Pneumonia

At the library . . .

I'm glad to be back.  2015 seems to be so far not very good for me.  I'm recovering from a serious case of pneumonia.  It's good to push the cart at Walmart without having to lean on it.

In the meantime I've been thinking about new posts and there's plenty of material to think about.  Trump is on top because people hate our out of touch politicians.  It's that simple.  With all our setbacks this year it's a wonder why the Silent Majority isn't in full rebellion.  And what difference can one person make anyway?

I watch a lot of TCM old movies during recovery.  Every other channel seems to be about people and events that are so nuts as to baffle the most avid movie watcher/critic.  Hanna and Her Horse commercial seems to brighten me up a bit as much as the Whoppers I buy at Burger King.

Bastille Day 2015

Bastille Day, July 14th is just around the corner.   Few Americans know what it is although the French Revolution of 1789 is an important part of our history.  After all, if it wasn’t for France, we would have lost to the British.  It’s that simple: the port blockade.  In my book, Journal of the Silent Majority, I write how the French revolutionaries caused what is happening today with our rainbow reds knocking off one American institution after another without firing a shot.  If you knew your French history, you’d know there is a precedent for the destruction of the Catholic Church in France which had grown too politically close to the corrupt monarchy – one of the Estates.   It was high times for militant atheists just like today in America, but I’m not giving the plot away.  You’ll have to buy the book which you can do for the reasonable e-book price of around three dollars on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

One clue I can give is my analysis of the development of one of the world’s most diabolical institutions – the Media.   It’s the source of intellectual ferment and a nursery and mother ship for our unhappy reds.  (I found agreement in Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler although it’s a hard book to understand.)  Today all power in America comes out of the end of a camera.   Sorry Mao.  The Press of yesteryear is the Media enslaver of today, yet the “Press” of today hides behind its old constitutional protections.  As a politician, if you don’t go along with its program, you’re out like Nixon.  You’re fired!  One false move as an average working stiff, media pressure will cause you to be fired.  The Media is the source of all political correctness and the official tabulator of presidential votes since 1964.  It’s no wonder millions of us don’t vote anymore.  The ones who take advertising money are the official designators of the victor.  Above all, don’t let anyone besides Republicans or Democrats into the Presidential Debates because they are a private corporate monopoly incidentally using the public airways.

The French Revolution is the story of class warfare of which Americans know little.  Maybe Proletariat and Bourgeoisie sound too Bolshevik, therefore an understanding of it all is bad even though the terms were popular in France in 1789 at the start of their revolution.  The concept of their being those exempt from the laws they impose upon others is incomprehensible to Americans.  So too recall a political club called Cordelier’s which housed the most murderous collection of media types like atheist Marat.  Over a hundred years later the father of fascism, Benito Mussolini, was a journalist and so was Karl Marx.  I suspect, incidentally, when the time comes, our revolutionaries could help “appease” our deficit when it reaches $24 trillion with seizing the assets of the Catholic Church.  The red agenda for us could also include an intensified attack on military officers with Stalinist-like trials and purges.  It all began when the atheists were let loose.  Yes, we could learn a lot from the French Revolution.

Zapruder II

Fishermen are braggarts.  Hunters are braggarts.  It’s not too far fetched to speculate that the person who shot John Kennedy was the same.  He was hunting too.  Taxidermy is a big business here in the Ozarks where the biggest bucks are displayed at the local farm supply outfit.  When I checked in to Hq. Co. 24th Marines in Kansas City after boot camp, there, above the colonel’s desk, was a framed VC scalp.  Professional killers collect it all: hair, noses, and ears.  I remember seeing three shrunken heads in the Kansas City museum when I was a kid.  I suggest in the killing of John Kennedy there is something the TV specials and all the experts have overlooked – intentionally or not.  It’s something very basic to the nature of man and I’m surprised of all the silly and far-out JFK conspiracy theories no one has mentioned a logical extension of how killers behave and what their peculiar mindset suggests.

The Abraham Zapruder film proved to me a front shooter was involved and I wrote a piece about the “front sniper’s nest” which became my most popular post on Ray N. Cherry Blog.  Putting aside the influence of the mob, UFOs, Castro, the Russians, (ad infinitum), could there be new evidence consistent with the nature of man?  Is there a second undiscovered “Zapruder” film?  I specifically mean a trophy film of the assassination shot by the assassins.  Why hasn’t even the possibility of one existing ever been considered?  “Gee boss, if we’re going to go to all that trouble, can I at least have a memento of shooting Kennedy?”

I guess the answer lies in convenient operation and the brazenness of the assassination itself.  A barrel mount camera would be a simple procedure.  The Signal Corps used to do that sort of filming all the time during WWII.  Filming the grassy knoll by the book depository could have been easily done from the windows or roof tops of the near-by buildings.  Because there was a conspiracy in the assassination of John Kennedy, the logistics of filming the event aren’t difficult.  A tourist could have filmed it on the ground.  Again, I speculate that the operational philosophy might have been: “You might as well be hung as a ram as a lamb.”  Do it!  Zapruder II, to be shown in the twilight years of the assassins, would give them their life’s trophy mount.  If it was taken out of the hands of the assassins by the Agency we’ll never know except for the primal nature of man which suggests Zapruder II does exist.

