Speed Racer

Cleaning my desk the other day, I found an antique.  A picture of a pinewood derby car my son and I built for the Cub Scouts.  What’s-His-Name and I learned a lot from that car.  One of the things we learned was that we didn’t particularly like the Cub Scouts.

Actually, we built two cars.  I have no idea what happened to the first car, but looking down at the photo of little chunk of blue painted wood, the whole story flooded back, and for a little while there, I had an eight year old boy standing next to me.

When What’s-His-Name joined the Cub Scouts, I remember going to the meetings at the elementary school lunch room.  I wonder how many hours I have spent squirming around trying to fit a grown up ass into those little midget chairs?  If you have small children, before they start elementary school, find yourself a good folding chair you can drag along to such meetings.  If you can get away with it, take a hip flask.

That boy was excited.  A moose hunt in Alaska wouldn’t have excited that boy half as much as sitting on the floor of a school cafeteria trying to tie a square knot.   His ratio was about 5 granny knots to every square knot, but we were both proud of them.  I never told him that was about my square-to-granny ratio, too. 

Then they announced the pinewood derby competition.  We had a month to turn a $2.50 kit into a prize winning racecar.  The rules were fairly simple.  Each boy had to build it himself, under supervision of his father.  There was a weight limit, a maximum length, and a few other assorted rules that escape me twenty years later, but that was about it.

What’s-His-Name had a lot of fun putting that model together, and I can honestly say he did it all himself, while I hovered overhead.  And I can prove it, too.  That car was as ugly as a mud fence and as slow as a lame Mississippi mud turtle.  The nails holding those wheels on were as crooked as a congressman.  We were both proud of that car, but it came in dead last.  And even my son could tell why.   His was the only car in that competition that had been made by an actual cub scout.  The rest of those cars were perfect.  They were fast, perfectly balanced, and beautifully painted.  One father told me privately that he had paid $200 for his son’s car.  About the only thing most of the actual scouts had done was put their cars on the track.

I can still remember the look my son gave me when that race was over.  He was only eight, but he clearly understood that we had been snookered.  We had been played, and neither of us liked it. 

Eleven months later, What’s-His-Name was nine, and we bought the second pinewood derby kit.  And while my son certainly helped build that car, he had a little help.  The “advising” team had a total of 7 advanced college degrees.  It was probably the first pinewood derby car in history that had the weight placement plan calculated by a nuclear physicist.

There was absolutely no problem with the wheels that year.  My son and I had put the nails on a jeweler’s metal lathe and insured they were perfectly round and a perfect match for the wheels that had their cores filled and re-drilled.  The underside of the nail heads had been polished mirror bright.  You could spin one of the wheels on that car and it would turn for an amazingly long time.  And the tread of the tires had been slightly cambered so that only a portion of the wheel actually made contact with the track, thus reducing friction.  His mother, the Doc, helped him paint the car.

Needless to say, What’s-His-Name won.  That car ran like a scalded dog.  And my son could have made a tiny sum that night.  Several fathers wanted to buy it, but he didn’t want to part with it.  He still has it.

My son and I both learned something from those races.  The children aren’t always the childish ones  when fathers and sons play together. 

Joe Foss and Saburo Sakai

I have previously written a small anecdote concerning Colonel David Hackworth.  After that blog was published, I received enough mail about the Colonel to have written a book about his exploits.  I can only say that the Colonel lived large.  Hopefully, pretty much the same thing will happen this week when I tell my small story about General Joe Foss.


Where do you start with a man like Joe Foss?   Governor of South Dakota, Commissioner of the American Football League, past president of the NRA, and Brigadier General of the Air National Guard.  Probably the best place to start the story is to mention that during World War II, Marine Captain Foss received the Medal of Honor for his victories with the "Cactus Air force" at the Battle of Guadacanal.  A fighter "Ace" early in the war, Joe Foss was a natural leader, and more important, a man who made friends everywhere he went.

Almost twenty years ago, I was invited to a dinner honoring the Marine Corps’ birthday.  The guests of honor were General Foss and Saburo Sakai, the top  surviving Japanese ace of the war.  Actually, this wasn't my first meeting with the famous Japanese ace.  About fifteen years earlier, I had had a lunch with Sakai in New York.  I was working  for Bantam Books and we were publishing his autobiography, Samurai, so I  got the opportunity to talk with him at length about his experiences in the war.

Amazingly, in 1993, Sakai remembered me from our earlier meeting.  There must be a shortage in Japan of geeky guys who stare with their mouths open.   

Inscription Reads: Never Surrender

It was a wonderful evening.  Both men related their experiences of the war and each man complimented the other.  When Sakai was asked who he thought was the greatest aviator of the war, he immediately answered, "Joe Foss."  Joe was smiling, but I'm still not sure what that twinkle in his eye meant.  Both of these men were entirely at peace about the war, and Sakai was actually a Buddhist acolyte by this time.  While neither would have wanted to actually harm the other, it was sort of a shame we didn’t have an F4F Wildcat and a Mitsubishi Zero standing ready at the airport.  The town may have missed an opportunity to have a hell of an airshow.

