When The Snows Came

They'd forecast this heavy snow a few days in advance. Evidence could initially be seen at the grocery stores, where the bread and milk shelves were quickly depleted. Gas stations began running out of fuel. Snow shovels and bags of de-icing salt started getting difficult to find. Pickup trucks with snow plows, some with those little $4.99 yellow flashing lights magnetically stuck to the roofs, became increasingly visible on the roadways, waiting for their dollar bills to start falling from the skies.

Then it started snowing, steadily.

My bride and I were at the house we'd just purchased when it began, discussing with a family friend the pros and cons of running water and sewer lines up to the 2nd floor, where we want to build a half bath. By the time Tom left, an hour later, it became obvious we'd be engaged in adventurous driving on the way home.

Right after trekking downtown to the BMV office. Stacy needed her yearly registration sticker.

Here's the thing about winter driving and, admit it, we all have this same mindset: nobody else drives as well in the snow as we do. Everyone else drives too fast, too slow, takes up two lanes because they have no idea where the lane lines are, don't have the faintest idea how to brake on slick streets or how to get up icy hills.

Everyone else needs to just stay home so I can get to where I'm going.

So here Stacy and I are, inbound on Woodville Road towards Cook Rd, snaking moderately through the 3 ninety-degree turns. An oncoming car, driven by a Generation X-er on her cell phone, decides the center of the road belongs to her white Jeep SUV.

Disaster averted, thanks to a drive entrance I was able to encroach upon.

People have been remarking negatively about the City of Mansfield's lack of road maintenance during winter weather, saying they never see city plow trucks working the streets. We passed two withing a 200-yard stretch, plows down and salt slingers scattering material.

We safely arrived at the downtown license bureau, where we were reminded yet again why we prefer going to Shelby's office: the employees in Whippet Country are much more pleasant to deal with.

My wife, now feeling much better for having purchased her new plate sticker (the old one expires tomorrow...she was convinced she would be stopped and thrown in jail for having an expired registration sticker this coming Tuesday), and I started for our current Melody Lane home.     

There is no way to get to Ram Field Ranch without encountering a hill. A big one.

That being the case, I took the bull by the corns and traveled across Grace Street, which my wife thought was crazy; Stacy thought that the big hill between Stewart Road and Sabo Drive would be impossible for our Chevy Equinox to climb, road conditions being what they were.

"There's a key", I told her. "Momentum. Make sure no one is in front of you when you start down the hill so you don't lose momentum because of something they're doing."

Worked like a charm. We had no problem getting up that hill because of inertia.     

We got home and in the garage. Our refuse container, which I'd had the foresight to cover with a tarp supported by multiple two-by-fours the night before, was quickly accumulating snow, which I knew I'd have to sweep off. 

Then it REALLY started snowing.

We resumed our in-home packing, preparing for next weekend's move to the new place, while the storm really started getting serious. I went out and removed snow from the tarp three more times, then got the snowblower into the mix, clearing out 2/3rds of the drive in the semi-lighted darkness.

This morning, after more snow and high winds overnight, you can't tell I even touched it. But that's OK, though....

...my wife just put a pot roast, with carrots, potatoes and onions, in the crockpot. We may not be bale to get out, but we'll be eating well.                 

The Blame Game

Raising kids to adulthood is no easy task.

I'm not talking about teaching them to read, dress and feed themselves, teaching them to play catch with a ball and glove, how to make their beds, wash their own clothes, tie their shoes. That's the easy stuff.

Teaching them values, morals, character...things that will guide them through life...is much tougher. Right from wrong, honest from dishonest, good from bad. Those are the foundations on which to build and raise a productive citizen who is an asset to those around them. A leader among leaders.

Most of all, we want them to make decisions that will have positive impacts while also learning the value of personal responsibility.

Ah, but there are obstacles along the way, pot holes in the road of life. Single-parent households, less-than-desirable friends, peer pressure...they can all work in concert to hinder the process. Some roadblocks are beyond what we, as parents, can control and can have a profound effect on our young adults.

When that occurs, in whatever form, we must choose how we, as parents, react. We pray the issues aren't insurmountable.         

Or fatal.

On the sixth of December, 2018, 19-year-old Andrew Herrera walked into a San Antonio Popeye's chicken shack wearing a mask, hoodie and brandishing a gun, intent on robbing the restaurant and patrons.

