January 20, 2019

Safe and Sound

28 years ago, I was in the Middle East with the First Engineer Battalion. We were somewhere out in the middle of God only knows where, and that region of the planet experienced weather that it only experiences about every thirteen years.

Special Air Service operatives that were now deep in Iraq were experiencing snow storms as they attempted to take out mobile SCUD missile launchers. They were wearing summer uniforms and freezing their asses off.

Much further south, my unit was in a hold position as we waited for other divisions and allied forces to make their moves. That meant performing "stand to" every morning about 30-45 minutes before dawn. That means you get up, don your gear, and go out to the perimeter and make yourself ready for the enemy that might decide to add bullets and RPG's to your breakfast menu.

That particular time of that war stands out in my mind for one reason. Every single morning, we'd go out and lay prone for our perimeter guard, and scan the horizon for anyone that might be invading our temporary home. It would be dark and cold, and soon the sun would begin to brighten the horizon, and a glow of yellow and red haze would show the world that the sun was going to rise again, and bathe the Earth in warmth and light. I used to lay there and think about the mountains back home, and how the Apache must have done this same thing many mornings, and watched the sun rise, giving way to the cold, dark night that was full of predators.

But the worst thing that I remember was that every morning...without fail; it would pour rain for about 15-20 minutes. It was exactly like God walked over to his control panel and pushed the rain button for just a very short time, but the volume selector was set on maximum. It was just enough rain to soak you to the bone, and make you the most miserable son of a bitch for the next two hours that was possible.

I was always next to my buddy Gomez on stand to, and every morning we had a ritual of betting when the rain would start. When it did, we'd break out laughing. It was our "anti-insanity" mechanism, and it served us well. Then we would go back to our Saudi issued cotton fiber tent, and cuss up a storm because everything we had in that tent was soaking wet. As we smoked cigarettes and heated up instant coffee, we'd joke about that too.

The point I want to make is this. When you get up the morning, and walk to the kitchen in your warm home; pour yourself a cup of pre-brewed coffee, and sit on your lounger and sip it... remember those that gave up so much for you to be where you are.

Please thank a veteran for their service today. They will really appreciate it.

-Jim

January 11, 2019

“What Could You Do?”

-By Jim Culp

Our national debt is now at a staggering 22 trillion dollars. Yes, that is 22,000,000,000,000 in numbers if you prefer them. It is almost an unfathomable number to most people, and very few people ever stop one minute in their daily lives to ponder the magnitude of it.

About 33 years ago, I was in Korea. On a particular training event, we were sent out on top of a hill and told to defend it against our imaginary enemy. It was late summer, and in Korea that means rain, and a whole lot of it. I was sitting on the edge of my foxhole with two other guys, and we were bored out of our minds; so we bantered silly crap back and forth to one another the way most soldiers do.

One of my buddies suddenly blurted out with a great question…”Hey man, what would you do if you had a million dollars?”

I thought for minute, and said “well, I’d give my Mom and Pop some of it, and then my brothers and sisters some of it, and then I would buy a house and a new truck!”

Our Korean counterpart (being a college graduate and pretty good at math) quickly replied that I could do all that, but as long as I was frugal, I would still have a large amount of money left over.

“How much Sarge?” I said. He took out his green pocket book that supply issued us back in those days, and a fished a pen out of his other breast pocket.

“Well, dependent how big house and truck was, probably $700,000!”

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed.

“Well, I guess I’d want a boat too.” Having never fished the ocean at that age, I started thinking about bass boats that I had seen at the RV show. “That’d be about $2,500.”

Sergeant Kim laughed. “You’d still have a large amount of money left even then!”

We spent the next hour deciding how I would have done that, but I couldn’t think of much that could dwindle that number down very much.

I used that example for the following reason. It’s hard for an 18 year old kid that had D’s in arithmetic to fathom that much money.

It’s also hard for the same guy that is now 52 to ponder the magnitude of 22 trillion dollars.

So I broke it down really simple. What if I only had one percent (1%) of that amount?

Using my powerful third grade math, and then checking it with Google, I ascertain that 1% of that 22 trillion would come to 210 billion.

So then I think…what could I buy with that amount of money?

Well, here's just a few tiny items:

·         Repair every degraded bridge or over-pass in the six largest states of our nation and use them as future models for every one to follow.

·         Repair or replace every degraded highway and interstate in those same states.

·         Build housing, medical, and recreational facilities in every state of the nation for veterans to live in (free of charge) and participate in training and work programs.

·         Allocate a 20 year allotment to each of these programs for sustainability and productivity.

·         Build and fund colleges and training schools in every state of our nation to allow kids to attend free. Hire the best teachers and professors and pay them the money that they deserve for educating our children for us. A model of each of these would be present in every state for everyone to see how well a college works when money, religion, or sports are not the goal.

Right now I hear someone saying "Hey man...you'd already be out of money."

Hardly. Right now, I've spent 86 billion dollars. I've still got a plethora of funds sitting there to use.

I used this little ditty to show you, dear reader, what way less than a hundred  billion dollars could do on the grand scheme. But in this day and age, we talk trillions. Isn't it time that people wake up and see how badly we have been misled by using a government model where people are born in debt, live in debt, and die in debt? Don't you think that it is time for us to think about changing the way we do things? Lets dumb it back down. What would or could you do with just a million dollars?

Think about it.

-Jim  

Follow me at jimculp.blogspot.com

January 4, 2019

“Stolen Valor”

In my recent holiday travels, I came across two separate individuals that claimed years of service in the military of our great nation.

The first individual (in a McDonalds that had a TV, and Fox News was talking about the Kurds, Syria, Etc.) I sat a table away from a guy and his wife. Soon we talked about the news cast, and he claimed that he had been in the Korean War, and that he had earned the Bronze Star with V, the Silver Star for Heroism, and three purple hearts. He claimed that he was a Ranger in the Special Forces 10^th Group.

Hmmm. “Amazing,” I said. “Well, I never did anything like that. But I have a couple of questions.”

“Shoot,” he said.

“OK, you look about 40 to me…is that about right?”

“Yeah, I am 43. I know I look older, but I’m pretty healthy. I still get up every day and run ten or eleven miles.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “I mostly run to the refrigerator or the toilet.”

We both laughed.

“But seriously,” I said…”The Korean War was 1950 to 1953. How old were you in Korea?”

He stammered for a bit, then backtracked trying to think quickly. “Um, about 17, I think…it’s all a blur these days. My health is so bad I can’t do much…”

(do remember that he said he ran 10-11 miles per day a short spell ago…)

“oh, I see. Well, I was just doing the math dude. 43 years ago, it was only 1975. I was 9 years old, and sure as fuck wasn’t in the service yet. I went to Korea in 1985, and while it only has a stalemate/ceasefire, it’s relatively peaceful these days.”

He fumbled around, and said that “none of that applied to him, because he was Special Forces.”

I laughed out loud. “You’re a bull-shitter, dude. Ok? 10^th Group is responsible for European and some Middle East stuff, but not Korea. You need to stop lying and do something better with your life.”

He muttered something inaudible, and he and his wife (now looking at him in a weird and puzzled way) got up and left the restaurant.

The second was when my daughter and I visited a bar on New Years’ Eve to toast the New Year and drown the old one.

An attractive woman was there, and was wearing a very sexy dress, and had blonde hair that was fixed up like Mary Tyler Moore used to do.

Since we were seated at what normally is the waitress station, we interacted with most everyone that came up to the bar to order drinks.

She immediately told us that she had spent 20 years in the Marine Corps, and showed us her Drill Instructor tattoo on her bare shoulder. She talked and cussed like a Marine (I have known and still know many Marines), and bought us a round when my daughter told her that I had been in the Army for 22 years.

We proceeded to talk about our services (respectively) and she said that she wished she was back in the Corps (it sounds like “CORE”).

I asked her where she did her Drill Instructor time, but I said “D.I.” because that’s the accepted abbreviation for those words. She ignored me, and I asked her again. She looked at me as if I’d asked her a trigonometry question, and remained silent.

“Drill Instructor time…” I said, “where did you do it?”

“OH,” She exclaimed…”Parris Island. You can’t be a Marine Drill Instructor for females anywhere else.”

“Oh, I see.” I said. “So where do Marines go for training after they leave Boot?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “That was never my worry. I just got ‘em through boot camp and that was the end of my job.”

“I see,” I said. “Well, Army troops go to AIT {Advanced Training/ you learn your specialty during this time}, and that might be on the same base, or another base.”

“Oh yeah,” she said…”we do that. I think it’s on Fort Leonard Wood (FLW).”

I told her that I went to AIT on FLW…for Basic Training, Engineer School, Demolition School, and Basic Non Commissioned Officer’s Course.

“Oh,” she said…”we don’t do any of that shit. Marines are fighting men. They don’t need all that dumb shit.”

“I see;” I said. “So where were you stationed besides Parris Island?”

“No-where…” she stated. I was there all of my twenty years.”

I never pushed it past that, because she was drunker than an American 18 year old in a Brew Haus in Heidelberg, and I also didn’t want to start a bar fight. I’m getting a little too old for that shit.

Admittedly, the Marine lady didn’t have a story as false as Ranger Rick’s was, but I still doubted the validity of most of her claim. Stolen Valor is rampant out there, folks, and those of us that did our time don’t care for it in the slightest. Those of us that lost soldiers wearing the same uniform (that we see people acting out their fantasies in) not only pisses us off, but it is also illegal.

So when you see a “soldier” that is 40 pounds overweight, and has a questionable looking uniform on their body… take a photo and post it on Facebook. We’ll let you know if they were true or not.

-Jim