Who Should Give The Speech?

by Craig | Feb 18, 2019 | Stories from Craig

Autumn has arrived. Soon there will be a flourish of activity all across America to prepare for Veteran’s Day celebrations.

I know what I’m doing for Veteran’s Day. 

I’ll head down to the small cemetery where my father now lies. I’ll trim the grass and weeds that are trying to take over his headstone. Then I’ll clean the dirt from the lettering, so that all might see that he was an Army Sergeant during World War II.

I’ve listened to quite of few speeches given at Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day ceremonies. Usually an elected official is the speaker. I suppose it’s in their job description to give speeches. I’m glad I don’t have to give the speech. The task of writing and presenting a speech worthy of the selfless service and sacrifices of our war veterans is a great challenge.

It seems politicians just can’t resist the temptation to wrap their speech around their politics. For instance, when the city threw a “welcome home” ceremony for my son’s US Marine Reserve Battalion (The 3/25 Battalion, Brook Park, Ohio),  A congresswoman  warned the Iraq war veterans; “I hope your expectations are not too high…we still have a lot of work to do here.”  

Was she telling my son not to expect too much from the nation that 37 men of his battalion had given their lives for?  Was this an expression of her gratitude?

Then our congressman spoke. He seemed to be thanking the Marines for fighting a war that we had no business fighting. Thanks for your service, even if it was for a vain cause.  

After hearing these speeches I have put some thought into who should be the speaker.  I’d like to hear from someone with the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, the nobility of Washington, the elegance of Webster, the Humor of Bob Hope, the simplicity of Lincoln and the compassion of a mother.

The speech should begin by describing how beautiful America is. Truly our land is unsurpassed in its many natural wonders. No other land has ever produced the bounty of earth as America has.  I hope the speaker would then praise our forefathers who came to America in search of a better life. They pursued that goal with an intensity and passion that would enable them to bring freedom and prosperity to their children.

Then perhaps the speaker would lay down a foundation for the remainder of the speech to be built upon. He would talk about America’s values of freedom, liberty and equality. He would thank God for our right as individuals to be free from oppressive governments and show gratitude that our government is “of the people, by the people and for the people.” 

Then the speaker would shift from America’s great values to it noble virtues; selfless service, self reliance, honor, love of God and country, but most importantly, courage. At this time it would be proper to speak of American heroes who exemplify these virtues.  Americans such as, Nathaniel Hale, Clara Burton, and Col Lawrence Chamberlin would be mentioned. But as heart touching and inspiring as this orator might be, I want something more from them.

I would like my speaker to be someone who knows what it is like to spend sleepless nights worrying about a loved one serving in a combat zone.   I want to know how may tears they shed upon hearing news that a neighbor’s son has just been killed or maimed.   I’d expect the speaker to have spent many hours volunteering for the USO or the Red Cross to make life easier for our troops.  Perhaps the speaker had to shrink away from a newspaper because the headline was just too painful.

I have some extra qualifications for politicians who might still be in the running as a speaker. I want to know if they changed their vote to support the war after committing our troops to fight in it.  Have they done everything possible…. opened the treasury, cut red tape, forsaken pork barrel spending, and told our military leaders to “forget the cost , just buy whatever is needed to win the war.”

Did they tell those same leaders to pursue every advantage our technology, industry, and natural resources can provide to safeguard our troops and bring a swift and enduring victory?  Did they ask Americans to make any sort of sacrifice of time or money to support the troops?  Finally, the speaker should never have made apologies to returning warriors for their service or implied that America isn’t worth fighting for.

So who should be the speaker? I’m guessing it will be a soccer mom with a bumper sticker that reads, Proud Mother of a… Marine, Soldier, Airman, (take your pick).  Who else would have the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, the nobility of George Washington, the elegance of Daniel Webster, the humor of Bob Hope, the simplicity of Abraham Lincoln and the compassion of a mother, worthy of giving tribute to our veteran’s on this, their special day?

And Possums. . .

by Craig | Feb 18, 2019 | Stories from Craig

Sometime ago…..  or maybe I ought to say, “Once upon a time” …  My wife , Joan, had a run in with one of Ohio’s ugliest critters–an opossum. Or just “possum” for short.

Joan teaches clinical instruction for Cleveland State’s school of nursing, and it involves getting up very early in the morning and working a long day in a hospital. Well on this one particular morning,  Joan was opening the door of our attached garage when she heard something shuffling along the wall behind my black beauty Camaro. She groped in the dark for the light switch and when the lights bloomed into brilliance, there was a loud and very weird screeching noise as a possum came running out from under the Camaro heading right between Joan’s legs.

As you can imagine my wife was quite startled.  She did what every red blooded American woman would do, she screamed.

Joan slapped the garage door opener’s wall switch and as the door opened she bolted out of the garage.  The possum who had been trapped in the garage for hours, now saw the growing gap between the floor and the door.  He lurched towards his freedom; but, suddenly the woman was cutting him off! He tried to reverse himself, but too late. He slid right into her legs, bounced back, turned around and went straight back into the garage.

