Month: July 2017

I must admit that I don’t find the question to be simple. I will continue to think on it, but I also realize that I will always be limited in my thinking. I would like to point out a couple of things. Number one, I personally have experience and it was an experience like no other in my life, and I have not figured it out in my mind. Two, anyone and everyone is entitled to have an opinion and voice it, but three. I would suggest that most women would weigh appropriately men’s opinions about natural childbirth procedures and their efficacy as opposed to women’s and more importantly, women with experience’s opinions. Number four, please keep in mind that if a man were to be very loudly vocal about his opinions in the example above he might know more about it than you mothers, or he might think he knows more about it than you mothers.

My experience was during a time of war, and I was drafted.  So, my experience is different than today’s all volunteer services.  It was also about half a century ago, and things change with time.  Not all things.  The reason for our military hasn’t changed, but the use of it to enact social change has.

Some will say that this is a flat out denial o one’s right to fight for the country they love.  I call bullshit on that one.  If the country was being invaded and overwhelmed, I doubt very much if the question would come up.  All hands on deck means all hands.  But, in a time when the military has more people wishing to serve than there is call for, the military has some discretion in whom it allows to serve.  So, the situation we are in has something to do with it.  I think almost everyone would agree that in the right situation, or should I say a dire situation that no one would be too concerned if a person was sixteen or seventeen, if they could keep us from losing our way of life, or country.  But, that it also a recognition that there is a sliding scale.  Jake Matlala was a 4 time world champion boxer, but would have been considered to short to serve at just under four feet ten inches.  No soldier anywhere near his size would have been able to beat him at fighting.  Oh, and George Foreman was too old to enlist because old guys can’t withstand the rigors of physical combat.  Right!?  Of course there are exceptions, but they have the ability during this period in time to be somewhat selective.

The military probably is our society’s most powerful single tool used for change in our history. It forced integration well before the states got things figured out. Recently, it has been used to champion equal rights for women, to I believe our country’s great credit.  The big question at the time was about combat readiness.  Could the military maintain its ability to fight?  The answer has been simply, Yes.  Now, the military, at the time it was thrust upon them argued that it wouldn’t.  It is I believe upon the advice of the military leaders that at this time they believe that transgendered men and women serving is not the best way to go.  So, we know that they can be wrong, and that using the military to change society has been used and can be used to effect social change.

It seems to me that much of the arguments will be from those outside of the military and be geared more toward social change.  Some will be about using resources spent to enact the inclusion of transgendered individuals to be the problem, and some will bring up unit cohesiveness.  My self, I think in the overall scheme of things, in the amounts of money spent by the military that money may not be the biggest problem, and like in the past, arguments about unit cohesiveness may end up being overblown.  Now, remember that I am an outsider, now, so my experience in the past gives me insight that 95% of the population doesn’t have.  I have been in those units.  But, I am an outsider now.  It seems to me that what is left is a question of whether or not you believe the military should be used at this time for social change.  Maybe in this case, this social change.  There I am right back at the start.  Would you let your daughter shower with a biological male who identifies as a woman?  What if your daughter wasn’t a Marine, but a 10 year old Girl Scout at the public pool?  What if your son is the male who identifies as a female?  Should she be sent to shower with the other males?  Should there just be no Men’s or Women’s restrooms in the Marines?  How about just open stalls and showers at the public pool?  Those of you who have it all figured out are ahead of me.  I still have questions.

Sometimes the simple ones are tough for me.

My Grandparents had bought a lot in Cambria and had been using our 14 foot camp trailer to live in while their home was being built. It was finished, and my father and I were going to make the drive from the Bay Area down the coast and pick it up.  It was 1962, I was 14 and had been accompanying my dad on weekend fishing trips and to the San Jose Flea Market to sell,  for years.  We planned to pick up the camp trailer and take it up to Pinecrest for fishing before bringing it back to the Bay Area with us to return it to its normal space amongst all of the other boats and rv’s behind the Chevron station on Grant Avenue.

My dad had bought an old International Harvester pickup truck, I think it was a 1951, and he and my Uncle Chuck had fixed it up and given her a nice new paint job.  It ran like a top.  The straight 6 developed about 100 horsepower and had a 4 speed non-synchromesh transmission.  First gear was a Granny low that could climb up the side of a building.

We hooked up the trailer and set off for Strawberry Lake and the rainbow trout that were waiting for us.  Because we had gone hundreds of miles south and were as far west as we could get, Pinecrest lay hundreds of miles back up north again and a couple of hundred miles east high into the Sierra Nevada mountains.  If you have ever done much traveling you know that highways pretty much go north and south and east and west.  They don’t much do northeast and southwest or northwest to southeast.  But we needed to go diagonally.  So we got out the map and began making our way on not well travelled roads.  Before long we were out in the middle of nowhere.  My dad slowed the pickup and trailer to a stop, slightly off of the road onto the shoulder.  He got out and found a bush to get behind saying he had to see a man about a horse.

When he returned, he came to the passenger side door and opening it, he told me to slide over behind the wheel.  He showed me the shift pattern and warned me that because it was not a synchromesh transmission, I would need to double clutch it when I shifted.  Then he explained that meant I would have to push the clutch in to shift to neutral, let the clutch out in neutral, and then push it back in before completing the shift up to the next gear.

He told me to put it in second gear with the clutch pushed to the floor.  Oh, did I tell you that it had a heavy duty truck clutch in it.  I had to use my arm to help keep it pushed in because my leg couldn’t hold it down for too long. He told me to use my right foot to push down on the gas at the same time as my left foot came up from the floor to engage the clutch.  Off we went like two riders atop a bareback bronco, lurching forward, almost coming to a stop before the next lurch forward.  The pickup was so low geared and had so much torque that it was hard to stall it.  It would buck a dozen or so times before finally stalling.  He would have me try again.  “Work your feet like a kitten making muffins”, he said.  Don’t forget that we are pulling a 14 foot long camp trailer behind us.  I would try again and again.  My dad would have to periodically drive for a half an hour or so, to recharge the battery which would get low from starting the engine so much.  Finally I could get going enough in second gear to coast long enough to complete a double clutch shift to third.  By the time I needed to shift from third to fourth, I had enough speed built up to be able to make smooth shifts.  We were rolling down the road.  Over steering like a maniac!  Watching the road just in front of the pickup had me going side to side and moving the steering wheel all over the place. Remember, there was no power steering so much of  my arm motion back and forth was doing nothing much except making for a rather swaying path from the left and right.  Then he told me the secret.  Don’t look in front of the hood.  Look ahead in the distance and trust that your arms would keep you in the middle of the road.  Now, we were rolling along the nice flat roads of the giant valley.

After a while, we began to climb into the foothills and the rolling highway, with the trailer behind me would be pulling one minute and the next it would be pushing the pickup forward.  Some time during the trip I learned that I could time the pushes and pulls  of the hills and curves to smooth the ride out instead of fighting it.   Through the hairpin turns and the rapidly climbing road into the high Sierras we climbed.  Sometimes I would have to pull off into the turn outs to allow the cars behind us to pass.  By now, evening had turned into night and the mountain road cutting through the pine forests, the headlights illuminating the drops of thousands of feet into canyons below while I sat comfortably in control of it all was exhilarating. We listened to the Giants game late into the night.  Finally, we pulled into the campgrounds and began a search for a camp sight near the lake. The final lesson for the day was backing a trailer up, using only the side mirrors into a parking place between the trees.  For some reason, by that time, it was the easiest thing I did all day.

From that day forward, I became our driver for our trips.