October 31st is a special day for me. It marks the 50th Anniversary of the day I shed my green costume for a life of blue jeans and t-shirts. It’s hard to believe, where did the time go?
I never thought that the day I got on the train in Minneapolis, September 14, 1956, that I was going to take a twenty-year trip around the world, stopping off at a few places to spend some time. I had never been out of Minnesota, not even to Hudson, Wisconsin, twenty miles from where I lived my early life.
I’ve mentioned before how and why I left the comfort of home cooking with Mom, and Dad keeping my clunker cars running.
Nonetheless, I had made the two-year commitment. That first day headed for Fort Chaffee was frightening. The unknown, the concerns of not measuring up, not meeting the expectations, preyed on my mind.
Fortunately, I had convinced my older brother to take the pledge as well. That gave me some confidence and reassurance. On the other hand, in the back of my mind, was the competitiveness we had grown up with. As it turned out, since we’d been in the National Guard, we both were selected as trainee platoon sergeants in the same basic training company. Bill was 1st Platoon, I was 2nd Platoon. Thus was the start of an adventure I’d never thought about before.
We both went off to Supply School, though at different locations.
As a result we parted ways and on to our next assignments. I ended up in Sacramento in a Signal Maintenance unit. During my short stay the tech guys had made an impression on me. They had all been to long schools and knew all kinds of stuff like radio, radar, and teletype. I was a supply clerk in the supply room. I was bored and volunteered for Korea, with Germany as my second choice.
Of course I ended up in Germany. I had a variety of jobs, including about three weeks of pool table leveling in the Day Room. There were about four pool tables, my assistant and I spent a lot of time ensuring they were level enough for the troops to use.
Time passed, as it always does, and I returned to the US and back home. It wasn’t the same. My buddies were gone, the local girls had gotten married or were off at college. I felt out of place. I was missing something. My brother was back as well and after a few days we visited the unemployment office, which was directly across the street from the Army recruiter.
I already had a plan in mind. I would talk to the Army guys, I knew I wanted to go to a long school, to be one of the techies. I would see what they could offer. After some discussion with the recruiter we came up with some choices. The longest school was crypto equipment repair. I decided that was to be my first choice. Second choice was microwave equipment repair, third was radar.
My brother was married and had two little kids, so he decided to skip this round.
First though, I had to take a test at Fort Sheridan to determine my abilities. The recruiter got busy, a few days later I took the test, and a week or so later got orders for Fort Monmouth, to go to Microwave Equipment Repair School. I had been out of the army for about five weeks. This time I was not apprehensive, though I knew not what to expect I was prepared.
A year later I’d graduated and moved on to France.
[To be continued…]
Currahee Fourscore!
Jealous you got to be stationed outside of the U.S.
Thanks, Fourscore – looking forward to the next chapter and appreciate the great photos and willingness to share your story!
Those high water pants are something else.
High water pants are too short for your legs.
His were awfully high-waisted though.
The onion on the belt is missing. That was the style at the time.
See, I thought the overalls-and-tie combo was the real sartorial statement.
Ron. I always thought that was in reference to pants that looked like a pair of waders.
My father has similar photos collected in a manilla folder.
He only did the minimum to get his GI Bill, and then got out and started a family (kinnath’s origin story).
Excellent question, I retred from the Marines 10 1/2 years ago, but it doesn’t seem more than 4 years.
The Army knew where to put the office, were all the branches co-located?
*retired* not retred
I’m army tired.
They were co-located, maybe it was a repurposed armory, I can’t remember.
Yeah. The time since 9/11 feels like an alternate universe where the time passes at warp speed.
That was like a couple years ago, right?
People years or Obama years?
Doin’ right ain’t got no end
Garcia highlighted millions of pages of documents that he said the Justice Department is illegally withholding, and called out Attorney General Todd Blanche for not testifying before the committee “about his role in the largest government cover-up of the modern era.”
“We intend to hold real public hearings uplifting survivors and asking tough questions of the powerful men who associated with Epstein, including [President] Donald Trump,” Garcia said. “Our work is just getting started.”
They will beat this bloated festering dead horse in perpetuity.
