Category: Orphans

My Christmas Eve morning started off with a phone call from my doctor at the VA. A call from your doctor never really portends a good omen. A phone call while you are asleep is usually not good one way or the other either, so I just let it ring and listened to the voice mail message from my doctor after I got out of bed before calling him back.

The news I received was not really unexpected. I had some routine tests done the other day which include a fecal occult test which — despite sounding like some kind of investigation method to detect devil worshipers — actually finds blood in one’s stools. Like I said, I expected it and mainly so because of the stress that the methadone I take for chronic severe pain puts upon my lower GI system. There are, of course, a number of reasons — most of which are rather ominous — why blood may show up in your feces. Among these reasons are colon cancer. While not worried, per se, at this time about cancer I nonetheless will go through the unpleasantness of a colonoscopy just as soon as the VA can schedule one for me.

After years of interaction with medical professionals this one has been more involved than normal and I would rather that not be similarly the case in 2008. But when one reaches more than five decades of life more and more visits to the doctors can be expected along with their poking and prodding you in the most creepy of manners and locations.

So all I can do now is sit back and hope for the best next year and try to tell myself things will get better. That’s not easy for a seemingly born pessimist like myself, but I don’t suppose you can go rolling skating in a buffalo herd. So to cheer me up and perhaps it will cheer you up as well, I offer one of my favorite Christmas stories, the David Sedaris piece Six to Eight Black Men which I first read in Esquire and later in his collection Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Esquire played up the piece by touting the below teaser:

“A heartwarming tale of Christmas in a foreign land where, if you’ve been naughty, SAINT NICK and his friends give you an ass-whuppin’

Unlike our Santa, SAINT NICHOLAS is painfully thin, dresses like the pope, and tops off his robes with a tall hat resembling a tea cozy.

In addition to a great Christmas story, THE DUTCH have thrown in legalized drugs and prostitution. What’s not to love about that?”

If that doesn’t whet your appetite then I don’t know what will. Have a merry Christmas!

The ‘corner’s gen-u-wine My Name is Earl Christmas lights.

My life is a little like Earl’s in the wickedly-funny TV show My Name Is Earl. Actually Earl and I aren’t that much alike except for living in a motel although we have our share of weird characters here as is the case in Earl’s world. One of those characters is my next door neighbor here in the ‘corner’ who, even though he claims to be a redneck, is actually a nice guy who’d give you the shirt off of his back. So that is among the reasons I had no objection when he installed the bizarre Christmas lights the other day. His brother, who also lives in the motel, said they look like a real “White Trash Christmas.” And so they do. But if one lives in a situation such as this then that person must embrace the symbolism that accompanies such a life.

It’s almost enough to make one play Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. I say almost, but not nearly enough. It is funny that I have yet to hear that hideous song this Christmas season. The song seems to appear every Christmas much like a fruit cake from a favorite relative whose feelings you don’t want to hurt by telling them that fruit cakes really suck. However, I have no qualms about saying how much I hate that song. I can’t believe that it’s only been around less than 30 years, it seems like it has existed longer than time itself.

But if one likes their Christmas music to include, like their families and friends, a little dysfunction then they should find one of Robert Earl Keen’s albums which contain Merry Christmas From the Family.

Keen, the Texas troubadour and college buddy of Lyle Lovett’s at Texas A & M, touches most of the bases for a made-for-TV-disaster family Christmas gathering in his song, starting off of course with Mom and Dad getting drunk at the Christmas party.

You then have your familial ethnic tension:

“Little sister brought her new boyfriend
He was a Mexican
We didn’t know what to think of him until he sang
Felis Navidad, Felis Navidad.”

Next is the divorce-melded family:

“Brother Ken brought his kids with him
The three from his first wife Lynn
And the two identical twins from his second wife Mary Nell
Of course he brought his new wife Kay
Who talks all about AA.”

The merriment continues but faces danger should the booze and sanitary napkins run out:

“Carve the turkey turn the ball game on
Make Bloody Mary’s
Cause We All Want One!
Send somebody to the Stop ‘N Go
We need some celery and a can of fake snow
A bag of lemons and some Diet Sprites
A box of tampons, some Salem Lights
Haleluja, everybody say cheese
Merry Christmas from the Family.”

As for my own merry little Christmas I will be headed for the Dallas area tomorrow and return on Christmas Day. And to keep the theme of a White Trash Christmas going I will be traveling by bus. Yee Haa! It should be fun just as long no one throws up on me. Feliz Navidad, Ya’ll.

PS If any of the above links don’t work. I’m sorry but you’ll have to figure them out yourself if you want to look/listen that badly. Who do you think I am Santa Claus?

As if we don’t have enough to worry about down here in Texas, the nation’s sports media is all abuzz about the new “it” couple Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo and the ditzy Jessica Simpson.

It all started with the only person it could start with, Cowboys’ receiver Terrell Owens. That is because if it’s not about T.O., it will eventually be about T.O., who could easily be known as T.O. the Ego. What is wrong with that guy?

Owens shot his mouth off about Simpson being a detriment to Romo, whose team lost Sunday only their second game this season to the lackluster Philadelphia Eagles. Apparently Owens didn’t want his teammate to think Romo’s squeeze was the Cowboy’s Yoko, so he made some sort half no-apology.

Look, if I was young and rich like Romo, and was going out with a beautiful starlet who doesn’t seem to care that she isn’t the brightest bulb in the box, I think I would tell T.O. to just “shut the hell up!” But that’s why Tony gets the big bucks. Big surprise but in reality I just don’t give a damn Scarlett.

My local newspaper has a poll asking: The Dallas Cowboys’ Terrell Owens thinks quarterback Tony Romo’s girlfriend is distracting him.

