The Prom season is almost over and it is the night that kids get to pretend they're adults and ready to take on the world. I know I was one of those..The most beautiful girl in the world on my arm, ready to hit the big time and make a name for myself, preferably as a singer..Radio was the second choice. Planning a future free of toil and strife..Of course there was, as Kenny Rogers called it, "That pesky Asian War". But we were naive. We relied on Walter Cronkite for 20 minutes each night (minus commercials) to tell us everything we needed to know about the world. 20 minutes wasn't enough to spend on unfunded liabilities, debt limits, and federal deficits. 20 minutes was barely enough to tell how many died that week in Southeast Asia or the show President Johnson picking up his beagle by it's ears. No, Prom was just a night that would be burned into your memories to be resurrected once in a while to remember a quieter and simpler time. Republicans and Democrats got along, more or less, we didn't question our elective process or hear of hanging chads. All that mattered was how to make those idiotic Roman columns for the gym. Our motto was "We Came, We Saw, We Conquered". About the only thing I conquered was the Pythagorean Theorem and don't ask me to explain it today. We went in my custom painted '61 Plymouth 4 door sedan which, while looking much better than she did when I bought her, wasn't exactly the stretch limo kids rent today. I washed it and then waxed the hell out of it.
We had some quiet rumblings about spiking the punch bowl, but thought better of it. Our corsages were a courtesy of our small town undertaker. They were magnificent and I don't think he made much, if anything off them. A 2 orchid corsage was 3 bucks, a single a buck and a half. It cost 15 bucks to rent the tux. I was lucky, a friend of the family actually owned one and he was my size. I forget the name of the band, something like the Sominex Sextet or something like that. We would have had our own school dance band but the whole trumpet section (myself included) and half the sax section were Seniors, so a band consisting of drums and 2 clarinets wouldn't have provided much romantic atmosphere. Nobody hired disk jockeys back then, at least not in small town America. They were those mystical people from far away places and God, I just had to become one of them. Should have become a door to door proctologist. Or a used car salesman. At least I wouldn't have had to choose between the microphone and working 8-5.
Nowadays, kids going to the Prom face a future of uncertainty. They already owe around 50,000 dollars toward the national debt, more or less depending on whose figures you use. Even more if you included State and Local debt. The "fun" jobs are going away. Hell, the kid who wanted to be an astronaut just saw his dream job go away. Can't even pay for a Shuttle ride anymore. "Green Jobs" and "I.T." jobs are apparently in abundance as are jobs at Walmart. But the jobs you can grow old with are swiftly fading away. As we make better mousetraps, we need fewer mice.
In the Bible, Jesus said "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth". Time to change that to "Blessed are the EDUCATED" America is so in need of young adults who are ready and eager to learn. In my neighborhood, most of the young adults are more interested in learning skateboard skills and how to make their pants defy the laws of gravity. Learning is so easy today...If the history teacher leaves out some important details on the Battle of Hastings, there's always the internet and the History channel to fill in the gaps. There's always a friend on one of the social networks to walk you through a Math problem. Wood shop..get rid of it. You can learn to cut off your thumb on your own.
America is at a crossroads. Continue on as we are and go down faster than the Roman Empire, or make the changes that need to be made and upset everybody who has a hand out, and in one way or another, that's all of us. Makes you want to go back to the days of blue Prom dresses and '61 Plymouths.
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
God Bless The USA
I spent more time in uniform than most, 11 mostly good years, and I never saw it as a sacrifice or myself as a hero. The heroes are in cemeteries and VA hospitals across the land. To just call somebody in uniform a hero cheapens those who really did make a sacrifice, some of them ultimate. On Memorial Day we sometimes lose track of just what the day really means. I must have gotten a thousand advertising flyers for Memorial Day sales. Most of those are emblazoned by the red, white, and blue and offer me Hi-Def TV's, refrigerators, tires, and even vittles. There are festivals galore. In my own backyard we have "Freedom Aloft" weekend which is a gathering of dozens of hot air balloons which usually brings them over my house. In years past, some have even crash landed on people's houses. There are kiddie rides and lot's of food I'm not allowed to eat anymore..But will anyway. I doubt many will think about what used to be a solemn day when fresh flags were placed on the graves of Veterans from all our wars and conflicts.
