Mom! Dad!

 Different parental roles:

My mom taught me how to read and write, including cursive, before I started kindergarten.  She did that by giving me alphabet blocks and playing with me, teaching the letters, singing the ABC song with me as she lifted each block, making a game of forming words with the blocks, and reading to me.  I sat by her side as she read. She ran her finger under the words as she read so I could follow along. And one day I picked up my favorite book and just naturally began reading it.  All by myself.  From then on, my mother's role shifted to directing my reading and helping me understand what I read.

She taught me block letter writing at the same time I was learning the alphabet by making it a game to draw the letters and then form them into words, then sentences.  Doing so was never boring or hard for me.  It was fun time with my mom and I looked forward to it.  She used the Palmer method to teach me cursive, using the same books her mother had taught her from.  I loved the capital "G."  The capital "L" was okay, but I did not like the capital "B."  It looked bossy and mean to me.  I didn't like "M" or "N" either, but I liked "D" and "H" was okay.  Each letter had a personality to me and it wasn't till I began forming them into words and then sentences that they lost their individuality, subsumed into the meaning of the word and sentence.

I learned to read sheet music and play the piano essentially the same way, first singing simple songs together with my mother, which was fun and came naturally, then singing the scale while she showed me the notes on paper.  To me they looked like little balloons floating up and down on a fence.  Then I sat beside her at the piano and watched and learned, connecting keys to notes -- or balloons! -- and singing.  It was so much fun. I'm sure my mother corrected me when I made mistakes, but I don't remember that.  I only remember her smile when I did things right.  To this day, I can't play Ma mère l'Oye without remembering those happy days.  Sitting at the piano in the conservatory on a sunny winter Sunday with the north wind swaying the trees, the notes flowing without thinking from my fingers, I could be five years old again, sitting next to my mother together playing the four-hand arrangement, she smiling down at me, encouraging me when my little fingers couldn't quite reach.  Then, after, hot chocolate and a nap hugging my panda bear.  To this day, if I am feeling down or melancholy and sit at the piano I automatically begin playing Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant and it seems as if my mother is right there with me, comforting me as only a mother can her child.

My  dad taught me how to ride a bicycle, running along beside me as I pedaled, instructing and encouraging me, catching me when I lost courage and slowed down then started to fall over.  He guided me through turning a circle, then a figure eight, taught me how to come to a full stop with both feet still on the pedals, only setting one foot down as I released the brakes.  I felt completely safe and grew in confidence easily because I knew dad was right there jogging along beside me.  Gradually, he would take his hands away from the bike as he ran along side.  I never noticed that I was actually balancing and riding, turning and braking unassisted.  He was still there beside me, giving tips, praising, correcting, ready to put out a hand to steady me should I wobble.  But then one day as I pedaled along I asked him a question and he didn't answer.  He wasn't beside me!  I looked around and saw him far back, standing watching me.  I circled back to him, stopped and asked why he wasn't running beside me.  He laughed and pointed out that I had ridden all by myself far ahead, turned around, rode back and stopped without any assistance from him.  I hadn't realized.  I knew how to ride a bicycle!  And it just happened.  Thanks to my dad.  To this day, when I'm facing a difficult challenge or have to deal with scary things, I imagine my dad running along beside me, ready to catch me if I fail, reminding me I can do it, I can, I can.

Dad also taught me how to ride a motorcycle, dirt and street, how to drive a car, how to shoot (not that I really wanted to learn that, but he thought it was a skill I should master), how to care for and train dogs to be obedient and useful, how to behave around livestock, ride a horse.  He even taught me how to use a bow and arrow!  And a slingshot!  He taught me so many practical and useful things.  But maybe the most useful was, especially when anxious or upset, to slow down and examine what you are anxious or upset about and why.  Break it down, tease out the specifics.  Then you can do something about them, or at least manage your emotions regarding them.  He also taught me a similar way of dealing with recalcitrant machines and various mechanical objects.  Don't become frustrated and agitated if something doesn't work.  Examine it.  Determine how it is supposed to work, then see if you can discover why it is not working.  Once you've done that, you often have a good chance of getting it working again. 

My mother taught me how to cook, how to plan and produce a meal for two or twenty, how to sew and mend, how to design and measure to create a pattern to sew from so I could make my own custom clothes then and later for my family.  She taught me first aid and the care and treatment of the injured and sick.  When our cat had kittens she explained what was happening and answered all my questions. She taught me how to dress to bring out my best, and use make-up to conceal (a very useful skill come puberty and zits) as well as to enhance and highlight.  She even taught me how to stand and walk properly.  Don't slouch! Glide don't shamble! 

