good talk

I like Halloween a lot, I think it's one of our best traditions, I hope that I get a lot of trick-or-treaters and I'm ready for 'em. What's with this Obama thing? I never heard of this guy before 3 years ago. He was elected as U.S. Senator from Illinois just 3 years ago and from the getgo he wasn't content with that. Ha, ha, he wants to quit doing that just halfway through his first term after assuring the citizens of Illinois how well he would serve them. He's served them poorly as he's spent the past 3 years jockeying to become President, being the junior Senator from Illinois is far beneath his Highness. I knew who this Palin woman is who's running with McCain because she got a lot of pub this past April when she gave birth to a Downs Syndrome baby while serving as Alaska's Governor. I thought, why, that's the same nutty woman who had a special needs baby because she gave birth at the ancient age of "44." Apparently Ted Stevens stands a good chance of being reelected as U.S. Senator from Alaska even though he was convicted of 7 felonies the week before. Maybe it's good that I haven't been to Alaska. Maybe the cold has numbed the people's brains. Now every crook and wacko is heading up North, the Rush is on. Throughout American History it always seemed as though there was an abundance of Great Men and I personally can't think of anybody who would come close to this today. This once-great country is dying by it's own hand.

good talk

A lot of people like my car, already today some guy in a supermarket parking lot was eager to buy it, reminds them of the good old days. In 1920 Eugene V. Debs garnered a million votes for President while a convict in the federal prison in Atlanta. I asked my brother recently, who are the great men today, throughout American History there always seemed to be a lot of great men, it escaped me who is today. Bob said that David Hackworth and Bill Carpenter who he served with in Vietnam were great men and also that John McCain was a great man. So I guess he'll vote for McCain. I toured what was left of the "Hanoi Hilton" 3 years ago and they had a plaque up that said in English "...The American Aviators were well-treated..." About 6 years ago I met a guy at a Superbowl Party in Las Vegas who said that he had been in the "Hanoi Hilton" for years with John McCain. I forget his name, University of Michigan, and this guy said "...My back looks like a roadmap..." I don't really care for either candidate, I'm going to vote for Barr. There's far too much government, it's strangling us all. Having a minimal amount of government just to smooth things along and have natural laws prevail would be best. Everybody sucks the federal teat, the federal government is anything and everything for everybody. I knew the late Dave Riegle who was the middleweight, 165 pounds, in weightlifting on the U.S. Olympic Team that Jimmy Carter had boycott the Moscow Olympics in 1980 to mess it up for the Russians. Not only was this mean-spirited but why would this be the option of the American President? Why would he be able to weigh in so heavily on that? In relation to the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan, Dave said, "...Who gives a hoot, I would have liked to have competed in the Olympics!" Is the U.S. President a semi-dictator?

good talk

In the mid-60's my brother, Bob, was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, home of the 101st Airborne, indeed the two servicemen's clubs were the "Bastogne" and the "Normandie." My brother had a car and he and a friend were going into the closest town, Clarksville, when they spotted something beside the road. It turned out to be some guy who had been beaten and bludgeoned unconscious and he was bleeding profusely. They were able to get him to come to and they helped him into my brother's car and drove him to the hospital in Clarksville. Of course at the Emmergency Room they had to leave their names and address. Four weeks later Bob and his friend received word that the guy was doing a lot better and wanted them to look him up the next time they went to Clarksville. So these two did look him up when they went to Clarksville and as it turned out he owned a jewelry store and he took them to his store and said "You both pick something out, anything you want in the store." As these two young men were gentlemen they said, "I'm sorry, but we can't do that." But he insisted on getting them something so he took them to a clothing store and bought them some clothes and then he took them out to dinner, so he really was grateful. I'd have to say that probably a number of cars passed this poor battered and bleeding man by because they didn't want to get involved, maybe somebody violent would be angry with them for helping him (they never heard who had done this to him), a lot of people wouldn't want him bleeding all over their car, maybe in his dazed condition he'd tell the authorities that they were the ones who had done this to him, and other sundry reasons for not stopping. This account isn't all that far from the story of "the Good Samaritan."

