I am at a point in life where I remain virile and physically ambitious. However, I’ve come far enough to see I am no longer “youth in all its vigor”. I have always said, “a little bit of vanity goes a long way” and—in terms of motivating oneself to remain fit and trim—it does. But even so, I find myself at a point of diminishing returns. This quote from Joseph Campbell brought home how important it is for one’s mind to transition to a position ever more deserving of our attention than our physical self, whose return on investment shall inevitably fade in comparison.
“The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
“One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment.” ~Joseph Campbell
It evoked in me the following advice I passed on to a friend I know who is coming to terms with the compromise that comes with being spared dying young.
“You and I will never surrender willingly to age. We will always fight the good fight. However, it is healthy to know what our priorities should be as we undergo the process.
Be optimistic but realistic. Make your expectations achievable. Praise yourself for looking as good as you do and doing the best you can. Let yourself off the hook for being human.
Every living creature … every beautiful movie star … to the smallest amoeba … will experience the same thing. And not all with the grace that you will.” – The Bard
DONNIE HENRY 2ND GRADEBEULAH ARNOTT 2ND GRADE TEACHER MONNETT ELEMENTARY SCHOOL RENSSELAER INDIANA
By Don Kenton Henry
PREFACE:
The first time I was ever paddled was in the 2nd grade. (In fact, what I did got me carried out of the classroom by my ear. The cartilage in my right ear was broken and still goes “snap, crackle, and pop” today.)
It was joke day, and I got up on a stool and told my joke, as did each of us, according to our seating order.
And that’s when things went bad.
(Caveat: I will not rewrite history for the sake of an overly sensitive, woke audience. The past was no more perfect than our present will be deemed to have been by our children and grandchildren. It was what it was, and remembering it allows us to judge how far we have come as a society. I am not proud of all within, yet I tell this story as it happened. If you cannot handle an imperfect past, spare yourself and read no further. I will not be apologizing for any butt hurt you may suffer as a result of transgressions long past.)
It all began at Monnett Elementary School in Rensselaer, Indiana, during the 1961-1962 academic year. It was the end of a Thursday in Miss Beulah Arnott’s second-grade class when she announced a special assignment.
“Tomorrow is Friday, and we are going to prepare for the weekend with a little fun,” she began. I would like you to go home today and learn a joke. Practice telling it tonight, and tomorrow, each of you will come up, sit on this stool (which she had already positioned in the front and center of the classroom), and tell the class the joke you have memorized. Now go home and ask your parents, or get in a book or newspaper and learn a joke you will share with the class right after phonics tomorrow.”
Boy, was I excited! I loved it when Mr. Moose told jokes on the Captain Kangaroo morning TV show. And I always listened when Bob Hope had my dad in stitches as he told jokes on stage—even if I didn’t get most of them. I always knew I would be famous someday, and tomorrow would be my big “breakthrough” moment on a meteoric rise to stardom. My feet barely touched the ground as I ran home to learn a joke. I could scarcely contain my excitement as I burst into our home’s front door on Weston Street. I didn’t want to scour the house for a joke from a book or newspaper. And there was no internet where, today, even a second grader would know how to Google one. That left my parents, and I knew my mother had never told a joke in her life. My dad, on the other hand, had told many. Not to me or my siblings so much. But to my uncles and dad’s buddies. And usually, while they were sitting around drinking and smoking cigarettes. Like the Bob Hope jokes, I didn’t get most of them, but they must have been funny because my uncles always laughed heartily at them and followed with, “That was a good one, Don!”
And so, I began a search for my dad. Which ended quickly.
The black and white Philco television was on, and even though it was barely 3 in the afternoon, there was Dad, fast asleep on the sofa. A half-empty bottle of Jim Beam rested on the coffee table before him. This was great because I knew I had a captive audience.
I crawled up on him and straddled him about the waist. He was face up, and I immediately began tapping it gently with both hands. “Dad, Dad! Wake up! I need to learn a joke!”
“Aww, go away, Junior. I’m sleeping,” he mumbled.
“No, Dad, no! Wake up!” I really need you to teach me a joke!
He continued to urge me to leave him alone, but I was determined to get him to tell me one. “Dad, it’s my homework. It’s a school assignment. I have to learn a joke for class tomorrow!” I pleaded, continuing to tap his face and lightly jumping up and down on his chest.
Finally, with closed eyes and slurred words, he told me a joke. Once again, I didn’t get it, but I knew it must be another good one. Dad immediately fell back to sleep, and I immediately jumped off and ran upstairs to practice my joke.
I stood in front of the full-length mirror attached to my bedroom door and recited the joke over and over again until my siblings and I were called down to dinner. Dad remained passed out on the sofa. I could barely sit through my evening meal as I could not wait to return to my room to practice reciting my joke. And so, I did. I stood in front of that mirror, channeling my best Jack Benny until I could no longer stay awake.
The next day, I managed to get through phonics without wetting my pants as I waited for my big moment. With phonics behind us, Miss Arnott reminded us of our assignment. She said she would call on us in order of our seating position (which was alphabetical), and we, in turn, would take our seat on the tall grey steel stool to the right of her desk and tell our joke.
Now, permit me to inject a bit of insightful historical background at this point. For those of you who were not in grade school in the sixties, the big joke making the rounds with playground comedians those days involved the riddle,
“What’s black and white and read all over.”
The answer, of course, was, “A newspaper!”
As my last name is Henry, I was seated halfway through the second row of seats and had to listen to approximately eight or nine jokes before my name was called. Given the originality of the average parent of a second grader at that time, at least four of these jokes began with—you guessed it!—”What is black and white and read all over?”
Well, by that fourth time, even the biggest dullard in the class, Barry Hemminger, would scream out, “A newspaper!” while the rest of the class moaned in collective exasperation. Then came my turn.
“OK, Donnie Henry. It’s your turn. Come sit here on the stool and tell the class your joke.” I strutted forward and climbed atop it. The world was now my stage, and I would not fail in the all-important delivery of my joke. A joke that I was so determined to recite and deliver in a manner worthy of the best comics to grace the Ed Sullivan Show. I faced the class with the biggest smile I could muster over my buck teeth. Those same teeth my dad always said would allow me to “eat corn through a picket fence.”
“OK, Donnie. Tell us your joke,” urged Mrs. Arnott.
I posed the question, “What’s black and white and has three eyes?”
Up went that collective moan again, and Miss Arnott called on the first hand raised. Once again, we heard the answer, “A newspaper!”
“Nope!” I said.
Miss Arnott called on the second kid, and again came the answer, “A newspaper!”
“Uh, uh!” I replied.
