I am sitting here wracking my brain

 and thinking about the odd things that happened in Kodiak during my stay there. I just had a thought about the seamier side of the drug world.

Every now and then huge batches of some drug or another would hit town and be sold on the street for bargain prices. Two drugs come to mind although there were others. They are Quaaludes and mushrooms.

When a huge batch of Quaaludes or other doggie downers hit town it seemed that a lot of women would be stumbling around ‘Luded out and in a daze. Downers seemed to be more of a woman thing but there were a lot of guys eating them, too.

Dealing with these zoned out people kind of sucked. They ran around acting and talking like an old 78 rpm record being played at 33-1/3 rpm.  It only took a sentence out of their mouths for me to know that it was time for me to make my excuse to leave and split.  I hated being around people when they were like that.

Half of them didn’t know what they were doing. They didn’t call Quaaludes ‘panty droppers’ for nothing. If you had half a brain you didn’t go home with a woman whacked out on Quaaludes no matter how willing she was. Mornings could often be rough on a guy as the woman would occasionally wake up with buyer’s remorse.

More than one unlucky guy woke up to headaches and one or two guys were charged with sexual assault. The DA would generally throw it out if he found out Quaaludes were involved. It was hard to get a conviction.

What was interesting is that women would often come to some guy’s defense and be willing to testify that they saw the purported ‘victim’ groping guys at the bar on the night in question.

There were a number of decent women in that town that had a sense of right and wrong and didn’t like women like that because it made them look bad.

It got worse when the user had a few drinks to go along with them. A lot of people would pass out in the bar.

The strippers in the club would slow down, too. Sometimes that was funny to watch. It was about the only time I’d wander in. Between that and the fact that there would be passed out patrons to scrape up the manager of the club told me he hated it when Quaaludes came into town. I told him I felt the same way. I hated being around the effects of Quaaludes.

I do remember one guy that got into Quaaludes. He was a troublemaker and when he had a couple ‘Ludes in him someone bought him a couple straight up Crown Royals and it wasn’t long before he passed out. He woke up in a Dempsey dumpster much to my amusement as I didn’t like him much, either.

Magic Mushrooms were another thing entirely.

I remember when one guy got on an airplane headed for the cow fields of Whatcom County, Washington where psilocybin mushrooms grew on cow pies regularly. He left with a small bag of clothes and an empty 5 gallon pail and returned with the pail nearly stuffed full.

He wasn’t a capitalist. All he wanted out of the pail full of mushrooms was to get his expenses paid. He practically gave them away and a good chunk of the town got pretty toasted for the few days the pail full lasted. He kind of considered it a public service to get half the town stoned out of their minds.

I do have to admit that dealing with people whacked out on mushrooms was often entertaining. They make a lot of people laugh uncontrollably. After a while it becomes contagious. I would be sitting there talking to someone that was laughing and pretty soon I would be rolling on the floor with him.

For someone whacked out on ‘shrooms just about anything could be funny. Tell someone their house burned down and you were more than likely to be treated by gales of laughter.

Mushrooms didn’t affect the body the same way the downers did. People on mushrooms were coordinated and maybe a bit animated.

Of course, cocaine was a constant as it was a huge moneymaker for drug dealers and pot was pretty much a staple.

The local police generally didn’t bother too much with drugs so long as it was kept away from the high schools. Every now and then there would be a pro-forma bust and the dealers that were getting greedy, out of hand or advertised too much would generally get carted off. A day or two later it would be business as normal.

The police were reluctant to put a lot of effort into victimless crimes and generally overlooked gambling and drugs. Personally I avoided the drug scene for a few good reasons. While getting busted took some doing, you never knew if you’d get picked up accidentally in a raid and become collateral damage.

A drug bust of any kind was and is a bad thing to have on one’s record. It can cripple a person’s career and life. There are other reasons I avoided the drug scene, too. I have posted them in an earlier post.

I have had people ask me why I know so much about life on the streets and it is simply because I lived on the streets for a while and saw things firsthand. When you live in a camper/trailer or a sailboat in a fishing port you see all sorts of things.

Prostitution was controlled in town simply by tacitly allowing one madam to have a monopoly of sorts which she guarded with an iron fist. Maybe I’ll do a post on this sometime. It was interesting how that system worked. It actually made sense and I have to give the police credit for the way they handled it.

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One guy keeps asking me to post my stripper stories

and I guess I will just to get him off my back. It’s really not too big of a deal.

I did maintenance work for a club when I was in my early thirties. A lot of what I did was repaint the men’s room and replace the toilet every time some alcohol and testosterone fueled fisherman pulled it off of the floor. That and keep the stage and other things in repair.

Incidentally it is not all that hard to pull a toilet off of its moorings. There’s a trick to it. They’re not fastened to the floor too strongly. You twist it first to break the moorings and then lift it up.

The biggest part of the odd jobs I did were not done at the club but at the pair of apartments the manager rented for the girls, most of whom were from Washington and Oregon.

I was a doorman briefly but didn’t like it very much. I am not big and imposing enough and not mean enough for the job. I begged off after a couple of weeks.

My favorite incident was when some big guy came in and simply pushed me out of the way. I looked at the barkeep who simply shrugged and called the police who arrived and carted him off for the evening and gave him a place to cool down.

What I did do a couple of times when someone looked like they were getting ready to start trouble is get one of the girls and go outside and smoke some pot with him. Then she would agree to meet him at the ginmill next door. There was a bartender there that liked to fight.

It was generally a winning deal for everyone. I got rid of a headache. The girl got stoned on company time. The bartender next door got to punch someone silly and the guy that was looking for trouble found what he was looking for. Everybody won.