I had come to this dinner prepared.  Years before when I was cleaning out the attic of my father's house, I had found a mint condition Life Magazine from June 7, 1943.  The cover featured a smiling Captain Foss, America’s top Ace, wearing the Medal of Honor that Franklin D. Roosevelt had just hung around his neck.  Of course, I had kept the magazine—when that magazine was printed, it had cost a dime-- to me it was priceless.

Years later, I was hoping that General Foss would sign that magazine, and if he did, I wanted the signature to be perfect.  I had borrowed a Parker Fountain pen that had been manufactured during the war.  I wanted a period pen for that antique magazine.

Finally, the opportunity presented itself.  I walked up to the general and handed him the magazine and pen, while I politely asked him for his autograph.  As General Foss accepted the magazine, I wondered what he was thinking about as he looked down at a picture taken of himself from fifty years earlier--a time when he had just received his nation’s highest honor.

General Foss smiled.  "Wow!  I haven't seen one of these in years," he said as he autographed the Life Magazine just below his own photograph.  "They don’t make pens like this anymore."

Maybe the most remarkable thing about that truly remarkable man was that he honestly believed he was just an ordinary man.

Educational Embarkation

The budgetary crisis of New Mexico finally sifted down the budgetary maze of state government until it has reached that branch of bureaucracy heretofore known as the Department of Higher Education.  From now on, we will just refer to them as those Bozos in Santa Fe.   For years, the formulae by which universities have been funded was been based on the number of students enrolled in our classes.  If more students take biology than journalism, the biology department is allowed more funds (assuming the football department doesn’t need them) than Journalism.

Similarly, if more students go to Enema University than the Southwest School of Livestock Grooming, then… well, actually, the money will either go the school with the biggest sports program or to school in the home town of the state senator who introduced the governor to his current mistress… but you get the idea.

At least, that is the way it used to be.  Now, higher education will be funded by how many students we graduate.  Not necessarily educate--just get out the damn door robed, capped, and brandishing a diploma they may not be able to read.   Trust me, if we get paid for every student who leaves a classroom, regardless of what they learn while actually in the classroom, the administration will remove desks to discourage loitering.

Even as I was thinking that our educational ship was sinking, the radio suddenly announced that another Costa cruise line ship had failed to reach its intended port.  The poor cruise line companies may have trouble filling their ships for a while.  That’s when I had the inspiration!  Let cruise ship lines run the university.  If the state wants to sell a 4 year passage through the campus, even an Italian cruise line could do that better than a bunch of academics.

If you think about it, most of the campus buildings could easily be converted to resemble a cruise ship experience.  We have a pool and lots of dining areas, and the library would be a great place to have a book club after we clear out most of those ugly bookshelves.

I can just picture the advertising:

YOUR EDUCATION COULD BE A FOUR YEAR VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY!

A campus full of possibilities makes the perfect retreat!  Throughout your four year stay, whether you love activity or crave tranquility, the University of Carnival Royal American Princess offers everything you could need for a relaxing, rejuvenating retreat, including a wide variety of freshly prepared cuisine and innovative experiences all designed to help you escape completely.

Fresh, flavorful cuisine cooked with passion and care.  At any hour, wherever you go on your University of Carnival Royal American Princess campus, our chefs are busy baking, grilling and sautéing the ingredients of your next meal. Bread and pastries are baked fresh three times a day, and sauces are prepared by hand.

We have Dining Options to match any mood!  On tonight's menu? A signature U of CRAP pasta – served with freshly-prepared sauces. Or perhaps grilled halibut, perfectly complimented by a chilled glass of chardonnay.  Another night, it could be homemade Italian pizza by the pool. That's the beauty of dining at U of CRAP-–there's always something to match whatever your mood might be.

And you never need cash—just charge it to your prepaid CRAP Card®!

As a student, you have your choice of Anytime or Traditional Dining!  A sumptuous variety of dining options awaits you on every voyage. University of Carnival Royal American Princess offers you the choice of Traditional Dining with fixed time and seating, or Anytime Dining with the flexibility to dine when and with whom you choose.

Campus Activities?  Find your passion. Take a class on cooking, ceramics, photography and more. Shop our duty-free liquor store or log on to the web with your complementary iPad—preloaded with textbooks if you wish to read them. For something physical, take an exercise class at the gym, practice your putt on the green, or get a massage at the spa. It's all here, exclusively at University of Carnival Royal American Princess.

There are endless ways to spend your days at U of CRAP. Even if you never leave the campus, you can always find something new to do.  Visit our boutiques: we have had years of experience selling T-shirts, sweats, and hand bags.  Designer brands and duty-free combine for a great shopping experience. Plus, get great college promos on jewelry, T-shirts and souvenirs to match your major.  We are more than ready to sell you CRAP merchandise.

Our multi-million dollar Arts Center has what you want in entertainment!  Movies, music, shows, and plays!  Want something more relaxing?  Get pampered from head to toe for an hour of bliss or the entire day. Or spend some time limbering up with a personal trainer in our world-class gyms.  We even have an indoor equestrian center!

Cards, Bingo, slots and more!  Whether you've got a favorite game or you're just a beginner, everyone is welcome when the chips are down. We have partnered with a nearby Native American reservation to bring you the finest gambling experience while earning a degree in Anthropology with a concentration in Native American Studies.  Advanced students can qualify for a B. S. in Statistics.