We still have too many soldiers and Marines in combat in places where we really aren't liked much. And the lessons of Viet-nam have been lost in our fervor to impose democracy on countries that don't know the meaning of the word. In the beginning, we didn't know what it meant either. It was the dream of some very forward thinking men of an experiment where we, the people, would have liberty, a word that had never been used before to define a country of diverse and sometimes radical views. To be sure, the Constitution itself was a compromise to bring 13 states under one umbrella. The Articles of Confederation had failed, and it looked like the nation itself would fail. That view of failure led the British to try to take back her territories in the War of 1812, but by then, the Constitution had 23 years to take hold, and we were able to retain our liberty, although just barely.
Since then, dozens of wars, some frivolous, some out of necessity, made us the most feared of all the world's powers. The British Empire declined, the Spanish Armada was gone, Nazi Germany rose and fell, Communism took hold, only to fall under it's won weight. Suddenly, we were the only ones left to maintain world peace. NATO has always been a paper tiger. If not for our billions of dollars and tens of thousands of troops, NATO would be nothing but a bunch of politicians arguing why they COULDN'T go to war.
Now we are involved in 3 theaters of operation. Iraq is drawing down but still is a fragile democracy in it's infancy. The big question is will she stand on her own once we have pulled out with only a few advisors left. Afghanistan is the big question. Will our leaving, as promised, open the door to the Taliban to return? My guess is yes, and those who have died on the battlefield will have died in vain. And the "Non War" in Libya actually see a change in government to a true democracy, or will radicals swoop in to fill the void if and when Quadafi leaves. You cannot impose democracy. It has to be earned, and without courage, will fail.
So as we buy a new Hi-Def TV, or refrigerator, or tires..And watch the dozens of hot air balloons fill the sky, remember those who serve far from home, and hope no more flags will be placed on the final resting place where they, as Abraham Lincoln so succinctly put it, "Gave the last full measure of love and devotion". And God Bless America and those who walk in the shoes where so many of us walked before.
We still have too many soldiers and Marines in combat in places where we really aren't liked much. And the lessons of Viet-nam have been lost in our fervor to impose democracy on countries that don't know the meaning of the word. In the beginning, we didn't know what it meant either. It was the dream of some very forward thinking men of an experiment where we, the people, would have liberty, a word that had never been used before to define a country of diverse and sometimes radical views. To be sure, the Constitution itself was a compromise to bring 13 states under one umbrella. The Articles of Confederation had failed, and it looked like the nation itself would fail. That view of failure led the British to try to take back her territories in the War of 1812, but by then, the Constitution had 23 years to take hold, and we were able to retain our liberty, although just barely.
Since then, dozens of wars, some frivolous, some out of necessity, made us the most feared of all the world's powers. The British Empire declined, the Spanish Armada was gone, Nazi Germany rose and fell, Communism took hold, only to fall under it's won weight. Suddenly, we were the only ones left to maintain world peace. NATO has always been a paper tiger. If not for our billions of dollars and tens of thousands of troops, NATO would be nothing but a bunch of politicians arguing why they COULDN'T go to war.
Now we are involved in 3 theaters of operation. Iraq is drawing down but still is a fragile democracy in it's infancy. The big question is will she stand on her own once we have pulled out with only a few advisors left. Afghanistan is the big question. Will our leaving, as promised, open the door to the Taliban to return? My guess is yes, and those who have died on the battlefield will have died in vain. And the "Non War" in Libya actually see a change in government to a true democracy, or will radicals swoop in to fill the void if and when Quadafi leaves. You cannot impose democracy. It has to be earned, and without courage, will fail.
So as we buy a new Hi-Def TV, or refrigerator, or tires..And watch the dozens of hot air balloons fill the sky, remember those who serve far from home, and hope no more flags will be placed on the final resting place where they, as Abraham Lincoln so succinctly put it, "Gave the last full measure of love and devotion". And God Bless America and those who walk in the shoes where so many of us walked before.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
1967 And Harmon Killibrew.
Another link to my youth passed away, something that is happening more and more frequently these days. Harmon Killibrew was "only" 74. In 1967, I got to see him play several times. He was all that was good about the late '60's, even as the country was torn apart by an unpopular war that was claiming far too many lives. Baseball was our diversion. We escaped with the pitching of Tom Seaver and Sandy Koufax who retired before I had a chance to see him pitch. And there were the home run kings..Reggie Jackson made his debut in June of 1967 and in 118 at bats his rookie year he hit..1 home run..Harmon Killebrew was at his peak in 1967. He played every game and hit 44 home runs, 113 RBI's and walked 131 times. He was as good as they get..And he played for Minnesota.. In his 22 years in major league baseball, his total career earnings were less than 2 million dollars..a lot less..He only had 4 seasons where he earned over 100,000 thousand dollars and in 1960, his salary was $20,000. Today he'd be in the 20 million a year range..Maybe more.
