Making The Best Of A Bad Circumstance

 

Merry Christmas!

My wife tested positive for Covid 19 yesterday, a day before my son, his girlfriend and our nearly year old granddaughter are scheduled to fly in to Ohio from Florida. They should be on the ground at Rickenbacker in just under two hours.

Desiree has family in Crawford county, so their trip won't be a total waste, and this will surely be a Christmas Stacy and I will remember for decades to come.

Here's how things unfolded:

Wednesday, Stacy commented that she wasn't feeling the greatest, her main issue being a runny nose. Wednesdays are when we usually go see our local granddaughter, Mila, for a few hours, so we cancelled that. Didn't want to chance Gramma passing her cold on to our little punkin' pie.

Knowing my oldest and his crew were due in today, Stacy went to a OhioHealth drive-through Covid testing site, just to be safe. She was also tested for influenzas A and B, with instructions to check her test results on line later in the evening.

The flu tests came back negative; Covid, unfortunately, was positive.

Stacy only has a runny nose! No fever, no aches, no cough...nothing else! How can this be?

My bride and I were devastated, as we haven't seen Raelynn since March. Texts and phone calls followed, fast and furiously, delivering the bad news. As I'd read a bulletin from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently warning of possible false-positive Covid test results, Stacy and I cleaned off her Jeep (we were in the midst of what was to become a seven inch snowfall), warmed it up and headed to OhioHealth MedCentral's emergency room for another test...for which she was turned away, after being told their tests have a 96% accuracy rate. They wouldn't retest her as she'd already had one earlier in the day.

So we trekked back home over unplowed roads (it was Christmas Eve, after all), both of us suffering a deep, growing depression. We'd been so excited at the prospect of seeing Raelynn and the kids; now, it seemed an impossibility. Stacy felt the worse of the two of us, expressing that she felt responsible for our predicament.

"Honey, it is NOT your fault", I told her, "I mean, you didn't get infected on purpose, right?"

It didn't help.

Once back at Black Gold Homestead, we had a conversation on what to do next. As of right now, we're both going to be tested Saturday morning at a large chain pharmacy, through appointments made on the internet at 0030...Christmas morning.

As we await Stacy's retest and my test, she's quarantining on the second floor of the house, donning a mask and gloves when she needs to come downstairs and sanitizing everything she touches. She notified the office manager of the physician's office where she works and her two-week lockdown clock started today. She feels much better than she did Wednesday and is constantly taking her temperature, as am I. I feel totally fine and think that I probably had suffered through the dreaded Wuhan flu at the end of June, when I'd been deathly ill with severe digestive issues. I'd gone to an emergency room at its height and they tested me for everything under the sun....except Covid. All my tests had come back negative, and still to this day no one can tell me what I'd been afflicted with back then. I mean, it was so bad that I even let Stacy mow; anyone who knows me well knows how huge that sacrifice had been, as I'm very particular on how our place looks.

Having been exposed, my three-days-a-week cardiac rehab will no doubt be put on hold and I'll probably also have to reschedule my first follow-up visit with my cardiologist since the heart attack, which had been scheduled for the 29th...unless, that is, my test tomorrow comes back negative for Covid tomorrow. In that case, I'm not sure what MedCentral's protocols are.

So, while we await tomorrow, Stacy's upstairs binge-watching 'A Million Little Things' as I'm downstairs typing this entry. Afterwards? Looks like I'll be re-watching my favorite WW II movies In Harm's Way, Midway and Fury, with maybe a side of Avengers thrown in there somewhere.

We'll also be praying that both our tests come back negative tomorrow, so we can see our precious little Raelynn.

Until then, we'll do what we have to do and make the best of this holiest of holidays.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Brotherhood? Not Always

Cops look out for their own kind, right?

Not necessarily.

The year was 1995; my then-wife and our two sons had traveled to South Carolina on vacation to visit my parents, driving our  SUV. It was about a nine hour trip. 

