Butch, Chastity and the No Chance Kid

Butch, Chastity and the No Chance Kid.

No one really knows what HEB stands for. Its a grocery store chain in Texas. Butch was there over his lunch hour for some coffee and chewing tobacco. The closest one is two blocks from his office on 8th and Harris; the middle of downtown. Its not up to the standard of the HEB stores in the better neighborhoods, but its seldom as busy either. It just carries the essentials and that's all Butch ever went in for anyway.

As he approached the 3 active checkouts he did what everyone else probably does: look for the shortest line with the baskets with the fewest goods ahead of him, makes a quick assessment and joins the perceived quickest line. There was only one basket ahead of him and they were just setting a their last item on the counter as he approached. Short wait for sure. He perused the magazine covers and contemplated buying a Hershey Almond bar, which he successfully resisted. A good amount of time passed before he realized the line wasn't moving.
"Oh crud"., he thought to himself. "another price check or maybe one of those who can't find their food stamps". He looked up from the Cosmopolitan and glanced toward the cash register.
The clerk was just standing there. Everything was bagged up, but she was just standing there, waiting.
Butch scanned to the customer, a foreign looking youngster with his back to him, talking to someone.
"Hey how about it. You going to checkout or stand there jacking your jaws all day?"
The youth turned around and faced him.
"I was talking to my mother you f---!"
He looked to be maybe middle teens. No visible tattoos or pants hanging around his ankles, but youthful, with attitude.
"I don't care who you are talking to. Talk later after you've checked out. There are people waiting here. In this country we don't keep people waiting!"
"I'm going to f------ checkout" , he said swiping his card.
"But you can shut the f--- up if you know what's good for you", he said.
"Oh my my! Listen to that mouth. Look at that upbringing. In this country we don't speak to one another that way. In this country we try to have consideration and show respect for one another"

"I'll cuss all I want to! f---f----f----f----f----"
"Its none of my doing", said the woman.
The cashier and bagger and everyone around started looking for possible escape routes.
"You leave my mother out of it motherf------!"
"In this country we most certainly don't just start cussing at people we don't know."
His mother whispered something to him.
"You think I'm a Mexican?, he screamed.
"Son, I don't know what you are. I know what you are not.", Butch replied.
His mother said to the kid: "Don't sink to his level", Just cool it."
"Oh. He's already well past my level Lady"
As they walked to the door the kid continued with the epithets with his mother coaxing and pulling  him out the door, leaning back in as he went to yell the last insult in before disappearing to the parking lot.
"Now there is a naughty little boy, and one disadvantaged with a stunted vocabulary. Get me a pack of Redman over there will you Hon. The one in the green package...There, that's it"
Butch finished checking out and walked into the parking lot.
As luck would have it their car was parked right in front of his.
As Butch walked toward his car the kid was putting the groceries in his back seat. Upon seeing butch he slammed the door and strutted toward him.
"Go ahead. Say something f-----."
"Don't sink to his level Son. Just be calm", the mother chimed.
"You're the one doing all the talking." Butch replied as he brushed by and clicked the remote.
He climbed in, started the engine, waiting for the kid to give him the finger and wondering if the kid was expecting the same from him.
They simply exchanged hard looks as Butch drove away.

On the way back to the office Butch welled in self satisfaction thinking the kid was only a few more four letter words away from the slammer.
"Prisons are full of punks like that.", he mused.
"Yeah. And they got there by killing dumb chastising simpletons like you over something as simple as a very avoidable altercation in a supermarket. Graveyards should have a special section for people like you Butch. Lessee'   'Big Mouths like Butch and People who Failed the GED. '

"Whaa.."
Someone was talking to him. He looked out through the tobacco streaked side window. There was no one running beside the car. He turned to the passenger window, half expecting to see someone there.
"He would have to be on a bicycle to be going this fast." There was no one there either.
 He checked the rear-view mirror. No one in the back seat. It came from the back of his brain.
"Hey Dummy. Its me again."

"Whaa.."

"Your common sense Sherlock."

Well, where were you when I needed you?", Butch thought back.
"Me? I beat it out of there when I saw everyone around starting to duck for cover. How do you know what that kid was capable of? Yelling at him like that. That's certainly no way to avoid someones bad side. You asked for it and he showed it to you. Your impatience could very well have cost us our lives. You took a big chance. In a good neighborhood you may have just taken a punch. In that neighborhood? How many times do you think you can get away with that before someone blows us away? That kid could have been a gang banger, maybe an off-balance soldier just back from the killing fields in Iraq or Afghanistan, or maybe just pissed off in general because his girlfriend cut him off. Whatever. Certainly his state of mind was an unknown, but you failed to consider that and began arrogantly chastising him.  And what did you gain from it? Absolutely nothing. And what did you risk for the price of a few seconds wait? Absolutely everything. I'm telling you right now because the next time I will again be in hiding while you are in process of getting us stabbed. Don't ever do that again Doofus! You owe that kid for handing you a free lesson.  Now lets get back to work. I need a break."

The Day the Stil Blew Up

Making it big in Saudi Arabia

In Saudi Arabia before the days of Khomenis religious
revolution in the Middle East the indigent Western Hemisphere
part of the work force occupied a lot of their free time by
either looking for spirits or engaged in distilling them.
I arrived there in the spring of l976 and inside of a
month was approached by my supervisor and asked if I would
like to make $50 a week extra. He took me over to where he
was living temporarily and explained that he was house
sitting for two people who were on vacation in the U.S. He
gave me a tour of the place and then escorted me out back to
a tin shed. Inside the tin shed was a full blown alcohol
stil just a cooking away. There were two 375 gallon vats
for fermenting beer and two 30 gallon pots sitting on eight
electric burners. The pots were connected at their lower end
through a series of hoses switches and pumps to the vats, and
at the upper end to two condensers mounted in window boxes
and fans.
The pots were a large aluminum type that could be purchased
at the Suk but were modified and shaped so that a pressure
cooker with its bottom cut out could be welded to the top of
the pot after it was modified with an aluminum sheet metal
cone, the bottom of which was welded to the mouth of the pot
while the smaller end of the cone accomodated the reduced
size of the pressure cooker. Protruding from the pots were
two thermometers, indicating the temperatures of the interior
brew.

