Life in the Garden

Matters of Life and Death

Confessions

Kaneohe Spring 1948

Three Beautiful Things:

No curfews or checkpoints
Redbuds and Lilacs
Lunch with an old friend

Had a little time to review my grandfather’s memoirs this weekend, and so grateful for this gift. A couple of family members are packing their bags for Hawaii and we were reminded of the Aulick experience before Hawaii was granted statehood. Let’s just say…it was pretty native and not safe to leave your women unprotected.

“In the spring of 1948, we were assigned as primary air escorts for a convoy that took an atomic arsenal to Bikini for testing. We left Kaneohe on the 9th of March and returned home on the sixteenth. We covered a lot of ocean in that time and flew a lot of hours. While in the Marshalls, we spent one night on Johnson Island and slept in barracks that had been previously occupied. Somehow, I wound up with a horrible bunch of body lice (crabs) on me. So, when we arrived back on Oahu, they had to fumigate me with DDT before I could leave the damned airplane.

I finally found civilian quarters for my family so I got authorization for them to come to Hawaii. Mother also came with the family. They arrived by Military Transport, a few weeks later and we moved into our new “home” in Hauula, Oahu T.H.

Hauula is a small town on the northwest side Oahu- right on the ocean. A lovely little place but it was the home of hundreds of Samoans- who lived like animals.

Those suckers partied every night and nobody was safe from their foraging through the neighborhood. When they weren’t looking for women, they were looking for something to steal. They NEVER slept.

One night one of the men sneaked into the house and tried to get into bed with Mother. When he came through the front patio doors, he left his shoes at the door and at the same time, let a helluva bunch of mosquitoes in the house. That’s what woke Mother up and she screamed when she saw a man standing over her bed, taking his belt off. I ran into the room and that bastard Samoan was just clearing the front fence on his way out, and in his haste to leave, he left his shoes behind.

We also had a lot of window-peekers. I finally got a dog that would bark if they came into the yard. One night, Etta Mae (his wife) and went to the toilet. As soon as she turned on the light in the bathroom, my dog started to bark. I had a small forty caliber revolver (slept with it under his pillow), the switch for the yard lights was in the bathroom, Etta Mae flipped them on. When the lights went on, I opened the door and there stood that Samoan bastard, looking at my wife through the window. When he saw the gun in my hand, he literally few over that back fence. That fence was solid rock and about five feet tall, but he never touched it!

After the Samoans found out I had a gun and dog, they didn’t bother us much.

We also went through our first earthquake in Hauula. It was just a few minutes long but it was scary. When it was over, everything that could make a noise, started barking or howling.

Speaking of howling, we had a lot of mongooses living in our attic. They don’t have any snakes in Hawaii but they do have mongooses (which eat the snakes). These critters did a lot of squealing and fighting in the attic but they didn’t bother us much.

We had date palms in our yard and four different types of bananas, Guava bushes, papaya trees and just about anything tropical you could ask for. The avocado pear trees were loaded with fruit but we hadn’t learned to like them, yet. The damned Samoans kept them cleaned up for us, though.

Finally, after a long wait, I was assigned quarters on the base at Kaneohe- in a housing development called “Bird Farm”. What a relief it was to get away from those Samoans and really start to enjoy our Hawaiian adventure. We formed a bridge club among some of the other crew and started having parties.

Live it up! And thank you for sharing. Maybe we’ve been rewinding lately because the present is hard to handle and these stories have a message of hope. Now, back to the future….

Today’s tip: Do a cartwheel if you can.

Welcome to McDonalds

Customer service note: While catching up with one of our interns who resides in the Orlando, FL area he mentioned visiting a McDonalds at about 3:30 AM. Intern places order at the speaker and is told that despite being open for business at this hour, they have a very limited menu, no chicken, no beef patties, just buns apparently. Intern says, no thanks, he’ll move on. Order taker replies ” Thank you for choosing McDonalds, now go suck a d–k!”

Very nice.

Now board the time machine (or leave) more notes from Grandfather’s diary: This first entry isn’t dated, and probably occurred several weeks after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, late December 1941 or January 1942.

“It was quite a shock to see what the Japs had done to that place. Battleships were laying all over the place. We took off from the Yorktown just off shore in Pearl Harbor and flew into Ford Island but Ford Island was in no shape to receive aircraft so we proceeded to Eva Field- a Marine air base out near Barber’s Point. We did make some low passes out near Barber’s and that picture will always be indelible in my mind. The Oklahoma was bottoms up. The Nevada was beached in the channel and the Arizona was fifteen feet under water at her berth, completely destroyed down to a hulk.