Discovering Cable News

I didn’t know what cable news television was until I took our state utility truck in for repairs during the late 1990s.  Up until that time I’d always watched news on my rabbit ears 19 inch TV.  Dealerships had big screens in their waiting rooms with something new to me – cable television.  Oprah, Judge Judy, and Dr. Phil were big at the time, but I didn’t care anything about that fluff except I liked the way Judge Judy took no guff from those who appeared before her.  Cable news was longer and better covered and it was glamorous.  Case in point: FOX News and its stable of blonds.   It was a time when men were men and women were actually attractive.  I remember Gretchen Carlson, a pioneer the employment of beautiful women in cable television.  Rupurt Murdock knew what he was doing.  Of course, that’s sexist, but sex sells.

On the other hand there’s MSNBC:  transgender this and LGBT that.   I have enough trouble getting past the “talking with hands” mannerisms, let alone wondering if Rachel Maddow has an Adam’s Apple.  If I want to find out what the red brigades are up to, MSNBC is the place and it’s actually fun because they follow the socialist and communist playbook so closely.  (I did a blog post on Halloween at MSNBC) Is there anyone there who’s not a militant atheist?  Who’s the almost-white chick with the braids?  Stop waiving your hands and talk slower.  Those of us from the Hustings can’t understand what you’re saying.  Perhaps we’re too simple.  All we get is that you hate white men, come from an oppressed minority, interview wretched like-minded leftists, and get a big fat paycheck for doing it - probably from an old white man.

CNN and Anderson Cooper are getting better.  At least he has a nice looking haircut and doesn’t tell us he’s a homosexual all the time.  Who cares?  Not all the world is a Bruce Jenner telling the world to “look at me.”  Thank you very much.  Currently, I’m sticking with Bill O’Reilly because he doesn’t hide what real people think like the other cable channels do.  Real people know the country is irretrievably lost because they have eyes and ears and a memory.  I wish Hannity would ask real people real questions in one of his town-halls.  He’s got the bad habit of asking only celebrities and experts.   Of course, you can argue cable news isn’t real reporting in the tradition of Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Morrow.  It isn’t.  It’s entertainment and we must pay the price.

29 Palms: Live Fire

This is what Outpost Crampton looked like in 1978.  It was a part of reserve Marine Corps training at 29 Palms, California in the Mojave Desert.  Any resemblance to civilization is merely co-incidental.  The wooden buildings are permanent and are occupied by succeeding units that overlook the valley where the armored battalions maneuver under live fire conditions.  APCs reach 155 degrees on the inside.  Where we were on the mountain top it was only 120 degrees.  The first photo shows the ingenuity of Marines.  Wherever two or three rocks are gathered together, Marines will make their homes.  I remember we had no cots and slept in tents infested with rats.  One discovered my unopened can of peaches two feet from my head.  He picked it up with his paws and sniffed it, bit holes in the top, and sucked out the juice.  Our Vietnam veteran corpsman had warned us by relating the story of how the rats used to attack the eyeballs of Marines while they were sleeping to obtain their body salt.  Standard amenities at Crampton included a 4-seat non-partitioned toilet they called something else.  Navy corpsmen would burn off the contents only on certain days when we were down wind.

 

The next photo is when the planes and artillery opened up on a target.  One A-4 jet from El Toro streaked up to us on the west side and fired his neon colored missiles upside down as he crested above us.  Captain Anderson in white t-shirt looks on and SSgt. Vest (seated) enjoys the view.  If I remember correctly, the guy taking the picture in the middle is Pvt. Malko, soon to be the official photographer of Hq. Co. 24th Marines, Kansas City.  Note the panorama and the smaller mountain ridge below the big ones.  Our regimental S-2 shop had spent several months making a terrain model of the area out of newspaper, sugar, and flour.  To our surprise it didn’t make it to the Palms.  Mice had eaten it in transit, but still, preparing models are part of the intelligence function.  Our shop was set up in one of the wooden buildings and it was typical.  Our desks were olive drab blocks we had to unsnap and unfold.  I suppose they had been that way since the Civil War.  Of course, we had the situation map with red and black grease pencils and overlays.  Today with computers, it’s all changed.  I was the only divisional level trained intelligence analyst, a rare bird.