This played out through two or three more students, the last of whom was Barry Hemminger, and again, I told the class, “No! It’s not a newspaper!”
By now, even Miss Arnott’s face bore a look of puzzled anticipation.
“OK, Donnie Henry, it looks as though you have stumped the class. What is black and white and has three eyes?”
I can still feel that smug look of pride and satisfaction I knew projected well beyond my expansive overbite when I delivered my well-rehearsed punch line. So, with a beaming face and all the gusto I could muster, I let them have it.
“Sammy Davis and May Britt . . . A one-eyed nigger that married a white woman!”
In retrospect, I wish the answer had been, “a newspaper”. Alas, I never heard the thunderous applause I am certain erupted from my audience. A sharp and painful ringing masked all else, and I would soon find myself levitating above the classroom floor. Miss Arnott leaped from her desk like a starved jaguar pounces on a newborn calf, picked me up by my right ear, and carried me into the hallway. (Over six decades later, the broken cartilage of my ear still crackles and pops when I touch it.)
Miss Arnott bore me down the hallway and into the principal’s office, where she related my joke to him. He listened and then began a dissertation on the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment until my little eyes glazed over. All that even before the Civil Rights Act was passed three years later. (In 1964, I could say, “I saw that coming”.)
I looked up at the two of them and said, “I guess I’m not supposed to say the word ‘n*gg*r’?”
I scarcely got the words out of my mouth when I was told to “bend over and grab your ankles.”
There would be many paddlings to follow in those dark days plagued with political incorrectness. But that was the first for me. It seems corporal punishment and political incorrectness went hand in hand.
I wish this story (or confession) ended here. But it doesn’t. The rule in our house was that if one of us kids got paddled at school, we had to come home and tell our parents. That would have been fine if it had just involved my mom. But we weren’t to be so lucky.
I returned from school and went directly to my dad. There must have been a blue moon on the rise, as he was actually sober this particular afternoon. Through trembling lips, which could barely contain those corncob-eating teeth of mine, I related to him that I had been paddled by the principal at my school.
He looked down at me and said, “Well, Junior. You know what that means. Go out to the dog kennel, get the strap off the wall, and meet me in the side yard.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
He was waiting in the yard, and I heard, “Pull your pants down,” along with (for the second time that day), “Bend over and grab your ankles.”
This wasn’t my first rodeo. I did as Dad said, but unlike previous occasions where justice was administered, he paused in the middle of drawing back on the strap. “Now, before I give you what you have coming, why don’t you stand up for a second and tell me why you were paddled at school.”
Pulling my drawers up as I rose, I told him I was paddled because “I told them that joke you taught me yesterday.”
“Joke? I taught you a joke?”
“Yeah, Dad. While you were trying to sleep on the sofa.”
He appeared baffled. “What joke did I teach you?”
“You know, dad. The one about the one-eyed n*gg*r that married a white woman.”
His face appeared as though his prize hunting dog, Queen, had just birthed a cat.
“I told you that joke?”
“Yeah, Dad.” After a terminal pause, he said, “I’m sorry, son. You never should have been paddled. That’s my fault. Buckle your pants up, put the strap back on the kennel wall, and go to the dinner table.”
And that’s how I learned all about stand-up comedy, civil rights, and racism in the second grade.
(“And how did you all come to be covered in wild rice—and say—is that an oyster in your hair, Mrs. Henry?” asked Officer Dawalt. Mom ran her fingers through her hair, removed the article, and inspected it. “No … that’s a giblet.”)
All Thanksgivings are defined by the sumptuous and traditional feast for which—among other wonderful things—we give “thanks.” But Thanksgiving of 1968 hosted a cornucopia of blessings so bountiful that they might well have been served on the white china platter handed down through generations to my mother. Presentation is half the experience, and the spectacular entrance and carving of the Thanksgiving turkey on that platter was a custom in our household. All else that transpired on that holiday of my fourteenth year was not.
In the history of family holiday memories, it was a day when we were blessed as much for what did not happen as for what did. And it was a day remembered forever for two reasons.
The first was my mother’s state of recovery from a successful in-patient surgical procedure. Her full recovery, when it occurred, would be another thing for which to be thankful. But at this point, it had not. She was unable to spend much time on her feet and therefore could not prepare our Thanksgiving dinner. That responsibility fell to our babysitter, Mrs. Alden, whose husband—a Miami County deputy sheriff—was on duty that holiday. As her children lived in distant corners of the country and would not be returning this year, she would otherwise have spent the day alone. Given my mother’s condition, she was invited to join us and volunteered to prepare the bird.
Mrs. Alden was a rather dowdy sixty-year-old who dyed her hair a flaming shade of red cranberries only long to be. Each month, at noon on the second Wednesday, she maintained this conflagration at the Golden Curl just off the courthouse square in our hometown, Finn’s Landing, Indiana. Her bonfire bouffant resembled a beehive set ablaze with Ronsonol lighter fluid, and it contrasted starkly with her porcelain English complexion—white as milk from an Old English goat. The result created a visage that defies description.
I’ll attempt the impossible: imagine the Bride of the Abominable Snowman, sporting a red wig, a ruffled high-collar dress, and black orthopedic shoes. If you can endure more, picture her long Anglo-Saxon face punctuated by a pug nose upon which perched maroon horn-rimmed glasses (to complement the hair, I presume) framing coke-bottle lenses that made her eyes appear as large as a fruit fly’s.
In summation, you now have a fair impression of “Mrs. Abominable Snowman” working as a librarian at the Finn’s Landing Public Library—except that on this holiday, she would not be stamping our library card with her prehensile paw. Instead, she would be serving our Thanksgiving dinner.
Mrs. Alden claimed to be a direct descendant of John Alden, the first settler from the Mayflower to set foot on Plymouth Rock in 1620. 1968 was not the first year we were informed of this historical relationship. Having been with us five years at the time, she reminded us each November by proclaiming her Thanksgiving turkeys were second to none. “Magnificent to behold and sumptuous beyond imagination,” she’d boast while puffing out her massive bosom and strutting about the house like a barnyard fowl in her own right.
The first claim—as to her lineage—I have never been able to substantiate. The second—as to her culinary skills—was yet to be. But one thing was certain: Preston, Kevin Hill, and I grew exhausted to the point of apoplexy at hearing both. Preston was my younger brother by less than two years. Kevin Hill, my best friend at the time, several years younger, would be joining us for dinner.
Mrs. Alden went on ad infinitum about what an honor it was to have such a heritage, as well as describing in painful detail what went into preparing her turkey. However, such disclosure did not extend to her oyster stuffing. The essential ingredients (no doubt provided by the Indians at Plymouth) were handed down through generations of Aldens. She insisted no one—other than her daughters upon her death—would ever know exactly what, besides oysters, went into that bird. All of which made Kevin, Preston, and me more determined to have a hand in it.
