Plus ça change,

I doodled this little thing in a spectacularly tedious class on "leadership ethics" during Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC) at Ft. Sherman, Panama sometime in December, 1986...and this one yesterday - what, 26 years later? - in the first day of my 40hr HAZWOPER class in Hillsboro, Oregon, 2012Sometimes not only does the damn plus c'est la même chose leopard not change his spots but the damn spots don't change, either.

Hmmm. Well, not entirely.

I do note that while as a broth of a lad of twenty-nine I appear to have been obsessed with women and have spent most of my time doodling about them twenty-something years later the places my head goes when it's desperately looking for a way out of the room are somewhat less venereal and more...interesting. Although I still do seem to like to draw women.

I find it interesting that the one repeated image - although not from the PLDC doodle I posted above, is the mermaid riding the torpedo. Here she is, from "Raiders of the Lost Parts"......and here she is on the wall of what is now Missy's bedroom (she got up on the old drywall as we were demoing the old backhall closet room, and you can read aaaaall about it here although she seems somewhat Asian in this one).For some reason she seems to be an image I enjoy drawing.

There are truly some strange things that get lodged in the human cerebrum.

But I suspect that there are more doodles to come. I have three more days of this HAZWOPER stuff this week. Eeegah.

Funny Papers 2: It Came From South Florida

This little comic adventure stemmed from the week back in 1986 I was detailed to provide medical support for an ARNG infantry brigade from Florida. For some reason they deployed to Panama for their Annual Training and requested - and got - a GAMA Goat ambulance, driver and medic (which was me) from the 2nd Battalion (ABN)(LT) 187th Infantry, my then-unit of assignment.They were an interesting crew - lots of Cuban-Americans - and provided a certain amount of amusement but also a hell of a lot of irritation. Their officers were...shambolic, to put it kindly. They had very little in the way of military skills - I think that their weekend drills were a sort of Cuban-American social club. And they were in terrible physical shape and the Panamanian jungle just flat wore them out.I actually started this in the field, and included a full page (Page 6) detailing a long and pointless bit of foolery that, on reflection, adds nothing to the story and is omitted here. The second and third pages were an extended and juvenile bitch about how fucked up the Guards were, which I now regret (having been in the Guard myself now and seen the other side of the hill) and have also used my aeditorial powers to delete.



The one thing I should mention is that at the end of page 3 I draw a little scene wherein we had something like a stray round go overhead (the 105s were firing on the nearby FA impact area). The Guard had a bit of a panic, assuming they were taking friendly fire. It turned out to be one of the base-ejecting illumination round canisters (that hold the flare inside the shell). We lost a lot of sleep over that, though, and that's where you come in on Page 4.I think the story largely stands on its own but I should perhaps add some notes to explain some otherwise in-joke images.Notes: (The page numbers are from the original pagination - look in the lower right corner; pages 2, 3, and 6 are omitted)



Page 1, top: The teeny little picture right below the caption is supposed to be the Panamanian DMV - "D.N.T.T.", a notorious hive of scum and villainy (and bribery) where you got your Panamanian tags and licenses. I had a motorcycle, which the "inspectors" seemed to find all sorts of wrong and fine-able with until I slipped them all a sawbuck after which they were my best pals and passed me out most quick smart.



Page 2, bottom: My medical platoon sergeant was a "fixer" of the Bilko breed and had managed to scrounge a M151 quarter-ton jeep which was supposed to have been turned in as excess when the battalion converted from the 3/5th Infantry (straight-leg) to the airborne/light MTO&E. It was strictly off-the-books and for his own driving pleasure. Well, the Florida Guard borrowed it on a hand-receipt and wrecked the fuck out of it. I have no idea how. I really did roll up to our Motor Pool and find it sitting sadly, looking just like that, right outside the main gate. I heard later that my platoon daddy actually cried when he saw it. He really did love that quarter-ton.Page 5, top: The Guard chain never bothered to give me their challenge/password - probably assuming that as a "notional" part of the exercise I didn't need it - but never told their gate guards to let me pass without challenge, either. We spent some fun playing word games at their trains gate while someone went up to the the TOC and then the battle captain waddled down and sprung me. Good times.



