HEAVY Things Are Happening......finally.....

[J.B. Stone]

Got my questionaire on Project SHAD today.

4 months LATE, I might add...but, hey...it came with a FREE PEN.....!!!!


What the heck....35 years of suffering, a dead daughter, 6 heart operations, and a whopping $880 a month....what MORE could a guy ask for...???


~~~~~~

Since it looked like the IOM would NEVER get this far....I guess I should me more THANKFUL.


right.


I just wonder how many MORE years this will drag on, now that the DOD/VA have admitted they have contacted fewer than HALF those affected.....and many of the rest are DEAD already.

......sigh......

~~~~~

On a more positive note...

A second topic thread in the "BioChemical Warfare and You" forum has broken 10,000 page views. A few more posts and I'll catch up to KaSuckThong....!!!

Never mind that his "research" is WAY funnier and more useful than my contributions.

It's time to THANK Connie and SquareEntropy again for their very generous allowances in my respect.

~~~~~~

Now for the HEAVY part.

I've seriously considered taking the voluntary dirt nap on several occasions in the last six weeks.

Not to worry....I'm still here.

I'm installing a new [rebuilt] engine in my 4X4 Ford, a few folks have made attempts to reach me after many, many years of wandering, and I MAY be able to scam the ownership of one newly primered '39 Chevy Two Door Sedan......for less than $5,000, no less.

But, that PEN just made my day.


At least now I can pick up my motorcycle from the shop where it's been sitting for two months.....and I guess I'll just shelve the dream of ever sitting in my own 427 Cobra kit car.


Life is what it is.

Thanks to all who've peeked into the SHAD/112 world.

I keep hoping I'll wake up and forget the nightmare...but, THAT is just a silly wish.



~~~~~~~~

Hang in there, it could be worse....

You could be ME....!!!

[Theresa]

J.B. Stone wrote:

I've seriously considered taking the voluntary dirt nap on several occasions in the last six weeks.

This IS NOT an option J.B. Stone and I am not kidding. You are not a quitter! What will a voluntary dirt nap accomplish? It will relieve you of your physical and emotional suffering from this earthly life but it will also leave your business here unfinished. You will also leave behind people who will forget your fight and what you were fighting for, because they will remember instead that you took a voluntary dirt nap. NO NO NO .

[Roy Wilson]

Navy ; knock that dirt nap crap off, that’s for cowards sit ; you are no coward!
I told you this was going to be a good year and it will be. Let us know when you get the motor in the 4x4. get that bike out and clean her up, if the weather is good enough take her for a run.
Nobody can be you JB , too big of shoes to fill, so you will have to do it.

[J.B. Stone]

J.B. Stone wrote:

I've seriously considered taking the voluntary dirt nap on several occasions in the last six weeks.

This IS NOT an option J.B. Stone and I am not kidding. You are not a quitter! What will a voluntary dirt nap accomplish? It will relieve you of your physical and emotional suffering from this earthly life but it will also leave your business here unfinished. You will also leave behind people who will forget your fight and what you were fighting for, because they will remember instead that you took a voluntary dirt nap. NO NO NO .

OK, OK.....


You realize the ONLY thing that keeps me going at times is the refusal to let "them" win.

Is it 'FUN'.....????


Yeah, right.

I'm just real, real, REAL.....burned out on this quest.

I wanna go build hotrods and FORGET about it.

Trouble is.....

Ain't got no money, ain't got NO energy, ain't got no HOT ROD.....!!!!


But, thanks to folks like you....

I HAVE got some friends in this world.

Actually, quite a few.


Didn't want to let them down.


So MUCH of my life is about "other people".

[J.B. Stone]

I'm not the ONLY one who's getting the crap kicked out of them by this whole MESS:

Today's SHADDEE CHAT....

Received my Navy Shipboard Health Study questionairre from the IOM yesterday. Returned it today with additions and supplements. The IOM has lots of questions of which the last third involve project SHAD.

Answering the last two or three questions looked like a one way trip to Leavenworth, Kansas but since I didn't actually prepare the test samples or handle dead animals I could skate. I know some of you did that. Sure wish the money involved in this stupid study had come our way.

Also wish I could get my medical records from that wonderful time. Don't know if any of you remember when I had some Vietnamese metal removed from my right knee and left shin while serving in Hall but it doesn't really matter to the current VA administration. If I died right now it would take a second or third opinion to get buried in a National Cemetary. Cremation would be considered as faked evidence.

