You’ve heard about my Brother Bryan. He has been gone since not long after Christmas 2008.
My other brother and sister are alive and well. We lost our other sister Lizzy when she was a very young girl.
My other brother, who has been blond, athletic, handsome, and magnetic all his life, works as an undertaker. You would never guess he makes his money that way. Many gals have said he could charm the panties off the Statue of Liberty.
He has been busy as hell these past few weeks. He says it’s that way pretty much every December for him.
When I asked him why, he said he figured many people give up when they have nothing to live for. Many old-timers have outlived their families and friends, and their kids have moved away. They are shut in, or they run into other old folks who bore them with tales of their grandchildren, their pets, and their ailments.
My brother says, for too many old people, the kids will next show up to see their folks at their funerals and will fight each other over their parents’ property.
How sad, but true.
99 used to visit shut-ins routinely. What tore her heart was having so many old people in nursing homes beg her pitiably to take them out of those places with her.
I used to visit veterans and take them to Sunday Mass in the VA hospital near where I lived before 99 and I became a team in investigation and in marriage. Almost all of them wanted to talk – not about their service, but about life on the outside.
The World War Two and Korea vets are almost all gone now. The best years of their lives spent fighting Krauts or Japs or Chicoms … when they would have preferred to be dating, marrying, and starting families.
If you want a cure for self-pity, visit those who are shut in. You’ll thank God your problems are as few and light as they are.
The older we get, the more we think about who is gone now.
My grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, a brother and a sister, two former girlfriends, and one of my closest friends, are all gone. In the case of our little family, 99 and I have outlived all three of our children.
We haven’t traveled for Christmas since my brother Bryan died. We always used to spend Christmas or New Year in California with him.
This year, we went to Mass on Christmas Day, had a good breakfast and a good dinner, and in between we made phone calls and worked on a sex offense case involving suspects with a lot of juice. If George Washington and our Continental Army could cross the Delaware, make a night march in a storm, and attack Trenton in the early hours of the day after Christmas, we could do some research and analysis. After all, we stayed home for Christmas, and have been enjoying each other’s company.
The priest on Christmas Day noted how small a part of secular America’s Christmas the Christ Child really is. He was right.
It took me till Christmas Day to hear on the radio a religious Christmas carol. I caught a country station and the singer was singing “Away in a Manger.” None of the other religious carols came on the air this season when I had the radio on.
Jews could say likewise about Hanukkah. Is it about the Maccabees and steadfastness in the defense of Judaism, or just the latkes, gelt, and gefilte fish, along with the eight days of gift giving?
It’s too much about consumerism. And not hurting the feelings of douchebag nonbelievers, be they atheists, pagans, or Moslems.
And look at the poor Jewish victims in New York, who were celebrating the last day of Hanukkah when some shithead ran into their house and cut five of them with a machete. And then all the scumbag Democrats attacked President Trump for the actions of this bloodthirsty shit, who is likely a Moslem. His worthless relatives started making excuses for him, just like the top Democrats make excuses for the dogfaced Michiganistan congresswoman who attacks Jews, or the Somaliapolis congresswoman who attacks Jews and cheats on the brother she married.
Last Day of Hanukkah
Perhaps the most important Christmases I’ve had have been when I was in the Army.
Just before Christmas 1978 I helped break the color line at a Tennessee cemetery. I was a young officer at Fort Campbell with the 101st Airborne Division. During Christmastime of 1944, this unit was surrounded at Bastogne, Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge. Our then-commander General Anthony McAuliffe told the Krauts “Nuts!” when they demanded he surrender.
One of his aides told the Krauts “Nuts!” was a polite way of saying, “Go to Hell!” McAuliffe, a graduate of West Virginia University and part of the West Point class of 1917-1918 who went to war after a year of being cadets, was one of the rare officers who was not much given to profanity.
Days later, the weather cleared, our bombers could see Nazis on the ground and light them on fire, and General Patton led the Third Army to the relief of our division. (I say “our division” even though the Battle of the Bulge happened about a decade before I was born. I was proud of being a member of the Screaming Eagles.)
