I was just watching the Horse Soldiers with John Wayne.
it's a so-so John Wayne movie, I like it because I've heard about
it since I was young. My father was a recruiter in Natchatoches, La
when that movie was made there in in the late 50's. Because he was
the highest ranked (only) federal official, he had to be there to supervise
the filming on federal land.
He got to meet John Wayne at the location, and my dad pointed out
that the fencing all had barbed wire, but barbed wire wasn't invented
until after the civil war. John Wayne said that 'people like you are
what make movies so expensive.' But they added split rails to all
the fencing. Some of it in the movie looks more like they just wired
some branches to the existing barbed wire to cover it up.
My dad did get to meet John Wayne again in town. He needed to buy
a present for a son or nephew and my dad took him to the store where
they sold model toys and helped him find what he needed.
He was a down to earth kind of guy, no entourage or assistants needed.
My parents lived there in Natchotoches to have a few of my siblings there,
then moved up to Newfoundland Canada to have a few more. It's really
beautiful there. If I was going to live in Louisiana I'd live in Lafayette
just to get a good lunch every day, or in New Orleans if I could get an
apartment in the quarter, but Natchotoches would be a good backup
retirement spot.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015
Sum of all fears
I've said before on this blog that Tom Clancy was a little too
close to the truth in his novels. I'm watching the Sum of all
Fears on TV, where they massacred the book and made the
bad guys some neo-nazi group instead of the islamofacist
group in the book. I'm sure they changed that to be politically
correct, but it was a major mistake because if they had left it
as originally was told it would be a much more timely movie.
The attacks in Paris just happened in Paris 3 days ago, I'm guessing we'll
be seeing more of the same in Europe. ISIS would be fools to
attack in the USA, we currently have a dope/inept/apologist in
charge, and if something major is tried before the election it would
sway events away from the inevitable Hillary towards one of the
republicans.
Much more likely they are working on a deeper game or bigger
attack similar to the Sum of all Fears. God protect us from smart
terrorists.
It really matters not a whit what the Republicans or Tea Party
think we should do to Isis. At some point either the problem will
be fixed by the Europeans, or some terrible event will happen and
rest of the country will rise up and demand war to the knife.
Watching the videos of the president in Turkey today, he sounded
like the most inept high school debater in southern louisiana. Even
CNN's Armenpour was talking about how inept he sounded.
I never expected to see Clancy's fictional presidents portrayed in
real life. He had several presidents beyond reality in novels, and
each one was more venal than the last until Ryan took over. The
current president is similar to a Tom Clancy character, likely
to get his comeuppance in the 3rd act.
close to the truth in his novels. I'm watching the Sum of all
Fears on TV, where they massacred the book and made the
bad guys some neo-nazi group instead of the islamofacist
group in the book. I'm sure they changed that to be politically
correct, but it was a major mistake because if they had left it
as originally was told it would be a much more timely movie.
The attacks in Paris just happened in Paris 3 days ago, I'm guessing we'll
be seeing more of the same in Europe. ISIS would be fools to
attack in the USA, we currently have a dope/inept/apologist in
charge, and if something major is tried before the election it would
sway events away from the inevitable Hillary towards one of the
republicans.
Much more likely they are working on a deeper game or bigger
attack similar to the Sum of all Fears. God protect us from smart
terrorists.
It really matters not a whit what the Republicans or Tea Party
think we should do to Isis. At some point either the problem will
be fixed by the Europeans, or some terrible event will happen and
rest of the country will rise up and demand war to the knife.
Watching the videos of the president in Turkey today, he sounded
like the most inept high school debater in southern louisiana. Even
CNN's Armenpour was talking about how inept he sounded.
I never expected to see Clancy's fictional presidents portrayed in
real life. He had several presidents beyond reality in novels, and
each one was more venal than the last until Ryan took over. The
current president is similar to a Tom Clancy character, likely
to get his comeuppance in the 3rd act.
Sunday, November 08, 2015
Seasickness and other problems
I have a limited ability to travel by boat. I set the record for shortest
time to being seasick on a crewboat when I walked onto one at the dock,
entered the crew area and smelled that crewboat smell of diesel/lysol/cleaned
vomit and turned around to puke on the dock.
My dad had an iron stomach (still getting used to writing that in the past
tense :( ). When we were on lake Pontchartrain in his 14' aluminum boat
trying to catch shrimp in 4' waves I was already asking to go home and
he was focused on doubling our catch from one to two shrimp. He told
us the story of when he was on the LST going from Morocco back to
New York they were in the tail end of a storm and the waves were the
same height as the wheelhouse. The sailors were short handed and my
dad was one of he few people that could stand a watch so he stayed up
in the wheelhouse during the storm. Even the captain had to turn and puke
in a bucket, but my dad stayed standing tall.
