JINKSTO

*sigh* Remember in Dear Santa… I mentioned wanting a new knife? For those that (for good reason) don’t read every word that I write here’s the bit relating to the knife:

Gerber Lockback Pocket Knife
I lost my knife last year. The one that I’ve had for about 8 years. I want another one, just like the one I had. You remember, it’s the one that bought for $30 and then had to FedEx from the airport that time I forgot to pack it? I know it was silly to pay $40 to FedEx a $30 knife halfway across the country but I really liked it. I don’t want one with one of those gangsta serrated edge blades… the odds of me having to cut my way out of a burning vehicle with it are really pretty small so let’s just keep with the standard blade. Besides, my dive knife has a serrated edge on it so if I ever have to cut my way out of a burning vehicle while scuba diving I’m good. Just a standard folding knife with a 4 1/2 inch blade.

Over the weekend I made a quick trip over to Bass Pro Shop to pick up several things for the winter hunting season. While we were there my wife and I spent a long time looking at pocket knives. I have been avoiding buying a new knife. I really did lose the last one about a year ago and haven’t bought one yet. I joked that as soon as I bought one that I’d find the old one and then I’d just have to take the new one back.

Pocket knives have always been sort of a personal item in my family. I know exactly where my grandfathers pocket knife is stored. I know exactly where my dads pocket knife lives when it’s not in his pocket. I can tell you the make and model of both. My grandfathers pocket knife had been sharpened so many times that nearly half of the blade was gone. It was still the same length, mostly, just really thin. I have no idea how long he had that knife but it was a long time. My dad has had his knife for as long as I can remember so well over 30 years. I don’t like the fact that I lost mine but I knew that at some point I’d just have to give up and buy a new one. My everyday life is affected by the lack of a knife. It’s expected that I have one. If two or more rednecks are standing around one of them will have a pocket knife. In fact, if you don’t have yours you can count on being able to say, “got your knife?” when you need to cut something and having one presented instantly. My brother and his friends recently flew out to go to the Nascar races with me. Since they flew, none of them had knives with them so it became apparent quickly that mine is lost and has been for a long time. It was terrible. Hmmm…

As our Preacher used to say, “Ya’ll hang on, I’m gonna chase a rabbit for a second”. There is a protocol to borrowing someones knife. Here’s a few rules to follow:

It is expected that you will use it and give it back. If whatever you’re doing takes more than a couple of cuts go find your own. Don’t borrow someones pocket knife and keep it for half a day.

If you cut something that makes the knife dull. Do Not Sharpen it! Give it back, apologize profusely and offer to buy alcohol as penance. Each person sharpens a knife differently. The angle of the blade as it strikes the sharpening stone is different for every person and changing it can take hours to fix. Oh and, for the love of all that is holy do not use one of those store bought sharpening tools on a knife. That’s a great way to lose a friend.

By the same token it is a great honor ask someone else to sharpen your knife for you. It implies that the person is a master “sharpener” and you could never hope to meet his skill. Occasionally, people will offer to sharpen your knife for you. That is a tricky situation so it’s usually offered with great care. “So, uh, if you don’t have time to do it I wouldn’t mind putting a new edge on that knife for you.” Don’t offer to do this unless 1) You know what you’re doing and 2) you can offer the service without offending (you probably can’t. :0)

Always give a knife back to the person that you borrowed it from in the same state that you received it. Some people will open a folding knife before handing it to you. Others will hand it to you closed. It is VERY bad luck to hand it back closed if the person handed it to you open (and vice versa).

If passing a knife that is open or a non-folding knife always present the butt of the knife to the person you’re handing it to. Just hold the back of the blade and hand them the knife. Don’t try to hand them the sharp end.

A knife is not a hammer… especially someone else’s knife.

A knife is not a screwdriver… ever… dammit. No, I don’t care what your excuse is… EVER. Get a screwdriver…. sheesh.

