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!









To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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. 




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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!


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.






To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

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.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

I never did enjoy bar room braggarts.

I remember one time I was having a drink at the Beachcombers in Kodiak before the band started and some drunken braggart started bragging about his sexual conquests.

I picked up a newspaper to act like I was reading so as not to get dragged into his crap. People were mildly aggravated and a few were looking at me wondering when I was going to say or do something. I had a  reputation of not suffering fools for long.

Truth is, I was waiting for an easy knockout shot. I was being patient. I knew if I waited he'd set me up for one.

Two shots of schnapps later he claimed that he had slept with just about every woman on the island but his mom and sisters.

From behind the paper, without looking up, I dryly commented cheerfully and loudly that between the pair of us we had gotten them all.

The whole place busted up laughing and after a while it sunk in and then swung a hard backhand at me that I ducked because I expected it and had watched for it. I pushed his arm and let the momentum of the blow get him off balance and he fell off of his stool.

The bouncer simply stepped in, grabbed his feet and dragged him outside to the amusement of everyone.

Now there was an empty stool next to me. I hooked my thumb and pointed at the empty stool. "Next!" I shouted and the stool was soon occupied by a fairly attractive woman in her late thirties that proved to have a delightfully sarcastic sense of humor. She proved to be a delightful change from some jerk with a loud mouth.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

It was one day in March

 in Kodiak that I was sitting in a bar at about 8 am waking up to a cup of morning coffee.

This is actually not as bad as it sounds for a couple of reasons. Bars served as a lot more than watering holes. They were meeting places, message centers and several other things. A bar that was just a bar didn't generally do very well.

I was there that morning looking for something to do. It was often a hiring hall of sorts for people looking for odd jobs. On the rare times I had nothing to do I'd drop in the bar early on and more often than not I'd get grabbed for a job of sorts.

The day was Seward's Day. It's an Alaska holiday celebrated in March. It's not to be mistaken for Alaska Day which is in October.

Seward's Day is the day Seward made the Alaska purchase. Alaska Day is the day the United States took formal posession of the new territory.

I was sitting across the bar from an ignoramus named Elrod. He was basically a self appointed big shot. To his credit he was a pretty good equipment operator and had seniority. This meant he generally worked almost year-round. Hence, he had a pretty good income.

On the debit side he was self-important, arrogant, egotistical, bigoted and thoughtless. He was ignorant as hell and would get angry if proven wrong over just about anything.

He wasn't violent, but his little snits were a real horror show to be around. I generally avoided getting him upset.

In short this guy was an asshole.

We were discussing Seward's Day, a statewide holiday. It is the day Seward purchased Alaska from the Russians.

Elrod said that it was the day Seward discovered Alaska.

I commented that Seward didn't discover Alaska because there were already people there before.

"Just a bunch of ignorant savages," he replied.

At the time the word 'savage' was often used as a racial slur when referring to native Alaskans. Tlinkets, Aleuts, Athabaskans and Eskimos, all native Alaskans took offense to being called savages.

The Aleut next to me was doing a slow burn. I suppose if he had a few drinks in him there might have been a row of some sort.

I turned to him, grinned and winked. He gave me a look of confusion and curiosity.

"Hey Elrod! They ought to make April 29th Piccolo Day," I said.

"Who the hell is Piccolo?" he asked in an irritated tone of voice.

"Me. I discovered Alaska on April 29, 1978," I replied.

"I was here over twenty years before you got here!" he answered back indignantly.

"Yeah, but when I got here, all I found was a bunch of ignorant savages!" I answered, dryly.

Two people snarfed, the owner of the joint turned red and surpressed a smirk. The Aleut laughed outright and the bar braced for the horror show they figured was coming. They were surprised.

Elrod  simply got up and left in a big, angry huff. There was a confused, sudden silence.

The Aleut broke the silence. "Give that white man a drink!" he said. The bartender, half Aleut, came by and poured about an inch of Bailey's into my coffee.

In seconds every native in the joint found out what I had said and I was faced with a number of beers stacked up in front of me. 

"Looks like I know what I'm doing today," I said to the bartender. "Put these on ice. I'm going to be here a while."

Thank God I had nothing planned for that day because it took me a long time to even put a dent in the drinks I had been bought. The bartender ended up giving me token chips after I decided I had enough to drink to make sure I got them all.

Someone even bought me lunch to keep me going!

It was late afterrnoon when I had to stop and go m
home and sleep it off.

For the rest of the time I lived in Kodiak I seldom had problems with any of the natives.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

One of the things I look back on is when I was in my early to mid thirties.

Looking back on it there were a lot of people that were pretty envious of me. Unless a guy was in a solid, dynamic marriage and had a career they loved a lot of people out there would have gladly traded places with me.

