Your life stories

florida · May 23, 2017, 07:54:53 AM

The thing I love most about this forum is the wisdom and down to earth attitudes. I say this in all honesty, in my opinion it's guys like you all who are the bedrock of our country. When things get bad nobody is going to be calling the lawyer or salesman down the street to put things back together. Value will be in people who can do things, put stuff together and make things work. Most of you have been doing it all your lives so you don't give it a thought but like a bee hive the combined knowledge and life experiences here are encyclopedic.

All this to say I wish any and all of you would start writing down some of your experiences and life stories. I've been doing it for 10 or 12 years and have about 250 pages written so far with no end in sight. Lots of it may never be of any interest to anyone but me but it's fun to put my memories to paper. You all have a lot to share, lots of stuff you've learned over the years that could disappear once you're gone. Many of you have grown up in circumstances that makes you look like a pioneer in the eyes of younger people.

Most of us aren't writers but it's the content that counts, not the grammar. if you already have a story please post it and if not please try one. It doesn't have to be long to be interesting.

WV Sawmiller · May 23, 2017, 08:42:04 AM

I heartily agree.

I have a 98 y/o old neighbor who is probably the last surviving WWII veteran in our county. He is active, still drives and works around the farm and his mind is clear. We have told his granddaughter she needs to records his tales for posterity.

I spent most of my working career overseas in some pretty remote areas and started writing journal articles for a former HS classmate who published them in a local hometown paper as long as she worked there. From that I continued writing about the people, customs, culture, working and living conditions, etc. where I worked and on our trips and vacations. Now I have about 800 pages of them from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Central African republic, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ecuador (Galapagos & Amazon jungle), Peru (Up the Amazon), Mongolia, Alaska, Fla everglades, Thailand, Norway, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, et. al. I need to double check and be sure the latest ones are all incorporated into one long tale.

I have been thinking now about writing some of the tales I grew up with from my dad and grandfather to pass along to my grandchildren. I tell them to the kids as bedtime stories but it would be better if they were written down.

I hope others do the same thing.

woodworker9 · May 23, 2017, 03:36:57 PM

I agree with your idea, and not be different, but I'm not much of a writer. Instead, I have chosen to document things on my YouTube channel, which I started the beginning of this year. I figure that long after I'm gone, my grandkids and great grandkids can see what the old guy (me) was like, and see my work, too.

I know that making video's is not for everyone, but it suits me just fine, and I dislike writing.

florida · May 24, 2017, 03:58:33 PM

WV Sawmiller- fantastic! I knew you had to have a lot of good stories. Please post one!

Woodworker9- video is great. Give us a link to one of your stories.

PineHill4488 · May 24, 2017, 07:37:43 PM

Here is a story from my college days, my Sophomore year when springtime rolled around, I had a hankering for some poke salad. One Saturday morning, I drove a couple back roads picking a good sized grocery bag full. To my apartment I went with what was sure to be some good eating, as remembered from living at home before serving in the Navy for six years, washed them in cold water like I had seen Mom do, boiled them for a half hour or so, then put some in a skillet with a few beaten eggs till they set. Served them up with some pepper vinegar and ate like a KING. Come middle of the night I couldn't get to the bathroom fast enough. They tonicked me right good, I had forgotten that Mom rinsed them between several boilings, I now know that pokeweed is a member of the nighshade family and when eaten will purge your innards.

WV Sawmiller · May 24, 2017, 07:51:05 PM

Florida,

Be careful what you ask for! Below is one from my last assignment where I hired a boat and went up the river to a couple of villages and stopped to visit an illegal diamond mining operation along the way. I was managing a camp on the Kissadougou River in Guinea in West Africa at the time. I'll even add a few related pictures.

November 11, 2012

   Happy Veterans Day (or if you are British - Happy Remembrance Day)! I had a restless night with rain waking me and I read a while. It stopped raining by 0700 so I got up and had breakfast, got ice and water and my packed lunch and put it in a cooler to take on the boat trip. My guide, Girrilla, was on time and we walked to the boat landing about 100 meters from the front gate. The boat was on time but not acceptable. It did not have a front seat like the one I was promised so he swapped with another there at the landing and we started our journey. It was near high tide and there was very little current. We were heading east up the river.

