Last days in Camp Speicher, Tikrit-2004
We are due for a change of scenery. After 10 months of nothing but sand and dust we are moving to an airfield just north of Baghdad which offers, very good! More sand and dust.
We spent the last three weeks tearing down our digs and cleaning the area. No more walking to the chow hall a mile away. (it does us all good) Get used to it. This is Iraq. The next chow hall will probably be two miles away. No more beerless nights. Its been so long since I’ve had a beer that its going to take a couple of days force feeding just to start liking it again. Whoaa! There I go again, talking like I’m going home. I’m not going to beer city. The 4ID is going to beer city. I’m going to another dust bowl and months of near-beer with the incoming unit. Ok. What’s good about this place? No beer. That’s good for my health. Bad for my disposition. No hahahuhahu. That’s not good for anybody. No scenery. Good for nearsighted people. Blowing dust. Good if you are in need of sand blasting. I’m going to buy one when I get back home just so I can continue feeling at home. Hi Wife, Where’s Chuck. “Oh he’s sitting in his sandblaster again soaking up brewskis”. Its very noisy here. That’s good if the fellow in the next tent is playing gansta rap at full volume. There is nothing like an occasional mortar attack to muffle those sub woofers. Its almost like, like listening to Mozart comparatively speaking.
The electric showers are good if you are in the mood for excitement and like to live on the edge. They tore down the shower point weeks ago because everyone is packing up. Actually, our electric showers are fixed now. They replaced a defective heating element so no more heart defibbing until the next one shorts out.
The rain storms are good, for what I don’t know but the desert is sprouting. Its green out there! Summer’s coming though. The Jackals that roam the area are good for keeping the mice population in control. Only trouble with them is that they have discovered that MREs (U.S. Army short for Meals Ready to Eat.) are better, and don’t require chasing and after we got tired of cleaning up their mess each morning and packed away the MREs, they began knawing on the next best thing: Us. Four soldiers have to get rabies shots because they have awoken to a Jackal enjoying them as midnight snacks. They set out traps and caught about 6 of them. They painted their tails and planted them way out in the desert somewhere. If they return they will be target practice. There were a couple of them just across the road having hahahuhahu the other day. They both had a sort of happy sneer on their faces. After we got back from lunch they were still at it. Making little Jackals. We were all so envious. TWENTY EIGHT DAYS! Yells one soldie to the loving couple. “AN DEN IMON BE MAKIN MYOON’ LIL JACKALS! DAS RIGHT!! The jackals agreeably smile back at him.
There is a large green field across the road where we play golf. Someone sent the unit a set of Arnie Palmers and 25 balls so we are out there on a regular basis. That’s good. Our long game and sand trap shots are seeing marked improvement. Its mid-March and the grass is getting so high its hard to spot the balls hit. Used to be you could see them very plainly, all sitting out there like little eggs abandoned by their mommies. Now I only shoot one or two at a time because if I don’t remember exactly where they went, I will never see them again.
Today, March 14 is our last full day here at glorious Camp Speicher. If Lt. Speicher ever had a chance to experience a stay in the camp they named for him he would not be happy.
Father Longbucco is leaving this afternoon. We enjoyed many a cigar together. He gave me a bottle of his sacramental wine before he left. There is a lot to be said for the Catholics. Alcohol is a no no for Baptists. They commune with grape juice. Father Longbucco says that anything but the real thing is just not done at the Mass. So Jesus does have red wine running in his veins. The Baptists never have been any fun. I will miss Fr. Longbucco. Tomorrow morning Byrom and I will get on that Blackhawk and fly to Kuwait with the Col. There we will meet with Dave and head back to civilization and maybe a decent meal so I can share my wine. Then its back up with the 1st Cav. till July anyway. At that time I will take a hard look at just how badly I need any more money. Maybe sign on for another 3 months and that will be it. Home for Thanksgiving and Christmas. By the time I leave Taji I will already have a month past the required 12 months taxfree past me. $7500 bonus and $6500 cash in lieu of a mid-tour round trip. Additionally Wifey should have about $25000 saved. Me another $95000 + $7000 perdiem. Then there is a tax refund of around $20,000. Whoa! $154,000 cash + $7000 walking around money for me. Ok. So another 3 months should net us $10,000 walking money for me and $18000 tax free for the kitty. $172,000 + 10k walking money. Take my 95k out and its still 77k cash in reserve for the family. Yeah!