Besides the pungent smell this was the scene that
greeted me as I walked into the tin shed. My supervisor,
Butch, never gave me a clue as to how I was to earn the $50.
To me, it was a total surprise, and I was overwhelmed to
learn that alcohol was being made in a country whose laws
strictly forbid its use. Thus began my career as a
bootlegger in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
My duties for my weekly fifty involved fetching and
carrying and mixing for Butch. Each week the fermenting vats
had to be refilled with 375 gallons of water, 250 lbs of
sugar and five quart tins of bakers yeast and a tin of Calgon
water softener. The mixing was done with a nondescript 2 x 4.
Over the subsequent 18 months I would come to know that long
board well; I earned that weekly fifty. During the course of
my working for Butch I inquired as to what exactly he was
getting out of keeping the stil going for the absentee
residents. Surprisingly he did not hesitate in telling me.
"Around $10,000" he replied
I lost my breath for a second. "Ten thousand dollars U.S"?
That's the monthly take off this stil after expenses Butch
told me.
"And you are only paying me $50 a week for doing all of the
heavy work? I asked.
"It is you", Butch said, "who should be paying me for
introducing you to the opportunity" I was getting smart
fast. Six months later the owners of that stil left for the
States permanently, with their profits from making and
selling alcohol from that stil for the past ten years.
Millionaires. I purchased half of their stil at that time
for $5000 cash. I received one fiberglass fermenting vat, a
pump and hoses and valves, a fan and windowbox and the
condenser which was explained to me was a radiator from a 57
chevy because that particular year Chevy had used silver-
solder and not lead solder. I also got one of the 30 gallon
pots and my old friend the well-used and blackened, sugar-
encrusted 2x4. It was worth it. I had purchased a proven stil
which I had already a month of experience on. I was in
business.
During my initial tenure with the 2x4 I was situated in
temporary quarters and was on the waiting list for quarters.
Each week the new-hires looking for permanent quarters would
board a bus and be ushered around to the available housing. I
knew what I wanted and fortunately had the patience to wait
for it. There was a section of Jeddah that was primarily
built for the original TWA employees that arrived in 1945 to
help Old King Saud set up an airline with the DC3 that FDR
had given him on a State Visit. The housing was in various
states of dilapidation by my arrival in l976, but ideal for
making booze. Each villa had two bedrooms and twoa bathrooms and
a garden and patio that was surrounded by an 8 foot wall with
a double gate entry large enough to drive my suzuki jeep
through. The garden had banana palms and numerous oleander
bushes which seemed to be in a constant state of full bloom.
It was paradise. I bought an African Gray Parrot to live in
the banana tree to celebrate moving in. Thank god those ahead
of me on the list didn't want it when it came available.
Obviously no bootleggers in that group.
I set the big vat and the pot up in the spare bedroom
which had a large double window opening to the garden just
inside the gate. Perfect for off loading the sugar right out
of the jeep. I got the original rig set up and had canned the
first and second run before even purchasing any furniture for
the place.

The making of alcohol in Saudi Arabia was a rather hit
and miss affair for a number of years and there were many
incidences of westeners setting their houses on fire or
blowing up their stils or poisining themselves before the
Aramco Chemical Engineers finally outlined the four stages
and procedures necessary for making drinking alcohol from,
what was essentially, by Kentucky standards, a portable stil.
The procedure was published and passed around clandensingly
within the western community and it was known as the "Blue
Flame" It was the Saudi bootleggers recipe book for making
Sidiki. It is time to introduce the reader to some of the
specific terminology that was used (and probably still is) in
the alcohol business in Saudi Arabia. Sidiki is an arabic
word for friend and was applied to the specific alcohol that
was being distilled by westerners from sugar and brewers
yeast in the Kingdom. To be "cooking" was interpreted as
brewing sidiki. There was "brown" and "white" sidiki. Brown
sidiki was made by the early brewers from chipped up whiskey
barrels brought from the States. The alcohol was soaked in
the barrel chips in an attempt to flavor it and it eventually
took on a brown tinge. White Sidiki was exactly that,
straight from the fourth run cooking pot and barrelled in a 5
gallon plastic jury can at the wholesale stage.
Normally alcohol is distilled by boiling the fermented
mixture (beer) and tapping it off from the top of a very high
stack. Only the alcohol rises to the very top of the stack.
At lower levels can be tapped lower qualties of the brew. A
large stack for a bootlegger is impractible because of its
visibility so another means had to be devised that
brewed a quality end product without the stack. That method
was a procedure where the brew is cooked four different times
at subsequently lower tempratures, thus simulating the stack.
The first run as it is called is cooked until the thermometer
reaches a certain temprature, the drippings from that cook,
which usually jtook about 6 hours was then recycled into the
vat after it was emptied of waste and cleaned of course, for
the second run. The second run was then cooked untill the
thermometer hit a somewhat lower temprature. I had
accomplished this within the first week land a half of living
in my new villa, but it then became apparent that for an
additional investment in some additional hardware I could use
my initial hardware purchase for the first and second runs
and the smaller pot for the third and fourth runs. I
purchased part of another proven stil the following week and
put the word out that I was in the wholesale sidike business.
In other words I was "cooking", with 220 volt electricity in
this case which was free for the taking if you were willing
to connect up to it while it was hot, which I very carefully
did. The alternative was to call the authorities and explain
to them that the reason you wanted your electricity turned
ff. Having never come up with a good reason and then follow
hrough in person with a straight face I drilled a hole
hrough the wall to the box on the outside by the meter and,
ith rubber gloves pliers and rubber soled shoes hooked it up
after dark by flashlight as a further guard against
detection. I don't mind saying that it was uneventful and the
end product was virtually invisible to passersbye on the
outside of the wall.

