Insight: 48 years and counting

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Seems hard to believe that this week it will be 48 years since I completed my U.S. Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Where has all the time gone?

Ed Pierce at Lackland Air Force Base during U.S.
Air For Basic Training in July 1977.
COURTESY PHOTO 

Members of our Flight 610 and Squadron 3723 arrived in San Antonio back in June 1977 for eight weeks of learning about what it meant to serve in the military. That first night, we gathered outside our dormitory waiting for everyone’s plane to land and to join us so we could begin training.

A friendly sergeant who waited outside with us called our group “Rainbows.” He said that term was derived from the fact we were all dressed in different colored clothing, like every shade of the rainbow.

Once everyone was there, another not so friendly sergeant joined us and told us we were going to play a game called “Pick ‘Em Up, Put Em Down” to get us accustomed to taking orders. For the next few hours, we lifted our suitcases upon his command and put them down when he instructed us to do so. It was boring and monotonous, but I adapted and avoided being screamed at for not following a command.

At the end of that drill, we were instructed to proceed into the dormitory and choose a cot. We slept head to toe, alternating positioning with each cot. The gruff training sergeant then told us we had five minutes to use the restroom, remove the whiskers from our faces, and pop into bed. That was an easy one for me as I was clean-shaven and at the age of 23, I couldn’t grow much of a beard or mustache at all. A frantic shaving rush ensued and by the next morning when I woke up and looked around the room, I saw many of my fellow trainees sporting significant shaving cuts and looking like they had gone through a hamburger grinder.

The person sleeping in the cot next to me was called out after the sergeant looked at his pillow and face. He had more than 40 deep facial hacks from his razor and his pillow resembled the underside of steak packaging at the supermarket. He told the training sergeant that he was frightened by his command to remove his whiskers, and we never saw him again as he was discharged for military incompatibility.

We marched as a group everywhere including to the barber shop to have our hair buzzed off, getting our first uniforms to wear or to the mess hall for breakfast, lunch and dinner. While being measured for a uniform, I was given pants two sizes too large but hesitated to complain out of fear that I could meet the same fate as what happened to the hamburger-faced trainee.

Rather than remain in the dorm on Sunday morning when we weren’t training, I joined many fellow flight members at church. Afterward several food trucks were in the parking lot, and you could unwind and just be yourself and socialize with your friends for a while there.

Our weekdays were spent marching around in 95-degree heat. On one occasion, the training sergeant noticed me at the back of a formation, and he pulled me aside. He told me that I better get in step or else I would face a “setback” or a return to day one of Basic Training. That was all it took for me to rapidly dedicate myself to always be in step during the three-mile marches.

In the classroom, we learned about the Uniform Code of Military Justice and basic hygiene principles, and what was expected of us as U.S. airmen. In the dormitory, we were shown how to make a bed using neat and sharp hospital corners. While demonstrating precisely what he wanted to see by showing us himself, the training sergeant yanked back the covers of a trainee’s bed to demonstrate but instead discovered a puddle of pee. That trainee was given a discharge for military incompatibility.

Each morning our dorm was inspected, and demerits were assigned for shoes under the beds not being aligned properly, messy lockers, filthy bars of soap, poorly made beds and uniforms not hung up the right way. Those demerits resulted in extra running drills for the entire flight or a smaller amount of time that we could use the telephone to call home after dinner once a week.

Eventually after weeks of racking up demerit after demerit, we came together and determined that we all needed to leave a bar of unused soap in our lockers. We instead all used a jug of liquid soap carefully hidden away in a shower vent. when we showered. A team of the best show aligners, best bed-makers, best locker arrangers, and best uniform hangers handled those tasks for everyone and there were no more demerits.

On Aug. 1, 1977, our training instructor bid us farewell and put us on a bus for tech school. My bus, bound for Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, pulled out of the dorm parking lot and then suddenly stopped. A trainee had given the middle finger to the training instructor out the rear window as the bus was leaving. He was removed from the bus and given a “setback” and had to do the eight weeks of basic training all over again. <

Andy Young: No kangaroos, but plenty of Stachelschweins

By Andy Young

I love getting unusual postcards, which my niece knows. That’s why, while traveling in Europe recently, she took the time to send me one featuring a yellow sign declaring, “No Kangaroos in Austria,” with the very recognizable outline of the Australian marsupial in its center.

The card made me smile, but it also made me wonder: how many of the locals, the majority of whom speak German, actually get the joke? After all, 97 percent of Austrians speak German; it’s the mother tongue of 93 percent of them.

What, I wondered, is the German word for this animal that to my knowledge is native to only one continent on Earth, and one that’s a very long way from Europe? But then, “Kangaroo” seems like a pretty uncommon word. How different could it be in other languages?

Well, thanks to an online translator, I now know that känguru is German for Kangaroo. It’s kangourou in French, canguro in Spanish and Italian, kangur in Polish, kinghar in Arabic, kangoro in Farsi, kengúra in Icelandic, and kanguru in Turkish. It’s also two symbols in Chinese that neither my computer (nor The Windham Eagle’s, apparently) has on its keyboard, although the approximate pronunciation is, allegedly, Dàishǔ.

But for my money, the languages with the best word for “kangaroo” are, among others, Swahili, Samoan, Hmong, Dinka, and Jamaican Patois, all of which refer to what we English speakers call a kangaroo as a “kangaroo.”

Another animal most Austrians would likely see only in zoos is what the folks in Turkey call a zürafa. This long-necked creature is a girafe to the French, a jirafa to Spanish speakers, a giraffa in Italian, a giraf in Danish, and a sjiraff in Norwegian. It’s a shame most standard laptop keyboards lack the capability of composing in Vietnamese, Greek, or Hindi, because the term for Giraffe in each of those languages is a real mouthful.

Thankfully not every word system is so complicated when it comes to identifying the animal with nature’s longest neck. For example, in German and in Filipino, the word for giraffe is “giraffe.”

If life were truly just, only linguists from the region unusual animals are native to would have the right to name these creatures. That’s why fair-minded people should refer to what we currently call a panda as a Xióngmāo, which is what locals call the adorable, rotund bamboo-munchers that exist in the wild solely in the mountainous region of southwestern China.

But anglophones aren’t the only group arrogant enough to make up our own words for animals not native to where we live. The word “panda” literally translates to “panda” in, among other languages, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Turkish, Danish, Kurdish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Romanian, Javanese, Japanese, and Susu, a tongue spoken in West Africa that’s one of the official languages of Guinea. Don’t use the word “Susu” in Indonesia, though. Its meaning there is different, and quite vulgar, apparently.

Common sense dictates that one should never startle a mofeta in Mexico, a mouffette in Quebec, a haisunäätä in Helsinki, or a skunk in Sweden, Germany, Samoa, and every English-speaking nation on the planet. Similarly, smart people know better than to pet an animal known as a yamārashi in Japanese, a dikobraz in Russian, a puerco espín in Spanish, a stachelschwein in German, a porc-épic in French, a kirpi in Uzbek and Azerbaijani, a pokio in Hawaiian, a porkopi in Papiamento, and a porcupine in English.

It’s too bad that porcupines live where my niece just visited, because I’ll bet “No Stachelschweins in Austria” postcards would sell like hotcakes in Vienna to tourists and locals alike! <

Insight: Take This Job and Shove It

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

One of the things that I enjoyed the most about working as a journalist in Florida was the sheer number of odd, bizarre and amusing stories to report about in the Sunshine State.