She also taught me about boys and love and sex and how I, as a girl, had so much more invested in both than boys did.  She told me that as much as I might like sex and consider it important, boys liked it orders of magnitude more and considered it so important that as men, they would risk any humiliation and loss of public stature and family to get it, with no limit to how much they desired.  She also taught me how to be a good companion to a man and how to know a good one when you find him. Of course, a lot of what she tried to teach me I didn't really believe until I learned it the hard way...so to speak. My mother also taught me about pregnancy, what to expect and how to deal with it, and the difficult days immediately after pregnancy and then the first, trying months of being a mother. And most especially she reminded me that she had made it through it all and so could I. 

 

 

Walking in Memphis

Elvis, The King, having a great time in the Army

 

 

Thinking about the old America my parents grew up in. It seems like a dream now.  It must have been so much fun to have been alive then.  Oh, sure, doubtless there were all sorts of bad things going on back in those days.  There always are.  But compared to today?  I'd take my chances with...what?  Polio?  The vaccine came out in the mid-Fifties and most people didn't catch it anyway.  World War III?  They worried about it, but it didn't happen.  The bad stuff that has led to now really got going with the assassination of Kennedy and the Viet Nam War.  So cycle me repeatedly through the decade from the end of the Korean War to the killing of Kennedy, basically the Nifty Fifties and Camelot.  

Call it Groundhog Decade.

 

 

 

 

War is for kids

From 1939:

 Also from 1939:

After a 1939 Japanese bombing raid on Chungking:

Also from 1939:

And from a few years later, published 
for distribution in Latin America:

Does anybody really know what time it is?

“The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God. Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful.”
― Martin Luther  

Dance, sing, listen to music and forget the world.
Enjoy this brief light we have between the two great darks.

 

A most unusual year

 There were no preying mantises this year.  Well, I saw one, about two inches long, pale brown, swaying back and forth on the front porch.  They used to be everywhere come late September and October.  

I saw not one dragonfly nor devil's darning needle or grasshopper throughout all of summer.  Nor any little green frogs.  No snails at all.  And after the rains, no earthworms. Not even one.  And bees -- what bees?  I saw a few lethargic bumble bees but no honey bees. There were no pumpkin spiders at all this year -- those are big yellow-and-black spiders with a leg span of up to about three inches that create big webs between tree branches just about at face height.  Lots of fun to blunder into one unawares.  So be aware!  Except this year there was no need.

Our apple trees had plenty of blossoms this year, but yielded very few apples. Ditto our cherry and persimmon trees.  The tomato crop failed.

The vultures are very few in number these days.  Not so long ago it was common to be able to count a dozen or more lazily circling high in the sky.  One morning I counted 13 sitting in a row, each perched on a fence post with its wings spread wide to catch the warmth of the rising sun. But that was years ago.  Now you may see one or two once in a while, always flying low, just above the treetops, flapping their wings heavily.

There were only a few barn swallows this year and they inexplicably disappeared about six weeks after they first arrived.  Last year's nests remained empty.  In September I saw an enormous flock of ravens flying from the southwest to the northeast.  Great numbers of them had already flown by when I began counting. I gave up when I reached 200 and they were still coming.  I've never seen such a vast number of ravens in my life, nor imagined I ever could.  Since that day, I have seen not even one.

A squirrel showed up in August and began chewing through tree branches, some quite thick, and dropping them onto the ground.  He went from pine tree to pine tree as if he had a mission to lop off their branches.  He also tore great strips of bark from their trunks.  After a while, he was gone.

I found a salmon, about 20 inches long, next to the rose bush beside the front room fireplace.  I thought perhaps an eagle had dropped it, but there were no claw marks on the body.

It was very cold in August, with thick fogs and low overcast lingering into the early afternoon.  Then in September and October we had a lot of rain, borne on warm, tropical southwest winds.  There are mushrooms everywhere.  After sunset packs of coyotes howl just outside the house and the dogs cower and growl but don't bark.

If I were of a gloomy nature, I would say that the world seems to be dying, at least our little corner of it.  Maybe it is.

You missed out

 

Just another day at the office, Navy style.

Japanese Men

One time when I was in Japan, not SOFA but on my own as a student taking intensive Japanese courses at International Christian University, I got around on a motorcycle, a Kawasaki 750, a large motorcycle for Japan, but of a size I was used to riding since my dad taught me how. I was tired of being groped by Japanese men on the crowded commuter trains (they would cut off locks of my hair, masturbate against me, take upskirt photos...you name it) and a motorcycle was easier to thread through traffic than a car.   I did wear leathers, custom-tailored Bates, black with red trim set off with white piping, that matched the colors of my bike.  I looked quite snazzy.

