Chapter 56 – “251 Dickson Ave”

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A correction from last week:

We’ll be performing at “565 Live” on 23 February, NOT 22 February!  I guess when you’re retired you lose track of dates.  Every day is Saturday!

Sorry I’m a little late this week.  Maybe I’ll tell the story some day.

Working on my mom’s kitchen got me thinking about our perception of what “home” is.  Most of us have fond memories of growing up.  Going home means remembering the sounds and smells of things familiar and happy.  Whether it’s the predictable squeaks on the staircase or the smells of mom’s cooking, there are powerful triggers that send us back decades when we go “home”.  It’s a little different for me because going home means walking up my driveway, turning left and walking 137 feet.

It’s not that I’m not nostalgic about being in my mom’s house it’s just that, as I’ve said before, many of my memories involve headaches from banging my head and waiting for my sister to get out of the 1 bathroom.  Holidays at mom’s are great, but not for the claustrophobic.  It’s always been that way and as we pop out more grandkids and great grandkids it’s only getting worse.  So, when I started dating Peg in 1973, my perspective of “home” changed.

Peg’s parents bought their house in 1956 for the staggering sum of $21,500.  It sat in the very center of Ben Avon on a level, double corner lot.  It was built in 1900 and is a 40′ x 40′, full three story high with heated basement, grand entrance and staircase, 10 foot ceilings with decorative plaster inlays, inlaid hardwood floors, double pocket doors, third story servants quarters with servants staircase, Victorian mansion.  When they bought it, it had been converted into a duplex but they quickly turned it back into a single family home and for the next 53 years raised their 4 children and entertained their numerous grandchildren.  It was, and is, an architectural masterpiece.

By the time Peg and I went on our first date (to see Fantasia in Squirrel Hill on September 23rd, 1973) her siblings were all out of the house.  So the enormous house was occupied by a total of three people. No, wait, I forgot about her grandmother who lived in the servants quarters on the third floor who I only spotted once or twice a year.  So that makes four people.  You could go for days and not run into anyone else!  Peg had her choice of four bedrooms but she, of course, had the largest one.  I spent my first Christmas with the Redman family in 1973 and for the next 35 years it was my second “home”.  At my parents house it was fun filled, cram packed, “don’t stand up or you’ll lose your chair”, pandemonium. At Peg’s parent’s house things were always much more mellow.

Peg’s dad passed away in 2002 leaving her mom to rattle around by herself for the next six years.  She managed, with Peg and Lou’s help, to maintain the place.  She had no desire to go anywhere else and eventually passed quietly, surrounded by family, in the house she loved.  After the funeral, Peg and her siblings were left with the inevitable question.  What happens to the house?

Peg and I had talked about what would happen for a long time.  We were in a position to purchase the house.  To make all of the changes that needed to be made, to bring it into this century, to keep it in the family as a place where both of our families could gather comfortably and keep traditions alive.  But at what price?  The utilities, on a yearly budget plan, where nearly $600 per month.  Taxes another $600 per month.  Although it had plenty of property to build one, it had no garage.  Emotion versus practicality.  Those that know me know that practicality had to win.  Do I sometimes regret the decision?  Of course, but the young family that bought it has a real passion for the history.  They invite us back every Christmas to see the changes they have made and give us a chance to remember.  They’re doing all of the modifications I would have done and are building new memories with their children.

When parents pass there is always the desire to keep the family home in the family.  Everyone wants someplace to go back to.  To recapture happy childhood memories.  To gather under one familiar roof.  To see, and hear, and smell, and feel again the things that made us a family.  But nothing stays the same.  Change is inevitable, and necessary.  We can fondly remember the past but we can’t cling to it.  When we stop moving forward we begin to slowly die.  It’s true for everything, not just the family home.  Relationships, careers, companies, churches, marriages, everything.  But don’t get me wrong.  Change for change sake can be just as disastrous.  It’s our past that provides an anchor for the future. The very core of what we are, who we are, what we believe in our hearts defines us and gives us a framework for the future.

There is a door frame in the dining room where Peg and her siblings were measured every year on their birthday.  A line on the moulding with a name and a date.  The first thing the new owners did was to paint the house.  The whole thing.  From top to bottom.  Everything, except the dining room door frame.  If you forget the past you’ll surely screw up the future.

