Father Anthony and Philomena

*
     We just got word a few days ago that our dear friend, Bishop McCollip, better known to us as Father Anthony, had just passed away. We mourn for this great man, and wish we could be there now to share the grief of his wonderful wife, Philomena. I am reprinting this story in honor of this great man.
*******************

     During our Australia adventure, Barbara an I stayed at a guest house in Sydney for several nights, as we explored Sydney, and I worked up my nerve to rent a car, one with the steering wheel on the wrong side, drive across that huge city on the wrong side of the road, and figure out how to negotiate multi-lane roundabouts, and head out up the coast to points north, toward the Great Barrier Reef.


     One night, at our dinner table, we met great couple, Father Anthony and Philomena. We seemed to hit it right off, and after we told him we were about to head north toward Brisbane as soon as I got up my nerve to do that, they told us to call them when we arrived there, they would come get us, and we could spend a night with them.


      A few days later, we did. They came to get us, and we soon arrived at their home.  A great meal followed, and while Barbara and Father Anthony washed and dried the dishes, Philomena and I poured over her road maps. We then spent a fun evening talking. He was royally insulted when Barbara told him they sounded British, informing us that Brits sounded like they “had a plum in their mouth, and were far more pompous.” I, in turn, was offended when he indicated American football players were somewhat less that manly,having to wear head gear and padding, while Australian Footballers used none. He had to admit, however, that many of their young men got an awful lot of concussions.

      He showed us a photo of him carrying the Olympic torch, and showed us their church. At that time, it was only a small building in their back yard. He said he was placing a photo of us over the alter, and they would pray for us daily.

Their church, he explained to us, was just like the Roman Catholic Church, except that the Priests were not celibate, an unnatural thing, and, since Jesus excluded no one, neither did they. Since that time, the church has grown very rapidly, with branches in many countries. There is an orphanage named after him in Africa, and he is now the Presiding Bishop. He was 65 at that time, she 70.  We still stay in touch regularly. It was nice to sleep in a real house that night, and we awoke to many strange and beautiful bird sounds.

      After breakfast, they drove us to the beach for a walk. They literally walked us both into the ground, several miles. They offered us the use of their beach house, half a day up the coast, but we had to decline, since we wanted to cover as much territory as possible during our stay. They led us out of town and got us started on the correct road, after giving us their official Catholic blessing.

      Since we have returned home, we have, as I said, stayed in regular contact with these friends. I told him once if they ever came to the US, we would come see them. Soon, he called, saying they were going to Hawaii for the official ceremony to make him a Bishop, wanted us to come. How does one explain to a Bishop that one can't keep his word? I had to start out by explaining how far Hawaii was from Arkansas. After he became Presiding Bishop, he once told Barbara that he was taking on the name of McCollip, in honor of a Saint. Then he said, “I personally believe, there are many living Saints in the world, today, like yourself.” Well, that bothered me some. Even though it was an off-hand remark, it was, after all, said by the Presiding Bishop of the Independent Catholic Church of Austraila. Just how official IS that? How does one live with a Saint? Can I still kiss her on the mouth? Can I sleep in the same bed? Must I always walk 5 steps behind? Just an awful lot I don't know about all that.

He once wrote to tell us their small dog, whom we knew, had got in a fight with a Cain Toad and died. How could a toad kill a dog? I looked it up. A Cain toad has a poisonous skin. Bite it, and die. Australia is full of deadly creatures.

Rest in peace, our dear friend. Though I know Jesus, in your casual conversation with him, refers to you as Bishop McCollip, you will always be Father Anthony to us. You enriched our six weeks in your wonderful country of Australia greatly.

********

     I had always thought, in the deep recesses of my mind, someday I will build my own house. Mostly by myself. I decided, now was the time. We borrowed twenty-five thousand dollars in 1978, and I set in. I didn't know how to build a house, but I knew how to use a saw and hammer. Pretty well all of us raised in Wing learned to do that. The rest I learned along the way. If I got to a point where I was stumped, I went and looked at other houses under construction, and just did like the big boys did. When I first started and was doing the dirt work, a friend said, “I don't know how you ever make any progress. Every time I come by, you're leaning on your shovel.” Actually, I was very busy thinking. Trying to figure out what to do next. I did, however, dig the footing trench in one day. Lots of sand, no rocks.

      It was pretty well framed up, and Kinley, about four, was sitting in the front yard, playing in the sand. She had a spoon in her hand, and dug up a spoon full of sand just as we saw the mosquitoes were eating her up. We scooped her up, along with her spoon full of sand, and she quietly reached down and pulled a gold ring from the spoon. We figured that was a good omen for the house.

     I was working on the master bathroom when Barbara and Kinley came over with the news. Elvis Presley had just died.

      Some of the finish work I saved for the pros, like the cabinets, carpet, and brickwork. I knew I couldn't hide my lack of skill there. I found a little trick that worked well. After a contractor had been on the job one day, I went over his work until I found a flaw. Then I ragged him until he re-did it. His work quality now moved up a notch. Most contractors will only do their best work if they are pushed to it by picky people. It's all about speed with them. Many will go too fast if you let them.

     When it was finished, we turned three thousand dollars back to the bank. A one thousand, seven hundred and ten square foot, three bedroom brick house for twenty two thousand dollars. Including the lot. But, that was 1978. Prices have changed some since then. But the labor expense saved amounted to close to half the cost. It took ten months, after school, weekends, and a summer. I never, in my life, become as completely focused as when I start building a house. Barbara has a lot of trouble getting me away from it, for any reason. I wound up building the next two housed we have lived in, too. But not for that price. Thirty eight thousand dollars in 1983 out in the country, out in the woods four miles from Arkadelphia. Was a two story frame house. Our new banker was very hesitant about lending money. He just said most people who set in to build their own house were soon overwhelmed, and quit. But, I had done it once already, so he finally relented. When the house was finished, and he came out for the final inspection, he told me I should build houses for a living. No thanks. Once the banker does his final inspection and declares it finished I take his word for it and just quit right there. I'm sick of it by then, and I have never finished up every little detail .Who am I to argue with a banker? Usually, it's part of the garage that is eternally unfinished. Water was a problem. We first dug a large bore well, thirty or so feet deep. Plenty of water, but the test came back bad. So, we dug a small bore well, 200 feet deep.  It tested bad also. The next sample was bad. The bank would not finalize our loan until we passed a water test. The third sample was accidentally dropped in the microwave for a minute or so. It tested perfect. Sometimes, one just does what one must do. After our kids grew up there, Barb wanted back in town with city water and cable TV. That third one, twenty years ago, cost sixty eight thousand, the one we still live in. But this time, the soreness in my body did not end after a few days. It was there, every day, for ten months. I was getting too old for this.

      A sheet rock hanger guy, in his mid-fifties, lived next door. He kept a close check on my progress awhile, then told me I was going to make it. A neighbor woman commented, “I’ve been wondering what’s going on there. I never see but one man there, yet it just keeps going up.” The sheet rock hanger’s son told me one day, “I never want to be old. I want to die by fifty.” I asked why. He said, “I never want to hurt as much as my father does, every morning when he gets up.” A few months later, his father died suddenly, no one seemed to know why. But I did. Hanging sheet rock every day, for an old man, is a man killer. I had learned this on my first two houses, so this time I left the sheet rock hanging and finishing to the pros, the young guys. Three or four days as opposed to two months.                                                             

      The city inspector was the bane of my existence while I built that last house. Although it was legal to buy permits and build one's own house in Arkadelphia, plumbing, electrical and all, he was determined that you just can't build a house like that, alone.  He was there, nearly every day, finding things wrong.

I pulled a fast one on him once. I had the under-the-slab plumbing finished, uncovered in a four foot deep trench, and he was getting out of his truck, coming to inspect. I noticed a drain curve turned the wrong way. I knew he would say, "You can't do that! That will cause the drain to stop up every couple of weeks! Pull it out and redo it!" I threw a shovel full of dirt down on top of that joint as he walked up, gambling he was too lazy to get down in the ditch and check it. He didn't, and twenty years later, it has never stopped up.

