Category: Kyyote’s Howl

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.

I grew up in a small town, a suburb of San Francisco/Oakland.  In the 1950’s the war was over, the United States had straightened out most of the world and the economy was booming.  A few years earlier my parents had joined many others from the Midwest and had migrated to the promised land-California.  Our street was one of a new sub-division and the homes were bought up by young couples starting families.  Our street had at least 20 kids on it of varying ages.  Kids moved freely from one house to another.

Behind my house was the elementary school playground.  It was a huge field of well mowed weeds, mostly.  There was a huge backstop leftover from the Oakland minor league ball club that had played there and a baseball diamond.  We had enough kids to play baseball and football.  There were three basketball courts, too.

Everyone had skates.  They had metal wheels and attached to the leather soles of your shoes using a key to screw clamps tight.  The lines in the sidewalks made for quite a bumpy ride.  However, on weekends, when the school was empty, so were the outside hallways.  These were cement, very smooth cement broad sidewalks that were covered and had wooden rails, and posts holding up the roof.  They formed long straightaways and turns to make an oval track.  A track to play roller derby on.  We whipped each other around and knocked each other over the rails, sliding on metal wheels on the slick smooth concrete making the turns, squatting down and sticking outside legs out for balance like a speed skater on ice.

Once the bearings failed in the wheels, the ball bearings became slingshot ammo.  But each skate had four wheels and the skates would separate in the middle so that there were two pairs of parallel wheels from each skate. Four pairs of wheels, so now with one failure, we are down three.  Ah, with two pairs of wheels, a 2×4 board, which was available everywhere from all of the construction in the area, a hammer and four or more nails and we had a cart.  Very simple.  Put the wheels at each end, sit on the board and have someone push you by your shoulders.  Add a second 2×4 nailed perpendicular to the first at the front, brace it with a block of wood and maybe put a handlebar on it and we had a scooter.  A wooden peach crate made a Cadillac version as it was like having a cowl.

Back then, little girls got baby dolls and they pushed baby dolls around in baby buggies.  Those were treasured for their wheels and axles, after they were outgrown.  Those four wheels mounted on a frame of three 2×4’s with a bolt through the front board and the center board allowed it to turn.  Feet went on the front board, which had a piece of rope attached making reins to hold onto, and allowed us to steer.  The person who was pushing you down the street tried to push as fast and as long as they could.  It was always dangerous.  And incredibly fun.

We could not have had a better childhood for anything in the world.  We had friends, we had rivals, they changed at times.  We had all we needed if we had a hammer, a few nails, scraps of wood, and wheels.  Hell, the girls rode around on broomsticks, galloping and neighing, pawing at the sidewalk while they talked, before riding off.  If we didn’t have wheels, no problem!  We didn’t need anything.  Go hide and I’ll see if I can find you.  Hide and Seek could go on for hours.  The day was done when it got too dark to see.  I think the children of today have been shorted on their childhood.  Of course, I am old and that is what old men say.  I’ll tell you this, I have lived mine and watched my children live theirs and I would take mine over theirs.

Have you ever seen the picture that asks you which you see first, the ugly old woman or the beautiful young lady?  The reactions are varied, of course.  Some see both, some see the ugly old woman and not the other while others see only the beautiful young lady and not the old woman, and there are those who see neither.  I guess there would be the group that saw others things like in an ink blot test and then there could be those who saw it as impressionistic art.  In a  way this is my point.  Looking at the same thing people can see a lot of different things.  When people see those things in different ways they think differently about them.  They feel differently about them! And, most important of all, they work back and forth on each other.  If you see things that make you feel good you see good in the things you see, and if you see things that make you feel bad you see more bad in the things you see.  If I show you the picture for the first time you have ever seen it and tell you to look for the Ugly Old Woman I can guide what you see, think, feel, and do.  If I show you ten different pictures and guide you to see things one way, you will begin to look at pictures in a different way.

