Coffee or Tea, Anyone? Both?......

 

Memoirs of a Geezer

  

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:          Coffee or Tea, Anyone?  Both?......

For the record, I once participated in an "International BORE OFF" with a chap who was reputed to be the most tedious and boring of humans anywhere on the planet.  However, I won, and walked off with the trophy held high!!  What an accomplishment!

I think the contest may have been rigged!  

In any case, as a Geezer in Full command of my faculties, sort of,  and in the full flight of GeezerHood generally, I'd like to present to my beloved and faithful readers a new presentation about the wonders and glories of COFFEE and TEA consumption, and the marvelous venues that serve the finest of those concoctions (or are they confections?) 

Some people, we're told, do not care for coffee, and some prefer "mud" over tea, we're told...  reliably, sometimes!  (I have a friend who prefers hot tea to coffee.  Very strange!)

(Both coffee and tea, by the by, contain nutrients and antioxidants!  Both help protect the body against cell damage.  Do we need more reasons to drink the stuff??!!  One should think not!!  Oh yeah, and Vitamin B2...!)

SweetHeart and I do not start our day without a trip to a favored coffee house.  Wait!!!  Don't leave yet...  I'm not finished!  She prefers decaffeinated coffee with a modicum of hot water at its base.  I, on the other had, prefer a puddle or a quarter slurp of caffeinated, dark roast coffee with the balance filled with the purveyor's finest decaffeinated blend!  Oh, and did I mention the superb aroma of fine coffee??!!

Whilst positioned at said coffee house -- lately, Stone Creek's Harwood Avenue location; sometimes Downer Avenue -- we tend to haul out our electronic telecommunications devices, explore certain puzzling challenges and commence attempting to solve said puzzles!  E.g.   Wordle, Connections, Mini-Crossword challenges.  We generally succeed in conquering said challenges!  I mean, what fun, what joyful pastimes for those of us still in control of our brainwaves and sentient powers!  (Before they fade?...)

This morning, I'd like to add, in case anyone is wondering, or curious or perhaps already stupefied, we repaired both to Stone Creek and to Colectivo, the Oakland Avenue location.  (We enjoy interacting commercially and personally with Frank at the latter locale...)  Sometimes a second cup of mud is necessary, or at least greatly desired and

appreciated.  Sometimes iced coffee is a nice treat, particularly in the warm and sunny days, or, put another way, the blazing moments of summer!  Wouldn't you agree??

In the afternoon, we tend to prefer, not hot tea, but ICED SPORT TEA -- light ice and a slice of fresh lemon, if you please...   A large of cup of ice to take away with us, also please, as often the light ice is insufficient, 

Could be an image of a fabled coffee house
on Capitol Hill in Seattle, Washington!
Once thought to be the American
birth place of popular coffee houses!

 (not sufficient), and we prefer more tea than ice, you see....  One needs to re-ice the tea lest it warms too quickly!  We are nothing if not astute, possibly even quite brilliant,  about maximizing our quantities of tea.  If one does not specify "Light Ice," one might enjoy a few brief sips and nothing accosts one's nose but large and uncomfortable cubes of ice destined to freeze the proboscis!  Resulting in very little actual TEA!

There are highly important lessons to be learned here!!

But let us now return to the crux of this writing, or posting, if you prefer.  Coffee in the AM, Sport Tea in the PM!  Pay Attention!!  

Could be the Foundry...  Our 
favorite among certain
of them!  

   When during my wandering         days, I landed in the Seattle-    Tacoma region of the western     states, and discovered Capitol Hill  (high atop Seattle) and the many     fine coffee houses situated

 thereupon; thus I fell a bit     mesmerized and thus found myself amorously captivated by     and enthralled with the glories of truly good coffee.  A discovery most delightful and profoundly delicious!
Thus my eternal fondness for fine coffee began in earnest!!  

I don't think I have anything more to report...  The aim, here, is merely to extoll the virtues of great potables such as coffee and iced sport tea (Maybe hot tea as well...  Black, Green, etc.).  And to share with all and sundry the pleasures of both beverages, just in case some of my devotees might be seeking pastimes and potables yet undiscovered.  Thank you, and happy imbibing...  Oh, this has nothing to do with and is in no way intended to steer my beloved devotees to spirited or intoxicating beverages.  Thank you!  (Did I say that already?)

Humbly Submitted in August of 2025 -- by Joel K.