At the time I was assigned to Special Investigations / METRICH, part of a 10-county counter-drug task force. I mention this because, in order to deal with dopers and scumbags, we had to look the part; to say that grooming standards were relaxed in the unit would be a gross understatement. Back then I had hair and had let it grow out, to the extent I sported a ponytail to go along with a full beard, topped off with an earring.

I loved it. Mom? Not so much. About a year later, after I'd been promoted to sergeant and transferred back to uniform patrol, I had my best friend in the task force cut my ponytail off....and I promptly mailed it to Mom.

We spent the week with Mom and Dad, then headed home on Sunday, the day drenched in sunshine. My wife, Lorie, wanted to start out behind the wheel.

I should probably mention that she was something of a leadfoot, believing the Fraternal Order of Police emblem attached to the rear license plate would cut her some slack should she be stopped for speeding.

We'd gone about an hour north on US 25, then merged onto I-26, nearing Hendersonville, NC. On previous trips, I'd noted that there always seemed to be a handful of North Carolina state troopers in the Hendersonville area, working traffic on the interstate. I mentioned this to my wife.

"They're not going to stop me for doing ten over", she'd said after I mentioned lowering her speed. My spouse maintained her seventy-five MPH speed, failing to observe that the limit had dropped to 60. Not long after, a state trooper took notice and stopped us.

As the lanky officer approached our car on the driver's side, I had one thought: let him know that I was a police officer and was armed. It wouldn't do to have an avoidable, distasteful incident.

As my wife handed him her driver's license, he started into his spiel. "Ma'am, the reason I stopped you...".

"Excuse me, officer", I remarked, "but I'm a police officer from Ohio and I have a 9mm handgun in the door pouch by my right leg.

He eyed my bearded, scraggly appearance suspiciously. "Can I see your ID?"

I handed him my Mansfield PD identification card, explaining that I was assigned to Narcotics.

The trooper looked at the clean cut photo on the card, then back to me, the beginnings of a smirk molding his mouth. "As I was saying, the reason I stopped you is because you were fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. Sit tight, I'll be right back."

I knew my wife was getting a traffic ticket and I'd be bearing the brunt of her anger for the next 500 miles.

Ten minutes later we're once again northbound, Lorie now in the passenger seat, seething.

"WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING?"

The truth was, I'd said enough...enough to let the trooper know I was a brother officer, a fact that hadn't mattered a whit. Though I didn't say it out loud, in my mind I thought, well, I tried to tell you...

Six hours and two stops later we're crossing the Ohio River, coming into Cincinnati. My wife was driving once again. 

Winding through the city on I-71, up what seemed like the longest incline on earth, we came across a stretch in which the speed limit was posted at 50MPH, which I mentioned....and, just like before, she got stopped for speeding.

And got another citation.

The next three hours were the longest of my entire life...and I drove the rest of the way home.

Over my five decades in law enforcement I saw a distinct shift in attitudes of younger officers. When I started out at MPD I'd already been a copper for 4 years at a small department and knew I didn't know squat about policing in an urban environment. As such, I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told...and got along just fine. Back in those days we considered one another 'family', save for a few exceptions. We stuck together and defended each other against all odds. You knew if you got in a scrape on the job that your brothers would have your back.

That's not the case anymore, so I've been told. One of my 'brothers', a Marine who saw combat and is still on the job, told me that the department is pretty much every man for himself now...and that is sad.

Those two young officers back then were just doing their jobs, I know that, and my then-wife paid a price for believing a little piece of tin on the license plate would shield her from the law. There's another thing from back in the day, though, that is sorely lacking nowadays, and that's empathy, understanding.

Maybe they were just a couple of tickets away from earning a toaster or something.

                                                          1995, while in METRICH

Heart Attack? No Thanks...But I Had One Anyway

 

Three times now, my wife Stacy and I have had one of those "wait, that only happens to other people" moments; the first was in 2012, when medical staff at Columbus' Riverside Hospital told us that she had a massive blood clot on her brain and would undergo emergency surgery, her neurosurgeon telling us he didn't know why Stacy wasn't comatose already.