Page 7, middle: Our mortar platoon was live-firing on Empire Range during the Guard field problem, and they really did shoot out of the impact area and blew some nice holes in K-15 road, which was the main road through that section of the range. I found the shell holes, so I got to be the one to inform the mortar platoon leader, who wasn't half as amused by it as I was.



Page 7, bottom: I really did have a guardsman that practically assaulted me trying to climb into the ambulance to be evacuated for being a heat casualty. Liveliest case of heat exhaustion I've ever seen. And the other guy wouldn't say what his problem was (I couldn't find anything, either, which didn't help) other than he was "woozy". I think he was woozy at the idea of trying the fire-and-movement course with his buddies shooting around him, since their idea of fire discipline would have made a pack of savage Shiite militiamen on the roof of the Ramadi Holiday Inn gulp with disbelief.



Last page, center: I really need to write a post about the old M792 ambulance. It really was a horrible idea of a truck, but it was unique and a bit of Army history. Maybe in a bit. Maybe as a cartoon.



But GAMA Goats or no, that's the tale of what happened in Panama in December, 1986. Hope you enjoyed it.

Funny Papers

When I was just a lad I loved to draw.My early cartoons featured dinosaurs, rocket ships, and lots and lots of soldiers. They were of value only to my parents, who probably still have them around somewhere.

As I grew older I kept drawing, my skills got a little better, and the dinos and rockets disappeared. The soldiers, however, remained until I eventually grew old enough to become one myself.As a soldier, one thing I found is that when not actually soldiering one ended up with a lot of spare time.

This could be filled with partying and drinking, and while I enjoyed the partying and drinking I found I wasn't very good at them.

But drawing?

Drawing I could do.

(If this one seems out of place with the others, I did this as part of a series for my then-girlfriend involving famous ancestors of hers, usually in some sort of compromising position - there was one of her "ancestor" in Lexington, 1776, with Paul Revere pawing her bare breasts and leering "Now, let's see...were these two if by land or two if by sea?" with the redcoats leaning over the Dutch door. This was her descendent as Star Wars Princess. Laugh if you will, but she enjoyed them, and laughter is as potent an aphrodisiac as poetry or jewelry. Fuck Kay - many a kiss begins with a chuckle. Anyway, that's why this one's here...)

Posted to Panama back in the final days of the expiring Canal Zone era I had even more time to draw, and I did.

For a while I even put out my own little paper, a compendium of vanity and nothingness I called "Evac Section Newsletter". For years I thought I had lost all trace of this stuff until whilst pawing through my military paperwork folder I came across a file that had a bunch of these old drawings in it.

I don't pretend that these odd little comics have any more value than the old dinosaurs and rocket ships. But they do, to my biased eye, have a certain charm, they were a part of me back in the day, and the youngster I was then is still part of me today.

If nothing else they are an artifact of a time, and a place, that has vanished like the Etruscans; the American occupation of the Panama Canal Zone, circa 1986.So I will post up one or two of these things every so often, as much to amuse myself as anyone else. I hope you enjoy them, but if not, just remember that there's all SORTS of worse stuff published every day. Just check the magazine rack the next time you check out at the supermarket. Trust me. And just think; these may well turn out to be the Pompeii-wall-paintings of Panama in the Eighties, as well as a momento mori to the wide boy I was in the flower of my manhood.Ah, but I was a roaring cartoonist of a fella then, a regular broth of a boy! Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait,dammit!

The Policeman in Arraiján

The second year I was stationed in Panama I bought a motorcycle.It wasn't anything special, a little blue 1986 Sportster with a solo seat, but it gave me a freedom I hadn't had until then, and I used it to travel about the immediate vicinity of my post at Ft. Kobbe and see a little of the country I lived in. I enjoyed most of the trips I took up and down the "Inter-America" as the locals called the stretch of the Pan-American Highway that ran through the environs of Panama City.