When I first moved to El Paso, having grown up in the Bay Area of California, I saw the surrounding landscape to be desolate and barren.  There was an abundance of brown where there should be green.  It was like the heat that came with it, something to be endured.  It wasn’t until I began spending countless hours sitting silently out in it that I slowly changed my thinking, my feeling, and how I saw this beautiful desert.  It is rugged.  Part of its beauty is in it ruggedness.  Not a lot of fancy frills or make up here.  It doesn’t need it, it will tell you, if you listen.  You learn that she dares you.  She makes it clear that you probably aren’t tough enough for her.  You grew up with Kim and here is Rhonda checking your ass out!  She knows she can kick yours and you know it too.  That is a whole different kind of woman.  Kim was Kim, but Rhonda sits right up in the front seat, too.  Things can change.  Things can change you and you can change things.  And you can change you.  You can change yourself and you can be changed.  Let me change that to You will change yourself and you will be changed as change is the one constant in life.

So, let’s move to a more down to Earth part of this.  In every aspect of your life you are presented with a three dimensional video instead of the picture of the ladies.  But, the same rules apply.  You see what you see and what you see can be seen differently by others, and what is seen by you and others can be changed.  Remember that what you see affects the way you look at things, feel about things, everything.  And vice versa.  If you chose to look for the ugly you will find it everywhere.  Look for beauty.  After you have found it, look for the ugly to get a balanced view, but look for beauty as your default position.  Look for good. They are both there but seeing the good will help take away the energy of the bad.  They are there in equal amounts, but the choice is yours to make on which one you look for first.  You see, it doesn’t diminish your ability to examine closely when needed.  What is does do is allow you to see, think, feel, and be positive, good, seeing beauty when you aren’t having to do critical examination. That beats the Hell out of the opposite, seeing, thinking, feeling and being negative, bad, and seeing ugly as your default way of living.

Beware of guides who want badly to have you join them in their search for ugly.  Misery loves company.  I am as serious as a heart attack about this one.  Guides will ruin you if you let them.  And the thing is, they are in a world of ugly so the way they see things allows them a lot of latitude when it comes to providing guidance.  They are needy.  That is a side affect of that life.  Misery needs company.

So, if you are looking for the beauty, help others if they need guidance. If they are seeing nothing start them off with looking for beauty.  If they see ugly as their default position you have to ask yourself if they want to change.  If they do, and just need help it is one thing.  If they want to drag you into the abyss that is another.

I have a plan.  It is a very simple plan and easy to follow and teach others.  It is what I used on a few occasions when I taught school and as the Foreman of a production plant.  It starts at the beginning. Make the choice to start with the good.  That is not where you stop, but it is where you start.  Do the best you can with the understanding that some times you best will be better than at other times. Now, I always needed a plan for them to follow.  Boxes that could be checked off, signifying accomplishment.  It always started off incredibly easy.  We set goals that couldn’t be not achieved.  Because in order to build a foundation for success it has to be built on and with success.  I found that once a person is on the right track and has a little momentum built up, they continue to stay on track, want to stay on track, resist going off track and can be a mighty example for others to follow who need it and can relate.  In this case, we start with looking for beauty for the day.  You can not fail this!  You can only do the best you can, today. If you have to shorten the time to be successful, do it.  When you are sure you can lengthen the time, do it. Start counting and setting records.  If you go eight days without having an ugly day.  Get back on track and start a new run at the record.  Do the best you can.  You can not fail!  YOU CAN NOT FAIL AT THIS IF YOU TRY AND STICK TO THE PLAN! The absolute worst that can happen is that you can avoid being in the ugly world perhaps not a long enough amount of time.

I don’t expect this to cure the world.  But, if it changes one person from being a miserable human being seeing ugly and bad into a happy person who sees beauty and good I have accomplished wish to not only see it but help others if they can’t.  Most people don’t need this, but this is to tell them that they too can influence others. Go see, and look for good.  Be an example. Be the light. See the good, be the good and if needed help someone else to see the good.