting, although my impression of GMAC through the news articles I read was that it was primarily concerned with issues associated with the real estate of this area. In particular, GMAC played a very active role in reviewing requests to build homes and other structures in the greater Gualala area. A lot of what they did in this process of review seemed to duplicate the work of the Mendocino County Planning and Building Department, but I assumed that the county department must have delegated certain functions to GMAC. My assumption was wrong.

The GMAC meeting began in a state of confusion, as the agenda for the meeting was reviewed in a lengthy process reminiscent of a Chinese fire drill. One council member wondered where his item was on the agenda, apparently an item he had told the secretary would not be on this agenda. Another couple of agenda items had fallen through an email crack. The numbering and renumbering of agenda items in the process of creating and approving the agenda for the evening confused everyone, particularly the council members.

Finally, the meeting began with “Public input on Non-agenda items.” Of course, several people got up to speak on an issue that was an agenda item, the very agenda item that had caused me to come to this meeting in the first place. The GMAC chairman didn’t seem to recognize that she was receiving presentations that a bit later in the meeting would be presented again when their topic on the agenda came up. I felt cheated, because my reason for attending this meeting was to point out that the GMAC did not have jurisdiction over the issue which had been placed on the agenda, and here it was already being addressed totally inappropriately.

Not long ago Alice and I concluded four years on the Point Arena School Board. Each meeting our chairman explained that “Public input on Non-agenda items” was confined to items which were not already on the agenda. I remember only one instance when the chairman had to remind an individual that they were jumping the gun on an agenda item, and that their comments would have to wait their proper time.

The council then took up the first agenda item, a request to recommend approval of a building plan for a single-family home. The chairman and another council member recused themselves from this review, and the chairman passed the gavel on to another council member. Later the chairman realized that she had passed the gavel to the wrong council member.

At this point I should mention that the building permit being reviewed had already been reviewed and approved by the Mendocino County Planning and Building Department. In the course of their review, they had sent one of their planners down to walk the site and its environs. What the GMAC did next can only be categorized as incompetent. First the chairman asked the council members who had been assigned to do an on-site review for their input. The council members assigned the review did not know they had been assigned, and had nothing to say. Another member who lived near the proposed building site then took over doing the review, and it was obvious that neither he nor any other member of the council had reviewed any of the application paperwork. Also apparent was that the council members didn’t understand the regulations concerning height limitations, whether a property was adjacent to a government park, whether it was in an exceptionally scenic area, and what paperwork had been provided by the county to assist their revue.

Fortunately for the poor applicants, they had done a very diligent job of putting their permit package together for county review, had brought all their papers and plans with them, and could show the council what had already been approved by the county. In fact, the applicants demonstrated greater knowledge of the permit requirements than the council members, particularly on such matters as determining how to compute the maximum building height allowed on the east side of Highway One. Finally, a call was made by the erroneously acting chairman for a motion to recommend approval. After all that had transpired, making a simple motion to recommend approval should have been very simple. That was not to be the case. The council member we expected was making the motion we soon found out was stating a long rambling rehash of the review which had just been so laboriously conducted and concluded. There was nothing in his remarks that had the slightest resemblance to a motion. After a period of prolonged confusion, another council member attempted to state a motion. She got off to a good start, but then she too started to wander off creating a motion to recapping what had been reviewed. The motion was passed unanimously, I think. I feel sure that whatever the secretary writes as the motion that was passed will have only a passing resemblance to the motion that was made.

The next application was much simpler and straightforward, and apparently had been a long time in review anyway. The council member who made the GMAC review basically just confirmed that the applicants had done what the county required, and accepted their verbal assurances that that was the case. What I now saw was what appeared to be the usual strange process of making a GMAC motion. This time the motion was stated as a recommendation. “I recommend that..” instead of “I move that we recommend approval…” Whatever. Motion made and passed.

My mind was beginning to think of this meeting in terms of such yardsticks as elephant gestation periods.

Finally we arrived at the agenda item that had brought me from my comfortable evening in Buddy’s Apartment, where I can blog and pet Buddy at the same time. It was the “July Forum with Mendocino County Animal Control,” on which several members of the public had already made full presentations. So now the chairman called on them again, and they repeated themselves. Although the ground rules for presentations stated that they should only be addressing the need for a forum next month, no one, including myself, honored that rule. The reason was pretty obvious. The GMAC had already voted at a previous meeting, 4-2, to have the forum. Since having the forum was a foregone conclusion, both sides were already stating their cases. And my case was that the forum GMAC had decided to have should not occur. First, GMAC has no charter or jurisdiction over singling out individuals on animal control issues. Secondly, the parties they have singled out cannot speak in their own behalf, because they are under and honoring a court-imposed gag rule. Two of the individuals in attendance at this meeting were also under the same court restraining order, but one of them made a presentation, and then later repeated it. So much for honoring the restraining order. Third, the forum should address the entire issue of pets roaming freely on owners’ property, not just one family’s pets.

The GMAC members then took some time to extemporize on the need for the animal control forum. Apparently they recognized that there was nothing in their duties and responsibilities that required them to host the forum, so they decided that it would be a good opportunity to allow people to vent, in this case, against their neighbors who have already gone through a lot of pain and suffering the past eight months. The two pups escaped and efforts to recapture them have been very expensive and emotionally draining. One of their two mature wolf-dogs became sick and, after a very expensive operation and medical treatment, died. Then the wife found she had breast cancer, and for lack of medical insurance, the mastectomy was performed in India. Just on their return from India, the husband had an automobile accident that required an operation to repair spinal cord and ligament damage.

And now this almost incoherent advisory council had taken it on itself to sponsor a forum to further vex and bedevil two people who deserve better, particularly in their hours of greatest need and suffering.

Why? What is the need? What will be accomplished? Why is it important to do it now? Since Fish & Game have already determined that the pups are not wild animals, since when does an advisory council with no animal control duties or responsibilities get involved in listening to one neighbor gripe about another neighbor’s pets?

If GMAC is going to have a forum about gripes about neighbor’s pets, they had better include all of us who let their pets roam free on their property. I let Buddy roam freely on our property, and so do most of the other dog owners in this area let their dogs roam freely on their properties too. If the GMAC is going to have a gripe forum for one family’s pets, they better have it for all.

