Author: frankisemptiness

November 12, 2021

– Sir, you try my patience.
– I don’t mind if I do. You must come over and try mine some time.
– Groucho Marx

Asher is almost ready to walk on his own. He loves to stroll around with somebody holding his hands. The kid is on the move. He can wander throughout the house, assisted by Karin or myself, for hours. Eventually, Asher tires himself out, but not before he tires us out. Asher is eleven months old. We are in our 60’s. His energy reserves are seemingly limitless. Ours are not.

Asher likes to wake up dark and early. Once he has a fresh diaper and a warm bottle, he is ready for action. I take the early shift with the boy, so Asher gets to try my patience first. He’s getting really good at it.

Well, this essay is actually supposed to be about walking meditation. During Zen practice, we mostly sit on a cushion to meditate. If the practice goes on for an extended amount of time, then we break up the sitting with a short period of walking meditation. We walk in a line around and around the meditation room for maybe ten minutes or so. To the casual observer this activity seems rather mindless. Actually, it can be mindful. It depends on what the walker is doing as he or she shuffles through the room. If the person lets their thoughts wander aimlessly, yes, it is a mindless thing to do. However, if the person focuses on their walking, paying attention to every detail, then it keeps them in the moment.

Holding Asher’s hands as he stumbles from place to place is a form of walking meditation. To keep him from tripping and/or falling, I have to pay close attention to his every step. As long as the boy is leading me around our house, I am alert and aware of everything that he is doing.

Asher loves to pull on electrical cords. His hands are swift and agile, and remarkably strong. He will snatch at the cord and immediately attempt to yank it from the outlet. I can’t be daydreaming when he passes near to the microwave. The cord on that device is his favorite. He will sometimes try to deceive me by passing by the microwave and then quickly turning back to grab the wire. He’s stealthy that way.

Our home is not completely childproof. I’m not sure that any home can be. We have hermetically sealed a number of the kitchen cabinets, but Asher always seems to find a door that will open for him.

“Asher! Leave the door closed! Don’t take out the plutonium!”

Asher likes to walk over by our two dogs. They are old, and they tend to lie on the couch snoozing. Asher will happily go up to Shocky, the border collie, and pull on the dog’s nose. Shocky shows great tolerance toward the little human. She will lick Asher’s hands, and then give him sloppy dog kisses. Eventually, Asher gets tired of being soaked in drool, and he moves on to other things.

There are three smooth stones on the coffee table. I don’t know where they came from, or why they are there, but Asher loves to walk to the table and play with them. He tries to put them into his mouth first. They don’t fit. Then he pounds them on the top of the table. The coffee table is old, and a few more nicks in it don’t matter much. He beats on the table for a few minutes, and then loses interest.

Asher takes a perverse pleasure in ripping the leaves off of house plants. I don’t know why that is. I just know that he likes to do that.

“Asher! Stop that! What did that geranium ever do to you?!”

Asher is attracted to my old stereo system. He has become quite adept at turning all the knobs, especially the one for volume control. He is fascinated by the turntable. He loves watching the vinyl go round and around. He greatly enjoys looking at all the album covers. Oddly enough, years ago, I used to buy records purely based on the quality of the album art. For instance, I liked the art on Disraeli Gears from Cream. Asher doesn’t much care for the music, but he likes the illustrations.

After a few hours, Asher slows down. His legs become wobbly. He attention wavers. Then he takes a nap.

Which is what he’s doing now.

November 9th, 2021

“The horror! The horror!” – Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Asher is large. At eleven months of age, our grandson is a rapidly growing boy. He’s sturdy and solidly built. He is round in the middle, with broad shoulders and remarkably strong arms. Asher has the physique of a sumo wrestler, or perhaps a linebacker. There is nothing frail about this lad.

Sometimes he wrestles with me on the floor. He fights dirty. He likes to grab my right ear and bite it. He is toothless at this point, but he can still bite hard. He likes to rip out handfuls of my beard. He is also fond of twisting my large nose. He’s going to be a terror on the playground.

Asher likes to eat, pretty much any time, pretty much all the time. It was simpler when he just took a bottle. Now, since we introduced a variety of solid foods into his diet, things are more complicated, and significantly messier.