The LST made it's way to New York and they arrived at some ungodly
hour and were dumped off the ship. The USO should have taken care of
them to get them some place to stay on liberty until they could draw pay,
but they were no help, a guy from the salvation army drove them from
brooklyn to manhatten and got them a place to stay. My dad never supported
the USO after that.
He ended up being roped into working with shore patrol, paired with
a NYC police officer and had his nose broken in a bar fight. He described
his nose as a Roman nose (it roams all over his face). I look enough like
him that the priest stopped me on the way out of the church to say that it's good
that I got his looks and his other fine qualities, but I would never have the
guts to wade into a bar fight.
time to being seasick on a crewboat when I walked onto one at the dock,
entered the crew area and smelled that crewboat smell of diesel/lysol/cleaned
vomit and turned around to puke on the dock.
My dad had an iron stomach (still getting used to writing that in the past
tense :( ). When we were on lake Pontchartrain in his 14' aluminum boat
trying to catch shrimp in 4' waves I was already asking to go home and
he was focused on doubling our catch from one to two shrimp. He told
us the story of when he was on the LST going from Morocco back to
New York they were in the tail end of a storm and the waves were the
same height as the wheelhouse. The sailors were short handed and my
dad was one of he few people that could stand a watch so he stayed up
in the wheelhouse during the storm. Even the captain had to turn and puke
in a bucket, but my dad stayed standing tall.
The LST made it's way to New York and they arrived at some ungodly
hour and were dumped off the ship. The USO should have taken care of
them to get them some place to stay on liberty until they could draw pay,
but they were no help, a guy from the salvation army drove them from
brooklyn to manhatten and got them a place to stay. My dad never supported
the USO after that.
He ended up being roped into working with shore patrol, paired with
a NYC police officer and had his nose broken in a bar fight. He described
his nose as a Roman nose (it roams all over his face). I look enough like
him that the priest stopped me on the way out of the church to say that it's good
that I got his looks and his other fine qualities, but I would never have the
guts to wade into a bar fight.
Saturday, November 07, 2015
Sadness and stories
My Father passed away a couple of weekends ago. He rode home in an ambulance
for hospice care, then died the next day.
It only hit me later that my father's stories about how his father died were similar.
My father moved to New Orleans as a boy from the country in Avoyelles Parish.
They were sharecroppers there, but due to the depression they lost the farm they were
on and moved to New Orleans where there were jobs available as world war 2 was
beginning. My grandfather had Tuberculosis, and he passed away when he was 42
and my Father was only 12 years old, but he didn't want to die in the hospital in the
city, and they paid for an ambulance to take him from New Orleans up highway one
to Moreauville in Avoyelles Parish, where he passed away.
My father apparently always had a fear that he would die when he was 42, and
strangely enough when I was a boy and heard the story about my grandfather, I
was afraid that he would die when I was 12 years old. Events don't repeat exactly,
but things do seem to echo down from the past. (I was tremendously relieved
when I became a teenager and nothing bad had happened.)
Because my Grandmother was in debt to pay for that ambulance, they had to rent
out rooms or at least beds to people working in the war factories in New Orleans.
My father and Uncle Garner were in a house that was full of beds, most of the people
that were staying there worked at a cardboard box factory, others worked at Avondale
shipyards across the river (my Aunt's husband was one of those). Enough people were
staying there that they had to hot-bunk, and they were paying for a bed and meals.
My father worked as well. He worked as a paper boy for the Item (or maybe the
states-item, now the paper is the times-picayune-states-item), and he didn't start learning
english until they had moved to New Orleans. He told one story of how he met
Carlos Marcello. He was standing on a street corner selling papers, but it was raining
so hard, like a "cow pissing on a flat rock" that his bag of papers were mostly mush.
A young well dressed guy came out of the corner bar and offered to buy all of his ruined
papers, the young Marcello was carrying the take from the slot machines in the bar
and it was a bag of coins. He told my father to reach into the bag of quarters and grab
as many as he could hold with both hands. That was several dollars more than the cost
of the ruined papers and was enough of a windfall that when the news showed Mafioso
Carlos Marcello on trial my father responded with that story. He couldn't be such a
bad man.
My father also worked at a pharmacy (all of this happened uptown, close enough to still go
to St Aloysius high school on Esplanade), The pharmacist was willing to pay my
father's way to Tulane to study to become a pharmacist, but the family needed money
and he enlisted in the Navy instead at 16 by fudging a birth certificate. I don't think
it mattered much anyway, he had already graduated high school, H.S was only to the
11th grade at the time. He should have gone to Tulane, he was smart enough that
he was a good student even though he had just learned english as a teenager.
My father served around the world in the seabees. In Guantanamo bay Cuba, Trinidad,
morocco, Newfoundland, Spain, as a recruiter in the USA in Northwest Louisiana and
Virginia, at bases in Norfolk and Providence, RI, and finally in Jacksonville fl.