Ok, back on track… where was I? Oh, right! I’m expected to carry a knife. I like carrying a pocket knife and I like to be able to cut things when i need to. No one likes looking for a pair of scissors to open one of those darn super vacuum packaged items from Wal-Mart. With a knife, you can whip it out and make short work of those things. By the way, ever noticed that all knives at Wal-Mart are packaged in such a way as to require a knife to open them? I’m just sayin…

Still, I was hesitant to buy a knife but having seen my Christmas list and knowing that hunting season is approaching my wife wanted to buy me one (I love her too). We looked for over an hour for a knife that was simple knife. In the old days, there was one kind of knife. It had three blades. One long “General” blade with a sharp point, one “Utility” blade with a rounded point to make it more sturdy and one very small blade for detail work. Oh there were different brands and models of course but they were all variations on the three blade theme (barring the ever popular Swiss Army which no one in his right mind would ever consider a “real” pocket knife). Later the single blade lockback knife became popular but for years that was it. Now… Now there are knives with blades of all shapes and sizes. Most of them have no function other than to look “cool”. Some of them are knives for specific application which I’m OK with but a pocket knife, one that you carry with you daily, should really be a general purpose knife (barring the swiss army knife). There are thousands of knives and none of them looked anything like my old knife which was exactly what I wanted. I looked at, I’m not kidding, really, thousands of knives. None of them worked. Some had serrated blades (completely useless), some were too big, some where too small, some I couldn’t figure out why anyone but a Ninja would be caught dead with and some… some defied explanation. After an hour of looking I finally gave in and picked a knife that “mostly” looked like my old knife but not quite. It was a little thicker, a little heavier. It had a different locking mechanism and a “quick open” blade. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a SWEET knife and it cost my wife almost $100 to buy it. It just wasn’t “MY” knife.

As soon as we left the store she opened the package and presented me with my new knife. I dropped it in my pocket and worked on getting used to carrying a knife again. It was dull (as are all new knives) but I put off sharpening it. I thought that if my old knife turned up I’d be able to take this one back and get my money back for it. You can’t take a knife back once you’ve sharpened it.

Eventually, I decided to sharpen the new knife. I went and found my sharpening stone (a trusty and well worn Arkansas Stone (made in Kansas?)) and “put an edge on it”. I spent hours getting rid of the “factory edge” which is nearly the same as you would get with an automatic sharpener (remember those are against the rules) and putting a new edge on it that’s just right for me. The target angle is one that is high enough to provide a good sharp edge but low enough to not have too fine of an edge and thus require sharpening more often. At some point (pun intended) a knife is sharp enough to cut anything you are likely cut with it so making it sharper just means that you’ll have to “hone” or sharpen it more often. After a lot of work and sweat I finally had the knife exactly like I wanted it. Just sharp enough to shave the hair off of my arm and no sharper.

Two hours later my wife found my old knife in a pair of camo pants that I wore hunting last year. The new $100, freshly sharpened knife now lives in the ubiquitous “top drawer” of my chest of drawers. and my old knife lives in my pocket again…

*sigh* Two days in a row that I’ve been bitten by “superstition”

Pilots have a rule called “the three strikes rule”. The concept is simple. If you are getting ready to go flying (or already flying for that matter) and three things go wrong then cancel the flight. It doesn’t matter what the problem is. It can be anything from a blown light bulb to marginal weather for the day. Three strikes and you’re done. This is especially the case for recreational flying. Commercial pilots have a little more pressure to complete a flight but even they think through the three strikes rule when it applies. They may not cancel the flight but they will often take a “timeout” and think things through from end to end. For recreational pilots it’s (usually) easier because we don’t HAVE to make any particular flight. You might disappoint someone that you’re meeting or you might miss a perfect day of flying but you might also avoid an emergency. As the saying goes, “it’s better to be on the ground wishing that you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground.”

The three strikes rule can be applied to non-aviation tasks as well. Yesterday I had plans to go out to the hunting lease and set up some stands. I invited Rob along to help with one of the larger stands and he decided to bring his son and daughter with us for a day in the woods.

Strike one: I had bought a new stand the day before and started putting it together late in the evening. I ran out of daylight and thought I only had a few minutes left to finish it up so left it for the next day. The next morning when I went out to finish things off I realized that I actually had a lot more left to do than I had intended and was running very late. At the last minute I found that I had assembled one piece incorrectly and had to redo it. Now I’m a stickler for doing things slowly and correctly so by the time I finished putting it all together and loaded everything in the truck I was well over two hours late.