They owe it to the survivors of the horrific luxury lifestyle they entered into voluntarily.
Democrats will learn that Trumpenfurher is guilty even if they have to write the evidence themselves!
And, those brave survivors don’t want to provide names – they (and their lawyer handlers) just want be shown a hint of greenbacks from any potential rich name they can exploit.
The last named survivor ended up as a suicide.
They gal was 100% in on whatever dirty things happened Gustave. She played the fake victim card to the end
And/or ignore it as whatever the current Narrative demands.
That mischievous grin, Fourscore still has it.
“And the clocks and calendars going rolling along!” 🎶
Good news, everyone! One of our IT guys just told us that Microsoft Outlook is “broken,” though only across North and South America. If you don’t use Outlook, at least you can enjoy the fact that you’ll probably be getting a lot fewer emails for a while.
Nope – AI assures me this is false, and AI is the source of all knowledge 🙂
Thanks for sharing this update – my husband has been rebooting and complaining for the last hour because his email isn’t working.
My internet is blocked and I can’t check the Cal score on my work machine.
For the record, I’m a UCLA fan now. I might need the score tomorrow night.
I’ve been battling HR for months to remove pictures of my signature, Driver’s License, and passport from the cloud:
https://www.flyingmag.com/cirrus-aircraft-data-breach-personal-information/
Thanks, fuckers.
*I haven’t been notified yet that my data is out there.
Unfortunately, Teams still seems to be working, dammit. 😒
I had seen the effect at work, which makes it a little hard to do some things, since a lot of my communication is via email.
Same.
Same same. I just got pinged from a tester that my website isn’t sending an email (actually, it opens your email client and is supposed to send from there). Since I’m vibe coding this thing I don’t know how to do it better.
Why not just throw an SMTP call to the appropriate gateway?
I seem to remember reading it’s blocked in our Blazor/k8s/etc. setup.
It’s gotta be possible but I don’t have time to learn it yet. This is an AI-created migration from another platform that the company doesn’t want to pay for anymore and the insurance program that it supports is already at end of life. I’m not wasting any more time on this goddamn thing. It’s been six months and the site gets like two claims a year while it’s winding down.
I suggested, “Why don’t we just handle them manually?”
My boss was like that would be great but I guess that stupid idea was rejected higher up. 🙄
It’s more than that. All 365 apps are affected. Woohoo!
To tie this back to the article, this is one thing FourScore is not missing out on.
Ah, so that’s what the red exclamation point is about. Oh well.
Microsoft has been broken since the late 90s.
Hegseth is a drunk and a louse and poor taste in tattoos but he’s the Donald Trump of SecDefs.
https://x.com/secwar/status/2120901801281044969
I forget why the hive mind is so suddenly bent on removing him.
1) claim a Trump scalp
2) anti DEI and leftist skinsuiting of the DOD/WD
3) gores sacred cows, wildcard that threatens the stars to jackpot pipeline
4) may block purported color revolution antics here
5) rabidly pro American and pro warfighter, and if not sincere, at least knows how to do so in public
#4 seems particularly relevant and the main reason now that I recall being mentioned elsewhere.
Because the left needs Trump (see: most recent election).
Plus Hegseth is an easier scalp than Donald + JD.
Made my day – I read the story yesterday about the guard speaking-out at the tomb – and job well-done!
“We love standards”
Those guys look like they could use some beards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cake#Japanese_metaphor
“unsold Christmas cake” – I need to remember that phrase.
So we’ve been having problems with one of the neighbors letting their dogs run into our yard for a while. Wifey finally okayed starting the fencing process. First step was getting a surveyor out to see where the property line is. Ever since the stakes went in, the neighbors that couldn’t control their dogs suddenly were able to do so. Not counting on this to last but sure has been nice. And wifey hasn’t been stressed out by the dog show.
We had a similar problem. Lost a couple chickens to it. I talked to them, I had a sheriff’s deputy talk to them (reluctantly, but I wanted it on the record because of my next step), and I had my pellet gun talk to their dogs.
Finally they decided to put up fencing after a couple dogs came home with injuries and the sounds of my conspicuous practice with the .22 hinted at the next escalation. I’ve seen the dogs on my property exactly once in the 6 months since then, and I think it was a legit “slipped out the gate” accident.
I don’t like shooting dogs, but if it’s between their dogs and my chickens on my land, the dogs lose that battle.
I just don’t get the mindset behind some dog owners. If it got back to me that my dog was out there being obnoxious to one of my neighbors, a fence would go up the next weekend. As it is, she has a gps collar to keep her on property because it’s pointless to have a livestock dog if she’s a quarter mile away doing dog things.
Since the Feds made ‘animal cruelty’ a felony shooting a dangerous dog makes you the bad guy. Such a shit law.
My neighbors with the lose stacking dogs, trespassing chickens and crazy lights told me that “you need to get blackout drapes.”
Here is hoping he gets an assault charge for his dogs attacking the third person in the neighborhood on Monday and all four of them get put down.
Had a similar deal and had to put up a fence. So I paid for the fence and the neighbor got a free fence. And in my township, you are required to put the nice side toward the neighbor if you put up a wood privacy fence.
“had never been out of Minnesota”
Shortly after high school, one of my friends mentioned that he had never been out of state. We drove to Mexico that day.
When I worked for a CA based company I had some coworkers that had never been out of the state and viewed it as a badge of honor.
Coming from NJ I don’t think it’s possible to have not left the state for many reasons.
Well, CA is like a country unto itself.
All the more reason to reduce CA to territorial status, remove the residents citizenship, and place them under external administration until such time as they learn to stop voting themselves free shit.
Same for any other polity that wanders down that path.
Growing up in Rochester I had never left NY except to visit family in PA once and for a handful of vacations in NJ. Oh, and a year in Germany lol. I guess I got around a little.
Yeah. I drove NYC to the cape. 5 states in under 5 hours.
I’ve never been in 3 counties in this state.
I’ve never lived more than 40 miles from where I was born/hatched. But have managed to visit all 50 states and about 25 foreign countries.
My parents moved around quite a bit when I was growing. Started in Iowa then moved to Milwaukee then moved back to Iowa. Later, we moved to Atlanta, then Chattanooga, and then back to Iowa. After high school, I moved to Atlanta, and then back to Iowa. After college, I moved to Phoenix, and then back to Iowa.
Been for 34 years now. I don’t expect to move again.
LOL always back to Iowa.
70 percent of Iowa residents were born here. I seem to recall it was much higher than that in the past.
Don’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned it, but I was born and raised in Sioux City, IA. Dad moved us 18 miles away into rural SD, then I came to Michigan to attend MSU. Hadn’t been back to Sioux City until my 40 year high school reunion.
Goin back to
CaliI-wahGoin back to
CaliI-wahSioux City’s airport code says it all.
We had a surprising number of graduating seniors choose Iowa colleges this past year.
With my engineering work history, I could to choose to live and work almost anywhere on the globe.
And yet, I choose to be in Iowa. It’s a tragic character flaw that my children suffered for.
“Sioux City’s airport code”
*tap tap tap*
LOL
RAH — yes, yes it does.
There were about four pool tables, my assistant and I spent a lot of time ensuring they were level enough for the troops to use.
It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.
Some jerk took a crap in one of the day room pool table pockets and then the pool tables went away. So much for having CQ sitting 40’ away from them.
Thanks for the article Fourscore. I look forward to the next parts.
Dude.
Only three? I bet there’s more.
That’s called multi-core processing.
He’s a “bit of a lad” as the Brits would say.
Guy is in his 60’s and worth ungodly amounts of money. One of my first thoughts was I’m sure she wasn’t the first and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if the wife knows he steps out.
Like Hillary.
Many people if not most people are only as loyal as their options. And billionaires have lots of options. And the women from the wife to the mistress aren’t naive about it either.
“Jensen Huang had an intimate relationship with yet another Nvidia employee before stepping down”
DON’T FISH IN THE COMPANY POND
That’s a guaranteed payout in California.
Browsing on google news, I saw this headline: Gunman dead after killing 1 and injuring four in shooting . . . . .
That has got to be the clearest, most concise headline I’ve seen in ages. Who let that editor get near a keyboard?