Wimpy and Congress

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Those favored few, by this I mean those born the same year I was or earlier who are still alive, will remember the adventures of Popeye and his rotund, pompous and ineffectual companion, J. Wellington Wimpy. Wimpy’s usual line was, “For a hamburger today, I’ll mow your lawn tomorrow.” The hamburger was always eaten. The lawn was never mowed.

Does this, by any chance, make anyone think of our federal Congress?

The most obvious parallel is the current immigration bill. We are being promised a secure border if only we accept those who have previously entered the country illegally as legal. Haven’t we heard this before? Where is the security of our border that has been promised? As Wimpy, pardon me Congress and President Bush say, for a hamburger today, I’ll mow your grass tomorrow. But that has been said before, hasn’t it? Several times.

President Bush is adamant that we must secure the borders of Iraq, keeping undesirables from entering the country illegally, but he doesn’t seem to care about invaders of our nation. The only border security case I have heard of recently is that of two border agents who chased and shot at, wounding, a drug peddler who was crossing the border illegally. Our federal government, protecting our rights, gave the drug peddler immunity and sent the two agents defending our border to jail.

Those agents broke the law when they failed to complete paperwork. Horrible crime. The first agent who sees the Mexican army crossing the border to protect the rights of those Mexican citizens rioting and waving Mexican flags in cities such as Austin, Los Angeles and Phoenix should immediately go to his office, fill out the necessary report and mail it to Washington before undertaking any other action.

But Bush’s inanities are trivial – except to the two border agents in prison – compared to those of our Demoronic Congress. When Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House she promised great happenings in the first week. They happened. She threw a party to celebrate her election that would have been envied by the Emperors of ancient Rome. Then she usurped the administrative powers by paying a visit to sworn enemies of the United States, including the leaders of Syria, who are busy supporting terrorists attacking the people of Iraq and our troops who are trying to help stabilize the country. I suppose she promised them her friendship and support.

For once I’m not alone in my opinion of Congress. In a hilarious article, “That Wacky Fourteen Percent,” (Townhall.com; Friday, June 22, 2007) Jon Sanders compares the percentage of the population that believes in Congress with numerous other polls. Would you believe polls show a higher percentage of people believe Elvis is alive than trust Congress? Unfortunately, like much good humor, there is an underlying sadness.

Incidentally, has anyone in the federal bureaucracy noticed or cared that some of our cities, San Francisco for one, have declared themselves independent of federal law. They have no intention of arresting or deporting illegal immigrants. Isn’t there a law against a city’s or state’s repudiation of federal law? Didn’t we fight a civil war about this? If it is legal for them to declare independence of the United States, shouldn’t we, at the very least, stop giving them federal welfare money?

(I feel the same way about universities that deny the American government the right to have ROTC units on campus or to permit the military to recruit on campus. Any school that does that should have all tax exemptions and federal grant funds frozen. Immediately.)

But let us return to reality, to that which is in our power as citizens: we have a Wimpy Congress and a Wimpy administration. Thank goodness the President will change although currently announced candidates for the presidency offer little hope for improvement, but Congress needs changing also. Badly.

                                                              Abused Wives

By

William D. Dannenmaier

During the years that I was employed: as a teacher, psychologist and researcher as well as for some time following retirement, I donated time, as a volunteer, to varied agencies. Sometimes this was on an ad hoc basis, as was the semester I spent an hour each morning in a class for mentally retarded children or the semester I worked as an aide, one hour a day, in a class for the emotionally disturbed. There was one stretch of six years when it was a minimum of a half day a week in a mental health clinic working, as a psychologist, with court referrals and persons recently discharged from mental hospitals. This was followed by half days for five years donated to social work agencies.

I didn’t do this out of any great charitable feeling, it was entirely in self interest. I taught psychological testing and mental health and had become convinced from reading professional journals and text books that professors lost track of reality after a while. I didn’t want that to happen to me, so I tried to keep in touch with the people I was telling others how to test and counsel. I also learned a lot.

One thing I discovered was the wisdom of Dr. Sullivan, a respected expert on schizophrenia in the 1950s and 60s. He argued that each of these most difficult and disoriented of people have a rational to their behavior. To be successful, a psychologist or psychiatrist must first understand their client’s reasoning. Then, by entering his or her system of logic, he can help them. I found this to be true of all people with whom I worked. To be successful, I had to understand their thinking.

A second learning was that sometimes society views the wrong aspect of a problem. This was the case with my child abusing wives. A volunteer task with one agency included doing group counseling with about twenty women who had been convicted of abusing their children. For some weeks, perhaps months, it was the type of group session one sees in movies: we were getting to know one another and talking about children. Nothing much was happening. Then, one week, a break-through occurred.

A member came in with a black eye. In answer to my query, she said her husband had hit her. Another member of the group, a woman who would have made a good offensive tackle on a professional football team spoke up. “No one would do that to me! You should walk out.” The others murmured their agreement.

That was the last thing I wanted, a woman with three children walking out, with children, on a moment’s notice. “Wait a second,” I said, “if you walk out, where will you eat tonight? Where will you sleep?”

The conversation stopped and the woman thought for a minute, “I have a friend down in Florida.” (This was in Tennessee.)

“Do you know the address?”

“No.”

“The city?”

“No.”

“Before you leave, you had better have a place to go.” Then, curious, I went to the group as a whole and asked each one if she had ever been abused by her husband. Except for my tackle, every woman said, “Yes.” My women were not only convicted child abusers, they were battered wives also.

I thought that over for a minute and then said, “I don’t blame your husbands. You are probably lousy wives.”

That got their attention, so I want on.

“I don’t know anyone, doing any job, who does their best year after year when they believe that it is the only thing they can do, they have no choice. Do you? It’s like being in prison.”

They all agreed. They were not as good as they could be as homemakers: mothers or wives. So then came my next questions, “If you had to leave, where would you go and where would you stay?” Not one had an answer.

From that point, the next steps were to identify what each would like to do if she had to work and how she could go about it. I’ve forgotten most of those answers, but one wanted to know how to apply for a job at a factory. Three wanted to be nurses’ aides. We went into a vocational counseling mode, helping each to get started on what they wanted to do.

The meeting before the night that the three who wanted to be nurses’ aides were to begin class, I suggested that they prepare a special meal and dessert, something the husband was particularly fond of, for him to serve when they left. The goal was to make it a special night for the husbands and children as well as for the wife. (A campus feminist criticized me for this, saying the wife shouldn’t have to. Possibly not, but I wanted the husband as well as the wife looking forward to those nights.)

Of interest, surprising to me and to the women, was the response of the husbands as the wives began to prepare themselves to enter the world of work if necessary. Every woman reported her husband was delighted and supportive. After the fact, it made sense. Not only were the women frustrated by being tied to one single job, the men were frustrated also. As the only “bread earner” in the family, they were in a similar trap to their wives.

The week my nurses’ aides graduated, I went to the director of the agency and said some of the women were ready to move on. They no longer needed their group therapy.

“We can’t have that,” she replied, “our funding depends on how many we have.”

The director wanted them to stay sick! The vocational rehabilitation agencies are the only state or federal agencies that receive state funds for those they cure! I learned more than I wanted. That was the week I quit volunteering at that state welfare agency.

Incidentally, during the more than a year I worked with these women on helping them to be able to stand on their own feet, there was not a single incident of “child abuse” or “wife abuse.” We had been looking at the wrong problem.