What do YOU think?

Should Jessica Simpson make herself scarce during Cowboys games?
–Yes
–No
–Who cares

It appears after my voting four times now, the “Who cares” choice, my side leads 46 percent to 42.2 percent “yes” and 11.8 “no.: I can only say to that 54 percent voting out there: “Get a life.”

It seems a little late that people here in Beaumont, Texas, are beginning to notice that the firefighters might have a good reason for wanting enough staff on a truck. Firefighter Cody Schroeder is undergoing what is surely agonizing treatment for the burns he suffered Monday during a fire in which he and five other of his fire department members were injured. The 27-year-old Schroeder suffered burns to 40 percent of his body when a structure blaze flashed over.

Continuing difficulties in negotiations between the city of Beaumont and the firefighters’ union has included demands that fire trucks be staffed with four suppression personnel. Such goals aren’t really pie-in-the-sky wishes by greedy union men. Numerous studies have prompted fire safety associations for years to call for minimum engine staffing standards. The “fire staffing” debate was one of the big issues when I worked as a firefighter more than 20 years ago. Cities whose politicians rightly worry about trivial matters such as taxes often feel like having enough firefighters or police officers to safely do their jobs is some kind of luxury. And even in a number of cases, the police may fare better getting what they want from the cities. Maybe it’s because they carry guns.

Although the Beaumont fire union president stated yesterday that having four firefighters to an engine company would not have made a difference in the incident involving the injuries, plenty of evidence exists that it is definitely safer to have more personnel on the fire scene.

“A study conducted by the Seattle Fire Department found that the severity of fire fighter injuries declined 35% when staffing per apparatus was increased from 3-person crews to 4-person crews,” Michael McNeill testified before a congressional panel in 2004. McNeill, a district vice president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, retired after 33 years with the Denver Fire Department. “A study by the Dallas Fire Department found a direct correlation between staffing levels and both the safety and effectiveness of emergency response operations. Specifically, the Dallas study found that inadequate staffing delays or prevents the performance of critical tasks, increases the physiological stress on fire fighters, and increases the risk to both civilians and fire fighters. After analyzing their data, the authors of the Dallas study concluded, “staffing below a crew size of four can overtax the operating force and lead to higher losses.”

McNeill’s testimony also indicated the fire staffing debate even goes to the heart of cities adequately preparing for terrorist attacks.

“The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)-the consensus, standard making body of the fire service-recently completed a report entitled “Preparing for Terrorism: Estimated Costs to U.S. Local Fire Departments.” The study found that an additional 75,000 to 85,000 fire fighters are needed to fully staff fire departments to be able to safely respond to traditional emergencies and to minimally respond to terrorist incidents, said McNeill.”

I won’t hold my breath that the Beaumont City Council will come around to the side of sanity and institute a decent staffing level on the city’s fire engines. So incidents such as Monday’s flashover which injured six of our firefighters could very well repeat itself. Especially considering how much the department was zapped Monday after the structure fire, followed by a truck exploding after it ran off I-10 into Ida Reed Park. The driver of that truck was killed although no firefighter injuries were reported. As bad as Monday was for Beaumont firefighters, the outcome could be even worse next time.

As I get “on up in years” as some say it is interesting how looking back at certain events through the spectrum of time differ so much with respect to perspective. In other words, certain things 30 years ago sometimes seem like they weren’t all that long ago while something that happened 10 years ago feels as though it took place way, way back. It is such an odd sensation.

This thought came to me this morning as I got a Christmas card from my friend Elva in Australia. It will be 30 years on Christmas Day that I had the honor of sharing a holiday dinner with Elva, her son Mark and her mother. I was 22 years old then and, while it was not the first Christmas I had spent away from home after three years in the Navy, it was the first Christmas dinner I ever had with those who were not family members.

Inviting a total stranger, especially one from a foreign land, to Christmas dinner may itself seem foreign to most people. I think it would have been even more bizarre to have a total stranger in the U.S. invite me to a holiday dinner during those times because that was during the immediate post-Vietnam days when folks didn’t share the appreciation for their military personnel that they seem to do these days. But it was much different in Australia, at least back then.

While our ship visited Australia the locals would call a special “Dial-a-Sailor” line that was published in the newspapers and invite the American sailors to various types of outings. I ended up at the Tinson’s home on Christmas after meeting Mark at a party the night before. He was a nice young lad who had just graduated from high school and he told me his mom had thought about having a sailor over for dinner so he asked if I would like to come over the next day for Christmas lunch. I agreed, he asked his mother and since that time I have exchanged Christmas greetings on and off with Elva over the many years.
Just how hospitable this Australian mother was took place after lunch. Mark and I talked about going down to the beach to hunt for Sheilas (girls). Because of the laws there, Mark had graduated from high school but was not old enough to drive a car. So Elva let me drive their Australian Ford station wagon. It was the first time that I had driven a car with steering on the right-hand side so it was kind of different but it was a great gesture nonetheless. It would have been one of those magical Christmas Days had Mark and I scored some ladies. But the memory was great enough as it was.

It was a simpler time back then in Australia even though the country was as modern in every respect than the U.S. Crime wasn’t a worry at all then and the Australian government even encouraged us to hitchhike. I unfortunately don’t know what the country is like today with the exception of what I have read and reports from a few people who have spent time there in recent years. That whole experience now feels like it was only yesterday even though the socio-historical aspects of that time in Australia seemed as if I was living an entirely different decade than the 1970s. It was kind of like how I imagined the 1950s although I imagine those were some meaner times in the U.S. back then.

It was a long time ago now. But it doesn’t feel like it. It felt then as if we had somehow been living in different times. But we weren’t. It’s odd but it makes for a great memory.