...my young Vietnamese neighbor, An, comes over to ask if I have any zip ties he can have. His family has lived across the street for 25 years. I remember when he was a kid loving to work on cars. Still does. His little boys do too from what I've seen. It makes me happy.
He lives a few miles away now so he comes home to his parents to work on his or their car projects because, according to An, otherwise he'll be pestered to death lol. Man I sort of envy him like that. Being pestered by love.
Anyhow he hung around for a few minutes looking and asking about the various tools I was using; specifically the pneumatic nailers. Like when to use which and how to know which nails to buy and so forth. He focused on the big framing nailer I use like it was some sort of weapon. I have to imagine he was a little intimidated by it. I thought a little bit of that intimidation was a good thing. Respect and for good reason. Not enough intimidation as to usher fear though. That would be self defeating and dangerous.
Choir?
The thing is he said he wanted to learn the fundamentals of carpentry etc. I'm such a buzzkill but I couldn't stop myself from saying "well, of course you can find out just about anything on the internet but you can't go back and learn how to do it before there was such a thing as a pneumatic nailer" as I stood there with glint in my eye.
Ok, he didn't get the joke. As a matter of fact I'm not sure I do either...
In military basic training the mental/emotional is stressed along with the physical in order to toughen a mindset; a sort of preset weariness in the guise of forced self discipline.
I must say, being a hopelessly undisciplined 19 year old to begin with that, at least in my mind, life was all just one big risk after another. Anything can happen, and usually does.
That is exactly what a drill sergeant tries to wrangle out of you. A soldier is to know what is going to happen, and to be prepared for the suffering as much as the victory over ones own doubts and failings...
All that said, that cold rainy December morning about 3AM I guarded my post as ordered. I had my clipboard around my neck and a trusty 4D cell flashlight; ready to engage any threat and since I was still young, didn't need these smudged up drugstore reading glasses to read my general orders off the clipboard. Empowerment is the new black, don't you know...
At any rate I was defending the security of the Post Morgue.
Not sure which door the threat might appear but I guess the Army didn't want to take any chances. Zombies are just a hassle any way you look at it, especially if wearing olive drab.
Two hours on, four off. That was the gig. It was my second shift and I was in my second and last hour of sleep deprivation during that cold December rain in Ft Polk Louisiana in 1974.
There I was, sleep deprived and well into an anguished 11 weeks of civilian mind destruction so I could fight with somebody besides myself.
As I said, there I was on the porch of the Post Morgue, a spare wooden structure painted, wait for it, greenish yellow, no doubt built in the teens to train soldiers for the war to end all wars. At least one of them.
I'm peering into my time-heart-memory- lens and I can see myself there, wearing ill fitting army garments and huddled up on a hot water pipe I found protruding from an exterior wall.
As I'm hanging on there in dreamy half snooze I hear bangs and bumping around inside. I didn't have the courage to knock on the door but just in case I clutched my clipboard tightly.
I wonder now, at this late stage of the game, if any of it actually happened. I remember thinking somewhere along the way during my early enlistment days that I had really gotten myself into a pickle this time.
(The green pickle; that's an inside soldier joke. You get the gist)...
In military basic training the mental/emotional is stressed along with the physical in order to toughen a mindset; a sort of preset weariness in the guise of forced self discipline.
I must say, being a hopelessly undisciplined 19 year old to begin with that, at least in my mind, life was all just one big risk after another. Anything can happen, and usually does.
That is exactly what a drill sergeant tries to wrangle out of you. A soldier is to know what is going to happen, and to be prepared for the suffering as much as the victory over ones own doubts and failings...
All that said, that cold rainy December morning about 3AM I guarded my post as ordered. I had my clipboard around my neck and a trusty 4D cell flashlight; ready to engage any threat and since I was still young, didn't need these smudged up drugstore reading glasses to read my general orders off the clipboard. Empowerment is the new black, don't you know...
At any rate I was defending the security of the Post Morgue.
Not sure which door the threat might appear but I guess the Army didn't want to take any chances. Zombies are just a hassle any way you look at it, especially if wearing olive drab.