I had the world pretty much by the ass.

I lived on a sailboat that cost me $250 a year in slip rent. My bills were about $12 a month for electricity and in the heating season about two bucks a week for heating oil. That's about it.

My electricity was paid for a year in advance. One day when I was flush I gave the power company $150 and told them to let me know when it ran out. I actually told them to leave word at the Anchor bar. (Things like this were far from unusual in Kodiak at the time)

I had what I'll call an 'income on demand'. This means I could work whenever I wanted to and make as much as I needed.

If I needed a couple of bucks to eat on I'd do an odd job of some sort. If I needed a bigger chunk of change for something expensive I'd hop on a boat and go fishing. If I didn't want to fish there were contractors I could work for that paid pretty well.

Many of the local restaurants and bars kept books on that they owed me for fixing stuff and otherwise helping out.

While some of my food came from the local supermarket, a lot of it came from the fat of the land. There were fish to catch and ducks and deer to shoot. If I caught or shot too much that was OK, too. I knew people that would let me use their freezers in return for a piece of the pie.

Single women and divorcees were plentiful and for a bar stool sniper it was a target rich enviornment. 

Beer was too easy to be had and I had to be careful I didn't drink myself goofy. I easily could have if I wanted to.

In short, life was incredibly good.

You could tell how another person's life was pretty much by the way they showed approval to your life style. Miserable people hated me. Truth is they would have changed places with me in a heartbeat. These were either people that found that their money didn't buy happiness or the guys that had married poorly and felt trapped.

Happy people and I got along well. We seemed to respect each other's happiness. I also got along very well with the Filipino community, which I attribute to Filipinos being basically happy to begin with. They are actually kind of like the Irish of the Pacific.

A lot of this I attribute to being pretty handy, not greedy and flexible. When I needed a spinnaker for my boat I didn't feel the need to have a world class racing 'chute built. I just needed something for light airs.

I could make my own if I had the materiel. A parachute would do.

One day I put the word out on the docks and in the bars that I was looking for a parachute and presto! A couple of days later someone came up to me and offered me ten bucks to move a tote of stuff for him a couple of miles. There would be a fork lift at either end to unload it. I could either tale the ten bucks or the parachute he had in his garage.

A parachute at the time on the surplus market ran about $40 so it was a no brainer. The job took me 20 minutes and I got the 'chute.

The next morning when the bar opened I took the chute and lofted the pattern on the dance floor which was not being used.  I whipped the sail up over the next day or two and was good to go.

The 'chute was multicolored, half orange, and the other half was split between white, brown and OD so as to provide camoflage for a downed aviator. The resulting sail looked like hell but actually worked pretty good when I tried it out.

It proved quite servicible and a few of the people that laughed at it later respected it when they thought about it a bit. It did the job it was supposed to. It caught wind in light airs and propelled me.

In a nutshell I was able to live like a king with very little effort and there were people that envied it.

When I re-entered the 'straight' world several years later I had skills of all sorts to fall back on and compliment my re-entry.

The biggest thing I brought with me was the ability not to sweat the small stuff coupled with the ability to see that about 99% of it IS small stuff.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

I always get a kick out of the people

 that have proposed gun registration schemes and other things that PROMISE the government won't use the registration lists to disarm or otherwise harm the public.

They seem to forget the track record of the government.

The government has broken every treaty thay made with the Inidans and it hasn't been until fairly recently that the Indians have started to get things made right through the courts.

The government tacked a tax on telephones early in the 20th century that was supposed to pay for the Spanish American war and then go away. The war has been paid off for decades yet we still pay the tax.

When FDR passed the Social Security Act back in the thirties the government said that the money would be set aside and not used for anything else whatsoever. The fund was plundered during the LBJ administration and was spent in less than two years on a bunch of failed programs.

The social welfare programs of the FDR administration were supposed to be temporary programs until the country could get back on its feet. The programs are still there and have bloated out of proportion.

The most recent of the big governmental lies is that you can keep your doctor.

I have has people over the years call me whacked out and I'll say simply that it is a matter of opinion. However, I am certainly not stupid enough to believe a government with a track record like ours has.

Yes, it really IS that simple. I trust them about as far as I can throw them.

If you think I will trust them with ANY of my rights, guess again.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

Someone asked me where I got off being a tough guy.

It goes back to the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

Shortly after the bombing the media decided to make militia groups pop out from behind every tree so as to further whatever agenda they had against the right.

The CMP marksmanship program came under subtle pressure and local TV stations would show up at matches and take videos of the rapid fire segments to palm off on the gullible public as being militia training instead of what it is. It is nothing other than a sport.