People don’t know it, but lighting is terribly important in strip clubs because a lot of the women that work there are not world-class beauties to begin with. A lot of them have a lot to hide.

Some of them looked pretty beaten up.

The yellow tones tend to hide a lot of bruises and other things and in general highlight the makeup and reflect well off of their scant costumes. You can take a pretty beaten up looking woman and hide an awful lot through lighting.

Incidentally I’ll have to say that makeup can do wonders. For a while the manager had a ‘house mother’ for the girls and oddly enough it was someone in the process of being transgendered.

She was extremely talented with makeup and while she was there she made up most of the girls before work. I have to say she could truly work wonders. While she was there the girls looked 100% better.

I suppose people might find that odd but when you think about it, this make sense. She had spent a lot of time studying up on becoming a woman. The strippers were born female. The ‘house mom’ had to study up on it. Actually she was a pretty interesting person to talk to.

The stories of the single moms supporting a kid and the college student saving for school are not really all that common. Truth is a lot of the women working there are there because they don’t have a whole lot of education and smarts to begin with. The money’s generally pretty good and drugs are fairly easy to score.

The real moneymakers at a strip club are the owners who get to sell their drinks at inflated prices and the drug dealers that keep the girl’s habits fed. The strippers were paid peanuts as contract entertainers. They made their money in tips.

There are exceptions, of course. I’ve mentioned them in previous posts. However, the average stripper I met really wasn’t too bright and had a tendency toward the drug and alcohol lifestyle.

I’ve seen them fight over stupid stuff like which girl ‘owns’ which song and bickering over customers. I managed to stay out of that, thank God.

The part that amazed me is the amount of damage the girls could do to their living quarters. A 115 pound little girl properly coked up can tear a door of its hinges.

A lot of them were slobs and had little in the way of domestic skills. They could plug up a kitchen sink in a heartbeat or plug up a toilet by using it as a wastebasket.

A few of them were neat and clean but an awful lot of them were real slobs. Generally the neater ones lived in one apartment and the slobs in the other.

Guess which one required the most maintenance?

Many of these girls didn’t seem to really have the basic life skills to take care of a home and/or raise a family.

The truth is that there is nothing really exciting, glamorous or even interesting about working for a strip club. Actually it’s sad.

It wasn't one of my favorite gigs.

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One of the things I have learned

 is to stay focused on what you are trying to do.

I just wrote a post about the laptops I tend to use. I use old, solid, simple machines to surf the web and write with. I do this to keep costs down. Why should I buy something I will never use?

I’m pretty much the same way with vehicles, too. I buy them dead simple and run them until they are no longer reliable.

The last thing I want or need is a loaded pickup with all the bells and whistles on it. I use it to go from A to B and to carry grub and stuff to and from work. Yes, it really is that simple.

When I get the truck I set and forget the front seat and it stays there unless someone else drives it. Afterwards I reset it and carry on. I don’t need or want some kind of hydraulic seat pusher-arounder-er to do what I can do simply with my hands.

It always winds up being a never ending battle for simplicity, reliability and peace of mind.

Electric windows always break and must get fixed. Roll ups work forever with no headaches. Thanks to Mr. President’s wonderful cash for clunkers program I was forced into getting air conditioning. All of the simple pickups were already sold. The A/C pump broke the instant it came out of warranty and now I’m $864 poorer.

There is always someone sneaking in and trying to get me to add something onto something simple. It turns things into a brawl because as soon as you add something someone tries to get you to add something else and pretty soon you wind up with EXACTLY what you don’t want and have been fighting against.

I have had nightmares over this.

It is not just about pickups, it’s about almost everything.

I remember the VCR I used to have that would record automatically and had a clock that required a PhD to set. There were a boatload of features on it, only one of which I ever used.

I used it to play tapes and that was it.

I looked for one that would do just that but they didn’t make one. I had to settle for more than I wanted. When DVDs came out I simply decided I’d watch them on my laptop because I figured it would be like trying to get another VCR and I’d just get pissed off again.

Then again, I do have to admit every now and then someone comes out with an add-on that is a stroke of genius. I saw a pair of flip-flops I snagged. Some genius put a bottle opener in the sole of them.

As I write this I suppose I would pay an extra $20 for a bottle opener on the dashboard of my pickup. You can’t have too many bottle openers. They won’t do this, though.

Some idiot will likely drink 42 beers, wreck and kill a bunch of people and blame it on the car maker for making it easy for people to drink and drive.

Still, you have to stay focused on things when you go looking for them. You have to keep asking yourself what you want something to do and not get sidetracked.  If you do likely you’ll wind up at Square One which is with something you really didn’t want to begin with.

It is a constant battle.

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Keystone Accuracy

Just did a job for me and I think it was a good job done at a reasonable price and unless the thing totally craters the first time I use it I will cheerfully go there again.

My service rifle rear sight was flopping around and something had to be done about it. It was not a custom rifle to begin with and the years had weakened the rear sight springs. There are a couple springs in the sight that put it back into place after the recoil of each shot. I suppose for basic GI use it’s a passable system but for long term match work it is less than desirable. The fix is to ‘pin’ the rear sight. You eliminate the springs and allow the rear sight base to slide up and down a pair of pins and you wind up with a rock hard rear sight with no movement or slop. It stays where you put it. No springs have to push it back onto position because it doesn’t move in the first place.

When I dropped the rifle upper off I looked around and saw a professional neat, clean, well-organized work area with what appeared to be rather new and well maintained machines that looked adequate for a custom rifle maker. It was also obvious that the owner was no stranger to other tools such as a broom and a mop because the place looked clean and airy.

I glanced around at the project he was working on and saw what looked like a first class job being done on a custom build.

