My Portfolio

Four Score and One Written October 3, 2013             Four Score and One years ago last night a young boy was sent by his father out into the night to go fetch a doctor.  It was a cold October night, the clock was nearing midnight and the still sparsely settled countryside...

Ask any Missourian south of I70 what a “float trip” is and unless he is one of our more taciturn Ozarkers he will tell you.  However as a boy living in Kansas where rivers flow muddy and sluggish I’d never heard of a float trip and 30 years later when we...

Since the day he discovered that his tricycle was faster than walking all but the dullest, most sedentary American boys have felt the urge to have wheels beneath them.  From tricycles to Corvettes (if only in their dreams) their desire is always to have faster, sexier ways to go from place to...

One of the gloomy realities that came with my retirement was the economic necessity to give up my beloved little red airplane. Most people knew her (Like ships, all airplanes are of the feminine persuasion) as an AA1A Grumman Trainer - Not me. Once I got to know her and understood...

How far in the past does an event have to have occurred before it can be called “history?” I have no idea. But as for a man’s personal life and times it seems reasonable to say that the day he becomes an octogenarian he can be forgiven if he looks back...

JUDGMENT: “The ability to judge, make a decision or form an opinion objectively, authoritatively,and wisely,especially in matters affecting action; goodsense; discretion:” Or so say the guys who write dictionaries. Okay I can memorize that and tell you in seconds what judgment “is.” Given a few minutes I could probably write an...

On the road to becoming a Private Pilot there were three “gates” through which I had to pass.  One was guarded by a medical doctor, the other two by a pilot. The medical doctor was obviously a man who clearly looked upon people who wanted to learn how to fly an...

Among the memories I cherish most are those of the hours I spent flying small airplanes.  I earned my Private Pilots License late in life – in my mid-`40’s - and I flew regularly until I was in my early `70’s; amassing a total of just over 2,000 hours in the...

A few days after meeting a very attractive young lady at the Chicago USO on the 4th of July weekend, 1954, I pulled her phone number out of my pocket.  “Anne DeNicolo” was the name above the telephone number.  As I stood by the wall-mounted pay phone in the Fifth Army...

In the early 1960’s I was in my mid-30's and working as a junior high school band director in Carpentersville IL,  a suburb 40 miles northwest of Chicago.  Like many music teachers I, for fun and extra income, played in a small combo for dances, parties, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and what...

My Dad was taken out of school at an early age and was put to work with his dad, first was "cutting ties" (cutting down trees and shaping them into railroad ties).  Then they both went to Texas to work in the oilfields.  First they worked dismantling huge steel oil tanks. ...

      Because they had so many off-post and other musical duties most Army Bandsmen in the 1950’s were exempted from “extra duties” such as K.P., Guard Mount, and “work details” -  Most being the key word in that sentence.   But the “Command Band” of the entire Fifth Army, the...

In the Spring of 1953 it seemed the Korean Police Action was going to go on forever with “Peace Talks” bogging down on who should sit on which side of the table, what shape the table should be, and where the talks should take place.   It had degenerated into a “Which...

Soon after assuming power Adolf Hitler, knowing like many of our politicians today, how to curry favor with "the masses," ordered Frederick Porche to build a "Peoples Car."  An affordable vehicle for those masses whose adulation he needed.  It truly was a good idea.   Porche, knowing where his bread would...

Thomas Wolfe, the author, wrote a book entitled “You Can’t Go Home Again.”   Johnny Cash told us in song that “The old home town looks the same.”    Cash, however, admits later in the song that he “was only dreaming.”  Wolfe got it right.  You can go to the “place” - but...

The early day Volkswagen busses, vans or whatever they were properly called were noisy magnificently wonderful, contrivances.   Nothing like them was being made in American factories.  With two rows of seats behind the front seat you could pack six adults and a fair amount of luggage behind the rear seat.  Or,...

So Briefly An Eagle This memoir is based on letters and telephone conversations with Messrs.  Frank Zywiczynski and Jerry Evers, and on research done by the writer in the USAF Archives.   Mr. Evers, an airline flight attendant, had the opportunity to interview French citizens who had witnessed this incident.   With the...

My mother was the source of a few sayings that have survived her.  One she used grated on my nerves each time I heard it.  It had to do with my doing "chores" around the house.  I honestly wasn't burdened with very many but once in a while when I was...

Shug My Mother   The cotton fields of Arkansas were too small to hold her dreams,                 Too bleak to hold her hopes Her soul heard music, poetry, drama Her mystic intuition                 Told her of stars waiting to be touched But her eyes saw only endless rows of cotton                ...

I was really reluctant to start the engine in the old car.   You see, I had a big problem.  Actually it was a two-part problem I faced as I sat there next to the gas pump of a C-Store in Tucson.  The first part I couldn’t do anything about because somewhere...