Chief Disappointment

Posted on October 11, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Science and medicine have come a long way since sage smoke was used to help heal and ward off evil spirits. In most cases, advances have been beneficial and productive. Still, there are times when even the most well-intentioned advancements can lead to disappointment.

For example, the advances made through the study of DNA resulted in all sorts of benefits. From helping identify potential health risks to reuniting siblings separated at birth or helping provide justice for the victims of horrible crimes.

DNA analysis also made genealogy a big business. Today, anyone who wishes can spit in a test tube, and one company or another will begin tracing their genetic history. Of course, there are downsides to almost any scientific breakthrough, and those researching their heritage through the scientific method are not always happy with the findings.

Take my family for example. My mother’s side of the family tree was proud and vocal about their Native American heritage. I remember hearing stories of our Cherokee and Choctaw heritage from a young age. One in particular was told regularly.

It was the tale of the young Cherokee cousin who decided to leave Oklahoma and move to Florida. He became a successful entrepreneur in the hotel business and was the family’s pride.

No one could provide any evidence that the story and heritage were true. However, if looks meant anything, they were spot on as far as ancestry was concerned. My grandmother’s features and bearing would have allowed her to play a Native American matriarch in any Hollywood Western.

Thankfully, my mother and grandmother passed before DNA tests became a feature of the modern world. Otherwise, they might have received devastating news when I took two DNA tests to learn more about my lineage.

The reason for my research had nothing to do with my mom’s family history. No, I was checking on my dad’s side of the family. My goal was to identify my father’s lineage. His biological father was known only to his mom, and she never shared the info.

I still receive notifications about potential relatives and ancestors from the services I used. Most of those are worthless or validate what I already knew. However, the original DNA tests answered a question I did not ask.

As expected, I discovered that my dad’s heritage was likely Scottish-Irish, with some Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA thrown in for good measure. I also found there was not one small percentage of Native American DNA in my body. The closest I came to Native American DNA was Asian.

The Asian DNA match makes sense. Most experts agree groups from Asia originally populated the Americas. Still, as much as I’d like to think otherwise, there is little chance I am probably related to Sitting Bull, Geronimo, or any other famous Chief. *

* I know! None of the most well-known chiefs were Cherokee or Choctaw, but one can dream, can’t he?

© oneoldcop.com 2023

Posted in family, Humor, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Friday Follies: Burnouts and Burgers

Posted on October 6, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Working nights, 1100 to 0700 hours, was one of those good news-bad news things. You were either going to be bored out of your mind or scared out of your wits at some point. In between those extremes was routine patrol. Occasionally, there were also little incidents that made you wonder how some people managed to get dressed in the morning.

For example, one night shift, I was camped out watching the infamous Fry Street area in Denton, Texas. I was parked where I could keep an eye on the local “stop and rob,” the head shops and bars on Fry, and the Jack in the Box. The Box was where the stoners and drunks would go to scarf down greasy burgers and fries.

Shortly after the bars closed, I heard what sounded like a car at the drag strip warming up the tires.* There was that loud screeching sound and the noise of an engine revving up, ready to launch, but there were no loud exhaust noises.

Now, that was strange. Who, in those days at least, did burnouts without loud pipes? Nobody! Yet, for a few minutes, there would be loud screeching and engine noise but no movement. I could not see anything to match the noise and was about to drive down the street to see if I could see something.

Then there was movement. From behind the Jack-in-the-Box, a car appeared. It moved in jerky stages. The engine would rev, the tires would screech, the front end would raise up, and it would move a few feet. Then the noise would stop, and the strange show would start again. When it reached the street, I was there, red lights flashing.

Of course, I expected some drunk kid or local stoner to stagger out of the car. Instead, a nicely dressed, polite young man stepped out when I asked him. He and his three buddies had those “Oh, no! What am I going to tell my mother” looks on their faces.

