gobag 3-12-2013

HAPPY LEAP DAY/YEAR

HAPPY LEAP DAY/YEAR!

Today is February the 29th.  This is Leap Day that only comes around every four years, the same as Leap Years.  

This day is the reason this year will be one day longer than the next three.  It is sort of a make-up day, like each year is not exactly 365 days long, it is 365 and a quarter days long. 

Leap years are also known for Presidential Politics year.  It means a lot of political dirty tricks, lies, and hate will be smeared.

It also is the year that the women chase the men for a likely husband, like Sadie Hawkins Day in Dog Patch.

Oakland Cemetery and Dancing Statues, rerun

What kind of an Oscar does this get?  "The Worst home video that makes no sense what-so-ever"?  Hey!  I'm eligible!  I'm White! 

SUNDAYI FUNNIES!! HELP! Magazine Public Gallery

Many budding young artists got their first cartoons published in HELP! Magazine.  HELP!  did not pay much but it was a start being in the public's eyes.  They even accepted two cartoons from me.  Editor Harvey Kurtzman sent me a note saying assistant Editor Robert Crumb would be getting in touch with me.  Then the magazine folded.  True.

This is by Skip Willliamson who became a well-known underground cartoonist, then Art Director of PLAYBOY Magazine and then moved to Marietta and hid out on the west side of town.

GOBAG 8-21-2012

Benjamin Takes His Folks to a Puppet Show

Benjamin took his folks to a Puppet Show Today.  I am not sure, but I think this is his second.  He might become a Puppet Show Critic.   Click on picture to enlarge.

Who Covered Up The Old Court House?

Friday the Marietta Museum of History had an opened discussion on the tearing down of the Old Cobb County Court House and building a new one.

The old one, I suppose, wasn't missed until it was no longer there.  Literally removed off the face of the earth.   The court house replacement  was built with little plans, kind of like plan as you go when each new problem arises which of course hopped skipped and jumped over the bidding contract system of tax paid projects.

I remember Herbert McCollum was the commissioner who was all for doing away with the old  building a new one. 

It was just about an overall consensus  that Cobb County leaped into the fast modern times and they needed their Face-front buildings to reflect that.

When it was gone we realized what a Mecca we had that slipped through our fingers.

Where did the material  go that came down with the building.?  The wood and the bricks.  One lady said her late husband got the timber and they built their house with it.  I have been told that the owner of either Discount Lumber or Discount Building Supply got the bricks and made his home with them.

Listening to people talk about how things were and who did what to shift's the direction of Marietta History I heard a   lot of name dropping of the elite.   And that is why we were there, to hear the names dropped.

Herbert McCollum's Deputy Commissioner Cliff White, who was our neighbor behind us., I don't know just what his role was with out with the old and in with the new, rather quickly played. Oops!  There I go name dropping.

It was said several times what a great town Marietta is and how some people who came here to work for a short period of time, like the military people, liked it so much they returned..   A friend and I were talking a few days before that that we think or believe that Marietta also has a very high rate of natives who stayed planted in Cobb County.  Other places, people just  live in their home town  long enough to get their basic education, then move on.  Not so in Marietta very much.

Mrs. Clara Howell,(name dropping again)  my high school science teacher, took the mike and said  a lot of people are using Photo Shop with their memories.  She reminded us of all  spit, snuff spit, tobacco spit, on the pavement  that you had to watch your step in front of the Old Court House  and all the idle men that hung out there.

The lawyer who made our will, Don Smith (opps! Name dropping again)  recalled from his memory when he watched a murder trial at the old court house while sitting in an opened window.  I was impressed.  Not only about watching a trial  sitting in a window where he could fall and no one cared but of all the facts he said I quickly calculated he was 92 years old and was very robustly healthy looking.  Wow!

What he said reminded me of a time in my preteen years that I was hooked on the lawyer series on Saturday night TV, PERRY MASON.   I was so interested I wanted to watch a real live trial at the court house.  My daddy told me the next time there was to be a trial by jury  and I went and had a seat in a pew.

