A New Greatest Generation

My father joined the Army in October of 1941, and served as a Combat Medic with the 7th Infantry Division in the Pacific.  He took part in the re-taking of Attu & Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, was there during the invasion of Kwajalein Atoll as well as a number of smaller places that never made the news, and ended up in the Philippines for the invasion of Leyte.  He was wounded there and made his way home by a very circuitous route which involved stops in numerous military hospitals.  He never talked about his war.  As a child, I once asked how he had gotten all of his scars, and he joked he had been offered a choice of digging foxholes or going on a patrol.  While on that patrol in front of his own lines, someone dropped a mortar round behind him.  Today it would be called "friendly fire".

My father-in-law was a navigator in the 525th Bombardment Squadron, 379th Bombardment Group(Heavy) at Kimbolton, England during World War II.  It wasn't until late in his life he began to recount some stories of his time there, and most of what he shared was more lighthearted than serious.  His B-17(g) was named "London Avenger" and was paid for with pennies donated by schoolchildren in England and christened by the Queen.  He and his crew members were more than a little disappointed because they had wanted to be able to design & paint their own risque nose art, but couldn't because of the political implications.  Only when reading through his matter-of-fact recounting of the 35 missions he flew do you begin to get an idea of what he endured for his country and the world. 

 My mother's second husband joined the Marines as soon as he was old enough, and since it was late in the war, passed through basic and advanced infantry training rapidly.  He spent some very memorable time training and practicing amphibious assaults on Maui with the 4th Marines before heading out to his first real combat.  He made it ashore on a little island named Iwo Jima, and lasted almost half of his first day before having a chunk of oriental metal try to take off his head.  He spent a great deal of time recovering in Pearl Harbor, San Diego and other Navy Hospitals, but was finally able to stand after more than a year.  He experienced neurological difficulties, pain and muscle weakness for the rest of his life, but he still lived that life to the fullest.

These three men and their lives were my personal reminders of the selfless contributions made by what has become known as "The Greatest Generation."  The war they were willing to give their lives in winning has been referred to as the last "good" war, meaning most people understood why our country was fighting, knew who our enemies were, and supported those soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who were actively engaged in the conflict. 

Today we are engaged in a conflict which is spanning our world.  This war, for there is no other word for it, doesn't have the support of the American people, who are divided, based more on their political leanings than any critical thinking.  People get tangled up in the politics, and try to blame one politician or the other, but it is OUR war and it affects us all, like it or not. Those who try to characterize it as a "good" war or a "bad" war are complete fools! There are no good wars, only necessary ones which we wish we didn't have to fight. That's one of the first things most soldiers learn...the only good war is the one they don't have to fight, because they are the ones who pay the price.

Yesterday we learned that yet another soldier had paid that ultimate price in Afghanistan as a result of an encounter with an improvised explosive device.  This was a hometown boy the age of my daughters.  He won an appointment to West Point out of high school, graduating and going on to become an Army Ranger, then into Special Forces and earned the right to wear the Green Beret.  This month of July has the dubious distinction of having the greatest number of casualties since we entered the country nine years ago.

These brave young men and women who are going in harm's way every day on our behalf are the ones who need and deserve whatever comfort & support we can provide.  Those residents of our country(I can't call them citizens) who refuse to support their troops because they don't agree with the politics of someone they blame for starting this war; for not waging it the way they want; or for not ending it as quickly as they'd like, need to engage in some personal soul-searching.  If you must, play political games with your own life, but give these brave warriors what they need to do our country's bidding and then let them do their job.

Veterans' Benefits

People who are acquainted with me know if they want to start a spirited "discussion", all they have to do is say something about the cushy benefits veterans are "given" at taxpayer expense.  After my retirement from the Army, I quickly found I needed to maintain full time employment as long as I was interested in luxuries such as regular meals and indoor plumbing.  I discovered once I was on the outside of the military healthcare system, access became more difficult and more frustrating as those care providers I had served with left because of their own retirements or PCS moves.  Within a very few years, I had to find other health insurance, and what the military provided served only as a secondary source of coverage.

