Sgt. Mom
- Location
- San Antonio, Texas,
- Birthday
- February 21
- Bio
- Retired military, novelist and mother, sucker for animals and homebody
MY RECENT COMMENTS
- “Hey, Mrs. Beeton's is
one of my classic references -
as far
as 19th century
house…”
November 24, 2009 09:25AM - “Ah, an oldie but a
goodie. I came to Texas,
fifteen years
ago, and
although some…”
November 23, 2009 05:15PM - “It was the most
beautiful sight, SM - all the
snow was pink,
from the
setting sun…”
November 22, 2009 02:09PM - “Actually - the longest
continuous party I ever had
anything
to do with was in
Gre…”
November 22, 2009 12:29PM - “A lovely evocation - I
visited Vienna, when I was 16.
My
friends and I hung out
i…”
November 21, 2009 10:21AM

(Street fair in Misawa City, 1978)
Since the military services are, not to put too fine a point on it, a male dominated environment--- the services run from 3% female (Marines) to the %14-16 female (Air Force and Army)--- this tends to encourage a pretty frenetic social life… Read full post »
1. Bring a gun. Preferably two guns. Bring all of your friends
who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap.
Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow
miss.
4. Move away from your attacker. Distance… Read full post »

A certain picture hung in a black frame, in the back bedroom of Granny Jessie’s house in Pasadena for many years, a black and white photo of four graves piled high with flowers. Only recently did my mother realize, upon looking closely at it, that the flowers were… Read full post »
(Another essay from a couple of years ago, when I was still trying to get my second venture into historical fiction published the traditional way.)
Or this one would, if it weren't a weekday. Besides the slow corrosive frustration of dealing with the various submissions processes of the b… Read full post »
I used to be a feminist, a long time ago and another century, when it used to mean that you were bright and adventurous, and the life choices presented to you— the options that your mothers and grandmothers had were about as appealing as a plate of cold gruel. My Grannie… Read full post »
Oh, Greenland is a dreadful place, it’s a land
that’s never, ever green
And there’s ice and snow and the whale-fishes blow, and the
sunlight’s seldom seen,
Brave boys, and the sunlight’s seldom seen!

(JP and I, around 1963)
Besides being a nasty slam against those who slog their hearts out trying to instill some degree of knowledge into those who are young and dumb and full of... well, never mind... it's an axiom deserving of a bit of qualification. When I was… Read full post »

(Rear: Sgts Butterfield, Festa,Thomas,Menaul, Buonarobo, McLendon
Front: Lts Francis, Dodge, Chandler, Becker)
The ten men in this picture assembled in May of 1943 at Eprata Army Air Base, Washington, a place of which Jimmy-Junior wrote in disgust, “They have me living in… Read full post »
A year or so ago, another blogger linked to this article- The Very Worst Toys Ever, and I so began to chortle…. Not so much at the toys themselves, although JP, and Pippy and I were actually given at least one
… Read full post » 
(Wintertime at Misawa AB, 1978)
A single woman in the Air Force barracks, being in a rare, precious and much pursued category needed to develop a certain amount of street smarts (or brutal realism) vis a vis the male of our species, subcategory/… Read full post »
... It just gets parked in new premises, every couple of years. Summertime is the favored PCS, or Permanent Change Of Station time for families with children, but it’s not like there is a really good time, just a least worst time to pack up everything you own and vacate the… Read full post »

(Great-Aunt Nan, Camp Lee, 1944 “Overseas Cap Issued”)
My great-aunt Nan was Grandpa Al's younger sister, born in Reading in 1903. They were the children of Great-Grandpa George's second marriage, to Alice Page of Middlesborough, Yorkshire, who had trained as a nurse, until sh… Read full post »

(Blondie in Nauplion, Greece, 1982 - she is the little girl on the far right)
When I was 16 and half years old, I went to Europe with a troop of teenaged Girl Scouts and made the happy discovery that I blended in. Being plumpish and fairish,… Read full post »
On a mild spring day, my daughter and I walk on a narrow trail, trampled out between tall grass and wildflowers grown knee-high, waist-high, shoulder-high. A light breeze ruffles the flowers, around which orbit a fair of butterflies. We are on a quest, looking for the past, and exploring the ruins… Read full post »
My
dearest daugher, known as Blondie, for the exceedingly fair color
of her hair, first raised the subject by asking, in that
deliberately casual way that teenagers have of raising that issue
that is of supreme importance to them:
"Mom... do you think I could make it through Marine Corps basic
t/… Read full post »
And some things which should not have been forgotten....
Have not been, because they are either funny or excellent cautionary tales. The Teflon Man, for instance: he bestrode the small world of military broadcasting, providing a rich legacy of horrible gaffes, cringe-inducing mis… Read full post »
We took a road trip, my daughter and I, in the summer of 1990. We lived then on the northern outskirts of Zaragoza, in an urbanization by the main road towards Logrono, so one summer day we packed the tent and our sleeping bags, and a little gas camp stove in… Read full post »

(The Lesser Weevil and Spike)
So, now that my daughter Blondie and I are supporting a houseful of critters… some of whom interact agreeably with each other, and some others of whom maintain a guarded distance and a policy of non-recognition, and one who spits and snarls… Read full post »
We were on our way to Granny Jessie's house just before Christmas, not over winter fields and woods in a sleigh, but in our parents' main car, the aged jade-green Plymouth station wagon. Mom was somewhere along Foothill Boulevard short of the turnoff for Descanso… Read full post »
While not quite achieving Melrose Place-like high drama, living in a barracks and keeping attuned to your friends love-lives is about on par with one of the duller soap operas. Of course, where the walls are tissue-paper thin, and there are only two communal telephones, one is made rather… Read full post »
Pax Romana
The stone ruins of Imperial Rome underlie Western Europe and the Mediterranean like the bones of a body, partially buried, yet here and there still visible and grandly manifest above ground, all but complete. From Leptis Magna in North Africa, to Hadrian's
… Read full post »My mother's favorite Christmas cookie recipe came originally from one of those post-war commercial give-away cookbooks which have provided James Lileks with so much materiel for “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” when they attempted to shroud whatever foodstuff they manufactured i
… Read full post »
(The house, in winter 1992)
I had no idea who had lived in the house before. I found it by accident, taking a shortcut between two housing listings in South Ogden, one of which proved to have been rented by the time I got to it, and the other which… Read full post »

(Sgt Mom - pre-Sgt, pre-Mom: at Misawa AB, 1978)
The women-only barracks was the only one that contained a working kitchen. Once upon a time, all the female troops were assigned to a WAF squadron, and lived in the WAF barracks. The WAF separate command was long… Read full post »
This is a lovely recipe for a whole chicken, butterflied and baked on a layer of seasoned, sauteed onions and slices of stout artisanal bread. I found it in an old issue of “Cuisine at Home”, where it had been taken from
… Read full post »
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