Asher is getting good at handling finger food. His fine motor skills have developed to the point where he can pop blueberries into his mouth without much trouble. Bananas are problematic because they are slippery. They usually wind up on his lap. Grapes are like that too.

The boy is only willing to be fed with a spoon for a while. Then he wants to take over. Without warning, he will grab for the spoon with the speed of an attacking mongoose. He gets it in a vise-like grip in his chubby hand, and he won’t let go. He’s strong. I generally let him have the spoon before its contents are splashed all over the place. Asher smiles once he has the spoon. He eats what is on it. Then he casually holds it over the edge of his high chair and lets it drop to the floor. For him that’s a victory.

Last night, my wife, Karin attempted to feed Asher some beets, and then some peas. Both the beets and the peas had been through the blender. Asher was uncooperative. That was odd since he likes both those vegetables. Asher fought off Karin’s efforts to get the spoon into his mouth. By the time he was done with the beets, the kitchen looked like a scene from a low budget slasher film. Everything was spotted red, and Asher’s mouth and hands appeared to be covered with gore.

After a hasty clean up, Karin tried the peas. Basically, she had the same results, just in green. Asher had his mouth full and managed to emit a fine spray of pureed peas in Karin’s general direction. It had that Exorcist look to it. Very disturbing.

Rather than hose the kid down, Karin chose to give him an immediate bath. She used his baby tub, which Asher has almost outgrown. I wiped down the kitchen while Karin washed the boy. Things seemed to go okay. The boy was finally going to be clean and fresh. Then I heard Karin call from the bathroom.

“Fraaaaank!”

That’s never good.

I went to bathroom. She cracked open the door. Karin looked worried.

I asked her, “What?”

“Asher pooped in the tub.”

November 1st, 2021

Why do people join the U.S. military?

There really isn’t a definitive answer to that question. There are as many reasons to join as there are people who choose to do so. Some of the reasons are logical, some…not so much. The decision to join the military comes from the heart as much as it comes from the head. Some of the reasons for making this life choice are crystal clear. Some of them are not apparent to anyone, even the person making the decision, until much later in life.

Perhaps the most obvious reason for going into the service has to do with money, or lack thereof. Some of my peace activist friends insist that we don’t really have a volunteer army. They say that we actually have an “economic draft”, implying that most of those who enlist are persons who are struggling financially. There is some truth to that. My son, Hans, joined up during the Great Recession in order to get room and board, health care, and a steady paycheck. He also hoped to learn some skills that would make him better able to find work once he returned to the civilian world. Additionally, he was thinking about using the G.I. Bill to go to college or a trade school eventually.

I went to West Point because I wanted to go to college, and my father made it clear that he could not, or would not, help me to pay for my education. The folks in the Army offered to pay for my bachelor degree, as long as I sold (or rented) my soul to them for at least five years following my graduation. It was a Faustian deal, but I don’t regret it.

Hans did not join the Army just because of money issues. Neither did I. I don’t think anybody does that. There are other, easier ways to become financially successful than being a soldier. Poverty can push a person toward enlisting, but I doubt that it is sufficient motivation. There have to be other reasons to join up.

A neighbor of mine joined the Marines last year because he needed structure. His parents certainly thought so. In any case, the military can provide plenty of structure for a young person who does not yet have a direction in life. Paradoxically, the military also provides plenty of noise and confusion. It has always fascinated me how an organization so regimented can still be filled with so much chaos. Well, people can learn from chaos as well as from structure.

For a young person there is often the need to prove themselves. All traditional societies have a rite of passage, at least for the young men. American culture has no rite of passage. Young people in the United States seem to fumble and flounder into adulthood. It’s not their fault. Nobody teaches how to be an adult. By default, the military takes on the role of rite of passage for many people. Hans went into the Army to prove himself to himself. He wanted to find out what he could really do, and he did.

Family plays a role in the decision to join up. I wanted to go to West Point partly to make my father proud of me. Hans went into the Army to prove that he was his own man, and that I wasn’t calling the shots any more. Years after he deployed to Iraq, I talked him about how I had felt about his enlistment. Hans grinned at me and said,

“Yeah, that was a pretty big ‘fuck you’, wasn’t it?”