 

 

Chapter Three: Into the West...

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A Possible Murder Mystery...  Just Trying it Out, Sort of...

Chapter Three – Into the West…. But First, a Ritual

        The auditorium was packed with gowned men and women, different groups of them in different colors, a glorious array of distinctive regalia and insignia.  Everyone wore the requisite graduation cap.  On the heads of most of the graduates in the assemblage, square caps with their colorful tassels abounded.  As he sat there waiting for the remaining graduates to file into the cavernous hall, Jack Rosnov thought how those massed square caps resembled a vast, undulating sea, as heads bobbed and turned in conversation or observation.  He amused himself by thinking that if one of the caps were removed from one of the heads, would it seem as though a great sea suddenly drained, as if a plug were pulled from its floor deep below the surface, causing a great swarm of bodies to rush helplessly into an unseen drain and disappear forever into a great, bottomless trench.

Hating the wait, not wanting to be a part of the pageantry of graduation day, Jack was cursing vigorously under his breath, fuming, expecting his head to blow up in rage at any moment, like a bomb, a mine in an enemy harbor accidentally struck by an invading ship.  And then, finally, everyone was seated on the main floor of the auditorium.  Various university dignitaries trooped in, taking their seats at the long table facing the audience of graduates and their families, mothers and fathers and other relatives seated further back, beaming with pride, situated behind the graduating seniors, masters and PhD candidates.  The ritual commenced, at last.  The university president rose and gave lengthy introductions, finally presenting the prominent guest speaker upon whom an honorary degree would be conferred sometime during the proceedings.

Jack did not hear the name of the commencement speaker as the latter was introduced, nor did Jack really care.  Though he knew he could look up the speaker’s name in the commencement program, he had no real interest, at least not at that moment.  He did notice, however, that the speech was quite good.  He thought he remembered that the speaker was a professor of anthropology or history or, perhaps, social sciences.  The man talked about humankind’s propensity for violent behavior, and tried to make the case that human beings, at least in part, were not responsible for “inventing” its own base, cruel and too often outrageously violent behavior.  

“After all, it was a great ape who took up a club and struck another member of the ape family long before homo sapiens began fashioning weaponry.”  At least that’s what Jack thought the dignitary said.  In the end, the speaker’s message made the point that human beings have the intellectual power to reverse the backward evolutionary slide.  “We have the means to resolve conflicts by using our brain power, vs. using the destructive power of guns, knives, bombs and other more destructive weapons.”  It was that point, that snippet from the commencement address that stuck in Jack’s head, in his memory.

Following the ceremony and the private family party that saw many friends and family members gather in the basement recreation room of the Rosnov family home, Jack took a job, briefly, as a bartender in a tavern at which he had previously worked, “Mario’s on Mason.”  Tending bar was a profession he had used as a funding mechanism for part of his college education, and would use again to bankroll his soon-to-commence, he reassured himself, travels throughout the western United States.  The memory of that commencement gathering occupied a permanent etching in his brain.  It was during that happy celebration at which he once again enjoyed a long conversation and pleasant visit with the young woman who would eventually become his wife.   That event, the future marriage, was, at the time, unforeseen, and several years and a number of adventures removed from the graduation celebration that was happily unfolding, a tapestry of merriment, laughter, story-telling and free-flowing alcohol.

At Mario’s, Jack continued to concoct drinks and draw beers for the faithful patrons who considered the place their club, for many a refuge, for others a place they seemed to regard as home, at least until asked to leave or ejected at 2:00 in the morning, standard weekday closing time.  Mario’s was a kind of legendary east side Milwaukee bar, a “character lounge,” a hangout, a place of careless revelry for local celebrities, an occasional national celebrity and for those who simply wanted “to be somebody.”  Often feeling they succeeded, as into the procession of nights, they absorbed too much alcohol and felt themselves genuinely amusing and interesting, not merely boring drunks given to tiresome jokes and too much loud and forced laughter.  

Mario’s would provide the bankroll that Jack needed to make his escape, extend his empirical reach into the vast, beautifully wild and romanticized west.  Within the space of two months’ time, more or less, Jack and his possessions were packed into the older but serviceable convertible, and then finally on the road.  The odometer would eventually tick off some 180,000 miles before the red Chevy’s engine would burn itself out in a chaotic soup of blackened and co-mingled oil and water, becoming a bulk of fried and unusable scrap.  Jack and a friend would hitchhike home from the old Chevy’s final resting place, a service garage and junkyard in central Wisconsin.