The second was April of 2015, when my personal physician informed me that I'd be losing a kidney because I had small-cell renal carcinoma. As it turned out, I kept half the kidney and didn't require chemotherapy or radiation treatments afterwards.

The third was Thursday night.

Ask anyone in my family and they'll tell you I'm a pretty stubborn guy. Good-natured, honest as the day is long...but stubborn. I get it from my Dad. Well, that stubborn streak could have been my undoing.

A week ago this past Wednesday (October 21st for those keeping score at home) I started having a weird feeling in my chest. It wasn't pain or pressure, just weirdness that was discomforting. As my wife was babysitting our granddaughter Mila on the other side of town, I texted her this information, adding that I didn't want to alarm her, just wanted her to know. Thursday, Friday and Saturday, I still had very mild discomfort but less than what I felt at its onset. Sunday evening it got a little worse, but there was no way I was going to the emergency room. "It'll pass", I thought, "probably pulled a muscle in my chest filling the coal stove." The next three days were uneventful but the feeling never quite went away. 

Then came Thursday, when it started bothering me worse than ever; so much so that I called Doc Becker's office. Her advice? "Go to the ER."

It was the last thing I wanted to do, believe me. I was sure I was probably having an angina attack and most definitely would catch the China virus waiting to be seen in a room full of sick people. Unbelievably, when I arrived, there was exactly one other person waiting to be examined. Ten minutes later I was in an exam room.

When the Doc came in, I told him my symptoms and that I probably had a pulled chest muscle. He ordered an EKG and bloodwork; the electrocardiogram came back normal. The blood work did not. Apparently there's an enzyme that becomes elevated during a cardiac event; the normal range is 45 and below.

Mine was over 1900.

"We're going to admit you and you'll most likely undergo a heart catheterization on Friday", he'd said.

I CAN'T DO THAT! MY WIFE DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO RUN THE COAL STOVE! I raged in my mind. Stacy, being a self-imagined pioneer-woman, thought otherwise. "When I get home I'll call you, and you can walk me through it."

Coal stoves get hot. Very hot. The first time I emptied the ash pan this year I burned a finger, right through the thick welding gloves I use when handling it. Its nearly healed now but, boy, did it blister up. The thought of my angel trying to handle the hot ash pan scared me to death, let alone the thought of her trying to fill the stove, which requires lifting a 40-lb, 5-gallon bucket of the nut coal we use to chest-level to reach the top-fill chute...all while trying to avoid touching the cast-iron stove.

Stacy stayed with me until I got settled into my room in cardiac step down and my hairy chest was mottled with those very sticky tabs used with heart monitors. I knew that, when I was discharged, those would be painful to remove (and I wasn't wrong).

The night passed uneventfully, though sleeplessly, as it seemed a nurse would come in every half hour to do something or other; blood draws were frequent, I imagine to keep an eye on that pesky enzyme level. I also was outfitted with an IV port in my hand, through which dripped two different kinds of blood thinners.

Then came Friday and the heart cath. I was disappointed to find I wasn't scheduled until 3 PM; I'd hoped it would be much earlier, say around nine or so, hoping I'd get discharged afterwards.

3 o'clock came and went. Then four PM. Then 5 PM. They finally came for me at 5:30. It seems they schedule outpatient heart catheterizations first, and there'd been an emergency procedure to boot. 

The staff in the cath lab were very efficient, to say the least, working in concert to prep me for the procedure. The catheter was inserted through an artery in my wrist; though uncomfortable, it wasn't really painful, due in part to the microgram or two of fentanyl I'd unknowingly been given.

In what seemed only minutes, the procedure was completed. The attending physician informed me that he'd removed a blood clot, inflated a balloon and then inserted a stent, to keep the affected artery open, and that all the other arteries around my heart looked very good. Great news, to be sure, but I'd be staying another night.

All told, the hospital stay wasn't a bad experience; the worst part is both the short-term and long-term restrictions, such as not exerting myself or lifting anything more that 5 pounds in weight for a week, not being able to drive until Monday and adjusting what I eat and how I exercise.

