TheList 7394

The List 7394

To All

Good Tuesday Morning December 23, 2025 . When I woke up this morning it was dark and the dogs needed a trip out to do their business and get fed. It is still cloudy and is supposed to remain that way all day.  The weather guessers are now predicting rain starting late Today  .05 inches  Tuesday    and looking at 4 days of rain through Christmas. Counting today we have 1 shopping day left before Christmas..

I was putting the finishing touches on today's List when I received a call from Z-Man with  some great news. See below

.Regards

skip

.HAGD 

 

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There is a Wall street Journal article out that states that Royce Williams is going to receive the Medal of Honor from President Donald Trump.

This is a fantastic event that is long overdue. As I receive more I will send it out to all

 

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This day in Naval and Marine Corps History (thanks to NHHC)

Here is a link to the NHHC website: https://www.history.navy.mil/.    Go here to see the director's corner for all 94 H-Grams. 

December 23

1803—The schooner Enterprise, commanded by Lt. Stephen Decatur, captures the Turkish ketch Mastico with a cargo of female slaves as it is sailing from Tripoli to Constantinople under Turkish colors and without passports. Renamed Intrepid, the former Mastico is taken into U.S. service.

1826—Capt. Thomas Catesby Jones of the sloop-of-war Peacock and King Kamehameha negotiate the first treaty between Hawaii and a foreign power.

1910—Lt. Theodore G. Ellyson becomes the first naval officer sent to flight training when he was ordered to report to the Glenn H. Curtiss Aviation Camp at North Island, San Diego, CA.

1944—USS Blenny (SS 324), despite an escort vessel close by, sinks the Japanese merchant tanker Kenzui Maru off San Fernando, Luzon, Philippines.

1968—The Sailors of USS Pueblo (AGER 2) are repatriated following their release by the North Korean government. The crew had been captured off Wonson on Jan. 23, 1968. 

 

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Today in World History: December 23

1861 Lord Lyons, The British minister to America presents a formal complaint to secretary of state, William Seward, regarding the Trent affair.

1900 The Federal Party, which recognizes American sovereignty, is formed in the Philippines.

1919 Great Britain institutes a new constitution for India.

1921 President Warren G. Harding frees Socialist Eugene Debs and 23 other political prisoners.

1933 Pope Pius XI condemns the Nazi sterilization program.

1937 London warns Rome to stop anti-British propaganda in Palestine.

1939 The first Canadian troops arrive in Britain.

1940 Chiang Kai-shek dissolves all Communist associations in China.

1941 Despite throwing back an earlier Japanese amphibious assault, the U.S. Marines and Navy defenders on Wake Island capitulate to a second Japanese invasion.

1944 General Dwight D. Eisenhower confirms the death sentence of Private Eddie Slovik, the only American shot for desertion since the Civil War.

1947 President Harry S Truman grants a pardon to 1,523 who had evaded the World War II draft.

1948 Japan's Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo and six other collaborators are hanged for war crimes.

1950 General Walton H. Walker, the commander of the Eighth Army in Korea, is killed in a jeep accident. Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgeway is named his successor.

1967 U.S. Navy SEALs are ambushed during an operation southeast of Saigon.

1974 The B-1 bomber makes its first successful test flight.

1986 The Voyager completes the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. The experimental aircraft, piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after nine days and four minutes in the sky.

1990 In a referendum on Sovlenia's independence from Yugoslovia, 88.5% vote in favor of independence.

2002 An Iraqi MiG-25 shoots down a US MQ-1 Predator drone.

 

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Thanks to the Bear. We will always have the url for you to search items in Rolling Thunder

OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER …

. rollingthunderremembered.com .

 

Thanks to Micro

From Vietnam Air Losses site for ..December 23

23-Dec:  https://www.vietnamairlosses.com/loss.php?id=3080

 

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The Christmas Bombing   

FROM: Joe C.

SUBJ:  6th Night of LB II

 

None of the BUFFS were lost on this night attacking the railway yard at Lang Dang and the SAM sites north of Haiphong. 