Another reason for joining is that some of us just want to do crazy shit. I really can’t explain it any other way. Some of us like to blow things up. Some of us like to fly fast aircraft. Some of us like to jump out of perfectly good aircraft. Hans still gets a wistful look in his eyes when he talks about driving an Abrams tank or firing a salvo round down range. These reasons are not at all rational, but they make a difference.

Finally, people join the military because they want to serve. This reason may not be at the top of the person’s list. The individual might not even be conscious of this desire. However, this particular reason is always there. A person who is drawn to military service wants to be part of something bigger than his or her own ego. The person who joins up wants to be part of something noble.

That last reason is impossible to dispute.

October 28th, 2021

“Zogen einst fünf junge Burschen,

stolz und kuehn zum Kampf hinaus.

Sing, sing was geschah?

Keine kehrt mehr nach Hause.” – von Zogen einst fuenf wilde Schwaene

Translated from the German:

“There were once five young fellows,

proud and ready to go out to fight.

Sing, sing, what happened?

Not one returns home.” – from Five Wild Swans Once Flew (a traditional Lithuanian folksong)

My wife, Karin, was born in 1954 in postwar Germany. The last shot of the war had been fired nine years before her birth, but she started her life in a country haunted by the effects of World War II. The land and the people were still scarred by the violence. Her father and her uncles had all fought for the German Reich. Even when I first met them in 1983, they were still dealing with the issues that all veterans have, regardless of when and where they served, and regardless of what cause they served.

Little by little, I learned their stories. They told me about their years in the military. Now I am telling these stories to you.

Karin’s father, Max, was drafted into the Wehrmacht, specifically the Luftwaffe, in 1938. He was eighteen at the time, and had already spent his earlier teenage years in the Hitler Youth. He was from Silesia, which is now part of Poland. In 1939 he was part of the invasion of Poland. He served in Italy after that. Then he was transferred to the Russian Front with almost all the rest of the German forces. Eventually, the Russian Front moved west until it halted in the smoldering ruins of Berlin. Max got shot in the lung just before the war ended. He convalesced in a Lazarett, a German field hospital. He never went home again. He started his civilian life as a refugee, not knowing where any of his family members were.

Karin’s Onkel (Uncle) Kurt had been in the German Army. He was also originally from Silesia. Kurt was stationed in occupied France. On Christmas Day of 1943 he married Aga. He had only a couple days of leave. After the wedding he returned to his unit in France. He did not see Aga again until 1948. He was captured by the Allies after D-Day, and he was held as a French prisoner of war for three years after the end of the war.

The French did not give Kurt and his fellow prisoners enough to eat. Kurt worked in the vineyards. At times he was so hungry that he ate unripe grapes. Those gave him severe diarrhea and dehydration.

Kurt told me that, when he was finally released by the French, he found Aga (who was also a refugee) near Bad Mergentheim. He said that he got off the train and saw her standing on the platform waiting for him. He told me that it was as if no time had passed at all. She looked just the same as she did at their wedding five years before.

After the war, he became a salesman. He was good at it. He was always friendly and quick with a joke. Once he and Aga were back together, he would always make himself a plate of sandwiches before turning in for the night. He placed the sandwiches on his nightstand next to the bed. He did this every night for years because he wanted to be sure that he had enough to eat.

Karin’s Onkel Friedolin (Friedl) was bauernschlau, or “street smart”. He was not well educated. He had grown up on a farm. However, he knew how to take care of himself.

Friedl initially worked in armaments factory. However, he wasn’t getting enough food, so he joined the army. He was trained as an anti-aircraft gunner, and was stationed in Dresden. His unit was moved early in 1945, just before the fire bombing of the city. He barely missed being incinerated.

At that point in the war, chaos reigned in Germany. The Reds were at the Oder River, east of Berlin. The Nazis were feeding every soldier they could find into the Soviet meat grinder. Friedl was at a train station waiting to go east with his unit. Some troops from Bavaria were loading on to another train. They told him,

“Komm mit uns! Wir fahren richtung Süden!”