Strike two: I was already late and kept catching every stop light on my way to pick up Rob and crew. This was frustrating. As I approached the only train crossing between our houses the signal lights started flashing and the guard arms began to lower. I had a brief moment of thinking, “I can make it”, considered punching the gas and then slammed on the brakes. I really could have made it, I was probably 30 feet from the tracks when the lights and bells came on and the arms had just started moving but it’s one of those things that’s just not worth it. After living in Chicago for 10 years and seeing monthly news reports of people getting hit by trains for trying exactly that I’m not really one to tempt fate. I stopped, waited… patiently… for a very long time… *sigh*

Strike three: After the train passed I was even more late and starting to feel the pressure of scheduling someones time and then causing delays for them as well as me. As soon as the gates came up I floored it and made it about 200 yards to the next stoplight where I, again, waited patiently. The light turned green, I turned left, went about 200 yards and was met by a police officer… traveling in my lane with his lights on. I pulled off of the road and he eased past with a house behind him. Now, we’re not talking about someones double-wide getting delivered. We’re talking about a 2000 square foot house. As the house approached I thought, man, that’s big and moved a little further off of the road. Then I thought, man, that’s REALLY big and moved still further away. At this point I realized that I was parked in the middle of someones lawn and that the approaching house might still hit me. I backed back onto the road and kept going until I found an open driveway where I promptly pulled in and waited for him to pass. And waited… and waited… and… *sigh*

After the house finally passed I made it to Rob’s without further incident. We loaded up the carseat, the kids and ourselves and were on the way. On the way out to the lease I was, of course, telling the story of my day and mentioned the three strike rule. Rob, who doesn’t fly, asked about it and I spent a few minutes explaining the rule and how superstitious pilots can be. It’s about an hour drive out to the lease which, while not quite what one would call wilderness is a good ways out in the country. On the way we stopped at a waffle house and had lunch. We eventually made it out to the lease and it was turning into a great day. Way out in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but enjoy the day.

We had been there about 30 minutes when Rob called over to me that we needed to take his daughter to the Doctor… huh?

Now, I’ve known Rob a long time. He’s not one to panic (mostly) and if he says we need to take a kid to the doctor I assume that he knows what he’s talking about. As I walked over he told me that she had stepped on a nail… in the woods… 30 miles from the nearest source of nails. Not that I didn’t believe him, of course, but I did a quick evaluation of the problem and the kid did, indeed, have a hole in her foot. I made her a quick bandage out of a folded bit of (premium quality, extra soft) Toilet Paper and resolved to get a real first aid kit for the truck.

We loaded everyone up and headed back to town. I dropped Rob and daughter off at the Urgent Care clinic and took his 4 year old home to mommy. She promised to pick them up from the clinic and I headed off for home. On the way home, I considered, briefly, going back out to the lease and hanging out by myself. At that point though the idea seemed about as inviting as trying to beat the train across the tracks so I gave in to the three strikes rule and called it a day. Superstition or not the rule is a good one. Think I’ll listen next time.

Some days in North Carolina you get up and it’s a day like any other day in any other place in the world. There’s work to do, expectations to meet, obligations both personal and professional to attend to and you’re behind on every damned one of them. For me and for many of my friends, those days are thankfully rare.

Most days here you really start to understand the concept of “Isand Time” or the carefree attitude attributed to folks that live in the Caribbean. There’s a major difference here so “island time” doesn’t fit. I call it “Carolina Time” (I know, original huh?).

There’s still work to do and all of the other headaches of every day life but when you’re on Carolina Time they seem to hurt less. The “hard” work becomes enjoyable. The mundane stuff flies by and occasionally you stop for a second, look around and just can’t help smiling.

You realize that the sun is high in a clear blue sky (what pilots call CAVU or Ceiling And Visibility Unlimited) and it’s neither too hot nor too cold. You study your surroundings for a second and see the towering poplar trees, the bushy evergreens and the still green grass carpeted with fallen leaves. You hear the birds singing in the background and feel like joining them, and sometimes do, just for the fun of being alive. That’s Carolina Time.

It can happen any time really. You don’t have to have trees to do it. I had one of those moments today standing in the Best Buy parking lot. I had just spent money that I didn’t have on a credit card with an obscene interest rate. I was standing in the parking lot waiting for friends to finish shopping and I was late… very late… for work. I have deadlines that are behind at work (late or not) and crushing expectations to get a lot of stuff done before the end of year holiday season. With all of that going on, with traffic flowing by and with people working through daily life I suddenly realized what a truly fantastic day it was.

