Mr. Perry

The mention of using a spotlight as a hunting accessory in the last post reminded me of a story...

My sophmore year at Small Town High, I took World History with Mr. Perry. Mr. Perry was a big guy, about 1,000 years old, and a character. He had been teaching history since Christ was a corporal.

First day of class he went through the class list, taking attendance.

"Abby [Oldname]?" he barked. "[Oldname]? You Bob's daughter or Chuck's?"

My Dad and my uncle. It was a small town. My Dad and my uncle had been lively (that is, pain-in-the-ass) students and athletes back in the day.

"Bob's my Dad."

Mr. Perry peered at me. "Yeah, I remember Bob."

Mr. Perry had been a coach years ago, and retained the figured. Stoop shouldered and wrinkled, he was a big - not fat, just big - old man. In the summer, he supplemented his income by working as a part-time DNR ranger.

The man had a gift for gab. He taught the Norman Invasion of England in 1066 in two days of lecture. Just stomped back and forth across the front of the room, occasionally gesturing at a map of the British Isles, and telling a story.

It was a good story. You have to be a good storyteller to keep 25 high school sophmores hanging on every word for two days, and he did.

The Norman Invasion, though, was possibly the only subject that I don't remember him working poaching into. Like a lot of small-town woodsmen, he seemed to delight in those who operated just outside the game laws, even if he spent a portion of each year enforcing them.

"So these cave paintings, they'd have deer in them, right? Because deer were a food source for a hunter-gatherer population. Of course, they hunted with spears..."

A gleam would come into his eyes, and we'd know what was coming.

"And now spears, they aren't an easy way to hunt deer. We all know the easy way to put deer on the table..."

And by the end of the year, we could pretty much chant the next part right along with him.

"You get you a million-candlepower spotlight and a good .22 magnum, and you get in the back of a pickup and find somebody to drive you. And you drive these backroads real slow a couple hours after dusk and you shine that light out into the field until you pick up two eyes...."

Mr. Perry also did a mean moose impression, but I cannot for the life of me remember how that came up.

Mr. Perry was a widower, and it was a shame to think of all that personality wasting away alone at the end of the day. However... At the other side of the school, in the library, worked Mrs. Murphy.

She was the benevolent second-in-command at the high school library (which doubled as the town library), a tiny woman who radiated kindness and gentleness. That was fortunate, because the library was run by an ony-slightly-benevolent dictator who none of us were bright enough to appreciate at the time.

A few years after I left high school, Mr. Perry and Mrs. Murphy were married. I smiled when I heard the news - it was nice to think of her being kind to him, and of him making her smile with his jokes and stories.

It was still nice a couple years further down the line, when word reached me that Mr. Perry had died. He left behind, in addition to one very kind woman, thousands of former students who remember not only the Norman Invasion of England, but the best way to spotlight deer.

Once upon a time...

I was reading Murphy again, and he spoke, among other things, about a particularly foul cup of coffee in Iraq.

Long ago and far away, I was a young Marine public affairs type stationed on Okinawa. As military "journalists," we drank copious amounts of coffee from sunup until the bars opened.

We had a particularly irritating "shop duty" which required one of us junior pukes to trudge up to our basement Public Affairs Office in the wee dark hours and get things set for the day. We copied and distributed the Early Bird (which came in by fax), turned on lights, did some other random crap, and made the coffee.

Since we were stationed on Okinawa, periodically one of our Marines would get to travel to Iwo Jima. Veteran's groups, VIPs, and the occasionally over-motivated wing unit would go to the island for various reasons, and they all wanted official photos taken.

Now, we are all aware that in the all the grand mythology of the Marine Corps, there is no more hallowed battle than the one for Iwo Jima. Blood and death and sacrifice and valor and victory and the ghosts of long-gone heroes...it was a religous pilgrammage to make, and any small souvenier was treated like a sliver of the One True Cross.

One dark morning, a young corporal had Office Duty. He trudged up the hill, copied the Early Bird, and took a copy to each appointed desk. He turned on lights and then went to the main office to start the coffee. The big can, he noted, was empty.

So the corporal went to the supply closet, where there was a big red Folgers can, partially full. He set the coffee, then went out for a morning smoke and prepared to start his duty day.