Hot dawg! I was cooking. Each week I was filling 6 5 gallon plastic jury cans with 95% alcohol.Cash customers were lined up at the door. Ordinarially they would cut it with bottled water and sell it by the gallon. It depended on the customer. If they were selling to Arabs they would cut it with tap water. The tap water wasn't potable over there but maybe the natives had the necessary bugs to fight dysentery, or maybe the alcohol killed any germs. The stil ran 24/7 and I was pocketing $6000 a month for $400 in expenses. I was getting rich. So rich I started buying $100 a bottle Jonnie Walker Black smuggled in by the Embassy boys. One night while drunk out of my mind and entertaining some potential buyers everything in the room went into slow motion. There were only two rules in making Sadiki and staying in the chips and out of trouble. Don't drink while you're cookin and don't sell to Arabs. I had an Arab friend that I gave an occasional gallon to so I didn't think I was breaking the second rule technically. It was the first rule that sunk my ship. While showing them around the stil I opened the bathroom door and showed them my 3rd run, which was steaming out of the radiator so fast and filling the room so that it burned our eyes. I closed the door without wondering why there was steam coming out of the radiator instead of drips. Ten minutes later my question was answered as the expansion of the gas from the exploding stil sucked out my windows, separated the wall of the add-on in which we were sitting, split door jams as closed doors were blown open and the wall of the bathroom came crashing down. What was really neat was how the dust in the add-on just seemed to go airborne simultaneously. I found my guitar laying out in the yard--with out a scratch on it??

The Saudi cops came knocking on my fence gate. I told them my oven blew up while I was baking unleavened bread. My neighbor and I spent the next few weeks jacking the house back together. I tried to rebuild the wall but it was a cinderblock mess. My girlfriend suggested I put up some 1/8" plywood and plaster over it. Which I did. I removed the shards of remaining glass from the windows and closed the drapes. I cooked for another few weeks but it was never the same. I sold the still for what I paid for it and gave my notice at work.

Before leaving my house had to be inspected by the Housing Authority. That was a hoot. In anticipation of the building inspector I patched the doors back on their frames, moved a large wardrobe infront of the plywood wall, waxed the floors and shook out the rugs, polished the mirrors and wet dusted the entire house. I put on my happiest, glad to see ya, face on for the Inspector.

As he meandered through the house with his clipboard I kept chattering about how I loved the place and spent a lot of time fixing it up despite its dilapidated state when I had moved in. I told him that I had spent a lot of my own money on the house and garden because I fell in love with the villa's old world flavor. He opened the drapes and stared out into the garden. "Those are the cleanest windows I've ever seen" he exclaimed. I use ammonia and newspaper just like my mother taught me, I replied. If there is one thing I am insistant on its sparkling windows, I said. He closed the drapes and headed for the bathroom. The trick here was to get him to turn to his right as he was leaving the bathroom because if he turned to his left he would see that the wall was missing. As I positioned myself slightly aft and to his right I pulled some of the kitchen flat ware out of my pocket. As he was preparing to leave I said. "Look here. My girlfriend even polished the flatware as well as the pots and pans. Naturally he turned to his right to see my polished flatware as he left the bathroom and we walked toward the kitchen. As he moved out of the bathroom I positioned myself in front of the glass from the bathroom door buried in the opposing wall across the hall. I had removed some of it, but I didn't want to make a repair obvious with patches. I wonder to this day what ever happened to the poor man after the next people that moved in complained that the place was an absolute shambles.

Taji

2004 Camp Cooke, Taji, Iraq

Twenty seven days left here. Its easy living now except for the total lack of inspiration. No mountains, no Mexico, no restaurants, nothing to break up the day except the 1st Sgt's occasional visit telling me what I’m doing wrong again. “You are parked out front. We can’t allow that. There are no military vehicles allowed to be parked out front.” Ohh! I reply. “You mean military vehicles like the other 3 that are out there?” The next time he whips out “The Colonel” on me I think I’m going to tell him to have the Colonel come tell me himself. I may come back here but when I leave next time it will be the last time I come over here to this God forsaken desert.Then the Colonel really will have to come tell me himself. And I’ll smile then do it anyway. Nothing here but money. Killeen Texas is going to look so good. The most God forsaken place in the States. i.e. Killeen, Texas is going to look like DisneyLand compared to this hole.

The living is easier though. At least my airconditioned trailer presents some small relief to the 130deg heat and no privacy we had before. Even living with other people in a tent in Tikrit wasn’t really what I would choose for a lifestyle. Still, we had it better than most, but living with the likes of  Sills and  Tylman and right next door to maniacs like Seiler and Lawrence wasn’t a picnic. I think  Hocket was the only sane one in that whole bunch. He deservedly got picked up for Warrant Officer. The other two, Lawrence and Seiler were nuts. Lawrence, the 34 year old E-5 put in for OCS. “ I’m not having to put up with this shit after I’m an officer”. He would say when he wasn’t telling you all about how he was going to be the President someday. Needless to say: He is still an E-5. He only has 8 months left. I think he mentioned that he has found himself a swell job in his home town at Bell Helicopter pounding rivets. I can just hear him. “There’ll be no more of this shit after I’m a rivet pounder”. Now its  Phillips and  Elliot who are my next door neighbors. Doc is an ex Army copter mech who keeps flight and maintenance records. Dan is the resident Sikorsky know-it-all. They live in the trailer facing mine. They’re ok. I made the mistake of loaning them my tables and now they won’t return them. Doc wanted to borrow a transformer yesterday and my answer was short and to the point. Still, they aren’t bad fellas but Doc will play you for all you’re worth if you let him. “Hey Chuck” He says one morning. “I’m having a real hard time getting my name on the list to have checks cashed. They won’t cash anything from me over $200. I want to buy some Iraqi Dinars because I think they will double or triple in the coming years. If I write you a check could you cover me for $2000?” Ha Ha That Doc. What a kidder. He must have been kidding. I do tend to mope around sometimes with a blank look on my face but surely, I don’t look that stupid…Do I? Anyway, I informed Doc that my wife Rhonda is the family Finance Minister and to write and ask her for it.

