Biff Calhoon presents: Biff Calhoon in, Take the Long Way Home, the Next Chapter

A long time ago in a town far, far away… (From where I’m at right now)


TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME

EPISODE V

FORT CAMPBELL AND WALKFEST 2003

BIFF
CALHOON
had just
returned from
basic training and
was preparing to go to
FORT CAMPBELL, his first duty
station. He was home visiting and getting
ready to get married to Hera.

My visit was short and sweet but it’s something I would get used to the longer I was in the ARMY. I almost severed my index toe on my left foot on a piece of glass at the U.S.S. OREGON and that was the fourth time I woke up in a pool of my own blood on the bathroom floor…………………………………………………







I was married on July 6th 2002. I moved quickly to Hopkinsville Kentucky where I would stay the entire time I was at Fort Campbell. Hera and I were happy for a little while but in about six months I had already started to regret rushing into a marriage. She had not changed at all from high school and she wasn’t the most fun person in the world then, believe me. I was having a rough time adjusting to the Army life but it soon came to suit me. I was in the 3-502 Infantry battalion. Alpha company Colesteel, 3rd platoon WARPIGS. I was in second squad and did we ever have a funny group of guys. SSG Benjamin Lewis, SGT Matson, SGT Ransom (Amy), Fred EX, Goforth, Copeland (Barry), Webb, Mikler, and myself. Now we had others come and go but that was the roster for Iraq. The whole damn platoon was funny as hell. We trained a lot at Fort Campbell and we all had a great time. After work the guys would go out on the town and invite me to come along. I would always decline. I was going back home to my wife every day just to be with her. Maybe figure out why I was so unhappy. Nothing came of it and I soon just kept declining to go out, out of habit.
My first real field problem at Fort Campbell was a month long stretch in the woods complete with what we called the Battalion Death March. Hurricane season had just hit the Carolinas and Kentucky was catching hell from all the rain. We were in the woods. All of us quoting Water World and talking like pirates. Fred Ex said that that was one of the worst field problems he’s ever been on and he’s been in over ten years. Later on that year we would start preparing to go to Iraq. 2003 was looking to be a really bad year. Like in a late year training problem that had us out at an old MOUNT site on our way to a new one in the dead of winter to prepare for the desert. Yeah didn’t make much sense to us either. At this old MOUNT site we trained all day and then bedded down for the night on the second floor. The second floor was wooden and in the morning someone probably Webb made the comment that it was cold and SSG Lewis had us doing side straddle hops till he returned. It took us all of three seconds to figure out that once he was out of the room we could just stomp our feet and it would sound like we were still jumping. We looked funny all stomping around like mountain folk around a still so I started as I oft times do breaking into song. One thing lead to another and the Irish jig was added to our repertoire of funny things we did constantly.
Two thousand and three marked the beginning into a madness for me. I would for a while believe that Biff Calhoon and Mike Lanzer were two different people. One was the conceited dick and the other was the passive stepping-stone of all who took advantage. Here’s how it happened.
. March 29th 2003 we invaded Iraq. Flying for three hours in a Black Hawk to the city of Al Kufa. There I saw my first dead bodies. My first five bodies actually. The car was filled to capacity and all the passengers were dead. 3rd ID went through and lit everything up. We followed and secured a bridge while we planned the Baghdad invasion. Our first night at the bridge two Iraqis approach and are given warning to halt. Well all of us must have turned to see these guys because they were glowing with PAQ4 dots. They started yelling pleas in Arabic and stripped down to nothing in two seconds. We were all thinking what the hell are they doing. On Hera’s birthday we went into a city called An Najef. We pretty much walked there from Kufa, which isn’t a small task. Then we went to Karbala, which was a hell of a walk as well with two combat loads of ammo a spare barrel and my SAW. I loved that weapon. Two combat loads of ammo is 1600 rounds. That’s a lot of weight if you start counting the body armour and grenades and shit. In Karbala we ran out of water and it was rumored that the military didn’t order us enough. Wouldn’t surprise me. Well after Karbala we made it to Baghdad. Then one day we’re talking about moving north when all of the sudden a mission comes up in a small town just to the south of Baghdad. First of all, they said we had to clear a path for the tanks. The tanks are supposed to clear the path for us. Second, they only sent my platoon. However, we didn’t take our Javelin teams, which we never did before, third, all kinds of useless officers came with us. That means it was supposed to be a dog and pony show. We were so pissed. At the beginning of the trip we found a huge cache of weapons and mortars and TNT and C-4 and all kinds of fun US killing devices. We blew them up in place cause we didn’t have the vehicle support to take then back with us. So on we walked. Ironically the one day I’d like to forget the rest of my days happens to be the same day I got most of my souvenirs. I found an Iraqi gas mask with pouch. All of my skeleton keys were in one building we searched. I found a Iraqi police beret. I got my Iraqi flag in the town in question. Al Mhamadia. April 13th Palm Sunday Bloody Sunday 2003. You could tell that there was something wrong with the people in this town. They weren’t smiling or waving. They weren’t enjoying Princes song Kiss that I was singing. We searched the police station and I got my trinkets. Then we found intel that told us where there were more military compounds around for us to search. So we went and prepared to