     A couple of times, I had to bring him an engineering book to prove my point. He once decided that  two by six inch studs, two feet apart, would not hold a two story house. He told me to put another stud in between. I finally convinced him that two by sixes spaced that way could carry more weight than two by fours spaced sixteen inches apart. I let him read it right out of the engineering book. But the last time he came out, as I was finishing up, he was different. He smiled and said, “You know, a man should never have to do what you did on this house, alone like that, but once in a lifetime.” And I was doing it for city water and cable TV, for heaven's sake! I decided that day that he and I finally agreed on something. This was my last house.

                                

     Then we started buying old, rundown rent houses, and I fixed them up. After the first one, our banker realized I would quickly fix it up, make it worth more. Sweat equity, he called it. I never had to make a down payment on another one. I even made a profit on a closing once, because rent was due. But like I say, that was then, and things have changed in banking. We made sure our credit rating stayed around eight hundred. And I have changed. I've got to renovate a trashed apartment next week, and what I really want to do is write. I wouldn't mind if I never saw another hammer and saw. Anyone want to buy sixteen old houses and apartments? Have I got a deal for you! (This story was written some time back. I now own only four rentals to work on. I’ve stopped climbing up on steep roofs, and squeezing under low houses, so my profit is much less.)

Building my own houses: Half priced

     I had always thought, in the deep recesses of my mind, someday I will build my own house. Mostly by myself. I decided, now was the time. We borrowed twenty-five thousand dollars in 1978, and I set in. I didn't know how to build a house, but I knew how to use a saw and hammer. Pretty well all of us raised in Wing learned to do that. The rest I learned along the way. If I got to a point where I was stumped, I went and looked at other houses under construction, and just did like the big boys did. When I first started and was doing the dirt work, a friend said, “I don't know how you ever make any progress. Every time I come by, you're leaning on your shovel.” Actually, I was very busy thinking. Trying to figure out what to do next. I did, however, dig the footing trench in one day. Lots of sand, no rocks.

      It was pretty well framed up, and Kinley, about four, was sitting in the front yard, playing in the sand. She had a spoon in her hand, and dug up a spoon full of sand just as we saw the mosquitoes were eating her up. We scooped her up, along with her spoon full of sand, and she quietly reached down and pulled a gold ring from the spoon. We figured that was a good omen for the house.

     I was working on the master bathroom when Barbara and Kinley came over with the news. Elvis Presley had just died.

      Some of the finish work I saved for the pros, like the cabinets, carpet, and brickwork. I knew I couldn't hide my lack of skill there. I found a little trick that worked well. After a contractor had been on the job one day, I went over his work until I found a flaw. Then I ragged him until he re-did it. His work quality now moved up a notch. Most contractors will only do their best work if they are pushed to it by picky people. It's all about speed with them. Many will go too fast if you let them.

     When it was finished, we turned three thousand dollars back to the bank. A one thousand, seven hundred and ten square foot, three bedroom brick house for twenty two thousand dollars. Including the lot. But, that was 1978. Prices have changed some since then. But the labor expense saved amounted to close to half the cost. It took ten months, after school, weekends, and a summer. I never, in my life, become as completely focused as when I start building a house. Barbara has a lot of trouble getting me away from it, for any reason. I wound up building the next two houses we have lived in, too. But not for that price. Thirty eight thousand dollars in 1983 out in the country, out in the woods four miles from Arkadelphia. It was a two story frame house. Our new banker was very hesitant about lending money. He just said most people who set in to build their own house were soon overwhelmed, and quit. But, I had done it once already, so he finally relented. When the house was finished, and he came out for the final inspection, he told me I should build houses for a living. No thanks. Once the banker does his final inspection and declares it finished I take his word for it and just quit right there. I'm sick of it by then, and I have never finished up every little detail .Who am I to argue with a banker? Usually, it's part of the garage that is eternally unfinished. Water was a problem. We first dug a large bore well, thirty or so feet deep. Plenty of water, but the test came back bad. So, we dug a small bore well, 200 feet deep.  It tested bad also. The next sample was bad. The bank would not finalize our loan until we passed a water test. The third sample was accidentally dropped into the microwave for a minute or so. It tested perfect. Sometimes, one just does what one must do. After our kids grew up there, Barb wanted back in town with city water and cable TV. That third one, twenty years ago, cost sixty eight thousand, the one we still live in. But this time, the soreness in my body did not end after a few days. It was there, every day, for ten months. I was getting too old for this.

      A sheet rock hanger guy, in his mid-fifties, lived next door. He kept a close check on my progress awhile, then told me I was going to make it. A neighbor woman commented, “I’ve been wondering what’s going on over there. I never see but one man there, yet it just keeps going up.” The sheet rock hanger’s son told me one day, “I never want to be old. I want to die by fifty.” I asked why. He said, “I never want to hurt as much as my father does, every morning when he gets up.” A few months later, his father died suddenly, no one seemed to know why. But I did. Hanging sheet rock every day, for an old man, is a man killer. I had learned this on my first two houses, so this time I left the sheet rock hanging and finishing to the pros, the young guys. Three or four days as opposed to two months. The sheet rock hangers told me when they finished, it was the most square and plumb house they had ever worked on. A plus, I guess, for being so slow in framing it up.

                                                             

      The city inspector was the bane of my existence while I built that last house. Although it was legal to buy permits and build one's own house in Arkadelphia, plumbing, electrical and all, he was determined that you just can't build a house like that, alone.  He was there, nearly every day, finding things wrong.

I pulled a fast one on him once. I had the under-the-slab plumbing finished, uncovered in a four foot deep trench, and he was getting out of his truck, coming to inspect. I noticed a drain curve turned the wrong way. I knew he would say, "You can't do that! That will cause the drain to stop up every couple of weeks! Pull it out and redo it!" I threw a shovel full of dirt down on top of that joint as he walked up, gambling he was too lazy to get down in the ditch and check it. He didn't, and twenty years later, it has never stopped up.

     A couple of times, I had to bring him an engineering book to prove my point. He once decided that  two by six inch studs, two feet apart, would not hold a two story house. He told me to put another stud in between. I finally convinced him that two by sixes spaced that way could carry more weight than two by fours spaced sixteen inches apart. I let him read it right out of the engineering book. But the last time he came out, as I was finishing up, he was different. He smiled and said, “You know, a man should never have to do what you did on this house, alone like that, but once in a lifetime.” And I was doing it for city water and cable TV, for heaven's sake! I decided that day that he and I finally agreed on something. This was my last house.

                                

     Then we started buying old, rundown rent houses, and I fixed them up. After the first one, our banker realized I would quickly fix it up, make it worth more. Sweat equity, he called it. I never had to make a down payment on another one. I even made a profit on a closing once, because rent was due. But like I say, that was then, and things have changed in banking. We made sure our credit rating stayed around eight hundred. And I have changed. I've got to renovate a trashed apartment next week, and what I really want to do is write. I wouldn't mind if I never saw another hammer and saw. Anyone want to buy sixteen old houses and apartments? Have I got a deal for you! (This story was written some time back. I now own only four rentals to work on. I’ve stopped climbing up on steep roofs, and squeezing under low houses, so my profit is much less. A product of being 69 years old. I don't do that kind of work anymore.)

My Dogs: Sad Endings

Fair warning:  This is no feel-good story. I decided to put all my sad endings in one post, so I would remember to never read it again. You might want to do the same.
********************************************

     Contact with dogs came early in my memory. Spot was an aging, cancer-eaten long haired dog, nearing the end, faintly recalled in my early recollections. Not so faintly recalled is the rifle shot that ended his suffering existence.