While there's a certain amount of "gallows humor" that we can employ....it's as if we don't even EXIST.


I've got an idea for a way to impact the situation....but, then....that means yet ANOTHER project for which I am unprepared, unfunded, and unsupported by the people who stand to profit MOST.

[J.B. Stone]

Navy ; knock that dirt nap crap off, that’s for cowards sit ; you are no coward!
I told you this was going to be a good year and it will be. Let us know when you get the motor in the 4x4. get that bike out and clean her up, if the weather is good enough take her for a run.
Nobody can be you JB , too big of shoes to fill, so you will have to do it.

I just want some REST...but....we ALL know that is NOT in the charts.


THere simply ISN'T any "reserve".

No second wind.

Heck, there's no FIRST wind.

[J.B. Stone]

You know......the most IRONIC part of all this is that we ALL loved the Navy....!!!

To all my Navy Comrades in Arms: The Navy - VAdm Harold Koenig, U.S. Navy, Retired

The Navy

*** I liked standing on the bridge wing at sunrise with salt spray in my face and clean ocean winds whipping in from the four quarters of the globe -- the destroyer beneath me feeling like a living thing as her engines drove her swiftly through the sea.

*** I liked the sounds of the Navy - the piercing trill of the boatswains pipe, the syncopated clangor of the ship's bell on the quarterdeck, the harsh squawk of the 1MC, and the strong language and laughter of sailors at work.

*** I liked Navy vessels -- nervous darting destroyers, plodding fleet auxiliaries and amphibs, sleek submarines and steady solid aircraft carriers.

*** I liked the proud names of Navy ships: Midway, Lexington, Saratoga, Coral Sea, Antietam, Valley Forge - - memorials of great battles won and tribulations overcome.

*** I liked the lean angular names of Navy "tin-cans" and escorts - - Barney, Dahlgren, Mullinix, McCloy, Damato, Leftwich, Mills - - mementos of heroes who went before us. And the others - - San Jose, San Diego, Los Angeles, St. Paul, Chicago - - named for our cities.

*** I liked the tempo of a Navy band blaring through the topside speakers as we pulled away from the oiler after refueling at sea.

*** I liked liberty call and the spicy scent of a foreign port.

*** I even liked the never ending paperwork and all hands working parties as my ship filled herself with the multitude of supplies, both mundane and to cut ties to the land and carry out her mission anywhere on the globe where there was water to float her.

*** I liked sailors, officers and enlisted men from all parts of the land, farms of the Midwest, small towns of New England, from the cities, the mountains and the prairies, from all walks of life. I trusted and depended on them as they trusted and depended on me - for professional competence, for comradeship, for strength and courage. In a word, they were "shipmates"; then and forever.

*** I liked the surge of adventure in my heart, when the word was passed: "Now set the special sea and anchor detail - all hands to quarters for leaving port," and I liked the infectious thrill of sighting home again, with the waving hands of welcome from family and friends waiting pier side

*** The work was hard and dangerous; the going rough at times; the parting from loved ones painful, but the companionship of robust Navy laughter, the "all for one and one for all" philosophy of the sea was ever present.

*** I liked the serenity of the sea after a day of hard ship's work, as flying fish flitted across the wave tops and sunset gave way to night.

*** I liked the feel of the Navy in darkness - the masthead and range lights, the red and green navigation lights and stern light, the pulsating phosphorescence of radar repeaters - they cut through the dusk and joined with the mirror of stars overhead. And I liked drifting off to sleep lulled by the myriad noises large and small that told me that my ship was alive and well, and that my shipmates on watch would keep me safe.

*** I liked quiet midwatches with the aroma of strong coffee -- the lifeblood of the Navy permeating everywhere.

*** And I liked hectic watches when the exacting minuet of haze-gray shapes racing at flank speed kept all hands on a razor edge of alertness.

*** I liked the sudden electricity of "General quarters, general quarters, all hands man your battle stations," followed by the hurried clamor of running feet on ladders and the resounding thump of watertight doors as the ship transformed herself in a few brief seconds from a peaceful workplace to a weapon of war -- ready for anything.