The rest of the office rolled in. As was normal, the old gruff master sergeant was the first at the coffee pot. He stopped, peered at it, and hollered for the corporal.

"Yes, Top," the young man joined the master sergeant.

"Why is the coffee clear? Or cloudy? But not black?" The Top was perplexed, as was the corporal. The young man immediately opened the top of the coffeemaker to ensure he'd put the grounds in. Yep - wet and black. He looked at the Top, and the Top looked at him.

"What 'coffee' did you use?"

"We were out, so I used the half-can in the supply closet."

A sigh. A long, drawn-out, master sergeant sigh.

"Son, you made coffee with the sands of Iwo Jima."



Anybody could have made the mistake, I suppose.


Note - picture above swiped from a gentleman named, I believe, Joe Richard, who has a very nice page dedicated to those who served with such courage at the gates of Hell. Their valor allowed us to monkey around on a Japanese island 53 years later.

Lonestar beer - Story Time!

At my last Marine Corps duty station, we served under Major General Evil. This particular general officer was the tool of Satan. He was simpering, political, pandered to any and all media outlets, and often stuck his head in our office to bitch at our officers for imaginary slights.

He once delivered a group ass-chewing to the lieutenant in my office, our senior NCO and me. Why? I'd been promoted and since we worked in a wing of his building, we should have told him. Rather, I'd asked the lieutenant (a fabulous officer) to do it, specifically to avoid having Evil General put my sergeant's stripes on (and the LT had done it, specifically to avoid having to listen to the general ramble on in our office). It wouldn't have been a big deal, but he seemed seriously offended that any Marine in his "orbit" would rather be promoted by a butter bar.

He also ordered the base NCO club to stock orange soda (his preferred beverage), so he could enjoy one when he'd drop in and annoy the NCOs who were trying to hide from officers and drink in the dark. This, it seemed to him, was camraderie.

Jackass.

Time passed, and the day came when General Evil was to leave us. He was to be replaced a one-star. I was tasked to narrate the change of command ceremony.

I narrated a lot of these, having been gifted with the (rare in the Marine Corps) ability to read aloud in a non-stilted manner. We rehearsed the parade for several days.

One day during rehearsal, I was standing behind the podium and smoking a cigarette while the base sergeant major chased field grade officers around the parade deck, trying to explain the proper manner in which to march the staff forward. A shadow approached from my right. I glanced over, caught shiny stars out of the corner of my eye. I dropped my cigarette, assumed the postion of attention, rendered a sharp salute, and greeted the general.

"Jesus Christ, sergeant," he growled. "Pick up that cigarette. Those things are expensive these days."

It was the new Commanding General, and he chatted with me a couple minutes while I smoked (nervously).

The change of command went off without a hitch. I resisted the urge to say, "Hurry up! Faster!" when the sergeant major passed the colors to the new commander.

The new general's remarks, in which he introduced himself, included mention of how happy he was that the local cops had never "caught up to him" when he was a young officer at our base.

Within a week, he'd had the orange soda in the NCO club replaced with Lonestar beer. That was his beverage of choice, and he'd often drop in and have a beer with his corporals and sergeants. Unlike when Evil General would visit, we looked forward to seeing the new CG. Yes, he was a general, but you could shoot the breeze with him.

Evil General retired as a two-star. Awesome General is still out there in the Marine Corps. And tonight when I saw Lonestar at the gas station, I thought of him and bought a six-pack.

So, LtGen. Weber, this one is for you.

About "Spook" - Story Time!

I've been getting some great ideas for a name for Black Dog. LabRat recently suggested "Spook."

Well...now I gotta tell you a story. Two, in fact,

First one, made very short: when I was a kid, my Dad had a yellow lab crossbreed named Spook as a hunting dog. Good dog. One day, he was gone. Swiped. I think my Dad is still bummed out about the loss of Spook.

OK. Story #2. We're going back to 1997, and Abby is a young Marine in the Basic Journalist Course out at Ft. Meade. It's an all-services course, and PFC Abby's primary instuctor is SFC Reed, a black Army NCO. He's very smart.

We're getting toward the end of the class and we're writing "features." These are different from "news," "sports," or "commentary." They're human interest. I opted to do one of mine on the museum the National Security Agency had recently opened at Ft. Meade (yeah - just for a minute, imagine the DoD training all its photojournalists on the same base as the NSA - where you can't take pictures of anything - that was an adventure).

