Feral

August 24th, 2026

While we were in Texas visiting our son’s family, Karin, Asher, and I spent nearly all of our waking hours in their double wide home. The double wide stands on an acre of wooded land, mostly live oaks and cedars. However, since it was the early part of August, the kids were indoors most of the time. The outdoor temps hovered near 100 degrees, and even for children who are Texas natives, that is a little extreme. They might play in the yard for a while early in the morning, but then they get out of the intense heat and retreat to an air-conditioned environment.

During our visit, the air conditioning on the double wide went out. That was a bad thing. Gaby, the mother of our three grandkids, promptly called a HVAC guy to come to the house. Karin and I paid for the repair. I talked with the repairman before he started his troubleshooting. He was a busy man. He had many calls to make that day. Fortunately, the problem was just a bad switch, and it was a quick and easy fix. He hit me up for $300. I told him,

“That’s a bargain.”

The sweating repair guy smiled at me and drawled, “Well, I can charge y’all more if you like.”

“No. I’m good.”

The fact is that getting the air conditioning fixed was a non-negotiable item. It had to be done. It is like what happens in winter in Wisconsin, where we live. If the furnace at our house goes out in subzero temperatures, it gets fixed. It doesn’t matter how much it costs.

Asher’s three Texan cousins are all about his age. Weston, Maddy, and Wyatt are members of a restless crew. They have energy that would be best expended outside, but that would probably risk heat exhaustion. So, they played with Asher inside the house. There was a lot of yelling and laughing and crying and general mayhem. Gaby wisely chooses her battles. She could demand that her kids play quietly and keep the house in order. But at what cost? She lets them make a mess, and at certain points in the day allows them to watch Blippi, which gives her moments of relative calm. Asher engaged well with his three cousins. It didn’t take him long to become one of the Lost Boys (and Girl).

One day, I was sitting in their living room near the youngest boy, Wyatt. Wyatt is three years old, and he is generally a quiet lad. I did not interact much with him. He was shy, and as my wife said, “When he smiles, he does it with his whole body”. At home, both in the house and outside of it, Wyatt was usually only clad in a pull-up diaper and maybe oversized cowboy boots. On that particular day, Wyatt had multicolor streaks of washable marker all over his body, like a mischievous kind of warpaint. He made me think of the boys in the book, Lord of the Flies, although he’s much younger and more peaceful.

I mentioned to Gaby, “Wyatt looks kind of feral.”

She agreed with that. Being feral is not necessarily a bad thing. Innocence and wildness coexist in children. The two attributes complement each other. I’ve come to accept that both are essential qualities and should be seen as blessings. That’s just who they are.

He’s Grown so Much

August 22nd, 2026

“He’s grown so much.”

The young woman made that comment after she looked at her little boy. Her five-year-old son smiled back at her. It was his second visit to see his mom at the prison. The prior visit to the prison was over three weeks ago. The visit to see her in jail before that was four months ago. The young woman calls her son every day, but she seldom gets to physically interact with him. She is incarcerated at a facility that is a 90-minute drive from our home. That drive is not something we can do every day, or even every week.

The young woman may get transferred to a minimum-security prison soon. There is a facility like that much closer to our home. She might end up there. That would make visits easier. Even so, she still won’t have daily contact with her boy. That just isn’t possible. She won’t get to eat dinner with him. She won’t get to take him to school. She won’t get to tuck him into bed. She won’t get to do the innumerable little things that mothers do with their children every single day. She is going to miss so much of his childhood.

A caregiver who is with a child day in and day out doesn’t often notice the subtle changes in the boy or girl. The child develops almost imperceptibly. Suddenly, one day the caregiver looks closely at the child and realizes that they are staring at a stranger, somebody new. They are surprised by how the kid has grown. This older version of the child snuck up on them.

A person like the young woman notices the changes immediately because for her they are stark, because she has not been there for all of the little things. There are huge gaps in her experience with her son. Every visit is jarring in away because she hasn’t been able to witness his entire growth process.

The real punishment involved with doing time is not what a person endures inside prison. The punishment is what that person misses on the outside.

