Kids!

Grandson, age three, sees my profile picture on Facebook.  It's a photo of my wife and me on our 25th anniversary.

"Is that you and Gramma?" he asks.

"Yes."

"Are you was getting married?" he follows up, employing the peculiar syntax of a three-year-old.

"No, we've been married for a long time."

"What?  Aren't you getting married?"  he still wonders.  Understandably, he's a little confused about how marriage works.  I mean, he's only three.

"Yes," I say, thinking this would end the line of questioning.

But he comes back with that time tested retort of all kids under the age of six, "Why?"

"Because," I say, thinking that now I've got him, he'll have to move on to a different subject, "she's my girl friend."

"Nuh-uh," he says, "she's mine."

Kids!

Apollo 11 and a Ten Year Old Boy

Mission Insignia for Apollo 11

Today is the 41st anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's landing on the moon.  I remember watching it on television.  It was after 10:30 p.m. when the astronauts exited the lunar module, the Eagle.  It wasn't a school night, because we were then on summer vacation.  Still, we weren't accustomed to staying up that late.  So, for me, that made the historic event even more special.  I remember Armstrong's words, when his left foot touched the moon's surface, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."  I was ten years old then.  I was in the fifth grade at Nations Ford Elementary School.  We lived in an apartment on Old Pineville Road in Charlotte, NC.

Those were heady days.  Nixon had just replaced Johnson as president.  Seemed like there was an Apollo flight every few days.  At some point during all those flights, but very near to the Apollo 11 flight, I experienced my first solar eclipse.  Space was about the most interesting thing there was.  (That, the North Carolina Tar Heels, the Green Bay Packers, and Arnold Palmer).  I recall telling my fifth grade teacher that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up.  She replied that I'd have to be very good in math.  Hence, I think that was also the end of my aspirations for space. 

But I was always interested.  In second or third grade, I remember us watching the landing of one of the Mercury mission flights (maybe we watched more than one).  It was just what was done back in those days.  We stopped our work, the teacher wheeled the old Zenith black and white (perched atop a five-foot tall stand with rollers) to the front of the class, and we watched.  Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Armstrong, and Aldrin were names as familiar to me as Bart Starr and Johnny Unitas.

I vividly remember when Apollo 8 was orbiting the moon.  It was Christmas Eve, 1968.  I got a telescope for Christmas that year.  We were at Grandma Huffman's and I remember going out in the yard with my Uncle Ernest and trying to spot the spaceship.  I was able to view the moon through the lens, but I think I merely imagined seeing the spacecraft, if memory serves.  Besides, it was cold out.  Telescopes were cool, but watching the spaceflight inside, on TV, seemed to make more sense.

But, you know, I've never watched a Shuttle mission.  And I can't explain what happened to my interest in space.

Why?

Harvard University

Patrick Buchanan, whom I sometimes like and sometimes don't, writing for World Net Daily, laments the fact that the nation's elite colleges and universities discriminate against white conservative and Christians (the media's term for Catholics).  "Bias And Bigotry In Academia" blares the headline.  And, of course, all the latest research and studies are cited to substantiate these assertions as factual.

I don't disagree with Mr. Buchanan's facts; I simply ask why?  Why would conservatives, if they really are conservatives, and Christians, if they really are such, want to subject themselves and their money to four years in one of these, so called, elite institutions?  What's so conservative about that?  What's Christian about it?

Are these conservatives and Christians, so called, envious of a (name the institution) eduation?  Do they covet acceptance by the ruling class?  (I invite you to Angelo M. Codevilla's excellent piece on that subject, published in the July 2010 issues of The American Spectator).    If so, by what rights do they lay claim to the appellations of Christian and conservative?

The Little Man's Visit, Part I

Reading a Search and Find Book with Gramma

As an unplanned consequence of the birth of his little sister, Haydin is spending part of the summer with his Papa. Here's a recap of the first day of his visit.

