Tag Archives: California

Utah Trip – The Road To SLC

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This is the third blog of the series on my recent trip to Salt Lake City, Utah from Ontario, California. Here I’ll deal with weather and the clearly distinct differences between California and Utah as they relate specifically to road travel (excluding speed limits, which I already discussed).

Southern California has a lot issues related to highway and interstate roadways. By way of example, let me point to the section of Interstate 15 north of Barstow to the agricultural inspection station in Yermo. That stretch of highway crosses over a number of dry washes, creeks, wadis, arroyos, whatever you want to call them. The whole area is considered a construction zone (with traffic fines doubled throughout) as the orange signs indicate. But as you approach one of the insignificant “bridges” over a dry creek bed you’ll see a sign that says, “Bump”. Stand by. Depending on what you’re driving, that “bump” could cost you some ground-effect bolt-on molding, it could launch you off the pavement or you might not feel anything at all.

For whatever reason, the spirits that possessed the highway workers deemed the asphalt over the concrete bridge should be removed. Okay, I’ll go with that. Well, I would have gone with that about a year ago but nothing seems to have changed. Heck, the signs have been there so long they’re blanching more white than orange. So I guess I’m not as enthusiastic about the repairs now then I might have been a year ago. Regardless, I’m certain that the highway repair people work hand-in-hand with the civil engineers that know all about road repair. Or maybe not.

I am not an engineer. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, acceptable or not, when it comes to road gradients, construction materials, surfacing or anything technically specific with respect to roadways. What I have picked up on, though, is a small amount of common sense.

When you’ve taken a couple of inches of asphalt roadway off to return it to the concrete base, adding a short asphalt ramp (or apron or “lip”) from the elevated road to the concrete and back again can’t be done at random. I’m certain someone with a slide rule and basic trigonometry knowledge can tell you that at 55 MPH you need an apron of “X” inches to go from the concrete to the asphalt with minimum vehicular damage. Sometimes you have a 12″ apron and you don’t feel a thing but a slight undulation. The next bump might only have 6″ of apron which gives you a fairly strong jolt and then the sensation that all of your car’s weight has been suspended for a split second before you nearly bottom-out. And then you have my favorite, the 3″ apron after-thought.

I swear the roadway workers use the exact same amount of asphalt for each apron they make. The difference is how it’s distributed. When you’re dealing with one of the after-thought aprons, they have to figure out how to get a predetermined volume of asphalt into a space 3″ wide. Since they don’t seem to want to make the apron wider, it goes taller. It’s like a freaking speed bump. It’s not uncommon to see bits of air dams, rigid mud flaps or large pieces of low-hanging bumpers or plastic ground effects along the side of the road at one of these killer sites. For me, at least, the whole apron concept seems rather random and hit-or-miss. Especially since no one really drives 55 MPH like the sign says. Except me.

Afraid of a double-the-fine speeding ticket and the cost of a front-end alignment, I’ll drive the posted speed limit when I can and when it’s safe. Sometimes I’ll even punch it up to 4 miles an hour faster than the posted limit. I am a speed demon.

Once you clear the Minneola off-ramp, it’s pretty much clear sailing into the downtown Las Vegas construction area. Even there the roadway itself isn’t bad at all, just the volume of traffic. When you leave Mesquite, Nevada and get into the Virgin River section of Arizona the roadway definitely needs to be resurfaced but it’s still fine. And then you get to St. George, Utah.

I encountered one “Bump” sign as I left St. George. Expecting the worst, I was on the alert. I passed over what amounted to nothing more than a tar bubble and did not see any more warning signs regarding a bump. Awesome. Utah had a totally different standard when it came to highway maintenance and I was thrilled to death. I didn’t encounter any pot holes, tire-eaters or launch ramps as I got closer to Provo. And then it started raining.

I had been driving for a number of hours by the time I got to Provo. I was tired and road-weary. It was getting dark, the rain was picking up, the city was the largest I’d encountered since St. George and more local drivers were entering the roadway.

Not familiar with the area at all, I reduced my speed from the posted 75 MPH and fell in line behind a line of cars headed in my direction. All I had to do was start looking for the off-ramp I needed to get me to my hotel in Salt Lake City. The rain got heavier.

The first thing I noticed after all the cars I was following left the freeway was the highway itself. In California, we have hard composite “dots” fixed onto the road. We jokingly refer to people who run over the dots (because they’re not paying attention while they’re texting) as “driving by Braille.” Even in the rain you can see the dots. At specific intervals, the dots are supplemented by a rectangular reflector that helps identify your lane. In areas that experience snowfall and use snowplows to clear the roadway, dots are not used because they’d be scraped off by the snowplow blade. The rectangular reflectors are still used, however, in a rather unique way: the roadway is contoured and the reflectors are recessed. When driving, you can still see the reflectors. When operating a snowplow, the reflectors are below the road surface and are safe from the blade. But this was Utah. And it was raining hard.

Without the aid of dots or reflectors, totally unfamiliar with the area, in the dark and in the rain, my next-best hope was to follow the white lane stripes on the road. Uh, no. Perhaps because it’s California and our line painters are all union or something, you can pretty easily see the reflective paint they’ve sprayed on layer upon layer of white stripes. The layers of paint on the stripes give the road a contour of their own. But I guess when a snowplow might scrape the surface clean you can’t rely on the “feel” of the road. No dot, no reflectors, no stripes, no one to follow. I was down to easily 55 MPH, thinking that I was experiencing the “driving lanes are just a suggestion” attitude of Afghan drivers. I was pissing off the locals like a boss.