     Snippy was a short haired, black, chunky feist. He was a dandy squirrel dog without a hunter. Harold, my older brother, his hunting partner, had gone off to college. Snippy spent his days, lying in the warm sun, dreaming of days gone by. On cold winter nights, he would jump up through the open crib door into the barn, work his way into the hayloft, and burrow in for the night. One very cold winter morning, with the temperature hovering near the single digits, I approached the barn. Then I saw him. Snippy lay, curled up in the snow, frozen solid. Above him was a closed, and latched, crib door.

      My very first dog of my own was Champ. I built Champ a house, painted his name over the door. We wrestled and played, getting closer daily. As Barbara and I rode to the cucumber patch one morning, Champ followed. When we arrived, I said, “Let me out so I can watch after champ while you make the turn.” I was too late. Bumped and knocked off balance by a front wheel, the rear wheel ran over his snout. Champ got up, walked a few steps, looked at me, and I saw the light fade from his eyes. Slowly he fell. I raced to kneel beside Champ, my shaking hand feeling a faint heartbeat fading away. It was a long time before the memory of Champ began to fade.

     When I got Tooter, he was an eight week old, part German Shepherd pup. He had a black and white cross on his chest. I carried him, resting on my forearm, the two miles back to our farm. As Tooter grew, he learned quickly. He became my constant companion as we hunted, fished, and trapped – or just roamed the bottoms and mountains for the fun of it. He quickly learned to “stand,” “heel,” and “back  up.” Tooter was my best friend as I grew up. Early one summer morning, after my freshman year of college, a loud disruption awoke me one morning at daylight. I ran to the yard wiping the sleep from my eyes. Two large coyotes held Tooter, strung out between them. When I hollered, they dropped him and ran. Tooter chased one of them down, and grabbing him by the throat, began to choke the life from him. I pulled Tooter back, and the coyote melted into the woods.

Over a period of days, Tooter seemed to be getting better. One morning, Tooter leaped from a load of cattle feed in our truck, yelping loudly with pain. He limped to the porch, and lay down. Soon, he was unable to get up. I carried Tooter to the cool cellar. He got worse. As I checked on ;him during the night, he became weaker. At daylight, he was gone. That day, I buried tooter under the large tree overlooking the valley and the bottoms we had roamed so many times. Tooter had seen me through my growing up years. His job was done. Now I was a man. I must go on from here alone.

    After Barbara and I married and built a home out in the country so that our children could grow up as country kids, we decided to get a big dog. Buster was half husky – half collie. He was a good dog. The kid's loved him. One day he showed up limping real bad, and we could tell he had a broken leg. We figured a car must have hit him. Well, the kids were crazy about Buster, so we took him to the vet. He put a pin in his leg, and he told us we had to keep him confined tightly for several weeks. We had a pen, but Buster had other ideas. He would just chew his way right through the gate. Time after time. Well, finally, we figured the bone should be healed, so we let him out. A day or two later, Corey started backing up his car, (before reverse went out) and Buster was underneath. When he heard Buster scream, he stopped the car, but Buster was under a wheel. I was not there, and it took all three of them to push the car off him. We took him back to the vet, and he put a pin back in his leg. A couple of weeks later, we let him out of the pen. A couple of days after that, he was not feeling good. Wouldn't eat. He walked up the sidewalk toward Barbara and Kinley. He looked up at Barbara and Kinley, the light left his eyes, and he fell over dead. We figured he had just had more trauma than he could stand.

     Our other dog, Midnight, was building a bad reputation. He was a high powered lover. Some of the neighbors had purebred females, and they didn't want a mongrel like Midnight around when the females were in heat. They penned them up. But that didn't stop Midnight. The next morning, he would sometimes be in the pen with the female. Another neighbor had a female in heat, and I tied midnight up. He chewed the rope in two and still got to the female. After that happened a few times, Midnight just disappeared one day. We never knew who. But we had a pretty good idea who. Actually, I now know for sure. And just let me take this opportunity to call you a sorry, egg-sucking, #!**@&^ch!

     Another small dog just showed up one day, half starved. We took him in. Since he was brand new, Barbara named him Booker Brand New. We got that from a classmate of Corey's, Booker. Booker showed up at school one day with brand new tennis shoes, and all his friends teased him about being "Booker Brand New." That phrase just stuck in our family. Anyway, Booker Brand New had obviously been living on his own in the woods for a long time, and he had a ton of strange hang ups. Booker Brand New stuck with us, though. Must have had to do with being able to eat regular for a change. We soon learned he could not be fastened up in the house. One very cold night, we “did him a favor” by letting him hang out in the laundry room. The entire vinyl floor was torn up the next morning. His hangups just caused him to go crazy, We never again intentionally allowed him in the house. "Having more hangups than Booker Brand New” became another catch phrase.

     Barbara wanted city water and cable TV, so I spent ten months at hard labor building her a house in town. We sold our house in the country.

We were in the process of moving out. While loading up our stuff on our pickup, Booker Brand New must have sneaked in, unseen, and hid in the house. We locked up and hauled that load. When we got back, Booker Brand New had torn the vinyl floor up down to the concrete around to the front door. We found one small piece of left-over matching vinyl, just large enough. Our friend who had put the floor down in the first place matched it up and did a great job of repairing it.

Corey and Christi had now married, and they needed a house, and the people who bought ours sold their house to Corey and Christi, and one day we all just counted "One – two – three – GO!!" and we all moved. The people who bought our house agreed to keep Booker Brand New, as he was in no way, shape, or fashion a dog that could be penned up. Or live in town. That was good. We didn't have a fenced yard, anyway. After we all got moved and settled a little, our buyers called us one day. Booker Brand New was just not compatible with their dog, with all his hangups. We had to find a new home for him. Well, Kinley's friend agreed to take him. He lived in the country, and it seemed everyone was going to live happily ever after. Kinley and I took Booker Brand New out to his new home, introduced him to his new owner, and said goodbye. I told the new owner, "Might be a good idea to hold onto him until we get gone. He may try to follow us." After we had gotten a long way down the road, we could see a dot in the distance, chasing after us. I told Kinley, "Well, lets just outrun him, and he'll go back to his new home." When we got back to town, we called the new owner. "He never came back," he said. So we went out and looked. And we looked. Around the new home, around his old home. But he was never to be found. Booker Brand New was never to be seen, or heard of, again. I still have nightmares about that little tiny dot, in the distance, chasing after us as hard as he could. We did Booker Brand New bad. Really bad.

A Dad from the Old School

On March 1, 1997, at 2:20 PM, an F4 tornado ravaged much of my home town of Arkadelphia, Arkansas.

 The tornado sirens started at 2:10, and word was spreading that a large tornado was on the way. I went outside our photography studio in downtown Arkadelphia, with our best camera. If we were about to be hit, I wanted a photo. A very dark, ominous cloud was moving in from the west. The sirens stopped. At 2:15, they started again, and the downtown electricity went off. A man from next door was beside me. A roar was coming from the west. “Sounds like a train,” he said. “No tracks over there,” I answered. He went inside. I readied my camera. Suddenly, a strange thing happened. Clouds from all over the sky began rushing toward one central point, the point of the roar. I realized this thing might be about to form up right over me. I snapped a shot of the clouds, and went inside. It was my last picture for weeks. I could never justify taking pictures when so many people needed help. I was playing chicken with an F4, and I blinked.

     The dressing room, right in the middle of our building, a very old two story brick, looked like the best place. As I started inside it, the wind picked up. I looked toward the front. “Aw dang, my awnings are blowing away,” I thought. Then a large trailer house, or what was left of it, mostly the frame, came through our front picture window. The back windows collapsed inward, the suspended ceiling around me was sucked down to the floor, and double swinging doors right behind me slammed shut with a bang. I went in the dressing room, shut the door, lay our best camera on the floor, and covered it with my body. My thought processes ran, “We’ve got to have something left to make a living with when this is all over.” I heard the most awful groaning sound I had ever heard as our front wall, three bricks thick, was pushed outward several inches at the top.

     I could write for days about the aftermath during the next weeks, but right now I want to pick out one  small part of it, one little story out of an entire storybook, and tell you about it. I still think of it often.