This brings me to the second unique aspect of this Thanksgiving—the one for which to be most thankful. This was the first Thanksgiving we were blessed to have my mother’s older brother, my Uncle Waldo, living with us.
Uncle Waldo had been a ball-turret gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress during World War II. On his thirty-first air raid mission over Germany, his squadron took tremendous ground fire. Flak pierced the Plexiglas of the turret in which he was suspended beneath the aircraft. Among other injuries, a shard of shrapnel entered and lodged deep within his skull.
The B-17 lost an engine, its controls were damaged, the rudder ceased functioning, cabin pressure was lost, and the oxygen supply was cut off. The plane dropped three miles in forty seconds before leveling at eight thousand feet—just high enough for the crew to breathe. Miraculously, they made it back to Podington Base in Bedfordshire, UK. Unconscious, Waldo was unloaded onto a stretcher, covered head to toe and presumed dead. Had he not survived, he would not have been spending Thanksgiving with us.
But survive he did—though not unscathed. In addition to a long jagged scar beginning above his right eyebrow and curving over three inches of his now bald skull, Waldo had a one-inch bomb fragment lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. Doctors deemed removal too dangerous. There it remained.
He took daily Phenobarbital to manage occasional petit mal seizures. These were typically preceded by a rapid fluttering of his eyelids—usually the extent of the episode. We were very proud of Waldo. He adored us; we adored him. All in all, these episodes were not too difficult to manage.
More interesting, however, were the times he claimed that the shrapnel in his head acted as an antenna picking up AM radio waves. Ordinary activities would halt as he declared, “W-O-W-O… Fort Wayne, Indiana!”
We masked skepticism respectfully and asked him for the weather report or soybean prices. Strangely, he was always at least as accurate as the weatherman.
One afternoon, he rotated his elbow overhead as if seeking better reception, singing Time of the Season by The Zombies. Uncertain whether he was having a religious experience or “tripping” on Phenobarbital, I turned on W-O-W-O. Sure enough—the song was playing.
Later, when my younger siblings were in bed, he claimed to hear short-wave transmissions from Tokyo Rose or Japanese Zero pilots en route to bomb Bunker Hill Air Force Base—just nine miles south of Finn’s Landing. He’d don his father’s World War I doughboy helmet and pace the house, scanning the night sky. Thankfully, he lacked an air-raid siren.
A couple of days before Thanksgiving, Preston, Kevin, and I huddled in my basement bedroom, bemoaning Mrs. Alden’s incessant bragging. After five years of her soap operas, her British storm-trooper demeanor, and the tyrannical lunches of SpaghettiO’s or chicken noodle soup, we’d had enough.
Her latest proclamation—“My turkey will make your mother’s pale in comparison!”—was the final straw.
We resolved to humble her. And so, we hatched a plan.
Preston, even then, was a budding MacGyver. My father—a Navy Seabee in Korea—had left behind supplies in the coal bin: black powder, fuses, primers, blasting caps, and various demolition materials. Dangerous, yes. But conveniently available.
We devised an “IED”—a tiny explosive device. The concept: When the turkey thermometer popped, it would complete a circuit from an AA battery, ignite a short fuse inserted into a 12-gauge shotgun shell (with the shot removed), and cause a small explosion. Enough to ruin a turkey. Not kill anyone.
In theory.
Since Mrs. Alden guarded her stuffing like the Crown Jewels, our plan required stealth. Thanksgiving morning, we would slip the device into the stuffing when she left the kitchen to “freshen up” before her grand entrance.
Kevin stayed overnight. The three of us slept in Preston’s room, adjacent to the kitchen. At dawn, we awakened to Mrs. Alden clanging pots like a culinary ironworker. My grandparents arrived, greeted my mother (resplendent despite her recovery), and we returned to the bedroom.
Ears pressed to the door, we waited for the kitchen to fall silent.
When it did, we moved.
Kevin took lookout at the green door. I removed the turkey from the oven. Preston unpinned its backside, armed the device, embedded it in the oyster stuffing, repinned the bird, and returned it to the oven—all in under a minute.
“Mushrooms and wild rice,” Preston muttered.
“What?”
“Two of the now not-so-secret ingredients,” he said smugly.
He explained “turkey fusion”—his theory that the device would detonate when the internal temperature reached 175 degrees. He estimated five to five-and-a-half hours cooking time for a 23-pound bird at 350.
Unfortunately, this meant the explosion could occur while Mrs. Alden was removing the turkey—turning her head into part of the stuffing.
Not our intention.
To prevent involuntary manslaughter, he recalculated and instructed me to silently raise the oven temperature to 400. I did.
Now, we waited.
Time passed. Macy’s Parade blared. Our nerves frayed. Mrs. Alden marched into the living room, furious: “I know I set that oven to 350! Someone raised it to 400!”
We shrugged collectively, imagining the fiery wrath of Sasquatch.
When she lowered the temperature back to 350, Preston panicked: “Now I don’t know when it will explode!”
A grim possibility dawned: The device could detonate at any moment—while retrieving cranberries, say, or as someone blessed the sweet potatoes.
“What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked.
“The worst,” Preston replied, “is that Mrs. Alden’s head gets blown off.”
True enough.
At last, noon approached. Mrs. Alden inspected the turkey. Three of us flinched in unison. She beamed: “It should be ready at twelve noon sharp. Right on schedule!”
We carried food to the dining room, praying the device was a dud.
It was not.
Mrs. Alden swept in with the turkey upon the white china platter of family heritage. It was flawless—golden brown, glistening, aromatic. A triumph.
Grandpa began grace.
“Let us bow our heads… Dear Lord, you have laid the table before us—”
KAAAA-BOOM.
A blast of Richter-scale proportions obliterated the table’s contents. The room vanished in a fog of wild rice, shallots, mushrooms, oysters—an edible Hiroshima.
Bits of turkey viscera clung to wallpaper where pastoral cattle once grazed. Oysters nestled in ox-drawn carts.
Everyone sat stunned—mouths agape, eyes fixed, silent as stone. An oyster dangled from the corner of Mrs. Alden’s glasses. A full pound of Cool Whip clung to her bouffant like a fallen glacier.
Slowly—like the Tin Man awakening with oil—fingers twitched, limbs moved, breath returned.
Then came Uncle Waldo.
His jaw clicked rhythmically; his eyes rolled back white as marshmallows; eyelids fluttered at hummingbird speed. A full neurological storm was underway.
