Insight: Not in Kansas anymore Toto

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

As I took my seat in the 28th row in the American National Government class at New Mexico Highlands University in September 1971, it began to dawn on me that I was now a full-fledged college student.

Just 17 years old and on my own away from home for the first time in my life, my high school days were behind me, and I was about to start a new chapter that would require focus and plenty of attention to detail.

My class schedule for that fall included American National Government taught by Dr. Ralph Carlisle Smith; Journalism 101 taught by Dr. Harry Lancaster; History of China with Professor Emmett Cockrum; along with Earth Science, and English Composition.

Looking at the reading list passed out by Dr. Ralph Carlisle Smith that first day, I surmised that a great deal of my time would be spent reading about government. His list was 18 pages long and I thought I’d never complete reading all the books he required in just one semester.

I vowed to do my best and had a strong desire to learn as much as I could about the workings of our government and how the federal system operated. I had thought I knew some aspects of government bureaucracy before that class, but Dr. Smith was an excellent teacher and experienced in all things federal.

He had co-authored a book “Project Y: The Los Alamos Story” and had served from 1947 to 1957 as Assistant Director of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory which helped to develop the atomic bomb.

During our first Journalism class, students discovered our powers of observation. As Dr. Lancaster started to give his opening lecture to our class, he was interrupted by a man in a suit carrying a yardstick in his left hand and a red dictionary in his right hand. He walked to the front of the classroom and whispered something to our professor before leaving.

Dr. Lancaster then continued with his opening presentation to us, telling us that the first paragraph in a news story should always contain the “5 Ws” for readers, or Who, What, When, Where, Why and sometimes How.

But then he stopped and told us that a journalist’s job is to provide as much detail as possible about a subject when writing an article. He asked us to pull out our class notebooks and to jot down as many details as possible about the person who had interrupted his lecture just 15 minutes earlier.

He wanted to know what color the person’s suit was (blue), what color his shoes were (brown), his hair color (black), and what he was carrying (yardstick and a red dictionary). He even wanted to know what color the person’s necktie was (yellow).

Going around the room, he asked us one by one to reveal our answers and it just happened that I was the only one of 15 students in the class to get all the details correct. Dr. Lancaster praised my powers of observation and told our class that we needed to be aware of how difficult a job that a police investigator may have because we all see things differently and sometimes an eyewitness to a crime fails to get the details right. He said that if we wanted to become effective journalists someday then we needed to always be aware of our surroundings and those around us.

My first class for History of China was something I vividly recall 54 years later. Professor Cockrum had served in the U.S. Marines after World War I. He told us that in 1927, the 4th Regiment of the U.S. Marine Corps had been ordered to China with a mission of protecting the lives, property and commerce of American citizens in Shanghai.

Cockrum described his life as a U.S. Marine in China and how he found that nation’s history fascinating and why we would too. He told us that when the Japanese Army invaded Manchuria in 1931, war broke out between Japanese troops guarding their settlement in Shanghai and Chinese troops at Chaipei, a district to the north of Shanghai. The 4th Marines and Cockrum were called into action, maintaining a defensive perimeter and protecting the Shanghai international settlements.

As part of Cockrum’s Marine Corps duties, he said he was assigned to oversee his unit’s caissons, or small horse-drawn wagons carrying ammunition. He pointed out that caissons were still in use by the U.S. Army’s Old Guard unit to bring caskets of military personnel to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.

In his first class, I could sense Cockrum’s passion for Chinese history and it ultimately led me to complete a concentration in Asian studies for my college minor in history for my Bachelor of Arts degree.

My other two classes as a freshman, Earth Science, and English Composition, were not as memorable. I can’t remember the professors for those classes. I must have liked them because my college transcript shows I received an “A” grade in both Earth Science and English Composition that first semester.

Reflecting on my first days of college so long ago, it amazes me that I was able to not only survive but thrive at that challenge. <

Insight: Scent O'Mental

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

It’s kind of funny when I think of things I can remember vividly from my childhood more than six decades after they happened.

In a way, our memory is comparable to a computer in which our brains capture sensory information, store it away, and then can bring it back to the forefront when needed. In my case, I have been blessed with a great memory and even in my advanced age, I can recall trivial and insignificant events from years past.