     A very old rental property, two blocks away, was right on the edge of the tornado. It was my worst looking rent house. Insurance adjusters took one look at it after the tornado, and brought me a check for the total loss of the house. But actually, It really didn’t look that bad, compared to the neighborhood. It had been transformed from being the worst looking house in the neighborhood to being one of the best, in only seconds.  All houses right across the street were flattened to the ground. I decided to repair it myself, which included putting on about six squares of shingles, replace 17 windows, getting a bunch of little trees off the top, and replacing the electrical service.

     One day as I sat working on top of that house, I looked across at the neighbors. A young man, two young children and his wife had totally lost their house. His father also owned two small houses next to it, and they were totally flattened also. The young man told me, “This was to be my inheritance.” As I watched, they started pulling out each plank, pulling the nails, and stacking them neatly. Even the young children worked hard, long hours. Day after day they worked. His dad came to town, and I could see they planned to rebuild that house totally by themselves. After a week or so had passed, as I watched them all labor from daylight to dark, even the young children, I was filled with admiration for that family. After a few more days, my house was finished and rented, and I went over to see the Dad. I asked if I could help them. The dad, whom I could tell was of the old school, was nor unfriendly, but he said, “As sure as shootin,’ if I start letting people help, they’ll get hurt, and the next thing you know, they’ll be suing me. Thanks, but we can handle it.”

     I continued to watch them struggle for several more days. I could follow their progress from our business window. They had the walls up, ready to put the roof on, but no plywood was to be had in Arkadelphia. It was all used up. They were in a tight, and heavy rains were forecast soon. I again walked over to the old dad. “Hey, I’ve got quite a bit of plywood stored in one of my storage buildings. Tell you what. If you will let me help put it on, I’ll give you that plywood.” The Dad looked at me, thinking. Then he frowned. “I appreciate the offer, but I just can’t risk having someone outside the family gettin’ up there, falling and hurtin’ themselves, then I’ll be sued.  “Look”, I said. I’ve built three houses by myself, almost. I’ve been workin’ on these 18 rent houses for years and never been hurt. I wouldn’t get hurt here, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t sue you.”

     The Dad was in a tight. He thought about it for a long time. Finally, he grudgingly agreed, turned around, and walked away muttering about “gettin’ my pants sued off.” We hauled the plywood in from my storage building 3 blocks away, I took a sheet up on top, drove one nail, and my foot slipped, only about 3 inches down to a lower 2x4, but my sometimes trick knee picked a bad time to give way, and when all my weight came down on the toes of one foot, something really bad went wrong with my foot. I tried to fake it for a while, knowing the dad was keeping an eagle eye on me, but I couldn’t go on. I climbed slowly down the ladder, told the dad I had to go run an errand. He was frowning at me, and I knew he was not buying what I was saying, me limping like I was. I knew full well he thought I was headed for my lawyer’s office.

     I went to the emergency room. The verdict was, my big toe was dislocated. The doc came in. Now, I’ve got to tell you. I had been wearing these work tennis shoes for days now. And they, my socks, and my feet smelled really ripe. He gave me a shot in the toe, said that will numb it in five minutes. Then, I guess he just could not stand that smell any more, because he grabbed my big toe, and jerked it as hard as he could. I thought about screaming.

     I drove back out to the job site. I had to go fess up to the dad, who was really looking at me hard by now. I knew I would not be able to climb a ladder for a long time. I watched them continue to labor long and hard. When they were working on the inside part, I guess the dad was softening a little, having dodged one lawsuit bullet, because a whole team on Mennonite volunteers moved in from up north to help Arkadelphia, and he allowed them in to help finish up. Just as they drove the last nail, and the house was complete, the city decided to take that land and build the new city hall building, so it was immediately torn down again. But when the city takes land, I hear they pay for it by the square foot, which means through the nose, so I guess the hard working family came out all right, money wise. I never did know their names, or what happened to them. But I often think of that family, and their hard case dad, (who reminded me of my own dad) with a smile and a lot of respect.

Conclusion - Crittenden House and the Time Capsule

     The volunteers  got the trees off the house, I  bought window glass by the box, attached the electrical service back on, and three weeks later, it was rented again, to one of those crooked guys who drove up from Florida to make a killing off our tornado, getting work. He told me, “I’m a little short on cash right now, long on equipment, could I put this chain saw up for a security deposit? I’m going to be making a lot of money in the coming weeks.” I went for it. I don’t think he did much work, because a couple of days later, he called me, asked me to bring his truck to Hot Springs  so he could use it to bail himself  out of jail. I went for that too, and after a few weeks, he went home. Seems that new rule put in right after the tornado requiring that repairmen flocking in must have a permit, prove they are honest and upright, and that, plus his drinking habit, did him in. He called me a few weeks later, asked me if he would send me his rent due, would I send him his chain saw. Told him I would if he would also send shipping money for his chain saw. Never heard from him again. I still have that chain saw. Has not run in years.

     Have you noticed that “the law” appears quite a lot in telling about Crittenden House? Well, I’m not near done yet. In 1998, Barbara and I were traveling a year in an RV. The last thing I did before leaving town and handing the rentals over to Bud Reeder was rent Crittenden House out to a Mexican Framing crew for a few months. A month into our trip, I got an early morning call on our emergency phone. Son in law Mickey, then a paramedic, had been the first responder to Crittenden house after a fight over a woman broke out at the front end of the house, traveled through the house to the back door, spilled out into the yard, and one man picked up a handy concrete block and busted the other man’s head in. I was far away, never got the official version, but scuttlebutt has it he was shipped back to Mexico, not being a legal citizen. When we got back to town, many months later, there was a concrete block lying in the back yard. Surely, that could not be the murder weapon. I feel certain that one has to be on file, up in the evidence room. But it sure has some curious stains on it.

     Along with a lot of good, clean renters, Crittenden House brought me quite a few occasions to practice up on my “dirty mess man” skills. One case comes to mind. When a renter moved out, I discovered the back bedroom had been used as a dog pen. For some time. That’s bad, but I’ve seen that a lot. Nothing noteworthy here, in itself. The problem was, his bagged garbage seems to have been placed in that room right down in there amongst’ em’ for a long time. That makes for a very bad combo. A big challenge for the dirty mess man. I have used Reeder’s hired cleaners some, but I never sent them into that kind of mess, if I was in town. But then, I’ll admit. I do travel a lot.

     Though I’ve relied on the bad side of Crittenden house to make an interesting story, there were a lot of good things along the way. One good renter I want to tell you about was the very last, and though she only stayed a short time before the house sold, finally, I think she was the best. When a house is for sale, renters are made aware of it before they move in, and assured of 30 day’s notice. But, most houses are bought as a rent house, and they usually stay on. This time, Crittenden house had served 104 years, and she was very tired. House ages seem to correspond to human ages pretty closely. I wish I had known Crittenden house, when she was young and beautiful, clear fresh water running through her pipes and drains. But in that case, I would still have been making payments on her to the end. I told that last renter the day it sold she would have to move, and I dreaded that. She was in her early twenties, a sweet person. She was working two jobs, also helping her mom and younger sisters, and saving to go back to HSU.  I had been saving her another apartment, a higher priced one,  but told her I would give her a month’s free rent, reduce the rent to what she was used to. She took the whole thing well, with a sense of humor like I knew she would. But my other apartment had a shower, and she had became addicted to that huge claw foot tub in Crittenden house, and she finally found another apartment that suited her needs better. So, sadly, she went for it instead, and I lost one of my best renters ever.

      I borrowed a trailer and helped her move. I also told her, no need to clean up at all when she moved.
 I’m about to start tearing things out, and making a royal mess. But I knew she would. And she did. It’s fitting, I think, for a once-beautiful house that has served so long, like Crittenden house, to begin the process of dying as clean as it’s ever been since I've owned it. I will always remember that hardworking, wonderful girl/woman. If I had the chance to choose a second daughter, in addition to the wonderful one I have, I would choose her.

