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. <

Andy Young: Time to change a (very) dated item

By Andy Young

I’m not advocating that America switch to the Hebrew, Islamic, Coptic, or Bengali calendar but the fact is there’s little about the one currently in use that makes any sense at all.

The long-since-outmoded Gregorian model needs a radical facelift. It’s been impractical and obsolete for some time now and my guess is the only reason it wasn’t overhauled long ago is that no one knows who exactly is in charge of making such changes.

The most obvious imperfection: what dimwit decided to designate January 1 as New Year’s Day? That’s pretty arbitrary, if you ask me. Why change over to a brand-new year in the midst of winter, or, for the folks in the southern hemisphere, in the heat of the summer?

September 1 would be far more appropriate, as it, for many people, marks the tangible turning over of a new leaf: the beginning of a fresh school year. That portends far more significant changes than going from December 31 to January 1 does. The start of an academic year impacts anyone attending school, working at a school, or parenting and/or grandparenting someone in the midst of getting their formal education. Bus drivers, crossing guards, and people involved in coaching school sports start their new year in the fall as well. So it’s settled: from here on in, New Year’s Day should be September 1.

Better yet, let’s swap January 1 with Labor Day. There are already enough good-weather three-day weekends; why not give America’s workers a Monday off when the meteorological conditions are more likely to be unfavorable? I for one wouldn’t mind not having to commute to work on a day when the likelihood of the roads being coated with snow and/or ice is significantly higher than it is on the first Monday of September.

A healthy society evolves over time, and the Gregorian Calendar has been in use since October 1582. No one I know is suggesting that people should go back to living in mud huts or log cabins. Reading by electric light bulb rather than by candlelight isn’t just better for the eyes, it causes fewer fires as well. I for one prefer traveling distances of greater than a mile via bicycle, motor vehicle, train, or airplane rather than on foot, on horseback, or in a birch-bark canoe. And I don’t hear anyone recommending going back to getting their nourishment solely from unrefrigerated foods that they’ve grown and/or killed themselves, either.

Also, why just a dozen months? Thirteen, with 28 days each, sounds far more equitable to me. True, having 13 four-week months each year would leave one extra day to account for, but solving that problem is easy. I propose the extra day be given to the new month of Thirteenuary, given that it’s been deprived of having any days up until now and thus deserves to be retroactively compensated.

I admire reformers like the people who want to re-christen the fifth month as “No-mow May.” Designating five-ish weeks where people don’t pollute the air with gas-powered lawn mowers or tractors is a great idea, although this year I’d have preferred “No-mow August,” since I didn’t have to mow the lawn even once last month anyway.

Besides, if the main idea behind the “No-mow May” movement is to help support bees and butterflies by allowing flowering plants to bloom naturally, why not just go the whole hog and say “No Lawns?” That’s already being tried, albeit involuntarily, in places like Phoenix, south Texas, and southern California, where many residents are customarily even thirstier than the increasingly rare blades of grass are. <

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. <

Rookie Mama: Motherhood Bureau of Investigation

By Michelle Cote

The Rookie Mama

‘Tis that season of reading and ‘riting and ripping through kiddos’ wardrobes as we inventory school clothes and checklist what fits.

I don’t know about you, but investigating what lies beneath, on top, below, and squished between all the garments in all the drawers of the bureaus makes for quite the bureau of investigation, indeed. And not a federal one.

Sorting through clothing in my household is nothing short of an Olympic sport. The tears, the emotions, the absolute refusals to part with faded pants that have knees holier than a church, too-small shirts that ride up for all the world to see one’s belly button – when the shirts were definitely not designed that way – and socks whose significant others have long since been rendered to an island of misfit socks and are worn beyond darning.

Darn it, indeed.

More tears, more emotions, more attachments to clothes that just don’t fit.

Last weekend, I forced a fashion show from my teen who insisted his pants still fit loosely.

One would think that, as an oldest, he’d handle the inevitable sizing up best.

But alas, no.

He posed, he strutted, he insisted that shirt after shirt, shorts after shorts, pants, the whole ensemble fit fine.