I happened to think of this the other day when I was shopping at the supermarket and was in the dairy aisle. Passing by the refrigerated cheese section, I recalled a certain type of cheese was the brunt of many jokes when I was a child. The pungent odor of limburger cheese smells terrible and was the source of an ongoing Three Stooges comedy routine on television. I can recall smelling it myself at school and remember how bad it was even though that was close to 65 years ago.

Despite the passing of time, I haven’t smelled limburger cheese since, yet I can remember that experience and consider that to be truly amazing. As an adult I have never purchased limburger cheese and haven’t seen it at any of the stores I have shopped in. It might be on the shelf there somewhere, but it isn’t a commodity I would go searching for.

The arrival of every spring in Rochester, New York where I grew up is marked by the blooming of lilacs in Highland Park and the annual Lilac Festival. Our family used to go every Memorial Day Weekend to see more than 1,800 lilacs in majestic shades of purple and white at the event. Along with the visuals, one of the things I remember the most about the Lilac Festival was the sweet smell of the lilac flowers. It wasn’t an overpowering aroma, but a pleasant one that captivated my senses, and one I still enjoy.

My sense of smell is directly connected to my memory and it’s more than recalling the odor of limburger cheese and lilacs.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, my mother was a stay-at-home mom who did all the cooking for our family. When I was in first grade, she instituted something she called “Vegetable of the Day,” introducing us to as many different types of vegetables as she could find, one at a time with each supper.

My younger brother and I were not allowed to opt out of this program. We were made to try each one of them we were served, and it has led to a dislike of the taste of many vegetables for me that persists to this day.

Under the “Vegetable of the Day” regimen, I recall eating asparagus, spinach, artichoke, broccoli, beets, carrots and cabbage. We also ate cauliflower, eggplant, corn, green beans, wax beans, kale, lettuce, collard greens and peas. Our mother prepared squash (both orange and yellow), rutabaga, radishes, green peppers, rhubarb, sweet potatoes, turnips, tomatoes, brussels sprouts, and zucchini.

But one afternoon when I was in second grade, I got off the school bus and raced home to hit up the cookie jar on the kitchen counter. As I entered our house through the back door to the garage, I caught a whiff of a smell that instantly turned my stomach.

Dear old mom was frying some parsnips in a pan on the stove for “Vegetable of the Day.” The rank smell became indelibly imprinted upon my brain that afternoon and continues to strike fear in me even years later. The foul odor of fried parsnips also evokes having to sit at the dinner table and having to eat it.

My mother would watch us and our dinner plates to ensure that my brother and I consumed every last bite of her vegetables each evening, and I struggled mightily this time with her heaping serving of fried parsnips. I think the reason I remember eating those after six decades have passed is that when dinner was over and I was excused from the table, I stepped out into our backyard, and I remember being ill to the point of projectile vomiting chewed pieces of fried parsnips into the grass.

Once when I was serving in the U.S Air Force in Germany, I went to a local restaurant and was waiting for my meal to arrive when I began to smell something that I hadn’t experienced in many years. Apparently, the couple dining at the next table had ordered and were eating fried parsnips, and that smell had wafted over to my table. Just like years previously, the smell started to make me feel sick to my stomach, so I got up from the table, left money for what I had ordered on the table and then departed quickly. Being outside and away from the smell, mu stomach slowly seemed to recover.

Scientific research has shown that memories associated with smell carry more emotion than visual memories and that’s something that I can certainly assert as fact.

Some of my childhood memories are directly linked to certain smells and I suppose one could say that fried parsnips are my personal kryptonite. <

Insight: A story of persistence

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

In the days before digital, newspaper articles were written on a typewriter and much harder to produce.

Computers simplified that process but not the interactions between reporters and the subjects of articles. For me, I take hand-written notes and use them to create the stories I write.

Back in January 1980, I was new to my duty assignment with the 2044th Communications Group at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., where I was serving as a Public Affairs representative in the Air Force. That meant I was reporting on the activities and airmen who were also assigned to the unit.