1967 was my year of hopes and dreams. There were proms and the pressure of finals and graduation. And after graduation on a Friday night, I had 2 days downtime before heading to New York matriculate on the science of broadcasting and to find fame and fortune as a "big time, sensuous rock and roll disk jockey". There were dreams of a white picket fence and a beautiful wife and daughter welcoming me home after a hard day slaving over a hot microphone. Fancy and expensive cars, cool sharkskin suits..(Maybe my future would have been better served in the Mafia with the suits.) I made them all happen, just not as expected. Actually the sharkskin suit's were the first to go, replaced by leisure suits and apache scarves.
But 1967 was the perfect year and the one I use to judge just where I am as a person and where we are as a society. And that's where Harmon Killebrew comes in. I had a whopping budget of $60 a week to pay for our dorm at the Prince George Hotel on East 27th which was 24 bucks a week, $13.50 to buy a round trip ticket to Waymart, Pa on Friday Afternoon , a few bucks to wine and dine while there, and the rest to eat..or go to a Yankees or Mets game..sometimes 2 or 3 if I didn't eat much. General admission at the time was a buck and a half and the subway was still 15 cents so it was a cheap 3 hours of thrills. And the night I spent in the WPIX broadcast booth with Joe Garagiola and Phil Rizutto, knocking off a few White Owl cigars was a freebie so that week I could take in an extra game. Over the course of the summer, it was the subway to Shea to see either Seaver and Koosman or to the house that Ruth built to see the Yankees and Mantle and Ford, both of whom were in the twilight of their careers as the Yankees had a dismal .444 winning percentage. The Mets were worse with a .333 winning percentage. Tom Seaver won 16 of the Mets 61 wins. But win or lose, baseball was fun and a cheap escape.
1967 was also the year we didn't care about the deficit or the national debt. Few of us even knew they existed. The government left us alone, more or less, except at tax time. Cars didn't have electronics that made driving so easy that we became bad drivers. Gas was 35 cents a gallon or less which is why I learned it was cheaper for me to drive back and forth from New York to Waymart than to take the bus. Plus I had an extra 10 bucks in my pocket which meant I could have a couple more hot dogs for dinner during the week.
So while most of us had forgotten Harmon Killebrew since he retired, he was part of what was right and good in America in 1967. Even the Viet-Nam War was considered just and good. We cared for the welfare of our neighbors and we believed that we were our brother's keeper, not the government. I knew few people who owned new cars, and those that did kept them for a very long time.
Killebrew would probably been a farmer in Iowa being known only to those in his community. But he did have the ability to hit a baseball over 500 feet and to be a role model for thousands of other kids who wanted to hit a baseball over 500 feet. Without steroids or corked bats. Just a natural talent and a love for the game. That's what baseball and life were all about in 1967
1967 was my year of hopes and dreams. There were proms and the pressure of finals and graduation. And after graduation on a Friday night, I had 2 days downtime before heading to New York matriculate on the science of broadcasting and to find fame and fortune as a "big time, sensuous rock and roll disk jockey". There were dreams of a white picket fence and a beautiful wife and daughter welcoming me home after a hard day slaving over a hot microphone. Fancy and expensive cars, cool sharkskin suits..(Maybe my future would have been better served in the Mafia with the suits.) I made them all happen, just not as expected. Actually the sharkskin suit's were the first to go, replaced by leisure suits and apache scarves.
