The Oregon: Year One - The Tale of Love

This is the tale OF Love, not to be confused with a tale of love.

One fateful day, it just happened to be his birthday, Joe “Hot Ham” McCartney went to the Main Street Café to get a tasty dish alone and in the dumps because his fellow mates of the grand ol’ Oregon had not really peaked an interest in his birthday. To be totally honest we didn’t know it was his birthday because we forgot our own birthdays that year. Good times. Once there, he befriended the hired help which is his custom when visiting anyplace. Joe’s a friendly guy, who would gladly shave your back for a nickel. It was here at the Main Street Café that Joe discovered a woman who would soon play a vital role in my life. More vital then she ever could’ve imagined in the short time we were together. Her name was Love and she would soon fall into a world of strange adventure, thrilling stunts, and possible jail time, known only as the Oregon. She gave Joe a yellow balloon to sooth his hurt feelings over our complete disregard for his birthday which if I remember right later that night we got him drunk as hell for his birthday so stop whining you damn bitch.

A few days later, Joe and I were playing classic Pac-Man in the attic room of Grog the great and powerful, aka Dan Warner, aka DW. We were mixing Everclear with our Buch Light to make Everclear Beer. A glorious and powerful beverage Everclear is. When I would take straight shots from the bottle my head would jerk back thus hitting the low lying rooftop sending Joe into a riotous laughter of child like joy. We were all very easily amused. The stairs leading up to Grog’s humble attic abode were affectionately called the Drunk Steps. Two reasons for this now, the first of which was they looked like a drunk person built them. They looked like the vertical part had been placed as the step and the step part was placed in the vertical position. Thus it was not uncommon for us to fall down said steps in a heap of drunken laughter. When Grog returned home from work and drank two Everclear Beers and four Grog sized gulps of straight Everclear to catch up with Joe and I we all rolled down the steps and over to the Main Street Café. Yes we rolled to the Café. Unbeknownst to me this Love character, a creature of beauty and contagious silliness, already knew of me. I, however, was in no condition to learn anything of her. You see it was Monte Python day at the Main Street Café. Now that’s not a day that they advertised. It’s a day where Grog, Joe, and I decided to talk like British men particularly those from Monte Python. If you’ve ever seen the Dirty Vicar sketch you’ll get an idea what these poor girls went through. Between that and the very explicit cat calls we were sure to leave an impression of good breeding and class on all of the young women working that day. Love had had the biggest crush on me for years apparently since I had played the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, so she wasn’t sure she wanted to slap me or blush at the things I was rattling off. We opened negotiations to the small country of Main Street Café and opened the Oregon’s borders to their people. Female people who were all underage and we had a knack for corruption you might say.

Shortly after that strange meeting Love and some of the other waitresses would begin to trickle into the Oregon on weekends and such to see what the “crazies” were up to. There were days when I would mix her a Screwdriver and then she’d sip it on the porch while I’d run around the yard with my Axe Handle of Doom and Grog while listening to The Clash. Dr. Robinson was always afraid that the cops were going to show up and bust us up for contributing to minors but when we were getting the neighbor kids we hated drunk and send them off to get beat by their hick ass parents he would laugh and laugh. We were never consistent with our principles at the Oregon. One time in particular Love and another waitress, Kari, came over and told their parents the classic “I’m staying at the others house” lie. ( To see how that night went veiw the good Dr.'s blog http://drrobinson.blogspot.com/2007/06/oregon-year-one-tale-of-cock-blockery.html.) Ah youth, anyway, Kari’s mother shows up at our house and we sent, as usual, Grog to speak on our behalf. Grog is a crazy drunk and very unpredictable, however, when it comes to sliming out of a sticky situation he normally has a better chance then the rest of us who prefer the giggling like a girl at the wrong moments (Adam) or making up totally different realities when talking to the cops type strategy (Me). The girls hide in the depths of the house, my room, whilst Grog tried his hand at talking this angry mother off our door step. It wasn’t until she pulled the “I’m calling the cops” card that we gave the girls up and they went home to get yelled at and such.