Back to my story.
I had funeral detail duty during the last two weeks of the year. If anyone in Tennessee or Western Kentucky died in that time frame who merited a military funeral with a bugler, military pall bearers, and a rifle party for a three-volley salute, I was the officer in charge of the men who would perform the honors.
The South was going thru the changes from segregation to grudging tolerance to an integrated society at the time. The Army went thru that during the Vietnam Era, so we had a little bit of a head start on the South. My funeral detail was about a third black, and had a few conspicuous Hispanics in it too. All in green dress uniforms and spit-shined boots, and wearing the proud Screaming Eagle shoulder patch.
We took the bus down to a little jerkwater town called Parsons, Tennessee the Sunday before Christmas. We were going to bury R.T. Scott, a member of St. Mark AME Methodist Church in that town. R.T. Scott was a retired sergeant who had fought in World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam. He was awarded the Purple Heart in all three wars. He was a man’s man.
General McAuliffe (one-star general, left)
I had gone to Mass Saturday evening and drove into post and slept overnight in my unit’s barracks to be ready when we shoved at 7 a.m. after chow. We got into the little town, and the first church I saw was a United Methodist Church. I got off the bus and went inside.
The minister and his assistants were getting ready for service. I said, “Sorry for interrupting your prep for Mass, but where is St. Mark AME Methodist Church?”
The people looked at me and said, “Mass?”
I said, “Yeah. Mass. I’m Catholic. Force of habit.” in my harsh non-Southern voice.
These people were not happy with the Northern stranger.
I said, “Look. I’m an officer with the 101st, at Fort Campbell. We’re in town to give a military funeral to R.T. Scott. Where is St. Mark AME Methodist Church?”
“Gee, I’ve never heard of it. Have you, brother Wilbur?”
“No, Brother Jimmy. What about you, Sister Ruby?”
“We’re sorry. We can’t he’p yew.”
“Maybe go down the road another couple of miles.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
In a town with only a few blocks, this bunch didn’t know where the other Methodist Church was. Maybe they were stupid or had a grudge.
The morning was overcast, and it started to snow gently.
I got back in the bus, and had the driver head for the next little town, Decaturville. Maybe our orders were wrong.
The flock at the Methodist church in Decaturville was into their service, so I eased into the pastor’s office to use the phone. They could spring for a distance phone call. I called the funeral home in Jackson, Tennessee, and I got a distinctly black voice. It was the funeral director. He gave me precise directions, which included going back to Parsons, and going in a way that he promised would run us into the right church.
So I thanked him for the directions, got back outside, had the bus U-turn in the intersection in front of the church, and head back toward Parsons.
Just then, a rather large black man pulled up in a blood-red Buick.
“You guys the funeral for R.T. Scott?” he asked.
“Yeah!” I replied. “How did you know?
“I saw your bus at the other church,” he said. “We’re only four blocks away. Follow me.”
I told the men what the driver had just told me. There were a lot of pissed-off GI s on that bus, me included.
“A combat veteran and a multiple Purple Heart winner,” I said. “And these inbreds wanted to lie about not knowing where his church was. A few effing days before Christmas!”
The driver was going the same way the funeral director told me to go. We followed him and went by the United Methodist Church in Parsons, and a few blocks away was St. Mark AME Methodist Church.
The congregation was black. I met the pastor, and asked him for a place for all of us to change into our dress uniforms. He set us up in a room in the little church building.
I got finished first. So out I came, and I was the immediate center of attention of the congregation. “They came after all!” a number of them marveled.
American blacks prepare for combat in Europe, World War Two
“What does AME mean?” I asked the minister.
“African Methodist Episcopal,” the minister said. “Didn’t you know that?”
“No, sir.” I said. “I’m Catholic. All colors can go to the same parish. I didn’t think Protestants would keep blacks out of their church in this day and age.”
“Welcome to the world!” the minister replied.
