Key Board Banger

What pretends to be discourse on facebook about politics, just doesn't cut it.

2011-10-11T00:19:00.001-07:00

San Diego Tea PartyThe "Occupy Wall street" group is angry at the 1% in the USA that has all the wealth.......... Don't they know (in global terms) They are the 1% ??Like · · Share · 9 hours ago7 people like this.View 1 shareTerry Collins Wow, never looked at it that way9 hours ago · LikeKerrie Lee Wagenknecht I feel they are not angry at the rich...they are angry at the gluttony that makes them poor or less affluent, after working hard with no raises or no health insurance or vacation days. Just so the rich wont be poorer. They are mad because no one is being accountable for the deceit that caused the housing problem. etc etc.9 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark So how do you do that math? 300 million is one percent of six billion, not even a decent try, tea party needs to go back to school.9 hours ago · Like · 1 personDonald Wang I think the point is, they're not 99%.7 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark And the tea party doesn't represent a credible percentage of the US population either, and they don't agree with each other on all points either. They sure don't represent me, though I think illegals should be arrested and deported and defunded, does not mean I want social security to be abolished. The tea party seems to support contradictory beliefs and often not in their own interest but in interests of the one percent.6 hours ago · LikeDonald Wang If you've never been to a tea party meeting, then you don't really know, do you?5 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark It would be a waste of time, one tea party in San Diego would not be representative of one in Orange County or any where else for that matter. I don't agree with most of the nonsense they presented all year long. Owned and operated by the Koch brothers and a bunch of other right wing hacks. When I see a grey beard bad mouthing social security and one beside him with a sign saying keep your hands off my social security, I have to say...CRAZY!!!!5 hours ago · LikeSan Diego Tea Party Why did you click "Like" on this page??? Just to correct the ignorance of people you don't agree with?? And yes, Donald was right, its the point, not the math that the comment refers to.4 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark Guess what, I never clicked "like", I came here from a post some other person liked! Perhaps you can enlighten me on what I should like about the tea party.3 hours ago · LikeDonald Wang ‎@Gary. Please don't tell us your 'perfect group' is the Occupiers.3 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark Hardly, it would be the republican party of 1904, the republicans of the 50's, Nixon's environmental policies, and FDR's deportation policies of the 30's, neither party represents what it did those days and never will, abstaining is the only honest thing to do, I don't vote for the lesser of evils if they are both evil. Write in your own name.3 hours ago · LikeDonald Wang Well then, you deserve what you get. Quit belly aching about it. Nothing worse than some putz criticizing from the side lines, but too chicken to get into the game.2 hours ago · LikeGary P. Clark Principled does not mean to conform, follow the tea party brigade over the cliff, have a nice fall. I can accept what I get, you,on the other hand will take your mouth fed pablum and suckle on it forever.2 hours ago · LikeDonald Wang When we turn this country around for you, I wonder if you'll have the guts to say thank you. On the other hand, you'll probably always find something to belly ache about. Have a nice life.about an hour ago · LikeGary P. Clark You will not turn the country around when you can not define what around is. Just where in this conversation have I been "belly aching"? I asked you to enlighten me on the tea party and instead of engaging in trying to find out my views and expressing yours, you choose to find fault with my not voting like a robot. You could have asked if I found refuge in a third party, or if Ross Perot was a better choice than Clinton and Bush...or even if I follow politics that closely. However, you think I am a putz and I think you a robot and nothing was enlightening about any of what transpired here. My life will be just fine and your wallowing in trying to make this tea party work will be as useless as drying clothing in a rain storm. Farewell, Mr Wang, you will do better if you try to use sugar instead of vinegar. Politics is always, "What is in it for me?" You did not reveal what is in it for you, much less me. If you work for the tea party they should send you packing as you never advocated a single thing you wish to accomplish.7 minutes ago · Like

Is it Racism if you dislike illegal aliens?

2011-09-29T17:22:00.001-07:00

Substitute race for religion and the hate is just as bad, use the terms rich and poor, royal and peasant, on and on. If borders don't matter then it would not matter, but borders do matter and when the border leaks like it does, the resentment from the competition for jobs and resources heats up just as the rhetoric is on this site. I don't like the competition with people who will work for less or utilize the facilities of our society without contributing and assuming a similar language to mine. I am not entitled to enter any of the countries from where the border invaders come and take advantage of their society as they do mine. There are supposed to be three races and a ball bearing race is not one of them, or a foot race, car race but people would like to believe racism is just distrust, hate, jealousy, when in reality, racism requires the ability of an individual to have actual power over somebody. I can hate you all I want, it is not illegal until I can prevent you from exercising some human right this country says you possess. I can admire or denigrate your culture and so do all of us. There are not any of you who has not exercised your right to hate. I don't like seeing any foreign national flag flown in somebodies yard or car and I would not do it in another country. It serves as a sign of disrespect and most of us hate to be dissed! And yet here you can and live to see another day. Be grateful for the actual freedoms you have and preserve them by accepting the culture you are entering, don't keep the ones you choose to leave to come here.

Being illegal is hard, refused entry into Antarctica.

2011-09-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

I was heart broken when I went up to a penguin with my "papers", done on my own trusty word processor, and he or she, how do you know which one it might be?... and them they refused me entry into Antarctica. I would scream and yell at them, who do you expect to build your houses (nests) when all the ice melts, you short beaked, tux imitating bastards!!!!Since I was refused a visa to Antarctica, I hung out on a crab boat, there is a giant crap invasion going on there, and earned enough money to get dropped off in Chile where I worked illegally rebuilding the earthquake damage for a while. I then crossed over the Andes and got a job as a goucho riding the pampas rounding up some beef so the owner could sell it to Burger King, MacDonalds and Carls and the other joints who use cheap beef instead of Iowa corn fed Angus. That got boring so I hitch hiked up toward Brazil and entered there illegally, after evading the Paraguay and Uruguay police, they beat your ass if they catch you there without papers.In Brazil I got work as a female impressionist at a hoochy coochy club and was invited to a rancho up the Amazon. I was damn near raped and escaped into Bolivia where I mined for bright colored baubles, stuffing a wad of them up my rump to steal a fortune and make it on over to Peru. I hung out with some dope chewing Inca types and got a buzz on for a few months. They beat my ass and took my jewels. I got the hell out of there and headed for Columbia. Took a job as a coke submarine crewman and was depth charged by the DEA goons and barely escaped in my shark skin scuba suit to Venezuela, damn long swim.I caught a break there because I talked up the socialist line and that crazy President for life gave me a lift to Cuba when he was going to get his cancer treatments. It was hard to move around in Cuba, so many Canadians, they kept thinking I was from Ontario, but after eluding them and the European tourists, I slipped under the wire at Guantanamo and convinced a marine I was not a terrorist, so he set me up on a raft to get out to sea. I was swept up in a hurricane called Irene that put me ashore in Haiti. I pretended to be an aid worker and caught a cargo freighter to CharlestonBy now I was missing SoCal so I did some hurricane repair work up at Cape Hatteras, can always get a job after a storm if you don't have papers! i finally caught a flight west to Orange County just in time to make the next payment on my condo. Ain't life grand?

Link to my drawings on Facebook.

2011-09-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.58988873039.68816.556013039Here you will find drawings from when I was in my twenties until recently. You have to copy and paste the link in your browser, I haven't any idea how to link it directly.

Thoughts and posts to facebook on Earthday 2011

2011-09-01T20:23:00.000-07:00

Posted on facebook on Earth Day, 2011.On the first Earth Day, April 22, my first born son, 18 months old and his mom and a friend of ours, Liz, marched in Portland, Oregon. Liz made Ann a beautiful dress, full length, and it was yellow with lots of flowers. The flower power theme was strong then. A motorcycle cop kept bumping into their legs as the brought up the rear of the march. Cops had little respect for dissent.Twelve days later troops fired on students at Kent State. We were on the way back to the midwest from Portland. I thought the country would be in full revolution by the next day because of that action and thought I might get ambushed in my '68 Volkswagon. It was quite modified with dents and bullet holes, primer and blue with reversed wheels and big mud and snow tires.And you think these are interesting times!!! Johnson and Nixon heard horns honk outside the White house every day they kept the war running. What are you doing to end these worthless wars today? Have you even had the courage to state you opinion on the social networks?You either bomb them into submission or leave them alone. We won't do the ultimate degree of war, much less a tough, go for a win, and we won't leave them alone either. Now it is too sneaky and unfair to use drones on them, will we win a war with rubber bullets and firehoses, teargas? Just get out and forget the mess as soon as possible.

Iowa Straw vote in Ames

2011-08-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

Can I change the place of my birth on my birth certificate? When did Iowa, the leading state in literacy in my youth, become the land of the dunces? Are they really in Ames? There ought to be more students in that city that can still think than the 16892 voters that showed up there today. This crap doesn't even mean one iota of the result for the nomination next year. The press sucking up to these off the chart, far right wing fools is just a farce. Looking for ratings in all the wrong places. And Parry "with an A"...Good grief, how can anybody see this bozo as a president?

I am watching the straw poll and they keep saying the home schoolers and the evangelicals determine the nominee. Who and where are these people? I am so out of touch will my old home, I thought we were the salt of the earth, good old boys, hard working, honest and true. Did we import a bunch of the new Iowans?

Evangelical... That is how republicans refer to Iowans. Born and raised there I never knew any, never ran into that type of person until I moved to Missouri. I don't recall anybody being pushy with religion in Iowa. I don't think any of my many friends and relatives fit this description. If you are Iowan, former Iowan, do you know many people like this or has Iowa changed this much?

Secret Regets

2011-08-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Just know in, every day, you have choices, most are not critical to life, like Skippy or Peter Pan. If there are parallel universes, they must be infinite because the range of choices you make every day are too vast. Regret is wasted emotion, once done, that is it. You can have redo moments and correct a poor decision, rectify it, and press on. I checked out most of the comments on the face book page for this and it was mostly about screwing up relationships with husbands, wives, family. I did not see any saying they regretted not giving their life for this country or another country. Taking risks isn't always the best choice, playing it safe can be a good decision. Only thing worse is believing you know the actual future. "What if" games are played by planners for future outcomes and rarely are they right. The CIA never even saw the wall in Berlin coming down. I am sure they regret not getting it right. If you think you have to own every decision you have made that hurt somebody else you will be forever haunted because you have inadvertently hurt people you don't know just by voting for people whose decisions cost lives and ruined families you will never know. It can be carried to such extremes that it boils your soul in hatred of others or yourself. A waste. It was as it was and if you can't correct it, why bother to make it one more burden to carry to your grave. I don't regret a damn thing. No point to it.

Paying interest on student loans while in school.

2011-08-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

College graduate students will now pay interest on student loans while attending college. The don't have that deep of pockets, ever been to graduate school? You are just as poor or worse than when you were an undergrad. The country would be better off to have grants, not loans for college and fine businesses that hire illegals. No jobs here for college grads when business can hire workers cheap off the books. It cost a lot more to keep an illegal work force here, medical, welfare, and overburdened schools. This problem was not even discussed. Serious debt reduction must include costs from the impact of business hunting for cheap labor. No taxes paid, no contribution at all. Sorry my liberal friends, you can't keep letting the bleeding heart make all the rules. We need to end the military occupation of Japan, Korea, Germany, Iraq, and Afghanistan, end the lopsided ratio of rank officers to soldiers and sailors. End corporate taxes and charge every corporation a military fee for the use of our military to protect the airways, sea lanes, and overseas markets for them. All shipping from businesses importing to America get a free ride to move product under our military protection. Make the fee high enough to balance the budget and if that makes the products less competitive with American products then they will manufacture it here. You have to close the door to illegal entry from every country, not just Mexico. Complete the border fence. I just watched the Senate vote, all standing around, back slapping and looking like the fools they are.

Crap I have said again and again in some way or another.

2011-04-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

Two years ago April 4, 2008 crude oil was $106.23, the price of crude today the same within pennies. Gas prices peaked in the second week of July, 2008 when crude topped $147 and gas for super hit $4.30 US average. When oil was $106.23 in April, 2008 do you know what gasoline cost you? Give me your best guess. You are being ripped off big time!! You paid a US average of $3.21 in April of 2008. So why are you paying so much more for gas now when the price of crude is the same as in April of 2008? Here in Orange county it is no less than $4.11 for regular, 87 octane. Does your congressman have ears? Do you have a voice? When the economy tanks again because you have to quit buying products to pay for your gas will you care? Tomorrow I will drive 40 miles to add to my application for a job as an engineering assistant/draftsman. Maybe I will return to the working grind and long waits in traffic. What the hell, am I really going to do this? It will cost me more than $15.00 just to apply for work. Do I really think they are going to hire a 67 year old washed up graphics artist?

Never going to sanction theses bastards!

2010-11-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

Voting? NO! I looked all of them over and see nothing to justify giving a yea or nay for any. I used to vote for the least unfavorable but it is a waste of effort. And the propositions? They are worded in ways nobody would ever know if they voted for or against it by voting a yes or no. This election...No thanks!

POLITCAL PARTIES NEVER GET IT ALL RIGHT

2010-09-26T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have no political party and here is why.

