35 Year Army Reunion
On the July 13th weekend, 2018, four people who had served together in the 103rd Military Intelligence Battalion, and, in fact, had been some of it's founding members, met together for the first time in 35 years. They met in Las Vegas. Those people were
Steve "Bucky" White,
Steve "Chip" Jordan,
me
And a guy who answers to a lot of names, which caused a debate as to what his name actually was, Chris "Gary" Figelski, who everyone simply called "Fig".
There was a fifth person there for the reunion, that was "Bucky's" wife, the former Stella Carrillo. She had also served in the 103rd M.I. Battalion, but she had arrived after "Fig", Chip" and I had left.
Technically, there was a sixth person, my wife, Michelle, but she was sick with laryngitis and stayed mostly in the room, except for her "health walks" around the expensive stores at the Venetian Hotel.
So, I don't remember a lot about the first night, Friday. "Chip", "Bucky", and Stella met me at my hotel. "Chip" texted me that they were coming into the lobby. I walked out of the lobby to meet them. "Chip" walked past me and right into the lobby, as "Bucky" greeted me with a big smile and, "Chupta? Hot 'nuff fo ya?". He introduced me to Stella. When "Chip" finally recognized me, we headed out, just talking about the old days.
We talked about how much I cussed in the army. I explained to Stella, my language was so bad, if a word had two syllables in it, I would add a another syllable or two, usually starting with F or MF. "Chip" and "Bucky" laughed and nodded. I told them that I had made a concerted effort to cut down on my cussing after I got out of the army, when, at Thanksgiving, about a month after my discharge, I had casually asked,
"Hey Grandma, can you pass the mashed fuckin' potatoes? That's some good fuckin' shit!"
My Mother had looked at me in shock and said,
"WAYDE! Watch your language!"
In utter confusion I had immediately asked, "What the fucked I say?"
I told them,
"I was pretty good about not cussing around people older than me after that. Then, about 8 years later, when I became a father, I stopped fuckin' cussing at home. So the only place I cussed was sometimes at work, when I got fuckin' stressed, and since I was retired now, I hardly ever fuckin' cussed."
"Bucky", who grew up in Maine said,
"Aiftah I got aht the Aaamee, I mooofta Caylifonyer. Thate wuz twainty fiiive yeahs ago. Sews I doan hay-uv thate Maine ache-cent I used ta hay-uv."
"Chip" snickered, looked at me and said,
"So you don't cuss anymore?"
"Fuckin' A!", I responded with a straight face.
"Chip", Stella and "Bucky" snickered.
"And...", "Chip continued as he turned to "Bucky", "..you lost your accent?"
"Ayuh", "Bucky" responded with a look of pride on his face. "Chip", Stella and I snickered.
Over dinner, I told Stella a story about "Chip". One weekend, several of us had gathered around the lobby and stairwell of Alpha Company. We were playing Hangman to kill the time. The game had quickly degenerated to a game of sexual words. On one game, I was the hangman and Chip was guessing. He had guessed "V", "A", "G", blank, "N", "A", and had only missed a few letters getting to that point, so he had plenty of guesses left. He looked at the letters, calculated the possibilities and had concluded the missing letter must be a vowel.
"A?", was his shot in the dark. Everybody started laughing.
"O?", another miss, and the laughter got louder. The laughter attracted even more people, so people were crowded around the table and on the stairwell, as the soldiers snickered, whispered, pointed at the word with the missing letter and shook their heads in disbelief. Every time "Chip" guessed wrongly, the room burst into laughter and then grew expectantly silent, waiting for his next guess. Nobody could believe he couldn't figure out the word. He made his last guess and was hung as the audience burst out laughing. After the laughter quieted down to snickers, "Chip" indignantly asked,
"Okay, then, what's the word?" I silently wrote in the missing "I" for "Vagina". the room was dead quiet as everyone expected him to slap his forehead for missing the obvious, but that's not what happened. "Chip" looked down at the word for a few seconds, cocked his head to the side, (I presume to view it from a different angle, because everyone knows if you can't read a word straight on, cocking your head helps). Finally he shook his head, shrugged and said,
"VaGEEna? WHAT the HECK'S a vaGEEna?"
The room was silent for a second as everyone looked at him to see if he was serious. The expression on his face, as he looked around the room for an explanation, told everyone he was. The room burst out in laughter. Doreen Kees, who was sitting on the stairwell above the table, had tears rolling down her face. The laughter continued for at least thirty seconds, before it quieted enough for "Chip" to indignantly demand an explanation,
"Well? What is it?"
"It's not vaGEEna, you Oakie dumbass! It's vaGIna! You probably didn't recognize it, because you haven't seen one since the day you were born!", I answered.
The room burst out in laughter again, as "Chip" finally did slap his own forehead.