The only thing good about Outpost Crampton was when flew back to Camp Wilson. The first person I met after landing was from a New York unit, a beautiful Puerto Rican girl near the wash racks.  She teasingly sprinkled water in my face – the nicest greeting I ever received in the Marine Corps and a real morale booster.  Sadly, I learned in 1980 when we came back to the Palms for CAX80, she had been stabbed to death in a jealous rage.  The last photo shows a bunch of us getting ready to catch the bus for the trip home.  We had staged our gear and I hold my ever-present water bag.  Sgt. Peak holds the soda pop and SSgt. Williams is next to him milling about smartly.

National Police Strike

The plotters of the Left know when they have a good thing going.  They’ve found a perennial excuse to attack the police locally and nationally, the allegation of police butality.  Of course, they’ve been using the race card for decades in their desire to establish a national police force like the NKVD or Gestapo.  Al Sharpton wants one.  It would be much simpler to establish a socialist state with no opposition if every police department was put under the control of a Blue Cap commissar in the Federal Government. 

In the waning months of the Obama Administration, the Fortuitous Convergence still tempts the crazies of the Left.  So the attacks began to destroy another institution – the police – by the old tired and true technique of provocation, crisis, and reward.  The big picture tells us that the Left is trying something new and more dangerous.  Capabilities beyond the imagination of the SNCC, SDS, and the Black Panthers (and more permanent) have arrived.  New technology has advanced their capabilities to dangerous level unappreciated by the Right.  With provocateurs armed with cell phones recording every move of the cops and with media complicity in non-stop coverage, they’re successfully bringing law enforcement to its knees.   Criminals are targeting and assassinating cops.   The Obama Justice Department is attempting a federalization which masquerades as reform. (see: Kelly File interview, J. Christian Adams  5/ 29/15, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department).

The best elements know their history too and have begun to fight back with a police Slow-Down in Baltimore.  Why protect the ones who are trying to kill or imprison you?  And why not meet a national attack on police with a “national police strike” counterattack?  It’s how our best elements can force the issue like Martin Luther King did when he made Birmingham in 1963 a national and international issue.  If President Obama tries to counter with the federalizing of U.S. police departments, the U.S. will become a dictatorship overnight and then the real game begins.

The Passing of Mr. Stockmyer

A few days ago on the Internet I learned John Stockmyer had died a year ago last month.  He was a history professor of mine from the 1960s.  The last time I saw him was about 15 years ago at a restaurant near River Front in Kansas City not far from Maple Woods Community College.  I think it was a departmental retirement dinner, but Mr. Stockmyer was sitting with another man close by.  Even after all those years I still recognized him.  I told my boss, “That’s Mr. Stockmyer, my old history teacher.”  I had to pay my respects, so I went over and introduced myself as one of his former students at Metropolitan Junior College.  (I also told him I was writing a book.)  He looked embarrassed by my compliments and when I returned to my table, I heard him quietly tell his friend, “He’s one of mine.”  I get a little misty when I think about it.

The first time I saw John G. Stockmyer in 1969 I thought he was one of us.  He had that rare gift of looking many years younger than he actually was, especially with his boyish mischievous smile.   After the bell rang he closed the door, unbuttoned his cuffs, and rolled up his sleeves.  He didn’t look like a history teacher, at least the ones I endured at Westport High School like Dave Morton, the TV weatherman who gave me an “I” in Colonial History which I deserved.   Nor did Mr. Stockmyer look or sound like Mr. Naismith at Metropolitan Jr. College in Kansas City – very pleasant, but uninspiring.  History to me meant just another teacher moonlighting from coaching basketball.

Things were not going well.  In the fall semester of 1968 I had withdrawn from a five hour course, General College Chemistry that kicked my behind in more than one way.  Fortunately, the instructor, who looked and sounded like Ben Stein (Clear Eyes), gave me a “Withdrawal Passing” grade which left me with just 12 hours that semester and eliminated my student deferment in 1968 the year of the Tet Offensive.  Mr. Stockmyer’s Early World Civilization, also a five hour course, got me back on track with a “B” and actually convinced me to make my major History and Art my minor.

In thinking about it after all these years, Mr. Stockmyer was the right man at the right time for me.  With his unconventional ways of teaching, he made history fun and better still, he made it doable; you could pass a seemingly boring subject.  I remember the silver Greek Drachma he used to pass around on “Things and Stuff” day which was every Wednesday.  With a gleam in his eye, he’d say something like, “Shriek, Shriek, Chuckle, Chuckle . . . We’re going to learn about the Pink Power of Pergamon today.”  He was also known for his Time Machine which I don’t remember.  He made history come alive because he incorporated all the senses, at least those that can be.  From the Internet I’ve read Mr. Stockmyer was the best history teacher in the United States.  For me, he certainly lit the spark and fed the flame.

George Washington Cherry

The Central Plains were not settled by a haphazard onslaught of land hungry pioneers.  The real ones were smart enough to follow the paths of least resistance up the Missouri River and adjacent trails to Independence and Kansas City using St. Louis as the ultimate source of supply.  In turn Kansas City became the hub which fed the Oregon Trail and the 800 mile long Santa Fe Trail. Westport, the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail, received supplies from Kansas City a few miles away.