After checking them out, checking the car out, and realizing what happened, I had to laugh. However, I did not laugh until I let them go on their way.

The driver and his friends were new students at North Texas State University. The driver’s parents surprised him with a brand-new Chevrolet Monte Carlo and had it delivered to his apartment in Denton. Since it was a delivery, the driver dropped it off and left the keys at the office, and no one familiarized the kid with the car.

The display of smoking tires and revving engines was not due to drugs, alcohol, or a desire to show off his powerful new hotrod. Rather, it resulted from not releasing the parking brake before putting the car in gear.

The look on the kid’s face when I pulled the release and the parking brake pedal popped up was priceless. The muffled laughter of his friends was sad.

*Image by LEEROY Agency from Pixabay

© oneoldcop.com 2023

Posted in Humor, Police, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Speaking of Brands

Posted on September 27, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

I’ve been asked a lot of questions in my life. They ranged from the rather petulant ” Just who do you think you are?” to the whiney “Are you really going to arrest me, officer?” Until this week, no one ever asked me, “What brands do you associate with?”

Did I suddenly become a social media influencer or a rising hot commodity in the entertainment or sports field? I don’t think so. Though, I have been asked what’s your favorite brand of this or that sometimes. In most cases, such questions were for surveys, but occasionally, they were statements in disguise.

Questions in Disguise

For instance, a friend asked me not long ago, “Do you still wear Levi’s?” He wanted to say he quit buying Levi’s when he heard Levi’s moved production overseas. First, though, he needed me to clarify my position, just in case.

So, where does the question inspiring this piece stand? Well, it is a bit open-ended. The question probably refers to manufacturer’s brands like the one I referenced. However, I’m from Texas, and I might think of a cattle brand that was pretty nifty, such as the Four Sixes.

The bottom line is this. I do not associate with any brand. I might drink a particular beverage brand more often than others, but I don’t associate with the brand. Others may associate me with the brand, but that is their bias, not mine.

Beyond having some fun with words, my point is that using the term associate here makes one question its use instead of addressing the question’s intent. Unless, of course, the goal was to flush out hairsplitters like me.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

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Monday Musings: A Lesson Learned

Posted on September 18, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Have you ever had the experience of wishing you’d learned something earlier in life? I do not mean knowing the Theory of Relativity or not making the mistake the character below made.

I’m talking about life lessons. Something like how time-wasting it is to carry a grudge or allow someone’s actions to make you feel bad or hold you back. If we’re honest, most of us had that “if I’d only known” thought at least once.

For me, it allowed others to impact me negatively and feel powerless or less than at times. I learned that as a child, and it stuck with me for years. In some ways, it was a blessing but an exhausting one.

It was a blessing because it made me work hard and be the best I could be. That was exhausting, but it was even more exhausting when someone put me down, played games to take credit for something, or kissed the right butts to get the promotion I deserved.

I would be carrying the same baggage today if I had not encountered a personal development program that helped me look at myself and others differently. In that program, my years of higher education and experience in dealing with the training and managing of people came together.

Suddenly, I was looking back from a different perspective. I realized I had allowed the flaws in others to make me feel flawed. People who would stab their best friend in the back to get a promotion were the ones who were hurting. And I had let their negativity and inappropriate actions affect me.

Thankfully, my childhood gave me the tools to keep moving and succeeding in the face of negativity, backstabbing, and rumor-mongering. However, it would have been a much easier path to travel if I’d known what I know now.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

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Friday Follies: Another Humpday Night

Posted on September 15, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

It is so nice that people I’ve never met and probably never will meet are interested in my life. Yes! My little online muse posted a note wanting to know what I was doing that evening. That is so sweet!

Okay, whoever came up with that question is just trying to keep me writing, hoping it’ll help my and WordPress’s numbers. That’s fine because it also allows me to stroll down memory lane again and visit the past.