Herrera confronted a man who was dining with his family, demanding his money and pointing the firearm at the man's children. When told by the man that he'd spent his cash on food for his kids, Herrera then turned his weapon on a Popeye's employee, looking away from his initial target.

The seated patron, who has a concealed-carry permit, used the distraction to draw his own handgun and fire on Herrera, striking the masked gunman five times. Herrera died at a local hospital.

While the incident is still under investigation, a police spokesman stated there would be no charges filed against the patron protecting his family.

That brings us to the deceased gunman's mother, Cynthia Ruiz. She hasn't had an easy life; her husband died, leaving her to raise Herrera alone.

While not excusing her son's decision to attempt an armed robbery, she wonders why the man who shot Herrera didn't stop after the first round.

"Why shoot him four more times? Why did he shoot him 5 times?"

Then she added that her son, diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic, suffered from mental health issues and that he'd recently stopped taking his medication....in effect, blaming her son's actions on his refusal to medicate and his death on an overzealous gun owner.

Police investigators stated that Herrera was a suspect in several other armed robberies.

The blame game has become endemic in today's society, finding a way to shift guilt onto anything or anyone other than yourself. I don't blame Mrs. Ruiz for what her son did, nor do I blame the unnamed father for protecting the lives of his family and the employees inside that Popeye's on December 6th.
Herrera didn't take into account what effect his refusal of medication would have or the possibility that he would not be the only armed person inside the restaurant.

He should have. The minute he pulled on the mask and drew a handgun, young Andrew Herrera crafted his own destiny. It was his decision, and it was a tragically bad one.

No one else is to blame.

Offended? Get Over Your Fragile Feelings and Grow Up

I write a weekly column for the local newspaper about our military veterans who've served in conflicts and wars from times gone by: World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I put a premium on the opportunities to interview the WW II and Korea folks, especially, because there are so many fewer of them.

There's a Facebook page I run, entitled, 'A Veteran's Story'; all of the veterans that have been profiled to date are on that page. Every week, when a new story is posted, I'll make that week's soldier the profile picture for the page and, if there's a suitable one available, it'll be posted as that week's page background photo.

It's just one more way of honoring these patriots.

Last week's story was about Morrie Sheffer, who served in the Army's 8th Air Corps in Europe during WW II. As part of his duties in the bomb wing's public affairs office, Morrie wrote stories for the outfit's newspaper...an assignment that afforded the young soldier the opportunity to travel all over Europe and write on a variety of topics, including the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.

He also wrote a story after being sent to tour Dachau Prison Camp, the Third Reich's very first genocidal extermination facility, shortly after the war. 31,951 souls were executed there.

To put that into perspective, imagine a just-shy-of-capacity crowd at the Cleveland Indians' Progressive Field being killed with Zyklon-B gas by the Nazis, victims who were told they were being given showers.

Mr. Sheffer didn't have very many photos from his time in WW II; since he'd covered the Dachau camp, I chose a photo from the internet to use as the weekly page background, a photo from Dachau.

A photo from the Dachau crematory ovens, one showing three prisoners standing beside a deceased victim about to be burned to ashes.

One of the page readers was offended by the photograph, sending me an email to tell me how terribly offended she was and how ashamed I should be for using that picture. She certainly got her moneys' worth. I didn't reply to her communication but, knowing she also follows this page, I will now.

Get over it.

Get over your offended self. What happened at Dachau, and all the other Nazi death camps, is history, very well-documented history. It is a terrible, horrific history, but it is history nonetheless, whether you see those pictures or not.

Conditions were so terrible that, after visiting the Ohrdruf sub-camp at Buchenwald, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered that members of Congress and prominent newspaper editors be flown to Europe in order to witness the atrocities committed at these death camps. He wanted it on record, in print, in photographs, in newsreels, so that there could be no denial of what had been done to these human beings by the Third Reich.

I will not bend or distort history, no matter how distasteful it may be to some. Your feelings may be fragile but history...and truth...doesn't care.

Neither do I.

Resolutions Made and Broken...Maybe

A conversation with myself...

"New year, new me!"

Yeah, OK.

"No, seriously, I'm going be a better version of me in 2019."

That's the same thing you said last year, remember?

"Well, yes, but..."

That's my point. Good intentions and sincerity turned into the same old you.

"Hold on a minute. I ate better, lost weight and got my A1c down over 2 full points,"

Yeah, you did...for awhile. Then good ol' Mr Temptation eased his way right back into the mix, though.