I'd planned on mowing today. Didn't happen.

And my lovely wife will continue to tend to the coal stove for the next week...which drives me insane.

Paratroopers, Fire Ants and Birthday Cake

 I remember a time when fire ants being in the southern border states was big news. These tiny insects were supposed to be killers, attacking their victims in swarms and causing intense pain to go along with massive swelling of the airway, literally choking people to death.

A few decades later, they're still with us in the southlands as more of a nuisance than anything else. I personally found that out four weeks ago while in South Carolina for my mother's 85th birthday. 

Stacy and I traveled the roughly 550 miles from our home to the town of  Easley on a sunny Sunday, preferring the mostly four-lane route of U.S. 23 over the combat-driving of interstate highways; its very scenic, affording the opportunity to see backroads America during the journey through southern Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina before hitting I-85 outside Greenville, SC for a whopping ten miles.

To say my mom Betty was glad to see us is an understatement. Leaving at 0515 that day, we walked though her door around 2:30 in the afternoon to find my brother Jim and sister Chris already at mom's place. As I knew she would, Mom had fixed a spread of food fit for a king, including (but not limited to) meat loaf, mashed potatoes, broccoli, corn, potato salad, sweet potato casserole and more.

I'm working on losing the six pounds I gained that week. Nobody cooks like Mama.

During the week we were there, Mom, Stacy and I (my siblings aren't retired like I am) toured second-hand stores and antique shops, something we all like to do. Mom is a real bargain hunter; you should see the cherry armoire she owns...that she got for five bucks! It at one time had a big scratch on the side, which Mom fixed with one of those wood-scratch filler pens to the extent its nearly impossible to see, unless you know exactly where to look.

I turned one of our antique-seeking excursions into a historical field trip. Forming the plan in mind, I located a very large antique store (three floors' worth) using the internet in the little town of Toccoa, Georgia, about sixty miles from my mother's home. The antique store, located in beautifully quaint downtown Toccoa, was lodged in one of those old-time department stores, complete with an elevator right out of the late 1940s. It took us a full two hours to see all they had, which in turn produced our antique wooden ironing board. Stacy's intending to turn it into something crafty-ish.

We loaded up in my wife's Jeep Laredo, I punched in 'Camp Toccoa' on my phone's mapping app and, ten minutes later, we were at the gates of the former World War II US Army paratrooper training facility, its significance largely lost to society save for those of us who remember and honor those who sacrificed so much.

Camp Toccoa, you see, sits at the base of Currahee mountain...and was home to thousands of men training to become paratroopers during World War II. If you're a 'Band of Brothers' fan you know where I'm talking about. Dick Winters, Bull Randleman, Lewis Nixon, Carwood Lipton and a host of others from Easy Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment walked, ran and marched over the grounds of Toccoa. Several other PIRs trained there but, thanks to the HBO miniseries which aired in 2001, the 506th is the most storied and well known.

While Mom and my wife waited in the car (they weren't nearly as excited as I was about being there), I stood for a moment beneath the overhead gate banner, my mind trying to envision this place in 1943. Most of the original buildings are long gone, with several mock-ups standing in their place, save for one original barracks building which housed a small museum. Three Harley motorcycles were parked outside, along with a SUV; inside I met the three riders, all Gulf War veterans, and I thanked them for their service. I also met George Smith, curator of the museum, who showed me several displays and explained their meaning.

I mentioned to George that I am a very serious metal detectorist and that I would love to detect the grounds of what remains of Camp Toccoa, adding that, if that were to happen, I'd gladly donate any significant finds to the museum. George told me he'd take it up with the camp's board of directors, but believed I'd be given permission to hunt the grounds. I'm waiting to hear back from him. George told me that the "TV guys" from the old metal detecting show 'Diggers' had detected Camp Toccoa ten years ago and that they'd concentrated mainly on the old rifle range.

I was beside myself with excitement when I got back to the car, an excitement that was lost on the two most important women in my life. "That's nice, honey" was all my smiling wife said, knowing how much I love both the hobby and WW II history.

