One of my pet peeves is people who don’t want to tell their boss no, so they ask their friendly lawyer for an opinion.  Then when the lawyer tells them what they already knew, they run to their boss and say, “The judge says you can’t do it.”

March 13, 1981

“Hey Judge, Colonel Flapper wants to use unit funds to purchase that gear we were talking about.  Could you take a look at paragraph 7-2a of Army Regulation blankety-blank.  I don’t think the regulation lets us do that.”

“I agree,” sayeth the Judge.  “Thanks Judge.”

“Hey Colonel Flapper, I just talked to the JAG about using unit funds and he won’t let us.  Says it violates some regulation.”   “Damn, I wanted that gear.  You can always count on the lawyers to get in the way.”

Please excuse my mild paranoia, but I am convinced that the above is in my job description.  At my previous assignment, in a funny shaped building, I would receive correspondence that would ask, “Does para 4-3 prohibit us from doing this?”  I would pull out the regs and sure enough, para 4-3 would say, you can’t do it.  Then I would call the turkey who sent me the request and ask him why the dumb question?  The answer goes something like this.  “The boss really wants to do it and I don’t think he will believe me if I tell him that he can’t. But if you put it in writing, he’ll understand.  Sure he’ll understand.  He never had any doubt.  It’s those damn lawyers again.

We don’t like to tell commanders no.  We would rather have them tell us what they would like to do and then let us try to figure out how they can do it legally.  But it is also our responsibility to keep our clients out of trouble. When we see that there is a danger in what is proposed, then we have to stand up and be counted.  That comes with the territory.

But the type of responsibility I am talking about isn’t limited to lawyers.  We have all kinds of soldiers who are experts at what they do.  The best.  Each one of you who knows your job should let your boss know when you see something is wrong.  I’m not saying a soldier shouldn’t do what he/she is told.  What I’m saying is that if you see something wrong, something that doesn’t make sense, something that is dumb, let your boss know.  We ought to take advantage of everything we know and make it work for the organization.

September 11, 1981

“Folks, we are going to give you a new camera, and the film is also free and all you have to pay for is a small processing fee to have the film developed.”  Does that sound familiar?  Yep, the old door-to-door huckster.  Have you ever wondered how these salesmen make a living when they give everything away free?  The answer is you will pay big for everything you get.

Here are some of the door-opening gimmicks.  “This offer is only available to members of the Armed Forces (Golly, they found a soldier living in Junction City – What a break).  Another way they get in your door is they tell you they are only taking a survey.

They will look you right in the eye and swear that what they want to talk about won’t cost you a cent. (that’s true, it’s going to cost you big bucks).  They will tell you that your name was randomly selected out of the phone book (so was your next door neighbor and his neighbor).

Back to the camera deal.  The camera is free, the film is free and over a two year period, you only pay $450 for film processing.  For 450 bucks you can get an oil painting.  Such a deal!

Let me give you a couple of rules for handling these turkeys.  First, no honest salesman is going to insist that you must sign the contract at the time he gives his pitch.  This bit about “this offer is only good tonight” is bull.  What do you think he will be doing the next night?

I have had salesmen in my house (whom I thought were reputable) who insisted that the offer was only good that night.  I turned red, my upper lip puffed out and I escorted them to the door.  They do this every night for a living, but your offer is only good for that night.  Think about that.  Balderdash.

Second, if you get taken in by these smooth talking snake oil salesmen, I have good news for you.  Under Kansas and Federal law you have a three-day cooling off period in which you can cancel the contract.  But you need to move fast.  If they can slip and slide, they will.

Another gimmick they will use is to tell you they will pay the down payment and you can pay them back later.  They want your signature in the worst way.  Once they’ve got it, they gotcha.

There used to be a clothing store in St. Louis that when you bought a belt, they threw in a free pair of trousers.  But, of course, the belts were not cheap.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may receive this totally free introductory offer simply by writing your name and address on the back of a ten dollar bill and sending it to me.

June 27, 1980

When I was a kid back in East St. Louis, Illinois, I used to love to go to the carnival.  I used to stand by the hour and watch people try to knock over a bowling pin with a baseball hanging from a cord.  When the patron was only practicing, he could knock over the pin every time (you had to swing out the ball and knock the pin over on the back swing).  But as soon as the money was on the table, the ball couldn’t find the pin.  I knew it was crooked, but I couldn’t figure it out.

Well, last month, Bob Stephan, the Attorney General of Kansas, invited me out to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation in Topeka, and the KBI presented a program on how carnival games work.  I was right, most of the games are crooked.  Even the little innocent-looking mouse is a crook.  He always runs into a colored hole that no one has bet on.  The operator has ammonia on his finger and touches the hole he wants the mouse to go into.  The mouse is attracted to the ammonia and goes to that hole.  I also found out that there is a spot where the bowling pin can be placed so that the ball cannot hit it.  The pin is placed a little off the spot for practice shots.

Carnivals get by on the basis that there is always a sucker ready to part with his money.  I saw a spinning wheel  in Topeka that always won when it was spun to the left and never won when it was spun to the right.  All the numbers games with conversion charts are made so that you will never win.   If the operator shows you how easy it is to win, you can bet he didn’t add the numbers up right.  He will do it so quickly that you won’t be able to keep up with him.  But when the money is on the table – forget it – the addition will be impeccable and you lose.

The coin toss works on the percentage.  If you pitch enough coins, you may win a prize.  The $2.00 stuffed animal ends up costing you $5.00.  Such a deal.  The coin toss is rigged by hanging the prizes low over the dishes so the coins can’t be arched.  Further, the dishes are waxed and tilted at a slight angle.   My advice is to let your kids ride the merry-go-round and buy them some cotton candy.

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.