My only respite here so far has been working with Sgt Smith. He’s a bright fellow. I like watching him figure things out. He knows Jesse and guess who was also picked up for Warrant? So we will be losing him within the next month or so. He and Jesse will be going through WO school together…while Sgt Lawrence will be in Amarillo pounding his rivets and not having to put up with any shit.

Today Eric and I are once again working on the helo. Yesterday we roled it as 4th BDE trying to sus out our FBCB2 messaging problem. Force XXI Command Brigade and Below. FBCB2 gathers information on the location elevation, type and speed of friendly battlefield platforms and presents them as ikons on a computer screen. It enables warfighters to see each others positions and speed and direction of travel. Plus they can communicate by sending a sort of email to one another. Our problem, maybe the 1 Cav Division’s problem, is that we can’t message. We are unable to communicate by free-text messaging (email) to any other platform. We think that it may be the Division role we are using. We re-roled as 4th yesterday but they gave us the wrong crypto keys. In order for us to reconfigure the radios for the new role they must be “zeroed” of their cryptography. Once they are reconfigured then they have to be “filled” once more with the proper crypto keys. We hope we will get the proper keys this morning. Then we will try to message as a member of 4th BDE.

They are trying to fly this chopper into phase shortly. If I didn’t know better I would think they are trying to time it so that it interferes with my going home on 17 July. They have bigger fish to fry than just thinking of how to screw my life up. They do have a talent for chaos though. It seems to come natural to them. When your outfit has a Colonel who occupies part of his waking hours worrying about whether one of the civilians supporting his outfit is wearing his helmet or parking his Hummer in the wrong place, I would say that there is a problem. I was flying just after the initial invasion with the commanding general in the back seat with his legal officer and aide. His deepest thought was whether he could use a box of 50 caliber ammo he had confiscated from the Iraquis. Maybe he was just on break. What really is the matter is that it sticks in their craw that I have control of a military vehicle for my personal use. They are always short vehicles for one reason or another. It bothers them and what bothers them even more is there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. My Hummer is owned by the PM A2C2S and they can’t touch it. I really don’t think they can tell me where or where not to park it, but giving them an argument there would violate the first principal of military contractors everywhere: Keep smiling and take the money. Losing that battle would remove me out from under the eagle pooping. Not worth it. Best to wear the helmet and stay out of their way. Out of sight , out of mind and the eagle will keep pooping on me bi-weekly. Repeat after me: I have no ego. I have no ego. Hey, I studied under the best. The Saudis. The most arrogant, elitest , self righteous fools on the planet. One can get away with just about anything else. Only one rule. Ok Two: Keep smiling. Don’t lose your temper. Follow those two rules and no one can touch you. Anger management. Can all of the above be true? The Eagle swallowed a worm one day and at 3000' the worm poked his head out of the Eagles butt and said 'You wouldn't shit me would you?"
"Of course not." replied the Eagle.
"You are my favorite terd."

Another View from the Porch

With the Army at Camp Speicher, Iraq 2004

By
Chucky

The birds showed up along with the snakes shortly after winter solstice. The sun is low in the sky now, casting its long shadow. Even the ants are feeling brave. We’ve been busy. Put in a wood floor in the tent in anticipation of the coming rains. It has a pallet foundation with plywood decking. I salted the pallet foundation with mothballs to discourage the critters, and I think it is working with the lone exception of our resident kangaroo rat which has moved in. I think he’s nibbling the moth balls like candy. Some of them eat anything. It must be like living in a warehouse for him under there. His own air-conditioned space to hop around in. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of us at all. Acts like a member of the family. We will have to murder him in short order though. Don’t want a tent full of droppings to breathe in with the dust. I’ll bring back some large mouse traps with me from vacation.

The birds are eating well. Bread and cookies from the messhall each morning. They have taken to spending the majority of their time grab-assin. Birds should be grab-assin. Like kids on summer vacation. It’s a bummer working looking for food all the time. They should be flittin and fartn around. I’m their sugar daddy. They can do that. Just like my kids at home. I sure did when I was a kid and its good to be able to pass it on to everybody/bird I can. I usually drop their nuts and crackers, bread crumbs and all out by the back hoe ditch where the lizard lives. Last week I was out there reading, (my Raytheon ethics manual(yeah, right) when I heard them flitn and chirpin ‘n jumpin up and down. I never put any food over there. I looked over my left shoulder to see what all the commotion was about. Oh. They were raisin’ a fuss for no apparent reason, just a' hoppin and 'chirpin, about 10 of them. Grab-assin birds, I said to myself. Something at the bottom of my vision caught my attention. It was silver with black spots and slithering toward the porch. I jumped up, looking for something to hit it with. He skedaddled under the porch and the birds flitted back to their bread crums. Mission accomplished. They like me because I’m their friend or they were rescuing their golden goose. I prefer the former but suspect the latter.

We’ve enlarged the porch. I did a dope-deal for a brand new tarp that’s twice the size of our old one. With the cooler temps below 100 degrees F it’s nice to sit out and watch the birds flap and watermelons grow. We made a fly trap. Simplest of simple: tub of water. Its like the Roach Motel. They check in for a dip, but they don’t check out. Buzzing around harassing people, lost souls that they are, their little horrible selves gets thirsty. There is their tub of fresh water just for them. They get caught in the surface tension and can’t escape. They eventually drown or die of exhaustion, whatever. The last thing some of them see on their road back to Hell is my big happy face.

Our watermelons are grown from scavenged seeds from the chow hall. We germinate them in an empty water bottle. Wrap the seeds in a bit of tissue one layer thick and place them in a capped water bottle with a few drops of water, put the bottle in the shade and after a week cut the bottle in two and add a little dirt and water if necessary. If you like boiled watermelon seeds then leave the bottle in the sun. Chirp Chirp. There they go again; jumping around trying to steal one anothers chip of cracker. Peck peck. “Yo! Lookit what Herbie’s got. I’m going to chase after Herbie and get his piece. OH. Herrrbiee..” They are hopping around in a horn of plenty, gobbling more food in a day than they have ever seen in their life and they want what Herbie’s got. I thought that was just in my neighborhood, but it looks like animal nature rather than just the human kind from my view from the porch.