Ann Coulter Gives Good Column

How can you be forgiven taxes you haven’t paid for two years? And qualify for the earned income tax credit at the same time? Plus be part of an affirmative action program for admittance to U.S. colleges with lower grades and scores than American citizens? In addition, get to pay the in-state tuition rate, while American service members stationed on orders by their government outside of their home state have to pay the out-of-state rate? How can you be forgiven the commission of the felony identity theft for stealing a Social Security number? And, of course, become instantly qualified for all sorts of government benefits?

If you haven’t already figured out the answers to the above questions, Ann Coulter has written extensively on this matter. Look in back columns in Human Events Online.

Country & Western - Telling Life's Stories

I grew up in the Rock 'n Roll generation, but Country and Western has always been my kind of music. I think I know why.

I think it’s because Country music is for grownups. Rock has been, and always will be, adolescent. Other forms of popular music feature roll playing. Sinatra having us pretend we are social sophisticates. Andy Williams sickening me with “Moon River, wider than a mile…I’m crossing you in style some day,” and “June, Moon, Spoon” too. Ella Fitzgerald, a great songstress of banal lyrics.

There’s the key. It’s the lyrics, stupid! A song is a story, packaged in a way that deeply stirs our emotions.

When I’m alone, I’m often driving with tears in my eyes, listening to Country music on my Ipod. And most of the time, the music is not sad, and often it’s very happy. But the tears flow nevertheless, because tears are my tribute to beauty.

Country performers are usually great musical craftsmen. The Statler Brothers polished their harmonies for years singing gospel music, and then applied it to great story-telling like “the Class of '57 had its dreams.” George Jones, sometimes with Tammy Wynette, portrayed adult love, loss, and longing in a way few ever have. “I know you’re tired of following, my elusive dreams and schemes…”

Hank Williams, Sr., celebrating the Cajuns of Louisiana with Jambaya (On the Bayou):

“Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my-o,
I got to go pole my pirogue down the bayou,
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my-o,
Sonofagun, we’ll have big fun, on the bayou.”

And, “Hey Good Lookin' (What cha got cookin'?).” Then a whole lot more.

Loretta Lynn, being a young mother:

“They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France
And Jackie's seen in a discotheque doin' a brand new dance
And the White House social season should be glittering and gay
But here in Topeka the rain is a fallin'
The faucet is a drippin' and the kids are a bawlin'
One of them a toddlin' and one is a crawlin' and one's on the way”

Forgive me when I say, in my humble opinion, Loretta Lynn had a lot to say, and said it a lot better, than all the legions of rock ‘n roll songwriters dedicating their efforts towards the celebrations of lovesick adolescents.

Often I listen to Folk music too, from whence came County music. To the heart tugging eloquence of the Irish, who when they’re not glorifying drinking whiskey, tell many of the most interesting stories ever put to music.

My love of their stories began over fifty years ago, with the first haunting words, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes, are calling.” You could write a novel, make a movie, an opera, a Broadway musical, from the story line of that haunting song.

The same can be said for humorous Irish songs, like “The Mountains of Mourne.”

“Ah Mary this London’s a wonderful sight
With the people here working by day and by night
They don’t plant potatoes, nor barley, nor wheat
But there’s gangs of them digging for gold in the street.”

All of these songs have elements – mature insight, humor, religious conviction, appreciation of mortality, of honor, of loyalty, liberty, freedom – not the sorts of things that make sub-teenage girls, or wannabe gangstas, put their mother’s or father’s hard earned money down to buy a recording of a song written and performed with almost a total absence of musical talent or redeeming social value. It’s throw-away music, music that is so eminently forgettable that it won’t even make it to elevator-music immortality.

At least to be elevator music a song has to have a recognizable, catchy melody. The lack of such pretty much defines today’s popular music. To those who don’t, won’t, would never listen to country & western or folk music, it’s your loss. It’s music that makes you laugh, makes you cry, puts a smile on your face, a tear in your eye. It tells the story of life.

They Also Served

Marilynn Marie Miller Combs, 1962

The military family serves too, and often pays a higher price than the soldier, sailor, or airman. I know that many times in my Air Force career, when my responsibilities were the most demanding – long hours, challenging work, extended family separations – I honestly was having the time of my life. It didn’t take long for my late first wife, Marilynn, to catch on. When I would try to get out of a doing a house project for her by pleading how tired I was, how hard I was working, she would look me in the eye: “You love it, don’t you?” The way she said it, it wasn’t a question. She knew. She knew me. She knew that I loved my job, enjoyed the company of fellow students at first, and later in my career, fellow workers, and that I would rather be working long hours on the job than at home. Since Marilynn was able to see through me, I ended up doing both.

For her part, she was both a hard worker and very adaptable. During our early married years my Air Force pay didn’t always stretch enough to fit each month's needs. Without some help every now and then from Pop and Mom, we would have come up short a few times. While I was going to Indiana University for Russian training, I walked past the Bloomington high school on West 2nd Street every day on my way home to pick up the empty soda bottles that the students tossed behind the fence and redeem them for the deposit. During one tight period, when we had just arrived in Maryland for my classes at the National Security Agency, we had spaghetti for every meal for two weeks.

Marilynn had Bruce, our oldest son in California while I was attending a radio intercept school in Texas. Later, I was stationed in Turkey for six months before we saved up enough from her job and my Air Force pay to pay for Marilynn and Bruce to join me in Turkey.

When Marilynn was pregnant with our third son, Jeffrey, she spent three months in California taking care of Bruce and Scott while I was in Officer Training School in Texas. Just before my commissioning date, she drove with the two boys all the way out from California to Texas, then we all drove in a rush to Michigan where I enrolled in the Michigan State University MBA program. There Marilynn set up her ninth household in six years, and soon Jeffrey arrived.

A year later, we were off for what turned out to be five years in England, our first real settled assignment in over seven years of married life. We came back from England to Scott Air Force Base, Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Missouri. We had a good almost four-year assignment there, although Marilynn spent many anxious hours with Jeffrey in the Air Base Hospital because of his asthma attacks.

