Insight: Where do nomads go on vacation?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

When you sign up for military service, as I did, you learn quickly that where you wake up today may not be the same place you wake up tomorrow.

C-Rations were canned prepared meals used by military
members on deployments in the late 1970s.
COURTESY PHOTO      

For me, it could be best described as a nomadic lifestyle, and certainly not something everyone can embrace.

It takes a person to all kinds of places and situations and looking back on that time of my life years later, how I adapted to constantly moving from place to place can only be attributed to my youth and being open to experiencing new things.

I can recall being with my unit on a wintertime deployment in what was then West Germany in February 1978. Our commanding officer was directed to have us establish a camp at the edge of some woods near Fulda, close to the border with East Germany, which at that time was a communist nation under the control of the Soviet Union. We pitched our tents in darkness and set up a diesel stove inside the tent for warmth.

Outside there was snow on the ground and the temperature was hovering at around 5 degrees. Our unit’s tent sat on a massive sheet of ice which never melted, despite keeping the diesel stove going throughout our entire week there.

There was no mess hall for food, so we ate what were called C-Rations, canned prepared food, much of which was left over and recycled by the military following the Vietnam War. I was informed by other unit members that some C-Ration meals were better than others. The meals were stored in drab olive cans and flimsy brown boxes.

Inside each box was a canned entrée, a small package of stale crackers, a packet of ground coffee, packages of salt and sugar, canned pound cake or bread, a chocolate bar or chewing gum, matches and a package of three cigarettes. To open the C-Ration cans, we were issued what was known as a P-38, a tiny aluminum disposable tool.

Sometimes by the time I finally got the C-Ration cans open, I would find that what was inside was rotten or moldy. Because of that, I became a bit more selective in meals that I chose when they were offered. I preferred C-Ration cans of tuna and boned turkey over beef slices with potatoes (we called these ones beef with boulders), chicken chunks and noodles, beans with hot dog chunks (known commonly as beanie weenie) or ham and lima beans.

To this day if I see a can of C-Rations for sale somewhere in an antique store, I gasp, and my stomach turns.

There is very little that compares to sleeping in your clothes for a week in a sleeping bag, waking up on a tiny wooden canvas cot and smelling burned coffee grounds on top of the diesel stove in freezing weather. There were no showers, no running water, and no amenities associated with modern life which we all take for granted such as electricity.

Later in my military career, I was a candidate for a TDY, a temporary duty assignment to another location, along with another E-5 staff sergeant who worked in our office with me. It was not disclosed where this temporary assignment would be, and up until the moment that we received our official orders, we had no idea where that location might be.

We were going to flip a coin to see who had to go, but he said he was supposed to be best man at a wedding that weekend and asked me nicely if I could go and he would then gratefully take the next TDY assignment in the future. I agreed and then was informed that my TDY was to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I spent three weeks there and slept in the NCO barracks, getting up early each morning to conduct interviews, gather stories and then produce a newsletter for Air Force air crews participating in an air-to-ground military exercise. Each newsletter was finished and distributed by noon and the rest of my days and evenings were free to see the sights in Las Vegas, go to some shows and enjoy great food served in almost every casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

When it was all over and I had returned to my regular duty station, eight months passed before another TDY assignment arose. The other staff sergeant received orders to travel to a remote jungle location about 75 miles from Tegucigalpa, Honduras. When he got back from his trip, he spoke about living in the utmost primitive conditions there.

He said there wasn’t laundry service at the camp he was assigned to. All their clothing was washed in a large boiling vat, which resulted in most of his military T-shirts turning a shade of light brown. He was also receiving medical care for a mild case of malaria after being bitten by plenty of mosquitoes and hordes of other insects.

I chose not to share with him how different our TDY experiences turned out to be, but I thought to myself how fortunate I was to be sent to Las Vegas, Nevada instead of some remote jungle location in Honduras. <

Andy Young: A bad-weather-induced rant

By Andy Young

Four straight rainy weekends in what should be a beautiful time of year in Maine have me in a foul mood and have forced me to do the unthinkable: release my inner curmudgeon, which will now vent about everything that cries out for ventage.

