Seaman Mike Browne - 12/62 -- recording the  Bob Hope show  -- USS Kitty Hawk, Subic Bay, Philippines

At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 the guns of the World War One fell silent.  The following year Woodrow Wilson designated the day as Armistice Day. In 1954 President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day, a day of celebration when a lot of aging vets squeeze themselves into their old uniforms, or maybe just put on an American Legion or VFW hat, and march in a parade.

Last year this old vet sat in a wheelchair on a San Diego curb and watched the parade rather than wheel in it, accompanied by two beautiful women, the Lady Karen Simons and Lady Sandy Burgess, the latter being a cousin from Alaska. Lady Sandy and her husband, Keith, were in town to visit their Marine son. Lady Karen had bought me a really fancy cap with Navy insignia. Later Lady Sandy sent me a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a ship I'd served aboard.

During the parade I removed my cap when a color guard bearing the flag passed by.  I'm not all that patriotic about the flag, but I did get caught up in the martial music, the presence of all those impossibly young sailors and Marines probably bound for harm's way, and an ingrained sense of flag protocol acquired at an early age in a military academy and reinforced in the Navy. If you're a civilian wearing a hat, you take off your lid when the flag passes by -- or should.   For me, the gesture was not a tribute to a decorated cloth, but a showing of respect for American kids being shot at in foreign wars.

No parade for this old bat this year, but I did snag a free lunch. See, San Diego is a military town and some restaurants lose a bundle of money offering free lunches to active duty, retired, and former military people like me who never pass up a free meal. Sooo, I put on the Navy cap Lady Karen gave me last year and invited her to accompany me on my free lunch mission.

While we were seated in the waiting area of a restaurant crowded with service people and former service people along with their families and guests, a well buffed 20-something fella with buzzed hair, accompanied by two parent looking people, came up to me, extended his hand and said, “Thank you for your service.” He was gone before I could thank him for his. I guessed he was a Marine from nearby Camp Pendleton despite not being in uniform. The haircut was a giveaway.

Like many of us, I've been watching the behavior the president-elect with mixed feelings, none of them good. He talks so cavalierly about invading Iraq on the false premise that Iraqi oil is America's oil. Now this man never spent one day in the armed forces, and he's perfectly willing to send that 20-something Marine who courteously greeted me in the restaurant, along with thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of people in uniform into combat so he can Make America Great Again.

Excuse me, Mr. President-elect, but America is already great – and you sure as hell won't make it any greater unless you learn to play well with others on the international playground.

Me, I do not want to see photos of an airplane hangar filled with flag draped coffins flown in from the Middle East or anywhere else. I hope the young fella I presumed to be a Marine will one day be an old man who marches in Veterans Day parades wearing a silly hat.

-oOo-

Comments, anyone?

This response is full of Thank Yous:
Thank you for your service.

Thank you for thanking others for theirs.

Thank you for sharing your sentiments about the president-elect.

Thank you for your heart.

Hubba Hubba, sailor!

– Ellen

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Thank you for your service, Mike  You are as handsome now as you were then.  Peace and love to you, my friend. – Peggy Hill

Oh stop. – MB

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Re Trump never serving; Didn't you know? Donald Trump attended military school where he learned everything he needs to know about the U.S. military and how it should operate. (Don't you feel secure knowing this failed businessman is in charge of the country?) Three days later and I still have a knot in my stomach, waiting for the other shoe to fall. I don't want to have to listen to him for another four years. I miss George W. Bush already!

 – Brat

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I love your snide remarks about Trump.  My serious side has emerged after my initial denial and shock and disgust. I wrote this little paragraph today:

Trump's appointment is a crisis that may serve to mobilize us to address the very real problems and big questions this society faces.  We have been missing serious Democratic party discourse about the effects of globalization on manufacturing sector in the US. Most people can only blame single causes, when in fact we need to think systematically. Are protective tariffs going to be enough?  Should there be a relocation program for those in dwindling cities? Or a [Civilian Conservation Corps] for the environment?   How does a nation gracefully decline? Does the UK's end of empire offer any insights?  Decades ago social theorists speculated about a leisure society and asked what meaningful activities might take the place of work.  Do we need a citizenship wage? Can we call upon the human potential movement to help people enjoy and share their inner resources?

