Sweet, Sweet Summertime

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Marty Ryan

We ate our first garden-raised tomato ten days ago.  I’m not kidding.  It came from Stephanie’s garden.  We also ate our first strawberries of the year, also from Stephanie’s garden.  Radishes are the only thing we’ve eaten so far from my garden.

It’s not a competition.  Our gardening styles are different, and some of the things we grow are different.  She’s not growing radishes; I am.  We’re both growing tomatoes, but even though we bought some similar plants, not all of the plants were from the same flat.  When you have a mixed marriage like ours (everything’s different – politics, rural v. urban, age, etc.) you have to accept the other’s idiosyncrasies and choices.   

Stephanie bought an Early Girl plant with a tomato about the size of a golf ball on it.  I have purchased plants with blossoms showing, but never with an actual fruit on it.  I’m always cautious.  That one fruit can damn the whole plant, in my nonfactual opinion.   However, this one particular tomato turned out perfect.  As a matter-of-fact, we have eaten the second tomato off that plant and have another sitting on the window sill waiting to ripen.  Ripe tomatoes in June is a rarity.  I guess she showed me.  That’s all right.  My garden will produce bushels of produce once it gets going.  I learned patience from a prayer I made up.  “God, grant me patience, and grant it to me NOW!”

Our garden plots are in different locations.  Stephanie’s garden is in Pleasant Hill (a house we own jointly with her eldest); my garden is in Des Moines.  Because we live close to the Des Moines River, you would think the soil would be black river bottom dirt.  No, it isn’t.  Two inches deep and you run into clay.  Less than a mile from the Des Moines home is a former brick factory, which explains why we have so much clay.  The soil at Pleasant Hill is much better. 

Both gardens are threatened by the usual pests.  I get more deer.  These guys will eat right through the deer repellant.  I have even used hot sauce without having any sort of effect.  The deer in this area must be from a country in which the cuisine is known to be hot.  We do provide water.  Since the back yard here is a “Certified Wildlife Habitat” by the National Wildlife Federation, founded by Iowa’s Pulitzer Prize Cartoonist Ding Darling, we’re going to get critters.  We expect them, and we get them.  It’s not good for the lettuce, cup plants, or lilies, but they don’t seem to bother the radishes or onions, or especially the hemlock plants that grow wild.

Yesterday, I made strawberry salsa for the first time.  I have made tomato salsa and peach salsa, but this strawberry salsa has a separate taste of its own (I leave out cilantro).  It has inspired me to make as many salsas as I can.  Not to sound like Bubba on Jenny (Forest Gump’s shrimp boat), but you can make salsa out of just about anything: cherry salsa; corn salsa; beet salsa; apple salsa; and orange salsa.  Don’t try to make cabbage salsa; but I suppose you could.

I began gardening when I was a young boy.  My garden was one of the best in town, especially because Mom told me she didn’t want weeds.  If it was going to go to weeds, she would plant grass back in the garden plot.  That was enough of an incentive to keep everything that looked like a weed from growing within six inches of the garden.  I was so excited when Howdy Lindberg came up the alley with his little Ford tractor with a plow on the back and plowed up a 15’ x 30’ section of the yard.  Mom wasn’t home.  I’m the one who told Howdy how much land needed to be tilled.  I guess it was too much – at first!  End results were enough to keep it up for years.  My brother Joe took over after I couldn’t take care of it anymore (got a real job during the summer and after school).

That first year I grew radishes, onions, carrots, peas (which didn’t pan out), tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and Zinnias.  Mom said I couldn’t grow corn because it would bring rats to the yard.  I believed her.  No green beans!  I like them now, but despised them as an adolescent.

I was also delivering the Omaha World-Herald evening newspaper about that time.  One of the first customers on my route was the Vail Independent Telephone Company.  I had to walk up about 20 stairs to get to the lobby of the office.  In the lobby there was a door with the top half open and the bottom half closed so that people could pay their telephone bill without mailing it.  It was also where I left the newspaper.

If the switchboard wasn’t too busy, one of the nice ladies would chat with me, unless it was Louise.  Louise, the owner, didn’t chat with anyone.  But Stacia Robinson, Bonita Gallagher, and Marg Adams, the other operators, were charming.

Marg knew I had a garden and often asked how things were growing.  “Pretty good,” I would say.  “Got my first cucumber today.”  “No, Marty,” Marg responded.  “You cannot have a cucumber in June.”  The next day, I brought her a cucumber out of my garden.  If she were still alive, she might still be skeptical.  And I started the cucumbers by seed. 

It may have been one of my sisters (CFR) who told me she couldn’t grow cucumbers because they didn’t have a hill.  Maybe it was someone else who told me that.  I’m not sure.  I shouldn’t pick on my older sister like that.  I hope I don’t have to explain this. 

Growing fruits and vegetables is one of my favorite pastimes.  Actually, it can be a lot of work.  But what other job gives you so much pride and happiness, and something to eat!  The end result is always rewarding. The sad part of gardening today is that climate change may have us rotating our crops to cacti next year.

My garden is growing in raised boxes.  Stephanie’s garden is fenced in to protect it from the bunny living under the deck.  Harvesting veggies is a process in which whatever you’re craving is just about ready.  Whether it comes from Stephanie’s garden or my garden, we enjoy it thoroughly.   

We don’t compete; we eat!

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Bizzarro!

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Marty Ryan

This link will bring you to an article written originally for the Prairie Progressive, Iowa’s oldest progressive newsletter.

https://secureservercdn.net/45.40.149.159/c8h.0e8.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Bizzarro.pdf?time=1591144261

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Memorial Day 2020

Posted on May 27, 2020 by Marty Ryan

This year, on Memorial Day, I reminisced about Memorial Days past.  It used to be a huge day of drinking for me and my American Legion comrades of the 1970s and 1980s.  I don’t miss them – the days of drinking; I was just thinking of them.  I do miss my fellow legionnaires.

Shortly after being discharged from the Army (honorably, I might add), my mother wanted me to join the local American Legion post.  We oblige our mothers when asked, right?  My father was a legionnaire, it was only genetic that I become one too.  So, I joined American Legion Post 65 in Vail, Iowa.  For the longest time, I was the youngest active member.  Most were Korean War veterans, several were World War II veterans, and a few were Vietnam War veterans older than me. 

I was given a uniform.  Reluctantly, I wore the damned thing.  I was sort of tired of wearing uniforms about that time.  We were called out for funerals, parades, and the yearly cemetery duty of three graveyards on Memorial Day each year. 

Jim Hickey & Marty Ryan August 8, 1973

Every year, on Memorial Day, Legion members would gather at the Legion Club around 8:30 am.  The keg would be tapped, and most of those present would draw a beer in a plastic cup and take it with them to the first cemetery, Kings Cemetery about four miles northeast of town.  The festivities at Kings began at 9:00 am.

Part of the ritual is to read the names of those veterans buried in the cemetery.  Kenny Nelson was our chaplain.  He read the names of our deceased comrades.  At Kings Cemetery, all the surnames were Slecta, with the exception of the lone last name read by Kenny – Banachek.  As you can tell, the graveyard was primarily a cemetery for Bohemians who settled the land northeast of Vail.  There were about nine or ten veterans buried there.

The second cemetery was the Vail Cemetery, and the ritual began at 9:30 am.  The cemetery was established for those of various faiths who had died in the town, and surrounding countryside of Vail, with the exception being Catholics and those resting eternally in Kings Cemetery.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at this cemetery, the beer had caught up with most legionnaires.  A Presbyterian minister was often on hand to say some words and read a prayer.  The chaplain, Kenny, had to read close to 60 or 70 names at this location.  You could count on one member of the firing squad telling the sergeant at arms to remind the preacher that we had to be at the Catholic Cemetery at ten.  As you can imagine, the prayers and sermon went on far too long. The sole restroom with one toilet at that Legion Club in town was more important than a beer refill on the way through town to the Catholic cemetery.

St. Ann’s Cemetery was a mile-and-a-half out of town on the southwest side.  This was the big display.  Hundreds of people showed up after Mass was over twenty minutes earlier.  There were way over one-hundred names to remember at this cemetery.  For some reason, a legion member by the name of Bill was always stuck with a rifle that jammed.  The firearms were old M-1 carbines that had a tendency to jam at times.  Most legionnaires in the firing squad who picked up a firearm that jammed just went through the procedures without actually squeezing the trigger at the command of “fire”.  But not Bill.  He would set the rifle down and step on the bolt to get it open for the jammed shell to fall out so that he could shoot during the next volley.  You could hear some people in the crowd giggle. Eyes rolled among the rest of us.

After St. Ann’s, we headed back to the Legion Club for more beer and a chicken dinner around 11:00 am.  The flag outside the post was raised from half-staff to full-staff at noon and many sat around for an hour or two socializing and drinking.

A few of us didn’t know any better.  We might get in a car and go visit other posts throughout the area.  We traveled to Manning, Arcadia, Denison, Breda, Schleswig, and just about any post within a 40-mile radius.  We were often delayed if Fitzpatrick showed up. 

Fitzpatrick lived in Schleswig; a town heavily populated by German descendants.  Fitzpatrick was (or claimed to be) the only Irishman in town.  He wanted to party with the Irish in Vail.  On more than one occasion, we took Fitzpatrick with us to other posts. 

Life at work the following day was pure hell.

I was an American Legion member for about 23 years.  I even served one year as the commander of the Post 65 in Vail.  I quit paying dues sometime in the 1990s because I was upset at the national office and the national commander.

I had written a letter asking the national American Legion to stop raising money to lobby for a constitutional amendment to prohibit flag burning, and to use that fundraising money to help veterans.  I received a form letter.  I wrote again.  I received a letter from the commander asking why I have not submitted my dues.  I wrote again, explaining again why I hadn’t paid my dues.  I received another form letter – this one telling me all about how the American Legion was fighting to get an amendment passed that would prohibit flag burning.  I gave up.

This year, before I awoke, Stephanie displayed our U.S.A. made flame-retardant flag at half-staff outside our house.  At noon, I proudly raised it to full-staff.  I spent the rest of the day enjoying the weather – safe – sober – at home!

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Who Was That Unmasked Man?

Posted on May 23, 2020 by Stephanie Fawkes-Lee

One snowy winter day in Minnesota many years ago, I bundled up my first-born son Gregg, complete with light blue snowsuit, navy fur-lined aviator hat and hand-knitted mitten and headed to the store.  He wasn’t even two-years-old and couldn’t talk in sentences yet, but he noticed that I wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves.  He didn’t like wearing all that winter gear and asked me why I wasn’t wearing it.  I told him, “I have old hands.”  He looked at his hand thoughtfully for a few moments and stated, “Gregg old hands.”

Stunned by his rather complex thought process at a decidedly young age, I realized a few things.  First, clearly this was going to be a difficult child to raise, since he could out think me before he was even able to form sentences.  Second, I’d better come up with better excuses than “old hands”.  But the most important lesson was that I needed to enter the realm of being a role model.  Gregg and his two future siblings were not going to accept the “do as I say, not as I do” mantra.  I needed to teach by example.

So, for the next twenty-five years I led a life of role modeling honesty, integrity, but most importantly compassion.  My children deserved a reliable rock in this crazy world we live in, so I dubbed myself Gibraltar.  It was an exhausting way to live.  But parenting forces you to look outside of your own desires and care about another person’s needs, many times putting those needs ahead of living within your own comfort zone.

So that quarter century lifestyle of discomfort prepared me for the pandemic mask requirement.  I didn’t have a mask at the beginning.  With the shortage, it seemed that health-care workers had a greater need and my hopeless lack of sewing and craft skills kept me from creating my own.  Actually, it was my son Gregg who gave me a mask, since I’m around high risk individuals and have been the designated grocery shopper, thereby potentially exposing them through me to the virus. 

To be perfectly honest, if the mask was just for my protection, I wouldn’t wear it.  It’s hot, scratchy and uncomfortable.  My eye glasses fog up at times, leading me to hold my breath as I quickly attempt to read the best by date on the items that I’m purchasing at the grocery store.  At the check-out, same problem, holding my breath while typing in my debit card PIN.  Life would seem to be so much more comfortable without the mask, but then I look around at all the vulnerable people in the store and how the number of deaths from this virus are escalating.  How comfortable would I be knowing that my selfishness could expose others to a deadly virus? 

It’s difficult for me to understand why leaders are refusing to wear the mask and role model a reasonable method to protect human life.  Is it vanity?  Fear of having one’s hair mussed or makeup smudged?  Maybe they feel that it diminishes their role as leaders.  Do religious leaders believe that somehow God loves and protects them more than other people?  This is an extremely dangerous belief, since God loves to teach humility and dying alone, unable to breathe, is a most humbling way to end a life.  Maybe these leaders weren’t active parents and never needed to put another person’s health and safety ahead of their own personal interests.

But Marty and I have decided to embrace our current masked existence.  This morning we left the house with our Fleet Farm list, half-filled coffee mugs, cell phones and face masks.  As we stood on the front stoop, both of us noticed a teenager on the sidewalk.  His eyes grew wide with fear and surprise at our unexpected entrance and he signaled with his hands to his buddy who was rifling through our Ford Explorer in the driveway.  Where was a policeman when you needed one? Luckily for us he was pulling up to the 3-way stop on the corner.  He drove after the two, but wasn’t able to catch them, although he did recognize one of them.  So our morning outing was delayed as we visited with the officer and filed the complaint.  Did we feel fearful or violated by this experience?  Not really.  That came later in the morning when we finally made it to Fleet Farm. 

Quite a few people were shopping, some with small children and even dogs.  What was missing from this scene were face masks and social distancing.  A few of us were wearing masks to protect other people in the store, especially the young children as they too are facing fatal consequences from this virus.  We don’t know if we are carriers and we certainly don’t want other people to pay the consequences if we are simply two of those lucky people who don’t suffer symptoms from the virus. The loud speaker periodically came on, telling shoppers how much Fleet Farm cares about their health and instructing them to please practice social distancing.  But very few of the workers were wearing face masks and no one, not Fleet Farm employees or shoppers were making any serious attempt to practice social distancing.  “Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work.  We did our best to distance ourselves, got through the store and checkout in record time, packed up the old Explorer, took off our masks and headed home. 

Hi Ho and away!  Hopefully, off to survive another day.

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Observations

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Marty Ryan

Are you the type of person who writes little notes to yourself so that you can write a letter, a blog, or an article later?  I want to say that I’m that person, but I’m not.  It’s not from a lack of desire to be more organized; it’s just that my mind won’t let me slow down enough to remember where I was before I made the note.  It’s a sign of getting older.

I have questions.  Over the past few months, I have built up a memory of items that I need to get out of my head. 

This blog began when I read a May 9th article from Carol Hunter, the Des Moines Register’s executive editor.  Ms. Hunter was explaining why the Register used the word “approximately” when reporting the number of COVID19 cases in Iowa.  Her response to a writer:

It turns out that there was a math discrepancy in the numbers the state had reported that morning. The number of total cases in Iowa to date that it reported was five fewer than the number of new cases added to the previous day’s total. Math errors happen. Our staff decided, correctly I believe, to report the “nearly 400” estimate until the discrepancy could be resolved.

But hey, math errors cannot happen with the Iowa Caucuses?  The difference in numbers being counted – caucuses vs. Coronavirus cases – is huge.  If it can’t keep a small number like 400 accurate, the Register should move out of its glass house.  It was the media leader in beating the dead horse with stories about inaccurate counts of the caucuses?

That’s just an observation.

Rule 12 of the Iowa Rules Regarding Lobbyists states: “A lobbyist shall not cause or influence the introduction of any bill or amendment for the purpose of being employed to secure its passage or defeat.”  Basically, that’s what lobbyists do. 

Several years ago, Stephanie and I approached the Ethics Committees in both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate.  We suggested a language change since the Rule 12 sentence was confusing.

The reply we received was that everyone knows what that sentence means, so there’s no need to change it.  Well, shortly after that, a new agency was born, and the first executive director of the agency was the lead lobbyist in creating the agency.  We asked the committees for clarification.  Did the lobbyist “cause or influence the introduction of” the bill creating the agency “for the purpose of being employed”?  No, supposedly, that’s not what it means.  Then, what in hell does it mean?

That’s just an observation.

I received my absentee ballot this past week.  I will have voted by the time this is posted.  Iowa’s very own stable genius, the Iowa Secretary of State, has provided instructions on completing my absentee ballot.

Instruction #3 states [in bold]:

If a secrecy envelope was provided, place the voted ballot in the secrecy envelope.  If no secrecy envelope was provided, go to step 4. 

Step #4 says to [also in bold]:

Place the voted ballot or the secrecy envelope containing the voted ballot in the return affidavit envelope.

I’m smart enough to figure it out, but wouldn’t it have been less confusing to use fewer words in step #4, such as: “Place the voted ballot in the return affidavit envelope”?  The instructions already indicated what to do if a secrecy envelope was provided.

That’s just an observation.

Now, I’m observing the media again.  There are several stories about face masks; who’s wearing them and who is not.  What about gloves?  I feel that gloves are more important than face masks. 

Granted, wearing a face mask may protect you from touching your face, but doesn’t it work both ways – protecting others from your projections, and protecting you from bad breath?  The hands are the instruments that touch things other people have touched.

Consider this.  You go to the grocery store and you are wearing your mask.  Good for you.  However, you pick up a can of green beans and you’re not wearing gloves.  How do you know that can of beans has not been picked up and put back in place by someone without gloves who is symptomatic?  Huh?  They could have coughed while holding that can of beans.  Now, their tiny little virus babies on are your hands.  You can go home and wash your hands, but the little baby viruses are on the steering wheel, the door to the house, etc.  Alternatively, you can rip those gloves off after walking out of the store and throw them in a trash receptacle that should be placed somewhere near the front door of the store. 

I think gloves are more important than masks, but that’s just an observation.

Finally, many people have now watched the Jimmie Kimmel film where he shows Vice President Pence moving empty boxes to the front door of a nursing home.  [Don’t look for it; it’s been taken down.]  USA Today conducted a fact check and discovered that those boxes were not empty.  That’s great investigative work!

However, the fact check story is missing some very prominent gaffes in the photo op.  First of all, that’s all it was – a photo op.  What purpose did the photo op serve?  That VP Pence is hard at work personally delivering Personal Protection Equipment?  I applaud him for finding a real job, but he was not wearing gloves (see statement above); he was not wearing a mask; he was at the front door of a nursing home where the rest of America cannot get within a sidewalk away; none of the supporting staff with him were wearing masks or gloves; and they were all grouped together – not six feet apart.  But the boxes were not empty.

It wasn’t that long after the photo op that two of his staff and several secret service agents tested positive.  I’m thinking: maybe the boxes weren’t empty, but the nursing home might have been.  If not, it might be today.  But . . .

that’s just an observation.

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Order Up

Posted on May 3, 2020 by Marty Ryan

In the Army, written formal orders from above can be good; they can be bad.  When you’re not expecting orders, they can be like getting a notice from the Internal Revenue Service, it will make your stomach feel uneasy.  Upon being told to report to the captain’s office, I was very apprehensive.  When I arrived and was told the captain had orders for me, all I could do was hold my breath.  I received orders to go to typing school on base.  For two weeks, I learned how to type.  I got up to forty words a minute.

Upon graduation from typing school, Sergeant Bush said, “Ryan, I’m going to make you the mess hall clerk.” 

I can only guess what brought this about.  I had enrolled in an online sociology course with the University of Wisconsin.  My first paper submitted was returned with a grade of C+.  Oh, come on.  It was better than that.  I was expecting nothing less than an A.  So, I quit.  But it could be that enrolling in a class was a tip to the brass that I was looking for a challenge.  Being a mess hall clerk wasn’t much of a challenge, but it did take more intelligence than making salads.

The job had its advantages.  I would remain housed with the cooks in a separate wing of the building.  That means I didn’t have to fall out for roll call in the morning.  No longer would I have to wear cook whites, which never seemed to fit properly.  There was no problem fixing my own plate and doing so before anyone got in line.  I could sleep in and go to work whenever I wanted, as long as it wasn’t too late, which meant getting to the mess hall about five minutes before Sgt. Bush.

Sergeant Bush was a heavy man.  If you’re any sort of a football fan, you may be familiar with Andy Reid, the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs (my favorite pro football team).  Sgt. Bush didn’t wear glasses, but he resembled Coach Reid in just about every respect.  He was smart, funny, firm in his ways, and he had a great nose for talent – my opinion.

One hot, humid, suffocating July afternoon, Sgt. Bush was talking about how he wanted the mess hall dining room air conditioned.  I was talking to the supply sergeant one day, and he brought up how much he would like to have his own coffee so that he wouldn’t have to keep walking over to the mess hall (30 feet away).  Sgt. Rodriquez was a rotund Hispanic about 5-feet tall.  He had a thick mustache and wore black-rimmed glasses.  He could be intimidating; most people working in supply are intimidating – they have something you want.  But I wasn’t just going to give him the coffee.  I noticed his office was air-conditioned.  I made an offer.  I would give him a 30-lb. tin of coffee for the air conditioner.  I thought he would talk me down, but he didn’t.  He readily gave up the air conditioner.  I went back to the mess hall and picked up a full, unopened 30-lb. tin of coffee like it was mine and brought it right over to him.  I helped him take the air conditioner out of the window and hefted it by myself back to the mess hall.  Sgt. Bush scratched his head and laughed so hard the cigar fell out of his mouth.  I purchased a large window air conditioner with a 30-lb. can of coffee.  He had a couple of guys on KP install it in our little window about 8 foot off the ground.  Might as well, no one could look out the window anyway.  It wasn’t a panacea for cooling the dining room, but it did have a positive effect on everyone who ate and worked there.

A few days after acquiring the air conditioner, I had noticed that Sgt. Rodriquez had a new air conditioner in his window.  Someday, when he needed more coffee, I would get that one, too.  Evidently, there was no shortage of them. 

The fact that I could operate like Radar O’Reilly came in handy when our mess hall was one of a handful of mess halls throughout the country chosen to experiment with a new program.  At the time, a mess hall was given so much food based upon the number of soldiers fed.  It was rationed.  If you served 100 GIs for lunch, you would receive approximately 110 hamburgers for a lunch on a specific day.  110 hamburger buns, and so on.  For dinner, you might receive 110 pork chops.

The pilot program in which we were selected to participate in was devised to allow the mess sergeant and mess clerk to order whatever food it felt it needed to acquire, to accurately feed the estimated number of soldiers.  We were allotted a specific amount per soldier for breakfast, a little more for lunch, and more for dinner.  For example:  if the 260th Quartermaster Battalion was feeding 100 soldiers for breakfast on Monday, we might receive one-hundred dollars in allotted credit to shop at the warehouse.  Perhaps we would have 125 to feed at lunch on the same day.  At a pretend ration of two-dollars per person, we would add two-hundred fifty dollars to our credit.  If we fed only 30 soldiers for dinner because it was payday, we would presumably receive ninety dollars for a three-dollar credit per person fed.  For that day, we would have earned four-hundred and forty dollars.  We could spend up to $440 at the warehouse on anything we wanted.  We could get $440 worth of mustard if we wanted.  (Probably be court martialed the following day, but we could.)

Sgt. Bush devised a plan.  At breakfast, where turnout for meals was larger than the other two meals, we would ask each soldier to sign all three sheets for the day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  At lunch, we would ask the soldiers in line if they signed at breakfast.  If not, we would ask them to sign the lunch register and the dinner register.  Same thing at dinner.  Not one GI complained.  Sgt. Bush said that if someone did complain, make sure they knew that they were eating in a special mess hall with all the trimmings.  They could go back to the old way if they wanted to take the complaint higher.  It was never necessary.

Our mess hall had great food.  We had two staff sergeants, one on each shift, who were chefs at high-class restaurants before entering the service (one in Baltimore; the other in Boston), and because of that, most cooks spent their time cleaning.  We were selected as “Best Mess on Post” 12 of 13 months I was there.  The food was excellent; the place was spotless; and, because we could order what we thought would provide a better variety of dishes based on the pilot program, more and more servicemen wanted to eat with us rather than go to town.  The program allowed us to serve steak more often than other mess halls, and the steaks were prepared to order – unlike the others who cooked each steak thoroughly and plopped it on your plate.

When all the other mess halls on base were having beans and rice, we were offering a choice.  You could get a hamburger with French fries, or you could have beans and rice, or you could have a chef’s salad.  Our mess hall was a destination spot for dining on base.

We also had a guy from Washington, DC.  He was the best fry cook I had ever seen.  He could accurately keep track of whose breakfast order was up, even when he had six or eight orders in front of him.  Each egg was cooked exactly as the person requested it.    

Trays with bowls on them, each bowl containing two eggs, were set next to the grill.  When you were in front of him, he knew whether you had the scrambled, the over-easy, or even the poached. 

One morning, when he yelled out “next man, how do you want your eggs?” the person in line replied, “you say ‘sir’ to me!”  Without looking up to see that it was a lieutenant colonel, he quipped back: “Sir, this is an enlisted man’s mess.  Next man, how do you want your eggs?”  I could barely believe it.  I was standing a little behind the counter when it occurred.

The officer was pissed.  He went back to Sgt. Bush’s office.  I was free to follow since that was also my office.  I didn’t want to miss this.  Sgt. Bush was firm.  He stood behind his cook.   “Yes, this is an enlisted man’s mess hall.  If you want to eat somewhere where you want to be called ‘sir’ ya’all will have to eat at the Officer’s Club.”  Sgt. Bush was right, and the LG knew it.  We got a lot of officers eating in our mess hall.  We had a petty cash box by the registers, and, besides the LG that thought he could push power in the breakfast line, they all paid and mixed in with enlisted men. 

Cooks were some of the most powerful people in the Army.  If you like what you’re eating; if it’s better than the Officer’s Club; if it’s less expensive than the Officer’s Club; then you shouldn’t mess with a good thing.  (Pun intended.)

NOTE:  It has since been changed, but in the in the 1960s and early 1970s, the word MESS was an acronym for Meals Essential for a Soldiers Sustenance.

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