“Come with us! We’re going south!”

Friedl went with the southern boys. He got off the train a couple kilometers from his home. Then the war ended.

I don’t know what Max, Kurt, and Friedl were like during the war. Maybe they were rabid Nazis. Somehow, I doubt it. They got swept up in events they could not control, and they managed to survive. When I met them, they were the age that I am now. They were old, and they seemed to have made some sort of peace with their past. To the end of their lives, they believed that they had only fought to defend their homeland. They believed that they had done their duty.

They were vets, just like any other vet.

October 26th, 2021

“A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason.” – J.P Morgan

My youngest son, Stefan, is a welder in the Iron Workers Union. He is currently an apprentice, although he expects to become a journeyman in the next few months. Stefan had a job interview with a construction outfit on Friday. From what he told me, the interview was rather informal. The union hall had sent Stefan to this company, and the interviewers wanted to know what they were getting.

It went like this…

1st Interviewer: “Do you have any DUI’s?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Are you divorced?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Have you done any prison time?”

Stefan: “No.”

The interviewer looked at Stefan and asked,

“So, how the fuck did you ever get into the Iron Workers?”

No response from Stefan.

1st Interviewer: “Are you mechanically inclined?”

2nd Interviewer, as he was perusing Stefan’s Facebook page: “Of course he’s mechanically inclined! He rides a chopper!”

1st Interviewer: “Okay. Good. Do you have any problem with heights?”

Stefan: “No.”

1st Interviewer: “Do you want to start tomorrow evening?”

Stefan opted to start on Monday.

Stefan has worked at a number of construction sites. He is usually high up on lift, or he’s walking on steel beams 100 feet in the air. Stefan likes that. He enjoys the adrenalin rush. He doesn’t want to be on the ground tying up rebar all day long. He cannot tolerate boredom. Stefan is not risk averse.

Actually, nobody in the Iron Workers is risk averse. An individual who is overly concerned about their health and personal safety would never even consider joining the Iron Workers. The same sort of thing goes for people who join the military. They are the same breed as Stefan and his cohorts.

My oldest son, Hans, joined the Army in 2009. He knew when he joined that he would get deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. After he signed up, Hans told me the good reasons for going into the Army: food and shelter, regular pay, and chance to go to college, etc. Later, much later, Hans told about the real reasons for enlisting. Most of those involved the adrenalin rush.

Hans wanted to prove himself. He wanted an adventure. He wanted to push himself as hard as he could. In Iraq he did all those things, at some cost to himself. When he came back from Iraq, he took up skydiving and bought himself a crotch rocket. Hans is not risk averse.

I don’t think that anybody in the military is risk averse. Like the Iron Workers, the military attracts a population that wants to dangerous work. Doing risky things makes us feel alive. The things we do (or did) in the service (in my case, fly helicopters) straddle the line between totally cool and batshit crazy. It depends on your perspective.

I wanted the adrenalin rush. I still do.

October 23rd, 2021

I was sitting with my son, Hans. He was telling me about going to Air Assault School. He was injured near the end of the class, so he didn’t get his wings. The school was willing to let him graduate if he took the entire course again. Hans declined that generous offer. He wasn’t going through all that shit a second time.

Hans look off in to the distance and said,

“Yeah, Dad, it’s no fun rappelling from a helicopter and running out of rope at the end.”

I replied, “I imagine not.”

Hans took a drag and his cigarette, and said,

“It helps if the pilots maintain their altitude.”

Indeed.

I never rappelled out of an aircraft, although I did learn how to rappel. I was at Fort Greeley, Alaska, in the summer of 1978 for training. I was taught how to rappel down a cliff. The goal was to feed the rope, and bounce all the way down to the bottom. The instructors made it clear that I had to keep my body bent at the waist to avoid doing a face plant on the rocks. I managed to make it down the stone wall safely.

Years later, when I was an Army aviator, I flew at least one rappel mission with the infantry. It was boring. We picked up a load of troops, flew a short way to a flat and open area, came to a high hover, and then let the soldiers slide down their ropes. We flew back to the pick up zone, grabbed some more troops, and let them rappel. We went through this cycle repeatedly.