The men of the funeral detail got a very warm welcome from the people. We represented the US Army coming to bury one of its heroes. Patriotism doesn’t depend upon coat size or color.
We assisted at R.T. Scott’s funeral service, then went out to the cemetery to lay him to rest.
There were state troopers there, but they were aloof. A church elder told me R.T. Scott’s family decided to integrate the cemetery by buying a plot there and burying their war hero relative there. This, he said, caused the shitheads in town to make trouble, so the troopers were there to ensure order.
My pallbearers carried R.T. Scott’s casket into the cemetery and placed it on the bier. The minister said a few prayers and gave a short homily. When he was done, the bugler played TAPS and the seven-man rifle party fired three volleys of blanks for a 21-shot salute. Two soldiers folded the flag and I presented it to R.T. Scott’s sister.
We didn’t solve race relations. All we did by showing up was testify, as fellow soldiers, to the bravery and worth of R.T. Scott … but we honored him openly, to the chagrin of the peckerwoods in that little town.
I wrote an angry note to the town council of Parsons, and another one to the United Methodist bishop whose territory included Parsons. The bishop claimed his minister didn’t know where St. Mark AME Methodist Church was, and I replied that the minister was then too stupid to lead a congregation.
Someone on or around the town council complained to the chain of command at Fort Campbell, That person was upset I suggested they imitate the idiots in Jonestown, Guyana and drink purple Kool-Aid. My chain of command advised me not to get involved in local politics. I told them the letter was the least we could do. Fortunately for me, my colonel decided not to dock my pay.
My last Christmas in uniform was in Korea. I spent that Christmas Jeeping with our chaplain out to an orphanage. Another GI and I delivered gifts for the orphans. Father Thorne, the chaplain, was going to say Mass fo the orphans, but at the last minute a Korean priest was able to make it thru the mud to the orphanage. Dinner was rice, fermented cabbage, and a little meat.
Then there was one Christmas, where Greg the Sicilian and I, both out of the Service, turned my apartment kitchen into a bakery for Christmas Eve.
Fortified on a meal of Italian cold cuts, bread, cheese, olives, and red wine, we made dozens of pastries for our respective families so our moms didn’t have to slave away on Christmas Eve.
Both of us were boxers, and impatient. When the dough didn’t rise fast enough, we added more yeast and then beat hell out of the dough with our fists. We laid out the pastries to rise before filling them, and they blew up like catchers’ mitts. The pastries were going to be very light, because the dough tripled in volume. This called for a lot more filling.
I made a run to the store for more butter, brown sugar, sliced almonds, baker’s chocolate, and SOLO prune, apricot, berry, cherry, almond, and poppy seed fillings. (SOLO is still in business and still makes good fillings.) Hopefully no one in either family circle needed to take a drug test after killing some poppy seed pastries Christmas Day.
This also called for a lot more oven time to get the much larger number of pastries done. So we took care of business. About 2 in the morning we got done. Greg the Sicilian took his half of the haul and I took my half, and then I crashed. Christmas Mass at 8:15 at St. Genevieve came early.
This would be my last Christmas in California as a resident.
Our First Lady at Christmas
Two years later I was living in Indiana and was too broke to come out to California for Christmas. A young woman who I’ll call Joan, was blue because she was single and everyone else in her circle. was married or engaged. Now Joan was one of my oldest friends from my childhood. Joan called out of the blue, said she was on business in the Midwest, and asked if she could spend a few days with me in Indiana over Christmas. I cleaned up the house, bought some groceries, and put the place into Christmas-ready mode. I had no tree, but I did have what really mattered – a Nativity Scene.
I picked Joan up at Cincinnati’s airport, which is across the Ohio River in Kentucky, on Christmas Eve. We crossed the river in the darkness and drove thru the snow-covered back roads to my house that night. Joan marveled at all the lights on houses in the countryside, and at the navy-blue clear sky with the moon and stars so easy to see by comparison with her home in California. After Christmas Mass and home-cooked breakfast (potato pancakes and sausage), we watched “It’s A Wonderful Life,” and Joan teared up thru some of the sad parts. Then, Christmas calls home to our loved ones, and a walk thru the snow. Then it was beef, mashed potatoes, and red cabbage for dinner.