And forget those quaint old dorm rooms.  At University of Carnival Royal American Princess, you can book a luxury suite.  Queen-size bed.  Separate sitting room with convertible double sofa bed and dining area. Large balcony.  Two televisions.  Personal computer.  Refrigerator and wet bar.  Walk-in closet.  Bathroom with corner tub (equipped with whirlpool jets) and multi-directional brass-fitting shower.  Aproximately 1,329 square feet, including balcony.

All this may seem a little radical, but why not?  Even Costa Cruise Lines couldn’t put Enema U aground as fast as the state legislature.

Rapping-Tapping at My Chamber Roof

I can remember the dilemma of being a teenage boy in the sixties.  While I had an almost unlimited amount of time, I had neither a car nor a girlfriend.  So I got a job bagging groceries at a local grocery store.  Through hard work and perseverance, within a year I had been promoted to checker/stocker, made fifteen cents an hour over minimum wage, and got both a girlfriend and a car.  And then had no time to enjoy either.

That might be the story of most men’s lives.  We trade our allotted time for the money to better enjoy the time we no longer have.   Come to think about it, retirement is not that far away.  Once again, I will have more time than money.  Is that what they really mean by a second childhood?

Working at that grocery store taught me more than I learned in high school.  I have always enjoyed learning by doing.  (Even today, I have discovered that I have learned—and understood—more about history by teaching it than I ever did as a student.  If I had it to do over again, I would just skip that student phase and go straight to the faculty stage.)  I learned that if it was a hot day, bag the grapes on top and as you carried the groceries out to someone’s car, you could eat a few of the grapes.  I learned not to put groceries in the back seat of a car until someone was holding the damn dog—and still have the scars to remind me.

Mostly, however, I learned that I wanted a better job.  And the grocery store chain I worked for had a better job, if I could just find a way to be part of it.  The inventory crew—that’s the job I wanted.  They paid thirty-five cents an hour more than I was making as a checker.  (If that doesn’t sound like much, remember that you could buy a gallon of gas for thirty-five cents and the gas station attendant would put it in your car for you, check your oil, and give you a free glass.)  The problem was that the inventory crew worked the graveyard shift.

Four nights a week, Wednesday through Saturday, the inventory crew would be locked inside a grocery store after it closed at 9:00 PM.  By 6:00 AM, the entire store would be inventoried.  Every member of the crew worked 36 hours a week but got paid for 40 hours.  This was a great job, but I was still a junior in high school and the summer vacation did not start for two months.  Still, I wanted that job.  I wanted the money—I wanted that job.  I could sleep in July or sometime.

Somehow, I convinced both my boss and my parents to let me do the job. Sometimes, I could grab a few hours sleep after school and before work, or take a short nap before school started in the morning… but by Saturday morning, there was simply no denying it: by the time I got home I was bushed.  Luckily, I could sleep the whole day, then go to work that night fairly rested, and start the week—and the whole process--all over. 

By May, the summer vacation was close.  And God knows I needed it.  Between the demands of my girlfriend, school, my girlfriend, and chores around the house—I was averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night.  And to get that much I had to regularly sleep through my English class.  Luckily, Texans have very little need for grammar.  (You can tell by reading my blog.)

One Saturday morning, I came home exhausted, climbed the stairs to my attic bedroom, stripped off my clothes down to my religious underwear (Holy! Holy! Hole-y!) and fell into bed unconscious.  I immediately slept the sleep that only comes to the very innocent or those with no conscience.  Like Republicans.

I didn’t get to sleep long.  My attic bedroom was directly beneath the cedar shake shingles that covered the entire house.  This being Texas in May, the shingles were covered with tiny little bugs.  The kind of bugs that woodpeckers love to eat.  I had probably been asleep for about an hour when that damn peckerwood woke me up.   TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP!  The damn bird was directly over my head.

Have you ever been trapped somewhere between being awake and being completely asleep?  It’s like your brain is coated with molasses or you have been reading Jane Austen while stoned.  I have no idea how many times that morning I stood on my bed, beat on the ceiling to scare off that woodpecker, only to have it come back five minutes later and start the entire process over again.

TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP!  TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP!  TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP-TAP! 

Finally, that damn bird woke me completely up.  I ran over to my closet and grabbed my .22 rifle, a loaded clip, and ran down the stairs screaming obscenities at the top of my lungs.  Down the stairs, across the living room hall, out the front door and into the front lawn.  I turned around and looked up… there was that damn woodpecker.

The rifle came up just as the bird lifted off the crown of the roof.  He was no more than six inches off the roof when I shot that son-of-a-bird brain.  His wings folded, and he fell down onto the roof line, bounced, and rolled down the back of the roof.  I immediately improvised a combination war and victory dance as I waved the rifle over my head and screamed my victory cry.

I don’t know how long I did this before I noticed my audience.  This was Saturday morning in May.  The neighbors were mowing their lawns.  At least they had been until a nearly naked teenager fired a gun and began screaming obscenities.  None of them had probably even seen the bird; God alone knows what they thought I was doing.