Then came the second part of our visit, one that got more of a rise out of Mom and Stacy.

We drove the Colonel Bob Sink trail to the top of Currahee. Sink was the original commanding officer of the 506th PIR, portrayed in B of B by retired Marine Captain Dale Dye. A gruff, no nonsense officer.

The trail was no nonsense, too. To say it was in dire need of repair is a massive understatement. The first third of the way wasn't too bad, but the higher we went the worse the trail became. Large gullies from rainwater run-off  made very slow speed a life-or-death necessity, as there were, in places, large drop-offs on the downhill side of the trail. It wasn't actually a road; rather, it became more of a path. Suffice it to say that we wouldn't have made it to the top of the mountain without our 4-wheel drive Jeep.

The view from the top, though, was breathtaking.

Trekking back down was uneventful, being that I knew what to expect; near the bottom of the mountain a Toyota Camry, occupied by two teenage-looking girls, passed us headed up. I thought briefly about flagging them down and warning about the very rough terrain but I didn't. Sometimes people just have to find things out for themselves.

The next day, thanks to a tip from Mike at @digginhistorysc on Instagram, I ventured to Greenville's south side to the old Donaldson Army Air Corps base, its runways now used by a small commercial airport. During WW II, the Army trained B-24 air crews at Donaldson but, much as at Camp Toccoa, all the original barracks were gone. The area was now just one large, open field, save for the few stubby, cracked and weathered concrete piers poking out of the ground here and there.

It wasn't long before I was painfully reminded about the fire ants. I'd been too engrossed in swinging the coil, listening to the staccato of multi-tonal feedback through my headphones, to notice the many, many small, red mounds of dirt or the smallish but fierce insects swarming around them. They made their presence known when I sat on the ground to use my pinpointer in a hole I'd just opened up.

Wearing denim shorts had been a mistake.

Almost simultaneously, as if a signal had been given, the twenty or so ants started biting/stinging their way up my lower legs and it took a good five minutes to get them off me. Angry red welts soon appeared, accompanied by persistent, though tolerable, pain. I continued metal detecting but now took note of the mounds of earth, careful to avoid by a good five feet sitting near them.

Lesson learned, the hard way. Weeks later as I write this, I still have one small scab on the inside of my right lower leg to remind me of the encounter.

Then came Saturday and Mom's 85th birthday party, held at my sister Chris and her awesome husband Dan's home outside of Cowpens, SC. In conversation with my siblings, we'd discovered that this had been the first time Mom had all four of her children together for a happy occasion in quite some time. The last had been when Dad died on October 6th, 2014, and again in January of this year when my older sister's husband David passed away..

With much great food followed by birthday cake, all of us thoroughly enjoyed being together, reveling in an assortment of stories and memories from childhood, though, in my recollection, there'd been a few embellishment of facts, resulting in me being more of a rascal than I thought I was.

Stacy and I headed homeward the next day, joyous in returning to Black Gold Homestead and our doggie Roscoe but saddened that our time in South Carolina had come to an end. Many memories were made that week, ones that I'll fondly recall as I venture further into my golden years.

Except for the dang fire ants.

From top: Camp Toccoa, Mom on her birthday, the view from Currahee Mountain and the old Donaldson Army Air Corps base.

Real-Life Hero? He'll Never Say That

 "What's going on, fat boy?"

That was how Bob Mack greeted me earlier this week. With friends like that, who needs friends, right?

We both laughed. The burley, aging and former detective with the sheriff's office smiled beneath his snow-white Fu-manchu mustache. The good-natured insult was Bob's way of expressing happiness at seeing a long-time friend he hadn't encountered in well over 18 months.

I first met Bob probably fifteen years ago, though I don't recall the exact circumstance under which we'd encountered one another...I'd guess it was at a crime scene involving both deputies and city coppers. I DO remember my first impression: gruff, gravel-voiced and unapproachable.

I was wrong on that last item. He's one of the friendliest people I've ever met.

