Staring the Beast in the Face

The Beast is coming for me. Ever so slowly it advances towards me every day, almost leisurely...but still it comes. Constant. Unstoppable. It will arrive in a little over seven months and there is nothing I, or anyone else, can do about it. It doesn't pause, it doesn't hesitate, it doesn't sleep. It is on the horizon, shimmering in the distance, but it is there. Always advancing. Never, ever retreating. I cannot flee from it. It will follow me wherever I go, pursuing me.

It will overtake me. It will consume me, and I know the exact date when it will happen.

 The Beast has a name.

Sexagenarian.

Sixty. 6-0. Six decades on this earth.

How is that possible? It seems like, just yesterday evening, I was laying on the floor of our home on Hout Road watching my hero, Sergeant Saunders, and his band of G.I.s take on the German Army in the WW II television show 'Combat!' Or, the next night, following the exploits of Napoleon Solo and his sidekick Ilya Kuryakin as they saved the world from the forces of evil in the spy show 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'; they were the small screen's answer to James Bond, corny as the production may have been.

And now, in less than eight months, I'll be 60 years old.

They say the older you get, the faster time goes by. It is a truth of life. According to noted author Phillip Yaffe, it is all about anticipation and reflection. In younger years we anticipate events: first day of school, first little league baseball game, first trip to that big, exciting amusement park. As we age, we tend to look back and reflect on events such as weddings, graduation of children from high school, or the death of relatives and friends. When a child is five years old, that fifth year is twenty per cent of their life; they have fewer memories on which to reflect. However, a person who is 80 has a lifetime to look back on. More memory space is consumed in that octogenarian brain. I heard one analogy that makes sense: time is like a roll of toilet paper; in the beginning it is full and big. However, through use, that roll gets smaller and smaller, makes faster revolutions as you get closer to the core.

Then it is gone.

I try not to think about age. As a matter of fact, in my mind I'm still that sixteen year old junior at Madison Comprehensive High School. I believe all of us have that perception in our minds. We're young!

Not so fast, says the body, I'm going to slap you with reality as soon as you get out of bed. And it does, through aches and pains brought on by a life of injuries, illness and wear. Life, particularly my former profession, has been hard on my body; dislocations, broken bones, disc herniations with a dash of rods and screws thrown in for good measure, a knee replacement and then repair of a worn-out part seven years later, the invasion of arthritis in both shoulders and hands, becoming diabetic....and, oh yeah, that whole renal carcinoma thing this past summer. That episode cost me part of a kidney.

But I am still here. I'd like to stay a little longer, too, if that's what the Good Lord has in mind.

Isn't it frustrating, when you get to be our age, to realize you can no longer do things you could five years ago? Or even last year? That has been my biggest obstacle, dealing with that particular issue. However, being older does have a few advantages. Friends and relatives don't call you to help move furniture every time they decide to change homes. You get discounts on certain days at restaurants. Occasionally, younger people are courteous enough to open doors for you...although, for me, I draw the line on that one. Unless I'm using a walker, crutches or wheel chair, I'll open my own doors.

Age also brings about retirement at some point; for me, it happened in August of 2013, due mainly to those aforementioned injuries. I had difficulty dealing with retirement shortly after it happened, as I think many people do; what am I going to do with my time? How will I handle this feeling of uselessness?

The answer? The passage of time.

With my working life in the rear-view mirror, I've found other activities to engage in...one of which is writing. I developed this growing passion for creating stories with words when I was in high school, which wasn't just yesterday. I first started writing seriously back in 1992, when I was placed on administrative leave by the Police Department after being involved in a shooting. It had been an off-the-cuff fictional work, a law enforcement story, done on a typewriter ( remember those? ) for stress relief. Believe me, being compelled to use deadly force on another human being is extremely stressful. Looking back on that piece...well, it wasn't very good, and ended up in the circular file after I was cleared to return to work. However, the hook had been set.

