cockroach control miami

Be damned. You sure we didn't get drunk together somewhere along the line? I seem to remember someone with a phony British accent cadging drinks in that joint just down the street from Cherokee Park.

Wasn't boot camp. I was a fairly freshly minted Second John taking a re-
orientation course in the newly reorganized armored corps, replete with new tanks etc.etc. We were a group of ossifers ranking from the lowliest (me) all the way to a Light Colonel who, I guess, needed re-orienting.

Then, from the blue grass of Kentucky, they shipped me up to the blue lips and fingertips country of Fort Drum, NY. Louisville, I trow, has recovered from the onslaught but I doubt that Watertown, NY will ever be the same.

You were fortunate, Andy, not having to hike those three hills with a 70-lb. pack and a DI shoving you all the way.

I was also lucky in that regard. I went from Louisville to San Antonio where I learned to fly a USAF desk. Then for a short tour in the Azores and eventually to Madrid for a little over two years.

But perhaps you got to climb Heartbreak Hill afterall. In Beantown, that is.

In Beantown, yes. The Pentagon had the good sense to never send me overseas.

I guess you missed this action also, Andy. You are among the elite few to have seen Cherokee Park in it's prime. Of course, you were probably fairly well primed yourself when you saw it. Seeing it several times at once.

This from Wikipedia:

Tornado damage in 1974

Much of the park was heavily damaged in the April 3, 1974 tornado Super Outbreak. The tornado was an F4 on the Fujita scale. A city forester surveying the aftermath said, "I don't believe that anyone alive today will see Cherokee Park as it was before the storm."

Because of the loss of thousands of mature trees, a massive re-planting effort was undertaken, financed in large part by a grant from the United States government under the Disaster Relief Act of 1974. However, to qualify for these funds, the park had to be restored to its pre-tornado design as faithfully as possible. The original Olmsted plans were consulted for the park's "rebirth" (as it was called at the time), with 2,500 trees and 4,600 shrubs planted in the restoration effort.

So was I, somewheres around '65. I reenlisted to get out of that hole. I swear it. I didn't see any gold, but from the top of tower 1 at the Ft. Knox stockade you can see the repository - or is that supository?

I can credit that, Rog. I was only at Ft. Knox once, in '64, when I drove there to pickup a hometown buddy who'd just finished AIT. It was a dismal Saturday morning, foggy and drizzling. Seemed like my idea of a POW camp; a dreary looking place, if I ever saw one. My buddy was sure glad to see the last of it.

The only gold I saw there was on the collars of a few guys like Andy. Though I seem to recall the clapboard buildings were painted a sort of washed out yellow.

In the 1960s it still looked like the pictures of training camps of the 1940s that you see in books on World War II, accurately (mostly) recreated in movies about that war. The only part of the base that was worth a visit, if one is a history buff like me own self, was the George S. Patton Museum which has a fine, fine collection of tanks and other tracked vehicles dating back to World War I. And they're not all American tanks, eeither. There are British and French Renault tanks and Russian JSU3s etc. That, and the Officers' Club which served marvelous mint juleps.

Say, has anybody seen a thread on cockroaches around here anywhere? I lost it somewhere in this area.

It's possible the cockroaches got homesick and left when we got on to Ft. Knox.

Must have been in the summer time. Any other time, the first thing you would have mention was that god awful, overpowering stench of coal fired heating and hot water heating systems. It takes up residence in the sinuses, and doesn't move out for the rest of your life.

Sounds just like cockroaches.

It's even worse now, Roger. The lower Ohio Valley is in a league of it's own when it comes to poor air quality.

The last breath of really clean air I had was when I visited family in Payson, AZ a few years back.

You ever been there, Rog? It's not overly far from you ... south to Gallup, west on I-40 to Holbrook and then follow the Mogollon Rim southwesterly. Payson and someplace in Louisiana are said to have the highest ozone levels in the U.S.

http://www.paysonrimcountry.com/MountainRecreation/StarGazing.aspx

Don't think so. I have driven from Gallup to Los Angeles, but I was looking at miles per day, and not scenery.

I have driven from Cortez to Shiprock fairly recently, and was really surprised at from how far away you could not see Shiprock Peak. That Four Corners Power Plant, at which I used to work, had a reputation for visible air pollution, and the San Juan Generating Plant on the other side of the river made it's own contribution. I understand that some individual units, and maybe an entire plant has since shut down. For political and other reasons, the cost of shut down became greater than the cost of keeping them up.

Old pals from design school in Los Angeles ended up in Nicholasville, Kentucky. They were both sharp designers, but he punted to go into locksmithing because he loved puzzles and got into quite advanced levels of that. I still hear from them at the holidays and would enjoy visiting. Oh, and some bourbon if I ran across it, hey. If I remember, they were both from Kentucky in the first place, so for them it was going home. I have fond memories of him showing us all about this new game, Pacman.

I know a couple of fellows who live in Nicholasville, but neither is in that sort of work. Both are in heavy equipment sales, but with different companies. The guys also share the same last name, but they're not related, except insofar as we're all supposed to be descended from George Washington, or so I read somewhere. Better than being descended from an ape, which I heard someone else say. Anyway, both guys are named Smith, so it's not so overly strange they're not related. I know a lot of Smiths who aren't related to anyone, to speak of.

I'm still racking my brain to try and recall whether I actually know, or ever did know, anyone whose family name was actually Smith. I can't come up with an exact match. My father had a good friend whose last name was Smits. Close enough, I guess, but you don't win a kewpie doll for 'close.'

I'm positive I've never known a single 'John Smith.'

We had a Smith check into the motel when that's what I was doing. He seemed a little uncomfortable giving the name Smith, especially since he lived on Smith Lane. I assured him that anyone with a street named after him was entirely welcome.

'Struth, I swear.

I'm pretty sure there was a captain by that name, Andy. Stationed in Virginia, I believe. Might have been before your time.

Know who you mean. But I wasn't in Virginia at that time; I was staying up north in Plymouth. We had a John Alden living there.