Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

    Toward the end of Jimmy Carters's term of office Vice President Mondale landed at the Nashville airport on two separate occasions. One of these times was to watch his daughter perform in a horse show at M.T.S.U. Whenever Air Force One, or Air Force Two, landed in Nashville the planes were parked on the Air National Guard side of the airport. We were tasked to guard both planes, along with augmenting the Secret Service and local law enforcement. There was only one problem. We were carrying empty weapons. National Guard troops had shot 13 Kent State University students, killing four of them, during an anti-war riot on May 4, 1970 while I was home leave before going to Turkey. The state of Ohio did not insure their Guard troops and they were held personally liable in civil court. Since Tennessee also did not insure it's troops against personal liability we were not allowed to carry loaded weapons after the Kent State fiasco. Regardless, our commander wanted us to carry empty ...

  As we continue this discussion of Marx's family values, encounter another sordid element of the life of Karl Marx that cannot be avoided and merits pause: his awful statements about blacks and Jews; we see such ugly views by Marx littered throughout his personal and professional writings.  A victim of Marx's racism was his son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, husband of Laura. He came from Cuba, born in Santiago, later home of Marxist revolutionary Fidel Castro. Because Paul was Cuban, Marx viewed him as marred by "Negro" blood in his veins, prompting Marx to denigrate him as "Negrillo"and the "The Gorilla". Marx complained to Engels that "Lafargue has the blemish customarily found in the Negro tribe---no sense of shame, by which I mean shame about making a fool of oneself. ...Marx effectively "disowned" his daughter for marrying a man of mixed race. 

In May 1979 Debbie's grandmother Grace Brown wanted to sell her 1970 Nash Rambler. It was clean and in great shape since she only drove it on short errands like going to the store or to church. I bought it from her for 500 dollars. A rain storm was moving in about the same time that I bought the car. There was a heavy downpour that lasted for several days. One night after I got off at Colonial I started driving toward our house near Smyrna. In January 1979 we moved from our house in South Nashville since we only had 1,100 square foot house and we moved into our present house that had 1,400 square feet at the time. Over the years we have expanded twice and now have 2000 square feet. As I was driving toward I-24 I learned on the radio that there was flooding near the Bell Road exit and Hickory Hollow mall. This was an understatement because it was raining so hard when I approached the Bell road exit that I could barely see to drive. As you approach Bell road in the east bound lane th...

 I had a 1957 Ford pick-up truck that I bought in the late 1970's. It was Ford tough and built like a tank. I loved this old truck. A friend of mine named Joe, who worked with me at Colonial Baking company, sold it to me. Joe tied a bunch of artificial red roses to the front grill. I asked him why he did that and he said that he had declared the truck dead and had given it a funeral. The flowers were on the grill the whole time I owned it. I would love to have a nickel for every time I had to help my sister Donna move. She lived all over Nashville and Middle Tennessee at one time or another. Because of her, I came to detest helping people move. To make things worse she always managed to find an upstairs apartment. For reasons I will never understand she moved to Sullivan Illinois in 1977. I worked five days a week at Colonial. Tuesday and Saturday were my days off. Donna decided to move back to Nashville and asked me to help her. It is 333 miles, or nearly five hours to drive from ...

  In 1976 I found out that Debbie was pregnant with our fourth child. Although I was crazy about my kids and we always talked about having a lot of them I felt like four was about all we could afford. All I had to do was smile at Debbie and she would get pregnant. Vasectomies were a popular form of birth control but the thought of getting one made me cringe. At first I was being selfish because I wanted Debbie to get her tubes tied. After being shamed by her, and everyone else I finally set up an appointment with a urologist and had it done. The doctor gave me a shot of Sodium Pentothal or truth serum as it is sometimes called. Almost immediately I was feeling the most pleasurable high that I have ever experienced. I was laughing as the doctor was operating on me and I told him that he could just cut it all off. I didn't care about anything at that moment. He laughed and said that he better not. I wouldn't be too happy after the drug wore off.  On March 17, 1977 I was ready to...

  Around 1975 I became a shop steward for the Bakery and Confectionery Union at Colonial. I took the job more out of frustration than anything. We were working very long and hard hours without breaks. For my first couple of years I was working in the bun room and we were supposed to be relieved every two hours for a ten minute break. There was a break man that relieved everyone on the bun and bread lines. Our first breaks usually came close to on time but as the night wore on they would get farther and farther behind. Our second break was usually late and out of frustration everyone took longer breaks as the night progressed. This threw the breaks further behind and on top of this we were not getting a lunch break. I found a copy of our union contract and there in black and white it said that we were not only supposed to get a ten minute break every two hours but a thirty minute lunch break after we had been there four hours. Every time I would ask the older employees about the con...