Reminiscing -- Christmas, 2023

I was going to send this as an insert with my annual Christmas card to friends, but for a number of reasons, chose not to.

But I thought it might be interesting to the children and grandchildren, and perhaps more.

So, here goes:

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Christmas 2023

Hi, guys and gals, binary and non-binary,

Our annual update is posted elsewhere.

I’m sitting in the Bat Cave, at an undisclosed location. It’s mid-December — the winter solstice was last night, 9:27 p.m. CT.

I’ve had two glasses of wine and am enjoying my YouTube play list on a huge flat-screen Philips “smart TV” powered by an Amazon Firestick, which connects me with the legacy networks, MAX, HBO, YouTube, ESPN, Hulu, and almost anything else one can think of.

I’m working on an Apple laptop. I was the #3 Apple Fanboy.

As the attached update says, I’m 72 years old and in good health.

Sipping $8-wine (bottle, not glass), in my Hawaiian short-sleeve shirt, and watching great music, it’s hard not to reminisce.

I wear nostalgia on my sleeves.

But that gets boring for readers; I will try to shorten this a bit using bullet-lists.

The Bat Cave was the second-best thing I ever did in retirement. The first-best thing: the blog.

My “life” is all around me in the Bat Cave. Framed photos of the entire family going back a generation or two, and the photos of grandkids, hang on the walls.

Prized photographs from my 30-year career in the USAF hang on one wall:

• posing in front of the T-37, Randolph AFB: my first real flying experience with the USAF on my way to becoming a flight surgeon
• the B-52: one 8-hour, all-night low-level terrain-following flight through the Rocky Mountains launched out of Grand Forks AFB, ND, in 1982, or thereabouts;
• the F-15: more than a 100 sorties out of Bitburg AB, Germany, 1983 - 1986;
• the F-111: a dozen or so sorties out of RAF Lakenheath, England, 1986 - 1989;
• the F-104 “widowmaker”: over the Mediterranean, flying out of Sardinia;
• from a KC-135, re-fueling an SR-71: who knows where?
• responding to a B-1B emergency landing: Rhein-Main AB, Germany, 1993
• countless flights in C-130s, KC-135s, C-5s; other USAF aircraft and the US Army’s C-12;
• UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on the ground in northern Iraq and in the air in South America.

A mechanical engineering drawing board and a work bench for Sophia under the photos.

And then shelves and shelves of Legos including some really, really prized Legos.

And surrounded by bookshelves of books. Mostly literature. Some science.

Stickley Furniture.

And coffee mugs from everywhere: 


• USC School of Medicine
• my father-in-law’s US Army coffee mugs, along with one for his Japanese wife who probably never had a cup of coffee in her life
• an X-Files coffee cup from our younger daughter who lived and breathed that experience but who also never drank coffee;
• several USAF coffee mugs; most from Germany
• two Spode Christmas tree cups, from England

As a family we spent thirteen years overseas.

We spent three years in England. With additional temporary assignments there for me, I’ve probably lived in England for a total of four-plus years.

From England, I gained a real appreciation for

• great 60s music;
• Shakespeare; and,
• long, solitary walks on treeless highlands during inclement weathe

From Germany, eight+ years:

• Legos


From Turkey, two years:

• a real appreciation for living in a country — the US — where “government” works;
• a real appreciation for living in a country — the US — where there is no beyanname.
• a great lifelong frien

From Japan, temporary duty:

• a real sadness we did not have a full tour there.

The US:

I have lived in, or worked in, or visited all fifty states (as far as I know, including Hawaii, Alaska, Wyoming, and Rhode Island). I’ve hitchhiked across the entire USA not once, but twice. I have fond memories of everywhere I’ve been and could say great things about every state, but now, in the autumn — and, soon-to-be — winter of my life, I can say that living in a middle class suburb of Ff Worth, north Texas, thirty minutes from Dallas, is just about the best place I can imagine.

May and I try to get back to Portland, Oregon, every three months traveling separately, so the grandsons see one of us almost every other month or so. May stays a bit longer, but I generally go for five days.

We also try to schedule five-day road trips for the two of us, renting a car from our Enterprise Rental just down the street. Our longest trip was to Philadelphia and back, all in five days, to visit art museums in Philadelphia, visit Gettsyburg, and celebrate my uncle’s 100th birthday in Amish Country, Pennsylvania. Don was my mother’s only sibling, and I don’t recall ever meeting him. At his 100th birthday he told me he sort of recalls meeting me when I was two or three years old. It was an incredible trip — Dallas to Philadelphia in five days with a short stop in Nashville to see our oldest granddaughter, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

We did another five-day trip to Nashville - Chattanooga to see our daughter compete in the 31-mile paddle-boarding race down the Tennessee River; and, during that trip see our Vanderbilt daughter participate in a Latino dance festival.

We have at least two five-day trips pencilled in for this spring — one in New Mexico, one in Arizona.

We can connect with the extended Oksol family on Flathead Lake, Montana, where our parents left us a McMansion Of Memories now owned by the youngest sibling.

We can connect with May’s brother and sister-in-law in Huntington Beach, California, just down the road from Disneyland.

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If I have one regret it would be that I did not keep a 2 x 3 index card on every incredible person I met and / or worked with or for in the USAF. And then kept in touch. But it was not in my genetic makeup to do that.