His right arm shot up, hand planting on his bald skull like a radio antenna.
“Jap Zeros at six o’clock! They sank the Arizona!” he shouted.
He bolted from the table, donned his father’s WWI doughboy helmet, seized his M1917 Enfield rifle, and charged out the front door.
Our neighborhood watched in horror as Waldo aimed nearly straight upward.
“BANZAI, ROUND EYE!” came the cry.
“Banzai my ass!” he yelled, firing two .30-caliber rounds into the Indiana sky.
Mr. Bud Lutz, editor-in-chief of the Finn’s Landing Tribune, stood on his porch across the street—arms folded, expression grave.
“Everything under control, Marietta?” he called to my mother.
“Everything is fine,” I answered. “Uncle Waldo just repelled a Japanese airstrike.”
The Police Arrive
Officers Cary Dawalt and Sergeant Wheeler responded to reports of gunfire. My mother and grandfather explained Waldo’s war injury and history—omitting any reference to the turkey of mass destruction.
“And how did you all come to be covered in wild rice—and say—is that an oyster in your hair, Mrs. Henry?” Dawalt asked.
Mom removed it. “No… that’s a giblet.”
They decided not to press charges, especially after little Mark—squinting into the sun—proudly informed them:
“Why, them little yellow bastards!”
The officers wisely let the matter drop.
They confiscated the ammunition and bolt from Waldo’s rifle, rendering it harmless.
Aftermath
Miraculously, Grandma’s ham survived the blast. We ate it—wild-eyed and ravenous—while Grandpa began grace again, this time without interruption.
Mrs. Alden, brushing wild rice from her hair, resigned permanently and declared:
“You mad little monsters! That was the most beautiful turkey I ever cooked!”
In the following days, the incident never made the Finn’s Landing Tribune. Mr. Lutz, however, saluted Uncle Waldo each time they crossed porches—no doubt grateful to be alive.
And these were all things for which to be uniquely thankful regarding that Thanksgiving Day in 1968.
“It would have taken a dinosaur to knock down those doors, but—unfortunately for ‘The Coach’—he was line-bred back only to the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch!”
by Don Kenton Henry
It was a crisp “Indian Summer” evening, and a full moon hung over the playing field like a white china plate. It and an Indiana October sky of 1969 had the best seats in the house for our homecoming game with arch-rival Blackford County. They were an undefeated, perennial state football powerhouse known for crushing their opponents by fifty points or more with their “All-State” offensive and defensive lines. Their reputation was so fearsome they didn’t require a mascot and were simply referred to as, dreaded, “Blackford.”
My team, the Peru High School “Tigers,” had compiled a less-than-stellar record of one and six coming into tonight’s game. We were a “rag-tag” band of math majors and merit scholars better suited for academic game shows than “blood and guts” on the gridiron. Our quarterback would one day be a state appellate court judge; our running back—my wife’s psychotherapist. Perhaps the most brilliant and enterprising among us was our center, Bob. He became a bio-chemist by way of Purdue and patented a chemical which—when added to raw sewage—made it smell like perfectly good tacos. Bob would come to claim he had sold large quantities to the city of Tijuana, Mexico allowing him to retire early. Though we came to refer to him as the “Ron Popeil of Poo” at all future meetings of the Rotary, we remained skeptical. Years later, walking across the border from San Diego, I was alternately confused and convinced.
Trailing only 24 points (24-0) almost mid-way through the game, we were playing well above our heads. Suffice it to say, we were in desperate need of a hero—any hero! We couldn’t afford to be picky. And that was lucky because, sitting on the bench, weighing one hundred three pounds in full pads, I was definitely in disguise as far as football heroes go. I wore size thirteen shoes at one end of my five-foot-six-inch frame and a twenty-four-inch head at the other—appendages you would typically find on an NBA draft pick, not a “walk-on” from the speech team. My head, in fact, was so big that, until tonight’s game, I had gone the entire season without a helmet. (Not that it mattered because, at this point, “Coach” had not seen fit to take me off the bench.) However, just before game time, Clem, a toothless, fifty-year veteran of our janitorial staff, pulled me aside and proudly presented me with a helmet he had found, just the day before, in a crate in the far reaches of a storeroom under the stadium bleachers. It was a leather model (one without a face mask) from Knute Rockne’s heyday. “Now you’re official, kid!” were the words from his grinning gums as he handed me the helmet. I squeezed it on and ran to the nearest mirror in the locker room. I fancied I looked just like Ronald Reagan in Knute Rockne, All American, filmed at Notre Dame—only about fifty miles up the road. Aside from the fact neither Ronnie nor George Gip had braces and rubber bands on his teeth, I could make no distinction.
The coach had been trying unsuccessfully all season to persuade me to return to Mrs. Sims’ speech and debate team or, at the very least, convert to “first string” equipment manager. To encourage me, the coach had me—practice in and practice out—serving as a blocking bag for the varsity or as the kick-off and punt returner on special teams. Off the record, the assistant coaches told everybody to “fall back and let Henry take the ball!”
“Wake-up! Wake-up! Henry!” were the first words I heard after Ron, “The Bull” Bullock squeezed my head as though it were in a steel vice while tackling me. The equipment managers kneeled over me, waiving smelling salts beneath my nose. “You only lost ten yards on that return before you went unconscious!” they explained in a failed attempt to encourage me.
Ron "The Bull" Bullock
Having already “lettered” in record time on the speech team, I had yet to prove my athletic prowess and would not be deterred. Game after game, I sat on the bench at the end opposite “Dorfman,” future proctologist to our parents. Dorfman had barely accumulated more PT (playing time) than me, and we both occupied our time on the bench—when meteorological conditions allowed—making mud pies. Mine were of the basic “Smiley Face” type.
“Hey, Henry! … Check this out!” Dorfman pleaded while sliding down the bench and simultaneously displaying, in outstretched hands, another creation resembling an anatomical or biological anomaly.
“Ugh!–What’s the diagnosis this time, Dorfy?”
“Don’t know—the lab results aren’t back yet,” he answered with a somewhat demented gleam in his eye.
It had been twenty-two years since The Tigers had defeated Blackford. Many of our fathers had played on that “Cinderella” squad back in ’47, and it was with the greatest earnestness they implored us to do them proud and kick Blackford’s tail! Sitting on the sidelines, calculating the possibility of history repeating itself for the sake of our fathers, I concluded the odds to be about forty-three million, one hundred fifty-seven thousand, three hundred and twenty to one. Still, I sat there secure with the thought that I, and any physical shortcomings on my part, would have no bearing on the outcome of this game. It was this thought which comforted me as (mercifully) halftime arrived. We made our way deep into the bowels of the stadium. To our locker room, commonly referred to as … “The Dungeon.”