Joan cried out, “Jiminy crickets!!  Craig, Cur-raig!”

She was trying to call me out of my deep slumber. I never heard a single thing, but the neighbors sure did. The neighborhood began to light up like Bedrock whenever Wilma’s cat locks Fred Flintstone out of his house.

Somebody called the cops. We live just around the corner from the police station, and there’s not even a donut shop between the station and our house to slow down their response.  The men in blue arrived to see a wild-eyed woman staring into the garage. They were trying to figure out what was going on as they stepped out of their cruiser.

 My wife said, “Got a possum”. But that’s not what the policeman heard!  “Got a gun” is what the policeman heard.

The atmosphere became very tense. The policemen, thinking they were now facing down a crazy armed women dressed in white, called for backup. Within minutes the police SWAT team was setting up around our house leveling sniper rifles at my wife. 

Our city Councilman lives just down the street. He was looking out his window at what he thought was a major crisis developing in his neighborhood.  A good politician, he knew what to do next. Call the TV stations and prepare for a photo op.  By now the whole neighborhood was awake, except me. People in their robes and pajamas, some wearing fuzzy slippers that looked like Homer Simpson, were streaming out of their houses to see what was going on.

Blue and red flashing lights, white strobe lights and local news TV video camera lights were turning my bedroom into a late night disco. I finally woke up. When I turned on the radio I heard there was a hostage situation developing in Parma. I leisurely dressed, went downstairs, into the garage, I saw a very frightened possum hunkered down in the corner. I said “Hey, little fella, has this ruckus got you scared?”   I took a broom and sort of shushed him on his way out the side of the garage. He tore off into the darkness never to be seen again.

Just about then, they had my wife in the back of a police cruiser. A detective shook his head in denial as Joan told the story about the possum. They didn’t believe there were possums in Parma.  The detective was getting pretty mad because Joan refused to tell him what she did with the gun.  While the detective  interrogated her, the other policemen were having a argument about whether the  purple stethoscope around her neck should be considered a weapon. 

Since the hostage situation didn’t seem to be developing, the news media lost interest and left. The councilman congratulated the police on a job well done. Slowly everybody went home.

Except for my wife

However, upon further questioning, and upon learning that she was on her way to teach clinical instruction, that she is the President of the Sigma Theta Tau Nursing Honor Society and President of the Northeast Ohio Medical Surgical Nurses Association, and of course married to me, they decided it was okay to let her go.

In the next issue of the Parma- Sun Newspaper the headlines read:  “Councilman thwarts Hostage attempt.”

Venus & Mars in the Bio-Dome: A True Life Adventure

by Craig | Feb 18, 2019 | Stories from Craig

We have been getting a lot of use from our car heater. By early December we were visited by snow squalls and below freezing temperatures. The foul weather did not stop me from taking a car ride with my lovely wife, Joan. After we had driven a little while I began to feel ‘hot’. So I reached over and turned down the car heater fan. Soon the car was at a comfortable temperature, but not for long. Joan began to feel cold so she reached over and turned up the fan. So, I turned it down the temperature. She countered by turning up the fan and temperature. Get the picture?

Odd thing about this is that our conflict isn’t on how to set the controls for the car heater; it is a matter of dressing properly for a cold ride. When I go out I like to bundle up in a sensible, warm parka, with a knit hat and gloves. Even with 26 degree weather.  My wife wears a long sleeve cotton shirt and a skirt that does not possible go below her knees.

Let’s take a look at our combined efforts to keep our house warm. I like to keep the thermostat at a very cozy 72 degrees. It seems my significant other isn’t aware that the perfect temperature for a human dwelling place is 72 degrees.  For instance, the other night I awoke at about 3 in the morning from the sound of my very own teeth chattering. I opened my eyes to see icicles dangling from our ceiling fan. I rushed downstairs to see what was up with the furnace.

Someone had set the temperature to 50 degrees!  I properly adjusted the thermostat and returned to our bedroom. As I eased into bed, I glanced over at my snoring wife, but I couldn’t see her. I followed the nasal roar to a small hole in the deep pile of blankets, quilts and bed spreads. It was like a cocoon made for arctic explorers and somewhere inside was my wife.

The lesson in feminine logic is clear: When outside in a car, dress half naked and turn up the heat all the way. When in the privacy of your own home, dress like Nan-nook and turn off the heat. Get it?

Now please excuse me while I scrape the frost from my monitor screen.

The Great Pea Story

by Craig | Feb 18, 2019 | Stories from Craig

This is the tale of how a simple, green garden pea caused the lives of many people to be changed. The pea had modest beginnings. It grew on a common truck farm in mid-west America. It was picked while still in its pod, but was soon chucked; then bagged; then quick frozen with a thousand, thousand other peas. The bag was then placed into carton with a couple dozen other bags. The carton was stacked onto a pallet. The pallet was loaded into the back of a freezer trailer.  A Semi-truck hauled it to the local grocery store, where our pea was placed into a display case and then began to wait and wait.