A brief chat with him makes me believe he is one of those rare people that are mentally incapable of doing a poor job of anything they do. He knows that everything going out his door has his name on it and seems picky about letting anything leave that isn’t 100%.

His turn-around time was excellent, too. I delivered my upper late Tuesday afternoon and about 11:00 Thursday morning got a call to pick it up. I looked at it and it appears to be a clean job and the rear sight went up and down perfectly.

He does take Visa which is handy as I seldom travel with cash. Add 3% for this which is fair enough. It’s what they bite him for and the 3% add-on is well worth the convenience.

In my opinion this guy is good to go and I will more than likely do business with him again.

As regular readers know I seldom say anything about businesses on this blog but I’m putting this one here because some of you guys are shooters and good service rifle gunsmiths are hard to come by. Consider this a public service announcement




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Yonder.

 

I once worked on a bunker barge bunkering ships and had to deal with a pretty ignorant tug skipper.  Everywhere to him was either ‘yonder’ or ‘down yonder’.

“Catch me a line over yonder,” he’d say.

Of course, yonder was where ever he wanted it to be and it was always confusing to say the least. I think he was some kind of flatbilly. (This is a hillbilly without the hills)

 Finally I decided I’d had enough. I made a stencil and labeled the midship cleats ‘yonder’ and went aboard the tug and explained to him that yonder was the midship cleat and when he said ‘yonder’ that’s where I would go.

Of course he would say something like, “Catch a line yonder!” and I would head straight to the midship cleat. He’d get frustrated until he finally figured it out. He started saying things like “Two cleats aft yonder.”

That I could work with. I knew where yonder was and I could count two cleats aft. Yonder now had a fixed value and from then on things went pretty smoothly.

Sometimes all it takes is assigning a fixed value to something and working off of it.

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Problems.

The combat laptop cratered and I am having to do what I can.

Expect nothing for the next 2 weeks.

On top of that I am behind the lines.


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Driver's license renewal is coming up and it's time to start to stop shaving

so I can get my picture taken looking like Charles Manson.

My sisters, who do a similar thing, call renewal 'dress like a whore day'.This is because while neither of them wear more than a smudge of makeup they get their driver's license picture taken looking like a couple of whores.

This started back in the day when I was fishing in Alaska and renewed after a small bender following a fishing trip. I looked terrible but gave it no thought. 

Several months later on a visit home my sis asked me what an Alaska driver's license looked like and told me my picture made me look like a hatchet murderer. I laughed and suggested she get hers taken looking like a whore.

She actually did and the other sister decided to do likewise and a family tradition was born. As the nieces and nephews came along and grew up they would shout "Driver's license time" at Thanksgiving dinner and judge them.

I generally took top honors in the hatchet murder category.

It was also funny hearing a niece say something like, "Gee, Aunt Gloria, you look like a real slut in this one!" 

 Of course, Gloria would beam proudly.

"Hey, Mom, you sure look like a tramp in this one!" would draw something like, "Thank you, Son!"

My niece once said to me, "Uncle Pic! You look like you just hacked up a whole troop of Girl Scouts with a chain saw! Great picture!"

Anyway, the girls have it made because they can just pile on the makeup. I have to work at it and do stuff like stop shaving and the night before stay up all night drinking expresso to get my eyes to glaze over for that wild-eyed look.

Over the years I have been stopped by the police and had a couple of cops comment on the picture. When I explain to them what we do they just laugh and shake their heads.

I once had a cop tell me that the true test of a pretty girl is one that actually looks pretty on her DL photo. I had to agree with him. Driver's license photos are generally pretty lousy.

Anyway, it's that time again and I am going to continue to keep first place in the hatchet murderer category. Personally I don't give a damn but it does entertain the nieces and nephews so why not.


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I think I'll answer the comment made on my earlier post with another post.

There are places in the world that you have one chance at things. You are given an opportunity for further education based on how well you have done in the course of study you have just completed.

If you did well, it's on to further studies. If you didn't make the cut your education ends and you're stuck in that rut for life.

It ain't that way here. We have second chances. You can go find schooling or training and pick up a skill at any age. 

The truth of the matter is that nobody is stuck in a career they don't want. You can change jobs at any time.  If you are in your mid 20s and still flipping burgers and not in some kind of schooling or training program than you are probably not very motivated. When you are unsuccessful and wind up flipping burgers for a career you have nobody to blame but yourself. The opportunity was there.

Drop out of high school? No problem. Go back to school in adult education or take a GED course. The opportunity is there.

Have good hands? Open yourself a home repair or office cleaning business. Good handymen are hard to find these days and a pickup truck, ladder and toolbox can make a guy a halfway decent living.

Get laid off from a job? It's going to be tough but you can do what the HVAC guy that installed my furnace did. He took his savings and invested in himself. He was smart enough to realize that his prior career wasn't going to come back so he went back to school for HVAC. He was hired well before he graduated but finished the course, anyway.

I entered an apprenticeship when I was 38. In less than a year I was making twice what I had started at.

Programs to get ahead are out there and easily attainable. It's really quite simple. Get yourself a skill.

Incidentally, choose wisely. The woods are full of college idiots that graduated with useless degrees and are trying to pay loans off by working at Starbucks pouring coffee. They chose poorly.

A person defending the unsuccessful by blaming the rich and or the so-called unfair distribution of the wealth is just making an excuse for those that are not motivated enough to make a life for themselves. They don't need covering for. They need motivation.

Raising the minimum wage or giving them welfare only goes to keep them down because life becomes too easy for them. It makes it PAY to be unsuccessful.








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Looks like it's time to dust

And that is likely how I will spend my day or at least part of it.

In the book 'A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court; Mark Twain describes how people want big wages and had no sense of buying power. Seems that things never change. Twain was right.