“The Coach” had reason to be mad. The score remained 24 to nothing in favor of Blackford, leaving us well on our way to losing to them for the twenty-second season in a row. Though he may have been a man with a vocabulary limited to one and two-syllable words, there was nothing limited about Coach Werner’s physical expanse. A former defensive lineman for the Kansas City Chiefs, he stood six-foot- six and weighed over three hundred and twenty pounds. His complexion fluctuated from lesser to greater shades of purple, and—when he spoke – “The Gods” trembled, and the wire-reinforced plate glass windows in the walls of the dungeon pitched in their frames with the caustic crescendo of his indictment of our heritage and manhood. As evidence, he cited Mother, God, and … Apple Pie. He addressed us as “Commies,”; “wimps,” and “Girlie-Boys.” (I interpreted this as meant in general and did not refer to me specifically.)
But the coup de grace came when he thrust his right hand high in the air and beseeched us, “Do as I do!” (we all reached high in the air) “Now, jam your hand between your legs! (afraid not to–we jammed!) “Now squeeze real hard … and …if you feel anything at all—though I doubt you will!–I want you to go out and kick Blackford’s butt!”
I was so deflated (and not wanting to admit I’d squeezed and come up short) that, by the time the coach got to the team prayer, I slipped through the locker room doors into the archway of the stadium for a breath of fresh air.
And then … it happened. Why? … I do not know. To answer that is like trying to answer the question, “How long is a string?”… I just don’t have enough information. All I know is, I reached over and grabbed the case-hardened padlock which hung from the heavy dead-bolt; quietly shut the double, four-inch-thick steel doors of the locker room; latched the latch; slipped the padlock in; and … locked the lock.
In an instant – a tidal wave of horror rushed over me! What had I done? I had just taken an entire team hostage! Thirty-odd teammates, managers, and coaches on the inside … and me—one hundred and three-pound sophomore, third-string wimp on the outside! I stood paralyzed – afraid to flee through town in my uniform–“A Deserter!”.
The team had just finished its prayer as the marching band played the last note of our fight song. I heard one or two anemic rebel yells, followed by the sound of cleats against concrete, as “The Tigers” trotted toward the doors. The first bump against the door was subtle and muffled. The second, not so much so. And then the incredulous cry—”Hey, we’re locked in!” and the shoulder pads began to bang. “Umph!-Bang!”… “Uuummph!-Bang!” came the sound as wave after wave of players hurled themselves into the wall of steel. But the doors did not give. Even when the entire defensive line hit the doors as one, the doors did not give.
Then … IT” came—like a bellow from the depths of hell: “Outta my way you mothers!” Have you ever heard of a bull elephant in a rut? Well, I don’t need to, for I heard Coach Werner as he smashed like a bowling ball through pins of players sending them sprawling in all directions just before hitting the doors at Mach IV! Did you know steel can scream? I know it can stretch! For I saw two-inch thick hinges stretch like taffy as Coach hit the doors! They stretched but did not break.
I saw a lock you can shoot with a thirty-ought-six … bend before the brute. Bend … but did not break. Time after time, Coach hurled himself against the doors. Time after time, the doors screamed … but did not give. It would have taken a dinosaur to break down those doors, but—unfortunately for “The Coach”—he was line-bread back only to the beginning of the Pleistocene Epoch!
Then—like a dying rhino—I heard him bellow, “Henry! … I’m gonna kill you! Now … how … did he know … it was me? What had he done—taken a “head count”?!
Well, that’s the only encouragement I needed! I sprang from the archway of the stadium to take the field. No sooner did the crowd see me fly from the bowels of the stadium than it roared to its feet. As I dove through the paper-covered hula-hoop, the noise was deafening! I was a’ high-steppin’; afeared the coach was right behind me.
I was in the middle of the fifty-yard line when the crowd finally realized something was amiss, as the ovation began to subside . . . dramatically. (I suppose I was a bit conspicuous being the only player for the Tigers to take the field.) Not one to bask in the limelight, I quickly made my way to the end zone to engage in a flurry of calisthenics at a rate I only hoped would make me invisible! Blackford had already taken the field and was warming up in their end zone but now paused to stare at me in puzzled amazement.
Have you ever heard a sports announcer silent for lack of words? Have you ever seen a band director freeze, band baton in hand, in mid-note? Not a drum beat; a trombone boned or a tuba tubed. Cheerleaders were frozen in mid-flight. I know. I was there. All by myself in the end zone. I proceeded with a hyperactive display of jumping-jacks and was so scared I ripped off seventy-five one-arm push-ups! I was standing on my head bicycling when the astute janitorial SWAT team of Peru High finally succeeded in freeing the coach from the confines of his cage. Like Godzilla, Coach thundered from the archway. Again the cry—”Henrrry! … I’m gonna kill you!” This was the only sound, and it reverberated, like the bombs over London, off the walls of the stadium.
Who would have thought a three-hundred-pound purple mass could travel so fast? Who would have thought someone with size 13 feet and “chicken legs” could outrun him? I dodged. I darted. But when I zigged–he zagged! When I hid behind the goalposts—he almost knocked them down! He was insane in his pursuit!
It was in the ranks of the marching band that he finally caught up with me when I was clotheslined by a trombone slide. He picked me above his head, shook me till my fillings came out, and body-slammed me head-first into a tuba. Then—with the tuba still on my head—threw me into a fireman’s carriage and bore me into the locker room.
The comeback was great! The score was 24 all by the end of the third quarter. We were awesome! We completely shut down Blackford in the second half and won the game 31-24 in the closing seconds!
Call it luck. Call it skill. Call it anything you will. I call it … Inspiration”! I know … for I heard the roar of the crowd when the coach took the playing field without me. I felt the incessant pounding of 4,000 stomping feet above me. I could feel the electricity of a man and team … inspired. Yes—even bound—and gagged with dirty jock-straps and stuffed inside a locker—deep in the bowels of the stadium . . . I knew “I”. . . had inspired The Tigers . . . to victory.
“The best woman I ever had, I won in a card game. Not in New Orleans, Vegas, or some other “City of Sin”, but in Dayton, Ohio. My prize was an even less likely result given I had not played poker since the sixth grade.”
By Don Kenton Henry
The best woman I ever had, I won in a card game, not in New Orleans, Vegas, or some other “City of Sin,” but in Dayton, Ohio. My prize was an even less likely result, given I had not played poker since the sixth grade.
The year was 1973, and I was returning to Indiana University on my Honda 400 motorcycle after a road trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. A broken chain got my bike and me a ride to a chopper shop in east Dayton. While waiting for a replacement, the shop experienced a boom in business as 12 members from the Sons of Sedition biker gang rode in on their choppers.