I didn’t break into song but I certainly felt the need. I love days like this and on days when life has me a little upside down I often force myself to just take that little moment, look around and get back on Carolina Time. More often than not, I’m successful at it and can feel the stress flowing somewhere else. It works… “it’s the truth, It’s actual, Everything is satisfactual….” err… see, there I go again. Try it some time. You might just realize that there’s plenty of Sunshine heading your way and that it’s a wonderful feeling, feeling this way.

Dear Santa,
It was me. There, are you happy? I did it and I’m sorry. OK? I was twelve and after everybody went to bed I got up and I ate your damn cookies. The cookies were dry so I drank the milk too. After that I never got another gift from you.

I send you this dang list every year and you have ignored it every year. That’s not very cool Santa. I mean, sure, I’ll admit to not being the best boy ALL the time but come on! At least I try and sure I ate the cookies but I was freaking TWELVE at the time! Nearly 30 years of nothing? No return note… no lump of coal… nothing. If I had known those cookies were that dang precious to you I wouldn’t have eaten them. If I had known you’d treat me to a lifetime of abuse, I’d have got my own cookies. I thought you’d understand. I was hungry! Ok? I mean, you fly around in that deathtrap pulled by hopped up whitetails and get cookies at every house. It’s not like I was starving you or anything? You know how poor we were. You know we only got sweets a couple of times a year. You’re supposed to be the kind, giving soul and yet you hold a 30 year grudge against a twelve year old? Look, I know you had probably gotten the tofu cookies from Mrs Brown down the road a ways and were still mad about that but I’ve got a newsflash for you pops. She gave those cookies to everybody. Church picnic’s, school bake sales, weddings, halloween, birthdays, funerals, you name it… she showed up with those horrid tofu monstrosities and you just HAD to eat one in front of her or Mama would make you sorry later. We ALL had to do it… you weren’t special. Did you know that Mama actually told me you weren’t real over that whole cookie incident? You were like some kind of deadbeat dad whose ex-wife tells his kids that he “died”. She obviously had problems dealing with your attitude too.

Anyway, this year I’m going to put the list out on the Internet so that you can find it easier. That way, if you “forget” what was on the list you can use your iPhone to look it up on the way. If you don’t have an iPhone don’t worry, there’s one in that bag of yours somewhere. I mean, I’m sure it’s not for me or anything and I’m sure that twelve year old Nancy Really Really Really Really needs it so that she can update her Twitter while she’s on the school bus. But that’s cool. It’s not on my list anyway, I’m just reminding you that you have one…

Anyway, here’s the list:

Remington 700

I want one with a wood stock not that cheap synthetic stuff and I don’t want one of those flashy silver/stainless steel sniper wanna-be bling barrels on it either. Just a plain old gun. Blued barrel, wood stock should be pretty easy to do. Should be a .270 Winchester (or Weatherby if you’re feeling particularly kind).

Trail Camera

I’m not too picky with this one. I just want something that takes pictures of deer. It doesn’t have to be all IR/Night Vision capable (although that would be kinda cool). Just a digital camera with a flash will work. Oh, and a display screen inside it so that I can review the pictures right there without having to take the CF Card back to the house. Don’t forget the batteries. I know the one you were planning to bring me has chargeable batteries but heck, I’ll want to play with it right away. Oh, and a chain and lock for it because, well, honestly Santa that whole bribing kids to be good thing you had going… it’s not working out for us any more.

Pocket Knife

I lost my knife last year. The one that I’ve had for about 8 years. I want another one, just like the one I had. You remember, it’s the one that bought for $30 and then had to FedEx from the airport that time I forgot to pack it? I know it was silly to pay $40 to FedEx a $30 knife halfway across the country but I really liked it. I don’t want one with one of those gangsta serrated edge blades… the odds of me having to cut my way out of a burning vehicle with it are really pretty small so let’s just keep with the standard blade. Besides, my dive knife has a serrated edge on it so if I ever have to cut my way out of a burning vehicle while scuba diving I’m good. Just a standard folding knife with a 4 1/2 inch blade.

Ultralight Airplane

Look, I know I haven’t been flying in a while but I’m still stuck on it and as soon as I get the money flowing again I’m going to get back into it. You bringing me an ultralight would really move that process along.

Well, that’s it really. As you can see, I kept the list to things that I really need this year. Hopefully, you’ll accept my apology this time and help me out. Oh, and before you ask, yes I appologized to my brother for blaming him in the Cookie incident. He was really innocent on that one; slept through the whole thing. I checked and he hasn’t gotten anything from you since he was 11 so… yeah… sorry about that.