The Little Man arrived in our dominions at about four AM, Wednesday and Gramma chose not to wake me. Instead, they went straight to bed and I didn't see the Little Man until supper time next day.  When I got home from work, I learned that he had sprayed gramma with the hose when they were at Minerva's watering her flowers. That was late afternoon. When I arrived, the two of them were in the kitchen, at the table, and it took me a minute to realize that something was wrong with Gramma's appearance. Her hair was all unkempt and sort of matted down, very much unlike her. It looked like she'd been in the shower with her clothes on. She told me to ask the Little Man what happened. But when I did, he just looked down and said, "I don't know." But, gradually, he owned up to what he'd done. Evidently, the two of them sprayed each other. They actually had a blast! Haydin thought it was way cool. And I would pay the price for this, later.

Do You Have a Weed Eater?

H/t to the editors.

Two Texas farmers, Jim and Bob, are sitting at their favorite bar, drinking beer. Jim turns to Bob and says, "You know, I'm tired of going through life without an education Tomorrow I think I'll go to the community college and sign up for some classes." Bob thinks it's a good idea, and the two leave.

The next day, Jim goes down to the college and meets the Dean of Admissions, who signs him up for the four basic classes: math, English, history, and Logic.

"Logic?" Jim says. "What's that?"

The dean says, "I'll give you an example. Do you own a weed eater?"

CNN: Pioneer in the Dumbing Down of News in America

In Websters forthcoming video dictionary of the English language, the following snippet will appear beside the word, idiot.

Postcards

My postcard box

For some reason today I went through this old shoebox I've kept for years full of postcards from my travels.  Once I got started, it was impossible to stop.  I went through them all, even reading those that had been through the mail.

Ruedesheim am Rhein

I haven't traveled much since retiring from the Army, but I've been to a lot of places.  The cards sort of document my travels.  In Germany, I visited places like Ruedesheim on the Rhine.  That was a place accessible on the Rhein cruises.  But I think we drove there more often.  The quintessential Rheinland-Pfalz town.  Just made for postcards.

The bridge house in Bad Kreuznach

Bad Kreuznach was the first German town I ever experienced.  I was stationed there in the early '80s, employed by the 232nd Signal Company (headquartered in Worms), 102nd Signal Battalion (headquartered in Frankfurt). My barracks were on the old hospital kaserne which, I understand, no longer exists.  I worked shifts in a Defense Information Systems Agency (back when it was called the Defense Communications Agency) communications station--a microwave/technical control facility--on the top of Cow Hill (Kuberg).  I remember climbing the antenna tower one New Years' Eve (highly unauthorized) to view the town's fireworks display.  Nearby locals were also shooting their own, and they seemed to be aiming for my antenna tower!  So I didn't stay up for as long as I would have liked.

About a year and a half after leaving BK, I returned to Germany, this time to Helmstedt, in Niedersachsen, and this time with a family.  We had one daughter when we got there and two when we left.  In Helmstedt, I worked at the Helmstedt Support Detachment, a unit of the 6/40th Armor Battalion, Berlin Brigade.  We traveled to so many places from Helmstedt--to Berlin, of course, and to nearby small towns, to Schoeningen, to Koenigslutter, to Celle and Wolfsburg, to Braunschweig and Hannover, and to the Harz Mountains.  We were at Helmstedt when, on the night of November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and all the travel restrictions between East and West Germany were overcome by events.  Out town was flooded, absolutely flooded with East German cars, little light-blue Trabants, or "Trabbies" as they were called.  We traveled to Dusseldorf, to Frankfurt am Main, and to Heilbronn, down in Bavaria.  We rode the duty train from Helmstedt to Frankfurt and back.  From Frankfurt, I connected to Heilbronn to visit friends there.  We also visited Switzerland once, and Liechtenstein, and I made a trip or two to Rotterdam, in Holland.

Taukkunnen Kaserne in Worms

Within six months of the Berlin Wall falling, we learned that our little detachment would deactivate.  I was sent a few months later to Worms, about a six hour drive to the south.  I worked at the headquarters of the 5th Signal Command on the old Taukkunnen Kaserne.  We spent three years in Worms and did quite a bit of traveling.  Our longest trips were to Berchesgaden, deep in southern Bavaria, and to Austria, and to Holland. The German towns we visited included Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Speyer, all the little villages along the Rhein and the Deutche Weinstrasse, Kaiserslautern (or K-town, as the Americans called it), and Ramstein, and many others.