Green Party
Californians need living-wage jobs, affordable housing, sustainable energy, WHO IS TO SAY WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE? single-payer health care and progressive taxation. Greens support vibrant economically sustainable communities, preserving environments, SOME DO NOT NEED PRESERVATION JUST CONSERVATION, withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, and developing safe clean energy sources. Greens oppose bailouts and corporate personhood.
Greens advocate:
Sustainable Economics: MORE BULLSHIT
Supporting workplace representation, creating living-wage jobs, affordable housing, public transportation, SCREW THAT WASTE and sustainable energy. USE WHAT EVER WE NEED
Implementing fair graduated taxation on one's ability to pay, EQUAL TAXATION, NO FREE RIDES, eliminating government subsidies to corporations, HOW AND WHY? and implementing carbon taxes. NO NEED FOR THIS SHIT!
Ending government indebtedness and deficit spending. IMPOSSIBLE!
Constitutional Rights:
Supporting habeas corpus, repealing mandatory sentencing, I LIKE MANDANTORY and amending the Three Strikes Law. THEY DESERVE IT!
Repealing the Patriot Act, withdrawing from Iraq and ending preemptive wars. WE MIGHT HAVE TO WACK CHINA SOMEDAY.
Requiring presidential election by popular vote, equal access to debates and state ballots, ranked choice voting and reliable counting methods.
Environment protection:
Promoting public-owned safe, clean renewable energy. PRIVATE IS EVIL???
Reducing global warming A FAKE ISSUE IF THERE EVER WAS ONE through efficiency, conservation and fossil fuel taxes. NO FUEL TAX!!!
Protecting endangered species, RATS AND COCK ROACHES WILL BE ADDED NEXT agricultural land, and opposing sprawl developments. JUST STACK US UP IN HIGH RISE CRAP!
Social justice:
Supporting single-payer healthcare and free public education. NO NEED TO PAY FOR ANYTHING!
Supporting undocumented immigrants' right to work. NEVER!!!!!
Ending torture and unwarranted surveillance. THERE COULD BE EXCEPTIONS IN TIME OF WAR

The Peace and Freedom Party is a working-class party in a country run by and for the wealthy and their corporations. We should not have to sacrifice our health, our livelihoods and our planet for our bosses' profits. We can tax the rich, whose wealth is entirely created by workers, to pay for the people's needs. We favor:
Bringing all troops home now.
Ending all discrimination.
Full rights for immigrants. NOT ILLEGALS
Free health care for everyone. GET REAL!!!
Good services for disabled people.
Restoring and protecting the environment.
Real democracy and fair political representation.
Free education for all from preschool through the university. MORE OF THIS FREE SHIT!
Decent jobs and full labor rights for all. BY DEFINITION, SOME JOBS SUCK AND CAN NEVER BE DECENT.
As long as our system puts the wealthy first, we will suffer war, police brutality, THE WEALTHY MAKE MEAN COPS DO SMACKDOWN FOR THEM??? low wages, unsafe workplaces and pollution. We advocate socialism, OH SURE, THAT WORKS JUST FINE IN CUBA!!! which we see as the ownership and democratic control of the economy by working people. If we join together to take back our industries and natural resources, we can work together democratically and cooperatively for the common good, rather than being slaves to the rich and their corporations.
Vote for those who speak up for your own needs, the candidates of the Peace and Freedom Party. COMPLETE WACK JOBS!!!

Libertarian solutions are the most practical and workable for strengthening our economy and governing our state. If they had been employed during the last decade, our state would be strong and not in a deficit. Thus, Libertarians work to:
Reduce government spending; THEY ALL SAY THIS!!!
Promote business development, which will create jobs; HOW?
Reform public employee pensions, which are bankrupting cities, counties and the state;
Privatize services that are best delivered by cost-effective providers; LIKE OUR WATER AND SEWERS, ROADS, RETIREMENT, JAILS....RIGHT
Guarantee equal treatment under the law for all Californians; IT IS AND STILL THEY COMPLAIN.
Strictly regulate, control and tax marijuana for adults, thus making it less available for children; and WON'T STOP OTHER DRUG ABUSE OR EVEN WEED ABUSE.
Reduce sessions of the Legislature to every other year. WOULDN'T HURT BUT THEY STILL WON'T BALANCE A BUDGET.
The Libertarian Party has candidates who will bring about these reforms, but first they need your support this November.

The Democratic Party is building a healthier future for our state and improving the quality of life for all Californians.
California Democrats were key in helping President Obama pass health insurance reform, ending the insurance company practice of denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions and lowering the cost of health care for millions of Americans. DID IT REALLY FIX IT?
We support Barbara Boxer and Jerry Brown because they are proven leaders who have what it takes to put California back on track. CHOICES THAT AT BEST ARE NOT GOOD.
Barbara Boxer has been working tirelessly to bring good jobs to our state and crack down on Wall Street corruption. WHAT HEADLINE DID I MISS, ALL OF THEM!!!
Under Jerry Brown's leadership, university tuition rates for the University of California system were $1,194 a year; today they are $9,285 a year and rising. Students attending the Cal State system were paying $441 a year in tuition; today they are paying $4,827 a year and rising. THAT WAS 30 YEARS AGO....
Democrats believe our state must make university and community college affordable for today's working and middle-class families.
We believe in rewarding hard work and expanding opportunities for all Californians in order to create stronger and healthier communities. WHAT ABOUT EASY WORK... WHAT A TRITE STATEMENT, NO REAL MEANING HERE.

The California Republican Party supports restoring our state as the nation's leader in economic growth BIGGEST WHEN IT WAS GOOD TIMES AND BIGGEST WHEN IT IS BAD and innovation by cutting taxes, ALWAYS WITH THE TAX CUTS, IT IS LIKE ASKING TO REDUCE YOUR PAYCHECK SO YOU CAN WORK MORE HOURS TO MAKE THE SAME MONEY. slashing wasteful regulations, DEREGULATION IS SO FUCKED UP AND THE THIEVES WILL FIND IT EASIER TO RIP US OFF.... and making California competitive again. We want to build a California where people and families are safe and secure because a vibrant economy is creating jobs and opportunities for everyone who is willing and able to work. COPS AND TOUGH COURTS MAKE US SAFE, FIREMEN AND PEOPLE WHO PUT THEMSELVES IN DANGER TO PROTECT US, GUESS WE CAN JUST HIRE MORE OF THEM AND THEN EVERYBODY GETS MORE WHEN THOSE EMPLOYEES SPEND THEIR PAYCHECKS.
Republicans support boldly reforming our bloated and wasteful government and reducing its burden on taxpayers to grow our economy and generate the jobs and opportunities families need. YOU HAVEN'T REFORMED SHIT IN FOREVER.
The Republican Party is the advocate for everyday Californians—people who were born and raised here, AND WHAT OF THOSE BORN IN OTHER STATES WHO LIVE HERE? and those who have come here to raise a family or build a business. We support protecting every Californian's personal freedoms and opportunities to have a good education, to work, to save and to invest in one's future, and in one's family. BOGUS CRAP THEY NEVER DELIVERED ON EVER...
Our democracy only works if good people decide to step up and get involved. Our doors are open to you and we hope you will make the personal decision today to protect, improve and build California by joining the California Republican Party. You can learn more by visiting our website at www.cagop.org today.

The American Independent Party is the party of ordered liberty in a nation under God. We believe in strict adherence to written law. We believe the Constitution is the contract America has with itself. Its willful distortion has led to the violation of our Tenth Amendment guaranteed right to limited government—which inevitably requires oppressive taxation. WHERE DOES IT SAY THAT? Its faithful application will lift that burden.
Freed from the lawless oppression of Liberal rule, BUSH WAS A LIBERAL?
we may then compassionately and justly use our energy and ingenuity to provide for ourselves and our families. We will then establish truly free and responsible enterprise and reassert the basic human right to property. YOU GET PROPERTY BY PAYING FOR IT NOT BY BEING BORN.
We believe in protecting all human life however weak, defenseless, or disheartened; UNTIL THEY ARE BORN THEN YOU DO WHAT? endorse the family as the essential bulwark of liberty, compassion, responsibility, and industry; and declare the family's right and responsibility to nurture, discipline, and educate their children. ENDORSE ALL DAY LONG, WON'T MEAN SHIT TO ANYBODY.
We assert the absolute, concurrent Second Amendment guaranteed individual right to self defense coupled with a strong common defense, DOES THAT INCLUDE A BOMBS AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? HOW ABOUT AUTOMATIC WEAPONS? a common defense which requires a national sovereignty not damaged by imprudent treaties. We oppose all illegal immigration. FINALLY I FIND SOMETHING HERE, WHAT ABOUT A WALL, FINISHING IT.
We support secure borders and immigration policies inviting the best of the world to join us in freedom.

Thinking about the fifties one night at a casino.

2010-08-29T14:57:00.000-07:00

I wrote this in the late summer of 2010.

I am sitting up at 5:30 in the morning in a nice room in a casino in Pala, California. I have spent two days here and now am reversed in my sleep so badly I can't sleep until the sun shines in the windows. I am trying to fall to sleep to music from the 50's. Bad plan cause my mind flies back to that time and the songs make my brain go bonkers. What a list of great songs I have been listening to! I am not going to bore you with a list because it doesn't matter. The feeling of that era does. I feel so sorry for people who don't share this, my kids, grand kids and the people of those generations. I know what my parents enjoyed for music because they sang to the music of their time on tv and radio, especially in the car on the many road trips we went on. They most likely did not think we were paying attention but the songs of the 30's and 40's are imbedded into my memory like the ones I am hearing tonight. These are my songs and the feeling of the sock hops, the jute boxes, the car radios blasting the tunes from WLS, KOMA, WHB and so many other great stations on the AM dial are coming at me full and fast and I am loving that feeling.

I recall as if it were minutes ago riding around with so many pals in their cars, hearing in my head the conversations, the singing along to these songs, the beers tapped by old church keys, the home made wine, the cherry slow gin, vodka and other temptations of our time. Stopping by the roadside to take a leak, a car full of guys making the snow yellow in the ditch. I think there were often girls involved but we didn't share that event with many of them, though it was not out of the question for the gals to need a road stop where they could dash into a grove or cornfield to get some distance between them and our prying eyes. The ditches should be lined with rusting cans of all the common brands of beer, and also layered with broken glass from the bottles of booze and beer of all the ages and finished off with several generations of aluminum cans to preserve it for the the archeologists of a future age. To locate the roads eons from now a metal detector would make Everly reappear on the maps as sure as Troy and Carthage. Not towns in Missouri, you know, the first ones a couple thousand years ago.

Anyway, these tune are ripping my brain up, like laying around this town too long, got to be moving on. I see my teen years flashing, a darkened gym, some cat laying the 45's out one at a time on the record player, hoping the needle won't jump and ruin somebodies favorite record. Stereo was just getting into the mix and mono was not just a kissing disease, it was a suck ass way to hear our music. There were bobby socks, Ivy league pants, tight angora sweaters, skirts below the knees, hem lines raising every year from junior high until I went in the navy and then they got even better. My dad said it just was repeating the 20's and nothing we were doing was new and to some extent that was true but it was fun thinking we were inventing all the new moves, the sayings and by some accounts we know we did spring a few original verbal retorts, some that never got much past the city limits, like “Next and Ainghhhnnn” You had to be there. Hot summer nights heading for the Roof Garden, local bands that are now in the Iowa Rock and Roll hall of fame known to just us. Guys we went to school with that made a mark, you who knew me then know who all those guys were. Some of them are still kicking around and some have left the building like Elvis but there is no doubt those bands really made us think we were special to listen to and dance to.

I sure would like to think our grandchildren could share such a rich time and appreciate the legacy we shared with our classmates and neighboring communities. Maybe the people who still make their homes in the area have passed along some of the memories and I hope that is true because I hate to think it will just die with our generation. My class was not the first of the baby boomers but it was the last of the depression and war babies. We shared the streets with people who paid the taxes to educate us and give us the opportunities we have had in our life time. They made it through the hard winters, hot summers, bad crops, dust storms, blizzards and floods. They lost many friends and children to a horrible war, never equaled in it's death total and hopefully never repeated. I remember the veterans who a few times a year solemnly revering those who suffered in that war. Our war was just around the corner but the threat of war was an overtone that we tried to ignore in spite of the possible next half hour could see the launch of missiles intended to knock our rock and roll party off the stage forever. The fall after I graduated we waited to see if the commies would stop and take the missiles out of Cuba and if that day would be the last for many millions. Could have been and how lightly we take the threat now is just our reward for staying the course and not letting those bastards take control.

I really get sad when I see how little respect there is for the effort our parents and grandparents made to make this such a great world to live in and how easily we pit our own people against each other over stupid social issues that are so meaningless. I could give a damn if you keep your baby, get married to the same sex, show off your crotch, vote republican or democrat, have a tea party or a sit in. That is just the kind of crap that keeps us from enjoying a nice night listening to great music and moving your body to a great tune. Give me my time of coming of age over all this strife of trying to impose your view on everybody else. We had a good time as teenagers and it would be nice to get back to the business of enjoying life, not pissing it away by letting others steal our pleasant thoughts and replace them with hate filled diatribes and believing all the talking heads who think they could do a better job running the show. I would rather sit here in a comfortable bed beating the keyboard and telling you about a better time and enjoying this music any day than disputing the validity of somebodies view of the world. It doesn't get better than this to me. Damn, I need to get some sleep, the sun is coming up! I will return to the role of telling you what to think at another time.

Wishin' n hope'n!

2010-08-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

When I lay my ass down to sleep
I wish for my soul off to creep
just pack my body in a box
throw it on a hole of a fox
let it stay there and rot
look around for what I've got
when it is time to read the will
won't be enough to pay the bill

The Big Oil Gusher

2010-05-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

Worse than Katrina? 11 dead, vs 2000 or more. Five years later they haven't rid themselves of the Katrina mess. I can only say those who live there make no effort on their own behalf, then or now. A month to prepare the beaches, place barriers and all they did was wait and let someone come and do it for them. I would be less proud of the locals who laid down on the job than the government who has tried to do more than that. Overstated is the damage done. A lifetime gone? Bull, it has only been 30 years since a well put oil in the gulf for 9 months and I don't think the fishing stopped for a moment then. In five years there will still be rubble in Katrina's wake and the oil will be long gone. The rate of flow is all over the place. If that well is a 70000 barrel a day producer, I think you should be buying BP stock. More likely a hell of a lot less than that. How many wells in the world produce at such a rate? Damn few! I hope that field is for real and is capable of such fantastic production and I wish it was a US oil company that was drilling it. At least the profits would stay here in this country. Isn't there some real news to cover like a child abduction, rape, murder, the war? Set that swamp land on fire, burn off the oil and let it rest a year. Keep your stupid boats and swamp machines out of the area. Put the BP engineer who screwed up on trial and get on with life.

Oil washed up on the Gulf beaches in World War II, German subs sunk ships there with little effort, oil slicks on the ocean were a common event in those days world wide. Are those beaches ruined for a lifetime? We know it is a mess but what do they think the beaches in France looked like in the summer of 1944. I see a congressman cry and think "Man, put it in perspective!" But, no, we have such a reaction going on here. Be thankful those are not the bodies of soldiers and sailors in the slick instead of birds. Even if there is a mass kill, it doesn't rank up with the worst the world's beaches have absorbed. When the rivers in this country take a notion and flow out of their banks, I see school kids, families, and neighbors filling sand bags and making levys to keep the flood at bay. I don't see any coverage of this on any network. They had more than a months lead and did little. Shame on them!

This Memorial day try to think of all the bodies that littered the beaches in all the wars fought be our armed forces in the history of this nation. Then think about those shore birds and tell yourself it is the worst disaster in a lifetime. Oil is natural material, in time it degrades. Save your prayers for the men who died on the oil rig!