I would compose articles and then drop them off in person or mail them to weekly military newspapers that my commanding officer thought would be interested in publishing them.

My duties had me cover everything from special events being hosted by the 2044th Communication Group to welcoming new personnel. If I wasn’t out of the office interviewing someone, or typing stories up at my desk, I could be found taking photographs at The Pentagon or discussing potential articles with the editors of several nearby military papers on the phone.

In just my second week of duty at The Pentagon, a Senior Master Sergeant who supervised the 2044th radio section stopped by my office and asked if I would write an article about a young airman who had passed a proficiency test for radio repair with a perfect score. I agreed and called to arrange a time to do that.

Three days later, I met the young airman at his office workstation and started asking him questions about the test.

His name was Airman First Class Billy Catalina, and he grew up as an only child of a family in Queens, New York. He told me that he used to watch airplanes taking off and landing at LaGuardia Airport as a boy and wanted to become a pilot someday.

Billy’s father had died when he was 8 and his mother struggled to put food on the table for her son. As Billy got older, he paid less attention to school and spent more time with neighborhood friends. He got a part-time job in the evenings at a warehouse and dropped out of school with failing grades when he was a sophomore in high school.

His mother pleaded with Billy to return to school and to please her, he signed up to attend night adult education classes at a nearby high school for several years trying to earn his diploma. When his boss at work changed his hours, Billy had to give up night classes but he then spent almost a year on Saturday mornings studying and he eventually took the high school equivalency test and earned his GED diploma.

That was his ticket to enlisting in the U.S. Air Force where Billy trained as radio repairman and was assigned to the 2044th Communications Group. The test he took was to advance from an apprentice-level to a proficient-level in his job and consisted of tough technical questions.

He said he was a bit apprehensive and not very confident prior to taking the test since he was such a poor student in school. But he dedicated himself to reviewing the radio repair manual in advance of the test and was the first person in the examination room to finish the test.

Several weeks later, Billy received notification in the mail that not only had he passed the proficiency test, but that he had achieved a 100 percent perfect score.

I wrote a small 400-word article about Billly’s accomplishment, and it appeared several weeks later in the Air Force Communications Command’s newspaper. Billy stopped by my office a few days later to pick up a few copies of the newspaper and to thank me in person for taking the time to interview him.

Less than a year later, I was reassigned to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona for duty as editor of the base newspaper. By the time I had completed four years of duty there, I had written hundreds of stories and was preparing to return to civilian life and restart my career as a newspaper reporter.

At Christmastime in 1990, I was shopping at the Winrock Mall in Albuquerque, New Mexico when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a man pushing a baby stroller and holding the hand of another small child under the age of 5. He asked me if my name was Ed and if I remembered him.

To be honest, his face looked familiar, but I didn’t recall his name. He said he was Billy Catalina and reached into his wallet and retrieved a faded yellow article that I had written years before about him.

He told me that his mother had died of cancer not long after it had been published. In cleaning out her house, Billy found a clipped copy of the article in her bedside nightstand, and another one tacked up on her refrigerator. He hugged me and thanked me for making his mother so proud of him.

I try to keep that in mind with each article I write and hope they impact lives positively like the one about Billy Catalina did. <

Insight: Memorable duty in the desert

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Following two years of high-profile military service at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C., I was hoping that my next duty assignment for the U.S. Air Force would be somewhat less intense in the fall of 1981.

An F-15E Eagle aircraft from the 555th Squadron sits on the
tarmac while awaiting a training mission in 1983 at Luke 
Air Force Base in Arizona. COURTESY PHOTO 

I was mistaken as I drew Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona. Sitting on land donated to the Air Force by the Goldwater Family after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Luke AFB was among the busiest military installations in the world and was training F-4 Phantom and F-15 Eagle pilots and maintenance aircrews.

With a 2 ½-mile long runway, at the time of my arrival, Luke was third behind Cape Canaveral and Edwards AFB in California as a potential U.S. Space Shuttle landing site. Each time U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy flew home to his California ranch, Air Force One would land at Luke so they could visit with Nancy’s mother and stepfather, who lived nearby in Scottsdale, Arizona. U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater would fly his Cessna aircraft home to Arizona from Washington, D.C. and would land at Luke.