"Hey, but I did what I set out to do, didn't I?"

True. You're doing OK with the blood sugar and slipped up just a little on the 'eating right' deal but, overall, I guess you were a little different. So, what's it gonna be this year?

"Well, for one thing, I AM going to write a little more. I also want to let go of a few things, you know, put the past behind me and just keep moving forward. 'Can't change the past', as they say, and regret doesn't do anyone any good. I also will be making a concerted effort to get rid of smokeless tobacco."

Really? HA! How many times have you tried that one, then crashed and burned?

"I admit, its been very difficult; this time, though, I have a little extra motivation."

Oh yeah? What's that?

"Her name is Mila, my month-old granddaughter. She's gonna need her Papaw so I have to kick that habit. I mean, who else will make her ornery and spoil her? Plus my wife will be happy if I get rid of the pouches, too."

Yeah, gotta keep your redheaded angel happy. I mean, she's the one who turned you around and got life back on track for you. You owe that woman a lot.

"Yes I do; she sure could have done a lot better than me, that's for sure. I'm a lucky guy."

No, you're blessed. You also need to stop with the self-negativity, bub.

"That's true. If she's happy, I'm happy. Still, when I look in the mirror while shaving, I wonder what she sees in me. She sure didn't marry me because I'm dashingly handsome."

There you go again...

"Right. Sorry."

So, how soon do the pouches go away? It IS January 1st....

"How about....NOW?"

"

Semantics, Generations and Society

Please forgive the extended absence...we've had a lot happening lately.

Have you ever noticed how, as you've progressed through life, words and titles change, yet still have basically the same meaning?

For instance, a doctor's office or medical complex is now a 'wellness center'. Same place but different title. 'Wellness' implies 'good', kind of gives us a warm and fuzzy feeling. Instead of asking 'how's your health?' maybe we should ask, 'how's your wellness?'

Personnel managers are now 'human resources officers'....as opposed to 'inhuman resources'?

Maintenance departments are now 'operations centers'. People who work in operations still wax the company floors and mow the company grass.

The examples are endless.

During the War on Terror, there are no 'combat reporters'; they are 'embedded journalists.' Regardless of the title, they still get shot at right along with the troops they are annoying. Side note: none of the embedded newsies today can hold a candle to the great Ernie Pyle, who was a war correspondent in the Pacific theater during WW II. Pyle was killed in combat during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. Being so highly respected by the troops he covered, he was interred in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu...with his helmet. Pyle was also awarded a posthumous Purple Heart, a very rare occurrence for a civilian.

Which brings me to generational labels. Pyle was a part of America's 'Greatest Generation'; since then, we've had Baby Boomers, generations X and Y...and now Millennials. In my personal opinion, each generation has gotten a little weaker as far as societal standards and moral direction. Need an example? The old TV show 'Ozzie and Harriet'. When they'd shoot a scene that took place in the parental bedroom, they always depicted Mom and Dad as sleeping in separate beds. Always. Now? It's not uncommon to see partial nudity in bedroom scenes on television.

As part of the Baby Boomer generation, we grew up in a much different world. Cell phones, selfies, the internet, social media...they didn't exist. If we rode bikes we didn't do it wearing helmets; if we crashed and got scraped up, Mom would douse the wound with mercurochrome and slap a band-aid on it, good as new. We weren't rushed to the wellness center for an MRI or CT scan, where the medical staff could quite possibly report the parents to social services for child neglect because the kid wasn't wearing a bike helmet.

Don't even broach the subject of discipline. We didn't have 'time outs'; we had Dads with belts or Moms with switches.

...and the world would be a better place today if society still had them.

Self-Inflicted Wounds

I don't sleep much, averaging around five hours a night; arthritis in the shoulders and metal in the lower back see to that. As Dick Marcincko said in one of his books, 'Pain lets you know you're still alive.'

Awakening to this reminder of life at 0430, I made my usual breakfast of oatmeal (containing a tablespoon of peanut butter) and a non-fat yogurt, to go along with my Tim Horton's black gold, and retired to the recliner to browse the TV menu.

'Destroyed In Seconds' on Discovery caught my attention; this show depicts all sorts of disasters and accidents caught on video, so this would be my breakfast entertainment. Hey, it beats reading the back of the oatmeal box, right?