-- Galen

Galen is right. We liberals have gotten politically and socially complacent and maybe just a little too smug. That made us a big fat target for the disaffected. – MB
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A friend who worked for Homeland Security said, “I have a high security clearance and if I had done what [Clinton did with the classified e-mails] I would be spending the rest of my life in federal prison “

I am glad to see the GOP blown apart and the DNC likewise. Perhaps we can get someone in four years we can proudly support.  As for Donald, I hope he will fulfill his promises. I am willing to give him a chance. 

-- Charlotte
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Thanks. This was most welcome today. – Sum

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I too hope that young man will march in a parade one day.  We are opening a housing project for vets.  I think any president should visit there and hear the residents stories before considering war.  The president would also learn a thing or two about what vets need when they return home.  – Tammy

Thank you and your community for what I gather is a project for homeless or low income vets. -- MB

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Enjoyable read, as always! Glad you got your free lunch. Re the election.... still in shock. – Lynda
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First, I am foursquare against war - and just as surely know American humans will engage in it with noble and patriotic reason, and I honor them every Veteran's Day and any day I see an old vet with a hat on proudly depicting his military service, or a young man from my local Army base sporting his camo and name tag filling up his rig down the street.  I cannot, and will not, take anything from the courageous act of walking into danger in defense of a way of life I freely can live. Yeah, you can cue the anthem.  I love my country and I am safer because of the soldiers who are much more brave than I.

As for Trump, I am pretty sure one of the main reasons he was elected is that so many are so sick of politicians and their chronic inaction that they would elect a pompous ass instead.  I go with this:  In four years, maybe we WILL elect someone we can be proud of.  Time will tell,

Thanks for the piece, and thanks to you Mike, and to my brother, and every person who ever served, or still serves. – Zoey

https://nsjour.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/americas-armageddon-might-be-a-century-or-two-away-yet/

The following is by Garrison Keillor, author and host of A Prairie Home Companion on NPR, which appeared in the Washington Post, SF Gate, and which I filched from the whirled wide web.   MB

Let us be clear that if this election is stolen from Hillary by last-minute machinations, you Republicans are in deep trouble. We lefties are not patsies who you can play footsie with. Vengeance shall be wreaked.

We are taking names and we know where you live. If Hillary loses, your hairdresser Heather (a Democrat) is going to cut your hair with pinking shears and color it mauve and trim your eyebrows to look like Bette Davis. She will massage your shoulders and press hard on a certain nerve that makes your voice squeaky and trembly.

You drop by your favorite cafe and Hazel, a Democrat, will bring you coffee with cream though you never take cream but absent-mindedly you drink it and you wind up staying home for 48 hours, driving the porcelain bus.

Hillary has got this election in the can and if you and your KGB pals attempt dirty tricks like give Democrats pens with invisible ink to mark their Xes or jam the voting lever with wads of bubble gum or put our ballots in the fake box full of composting worms or use X-ray binoculars to see through our clothing and spot the ACLU cards in our pockets and hand us the trick ballot that goes blank when exposed to kryptonite, you will pay for this big time. Do not think otherwise.

Schoolteachers, health care workers: all Democrats. No more special help for your kids having trouble with algebra so give up any thought of college -- they are headed for jobs in the hospitality industry, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets. Your urine test at the doctor's will reveal a previously unknown strain of flesh-eating bacteria and you will wind up in long-term care, tended by -- you guessed it -- a woman named Carmelita who will not take you to the toilet unless you ask her in Spanish. ("Necesito el toilet, por favor.")

Did you know that 95 percent of all psychiatrists are progressive Democrats? If Hillary loses, you will be declared mentally incapable and put under the guardianship of your lesbian daughter who hasn't spoken to you in three years. She will bring her German shepherd Namaste who stares at you relentlessly and snarls if you pick up a telephone. Good luck with that.

