Category: Orphans

This afternoon I went to a new dentist and had what I consider as the world’s record for a dental office visit for a tooth extraction or anything else for that matter. I went right in, the doctor was the only person who works there. He yanked my extremely loose back molar and the whole thing took 30 minutes from the time I entered until I exited. The visit went so fast that I forgot to ask him the question I had intended to: Where do all those teeth go when you pull them? Do sell them to jewelers who make chains to sell in foreign countries? Are they gathered up and put onto a rocket and shot into outer space? It would make sense. Unless they are recycled. I mean, we are running out of landfill space. I know this because I once served on a sanitary landfill task force in an East Texas county.

I say all that because I came across this article. I hardly ever read Women’s Day and I seldom read or listen to anything about UFOs, but I found this story … well, I found this story. So check it out. My mouth is still numb and I have a hard time thinking straight when my mouth is numb. I don’t know why. So don’t ask me.

There had to be some reason I ate at the original Jason’s Deli at Gateway Shopping Center in Beaumont. Texas. There was. I was hungry.

I could have lied and said I ate there because it made the list — featured on Yahoo — on foodie site Shine of top 5 healthiest fast food restaurants in the country. Admission: I have only dined at two places on this list, Jason’s and Au Bon Pain. This Beaumont-based chain of 206 locations in the West, Midwest and South, was named No. 2. Not too bad for local boys Joe Tortorice Jr. and his partners Rusty Coco, Pete Verde and Pat Broussard who started the restaurant business in 1976.

It is hard to say if I ate at Jason’s before the mid-90s when I moved to Beaumont for the second time — this is time three — I would have think so. But whether I did or didn’t, it’s one of my favorite places to eat although they seem sometimes to verge on getting too big for their britches. That’s not good, especially for the second healthiest fast food place in the country.

All these years of eating there, and today, I never knew it was so healthy. Just watch out for the sodium.

Truly I wish I could become more enthused about the Rangers and the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.  It would be the Rangers first time to head to the series if they win. Even though the Yankees lose sometimes it is hard to beat the best team money can buy.

I listen to sport radio some when I am riding around in my truck and have come to conclude the audience is a bunch of guys, ex-jocks, gamblers, Type ones who want to see the best teams money can buy. Maybe I am wrong, but that’s my take on it, having done no research. It would stand to reason that is where the money is at on the radio. You hear lots and lots of beer ads, I can’t think of any others but that is just a temporary mind block.

Colin Cowherd of ESPN Radio, whom I think is immensely talented, typifies his listeners it seems. He plays up the teams in his big markets, Dallas, New York, a little bit of Houston, He touts the Kobe Bryants, the Brett Favres, the Alex Rodriguezs because they are the best. He hates that TCU and Boise State are on the BCS Top Ten and Alabama and Texas are not. Why? Because the Tide and Longhorns  are the best. Cowherd does not appear to mind at all those who call him an idiot because he doesn’t buy into media fairytales when it comes to sports stories. In short, his mantra is “Give me the richest players and you will there find the best.”

All of which is true to a certain extent. The best players bring the play way up in the game. But there are also times when you need a miracle. The Miracle Mets. The Miracle on Ice. The Dream Team.

Sometimes you need the Jason McElwains. You may remember the You Tube videos or the TV stories. McElwain was an autistic kid, team equipment  manager for the Greece Athena High School basketball team in Rochester, N.Y. The team was playing its last game of the season. McElwain was a senior and this would be his last game. The coach gave him a jersey and  hoped he might even play. He did. McElwain hit six 3-pointers and another shot for 20 points in three minutes. Even if you don’t like sports you have to love stories like that. And that, is my point exactly.

I haven’t followed the Texas Rangers much this year because I no longer live near the so-called D-FW “Metroplex” as I did in the past. I realize some might say that is ridiculous especially my friend who never went to Texas A & M and is a huge Aggies fan, or my friend who lives in El Paso and is — I suppose he still is or at least he was — a Raiders fan. That is partly because he lives closer to California than Dallas or Houston. But that is just me. I only have a few teams and even among those I am not fanatical. I do know Nolan Ryan is running the team (he  is the Rangers’ president.) Even if I didn’t know it, I could have seen it from the final playoff game between Texas and Tampa Bay that the stamp of that old workhorse the Ryan Express, one of the game’s best, was on the team when ace Rangers’ pitcher Cliff Lee went the full nine innings. That is something you would see Ryan do and some of the old pitchers before there was a reliever for every inning after the seventh.

Right now, I am more interested in football, particularly my old high school team and the Texans. Also, my college team and the local college team. Perhaps for some in Dallas the ALCS is a nice diversion from the 1-3 Cowboys which seem to be going down like the good ship Titanic.

That doesn’t mean I won’t watch the Rangers-Yankees game, or at least some of it, tonight. And, sorry to be a fair weather friend to a team that I like and one that I liked long, long ago — in that bygone world of Maris and Mantle — when it possessed something more akin to magic than to a gigantic automatic teller, but I probably won’t be that interested until if and when the Rangers beat the Dollar Bills Yankees. Good luck on that Nolan.