P.S.
I’m also sorry about that “chocolate” thing when I was 14. I was mad about you not bringing me anything for the previous two years but still stopping by to eat my cookies and things might have got out of hand. It was all in good fun though. Honestly. You remember? That was the year that Dad got real sick and spent the whole of Christmas day in the bathroom. By the way, you might want to look into that one… I’m just sayin…

Best Regards,
jinksto

I like to cook. Occasionally. Luckily, I’m good at it. Occasionally. See, with me, cooking is about big things. I usually cook for holiday meals and invite folks over or just make a really big pot of something and… invite folks over. Sometimes, just to change things up, I invite people over and THEN cook something.

The primary problem with my cooking is that I can’t cook for two. Fifteen I can do… two, I can’t. For example, I made a bit of chicken and rice for my wife and me the other night. We’ve eaten three meals out of that batch and still have well over two gallons left. For those that can’t get the visual picture, two gallons is a LOT of chicken and rice. You can, easily, feed 10 people with that, twice, and have left overs. Oh well, at least it’s good.

About twice a year we decide that we want to cook a pig. Now, cooking a pig in and of itself is an event but I can’t leave it at that, oh no. Where most people would rent a big pit grill or dig a hole and bury the thing we (read “I”) prefer to hang the pig in front of the fire. The Brazilians cook beef in a similar way by standing upright “spits” in front of the fire but not me. No, when I cook big there’s often engineering involved. Here’s the first pig that I ever cooked along with Mark (his uncles in the backwoods of Louisiana actually taught us how to do it this way (sans the tripod, they hung it from a tree)).

Yeah, that’s right. In order to hang the pig you need something to hang it FROM. Lacking something to hang it from, I “invented” this contraption**. Three twelve foot poles, a bit of dog chain, a “fence stretcher” from the home store, 4″x4″ square fencing, some bailing wire and you’ve got yourself a $25 pig cooker fit for a kings banquet. On later attempts we extended the back pole to be about 10′ longer than the others. Doing this gives us the ability to turn the front two legs into upright/vertical supports and allows adjustment of the heat by moving this third leg (and thus the pig) back and forth… pretty slick if I do say so myself. There are inefficiencies with the process though. It can take up to four times as long to cook a one hundred pound pig this way. The average cook time is about 12 hours. With a closed grill you can finish the same pig in around three hours. The process requires a LOT of wood. We’ve burned as much as a rick (half a cord) of wood cooking one pig where a similar pig took only four 10 pound bags of charcoal on a grill…. a huge difference.

The bonus with the really slow cook time though is that you get insanely tender meat that (literally) falls off of the bone. The last time we cooked a pig in a grill it took nearly two hours of “picking” to get the meat separated from the bone and chopped. With a slow roasted tripod cooked pig you simply cut the wire loose and pull the bones free. There’s no cutting or trimming… nothing. Just tug on a bone and it falls out leaving a pile of steaming pork.

There are, of course, other benefits to using this method. The first and primary benefit is that you have a 15 to 20 foot tall structure in your yard. You also have a huge fire in the yard. It is immediately apparent to anyone that’s shows up that there’s a party going on. No doubts about it… here’s the party and we’re serious about having fun here. We’ve had people driving down the road stop, turn around and come back for a chat about what the hell it is that we think we’re doing. This usually leads to someone posing while a cohort snaps pictures of them with our pendant porcine picnic to prove what the rednecks down the road are doing. No one leaves without a story to tell and the end result is without peer.

Those are for special occasions though. Usually, it’s just a round meal of simple fare. I’m not big on having “courses” with our meals. In fact, if there’s to be anything to eat other than the one or two dishes that I make for a meal then somebody better get a pot. I’m not above serving a platter of roast pork with nothing else. My wife (and anyone else that’s sane) enjoys a nice round meal. I can sometimes get away with it by doing a “one pot wonder” like Gumbo but most of the time my wife gets stuck with making the sides.

