June 14, 1978 found me riding in a jeep as part of a convoy headed to Ft. Drum, NY for two weeks active duty. The unit, an Army Reserve infantry battalion from Portland, ME had left the day before stayed overnight on the floor of an armory in Vermont, and was on the final leg of the trip. We were stretched out with a proscribed distance between vehicles, trucks, jeeps, ambulances, and fuel tankers, extending for several miles along the road, probably irritating local drivers, as the military was still suffering from its poor Vietnam era image.
At once the radios crackled with a message that we should all pull off to the side of the road as a problem had developed at the head of the column. The problem was that in planning the convoy route, no one had considered the possibility that any of the towns through which we had to pass, would be holding a parade in honor of Flag Day. I doubt that it had occurred to anyone that June 14 was Flag Day at all.
But here we were, outside the town of Gouverneur, NY, and our lead elements had come down upon the start of their parade. Being somewhat far back in the marching order, I have no idea what actually transpired only to know that with some quick thinking, probably on the part of the local officials, we would simply blend into the parade and pass on through town as part of it.
The commander sent a radio message back along the line, that we were to put on our web gear, that is to say our harnesses which held canteens, first aid and ammunition pouches, and replace our caps with our helmets. The convoy was then to bunch up.
When all this was accomplished, we fell into the parade behind the high school band. Ahead in one of the ambulances, Tommy Mullen, a somewhat irreverent medic, who had been awarded the Silver Star as a corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam, substituted a paper Burger King crown for his helmet, much to the delight of the small children.
Several of us practiced our best beauty pageant waves as we progressed through the town, and many surprised residents asked us how we knew about the parade, and what brought us to it. The answers, they received were varied, I’m sure. And so we passed along out of town and on our way to a cold, wet, “fun-filled” two weeks of playing soldier at Ft. Drum.
Which brings me to my father’s story. Toward the end of World War II, the 104th Infantry Division was in an area where combat operations had ceased. The US Army had linked up with the Russians, and everyone was starting to breathe more easily. Not having an American flag, my father thought it would be nice to have one flying over his platoon command post. A local German woman, who spoke English and had relatives in Chicago, volunteered to make an American flag, if he would show her exactly what it entailed. He explained the 13 stripes, the blue field, and told her it would require 48, five pointed stars. To help her, he took a piece of paper and cut out a star as a pattern. She promised to return with it the next day.
True to her word, she returned, but, as she explained, it took longer to make, and she had been up all night to finish it. The flag, she said, did not require 48 stars; it required 96! My father had forgotten: the flag has two sides!
When the unit returned to the states, my father decided the right thing to do with it, was to have everyone in the platoon put their name in a helmet, and the person, whose name was drawn would get to keep it. To this day he has wondered whatever happened to that flag.
Showing posts with label US Army Reserve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Army Reserve. Show all posts
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Gleaning, or How I Heat for Free
When my wife and I first moved into our house in July 1979, it was not finished. The electrical system consisted of one socket. One half of it was occupied by a string of Romex wire, into which was spliced, at intervals, several light bulbs which ran from the kitchen up the ladder where the stairs would eventually be to the bedroom. The other half powered an ancient refrigerator, a donation from a former selectman of the town. Plumbing was a few months away from complete, and where there is a flower garden today, stood a small, plain outhouse. It could be illuminated at night, if need be, by a kerosene lamp. Insulation and sheet rock was non-existent. With a six-week old daughter, we knew there would be a race to beat winter.
We had both quit our teaching jobs to make the move. I was going to be the oyster baron of Casco Bay with my brother-in-law and another partner, and as soon as Heather was old enough to be left with a sitter, Susan would resume nursing. The oyster farm could pay us in nothing but sweat, and the $260 per month I earned as a captain in the Army Reserve, commanding a combat support company in New Hampshire, didn’t stretch very far.
We were entering the time we now refer to as “The Winter of Ham Hocks and Beans.” Each week we would make up a new soup, first pinto beans, then yellow eyes, peas, and lentils, which would be enriched with a ham hock and rice. Our diet was rounded out with dairy products and cereals we bought with W.I.C (Women, Infants, Children) coupons and sometimes augmented with a huge brick of government issue cheese my father-in-law would score at the senior center he attended. Store bought beer, or anything like that was out of the question, and so I brewed, from a recipe in a prohibition era book, a beverage called “molasses beer.” That rates its own story later, but anyone who drank it felt pity on us, and would bring enough real beer to leave behind a bottle or two.
Heat was a wood stove. Fortunately, we had the foresight to purchase five cords of hardwood before we left our jobs, but being neophytes, we had no idea how long that would last or how warm it would keep us. It was then I started gleaning. At the end of each day, I would go down to the shore to pick up drift wood and lug it back up the steep bank to the house. Most of it was punky soft wood, but sometimes the sea gods would give me a break and cough up a nice piece of oak or better an oak plank that had been part of a commercial wharf. Soaked with years of fish and engine oil, they burned really well.