Mack worked some big cases over his 21 years at the sheriff's office, eighteen of which were in the detective bureau, and he seemed to know all the sketchy players on the wrong side of the law, particularly in the county's Little Appalachia area; folks with family lineage traceable to Kentucky and West Virginia. He was a wealth of information if you needed to know about burglars, thieves, dope-slingers and safe-crackers and I used his knowledge on more than a few occasions.

It wasn't until early 2017, though, that I really got to know this man, a handful years after we'd both retired.

Military veterans have always garnered massive respect on my part and I'd turned that interest into a writing project, interviewing local people who'd served in our armed forces and telling their stories in the local newspaper and social media.

Bob had served during the Vietnam war; I approached him about doing an article and he agreed, so we set a time for an in-home interview. When that day arrived I saw a totally different side of  the man, one I'd never known before.

Bob Mack is a war hero. A combat-tested, twice wounded, decorated Army Ranger.

He'd grown up in Florida, he'd told me, and had wanted to do something 'new and exciting'...like any other 18-year-old...so Bob joined the United States Army during the nation's early involvement in southeast Asia. He'd gone through basic training, advanced infantry training, jump school (parachute) and then ranger school.

For the uninitiated, ranger school is a very, very tough course; only 40% of those who start the training become rangers.

I spent two and a half hours with Bob, sitting at his kitchen table and listening to his story of service, of how he'd been promoted to sergeant and been assigned a 12-man LRRP (long-range reconnaissance patrol, pronounced 'lurp' in army slang) unit.

I listened to his stories of combat, of losing close friends, of being scared out of his mind. Out of respect for the man, I'll leave out details he'd confided and asked not to be printed. I'll just say that tears were shed by both of us. A lot of them. Bob told me things even his wife of over 30 years doesn't know to this day.

Suffice it to say Mack earned his Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. He shed blood for his country to the extent that he was sent stateside for medical care and treatment. He still has scars, both physical and mental, that will be with him for the rest of his days on this earth.

He thanked me for listening that day. To say I was humbled is a gross understatement.

These days Bob spends his summers in Ohio and winters at his place in Florida, doing a lot of fishing while we of the northlands shovel snow and pray for an early spring.

He earned that, too.

We're having breakfast next week sometime, as he's headed back to Florida the end of this month; we really couldn't sit and talk during our meeting at the Lexington soccer fields, as we both had grandkids to watch practice. I look forward to catching up with him and hearing how his battle with cancer has progressed. So far he's fared pretty well.

And, for the record, I weigh two hundred and eight pounds, down from 243 in 2018. 'Fat Boy', he'd called me....  

Bob's story can be found here: https://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/story/life/people/veterans/2017/05/26/157-veterans-story/348663001/

What's Happened Since August 4th, 2013?

I know what you're thinking. "What's so special about 08/04/13?"

Pro football Hall of Famer and World War II Marine veteran Art Donovan died on that date. Oh, and Barack Hussein Obama (formerly known as Barry Soetoro) turned fifty-two back then.

"That's it?"

Yeah...and I retired as a copper. I first put on a badge in September of 1979; a series of injuries and surgeries plagued my career, which spanned five decades. One of those surgeries, involving metal rods, screws and my lower spine, forced me out of the job from 1999 to 2002, when I went back to work as a police officer against the wishes of Dr. Timperman, my surgeon. I'd later have a knee replaced in 2005, after a mishap at the Lexington PD pistol range (no, I didn't shoot myself) pretty much destroyed an already fragile joint. I went back to work after that one, too, defying the strong advice of ortho surgeon Dr. Jay Guth, who'd suggested I think about retiring. Problem was, I wasn't ready to call it quits.

I talked him into letting me go back to the job I loved.

I worked right up until February 14th of 2013, which was the last time I took off my uniform; I'd started having issues with the artificial joint and, according to Dr. Jay and a few medical tests, I'd worn out a part of the joint which had to be replaced.