Now that I'm retired I have plenty of time to write, especially during the winter months. Apart from a book that I've been working on for a few years ( it sees light at the end of the literary tunnel ), I've produced several non-fiction pieces dealing with actual events that took place during my police career, involving both humor and drama. I do this mainly so that, ten or 15 years from now, I'll still be able to recall them through print. I've done fictional stories about another passion, too, that has been developed after retirement: the hobby of metal detecting. I got involved at the behest of my wife's brother, never imagining that it would become as important as it is to me. Now, when the weather and my schedule cooperate, I'm out scanning the ground somewhere, trying to recover history. I love history, particularly America's Civil War and World War Two. I've spent time on vacations and trips engaging in metal detecting, in places such as Charleston, South Carolina, where history abounds, Florida and North Carolina. My brother-in-law Steve and I just got back from a trip to the mountains of Virginia to hunt an old, abandoned plantation. My knee, back and shoulders are still complaining.

Ibuprofen, ice packs and the heating pad are becoming close friends of mine these days. It comes with the territory. That's OK, though, because I know several people my age who are in worse shape than me; unable to climb stairways, mow their own yard, shovel snow...mundane tasks that most people take for granted. I have a good friend who is an inspiration to me; a guy who lost both legs in a firefighting accident. Instead of brooding on his lot in life or feeling sorry for himself, this man has taken his attitude to higher ground. I never hear him complain, he always has a smile when I see him and he just has a fantastic attitude. When I catch myself complaining about my shoulders and hands aching, I think about Joe...and then I shut up. Things could always be worse, as my police pal John Fuller says.

Getting older is just a part of life. The best thing you can do, as far as I'm concerned, is just enjoy it to the fullest. Yes, it's a cliché, but that doesn't make it any less true. Get outside, find something that makes you happy and just roll with it. Try a new activity. Volunteer at the local animal shelter or participate in some sort of outreach program. Take a walk and reacquaint yourself with neighbors. Look up old friends you may have lost touch with and make a lunch date or go see a movie. There's a whole spectrum of things you can do or get involved in that can reinvigorate your body, mind and spirit, even something as simple as sitting under a tree and reading a good book.

Just don't stay in that recliner all day, staring at The Beast on the horizon.

Just relax.....with Candy Dulfer's smooth sax on a Monday evening, as she does Lily Was Here.

Gorgeous AND talented!

I'll be posting a new blog tomorrow.

Karmatic Justice

True story ( as best as I can recall ): Back in the early 90s, while working midnights at MPD, there was a mope in the north end of the city who was pretty much  the crack cocaine kingpin; this was before or early on in the time period where the Detroit and Chicago factions were starting to move in on local dealers. The drug task force had been chewing on this guy and his crew, as were the patrol officers, and had made significant strides in crippling his trade. We’ll call this scumbag ‘Doc’.

It was summer time, a warm night….a Sunday/Monday; there was nothing moving outside. We’d received a stolen car complaint a few hours earlier and, as luck would have it, the car was found…sitting in the middle of Bowman Street at Buckingham St, crossways and engine spewing steam. Somebody had run the crap out of it and left it abandoned. This was at about 0300 hours. Gary Foster, who is like a brother to me, was the officer assigned to the call; he was fairly new, maybe a couple years on the job. I was a Field Training Officer at the time, and had Joann Krausmann on board…she was driving this night. Gary was standing in the street waiting on a tow truck to arrive as we cruised up, and we stopped and chatted for a few moments, making a joke or insulting one another…typical cop stuff. I’d told Gary, “If you need anything, we’ll be in the area”, and he responded that he’d be OK as soon as the tow showed up.

As we pulled away, Joann turned east on Buckingham…and then BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!! , sounding like the gunshots were right outside our cruiser. Simultaneously, Gary starts screaming on the radio “ SHOTS FIRED SHOTS FIRED! 300, I’M BEING FIRED ON !! “. Joann whipped the cruiser around and we screeched to a halt beside the abandoned stolen car, which Gary was crouched behind, weapon drawn. Sirens seemed to be coming from every direction, and shortly there were about ten other police officers on scene….our guys, the sheriff’s department and the state patrol. Gary was OK…they’d missed him…but a little shook up; who wouldn’t be? Cruisers streamed through the neighborhood, searching for the suspect(s) who’d shot at Gary from the north, around the Bowman/Harker intersection. After 20-25 minutes or so, the search was called off…no sign of them anywhere.

