Gambling on the Big Rock

I love story tellers, and one of the best I ever met was Gwynn Hayes of Sanders, Indiana. When I met him he'd been a school teacher in the elementary school in Sanders for 46 years! His father had also ran a the country store in Sanders. When the store was open and Gwynn wasn't teaching, he worked at his father's store. So, he had lots of opportunities to hear everything going on in Sanders all through his life! When I knew him in the early 1970s he must have been in his 50s or maybe his 60s.
I spoke to him several times, but the time I remember most was sitting on the counter in his father's store for most of three, maybe four hours, hearing him tell story after story about life in Sanders, Indiana, from the 1930s to the present, the 1970s. The store where we sat was empty. I don't know how long it had been closed. It, like so many small businesses so necessary to people in a prior day no longer was. Better roads and cars that could took people shopping to the bigger towns around.
Some of Gwynn' stories:
--Some cars of his early days had what he called "gravity flow" gas tanks, meaning there was no pump to carry gasoline form the gas tank to the engine. The gas just "flowed" by gravity to the engine. He said in the hilly area around Sanders people with those early automobiles frequently found themselves backing up hills--so the gasoline would flow into their cars' engines.
--A railroad that served the area was called the "Pumpkin Vine" because it made so many twisting turns in that hilly country.
--A popular spot in the town on paydays was a place known as the "big rock." It was a flat sheet of rock on which no grass or other plants grew. And, on paydays the men would take their pay up to that big rock to gamble. Gwynn said one fellow gambled away all of his money except for 10 cents. So? The man took that 10 cents down to the ice plant in Sanders, bought 10 cents worth of ice (which was a big chunk), put it in a bucket, filled the bucket with water and, presto, he had ice water! He took the ice water back up to the Big Rock--where he sold drinks of that cold water until he got enough money to get back into the game!
--"Biggam" McCammon ran a cafe in Sanders during Prohibition. That was the period when it was illegal to sell booze, beer, whiskey etc. in the United States. There were rumors that "Biggam," so called because of the size of his fists, sold illegal spirits at his cafe. And, wouldn't you know two Horse Thief Detectives, the so-called "police arm" of the Klu Klux Klan, showed up one day determined to arrest Biggam. They didn't. Story goes that Biggam didn't use his fists, only a gun he kept under his counter--which he pulled out when the two Horse Thief Detectives pulled out their badges. Biggam then proceeded to fire several shots into the ceiling of his cafe, to which the Horse Thief Detectives promptly set to flight. It is said they forgot a vehicle they'd brought with them or didn't want to take the time to get in it--and ran a good ways back to where ever they came from. I think I would have liked Biggam!
There were many more stories that Gwynn told and one day I will add some. Just know it was awfully nice hearing him tell all those stories in that store. I still remember how sunny the place was when he started telling me and then how it had grown to twilight when he finished. He told stories that long.

Hamas & Democracy

Newscasts of most American broadcast organizations have all been putting the same "spin" on the story out of the Middle East about the Palestinians electing a largely majority Hamas government. Hamas the newscaster say is a terrorist organization and therefore they find people who say Democracy did a bad turn for the moderates in the Middle East and around the world.
I disagree with that completely. I believe the ballot box did exactly what it was supposed to be and that we should congratulate the Palestinians on electing a government. The government they have or had--Fatah--has been known to be corrupt for a long time, and it retained its power for many years without elections of any sort at all.
One story I read in fact quoted a Palestinian man as saying he voted for Hamas because Fatah is so corrupt. If that is true, then that man's vote worked! Democracy worked. The Palestinians were able to throw out a corrupt government, not by getting a lot of people killed, but at the ballot box.
So, the story that none of the American news organizations seem to be picking up on is that: democracy worked in Palestine.
Now, that said, there are many more steps to be taken to ever solve the problems of hate and killing in Palestine. There seem to be too many people there who enjoy both those things, hate and killing. Furthermore, they seem to enjoy it not for any political reason, but simply for the sake of hating and killing.
Yet, if the Palestinians decide they want peace, they will vote in a government that campaigns for peace. That may take years. Who knows? But, it may not take years because if they see their wishes fulfilled at the ballot box, they may vote more often.
But, the major news organizations will never understand that.
That also is why the newscasts of the major news organizations in the US, ABC, NBC and CBS continue to loser viewers.
In a nutshell? They don't know what they are doing.