He retired there on a disability after 20 years and reaching Senior Chief Petty officer (E-8)
We were always told growing up that he had emphysema due to smoking and sandblasting without breathing protection in Spain. Just in the last year we learned that it wasn't emphysema that he had, but while he was in Spain there was an accident where an idiot moving some gas cylinders filled with Chlorine gas dropped them off
a forklift. One cylinder hit the edge of a concrete pad and sheared off the valve, gassing
everyone in the warehouse and killing a couple of spanish workers and injuring several
other people including my father. It was classified due to that fact that they were working
there as part of the Palomares nuclear bombs that were lost when a plane crashed.
One was lost at sea, and that one was part of the movie with Cuba Gooding Jr, the ones
on land were broken and scattered radioactive material across the area. The seabees
were scooping up contaminated dirt and moving it, and he was injured as part of that
operation, so the idiots in the navy classified it and my father never told us about it
until 50 years had passed. (he was honorable even to people that treated him poorly).
The Navy was good enough to send an honor guard to the funeral, with the full 21 gun
salute. When taps played the rain changed from an occasional drizzle to a full sad downpour.
for hospice care, then died the next day.
It only hit me later that my father's stories about how his father died were similar.
My father moved to New Orleans as a boy from the country in Avoyelles Parish.
They were sharecroppers there, but due to the depression they lost the farm they were
on and moved to New Orleans where there were jobs available as world war 2 was
beginning. My grandfather had Tuberculosis, and he passed away when he was 42
and my Father was only 12 years old, but he didn't want to die in the hospital in the
city, and they paid for an ambulance to take him from New Orleans up highway one
to Moreauville in Avoyelles Parish, where he passed away.
My father apparently always had a fear that he would die when he was 42, and
strangely enough when I was a boy and heard the story about my grandfather, I
was afraid that he would die when I was 12 years old. Events don't repeat exactly,
but things do seem to echo down from the past. (I was tremendously relieved
when I became a teenager and nothing bad had happened.)
Because my Grandmother was in debt to pay for that ambulance, they had to rent
out rooms or at least beds to people working in the war factories in New Orleans.
My father and Uncle Garner were in a house that was full of beds, most of the people
that were staying there worked at a cardboard box factory, others worked at Avondale
shipyards across the river (my Aunt's husband was one of those). Enough people were
staying there that they had to hot-bunk, and they were paying for a bed and meals.
My father worked as well. He worked as a paper boy for the Item (or maybe the
states-item, now the paper is the times-picayune-states-item), and he didn't start learning
english until they had moved to New Orleans. He told one story of how he met
Carlos Marcello. He was standing on a street corner selling papers, but it was raining
so hard, like a "cow pissing on a flat rock" that his bag of papers were mostly mush.
A young well dressed guy came out of the corner bar and offered to buy all of his ruined
papers, the young Marcello was carrying the take from the slot machines in the bar
and it was a bag of coins. He told my father to reach into the bag of quarters and grab
as many as he could hold with both hands. That was several dollars more than the cost
of the ruined papers and was enough of a windfall that when the news showed Mafioso
Carlos Marcello on trial my father responded with that story. He couldn't be such a
bad man.
My father also worked at a pharmacy (all of this happened uptown, close enough to still go
to St Aloysius high school on Esplanade), The pharmacist was willing to pay my
father's way to Tulane to study to become a pharmacist, but the family needed money
and he enlisted in the Navy instead at 16 by fudging a birth certificate. I don't think
it mattered much anyway, he had already graduated high school, H.S was only to the
11th grade at the time. He should have gone to Tulane, he was smart enough that
he was a good student even though he had just learned english as a teenager.
My father served around the world in the seabees. In Guantanamo bay Cuba, Trinidad,
morocco, Newfoundland, Spain, as a recruiter in the USA in Northwest Louisiana and
Virginia, at bases in Norfolk and Providence, RI, and finally in Jacksonville fl.
He retired there on a disability after 20 years and reaching Senior Chief Petty officer (E-8)
We were always told growing up that he had emphysema due to smoking and sandblasting without breathing protection in Spain. Just in the last year we learned that it wasn't emphysema that he had, but while he was in Spain there was an accident where an idiot moving some gas cylinders filled with Chlorine gas dropped them off
a forklift. One cylinder hit the edge of a concrete pad and sheared off the valve, gassing
everyone in the warehouse and killing a couple of spanish workers and injuring several
other people including my father. It was classified due to that fact that they were working
there as part of the Palomares nuclear bombs that were lost when a plane crashed.
One was lost at sea, and that one was part of the movie with Cuba Gooding Jr, the ones
on land were broken and scattered radioactive material across the area. The seabees
were scooping up contaminated dirt and moving it, and he was injured as part of that
operation, so the idiots in the navy classified it and my father never told us about it
until 50 years had passed. (he was honorable even to people that treated him poorly).
The Navy was good enough to send an honor guard to the funeral, with the full 21 gun
salute. When taps played the rain changed from an occasional drizzle to a full sad downpour.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)