Except for the bit where I had to go through the little town of Arraiján.

The one-stoplight part of town along the road was a notorious Panamanian speed trap, and by that I mean a revenue-generating machine, since speed had nothing to do with it. I assume that the locals were exempt, but I'll bet that other Panamanians, the "rabiblancos" from downtown and transisthmian travelers got nailed, too. Being unable to do anything other than DWG, I payed the driving-whilst-gringo penalty almost every time I passed through the burg.Speed was immaterial; I once tried to go as slow as I could short of actually falling over. Mal suerte, Yanqui; a ticket for you (if I understood the copper correctly) for going too fucking slowly and tying up the busy traffic of the Republic of Panama (one rackety Chiva bus and a panel truck, I recall).

But that point was that the tickets had nothing to do with traffic or enforcement of the Panamanian statues regulating traffic. It had everything to do with the salary of a Panamanian police officer and the cop culture of Panama.

Panamanian cops, like nearly every other Panamanian national functionary back in the Eighties, were paid better than most Panamanian civilians that didn't work for that money tree, the Canal Commission. But by any other standard, they were paid squat.

And the "civil service" culture of Panama had a streak of graft a mile wide and deeper than Gatun Lake.

So the policeman in Arraiján was on the take.And the clerk at the DNTT, where you got your Panamanian plates and license. And the guy doing the food inspections for the bodegas and kitchens in Panama (interestingly, in country if you said "Panama" everyone knew you were referring to the City of that name; the nation of Panama was referred to as "la pais" or some equivalent of "the nation" or "the country".), the guy taking your toll along the TransIsthmica, the highway from ocean to ocean...in fact, pretty much everyone in town had some sort of scam going on. It was how they made ends meet, since they worked for a poor country that paid them poorly.

And Panama was not the only place I watched this go on; in fact, pretty much everywhere outide the U.S. I spent any time; Honduras, Bolivia, Egypt...every public employee and a hell of a lot of the private ones stretched their incomes by mulcting the public they "served". La mordida - the "little bite" - came out of nearly everything you needed; inspections, licenses, travel...everything.

In China to adopt our little Miss we met the same; we had to bring "gifts" for every fucker in the process. The nannies in the orphanage, the orphanage director, the clerk at the public records office - in fact, the only people who DIDN'T formally solicit a little bribe were the coppers, making China one of the few parts of the Less-Developed World when I didn't associate a uniform with a gentle tug on the wallet.

But the reason I have been thinking about the policeman waiting patiently at the traffic light in Arraiján for his little bite is the recent furor over public unions and the apparently insatiable needs of the conservative party (and people, it seems) to beat down those damn tax-fattened hyenas until they accept their serfdom.Now I enjoy paying taxes about as much as anyone, and I certainly don't like the notion of bloated bureaucrats lolling about on my dime. But, unlike many of the people, especially many of the conservative people I read, I have read a little on the history of public employment in the U.S. AND have spent some time in places where the public employees really ARE serf-like.

And the reason that most U.S. public jobs pay middle-class wages - or better - has as much to do with the good of the public as it does the good of the "public servant". Because a poorly paid policeman, or clerk, or inspector - as anyone who's brain cell wasn't lonely should be able to figure out - would seem to be ideally placed to suppliment his or her income.

And do it in a way that most of us Americans, used to a relatively honest public workforce, would find extremely unpleasant.

One of the biggest reasons that the policeman in Arraiján could ply his trade was because he never touched los dorados - the golden ones, the truly wealthy - who had all the wealth they needed to buy protection from his irritating intrusion. A culture of public corruption can only really flourish in a society where the people who command the society are raised above the effects of the corruption...or benefit from it. In Panama back in 1986 they could do both, and did.

I wonder.