After dinner, we went back to their hotel, The Westin, for a whiskey tasting event. Everytime, "Chip", Stella, or I would say we liked the taste of a particular whiskey, "Bucky" would respond with,
"So doahn I!" (Bucky speak for "Me too"!)
Around 7:00 PM, we still hadn't heard from "Fig". I knew he lived in the northeast area of Las Vegas, so we headed up that way, because there was a bar called Frankie's Tiki Bar at 1712 W Charleston Bl. that I wanted to check out, and that seemed as good a place as any to wait for "Fig" to call. I texted "Fig", who lives in Vegas and told him where we were along with the address. I opened a tab and we started winding our way through the various rum and fruit juice concoctions. "Bucky" went for whiskey on the rocks.
About 8 PM "Fig" called me. I told him "Frankie's" probably wouldn't be a very good place for him, because it was standing room only. I asked if there was a place closer to him we could meet. He apologized for not responding to my earlier texts, but said, he and his wife don't get up until after dark. He said it's how they deal with the heat. He said for us to come over to his place on Saturday night and texted me the address. "Chip" and "Bucky asked why it wouldn't be a good place for "Fig" to come. I told them to look around at the crowded room, as if that was explanation enough. It wasn't.
"How in the fuck is "Fig" going to get his wheelchair in here?", I asked. I got shocked looks in return. I told them that sometime after I left Germany in 1983, "Fig" had rolled a jeep and been paralyzed from the waist down. It was the first they'd heard of it and it kind of put a damper on the rest of the evening When we called it a night, they dropped me off at my place.
On Saturday, "Chip", "Bucky" and Stella wanted to see Hoover Dam and the lake. My wife, who loves all things alien, just had to see Area 51. We split off on our different missions. Michelle and I went to a place called the Area 51 Alien Visitors Center. That's four hours I'll never get back. I assumed some property owner figured he would cash in on the Area 51 fans and had built a concrete bunker type structure, with some scorch marks on it. Parked a few old military vehicles on it. Scorched the ground a little and jammed a homemade flying saucer into the ground to look like it had crashed. No, what I saw looked like an old western saloon. The inside was a combo road snacks and alien tourist trap. T shirts, stuffed critters, hats, buttons, magnets, you name it, all with an alien theme. There was a little 50's style diner in the back. Talk about a let down. But, my wife was in Heaven. Her version of heaven being completely plastered with hokey posters and cheap plastic chotskies. She was still hoarse though, so I had that going for me.
After getting back to Las Vegas, we (minus "Fig", because the sun was still up, and my wife, because she was still hoarse) met up for dinner. I picked the three of them up at The Westin, in my Toyota 4runner. "Bucky" was all gentlemanly telling his wife,
"Heah, lemme get the doah foah yah."
As he got in the back, he said, "Ay, nice honkin' cah.", to me. He took on the roll of navigator, or, "nayvigaytah", in "Bucky speak", and suggested we eat at the Hofbrauhaus, for a German dinner, for old times sake. Of course, "Bucky" pronounced "dinner" as, "suppah".
.
After listening to "Bucky" direct me to turn on "Flaminger" (rhymes with "finger"), "Las Vegas Boolevahd", and "Payahdice", none of which are actual Las Vegas street names, we arrived at the Hofbrauhaus. We were seated and given menus as the oom-pah-pah band (the German version of a mariachi) blasted out some top 40 hits from 1912. This sparked something in "Chip's" memory banks and he dusted off his German vocabulary, which would be the equivalent of a D in 8th grade German. As he prattled on in his limited German, more of his ancient neurons started firing off. This sparked an old memory of an incident from a field training exercise. Some German bicyclists had biked up to our field site. Using my best German, I had tried to tell them to leave, because some of our equipment was classified.
"Rauchen verboten."
This got the Germans to look casually at each other, before looking back at me. They did not leave. I tried a different tactic. I said it slower, in case they didn't understand German very well.
"Rau-chen ver-bo-ten."
They looked again at each other again, this time shaking their heads and smiling. They looked back at me with amused smiles on their faces.
"What the fuck!", I thought, "Who do these, long-haired, scraggly bearded, sweater wearing, fuck sticks think they're dickin' with?" I changed tactics again. This time I used my, "no bullshit, I ain't fuckin around", voice.
"RAUCHEN VERBOTEN!"
When they started to snicker, I felt myself stepping toward, as I was seriously considering butt stroking the closest one across the face. My Platoon Sgt, whose last name I forget, but whose first name was Steve, (Another fuckin' Steve! I was surrounded by Steve's! Now you know why they all had nicknames!) anyway, Sarge stepped up, grabbed me and pulled me back as he looked at the Germans, and laughingly waved them off as he said,
"Raus!" (Beat it)
"Damn! That's the word I was looking for.", I thought. I had been repeatedly advising them that smoking was forbidden. None of them were smoking... soooo, technically, they did listen to me. Yeah, Chip loved that story, even back then.