Anyway, one day I rode down to Lake Hakone (Ashinoko) and fell in with some Japanese bikers and became friendly with them. They were quite curious about an American girl tooling around Japan on a "nana-han." The upshot of this was that I was interviewed by a Japanese motorcycle magazine and as part of their story they arranged for me to be an honorary "race queen" (not that kind of race but the zoom! zoom! kind) at Suzuka Circuit.  They took a number of photos of me in my leathers beside my own bike, then in a miniskirt outfit with other race queens and in a bikini posed on a race bike and with some Japanese racers, all of whom seemed exceedingly bashful.  I thought at least one or two of them would have come on to me the way American guys did, but they didn't.  They just stared furtively and took snapshots with their own cameras when I was posing for the magazine photographers and looked away when I noticed and smiled at them. When one guy did that, then glanced back sideways at me, I stuck out my tongue at him. 

 I always found Japanese guys to be very weird in their reactions to White girls, maybe just American White girls -- well, me, anyway.  If I dealt with them in some kind of normal social situation, school, business, shopping, they were formal and polite at best and at worst tongue-tied and school-boyish.  But in an anonymous situation, even in such a public place as a crowded commuter train or bus, they were perverts. I've had Japanese men more than once leave a load of pud on my haunch when I was traveling on the Chuo-sen at rush hour.  One time after getting off a jam-packed Yamanote-sen train I found two gobs of cum on my skirt.  Whoever the creeps were who did it, you can be sure neither one of them would have taken the opportunity of us being jammed together to smile and say hello, introduce himself and chat me up, like a  normal American guy would have done.  Oh, no.  Just whip out his dick and jerk off on me.  

 That didn't only happen on commuter trains.  One afternoon I was sitting on a park bench reading when I heard a rustling in the camellia bushes behind me and turned around only to see an older man dressed in a business suit with his pants dropped and his dick rampant, staring at me and vigorously masturbating.  When he saw me looking at him he began stroking himself furiously, gasped and launched his load toward me, then pulled up his pants and scurried away. I looked at his leavings glinting wetly in the sunshine and decided I could read somewhere else.  There were plenty of people in the park, by the way, some sitting within a few feet of me, but none appeared to notice what had happened.  Well, my only consolation, if such I needed, was the knowledge that Japanese men did the same things to Japanese women.

Later I read in some weekly magazine that Japanese women would deliberately go to parks where they knew pervs would be lurking just for the thrill of it.  But I don't think so.  There is no thrill in being the object of some creep's public perversions when all you want to do is get out of your crummy apartment for a change of scenery and some fresh air.  I imagine the Japanese women just accepted that they would have to put up with the slimeballs if they didn't want to stay cooped up in their 1DKs all their lives.

Speaking of 1DKs -- that's a Japanese term for an apartment that is one room plus a dining/kitchen area -- at this time I lived in such, a four-and-a-half tatami sleeping/sitting room plus a tiny kitchen with room for a small table and chair and a little bathroom.  I was usually away at school, or working -- I modeled clothing for an agency with a big department store client.  Sometimes I modeled swimsuits or lingerie.  But even in this situation, no Japanese man ever even flirted with me.  If they accidentally made eye contact with me, they would flinch as if I had slapped them.

Anyway, one day I came home to find that my apartment had been broken into.  It had a little frosted window in the entry door and someone had smashed it, reached in and opened the door from the inside.  It was only secured with a snap lock.  My little dresser had been ransacked, as had the closet and some of my underclothing was missing.  Resting atop the dresser was a pair of my panties on which the thief had ejaculated, apparently using them to masturbate with.  I didn't know who to suspect and I was uncomfortable notifying the police.  If it had been a normal burglary, I would have, but .... I told the landlord I had been burgled and he repaired the window and offered to install a double-key lock but I decided I didn't want to stay there.  Maybe one of my neighbors was the burglar, maybe even the landlord.  Who else would know which apartment was mine?  

I thought maybe my motorcycle was attracting unwanted attention, so I sold it and bought a yellow-(license) plate or kei car.  That is a really small minicar subject to much lower taxes than a regular-size or white-plate car.  My car was a stupid-looking Suzuki Wagon R that had an engine smaller than that in my motorcycle.  I thought it would not draw attention to me.  I actually liked it because, even though I was stuck in traffic that I could have threaded through easily on my bike, I could carry stuff in it, dress for my outing without need to change and fix my hair at my destination, and not feel the need to take public transportation should the weather be bad.  I did somewhat  resent the expense I had to resort to to avoid being sexually harassed -- not only the car, but also a more expensive apartment.  But better safe than sorry.  And speaking of sorry, I felt sorry for all the Japanese women who couldn't afford to escape the eternal sexual harassment -- real sexual harassment, not the current USA "me too" stuff.

Thinking about it, the position of women in Japan may be why it seems that it is almost exclusively Japanese women who immigrate to America these days.  I don't think I've ever met a Japanese man who has left Japan for permanent life in the USA.  Typically, men are university students who go back home or businessmen assigned to the States by their company.  They go back home, too.  But I know a number of Japanese women who have fled Japan for America and would not go back on a bet.