leave. My squad was the lead element so we were already lined up about to take a stroll down the road to the next compound. Our leadership and first squad and some of weapons squad were still getting ready to leave. A car drove past and the passenger threw out a grenade. Here’s where it starts to blur cause I was all on instinct here. I heard the blast, turned and saw half of my platoon in disarray. I looked to SSG Lewis, my squad leader, and Goforth, my best friend. SSG Lewis’s mouth was bleeding cause his tooth was knocked out by shrapnel. That’s when I saw one of the scout SGT’s about five feet to my left side. He turns to me and his left eye is gone. What’s there is a waterfall of blood. Suddenly, the guy right next to starts to shake and fall to the ground. He was shot eight times with an AK47. Seconds is all this takes. We start dragging the bloody bodies into the building. The few vehicles we had we used as cover to get back to the building. My squad was farthest from the blast so we had the most intact people. We had to get to the roof so we could get some payback. I remember stepping on wounded friends to get to the roof we had so many hurt. Fact is one of our guys slipped on blood and hurt his fucking neck. We got to the roof and immediately take fire from buildings on all sides of us. The insane number of Iraqis who had followed us to this point were still just standing there. These people need TV. Our weapons squad is the element that has our largest platoon weapons, hence the name. We took them from the wounded below and set up on the roof. The SAW is the second largest weapon in the platoon and as I said I was one of the guys with that. Suzanne was her name. Anyway, once we were placed and have our targets acquired we opened fire. Had to be over three hundred people. Old men and women, young men and women, and children, we cut them all down. This part is where I start to get gaps in my memories. We shot everything that showed itself. We had no support because we weren’t supposed to be on a real mission so we had to spend the night in the kill zone. We were still strung out after we medevacted our wounded. At midnight our 1st platoon finally made it out to us and helped us pull guard. The next day we were still there. We blocked the roads and shot anything that came towards us. My buddy shot a warning shot into an Iraqi riding his bike towards us. Hit him center of the chest and another Iraqi came out and stole his bike. These people suck. We were the cowboys of our company and we acted like those badasses that you see on crazy war movies. Actually we quoted movies like Predator and Aliens more then real war movies. During my turn watching the road my buddy Webb was calling me cause I was looking down a different road. He was calling me saying, “Biff this guys isn’t stopping and it’s a truck.” I came around the corner with Suzanne propped straight up in the air and then brought her down to the trucks level and shot off a 3 to 5 second burst. The truck screeched to a stop and reversed back whence he came. Webb said that needs to be in the movie Hollywood was going to make about us. We were always saying that about certain things we were doing. After we got back to Baghdad our leadership took us off duty. OFF DUTY in a fucking war zone. We weren’t allowed to go near our compound wall with our weapons and we couldn’t go on patrol and we couldn’t pull guard either. They were afraid and rightfully so that we were going to just kill anyone we saw after what we did in Mhamadia. That’s when I started to truly for the first time in my life hate an entire people and religion. I was insanely prejudiced against Muslims. I hated them. Anyway, I don’t like to talk about that stuff that much. It’s weird to witness mass amnesia. Not one of us really remembered the whole thing when we all started talking about it after getting to Mosul. For the rest of the deployment we stayed in Mosul and the village of Bartalla. In Bartalla there’s a little girl named Safa who had no fingers on her right hand. If I could have legally done it I would’ve adopted her and raised her as my own. I loved and still love that little girl who I’ll never see again. She’s my daughter as far as I’m concerned. I miss her and hope she’s okay. Upon returning to Kentucky I find that Hera’s acting funny, distant. I try my hardest to feel anything for her at all but Iraq took all of my feelings away. I was completely apathetic to everything that was going on around me. Without knowing why and really not caring all that much Hera and I agreed to divorce. I was a wreck. Not cause of the divorce but because I had hoped that the feelings of dread I had in Iraq were just my over powerful imagination.
When I went home on leave I met Pandora. I was back on the sauce and trying to enjoy what was left of the ruins of a life abandoned for a year. You never know how important the people back home are to you till the ones you’ve left in charge fuck everything up. Well Pandora would flirt and flirt with me but I wasn’t really that open to it at first. Having no feelings about anything and a growing hatred for the “regular” people who stayed home in the States while I saw and did what I did made me pretty hard to get to. The one thing that has never really changed (it just got darker) was my sense of humor and that’s how she eventually wore me down. The more she made me laugh and the more I smiled at her the better I felt. Funny story, at her birthday party I am drunk as hell and I keep grabbing her moms ass. Well later in the evening I say to her, “Claudia, I just had sex with your daughter four hours ago and now I would like to have sex with you and make it a Grand Slam.” Well I, thank God, didn’t have relations with her mother cause it would be really weird at gatherings. The divorce from Hera was legally final on the 20th of January 2004. I had been hanging with Pandora for three months. February 15th is when I got to Germany. Ray Barracks, my second duty assignment. I left Pandora behind with no promise of any kind of future. Why give her hope I had none myself…

