Our blog friend Theo Boehm is tired of all the conflicts that go on and on at various blogs. It gets old. We should turn over a new leaf for the new year. More love you know.
So he decided to email me a photo from his archives. This is how his grandfather courted his grandmother out in California back in the day. He is one suave dude.
It's really is all about the size of your flute.
11 comments:
Now, Trooper, that's not completely true.
I'm not bothered by conflicts, as much as the spiritual sinkholes people seem so proud of living in.
It's that time of the year: Christmas Trashing Season, wherein those with absolutely no idea of the meaning of this holiday, not to mention one iota of anything else religious, feel it's their absolute duty to display their joyless souls as models for the rest of us.
You'd think, after seeing Christmas Trashing being done over so many years and in so many ways, that I wouldn't be brought down by it. But as I get older, I'm even more bothered than ever. So, I'm just avoiding those blog posts and other bits of the media where I expect Christmas Trashing to occur. I'm also avoiding its related activities: Christianity Bashing, and Complete Inability to Understand Religion.
Oftentimes, these go together, but sometimes they're separated out to one degree or another. I'm avoiding all of them. It's fine to discuss these things, but life is too short to waste any of it on stupid ideas that anyone brighter than the inside of a moose has thought through perfectly well when they were, say, nine years old.
* * * * *
Now, being the old fart I am, the people in the picture resemble my parents, not my grandparents. I actually have some old photos of my father and mother, similarly attired, on the beach in 1941. But they weren't married then, or even together, just in a larger group of people.
The group included my father and one of his brothers and several other guys, all holding, not flutes, but surfboards. Yes, surfboards in 1941. The boards were made out of mahogany, about 14 ft. long, and had no fins. Yikes!
My Dad was a serious South Seas enthusiast, complete with a surfboard, a conch shell collection, and 78 RPM recordings of Augie Goupil and his Royal Tahitians. The Draft was breathing down his neck, so he decided to join the Navy, which he did on December 5, 1941.
My mother did not go to work as a waitress at the Elks Hotel in Hollywood on the morning of December 8, because her husband, a Chief Petty Officer on the USS Arizona, had been killed at Pearl Harbor.
My Dad got to see a lot of the South Pacific, but not on a surfboard. His view was from the side of a 5 inch/25 caliber gun on the deck of the USS New Mexico.
He and my Mom knew each other through mutual friends and relatives before the War, and eventually, when my Dad was stationed at San Pedro, they got together, and were married in '44, just before my Dad shipped out for the invasion of the Philippines.
My Mom always said it must have been love, because why else would she take a chance on another Navy man shooting at Japanese planes from the deck of a battleship?
Great story Theo. You dad was a hero. Like so many who served their country in those perilous times. God bless him.
And in other places to prove your point the broads are getting into it.
Peace on earth and good will toward men.
Last night we watched a TIVO of the Real Housewifes of Orange County. The head super bitch Vicki tried to set up this "girls" weekend where they all fly out to Florida. I mean why do you need to go to Florida when you live in Sourhtern California?
Anyway some of the broads decide to invite the husbands and Vicki pouts and acts out and refuses to participate in anything. Now these guys don't really like each other or know each other but they don't give a shit. They just hang out and have a burger and go golfing.
The woman have all these discussions and bitchfests and catfights and what not.
It was quite entertaining.
By the way that was Ava Gardner in the bikini.
Just to pull rank on Theo, my dad was already a doctor with an established practice at the time of Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless he volunteered and served as a captain, the standard officer ranking for physicians. He was sent to the European theater and was in a field hospital at the Bulge. Horrific experience that he never talked about. To me the war was his Eisenhower jacket and a souvenir Luger. The downside of all this is that my mom never forgave him for "abandoning" her with one small child and one on the way (me). I didn't really understand any of this until I was well into adolescence.
The gal in the picture looks like Ava Gardner.
Your dad was a hero as well ricpic.
We honor his service to his country.
That indeed is Ava. Good eye.
Great stories Theo and Ricpic-thanks for sharing that.
Good stories Theo & Ricpic. My dad went into the Army on 2/18/42 and served in the Aleutians.
He had some good stories too.
He said he lost and won back his high school band's clarinet several times in poker games. He once almost drowned a fellow soldier named Utley in a fight. After that, my Dad said he never took his eyes off of Utley [who was a crane operator] when Dad had to load military supplies in the belly of supply ships.
Dad never flew on a plane until he was in his 70's. Even travelinng from Pennsylvania to the Aleutians in the Army was via, bus, train or ship.
Thanks for the great stories everyone.
Surprised to learn that Ava Gardner was Theo's Grandma. Well, maybe I got that part wrong.
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