As you’d expect, the incident initiated an intensive investigation and round of new policies; the detective bureau utilized their street contacts, searching for any information on whoever had shot at Gary. Patrol guys chatted up neighborhoods in the area, trying to get that one shred of intel to work with. Nothing.

Finally, somebody got something; METRICH had an informant ( they’re called ‘cooperating individuals’ now; ‘informant’ has a negative connotation ) who’d been told that the shooter was ‘Malcolm’ a young guy I’d had contact with a few times who was on the wrong side of the law. Malcolm had been instructed to shoot a policeman by Doc, in retaliation for all the heat that had been brought down on his little operation. I’m sure thousands of man-hours were expended by the Special investigative Bureau, METRICH and the Detective Bureau in order to expand on this information, but nothing concrete enough to take to the prosecutor’s office came out of it. Malcolm, budding drug trafficker that he was, would remain free.

Fast-forward a year, almost to the day Ptl. Gary Foster was shot at several times; afternoon shift receives a call of a shooting with a ‘man down’…somebody had been shot on Vale Avenue, which is the next intersection south on Bowman from the location of the night shift shooting. Officers arrived to discover a body laying in the yard of a home, the body having been shot multiple times. It was Malcolm. Investigation showed that two underage thuglets had tried to rob Malcolm of his dope, cash and jewelry, and had been shot in the process. Malcolm had tried to flee, staggered from the street and collapsed in the front yard of the house on Vale, succumbing to his wounds.

The address of the house whose yard Malcolm had collapsed in was 173.

Gary Foster’s badge number?

173.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Dear Private Citizens...

Unless you wear a badge, have worn a badge, have a spouse, parent, son, daughter, aunt or uncle who has worn or is wearing a badge....you have no idea what being a law enforcement officer is like.

You see us sitting in a cruiser, stationary in a park with our head down. 'Sleeping', you think; in reality we are probably working on finishing a report.

You see us cruising your neighborhood time and again. 'Overpaid and wasting the taxpayers' gas money', you think; in reality we may be looking for a lost child, or the suspect in a home burglary that happened the next street over just a few minutes before.

You see us walking through bars or driving through a liquor establishment's parking lot. 'Fishing for drunks and harassing patrons', you think; in reality we're looking for trouble, which often involves alcohol, or providing an extra presence because of the robbery of a patron the week before in that very same lot.

You see two, maybe three cruisers parked at a restaurant or coffee shop. 'Goofing off', you think; in reality we finally had a lull in the never-ending stream of calls for service for the first time during our shift and are wolfing down a meal. Maybe only a partial meal, because we are subject to being called upon to respond to an incident at any moment, lunch time or not.

You see us alongside the road on a car stop, talking to a motorist. 'Trying to make that ticket quota', you think; in reality we may be assisting someone with vehicle trouble, giving directions, or handling a road rage incident, which is becoming more frequent with every passing day.

You see us at high school basketball or football games working security, leaning against a wall or fence. 'Lazy', you think; in reality we may be combating a bad back, bad knee or bad hip, and leaning against something solid may be the only way to get some semblance of relief. Bad backs, hips or knees are an affliction that most cops develop during years on the job.

You see us on foot patrol in a downtown area, constantly going in and out of shops and businesses. 'Shopping on the job', you think; in reality we're building relationships and trust with the shop owners.

You see us talking to a group of young people at a basketball court in a park or on a street corner. 'Harassing those kids', you think; in reality we're trying to make a difference in young lives, trying to show today's youth that we, the police, are not the enemy, and that they alone have the ability to choose what path in life they will take.

It's called 'community-based policing'. You get to know the people you serve and protect. They don't only see you when something bad happens. The officers become familiar faces.

What you, the private citizen, don't see on a daily basis is the worst of humanity. You don't see the death, the despair that's bad enough to make someone want to end their life. You don't see the abused children, covered with bites from bedbugs and living amidst animal feces while their parent is out drinking or smoking crack, leaving the kids to fend for themselves.