A black man was on trial for raping a black lady behind a school house at night.  The trial was a sign of the times just how much a Jim Crow style of living we were living in and didn't even realize it.  All the court officers were white including the jury.  Both the defense attorney and the DAA took on the stereotyped black accent when they questioned the accusing lady, or victim, and also the accused, like that was all they could understand.    They had the jury (certainly not their peers) rolling with laughter.

The two black people were openly being publicly mocked, ridiculed,  and made fun of at their own expense.  I did not stick around to see if he was found innocent or guilty.  I think in the jury eyes they were both guilty of being  themselves, anyway.

I think that is another case of  Clara Howell's  Mind Photo Shop.

  

A Nice Decorated Alley in Marietta

A not  so-typical alley in Marietta.  Most people who drink wine in alleys  drink straight from the bottle which is covered by a brown paper bag.  Not in this alley!  In this alley you sip wine from wine glasses and discuss live theater plays and literature.  If you were to  squat down to take a dump, like in other alleys, or urinate on the side of the building,  the onlookers here would be horrified and at the same time  have their video phones out and recording it instantly. 

Tuba Skinny "SWEET POTATO BLUES"

This evening at Baybreeze I had blackened salmon and a sweet potato.  Which reminds me of a song, hit it Rebecka!

Who's the guy in the overalls?

The group of Cobb County Government Buildings On the Other Side of the park were the topic of conversation at this morning's opened discussion at the Marietta Museum Museum of  History.    

Well, well, I Meet Myself Again, On-Line

click to enlarge

I blogged this a few years ago, but forgot about it.  Yesterday I was reviewing some old blog posts on Chicken-fat and I came across this article.  It is a picture of my uncle Roy Petty that I took at a family get together and it was accompanied by the below article, which quotes me, ahem!  from the Dalton Daily Citizen, Jun 10, 2012: 

Stories of former Cohutta man’s heroics as a Ranger live on in books, memories

·         Jamie Jones
jamiejones@daltoncitizen.com

·         Jun 10, 2012

·          

·         Dalton Daily Citizen

With healed legs once shattered in a parachute jump and a mouthful of false teeth from his football days, former Cohutta resident William Petty never wavered in his journey to become a U.S. Army Ranger.

Because luckily for Petty, his will was never broken.

As a 22-year-old member of the 2nd U.S. Ranger Battalion, Petty was part of the first wave of troops that stormed the beaches of Normandy and scaled the treacherous cliffs there in northern France on June 6, 1944.

That date would be known as D-Day.

On that day more than 150,000 Allied troops began Operation Neptune, part of the larger Operation Overlord. The military maneuvers were an attempt to regain control of the German-controlled country during World War II and defeat Adolf Hitler.

The invasion was bloody and costly.

Some 9,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded; however, almost 100,000 soldiers started to cross Europe and defeat the Nazis. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft were involved in the invasion.

Petty survived the harrowing ordeal and became a war hero. He is credited with killing more than 30 Germans during D-Day. With the help of several Rangers, they leveled a huge concrete gun emplacement at Pointe du Hoc that was aimed at the English Channel. By the time his military career was over, Petty had earned a Bronze Star, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts.

Petty passed away at age 78 on March 21, 2000, in Carmel, N.Y. His stories of bravery live on. He is featured heavily in Ronald L. Lane’s “Rudder’s Rangers” and receives several pages in Douglas Brinkley’s “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc” and Cornelius Ryan’s “The Longest Day.”

Petty’s stories were also handed down to his family.

“I remember growing up you used to hear the stories over and over from all of his buddies,” his son, Bill Petty, said. “The guys that did survive, they were very tight knit. We used to have reunions and we’d travel across the country and we would always be staying at some Ranger’s house somewhere. You always heard the stories. As a kid you’re like, ‘Oh not again.’ Now as an adult, with him not being here, you have a greater appreciation for all of it.”

Petty was born in Appomattox, Va., on May 22, 1921. His family, which included 13 children, moved to Cohutta when he was a child and operated a cotton farm. Petty attended the University of Georgia, but his studies were cut short after he joined the Army.