For those reading this in countries other than mine, I do not know if Wednesday is considered “Hump Day” in your world. Here, it is the traditional midpoint of the five-day workweek. So, it is the day you get over the hump and start sliding toward the weekend.

In this household, it is also the last night of traditions that started when we were kids and television was still in its infancy. Like many of our Baby Boomer friends, we were hooked on television variety shows as kids. Shows headed up by people such as Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan, Jack Benny, and Steve Allen, to name a few.

Some, including some of our children, cannot believe we’re wasting time on such shows. But there is a reason for our becoming couch potatoes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. Beyond reminding us of childhood time spent with our families, we have another connection to these nights and these shows.

They came back to us at a poignant period in our lives. Cancer raised its ugly head in our home. For months, our formerly active lives were dedicated to dealing with surgeries, chemo, and all that goes into surviving such a challenge.

Nights out with family and friends or inviting someone to dinner were on hold. Shows such as American Idol, Dancing With the Stars, and The Voice took our minds off the challenges and reminded us of days gone by.

So, the day this question was posed, it was Hump Day. We dined at home, enjoyed some decent entertainment, and remembered sitting on the living room floor watching Elvis, the Beatles, or comedic action on black and white television.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

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A Question of Distance

Posted on September 13, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

I was recently asked to write about the “farthest” I’ve ever traveled from home. Immediately, a short list of locations ran through my mind. And I pondered, “Which was the farthest from home?” With the help of Google Maps and a little patience, I started comparing distances.

Of course, my contrarian persona threw me a curve ball before I was finished. It whispered, “What did they mean by farthest?”

I know! Farthest usually means distance, but not always! Take New York City and Toronto. I spent time in both the late ’80s and early ’90s. They are less than 500 miles apart by car but might have been on different planets. The difference between Ottawa and Toronto was not as dramatic, but they could have been on different continents.

I could go on with the comparisons. I’ve been blessed to travel to wonderful places thousands of miles from what I’d call home. If you’d like, click the links below to read about some of those experiences. However, none of those trips meet the farthest I’ve traveled definition I have in mind.

The farthest I ever traveled from home was a round-trip of almost 2,000 miles that lasted several weeks. It was a sad journey, though it could have been a sadly amusing tragic comedy movie in hindsight. What made it sadly funny was where it ended.

My mother, brother, and I left home in the summer of 1963 and headed to my grandparents’ home in Indiana. It was not a vacation or a normal trip to see the relatives. It was a relocation journey. Thankfully, the relocation did not work out. After a few weeks, we returned to Fort Worth, Texas, our hometown. Unfortunately, we weren’t going home.

Mom and I ended up in a small house about a mile from where we lived when we left Fort Worth. While we were away, Dad moved to a garage apartment near my future stepmom, and my brother joined him. When the dust finally settled, the term home had a different meaning to all of us.

Before, the four of us lived in a large ranch-style home with a few acres, a barn, and two horses. The horses were not ours, but we cared for them. You might say we were their foster family. Mom and I were still within walking distance of the place, but it might as well have been in another universe.

Yes, farthest can mean something other than distance.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

A Question of Beauty

Speaking of Travel

A Reason to Give Thanks

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Monday Musings: Oops! I did it again!

Posted on September 4, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

If the title of this piece has you humming a Britney Spears song for the rest of the day, good! I wish I’d had it running through my head the other day when I did something I promised myself I would not do again.

Yes! I bought into a clickbait post concerning a topic near and dear to my heart. How those who serve our country in uniform, military or otherwise, are often treated when they are out in public.

I wore Army green in the late ’60s, police navy blue for almost thirty years after that, and buried my little brother with military honors during the Vietnam War. So, I am interested when someone tells a story about how anyone wearing a uniform is mistreated.

Sadly, as in the case attracting my attention, many of those stories are simply internet con games. This one started with the tale of a soldier who lost a close friend in combat.

Like my brother and one of his friends, they made a pact to get together when they made it home from ‘Nam. In both cases, the post and my brother’s life, only one made it home.