Buying Crappy Souvenirs

August 22nd, 2026

Traveling on a long road trip with a restless five-year-old is an endurance test. Our grandson, Asher, is a good kid and we love him dearly, but he can be relentless when he wants something, and he often wants something. On our journey from Wisconsin to Texas and back, Karin and I had to make frequent stops to fuel up the car, take bathroom breaks, and give bribes to Asher. It was nearly impossible to leave a truck stop without buying him some kind of crappy souvenir. In a way it didn’t matter what he got, as long as he got something. We could have shown resolve and refused to purchase anything, but that would have made for a much more stressful ride. So, Karin and I took the path of least resistance and bought Asher some badly made consumer items every day on the trip. Here’s some of what he got:

At a Love’s in Illinois, Karin bought him this ball that looked like the head of Skye, a Cockapoo character from Paw Patrol. The object was truly hideous. It was just this smiling head without a body attached to it. It’s like Skye had been sent to the guillotine. How does a kid even play with that? Does he play catch with it? “Here, Grandpa, throw me Skye’s head!” Asher wanted me to pretend the head/ball was talking. That freaked me out. It was way too macabre.

We stayed for twelve days in Madisonville, Texas, in a Best Western across the street from a Buc-ee’s gas station. To those who are unaware, a Buc-ee’s is a monstrous filling station with dozens of pumps and a store the size of a strip mall. They have everything there, including a BBQ brisket sandwich that is to die for. They have toys and activity packages that kids can take in the car on a trip. The items aren’t really that bad, but all of them somehow advertise for Buc-ee’s. We bought several things for Asher. Some he liked, some not. There was a small coloring book that worked with a pen that you filled with water. Asher liked drawing with the water pen and seeing the colors that were embedded in the paper become visible.

We stopped in an obscure convenience store/gas station in Tyler, Texas. Asher demanded a prize in that place. He selected a toy that is difficult to adequately describe. It had a clear plastic handle on the bottom that was filled with tiny pieces of candy. Attached above the handle was a blue plastic dolphin with what appeared to be a propeller sticking out of its mouth. On the side of the dolphin was a yellow hand crank. When Asher turned the crank, the propeller lit up and spun rapidly. It looked like a glowing disc. That was actually kind of cool. Unfortunately, when he cranked on the handle like an organ grinder, the toy spewed out some horrible circus music like a demonic calliope. He began playing with it in the car, and after less than a minute, both Karin and I demanded that he stop. It was a toy from hell.

At another Love’s we reluctantly purchased a stuffed animal for Asher. It was a large, pale blue, morbidly obese seal. Asher fell in love with his new stuffie. He insisted that I do “stuffie talk” and speak for the seal. The seal is now known as “Big Blue”. I had to make up a special voice for Big Blue. Now, Big Blue has his own background story. He lives at the North Pole and hangs out with Santa’s reindeer when he isn’t swimming and fishing. Asher takes Big Blue to bed every night. I have to admit that the seal is rather huggable.

The seal was worth the money.

Once Upon a Time

August 15th, 2026

I was sitting on the back porch of Hans’ double wide, soaking up the Texas heat and listening to Hans talk about his time in Iraq. Hans had a Lime-A-Rita in one hand and a Pall Mall in the other. As his wont, my son started telling a tale about his deployment. It went like this:

Once upon a time, a group of British soldiers were attached to Hans’ unit. The reasons for this are obscure. However, Hans became friendly with the Brits, possibly because they always had a sufficient supply of alcohol. In any case, there was an officer among the Brits who was a sniper. He used a Bartlett 50 Cal rifle in his work. He took a liking to Hans and insisted on having Hans accompany him on a couple missions. Hans is a gun enthusiast, and at that time he was an excellent shot.

On one outing, the lieutenant set up his 50 Cal and told Hans,

“See that camel? Shoot it.”

Hans protested, “Why? It’s somebody’s camel.”

The officer blandly told Hans, “Just shoot the camel”.

Hans did. He damn near vaporized the animal.

On another excursion, Hans was supposed to be the lieutenant’s radio man. The Brit told Hans to let him handle the radio. He had a different task for my son.

Once again, the sniper set up his rifle. He asked Hans to look through the scope. He told him, “Adjust the magnification to 3x.”

Then he asked Hans, “Do you see that black dot on the horizon?”

Hans did, and the Brit told him, “Adjust it to 8x.”

Then he asked Hans, “Do you see the SUV?”

Hans did. The sniper told him, “Shoot it. Aim for the hood.”