Anyway, I went out and I did the story. The NSA museum is highly cool, by the way. You should go see it if you ever have the opportunity. They have pieces of the U2 that Francis Gary Powers was shot down in.

I wrote the story and handed it it. Of course, being "journalist" trainees, we had to write a headline. I used something along the lines of, "Terrorists, Spies and Spooks - Oh My!"

Yes - I know. Very gay. But that's why God made editors.

The day after we handed our features in, SFC Reed called me aside.

"[Abby], that was a great feature," he said. "But the headline's no good."

I was confused. Disoriented. "Why not, sergeant first class?" (The Marines always used the full rank and it drove the Army instructors nuts)

"Do you know what 'spook' means?"

"Yeah. A spy. Or a ghost."

SFC Reed sighed. The poor man. "Or nigger. It's a term a lot like 'nigger' in the south."

I was mortified. I did not know this. We didn't have any black people where I came from, and I just had no idea. It was embarassing. He didn't mark me down, and I never used 'spook' again.

So...I dunno about that for a dog name. I'd be all about it, but I don't want to be rude. Rude is bad. Since I discovered that people have alternate meanings for the word "coon," I've been very careful to not refer to "shooting coons in the barn when I was a kid," and I don't think I should backslide on this one.

I dunno. It's a shame the term has racist connotations, because I like it.

Story Time - The World's Greatest Flashlight

I'm not overwhelmingly into expensive shit. Oh, I like it, but quite often, the really pricey version is overkill.

But not always. This occured to me as I was rummaging around my Jeep the other night trying to find my keys. A Maglite would have been helpful.

But a Surefire A2 Aviator is better. This is mine.



Ladies and gentlemen, I own guns that cost less than this flashlight. Story time!

Once upon a time, Abby was at an awful little base in Iraq. I had a small Maglite that annoyed me. I was making plenty of money, and for once, my husband wasn't spending it all on truck accesories (he must have been overseas at that point).

One day, we loaded up the trucks and made a run up to Disneyland (Camp Liberty - where you don't have to wear your body armor everywhere!). Often, these trips involved spending time at the World's Most Evil Civil Affairs Battalion HQ, but they also always involved a PX run.

Now, we had a "PX" down at FOB Crappy, but it was:
A- rarely open
B- rarely stocked because trucks couldn't get through
C- rarely stocked with anything useful. Seriously - you couldn't get toothpaste there. Or shampoo. Or cigarettes. You could get Mach 3 razor blades, Cheezit (if you were one of the first four people there when a truck came in), and an issue of Cosmopolitan in Spanish. I shit you not.

So - the Camp Liberty PX was...amazing. It had...stuff. More than one flavor of soda. Folding chairs. Pillows. Steaks (this was the most amazing thing in the world and we fully took advantage of it).

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but when I was over there, I did not give a shit about money. $150 bucks at Amazon.com so I could read something decent? Sure! $125 on steaks so my tentmates and I could eat good meat? Sure - don't worry about paying me back! A lot of the other folks seemed the same way. We had enough, and damned if we weren't going to pay for anything that might make us smile.

They had a rack of Surefire flashlights. They had obviously been pawed through, and were all mixed up. Most of them seemed to cost about $70. Seemed reasonable. So I pawed through, too, until I found one with features I liked.

Tossed it in my basket. Got steak, toothpaste, cigarettes, lighter fluid, root beer, and six month-old magazines. Got in the World's Longest Checkout Line. Finally got to the counter...my total was like $300.

I paid it. Whatever. If it was wrong, I'd look when I got outside and go back in and get it adjusted.

Got outside, looked at the receipt. The damn flashlight was $149.99.

Now, I walked around in a daze for a significant portion of my time in Iraq. If I was not on mission and there was no immediate threat to my life, I just did not pay attention. So I shrugged. I felt a little sheepish, but I resolved to look up this flashlight on the internet at the first opportunity and see if AAFES had mischarged me.

Later that night, it was time to head out and send the evening SITREP. So I put on my armor and my helmet and grabbed a gun and the Flashlight.

