In October 1981, while reviewing a parade with many dignitaries from several nations, Anwar Sadat was assassinated. One of the trucks in the parade stopped in front of the reviewing stand. Men dressed as Egyptian soldiers threw flash-bangs into the reviewing party then opened fire with AK-47s. One of the shooters jumped from the truck, ran up to the reviewing stand, and fired point blank into the reviewing party. Some on the stand threw folding chairs over Sadat and his party to try to protect them from the rifle fire. Others huddled in the pre-natal position and prayed for a poor aim. There were many U.S. officers on the stand, including a Marine Three-Star and our boss at EUCOM, an Air Force Four-Star. Their usual assortment of horse-holders were there as well. The Aide to the Air Force General was wounded in his foot. The Marine General's Aide took one in the thigh. Neither General was wounded. The US officers who were not wounded were hustled off to the Air Field and immediately took off for safer places. The wounded were left to be taken to the military hospital in Cairo.
The Aides were put in the same room and were given emergency aid, bandaged, and then left alone. They could hear people crying and screaming and moaning. There was another wounded soldier in the room with them, but he wasn't making any noise; he had been dead before they arrived. The Aides were both in severe pain. Major Ryan, the Air Force Aide, had had an AK round go through his foot at point blank range. They put the foot in a cast (without any attempt to set the bones or even take an x-ray), elevated his leg and changed him into Egyptian pajamas. They put a cast on the Marine's leg as well, and gave him the same change of clothes and traction rig for his leg. As the afternoon turned into evening and no one came to check on them, they began to yell and throw things out into the hallway to try to get someone's attention. The Marine was having extreme pains in his thigh. The cast was apparently too tight and with his leg swelling, his foot was turning purple. It was late in the evening before anyone came into the room. An orderly was there to retrieve the dead patient. After a few minutes of hand signals and shouted threats, the orderly got the idea and fetched a doctor. He removed the cast from the Marine's leg and replaced it with a pressure bandage. He didn't do anything for Major Ryan. They were told that they needed care that couldn't be provided at that hospital. As soon as the "situation" was clear and stable, the Egyptians would try to get them to the Air Field and evacuate them to Italy or Germany. There was still the fear that the assassination was the prelude to a full-scale revolt; everyone was very edgy and no one was allowed to move around the city at all.
Major Ryan was growing concerned about his foot. His cast was softening from the inside and blood was starting to soak through to the outside. Blood was also trickling down his leg and drying under him. He was stuck to the bedding and his pajamas. It was about two days after the shooting that the two aides were loaded onto an airplane and flown to Landstuhl. The Egyptians had showed up in force on the morning they were to fly; the hospital room abuzz with doctors and orderlies. They had put a new cast on Maj Ryan (over the blood-soaked, smelly, itchy cast), a new dressing on the Marine, and put them onto transport gurneys, bloody sheets and all. At Landstuhl it took a couple hours of soaking to free the Major from his jammies and sheets.
The bullet had traveled across Ryan's foot at about the peak of his arch. All the bones between his ankle and his toes were shattered and pushed over to the exit side of his wound. The tissue around the breaks was shredded, swollen, and extremely painful. I am not sure how many surgeries were required to put his foot back together, but I do know that it was more than a year after the shooting before he was able to run again. He had been an avid runner before his trip to Egypt: marathons, mini-marathons, fun-runs, you name it. I don't know if he was ever able to get back to that activity level again. I never heard what all the Marine had to endure, but his bones were intact so it wasn't nearly as hard as Ryan had it. The delays Ryan endured nearly cost him his foot. He was being treated in the most up-to-date, quality hospital in Egypt. I know that this was an extreme situation, that the hospital was being stressed. They needed to come up with beds for the 30-plus wounded (and apparently the eleven dead bodies). But the constant presence of flies, roaches, and other vermin, the lack of any type of hygiene, the shortage of care providers and cleaning personnel, and the general malaise of the medical staff were not a product of this emergency, they were the business-as-usual operating procedures at that facility.