But 1967 was the perfect year and the one I use to judge just where I am as a person and where we are as a society. And that's where Harmon Killebrew comes in. I had a whopping budget of $60 a week to pay for our dorm at the Prince George Hotel on East 27th which was 24 bucks a week, $13.50 to buy a round trip ticket to Waymart, Pa on Friday Afternoon , a few bucks to wine and dine while there, and the rest to eat..or go to a Yankees or Mets game..sometimes 2 or 3 if I didn't eat much. General admission at the time was a buck and a half and the subway was still 15 cents so it was a cheap 3 hours of thrills. And the night I spent in the WPIX broadcast booth with Joe Garagiola and Phil Rizutto, knocking off a few White Owl cigars was a freebie so that week I could take in an extra game. Over the course of the summer, it was the subway to Shea to see either Seaver and Koosman or to the house that Ruth built to see the Yankees and Mantle and Ford, both of whom were in the twilight of their careers as the Yankees had a dismal .444 winning percentage. The Mets were worse with a .333 winning percentage. Tom Seaver won 16 of the Mets 61 wins. But win or lose, baseball was fun and a cheap escape.
1967 was also the year we didn't care about the deficit or the national debt. Few of us even knew they existed. The government left us alone, more or less, except at tax time. Cars didn't have electronics that made driving so easy that we became bad drivers. Gas was 35 cents a gallon or less which is why I learned it was cheaper for me to drive back and forth from New York to Waymart than to take the bus. Plus I had an extra 10 bucks in my pocket which meant I could have a couple more hot dogs for dinner during the week.
So while most of us had forgotten Harmon Killebrew since he retired, he was part of what was right and good in America in 1967. Even the Viet-Nam War was considered just and good. We cared for the welfare of our neighbors and we believed that we were our brother's keeper, not the government. I knew few people who owned new cars, and those that did kept them for a very long time.
Killebrew would probably been a farmer in Iowa being known only to those in his community. But he did have the ability to hit a baseball over 500 feet and to be a role model for thousands of other kids who wanted to hit a baseball over 500 feet. Without steroids or corked bats. Just a natural talent and a love for the game. That's what baseball and life were all about in 1967
Sunday, May 1, 2011
The Aftermath
I had very mixed emotions about President Obama on the ground in Alabama after the rage and fury of Mother Nature. What part was compassion and what part was a campaign photo-op. I'm sure he remembered the flack about George Bush doing the fly-over after Katrina and didn't want to fall into that trap, but the fact is, whenever a president is on the ground during a natural disaster, precious resources needed for search and rescue are pulled from their job to provide security for the "visit". That's why Bush did the fly-over. And that's the only way to get the full picture of the devastation.
I know tornado's quite well having lived 2 years in Lawton, Oklahoma which is in the heart of Tornado Alley, although it appears the storms are forming farther east so Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas aren't affected as much as they once were. During the spring and summer of '73, we averaged a tornado watch every day, and a tornado warning a week. There was no Doppler radar at that time. The best we could hope for was that normal citizens would report funnel clouds, or the National Weather Service at Will Rogers in Oklahoma City would see a "suspicious" cloud formation on their normal weather radar. We also had what are now called "stormchasers".
Besides my normal 8-5 at Fort Sill, I was also the night jock at the local FM station and an auxiliary Cameron County deputy sheriff. In Oklahoma, the county sheriff's were law enforcement and was in charge of what used to be called Civil Defense. I became a deputy when our program director came in one night in uniform and when I asked, he told me about the program. First and foremost, they preferred military and ex military because there wasn't a need for extensive background checks and we were already weapons qualified. So I applied and was accepted. It gave us the edge on news gathering and also provided a service to the community which looked good when we re-applied for our station's license.
It was a paid position, and we had to go on patrol once a week, I usually took the Friday midnight to 8am Saturday shift with my PD, and, when severe weather hit. Tornadoes usually travel southwest to northeast, so we would send cars out to the southwest part of the county and inward toward town and sit and wait. We'd watch the sky through lightning looking for funnel clouds and listen for the roar. It's very scary sitting in a squad car in rain so heavy you can't see the end of the car, with winds over 50 miles an hour. One night we had 160 funnel clouds (clouds with rotation) go over the city. Luckily, none of them came to ground. But one did in a neighboring county. I forget the name of the town but it roared up main street where there was a an assisted living home that was flattened. At first they thought there would be massive casualties, but luckily there were none. Relatives had taken the residents out without telling anybody.
Another night there was a supercell that went just north of town and according to the National Weather Service, it topped out at 55,000 feet. The sheet lightning within the cloud lasted as much as 30 seconds and was bright enough to read by. It also did strange things to radio waves. I listened to an FM station in Detroit that came in clearer than our own.
On the western side of town there was a mountain that stood alone on the plain called Mt. Scott. It was a National Wildlife Preserve where buffalo had the right of way. If a buffalo was crossing the road, you had to stop. There was also an old Native American saying that Lawton would be spared of tornadoes. But while I was in Italy, a news story crossed the wire that a tornado had hit Lawton and 5 people died.