Marilynn was very active in the Officers’ Wives Club, and one of her good friends, Janey, was also the wife of my ultimate boss, Colonel Leuthold. When Janey heard of Jeffrey’s asthma problem, she and Marilynn worked together to get us our next assignment, Hawaii. Janey was confident that Hawaii would be wonderful for Jeffrey’s health, and bless her heart, she was right.

We began preparations for our move to Hawaii. I did a for-sale-by-owner on our house, we arranged that half our household goods would be shipped to Hawaii, and the other half we would take to California in a rental truck for storage in one of my father-in-law’s garages. As we packed and got everything ready for the big move, Marilynn noticed some swelling and prominent blood vessels on the side of her right breast. Since she was only 33 years old, we weren’t very concerned, but she made an appointment for an examination. I was in my office at Base Accounting & Finance when she walked in looking distraught, then began sobbing uncontrollably. A large tumor had been found, and a needle biopsy indicated it was malignant.

We consulted two surgeons, and agreed on a modified radical mastectomy to remove the breast tissue but not the underlying muscles so that Marilynn would retain the full range of motion and strength in her right arm. Within days following the operation, with an open sixteen inch incision on her chest, Marilynn and our youngest sons, Scott and Jeffrey, flew to California. Then her mother Priscilla, with our oldest son Bruce in one car, and Dilly dog and I in the truck towing the other car, set off for California. We made a detour to Offut Air Force Base, Nebraska, on the way. One of Marilynn’s younger sisters had divorced her husband, also an Air Force officer, and we had agreed to pack up some of her things on the way and bring them along to California.

After a couple of weeks in California, we flew on to Hawaii. We lived the first seven weeks in the Reef Hotel on Waikiki while we waited for our house on base. During this period, Marilynn went to Queens Hospital in Honolulu almost on a daily basis for radiation therapy. After we moved into our house on Hickam Air Force Base, Marilynn started six months of chemotherapy at Tripler Army Hospital, the large pink building on the hillside across from Honolulu International Airport. At Tripler, Marilynn also had a second mastectomy, this time as a precautionary measure.

After four years in Hawaii, the Air Force arranged a compassionate reassignment for me to Travis Air Force Base in northern California, and we were able to live just a couple of blocks away from her parents’ home in Vallejo, California.

I soon retired from the Air Force, with over 21 years of service, rather than take another assignment and move Marilynn away from her family. After another six months of chemotherapy, and then a three-year period of slowly declining health, the cancer began aggressive spreading and growth, and just two months after our 25th anniversary, Marilynn died in January 1988 at age 43, almost ten years after her initial treatment.

Through it all, in sickness and in health, from being poor to living comfortably, watching our sons grow, sometimes joyously sometimes struggling as we moved them away from old friends and into the unknown, Marilynn’s strength and support enabled me to do my duty to my country. There are a lot of people who are not in the military, but who struggle every day to make it possible for our guys and gals in the armed services to get their jobs done.

On Memorial Day, and on a lot of other days too, I think of them. They get no medals. No band plays. We’ll never have a day to honor them.

They also served.

California School Exit Exam Not Needed

Just in time for graduations, my buddy Sam way down south in Garden Grove reminds me that Bill Clinton signed the Americans With No Abilities Act during his last term. He did it as a special favor to Monica, who got down on her knees and thanked him.

Congress Passes Americans With No Abilities Act, The Onion, June 24, 1998, Issue 33-24.

“WASHINGTON, DC—On Tuesday, Congress approved the Americans With No Abilities Act, sweeping new legislation that provides benefits and protection for more than 135 million talentless Americans.

The act, signed into law by President Clinton shortly after its passage, is being hailed as a major victory for the millions upon millions of U.S. citizens who lack any real skills or uses.”

Nowhere is this act more important than in California, where in many school districts a quarter or more of the Seniors (12th Graders), who have otherwise passed requirements for graduation, cannot pass the state exit exam that is set to measure English achievement at the 10th grade level, and math and algebra at an 8th grade level.

At the moment, there are 47,000 students, roughly 10 percent of California Seniors, who have not passed the exit exam. Arturo Gonzalez, a lawyer for the students, said that he would seek an injunction immediately since it was un-American that students should be expected to know anything to get their diplomas.

It is well known in liberal and academic circles that formerly, racist and elitist employers required proof of educational achievement as a condition before hiring.

Mr. Gonzalez should be reminded that, thanks to the Americans With No Abilities Act, no one cares anymore.

Butcher, Baker

Tonight I’m reading the Mendocino County Historical Society Newsletter, Volume 44, Number 4. You can join by sending $20 ($25 for a couple) to 603 West Perkins Street, Ukiah, CA 95482. Each month I eagerly look forward to the latest issue. A couple of months ago I wrote, You Gotta Ring Them Bells, a risqué and ribald story set in Philo, in the hot Anderson Valley about an hour by car over narrow, twisting roads from our cool northern California coast. 

In this month’s newsletter, there was a short article about the apple-growing Gowan family of Philo, which of course reminded me of another story about my own family. After we completed the basement, and later the house, in Point Arena in 1955, I remember a flat-bed truck stopped in front. It was driven by Cecil Gowan, and as I found out in the newsletter, the year before the Gowans had started a business in Philo, Gowan’s Oak Tree, selling apples. He had loaded his truck with boxes of apples, and drove over to the coast to sell them door-to-door off his truck. Mom bought a box, and that night we started a new family project that we did regularly for several years – we baked apple pies. 

Brother Ron and I sat at a table at the back of the kitchen and used an ingenious device that peeled and cored the apples while all we had to do was turn a handle. We then quartered the apple, and sliced the quarters into apple pie pieces. Then we added sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, flour, and margarine, and stirred it all together. At this point, Mom added the skill factor. She prepared the pie crusts in the pie tins (I think eight at a time), added the filling, placed and trimmed the upper crust, and then baked them. We repeated this process until we had twenty-four freshly baked pies, which we then wrapped all but one in tin foil and put in the deep freezer. We would have the chosen pie for dinner that night, and one of the frozen ones for each succeeding dinner until we ran out of pies, usually in about twenty-four days. When we ran out of pies, Mom would call the Gowans and ask them to please bring by a box of apples on their next trip to the coast. It usually wasn’t long before we were making the next batch of pies. 