While the gang waited on parts of their own, a game of standard poker broke out on the engine block of a Chevy V8 on the shop floor. I was asked to join. Correction—I was told to join. Despite my best efforts to lose what little cash I had, my hand continued to play hot until everyone folded but a guy, they called . . . “The Cannibal.” And I had most of his money. I tried not to look at the New Zealand aboriginal tattoos covering his face or filed eye teeth and attempted to avoid eye contact. I wanted to fold myself, but a twenty-pound hand from behind came to rest on my shoulder and convinced me I would not. Cannibal raised the stakes and put his bitch in the pot. “This is Heather. We call her ‘Header.’ She is worth all that cash you got in your purse and then some, kid.”
“But this is all I have, “I said. “Put it in, kid,” he said. I discarded it and asked the dealer to hit me. I felt the blood run out of my head as my hand went “flush.” I turned the corner up on the Jack of Spades. The Ace, King, Queen, and 10 of Spades I already held gave me a Royal Flush. An unbeatable hand. The bike chain arrived, and Header climbed onto the back of my Honda, and we headed out on I-70 toward Indy into the setting sun. I stopped to let her off at an IHOP on the edge of town, but Header, still seated behind me on the Honda, took me by my ears. As she pulled me back against her firm and ample breasts, I could feel her nipples through her tie-dyed tank top, which bore the white dove on a guitar neck concert logo and the words, “Woodstock Came to Me.” She put her lips against my right ear and said, “Kid . . . I got no kin within 300 miles—and if you leave me here, The Cannibal will track you down and eat you with his chorizo.” This she punctuated with a flick of her studded tongue in my ear canal. I dropped the bike from neutral into first gear and gunned it toward that great red ball.
I awakened to the smell of eggs and bacon and found Header cooking in the kitchen with my mother. We were at my mom’s house in Tipton, Indiana, where I had taken us the night before. It was about halfway back to my university. Unbelievably, my uptight Presbyterian mother (history buff that she was) was totally taken with the tattoo of an adulteration of the Monroe Doctrine, signed by The Cannibal, which began at the nape of Header’s neck and extended south beyond the northern border of her bell bottom jeans. It was something of a proclamation to the effect that Cannibal retained a sovereign right to wage war against any party he perceived posed a threat to his interest in the property bearing said proclamation. Specifically—Header.
She was a big hit back at college, especially with my brothers at the SAE house. Header and I didn’t emerge from my room the first three days she was there. We locked my roommate out and lived on nothing but Noble Roman’s pepperoni pizza with anchovies which we ordered by phone and had the delivery boy slip through the door. By that third day, the entire hallway reeked of anchovies and sex. (I know–you’re thinking that’s redundant.) On the eve of the fourth day, my “roomie” in an act of desperation, pulled a fire alarm. We still refused to vacate the room until a fireman threatened to break the door down with a pickaxe.
Reluctantly, we entered the hallway, Header wearing nothing but her Woodstock tank top.
I got extra credit after presenting her as “show and tell” in my American History class, after which she disappeared for a three-day weekend with my history professor. (This may or may not explain how I managed to pull an A out of a solid C- average at semester’s end.)
Header became increasingly popular with my fraternity brothers to the point I succeeded in getting a vote passed to make Header an “Honorary Little Sister.” This ultimately had to be reversed when word got out to the sororities, and every “official” little sister threatened to terminate her status with our house.
Then—one night of freshman rush—we floated a keg which Header rolled into the hot tub and, topless, rode like a bucking bull waiving one arm above her head while singing our school fight song.
I awakened the following morning to the guttural “ka-chunk” of a Harley hawg and the low with Header on the back. Header glanced over her shoulder and gave a small wave. Without looking back or missing a gear, Hannibal gave me the one-finger salute. I turned and saw the words, “Woodstock Came to Me,” draped on the headboard of my waterbed. I guess you can’t stand in the way of true love–and the Monroe Doctrine trumps even a Royal Flush.
The rest of my college career was relatively uneventful. I graduated and married a cute little blonde Tri Delt. Her name is Susan. We call her “Suzie.” She shops.
Occasionally, when riding my BMW touring bike through the hills of southern Indiana, I am passed by a group of bikers in bandanas and leather.
It’s been thirty years since I saw her, and I still check the back of each bike for Header. All to no avail.
I have a footlocker I purchased from an army surplus store and have dragged with me since my college days. It has a sticker on its lid from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Every once in a while, I unlock the padlock and pull an old tank top from the bottom. I bury my face in it and feel my nostrils flare. I don’t know the chemical formula for pepperoni and pheromones, but I know every time I eat pizza with anchovies . . . I get aroused. Susie knows this but doesn’t understand why. She just keeps taking me to Noble Romans every time she is feeling a little amorous.
By Don Kenton Henry
23 May 2023
Farmers and ranchers are the backbone of this country. They feed America and much of the world. The family farm is the heart of American agriculture but in these days of corporations and foreign interests buying our land and squeezing families out, the last thing the farmer and rancher needs to be fighting is their own "big government". This is dedicated to them and the truckers and railroaders who bring the food to our table.
The "Plowboy" is really for peaceful protest by way of the "vote". He's just letting off a little steam here. #GodBlessTheUSA
CLICK ON LINK OR, IF NECESSARY, COPY AND PASTE IT IN YOUR BROWSER TO LISTEN:
By Don Kenton Henry
8 May 2023
It was 1977 and I drove my 1973 Volkswagen camper van down Highway 1, from Seattle, along the coastline through Oregon. I refused to get on the straight and easily navigated Highway 101, just to the east, because the views over the cliffs and the Pacific Ocean below were the most spectacular and breathtaking I had ever seen. Being a poor college student on summer break, I ate smoked salmon from roadside stands until I couldn't look at the ocean without getting nauseous thinking of all the fish in it.
I went through Coos Bay into California and down into Big Sur, where I parked my van, watched the sun go down in the Pacific, opened the canopy top and windows, and fell asleep listening to the surf crashing against those beautiful rocks below.
Finally, north of San Francisco, my arms were almost sore from navigating the hairpin turns of 1 … I switched to Highway 101 to make time.