We got energetic and re-inventoried our conex. We decided to build shelves to organize our parts. Turns out we were finding parts that weren’t on the inventory. We re-inventoried and organized it all on our new shelves. From now on I’ll do my own inventory when I arrive at a job. We found most of anything we never thought we had and a lot we will probably never need. Whilst we installed the shelves we got the idea to build a door to the tent. Now we’re legit. Got our own door. A door is like your face to the world. It’s what everyone looks at when they pass your abode. No longer do we need to be ashamed of our entry. No more peeking out the tent window and crawling out under the rear flap if we see someone who lives behind a better door passing. Now we have a door to be proud of. We have a fancy door knob and some Hajji carpet trim around our door. Those Yahoo System Operators in the next tent over will be hard pressed to beat that. They’ll try though. I caught one of them sneaking over some materials today.

“Hey. Whatcha got there”

“You’ll see”. Uh huh. Dead giveaway.

Maybe they are up to a coat of paint, maybe hang a light or something. We are going to decorate our walk-up with lights. Lets see em top that. That’s on my list to bring back from vacation. A string of Christmas Lights. Maybe a snowman and some egg nog. If they are satisfactorily submissive I may share some with them. With some nutmeg sprinkled on top. No mistletoe this year though. Most of us been out here too long and I’m way too good looking to risk that.

Got Me a Job

Written in Camp Speicher, Tikrit, Iraq sometime in 2004

I've got a job that pays me more money than I have ever made in my life counting inflation and I don't have to go to work. All I do is sit around. Its like a night watchman's job except I don't have to make any rounds or monitor a tv. I don't have to wear a uniform, I don't have to answer to anyone. I don't have to go to meetings, write reports. I don't have to do anything. Ok. I have to make a conference call once a day. If I miss it nothing is said. Hey! I couldn't get through. It's like I'm someplace all the time, but staying right here. I can mind travel all I want. sometimes I just sit and watch the horizon and think up interesting lies to tell during the conference. No work to concentrate on. Sometimes I fish all day. Other days I go to the beach. I'm reading my book in the middle of a sandy desert and if I were to get up and walk stright ahead I would eventually hit water, somewhere on the other side of Iran. Its a beach. My beach chair is just a bit further back from the tide line than most. To think that I used to do this for nothing: lie on the beach.

All day long I make up things to pass my time. I am studying for a Microsoft Certification. I am reading a lot of books. I do my own clothes rather than send them to the free laundry because it is something to do. I sit out on my porch and swat flies. I play chess once in a while. Its one of those jobs where I'm paid for what I know, not what I do. Paid for what you know? Consulting Physician, Psychanalyst? Theoretical physicist? Me? Its more like being paid for what I don't know. ts a job that no one else wants to do because of where it is. That is the only drawback. I'm a terror fighter in Iraq.

When I previously contracted to the Army I was a Commie fighter; protecting America against the ravenous Commie beast. Now I are keeping the world safe from terrorism.
We are all fighting terror over here. Just by being here I am doing my job. I owe Osama a lot. When I was working for the Army in Vietnam it was the commies that we were saving the world from. That wore kinda thin..and so now it is the terrorists. They are everywhere, just like the Commies used to be till their wall fell down and weren't any fun anymore. There is a lot of change to be made in fighting terrorism.

That is the bottom line. How much money can we make before the American People get sick of it. Ok. We have to sacrafice a few GIs, just like in Vietnam, but here it is only a few hundred rather than 60,000 killed by the enemy and another 60k that killed themselves after they grew up and realized the crimes they had comitted. Names that aren't on the Wall, but should be. The Army has toned down its operations over here recently. There is a Presidential Election coming up and this war is growing unpopular already. No operations above battalion level. Anything done at battalion level doesn't attract the attention of the national news. Brigade level stuff gets Rather's et.al attention. They need to stay below his and his ilks radar till after the election. They are still hunting Saddam. I think they have him hid out. If they find him there won't be a lot of excuse for us remaining here. Whooaa!Nickel Dripper.

One of the biggest nickel catchers here is Brown and Root. I think Lady Bird has ties with that company. Lyndon made sure he got a piece of the action by starting up the company. At least he had something to do with it.All the usual suspects are here with some name changes to protect the guilty. Dynelectron became DynCorps after the bad taste their participation in Vietnam left in everyone's mouth. Bush and Cheny and Conde are oil people and you had better believe they are getting their share. "Hey!" They said amongst themselves. "Lets get the ball rolling against Saddam because he's burning up our resources. We can save the worlds oil supply and make ourselves a barrel of bucks for our trouble. Who can we get to run for Pres? Hey Dwba. Who can we get to run for President?" Halliburton (which owns B & R now by the way) used to be owned by Cheny and they get contracts here without even having to bid.

So this is my last op to make any real money, thanks to Osama and Dwba,OH! and Ronnie Regan who made this possible by running the USSR broke. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If it weren't me it would be someone else hauling in the bucks. I'll stay here with my smiling mouth shut till they kick me out. Or for as long as I can stand it. Meantime..plink....plink, kach'ing.

Its hot here. I mean the temp tips 57C in August. The wind hits you like a knife. There is the dust. Lots of it. What the wind doesn't kick up the Army vehicles blow at you. Then there is always the odd dusting by a helicopter. You are dusty before you get back from the showers. Nothing to do here except study and read. No where to go. No recreation. Just sit and listen to the nickels drip. Drip, plink, drip plink. Into that deep hollow bank account. Like dropping a stone into a dark well and listening for it to hit the water. The longer I'm here the shorter that wait becomes. I wonder how much it is going to take to fill the well. Where there is nothing but a visible splash the nickel makes as it hits the surface.