I took Joan to a women’s clothing store north of Cincinnati the day after Christmas, and she was happy to buy winter coats and dresses she couldn’t find in California. I also took her to a couple of the Christmas time attractions in the Cincinnati area that day and the next day. It was a great little Christmas.
The next year I was flush, and I came home for Christmas. Mom was doing her ironing and watching “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” on her portable TV. She started to cry during the part where the successful businessman and kind-hearted former policeman Michael McShane offers to marry Katie Nolan, who was an impoverished but unbowed widow. It was understandable Mom would tear up at that part of the movie, but she continued to weep.
I gave Mom a hug and asked her what was hurting her. She said, “All the actors in this picture are dead. It reminds me how old I am now.”
Mom died not quite four years later, on Dad’s birthday. I took Dad to be with my brother’s family over the New Year. New Year’s Eve was movie night, with Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy all triumphing in “San Francisco.” This was truly an inspirational movie centered around the plight of San Francisco’s poor, Gable’s character trying to square his lust for Jeanette and his sleazy saloon with his very admirable desire to help the poor as a reform politician, and the horrible earthquake and fire of 1906 that killed so many people. “San Francisco” was a special favorite of Mom’s, God rest her great soul.
Jeanette MacDonald and Clark Gable during a break. He has just done the earthquake scene where he escaped a collapsing building. She is about to do the scene where she sings hymns for the mourning survivors. Unlike today’s actors, Clark had talent, machismo, and World War Two service. Jeanette MacDonald had the most winning smile and the best set of pipes in Hollywood. There is no one in today’s Hollywood with her talent or charisma, either.
The second picture was “True Grit” with John Wayne. ‘Nuf Sed.
Dad didn’t wake up for New Years’ Sunday Mass. He died in his sleep. I got on the phone with his doctor to ensure the identities of his prescription drugs and an experimental heart drug he volunteered to take after Mom died. My brother was on the phone with the county sheriff and the county coroner, both of whom he knew as an undertaker. Dad’s doctor, and my brother and I talked the coroner out of ordering an autopsy. We prepared Dad for shipment back to San Fernando Mission in California, and put out the sad word to Dad’s and our family and friends that Ed Sherlock, the Lion, had finally gone on to his reward, God rest his great soul.
We held his funeral on Epiphany, the day celebrated for the visit of the Wise Men, and also the day Joan of Arc was born.
Since Dad was a veteran of World War Two, and I was a veteran, the funeral director gave me the flag “on behalf of a grateful nation and Commander in Chief William Jefferson Clinton.” I took the flag, and turned to address our family and Dad’s and Mom’s many friends graveside – “I’m not accepting this flag from Bill Clinton. I’m accepting it on behalf of a real man – DAD’S Commander in Chief (pause) HARRY TRUMAN!” Everyone erupted in laughter and then started cheering.
Then there was the first Christmas 99 and I spent together as a married couple. We were in California and Arizona a the time. On Christmas Day, the closest Catholic church to us was near an American Indian reservation. We went there, and inside the humble structure was an almost military surplus sand table with little buildings and hills made up to look like a child’s version of Bethlehem. Plastic animals, shepherds, and townspeople cobbled together from many sources filled the sand table. The Wise Men and the Holy Family and the angels were more presentable, but the shepherds and townspeople back in the day weren’t rolling in money either. It was a perfect metaphor for the American Indian people and Hispanic people coming in to wish the Christ Child a happy birthday.
At Christ’s birth, a cross section of mankind came to do Him homage. The shepherds were poor, but not destitute. They had families and were used to the nomadic or seminomadic life. They followed the rain so their sheep would have good pastures and water. They worked together to protect everyone’s animals from predators and sheep thieves.