Hans fired. The round hit the driver’s door and the car exploded.

The lieutenant called back to the FOB to tell them they were coming back.

At the base, Hans got chewed out for letting the sniper make the calls. Hans replied, “He’s a lieutenant! I’m a PFC!”

I was lying awake last night thinking about Hans’ story. His tales often disturb me. I sometimes wonder if things really occurred the way he said. If his narrative was a work of fiction, any editor worth his salt would reject it out of hand. Hans’ stories are rife with plot holes, inconsistencies, and numerous loose ends. Oddly enough, it’s those very things that make me believe Hans, because many events in my life are just as messy and confusing. A good novel or short story has internal consistency. Real life usually does not.

Another reason that I find Hans’ narrative plausible is that he is never the hero in his stories. He doesn’t come across like a whiskey warrior. He describes himself mostly as an unlucky mensch who has found himself in a situation involving intense heat. sand, and seemingly endless stupidity.

His stories often leave a bad taste in my mouth. My reaction is typically, “That is fucked up”. When Hans tells me about his life in Iraq, the episodes are always, at best, morally ambiguous. There nothing uplifting, or even logical about his experiences, but apparently these things happened.

I am grateful that Hans talk to me about Iraq. It seems to help him. He needs to tell somebody about what happened there. It might as well be me.

Hans came back damaged. I don’t say that he came home, because I don’t think he really ever did. Part of him is still in Iraq, and that part will never come home.

Her First Day of School

August 12th, 2026

Our granddaughter, Maddy, started kindergarten today. Karin, Asher, and I came over to her house at 6:30 to see her to the bus stop. We were early and the sun wasn’t quite up yet. It was hot already, the temps in the upper 80’s.

Maddy was not doing well. Her mama, Gaby, was holding her and trying to comfort the girl. Maddy was crying and didn’t want to get dressed for school. Gaby gently nudged her along. Finally, Maddy was wearing in her fancy pink dress with the strawberry pattern. She had calmed down enough to walk to the bus top with her older brother. At least she wasn’t going on the school bus alone.

Starting something new is often scary. Our grandson, Asher, began his school career last fall when he went to kindergarten. He was good on the first day when my wife, his mama, and I were there with him. Things went downhill after that. Asher is a smart kid and quickly figured out that going to class was not a one-off. He suddenly realized that he had to go to that school every day. One day, I drove to school and almost had to use a crowbar to extract him from his child seat in the car. He cried constantly as I carried him to the schoolhouse. Fortunately, Miss Martha, a seasoned faculty member, came over and pulled Asher out of my arms. He quieted down as she soothed him. Then Martha smiled at me and made it clear that I should go away, like right now. After a week or two, Asher grew accustomed to going to school. I think that might have been after he noticed a cute, blonde girl in his class who stole his heart away.

I think back to when I went to West Point fifty years ago. I arrived at a place where I didn’t know anybody, didn’t understand the rules or the culture, and didn’t even understand some of the language used. The environment was utterly alien to me, and it took probably a year for me to adjust. I sympathize with a five-year-old doing something similar to that.

We walked to the bus stop as a group: Maddy’s mama, my wife, her older brother, her younger brother, Asher and me. The bus travels down a dirt road. The road was being fixed when we got there in the early morning twilight. I am not sure what the maintenance crew was doing besides shoving the dirt around. The bus showed up like a stagecoach in those old western movies. It stopped in a cloud of dust.

Maddys’ older brother got in the bus. Then Gaby held onto Maddy’s hand while she got in. The younger brother, who only clad in a pullup diaper and sandals, started to walk up the steps too. He was almost inside the school bus before his mama snagged him and pulled him out again. That is one impatient little boy.

His turn will come.

What’s the Deal with your Dad?

August 12th 2026

My son, Hans, sometimes tells me stories of his youth without any warning. He did that today. He is a combat vet from the most recent Iraq War (deployed there in 2011). I’m a veteran too, but I am Cold War vintage. Anyway, out of the blue, he started telling me about how he enlisted in the Army back in 2009.

Hans said that his recruiter wanted him to meet and have dinner with their “liaison”. Hans did not realize until later that the liaison was in the FBI and Hans was meeting with him for a background check. Apparently, every 19 Kilo (armor crewmember for Abrams tanks) needs a secret clearance. Hans figured out that the session was going to be an interview when the FBI guy opened up a folder.