The U.S.S. OGALALA, an underwater mine vessel was sunk right in the middle of the harbor. Her crew scuttled her before the Japs got a chance to bomb her. If they hadn’t done that, I’m sure Pearl Harbor would be a few feet deeper because that ship was loaded with mines when the attack started. Fuel oil was all over the place- at least four inches thick.

We got replacements for our planes and crewman that we had lost. There wasn’t much frolicking going on around Honolulu in those days. There was a 2100 curfew, it was asking to get shot to be out after dark.

Man, that Eva Field was a feeder. Those Marine cooks had an outdoor barbecue pit rigged up and they served the darndest barbecue beef you ever tasted. After the food we had been eating aboard the Yorkamaru, that was heaven. We all ate like there was no tomorrow and for some of us, there wasn’t……

Today’s Memorial Tattoo:

Today’s tip: Spend the day with a toddler.

Refreshments, Anyone?

Last week was a sad week for pet owners, we had several calls from distraught clients who were dealing with the loss of an old friend. When we took our advisory team to visit the vet, there was an older couple getting ready to put down their pup after 14 years together. Seems everyone has a sad dog story, including yours truly…but not today.

We worked out a lot of frustration weeding and harvesting rocks. The big rocks are trophies and I collect them and give them a place of honor. “Shovel Buster” is my latest acquisition and is on display now.

Moved across town and helped Granny get her beds cleaned up. She’s my inspiration for this site (and in life), she started small memory gardens after the loss of her husband and son. She liked a military theme, after all that was how they had spent most of their life. Her husband, my grandfather was a complicated man and they spent over 50 years together. Several years after he died she said the only thing she needed a man for now was to run a chain saw.

She always makes me feel better and I often think about her as a young woman with four kids, with a man off to war, and years of moving a household coast to coast. I don’t know if I could handle it.

During the last years of his life, my grandfather would mix a few Manhattans , turn on the tape recorder and lay down his memoirs. I’m glad he did. Here’s an excerpt of a WWII experience when he was a 20 something Okie in the Coral Sea on the Yorktown:

“Our dive bombers scored a total of only two 1000 bomb hits but they were devastating. The Shokaku broke immediately in fire from stem to stern and from water line to the forepeak. They had ignited her aircraft fuel lines on the hanger deck. Wow-what a fire!

Then it was our turn. We had a good view of the Shokaku because she was afire and smoking heavily. We had only two enemy fighters attack us but our escorting fighters took care of them. The only thing wrong was that we were still dropping Mark Thirteen torpedoes and they ran, true to form, either too deep or they broached, and those that hit the ship simply bounced off as duds.

The Lexington planes didn’t fare too much better. They got one bomb hit on the Shokaki but, because of the stinko weather, they mostly got lost and milled around until it was time to return to base.

Meanwhile, our “bases” were catching it from the Japs, those Japanese torpedo and dive bombers were so much faster than ours that our fighters were amazed! For instance- their torpedo planes came in at a speed of 180 knots with torpedos attached…Our TBD aircraft were limited to about 120 knots with a fish attached.

The Yorktown took a bomb hit just aft of the super structure- right near elevator two. It went clear to the fifth deck (the armored deck) and exploded. It killed forty-one members of the Repair Crew Fire who were located in the Ship’s Service Compartment on the third deck. A lot more of those guys died later in sick bay.

When we arrived back at the Yorktown I couldn’t see much damage to her because all the damage was below decks. The bomb hit left nothing but about a ten inch hole in the flight deck where it went through.

The Skipper of the Yorktown- Captain Elliot Buckmaster ordered the flight crews below to the ready room where they dispensed a shot of whiskey to all of us. Actually, it would have taken a lot more than one shot to assuage my feeling that evening. I was plumb shook from the day’s actions and tired as hell.

The next announcement was that the ships cooks were serving sandwiches in the crew’s mess, below.

Now, the crew’s mess hall was right next to the sick bay, and one had to go through the passageway outside sick bay to get to the mess hall. The salvage and repair crews had stacked all of the dismembered and unidentified parts of human bodies from Repair Five in that passageway like a big stack of hay….Then, too, the water from fighting fires was sloshing back and forth across the deck- about four inches deep. Of course it was mostly blood from the pile of arms, legs, torsos, intestines, etc. in that stack. Then, there was the smell of butchered flesh. It smelled just like a slaughter house smells. To say the least- by the time I saw and smelled all of that, I sure as hell didn’t want a sandwich. In fact, I don’t remember being too hungry for several days after that. All night long, that night I could hear the funeral prayers being said and the sound of the bodies being ceremoniously dumped over the side in to the sea as their last resting place.”