Well, It didn’t quite work out that way. I spent a lot on two AH Sprite Bugeyes and a Harley. I stayed till February of 2005. Met the fam in London for Christmas. We all learned a great lesson there: Don’t spend Christmas as a tourist in London unless you don’t mind paying for $200 cab rides. Besides, nothing was open. We had Christmas dinner in an Indian restaurant. It was a thrill for the girls though. They ran right by all the history and architecture straight for the gift shop. Money well spent if they remember anything more than Westminster Cathederal being “that house full of dead guys”. Two weeks in an overpriced hotel in a poor part of town, but we got a lot of exercise hiking to the rail station and eating breakfast at Attilas, the Greek cafe down the road.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Kamakazi Kiwi
by Chucky
Cranley Leigh and I were working a narrow strip along the side of a dike. We were spraying DDT on cotton. The Sudan didn't grow a great grade of cotton but they employed contract crop dusters to protect what they did grow. DDT is illegal in some countries but not in the Sudan; at least not in the summer of 1981. We usually worked two planes to a strip. Our strip that day would only accomodate one aircraft at a time. It was narrow with the dike on one side of it and a field of tall cotton on the other side. There was a pull-in which required some fancy manuvering and was used to get out of the way of the departing aircraft. It was almost like a wide spot in the road, as it were, only it was more like a dead-end alley than a wide spot because once you taxiied in there the aircraft was closely surrounded on both sides by tall cotton. At the end of the alley the cotton was chopped down a bit. It was cut down to about four feet from the ground to give the aircraft room to turn around and position itself to taxii out to the strip and down to the loading dock after the other aircraft took off. It took a bit of manuvering. You couldn't simply brake one wheel and swing around. The tail had to be lifted above the chopped cotton stalks. To do that you had to taxii until you were facing the end of the alley and then brake one wheel , apply enough power and forward stick to fly the tail up in the air while booting full rudder. As soon as the aircraft was turned around it had to be taxiied forward enough for the tail to clear the cotton before being lowered back to the ground. It was tricky and took a bit of delicate coordination. Its just one more tool in the box that makes experienced crop dusters the best light aircraft handlers in the flying community. After a few tries I got used to it. What I am still not used to is the likes of Cranligh Leigh.
We were pretty much balls to the wall all day long out there. We got paid by the feddan (2 1/2 acres), 60p per if memory serves, and never wasted daylight waiting for dark. Cranliegh was from New Zealand. He once told me that some of their strips are literaly on the sides of mountains. Like literally a 45 degree slope.
"Ya land at just the right speed and power Mate to get your aircraft over the hump to the loading dock at the top. Those who haven't learned yet learn to turn around real fast. Those who don't learn to turn around real fast learn to fly backwards.
Those who don't learn to fly backwards don't have to learn anything anymore Mate."
We were turning and burning. As the day progressed we learned to coordinate our takeoffs and landings for peak efficiency. . One of us would land and be loading up and shortly after the other would land and taxxi into the turn-around-spot out in the cotton. After the loaded aircraft took off the other would taxxi down to the dock. There was little room for much else, but then this was the first time I had flown with Cranleigh Leigh.
Did I say that the wall of the dyke sloped upward from our narrow strip at a 45degree angle? Remember that.
It may have well been a stone wall as far as I was concerned.
On one final I noticed that the timing was such that Cranleigh was almost loaded and would be ready for takeoff during my rollout. I should have circled to adjust our timing, but I decided that it would be to my advantage to land early. It would be a gain of a few seconds for me at his expense.
"He'll have to wait for me to make it to the turn-around", I chuckled as I sticked it on to the rutted strip.
By the time I was in taxxi mode, instead of waiting for me to reach the turn-around, the Kiwi was at full power , him and his cloud of dust coming right at me.
"He'll never make it. There is no way I can get out of his way in time. Holy Crap!"
I throttled to idle and hit the brakes, desperately seeking an escape from this madman from NewZealand.
"Are you outta yer Kiwi mind?", I yelled."
By this time his speed wasn't enough for liftoff but too high to stop even if he wanted, which apparently he didn't. I reckoned that if I applied full power immediately I may have enough airspeed before we collided to lift the aircraft and plop it into the cotton. "Surely he wasn't going to do that to me for the sake of a few seconds... Would he?"
"Is he nuts? Is he playing chicken with me? I have no escape here."
If I just taxxied into the cotton my tail would be sticking out and we would collide for sure. At this point nothing was making much sense.
"Damn! I should have circled!" Tall cotton on one side and the dyke on the other. No where to go.
"What had I done to deserve this", I thought. "
Maybe he doesn't like Americans. Funny, he never let on before. This suicidal maniac is going to turn us both into a fireball."
I was an RCH from applying full power when he did something I never thought possible and haven't seen since.
He climbed the dyke! With inches of clearance to spare on his left wing tip and heavy with 100 gallons of chemical, he climbed the dyke and screamed past me from the top. "Whoa!"
I watched him lift off and turn out of sight in my rearview mirror.
Our Sudanese loader ran up to the aircraft as I swung around at the dock.
"Who is that Captain? Who is that Captain?", he exclaimed.
"Don't really know", I replied, "but next time I'm circling."
His eyes were like dinner plates as we watched Cranleigh dive into a distant field.
Cranleigh and I never spoke about this. He never mentioned it and I certainly never gave him occasion to repeat it. He acted like it was routine, but I wonder if he ever noticed my occasionally staring at him.