People are often very complimentary of my dishes and then upset that I won’t tell them how I did it. They fail to understand that this is usually because I “cheated” in some way. For instance, I make a roast pork tenderloin in mushroom cream sauce with just a hint of onion that is (I’ve been told) divine. People taste it and MUST have the recipe. I’ve considered writing up a very complex set of recipes and then, when things don’t turn out for them, just nod sadly and say, “yeah, it’s hard but it took me many years to perfect that… keep trying.” In truth the roast pork is pretty much just that. Here are all of the ingredients: Pork Loin (obviously), Two cans of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, One packet of Lipton Onion soup mix and… err… that’s it. The instructions are a little more complex: Dump the soup on top of the pork. Sprinkle the soup mix over it, smear it all around and wrap the whole thing in foil. Bake at 275 for 3 hours while you wander around the kitchen banging pans together for good effect. Once it’s done, dump the whole mess into a casserole serving dish and present it carefully to the table. All of my dishes tend to be like this. When people rave over the chicken soup and ask what’s in it I can just evasively say, “chicken soup” without ever mentioning the fine folks over at Campbell’s.

The one exception to this is my Banana Pudding which is made according to the “OLD” Nabisco recipe which was made from scratch. Hours of slowing stirring real cream over a double boiler and then carefully layering the bananas with nilla wafers and pudding and then topping it with home made meringue makes a real difference in the taste. People often smirk at all of the work that goes into it and then later exclaim that ones they make with instant pudding aren’t nearly as good. I just nod sadly and say, “yeah, it’s hard but it took me many years to perfect that… keep trying.”

Here’s one more picture. The pig isn’t really burned… it’s just wierd lighting:

** Yes, it’s really hard to claim that you’re the inventor of the tripod and get away with it… I did

From Full Metal Jacket:
Pogue Colonel: Marine, what is that button on your body armor?
Private Joker: A peace symbol, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Where’d you get it?
Private Joker: I don’t remember, sir.
Pogue Colonel: What is that you’ve got written on your helmet?
Private Joker: “Born to Kill”, sir.
Pogue Colonel: You write “Born to Kill” on your helmet and you wear a peace button. What’s that supposed to be, some kind of sick joke?
Private Joker: No, sir.
Pogue Colonel: You’d better get your head and your ass wired together, or I will take a giant shit on you.
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Now answer my question or you’ll be standing tall before the man.
Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
Pogue Colonel: The what?
Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?
Private Joker: Our side, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Don’t you love your country?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Then how about getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?
Private Joker: Yes, sir.
Pogue Colonel: Son, all I’ve ever asked of my marines is that they obey my orders as they would the word of God. We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out. It’s a hardball world, son. We’ve gotta keep our heads until this peace craze blows over.
Private Joker: Aye-aye, sir.

There are people that ask stupid things and then, there are just stupid people. Occasionally, it comes up in conversation that I served in the first Gulf War. I usually get one of two responses. The first is most common (thankfully) and it is a simple, “Thank You”. That thought often embarasses me but the people who share it mean it and I welcome it.

The second is offensive. It’s, “ah, the war where nothing happened.” I stare blankly at them. We won. People died. A lot of people. I know, I saw them. I listen to people who claim that it was a War for Oil and shrug at them. I saw the liberation of Kuwait. I saw the smiles of people who had been oppressed, murdered, not in war but in massacre by the Iraqi army. I saw that humiliation and grief returned to that army one hundred fold. I saw. You can claim that we risked our lives for oil and maybe that’s true but you can not deny the side effect. You can not claim that the lives that we lost were wasted. You can not claim that it was a senseless war.

The same applies to the current conflicts… both of them. I don’t pretend to understand all of the political drivers for the wars. I believe that the overriding goal was to engage the aggressors on their own soil. It’s a well documented tactic. If he’s engaged there he can’t attack you here. I’m all for that. I have heard people claim that our troops aren’t defending our freedoms by participating in the current conflict because the goal is oil. And yet, we haven’t had a major terrorist attack from an external aggressor in a very long time. People forget too easily what it was like to watch the towers in New York fall. It’s almost rhetoric now to present those attacks as evidence. That’s a painful fact.

People sometimes ask me what I thought of serving in a war. That’s a very hard question to answer. To be honest, I didn’t and I don’t really think that most of our troops do. I thought about why I was there. I thought about home and the things that I missed but I don’t recall ever thinking, “this is a war!”. I don’t remember fearing that a missile would fall on my head every night. We adapted to the environment and we lived. Day by day just like everybody else. It was a fact of life that someone might drop a scud missile on your tent. The same as crossing a busy intersection. You had the best protection possible in bunkers, early warning and patriot missiles so when the missiles came every night, we’d get our gear on and wait for them to stop. There wasn’t a great deal of fear. There was discomfort in the hot gear. It was just part of life. One of my most vivid memories of that time is Mark and I sitting across from one another with our Gameboy video games together via cable playing a game together. I wish I had a picture of that. It would speak volumes about what it was like to live there. Two soldiers in what most would call “chemical suits” wearing gas masks and playing with Gameboy’s while missiles streaked overhead. There were, of course, times that we were “scared” but it didn’t seem to matter much. We had a job to do and working through fear was just part of it.