The guys generally wore old BDUs to shoot in because they have a lot of room in them and are pretty comfortable. Truth is it added to the militia scenario the media was feeding the public.

Some of the guys in the program were stubborn stupid and refused to trade the BDUs in for jeans. The dumbasses played right into the hands of the media and a local club's program had to go underground for a while.

At a local club I started showing up in hot pink camo to aggravate the BDU wearers and it actually did some good. A couple of the stubbornest BDU wearers told me that if I'd ditch the neon pink camo they'd fund non-camo BDUs.

Shortly thereafter someone I didn't like very much bet me I didn't have the guts to wear the pink BDUs to Camp Perry. 

Normally I wouldn't have taken him up on it but I knew he'd try and squirm out of paying me and i wanted to embarrass him. Bam! I wore them to Camp Perry and the women that run things there loved them and asked me to wear them next year. 

For years they were my trademark.

Shortly thereafter pink became the breast cancer awareness color and I can sure support that. I'd don a pink ribbon or something. 

Occasionally some insecure guy would give me a little crap over it and being the kind of guy I am I decided to make pink a routine part of my wardrobe.

Actually for years beforehand I'd wear a pink shirt and a black tie to some events so adding a little more pink wasn't much of a change.

What cemented it firmly was when some snot nosed kid started flipping me crap one day. I guess the gay rights people were in the news and he was probably a homophobe.

A friend of mine stepped in and pointed to the youngster that any guy like me wearing pink was likely bad enough to be able to take care of a whelp like him and that further pestering would likely land him in a deep quarry somewhere wearing concrete golashes.

The kid looked dubious and my friend told him I was an Old School Tough Guy that didn't play games.

While he was doing this I flipped out a knife and started cleaning my fingernails and the kid fled. All in all it was an Academy Award performance and from then on I became a self-appointed Old School Tough Guy.

It's been fun.

What was funny was the time at Camp Perry I was wearing my neon pink BDUs and a young private asked a senior NCO about them. The NCO told the private that I didn't have a whole lot of marks on my face and that the best thing he could do is leave me alone.

The private avoided me and the NCO met me later and we shared a laugh. A couple years later he saw me in a pink CMP ball cap and told me he was going to get one for himself.

He did, too. He wore it the following year after he retired and came to Perry as a civvie shooter.

Tough guys wear pink... if they feel like it.

Actually, tough guys wear whatever the hell they want to.

They also do whatever they want to. If a tough guy decides to feed a baby who is going to stop him?

Tough guys mop floors because their mother is not there to pick up after them and they are not pigs.

My favorite wannabe tough guy was a sailor that was on an aircraft carrier running a mop and decided he wanted to be a badass. He put in for SEAL training but his division officer wouldn't approve it. He told the wannabe that before he could go to badass school he had to prove he was a tough guy by taking care of himself and his shipmates first.






To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

Old School Tough Guy.

Doing what tough guys do when babies start crying. They feed them.

I showed this picture to one of the newer employees today and he asked me if it was a grandchild.

Being the evil sort that I am I told him that it was my firstborn because I married a younger woman.

Being the nosy sort he seemed to be he asked me how old my wife was. 

I told him she had just gotten her driver's license and when she finishes high school we're going to have another six or seven.

It didn't take a half hour before people I know started calling me asking me what kind of story I had fed the kid.


It's actually my grand niece. What a sweetie she is!


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

reunion 45

Reunion 45 was pretty interesting. A bunch of people from my past showed up and we got to chatting here and there until the band started and about 1/4 of the people there bailed out.

One of them that bailed was a woman I have wanted to thank for a few kind words she made about 37 years ago. I was bummed. I wound up getting her address from someone else and sending her a letter. When we ran into each other years ago I was at a crossroads in life with the ink not even dried on my divorce decree or Army discharge.

Her interest in what I was doing made me feel good about myself and gave me a sense of value that stayed with me for life. She very well may not even remember the encounter but it has stayed with me for life.

She really looked wonderful. The years have been very kind to her.

Can't say I blame the people that bailed. With music you really can't talk save to shout. Personally I think having rock band wasn't the best idea in the world. An awful lot of us booked flights to the outside porch to be able to continue our conversations.

All in all it was a good reunion and I was glad I went as I met up with a few people I have not seen in almost a half-century.

There were a couple people I had wondered about over the years and it was good to see what they were up to.

What was interesting is that there was someone I hadn't ever thought about over the past 45 years that I struck up an interesting conversation with. He's been driving a truck for years and looks pretty good. One thing we shared in common are DOT laws and we share a phobia of illegal drugs. Both of us are too close to retirement to be able to start new careers. We can't afford to fail a drug test. We'd lose it all.

The years have been good to some of them and have been hard on others.