 

But two aircraft were lost in separate incidents:

 

A Marine F-4J from the Enterprise escorting a recce  flight was hit by 85mm and the crew had to eject.  They were picked up at sea by a Navy HH-3A chopper.

 

An EB-66B suffered  dual engine failure on approach to Korat killing all three aboard. The navy called them A3D.no ejection seats All Three Dead

 

Those of us who came home must never forget those who could not....

 

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Thanks to Carl and Cowboy

The Kingfisher as engineer. Fascinating!

Fascinating is an understatement!  Watch and be impressed at how we can learn from nature!

 https://youtu.be/poNUiJ7x2CE

 

I rode that train a couple of times when I was in Japan. It was comfortable and cruised right along. I even flew next to it once in an F-8 with the wing up as it was roaring done the coast…skip

 

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Watch Grocery Store Jingle Bells video first, then click below to see how they did it, too bad it is German not a problem for us…you will  understand it took a lot of effort. We shop there when in Germany.

 

(87) Making Of EDEKA KASSENSYMPHONIE - YouTube

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcH6GBmwoxc

 

 

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Thanks to Carl

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/12/23/the-greatest-gift-for-all-5/

 

The Greatest Gift For All

December 23, 2022

 

Christmas Column 2022 - Paul Craig Roberts

Dear Donors,

Thank you for your support in 2022. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are still some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people.

My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when one of my occupations was being a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind's abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states?

Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep.

In the days of my youth Christianity was still a potent force in America. It was part of most people's lives, whether they were believers or not, and it regulated their behavior. That is why in Atlanta during the 1940s and 1950s we did not have to lock our door at night, and boys and girls could be gone all day without parental supervision and be completely safe. It is why I, as a 5-year old, could walk a mile safely to school and return home safely. Today parents who allowed such independence would be arrested for "child endangerment."

The power of Christian morality over behavior has faded substantially. Nevertheless, even today in the remains of our civilizational foundations many, if not most, people are still guided by Christian morality. As Christian tradition fades as the basis of behavior, barbarity will gather more strength and reign over us.

Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it and to preserve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual.

The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the regimes in Washington are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government's claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty.

In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year.

Paul Craig Roberts

The Greatest Gift For All

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual's soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by "Identity Politics," "political correctness," "critical race theory" and the war against "white culture." Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life.

Christianity is being gradually marginalized. Each year it becomes more difficult to find a Christmas card that says "Merry Christmas" instead of "Seasons Greetings." In place of Christmas carols we get Hollywood Christmas songs. In some churches Christianity is being transmuted into Christian Zionism and the worship of Israel. Others fly LGBTQ and BLM flags. We are approaching a time when a Christian Christmas cannot be celebrated as it is not inclusive in a diverse society and therefore is politically incorrect if not a hate crime.

Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged.

Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak.

Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by wars that served the ambitions of political leaders and ideological movements. Many were murdered simply because they were members of a class or race that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have been murdered and millions displaced in order to serve the neoconservatives' agenda of extending Washington and Israel's hegemony.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as "unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything."

Washington's drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power.

Christianity's emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ's birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

As we enter into 2023, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, is in decline. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny and degeneracy, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

 

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These are a couple of stories from Al's Monday morning Humor that are worth repeating

One of my traditions is that the Monday Morning Humor prior to Christmas contains thoughts and stories rather than jokes.  So once again, these are my perennial favorites and some new ones.  My intentions are to provide you with material to take you out of the holiday rush and put you in a Christmas spirit.  It is long...but then again so was the Christmas shopping period which began back in October.

 

     Bobby was getting cold sitting out in his back yard in the snow. The thin sneakers he wore had a few holes in them and they did a poor job of keeping out the cold. He didn't wear boots because he didn't like them and he didn't own any. Bobby had been in his backyard for about an hour already. And, try as he might, he could not come up with an idea for his mother's Christmas gift. He shook his head as he thought, "This is useless, even if I do come up with an idea, I don't have any money to spend."