Petty almost never made it to Normandy. In fact, he barely became a part of the Rangers.

After that first parachute jump gone awry, Petty decided he wanted to become a part of the all-volunteer force that often operated behind enemy lines.

In the early 1940s, he went to Camp Forrest in Tullahoma, Tenn., which was one of the U.S. Army’s largest training bases during World War II. There he began the process to become a Ranger. The parachute accident left Petty with a pronounced limp.

“He had to be a fast talker because he was still walking like a duck when he got there,” recalled Monroe Reed, a lifelong Cohutta resident and Petty’s childhood friend. “His legs had healed enough so he could put weight on them.”

After taking the physical, the doctor declined to allow Petty into the group. Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder, the commanding officer of the Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion, agreed with the doctor’s assessment.

The doctor also noted another problem.

Petty had none of his original teeth. They were all knocked while playing football. He had false teeth.

“The officer that was interviewing him for enlistment said, ‘Well, you can probably get where you can walk and run pretty good but you ain’t got a tooth in your head that you can use,” Reed said.

Petty persevered. He requested a more intense medical examination. Eventually, he met with Rudder.

“The very fact that even after fracturing both legs he still wanted to be a Ranger showed true heart,” Brinkley wrote in “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc.” “Petty insisted to Rudder that it was unfair to disqualify him because of his dental malady.”

Rudder admired Petty’s tenacity, his grit.

Petty then uttered his now famous line about the Germans.

“Hell, sir! I don’t want to eat’em. I want to fight’em.”

The lieutenant colonel flashed a smiled then signed a form, succinctly telling Petty, “You’re in.”

At Normandy, the Rangers went into northern France about one hour ahead of the other troops. They scaled 100-foot cliffs under the cover of darkness to take out the German 15.5 cm Kanone 418(f) coastal defense guns. The guns were thought to be near the landing areas on the beach, but the Germans had placed the guns farther back. The Rangers were successful in destroying the emplacements. However, about 60 percent of the 200-member Ranger squad perished.

After the service, Petty went back to UGA. He eventually returned to Dalton for a short time and opened a laundry. The business failed and Petty moved to New York, where he earned a master’s degree from New York University.

For years he was the director of Clear Pool Boys Camp, which served troubled children from New York City.

“From my blog, I still get people that write me every once in a while about what a big difference he made in their lives,” said Eddie Hunter, Petty’s nephew.

Reminiscing on his father’s military service, Bill Petty recalled a poignant moment with his children.

“I remember walking through a library with my kids and I saw the book,” he said. “I pulled it out and said, ‘Hey, do you want to see something cool?’ And I flipped it to the back and there was William ‘L-Rod’ Petty.”

There for future generations to read about.

Boat Ride on Lake Allatoona

In September 2014 our son Adam gave us a pontoon ride at Lake Allatoona from one end to the other.  Man!  That was pleasant!  And here it is any time I want to relive it.

On This Day In History The Bubble Machine Stopped

On this date, Feb 25, 1982, the Final episode of "The Lawrence Welk Show" aired.

Cadence Thru Dahlonega, Ga

Death in the Chocolate Candy Box

As Forrest Gump said, "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get"  (or similar).   So is genealogy.  Today I was posting information on Aaron Tison, a distant Tyson relative in Bemen County, Georgia, who was born in 1840 and married to Elizabeth Holland,  when I noticed an entry in the notes section.   I looked closer and it said:  "Aaron was accused of killing his father-in-law, B. HOLLAND. Indicted 1867, Mistrial 1868.  He did not kill his father-in-law, but hired someone to do it."

Rerun: Varner's Reunion 2010, The Musical

Repeat repeat: Willow, CALL OF THE TAME

I was holding this until we were snowbound to give you the spirit.  Then the Groundhog had other ideas.

GOTCHA!