As you know, we in the media are totally Democratic and when your wedding story appears in the paper, don't be surprised if the bride has a mustache and the groom's eyes are off-kilter. Your name will be misspelled and instead of "is employed as a data imaging specialist at NorCom," it will be "is currently doing time for wire fraud in a federal facility in Oklahoma." Send us your birth announcement and we will rename it Hillary and put "Stronger Together" on the onesie.

Your wife is a Democrat so I'd advise you not to eat home-cooked meals for maybe five or 10 years. And as for your little blue pills, your wife knows about identical little blue pills that will make a man suddenly interested in fabrics and interior decor.

I hope it does not come to this. Ours is a great country and we say let the candidate with the most votes win, but if you carpet-chewers want to play a different game, bring it on. Microsoft and Apple have come up with a powerful whammer-jammer that, should it come to this, God forbid, will shut down the ignition of every RV and pickup truck in America and make the radio play NPR at high volume and instead of the latest CD by your beloved Anthrax Fruit Bats or Demented Loners you will be listening to Ira Glass talk about hipster millennials and the cultural phenomenon of plaid shirts and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

-oOo-

My First Date

A friend asked for a juicy story, so I decided to relate one about my first date.  The event was not nearly as romantic as the one shown.  It was pretty far from being romantic at all, but it is juicy in its own way.  

The year was  1959 and I'm a skinny 15-year-old boy getting ready for a blind date, a double date with a worldly neighbor of 16 who has a drivers license and a '51 Ford. He's been going steady with his girl for six months, which in that Happy Days era qualified them as an Old Married Couple. Me, I'm full of hormones and smelling of too much Old Spice cologne with an underlying scent of Clearasil acne paste I've dabbed on the zit that always blossomed just prior to a crucial time.  My neighbor was not encouraging. "Oh man! Your face is breaking out! That looks terrible! he said. "And hey, I told your date you're 16, so try to act like it, dig?"

How? Suck in the remaining baby fat in my cheeks? Wear a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes rolled up in a t-shirt sleeve? Make awkward physical moves like James Dean and mumble like Marlon Brando? I'll do my best.

His date is a slightly chubby good natured blonde girl with a loud musical laugh. My date is a thin Mexican girl with beehive hair and great big hoop earrings who, upon seeing me, got a very laughless frown on her exotic dark face. She got in the back seat of the Ford with me with all the enthusiasm of a juvenile delinquent on her way to an appointment with a probation officer.

The date was at the El Monte Drive-in just off the San Bernardino Freeway where there was a double bill of B-grade horror films which allowed girls to fake clingy fear and be closely comforted by their boyfriends' hands, lips, and who, if they were an Old Married Couple among their peers, by a comforting index finger slipping under the elastic band of her Capri pants or working the buttons on the back of her blouse. Maybe. 

My scene in the back seat proceeded in the accustomed manner of the time. Arm on the back of the seat over her shoulder. Arm drooping to the shoulder. A little scoot closer to her. No resistance so far. Up front the Old Married Couple are lip locked in what appears to be a desperate attempt at mouth-to-mouth first aid.

As for us in the back, so far so good. Then I reached over to turn her face toward mine for a little of the same first aid on that hot airless night -- and snagged a hoop earring. Needless to say she had pierced ears. Also needless to say her reaction was not one of unbridled delight. "Shit!" she yelled.

The up front couple separated. "Something wrong?" my neighbor's date asked. "This jerk almost tore my ear off!" my date said. 

After several awkward moments while I contemplated life in the French Foreign Legion, my neighbor's date rescued me and -- and my date. "Let's swap!" she cheerfully suggested. My date didn't even get out of the car. She hurled herself over the front seat like a paratrooper out of a burning plane.  The neighbor's date used the door to get in back and snuggle close to me in a sympathetic manner. Oh, we did wind up kissing for little while, but the only juicy part of this story is that she was chewing Wrigley's Juicy Fruit Gum.