     Ever since his father had passed away three years ago, the family of five had struggled. It wasn't because his mother didn't care, or try, there just never seemed to be enough.

     She worked nights at the hospital, but the small wage that she was earning could only be stretched so far.  What the family lacked in money and material things, they more than made up for in love and family unity.

     Bobby had two older and one younger sister, who ran the household in their mother's absence. Three of his sisters had already made beautiful gifts for their mother.

     Somehow it just wasn't fair. Here it was Christmas Eve already, and he had nothing.

     Wiping a tear from his eye, Bobby kicked the snow and started to walk down to the street where the shops and stores were.

     It wasn't easy being six without a father, especially when he needed a man to talk to.

     Bobby walked from shop to shop, looking into each decorated window. Everything seemed so beautiful and so out of reach. It was starting to get dark and Bobby reluctantly turned to walk home when suddenly his eyes caught the glimmer of the setting sun's rays reflecting off of something along the curb. He reached down and discovered a shiny dime. Never before has anyone felt so wealthy as Bobby felt at that moment.

     As he held his new found treasure, a warmth spread throughout his entire body and he walked into the first store he saw.  His excitement quickly turned cold when the salesperson told him that he couldn't buy anything with only a dime.

     He noticed a flower shop and went inside to wait in line. When the shop owner asked if he could help him, Bobby presented the dime and asked if he could buy one flower for his mother's Christmas gift. The shop owner looked at Bobby and his ten cent offering.  Then he put his hand on Bobby's shoulder and said to him, "You just wait here and I'll see what I can do for you."

     As Bobby waited he looked at the beautiful flowers and even though he was a boy, he could see why mothers and girls liked flowers.  The sound of the door closing as the last customer left, jolted Bobby back to reality. All alone in the shop, Bobby began to feel alone and afraid.  Suddenly the shop owner came out and moved to the counter.

     There, before Bobby's eyes, lay twelve long stem, red roses, with leaves of green and tiny white flowers all tied together with a big silver bow.  Bobby's heart sank as the owner picked them up and placed them neatly into a long white box. "That will be ten cents young man." the shop owner said reaching out his hand for the dime.

     Slowly, Bobby moved his hand to give the man his dime. Could this be true?  No one else would give him a thing for his dime!

     Sensing the boy's reluctance, the shop owner added, "I just happened to have some roses on sale for ten cents a dozen. Would you like them?"

     This time Bobby did not hesitate, and when the man placed the long box into his hands, he knew it was true. Walking out the door that the owner was holding open for Bobby, he heard the shop keeper say, "Merry Christmas, son."

     As he returned inside, the shop keeper's wife walked out.  "Who were you talking to back there and where are the roses you were fixing?"

     Staring out the window, and blinking the tears from his own eyes, he replied, "A strange thing happened to me this morning. While I was setting up things to open the shop, I thought I heard a voice telling me to set aside a dozen of my best roses for a special gift. I wasn't sure at the time whether I had lost my mind or what, but I set them aside anyway. Then just a few minutes ago, a little boy came into the shop and wanted to buy a flower for his mother with one small dime.

     "When I looked at him, I saw myself, many years ago. I too, was a poor boy with nothing to buy my mother a Christmas gift. A bearded man, whom I never knew, stopped me on the street and told me that he wanted to give me ten dollars. "When I saw that little boy tonight, I knew who that voice was, and I put together a dozen of my very best roses."

     The shop owner and his wife hugged each other tightly, and as they stepped out into the bitter cold air, they somehow didn't feel the cold at all.

 

     I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"

     My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so.

     It had to be true.

     Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" She snorted…."Ridiculous! Don't believe it. That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go."

     "Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun.

     "Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars.

     That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.

     I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself.

     The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping. For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, and the people who went to my church.

     I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class.

     Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note, telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat!

     I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.

     "Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down.

     "Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby."

     The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.

     That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it. Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.

     Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk.

     Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."

     I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.

     Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.

     Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes.

     That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were – ridiculous. Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team. I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside it of $19.95.