Cranley Leigh and I were working a narrow strip along the side of a dike. We were spraying DDT on cotton. The Sudan didn't grow a great grade of cotton but they employed contract crop dusters to protect what they did grow. DDT is illegal in some countries but not in the Sudan; at least not in the summer of 1981. We usually worked two planes to a strip. Our strip that day would only accomodate one aircraft at a time. It was narrow with the dike on one side of it and a field of tall cotton on the other side. There was a pull-in which required some fancy manuvering and was used to get out of the way of the departing aircraft. It was almost like a wide spot in the road, as it were, only it was more like a dead-end alley than a wide spot because once you taxiied in there the aircraft was closely surrounded on both sides by tall cotton. At the end of the alley the cotton was chopped down a bit. It was cut down to about four feet from the ground to give the aircraft room to turn around and position itself to taxii out to the strip and down to the loading dock after the other aircraft took off. It took a bit of manuvering. You couldn't simply brake one wheel and swing around. The tail had to be lifted above the chopped cotton stalks. To do that you had to taxii until you were facing the end of the alley and then brake one wheel , apply enough power and forward stick to fly the tail up in the air while booting full rudder. As soon as the aircraft was turned around it had to be taxiied forward enough for the tail to clear the cotton before being lowered back to the ground. It was tricky and took a bit of delicate coordination. Its just one more tool in the box that makes experienced crop dusters the best light aircraft handlers in the flying community. After a few tries I got used to it. What I am still not used to is the likes of Cranligh Leigh.
We were pretty much balls to the wall all day long out there. We got paid by the feddan (2 1/2 acres), 60p per if memory serves, and never wasted daylight waiting for dark. Cranliegh was from New Zealand. He once told me that some of their strips are literaly on the sides of mountains. Like literally a 45 degree slope.
"Ya land at just the right speed and power Mate to get your aircraft over the hump to the loading dock at the top. Those who haven't learned yet learn to turn around real fast. Those who don't learn to turn around real fast learn to fly backwards.
Those who don't learn to fly backwards don't have to learn anything anymore Mate."
We were turning and burning. As the day progressed we learned to coordinate our takeoffs and landings for peak efficiency. . One of us would land and be loading up and shortly after the other would land and taxxi into the turn-around-spot out in the cotton. After the loaded aircraft took off the other would taxxi down to the dock. There was little room for much else, but then this was the first time I had flown with Cranleigh Leigh.
Did I say that the wall of the dyke sloped upward from our narrow strip at a 45degree angle? Remember that.
It may have well been a stone wall as far as I was concerned.
On one final I noticed that the timing was such that Cranleigh was almost loaded and would be ready for takeoff during my rollout. I should have circled to adjust our timing, but I decided that it would be to my advantage to land early. It would be a gain of a few seconds for me at his expense.
"He'll have to wait for me to make it to the turn-around", I chuckled as I sticked it on to the rutted strip.
By the time I was in taxxi mode, instead of waiting for me to reach the turn-around, the Kiwi was at full power , him and his cloud of dust coming right at me.
"He'll never make it. There is no way I can get out of his way in time. Holy Crap!"
I throttled to idle and hit the brakes, desperately seeking an escape from this madman from NewZealand.
"Are you outta yer Kiwi mind?", I yelled."
By this time his speed wasn't enough for liftoff but too high to stop even if he wanted, which apparently he didn't. I reckoned that if I applied full power immediately I may have enough airspeed before we collided to lift the aircraft and plop it into the cotton. "Surely he wasn't going to do that to me for the sake of a few seconds... Would he?"
"Is he nuts? Is he playing chicken with me? I have no escape here."
If I just taxxied into the cotton my tail would be sticking out and we would collide for sure. At this point nothing was making much sense.
"Damn! I should have circled!" Tall cotton on one side and the dyke on the other. No where to go.
"What had I done to deserve this", I thought. "
Maybe he doesn't like Americans. Funny, he never let on before. This suicidal maniac is going to turn us both into a fireball."
I was an RCH from applying full power when he did something I never thought possible and haven't seen since.
He climbed the dyke! With inches of clearance to spare on his left wing tip and heavy with 100 gallons of chemical, he climbed the dyke and screamed past me from the top. "Whoa!"
I watched him lift off and turn out of sight in my rearview mirror.
Our Sudanese loader ran up to the aircraft as I swung around at the dock.
"Who is that Captain? Who is that Captain?", he exclaimed.
"Don't really know", I replied, "but next time I'm circling."
His eyes were like dinner plates as we watched Cranleigh dive into a distant field.
Cranleigh and I never spoke about this. He never mentioned it and I certainly never gave him occasion to repeat it. He acted like it was routine, but I wonder if he ever noticed my occasionally staring at him.