"That's it", the affable doc and personal friend had told me after surgery, "you're done. I'm not signing off on the knee again." Jay and I had known each other outside of the medical realm, having coached travel-league baseball against each other.

Grudgingly, I put in papers for disability retirement; it was granted a few weeks before I officially retired on August 4th of 2013. I chose that date because, in 1984, that was the day I'd been sworn in at Mansfield PD, alongside Chuck Norris, Dave Nirode and Chris Brunk. Since then I've always felt a part of that particular brotherhood, and still do to this day.

Since retirement, seven years ago today, life has continued onward in ways I never could have envisioned, leaving me with some great and not-so-great experiences...and yet another scar on this body that already resembles a road map.

In 2014 I went to a place I'd always dreamed of: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Having a keen love of WW II history, I was able to go to the place where it all started for the United States; I got goose bumps standing on the deck of the USS Arizona memorial, above the sacred resting place of over 1,100 sailors and Marines still entombed in the sunken hulk of the ship.

That trip was courtesy of my oldest stepson, Cory Prater, who was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base while serving in the Air Force. Stacy and I had gone to see him and got the grand Oahu tour during the whirlwind two weeks we were there.

Less than two weeks after we returned I lost my 88-year-old Dad.

Seven months later I was diagnosed with kidney cancer, which had been discovered through a fluke chest x-ray, which had caught the upper part of my left kidney. June 30th, 2015, I lost half of that organ, but it had been discovered so early that I didn't require chemotherapy or radiation treatments. I get checked once a year...so far, so good.

I've gained two daughters-in-law and two grandbabies, who are my pride and joy. We love our children, but I'm here to tell you that grandchildren kicks that love up another notch.

There's nothing like it. Nothing.

Stacy and I sold our house, which I'd called 'Ram Field Ranch' because of its close proximity to Madison's football field, and bought our current place, 'Black Gold Homestead.' There's no oil in the ground here, but Tim Horton's black gold coffee flows through the coffee maker every morning.

My wife had heart valve repair surgery, a procedure in which they had to separate her sternum and stop her heart while it was being fixed. There was a lot of hard praying being done by yours truly. For weeks after she returned home, friends and family brought us an almost endless supply of pre-cooked meals; it got to the point where we had to ask that some meal deliveries be delayed because we couldn't fit anything else into our refrigerator. Stacy and I are richly blessed with the friends we have and will forever be in their debt.

On June 6th of this year I lost my wonderful mother-in-law, Retta Mellick, who I referred to as my 'Ohio mom', as my mother lives in South Carolina. Miss Retta, one of the strongest Christians I've ever known, was a loving, caring soul who never met a stranger. I miss her dearly and think of her quick wit and sense of humor often.

Sadly, I've lost some of the fine men I'd worked with through the years, veteran coppers who took the time to impart some of their law enforcement wisdom. Men like Tim McClaran, who I wrote about a few weeks ago; Dan Brant, who'd been a captain at MPD and my first watch commander there; Denny Reid, second in command at Ontario PD back in the early 1980s; Sgt. Bob Poth, 'Pappy' to so many who knew him and my training officer during my first few weeks at Mansfield. Keith Miller, with whom I'd worked at Ontario, as well as Cal Miller, OPD; Sam Wade, who'd been a part-time officer at Lexington and taught classes at North Central State College in their criminal justice program; and Harold Scott, who I loved like a brother. There's so many more that have left us and I'm sure I'm not recalling some, but they're people I'll never forget. Ever.

It's been quite the journey, these last seven years in retirement, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

                                      Retirement reception, with some of my Mansfield PD
                                      brothers. (L-R) Dean Blamer, Keith Coleman, myself
                                      Jan Wendling, Gary Foster, Phil Messer and Mike Bammann

You Want Hot? Bulletproof Vests In August...

Bulletproof vests. I guess nowadays they call them 'ballistic' vests, or 'body armor', or 'personal protective gear.'

Back in my day, us coppers had quite a variety of terms for them, nearly all unprintable on this forum. I try to keep it rated 'PG' here. Parental Guidance...where has that gone? Might be a good topic for a future post.