I quickly ran back inside the house, slammed the front door and leaned backwards on it.  It was at this point I was able to smile and nod my head towards the gathered ladies of my mother’s church group.  In my haste down the stairs, I hadn’t quite noticed them on my trip through the living room.  They were a little harder to ignore on my way back up the stairs.

Not only did my mother remind me of this story approximately twice a week for the rest of her life, but I think it was the main topic of conversation when I introduced my future wife to my mother.

Cajun Night

Thirty years ago, I was the Resident Manager at the Flagship Hotel on Galveston Island.  As I have written about before (and even before that), the Flagship was built on top of a pier extending out over the Gulf of Mexico.  You could even make an argument that the hotel was really a ship, since not only was she built entirely over water, but a few years before, a Governor of Texas, seeking reelection, had named the hotel as an official ship in the Texas Navy.   This was a signal honor that the hotel shared only with a couple of ferry boats and a beached submarine that had last tasted sea water during World War II.  Though small, the Texas Navy is far superior to any competing service offered by such states as Nevada, Iowa, or New Mexico.

Though profitable, the hotel changed hands frequently.  Every new owner was convinced that he could quickly double the profits of the inn, yet within six months he would eventually realize that he had overpaid for the property and that the only way to recoup his money was to resell the hotel.  As in many other professions, the only way to amass a small fortune in the hotel business was to start with a larger one.

Our current new owners had decided that what the hotel desperately needed was a first class restaurant--an eatery that would bring people from all over the island to dine in our large restaurant, enjoying the beautiful views of the waves crashing on the beach.  Accordingly, the hotel hired a rather famous Cajun Chef from New Orleans.  While the General Manager and I would continue to run the hotel and the bar, the new chef was to be given a free hand to manage the restaurant as he wished.

Despite the new chef’s reputation, I first realized that the hotel might be in for some trouble when the chef and I had a small disagreement over the keys.  The chef and his crew would arrive at the hotel every morning about 5:00 AM and begin prepping for the new day.  First thing every morning, the chef would come to me and I would give him the large collection of kitchen keys.  There were about two dozen keys for the pantries, liquor cabinets, walk-in freezers and refrigerators, which were all kept locked up at night.  There was a small fortune in that kitchen.

Within the first two weeks, the chef managed to lose this set of keys four times.  If we could not immediately find the missing keys, all the locks had to be changed, each time.  Even the new owners were getting a little annoyed at this cost.  The morning after the fourth set of keys vanished, when the chef arrived for his keys, the key rings were firmly fastened to a large metal ring a foot and a half in diameter.  While the chef was very unhappy with me, he took the key ring.  And within a week, he had managed to lose it, too.  

The chef never lost the next set of keys.  These consisted of a normal ring of keys welded to a six inch length of chain.  The other end of the chain was welded to an eight foot long piece of 2” water pipe.  The pipe had been painted with red and white stripes to resemble a barber pole.  It was heavy, cumbersome, and took two men to carry.    I promised the chef that if he managed not to lose it in the next few months, I might cut the pipe in half.  The chef was furious, but the owners backed me, and the new key ring-pole stayed for months.  As it turned out, that pole outlasted the chef.

The new chef made a lot of changes to the menu.  Shrimp Etouffee, blackened catfish, jambalaya, and gumbo were added to the menu. The restaurant was redecorated in a style that the General Manager and I privately called “Wrought Iron Whorehouse.”  And a small fortune was spent advertising the changes.  Unfortunately, despite the fact that our bartenders could now produce an excellent sazerac cocktail, the business in the restaurant did not dramatically improve--certainly nowhere near enough of an increase to justify the cost of the remodeling or the salary of the new chef.

Now, the summer was almost over.  Beach hotels start an inevitable decline in the fall until business revives with the arrival of Spring Break.  By now, our chef was desperate to prove himself and seized on an idea: an All-You-Can-Eat Cajun Night for the Friday night at the start of the Labor Day weekend.  The general manager and I thought this was a horrible idea, but the chef had been given a free hand.  We were astounded when the trucks began delivering the food for this dinner.  There were mountains of red potatoes, baskets of corn on the cob, and huge amounts of red beans and rice, but none of this compared to the thousands of pounds of live crawdads.  (Or as we say in Texas, “Mud Bugs”.)  Thousands and thousands of them crawling and snapping their miniature claws in large mesh bags that filled every storage place in the kitchen to capacity.

Within hours of the bags’ arrival, those damn crawdads were all over the hotel.  I suspected some complicity from the bellboys, but I couldn’t blame them.  The situation was hilarious to everyone but the chef.   I think the chef boiled about a thousand pounds of the critters as the sun set, in preparation for the horde of anticipated patrons.  Unfortunately, the patrons stayed away in droves.  We may have sold 25 pounds of crawdads that evening.  Maybe, but probably not.

The chef was surprised, but he had a new plan.  The next day, Saturday, he had the kitchen set up banquet tables on the sidewalk fronting the hotel.  He offered Cajun food to the throngs of people roller skating and walking along the seawall.  As it turned out, very few people want heavy Cajun food on an extremely hot day.  Another hundred pounds may have been sold. 