Sometimes we have a/c. Right now the generator is down again. Its easily over 100 deg F. in the tent and no wind blowing. Its the middle of October. Things always get better here though because they can't get any worse. Our first campsite was Udahri in Kuwait. Hot, dusty, no a/c, portajohns full up to the brim and a line waiting to get into them. Absolute misery. Then we moved across the border to Tikrit. We are building shantys now and getting some semblance of civilization. We have movies, music and a little privacy. Still, I wouldn't be here except for the dripping nickels. This place is like Killeen, Tx in that there aren't many jet setters electing to retire here.

Haven't found any way to make extra money here yet. There might have been before all the fanatics we let go started mortaring and shooting us. Now its hard to get into town and do any business. Ears open though.

"Fact is the Cowboys is good for business" as Fred the Sheriff said in Tombstone. An evil bunch of shits but good for business. One of them killed him eventually. Dance with the Devil.

A Likely Story

by Chucky

I didn’t know it at the time, but when I started out on my own I should have realized that I was born thirty years too early to fully join the Information Age. I knew I wanted in but wasn’t sure how to go about it. I wised up a little too late academically in High School and by graduation I was scratching my ducktail wondering what to do with the rest of my life...so I joined the Navy, which promised me a great education and Boot Camp in San Diego. “A vacation spot”, my recruiter said. Well, it was a start I thought because at that time, college was out of the question. It was probably for the best because I was still not in the right frame of mind for neither college nor slinging hash, from which I could use a little vacation. Thankfully the Navy provided me with the opportunity to reject slinging hash as a career choice and offered scrubbing decks, cleaning ovens, standing guard-duty, and chipping paint and eventually a little electronic repair work.

Four years three months and 21 days after swearing to support the Constitution of the United States I decided to embark on an academic career and support myself with the training and experience provided by the U.S.N. While working in the electronic field during college it became apparent that I really enjoyed the challenges of the technical field of electronics. While still committed to finishing college with some sort of Bachelor Degree, it was hard to visualize actually earning a living through the study of history and European cultural heritage which fascinated me. I really was mesmerized by being a techie, a self description that I have enjoyed most of my life. To this day ,possibly to my vocational detriment, it still fits.

Around age 28 I started becoming politically aware. I remember at that time wanting to vote for JFK, but also remember having no political reason for doing so other than he was good at asking for “Eisenhower’s job”, as he put it. It was a moot point because at the time I was too young to vote for JFK. The first president that got my vote was Richard Nixon and he would get it again today. At about this time I became a bit unstable and restless and set off to see the world, without the framework of a port-hole, so to speak. During the next twenty-five or so years I supported myself with various occupations sometimes technical, sometimes hazardous in different parts of the world without any outside support. I was enjoying total freedom I told myself, and indeed the journey was a cultural and philosophically enlightening experience, the results of which cemented my political beliefs to the right of center. Mind you I wasn’t giving it a lot of thought while that 2 1/2 ‘ foot diameter, three ton log was thundering down the mountain behind me... toward the creek bed in front of me... while logging in Oregon that summer of ‘73 but I’m sure that it helped build confidence that Chuck Michael can take care of himself. And of course during those few magical, precipitous seconds, trying to get around that log, I actually knew which direction , and at what speed I was headed. In a way that was becoming a comfortable feeling. Well, the good Lord provided me with a propitious hole to fall into at just the right time, and after watching that log crash by inexorably on its way to the creek bed with my ghost impaled round and round on one of its broken branch stubs I dusted myself off and began the joy of facing the rest of my life without a scratch while the faint cant of the hook tender, who witnessed the entire affair from across the valley, echoed:” I wouldn’t blame you if you quit right now Son.”(which I didn’t) Must have been quite a show. Anyway, I left the Willamette Valley with a whole new attitude, and an inkling of religious awareness, or maybe it was a reawakening of strict Christian upbringing, which I had come to reject, because it interfered too much with all the fun I was having.

Logging was a great experience , a little too great, but it got me into fantastic shape so I divorced my wife and went commercial fishing in Florida-never did make any money at it, but took in fully the unencumbered nature of living in the Keys while learning how to tie fishing knots and build lobster traps, and fight. The guys in Florida seem to like to fight a lot. If you were worked till you dropped all or your life, were never taught to take a bath, slept a lot of the time on the side of the road drunk out of your mind, and could never remember to brush your teeth. Hey! Where do you get your recreation?. So they sought solace in knocking one another’s teeth down their throat.. Fun at first, but take my word for it: It doesn’t last. Skiing is cleaner, and the company much more rewarding. After another year or two working as a part-time this and that I decided that I needed a brand new Ford Van, and toward that end landed a job as a telephone central office installer in Central Florida. my first real job in nearly a century. They taught me how to install and tie cabling...day after day after day until the van became mercifully paid for a year and a century later.. Actually they fired me for insubordination before I could quit, but I needed the medical insurance for a mending ankle. Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Slate. BlueOrangeGreenBrownSlateblueorangegreenbrownslate...... FORGODSAKE! SHADDAPP! like my Service Number, that color code scheme became indelibly imprinted on my hard drive. Showing up stoned and remaining so all day long helped.

During those days in WinterHaven I broke my ankle skydiving and having decided that that was not the correct relationship to develop with an airplane, began taking flying lessons, which made a lot more sense to me. Now here was something really interesting, with lots of technical stuff to know that no one else does. What romance! Then the money ran out as it always does. The cost of learning how to fly is the same now as it always has been and always will be.  All you got.