Johnny Paycheck had the only Number One 
country hit of his career in 1977 with 
'Take This Job and Shove It' which was 
played repeatedly during a radio station
prank on April Fool's Day in 1986.
COURTESY PHOTO  

In fact, the daily newspaper I worked for there at one time published a regular feature every day on the back of the local section of unusual articles of interest from locations in Florida.

One that certainly caught my attention involved a radio disc jockey in 1986 who decided he was going to show everyone how much he disliked his work.

At about 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 1, 1986, Charlie Bee was broadcasting his afternoon program of country music for WAPG-AM radio in Arcadia, Florida, east of Sarasota. Without any warning to listeners or radio station management, Bee suddenly locked himself in his broadcast studio and began playing “Take This Job and Shove It” by Johnny Paycheck over, and over, and over at varying speeds.

He ignored hundreds of telephone calls from listeners, friends, the radio station manager and other disc jockeys to surrender his microphone and stop what he was doing immediately.

Not paying any attention to their pleas to stop, Bee continued to repeatedly play “Take This Job and Shove It” and adjusted the radio station turntable to the point that he could slow down the speed of the record or speed it up. No matter what speed Bee chose to play it, the repeated song angered everyone that day.

If you haven’t heard it, the song “Take This Job and Shove It” is about the bitterness of a man who has worked long and hard with no apparent reward. The song was first recorded by country performer Johnny Paycheck on his album also titled “Take This Job and Shove It.”

Paycheck’s recording was the top country song for two weeks in 1977. The recording spent a total of 18 weeks on the Billboard County Music charts that year and happened to be the only Number One country hit ever recorded by Paycheck.

The radio station switchboard was flooded with more than 250 complaints from listeners while Bee remained barricaded behind the doors of the program’s control room.

Stopping the song briefly to air his own personal grievance, Bee complained over the airwaves that April 1, 1986 just happened to be his 49th birthday and the radio station managers were making him work on his very own special day. Then he went right back to playing “Take This Job and Shove It” for listeners tuning in.

He also explained to listeners that he was "fed up" with not receiving an adequate salary and would play the song until his employers agreed to give him a raise.

Hearing Bee’s broadcast complaint and with the situation now having stretched to more than an hour, the station manager resorted to calling the police. The DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department and officers from the Arcadia Police Department responded to the radio station studios and sheriff’s deputies began to knock loudly on the barricaded control room door. They demanded that Bee remove the barricade, unlock the door, and stop playing “Take This Job and Shove It.”

The deputies were banging on the door so loud that it could be heard over the airwaves as Bee continued to play the record repeatedly.

The embattled disc jockey then proclaimed over the air, “This is my show and they’re not going to tell me what to do.”

With the situation at a stalemate, Arcadia Police Officer Dan Ford asked Bee politely through the barricade, “Charlie, don’t you want to go home now?”

With that, Bee took down the barricade and unlocked the control room door. With the tension seemingly resolved, Bee left the radio station studio with Officer Ford.

No charges against Bee were filed over the incident, although the station manager terminated his employment as a disc jockey with WAPG-AM.

With the radio studio control room now empty, WAPG-AM disc jockey Bill Madison replaced Bee at the microphone and he dedicated his first song to Charlie Bee, playing “Take This Job and Shove It” one last time that evening.

When reached by telephone at his home later that week by a reporter, Bee said the incident arose out of sheer frustration.

“I was fed up and playing ‘Take This Job and Shove It’ expressed my sentiment exactly,” Bee told a Florida newspaper the weekend following the incident.

He refused to give any further details in subsequent newspaper articles, but his fellow DJ and friend Bill Madison eventually confessed that the entire situation and incident was an elaborately staged prank with which the police were cooperating.

Charlie Bee was never heard again on the airwaves of WAPG-AM after April 1, 1986, and it is unknown what happened to him thereafter.

Paycheck was sentenced to seven years in jail for shooting a man at the North High Lounge in Hillsboro, Ohio in 1985, and he spent 22 months in prison before being pardoned by Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste in 1991. He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 1997 but died at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center in 2003 at the age of 64 from emphysema complications. <

Andy Young: Who wants to be a Canadian millionaire?

By Andy Young

The primary purpose of the vacation I took earlier this month was relaxation. However, there was also some responsibility involved, since I believe providing some unique token of esteem for family members and/or special friends is a must. But everyone I’m close to already has all the coffee mugs, T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, baseball hats and keychains they need, so this time around they all got postcards with $1.75 worth of Canadian postage on them.

Andy Young in his Portland  Sea
Dogs turtleneck in 1999.
COURTESY PHOTO

Personal note: if you’re one of my special people and haven’t gotten your postcard yet don’t panic. It’s probably being held up in customs.

I also wanted to get myself something, but I don’t drink coffee, I don’t need new clothing, there’s no space left on the outside of my refrigerator, I’ve got more baseball hats than Sybil had personalities, and I have more keychains than baseball hats. For me a souvenir has to be useful. Fortunately, given where I was headed, I knew exactly what I wanted.

When I was employed by Portland’s professional baseball team, I represented them in public wearing some appropriate article of Sea Dog apparel. During the summer I’d sport a teal golf shirt; for winter speaking engagements I’d wear one of my two Sea Dogs turtlenecks, either the black one or the white one, each of which featured the face of Slugger, the team’s mascot, just above my left clavicle. I loved those two shirts nearly as much as I did my Wile E. Coyote turtleneck, which a good friend had given me some years previously.

Turtleneck shirts serve multiple purposes. They’re functional on social occasions or at work and are also handy for cold winter days when snow removal becomes a priority.

When I changed careers and moved into education, I took those still-sharp-looking Sea Dog turtlenecks with me, transitioning them into serviceable school shirts. Inevitably though, like the Wile E. Coyote model before them, they began fraying at the edges and ultimately just wore out.

None of the generic turtlenecks I currently own stands out, which is why I realized I needed a brand new one with “Newfoundland and Labrador” or “Nova Scotia” or “Magnetic Hill” embroidered on the collar. It’d be perfect: a new, useful shirt that’d simultaneously serve as a memento of a unique and memorable trip. And how tough could it be to find turtleneck shirts in places that are nominally even colder and darker during their lengthy winters than Maine is?

The answer: extremely tough.

There were no turtleneck shirts with unique logos on them in St. John’s, Newfoundland; Saint John, New Brunswick; or Digby, Nova Scotia. No professional hockey teams like the Newfoundland Growlers, the Moncton Wildcats, or the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles had any, either. I searched every tourist-driven establishment on Water Street in St. John’s, which looks exactly like every souvenir boutique in Portland’s Old Port, Kennebunkport, Bar Harbor, Newport, Cape Cod, or every other New England coastal tourist-friendly locale but came up empty.

Disappointed, I returned home and visited Hadlock Field’s souvenir store in Portland to buy myself a consolation turtleneck from the Sea Dogs. But they don’t carry them there anymore, either!

Did turtleneck shirts go out of style when I wasn’t looking? Were they always out of style, but no one told me?

If there’s a north-of-the-border edition of “Shark Tank,” someone ought to go on it and pitch the idea of selling turtleneck shirts with unique logos or names of places on them. They’d make millions of Canadian dollars, I tell you!

Or at least dozens of them, once I make my next trip up there. <

Insight: Don't pass Go, Don't collect $200

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

If you grew up in the 1950s and 1960s like I did, chances are that your closet was filled with popular board games of the day like mine was.

Board games were a way to engage the entire family in a fun-filled evening, show your friends how much you learned about a subject in school or to display a new winning strategy that you developed.