********************************

Navigating the nation's highways with a mixture of giddy anticipation and anxiety, he enjoyed being on his own, driving the Interstate but retreating frequently to back country roads, drinking in the pleasures of summer landscapes and the faces of rural America.  It was a journey of pure joy, of freedom.  Jack knew he’d eventually wind up in Washington State, but savored the unhurried pace with frequent stops, collecting ideas and odd characters and memories of things seen and experienced, jotted into a spiral bound notebook.  Its pages would become smudged and bubbled, a kind of ski slope of moguls in miniature.  He had no camera but never regretted the decision not to carry one with him.

Eventually, two or three weeks into the odyssey, past stone sentries that lined the highway of a western landscape location he wouldn’t later recall, past hills, rivers, mountains, small towns and too many watering holes of a different sort, Jack arrived.  He landed in Tacoma, Washington, the suburb of Ruston to be accurate, near a scenic park bordering Puget Sound, Point Defiance.

Jack would soon reconnect with friends he met while serving in the armed forces, a bit more than four years prior to this “homecoming.”   Some of whom were residents of long standing, and still made Tacoma or its nearby communities their home.  Jerry Smythe was his first contact, closest among the friends with whom he’d soon reunite.  Those who knew him well called him “Jere the Hare,” owing to a bald pate rimmed by what remained of fair-colored fringe, his proud head always termed by his friends, female and male alike, a “perfectly-shaped cranium.”  

One of Jerry’s procession of paramours — Louise — had often announced, “He has a beautifully-shaped dome, and if anyone says otherwise, I’ll bonk his head with a skillet!”  Jerry often regretted ending his relationship with Louise.  “She was the best cook of them all,” he insisted.  The remark a bit cryptic, as he would not discuss nor reveal the nature of his relationships with “all” of the women in his past.  Or, perhaps, if a “serious love affair” had ended badly, crippling forever any need or wish to commit himself to just one of the  women who populated his longings.  Jack would shortly be introduced to the latest in Jere the Hair’s parade of lovers, a Latino named Magdalena whom Jerry called, not surprisingly, "Maggie."

(Special Note:   Next Chapter, if there is to be one!:    "A Grim Discovery!"  Stay Tuned, and thank you for your rapt attention...  Inattention?  Complete Disinterest??!!)

Humbly Submitted, 10-23-18 -- Joel K.

Identity... Nicknames... Noms de Plume, and Like That!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:      Identity...  Nicknames...  Noms de Plume, and Like That!

As I gaze through the lens of hoary GeezerHood, that lofty pinnacle (or is it the nadir?) of life on this planet, I cannot help but ponder the complex concept of identity, that of those we know and encounter in our lives, and our own.  Masks? Do we ALL wear them? It's a puzzle, what? 

In my youth, I knew a kid who held the unenviable nickname, "Stinky."  I don't recall that he was surrounded perpetually by a repulsive odor, in fact I don't think that was the reason. Perhaps he fell into a sewer, you know, just once!  Maybe he collected stinkhorns!  I don't know, but the nickname stuck throughout elementary school, and what an awful stigma to have to carry. (I wonder if people still call him "Stinky"?!)

I suppose I digress a bit!  We all know the phrase, "re-inventing oneself." Not sure I know exactly what it means.  In fact, I don't know who the hell I am, most of the time. I think we all tend to identify ourselves in terms of the different phases of our lives. We're different individuals as children, as teens, young adults...  And what about mood swings?  Bi-polar disorder? Do they change who we are, how we've perceived and identified? Certainly "Bi-Polar" has to pin a name tag on the afflicted party!!   

And how about a specific identity that's attached to a person in a specific place he or she tends to frequent? A case in point, maybe not a perfect example, but perhaps kind of interesting...  Consider a telephone conversation in which an casual listener might think both

parties nuts, or brain disordered:

"Simon's Tap!"
"That you, Wa...? I mean..."
"It's me, Archie.  Who's this?"
"Um... it's me, J...  I mean...."
"Mario? That you?"
"Yeah.  How you doin' Archie?  'The Boy' around?"
"How's Bobby?"
"SweetHeart?"
"Yeah, Bobby.  How's she doin'?"
"She's doin' OK. Big Nick there today? TV Johnny? Oil Rag Ralph?..."