At about this time, 1955, we started doing our own butchering. We had already been raising calves for beef for several years, but we had left the slaughtering and butchering up to the meat markets downtown – Uneda Meats, operated by Bill and Delia Hay, and if memory serves me, the other meat market was run by Garth and Alice Rawls. How did Uneda Meats get its name? Delia Hay was from Italy, and had a thick Italian accent. When she and Bill opened the meat market, Delia would greet customers, “You needa meat?” Almost fifty years later in New York I burst out laughing. A Uneda Taxi had just driven by. 

Pop would kill the beef with a well aimed rifle shot to the head, and then we used a block and tackle to hang the carcass from a platform we built between two limbs of a cypress tree in our hedge row. Using an incredibly sharp skinning knife made for him by Arnold Cremonini, our Point Arena town blacksmith, Pop gutted and skinned the carcass, then used the knife and a hack saw to cut it in half. We then carried each side of beef to a rack mounted high in our back porch over the basement steps, wrapped it in burlap, and hung it from the rack to cool and age for about a week. 

The first time we did our own butchering, Pop borrowed a government bulletin about beef inspection and grading. On its center page there was a picture of a side of beef, surrounded by labeled pictures of different cuts of beef with lines pointing to where on the side the cut came from. Brother Ron and I stood by the hamburger grinder, a large machine powered by a third of a horsepower electric motor. Pop started cutting and sawing. As he finished cutting off a steak, he would compare it to the picture. If it looked right, he passed it to Mom to wrap and label for the freezer. If he thought it didn’t quite pass inspection, he tossed it to us to make hamburger. We ended up with quite a bit of very high quality hamburger that first time, until Pop got a feel for making steaks and roasts instead of hamburger. Mom packed all the steaks and roasts for freezing, but Ron and I got to wrap and label the hamburger. By the time we finished that evening, we had filled our old chest freezer almost to the top. 

We also raised chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigeons, and on one occasion a pig. Although we lived in town, I doubt if our lives would have been much different if we lived outside of town on a farm. There’s not much more you could do on a farm than Pop had us doing in town. 

Previous Point Arena stories: The Great Point Arena Fire of 1954 - Everyone likes to help Pete Bjornavik, a Point Arena character - Fun to be around Gopher Capital of the World? - There's a bit of larceny in all of us 1960 NCAA Basketball Championships - Thanks, "Chub" Ohleyer - A very generous man Sweethearts Dance 1960 - Bad weather makes a special memory Number, Please? - Personal connections before the dial telephone Puddles the Pup - A big part of the best childhood in the whole world You Gotta Ring Them Bells - Some wedding nights you don't forget, but you try! After The Summer of 1954 - 7th and 8th grade, 60 students, one great teacher The House We Built - Brother Ron and I dug the basement in 1954, with help from "Prince" The Old High School - When we came to Pt. Arena in 1949, we lived in one big room of an abandoned high school building

Tower Of Babel Is A Democratic Goal

The Biblical lesson of the Tower of Babel has been lost on Democratic Senate Minority Leader - Democratic Senate Minority Leader, that sure has a nice ring to it - Harry Reid. In case some of us have forgotten, a brief summary:

According to the narrative in Genesis Chapter 11 of the Bible, the Tower of Babel was a tower built by a united humanity to reach the heavens. Because man had it in his heart to be like God, God stopped this project by confusing their languages so that each spoke a different language. As a result, they could no longer communicate with one another and the work was halted. The builders were then scattered to different parts of Earth. This story is used to explain the existence of many different languages and races.

"...they could no longer communicate with one another and the work was halted." I think if we ever let the likes of Harry Reid and other Democratic multiculturalists back in power, the United States will soon be a nation of many tongues, cultural divisions, ethnic jealousies - why should we stop at English and Spanish? How about Chinese, Tagalog, Serbo-Croatian? Soon the work of continuing to be the greatest nation the world has ever known will be halted because we will no longer be able to communicate with one another.

Have you ever spoken to someone in a foreign language? Many of us have. I was a Russian linguist for a couple of years in my Air Force career, and studied German in high school. The main impression I have of my conversations with others in their language was that we were communicating on a very basic level. We were not getting into deep philosophical discussions, or going deeply into the issues of the day. In other words, we were not really communicating, not in the way that builds bridges to understanding and directs efforts to a common goal.

All Things Beautiful does a beautiful job of illustrating how a country without a national language struggles just to hold together as a country, with no hope of ever finding a common path to greatness.

Hollywood Taught Us About Drug Addiction

Many of you, most of you I hope, learned about drug addiction the same way I did. That's right. Not by being an addict, but going to the movies. Everything I know about drug addiction I learned from Hollywood.

I saw honest, smart, hardworking men and women, in a moment of weakness, take their first snort, hit, drag, injection, because a "friend" told them, "Try some of this, you'll feel real good." We all wanted to scream, shout at the movie screen, "No, don't do it!" We all knew that the road was all downhill from there, because Hollywood has shown us so many times how poor innocents are hooked, can't resist, and drugs lead them into a wasteland of addiction, despair, depravity, and crime. They have no choice. It's the physical dependence, the horrible withdrawal, they are truly hooked, there's no way out.

Except, that's not true. What we saw was Hollywood dramatizing drug addiction to sell movie tickets. It's really the simple tale of bright hopes tragically perverted by insatiable craving for drugs, or the miraculous recovery from addiction because of devoted friends and loved ones. Tragic loss, miraculous redemption, the stuff of Hollywood dreams. Unfortunately, not the stuff of real life. For that you have to go to an excellent Fraters Libertas post, Suck It Up Degenerates. There you will find that most addicts were criminals before becoming addicts, and that the quality of withdrawal displayed depends more on the audience than the drug.

This post reminds me of my Freshman year of college, at Humboldt State, Arcata (near Eureka) in northern California. The year was 1960, and one of my first assignments in Honors English (I amazed myself when I was picked for Honors English, a two semester course combining Freshman English and Speech with both an English and a Speech professor) was a paper and speech on a subject of my choosing. I chose "decriminalization, not legalization, of drugs." My points were that criminalization of drug use drove the addicts underground and away from help from the medical and mental health care providers; criminalization made drugs far more expensive and drove addicts to crime to feed their addiction; and that the enormous profits made by organized crime from the drug trade resulted in corruption of police and the judiciary. Here, 46 years later, the only things that changed are that the profit and corruption are much worse than what we felt was rampant criminality back then.