My first board games were Candyland, Chutes and Ladders and Uncle Wiggly. Of that group, Uncle Wiggly was my favorite because it was about taking a trip through a forest and reading simple rhymes found on each card drawn when it was your turn. The winner was always the first player to reach Dr. Possum’s House.

As I became older, for my 7th birthday in 1960 I was given a Go to the Head of the Class game. This was always entertaining for me, especially the game tokens which were cardboard images of adults and kids on wooden bases. The objective was to move across a playing field of student desks from nursery school to high school graduation by answering simple questions.

In fourth grade in 1962, I received a Cootie game for Christmas. That game baffled me as you had to build a large plastic bug-like creature called a Cootie by collecting various bug body parts. Not being into science in school, Cootie wasn’t my favorite and wasn’t played a lot after my younger brother carried off a Cootie body part and then lost it somewhere outside.

My brother was much more hands-on growing up than I was. Therefore, he received building blocks, Lincoln Logs and an Erector Set as gifts, while I was presented with board games.

By the time I was in sixth grade, my closet was filled with Monopoly, Aggravation, Scrabble, Game of the States, Chinese Checkers, Parcheesi, Clue, Concentration and Yahtzee. I also had a Lassie game, Careers, Battleship, and a World War I aerial combat game called Dogfight.

I didn’t own every board game. For some reason, I never had Life, Password, Sorry, Easy Money or Racko and I never wanted Milles Borne as I never understood what that game was all about.

A few games I owned required more physical skills than metal prowess and some of them were Mousetrap, Operation and Bas-Ket. In Mousetrap, you rolled a marble through a large contraption and the person with the fastest marble to complete the course winning. Operation involved extracting small plastic objects with tweezers from a funny looking cutout of a man. It needed a battery and the patient you were “operating on” would buzz and his nose would light up if you touched the side of a cutout space in retrieving an object. Bas-Ket was great fun and had players moving levers on a makeshift basketball court to connect for basketball baskets using a plastic ping pong ball.

At that same time, my parents gave me a Twister game and since my brother never wanted to play that, it sat in my closet for years. It got more use when I took it with me to college and there was no shortage of players during college co-ed dormitory parties.

I also had a table-top ice hockey game and an electric football game. The ice hockey game was the kind where you used levers to maneuver a small plastic puck up and down and take shots on goal. Unfortunately, my ice hockey game was ruined when I left it on the floor in my bedroom and my brother ran in there not knowing it was on the floor. He stepped on it and the levers became severely bent and twisted. My father was unable to straighten them to salvage the game so we could play it.

The electric football game involved small plastic players in realistic football poses who moved by vibration when the electricity was turned on. You could also pass a tiny oval felt football by pulling back the arm of the quarterback but never quite knew where a receiver would travel based upon the vibrations.

During my sophomore year of high school, I received both a Stratego and a Risk game for Christmas. I had also purchased my own chess and checkers games using money I had earned on my paper route. Instructions that came with the checkboard showed how to play a game called Backgammon, but it wasn’t until years later that I learned how to play that game.

Stratego quickly became one of my favorites. It’s a two-person contest where you advance colorful plastic military ranked pieces across a battlefield and the winner captures an opponent’s flag. Risk also fascinated me as a game of worldwide conquest where players roll dice to try and occupy countries on a global map.

My original Risk game had wooden game pieces that were much more durable when they accidentally fell on the floor and were then scooped up by my dog and chewed. The newer Risk comes with plastic game pieces that my dog would enjoy chewing and swallowing.

After a lifetime of playing board games, I’ve come to appreciate that the beauty of a game lies in its challenging complexity. <

Tim Nangle: Supporting healthcare access and affordability for all Mainers

By Senator Tim Nangle

With the legislative session behind us, I'm glad to be home in Windham, attending local events and reconnecting with people in our community. Hearing your concerns firsthand has reinforced the importance of the work we've accomplished. It's also given me time to reflect on the important achievements of this session, especially the health care initiatives I supported, both while serving on the Health and Human Services Committee and through broader legislative efforts.

State Senator 
Tim Nangle

A key achievement of this session was the full funding of the state’s share of MaineCare through our Part 1 and Part 2 budgets (LD 609 and LD 210). By closing a projected funding gap, we safeguarded essential health services for thousands of Mainers, particularly low-income families, older adults, children and individuals with disabilities. These critical investments mean families across our state won't face disruptions in their health care.

For individuals diagnosed with hearing loss, we passed LD 167, “An Act to Provide 2 Hearing Aids to MaineCare Members with Diagnosed Hearing Loss.” This will significantly improve the quality of life and health outcomes for hearing-impaired Mainers by ensuring access to two hearing aids rather than just one.

Every Mainer deserves dignity and high-quality care, particularly in later stages of life or when facing serious health challenges. That's why we prioritized improving care and conditions within nursing facilities and Maine’s Veterans Homes by investing an additional $6.5 million. This funding will support workforce retention and directly benefit the Maine residents who live in these facilities and rely on these critical services.

Recognizing the tireless efforts of our direct care workforce, we included increased support for their cost-of-living adjustments. These dedicated workers provide essential care to older Mainers and individuals with disabilities. Ensuring fair compensation is crucial for worker retention and maintaining the quality of care our communities depend on.

Supporting emergency response workers is particularly personal for me, having previously served as a police officer and paramedic. This session, we permanently established the workers’ compensation presumption for PTSD through LD 82, ensuring that police officers, firefighters, EMS personnel, corrections officers, and emergency dispatchers receive timely care and support for trauma endured while protecting our communities. I know firsthand the challenges these dedicated professionals face, and I’m deeply committed to supporting their mental and emotional well-being.

Insurance companies shouldn’t dictate which treatments a patient needs based on cost. That’s why we passed LD 178, “An Act Regarding Coverage for Step Therapy for Metastatic Cancer,” to help patients get the treatments they need when it matters most. This law prevents insurance companies from making patients try and fail with ineffective treatments before they can get the most effective therapies for metastatic breast cancer, ensuring faster, and potentially life-saving care.

Tackling prescription drug affordability, we enacted two significant measures regulating pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). LD 180, “An Act Regarding Reimbursements by Health Insurance Carriers or Pharmacy Benefits Managers to Pharmacies,” prohibits PBMs from under-reimbursing pharmacies, protecting Mainers from artificially inflated drug costs. Similarly, we passed LD 1580, “An Act to Prohibit Carriers and Pharmacy Benefits Managers from Using Spread Pricing.” This new law bans PBMs from charging health plans more than pharmacies are reimbursed for medications, directly reducing prescription costs for Mainers.

We also strengthened our commitment to the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program to further support rural and underserved communities. This program allows eligible health care providers, including hospitals and clinics, to buy medications at discounted prices and reinvest those savings in patient care. By bolstering this program, we’re increasing access to vital medications and quality health care access across Maine.

These measures reflect the Legislature’s ongoing commitment to strengthening health care across Maine. I’m honored to serve our community and advocate for policies that prioritize Maine’s health and well-being. There's more work ahead, and I'll continue fighting to ensure every Mainer has access to affordable, dependable and quality health care.

For the latest, follow me on Facebook at facebook.com/SenatorTimNangle, sign up for my e-newsletter at mainesenate.org, or contact me directly at Tim.Nangle@legislature.maine.gov. You can also call the Senate Majority Office at 207-287-1515.

The opinions in this column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of The Windham Eagle newspaper ownership or its staff. <

Andy Young: A fiendish wolf in friendly sheep’s clothing

By Andy Young

Like pretty much every person who wasn’t born blind, I know exactly how I look physically. I’m 6-foot-2 inches tall, with perfect posture, an athletic build, and a full head of lush, dark hair. I know this not only from memory, but also from the way I appear each night in my dreams, when I’m recording the final out of the World Series, foiling armed bank robberies, or rescuing damsels in distress from burning buildings (and subsequently sweeping them off their feet).