On the other end of the spectrum were the Wise Men. The Wise Men were wealthy enough to be able to foot the bill for a caravan. Women and children cooked and fetched water and kept things clean. The men drove and tended the beasts of burden, drove and tended the livestock for milk and meat on the hoof, pitched tents and broke camp, navigated from watering point to watering point thru the deserts, and fought off bandits.
In the middle were Joseph and Mary and the family of the innkeeper who let them use the stable. Joseph was a carpenter, a skilled tradesman who did everything from build furniture to build houses. Mary knew and practiced all the domestic arts a woman was supposed to know, and she was strong enough that, while pregnant herself, she traveled many miles on foot thru the hills to help her kinswoman Elizabeth, who was carrying John the Baptist. Joseph and Mary were not rich, but they were not desperately poor either. They both could read, which was rare in that era.
Here’s a thought, with regard to the Wise Men: Rich people create more jobs than anyone else. I don’t oppose the rich for being rich. I just wish more rich people act like Donald Trump in creating jobs that pay real money and treat their workers right, and fewer people act like George Soros or Mitt Romney who grew rich by scavenging and practicing vulture capitalism.
Over the holiday season, something happened that reminded me of the inbreds of Parsons, Tennessee.
A Catholic priest hired a crop duster to clean out his plane’s tanks and then fill the cleaned tanks with a hundred gallons or so of water he had blessed. The crop duster then sprayed the town and nearby farms with the blessed water on Christmas Eve.
Parishioners of St. Anne Church in Cow Island, La., stand next to the crop duster that had 100 gallons of holy water on it to bless the nearby farms and town. (Credit: CNS photo/social media, Diocese of Lafayette.)
Usually it is the professional atheist shithead groups who sue over something like this. Maybe their lawyers are getting their briefs in a bunch as we speak. But the first assholes to respond to this news items were self-styled fundamentalist pissants.
Some of the inbreds who hate Catholics attacked the priest and the Catholic Church on the Net. These are the products of incest who claim their tiny goofball church is the only source of Christianity, and they argue among themselves who the true Christians are. They lie like rugs in smearing the Catholic Church. Anyone with a 6th grade education could refute their lies about the origin of the Bible, the religion of those who printed the Bible decades before Martin Luther, and so on.
So some of them point out the scumbag priests and bishops who raped children. This is true, but the sad thing is the various Protestant denominations are now having similar lawsuits and outings as the lawyers looking for easy money have gotten about all they can get out of the Catholic dioceses. Those in the know about such things note the Catholic and Protestant clergies are about similar in percentage of sex offenders. It is easier to sue a Catholic diocese because the bishop controls all the property. It is harder to sue First Primitive Christian Church when Pastor Billy Bob Boylover or Youth Minister Freddy Feelgirls abuses children, because the congregation usually owns the church. But lawyers are figuring out how to make these cases profitable.
So it’s not celibacy but homosexualists and child rapists who seek clergy jobs to gain access to children who are at fault. Many of the pervy priests are infiltrators from leftists groups, so this explains the screwball departure from traditional Catholic teaching these pervs have engineered. It wouldn’t surprise me that many pervy Protestant preachers are infiltrators also.
Purging the clergy of evil men (and females like the dyke preacher in Ames, Iowa, or the former New York pastorette who handed out sex toys to her assistants) should be the priority of all Christian sects. A revealed religion — that is, one whose people worship the True God – should lead people to Heaven and away from Hell.
About the only Christian sects that are virtually free of clerical scumbags are the Orthodox Christian churches. They treat clergy who prey upon children much more harshly. They allow priests to marry, but those who choose celibacy are normally wired also. Like Catholics, the Orthodox priests can trace their ordination succession back to the Apostles. They are strong in the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, and Ethiopia.
(For the record, most priests who break their vows of celibacy do so the normal way, with adult women. This is at least understandable.)
Back to the holier-than-thou inbreds. Anti-Catholicism is the pornography of the inbred. These same people are usually silent on the godless conduct of most of society, especially the politicians.