The relevance of George, my great grandfather, is that he was the first Cherry to break from the Cumberland region, head west across the Mississippi River with the Independence Wagon Train, and found the Missouri Cherrys.  After 1850, he went west to California and became a gold miner in Jacksonville, Oregon.  George was a freighter across the Plains from Ft. Leavenworth to all government posts including those of Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah.  On November 1, 1855, he enlisted in the Oregon Mounted Volunteers in D Co. commanded by Captain Miles F. Alcorn and led by Colonel Robert Williams of the 9th Regiment.  At the time of enlistment, he was 5 ft. 11 inches tall, had a light complexion, blue eyes, black hair, and weighed 125 pounds.  He was discharged on May 28th 1856.

Shortly after this, he became a “filibuster” under General Billy Walker in Nicaragua where two hundred army soldiers of fortune fought against 20,000 Nicaraguans for control of that Central American country.  They succeeded for about a year until disease and starvation drove them out.  In November, 1857 George enlisted in the Utah Volunteer Battalion for the Mormon-Indian expedition.  The two stories I heard in my youth about George and the Indians happened here.  He scalped an Indian and left him for dead.  At a trading post some years later that same Indian came up to him and said; “You scalped me!”  George was supposed to have used a hollow reed in the water to hide from the Indians.  On December 12, 1857, he was stationed at Camp Scott, Utah Territory and became Captain of C Co. just three months after the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  He was discharged September 14, 1858 after walking 1200 miles back to Ft.  Leavenworth.  Prior to Kansas and Missouri, George had lived “3 years in Differnt (sic)Places in Oregon and Caliaforne (sic) and Utah” (sic).  After that, he lived “11 years in Kansas and 33 years in Mo.”

He then returned to Kentucky and married Sarah Parrish on December 12, 1858 in Barren County.  They packed up and went to Linn Co. Kansas for seven years.  This was during the time after the Kansas Nebraska Bill of 1854 which admitted Kansas as a free state.  Settlers both slave and free, were encouraged to immigrant there to tip the balance in favor of their particular political persuasion.  “Bleeding Kansas” was not a good place to be.  The newlyweds had no sooner got to Kansas than the severe drought of 1859-1860 happened.  When my grandfather, Isaac Anderson Cherry was born to George and Sarah in Olathe, Kansas April 15, 1861, the War Between the States began.

Last Call for Race Riots

Where do we go from here?  The April riots are over and the hot months of July and August 2015 approach.  The “Fortuitous Convergence” of Left wing forces is still operational.  All the “civil rights” stars aligned: black President, black Attorney General, black mayor, black prosecutor, and the Media hungry for dramatic events and ratings.  Pinch me.  Am I living in another Reconstruction America after the Civil War with its federal occupation of the South?  With more than a half century of “loot and scoot” politics has time finally run out on the thugs and criminals that have made a mockery of law and order?  On the other hand, as one commentator on MSNBC gleefully noted; violence works.  Jesse Jackson knew that; so did Martin Luther King Jr. and Tom Hayden.  “When you riot, you get things.” 

In my studies of the 1960s era I was surprised by the intimate relationships between the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, the Left (CPUSA), and Democrats, especially John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.  In the largely unknown story, there was a remarkable co-ordination: tactical and strategic strategy, logistics (Ford Foundation), alliances (i.e. ACLU, Lawyers Guild), and above all, Media support and participation.  Someone could write a book about it, but the important thing to remember is these guys like Stanley Levison, Harry Wachtel, and Allard Lowenstein knew what they were doing.  So do people like AL Sharpton and our other present day rabble rousers.  It’s their thing and how they make a living – professional carpet baggers and snake oil salesmen.  Amateurs can’t sell Utopian ideas.  On the other hand, I think it’s fair to say, their nemeses in the intelligence agencies are good at their jobs too and know what the trouble makers know.  Time is running out on their race card antics.

 

If you’re going to riot, burn down another town, rob CVSs, or pulverize the cops with brinks (Kent State), do it in 2015.  (July and August are the traditional riot months in the United States.  See Facts on File, 5-Year Index.)  Both sides know their history, especially Republican strategists who, I believe, are still shedding crocodile tears over Ferguson and Baltimore.   Don’t riot in 2016 because that’s Election 2016 and the Republicans will be waiting with a Nixon-like “law and order” candidate.  Next stop: another Republican landslide.  The last part of 2015 should be a healing and forgetting period after the projected summer riots.  If riots occurred during the presidential debates or conventions (Chicago 1968) in 2016, it would be disastrous for the Left.  Again, I say the Left is calculating about its timing in the application of destruction and violence.   History shows July and August are their favorite months, in this 2015, their final glory hours of the Fortuitous Convergence.