People want big wages.

Right now the natives are restless and want a raise in the minimum wage. I have said time and again that it will only lead to more inflation and stand to rob the responsible of their savings, yet people don't understand. They simply want big wages.

A while back I ran something past another guy and got the predictable answer. I asked him how it would be if we changed the value of money by basing it on gold. He went nuts.

"You want to work for ten bucks a day?" He asked.

"If the ten bucks was worth something, I wouldn't mind it," I replied.

"You're a nut," he said.

"So shortly after you get this raise you keep prattling on about what are you going to say when you go to the pump and have to pay six bucks a gallon?" I answered. "Howzabout if you made twenty or thirty bucks a day and paid nineteen cents a gallon?"

He looked at me like I was mad.

He wants big wages.

The truth is that raising the minimum wage is only going to drive prices up, rob the poor of their savings, make the people on fixed incomes have to tighten up even more and discourage people to save their money. 

But that's OK because people want big wages. Even if they're not able to buy what they used to. They'll feel good because they are making big wages.

As for me I wouldn't mind working for twenty bucks a day if we returned to the nickel beer and the free lunch. I'd be a lot better off.






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0700 Sunday morning.

The next portion of this blog is brought to you by The Old Grouch's army surplus at http://www.oldgrouch.com/ sellers of fine us military surplus.

They have been good to me over the years and I'm grateful.

,...grfffffffffffffffggggggggggggggggggggzxxxxxxxxxxxx

Part 2 of today's post has been written by the cat. I saw that one coming as I got up to pour more coffee.

Over the last week ham radio has been a slug fest trying to get new entities into my log. I just got Faroe Islands and QSL is going to be interesting as I had to go through a British QSL manager electronically. I just hope the Faroe Islander gets his log downloaded to the manager in a reasonable amount of time and didn't screw up my call sign.

I reworked Benin as the first time I sent for QSL I found out I was not in his log. I clearly recall him repeating my call sign to me, too.

The Benin rework was made possible by the Italian DXpedition team and they post their logs on line in real time. I'm in it for a QSO in 15 meters and I have sent for my card electronically. We'll see how long it takes.

I have to say that the Italian DXpedition team is an EXCELLENT bunch of operators unlike a lot of the individual hams that are a pain in the neck. If you have to deal with a lousy operator it is a pretty good chance it will be Italian. Japanese and Arabs have seemed to be the better operators out there.

When I am trying to get an Asian station and am calling 'CQ Asia' an Italian will often answer my call. When they do this I generally ask them if they know where they live. 

My guess is the Japanese hams are polite and patient by nature and the Arabs for the most part are very educated men but I digress.

My goal was to have 200 confirmed entities by the end of the year and it does not look like it is going to even come close. Once I hit about 170 or so things slowed right down to a trickle.

I suppose that's because I have gotten just about all of the entities that have any reasonable number of hams living there. 

An example of this is the Solomon Islands where activity is practically nil. Some entities are just plain uninhabited and are only  on the air when someone goes there for a DXpedition.

Anyway, I hope I can hit 200 eventually.

Today's post sucks but I have to get things done today.






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One of the things I do for the boat I work on is grub shop and it's getting harder and harder.

I get a grub allowance and buy grub with it.

It wasn't all that long ago I'd have a surplus and we'd use the leftover funds to buy something we could use out there such as some halfway decent raingear.

The surplus is there no longer as inflation has eaten at the value of money for all of us. Things are going up and that's simply the way it is.

I suppose that sometime the company will raise our grub allowance but that is not the point.

It looks now like Americans are not going to live as well as they used to unless their employers raise their pay. Employers are not going to be able to raise employees pay unless they raise their prices.

It is a round robin effect that will only serve to make life a little more miserable for everyone. Add the prospect of the minimum wage going up and things will only get worse.

If you are retired and on a fixed income you are pretty much screwed. Over time the retirement you planned that included three trips a week to the golf course and steak and lobster a couple nights a week will likely be reduced to no more golf and cat food three nights a week.

Of course, Uncle Sam will promise to fix the situation as always but the truth is that Uncle Sam caused it to begin with.



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I just read where the army says there are not enough blacks in combat leadership

roles.

That's a complete and total crock.

A woman I correspond with has this to say: If there is one sector in American society that absolutely should be a meritocracy, it's in the leadership of combat troops. When you're accepting checks from people written as "Payable to America on demand for any amount up to and including my life and limb", there is a moral imperitive to expend those "funds" as effectively as is humanly possible. 

.We're not talking about a check that can be paid off with worthless currency distributed by the Fed. We're talking about lives here.

Our troops deserve the best, period.

There is no excuse spending these lives just to satisfy some idiot that wants to perform a social experiment.

The fact that you would put people in leadership positions that are not the best people for the jobs shows that one is willing to accept second best. Personally I'm not willing to accept anything but the best.

There's a reason that the officer corps doesn't get a whole lot of minorities and it's simple. They get recruited by the private sector upon graduation for a lot more than the services offer so the private sector can play the game.

I don't think that the services should do anything but put the best and brightest they have in leadership roles no matter what race or color they are. 

Back in my day I was glad to have good officers, most of who were white. Truth is, I was than and still am colorblind. I didn't care what color my leadership was. I wouldn't care now.

There were a handful of incompetent officers back then, too. Most of whom were white. I do, however remember two black officers. One was reasonably competent the other was on the minority bandwagon. He sucked.

The real problems we had back then during the Vietnam wind down were in the NCO corps. The war was unpopular and a lot of people fund ways to get out of military service. A lot of people that shouldn't have been were promoted to ranks beyond their abilities.

I remember three staff sergeants that fit this bill, two blacks and a white. They were basically Alabama sharecropper types, uneducated and unmotivated. They were just awaiting retirement.