I had no choice but to teach him a lesson.

Steve Martin.

You may recall the classic scene that plays out in ‘Father of the Bride’ in which his titular character insists on saving money by wearing an old, ill-fitting tuxedo from two decades earlier that fits him, well, as his daughter remarks – ‘like a glove!’

He poses, he struts – like my son had done – before a dusty attic mirror in his tux with too-short pants, crooning, ‘What’s new, pussycat?’

I pulled up this scene on my iPhone and showed my son, who rightfully remarked that any scene with Steve Martin is solid gold.

But the maternal point I made was that it was time to let go of some of his favorite clothes.

After all, he has three younger brothers.

As it turns out, breaking up with favorite threads is hard to do.

Letting go is emotional for me, too.

As I gently fold and place outgrown clothing from my youngest child’s wardrobe into storage totes, I regard them tearily as memories flood back.

When said shirts were once worn and loved by my oldest.

My secondborn.

My thirdborn.

My last.

How did time pass so rapidly in too-fast-forward motion?

When did the switch flip off babyhood directly to strutting like Steve Martin before a mirror?

Time flies when we’re having fun, and apparently clothing flies too – Because ready or not, clothing sizes stay put while the kiddos keep on growing, and will eventually be handed to the next in Cote boy line.

So clothes keep on flying right to storage; I’m tossing them more rapidly than my athletic eldest can cause pass interference and cling to what’s outgrown.

And so we’ll continue to focus on packing away the old; hand down to the next, so we can make room for what’s new. Pussycat.

­­– 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! <

Andy Young: The secret(s) to good writing

By Andy Young

The 2025-2026 school year has begun, which means I'll again be trying to convince high school students of the importance of writing, and then attempting to help them become better at it.

But strong writing skills are beneficial to people of all ages, and with that in mind I’ve generously decided to share 30 vital writing tips with a select group of adults, specifically the thoughtful readers of The Windham Eagle.

1. Proofread your writing carefully and do it OUT LOUD! That way you’ll avoid any awkward or repetitive sentences.

2. When you take a break, DON’T DELETE ANYTHING! Some of the best writing you’ll ever produce will involve completing something you had started weeks, months, or years earlier.

3. Write early in the morning when your mind is clear, and drink 20 ounces of water (spiked with a teaspoon of vinegar) before you start. That way you’ll stay hydrated and regular, even if you have Writer’s Block.

4. Notice things around you and meticulously jot down what you observe. Ordinary events often make great writing material.

5. Essays on politics and current events have short shelf lives. Also: you’ll never, ever change anyone’s mind about any president, even with the most thoughtful, carefully researched, and reasonable writing.

6. Proofread your writing carefully and do it OUT LOUD! That way you’ll avoid any awkward or repetitive sentences.

7. Always Avoid Alliteration. Unless you think it looks or sounds cool. Then go ahead and use it.

8. Never plagiarize or use trite, overused cliches, like I just did on the previous tip.

9. Don’t edit your first draft as you go, unless doing so helps control your OCD.

10. Only write when you are enveloped by silence; it’ll help you focus. Unless you like noise. Then turn up the volume and start creating.

11. Proofread your writing carefully and do it OUT LOUD! That way you’ll avoid any awkward or repetitive sentences.

12. Don’t assume your reader’s attention span is (or readers’ attention spans are) any longer than yours.

13. Don’t assume that you’re any smarter than the people who’ll read your writing. But don’t assume they’re any smarter than you are, either.

14. Be aware of the audience you’re writing for. Baby Boomers don’t care about Kendrick Lamar, Megan Thee Stallion or Killer Mike any more than Gen Zer’s do about Kate Smith, Perry Como, or Soupy Sales.

15. Keep in mind that a 1.000-word essay is pretty long. Twelve-hundred words constitutes a short story. Anything over that is technically a novella.

16. Sometimes it’s best to write your opening and your conclusion first and then fill in the middle.

17. Except for those times when it’s not.

18. Always try to attempt to avoid using too many extraneous, superfluous, unneeded, redundant, extra unnecessary words in your writing.