The manager and I pitied the poor chef, but we had other things to worry about.  Chief among these worries was the sign on the roof.  In large fluorescent looping script, the illuminated sign read “Flagship” in blue light.  Or it would have if the damn “L” hadn’t gone out.  We were getting more than a few phone calls along the lines of:  “Hello?  Is this the looovvvee boat?”

Late Saturday afternoon, as we stood there on the roof of the hotel examining that damn sign, the General Manager suddenly pointed at the water seven floors below and asked, “What the hell is that?”

There was a hundred foot long red lumpy oil slick floating out from underneath the hotel.  And there were strange little yellow dots in the red slick.  “I think,” I said, “that is about 2000 pounds of crawdads mixed with a few hundred ears of corn.”

The chef had decided to destroy the evidence of his culinary stupidity by walking out onto the loading dock and dumping the unsold crawdads, both living and boiled, into the bay.  I suspect the chef did not know that the crawdads would float.  Still, he probably would have gotten away with this subterfuge if the tide hadn’t been coming in.  The crawdads began washing up onto the beach below the pier.

Almost immediately, we began receiving phone calls from guests concerned about the strange mess on the beach.  “Don’t worry,” the front desk lied.  “This is a marvelous opportunity for you to observe a rare natural event.  Red tides only occur once or twice a year.”

The General Manager and I were both elated and terrified.  We were elated because the chef was toast.  He had cooked his last meal.  Terrified because at any minute we were going to get a phone call from the Health Department.  You can’t dump a ton of fresh water crustaceans into the bay without somebody noticing. 

Actually, it turned out we could.  Maybe it was because it was Labor Day weekend.  Maybe it was because the sun set only a few hours later and everyone was staring at that damn sign.  Whatever the reason, we got away with it.  By morning, most of the evidence was gone.  What happened to it?  Well, about midnight, I took a flashlight and went down the stairs from the end of the pier and walked out onto the narrow beach under the hotel.

That beach was alive, but not with crawdads.  There was a constant clicking and snapping noise.  As I moved the flashlight back and forth, I could see an army of sea gulls, crabs, and rats devouring everything.  Everywhere I looked, all I could see were teeth and eyes illuminated by my flashlight.  It was a sight that Dante could have used for a new level of Hell.  By morning, the tide going back out removed most of the remaining evidence.

As it turned out, Cajun night was popular after all.

House Arrest by the Rubber Gun Squad

The first hint of trouble was when I almost couldn’t get into the driveway.  Several police cars had set up a barricade in front of my house.  There was just enough space to go to the left of the barricade and turn into my driveway.  As I got out of my car, a man with a rifle ran up my driveway demanding to know if I lived here.  Even after I assured him that I was indeed parked in my own driveway, you could tell that he was unhappy at my having parked in my own driveway without his express permission.

“You can’t fix that kind of stupid,” the cop said.

“No, but the police department can hire it,” I replied.  From there, the evening went downhill.

For the next couple of hours, police cars came from all over the county.  I didn’t know we had so many cop cars.  I finally counted 37 city, county, and state vehicles.  The K-9 corps was called out.  The only people missing were the campus cops from Enema U.   I have never seen so many cops at one time without a tray of donuts.

Despite what the police told us--some wild lie about a disturbance a few blocks away--the police had surrounded a house 4 doors up from us.  We might never have known the truth if we hadn’t accidentally noticed the bright floodlights and the bullhorn that screamed for over 5 hours.  Only a trained observer could have picked up on these tiny details.

“BILLY THE KID, COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP!  WE HAVE A WARRANT FOR YOUR ARREST.  YOU WILL BE HANDCUFFED AND TAKEN TO THE STATION.  WE ARE NOT HERE TO HURT YOU.”

Well, I’m lying.  His name wasn’t really Billy the Kid.  And I think the police may have been lying about the part about not hurting him.  Otherwise, why exactly did they call out two separate SWAT teams?  And did I mention the tank?  Why in the hell does this town own a tank?  Hell, we don’t even have a good barbecue restaurant.  Shouldn’t good ribs be a higher priority than a tank?

It was about this time that I walked out to my truck and noticed that there were an equal number of cop cars at the other end of the block.  Does everyone in this town own a cop car but me?  If you wanted to rob this town, this would be the perfect time.  I might have tried it myself but THERE WAS A TANK BLOCKING MY DRIVEWAY.

After five hours, the police finally made their big push.  Covered by a sniper on the roof of my neighbor’s house, and safely crouched behind the tank, the police rushed the house, blew open the front door and deployed a robot.  (If we can have a tank, why quibble about a robot?)   As the robot reconnoitered the house, the police eventually learned….that the house was empty. 

The police shut down a neighborhood, blocked a major thoroughfare, and assaulted a residential area so they could assault an empty house. 

There were dozens of heavily armed men moving up and down the street.  What would have happened if one of these men had accidentally fired his weapon?  The resulting firefight might still be going on.  If a car had backfired, a kid had thrown a firecracker, or that idiot sniper had fallen off the roof of my terrified neighbor’s house, the results could have been tragic.  It doesn’t really matter what crime the guy they were after was accused of.  Unless he was making (and testing) homemade nuclear hand grenades, he was not nearly as dangerous to my neighborhood as the police.