I would know when a local was coming. Easily going the posted 75 MPH or better, they’d swerve out from behind me and be gone in an instant. Had I not been looking for my exit, I would have followed them. I know I was creating a traffic hazard. All I needed to do was find the exit for the highway I needed and I would be safe. All I needed was the correct highway. And then I realized the second major difference between California and Utah: state highway signs.

In California, a lot of our larger, high-volume highways have green and white signs. The background is green and the white logo and highway number are done with reflective paint and white reflectors. They’re fairly easy to see. Even many of the older highways have signs with white backgrounds and black numbering that are pretty easy to see. The highway logo looks like a fat triangle and the numbers use a non-serif font. But this was Utah.

The logo for a state highway in Utah is a beehive. California’s a triangle, Utah’s a beehive: I’m okay with that. Except when it’s raining and dark, I don’t know how far it is to the correct exit and I’m creating a traffic hazard. Then the beehive looks like a pile of dog crap. Inside that pile of dog crap I’m supposed to make out the numbers for the highway I need. Great. It’s raining and the idea of using any type of reflective materials in the construction of the road sign completely escaped the drawing board phase of their highway safety commission. You can’t see the freaking numbers in the middle of the dog crap until you’re already under the sign, which means you missed the exit by about 50 feet.

Having caught a glimpse of the correct exit I needed, I knew it was only a couple of miles down the road. I could not take my eyes off the road to glance at the odometer on the rental car I had as it would have taken me precious moments just to remember where the odometer was in the first place. Since I couldn’t do the odometer/trip meter countdown to the exit I chose to base my freeway departure on time. The time would be a guestimate, however, since I didn’t want to run the risk of looking at the digital clock. So I started counting. Two miles, two minutes, no problem.

Basically, in order for you to go two miles in two minutes you have to maintain a constant speed of 60 MPH. If you go less than 60 MPH, you won’t go two miles. You’ll get off at the exit BEFORE the exit you need and wind up all by yourself on a transition road about 50 feet above the highway wondering where in the heck you are. But that’s simple enough, you just take the next off-ramp and get your bearings. Unless that off-ramp is 900th Street.

I will abbreviate this long story by telling you that only because of my daughter and her iPhone was I able to finally make it to my room. Well, my daughter and the night clerk at the hotel. Nothing my daughter did could have prepared me for the heavy construction detours around the hotel. Even the hotel clerk had to guide me in not by streets and cardinal directions but by landmarks and flashing barricade lights. Seriously. “When you get to the Radisson, turn right at the yellow flashing lights and then go straight through the flashing red lights.”

So, when I’m in charge, the people responsible for maintaining the condition of Utah’s roads will be supplemented by the people responsible for creating the signage for California’s roads. But don’t get me wrong. I don’t want the California Department of Transportation (CalTrans) responsible for actually posting the highway signs. If they can’t get Route 66 right, who knows what they’d do.

If you plan on driving anywhere between Salt Lake City and south of Provo, just be aware that the whole Interstate 15 area is a huge construction site. I didn’t see it on the way to Salt Lake City because I was locked in behind a row a cars in the dark and the rain. You’d never know it, though, because it was smooth sailing all the way. Those guys know how to build a road. Except for the dots. And the reflectors. And the white stripes. Other than that, it was awesome.

California Sucks – Reason 3

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This state needs a serious change in leadership. People laughed when it was proposed the southern California counties (specifically excluding Los Angeles) split from the existing state and form a new state of Southern California.

If you look at California’s voting demographics, you’ll see all the tree-hugging, socialist, “You Owe Me”, peaceniks live along the coasts from Los Angeles on up. Sacramento has a huge cluster of pod people there also, but they’re too far north (and too far out there) to care about the rest of us. The vast majority of inland California voters are conservative, law-abiding, “stand for something or you’ll fall for anything” people. This can best be summarized by looking at one of California’s most divisive election issues, Proposition 8.

Prop 8 was a voter initiative that wanted to firmly establish and retain the concept of marriage as a union between one male and one female. Unhappy with the near identical language in the “civil union” statutes that guaranteed equality for same-sex partners, the state devolved into throwing stones back-and-forth over the word “marriage” and, for me at least, it’s religious connotations. Regardless, check the map. If you have an image blocker on your browser you can see the image here.

See the green? If we were to change that color to red, what would that represent to you? If we changed the yellow to blue, does that change your perspective? Yes, I’m trying to draw a parallel here between Republicans and Democrats and no, they didn’t vote along party lines for or against Prop 8. My purpose here is to graphically illustrate how the population centers that would tend to be red or blue are divided between the coast and the inland valley, mountain areas. Los Angeles county is the lowest patch of yellow on the coast and the Mono Lake lovers are hugging Nevada.

So we have a problem. Check the numbers. The reason why California is a political wasteland is because the numbers are so close. True, the example shown is Prop 8, but the numbers pretty much ring true for just about any state issue. We can’t get anything done here. If we were to split the state and allow the southern counties to keep their tax revenues rather than sending them off to Sacramento so they can subsidize Oakland and San Francisco’s social service programs, we’d be doing a lot better. The San Bernardino / Riverside County areas known as the Inland Empire have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state but because the population density is less than Oakland, we lose. It ticks me off. It grinds my gears.

But why, specifically, does California suck today? Yes, it’s that old theme of illegals, drivers licenses and political pandering. There was an article today (here) in which the Los Angeles City police chief said his officers were not going to enforce the current law that requires them to impound vehicles of unlicensed drivers. Why? Because it’s not fair. It might limit or restrict their ability to get to or search for work. Uhhh…what?