I wouldn't follow them in combat. I don't know many others that would have, either. I had a platoon sergeant that was an alcoholic for a while and so was one of the First Sergeants I served under. Thank God both of these two retired shortly after I arrived. Incidentally, both of these people were white.

Incidentally the best First Sergeant I served under was a black man. What he lacked in formal education he more than made up for with an immense amount of native wisdom.

A lot of these promotions were the result of the racial policies of the time. It was a bad time to be in the service.

In fact the situation was so bad that I would up being promoted to E-5 in under 2 years. Normally it should have taken at least 5 years but I guess they were desperate for NCOs.

The truth is that the services should be based on merit and merit only and they ought to junk any social experiments. There's too much at stake here.

Back in the day we craved good leadership and as far as I was concerned race, color etc had nothing to do with it. I would have been pleased to serve under a competent officer or NCO no matter what color. Most of us felt the same way.

Putting minorities in leadership positions just to appease liberal do-gooders is nothing more than a recipe for disaster.

Dear Mrs. Smith. 

Sorry about Jimmy. He was a great guy. I hope you can find solace knowing that he died because we put an incompetent lieutenant in charge of his platoon to appease the race baiters. You don't have to feel like the Lone Ranger, though because Lieutenant Smith managed to get 12 other guys killed in the same fight.

Captain Jones

They ought to throw the entire RR/EO package out the window and promote on merit and merit alone.








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I make periodic references to strippers which is a joke.

because with the exception of a dopey bachelor's party I went to some time back I haven't been in one for about three decades.

I really don't like the places very much because I briefly worked in one back in the day and saw through it in about ten minutes.

Over the past few years a few people have asked me to write a couple of stripper stories and maybe one day I will. Some readers might laugh like hell over them, but the truth is they're pretty sad.

Still, it remains that I am a stripper magnet and I didn't know why until some intelligent woman explained to me that I seem to have a fatherly air about me and most strippers have father issues.

Actually is sucks. It is a pain in the ass having every airhead with daddy issues attracted to you.

Actually it is not just restricted to strippers. I also draw airhead women with daddy issues. I said it to my sister at a wedding once.

"You watch," I said. "Before this wedding is over some little bimbo hottie half my age will be all over me like white on rice."

She laughed and said that if I did draw someone like that then she would buy my drinks for the rest of the wedding.

Bam! Five minutes later the little predicted hottie popped up out of nowhere and started talking to me about this, that, and the other and how her meds made her feel weird and so on. I drank for free at that wedding.

Still, back on track, the stereotype of the single mom or college student working her way through med school as a pole dancer isn't really the norm. When I worked at the club I met only two or three that fit into the stereotype. The one I liked the most was a married woman pushing 40 that was trying to pay off a mortgage so she could go on to other things. She had a plan and was working on it.

She was successful and managed to pay the house off and as a result she could now live in a rural area with her husband and not have to bust their asses somewhere away from home to keep the house.

For what it's worth, her husband went crab fishing and put his ass on the line to make the dream come true. Incidentally, I can't say I am in total approval of the way she made her money but I will give her this. She did it with a little class and didn't get on the cocaine highway like most of the strippers I met back when did.

Most of what I did in the club was maintenance work and maybe I will tell a story or two of maintaining not only the club but the two apartments the club had for the dancers to live in.

Maintaining the apartment was about as much work as the club was. 

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

This is post 1900 out of a series of who the hell knows how many. Be the first kid on your block to read them all!









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It is Wednesday

One of the things I figured out at a very early age is that we are all going to wind up in the same place.

When I got out of the army and headed for tall timber I knew it. I realized that this life was little more than a contest of who gets the biggest headstone. It struck me that busting my ass for a big headstone was a waste of the time I have in life.

I had no desire to become an investment banker or big shot attorney and cheat widows out of pensions or rob honest people out of their savings under some self righteous guise of an indignant lawsuit.

Back in '76 some of my classmates that I ran into 7 years after high school warned me that I had better get on the stick and buckle down or else I'd wind up behind the 8-ball.

"What's the difference," I shot back. "We're all going to end up in the same place, anyway."

To a couple of them that were rude about it I added, "See you in Hell."

Apparently I am not the Lone Ranger in my attitude to start life after school by doing the things I wanted to do before I started a career.

I met a guy that told me his son has decided to put his career on hold. The kid got a pretty marketable degree and was offered a  job starting at about $75K a year.

Instead he has decided to put his career on hold and be a sailboat bum for a few years. 

It will be interesting to see how this one plays out. 

I got $50 that says he'll be just fine.




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I almost forgot to post this morning.

Yesterday I went to the range and tried a few things out.

I shimmed the rear sight of my service rifle to keep it from moving and shot a group a little over a minute of angle which means I don't need a new barrel yet. I DO need a pin job on my rear sight.

I also took out someone else's rifle to try it out for him and found out that it simply won't shoot and that he's not crazy. I had a hard time keeping my rounds on a pie plate at 50 years. Something is wrong with the rifle.

Then I found out that my long range rifle doesn't like the USGI sniper round recipe very well and I may have to return to shooting Palmas. I'll try another couple recipes for 175 Sierras before I make up my mind, though.

Not a bad day. 




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I am starting to draw a blank because

yesterday I saw something I thought I would write up for today's post but seem to have forgotten what it was.

Anyway, this morning I read an article where a black girl was beaten up by another black girl for 'acting too much like a white person'.

Interesting.

The first thing that came to mind is that the beaten up girl was likely doing well in class, speaking good English and was preparing herself for success.

I'll just come out and flat out say it.

The one thing an unsuccessful black can't stand is a successful black conservative.