Could this recent enthusiasm for vilifying, and destroying the power of, the public employees in my country be related to changes in the U.S. of 2011 that make us more like the Panama of 1986 than the U.S. of 1986?Because I don't think I want the policeman...or the fireman, or the DMV clerk, or the building code inspector...in Portland, Oregon to feel the desire for the little bite of the policeman in Arraiján.

The Feast of Stephen

I returned from a jolly week of drilling on a barge up the Columbia Gorge to note that it is Christmas Eve. And one of the things that has always been especially poignant for soldiers is holidays far from home. And that, in turn, made me think about my bride and our little Peeper and Missy warm and snuggly in their beds, inside our little house strung with lights and full of presents and cards and the other impedimentia of the Season, and contrast that with the last time I was far away from home on a Christmas Eve.

Ft. Kobbe, Panama, December 24, 1986

It was a practice in Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion (Airborne) (Light) 187th Infantry Regiment for the unmarried sergeants to volunteer to take holiday duty for the wedded guys. So that's why I found myself standing on the landing outside the dayroom of the HHC barracks Christmas Eve day dressed tastefully in holiday-green tropical fatigues and a santa-red beret being violently abused by a Panamanian taxi driver.

It seems that one of our American heroes had, in an excess of Christmas cheer, commandeered the driver's services to motor all around Panama Viejo attempting to find a shapely little elf who would supply a Christmas stocking that he could fill.

Not surprisingly, given his slobberingly drunk condition, the only attentions he could find came from ladies who expected to receive green, folding presents in return, which struck our young hero as more than a little Grinchy.

This seeker of the true Spirit of Christmas imbibed some Chistmas spirits and then resolved to return to his only REAL family, his buddies at HHC 2/187, only to find on arrival that one of Santa's little ho-ho-hoes had lifted his wallet during his importunations. Or he had left it on the bar. Or whatever.

The upshot was, anyway, that he now had nothing to give the infuriated driver whose worn taxi now reeked of cheap perfume and drunken G.I. Worse yet, he turned out to be nimble as a monkey - even drunk - and had shinnied up the mango tree in front of the barracks and was hiding in the branches lobbing the occasional overripe fruit at both the driver and the taxi windshield.

The street in front of the barrack reeked of mango juice and the combined noise of a furious taxi driver and an intoxicated arboreal G.I. This, in turn, drew a small crowd of pre-Christmas revelers, who took turns abusing both parties and shying additional fruit at the taxi when the driver wasn't watching.

I managed to pay off the driver, scatter the crowd and talk the monkey-boy out of the tree just as one of my other single friends came sauntering down from his post as battalion staff duty NCO.

"I see life in the slums is still exotic and vigorous, even on Christmas Eve" he sneered.

SGT Chief: "Little you know about it, lolling about up there at Battalion as you do. It's like a freakin' Jerry Springer show down here, you know. Oh, and a Merry Christmas to you, too, jackass."

BN SDNCO: "Yeah, well, lucky for us that the first Christmas happened in Bethehem, not Fort Kobbe, eh?"

SGT Chief: "Why's that?"

BN SDNCO: "'Cause where the hell'd you find three wise men and a virgin around here..?"

It was an old joke but I was still chuckling as I ran back up the stairs to the dayroom to share warm Coke with the three guys watching football.

This year, as they have for the past nine years now, American soldiers are preparing for a holiday in faraway places much less entertaining and far more hazardous than my Panamanian Christmas Eve two and a half decades ago. I'm sure that they share many of the same feelings I did then: loneliness, regret, some pride in a hard job well done in demanding circumstances, but mixed with others I didn't; fear of death or wounding, anger and grief at lost friends, hope that their own homecoming will be soon and safe.

As do I.

So Merry Christmas, Joyous Kwanzaa, Happy Hanukkah...however you say it, however you celebrate it, all you young - and not so young - men and women in the hard places far from home; I hope you will all be home soon to enjoy this time with your families.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night...