The only difficult thing about the rappel mission was keeping the helicopter steady while hovering. There is a tendency to drift a bit. I had to pick up a couple reference points on the ground and keep them in the same location relative to the windshield of the aircraft. I also had to keep checking the radar altimeter to make sure I wasn’t going any higher. As Hans pointed out to me, it kind of sucks when the helicopter is flying higher than the length of the rappel rope.

It was important for the troops to rappel off the helicopter from each side simultaneously. If only one soldier jumped off the edge of the aircraft, that radically changed the weight and balance of the aircraft, and created an unpleasant rocking motion. Most people on board found that disturbing. It was best for two guys to go out at once.

I know that I said that I found the rappel mission to be boring. Boring is not always a bad thing. Excitement is overrated. I was on another flight early on in my flying career that wasn’t boring at all. I wish it had been.

I had only been in West Germany for a couple months. I was stationed at Fliegerhorst Army Airfield near Hanau, an industrial suburb of Frankfurt. An instructor pilot took me for my night orientation flight. I think it was in February, and the winter weather in Germany is kind of sketchy. There is often fog or freezing rain. We went for a weather briefing with an Air Force meteorologist, and the forecast was “skoash”. I don’t know if “skoash” is a real word (or if I spelled it right), but for us it meant low clouds and poor visibility. We were legal to do the orientation ride, but it was a little iffy at night.

I never liked flying at night. and we were going to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules), which meant we had to use outside landmarks (lights) to orient ourselves during the trip. That was always tricky. During night flights we usually tuned in radio beacons (e.g. VOR’s) to keep track of our location. Frankfurt is an extremely high traffic area for planes. Getting lost is a really bad idea.

We flew mostly along the Main River. That was easy. The Main was a twisting piece of ebony below us, bounded on both sides by the bright lights of Frankfurt and its surrounding urban areas. We went our merry way. The instructor pilot pointed out different reference points. I was at the controls.

Then we went inadvertent IMC. That meant we went into the clouds accidentally. That meant we couldn’t see a fucking thing outside of the cockpit.

IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions) is not a big issue if the pilot has planned for it. We were all trained to fly using the instruments in the cockpit (e.g. attitude indicator, altimeter, airspeed indicator, compass, etc.). The problem is when the pilot is flying using outside references, and then these markers disappear. Then the pilot has to immediately change over to his or her instruments, and this is a bit disconcerting. The pilot’s asshole tends to pucker up as they try to get their bearings in a completely new way. There is a moment or two when mortality seems very real and very close. After that, the pilot either has the aircraft back under control, or bad things happen quickly.

We got it under control, and we sent an emergency transponder signal to ATC. Air Traffic Control really hates that. An emergency signal gets their attention, and tends to make them lose track of the tin they trying to push, airliners and such. ATC told us quickly and convincingly to turn off that signal, and then they gave us brief and succinct instructions to take us back to Fliegerhorst. Their message was basically, “We’re busy. Go away. Don’t come back.”

We were okay with that.

October 22nd, 2021

“If you have money, consider that perhaps the only reason God allowed it to fall into your hands was in order that you might find joy and perfection by throwing it away.” – Thomas Merton

“It’s possible to trace the movement of Christianity from its earliest days until now. In Israel, Jesus and the early ‘church’ offered people an experience; it moved to Greece, and it became a philosophy. When it moved to Rome and Constantinople, it became organized religion. Then it spread to Europe, and it became a culture. Finally, it moved to North America and became a business.”

Father Richard Rohr, OFM

Karin and I went out for coffee with Dan on Wednesday. We see Dan once a year when he comes back to the local area from Germany. Dan is a missionary in Germany. He’s lived there for several years already, and he plans on retiring there and making the country his permanent home. Dan returns here every autumn. He spends time with his family, meets with people he knows from Elmbrook Church (a local megachurch with which Dan is affiliated), and he schmoozes for a while with old friends, like us.