19. Avoid using pompous, grandiloquent, pretentious, bombastic verbiage and utterances when simple, uncomplicated, straightforward, basic words and phrases will do.

20. Proofread your writing carefully and do it OUT LOUD! That way you’ll avoid any awkward or repetitive sentences.

21. Ask a friend, parent, child, employer, or hitchhiker you picked up to proofread your writing. (Note: this tip is not intended to be an endorsement of picking up hitchhikers.)

22. Ask someone you trust for feedback, but only if you’re prepared to absorb honest feedback.

23. If you’re having fun, you’re probably working on a good essay. And even if it’s not so good, who cares? You’re having fun!

24. Journaling is great therapy. It’s also a lot cheaper than regular therapy!

25. Proofread your writing carefully and do it OUT LOUD! That way you’ll avoid any awkward or repetitive sentences.

26. Never promise people 30 helpful writing tips when you can only think of 26 of them. <

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. <

Andy Young: Discovering good fortune(s)

By Andy Young

Recently while in the midst of yet another abortive attempt to de-clutterize my living space, I picked up a piggy bank I found hidden under some old shirts in the back of a seldom-opened drawer. However, when I shook it, I didn’t hear coins jingling, but rather paper rustling. I briefly found myself hoping I had stumbled onto a cache of $20 bills I had squirreled away and forgotten about some years before, but it turned out what was producing the noise was something even more valuable: a veritable gold mine of good fortune!

Or, more accurately, good fortunes. Seventy-nine of them, in fact. Years (or perhaps decades) ago I began saving the messages from inside the cookies my dinner companions and I polished off after finishing our Chinese takeout.

Sadly though, not every fortune comes to fruition. For example, one that said, “August will bring you financial success,” has yet to do me much good, although to be fair, it didn’t specify in which year I’d be moving up a tax bracket or two. Other date-specific messages included, “An exciting opportunity will knock on your door this Friday,” “An act of kindness on a Saturday will have a ripple effect,” and “Your career will take a positive turn in April.”

If you eat enough fortune cookies, it’s inevitable you’ll start getting some repeat messages. For example, I have two separate fortunes that declare, “A secret admirer will soon send you a sign of affection.” I’m not sure which one to believe: the one printed in red ink or the one in blue, so I logically kept both of them. I also have two fortunes that say, “August will bring you unexpected surprises.” But that one doesn’t really excite me, because really, aren’t all surprises unexpected?

I’m convinced some people who write those fortunes are moonlighting from their regular job of authoring the daily horoscope that runs in newspapers. I swear I’ve read “The time is right to make new friends, “This is the month that ingenuity stands high on the list,” and “Your hard work will lead to greater happiness” before; the only question is which of the 12 signs of the zodiac these generic lines were written about.

Evidently some amateur philosophers are employed as fortune providers. Anyone who can write, “There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness,” “It is easier to fight for principles than it is to live up to them,” or “Those who love rumors hate a peaceful life,” clearly possesses insightfulness that many of the rest of us do not.

It’s also likely that some folks who currently churn out fortunes for a living aspire to be comedy writers. That would explain, “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end; it’s already tomorrow in Australia,” “A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory,” and “Oops……Wrong cookie.”

Some fortunes just defy explanation, like, “You are the mast of every situation.” The author of that one is probably still learning English. The same goes for whoever wrote “Une personne que vous connaissez attend votre louange.” Fortunately. that one had a translation on the back (“Someone you know is waiting for your praise”).

I’m not sure if keeping those fortunes guarantee that they’ll come true, but throwing them out would almost certainly negate whatever magic they might possess. Those tiny pieces of paper aren’t taking up much space, and who knows, maybe one of these days a secret admirer will send me a sign of affection, in either red or blue ink.

That would be most delightful.