Maybe nicknames are not about identity or even real perceptions of personality or a consequence of re-invention! But we do tend to be identified and given different names by people based on how we present ourselves, our personality traits, talents, appearance, what we do for work! "Mario" rose out of my tendency to sing for the gang at the saloon. Don't know how "Bobby" evolved!

I've had conversations with scholarly individuals who insist we never really know who we are, how to self-identify or convey who we think we are to others. So many tend to identify people in terms of what they do, not who they actually are. We present different faces in the workplace, often very different from those we present to intimates -- family members and close friends -- away from our places of employment.

Email, texting, telephone conversations... they tend to identify people in ways that may be very much or entirely contrary to who we / they might actually be. I have an old friend who is, in most circumstances, bright and articulate, but his telephone manner made one think of a shorthand clerk with a particular dislike for anything longer than 10-seconds on a telephone:

[ Phone rings! (Longer than four rings and he's gone!) ]
"Doin?"
"Nuttin'."
"S'up? Jeetjet?"
"Nah, d'jou?"
"Jake's...  five!"
"Ten OK?"
"Got smokes?"
"Some."
"Bucks."
"Some."
"Bring."
(Bang! The end of it was always ear-pingingly loud!)

The conversation -- or whatever it was -- was always the same, no matter who was called.  I

This is not a good likeness
of Uncle Icky! Nor is the
top image a good depiction
of the laconic caller, but you
probably get the idea!

often wonder if he knew, or cared, who he was calling.  Probably didn't matter!  As long as someone showed up with money and smokes in the time allowed!

Long ago, some good friends lived upstairs from us.  The male part of the duo had a fondness for strong drink...  To be accurate, I guess we all did in those days. One afternoon or early evening, he stumbled in, climbed a few steps, stumbled back one or two, finally arrived at our open back door. "Hey," he slurred as he beamed a smile, eyes not quite focused, addressing the three of us, SweetHeart, our only child at the time and me.

Our little daughter, then just in infancy, perhaps nearing toddler stage, pointed at our friend with a certain degree of dramatic emphasis and said, "Ick." From that day to this, our friend is known affectionately as "Uncle Icky." We've had T-shirts made with the nickname emblazoned upon them.  I assure you, he wasn't chronically "icky" with strong spirits, and in fact is a very bright, well-informed and largely self-taught individual. There was, still is, about him a great deal of humor, sober or inebriated! He doesn't seem to mind the moniker, "Uncle Icky." I guess he'd of said something by now, three or four decades later!

Florence did not look like
"Mickey da Rat," but she
did have Red Hair!

Certain labels or so-called identities we hang on people are not at all kind, or fair, or accurate. At a major hotel at which I worked in the Seattle-Tacoma area, there was a salad chef we christened "Florence of Arabia." Why? When she was concocting her leafy, culinary masterworks, knives flashing and whirling, lettuces and vegetable matter flying about her head and upper torso as she worked...  I mean, it all looked like a vegetarian sandstorm! It's entirely possible she went from her job to an art studio, or maybe, avocationally, she knit socks, or volunteered as a counselor to people struggling with identity issues...

One more thing...  I think it's rather sad and unfortunate that people tend to identify certain individuals in terms of prominent physical characteristics, often unkindly so...

"That you, Biffy?  How ya doin'?"
"I'm OK. You?"
"Good, thanks!"
"Hey Biffy, I lost my address book. Can you give me Iggy Blotnik's phone number?"
"You mean the guy wid de ears?"
"Look, Biffy, it's true Iggy has noticeably large ears and elongated lobes, but he has many other, including some very admirable characteristics too. He's bright. He's knowledgable. He's a great conversationalist. Good hair and teeth. I mean, the guy's a well-known micro-biologist!!"
"You mean the guy wid dem ears!"
"Gimme the phone number, Biffy."

So who the hell are we, really? And how do we truly come to know one another? I mean, in a real and significant sense! Oh well...  I'm hoping I'll eventually figure out a point to all this foolishness! Hey! Maybe everyone in the nation ought to have a talk show or a reality program to let people know who we are! Wait! Here's a swell idea for a brand new television show:  "Who am I? Do I Know, or Do You?" I should call Doctor Phil, or somebody. On second thought, never mind...   It's all too obscure and indefinable!!

Humbly Submitted, January 18, 2018 -- Joel K. 

   







  






       


  

"...In The Service!"... Are People Actually Melting in That Pot?