As I said, not much has changed except one thing. Because of Hollywood, I felt then that drug addiction started as curiosity, an adventure, and then went sour and led to crime. Now I realize that most addicts start out in crime, and take drugs because of a "strong adversarial stance to the world caused by the emotional, spiritual, cultural and intellectual vacuity of their lives." In other words they're losers already, not victims. This realization wouldn't have changed my thoughts back then about decriminalization of drugs. I still think it's a good idea, but now mostly from the stand point of drying up this criminal cash cow.

Congressional Power Makes Idiots Of Republicans Too

To The Speaker of the House, The Honorable, Imperial, Etc., J. Dennis Hastert

Dear Speaker,

I used to think, and often say, that it took a village of Democrats to raise a bunch of idiots. Now I find it only takes a position in Congress to get the job done. At one time, the Democrats owned Congress. Since Democrats have no guiding principles, the power went to their unprincipled heads and they did all sorts of foolish and arrogant things. Bill Clinton unleashed Hillary to dazzle America with HillaryCare, which simply depicted how government could take an essential program like health care and turn it into a monument to bureaucratic ineptitude. During all this, Republicans stood by their principles, and in a period when the Democrats made headlines almost daily with their arrogant abuses of power for personal benefit, Newt Gingrich and the Republicans struck with a statement of principles, the Contract With America.

With the desperation of Bill Clinton for a new intern, Americans were all over the Contract With America. At the same time Americans rallied to the Contract, they showed they were tired of the Democrats who made "two major missteps -- the failure in 1994 to offer any theme or message around which to rally and the failure over a 25-year period to fashion an approach uniting the middle and underclass wings of the party. They seem no closer to such a message now."

Speaker Hastert, when you make a big stink about the FBI seizure of subpoenaed documents from the congressional office of Rep. William Jefferson, a subpoena that Congressman Jefferson had ignored for eight months, you are saying that you and your colleagues are above the law. In essence, you are saying that you are all Democrats now.

We saw all this happening soon after Newt led the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. Very quickly he became personally and professionally out of touch with the American voter, and almost single-handedly sunk the Republican Revolution just as it was being launched. Fortunately, Bill Clinton and Monica reminded Americans again, just in time, how feckless and reckless the Democrats are when they are in a position of responsibilty.

To paraphrase Coach Vince Lombardi, who said "fatigue makes cowards of us all," apparently Congressional power makes idiots of Republicans too.

France - One Step Away From Socialist Paradise

Robert Samuelson, the only reason I continued my Newsweek subscription for many years, wrote The Politics of Make-Believe, April 3, 2006 edition, and summed up France's impending step into socialist paradise thusly:

"This cannot continue indefinitely. In 2005, France's labor force was 2.7 times as large as its 65-and-over population; by 2020, it's projected to be only twice as large. France's policy is to have a shrinking share of its population, working short hours, pay for rising pension and health costs. In 2004, the average retirement age was 59. Average taxes are already about 50 percent of national income; effective marginal rates (the rates on additional income) can hit 60 percent. How much higher could these go without crushing work incentives? Sooner or later, France will have to adopt policies that lower unemployment, lengthen work hours, raise retirement ages and cut promised benefits."

Don't look now - I know I don't have to tell Liberals that, they won't anyway - but we could be going the way of France if the Democrats regain power. We are getting older, too. Social Security, as now structured, is not sustainable. In less than two decades, Social Security will have to fall back on its Trust Fund. One problem with that. The only things in the Social Security Trust Fund are United State government IOU's made out to the United States government. The name of that tune is the "Raise Taxes Big Time Polka." And the next tune after that is "We Just Flushed Our Economy Down The Toilet Blues."

Liberal Urban Legends About Iraq

(Click on cartoon to enlarge it)
The following Liberal Urban Legends persist no matter how thoroughly they are debunked. The president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization.

Time and time again, researchers and writers have proven each of these Liberal alegations against the President are false. Many of the Liberals -- Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, even Nancy Pelosi -- who are spouting the above charges against President Bush were saying the opposite under President Clinton, and were even making the same charges against Saddam as the President just prior to the start of war.

All this evidence of Liberal perfidy has been aired repeatedly, and just as repeatedly ignored. Now there is an excellent article, Revisionist History - Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked. By Peter Wehner, in the 23 May 2006 Opinion Journal from the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. It too will be ignored by many, but let us not aid the willfully ignorant. We owe a debt to truth to try to plant it and to help it grow in the most barren of soils, the editorial rooms of the Main Stream Media.

The Best Of Times

Alice and I frequently marvel about how good it is to live in these times. We wonder, are we the only ones who realize how good we have it? We are clearly winning the war in Iraq, yet most citizens think we are losing because the Main Stream Media are so incompetent. Our economy is strong, by far the most powerful and dynamic the world has ever seen, yet Liberals hold out the enemic economies of the socialist welfare states of Europe as models of what we should be.

What is going on? How can reality be dumped on its head and this gloom about our lives and future prevail? Where can we find what is really happening?

Surprisingly, a writer for the Main Stream Media, Michael Barone at US News and World Report, has looked outside the box filled with gloom and doomers and has reported (Heard the Good News?) that things are now as good or better than they have ever been. World economic growth, driven by the powerful engine of the United States economy, is surging. Armed conflicts are down dramatically in terms of numbers and savagery since the end of the Cold War. The war in Iraq is being conducted at a far lower cost in lives and dollars than previous wars such as World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Now if we could just get professionalism into our journalistic ranks, as we already have in the ranks of our military and business organizations, we might stop being cheated out of enjoying this wonderful world and the great times we are living.

Alice's Project Completed!

(These photos show the beams of the sunroom being placed by a huge crane extended over our house, Alice and her daughters and grandkids on the deck, and in the pool in the sunroom.)

For almost a year, Alice worked tirelessly to add the new deck and sunroom with swim-in-place pool to our house.

The deck was designed by Ralph Matheson, engineered by Kurt Menning, and the iron work by Kentucky John.

The sunroom was provided by Dave and Darla Paoli of Fort Bragg, Lindal Cedar Sunrooms, and the pool by Endless Pool.