Andy Young

Full disclosure: I have, on several occasions, accomplished all of these Herculean feats in a single evening!

But recently my positive self-image has been shaken to its core, and what’s worse, the person responsible is someone I had previously considered a close friend.

Kevin and I have known each other since college, starting when he was the sports editor of the University of Connecticut’s student newspaper at the same time I was calling play-by-play for the school’s baseball, hockey, and soccer games on the campus radio station. His off-beat sense of humor seemed to mirror mine, as did his professed love of travel.

After graduation Kevin began a distinguished career as a newspaperman, while I continued functioning as a fulltime adolescent while nominally seeking a broadcasting job.

Some years ago the two of us took a seven-city, 10-day, freelance writing trip to some major league baseball parks together. Later we combined business with pleasure when we teamed up for a cross-country drive from Arizona to Connecticut. Kevin was unquestionably one of my closest and most trusted friends, which was why I was looking forward to the two-week trip the two of us were planning on taking to Canada’s Maritime Provinces early this summer.

After spending an evening at my home following his arrival in Maine late last month, Kevin and I headed north. The scenery in Newfoundland was as breathtaking as advertised, and the people there (and also in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) bent over backward to make us feel welcome. We made some new friends, picking up a bit more useful wisdom along the way. Using his considerable photographic skills, Kevin snapped hundreds of pictures during our trip, capturing all the beauty and majesty of nature in the process.

But his photos revealed something else as well, which was that our whole relationship was a sham. Fraudulent. Bogus.

It turns out my close “friend,” who I’d have trusted with my life, was a total fake. Apparently, my ersatz chum had been waiting decades to undo my sense of self-worth, and when he saw an opportunity to take me down, he leaped at it.

Even worse, I wouldn’t have known of his craven doings had they not been called to my attention by an actual friend, who’d seen some photos of our trip Kevin had posted on his Facebook page.

Using what I assume is a magic, appearance-altering camera he acquired from the image-shifting department at backstabbers.com, my duplicitous “pal” had created images depicting me not as the matinee-idol handsome fellow I truly am, but as a frail, balding, doddering old geezer who resembles your aging grandfather’s wizened great-uncle.

Naturally Kevin professed his innocence when confronted with his treachery, but I told him to save his lame protestations. There’s no denying he’s responsible for those horrific photos depicting me as a haggard, shriveled old codger.

And how do I know for certain it was Kevin who used his diabolical technological know-how to alter the way others see me?

Because evidently the rat did the same thing to every mirror in my house the night he stayed there! <

Insight: Kung Fu Fighting, Mr. Bojangles and Brandy

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

What would you pay to own the soundtrack of a significant decade of your life? For me, the answer to that question launched a special quest unlike any other I have undertaken.

Ed Pierce has just completed acquiring all 25 music CDs
in the 1990 series issued by Rhino Records called
'Super Hits of the 70s Have a Nice Day.'
COURTESY PHOTO
 

It all began sometime in the mid-1990s at a music store in Melbourne, Florida. I had the day off from work and went to this store to purchase some CDs for my home stereo system. There were many fascinating bands and recording artists to choose from but an odd-looking CD in a bargain bin caught my eye and it was part of series of CDs issues by Rhino Records to salute the 1970s.

That decade was when I truly came of age. It was the time in which I graduated from high school, went to college, got married, started my career and joined the U.S. Air Force. I purchased my first car in 1972, met David Bowie in 1975, traveled to Europe in 1977, and became the owner of a pet cat in 1978.

As far as music goes, I collected what I could afford based upon my earnings at the time and the vinyl record albums I purchased were a luxury after paying the rent, buying groceries and writing a check for my auto loan every month.

But 20 years-plus after the 1970s, here I stood in awe of a CD I was holding called “Super Hits of the 70s Have A Nice Day.” The front of the CD was a photo collage of cultural icons of the decade including depictions of Elton John, Richard Nixon, Richard Pryor, Lindsay Wagner, Richard Roundtree, Rod Stewart, and characters from the 1970 film “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.”

Inside the CD, I discovered a compilation of 12 different 1970s tunes sounding just like they did when they aired on the AM radio in my 1974 Mercury Capri. Buying the CD and taking it home, it was indeed like turning the dial and finding a radio station playing the top hits of that era.

The playlist for the “Super Hits of the 70s Have A Nice Day Vol. 2” was like a time travel adventure. There was “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” by Edison Lighthouse; “Ma Belle Ami” by the Tee Set; “Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum; and “Reflections of My Life” by Marmalade. There were two tracks I had never heard of before called “For the Love of Him” by Bobbi Martin and “Little Green Bag” by the George Baker Selection.

Also featured on this CD were “Which Way You Goin’ Billy” by The Poppy Family; “My Baby Loves Lovin’” by White Plains; “Hitchin’ A Ride” by Vanity Fare; “United We Stand” by The Brotherhood of Man; and “Everything is Beautiful” by Ray Stevens. The CD tracks on this edition closed with “Lay a Little Lovin’ on Me” by Robin McNamara.

After a few months I stored the CD with others in my collection and hoped that someday I could find others in the series. Months turned into years and then into decades and I got busy with life and stopped looking.

Last summer when I rebuilt my stereo system, I was thrilled to own a turntable again and started to collect vinyl albums once more. As part of my stereo system, I own a 5-disc CD changer and brought a box of CDs up from the basement to my music room. Inside, I rediscovered the “Super Hits of the 70s Have A Nice Day Vol. 2” CD and it sounded fantastic when I played it.

That got me to thinking that perhaps someone might have other CDs in the “Super Hits of the 70s Have A Nice Day” series for sale. I first looked at two different locations of the Bull Moose music store without luck. Then I saw some CDs in the set listed on both Amazon and eBay.

Ordering one or two at a time at a reasonable cost online, I started in May on a quest to collect all 25 CDs in the series. I soon found out that some of these CDs are more valuable than the others.

For instance, Vol. 24 and Vol. 25 CDs are genuine collectors’ items because they were the final ones issued in the set in 1990. And for some strange reason, Vol. 11 and Vol. 14 are also hard to find and priced extravagantly.

My wife thought I was slightly insane over the past few months to be frequently checking the mailbox to see if any packages containing CDs had arrived for me on any given day. I was on a mission and would not be deterred.

Finally on July 3, I am happy to report that the last “Super Hits of the 70s Have A Nice Day” CD that I was seeking arrived via Fed Ex. It was the Vol. 11 edition, and I paid more than $10 extra for it than the other CDs. Not sure what the fuss was about for that one as none of the tracks on it are spectacular, unless you like “Playground in my Mind” by Clint Holmes or “Dueling Banjos” from the “Deliverance” film soundtrack.

Now I’m on to another obsession. <

40 X 15 = 600

By Andy Young

I never really know what I’m going to write each week for The Windham Eagle.

Sometimes I start with one idea but then head off in an entirely different direction.

Often life presents a topic, like last winter when a snowplow hit my car.

At other times a random thought will cross my mind, and it’ll get me started.

The ability to play with words and/or numbers helps when producing a cogent 600-word column.

Over the years I’ve gotten plenty of writing advice from a variety of distinguished mentors.

For example, a veteran editor told me to never write essays of over 800 words.

“Nobody wants to read more than 800 words about anything you can name,” she said.