California already turns a blind eye to illegal immigration. It’s a Federal issue and the State doesn’t have the right to enforce Federal immigration laws. Let me take that one step farther and say the state wouldn’t enforce those laws even if required to do so. Unlike Arizona, California would never consider laws that would require illegal aliens seeking to enter our public school system to show they live in the local district. Pay the same tuition at a college or university? Are you insane? That would mean undermining the DREAM Act.

I have had the immigration rant with just about everyone that knows me. I believe in immigration the way it was run even as late as the 1950s. If you want to come here, fill out the forms and get in line. Have a sponsor. Get a job. Two of my grandmothers had to do that and they were married to a U.S. born-and-raised citizen! They tried to deport one grandmother back to Australia and my Peruvian grandmother had issues because my grandfather was often out of the country flying aircraft between Los Angeles; Lima, Peru, and; Sao Paulo, Brazil. I’m not going to go into my overall feelings on this but I will say it’s highly disingenuous of our country to require people from countries with whom we do not share a common border to process through the system yet we pander to others.

But back to today’s issue. I have no doubt in my military mind that if I was pulled over in the People’s Republic of Los Angeles and produced my insurance card, my registration card and my Disneyland season pass from last year as a photo ID, they’d impound my car. It wouldn’t matter that I could recite to them my driver’s license number, my home address or my height and weight. My car would be on the back of a tow truck on the way to the revenue station impound yard in a heartbeat. I really don’t understand the reasoning behind the decision.

We’re told constantly it may be illegal to hire day laborers from the street corners. Forgetting the personal safety and risk you take, the state loses tax revenue. If we want to stop complaining about the number of jobs citizens have lost to illegals, stop hiring them. Some organizations post lists on the internet of companies known to hire or cater to the “undocumented” crowd. If you want to keep your job or create a job, boycott those businesses. If we get enough economic sanctions against employers (either by increasing penalties or citizen boycotts), they won’t hire illegals and they will magically self-emigrate back to their homeland.

But no amount of pushing an employer will seriously induce an individual to act now and act with decisive finality. If you know you cannot obtain a driver’s license in this state unless you can prove you have a right to be here, that’s a concern. If you know you might be subject to Federal identity theft laws if you use a false or stolen social security number to obtain employment, that’s a concern. But concerns really don’t mean anything. Every time you stuff a cigarette in your face you might be concerned about lung cancer but it doesn’t stop you from lighting up.

Just because I might get caught doesn’t really mean I need to lose any sleep over it. However, if I’m on my way home and I get pulled over and I have my car towed and impounded, THAT gets my attention. If I have to pay the tow charges AND the impound charges for my vehicle as well as a fine for driving the car without a license, I’m impacted directly. How will I work? Who freaking cares, as far as I’m concerned. How will you pick up the little ones from day care? Not my problem.

For me, this is not a humanitarian issue. Don’t cry to me about how as a Christian I’m charged with saving the world and all the people in it. This is not the same. Requiring foreigners to obtain documentation for admission into this country gives them certain rights and responsibilities. Knowing and obeying our laws keeps the playing field level. Breaking a law and claiming ignorance of the law because you didn’t know about it is the wrong answer. But let’s move on.

If the requirement is that you either pay-to-play (by getting a driver’s license legally) or you don’t drive, you don’t drive. Using the new Los Angeles philosophy, it seems any high school student 16 or older could tour around the county without having to have a license. All they need is their school I.D. Mom and Dad have their name on the registration and insurance, so the car shouldn’t be towed, right? True, they might fine the student for driving without a license but how can they do that to Betty Sue or LaTonia when they won’t do it to Belinda? Obviously, my comment has racial overtones, but my point is this: How can you say all you have to do is provide a picture ID and they won’t tow your car? Idiots.

California sucks.

Cowards

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I had a discussion today with another one of those “wouldda, shouldda, couldda” folks that drives me insane. The issue? Military service.

I was born into an Army family and lived in a number of interesting places because of it. I joined the Army at 18 and spent the next 20 years doing all kinds of fascinating things that I won’t go into here. The point? I did what I felt needed to be done. It was truly the only life I had known so it seemed natural to return to it as soon as I was able. But because that life was, by default, compartmentalized (especially people and emotions) I’ll focus on people today.

For me and my kind growing up, there were lots of different groups of people. First, of course, were the military service members. Army, then Marines, then Navy. The Air Force really served as a charter airline for the Army (just like the Navy provided cruise-liners for the Marines) and didn’t get much respect from us Army brats. The Coast Guard didn’t count as a military service (except in WWII) because they fell under the Department of Transportation (after having been moved out of the Treasury Department, by the way). I’m certain every military branch had it’s own set of standards in which their service held the number one slot but since they were all posers anyway, it didn’t matter.

After the military service members were the dependents. Spouses and children were dependents. They were significantly lower on the totem pole than the service member, but at least we could buy cool crap at the post exchange.

Back in the day, being a dependent could suck really, really bad. Since it was the Vietnam era, almost all of my friends’ fathers were the service member, so where you stood in the social hierarchy depended on a few specific factors:
1. What was your dad’s rank?
2. Was your father Regular Army or drafted?
3. Was he a “soldier” or a REMF?
4. How many tours had he done in ‘Nam?

Due to segregation, we never hung out with any officers kids. My dad was a non-commissioned officer (NCO) and very proud of it. Although the Army ensured that officers, NCOs and junior enlisted soldiers all lived in different areas of the base (with significantly different standards of living, of course), I doubt my friends and I would have chosen to hang out with Zeros anyway. For clarification, enlisted ranks in the military start with the letter “E”. Officer ranks start with the letter “O”. Because the “O” looked like the number 0, we called officers and their dependents “Zeros”. I imagine it’s changed, but “Zero” was a derogatory term.