Alice served as the master contractor, hiring Greg Chamberlin, Joseph Arthurs, and Jose Luna for construction, Mike Nelson for the electrical, Dave Hall for the plumbing, Charles Hunnicutt for the tile work, Home Depot the indoor-outdoor carpeting, and Darren Maahs for the painting.

The deck was completed first, with Greg, Joe, and Jose doing most of the work, Bobby Baker the excavation, Scott Ignacio and the Spa Guys installing the hot tub, concrete from Bed Rock, and crane work by Leighton Nelsen.

Alice's daughters and their families were here for Mothers' Day, and thoroughly enjoyed the pool and hot tub - plus beach walks and kite flying. Buddy's little sister, Duchess, ran into the sunroom and jumped on the bubble cover, apparently thinking it was a solid floor, and had the honor of the first doggy swim in the pool. Buddy doesn't seem interested in diving in, just like he avoids getting wet in the ocean. He and I haven't been in the pool yet. We're happy with our morning two to three mile jogs.

Next project, adding stone facing to the driveway retaining wall.

Plus Alice is anxiously waiting for me to design and install one of the most prodigious drip systems ever seen, second only to the ones I put in on our ranch in Livermore fifteen years ago.
The most fun part of the project will be putting a drip system in the sunroom itself, where Alice and her landscaper, Kathy Bienhof, have already planted a jungle in pots.

An Experiment Using Liberal Specimens

I am conducting an experiment of sorts, using Liberals as my laboratory specimens. A couple of days ago I unexpectedly received an email from a friend who never emails me, since I’m a conservative and she’s not. This email was about illegal immigrants, and some of its points I agreed with, and some I didn’t.

Among her points were: without cheap Mexican labor, lettuce and other products would become very expensive. Also, it was wrong to have the Mexican flag flown over the American, but the American flag should be flown upside down because the United States is a nation in distress.

This was my response:

“One point among many. When labor becomes too expensive, we mechanize the process. Cheap Mexican labor has just delayed the inevitable.

Second, we are not in a state of distress. That is truly rhetorical overkill. There are, and always will be, problems we must face and attempt to solve with some degree of competence, compromise, and cooperation. No one will ever be totally satisfied. However, if we are honest in assessing our circumstances, we will conclude that we live in the most free, prosperous, and vibrant country that has ever existed. And still admittedly far from perfect, just closer than any other. Those who hold up as shining examples the welfare states of Europe are blind to the high unemployment, high taxes, and barriers to business formation and growth, and to the fact that their population demographics make their social benefit programs unsustainable. Look to France for an example of what we don't want to be.

We are not anti-immigrant. But the key element of our greatness as a nation is that we are a nation of laws in conformance with our Constitution, and if we don't think a law is good, we get rid of or change it. We don't just ignore it. And continually rewarding illegals by giving amnesty for breaking our laws is not a good way to discourage law breakers.”

I then provided links to three of my recent posts: Making the Army of Reconquista; The Reconquistadores; and "Heartless" Capitalism is the Most Compassionate.

I concluded with this offer:

“And please feel free to wander through my archive folders, particularly the January through May 2006 ones. I have stories about life in Point Arena fifty years ago, and a variety of other topics, not all political by any means.”

I then launched my experiment. Instead of just sending a reply to her, I hit the “reply all” button, so that my response would go to both its author and to all others she had sent her original email. A day later I sent this additional response to her email, and again sent it “reply all.”

“Charles Krauthammer wonders why border security has been dismissed as a concern only to conservatives in the current debate over immigration reform. It's a question that organized labor might want answered as well:

Bush's enforcement provisions were advertised as an attempt to appease conservatives. This is odd. Are conservatives the only ones who think that unlimited, unregulated immigration is a detriment to the republic? Do liberals really believe in a de facto policy that depresses the wages of the poorest and most desperate Americans, African Americans most prominently among them? Do liberals believe that the number, social class, education level, background and country of origin of immigrants -- the kinds of decisions every democratic country makes for itself -- should be taken out of the hands of the American citizenry and left to the immigrants themselves and, in particular, to those most willing to break the very immigration regulations the American people have decided upon democratically?

And is it just conservatives who think the United States ought not be gratuitously squandering one of its greatest assets -- its magnetic attraction to would-be immigrants around the world? There are tens of millions of people who want to leave their homes and come to America. We essentially have an NFL draft in which the United States has the first, oh, million or so draft picks. Rather than exercising those picks, i.e., choosing by whatever criteria we want -- such as education, enterprise, technical skills and creativity -- we admit the tiniest fraction of the best and brightest and permit millions of the unskilled to pour in instead.”

Following the Charles Krauthammer quote, I added this:

“Charles Krauthammer shows that illegal immigration is a concern to us all - except the Democratic Party, who are only concerned with prostituting our immigration laws to get more votes for Democrats. That is what amnesty for illegal immigrants means - votes for Democrats. Votes from recent Latino immigrants who are now citizens, votes for Democrats from the illegal immigrants who want citizenship as a reward for breaking immigration law, and future votes from the enormous number of instant citizens created when illegal immigrants have children in the United States.

Mexico has been in a state of distress for a very long time now, and only the safety valve of illegal immigration to the United States has kept Mexicans from revolting against their corrupt and incompetent leaders. By our inaction on border control, we have only succeeded in keeping corrupt Mexican governments in power, and in perpetuating Mexican poverty and misery. The Flag of Mexico is the one that should be flown upside down.”

The results of my experiment thus far have been limited, but interesting nevertheless. One fellow sent me a very thoughtful response, and I replied to the points he raised.

One woman, in anguish and pleading “for the love of God,” implored me to never, ever again, traumatize her Inbox in this way.

Another fellow emailed: “Please tak (sic) me off this list!! I get plenty of this B.S. in the I.C.O. [Strong Ox note: ICO is the Independent Coast Observer, our local weekly newspaper] and don't want it on my e-mail.”

I can hear it now: “Oooooooooo, yuck, do you see the crap this conservative spread on my email?! Gross!”

Several seem to have deleted my emails without reading them. Others at least opened them, although that doesn’t mean they weren’t also immediately deleted. Apparently liberal email Inboxes are sensitive, sacred places, not to be profaned by conservative heresies. I have lurid images in my head of the cleansing rituals liberals must perform on the ICO each time one of my letters is printed. Plus they must have exorcisms for Inboxes to return them to a state of liberal purity and grace.