29 Palms: Heavy Metal

In 1978 the Soviets had their new T-72 tank.  In our S-2 shop, we didn’t know too much about it. In the Marine Corps Reserve, we still had our old M60 tanks produced in the early 1960s.  Twenty-nine Palms is where I first saw ours in numbers because that’s where tankers go to have fun.  I’ve seen these guys drive around firing at targets all day long.  Fire streaks out of the barrel and if they miss, there’s a bright ricochet when the shell hits the ground.  I didn’t see any old hulks used as targets like I did at mortar ranges.  Tires are used instead.  The guy in the picture isn’t having any fun because his tank was out of gas. (Can you believe it?)  He told me all he needed as a funnel and he’d be on his way, so I got him one at supply with my ID card.  The M-60 is big and hot and they had no AC.  I don’t see how those guys in armor stand it; the surface temperature then was 144 degrees.  When I went through weapons orientation at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona our intelligence class got to crawl inside one of these beasts.  I remember they were reasonably cozy and the turret could be easily cranked manually if the power went out.

My job was with regimental intelligence – S2.  Operations (S3) dealt with American equipment and I have to admit Soviet equipment was my specialty.  CAX78 and exercises like it balances out the theoretical training of books and the class room.  My lowly rank excluded me from training at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but still I read, especially one primary source account of real war by Chaim Herzog, an ex-Israeli intelligence officer.  He wrote the War of Atonement in 1975.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the Israelis advised us at 29 Palms.  I only saw them mixing with the officers.  Herzog’s account of their war five years earlier jived with all my intelligence training: advancing to lines of departure, diplomatic moves, rehearsals to crossing the Suez, Sadat recording brag sessions of Israeli generals from their previous victories, advancing to the attack on Israel in the morning with the sun blinding Jewish defense.  Then there was Task Force Zvika soundly clobbering Arab units.

The last photo is one taken in front of a 155mm Self Propelled (SP) howitzer.  These are the ones the Marines used before the 198mm came into service with a significant increase in stand-off range.  For those who do not know, the difference between a gun and howitzer is one of angle.  A “gun” fires directly at a target; a “howitzer” fires up at an angle.  Of course you have exceptions, most notably the German 88 which did both - best artillery piece of WWII.  The barrel of the 155mm rests at eight feet, my reach.  A 50 caliber machine guns protects against infantry.  In a day or so we were to stage our gear for the move to Outpost Crampton up in the mountains where it was 20 degrees cooler.  That’s where the combined arms were to be tested in the valley below the outpost.  I soon found out that these exercises are dangerous and people can get killed.

Baltimore Race Riots 2015

It’s April and here come the riots.  The hot months of July and August aren’t even here yet.  The circus is still in Baltimore just like it was in Ferguson, Missouri, LA in 1992, and countless other American cities where race rioters rule or ruled the day.  Again, they appropriated a cause, burned and looted, and attacked the police.  When there were no more sneakers, Colt 45 malt liquor, or check cashing outfits to rob, things died down.  The officials are happy now and love and peace abounds.  The Maryland National Guard will stick around for a few more days after arriving late and letting inner city businesses burn to the ground.  Black criminal gangs like the Bloods, Crips, and Black Guerilla Family have received beneficial publicity.  Network TV ratings received a much needed April resuscitation.  Politicians, especially black ones, got a chance to strut and fret their stuff on national and international television.  Black rioters where asked how they “feel”.  The revelers formed Conga lines and danced amid the flames.

I did not see one ordinary white person interviewed on how he feels.  “Fair and Balanced”, my foot.  We’ve seen this burning and looting mayhem for more than 50 years.  That’s the legacy of the 1960s when the Left successfully destroyed the “use of force” and occupied and began to control academia, politics, and the Media.  How does the white majority feel?  That’s the question the Media carefully avoids.  It also harbors a pivotal question relating to the shelf life of our constitutional republic.  How long do we have?  Are white youngsters catching on?

When laws aren’t enforced the jig is up.  It’s only the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.  Baby Boom whites have known this for 50 years.  Millions of voters have dropped out and don’t vote anymore.  I don’t.  (Reform was sabotaged when polls revealed Perot would have enough electoral votes to win the Presidency.)  We tried.  All avenues lead to the same destination: Republicans and Democrats – co-joined twins happy in their briar patches as the status quo proves again and again that some are more equal than others.  What about the 14th Amendment?  Businesses have become the expedient sacrificial lambs during race riots.  They are “lynched” to avoid a showdown and confrontation with a culture of minority criminality and what to do about it.

What does the ordinary white person think when the black President, black Attorney General, a black mayor won’t use deadly force against the attempted murder of the police and civil unrest.  Malcolm X said everyone has the right of self-protection.  I’m surprised more militias haven’t sprung up.  If the political system doesn’t help and actually aids and abets criminals, what’s left?  Stand by for a run on gun shops and more. 

