Tell It To COACHIE

Whatever we do,

We’re gonna go through it together.

We may not go far,

But sure as a star,

Wherever we are, it’s together.

Wherever I go I know he goes.

Wherever I go I know she goes.

No fits, no fights, no feuds and no egos,

Amigos, together!

Through thick and through thin,

All out or all in.

And whether it’s win, place or show.

With you for me and me for you,

we’ll muddle through whatever we do.

Together, wherever we go.”

I always hoped the HP would one day get a hobby, but for now his one and only hobby remains spending time with me. When he is working, it’s not a big deal, because he is forced to leave my side. However, when he is not working and has no requirement to leave my side, he is very unlikely to do so.

Of course I am happy he’s home, and if the choice is to have him around all the time or not at all, I’ll take all the time. This is not a cry for helpcomplaint, just an explanation as to why I haven’t had a chance to do any writing since the HP reappeared (and will probably not get a chance to do any writing until he goes back to work after New Year’s).

And perhaps this post can provide some advice to anyone out there thinking of getting married: you should marry someone with whom you can spend every waking moment.

Not that you’ll have to.

But just in case.

After so much time off, I was having a little trouble getting back into the swing of writing my lame essays. So I decided to go with good news from Arizona, because it was kind of like an assigned topic and also because I already had a place to start.

Earlier this year I read Devil’s Highway, a book that details the true story of 26 men who tried to cross the Mexican border and enter the US through the Arizona desert. The story focuses on the men walking, burning up in the heat, and fourteen of them dying over five days until the Border Patrol finds one of them and sets out to rescue the rest. The whole story is so horrific, that it really doesn’t fit into the “good news” category, but when I decided to try to find some good news about Arizona, I remembered something from the book that would qualify.

After the “Yuma 14” incident, the Border Patrol in the “Yuma sector” set up portable buildings in the middle of the desert where illegal immigrants (“walkers”) typically cross. Each building contained water tanks, radio and satellite antennae, and generators so that they would be visible to walkers who were in trouble. From these outposts the patrol could go out at night and search for the walkers. That change in Border Patrol positioning would have been enough to qualify for good news in this post, (because as I’ve said before, searching out good news is rather time-consuming and difficult), but it really doesn’t reflect an individual’s efforts. After all, the Border Patrol budget covered the new outposts.

This does: in addition to the desert outposts, a Border Patrol agent named John Bergkretter designed “lifesaving towers” that were erected in the most dangerous area that walkers passed through in the Yuma sector. Each tower is 30 feet tall with aluminum reflectors and a flashing beacon that can be seen for miles. A sign on each tower says “ATTENTION! You cannot walk to safety from this point! You are in danger of Dying if you do not summon help! If you need help, Push red button. US Border Patrol will arrive in 1 Hour. Do Not Leave This Location!” What is interesting about these towers is that they are not a part of the Border Patrol budget, so taxpayers can’t get mad their hard-earned tax dollars are paying to help illegal immigrants. They are, in the words of the author, “built, raised, maintained, and paid for out-of-pocket by those bleeding- heart liberals, the Border Patrol agents themselves.” According to the book, the first year that the towers were established, the nearby Tuscon sector recorded hundreds of walker deaths, but the Yuma sector only had nine.

Usually, when anti-immigration blowhards talk about illegal immigrants, they conjure up the worst sort of caricature of hispanic gangsters that you see on Law & Order. The Yuma 14 included a man who wanted to come north for one season to pick oranges and earn enough money to put a new roof on his house, and his 15-year-old son who wanted to go too so that maybe they could buy his mother new furniture. One man was going north to earn enough money to buy uniforms so that his kids could go to school. The details in the book describe all of the walkers (though not the guides, they are really scary) as regular guys, not thugs coming here to steal our jobs and wreck our civilization. Even the Border Patrol, the people who have to catch them and send them back, sees beyond the propaganda and views the walkers as human beings who shouldn’t cook to death.

I certainly don’t know what the answer is for immigration, but I don’t think a big bad fence is going to make much difference. I’m not sure why we care more about people who want to pick fruit than people who want to send dirty bombs into our ports. I don’t think al-Qaeda is going to come in across the desert in Arizona, since they seem to prefer to travel in style with lots of money (and like to bring luggage so they have something to wear when they hit the strip clubs). The only people who are crossing through the desert are people who are too poor and too desperate to find another way. Clearly the government is not interested in helping them come legally. It’s nice to see that someone is looking out for them and trying to keep them alive, even when it’s politically incorrect.

When I was little, almost no one in our neighborhood put up outdoor decorations for Christmas. Granted, I am really really old and electricity was still sparse back then, but I think the main reason no one decorated was that the median age of our neighborhood was 78 (and that was with five of us at our house aged 10 and under dragging down the stats). Once every year my parents would drive us around to seek out the few houses that did have lights up (we would cheer for one strand of crappy lights), and to enjoy the one house in the neighborhood that went totally overboard and lit up every stationary object in the yard. I coveted that light display.

My parents put candles in their windows at Christmas time, a tradition that made us rather remarkable on our block. A few years later, my dad started putting up a strand of white lights around the front door, and years after that I think he added a red strand too. It was a small display, but it made me happy to know that we were staying on the cutting edge of Christmas decor. Now of course, crazy light displays can be found everywhere, and when we take the kiddies out to look at lights, they don’t have to desperately watch every second for fear that they might miss something. Almost everyone in our neighborhood has lights. And inflatable things. Or five or six inflatable things. The army housing areas seem to specialize in the overblown, flashing, tacky displays that I longed for as a kid.

Since I have no experience with outdoor decorating, the HP has always been the designer of our Christmas extravaganza. Typically this involves pine garlands, wreaths and little trees, white lights, and red bows. The front of our house always looks classic, but as the kiddies got a little bigger, we decided maybe we should add an element to the display for them.

Enter the snowman. Of every inflatable Christmas decoration I’ve seen, our snowman is my favorite. He stands in the middle of the lawn, with a small glow in his head, waving and smiling at the traffic. You can see for yourself what a cute friendly little guy he is. So imagine my shock when he became a victim of a vicious snowman snubbing. Why on earth would anyone want to hurt his feelings? Why would he be singled out for a cold shoulder?

Here is what our snowman sees as he gazes across the street at the neighbor’s house.

Who puts up a snowman perpendicular to their house? Why isn’t he standing in front of the house looking straight ahead at the street like all good-hearted snowman everywhere? Is there any question in anyone’s mind that this snowman was positioned in just that manner to send a message to us, the neighbors across the street? Positioned that way by a chaplain household I might add (to ignore us and wave at the other chaplains up the street). It really doesn’t seem to be in keeping with the whole “Tidings of great joy” or “Goodwill toward (snow)men” sentiments does it? Our poor little snowman. It is one thing to irrationally hate me, but it is quite another to drag an innocent little snow-being into the drama.

And so chaplain neighbors, I think it’s time to step back from your aversion of me and focus on the spirit of the season. Take a minute to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas and ask yourselves, “What would Frosty Do?”