 

     In September 1960, I woke up one morning with six hungry babies and just 75 cents in my pocket. Their father was gone. The boys ranged from three months to seven years; their sister was two. Their Dad had never been much more than a presence they feared. Whenever they heard his tires crunch on the gravel driveway they would scramble to hide under their beds. He did manage to leave 15 dollars a week to buy groceries. Now that he had decided to leave, there would be no more beatings, but no food either. If there was a welfare system in effect in southern Indiana at that time, I certainly knew nothing about it.

     I scrubbed the kids until they looked brand new and then put on my best homemade dress. I loaded them into the rusty old 51 Chevy and drove off to find a job. The seven of us went to every factory, store and restaurant in our small town.  No luck. The kids stayed, crammed into the car and tried to be quiet while I tried to convince whomever would listen that I was sailing to learn or do anything. I had to have a job. Still no luck.

     The last place we went to, just a few miles out of town, was an old Root Beer Barrel drive-in that had been converted to a truck stop. It was called the Big Wheel. An old lady named Granny owned the place and  she peeked out of the window from time to time at all those kids. She needed someone on  the graveyard shift, 11 at night until seven in the morning. She paid 65 cents an hour and I could start that night.  I raced home and called the teenager down the street that baby-sat for people. I bargained with her to come and sleep on my sofa for a dollar a night. She could arrive with her pajamas on and the kids would already be asleep. This seemed like a good arrangement to her, so we made a deal.  That night when and the little ones and I knelt to say our prayers we all thanked God for finding Mommy a  job. And so I started at the Big Wheel.

     When I got home in the mornings I woke the baby-sitter up and sent her home with one dollar of my tip money-fully half of what I averaged every night.  As the weeks went by, heating bills added another strain to my meager  wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat.  New tires!  There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires.  Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered.  I made a deal with the owner of the local service station.   In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would cleanup his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires.

     I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough.  Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning.  Clothes were a worry too.  I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair.

     On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel.   These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe.  A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up.

     When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree.  (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night?   Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what.

     When I reached the car I peered warily in to one of the side winders. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was full-full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes.  I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat.  Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was a whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10! I looked inside another box:  It was full of shirts to go with the jeans.

     Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There were candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries.  There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-O and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items.  And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll.  As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on the most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude.  And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning.  Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop.

 

 A friend of mine once told me that he knew about the Big Wheel truck stop and there were a lot of stories like this that came from there…skip

 

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 From the archives

Thanks to Mud…..I also remember them all…. Skip

    I remember all of this like it was yesterday.  On reading several like the metal ice trays with a lever, I thought, "Gee, they don't make those anymore?"      I am indeed older than dirt.  That's why I don't remember having sent this around before.  😂    Merry Christmas.

 

Darn, I'm Older Than Dirt!

Someone asked the other day,

'What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up?'

'We didn't have fast food when I was growing up ,' I informed him, ' All the food was slow.'

'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'

'It was a place called 'home,' I explained! 'Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, & if I didn't like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it .'

 By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow) .

We didn't have a television in our house until I was 10. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 11, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people ...

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn't know weren't already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home... But milk was & so was bread .

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers - my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 5 AM every morning .      I did this at Loring AFB for almost 2 years and the men wanted their newspaper very early and I had to open the storm door and put the paper in and shut the door because they did not want is wet. The snow was a real challenge…Skip

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut At least, they did in the movies! There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive .

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren Just don't blame me if they bust their gut laughing.

Growing up isn't what it used to be, is it ?

 MEMORIES:

My Dad is cleaning out my grandmother's house (she died in December) and he brought me an old Royal Crown Cola bottle. In the bottle top was a stopper with a bunch of holes in it. I knew immediately what it was, but my daughter had no idea. She thought they had tried to make it a salt shaker or something. I knew it as the bottle that sat on the end of the ironing board to 'sprinkle' clothes with because we didn't have steam irons. Man, I am old .

How many do you remember ?

Head lights dimmer switches on the floor .

Ignition switches on the dashboard .