Within weeks after I arrived at Luke for duty, my commanding officer informed me that I would be part of a base response team that mobilized quickly in the event of an emergency. Just three days later, I joined a team of airmen aboard an old Huey helicopter responding to the crash of F-4 pilot in the desert on a training flight. My job was to interact with any reporters who arrived at the crash site and to safeguard any classified information in case it was exposed during the crash. I sat on a bench in the helicopter, which had no doors and secured myself to the bench with a rope instead of a seat belt.

As the helicopter hovered in a circle above the crash site, I wanted to throw up as the only thing preventing me from falling out of the open door was a flimsy piece of rope. We landed and all that was left of the F-4 was contained in a 10-foot black smoking hole in the sand. The pilot had ejected before the aircraft crashed, but the ejection seat landed upside down and he was dead upon impact.

While I settled in at Luke, my primary job was to write for the weekly base newspaper. But I did have other duties such as serving as a flightline guide for tourists and groups known as “tailspotters,” who would take photographs of aircraft tail numbers as a hobby. These groups were required to apply to visit the base months in advance and couldn’t stop by randomly as they wished.

Another of my duties was to serve as the Public Affairs Command Post representative one weekend a month. Back in the days before cell phones, I was handed a beeper and notified of emergency situations. One Saturday morning in May 1983, I was recalled to the base for a commercial airliner in distress.

Taking off from Fresno, California with 81 passengers and crew members on board, a Republic Airlines DC-9 aircraft enroute to Phoenix was forced to make an emergency landing at Luke because of a fuel problem. The aircraft’s fuel gauge read full in Fresno, but it was faulty, and the DC-9 only had less than five gallons of jet fuel or about 30 seconds of time in the air remaining when granted permission to land at our base.

I notified the base commander of the incident, and he directed that the Luke Officer’s Club be made available for the passengers. He arranged for an Air Force bus to transport them to their awaiting families at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. My job was to brief reporters about the incident at the base’s front gate after I made sure the passengers knew what was happening and helped them contact their families to let them know they were safe.

During my time at Luke, I never got to see a Space Shuttle landing there, but one afternoon, I did watch as a “Super Guppy” aircraft landed to refuel in September 1984 while carrying the Space Shuttle Discovery across the U.S. on a trip back to Cape Canaveral in Florida. I also was able to see a SR-71 Blackbird aircraft when it landed for refueling on its way to Beale AFB in California.

Luke’s mission also changed while I was stationed there. The Air Force transitioned Luke’s fleet of F-4s to the Air Guard and began training F-16 pilots at the base. A contingent of Saudi Arabian pilots and aircrews also trained on the F-15 at Luke as did Italian, British and German pilots on the Tornado aircraft.

On several occasions, I was offered an incentive flight as a passenger on an F-15 aircraft, but I always turned those down. I had previously written articles for the base paper about incentive flight recipients and had always noticed a large plastic trash can filled with water near where the F-15s landed. I had asked what that was for and learned that the amount of G-forces recipients experience, and their lack of flight time result in severe vomiting afterward. The trash can is there to splash away what incentive ride recipients throw up when landing. <

Insight: Let the laughs begin

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Back in the 1970s, I spent a good deal of time going to the movies and despite the lack of reclining stadium seats, Dolby surround sound, personalized concierge concessions and $18 tickets, I survived the experience.

'Foul Play' starring Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase is among
Ed Pierce's favorite comedy films of the 1970s.
COURTESY PHOTO   

I would attend midnight showings on weekends, drive-in marathons, and Saturday afternoon double-features. On most excursions to the neighborhood theater, I could buy a movie ticket, a Coke and a large popcorn combined for less than $10.

Recently I was asked about my favorite films from the 1970s era. I told them it was a very good question because it’s hard for me to pin that down as I watched so many movies in theaters during that time. Off the top of my head, I rattled off “A Clockwork Orange,” “Rocky,” “The Godfather,” “American Graffiti,” “Bound for Glory” and “Carrie,” but having more time to think about it, I might have answered differently.

Comedies have always appealed to me and the 1970s produced some of the very best which I vividly recall 50-some years later.