Stray Thoughts

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Recently my pastor, Dr. Roddy, quoted, “Memories are much like buckets without bottoms, nothing stays in very long.” I liked the quote, but prefer the idea that they are semi-permeable membranes, permitting us to forget all of our misdeeds and mistakes while keeping memories of our triumphs. For some of us this means that we have remarkably few memories.

All columnists have written on illegal immigrants recently, I bow to the inevitable. Reagan began it by legalizing about a million or so when he was president, Clinton  continued the process when he feared he might lose the presidency and now they are saying there are 15 million more who need to be legalized. In another seven or eight years there will be 15 million more. The next step will be for Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Texas to vote to secede and join Mexico. It seems only fair. We stole those states from Mexico in the first place.

The usual excuse is that there are too many to arrest and deport. Great argument. In every state I’ve lived in or driven through I’ve seen people, millions of them, disobeying the speed laws. If you can’t punish all of them, why discriminate against a few? Similarly, there are many more people committing rape and child molestation crimes than are ever caught. Since we can’t catch them all, why discriminate against the few?

What a great country we are! We ignore criminals, illegal aliens are breaking the law. We make them legal and then immediately admit them to affirmative action programs as a depraved – wrong word, it’s congress that’s depraved – deprived minority. What other nation takes foreigners who have broken their laws and gives them priority in jobs and schools over citizens who have obeyed the laws?

Paris Hilton has never interested me, but the time and energy the media spend on a woman who can’t act, is not particularly attractive, gives no evidence of intelligence and has the morals of an alley cat interests me. Obviously, wealth and notoriety have value. On May 7^th, a Fox News.com article said she was reported to have received a fee of $200,000 for appearing at a charity event in Cannes.

Still, Paris – as in Hilton – intrigued me. I thought I might do a column on her mind. Then again, I saw little use in sending a blank page around to friends.

Since being released from house arrest following my heart surgery, I walk every morning. My first expedition took me about 150 feet before I had to sit and rest before returning, now I’m up to 3 miles every day that I don’t go to the hospital for cardiac rehabilitation. Anyone who believes that at 77 I’ve lost my creativity should hear some of the reasons I think up as to why I SHOULD NOT walk 3 miles as I trudge away from home. I can come up with 10 or 12. Unfortunately, by the time I’ve settled on the correct reason for quitting my walk, I’m in sight of the road at the top of the hill and stubbornness replaces creativity. On the return trip I always hope some passerby will offer me a ride. But no one ever does.

While on the subject of walking, there are fewer unhappy thoughts than the realization that you are 1½ miles from home on an empty country road and that you would be much happier sitting and reading a book, with a roll of paper nearby.

Sometimes the logic of our judicial system escapes me. According to an announcement on WSMV-TV on May 11, 2007, Tennessee has released 1559 sex offenders from prison early because of their “good” behavior. Child sex offenders behave themselves while in prison, so they are given early exits. Isn’t it nice to know that when men are locked up in cells they don’t bother children? Could there be any better reason for turning them loose?

I suggest that we have a special prison for child molesters. As part of their incarceration, they should be permitted unsupervised time alone with children. That way they can prove they are truly ready for release to society. I’m certain the Liberals who decry their excessive punishment will volunteer their own children and grandchildren for this project. If child molestors are safe in society in general, then they’ll be equally safe with privileged children.

Presidential Candidate Guiliani has clarified something that has confused me for years: how can the Liberals support abortion and condemn the execution of killers? The answer is amazingly simple. Mayor Guiliani said that, although he opposes abortions, people who believe in abortion should have the right to obey their beliefs and commit abortions. This explains everything. I assume he and fellow Liberals think people who believe they have the right to murder should be permitted to murder. They are only exercising their beliefs. They shouldn’t be executed for this to protect future victims. But if this is true, why the “hate” crime legislation for people committing crimes against blacks, whites, women and homosexuals? Aren’t they simply exercising their beliefs in our multicultural, multi-moral society?

“Revenge” is a word used by many media personnel to describe the execution of murderers and how an advanced civilization should not tolerate it. I saw it again in article about a death sentence handed to a middle-aged man for raping a child who subsequently died. Poor word choice. Revenge is something a victim or his adherents do to the person who harmed him. Victim’s families do not authorize the death penalty. Juries do. The proper word is “protection.” That is what a jury is doing. Murderers do escape from prison. They also get released for “good behavior.” They also murder again. But not if they are executed. Execution protects the innocent.

Our Turkey Culture

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Too many of the liberals I know, which includes at least one of my sons, claim that we in the United States don’t really have a culture, just odd bits of other people’s cultures. This only shows how poorly they have been educated, but I have no interest in pushing that point here. Rather, I was wondering the other day if it could be said that other organisms have cultures. Could we, for example, speak of bees having a culture with their soldiers, their workers, their mostly worthless lay-abouts called drones and their queens. How different from our human society is that? We also have our police, our workers, our welfare careerists and our queens. My walk the other morning started this mental meandering.

On mornings that I don’t report to the hospital for cardiac therapy, I take a three mile walk. That particular morning I watched two Tom turkeys prancing for each other, each one raising his feathers and tail in an effort to frighten the other into leaving. In a sense, I thought, turkeys have a culture. The males strut and preen in open areas, whispering sweet nothings for nearby females. Those females who respond are rewarded with sex and company – for a while. Old Tom disappears when the eggs start accumulating. Let the female care for the eggs and the young. What care he? If she must go hungry for a while, that’s not his fault. If a wandering raccoon or opossum performs an abortion on the nest, no problem so far as he is concerned. The turkey culture condemns him not at all for abandoning his family.

As I thought about it, I remembered the young men described in the “Street Corner Society” (William F. Whyte, 1953). Unemployed and unable to find jobs during the great depression, these young men “hung out” on the street corners in Chicago (as well as other cities) bragging to one another of their achievements and abilities and flirting with passing girls. Each corner had its own, special, group.

I don’t know if the street corners of Chicago still have young men “hanging out” and whispering “friendly” comments to passing girls, but I’ve seen a lot of that around the student unions of various colleges. Just as in Chicago during the depression, different groups of unemployed and non-studying “students,” collect in specific locations. Just as the Chicago lads did, they preen in front of the girls. They even whisper soft “friendly” comments to attractive girls as they pass by.

And, increasingly in our society, the girls respond. Why not? After all, the chant of liberal feminists and their obliging social “scientists” is that there are no differences between men and women. Why should their young followers behave differently? And if the males breed and leave, well that is not their problem. If the women have a child, that is their problem. We have become a turkey culture.

This turkey culture we’ve developed seems to be being copied by increasing numbers of blacks, Hispanics and whites. After all, why should men marry and undertake responsibility if society will provide a living and the girls will provide the pleasure? And our society provides a living for the women and the children also.

But, consider. In the turkey society the children die and the mothers go hungry in a bad year. What happens if our society’s prosperity fades: if we have bad years? Will the women do as those of Europe and Japan and Korea did when the wars destroyed their prosperity with the younger and more attractive turning to prostitution and others scrounging on the garbage dumps to feed themselves and their children?

How they will envy those stupid, conservative, traditionalists who kept to marriage and family and have others to help support them and their children!