Chapter 55 – Charlatorn

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Let’s start off with a little self-promotion.  If you live in the Pittsburgh area, or will be in the area sometime in the next month or so, here’s the latest Carnival of Souls schedule for those who appreciate Celtic music:

22 February, 8:00 – 10:00  – “565 Live”, located in beautiful downtown Bellevue, PA at 565 Lincoln Ave.  It’s a brand new venue so come out and support the local music scene.  There is a cover and, since Bellevue is “dry”, you’ll have to BYOB if you’re into that sort of thing.

2 March, 7:00 – 9:00 – Sacred Heart church on Rte 65 in Emsworth, PA.  Great Irish food.  We start playing right after evening St Patrick’s day Mass.

17 March, 7:00 – 10:00 – “Mogies” in Lower Burrell, PA, 3210 Leechburg Rd.  We’ve played there every St Patty’s Day for at least 13 years.  Reservations required. There is a cover.  724.339.6904

Hope to see some of you!!

 

For some strange reason, throughout my Air Force career, I was usually paired up with folks of, shall we say, diminutive stature.  Now it could be that, since I’m tall, lots of people seem short to me, but I think it’s a little more than that.  I’m convinced it’s either height karma or folks in leadership positions who think it’s really funny.  Either way it doesn’t really matter to me it’s just made for some odd photo ops over the years and more than one awkward situation.  Here’s one.

When I left active duty and the venerable B-52 and came home to the C-130 I, of course, had to attend school to learn the new airplane.  “New” being relative.  Off I went to beautiful Little Rock, Arkansas where generations of C-130 pilots from here, and around the world, have trained.  And it truly is an international training program.  I flew with fellow students from at least three countries including Zaire, Great Britain, and, the subject of this story, Thailand.

The Royal Thai Air Force had finally decided to retire their old C-123s and purchase a small fleet of brand new C-130s.  Now there are several ways to train your pilots in a new aircraft.  You can either send them all to school, in this case overseas, or you can just send a small cadre of your most experienced and then let them trickle down the training to everyone else back home.  The latter is usually the most economical option and that’s what the Thai’s decided to do.  Here’s where I fit into the story.

After you finish the classroom portion of the training they pair you up with another pilot for simulators and flying.  When I showed up at the school they told me that I was 20 hours short of having enough time to train directly into the left seat as an aircraft commander and that I would have to go through the school as a copilot.  I wasn’t bothered.  I was transferring to a new mission in  a new aircraft and I saw great value in sitting in the right seat and learning the ropes before being the guy responsible for everything.  Besides, I’d have to go back to Little Rock for aircraft commander upgrade and that meant more paydays.  When you’re a reserve bum it’s all about manday/payday management!  So, I finished classroom training and was introduced to my partner for the next two months.  His name was Charlatorn.

Charlatorn was going to be the first Thai pilot qualified in the C-130.  So he had been sent to Little Rock to attend every C-130 school available.  He had already been through the copilot training course and was starting the aircraft commander upgrade class after which he was going to go right into the instructor training course and finish with the flight examiner class.  All told, it was going to take over a year!  He was a great guy but, like many Thai’s, he was very short.  I’m talking 5’2″ short.  Which made reaching the rudder pedals and seeing over the dash a bit of a challenge.  They scheduled us for our simulators and I was thrilled, not really, to find out that all of our sims would be from midnight to 4:00 am.  I have never been a all nighter kind of person and I quickly learned that Charlatorn wasn’t either.  At around 2 AM he would magically forget English and revert to running checklists in Thai.  After about thirty minutes of me just guessing what he was trying to say and running the proper emergency procedure, he would just go catatonic and stare straight ahead.  For the rest of the sim I would just fly solo and react to all of the emergencies on my own.  Good times!

We finally started flying and things got even more interesting.  As long as there were no clouds my little partner did great but as soon as we entered the weather all bets were off.  He could fly on instruments if you gave him a heading, altitude, and airspeed but the subtleties of instrument approach procedures were lost to him.  After five flights our instructor recommended us for a checkride.  Frankly, I was shocked.  I took the instructor aside and expressed my doubts about the sanity of throwing Charlatorn to the Stan/Eval wolves.  He told me that in Thailand they rarely flew IMC (in the weather) they were almost exclusively fair weather fliers and all they needed Charlatorn to demonstrate was basic knowledge of instrument procedures.  And he had a plan.  He told me to finish my checkride and then to get into the navigator seat and talk Charlatorn through all of the approaches.  Tell him what heading to turn to,  what altitude to maintain, what descent rate to set, what airspeed to fly, when to lower the flaps, when to lower the landing gear, when to look out the window and land, and run all of the checklists for him.  So that’s what I did.  It was like flying a voice controlled airplane.  We flew procedure turns.  Entered the holding pattern.  Flew an ILS.  And he wired everything I told him to do.  After we were complete and taxiing in, the flight examiner, who hadn’t said a word through Charlatorn’s entire checkride, turned to me and said, “Nice job, you passed two checkrides today”.  Charlatorn just smiled.