      The front room in Crittenden house has a beautiful built in long bench, with bookshelves on each end. The whole thing stretches along the entire wall. The first thing she mentioned regarding what she will miss most was that bench. I told her she could have it, if she could get it out. Her friend tried, but gave up. It would have to be torn up to get it out. I’ve studied that bench a lot, as I scavenged the building. I decided today I would have to sacrifice the shelves on one end to get the bench out. An antique buyer from near Conway, seeing pics of it, said he wanted to take it out, piece by piece, reassemble it out and sell it. But he never showed up.  I started  tearing off the top right shelf. When it came off, I discovered a three inch deep, hidden and sealed pocket underneath. It was totally sealed with layers upon layers of paint, many of which I applied. The dust that rose up, and the air that I breathed, as I looked in, was just different. It had been in there for a very long time.  I saw a stack of papers in the bottom. Many of them turned to dust as I touched them.  I picked up an envelope that was more sturdy. It was a church collection envelope, stamped with the date, Dec. 16, 1917.  It’s stated purpose:

Weekly Offering

Arkadelphia Methodist Church, South

Arkadelphia, Ark

For:

Pastor’s Salary

Current Expenses

Connectional  Claims

     To my amazement, two items present were obviously not nearly as old. One was a baseball trading card for Mike Schmidt, who played for the Phillies in the 70’s, born in 1948. Also present was a payday advance receipt, made out to Mathis, with no year date. The business was located at 1730 Pine Street, Arkadelphia, Arkansas 71923  501-246-CASH. The amount was $33. My best guess for the late arrivals would be that the time capsule was not always sealed as tightly with paint as it is at present, and slipped in through the cracks. I have no other possible explanations. I applied many, many coats of white paint to it myself, over twenty years. Just today, in another hidden space under the other shelf unit, I found business cards. If I ever decide to go into that business, I’ll be stocked up. The business advertised asbestos products. Along with those, there was a Malvern High School graduation announcement envelope, dated 1920.  Crittenden House, in your death you leave me with a puzzle I will be thinking about for a long time.

Yesterday was a big day in the death process of Crittenden House. Lisa Green, the owner of the Blue Suede Shoes Antique Mall in Little Rock, showed up with a very large trailer and two hard workers, and we pulled out all the windows sashes, 50 or so, along with the doors, fire place mantles, door headers, shelves, and every other old thing she could load on that trailer. Soon, once beautiful parts of Crittenden house will be adorning houses all over Little Rock. Makes me feel better, somehow. Parts of Crittenden House will remain alive, and totally beautiful again, for a long time to come. As Jimmy Bolt requested, I’ll soon present the keys to Crittenden house to him when I finish with the house. “But Jimmy,” I’ll say to him, “You see, she has no doors – or locks -”

     The beautiful, almost knot free planks trimming the doors, windows, and making up the baseboards, were a problem for me. Beautiful lumber, but I really had no market for them. Trying not to reason this out too much, I pretty well pulled them all off, pulled the nails. Day after day. To date, I have not sold one of them. But they are far too beautiful to go to the dump. Every crack and crevice in all my storage buildlings are now crammed full of beautiful lumber. For what, I don’t know. I’ll probably let my kids and grandkids deal it someday. When I left the house today, only two items remained for me to deal with. The beautiful clawfoot tubs. Monday, the last day, they will have to go, one way or another. And, they weigh about 300 pounds. Each. Everybody who sees them, or pics of them, just love them. They oooh and aaah, talk about how they would love to have them. But no one offers to buy them, or deal with their 300 pound bulk.

     Crittenden house and I have been through many hard times, in our old age. But there have been good times, also. She has always been my worst looking rental property, yet she always was easy to rent. She was cheap, and provided cover and shelter for many who were just one step removed from the streets. Poor people need a place to call home, also. And remember, not just everyone can look out their window when they wake up, and see our beautiful city Hall, or see Jimmy Bolt, our best city manager ever, at his window, gazing out across his domain. Rest well, Crittenden House. I hope you love being spread around all over Little Rock, Though parts of you will not be so lucky, resting peacefully in a nice landfill. Just remember, in your passing, you will be making room for a nice new parking lot! Now, who can ask for more than that?

Thanks for Reading!

Crittenden House and the Time Capsule

Crittenden House and the Time Capsule

     When I first saw Crittenden House, she was a mess. Not just a regular type messy house; she was a living, breathless royal nightmare of a mess. I say breathless because one could not really stand to breathe inside that house. Those first associations with this house affected me in such a way that, until this day, I could never eat anything inside that house. But today, as Crittenden house is in the throes of its last days, I ate. Two peanut butter sandwiches, kept tightly sealed until they entered my mouth. So, today, I made things right between Crittenden House and myself, and gave her the respect she has deserved, during the twenty some odd year association we have had. Crittenden house has a date with a bulldozer, right after the first of the year. I sold her, awhile back. On a handshake. Keeps down the paper work. Jimmy Bolt, our best city manager, to my way of thinking, during our thirty year tenure in Arkadelphia, was my partner in this deal. Now, don’t get the idea that I normally buy and sell a house on a handshake. But Jimmy Bolt and I have a long history. We were both country hicks together out in the woods west of town in the 1980’s. We were so close, my dog once raided his henhouse, and caught a bullet in the foot for his efforts. Not by Jimmy, but from one of the several neighborhood kids, and we had several. None ever openly admitted it, to the best of my memory.  But it worked; to my knowledge, my dog, Booker Brand New, never went near his henhouse again.

     You see, Crittenden house sits right across the road from Jimmy Bolt’s office window, and Crittenden house had long ago lived out her best years when I bought her. She’s just plain ugly. Sorry, Crittenden House, but it’s time for me to admit what the rest of Arkadelphia has talked about as long as I’ve known her. According to my recent research, she went on the tax records in 1910. I knew fifteen years ago the city of Arkadelphia would one day own her, and remove her. The big surprise was, It  took so long.  I passed up an offer twice what I sold it for, finally, around twelve years ago, waiting for Arkadelphia to bring a fine point pen to the negotiating table, and maybe buy the property by the square foot, which also means through the nose. But alas! I finally had to threaten to sell, OWNER FINANCING written plainly on my little For Sale sign, which could have given Crittenden house a new lease on life for thirty more years of being the blight of downtown Arkadelphia. Should have tried that years ago.  Gives you some sort of idea the kind of businessman I am. But that’s another story.

     But I digress. Being overcome by sentimentality, I have wandered off. Let’s get back to my first introduction to Crittenden House.  The relator, I forgot which one, could find nobody in Arkadelphia willing to enter the house to clean, no matter what they offered. But that brought the house down to $14,000. It IS a duplex, and all I could see was, if I can just get through the initial cleanup, spend a few weeks bringing her up a few notches, It would bring me in $560 a month, the renters will pay it off in a few years, and the rest just will be gravy. (ugh! Did I just mention food?)

     I put on a mask and rubber gloves. Sometime into the second day, I started cleaning off the counter and the stove. Skuttlebutt had it, the last renter, who made that mess, was being chased by the law, and had to leave in a big hurry. When I finally reached the bottom of the mess on the stove, I discovered part of the problem with the smell.  Pork chops were cooking on the stove, it must have been quickly turned off after they were brown, or maybe, time did that. Weeks passed before I bought the house.

     I've had a lot of on the job training with messes. My agreement with Barbara has always been, she does more house cleaning of the normal variety than I do, but when the really bad messes occur, I clean them up. Fortunately, both our kids were past the diaper stage before I would go along with that. You remember washing out all those old, cloth type diapers? Nuf’ said. I’ve never understood how a family member can get a bad stomach bug, be kneeling right over the commode when the time comes, yet throw it all over the bathroom; never a drop hitting the commode.

     After I finally chased out the smell, a lot of elbow grease (ugh!) putting a hanging picture or shelf over various holes in the wall, and a lot of paint did the job. Crittenden house was smiling again. And she started paying off her mortgage note. Things were looking up, for this old gal, even if she was reaching 83.