Our worst elements focus on the here and now: drugs, liquor, and a pair of shoes.  The Silent Majority sees things over time and race riots are just the tip of the ice berg. What’s next?  What’s the end game?  If the reporters were to ask me, I’d say this constitutional republic is disintegrating.  I could write a book about it.

Hayatt Walkway Collapse 1981

Kansas City is famous for many things: barbecue, the Nelson Art Gallery, the Royals baseball team, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Country Club Plaza, and Crown Center.  It’s also remembered for not-so pleasant people and events like Tom Pendergast, the Union Station Massacre, mobster Nick Civella, and the Hayatt Walkway Collapse of 1981 when 114 people were killed at that newly opened hotel.  I’m surprised more people don’t remember the tragedy because it made the national and internal news.  Even more surprising is the mystery of how it happened and why, I believe, it was allowed to happen.

I was working in downtown Kansas City at the time.  The day before the collapse a co-worker and I took our lunch break to see this newly constructed marvel, the Hayatt, which was like Crown Center a jewel in KC’s drab concrete and steel skyline.  (Henry Ford did the same urban renewal in Detroit with his version –  the Renaissance Center.)   My recollection is of a first class structure with an interesting tier of catwalks above an expanse used for social gatherings called Friday Night Teas.  It was a place for singles to mix.  What interested me especially were the catwalks because I’d never seen anything like them.  Leonard and I couldn’t help venturing out onto the center one just far enough for it to start swaying with just us two on it.  I remember my exact words, “I’m getting off this thing!”  I felt it could have collapsed with just us two on it.

When one catwalk pancaked on another and sent the whole thing down everyone asked, “How could such a thing happen?” It was a brand new building.  Overcrowding was a factor, yet my maintenance co-workers and I knew more.  Hanging catwalks are like anything else you hang in a building: AC duct work, plumbing pipes, and electrical cables.  There is a threaded suspension rod called Redi-Bolt that receives washers and nuts.  The bolt hangs from a “channel” (similar in function to the one above your overhead garage door) or a steel frame.   Our conclusion was that a cheap nut or washer was used; there are different grades of steel.  I speculated that Fender Washers might have been used to conveniently join bolts to channel.  They are unusually wide, but thin.

Since 1981 catwalks, especially those between buildings, are a standard feature of Kansas City and America’s urban terrain.  They allow down-town shoppers and the big shots to avoid the streets, crime, and homeless encounters.  Similar collapses have not occurred, so architects and builders must have learned something from the terrible event.  To me there is still a mystery.  Others will say, “It was due to all those people who were on it.”  Then why did it sway with just two on it?  More than that, those who built it must have noticed the same thing.  What about the construction crews or the building inspectors?  Weren’t they also shocked enough to say, “I’m getting off this thing!”?

So You Want to Dig Out Your Pond?

Our old pond was put in by Works Projects Administration (WPA) soon after the drought in 1936.  It was free from the Democrat Roosevelt Administration that’s why our family named it the Roosevelt Pond.  The unexpected gift must have been like what the joyful Chinese farmers in the movie The Good Earth felt when Japanese planes bombed their fields – instant ponds.  That’s the only government help we received in the Ozarks and for some reason the pond hasn’t been touched since.  By the time of my retirement, it was reduced to basically a four foot slop pit for deer, snakes, and snapping turtles.   I thought it would be nice to bring it back, but unlike the unusual freebies of politics or war, it’s expensive.   Word of mouth eventually leads to locals with decades of experience with loaders.  Their expertise is important because the usual cost around here in the Ozarks is $110 per hour.  I was warned that 50% of the time, the scooped-out ponds won’t hold.  They know how to "better the odds."

The second picture shows the old pond being drained.  A breach was made by a back hoe on the dam at the point where the water line would be its deepest, not on the spillway where pond curvature makes for more dirt removal.  The loader digs up old posts and a pipe farmers frequently use to stick in the dam a little below the waterline to water their cattle when the pond freezes over.  The government might have required the configuration with a fence to prevent cattle from fouling the water and stomping down the banks.  A pump is used to drain the water.  There were several small fish left in the pond after all those years, but to save them would have meant they might run into the breach – too dangerous to go after.  The Missouri Conservation Department recommends that everything goes which means a complete clean out.  To the right and underneath is an outcropping of huge limestone rocks the size of bathtubs only flatter.  They’re probably the reason the pond never held water.  The hook on the loader pulled them out. 

This picture shows how the water was pushed into the breach on the dam.  They’re working on the pump that had just quit working.  You can see from the grass on the bank that the pond had always been half full.  Gravel is scooped out and put on a slop pile never to be used except for fill around the farm.  It takes about two years for one of these piles to dry out.  What’s left elsewhere was a seam of clay which was used as a pond sealant.  (I’ve heard stories of people using old dry wall)  I doubled pond’s size and had it dug nine feet deep to allow the stocking of large mouth bass.   They can only live in ponds that are at least eight feet deep, otherwise, they’ll cook during the summer.  I lost two pond stockings in another pond finding that out!  Nowadays a laser transit on the spillway is used to measure depth.  It took several hours removing the outcrop and I had barely enough clay to cover the larger pond area which I figured was about 1/3 of an acre.