Dan spent most of his working life in corporate management. He was a businessman, and the skills he acquired during his career apparently serve him well in his current vocation as a Christian missionary. Honestly, even when he talks about his work, I don’t understand what he actually does. He often mentions going to conferences, doing strategic planning, and planting churches. None of that means anything to me. I really don’t comprehend how he is bringing Christ to people in Germany in any specific or concrete way. I am sure that he is doing good things, but I don’t know what they are.

Two years ago, I met to Catholic missionaries in Mexico, Father Peter and Sister Betty. They lived in a tiny house in Anapra, an extremely poor neighborhood in Juarez. I understood completely what they were doing to bring Jesus to the people in their town. These two elderly people lived in poverty, just like their neighbors. They did what they could to stop the violence in the community. They worked to relieve the suffering of the women and children they met each day. They had very little money, but they used all of it to help others who had nothing at all.

Father Peter and Sister Betty were not businesspeople. They were not part of the American corporate culture, at all.

Several years ago, My wife, Karin, and I switched churches. We had been going to St. Stephen Catholic Church for twenty-nine years. We were actively involved in the life of that parish. Then the church got a new priest. He was involved with business in his previous career. When he came in, all available funds went to pay off the church’s mortgage (we built a new church structure in 2009). Everything became a fundraiser. It seemed like there was no event that did not have a financial aspect to it. This was a huge turn off for Karin and myself. We went elsewhere.

I understand that the new priest was dealt a bad hand. He had to deal with a pile of debt left by his predecessor. He had a duty reduce the mortgage. He did what he thought was necessary.

There is nothing wrong with paying off a mortgage. Karin and I worked hard for many years to pay off the mortgage on our home. However, there are other things to life besides raising money and paying bills. This especially true of the spiritual life. Not everything can be measured by the Almighty Dollar. The most important things, like love, do not have a price tag.

There are Christian religious communities in America that, although they require money to survive, do not worship it. The Catholic Workers live in poverty in order to better serve the poor. Members of the St. Vincent de Paul Society work diligently to aid those who are struggling to make ends meet. Annunciation House, a group that helps and advocates for migrants in El Paso, operates on a shoestring. Not everyone has accepted the nearly universal corporate model.

Two days ago, I was stopped at a red light. A young homeless man was there panhandling. I waved him over to my car and opened the window. I slipped him some money, then I asked him,

“What’s your name?”

He replied, “I’m Mike.”

I told him, “My name is Frank. Take care of yourself.”

We shook hands. He thanked me with his hand over his heart, and he walked away. Maybe he forgot me immediately. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.

I am sure that I could have donated that cash to some well-meaning organization that would have put it to good use. I could have given it to some group with slick advertisements and smooth telemarketers. Mike will use the $20 for God only knows what, and I’m good with that.

I wanted to help a flesh and blood person. I wanted to see him and hear him and know him for at least a moment.

Christianity in America is not always a business.

October 19th, 2021

I took our ten month old grandson, Asher, to my former workplace a couple weeks ago. It had been at least a year since I my last visit to the trucking company. I only went there because one of my previous co-workers wanted to meet the little boy. I had no other reason to return to that place. I feel no nostalgia for it.

I held Asher in my arms as I walked across the parking lot, like I had done a thousand times before. The physical plant looked the same. The tractors and trailers were as I remembered them. There was the same dirt and grime on the overhead dock doors. I felt the same old Sith energy radiating from the place.

I was a dock supervisor at the company for nearly twenty-eight years before I retired. I worked third shift for most of those years. The dock was, and still is, unheated and mostly open to the elements. I worked in the heat and in extreme cold. Most of the time I worked when it was dark. The job could be dangerous. I was run over by a forklift twelve years ago. My right foot and ankle were crushed by the weight of the jeep. I left that corporation with scars.

I don’t miss working there. The work environment was toxic, and sadly I helped to make it so. People were treated as commodities by the company. It was always about profit all the time. Working for that business was corrosive to my soul. My body was not the only thing damaged by my experiences on the dock.

I took Asher into the office to meet Jen. She was delighted to meet the lad. Asher was happy to see her too. Asher loves to meet new people. I didn’t see many others that I knew or remembered. The company has always had an extremely high turn over rate. I left there six years ago, so it’s no surprise that I couldn’t recognize many of the faces. The place was full of strangers, and it made me feel even less welcome than I had expected.