Love had told us during the “Python” interview portion of negotiations that she was 17 and that she would be 18 in just a few short months. Being 21 at the time this did indeed bode well for me because I had already gathered a reputation as a corrupter of underage girls. An unwitting corrupter but don’t ask Dr. Robinson about it. Ol’ Adam will list off the many young ladies that I seemed to attract like moths to the flame. Why? Don’t ask me but I’m not going to turn a free drink down if you know what I’m saying. Don’t look at me like that I’m married now for Christ sakes. Hey get back here. Don’t go check how old my wife is….. Damn. All right are you satisfied? Can we proceed now? Thank you. I was trying to veer away though not by very much this rep I had so Love’s birthday was a glorious prospect. Now even though she wanted to get with me because of the above mentioned crush she hung around Dan a lot because I was still dealing with her age. I hadn’t been dating anyone since Barb and I wasn’t looking at the time for anything serious. After awhile though and through her efforts I came around and we started a whirl wind relationship that would burn fast and die out just as quick as the spark that ignited it.

I was falling in love with her slowly but it wasn’t me she was hanging out with most of the time. That’s right folks she spent most of her time with Biff Calhoon. Biff treats women like they are objects, something I always thought was odd because I don’t think like that at all but then he always had different ways. As Biff, I was sometimes pretty mean to this very good sport of a girl who would simply brush him off. In her own words she says, “When Biff came out I would laugh for awhile and then I would head into the other room before you would say something mean that I knew you didn’t mean or do something that would really hurt yourself.” If I remember correctly she bore witness to the demise of the basement door. (A tale for another time) The time came to go to her birthday party and Grog and I go to the local liquor joint to score some booze. We got Galen’s 151 Vodka (my favorite), Jack Daniels, and some Sprite and grape juice. Upon arrival we promptly ditch the Party Wagon, Grog’s sometimes van, and I mean we literally ditched it and we hadn’t even started drinking yet. We show up make some drinks for the little kiddies in attendance and then we sit the hell down in front of the bon fire. When her mother shows up with the cake Grog and I are pretty toasty and really feeling the good vibe the party was offering. That vibe would last mere moments as we read the cake only to see that the cake elves had made a grievous error. Instead of saying happy 18th birthday like it should’ve, it said happy 17th birthday. I was outraged and wanted this foolish baker found and reprimanded. When I looked at Love and she gave me the “I’m sorry” look I knew that there was no mistake. I was having torrid, passionate relations with yet another woman of youth. I vowed that night that after Love and I parted ways I would start to card at the door of my club if you get my meaning. I, of course, knew that the damage was already done and I wasn’t about to stop now. So Love and I kept on a little longer. Dan and I liquored her friends up good at the party and laughed heartily as a lanky fellow fell into the fire two or three times. Love sat her ass on a nail of which she still bears a scar. Nothing is better then watching impressionable younglings do things you already know is dumb. Ah, youth. Then we pushed the Party Wagon out of the ditch, cutting Dan’s hand in the process, and headed back to the Oregon.