We finished dinner, jumped back in my car and I texted "Fig" who told us to come on over and asked if I still had his address. I said I did. I tossed my phone back to "Bucky", in the backseat, and told him to look up "Fig's" address in the messages and punch up the address. As "Bucky" announced that "Fig's place was coming up on the right in two tenths of a mile, I looked and saw nothing residential. We stopped for a red light, under a freeway. I said,
"I don't see any houses coming up."
"Bucky" said,
"Wail, maybe he lives in a can-doh, oh an apatment."
"Let me clarify,...", I said, "... by house, I meant residence of any type. All I see is a cardboard box under the freeway."
"Bucky" rolled down his window, leaned out and yelled,
"AY! FIG!"
He rolled his window back up, grinned at me and said,
"I doan think ee's ap yet.".
The light turned green and we continued on, so did, "Bucky"
"A tenth of a mile.... nine hunnit feet... five hunnit feet... two hunnit feet..."
Frankie's Tiki room came into view.
"Heahtis on the right."
"You brought us back to Frankie's fuckin' Tiki Room, numbnuts!"
"Ayy, you said look foah the ayddress in the messages. Thate's the aydress in the messages!"
"Give me that fuckin' thing!", I said. He passed my phone to me and pointed out the message.
"Did you read the fuckin' message dick brain? Right there it says, 'We're at Frankie's Tiki Bar, 1712 W Charleston Bl.' That's MY fuckin' message to HIM telling him where we were last night! Now look up two damn lines! That HIM inviting US to HIS fuckin house and giving us the damn address, ya dipfuck!"
"Oh. Wail, lemme try thate ayddress thane."
Luckily, "Fig's" was only about 5 minutes away. Then it started to rain. And by rain, I mean storm. It took us ten minutes to get to "Fig's". When we got there the streets were flooded 3 to 6 feet from the curb. We parked in front of his house and saw him sitting on the porch, in his motorized wheelchair. We ran up to his porch to get out of the downpour. After some big hugs, handshakes and "How ya beens", "Fig" advised us his wife was sick and suggested we go to a bar around the corner. He passed us a slip of paper and said, just follow those directions. I was still wondering if "Fig" had a foldable wheelchair that we could stuff in the back of my SUV, when he said,
"Let me just put this bag over my controls, so I don't get electrocuted." He put a plastic shopping type bag over the controls on his right armrest and shot off the porch into the pouring rain! He yelled out,
"I'll meet you there!", and was at the corner, before we could get back into my car! He took a different route than he gave us, but we got to the bar first. We stood around outside, wondering if he was actually going to make it. About five minutes went by and the rain started to lighten up. Suddenly the headlights on "Fig's" transformer wheelchair rounded the corner and he shot up to us. We were laughing our asses off. (if the video doesn't play, you can view it on my Facebook page)
We went inside the bar and started talking about the old days. "Chip" brought up an old 103rd legend This is the story;
By the time "Chip" had arrived, an unknown legend had been born in the 3rd Infantry Division. The story went like this. In the 1980's there was an annual two week field training exercise in the 3rd Infantry Division. It was a two week long war game called Reforger. Somehow, or another, during Reforger 1981, a spat arose involving some infantry units and artillery units on one side and the 103rd M.I. Battalion on the other side. It basically came down to the infantry and artillery units calling the 103rd personnel REMFs (rear echelon motherfuckers, a high insult), because M.I. personnel, according to the infantry and artillery guys, never came close to combat. Using their superior intellect, the M.I. guys initially responded by trying to reason with the infantry and artillery guys by using the following arguments;
1- Of our NCO's, all of our SFCs and up, and most of our staff sgts were Viet Nam vets, and many had been in the infantry, before smartening up and joining M.I.
2- The personnel in our unit were linguists, analysts and radio intercept personnel. Their job was to intercept radio communications, locate the source of the signal, translate the transmissions, analyze the transmissions, and issue false transmissions to the enemy. To do this reliably, we had to be within a mile, or two, of the enemy. That's because radio transmissions have a limited effective distance, which can be cut even shorter by weather and terrain.
3- So, we might not be as close as the infantry units during combat (or we might), but we would definitely be closer than you dipshits in the artillery. You fuckers can't even see the enemy you're shooting at with binoculars! You need somebody to call in the grid coordinates for you to aim, that's how far back you fucktwats are! In fact, if you REMFs were any further back, your asses would be behind enemy lines! Yeah, we'll wait for you to figure that out... here's a hint, the earth is round.
4- As for you infantry guys, we notice the only inbreds talking shit are the corporals and below. Well maybe you dipshits haven't noticed, but none of your asses have seen actual combat either, so...