 Curiously -- to me, anyway -- White men in the States don't sexually harass me.  Darn it!  Haha.  Kidding.  Maybe....  But black men have no problem moving right in and letting me know I get their motor running, all the while being quite charming and friendly, simply openly admiring my...um...charms and expressing the desire I elicit in them.  

 I suppose this is another example of Whites being obedient to public mores, however restrictive they may be or how much they chafe under them, while blacks don't really GAF and just do whatever they feel like doing.  I suspect a lot of White guys envy them their freedom.  Of course, you can't have a civilization or even a viable civil society if everyone openly indulges their basest appetites. 

I also suppose that my getting rid of my motorcycle in order to better fit into Japanese female behavior norms is an example of being obedient to public mores.  There are always costs to just doing whatever you want to do.  Fitting in is a kind of protective mimicry.

What a contrast all this is with Japanese men!  They may have had the same desires as American black men but never expressed them to me but instead furtively satisfied themselves through me with no consideration for how their acts affected me, how I might be embarrassed, shamed, humiliated, angered or frightened by not only what they did, but the way they did it. The only way to have any influence on them might have been to shame them, but as a foreigner, an alien outsider, that wasn't possible for me.  And from what Japanese women have told me or from what I have read that they have written, Japanese women also have very little power to shame Japanese men.

Incidentally, let me make it clear that I wasn't wanting a relationship with a Japanese man, I'm just noting how they behaved toward me.  But I would gladly go out with a homesick American sailor overwhelmed by being surrounded by the teeming masses of the Orient and so happy to see a fellow Yankee round eye. 

Lighten Up!

Enough grim stuff.  I had a great time this weekend, chowing down on some groovy grub with grand pals and then spinning some platters far into the night, swinging and swaying, rocking and rolling to the beat.  I even sipped some happy juice and got a little frisky.  ( A little? A little?  I can hear a chorus of voices... Oh, hush, you were clapping and cheering!) Well, why not? 

A joke:

A man was sitting at home watching TV when there was a knock at the front door. He opened it to find a policeman holding a photograph. “Can I help you?” asked the man.
The policeman hesitated and then showed him the photograph and asked, “Is this your wife, sir?” The man looked at the picture and replied “Yes, yes it is. Why do you ask?”
The policeman hesitated again and then said, “I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like she has been hit by a truck.” The man responded, “Yes, I know, but I love her anyway.”

 “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing.”
― Martin Luther

“He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long.”
― Martin Luther

  Oh, if you are wondering why most of the time I post late at night or in the wee hours of the morning it's because I'm always available to talk to my Marines when they need me, and that's usually when they can't sleep.

Thinking about War on Veteran's Day

War is something every man I have ever known was deeply interested in.
Why?




 

 

 

Calm and full the ocean under the cool dark sky; quiet rocks and the
birds fishing; the night-herons
Have flown home to their wood...while east and west in Europe and
Asia and the islands unimaginable agonies

Consume mankind. Not a few thousand but uncounted millions, not a day
but years, pain, horror, sick hatred;
Famine that dries the children to little bones and huge eyes; high-explosive
that fountains dirt, flesh and bone-splinters.

Sane and intact the seasons pursue their course, autumn slopes to
December, the rains will fall
And the grass flourish, with flowers in it: as if man's world were perfectly
separate from nature's, private and mad.

But that's not true; even the P-38s and the Flying Fortresses are as natural
as horse-flies;
it is only that man, his griefs and rages, are not what they seem to man, not
great and shattering, but really

Too small to produce any disturbance. This is good. This is the sanity, the
mercy. It is true that the murdered
Cities leave marks in the earth for a certain time, like fossil rain-prints in
shale, equally beautiful.

~ Robinson Jeffers



In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
~ Randall Jarrell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.
 

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
the fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.

Who would remember Helen's face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world's values.
~ Robinson Jeffers

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can still kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
~ Richard Eberhart

 

 Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
again, and ever again, this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I drawn near,
Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
~ Walt Whitman

 

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.
~ Carl Sandburg

The Train Stops

 

The bond between a father and daughter never breaks, but it can hurt each very much to maintain.  If you don't understand this story, you probably aren't the father of a daughter or a daughter.

 First broadcast August 23, 1976:

 

Odds and Ends

 "You men do not want women educated to do anything, to be able to earn an honest living by their own exertions. They are educated as if they were always to be petted and supported, and there was never to be any such thing as misfortune."
~ protagonist Laura Hawkins in Mark Twain's "The Gilded Age"

"The world is against me. Well, let it be, let it. I am against it."
~ ditto

Whenever I need help when I'm shopping, I always seek out a male store staffer, the older the better.  They are always kind and helpful.  The old-timers are the most helpful of all and I look for them.  My mother and father both say the same thing.  In fact, they taught me to do so.  Here's to old men, keeping civilization going one helpful act at a time!