Like I said Love and I kept doing our thing for a little while longer and whether it was getting caught “making out” as she puts it or me kissing her naughty bits as I remember it in the computer room (the drunk tank mattress had moved there) or keeping some of the guys up with our bedroom antics it was never a dull moment. The last time I ever saw Love face to face, that I can remember, was the night I was going to tell her that I wanted to get serious. I hadn’t been drinking that much that night because of that mission but she wasn’t in the mood for serious talk. She kept giving me more and more Vodka until I vaguely remember retiring with her to my room. The door of which had “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” written on it in Italian. That Dante and his Inferno, now that’s a good read if you’re into that kind of thing. As I awoke in the morning I found she was gone. The first time she ever left before I woke up. I walked up stairs to the corner booth to commence the usual retelling and booze clues sleuthing of the night. Dan, Adam, and Joe already had their breakfast and were seated. I got a bowl of cereal and as I approached they gazed at me with these shit eating grins on their face. I sat down and said, “What?” Joe replies with, “Had fun last night?” He chuckles a bit as do the rest of the guys. I say how I didn’t want to just jump into bed I needed to talk to her and she liquored me up and took me anyway. I sat there a few moments taking their stares and grins as long as I could when suddenly it dawned on me, “She used me last night. I was used.” Then my patented shit eating grin blossomed on my face. “I was used.” I never blamed her for taking off. There were no strings attached. We’ve both gone on to bigger better things. Even though I didn’t really get a chance to start anything serious I was really getting attached to her. She showed me that there were women out there who were funny and tender and loving and that I could find them if I only looked. However, going cold turkey like I did and never seeing her again didn’t help with my growing abandonment issue. Haha! Years later we got back in touch with each other and we’re both living better lives. We still talk to this day and I imagine I’ll get an email full of choice expletives about airing our business in the open even if it’s all water under the bridge. However, it’s an amusing tail and one of the most important ones in helping me become who I am today.

I’ll see you all further on down the road.

Mike

P.S. When I returned from basic training my friends thought it would be funny to put it into my head that Love was pregnant and that I had some timing issues to worry about. There was no way I could’ve been the girls father because of when we stopped seeing each other but they, ‘ol Grog especially, kept bringing it up. I should’ve known now that the reason they all laughed so hard was BECAUSE I believed them but that wasn’t the point. The point was I DID believe them. I even offered to help take care of the baby. Love about laughed her head off thanked me for the thought but told me there was no way in hell the girl was mine. Now I can relate to Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean! Haha! You guys fooled me again! Touché.

Christmas In The Den Of The Enemy Or Why I Long To Visit Northern Iraq Again.

I got off work this morning thinking about how I can't wait to get home to my wife and away from this place forever. I thought about how I would never set foot in this country again God willing and that I'd never regret that as long as I lived. However, another memory washed over my from my first trip to this place that spun me around and made me rethink everything.

Back in '03 I was in the 101's Screaming Eagles, Third of the Five o' Second Widowmakers, Alpha Company Colesteel, Third Platoon War Pigs, Second Squad Flying Column. Well we never named our squad actually but our squad leader had Irish backround and his grandfather had been in an IRA cell called the Flying Column. We used to make fun of each others backrounds or weight or accents or whatever else. We gave our squad leader a lot of shit because he was extremly homophobic so we told him that our squad song was "It's Raining Men." So in this blog I'll give our old squad a name after something from his backround to make up for the headaches and high blood preasure we gave him. Hahaha! Anyway, while we were in Mosul we had a mission to go train Iraqi police in a small town called Bartahla. Now I don't really know how to spell it so that's as close as I'll get. This town had both Christians and Mulsims liveing pretty much side by side and there was very little fighting. It was a strange thing to see because none of us had seen any Christian churches the entire time we had been in country till then. On on side of the main street there was a large cathedral and on the other side there was a mosque. It was a really cool place if you ask me. I haven't been there since so I don't know what's become of it.

There was this little girl there I'd say either nine or ten years old. Her name is Safa and she only had fingers on her left hand. Through an interpretor I asked her how her hand got that way. I thought that maybe she had picked up an explosive because that has happened. She said no that she got her hand caught in a meat grinder when she was little. She said she didn't cry. I told her she's more of a man then I am then because I would've bawled my eyes out. Through the next four months or so of our mission in that town I sang to her everyday. All the kids really but I sang specifically to her. Her favorite song for me to sing was Queens We Will Rock You and Minnie the Moucher. I sang and sang. She made me a cross out of thread and beads that I still have. I have pictures of her and I together and if I could've legally done it I would've adopted her and taken her with me back to the states.