The Blue Flame
The Blue Flame. http://www.aramco-brats.com/museum/bf_toc.htm
Lets talk about opportunity. Some say that one must make their own opportunities. Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. Blaze your own path. A cursory glance at some of the most successful entrepreneurs says that It needn't be legal. There is a dividing line between illegal and immoral. Joe Kennedy earned the money to start his banking empire through boot-legging. Richard Branson, owner or the Virgin Group, made his initial nestegg by employing a scheme to avoid paying tax on popular records. He almost went to jail for it. Most of us have seen opportunities in our lives but I wonder how many of us, for various reasons, failed to grasp at them. Therein lies the dilemma. How much risk are you willing to accept measured against the gain. This is a personal choice.
I fell into Opportunities for easy money three times in my life. Once in Vietnam, Once in Florida, Once in Saudi Arabia. All were illegal. I took advantage of all three of them. Let me describe the opportunity in Saudi Arabia, and before you begin moralizing hear my story and ask yourself if you would have done the same thing.
One day while working as an avionics technician in Saudi Arabia, my boss approached me and asked if I would like to make an extra $50 per week. That evening he introduced me to his still, which was set up in his villa and adjoining shed. For my $50 per week I humped and mixed 100lb sacks of sugar, 5 boxes of bakers yeast, 5 cans of calgon water softener into 4 300 gallon fiberglass vats. Each of these vats produced about 30 gallons of 190 proof alcohol per week. In those weeks I learned how to maintain and operate a still that produced large qualities of high quality drinking alcohol. The way we measured the proof for instance was to measure so many milliliters of product into a saucer, put a match to it, watch the pretty blue flame until it died and then measure what was left over. I should have paid him.
Before the fall of the Shaw and the Revolution in Iran things in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia , were pretty lax. The politicians were in control. Oil Production had brought high rise apartments and shopping centers offering the best of what New York and Paris had to offer. They imported Americans and European expatriates in huge numbers to maintain technology they could now well afford but not maintain. There were roof top parties nightly in Jeddah, where I lived where alcohol flowed freely. Most of the alcohol consumed there was a home brew locally called Sadiki which is Arabic for 'friend'. The risk was low. The water and electricity supplied with the villa. I heard OPPORTUNITY loudly KNOCKING!
When it presented itself 6 months later I paid $5000 cash for a stil which I installed in my villa and ran 24/7 pumping out 30 gallons of ethel alcohol a week. I sold it wholesale in 5 gallon water jugs. The materials cost me $400 per month and for the better part of a year I was grossing $6000 per month. This was not rot-gut alcohol. I followed the rules set out by Aramco Chemical Engineers in a book called the Blue Flame. The Blue flame outlined the exact procedure for turning the fermented "beer" in the vats into Sadiki. The process involved cooking the mash 4 times in specially designed and constructed stainless steel vats. These vats were built in the hangars of Saudi Arabian Airlines by American aircraft mechanics. The copper piping was all silver soldered. For a condenser the radiator from a '57 Chevy was especially valued because it was also silver soldered. I had an electric pump to pump the beer into the first run vats. I cooked the first and second of 4 runs in these vats in one room and the 3rd and 4th run in two other vats setup in a bathroom. We would cook the brew to progressively lower temperatures. This method alleviated the necessity of a 30' stack with obvious implications. The wastage from the 3rd and 4Th runs was almost entirely methyl alcohol and highly flammable. I used it for charcoal starter. When I bought the still the seller insisted that I also buy his fire extinguisher. Glad I did but that's another story. It is surprising discovering hidden talents and capabilities while in pursuit of your own dream. Opportunities grasped present benefits beyond mere money.
Before I sold my still for $5000 cash just after the Iranian Revolution I had saved $40k in just under a year.It was 1978. I went home on vacation and squandered $5000 for kicks. I bought new tires and fancy wheels for my van. The money was, pun intended, intoxicating.
So I made a lot of booze in Saudi Arabia. Illegal? Yes. Enforced? No. Not before the Revolution. OPPORTUNITY! I took my gains and spent $15000 on a commercial Cropduster pilot license. I eventually went on to multi-engine charter work and some of the most satisfying and rewarding work I had ever experienced. If it hadn't been for that easy money I would never had been able to make my dream materialize in the short period of time that it did. Hey! Just like Joe and Richard.
I presented you with a description of an opportunity that came my way. You learned how to make good drinking alcohol and charcoal starter. I saw opportunity, weighed the risk and consequences, and then acted upon it. Would you have done the same?
Lets talk about opportunity. Some say that one must make their own opportunities. Luck happens when opportunity meets preparation. Blaze your own path. A cursory glance at some of the most successful entrepreneurs says that It needn't be legal. There is a dividing line between illegal and immoral. Joe Kennedy earned the money to start his banking empire through boot-legging. Richard Branson, owner or the Virgin Group, made his initial nestegg by employing a scheme to avoid paying tax on popular records. He almost went to jail for it. Most of us have seen opportunities in our lives but I wonder how many of us, for various reasons, failed to grasp at them. Therein lies the dilemma. How much risk are you willing to accept measured against the gain. This is a personal choice.
I fell into Opportunities for easy money three times in my life. Once in Vietnam, Once in Florida, Once in Saudi Arabia. All were illegal. I took advantage of all three of them. Let me describe the opportunity in Saudi Arabia, and before you begin moralizing hear my story and ask yourself if you would have done the same thing.
One day while working as an avionics technician in Saudi Arabia, my boss approached me and asked if I would like to make an extra $50 per week. That evening he introduced me to his still, which was set up in his villa and adjoining shed. For my $50 per week I humped and mixed 100lb sacks of sugar, 5 boxes of bakers yeast, 5 cans of calgon water softener into 4 300 gallon fiberglass vats. Each of these vats produced about 30 gallons of 190 proof alcohol per week. In those weeks I learned how to maintain and operate a still that produced large qualities of high quality drinking alcohol. The way we measured the proof for instance was to measure so many milliliters of product into a saucer, put a match to it, watch the pretty blue flame until it died and then measure what was left over. I should have paid him.
Before the fall of the Shaw and the Revolution in Iran things in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia , were pretty lax. The politicians were in control. Oil Production had brought high rise apartments and shopping centers offering the best of what New York and Paris had to offer. They imported Americans and European expatriates in huge numbers to maintain technology they could now well afford but not maintain. There were roof top parties nightly in Jeddah, where I lived where alcohol flowed freely. Most of the alcohol consumed there was a home brew locally called Sadiki which is Arabic for 'friend'. The risk was low. The water and electricity supplied with the villa. I heard OPPORTUNITY loudly KNOCKING!
When it presented itself 6 months later I paid $5000 cash for a stil which I installed in my villa and ran 24/7 pumping out 30 gallons of ethel alcohol a week. I sold it wholesale in 5 gallon water jugs. The materials cost me $400 per month and for the better part of a year I was grossing $6000 per month. This was not rot-gut alcohol. I followed the rules set out by Aramco Chemical Engineers in a book called the Blue Flame. The Blue flame outlined the exact procedure for turning the fermented "beer" in the vats into Sadiki. The process involved cooking the mash 4 times in specially designed and constructed stainless steel vats. These vats were built in the hangars of Saudi Arabian Airlines by American aircraft mechanics. The copper piping was all silver soldered. For a condenser the radiator from a '57 Chevy was especially valued because it was also silver soldered. I had an electric pump to pump the beer into the first run vats. I cooked the first and second of 4 runs in these vats in one room and the 3rd and 4th run in two other vats setup in a bathroom. We would cook the brew to progressively lower temperatures. This method alleviated the necessity of a 30' stack with obvious implications. The wastage from the 3rd and 4Th runs was almost entirely methyl alcohol and highly flammable. I used it for charcoal starter. When I bought the still the seller insisted that I also buy his fire extinguisher. Glad I did but that's another story. It is surprising discovering hidden talents and capabilities while in pursuit of your own dream. Opportunities grasped present benefits beyond mere money.
Before I sold my still for $5000 cash just after the Iranian Revolution I had saved $40k in just under a year.It was 1978. I went home on vacation and squandered $5000 for kicks. I bought new tires and fancy wheels for my van. The money was, pun intended, intoxicating.
So I made a lot of booze in Saudi Arabia. Illegal? Yes. Enforced? No. Not before the Revolution. OPPORTUNITY! I took my gains and spent $15000 on a commercial Cropduster pilot license. I eventually went on to multi-engine charter work and some of the most satisfying and rewarding work I had ever experienced. If it hadn't been for that easy money I would never had been able to make my dream materialize in the short period of time that it did. Hey! Just like Joe and Richard.
I presented you with a description of an opportunity that came my way. You learned how to make good drinking alcohol and charcoal starter. I saw opportunity, weighed the risk and consequences, and then acted upon it. Would you have done the same?
The Sink
Ever wonder why those sinks are delapidated in cheap hotels?
THE SINK
Being raised in a strict military family has restricted
and limited my powers of observation. I'm convinced of that.
As strictly as we were all raised-the top half of the
family anyway-we were for all of our childhood and much early
adulthood ingrained not to think, not to question, but to
blindly obey. Needless to say, as adulthood approached, I
sought an escape from that confining framework, and began to
progress toward a goal a mite more far reaching than retiring
as a Corporal.
Still, early training becomes part of the foundation,
and is hard to reconstruct past adolescence. Rules were meant
to be unquestionably followed, or so we were drilled. In
retrospect I suppose I just had too many questions to
continue blind in life's journey much past seventeen.