I’ll update this as (hopefully) more responses come in, probably Monday after everyone goes back to work and checks their emails. I hope the three responses aren’t all I get. That would be terribly disappointing.

The Arrogance Of Immigrants

When did it start? Why haven’t I noticed the arrogance of immigrants until just the last couple of months?

First, what do I mean about the arrogance of immigrants? When someone becomes an immigrant, and then expects the host country to change to conform to the immigrant’s beliefs and desires, that is arrogance. And when the host country conforms, that is cowardice, it is stupidity, it is self loathing, it is despicable.

Do I have any examples of immigrant arrogance? Glad you asked.

An Islamic mufti in Copenhagen, Shahid Mehdi, sparked outrage a couple of years ago after stating in a televised interview that women who do not wear headscarves are "asking for rape." That’s right, this arrogant bastard is telling his Danish hosts that Danish women are asking to be raped because they won’t conform to Muslim standards of modesty. Since over half of recent rapes in Denmark have been by Muslim men (who are less than a tenth of the Danish population) and eighty percent of the rape victims have been non-Muslim women, the good Muslim mufti says that of course it is the fault of the women – first, no headscarves, then it will be they wore dresses that exposed their legs, then that they wore pants that defined their bottoms, or swimsuits that displayed their figures, or sweaters that outlined their breasts – what is a good Muslim male to do? Rape them, of course. Wouldn’t you?

Demanding citizens of the host country conform to Muslim standards of female modesty is one example of immigrant arrogance. Another is threatening death to anyone who offends Islam in any manner or form. Death threats against the Danish cartoonists are one example, but more serious was the actual murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, and the death threat (fatwa) on Ayaan Hirsi Ali for voicing views critical of Islam. Her film Submission, directed by Theo van Gogh, made her a target of the Hofstad Network, an Islamist terrorist organization.

Mexican illegal immigrants have perhaps been emboldened by the arrogance of Muslim immigrants to their hosts. The indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America, descendents of some of the cruelest and most savage cultures in history, the bloody Mayan and Aztec, lay claim to all North America. A very weak claim, since their cultures never ventured permanently north of the Rio Grande. If they had, they would have murdered and subjugated the Native American tribes they encountered, just as they murdered and subjugated all the other tribes they encountered until the Spanish came and murdered and subjugated them. Now they have Atzlan and La Raza, their own racist organizations, dedicated to taking over the American Southwest and imposing a culture, the Spanish, that is truly alien to North America. In fact, the backwardness and poverty of Mexico and the Central and South American countries are vestiges of the arrogance and cruelty of Spanish Conquistadores. Now the Reconquistadores want to spread their ignorance and poverty to the United States, so we can be just like Mexico.

It is the height of both ignorance and arrogance that the Reconquistadores claim their gardening, dish washing, crop picking, burger flipping, housekeeping and bed making, and other forms of unskilled labor during the last couple of decades are what made the United States great, and that these skills qualify them to take over and run the place. If they are so good, and so valuable, their abilities could be put to best use in Mexico, the land they love and respect so much once they leave it.

The Great Point Arena Fire Of 1954

The pert and perky mayor of Point Arena, a city of 500 and a strong contender for the title of smallest incorporated city in California, explained the recently and finally approved General Plan for her city at our Rotary Club weekly luncheon at St. Orres. Towards the end of her talk, she spoke briefly of the value and importance of volunteers in getting city projects accomplished.

As she spoke, my mind drifted back to Point Arena. As I recall, it was the summer of 1954. I was walking down the Main Street hill towards downtown, and just at the bottom of the hill next to Disotelle’s Bar and Restaurant I heard the fire alarm go off on the city fire station across the street. The volunteer firemen rushed to the fire station and fired up the engine of the city’s old tanker fire truck. I heard a couple of them shouting back and forth that the fire was up the hill and almost all the way to the west end of town on Lake Street, at the Hedden home just before the high school.

A couple of tourists came over, and asked me if I knew where the fire was. I indicated it was north, up the hill, then past the elementary school, west about a half mile, to a driveway to the right just before the high school. As I was finishing my verbal description of the route to the fire, which I had embellished with pointing and hand gestures, the fire truck pulled out the firehouse and turned – south. The people I had answered looked at me, and over all the noise -- the motor racing, the siren screaming, the horns blasting -- indicated that the fire truck was “going the wrong way!”

Since I could no longer be heard, I held up my hands in a “relax” gesture and shook my head “no.” In the meantime, the fire truck had labored to the south end of town, past Soldani’s to the old abandoned creamery building, and was slowly turning around. “Watch this!” I shouted.

Slowly, but noisily, it’s speed increasing imperceptibly, the fire truck, with a full load of water in its tank, had reversed its course and was now heading north on Main Street coming back into downtown, its engine at its peak revolutions per minute, probably in second gear. As it roared through town, it would have been an awesome sight if its speed matched its noise. It passed where I was standing again, started up the hill at its top speed in second gear, and I started running up the hill on the sidewalk. I caught up with the fire truck a little more than half way up the hill, not long after its driver had downshifted into low, and pulled ahead of it and beat it to the top of the hill by five or ten yards.

A crowd had assembled downtown, watching and cheering the fire truck on. A few yelled, “Can we help? Do you need us to push?” And, of course, “Get a horse!” As Main Street leveled out by the elementary school, the fire truck picked up speed, and caught up and passed me before I got to the left turn onto Lake Street. It continued to accelerate up Lake Street, and if the sound had any meaning, it would have been going about eighty miles an hour. Sonny Buti was sure they were doing better than twenty-five miles an hour before they had to slow down to turn right into the Hedden driveway, but other people thought that Sonny had just been caught up in all the excitement. “That thing couldn’t hit twenty if we drove it off the bluff!”

“Good idea,” someone yelled.

As I ran down the driveway to the Hedden house, the excitement level was already sky high. The fire truck had stopped in front of the house, and a hose connected to the truck’s water tank had been run in through the front door, down the hall, and out to the back porch where the fire was burning, well fed by cans of old paint. It didn’t take long before the combination of old pump, old fittings and connections, old hose, and overeager firefighters ran the truck out of water with the fire still producing prodigious amounts of smoke. So then garden hoses were hooked up to the Hedden’s water tank, which also was quickly drained. Still smoke poured out of the porch.