My Grandma Fink

2010-05-12T05:12:00.000-07:00

Can't sleep at the moment, had a thought about my grandmother. She was about 4'6", totally white hair, once auburn red, Irish lady, went by the name of Beatrice Downs before my Grandpa snapped her up in 1909. She was born in 1887 at Mullinger, Ireland and came to the USA as a very young girl. They came on the ship The City of Rome and ended up in O'brien County, Iowa. She and Grandpa made Sanborn their home from then on until they died. What ever made me think of this. Both of them had little snap pocket purses, some folded money and change. But Grandma had also a little hanky, tied at the top with some dimes in it. Real silver in those days. If you were good she might untie that knot and give you one dime. That was for the dime store, or the drug store, or the bakery. For a dime you could get a Tootsie Toy, a plastic whistle, shaped like a ship with three stacks on it, a submarine, a wind up car, a balsa model airplane, lots of things at a real dime store. You could go to the drug store and get two nickel cherry phosphates, two one scoop dish of ice cream. For a dime you got two scoops and there would be chopped nuts on it with some syrup, with malted milk powder on it. For two dimes you could get a banana split, or even a malted or a sundae. At the bakery you got two or three donuts, a couple of cookies, a slice of cake or pie. What a deal. This was not 1925, but 1950. It stayed that way until I went in the Navy in 1962. No inflation, good prices, low wages, you would mow a lawn for a quarter or fifty cents. Buck an hour was a mans wage. What I liked best was getting three donuts and going back to Grandma and Grandpa's and share them with them. Grandma liked cake donuts and Grandpa liked glazed. I liked them all. Now maybe I can get some sleep.

Mothers Day

2010-05-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

My mom would be one hundred years old this year, she would have been a mother for almost eighty years of them. The one thing she gave me above all else was independence. As kids my sisters and brothers made a lot of decisions for themselves, not all good but we got to take a bite of the apple, good or bad, reward or pay the price for plain stupidity. As an adult I thought this was great, I still do and I don't care much for the over protective adult supervision that sometimes passes as parental care. You can never be prepared for life if your decisions are second guessed from the time you try to roll over in the crib. Some parents gradually let go and the kids learn to make the hard decisions and sometimes they end up as the wreckage of life we have all seen. My mom didn't raise any criminals that were caught. Did she stop us from some criminal activity by stomping down on that freedom? No! We got away with a lot and a lot of it I would not want my kids or grandkids to even attempt. So maybe my mom was not the prize mom some people would say. She took a big risk with us by letting us run out of control. All of us have been out of control behind the backs of our parents one time or another. We all surely heard the warnings given and maybe we heeded them and maybe we didn't. It all goes to the sum of experience that makes us what we are and that makes the approach we have with our kids different than that of our mothers and fathers. The way my grandchildren are raised is certainly a reaction to the way my kids were raised. What to me is unfailing in all the generations is the love of parents for the children. If that is uncertain to the kids then the parent fails. So I say "Happy Mothers Day" to the mothers whose kids are certain they were loved. Do your kids love you and let you know it? Then ya done good and thats all you can ask.

So you hate big oil

2010-05-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

So if you hate big oil just go green 100%. Then you won't sound like a fool ragging on them as you drive off, eating food delivered to the store with fuel made by big oil, or fertilized by big oil to live in a house with byproducts of oil. You can't say you are not somewhat responsible for every oil spill or leak because you all benefit from the product. As for the big leaking well in the Gulf, this well has to be one of the biggest producer in the world, thousands of barrels a day is beyond almost any wells I can find in the statistics. Most are in the hundreds and require artificial pressure to get that. I doubt the numbers provided by all the sources. Oil on water is measured in inches if it is heavy crude, light sweet is in fractions of inches. It is not uniform in depth and is in patches not a continuous flat surface but is the farthest extents of the sheen. The impact is mostly exaggerated by the environmentalist and is minimalised by the oil companies. To claim your life is ruined because you can't fish today or even for a few months is a little over the top. Lives are changed every day by accidents of all sorts, getting a diagnosis of cancer, a robber, any number of things that change you life are a daily trial millions of people contend with so don't ask me to cry for some fishermen in the big spill area. I would like to know what the actual daily production of the leaking well was and if it was choked off to contain the production but it is really hard to find an answer. Spindletop had 10000 bopd but later was at 2000, so are we to believe this well is equal or greater than a historical massive oil strike? I have my doubt it is capable of more than a 1000 bopd. What do you think?

Swearing

2010-05-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

Swearing

God damn son of a bitching ford! The starter sounded like Nona, nona, nona...first spinning the engine over rapidly then ever slower until it was unable to grind out one more revolution. My dad was pumping his foot rapidly, pulling on the choke, pushing it in and out, the foot feed, as he called it, was a shiny small pedal, next to it was the brake with the rubber worn down to the metal on the right bottom side. The clutch pedal was worn on the left side about an equal amount. Dad repeated the sing song refrain to the ever slowing starter motor and I was listening intently to the song. When it no longer would grind, I repeated the song and for my effort got popped with the back of an angry man's hand. I recall standing beside my dad on the seat, tall enough to look into his right ear at eye level. So I was as tall as all that, from the sitting position of a guy who was 5' 10”. Measuring myself, I find that distance to be 26 inches. Add about another one or two for the difference in my 5' 6” height and I might have been 27 to 28 inches to eye level. Give that another 3 inches to the top of my head, I was still in the 30 inch tall bracket. Yeah, I know I was a little kid, smaller than almost any other boys my age or even the girls all of my childhood. But even at that I was a young child when that incident took place. The pickup was a Ford, late 30's model, I think it was blue. Dad had this pickup before 1946, it got tagged by the train up by Hunting Elevator and we never saw it again. The occasion was trying to get a ride to church in a snow storm one Sunday morning. We ended up walking the 500 feet to the church. The snow was about a foot deep, I was the youngest of three kids. Mom was putting on Tom's snow suit and Joan was still in the house with them. I had a aviator hat with the flaps pulled over my ears. I had brown shoes, with the hard soles that would not let you foot bend. Someone seemed to think a kid would walk better with those stiff bastards propping you up. Kind of like standing a Kewpie doll up, bottoms of the feet flat and stiff so the doll will stand on its own. I wonder if that was ever ended for shoes, I haven't looked at kids shoes in years. Seems like little kids all wear tennis shoes or miniature athletes shoes. Air Jordans for tykes. What stupid shit thinks a one year old is going to dunk a basketball? Oh, of course, the guy who makes tiny basketballs with hoops about 30 inches high. So what does this all mean? I have a good memory. Yes, for such things, but it also says kids are heavily imprinted by odd events. I first heard the old F bomb in regard to Gary Smith telling me to ask my sister if she would do that with him. Terry Schoeder said it when we were playing on the merry go round in front of the school house in Everly. From then on it was game on for the first grade class of 1950. There were no off limit words in play, except when adults were around. You good get the soap in the mouth treatment and I did. Soap had no effect on my stream of swearing. I remember swearing a lot as a kid, listening to old men, teenagers, other kids my age, mom, dad, aunts and uncles, even grandparents. I was about four, he would have been ten. Not so much my grandmother, but there was a appropriate cuss for a sound reason even from her. My swearing hero was my cousin Butch. Even before he went in the navy he was pretty salty but so was his mom and dad. When he came home on leave he was on a tear. Three of four words were obscene, and it did not make a bit of difference if he was in mixed company or with little kids around. He could swear a blue streak and a few other colors. When I was in the navy I saw I was well prepared to communicate in the manner prescribed. I never was too keen on saying certain words in mixed company, but when I got out of the navy my little brother Rick was swearing in all manner in front of my mom. I could not believe it. My college years found women as inspired to swear as any sailor I ever knew and I married one that had no limits including in front of her kids. So if my kids are prone to the fine art, I say they could not avoid it, the impression given by all the adults I ever spent time with gave ample example that it was perfectly ok and by the time they were teenagers the lyrics in music pretty much cinched it that swearing was not going to abate anytime soon and as far as I can see, it hasn't. Seven words you can't use on broadcast air waves, sure...but listen to your tv shows use all the rest. And then there is cable and the movies. It is just high time to just fess up folks and admit we all do it and won't be stopping soon. There is little doubt I could have written this with a lot more flair and sprinkled the text with a lot of expletives but I chose not to do that, proving one thing, it is up to yourself to censor yourself. I pretty much ended my working career with a barrage of language that was provoked by a ceaseless stream of deadline pressure that need not been endured by anybody. Sometimes you have to let it go and sometimes it costs you more than you could have imagined. Funny how the same words I directed at the overbearing rat bastard are perfectly fine for the rest of the staff to mutter, utter, and stutter all day long. I have heard in the work place among the most educated, refined, cultured, matronly, demure women and men all the words I ever heard in the Navy and doesn't that just say it all? I rest my case, SWEARING ain't going away any more that AIN'T ain't going anywhere either.

Manners

2009-09-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

Remember when people thanked you for submitting your resume and told you politely they were reviewing it or not taking new applications at this time. Well, it is not this time or ever because you will never know if they look at your resume or not. The use of filtering software and the insistence you submit over the web has insured you will never be treated as a human again. Just try to drop off a resume at a firm you have an interest in seeking employment. You will get instructions to submit it on line. It is not just there, do people, your doctor, the lab, the lawyer call you back when you are forced to leave a voicemail? Do your families, friends and co-workers say thank you for anything. Less and less, I think I will cease any polite response for anything until I see it reciprocated.

I think I have gleaned all the information out of my 360 worth saving.

2009-07-03T07:49:00.000-07:00

I guess that Yahoo is trying to upgrade the blogs to be more like Facebook. I put in my profile and sent out invites but I doubt i have any better response on Yahoo than I did on 360, one blog had 195 page views the other 565 so some of my crap was imparted to a few people but to what end I can never know. I don't really know why we try to push ourselves out into the net world but we do and I seem to be just as interested in the net as always. I know it is a fountain of information and I have gleaned much from it. What this world would be without it will never be known but when it was not around things did not find a way to surface when they were less important then the press or networks deemed so. I like knowing some trivia about anybody who has something interesting to say. Hope you find some here from time to time.

I have had it with people who preach to smokers!!!

2009-07-03T07:46:00.000-07:00

Yes.. he had cancer and smoked and still likes his cigars and he died. All smokers hear it up to here! I am not a smoker so I choose to speak for them as it is not politically correct for them to defend their bad behavior. How rude these bastards are, they enter a smokers car and start in on how smoking is sooooo bad. If all the non-smokers gave money to a fund to actually provide a means, the patch, the gum, the pills that kill the craving instead of ragging on smokers I could understand their concern. But they commit nothing to the solution, just a diatribe about smokers at every chance. And the worse are those who quit and are still tempted by the familiar aromas, the strike of a match, the look, the smell of fresh tobacco, smoke in the air who deny they did it, liked it, and thought it was just so cool. Well, guess what? We are conditioned by the movies, combat, teen rebellion, and other social situations that make smokers the people they are. Few of us never smoked, fewer who never smoked and can handle smoking as a fact of life not consider it an insult to them. We, as a nation spend all the tobacco settlement money on info commercials that fail utterly to cause any smoker to cease the habit, and bitch at them for the ashes, the butts, the ads, and all the contributing factors to smoking. If the Cancer Society handed out patches, pills, counseling, support instead of spending all the money on ads that do nothing maybe some headway could have been made. I see smoking everywhere and do not see the number decline, the youth still pick up the habit, you don't scare them with your bullshit. What a failure this program has been! If you can't help then just shut the fuck up and go someplace where they don't smoke, stay out of the casinos and bars and suck your thumb with your like and kind, rag on the smokers and put on some more weight, buy your 5$ coffee and vote for green weenie ideas like global warming. Notice all the new taxes on smoking, not on rock climbing, motocross, racing of any kind. There are many vocations, recreations that injure and kill, why not tax them to hell and gone too?

THAT'S IT!!!

After 65 years, working as a newspaper boy to graphics guy!

2009-07-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

Work is endless repetive druge, just like life, same shit over and over.
A poem, when depression looms this is my way of screaming!!!

The longer I have been alive

the more my life story I contrive

I look back and see just when

all those moments became a then

What seemed of small import

now fill my head of last resort

Little seems worth looking ahead

so when night comes and I take to bed

the future is without appeal

and the past makes my head reel

It is so damn hard to believe

what my history now wants to deceive

The worst of my days I see clear

the best make my eyes run with tear

Had I known where the next turn took

would I need to turn back to look

What seemed so insignificant

bloom into a memory so constant

They won’t let go of my mind

and I search for what I can’t find

The best Engineer was an Artist!!!

2009-07-03T07:04:00.000-07:00

I hope some of the engineers i have worked with will take pause and think about who the really creative people have been in history. At least they ought to know his name. Most people do. Will the engineers who read this get the answer correct. Stay tuned.

Talk about the future. My 360 post in April 2009!

2009-07-03T06:52:00.002-07:00

Editing work at work.
You can just about expect when an engineer changes a drawing, chances are the boss will change it back to what it was before you edited the damn thing.

Such shit is what drove me over the edge on June 12, 2009!

All in all, I loved my job but this aspect was and is what those who ask us to do our thing ought to keep in mind. Lost production and over expense on a job is usually the fault of the ill prepared and sloth like thinking of an engineer. Dumbest smart bastards you can ever meet. There are exceptions but if you wonder why the infrastructure of the country is run down in less than a century when the Roman roads still prevail, think no more. The Romans did not go to engineering schools. The left the building to the best and brightest slaves.

The Turd of Life

2009-07-03T06:52:00.001-07:00

If my lifetime was compared to a turd, and my head was the first point out of the asshole of life, I am now hanging by my knees or ankles about to dip my head in the bowl of water, if I don't get diarrea, I might get out to the toe nails before I drop off and get flushed once and for all.

That's all the wisdom I can offer for the moment.

Remembering Everly, Iowa

2009-07-03T06:50:00.000-07:00

How did I get here

Where have I been

I just wondering

If I will be here again

Begin from the beginning or the present, that is the question.

D-Day was the cross channel attack on the beaches of Normandy, France. During the weeks before the invasion, England was transformed into an massive military base force encampment. The original attack was set for May 12, 1944, but was delayed until June 6th, making all the soldiers quite anxious to begin the attack. My uncle Howard Clark was among the troopers, a corpsman, he went ashore on the second day. I can only presume he knew of me when he entered the fray. I am glad to say he made it to come home and meet me. I made my appearance in the world on what might have been the day the Allies invaded France.