While a lot of people see a race war in the offing, I see a war where the combatants are the successful and the lazy.

Successful people tend to do successful things and it is likely that a battle between the successful and the unsuccessful is likely to be won in a landslide by the successful. 

I don't even see why the unsuccessful should even bother.

What they should do is use the energy and resources they would use for fighting to be put to being successful.

Of course, that ain't likely to happen because unsuccessful people don't think. That's a big part of their lack of success.




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It would be a damned shame

Recently a shooting instructor was killed while teaching a nine year old girl to shoot an Uzi.

For what it's worth, she didn't kill him, he killed himself. He broke the safety rules and it bit him hard.

Of course, there is now a hue and cry to enact laws prohibiting adults to teach kids to shoot and handle firearms safely. I would imagine it that gets passed we would simply have to hand firearms to kids and send them on their own to teach themselves. Let's see how that one works out.

After all, it would be a damned shame to have responsible adults teach children something like gun safety.


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Follow your dreams.

At 62 and being of short lived Irish blood I know my time here is coming to an end and from time to time I think about it.
I think I think I did it right.

The normal route is to go through high school and either continue one's education and then start a career or start a career out of high school.

I took a different route. I decided to follow my dreams.

I had an early bad marriage and a false start but I decided to follow my dreams. I didn't settle until I was a few weeks shy of forty and I figure that was likely too damned young.

My mother didn't know what to make of it. My father was scared until shortly before he died but just before he died he made his peace with me and became proud that he had raised a son that had defied convention and was having the kind of life he wanted.

Over the period of twenty years I became the kind of man I had envisioned as a child and I'm damned glad I went this route.
To those of you that are in high school my advice is to follow your dreams. Do what is right and what your gut tells you. Swim upstream! Run against the wind!

There is always time to start a career and make money and after you decide to settle into a career you get to bring your past along with you.

When I got out of the army I left Fort Carson in a VW bug with 25 foot tipi poles strapped to the top and headed straight to the mountains. For the next fourteen months the tipi was home. I got to experience all four seasons in a tipi in the Rockies and I became a better person for the experience.

There were a lot of hands-on things I learned in the woods and I became a pretty good woodsman. All it took was hard work and planning ahead.

I took a break for a few months after I broke camp and sold the tipi. 

During that time I learned a basic trade. I learned to frame and finish houses.

After that it was time to live another childhood dream. I hitch hiked to Alaska and lived that dream. That was followed by ten years of life on Kodiak Island where I commercially fished and built houses for an income.

When I took a job or embarked on an adventure I never asked if it was dangerous. I always asked if it was interesting. I suppose this attitude like to about kill me any number of times it was sure satisfying.

It was one hell of a dangerous twenty years and there were a lot of people like me that didn't survive. After the tipi it was a series of boats and a lot of time in small airplanes. One day my instincts told me to stop winter fishing and I did. Shortlly after the boat rolled up into a ball and killed the entire crew.

Still, to a young, adventuresome guy getting out of high school I'll say follow your dreams while you are young enough to.

There's time to have a career.

I didn't even start my present career until I was almost 40. It took me about a year to get promoted to the job I wanted to work at. I still love it.

During the twenty years of adventuring a lot of people I grew up with warned me that I never would have anything if I didn't buckle down. 

The interesting thing is that when I bought my house on a 30 year note I had it paid off in under a decade. A lot of the very people that warned me were still paying on theirs.

The thing I always seem to hear is that someone is going to buy a boat when they retire and sail around and do things. The truth is generally a lot different. By the time a person retires they generally do not have either the health or the drive required. Health issues also come along in later years.

There's more than one guy out there that worked for the retirement payoff only to have his health cheat him from his dreams.

At 62 I would be pretty hesitant to start and spend an entire year in a tipi. I simply don't have the energy I did in my 20s.

Lord knows I don't have what it takes to fish anymore in the Bering Sea. Time has taken its toll and fishing is a young man's game. I knew skippers that fired people on their 35th birthday for Pete's sake!

I have heard a lot of people my age say that youth is wasted on the young and maybe that has a grain of truth to it but that's the way it is. The best thing I have found is to take advantage of your youth while you are still young and do those things you dreamed of as a kid. You won't get any younger.

There's something to be said for entering old age with a fairly empty bucket list.

Maybe this attitude isn't for everybody, but it sure worked for me.
Follow your dreams!


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I got the boot from my class Facebook page

Which actually does not surprise me very much.

I wasn't obnoxious at the reunion, I actually behaved myself and stayed sober. I only made one comment that could be considered outrageous and I didn't think it was heard but I guess it was.

As I have posted earlier, at the reunion the minute the band played the reunion broke into three segments. A third left like Beelzebub himself was chasing them, a third retreated to the porch where they could talk and a third stayed and danced and shouted to communicate.

The social director came out and tried to herd a bunch of us onto the dance floor and forgot that I never did like being forced to do something I don't want to do.

I told her I had too much steel in my ankle to dance and she said it didn't matter and started trying to herd people in.

I then said "I ain't goin' into that geriatric dance hall. The only dancers I want to see work at the Kit Kat Club and they're a damned site younger and better lookin' than we are!"

I didn't think she heard the second part and truthfully I didn't care if she did. I figure she must have because I have now been defriended by the social director and that's fine by me. I figure it's for that remark.

I think it speaks highly of me getting booted out of my graduating class 45 years later.


&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I wonder if this means they are going to reprint the yearbook and leave my picture out. Do I have to return my diploma?

This might be a bigger mess than having to get my birthday back after my First Sergeant took it away from me.






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Home again.

Time to dig in and get things up and running.

It doesn't take long so I ought to be operational by noon.



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One of the things I have noticed

 is that people are more inclined to believe something that isn't true as opposed to the truth.