I went out into the pitch black night. I pushed the tailcap a little. A nice, white glow. Not very bright, but even and easy on the eyes. Totally sufficient for reading or close-up work. I pushed harder. Holy crap! It was Super Beam! This is the xenon bulb. And it is amazing.

I sent my SITREP. Then, as was my habit, I trudged across the FOB to get to the internet trailer. At that point, we worked with an armor unit. There was a big open space in the middle of our FOB (there's a story behind that space, but it involves a fire and I'll tell it another time). Crossing the open space was the best way to get where I was going, but the armor unit persisted in changing out track on their vehicles all the time. In the open area. So there were always several lengths of tank track stretched out there.

People, if you have never stubbed your toe on tank track while wearing running shoes...well, it hurts. So I shot the area with Super Beam. And damned if I couldn't see all the way across. Clearly.

I got to the internet trailer and found that the A2 normally retails for $185-$195. Seems I got a pretty good deal. So I kept it.

I did make my tentmates join me outdoors several times to admire the beam. They thought this was weird until I finally confessed what I paid for it. Then they really made fun of me.

It is the World's Greatest Flashlight, folks. But it is also overkill. I recommend the G2 from Surefire. Even brighter (but without the lower-output LED option), much less expensive, and unless you plan on really beating your flashlight to shit, it should hold up almost as well. And if it doesn't? You can buy another one. You'd have to go through four and be on number five before I became more frugal.

But here's the confession. I love my A2. I love it so much that I want more insanely expensive flashlights. I need a G3. And an E2E. And a C3. It's like a sickness.

Story Time! INS

Several years ago, when I was newly released from God's Blessed Marine Corps, I worked as a security guard Up North. The company I worked for had a contract to provide armed security at federal buildings, and that's what I did.

Soon after I was hired, before I started my climb Up The Ranks of security guards, I got called to fill in at the Immigration and Naturalization Service for a week since their normal guard was...I dunno, fishing or something.

Yes, this was shortly pre-9/11. INS is now called [pause for Google search] US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Whatever.

This was the setup. It was an office in a small building in an office park. This was where people in all stages of the immigration process came to get forms, file paperwork, follow up on paperwork, have interviews, etc etc.

It was Hell on Earth.

The office opened, I believe, at 0800. People would start lining up before 0700. People do not go the INS by themselves. They take their entire families. We had zillions of hispanic immigrants, of course. This particular metropolitan area also has zillions of Somali refugees. And many, many southeast Asians.

OK. So we're getting the scene set. By the time the doors opened, there were eight billion people there. The average group size was...four people. The instant the doors opened, they formed a pretty good line (it's worth noting that orderly lines are a western european concept. Truly. Apparently standing patiently in line with the assumption that the que will progress in an orderly manner requires a leap of faith most folks from the developing world can't quite make).

Do not think for a second you could get out of line to pee or go out and have a smoke or whatever. If the guy behind you wasn't feeling kind (and remember - random kindness toward strangers is also a phenomenon largely confined to the western world), you were headed to the back.

Most of the line was out in the hallway. Once you got through the big double door, it continued through one of those maze-type things. After the maze, you'd see an INS employee in an elevated cage who would hear your issue or take your form, then give you a number and direct you to a seating area.

My job was to occasionally stick my head out in the hall and make sure the masses were behaving. Also, I was encouraged to offer them forms to fill out. Once they got inside, I was to act disapproving and scold them if they spoke too loudly, because that annoyed the INS employees.

The INS employees. The singlest rudest group of fuckheads I ever encountered in government. I seriously questioned the morality of returning to my post after the first day, since I felt like I was participating in great wrongness.

OK. If you work at INS, you have to speak to the public. I'm familiar with the public, and they can be really really annoying, but if it's part of your job, you have to treat the public in a civil manner.

Also, if you work at INS, a lot of the public you have to speak with will not have the greatest command of the spoken english language. It's just the way it works. Actual immigrants (you know, adults?) frequently never gain mastery of the english language. Their children do, but it's asking a lot of a 40-year old guy from Senegal.

So the INS employees were rude. Very rude. And the part that rubbed me wrong was that they were gratuitously rude to people who didn't speak much english, and over whom they had much power.

Listen - that ain't right. If your life sucks, yell at your spouse or your dog. Or quit your job, change your name and open a bar on the beach in Mexico. Do not take out your frustrations on a defenseless group of people that it is your duty to serve.