5- St. Fu to you too. (According to legend, St. Fu was an ancient Chinese Shaolin monk, who got pissed off at his monks in training and told them to Shut The Fuck Up. They didn't speak for 10 years. And that's how that whole ten year vow of silence got started... or maybe not, but St. Fu DOES mean Shut The Fuck Up.)
Well that argument was a little too intellectual for the infantry and artillery guys to follow and they continued to talk smack. That inspired one of our personnel, a private first class, to work out the disagreement using his own initiative. I won't get into all of the shit he pulled over the next two weeks, but the first thing he did, was prove point number 3 to the artillery guys, by requesting they send a smoke round to mark a target. He provided the coordinates, when asked. Well one of the other artillery units was quite surprised when a smoke round landed 50 yards to their front. He proved that same point to them later that same day, by having the same artillery unit send another smoke round into the other artillery units vicinity.
This PFC's last lesson was for the infantry guys, who were set up near Hohenfels. On the last day of Reforger, all checked out equipment had to be turned in to be accounted for, this included M-16 rifles. Our nameless PFC got on the radio and advised he had lost his M-16. When ordered to identify himself, he refused. The division spent another week in the field looking for this "lost" M-16, before the prank was found out. People (people not in the 103rd) were pissed! In his defense, he explained that he was simply doing what the military had trained him to do, fuck with enemy communications. Disrupt, I meant to type disrupt. Disrupt enemy communications.
"And...", he added, "... it could have all been avoided if the people I fucked with had just done what they were supposed to do and asked for authentication. Although to be fair, one guy did, but I just gave him an authentication I had heard an infantry unit use earlier in the day." (Authentication is a changing code system used to verify a sender of a message and the validity of a message.)
"Chip" asked "Fig" if he remembered hearing about it. "Fig" started laughing and said,
"Yeah, I remember that. One of the main reasons I remember it is because I was the private who did it!"
We also tried remembering the lyrics to a song one of the guys in our unit named Dan Reck had written. This was the best we could recall;
Hello dear mama. Just thought that I'd write you
And tell you 'bout the place I'm in,
It's called the 103rd MI,
Mechanized Infantry,
an ignorant destiny,
here in Germany
and it’s not very good,
not very good
for me.
We have lots of parties,
Not good for the soul
It's hard for a man to feel like a man
With his head in a toilet bowl.
But I’ll tell you this sincere.
We're drinkin' lots of beer
Our minds are run with fear
And Audie Murphy was (strategic pause)
For the 103’rd MI…
We all are fatiqued,
And sleepin' out in tents,
Left my brain out in the field,
And now, nothing makes any sense.
Spend our days in the motor pool
Our nights down at the bar.
It's not really bad
to be in this place
If you can just forget where you are.
The 103rd MI, Mechanized Infantry,
an ignorant destiny, here in Germany
and it’s not very good, not very good for me.
Well, we got us a daddy.
Colonel Hardy is his name
Wakin' us up at four in the morning is
Just one of the games he plays.
But I’ll tell you this sincere.
We're drinkin' lots of beer,
Our minds are run with fear,
And Audie Murphy was (strategic pause)
For the 103’rd MI…
Eventually, we called it a night, because "Chip" had an early flight back to Kansas.
Oh, so Sunday morning, My wife and I packed up the car and checked out. We ate breakfast and my wife wanted to buy some little key chain with a frog on it. As we were leaving she asked if I wanted to do any gambling. I hadn't done any gambling all weekend. I sit on my ass all week for my money, I'm not going to just fritter it away, but I figured "What the Hell, I'll make one bet". I went to a roulette table, and got a $20 chip. Before I placed the bet, my wife, who was still hoarse from the laryngitis she had all weekend managed to croak out,
"Rub my bra."
"What?"
"Rub my bra for luck."
I looked at her to see if she was serious, because this isn't exactly her style. She had a hopeful look on her face, so I figured it was an Asian thing and went to rub her left breast. She slapped my hand away, and croak/yelled,
"What do you think you're DOing!",with a shocked/embarrassed look on her face, as she looked around to see if anyone had seen.
"What? You said rub your bra for luck."
"I said, 'Rub my frog!", as she held up her keychain.
Oh well, I rubbed her stupid frog key chain and covered the corners of four numbers with a $20 chip. I wasn't really paying attention, because I don't really get all the rules of roulette, but I'd heard it was the game skewed most in favor of the house, so, I figured I was going to lose anyway, but one of my numbers came up, and I'm pretty sure that number's color came up and maybe even over odd came up, so I won $160. I took my winnings, let the original $20 bet ride again and lost that, but I was happy. We plan on it doing again next year, during a cooler season.