Mothers’ Day

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Sunday is Mothers’ Day. Everyone in this nation needs to celebrate it. Were it not for them, we would be living in a different nation, one of different morals and values even if in the same location and on the same continent. Most of us wouldn’t like it as well. That is obvious from the millions who demonstrate that they would rather live here than in their countries of origin, which seems especially true of South Americans, Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, Eastern – you get the drift.

In our history as a nation, past and present, it is the mothers who have raised the children. Babies know their mothers for nine months before they meet anyone else. If you don’t believe learning occurs during pregnancy, read the studies that prove that a crying newborn in a hospital nursery will stop crying if a recording of its mother’s stomach sounds are played. It will not stop for a different mother’s sounds.

Mothers are important. The children of mothers who stay home and care for them, reading to them, correcting their behavior, showing them proper behavior by example and taking them to Sunday Schools do not crowd our courts and rehabilitation centers. Street children – those raised by Hillary’s “village” - crowd our courts.

Feminists have derided “stay at home mothers” and “soccer moms.” That is their problem, but it is also our problem. Our problem is the number of women who believe them, who have decided they can raise children without a responsible partner. To be a full time mother requires a full time father. No matter how hard any person tries, one person cannot do as good a job as two in raising children. The hours single parents are at work, the hours they need for preparing for work and getting to and from it, the hours they need for the normal tasks of living use the energy they would otherwise have for their children. At their best, they are tired.

Neither are they available when their children need them, unless by accident. Then, that tiredness prevents them from giving the time, affection and quality of care that are needed, albeit rocking them for a few minutes for a scratch on a knee or sitting for quiet discussion about how to handle boy (or girl) relationships. The liberal idea of the sixties and seventies of having working parents give an hour of “quality time” to their children after work was and is an absurdity. Quality time is time you spend with a child when that child needs you. Otherwise to children, being busy creatures, it is only an annoyance.

Baby sitters and nursery schools are not the answer. Few women, or men, make sufficient money in their employment to hire a person who is an adequate replacement for themselves. At their best, nurseries do not have the “manpower” to provide the intensive one on one care and training that infants and toddlers need. At their worst, baby sitters are semi-literates unable to get a better job elsewhere.

In our history books we celebrate many men, national leaders, anointing many as “great,” whose greatness would be questioned by honest and knowledgeable biographers. Considering the advent of Mothers’ Day, I have tried to decide which of our leaders have contributed as much to our current society as have mothers. I can think of only four: George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps Clark should be included as his wilderness campaign during the Revolutionary War drove the British from all of North America between the Appalachians and the Mississippi. The achievements of all the rest pale in comparison with what the mothers have done. But even those few greats did not create our culture, they only secured the land. The mothers secured the culture.

We have a day to honor Martin Luther King, but his “I have a Dream” speech would have fallen on deaf ears if tens of millions of mothers, black, brown and white, had not taken the time and spent the effort to raise children who thought that he was right.

The stay-at-home moms, who give up those little additional luxuries of living that a second salary might provide, are our nation’s greatest asset. Their children become responsible citizens. It is their sons and daughters who have built our nation, our unique culture. There is no adequate substitute for “mom.”

Feminism: The Price to be Paid

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Janice Shaw Crouse had an interesting, but sad, article in Townhall.com on April 3, 2007. entitled “Washington’s Working Women.” She commented on a couple she had observed on a commuter train one morning. She guessed the woman to be in her early thirties: well dressed and attractive but with that slightly worn, tired, look which carves the faces of so many men and women after ten or fifteen years in the world of work. She said the woman made those small, tentative, gestures towards the man so often seen in dating couples who are uncertain of one another. The man appeared slightly younger and disinterested.

In her essay (well worth reading), Ms Crouse drew a parallel between what she observed and what she had known of so many reasonably successful working women in our nation’s capitol. As young women, enamored with the world of work in which they found themselves and, perhaps, with visions of great and meaningful futures, they forsook marriage and family. All things were new, and all seemed possible. But possibilities fade with the years. Having contented themselves with casual relationships and casual sex in their twenties, they found themselves career women in their thirties, unlikely to create a family, and unhappy with the future they anticipated as they viewed the lives of women in their forties who had preceded them on the same path.

I told my bride that there was nothing new in this, nor was the problem limited to our nation’s capitol. Fifty years ago in St. Louis I was employed as a counseling psychologist in Washington University’s Adult Counseling Service. Young women in their late twenties who had ignored marriage and family possibilities for careers were reasonably frequent clients. At twenty-nine or thirty they found their “careers” disappointing and saw their age as a limiting factor in developing the loving bond that would lead to a stabile marriage and family. (In fact, Achenbach reports that the chance is one in five that women who have a first child after the age of thirty-five will have a child with a serious disability. “Developmental Psychopathology, 1974.” This does not apply to women who have had previous children.)

My bride told me that I was wrong, that I didn’t understand the real problem because it was a “woman thing” not a “man thing.” She pointed out that beginning in early adolescence and continuing for years girls receive special treatment from boys their own age as well as from men in general. While this is obviously sexual, it is neither predatory nor sensual. Men of all ages will do things to help girls without expecting anything in return, simply because they are girls. This gradually changes. Favors are expected in return, typically sexual favors. The young woman finds that she is paying for the attention she receives, but there is no lack of men willing to assist her, so it appears as a minor matter. Popularity is pleasant.

The problem begins as she ages. As Ms Crouse points out, there are a decreasing number of men interested in the favors of ageing, female, junior executives. Sometime in their thirties most women realize that they are probably at the end of the ladder in the career they have chosen (this same realization occurs to most men at about the same age). Marriage becomes less certain. Men of their own age, who are interested in starting families, are more interested in younger women. The possibilities of having a family are limited to meeting some divorced man with children. Remaining single provides a bleak future, one, as Ms Crouse points out, in which the only person truly interested in “you” is the person for whom you work and that interest is tied to your productivity at work.

Considering Ms Crouse’s article and my bride’s comments, I would add only one change. It begins much earlier than the teens. I have watched girls of two and three dancing about at church and in our community center. Little girls of two or three with their long hair and pretty clothes attract much more favorable attention - hugs and kisses - than little boys of the same age. The men at these meetings, fathers and grandfathers, are “safe” men, men from whom girls can learn that care and affection are independent of sex.

But everything has a price to be paid. Just as all objects in a store have a cost, all activities have a cost. A family attending church has its costs of the time and energy: the donation is probably the least of these. But non-attendance has its costs also: the loss of a family activity and the loss of friendships with people of similar beliefs. Marriage and the raising of children have a cost. But single life has its costs also. All long term studies of happiness in life report that more people are satisfied with the cost of marriage than are satisfied with the cost of a single life and a professional career. Whatever the choice made, the price must be paid.

Yellow Dog Democrats: A New Definition

By

William D. Dannenmaier

About forty years ago, a man invaded an apartment where eight student nurses had gathered. He took them, one by one, into an adjacent room and killed each in turn. I read about the slaughter in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

I was reminded of that about forty years later when a television program discussing convicted murderers in Illinois showed him laughing and talking with friends while in prison. I was disgusted – with the politicians of Illinois – for providing that pleasant life for such a beast.

At the time, I couldn’t understand why not a single one of those students ran out of the door to safety while he was occupied with killing one of her friends in an adjacent room. Perhaps my background increased that puzzlement. In Korea in 1953, I served as a radio/scout with the 15^th Infantry Regiment. We were all volunteers and had an unspoken agreement that we would not be captured. If trapped, better to fight until we could escape or until we were killed than to be captured. (I mentioned that quiet agreement to a military historian. He said it was a good agreement. He claimed that not a single scout who had been captured in Korea was ever seen again.) If the remaining seven girls had run when that murderer took the first one in to kill at least some of them would have lived. Why taxpayers have spent tens of thousands of dollars each of the many years since that atrocity to keep him alive, well fed and happy is a mystery to me.