The utility company that we buy our home natural gas from sent us an offer that was hard to refuse.  If we sign up to equalize our bill year around, like we would be paying the same in the winter as we do in the summer they would give us a $50 credit on the next billing cycle.  We took advantage of it.  And, true to their word, on the next bill there was a $50 credit.  But there was also $50 more added, in the hidden costs.  We called about  their billing department about it .  The lady explained that when we signed up for the new billing system we were breaking our old contract.  There is a $50 charge for breaking your current contract. 

To top things off, she should have said, "GOTCHA!"

Drone: 4th Ward, Highland Area

Is It George Washington's Birthday?

George Washington might have been born on this date.  Again, maybe not.  He was born February 22, 1732, which is OS February 11, 1732.  If I have this straight, he was born according to the calendar then on 11th, however that was the old calendar.  After the new calendar dates was set into place days before the date it was shifted 11 days.  Do you get it?  Good for you!  Now, explain it to me.

Speaking of George Washington, for those who know me will not be surprised that George is a relative of mine.  Actually, an in-law.  My Petty family is related to George's wife Martha Dandridge Custis.

Bill Kinney Died Yesterdy

Bill Kinney died yesterday at age 91.  He was a reporter for the Marietta daily Journal then chief editor, and retired.  I'm sure The Marietta Daily Journal will do a great obituary, so I am not trying to outdo them, as if I could.

When I was in Miss Alberta  Shouse's class at Waterman Street School Bill showed up now and then.  He was courting Alberta..  Bill was a young dashing reporter for the Marietta Daily Journal.  They were married shortly after that time.

Along that same time my daddy, who was the new Cobb County Police, raided the largest whiskey still ever to be found in Cobb County.   Reporter Bill Kinney went along  to witness the raid, and report on it first had,  They poured all the whiskey out and the fumes were overwhelming.   The young reporter got intoxicated.*

When Daddy died the Marietta Journal had their standard obituary**.  , My mother, who was not afraid to take on The Marietta Daily Journal, or City Hall for that matter, called Bill and reamed him out for not mentioning Ed Hunter in his column. after all the tips Daddy had given him.

He quickly correctly that oversight .  In his next column he recalled the time Daddy and his men raided Aunt Fanny's Cabin in Smyrna.  It was a dry county, but Mr. Hester, the owner and manager had an "understanding" with the local officials.   To Daddy the law was the law, and if you broke it you get arrested.  He praised Ed Hunter for being an honest cop, regardless of the consequents..

Through the years I have enjoyed his columns of the history of Marietta and his boyhood adventures in  the then-small-town. One that comes to mind,  I think he had a crush on Virginia Hill, girlfriend of mobster Bugsy  Siege when she came to town to visit her mother, he and other boys would follow her riding around on her horse.

My son Rocky majored in journalism and interviewed Bill as a well known successful newspaper man.  Rocky said he was very nice, but also frail and fragile.  Along the same time I saw him in line to vote, and I concur, he did look very fragile and weak.

Several years ago I told him in an email the time his late wife Alberta gave me a pigeon and I confessed  that it had died under my care, eaten by something, and I never told her.  He replied seeing the humor in it.

I think he was very fair in his editorials, factual reporting,  editorial, and what was buzzing between elected officials.

*In case you are wondering where the still was, it was about where Walmart on South Cobb Parkway (aka South 4-Lane) just north of Terrell Mill Road.

**Which of course the obituary  left my name off as a survivor.  I was not surprised, of course they did,  Invisible People are not mentioned very much.

Benjamin at the Voting Place

Sunday Funnies!! FRONT LINE COMBAT: Desert Fox!

art by Wally Wood.

Click on each page to enlarge them to know what is going on.

Anthony

I took this picture in 1979 at our cousin Becky McLemore's wedding.

This is my first cousin Anthony Rollins.   If you went to Marietta High School you might know him as "Mole".  He is the only son of my mother's sister Opal Petty.   When I was in my mid 20s it seemed that every place I went Anthony worked there.  I walk in Riches and he was working in Men's Clothing.  I go to Thoni's Pizza, there was Anthony behind the counter.  He married Martha and they had two sons; Jonathan and Nicholas.    Unfortunately, Martha died and fortunately, he married  Patricia  Ann.  

