Dropping Off Bags at Fort Indiantown Gap

Yesterday my wife and I drove to Fort Indiantown Gap (40 miles away) to drop three of my five bags off. In the next few days they will be loaded and shipped to Oklahoma. Yesterday I dropped off two duffel bags and the footlocker--The DBag of a post earlier this week. That leaves just the backpack and one duffel bag to go with me on the 29th. The DBag weighed a lot. I have an extra laptop and a dozen books in the footlocker along with everything else I supposed to have in it. After all the rehab I have been doing, I'll have to be careful not to hurt myself moving my luggage!!

Attention K-Mart Shoppers--Fill your DBag

My wife and I are going to K-Mart today to get the last few items recommended on my Army PowerPoint slide: eyeglasses cleaning and repair kits, fitted sheets, handheld mirror, locks for duffle bags, foot powder, talcum powder, surge protector, extension cord, battery-operated alarm clock, etc. All of these items go in the footlocker--the fifth of the five bags that go with me: A backpack, three dufflebags and the footlocker. For whatever reason, the backpack is not counted as a bag and the others are called Bags A, B, C, & D (the footlocker). One of my kids seeing the printed listed noted that the PowerPoint printout for the footlocker started laughing and said, "Dad, this is a DBag?" DBag is a common insult among high school kids. When I was in high school, we used the same insult but didn't abbreviate. According to the Urban Dictionary DBag is most commonly a "playful insult" though it can be nasty. In the 60s I remember it only as a harsh insult. I suppose there is always something to learn about language even when stuffing a footlocker.

Enlistment Diary

During the coming week I will be on vacation, packing, cleaning up final details. I was looking at my enlistment diary and thought I should post some of my recollection of how I got here.

I left the Army reserve July 21, 1984. I completed all the classwork for an MA in American Studies and now had the opportunity to write a book for my Masters project. I needed more time. I could not quit my full-time job loading trucks at Yellow Freight, so I left the reserves. It wasn’t an easy decision. I liked the Army in some ways, but I wanted to get a job as a writer, so I had to cut something and the Army reserve was it.

At that point I knew I had served six years and ten months on active duty, two and one-half years in the Air Force and just over four years in the Army. I thought I had three years in the reserves, but it turns out I had 11 years, 2 months and 2 days of Federal Service. This would be important 23 years later.

I turned 50 during the very successful campaign to invade and capture Iraq and take Saddam Hussein from power. I was very proud to (formerly) have been part of the Army that won such a swift and sweeping victory. And I was envious. The Army I joined in 1972 was about to withdraw in defeat from a far-away jungle war. The Army that defeated the Japanese and the Nazis in World War II was unable to fight a limited war. Despite the great tactical victories in Iraq and Afghanistan, the situation after the major fighting turned bad.

In the fall of 2003 I looked at an Army Web site just to see the age requirements for re-enlistment. I satisfied myself I was too old to join by almost five years. I made jokes about it with my family. Probably too many.

In January of 2006, the military enlistment age went up from 35 to 40. I was three years older, still too old. Then in June of 2006, the age went up from 40 to 42. I was not sure, but now I could go back, but I just laughed at myself when I thought about it. The trouble was, I could not stop thinking about it.

More later.

Packing for the Big Trip

This week I started stacking all of my Army eqiupment in the living room. This weekend I'll start packing a backpack, three duffle bags and a footlocker for training in the US, then on to Iraq. I have a five-page PowerPoint presentation that tells me what goes into each of the five bags. Then I will have to decide what books I will take with me and where they will go--three per bag and ten in the footlocker? Three in each bag and let my kids send me one every other week? How about running shoes. One set in my A bag that goes on the plane to stateside training, one extra pair in stuff that gos by truck, two more for Iraq? We'll see how everything fits.

Junk Food in my Future

One way or another I am going to be eating junk food in the coming year. I watched a news segment recently about a guy who has eaten at least one Bic Mac every day for nearly forty years! He didn't look healthy. But it did remind me of one of my favorite jokes which I wrote down for no particular reason when I was in grad school.


(Should be Told With Exaggerated Gestures and Feeling)

Once there was a town in Western Pennsylvania that was so small it had only one school, one school bus, and one school bus driver--a nervous little man.