While you listen to the debate raging over the need to change our health care system; while you are inundated with reasons our system is soooo screwed up; while you hear politicians who appoint themselves to the status of subject-matter experts on medical treatment tell us that the new system won't cost us an arm and a leg...or a foot...ask yourself this. Which system do you think Chris Ryan would prefer...what we have here and now or the socialized system they have in Egypt? If you think that this is irrelevant to today's debate, you are wrong. While our system may not be perfect, it is a quantum leap past most of the rest of the world.

The Chief and Betty Lou were passionate people. Their passion for each other was matched by an equally fierce passion against each other. I knew that no matter how vicious a fight sounded, no matter how nasty the threats, no matter how many things got thrown or broken, they would not really physically hurt each other. Often when the storms raged I would hold my terrified little sister and assure her that they were not killing each other, just ironing out a few differences of opinion. And after the sounds of their passionate fights faded, they would be replaced with the sounds of the other end of the spectrum.
Betty Lou often told me the only time she ever felt that the Chief might actually do her in came early in their marriage.
The Chief was a pipe-smoker, not just a casual pipe-smoker, but a full-on, paraphenalia-ladened, studied, pipe collector. I remember the clear glass humidors full of various blends of tobacco with their wooden tops and a slice of apple in each one to keep things moist enough. He had numerous pouches; each with an aromatic blend fit for various occasions, collected from far corners of the world. He had a leather folder full of picks, tamps, reamers, cleaners, and other implements that I had no clue about their use. But all of these things were secondary, they were in support of his grand possessions: his pipe collection. He sailed all around the world. Every port held its special possibility for a pipe purchase. He had Briars, Meerschaums, Medicos, and dozens of others that I can't name but I am sure were valuable. He had pipes that were straight, bent, corncob, carved clay, and one from china carved out of a jade-looking stone.
One of the most important characteristics of a pipe is the way it is maintained. Careful scraping and reaming are necessary to develop the correct "cake", the carbon build-up in the bowl that affects the way a pipe burns and how the air flows through the tobacco. The cake has to be thick enough to insulate and facilitate the burn, but not so thick as to impair the same. It is a delicate balance and it takes some time to "break in" a new pipe and develop a proper cake. Once a proper cake has been developed, constant maintenance is necessary to keep it at the correct thickness. Do I sound like a pipe-smoker's son?
Told you all that so I could tell you this: Betty Lou wanted to be a good wife. She was raised by a Pennsylvania Dutch family to whom cleanliness was indeed next to Godliness. Looking for something "nice" to do for the Chief, Betty Lou decided to clean his pipes. She cleaned them as they had never been cleaned before. She put them in a sink full of hot soapy water and scrubbed and scraped and worked on each one until they were shiny and bright and free of all that nasty carbon build-up in the bowls. She spent most of the day on her chore and finished up shortly before the Chief got home. She put them all away in their racks and anxiously awaited the moment of the "Big Surprise".
The "Big Surprise" was memorable. He stood stunned and speechless as she proudly displayed the fruits of her labor. She thought he was that way in utter gratitude and awe that she had done such a fine thing. He was soooo quiet. He didn't stay that way. The explosion was about the same magnitude as the Hiroshima A-Bomb. And about as devastating. Then it was Betty Lou who stood stunned and silent. But not for long. Then it was on. They raged and carried on for quite a while before the tide ebbed and sound levels approached normal. When it was over a couple of things had been settled. First and foremost came the making up...they really did love each other. Second: Betty Lou understood that pipes were not on her list of things to clean...or even touch. And third: Betty Lou truly learned and understood the magnitude of her mistake and came to realize how much effort had gone into blah blah blah. She nodded and displayed the proper amount of humility and contriteness...but I don't think she ever really cared. But the making up was fun.