Wayde Farrell
Chris Gary Figelski "Fig"
Pontbriond (RIP) and Steve Jordan "Chip"
Steve White "Bucky"
Chip Bucky Wayde
On the July 13th weekend, 2018, four people who had served together in the 103rd Military Intelligence Battalion, and, in fact, had been some of it's founding members, met together for the first time in 35 years. They met in Las Vegas. Those people were
Steve "Bucky" White,
Steve "Chip" Jordan,
me
And a guy who answers to a lot of names, which caused a debate as to what his name actually was, Chris "Gary" Figelski, who everyone simply called "Fig".
There was a fifth person there for the reunion, that was "Bucky's" wife, the former Stella Carrillo. She had also served in the 103rd M.I. Battalion, but she had arrived after "Fig", Chip" and I had left.
Technically, there was a sixth person, my wife, Michelle, but she was sick with laryngitis and stayed mostly in the room, except for her "health walks" around the expensive stores at the Venetian Hotel.
So, I don't remember a lot about the first night, Friday. "Chip", "Bucky", and Stella met me at my hotel. "Chip" texted me that they were coming into the lobby. I walked out of the lobby to meet them. "Chip" walked past me and right into the lobby, as "Bucky" greeted me with a big smile and, "Chupta? Hot 'nuff fo ya?". He introduced me to Stella. When "Chip" finally recognized me, we headed out, just talking about the old days.
We talked about how much I cussed in the army. I explained to Stella, my language was so bad, if a word had two syllables in it, I would add a another syllable or two, usually starting with F or MF. "Chip" and "Bucky" laughed and nodded. I told them that I had made a concerted effort to cut down on my cussing after I got out of the army, when, at Thanksgiving, about a month after my discharge, I had casually asked,
"Hey Grandma, can you pass the mashed fuckin' potatoes? That's some good fuckin' shit!"
My Mother had looked at me in shock and said,
"WAYDE! Watch your language!"
In utter confusion I had immediately asked, "What the fucked I say?"
I told them,
"I was pretty good about not cussing around people older than me after that. Then, about 8 years later, when I became a father, I stopped fuckin' cussing at home. So the only place I cussed was sometimes at work, when I got fuckin' stressed, and since I was retired now, I hardly ever fuckin' cussed."
"Bucky", who grew up in Maine said,
"Aiftah I got aht the Aaamee, I mooofta Caylifonyer. Thate wuz twainty fiiive yeahs ago. Sews I doan hay-uv thate Maine ache-cent I used ta hay-uv."
"Chip" snickered, looked at me and said,
"So you don't cuss anymore?"
"Fuckin' A!", I responded with a straight face.
"Chip", Stella and "Bucky" snickered.
"And...", "Chip continued as he turned to "Bucky", "..you lost your accent?"
"Ayuh", "Bucky" responded with a look of pride on his face. "Chip", Stella and I snickered.
Over dinner, I told Stella a story about "Chip". One weekend, several of us had gathered around the lobby and stairwell of Alpha Company. We were playing Hangman to kill the time. The game had quickly degenerated to a game of sexual words. On one game, I was the hangman and Chip was guessing. He had guessed "V", "A", "G", blank, "N", "A", and had only missed a few letters getting to that point, so he had plenty of guesses left. He looked at the letters, calculated the possibilities and had concluded the missing letter must be a vowel.
"A?", was his shot in the dark. Everybody started laughing.
"O?", another miss, and the laughter got louder. The laughter attracted even more people, so people were crowded around the table and on the stairwell, as the soldiers snickered, whispered, pointed at the word with the missing letter and shook their heads in disbelief. Every time "Chip" guessed wrongly, the room burst into laughter and then grew expectantly silent, waiting for his next guess. Nobody could believe he couldn't figure out the word. He made his last guess and was hung as the audience burst out laughing. After the laughter quieted down to snickers, "Chip" indignantly asked,
"Okay, then, what's the word?" I silently wrote in the missing "I" for "Vagina". the room was dead quiet as everyone expected him to slap his forehead for missing the obvious, but that's not what happened. "Chip" looked down at the word for a few seconds, cocked his head to the side, (I presume to view it from a different angle, because everyone knows if you can't read a word straight on, cocking your head helps). Finally he shook his head, shrugged and said,
"VaGEEna? WHAT the HECK'S a vaGEEna?"
The room was silent for a second as everyone looked at him to see if he was serious. The expression on his face, as he looked around the room for an explanation, told everyone he was. The room burst out in laughter. Doreen Kees, who was sitting on the stairwell above the table, had tears rolling down her face. The laughter continued for at least thirty seconds, before it quieted enough for "Chip" to indignantly demand an explanation,
"Well? What is it?"
"It's not vaGEEna, you Oakie dumbass! It's vaGIna! You probably didn't recognize it, because you haven't seen one since the day you were born!", I answered.
The room burst out in laughter again, as "Chip" finally did slap his own forehead.