By June 6th I was having my own battle for life. I caught pneumonia and nearly ended my visit on the planet earth. But for the efforts of my tiny Irish grandmother, a nurse and teacher who steamed me all day and night for several days and broke up the liquids trying to drown me I would not be writing this now. I was delivered by Dr. Maris of Sanborn, Iowa with the able assistance of my aforementioned grandmother, Beatrice Fink, formerly Downs. I was born in Everly, Iowa at 3:00 pm at home to Venita Kay Clark and Leslie William Clark. The house where I was born still stands in Everly though my stay there was a short one. It was the home of the Hartman’s when I was a boy, located two and a half blocks east of the bank on Main Street on the south side of the street, three houses east of the Lutheran Church.

Soon after my parents moved into the house north of tracks and the stockyards that later belonged to Belle Roberts. I don't recall anything of this house except stories that my brother Tom was saved by our dog Mac from being run over by a car. I recall one thing people say I could not be old enough to know. I know I was in a wagon pulled by my sister, Joan, sitting in front of Tom and feeling the bump of the brick sidewalk and the fence along side the lumber yard, seeing a train at the station and crossing the tracks to the post office then located on the corner across from the park in Adrian's house at the front. It had four or five steps up faced the east side of the street from what was later Harms Implement.

There was a shoemaker shop below the post office where you entered from the south side into the basement. The barber shop was just south of it. Further down the street was my grandpa Clark's Café. I was less than two years old when we lived in that house. I also recall being in the café, barely tall enough to have my chin above the stool that lined the counter. I used to crawl into the counters and remember them being like a tunnel with cigar and candy boxes stacked inside. The pop cooler was the kind that had two lids, hinged in the middle of each, so the lid could be opened from either side and the water was iced and very cold when you reached in to get one. I remember being held up to get my own. I remember the ice cream cones grandpa would make for us and how busy the place was.

My uncle Ernie’s John Deere shop was just across the street, still there in Everly, the big plate glass windows boarded up. When the first TV was on display it was in those windows, my dad was the TV repair man and put up a very tall antenna, most likely over 50' high. The TV got an Omaha station, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Winnipeg and Rock Island, sometimes Kansas City and St. Louis. It could be very clear or just a mass of snow. We watched the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports a lot with boxing and wrestling, Milton Berl and Ed Sullivan. Lots of people never had a TV until the mid 50's so the shop was always full on open nights, usually Saturday all year long and on Wednesdays also in the summer. Everly had a movie theater located on the west side of Main, next to the trucking shop and the Everly News run by Mr. Gibbs. Tanny's Bar, an office building for the insurance man, Merle Rowles. Merle was Mr. EVERLY, you need an MC, need any civic minded guy to step forward, he was always involved. There were quite a number of Mr. Everly promotion types but Merle was at the top of town booster types.

Next to his office was the grocery store, later Cecil and Vera Peterson's store. You could buy clothing and some dime store items, toys, gadgets as well as food. On the corner was Masons Lodge. They had lots of uniforms and flags in there. My grandpa was a Mason. I don't know much about them from that time, just that it was there and I had been inside on occasion. The Everly State Bank was across the street, president of the bank was my boy pal’s dad, Dave Cuttel. Chuck and I along with about 17 other kids spent all twelve years together in school. Dave was in WWII and flew a hell of a lot of B24 missions. He had a photo of his plane on the wall in the living room of the house where Darrel Walton lives presently. Darrel was my neighbor up on the north end and we were usually thick as flees. The bank was next to Froelich’s grocery, a larger variety of products than Petersons. I replaced Bob Frolich as an altar boy, my brother Tom replace Mike Morrow the year before. Rick Froelich replaced me. As did several others, those guys had more boy Catholics so they didn’t have to serve Mass every week like we had to. When they got old enough they substituted for us as well as my brother Kirby. I don’t think any of us really were that gung ho to do it but the nuns at vacation school, the first two weeks of June, would draft a kid and we all had to pull the load on that duty. First alter boy I recall was Johnny Norman. He went to the choir when Mike and Bob got old enough and when Tom and I replaced them, it was to the choir they went. All three were very good singers. I never wanted to be in the choir and got out of it. I was having deep philosophical discussions with the priest, Father Kolash, about faith and I was not destined to remain a Catholic. I didn’t go to church after I joined the service and skipped Mass every chance I got. The excuses were the papers came in late, being a paperboy had at least that perk.

A restaurant, Kronk's in the forties and later it was Molly's. Gertie Leslie ran it, Wilbur was a painter and their boys all did construction or painting. Those guys could run and jump like deer. Even faster was George Hintz. As an old guy, school janitor, George, around thirty then, dusted off our best sprinters in high school wearing his street shoes and jeans. The guys he beat were state contenders in the 100 and 220 yard dash in the late fifties. Gus the druggist was next to the café and Amo had the pool hall and beer joint next to that.

My grandpa's café next to the Amil Schmidt’s pool hall with Andy Schonewe's sand, gravel, and lime trucking office on the north side of it. The hall had a door with a one way glass that let you into the Stockmans Club in the back. This was in the days of no liquor by the drink in Iowa, private clubs were in every town. Andy was the mayor most of my days there. My dad wasn't fond of him nor were many others. He was a bootlegger in the 30's and had slot machines.

Leo and Virgil Morrow Hardware was next to Andys. You could buy lots of bike repair parts there, paint, tools, shovels, it was a great little shop for the kid who liked to build things… Me.

The barber shop was owned by Barb Kenyon, not sure of the spelling for any name I use here. I recall his haircuts with the short stubble on the back of the neck that I used to rub up to feel the hair snap back into its normal laid down position. He used shaving cream on you and a straight razor to clean you up behind the ears. You felt like you got your quarters worth when you got your hair cut there. He went farming later, don't think he ever got more than a quarter for a kids haircut before he quit. Hillegus replaced him, I think he was getting 75 cents by the time I graduated.

That takes us back to the post office. North of it was the park where the town had a memorial to the guys who served and those who died in the World Wars, later Korea and Viet Nam. The memorial is now located beside the highway leaving Everly to the south. The city dads put in a hockey/basketball court one summer in the east end of the park. Everybody worked, kids, moms, dads, poured a big slap, smooth as a baby's butt and that slab still holds water and is crack resistant as any slab I ever saw. I skated and shot baskets there a lot. There was a steel tennis net but I don't know anyone who had the tennis equipment to play there. I had to mow that park a lot, as did many of my pals. I think we might have gotten a buck and a half to do it. I mowed a lot lawns in that town, even the churches I didn't attend. Never mowed the school but just about every damn yard in town at one time or another.

The depot for the Milwaukee Road was across the tracks from the park. My grandpa was the agent there from 1916 until the 30's, he bought the café in 1926 and my grandmother ran it until she died in 1940. My mom said it killed her, she wasn't very old so I think it was a brutal job, long hours, open early, closed late. Grandpa sold it in 1948 to Tommy the Cop, Lowell Thomas, who later sold it to my cousin Judy and her husband Don Amick. They called it the J & D Café. The phone number was 25.

They sold it to the Roskens family who sold it to the Longs. I don't know if it was a café after that as I left town in 1962 to go to the Navy. I swept it at night for the Roskens so I could get a burger at lunch. We got the left over rolls from Molly for sweeping. Sometimes we lived off left overs when times got hard for my family in the late fifties.
Back to my description of Everly at the time of my early childhood. There were coal sheds by the depot, owned by the lumber yards, Slagle and Andersons. The block was filled out by Hunting Elevator run by Terry Linnihan, famous Irishman known for wild bets and corn husking feats. Just north of the elevator was the town water tower and The Club, a key club like the Stockmans where you owned your bottle and they poured it for you. They had a dance floor and I spent much time there as our pal Randy's Mom owned it. Alice and her boys lived across the street from it. Del Ennis's parents cooked there and they lived in a trailer house behind it.

Just north of there was Fears Trucking, hauling livestock all over the Midwest to market. They had 3 to 4 trucks and I went with Ralph on occasion to load hogs at local farms. I also road with him to Sioux City, Austin and Fort Dodge. More often I rode with the Adrians, Fred and Doreen, Don Bates, one of the drivers, and with my cousin, Dave Lynn, who worked for them after 1959. This is because after 1952 we lived in the north end of Everly just north of the stock yards and we loved to help load livestock. So often we took a day run with them to the market centers mentioned above. I also went to the west into Nebraska and the Dakotas with them. I wanted to be a trucker then. But art was in my blood and I have with the exception of a stint as a planner have had my hands and brain to make my living within the art world of some kind or another.

Andersons lumber yard was east of the Club and across from Slagles. Don Myers managed Slagle when I was a boy. To the south of Slagles was the Farmers Coop Elevator, east of it was Hormel

Stock yards, lot of cattle shipped out of Everly, hence the home of the Cattlefeeders. Andy had a lime pile and gravel pile east of the stock yards. Standard Oil had fuel storage tanks on the same block and Emmet

Frick managed the competing oil and gas distribution just south of Standard Oil. This was later to be my play ground and general territory for the kids on the north side of the tracks in the 50's and 60's. My uncle Ernie kept his used farm equipment on the south half of the block, the east end of a two block stretch. Farmal had the west end of the half block for its storage. My dad worked for both of them during his lifetime in Everly. Farmal later International Harvester, was owned by Ed Harms, later his son Jack, who had a new painted white concrete block building on the corner opposite the post office. Hank Brian had a service station and auto repair shop next to him.

A few feet south of him was City Hall and Library. The one cell jail was located in the same building. We held scout meetings in the basement. Bob Greg was our scout master. He was General Patton's driver in WWII. He had a lot of medals and could tell a great scary story at the drop of the

hat. His son Bob was in my grade from 2nd grade until about 5th.

Short History of My Clark Family

2009-07-03T06:49:00.000-07:00

My Dad's family.

Catherine C. Davis, mother of my grandfather, Henry Clay Clark. She was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1840. The Davis family at that time in the area were all related to Samuel Davis, oldest brother of Jefferson Davis. Nothing other than circumstantial and family stories links my family to that one. I heard the story from my family as long as I can remember that she was related to Jefferson Davis. Shows up in the 1850 Missouri Census living with Alexander V. Davis and family including Joshua, a possible grandfather and Nancy, the presumed mother of Catherine. She appears in the 1860 census now married to David D. Clark, my great grandfather. She died in 1922 in Everly, where I was born 22 years later.

My Dad's Grandfather, David, and Great Grandfather, Christopher Clark built a cabin on Bear Creek in Montgomery County, Missouri before the Civil War. I have a photo which was taken in 1981 by my Aunt Vi before it was torn down in the early 1990's. The Hart cabin, a mile away was my Dad's Mothers home place, was still standing in 1996 when it was shown to me by neighbors who knew of its location in the woods behind their own log cabin.

Clay was the second youngest of twelve children. He married Emma Hart, daughter of Peter Hart and Mary Beucher of Big Springs Missouri. Grandpa Clark was raised in a log cabin, Emma was raised in one too, just over the hill to the southwest about half a mile. That cabin was the one still standing in 1994 when I saw it. Mary was born in Martinsburg, Missouri, of Mathias and Petronella (Wandering) Hart, both of Germany. They were living in Rhineland, Missouri in the 1840's.

Viola Peterson, was born in Silver Lake, Kansas, on December 04, 1905. My Aunt Vi, such a kind lady, with good humor and creative mind. She was my story teller, family history. After college at Iowa Teachers College in Iowa Falls, she was a rural school teacher and later a cook at Everly Consolidated School where I attended school. She and uncle Pete were a great couple and the laughter was always present where ever they were. He was older than her, born north of Peterson, Iowa, on February 11, 1896. Harry and Viola were married on March 24, 1927 at the English Lutheran Church, Spencer, Iowa. They were so much a part of my childhood and life up to when they died, uncle Pete on December 27, 1973, Aunt Vi on December 28, 1985. It was 32 degrees below zero for the funeral, could not break the ground so she was not buried until spring. Oh, the Iowa winters!

My cousins Judy and Mary were the only children of Harry and Vi. They were born during the Great Depression, Judy on August 19, 1932. The country was in dire straights and they were farmers. No way to sell what you grew, they farmed south of Everly until retirement when the moved to town and spent the rest of their days in a small house on the south edge of town, in the flood plain of the Ocheydan River, getting flooded on a few occasions. Judy and Don Amick built two houses south and Judy still lives there today. Don was a decorated marine from WWII. He was seriously injured by machine gun fire at Iwo Jima. He spent the night in a shell hole, the only survivor of his unit, throwing grenades and firing all the weapons he could locate until reinforced at dawn. He very active in the American Veterans groups, Iowa commander for a time. He was born on April 21, 1927, you might notice he was too young to be in the marines when he joined, nearly too young when he was wounded. He died on June 19, 1991. They had a daughter, Susan Dianne who died at birth in 1956. Gregory was born February 25, 1957 and his brother Bradley came along on December 07, 1960, Pearl Harbor Day. Fitting day for the son of a marine. Judy knows the family history much better than I. She is also a talented designer and artist. I rank her my favorite older cousin.

Mary was born on May 04, 1935. Both girls were real knockouts! Mary modeled for Look Magazine in the early 50’s. When we had Christmas parties it was always out on the farms they lived on as kids. My Aunt would play Santa. I remember picking corn, milking cows, playing in the grove, the barn loft, riding horses and being loved a lot by the whole family. When we had baby sitters, most of the time it was Judy or Mary who got the job. She married Norman T. Miller, a really bright guy, who worked for the government in Atlanta, Georgia and Knoxville, Tennessee, where they still live. They had three children, Scott, Michael, and Janna.

My uncle Ernie was born on September 15, 1909, in Kansas. He died way too young, in May 28, 1958, of a aneurysm in the brain, it affected all in this family very much, just a year after Grandpa Clark who died on November 07, 1957. I was helping Ernie to tear down a house on a lot he was going to build a new home upon. At noon he left to go get us some lunch, when he did not return I walked the three blocks up to the back of the implement shop and found the doors closed and locked. I went around to the front on main street to find my way blocked by people who told me to run home and get my mom. I heard someone say Clark had died. They acted like it was my dad. I ran home and got mom and we came back, by then the body had been taken away. It was not my dad but my uncle Ernie who had died. My cousin Emmy was one of those most impacted by her dad’s passing. Last I saw her a in 2002 she had lost a leg to diabetes and was in the hospital.