This morning on Christmas I wished that I could see her again and see how she is doing. Northern Iraq doesn't have it's head so far up it's ass so I hope that she is fine. My Platoon was there for the first mayoral elections in Bartahla and I jokingly asked if I could run for mayor. My Platoon Sergeant SFC Tucker said no because I would more then likely win and that would conflict with my Army obligations. Haha! He was probably right too. I didn't ever speak the language but I had preformed "concerts" all over the city and whenever we were on patrol I could hear people shouting "sing, sing" in Arabic. It was wild.

Being that popular in that town even through the language barrier I realized that this town could be the site of a common dream I share with the good Dr. Robinson. I contacted him online shortly after I realized how much attention the people of Bartahla were giving me and said that it could in fact be the very place were we could breed our own personal entourage of Ninja attack warriors. Adam and I have always wanted a hollowed out volcano or a mystery island that could be our base for private Ninja training. That way whenever we walked around and got static from anyone looking to do us harm we could simply say, "Ninjas attack," wave our right hand toward our attacker and out of every shadow around us a multitude of Ninja would appear to do take care of our light work. It's an odd dream but we're odd guys and you have to have your own private Ninja Attack Force (NAF) if you are going to plan world domination.

With the north much more stable then the south I think that one day I may return to Iraq, in what will probably be called Kurdistan, to see if I can find Safa and see how she's doing. She might not even remember me but it would be nice to see her. Also I would see if that town is ready for my "second coming" and Adam and I will train them all in the ways of the Ninja. Well we'll have someone who knows what the hell thier doing train them. Then let the world tremble before our NAF as we arise to our proper places as rulers of all the Earth. Don't worry not only are we lazy but when we do get motivated we procrastinate so don't hold your breathe for our ascention.... eh I mean TREMBLE BEFORE OUR NAF PUNY PEASENTS!!!

See you all further down the road.

Mike

Stuck In A Temporal Void With All Our Lost Companions

Well here I am during the holidays. Most importantly I’m missing my two year wedding anniversary. The cherry on top of all of this which overshadows everything that I miss this month is that a good friend, Vincent Pomante, was taken from this world at the very beginning of this month. This time of year used to be kind of calm but as one of my good friends put it today, “We’ve stirred up the bee’s nest here.”

In 2003 I did more things that I have to live with the rest of my life then I have done here this time. However, this time around I haven’t been out on the front lines as much and have considered myself pretty lucky because of that. This is the worse place, Ramadi, which I’ve ever been to. I feel helpless every time I hear about one of my brother’s or sister’s falling in battle. This whole year will never happen in my mind. It’s hard to explain how it feels to step off the plane back home and suddenly it’s the day after you stepped on the plane to leave. Most of us feel like all that we do here is outside of time be it from our odd schedules to the seemingly uninterrupted, unchanging days and nights. We are so used to what little sleep we get that we are unable to keep track of the days. Changes in the weather help but really we are on one loooooonnnnnnggggg Groundhog Day. Go on watch that movie. I’ll wait……. Back so soon. Okay so that’s what it’s like only less homey feel and more misery. I think that how we deal with all the crap that we get to live through here is by chalking it up to one long never ending day. Then when we get home we feel like it’s only been a day since we left and we’re upset that our loved ones have changed. How can you change in one day right? Haha! Well after the first couple days we start to realize that we’ve missed so much and then a lot of us will try to “make up for lost time”. These poor fools will have survived over a years worth of hell only to kill themselves through alcohol poisoning or drunk driving or drug overdoses. Many will face prison for murdering the plethora of unfaithful wives and husbands out there who think that deployment=sexy time. Most of us will have a great reunion and be able to pick up right where we left off but the scars that we have from this rift in time are more then just physical injuries. We all have things that we’ll take with us to our graves. Things that family and friends will never understand and may actually feel disgust at the telling. It’s not their fault; they just have no perspective as to why we made certain decisions. Now being an avid sci-fi fan with such series as Star Trek, Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Enterprise, Quantum Leap, Stargate SG1, Dr. Who, Red Dwarf, under my belt I feel like I’m an expert if not close to godlike in the field of temporal anomalies. Still I find the ease that the characters on above shows deal with traveling through time is strange. It’s not that easy of a thing to deal with when we get back to “the real world”. It may take months to get back on track or to feel like we’re back in control of our lives again. It’s not as easy as jumping through the Guardian of Forever killing someone you foolishly fell in love with in the thirties knowing full well you can never be with her and then coming back with your crazy doctor in tow. It’s just not that easy in real life. It’s odd to wrap one’s head around a feeling of timelessness. It gives us a culture shock when we find how different our spouses and family have become.