Things have changed there, for the worse.

When I retired it was a big deal, not just for me, but for the other folks working at the company. Whenever anybody retired, the company bought a big sheet cake and gave the lucky winner an award of sorts. Everybody who was in the building came to witness the event. A retirement was one of the very few times that people came together as a team.

Now that doesn’t happen any more. There is no party for retirees. There is no recognition of their years of service to the corporation. People just disappear. I guess it makes sense. The worker did not matter to the company when they were on the clock. Why should anybody care when they leave?

One of my old dockworkers was in the break room when Asher and I arrived. The man’s nickname is “Kung Fu”. He has eyes that remind people of “Kung Fu Panda”. When he saw Asher, his face broke into a grin. Kung Fu said,

“Wow, look at him! He’s such a happy little guy!”

I replied, “Of course, he’s happy. He doesn’t work here.”

October 13th, 2021

My son, Hans, and I were just sitting around, arguing about who had put up with the most shit while in the Army. Hans had been a tanker in the 1st Cav at Fort Hood, but somehow he got used as infantry when he went to Iraq. When I was in, I flew Hueys for a while and then transitioned to flying Black Hawk helicopters. Hans had strong opinions about aviators.

He took a drag on his Pall Mall and said,

“I didn’t like pilots. Those guys were assholes.”

I looked at him and asked, “Are you aware of what I did for a living?”

Hans shrugged, and said, “Yeah, I know. Why?”

I ignored his question and asked him, “So, why exactly were the helicopter pilots assholes?”

He gave me the stink eye and said, “Don’t go playing all innocent. You know what I mean.”

“Give me an example.”

Hans took a hit off of his Lime-A-Rita, and said, “How about when y’all would make a really steep turn for no good reason, and the troops on one side would staring straight down at the ground?”

“Oh, that…”

Hans burst out, “Yeah, oh THAT!”

I asked him, “You were buckled up, right?”

Hans was fired up now. “I was buckled up, but my smokes weren’t! I dropped my last pack of cigarettes out of the aircraft, and I had nothing to light up during that whole field problem!”

I replied, “I can see how that would be an issue.”

“Damn right! I gave that pilot a talkin’ to when we landed. Well, that warrant officer felt so bad about it that he gave me his can of chew.”

“What kind was it?”

Hans replied, “Grizzly.”

Of course, Hans was right. We really were assholes. A Black Hawk can make a 90 degree bank without losing any altitude. Therefore, we loved making 90 degree bank turns, especially if we had troops on board. It was one of the fringe benefits of being a pilot.

Hans’ story reminded of another time that a troop lost something from a helicopter in flight. When I was with the 7Th ID at Fort Ord, we used to fly the infantrymen to Fort Hunter-Liggett to do their training. Fort Ord was a tiny military post on the Pacific coast, so everything had to be done at Fort Hunter-Liggett, which was a much larger area, maybe about eighty miles inland from Fort Ord. We made numerous flights between the two posts. It was generally a straight shot down the Salinas Valley.

At that time the Black Hawks were equipped with a Doppler radar system to assist in navigation. We still had to use our map books, but the Doppler would help us to know our grid coordinates. We would log in the initial grid coordinates before take off, and then the radar would measure our air speed and direction to keep track of our location. Think of the Doppler as a Fred Flintstone version of a GPS. It wasn’t terribly accurate, and we had to update the information frequently, but back in 1986 that device was hot shit.

One day we were flying the standard milk run to Fort Hunter-Liggett. We had several aircraft hauling the members of an Infantry company. Then suddenly everybody got this urgent radio call. The voice on the radio was tinged with panic:

“Get me our current coordinates ASAP!”

Somebody asked, “What for?”

“Just DO IT!”

Well, somebody did. One of the pilots called the guy back with the grid coordinates, and life went on.

Later, we heard from unofficial and possibly disreputable sources that one of the troops had dropped an extra machine gun barrel from the helicopter. Maybe that isn’t accurate, but somebody dropped a weapon, or part of one, from a helicopter. That explained the panic. Now they had to find this sensitive item.

