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Everybody loves a nut, except when it breaks your tooth

It is hard to imagine that a recently-discharged veteran would forget about his or her various benefits but I could see how it might happen. You are young. You just got out of the service. The world is your hot dog. You are going to party until the cow’s cows come home. Oh sure, you’re going to need a job or go to college the next semester. The point here, if you meet the qualifications, quite a few veterans benefits are available to you. You can find those out from the Department of Veterans Affairs, your local veterans service officer or state veterans agency.

One of the great benefits, which is very limited, is the dental benefit from the VA.  Here are the guidelines:

“Recently discharged Veterans whose

discharge record (DD214) clearly

indicates either that dental services were

not provided within 90 days of

discharge or that dental treatment was

not completed, who served on active

duty 90 days or more, and who apply

for VA dental care within 90 days of

separation from active duty, may receive

a one-time treatment for dental

conditions and follow up treatment for

that specific dental condition.

For more information regarding

services available to returning Active

Duty, National Guard and Reserve

service members of Operations

Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom

visit  www.oefoif.va.gov.”

My first job outside of the Navy, which you will know if you follow this blog, was as a firefighter. After I started working I had heard about the dental benefit. I didn’t know a dentist as I was still new in town. But my co-workers told me about a local boy who — as I would sort of end up doing — worked his way through undergraduate school at the fire department. The local boy, man, ended up going to dental school. I saw Sid for my “post-service, one-time dental appointment” as I suppose you could call it. I recall Sid had a very sweet and pretty local girl working as an assistant. No, I didn’t end up marrying her. I didn’t even date her. I did end up dating my physician’s nurse. She left me on a New Year’s Eve date to go off somewhere with some girl. That kind of sucked, actually. I can’t remember what all Sidney did on my “one-time” dental appointment. I knew that Sid and Holly, the pretty girl, cleaned and X-rayed my teeth. I think maybe Dr. Sid filled a cavity.

Less than a week after my having found a new dentist, I was sitting at home, minding my own business, when “CRACK” went one of my left side, lower molars. I broke a tooth while eating a Corn Nut. Yes, a freaking Corn Nut! Well, I went back to see my dentist. He said I needed a crown and that it was going to cost about $250. Say what? This was 1978. I just started my job. I was going through fire rookie school. I grossed $815 a month. I had taken out a small personal loan to get an apartment, well, it wasn’t even an apartment. It was a room in a boarding house owned by the town’s most infamous slum lords. I didn’t know whether I could get another loan for a crown.

Dr. Sid said that maybe the VA would pay for it. The eternal pessimist, I said that, no, this was a one-time deal. Sidney said, “Well, let’s just give it a try and if not, we’ll work something out.”

I don’t know what happened. Maybe the stars converged. Maybe Jupiter aligned with Mars. But the VA paid for my gold molar crown. I still got that sucker, too. Sidney had to re-cement it once. I’ve had it reset probably two or three other times.

But you know what? I never ate another Corn Nut.

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Here is wishing you an eight feet deep type of Christmas (if not a whole lot better)

Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho and some more ho. This is my Christmas 2011 message and because of the holidays and the desire to put my poor, crooked toes up and relax, I plan to make this short and sweet. Well, at least I’ll make it short.

To all you non-believers out there, Yes, Damn right Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and yes, North Carolina and yes, Delaware and yes, Maryland and yes, by God, West Virginia.

Santa on board a C-17 delivers fuel to remote bases in Afghanistan with some help from Tech. Sgt. Mike Morris of Charleston A.F.B., S.C. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Nathanael Callon)

If you still don’t believe in Santy Claws, then check out NORAD’s page. I mean, NORAD, they’re the ones who keep track of objects which belong and don’t belong in our skies. If you can’t believe them … Pretty interesting story how NORAD got into the business of tracking Santa Claus. You can read for yourself, but a short version:

 
“It all started in 1955 when a Sears media advertisement directed kids to call Santa Claus but printed a telephone number that rang through to the crew commander on duty at the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center.

“The colonel on duty told his staff to give all children who called in a “current location” for Santa Claus. The tradition continued when NORAD replaced CONAD in 1958.”

Well, that’s all I have to say about that. Dadblamed Gump! Now he’s got me saying it.

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An ending, finally, to the Son of Gulf War

The war is ending in Iraq. That isn’t so hard to believe although I honestly felt like the ending wouldn’t have been this soon. It ends just as I figured it would end though. That is when our government said it was over. I suppose that is one way to end a war.

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the others of their ilk did tremendous damage to our country and to Iraq by our going to war there. Almost 4,500 American troops died from the war. Much more physical damage happened in Iraq itself, of course. At least 60,000 perhaps 100,000 or more Iraqi civilian deaths occured. Some were our enemies, others not so much.

Bush damaged the United States with this war. The torture tactics. Spying on our own citizens. Suspending habeas corpus. This hurt our belief in freedom and liberty. It has hurt our stature around the world as well. The bright shining light, America, now somewhat dimmed.

As for Obama’s role in taking up where Bush left off, I am unsure he could have done differently. Some already call him a hypocrite for embracing a war that he opposed as a senator. But how is it that much different for the man to become commander-in-chief and having to support his troops and thus the ongoing cause, than for a man to become a soldier and thus being required to support his commander-in-chief? Then there are the super hawks who think we should probably stay indefinitely.