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    "...In The Service!"...  Are People Actually Melting in That Pot?  

Many a time and oft, I've pontificated -- when engaged in a dialogue with acquaintances of dissimilar attitudes, beliefs and values -- suggesting that each of us becomes his or her "composite self " (for lack of a better descriptor), say at age 30 or 35, some younger, others older -- as a result of a the many and varied elements that inform our lives.  They include, perhaps needless to state, environment, upbringing, role models -- both positive and negative -- education, experience...  These among the factors that mold us, make us who we are.  Experience, I think, is a powerful force in the development of attitudes and values as we traverse our separate pathways.

Above is a graphic depicting a
Melting Pot, or, a "metaphoric
crucible" in which "...all manner of
people can blend together and
co-exhist in peace and harmony..."!
(paraphrased from a statement
by Pollyanna...  maybe?!)  

The absolute jewels of experience are the people we meet along the way, who touch and affect our lives in a positive manner;those who make a negative impact have a certain value too, particularly if we learn something useful as a result of the collision!  Obvious, perhaps, but I'm coming to the point!  

In my own experience, for example, viewed from the exalted elevation of Geezerhood...  a prime example is Military Service (and those who populated its ranks...  a life episode that included extensive travel)!  It was a harvest of diverse thoughts, ideas,  opinions, philosophies, personalities...    

Among "fellow travelers" and intersecting lives was that of Jonas B. whom I met at Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas, perhaps we were in basic training together as well.  It's difficult and can be misdirecting to sift through memory from a distance of more than 50 years.  


Jonas may have had a small issue with alcohol.  On occasion his breath manufactured a fog of fetid mist.  Odd, I sometimes thought, because he frequently drank Aqua Velva and mouthwash when no other alcoholic "potable" was at hand.   His personality was strikingly potent and memorable.  Jonas was a Native American with a superb mind.  A dark-skinned Oklahoman, fiercely proud of his heritage, his gift to peers was tolerance and acceptance.  I enjoyed him, his stories about warrior ancestors, his humor.  I wonder if he's still among the living, or if alcohol claimed his brain and the oil wealth he was promised.  I hasten to add, Jonas was by no means the only individual whose consumption of alcoholic substances was prodigious and eclectic!  Black, white, red, brown and yellow, we all consumed our share in whatever form was cheap and available.  After-shave lotion was a novel variant, however...  perhaps an acquired taste?      

Air Force Security Service Tech School yielded the next posting...  A day before boarding a plane bound for Karamursel Air Base in Turkey, I had to visit a Philadelphia barber for a much-needed shave, singe, a haircut, a uniform brush up...  Foolishly, I lacked the funds to cover the entire expense of all those tonsorial services.  Jerry S., a former machinist from Chicago, and a fellow airman bound for Turkey, helped bail me out of the shop, rescuing me from the angry barber who held me by my uniform collar.  Tilted at a 45-degree angle from the door of the shop, I beckoning madly at passing GI's until required donations set me free.  

Like all "composite" human beings, Jerry was a paradox, an amalgam of biases and tolerance.  He had few kind words for the "hillbillies" who invaded his beloved Chicago from "The South," but acquired an acceptance of the many Black-, Asian- and Latino-Americans who peopled our shared military orbit.  Conversely, there were many in our ranks and stationed with us, over the course of a four-year enlistment, who clung to their racist attitudes and ideas like thieves clinging to sacks of pure gold coins.      

In Turkey -- a year-and-a-half tour that began in late 1961 -- four of us, typically, occupied each space in a large, concrete barracks.  In my case, an African-American, a young man from Guam, A Texan and myself.  In a room near ours was a Latino named Armando G.  A handsome lad, he collected women as some do baseball cards or stamps.  He challenged us to acts of absurd "bravado" such as placing lighted cigarettes in the hollow of our abutted arms to see who could stand the pain longer.  He  swallowed jars full of jalapeño peppers and dared the rest of us to match his ability to consume those fiery, stomach-destroying missiles.  Armando told us stories of deprivation among his family members, struggles to assimilate into North American "Gringo" culture while preserving their Mexican heritage.  He was impatient to return to family and the women of Corpus Christi, TX.  Armando kept his focus, was eager for the tour to end and considered Turkey an irritating if unavoidable aberration in the cycle of his life.

This, I think, is a photo of Aghia
Sophia, fabled former Byzantine
Church, now a great mosque in
Istanbul, Turkey!  