Now we have the same puzzling behavior at Virginia Tech. An entire class of students, probably twenty or twenty-five and mostly male, permitted themselves to be slaughtered by one man with a pistol. They appear to have made no attempt to fight or run. If, as a group, all of them had rushed that gunman most would have lived. He did not have the ability to kill that many in that small a space if they had attacked, even if his nerves had permitted him to stay and fight – one against many. Even if only half of them had rushed him, most would have lived. Instead, they chose to die.

The Democratic Party must be proud of them, at least the leadership must be. Isn’t that what Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Kerry and other leaders of the party are proposing to do in Iraq? They voted for the war, but when the going gets a little tough these multi-millionaires want to cut and run. A nation of three hundred million with the most advanced technology in the world and the strongest army must surrender, according to Democratic leaders, to a few thousands of insurgents imbedded among people who really don’t want them but, justifiably, fear to expose them to soldiers who are about to surrender.

When I was a boy, a strict Democrat was called a Yellow-Dog Democrat. My neighbors, who were Democrats, were proud of that term. Following the assassination of President Lincoln an unholy alliance of military leaders and Republican political hacks seized power and invaded the South, stealing everything in sight. They were called “carpet baggers” because their only possessions when they first arrived were packed in simple “carpet” bags. Bitterly resented, the Klu Klux Klan was formed initially as a defense against those thieves. They caused so much resentment and hatred that almost a hundred years later Southern Democrats were still saying, “I’d vote for a yellow dog before I’d vote for a Republican.”

But now the meaning of “Yellow Dog Democrat” has changed. Under the current Democratic leadership, it refers to the type of cowardly cur and people who lie down, whine and roll on their backs in surrender when they perceive a threat. Nationally, these people are a disgrace, but what is worse is that the Democratic “don’t run, don’t fight, just surrender” theory is being taught to young people throughout the country. Can you think of any other reason that so many young people would quietly stand to be slaughtered?

Most extraordinary is the recent announcement by Senator Hillary Clinton that the United States might have to confront Iran militarily. At the same moment that her fellow Democrats are calling for retreat and surrender to the Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan she is proposing that the United States enter Iran. Then again, it would be another place to retreat from. A Yellow Dog always needs a reason to cower, whine and roll over – belly up.

Virginia Tech: A Different Opinion

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Crying and moaning makes money for newspapers and television stations, but I’m not aware that it has ever solved any problems.  Several years ago Tennessee lost several young people, teen-agers, in a series of automobile accidents in a short period of time.  The newspapers were full of sad stories, the television ran tapes of high school students clinging to one another, to counselors and to teachers in sobbing sessions.  It was a time of regret and remorse.

In an unpopular essay I wrote that if the principals of the high schools had told their assembled students that the reason their friends were dead was because they had broken the law they would have done more good.  If the dead teens (with their parents help or acceptance) had not broken the Tennessee driving laws, they would have been alive.  While such a talk would not have sold newspapers or kept those who enjoy grieving from being glued to their television sets, it might have saved lives, because it was true. 

This may appear harsh on my part, perhaps it is because of my background.  Several months of combat in Korea taught me to watch how others got killed in order to avoid the same experience.  On Outpost Harry in 1953, for example, it was a mistake for two men to stop outside of the command bunker for a brief conversation even though it appeared to be a safe spot.  We scouts warned new troops of the problem, but people were still killed standing there.  The Chinese mortar men only needed a minute to send a shell their way.  That doesn’t mean we didn’t grieve for a particular friend, but that was private business: it could not be permitted to interfere with learning from experience and living. 

I feel the same way about this massacre at Virginia Tech.  Television news furnished picture after picture of grieving students, candlelight vigils; amateur analyses of the murderer’s state of mind and interviews with survivors.  Why?  It’s over!  What is the relevance of the murderer’s state of mind, what good are pictures of him holding weapons?  How is that going to prevent another such incident? 

I would like to see interview after interview with university officials, beginning with the president who punished a young man who – legally – carried a weapon on campus and led a campaign which convinced the Virginia legislature to prohibit ALL guns on campus.  This only, as he now knows, kept the LEGAL guns off campus.  Or an interview with the administrator who said the campus was completely safe; students had no need for self protection.  Incidentally, this meant that students who lived off campus could not carry guns in their car for their safety while traveling too and from campus even if licensed to do so unless they parked off campus.

Why was there a failure to alert students on campus or coming to campus that a killer was running loose?  Officials knew there was danger, but no attempt was made to warn faculty or students until following the tragedy. The feeble excuse that they have too many students is a travesty.  I’ll bet that if their football team or basketball team won some important game or a championship it would be broadcast across campus and on local radio stations in a minute!

Isn’t now a proper time to ask about student rights of privacy and the restraints placed on communicating within the campus or to family concerning students in trouble?  The Tennessee Tech killer was known to be a problem.  He had been in court, he had been expelled from a class for his behavior towards women and he had been in a mental hospital.  Yet no responsible official was paying attention.  Why not? 

One of my sons had extraordinary problems following a very successful first year in college.  Briefly; almost blind without his glasses, he broke them.  The nearest place he could go to replace them was some fifteen miles from campus and he had no transportation.  Simultaneously, he came down with a severe case of bronchitis.  Over a period of a couple of months, following weekly telephone calls, we had him go to the Student Affairs Dean, the Student Counselor, and the campus doctor.  He also asked permission of his chemistry and zoology professors to go to the board to read their notes as he couldn’t see them from his seat.  Only the zoology professor helped, none of the others did.  Apparently, no one of them communicated with anyone else concerning his problems.  Neither did any authority he went to for help do a follow-up to see if he still needed help.  His grades plunged and he was seriously unhappy by the end of the term.  I wrote the college president about this.  He never replied. 

I have been told that privacy laws prevent the communication of facts about a student to his parents, or parental authority and between offices on college campuses.  This may be true.  I know that as a teacher in a slum school and then as a professor I was always concerned about my students.  Early in my career if I found a student behaving oddly I could go to the dean or registrar to discuss the problem.  After the seventies, when I tried to do that I was told I couldn’t do that, confidentiality laws prohibited my knowing a student’s background even though I was trying to help that student.  That is absurd.  If the law prevents the communication of a student’s mental health problems among responsible campus personnel, which should include his professors, or with parental figures, that law needs to be changed.

Rather than having flags lowered to half mast I’d rather have the President appoint a commission to study the legalities of the situation.  This tragedy, and it is a tragedy, at Virginia Tech could be used as a springboard to prevent future problems.  

Perhaps now you will understand my dislike of the moaning and groaning.  It accomplishes nothing.  A review of administrator conduct and the laws which inhibit the assistance or protection of students would be much more useful.  Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year on college administrators.  We have a gaggle of administrators on college campuses: presidents, assistant presidents, academic deans, deans of students, counselors, affirmative action deans, Black Studies deans: deans about every conceivable element of campus life – it would be nice to know that they are doing things other than attending football games and drawing their salaries.  Who is responsible and who is accountable?   A focus on grief detracts from an analysis of responsibility.