Asswipes.

Picture this. There's a man and a woman and she's carrying a baby and they have a 12-year old boy with them. They wait in line for five hours (I'm not shitting you) to get to the window, where some fat cow sighs in irritation (because, you know, she's like a GS-7 making 40 grand a year to sit on her ass and hand out paper numbers and it's just so damn hard) and shouts "what do you want?"

The man is holding a letter, and he holds it out and says "Buenos dias," then looks at the boy, who says "yes ma'am. My father got this letter and it's telling him his greencard is about to expire and he sent in the extension paperwork and the money and he has this proof and they haven't sent him a new one and-"

Then the cow grabs the paperwork and peers at it.

"He hasn't got the new one?"

"No. And he sent the money and-"

"Have you moved?"

The boy translates, the father speaks, the boy answers the cow.

"Yes, we moved last-"

"Well, that's why. They won't forward green cards."

The boy and the father and the mother confer, then look at the cow.

"We did not know. How does my father get his new card? He sent the money and-"

"It doesn't matter. If you moved then they destroyed it. You'll have to send another application."

"But the money-"

"That's too bad. Fill out this form and send it again."

Now, I understand that this entire system is fucked beyond belief. The employees who deal with the public are only a small part of the total problem. People send off these forms, which they fill out with great trouble and care, along with checks and money orders, and hear nothing. For months. Sometimes for years. And if they go to an "information office," they get treated like shit. For trying to do the right thing.

That ain't right. Listen - the vast majority of the rest of the world is all jacked up. You put an immigrant from some shithole like Somalia or El Salvador into a line with rude government functionaries, he's scared shitless. I mean, we're talking about people from places where just about any government flunky can disappear you. And I mean the BIG "disappear." They're not going to argue, they're not going to raise hell. They're going to go home with a duplicate form and get the best english speaker in their little community to help fill it out, then they'll either send a check or a money order representing an assload of money. And they'll do it again and again.

INS got away with this rudeness and incompetance precisely because they were bullying people who are used to being bullied. I know lots of rude government employees, but I've never seen one approach that level with any American.

And we all know why. Americans will only stand for so much of that shit, no matter how downtrodden we are. While working the same job, I occasionally filled in at Social Security Administration offices. I've seen poor people, hookers and 80-year-old codgers stand up and demand to talk to someone in charge. I've also escorted a few of the out of the building (usually gently) for exersizing their God-given right as Americans to not take any shit off of government flunkies.

Working with INS was one of the very, very few times I've ever felt ashamed to be working for the U.S. Government.

Oh yes...I did have a tiny sense of revenge, though. See, Mr. Abby is an immigrant citizen. And he lost his naturalization certificate. I dunno - it was there, then we moved, and it wasn't. So he had to get a new one.

So he changed into civilian attire and went down to the INS office. He stood in the line for several hours. Then he got up to the information cage. And the cow spoke rudely. And somewhere after the part when he slapped his ID card down in front of her, identified himself and began giving an impromptu class on common courtesy, and before the part where he went over the counter and tore her head off, a supervisor materialized and offered assistance.

Good for Mr. Abby. But not so good for everyone else.

We have a serious damn problem with immigration in this country. If we can't handle the routine paperwork for people who are doing things the right way, we don't have a prayer of coming up with a solution. And if we cannot treat those people who are here lawfully with common human decency, I doubt we have the bureaucratic dedication to really fix any of it.

Customer service is a simple thing, but it's a huge thing.

Story Time! Sparky and the Kittens

Once upon a time, not so long ago, before the DoD moved us to Florida, Mr. Abby and I lived Up North. We had a house, and it had a barn and a couple of ponds (it also had two bathrooms and a washer and dryer. Not that I'm bitter). When we bought the place the owners had horses and dogs and cats.

"Don't worry," they said, laughing. "All the critters are going with us."

Liars. They took the dogs, and the horses, and the emotionally damaged donkey, but they LEFT THE GODDAM CATS. And we're not talking about housecats, either. Or nice cats who lived outside.

We're talking about Barn Cats. They left us an indeterminate number of angry, antisocial Barn Cats. We were never clear on the number, because they were ALL orange. We had at least three. Maybe four, and possibly even five. I don't know. One was very large, at least one was normal sized, and one seemed to be retarded, as it wandered in circles and had crossed eyes.