This wasn't the end of the Chief's pipe-smoking days, but he was never the same about it again. He was able to salvage a few of his pipes (aside from the uninitiated scraping ruining the cake, she also gouged chunks out of the bowl and the water about sealed the fate for most of the pipes). He still kept a few at home, but I rarely saw him smoke one after that. He told me he kept a few on the ship and enjoyed a quiet pipe while at sea. Seemed to me that his heart just wasn't in it like it use to be. I considered taking up a pipe when I was in high school. I mentioned it to him and all he said was, "Yeah? Well...don't let your mom clean 'em for you."

It's Miller Time...Again

In Hawaii it was flying ants. They came once or twice a year and would swarm all over any light source. One evening it was so bad that we locked ourselves into one bedroom and put towels up against the bottom of the door and sweated in that airless, close room all night long. The next morning we swept up two dustpans full of dead ants, I guess they all don't make it.
I think that the worst was Missouri where we had roaches. They were legion. They lived in any paper product, crack or crevice. We had to have the place fumigated twice and still we had lots of them to spare. A friend of ours happened to be the bug doctor at the Hospital. He told us that many of the roach strains in Fort Leonard Wood had become immune to the incsecticides that the Army exterminators used. I had an image of the little bugs huffing the spray.
In Texas it was crickets. They came all of a sudden one evening and swarmed all over the town of Lampasas. Driving home that evening sounded like popcorn popping. They smashed on the windshield and smeared when I tried the wipers. They literally blackened the sky. Come morning they were gone.
In California we had ants. Lots and lots of ants. They got into everything, we had to ziploc the sugar and any thing that had sugar in it. Little lines of ants worked their way all through the house. They found whatever crumb or left-over that didn't get put away properly...and they found them FAST.
In Stuttgart we had bees. Every Spring we had to dodge and duck as they swooped around us looking for something colorful and sweet. Everyone of us got stung at least once every year. Except in the years that had an early false Spring and the bees came out only to get frozen in a late snow.
Vietnam? Don't get me started... bugs, snakes, flies, the little gekko lizards that would crawl up the wall and yell "f*** you" (it is true, that is what most of us called them: "F*** You Lizards"), and little brown guys with guns; but mosquitos were the worst (well...maybe the guys with guns were worst) Big as a small humming bird and bearing a quenchless thirst. They would raise a welt the size of a dime that would itch like madness for a week or more. Many of us would burn the bites with a cigarette because the burn would heal faster than the bite and hurt less.
Arizona was fairly clear of pests...in town. But the desert is full of scorpions, snakes, and lizards. And every now and then a very colorful, slow, poisonous lizard a called Gila Monster will find its way into a back yard. And crickets. And Cicadas will drone you to death. After a thunderstorm out in the desert, millions of toads and frogs will crawl up onto the asphalt to escape the water.
Here in the Swirling Epicenter, the altitude and cold winters eliminate a lot of the common pests that we have endured in our travels and adventures. We occasionally get bees and mesquitos, though we rarely see a bug in the house. But every Summer as soon as the Spring rains slow down, we get flooded by millions of medium-sized moths. They are called Miller Moths and they wind up in everything. In the morning when I raise the garage door it is like the bats swarming out of Mammoth Cave. They get in the house, the car, stores, everywhere. I kinda get a kick out of watching them try to get to the lights on the ceiling fan and getting batted across the room when they get into the fans arc. The moths appear to be the main diet of several of the local birds, but the Swallows especially. They are like Zoomies (Air Force fighter pilots), they fix on a target moth and tune out anything else. The moths like to sit on the warm asphalt so the birds are constantly swooping in and around traffic. Most years I get at least one bird embedded in my grill (Grilled Swallow, anyone?). I mention it because we are in the middle of "Miller Time" right now. They donk us on the head, scare us when we turn on the lights, cause "Target Fixation" at traffic lights (motorists who become so entranced watching birds swooping on moths that they miss the changing of the lights) and just generally piss us off.
Every Paradise has its price? I guess. I never made a secret of the fact that basically, I am just passin' through...well...I guess I am staying.