Temptation

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Temptation is supposed to come from the devil, not your oldest son, but my Chris waved a nostalgic perfume under my nose the other day.  He frequently telephones me, but occasionally the calls are invitations.  Our first long trip together, since he became an adult, was when I helped him and his son August, then six, move from Colorado Springs to Fairbanks in his jeep.  Then we drove to Anchorage to put me on an airplane.  I supposed they didn’t have them out of Fairbanks.

On another, later, trip I helped him move from Galveston to Colorado Springs, that time accompanied by his five year old daughter Veronika and twelve barred rock hens.  The latest trip was from Cumberland Furnace to Parris Island to see August graduate from Marine basic training.  We’ve always averaged about 700 miles a day and the trips have been enjoyable even if tiring.  This was another such invitation.  I’m tempted.  He said “I know you’re a great traveling companion and I want to see Prudhoe Bay.  I’ve never been there and I’d like to see the Artic.  I don’t want to do anything there, I just want to see it.”

Siren sounds of my youth!  I remember when I was just fifty, maybe fifty-two, I taught one summer at the University of Saskatchewan and found out that I had three days before I needed to return to work in North Dakota.  I went home and asked my bride how she would like to swim in the Pacific Ocean.  Sheila is always good for a lark, so we hitched our little trailer to our Datsun and took off, first driving a hundred miles south to our home in North Dakota to leave unnecessary gear and then back to Regina and headed west.  It’s not easy to get lost in western Canada if you are on a highway, so we had no problems driving through Alberta, Banf and the Roger’s Pass, but I was concerned after we rolled mile after mile in British Columbia without hint of Vancouver.  So I stopped to get a map.  We were on track and arrived during a traffic jam, negotiated that and headed for the beach.  When we arrived the tide was out.  The life guard came up and said, “You aren’t planning on swimming, are you?”  I replied, “That’s why we’ve just driven two thousand miles.”  So, we put on our swim suits, had a swim, returned to the Datsun and headed back to North Dakota, this time taking the southern pass through the mountains. 

But in those days I was young and foolish.  And on the other trips I was helping Chris. This one was different.  I was a bit taken aback by the idea of Prudhoe Bay.  That must have shown in my voice.  Two days later Chris called back and said, “Prudhoe Bay is a bit far (Chris lives in Galveston), why don’t we do Newfoundland instead.”  That sounded much better to me and visions of limitless lobster alternating with fresh steamed clams swam before my eyes.  But a week or two later Chis called back again. 

“Dad, Prudhoe Bay is a bit far, but it is only forty-nine hundred miles to Inuvik.  We’d take the Al/Can Highway to Dawson City and then swing straight north on a gravel road for four hundred and fifty miles.  I have lots of airline miles, we could fly to Calgary or Edmonton and rent a car with unlimited mileage there.  That would knock two thousand miles off the drive north.”

After the call, I started some planning.  I’ve traveled in the North before.  I have the artic sleeping bags, a cook stove, a short-handled ax, a strong nylon rope: in fact, all of the gear necessary for a reasonably safe trip.  But what airline would let me take it all on a plane when they confiscate scissors?

Worrying about that led to some other thoughts.  Since my heart surgery, when I first get up in the morning, or if I turn to violently in bed, it feels as if sticks and gravel are clashing in my chest, usually not painful, just unpleasant.  I’m certain that Doctor Austin didn’t stick a few marbles in my chest before he sewed me up – I hadn’t built my reputation at the hospital at that time – so I suppose its just gas gurgling around, but how would it be sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag?  Also, it is the rare morning, in fact I can’t remember one, in which I don’t wake up with a back ache.  I don’t think a dirt mattress would help that either.

I could ask Dr. Smith, but he would probably tell me to ask Sheila, that she has commonsense.  This wouldn’t work at all.  In fact when I first mentioned it to Sheila she said if I didn’t want to go, she would.  That would be disaster. Who would take care of our livestock, the dogs, cats, chickens and me if she were gone?

Teachers

By

William D. Dannenmaier

The semester at college is winding on and I am beginning to hear complaints. One of my sons was describing his teachers to me - not always in complimentary terms. I have heard the same grousing from others over the years. When they complain about some specific teacher to me, my typical, unsympathetic, answer is always, “Other students can learn and pass in that class. Why can’t you?”

Not counting grade school, junior high and high school, I have known at least a hundred at the university level as a student as well as others in such fun courses as sign language, automobile mechanics and small motor repair. I have also worked with hundreds in different universities.

Some teachers have been wonderful, and I knew they were wonderful. A few have been horrible, and sometimes I knew they were horrible. Some I thought of as useless, whom I later discovered to have taught me things I didn’t appreciate at the time but proved to be valuable to me. (They were what I now call “time-bomb” professors. You think they are simply talking and then some five or ten years later you suddenly realize that you are succeeding at something because of what that teacher taught you when you thought he was simply “wandering.”) Others I have considered useless – and they were.

There are at least five main types of teachers: those who don’t teach their subjects, those who read the textbook to the students, those who discuss personal experiences and events relevant to the class, those who teach the theoretical background of the subject and those who, using the textbook as a base, present theory and practical applications of textbook lessons. All five of these types are found at all educational levels.

First there are those who don’t even pretend to teach their subject, whatever it may be. Instead, they talk about events of the day, sorority and fraternity activities, football results in effect, nothing of substance. Such teachers often give high grades, using them to get the students to accept without complaint the fact that they have learned nothing that has anything to do with the subject they paid to take. Poor students love such “teachers.” Those who had hoped to learn something despise them.

Then there are those who simply read the textbook to the students. Most of these are either new teachers, learning the textbook and building their own self-confidence or else experienced teachers teaching a subject they have not taught before. But not all fit that description. I had one in graduate school. I would drowsily follow his lecture through the text, with my finger moving along the line – he had memorized the book. I had a similar teacher in calculus, but my favorite was one in English. A slender, elderly, prim, spinster type she was reading Anthony and Cleopatra to us when, suddenly she skipped two lines. Sixty years later, they are the only lines I remember: “He plowed her and she reaped.”

More interesting and frequently underestimated by students, are those who appear to ignore the textbook and discuss personal experiences relevant to the subject. Sometimes, such teachers are part-time instructors who are making a living doing what the textbook is attempting to teach. To have someone who is or has made a living doing what is being taught is invaluable. I recall one professor, a Miss Windhorst, whom I liked as a person, but who never seemed to teach anything. It was not until years later that I learned that she had somehow taught me to look at students in my classes as human beings and treat them as such, whether they were five or fifty. During all the years I worked with student teachers, the ones who had the most difficulty in the classroom were those who did not understand or had not learned that seemingly simple lesson, which – as I learned – is difficult to teach.

Then there are those who teach the theoretical foundations of the subject. Often esteemed as scholars, their teachings are invaluable to those able to make the step to applying the theory on their own. Such classes are also invaluable to those who wish to know the “why” of a subject. Other students, at least at the university level, learn to avoid their classes.

Lastly, there are those who follow the text they have selected, emphasizing the spots they know to be difficult for students, and illustrating the text by giving examples of real life occasions that are, or should be, familiar to the student. They also add material which is directly relevant, but which, for some reason, has been omitted from the textbook. Such teachers are always considered difficult, but, typically, are well regarded by the more interested students.