And after many years of experience, I have to say I believe she was right.

Although given the attention spans of current readers, 400 words might be more like it.

Or, thanks to soulless social media influencers and avaricious cellphone purveyors, perhaps 200 would suffice.

After thoughtful consideration I decided to write exactly 600 words for The Windham Eagle each week.

And that’s what I’ve done for the past five years, week in and week out.

But what is the most effective method of writing thoughtful, meaningful, amusing, or inspiring essays?

Some folks say the best way of learning to do something is actually doing it.

And for the most part I agree, although obviously there are exceptions to every rule.

I have heard that for some people, formal education is more important than hands-on experience.

My best guess is that people who maintain that belief are most likely professional educators.

Or “educated idiots,” as my supervisor at the apple orchard, an 8th-grade dropout, enjoyed saying.

I wasn’t exactly the greatest at academics, but some random lessons somehow stuck with me.

Today a kid like me would be diagnosed with “oppositional-defiant disorder,” or some such thing.

But that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate in my case, since I wasn’t ever defiant.

Oppositional maybe, but defiance most definitely wasn’t a viable option when I went to school.

However, I may have shown a bit of passive-aggressive oppositional behavior from time to time.

If adults told me I couldn’t accomplish something, I’d do it just to spite them.

A well-meaning teacher once told me to vary the length of the sentences I wrote.

“Too many short sentences make your writing sound too simple, and too boring,” she intoned.

She also cautioned me against constructing overly lengthy sentences that contained too many multisyllabic words.

“Overlong sentences and pretentious verbiage turn readers off,” she sagely advised, and naturally I agreed.

I should have listened more carefully to most of the teachers I had back then.

But because I was an immature adolescent boy as a high schooler, I did not.

Funny, because now that I think of it, “immature adolescent boy” is a classic redundancy.

There were only three boys in my entire high school class who weren’t immature adolescents.

And naturally those three exceptions were unfairly (and unmercifully) tormented by the rest of us.

However, that was then, this is now, and the subject at hand is essay writing.

Nobody would recommend authoring an essay where every sentence contained the same number of words.

Or even worse, a 40-paragraph, 40-sentence essay, with each sentence consisting of exactly 15 words.

“Writing something like that is impossible!” they’d insist, adding, “Besides, who’d want to read it?”

I admit, I’m not quite sure who’d really want to read 40 consecutive 15-word sentences.

But after finishing this column, I know for certain that writing one is indeed possible! <

The Rookie Mama - Don’t sweep chores under the rug: A tale of summer structure and Lucky Charms

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

Parenting in the summer is like a firehose to the face that sends you backward down a giant slip-and-slide and lands you somewhere in a splashpad wild wilderness world if you so much as blink, when your kiddos are on three-month hiatus, but alas, your full-time work schedule hasn’t changed.

Splish-splash, don’t jump back in the bath – When it’s peak summer-lovin’ time in Maine, a bit of structure can go a long way to ensure smooth sailing for your whole crew.

Whether your little ones are summer camp bound or home with caregivers, be sure to begin every morning and end each day with a little routine and chores for all.

My husband and I have four young boys, ranging in age from 4 to 13. Each is able to contribute meaningfully to our home’s everyday upkeep, and as we all know, many hands make light work.

And in our home of six, we’ve sure got many a hand.

Kiddos kicking in with chores not only contributes greatly to our daily function, but teaching responsibility gives our little guys a sense of pride and accomplishment.

It’s a family affair.

Our youngest ones help pick up, whether sorting and properly stashing toy trains, Hot Wheels cars and Duplos from whence they came, or clearing the table – be it storing away art supplies or scooping up accidentally spilled bowls of Lucky Charms.

They’re also learning to help our older boys fold laundry.

After all, we all wear clothes – A whole lot of it – Folding should also be the team effort.

The folds may not be perfect, and socks may not always be exquisitely matched, not to mention the shirts that may be inadvertently placed in wrong piles.

We don’t expect perfection.

After all, I’ve never even met an adult who can fold a fitted sheet.

Among our older circuit, our boys help clean the house, do dishes, take out trash and recycling and mow our hilly lawn among other tasks.

When our kids are really deep in chore zone, they get music or background movie choice to make it fun and truly nurture that autonomy.

Rise-and-shines and bedtimes are still enforced, albeit with more flexibility than school nights and golden rule days. This keeps us on routine and ready to take on the day.

Peppered between daily tasks is lots of fun in the sun and the reward feels all the more magnificent after each doing our part.

But that’s precisely what it is – Each does our fraction; together we’re made whole.

When we teach responsibility – with patience, grace, and some great tunes in the mix – we all benefit, and our littles ones learn these life skills.

According to Parent.com, children who do chores grow up to be successful. A Harvard study that followed people for 75 years were able to connect their physical and emotional health as well as professional success to whether they did chores as kiddos.

And so it goes – To participate in life, one must contribute to it.

Chores also allow little ones to learn how things work.

So cleaning up those Hot Wheels cars and washing dishes regularly go a long way, so it seems.

Even Harvard says so.

Even if no one will ever know how to fold a fitted sheet.

So keep calm and carry on all summer long – Just don’t forget to keep kid chores top of mind along with sunscreen, and you’ll all have a well-deserved summer to remember.

­­– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!

Insight: Buck and The Cro

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Several famous people I have met under different circumstances exhibited an uncommon trait called kindness.

Joe Crozier, left, befriended Ed Pierce when he was the
coach of the Rochester Americans in the American
Hockey League in the 1960s. Pierce met recording artist
B.W. Stevenson before a concert in 1973.
COURTESY PHOTOS     

As a representative of the Student Entertainment Committee at New Mexico Highlands University in October 1973, my mission was to ensure the bands we booked to appear in concert had suitable hotel accommodations and their equipment was on site and available for their performance. It also meant making sure the electricity and microphones worked and that band members were fed before each of the concerts.

One of the first performers I got to meet in person was a musician by the name of B.W. Stevenson. He and his band were touring the county promoting his new album. “My Maria” and his hit single of the same name from the album. Our committee had booked him earlier that summer, when his fee to perform was reasonable enough before his hit song rose to reach the Top 10 nationally.

I hadn’t listened very much to his music, but I had noticed his first album with his photo wearing a stovepipe hat the year before. I met his bus when it arrived on campus and told the band that once they looked over the gym where they were playing, we could get them checked into the hotel and then return for early afternoon sound checks and rehearsal.

Stevenson was slightly older than I was, in fact, he shared with me that this day of the concert was in fact his 24th birthday. He wasn’t very tall but was rather stocky and quiet. He told me that he was from Dallas, Texas and learned to play the guitar as a teenager.

When I asked him what the B.W. initials stood for, he laughed and said, “It’s Buckwheat, but you can call me Buck if you’d like.”

After dinner, Stevenson pulled me aside and asked what was going on in town after the concert. I mentioned to him that our fraternity was having a party with a keg of beer afterward and that he was welcome to come by our fraternity house with his band.

The concert was successful, and my job was done as other committee members made sure everything got packed up and stored on the band’s bus.

To my surprise, Stevenson showed up at the party with some band members and thanked me for inviting him. He shared a beer with us and some stories from the road and his life as a musician. I found him to be genuine and a regular guy despite his celebrity status.

While attending a professional hockey game in Rochester, New York in 1965, I asked my father if I could walk down to the player’s bench and see if one of them would give me a hockey stick. Most of the players were out on the ice warming up before the game started and so there was just one man standing by the bench and he was dressed in a business suit, so I decided that he wasn’t a hockey player.