Following the delights of Turkey, including Turkish friends left behind -- Vahan, Achmet, Hamdi, Nadia, Ishkin and many others -- I reported to McChord Air Force Base in Washington State, a neighbor to the enormous army base, Fort Lewis.  Our circle of friends included enlisted men from four branches of military service -- Army, Air Force, Navy, the Canadian Army, too, thrown in for international flavor.  Upon arrival at McChord, the First Sergeant from the Division to which I was assigned told me the only available barracks space near my new headquarters building was already occupied by a...  he used the "N" word.  He suggested I choose a barracks room in a different part of the base.  Partly, I suppose, due to a a streak of rebellion, partly because I had experienced co-habitation with diverse ethnicities, I told him I'd be happy to room with Shane R., the Black airman about whom he made the offensive reference.

What a dashing figure
he cuts in his (almost)
Full Military (Fatigued)
Regalia (a small, non-
regulation enhance-
ment added!)?!

Shane and I became friends.  I felt myself privileged to meet his family members who lived in the Tacoma, WA area, a number of his friends as well.  It was a revelation.  I came to know bright and talented individuals among Shane's circle who were ignored, overlooked and treated harshly or indifferently because of their color.  Shane's sense of humor, his confidence, optimism and his friendship never wavered.  I often wonder where he is, if he is, and what he's doing now, more than 50 years and many remarkable and life-changing events later.

So many friendships made and forgotten!  Can't possibly do justice...  I'm not sure why this particular subject matter popped up out of the deep recesses of my skull, this flood of "military memory," except perhaps to admit to benefitting from the luck of the draw, to express thanks.  

For me, Military Service was a great teacher, and to my good fortune, I enjoyed experiences from which I could actually learn and benefit.  For me, an irreplaceable moment in time!  Because the driving force of attitudes, beliefs and convictions could easily have turned at the wrong corner, I'm lucky to have gained from it, vs. merely having endured while incubating resentment, building discontent, bigotry and hatred, a fate that befalls too many.  I hasten to emphasize, I know I'm neither special nor superior, merely a fortunate by-product of experience, lucky to have melted in rather than boiled out of the pot, like some gaseous, toxic bubble belched forth to pollute or poison.      

That could be Airman Hackley (second row, second from
right)...  Looks like he's warming up to launch
a crowd murmuring  rebellion (please see para. last)!!   

Interestingly, and not necessarily the sole catalyst, our first "TI" or Training Instructor in the military was a Jew from Brooklyn, NY -- Sergeant Goldman.  He may well have set the tone for many.  Among the first of his pronouncements to new charges, a squadron-full of terrified young enlistees, was this:  "Some will tell you that in military service there's little room for prejudice.  I'm telling you this...  in my 'flight,' in this barracks, among my squads of airmen there is NO room for prejudice or racism.  None!"  That was in 1961.  Extraordinary!  

He may not have realized a legion of converts on the spot, but I know he made a lasting impression on many of us.  I often think of my time in the military, a crucible that helped forge ideas and values that still nourish and sustain.  So many different personalities, from so many different backgrounds and life experiences.  

                   --------------------------------------------------------
Epilogue:   It wasn't all enlightenment and wisdom, of course.  Anyone who ever served in the military no doubt has a similar story!  Lieutenant Peach was our linen supply officer at Goodfellow AFB.  On a rainy Friday he assembled the entire squadon to announce in a voice that could damage the ear drums of humans and dogs alike, "Men, someone's been 'dicking with the system' (his favorite phrase when piqued)!  Alright then," he squeaked on, face glowing crimson, "someone purloined a pillowcase??!!...  My count does not tally!!  We'll stand here all day if necessary until the miscreant confesses!"  

Had it not been for the Captain, we might still be standing at attention listening to the obtuse rantings of Lt. Peach.  Oh, and the brilliance of Airman Hackley who could mimic the murmuring of an angry crowd; it was his talent that probably summoned the Captain to our aid.  And the Peach complaint?  The Case of the Purloined Pillow Cover remains a mystery!  In the end, Lt. Peach was re-assigned to the motor pool in charge of drain-oil disposal and brake pedals.  He was never promoted and died in disgrace, an ancient, oil-stained and squeaky "Second Louie"!  (That last bit might be mere conjecture, part of the legend!)  

Humbly Submitted, May 7, 2015 -- Joel K.