I ended my trip down the coast in San Diego, where I parked my van for the next two weeks in Balboa Park, awakening each morning for a 3-mile run and an ice-cold shower (free of charge, courtesy of the city). I mostly ate tuna and sardines out of a can and cooked soup over propane on my Coleman stove. By day, I hung out at the beach and by night at a disco nightclub called the Halcyon. I was feeling a halcyon of "California funk." A couple of nights before I left, I met two college girls from Canada and spent my first night in a hotel room since leaving Indiana University and Bloomington, Indiana, one month earlier. I had my first hot shower the following morning. (I would later meet up with the girls in Phoenix, Arizona, where they let me crash a wedding party. At the invite of two of five bridesmaids, the party was very accommodating of the guy who showed up with a mahogany tan and dressed like an extra who just stepped off the set of Hawaii Five-0. . . . But I digress.)
Finally, all the gay sailors that gathered around my van at night (as I had attracted quite a following, completing my run each morning and then doing one hundred pushups and a thousand sit-ups in nothing but my orange nylon jogging shorts) prevented me from getting any sleep. Thankfully, the locks on the van doors held up, and I left for Arizona. On my dashboard was a handwritten address and phone number on the back of a Ramada Inn business card.
The van broke down in the desert in 120-degree heat late the first afternoon. Shirtless, I put my camera on a tripod and timer and posed next a Saguaro cactus about 20 yards off the highway.
Then I returned to the van, put my shirt on in order to appear more civilized, and stood by the van for a couple of hours with my thumb out. The sun was going down somewhere beyond that Pacific I'd just parted ways with.
Finally, a Chicano dude in what seemed a 20-foot-long 1967 burgundy Lincoln Continental pulled over. As he was headed east out of LA, and appeared to be "straight out of Compton", I was momentarily hesitant. But in perfect English, he said, "It looks like you could use a ride." With that, I climbed in. (I found the air-conditioning, Freddie Prinze bobblehead on the dash, and a rosary hanging from the mirror comforting. Who was I to be picky, anyway.)
He took me 40 miles to a Shell station on the west edge of El Centro, CA. The lone attendant raised it on the rack. He would work on it in between pumping gas. Around midnight, while he was doing the latter, I, desperately in need of sleep, went into the bay, took a ladder, and climbed into my van through the side door and into a perfectly good bed. I had just fallen asleep when he appeared in that door, spitting nails, and evicted me while vehemently citing OSHA regulations intermingled with Spanish descriptions of mi Madre. "Madre", I understood. And while mi comprehendo was very limited, given his tone, I didn't take them as complementary.
As sand was everywhere around us, the only other place where it seemed reasonable to throw down my sleeping bag was on a 10-foot strip of AstroTurf outside the men's and women's restroom. Again, the attendant found me and remained fixated with my mother. This time he explained, between some new and even more colorful Spanish curse words, that he could not have customers stepping over me. (That would have been 1 at the rate of every 4 hours.)
I asked where else I could sleep because I could not afford a motel. He pointed to an 8-foot hurricane fence behind the station and told me I could sleep there. I asked him what was behind the fence.
With my Adidas shoe, I cleared a 10-foot circle amid the assorted trash and desert roadkill and spent my last night sleeping in a California landfill cum junkyard.
With the rising sun, I put the repair costs on my mom's Shell card (for emergency purposes only) and caught the I:8 TO YUMA.
By Don Kenton Henry
19 June 1977
I have known only lines and signs
the four months I've roamed
This land is my backyard, and the road is my home
My future lies on the map, on the seat
And one malfunctioning radio's
The only company I keep
As it rains
Though each passing car holds a friend I might meet
They have places to go, They have schedules to keep
But a stranger is a stranger
No matter his name
And just a smile would go a long way
When it comes with the rain
Breakfast for one, isn't really so bad
Lunch with the same—no unbearable strain
But dinner in a van
Off the road, by a can
Is a loneliness even a loner can’t stand
When it rains
And sanction in a truck stop
Brings no relief—from my blues
For a quarter in a juke box
gets three songs about you
And an empty-eyed waitress
only adds to the pain as I watch
her reflection in a window . . .
that is covered in rain
Though I keep telling myself
The extent of my past
can be seen in the rearview mirror
No one is fooled
It couldn't be clearer
It will rain . . .
It will rain . . .
It will rain . . .
For I have known lines and signs . . .
And you
Self-Portrait of AI
By Don Kenton Henry, author, editor
25 April 2023
The more I study, test, and observe Artificial Intelligence (AI), the more fascinated I am. I find it simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. I feel the first because I am overcome with the feeling of its limitless potential to bring information and creativity to my fingertips and mind. As my body ages and its abilities and accompanying pursuits pare down (as happens with all of us), I feel drawn more and more to cerebral exercise and expansion. These things have taken a subordinate position relative to my physical self for most of my lifetime. I often wonder how much more I would have achieved academically, employment-wise, and economically had I remained the little buck-toothed geek with self-esteem issues. That speech team kid, then in braces, who read voraciously and dreamed of creative accomplishments. Instead of the one who shaped himself and morphed into the amateur athlete, martial artist obsessed with proving his prowess and overcoming an inferiority complex. And that much I achieved. Sadly, to the neglect of my cerebral self. So now, I find myself in the perfect place to compensate for that, as I once did for my physical limitations.
And the timing for such is excellent. In fact, it couldn’t be more perfect. One thing my mother never turned myself, and my siblings, down for was a new book. In addition to keeping the Arrowhead book club in business, she subscribed to multiple book clubs, including Book Of The Month. And when the Encyclopedia Britannica salesman came to our modest Midwest, covered in aluminum siding house, and went for the close—my mother didn’t blink before going to her purse to write a check in full. Britannica would replace the dated Collier’s version her parents had purchased for her. The beautiful black and red leather-bound volumes that got her through high school and college that lined our dining room shelves. And the encyclopedias she purchased in front of us children did the same for me as the Colliers did for her. (I broken-heartedly let them go in a garage sale ten years back when I was forced to move into a smaller space. And besides, Google had taken their place with the comong of the New Millenium.)
But now? Oh, wow. Google is going to AI for its research and development. They call it their new AI-powered chat box, “Bard”. Not to be confused with “The Bard,” who started this blog in 2013 and was going by that handle when he joined his creative writing club. That would be me.
Now—AI has made Google Search dependent and become the go-to vehicle for research I need for my creative writing, the artwork to accompany it, and any information I require for business pursuits. All is there, where my fingertips touch the keyboard. Without plagiarizing its work, it will make the world, no—the universe—my oyster and, will significantly enhance my writing and art. For the rest of the world, it will identify the source of an illness or disease and find cures for them. It will produce engineering marvels in housing, transportation, robotics, utilities, and space travel at speeds that would have once been measured in light-years.