--oOo--

E-mail any comments, critiques and hate mail to tomatomike@aol.com.

At least you got something, that's a lot more than most guys get on a first date - even if was juicy fruit gummy. - Beaty

A "gum job" does not seem vary appealing. MB

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Aha! So that's where you got the name Mike the Mauler. And now we know the REST of the story.  Page 2.  -- Linda

Oh no. Not at all. I was a reformed mauler by that time. I'd gotten beaten up fighting for a girl's honor. She wanted to keep it. And I see you're of an age, like me, to have a Paul Harvey radio moment. MB

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My first "date.”I was twelve.  He was eighteen, and worked  for my father.  My older brother orchestrated this event.  "Dad, Sis and I are going to the movies."  Uh huh.  So,  Farm Boy Billy met my brother and I at the local drive-in, and he quickly made his way to the outside seating to meet his friends.  Billy and I were in the back seat of my brother's car.  I knew as much about anything that might happen that night as my grandfather knew about Maybelline eyeliner. 

Billy and I kissed.  What it really was, I remember vividly, was him showing me what kissing was, and I'll swear to this day it was the best kiss I ever had.  And then there were more of them amid a lot of awkward conversation that I can't remember at all.  I was wearing a white button-up, Peter Pan collared blouse, and he found a couple of buttons and touched me under a white lacy Junior High bra, and commented that he liked what he was touching, though in retrospect I figure he hadn't a whole lot to compare it to.  Then we kissed some more.

My brother came back to the car with his buddies.  Billy's hand moved away from my girl parts faster than a rocket, and we drove home, the three of us figuring out what the movie was about since none of us had watched it.  This was tradition, you realize, for teenagers - and those not quite there yet - to go to the movies and never watch them, so we had to make up a story detailed enough to be convincing with room for elaboration if need be under Dad's watchful interrogation.

Oh, youth, Mike.  Those were the days – Zoey

Caution:  Foul Language And A Dead Fish

University of California President Janet Napolitano appeared on Tavis Smiley's PBS program last night touting UC's efforts to recruit and even seek out minority applicants for admission to both student and professional positions since the passage of the Proposition 209 in 1996, a ballot initiative that established racial diversity in state run schools, agencies and among state government contractors. 

Oh please. Not again. See, what Dr. Napolitano and other well intentioned ninnies mean by diversity mainly refers to black applicants, as were the kids shown in Dr. Napolitano's video clips during the Smiley broadcast.  Hispanics were included as a seeming afterthought.  As for white kids?  Pfft. They were shown as exclusionary frat rats.

Dr. Naplitiano sure as hell wasn't referring to Asian kids, who already comprise about 40% of the undergrads at Berkeley and UCLA, and whose numbers are legion in all of California's universities and colleges. 

Prop 209 was not really intended to foster racial inclusion and “level the playing field” as its disingenuous supporters claimed. It was nothing more than sanctioned prejudice in the name of slavery compensation.  

I was goddamned tired of the misnamed Affirmative Action nonsense long before I was passed over for hiring and promotion because, as I was told by the chief of staff to Jerry Brown during the weird bastard's first gubenatorial incarnation: “You're a white male.” On another occasion I was asked by a middle-aged female personnel officer when I called about my interview results, “You're the older Caucasian man we talked to, right? Well, we'll keep your application on file in case we need you.” Gee, thanks.

Another time I was told by a nervous barely 20-something Asian female: “You're overqualified.” I guessed the poor kid had been sent out to talk to me by her boss who was too cowardly to give me the bad news herself once she saw me through the office window, even though that boss and I spoken on the phone the night before. She'd said she looked forward to meeting in person, but instead sent this Asian kid who had not even seen my resume.  The poor girl looked so uncomfortable that I sympathized with her. “Look, I know someone put you up to this. So let's make the best of it.  You go have a nice cup of chai tea and I'll quietly open a vein in the men's room.” She almost cracked a smile.