*** And I liked the sight of space-age equipment manned by youngsters clad in dungarees and sound-powered phones that their grandfathers would still recognize

*** I liked the traditions of the Navy and the men and women who made them. I liked the proud names of Navy heroes: Halsey, Nimitz, Perry, Farragut, John Paul Jones and Burke. A sailor could find much in the Navy: comrades-in-arms, pride in self and country, mastery of the seaman's trade. An adolescent could find adulthood.

*** In years to come, when sailors are home from the sea, they will still remember with fondness and respect the ocean in all its moods - the impossible shimmering mirror calm and the storm-tossed green water surging over the bow. And then there will come again a faint whiff of stack gas, a faint echo of engine and rudder orders, a vision of the bright bunting of signal flags snapping at the yardarm, a refrain of hearty laughter in the wardroom and chief's quarters and mess decks.

*** Gone ashore for good they will grow wistful about their Navy days, when the seas belonged to them and a new port of call was ever over the horizon.

*** Remembering this, they will stand taller and say...

"I WAS A SAILOR ONCE."

Recived From : Richard Jones USS Wexford County (LST-1168)

*** I liked sailors, officers and enlisted men from all parts of the land, farms of the Midwest, small towns of New England, from the cities, the mountains and the prairies, from all walks of life. I trusted and depended on them as they trusted and depended on me - for professional competence, for comradeship, for strength and courage. In a word, they were "shipmates"; then and forever.


You're not REALLY an "old salt" until you realize your life really DOES depend on each and every member of the crew....24/7....while you blissfully [right] sleep.....!!!

*** I liked Navy vessels -- nervous darting destroyers, plodding fleet auxiliaries and amphibs, sleek submarines and steady solid aircraft carriers.

Even that crappy old rust bucket, the Granny had a certain "magic" to it....stirring up the luminescent plankton in the tropical ocean....leaving a football field - wide swath of blue-green glow in the water....

smashing through waves, watching the anchor chains rattle with the force...

waiting for the mythical "blue flash" at sunset when....momentarily....the sun's light passes through the deep ocean from below....

watching a blue whale silently breach a few yards off the port beam in the moonlight...curious at our passing....

"talking" to the school of porpoises that followed us for three days, playing and challenging one another to swim THROUGH the screw and laughing at us by the fantail...

knowing your nearing the shore when you see a lonely sea gull floating by on a crate HUNDREDS of miles from land....

*** I liked the serenity of the sea after a day of hard ship's work, as flying fish flitted across the wave tops and sunset gave way to night.

The first time you see the flying fish....you think you've been eating Navy chow too long.....but, they're WAY cool....!!!

*** Remembering this, they will stand taller and say...

"I WAS A SAILOR ONCE."

.....yep.....

[Phi]

But, thanks to folks like you....

I HAVE got some friends in this world.

Actually, quite a few.

A man with friends is the richest man in the world.

[J.B. Stone]

But, thanks to folks like you....

I HAVE got some friends in this world.

Actually, quite a few.

A man with friends is the richest man in the world.

Aye, Aye, Sir...!!!



I think Larry, over at ProjectSHAD.com says it best...

" Old Sailors NEVER DIE -- we just go to hell and regroup......."

[Roy Wilson]

" Old Sailors NEVER DIE -- we just go to hell and regroup......."

That is priceless JB

[styky]

JB you are the very definition of the word perseverance.

[carfix2000ca]

Re:2:17: He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.
Re:2:26: And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Re:3:5: He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
Re:3:12: Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.
Re:3:21: To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.

[texasredtop]

J.B. Stone wrote:

I've seriously considered taking the voluntary dirt nap on several occasions in the last six weeks.

This IS NOT an option J.B. Stone and I am not kidding. You are not a quitter! What will a voluntary dirt nap accomplish? It will relieve you of your physical and emotional suffering from this earthly life but it will also leave your business here unfinished. You will also leave behind people who will forget your fight and what you were fighting for, because they will remember instead that you took a voluntary dirt nap. NO NO NO .

Theresa is right.

Shame on you. You're made of more than that JB and you know it.

[Lionhead]

Theresa's sentiments cannot be echoed enough on here.

JB, you've got too many friends and followers on here to get away with that.

I know it hasn't been easy, but, keep pluggin'!

[Angleland]

Thank you for posting Navy Comrades In Arms. My father served on the North Atlantic in WW II so at least some of it would be applicable.