Anyway, back to segregation for a moment. I’m certain any military brat can tell a different story but me and my friends didn’t have issues of race. Segregation was by rank, not by race. I don’t ever recall as a kid hearing any of our dads refer to another person by a racial slur. Staff Sergeant Hernandez was either “Sergeant Hernandez” or the SDNCO (staff duty NCO). He wasn’t a “wetback” or a “spic” or anything else. Sergeant First Class Morris wasn’t “the black guy” or a “nigger.” He was “Sergeant Morris”. I think if any of our dads heard us refer to someone by a racial slur we would have had our asses kicked first by the dad that heard it then by our own fathers. As a child of the ’60s coming into maturity in the ’70s, racism wasn’t our issue. Whether you were a Zero or not was. And yes, if you screwed up and someone else’s dad caught you, he administered the first round of corporal punishment before you got sent to your dad for round two. No questions asked.

If your dad was Regular Army, you had it going on. Back in the day before your social security number became your number, you had a service number. Almost everyone remembers the old line about the three things you have tell a captor if you’re taken as a prisoner of war: Name, Rank and Service Number. No? You remember Name, Rank and Social Security Number? Newbie. “Real” soldiers, those that volunteered to join, had service numbers that started with “RA” for Regular Army. Soldiers that either volunteered to avoid the draft or were drafted had service numbers that started with “USA”. Since my dad joined during and did time in Korea, he had an RA number. That fact put me socially above some other kid who’s dad might have had more rank but only volunteered to join because he thought he might get drafted. We still accepted those kids but we let them know their dads were weak.

If your dad was a “soldier”, we knew it by his Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). It might have been called something different back then, but if your dad was Infantry, he was a soldier. Infantry, Armor (tanks), Artillery–those guys were the top spots. On one of his tours in Vietnam my dad was in Psychological Warfare working with the Special Forces, so I got to claim that honor also. If your dad was a cook, a supply guy or anything in the Adjutant General’s Corps or Finance, they were a REMF. Just like “Zero”, “REMF” (pronounced like it reads, remf) was derogatory. It stood for Rear Echelon Mother “Effer” and meant the chances of your dad actually seeing combat time were little to none. If your dad was a REMF, you were a REMF. It would be really bad if your dad was a personnel officer of a unit because then he’d be both a Zero and a REMF and your social status would suck with us. But since we didn’t associate with Zeros, we’d never see you anyway.

Today the outdated term REMF has been replaced by FOBBIT. If you’re a FOBBIT and proud, to me you’re still a REMF, loser.

How many tours had your dad done? Ideally, at least one. The last gasp of hope you had for any type of social recognition was if your dad had “punched his ticket” in Vietnam. If your dad had never been there, did not have orders sending him there soon or planned to ETS (get out of the service) before he got sent there, you were nothing with us. We would sooner play human-target lawn darts with a bunch of Zeros than a Non-Dep (Non-Deployable, Non-Deployed) REMF-loving waste of skin like you.

Non-Deps were vile. Even Zeros hated Non-Deps. It was universal. The best I can equate it to today was during Desert Storm. A female medical officer (Army, unfortunately) was interviewed on a local (Los Angeles) television station. In uniform, crying uncontrollably, she looked at the camera and said when she joined, no one told her she would have to go to war. That image was burned into my head and will stay with me forever. On my first day of basic training, a drill sergeant stood in front of us and told us that if we weren’t told one day we might be called upon to kill someone, perhaps by running a bayonet through their chest cavity in hand-to-hand combat, we were in the wrong place. How you can be in the Army–and an officer at that–and cry because “no one told you” is an outright lie.

Okay, so that basically established the pecking order within the accepted group of military branches and dependents. Then what?

We recognized two types of civilians. One had a capital “C” and the other was lower case. A Department of Defense (or Department of the Army, etc.) Civilian (capital “C”) was a technician. Oftentimes they were separated or retired service members that scored a sweet job doing stuff for the Army and getting paid for it. My teachers were Department of the Army (DA) Civilians. The people that worked at the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) office that rented us everything from rowboats and fishing poles to horses and guitars were Civilians. Civilians (capital “C”) and their dependents were okay by us. In Germany, for example, the father of a friend of mine separated from service and returned to marry a German woman. I don’t remember what Mr. Cobb did but he was a Civilian. His son was a friend of mine and we attended the Munich American Elementary school together. However, the Cobbs lived off-post in Unterhaching. Most of the Civilian families lived off-post but that was still okay.

Then there were civilians (lower case). Nothing was worse than a civilian. Words cannot express the disdain and contempt I had for civilians. From civilians came the two most evil infections the world has ever known: The Draft Dodger and the Career Student.

I will honestly confess that it wasn’t until my early-twenties that my mindset on civilians began to change. I still to this day cannot stomach draft dodgers and career students, but I accept that civilians have a place in this world and, most importantly, a right to exist. You might think I’m joking about this but those that know me well know how little I cared for civilians. I wasn’t a round-them-up-and-put-them-in-camps kind of freak (though I knew some) but I really didn’t care. I would donate blood to help a Non-Dep before I’d shed a tear for a civilian. This may not make sense to you but anyone with my background will understand immediately what I mean. We didn’t tell blonde jokes or Polish jokes or ethnic jokes–we told civilian jokes. How many civilians does it take to change a light bulb? Who cares? Nuke ’em ’til they glow and they won’t need light bulbs. That kind of stuff. But it only applied to American civilians. We loved the Germans and the Panamanians and everyone else. Just the Americans.