A pretty young woman with brown hair and eyes as green as the pea, came into the store and purchased the bag of frozen peas. She took the bag home and placed it into her Kenmore freezer where the pea once again had to wait and wait.

After a few months the woman took out the bag of peas. She tore the bag open and…Oh No!  She poured the frozen peas into a little pan of scalding hot, boiling water.  Our little pea was cooked until it became soft and very tasty.

The woman began to scoop out the peas with a big straining spoon. First she plopped some onto the plate of a pretty girl who only played with them, sealing their doom to the ignominious fate of uneaten food — the disposal.  Other peas were given to an adolescent boy who devoured them while making a great noisy lip smacking. Some were placed on the plate of a middle-aged man who smothered them in margarine.  Then the woman plopped our special pea down onto the dinner plate of a beautiful young girl. She was so young that she did not even know that Pea was spelled with a “P”.

The girl’s long golden hair swooshed across her dinner plate as she looked up and gave her mother a big smile. Oh how she loved to eat peas!  First you get to chase them around your plate and then when you ate them they made a delightful snapping sound in your mouth!.

At first she eagerly dug into the peas, eating many of them in a single swoop of her spoon. Then she began to play, chasing them around her plate before capturing a few on her spoon. Soon she became weary of these games so she decided to see if a pea could fit somewhere else in her head besides her mouth. She picked out our special pea and held it delicately between her finger and thumb.

First her father stopped her from putting the pea into her left ear. Being only four years old, the girl mistakes her father’s intentions and tries to put it into her right ear. She is stopped again, this time by her adolescent brother.

Suddenly a loud gasp is heard followed by a whining cry. “Mommy”, the little girl whispers fearfully. “There is a pea stuck up my nose!” Undaunted by her father and brother’s attempts to keep her from placing a pea inside her head; Blondie successfully inhaled the pea up her nose!

The now sad little girl with a pea up her nose was put into a little blue car, and is driven through the city to the emergency room of a leading community hospital. Her Mommy hoped the doctors would be as good at pea extracting as they were with triple bypass surgery.

The Medical people tried to extract the lodged pea. However, the pea’s eviction had became a political struggle between the rights of little girls to put and keep things up their noses and tyrant adults who would shamelessly deny them those rights.

Now imagine seeing all this through the eyes of a girl not quite five. You’re taken by a mad mommy to a terrible place where you are forced to lie on a really hard bed with a paper blanket on it. Hanging on the walls are posters showing people without any skin, showing what their muscles look like. There’s even a poster of a man with his head sawed in half showing the innards of his head. In the corner is a stainless steel cabinet with glass windows. Behind the windows are tons of shiny needles to stick you with and bundles of Popsicle sticks to shove down your throat.

Next thing she knows, a man all dressed in white wearing purple latex gloves enters the room. In his right hand is a long  pair of tweezers that glimmers under the bright examination light. He is coming right at her pretty little face with those monstrous tweezers.

“Please pretty little girl with a pea up your nose” the wicked man says, “let me put these tweezers up your nose, and I’ll yank that pea right out!”

NO WAY!

Victory for kids! After putting up a big fit and shedding many tears the adults give up and the now an even angrier mommy takes her back home. The pea up the nose has proven stronger then the adults. Proving that kids do have the right to stuff things up their noses. Ring the bells! Sound the trumpets! Sing along with Barney! Because today is a liberation day for kids all over the world.

The adults haven’t admitted defeat. That night they conspire to have her father take her to see a specialist. Perhaps even a PEA-di-ah-trician. Now a person might think it funny that a man could specialize in plucking small objects from children’s noses, but in  a society where grown men get paid millions to hit a tiny ball with a club and then go on strike for more pay, I guess there would be some people who could make a fair living performing nose pickology.

Next morning her daddy took the girl with a pea in her cute nose back to the hospital. Once again the girl refuses to let anyone come anywhere near her nose. Still thinking she has won, her daddy walks her through a door labeled; ”Pre-Op/Surgery”. The adults are getting tough now.

A nurse tricks her into drinking apple juice laced with a sedative. It tastes icky so she only takes a few small sips. Then they wheel her into surgery, where even though she says; “No, I don’t want to put on that funny mask”, a man wearing a silly blue hat puts it on her anyway. Then he makes her breath horrible smelling air. Soon she is fast asleep.

The nose picking specialist, unopposed by the slumbering girl, approaches her nose with the long slender tweezers. With a quick flick of his wrist he removes the pea and sends it into a nearby stainless steel pan. From there the pea will meet its end down the operating room disposal.

Yet the story is not over. After the hospital visit, her father takes her to MacDonald’s for a plain cheeseburger happy meal. As she happily munches her fries she decides to never put a pea up her nose again. Unfortunately, she will have to suffer year after year as her family retells the story of how one little pea affected the lives of so many people.

The End.