At the old Serf Theatre in Las Vegas, New Mexico in January 1972, I watched “Kelly’s Heroes,” an action caper set in World War II. I typically didn’t associate Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas with a comedy, but Donald Sutherland was hilarious and so were Don Rickles, Carroll O’Connor and Gavin McLeod. I was amazed at how much I laughed during this movie about a group of GIs trying to extract Nazi gold bars from a bank behind enemy lines in France. It was also the first time I remember seeing Donald Sutherland on the big screen.

While visiting home over Christmas Break from college in December 1972, I watched “What’s Up Doc?” at the Lowe’s Theater in Pittsford, New York. Ryan O’Neal, Barbra Streisand, Kenneth Mars, and Madeline Kahn are part of an insane screwball plot involving identical plaid bags, stolen Top Secret classified documents, a valuable jewel collection and a bunch of igneous rocks. It’s a madcap whirlwind ride through the streets of San Francisco and contains an assortment of oddball characters including Sorrell Booke (who went on to play Boss Hogg on television’s “The Dukes of Hazzard”) and John Hillerman (Higgins on TV’s “Magnum P.I.”).

The night that “Blazing Saddles” debuted in February 1974, I was watching it with friends at the Highland Theater in Albuquerque, New Mexico and couldn’t stop laughing. Harvey Korman, Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn were perfectly cast in this classic directed by the legendary Mel Brooks. Former NFL football star Alex Karras as Mongo cracked me up too. The scene sitting around the campfire eating beans remains one of the best things that I’ve ever seen while attending a movie in my lifetime.

I didn’t know anything about “Slap Shot” when I saw it at the Coronado 4 movie theater in Albuquerque in April 1977. Starring Paul Newman as the coach of a losing minor league hockey team in West Virginia, the film becomes even funnier once the general manager, played by Strother Martin, adds the three “Hanson” brothers to the team. They inject craziness into a team going through the motions of a losing season. Between hockey fights and brawls before the puck is even dropped during their games, the Hansons inspire the team which is on the verge of folding.

In August 1978, I watched “National Lampoon's Animal House” at a U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange theater on Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, Germany. Serving in the U.S. Air Force at the time, this movie brought me back to my college fraternity days. I identify with Tom Hulce in this film as the new fraternity pledge as I was back in 1971. John Belushi, Kevin Bacon, Tim Matheson, Steven Furst, Bruce McGill, Mark Metcalf, Peter Riegert, Karen Allen, Verna Bloom and John Vernon all deliver excellent performances. It’s non-stop laughs and remains one of those films I can watch today and find something new to laugh about. It still makes me chuckle to think about the toga party in this film.

The following week in August 1978 at the very same U.S. Army and Air Force Exchange theater on Drake Kaserne in Frankfurt, Germany, I watched “Foul Play” with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase. It’s a wacky story about a kooky librarian who is being stalked by a strange cult looking to kill the pope who is visiting San Francisco. Hawn picks up a hitchhiker who slips something into her purse and dies but not before telling her to “Beware the Dwarf.” That sets into motion a chain of bizarre events and she meets Chase, a detective who is investigating. Burgess Meredith and Billy Barty are also in the cast, but the scene stealer is Dudley Moore as an inept ladies’ man who keeps showing up at inopportune times. I can laugh just thinking about some of the Murphy bed scenes with Moore. The 1970s remains for me a Golden Age of classic films and a time when it was highly affordable to watch new movies at the theater and no screen flashes from smart phones lighting up the darkened theater. It was a different era and one I’d go back to in a heartbeat.

Insight: Friendship worth remembering

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

After my brother was born in 1957, our family moved the next summer from a smaller home in Gates, New York to a brand-new larger house in Brighton, New York. The Evans Farm subdivision had hundreds of homes and was a jackpot of places to go trick or treating on Halloween.