You don't see us sitting in the cruiser, crying, because we just handled a call involving the death of an infant due to neglect. We're crying because we have an infant at home the same age. You don't see us when we're out at 0300 hours on one of the coldest nights of the winter, looking for the elderly woman afflicted with dementia who wandered out of her house, trying to find her before frostbite and hypothermia end her life.

You don't see the inner rage when one of your brothers or sisters runs afoul of the law, knowing that, once again, the media and public opinion will paint you all with the broad brush of 'dirty cops'.

You don't see the broken relationships caused by the pressures of the job. It takes a very special individual to be the spouse of a police officer, someone with patience and understanding, someone who knows they are the rock on which we lean.

You don't see the officers absent from Christmas and Thanksgiving family gatherings because they had to work. You don't see us at our kids' sporting events and school plays because of the job.

You don't see or feel the fear and apprehension when we get sent to a call involving a gun and someone who has either already used it or fully intends to, knowing that we, the police, have to respond. There's no one else, no others but those of us who are sworn to protect the public, knowing we could lose our lives in the process.

You don't see us grieving at the loss of yet another brother or sister of the badge, wondering if maybe, just maybe, our time will be next.

You're not there at 0400 hours, knocking on the door of a home and knowing you are about to devastate the family inside by telling them their only son, a fifteen-year-old who had snuck out of the home, had been killed in a traffic crash. You also weren't there two hours earlier, investigating that accident in the pouring rain, having seen that son's mangled, unrecognizable form.

You haven't seen the body crushed flat by heavy equipment in an industrial accident, the victim's internal organs lying on the shop floor beside him because of the sheer weight of the machinery, the old farmer who hung himself in his barn at sunrise because he thought he had cancer, the young teen on foot who decided to try to cross the tracks ahead of a freight train on a dare... and lost. You didn't watch the distraught man, locked in his car, shoot himself in the head while looking you straight in the eye, all because his wife had left him for another man.

You didn't see the woman, stabbed thirty-three times by her enraged boyfriend, lying dead in a room whose walls looked as if they'd been splattered with red paint...while her three young children were sleeping downstairs on a bare wood floor on Thanksgiving morning.

You, dear citizens, weren't there to witness those terrible events, those tragic incidents.

We were.

And we pay a price every day. Sometimes, for some of us, for the rest of our days on this earth.

Next time you see a police officer on duty, try not to jump to conclusions. Think about what you haven't seen.

...and what we have.

