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Lately we have all watched in wonder and some distress as Russia’s Putin announced that he was going to invade the Republic of Ukraine. Reasons given were sort of vague. President Putin said he was going in there and get rid of the Nazi’s that he said had taken over the country.
Read moreIt was a warm soft summer night in 1947 and I was walking home. I saw 5 of my peers sitting in front of the Main Café. Just sitting there. Their feet somewhat appropriately in the gutter. I detoured and joined them. I noticed one thing different though. There was a brand-new Cadillac parked right in front of the café. The conversation was, uh, well I don’t remember except we talked about the new car. New cars weren’t common in 1947 — right after the war — but there sat this one. Its door swung open and the driver came over and stood in front of our group of 12 and 13 year old boys. Most of us had taken up smoking cigarettes. And some of us were smoking. Or trying to.
Read moreSometimes you just can’t win. I remember long ago when I was in the Navy. We had just completed a port call in Yokosuka, Japan. Its duration was two weeks but the first day we pulled out I saw this real long line of sailors on the hanger deck. I learned that the USS Lexington crew (1,100 of them) was the worse infected crew in the 7 fleet. That long line of sailors were waiting for medical attention for their recently caught VD. I went up to my workstation and learned all about it. Not any of my guys were infected. In fact, it was all on the deck divisions and some of our so called “air dales” who had gone ashore and partaken of the shore delights they should have avoided.
Read moreOur new year is finally here. So is winter. One thing I did first this year was call my sister Sue. She is now in an assisted living home up in Edmond and I was happy to find she received a new phone for Christmas. It is easier to use, so she thinks. I hope she is right. We have had a history of tough luck trying to communicate over her old one. Sue is 4 years younger than me, and we enjoy our time during phone visits. I went to church yesterday and the preacher spoke quite a bit about time. He noted, correctly how we waste it, how we can’t control it or stop it from passing. So true.
Read moreLast December, the Virginia Military Institute removed a big statue of Stonewall Jackson. They are now hiding him in a museum. He was just one of many “celebrities” of the old south to vanish as American tries to change its history. I guess there really isn’t much wrong with the idea of change. The old South, as we knew it is gone. The idea of white people being able to enslave people of dark skin is long gone. And that’s a good thing in our land of freedom such as the USA basically is.
Read moreThanksgiving? Here again? It’s almost stylish these days to say: “Thankful for what?” Well, let’s just look back a bit. One in particular noteworthy year in my life was 1963. Fresh out of college and my military service behind me, things never looked any better. I was glad to have my military service behind me. The hard times of working my way through college had left Pat and me with sighs of relief. A new and first baby boy in our family was for sure a joy. And I was living and working in Ada. How could it get better?
Read moreMy mother sometimes got onto me for daydreaming so much. I had a teacher or two over at Stonewall that agreed with her too. She always admonished me to quit my daydreaming. As though one could. Like most people I think I was meant to travel. Go places. Someplace where they speak different languages. Dress funny. Eat weird foods. Places so far away you might need to get on an airplane or a ship to get there. But to get on an airplane means going through x-rays, being patted down. Getting a passport. Well sure. Pat and I, being the forever optimists, renewed our passports some time back. I guess we did want to be squeezed into an uncomfortable seat and be hurtled at speeds at nearly the speed of sound to one of these strange places.
Read moreSometimes this old Shakespearean quote applies to us. It sure did to people in Allen in 1938—a tough year for people here in Mustang land. I know it was for the Bullard’s. The business dad worked at in Allen was shuttered and gone.
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