One day the school bus driver called up the superintendent at 6 a.m. saying, "It's time for me to pick up the kids and the bus won't start and its six o'clock. . .What am I going to do?"

"Calm down," said the superintendent. "The Sesame Street people are in town. Why don't you run over to the hotel and borrow their bus."

He asked. They loaned him the bus.

The first kids the driver picks up each morning are two little girls named Patty who live next door to each other. Actually these girls are not little. They are so fat that they have to sit on opposite sides in the front or the bus will tip over.

The next kid is Special Ross. Special Ross is the mayor's son, so he can sit anywhere he wants. So he sits on the floor in the middle of the bus.

The last passenger is Leonard Snead. Leonard Snead has bunions and his feet smell, so he has to sit on the back of the bus.

What do you have?

You've got two obese Pattys,
Special Ross,
Leonard Snead with the bunions on a Sesame Street bus. . .

November 9, 2001

The road to my enlistment is longer and more twisted than I thought. I got laid off from a dot-com job in 2001. Here's what I wrote the next week:

Friday, November 9

Can lightning strike twice in the same place? Certainly. Especially if the place in question is prone to storms. So, Friday, November 9, is a place in time I will try to avoid.
November 9, 1973, just after 9 a.m. was my first lightning strike. I was connecting wires to detonators at a U.S. Air Force missile test site in Utah. Someone turned on the power, and my world turned bright blue and white. Several minutes later I was strapped in an all-terrain ambulance headed for the first of six eye operations that would eventually restore my sight. Along with the eye operations, I had surgery to reattach two fingers on my right hand and to remove wires, screws and various pieces of metal from my face, arms and chest.
It was Friday. I had planned to ride my motorcycle up into the mountains for the weekend. My plans changed.
On November 9, 1973, I woke up an agnostic. Before the day ended, I believed in God and a few months later, I went the whole way to become a Christian. I would have preferred a smoother path to faith, but at 20 years old, I test-fired missiles for a day job and rode a motorcycle in mountains of Utah for recreation. I was not inclined to listen to a still, small voice—blindness was the right size for God’s megaphone.
Fast forward 28 years. Friday, November 9, 2001, just after 9 a.m., lightning struck at the same place in time. My supervisor took me to a vacant conference room to tell me I no longer had a job, effective immediately. Twenty-eight years before (almost to the minute) I had no faith and no obligations. This time I had faith, a house, a wife, four children and am part of a faith community. Now that I am listening to Him more closely, God can be more subtle. The moment of crisis is over and I can still see just fine. All my fingers are attached and when I shave I don’t feel metal scraping.
But I was not listening as well as I could. The long hours and hectic pace of my job frustrated many of the good impulses I had to serve people in need. If it was my job that tied my hands, then God just cut the ropes clean through.
For most of the year since I started my current job, I have felt uneasy, felt I should be doing something else. But good pay and great co-workers made it hard to leave. Now I am more free to listen. And I can exercise faith in a way I never have before. I worked summers and weekends since age 12 and have never taken more than two weeks off in the 36 years since. Work has defined me. In recent years, I have tried to keep work locked in a compartment away from the rest of my life. I have had some success at this, but at the expense of commitment to my work.
Now I have the opportunity to find work that either serves people in need more directly, or that keeps me closer to home and more involved with my family and community. Wherever God leads me in the coming weeks and months, I’ll be thankful for the time I have had to think, reflect and to reconnect with friends.
But I will also be careful. Friday, November 9, happens again in 2007, 2012 and 2018 before the next 28-year interval ends in 2029. One thing I am sure of: If I am still alive on Friday, November 9, 2029, I am staying in bed.

What Me Worry?!

OK. The most likely outcome of my shoulder evaluation will be: Sergeant Gussman is a Go for deployment. But I have nagging doubts. I am dealing with a bureaucracy and I am currently a No Go. To do nothing is the default setting for paperwork of any kind. So on the 20th I will take the results from my surgeon's evaluation directly to the "No Go Counselor" (really--that's a job title) handling my paperwork.
I'll continue to be optimistic--and make sure my paperwork is correct.