Before I continue, let me make a couple of things perfectly clear. First, it wasn’t until I joined the Army that I recognized not everyone was cut out for military service. Some people can’t stand the sight of blood and some people don’t do well under stress. Some people can’t work under someone else’s authority and some people obviously lost a game of human-target lawn darts early in life. I know not everyone is capable of performing the duties required of military service. In fact, there are some people in the service that have no right to be there but that also is a different story.

Second, education is good. Even a degree from a liberal, earth-first, Vegan-loving college is better than dropping out of school because it “got hard”. Life sucks if that’s what you make it. I’ve failed plenty of times in different things but at least I tried.

So, do I think everyone should be in the military? No. I hope that’s clear. But let me tell you two things before I *FINALLY* get to the point of today’s blog.

Hate is a strong word. I understand it’s subtleties and multifaceted meanings. I hate draft dodgers, especially those that fled out of the country during Vietnam. All my friends and the Zeros hated them, too. Being drafted did not automatically mean you were handed a rifle and sent to kill Viet Cong or NVA soldiers. What it meant was that the country in which you were lucky enough to be born required your service. Could you be drafted and killed in some far-away country in a war you didn’t support? Maybe. Could you be drafted and spend your whole tour of duty sweating your ass off painting rocks and picking off leeches at Fort Polk, Louisiana? Maybe. But if you were too much of a coward to consider anything other than running away, we’re better off without you anyway. But you’re still one step above the worst-of-the-worst: The Career Student.

Many cowards who chose to avoid the draft and couldn’t afford to run across the nearest border elected instead to become full-time college students. I honestly am not up-to-speed on what all of the draft laws were of the late ’60s and early ’70s, but I know that if you were a full-time college student, especially if you had a family, you got a reprieve of some sort. Un-Effing-Believable. I disagree with that line of reasoning just as much as I disagree that the draft should only be for men. If the country needs people to serve in the military, draft men and women, not just men. But that again is for another day.

If you are one of those who became a full-time college student to avoid the draft, knowing full-well what you were doing and taking this course of action with the intent simply to avoid the draft, I earnestly pray that someone else did not die because of your cowardice. You might be able to make peace with God, your pot supplier or whomever else you believe in to justify your actions, but there truly is no lower form of life. I consider you no better than a rapist or a child molester. Seriously. The contempt you have for your fellow man by causing them to pay a sacrifice on your behalf is unacceptable. You are the worst type of coward.

When we tuned in to the evening news to see what was happening in the States, what did we see? Flag burning college students complaining about the war. My friends and I hated them. Whether our dads were Regular Army, pre-draft volunteers or drafted, they were all service members who answered the call to serve their country. Did they like the war? None of us did. I can pretty much guarantee you that unless he was dead, you saw your father more in one year than I did in five. The same with my friends. Our dads weren’t there because they were called away. Sometimes one of our dads wouldn’t come home. There was no fanfare, no parade, no community event. One day Chris was at school with you and then he was gone for a few days. By the time word got back to us that Chris’ dad had died they were already on a plane back home. You never said goodbye. They just weren’t there anymore, neither Chris nor his dad. And who was responsible? As far as we were concerned, the flag-burning filth on TV.

I remember that my father returned home from Vietnam once (he served multiple tours there) and was taking a bus from Los Angeles to where we lived in Pasadena, California. Someone on the bus called him a baby killer. Why? Because that’s what all the young, hip, flag-burning, draft-dodging, pot-smoking, acid-dropping hippies did at the time. My dad beat the crap out of him and only because of the bus driver and some of the other bus riders, he didn’t kill him. Why? Today they would call it PTSD but unknown to the loser hippie, my dad had literally been in the jungles of Vietnam not 48 hours before shithead called him a baby killer. Does this matter? Not necessarily, but it will help you understand my position. I was proud of my dad for what he did. No one on TV ever stopped the flag burning. No one ever stopped the name calling. No one ever stopped the student protests (thanks for the effort at Kent State, though). “We”, the military service members and dependents, were always the villains.

One obvious group I excluded here were the conscientious objectors (COs). I respected them. They didn’t run from the draft or suddenly have the need to enroll in school. If they registered (many if not most did), they declared themselves as COs. Did that keep them from being drafted? No. In fact, I met two people when I first joined the service that had registered as COs but were drafted anyway. One was a Chaplain’s Aide and the other was a medic. Neither would carry a weapon or inflict harm to someone else but both answered when their draft number came up.

A conscientious objector is not someone that simply doesn’t want to join the military. To me, a CO is someone who either based on their religion, ethics, morality or combination of all three refuses to harm, much less kill, another. If you call yourself a CO and then punch someone in the face because they call you a coward, you’re not a CO. You’re a coward. A CO is not afraid of serving provided *service* is what’s demanded. Chaplain’s Aide, medic, dental hygienist, there are scores of job specialties where known, self-described COs can and do serve. If you were a CO during Vietnam, registered for the draft and reported to the draft board when they called your number, I have a lot of respect for you. Perhaps the military didn’t need or want you by the time you got there, but you got there. As a civilian (lower case “c”), you’re still head and shoulders above the rest because you took a stand on principles, not on fear. A true CO is not a coward. Jesus Christ was a conscientious objector and no one I know would consider Him a coward.

But on to today’s beef.