     The Tornado of 97’, bad as it was, actually gave Crittenden House an image boost in the neighborhood. In seconds, it went from being the worst house in the area, to being one of the best. Nobody was in it at the time. Houses across the street were flattened to the ground. One apartment was rented, his stuff was still there. We never found him, and he never showed back up. I wondered if he had become a victim, but further inquiries told me he also left in a big rush, also being chased by the law, a day or two before the tornado.

     Insurance adjusters hit the town in droves a couple of days later. Before I knew they had even looked at Crittenden house, my agent was presenting me with a check for the total loss of the house. I protested. “The contractor says it can be repaired.” “ But for the amount of the policy?” he said. “Well, I don’t know. I haven’t gotten an estimate yet.” Then, realizing I was talking against myself, which goes back to the kind of businessman I am, I shut up and gratefully accepted the check. My banker laughed when I told him that. “If he had seen that picture I have down at the bank, showing what it looked like before the tornado, you would have never gotten a dime!”

      I decided to repair it myself. I put on six squares of shingles. One day while I sat on that roof, getting a bird’s eye view of the destruction, I just sat there a long time. FEMA was doing a great job, but the town still had a pink cast to it from all the insulation strewn around. That wonderful little lady was pulling her little red wagon up the street with cold water for all the workers. She had been doing that for days. I never knew her. I wish I did. I’d just like to thank her. I sat there and bawled like a baby for my town.

 Continued in four days. thanks for reading!

Lt.Col. Deanna Brown: Never be Weak, Never Back Down - Conclusion

 This time she assigned herself to the civil affairs unit working with the Iraqi people. Since the overall mission in Iraq at that time was to help get the Iraqis back on their feet, she figured, where better to work. Maybe that stuff she learned back in Haiti would pay off.

     Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture had lots of vets. They estimated at least 10,000.  The problem was, to be effective, they had to have a system that allowed them to get drugs and equipment they needed, a system where farmers paid for their services, and at a higher government level, a plan for how to prioritize and control the many diseases that plagued their livestock and poultry.  Saddam did not allow “Thinking for self” for his vets, or anyone else, for that matter. So now, they needed to be taught these things.

     And, we added to the problem. Many of the Iraqi leaders were deposed, with all new people brought in after the US invasion

.

      Deanna’s second tour in Iraq accomplished a lot. So it was a good tour. But it had a very bad personal aspect to it, for Deanna.

     Five vets were needed for the civil affairs mission. Deanna assigned herself, as I mentioned. Another was her friend, Lt. Col Daniel Holland, who wanted to go. But he told her his wife would kill him if he volunteered. Since Deanna was in a position to influence who was assigned, she asked the Vet Corps if they could get Dan assigned.  Dan was a very good man, and was on a path to becoming the Vet Corps’ General. Deanna knew that to be successful in their mission, she needed a man like him.  After completing her team, they headed for Iraq. She had a pretty good idea where her Civil Affairs vets should be placed, but the decision makers had different ideas. Two were assigned to the same desk northeast of Baghdad (Diyala Province), the most junior vet was sent alone to a pretty hot area (Mosul), and Deanna and Dan were assigned to Bagdad.

     Soon after getting in country, Dan and Deanna started meeting regularly for lunch to discuss their missions and to figure out how to influence the decision makers to change how they were being used. 3 weeks into the tour, Dan’s bosses wanted to send him to a very dangerous area, to deworm animals. This was something that many military leaders thought would help win the hearts and minds of the locals… they were used to operating in places where there are almost no vets, not like Iraq where they had vets on every corner.  Deanna’s team wanted to stop this kind of mission since they felt it did very little good, and put people’s lives at risk unnecessarily. But… being new to theater, they both knew it would take time to change that way of thinking.  Dan said he needed to go to prove he wasn’t scared. Two days later, Dan was dead; killed by an improvised explosive device while on that mission.  In Deanna’s mind, it was largely because of her. She escorted the bodies of Dan and the three other Soldiers killed with him home from Iraq.  This was the low point of her career.

     Lt. Col. Daniel Holland’s love for animals and compassion for people were profound. He served in Germany, Bosnia, Honduras, and Haiti. He was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart. Other awards included four awards for Meritorious Service, Armed Forces Expeditionary medal, and The Humanitarian Medal. He was a favorite of many in the Veterinary Service. A very, very good man.

    After the initial challenges, Deanna and the other vets finally started being able to do what they came there for.  Finally, they were able to organize the vets of Iraq, working toward being more functional, and think more for themselves. Deanna knew they couldn’t do this alone.  She enlisted help from many vets in the United States, from the University of North Carolina, Texas A&M, the University of Kentucky, and Colorado State, as well as the USDA and the American Veterinary Medical Association. They planned a large workshop to bring all these people together with the veterinary leadership from all parts of Iraq.  They held the workshop in Northern Iraq, the Kurdish area, where a large gathering would not be as dangerous. This workshop stressed the importance of Vets of Iraq working together to agree on priorities and function as a country wide group. All in all, this was a very successful meeting, and it spawned ongoing relationships as well as many more projects and programs that would be used to help the Iraqis toward their goals. The meeting helped identify some of the key things they needed to move forward.  One of them was more advanced lab equipment so they could identify organisms.  The team arranged to have this lab equipment brought in and to train the Iraqi vets how to use and maintain it.

     One USDA vet, Paula Cowan, who was very important for the meeting, was wheel chair bound. She was discouraged from coming by many, but she would not hear of it. The security people finally agreed, and they assigned her a personal body guard, a very large man, whose job was to pick her up and get her out of there if trouble arose. Luckily this was never necessary

     Through most of her tour, Deanna was assigned to cover all of Iraq south of Bagdad as well as the very large western province of Anbar so she was out a lot. During one mission, she was in Fallujah, to help the Marines in establishing a slaughter house. She flew in by helicopter, but was unable to fly back as the helicopters were grounded by a large sand storm. She spent two nights at the airfield.  After the second day, still unable to fly, she was told a convoy headed to Baghdad had one more space. It consisted of three heavily armored SUV’s. Security was provided by a private contractor, Aegis, Britain’s version of Black water.  About halfway back, they were ambushed by about 30 men. They were shooting mostly small arms, thank goodness, and the upper part of the cars were armored. They were shooting at the tires. Three on Deanna’s car were shot out, two on another, but they were “run flat” tires, so they managed to keep going. After they were out of danger, or so they thought, they stopped to assess the problem and came under fire again. A rocket hit between two of the cars, so they quickly got going again, and traveled the last ten miles to Abu Ghraib Prison on the rims, where they could stop inside the walls and change tires. Deanna assured me, they played no role in the infamous activities at that place. They were only there to change their tires behind a wall.

     After returning from Iraq, Deanna’s family wished to stay at Fort Bragg, where they had bought a house, but Deanna was needed to take a command at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, where she traveled around a lot, supervising Vets in half a dozen eastern states. To my knowledge, she never parachuted in to these locations, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.

     When Deanna retired, our entire family breathed a sigh of relief. My brother Harold, the Patriarch of our family and an old Air Force man himself, lectured Deanna years ago. “You need to stop volunteering for all these hots spots in the world. Sooner or later, that will come back to bite you!” Deanna just respectfully smiled, nodded her head. Then she was off to find her next exciting adventure.

     Deanna now works for the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service where she is assigned to a chicken plant in Arkansas. I’m not really sure how, but some way, somehow, Deanna will find a dangerous mission that’s attached to chicken inspecting. It’s just, I guess, Deanna being Deanna.

Deanna Brown: Never be Weak, Never Back Down - Part Four

Part four of a five part story

Iraq

     The 3rd group Special Forces was planning other military training missions throughout Africa as part of Bill Clinton’s African Crisis Relief Initiative.  She would do missions similar to Eritrea, and couldn’t wait to go.  But the Army had other plans.  Her assignments officer told her that if she hoped to advance further in the Army, she needed to go back to school. So, again against her will, she put in her application. Otherwise, she would never be promoted above major, no hopes for advancing. Goodbye, Third Group. Hello, San Antonio, for a Master’s Degree in Public health.