And had they been "fixed?" Oh no, they had not. Hell, you couldn't even get near them, let alone catch them and take them to the vet.

So there we were, with this fabulous house we'd just purchased, and our two Bad Dogs, and this gang of cats that we were only aware of when we'd enter the barn and they'd go racing up the ladder to the hay mow.

That is, until they started coming in the garage. And peeing in the garage. It was a nice garage, too. Until it started smelling like cat pee. And they'd come in the window if they couldn't sneak through the garage door.

I can hear you asking now, "Abby, you guys are Gun Nuts! Why didn't you just shoot the cats?"

Well, we tried. Problem is, we actually kinda like cats, and couldn't bring ourselves to shoot them. We shot at them occasionally, but somehow, a couple of "expert riflemen" (by various DoD standards) continued missing.

Then the Bad Pups (my stepkids) showed up for the summer. And what did the cats do? They immediately produced a litter of three inbred orange kittens in the barn. And kids loooove kittens.

So we couldn't take advantage of the opportunity to trap at least one adult and the kittens and transport them to the Kitty Gulag.

Weeks passed, and the kittens moved out of the hay mow and took up residence under the mower deck of Mr. Abby's tractor. The kids continued to obsess about them, and we continued to envision the exponential growth of our inbred, garage-peeing cat population.

Have I mentioned that Sparky CANNOT ABIDE cats? Hates 'em. Several times he'd pursued the adult Barn Cats into a tight corner, whereupon the cat would claw his face most viciously, bite him, then escape. We'd already had one close call with him and an infected cat bite.

One afternoon, Mr. Abby took the Bad Pups and went somewhere. I went out the front door to get the mail, and Sparky escaped through it. Being a terrier, he made a beeline for the barn. Where the kittens were.

Shouting, I pursued him. The sounds of kittens yowls, Yorkie snarls and other horrid, animal fight noises were coming from under the tractor. I hit the dirt, reached under the mower deck and extracted Sparky. Noticing he was bloody, I carried him back to the house.

There was blood on his face and blood on his paws, and he was itching to get back in the fight. After ensuring both of his eyes were intact, I tossed him in the front door and turned to face the barn.

Shit. I had a bloody Yorkie, and, I was guessing, a scene of significant carnage awaiting me beneath the tractor. I figured he'd done a number on the still-quite-small kittens. I also knew that this was not something I wanted the kids to come home to. The situation needed to be dealt with, and as I was the closest thing to a responsible adult present, I had to do it.

I trudged toward the barn. I did not want to see what was under the tractor. I didn't want to have to engage in any kitten mercy killing. What I wanted, in fact, was for my Dad to come and Fix The Problem.

Oh well. Dad was 10 hours away. I entered the barn and flopped down on my stomach to look under the tractor. Sometimes, being a grownup sucks.

Three little pairs of eyes peered back at me. I reached under the tractor and scared the kittens out into the open. Where they proceeded to give me filthy cat looks. They were fine. They were licking their bloody little kitten claws.

I shrugged and trudged back toward the house. To examine my Yorkie. Who had LOST A FIGHT WITH KITTENS. I don't think he's ever really recovered.

In the end, the Bad Pups left at the end of summer. We kidnapped the kittens and, in what could be another whole NOVEL of absurdity, kept them sequestered in the house to give them some human contact. One went to live with a co-worker of mine and became the World's Most Spoiled Orange Cat. The other two went to the Kitty Gulag. And the rest? Well, I have to admit, we didn't mention that to the World's Greatest Tenant when he moved in...

Story Time! Wake Island

Although you might not know it from the last few posts, I don't drink a whole lot. That hasn't always been the case, though.

I washed up on Wake Island once, on the way back from a trip that had involved the Republic of Kiribati and drinking on a C-130 with the remains of WWII Marines. Our mission complete, we needed to fly from Hawaii to Okinawa. You cannot do that directly in a C-130, you need to stop.

And when you need to stop in middle of the Pacific, you stop on Wake Island. We landed in the evening and were to take off the next day.

Wake is a strange place. There are very few people there. There are no natives. I recall a handful of civilians running the airstrip and plenty of ghosts.