Hans asked him, “Do you mind if I get a beer?”

The interviewer said, “Go ahead.”

Hans asked him, “Are you buying?”

The FBI guy said that he would.

So, Hans was drinking beer while answering questions. Apparently, he answered them all to the satisfaction of his interrogator. There came one last question from the man with the folder:

“This isn’t really a red flag, but what’s the deal with your dad?”

Hans wasn’t expecting that one. He explained to the FBI official that he didn’t know what the deal was. He also made it clear to his questioner that he was not his dad.

The guy closed up his folder and said, “It’s okay. I just have to ask these questions.”

It should be noted at this point that I got involved in the antiwar movement just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. I did that partly to keep Hans from going to war, which he did anyway. I stayed active in the movement even after Hans enlisted and got deployed. I am still connected with antiwar groups, although it’s now in a more peripheral way.

Hans has told me repeatedly over the years, “Dad, you’re on a list.”

I guess I matter enough that enough that the government has a file on me.

A Balloon

August 10th, 2026

How do you connect with some kids who you haven’t seen for almost two years?

When the three children are quite young (ages seven, five, and three), you really don’t connect with them. You certainly can’t establish a relationship in twelve days, especially if you are more than sixty years older than they are. You may be their grandfather, but you are really a guest, a visitor, somebody who is just passing through.

My wife and I are visiting our grandkids in Texas. We live in Wisconsin. We are usually separated from these children by over a thousand miles of geographical distance. We are also separated by experience. Even if we lived next door to these kids, we still might not have a solid bond. We live on the periphery of each other’s reality. They don’t know us and we hardly know them.

We brought our other grandson, Asher, with us to visit our Texan grandkids. Our relationship with Asher is profoundly different from the one we have with the three children from the South. We are with Asher each and every day, often all day. We know Asher, as well as any grandparent can know their grandchild. We have an extremely deep connection with Asher, and we have a very tenuous one with the other children.

Asher has been playing each day with his cousins, and they are getting along quite well. It took Asher less than a day to fit in with these other kids. That’s excellent. My wife has found it relatively easy to slip into her role as “Oma”, which is German for grandma. She plays card games with Texan kids and interacts with them in a relaxed and natural way.

I struggle with establishing a connection with kids. I don’t know what to say to them and I don’t want to push myself upon them. I mostly observe them and try to know them in that way. I would require months to really became their “grandpa”. I don’t have much time. We only have twelve days here, and half of those days are already gone.

Several days ago, their mother bought all of them balloons. All the children played with them inside of the house, seeing as it was 100 degrees outside. Then the kids’ mom and my wife had to make a trip to buy school supplies and new clothes. They took the older two Texan kids with them. I was home babysitting Asher and the three-year-old boy, Wyatt. Wyatt has never spoken to me. He keeps me at a distance. While his mama was away, he grew sad. He didn’t want to watch the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with Asher. He missed his mom. I found a balloon and started to bounce it back and forth with him. Wyatt smiled and we played together until his mama came home with the school stuff from Walmart.

A balloon helped me to connect with Wyatt, at least a little bit.

That’s a win.

Over and Over Again

August 8th, 2026

Yesterday morning, we drove to a jobsite in Texas where are oldest son, Hans, was pumping concrete. He operates a huge pump truck. It has eighteen wheels, weighs about 185K lbs., and has a 57-meter boom on it. He had been working at the site since 2:00 AM to pump a 600-yard concrete slab for a new hay barn. Karin, Asher, and I got there at 8:30, and his crew wasn’t even close to be finished with the job. Hans had asked us to come to the site to see what he does for a living. He seldom does jobs so close to home. It’s nothing for him to pump concrete as far away as Dallas, or Houston, or Port Arthur. Since yesterday’s job was only about ten miles from our hotel in Madisonville, he figured it was a rare chance to see him in action.

We did not actually go into the jobsite. If you aren’t wearing a hard hat, you shouldn’t be there. We could see Hans in the distance. He is instantly recognizable even at 100 yards away. He was walking around slowly and with a slight sag in his shoulders. He waved once at us and then went back to work. He looked tired, extremely tired. I can identify with that.