After dinner, we went back to their hotel, The Westin, for a whiskey tasting event. Everytime, "Chip", Stella, or I would say we liked the taste of a particular whiskey, "Bucky" would respond with,
"So doahn I!" (Bucky speak for "Me too"!)
Around 7:00 PM, we still hadn't heard from "Fig". I knew he lived in the northeast area of Las Vegas, so we headed up that way, because there was a bar called Frankie's Tiki Bar at 1712 W Charleston Bl. that I wanted to check out, and that seemed as good a place as any to wait for "Fig" to call. I texted "Fig", who lives in Vegas and told him where we were along with the address. I opened a tab and we started winding our way through the various rum and fruit juice concoctions. "Bucky" went for whiskey on the rocks.
About 8 PM "Fig" called me. I told him "Frankie's" probably wouldn't be a very good place for him, because it was standing room only. I asked if there was a place closer to him we could meet. He apologized for not responding to my earlier texts, but said, he and his wife don't get up until after dark. He said it's how they deal with the heat. He said for us to come over to his place on Saturday night and texted me the address. "Chip" and "Bucky asked why it wouldn't be a good place for "Fig" to come. I told them to look around at the crowded room, as if that was explanation enough. It wasn't.
"How in the fuck is "Fig" going to get his wheelchair in here?", I asked. I got shocked looks in return. I told them that sometime after I left Germany in 1983, "Fig" had rolled a jeep and been paralyzed from the waist down. It was the first they'd heard of it and it kind of put a damper on the rest of the evening When we called it a night, they dropped me off at my place.
On Saturday, "Chip", "Bucky" and Stella wanted to see Hoover Dam and the lake. My wife, who loves all things alien, just had to see Area 51. We split off on our different missions. Michelle and I went to a place called the Area 51 Alien Visitors Center. That's four hours I'll never get back. I assumed some property owner figured he would cash in on the Area 51 fans and had built a concrete bunker type structure, with some scorch marks on it. Parked a few old military vehicles on it. Scorched the ground a little and jammed a homemade flying saucer into the ground to look like it had crashed. No, what I saw looked like an old western saloon. The inside was a combo road snacks and alien tourist trap. T shirts, stuffed critters, hats, buttons, magnets, you name it, all with an alien theme. There was a little 50's style diner in the back. Talk about a let down. But, my wife was in Heaven. Her version of heaven being completely plastered with hokey posters and cheap plastic chotskies. She was still hoarse though, so I had that going for me.
After getting back to Las Vegas, we (minus "Fig", because the sun was still up, and my wife, because she was still hoarse) met up for dinner. I picked the three of them up at The Westin, in my Toyota 4runner. "Bucky" was all gentlemanly telling his wife,
"Heah, lemme get the doah foah yah."
As he got in the back, he said, "Ay, nice honkin' cah.", to me. He took on the roll of navigator, or, "nayvigaytah", in "Bucky speak", and suggested we eat at the Hofbrauhaus, for a German dinner, for old times sake. Of course, "Bucky" pronounced "dinner" as, "suppah".
.
After listening to "Bucky" direct me to turn on "Flaminger" (rhymes with "finger"), "Las Vegas Boolevahd", and "Payahdice", none of which are actual Las Vegas street names, we arrived at the Hofbrauhaus. We were seated and given menus as the oom-pah-pah band (the German version of a mariachi) blasted out some top 40 hits from 1912. This sparked something in "Chip's" memory banks and he dusted off his German vocabulary, which would be the equivalent of a D in 8th grade German. As he prattled on in his limited German, more of his ancient neurons started firing off. This sparked an old memory of an incident from a field training exercise. Some German bicyclists had biked up to our field site. Using my best German, I had tried to tell them to leave, because some of our equipment was classified.
"Rauchen verboten."
This got the Germans to look casually at each other, before looking back at me. They did not leave. I tried a different tactic. I said it slower, in case they didn't understand German very well.
"Rau-chen ver-bo-ten."
They looked again at each other again, this time shaking their heads and smiling. They looked back at me with amused smiles on their faces.
"What the fuck!", I thought, "Who do these, long-haired, scraggly bearded, sweater wearing, fuck sticks think they're dickin' with?" I changed tactics again. This time I used my, "no bullshit, I ain't fuckin around", voice.
"RAUCHEN VERBOTEN!"
When they started to snicker, I felt myself stepping toward, as I was seriously considering butt stroking the closest one across the face. My Platoon Sgt, whose last name I forget, but whose first name was Steve, (Another fuckin' Steve! I was surrounded by Steve's! Now you know why they all had nicknames!) anyway, Sarge stepped up, grabbed me and pulled me back as he looked at the Germans, and laughingly waved them off as he said,
"Raus!" (Beat it)
"Damn! That's the word I was looking for.", I thought. I had been repeatedly advising them that smoking was forbidden. None of them were smoking... soooo, technically, they did listen to me. Yeah, Chip loved that story, even back then.