Cell phones are instruments of the Devil. Having instant gratification at one’s fingertips 24/7 isn’t just an imagination suppressor; it robs serial phone users of interpersonal skills. Younger folks who’ve never lived in a world without phones are often flummoxed on those occasions when circumstances dictate that they must communicate face-to-face with others.

Today more people than ever are considered “on the spectrum.” Is that because more is becoming known about autism? Or is it that increasing numbers of individuals don’t take the time to pick up on social cues because they’re too busy taking selfies, playing video games, or commenting online about the most recent celebrity scandals. There’s no telling how many traffic accidents are caused by people operating a motor vehicle while simultaneously gazing in fascination at their phone’s screen.

And heaven help the technology-dependent when their devices are lost or become disabled. Those unaccustomed to a phoneless existence often have difficulty coping rationally without hand-held technological aid. People relying on phones for everything from waking up to charting their daily exercise are often incapable of independent thought, even when they’re in possession of a fully functional (albeit attention-monopolizing) device.

But perhaps the worst thing about phones is they allow too-convenient access to social media, a term which is an outrageous misnomer. “Anti-social media” would be more accurate, since far too many readily accessible websites offer individuals already short on impulse control the opportunity to impetuously spout ignorant, offensive and/or inflammatory nonsense publicly.

Profit-driven platforms like Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook don’t just perpetuate unnecessary drama, or create strife where it needn’t exist; they spread trends that too often virally metastasize into risky social behaviors, not to mention provide the opportunity for potentially horrific online misconduct like cyberbullying. It’s unsurprising that increasing numbers of elected officials (and aspiring elected officials) are textbook narcissists, since social media is grooming Americans to become more vapid, egocentric, and non-thinking with each passing hour.

Today’s high schoolers have every bit as much potential at this point in their lives as teens in past generations did, but greed-fueled social media platforms are leading them into self-centered, exertion-free existences. The only thing more alarming than millions of non-thinking citizens is the prospect of a looming generation content to let ambitious, ethically unconcerned types do their “thinking” for them.

When my then-home state instituted a lottery in 1972, my father characterized it as a “Stupidity Tax.” That harsh but accurate description goes for other forms of gambling as well. Casino operators skillfully market the business of picking their customers’ pockets as a chance to have fun getting rich the quick and easy way. “Gaming” boosters maintain lotteries and other forms of legalized gambling create jobs and generate revenue for the government agencies that regulate them, and in fact they do. But gambling also preys on individuals with obsessive tendencies, and often those who can least afford to pick up the habit. And as is the case with most addictions, betting has ruined far more lives than it has improved.

I’ve got lots more axes to grind, like littering, the monetization of youth sports, the designated hitter rule, and my computer’s spellchecker claiming “ventage” isn’t a word, but it’s best that I stop here. Released inner curmudgeons that stay out too long inevitably become outer curmudgeons, and America already has more than enough of those! <

Insight: Underrated inventions and revelations

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

If I were to compile a list of prominent inventions introduced throughout my time on earth that have made my life easier, it would certainly be long and extensive.

Instead, for brevity’s sake, I’ve limited my list to just four and detailed some of them below.

My first automobile was a 1956 Chevy that a student and friend of mine had driven across the country from Vermont to New Mexico. Somehow, when he graduated from college, he sold it to me in 1972, and despite some physical defects – such as a rusted rear driver’s side wheel well that eventually fell off forcing me to stuff a towel in the hole to prevent the back of my head getting sprayed when driving through puddles – the car ran great.

Because power steering for automobiles was a relatively new feature in the 1950s, my Chevy was not equipped with that enhancement and at times it required a good deal of strength to turn the steering wheel.

I suppose I was young and didn’t know differently when I drove the 1956 Chevy, but I was about to be astounded when I purchased a new Mercury Capri in 1974. The Capri came with power steering included and the steering wheel turned so easily that I could steer it using just one of my fingers instead of the two-handed grip required for vehicles without that special feature which we all take for granted these days.

Therefore, my first marvelous invention on my list would be automobile power steering.

When I was 13 in 1967, our family received an invitation from one of my mother’s cousins to visit their home to see something incredible. Color television had been around for a while, but my father didn’t want to spend $500 to purchase one. The cousin made us close our eyes and sit on her living room floor. In opening our eyes, she revealed her own version of “color TV,” which was a tri-colored piece of Saran Wrap stretched across a black and white TV screen. One third was blue, another third was yellow, and the other third was red.