Slowly at first, and then as I gained more confidence
more blatantly I began abrogating some of my father's rules:
"The Right Tool for the Right Job"; "There is Only One Right
Way"; "Don't Touch! You'll Break it." And of course that
shining gem: " That's what you get for thinking." The result
of this brain washing was a slow and methodic approach to
something so simple as running for a hammer when I knew full
well that a tap with my on-hand pair of pliers would have
done the job adequately. Twenty years of the " don't think
rhetoric began proving a burden when I approached the
responsibilities of adulthood. Analyzing and solving problems
became a real chore for me. Nothing seemed to go right and
the expectation of my efforts never seemed to yield the
desired results.
I'm certain my father's training helped me, and at times
certainly kept me alive. Always an avid student; I learned,
to a degree, better to obey the direction of my instructors
and ask questions later. This especially came in handy
learning to sky-dive, and learning to fly crop dusters. Oh
Yes! No denying that, up to a point, good corporaling has its
merits. But there came a time when I decided that is was
necessary to cast off the panoply of platitude and learn how
to think.
I was quite along in life before I found something
really worthy of my first effort. I wasn't used to thinking a
lot and the first chore was to think of something to think
about. I moved around a lot, saw a lot, talked a lot, ate a
lot, read a lot, but didn't think a lot. It affected my every
waking moment, my relationships with people, my working
relationships on the job. Indeed the celebration of life
itself seemed to be a continuous corridor of wrong doors. In
all of my travels to all of the foreign countries, living in
hotels from Edinburgh to Seattle, I always observed, but
never questioned why, without exception, the sink in those
coldwater rooms were torn away from the
wall. If you have ever stayed in a cheap hotel I'm sure
you've noticed.
Admittedly, for years I never gave it a second thought.
It never entered my mind. How unobservant.
"Because that is the way it is."
"To make little boys ask silly questions...
"You'll understand when you get older."
" Don't ask why; just do it"!
I never had cause to place enough pressure on a sink in
order to cause it to pull away from a wall; still, after
years of hotel rooms with platoons of fallen sinks, barely
supported by the plumbing, I began to wonder. Certainly I
never had cause to place enough pressure on a sink to cause
it to fall away from a wall--unless I stood on it. Was
everyone standing on the sink? I searched the wall above the
sink for a moment, my attention momentarily diverted from the
silhouettes of the buildings out of the window. I was in
London, on the 4th floor of a coldwater bed and breakfast, just
off of Carnaby Street; I began to regress,
dividing my attention between the dark skyline and the yellow
swirling down the drain.
The bathroom was always down the hall in these places.
"Sod that," as the British are fond of saying.
Don't piss into the Sink!"
No. He never said that, but I'll always wonder if he did
He taught me to pee down drain of the tub while showering,
but it was always somehow forbidden nay, never even brought
to mind when I was a child to do it in the sink. I haven't
the courage to ask him so I don't suppose I will ever know.
"Hey Dad. Did you ever piss into the sink?" That just isn't
something that you ask your father. Not my father anyway. It
certainly came in handy during these cold nights in the
company of a four pint bladder. "Hope the toilet works.
Hope I can find it. Hope the light works; if it doesn't,
hope I get lucky and hit it. I can't remember when I first
did it. It was probably just one of those things that simply
happened. The pressures of a bladder full of beer and a long
line in some bar.
My first recollection is when I opened a window and
whizzed out into the street, but one day, come to think of it
was in February, that I decided it was too cold to continue
that practice; besides, someone saw me and instead of just
walking by, stopped to watch.
The first time I did it I thought: "Never mind Pop. If
Mom saw me she would keel over with heart failure."
" What am I doing"? I asked myself as relief became
guilts welcome partner. Mental images of my parents'
assiduous efforts in child-rearing on my behalf swirling
counterclockwise on the worn porcelain.
" I'm peeing into the sink."
Even through four drunken, ribald years of wild youth in
the Navy I had never done something like this. Oh. I did it.
We all did it. But only because the head in those
Philippine bars were always crowded and we were all having
too much fun to stand in line waiting our turn, and I was too
drunk to remember social protocol. That was different; it
wasn't a conscious act of rebellion; even when we did it out
of the barracks window it wasn't "on purpose", as it were
but simply testimony to the distance down a cold and drafty
corridor to the john, and again, we were usually drunk. Of
course I can imagine the consequences if the Navy had caught
me urinating out of the barracks window.
The thought of trooping down that cold clammy hallway
toward the head brought me back into reality and assuaged my
conscience.
That was it of course--the thought of the lonely journey
of uncertainty down the hall way in the middle of the night.
It wasn't an act of rebellion at all; and it began in the
Navy, cranking it out of the barracks window. Or into the sink. In a word
convenience.
Hold that thought and come with me now into 25 years of future. To London Town.
There was dew on the railing of the fireescape staircase across the
alley from my window. Dawn was breaking; my favorite time of
the day in London--even though it usually was the coldest
part. My digs for the night are in Bethnal Green.and the water
closet was at the end of a dark and drafty hallway.