We finished dinner, jumped back in my car and I texted "Fig" who told us to come on over and asked if I still had his address. I said I did. I tossed my phone back to "Bucky", in the backseat, and told him to look up "Fig's" address in the messages and punch up the address. As "Bucky" announced that "Fig's place was coming up on the right in two tenths of a mile, I looked and saw nothing residential. We stopped for a red light, under a freeway. I said,
"I don't see any houses coming up."
"Bucky" said,
"Wail, maybe he lives in a can-doh, oh an apatment."
"Let me clarify,...", I said, "... by house, I meant residence of any type. All I see is a cardboard box under the freeway."
"Bucky" rolled down his window, leaned out and yelled,
"AY! FIG!"
He rolled his window back up, grinned at me and said,
"I doan think ee's ap yet.".
The light turned green and we continued on, so did, "Bucky"
"A tenth of a mile.... nine hunnit feet... five hunnit feet... two hunnit feet..."
Frankie's Tiki room came into view.
"Heahtis on the right."
"You brought us back to Frankie's fuckin' Tiki Room, numbnuts!"
"Ayy, you said look foah the ayddress in the messages. Thate's the aydress in the messages!"
"Give me that fuckin' thing!", I said. He passed my phone to me and pointed out the message.
"Did you read the fuckin' message dick brain? Right there it says, 'We're at Frankie's Tiki Bar, 1712 W Charleston Bl.' That's MY fuckin' message to HIM telling him where we were last night! Now look up two damn lines! That HIM inviting US to HIS fuckin house and giving us the damn address, ya dipfuck!"
"Oh. Wail, lemme try thate ayddress thane."
Luckily, "Fig's" was only about 5 minutes away. Then it started to rain. And by rain, I mean storm. It took us ten minutes to get to "Fig's". When we got there the streets were flooded 3 to 6 feet from the curb. We parked in front of his house and saw him sitting on the porch, in his motorized wheelchair. We ran up to his porch to get out of the downpour. After some big hugs, handshakes and "How ya beens", "Fig" advised us his wife was sick and suggested we go to a bar around the corner. He passed us a slip of paper and said, just follow those directions. I was still wondering if "Fig" had a foldable wheelchair that we could stuff in the back of my SUV, when he said,
"Let me just put this bag over my controls, so I don't get electrocuted." He put a plastic shopping type bag over the controls on his right armrest and shot off the porch into the pouring rain! He yelled out,
"I'll meet you there!", and was at the corner, before we could get back into my car! He took a different route than he gave us, but we got to the bar first. We stood around outside, wondering if he was actually going to make it. About five minutes went by and the rain started to lighten up. Suddenly the headlights on "Fig's" transformer wheelchair rounded the corner and he shot up to us. We were laughing our asses off. (if the video doesn't play, you can view it on my Facebook page)
By the time "Chip" had arrived, an unknown legend had been born in the 3rd Infantry Division. The story went like this. In the 1980's there was an annual two week field training exercise in the 3rd Infantry Division. It was a two week long war game called Reforger. Somehow, or another, during Reforger 1981, a spat arose involving some infantry units and artillery units on one side and the 103rd M.I. Battalion on the other side. It basically came down to the infantry and artillery units calling the 103rd personnel REMFs (rear echelon motherfuckers, a high insult), because M.I. personnel, according to the infantry and artillery guys, never came close to combat. Using their superior intellect, the M.I. guys initially responded by trying to reason with the infantry and artillery guys by using the following arguments;
1- Of our NCO's, all of our SFCs and up, and most of our staff sgts were Viet Nam vets, and many had been in the infantry, before smartening up and joining M.I.
2- The personnel in our unit were linguists, analysts and radio intercept personnel. Their job was to intercept radio communications, locate the source of the signal, translate the transmissions, analyze the transmissions, and issue false transmissions to the enemy. To do this reliably, we had to be within a mile, or two, of the enemy. That's because radio transmissions have a limited effective distance, which can be cut even shorter by weather and terrain.
3- So, we might not be as close as the infantry units during combat (or we might), but we would definitely be closer than you dipshits in the artillery. You fuckers can't even see the enemy you're shooting at with binoculars! You need somebody to call in the grid coordinates for you to aim, that's how far back you fucktwats are! In fact, if you REMFs were any further back, your asses would be behind enemy lines! Yeah, we'll wait for you to figure that out... here's a hint, the earth is round.
4- As for you infantry guys, we notice the only inbreds talking shit are the corporals and below. Well maybe you dipshits haven't noticed, but none of your asses have seen actual combat either, so...
5- St. Fu to you too. (According to legend, St. Fu was an ancient Chinese Shaolin monk, who got pissed off at his monks in training and told them to Shut The Fuck Up. They didn't speak for 10 years. And that's how that whole ten year vow of silence got started... or maybe not, but St. Fu DOES mean Shut The Fuck Up.)