Finding a job these days can be discriminatory hell. Just fill out a printed job application anywhere. There's always a tear off section for the applicant to check off his/her ethnic background. I suppose this is intended as evidence an employer can use if challenged by the Affirmative Action ISIS when bidding on a government contract.  If you don't fill it out someone will fill it out for you, or mark you down as an unemployable troublemaker and all around smartass who probably does weird shit in secret, like read books or listen to classical music, and who should be medicated up to his antisocial eyeballs and locked in a padded cell  -- but not hired.  Ever.

Thing is, I have just enough Native American in my familial wood pile to count, but it's not my primary genetic heritage and my advanced age tends to cancel it out.  I know, I know, age discrimination is illegal in hiring, but proving it takes more time and legal hassles than I can afford.  Anyway, going where you're not wanted is not a good career move.

Look, I'm a commie socialist pinko knee jerk liberal and life-long Democrat of Medicare age who wants to tax everyone to the tits so politically enlightened local governments can declare eminent domain over every goddamn golf course in America and replace them with subsidized housing for unwed crack whore mothers, especially those gated communities occupied by annoying old farts who tool around in golf carts and complain a lot.

But goddamnit, Dr. Napolitano, your university affirmative action program is nothing more than bigotry dressed in a graduation gown with a mortarboard hat.

Worse yet, thinking like yours is just the kind of well-meant social justice bullshit that's given rise to the right wing basket of deplorables who believe that a blow-dried serial bankrupt with the family values of Caligula is presidential material. 

Seems that we liberals have awakend the hungover sleeping giants among the loudmouthed yahoos who let an OxyContin addicted gasbag with a radio show and a skinny blonde shrew of a right wing author do what little thinking they do for them. And the bastards actually vote while too many of us smug liberals get complacent and do not vote at all.  Or if we do, we vote against someone we deem toxic instead of voting for someone we deem beneficial.  Even many women who tell pollsters they're voting for Clinton are ambivalent about her, citing the trustworthiness issue.  

So basically we're voting from reaction and not reason.

That reaction is so pervasive it even got to my goldfish.  After seeing last night's Trump-Clinton debate from the privacy of his fishbowl, he made a suicidal leap from his watery balcony during the night.  I found his stiff little body on the floor this morning. There was no note.

-oOo-

E-mail comments, critiques, corrections and death threats to tomatomike@aol.com.

Well, there’s just no way of getting around politics and the commensurate emotions. Some things just can’t be allowed to pass. The NAFTA deal cost millions of jobs and Hillary backed it. She has touted the TPP as the “gold standard” of trade deals which she has now flipped on. She will likely amend it in some inconsequential way and back it again if elected. The TPP, which Obama is pushing with all his might, gives some unelected multinational corporate entity the power to decide our laws on labor, trade and manufacturing. Which brings us to the crux of the matter. Hillary and Obama are globalist lackeys.  What comes next, authority over more of our laws? This is our sovereignty folks. You really need to think about this. -- Wht
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Jesus! One email and I've been reading ever since.  All your Times piled one after another.  Great.  -- Thea
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I was once told by a high rise law firm's hiring partner, "Oh, yes-- you're the one who fits the profile that we used  to be looking for."  -- Trog
_____

I couldn't stomach listening to the debate last night. I'm not fond of Clinton, but Trump makes me want to throw things.  I read all about the debate in several articles in The Washington Post.

Thing I don't get, Trump wanting to keep bringing up Bill's infidelity and actions he took as President. Has no one told him it's Hillary running for President? She's not the one who had the affairs. She's not the one who signed trade agreements. He can try to rattle her, but he should have asked Ivana for her opinion. She could tell him that, after publicly experiencing the pain and humiliation of something so publicly exposed, bringing up the subject again, bringing those women into the debate room wouldn't rattle Hillary.