At home we had a black and white console set and a black and white portable that could move from room to room, but each time I asked when we would be getting a color model, I was chastised by my parents for not being frugal and wanting to spend money needlessly. I grew up watching classic TV shows such as Bonanza, Batman, Star Trek and Disney’s Wide World of Color in good old black and white. I was thrilled when my father wheeled the portable TV into the dining room to watch a World Series game in 1963 between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers in black and white, although my mother complained about watching television during Sunday dinner.

For Christmas in 1975, my wife and I pooled our money and bought a color portable television set, and I was finally able to watch shows such as The Price is Right, Baretta, The Captain and the Kings mini-series and the Super Bowl between the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers in color.

Item #2 on my great invention list would be color television.

Because my father insisted that being head of the household was his duty and his alone, he never taught me simple tasks such as the proper way to carve the Thanksgiving turkey. He had his own set of specialty carving knives and decades of carving experience behind him for that annual chore. By the time I was grown up, married, and living elsewhere, my knowledge of carving was limited at best and highly primitive. Yet, the job of carving the Thanksgiving bird fell upon my shoulders and no matter how hard that I tried, cutting off turkey legs and slicing portions precisely was not something that I mastered quickly.

Then one year when I worked part-time at a furniture and appliance store, I saw a presentation for a handy inexpensive tool that I knew I had to buy. A manufacturer’s rep at the store I worked at demonstrated an electric knife and after buying one for $19.99, my carving worries were soon behind me.

I’d put the electric knife as my third great invention of my lifetime.

During the summer break between my freshman and sophomore year of high school, my parents insisted that I not waste the summer lying around doing nothing. They insisted that I enroll for a summer school class that taught students how to type. I showed up for the first class and found that all the typewriters in the classroom were manual ones from the 1930s and some were in better condition than others. We were assigned seats, and my typewriter had a carriage return key that would stick. To make it work you had to bang on it hard and having learned to type that way, to this very day, I am told that I strike the return and space keys on the keyboard with force.

Lastly, I’d place the Royal electric typewriter that I received as my high school graduation present in 1971 on my list of the greatest inventions of my lifetime. <                 

Andy Young: When does Gatorade go bad?

By Andy Young

Gatorade, the liquid thirst quencher, was invented by scientists at the University of Florida in 1965. It originally came in one variety: green. I didn’t try the stuff until after I had turned 10. Perhaps that was due to its cost at the time, or from a lack of its availability where I lived.

My interest in this skillfully marketed, ubiquitous source of electrolytes was reignited recently when I was gifted with three bottles of it, and from a most unlikely source.

However, in order to effectively protect the privacy of the individuals involved in this real-life tale of intrigue, I’ve opted to use a pair of three-letter pseudonyms.

“Amy” and I went to see a mutual friend (and former colleague) one afternoon last month. “Joe” has been retired for 15 years or so, but he’s still as vital, witty, and caring as he was when the three of us served as English teachers together. He’s universally acknowledged as one of the best educators to ever roam the halls of the high school where I’ve been employed for the past 23 years. He’s also, incredibly, an even better person than he was a teacher; his kindness and generosity of spirit are both palpable.

When we arrived at his home, “Joe” greeted us with hugs, handshakes, and an offer of refreshments. Then he asked a question I had not been anticipating. “Andrew,” he intoned in the same stentorian voice that mesmerized his students and colleagues alike for decades, “do you drink Gatorade?”

Even more unexpected than that odd inquiry was its source. “Joe” has never hidden his aversion to perspiring. He pronounces the word “exercise” with the same level of disgust most people my age reserve for such terms as “racist,” “human trafficker,” or “social media influencer.” Why he had three bottles of Gatorade in his possession is unclear, since someone who detests exercise needs Gatorade like Helen Keller needed binoculars.

Still, when I’m asked an honest question I provide an honest answer, so I responded, “Sure … if it’s free.” “Well then,” he intoned. “I’ve got three bottles you can take home with you.”