   My boat handlers were Osman Suma and Alma Abdulakaba. They were armed with a push pole and two square pointed/contractor shovels. Their normal jobs are to haul sand from the river. I was expecting paddles but I guess there is as much surface area on a shovel as a paddle blade and it seemed to work okay. I see them use shovels here at the landing all the time but they are only paddling a few hundred meters from the middle of the river to the landing.

   We immediately began to see hawk–like birds Girrilla said were eagles. Evidently they feed mostly on fish but sometimes take small chickens and such too.

   Off in the distance I spotted two shapes in the top of a bare tree. I got out my 12X25 TASCO binoculars and found it was two monkeys. I assume they were lookouts and there were more monkeys in the area.

   The shore was lined with small mangrove trees with their distinctive twisted roots. We passed lots of assorted kinds of palm trees, rice fields and even some couscous. I had never seen couscous growing before. It is a tall grass with a large seed head growing seven to eight feet above ground.

   There was plenty of water in my boat so I had to keep my feet on the ribs to keep my boots dry. I spied a large snail on one of the plank sides of the boat. Off in the distance I can see haze shrouded, flat top mountains.

   The boat is interesting and pretty amazing to be made entirely by hand. The ribs are pieces of tree limbs and trunks shaped to the right curvature using a hand adze and plane. The boards for the sides were cut using a chain saw. They have been carefully shaped and placed to minimize the openings at the seams. Once built the seams were packed with twine and oakum or some other sealant to make the boat more or less water tight. I have seen Styrofoam melted and poured in as a sealant. This boat was about 25' long and maybe four feet wide at the center/widest point. There is a long pointed bow extending at the front of the boat. The anchor is a round piece of concrete about six inches in diameter and twelve inches long. It is wrapped in a piece of green netting like a cargo net and tied to a spliced together nylon rope.

   After a couple hours we see several dugout canoes tied at a river landing. We go ashore and walk to a village called Molygia. It is a kilometer or so from the shore. We pass recently harvested rice bundles along the trail, couscous, orange trees with lots of ripe fruit, bananas, cassava, etc.

The villagers seem to be surprised to see us, especially me, walking up the trail from the river. They are friendly and I ask one man about a bunch of one inch diameter sticks he has. He shows me these are used for cordage. He splits the very straight grained stalks with a knife into smaller and smaller strips and they are very flexible and strong. They will use this to tie the rice bundles together. Girrilla advises this is what they tie the poles together to build their houses. The ties will outlast the poles.

In the yard I spot a couple of large green gourds or calabashes as they are called here. I look for the vine and discover they come from a gourd tree. We had these in Cameroon but I had forgotten about them and never saw gourds this big on the ones we had. They are very commonly used for bowls over here.

I see a small building with a floor about two feet above the ground. The sides are small diameter poles and it has a corrugated metal roof. I thought it was a chicken house but when I got closer I found it was full of sheep and goats.

   We pass a pile of wood in a big circle and I learn they will add more and make charcoal. I gather they set it on fire then cover it with earth to smother it down.

   I photograph a couple of old hens with several chicks as they scratch through the damp leaf matter looking for bugs and worms and seeds and such.

   On a woven mat are two very young girls sitting upright. I find they are twins which is not common over here. These look very healthy and I get their picture along with their very young mother when she comes out of the house.

   All the children line up on a bamboo bench with Girilla on one end and I get a picture then we give each child a bonbon. I get another picture with the grandmother on one end of the bench. There is a square made of these long benches evidently used as a sort of community center.

   We get pictures of the villagers at their work cooking and cleaning and preparing foods and head back to the boat. The chief has had the kids pick us a bucket full of oranges to take back with us. He includes a couple of cassava roots. This is unexpected but Girrilla says it is normal they won't let strangers leave without a gift.

   At the landing we watch a dugout return and the paddler shows us several fish he caught in his nets. They look like a bream or tilapia of some sort and look to weigh between one to two pounds for the larger ones. He doesn't need a live well as there is plenty of water in the bottom of his boat for them to swim in.