If Donny Boy wants to bring up infidelity, well... Marla Maples comes to mind. HE is running for President. -- Brat

My dearly departed goldfish and I didn't watch the entire debate either, and look what happened to him after what we did watch.  MB  

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When I apply for a job, I PRAY for paper applications. As it stands now, most places with corporate offices, want you to apply on line. If you can remember your last job, when you started (day/month/hour) how much you were making when you started and how much you were making when you left, you're gold. Well, silver. Then try to back up from there until the blanks run out. If you get through the remembering part, you get to take a half-hour test about how you'd handle this if this happened, of this if that happened, and then they ask it again in a different form to see if you were paying attention. Aaargh! So stupid if you're an elder soul, just looking for a few part time hours to supplement your paltry Social Security. I don't know who to blame for that. Progress, I guess. Thanks for making me angry again! (Seriously, glad to see you venting. Saved me the trouble). – Beaty

Well, maybe getting angry over a blog post is healthier than getting your blood pressure up with a double espresso latte or an 8-ball of speed. MB  
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Sigh.....I read this piece with great understanding.  Here I am, and have been for decades, just wishing everyone was treated equally.  You know, equal pay for equal work, don't care what color you are, or where you're from or what your gender is.   It has seemed odd to me that in order to get more diversity into the work force the solution has become to limit how many of this heritage or that gender or whatever other lines are drawn with crayon and we've all gone mad.  Why (yes, I'm still Pollyanna here) is it so hard to just hire somebody who applies for the job and has a bit more savvy than somebody else, and maybe who isn't wearing a foil hat?   Why doesn't everyone just require himself to be colorblind or culture-blind or...oh never mind.  Young black men are getting shot by white officers in the street, middle-eastern men are shooting people by the dozens in malls, Natives drink too much and Asians are...taking up a lot of space in colleges.   And white people....well, maybe I ought to stop writing things like this because someone will think it's easy for me to say anything since I'm white.  Why do so many insist on reporting things that incite and not mention the people from all over the world in all walks of life who live here peacefully and want no harm played out on anyone?  Humans are missing the important stuff, Mike.  Pardon me for humming Kumbaya, but I would just like a better line drawn - one that happens to curve around us in a circle and nobody is left out.  Maybe it's the hippie in me.  -- Zoey

This man is now a friend of mine, but...

....that was not always the case.  Lieutenant Edward R. Murphy, Jr., was a naval officer and I was an enlisted sailor.  He's since become a figure in Navy history as the former executive officer of the USS Pueblo, the spy ship captured by North Korea in 1968. The other night I happened see a televised interview of him on YouTube:

Citizen Soldier: The Ongoing Story Of USS Pueblo, With Executive Officer Edward R. Murphy, Jr. - YouTube

Six years earlier we had both been stationed at the Subic Bay naval base in the Philippines. I was an 18-year-old high school dropout, he was the base education officer and a tyrant about it.  He did not tolerate diploma-less sailors under his jurisdiction running around loose, so he restricted me to the base until I passed a high school G.E.D. test -- which I did with all deliberate speed.

Fast forward to 1967.  I'm a radio reporter at small station on California's north coast, working two jobs and attending college full time.  Busy boy.  Anyway, I learned that my former education officer was stationed at a nearby naval facility.  Seems that he and another officer were being awarded the Navy - Marine Corps medal for lifesaving.  They'd swum through 100 yards of cold surf with a bad undertow to rescue two stranded fishermen clinging to a rock.  So we had a reunion at an awards ceremony on the county fairgrounds.

We occasionally chatted over the next few months. Then he told me he was being transferred to a small ship in Japan, saying it was about the size of the coastal transports we had in the Philippines. But it was no mere coastal coastal transport.  It was the spy ship Pueblo.

A year had elapsed by the next time I saw him, not long after his release from a North Korean prison.  Although only in his late 30s his formerly black hair had turned completely white, presumably from trauma, and he'd resigned his commission.  When we met he  was being interviewed by a reporter for a series of articles published in the Christian Science Monitor about his Pueblo experience.  He later collaborated on a book in a similar vein:

https://www.amazon.com/Second-Command-Uncensored-Account-Capture/dp/0030850754.