The other day I had a newbie ask me how many times I had been married. It is actually a somewhat common question among professional mariners as the business seems to be hard on marriages.

I told the kid "Three times but the second didn't count."

When he asked what that meant I told him a wholly ficticious whacked out story about waking up in a rental car in a Las Vegas wedding chapel parking lot.

''There was a woman next to me passed out and I saw a piece of paper on the dashboard. It was a wedding certificate. I went through her purse and found her driver's license and her name was on it along with mine," I explained.

When he asked me what I did I told him I took the certificate into the chapel and gave the guy $200 to make it go away.

Then I went down the street to get something to eat and when I returned to the car she was gone so I took it back to the rental office and left town. Never heard another word about it.

He accepted it as gospel.

Of course when I told him about some of the stuff I had really done commercial fishing in Alaska he acted pretty damned dubious.

I told him fishing had been a crapshoot and that every trip was different. You could either come in with a paycheck of several thousand or you could come in broke.

He didn't believe it. He'd seen on TV that everyone that fishes in the Bering Sea is a millionaire.

People are odd that way.



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Back in '84 Captain Glen and Scrimshaw

 were having an argument over who was the best golfer one January.  Finally one of them bet the other $50 that he could golf his way up Pillar Mountain in fewer strokes than the other.

One hole, par 70 with the hole a 5 gallon bucket buried in the snow.

The bet was casually announced in one of the bars and someone else wanted a piece of it and overnight the idea of the Pillar Mountain Open Golf Classic sprouted out of nowhere.

A hasty plan was set up and it was decreed the winner would get half of the pot and the other half would go to a  local charity.

In another bar a board organizing foursomes was set up and it became an instant town event. The awards banquet was slated appropriately for April Fool's day.

The fee was $50 and that time of year I didn't have a lot of loose scratch and happened to be in the bar with the organizing board. The owner offered to ante up and support a woman's team.

Three woman were there having a drink and talking about who to get to complete the foursome. I looked at them and laughed. I knew all three of them simply because Kodiak was a small town. They were 10 to 20 years older than I was at the time.

"Hell, if you three old broads can't find anyone I'll pinch hit," I said. I turned to the bartender. "Us girls can chippie our way to the top!"

None of them took any offense as there was no malice in what I said. They didn't take themselves too seriously. They, along with the rest of the patrons broke out laughing.

I didn't think anything of it and wandered out and headed up the line. I had someone to meet. They'd find someone.

I was in the next ginmill up and was having a beer with a friend and discussing business when Captain Glen walked up to me. "Hey, Wiseass!" he said. "You overloaded your face a couple doors down and now you're on the woman's team!"

"Me and the girls are going to chippie our way to the top!" I shot back. He shook his head and walked off looking a tad confused.

I made arrangements with my team members to show up beforehand and we'd travel to the tee-off together in someone's Jeep.

I showed up in Carhart inculated coveralls as did the girls. 

Another woman, a friend's wife showed up with a shopping bag and started pulling stuff out of it. The first thing was a bra and I knew I was in trouble.

The cups were huge and she reached in for a roll of paper towels to stuff it with. I told her to stop and went next door to the liquor store and grabbed a pair of Pinch bottles of Haigscotch. They fit pretty good into the enormous cups of the bra.

With 2 bottles of scotch bolted to my chest, my friend's wife then proceeded to pull a huge dress over me and then topped me off with a Dolly Parton wig.

Another woman laughingly sat me down and put makeup on me.

I looked ridiculous but that was OK. I knew we'd have a pretty good time.

We did, too. between the four of us we had one golf bag, three clubs (1 wood, a 9 iron, and a putter). In addition to that there was a baseball bat, 75 feet of 3/4 inch rope and a baseball bat.

I was last to tee off and during practice swings I griped that my jugs were getting in the way. One of the woman said, "Now you know how we feel!"

"Look," I said. "All three of you are reasonably endowed but none of you are packing two quarts of scotch!"

Laughter.

I picked up the baseball bat and clouted my ball with it. Then we started climbing and retrieving balls in the snow. It was a bitch.

We stopped after a couple of strokes and had a snort out of what the girls referred to as the 'whisky tittie'. We put a pretty good dent in the bottle and shared some with another foursome.

The loss of the weight made my load uneven and one of the girls started laughing and asked me if I was a Chinese girl named Wun Hung Lo. 

I looked. My boobs were definitely uneven. So I fished into my bra for the other bottle and we evened things out, sharing a few snorts with another foursome.

Somewhere along the line one of the town muckety mucks heard about the scotch and asked me for a snort. I was clever. I undid a couple of buttons on my dress and slipped a bra strap down and brought the bottle over the bra. 

About this time when he wasn't looking one of the girls produced a camera and got his picture sucking scotch out of my left 'whisky tittie'. Later the picture got blown up and it graced the walls of one of the bars, much to his embarrassment.

By this time we were pretty toasted and we continued our way to the top. The rope came in handy as we had to drag each other up the slippery hillside.

 By the time we got to the top and turned in scorecards we were a mess. Mine was the best of the four. It was a 385 or something for a par 70 one hole course which I later found out wasn't all that bad.

We had left with a pretty hefty sized bag of golf balls and when we got to the top we had only a half-dozen left, if that.

Incidentally the Dolly Parton wig had done a pretty good job of keeping my head warm.

We had all had a blast. I was glad I had done it and enjoyed the woman's team slot.

Another woman that came along with her boyfriend commented that she was glad she hadn't taken my place because she enjoyed watching the four of us.

We finagled a ride down the hill somehow and planned on meeting in a few days for the awards banquet. 

