Monthly Archives: May 2010

The Judge Says

The Judge Says

One of the reasons I started writing this blog was so I would have a repository for things I had already written.  That’s why you can find Christmas poems going back to the 80’s.  I also wrote a column in the Fort Riley POST when I was the Staff Judge Advocate for the 1st Infantry Division and Fort Riley.  I wrote a column every week and it was great fun.  I tried to plug in a little legal education (at a very mundane level), pride in the Division and Post and a little humor.  I called the column, “The Judge Says.”

After I had been doing this for a little over a year, General Hugh Overholt, The Judge Advocate General of the Army, showed up for our annual inspection and presented me with the Forces Command “4th Estate Award” for writing the best column in an Army paper.  I’m may be overstating the significance of the award.  So sue me.

So I am going to feed in Judge Says columns under the category, “The Judge Says.”  I also wrote comumns in Germany when I was the V Corps SJA.  I entitled the Column, “From the Corps.”  It was originally entitled it “From the Corps Rear.”  The SJA office was located at the rear of the Corps, but I was convinced that I should drop rear out of the title.  I guess there were no prizes for originality of thought.  I may stick the “From the Corps” articles under “The Judge Says” or come up with a new category.  I don’t want to make such a weighty decision at this time.  Here it is.  Enjoy.

*** Tuesday, we had the ground breaking for the new NCO Club.  And while I wasn’t there, I’ll bet I can tell you what happened.  I’ll bet General Partain and probably CSM Dyess each with a shovel, dug into the virgin soil where the new NCO Club will soon stand.  How do I know this?  ‘Cause that’s how it is supposed to be done.

The reason I am mentioning this is because, in 1973 (or 4, things are beginning to get fuzzy), I observed the craziest ground breaking ceremony ever.  It was the new JAG School in Charlottesville, VA.  The Commandant couldn’t get The Judge Advocate General down from DC at the time construction was ready to start, so he decided to wait till a later date when a lot of big wigs could be present.  Well, by the time of the ground breaking, the foundation had been dug and the basement concrete had been poured.  You ain’t heard nothing yet.

On the day of the ceremony it was raining.  We were all loaded on buses (mandatory formation), but we were heading in the wrong direction.  It seems that because of the muddy conditions, the ceremony was to be held inside at a different location.  As I took my seat at the Red Cross Training Center, I noticed up on the stage, a sand box full of dirt.  Now, I’m flexible (there’s a fine line between being flexible and wishy-washy) and I think I could have gone along with the late ceremony inside the wrong location as long as the dirt had come from the construction site (Heaven knows they had lots of dirt laying around).  But when I found out the dirt had been purchased from a local nursery, I slid down in my seat hoping no one would see me.  On three occasions, I denied being present and, even later, claimed ignorance of the whole affair.  I was convinced the building had been conceived out of wedlock. But, even with this dubious beginning, the JAG School has turned out to be a fantastic building.  Each one of my lawyers has studied military law at the school.

The bit about the JAG School doesn’t have a lot to do with the point I want to make.  That is that Fort Riley and the Big Red One are pointed in the right direction – a new NCO Club that will bring back some of the traditions of the Army.  Soldiers at Fort Riley are doing a lot of things right and we need to build on that pride.  We are the best.

That brings me to another pet peeve – dissatisfiers (that’s a 75 cent word that means those things that hack you off).  If we sat down and thought about the things that we are unhappy about, we could make a long list, and the more we wrote the more unhappy we would become. And there are turkeys around that do just that.

Don’t get caught up in the game of negative thinking.  I knew a captain and his wife who were unhappy at Fort Carson, Hawaii and every other post they were assigned.  And they loved to talk about how miserable they were.  The Fort Riley community has a tremendous amount of energy and good things are happening.  Get involved and contribute.
 

Random Thoughts

I Don’t Own a Credit Card, It Owns Me!


I am having trouble keeping up with this computer driven world.  Credit cards have been around long enough that I couldn’t conceive how they could become a problem.  Not for old conservative Ish.  By using a credit card, I don’t have to carry around a lot of cash.  Then, pay them off each month and I’m golden.  NOT. 

I started hearing late last year that some of the players on my high school baseball team wanted to hold a reunion.  We are talking about the 1950’s.  And, it happened.  On Saturday, April 24, 2010, East Side High baseball players from 1954, 55, 56 and 57 met at the Collinsville Recreation Center to regale each other with long dormant memories.  I counted about 18 players.  No, we didn’t chose up sides.  Nobody even brought a ball or a glove.  But a scrapbook or two jogged a few memories.  After 55 years, the stories definitely get better.  The reunion was low key, but great. 

We stayed in O’Fallon, Illinois with Carole’s mom.  On Friday, I ducked out the back of the apartment complex to visit Schnucks Market.  I bought a gallon of milk and four “D” batteries.  I paid with my Visa card.  All went smoothly.  Why wouldn’t it?  The next day I slipped over to Schnucks for a bucket of chicken and my Visa card was denied!  I ran it through four times before the clerk explained that the machine recognized the card, but it was being denied.  That is so embarrassing.  You feel like everyone in the store has stopped what they are doing and are staring at you.  I whipped out a wad of twenties, displaying as much cash as I could and paid for the chicken. 

As soon as the chicken was sequestered, I called Visa.  Eventually, after convincing them that I was the card holder, they advised me that their records indicated fraud or a stolen card.  I assured them I had the card.  We went over our purchases for the last three days.  They were mundane charges that  one makes when traveling from Virginia to Illinois.  What is suspicious about eating at Cracker Barrel? 

The Visa representative had no authority to reactivate my card.  I’m 650 miles from home and some computer, which is unhappy with my travels, has shut down my card.  I was transferred to Visa Security.  After again identifying myself to their satisfaction and going over my recent transactions, they agreed to reactivate my card.  I was further told that I needed to contact the Pentagon Federal Credit Union (my Visa carrier) and let them know I was traveling.  And, in the future, contact them before I leave the state.  Otherwise, the sophisticated computer system  will track me down and shut me down. 

I called PFCU.  The woman wanted my PIN number.  I do have a PIN number.  It is in a ledger back in Springfield, Virginia.  She advised me that there was another way to identify me.  It consisted of a series of computer generated questions that only I (the true card holder) would be able to answer.  I answered two of the first three correctly.  Not good enough.  The computer generated questions had a better memory that I had.  I didn’t do as well on the next three questions.  I only got one right.  Finally after answering the first two questions correctly, she asked me to identify the state in which Sandy Rice was living.  I passed.  This permitted me to tell them that I was traveling and would be for a couple more days.  I presume this information was fed into the security computer so it wouldn’t get excited when I charged a motel bill in Beckley, West Virginia.  

So our next trip is at the end of the month.  I will have to call PFCU and tell them where we are going to be and on what days.  What I want to know is who is working for whom?  This crosses my mind every time a check out clerk is explaining to me what I need to do to process my credit card through the machine.  Didn’t they used to do that for us? 

On my next trip, I am now fearful I will have car trouble and be late getting to the Kentucky State line.