Day to day life was just that. Occasionally we’d get mail from home. Occasionally we’d get mail addressed To Any Soldier. We felt obligated to read those mails and reply though never managed to respond to all of them. For those that I read and was never able to respond to. Thank you.

There is another group to remember today. There are millions of soldiers and sailors in the reserves. They give their all for our country. They train for thousands of hours. The attend the same boot camps and schools as the rest of our armed forces do and many of them serve multiple terms. They give up every summer vacation and one weekend every month… that’s nearly a month of duty every year… and yet are not counted as “veteran’s” because they haven’t served enough continuous active duty or served in a war zone but they’re always there for us.

When floods and hurricanes wipe our homes away they help to recover. They volunteer for almost no reward ( the average monthly pay is something less than $200/month) and few realize the sacrifice that they make. They risk being called to active duty and flown into a war zone to fight beside our “regular” troops. They are your neighbors… thank one. A huge number of our National Guard and Reserve have fought in every war fought by America. They are mocked in film, laughed at and called “weekend warriors” but when our nation calls they hang up the overalls and put on combat gear. They show up trained and using hand-me-down gear from the parent services. They don’t complain that their vehicles are Vietnam era cast offs. They just go and do the job. Not all of us came home from that war in 1991. Never forget that. If you do, I’ll remind you. Not everyone has come home from these two wars. Never forget that either.

For those that have been and returned. Thank you.
For those that are still there, God Speed, Stay Safe and Thank you.
For those that have stayed home and taken care of business. Thank you too. In my heart you are all Veterans.

For those that went and never came home. Thank you most of all. Your sacrifice honors all of us.

For those that are put off by my posting a protest song along with this post. I think that it speaks volumes about the difference between my perception of the war and what was experienced and published by “non-participants” (though this song is about a different war). The person that likes a war the least is the solider that has to fight it. It’s not disrespectful of those that didn’t return to say that I didn’t enjoy being there. It’s not wrong to suggest that whatever the reasons for the war, the result was a good one.

In the Social micro-Blogging world this note would come across in 140 characters or less as, “what a fantastic day”. In the macro-blogging(?) world it comes across as the following.

This is another post that I’ve struggled with for a while. There are a couple of things that I’m really not good at and I wish I were. I can’t write riveting stories. I can’t write descriptive texts. One of the reasons that I’ve been focused on political posts lately, beyond the lucky happenstance that there was an election on, is that those are opinion pieces. I’m pretty good at writing opinion pieces… it’s what I do for a living in a round-about way. In my job, I live and die not by the sword but by the pen. I spew off a thousand words of opinion on technical topics in just a few minutes. I can wheedle, convince, berate, correct and stroke. I can type fast enough to hold a two sided conversation with three people in text at the same time. I can solicit and process opinions from 10 or 15 people via chat faster than most people can hold a conference call. I’m good at that.

I’m not good at this… suffer:

When I woke up this morning it went the way it normally does, with me laying in bed moaning, groaning and whining until my very wonderful wife tires of it and brings me a cup of coffee. I still feel the effects of my motorcycle accident early in the morning before my first cup of coffee. My wife says that she thinks it’s related to the sympathy limp that I get when I’m in trouble. I don’t think so.

Once I had caffeine in hand I spent the next few minutes alternating between putting pieces of clothing on and sipping my coffee. After fighting with my boots for a few minutes and finally managing them as well I stumbled out onto the porch.

As soon as I opened the glass storm door the world exploded. Seven or eight doves that had been on the ground around our feeders made a terrible racket as they bolted from the ground kicking up dried fallen leaves like jet wash and approaching the sound barrier as they headed for the trees. This ruckus, of course, startled the three squirrels who immediately ran full tilt for the woods like little fur missals launched after the jet fighter doves. A deer who was browsing on my grass watched all of this and rather than running herself seemed amused by it. Once she decided that I was going to stay on the porch for a minute she turned and sedately strolled off into the woods.