From Skip…I remember the ignition switch on the floor. I would watch my dad start the car and saw him push on a switch by the gas peddle. When I was around 5 or so My dad and mom had parked the car on the curb and gone into a store. I got into the front seat and put my foot on the switch and he had left the car in gear so it jumped forward a bit and I ended up moving the car a lot. Fortunately there was no car in front of us. When they came out I saw them look toward where the car was and then look at where it was and where it was now and knew I had been caught. As I remember it was a 37 Chevy. Parents were trying not to laugh and I got a few words about it.

Pant leg clips for bicycles without chain guards .

Soldering irons you heat on a gas burner .

Using hand signals for cars without turn signals .

 

Older Than Dirt Quiz :

Count all the ones that you remember , NOT the ones you were told about !

Ratings at the bottom .

 

1. Candy cigarettes

2. Coffee shops with tableside juke boxes

3. Home milk delivery in glass bottles

4. Party lines on the telephones

5. Newsreels before the movie

6. TV test patterns that came on at night after the last show and were there until TV shows started again in the morning. (there were only 3 channels !! If you had a TV!

7. Pea-shooters

8 Howdy Doody

9. 45 RPM records

10. 78 rpm records

11. Hi-Fi records 33 1/3 rpm

12. Metal ice trays with lever

13. Blue flashbulb

14. Cork popguns

15. Studebakers

16. Wash tub wringers 

If you remembered 0-3 = You're still young

If you remembered 3-6 = You are getting older

If you remembered 7-10 = Don't tell your age, &

If you remembered 11-16 = You're older than dirt !!! THAT'S ME !!!

 

I might be older than dirt but those memories are some of the best parts of my life .

Don't forget to pass this along.

Especially to all your really OLD FRIENDS!

 

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This Day in U S Military History

December 23

1864 – Union General William T. Sherman presents the city of Savannah, Georgia, to President Lincoln. Sherman captured Georgia's largest city after his famous "March to the Sea" from Atlanta. Savannah had been one of the last major ports that remained open to the Confederates. After Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864, he did not plan to stay for long. There was still the Confederate army of General John Bell Hood in the area, and cavalry leaders like Nathan Bedford Forrest and Joe Wheeler, who could threaten Sherman's supply lines. In November, Sherman dispatched part of his force back to Nashville, Tennessee, to deal with Hood while Sherman cut free from his supply lines and headed south and east across Georgia. Along the way, his troops destroyed nearly everything that lay in their path. Sherman's intent was to wreck the morale of the South and bring the war to a swift end. For nearly six weeks, nothing was heard from Sherman's army. Finally, just before Christmas, word arrived that Sherman's army was outside Savannah. A Union officer reached the coast and found a Union warship that carried him to Washington to personally deliver news of the success. Sherman wired Lincoln with the message, "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."

1941 – After continuing the bombardment of Wake Island the Japanese land 200 men on the island to fierce resistance from the 450 US Marines stationed there1941 – Japanese troops made an amphibious landing on the coast of Lingayen Gulf on Luzon, the Philippines.

1942 – Pharmacist's Mate First Class Thomas A. Moore performs appendectomy on Fireman Second Class George M. Platter on board USS Silversides (SS-236).

1944 – With Ho Chi Minh's support, Giap sets up an armed propaganda brigade of 34 Vietnamese and within two days will begin to attack French outposts in northern Vietnam. This is essentially the beginning of the Vietminh's armed struggle against the French.

1944 – In the advance of German 5th Panzer Army, Bastogne is surrounded and the Germans demand the surrender of United States troops. The demand to surrender, issued to the American defenders, is rejected by American General McAuliffe commanding the encircled troops. St. Vith is captured late in the day. However, the lack of substantial progress leads Model, commanding Army Group B, and Rundstedt, Commander in Chief West, to recommend an end to the offensive. Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe reportedly replied: "Nuts!"