We don’t eat bean soup as much as we used to, and the smell of molasses beer will never permeate the house again, but I still glean. People call me crazy for spending the year, when the bay isn’t ice-bound, hauling pieces of wood much to heavy for me to be carrying, up a steep bank to cut up with an electric chain saw. Soft wood, they say, is lousy firewood. Well, I have to disagree; free wood makes great heat, no matter what it is, oak, birch, spruce or poplar. True, softwood doesn’t build up a bed of coals, but I use it when we don’t need a fire all night. I figure I can heat my house for free, right into December, although the free wood usually lasts until about the end of November. And no, I don’t burn pressure treated wood. I save that for projects, such as the platform my rain barrel sits on.
Most of the shore ice is gone, so I went down to glean today. I got a piece of oak, about 4’ long. I figure, cut, split and dried, will last me a cold January night. I retrieved some stray pine and poplar, which will probably keep me warm for two nights in the late fall.
Maybe I am crazy or cheap as many tell me, although I prefer to think of myself as parsimonious, but when those first sharp nights of October come in, I’ll go to my wood pile, bring in an armload of free wood, and sit back with a beer not made from molasses and stay warm.
We had both quit our teaching jobs to make the move. I was going to be the oyster baron of Casco Bay with my brother-in-law and another partner, and as soon as Heather was old enough to be left with a sitter, Susan would resume nursing. The oyster farm could pay us in nothing but sweat, and the $260 per month I earned as a captain in the Army Reserve, commanding a combat support company in New Hampshire, didn’t stretch very far.
We were entering the time we now refer to as “The Winter of Ham Hocks and Beans.” Each week we would make up a new soup, first pinto beans, then yellow eyes, peas, and lentils, which would be enriched with a ham hock and rice. Our diet was rounded out with dairy products and cereals we bought with W.I.C (Women, Infants, Children) coupons and sometimes augmented with a huge brick of government issue cheese my father-in-law would score at the senior center he attended. Store bought beer, or anything like that was out of the question, and so I brewed, from a recipe in a prohibition era book, a beverage called “molasses beer.” That rates its own story later, but anyone who drank it felt pity on us, and would bring enough real beer to leave behind a bottle or two.
Heat was a wood stove. Fortunately, we had the foresight to purchase five cords of hardwood before we left our jobs, but being neophytes, we had no idea how long that would last or how warm it would keep us. It was then I started gleaning. At the end of each day, I would go down to the shore to pick up drift wood and lug it back up the steep bank to the house. Most of it was punky soft wood, but sometimes the sea gods would give me a break and cough up a nice piece of oak or better an oak plank that had been part of a commercial wharf. Soaked with years of fish and engine oil, they burned really well.
We don’t eat bean soup as much as we used to, and the smell of molasses beer will never permeate the house again, but I still glean. People call me crazy for spending the year, when the bay isn’t ice-bound, hauling pieces of wood much to heavy for me to be carrying, up a steep bank to cut up with an electric chain saw. Soft wood, they say, is lousy firewood. Well, I have to disagree; free wood makes great heat, no matter what it is, oak, birch, spruce or poplar. True, softwood doesn’t build up a bed of coals, but I use it when we don’t need a fire all night. I figure I can heat my house for free, right into December, although the free wood usually lasts until about the end of November. And no, I don’t burn pressure treated wood. I save that for projects, such as the platform my rain barrel sits on.
Most of the shore ice is gone, so I went down to glean today. I got a piece of oak, about 4’ long. I figure, cut, split and dried, will last me a cold January night. I retrieved some stray pine and poplar, which will probably keep me warm for two nights in the late fall.
Maybe I am crazy or cheap as many tell me, although I prefer to think of myself as parsimonious, but when those first sharp nights of October come in, I’ll go to my wood pile, bring in an armload of free wood, and sit back with a beer not made from molasses and stay warm.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The World's Briefest Trip Abroad
Paul and Sylvia Nadeau are two of our best friends. We met while Paul and I were still in the Army Reserve and both are from Aroostook County (The County to Mainers). For a number of years, as part of our reserve duties, Paul and I were required to travel to The County to inspect military skills classes being held at the National Guard armories there. Our unit was a school with classes being taught at local centers, Paul and I acting as school principals. It was during one of these trips that we took the shortest trip on record into Canada.
Aroostook County occupies about the northern third of Maine and is inhabited by about 10% of the state’s population. It consists of many heavily forested acres and the big sky of farm land. Potatoes are the largest crop grown. The southern half is made up of mainly of folks tracing their ancestry to the British Isles, while the northern half, predominantly the St. John River valley (The Valley) is comprised of people descended from the early French settlers, most of whom still speak French, and English with a delightful accent: French with a hint of Celtic lilt. Sandwiched in between is a small colony of Swedes in the towns of Stockholm, New Sweden and Westmanland.