Those vests sure were hell on hot days, let me tell you.

When I first started wearing one, back in 1979, bulletproof vests for coppers were rather crude, to put it mildly. Made of a material called Kevlar and fitted into a cloth carrier, you put it on over your head; they had a front panel and a back panel, with a strap down across each clavicle and four 2-inch straps from the back panel to the front, held in place by velcro. That way they were adjustable, so as to make them conform to your torso. Then you put your uniform shirt on over top of it, went out and put your life on the line.

There were a couple of problems: if you tightened the side straps too tight and weren't svelte they'd cut into your sides, showing the general public your fat rolls in the process in addition to chafing your skin. The other was, by virtue of moving around, the panels would ride up on you, until the front panel felt more like a clerical collar jammed into your Adam's apple.

So the manufacturers tried to solve the issue by adding an 'apron'-like extension to the front of the panel carrier that you tucked into your uniform pants, like a second set of shirt tails.

I can't tell you how many times I'd watch one of my co-workers unzip their pants, reach way inside and grab that apron so they could pull the vest back down where it was supposed to be. I did the same thing, too. We'd always take care to make sure we weren't in the public eye when we did that....didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about what we were actually doing.

When we'd order our vests, usually every three years because of fabric decomposition, they came in a variety of threat levels; the higher the TL, the more protection they offered. That's protection, by the way, from handgun bullets. Our vests at that time, well...a rifle round or an ice pick would go right through them.

As time progressed, through the 80s and into the 1990s, manufacturers added side torso panels to the vests and these rectangular metal or ceramic plates that slid into the outside of the front of the vest carrier, designed to add further shielding for your sternum. Police officers, after getting shot with their vests on, were suffering from blunt force trauma; the impact of the bullet, with all that kinetic force behind it, still caused considerable damage to internal organs, though no penetration of the bullet occurred. The plates were added protection for blunt trauma.

Still, those vests saved countless thousands of police lives over the decades.

But they were, and probably still are, unbearably hot. That was one of the many reasons I preferred working night shift during my career; it was always somewhat cooler at night. Back in my early days at Mansfield PD, though, I was stuck on afternoon shift for six years. That's six years of July and August, with many sweltering days from late June and early September mixed in for good measure.
Those vests were absolutely, stiflingly torturous on smoking-hot and humid days. The A/C in the cruiser would always be cranked wide open as we'd pull the vests away from our chests, as much as we could, to allow that luxuriant, cool air access to sweat-soaked T-shirts and bare skin.

If you got stuck outside the cruiser for an extended period of time, say, to direct traffic at an accident scene, God help you. Assorted coppers tried various methods to keep cool while wearing vests, from nylon, woven mesh undershirts to not wearing the back ballistic panel. I went to the Ohio State Highway Patrol academy with a guy from Marion county who ended up getting shot in the back in a rest area. He wasn't wearing his back panel.

 He survived, but it could have ended up so much worse.

At the end of the shift in the locker room, when we'd gear down, you could see the perfect, wet outline of those vests on whatever type of shirt was worn under the vest. I learned early on to bring an extra T-shirt to change into for the trip home, the damp duty-worn shirt balled up and in my gear bag.

Then there was the smell. You've never savored the aroma of a police locker room in late August...to me, it was five times worse than a high school football locker room. We'd hang our vests on hangers, body-side out, to dry out before the next shift; most of us had two vest panel carriers so we could launder one when the stale-sweat stench started to get overpowering, though it was a pain to change out carriers.

Bulky and uncomfortable as they were, someone finally came up with the idea of a protective vest designed to be worn on the outside of the uniform shirt, which is what you're seeing now with a lot of police agencies. Lexington, the PD I worked for the last eleven years of my career, has gone to that style of vest. Officers who use them seem to like them, but I don't think I would...because I'm a throwback.

I'd go back to a hot, humid August afternoon in 1986 and wear my old bulletproof vest again.

In a heartbeat.

                                               Early 1980s bulletproof vest