Then there’s the people who won’t come back with us. Our friends who were taken from our lives so abruptly that it’s almost hard to believe they are gone. My friend, Vincent, is one of those people. Vincent, like myself, was very interested in all things pirate and he had one day planned on having a ship that he would raid drug lord’s yachts in international waters with and turn in the drugs for a reward. Kind of like a Robin Hood of the high seas. I had done the research and found out that Brazil has no coast guard so we could pretty much do as we pleased in those water’s. It was a fun dream and we talked a lot about “Pirattitude” and how the freedom of the seas was where we wanted to someday end up. Both of us hail from Ohio and have a deep love for the state we grew up in. Vincent was a very funny man and there was always a joke or amusing story about Ohio on the tip of his tongue. He and I would swap stories about growing up in Ohio for hours on slow days while we smoked cigars or our tavern pipes (very piratical). Jokes flew around constantly. When the talk would turn serious it was always about the same thing. We always wanted our family and friends to understand what we are going through here. There’s just no way to explain it completely here with no frame of reference for the reader to have. We would discuss how the only way they could understand us is to be here with us but that was the last thing we ever wanted was for our loved ones to follow us through this hell. Then it would be back to laughs and jokes and stupid dances and singing silly songs. It was our three ring circus and it was always a funny show. Vincent lived everyday like it is an adventure and would live it as hard as he could to get all there is to get out of it. Though he was a soldier through and through he never let the Army destroy his wonderful individuality. He was a very real person and not just a face in the crowd. He touched many people’s lives including mine and he is greatly missed. I’m not as sad as I was when the pain was fresh. I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I know that Vincent has beaten us all to his pirate ship and is sailing off into uncharted waters to find wondrous amounts of treasure. Every now and then I can see him looking back to the horizon he’s sailing away from, looking through his glass to see if there are sails in the distance following him. One day he’ll see those sails and it will be my ship. I’ll join his fleet and we’ll find that treasure together. I miss him a lot. Fair winds and calm seas for all of your voyage my friend.

I will see you all further down the road.

Mike

The Oregon: Year One - The Tale of Biff Begins

The following takes place in late March of 2001, just a little bit before I moved into the legendary U.S.S. Oregon NCC-117. I’d come over on the weekends to hang out with my friends. Adam and I worked in the same factory so we had similar schedules making it easier to coordinate weekend Donkey Kongings of which he was much annoyed. Truth was my brothers, Nick and Jeff, and myself played so much Super Smash Brothers that there was few characters on the game that I didn’t like or wasn’t good at playing. This infuriated my opponents because it pretty much ruined any kind of fun for them because I was almost guaranteed a win. Adam and I have most of the same interests and are, if you all didn’t already know, two of the biggest dorks around. We just hide it better then others, mostly behind sarcasm and wit. If there’s an A-Team, Knight Rider, Star Trek (any kind) marathon going on you’ll find us sitting there together quizzing each other on our knowledge fully confident that said knowledge will someday make us gods amongst men. Well I didn’t drink back in this time and I was completely against it. I would go over and hang with my drunken buddies because they sometimes needed a driver and I could laugh at their dumb asses while they acted the fool. I use to make money out of the deal too. I would stop at every gas station and pretend to fill up the tank. Then I would make them split the bill. Heheh. Good times. Nowadays when they ask why I would do that to them all I can say is, pirate. Sometimes for the guys I didn’t care as much for I would drop them off at the wrong house and speed off. Man we had some good times. See I don’t need alcohol to have fun. Well I guess I did to get them drunk. Anyway, I was dating a woman named Barbara and she meant a whole hell of a lot to me. She wasn’t the type of girl I usually was known to go after. She was ghetto Canton style which isn’t really that ghetto but it’s a lot more then me and my friends were used to. I had worked my way up in the ranks by being truly being concerned by the problems she was having. I really wanted to make her happy. I did for about two years we were happy and I thought that she would be the woman I was going to marry. Well since my wife’s name is Stacie it’s obvious where this story’s headed. I was pretty upset because I was the one who ended the relationship with a cunning my way or the highway tactic. Well she chose the highway which wasn’t supposed to be a viable option. Such is life right. Well I was inconsolable. I couldn’t find the joy in anything and I had for a short time lost the ability to find the funny in life.