The parents of a young man who Ed Pierce befriended 
years ago gave him three of their son's first-edition
Hardy Boys mystery books from the 1920s and 1930s.
PHOTO BY ED PIERCE 

While in second grade in 1960, my mother walked around the neighborhood with me on Halloween as I was only 6 but soon to be 7 that December. She helped me to create my Halloween costume, a re-creation of Phineas T. Bluster, the Mayor of Doodyville on the popular Saturday morning children’s TV show Howdy Doody. I wore a yellow jacket with a red plaid vest with cotton balls my mom fashioned to resemble the white bushy eyebrows of the mayor.

As we walked from house to house down Glenhill Drive in Brighton, we turned onto Carverdale Drive and then left onto Del Rio Drive and into an older section of the subdivision. I rang the doorbell at the first house on that street and to my surprise, a tall young man opened the front door and grinned at me as he carried a dish of candy bars.

His mother and father soon joined him, and they all laughed at my costume. They asked my name, where I went to school and how old I was. The young man, who was their son, was incredibly shy and smiled a lot, but otherwise he had very little to say.

The young man's parents, Jeanne and Fred Dixon, told my mother that their son’s name was Franklin Dixon and that he was 26. As we started to leave, I turned around in their driveway and saw Franklin in the window waving to me. I waved back to him and when we reached the sidewalk, I asked my mother why Franklin didn’t say anything. She told me to mind my own business.

About a week later I was riding my bicycle through the neighborhood and rode past the Dixon’s house as they were outside raking leaves. I stopped and talked to Frank’s father, who told me that Franklin was mentally disabled and had been mute for his entire life.

He was an only child, and his parents had sent him to school when he was young, but other kids had teased him terribly and constantly made fun of him. Rather than subject him further to that, they kept him home and his aunt, a retired teacher, gave him reading and math lessons.

Some days after school when I finished my homework, I would get my baseball mitt and go play catch with Franklin. Or we would throw around a football in his front yard. He never said a word but laughed and smiled all the time.

The next spring, my teacher Miss Cross asked students in our class to choose a book from the school library to read and when we were finished with it, she asked us to stand in the front of the classroom and tell everybody about it. I chose the book “Quest of the Snow Leopard” by Roy Chapman Andrews. It was about an expedition into Tibet and the Yunan Province of China, and a killer snow leopard who escapes capture by hunters.

But while I was choosing that book from the library shelf, I glanced over at the books with authors whose last name started with “D” and spotted a series of books by an author with the last name of Dixon.

When I had read “Quest of the Snow Leopard” and during our next class visit to the school library, I checked out the only book in the F.W. Dixon series that was currently available. It was called “The Secret of the Old Mill.” I discovered that the mystery series was written by an author named Franklin W. Dixon and was about two fictional teen brothers who were amateur detectives, Frank and Joe Hardy. They lived in the city of Bayport with their father, detective Fenton Hardy, their mother, Laura Hardy and their Aunt Gertrude. They solve mysteries along with their friends Chet Morton, Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, Phil Cohen, Tony Prito, Callie Shaw, and Chet’s sister Iola Morton.

One afternoon while playing catch with Franklin, I jokingly asked him if he had written the Hardy Boys book series since his name was the same as the author’s. He shook his head no at me. His father had overheard that and pulled me aside and told me that Franklin W. Dixon was a pen name used by a variety of different authors who were part of a collective team that wrote the Hardy Boys novels.

On Labor Day in 1961, Franklin set off on his bike to get an ice cream cone at a new Carvel shop that had opened on Monroe Avenue in Brighton. A distracted driver swerved suddenly and struck him from behind on Edgewood Avenue. He tumbled off his bike and hit his head on a large rock at the end of a driveway and died instantly.

Several weeks later, Frankin’s father knocked on our door, thanked me for being his son’s friend and gave me three of Franklin’s books, which were all first edition Hardy Boys books from the 1920s and 1930s. I keep those books in my office at home in honor of Franklin’s memory to this very day. <

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 Force Basic Training in July 1977.
COURTESY PHOTO 

Members of our Squadron 3723 Flight 610 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. <

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. <

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. <

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. <

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. <

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. <

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. <

Insight: Exploring the age of English words

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Sometime in the 1970s, I recall watching a television show on PBS about English language words and how you could tell a verb’s age by the way it is conjugated.

For example, if the past tense of some verbs in English end in a “t” it is likely an older word than the past tense of one ending in “ed.”