“If we are to have another contest for the future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”
― Ulysses S. Grant

If there ever is a military coup in this country, it won't be led by Gen. Jack Armstrong, all-American.  It will be led by Col. Jaime Gonzalez, immigrant from south of the border, down Mexico way.  The English-speaking world doesn't have a tradition of the military seizing control from civilian authorities.  It's just not done, no matter what troubles we face.  But Latin America.... 

“Liberalism moves toward radical individualism and the corruption of standards. By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, liberalism prepares the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos.”
― Robert H. Bork

 In my HG magnet high school I had a teacher who said, "In my class I will talk most of the time and you will listen most of the time because although you may be smart I've been smart longer."

 “The fate of this man or that man is less than a drop, although it is a sparkling one, in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea.”
― T.H. White

Back when I was in high school there used to be a fad for making lists about yourself that were in the form of questions. This was around the time Friendster and TagWorld were things. Oh, and good old MySpace.  Anyway, the questions were things like what was the last thing you ate, what was the first thing you saw when you woke up in the morning, what was the last TV show you watched and so forth.  Kind of lame, right?  But everybody was into doing them, I guess because everybody else was doing them. 
A spin-off from that was lists of things about yourself. These were long.  I think one was called 85 Things About Myself.  There were no questions.  It was up to you what to write down.  I found them enormously interesting to read.  People would put down all sorts of things about themselves, often things best left unsaid -- those were the most interesting of all, heh.  I don't think guys were much into them -- I mentioned this stuff to one of my brothers and he didn't remember it at all.  After a while, the fad died, maybe because making all those lists made people realize just how trivial and dull their lives were, even their transgressions, so they quit making them. 
 So what sort of things would I put down if I were making one of those Lists About Myself?  Hmm.  Um...  Well...  There was this time that...  And another time...  Once there was this guy and this girl and I almost...  When I went to...  There was this homeless guy and he came up to me and...  My boss once called me into his office, closed the door and...  My boyfriend brought his friends over to the house and they all got...and we played...and they suggested...and I said...and then I was the only one except... and he and I...right in front of...  When I was just...my uncle...and when my mother found out...  The first time I ever...was at my friend's house when she invited me to a sleepover and we...  Once when my mother was away visiting relatives I saw my dad's...when he was... and I said...and he said...and then we...and while we were my brother and his friend came in and they...and afterwards I could hardly...but they wanted...so I.... 
Okay, as you can see, I got nothing. And you have a dirty mind!

 “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

I once knew a phone sex operator.  At the time, she had been divorced for nine years and hadn't been on a date or had sex since her divorce.  When she got divorced, she assumed that sooner or later she would find somebody else and her life would resume its normal course.  But nothing ever happened. 
She was middle-aged, with an older child and a job that kept her on her feet all day.  When she got home, all she wanted to do was take off her shoes and rest. 
She got into doing phone sex by answering an ad for audio text operators.  She thought it would be transcribing phone calls for deaf people or something.  But she needed the extra money so she took the job and soon found she was good at it and began making more money than she did at her day job, so she quit that to devote herself full time to her new profession.  But the job turned her into a recluse.  She worked from home and only made infrequent and quick trips to the grocery store because every minute away from the phone was a potential dollar lost (the phone sex calls netted her a dollar minute). 
She stopped taking calls from friends and family, including her daughter, who had gone off to college, because she didn't want to lose paying calls.  After a while, they stopped calling. 
She realized the job, well-paying as it was, was destroying her life so she quit, but the only job she found was stressful and tedious and paid just $8 an hour, not enough for her to live on.  So she went back to being a phone sex operator and a recluse.  She said if it wasn't for her phone pervies she would have no social life at all.

“The People's' historic duty was to become a nameless herd and submit to the absolute control of a small pack of wily and vicious intellectuals.”
― Charles Portis

The purported decline in reaction times as a sign of declining IQ is intriguing. There's a bar game you can play where someone holds up a dollar bill and you position your fingers over it to catch it when he releases it. If you do, then you can keep the dollar. If you can't, you have to pay him a dollar. Supposedly, it's impossible to catch the bill, but I can do it easily, and so can my brothers and, of course, my dad, who taught the game to us.
What I wonder is: if it's supposed to be impossible to catch the falling dollar, why did this ever become a game? At some point, enough people must have been able to catch the falling dollar that it made it a fun thing to try with your friends. Otherwise, why bother?
Maybe this is a sign of generally falling intelligence.