In my opinion, there is no place in any school for persons of the first type. They are not interested in teaching, only in being paid. Their disinterest should be documented and they should be fired. Their continued presence in a school is a reflection on the competence of the school administrator, but some of them are administrators. There is a place for all of the others, one type will appeal to one group of students, another to a different group and all add value to the school.

Is there any person who has been employed in business or in government who has not met all of these types, including, unfortunately, the first type? Learning to live with them in school is simply a preparation for learning to live with them in life.

More Meanderings

By

William D. Dannenmaier

On March 9^th, Breitbart.com reported that Judge Karen Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wrote that the Second Amendment does not apply to the District of Columbia because it is not a state. What an incredible decision! Following her logic, none of the remainder of the Bill of Rights or the United States Constitution apply to the District of Columbia either. I assume she is a Democrat from Hollywood, San Francisco or the East Coast.

I pointed out to my bride that when morning came she fed the dogs first, the cats second, the fish third and the stray cat that has taken up residence on our front porch fourth, then me. When I asked if there were any significance to this she replied, “They complain, you don’t, but if it makes you feel any better, I feed you before I water the plants.”

Occasionally, Sheila and I have other disagreements. At present, we are on a campaign to lose weight. She does well with less food in her stomach, but I get hungry, so I fill a side plate with vegetables. She calls them relishes. Today, I pointed out to her that beets are not relish, even if pickled it is still a vegetable, similarly cabbage is not a relish, even if cured with red pepper, cucumbers are not relishes ... At that point she interrupted me and proclaimed, “When cucumbers become pickles, they are relishes. So are the others.” I replied, “They are still vegetables, relishes are like ‘I relish you.” “You are supposed to.” “Or maybe the word was ‘ravish.’” “That too,” she replied.

Talking with my eldest son, Walter Christian, he reminded me of our drive to Fairbanks and asked if I was willing to leave the reservation and drive to see the Artic Ocean. He said he didn’t want to do anything there, just see it, dip his clothes in it and come back. I said it sounded interesting, but I had to do the income tax, a job I hate. He told me that I should ask for an extension. He said, “At your age, if you’re lucky, you’ll die before the extended time you have to do it. If you survive you haven’t lost anything, you just have to keep asking for extensions every year and one year you’ll win.” My sons are always considerate of my interests.

When I mentioned this to a fellow sufferer at the Cardiac Rehabilitation unit he replied, “I’ve told my wife that when I slip into dementia she is to put an electric wire around the pasture and let me out there for exercise, but that she should make certain the gate is locked.”

We had a “whole hawg” barbecue in the Furnace last night. For those from more civilized places, this begins about noon on Friday with the building of fires. The hogs, we had two, are placed on the grill about nightfall where they remain overnight. The men responsible maintain the coal bed and turn them as necessary. In the morning, they are turned skin side down, to keep the grease from falling into the fire and flaming up, and the meat is raked out of the skin. Bones are thrown into a barrel. I always go early in the morning to buy my meat (seven dollars a pound) because then I can get bones for my dogs. I do even better than that. The ribs are always thrown away, it being too much trouble to scrape meat off of a few ribs when you have the meat from two entire hogs to chop up, so I get a side of ribs for Sheila and I for breakfast. This morning there was a rather forlorn, mangy, black dog hanging about, cringing at the approach of any human. I gave it a bone with some meat on it, which it gobbled down. Bone followed bone. Finally, the beast was coming up and taking them from my hand. Then he took one and ran off. “So that pup is finally satisfied,” I thought. But soon he was back, took another bone and ran off. Finally, several bones later, I caught on. This thing was taking those bones and burying them, not just burying them, but burying each in a separate place! This dog had more sense than half of our citizens. When faced with abundance, he banked the extra. He didn’t even, so to speak, put all of his bones in one basket, he spread them about. Maybe the man in St. Louis who registered and voted his dog knew what he was doing.

My grandson August just telephoned. A marine, he has been in Africa for the last six months. He had just landed in America and was on the bus headed for camp. He said that he has several months before school starts and is planning on visiting family, an uncle who is a mechanic having put his car in best possible shape while he was gone. He said, “Knowing your reputation for having work for all visitors …” Actually, the last time August was here I had him painting the house. He did well, but I can find other jobs now: one shouldn’t allow young men to get bored. He is planning on volunteering for Iraq in January, which concerns me. I would rather no one had the experiences I had in Korea (or the memories). Unfortunately, it is necessary for some to do it. I can’t complain as I volunteered also. Anyway, I’m proud of him.

Stray Thoughts

By

William D. Dannenmaier

My bride says that every so often a girl (or boy) would say to her of someone, “He’s a homosexual or she’s a lesbian” when she was teaching high school. My wife would respond, “Oh no, he (she) isn’t, he (she) has too many friends of the opposite sex.” My bride was right. Every adult of any experience has known and probably worked with persons who were either homosexual or lesbian. I have. Several. I’ve also had them as clients in counseling when I was a practicing psychologist. A lesbian’s love of women is not her problem, her problem is that she distrusts, dislikes and fears men. For male homosexuals the same is the problem in reverse. I said this once to a “friend” who was a lesbian and she replied, “Oh, its worse than that. We can’t trust most women either.” For any person to distrust, dislike and fear all persons of a given sex because of their sex is a problem, To distrust, dislike and fear most of the human race is a disabling problem. It is not an alternate style of living, it is an emotional illness. It requires treatment, not acceptance.

Al Gore is dedicated to the cause of saving the world from global warming. Like most fanatics he will go anywhere at any expense to promote his gospel and help save civilization. I learned this when a friend in Branson, Missouri, wrote me that she had telephoned his Nashville office to ask about his availability as a speaker in Branson. She wrote me that she was assured he would come. All he needed was a six month window of time, a hundred and fifty thousand dollar fee, a private jet for transportation to Branson and a limousine while there, hotel and meals. But don’t think he was putting greed ahead of his cause. He needs the money. The Tennessee Center for Policy Research reports that his monthly expenditure of electricity in his house in Nashville, where he stays occasionally, is more than twice the amount most Americans use in a year, costing an average of $1,359 per month. For example, the average household in the United States consumes 10,656 kilowatt hours per year, but in August, 2006, Gore burned 22,610 kilowatts. Don’t think he is neglecting the use of natural gas, however. His gas bills average $1,080 per month. If he spends similar amounts in his homes in Washington D.C. and eastern Tennessee, it is obvious that he needs the money.

Speaker Pelosi wants military planes available at her convenience and, as I understand it, at the convenience of family members and friends. I received the impression the planes should have kitchens, meeting rooms and bedrooms, but a swimming pool was not, I think, mentioned in the articles I read. This is an extension of what was done following the attack of 9/11 when a military plane was made available to the Speaker of the House. The reason at the time was President Bush’s belief that Muslim militants were attacking the leadership of the United States. As the number two person in line for leadership of the country in the event of successful attacks on the President and Vice President, the Speaker was assumed to need protection. Those fears made sense in light of Ms Pelosi’s assertions that our troubles with Muslims arose from President Bush’s policies (She ignores the attacks during the Clinton administration), but she is an outstanding critic of President Bush’s policies and appears to believe that all problems with Muslims are President Bush’s fault. Why would Muslims want to attack her? She is on their side.

Incidentally, two months ago Speaker Pelosi spoke of great things happening in the first hundred hours after the Democrats took control of the House. When is the hundred hours up? Or did she mean her coronation?