There were a number of women that had managed to stay fairly attractive and that says a lot considering we're talking an average age of about 63.

The Class of '69 was a crossroads class. The Old Guard was taking a beating and the new age was entering. It was truly (according to the hippies) an Aquarian Age we were living in and it was a confusing time.

The Vietnam war was hot and there were differing opinions of it. Some joined the Marines, others ran off to Berkley. Although the Summer of Love had passed a couple of years earlier, it was the Summer of Woodstock.

To a certain extent we were a class torn in two. The drug scene was in full swing and tune in, turn on and drop out was in the air. 

To be honest I was surprised to find as much common ground with my classmates as I did. 

There was some sadness. One of the sharpest minds I had ever met had been dulled by medication. He said he had been forced to using anti depressants.  We have all heard the ad that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Seeing one dulled like that is just as bad if not worse.

Another thing that was scary and that was that one of the people there was still a pothead and started in on how the state was getting ready to legalize cannibis. It didn't bother me as I have thought that the war on drugs is a waste to begin with. It served as a mild warning not to go to the after-hours party as likely someone would light up.

I can't even afford to be around a dope smoker at this stage of my career. When I was offered an invite to the party I simply refused it gracefully.

Interestingly enough, both of the banes of my existence were dead. The guy that sat behind me for six long years in homeroom grades 7-12 was gone. As was another that never did seem to grow up.

Another thing is one of the organizers told me that the vice-principal asked him to get invited. Thank God he refused to pass the invite on to him. He was a jerk then and likely hasn't changed. He'd have had a lot of apologies to make had he shown up.

Another interesting thing happend and I guess one of my classmates came out of the closet and came onto me a little. I just ignored it and chuckled inside. What the hell, at my age it's nice to know that SOMEONE thinks I'm hot. As I age my perverse sense of humor just seems to be getting a lot dryer.

Many people were not there. I was hoping that the kid that lived across the street from me would show but he didn't. We grew up grades 1-12 together but by high school we were on different paths. Last I ever laid eyes on him was at a rock festival in Canada in '70.

I think that one of the mistakes that was made was that organizers didn't realize is that sometimes less is more.

For a 45th reunion I don't feel entertainment is necessary. We generally bring our own. It's about people meeting people. To have a successful reunion all that is needed is a few tables and chairs, a source of food and a source of beverages. A bar is great, but not absolutely necessary. A tub  full of iced beer and soda and a pile of sandwiches will work.

I think that people go to these to swap notes and satisfy curiosities. I'll admit that I did.

There was so much I couldn't bring up because I knew nobody could relate to it. I spent the first twenty years after graduation making a hard living in far flung remote outposts that most of them have only seen on the Discovery Channel.

For example the concept of eating an animal you have just shot is a concept that is totally alien to many of these people. As is having to take a shotgun loaded with slugs with you to go to the toilet fifty yards away from camp because you are in bear country.

One thing, though. A number of people aske me if I had recently gotten remarried and started a family. I'm going to blame that on one or two of my mischevious close relatives. 

One person asked me how long I had served in the French Foreign Legion which amazed me. Apparently the rumor (not true) was about 40 years old and started life as a sarcastic comment I had made to my sister when I was in the army.

One thing I did was that I think I got two people back in touch. 

I mentioned seeing another classmate in Kodiak back around '86 and knew the woman I mentioned it to was a friend of hers back in the day. I also gave her a clue as to how to get in touch with her and I think they might reconnect.

Even though several of the people I wanted to spend time with bailed and I spent most of the reunion on the porch where it was quiet, I was glad I went.




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

There are a lot of things

 that are more obvious bull$hit than acting like your 8 year old grand niece has just finished a six-pack.

One of them is telling someone that you shot your neighbor's pet dinosaur. 

After all, they have been extinct for 600 million years or so, give or take a millenia.

Some kid just got bounced from school and stuffed into the system of troublemakers for writing that he had shot his neighbor's pet dinosaur.

I wonder how far I would have made it through school if I had to start all over again in this day and age. Probably not very far at all.

You would think that the people in the school system would have a little common sense but it sure doesn't seem so.

Common sense in education is getting to be a scarce commodity these days.

Where do they get these idiots?




To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY

Remington

 in Ilion, NY has just laid over 100 people off as they slowly transfer their business out of New York.

Actions have consequences and the SAFE act was likely the final straw. 

Of course, Governor Cuomo is claiming he had nothing to do with Remington taking their business elsewhere and his supporters are making the usual claim.

"My gubner din't do nuffin.'"

Huntsville, Alabama seems to be winning this one. They offered Remington lower taxes and a nonunion workforce. They took the offer and I can't say as I blame them.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY