September 21, 2004 – The news today has many parallels to a war that was fought when I was young: the daily toll of lives taken, the rehashing of the war records of two candidates,¹ the images on the television.

To be sure, Iraq is not Vietnam.

It’s not the same for our soldiers. Today they have the support of the public.

It’s not the same for me.

In 1967, I was a sophomore in high school, a somewhat introverted kid from Nebraska transplanted to the steamy heat of Houston, Texas. I was moving from a comfortable lower middle class life into poverty as a 15 year old. Vietnam was a far distant place and not a true reality for me.

I graduated in 1970, still in the Houston area, from the same high school I had been in for two and a half years, even though we had moved five times. Still poor; I drew a high lottery number. Vietnam was still unreal and far away, something in the papers every day and on the evening news. It was just a part of life.

I joined the Navy and got married. Our first daughter was born at Travis Air Force Base early in 1972. At that time, POWs were returning home, many of them for treatment in the same hospital my wife and baby daughter were in. But it was time for us to move on to our next duty station. Vietnam was a closer reality, but I was in the Navy, not likely to have to go there, and, besides, it was just part of life.

Time passed and so did the Vietnam conflict. It never was a war, they said. Just a conflict. It never was close to me.

I don’t remember when I first saw the memorial.

What I do remember is how striking it was. It fascinated me. It stunned me. It was emotionally painful. It brought tears to my eyes.

With all of the names on the wall and the little mementos left by family, friends, and comrades, the wall brought home to me some of the horrible reality and waste. The loss of all those young lives; the impact on families; the sons, husbands, and fathers who were lost; the terrible toll that it took on our country.

Iraq is not the same as Vietnam… and it’s surely not for me.

Iraq is far away, but it is very, very real to me. It’s not just because my son-in-law is in the service and could be sent there. It’s the wall. It brought the reality of that long ago conflict and helps, for me, with the reality of today.

I fully endorsed the attack on Iraq. I thought it was a just cause. I was wrong. My belief is that it’s taken us off track in the war on terror. We’ve lost ground because of it and it’ll take much, much longer to get past it. I don’t know that it will ever be won. I expect it will eventually just fade away.

Vietnam was just a part of life for me. The wall, with its simple stark beauty, showed me some of the terrible reality of a war we didn’t fight to win.

I just hope a memorial to the fallen in Iraq is not needed to teach anyone else that lesson for this conflict.

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Update:  January 1, 2007 – Around the time that I wrote this, I got back in touch, for the first time since 1971, with a friend from high school. She said she had wondered about me over the years and that, on a trip to D.C., she had searched for my name on that wall.

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1. George Bush and John Kerry

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Post from a retired blog – North Farnham Freeholder – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

Revised June 11, 2019; added image, both photos are public domain, corrected some spelling, added date to beginning

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How many times have you seen it? How many times have you done it?
I see it a lot and it’s starting to get scary.

I know —it’s hard not to do it.

Everyone else does it.

I used to do it all the time and, last week, I did it, even though I’ve tried very hard to resist the impulse.

What I’m talking about is hitting the gas after the light has turned yellow, trying to make it through before the light turns red. Far too often, though, the light is red before you’re all the way through, and it’s green for the drivers whose path you are crossing.

Of course, a lot of the time it happens when someone has been waiting and waiting and waiting for the opposing traffic to clear so they can make a left turn.

You’ve edged out into the center of the intersection and, finally, the light turns yellow so the cars coming from the other direction will have to stop, and you can make your turn. Hit the gas!

But hold on, the guy behind you has been waiting, too, and he hits the gas!, tailgating behind you into the turn. You see him on your tail in the rear-view mirror as you are moving into the turn.

Coming from the opposite direction, the driver of a SUV in the outside lane sees
the yellow light and… hits the gas! to make it through the intersection so he’s not slowed down getting to wherever he’s going. Neither of you can see the other because of a semi in the inside lane and the guy behind you on your tail who is concentrating on the back of your car, trying to will you through the turn a little faster.

CRASH!

Down the street that you were turning into, just over a small rise, a young man in a new car sees the light turn green… and hits the gas!
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Last year, in a town near us, a high-school student rushed to make a left turn as the light was changing.

As I recall, she survived.

Unfortunately, he passenger — her grandmother —didn’t.

Hit the gas!

(written September 17, 2004; edited January 4, 2006)

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Recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/25/2011, page, and 2/26/2011, page.  Restored to the originally published date since there were no comments.

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I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. On the surface she was a laid-back, easy-going person, seemingly without a care in the world – everyone’s friend. Yet very few of the people who knew her really knew how sick she was… and how depressed she was.

Several years ago she had heart related surgery. I don’t remember exactly what.

She didn’t didn’t take care of herself the way that heart patients are supposed to and had to have another operation.

She still didn’t take care of herself. Her health deteriorated.

We had met her and her husband when we joined a mixed league for bowling. They were also just starting and ended up being our partners, and friends, for years.

As her health deteriorated, she was no longer able to bowl. Her husband stayed on the team, but another lady took our friend’s place.

Our friend developed diabetes, and didn’t take care of herself.

She was everyone’s friend, but very few people really knew her.

Part of the reason she didn’t see a doctor was that she knew she would be told that she would have to have more surgery. They still had debt from the previous surguries. Her husband was self-employed and they didn’t have insurance.

She didn’t want to build up more debt.

She didn’t take care of herself.

She had suffered for years from depression.

A sore, a blister, developed on one of her feet.

She didn’t take care of herself.

The sore didn’t heal.

After several weeks she finally decided she had to see a doctor.

The sore had developed into something worse. She was a diabetic. She had not taken care of herself.

The doctor was not a doctor she had seen before. It seems that whenever she would go to see a doctor, it would be someone different than she had seen before.

The doctor – I don’t know his name, and I’m not sure that I want to know his name – apparently really laid into her when he saw the condition of her foot.

He asked her, practically accusing her, if she was an alcholic, an addict, if she was on meth.

He told he that the sore had deleloped into gangrene and that they probably wouldn’t be able to save her foot or her leg, and, oh by-the-way, you might lose your other foot, too.

Years ago, a lady that our friend knew had been hospitalized from complications arising from diabetes. She had a lot of problems, including the loss of both legs, before she died after a lingering illness. Our friend didn’t want that to happen to her.

Our friend disappeared.

She was missing for two days.

Two days was the waiting period for a hand gun.

I miss my friend, especially on Wednesdays, like today. On Wednesdays we go bowling.

My friend didn’t take care of herself. I miss her and I’m angry.

I don’t know which one I should be angry at, my friend or that damn doctor.

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This post was recovered from a retired blog – Skedaddle’s Log– recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine 2/26/2011 – page

This was my second blog post, which was posted, again, later, on October 8, 2007, with some afterthoughts added at the end.

Skedaddle’s Log^♠ will be a combination of two things, at least in the beginning.

1. It will be a place where I log the new additions to any of our web pages or sites.
2. It will be a place where I can rant, rage, or just simply write about things.

This post is also about getting the first post in place so that I can adjust the settings.

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February 26, 2011

♠ This post was recovered from a retired blog – Skedaddle’s Log – recovered from Internet Archive WayBackMachine.

June 9, 2019

Added image as part of Exit78’s blog renewal.

That first blog post was on Blogger. The blog was called Skedaddle’s blog and was posted on Blogger on a blogspot.com domain. I didn’t care much for Blogger and looked at a number of different options, eventually settling for blogging using WordPress self-hosted.  Sometime in 2011, after I dropped that URL, someone else picked it up, using it for a blog that has a grand total of 3 posts, all of them in 2011.

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Our hard drive has crashed again.  It’s the same one that failed before, except that we were able to reformat it and continue to use it.  The good news is that very little was lost this time.  Because of other issues, mailing list information for Skedaddle was moved to an on-line service and it was lost.  Almost all of the work that’s been done recently is on-line at our web-site.  A few hours work on current projects, some personal photos and, of course, all of our saved internet “favorites” is primarily what we lost.  Of course, installation of a new hard drive, formatting it and installing all of the software are all additional costs in money and time.

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Originally posted on Skedaddle Web Log. Added image and title.

March 27, 2004 – Last weekend, returning from Texas, we found that our computer had locked up… to the point that it would not reboot. Since our most important material is already stored on-line, it wasn’t that big a deal to just go ahead and reformat the hard-drive so that I could limit the amount of down-time – or so I thought. Big mistake. I forgot that there were a lot of other things that were stored on it with no backup, things like our Skedaddle subscriber list and – even worse – the Christmas pictures. Years ago, we used to have a tape backup – more trouble than it was worth – that we never needed since the hard-drive never crashed. Fortunately, we had been having some problems a few months ago and I put all of our digital photos on CD and gave a copy to each of our daughters. Also a lot of our old files were backed up at that time on CD. Now when I have a few moments….

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June 19, 2019 – So far, this is my earliest blog post that I have been able to locate.  It was a originally posted on a blog I titled “Skedaddle Web Blog,” which was mostly on additions and changes to a Civil War related web site.  I’m reposting it to Exit78 on the original date for historical continuity of my early blogging endeavors in one online location. All that I have changed is the addition of the image and a few typographical edits.