     Shortly before finishing her degree, their beautiful daughter, Kristen, their only child, was born.  Deanna hoped to stay in San Antonio, but again the Army had other plans.  They needed a deputy commander for a vet detachment in Germany. Six weeks after Kristen was born, they all left for a three year tour in Germany.

     9/11 happened during her time in Germany. Her unit soon started preparing to be the first vet detachment into Iraq. Just HOW quickly, she seemed to be a little vague about. They would be in support of conventional forces. Special Forces were in Afghanistan.  She trained a year for Iraq. However, her three year tour was up before they were to leave for Iraq. She left for Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, training officers to be small unit commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. There she was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.  After only a year in Texas, the Army again said she had to move.  They wanted to send her to California.

Along about that time, her long time friend who had just returned from Afghanistan decided to retire as he had his 20 years. The unit he was assigned to was scheduled to go to Iraq the following year. Most vets did not want to go, preferring to stay in the US, so no one was jumping up and down to take his position.  But Deanna felt she had spent her entire life preparing for this, and staying in the US with all this going on, was just flat boring. She was headed for Ft. Bragg again.

     She spent a year training for Iraq, again. But right before being deployed, a new General was put in charge. He started moving out good men who had been training for a year for this mission, then he began moving in his own friends who had no training. Deanna survived the cut, so she deployed.

     From a vet and a public health point of view, there were lots of challenges in Iraq. There were many diseases which could be transferred between the local animals and Soldiers, to include an ongoing outbreak of rabies in which many Iraqis were dying.  Soldiers love to keep pets, even though they aren’t supposed to, so many were being exposed to this and other diseases.  There were problems with getting safe food to the troops as trucks carrying them were getting stuck and the refrigeration didn’t always work.  Military working dogs which were critical in finding explosives were growing in numbers as the military was learning that they were the best way to protect our troops from the deadly explosives that claimed many Soldiers’ lives.  In addition, there were water safety problems; careless handling of medical waste, and strange deadly organisms invaded many hospitals. There were limited vet and preventive medicine units to do this huge mission and the mission was growing month by month.

       

Deanna and the rest of the public health team that she worked with set about trying to find a ways to reduce these health threats to keep our Soldiers safe and to use our vet and preventive medicine resources in the most effective way possible.  After about five months, they were finally starting to see progress and some of their programs put in place.  But there were some who felt they were “making waves” as it made some of the contractors do what they were supposed to be doing.

     The General in charge was a hospital man, and focused more on treating combat casualties rather than worrying about the infectious diseases. He did not see the preventive medicine mission as being important, and didn’t like the waves they were causing.  He wound up sending the entire preventive medicine staff home halfway through their tour, and all of the programs that they got started fell apart. The general wound up wasting maybe a year and a half of her life, in Deanna’s estimation.

     I talked to Deanna when she arrived home. She was depressed. “I’ve spent my entire career training for this moment. Then when I got there, I was not allowed to do it. We were told, it’s too dangerous out there now, and made to sit around in the green zone far too much.”

     Deanna moved to Special Ops once again. Now she was in a position to assign people to Iraq. Guess who she assigned? Yes, you guessed it. Lt. Col. Deanna Brown. 

continued - conclusion in four days.

Deanna Brown: Never Be Weak, Never Back Down - Part Three

Check out my book, Spreading Wing! Hundreds of true Stories of living a hillbilly and globetrotting hillbillies on a shoestring! amazon.com or Amazon Europe. Also in kindle form.
*************************
Third post in a five part story

DEANNA AND THE SPECIAL FORCES

It Seems someone told the 300 Haitians that the US was paying two dollars a day for tearing down that wall. She explained that was not true, and sent them on their way. They never figured out how that rumor got started.

     I asked Deanna how much of a problem being a woman in a world of fighting men was for her. “Well, there’s always initial skepticism. But once they get to know me, there’s never been a problem. My behavior generally influences those around me eventually. Never be weak, never back down, and never, but never, say, Can you carry this for me?” And, I’m sure, always use that gruff business voice I heard on the phone, though she never mentioned that.  She also mentioned that readily being willing to jump out of a plane helped a lot.

     Deanna’s initial team Sergeant in civil affairs was with the Special Forces, a Green Beret. He initially took her out to test her. They put on packs equal to one third of their body weight or 50 pounds, whichever is greater, and he took her out on a forced hike for 12 miles in less than the cutoff point time of four hours. He then gave her a compass and a map to prove she could master land navigation. After additional testing, she proved herself to Sergeant Foster. They remained close friends throughout their careers, and are still face book buddies today. Later during her tour in Haiti, she met up with Sergeant Foster and the team that she was pulled away from.  He told her that the Marines could have cared less that their team leader was a woman.  They were upset that they arrived without one.

     After five months in Haiti, she came home. She found her vet position in civil affairs had been done away with, and she was reassigned to the Army’s only airborne vet detachment, the 248^th (The only one that jumps out of planes) which was also at Ft. Bragg.  Her team’s main function was to be ready for any kind of emergency situation where the Army needed vets and food inspection.  They had to be ready to go within 2 hours of being called.  She only had to deploy with that team once.  Her team was sent to do hurricane relief in the Virgin Islands. Not too bad, compared to Haiti.

     Her assignments officer suggested she put in for a year in Korea, which would be a good career move, though she would have to leave husband Keith. That was a bummer, but she grudgingly put in for Korea.

     While she was preparing for Korea, things were changing. Rules were changing regarding women in the Special Forces. The Special Forces had never had a woman attached. Some of them remembered Deanna from Haiti, knew she had proven herself there. The general feeling seemed to be, “we’ll eventually have a woman in this group, so we want one that won’t embarrass us.”

    So, instead of going to Korea, Deanna became the first woman vet ever attached to the Special Forces, the Third Special Forces Group.  3^rd Group’s area was Sub Saharan Africa and the Caribbean. She immediately started preparing to support 3^rd Group’s missions but since they had just returned home from Haiti, they didn’t have anything big planned right away.

     The Fifth Special Forces Group from Ft. Campbell, KY had lots of missions planned in the Horn of Africa. They would go in, work with the locals to help train them in fighting and helping with their needs. The population is very agriculture oriented. They needed a vet. They needed Deanna.  Her first mission was to Eritrea, a mixture of Christians and Moslem villages. The villages were permanent, not nomadic.  They are much like Ethiopians, and right on the Red Sea. There are two ports on the Red Sea that could become militarily important someday. This mission was humanitarian, and hopefully would help win their hearts and their good will. Their country has only been independent for six years, and they badly needed vet and medical assistance. They have very nasty diseases in their flocks, some preventable by vaccination, but they had a hard time getting the vaccine and had very few vets in the country.  Deanna worked with their Ministry Of Agriculture and planned to assist them with a vaccination campaign for Peste Petit de Ruminants (Plague of small ruminants).  It’s similar to dog distemper and was devastating to unvaccinated flocks. Deanna was able to obtain the vaccine in Kenya. Her and five Special Forces men along with their Eritrean vet assistants traveled to a different village each day in Land Rovers. They worked long, very hard days. They eventually vaccinated 140,000 of their sheep and goats. Each day, the village threw a big celebration at the end of the day, killing and roasting a goat, though they were very poor. Those people loved to see them coming. A very rewarding experience for Deanna and the men!                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Occasionally, they would go to a village where no, or very few, animals appeared. They would eventually learn that most all of the animals were killed the year before by the disease in a major outbreak, and only the ones that were naturally immune survived. If those immune stragglers came in, they were vaccinated anyway. The locals just felt better about it.

     These people are very hard, and very hard working people. They have to travel for great distances to reach a water well. Bad water kills many people in East Africa. After two months, her team returned to Ft. Bragg. 

*********************

CONTINUED IN FOUR DAYS - Next, 9/11 occurs, and Deanna starts training for Iraq.