The only aftermath was that for a while I was called Piccolene by the guys for a few weeks and the nickname showed up every once in a while for the rest of the time I lived on the island. I didn't mind it at all, though. I'd earned it.

Somewhere in a drawer I have a brown T-shirt with the Pillar Mountain Open Golf Classic emblem on it. I'll have to go find it.




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Halloween was always a big night in Kodiak.

It was the first holiday after the summer stock had left and was either a big thing or a bust. Some years I'd start planning for it shortly after the Fourth of July.

One year I wanted to do something that was out of character and would fool people. I decided to go out in drag and be one of the girls.

The idea popped out of something that happened around the Fourth. I was talking to one of the woman that I knew that was a friend of sorts. She mentioned that she was going out drinking with the girls that night. With a straight face I asked her if I could be one of the girls that night.

"OK, Pic," she said. "You can be one of the girls."

So I went out with the girls. I had a pretty good time being one of the girls. We drank, gossiped and in general i kept my mouth shut and learned a lot.

The fleet was out and I was ashore working construction so there were not as many men in town. Still, some guy came over to our table and was told he wasn't welcome because it was girls night out. He looked at me and Sally looked at him and smiled. "Piccolo's one of the girls tonight."

He left looking confused.

I was scruffy. Bearded, wearing a wool shirt with the sleeves cut between the wrist and the elbow fisherman style.

After a few drinks I asked the girls if I could go out with them again on Halloween. "Yeah, but you gotta look like one of us," said Sally. Everyone laughed.

"Think you can help me pull it off?" I asked.

"Keep your beard until the last instant," said one of the girls.

Then the five of them started looking and talking and thinking aloud. For a while they discussed how to fix me up and after a while we went back to girl stuff.

I had a pretty good time.

Over the next couple months from time to time one or the other of the girls would grab me and tke me to the local "Goodwill" type shop and have me try things on. We went when it wasn't busy and over the next few months I got an outfit picked out for me.

From time to time I'd buy one of them a drink and get coached. I had to learn to drink like a lady (hold the straw), smoke like a lady (hold the cigarette up and off to one side keeping it away from me). I watched a lot of woman studying their mannerisms.

Come Halloween evening I got whisked over to Sally's and the girls went to work on me. My beard was shaved off and I wass shaved several times until my face was smooth. I was stripped down to my skids andthey went to work on me getting me manicured and dolled up. They put two pairs of panty hose on me for strength to hold some padding to build up my ass.

When they were done we dimmed the lights and I was deemed passable as long as I was in a bar. Off we went.

It almost ended when we were entering one of the bars. Some drunk lookedlike he wasgoing to grope Sally. She dodged him and he grabbed my ass instead so I spun around and knocked him silly and in the process broke a couple nails.

They had spares and fixed them.

We sat down at a table and then they told me to sit at the bar. They wanted to see who would try to pick me up. 

I glanced over and saw that there was the town policewoman in a clown suit. She had the ight off, I guess and wanted to go out. She looked at me, did a double take and started looking at me from time to time. Then she got up came over and smiled. "Good one, Pic." she said.

I saw her tell her date and he looked at me for a while and finally figured it out. He grinned. I ordered a fruity drink that came in a tall glass.

Behind me the real girls watched.

A guy I knew sat down next to me and tried to start a conversation. I quickly told him I was a lesbian and he recognized my voice and turned beet red. 

"Rat me out and the girls behind me will embarrass you forever," I said. "Sit here a few minutes and politely leave."

'"Thanks, Pic." he said and looked a bit relieved, confused and embarrassed. Then he bought me a drink.

He'd been had and knew it. He was embarrassed but was a good sport. It was Halloween and he'd been fooled.

The girls behind me were good sports, too. They let him sit with them until the next guy sat down next to me and he could get a good laugh.

The next guy was someone I didn't know very well but I knew he would recognize my voice. He sat down started chatting. I kept my voice soft and played a little coy until he put a hand on my knee. I switched back to my own voice. "Reach up about a foot and a half and you'll grab a bigger one than you have," I said.

He turned purple and fled.

The third guy was a close friend. I knew I had my hands full then. I tipped  my hand instantly and he smiled. "Nice costume," he said.

Then he sat there a while, bought me a drink and we chatted. He watched my body language a while and commented that I had the mannerisms down pretty good.

Then he looked at me suddenly, "Two hundred bucks!" he shouted, "Damn, I didn't know you were a whore!" and left indignantly.

Everybody stared at me. The girls laughed like hell and whisked me out to the next joint. The policewoman laughed so hard she almost wet herself.

One thing I have to give the girls credit for is they put s fly of sorts in my panty hose. To pee I'd sneak out into an alley.

We left for the Beachcombers and that's where the party began. We danced the night away and it was funny having guys ask me to dance and having me answer,"Sure!" in my normal voice.

Some turned red, some danced with me anyway. It was a bizarre, surreal night. Sometime a real girl would ask me to dance.

Seeing them figure out who the were talking to was priceless. Nobody got too upset because Halloween on an island is a nut house where anything goes.

Sally had a boyfriend of sorts and he had a pretty good sense of humor. I asked him to dance and Sally, ever the character acted outraged and called me a slut. 

The girls started in telling me what a little hussy I was and a good laugh was had by all.

We all got in late and I crapped out on Sally's couch as she knew I didn't have running water. It was kind of her.

I woke up with my makeup smeared. Sally was getting up and she looked a bit rough. She suggested we go to the local greasy spoon for breakfast before I cleaned up and we did. We got quite a few laughs for that one. I really must have looked a mess with the 5 o'clock shadow, smeared makeup and looking rough.

We returned and I cleaned up.

I never went out drinking with the girls again but a year later I did dress like a woman again. This time for a golf tournament but that's another story.

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