This is the start of my annual leave. It makes me sound as if I only have one big block of time to take a vacation but that is far from the truth.  I am only using eight days of leave but I will be off from today until the first of November. Not really too bad when you think about it. I could have taken off some other time when I would be working less hours in my part-time job. But when you don’t work every day and you have 20 days leave on the book, it doesn’t hurt to burn some days.

Nevertheless, I love this time of year. It’s a good time to camp. This time 10 years ago I camped for a few days by myself in the Angelina National Forest. It was just after I stopped smoking and even though some might not have weathered the tobacco-less storm, my camping trip was smooth as one of those guys at big-city bus stations that sells watches. The highlight of my vacation this year will be meeting up with a friend whom I have not seen in 30 or so years. This will be in Galveston. I really look forward to seeing my friend Tere. While I am sure we both will make the journey, I just hope we are in a decent condition to enjoy it. Tere has been recovering from pneumonia. While I have some kind of knee problem now joined with a nagging toothache and just last night, a sore throat.

I have a scheduled “doctor’s” appointment tomorrow at the VA. But right now I feel kind of lousy. I think I will catch the news and then just kick back a bit. Does that  sound like a good plan? If so, you do the same. You certainly deserve it. Well, most of you do.

Over the weekend I found — thanks to a computer search performed with the greatest of ease — my cousin Jesse. It was that “greatest of ease,” I told Jesse that it took to locate him when he asked how I found him, not that he was trying not to be found, he added. I told my cousin that I had worked a number of years as a reporter so such searches came fairly easy.

I last saw Jesse the night before a hometown friend and I caught a flight from what is now George Bush International Airport in Houston for O’Hare in Chicago. From there we later took a short bus ride to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, a.k.a. Navy boot camp.

The fact that I found Jesse is really neither here nor there  except for the fact that I am glad to have found my 63-year-old cousin, a veteran of the “Brown Water Navy” in Vietnam, and it appears he is happy that I got in touch as well. What makes me write about this was that he mentioned our previous Navy “ratings,” or jobs with respect to our communicating with each other. I was a Navy Yeoman or clerical type, Jesse was a gunner’s mate, meaning — surprise! — he took care of guns.

It occurred to me after the exchange of e-mails that I can’t think of many military veterans whose civilian jobs even remotely approximated their military ones. Oh, I did some journalism work in the Navy as well as having run an offset press. Neither jobs were really what you would call part of my job description. I probably knew more folks who were Seabees whom I served with who worked construction or engineering type trades once they got out of the Navy. Although, two good friends who were Seabees didn’t even come close to such jobs. One friend who saw the life I led as a firefighter when I went to college, became a firefighter once he graduated from college. Another Seabee friend re-upped and served as some kind of aviation electrician until he retired as a chief. Several other Seabee friends got out for awhile and re-enlisted for the long-term.

The list goes on and on. My Dad was a cook in the World War II Merchant Marine. After a number of jobs he finished life as a sign painter. One brother was a Navy ship fitter, what is now known as a Hull Maintenance Technician. He has had a decent career as a painting contractor. Another brother, who spent his last year in the Navy as a cargo handler in Vietnam, was a boatswain’s mate. He retired after more than 30 years as a police officer. My college friend Paul, in Tokyo, I can’t remember what he did in the Army. I’m sure he will tell me but it seems like his military occupational specialty (MOS) had something to so with working on weapons or tanks. The point is so many military jobs, no matter how much the military would like for the illusion to work, doesn’t translate to a “real” job. Naval line officers on board ship? Good leadership opportunities. But there just aren’t a whole lot of jobs available as an anti-submarine warfare officer.

The last stats I could find showed overall veterans unemployment slightly below the nation’s rate. However, the most recent statistics noted veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan had higher rates, more than 10 percent. I don’t know what to think when I see the top jobs the nation’s veterans agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, is trying to fill and one of which is “Cemetery Caretaker.”

“How’s business Stan?”

“Pretty damned dead Harry.”

Since I left the military more than 30 years ago I have seen programs grow exponentially which attempt to link veterans with jobs. Many companies tout their veteran “friendliness,” decent companies trying to do the right thing such as Home Depot. Police and firefighter jobs are attractive to many veterans, as is corrections. Much has been done over time to link military and civilian occupations. The main problem though is that when the rubber meets the road and the cabbage hits the boiling water, the military is, after all, about defense, fighting wars, killing enemies.

Do I have a solution to the unemployment of veterans? Does a bear advertise for Charmin’ in the woods? Why it is easy. To reduce unemployment for those who just left the military, all you have to do is get them jobs. You find them jobs, other than the option of re-enlisting, and you have done something. Not that there is anything wrong with re-enlisting. Somebody’s got to do it.

I hope things will only get better. The federal government, state government, colleges, corporations all have plenty of  programs aimed at helping veterans. Now all those programs have to do is help veterans who aren’t the same ones hired to administer those programs. Then you got it licked.