1972 – Washington announces that the bombing of North Vietnam will continue until Hanoi agrees to negotiate "in a spirit of good will and in a constructive attitude." North Vietnamese negotiators walked out of secret talks in Paris on December 13. President Nixon issued an ultimatum to North Vietnam to send its representatives back to the conference table within 72 hours "or else." They rejected Nixon's demand, and in response the president ordered Operation Linebacker II, a full-scale air campaign against the Hanoi area. During the 11 days of the operation, 700 B-52 sorties and more than 1,000 fighter-bomber sorties dropped an estimated 20,000 tons of bombs, mostly over the densely populated area between Hanoi and Haiphong. In the course of the bombing, the Cuban, Egyptian, and Indian embassies were hit in Hanoi, as were Russian and Chinese freighters in Haiphong. Bach Mai, Hanoi's largest hospital, was also damaged by the attacks. In the United States, 41 American religious leaders issued a letter condemning the bombing.

 

Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

DALESSONDRO, PETER J.

Rank and organization: Technical Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company E, 39th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Kalterherberg, Germany, 22 December 1944. Entered service at: Watervliet, N.Y. Born: 19 May 1918, Watervliet, N.Y. G.O. No.: 73, 30 August, 1945. Citation: He was with the 1st Platoon holding an important road junction on high ground near Kalterherberg, Germany, on 22 December 1944. In the early morning hours, the enemy after laying down an intense artillery and mortar barrage, followed through with an all-out attack that threatened to overwhelm the position. T/Sgt. Dalessondro, seeing that his men were becoming disorganized, braved the intense fire to move among them with words of encouragement. Advancing to a fully exposed observation post, he adjusted mortar fire upon the attackers, meanwhile firing upon them with his rifle and encouraging his men in halting and repulsing the attack. Later in the day the enemy launched a second determined attack. Once again, T/Sgt. Dalessondro, in the face of imminent death, rushed to his forward position and immediately called for mortar fire. After exhausting his rifle ammunition, he crawled 30 yards over exposed ground to secure a light machinegun, returned to his position, and fired upon the enemy at almost pointblank range until the gun jammed. He managed to get the gun to fire 1 more burst, which used up his last round, but with these bullets he killed 4 German soldiers who were on the verge of murdering an aid man and 2 wounded soldiers in a nearby foxhole. When the enemy had almost surrounded him, he remained alone, steadfastly facing almost certain death or capture, hurling grenades and calling for mortar fire closer and closer to his outpost as he covered the withdrawal of his platoon to a second line of defense. As the German hordes swarmed about him, he was last heard calling for a barrage, saying, "OK, mortars, let me have it–right in this position!" The gallantry and intrepidity shown by T/Sgt. Dalessondro against an overwhelming enemy attack saved his company from complete rout.

 

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AMERICAN AEROSPACE EVENTS for December 23,  FIRSTS, LASTS, AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS. THANKS TO HAROLD "PHIL" MYERS CHIEF HISTORIAN AIR FORCE INTELLIGENCE, SURVEILLANCE, AND RECONNAISSANCE AGENCY

 

23 December

1907: The Army's Chief Signal Officer, Brig Gen James Allen, sought bids for the first heavierthan-air military flying machine. The specifications called for an aircraft that could carry two people, fly at 40 miles per hour for 125 miles without stopping, with controllable flight in any direction, and able to land at its takeoff point without damage. (12) (21)

1914: MACKAY TROPHY. Capt Townsend F. Dodd and Lt Shepler W. Fitzgerald won the trophy for reconnaissance competitions. For the third time, the winners were the only competitors as accidents and mishaps removed all other aircraft from the event. (24)

1950: KOREAN WAR. Using fighter cover, three H-5 helicopter crews rescued 11 American and 24 Republic of Korea soldiers from a field eight miles behind enemy lines. (28)

1958: Cape Canaveral, Fla., launched the first Atlas C intercontinental ballistic missile on a 4,300-mile flight down the Atlantic Missile Range. It used General Electric's Mod III radio inertial guidance system for the first time. (6)

1959: The Air Force Ballistic Missile Committee selected Malmstrom AFB, Mont., to be the first base for Minuteman I missiles. (6) The 4135th Strategic Wing at Eglin AFB, Fla., received the Strategic Air Command's first Hound Dog missile. (1)