 “If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.”
― Dorothy Parker

Once when I was a senior in high school I went with my boyfriend to an air show at Van Nuys airport.  He wanted to see the old airplanes and I wanted to see him.  I dressed as if I were going on a hot date because I thought we would stop by for a few minutes and then have a nice meal at the nearby World War One-themed 94th Aero Squadron Restaurant, one of my favorites, and then go do ... something ... else.  So I wore red four-inch mules and a form-fitting red miniskirt over red lace thong panties with a red lace half-cup push-up bra under a low-cut off-the-shoulder red top.  Looking back, I must have looked like a very sexy fire extinguisher. 
I skipped out of the house just as my mother spotted me and demanded, "Young lady, where do you think you're going dressed like that? Hey! Come back he--!"  Too late.  Well, I was a teenager.
At the airport there was a C-46, a B-24 and a B-29 on static display and a  dual-seat P-51D and a B-25J they were selling rides in.  Of course, there were some T-6s.  I knew all those airplanes by sight because I had been dragged to airshows and aviation museums since before I was in kindergarten by my dad.  My brothers were nuts for them but me...not so much. 
Anyway, my boyfriend was in heaven and climbed all through the planes, which I didn't want to do because I was not dressed for it, and talked and talked to the docents.  I eventually got bored standing around being ignored, plus it was hot in the sunshine out on the ramp, so I wandered off to find some shade.  There were crowds around the big bombers, the cargo plane and the Mustang, but only a few people by the B-25 so I sought out the shade under its wings.  It smelled of hot metal, paint and rubber, oil and high-octane gasoline.  They were selling rides for $250 and two or three customers were about to climb aboard. 
One of the crew members approached me smiling and I thought he was going to tell me I had to move away because they were going to be taking off, but instead he asked me if I wanted to go along on the flight.  I said I didn't have $250 but he said there was room since they hadn't sold out so why not come along? 
I hesitated, knowing old airplanes are full of dirt and grease and sharp corners and I wasn't dressed for that.  I also looked at the aft ladder the other passengers were climbing up and doubted I'd be able to manage it in my heels and tight skirt. 
The guy must have read my mind because he said, "C'm'ere," and steered me to the front hatch which he pulled open and then grabbed me by the waist and boosted me up over his head, telling me to grab something and pull myself in as he pushed me up.  So before I knew it I was inside the old bird on my hands and knees.
  He hauled himself up right behind me and steered me through the tunnel below the cockpit into the bombardier's compartment in the nose, steadying and directing me a little more literally hands-on than was strictly necessary as he helped me lie on my back and pull myself forward by the two handrails overhead, then helping me get strapped into the jump seat.  My shoes came off in the tunnel and he fetched them and put them back on my feet after I was seated.  He said he had to get to the cockpit while we took off as he was the co-pilot but after we were airborne he would be back. 
We took off with a rattling roar and flew south towards Catalina Island, thundering low over San Pedro after passing Signal Hill then climbing high as we crossed the channel before soaring over Avalon and Blackjack Peak. My friend the co-pilot did come back and crouched next to me, draping his arm across my shoulders and squeezing me to reassure me, I assumed, as well as to help brace himself as we maneuvered through some steep turns. The view was magnificent from the glassed-in nose.  I spotted the Banning House Lodge above Two Harbors where my family had vacationed recently.
Then he helped me unbuckle and crawl out of the nose back through the tunnel, he behind me again guiding me along, then he boosted me up to the crew station behind the pilots' seats.  There wasn't much room so he stood behind steadying me with his hands on my hips  as I looked around.  Then he lifted me up again, helping me straddle the bicycle seat in the top turret gunner's position, steadying me with his hands on my thighs. The turret was facing aft so I had a good view along the top of the airplane to the twin tails and rear gunner's position.  Then he lifted me down and helped me get settled into the co-pilot's seat.  I got to try steering the plane.  The control wheel was very stiff and I could barely reach the rudder pedals, but I did manage to induce a few Dutch rolls which I got out of with the pilot's assistance. 
As we returned to the field, my friend helped me crawl aft through the flat tunnel over the bomb bay and slide down into the radio compartment with the other passengers where he helped me strap into an empty seat and put my shoes, which had slipped off in the tunnel, back on.  The passengers looked at me with some surprise and puzzlement.  One tentatively asked me if I was part of the crew.  I said yes, I was the bombardier.  He nodded. 
After we landed, my co-pilot friend helped me down to the ramp and brushed some of the dirt I had accumulated off me.  I had grease smudges on my clothes and had somehow torn my blouse on something, and my hair was a mess.  He led me over to the flight crew office or whatever it was and waited while I went into the ladies lounge to clean up. Looking at myself in the mirror, I swore I would never dress like this for a date ever again.  Jeans or cargo pants over granny panties and a tee or sweatshirt over a sports bra with tennies or, better yet, hiking boots, my hair tied up in a bun. If my date didn't like it, phooey.
When I came out he said I looked fine and if he wasn't an old married man he would ask me for my phone number and a date.  He paused as if waiting for a response from me but I said nothing. He bought me a cup of vending-machine coffee and we chatted for a bit and then he had to get back to his airplane and I had to go find my boyfriend. 