Any small town police department stupid enough to think it needs to own a tank and is stupid enough to use that tank against an empty house, needs to rethink things.  If we can’t get better cops, let’s not allow them to use anything more dangerous than a potato gun.

Several hours into the one-sided standoff, a local cat slowly walked across the boulevard—right through the assembled police, under and past the road block.  The cat was obviously not impressed; he had probably seen a galloping cluster fuck before.  If only the police had taken a clue from the cat—the only sign of intelligence, and the coolest cat, in the street.

Yep. It’s Still There

Many years ago, I took several classes in Archaeology as part of a degree in Anthropology.  One of these was a field school.  In other words, we dug big holes in the desert, mostly looking for things that weren’t there, had never been there, and weren’t likely to ever be there.

The site was chosen based on local rumor and legend, both of which turned out to be wrong.  What we hoped might be the remains of an old train stop turned out to be nothing more than the remains of an old adobe house.  Unfortunately, this took a very long time to prove, and even more unfortunately, the dig was in summer.  I love the desert, I even like the heat, but no one can like digging holes in the desert during the searing heat of summer.  We dug.  And we dug.  And we dug some more.  Eventually, the heat made us a little touchy about it.  “Don’t call us diggers, we prefer “Archaeo-Americans”.

Eventually, everyone on the site knew that we were not going to find anything linking old adobe remains with a train.  In a last ditch effort, the professor leading the dig sent another student and me out to canvass the nearby farms and houses.  Surely, someone must know something about that old house.

Actually, it turned out that no one remembered anything about those old adobe ruins.  The walls had been about three feet tall and, as far back as anyone could remember, the only change had been a slow, gradual erosion after each spring rain.  We must have interviewed two dozen people before finally, in desperation, I asked a farmer, “Didn’t anything interesting ever happen around here?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he answered.  “Unless you mean the train.”

Of course, he had our attention.  “What train?” we asked. 

The farmer led us out of his house and deep into a field of cotton.  About halfway across the field, there was a clearing, and in the middle of the clearing was a large sheet of weathered plywood.  The farmer walked up to the board, lifted it up, and revealed a large hole.  As the three of us stepped up and looked down about four feet, we could clearly see… well, it was a train.  To be precise, we were looking at the right side of a steam-powered locomotive.  Or at least part of one.

The farmer told us the story.  About a century before, the land along the Rio Grande turned into a swamp every time it rained.  Since the train line ran fairly close to the river, in many places the train crossed trestles and bridges over the lowest points.  One night, a flash flood washed out one of the trestles.  The next train--a locomotive, wood car, and three boxcars--simply ran off the track and flipped over onto its side in the mud.  The railroad recovered the freight cars but left the aging locomotive to remain where it lay.

Eventually, the river was dammed by the Army and the water used for irrigation, so that the land along the river became valuable farming property and the fields were carefully leveled.  Somewhere in this process, the train was buried and (mostly) forgotten.

For a little while there, two archaeology students thought they had made the find of the year.  We had a train!  A whole train!  This was going to be a great archaeological site, we would dig up the train and put it into a museum.

Unfortunately, reality set in pretty soon.  It would have cost a fortune to dig up that locomotive.  We would have to pay the farmer for lost crops, set up cranes, somehow fix it so that the cranes didn’t sink down and join that train, then transport the train out, repair it…  Are you starting to understand the enormous costs involved?  Worse, it seems the southwest is just lousy with those old trains.  Nearly every small town has a locomotive sitting in the middle of town surrounded by a chain link fence to keep the children off the attractive nuisance.  Some of those towns would pay a pretty penny to have someone haul away the old eyesore.  No one really wants an old locomotive.

But everyone thinks they do.  Word spread about the train.  It’s been a few decades, and to this day, I get at least one phone call a year from someone who hears the story and has a great idea:  Why not dig it up?

Yes, the train is still there.  If you want a train, don’t call me.  Just go to Deming or Silver City and take down the fence and get theirs. 

The Feral Administrator Program

The campus of Enema U is under assault--we are in danger of being drowned by a tidal wave of administrators.  While they were never rare on campus, it was possible for a few weeks to pass without sighting an administrator on campus.  Occasionally, a vice-president could be spotted gently grazing in a coffee shop, or standing in the shade outside the Alumni Office.  While it was never easy to accurately determine the size of the herd, estimates of the population size were never higher than a few dozen breeding pairs.  

Sadly, those days of benign neglect are over.  Several factors led to the sudden over population. First, and perhaps the worst mistake, was when the university introduced a new major--a Bachelor’s Degree in University Administration.  After the success of the Golf Course Management program, perhaps this was an innocent mistake.  Unfortunately, this new program was not established under the School of Agriculture, where such ideas as selective breeding and culling the herd are widely understood and practiced; the new major was mistakenly also given to the Athletic Program.   

The new program began well, but soon (possibly due to low entrance requirements) there were simply too many majors.  In an attempt to reduce the size of the program (and in keeping with the best hiring practices of Administrators at Enema U) only students from other universities were allowed to apply to the program. 

Sadly, the administration population grew exponentially.  While no one knows exactly what the gestation period is for bureaucrats, according to one professor of Biology, it is entirely possible that administrators are born pregnant.