My life was beginning to take shape. Flying money flowed during the next few years, albeit sporadically, and after a stint in Saudi Arabia working as a tech for Saudi Airlines and bootlegger I was back with enough to finish my flying education, or begin it depending on your point of view. Right! All I had. “There it is. Make me a pilot. HOTDANG!” I began accumulating hours through cropdusting and instructing. Working was getting to be lots of fun again, and continued to be so, gaining flying licenses in three countries and graduating to flying multi-engine charter throughout Europe and the U.K. during the next 7 years. ThenthebottomfelloutandIlostmymedical.Endofflyingcareer. SSSHHHHHOOOOMMMMMM! What was that? That was your flying career Matey. Your sole

raison d’ etere. Your entire existence...and about $80,000. Was it something I had done in the past where all of my sins were catching up? No. That's what marriage is for. Pondering philosophically for a few moments, I cheered myself up by getting another divorce and returning to the States.

Not one to cry in my beer. (I never dilute any alcohol but straight Scotch. Just a dash of water over the cubes to enhance the taste.) I applied for a position as a roving avionics troubleshooter for Beech Aerospace Services, and for the following two years until settling down traveled throughout the U.K., the Mid East, Far East and South America troubleshooting and repairing aircraft for BeechCraft. In 1989 I left for a while to become a jump pilot and later a mechanic for a flying club and then Alaska Airlines and then back to Desert Storm with Raytheon. A relapse into unstable bliss, no doubt, that only served to remind me of the rewards of stability. About that time I think that I started becoming broody so when I landed in the Ft. Hood Area I bought a house and began looking for someone to give it away to. My beautiful wife of four years and mother of our two children and I met as I was drooling in a tax course she was teaching I married my tax advisor. Hey! Not just a pretty face here!

In the past ten years I have grown in any number or ways, all of which are manifested in my beautiful wife and only children, two gorgeous daughters. During the past five I have been educating myself in both hardware and software. Commitment is, I think, a key ingredient in a solid relationship, to a stable life, and certainly the means to an end. Commitment to God. family, country, and to oneself...And certainly a sense of humor.

…and then there is Crossroads Systems . but this was written in 2001. since then there was Iraq with Raytheon for 2 years then my present gig with Killeen ISD.

Update: So much for comittment. I opened up the door in late 2008 and got served with divorce papers. She has proven quite vindictive since then. Come to find out after a year of being single again  I was married to a low-life. Well, you can take the trash out of the trailer and put it in a big, pretty house with a nice car but what is it still? Do I sound bitter? Well, ok,  I won't mind if she feels the same as me but I never lived in a trailer. After twice being the dumper, I'm not programmed to be the dumpee. That's the tough part.

So after contemplation of this ultimate rejection my conclusion is that the reason I'm on the tail end  of three bad marriages is the inescapable fact that I never wanted to marry any of them, even Judy, the only one of the lot worthy of being addressed as a lady. Maybe they sensed it. Even though, to my mind, I was less than obvious. To their mind maybe I wasn't.

Paul

They killed my old friend Paul the day before yesterday on the 18th of June 2004. Saudi Terrorists. They cut his head off and then put it on the internet. He was 49 years old. Around 12 years ago Paul answered an ad I had placed in the paper for a room in my house for rent. I met him at his hotel, Room 15 on the top floor of the Landmark Hotel in Killeen, Texas sometime in 1992 I suppose it was. Paul had a hard time with the rent at first. I moved all his stuff out onto the sidewalk one day. He was on the phone to Lockheed-Martin telling them to send him money. I still don't understand that. I think he was supporting a lot of mouths. He had a condo in Daytona and an expensive son and family in NJ.

He helped me build my cedar closets and put a tile floor in my master bath. He never asked for anything for doing it. We became pretty good friends. It was always great to see him. Shortly before he left for Saudi Arabia he came home with a tatoo on his left shoulder. I chided him for it. "What are you doing Paul"?, I yelled. A tatoo at your age? He took it in stride. "Something to do, he replied". Shortly after he told me that he may be out of a job shortly unless he took their job offer in Saudi Arabia. It wasn't dangerous then. Well before 9/11. On the day he left we hugged. I could tell he didn't want to go. But he went. We wrote occasionally and a few years later he told me that he had married a girl from Tailand. Noom was her name. I suppose Paul cut out a life for himself over there because he never came back. He wrote that Noom had opened up a restaurant and that he was happy. After they nabbed him on his way home one day and cut his head off on television they found his body beside the road. I knew it was him from the tattoo. Months later on a raid of a terrorist enclave they found his head in the freezer.

Contractors usually are housed in areas. Despite their work location they live together in large housing areas.. Its criminal what they did to him. He was a gentle soul. Sayonara Paul. I prayed for your soul. At least you knew what was coming and had plenty of time to prepare for it. Rest in peace good buddy.

13 Motorcycles

Here she is, one of about a zillion pictures I've taken trying to sell her for the past year. I would have thought that all those young soldiers returning from the catbox flush with tax free cash would have bought her. No takers yet. Maybe they don't read the CL. I've taken out an ad in the Ft. Hood Sentinel. This is my third Harley and 13th motorcycle. The thrill is gone. Now I think of gentle breezes and rippling lake water, sitting by a camp fire curled around a glass of Chevas, strumming my guitar. In 1963 I bought a Vespa. They are classics now. It had a spare tire with a white cover on the back and a luggage carrier. I motored up and down the Strand from North Island to Imperial Beach on a regular basis to visit my girlfriend and cruised all over San Diego on that scooter. Truly I cherish those memories more than any spent on this Softail. Maybe its my age. maybe its the size of the motorcycle, maybe its the drab, barbwire fenced desert around here.  I suppose anything gets old if you use it enough. Thirteen motorcycles. I never met Steve McQueen, but on a trip to Palm Springs on my Triumph 500 I noticed a Bonneville while stopped at a traffic light. He was headed in the opposite direction. I didn't notice the rider till about 5 seconds before the light changed. I wonder if he noticed the expression on my face when I recognized him. I nodded, he nodded and we zoomed off in opposite directions. Five seconds of my 15 minutes of fame.