I’m certain I’m not the only person who’s heard someone say, “If I’d only stayed in I’d have my twenty by now.” That kind of bugs me. Why did you get out then? You did 12, 13 or 14 years–why did you quit? You can take an early retirement from the military at 15 years in most cases (reduced pay, of course, but you’re still eligible for retirement pay). Why did you leave? What are you not telling us? For what reason were you ineligible for promotion? What did you do that put a bar to reenlistment on your record? What happened? Just saying you “shouldda” stayed is not being honest. I’d like to know why you *didn’t* stay. If it wasn’t your choice, why not tell us what really happened? And don’t lie to me and tell me it was because you went to go work with Delta Force. Two quick questions will establish you’re a liar, so don’t even start. Just tell the truth. Why didn’t you stay?

Another favorite is, “If we were ever attacked I’d be the first one in line to volunteer.” What the frickin frack does that mean? You excuse the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut because it wasn’t “us”. Technically, our Marines were in another country so that doesn’t count. Wow. Okay. So the first time they attacked the World Trade Center (remember that?) didn’t count? What about the USS Cole? Khobar Towers? What about our embassies? What about 9/11? At what point do you draw the line and say “we” have been attacked and now you’ll hold true to your word? Did you lie? Did you ever really intend to join or were you just lying to make yourself feel better? Oh, I know: When you said that you were in school. Now you’ve got a decent job and a family and you don’t want to give that up. What about the soldier on his fourth tour of duty that just got killed by a roadside bomb today? Are his wife and kids less important to him than yours are to you? Come on! Nut Up! If you’re afraid, say so.

There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. Fear is a basic emotion. The difference between fear and cowardice is simple: A person can have tremendous fear yet still try. A coward won’t even try. If you’re afraid to serve because it might cost you your life, let alone your family and your career, admit it. There is honor in admitting fear. But please, don’t lie to me and tell me that “we” haven’t met your conditions for being attacked (at which point you’ll run down to the recruiting station to sign up). Promote yourself up from coward. Admit your fear.

Today’s discussion was the classic, “If I could have joined, I would have” statement. I understand that if you have an emotional or physical impairment that keeps you from entering service in the military, it is what it is. I was seriously injured training with a Ranger unit at an Arctic Warfare school in Alaska. I was told if I did not accept a medical separation from service (with a healthy cash payout to boot) at that time (1985) that I would have to surrender any future medical benefits related to the injury and accept a mandatory separation date twenty years after my initial entry into the service. Unfortunately, my retirement paperwork came through in August of 2001 and we were attacked (again) in September of 2001. That, of course, is another subject.

Not everyone has a debilitating injury. The guy I was speaking with today thought he would get some respect from me by claiming an injury but that wasn’t to be.

In California, we have the California National Guard. I think just about every state has a National Guard, but that’s not important. The California National Guard (CANG) occupies and trains on CANG property. It’s state property, but designated for use by the CANG. We have armories and camps throughout the state. Have you ever thought about this? If the entire unit at your local armory gets mobilized and deployed overseas, what happens to the building? The unit won’t be gone forever. Who maintains the facility? Ah, my friend. The Great State of California has an answer for this: The California State Military Reserve (CSMR). Never heard of them? Neither had I, until I worked with them.

The CSMR has uniforms just like the CANG except the unit patches and name tapes are different. Admittedly, my experience with the CSMR is dated (1990s) but it was staffed with people who answered the call to serve in time of need. There were people of all ages, men and women alike. A guy I worked with for a short time was a captain in the CSMR who could only walk with the use of crutches as he was essentially a paraplegic. He was freakin’ awesome.

I was a Military Intelligence officer with an emphasis on electronic warfare (jamming, direction finding, communications deception, etc.). I was detailed at one point to work as a liaison officer to the CANG’s 40th Infantry Division when they went to the field for their annual two week training exercise. I had a senior NCO with me and together we comprised what was known as an IEWSE (Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Staff Element). We rolled up to the designated rally point for our initial contact as planned.

When the back ramp of the M577 Command Track came down, I was surprised to see a guy with two silver crutches coming down the ramp. Having had the experience of both legs in full casts at the same time myself, I figured this guy had been injured recently. He and I were both captains so we introduced ourselves by first name (though I couldn’t tell you his name if I had to right now). It was obvious by the way he moved that he had not been injured per se, but had a disability. Namely, he couldn’t walk without his crutches.

Yes, we spoke about the mission and what I was there to do and all that crap, which isn’t the point here. I got to speaking with him about how he got to be in the middle of Camp Roberts, California in the back of an armored personnel carrier when he clearly didn’t meet the physical requirements for military service. He told me about the CSMR, what they did and how they functioned. I was fascinated. This guy was a freakin’ genius who didn’t have a disability at all–he just couldn’t walk. To him it was more of an annoyance than anything else, but it really forced me to wrap my head around the concept of being disabled versus having an impairment. This guy couldn’t walk but it didn’t keep him from thinking. It may seem incredibly ignorant now, but I don’t know that the point had ever been made as clearly as it was working with him. He was a great guy to work with and it was obvious the other people in the command respected him very much.

We spoke at length about the CSMR. Basically, if a unit gets deployed, the CSMR will occupy the armory until the unit returns. There’s more to it than that of course, but my point is this: The guy today said his hearing in one ear was too bad to join the Army. If he “couldda”, he “wouldda” but he couldn’t so he didn’t. When I told him about the CSMR and the fact that he could still serve in uniform, the conversation went from motivation to something along the lines of not having the time to be able to do it right now. Very weak.