good talk

My older brother, Bob, and I have been each other's only living relative for decades. Just as soon as I was born this guy was there, I've literally known him all my life. I was told that when I was born that he was going around telling people that what his mother had given birth to was a girl named Emily. He was a junior and my parents called him "Bobby," he's at least the 4th in a row with his name. He's 4 years and 4 months older, and one night when he was "9" we were all sitting at the dinner table and my brother announced, "Bobby sounds childish, from now on I want to be called "Bob" !" And so it was. My brother was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam and hasn't been out of the country since he got back 40 years ago. You know all the places I go, we're nothing alike in that way or much of any other. He's sort of a meat and potatoes, beer and a shot type guy. Bob is a retired federal "management analyst" and was the longtime director of the "Ironman Invitational," the best high school wrestling tournament in the country. For a long time he was also the high school editor for "Amateur Wrestling Magazine," and is now a contributing writer for the "Amateur Wrestling News." Although good-sized and muscular and not built like a distance runner, Bob was a devoted marathon runner for a long time and was getting his time down to where he was fairly close to qualifying for the "Boston Marathon." Unfortunately he hurt his back from all this running (he said there were 50,000 steps in a marathon, all on a hard surface) and had to scale back on his running. But this guy doesn't believe that I can do Telepathy, can you imagine! For sure Bob (he lives in Cleveland) is not telepathic himself but that doesn't mean that somebody else can't be, my gosh. This Good Telepathy that I do is a rare ability and I'm really glad that I can do it but it sounds so far out that I can understand somebody not believing in me. Poor me to be so misunderstood.

good talk

I'm half German and half English. My last name in German means "Prussian" or more exactly, "the Prussian One." My father's parents immigrated seperately around 1900, many of my mother's ancestors immigrated from England, Scotland and Wales around 1650, some came a little later. The Scots and Welsh might not like being lumped in with the English, but the same island, Brittania. 90% of the time when I'm in a foreign country they think I'm English. Four years ago last spring I was walking down the Champs-Elysees when I saw a sign that said "Aeroflot," and I decided to go in and jibe them about their bad safety record. In one of their disasters the pilot put his 10 year old son at the controls and this kid promptly put the plane into a nosedive, due to centrifugal force the pilot and co-pilot couldn't reach the controls and the plane crashed killing everybody. I think one of their planes went down over the past couple weeks, it's not uncommon. I started talking to this Russian girl who was sitting there and she was able to figure out what I was going to say after I had said only a few words. She said, "Oh, he's all upset because France beat England in football." I said, "I'm sure it's a bad thing but..." She said, "Oh, he's feeling out of sorts because the French beat the English at football." I excused myself and left. She hadn't let me get my jibe off, she had broken my jibe. We were just teasing each other, seemed like a pretty good girl.

good talk

My father never said much about WW II and the only battle that I heard him mention was the one that he said with a wry smile, "Monte Cassino." Monte Cassino also called the Battle for Rome was actually a series of 4 battles for 4 months in early 1944 near the Abbey of Monte Cassino 80 miles south of Rome. The American General Mark Clark had been assured by Intelligence that after the successful invasion of Italy by the Americans, English and their allies that getting to Rome would be "easy." But the Germans put up ferocious resistance and although eventually forced to relinquish Rome they did so only after inflicting 50% casualties on the Allies, far more than they took themselves. A month into the Battle the Americans bombed the Abbey of Monte Cassino in the erroneous belief that the Germans were in there. This was a really bad thing as the Abbey had been established by St. Benedict in 561 and where the Benedictine Order had originated. And as soon as it was bombed the Germans put SS Grenadiers into the rubble which made matters worse for the Allies. Once Rome was taken my father was often in Rome as a liason officer between the American Fifth Army and the British Eighth Army. My father and some of the other Catholic officers wanted to meet the Pope and my father had an audience with Pope Pius XII with maybe 10 others present. Meeting the Pope, that's as good as it gets, that'd be hard to beat. I'd like to meet Joe Ratzinger who I think is, as his predecessor was, a very good Pope.

good talk

My parents were married in February, 1942 and my older brother was born in February, 1943 but by then my father was in North Africa (and later Italy). In early 1945 my mother and older brother were in a drugstore in Akron and they walked past an old man who appraised them saying to my brother, "I'll bet your Daddy's overseas," and gave my brother a fifty-cent piece. They looked to him as the family of a man who would serve his country. My brother was 3 years old when my father and he saw each other for the first time when my father returned home in 1946. What my father did wasn't regarded as a sacrifice, it wasn't regarded as anything at all. This is the way Americans were at that time and it's not the way they are today, this is why Tom Brokaw called them "the Greatest Generation."