In the piece of trash doled out by the post’s author, the two buddies agreed to celebrate their reunion at a high-end restaurant the one who met his end in ‘Nam loved. The post was about how the survivor tried to honor his friend by dining at the restaurant.

The author of this piece of trash doled out the story in paragraphs separated by advertising, earning a few bucks for dragging people into his con game. Then, after a gut-wrenching tale of a soldier treated like dirt because he dared to wear his uniform in a “high-end” restaurant, the author explained the whole thing was a sham.

By then, I was expecting the “Hey, this is all a fairy tale I made up to get clicks” disclaimer. Still, using a story of this nature to make a few bucks or pick up a few followers is tantamount to the bullies many of us knew in school or hear about today. People who inflict pain on others to make themselves feel good about themselves.

And don’t give me any BS about the writer wanting to highlight how those in uniform are sometimes mistreated. Or how they can be supported in their post-deployment days or come together to help one of their brothers or sisters out in a time of distress.

I had the honor of meeting one of my brother’s buddies from ‘Nam and spoke with another several times by telephone. I also worked with many veterans of that and other conflicts. Few, if any, would find much solace in fake stories like the one inspiring my post.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

Posted in Ethics, Journalism, Morality, Uncategorized, Vietnam | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Monday Musings: Nice Butt Bubba

Posted on August 28, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Well, I guess I should have expected it. In some ways, it began with the attack on Boomers. It wasn’t an all-out assault, but it was an attack. Posts began appearing on social media with titles such as “50 Things Boomers Should Quit Doing.” Suddenly, our traditions, our hobbies, our vocations, and our clothing were under attack.

Even our manners were under attack. Take the practice of holding a door open for someone who presented themselves as female. According to an issue of Cosmopolitan, a study conducted in the United States found a man holding a door open for a woman was likely an act of ‘benevolent sexism.” 

The current trend appeared more recently and first manifested itself in business attire. I still remember a high-end men’s clothing store salesperson trying to convince me that a suit coat that fit me like a second skin was the right size. I wasn’t buying, but many of my young colleagues were.

When your suit coat is so tight you can barely button it, that’s a bit of a stretch. (pun intended) When that wasn’t enough, trousers began to be half a size too small, and legs were tapered to the point a thin younger man looked like a stick figure.

Recently, I made the mistake of clicking on a post touting the latest version of men’s shorts and trousers for work or leisure wear.  They are, to be kind, one step away from being stretchable workout attire. In fact, one advertisement even touted how they fit the wearer’s hips and legs.

The picture to the right is a pair of “Athletic Fit Stretch Suit Pants.” They are not as workout-looking as some others I’ve seen, but do you really want to wear slacks that are so thin and tight people can see how much change you have in your pocket?

OneOldCop -2023

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Monday Musings: A Question of Beauty

Posted on August 21, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Inspiration comes in all shapes, sizes, and formats. A friend commented on a post. They asked people to share the most beautiful place they’ve visited. This little piece was inspired by that. Being the analytical nerd I am, I read a few responses and realized I had to write about the matter.

First, as you’ve read or heard many times, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, as I wrote some years ago in “A Blind Eye,” humans can find ways to see only what they wish to see. People see what they want. This applies to everything, from a mountain vista to their belief in God. Beauty depends on more than just colors, shapes, lighting, and setting. It is like one’s religious or spiritual beliefs. It is a complex and multifaceted experience.

Take my first parachute jump, for instance. It was early 1969 at Fort Benning, Georgia. I was wrapping up my training and would be heading back to Texas in a couple of weeks. However, I still needed to jump out of an airplane at 1,200 feet several times. This was necessary to earn my Jump Wings. And, as luck would have it, I was the first guy to jump in my platoon.