As I watched her I noticed the color. The sun was just topping the trees behind me and as it moved across the trees on the other side of the yard they exploded with color. From the bright yellow of the poplar to the burgundy of the sassafras to the deeply glowing red of the dogwoods it was truly magical. Being from the deep south in a location were the primary industry is tree farming pine trees I have no idea what “peak color” means but if this morning wasn’t it I’m scared to see what tomorrow brings.

Nostalgia. It’s a ten dollar word which translates into Redneck as, “Man, this reminds me of..”. It was cold first thing in the morning with the smallest touch of frost enhancing the riot of color. It would have been nice to stand there all morning but I was out of cigarettes so I went back inside, put on a too heavy jacket and climbed in the truck. The weather, the time of year and the smells of my truck reminded me of days hunting with my father back in Louisiana.

In those days there weren’t many people that hunted where we lived and the “back roads” were truly that. Actually, that’s probably not exactly true. Everyone hunted… there just weren’t that many people there. We would get dropped off at a likely spot on the side of a dirt road. It was a good place to hunt as a young kid. The likelihood that you’d accidentaly shoot someone walking up to you was absolutely nil and no one is likely to shoot the only vehicle that you’ve seen in 5 hours knowing that it’s your only ride out of there. There would be frost most mornings but it would quickly disappear once the sun touched the ground. I would sit there in the white sand on a raised shoulder of the road trying to be still with my toes, fingers and ears hurting. I would burrow down into my jacket so that my breath was pushed up past my ears to keep them warm ( a trick that later served me well in the desert ). Hours later my dad would come lumbering up the road in his old 1970 3/4 ton ford four wheel drive pickup. This was a test of will. The child in you wanted to run headlong for the heated truck and dive in. The young man in me knew that this was childish. It was more adult to walk slowly up to the drivers side, exchange pleasantries with the old man and give a short report on what I’d seen. Once he was sure that I’d suffered enough he’d say, “well, climb in and let’s go get something to eat.” Words fail me again in trying to describe that truck. After being out in the cold it was too warm. As you climbed in, a wave of heat hit you causing all of your frozen bits to hurt again as the feeling came back. The smell of the truck is what I remember most though. There was my uncles stale cigar smoke, my dads stale cigarette smoke, the smell of the cotton boll tobacco laying on the dash, the smell of stale beer and of gunpowder, mosquito repellent and damp cotton clothes. It was a heady, rich smell that welcomed you to the warmth of that truck. I remembered all of this as I hunched over the steering wheel and fought my own four wheel drive to the store for a pack of smokes and it awakened the urge to hunt again as it does every year.

A little later in the day I took a ride on the motorcycle to see what else was out there. It was the same colors as I have in my yard but multiplied a hundred thousand times. All through the ride I kept thinking to myself, “I want to write about this but I have no idea how.” I could try to name all of the colors that I saw but I’m not sure that there are names for half of them. There were the standard reds and yellows and greens and oranges but then there were a hundred shades of each on different trees. How do you describe it? There’s no way. You can’t. At least, “I” can’t. As example, my favorite color today was somewhere between red and yellow but wasn’t really orange as it was more yellow than orange and had a very bright hue. That’s a clumsy description and doesn’t even come close to inciting the pure awe that I felt as I gazed upon that magestic old pen oak. Now, imagine trying describe a hundred thousand colors in this way. As I thought about different ways to describe the colors I found it humorus that I saw peach colored leaves on a young apple tree and then, a short time later, I saw apple colored leaves on an old peach tree. Cute.

My friends at work each morning greet each other with, “What a Fantastic day to live in North Carolina.” We often get bored with this and try to come up with new ways of sharing that sentiment but always end up coming back to that one so, I’ll use it now to…

What a Fantastic day to live in North Carolina!

My buddy Rob and I gave a presentation at a local High School yesterday.   Let’s be very clear about something… I’m not very good at public speaking.  Even if the people that I’m speaking too are 15-18 year olds.  I’m not good at it, I don’t like it, I don’t want to do it.  So why do it?  Well, we had important information.  As I understand it the conversation that got me roped into this went something like this:

Me: “Ok, it’s done have a look.”
TeamMember: “Holy cow! That was fast!”
*pause*
TeamMember: “Wow! It’s perfect! How did you do that!?”
Me: ” I can show you how I did it pretty quickly but when i’m done you’ll just have that same dumb, blank, stare that always shows up when I try something like that. Let me know when you’re ready”