See you all further down the path...

Mike

Biff Calhoon presents: Biff Calhoon in, Take the Long Way Home, a Biff Calhoon production

A long time ago in a town far, far away… (From where I’m at right now)


Take the Long Way Home

EPISODE IV

U.S.S. OREGON

It is a time
Of change for the
Class of ’99. The graduation
Ceremony complete and the paths
Of all diverge to the four corners as everyone
Reaches out to explore their potential and try to make
Their dreams become a reality. It is a time of change for the better.

BIFF CALHOON sets out to live his life on his terms. The easy going way that was his trademark in HIGH SCHOOL remains a practiced way of life in the years after graduation. He joined a group of his friends a year or two later and embarked on an adventure that has yet to end………





I worked at HP Products for a couple of years. I worked in the shipping department of the factory. It was and is still my favorite job I’ve ever had. I had so much fun there and I was really good at what I did. I was dating Scarlet then and I loved her very much. She meant a lot because of the effort I put into getting into her heart. She was a fighter. Probably still is, but I haven’t seen her in years. She was my first adult love. I was nineteen when I was with her and she was one in a million. Her very uniqueness gave her a compelling mystery. I was blown away when we parted ways because it was my fault and I had not planned for things to work out like they did. I basically gave her a my way or the highway ultimatum, and she chose the highway. Didn’t see that one coming. Well at the time I was looking for a place to move to so I could move out of my fathers house so my good friend and yours Dr. Robinson says to me that he needs a new roommate at his place. So I go over that weekend to scope out the place. I drink for the first time to get smashed and the spark lit from there. I was in the house within two weeks. I chose the basement room because I like living in basements and because I’m lazy and didn’t want to move my shit as we lost and gained roommates. The main body of the U.S.S. Oregon crew was Dr. Robinson, Mysterio, Biff Calhoon, Hot Ham, and Tcep. Tcep came later on in my stay on board. This was the roster that got along the most though. The extras that came and went sometimes caused friction in the house. We were all very much of the same easy going live life to the fullest type people. We all had a blast together.
Ham and Dr. Robinson and I all worked at HP at this time while Mysterio worked at the Hoover Company, and Tcep worked on living his Budda-esk lifestyle. Mysterio, Tcep, Dr. Robinson, and myself would jam away in the basement as the band, French Bread Pizza. We covered all kinds of songs from Foo Fighters to Harvey Danger to Green Day to anything from the 80’s, and ultimately Nintendo music especially from Megaman 3. All kinds of fun was had. Most of the fun was had sauced out of our fucking minds. We all loved the drink, none so much as Mysterio, Ham, and the ol’ Calhoon his self, though no one was a slacker in the drunkard department. The following facts are for that very reason probably not in any kind of order. It’s hard to put in sequence that which you learned second hand, even if you were involved first hand. Haha. The good Dr. Robinson will tell a lot of the same stories just from his point of view in his blog on blogspot.com. (Shameless plug) There is a restaurant across the street that we called the Main Street Café but I think it’s real name was Main Street Restaurant. We named it cause we ruled the seas of that neighborhood, our Jolly Roger flying high on our TV antenna. Every morning Mysterio and I would stand on the porch and drink our screwdrivers (the breakfast of champions) and cat call at the old people who were unlucky enough to walk in front of us. The neighbors all began to despise us all but Racist Bob. We believe to this days that he is the reason that the cops weren’t called on us that much. The neighbor directly across the street drove a Frito Lay truck so we called him Frito Lay-all-day. The house next to him was a rats nest of hilljacks. It was like watching clowns get out of a car only it was an unholy river of white trash flowing from a rather small house. They were our nemesis and we did all we could to get the kids in trouble or free their poor dog from the abuse that they beset upon it. The house next to that housed our sister ship in the neighborhood. Five-O lived there and we would party all up and down the street. Bonfires galore. The fact is for as much that went on at the Oregon the cops usually showed up cause Mysterio and I were lying in the street. Come on though can you blame us? Cool summer nights lying on a warm road. Come on, there’s nothing more relaxing. Dr. Robinson and myself would on occasion climb the tree in the back yard with our grappling hooks during a tornado or dump flour all over a table full of drunks playing poker. First off the 25 pound bag of flour was an impulse buy on my part at Wal-Mart. It was only four