Patience

Whatever happened to patience? Is it me, or does it seem like no one chooses to embrace this quality nowadays? Road rage leaps at us from the daily headlines. Fast-food workers get verbally abused because a patron had to wait a little longer for that fresh batch of fries to come out of the fryer. The guy in the pick-up truck next to you at the red light is screaming at the top of his lungs at the timed, inanimate object that controls traffic flow, mindless of the fact that the traffic signal cares not a whit about his schedule. Patience. It is a commodity growing more scarce each day. Why is that? Some would say that it is a result of technology. We get instant news, instant social interaction and instant entertainment from that one object no one can do without: the cellular telephone. I won't go into the evolution of this piece of electronic wizardry, but it is a far cry from that bag phone I bought in 1994. Prior to that, I was on the cutting-edge of communication by virtue of the Motorola pager clipped to my belt, a device that evolved into models with which you could actually send text messages to someone equipped with a like device. For an additional price, you'd get news, weather and sports headlines and scores. All the while, the cellular phone was evolving, too. Then someone had the brilliant idea of merging the two devices. Cell phones now are an integral part of the lives of Americans; a Pew Research study, conducted in 2014, asserts that ninety per cent of U.S. citizens own a cell phone, with 64% of those being of the smart phone variety. In 1994, 24 million Americans subscribed to a cellular service. Today, right now, as you read this? Two hundred eleven million, a number which increases by the thousands daily. Nowadays, practically as soon as you walk out of the store with your brand-new smartphone...it is obsolete. That's OK with me. My two-year-old phone does what I need it to do. I'm content being a cave man with a dinosaur of a cell phone. I'm at the age where 'cutting-edge' only has to do with the steak knife I'm using, and 'new and improved' doesn't impress me as it did three decades ago. My truck, new in 2004, has 121,000 miles and crank-up windows...and I love it. It, too, does what I need it to do, which is get me from point A to point B with whatever gear or belongings I need at the moment. I don't need power-everything or heated seats or navigational aids, nor do I need a port for my wireless device so I can listen to my favorite music while I drive. AM/FM radio is fine with me. Patience. Want to see how much you have of it? Shut your phone off for a day, stay away from the computer and social networks. I shut down my Facebook account in December because I caught myself checking it repeatedly every half-hour...while I was in South Carolina visiting my 80-year-old mother. I was there to see her, not interact with friends and acquaintances who were six hundred miles away here in Ohio. Facebook was also proving to be a hindrance in the quest to complete a novel I've been working on...so my social media had to go. I did it without announcement or fanfare, no long goodbyes or explanation. It was extremely difficult at first; the closest thing I can equate it to was giving up cigars in 2014, after decades of indulgence. As time has passed, though, I miss both vices less each day. Why? Patience. Throw contentment in there, too. I don't have all I want but I have all I need. Sure, I'd like to have that beach house on Edisto Island, but I am content here at Ram Field Ranch...aside from winter, that is. As I've gotten older it seems that every snow/ice/cold season gets tougher to endure, although now, being retired, I no longer suffer those long, dark winter nights while in a police cruiser. Being warm and toasty in my bed alongside my bride is much more preferable. Maybe patience is a generational thing, something that comes with the passage of time. I'm quite certain that every generation, as they've gotten into twilight years, has wondered how the younger set would make it, would survive in the world which was passing by. I wonder myself, being a 'Baby-Boomer', how the Millenials will deal with life. Not nearly all of them, mind you, but quite a few...those who lack that special gift of patience. This new age of young people sometimes seems to be dominated by the 'everything now' and 'entitlement' mind set; what the Greatest Generation and Baby-Boomers worked decades for, some Millenials want immediately: big, new house, new cars, that $100,000-a-year job/lifestyle. Unless you win the lottery, it doesn't work that way. The extra things I've had throughout life I worked for, by taking on extra shifts; moonlighting as hotel security after finishing my shift at the police department or working off-duty security at high school sporting events. Sometimes, by taking on a part-time job. I clearly remember Dad working another part-time job on weekends while he labored during the week at General Motors, at a time before the big union contracts. He did what he had to do to provide for his family...a trait that was passed on to me. Patience. That was passed along, too

Revenge of the Crows

True story:

Crows. Those big, black scavengers of the air. In the fall and winter, those birds would wreak havoc with pedestrians and shop owners in the downtown area of the city where I worked, gathering in large numbers to roost in the trees in Central Park or, as we called it, The Square.

This particular area was home to numerous shops, stores, taverns and restaurants, bustling with activity. When fall came, the store owners and shopkeepers fought a constant battle with the thousands of birds, who, when they were startled or took flight, would often leave droppings...everywhere. It was a morning ritual, seeing the business owners outside hosing off the sidewalks and awnings, a really nasty headache and health hazard for they and their customers. The city had installed electronic noise makers, put fake snakes in the trees...nothing helped alleviate their chosen roosting area. Crows, being the highly-intelligent creatures they are, would soon figure out that the anti-crow measures were not a threat.

We, the police, saw them as an opportunity, a tool to be used against our brothers and sisters in blue.

The thought first occurred to me one night as I and another officer circled the square in our cruisers, illuminating the crows with our spotlights, flashing the beams wildly from side-to-side; this would startle the flock, causing the illuminated sky to turn black with them as they filled the air, their thousands of crow-voices 'cawing'. It was quite the spectacle and racket.

After emptying the trees, Big Jim pulled up next to me, facing the opposite direction, so that we were window-to-window; we'd both cracked our windows about two inches so that we could carry on a conversation and laugh about our aggravation of the winged rats.

We engaged in this activity knowing we'd have to use the power washer in the police garage to clean our cruisers but the entertainment was worth it.