Being a small group of Marines (me, the C-130 crew, four honor guard guys and their SNCOIC) with an evening to kill, we commenced to drinking.

Canned beer. And I recall it being phenomenally cheap. Actually, I recall the folks who were stationed at Wake buying most of our beer. I actually ran the pool table in their bar - the only time I've ever done that.

After we consumed a significant quantity of beer, someone pointed out that there was a beautiful lagoon and a BRIDGE outside.

You can see where this is going, can't you?

This is the bridge.


It was dark and warm and the logical thing to do seemed to be to take an armload of beer out, then take off our clothes and jump, one by one, into the water, where we treaded water and drank beers the helpful locals passed down to us.

You know, treading water in a lagoon at night while swigging beer from a can ain't a bad way to kill an evening.

Of course, now whenever I hear someone say "If everybody you knew was jumping off a bridge..." I have to laugh.

I think that picture must have been taken at low tide, since I remember it only being a short distance that a beer had to be dropped. And a side note - there is some degree of fitness involved in treading water while drinking, especially if you keep it up for a while.

Abby and the Hippies

I promised a story about Oregon, didn't I?

Years ago, in the days before Mr. Abby, I had a long distance "thing" with a guy we'll just call the Sailor. He was in the Navy on a ship out of Everett, WA, and I was on Okinawa.

I said it was long-distance.

I was just past 21, and took a week or so of leave in the summer to fly to Washington. There, the Sailor pointed out that he had some hippie friends in Eugene and they'd invited him and me down for some event called the "Oregon Country Fair."

We rode the train from Seattle to Eugene (which was pretty - I recommend it most highly). We met up with the hippies and rode out to the Fair site with them (in their van - I'm not kidding). We'd camp there for a couple of days, the plan went.

Now, a little background about me, particularly at that point in my life. I probably qualify as a "conservative," but it's a stretch. Back in the late 90s, I was distinctly less so. I've never been a "peace and lover" flower-child type, but I'm pretty into everybody just doing their own groovy thing.

I was a little far to the left for most of the Marine Corps (my lack of a Rush Limbaugh quote tattoo on my ass leaves me left of most of the Corps), but I figured I could do the hippie fair thing.

Well, apparently two or three years in God's Beloved Corps had left me a little different than I was before. The hippies were all very nice, but they seemed like freakin' space aliens to me. The clothes were...well, hippie clothes. Not a big deal, I thought. I've got kind of a homeless park ranger thing going on, I can work with that. Well, no, Abby. You might be able to sleep in the dirt in your clothes for a couple days, but the Marine Corps has done something to your posture...

This was the hard part. I found that no matter where in this whole place I was, I felt like a damn federal agent or something. I could NOT find a suitable "hippie pose." I had very few just-standing-around poses in my inventory then, and they went something like this:

A - standing with my feet shoulder width apart and arms folded.
B - standing with my feet shoulder width apart and hands behind me
C - standing at the position of attention (feet together) with my hands in my pockets

That was about it. And I think they all went with a disapproving scowl. I felt like a fed, and the hippies looked at me like I was a fed.

So it was an uncomfortable couple of days. I'm not into pot, and if there's no marching, I'm not into drums. I don't get giant puppets on stilts, and I cannot function somewhere where there is no meat available in the food for sale. I finally managed to find beer, but it was some sort of homemade ginger atrocity that not even a young Marine on leave could choke down.

The only highlight was in the grounds itself. It's a beautiful location, and with any group slightly less over the top than the hippies, I think it would have been fabulous. They had the most wonderful communal showers I've ever visited (raised wooden decking, open air at the top, good pressure, warm, etc). The only downside was that it was co-ed communal showering with hippies.

Now if it had been co-ed communal showering with Marines, it would have been great. As it was, one naked experience with hairy, pudgy friendly people my parents' age and older was plenty. More than plenty, in fact.

So that was the Abby and Hippies in Oregon story. In the end, the Sailor and I parted ways on distinctly less-than-friendly terms, and I haven't been back to Oregon since then.

But if you're in the market for a big ol' Hippie Fair Good Time, the link to their site is below. Enjoy. And don't forget your shower shoes.

OK - I can't make the link work, so you'll just have to cut-and-paste.

http://www.oregoncountryfair.org/index