bucks. Somehow I couldn’t pass that up. One night Dr. Robinson and I are watching TV totally sober and we both look over at the doorway to the kitchen where we can hear the yell of drunkard’s playing cards. At the same time we look at the flour and then at a random squirt gun that was on the floor and the light went off in both our heads. Next thing you know I have the flour in hand he has the gun. One squirt of mist and a dump later there’s flour everywhere. Mysterio comes in and tackles me into the flour on the floor and Dr. Robinson dumps what’s left of the bag on us. One of our friends Sheriff we found out later is allergic to flour. Whoops. That’s six hours of a Saturday I’ll never get back. We went through six vacuums and two carpet scrubbers. Good thing Mysterio worked at Hoover so we never had a shortage. The weird thing is that of the six three were purple and three were green and the green ones just quit working after awhile of flour clean up, but the purple ones caught on fire. That shit was crazy. Another time Joseph head butted our basement door and we found out that it was hollow. So Mysterio and I naturally felt that we should jump through it and tear it the fuck down. We didn’t plan it so well and ended up jumping down the basement steps. Upon climbing back up the steps we would see some door hanging still mocking us and right back down the steps we’d go.
Of course there was also the day that Biff Calhoon was born. There was a new cashier working at the Dairymart that was right behind the house. I had asked her that morning how she felt about drunken idiots being retarded around her and she said that she wasn’t easy to offend. I made sure that she understood that I would be back later that night and that I would be completely wasted. That night it rained and hard. It was the night of “The Rain Boyz”. The Rain Boyz would strip off articles of clothing, as they would get waterlogged and heavy till they were comfortable again. They would do anything to be comfortable except GET OUT OF THE RAIN!! There were about ten to fifteen of us all running around the neighborhood. I made it back to the Dairymart as promised. No shirt, no shoes, but demanding service. Not the kind that’s stocked on any shelves either. Mysterio comes in and yells “Hey I’ve been looking all over for you. We can’t be the Rain Boyz without you.” I said, “ But I’m not done sexin’ her up” Mysterio says, “ Yeah you are”. Okay. That’s all the convincing I needed. Back up to the house there was a fight to be had. In the smallest area of the house, the kitchen, ten to fifteen soaking wet guys wrestling around for no reason. Joseph had hit his head on the corner of the counter and slumped passed out at the edge of the mass of limbs that didn’t seem to connect to any one body. Suddenly I roll out of the bottom of the pile with a look in my eye that wasn’t my own and say,” I’m not the one. I AM the one! Elbow drop!!!!” Thus was born Biff Calhoon. Bane to all things glass! I’ll always remember that back then at Metzgers Hardware storm windows cost twenty four ninety five. Good stuff. One particular night Biff had decided to wage a war on drugs and so with his Axe Handle of Doom he set forth. A bare footed bike riding drunk with a mission. I went over to my mom’s church and told the pastor all about my mission and then I was off to other points in the neighborhood.I next went to Holly’s house to inadvertently scare the hell out of her pregnant mother and then, of course to the Main Street Café. There I was promptly kicked out for not wearing shoes and cause I brought the bike and Axe Handle in with me. Memorial Day weekend was the first drinking binge I had ever done. Not one day that weekend was I sober. That Friday is when we invited over the waitresses from the Café. They were under age to say the least but their flimsy lies were good enough for the likes of us who cared little for the trappings of the law. The months to come they would play a small part in the bigger picture of a group of guys more concerned with their booze consumption then with getting laid. On Memorial Day Little Red, Carolina, Love, Doc Rob, Ham, and myself (at least I think Ham was there) had a huge water fight. The girls started it but were soon bested and their control of the hose was no more. To spite us they locked us out of the Oregon and chucked water balloons at us. Well the side door that went into my room was unlocked and I had my room locked from the inside so the girls couldn’t get to the outside door to lock it. I went in and got my briefcase of ninja gear. A couple sais, a couple on throwing stars, but what I was looking for, of course, was my grappling hook. I came out and it was decided that Dr. Robinson would to climb the house and so I threw the hook through the window by our corner booth and up the good Doctor goes. He gets all the way to the top without anything going wrong and then grabs the windowsill. The sill comes completely off the house and Dr. Robinson falls two stories to the hard ground below where we waited patiently. He lands hard on his wrist and while he rubs it and wonders what went wrong Ashley throws a water balloon that hits him square on the head. While he’s yelling at her I kicked the back door in and we retook the Oregon.