I now live in San Diego, which is also Mr. Murphy's home town, and yes, we've reconnected.  While we are both civilians now, and well into our Medicare years, the former Lieutenant Edward R. Murphy, Jr.,  USN, will always be Mr. Murphy to me, an exemplary officer who had put the lives of others before his own, but also one quick to yank the liberty card of a recalcitrant sailor whose education needed improving.  

Consider yourself saluted, sir.

-oOo-

Send corrections, critiques and lavish praise to tomatomike@aol.com.

Thinking of people who made a mark on our lives is like a dose of thankfulness.  A lot of life is laid out to make us search for the light at the end of the tunnel, but memories of shared experiences, pieces of stories that make us evaluate our own good luck, that's all a gift.  It's nice, too, to touch base with those people we once knew and couldn't have thought we'd see again.  I'm glad you got that chance again with Edward Murphy.  Be well, Mike.  And keep 'em comin'  -- Zoey

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Wonderful! ! As always.  -- Juli

Thank you.  -- MB

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Sorry for the delay. I had to locate my magnifier. I can't read 1 point type anymore. But as always, it was worth the fetching. I love that story and that you've reconnected. You have more stories in you then you are writing. Please, keep me in the loop. -- Beaty
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Really enjoyed this. It's great that you've reconnected with your former XO. – Shannon

Shannon's dad is a retired Navy cap'n.  – MB

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One wonders if the current crop of officers have the same concern for their men to have basic educational necessities. Or want to put that sort of discipline and effort into their jobs. -- Wht

I think so.  Our now all-volunteer military has become so technically complex that a high school dropout would probably not be allowed to enlist.  Even when I joined in 1961, the Navy had the motto "Stay In School" in its recruiting campaign to discourage potential dropouts from running away to sea.  But those were also the days when judges often gave the choice of jail or the military to juvenile offenders of draft age, diploma or not.  -- MB

The Stripper & The Church Lady

Six a.m. I‘m standing by my airport shuttle van in the driveway of a new McMansion near Sacramento waiting for a tardy passenger. The van company is a shared ride service, and this delay will make me late for the next stop. I’m getting antsy. 

"She’ll be out in five minutes,” the passenger’s boyfriend says. He’s standing beside the van in his bathrobe. He looks likes he just awakened from a sleep that began in 1973; Brillo pad red hair, droopy mustache. Disco Van Winkle. I could see him wrapped in a polyester leisure suit with white vinyl boots and a matching belt.

I clear my throat. “I have to pick up one more passenger, and I’m running late now,” I say. “Could you see if she’s ready?” 

He nods but doesn’t make move toward the house. Instead, he fishes a $50 dollar bill from his bathrobe pocket and hands it to me. “Just five more minutes, I swear,” he says. I tell him the tip is included in the prepaid fare, and anyway, $50 is way too much. 

“Take it. It’s for your trouble,” he says. 

I can take a hint. I pocket the fifty, then I hear the front door of the house open closely followed by the rattle of luggage wheels on cement. The passenger is 21 or 22, wearing sprayed on jeans, a nothing halter top, sandals and navel a ring. She’s also slugging down a bottle of Wicked Ale. 

“Hiiiiiiiii, Mr. Van Driver!” she gushes, all boozy cheer. “Here I am!” I take her suitcase, then politely but firmly suggest that she sit in front, where she’s less likely to throw up from motion sickness on the curving hillside roads we'll be taking, and where I can get a Hefty bag to her in a hurry in case she throws up anyway.  

“Guess I better not take this, huh?” she says, finishing the bottle and handing the empty to the boyfriend. “I’ll call you when I get there,” she tells him. “Think he’ll let me smoke in his van?”

They look at me. “I’d like to say yes, but state law and my next passenger say I can’t. And we’re running late. We better go. Now.” 

She throws me a wobbly, mock salute. “Yessir!” she says, and pulls herself into the front passenger seat. She blows a kiss to her squeeze:  “Bye bye. I’ll call when I get there. Will you miss me? Say yes!” 