Our thoroughly enjoyable visit flew by, but as dinnertime approached and “Amy” and I reluctantly had to depart, “Joe” reminded me not to forget the Gatorade. “Oh,” he added as an afterthought, “it may be a little, ah … old.”

A couple of weeks later, after taking a lengthy bike ride, I downed the contents of the bottle containing orange-flavored (or more accurately, orange-colored) Gatorade. It tasted normal, which is to say not even remotely like oranges. But then, remembering the parting remark “Joe” had made about the libation’s age, I thought I’d check to see if there was an expiration date on the outside of the container.

There was. It read, “Oct 24 21.” Then I checked the other bottles. The one containing what I had just consumed was the youngest of the trio.

Since I’m still very much alive, and it’s apparent I’ve suffered no harmful after-effects from gulping down 32 four-year-old ounces of Gatorade. I’ve yet to sample the lemon lime (expiration date; Sep 30 18) variety yet, nor the kiwi strawberry (expiration date: Aug 07 18), which is an indistinct, indescribable color I have never encountered anywhere in nature. I’m saving those two bottles for a special occasion, like maybe after they’ve turned 10.

There are, as I see it, two takeaways from all this.

One is that it’s safe to drink four-year-old Gatorade. The other: pseudonyms only work if you use a name different from the actual one of the person(s) whose identity you’re trying to protect. <

Insight: Long Lost Secrets

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I recently listened to a podcast about how to speak with your parents about their past and why it is important to learn about their lives and pass it down to future generations in your family.

A newspaper article from 1924 reveals details
about a violent incident that took place between
Ed Pierce's maternal grandparents that he
never knew about while growing up.
COURTESY PHOTO   

In my case, both of my parents are deceased, but they did tell me a great deal about how they grew up and their experiences during World War II while they were still alive.

I found out quite a bit about my mother just by being a snoop as a child. Once when my parents were shopping on a Friday night, I discovered a bonanza of information I hadn’t previously known by exploring a kitchen cupboard that contained our family’s cups and glasses when I was 8 and in third grade.

Opening the cupboard door to get a glass for a drink of water, I looked up at the top shelf and noticed some papers there. Curiosity got the better of me and I climbed up onto the kitchen counter and was just tall enough to be able to pull the papers down off their lofty shelf.

Sitting on the kitchen counter, I looked through the documents, which were my mother’s divorce papers from her first husband. To that point, I did not know that my mother had been married before, and that she was divorced before meeting and marrying my father. The papers were sent to her by an attorney and the listed reason for the judge to grant the divorce was on the grounds of physical and mental cruelty. And in what was a bombshell revelation to me, the judge had ordered that my mother’s ex-husband was to pay her child support of $10 per month.

I carefully returned the papers to the top shelf where I had found them, climbed down from the kitchen counter and began to process what I had just learned. As it turned out, my older sister was my half-sister, and it now made sense to me as to why her last name was different from mine.

The more I thought about it, the story about how my parents had first met that my father had told me became clearer. While working his way through college to obtain a degree in mechanical engineering, he worked at night as a private detective. He told me he had been assigned by the agency he worked for to investigate a case for my mother. They met, and he asked her to go to a square dance with him. Not long after they got married.

Years later I discovered that the case my father had investigated for my mother involved her ex-husband and his claim that he couldn’t afford child support for several months because he wasn’t working. She hired my father to verify if that was true. My father found out that he was working at night at a manufacturing plant and my mother then reported the details and his employer to the court.

My sister got married when I was 12 and I made the mistake of asking my mother if my sister’s father was coming to the wedding. She wanted to know how I knew that, and I explained how I had discovered her divorce papers years before. As I expected, she got mad and told me to stay out of her personal things.

A conversation I had when I was 16 with my father also revealed a story about him that I didn’t know. It seems when he was a teenager, he and a friend had purchased a pack of cigarettes, and they were caught smoking behind a barn on my grandparents’ farm.

To teach my father a lesson about smoking, my grandfather took him to the barn and proceeded to have him smoke a box of Dutch Masters cigars one by one until the box was empty. The experience made my father sick, and he ended up being admitted to the hospital for nicotine poisoning. After that, he said he never again had any desire to smoke.