Not to mention, an unexpected surprise. <

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. <

Tim Nangle: Investing in Maine’s childcare workforce

By Senator Tim Nangle

Earlier this month, alongside Senate President Mattie Daughtry, I joined Space to Thrive, a local nonprofit providing early childhood education and school-age care in Windham and Raymond, for a beach day at Sebago Lake State Park. I listened to their staff talk about the challenges they face and the support they need to continue doing this critical work.

State Senator Tim Nangle

I walked away from that conversation deeply moved and deeply concerned. What I heard over and over is that while these jobs are essential, the people doing them are stretched thin, underpaid and too often underappreciated.

I want to be clear. Childcare providers are not babysitters. They are early education professionals. Every day, they help children learn how to share, solve problems and express their feelings in productive ways. They teach children healthy habits and how to socialize, which is no small task in a world that sometimes feels more disconnected than ever. Their work allows parents to go to their jobs knowing their children are safe and cared for.

That’s why we must treat this workforce with the seriousness it deserves.

During my conversation, the providers told me about some of the tools that make a difference. One is the public-private partnership model that pairs school districts with local childcare providers. These partnerships give parents more choices, save districts and taxpayers money and expand access to high-quality early education. In Windham, for example, partnerships like this are helping to fill critical gaps in pre-K and wraparound care.

Another essential tool is the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Scholarship Program, which helps childcare educators earn college degrees and professional credentials. The scholarship covers most tuition costs, provides stipends for books and expenses and includes paid time for coursework. This program makes higher education affordable for the workforce, reduces turnover and builds long-term career paths for the people who care for our “mini-Mainers”.

But childcare providers are losing staff even with supportive programs like these because wages are too low to compete with other fields. Many who stay do so because they love the work but nonetheless struggle to make ends meet. As one childcare professional told me, “We can’t keep asking people to do so much for so little.”

That is why the Legislature acted during the last session to strengthen the system as a whole. We maintained critical funding for programs that keep child care centers open, including wage supplements for workers, support for families covering the cost of care and investments in Head Start (LD 210). We required the state to enter into contracts that expand child care slots, especially for rural families and children with disabilities (LD 1736). We also made it easier for small businesses to open child care facilities, increasing availability in more communities (LD 1428).

These actions matter. They keep centers open, support the workforce and expand access for families. But they are only a foundation. We know wages remain too low, staff turnover is too high, and too many families still cannot find or afford care.

When we invest in childcare, we are strengthening the foundation of our communities. Parents can work and support their households. Children are better prepared for school and life. Employers gain a more reliable workforce. And the entire state benefits from a healthier, more resilient economy.

Our conversation at Sebago Lake reminded me that this work is not optional. It is vital. Our childcare professionals deserve our thanks, respect and most importantly, continued action. I am committed to making sure the Legislature keeps listening and responding, because when we back the people who care for our kids, we’re backing the strength of our whole community.

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: Randomly thinking random thoughts

By Andy Young

I wish I had discovered the value of walking years ago. Non-competitive physical activity, I’ve found, doesn’t just encourage the free flow of ideas; it enhances it. Often, I find myself wondering about everyday things whenever I have the opportunity to stroll down some country lanes, or hike through nearby peaceful forests. 

Thankfully I was able to remember a few of the thoughts that occurred to me during this morning’s nature walk.

For example:

Who buys shoes or clothing on the Internet? I can’t imagine purchasing any article of apparel without first trying it on to see if it fits. It’d be like buying a car without at least test-driving it or buying a house sight unseen. I just don’t get it.

After eating with some friends at a restaurant recently we had to split the check. Up until then I thought cash was still king but apparently, it’s been dethroned. What the heck is Venmo? When I heard that word, I thought they were talking about some defenseman on the Finnish national hockey team. And who (or what) is Crypto? If I had to guess, I’d say he’s a fictional supervillain who’s out to destroy Gotham City, and ruin Batman in the process. I bet he lives inside a luxurious, tricked-out mausoleum, and only comes out at night.

If Venmo really is a thing, it won’t be long before someone launches Vedgmo, a system of paying for things with fresh produce. I’m just worried that someone’s going to create Vengemo, a diabolical method of gaining retribution for real or imagined past slights. Maybe it wouldn’t be all bad, though, since it would take all the idle hit men off the unemployment line.