My friends were hard pressed to cheer me up and in a last ditch effort offered me that which I had denied myself for so long. A drink made of barley and hops, a drink, called beer. I was unimpressed with the taste but managed to swig it down. It enveloped me in a tractor beam of warmth and calmness. I had another just to see if I had truly felt the touch of God as I had assumed I had. Adam was surprised at how open I had become to the whole drinking idea. I was on the third beer when Dan came home and we ventured off for more. Now the Liquor Hut we normally patron because they don’t judge us was closed and we had to go to Giant Eagle where I found every beer’s name hilarious. I’m not quite sober and it gets like a packed Ohio/Michigan game in Columbus when I get the sauce into me, loud and wild. Here Dan is trying to usher Adam and I through the line before they call the cops. Even though I think Louisville was settled by the French I think they were an offshoot of the Puritans. Anyway we got back and started to go shot for shot whilst watching TV.

After a bit of time goes by I put in Adam’s Beastie Boys DVD. However, the buttons on the once cooperative remote control are now moving every time I try to hit the play button. After I get Dan to give me a hand I start to jam out. Adam and Dan were hanging out watching my drunk ass dance and sing like the trained monkey I was acting like when Sabotage finally came on. It was the turning point in my evening where bad was careening uncontrollably to worse. I screamed at the two baffled drunks with me to “Play it twice at the same time” whatever that meant. That’s when I felt the urge that everything I’ve thrown down my gullet was coming back up for an encore performance. I quickly grabbed the bucket thinking briefly how I’d impress them all with my ability to take care of myself while three sheets to the wind. In my haste and self-congratulating I held the bucket up like Link does in the Zelda games when he finds a magic item to show them my intent. The Zelda music was more then likely playing in my head at this time. Unfortunately at that same moment my stomach surged and I let loose. Well I did hit the bucket but it was still in the air over my damn head. I was dragged by Brad and Glen out to Brad’s car and went home to my dad’s house. Now Glen will feature in upcoming stories but it’s mostly between his girlfriend and I. We fought a lot! At any rate once I made it back to Dads I went straight to the bathroom and proceeded to throw up all over that place too much to my dad’s chagrin. It would not have been my choosing for the end of the night and I’m sure that it wasn’t the way Dad wanted it to end either.

The next day, as we sat in the corner booth and living room respectively, piecing together what happened, not one of us knew that this would become a Monday morning ritual for the rest of the year. We were actually surprised how much fun we had minus the vomiting. Cleaning the house would become a major bonding experience in the Oregon bringing closer and causing friction between the main characters depending on the circumstances. I had missed the Adam/DW battle royale and I missed most of my first meeting with Glen but I would come to know him more as the weeks moved on. I would get to know his girlfriend really well because we fought all of the time. That was the first time I got really smashed and it was the first of many Oregon parties, which would become the place to party in just a few weeks. It was the beginning of the Biff. Still unnamed and abstract Biff would in short time make his mark in Louisville history as a defeater of windows and a warrior on the front lines of a self imposed war on drugs.
I’ll see you all later on down the road.
Mike

To hear about pony rides and why Adam and DW were locked in a battle royale in the first place check out the good Doctor's blog: http://drrobinson.blogspot.com/2006/11/oregon-year-one-tale-of-biffing.html