{"id":33418,"date":"2025-07-30T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=33418"},"modified":"2025-08-08T15:56:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T19:56:35","slug":"soldier-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/07\/30\/soldier-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"SOLDIER BOY"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nI wish I had been in the military. I could have been in, but I didn\u2019t go. I was against Vietnam. I learned quagmire<\/em> \u2014 the word \u2014 from Walter Lippmann in Newsweek<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I can take orders and I don\u2019t generally sass people, and I\u2019ve never argued with cops or umpires.<\/p>\n

Some of my high school classmates went into the service.\u00a0 Some are on the war memorial on Green Road. By and large, these deceased guys weren\u2019t in the college-prep classes.<\/p>\n

One high school friend — a Jewish guy — went to Annapolis, though. He eventually became acting head of the FBI in Cleveland. I visited him at his office, and we brainstormed on ways to thwart terrorists. I didn\u2019t have much to contribute.<\/p>\n

When I was in elementary school, I sent away to the Air Force Academy for photos, and the academy mailed me an application.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> I was mistaken for a military man only once, when I represented the Armed Forces at a sign-review meeting at Lakewood city hall. The Armed Forces rented a store from us. A sign-review board member said, \u201cYou walk like a military man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Atten-hut! Thank you.<\/p>\n

The Armed Forces recruiting center housed the four major branches: Army, Navy, Marine and Air Force. The Army turned its basement area into a gym with punching bags and a Nautilus.<\/p>\n

In 2008 the recruiters moved out and went across the street to a newer building, and left us with three ratty sofas, a rusty Nautilus, barbells, a mini-trampoline and a punching bag. For starters.<\/p>\n

I wrote to the Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, Kentucky, re U.S. lease W912QRM504000025:
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

There is 40 years\u2019 worth of\u00a0 junk in the basement: 27 chairs, a punching bag, American flag, scrap shelving, metal framing, boxes of “Army of One” promotional material, two bikes, six pieces of Nautilus-like weight equipment, barbells, a mini-trampoline . . .<\/p>\n

A 1970s stereo system, file cabinet, and a lot of assorted paperwork, of which I\u2019ve enclosed an invoice from 1991, just to give you a flavor for what\u2019s down there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The government paid for the hauling. That was my last dealing with the military. \u201cSgt. Stratton\u201d never happened. Nor did \u201cPrivate\u00a0 Stratton.\u201d\u00a0 I feel somewhat guilty about that. (I know, typical ex-hippie revisionist thinking.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I wish I had been in the military. I could have been in, but I didn\u2019t go. I was against Vietnam. I learned quagmire \u2014 the word \u2014 from Walter Lippmann in Newsweek. I can take orders and I don\u2019t generally sass people, and I\u2019ve never argued with cops or umpires. Some of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33418"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33454,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33418\/revisions\/33454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}