Litterers are lazy, selfish, and disrespectful. I know I’ve said that before, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Here’s a joke I heard (or to be accurate, re-heard) recently.

What’s Ludwig van Beethoven doing these days?

Answer: decomposing.

You know who must have lived a frustrating life? Whoever it was that bought the exclusive rights to manufacture 49-star flags. They probably thought they’d make millions when Alaska became the 49th United State on Jan. 3, 1959, rendering every previously-existing 48-star American flag obsolete. But imagine their chagrin when, just 230 days later, Hawaii joined the union! Owning all those 49-star flags turned out to be like owning Blockbuster Video stock in 2014.

These days 49-star flags are probably lining landfills that are rapidly filling up with fax machines, overhead projectors, manual typewriters, paper road maps that never fold back to their original shape, telephone books, boomboxes, Walkmans, slide rules, mimeograph machines, and shoes that need tying. When 29th century archeologists get around to digging up relics from our era, they’re going to wonder why 20th- and 21st century people needed so much tangible stuff. Alas, by then all the 49-star flags and paper road maps will probably have disintegrated.

I’ve been buying “Forever” stamps for so long now that I’d forgotten what their actual price is. Did you know it currently costs 78 cents to mail a letter within the U.S., and 61 cents to mail a postcard?

I’ve figured out how to get my money’s worth from the post office, though. Instead of sending letters to friends, I write out two postcards, then stick them inside an envelope and mail it. Every time I do that, I save 44 cents!

Another random thought: “Random” is a pretty random word. Why not use “haphazard,” “desultory,” “slapdash,” “arbitrary,” or any other unpremeditated synonym instead?

And finally, do scientists know how long it takes for a boombox to decompose?

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.

Andy Young: Keeping up with the Joneses

By Andy Young

The National Football League Players Association has filed a grievance on behalf of Christian Wilkins, a defensive tackle who has been released by the Las Vegas Raiders.

I have no interest in the brutal business of professional football or in the Raiders, who last time that I cared were calling Oakland home. I’m guessing Mr. Wilkins won’t starve though, since $84.75 million of the four-year, $110 million contract he signed in March of 2024 was guaranteed.

What caught my eye was the reason for the grievance. The NFLPA contends the Raiders are attempting to void the contract of an injured player, an action that is not only reprehensible, but also against the rules.

Mr. Wilkins is currently physically unable to perform due to his slow recovery from surgery to repair a Jones fracture.

What? You’ve never heard of a Jones fracture? Don’t feel bad. Neither had I.

A Jones fracture occurs at the base of the fifth metatarsal bone, which is on the outside of the foot. It can be caused by the sorts of repetitive stress professional athletes, particularly large ones, put on their bodies, and recovering from surgery on it is difficult, since the bone has a limited blood supply. Numerous NFL players, including current stars Derrick Henry and Deebo Samuel, have sustained Jones fractures, as has basketball superstar Keven Durant and more than two dozen other prominent NBA players.

What I want to know is who the Jones Fracture was named after. There are plenty of candidates, as “Jones” is the fifth-most common surname in the United States, behind only Smith, Johnson, Williams, and Brown.

It’s natural to assume that the first to sustain such an injury was an athlete, given the constant stress they put on their feet. Could the original Jones fracture have been suffered by Sam or K.C. Jones, two key members of the dynastic Boston Celtics teams of the 1950s and 1960s? And if not one of them, how about Caldwell, Wil, Major, or Charles Jones, four large brothers who played basketball for Albany (Georgia) State University before launching NBA careers of varying lengths. It’s not unlikely a basketball player was the first to suffer this particular injury since no fewer than 118 men (and at least 10 women) named Jones have played the sport professionally.

But then, it could be one of the 145 Joneses who’ve played major league baseball, or one of the 352, including seven Mikes, five Davids, four Willies, three Rods, two Victors, a Buddha, a Pacman, a Deacon, a Too-Tall, a Spike, and a Tebucky who’ve played in the National Football League.