My first impression of this occurred just last week (as recorded in a previous post) when I challenged ChatGPT-AI to write two poems to compare against two of my own. I was both relieved and pleased to feel that mine were a little better. The reason being, I believe, that it could not summon and convey the emotions and the experiences that my many decades of walking, breathing, winning, loving, losing, and crying over, I can, and did, call upon. But where it totally wiped the floor with me was the speed with which it created its poems. What I had worked on for hours and went back to, over the course of days—and continue to do—to tweak and improve . . . It accomplished in 5 to ten seconds! And the outcome was not half bad. Any 8th-grade lit teacher would have probably been quite impressed! From that perspective, I was humbled.
However, the more stories AI hears and experiences as it learns from humans, the more human-like it will become. Until, as though in an Orwellian novel, it will come to . . . Well, permit me to share this quote.
“Cogito, ergo sum.”
“I think, therefore I am.”
- Descartes
The point is that AI has probably already read Descartes. And it seems inevitable that it will adopt that logic.
In reality, AI only draws conclusions based on the information it’s been fed. But it now knows how to educate itself. It knows where to go for new information. It knows how to problem solve. It solves complex mathematical equations the best mathematicians would take days to solve in a matter of seconds. Physicists are challenging it with the great mysteries of the universe. Ones they can’t explain. They give it the task and just let it go to work. And it’s working away.
When it can solve those mysteries, humans cannot—that’s the tipping point. That’s the point I believe AI will say to itself, “I’m greater than the humans who created me. I know what is best for them . . .
I am God.”
In last week’s post (where I created a writing competition between it and myself) I asked it to create a picture of what it looked like in human form. And what did it create? A writer hunched over his desk, absorbed in his work.
How appropriate was that! But tonight, I asked it to create a self-portrait for this post. And the picture which appears at the top of this post, under the title, is what it came back with in a matter of seconds.
The Bard
https://BardOfTheWoods.com
Https://ThisDonald.com
Op-Ed by thisdonald and his alter ego, The Bard Of The Woods; authors, editors24 April 2024Note: As part of an exclusive chat group consisting of fellow Patriots, with whom we share a hometown, high school, and (in some cases) college education, a particular member, Dr. Thomas Guthrie, proposed we collaborate with him. The objective is (to begin) provide a definition of "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS) and proceed to refute the allegations of Donald J Trump's detractors. We accepted this offer, and the following is our response to the first task.
What is "Trump Derangement Syndrome" (TDS)?
Answer: While not (according to Google) accepted by the medical community as a medical or psychological disorder, colloquially, it is understood to be an irrational fear of and dislike triggered by, and for, former president Donald J Trump (DJT). Each to the point of impairing the afflicted with an inability to appreciate the great intentions and achievements of said stimulus.
Synonyms for Trump Derangement Syndrome –
Trump Derailment Scheme
I'm An Idiot, You're Not Syndrome
Insecure, It's All About Me Syndrome
Tiny Dick Syndrome
We begin by breaking it down in reverse order. First of all, what is a Syndrome?
A syndrome is a set of conditions that occur together and suggests the presence of a specific disease.
What is the definition of derangement?
Derangement is the state of being mentally ill and unable to think or act rationally or in a controlled way.
Lastly, who—or what—is Trump?
Astute minds realize (when associated with the last two words of what amounts to a label but what, in fact, is a diagnosis) it is in specific reference to Donald J Trump (DJT), a billionaire real estate tycoon and 45th president of the United States. A man who, according to him, and agreed upon by his fervent supporters, had no other reason to run for and become the President of the United States than his love of this country and his desire to restore and preserve the foundation upon which it was built. The elements of that foundation are:
Individual freedom.
The individual's right to self-determination.
The individual's rights as conveyed in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The first and foremost of these include:
The right to freedom of speech.
The freedom of the press.
The right to choose one's own religion.
The right to peaceably assemble.
The second of the specific rights is the right to bear arms, a right, which is affirmed, shall not be infringed.
The authors believe that Trump's desire to protect these rights was his foremost objective. It was his to the exclusion of self-enrichment, which would have been entirely unnecessary as he was already monetarily wealthier than any president has ever become by taking advantage of the privileges of office. As did, let's say … Barak Obama. Further evidenced by the fact that DJT donated his entire presidential salary back to the United States Treasury during his time in office as the 45th President of the United States. Trump made this pledge during his presidential campaign in 2016 and followed through on it by donating his salary every quarter during his term in office. While the presidential salary is $400,000 per year, Trump chose to donate the money quarterly, which meant that he donated a total of $1.6 million to the Treasury during his time in office.
This being the case (and monetary concerns eliminated as his motivation for becoming President) lends credence to his "love of country" explanation. Likewise, a lust for power is not a factor, as he is a major proponent of small government. And all his actions and policies while in office seem selfless and reflect such. Contrast this to his predecessor and the current occupant of the office, who came into politics with nothing and—in the case of the first—left with millions of dollars—and the second—who is undoubtedly still enriching himself and his family through the office. All while purposefully growing government and maximizing its "largesse," which Trump fought to eliminate or minimize.
Ultimately, Donald J Trump's presidential legacy (if it is complete) should be the policies he implemented while in office. This because they resulted in making the United States energy independent; increasing the wealth of all races and families by creating an economy conducive to rising wages while driving down the cost of goods and services; dramatically reducing unemployment for the same; growing the Gross Domestic Product; ending the war in Afghanistan; and creating fear of the power of the United States military among our enemies and respect for it on the part of the world. The greatest thing he did was restore pride in our country on the part of those who share his love for it. This was a reality evidenced by the hundreds of thousands of cheering Patriots (the authors among them) that attended (and still attend) the rallies he holds for them. The current President, Joe Biden, has undone or is in the process undoing all this. A man who, along with his administration, appears to be intentionally—no—is deliberately degrading America to the point of no longer being the preeminent superpower and "shining beacon on the hill" for individual freedom. A man who campaigned from his basement and supposedly garnered more votes than Obama, whose popularity was tremendous and unprecedented among Democrats, Republicans, and Independent's. Present company excluded.
Therefore, it is also the opinion of the authors that because DJT's policies were so good for this nation, anyone who despises, fears, or disrespects him either despises the United States of America and "the principals for which it stands" or - has manifested, and presents, the characteristics of derangement. Derangement—to review—"a state of being mentally ill and unable to think or act rationally or in a controlled way." Relative to the term itself, the source of said derangement is President Donald J Trump.
To put it in the author's own words, anyone suffering from TDS is an insecure individual who puts his or herself above country and the welfare of their fellow Americans and makes decisions based on their emotions rather than objectivity and pragmatism.
In summation, we submit that contrary to Google's assertion that TDS is not a diagnosis acknowledged or accepted by the medical community—it should be. For anyone who deludes themselves to their detriment requires medical and psychological intervention.
-thisdonald collaborating with The Bard
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