The university professor who was giving this presentation said that words such as keep, sweep, leap and send are derivatives of older Celtic words which remain to this day in modern English. The past tense of keep is kept, for sweep it is swept, feel becomes felt and send is sent.

By this logic, the professor concluded that other old English verbs include sleep and creep, with the past tense of sleep being slept and creep becoming crept. Weep’s past tense is wept, lend becomes lent, spend’s past tense is spent, while the past tense of lose is lost and for leave, it’s left.

He went on to say that bend is an older English word because it’s past tense is bent, while the past tense of mean is meant, deal is dealt, and build is built.

Other older English verbs by his definition then would include buy (bought), catch (caught), bring (brought), seek (sought), teach (taught) and think (thought).

Because some newer verbs were introduced later to the English language and were first conjugated with a “t” but can also be conjugated in the past tense with an “ed,” the professor suggested these words were newer in origin.

These verbs include burn, dream, kneel, leap, learn, smell, spell, spill and spoil. Using very old English, some authors may say burnt, but nowadays the preferred term in modern English is burned. Same thing holds true for dreamt (dreamed), knelt (kneeled), learnt (learned), smelt (smelled), spelt (spelled), spilt (spilled), and spoilt (spoiled).

Through time, several other older English verbs conjugated in past tense can have two different words meaning the same thing, such as pass, pen, and bereave. The past tense of pass can either be past or passed, while pen’s past tense can be pent or penned, and bereave’s past tense can be bereft or bereaved.

In his presentation, the professor said some of the older Celtic verbs are thought to have been spoken by the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, originating from northwest Germany, southern Denmark, and the Netherlands. They brought their Germanic-based dialects to England and these dialects combined with Celtic languages already being used set the cornerstone for the old English language. That became modified with infusions of older Norse as Viking invaders raided parts of early Britain and were further shaped by the Norman conquest of England in 1066 which introduced some French influences into the English dialect.

Old English words thought to have come from Vikings are knife, freckle, berserk, window, sky, husband, aloft, awkward, bag, blunder, and droop.

Some examples of newer English words with French influences, the professor said, contain “ch” and “que” and “ou” such as machine, unique, antique and boutique or youth and soup. Other newer verbs of French influence in English that came after the Norman invasion can be conjugated in the past tense with “ed” instead of “t” and include waste (wasted), and taste (tasted).

The Renaissance during the 16th century was yet another period when new words were added to the English language, the professor said. Some came from Latin origins and were introduced by scholars of that time such as atrocity, debilitate, ferrous, naïve and stipend while others derived from Greek origins including duo, pneumonia, and gravity.

Back in 2009, a study conducted by Reading University in England found that the oldest words in the English language include “I”, “we”, “who”, “two” and “three,” all dating back to at least in common use prior to the Norman invasion. The discovery was made by tracking the divergence of ancestral words into different languages including old English using a supercomputer and before the introduction of AI technology.

Many older English words commonly used centuries ago never quite made it into the modern English language and the list is lengthy.

Here’s a sampling of few old English words no longer used today and their meanings:

“Afeared” or “Afeardt,” meaning frightened.

“Bodkin,” meaning a dagger.

“Contumely” meaning insulting behavior.

“Cumberground” meaning a totally useless person or a total waste of space.

“Demesne” meaning domain, realm or territory.

“Doxy” meaning a mistress.

“Elflock” meaning wavy or tangled hair.

“Frore” meaning extremely cold.

“Jargogle” meaning jumbled.

“Lollop” meaning a drunken or foolish person.

“Maegth” meaning family.

“Recreant” meaning cowardly.

“Sluberdegullion” meaning slovenly.

“Varlet” meaning a crook or a conman.

“Wamblecropt” meaning someone who is overcome with indigestion.

“Wundorlic” meaning a feeling of wonder mixed with fear or the awe experienced when seeing something both marvelous and unsettling.

Taking a deeper dive into the English language can be both fascinating or frustrating and yet with everything else going on in our lives these days, examining the origins of certain words and conjugations may not appear near the top of many people’s lists of things to do.

But it can be interesting to learn the age of some commonly used words today. <

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. <