With this as background, I was pleasantly surprised by a benefit the state of Texas affords some of its veterans.  In recent years, specialty license plates have become a popular means for states to raise revenue.  Charities and colleges each have their special plate advertising their cause or team for a price.  I knew that Texas, at little or no cost, provided some of these plates to select groups of deserving individuals, such as winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor and those who earned a Purple Heart. 

About a year ago, I was driving around FT Hood and spotted a plate I had not seen before...one with an image of a Legion of Merit medal emblazoned upon it.  I checked the TxDMV website, and sure enough, if I was willing to fill out some paperwork and find a copy of my DD214, a set of plates with what my Lovely Bride calls my "pretty medal" could be mine.  There was something about paying registration fees, so I assumed I would have to pay my usual annual fee for the privilege of using these nifty reminders of my military service.  Last week the anniversary of my getting these plates was approaching, so I was not surprised to receive a renewal notice in the mail one day.  On opening the notice, I was startled to see there was no renewal fee listed.  The next time I was in town, I found my way into the county tax office to try to rectify whatever error had been made, only to be told that there was no error...there really was no annual renewal fee for holders of the Legion of Merit.

Revisiting the TxDMV website revealed that there are a large number of plates available, allowing almost all veterans to demonstrate pride in their service to their country.  Some are completely free, some have a one time charge for acquiring the plates, and others have an annual fee on top of the annual registration fee.  What they all do is convey the message that you have honorably served your country and are proud of having done it!

 Texas DMV Military & Veteran License Plates

To those who have sacrificed...

On this Memorial Day, as we remember the sacrifices of soldiers on our behalf, I want to remember and thank another group who have made sacrifices.  I want to thank my family...my wife who followed me everywhere without question; and my three beautiful daughters who were repeatedly pulled out of school and away from friends to move across oceans and continents. They went to bed each night knowing of the packed bag sitting in the corner, never sure if Daddy would be there in the morning.  Thank you all for your love and support...I could not have made it without you.

Naruna Update

  Anyone who complains of Texas weather being boring, obviously isn't paying very good attention.  It is an often stated "fact" that Texas has only two seasons...Summer and Not Summer.  This is close to being true many years, but there are always those bumps in the graphs which make our lives interesting.
  Last summer passed with records being set for the number of days over 100 degrees, and many of those days set records on their own, with temps of 105-107 and above becoming commonplace.  Surface water dried up, wells faltered, and what grass was left turned to powder and blew away.  As with most hot, dry spells, the summer eventually came to an end.  Instead of the more common deluges and floods we see here in the Hill Country, it ended with a series of small, repeated rounds of rain throughout the fall and into the winter.  Stock tanks filled, low water crossings actually were, and everything took on a greenish hue(often associated with mildew!)   Then, unusually cold weather caused a lot of record utility bills throughout the winter!
  Warm weather came early in the spring, with lots of fruit trees setting buds sooner than most of us wanted to see.  Fortunately, we escaped any late hard freezes which would have affected the fruit.  Now it is the middle of May, and we are enjoying an unseasonably cool spell, with temps in the mid 60s.  Today dawned cool, gray and drippy and is only now beginning to get into the low 70s.  If you still don't believe that our weather affects us all, just drop by Naruna and we can compare electric bills...the one I paid yesterday was almost $350.00 less than what we were seeing in January & February.

Family (re)Connections

In years gone by, families stayed close together. Sons grew up working the land, and either stayed on the home place helping out their parents, or moved onto a piece of property not far removed as they started their own family.  Extended family might be scattered over a couple of counties, but generally weren't too far apart.  With the demands imposed by an agricultural lifestyle (long before there was such a word!), those extended family groups didn't have many opportunities to gather.  Family reunions provided a chance for the family to come together, visit and catch up on the happenings in each other's households, cousins to play together & become reacquainted, and for everyone to sample the special dishes that each housewife was proudest of.

My own family was no different.  Most of the different branches of our clan moved from the Carolinas to Texas sometime in the second half of the 19th century.  It was not one smooth movement, and there were obstacles to overcome along the way.  One such impediment was the War of Northern Aggression which found relatives scattered from Alabama to Louisiana, and on into Texas.  As the family groups trickled into Texas, they settled in the area around Brenham, Chappel Hill, Kenney, and Waller County.  As the families grew and spread, annual reunions, scheduled around the planting and harvesting of crops, were a way to keep up with how everybody was doing.

Fast forwarding to today, much of the world has changed.  For many of us, we are no longer bound to the soil, and have left behind that relative comfort & safety we once experienced when living close to kin.  We have spread, sometimes across continents, and in our high speed world, the idea of "going home" for the purpose of "catching up" and renewing relationships is foreign to us.  We connect instantly via our many electronic toys, and fail to see the need to sit down with each other.  If you don't believe this, corner a teenager and try to have a conversation.

This past weekend, I began the process of trying to undo the last 45 or so years I had neglected those family ties.  College, marriage, children, the army & work had all provided excuses for not being able to attend reunions.  I appeared in Brenham at Fireman's Park with my Lovely Bride in tow, with a cooler full of lemonade, pasta salad & buttermilk pie.  The turn out was light, with most present my age or older, but we were made to feel welcome, especially since we were the first actual "Haleys" to attend the Haley Reunion in many years.  Old photo albums were scrutinized, genealogy charts were reviewed and updated, and friendships begun or renewed.  A sense of excitement could be felt as plans were put in place for next year's gathering.

Sunday morning found us driving out to the rural section of Waller County where I was born and raised.  This was a different group, with most of the attendees still living in the same region.  We were the ones driving the farthest, from our home in the Hill Country, to attend this gathering of a different branch of the family, the Bells.  It was a much more diverse group age wise than we found on Saturday.  Here were the groups of kids playing together, older relatives holding court from their lawn chairs and those in-betweeners circulating from one picnic table to the next, catching up on each other's lives.  I found cousins I went to school with back in the dark ages.  Back then, all we knew was we were related somehow.  With the assemblage of historical knowledge and a couple of books of family trees, we were able to plot out more exactly what is our kinship.


As I sat and listened to these cousins talking, I felt immediately comfortable and at home.  The conversation, whenever we weren't discussing relatives, kept going back to agriculture and their relationship with the land.  Only after listening for awhile was I struck by the difference that a couple hundred miles can make.  In Naruna, everyone has been very thankful for our wet winter and most are very happy with our water status...stock tanks are full, no wells are going dry, and the pastures are green with forage.  In Monaville, the total annual rainfall is much greater, but with corn planted and up, everybody was worried about "the drought" and how it would affect those crops which were in the ground if rain didn't come soon.  When you depend on the land for your livelihood, it's all about timing. 

I'm already making plans for next year, and my kids don't know it yet, but they are included in those plans.  I realized that this was something I missed over the years without knowing it, and enjoyed the chance to rebuild those all important connections with family.  My children have never had the opportunity to form those bonds or to even realize they have an extended family out there waiting to meet and welcome them.

Oliver

Oliver was a cat we weren't supposed to have.  His mother was a stray who just appeared one day and made herself at home on our rather remote place in the country.  Between her frequent roamings and our procrastination, she delivered a litter of kittens before we could get her to our local vet.  Most were quickly given away one summer's day while we held a garage sale.  The little white one was spoken for, but the family was on the way to town and asked if we could hold him until they returned.  Mysteriously, they never came back, and so we ended up with two new cats, Oliver and his slightly demented sister, Tizzie.

Oliver displayed a remarkable propensity for getting into trouble, always being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Neighbors would tell us of him showing up in their live traps on occasion.  He also seemed to delight in taunting our dogs, since they were frequently shut up in their pen, while he got to wander freely about Naruna.  One day he got carried away in his desire to rub the dogs' noses in his relative freedom, and ran into their pen when the gate was opened!  Needless to say, the dogs exacted their revenge upon the annoying pussycat.  After a quick trip to a kitty orthopedic specialist in Temple and a week long stay in the feline rehab center, a much subdued Oliver returned to Naruna.  He regained his physical abilities with few limitations, but he was a changed cat.  His sister, Tizzie, would have nothing to do with him since he apparently didn't smell like her little brother anymore. 

