Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

  America seems to be divided into people who believe that homosexuality is a learned behavior and those that believe that homosexuals are born that way. I believe that homosexuality is learned behavior. It can be learned at a very young age. Before we even know that we are in this world. It can be a wiring problem but I have a theory that the father is a heavy influence in regard to male homosexuality. He may be absent from a child's life either physically, or emotionally. The father may be dominated by the wife or partner. The male child could have a very dominant single mother. I think these factors are important, and as a result a male can only relate to a another male in a sexual way. In regard to lesbians I think it can also be related to the father. The father is abusive physically or verbally to the mother, child or both. It could be a boyfriend or stepfather not related to child but who is abusive in some way. There is usually a man in the woodpile somewhere who has ...

  This is a picture of my 1957 Ford pick-up truck 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 had tied a bunch of artificial red roses to the front grill. I asked him why he did that. He said that he had declared the truck dead and had given it a funeral. The flowers were on that 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...

     I had an interesting conversation with an Iraqi man yesterday. For the sake of privacy I wont give his real name but I will call him Ahmad. Having been stationed in the Middle East I was able to open up a dialogue with him and found him to be very interesting. He is the second Iraqi that I have met. I worked with an Iraqi mall security officer that was an authentic hero in my mind. His name was Nick and he had been an interpreter for American forces in Iraq. He could speak pretty good English and was well trained in security. He had not only been an interpreter but had worked for Blackwater Security. Nick was compelled to come to America because al qaeda had placed a contract on his life. The Iraqi man that I talked to yesterday seemed very intelligent and friendly. He is a forty year old shiite Muslim that came to the United States in 2012. Ahmad was engaged to a woman in Iraq but they had to break off their relationship because she was unwilling to leave h...

     I am hearing that they are going to take Andrew Jackson from the front of the twenty dollar bill and place him on the back. He will be replaced by Harriet Tubman. There is no doubt that Harriet Tubman is an authentic American hero. Her story is inspiring and amazing. I realize that Jackson has his dark side as a slave owner and because of his Indian removal policy that resulted in the Trail of Tears. When you evaluate the impact that Jackson had on American History as opposed to Harriet Tubman there is no comparison however. His era of Jacksonian Democracy made our system of government more accessible to the common man and he is the only president that was able to completely pay off our national debt. Imagine for a moment what a map of America might look like if Jackson had never lived. There might not be the states of Alabama and Mississippi. Jackson acquired these when he defeated the Creek Indians at the battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1813. We might be missing...

 One of my favorite stories about the battle of Franklin is the tale of a Union sentry that was posted in a side doorway of the Carter House. General Jacob Cox selected the Carter House as his headquarters. A sentry was posted just outside of the door. The Union Army was not expecting a battle so late in the afternoon on November 30, 1864. They were caught with their pants down. The Confederate Army formed a line battle along the Winstead Hills two miles away. It was four in the afternoon and it is usually dark by five in late November. Night battles were rare in the Civil War. As the Confederate Army approached, in the excitement of the moment, no one thought to relieve the sentry of his post. The first general order, even in the modern military today, is that a sentry never abandons his post until properly relieved.  As the bullets began to hit closer and closer to the sentry he made himself a small target in the doorway. Today you can see little ding marks where the ...

     Very early on the morning of April 12, 1861 Confederate artillery batteries opened a barrage on Ft. Sumter. After a 33 hour bombardment the fort surrendered on April 13th. Incredibly nobody was killed. Two Union soldiers were accidentally killed on April 14th when a Union gun exploded during the formal surrender ceremony. The Confederates took possession of the fort and would successfully hold it until February 18, 1865 when the city of Charleston fell to Union forces. The fort was badly damaged after the Confederates fired 4,000 shells at it during the opening battle. In 1863 the Union Navy attempted to take the fort by monitor ironclads but they were beaten back. Two battles were fought by Union land forces to take Morris Island in the first and second battles of Ft. Wagner. Both attacks were bloodily repelled.  The first battle for Ft. Wagner was spearheaded by the all black 54th Massachusetts Infantry portrayed in the movie Glory. The Confederates a...

   While I was at Erhac most Security Police were getting orders for Ellsworth South Dakota, Malmstrom Montana, Minot and Grand Forks North Dakota. These were all SAC (Strategic Air Command) bases. It was the Cold War and if you were an SP you were either going to hump B-52 bombers or guard ICBM missile silo's. Winters in the Dakota's and Montana are brutal. Temperatures can go as low as twenty below and the wind chill factor even lower. At Lackland, Kingsley, and Erhac I was always given a (dream sheet). You were allowed to make three choices of bases that you would like to be stationed at and I would usually choose bases where the weather was warm. Bases like Patrick in Coco Beach Florida, or Hickam in Honolulu Hawaii. I also picked Sewart in Smyrna Tennessee until I learned that the base was going to be closed in 1970. At Erhac my third choice was Peterson Field in Colorado Springs. This was because a friend had been stationed there and told me how much he e...