Until one of the black sharpshooters nailed me on the shoulder through that small, open space.

Big Jim ( so called because he was six-foot-five and 300 pounds; a guy you wanted with you if you had to handle a bar fight ) laughed uproariously, tears streaming down his face...a face that greatly resembled that of the late, great comedy actor Dom Deluise. Of course, by the end of our nightly tour, the entire shift knew about the incident. I took a lot of ribbing.

A few nights later, Big Jim and another officer were dispatched to a minor complaint at an apartment just southeast of The Square; nothing major, but I'd decided to cruise by just to be safe. Their cruisers were parked at the curb in front of the apartment building, which sat probably thirty yards from the street, and they'd just finished the call and were exiting the building. It was then that I noticed the leafless trees in the yard of the building, which overhung the sidewalk leading to the entrance, were absolutely filled with roosting crows.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Waiting until they'd gotten about a third of the way back to their cars, I spotlighted the birds, causing the mass to take flight...and crap. Everywhere. On Big Jim, on the other officer ( in war, there will be collateral damage ), their cruisers...it was a beautiful thing. I could actually hear the 'splats' on the sidewalk of those 'bombs' that missed their mark. Big Jim and his partner started running for the safety of their cruisers; I'd never seen my large pal run so fast. As I drove away, my laughter couldn't drown out the stream of profanity hurled in my direction by both officers, Jim's voice being the loudest.

Some memories, even after all the years that have passed, are still sweet.

                  Actors, NFL playoffs and Offspring- Induced Stress

      I intend to go see the movie 13 Hours very soon.  Michael Bay's latest directing effort looks to be a very compelling film, revealing little-known actions of heroes other than those who lost their lives at the American embassy on September 11, 2011 in Benghazi. While watching the film's trailer I noticed one of my favorite actors, James Badge Dale, as one of the lead characters.

   Who?

   James Badge Dale. Mr. Dale, who played a main role in the WW II mini-series The Pacific, has appeared in various efforts in recent years, including roles on Denis Leary's FDNY-themed television series Rescue Me and films such as Iron Man 3, The Departed, The Lone Ranger and World War Z, among others. Dale has a knack for making his characters very believable by drawing on his wide-ranging charismatic and emotional talents. I, for one, thought he was very good in The Pacific.

   I'm kind of a follower of lesser-known actors.

   This year's NFL playoff season has, so far, been nothing short of spectacular. Last-second and overtime wins seem to be the norm this time around, and last night's Arizona/Green Bay match up saw more of the same. The Packers' Aaron Rodgers threw a 'Hail Mary' as time expired and, you guessed it, touchdown. The extra point tied the game and sent it to overtime.

   Arizona ended it in three plays, winning on a shovel pass to All-World receiver Larry Fitzgerald. Last weekend Minnesota lost to the Packers because they missed a chip shot field goal with seconds remaining; The Steelers advanced over Cincinnati in a penalty-marred contest amid a last-minute scoring drive a week ago, but suffered injuries to players they can't afford to lose, including Ben Roethlisberger. We'll see later today if his ailing throwing shoulder will stand up to anything more than short-range passes and hits from the Denver defense.

   Well, so far this winter, we in north central Ohio have been fairly lucky; I've only started my snow blower once, and its the middle of January. Bone-freezing wind chill, however, will hit us sometime today, and tomorrow's high temp is forecast to be eleven degrees. But hey, I'm not complaining. Heck, I even got out for a metal detecting session a week ago, unheard of for this time of year in Ohio.

   Last night, my oldest son, Travis, stopped by with his girl; they informed my wife and I that they were leaving for Florida in a few hours ( they're on the road now ) on a spur-of-the-moment trip to see his mother and my other son, Tyler. I'm glad he's going to visit his brother, but Hollie is suffering from a really bad cold and I have questions about his truck's ability to make the trip successfully. I spent a fitful night trying to sleep due to worrying about them and won't rest until I know they've made it safely. 

   Kids. They have no idea how they worry parents...until they have their own children. THEN they understand.

   That's it for this morning...through an old cop's eyes.

                                Actor James Badge Dale in The Pacific