I introduced myself to the man in the suit and he told me his name was Joe “The Cro” Crozier and that he was the coach of the Rochester Americans. He asked how old I was, and I told him I was 11. He pointed out onto the ice to a player warming up for the Hershey Bears wearing a jersey with the numeral 8 on it. He said the player’s nickname was “The Big Bear” and that his real name was Mike Nykoluk, pronounced Nik-O-Luck.

Crozier said that if I shouted “You Stink” at Nykoluk when he skated by and if he reacted to it, that he would make sure I received a hockey stick.

Sure enough, Nykoluk skated past where I was standing and I screamed at him, “Hey Nykoluk, you stink like a skunk.” Nykoluk stopped, turned around and smiled at me, shaking his stick at me first, and then at Crozier, who was laughing hysterically.

I returned to my seat but before the game ended, Crozier motioned to the usher to bring me and my brother to the bench where he presented us both with broken hockey sticks. Crozier told me, “Someday when you are grown up, you’ll remember this moment.”

Crozier went on as a coach to lead the Rochester Americans to three Calder Cup American Hockey League championships. He later served as the coach of the Buffalo Sabres and the Toronto Maple Leafs in the National Hockey League. Ironically, when Crozier was fired as the Leafs’ coach in 1981, he was replaced by none other than Mike Nykoluk. In 2012, Crozier was inducted into the AHL Hall of Fame and died at the age of 93 in 2022.

B.W. Stevenson continued to sing and perform nationally until 1988. In April of that year, he went into the hospital to have a heart valve repaired. Following the surgery, he soon developed a staph infection and died at age 38. Brooks and Dunn later had a Number 1 country hit with their version of Stevenson's "My Maria." 

Years later, when I think about meeting Joe Crozier and B.W. Stevenson, and that they each chose to be friendly to me when I was a total stranger to them, I am humbled. Their kindness is not something I will soon forget. <

Andy Young: Celebrating the 3rd 83rd

By Andy Young

Historians have an inexplicable love for round numbers. That’s why next year (MMXXVI for Roman numeral users), Americans can expect a bombardment of pomp and ceremony when the United States marks its semiquincentennial, sestercentennial, bisesquicentennial, or, for people who struggle with pronouncing words containing more than five syllables, its 250th anniversary.

Harriet Lane was the niece of U.S President
James Buchanan and because he was not 
married, she served as First Lady for
the president in 1859. COURTESY PHOTO

Far be it from me to rain on next year’s extravagant parade(s), but what’s wrong with celebrating every July 4th equally? Just because this year’s Independence Day is the country’s 249th doesn’t make the occasion any less meaningful. In fact, I think this year’s July 4 is even more significant than next year’s will be, since it marks America’s third 83rd birthday.

And what was so special about the first two 83rd anniversaries of the founding of the United States? In a word, plenty.

Four score and three years after the Declaration of Independence marked the penultimate (an easily pronounced four-syllable word) year of James Buchanan’s one-term presidency. And while his indecisiveness likely led to the Civil War, the lifelong bachelor should also be remembered as the only president to ever have his niece (Harriet Lane, for those keeping score at home) serve as America’s First Lady.

Plenty of American history was being made outside Washington, D.C. in 1859 as well. Indian Head pennies were minted for the first time. Oregon was admitted as the nation’s 33rd state, and the city of Olympia was incorporated in the territory of Washington. A lot of Americans seemed to be in a hurry that year, since MDCCCLIX was the year of the Colorado Gold Rush, the Comstock Lode Silver Rush, and the Pennsylvania Oil Rush.

On June 30, Charles Blondin became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. The first-ever intercollegiate baseball game was played the next day, with Amherst besting Williams (and their notoriously weak bullpen) 73-32. Cass Gilbert, the architect who designed the Supreme Court building, the Woolworth building, and three different state capitals, was born in 1859. So were educator John Dewey and outlaw William H. “Billy the Kid” Bonney.

America’s second 83rd birthday occurred in 1942 (MCMXLII), when the country was embroiled in World War II. Food, sugar, and gasoline were just three items that Americans had to ration, and the conflict was coming uncomfortably close to United States shores. On May 12, a Nazi U-boat sunk an American cargo ship near the Mississippi River delta, and a month later a Japanese submarine fired on Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. On June 27, the FBI nabbed eight Nazi saboteurs off the coast of Long Island, New York, so it wasn’t surprising that the nation’s minimum draft age was lowered from 21 to 18 in November.

However, in June the war’s tide began turning the allies’ way when the Battle of Midway marked the first decisive defeat of the Japanese in the Pacific theater.

Not all of American History in 1942 involved war, though. Bing Crosby recorded “White Christmas” and “Silent Night” that year. Glenn Miller and his orchestra were awarded the first-ever Gold Record after a million copies of their rendition of “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” were sold, and Walt Disney’s animated version of Bambi was released in late August. The St. Louis Cardinals won a five-game World Series over the New York Yankees, and the Heisman Trophy went to Georgia halfback Frank Sinkwich.

There’s still half of 2025 remaining, so there’s no telling what significant history will be made this year.

That established, it goes without saying there’s no way to accurately forecast where America will be on its next 83rd birthday, in MMCVIII. <

Insight: Seven things I’ll never do again

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Don’t bother to ask me because the answer will always be no.

Here’s a list of seven things that I have done in my life previously that I simply will say I will never, ever do again and a brief explanation as to why not.

#1. Remove the gas pedal from an automobile. On a Saturday morning when I was about 8, my father asked me if I wanted to ride along with him when he went shopping at a nearby five-and-dime store. When he went into the store, I stayed behind in the car. Crawling along on the floorboard, I went to get up and grabbed the gas medal by mistake. It broke off, and as much as I tried, I couldn’t reattach it. I propped it up as if nothing had happened but when my father returned and tried to start the car, he noticed what had happened. He told me that if I ever did that again, he wouldn’t ask me to ride with him anymore.

#2. Handle a snake. When I was a member of the U.S. Air Force, I went to a party at a friend’s house, and he showed me several of his pet snakes. He insisted that I hold one of them and to not show fear in front of the other party guests, I held it briefly and the entire time that it was happening my knees were shaking, and I was trembling deep down inside with fright. I swore thereafter to never do that again and I’ve kept that vow for more than four decades now and counting.

#3. Arrive at a fire scene before the fire department while covering it for the newspaper. Once while working in the newsroom for a daily newspaper in New Hampshire, I listened to a radio call for firefighters to respond to a house fire. I knew exactly where the fire was and drove there quickly, arriving at least a minute before the fire trucks got there. A fire truck parked behind me and a firefighter laid two 6-inch fire hoses up the middle of the street, making it impossible for me to leave once the fire department had extinguished the fire. I had to wait for 45 minutes afterward until the fire hoses had been drained and reeled up before I could drive away.

#4. Eat lima beans, parsnips, artichokes or Brussels sprouts. When I was growing up, my mother was a stay-at-home mom and instituted a “Vegetable of the Day” program for our household. She said she did it to introduce us to the taste of as many different types of vegetables as possible. Through that experience, I came to loathe lima beans, parsnips, artichokes and Brussels sprouts and made myself a promise that I would try to avoid eating them in the future. I can honestly say I have never willingly ordered any of those vegetables throughout my adult life.

#5. Wear waist Size 32 or 34 pants. For at least 10 years when I was in my 30s, I only purchased trousers which were waist size 32. At age 41, that increased to waist size 34. But by the time I turned 45, my waist expanded again to a size 36 and I’ve pretty much stayed there ever since. It’s reassuring to know that I cannot fit into Size 32 or Size 34 pants, so I don’t even try to.