   We continue upstream towards the next village. We pass trees in the edge of the water with beans on them. These are bush beans but they evidently are not harvested or eaten. Later on I see other trees with very large beans on them.

   I see a couple of water monitors or Nile Monitor lizards. The largest is about three feet long and was on a limber branch. He tried to move when we approached and fell into the river. I don't get pictures of either. There are a few crocodiles here in the river but evidently they are mostly the pygmy crocodile and not much threat to the villagers.

   We paddle on several more hours and finally up ahead we see people on the shore. Girrilla advises these are diamond miners. I ask and confirm this activity is illegal so I am a little concerned about our welcome. I need not have worried. When we approach one man asks if I am interested in buying diamonds. I tell him I am not but would like to observe.

   Everyone is fine with me watching but a couple of the men don't want pictures made of them. The others don't care. I find the men dig up bags of red clay and gravel in the distance then transport the load on their heads to the river bank. The men dump their load then they, or their partners, shovel the gravel into round screens about 18" in diameter and three inches deep. They dip the gravel in the river and swirl it around and pick through the gravel looking for diamonds. I do not see them find any while I am there but obviously they do.

The men invite me to observe where the gravel comes from but after a couple hundred meters I find there are muddy streams to cross so I abort the attempt. They are barefoot and walking through knee deep mud and water is not an issue for them.
I find these men work for a sponsor who buys the diamonds and evidently provides them a "grub stake" of sorts to keep them going in lean times. The men have no idea of the value of the rough diamonds and are at the mercy of their sponsor when they take the diamonds to sell. Girrilla tells me there are places in the market in town where these are sold so I will look for them in the future.

   We cross the river and walk another kilometer to a village or more appropriately a family housing area. I see about 20-30 villagers of various ages. One of the first things I see is the women processing palm oil nuts over open fires. The red ones are processed to make orange colored oil used for cooking. In a cast iron pot the black kernels are cooking. This will yield the black oil used for medicine and such.

   In a nearby pile I see rice and when I pick up a handful I find it is hot. Evidently they roast it over an open fire then spread it out to dry. Later it will be put in a mortar and pestle and the husks will be knocked off.

   I start getting the typical family pictures of the children, men and women. We get several with me with the villagers and they really like this. The chief wants his picture made with a couple of scythes he has evidently made at his home forge. We give all a bonbon each then give them the remainder in the bag.

   We head back and the tide is going out so current is with us so we make much better time on the return. I open my pack lunch and share it with the rest of the crew as well as some bananas I brought along for us to munch on.

   Along the way I see nets placed over the mouths of small creeks and coves. Evidently when the tide goes out the fish get trapped in the nets.

   We arrive back at the landing a little before 1500 and I give the ice and water to the boatmen and Girrilla. I tip each of them for their work and thank them for a nice trip. I wish I had my big aluminum johnboat and 25 hp outboard here so I could travel much further and faster. There were many good looking fishing spots along the way and if I were returning I'd bring a good fishing rod and spend some time chasing the fish. This looks like a very good place to put out bush hooks to catch catfish and such. I asked Girilla and evidently some local people do put out set lines and bait with meat, cut fish and even soap like we do to catch catfish.

   It was a good day and I'm glad I went. My trip cost me $100 for the boat and paddlers and guide and I spent another $21 or so in tips. That is probably big money for them where the annual wages are less than $400 per year.

florida · May 25, 2017, 06:50:37 AM

Pine hill

Lol! I'll bet that was a meal you never forgot! Thanks.

wV Sawmiller

Great story! I can't imagine doing something like that. Heck, I can't get my wife to travel to South America much less Africa. For those of us who don't know how about sone history on how you came to spend so many years there?

WV Sawmiller · May 25, 2017, 09:41:06 AM

Quote from: WV Sawmiller on May 23, 2017, 08:42:04 AM
I spent most of my working career overseas in some pretty remote areas and started writing journal articles for a former HS classmate who published them in a local hometown paper as long as she worked there. From that I continued writing about the people, customs, culture, working and living conditions, etc. where I worked and on our trips and vacations. Now I have about 800 pages of them from Cameroon, Guinea, Kenya, Central African republic, Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Ethiopia, Ecuador (Galapagos & Amazon jungle), Peru (Up the Amazon), Mongolia, Alaska, Fla everglades, Thailand, Norway, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, et. al. I need to double check and be sure the latest ones are all incorporated into one long tale.