Today’s tat, selected for the bleeding hearts we spotted coming up:

Your tip for better living: Be a superhero.

For the Love of Poppies

vintage postcard

Greetings!

Sowed a little seed today and ran a mental checklist of all the frustrations we’ve been feeling this week….realized that almost all the consternation was self created. What to do. Hmmm.

We love poppies, blood red oriental poppies. Ancient Egyptians placed garlands of poppies on mummies and the Greeks crowned their dead with the flower. Legend has it that in Europe, poppies sprang up on battlefields from the blood of slain soldiers. Poppies symbolize consolation, sleep, and rest in the Victorian language of flowers and was commonly used to memorialize the dead.

Speaking of sleeping, dreams were alive with mice last night. Very disturbing slumber. A former co-worker swore she could smell a mouse in the house. That dream was so vivid I could smell it today.

Speaking of smelling rats, this is why Dirtsister keeps it on the down low in the Show Me State. For the record, most of our business is East, West Coast and Canada.

Missouri funeral regulators have agreed to settle antitrust charges by the Federal Trade Commission and stop impeding the sale of caskets and other funeral merchandise by non-licensed funeral directors, the Kansas City Star reports. A 1965 state law has long allowed such sales but in 2005 the Missouri State Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors cracked down on a rural Missouri casket seller who, the board alleged, was providing licensed funeral services in violation of board regulations that clearly barred the sale or rental of “funeral merchandise. The state board sued Larry Gegner of Buffalo, Mo., but last year agreed to a consent order in Dallas County Circuit Court that clarified his legal right to sell caskets and dispense free advice to the public on how to cut funeral and burial costs. The national Funeral Consumers Alliance and the Virginia based-Institute for Justice that represented Gegner later persuaded the board to amend its regulations. The FTC announced the agreement today. Under the settlement, the board will not adopt such anticompetitive regulations in the future, the FTC said. The agreement with the FTC was a product of extensive discussion and clearly provides that the board has not been found in violation of any state or federal law, said board chairman Kenneth McGhee in a prepared statement. Our goal is to ensure Missourians make informed decisions when organizing final arrangements for their loved ones. The state’s six-member regulatory board includes five funeral directors.

At issue in this case was whether Larry Gegner a consumer advocate from Buffalo, Mo., who has spent the better part of his life selling caskets and teaching consumers about the often-inflated costs associated with burials could share his knowledge.

Larry’s argument was straightforward: people should have the right to teach and learn about something so important as how to bury a family member without getting ripped off by the funeral cartel.

Today’s tat memorial: anubis tattoo

Today’s tip for better living: Arm yourself… with information.

Own It!

Greetings!

Three Beautiful Things:

Fresh fruit salad
Naps
Knowing someone still loves you in your most unattractive moment

While wandering around the internets we stumbled onto this amusing post, I tuned in because the author had ripped a couple of my pix and referred to some of my product.

Jetpacks pointed out the Trimspa is still pimping Anna Nicole’s image. Howard K. Stern is probably licensing a deal for the Anna Nicole Smith Halloween costume. How many dead sexy Annas’ will we see later this fall?

Everything is for sale, and if you haven’t seen Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, check it out on DVD. Thanks again to JP for tipping us off. “Don’t expect too much, as it is a satire about a dumbed-down nation, but the many (and brilliant) stabs at corporations were severe enough to cause this movie to have to go underground.

No studio backing for its release. No marketing push. Left to flounder in limited runs in 16 cities, in some cases being billed as “Untitled Comedy by Mike Judge.” Then dumped on the DVD market with no publicity, hopefully to die a quiet death. That’s what happens when you bite the hands of Starbucks, Costco, Carls’ Jr., FedEx, American Express, Fox News and more. People wear disposable logo shirts in the year 2505 and anyone who reads is “a fag.”

Branding has been on our mind lately, I’ve noticed that the rock stars of the yoga world have branded their own styles of the ancient practice, including BREATHING. On the flip side of breathing, the McDeath of the funeral world has been in litigation over the attempt to trademark “Family Funeral Care”. Independents have been fighting hard to shut it down, funeral directors love the word “Dignity” and SCI already owns that.

AS SEEN ON TV: Our intern spotted some of our wares that we sold to MTV as props for one of their sick puppet shows.
Today’s Tip for Better Living: Take the last train to Clarksville.