I was struck, while watching, by the number of avoidable incidents the show depicted. Things like earthquakes and hurricanes happen, you can't prevent them, but the number of people hurt by performing less-than-intelligent, unnecessary stunts was dumbfounding. That's saying something, coming from a guy who spent 31 years dealing with the public's problems.

For instance, the guy performing stunts on his motorcycle on a public highway as his buddy rides behind him, filming. He lost control in a high-speed wobble, went down and slammed into a car parked on the berm, all caught on tape. He suffered a broken arm and spine, but he survived.

The amateur stunt rider was lucky, though he suffered a painful price; others in the program weren't as fortunate.

It got me to thinking about the title of the program and how it can apply to events in our lives; a moment of pleasure or daring destroying our lives, literally in seconds. Allowing external influences to overcome our common sense, we have often made straight-out dumb moves or judgements. Some of those can do or has done irreparable damage, either physically, emotionally or both.

Though my life wasn't destroyed, Lord knows I've made my fair share of short-sighted, spur-of-the-moment decisions, most of them when I was a younger man. Its by the grace of God I am even here to realize those facts. For instance, my cousin and I thought it would be a good idea to walk out to the middle of a twin-tracked railroad bridge spanning the Ohio River; we discovered an access ladder that led down to the top of the central support buttress, about ten feet below the rail support timbers. That's where we were when a 100-car coal train rolled by mere feet above our heads, shaking the entire structure so badly I was sure it would come apart and throw us to certain death into the river a hundred feet below.

There's an excuse for that one, though, albeit weak: I was 14 years old. Kids and teens don't see danger nearly as well as adults, but that little trek could easily have cost us our lives. I told my parents about that one thirty-five years after the fact; Mom still wanted to take a belt to me.

The worst of the wounds we cause aren't the ones to ourselves, though, but rather to those we love. I've been on both ends of that scenario and, in both incidences, the emotional pain was just as intense as any physical pain could have been. Somewhere along the lines of both alcohol was involved.

I stopped drinking a long time ago, one of the best decisions of my life. The pain I had been causing to both myself and those I cared about was destructive. I took care of me first, which also took care of those close to me and, as a by-product, terminated other problems. Unfortunately, when the other side of a partnership refuses to acknowledge that a significant issue exists in their life, you can't fix it for them. They're far too busy revelling in their imagined glory to really take a look at themselves and see it.

What do you do? You move on. Impulsive behavior, in most cases, is going to cause damage somewhere in your life or someone else's, either immediately or down the road. Damage that appears later will always be at an unexpected time. Believe me on this one; experience is a great teacher.

Learn from your mistakes. Listen to those who have gone through some tough times of their own making.

STOP hurting yourself.

Truth In Advertising....Or Lack Thereof

When a realtor lists a foreclosed home and the first three words are "move-in ready"...beware. Chances are very high that it is not. Listing a home as MIR does NOT mean having to install a heat source, septic system and digging a new well because there is no water.

There's a security system commercial that is shown frequently on television; in this commercial, criminals are shown slowly creeping towards a home, intent on stealing something. The doorbell, which is also a security camera, allows the absent homeowner to see their approach and warn them off. The catch? This company follows the line of thinking that infests insurance companies and other home security advertisers on TV...every criminal in these commercials is caucasian. That's not racist, just fact. Watch and see for yourself. To those of us that enforced the law for a living, though, it goes like this: we're blue, and then there's everyone else. Race doesn't matter. A criminal is a criminal is a criminal, period.

On social media today I saw a poll; I won't go into what it involved, but you had to click a link to vote. Then, after you cast your vote, a pop-up asking for your credit card info appears because they want you to donate to their website...you know, so they can keep running their polls online. If you don't donate, your vote isn't recorded.

"If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." We all remember that lie, don't we? Well, now the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund is telling their own version of that fib. We were all told that retired members would receive a monthly stipend to offset the cost of health insurance, as OPF wouldn't be providing health insurance for its members as of January 1, 2019. As it turns out, that stipend will only be provided if a member enrolls in one of four Medical Mutual coverages; in other words, we can't shop for our own insurance...which would without doubt be cheaper and offer more coverage that the MM policies. Oh, and as for keeping my doctors? Under Medical Mutual, every one of my physicians, from my family doctor to my cancer surgeon in Columbus, is out-of-network. MM pays nothing if I have to see one of them. NOTHING.

THAT is outrageous, and I'm still three years away from Medicare eligibility.

Endeth the rant.