At about this time energetic volunteers, including several high school girls, had gone into the house, up the stairs, and started to pass furniture, clothing, and other household treasures out of the bedroom windows and toss or lower it to helpers below. The more the mature and experienced among the firefighters tried to discourage this, the more frantically the volunteers lowered and threw things from the upper floor windows.

No more water could be pumped from the well, because the power had been turned off to protect the firefighters and others from electrocution. At this point we spontaneously formed a bucket brigade, using whatever buckets and other containers were at hand to pass water from a big cattle watering trough to pour on the fire. This seemed to work, although the fire may have already been dying from the cumulative effects of all the water already splashed on the back porch, plus the remainder of the old paint being removed before it could ignite.

At first, the shouts that the fire was out seemed to drive the crews upstairs and in front into an even higher level of frantic activity. However, after a brief period of hyper-activity, suddenly everyone stopped. Then all the people who had been evacuating things just quietly wandered off, leaving the tired firefighters to clean up and help the Heddens put everything back inside.

As the years passed, the fire grew, the danger heightened, the heroics multiplied, and then it was all forgotten. Almost all forgotten, anyway.

Previous Point Arena stories:

Pete Bjornavik, a Point Arena character - Fun to be around
Gopher Capital of the World? - There's a bit of larceny in all of us
1960 NCAA Basketball Championships - Thanks, "Chub" Ohleyer - A very generous man
Sweethearts Dance 1960 - Bad weather makes a special memory
Number, Please? - Personal connections before the dial telephone
Puddles the Pup - A big part of the best childhood in the whole world
You Gotta Ring Them Bells - Some wedding nights you don't forget, but you try!
After The Summer of 1954 - 7th and 8th grade, 60 students, one great teacher
The House We Built - Brother Ron and I dug the basement in 1954, with help from "Prince"
The Old High School - When we came to Pt. Arena in 1949, we lived in one big room of an abandoned high school building

Liberals Squemish About Patriot Days

Under the category, It's Never Too Late, I belatedly ran across a blog post from almost a year ago that included a letter Alice wrote that SactoDan Blog featured.

He wrote: "Thankfully, there is some common sense in the area. Alice Combs of Gualala writes: "As I was walking between the marvelous Patriot Days exhibits I came upon a lady holding a sign that stated ''Make Peace- Not War''. I asked her if that meant she thought we should have made peace and allowed the Brits to rule us. She didn't answer the question and said that we took the Indian's land. I responded that some of the Indians were assisting the Brits, and again I asked her if she thought we should have made peace and allowed the Brits to rule us. She still wouldn't answer the question and said ''you figure it out''.

SactoDan concluded: "I figured it out. Peace and Love are great things, but sometimes you have to fight. Alice's question to the lady with the sign and her lack of an answer is a metaphor for the fact that there is nothing behind the sign."

It's A Gig

(This is the second installment of "You're In The Air Force Now")

“It’s a gig.” The three little words Airman First Class (A1C) Lucius M. Spence, Jr., and A1C James Colbert, drilled into our heads our first day of basic training. One or more gigs were awarded for infractions involving our uniforms, the way we made our bunks, the way we cleaned our area, the list seemed endless. And our surroundings seemed unreal, even more so because of our arrival on Friday, August 3, 1962, which meant that we would be a “rainbow” flight for four or five days until we could be sent to Base Supply to have uniforms issued to us, an unusually long period. Basic trainees wore their civilian clothes plus pith helmet, web belt, and canteen, until Air Force gear could be issued, hence we were called “rainbows” because we were so colorful.

Except me. I wore black slacks and a white shirt. I soon split the slacks all the way down one inseam from the strenuous physical activity for which they were not intended. Marching around for three days wearing pants with a split inseam further added to the unreal sense. Then on our third day, Sunday, we heard that Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her home.

On Monday, still a rainbow, I was sent with a couple of other basics to take a mysterious test. The test was in a made-up foreign language, and I had no idea what it was about, or why I was taking it. Out of such a trivial event, the entire course of my life changed. Unbeknownst to me, I had scored very high on the preliminary tests in Santa Rosa and Oakland. To the Air Force, high scores meant that I was a candidate for foreign language training, and the mysterious test I was taking was measuring my language aptitude. When the tests were completed, I returned to by basic trainee flight just as ignorant and confused as when I left that morning.

The next day we went to the Green Monster and received our military clothing issue. First we were issued a duffel bag and two laundry bags, then we moved sideways down a long counter to fill the duffel bag with the rest of our gear. At one station we received two pairs of brogans, at another one pair of low quarters (black shoes), then four pairs of wool socks, four pairs of cotton socks, six white t-shirts, six undershorts, two towels, a blue uniform suit (pants and coat), one overcoat (horse blanket), two long-sleeve blue shirts, two blue neckties, blue hat with brim and insignia, two blue belts with two brass buckles, two pairs of US insignia, two flight caps, two fatigue caps, two short-sleeve tan (505) shirts, two tan (505) pants, two pairs of green fatigue pants, and (for me) two battleship grey fatigue shirts that did not match the fatigue pants or anything else in my bag.

All of these things were issued to us with little or no input from us. I’m sure the supply clerks thought they knew better than we did what our sizes were. They were probably right. We soon found out that the real reason we were given all these things was not to wear them, but to organize them in our foot lockers perfectly folded or rolled, polished and cleaned, and to keep them at all times in inspection order. Or “it’s a gig.”

(For a very interesting, detailed, and sometimes humorous description of Air Force Basic Training, go to this post by Kihm Winship, who went through basic about six years later. With my usual luck, I had an outstanding Training Instructor, A1C Lucius M. Spence, Jr., who soon was the Honor Graduate of the last Air Force Officer Candidate School. As a result of his disciplined, thoughtful leadership, my basic trainee flight was spared demeaning punishments and physical abuse. I am ashamed to say that basic was actually fun, one of the periods of my life when I never felt more alive, when I and my fellow basics met and overcame physical and mental challenges and hardship, and experienced the comeraderie and joy that comes from shared, memorable experiences.)