Anthony is a retired Cobb County Deputy Sheriff.   I think his rank was Lieutenant.  He was the crime scene investigator.  On the local TV news, if there was a murder and the TV camera crews were there, you would usually see Anthony with his camera or lab tools.

Anthony and Martha loved to go to story tellers  gatherings.   He developed his own unique style of telling his own life epics  with humorous and ironic twists. 

Waterman Street School Adventures

I still have Waterman Street School on the brain after the picture the Marietta Daily Journal ran yesterday morning. 

It brought back memories.

Like for instance:

When my first grade teacher Mrs. Oliver shook me in class for something, I don't  remember what.  Mrs Oliver lived in Calhoun, Ga.  and took the bus there often.  She had to walk right by our apartment in the Clay Homes.   I remember a couple times she invited herself in and told my mother the latest no-good acts I did in class.

I remember in the second grade in Mrs. Killenbek's class in the lunch room one time Mickey Wilbur and I got into a scuffle.  Mickey smeared a little pack of honey in my hair.

In the 3rd grade Mrs. Jessie McCollum was our teacher, the wife or fiancé of future Commissioner Herbert McCollum.  I remember one time I was playing with a moth-ball, I liked the smell.  I sucked in the smell through my nose so hard the moth-ball went into the cavity of my nose.  I was so embarrassed I went hid the fact a moth ball was inside my nose.  I slipped out of the classroom into the coat room and with a pencil pried it out.

Mrs. McCollum had me sit in the hall often for cutting up in class.  I think the ideal was to sit there and when the principal made her rounds she would talk to you and get to the bottom of it.  I found out early to hide when I heard her (Mrs. Whiteheads's) high heels click down the hall.   The 3rd grade class was right beside the stairs going down into the basement to the boys bathroom, an off limits place for Mrs. Whitehead.

On one of our talks in the hall she let me know she was on to me... she said she taught my father and his brothers and stayed on to them and she would me too.... she was true to her word.

The 4th grade was first Ms. Rakestraw and she left, probably got married  and Mrs. Pool took over her class.  Ms. Rakestraw was pretty and pleasant.  Mrs Pool was like a ugly hateful witch.   I told Mama that Mrs; Pool picked on me, not knowing she would call Mrs. Whitehead.  Mrs. Whitehead and Mrs. Pool glared at me the rest of the year.

The 5th grade our teacher was Mrs. Miller. I don't remember getting into trouble  with her or anything. but one time I remember.  The Duncan Yoyo man came on campus at recess time to show off his yoyo tricks.  and I messed up his act and somebody told on me and Mrs. Miller scolded me. 

Oh me!

The 6th grade was Miss Shouse.  Elberta Shouse, before the year was out she became Mrs. Bill Kinney, Marietta Journal reporter.  One time Van Callaway pushed me against the fire escape during recess and it put a big gash in my forehead.  Elberta took me to the teacher lounge and she had me put my head on her lap, her soft thighs,  while she held ice onto my forehead and a a cloth to keep it from bleeding.  It was my first contact with the female body, and although I was in pain and bleeding I enjoyed every minute of it.  Daddy came in his police car and carried me to the Old Hospital to have Doctor Haygood put stitches  to sew up the head split.  Looking like Frankenstein for several months to a year was another good thing to come out of that.

One time Miss Shouse, or Elberta had me to walk to her boarding house for a pigeon  that somehow she saved for a storm.  She gave it to me for a pet.  I carried it home and put it locked in a little empty chicken coop we had in the backyard.  The next working there were nothing but feathers;  The bird was  probably consumed by our cat. I didn't have the heart to tell Miss Shouse that our cat ate probably ate that nice pigeon.  I lied the couple of times she asked me but then I told her it got loose and we didn't see it anymore.

That was also the year I think that us boys had pissing contests in the boy's bathroom.   Nobody could piss higher than Archie Richardson.  He could arch his back back and hold and aim his penis upward and urine would go up the wall and then to where the ceiling meets the wall.  We were all envious.