#6. Report at the scene of a fire without checking with firefighters. When I was a newspaper reporter in the 1980s, my editor sent me to cover a massive mobile home blaze. I got there and ran up the driveway while starting to take photos. Suddenly I heard a fireman behind me shouting for me to stop and not take another step. I looked down at my feet and noticed a live electric wire wriggling around and snapping just inches from my shoes. They never taught us this in journalism classes in college, but I have made it a point since then that if I am out covering a fire somewhere, I always ask firefighters where they advise is a place that I can stand and observe things safely.

#7. Pick up a stack of lumber without checking what’s underneath it first. Living on a farm in New Mexico in the 1970s, I was gathering small pieces of wood to use as kindling for the fireplace. We had a pile of old lumber behind a barn on the property, and I thought I’d grab a few pieces from there for kindling. I didn’t realize it but underneath the first few pieces there, hornets had decided to make a nest for the winter, and I ended up getting stung 44 times on my arms, on the top of my head and all over my back. Forced to drive myself to the urgent care clinic, I watched the physician carefully remove as many of the stingers as he could find over the course of the next hour. After that painful incident, I vowed that I would never reach blindly into a pile of wood without examining the wood pile first and I’ve zealously kept that promise. <

Andy Young: Exploring uncharted gourmet waters

By Andy Young

It’s ironic I’ve ended up living near what’s considered one of America’s premier “foodie” cities, because as a kid I spent less time at restaurants than Abraham Lincoln passed surfing the web.

Our family never went out for dinner, aside from stopping at a Howard Johnson’s when we traveled to Montreal the year after the World’s Fair there. The closest we came to dining out was when our mother would, on rare occasions, pick up a bucket of chicken from the Drumstick Bar-B-Q on her way home from work.

The first time I remember eating in an actual dining establishment was during my senior year of high school. When the place where I worked closed for the summer, Barney, our boss, decided to reward his half-dozen high-school-aged employees with a trip to a local restaurant. Since the community where we lived was completely devoid of eateries, our dining out experience would take place in an adjacent town.

Due to my inexperience in the sort of surroundings I’d be visiting, or perhaps because I was something of a picky eater, my mom gave me a pre-night-out talk about proper restaurant etiquette. She encouraged me to have an open mind, and to try a little bit of everything. She also stressed the importance of saying “Please” and “Thank you” to the people who’d be serving us, and to Barney for his kindness.

Our destination, it turned out, was the Golden House, which on the outside looked something like a pagoda. Never mind Asian food; the closest thing I’d experienced to any ethnic cuisine was my mom’s meat-and-vegetable sauce poured over La Rosa spaghetti. Barney announced he’d do all the ordering and began by requesting a Pu Pu platter. For obvious reasons I didn’t want any part of anything with “Poo-Poo” in it, but remembering my mother’s pre-dinner instructions, I gritted my teeth and accepted the first item sent my way, something called an “egg roll.” I had always hated eggs, but there was no dog under the table to surreptitiously pass it to, so, water glass at the ready to provide a chaser, I braved a tentative nibble from the suspicious-looking golden-brown object.

It wasn’t too bad, so I took another bite. Then I devoured the whole thing, along with the remains of one the kid next to me had foolishly placed on a napkin that was within my reach. When the main dishes (several of which were aflame) arrived, I heeded my mother’s counsel, trying a little bit of everything. For openers I sampled the pork fried rice and vegetable lo mein. Then I took some moo goo gai pan. After my third helping of pepper steak, I loosened my belt a notch, then removed it entirely a few moments later, after dispatching yet another steamed dumpling. I’m not sure my mom would have approved of having her son take his belt off in public and stick it in his pocket, but by the time I did so, I was confident that my pants were in no danger of falling down. Besides, I needed to breathe. The meal concluded with a fortune cookie, although I’m still waiting for the good financial news that the paper inside it promised was right around the corner.

When it was all over, I couldn’t believe I had let 18 whole years go by without knowing of the existence of Chinese cuisine.

I’d love to go back to the Golden House sometime, assuming it’s still in existence. Now if only I can find a boss willing to pick up the tab for me and five age-alike friends! <

Andy Young: Looking forward … and back

By Andy Young

“You have the power to change the world, whether through grand gestures, or quiet moments of compassion,” RSU 21 Superintendent of Schools Dr. Terri Cooper told Kennebunk High School’s Class of 2025 at the school’s sesquicentennial (150th) graduation ceremony earlier this month. She later added that the day was “not an ending, but a beginning.”

For me her message rang both true and eerily familiar, because the previous day I had attended the reunion of my own high school class on the 50th anniversary of our graduation.

When I heard several months ago that the Class of 1975 was going to get together, I wasn’t sure I’d attend, particularly when I learned the date was the day before the commencement ceremony at the school where I’ve taught for the past 23 years. It’s a lengthy drive to where I grew up, so I’d have had a reasonable excuse for begging off. But after learning attendees would be coming from, among other places, North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Colorado, Missouri, and California, well, being reluctant to make a mere 470-mile round trip from Maine sounded pretty weak.

Thankfully name tags had been provided, which was fortunate, since most of my erstwhile classmates had been frozen in my mind’s eye as 18-year-olds. Five decades of living can radically change a person’s outer shell; they’ve definitely altered mine. There have been other less noticeable physical changes in our chronological peers as well. I quickly lost count of our class’s collective number of joint replacement surgeries.

At one point I found myself renewing acquaintances with a circle of six people I had ridden the morning kindergarten bus with – in 1962!

There wasn’t nearly enough time to touch base with everyone I wanted to, even if I hadn’t gotten lost on some local back roads and arrived 45 minutes late. Each attending alumnus has lived (and is living) a unique and remarkable life.

I heard about personal and professional successes and setbacks from teachers, bankers, social workers, lawyers, and accountants. I visited with widows, widowers, divorcees, couples who’ve been wed for 40-plus years, and individuals who’ve never married. A significant number of attendees still reside around where we grew up; including at least one who lives in the house he was raised in.

Some Class of 75er’s have children nearing 50 years old; others have multiple grandchildren, and at least one has three children still attending college. Nearly all have lost parents, although I did learn of two still-extant mothers-of-classmates (ages 99 and 98), along with a 95-year-old dad. An unlucky few have experienced the excruciating pain of losing a child, but in the face of that unimaginable tragedy discovered strength and resilience they were previously unaware that they possessed.

The level of energy in the room that afternoon was high, although maybe that was to be expected, since those living less happily most likely passed on coming to the event. Perhaps another reason for the positive vibes: not one person, or at least no one I interacted with, uttered a word about politics.

I found myself counting my blessings the next afternoon. Not everyone gets to go to a festive high school graduation and a 50th class reunion on the same weekend.

The Class of 2025 is full of eager young people who can’t wait to start making their mark on the world, be it through grand gestures or quiet moments of compassion. Which, oddly enough, is exactly what the remaining members of the Class of 1975 are still aspiring to do as well. We’ve just got a little less time remaining to make our impactful contribution(s). <

Insight: ‘Illusion-grams’ and utter nonsense

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I recently saw a post on a popular social media platform mentioning that American soldiers who fought in Europe during World War II were misguided and it wasn’t all that bad, in fact it was merely a tool concocted to help lift Americans out of the poverty of the Great Depression.