One pleasant thought concerning Hillary’s potential election as President (I have quirks also). Can you imagine the face off: the icy politeness making the last ice age resemble global warming, the in-private swearing, the marshalling, arranging and commitment of forces in the vicious no-holds-barred battle the first time she, as President, decided to go against the will of Pelosi, as Speaker of the House? Speak of epic battles between power loving despots! It would occupy blogs for months (national news media would conceal it) and be worth several X-Rated, best selling, films.

The discovery of graves bearing the names of Jesus and Mary in Palestine has aroused considerable publicity. What is the big deal? They could have found several such graves, faster and at less expense, in Puerto Rico. I’m waiting for them to locate the Garden of Eden. I don’t care about Adam and Eve, I want to know about the apple tree. Was it a Granny Smith or an Arkansas Black?

Now that I’ve had my say on these topics, I’ll return to playing solitaire on the computer. How do you describe the sanity of someone who routinely plays a game that constantly humiliates him?

Veterans’ Benefits

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Persons born with poor vision don’t know what “seeing” is until they receive their first pair of glasses. Similarly, persons born deaf do not know that it is possible to hear.

Eyes and ears are not the only problems that begin with birth.

All people have organs that are weaker, more likely to create problems as they grow older. Some are born with potential heart problems; others have kidneys or stomachs more prone to disorder. The list and variety is equal to the list and variety of human parts. What has been well documented medically, is that extreme, prolonged, stress will accelerate the development of any potential problem in the weakest organ. And military combat is the most extreme of prolonged stresses.

Combat can be a relatively mild experience or intense confrontations between two armies: thousands of men attempting to kill each other. In Korea in 1952 and 1953 there were often weeks of relative quiet between the Communist and United Nations forces: casual shelling, casual shooting. Some were wounded and died, but not many during those quiet weeks. Still, it was wise to be alert – always alert, which meant always tense.

There were also days of intense conflict. The battle for Outpost Harry lasted eight days and included five nights of mass attacks. During the battle the American army fired more high explosive artillery than during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. In addition there was the noise of mortars and rifle fire. The Chinese matched this the first few days, probably exceeding it the first and second nights. To be present was like sitting in the center of a huge fireworks display that continued for days.

How is it possible for men who were there to have not suffered hearing loss? In addition to the normal “not knowing I have it” that is true of those who have hearing loss, the fact that all suffered it would contribute to its invisibility. The men involved would talk more loudly – a sign of hearing loss – but no medical records would show “hearing loss,” for two reasons. One was because the men didn’t know it was there. The other was simpler, men did not leave combat for medical assistance for anything so trivial as a hearing loss or minor cuts and wounds. Their comrades needed them.

Hearing loss is only one unrecognized problem. Those periods of relative but perilous calm, interspersed with vicious attacks by thousands, provided a constant, necessary, tension of living – twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Relaxation was unwise, dangerous, and too often fatal. Such tension would begin the deterioration of weaker organs: initiate the problems with heart or stomach that might not become serious and affect life until years later.

It is impossible for persons who have not experienced combat to appreciate the tension that combatants experience. In fact, the men in combat don’t realize how tense they are: they live with it twenty-four hours a day and become accustomed to it. It takes some later experience, after they have safely, hopefully, returned that arouses the same tension for them to say to themselves, “This is the way I was!” And that experience may never occur.

There are numerous studies that report the effect of tension on the human body. There is no single effect. Some develop ulcers, some have heart problems. No one knows the extent of damage to the system of extreme tension. What is the effect of a year of extreme tension? Again, no one knows, put there is some knowledge that combat accelerates latent organic problems, problems that appear only later in life, but years earlier than they would have if that combat stress had not occurred.

Military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan encounter that same need for readiness with its tension. They never know when and from where an attack will come. The tension must be constant. Recently, medical studies of men returning from duty in Iraq and Afghanistan have found that many, if not all, suffer from the effects of this combat tension as well as from physical problems unrecognized or ignored during their tour.

Such studies are not new. A British study compared men who had served in the combat arms, but never seen combat, with those who had experienced combat but were never “officially” wounded. The researchers found that men who had served in combat died at younger ages than those who had never experienced combat.

Recently, a study reported that veterans who had endured combat over a period of time had more heart problems than veterans who have never experienced combat when they grew older.

Another study showed that under stress certain chemicals were released in the body that increased the body’s ability to react to danger. No one knows what the effect of these would be if that tension was constant over a period of time. Perhaps this is the reason for the heart problems and for other physical problems that arise among combat veterans following their service.

Millions of Americans have served in the military forces, some as volunteers, some drafted. The volunteers can also be divided, those who make a career of the military and those who enlist for a short term with no intention of being “career” military, often because our nation has gone to war and they believe they should serve.

Of those millions, comparatively few serve in the combat arms and of those in the combat arms many never experience combat, serving in peaceful areas.

Happy to be alive, happy to be unwounded, combat veterans return to civilian life. It is not until years later that the stresses and experiences which initiated their unrecognized health problems become apparent. Then, when these men apply to the Veterans’ Administration for assistance, the first reply is, “There is nothing in your records indicating such a problem while on duty.”

Of course there are no records. Men in combat don’t live on nice posts where they can go to a hospital for every real or imagined problem. (A review of army hospital records in peaceful areas will show that any time there is a day of field duty there is a tremendous increase in the numbers reporting for sick call).

If they protest, they are asked to supply names of veterans who can support their claims. How can they do this? Comrades known only by their first names or nicknames; last seen thirty or forty or fifty years ago; widely dispersed and many dead, how can they be located?

I suspect there are many men who received damage in World War II, Korea and Vietnam: damage they never knew they had until later in life. Fortunately for taxpayers, most are old enough now that they’ll die soon, so no one has to worry about them, the Veterans’ Administration least of all.

But now we are receiving veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq. Like the “unwounded” of earlier wars, many of them will receive those unrecognized, undocumented, wounds that won’t be noticed for thirty years.

The Veterans’ hospitals maintain a list for priority of treatment. Veterans who have received serious wounds receive first treatment at Veterans’ Hospitals. That is as it should be. Others, such as those who retired after twenty years of peacetime service, are then listed in order of eligibility for treatment. At the bottom are those who those who served two or three years, returned to civilian life and received those hidden injuries, those silent wounds that never appear on medical records (unless they are below the poverty line).

Combat veterans, officially unwounded, should be placed just below the Purple Heart veterans on the priority list. The criteria for such placement should be the Combat Infantryman’s Badge or its equivalents, the Combat Medics and Combat Engineers Badges.

Al Poy

By

William D. Dannenmaier

Al Poy is dead. The world won’t mourn Al, just as it won’t mourn me when I die, but it should mourn Al. Al was one of those truly remarkable people: an everyday United States citizen who obeyed its laws without secret police watching him, he served in the military without complaint and raised a family of law-abiding citizens. True, there are millions like him in the States, but it is a fact that they are unusual in the world. They make the United States as great as it is. Once, I tried to talk Al into writing the story of his life because his life was unique in many ways that most of us could not comprehend, but I never succeeded.