I really doubt our involvement in Iraq has ended though. I fear we will continue to lose precious American lives there and elsewhere because of duplicity of the Bush administration and for the Bushies pushing us into an inescapable corner. But for now, we can say the war is nearly done, for this round–the Son of Gulf War.

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Cannons to the left of me, cannons to the right … of my minivan

A story on CNN caught my attention this morning as I brushed my teeth. I started to laugh in between molars and a few rugged bicuspids until I caught myself as the short news brief was read.

It seems an errant cannonball fired during the filming of a Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters” episode went on a wild ride through a San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood. The show was taping at the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department bomb disposal range, where 50 previous episodes were previously filmed, when the 6-inch projectile went “zing” off a hillside and then went “zang” through two stories of a suburban home before blasting through the windows of Toyota Sienna minivan parked in a driveway. Remarkably, no one was hurt which is even more remarkable since the shell flew through a neighborhood where children were coming home from school, and through an upstairs bedroom where a man, woman and child slept through it all before hitting the minivan in which a man and his 13-year-old son sat.

“Mythbusters” is a show in which the hosts use weird scientific experiments to debunk myths, often at the expense of some automobiles and crash-test dummies including one named “Buster.” Of course, in this case it was at the expense of a house and someone’s minivan. It can be a pretty funny show sometimes. But I couldn’t help but think, looking into the mirror with my bed-creased face, that this must have scared the crap out of folks especially once the adrenalin was no longer there to smooth the edges. I’m talking the almost victims’ edges, not my bed face.

I once did a story about some artillery shells raining down in the back yard of some folks who lived in the tiny community of King, Texas. Those 155mm projectiles had flown some seven or eight miles from Fort Hood, where they had been fired from a M-109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzer engaged in training by an artillery battalion of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. Army officials said after the incident that an improper compass reading was fed into the big gun’s computer, causing the cannon shells to fly off course. The guns were firing 180 degrees off target.

“Uh, sorry Sarge, wrong way.”

Some pretty large holes were made in the ground near a couple of houses and the foundation of at least one home cracked as wells as glass from windows and a chandelier was shattered.  A lady who lived in a house near where one of the shells landed told me she was in the bathtub when the shells started coming down. Imagine that, sitting and enjoying a nice bath when artillery rounds started falling in your yard. Luckily, no people, pets or livestock — this was a ranching area — were hurt.

It was incredibly lucky for those folks who took the errant rounds both in Texas and California. It is the type of happening one might hope they can laugh about someday. Some might be even laughing all the way to the bank!

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Happy Veterans Day whether your sacrifice was large or small

U.S. Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Mathew Petersen provides security during a four-day patrol through Nawa district in Afghanistan's Helmand province, Nov. 3, 2011. Petersen is a Navy corpsman attached to the Marines. Photo by Cpl. Jeff Drew, USMC

Today is Veterans Day, 11/11/11. I will leave the speeches to the speech-makers. I thank those who served, from those few who are still around from Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, to those serving all over the world these days. This picture above was just a random photo I picked from the Department of Defense Web site. It doesn’t say much about this young sailor, other than he is a medic. The Navy has long-furnished its corpsmen to the Marines since that component of the Navy doesn’t have its own medical care, or ships (not talking about boats) for that matter. These days, some folks from all service branches may go to a combat zone to serve as an individual augmentee, or IA.  Sailors also face combat on the high seas, whether it be searching for pirates or seeking weapons smugglers.

Speaking of IAs, I don’t know if that’s what they were called back in the day when I served. When I first deployed for sea duty and my ship first set out for the Western Pacific I volunteered for an individual assignment at Subic Bay, Philippines. It was a six-month stint as an Armed Forces policeman. That means I would be patrolling the streets of Olongapo where one could not walk without running into a bar or a hooker. This was when I first went to sea, as I said, I didn’t know anyone and tired of under way watches at sea which were four hours long and rotated around the clock. My watch was standing on the bridge, talking over sound-powered telephone with Combat Information Center. My job was to relay any radar contacts CIC picked up to the Captain or the Officer of the Deck. It was mostly pretty boring except for the time we left San Diego in a thick fog with inbound merchant ships headed our way, only to have the helmsman discover that we lost steering. Luckily the guy manning “after steering” was able to steer blindly from his little space below the fantail. It was hairy for a little while.

As it turned out, one of my fellow office mates got the job because I was deemed “too important” to the mission to go be a cop for six months. Too important my eye! What if I fell overboard and was lost to Davy Jones Locker? As it turned out though, I got to know some great guys and we had more fun than the law allowed — no seriously, we did — all over the western and southern Pacific. Our ship spent November and December and into the first week of January, including Christmas and New Years, in New Zealand and Australia. I guess by not serving  as Shore Patrol for six months in the Philippines and thus not getting my ass kicked by drunken sailors and Marines was my sacrifice.

I will leave you to think about your sacrifices or lack thereof. My burden was not all that heavy for me, thankfully. Still, all military folks share sacrifice whether it be large, as in with their lives, or small.

Happy Veterans Day.