I worked as a supervisor on the dock at a trucking company. For about twenty years, I worked third (graveyard) shift. During many of those years, my wife and I had small children at home, which meant that I was always sleep deprived. Like Hans, I tried to sleep before my shift started, but that seldom worked. I was dead tired and wound tight simultaneously. I often self-medicated to function, but that was unhealthy for me and my family. Even when I was physically at home, I wasn’t really there. However, I was the sole breadwinner in the family, and we needed the money that I earned.

Hans is in a remarkably similar situation. He doesn’t even have the luxury of having a set start time for work. He gets called by dispatch a few hours before his job is set to begin. He sleeps at random times, and he sleeps poorly. He is taking care of his family financially, but there are significant downsides to his line of work. He honestly loves pumping concrete, and he is good at his job. It is the erratic schedule that is slowly killing him.

When I was working on the loading dock, I was operating in a brutal environment. The temperatures on the dock were exactly the same as the temps outside. It was hot in summer and intensely cold in winter. My job required me to function under severe time constraints. I had to think on my feet. It was also literally dangerous on the dock. I had my right leg crushed by a forklift in 2009.

Hans’ working conditions are not much different. He works in extreme heat. His work is hazardous and physically demanding. His job is stressful. He has to get his job done while following a rigorous schedule. Everything is time sensitive.

I wonder why Hans and I have followed such similar career paths. It might be just bad karma. However, I think part of the problem is that we are both veterans. We have traits that draw us to work that, quite honestly, kind of sucks.

I will make some gross generalizations here. Veterans tend to be mission oriented. We just want to get the job done. We like unambiguous instructions and goals. Give us a clear set of orders and set us loose. We are used to working in difficult environments under pressure. We expect things to go sideways and we plan accordingly. We can be part of a team, but we prefer to work alone. We have limited social skills.

So, where do we wind up? Hans and I found work with companies that needed people who could work under stress and still get the job done. I really wish that Hans had found a different path, but he didn’t. The cycle just keeps repeating.

Old Vet

August 7th, 2026

Breakfast at the Best Western isn’t bad, but it’s nothing to brag about either. The scrambled eggs remind me of those served in any Army mess hall. The only interesting thing about breakfast is the waffle iron. It bakes waffles in the shape of the state of Texas. I made one of those for our grandson, Asher. He asked me to fill every divot in the waffle with syrup, and then he asked me where on this edible map of Texas we were staying.

After I finished serving Asher his waffle, an old man shuffled past me to make his own breakfast. I’m an old man, but this guy was much further along in years than me. He wore a tie-dyed t-shirt and shorts. He had cloth coverings over parts of his arms and legs. He had some dark bruises on the backs of his hands. He wore his hair in a ponytail, and he had wire rim glasses. He had a beard that had long ago gone white. He wore a baseball cap that had said “3rd Infantry Division” on it. That intrigued me.

I was tempted to tell him, “Thank you for your service”, but I hate that expression. It means almost nothing. It is one of those phrases that a person says when they don’t know what else to say.

Instead, I asked him, “Where were you stationed?”

He didn’t understand me at first, but then he told me that he had been deployed to Germany. He worked in the armory at Kitzingen in Bavaria. He had been in the Army in Europe from 1965 to 68. He never went to Vietnam. I tried to get a word in edgewise, but the man wanted to tell his story, so I listened. He told me in his slow Texan drawl more than I ever wanted to know, but it gave him pleasure to do so. I have to admit that I sometimes I do the same thing.

The old guy emphasized that being stationed in Germany gave him the opportunity to go places he would not have otherwise ever been able to see: France, Spain, England. He told me about arriving by train in some Austrian town during winter and getting a sleigh ride from the Bahnhof over snow-covered roads to wherever he was staying.

As I ate breakfast with Asher and my wife, I thought about the old guy at the next table. Why does a person wear a cap that broadcasts that they served in the military? The answer is probably because they want to talk about it. They want somebody to notice them and then maybe, just maybe, listen to their story. Here is an 83-year-old man who apparently considers his three years in the Army to be a crucial period of his life. That’s interesting. Obviously, this old Texan did many other things in his long life, but he wanted the world to know that he was a veteran. His time in the service must have been a peak experience in an otherwise flat and humdrum life.