I’m not sure I’d be interested in catching  hop with the Thai Air Force!

Chapter 54, “Happy Anniversary”

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Happy Anniversary!!  Well friends, it’s been exactly one year since I started on this journey.  At first I thought I would write these things once a month or maybe once a quarter but, if you’ve been with me since last January, you know that I’ve developed an addiction to sharing.  My intention is to keep this up as long as ya’ll are interested or at least mildly amused.  I am, however, doing something a little different today.  You might assume I’m being lazy but the truth is, Chapter 1 is just as timely today as it was a year ago.  Remember, I wrote this before the FSA (Force Structure Announcement).  I was either prescient or  part of a pretty good rumor network.  I’m not telling which!

So here it is, Chapter 1.  Integrity first!  Service before self!  Excellence in all we do!

 

I have lots of books.  I’m not really a book collecting kind of guy, but over 34 years I’ve accumulated a fairly substantial library.  At home I have an office, or man cave in the current vernacular, although I don’t have a TV.  It’s just my computer, my “I love me wall”, and lots of bookshelves (If you know Peg, IKEA of course!).  I’ve got a “do it yourself” section, a theology section, a fiction section, a Ronald Reagan section, and a smattering of political references.  On the other hand my library at work is a bit more, shall we say, eclectic.

I have books jammed in the credenza, in the drawers, on the coffee table and every time I move I’m amazed at how many boxes it takes to empty the office.  I’ve got Ayn Rand, Charles Colson, Natan Sharansky, and C.S. Lewis just to name a few, but there isn’t really an overarching theme to any of it.  Just things I find interesting.

At the top of the “interesting” list is a thrilling read entitled, “Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, 1995 Report to the President”.  In 1995 I was here at Pittsburgh as the Chief of Stan/Eval.  A job I loved but, after 9 years and multiple ASEVs, decided to leave in 1999 for a DO job in Youngstown.  But I digress.  I remember clearly the day that the proposal was made by the DoD to close Pittsburgh and that moment is captured precisely in the Commission Report with the quote: “It’s operating costs are the greatest among Air Force Reserve C-130 operations at civilian airfields”.  Well, we were gobsmacked!  We knew our financial situation here at Pittsburgh.  We only pay $20,000 per year to lease our property and it includes all fire fighting and crash/rescue services from the County.  Greater Pittsburgh has an international reputation as the most efficient snow removal airport in the nation and the runways are open 24/7 with almost no interruption even with the occasional blizzard.  The county even comes over and repaints the lines on our ramp for free.  We could only conclude that either other airports pay the units to be there or there was something “rotten in Denmark”, or at least Georgia.

We had some pretty smart guys here at the time, math/accounting types, so after the BRAC folks provided us their data base we were able to dig into numbers and it quickly became obvious that something wasn’t quite right.  “Someone” had taken many of the highest costs from all of the C-130 units and plugged them into the data for Pittsburgh and in some cases, numbers were just fabricated.  AFRES had decided what they wanted the answer to be and had, through the plans office, made the numbers add up.

The BRAC commissioner assigned to talk with the 911th was a small businessman from Rapid City, South Dakota and as we started the interview I remember him brushing aside discussions of value to the community and economic impact.  His perspective was that all communities suffer when their unit is closed and he just wanted facts.  Well, when the cooked books were presented to him, his whole attitude changed.  He gathered up the spreadsheets and headed out the door.

His conclusions were veiled in the paragraph:  “The commission found costs to operate Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station were inaccurate.  With corrected data applied to the COBRA model, the commission found Pittsburgh was one of the least costly installations to operate”.  As we all know, the commission eventually placed all C-130 bases on the list and made them defend themselves.  The rumor was perpetuated, and the myth continues to this day, that Pittsburgh pointed the finger at all of the other units when, in reality by attempting to cook the books, HQ placed all units at risk.

Eventually Chicago closed, mostly because the mayor literally told the commission that he didn’t want the unit there.  General Macintosh came to Pittsburgh and apologized at a commanders’ call for “mistakes” that were made and told us that “heads had rolled”, or at least been move to other offices.  But the end result was a community which now rabidly defends the 911th as it does all things “Pittsburgh” and offers its sons and daughters to its Reserve unit at a higher rate than any other C-130 unit in AFRC.

Luckily, we’re much more enlightened these days.  We’ve imbued our AF culture with TQM/6 Sigma/AFSO21 and all decisions are fact based/metric-micro-managed and we can be sure that everything we do is done to save the taxpayer the most amount of money and not to meet petty political parochial agendas.

What happened in the next BRAC – Ditto!

A Happy Man!

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Not really a new blog, but how can I not share my joy with as many friends as possible!

Charlotte Ann Fodi, born 23 Jan, 0059, 9 lbs 5 oz, 21 1/2 inches.  Her first photo.  I’m obviously happier than her!

Charlotte and Me

Chapter 53, Remodeling

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I’ve started my second post-retirement big project and it’s a doozy. My parents bought their little 1 1/2 story cottage in 1962 for a whopping $14,000.  They raised five of us there in three and a half bedrooms (one bedroom was actually just the landing at the top of the stairs!) and one bathroom. Eventually my brother Tim and I couldn’t walk through any of the doorways on the second floor without ducking and in the summertime we had to sleep with fans blowing directly on us because of the heat.  But it was home, and for my Mom, it still is.  Shortly after moving in Dad decided that the kitchen in the place wasn’t really working for them.  It was nowhere near the dining room and was your typical 1950 tiny thing with metal cabinets.

He and mom were out one evening at the new fangled mall and noticed that the Equitable Gas store (a local gas utility) had a “For Sale” sign on their “Kitchen of the Future” in-store display.  It had all of the latest in kitchen innovations like a stainless steel gas cooktop and fancy wall oven and state of the art cabinets.  The only problem was the configuration.  It’s actually very difficult to describe.  Let’s just say that there wasn’t one right angle in the entire thing.  As a result of the odd angles there were cabinets that were your standard 2 feet deep at one side but then tapered to 4 inches deep at the other.  It was, after all, a store display and never really intended to be used by anyone.  But dad was not deterred.  He took measurements and realized that the whole thing would fit in the house if he turned the master bedroom into the kitchen.  He hired a contractor and soon we had the “Kitchen of the Future” in our house.

We also had the oddest kitchen in the world.  Because of the shape of the thing, about a third of the room was unusable space behind the cabinets.  The contractors had to erect several walls and the lost area ended up being a, sort of, barely accessible storage room.  Decades went by and eventually the “Kitchen of the Future” became the “Normal Kitchen” and then the “Old Kitchen” and, eventually, the “Retro Kitchen”. We tried to update it with a fancy 1970s fake brick backsplash and, a dishwasher, and new paint, but time takes its toll.  The countertops began to crack and, because of the weird shape, they were impossible to replace. There wasn’t enough paint and silicone sealant in the world to salvage the room.

So, I promised mom I’d solve the problem after I retired.  I’ve gutted the entire room. I’ve removed the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, I’ve replaced the single overhead light with 6 high intensity LED recessed cans.  I’ve re-drywalled the ceiling and recaptured the lost space behind the cabinets.  I’m installing a double wall oven, a heated porcelain tile floor, an island, and quartz countertops throughout.  She loves to bake and this is going to be a bakers kitchen.  It’s going to be a whole new kitchen.  A whole fresh start.

We start our lives as “People of the Future”.  We have dreams and ambitions, things we want to be and things we want to do but somewhere along the way things get, well, messy.  Bad decisions leading to unfulfilled dreams.  Bad relationships with baggage and bitterness.  We become “Normal” people and then “Old” people and we think no amount of paint (or silicone) can make us new again. And we’re right.

But there are second chances.  There is a way to hit “Ctrl-Alt-Del” on our lives and it begins not with your son remodeling, but with God’s Son.  You just have to ask!

Chapter 52 – Hot Water

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I like to make decisions based on facts.  Now I’m not a pure, technocratic, heartless decision-maker but, all things being equal, I’ll always weigh my decisions towards cold, hard facts.  I understand how other people come to decisions and I appreciate that, but it amazes me how, given the facts, two people can come to two completely different conclusions.

I have this odd clock on the back of my head that tracks the age of all of the appliances I’m responsible for.  I know that’s weird but, since I own rental property, I try to be prepared for the next plumbing/electrical/toilet/furnace/appliance crisis.  The worst situation, in my mind, is a hot water heater failure.  You just can’t ignore it for a day since it usually results in shutting off all water to the house and a large amount of hot water spewing all over the basement.  It’s always a same day repair and it’s never convenient.

Three years ago my head clock went off over the hot water heater in my house.  I remember my dad and I changing it but I couldn’t quite remember when.  So I dug out the receipt (yes, I save receipts) and realized that the “9 year” hot water tank was 18 years old!  I was sure failure was imminent.  Not that big of a deal but I decided when it failed I would replace it with a tankless system.  I had installed one in my guest house next door and I loved the fact that I wasn’t keeping 50 gallons of water in the basement cooking at 120 degrees all of the time.  Cold water in one side of the little box on the wall, hot water out the other side.  Your hand on the spigot has total control of the electric bill.

What I did realize was, when it did eventually fail, I wouldn’t have time to order one online and wait for it to be delivered. So I bit the bullet, bought one, and sat it on a shelf in the basement.  Fast forward three years.  Two weeks before Christmas, with the impending arrival of a house full of guests, I decided to just change out the heater.  I warned Peg I would have to turn off the water for an hour or so, which didn’t thrill her, but I got up at 6:00 and had the thing pretty much installed before she managed to drag herself out of bed.  Another post-retirement project complete.  I’m in utility bill heaven.  Folks think I’m being green.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I’m being cheap, and I’m proud of it.  If being green doesn’t save me money then I won’t have any part of it!

It’s been installed for a month now so I asked Peg the other day how she liked the heater.  I know it was an odd question since most wives only care about whether or not hot water magically comes out of the pipe when you rotate the knob, but I guess I was looking for a little praise for my good planning and efforts to be an efficient provider.  I told her that I had actually shortened the time I spend in the shower since I now had complete control of water heating energy usage.  I had also been conscious of my water usage in the kitchen and only use hot water when I need hot water.  I almost dislocated my shoulder patting myself on the back.  Her response was a little different.  She told me she was taking longer showers since she knew, no matter how long she stayed in there, we wouldn’t run out of hot water.

And there you have it.  Given the same situation, two completely different conclusions.  Peg’s conclusion isn’t necessarily a bad conclusion.  It won’t raise our bills since what we’re saving in “standing losses” will be offset by higher “demand” costs, but it is diametrically opposed to my goal of pinching pennies.

When we make any decision we need to make sure we agree on what the end state is.  Is the goal to save money or is it to provide more service or is it to do both. Some of that has to do with worldview but part of it has to do with those who will always set aside logic and common sense if their “feelings” disagree with reality.  But that’s a discussion for a future chapter.

Chapter 51, The ORI

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It’s been ten weeks since retirement and I’ve had some time to reflect on the things I miss and the things I don’t.  At the top of the “don’t miss” list is the dreaded ORI.  For those of you who aren’t, or haven’t been, in the military, an ORI, or Operational Readiness Inspection, is a process devised to determine if an organization is capable of executing its war time mission.  It sounds pretty simple in theory but somehow they can never seem to get the process quite right.

When I started out in SAC (Strategic Air Command) it was all pretty straight forward.  During the Cold War our mission was to nuke whoever decided to attack us back to the stone age.  We had to be able to accomplish this at a moment’s notice with no opportunity to spool up prior to employment.  Launch within minutes, fly for a very long time, and drop/launch a bomb bay full of crowd pleasers.  Pretty straight forward.  And that’s the way the ORI happened.  The inspection team would arrive with no advance notification and we would generate all of the aircraft on base and fly them all on a mission simulating the end of the world as we know it.  You either dropped the bombs on target or you didn’t.  Pass or fail, it was pretty clear-cut. That was then. Now things are a little more complicated.

The world changed and the ORI process tried to change with it but it became mired down in everything but evaluating the primary mission of a flying wing.  It became more about operating in the, never seen but much feared, chemical warfare environment and bureaucratic minutiae than in the reality of how we’ve operated during the last three wars.  It hasn’t really kept up with that paradigm shift. There have been some efforts to fix the process but little success.  The best example, in my experience, was back in 1999.

I had just arrived at Youngstown as the new Ops Officer of the 773rd Airlift Squadron.  It was my dream job.  I had always loved being in the thick of things and the Ops Officer gets to run the day to day operations of a flying squadron.  There were new challenges, new problems, new taskings every day.  It never stops and that’s what I loved about it. Several months after I arrived on base, the senior leadership attended an Air Force Reserve Command Senior Leaders Conference down in Georgia.  It’s a weekend of briefings, networking and getting to know your counterparts around the command.  One of the briefings was from the newly appointed IG (Inspector General) at Headquarters Air Mobility Command (AMC).  He stood up and boldly described his vision for the new ORI process. His new construct would be centered around mission execution.  There would be a small chemical warfare exercise in the middle of the three days but after several simulated attacks over a 8-12 hour period we would pack up the gas masks and move on to other, more timely, scenarios. The crowd was thrilled.  Finally someone with half a brain and some common sense was in charge of the process.  My wing commander stood up and volunteered the 910th to be the canary in the mine.  We were ready and willing to try out the new improved process and maybe even having a say in working out the bugs.

We prepared for months.  We practiced with our partners, the active duty guys out of Little Rock, and when the day of deployment arrived, we were more than ready.  But that’s when things started going terribly awry.  As soon as we arrived at the inspection site, the scenario put us into a potential chemical warfare environment. It was a little odd since you would usually have 12 hours or so to build bunkers, unload cargo, and set up operations before having to suit up in chem gear but I concluded that they were just going to get the chemical exercise out of the way early.  That concept worked for me.  I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

For the next three days we did little else but dive into bunkers, put on our gas masks and trudge around the base like space aliens.  At one point we had the masks on for nearly 8 hours straight and as we were packing up to redeploy we were still in chem gear.  We even had to react to a chemical attack while we were in the passenger holding area waiting to get on an airplane to go home.  I wasn’t happy.  I took some time to cool down, but the next week I wrote an after action report which I upchanneled through 22nd Air Force to AFRC.  As you all know, I’ve never been one to hover long over send.

A month later we flew to HQ AMC at Scott AFB for a face to face sit down with the IG to discuss our thoughts on how the new system worked.  When it was my turn to speak I simply passed out my report and said to the O-6: “What you told us at the AFRC Senior Leaders Conference was the exact opposite of what actually happened.  I can come to only two conclusions.  Either you lied to the faces of 300 people or you are incapable of managing your staff and are incompetent.  Neither speaks well of you or the United States Air Force.”  I sat down and the meeting continued.  Maybe not the smartest thing to say to an O-6 as an O-5 in front of your O-7 boss.  I guess I needed more time to cool down.

Years later I was talking to one of the ancient civilian, former military staffers in the IG office, a guy that had been there for decades, and in a moment of accidental honesty, he told me that; “We get these new bosses all of the time who come here with new ideas.  They try to rock the boat and change things but we know if we just slow roll it they’ll be gone in two years and we can just keep doing things the way we know how”. And that’s it.  That’s the problem with all bureaucracies. The inertia of “the way we’ve always done it” prevents real change and real efficiency.  What was the last problem a government bureaucracy solved?  What’s the motivation for any bureaucracy to fix a problem?  Altruism?  You know better than that!  We’ve spent trillions to eliminate poverty but the poverty rate is unchanged.  We just make staying in poverty more comfortable.  Throw more money at a problem, you just get more of the problem.

One more thing on ORIs.  I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon in the Air Force.  Some people seem to get stuck with ORIs more than others.  I know an O-6 who, in over 30 years in the air force, has never been through an ORI.  He has either transferred from a unit just prior to one or to a unit right after they had one.  On the other hand, some of us get just the opposite.  In the first case it could just be that all of his bosses were wise enough to hide him!

 

Chapter 50 – For Sally

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Follow up from last week:

The last time I saw Dr. Wallace was when my little sister was 3 months old.  My mom made an appointment and, on a cold icy January evening, I drove mom and Jody to Dr. Wallace’s office.  Now I think most doctors would be a little embarrassed about a seriously incorrect diagnosis but Dr. Wallace was unflappable.  Even after my mother told him, tongue in cheek, that she had lost the weight that he had recommended he was imperturbable.  We drove home in the family ’72 Dodge Dart and as we came slowly, because of the snow and ice, down a long hill I made a right turn to merge onto a wide access road to the highway.  The car turned right but then it just kept turning right. No matter which way I turned the wheel it just kept slowly spinning clockwise.  After a full 360 we found ourselves going in the desired direction of travel at the proper speed.  I looked over at mom, who had baby Jody in her arms, it was before the age of child safety seats, and all she said was, “That was interesting”.  The rest of the drive was uneventful.  I suppose, after having 5 kids ages 0-20, there wasn’t much that could rattle my mom!

 

Something short this week.

Today we mourn the passing of a truly wonderful, caring, compassionate, unpretentious cornerstone of the community.  Sally Haas passed away suddenly, unexpectedly last Thursday.  She was the President of the Pittsburgh Airport Area Chamber of Commerce and a huge supporter of the military and, more specifically, the 911th Airlift Wing.  She had spearheaded more than one successful effort to ensure the 911th remained and, as a women of extreme integrity, was tirelessly shining a brilliant light of truth on the bureaucratic dishonesty of the pentagon.  I think the greatest tribute we could make to her would be to pick up where she left off and fulfill her dream of keeping the 911th as a integral part of this vibrant community.

May angels carry you swiftly on silent wings to a better place.  You are loved and will be missed.

Life is short and unpredictable.  Live and love, well and often, and savor every moment.

Hovering over send with tears on my keyboard.

Daryl

Chapter 49 – Old Dr. Wallace

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I was going to take a week off over Christmas but I woke up this morning at 0530 with words bouncing around in my head looking for a way out. So rather than lying in bed composing in my head I’ve moved to the computer.  Besides, after way too much snow shoveling yesterday, my back feels better vertical in a chair than horizontal in bed.

Yesterday was my mom’s last day of work.  As of today she has joined me in the ranks of the retired.  I think she felt a little funny still working while she had a retired son but I think, at almost 79, she’s ready to relax a little and enjoy grandkids and great-grandkids.  My mom has worked at Target for at least 15 years.  She doesn’t work out on the floor with the customers, but in the back office with all of the administrative functions that are a part of any business. She’s the face every employee sees when they punch in.  She’s the store mom/grandma/counselor and I know she will be missed.

Mom has had a lot of bosses over the years.  Retail tends to be a revolving door of personnel both on the floor and in management and, like all organizations, there are good bosses and there are bad bosses.  In her case, the good ones recognized her as a valuable, experienced asset who cared about people and getting the job done but the bad ones couldn’t see beyond the grey hair and couldn’t deal with someone older, and wiser, working for them.  she did, however, have one boss that had a very interesting link to our family.

Up to the day I walked out the door to go on active duty I had only been to see one doctor, ever.  His name was Dr. Wallace.  He brought all of my siblings into the world and, I’ll have to confirm this with mom, I think he was her doctor, as a child, as well.  He was ancient when I was a kid and I can vividly remember his office.  The smell, the racks of well worn magazines, the ticking of the clock on the wall as you quietly waited your turn, his enormous hands.  Dr. Wallace was my mom’s bosses grandfather.

When you’re a kid you think doctors know everything.  Especially when you’re sick and just want to feel better. So we all thought Dr. Wallace was a medical genius.  After all, none of us died.  We’d go to him, he’d tell us what to do, we’d get better.  How can you argue with those results.  In the spring of 1975, (I was finishing my freshman of college) unbeknownst to me, my mom wasn’t feeling well.  She had been gaining weight, feeling tired and she was worried.  So she dragged herself down to old Dr. Wallace’s office who proceeded to tell her to go on a diet and get more exercise.  As if raising four kids ages 12-20 wasn’t enough exercise!  So she dutifully doubled the size of the garden to get more exercise and started eating less.  After two months or so there was no improvement so back she went and his advice was more of the same.  This time she protested a little stronger.  She thought she had felt like this before and dieting hadn’t help then either.  He dismissed her self-diagnosis and off she went for another month of dieting and exercise.  Finally, she did the unthinkable, she went to a different doctor, a specialist, an OB/GYN who immediately diagnosed her condition as a severe, but curable, case of pregnancy.  By that time she was 6 months along and dieting and heavy labor wasn’t really the appropriate treatment for her condition.