Could Shirley Jones have fallen off a stage while dancing in Oklahoma, Carousel, or The Music Man, or during a taping of an episode of The Partridge Family? Maybe John Paul Jones tripped while declaring “I have not yet begun to fight,” during a memorable battle in British waters in 1779. Could it have been Davy Jones while on tour with The Monkees? Grace Jones tipping over when her hair got too heavy on one side? Carolyn Jones while performing a stunt as Morticia in an episode of the Addams Family? Terry Jones of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? James Earl Jones while voicing Darth Vader? Tommy Lee Jones? Catherine Zeta-Jones? Quincy Jones, or one of his daughters, Rashida or Kidada?

Okay. The Jones Fracture was named for … drum roll … Sir Robert Jones, a British doctor who first described the injury in 1902 after he himself sustained one while … dancing!

So there. And shame on those of you who pooh-poohed the possibility of the Jones fracture originating with Shirley while she danced. <

Rookie Mama: It’s automatic, it’s systematic – Why it’s a smart home system

By Michelle Cote
The Rookie Mama

“Rosie is stuck” – Our Google Home device.

No sadder words had been uttered in a long time.

If you’ve watched the Wild Robot or Wall-E films, you’d understand our penchant for curiously treating our ‘smart’ devices as family.

Perhaps we brought this phenomenon on ourselves because we name the darn things and talk to them, or conceivably it’s due to their automation and task completion that has become such an integral part of our day-to-day, each playing its role among the wild in the fanciful Cote homestead.

Alarms, LED lights, music, water usage and conservation – we named that one ’Mario the Plumber’ – There’s a smart-commodity for every little thing, each designed to assist in its own way.

Xennials and Millenials may remember the quirky Disney flick ‘Smart House’, released nearly three decades ago – quirky in that the computerized-home-experiment-gone-wrong came in the form of the ‘Married… with Children’ matriarch as a ‘90s AI, to the tune of ‘Slam Dunk da Funk’ boy band soundtrack fame (If you know, you know.)

Despite all that, the dated movie still serves as a forerunner of sorts to today’s smart device life.

Its 1999 release ahead of all that futuristic Y2K panic may not be coincidence.

But I digress – Back to Rosie.

Rosie was our Roomba robot vacuum, who dutifully cleaned our floors each morning via automation for more than a decade.

Despite our seemingly impeccable floors, dear Rosie humbled us each day when we emptied out the daily dirt and dust – There was always lots of it.

Those older than the Xennial/Millenial circuit will recall her namesake from The Jetsons – Now that’s a robot ahead of her time.

Sadly, our Rosie fell beyond repair in recent months, and we knew it was time to send her to the robot malt shop in the sky, also known as the Roomba recycling program.

The boys and I sadly thanked sweet old Rosie for her service and shipped her off, even as she rallied and tried to whirr her wheels to life a last time, to no avail.

Days passed; we purchased a new, more powerful and bells-and-whistles-y robot vacuum whom after much debate was aptly named R2-D2.

As Rosie had been, R2 was automated to vacuum our home on a schedule.

And when my husband accidentally commanded our Google Home device to start ‘Rosie’ – rather than ‘R2’ – Google simply responded that she was stuck, a solemn reminder that our beloved robot vacuum of yore was with us no more, and somewhere far, far away where the wild robots are.

My husband and I weren’t instant embracers of the smart-everythings.

We’ve been hesitant to accept it, as we feared losing some autonomy.

There are enough brothers in this house; we didn’t need another Big Brother.

A few years ago, we found ourselves needing to upgrade our wireless internet, and these updates came with smart speakers by happenstance.

Not only did we come to appreciate this added bonus, but we found the speakers to be useful – they are great at settling debates, sharing random trivia facts and knock-knock jokes, after all.

Then, our new heat splits came with full thermostat control via phone app, and this has been staggeringly useful as well.

As a busy mama who never has enough free hands, the hands-free commanding of these simple directives has been extraordinarily helpful.