Neither my mother nor my father drank alcohol, and I came to understand why they didn’t decades later. I read a newspaper article from 1924 regarding my maternal grandfather getting drunk and then striking my maternal grandmother with a stick breaking her wrist after she threatened him with scissors with my mother watching as it happened.

My father also told me about an embarrassing incident during the Great Depression in which my paternal grandfather was out somewhere drinking when it started to snow. He became drunk, took off all his clothes and went running down the street naked. The police were called, and they soon found him, wrapped him in a blanket and returned him to my grandparents’ front door in front of my grandmother, my father and his siblings.

The incident shamed him so much that my father said that he took a week off from school to avoid being teased by classmates about it. He grew up avoiding alcohol and I can’t ever recall seeing him with a drink in his hand during my lifetime.

No matter what someone’s past experiences might be, they can offer an invaluable glimpse into the person they are now. <

Andy Young: Far more than just a foodie city

By Andy Young

West Virginia, Vermont, Delaware, Wyoming and Maine are the only U.S. states that don’t have a city of at least 100,000 residents within their borders. That bit of trivia makes the naming of Maine’s Portland as (according to tripadvisor.com’s “Travelers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best” America’s 8th-best destination for food even more impressive.

I wasn’t one of those polled by tripadvisor.com, but after checking out their roster of the 10 top-rated restaurants in the Portland area, I can understand why. I’ve only heard of two of the places listed, and have eaten at just one of them, Becky’s Diner. For what it’s worth, if I’m remembering the right place, I’d give Becky four stars.

Being ranked amongst the nation’s top “foodie” cities is no small feat for a community of Portland’s size. Other metropolises in the Top 10 include New York, Boston, and New Orleans. That a place of under 70,000 residents can rank above world-renowned cities like San Francisco, Chicago and Philadelphia is nothing short of remarkable. Maine’s grandest municipality isn’t even the nation’s largest Portland; in fact, its current population (68,408, at the 2020 census) is closer to that of Portland, Texas (20,383) than it is to Portland, Oregon’s (652,503).

There’s no reason for Maine’s Portland to have a population-related inferiority complex, though. Its number of residents is greater than the combined populations of the Portlands located in Texas, Tennessee (11,486), Connecticut (9384), Indiana (6320), New York (4366), Michigan (3796), North Dakota (578), Pennsylvania (494), and Arkansas (430). No population numbers were available for the unincorporated Portlands in Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Kansas.

Sudden thought: am I the only one who’s wondering if Portland, Kansas is a fictitious place invented by some Wikipedia prankster? Sure, Kansas has plenty of land, but where would they put a port?

It’s tough determining exactly where Maine’s largest city’s population stands nationally, although it’s definitely somewhere in the top 1,000. According to Reddit.com, which cites the 2020 census as its source, Portland stands 563rd, 44 people ahead of Franklin, New Jersey, but trailing Palo Alto, California by 164 residents. However, gist@github.com has Portland 524th, 15 souls shy of Bossier City, Louisiana, but 21 more than St. Cloud, Minnesota. Both agree, though, that what people around here see as an urban megalopolis is far less populated than burgs such as Killeen, Texas; Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Avondale, Arizona; Racine, Wisconsin; Billings, Montana; and Layton, Utah, to name just a half-dozen places that can only dream of being considered for some sort of culinary-related award from organizations like tripadvisor.com’s “Travelers’ Choice Awards Best of the Best.”

There’s no need for Portlanders to feel inadequate just because the population of Maine’s largest city is a mere 10.48 percent of Portland, Oregon’s. Our Portland has nearly seven times the population of Portland, Victoria, Australia, which isn’t just that nation’s biggest Portland; it’s the largest one on the entire continent as well! South Africa’s Portland, a neighborhood located in the Mitchell’s Plain area within the city of Cape Town, has fewer than 25,000 residents, and Portland, New Zealand is home to just 483 inhabitants. That’s even fewer than New Portland, Maine, a Somerset County town of 765. And as for the two Portlands in Jamaica and the one in Ireland, well, they’re so minuscule that they don’t even list their populations.