Tornadoes are unpredictable as well. A friend of mine was General Manager of the television station outside of town and one day they were preparing for the 6pm news and one of the cameramen saw a funnel cloud so he opened the back door of the studio and wheeled the camera over and began shooting. As everybody gathered to watch, they realized it was heading for the building. Everybody went for cover, when the twister sucked the water out of a small pond nearby and jumped the building and continued for another mile where it destroyed some mobile homes.
Now, when there's a tornado warning, I don't fear, I respect. The best thing you can do is plan where you will go should there be a warning in your area. Basements are best, a first floor bathroom if it's not against an interior wall, even a church or other substantial building. The odds are very slim that you'll ever see one on the ground. The last round was an anomaly, and has nothing to do with global warming, it just has to do with mother nature's normal weather cycle. Just like the number of Hurricanes have an ebb and flow year over year, so to do super-cells. Just be alert and be safe.
I know tornado's quite well having lived 2 years in Lawton, Oklahoma which is in the heart of Tornado Alley, although it appears the storms are forming farther east so Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas aren't affected as much as they once were. During the spring and summer of '73, we averaged a tornado watch every day, and a tornado warning a week. There was no Doppler radar at that time. The best we could hope for was that normal citizens would report funnel clouds, or the National Weather Service at Will Rogers in Oklahoma City would see a "suspicious" cloud formation on their normal weather radar. We also had what are now called "stormchasers".
Besides my normal 8-5 at Fort Sill, I was also the night jock at the local FM station and an auxiliary Cameron County deputy sheriff. In Oklahoma, the county sheriff's were law enforcement and was in charge of what used to be called Civil Defense. I became a deputy when our program director came in one night in uniform and when I asked, he told me about the program. First and foremost, they preferred military and ex military because there wasn't a need for extensive background checks and we were already weapons qualified. So I applied and was accepted. It gave us the edge on news gathering and also provided a service to the community which looked good when we re-applied for our station's license.
It was a paid position, and we had to go on patrol once a week, I usually took the Friday midnight to 8am Saturday shift with my PD, and, when severe weather hit. Tornadoes usually travel southwest to northeast, so we would send cars out to the southwest part of the county and inward toward town and sit and wait. We'd watch the sky through lightning looking for funnel clouds and listen for the roar. It's very scary sitting in a squad car in rain so heavy you can't see the end of the car, with winds over 50 miles an hour. One night we had 160 funnel clouds (clouds with rotation) go over the city. Luckily, none of them came to ground. But one did in a neighboring county. I forget the name of the town but it roared up main street where there was a an assisted living home that was flattened. At first they thought there would be massive casualties, but luckily there were none. Relatives had taken the residents out without telling anybody.
Another night there was a supercell that went just north of town and according to the National Weather Service, it topped out at 55,000 feet. The sheet lightning within the cloud lasted as much as 30 seconds and was bright enough to read by. It also did strange things to radio waves. I listened to an FM station in Detroit that came in clearer than our own.
On the western side of town there was a mountain that stood alone on the plain called Mt. Scott. It was a National Wildlife Preserve where buffalo had the right of way. If a buffalo was crossing the road, you had to stop. There was also an old Native American saying that Lawton would be spared of tornadoes. But while I was in Italy, a news story crossed the wire that a tornado had hit Lawton and 5 people died.
Tornadoes are unpredictable as well. A friend of mine was General Manager of the television station outside of town and one day they were preparing for the 6pm news and one of the cameramen saw a funnel cloud so he opened the back door of the studio and wheeled the camera over and began shooting. As everybody gathered to watch, they realized it was heading for the building. Everybody went for cover, when the twister sucked the water out of a small pond nearby and jumped the building and continued for another mile where it destroyed some mobile homes.
Now, when there's a tornado warning, I don't fear, I respect. The best thing you can do is plan where you will go should there be a warning in your area. Basements are best, a first floor bathroom if it's not against an interior wall, even a church or other substantial building. The odds are very slim that you'll ever see one on the ground. The last round was an anomaly, and has nothing to do with global warming, it just has to do with mother nature's normal weather cycle. Just like the number of Hurricanes have an ebb and flow year over year, so to do super-cells. Just be alert and be safe.
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