Ed Pierce, Sr. graduated from
high school in 1943 and was 
drafted into the U.S. Army,
serving in combat in North
Africa and Italy during
World War II.
COURTESY PHOTO 

The person posting that nonsense has no idea what he is talking about and is certainly a good reason for me to stay off social media. My father, who would have turned 100 this year if he was still alive, would have refuted that post and would shake his head at some of the misinformation and untruths which pop up often on social media these days.

Yes, my father and his family did experience abject poverty in the Great Depression. He was the youngest of nine children and over the years, he related to me what it was like to be poor and how it shaped his life growing up.

While other students at Fairport High School outside of Rochester, New York were playing sports or participating in other after-school activities, my father worked two jobs. On Saturday mornings he received a penny for every bowling pin he placed upright on a lane as a pinspotter at a bowling alley. When classes in school finished on weekdays, he then went to his job at a company that made tin cans for businesses and paid him just 13 cents an hour.

There wasn’t money for anyone in the family to go to the movies, buy new clothes, or purchase groceries regularly. No one in his family owned a car, and he walked six miles into town for school and then back home again every single day.

My father had thought about attending college after high school but wondered how he could ever pay for it. On the same day that he graduated from Fairport High School, his draft notice arrived in the mail and those plans were put on hold. He trained as an infantryman at Camp Fannin in Texas and soon thereafter he departed the U.S. on a troop ship bound for Libya in North Africa.

He told me that although he considered his family to be poor, he witnessed seeing real extreme poverty in Libya as families would raid the soldiers’ trash dump and convert discarded burlap bags into clothing worn by their children. In Morocco, he saw residents scrounging for potato peelings from the Army dump to make a meal.

Leaving North Africa, my father was part of the U.S. contingent of troops landing at Anzio Beach, Italy in January 1944. In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, with Nazi troops holding the high ground overlooking the landing beach. He watched many of his friends die as Germans rained down machine gun fire and launched deadly mortars upon Americans on the beach.

A few months later, as my father’s unit was advancing on the town of Cisterna in Italy, he was shot in the back by a sniper while trying to repair a broken communications line. He survived his wounds and was discharged from his military service in 1946. He enrolled at Manhattan College in New York City and used the GI Bill to study mechanical engineering, finishing his degree after transferring to the Rochester Institute of Technology and working a series of part-time jobs in addition to his college studies to pay for his textbooks.

I constantly would ask my father to tell me about his wartime experiences. We would watch a television show called “Combat” in the 1960s and he told me that program came close to what it was like to serve on the front lines during the war. He eventually shared a few stories with me when I was in high school and they were gruesome and disturbing.

He told me about being part of an exploratory mission in Italy after surviving the landing at Anzio Beach and stopping to rest briefly under a tree with several other soldiers. They heard rifle shots and suddenly, two soldiers that were sitting next to my father keeled over dead having been shot in the head. On another occasion, my father said he witnessed the remnants of a German unit in Italy who were burned alive in a bunker after being torched by an American flamethrower.

More than 30 years later, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and saw the results of World War II in Europe for myself. There was still extensive damage to some buildings and infrastructure in Germany and cemeteries were filled with soldiers killed in the war.

In the Frankfurt, Germany town square, I saw a memorial dedicated to Jewish residents who were rounded up in that city and taken to concentration camps or sent for extermination in Nazi gas chambers. I spoke with German and Dutch families who lost loved ones in the war and never recovered afterward.

To say that World War II wasn’t all that bad and was nothing more than a tool to lift Americans out of Great Depression era poverty is ludicrous and a propagation of misinformation.

As Phineas T. Barnum is known for saying, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” <

Insight: If love is blind can marriage be game show fodder?

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Growing up in the 1960s, spending Saturday evenings at home with my parents was tough when I was a teenager, especially when they controlled what our family watched on television.

'The Newlywed Game' was created by Chuck Barris and
featured newly married couples predicting answers by
their spouses to win a 'Grand Prize. It aired on Saturday
evenings on ABC Television in the 1960s and 1970s.
COURTESY PHOTO  

“The Newlywed Game” was a staple of not only Saturday night viewing in our household but my mother never missed an episode when it aired weekdays. The show was hosted by Bob Eubanks, a popular young disc jockey and promoter of Beatles concerts and later the manager of country performers such as Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell, Marty Robbins and Merle Haggard.

Each “Newlywed” show followed the same format with four couples married under two years competing in three rounds for a grand prize. The first set of four questions was posed to the husbands or wives with their spouses isolated offstage. They were asked by Eubanks to predict how their spouse would answer the questions.

If their answers matched the ones their spouse gave, they were awarded a series of points, starting with five points for each correct question in Round 1, ten points for Round 2 answers and a 25-point bonus question for the final round. The game show sets were sparsely decorated with a podium on the side of the stage for the host, eight seats for the contestants, sheer curtains at the back of the stage and an electronic scoreboard for each couple in front of their seats.

The concept for “The Newlywed Game” came from the mind of Chuck Barris and was intended as a companion series to “The Dating Game,” also created by Barris. The banter between Eubanks, who was just 28 when “The Newlywed Game” launched in 1966, and the couples, was supposed to prompt embarrassing answers.

The formula worked among viewers as “The Newlywed Game” program was ranked as one of the top three daytime game shows for five consecutive seasons between 1968 and 1973. It also scored big with primetime television ratings, ranking among the top three primetime game shows for five consecutive years between 1966 and 1971.

Barris chose to end the nighttime version of “The Newlywed Game” in 1974 but continued to promote the show in television syndication with editions airing on TV screens across America from 1977 to 1980, 1985 to 1988, and again from 1997 to 1999. Cable television’s Game Show Network started showing reruns of “The Newlywed Game” in 2009 with Eubanks hosting special original episodes in both 2009 and 2010, making him the only television personality to host a game show in six consecutive decades – 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

But for me, the version I recall the most was the one airing in the 1960s. Some of the crazy beehive hairstyles, outlandish clothing and just plain corny answers among the participants were sheer torture for my teenage angst having to sit and watch the show with my mother and father every Saturday evening.

Questions asked of the couples competing for the Grand Prize were not only silly but embarrassing.

Samples of typical questions included:

** What would you say is your husband’s weirdest quirk?

** What is your wife’s worst habit?

** What is your husband’s pet name for you?

** What is something that your wife is most likely to end up in jail for?

** What is the first movie that you saw together?

** Would your spouse rather spend an evening at home with you, or a night out with you?

** What are you most likely to argue about?

** If your spouse could only eat one food for the rest of their life, what would it be?

** What is your spouse's most prized possession, or the item they'd save in a fire apart from you?

** Who has more exes, you or your spouse?

** Who is a better driver, your spouse or you?

Petty arguments would often arise when contestants would differ on answers and spouses thought the other should have answered correctly but missed. Correct answers usually were rewarded with a smooch by the couples. The host was prone to provoking ridiculous arguments by pressing couples who differed on their answers on the game show.

Eubanks himself became known to many viewers for his catch-phrase questions regarding “Makin Whoopee,” on “The Newlywed Game.” Every other show seemed to include a question about it, and I found it highly disturbing that my parents would always laugh loudly or shrug it off when one of those questions was asked of the contestant couples. I suppose they came from a generation where innuendo and witty banter about the subject was humorous, but as a teenager, I found it all to be silly and preposterous.

At the end of each episode, following the reveal of the Bonus Question, the winner was the couple with the most points. The winner received a special Grand Prize selected “just for them.” Typical Grand Prizes were “all new living room furniture from Broyhill” or “a full-size camping tent and matching his and her motorcycles” or even “a shiny chrome and Formica dinette set and a new Hotpoint electric dishwasher.”

To this day, I wonder how many contestants divorced after the show aired. <