Ernie married my aunt Myrna on March 22, 1939, she was born in Moneta, Iowa, March 22, 1917. I guess she never got along well with my dad and managed to live another 30 years, died a year before my Dad in 1978. She was remarried to a Johnson. She fired my dad from the John Deere Implement shop the next week. Dad finally got work in 1962 at Harms Implement, the International dealer. They never paid him over minimum wage nor let him do much of the work he was more capable of doing. You can imagine he was never going to get over that, he at least outlived her.

Howard Clark, the youngest brother of my dad I mentioned in the beginning of this yarn. Howard was born July 8th, 1920 in Everly. He never missed work at Culligan Soft Water in Spencer, Iowa, over 40 years, even with Iowa winters. They were always good to this nephew. My brother, Kirby, inherited his hairline, still full at the end of his life. Cecil, his wife, died on September 2, 1995, she was born on April 30 1923. Howard died on July 20th, 1992, both in Spencer. Old fashioned holidays and picnics are my fond memories with them. David, his oldest son is located in San Francisco. Robert is retired from the Navy in San Diego. Wayne and two sisters, Karen and Linda all live in Spencer.

Lone Tree cemetery has quite a few Clarks at rest on the hill south of town. Henry Clay and Emma, Viola and Harry Petersen, Ernie and Myrna Clark, Leslie and Venita, my parents, and my cousin Judy Amicks baby can be found there. Howard and Cecile are buried in Spencer overlooking the banks of the Little Sioux River.

Short History of My Fink Family

2009-07-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

My Mom’s family.

I have a photo of Ross and Bea Fink, my grandparents on my moms side, wedding picture taken in 1909. My oldest daughter, if a red head, looks a lot like her, both were and are beautiful women. I have another photo of the same handsome couple, about 40 years later. The white hair came about seven years after the wedding, the 1916 tornado that destroyed the Fink family farm shown below, also made my Grandmother's hair go white almost immediately. My Aunt Mate was known as the Cyclone Baby. My mom was carried a quarter of a mile away into a muddy creek without injury. My Grandma was hospitalized and Mate nearly perished because of a reaction to cows milk to feed her while Grandma was away from home.

In yet another photo show the Fink family plus my oldest sister, Marley, the teenager. Paul is on the left, Betty, Mary, Grandpa and Grandma, Marley, Pat and my mom, Venita. Great looking bunch folks. All of them played an important role in my life growing up in Northwest Iowa.
My Uncle Paul Fink, was the last of the generation, last Fink in the line. He was 92 when he died in June of 2004, he was born in April of 1912. Except for the 1940’s Paul lived most of his life in Sanborn, Iowa, working as a well digger. He worked with Kelly Johnson in the Skunkworks in Long Beach, California during the big war. He built P-38s and a few experimental craft then by hand including on a top secret project, America‘s first jet fighter.
Mary (Mate) the extra mom of all the grandkids of Ross and Bea, she sewed clothing for all of us, made us toys, had the creative edge, painted, did so much and had a house full of our history that went to auction to pay for the nursing care for Alzheimers, that same affliction that took Grandma Fink and Venita. I think she kept every card, letter, photo and nicknack ever to come her way, I have no idea where it is now but would love to see the things from her house again. Mate and Chuck had a son Larry, (Butch) who died of cancer in Kansas when he was 30. He was the cousin who was in the navy, as were so many of us. Navy guys were Chuck, Harry, Butch, Jeff, Tom, Gary, and several more great grandchilden in the Stofferan and Clark wings. Plenty of Navy vets from the Downs side, too. Army guys were on the Clark side, civil war vet, David Clark and brother Simon, Howard, a medic in WWII, whose two sons David and Robert, USN ret, Kirby, my brother, and lots of other Clark cousins. My cousin Judy, daughter of Harry and Viola Peterson married Don Amick, a decorated Marine hero of WWII. I would need another web site just for pictures of all these folks and their families. I might get around to that sometime if I got some good photos emailed to me by all these cousins.

Betty married Harry Benner, they had three children, Jeff, Sally and Jerry. She was the first of the Fink ladies to die, of polio, in 1951 in Richmond, California. The two youngest children remained with Harry in the west, Sally is still in California and Jerry is on an island off of British Columbia. Jeff was adopted by a family in Germantown, Iowa, remains a close part of the family in Iowa, still living in Germantown.

Patricia, was born December 30, 1925, on the farm north of Sanborn a few years before my grandparents moved to town. She married Harold Stofferan on September 21, 1946. All their children, 14, were the real baby boomers. My aunt Pat died of cancer on September 16, 1983. Harold died of the same and a broken heart just two years later on November 14, 1985. This family is a tale in itself. She was less than a hundred pound and he must have topped 200 in his prime. Pat was a wonder, did the books for the business, kept that crew out of trouble, made huge meals and had her sisters crew there about as often as every few days, I spent summers with them in Minnesota with my brother Kirb in the 1950’s. Harold was a mechanical genius and one of the strongest men I have ever known. My first job was working for Harold ditch tiling before I finally got in the navy in November of 1962. We sat by the cat eating lunch waiting to see if Russia was going to bomb us in October. There really is so much to tell about this family. So I will sprinkle the tale of my life with those gems later.

My oldest sister is Marley Fink, since she was born before my parents met, was raised in the Fink home, not so much as a grand daughter but as the youngest daughter. I believed she was my aunt until my other sister told me she was a sister when I was 12. It led to a lot of confusion as Marley lists herself in the obit of my grandparents and my aunts and uncle as a daugher and sister and as a daugher in my mom's obit. I can't blame her, not be be raised with your mom's other kids has to be conflicting to say the least. Marley married her high school sweet heart, Joe Strait and had three children, Jody, Denise and Pat all born in the early fifites. She was married to Harold Hoekstra and lives in Sanborn, Iowa. Marley died in bed of natural causes at age 75 in Oct of 2007.

Who be Me?

2009-07-03T06:42:00.000-07:00

Who am I?

I am Gary Paul Clark, named after Gary Cooper and my mom's brother Paul, whose great grand mother was named Paulina. One thing about chasing a family tree is the use of names from our past. I know I have seen David in almost every Clark tree, my first cousin, David Clark of San Francisco comes to mind. His dad was Howard, my Dad's youngest brother. My grandfather, Henry Clay Clark, named his son Ernest Clay Clark, my dad named my youngest brother, Richard Clay Clark and I named my second child Clay William. My dad was Leslie William Clark and picked up the William from my grandfathers brother and so on. My brother Thomas also got in the act of using a family name. That is one of the common threads we all have along with the Clark name. I think it is very interesting to investigate all the connections through geography and marriage.

I live in Costa Mesa, California. I have two sons who share my condo, we bought it together in the summer of 2002.

I have a web page…. blogs and more on Facebook. If you are interested in me google garigaru.

There is also a page that has photos of my mom and dad. I put up photos of grandparents and great grandparents at the family tree web site at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/c/l/a/Gary-Paul-Clark/index.html. I have a photo of Catherine Davis and my great grandparents, Peter and Mary Hart and also some from my mom's family. So if I have a hobby, my web page would not be it and going to yard sales would have been the other one before the money ran out. I like to travel, been a hell of lot of places, too many to recount and a lot of them several times. I still carve rock, smaller but carved none the less. You can see them in other posts on this blog.

I have added six children to the family tree, aided and abetted by my former spouse, Ann, now remarried in the old home area where I spent over 20 years, Rolla, Missouri. The convenience of living there was it was 70 miles south of Montgomery County and I would indulge in side trips to the churches, cemeteries and court house to pick up bits and pieces and run across the trail of my Dad's cousins. The great thing about the Clarks, Harts, Beucher, and Davis bunch is they all have over 150 years in and around Montgomery County, many still live there. I have met Martha Clark's youngest daughter, Flora, who lived on the Clark place until the early 90's. She was in her 90's living in St. Charles with her son in 1996. It would be something if she made the century mark.

My stock and trade is the graphic arts. I was a technical illustrator for American Geotechnical in Yorba Linda, CA, hometown of Richard Nixon, depending on your politics, something to be proud about or not.

My dad and grandpa were hard-core republicans. One of my early memories was of the 1948 election when they were hooting and hollering like a couple of hillbillies about Truman getting beat. The next day they had to nurse the hangover and the election results. Of course Ike made them happy. Roosevelt was a dirty word around there.

I used to make maps and building repair plans for houses that were built in a defective manner. AG does forensic studies on the cause of failures, soil studies, materials and so on. We make exhibits to use as expert witnesses in court cases. In this field there are lots of hard deadlines and fast paced work. One of our projects was a landslide repair at Laguna Niguel.

I used to work for the state of Missouri as the chief cartographer for the Geologic Survey. Long after I am gone many of my maps will still be in use. My handiwork is the 1979 State Geologic Map, all done the old fashion way, by hand. The State Mineral Resources Map was the first digital thematic map done in the United States with the help of USGS. I have been involved in computer digitizing since 1974 when we made ugly maps on mainframe computers. My web pages also have my vita so you can check that out also should you be interested. My web pages have a lot of information about my life. Could be I won't be found to be that likable of a fella, but that's not a problem for me. I just put it out there and someday when I don't pay my internet fees it will all vanish anyway. I rather doubt my kids will maintain my web page on that day. I have a proposal for anyone to ponder. Maybe the country should start archiving web pages in the Library of Congress just like we do books and recordings. There is a terrific amount of history, both personal and national on the web and it would be a shame to lose them for the lack of maintenance and departure from this world by the creator of the web page. I am all for a perpetual web page, of course, space donated by taxpayers. Now that is about as likely as keeping grass growing on a playground, riding the surf on Bear Creek, and ice skating on Pearl Harbor. But who knows?

My brood ranges from 1968 to 1979 birth dates. By oldest to youngest in age, Kirby Mitchell is married to Candie, and have two boys, Alex and Brandon. He lives in Emetsburg, Iowa, about 40 miles from my birthplace, Everly. Clay William lives in Spencer, about 8 miles east of Everly. My daughter, Tahna Mai, lives in Bullhead City, Arizona, is married to Eric Lind. They have two daughters Reagan and Reesa. Ailey lives in Fredricksburg, Virginia, with her husband, Brian, an Army officer with the current rank of Major and their three children, Melissa, Zachary, and Nathan. Garrick and Ryan live with me or vice versa.

Time is a wasting, or is it? You choose how you use it, wise or unwise. Enjoy it, work or play, drink or dry, clean or dirty, active or inactive. My Mom died in 1999, 1/10 of her life of 89 years spent in a nursing home. Time sometimes is the enemy.

I spend my off work time with my best female friend and companion Kerrie. We don't make marriage an issue as it would just make living less comfortable. Mixing finances, insurance, all that ends up a negative that is not worth the piece of paper a marriage is written on. We like our company and share everything as if we are married, more successfully than married people I know. I have my place and she has hers, we spend most of our spare time and vacations together. Once upon a time we spent going to and doing yard sales. We have sold on the internet and collected a lot of items we think our kids will love but won't. We like to go to casinos and play the penny slots, just about every tribe in southern California has a piece of our change. I call it the Indian Tax. One I would rather pay than the Illegal TAX we are all paying for to leave our borders wide open. The CSI shows on tv garner a larger share of our time than they should but isn't that always the case?

Got deposed from my job on June 12, 2009, life goes on and sometimes not, Kerrie's sister died June 24, 2009.

Will need to look for work, my timetable for retirement is so scrambled now!

That about brings anyone up to date on me. I will try to get all my family tree information up to date and keep it that way. Search ancestry.com for Clarks and Finks from Iowa. Can you fill in the gaps?

Veteran's Day

2009-07-03T06:40:00.000-07:00

In a few months another veteran's day will pass and about 10,000 WWII vets won't be here to see it. They are going fast. I know two old B17 flyers in one apartment complex in Anaheim. One was a pilot, he is 86 and the other was a waist gunner, he also in his eighties. Thomas Benton Taylor IV flew 29 missions over Germany. If you know your history, you would know the US pilots flew the daylight raids, the Brits at night. Tom claims he was a coward. James J. Denno was transfered to supply and transport aircraft because his ears became infected and he could not fly at the non pressurized heights required of a bomber crew. You can’t shot machine guns out of closed windows. It made it damned cold and both said until they got electric suits later it was hard to explain why you can sweat so much when it is so cold. Way below 0!! He doesn't say much about how he felt about combat. They both agreed it was not pleasant to go into combat. Recently they both said it was enough to make you sick. Tom said he had the shakes from the time he awoke until he slept. Jim said he threw up before every flight.

Tom said he volunteered to be a pilot because he thought the waiting list would be so long the war would be over before he even got to go train as a pilot. War was still raging when he got his call to duty. Then he was sure by the time he learned how to fly the war would surely be finished. Not the case and he soon found himself in England. He wrote his mom the first week of January that he had not had a bath all year. He hated long johns and wanted to turn down the standard issue of three, but they made him buy one pair. He said he wore them for over six weeks figuring it was better to itch and stink than to freeze. What proved him to be a coward was when he knew all he had to do to never fly again was to lay his wings down on the commanders desk and no questions asked he would be grounded for the duration. He said he was too big of chicken to look his crew and his other pilots in the eye so being a coward he went out on the missions until the last day of the war. A real big chicken, that guy. He speaks more freely about his experience but he said it is very hard to know someone and have daily contact and then they are gone in an instant. He lost his belly gunner in a matter of seconds, he was called Swede, a really fine guy and then he was gone. He said it wasn't like the movies, you look to your wing man and watched his plane roll over and dive for the ground. At that speed when a plane beside you was hit, before you could see anything you are far ahead of it. When the flak started coming up you had to hope you were not at the same altitude the arming devices were set to explode so you could have time to adjust your flight and try to stay between the layers of flak. Nearly 4000 B17 were destroyed, about 3 to 1 made it home. Tom and Jim agree, the 17 was a tough bird and got them back when other planes would have failed.

Jim was transferred to the C87 a cargo version of the B-24 and was stationed in India. He said the jungle was more frightening than the flights over the Burma Hump. Jim did not like the noise, smell, heat, humidity, animals, snakes, sickness, and much more about the jungle. One night he stepped out of his tent to find a tiger in front of it lying down. He re-entered the tent and made his exit out of the back of the tent where there was no exit. Nobody claimed to know how a tiger got in front of his tent. It was dead, shot by the troops and left there. Jim did not know that at the time.