People of good will praise other religions’ clergies when they do right. The Cajun priest’s intent was to bless all the people inside his parish, not just the Catholics. St. Jude’s Hospital and many other Catholic hospitals help the sick of all faiths. So do Shriners Hospital and many other Protestant hospitals. My Granny Ruth was a Protestant and a proud member of the Eastern Star, a ladies’ auxiliary to the Masons who do charitable work. Without church charity from Catholics and Protestants, many more people would go sick, hungry, abused, or homeless.
99 and I gratefully accept the prayers and blessings of Rev. Darrell, a Baptist preacher friend of ours. While we disagree with him on some elements of theology, we know he is a devoted man of God. And it is no boast to say his daughter is one of the best singers I have ever heard. If God didn’t enjoy her singing praise from the heart, He wouldn’t have blessed her with her beautiful and emotional voice.
Wise men and women of all faiths still seek Him.
Speaking of the wise men again, it looks like the land of their origin (Iran) is behind the attack on our embassy in Baghdad.
Note how the Iraqi leaders let the mob get into areas they didn’t belong. Note how our neocons want instant war. The Dems are keeping quiet, hoping our people get killed because they are human excrement come to life, like Schiffy the Shitman.
The Deep State wants war profiteering, and they want to entrap President Trump in another Middle East war. The Russia hoax has failed, the Ukraine hoax is failing, President Trump and his people are bringing the Red Chinese and Little Rocket Man to heel, they are getting a border fence built and immigration policy fixed, and we now export oil, natural gas, and coal. Manufacturing jobs are coming back to America. President Trump’s appointees are lifting the federal court system out of the shit it has been mired in for too long. The Deep State and the Swamp and the Chamber of Commerce are pissed and nervous. A second Trump term could put them in court as defendants.
(Hilariously, President Trump is treating the impeachment move of the House like a bad citation from a crooked cop. He’s right. These Democrats are crooked shits.)
President Trump has reinforced the embassy and held the leaders of Iraq and Iran accountable. The killing of any Americans will lead to retaliation. President Trump will likely have the command and control centers of the Iranian military and police destroyed, as well as their oil fields and oil infrastructure. Not many Iranians will die, but the regime’s ability to control their people, export jihad, and pay their bills will be severely hurt.
Likewise with the untrustworthy who run Iraq for now. President Trump has called upon the anti-Shiite Moslems (most of the people) to smash the Shiite heads who take their orders from Iran.
President Trump also knows most Iranians hate and/or fear their government. He wants the government to collapse and better people to take their places. He is not looking to kill large numbers of Iranians, but has directly threatened the government of Iran. He is looking for wise men in Iran to understand this and strike.
America has a similar disconnect between the public, and the crooks and perverts and Nazis who infest the public offices and bureaucracies and federal police and intelligence and military forces of the nation who hate the American people and prey upon them.
President Trump is 73. But he has not given up. He has a reason to live – it is the restoration of America. We as a people are now starting to grasp how corrupt most government payrollers, politicians, and donors are. We as a people are starting to see how corrupt the FBI, CIA, NSA, and State Department are.
America survived the wars against the British, Civil War, World War Two, and the first Cold War (we are in a second Cold War against China now). But we will not survive as a nation unless we get off of our asses and work to protect our nation as it was designed, and not as it was perverted, starting with the LBJ Administration, and continuing thru all following administrations except for the work of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
President Trump has only five more years as president. (I an assuming, even despite massive voter fraud in places like California, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Moslemsota, Detroitistan, parts of North Carolina, and Coward County, Florida, that he will win the election of 2020 if we show up and vote, and donate money and time to get other people of good will to vote.)
People who come after President Trump will have to continue his fight, and those people include us.
This New Year, one of our resolutions should be to keep fighting, and to leave our young ones an America as least as good as we had when we were children. We need to have a mission, and our lives need to have purpose.
This should ring clear as the bells this New Year’s Day.
God bless all of you, every day, for as long as you shall live.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