But when it comes to all things culinary in the five American states without a city of over 100,000, Maine’s Portland stands tall. Need proof? Try finding a tripadvsior.com list of the ten best eateries in Charleston, West Virginia; Burlington, Vermont; Wilmington, Delaware; or Cheyenne, Wyoming! <

Insight: A mentor and a friend

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

On the night before Thanksgiving in 1977, I was more than 5,000 miles from home, it was raining all the time, and I didn’t know anyone there. I had just been sent to my first duty assignment in the U.S. Air Force at the age of 23, at a remote location near Frankfurt, Germany.

Daryl Green was a longtime friend
of Ed Pierce and they served
together in the Air Force
in Germany and in Washington,
D.C. during their military careers.
COURTESY PHOTO

It was not what I had hoped for. My unit’s barracks were at Drake Kaserne in a U.S. Army housing building surrounded by a tall stone wall. My third-story room contained a cot, a closet and a window looking out over the stone wall onto a city street below. It was a 7-minute walk to the mess hall for a meal and by the end of my second week there, I was wondering if I had made the right decision in wanting to see if things looked any different on the other side of the world.

For the Thanksgiving holiday, my unit had been given four days off. I wasn’t envisioning having a fun time eating my Thanksgiving dinner alone in the mess hall and without receiving my first paycheck yet, I was unable to afford to use a payphone to call my family back in America.

Then something unexpected happened. Another member of my unit who lived across the hall from me in the barracks invited me to listen to music in his room and that simple gesture renewed my spirit. His name was Sgt. Daryl Green and meeting him turned out to be one of the best things to ever happen to me.

He was originally from Brooklyn and had been in the Air Force for almost four years. He was single and had some of the most expensive stereo equipment I had ever seen. Although I did not share his love for jazz music, I discovered that sitting and listening to his jazz albums in his room was as close to attending a jazz concert as in person.

All his record albums were jazz greats such as Miles Davis and John Coltrane and he introduced me to more contemporary jazz musicians such as the Brecker Brothers, Idris Muhammad and Herbie Hancock.

Even more impressive was Daryl’s turntable. It was a $2,000 Jean Francois Le Tallec linear turntable that electronically sensed the album tracks, and the turntable’s tone arm was self-contained. Each record played on it sounded incredible.

As I got to know Daryl, I found that we both loved college basketball and were both writers. He was working in Aerospace Ground Equipment in Europe, but his next duty assignment was to be the editor of the base newspaper at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. When he was eventually transferred out of our unit, I shook his hand goodbye, thanked him for being my friend, and sensed that it wouldn’t be the last time I would see him.

About 13 months later, I was reassigned to a squadron at The Pentagon in Washington and soon thereafter reconnected with Daryl. He asked if I would write some articles about events at The Pentagon for the newspaper that he was editing called the “Bolling Beam.” Over the next two years, I produced more than 200 articles for Daryl’s newspaper, and we went to a few college basketball games at American University and at the University of Maryland. I was with him when we ate lunch at the first Wendy’s Restaurant to open in Oxon Hill, Maryland.

By August 1981, I was reassigned from The Pentagon to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona to work for the base newspaper there and Daryl learned that he was being transferred in January 1982 to Beale Air Force Base in California. Before leaving Washington, I had dinner with Daryl and his wife Taryn at their home in Maryland and we talked about what it was like to serve as an editor of an Air Force newspaper.

We spoke on the phone almost weekly for four years and he congratulated me when I was promoted to serve as the editor of the Luke Air Force Base newspaper in 1982. He called me several times in New Mexico in 1986 after I had gotten out of the military and was in the process of earning my degree in journalism at the University of New Mexico.

In 2009, Daryl and I became Facebook friends, and he mentioned that he was retired from the military and was seeking a job in Las Vegas, Nevada as a card dealer in a casino. Despite sending him several more messages, I didn’t hear from him again. But earlier this year I noticed that his brother Vinny was on Facebook and sent him a message asking about Daryl.

He told me Daryl had passed away in 2012 at the age of 56 in Maryland and I couldn’t believe it. He had retired as a Master Sergeant from the Air Force and had served in Vietnam and in the Gulf War and was one of the smartest people I have ever known.

It was more than mere coincidence that led Daryl Green to invite me to listen to music with him in 1977, and I will always remember his kindness and guidance in serving as one of my mentors and a great friend.