Florida,

In my case it was mostly job related - these areas were where I found/chose to work after I left the USMC. Working remote areas others others did not want to work meshed well with what I learned in the Corps and paid better and provided more time off than domestic work plus it was areas I always wanted to see.

In addition to working remote overseas areas our income tax system offers big incentives to workers who remain out of the USA 330 days during a 12 month period so I could either come home on my breaks (sometimes 10-12 weeks per year when working 8 weeks on then 2-3 weeks off) and pay full taxes or vacation somewhere else outside the US borders. I chose to take advantage of these "subsidized" vacations and picked even more remote areas to visit. Often I could combine my R&R travel to get cheap flights to new areas by stopping in or taking short side trips from major airline hubs.

My wife is a free lance photographer with a spirit of adventure and she, and sometimes my kids, would join me in these locations. She often located and coordinated for in country guides and transportation before our trips. Most of the time we would locate and hire a private guide and we'd go where we wanted, stay as long as we wanted (within time constraints) and change our itinerary on the fly. Becky started bringing a portable picture printer on our trips and we'd give the locals pictures on the spot. This made us even more new friends and got us access to places and things others never saw. I remember on one trip in 2006 we were watching and photographing a couple of migrant herders in Mongolia. A National Geographic photographer was a couple hundred yards away. We asked for the herders permission, took their picture, gave them a copy and was invited to and spent the rest of the day at their home/ger camp sampling horse milk vodka, home made cheese, riding a yak, drinking(okay - tasting) horse milk, and taking and providing more pictures. N. Geo didn't get any of that (although on another trip they did pull us out of dry riverbed in the Samburu region of Kenya one time). Sometimes small children would hide behind their mother's skirts having never seen a white person, especially a white woman. We brought little gifts and candies/treats for them and helped get past their fear.

The above trip was just a report of an off day while I was working in Guinea. I visited local areas none of my co-workers took the time or were interested in seeing and learning about. I was often invited into the people's homes and to watch them at work. Our home is decorated with the fruits of our trips like baskets, boat paddles, spears, blowgun, crossbow, ropes, camel saddle bags, pygmy backpack with machete, carvings, mortars and pestles, and more other stuff than I have room to write.

Hope that answers your questions.

Ox · May 25, 2017, 11:06:25 AM

I guess I still don't know what you did for your work. What was your job title? Who did you work for? What were you expected to do?

I really liked reading about your adventures and seeing the pictures.

WV Sawmiller · May 25, 2017, 12:35:50 PM

Ox,

I am a Logisitican. That means as many things as you have people hearing the term. I generally built and or ran a camp. In remote areas like Mongolia and Haiti we built the camp from the ground up. In built up areas like Douala Cameroon and Norway we would rent apartments and villas (Houses) and I'd furnish and maintain them and our office facilities. I coordinated closely with safety and security and maintenance (when they did not work directly for me) to keep the camp/housing safe, secure and properly maintained. I coordinated with or ran the transportation to get people around locally and to and from R&R, medivacs, etc. Sometimes I oversaw the dining facilities. I ensured the back up or primary, in some areas, generators to make sure they kept running and had fuel and we had power. I made sure the trash got dumped and the landscaping was done (sometimes this was a security issue anyway). Sometimes I'd be the HR rep or fill in for him when he was off site to make sure people turning their timesheets and got paid. I wrote checks for local accounts and sometimes had the petty cash in my account. I sometimes prepared contracts for security and housekeeping and oversaw those contracts. In one case I oversaw the maintenance of a fleet of security vehicles used for Personal Protection details in Iraq.

I had experts to do most all the detailed tasks and mainly coordinated the efforts of them to make sure the work got done, the employees and sometimes their families, were safe and comfortable.

Camp manager was my title in most cases. Sometimes the work was simply in remote areas. Sometimes it was in war zones or very nearly so. I was not the expert but the one making sure the experts had what they needed and did what we need them to do.

Most of my work was with Fluor/Fluor Daniel out of various headquarters they had around the world. We had clients like Exxon, Rio Tinto, IBM, Ivanhoe Mining, etc. On some projects our client was the US Government like when we built the Embassy in Haiti or built and ran military camps in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ox · May 26, 2017, 10:45:21 AM

Thank you for your time on that. I enjoy reading your detailed writing. I also envy the working life you've had. I was only a farmer/farmhand, truck driver (tractor trailer reefer restaurant delivery and fuel oil delivery) and , some time woodcutter, small engine mechanic, forklift factory worker, golf course mechanic/groundskeeper. It would have been good for me to get out of here and see the world and perhaps I wouldn't be so ornery concerning many people.

florida · May 28, 2017, 03:10:04 PM

Well I sure thought you guys would have some more good stories by now! I know it's hard to match WV Sawmiller but we aren't having a competition. I certainly haven't traveled like he has nor had anywhere close to his adventures but I have been to North Korea, even if it was by mistake.

I had been a bad boy and was rude to my sergeant in Hawaii. To make his point stick better he made sure I had an all expenses paid trip to South Korea for 3 months. Imagine my surprise to find that in 1967 Korea was not a vacation paradise! Actually Korea wasn't much of anything but backward. On the ride into Seoul from the airport I saw people cooking over open fires on the sidewalks. Even better were the "public toilets" which were everywhere since everyone stopped and peed whenever and wherever the need arose. There was certainly no false modesty in Korea. Keep in mind that Seoul was the size of New York City. Walking down the sidewalk and passing a guy peeing on a lamppost was disconcerting and always left me wondering what to say.

That was bad but not as bad as coming upon a group of women squatting against a building with streams of urine flowing across the sidewalk in front of you.

I was stationed at a small, very small, base about half a mile from Yongsan, the big Army post in Seoul. Camp Coiner was a collection of Korean War Quonset huts and deteriorating brick buildings set inside ten foot high brick walls. I was made assistant ID photographer to a guy who was already bored stiff from lack of work,

Either stories of my past insubordination had preceded me or I looked like I was having too much fun. Either way I was handpicked by the First Sergeant for a trip to Panmunjom in the DMZ between North and South Korea to photograph that months Peace Talks. It was a long drive, Korean highways being what they were which was pretty non-existent. We finally arrived at the DMZ where we transferred to a jeep with sandbags covering the floor. The driver reassured us with the information that the North Koreans hardly ever planted mines in the roads anymore. I puckered up pretty tight even though I was pretty sure he was kidding. It was hard to rationalize those sandbags though.

Eventually we arrived at the "Peace Village" which was a collection of plywood buildings that looked more like a group of old, cheap warehouses than anything else. There were some UN and American guards around but mostly not much going on. The particular building where the talks were to be held was long and narrow with rows of windows down each side. A white line ran across the ground and through the center of the building including across a table that extended wall to wall across the width of the room. To the north of the line was North Korean and to the south was South Korea.

Off in the distance I could see North Korean troops goose stepping down a dirt road and a few bored looking guards off in the distance. Walking over to the building I looked through the open windows to see what was inside. An American soldier was arranging papers on an easel and testing microphones. Every now and then he would stop to curse at his North Korean counterpart with the vilest curse words he could muster.

Eventually I got bored with the show and looked around for something to do to occupy my time until the talks started. I was carrying a Speed Graphic which was a big press camera that we all used. I decided that a picture from the other side would start things off nicely so began to stroll around the north end of the building. I took my time and even stopped to look around before I walked around the end and back toward the white line. Just then I heard someone yelling "Run, run, run you stupid shirt!" I looked up to see an American UN guard apparently yelling at me. Run? Why did he want me to run? My latent dislike of being ordered around reared up and I continued my stroll toward the white line. The guard was becoming more excited and was joined by the soldier in the building who was now leaning out the window yelling as well.

As I got closer to the line the guard reached out, grabbed my arm and jerked me over the line. Now I was really getting angry. The guard yelled, "You just walked into North Korea you idiot! They would have captured you and kept you in a North Korean prison for at least a year!" Oh. That changed things a bit. The guard continued to berate me for a few minutes before he ran out of steam but by then my knees were weak and I felt pretty stupid.

That was it. I went on to take photos of the talks that day but I made sure to stay far away from the white line. One trip to North Korea was enough for me!

WV Sawmiller · May 28, 2017, 04:06:14 PM

Florida,

My dad lied about his age and went in the Army at 16 (we had a running feud with with another local family who had a member on the draft board so all the Green males got drafted when they turned 18 anyway) and he was in Korea in 1948 while the tensions were rising but before the actual "police action". He said one guy in his unit nearly created an international incident one day on the 38th parallel at a river crossing. The GI got drunk and staggered across the bridge and tossed a can of GI insecticide (You'd screw the top in and the contents would come hissing out) into the guard house there. The Russian guards thought it was poison gas and left leaving their weapons and everything. The GI picked up the weapons and took them back.

My Korea experience was 3 days including Christmas 1986 on my way home from a year's tour up at Camp Schwab USMC base in Okinawa. I stopped in Osan for a few days and did some Christmas shopping. The military had temporary mail stations there and you could buy from the shops then come out and immediately mail it home. I bought 3 of the mink blankets and shipped them then later bought a complete set of stuffed Fraggle dolls I brought home for my wife who loved Fraggles. I remember coming out Christmas Eve and seeing and hearing a gosh-awful Salvation Army band composed of Americans and Koreans singing Christmas carols and having a great time. The women were wearing beautiful bright colored traditional gowns gathered tightly under their bosoms and reaching the ground. It was about 20 degrees and cold and felt like Christmas which was a great change after leaving tropical Okinawa where the people did not observe Christmas for the most part.

A young Korean wanting to practice his English (maybe he was a North Korean spy for all I know) tagged along as my guide/translator. I stopped and ate a nice meal of Bulgogi in a hole in the wall cafe there and offered to feed him. He declined and opted to stop at the KFC on the corner for his treat. I was about to buy a bag of boiled peanuts from vendor on a street corner until my "guide" checked and confirmed they were actually boiled silkworm larvae. The locals were snapping them up but I declined that taste treat.

florida · May 29, 2017, 09:35:20 AM

I'm glad your Dad got out before it got ugly. Korea is a beautiful country but good gosh it's cold, at least to a southern boy! We had fuel oil stoves in our quonset huts that our houseboys filled every day. They kept us very warm while we were inside. The bad part was the latrine and shower was in the middle of the compound so was a long, cold walk after a hot shower. The mess hall food was horrible, the worst I ever had. There was a black market for everything in such a poor country so the cook stole most of the food and sold it for cash. We had freezer burned hot dogs, steamed prunes and mealy potatoes for a typical dinner. The supply sergeant told me that he had to order 10 bed sheets to get one as the others were stolen at every step along the way. If you went into downtown Seoul the streets were lined with vendors selling any kind of military supply you could want.

Our house boys were paid $1.50 a week and then tipped the same. We had 8 guys in our hooch so the house boys were making $24.00 a week, a fortune in Korea then. They came to work every day in 3 piece suits, white shirts with ties and highly polished shoes then changed into virtual rags to do their days work.

The highlight of my week was a trip to the barber shop for a haircut. While there I'd get a scalp massage, body massage, facial, manicure and hand massage and finally the haircut. It was better than drinking and left me ready for bed! That all came to another $3.00 with tips.

We had a small EM club on base attached to the wall so the Korean bar girls could come in off the street without entering the base. Toward the end of the pay period the girls favors were available for $.50 but on payday they were, you guessed it, $3.00! To say that these girls were not the cream of the crop was an understatement, I could never imagine being that hard up but I guess lots of guys closed their eyes.

Yongsan Amry base next door was huge and the EM club was in the middle of the base. The bar girls had to be taken to the club by a soldier so when money was running out I'd walk down to the Yongsan gate and escort one of the waiting bar girls to the club for which my reward was a beer on her tab. 2 or 3 walks to and from the gate and I' had had all the beer I wanted or needed.

I was an Army photographer so was on night call once a week. I got rolled out just after midnight Sunday morning to go take pictures of a military wreck. Seoul was a huge city, 8 million people at the time, but going out of the gate in an MP jeep was surreal. There was a 12 o'clock curfew so it was like driving through the Twilight Zone. No cars, no people, no movement anywhere. It was like everyone had left.

Being a photographer I took thousands of photos which I developed and printed once I was back to the big lab in Honolulu. Several years after moving back home I went through an ugly divorce and lost all my photos of Korea in the divorce war.

WV Sawmiller · May 29, 2017, 01:31:21 PM

Florida,

I keep hoping we will say something here that will trigger others to chime in with some of their tales. You already prompted me to dig out my old journals and edit and update them. I'd stopped recording them a few years back and will have to fill in those blocks the best i can. So far I am about 1/3 of the way through 886 pages.

As to Korea Dad said it was getting real tense over there when he was there. The communist insurgents were stirring up everything. The speaker would get up on a platform in the middle of town and start ranting and raving and the people would get ready to riot and attack the base and such. He said they had a sort of strike breaker fire team with a key player from Georgia they'd put on the hood of a Jeep and drive as deep into the crowd as they could get to the speaker. He said as soon as the Jeep stopped the Georgian stopped the riot.

Dad said the local dogs knew where every hole under the fence was located and when the Koreans would get after one he'd run straight for the base and under the closest hole for sanctuary. We had a similar situation in Iraq when I ran a small Base camp in the Green Zone. We had a checkpoint in the middle of my camp manned by the Wyoming National Guard and we took good care of them. There was an old yellow dog affectionately names BOHICA by the troops. BOHICA was the biggest thief since Ali Baba's days and every time you saw her she had a shoe or canteen or canteen cover in her mouth. She had a pretty rough life for the most part and was pretty timid most of the time. Sometime a crowd of locals, who all hated her, would get to chasing her with rocks and bottles and such. BOHICA would make a beeline to the guard post, back up to the sandbag bunker with her back directly under the M-60 machinegun and she was the baddest dog in Baghdad at that point.

The National guard were a lot more relaxed than the regular Army troops from what i saw. They were great guys and we loved them - they were just more relaxed and usually older. I was in USMC and we were much stricter about our gear and everybody in the unit would be dressed exactly the same (I had found the reason for this was so you could do a quick check to immediately determine if anyone was missing anything as anything missing or out of place would be very obvious). The NG troops would have a Hodge-Podge of hunting knives, K-Bars, Stilettos, throwing knives, etc duct taped to their H-harnesses. One young specialist I saw one day had a straight razor taped on his. I talked to him about it one day told him "Son, if it gets down to needing it you need to kill him not just cut him up. This is war and not a bar fight."

i was once working a short term assignment at a remote camp near the Iranian border and the dust storms were preventing chopper flights in and out and there were no PSD details running and it was time for my rotation home. As luck had it the Tennessee National Guard who ran the post had an in-country R&R detail going to Balad Air Base and I caught a ride with them. We did our pre-trip briefing and guys asked the Sgt in charge to have their prayer. They all circled and held hands and the the 50 y/o Sgt prayed. One ting I will always remember was in his prayer he said "Lord, we can take care of ourselves but we could sure use a little help if you can sorta help point them out to us." There was an ambush about 30 minutes ahead of us at Bakuba if I remember correctly when we left and we had to turn back till they cleared the route. The NG were upset as they figured they had a lot of firepower and they were ready to duke it out. I always wondered if they were called back because I was along as a passenger.

florida · May 30, 2017, 04:39:24 PM

Another good story! I too wish some of the other guys would chime it. I know there have to be hundreds of great stories waiting to be written! As much as you guys post I know you've got some good stuff to contribute.

gspren · May 30, 2017, 10:53:56 PM

I wish I could type faster but since I don't I'll do a brief overall and fill in later. After all the "before graduation" jobs like mowing, pumping gas etc, my career was mostly centered around machine shops. First real factory was Manly Valve as in car valves, 4 years in Navy during Viet Nam, back to Manly, then Borg Warner where for 4 years I went to Penn State college days and full time machinist at night, next 4 years Substitute Teacher days and machinist at night with thoughts of full time teaching. Instead I got a job as a machinist at the Army's Ballistics Research Lab that later merged and became the Army Research Lab where for 26 years I worked up the ladder and retired as Chief, Experimental Fabrication, Weapons & Materials Directorate. That was about as good as it gets for a Machinist, making things that go boom, or get blown up, or any type of weapon the military uses or defends against. During the years with the Army I lived on a small farm (still there) and raised goats, pigs, had a donkey, sold some fire wood, sold some timber etc. That's enough typing tonight but I do have some good adventures to add.

florida · May 31, 2017, 08:05:19 AM

gsprn,

Great stuff and so many experiences! Can't wait for more. Is the Army Research lab in PA? is that where your farm was?

Just a hint, like you I am typer at all, hunt and peck still. There's a story there. At age 39 my wife decided to go to college and get a teaching degree. I couldn't type so she suggested a typing class at the VoTec. I didn't do it and here we are, she's 2 years from retirement and I still can't type!

Anyway, to the point. Do your typing offline in Word or whatever word processor you have. It gives you the advantage of taking your time, fixing errors, lets you collect your thoughts better and preserves a written record on your computer.

gspren · May 31, 2017, 09:34:18 AM

ARL (Army Research Lab) was/is at Aberdeen Proving Ground in MD, while our farm is 35 miles north in PA. My first ship was the USS O'Brien DD725 a WW2 destroyer that was damaged in WW2, Korea, and Viet Nam. I was on the last cruise the O'Brien made to Viet Nam in 70-71 where we patrolled the coast and did shooting where directed and while we had no direct hit that cruise we had mortar rounds hit close enough to split the hull which put us in dry dock for a few weeks in Subic Bay Philippines. When our tour in VN was up we detoured to Brisbane, AU and Auckland, NZ on the way back to Long Beach, CA. The ships hull was examined and x-rayed and declared unsalvable and they moved us into barracks because the ship wasn't considered safe enough to sleep on in port, that's right after we sailed from NZ with some short stops back to CA. My next ship the USS Vulcan AR5 was another old WW2 ship but this was a repair ship based in Norfolk, VA.

reedco · May 31, 2017, 10:18:40 AM

gspren, What you don't know won't hurt you??

florida · May 31, 2017, 01:23:04 PM

gspren,

I've been on a jag the last few years reading Navy biographies. You got to be tough to be a sailor! I've been prone to motion sickness all my life so just going onto a docked ship is a challenge for me. I frequently visit the Yorktown, USS Laffey and diesel boat Clamagore. I love them all but can't imagine actually going to sea in one of them. Thank you for your service, not many could do it. I wonder why no one noticed the damage to your ship while it was in the Philippines? Destroyers look like a rough ride! I know you have some fantastic stories waiting to be told.

gspren · May 31, 2017, 07:19:14 PM

The Laffey and the O'Brien were sister ships but through the years and being refitted some things ended up slightly different. When the O'Brien was repaired in the Philippines they discovered the hull was not thick enough to weld so they plated out to the next frame members. because of the thin hull the sounding and security watch that dropped a brass rod on a rope into various places in the bilge to measure water depth had to replace the brass rod with an aluminum rod. For those that don't know those old Destroyers had zero armor and are affectionately known as "Tin Cans". As many know during Viet Nam period soldiers and sailors were treated bad in the States so we were really surprised when we pulled into Brisbane, Australia. The good people of Brisbane welcomed us like hometown heroes, we had people buying our drinks, thanking us for coming and even had a parade, unlike our return to Long Beach, CA where only a few family members met the ship.

florida · June 04, 2017, 10:14:40 AM

I didn't know that they were sister ships, but that makes it more interesting. I know they hauled the Laffey a few years ago for some body work and paint which if I recall correctly took 2 years and cost $9,000,000.00. All from donations I believe. If it cost that much just to paint I can't imagine what it would have cost to repair the O'Brian.

scgargoyle · June 11, 2017, 06:09:41 AM

I've had a pretty ordinary (OK, boring) life. It's the people I've known along the way that make it entertaining. I could easily write a book of short stories about various characters I've known, and I wouldn't have to exaggerate much to make it hilarious.