Some sailor I loaned the scooter to sideswiped a car on the freeway. I never saw it again. The next bike was a Ducati 'The Duke'. The day after I bought it I climbed a steep hill behind Mesa Jr. College. This was after discharge from the Navy. So sitting on top of that hill, looking down on the campus I decided to go back down the hill. At that age you fear little in life. What you lack in experience is made up in bravado. Of course within seconds it was out of control, leaning on the rear brake the bike went down. Lieing  on the bike digging my heels into the hill I thought to myself: slide down or jump on it and go for it. Unfortunately I chose the latter. It was a fast trip. What I failed to notice before deciding to ride it out was the ditch waiting for me at the very bottom of the hill. The Duke and I went airborne at the ditch. I landed with a thump, but what hurt worse was the sound of my brand new motorcycle crunching into the ground further on. I think it bounced a couple of times, bending the front wheel, the handlebars and I think it put a hole in the side of the gear case. I forget how I got it repaired or even how I got it back to the apartment, but I did and sold a year or so later  before leaving for a gig as a contractor in VietNam. That was the only accident I ever had on a motorcycle. There were a couple of close calls and went sideways with the Softail once but never laid one down. Of course I've had the crap scared out of me a few times. I sold #11 because I almost got creamed by an old lady barely able to see over her steering wheel, wearing a pair of  'I can't see shit wraparound sunglasses. If it hadn't been for drivers yelling and cursing at her I would never had turned around and seen her headed straight for me. She scared me off my Goldwing and it took me 10 years to work up enough nerve to get back on a bike. Number 12 was a Harley Lowrider. I traded that in after a year for the Softail. Oddly enough the same ole lady wearing the same 'can't see shit' glasses and driving the same car almost creamed me again. Someone should follow her home and cut off her valve stems. Hard to believe but it was her. I was returning from work and she came screaming out of a side street right in front of me. I don't think she ever saw me. Killeen, Texas is a dangerous place to be riding a motorcycle, but with her out and about its suicide.  Lots of crowded streets full of oversized egos behind the wheels. Its full of young tank drivers, combat vets who aren't used to giving way to anyone. It takes a while to adapt. In the meantime you could wind up a spot on their bumper.

My first Harley was a Sportster. I bought it in Jackson, Mississippi. He told me that I could double my money by selling it in California. The company transferred me to California and I did. A german tourist bought it. It was a beast. Kick start and I could never get the carbs set right. It was ok once it started but it backfired a lot and occassionally caught fire. It reminded me of what it would be like to drive a dinasour. You know, a real dinasour, A tyronosorous Rex. Can you imagine bridling and riding a TRex? Thats what it was like driving that Sporty around. Tired of the Harley I bought an old Goldwing. It was before Honda came out with its own farings and this one had the 3rd party fairings on it. I liked the ride but wanted something sleeker. I had an image in mind and drove it to a motorcycle shop in Laguna Beach with an idea to have it customized. There on their showroom floor sat my mental image of exactly what I drove in for: a 1980 European model Goldwing. No bags, no fairing, ocean blue with factory pinstripes, the prettiest motorcycle I ever saw. It was there on consignment and as clean as the day she was built. Previous owner was a millionaire who invented the system banks use to transport your money and deposit slips from the drive in kiosk to the teller inside the bank. He had 8 cars and the salesman told me that he spends all his time cleaning and waxing them as well as his motorcycles. It sure looked it. It turned out to be the best bike of the lot. I sold it a few years later when the lady with the 'Ican'tseeshitglasses' scared me off of it. I miss that bike. The next door neighbor bought it. I saw them drive it once. It sat out in their yard for about 5 years and one day a fat guy came and drove it away. That's the last I ever saw of it.

In VietNam I worked with the Signal Corps running a troposcatter site on VC Hill in VungTau. VungTau was the Army incountry R&R. It was a town full of restaurants and bars and right on the beach. What a great place. I bought a 90 cc Honda to get around; a surprisingly fast motorcycle. I wouldn't mind owning another. It was also the most useful bike and fast. It would flat get up VC hill in a hurry.  Starting up that motorcycle and pretending I was going somewhere was the only way I could get my pet monkey to come down out of the tree in the center of the courtyard. I named her Co; Vietnamese for 'girlfriend'. When we first met Co had a collar and a chain around her neck. After the first month or so I built her a cage. She hated the cage more than the collar. One day I removed her collar and tossed it.. She never noticed untill a few days later. I was watching her surprise and  groping around her neck in unbelief. She was so happy but also hard to catch, which wouldn't have bothered me except if she were loose at night she ran around getting into all sorts of mischief, like descretaing the neighbors Buddah shrine. I got my Walther out to shoot her. There she was in there rooting around like some sort of anti-christ and refused to stop. The Vietnamese urged me not to start firing my weapon. So I put the pistol away and fired up the bike instead and she comes bounding over, sits on the gas tank, grabs the handlebars head stuck out and ready to ride. I took her out a couple of times. She loved riding on that bike but it didn't take her much time to learn that I was using it as an occasional ploy to return her to her cage. Unable to put her in her cage at night and her wrecking the place I had to give her one last ride. We went up VC hill and about halfway I said 'bye Co' and tossed her into the jungle. A couple of weeks later I saw her on top of the Signal Corps barracks being coaxed by a couple of GIs with a bananna. There she was nibbling their banana eyeing them skeptically just out of reach, an older and wiser monkey.  Good luck Co.

I don't know where I got the Idea I've owned 13 motorcycles. The Triumph, Duke, Vespa, 3 Hondas and 3 harleys doesn't add up to 13. I suppose I'm getting too old for motorcycles and forgot how to count. Still, I'm not changing the title.  

pome

She sits there glaring at me like an unwanted wife

her cockney name is trouble and strife

year after year eager to please

I can't wait to be rid of her, saddle, fork and keys

She's number nine

of a long line

of two wheel hydes

Duke Vespa and Hondas they were all great rides

I bought the Duke as a vet

the Vespa as a teen

The Duke was met

by a ditch never

seen

of all the bikes and I've had a few

the Vespa left without so much as adieu

Three Harleys I rode

when gone I didn't grieve

One I sold One I traded

but like an unloved third wife

who refuses to leave 

just sits there glaring