The end result was a $3200 gamble and the digging out and restoration that took several weeks because of the drying required.  At least I took nothing and made it into something.  September, 2013 was many months ago and the pond leaked until recently.  Last spring I stocked fat head minnows and they’re doing well.  A month ago I put in two grass carp.  They seem to always do well.  The next step, if the pond stills holds, is Blue Gill which are the main food for bass.  By the time they mature and the bass arrive and are big enough for catching, I figure each one will be worth about a $100 apiece.

A Day at the Westport Reporter

How many young men came through the doors of the Westport Reporter from Westport High School and its neighborhood looking for work?  I was one of them during most of the sixties.   Harold Reddoch, the owner, had a steady supply of paperboys and office clerks because Kansas City’s Westport was still stable.  Demographics had yet to change another American city for the worst.  I remember of few names: Randy Becker, Gary Boyle, Ronald Elliott.  The Westport Reporter was called a newspaper although its reach went to just part of Kansas City, Missouri and was a small "advertiser."  Paper routes went from 27th St. on the north to 75th on the south where the old Fairyland Park was.   State Line was its farthest reach on the west although we overlapped at KU Medical Center.  Troost formed the eastern boundary where 1968 race rioters burned down the entire corridor.

My job at seventeen was as an office clerk before and during that summer of 1968.  I operated a Headliner which printed out the product headlines for paste-up work long before Photo Shop and computers.  I also did the Wolferman’s store ad in the picture.  Ron Elliott was the lead paste-up man.  The artwork would be photographed and transformed into an offset printer plate.  Harold purchased one of these presses during my stay and I remember the tickety-tickety noise and smell of the ink vividly.  After the pages came off they would be inserted and joined with others and shuffled in the box type jogging machine like the paint shaker you see at WalMart. 

I remember Harold.  He had a crew cut and smoked a cigar – no nonsense and driven in a tough inner city.  He loved history and once recommended I read Winter War, the story of the Russian- Finnish War of 1940.  I remember Jack Larson, his lead office person when I started there as a paperboy when I was still going to Rollins Elementary.  He had an unusually good sense of humor, tolerated us high school kids, and had an excellent telephone manner with advertisers.  The Westport High kids went off into life like me, but I’m glad at least one of us can recall and write about Westport and the people who lived and worked there.

29 Palms: Arrival

Getting off the bus at Camp Wilson in 29 Palms is like going to the kitchen and putting your head into the oven.  It’s that hot.  Immediately my nose shrank due to the lack of humidity.  This is the Mojave Desert where Patton practiced with his tanks before the war.  In many areas, supposedly off limits to everyone, is ordnance sticking out of the sand – some unexploded.  We had arrived from Ontario, California from Kansas City’s Hq. Co. 24th Marines for CAX78.  I remember going down Highway 62 into Yucca Valley aptly named and passing the exotic town of Joshua Tree.  I thought, “How bad could it be?” as we pulled in to the main base.  I’d been stationed at Ft. Hauchuca, Arizona for intelligence training two years before and that wasn’t so bad: There were patches of snow still in the mountains overlooking the desert in February.  There were no school dorms or barracks for us at 29 Palms.  Of course active duty types hate reservists so the Standard Operating Procedure is to immediately bus them to Camp Wilson which at that time was a tent city on the north side of the base.

I’ve recently heard on TV that the highest recorded temperature in the United States was 138 degrees in some desert.  In our tents one afternoon our corpsmen came out and measured the surface temperature (August) at 144 degrees.  It was so hot that a flock of Roadrunners that stumbled into our camp, lined up on the narrow shadow of a telephone pole.  The next photo is what it looks like during a sandstorm.  You hunker down and check the tent ropes.  Our floor was sand.  Nothing was pre-fab.  Cots were wooden because the metal ones always got too hot.  After a week someone hauled in a rubber water bladder for showers and it’s hard taking a shower in a wooden pallet.  Girls were being added to USMC combat units and they always showered first.  There was a lot of volunteering for shower tent guard duty all of a sudden.  Across from our tent was the Colonel’s big water bag hanging on a tripod.  One rebel among us soaked his cover in the sacred object before he starched it (the cover).  We bought our little ones at the Exchange.  They were canvas with a cork stopper and looked like a purse.

The last photo is dawn at 29 Palms shortly before another sand storm coming in from the East.  In the distance are the mountains above the valley where the exercise was going to take place.  Closer are the cement pads supporting water pipes for shaving and washing.   The little white shacks were used for another purpose.  I was always amazed at how long some Marines would stay in them to avoid a work detail (officers too).  The trick is to bring a big cigar.  Note the M-60 tank with its turret turned backwards moving north.  It was part of the positioning up the valleys for that particular battalion’s exercise the next day.  I really mean “all” the unit’s equipment including 155mm SP howitzers, jeeps, trucks, and even Bradleys that were new at the time.  Bradleys had little respect because they were lightly armored and were yet to be proven.  We had Israeli advisers.