After this traumatic experience, Oliver became more of a Momma's boy, seeming to spend more and more time with Susan.  Even after recovering fully, he spent much of his time curled up in her lap or on the sofa next to her.  Over time, he gradually began to roam farther afield and act more like his old self.  He would prowl the neighboring pastures and frequently bring "presents" home to Susan.  As the years passed, Susan and Oliver were a fixture, snoozing on their end of the couch in a patch of afternoon sun.

When we returned home late one night from a trip about a month ago, Tizzie was waiting, demanding attention and food.  Oliver didn't make an appearance immediately which wasn't unusual, but the next morning, he still was not home.  Calls to neighbors were fruitless, and no one at the church across the road had seen him.  With time passing, hope ebbed, and now after being absent for more than a month, we are forced to face the reality that Oliver is gone.  This is definitely harder than losing previous pets, where we knew what happened to them and frequently sat with them in their last hours. 

Not knowing.

Over Stimulation!

Personally, I favor a more leisurely approach to life, but our goverment has put in place deadlines for us to submit our calculations of what we think we should pay for the privilege of living in this great land.  Whether we are in agreement with how those taxes are spent is completely immaterial...our responsibility is to pay.  Then we pray that the people who were so convincing before the last election remember what they promised when they asked for our support and our votes.  Sometimes, those elected representatives actually remember and try to follow through on those promises...but we still pay.

This past year saw more versions of the truth than had been floated in many a day.  It seemed that everyone in Washington knew exactly what we needed, as opposed to what we thought we wanted.  One particularly ambitious scheme was a plan to disperse free money to ordinary citizens to stimulate the economy.  The particulars of this operation were a little fuzzy, few knew how it would be implemented, and fewer understood how giving small pots of money to individual citizens was supposed to jump-start our national economy.  Numerous mailings(paid for by us taxpayers) from different agencies announced that - much like Ed McMahon's sweepstakes - we were already winners and should soon receive our fair share of the bounty.

After a few months with no knock on the door and no check in the mail, I decided that I must have been one of the unlucky few who didn't qualify because of too much income, voting in the wrong primary, or some such detail.  The year passed and a new year dawned with a new set of tax deadlines.  Like many these days, I went to my local electronics emporium, and purchased software which takes most of the thinking out of tax preparation.  As information arrived from employers, banks and mortgage companies, I dutifully entered the data and watched the everchanging tally of how much more I owed big brother.  Finally, the flow of information  slowed and then stopped, and I saw that I did indeed owe our benevolent federal government another $110.  I have heard rumors that some people actually expect to get money back from the Infernal Revenue Syndicate each year, but I was excited to only owe that small additional amount.

The computer clicked and whirred as it checked all the data and recalculated the calculations, and proudly announced that all was well and it was time to send my return off into the ether of the Internet.  Only the push of a button was needed to send it on its way.  I sat in front of the screen, happy and satisified that this annual duty was completed and with no great additional financial trauma.  Suddenly, the computer bleeped and blooped and a message flashed on the screen that my return was REJECTED by the IRS!  Instantly, my stomach dropped and my brow became beaded with sweat as I frantically clicked on this message of doom.  Fortunately, the tax software knew just what to do and I quickly discovered the Feds had indeed sent me an Economic Stimulus Payment.  It was slipped into disability payments I received from the VA and had been spread out so it wasn't really noticeable.  No standard form proclaiming this payment was received, and it was only the IRS who seemed to know that I had gotten $250 more than I thought. 

Of course, the ultimate indication of how great the economic impact of this so-called Stimulus money was when I added it to my return.  Increasing the total income by $250 caused an increase of additional tax owed of exactly $250!  The government giveth and the government taketh away!  I'm not sure I can stand to be stimulated any more!