It was also the year that James the Janitor left and went to work for the Red Cross on South Avenue and his replacement was Cliff.  One time our little gang slipped into Cliff's work space in the basement, a dark room with a big furnace and a plain straight back chair.  Hidden in the shadow was a box full of comics.  We wondered if  they belonged to James or Cliff.  He must have confiscated them while cleaning up after everybody went home.  Again, we don't know who "He" was, James or Cliff. 

Sometime between the 5th and 7th grades two refuge families moved to Marietta into the Waterman Street District.  I think they both were from Poland.  They lived just  down Atlanta Street from one another.  One lived on the corner of Atlanta and Goss Streets, and the other lived a a few houses south of Crain Garage.  The kids of the family that lived south of Crain Garage quit coming to school.  One cold and rainy day Mrs. Whitehead got me out of class.  She wanted me to walk (in the rain) to the refuge family's house south of Crain's and ask them why haven't they been coming to school.  I don't know why she chose me for this errand.  Maybe it was because I was about the most unattached unofficial of Waterman Street School she could find.   I did as she asked, and no one came to the door.  I think they moved out.  I walked back and made my report, verbally, of course.

In the 7th grade Mrs. King was our teacher.  She was freshly married and good looking.  All us boys had a low grade crush on her.  She was always smiling and always making school fun, not a drudgery.  Once we had to do some creative writing as homework. .  I put it off and put it off..  Then one evening we visited my grandmother, aunt, and cousin  who lived in the Clay Homes.  Archie Richardson lived next door to them.  I visited Archie.  He had a new comicbook I had never seen before.  It was MAD Comic book.  It made fun of things.  It was a laugh a panel.  I focused in on a story illustrated by Wallace Wood, called SUPERDUPERMAN.  It had all the SUPERMAN icons and looks, but it was making SUPERMAN look like a farce.  I was immediately addicted to MAD.  But I wasn't above plagiarizing their material.  I was so impressed with the SUPERDUPERMAN I remembered every line and punch line and sat down and wrote it down on paper.  The next day we had to read the stories aloud in class.  With my story I had Mrs. King and the students rolling in the aisles with laughter.   Archie's face turned red, he knew  the real inspiration.   Mrs. King told me I was going to make a great writer someday.  I beamed with pride.

One time at night I caught a bat that was diving for bugs in front of our house below a street light.  I planned it pretty good.  I would throw a rock and the bat would dive at it.  Then, I figured if I threw a rock across the road as a car approached there was a good  chance the car would hit the bat.  I did and after several attempts a bat got hit by a car.  I thought it was dead.  I put it in a netted orange bag and carried it to school the next morning to show to Mrs. King.  The next morning  I was standing  with some other kids in front of the door of our classroom waiting for the morning bell when somebody looked down and saw the bat.  The bat was prying open the net and squeezing out... and out he flew.

Suddenly the whole school panicked.  The bat flew crazily up near the ceiling of the wide hall and kids were screaming, and Mrs. Whitehead and Cliff was chasing it with brooms swinging at it.  After it was brought down Mrs. Whitehead with a red face and trembling bent over and chewed me out good and asked hatefully was  I going to tell  my parents what a foolish thing I  did like when I told on Mrs. Pool (3 years ago) - she wasn't the type to forget and forgive.

It got where after school several school a few of us would walk downtown and hangout.  We wanted to be teenagers badly.  We were teenager wannabes.  We went to the T.A.C. above the fire station and City Hall a lot and got ran off a lot.  And we played across the street a lot in the front yard of a a female co-student named Donna LeVann.  Dona lived across the street from Mrs. Whitehead's boarding house.  One day Mrs. Whitehead walked over and said someone had just called her and said somebody left the paper drive house opened, would we go down, make sure everything is OK, and if not call the police.  She even gave us keys to the paper drive house.  We did, I think somebody just forgot to shut the door and they left.  But it made me feel good to know I was in Mrs. Whitehead's trust again.  

The Good Looking Discount

I noticed the other day my passport had expired almost a year ago.   I made a mental note the next time I had any postal window business I would talk to them about it.  Which today I did.