Today, it is practically impossible to cross the campus without sighting small herds of Executive Vice-Presidents or Assistant Associate Provosts.  At events such as convocations, the lowing of these administrators is deafening.  Worse, the campus is littered with their spoor--memos and reports can be seen everywhere, as ubiquitous as tumbleweeds in the breeze.

As an example of the problem, can you determine which of the following is not a real job title at Enema U?

a.  Senior Vice President of Research Integrity

b.  Dean of Student Articulation

c.  Dean of Student Success

d.  Vice President of Student Affairs

e.  Graduate School Mascot Handler

f.   Senior Vice President of Redundancy

g.  Executive Vice President of Redundancy

h.  None of the above

i.   Before e except after c.  Weird!

Sadly, the answer is h.  The problem is so severe, that it has been turned over to a new Vice President of Special Problems.  An investigation is under way at all levels and a report should reach us shortly.

In the mean time, I have a suggestion.  The university has for years operated a successful program to handle a similar problem: the Feral Cat Program.  Periodically, cats on campus are humanely trapped and taken to veterinarians, who vaccinate and neuter the animals.  Then, so the cats in the program can be recognized, the top of one ear is clipped.  Afterwards, the cat is released back on the campus.

Surely, this program would work equally well with our feral administrators.

Let’s Encourage the Others

Suddenly, with the foundering of the Costa Concordia off the Italian coast, people all over the world are thinking about a similar event 100 years ago this April.  For days, the news agencies interviewed survivors who consistently said, “Did you see the movie Titanic?”

Ignoring the strange fact that people tend to categorize real world events through the distorted prism of Hollywood, it is rather heartening to see so many people striving to find a historical reference to help explain the seemingly impossible loss of an “unsinkable” ship.  While I have no intention of repeating an endless stream of Titanic references—ending with the inevitable reminder that the Italian ship foundered on Friday the thirteenth—I do want to point out a few less obvious historical references.

As I write this, it is exactly one year after the US Airlines 1549 flight that ended with Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landing his Airbus in the Hudson River.  After a miraculous landing, Sully walked up and down the aisle of his aircraft, even as it slowly sank, making absolutely sure that every passenger and crew member had safely evacuated the plane.  There were no casualties.

Almost forgotten today is Pan Am Flight 6.  On October 16, 1956, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was attempting to fly from Hawaii to San Francisco when it lost two of its four engines.  Captain Ogg managed to fly the crippled aircraft, and its 24 passengers and 7 crew members, to the Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain, and circle the ship until daylight. The ditching was successful, and Captain Ogg was the last man off his doomed plane.  There were no casualties, excepting the 40 crates of parakeets in the luggage compartment.

When the SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm in July 1956, the captain knew immediately that the ship would sink.  Despite the fact that the ship immediately listed so badly that half of the life boats could not be used, the efficiency of the crew, led by Captain Calamai, ensured that the only casualties were a result of the collision, not from the evacuation.  Only after every passenger and crew member was off the ship did Captain Calamai leave his ship.

While the exact cause of the Costa Concordia accident is not (at this time) known, it appears that Captain Schettino deliberately steered his vessel too close to the shore in order to provide his passengers a better view of the coast.   When the ship hit the rocky reef, opening an enormous hole in the ship’s hull, the captain tried to ground his ship on the nearby shore.  Obviously, by this point, the captain fully knew his ship was doomed.

No warning was given to the passengers for an hour, even as the ship began to list.  No orders were given by the Captain to lower the lifeboats.  The passengers, most of whom had not yet been drilled in safety precautions, were left to fend for themselves.  While it is not yet known exactly when the Captain abandoned his passengers, his crew, his ship, and his responsibility, it is an undeniable fact that he was arrested on shore long before the ship was completely evacuated.  Captain Schettino was on shore long before his purser (who broke a leg when the ship rolled onto its side) was rescued by helicopter.

There is one more historical event to consider.  In March 1757, Admiral Sir John Byng was executed for his failure to aggressively engage the French at the Battle of Minorca.  He was court-martialed, found guilty of “failing to do his utmost”, and executed by firing squad on the quarterdeck of the HMS Monarch in the full view of the assembled fleet. 

Byng's failure is referred to in Voltaire’s novel Candide with the line Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres – "In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

If Nominated, I Will Not Run

I am very sorry to announce that I am not running for president.  While I have no doubt that most of you will be severely disappointed at this news, I have no choice.  It is my wife’s fault.

Evidently, I will never be able to run for political office.  No matter how much I might want to,  it appears that I do not have the right kind of wife to be a politician.

Herman Cain is just the latest in a very long line of politicians who have cheated on their wives (with partners ranging from chubby file clerks to farm animals) yet they still somehow want the voters to trust them enough to give them the most important job in America.  During the Clinton impeachment fiasco, my eldest son once asked me, “If his wife can’t trust him, why should we?”

Actually, I’m not all that surprised.  I have always taken it for granted that the most powerful man in the world could probably get laid.  All things considered, this is probably a good thing.  I think we can all agree that we don’t want the most powerful man in the world (the man whose finger hovers over the nuclear button) to get… anxious.