The answer to my perplexing query came to me then; while
standing there enjoying the skyline of London chimneys and
rooftops silhouetted against the dawn. I wondered how many
other men--business men, wearing their Fleet Street blue
suits and derby hats along with their aloof airs--fail to
muster the courage to negotiate that cold hall way. They
would deny it of course. (and what the devil are they doing in a fourth floor coldwater walkup? OK. Research.)
They aren't the cause of the sink coming away from the
wall though. Like so many other sinks in cheap hotels, this one
was coming away from the wall. Certainly they aren't so arrogant as to stand up
on the damn thing, or maybe they are, pretending to do it on
the world; believable but hardly likely.
The guilty party, the cause of the sink--wall schism are
not standing on the sink but sitting on it. They are sitting on the sink and tearing it away
from the wall. Oh! They deny it vehemently. But it is so
terribly obvious if given some thought.
Who, more so even than men are considered the comfort
creatures. Who are the ones that would be just a wee (excuse
the pun) bit reluctant to negotiate a dark and unknown
hallway in an strange place. No. Men don't have a monopoly on
eschewing a cold hallway in the middle of the night,
especially with an ice cold, and sometimes seatless and
soiled toilet as their reward.
Oh! They deny it emphatically. But the evidence is
blatantly clear in the cheaper hotels from London to
Timbuktu. They will accuse me of being totally ignorant of
the female anatomy; challenging my masculinity, insulting my
parents and even trying to change the subject, but those
tottering sinks, barely standing, glare accusingly and wax
feminine.
The girls have been doing it for years. The cold
hallway to be trodden? Sitting undefended in a strange little
tiled room, on a really freezing potty in the middle of the
night? Come on ladies--fess up. It takes a man to admit she
did it. No sense denying it any longer.
It is just a little disconcerting that, given a choice,
you have little conscience about diddling into our shaving
bowl. But Hey! What are we here for anyway?
So the next time you're up shivering on a cold night with
a bladder full of beer, take a good look at the broken-down
sink and enjoy your new found freedom from parental
hypocracy...but send the kids down the hall; let them figure
it out for themselves._
THE SINK
Being raised in a strict military family has restricted
and limited my powers of observation. I'm convinced of that.
As strictly as we were all raised-the top half of the
family anyway-we were for all of our childhood and much early
adulthood ingrained not to think, not to question, but to
blindly obey. Needless to say, as adulthood approached, I
sought an escape from that confining framework, and began to
progress toward a goal a mite more far reaching than retiring
as a Corporal.
Still, early training becomes part of the foundation,
and is hard to reconstruct past adolescence. Rules were meant
to be unquestionably followed, or so we were drilled. In
retrospect I suppose I just had too many questions to
continue blind in life's journey much past seventeen.
Slowly at first, and then as I gained more confidence
more blatantly I began abrogating some of my father's rules:
"The Right Tool for the Right Job"; "There is Only One Right
Way"; "Don't Touch! You'll Break it." And of course that
shining gem: " That's what you get for thinking." The result
of this brain washing was a slow and methodic approach to
something so simple as running for a hammer when I knew full
well that a tap with my on-hand pair of pliers would have
done the job adequately. Twenty years of the " don't think
rhetoric began proving a burden when I approached the
responsibilities of adulthood. Analyzing and solving problems
became a real chore for me. Nothing seemed to go right and
the expectation of my efforts never seemed to yield the
desired results.
I'm certain my father's training helped me, and at times
certainly kept me alive. Always an avid student; I learned,
to a degree, better to obey the direction of my instructors
and ask questions later. This especially came in handy
learning to sky-dive, and learning to fly crop dusters. Oh
Yes! No denying that, up to a point, good corporaling has its
merits. But there came a time when I decided that is was
necessary to cast off the panoply of platitude and learn how
to think.
I was quite along in life before I found something
really worthy of my first effort. I wasn't used to thinking a
lot and the first chore was to think of something to think
about. I moved around a lot, saw a lot, talked a lot, ate a
lot, read a lot, but didn't think a lot. It affected my every
waking moment, my relationships with people, my working
relationships on the job. Indeed the celebration of life
itself seemed to be a continuous corridor of wrong doors. In
all of my travels to all of the foreign countries, living in
hotels from Edinburgh to Seattle, I always observed, but
never questioned why, without exception, the sink in those
coldwater rooms were torn away from the
wall. If you have ever stayed in a cheap hotel I'm sure
you've noticed.
Admittedly, for years I never gave it a second thought.
It never entered my mind. How unobservant.
"Because that is the way it is."
"To make little boys ask silly questions...
"You'll understand when you get older."
" Don't ask why; just do it"!
I never had cause to place enough pressure on a sink in
order to cause it to pull away from a wall; still, after
years of hotel rooms with platoons of fallen sinks, barely
supported by the plumbing, I began to wonder. Certainly I
never had cause to place enough pressure on a sink to cause
it to fall away from a wall--unless I stood on it. Was
everyone standing on the sink? I searched the wall above the
sink for a moment, my attention momentarily diverted from the
silhouettes of the buildings out of the window. I was in
London, on the 4th floor of a coldwater bed and breakfast, just
off of Carnaby Street; I began to regress,
dividing my attention between the dark skyline and the yellow
swirling down the drain.