The man made me think about our oldest son. We are visiting him and his family in Texas. He also likes to wear a cap that indicates his time in the Army. He went to Iraq. My son’s experience was traumatic, but still essential to his identity. For my son and for this elderly gentleman, the time in the military was fundamentally different from everything else.

As we got ready to leave the dining room, my wife went up to the man to tell him that she was raised in Germany in a little town n ot too far from Kitzingen. The old guy looked up from his waffle and noticed Asher. He smiled at him and said,

“I wish I had even a bit of that boy’s energy. I can’t even remember being that young.”

Then he wished us all a good day. He was still wearing his cap.

Together at Last

August 2nd, 2026

I took the little boy to see his mama in prison this morning. It was a 90-minute drive from our house to the facility in Fond du Lac, WI. I hadn’t been there since the last time the young woman was incarcerated. That was seven or eight years ago. The prison hadn’t moved, but the way to get to it had changed. GPS was not a lot of help. I had to take a road that was torn up and clearly marked “closed to thru traffic”. A couple miles of gravel and potholes brought us to our destination. We made it to our visitation appointment in time, but I was still uneasy. When we got into the guard shack, I found out that I had good reason to be.

To visit an inmate an outsider has to request an appointment online with ICSolutions. This is after going through a multi-week screening process to even get approved for a visit. Once the boy and I got inside the entrance, I was told fill out yet another request form and then wait for somebody to help me. We waited. From long, painful experience I have learned to just roll with whatever happens in the prison system.

A female guard came out to us and smiled. She looked at my form and then checked on her computer printout for my name. I found it for her. She frowned a bit and said, “The boy’s name isn’t on my list with yours.”

Apparently, my face said it all. My expression screamed, “Ohhhh, fuck.”

She didn’t ask me any questions. She cut me off before I could even speak.

She told me, “Don’t panic! We’ll call and see if the captain can make an exception for you. I know that ICSolutions can be very confusing. Just give me a minute after we put you through security.”

The guard screened me and the boy. We put all of our possessions, except for a credit card into a tiny locker. The guard quietly asked me about the young woman and her son, and then she told me,

“It’s wonderful that you brought him here. We learn from the mistakes of our parents.”

I’m not sure about that, but I wasn’t going to argue.

She made a phone call. The boy and I stood at the closed door leading to the visitation building. Were we going to get inside? The young woman didn’t care about seeing me that much, but she was burning to be with her little boy. Clearly, I screwed something up when I made the appointment online. My only question was about how catastrophic it would turn out to be.

The guard told me, “The captain is making an exception for you, but we are putting a warning in your file. If it happens again, we won’t be able let you through.”

I thought to myself, “Fine. I will worry about next time when next time rolls around. Just get us through this door.”

We got past the door and then through a heavy steel gate. The outer fence of the prison grounds (note: there are several fences) is electrified and it has razor wire on top. We walked across the lawn to the visitation center, where we went through another series of locked doors. In the guard shack at the entrance to the prison we had been given hand stamps that only show up under ultraviolet light. At the final hurdle we had our stamps examined and we were assigned to a table in the room. Then we waited for mama to arrive.

The whole process reminded me of when I crossed into East Berlin at Checkpoint Charlie back in 1983. Funny how some memories resurface.

The emotional reunion of mother and child was almost anticlimactic after the ordeal of just getting them together in the same room. We talked for a while and then I bought snacks for mother and son. That is why I had a credit card with me. Only visitors can use the vending machines. Almost every item costs about $3.50. It doesn’t matter if it is a candy bar or a bottle of soda or a little bag of cookies. It’s all expensive, and the vendors literally have a captive audience.

The young woman thanked me for bringing her boy to her. I just said,” You’re welcome.” It was something that needed to be done, and it was done out of love.

We stayed for two hours. That’s all you can get on a weekend. There is a playground outside and the boy made good use of it. The boy and his mama joked and laughed. I spoke to her about what we might do once she gets out in February of 2028. A lot can happen between now and then, but we at least shared ideas.

Leaving the prison was the exact reverse of how we came in. A person goes back through the same wormhole to get home again.

There is a mural covering a wall in the visitation center. It’s really well made and shows images of women’s faces. There are two statements on the wall.

“She overcame all that tried to destroy her” and “Real change, enduring change, comes in small steps.”

Not bad.