I understand the powerful men believing they can ignore social conventions.  I can even understand these men believing that somehow their peccadillos won’t be discovered even as they undergo a very public anal exam by the press.  But where in the world do these politicians   find wives who will allow them to do such nonsense and then still stand by them on a podium, hand in hand, and pretend to smile lovingly at their scumbag husbands.

Herman Cain, after his ten year affair was exposed, somehow stood in public--with his wife--and made a public apology that miraculously managed to make it sound as if it was the press that was at fault.  What was it that Cain said?  "I am at peace with my wife."

Christ on a Popsicle stick!  If my mistress of ten years came forward and outed me in the national press, I would be in pieces with my wife.  The last words I would hear from my wife, as she stood over my bleeding body, would be:  "How do you reload this son of a bitch?"

Even with the use of strong drugs, if my wife stood behind me during such a press conference, it would be so she could keep carving my spinal column into spaghetti-o's with a dull spoon.  I simply do not believe my wife would allow herself to be humiliated that way.

More importantly, why would any man want to subject his wife to such public ridicule?

Perhaps more importantly, why are we far more interested in how a politician treats his mistress than how he treats his wife?

Evidently, to be a good politician, you have to be a lying cheating scumbag.  My wife, the Doc, reminds me frequently that she knows “where the hurty parts are.”  I think I’ll pass.

Profound Discussions

Several years ago, while a student, I had the habit of getting an early cup of coffee before classes started.  As I sat in the cafeteria at Enema U, I would invariably see a trio of my favorite history profs sitting together and having coffee.  I used to wonder what they were talking about.  Some abstract historical point?  A discussion of the latest pedagogical approach?

Move forward a few decades.  I now have coffee with two of the three above professors (the third having retired).  And if you are a student observing us, wondering about our deep thoughts…  We talk about the news, the weather, and our children.  And women.  Our conversations are about as deep as a parking lot puddle after a summer fog.

Our emails are not much different, either.  Professor Grumbles, the German professor, and I have had an ongoing discussion about movies for years.  Here is a recent email exchange:

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:01 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: movie proportions

I think we need a new system of rating movies.

Grumble’s Movie Proportions

01%   truly memorable, may withstand test of time = A

05%   thought-provoking, worth seeing = A-

05%   well-made, artistically rewarding = B

20%   entertaining distraction or popcorn thriller = B-

20%   pleasant, easily forgotten  = C

49%   not worth the ticket price = D/F

I probably should include examples.

Note total lack of correlation with Academy Awards or Golden Globes.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:21 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

 I think we need a grading rubric.

The Milliorn System

·         Entertaining and memorable movie with a unique plot.  Possible 1-60 points.

·         Nudity with an attractive female actress.  Possible 1-20 points.

·         Nudity with a male actor.  Negative 10 points.

·         Gratuitous Violence.  Possible 1-15 points.

·         Car Chase.  Possible 1-10 points.

·         Cool airplane.  Possible 1-10 points.

·         Crashing cool airplane.  Negative 50 points.

·         Unique and horribly cruel violence.  Possible 1-5 points.

·         Unique and horribly cruel violence inflicted on anyone named Sheen.  Possible 10-50 points.

·       Horribly idiotic firearms mistake.  Negative 25 points.

·       Presence of Kung Fu or any other Asian martial arts without Jackie Chan.  Negative 25 points.

·       Plot consisting of 2 men discussing their lives and dysfunctional families.  Negative 100 points.

·       Plot consisting of several couples trying to relive college moments.  Negative 100 points.

·       Coming of Age plot with adorable child actors related to some famous star.  Negative 1000 points.

·       Sequels or remakes.  Negative 10 points for each previous occurrence.   At this point, any movie with Rocky in the title can achieve, at the unlikely best, 40 points.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:27 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

A bit more subjectively flexible (what elements of a car chase give it more points?) than I would prefer.  But thorough!  I would also have to add: 

·         Clumsy misuse of a foreign language.  Negative 20 points.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:28 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Well, a tank chase, with nude women driving them, would receive MUCH more in points than say… the car chase in Thelma and Louise.   Let me amplify this…  Which would you rather watch?

A.      Thelma and Louise are chased off a cliff.

B.      Angelina Jolie, nude, drives a Sherman Tank after a school bus, full of screaming, naked cheer leaders, that eventually finds safety at a lesbian nudist colony.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:11 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Only if B takes place in a warm spring drizzle.  Of vegetable oil.   And Angie should be in an open Jeep.  The screaming doesn’t matter.  I won’t get around to turning on the sound.

So this is some kind of fashion statement?

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:12 PM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Screaming cheerleaders jump up and down.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:15 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Again – the screaming is irrelevant.  Jumping, though: excellent.  And slo-mo, please.

From: Mark Milliorn
To: Professor Grumbles
Date Sent: 12/2/2011 12:20:54 PM
Subject: RE: movie proportions

And Sherman tanks are driven by tugging and pulling on long levers.  Obviously, we would not want to deny the director the artistic use of such an obvious phallic symbol.  You’ll just have to settle for interior shots of Angie, sweating profusely, straining as she manhandles (or womanhandles) the steering.

And so it went.  I have consulted with my colleague, and Professor Grumbles and I are willing to discuss a possible movie treatment, but we insist on final say for both script and costumes (or lack thereof).