“Go. You’ll miss your flight,” the boyfriend says. She pouts. I climb in and we’re on our way. 

“You sure I can’t smoke in your van?” she asks.

“I’m sure.” 

“Are we making any stops?” 

“We’re picking up a church lady.” I mentioned the church connection on purpose. I thought it might make my tipsy passenger more circumspect. Silly me. 

“For real? We’re picking up Dana Carvey? That is soooooo cool! Should I ask for his autograph? I love Dana Carvey! 

“We’re not picking up Dana Carvey. We’re picking up a real church lady. A Presbyterian.” 

My dispatcher warned me about her the night before: "Watch your fucking language. The old bitch calls corporate and complains about the drivers swearing and shit." 

The elderly Presbyterian church lady is in tears when we arrive, thinking she's going to be late for her flight.  I assure her that she will be at the airport in plenty of time to have her luggage looted by airline baggage handlers, be humiliated while spread-eagled by an obese TSA minority hire, then jammed into a cement airline seat and nibbling on blanched rodent turds the airlines claims are peanuts. I don't put it that way of course,  but that's how I've come to think about airline travel since federal deregulation too effect in the 80s.

The stripper tries to help. "Hiiiii!," she gushes again, exhaling an invisible cloud of ale breath. The church lady's mouth puckers up like a barnacle.  

"My name is Tawny," the stripper says. "I'm going to Vegas. Are you going to Vegas too?" 

The church lady's barnacle pucker gets even more puckered. "No," she says with a rimless glasses glare. The stripper is too full of ale and God knows what else to take the hint. She presses on in a cheerfully boozy way: "Well, where are you going?" 

"Shhh," the church lady hisses, trying to shut the stripper up. 

Not a chance. Never try to quiet an aggressively happy drunk. It will have the opposite effect.  Tawny proceeded to prove my point.

"Gosh, I'm just trying to get your mind off missing your flight. I mean, wow, you were like crying your butt off a minute ago. But it will be okay. Like, even if you miss your flight, you can come to Vegas with me. Do you have any daughters? Hey, do you mind if I smoke? I'll give you $20 if you let me smoke." 

"Shhh," the church lady hisses. 

The rebuff hurt the stripper's feelings. "Fuck! I'm just trying to be friendly! Just because she's gonna miss her fucking flight, it isn't my fucking fault! Gosh! Shit!" 

Actually, the delay is her fault. But I don't say that. Instead, I say, "No one will miss any flights.” I gesture toward the windshield. We are on US 50 in light traffic, passing through an industrial area.  "Look, there's hardly any traffic and we'll be at the airport in plenty of time." 

"There's my club!" Tawny shouts. She waves an arm in front of my eyes and points to a cinder block building the Presbyterians on the zoning board wanted as far away from a residential area as possible. "Hi Marci! Hi Twila! Hi Amy! I'm going to Vaaaaaaaaaygas! Ha ha!"

"Shhh," the church lady hisses.

I intervene: "Miss, better settle down or Southwest Airlines won't let you on the airplane."

That seems to work. Her posture stiffens in drunken dignity and she clams up. A dense climate of silence settles over the van for the rest of the ride.  We arrive on time and the church lady bolts from the van, snatches her carry-ons with a blue-veined claw and scuttles full throttle to the terminal entrance.

The stripper gets out before I can open her for door for her and takes a deep breath. She appears momentarily sober, her eyes clear despite the alcohol. I unload her luggage from the back. 

"You've been patient with me," she says. She opens her suitcase, extracts a $20, and stuffs the bill in my shirt pocket. I start to say the tip is included in the fare and her friend had already been more than generous. She wouldn't hear it. 

"Hush.  I know what it's like to work for tips," she says, and tamps the twenty down. 

Back on the road, I reflect on which of those two women had the more Christian nature set forth in the Sermon On The Mount; the angry Pharisee or the sweet drunkard who strips for a living? 

My money is on the latter.

-oOo-