Bill, the window clerk, gave me some forms to fill out and told me to send them to the PassPort Office Bill asked me how long have they been expired.  "Less than a year."

Bill said the form along with a picture would be good.  He said after five years expiration and you might would have to go through the  whole process again with a birth certificate and all the other documents to prove you are you.  He said just fill out the form he gave me, a passport picture, and a check.  He turned  to the clerk Coco  beside him and asked how much do they charge to renew a passport now.

Coco said, "$110.00."

I said, $110 ?  But what if I am good looking?"

Coco said, "Good looking discount?  It doesn't  apply here."

Dali's Selfies

Salvadore Dali's Selfies

That is only a sampling of many of Dali's using his own image in his art.  Which gives reason why one might wonder if the below is a selfie too.  Notice the name below it.

Narcissus

GOBAGs Sandy's Birthday Day, Reun

Today is the National PTA FOUNDERS' DAY

Today is National PTA Founders' Day.

Mariettan Alice McLellan Birney  (1858-1907) co-founded the Parents Teachers Association (PTA)  in 1897.  There is a big memorial in front of  the Old Marietta High School, now Marietta Junior High School called the Birney Memorial in her honor.  She lived on Kennesaw Avenue.  There is a plaque in front of the house she lived in.

She was about the only claim to fame Marietta  had until Billy Joe Royal came along. 

repeat, Jan 19, 2010, GOBAGs

See, Hear, and Speak Evil

Presidents' Day

HAPPY PRESIDENTS' DAY!!    Some people would say "Every day is President's Day."  Maybe so and maybe not.  But this is the only President's Day each year you don't get your mail. 

Also,  most people would say George Washington was our first President.  However, some historians might say John Jay (1745-1829) was our first President.  He was President when George Washington was being a General of the Continental Army.  John Jay was the President of the Continental Congress, from 1778 to 1779.   However he was the 5th Continental Congress President, I have no idea why non of first four was considered. as first. 

John Jay was also the first  Chief Justice (1789-1795).

Remember, no mail today, but there will be President's White Sales and probably new cars Presidential sales too.

Ole Donald Bruno Lash Where Arth Thou?

Don in Times Square\

Don with Empire State Building looming behind him

The other day on facebook I mentioned my old Navy buddy Don Lash, or Donald Bruno Lash (for Google purposes). 

Another Navy friend saw it and asked me what happened to Don.  I wrote back and said I have a  feeling he died.  But I could be wrong... hopefully, I am.

After Don got out of the Navy, which  was two weeks after I got out, he went back home to Chicago and was rehired by the Chicago Tribune.  For years he kept me with a free Chicago Tribune subscription.

For the next  eleven years or so after we left active duty we continued our friendship..  He drove to Florida every year to visit his grandmother.  He would always drop back and forth and spent a couple of days.  And I went several times to visit him in Chicago and we drove to Minneapolis to visit Sam Kasuske, another Navy friend.

 Don went back to college, got his degree in communications and in the long run became a professor  tenured at the University of Illinois..

About 1976 we quit communicating over some minor disagreement and haven't heard from each other since.

In 2001, around Labor Day, about a week before 9/11 Anna and I flew to Chicago for a week.  Anna was there for a work related conference.  I was there to wander around the big city.  Our hotel room  had a Chicago phone book and I looked up Lash.  Don's brother Michael lived in their parents' house on Troy Street.   I was tempted to call, but didn't.  And regretted not doing so. 

Don at Guggenheim Museum, NYC

Don with my two cousins in Carmel, NY, at my uncle Royi's house

Don showing off his black eye a Marine gave him at the E.M. Club

I and Don posing with statue at Philadelphia Art Museum

Don posing of being dead on the ground outside HU-4 Barracks, NAS Lakehurst, NJ

Joe Rexroad and Don looking at Hudson River at Hyde Park, NY (Roosevelt Mansion)

Dick Hyatt, Don, and Ray Shultz at Fountain at Plaza Hotel, NYC