Camo camo everywhere and not a place to hide

Camouflage has long been a popular item in the world. Animals use their natural colors and patterns to blend in to keep from getting blasted from a hunter who is dressed in camouflage to keep from being seen by the animals they are a’ blastin’. Of course, the military has long used camo to keep from getting whole armies blasted by whole other armies wearing camo. Seems like a lot of blasting is associated with camo.

Of course, camo has become a fashion statement over the past number of years. It seems it is something the chic and the redneck have in common. There are all sorts of camo clothing — camo bikini tops and bottoms, camo prom dresses and tuxes. It isn’t limited to people. There is various camo wear for that special dog in your life, cars, trucks and SUVs can be found in different camo patterns and of course, your favorite deer stand.

I thought I had seen it all in camo until today while driving down a country road in nearby Hardin County near the Big Thicket National Preserve. Just past a field of donkeys or jackasses or whatever they were I spotted a mobile home with a forest-type camo pattern. Parked next to the mobile home was about the reddest, uncamouflaged pickup truck I have ever seen with tires that seemed as if they were my height — I am just a 1/2 inch short of six feet not accounting for surgery on my neck which may have taken off an inch or so — that made the top of the pickup cab seem as if it was about as tall as the trailer house.

Trailer houses are what we folks from East Texas used to call mobile homes before companies started calling them “manufactured homes.” Yeah, they’s manufactured all right. They’s manufactured like a trailer house. I am not being snooty or anything here, believe me. I lived in a trailer house one time, right by a railroad track that ran through the woods so that when a thunderstorm came up at the same time a train went by you didn’t know whether it was the SP freight train or a F-3 tornado.

Back to camouflage, it’s now in every color imaginable. Camoclothingonline.com has got your traditional woodland camo patterns, city camo (which I don’t understand at all,) sky blue, stinger yellow, desert camo, ultra violet, OD, pink and a few more.

The best gag gift I have seen comes from Stupid.com.  They’ve got Camo golf balls. “Bring the frustration back to your golf game,” their ad says. That is just pure fun, unlike the stupidity of the new “shipboard” camo found with the new Navy Working Uniform. The NWUs, as they are assigned with an acronym, are basically the same as the Army and Marine Corps working uniforms, BDUs in the ARMY and MARPATs in the Marines, only with blue camo. That camo is supposed to hide stains and blend in with colors on shipboard as well as utilize the traditional Navy blue, according to a Wikipedia article. That’s probably the best explanation I’ve heard so far. Although I think the Army BDU is a very functional, and not a bad looking combat utility uniform, I think it has no place on a sailor.

Even the blue jumpers with the rolled collars which I used to wear for working uniforms in the 70s look better for a sailor than does something making them look like GI Joe. That is, unless of course, they are in a combat situation that calls for the NWU and camo, such as in Iraq or Afghanistan. And while we’re on the subject, and I know I have probably covered this here somewhere before, but the Navy Service Uniform is just hideous. No more Winter Blues or Summer Whites. The Winter Blues were really a black shirt and black pants but I thought they were a sharp looking. The summer whites were a pain to wear for more than a special occasion during the summer like a change of command, but they also looked pretty snazzy. The new uniform combines the two, I guess to save money, and makes sailors look more like Marines. That shouldn’t be, you know, because of the relationship between the Navy and Marines. The Marines are a corps, which is part of the Navy. It isn’t the other way around. Not saying anything. That’s just the way it is.

Well, I glad I got that off of my chest, especially since I cannot foresee myself ever getting back into any kind of Navy or other military uniform. I am sure the young sailors who actually do the work these days have their own feelings. This is just what a Navy veteran says and I doubt my opinion counts much in the Pentagon, the Octagon or even the Trapezoid.

The camo trailer house though, that was something pretty unusual to see even for Southeast Texas.