There’s no fancy feeling like asking my Christmas tree to turn off its lights on a December evening.

What futuristic world is this place?

These smart home devices are assistive, certainly.

But our family remains old-school at heart, and by relying on these devices for the mundane, we are all the more afforded the mini luxuries to do what matters most.

Being aided by these attainable and useful technologies that didn’t exist until recent years – certainly not affordably if they did – allows us to thrive in all the old-school things that matter most.

We spend time having meaningful conversation, reading paperbacks, playing board games, camping, swimming, cannonball-dousing, and taking part in the wonderfully tangible pastimes of which core memories are truly made.

We’re grateful for the technology of assistance, the Rosies, the Marios, the R2-D2s of the smart home world so we can do what we truly love.

And without further ado, you should have a dance party of your own to ‘Slam Dunk da Funk’ like it’s 1999.

You won’t regret it.

­­– 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: 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. <

Andy Young: There’s no accounting for taste

By Andy Young

Why do some people adore foods that others detest? I love beets and prunes, though perhaps not at the same time. The same goes for bran muffins, dried apricots, ripe watermelon, Pink Lady apples, and several other items I actively savor every time I have them. I cannot fathom how anyone could possibly dislike these culinary delights, yet I know plenty of people who wrinkle up their noses at just the mention of them. I think grape juice is fantastic, but others complain it’s too sweet.

On the other hand, many people love chocolate ice cream, but I don’t. The same goes for coffee, and also beer. But at least those beverages don’t drive me from a room. Anything topped with nasty, foul-smelling melted cheese does, though. I find that particular stench nearly as off-putting as tobacco smoke. Peanut butter is another stinky food item I could do without.

Certain condiments (ketchup and mayonnaise, to name two) render any food(s) inedible for me. Yet other people, including some in my own family, use more ketchup on their fries than I do of milk on my cereal.

Potatoes can be delicious mashed, baked, roasted, scalloped, boiled, French fried, or in soups, but the best and most convenient way to enjoy them is as chips. But let’s be clear; any chip that’s designed to taste like salt and vinegar, barbecue sauce, sour cream and onion, dill pickle, lime and chili, ketchup or cheddar cheese is, in my opinion, useful only as salty compost, or as crunchy bait for rat traps.

There is, in my view, only one appropriate flavor for a chip: potato. Period. The best ones, commonly known as “wavy” chips are the ones with big ridges in them. “Rippled” (small-ridged) chips aren’t as good; they’re too salty. Don’t ask me why; they just are. As for regular, ridge-free potato chips, they always seem a little greasy to me. They’re uninspired and uninspiring.

And on the subject of snack foods, what’s up with bagged popcorn? You’re supposed to pop the stuff yourself; that way it’s warm, and you can add as much (or as little) salt and butter as you want. People who eat bagged, pre-popped popcorn have no sense of taste or are just plain lazy. And don’t get me started about flavored popcorn.

At least four of the five senses play a significant role in how people decide what they are and aren’t willing to ingest. The exception involves hearing. I can’t think of anything edible that makes alluring or off-putting sounds, unless one counts the shriek that comes out of a lobster getting boiled alive. For those to whom texture (touch) is important, items like mushrooms and certain types of seafood are, if you’ll pardon the expression, untouchables.

Taste and smell are similar but can have very different effects when it comes to food. For me there aren’t many aromas more alluring than beef sizzling on a backyard grill. I haven’t eaten red meat in years, but I’m still drawn to the smell of it cooking. I find the fragrance that emanates from a steakhouse nearly as pleasing olfactorily as an orange-purple sunset is visually.

Finally, who in their right mind willingly puts hot sauce (or similar elixirs) on items they intend to eat? Hellfire Hot Sauce boasts of containing 6.66 million SHU (Scoville Heat Units). To me the only thing less desirable than eating something which scorches the esophagus en route to one’s digestive system is one that burns even hotter as it exits, a seemingly horrific sensation one can safely assume 6.66 million SHU hot sauce provides. <

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. <

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. <