Tobacco & Alcohol

In order to buy Tobacco and Alcohol, you have to be 18 & 21 years old. In the grocery store that I went to this morning, there is a litte tear-off calendar that states "You have to have been born after this date..." in order to purchase either tobacco or alcohol. The dates were 1/18/87 and 1/18/90.

The cash register (which nowadays are computers) was being rebooted when I was buying lottery tickets, so I had the tickets in hand, but not the change. So there was this pause where I had to stand there and wait. At first, I didn't realize we were waiting for anything, and I was just standing there spacing off, staring at the date calendar. Then, when the cashier explained what we were waiting for. By then, I had latched onto the dates and was trying to remember what I was doing at the time.

I mentioned it to the cashier, and she said she had gotten married just before the 1990 date. I remembered that sometime around mid December, we had record cold that year. I was driving my brother's old Chevette, and there was snow in the street in front of the Batallion. I thought I was being smart when I drove through the snow, pulled a u-turn, passed the parking spot, pulled another u-turn and parked in the ruts. I saved myself being stuck in the snow, I thought.

I had just gotten back from 3 years in Panama and was not used to the cold yet. I did not have adequate cold weather clothes, and I was wearing an Army uniform, anyway, which wasn't the warmest choice you could make to begin with. The temperature dropped to -25°F with the wind chill below -40°F It was a record cold day. When I left the office to either go home or go out to lunch, the car started, but would not move. I was surprised, because I had specifically planned for this problem and taken actions to prevent it from happening. After digging the area around the tires out, it still wouldn't move. Somehow, I figured out that the brake pads were frozen to the disc. I had to jack up the car, remove the tire, and get a small blowtorch and heat up the pads to get them to release. I had heated up the brakes and packed them with snow with my fancy maneuver, and the melted snow refroze and held the brakes tighter than if I was standing on the brake pedal. I drove home for Chistmas that night and heard on the radio that the U.S. had invaded Panama, just 2 weeks after I left my 3 year tour there.

As for 1987, that was right after I first arrived in Panama, on December 28, 1986. The first thing they did after New Year's and inprocessing was to ship me out on a deployment to the Chirique province of Panama, up on the border with Costa Rica. I spent 45 days there, inspecting construction and flying around in helicopters. It was very cool, except for the fact that I was newly married, and my wife was cooling her heels in Manhattan Kansas, waiting for me to tell her to come down to Panama with me. I stayed in a tent with the aviators, and each night, they would quiz each other about flying helicopters. It was like extended school. They would ask questions like, "do you get more or less lift on a more humid day?" And about 7 variations on that theme. They verbally practiced loss of power, autorotation, and all the other tricks of the trade.

To me, it's not about fretting about how old you are getting, but more about remembering all the things you've done in your life.

So happy birthday, youngsters! Have a beer and a cigarette for me, because I'm staying away. That stuff will kill you.