It really bothers me to speak with someone about military service they didn’t perform. Why waste my time? Honestly, now that I’m older and hopefully more mature, I respect you just for serving in the first place. I don’t care if you painted handrails deep in the bowels of a Navy ship or chocked wheels on an airfield in the middle of nowhere for the Air Force. You don’t have to be a Force Recon Marine or a Ranger. Your willingness to serve puts you in a select group. Your motivation and dedication might define what you do and how well you do it, but it doesn’t define *you*.

I know I will have to endure more shouldda, wouldda, couldda conversations in the future. I enjoy speaking with other people about their specific military experiences. The stuff I did and for which I was trained was fairly unique, highly specialized and not well known. My world was one acronym after another, all of which had specific references to either capabilities, platforms, performance, personnel or missions. If you know the difference between Trailblazer, Teammate, Quick Fix, Rivet Joint or Mohawk, let’s talk. Otherwise, I’d be more than happy to listen you. Everyone who’s served has a different experience, some good, some bad. But please, if you didn’t even try, don’t ask me to talk about my service. You wouldn’t understand.

I have some pretty simple ground rules regarding military service.

  1. If you served, don’t lie about what you did. A liar is a liar. You’re not a Ranger because you bought the tab at the PX, you’ve never served in Delta Force and your sniper team was never sent to assassinate someone. Don’t lie.
  2. If you want to serve, look into it first. Don’t join because Call of Duty is a bad-ass video game and you kick ass and take names like no one else. Serving is not a video game. It’s not a joke. You might have to kill someone. You might die. Worse, you might suffer horrible, disfiguring injuries. Know the risks. Don’t do it because you broke up with your high school sweetheart or because you think it’s your best-bet for a job. Do it because it’s right and you and your family know the risks.
  3. If you don’t want to serve, don’t. But don’t lie about it. Don’t pull the conscientious objector card and then wish death or injury to someone else. Don’t say it’s because we’re not really at war. Don’t say it’s because you’re not able to serve. Tell me you’re a CO and prove it by joining as a Chaplain’s Aide. Tell me you’re afraid and earn a little respect. Don’t lie and make up some reason why you can’t serve. Don’t be a coward.
  4. If you didn’t register for the draft, do so. It’s still the law.
  5. If you’re currently serving and need to speak with someone about what you’ve seen, done, heard or read about, talk to your Chaplain. You don’t have to be ‘religious’ to talk to a Chaplain. For what it’s worth, if you think you might have something like Combat Stress or PTSD, a conversation with the Chaplain could help clarify the issue confidentially. If you go to the TMC, an Aid station or hospital for consultation, that gets put in your record. See the Chaplain first.
  6. If you’re currently serving and want to re-up or separate from service, don’t make a decision without including your family. You need their support either way.
  7. If you’re a civilian and you read this whole thing, thank you. I’m almost fifty now and it’s taken my whole life to accept you as an equal. I wasn’t better than you, it’s just that you didn’t deserve the company of service members and dependants. I’m almost over all of that. Unless, of course…
  8. If you’re a draft dodger or a career student (as defined above), pray. Pray daily. Pray that God will remove the guilt I hope you feel as a result of your selfish, cowardly acts of betrayal to true Americans. When you see the names on the Vietnam War Memorial, I hope you say a prayer that your petty act of self preservation did not result in one single person’s death. Pray that God will forgive you when Jesus reminds you of John 15:13.

California Sucks – Reason 2

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On a recent return trip from Flagstaff, Arizona, my kids and I agreed it would be fun to travel Route 66 as much as we could. We entered “The Mother Road” just west of Flagstaff and stayed with it. Before I continue let me state that if you don’t have either a ham radio or a C.B. radio, get one before you head out on this road. There were vast areas where my Verizon and my daughter’s AT&T cell phone services did not exist.

I enjoyed the old Berma-Shave ads they still have on the side of the road. I also enjoyed the cattle-guards, the tumbleweeds and the feeling you get when a semi-truck passes you in the other direction and your car swerves from the forces of the wind. Seriously, that was fun.

We passed towns (like Seligman, AZ) that are still close enough to Interstate 40 that if you chose to, you could ditch the highway and go back to the freeway. As I think many people know, the creator of Disney’s “Cars” received his inspiration for the movies after speaking with a barber from Seligman who talked about the “old” days, when Route 66 was the only game in town. So, with that in mind, we continued down the road.

We came across Peach Springs (speed limit 25 MPH) which could have been Radiator Springs? Who knows. We saw huge rock formations very similar to the hoods of the cars seen in the movie. Then again, we were probably seeing what we wanted to see. Except for the two or three towns where the speed limit went from 55 to 25, the countryside was beautiful and uneventful all the way to Kingman.

Once you leave Kingman, stand by. They don’t have any signs posted, but if you’re in a large motor home or pulling a trailer, or if you’re either afraid of heights or mountain driving, DO NOT TAKE Route 66 between Kingman and the California state border.

As we wound our way along the narrow road through the mountain pass, the view was spectacular. Well, you had to look over all the crosses placed on the side of the road where people had gone over the edge and apparently died, but still, the view was fantastic. If you’ve ever driven to or from Big Bear Lake, CA the back way from Victorville, it’s very similar to that except it’s steeper with sharper turns, more narrow, and they don’t have railings on the side of the road.

Not too long after we passed the Gold Road mine, we turned the corner to Oatman, AZ. If you have ever been to Calico, CA, imagine Calico with about 200 residents. I have links here and here if you want to check it out. We stopped the car, stayed for the gunfight, fed some burros and made a friend or two. I would go back in a heartbeat.