Never be Weak, Never Back Down - Part Two

Note: Typical of selfless Deanna, she feels like this story indicates she did much of this alone. She was never alone. She always worked with her excellent team members, and the soldiers she was associated with were the very best, especially in Civil Affairs, and other elite forces not yet brought into this story.
***************

    Shortly after being assigned, there was a military coup in Haiti and their only democratically elected president had been deposed. It was decided to send American troops down to assist.  Initially, Deanna’s team was to jump in with the 82^nd Airborne.  Although few women in the military, especially vets, wind up jumping out of airplanes into possible action, Deanna was anxious to go where her expertise is needed and the quicker the better. Also, she was anxious to prove she could pull her weight in a world of fighting men. Shortly before getting on the plane, she was called to her unit’s headquarters.  They informed her that she could not go with her team.  Women are not allowed to jump into potential combat.  That did not sit lightly with Deanna. Her removal left her team to go in without an officer. She put her team on that plane and watched it take off.  Shortly after getting home, she heard on the news that former President Carter had met with the coup leader, and toned things down some, so that our forces would not, hopefully, be arriving in the midst of open conflict. The planes, along with her team were turned around and came home.

 

   The next day, she again joined her team, and this time they were to go with the Marines.  Again they prepared, but again before they got on the plane… she was told she could not go.  This time, the story was that the Marines didn’t want any women.  She was very mad, feeling she needed to be doing the job they are paying her to do.  Her team left, again without a team leader, and Deanna was assigned to another team which would be attached to Tenth Mountain Division, assigned to secure the Port Au Prince airport. The following day, she and her new team were flown in and dumped on the tarmac in Port Au Prince. When they arrived, they pretty much had to fend for themselves.  They were a small team attached to an infantry unit whose job was to secure an airfield… why did they need to interact with the civilian population? They found a slight overhang outside of a metal building next to the airfield to camp under. Metal pallets on top of rollers kept them off the ground.  There were no tents, only what they carried in their ruck sack, which included one change of clothes. There were no bathrooms. Needless to say, there were no other women. Her bathroom was her pancho, spread out around her, while a teammate stood lookout. They were there for a month, doing very little. Finally, they were rewarded with a real bathroom, they found an enclosed space with a hole in the floor.  Luckily, it rained almost every afternoon, and the rain runoff from the roof was a great way to wash hair and to try to have a little hygiene.

     Food was also a problem. They were given none. They finally worked out a plan. When a plane arrived with cases of MRE’s (Meals ready to eat) they waited until it was unloaded. One would distract a guard, while another cut open a pallet of MRE’s and “borrowed” a few boxes.

     Deanna and her team were not using their skills. After a month, they asked to be used or transferred. They were then attached to the engineers who had a lot for them to do. Their job, then, was to go out and find places for base camps. Deanna, then a captain, was the Civil Affairs team leader.

     They sometimes had exciting moments in this job. There were still a lot of very bad people in the military, and police, of Haiti. Once, a man came running up to them. “Help! They’re killing Robert! You’ve got to stop them!” They followed the man, as he led out on his bicycle. He eventually led them to a very large compound. They realized it was a Fadh compound (some of the bad guys). They were now eight against two hundred. Their major went in to try to locate Robert, while the others spread out to provide security for the major. Deanna carried an M16 and a 9mm pistol, locked and loaded. Her M16 fires a three round burst each time the trigger was pulled. Robert was never found, but they all got out alive.

     Another tense moment arose when they found a nice spot for the engineers to build a base camp, a place that already had a brick wall around it.  Once, 300 or so Haitian men came running up to the wall, not fighting, but tearing the wall down.  The combat engineers were ready to use force to stop them.  Deanna’s team was called to intervene.  She took an interpreter out to talk to them.

Lt. Col. Deanna Brown - Never Be Weak, Never Back Down

     "It's Unca' Pat!" I often heard these sweet words from my beautiful little niece as she and her slightly older brother Stan ran to meet me as I arrived at my sister Barbara Lou’s house in the early 1960’s.

     Forty plus years later, I needed to call a relative in the military, who had a command at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky. This particular relative was in charge of many of the army’s veterinarians.  The only phone number I had was the business line. I had never used this number before. A rough, gruff (and frankly, somewhat scary) voice greeted me with, “This is Col. Brown. What can I do for you?” Shaken, my first instinct was to jump to my feet, come to attention, and salute. Though, never being military, I really didn’t know how. I finally stammered out, “This is Pat.” The roughness suddenly disappeared, and as she laughed, embarrassed that I had heard her business voice, she was that sweet little girl once more. “Family always calls on my other line."

     I had planned to include Deanna’s story as a chapter in Spreading Wing, my book. She agreed. I reminded her regularly to put some stuff down on paper and send it to me. “I want to do this. Don’t worry, I’ll try to start on it next week.” Next week just never rolled around. I finally realized, Deanna was one of those modest people who just can’t boast about their accomplishments. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time for all these things to happen to me.” Yeah, right.

     But finally, a couple of hours on the phone with her today, with me asking questions and pushing her on, did the trick.

     As Deanna grew up, she admired many of the men in the family who had served in the military.  But what she really dreamed of was to be a veterinarian. In high school she learned of a program in the Army that would help pay for vet school, so she decided that was for her. But soon before graduating, she found that program was cancelled.  She then heard of the National Guard and decided that might be the best of both worlds.  Right after high school, she entered basic training and signed up for ROTC when she entered Mississippi State.  She knew MSU had a good vet school, and the National Guard gave some tuition help in reaching her goal. During the eight years of college, the cold war was raging. She served as a military intelligence officer in the guard, and loved her “part time” job.

     Active duty in the Army was not her plan. After graduating vet school, she found a position as a vet in Wisconsin, primarily in dairy practice, but remained in the National Guard.  She was pulling three or four newborn calves a day, sometime working eighty hours a week. It’s cold in Wisconsin in the winter. Pulling a calf can be somewhat of a complicated maneuver. It involves chains attached to a “calf jack,” attached to a come along to ratchet up the pressure. She had to keep the calf turned just right, as skinny as possible.

    The first Gulf War came along, and her National Guard unit was notified to deploy.  She was initially upset, but shortly after that notice, on a cold January night, she was called out to pull a calf on a beef heifer. The temperature was minus 43 degrees, and that lean to barn was not very warm. She just knew she would freeze to death.  She ended up having to perform a C-section, but she saved the calf and the cow.  She had just spent the good bit of her night, she was freezing, and the farmer was angry about the bill. She thought, “What the heck am I doing here?’ She decided being an Army vet and deploying might be better.

      She went active duty Army, but instead of going to the Gulf War, she was initially sent to the Gulf Coast, in Biloxi, Mississippi. As an Army vet she primarily worked with the army’s dogs, mules, horses. The military also uses dolphins and sea lions, though she would give me no details about that. I was surprised about the horses and the mules in this day and age, but she assured me mules, especially, played a very important role, later, in such places as the mountains of Afghanistan as a pack animal.  Camels are also used at times. Dogs, of course, are valuable as attack animals and detecting drugs and explosives.

     In 1994, Deanna was assigned to Ft. Bragg, NC to the civil affairs.  This unit is somewhat of a go between with the civil population.  Her battalion consisted of four companies and she was the vet assigned to one of them.  But the unit was short of officers, so she was also assigned to lead a civil affairs team.  To be in civil affairs, Deanna had to learn to jump out of planes and was trained to be a civil affairs officer.  She really enjoyed this.

CONTINUED  This story will have four parts, about four days apart. Thanks for reading!    Next post - Deanna's small team of 8 faces 200 bad guys, guns ready, in Haiti. Deanna, with an interpreter, disperses 300 Haitians who are attempting to tear down her team's brick wall. Her team lives for a month, outside, with no food provided, no bathroom, not even a tent, guarding an airport. Deanna successfully completes a 12 mile forced march with a 50+ pound pack. In all of this, she's the only woman. Much more. And, this entire, four part story is totally true. Don't miss it!

.