Ignominious Snapshots of Life

I was stationed at the 7th Army Training center in Hohen­fels, Germany, which is in Northern Bavaria. One day, my friend Jimmy Allen and I were having coffee in the PX, (Post Exchange, for you draft dodgers) when we were joined by Sergeant Morris. (Not his real name.) Now Morris was not the sharpest fellow in the world and he was sputtering about something. Jimmy said to him, “Slow down, Sarge, and tell us what has got you all upset.” He pointed to a poster on the wall for pints of ice cream. It read “regular ice cream 39 cents per pint, no calorie ice cream 49 cents per pint. (This was in 1965 and no-cal ice cream was brand new.) He said, “Anybody who pays 49 cents for that new ice cream is really stupid. They are paying more than the regular kind and are not getting the calories. How can anybody do that? You’re being cheated!”

Allen could never keep a straight face and he was laughing so hard he was crying. I looked at Sergeant Morris and said, “You know, Sarge, that’s why you’ve got the stripes and are a leader and Allen and I are just Spec 4s.” Sergeant Morris stood up and said, “Damned straight,” and walked off. Jimmy couldn’t stop laughing for an hour. And to think, this man was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army. If you require any further evidence consider this: Sergeant Morris married a Korean national while stationed there and they had fivekids and he cannot speak Korean nor can she speak Eng­lish. I asked him how they communicated and he said it was O.K., they pointed a lot. The Chaplain at the post was a real piece of work. One day he asked me to get a staff car for the following Friday so I could drive him to Grafenwohr for his monthly staff meeting. We left at 0900, which gave us an hour cushion as it was about a one-hour drive and the meeting did not start until 1100. Along the way we witnessed a bad auto accident, as an Army soldier was hit by a German car and tossed some twenty feet or so right at the front of our car.

I hopped out and was holding the GI who was hit, and another GI was putting a blanket under him. He was in terrible pain and held on to me tightly and would not release his hold even as I tried to lay him down. The Chaplain tapped me on the shoulder and said to me, “Crane, I can’t be late for this staff meeting, you know.” I just looked at him and he walked away. The young man died just as the ambulance arrived. We got in the car and arrived at Graf with an hour to spare. The chaplain did nothing at the scene, never talked about the lad, nor did he speak to me for the rest of the day. Quite a guy, that Chaplain.

Another swell story is from my working career. I had put to­gether a sixteen-page marketing report with a series of sugges­tions of action items that we should immediately undertake to jumpstart sales for my products. Everyone who read it signed off on it, agreed with my ideas, and pushed it along.

It got to my big boss, who was to bring this to the head of the division. He sat down and told me I had written too much, too much hearts and flowers and violin music, he said. Then he said, “I want all this on one page, in caps, doubled spaced, using bul­lets.

Do it in small words, no technical jargon. The boss has no attention span and gets bored easily and I do not want him asking questions because I tried to read this stuff you wrote and it’s all a load of hooey as far as I’m concerned and I don’t want to have to bluff my through a load of your baloney.” So I had to take my report and gut it totally and reduce it down to the level of a fourth grader so that the Sales Manager and divi­sion V.P. could deal with it. I actually put one line in that said “This is a good plan.” I hope they understood that. I saw the boss the next day and asked how it went with the big chief. He said fine, the plan’s approved. He didn’t even read it. He looked at the title and said, “yah, yah, yah,” and tossed it back to me and started talking about golf. What an inspiring experience to learn the true depth of my leaders further on up the food chain.

The most overrated events in our history are as follows: The swine flu pandemic The Y2K panic

The advent of synthetic motor oil

Global Warming The Selectmen’s threat to make Stop & Shop plant grass on its lot

And the number #1:

President Barack Obama’s pledge of no more legislative ear­marks

I am now ready to award the coveted Crane Award for the Worst Politician of the Year to Christy Mihos, who crashed and burned at the recent Republican State Convention. Mihos was unable to garner the 15% of convention delegates necessary for him to get on the primary ballot. So as a result, there will be no gubernato­rial primary battle among Republicans this year. Instead, Charlie Baker will be the standard bearer for the G.O.P. unopposed. This is a good thing for candidate Baker and for the G.O.P.. The genesis of Mihos’s problems came four years ago when he bolted the party to run as an independent, opposing Republican nominee Kerry Healey. Mihos proved to be a constant irritant and distraction throughout the process, and his rationale was totally transparent: if I can’t win I’ll fixit so she can’t win. This year he rejoined the Republican Party, as though he’d never left, and he wondered why he was shunned by the rank and file. Add in his bizarre financial problems through this process leading up to the convention and there is no wonder why he was unable to gain any traction. So Christy, here’s your trophy. Please go away and stay away and please consider a vow of silence for at least the next ten years.