The bathroom was always down the hall in these places.
"Sod that," as the British are fond of saying.
Don't piss into the Sink!"
No. He never said that, but I'll always wonder if he did
He taught me to pee down drain of the tub while showering,
but it was always somehow forbidden nay, never even brought
to mind when I was a child to do it in the sink. I haven't
the courage to ask him so I don't suppose I will ever know.
"Hey Dad. Did you ever piss into the sink?" That just isn't
something that you ask your father. Not my father anyway. It
certainly came in handy during these cold nights in the
company of a four pint bladder. "Hope the toilet works.
Hope I can find it. Hope the light works; if it doesn't,
hope I get lucky and hit it. I can't remember when I first
did it. It was probably just one of those things that simply
happened. The pressures of a bladder full of beer and a long
line in some bar.
My first recollection is when I opened a window and
whizzed out into the street, but one day, come to think of it
was in February, that I decided it was too cold to continue
that practice; besides, someone saw me and instead of just
walking by, stopped to watch.
The first time I did it I thought: "Never mind Pop. If
Mom saw me she would keel over with heart failure."
" What am I doing"? I asked myself as relief became
guilts welcome partner. Mental images of my parents'
assiduous efforts in child-rearing on my behalf swirling
counterclockwise on the worn porcelain.
" I'm peeing into the sink."
Even through four drunken, ribald years of wild youth in
the Navy I had never done something like this. Oh. I did it.
We all did it. But only because the head in those
Philippine bars were always crowded and we were all having
too much fun to stand in line waiting our turn, and I was too
drunk to remember social protocol. That was different; it
wasn't a conscious act of rebellion; even when we did it out
of the barracks window it wasn't "on purpose", as it were
but simply testimony to the distance down a cold and drafty
corridor to the john, and again, we were usually drunk. Of
course I can imagine the consequences if the Navy had caught
me urinating out of the barracks window.
The thought of trooping down that cold clammy hallway
toward the head brought me back into reality and assuaged my
conscience.
That was it of course--the thought of the lonely journey
of uncertainty down the hall way in the middle of the night.
It wasn't an act of rebellion at all; and it began in the
Navy, cranking it out of the barracks window. Or into the sink. In a word
convenience.
Hold that thought and come with me now into 25 years of future. To London Town.
There was dew on the railing of the fireescape staircase across the
alley from my window. Dawn was breaking; my favorite time of
the day in London--even though it usually was the coldest
part. My digs for the night are in Bethnal Green.and the water
closet was at the end of a dark and drafty hallway.
The answer to my perplexing query came to me then; while
standing there enjoying the skyline of London chimneys and
rooftops silhouetted against the dawn. I wondered how many
other men--business men, wearing their Fleet Street blue
suits and derby hats along with their aloof airs--fail to
muster the courage to negotiate that cold hall way. They
would deny it of course. (and what the devil are they doing in a fourth floor coldwater walkup? OK. Research.)
They aren't the cause of the sink coming away from the
wall though. Like so many other sinks in cheap hotels, this one
was coming away from the wall. Certainly they aren't so arrogant as to stand up
on the damn thing, or maybe they are, pretending to do it on
the world; believable but hardly likely.
The guilty party, the cause of the sink--wall schism are
not standing on the sink but sitting on it. They are sitting on the sink and tearing it away
from the wall. Oh! They deny it vehemently. But it is so
terribly obvious if given some thought.
Who, more so even than men are considered the comfort
creatures. Who are the ones that would be just a wee (excuse
the pun) bit reluctant to negotiate a dark and unknown
hallway in an strange place. No. Men don't have a monopoly on
eschewing a cold hallway in the middle of the night,
especially with an ice cold, and sometimes seatless and
soiled toilet as their reward.
Oh! They deny it emphatically. But the evidence is
blatantly clear in the cheaper hotels from London to
Timbuktu. They will accuse me of being totally ignorant of
the female anatomy; challenging my masculinity, insulting my
parents and even trying to change the subject, but those
tottering sinks, barely standing, glare accusingly and wax
feminine.
The girls have been doing it for years. The cold
hallway to be trodden? Sitting undefended in a strange little
tiled room, on a really freezing potty in the middle of the
night? Come on ladies--fess up. It takes a man to admit she
did it. No sense denying it any longer.
It is just a little disconcerting that, given a choice,
you have little conscience about diddling into our shaving
bowl. But Hey! What are we here for anyway?
So the next time you're up shivering on a cold night with
a bladder full of beer, take a good look at the broken-down
sink and enjoy your new found freedom from parental
hypocracy...but send the kids down the hall; let them figure
it out for themselves._
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