Two hours on, four off. That was the gig. It was my second shift and I was in my second and last hour of sleep deprivation during that cold December rain in Ft Polk Louisiana in 1974.
There I was, sleep deprived and well into an anguished 11 weeks of civilian mind destruction so I could fight with somebody besides myself.
As I said, there I was on the porch of the Post Morgue, a spare wooden structure like all the other buildings and barracks painted, wait for it, greenish yellow, no doubt built in the teens to train soldiers for the war to end all wars. At least one of them.
I'm peering into my time-heart-memory- lens and I can see myself there, wearing ill fitting army garments and huddled up on a hot water pipe I found protruding from an exterior wall.
As I'm hanging on there in dreamy half snooze I hear bangs and bumping around inside. I didn't have the courage to knock on the door but just in case I clutched my clipboard tightly.
I wonder now, at this late stage of the game, if any of it actually happened. I remember thinking somewhere along the way during my early enlistment days that I had really gotten myself into a pickle this time.
(The green pickle; that's an inside soldier joke. You get the gist)...
Summer of '68 was hot. Everywhere. Everything. At 13 I had a strange understanding of the tenuous and violent world I watched on our Magnavox B&W console entertainment center. I wasn't allowed to play my Beatles records on it but back before digression was transgression the word for that summers events was confusion.
The world was still in black and white after all. Word came that there was to be a poor people's march so that evening Mouse and I climbed up on my house to get a better view. In those days I guess I didn't realize that we were poor too but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Mouse was saying they would be coming down the street any time and sure enough a lady and a couple of scruffy kids walked by.. Mouse saved his torment in case the neighbor across the street came out. They hated each other though I never actually learned why.
All the excitement that evening was due to the old hardware store and lumber yard catching fire and the glow and explosions of what turned out to be gallons of paint... I guess it was an alkyd seltzer moment for old man Dockery, the owner.
We could see it all from my roof. Later somebody said it was Jewish lightning but I never saw any lightning or heard any thundering Jews and I wasn't sure what that even meant.
Anyhow that night the poor peoples march was on our B&W tv and I figured they took a shortcut and missed our street...
Ted, lol. Ted was an Angel prospect that found himself in the Army. He was cool as hell and like many guys I knew including myself (if only vaguely), he was either working on a plan or a motorcycle or both simultaneously while still making formation. Mick had introduced me to Ted. Mick was the older brother I didn't have but needed so badly. Mick was from Anaheim but that's a story for another time. He had a '65 Chevy panel delivery he was proud of. I had a '59 International. I paid $250 for it in Pacific Grove. It was once a Sears Repair truck. Still had the color scheme.
Speaking of schemes, you've gotten this far to my delight... Now back to Ted. The prospect. He took Mick and I to this joint in Monterey. His girl was going to be there. She was there. She brought friends...
...staged for Viet Nam but more a transition soldier. The overlapping cold war advanced then dissolved with my youth and emotional disarray... I wasn't afraid then and I'm damned sure not afraid now. Though the world war seems colder in ironic displays of web fever, the survival game is on. Truth at the helm. Destiny on the horizon. Ship taking on tomorrow... Worn out soul meets the journey with worn out soles. It's in the books. It's in the wind. It's in the water; it's in the ether...signs and wonders...
ok, here it is. I am not easily trained. Housebroken maybe... I will get off the chain occasionally. It's a joyful galavant though perhaps the neighbors become alarmed...
I can attest to him being housebroken, although Shiloh was the more dependable roommate...
ok, here it is. I am not easily trained. Housebroken maybe... I will get off the chain occasionally. It's a joyful galavant though perhaps the neighbors become alarmed...
Just clean up after yourself, please.
I said I was housebroken but in your case I would definitely make exceptions...
ok, here it is. I am not easily trained. Housebroken maybe... I will get off the chain occasionally. It's a joyful galavant though perhaps the neighbors become alarmed...
ok, here it is. I am not easily trained. Housebroken maybe... I will get off the chain occasionally. It's a joyful galavant though perhaps the neighbors become alarmed...