Olga Greenlaw, Heroine of the Flying Tigers

I discovered Olga Greenlaw purely by accident, and those are the kinds of accidents I enjoy. Olga Greenlaw was married to the executive officer of the famed World War II Flying Tigers. The Flying Tigers? They also were known as the AVG or American Volunteer Group, a group of about 300 American airmen who provided China with an air force to fight the Japense as they invaded China. The story of the Flying Tigers can be found in many books and on many places on the Internet.
And, believe it or not, you can learn a lot about Olga Greenlaw on the web.
Continuing about her here, she was a beautiful woman who served as statistician and writer of the Flying Tigers' Daily Diary for the year they were in China. She chanced to be there because her husband, Harvey Greenlaw, knew the Flying Tigers' commander, Gen. Claire Chennault, and became his excutive officer.
I've read Chennault's book and his wife's (the Chinese one) book and then quite a few web articles about the Flying Tigers. All are interesting, but what you read is somewhat what you expect.
Olga Greenlaw, on the other hand, is totally unexpected because she is so beautiful and charming. She's like a beautiful rose in a cactus patch.
I ran across her name in something I read, and then looked it up on the marvelous web. There I found a lot about her as well as some photos that, again, show her to have been a very lovely lady. I also learned she'd written a book, "Lady and the Tigers" and that it was published in 1943.
I have since gotten the book and read it, and of the many books on the Flying Tigers, hers is one of the best. You get a good idea about the men who flew and maintained their planes. She got to know Chennault, and you learn from her that he was a great cribbage player. You meet Chaing Kai Chek (sp) and his beautiful wife, and you get a sense of how influential Madame Chaing Kai Check was. You also get a sense from Olga Greenlaw's book of what it was like to be in China during the war as the Japanese kept advanced so brutally.
You meet this woman who develops affection for many of the fliers--only to see the fliers killed one by one. And, oh, the loss she feels at their dying is sad.
One recurring theme in war stories comes up in hers, that of actually seeing those who have been killed in war. She describes seeing and talking to two pilots--after they were killed. She also recalls at another point something that happened that she related to the exact moment that another pilot was killed.
You can find that same idea, of seeing soldiers who have been killed coming back to be seen by a live comrade, in "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Those Devils in Baggy Pants." Now there is this third book, The Lady and the Tigers where it happens.
Most recently, incidentally, I saw a television program about an American GI re-visiting the battle field at Khe Sanh (sp) in South Vietnam. It had been a bloody battle field. Anyway, this GI claims to have seen a squad of soldiers or Marines somewhere through the mist, fully armed and dressed as they would have been during the battle. He said he saw them up a hill or on a ridge line.
Just curious.
You will also see, by the way, comments or suggestions on line and in some other books that Olga Greenlaw might have been more than just friends with some of the pilots. Those behind the hand snickers and winks. Yet, all you get from her book for sure is how much she cared for so many of them, and if in fact there was any more to her relationship than that, so be it. She still comes across as a wonderful human being whose presence meant a lot to the Flying Tigers.
She and her husband had a stormy marriage from what I've read. They were divorced in the mid 1960s, and Olga is said to have died in 1983.
I contacted one of the Flying Tigers still alive who knew Olga and told him I thought I would have liked to have known her. He said I would have because Olga would have made sure I liked her. I like that thought because Olga sounds like such a wonderful person.

Thank You Lovely Lady

I love seeing lovely, classy women. I don't have to possess them. I don't have to know them. I don't even have to say anything to them. Often, just seeing one is enough, although...
A week or so ago I chanced to be at a beach side restaurant in St. Peterburg, Florida with my wife and her mother. As they talked, I chanced to glance behind my wife at another table to see this truly lovely woman. She sat straight in a straight back chair sideways to me as she talked to a man whose back was to me. She wore matching pants and a waist jacket of light yellow or maybe a light brown color. Her hair was cut about neck length combed in a simple, but elegant style. I could not see her eyes. So I do not know their color.
I did not stare at her, but several times I glanced at her. I didn't seem to catch her eyes, and she continued talking to her male companion.
Our salads came, and then as I began to take bites from mine, I glanced at the lovely woman again. And, oh, how beautiful. She now leaned back in her chair in a way that she almost reclined, and her lovely body created this wonderfully diagonal line. The small waist jacket she wore was spread apart and open to show me this soft purple velour blouse she wore that covered her breasts...Well, I simply cannot describe how beautiful she looked. That long, soft line of her body, the way that blouse seemed to flow over her breasts. Oh, my!
I wondered: was she doing this for me? Striking this senuous pose?
I continued to glance at her as I ate, and she did not change her posture again for some minutes. Then a few minutes after having stopped looking at her to speak to my wife and her mother, I glanced again in the diretion of the beautiful woman.
Lo, now she stood as her companion, standing beside her, counted out money to leave for a tip.
And, then would you believe?
With her companion's eyes on his wallet, she glanced directly at me--right into my eyes. And, then would you believe: she gave me this wonderful smile.
I felt the warmth of that smile, and I do right now. Wow!
She and her companion turned and left, and I know I shall never see her again. But, oh my, I will always have that lovely picture of her reclining on that chair and feel the senuous sensations from her warm smile. I also have a very pleased feeling. She'd posed on that chair for me.
Wasn't that nice of her?