I thought he would be frantic, but he hadn't even noticed I was gone, so busy was he with going through all the airplanes, taking pictures and talking with everyone.  He asked if I had seen the B-25 take off and said he had gotten some good shots of it as it circled the field.  I said I hadn't really seen it take off as I had gone inside.  He looked apologetic at this and said he was sorry he had neglected me and suggested we have lunch.  So he escorted me over to the 94th where we got a nice table and I tried to get the date back on track -- my track -- but all he did was talk Sperry gyroscopes  or something.  Finally, I put my elbows on the table, resting my face in my hands, and just looked at him.  My lush, perky boobs were on full display practically in his face, but he didn't notice as he informed me that the World War Two Japanese, German and American bombsights all used Sperry gyroscopes.  Or whatever it was he was yakking about. 
After lunch, I asked him to take me home.  When I got in the door long before I had expected to be back, my mother was waiting for me.  I said, "Sorry, mom."  She gave me a hug.

“She dreamed of never again putting on tight shoes, of never having to laugh and listen and admire, of never more being a good sport. Never.”
― Dorothy Parker

Melancholy days

 November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And the earth sinks to rest
Until next spring.
~ Elizabeth Coatsworth

 November's sky is chill and drear.
~ Sir Walter Scott

The wild November come at last
Beneath a veil of rain.
~ Richard Henry Stoddard

 It is hard to hear the north wind again,
And to watch the treetops, as they sway.
~ Wallace Stevens 

 "The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear."
~ William Cullen Bryant

 

 

A Rebel?

 In a previous post I mentioned that some job interviewers had referred to me as a corn pone, and when I first started classes at an HG Magnet high school I was looked down on as some sort of yokel not only by many of the students but by some of the teachers as well, both because I was a service brat and thus of course the spawn of worthless human debris, and because I had a distinctive "southern" accent.  I wasn't aware of it myself and no one had ever remarked on it to me before.  I guess I picked it up from other service brats, there being a lot of southerners in the service.  I took an on-line test once that said my accent most closely resembles that spoken between Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, a region of the country I've never even visited.

I got particularly mocked for pronouncing the word "aunt" the same as "ant" rather than as "awnt." -- that pronunciation to me is really ridiculously snooty pants and I will not say the word that way.  I also pronounced "route" as "rowt" rather than "root," which once got me a severe scowl from a teacher.  The way I pronounced "know" also seemed to set people off.  

At the DoDEA schools I was educated at, most of the students were the children of career military personnel, and their parents very often were, too.  Most were old-stock Americans, pre-Ellis Islanders without a doubt and often pre-Revolutionary War pioneers, same as me.  Of course, the blacks were real American blacks with deep roots in this country, not Somalis or Nigerians. The most common non-old-stockers were the Latinos, but they all had ancestors who had been in North America for a very long time.

But at the civilian magnet I stood out as an oddity.   About 40 percent of the students were Orientals, almost all Chinese, children of FOBs.  They were very clannish and did not associate much with non-Chinese.  They had no ties to this country and no feeling for it as a nation and a people.  Another 40 percent of the students were classified as "white" but not the kind of whites I was used to.  These were Armenians and Iranians and Russians and who knows what else.  They, too, were the offspring of FOBs with no ties to this country.  The rest of the students were call-center Indians, some Latinos, a few African blacks and assorted.  I had nothing in common with them and they had nothing in common with me.  They all had "old" countries full of relatives.  When I said I had nothing similar and that to me the old country would be Montana or maybe Pennsylvania, they were baffled.  In that world, I was the foreigner.

One time at the end of a speed-reading course we were tested for speed and comprehension.  I scored 1,400 words a minute with 100 percent comprehension.  As the teacher read aloud the students' scores to the class, she particularly praised a boy who had received the highest score so far mentioned -- 800 words a minute with 90 percent comprehension.  I expected to be praised at least as enthusiastically when she came to my score, but when she did she merely read it off without remark and passed on to others, some of whom, who did not score as well as I did, she singled out for praise.  I was surprised and could not understand why she had ignored my achievement.  Later my mother said that it was probably simply because she didn't like me.  I couldn't think of anything I had done to offend her.  My mother said that sometimes people just don't like you, and there's nothing you can do to change that.  After thinking about it a while, I concluded that the teacher probably considered me a dumb hick who shouldn't even have been allowed to take classes at that school and my high score was just a fluke.  The service brat thing didn't help.  I did make an effort after that to watch my pronunciation and mimic that of my fellow students and teachers, and I made it a point never to mention that I grew up mostly overseas on Navy bases.  No blurting out that I had taken field trips to Kamakura or hiked up the slopes of Mt. Etna or mentioning that my dad joked that I had been baptized with JP-5.

The thing is, as far as I know, I have no recent ancestors, if any, from the South.  I don't know of any who fought in the Civil War, though I suppose some did, of course.  But most of those from back East were Anabaptists of one sort or another or Quakers.  Pacifists, in other words.  And almost certainly abolitionists. 