Well that argument was a little too intellectual for the infantry and artillery guys to follow and they continued to talk smack. That inspired one of our personnel, a private first class, to work out the disagreement using his own initiative. I won't get into all of the shit he pulled over the next two weeks, but the first thing he did, was prove point number 3 to the artillery guys, by requesting they send a smoke round to mark a target. He provided the coordinates, when asked. Well one of the other artillery units was quite surprised when a smoke round landed 50 yards to their front. He proved that same point to them later that same day, by having the same artillery unit send another smoke round into the other artillery units vicinity.
This PFC's last lesson was for the infantry guys, who were set up near Hohenfels. On the last day of Reforger, all checked out equipment had to be turned in to be accounted for, this included M-16 rifles. Our nameless PFC got on the radio and advised he had lost his M-16. When ordered to identify himself, he refused. The division spent another week in the field looking for this "lost" M-16, before the prank was found out. People (people not in the 103rd) were pissed! In his defense, he explained that he was simply doing what the military had trained him to do, fuck with enemy communications. Disrupt, I meant to type disrupt. Disrupt enemy communications.
"And...", he added, "... it could have all been avoided if the people I fucked with had just done what they were supposed to do and asked for authentication. Although to be fair, one guy did, but I just gave him an authentication I had heard an infantry unit use earlier in the day." (Authentication is a changing code system used to verify a sender of a message and the validity of a message.)
"Chip" asked "Fig" if he remembered hearing about it. "Fig" started laughing and said,
"Yeah, I remember that. One of the main reasons I remember it is because I was the private who did it!"
We also tried remembering the lyrics to a song one of the guys in our unit named Dan Reck had written. This was the best we could recall;
Hello dear mama. Just thought that I'd write you
And tell you 'bout the place I'm in,
It's called the 103rd MI,
Mechanized Infantry,
an ignorant destiny,
here in Germany
and it’s not very good,
not very good
for me.
We have lots of parties,
Not good for the soul
It's hard for a man to feel like a man
With his head in a toilet bowl.
But I’ll tell you this sincere.
We're drinkin' lots of beer
Our minds are run with fear
And Audie Murphy was (strategic pause)
For the 103’rd MI…
We all are fatiqued,
And sleepin' out in tents,
Left my brain out in the field,
And now, nothing makes any sense.
Spend our days in the motor pool
Our nights down at the bar.
It's not really bad
to be in this place
If you can just forget where you are.
The 103rd MI, Mechanized Infantry,
an ignorant destiny, here in Germany
and it’s not very good, not very good for me.
Well, we got us a daddy.
Colonel Hardy is his name
Wakin' us up at four in the morning is
Just one of the games he plays.
But I’ll tell you this sincere.
We're drinkin' lots of beer,
Our minds are run with fear,
And Audie Murphy was (strategic pause)
For the 103’rd MI…
Eventually, we called it a night, because "Chip" had an early flight back to Kansas.
Oh, so Sunday morning, My wife and I packed up the car and checked out. We ate breakfast and my wife wanted to buy some little key chain with a frog on it. As we were leaving she asked if I wanted to do any gambling. I hadn't done any gambling all weekend. I sit on my ass all week for my money, I'm not going to just fritter it away, but I figured "What the Hell, I'll make one bet". I went to a roulette table, and got a $20 chip. Before I placed the bet, my wife, who was still hoarse from the laryngitis she had all weekend managed to croak out,
"Rub my bra."
"What?"
"Rub my bra for luck."
I looked at her to see if she was serious, because this isn't exactly her style. She had a hopeful look on her face, so I figured it was an Asian thing and went to rub her left breast. She slapped my hand away, and croak/yelled,
"What do you think you're DOing!",with a shocked/embarrassed look on her face, as she looked around to see if anyone had seen.
"What? You said rub your bra for luck."
"I said, 'Rub my frog!", as she held up her keychain.
Oh well, I rubbed her stupid frog key chain and covered the corners of four numbers with a $20 chip. I wasn't really paying attention, because I don't really get all the rules of roulette, but I'd heard it was the game skewed most in favor of the house, so, I figured I was going to lose anyway, but one of my numbers came up, and I'm pretty sure that number's color came up and maybe even over odd came up, so I won $160. I took my winnings, let the original $20 bet ride again and lost that, but I was happy. We plan on it doing again next year, during a cooler season.
Wayde Farrell
Thanks for sharing. That video brought a smile indeed. Cheers to all of yall
ReplyDeleteI just wish I had started the video earlier, but you gotta dig it out of your pocket and type your code in, then you have to find the right icon and switch it from photo to video. By then any spontaneous moments are done.
ReplyDelete