He left India after the war by Liberty ship. The first day out the ship came to a halt and the marines searched the compartments and took all the animals, snakes, lizards and gave them the heave ho over the side. A few days later the ship stopped again. The marines were sent out to shoot a mine that was spotted in the water. You can’t leave a mine undetonated. They shot at it for 15 minutes until an army guy asked for a crack at it. He blew it up on the first shot. They all had a laugh at the marine’s expense.

Now the vets of that war are passing on and there will be more than a 1000 less vets everyday or more, not in an instant but in rapid enough fashion to not be thanked properly by all of us. My service has no comparison to those guys. I served with many WWII and Korea vets, they were the old salts and I as an eager young sailor loved to hear all tales they could tell. They are far too many for recounting here but most of them had more ribbons than a chest could hold. They didn't say much about what those ribbons stood for but it wasn't for just good conduct. A lot of the old petty officers never made it above PO2nd class some rarely made PO at all. They served and served with bravery and humility. Don't forget to thank the vets you know, be it recent service or 60 plus years ago, they deserve far more and expect nothing. Most of the time they get nothing. I wish I could see those old salts again.

democrats now rule?

2009-07-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

Except for that, expect to see legal imigration from Mexico
increased. Real liberals would be, should be, appalled by
the ethnic cleaning of Mexico by the Euro-Spanish of the
native peoples of Mexico. They are pleased to send us the
uneducated, lowest ranked among them. Once we educate
them, the Mexicans will see the loss of productivity which
could have been theirs had they invested in their own people.
Meanwhile we will exploit them for low wages, also a liberal
no no, and overcrowd them in apartments and old houses, a
liberal no no, let common childhood illness kill them, another
liberal no no... I could go on, like the high rate of children having
children, incest and rape of girls by much older men. All of
this happening here and in Mexico.

Otherwise I expect to see some good things happen on the
war front, declare what a victory would be defined as, such as,
the exit of Sadam, elections held, government in place and say
now the job to keep it is theirs, not ours and make an orderly
exit. The French, Russian, Japanese, Germans, Italians, and
the Chinese will be in there in droves to redevelop the oil fields
and infrastructure we wrecked. More oil, lower prices for gas,
we don't spend our money on Iraq, spend it here on alternative
fuels and get on with life.

I don't care if US industry gets less money from the war or from
building crap in Iraq. It is a pretty easy decision. We just have
to make the new congress do it. Holding their feet to the fire
to end this mess is the priority for everybody

Proposal to the new Congress

2009-07-03T06:35:00.000-07:00

certain veto proof and popular legislation would be to set up a veterans pension fund to supplement social security to ensure no veteran lives below the official poverty level for a single person. More veterans of WW2 are lost daily than the Iraq was has taken in total. The Korean, Vietnam, cold war veterans, gulf war, and Iraq civil war vets deserve to retire above the poverty level. I propose the difference between the official poverty level and the social security that a veteran receives should be made up by a new program to fund that difference. It would be a veterans pension plan. No reduction in disablity pay should ever be made in career military when they retire. The injury still exists after retirement, so too should the payment for it. Fix these things and bring the veterans the health care promised and you will never loose the Senate or House again.

Bush in 'Nam

2009-07-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

This sick bastard thinks the solution to Iraq is more of the same. You have to stay with it, the lesson of Vietnam is we did not stay with it long enough. Yeah, you stupid asshole, maybe another ten years there with the same result, only 100,000 dead Americans or a couple hundred thousand, not to even imagine how many more the dip shit thinking of people like George the war hero would have killed who are the natives of that country. You want to know how Iraq ends. The sooner the better, get the hell out, declare mission complete, Sadam go bye bye and you had your elections, we now go bye bye too! How dare he compare the lack of staying power in Vietnam as a lesson we failed to learn so he plans to teach it to us in Iraq all over again. We should impeach this gob of intelectual power before he kills again.

You can't pick your time to be a hero or dead!!!

2009-07-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

NAVPERS 10164 CONFIDENTIAL: TORPEDOMAN'S MATE 1 & C - BUREAU OF NAVAL
PERSONNEL - NAVY TRAINING COURSE, 1964

A 1964 Torpedoman's Mate training manual of standard size, paper, 213pp., everything you need to know about torpedos which, of course, includes nuclear weapons. The manual is marked "Confidential." Want to be scared? ..."And data gained from certain drop tests indicate that the high explosive assemblies of nuclear weapons will detonate to some degree when dropped only 8 inches..." Some "degree"!! Learn to be a torpedoman on your SSN for only $25.00 and don't drop a torpedo.

While leading the warhead end of a Mark 37 torpedo using the new cast aluminum clamp device with a rubber liner, the operator of the monorail air hoist let off the button on the control device abruptly which launched the torpedo forward by inertia. The torpedo was covered with grease from being in the torpedo tube of the submarine it was just off loaded from. This made the clamp slick and allowed the torpedo to move off center towards the warhead end of the fish. I pushed against it and was driven down to the deck with the warhead ending up on my stomach and chest. Several other sailors lifted it off of me. The torpedo clamp was a test product and in my opinion failed to keep the torpedo balanced while in motion. A web strap would not have done this. The operator was TM3 Ted Schneble and the
majority of the mark 45 and 37 shop personel witnessed this. Edward Cagney, TM3, now of Houston, Texas, and I recently recalled the incident. I believe my body may have prevented detonation by dropping and thus my effort to stop the warhead from hitting the steel deck was instinctive but I recall a story of a warhead exploding because it was dropped 18". I had to place myself under it or risk the explosion. I did not get any awards, medals or much acclaim but I know the guys that removed it from the top of me were grateful it did not explode. So am I.

This took place just outside the torpedo elevator in the Mark 37/45 repair facility on the U.S.S. Simon Lake AS33, berthed in Charleston, South Carolina on the Cooper River at the Naval Amunition Depot near Monks Corner.

Winning Texas Formula for the Iraq War

2009-07-03T06:31:00.000-07:00

Let's say in the old Texas West a new marshall comes to town. He enters the rowdy saloon to find crooked gambling, bad guys shooting good guys, the piano player scared to death, the bar keeper armed to the teeth to keep his stock safe, the whores and dance hall ladies suffering the taunts and grab ass behavior of the rough cow hands and gun slingers. The preacher, the teacher, the ranchers wife, the storekeeper, all terrified to even walk by the joint. What does the marshall do? He swings the doors open and comes in guns blazing, the ringleader goes down and the rest of the cowards shape up for the moment. The piano player resumes the music, the dance hall girls get it on and the whore business grows in leaps and bounds. The bar keeper sells out of booze and has to bring out the reserves. The gamblers go back to winning and cheating at cards. Life is great until the Marshall leaves but he stops by several times a day. Sometimes he has a drink and gets buttered up by the crowd, feels pretty cocky, has the town settled down, but behind the scenes the old hired guns of the bully buried up on boot hill get the itch for the old life. They don't like paying for drinks, sex and like to win at cards. When the marshall isn't in the bar the gun slingers don't care because they go back to the old ways, none of them is boss yet but the competition is great and when the marshall stops by they leave and go rob the stage, rape the ranchers wife, rustle some cattle and in general raise hell. It isn't long and the gun play is back on the street, because the marshall is too often drunk or full of himself to really get control again and anyway he is making a killing on land and smooching with the school teacher, bragging to the kids and feeling mighty to really care what happens at the bar. Now and then it comes to mind the place is going to hell in a hand basket and the school marm warns him she will be cutting him off of the sweet stuff if he doesn't put up his guns and hang around the house more. The marshall has just one real route to go. He can be whipped and cowed by the locals or he can clean house. He decides to clean house. Returning to the saloon, rowdy as ever and worse, issues one order, "knock it off!" and when nothing happens yells a bit louder. More futile threats and then he realizes it would be better to go back to the office and drink rot gut than to take this on again. But braver thoughts win the day, he arms to the teeth, double barrel shot gun, pistols at the ready, a few sticks of dynamite and smoking a short cigar to light the fuse. He enters the saloon again, blasts the hell out of everything and everybody, no good whores, no good gamblers, no good bar keeper, no good cow hands and no good piano player! The gunslingers run for the hills and he shoots them in the back and gives the dynamite a light and tosses it behind the bar and walks out backwards guns blazing with all barrels. Nothing is left, the place is blown to smithereens and a few other buildings including the bank, the church and school house are just so much collateral damage. He cuts down the telegraph wire, mounts his steed, lassoes the watertower and pulls it over, poisons the town well and hauls ass for a new town.

You got it? Got a problem? Get rid of it! Win or go home and suck eggs and let everybody make fun of you until you die. You want to win in Iraq then wipe it out and leave it for the buzzards!

Bush, you dumb bastard!!! Your head is up your ass!!!

2009-07-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

What sacrafice, more shopping?

If you want to win this war you have to kill people and break things. Leave or get it on. You said bring it on and they did. Now what, aim your guns at everybody but those who choose to kill at will in Iraq. If any human other than a US soldier has a weapon, he or she should be a target. If a dwelling holds weapons, is a refuge for the Iraq freedom fighters, you will have to level it even if you have to destroy every damn building in the nation. War is war, not tiddly winks, not hand holding people you can't trust to shoot you in the back. Start from our strong points and use our supposed superior technology and blow up anybody who shows up on the street with any weapon of any size. I see news report after news report with men waving weapons at the camera. I ask myself, where in the hell is the air strike that should have blown the weapon holder into the next world. You can't spare mercy to win a war, you can't tell them to vote and everything will be ok, give them jobs, pay them off or anything like that to win. You have to kill people and break things, end of subject, either do it or stand aside and let them kill each other, in each case a hell of a lot of things are going to get broken and a lot of people will die. The only difference will be who gets killed and what gets broken.

Left or right, get out of my sight!

2009-07-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Tree hugger, ok, I like to see big old growth forest, but I don’t want to hike 80 miles into the wilderness, build a road there so we can all see them. Build your house out of straw or some reused tires, if you can’t cut timber you can’t live in a dwelling made out of it. By the way, wear your leather sandals and never eat meat! Don’t waste oil as all the plastic never comes in contact with the good environmentalist. You think you can go ten minutes without an encounter with some plastic item in your face, hand, or wrapped around you. Don’t mine the earth for metals…. But I love my car. I fuel it with vegetable oil I get from the fast food joint that made my kid fat and sluggish and tied to his plastic keyboard and joy stick game controller. Don’t play outside the air is too bad to breath. I only eat natural foods… anything that walked on it and left some bacteria on it is good and if the insides are rotting because some bug also was hungry, well, better we not sell it with some pesticide residue because all those chemicals cause cancer. Cancer is caused by smokers, you idiots…everybody knows that. Don’t risk living like those rich people as living in the modern world is too risky, I am going to the backwoods and live with nature. I won’t let those doctors immunize my kids!!! Don’t trust the government, trust the government, don’t trust the scientist… and don’t trust the scientist. Never trust a politician. Give your money to the Democrats, the Republicans, the Greens, the Libertarian, the all have the answers, they only need money to get the truth out. Trust us, we are not like those other guys, God is really on our side.

Global warming… As long as telescopes have looked at Mars the poles have grown and shrunk and in the concept of time it is a blink of time we have observed it. Those damn Martian industrialist ruined that place with all those coal fired furnaces building space craft to invade other worlds. Duh! Does the sun have a constant output? Man is so proud of himself he actually believes he has the greatest impact on everything. Everybody is now a scientist when it comes to global warming. Well, guess what, environmentalist have made lots of predictions that have come and gone to no great loss of our environment. We would be out of oil by 1980… or 1990 or 2000 or 2010 or 2050 or whenever. The planet will cool and we will all freeze. We will all be heating our homes with wind and solar. A nuke power plant will destroy the planet. We will run out of coal. We will run out of natural gas. Natural gas is good, oil bad. Unsightly drilling in the wilderness of Wyoming is bad for the bears and the wolf and the elk.

The critters are always more important than the humans! Stop killing the seals!! Don’t sweat it when the Eskimo kids are all converted to huffers and the faces of Nanook and family are now silver, copper, bronze and gold because the good huffing paint all come in the metal finishes. Did you ever buy a rock carving or a spear point from some enterprising Eskimo? Did you ever figure out what he would pay for the gas for his snow mobile now that the sled dogs have all been taken by the racing crowd. I mushed across the north in ten days by way of the pole and Siberia with a spot of tea in Norway. We love to love the native peoples and they are real bastards to exploit the whites when they offer gambling on the reservation we confined them in so many years ago. White eyes lie! So do the brown eyes… eyes of every color. When it is convenient, lie all you like.

The Mexicans are reconquering the Norte. Guess what, native Indians of mezzo America…you never lived next to the Apache or the Navajo or the other tribes within the present United State the Spanish subjected to their culture and lanquage. You started out in Central America and moving here is not reconquest. It is conquest so don’t get you jaw all jacked up when someone says you are not welcome. Get in line, others have and done well. Don't think we like any illegal stuff unless it is to do dope, get drunk, drive fast and rape and pillage the rest of the earth.

All the world hates a fur coat…. Gee, no USA if fur trade did not lead the way. Follow the beaver and I don’t mean seeing if Brittney is going to open another car door to expose hers. Every damn one of us behave like we are not a part of the problem. Guess what? We were, are, and will be forever and forever. Humans also are part of the environment and they are not going away soon, get used to it. Mitigate our presence or announce it and control all in our presence, rule or ruin, so it was and will be. You can’t excuse our bad behavior and you can’t say you never did anything to hurt the other guy. We all hurt something or somebody just by existing.

Thinking about GOD

2009-07-03T06:26:00.000-07:00

It is not tangible so I don’t subscribe to any belief. I have tested it and found it lacking in the supposed power it should have over one’s life. Since I was a child I have often asked this god to let me not wake in the morning. I have never felt inclined to live for the next day since it is so often just more of the same crap I just went through. When it is different, by some choice I made about moving, traveling or some event thrust upon me by outside interests, it is not long before it returns to the same boring routines that pass as jobs and home life. Were there a god it would have be nice just to have the wish not to wake in the morning be put on a priority list this god should have at hand. I think any omnipotent god would get the message to just check me off the list. Having a wish to not continue is not the same as self-destructive. My dismissal from this scene would not adversely affect much in this world. I am not going to change much in the direction I would like to see us as a species move toward. I don’t pretend to have much influence over life events.

Certainly if we humans were made in a gods image, that god has a very morphing image since so few of us really look alike. Why would a god make us in its image in so many different ways? Since so many people believe pets and animal, cars and other inanimate objects communicate, then the god must also look like a cat or dog, bird, horse, car, boat, or you name it. Take it to these limits and there is no limit on what a god would look like. Better to think there is no such god and end the confusion.