I do know of one ancestor in California who had served under General Crook  in the second Pitt River Expedition in 1857 and headed east at some point during the Civil War to try to join up with Crook's boys in what I think was the Kanawha Division of the Army of West Virginia.  But he never made it farther east than Nebraska, enlisting in a cavalry regiment there that ended up fighting in the Indian Wars that erupted in 1864.  He kept a diary of his service days, which I have seen.  He wrote mostly about personal things, as is to be expected in a diary, recording what dreams he had or what was served for supper, that sort of thing.  But he did mention that the infantry the cavalry operated with were all Confederate PoWs, "galvanized Yankees" he called them.  These were men who apparently were given the choice of being confined to a prison camp or serving on the frontier and chose the latter.  He also mentioned that his cavalry unit's slogan was "40 miles a day on beans and hay" and that the cartridges their Burnside carbines used tended to jam in the breech.

He did write about coming across the remains of a wagon train attacked by the Sioux, who killed, scalped and mutilated the corpses of everyone and looted the wagons, scattering the goods and personal possessions of the travelers across the prairie, kegs of flour smashed, bolts of cloth unwound and left in great ribbons of calico.  The oxen were slaughtered and feasted on.  The only things taken were guns, ammunition and the horses.  And, as it turned out later, some women and children.  He also wrote that his troop, sent to reinforce Ft Rankin, defended adjacent Julesburg, Colorado, from an attack by over a thousand Arapaho, Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, who in a series of assaults eventually overwhelmed the defenders and burned the town to the ground.  He noted that of the 60 men in his troop, 22 were killed or died of wounds as a result of those battles. But they did hold the fort, saving the lives of the civilians who had taken refuge there.

About the oddity of having pacifist and war-fighting ancestors, at least one reason that I know of happened during the American Revolution when the British paid the Shawnee to attack homesteaders in the Ohio River valley.  The German immigrants that included my ancestor had originally settled around Germantown in what is now a part of Philadelphia but later moved to western Pennsylvania where they established farms. I guess the French and Indian War, especially the Braddock Expedition disaster, led them to move even farther west in an attempt to keep clear of trouble.  But in 1777, the year of the Bloody Sevens as it was called, their little settlement was massacred by the Shawnee, only my ancestor, his brother, sister and mother surviving out of a village of maybe a hundred people.  The experience killed his pacifism and he fought through the Revolution, then lit out for the far west, eventually joining John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company as a trapper and trader.  To avoid having his hair lifted, he needed the protection of Indian allies so he married into the northern Cheyenne tribe.  His descendants were associated with the Bent brothers.  Some adopted the white man's ways, one of them that I know about becoming a wagon train guide on the Oregon Trail and then going to California during the Gold Rush.  Others blended into the northern Cheyenne tribe.  Two of these that I know of joined the US Army after the final defeat of the Cheyenne in 1879, one serving with the 1st Battalion, 22nd infantry, E Company, out of Ft. Keogh, Montana, fighting the Sioux,and the other serving with the 8th Cavalry, Troop L, out of Ft. Union, New Mexico. He fought the Apaches and Comanches.

I suppose all old stock Americans have similar ancestral stories.  Maybe they know something about their forebears, maybe a lot, maybe nothing much, if anything.  But one thing they do know, even if they never really think about it, is that this is their native land. America is home.  After all, they and theirs created it, one felled tree, one plowed furrow at a time.  And sometimes one rifle ball at a time.

After looking back over my long line of American ancestors, you know what?  I am proud to be a corn pone, a real native American whose people founded this nation, and a country girl at heart who always looks with love and longing to prairie and mountain, sea and sky -- and prouder to be a service brat.  I come from a long line of soldiers, sailors and airmen.  It's what we do.  It's what we're good at. When this civilization dies, when all the great cities are nothing more than grass covered mounds -- and that day will come to our civilization as it has to every other -- my descendants will survive, if only as mounted warriors with bow and lance ....

 Fiddler’s Green

Halfway down the trail to Hell,
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead Troopers camped,
Near a good old-time canteen.
And this eternal resting place
Is known as Fiddlers’ Green.

Marching past, straight through to Hell
The Infantry are seen.
Accompanied by the Engineers,
Artillery and Marines,
For none but the shades of Cavalrymen
Dismount at Fiddlers’ Green.

Though some go curving down the trail
To seek a warmer scene.
No Trooper ever gets to Hell
Ere he’s emptied his canteen.
And so rides back to drink again
With friends at Fiddlers’ Green.

And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a saber keen,
Or in a roaring charge or fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean,
And the hostiles come to get your scalp,
Just empty your canteen,
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers’ Green.

 

Fear no danger! Shun no labor!
Lift up rifle, pike, and saber!
To arms! To arms! To arms!
Shoulder pressing close to shoulder,
Let the odds make each heart bolder!