Al and I met in Korea in 1953. I was a radio/scout on Outpost Howe on the eastern edge of the Chorwon Valley and Al was an interpreter and radio interceptor living in the next dugout down our trench. We understood each other and became friends immediately, perhaps because of certain similarities in our appearances, jobs and backgrounds. Neither Al nor I looked much like a soldier, movie directors wouldn’t hire people like us in war movies: I was tall and skinny, Al was short and skinny. In terms of jobs, no translator or scout who was captured in the Korean conflict was ever seen or heard of again, we both accepted that. Al carried a 45 on his hip, to use in case of potential capture and we scouts had an understanding that it would be better to be dead than to be captured. Also we were both depression babies, who had known what it was like not to have enough food on the table. Al’s parents sent him to China where an extended family would see that he had food. My parents got into politics and fed political workers (courtesy of the party) at our house: for three months my diet consisted of glazed doughnuts for breakfast and chili for lunch and supper. But there our backgrounds differed, dramatically.

In China, a just teen-aged Al was drafted into the Nationalist Army. He fought the Japanese throughout the Second World War, throughout his teenage years. When that war ended, his tour of military duty didn’t, he fought the Communists. When the Nationalists were driven from mainland China, Al was able to escape to Hong Kong. In Hong Kong he proved his citizenship and returned to the United States. Wouldn’t you know, this quiet, peace loving man, who had never known peace, returned during the midst of the Korean conflict? As Al explained to me, he was only a year away from being too old for the Draft: he could have avoided it completely. Instead, Al signed up and went to basic training. As soon as the military realized he could speak Chinese fluently, Al was shipped to Korea.

Al spent eighteen months on the front line in Korea, earning his four points a month. Soldiers were supposed to be sent home when they accumulated 36 points, which Al had by the end of his first nine months, but the Army is always willing to bend rules when they wish. So Al continued on the front line until his two years in the Army were up, living in his isolated bunker on the frontline, his forty-five always by his side.

I credit Al with saving my life, although neither he nor I was aware of it at the time. Two other scouts, Stan O’Connor and Ray Barker, and I spent three days and nights on a watching/listening post during one series of Communist attacks. We were about a hundred yards in front of the line and a hundred yards west of Outpost Harry, the point of the attack. During idle moments in the night, remembering those days, I have wondered why the Chinese did not attack around our side: they would have swept past us and could have cut re-supply to Harry. In a reunion with Al a few years ago, discussing old times, he mentioned that he had intercepted an order for just such an attack and relayed it to the command. An artillery barrage destroyed the attackers. That was why the Chinese never came our way. That was why Stan, Ray and I survived the battle.

The wealthy and the notorious make the headlines, but it is people like Al who make the nation. Goodbye Al, and thank you.

Lost Happiness

By

William D. Dannenmaier

I could have been a happy man. During my working years, I made a reasonable salary. It was sufficient for me to go to the occasional restaurant, order a standard meal and enjoy the food. I could even enter a grocery store, purchase any good-looking produce available and enjoy it. My eating habits as well as my living habits were uncomplicated, grocery shopping was simple and life was pleasant. I was happy.

Slowly, life changed. It began early, but I wasn’t aware of until I taught in Alberta. I remember seeing lovely peaches in the store that were available and purchased by many. Once, enticed, I bought a half dozen. I bit into one as I was leaving the store, threw it and the others in the nearest available trash container. It was a Hollywood peach, all looks and no taste.

It wasn’t my fault that I threw away those lovely peaches. It was my mother’s fault. She taught me to enjoy peaches picked from the tree with a gentle tug, then peeled, sliced, covered with whipping cream and eaten. They were very good eaten off the tree also, although one needed to check for worms first. I discovered that at about the age of nine when a half of a worm wiggled at me following one bite from a newly picked peach.

My life has been ruined by women and, as noted above, it began with my mother but was transferred from her, with her blessing I might add, to my bride – Sheila. I remember when Sheila and I were married and she first moved into the home in Cumberland Furnace that my son Bill and I had occupied for a few years. Bill and I had it arranged efficiently. Where and when, for example, do you take off your clothes? At night, while watching the late news. Naturally, intelligently, Bill and I had the dirty clothes basket under the television set in the living room. We could undress and toss our clothes in the basket while watching late night news. That was efficiency. When do you clean and sharpen a chain saw? While watching football games on Sundays. When else? The coffee table in the living room served as the location of oil, cleaning rags and files. There was no need to hunt for them. How efficient can a person get? Other tools were similarly, conveniently, located.

What my bride reacted to most negatively, however, when she arrived was my kitchen. Bill and I had two plates, two glasses, two cups, and two each of knives, folks and spoons. When we finished eating we simply rinsed them off and left them in the sink to dry until the next meal. They were all we needed and they were always in ready view – no mice tromped over dishes in our cabinets. My bride disapproved. Her most open disapproval was directed at the plates. She claimed the little yellow spots on the plates were not decorations, but were dried egg. But what if some of them were? Eggs are nutritious.

I had escaped my mother, but there was no escaping my bride. Gradually, well - actually rather quickly - things changed. Telephoning my sister, Ethel, Sheila found a ready co-conspirator. Ethel paid a fast visit to the Furnace from her home in Peoria, but while awaiting her arrival my laundry basket disappeared and my tools were removed to hidden locations. The sock that an errant toss had landed on the chandelier also disappeared. When Ethel arrived, a four place setting of china arrived with her: my treasured plastic was relegated to the smoke house. Curtains were hung and furniture was rearranged. It was a difficult transition, but my problems were just beginning.

I vaguely remember breakfast before Sheila as a relaxed time of an egg and coffee followed by the ritual rinsing of dishes before leaving for work. I still remember the first breakfast A.M. (after marriage). There were scrambled eggs, sausage, fried potatoes and home made biscuits. My pots of soup that I made on Sunday and heated up for meals during the week also disappeared (the green fuzz that grew on top during the week was easily disposed of before heating). Within a year I had gained twenty-five pounds. It all tasted great. That was the problem. No longer could I drop into Walgreen’s in Clarksville, order the dollar breakfast and enjoy it. That pleasure, which had been part of my Saturday ritual before Sheila, was ruined.

As the years have passed, things have gotten only worse. Everywhere we moved during the years that followed – Regina, Boston, Seoul and Vogelweg – there were restaurants which had special dishes which I learned to enjoy and everywhere we went Sheila learned to cook those dishes. The baked scallops I enjoyed in Boston are surpassed by Sheila’s – with butter and garlic added, no Korean restaurant makes Bul Gogi better than Sheila, no German restaurant does a better job of marinating pork tenderloin and baking it in sour cream sauce. I can’t go anywhere and eat better than I eat at home. It has taken away a main pleasure in my life.

I should add that living in Cumberland Furnace doesn’t help. Some organization is always having a breakfast or a supper. The Masonic Lodge has a monthly breakfast with all proceeds going to charity, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church had a breakfast prepared by the men as a “thank you” to the women, the Fire Hall has chittlin’ dinners in the winter and whole hog barbecues in the summer, the Community Center has whole hog barbecues, all of these meals being all you can eat for a set price, and I hate to waste money. My son Chris ate some of the special sausage from Murphy’s CeeBee store and declared it the best he ever tasted (the men had that at the church) but he never has tasted John Lee’s homemade sausage which combines venison and pork.

The Great Depression taught me to appreciate food and the army taught me that nothing can be better than going elsewhere for a meal. Going out to eat was undoubtedly the greatest pleasure of my life. Then Sheila wandered into my life. Now anywhere I go, when I taste what I am paying for, I think, “This tastes better at home.” Yes, women have ruined my life, beginning with my mother and reaching the ultimate in Sheila. My greatest happiness has been lost.