Think of all that has been done in GOD’s name. So much of it is malicious and disturbing, rewarding the least ethical among us that it really is a stretch to think this GOD is on any good person’s side. Religion has been a convenient excuse for conquest no matter the era. Pre Christian, post-Muslim, Pagan or what ever, all in the name of god or gods that give some validity for really terrible behavior. Imposing all these belief systems on others has always been the objective of the ill-tempered neighbor. Actually it is the easy way to take what they want without putting the effort into gaining it in a just and equitable manner. I would rather not wake up in the morning. I am not that person who is going to fight rather than switch. I would rather just get out of the way. All this imposition of wills is just so lame.

Entry for October 01, 2007, a poem, when depression looms this is my way of screaming!!!

2009-07-03T06:25:00.000-07:00

The longer I have been alive

the more my life story I contrive

I look back and see just when

all those moments became a then

What seemed of small import

now fill my head of last resort

Little seems worth looking ahead

so when night comes and I take to bed

the future is without appeal

and the past makes my head reel

It is so damn hard to believe

what my history now wants to deceive

The worst of my days I see clear

the best make my eyes run with tear

Had I known where the next turn took

would I need to turn back to look

What seemed so insignificant

bloom into a memory so constant

They won’t let go of my mind

and I search for what I can’t find

On this day, October 8th, 2007, my friend, Bill Slawson ceased to breathe the air of this earth!!!

2009-07-03T06:24:00.001-07:00

In better days, this was what everybody knew Bill to be, the appearance of the cannoe wizzard as my grandson tagged him. He was a savvy guy, gifted with great thinking and story telling. He had friends no matter where he found his feet planted. When people think of the classic unforgettable person, this is the guy they would be talking about. I am proud to have known him better than most anybody since 1952, the summer between second and third grade. We shared much along our life adventure, more than I can ever tell. He leaves a fine, devoted wife and four amazing children. I grieve with them and celebrate his life. Though I can not be present in Iowa, mere miles from where we met and I was born, I can feel him about me, giving me the comfort the living need in times such as this. I will miss him always, and never shall my thoughts not include the many fond memories we shared in those years, growing up, in the service, in college and raising our families. Farewell, Bill, everything is natural.

Gar I, the tag he gave me in 1963 in letter to me in the Navy. We used it for the duration.

Tho I was garigaru, he was a guru of the highest order, all who knew him know he was a master of the gifts he possessed, a fine mind, independent to the end.

That wretched cancer from 360

2009-07-03T06:20:00.000-07:00

Today I had a phone call from a buddy I served with in the navy. His daughter lost a 26 year fight with cancer, age 28. I can not believe how this cursed illness has impacted people I know in the past few years. I can't guess why some are so lucky to never have brush with it and others seem to have a flood of bouts with it. Will it ever subside?

Nope, took Kay, Kerrie's sister last Wednesday, June 24, 2009, age 63. 65 pounds at the end.

From 360

2009-07-03T06:19:00.004-07:00

like to think somebody might care, though from my hits at webpages and blogs, I have to think most people don't care what opinion I have. So I tried to put up interesting photos of places and of art work I have done, I can't even get a hit on Google images of much of what I have put on the web over the years. One wonders if any good comes of what we do on the web. I see on Facebook a lot of the comments are about the attention grabbers like five people you would like to hit in the face and so on. The amount of actual conversation is more like people passing on the street in a friendly town, like saying "Howdy" to somebody or "Nice Day". And then there are those who seem to think a fine insult is a special greeting. We are really working hard at upgrading a prime insult into a charming greeting. "Go Fuck yourself" has taken on the meaning of nice hearing from you again. Isn't life interesting. Takes the stream out of a good rant.

2009-07-03T06:19:00.003-07:00

2009-07-03T06:19:00.001-07:00

Something from 360

2009-07-03T06:17:00.000-07:00

What the hell!! And now it is worse than this.

I thought last year was just about the worst I was apt to face. My fifty five year relationship with my pal was cut short by cancer. A month later my oldest sister died at age 75, seemingly very young to me, no special cause, just died in bed waiting for the morning coffee to perk. At the same time as this photo was taken I was dealing with what was to be a few short months later, the death of Bill, one of my four sons, my second child, had a near death event which was a harsh awakening about the stability of my family. From that event, my oldest daughter saw fit to find me not worthy to spend time with, exiled me from her growing family and no hope in the present of making that work as she thinks I am some kind of jerk that will contaminate her family. All this stems from who knows what but frankly, she is a woman and who can figure them out.

At least I had the good lady, Kerrie, who stood by me in those months as she is doing in the photo, just as Bill's lady, Phyllis, took the pain of losing her man in an twenty month ordeal kept the strength of the family alive until Bill's time was complete. I was as certain of my lady being that kind of person as I was certain I could stand by her in times of trial. She had my complete attention during a bout with breast cancer, radiation, breast reconstruction and she came through like a real trooper. You could not ask for more. Positive and forward thinking.
Beginning in October, around the time Bill died, my lady, Kerrie, ran afoul of the management of her apartment complex. This led to a partial exile from her, as someone told them I was living with her. You can read about it by clicking on her page, see the photo of my only friend to ever grace this blog. As you can see she has had a great deal of stress in her life about that. I would have preferred her to move. She elected to fight and more power to her. I think it has taken a toll on her. You can read her blog when you click on my friend. Let us know what you think.

So now I use facebook.

2009-03-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

I have no idea if the link to facebook works but what the hell.

I let an election go by, a recession and a wind down of one war with the wind up of the other.

We are chasing the shining object of the current moment. I just can't do it anymore. All the rip off mutual funds, the loss of our resources we counted on to retire. Of course it comes as I near the age to get free of the harness and now it looks like an endless plowing forward.

I am posting more art work on facebook than here, seems to uplink things faster and easier to work with so find me there if you want to see more art. I have drawings and paintings there now. Will be putting other things up soon. I have been working on what I call microstabiles, gem stone carvings in jade, emerald, ruby, garnet, agate, jasper and many others, may not be the highest in gem quality but rocks worked to a polish do not need to be ones that end up in a ring or a trinket. These are just very small stone
sculptures from a few millimeters to an inch or so. Scaled up in a photo, they can look monumental which is what my older pieces where like, they were usually hand or fist size. I imagine them in a large setting and with photoshop I guess I will start parking them in public places where I have been. This could be interesting, one of my pieces in front of a casino or a courthouse. I made this one and only that I have a photo of presently. I gave it to my son-in-law, and I will give its image to all when I place it in a prominent public setting. See what you think. Of course, as always, this site never gets a response so I doubt you will be commenting though it would be appreciated if you do.

Limestone From Missouri Hopped to Iowa

2008-01-06T20:17:00.000-08:00

This is a piece done in Missouri Limestone. It is a frog. It was done in the early 70's. The limestone is marbled and sanded to a nice smooth surface. It is one job I can do where I lose myself, no need for breaks until my back just aches and I finally relize it has been half a dozen hours since I had a drink or gotten up and took interest in something else. That is what I mean to transform yourself as well as the piece. This sculpture has a nice home in the office of my best friend. It will remain with his family long after both of us are gone. Another nice thing about stone, quite enduring.

Moss Back Packaderm

2008-01-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

I found this stone at the base of a small waterfall at the mouth of a cave in the Missouri Ozarks about 30 miles south of Springfield. It was kind of my backyard but belonged to a couple from Kansas City who came down on weekends. I called it the Moss Back Pacaderm, the green cast still somewhat visible all these years later. Looked like a tusker taking a rest to me. It is about 9 or 10 inches long maybe 4 inches tall. I think it was the among the first ten items I ever carved beginning in the fall of 1968. I like to let the shape speak for me. It talked to me and I just enhanced the parts that reveal the true nature of the stone.

Free Web Counter

The Chief

2008-01-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Following my leaving the shape to speak for itself, this stone looked like it had a war bonnet on top so I added the faceted face of the chief. This was an early piece, apparently as in many I still have, the public never took to it. I still like it 37 years later.

The Apostle

2008-01-06T19:47:00.000-08:00

He used to be about 30 inches tall, knocked over at an art show in Springfield, Missouri, in 1972, had to level the break and made him a head piece. Now hangs out winter, spring, summer and fall outdoors at my son's home in Iowa; seems to suit it. This is very nice stone to carve, comes from a bluff overlooking the James River at Galena, Missouri.

The Double Ganger

2008-01-06T19:03:00.000-08:00

I am moving my blogs on Yahoo to this site, they are shutting down.

This pertains to the rock in the photo.
Split personality, two sides of the same coin, the dual nature of man? The two ridges on the corner of the stone made two noses seem most logical. Not mirror images, some see a more content fella on one side, an angry cuss on the other. Same source for the stone, the James River bluff east of Galena near the bridge. Every winter brought a new crop of broken stone to look over. One of my favorite places to get my raw material.

Bush gave him the kiss of death

2007-09-13T22:37:00.000-07:00

So the friendly Suni Sheik met Mr. Bush ten days ago and gave him all the publicity nobody in Iraq ever needs. Today he met his maker via a road side device intended to cause him much harm and it did. Was the harm done when Bush wrapped his ever powerfull arms around him in the glare of the TV lights or when the enemy lit his last light. The glare of publicity must have been just as bright as the bomb flash which was the last light he ever saw. Lights out now. Too bad the lights don't go out for the idiot who started this war in that country.

Christmas Eve 2006

2006-12-24T21:42:00.000-08:00

Approaching 10 pm and santa seems to be drifting off the radar. Well, no matter, since it doesn't seem like I am on the radar of lots of folks who should have me at least in a rearview mirror. Six children, phone is not ringing as per usual. Think they could at least mention the cards with the gift cards got to them safely. No trace of some guesture of kindness or a gift in return, year after year it goes this way. Sometimes my daughter comes through and at least even if she has been angry with me, she did send a card with a photo of the family on it. Maybe something came in the mail but my other two sons who could check the mail rarely do and most likely would not call me to say I had anything.

I got a really nice gift from someone I can count on. A case for my laptop and work crap I make the habit of lugging around is now my new possession. Very happy to get something so usefull and one I have been thinking about getting. Kerrie never forgets any day I feel is important. I really don't know where so many people who I know can manage to believe I never enjoyed a little bit of holidays. I made so danm many trips to Eastern Iowa in the snow and cold just so the mother of those kids could have her holiday. I never got to spend one with parents. I suppose I could have insisted but the plans were always made for me. When I refused to go one year the asshole inlaws would not send the gifts for the kids to them. Yet is was I who ended up with the scrooge reputation even if I have never failed to get my kids something for Christmas. Why is that? They wonder why a person can get depressed at this time of the year. It is all I can do to get through this period every year. I do hate the feeling I get from it. There is so little positive to balance out the negative.

I am willing to bet most people have identical problems with this holiday. I really don't like the fake happiness I see in a lot of people I have known. They can't tell me they think this is the best time of their life year after year. I can recall good ones and great ones and sad ones, bleak ones, hate filled ones, and just so so ones. This is kind of a so so one, I have come to expect the treatment I get from my kids. It would be more than pleasant to see something different. I have had a few times going to San Diego in the past few years but those days are gone now. I feel more estranged from my family than ever though they most likely never sense why I feel this way.

I will give them all a call tomorrow and they won't have the slightest idea I feel this way. And so it goes, thats the way it is. Good night and good luck.

Winning Formula to Victory in Iraq

2006-12-01T14:59:00.000-08:00

Proposal to the new congress

2006-11-09T11:44:00.000-08:00

A certain veto proof and popular legislation would be to set up a veterans pension fund to supplement social security to ensure no veteran lives below the official poverty level for a single person. More veterans of WW2 are lost daily than the Iraq was has taken in total. The Korean, Vietnam, cold war veterans, gulf war, and Iraq civil war deserve to retire above the poverty level. I propose the difference between the official poverty level and the social security that a veteran receives should be made up by a new program to fund that difference. It would be a veterans pension plan. No reduction in disablity pay should ever be made in career military when they retire. The injury still exists after retirement, so too should the payment for it. Fix these things and bring the veterans the health care promised and you will never loose the Senate or House again.

Missouri...YOU have NO Talent!!!

2006-11-09T10:44:00.000-08:00

Missouri.....You have no Talent!!!!

and he is a rat whose race got him to the exit.

What a delight to see the bums shown the door!

Except for that, expect to see legal imigration from Mexico
increased. Real liberals would be, should be, appalled by
the ethnic cleaning of Mexico by the Euro-Spanish of the
native peoples of Mexico. They are pleased to send us the
uneducated, lowest ranked among them. Once we educate
them, the Mexicans will see the loss of productivity which
could have been theirs had they invested in their own people.
Meanwhile we will exploit them for low wages, also a liberal
no no, and overcrowd them in apartments and old houses, a
liberal no no, let common childhood illness kill them, another
liberal no no... I could go on, like the high rate of children having
children, incest and rape of girls by much older men. All of
this happening here and in Mexico.

Otherwise I expect to see some good things happen on the
war front, declare what a victory would be defined as, such as,
the exit of Sadam, elections held, government in place and say
now the job to keep it is theirs, not ours and make an orderly
exit. The French, Russian, Japanese, Germans, Italians, and
the Chinese will be in there in droves to redevelop the oil fields
and infrastructure we wrecked. More oil, lower prices for gas,
we don't spend our money on Iraq, spend it here on alternative
fuels and get on with life.

I don't care if US industry gets less money from the war or from
building crap in Iraq. It is a pretty easy decision. We just have
to make the new congress do it. Holding their feet to the fire
to end this mess is the priority for everybody.