The Ozarks During the Depression

Recession, downturn or depression - it’s what happens when the big shots on Wall Street call in their speculations.  It’s like a high stakes card game, only it’s one played with people’s lives.  Someday it’ll happen to nearly every American except the Wall Street crowd who are the card sharks.  My first recession was in 1971 caused by a national trucking strike.  The Recession of 1982 came next and the most recent occurred with the Sub Prime Crash of 2008.  Ozark boys went through the same thing in the 1930s only it was more severe, but they were young, hardworking, and resilient because they followed the harvests of the Great Plains where the work was.  Dad and his best friend, Mott Davis, are shown packed up and ready to leave in a photo taken on our place during the Depression.   Key overalls, a good suitcase, and a jug possibly filled with an adult beverage are all you needed.  The car is a Model A.

John Steinbeck and his Grapes of Wrath got all the attention.  Okies lost their farms and fled to California.  Grandma Joad died along the way and “We’re the people” Ma Joad held the family together.  When they reached the Land of Milk and Honey, they picked fruit.  Our family planted corn and picked it for farmers hurting for labor near Sioux Falls.  (One photo was stamped “Luvern, Minn.”).  After WWII many from the Ozarks went to the Great Lakes (Michigan) where the industrial might of America took off.  In 1936 Missouri had its drought but it wasn’t as serious as the “Dust Bowl” further west in Oklahoma.  Ma always said if it wasn’t for turnips, people here in West Plains would have starved to death.  More on Michigan in Journal of the Silent Majority.

Mott Davis and Henry Cherry (right) are shown in a field of snow.  Henry was partial to what I call “depression caps” popular at the time.  Others form a road crew shoveling near major power lines.  Boys from West Plains, Missouri had never seen snow like that.  Notice one farm’s substitute for a corn silo.  Woven fence wire holds thousands of ears of corn in three layers.  Old plank lumber forms the roof supported by old telephone poles connected by a ridge pole like a tent.  I also have a picture of Dad with a team of huge draft horses that pulled corn wagons. It’s another interesting story worthy of a dedicated posting some other time.  He loved animals and earned the nick name “Doc Cherry.”

WWII Oran: More Clues

In Intelligence School we used to call this Photo Interpretation.  The photo of Dad’s driver and guard is possibly my most valuable clue as to what unit he was with early in WWII.  It took me a long time to realize what bumper markings were – much less what they meant.  As you look at the front of the truck from left to right is the unit hierarchy sometimes down to the truck number in the platoon on the far right.  MBS, the Mediterranean Base Section of Services of Supply appears to be the parent command.  “2 SV?” I believe stands for 2nd Bn Services Command.  (There’s probably a “C” after V.)  The Black driver is a good clue.  Necessity drove integration long before it became policy.  On the back of the photo is its identification: “My driver and gard (sic) in Oran”.  By that time Dad had been promoted from “T” to SSgt and truck platoon sergeant. Whether or not he was training an all-black Transportation Corps truck platoon (16 trucks) is questionable.  The online The Employment of Negro Troops was no help.

The second photo shows Dad in his summer Khakis and tie as a Technical Sergeant posing in one of Oran’s many truck loading sheds.  The “T” usually meant the GI was a technical specialist such as a mechanic, someone not yet in command of others.  In the background is an Army forklift – one of just ten at the port if I remember correctly and an unusually low number for the requirements of Operation Torch.  Note the triangular span of wooden gables under the shed’s ridge.  Judging from the shadows, the sheds are on an east-west axis.  When Services of Supply (Signal Corps, Engineers, Quartermaster, Ordnance, Medical, Chemical, Transportation Corps) landed at Mers El Kibir six miles away on November 11, 1942, Oran was beginning to get wet and cold.  I speculate his wearing of his summer service uniform might have been unavoidably late.  Just eight weeks before he’d been on the RMS Queen Mary with a large contingent of B-17 ground crews coming to England.  I’m still working on the “units aboard” puzzle.

Operations in Africa are overlooked.  All you see on TV is Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Bulge, and D-Day.  There was dive bombing in Oran and ships blown up at sea off the coast like the Arthur Middleton which I believe Dad saw blown up on January 1, 1943 and night convoys to the east to capture Bizerte and evacuate Tunis where 250,000 Africa Corps Germans surrendered.  I think he was involved in that too.  Germans marched all night beside his resting drivers and trucks. There were bodies floating in Oran harbor when SOS arrived.  Ordnance men removed them.   Isn’t there anything out there besides Lee Marvin and the Big Red One?  The stories of the average GI are more interesting to me, especially when there’s a puzzle involved and it’s personal and some of those pieces are rare.