I still clearly remember the day my brother Tim and I walked in the house, after returning from a week of performing out of state, and mom and dad asking us to sit down so they could tell us “something important”. It can be traumatic enough for teenagers thinking that your parents do “it” but you have even a harder time getting your head around pregnancy at “her age”.

Mom ended up having to spend her last two months in bed and by that time I was a sophomore, engineering major taking 22 credit hours, living at home, doing the family grocery shopping and all of the billing for my dad’s company.  On October 19th, it was a Sunday, my little sister Jody was born.  You’d think that it would be “inconvenient” to have a baby in a small house full of teenagers, but the opposite was true.  Peg says that I’m a “baby guy”.  She doesn’t mean that I act like a baby, although I do sometimes, but that I love babies.  And she’s right.  I learned a lot from my baby sister.  How to change diapers.  How to rock a baby to sleep.  How to make a baby giggle.  How to read the same book twenty times in a row just because she wants to hear it again. How to smile when a baby cries and not scowl at the frantic, embarrassed mother. Brotherhood was great training for fatherhood which was great training for unclehood and eventually grandfatherhood.

Three years later, Jul 1978, Tim and I jumped into my 1966 Studebaker Commander for the long drive to pilot training in Del Rio, TX.  Looking forward to the adventure ahead but knowing that what I would miss most was my baby sister.

I can’t wait to meet Charlotte Ann!  3 1/2 weeks (but who’s counting?).

Chapter 48, “Live Long and Prosper”

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“It’s the most wonderful time of the year……..!!”  If I could figure out how to type musical notes I would!  I really love this time of year.  In fact, for years, I’ve made sure that I have at least a week of use or lose leave at the end of the year so I could enjoy the holiday with friends and family and not feel guilty about not being at work.  Most of all, I enjoy finding and giving the perfect gift.  One of my favorite gifts was the year I gave my, then, 12 year old nephew Ben a rifle.  It was just a little .22 but it was the perfect gift for a kid who lives on a farm.  He almost wet himself and the look on my sisters’ face was priceless. (I did clear it with her husband Brian!)  I love giving gifts but the flip side is that I’m told I’m impossible to buy for.

It’s not that there aren’t things that I want, it’s that the things I want are always things I actually need throughout the year.  I like useful things like tools and when you need a tool you just can’t wait for Christmas to get it.  So I’m accused of always buying stuff for myself that other people could buy for me and making their lives difficult.  The key has always been to find me something I don’t know I want.  Let me give you an example.

In 1991 Hallmark came out with the first in, what has become, a long line of uniquely themed Christmas ornaments.  It was the Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek series.  And since they weren’t sure how strong the market was, they only produced a very limited number of them.  My little sister Jody, who at the time was 16, decided I would love to have one so she somehow managed to corral one for me for Christmas and I think it was my best Christmas gift ever.  Yes, I secretly am a sci-fi geek although I don’t hold a candle to Rebecca Oroukin!  Well, Peg concluded that she had cracked the “Buying Daryl a gift” code so, every year since 1991, she has bought me the yearly Hallmark Star Trek ornament.  Not the little figures of the characters, just the ships.  23 ships hanging from the special tree in the corner of the living room.  They light up.  Some of them speak with quotes from all 4 series and movies in the actors voices.  Some use those little watch batteries and some plug into those tree lights you can’t buy anymore.  A glistening tribute to….?……!……?  Festive Startrekiness?  And there’s where I’m conflicted.  What the crap does Star Trek have to do with Christmas?

I’m pretty good at stretching object lessons and finding a deeper meaning in just about any situation, but I just can’t come up with what the heck Star Trek has to do with Christmas.  Maybe it’s the hopefulness for the future of mankind through technology.  No, that’s just stupid.  Our hopefulness has nothing to do with technology.  Or could it be our attempt to perfect society and create a utopia on earth.  That’s diametrically opposed to everything I believe in and beyond stupid.  It’s socialist drivel!  So I’ve reached the conclusion that it’s, well, just fun.  When you really look at the way we celebrate Christmas, most of it has absolutely nothing to do with “Christ”mas.  So, here’s my challenge.  Make sure you take time this holiday season to look beyond the glitz and sparkle.  Celebrate the birth of the savior.  Sing and laugh and celebrate and reflect on what he means to you and look forward to the real gift we remember four months from now.

“Live long and prosper!”