Veterans Day

2006-10-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

Veteran's Day
In a couple of weeks another veteran's day will pass and about 10,000 WWII vets won't be here to see it. They are going fast. I know two old B17 flyers in one apartment complex in Anaheim. One was a pilot, he is 86 and the other was a waist gunner, he also in his eighties. Tom flew 29 missions over Germany. If one knows their history, you would know the US pilots flew the daylight raids, the Brits at night. He claims he was a coward. Jim flew less because his ears became infected and he was transfered out to crew a transport plane to deliver supplies. He doesn't say much about how he felt about combat. Tom said he volunteered to be a pilot because he thought the waiting list would be so long the war would be over before he even got to go train as a pilot. War was still raging when he got his call to duty. Then he was sure by the time he learned how to fly the war would surely be finished. Not the case and he soon found himself in England. He wrote his mom the first week of January that he had not had a bath all year. He hated long johns and wanted to turn down the standard issue of three, but they made him buy one pair. He said he wore them for over six weeks figuring it was better to itch and stink than to freeze. What proved him to be a coward was when he knew all he had to do to never fly again was to lay his wings down on the commanders desk and no questions asked he would be grounded for the duration. He said he was too big of chicken to look his crew and his other pilots in the eye so being a coward he went out on the missions until the last day of the war. A real big chicken, that guy. He speaks more freely about his experience but he said it is very hard to know someone and have daily contact and then they are gone in an instant. He lost his belly gunner in a matter of seconds, he was called Swede, a really fine guy and then he was gone. And then there will be less, not in an instant but in rapid enough fashion to not be thanked properly by all of us. My service has no comparison to those guys. I served with many WWII and Korea vets, they were the old salts and I as an eager young sailor loved to hear all tales they could tell. They are far too many for recounting here but most of them had more ribbons than a chest could hold. They didn't say much about what those ribbons stood for but it wasn't for just good conduct. A lot of the old petty officers never made it above PO2nd class some rarely made PO at all. They served and served with bravery and humility. Don't forget to thank the vets you know, be it recent service or 60 plus years ago, they deserve far more and expect nothing. Most of the time they get nothing. I wish I could those old salts again.

Alone Again

2006-06-02T11:34:00.000-07:00

Alone Again

There ain’t no cowboy song
to deal with what comes along,
can’t stay when sent away,
poor end to a nine year play!

Who was that actor?

2006-05-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

Fifty or more years ago a character cowboy actor, sometimes an old miner, had a high pitched voice and never a leading role, now I am reminded of his voice by the voice of my friend whose squeaky high pitch has replaced his very nice normal voice because of cancer, the treatment of it or some awfull trick by the gods to make his life just that much more less livable. I can't think of the actors name. Anyone?

Deliverance Wing and Liberals

2006-05-30T10:16:00.000-07:00

Stephany Miller likes to call the Minutemen the deliverance wing of the Republicans.
How many Democrats are included of your deliverance wing? Answer… just as many as there are from every aspect of American society. The real question liberals should be asking is why are the Euro-Mexicans of the ruling class in Mexico getting away with the ethnic cleansing? We bombed the hell out of Serbia for the same offense and liberals rightly fought the charge of wag the tail and all the other Republican taunts at the time.
I never voted for a Republican president in forty years. I would vote for anybody who will close down the human trafficking and ethnic cleansing that you apparently applaud.
What union wants wages driven down? What worker wants the company they work for to replace them with an illegal worker? They sure as hell were never Republicans. We used to call such workers scabs. What is the difference now? Liberals would not condone illegal behavior by the corporations who profit from the illegal human trafficking. It reminds me of liberals who were socialist who defended Stalin. They made it that much harder for social justice to be achieved in this country.
You hang your hat on the human rights issue as though the indigenous peoples of all the Americas are the victims of this country, as if they were the slaves from Africa brought here against their will. Nothing is comparable unless you are the descendent of the slaves brought to Mexico by the Spaniards. You neglect history in the story. None of the Indians of Mexico resided in the LA basin, lower Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, much less Chicago or New York. They are not taking back anything they ever had. I don’t see liberals improving the lot in life for the American Indians whose lands used to include northern Mexico. Are you for the Apache retaking their traditional hunting lands, for the numerous California tribes whose hunting lands included the Baja?
There are human rights causes in our country that need to be addressed of far greater importance than the rights of illegal aliens coming across the borders. The election in 2000 clearly demonstrates blacks still don’t have voting rights. Where were the mass protests for the voters in Jacksonville, Florida, denied access to vote? There is plenty of work liberals could be doing than wasting their time belittling the workers of America defending the workplace for their children and grandchildren. Yes, they are all racists. They are fat, bald, beer swilling laggards and football junkies to boot. More likely many of them marched in civil rights efforts in the sixties, fought to end the war in Southeast Asia, and stood against the corporations who tried to dismantle the unions begun by Chavez. You are just too smug and comfortable, most likely due to the efforts of the kind of activist who in the past fought for rights you don’t even contemplate. There was a time being a liberal meant you stood with Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, and it was something to be proud to say. There are a lot of us who voted for them who applaud the efforts of the Minutemen. We are just as liberal and also have a memory that includes defending our borders from the competition of cheap labor, anti-NAFTA and exploitation of child labor.
Liberals on the radio have just rolled over on those issues. You chase issues that have little to do with social justice. You have laid down on the job of fighting for fair rent, decent housing, health care, child care, corporate take over of the world, and corruption of government. Where did those liberals go? A lot of them will be found in the ranks of the Minutemen. Today liberals rant about the phony issues. You swallow the unfounded global warming crap just like you swallowed global cooling in the 1970’s. You would not know real science if it bit you on the ass. I remember when we would be out of oil by 1985, 1990, and by 2000 and on and on we hear the same false cry. Wrong on the issues is the worst part of seeing liberal becoming a laughing word. Corporations fund just as many Democrats today as they do Republicans. There are not the likes of a Bill Proxmire in the ranks of elected Democrats. They are money-grubbing bastards all. I won’t vote for either party for they represent the same constituents. Non-of-the-above should be a ballet choice for all of us.

poem

2006-05-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Regreteth Not the Passage of Time
For if it Twer Used Well
Yer Life was Worth a Dime
If not Twas just a Hell

hit counter

2006-04-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Free Web Counter

Will the Congress get it right? I doubt it.

2006-04-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

We are about to get the most screwed up laws regulating immigration ever conceived. If there will be anybody satisfied with the outcome of this it won’t be the people who voted these clowns into office. When somebody asks me why I no longer vote all I have to do is point east and ask them when is the last time congress acted in your behalf. They certainly won’t be doing so when the new immigration law gets enacted. Enforcement will be stripped out and no matter what you call this mess, the law will be nothing less than amnesty. If you believe the law will make the country of Mexico stop its policy of ethnic cleansing then you are truly a bigger fool than the Mexican who thinks he is coming for a better life here in the USA. Liberals celebrated when the Serbs were soundly pounded for ethnic cleansing. Where is their voice to protect the Indian, Mulatto, and mixed European minorities who are forced to choose between crossing the border and living in poverty in their own nation? To say they do the work we won’t is complete bull. It was done before they came and would be again if a living wage had not been undercut by the competition from illegal workers. Liberals used to protect American workers rights to a fair wage and decent work environment. No more. They now protect those who come to be exploited by the rich and immoral. The churches are at the head of this pack of wrongheaded thinkers. I can’t call myself a liberal person any longer. Protection of people who are exploited should be our goal, not to facilitate such exploitation. Remember when a tide lifted all the boats. Now when the tide is going out it is leaving those of us who used to be lifted by a rising tide. Unions, workers rights, organizing labor, now are pushed back into the sea without a boat by a wave of illegal workers. These are people who don’t pay taxes and can’t afford medical insurance so they must prey on a too generous system that is now far overloaded to do the job it was intended to do. What school can say the non-English speaking student is not a strain on the teachers and the tax base of the community? Lets just take our army out of Iraq and send it south to end the government that terrorizes our neighbors to the south. It would make more sense than to let the invasion continue here. Do the educated and wealthy of the nations south of the border enter the US through the deserts, under the fences, and wade the river to enter this country? Hell no! They are the ones forcing the ethnic cleansing of their nations. 36 families control the wealth of Mexico. What side are you going to chose? By excusing the problems in those countries and trying to be the good liberal, you betray what real liberals should be doing. Letting the endless stream of illegal aliens come is no solution and giving them absolution because they are “hard workers” is an insult to those of us who pay the bills for this stupid policy. And this is to say nothing of the insult it is to anyone who came here by application through the legal system we used to have in place. When I see another nations flag waved, no matter the country I see the Balkanization of America in full force. What fools we are to condone this. What fools they are to wave a red flag in the face of the bull! The Kaka is about to hit the fan.

To quote Bill Ross "I have a great ideal"

2006-04-20T19:46:00.000-07:00

That is the same mangled language Bush gets away with.

I am the decider...
how about the derider...
divider
insider

That man is so pewtrid it is hard for me to believe anyone within 100 miles of him can get by without an OBA.

This commander in chief is the worst ever. I know how much my Dad hated FDR, Truman, loved Ike, said little about JFK, hated LBJ, liked Nixon, Ford, did not appreciate Jimmy and died before Reagan. I never liked JFK much, thought LBJ was a joke, Nixon was a crook, Ford a lame brain, Reagan a waste, Bush 1 a mush head, Clinton by far best since Ike and now the worst person to ever hold the office is in charge. What is wrong with this country? No longer the free press capital of the world, free speech, assembly, search and seizure gone amuck, our liberties all in peril and so few seem to care. We remain stuck with same dorks on parade.

My great "Ideal" is to impeach and impeach again until all the dogs are out to pasture.

It surprises me the armed rebellion has not begun.

Tired of the way it is.

2006-04-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

When reaching decisions a person tries to predict what will be the case at a certain point in the future. In buying an RV I considered the cost of gasoline which was $1.85 at the time and assumed it might get up to $2.25 in the next few years. How wrong was that?
You might assume the government would look at the data it collects on gasoline stocks, refinery capacity, the split of a barrel of oil into its refined components, and the total production of crude oil worldwide. They might look at rig counts, the ability to supplement fuels with additives like ethanol and if there are enough pipelines, tankers, and storage to handle the normal demand. If demand does not exceed capacity the price should be stable. You are hearing demand in Asia is causing our price to inflate. Go to the government's own figures and check what the increase is in demand in gallons, not percent, for China, Korea and Japan. You will find there is an increase, which by percent of what they were using ten years ago is up but on the world scheme it is not significant to create shortages. In fact there are no shortages. You are not finding stations with signs saying “NO GAS” like in the 1970’s. This is pure speculation and is wrong.
Our government is not protecting the interest of the citizen. They are in bed with the oil companies and not operating as our representatives. I ask you to do your own research and suggest we dump the both parties; they are not fighting this fight for you. We need to start a new party, I suggest we call it the American Citizens Party. It is time to put somebody else in charge, some of the good ideas of conservative government, balanced budget, fiscal responsibility, and a strong military. We could keeep some of the good ideas of the liberals, such as consumer protection, health and education, veterans care, child protection, civil and equal rights. We need to reject multi culturalism, the politically correct non-sense, and government intrusion into your private affairs. I am not for acceptance of the fringe crazy ideas like marriage is something for all sexes and species and adult/child sexual freedom. I don't care if women or men live with each other, or if they share funds, fluids or whatever. It doesn't have to be called marrige. Why is it somebodies right to redefine normal just to make them feel better? You can pass laws to protect a person's rights without diminishing the rest of us and that is fine. When you make them more equal than others by the corrective action that is just as wrong as the original offense. I am not for letting anybody enter the country without the approval of the immigration department and without the means and health to find work and make good. Country of origin is of no matter. If we need people give them more access. If we don't then don't allow them to come and jump ahead of qualified people who are trying to get here the right way. What good does it do to make our culture splintered? Where there is war, it is usually the presense of an intolerant minority who want's to impose their culture on the majority. The war won't stop when they get their way as there will always be a reaction to counter it. Few places are as strife free as this country but we risk throwing it away by letting enclaves of imigrants live as though they never left their country.
I reject Libertarian ideas of no government oversight of business, interest rates, price fraud, inspection for impure foods and drugs. I see no use in telling people to stop smoking, drinking or using drugs that are addictive. We should just let them and when they die from it and destroy their families we should not rescue them. It is self inflicted, just like injuries from sports, dare devil activities, sky diving, and the like, no public funds need be expended to cover the injuries from people engaged in risky behavior. They can buy insurance to cover that and pay for the extra risk involved. I don’t want any Multilanguage classroom. Learn our language and progress. Stick with your own and risk being left out of the benefits of living in a society where you can get ahead if you take the chance and keep focused on having a better life for you and your family. If my ideas are harsh, then it is up to the majority to reject them, if my ideas are good then they will gain acceptance and some of us might see a day that things are run our way. Now nobody is being represented. What conservative voted to have the budget balloon in the way it has? What liberal wants to throw away personal freedom in the name of being politically correct? Who needs to see freedom dumped in favor of false security? You have the right to make these decisions. Don’t vote for any incumbent, give new blood a chance to try their hand at governing. Start a new party, name it what you want, we need to get back on track. Or nobody should vote at all, give us the choice of none of the above and see what that outcome would be.

Key Board Banger Up and Stunning

2006-04-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

I am about to enter the waiting phase of my life.

What am I waiting for? More time before I can quit working and when my income from my savings and social security hit a point that makes economic sense.

I know I am not the only person who is looking at this prospect. I have gone to the social security web page and made an estimate of what I will receive at age 62, less than a month away, and at six month increments until I would be 67. None of it looks good. My savings would now yield less than $300 a month for 20 years before I would deplete them. Another fund will yield about $200 for the rest of my days but because I don't want to kick half of it to a runaway wife, I may never see any of it. Bad attitude...yep. At any rate that makes for about $1500 a month to begin retirement next month. Waiting a year gives me more time to build my 401 and adds maybe another 100 a month to the tally and maybe lifts the boat a bit. Working another 5 years adds and subtracts from the tally board. Less hours to call my own, more in the 401, more from social security and so I wait...until I am really sick of work, not yet there and still feel very productive. I have a pretty good health record but that can change in an instant, accident, unseen heart, other organs, cancer, you know the drill. I might be good for the time while I am waiting only to find when the waiting is over so is life. Its a drag.

I really would like to make better use of my time for me than for a company. I can't pay myself enough. And there are the obligations one makes to others along the way. I can't walk away from my share of the house payment and make my two adult children take on the whole load just yet but I plan on a hand off when I do make the decision to quit work. They will never be ready for the financial hit but then they will be getting a big chunk of equity that I won't be taking out. In return, there will be a place to park my rear end if need be.

The plan is not be be there much, I have a RV, membership in a timeshare where I can keep it free for two weeks at a time at a half a dozen locations, and a payment of $470 for another 9 years. Of course when I began this plan, gas was $1.25. NOW look at it. Maybe I jumped onto a life raft that won't be as mobile as I had hoped. I can buy my week out of the resort for less than the gas to move it up the road to the next resort. That was not the idea I had in mind.

Anybody else in this condition, or worse? What are you doing to cope with it? I don't want to work part time to supplement my retirement. What is the point of giving away my time for less than I get paid now? Sure would like to do something besides go to work every day for the next 5 years.