We formed the Council of Evil in those days, Mysterio as Chancellor of the protectorate, Biff Calhoon as Vice Roy, Hat Ham as Man at Arms, and Tcep as our PR guy. The rules were simple, if you wanted to challenge another person in the council for their position the two would fight it out in the contest of, lets see if I can spell this one, Gombay Parry. You hold one leg up behind your back and use your other arm to help balance. However, you cannot use your arms against your opponent. You can only use you body weight. Fun times. The council was formed so that Mysterio and I could stop drinking so much so fast and take a more leisurely approach to our parties. You see everyone had come to expect Mysterio and I to just pound them out one after the other and then we usually ended up hurting each other. So we would take someone who usual drank like a girl and make them drink like we do while we sip our drinks and enjoy a more relaxed environment. Well to this date the only victim of the council was Bob-o. The next weekend no one showed up to our house, which had never happened before. We heard the brothers Bailey had a party and the Council of Evil took their weapons of choice there to lead the sheep away from a police attracting party in the middle of town back to our place where the cops tolerated us. Mysterio with mighty Bo Staff, Biff Calhoon with the Axe Handle of Doom, Hot Ham with Deadly Katana (believe me we all had concerns about that), and Tcep with the Segmented Staff of Bad Publicity sallied forth to the Bailey’s house. Once there we brought forth the people into the Promised Land, cop tolerating womb of the U.S.S. Oregon. Unfortunately, some guys we didn’t usually party with started to fight. I went outside to help Ham break the fight up and keep the peace. My strategy had one flaw…… So I punched Ham. Ham and I start fighting. Mysterio quickly joins the fray. I took a tiki torch and hit Mysterio across the face with it. He does a horizontal Matrix type spin in the air before falling on the cement drive way and lying there for a minute to collect his thoughts. I somehow ended up at Hera's house, who would become my first wife. Weird times.
Now Love, whom I mentioned above during the water fight had started coming over to party with us and we ended up getting together. Biff Calhoon thought he was just using her for a good time. Turns out that I have a hard time not developing feelings with women I’m fooling around with. I guess it’s the romantic in me. That wasn’t to last though. When your main concern in life is partying and having fun you have little to no tolerance for dealing with a relationship. Love went her own separate way.
Another fun night that ended in me being hurt pretty bad was the Cookie Sheet Challenge night. Now the intent was not to do anything that would hurt us but to do the Milk Challenge like on Jackass. Mysterio, Ham, and myself would see who could drink a whole gallon of milk the fastest. Well we spent all of our cash on booze so we couldn’t afford three bottles of milk. So we went looking for something else to do in the kitchen. That’s where we found our three cookie sheets. So we went out to the front yard and took turns hitting each other on the head with it until the person getting hit couldn’t take it anymore. Well to bend the cookie sheet back to being flat we kept flipping it until it burst in the center. The sharp shards of medal stuck out like knives and I took the last hit. Blood gushed out of my head and that was the third time I woke up on the bathroom floor in a pool of my own blood.
Days became weeks and weeks months and the fun times never seemed to dull. Then 9-11 came and knocked the Oregon into dangerous waters. That day changed everything. Not at first oh no. But slowly over the next three months I had to do something. Ham quit HP and gave blood, found a new job and he went that route for a while. Harder times were in store for him. I quit HP and joined the Army to go do something that would change the world. I was ever the dreamer. Now there were way more fun times at the Oregon but this is already running pretty damn long and I need to move on to the next part. The U.S.S. Oregon is my favorite part of my life and if I could repeat it all over again I wouldn’t change anything. The Army took me away from the place I called home and the friends I called family. A piratical group of guys the likes of which are still unique from anything I’ve ever seen since leaving Louisville. That’s saying a lot cause there’s a lot out there besides Louisville but it has something that no place else has. The crew of the U.S.S. Oregon still crazy, if scattered, after all these years. Things were still looking pretty good for me even with me heading into the Army. I was off on my adventure………….


See you further down the path…