Visualize for a moment how that must have looked. A weapon falls from a Black Hawk flying at probably a thousand feet. The object tumbles end over end, and finally buries itself deeply in the rich, fertile soil of the Salinas Valley. It probably landed in some strawberry field. Good Lord.

Keep in mind that the aircraft were probably moving at 120 knots when the mystery speaker made his frantic radio call. By the time he finished talking and the pilot checked the Doppler, we were most likely a mile or more from the landing site of the missing weapon. Did they ever find it? I sincerely doubt it.

I’m glad I wasn’t that troop’s platoon leader.

October 12th, 2021

I took our grandson to church on Sunday. There is nothing unusual with Asher going to Mass. Karin and I take him with us whenever we go to St. Rita. What was different this time was that I was the only one of us to be with Asher on Sunday. Karin was down in Texas visiting with our other two grandchildren.

Generally, when Karin and I are attending the Sunday liturgy, we take turns watching over Asher. Asher is only ten months old. He is not hard to handle, but babies need some care. This is especially true when I am scheduled to serve as lector during the Mass (a lector reads aloud from the Scriptures to the entire congregation). On Sundays when I am called to proclaim the Word, it is helpful when Karin can hold and cuddle Asher for a while.

This Sunday I did serve as lector, but I was Karin-less. One of my duties was to carry the Book of the Gospels up to the altar at the beginning of Mass. This is not a big deal, unless, of course, you are carrying a 26 pound baby in your right arm while trying to hold the book in your left. I managed to do that.

I was supposed to do the first reading from the Book of Wisdom. Normally, I would hand Asher over to Karin before I went up to the ambo (“ambo” is Catholic for “lectern”). Clearly this was not going to happen, seeing as Karin was absent. Georgiana, another reader, offered to hold the lad while I did my thing. I told her not to worry.

When my time came, I walked up to the ambo with Asher in my right arm. He didn’t seem bothered at all. If anything, he wanted to know how the microphone worked. With some difficulty I kept the boy from messing with the mike or with the book with the Scriptures. Actually, Asher was pleased with the fact that all eyes were upon him. Everybody in the church was looking directly at Asher.

They like Asher.

They like Asher because he is beyond cute. I suspect that they also like him because he is one of the few people in the church is less than sixty years of age.

The truth is that almost everyone who comes to our church on a regular basis is old. There is often a procession of cars at the entrance of the church just prior to the service. Old people get out of these cars to help even older people with their walkers and wheelchairs. The demographics are not good.

After Mass a lady came up to me and told me that, by taking Asher up with me to the ambo, I had inspired Catholic families in the church who have small children. I would have been more impressed with her comments if there had been more families with small children in attendance. There weren’t. There are very few young people at Mass. There were perhaps a dozen children.

After this woman made her remarks to me, I told her,

“He (Asher) is the future. We are not.”

If we take Asher to Mass every Sunday, will that ensure that he becomes a Catholic?

No.

In our time, I have no idea what would convince a young person to be a Catholic. Karin and I have three grown up children, and none of them go to Mass. They have some very good reasons for not going. I won’t go into details here, but the Church (which includes me) cannot satisfy their spiritual needs. All of our kids are spiritual people. They are all actively seeking God, but they don’t Him with us in our church.

What will Asher be? It’s hard to tell. He has a Hebrew name. Asher means “happy” or “blessed”. The boy’s mother has his name tattooed on her arm in Hebrew. When I visited with my rabbi on Monday, he gave Asher a blessing, the same that he gives to his own children. The Birkat HaKonahim:

“The LORD bless you and protect you!
The LORD deal kindly and graciously with you!
The LORD bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace!”

הוהי ךכרבי ךילא וינפ הוהי ראי ךנחיו םולש םשיו ךילא וינפ הוהי אשי

Transliteration Yeh-va-reh-cheh-cha Yahveh veh-yeesh-meh-reh-cha Ya-air Yahveh pa-naiv ay-leych-cha vee-chu-neh-cha Yee …

That’s a good blessing. At one time, I gave that same blessing to our kids (in English).