smeagol92055

5 posts

Nonlinear Tales: Gumbo

Since our apartment complex is a tight-knit bunch of people, we all decided to get together and have a pre-Thanksgiving potluck before everyone flew to the four winds for the holiday. Last night we all got together in the courtyard, each of us bearing delicious trays that we had prepared for the occasion. Since we have a huge ethnic diversity in the complex, we had everything from Hungarian food to Filipino food to Mexican and even good, old-fashioned gumbo, a Louisiana favorite. I ladled up a spoonful of the hot, savory stew over some brown rice and inhaled deeply; the aroma is something I haven’t smelled since I was a teenager in the deep South. Continue reading

Nonlinear Tales: That Time I Got Lost in the Woods

One of the things you get used to living in the deep South is kudzu. The stuff’s everywhere; it’s probably the hardiest plant in existence, surviving periods of intense heat and cold, all manner of chewing bug and animal, and it creeps up to three feet a day. I imagine if there were a camera in space over a long enough period of time, you could string together a time-lapse video of the stuff actually expanding outward. Continue reading

The Sandstorm

On one of the innumerable field ops leading up to the order to cross the line of departure into Iraq, we ranged deep into the desert of Kuwait, farther yet than we had been.

By that point, we of the Comm Platoon were used to our assigned jobs; as soon as the vehicles stopped, we raced out of them and set up the antenna hill as quickly as humanly possible. We became very efficient over time with putting together and throwing up the 20-foot-tall OE antennas, breaking only one or two of the things per op. Continue reading

This Is the Story of My Death

About the time I herniated a disk in my back, a new guy named Joe transferred into my unit from a grunt battalion. His leg was held together by about fifty brazillion pins, thanks to a drunken sergeant who hazed him and about three other guys late one night and kicked Joe over a railing. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that hazing in the military is dead; it’s alive and well, just a little more subtle these days. Continue reading

What Led Me to Join the Marines

To say that my home life growing up was anything approaching normal would be a stretch, so it came as no surprise to anyone when I announced to my folks that I was joining the Marines.

I don’t recall exactly what was going through my head when I made the decision; I do remember that I was home alone again, my parents out of town on yet another halleluiah tour of the Baptist churches in the surrounding states. At some point they had stopped insisting I keep uprooting myself to come along with them on these things, and I simply stopped going. They would be out of town three weeks out of the month, leaving me to attend school, work at the local grocery store, and sleep. Continue reading