1964: TYPHOON OPAL. A C-54 from the 405th Fighter Wing at Clark AB, Philippines, delivered 4,000 items of canned food to the victims of Typhoon Opal in Surigao del Norte Province, Mindanao. (17)

1965: Operation BLUE LIGHT. Through 23 January, the Military Airlift Command transported the 3d Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, from Hawaii to Pleiku, South Vietnam, to offset communist forces in the area. The movement included 231 C-141 sorties to move 3,000 troops and 4,700 tons of equipment. At the time, it was the largest airlift of troops and equipment into a combat zone. (2) (21)

1969: McDonnell Douglas of St. Louis, Mo., received the prime contract for the F-15 Eagle air superiority fighter. (12) (30)

1970: A Sprint terminal-defense interceptor missile launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean intercepted a Minuteman I reentry vehicle launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. (6)

1974: Charles C. Bock, Rockwell's chief test pilot, flew the prototype B-1 on its first flight from Palmdale to Edwards AFB in California. (1) (3)

1983: The 390th Electronic Combat Squadron attained an initial operating capability with the EF-111A Raven. (16) (26)

 

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From the Archives

Subject: To the German Commander: NUTS! 

This holiday season, please keep in mind all those who have defended us, in previous generations and those who stand ready today. It is thanks to their sacrifices and gallant feats of arms that we are able to truly make for ourselves a Merry Christmas.

 

               Dear Robert,

In December of 1944, 79years ago, Allied forces were immersed in one of the most epic battles of the Second World War.

At the time, it was becoming clear that the Germans would not win the war on the Western Front. In hopes of saving his 'Thousand-Year Reich,' Adolf Hitler launched a major offensive through the Ardennes region of Northwestern Europe.

It was the last major German offensive of the war, becoming known as The Battle of the Bulge.

The main German objective was to seize the port of Antwerp, dividing the British and American forces. Key to advancing on Antwerp would be the seizing of the road network that converged on the small eastern Belgian town of Bastogne. Take Bastogne, and the Germans stood a chance of winning the battle, and turning the momentum of the war. Thus, the American paratroopers defending Bastogne had to hold the town – at all costs.

Surrounding the American forces at Bastogne, the Germans sent officers to the Allied lines under a white flag of truce and a message demanding the Americans' surrender. When told of the German delegation's arrival, the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division, General Anthony McAuliffe, first believed the Germans had intended to surrender to the Americans. When told that, in fact, the Germans were demanding the Americans' surrender, McAuliffe exclaimed, "Us surrender? Aw, nuts!"

Realizing that a reply was in order – one that decidedly rejected the Germans' demand of surrender – McAuliffe asked his staff for suggestions. The 101st Airborne Division's operations officer, then-Lt. Colonel Harry W.O. Kinnard chimed in that McAuliffe's initial reaction would be tough to beat. The men nodded in agreement, and the following message was drafted:

To the German Commander,

 

N U T S !

 

The American Commander"

Inspired by his men's spirit and defiance, General McAuliffe tasked Lt. Colonel Kinnard with drafting a Christmas message for the division. It read, in part:

"What's merry about all this, you ask? We're fighting, it's cold, we aren't home. All true, but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades of the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West....How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Division's glorious history but in World history."

The message continued:

"Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies...

We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas."

A witness to one of the great moments of audacious defiance of World War II, General Harry Kinnard shared the story of Christmas, 1944 with the American Veterans Center prior to his passing several years ago.

 Please take a moment to listen to the story of 'NUTS!' and the famed Christmas message of 1944, as told by Lieutenant General Harry W.O. Kinnard.

As we enjoy the holidays among family and friends, let us not forget those who, 73 years ago, spent their Christmas in the snow of Bastogne, determined to hold the town at all costs and ensure that by Christmas, 1945, the world would be at peace.

This holiday season, please keep in mind all those who have defended us, in previous generations and those who stand ready today. It is thanks to their sacrifices and gallant feats of arms that we are able to truly make for ourselves a Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

 

James C. Roberts

President & Founder       

 

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