The greatest people in Maine live there. They are good humored, and a person’s intelligence is measured not by college credits but by common sense. Our Senator Susan Collins, who operates with such an intelligence not common in Washington, is herself a County girl.
During the time I was in State servitude, I would travel to The County with the Maine State Police, another of my favorite group of folks, where we would conduct school bus driver training. It was not uncommon to hear drivers discussing the merits of vehicles in French. We would know what they were talking about because the words, “automatic transmission” and “air brakes,” could be heard from time to time. At one point, one of my trooper colleagues was asked if he could speak French. To his negative reply, he was asked, “Then how does it feel to be dumber than a Frenchman.” Great folks these.
Although I don’t miss working for the state, I miss the great people I had the privilege to hang out with. Take for example, Jim Grandmaison, of the Ft. Kent School District. His name translates to “Big House,” but his decidedly French speaking secretary loved it when I called asking either for Mr. Big House or Senor Casa Grande. He always claimed that to come south, he parked his car, an alleged ’54 Studebaker in Medway (look that up on the map) where he would pick it up after a dog sled run south.
But I digress. Paul and I had to inspect the classes held there, so we would drive north on Friday, stay at the farm with Virgil and Althea, Sylvia's father and stepmother, and Saturday morning would find us in one of the armories. We tried to get done by noon to allow time for some trout fishing or bird hunting for Saturday supper as the seasons allowed.
Now, our pride was that we held the only classes in basic artillery skills, and nuclear, biological and chemical defense in the entire US Army that were held in French; that being with the battery in Ft. Kent.
One year, long before 9/11 as we were up there, the price of gasoline was significantly lower in Canada than the US, and with the armory literally a snowball’s throw from the border, we crossed over the bridge, dressed in our US Army uniforms, asked the friendly Canadian border agent for the location of the nearest gas station, and ten minutes later pulled up at the US Immigration Service gate to come back in. The guard looked at us, two uniformed commissioned officers, and asked how long we had been in Canada. Paul looked at his watch and said with a big smile, “Ten minutes.” “What are you bringing back?” “A tank of gas.” With a laugh and shake of his head he waved us through.
Life was a little simpler then.
Aroostook County occupies about the northern third of Maine and is inhabited by about 10% of the state’s population. It consists of many heavily forested acres and the big sky of farm land. Potatoes are the largest crop grown. The southern half is made up of mainly of folks tracing their ancestry to the British Isles, while the northern half, predominantly the St. John River valley (The Valley) is comprised of people descended from the early French settlers, most of whom still speak French, and English with a delightful accent: French with a hint of Celtic lilt. Sandwiched in between is a small colony of Swedes in the towns of Stockholm, New Sweden and Westmanland.
The greatest people in Maine live there. They are good humored, and a person’s intelligence is measured not by college credits but by common sense. Our Senator Susan Collins, who operates with such an intelligence not common in Washington, is herself a County girl.
During the time I was in State servitude, I would travel to The County with the Maine State Police, another of my favorite group of folks, where we would conduct school bus driver training. It was not uncommon to hear drivers discussing the merits of vehicles in French. We would know what they were talking about because the words, “automatic transmission” and “air brakes,” could be heard from time to time. At one point, one of my trooper colleagues was asked if he could speak French. To his negative reply, he was asked, “Then how does it feel to be dumber than a Frenchman.” Great folks these.
Although I don’t miss working for the state, I miss the great people I had the privilege to hang out with. Take for example, Jim Grandmaison, of the Ft. Kent School District. His name translates to “Big House,” but his decidedly French speaking secretary loved it when I called asking either for Mr. Big House or Senor Casa Grande. He always claimed that to come south, he parked his car, an alleged ’54 Studebaker in Medway (look that up on the map) where he would pick it up after a dog sled run south.
But I digress. Paul and I had to inspect the classes held there, so we would drive north on Friday, stay at the farm with Virgil and Althea, Sylvia's father and stepmother, and Saturday morning would find us in one of the armories. We tried to get done by noon to allow time for some trout fishing or bird hunting for Saturday supper as the seasons allowed.
Now, our pride was that we held the only classes in basic artillery skills, and nuclear, biological and chemical defense in the entire US Army that were held in French; that being with the battery in Ft. Kent.
One year, long before 9/11 as we were up there, the price of gasoline was significantly lower in Canada than the US, and with the armory literally a snowball’s throw from the border, we crossed over the bridge, dressed in our US Army uniforms, asked the friendly Canadian border agent for the location of the nearest gas station, and ten minutes later pulled up at the US Immigration Service gate to come back in. The guard looked at us, two uniformed commissioned officers, and asked how long we had been in Canada. Paul looked at his watch and said with a big smile, “Ten minutes.” “What are you bringing back?” “A tank of gas.” With a laugh and shake of his head he waved us through.
Life was a little simpler then.
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