So, why does California suck (reason number two)? Route 66. In Arizona, there is no limit to the number of signs pointing you to Route 66 and in which direction you must travel to get there. To cross into CA from AZ you must re-link with I-40, but as soon as you’re across the river they have a sign for Route 66. Don’t fall for the lie. You will take the exit but it leads nowhere. That’s not true. It leads to some touristy boat dock area that doesn’t have a single through street anywhere. So we went back to I-40.

As we came closer to Needles, there was another sign for Route 66. We decided to try our luck and took the exit. Here’s the thing: I know we were on Route 66 because it was painted on the highway itself. However, at some point it became something else (Route 95) and no one bothered to post a sign. You know, something like Route 95 with a sign beneath it reading Historic Route 66. Nothing. I went from being on Route 66 to being on another road headed for Searchlight, Nevada.

Headed down the road trying to loosen my load with seven women on my mind, we came to a decision point. A regular street sign indicated we were at the intersection of Goffs Road and the 95. Straight or turn? There was nary a Route 66 sign to be seen anywhere. Bastidges. So my daughter did the next-best thing: Used her iPhone.

Interesting thing about an iPhone, or maybe it was because of where we were, but if you’re at the intersection of Goffs Road and Highway 95, you’re guaranteed to confuse the crap out of Siri. A simple request like, “Route 66 from my location” will give you two abortion clinics and a Chik-fil-A in Portland, Maine. Ask something like, “nearest gas station” and you’ll be asked if you want to make a spa appointment at Madame Wong’s Day Spa in Vancouver, British Columbia. I don’t think it was until my son shifted just to the correct angle that we had sufficient signal for the GPS map to appear and realize that Goffs Road is, in fact, Route 66.

Once you leave Goffs, CA (be careful of the 90 degree, 10 MPH turn from north to west), put it on auto pilot and take a nap. Unlike Arizona’s small towns still alive along the road, California’s small towns all died–except where they intersect with I-40.

I guess to be fair, California doesn’t suck *because* of Route 66, it sucks because it’s hard to find. The freeway signs do a good job of teasing you off the freeway to relive the days of old, but once you’re off the freeway you’re on your own. I really felt AZ did a great job keeping you on the road and encouraging you to stay there even if it was to feed the speed traps and tourist towns along the way.

California was more like a card from one of those adult phone sex operations. They tease you with the promise of a good time. On the surface, it’s sexy and appealing–Route 66: The Mother Road. It even has it’s own song! And then reality hits. Candice really isn’t a 22 year old fit-and-trim, blonde-haired, blue-eyed co-ed who walks around in short-shorts and a too-tight tank top just like Route 66 (in CA) isn’t full of nostalgia. Candice’s name is really Betty and she works in a cubical at a call center when she’s not serving beers at the local bar. Route 66 (in CA) is really just a pseudonym for a hyped-up road (when you can find it–thank you CalTrans) that cuts a path of loneliness and despair through the desert.

And that, my friends, is why California sucks (reason number two).

Drivers Licenses for Illegals?… Really?… Again?

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This is my first post, so I will try and keep it short and sweet until I get into the swing of things. After all, I don’t want Sparky to ban me right off the bat before I even get going.

Lets break this issue down for a moment and see if we can get some clarity by giving equal time to some proponents arguments.

  1. “we are a much more secure nation if we do issue driver’s licenses and/or state IDs to every resident who applies, regardless of immigration status.”
    Ok, this is almost just too silly. So, anybody who applies, will be issued a driver’s license. That way, I guess, we can slack off on the border restrictions. Anyone from, oh, I don’t know… Iran, or Afghanistan for example, can walk on in to the DMV, take a driver’s test and get a license, and drive off into the sunset, fat, dumb and happy right? So where does the “much more secure” part come in?
  2. “If illegal immigrants are afraid to talk to police because of fear of deportation, fewer people come forward to report crimes, aid police investigations, and testify as witnesses.”
    So using this analogy, I guess if you grab some old ladies purse today, run around the corner and take the cash out, then witness somebody else getting mugged walking home, you will have no problem reporting the mugging to the cops, as long as we remove the fear of being arrested for stealing the old ladies purse, right? Illegal is Illegal…Period!
  3. “We need to keep track of them somehow because they are so afraid of deportation that most of them live ‘off the grid’. This will help us keep track of them”
    If we assume that they do live mostly off the grid, working for cash under the table, no checking or banking accounts, no social security cards, etc. (more on this later), and we are going to give them DL’s to keep track of them, what name do you suppose they will use on their application? How will we verify their information on the form. And here is the really scary scenario; someone goes to the DMV, claims to be illegal goes through the process to get their DL with their “real”  name verified by our superior background research. Ok, now multiply that by all 50 states (or at least the ones that are considering this legislation or have enacted something like it), with different identities in each. Cool! They should be easy to keep track of right?
  4. “Moving around freely is a right in this country. Taking that right away is unconstitutional and racist.”
    I love this argument. Growing up in a small California town, I could not wait until my 16th birthday so I could go take my drivers test and get my license. The week before I took the test, I got into a little argument with my dad over some trivial thing, trying to launch fireworks meant for a vertical launch from a safe non-flammable surface from a jury-rigged hand held launch tube I think, (like I said…trivial). He told me, and I quote “a drivers license is not a right, it is a privilege. It will be earned and not freely given to you! If you want that license, you have to prove to me you deserver it.” I still happen to believe that. Thanks Dad.
    As for it being constitutional, last time I checked, the constitution applied to US citizens. By definition, illegal aliens are not US citizens, and as for being racist, well, I have not even mentioned a particular race of people here have I?

I could go on all day with this (don’t even get me started on how they(illegals) prop up our economy), however I need to get back to work. I hope Sparky lets me publish this article.
Until next time…