The Jump Master instructed me to step up. I had to stand in the door of that noisy old C-119 for what felt like forever as we approached the drop zone. As I’ve written before, I counted the rivets on the engine boom while standing there. I was afraid to look down for fear I’d freeze when the Jump Master yelled, “Jump!”

He yelled. I jumped and remembered little except the rushing wind battering me until I felt a tug and looked up. My parachute was unfolding just as it was designed. I can’t tell you how beautiful that was. Then I looked down. I enjoyed the view from a thousand feet above, as I drifted over the forest toward the drop zone.

So what does all this above have to do with the point of this piece? First, the beauty I felt when I realized my equipment worked was profound. I understood I would not die that day. This beauty is different from the beauty one experiences on vacation. It is not like a less dramatic visit to a scenic area or locale.

I have been blessed to travel to some gorgeous places. I’ve been as far south as Brazil, west as Hawaii, east as Wales and England, and north as Alaska. I’ve been to mountain tops, the bottoms of canyons, the depths of caves, and many points in between.

I’ve had some wonderful experiences. I have seen some beautiful things. I admired the magnificent vistas in the Rocky Mountains National Park. I was on a boat near Niagara Falls. I also swam with the dolphins in the Caribbean. The most magnificent was Glacier Bay.

Yes, Glacier Bay is at the top of my list. It is not there because of the mountains. It is not because of glaciers, the bay, or any one thing you might normally identify with something beautiful. In fact, the day we were there, it was overcast and hazy.

An iceberg is calved!

There was also the distraction of groups of tourists full of chatterboxes. They yammered about everything. They ran around as if the rest of us were blind or didn’t exist. And there are always those who cannot wait their turn to get to the railing. They had to push to the rail to get a picture, even if it meant ruining someone else’s shot.

Eventually, the pushy, noisy groups were satisfied. They went back to their cabins or down to the lounge. Wherever they went, everyone remaining stood in awed silence or spoke in hushed tones to avoid disrupting others’ experiences.

As we stood there taking it in, the glaciers would groan. An iceberg would occasionally be calved with a sound like a cannon shot. And a line of ships floated motionless and silent, strung out the length of the bay. It was magnificent, and it would be hard to imagine anything more beautiful. Even the critters were in awe.

Okay! The little critter below did not appear in awe as it floated around on its little iceberg. Instead, it exhumed an air of disdain and grudging tolerance. It waited patiently for the captains to start the engines. It wanted them to leave this piece of paradise to its natural inhabitants.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

Posted in Holidays, Travel, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Once Again: Into the Breach

Posted on August 16, 2023 by S. Eric Jackson

Okay! Maybe it isn’t into the breach, in the classic sense. I’m not stepping in to save the day for someone. I’m not volunteering to stand between society and the chaos some seem to seek. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

I’m just trying to make it through the “Golden Years” without any more 4:30 AM ambulance rides or ICU visits. Thankfully, my shift from “Darn! You don’t look that old” to “Have you had any problems with anesthesia before” is relatively benign. At least the initial phase has been fairly low-key.

Yes, I am a brand new cataract surgery patient. With minimal fanfare but a long wait for an appointment, I had a relatively comfortable and pleasant experience having a five-figure lens implanted in my right eye. Of course, as with any medical procedure involving introducing a foreign object into your body, there is discomfort, worry, and adjustment when the anesthesia wears off.

So, here I go. Will my blurry vision in that eye at the moment clear up? Will the foggy look go away? The after-procedure instructions say you don’t rub the eye. Did I rub it while I was still befuddled by the sedation? Are the drops I need to put in the eye going to burn so much every time I put them in the eye? What happens if this doesn’t work? Will an optometrist be able to correct the poor vision left by the ophthalmologists?

Thankfully, the road I traveled to reach this point taught me many lessons. I cannot change what happened or didn’t happen this morning. I cannot let the potential shortcomings of the procedure interfere with my walk through this life. I have overcome and will overcome until my time here is done.

© oneoldcop.com 2023

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